Controlled Variables are Perceptual Variables

[rsmarken]

RM: Some recent comments on CSGNet reflect a misconception about PCT that I think is worth addressing, even at the risk of suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous opposition.

RM: The misconception is that “control of perception” implies that a controlled variable – the external correlate of the internally controlled perception – is controlled only as a “side effect” of controlling that internal perception. This notion is reflected in the following three comments made to CSGNet:

FN: I believe our actions affect external variables but we only control our perceptions of them. If there is a high degree of correspondence then for practical purposes we control the external variable too. But we don’t control it in the sense that control is used in PCT.

WM: …So controlling perception internally is paralleled simultaneously by controlling ‘something out there’ as indexed by the computer data. Rather than eschewing external control for internal control in a binary debate as you wish to do, I would propose that both views are simultaneously true when a system is controlling well…[emphasis mine: RM]

EJ: This is why I try to make the distinction that a) only perceptions inside the organism can be controlled, and b) something in the environment seems to get stabilized (we presume), in spite of disturbances pushing it in other directions.

RM: All three statements take “control of perception” to mean that we control only internal perceptions and not the external correlates of those perceptions – the controlled variables. The observed behavior of a controlled variable is just a side effect of control of the perceptual correlate of that variable. This leads to the notion that the observed behavior of controlled variables can give a misleading picture of the perceptions a behaving system is actually controlling.

RM: The actual PCT view of the relationship between controlled variables (CV) and and controlled perceptions was succinctly stated by Powers in a comment to CSGNet that I posted earlier:

[From Bill Powers (990331.0033 MST)] “The CV” is the observer’s perception. However, if the observer happens to be using a perceptual system closely similar to that in the behaving system, it is possible for the observer’s perception to covary with the behaving system’s perception. Then the observer will see that the CV is protected from disturbances by the actions of the behaving system, and the CV will pass all the parts of the Test.

RM: What Bill is saying here is that the controlled variable – the external correlate of the controlled perception — is itself a perception! The CV is not an “external variable”, “something out there” or “something in the environment” that is being controlled as a side - effect of controlling a perception. The CV is a perception in the observer that is exactly equivalent to the perception controlled by the behaving system when it covaries with the perception being controlled by the behaving system. This equivalence will be seen then the observer’s perception of the CV “… is protected from disturbances by the actions of the behaving system, and [passes] all the parts of the Test”.

RM: The observer’s CV perception can be equivalent to that of the behaving system only if “…the observer happens to be using a perceptual system closely similar to that in the behaving system”. So a human observer will be using such a perceptual system when the behaving system under study is another human. When the observer is a human and the system under study is another species the human may have to use a different kind of perceptual system to perceive the CV that corresponds to the perception being controlled by the behaving system; for example, a human observer can perceive the variables controlled by bats doing echolocation using sonar devices that can detect very high frequency sounds.

RM: Bottom line: Control of perception means control of perceptual representations of aspects of the outside world known as controlled variables. Any observer with access to a perceptual system similar to the one in the behaving system can monitor the perceptual variables that that system is controlling. The observers who do this are called PCT researchers.

RM: I think I’ll post this to the IAPCT Discourse site under the topic “Controlled Variables are Perceptual Variables”

Best

Rick

[bnhpct]

Compare the archived thread “P and Qi”, where I posted this diagram:

[rsmarken]

@bnhpct

BN: Compare the archived thread “P and Qi”, where I posted this diagram:

RM: Yes, that’s close. But one could still interpret it as there being something in the environment, represented by the little vertical blue bar, that both subject and observer are perceiving. I don’t know if there is a good graphical way of showing it but the PCT view is that the observer is perceiving the variable the subject is controlling when the observer is perceiving that variable in terms of the same perceptual function as the subject. So one way to improve this diagram would be to put the same perceptual function into both yellow rectangles in your diagram. And instead of a single blue bar as the environmental variable it would be better to put an array or line of dots representing different environmental variables.

RM: Here’s how I would show the relationship between controlled variables and controlled perceptions:

RM: The x’s are environmental variables. The variable controlled by the Subject is defined by the perceptual function, F(), which is a function of a subset of the environmental variables, so the arguments of F() are x1, x3 and x5: F(x1, x3, x5). The Observer is able to observe the variable the Subject is controlling by perceiving the environment in terms of the same perceptual function, F(x1, x3, x5), as the Subject. The resulting perception in the Observer is called q.i, which, the Observer knows from doing some version of the “the Test”, is a perception that is equivalent to the perceptual variable controlled by the Subject – the controlled variable.

RM: Note that this way of describing the situation makes it clear that there is not an “external variable”, “something out there” or “something in the environment”. The controlled variable is not a variable in the environment to be perceived correctly or incorrectly; it is a perception to be constructed by the perceptual systems in the behaving system (the Subject in this case) based on the sensory effects of variables in the environment. That is why in PCT we say that the controlled variable exists only as a perception – in this case as a perception in the Subject and the Observer-- and the nature of this controlled variable is defined by the perceptual function, F(x1, x3, x5).

RM: This way of describing the situation also makes it clear that the main goal of research aimed at understanding the behavior of organisms (living control systems) has to be aimed at discovering the nature of the perceptual functions, F(), that define the controlled variables around which the behavior of living systems is organized.

Best

Rick

[amatic]

It is true that the perception signal is controlled. That is the only signal being compared to the reference signal and maintained. The diagrams are confusing, though. This one makes it seem like the qi, the controlled quantity is out there in the environment and that it is controlled only as a side effect of controlling the perception.

This one is pretty good:

It would mean that qi and p are just the same variable from different points of view; if the TCV was done correctly.
Suggestions: the input function converts multiple x to p, so the notation is good, as p is a function of x1, x3 and x5. Output function takes e and acts on multiple x, so x1, x3 and x5 are different functions of error or output, and the notation should reflect that. Also, in the Subject and the Observer, variables/signals are presented as lines, and in the environment, variables are presented as circles, and lines are “influence”.

Maybe that is good to show that notation is different for the environment vs subject/system, the symbols for variables and functions should not be just switched, but somehow made more different., as it is not consistent. Here is my take on it:

The rule is - lines are variables with names next to them, boxes and circles are functions. Every branching is a copy function. I’m not too happy with the boxes for f1-f5, and the overlapping lines.

[MartinT]

[Martin Taylor 2020.10.22.12.20]

This is a response both to Rick and to a CSGnet posting by Warren Mansell.

Here’s the relevant segment from Rick’s relevant posting to CSGnet. Note his substitution of “external reality” for my “Real Reality”.: On Sun, Oct 25, 2020 at 7:48 AM Martin Taylor <csgnet@lists.illinois.edu> wrote:

Rick forgets that one’s actions influence real reality, whereas one perceives (and creates thereby) a perceived reality from the resulting input quantity. FN, WM, and EJ realize this and their quoted statements are correct. The precision with which the perceptual variable’s Perceived Reality corresponds to that of a variable in Real Reality determines the best possible Quality of Control. Real Reality may not function anything like Perceptual Reality, but the effects we produce on Real Reality do affect the input quantities that correspond to variables we perceive and control.

RM: No, I didn’t forget that actions influence external reality. See my reply to Bruce Nevin at the IAPCT Discourse site.

The rest is my response to Warren’s “On 2020/10/21 11:22 PM, Warren Mansell (wmansell@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) wrote”, but it applies equally to Rick’s unfortunate sunstitution of “external” for “real”.

All we control is our perception of the variable; that doesn’t mean that the variable itself isn’t also controlled, but we have no way of directly knowing that because we are all perceptual control devices even the people with rulers and electronic measuring devices. We just have to assume it is the case because we’ve survived and haven’t crashed our car yet…

I think it is a little more assured than that, though that is indeed part of the argument.

The argument I would use is that we perceive and directly control a variable property of something in Perceived Reality (PR), but can act only on whatever is really “out there”, a Real Reality (RR) variable. Disturbances in RR cause the value of the RR variable to change, with some variance if we do not act to influence it, and with some other variance if we do act in such a way that we do influence it. If we control the RR variable successfully, the latter variance is smaller than the former.

According to PCT, we control a variable in PR, not RR, and we sometimes compute Quality of Control (QoC) as the ratio of the disturbance-caused variance of the perceptual variable if we don’t act to the variance of the same variable when we act to control it. The question is then about the relation between the RR Quality of Control and the PR QoC. An outside observer cannot determine either kind of QoC, because the observer has perceptual reality different from that of the controller, and has access only to the effect produced by the controller’s actions in RR on the observer’s own unique PR.

An Analyst, however, has no such limitation. By definition, the Analyst has access to all variables related to a problem, in this case, including the values of the RR variable that is responsible for all influences on the sensory system of the organism, the Perception inside the organism, and the context of the perception in the Perceptual World (Perceptual Reality). The PR value of the externalized perception in PR is identical to the perception, and it is the discrepancy between that value and the reference value that generates the error value, and together with its history, the current output value.

The limit to the Quality of Control has two independent components: (1) the variance in how much the RR variable influenced by the control loop’s output changes over the effective loop transport lag time (which includes delays in any integrating or differentiating processes), and (2) the variance in how exact values of the momentary inputs (spikes) influence the exact momentary value of the perception. The second type is what Powers was referring to when he said that he hoped that using “neural current” as a time average over a “bundle” of neurons would not cause more than a 10% error rate.

Only the RR variable affects the sensor values that create the perceptual value, not the externalized perception in its perceptual reality context where it might be, say, the relative locations of a target and a cursor, which might not exist as entities in RR. When one acts to bring the relative location value to a reference, something happens in RR that we perceive as change in that relative location value. Of that we can be assured. Indeed, we can always, at any level of the hierarchy, be assured that if control quality is thus and so, then our actions have caused functional effects in RR that are to that extent correctly modelled in PR. Good control = much knowledge about functional relationships among components of RR.

What we cannot know is what the components of RR might be, nor how they produce their outputs given their inputs. We can, however — and this is the business of much of science — find sets of functional relationships among perceived sub-components that would produce these same functional relationships among the components. The position of a perceiver is closely analogous to that of a programmer trying to analyze an undocumented complicated programme written in an unknown, perhaps Object Oriented Programming (OOP), language.

The programmer could unravel the program into the input-output (functional) relationships among the objects by reprogramming in OOP those same observed functional relationships, and could do it in terms of ever simpler component objects that are re-used in different objects. The programmers version would behave just like the subject programme, but might be programmed entirely differently. The original program might not even have been written using objects in OOP form.

We are in that programmer’s position with regard to what we can (n principle) and cannot (even in principle) know about Real Reality. Our ability to control precisely sets limits on the ways RR interactions might play out in producing the perceptions (replicated in PR) that we control. The Perceptual Functions that produce precisely controllable perceptions necessarily are closely similar to corresponding functional relationships in RR. Our Perceptual Functions have evolved and been tuned and perhaps built from scratch in ways that improve the survival to reproduce of all extant species. What we all can control depends entirely on how well out perceptual functions match Real Reality, and since we are here, that is likely to be “pretty well”.

Martin

[rsmarken]

[quote=“MartinT, post:5, topic:15681, full:true”]
[Martin Taylor 2020.10.22.12.20]

MT: What we all can control depends entirely on how well out perceptual functions match Real Reality, and since we are here, that is likely to be “pretty well”.

RM: What does it mean for a perceptual function to match real reality? I don’t recognize the idea that “control depends entirely on how well perceptual functions match Real Reality” as something that can be derived from PCT. From conventional psychophysics, perhaps, but not PCT. I think PCT would say something more like: control depends entirely on perceiving aspects of the environment that can be affected appropriately (in a negative feedback sense) by the outputs of the control system. Controlling perceptions that correspond to what is really out there makes no sense because all that is really out there is what is described by the current models of physics. There are no words, only pressure variations in the air. There are no people, only collections of atoms. It’s all perception, remember.

[MartinT]

@rsmarken

I think PCT would say something more like: control depends entirely on perceiving aspects of the environment that can be affected appropriately (in a negative feedback sense) by the outputs of the control system.

I quite agree. All we are arguing about seems to be what it is that our actions directly influence, which, to my mind, ican only be whatever is really “out there”, not what we perceive. Did you ever hear of a mirage? Or an illusion?

Martin

[EetuP]

Rick, I am happy I was not eating or drinking when I read you last sentences:

“…all that is really out there is what is described by the current models of physics. There are no words, only pressure variations in the air. There are no people, only collections of atoms.”

I would like to see a physicist (a non-mad scientist) who would agree that words and people do not exist. I think that any physicist understands that if “It’s all perception, remember.” then also pressure variations in the air and atoms are perceptions. And they also understand that if there can be pressure variations in the air then there must be some relations between the atoms so that they form different structures. Words and people are based on these structures as much as individual atoms. According to the current models of physics we could calculate how many atoms there are in one person, say x atoms. Now a random lump of x atoms will probably not control its perceptions and be perceived as a human being by any input functions.

If you perceive a human being, there probably is that special kind of structure of atoms in the real reality, not just x random atoms which your input functions happen to pick up. Does that make any sense?

[amatic]

MT: The argument I would use is that we perceive and directly control a variable property of something in Perceived Reality (PR), but can act only on whatever is really “out there”, a Real Reality (RR) variable. Disturbances in RR cause the value of the RR variable to change, with some variance if we do not act to influence it, and with some other variance if we do act in such a way that we do influence it. If we control the RR variable successfully, the latter variance is smaller than the former.

Why even use the difference between perceived reality and real reality? There are “perception” and “input quantity” playing the same roles. You can only talk about the real reality using models of the real reality. So, quantities, atoms, molecules, whatever, it’s all models (and all models are perceptions on some level… programs? system concepts?)

To me, it looks like the problem is identifying the controlled variable with the input quantity. The perception is the controlled variable, and then the input quantity could be identical to perception or not, depending on the nature of the input function, how we make the model, etc. One example that shows how qi is not necessarily controlled is using a rate sensor (a differentiator) as the input function.

Each box is a function, and each line with an arrow is a variable. Each function corresponds to the following formulas, if we take d() to be differentiation:

Input function (box between qi and p):
p = d(qi) / dt

Comparator (circle up left):
e = r - p

Amplifier (triangle, parameters K for gain and tc for time constant/slowing )
d(v) = (K * e - v) * dt / tc

Integrator in the output function (box between v and qo):
qo = integral(v, dt) or if differentiate both sides:
d(qo) = v * dt

And finally the summing function for the disturbance and output:
qi = qo + qd

In code: python code There you can view the code. To run it, go to File->Save a copy [somewhere]. Then in the upper left click the “play” (>) symbol to run the code.

Here are the results:

This could be a person in a car, for example. He is maintaining his speed at 10 units/s, as we can see on the left plot the yellow and blue line are quite near each other, and the error is near zero. On the right plot, we can see that the input quantity is constantly rising, while the output is countering the disturbance (green sine wave). This could mean that the car is acting as an integrator, converting the speed to position.

So, in this case the input quantity, the variable entering the input function is a position, and the perception is the rate of change. They are not even correlated, the input position is not controlled.

However, this is not the only possible model of speed control. We can also represent the input function as identity, so that p = qi; we can loose the integrator from the output function, and then we have all environment quantities representing speed. For that model we could say that the input quantity is the controlled variable, but that is a bit forced by the model of the input function, which simply states that perception is equal to the input quantity.

[bnhpct]

Let me reiterate or make more explicit four things intended by the dyadic diagram.

1. It is essential to include the second control system, the observer-experimenter. This is obvious in the agreement that q.i is the observer-experimenter’s perception. In addition, d rather than o is the observer-experimenter’s control output, and d is in conflict with the subject’s control. The diagram should include higher levels. At the relationship level is control of the conflict d, control at the sequence level limits that conflict to just enough to observe the subject’s resistance to d, and control of a principle of science verifies by doing this more than once. Related principles try alternatives and try to falsify the hypothesized CV. This is all implicit but relevant, just as higher levels governing the subject’s control of p are implicit but irrelevant to the immediate test.
2. There is no claim that the little green rectangle is present in the environment as perceived. In the diagram, it represents the experience of perception by the subject and the experience of perception by the observer-experimenter. We conveniently talk of this as their projection of their perception into the environment or their assumption that their experienced perception is in fact that which they perceive.
3. To include in the diagram micro-variables that the physical sciences say are present in the environment (air pressures, etc.) we would have to include at least one Scientist control system controlling those perceptions. The absence of this, and its irrelevance to any diagram of the TCV, makes it obvious that in practice we do not take any account of such micro-variables in PCT experiments. We resort to imagining them, on authority of epistemologically prior sciences (physics and chemistry are customarily invoked), only in these philosophical discussions of what is really real and what in the environment is affected by disturbances and control outputs such that a perception is controlled. Let us be clear that these are discussions of the philosophical implications of PCT that have no immediate relevance to doing science.
4. To say that the TCV is predicated upon the subject and the observer-experimenter having like-structured perceptual input functions would make impossible PCT research on living things other than humans, and denies variation of perceptual input functions across the human population and between individuals. It is essential to the TCV to reconstruct a perception of the subject’s perception from the subject’s point of view. Mere assumption is not enough. This is increasingly the case as we investigate perceptions higher in the hierarchy.

[rsmarken]

@MartinT

RM: I think PCT would say something more like: control depends entirely on perceiving aspects of the environment that can be affected appropriately (in a negative feedback sense) by the outputs of the control system.

MT: I quite agree. All we are arguing about seems to be what it is that our actions directly influence, which, to my mind, i can only be whatever is really “out there”, not what we perceive.

RM: As you can see in my diagram, I show actions influencing whatever is really out there (the physical variables x1, x3 and x5). So our argument isn’t about that. It’s about the idea that the “precision with which the perceptual variable’s Perceived Reality corresponds to that of a variable in Real Reality determines the best possible Quality of Control”.

RM: There is no question of a correspondence between perceived and real reality in PCT. We control perceptual variables that are analogs of various aspects of real reality; our perceptual functions define the aspects of real reality that is being controlled. Quality of control – how well we control a particular perceptual variable – depends on the parameters of the control loop that is used to control that variable, parameters that include the physical links between system output and perceptual input.

[rsmarken]

@EetuP

EP: Rick, I am happy I was not eating or drinking when I read you last sentences:

RM: “…all that is really out there is what is described by the current models of physics. There are no words, only pressure variations in the air. There are no people, only collections of atoms.”

EP: I would like to see a physicist (a non-mad scientist) who would agree that words and people do not exist.

RM: I’m really sorry about that but whatever you were doing other than eating and drinking when you read it seems to have had hallucinatory effects since I never said that words and people don’t exist. I said they don’t exist “out there” in the world described by the current models of physics.

EP: I think that any physicist understands that if “It’s all perception, remember.” then also pressure variations in the air and atoms are perceptions.

RM: Yes. As I said, we know real reality only as a model, which, of course, is a perception. But it is the physics model that model is the environment portion of the PCT model of behavior.

EP: Now a random lump of x atoms will probably not control its perceptions and be perceived as a human being by any input functions.

RM: Yes, a very important point of PCT is that it is not the matter of which a system is made of that matters but how that matter is organized that matters.

EP: If you perceive a human being, there probably is that special kind of structure of atoms in the real reality, not just x random atoms which your input functions happen to pick up. Does that make any sense?

RM: Of course. But that is not really relevant to the point I was making, which is that words and people are perceptual constructions (the outputs of perceptual functions) that are based on an external reality that, from the point of view of physics, is a world of forces, masses, acoustic and electromagnetic energies and the like. That real world certainly provides the possibilities for perceiving words and people. But words and people exist only in systems with perceptual functions that can construct them from the raw material of real reality.

RM: Reality is to organisms like the image on a computer screen is to the computer: a booming, buzzing confusion. From that reality human perceptual systems construct words and people and computer algorithms can now construct them as well.

RM: And, of course, the perceptions that are constructed by organisms – the perceptual variables they control – can’t be arbitrary; organisms must perceive aspects of the world that are “adaptive” in the sense that the ability to control those aspects of the world allows them to survive at least long enough to reproduce. Based largely on introspection, Powers’ hypothesized that the aspects of the world that have proved to be the one’s that are adaptive for human survival are the types of perceptual variables that make up the human control hierarchy (as described in B:CP): intensities, sensations, configurations, transitions, sequences, relationships…etc.

RM: Powers believed that it was perfectly possibly that there are other perfectly adaptive ways to perceive the world that might have evolved instead of the way with which we are familiar. I mention this only to emphasize the fact that there is no concept in PCT of how well we control having anything to do with how well perceived reality corresponds to real reality. How well we control depends on constructing perceptions that are controllable in the context of the constraints of real reality and the parameters of the systems doing the controlling.

Best

Rick

[rsmarken]

@bnhpct

BN: Let me reiterate or make more explicit four things intended by the dyadic diagram.

BN: 1. It is essential to include the second control system, the observer-experimenter. This is obvious in the agreement that q.i is the observer-experimenter’s perception.

RM: I think it is obvious that you don’t need to include the Observer’s entire control system. You only need to show the Observer’s perceptual function, as I do in my Figure:

BN: In addition, d rather than o is the observer-experimenter’s control output, and d is in conflict with the subject’s control.

RM: If done properly, the TCV involves no conflict between Observer and Subject. And it is not necessary to show the Observer disturbing the controlled variable in order to see it, anyway. It’s quite possible for the Observer to perceive the variable the Subject is controlling – that is, it is possible for q.i to equal p – when the Observer is in passive observation mode (I’m sure you are familiar with the work of the Plooij’s on using naturally occurring disturbances to see the variables that infant chimps are controlling).

BN: The diagram should include higher levels.

RM: That would be nice but unnecessary to make the point made by my diagram, which is that, when the Observer has identified a controlled variable, q.i, then q.i is equivalent to p and neither correspond to “something in the environment”. q.i and p are the same perceptions because they are the result of equivalent functions of the same variables in the environment (and of the same lower level perceptual variables if they are perceptions above level 1 in the hierarchy).

BN: 2. There is no claim that the little green rectangle is present in the environment as perceived.

RM: I know. But it can give the impression that that is the case, which is why my diagram is much to be preferred.

BN: 3. To include in the diagram micro-variables that the physical sciences say are present in the environment (air pressures, etc.) we would have to include at least one Scientist control system controlling those perceptions. The absence of this, and its irrelevance to any diagram of the TCV, makes it obvious that in practice we do not take any account of such micro-variables in PCT experiments.

RM: I don’t think putting scientists in the diagram would help things. The point of the diagram is to show that q.i and p are equivalent perceptions, in the sense that they are both ultimately the same functions of environmental variables. In practice, Observers doing PCT research do take this implicitly into account by understanding that they have identified a perceptual variable that a Subject is controlling when they “see that the CV [q.i] is protected from disturbances by the actions of the behaving system” [Powers (990331.0033 MST)].

BN: 4. To say that the TCV is predicated upon the subject and the observer-experimenter having like-structured perceptual input functions would make impossible PCT research on living things other than humans, and denies variation of perceptual input functions across the human population and between individuals.

RM: True, which is why I never said that. I said (paraphrasing Bill) that the Observer’s perception of the controlled variable (q.i) will covary with that of the Subject ( p ) if the observer is using a perceptual system closely similar to that in the behaving system. As I mentioned in my post, this could be an artificial perceptual system, like the one used to perceive the ultrasonic echoes controlled by bats when navigating around in the dark.

Best

Rick

[EetuP]

Rick,

RM: I’m really sorry about that but whatever you were doing other than eating and drinking when you read it seems to have had hallucinatory effects since I never said that words and people don’t exist. I said they don’t exist “out there” in the world described by the current models of physics.

EP: Yes, just that: ‘…they don’t exist “out there” in the world described by the current models of physics.’ This can be read that that they do exist somewhere just like Santa Claus and unicorns, but not in the real physical world. However, the existence of words and people are strictly different from that of Santa Claus and unicorns just in relation to the physical world. If a physician were interested, she had no problems to study and model empirically the physical properties of a human being or a written word – but only as a thought experiment those of Santa Claus or a unicorn.

RM: [snip] But that is not really relevant to the point I was making, which is that words and people are perceptual constructions (the outputs of perceptual functions) that are based on an external reality that, from the point of view of physics, is a world of forces, masses, acoustic and electromagnetic energies and the like. That real world certainly provides the possibilities for perceiving words and people. But words and people exist only in systems with perceptual functions that can construct them from the raw material of real reality.

EP: Yes, but here I must add that a certain part of the real world provides the possibilities for perceiving words and people while another part provides possibilities to for perceiving chords and monkeys.

RM: Reality is to organisms like the image on a computer screen is to the computer: a booming, buzzing confusion. From that reality human perceptual systems construct words and people and computer algorithms can now construct them as well.

EP: And here I must add that (well-functioning) human perceptual systems and computer algorithms can construct words only it there happen to be “words” (= certain kinds of structures) in the image. If there is only a booming, buzzing confusion, then these systems construct only random words or no words at all.

RM: And, of course, the perceptions that are constructed by organisms – the perceptual variables they control – can’t be arbitrary; organisms must perceive aspects of the world that are “adaptive” in the sense that the ability to control those aspects of the world allows them to survive at least long enough to reproduce. Based largely on introspection, Powers’ hypothesized that the aspects of the world that have proved to be the one’s that are adaptive for human survival are the types of perceptual variables that make up the human control hierarchy (as described in B:CP): intensities, sensations, configurations, transitions, sequences, relationships…etc.

EP: What could that “adaptivity” depend on? One preconditions for it is probably that the sensory organs work reliably: that a perception really is some function of the (variance of the) physical stimulus caused by some force in the environment of the sensory organ. That means that there is in this lowest level a correspondence between RR and perception, doesn’t it?

EP: The higher-level perceptions are constructed from the raw material provided by the lower-level perceptions. They are structures made from low level perceptions. Isn’t it quite credible idea that there could be some correspondence (no isomorphy is required) between the structures of higher level perceptions and the structures of the real reality? At least this correspondence would explain the adaptivity.

RM: Powers believed that it was perfectly possibly that there are other perfectly adaptive ways to perceive the world that might have evolved instead of the way with which we are familiar.

EP: Isn’t that a self-evident case? Insects, bats, fishes certainly construct different perceptions, and they are adaptive? But this is partly explained that they perceive and need to perceive partly different structures in the reality.

RM: I mention this only to emphasize the fact that there is no concept in PCT of how well we control having anything to do with how well perceived reality corresponds to real reality. How well we control depends on constructing perceptions that are controllable in the context of the constraints of real reality and the parameters of the systems doing the controlling.

EP: I see here an implicit contradiction because “constructing perceptions that are controllable in the context of the constraints of real reality” depends (partly) on “how well perceived reality corresponds to real reality”.

Eetu

Best

Rick

[amatic]

BP: The perceptual signal represents the controlling system’s only knowledge of the controlled quantity. What the system controls, therefore, is the state of the perceptual signal, not necessarily the state of the external (observable to others) controlled variable qi. If the sensor calibration drifts, the perceptual signal will still be maintained in a match with the reference signal, while the visible controlled quantity’s value changes. The variable most reliably controlled by this system is the perceptual signal. Thus the name of my first book: Behavior: the control of perception.

That is pretty confusing, Bill.

Both qi, the input quantity and p, the perceptual signal are called controlled variables, but qi can be controlled or not controlled reliably depending on the calibration of the sensor; and yet it is still called the controlled quantity.

[EetuP]

Very important observation, Adam! I have been thinking just the same. Powers was a genius but not always very consistent and strict with concepts.

AM: Both qi, the input quantity and p, the perceptual signal are called controlled variables, but qi can be controlled or not controlled reliably depending on the calibration of the sensor; and yet it is still called the controlled quantity.

EP: I would like to tease the tangle as follows:

qi, the input quantity is the value of an input variable and it means the amount (or strength) of the environmental stimulus to the sensory organ.

Input function transforms this value to the value (strength) of the perceptual signal. This result of the transformation, the value of perceptual signal, is the perception which is some (mathematical) function of the input quantity.

The latter, the perception is p-controlled (see my message [Eetu Pikkarainen 2020-10-26_13:08:51 UTC] in CSGnet) and the previous, the input quantity is e-controlled. E-control is not real control but rather like stabilization (to some value) or something like that.

EP: That quotation nicely points that Rick’s claim that “there is no concept in PCT of how well we control having anything to do with how well perceived reality corresponds to real reality.” is at least questionable.

[bnhpct]

@rsmarken

there is no concept in PCT of how well we control having anything to do with how well perceived reality corresponds to real reality. How well we control depends on constructing perceptions that are controllable in the context of the constraints of real reality and the parameters of the systems doing the controlling.

The parameters of control systems are among “the constraints of real reality”. So you are making a distinction between “correspondence” of perceptions to real reality and “controllability” of perceptions in respect to real reality. What difference does this verbal distinction make?

From a denial that they are synonymous it follows that control of perceptions tells us nothing about real reality. In other words, it says there is no point to doing science. We’re just making it all up, all the theories and models of science are fabrications of the imagination with no valid claim to correspond to reality.

Accepting that they are synonymous–that controllability within reality demonstrates correspondence to reality–does not go to the opposite extreme. The degree of correspondence to reality is greater or lesser according to the degree of controllability. And that is the nature of science.

[bnhpct]

@amatic

That is pretty confusing, Bill.

Both qi, the input quantity and p, the perceptual signal are called controlled variables, but qi can be controlled or not controlled reliably depending on the calibration of the sensor; and yet it is still called the controlled quantity.

One of the first things we check in the search for the controlled variable is whether the organism can perceive the posited CV as we perceive it. For example, does blocking that sense modality interfere with control? If the response profile of the sensor that we have identified is disproportionate to the values of the q.i variable that we have identified, but control is not correspondingly poor, does some other sensory modality provide input to the perceptual input function for p? For example, the CV for speech perception depends simultaneously on visual as well as auditory input (cp. the McGurk effect) so q.i for perception of a phonemic contrast is not a single simple quantity.

[EetuP]

Sorry, I must still continue. In that quotation Powers says that “What the system controls, therefore, is the state of the perceptual signal, not necessarily the state of the external (observable to others) controlled variable qi.” So at least here qi is not the observer’s perception but an external variable which is observable to others. Observer’s perception is not observable to others.

Inspired by your images (RM, BN, and especially AM) I made that below:

Above the upper blue line is the controller and below the lower one is the observer. The upper left box is controller’s input function which creates the controller’s perception from the controller’s input quantity (qi_c). Qi is the value of the (complex) input variable (consisting of values of x, y and z depicted as green arrows) – or the corresponding environmental variable CEV. Both controller and observer have roughly same qi depending on the similarity of their input functions and their relationships to X. Right side box is controller’s output function which creates the output quantity form the error. The output quantity can divide to different effects partly affecting the X and partly something else and being thus side-effects.

Now what is that X? It is an unknown environmental structure which mediates effects and thus creates the feedback function. It can be as complex or as simple as ever, but it determines how the output effects affect the input quantity and thus the quality and the whole possibility of control. Presumably it consists basically of atoms – or rather something which physics models as atoms. It can then contain molecules, liquids, cells, organs, organism, machines etc. We cannot know what its ultimate character is, but we can learn to perceive how it works and how it can be controlled.

Successful control requires that we perceive X well enough and affect it in right manner and strength. We can make mistakes in both sides of control: input and output. We can perceive wrongly or affect wrongly (and if we perceive wrongly then we quite surely also affect wrongly), but from mistakes we can learn and have learned. Take for example politics. If something disturbs us: taxation, injustice, or any we must know what the system is kind we want to affect. We can bite the tooth or hit our neighbor, but it doesn’t help much.

[rsmarken]

@amatic

BP: The perceptual signal represents the controlling system’s only knowledge of the controlled quantity. What the system controls, therefore, is the state of the perceptual signal, not necessarily the state of the external (observable to others) controlled variable qi. If the sensor calibration drifts, the perceptual signal will still be maintained in a match with the reference signal, while the visible controlled quantity’s value changes. The variable most reliably controlled by this system is the perceptual signal. Thus the name of my first book: Behavior: the control of perception.

That is pretty confusing, Bill.

Both qi, the input quantity and p, the perceptual signal are called controlled variables, but qi can be controlled or not controlled reliably depending on the calibration of the sensor; and yet it is still called the controlled quantity.

RM: What’s the context of the quote? That might make it less confusing.