RM: Well, what do you expect; I live in La La Land;-)
EP: When I used the term instrumentalism, I meant an orientation in the philosophy science according to which the goal and task of a theory is just to help to explain the observations. Its counter party is scientific realism which says that the task of a theory is to give a true story about reality.
RM: Then I’m an instrumental scientific realist: I think the task of a theory is to explain observations and the more accurately the theory accounts for the observations the truer the theory is as a story of reality.
EP: Thus, constructivism and realism do not exclude each other. But if you rule realism out then it is extremely difficult talk about truth anymore.
RM: I do not (and did not) mean to rule realism out. Both constructivism and PCT view perception as a construction based on reality. So reality is definitely in there!
RM: I believe that PCT is based on a constructivist view of perception. The research program described in Powers, 1979 and that I hoped to discuss over at Powers’ Model of a Research Program is all about determining what types of perceptions organisms control.
EP: Perhaps your feeling of losing anyone to work with you on developing the research program that Bill proposed is a consequence of your unneeded strong commitment to epistemological idealism and thus setting too strict limits to that program?
RM: It’s more of a perception than a feeling. What I perceive is no one working with me to develop the research program Bill described at the end of Powers, 1979 . My only commitment is to Bill’s scientific legacy. I think what he wanted as his legacy was a revolution in the sciences of life where living systems would be studied with a PCT-based understanding that they are closed-loop control rather than open-loop causal systems. I believe that Bill’s most detailed description of his vision of this revolutionary approach to the study of living systems was is described in Powers, 1979.
RM: But it really isn’t all that detailed. So what I am hoping for is a discussion of Powers’ proposal that would help flesh out his vision – for my own sake as well as for the sake of anyone else who might be interested in pursuing or just understanding a PCT-based research program
EP: I myself would be extremely interested in researching experimentally the types of human perception, but I am too old to totally change my career because I have almost no training and experience in experimental research.
RM: I understand. I am old too (but still not too old…I hope;). But I don’t think one has to be an expert in experimental research to participate usefully in the discussions about Bill’s proposed research program (though having some basic understanding of and/or interest in research methodology is probably a good idea).
You are right, there is contradiction right there.
I’ve been thinking about those passages you quoted, It is a difficult topic. We can think of external variables as being in the objective real reality, the “environment”, but I think that creates additional confusion. ‘Objective’ variables are always someone’s perception or a model or whatever.
The problem, as I see it, is that you’ve misunderstood many of the things Bill was talking about, and are not open to correcting those misunderstandings.
You never actually took the time to learn about control theory - the math in the foundations of PCT.
Bill’s main gripe with cybernetics was that they did not understand the math of control theory, and just focused on “philosophizing”. That’s what I see you doing.
When your mistakes are pointed out, with empirical data, models, etc, you get huffy and puffy and nasty and dramatic. Or you invent stupid sh** like “causal functions” for cover up your misunderstanding of the math.
You’re not playing the science game - collaboration toward a better understanding of how people work. You’re playing something else, and trying very hard to do it. I don’t know what you are trying, but discussions with you have been completely pointless. Trying to be a leader and teacher? Achieving some kind of status? Trying to appear right? I won’t guess, it just looks like you are not playing science.
RM: What I am asking for is for help understanding Powers’ proposal for a research program based on an understanding of organisms in general (and people in particular) as living control systems; the program he described in Powers, 1979. In that article he frames it as a program for research in human development but I believe it can be considered a description of a general program of research on PCT. In that paper he starts his description of the program this way:
RM: What I would like is to hear what other researchers make of this description. Based on others understanding of PCT what does it sound like Bill is suggesting here.
AM: You never actually took the time to learn about control theory - the math in the foundations of PCT.
RM: There is no math in Bill’s description of this research program. Here is his description of the kind of data he would like to see collected:
RM: I was hoping to get some help understanding what kind of research and analysis Bill might have had in mind. I have a somewhat vague understanding of what he is suggesting, which is why I am asking for help. If it is important to know the math at the foundations PCT to get a clearer understanding of what Bill is suggesting then I would welcome help from folks like you who know that math.
AM: You’re not playing the science game - collaboration toward a better understanding of how people work. …
RM: I’m trying to develop the research program Bill gave a rather general description of in Powers, 1979. I would love to have help with this from people who are interested in doing research based on PCT.
Adam, I can only agree with much of what you have said. Rick, though Adam may not believe it, I can attest that you have become much more considerate in recent years, more aware of the effect as well as the avowed intent of what you write, and that is very encouraging.
I have to agree with you, Rick, that naturalistic observation is is essential to PCT, to identify the variables that we humans perceive and control and figure out how we organize them in levels or other categorizations. Personally, I must agree with this, because without this my field does not exist. Not just observation of humans of course, but other living things are of less immediate concern in my field.
Rick, you say the mathematics of control are not relevant to such observation. Adam, you may be aware of a way that poor grasp of the mathematics of control misdirects naturalistic observation or distorts our attribution of levels or categories of perception. If you see such problems, please tell us.
The mathematics of control are directly relevant to another PCT project to which you both have made many valuable contributions, the building of computer programs that simulate control systems and demonstrate control phenomena. This has been limited almost entirely to the lowest level of the perceptual hierarchy.
There’s a confusion of the two projects in this statement. These are demonstrations of phenomena, as is the simulation of catching a fly ball. On your website, demos and and research are properly in different places. The two projects intersect. Demonstrations and simulations are not in themselves research, but as a test-bed they contribute to research. Research into e.g. baseball-catching includes testing different assumptions as to what is controlled by comparing the relative success of simulations based on those assumptions. However, knowledge of the computer code can be overinterpreted.
The behavior of the “Program Control” demo is produced by computer code structured as if/then contingencies, and therefore you know that what appears to the subject is produced by one if/then ‘program’ or the other. For that reason, you say that the subject is controlling a program. However, the user cannot perceive the code that generates those appearances on the screen, the user only perceives the appearances. The same appearances on the screen could be coded as two repeating sequences, randomly alternating. One sequence complies with the programmatic description “if the shape is circle, the next color is blue; else, the next color is red”, and the other does not. True, the user has been instructed in program terms, but in actual execution I think you will find that it resolves to sequences. The contingency word “else” opens an infinite universe but experience shows that this universe contains only one shape, a square. The recitation of the program becomes “if circle, blue. If square, red.” An initial boggle is taking these to be simultaneous, e.g. “if it’s a circle, the circle is blue”, so after being tricked by that a few times the sequentiality becomes salient. Two sequences are OK “Circle, then blue; square, then red.” Anything else requires a press. So now the task is to recognize the sequences that require a press: “Circle-red-press; square-blue-press”. This reorganization is difficult to avoid, because the program statement makes salient that which requires no action. The cat is not focusing on the empty mousehole, the cat is focusing on the mouse which memory and imagination tell him to be prepared to snatch from that spot.
Bill’s 1979 analysis of “getting ready to back a stick-shift car out of a driveway” would seem to qualify as “actual PCT research” by this criterion, but only because Table 1 on p. 179 of LCS focuses on control actions and therefore is limited to the perceived variables that the successive actions directly affect. Bill’s table refers to door, seat, belt, mirror, window, clutch, key, keyhole, starter, starter noise, engine, engine noise, lever, stick-shift car, and driveway. We need neither avoid the phenomenological rabbit-hole of their “really real” existence nor get lost in it. These are perceptions that Bill remembered controlling as he wrote the lines in that table, and they are perceptions that each of us can remember and imagine controlling as we read those words. That accord is as good as it gets; and it had better be because it’s all we’re going to get. The angles, distance relationships, etc. are not more real just because they are immediately affected by measurable motor outputs. They, too, are perceptual constructs.
I agree with your framing that Bill’s table suggests a project for research. If Bill framed it as a project, he didn’t do so in this chapter in Ozer’s book. (He used it there to hammer yet again on the folly of counting ‘behaviors’.) Note that the whole table describes control of a sequence which has as its goal being in the car on the road at the foot of the driveway, which is the first step of another sequence. In this post from last April we revived the link to the spreadsheet you started, and I again raised the question how we are going to include sequence perceptions in this naturalistic investigation. Here’s my 2019 Manchester paper on that.
We need to seek these kinds of variables for PCT research as well as angles, distance relationships, etc. Bill suggested that Miller, Galanter, & Pribram (1960) presents a good collection of program perceptions. It’s at that link and in archive.org.
Saying this was a mistake. Not only that, but you had just quoted the place at the end of that chapter where he proposed this project. Much more egregious than overlooking a silly ditty.
RM: (yes, it is a program that is controlled in that demo – not a sequence or sequence of sequences; there is no sequence that is maintained in that demo when you are controlling a program).
BN: The behavior of the “Program Control” demo is produced by computer code structured as if/then contingencies, and therefore you know that what appears to the subject is produced by one if/then ‘program’ or the other. For that reason, you say that the subject is controlling a program. However, the user cannot perceive the code that generates those appearances on the screen, the user only perceives the appearances. The same appearances on the screen could be coded as two repeating sequences, randomly alternating.
RM: Then there would be nothing to control. The random alternation means that there is neither program nor sequence to control.
RM: It is these kinds of definitions of controlled variables – definitions in terms of lower level perceptual variables of which the controlled variables are a function – that are sought in PCT research.
BN: Bill’s 1979 analysis of “getting ready to back a stick-shift car out of a driveway” would seem to qualify as “actual PCT research” by this criterion
RM: It’s the start of PCT research. Bill’s analysis provides the initial hypotheses for formal tests of the variables that are actually controlled when people are seen carrying out these behaviors.
