[From Bill Powers (2010.04.17.0747 MDT)]
Bruce Gregory (2010.04.17.0703 EDT) --
I have to disagree with that. Control is a very precisely defined observational phenomena. It is visible from outside the organism we guess to be doing the controlling.
BG: O.K. So the term control applies only to observed behavior. When I add a column of figures in my head, I am not engaging in control. Control is only involved when I write down the result or tell you the result.
Sorry, I neglected to say that all this is about how we discover and define control by someone else or some other artificial control system -- not how we experience our own. These are all procedures we can carry out using our own control systems, and they all consist of perceptions at various levels, but they are about identifying the process of control when it's not being done by us. When we're the ones controlling, and are doing it consciously, we know what is under control and don't need to "discover" it. At the same time, many other control processes are going on inside us that we aren't conscious of. We might have to use the Test on those. Also, which are conscious and which are not changes from time to time.
To identify control, you must find a controlled variable. A controlled variable is a physical variable, in the space common to us all, which is maintained constant, or in a constant pattern of change, against disturbances. If you can't find any variable fitting this description, the process terminates here.
BG: Again, thought is not controlled behavior.
You probably drew this conclusion because I didn't say this was about discovering other control systems, not our own. If I ask you to think "This is not a thought," I'm sure you can remember what I asked you to think, and then think it: either the words, or their meanings. You don't have to say those words out loud, articulating and actually hearing them, but you can make them appear in your consciousness so they match what I asked you to think. The behavior by which you achieve this result isn't observable (not by me in myself, anyway). The PCT model offers an explanation of how this works, in the form of the theoretical imagination connection.
Thought, I propose, is a controlled variable that is under control in the imagination mode. We can't see it happening in other people, only in ourselves. The perceptions under control are the same kinds we control through actions; however, at some lower level in the hierarchy (it can vary), the downgoing reference signal is shunted instead into the perceptual channel so the result is just as if an action had taken place and produced the required perception through the environment and all the lower levels.
Since there are many possible reasons for a variable to remain constant against disturbances (it might be part of a system too massive to be altered detectable by an applied disturbance), we have to add some more conditions.
First, we must know that when no other variable forces (influences) are applied to the variable under examination, the disturbance we are using will change the variable in a consistent and predictable way.
Second, we must demonstrate that any failure of the disturbance to have its full predicted effect is due to the presence of another identifiable force or influence that tends to disturb the same variable in a way nearly equal and opposite to the effect of the disturbance we are applying.
These steps will give us a fairly high probability that some control system is present that is keeping the variable nearly constant. If no such source can be found, we have not found the control system and can stop here.
We find the source of the opposition by tracing the opposing force to its source, in some other system. This would be an output of a control system if the rest of it can be shown to exist.
Finally, we need to find out how that other system is sensing the state of the controlled variable (the assumption that some system is sensing it is a form of proof that I can't remember the name of). If no such system can be found, we have to conclude that we haven't proven the existence of a control system or explained the negatively-aimed relationship of the output we found to the disturbance being applied.
BG: From this I conclude that "control in imagination" is a theoretical construct and may always remain so.
No, I can observe it happening in me, although only the controlled variable and disturbances are visible to me (much as if I were observing someone else). The input function, comparator, output function, and several of the signals are theoretical. But I can observe the thought and am able to make it change, and if I am distracted and it changes without my intention to change it, I can change it back. So I can do most of the test for the controlled variable, inside myself. Thoughts are definitely under my control, though I can't observe the mechanism that make the control work. If you can't do those things, you probably won't believe that I can, but I assume you can do them, too.
We can find the means of sensing by interrupting paths that could be used for sensing. When all modalities of detection have been tested, and interrupting any one or more of them does not cause the opposing output to cease, again we have the Scottish Verdict, not proven. If the opposite does cease, we can move step by step along the discovered path to the sensor and identify it.
If we reach this final point, we have proven that negative feedback control exists, and we have located the region in which the system doing the controlling probably exists. We will have done this entirely by making observations of the physical environment outside any potential control system. No theory is involved, only empirical experimentation.
BG: Again, mental activity is not behavior so whether or not control is involved in mental behavior is purely conjectural. In fact, mental behavior is more or less an inconvenient fact that we do not have to worry about as far as PCT is concerned.
The conclusions you draw seem to be based on assumptions I know nothing about. Mental behavior is perceived, and we can act to control it, so why do you say it's conjectural? How would you know there is any such thing as mental behavior if you couldn't perceive your own? It's conjectural only when we try to guess about someone else's mental behavior (as I am trying to guess about yours right now). We must test for controlled variables in other people because we don't know what the other person is perceiving. To verify the perceptions, we have to ask the other person to observe them for us, and suggest things to try as a way of learning whether we have similar experiences, similar as far as we can determine by communicating.
The theory comes in when we now ask what happens between the sensor and the output that we have found, to generate the control phenomenon we have observed. That is where PCT and the models we use come in. We don't need PCT to discover that something is being controlled, and to locate the system doing the controlling. We do need PCT to explain how that system does it.
BG: PCT describes the behavior of humans and "zombies" (beings with no interior life) in exactly the same way. I understand.
Where did that come from? You understand incorrectly. Of course we can't control every internal experience, just as we can't control every external one. But why is it to hard to accept the idea that we can make certain things (like what we think and imagine, any in many cases what we feel) behave in ways we wish them to behave? Is the problem that you can't see anyone else doing this? Or are you really unable to experience your own mental behavior (or rather, its consequences in the form of thoughts and imaginings)?
Best,
Bill P.