[From Bill Powers (921023.1030)]
Greg Williams (921022) --\
control [your perception of -- I hasten to add!]
There's a problem with insisting too steadfastly on referring to
control strictly in terms of perception (even though all we can
control is perception). In order to talk about control that involves
other people, we have to assume that in controlling our own
perceptions we are causing things to happen in the outside world that
others can see, feel, etc.. In short, we have to include the physics-
model in the discussion. This is necessary even to suppose that other
people exist, for any observer.
This means that controlling our perceptions of another's action
amounts to a social interaction only if the actions that we perceive
have a boss-reality counterpart in the physical actions -- the outputs
-- that the other is producing.
I can control my perception of your action simply by moving myself so
I see the action from a different point of view -- you're pushing the
lawnmower away from me instead of toward me. This alters my
perception, but does not change your output. On the other hand, if
you're watching me I can control the direction in which you're looking
by moving myself, and now the change in my perception (of the
direction in which you're looking) DOES have a boss-reality
counterpart, a physical change in your direction of looking. Both of
these cases can be described by saying that I'm controlling my
perception of your action, yet only one case is a social interaction.
In the rubber-band experiment, suppose that the rubber band is kept in
a horizontal plane a foot above the surface where the target dot is
located, and where the other dot (above which I want the subject's
finger to be) is located. I can move my end of the rubber-band to put
the subject's finger on the line from my eye to the other dot; doing
this will actually control the subject's action as well as my
perception of the subject's hand in relation to the other dot. Or I
can move my head to make the line from my eye to the other dot pass
through the subject' hand. In the second case, I will have controlled
my perception of the relationship between the subject's hand and the
other dot without having any physical effect on the subject's hand
position -- the subject won't have to move the hand at all.
So when we speak of controlling a perception of someone else's action,
we are speaking of a social interaction only if that perception
corresponds to a physical change in the other's output.
It looks as though in order to talk about social interactions at all,
we have to take an epistemological position -- a practical position if
not a philosophical one. We have to believe the world-model in which
an external reality really does exist, have properties, have
characteristics, behave lawfully, and so on. This commits us to the
physical model and the neurology model, or whatever models we can have
a consensus about.
ยทยทยท
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Best,
Bill P.