CHUCK TUCKER 920916
TOPICS: Anti S-R Demo; "War on Drugs"; Becoming Social
ANTI S-R DEMO
Without modesty I would refer each of you to the paper that appears
in CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION (Greg - could you put a copy of that
on our list of available documents, please??) that I wrote using
statements from Bill demos which appear in BCP (241-244). I merely
transformed his demo into several sets of instructions (as I am
wont to do on most occasions) so they could be used with a group
(e.g., a class or conference). I have found that instead of using
a chalkboard with the rubber bands (sometimes I use a single rubber
band knotted in the middle) I use 3' X 5'drawing paper (which I
attach to the board with masking tape) to make a record of the
trace of pencils or markers (each person has a different color
tracing instrument) then I take down each paper after the
demostration and after all of the demostrations I can compare the
tracings (you could also reduce the tracings to distribute to the
group and also use the tracings in papers you may write about the
demostrations). One way to make a record of the movement of the
knot (as well as the tracings) is to video tape the entire
demostration making certain that the center of the frame is the
knot. I would also suggest making the knot a different color from
the background and drawing a grid around the target. The target (+
below) could look like this:
···
_______________________
> > > > >
>_____|_____|_____|_____|
> > > > >
> > + | |
>_____|_____|_____|_____|
> > > > >
>_____|_____|_____|_____|
then with "slow mo" you could see (and even crudely measure) the
movement of the knot. You could also use the video to show to
other groups as well improve upon your procedures. (NB: make
certain the the lens of the video camera in on the same plane as
the knot so as not to introduce errors of "perspective" [like the
person in the passenger side of the car always notes that the
driver is going slower than the driver notes]). I look forward (of
course) to seeing the videos at the next CSG meeting !?!
"WAR ON DRUGS" [Re: Marken 920911.0900]
This so-called "war" is, in my view (and some analysis), designed
to show the voters that the members of the Republican party are not
as "soft" on crime as are the Democrats (especially the Liberals)
who coddle, protect and make their hearts bleed for the criminal.
It has very little to do with actually trying to reduce the usage
of those substances which most laws make illegal. If there was a
serious interest in decreasing the use of these special illegal
substances (I keep writing this to note that caffiene, nicotene and
most certainly, alcohol [the favorite drug in the USA] are all
drugs as are all of the billions of drugs prescribed by MD's and
dispensed by pharmacists) one of the obvious ways to do it is to
make them legal and dispense them through official means (some of
these illegal drugs were once dispensed in this manner). But this
would take away the political and moral issue that can be used in
this crusade.
Another way is to not try to decrease the use of these drugs at all
but suspend all laws (and law enforcement) with regard to them this
is not making them legal but rather alegal) and watch the price
drop to all time lows. These is the position of Thomas Szasz
(remember THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS) who says we (by which he
means our government officials and our hired guns) should not be in
the business (literally and figuratively) of trying to alter some
behaviors, e.g., killing oneself, using drugs, prostitution, and
other classified as "victimless" (which means to me that only the
person him/her self, being autonomous, is harmed by such acts).
The main problem I see with this position (outside of the obvious
one that it would not be accepted by those who want to force others
to comply with their moral rules) is that some of the acts may be
harmful to others, e.g., prostitution should be arranged so that
others aren't robbed, physically harmed or acquire deadly diseases
[by the way, contrary to popular knowledge, only about 8% of the
cases of STD can be traced to paided prostitutes; STD is bad for
business and professionals know it]. If these sorts of problems
could be regulated without force (in most European countries
prostitution is regulated by the state as a service provided to the
citizens, by comparison in Columbia yesterday the County Council
was arguing over a law about whether "nude" dancers should wear
"pasties" and "G-strings"; next there will be a law for beachwear!)
then this might be the best solution from a PCT perspective.
Unfortunately, most of the disturbances that become transformed
into political issues, are very unlikely to be solved to my (and I
think, our) satisfaction because political solutions focus on
attempting to force people to alter their behavior rather then
assisting them to find a way to get them to reorganize their own
conduct. So, in an important way you are correct Rick
(920911.0990), political "solutions" do not respect the self-
regulating and automomous "nature" of the human being.
BECOMING SOCIAL
[Re: previous posts on manipulation and force; Dennis (920912); WTP
920912.1400; 13.1300; GW 920913 & 14 (last post)]
I think that these recent posts on "autonomy" (which are
masterpieces and definite candidates for CLOSED LOOP) have brought
the central issue (or problem) of Perceptual Control Theory into
sharp and definite focus. The problem was stated by Comte (as
paraphrased by McPhail): How can the Individual be both the cause
and consequence of Society? By Hobbs, Locke, Jefferson, Simmel,
Mead, Cooley, Blumer (I am being expansive here!): How is society
possible? A paraphrase of Tucker and Stewart: Given that human
beings are self-regulating, self-controlling and autonomous
organism, how are societies constructed and maintained?
This problem seems to be beyond solution since we claim that there
is no way that A can get "inside" of B or B can get "inside" of A
to have any direct effect on each other's operation. There are no
chains that link A and B to make it possible for each to effect the
other's physical movement. There are no "hardwired intrinsic
variables" that can even come close to accounting for the behavior
of the organism. There just seems to be no way to solve the
problem.
But we know (Bill claims it is obvious) that people do come to
regulate and guide themselves in ways such that they produce
children, construct and maintain relationships, build shelters,
grow and process food, create and maintain networks of friends and
acquaintances, learn how to accomplish a vast variety of tasks and
all of the activties that each of us observes that we and others
are doing everyday. So how is this done by self-regulating, self-
controlling and autonomous human beings? How do we become social
and remain an individual simutaneously?
The answer to these questions is, of course, a model of social
conduct which is based (at least, I believe) on the PCT model of
individual conduct. The central idea of the social model was
stated by Clark and I in our piece on "purposive collective action"
which is that individuals generate similar perceptual signals
independent of each other by interpreting their experiences,
generate similar perceptual signals interdependently or do so by
both taking the actions of another and using it to generate similar
perceptual signals. These "ways" are fairly obvious (even somewhat
routine and ordinary) and what is not fully modeled is how this
"generation process" works. The set of ideas we have found useful
we find in the work of Dewey, Mead, James and Blumer and stated
most simply in that human being "take" the actions of others and
make them their own and use them to control their own conduct. To
"take" them an make them their own they must transform them but in
most instances them transformation is such that another can "take"
the action and make it their own and still find it useful enough to
sucessfully interact with the other. We can see this "taking" most
clearly (but perhaps too clearly) in posts where Bill will actually
reproduce a statement from Greg and then Greg with reproduce his
previous statement, Bill's reply and then make another comment
thereto. Mead used the phrases "taking the attitude of the other"
and "taking the role of the other" to mean that I control my own
conduct by "taking and using" those transformations I make of your
conduct. Blumer spoke of "taking others into account" in much the
same way.
I can not detail it for you at this point but we do have some very
convincing evidence from experiments we have done which shows quite
clearly the this "taking the attitude(role) of another" does happen
in a systemic manner for a varity of actions. We, of course, don't
have all of the evidence that we would like to have but I doubt
that we even will so we just keep working on it trying to find out
the flaws in the model. Someday I will try to lay this out for all
of you but in the meantime we can keep up the conversation on these
questions.
CODA
I found the quotes provided by Ray Allis (920910.0845) quite scary
and realized for the first time that when behaviorism refers to the
inside as a "black box" they mean that there is nothing under the
skin of the human organism that is of interest to them if they are
to be true to their "model"; there are no internal organs, no
brain, no central nervous system - nothing since the stimilus just
passes thru without any problem. Am I correct about this? Please
point out where there is a serious discussion by a behaviorist
about the "intrinsic variables" of the human organism.
Regards,
Chuck