# \* Diagram Police \*

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/diagram-police/15683>\
**Category:** Control Structures\
**Created:** [October 29, 2020, 1:07pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/diagram-police/15683 "2020-10-29T13:07:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 40

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**Author:** ![amatic](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/13edae/32.png) [@amatic](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/amatic)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2022, 12:03pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/diagram-police/15683/40 "2022-02-09T12:03:25Z")

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To me, the problem is mixing experiences with perceptions.

A diagram of a control loop in a tracking task says that a researcher can measure the controlled variable, the distance between the cursor and the target, in millimeters or pixels. It also says that there is a perceptual signal in the brain of the participant that can be measured with appropriate equipment as a rate of firing of some population of neurons, in units of spikes per second, or something like that.

The diagram says nothing about the experience of the participant, because it is made from the perspective of the researcher. To the researcher, all the variables on the diagram are ‘out there’. The environment-organism limit does not mark the limit between participant’s experience and the outside world. It marks the limit between different types of quantites that the researcher can measure.

Then if we try to say _where_ is this experience, it gets unwieldly. We feel the cursor and target are ‘out there’ as a quantitiy, but we believe it is created by our brain, so it is also “inside” as a perception, but do we mean perception as experience or perception as a neural signal? and maybe both are inside and outside because the reality we perceive depends on the outside reality. I don’t know, to me, it gets confusing very soon.

The point being, in a diagram, there is nothing about the experience of the participant, organism or model. All of the quantities and signals are theoretically measureable. If we identify correct controlled variables in some task, something fitting really well with participant’s behavior, then we can hope to find a neural signal correlated to our modelled perceptual signal.

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