Our PCT discussions (including Bill Powers’ writings) refer to several kinds of data. For example, here are just three:
Quantitative measurements of a variable that is perceived to be the CV, of behavioral outputs affecting it, and of environmental disturbances affecting it.
Pairwise rankings. Examples: the substitution tests of linguistics; QSort assessments; the cognitive preference assessments of Ned Herrmanns.
Statistical measures, insofar as they help to identify variables controlled by individuals in a population, subject to verification.
What are the prerequisites for something to be accepted as data?
You could say this about science in general—that every science changes as people gain and lose the upper hand in arguments. Every science does change, of course, but despite a popularized superstar gladiator narrative gaining and losing the upper hand in arguments is an impoverished description of the process. In science, argument is answerable to observational data. No disagreement here about that. No two sciences have the same data. No two subfields of a science have the same data. PCT has subfields.
How to represent the data of interactions, social relations, and social arrangements in a way that is amenable to quantitative PCT modeling is not a simple and straightforward matter. For example, Stephen Johnson’s graph-theoretic approach to language shows promise, but such data are very different from those for motor control in tracking and pursuit tasks. It would be impracticable to insist that a PCT simulation model control down the hierarchy all the way to the motor outputs of speech and writing and the auditory and visual inputs for hearing and reading language. One approach might be that modeling at higher levels must encapsulate control below some level as though controlled in imagination.
RM: Whatever you call it, I haven’t seen any real world examples of social stability that correspond to the “collective control” model described by Kent. The best way to convince me that there are such examples is show how one is explained by Kent’s model – not just verbally but by showing how the model accounts for actual data.
BN: What are the prerequisites for something to be accepted as data?
RM: Anything I can observe that lets me make at least qualitative comparisons of what I see to what the model does. In Chapter 7 of The Study of Living Control Systems (SLCS) I describe several examples of what I consider to be good, data-based comparisons of model behavior to the actual behavior of organisms.
RM: If PCT is, indeed, a collectively controlled system of perceptions (which it might be) then it can’t be true that “PCT as a science… will prevail because those who comprehend it control better.” This is because PCT would be a virtual reference state that is continuously changing as people with different ideas about it gain and lose the upper hand in arguments about what PCT is. Since the virtual reference state of PCT is continuously changing, there is no correct state of PCT to be comprehended and, thus, to make control better.
BN: You could say this about science in general—that every science changes as people gain and lose the upper hand in arguments… In science, argument is answerable to observational data.
RM: Yes, indeed! And in mature sciences this has probably reduced the variation in the virtual reference for “what the science says”. But there are still the occasional revolutions – punctuations in the evolution of the science.
BN: How to represent the data of interactions, social relations, and social arrangements in a way that is amenable to quantitative PCT modeling is not a simple and straightforward matter.
RM: I’m fine with using qualitative data to test the models. The data used to test the flocking models described in Chapter 7 of SLCS, for example, is just videos of birds flocking.