[Martin Taylor 2010.04.26.10.14]
[From Rick Marken (2010.04.25.2310)]
External reasons come down to not having the necessary
environmental affordances.
Oops. There is no such thing as an environmental affordance, according
to control theory.
Maybe we have a difference in the use of words. Let me define what I mean by "environmental affordance" by some examples. It is much the same as "environmental feedback path" except that "environmental feedback path" has the connotation that the path is being used for control, whereas "environmental affordance" means the path could be used for control but is not necessarily being used.
1. Everyday language: Suppose I am on one side of a river. There is a bridge. I could walk across the bridge and find myself on the other side.
PCT rewording: If I ere to be controlling a perception of my location, with a reference to perceive myself on the other side of the river and a current perception of being on this side of the river. I might perceive the existence of a bridge, and perceive that if I used the bridge I could act so as to reduce the error in my perception of my location.
The bridge is an environmental affordance.
2. I am doing a pursuit tracking experiment, controlling my perception of the location of a cursor with respect to a target. My computer has a mouse and a joystick and a trackpad, any of which could be used to influence the cursor. Each of these mechanical systems is an environmental affordance for controlling the perceived location of the cursor. Only one of them is in the environmental feedback pathway.
3. I find the current policies of my government differ from my perceptions of what I would prefer them to be. What environmental affordances do I have? I can vote just once every few years, I can write to my representative(s), I can join a protest movement on the streets, I can try to make my views known publicly, and so forth. All of these are environmental affordances, but few of them are environmental feedback pathways.
4. I am in a jail cell, and have a reference to be at home. I have no environmental affordances for controlling that perception.
So when we understand "Freedom" as the ability to control, we see that
the true enemies of freedom (as Dickens realized so long ago) are
ignorance (lack of education) and want (poverty).
One question in my mind is whether an environmental affordance is a possibility for the existence of an environmental feedback path as seen by some arbitrary observer, or whether an environmental affordance exists only if the potential control system has been reorganized so that the pathway can be used or is perceived and used in program-level analysis-type control. In other words, is it a property of the environment or of the developed control structure that includes its environment? If environmental affordances are properties of the environment, then "want" is a restriction of them, but ignorance is not. If they are determined by the reorganization, knowledge, and intellectual ability of the controller, then both ignorance and want are restrictions of environmental affordances.
Consider the case when I want to control my perception of my location. I am on this side of a deep, fast flowing stream, but have a reference to be on the other side. There is no bridge, but a strong plank is lying near me, and it is long enough to lie from bank to bank of the stream. I am inclined to say that the plank is an environmental affordance for my control of my location, but only if I am smart enough to realize that I could lay it across the stream to form a bridge. A more Newtonian approach would be to consider it an environmental affordance regardless of my skills.
A lack of environmental affordances probably could be characterized
in many ways, but I think a major split is between social affordances
(the kind Martin L listed in his response) and non-social affordances.
So even though we disagree about the existence of affordances we get
to the same place. Nice.The availability of money provides the opportunity to change and
enhance environmental affordances. In other words, a rich person
has a lot more freedom than does a pauper.
Aside from the fact that I don't consider money an "affordance"
Do you, now, consider it an affordance?
"Freedom" can be split in another dimension, "freedom to" and>"freedom from".
I think both are implied when we see freedom as a person being "in
control". "Freedom to" simply means the ability to bring a controlled
variable to it's reference state; "Freedom from" is the ability to do
this while protecting the variable from disturbance.
I split them by environmental affordances. "Freedom to" means that environmental affordances exist for the controlled perceptions in question, whereas "Freedom from" means what you say, the non-existence of overwhelming disturbances.
That's a very crude first cut at what I think "freedom" means in PCT.
And a very nice one at that.
Thanks.
I suspect we all would wish to maximize our ability to control such
perceptions as we choose to control. Where I suspect we disagree is
in whether we would like to extend this wish to other people.
I presume you are talking to Martin L. here.
No, I don't think so, though his list inspired my comment. I remember a long-ago comment by an unremembered commentator that the difference between right-wing and left-wing politicians was in the list of things they wanted to prohibit (reduce or remove the environmental affordances for). Libertarians are a different breed. I think that my differences with Libertarians is analytic. I believe that if the kinds of "intrusions" of which they complain were eliminated, my own freedom, as well as that of most people including the complaining Libertarians, would be reduced rather than enhanced. I agree with them on objectives, not on means.
If we can agree that the term "freedom" is equivalent to what we mean
by being "in control" in PCT,
I don't agree with that, because we are actually "in control" of very little at any moment. To me "freedom" has more to do with the ability to choose what perceptions to control and the ability to control those perceptions than with the plain ability to control those perceptions we currently control. If I'm a billionaire, I could control to be taking a hoilday in a fancy resort on Tahiti, but maybe I prefer staying home. If I'm living hand to mouth, I could not have that choice. It's the fact that I could choose a wide range of perceptions to control at a wide range of reference values that to me signifies freedom.
then maybe we can then deal with what
this means in the context of a society where each person's individual
ability to control depends on the controlling done by virtually
everyone else.
It always does, and that's the point of "just" laws.
I think this is where people like Martin L. start
feeling "oppressed" by government.
You will have to ask him about that. I admit to feeling much as he does about many laws. I don't extrapolate it as far as he does, and in particular I think quite oppositely to him about taxation. But that's a matter for analysis, not a difference of basic philosophy.
Martin