[From Rick Marken (930411.1700)]
Ken Hacker [930410] --
Just a quick reply to your most recent exercise in ad hominem and
reductio absurdem.
I apologize for whatever I said that was construed by you as a personal
attack. I didn't mean to attack you personally; I welcome your
participation in this group and encourage your contributions.
Perhaps what you interpreted as ad hominum attacks were the following
comments, which included an implicit "attack" on social communication
theory in the last sentence:
...social scientists deal mainly
with irrelevant side effects of control. PCT is about a domain (phen-
omenon) called control, which is staring social scientists right in the
face. But they keep missing it because control can LOOK LIKE stimulus-
response (based on our long discussion I think we can now call this the
IT illusion), selection by consequences (Skinner's got a lock on this --
the Skinner illusion) or output generation (the "cognitive" illusion:
but I'm negotiable -- we could call it the social communication illusion).
In a subsequent post I will explain in detail what I mean by each of these
illusions and how you can demonstrate them to yourself. But for now, let
me just say that what I said above about social communication theory
was REALLY not meant to be an attack on you. But I apologize for the tone;
I can see that it could be taken the wrong way. Please try to remember
that when I criticize some idea that you happen to like, it is not meant to
be an attack (or a criticism) of you personally. I criticize only because
the idea seems to be in conflict with the way I see things from a PCT point
of view. If I am wrong in my criticisms, please feel free to explain why.
It is difficult to discuss PCT without sometimes pointing out that things
do not work the way other theories say they work. I have tried to stick to
saying positive things about PCT. But it is difficult to avoid noticing when
people are agreeing with the positive things AND, at the same time,
agreeing with things that are inconsistent with these positive things.
This is basically what happened (from my point of view) in the IT debate.
The Canadian group was saying "yes, behavior is the control of perception,
BUT there is actually something in perception called "information" that
guides behavior". It was difficult for me to avoid pointing out that this is
not the case -- not because I was anxious to "show up" the Canadian group.
Rather, it was because an important principle (as Bill Powers pointed out)
was at stake; a principle that distinguishes PCT from other approaches to
behavior.
The Canadian group succumed to what I described above as the "stimulus-
response" illusion of control. The illusion results from the fact that the
outputs,o, of a control system (when the reference signal is fixed) are
strongly related to the net effect of disturbances,d, to a controlled variable.
That is, o = g-1(d), where g -1() is the inverse of the feedback function.
Since the observer often cannot see the controlled variable, he or she is
likely to attribute the relationship between d and o (which are usually
quite visible) to the nature of the organism. That is, the observer will
attribute g-1() to the organism when it is actually a property of the
environment. This is the illusion; and it is the basis for assuming (as
the ITers do) that perception of the disturbance,d, must be responsible for
output, o (because how could d be transformed into o if d is not perceived
by the organism?). Avery Andrews fell for this same illusion in his recent
reply to my claim that "control systems control inputs; their outputs are
not guided by these inputs".
Avery Andrews (931411.1100) says:
Well, I hadn't noticed that anyone didn't know this to begin with,
tho I would want to say that the outputs are
guided by the inputs and reference levels together.
Many PCT afficiandos seem to agree with Avery's first point -- which
is, I think, that this whole IT debate was pretty academic because
everyone already knows that "inputs don't guide outputs". But even in
the quote above Avery includes the input (along with the reference
signal) as a guide to output. The fact of the matter is that the input
is not involved in directing the output AT ALL; input is DIRECTED by the
reference signal (via the closed loop). That is, output is neither a function
of input nor of input and reference levels together. The Canadians, to their
credit, noticed immediately the absurdity of this claim; like the Scholastics
with their "impetus", the Canadians "knew" that something MUST be responsible
for causing the outputs that result in control. This is the only rational way
to imagine that control occurs (if you are assuming a cause-effect model).
The something that causes the appropriate outputs is, according to the
Canadians, "information". No matter how good control gets, SOME of this
stuff must get through in the input (perception) to tell the control system
what output to produce. But the PCT people proved that the input is in no
way responsible for the outputs that control perception. From the cause-
effect point of view, this was a MAGICAL, MYSTICAL finding. It was completely
inconsistent with the laws of physical reality themselves. This response
of the Canadian side was absolutely appropriate; it reflected their excellent
understanding of how the cause-effect model works. Best of all it reflected
model based thinking. Because they are able to think in terms of models,
the Canadians were able to see that, if PCT were right on this issue
(nothing in the input to a control system guides the output) then
control system behavior is completely inconsistent with the fundemental
assumptions of the cause - effect model (which, from their perspective,
would make PCT inconsistent with physical reality). If the Canadians are
ever able to get past the cause-effect model into PCT they will have a
FAR deeper understanding of PCT than those who listened to the PCT side
of the debate, shrugged and said "everybody knows that". In fact,"hardly
anybody knows that".
Best
Rick