[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-26_06:43:39 UTC]
Bill,
yes, seems a pretty good agreement.
Actually, I really liked Martin’s choice of “diligent gnomes” for one main reason.
The ridiculousness of the options does, I think, a wonderful job of emphasizing the truth that irrespective of what we believe we can not actually
know what is generating our inputs to our sensors.
Me too!
Taking things to the extremes of epistemology, no we don’t know that there is any sort of actual
things in the environment outside of us. Indeed, we don’t know that we even exist in a bodily form!
Yes, we could exist as characters in the stories the gnomes tell to each other.
But back to a more practical approach.
The assertion that there is an RREV—a reference set, somehow—for a particular world view that says that what we perceive, in general, exists in the “real world” (which the world view also assumes to exist) as we
perceive them, I think, is a given.
If that is true (and I do believe that it is) then yes, the RREV exists independently in the environment. However, all perceptions of the same, and all conclusions about the RREV are still produced
wholly within a person. So they are perceptions and like all perceptions may or may not be a completely correct representation of what the RREV actually is.
Agree, except I think we may never know how completely correct representations we have of what RREV actually IS.
Your example of the map points out part, I think, of the problem with this whole idea that the RREV is important enough to be
included within PCT.
Suppose the map provided no terrain information (a common situation for most maps since the maps that use color for terrain do not provide enough information to use) however travel was always successful
using the map.
Not sure I follow here. The goodness of the map and the sufficiency of its information depends on its use. If you use it to navigate from one place to another (using a flying vehicle), you may not necessarily need any details about the
quality of the terrain.
First, the user and observer would, of course, conclude the map was an accurate tool.
Another observer, say viewing a actual trip visually from a distance, would come to the same conclusion but might notice something like the vehicle used, maintained a consistent ground clearance, and thus supplied the correction
for lack of “Y” dimension information.
This distant observer would have generally the same conclusion about the value of the map but only because this same observer had a perceptual input (data) that those aboard the vehicle did not have
(or at least consider). So distant observer’s conclusion would include the additional ideas concerning terrain.
My point here is that it is ALL perception.
Yes, my point was just to show by that example that if you have a map (as a perception of the terrain) you can use it for navigating in the terrain (as an RREV of which you may have no other perceptions in addition to that map) if there
is some correspondence between the terrain and the map i.e. between the perception and the RREV.
···
Here is where I say something that might result in others objecting to what I’m going to say…
Using an RREV either as a concept or in a specific instance of behavior (control of perception), is dangerous as it points toward a stimulus-response sort of approach
to a person not grounded in the implications of PCT.
I can’t see here any special danger. People believing or not in S-R do not change this way of thinking of them because of speculations about Real Reality. But if you try tell them that there does not exist any structures in the external
reality which mediate our output to our input they will regard our PCT even more incredible than they would else do.
Where I can see a possible value to the concept is in working with the higher levels of the control system hierarchy.
Areas where we currently have no hard research data and very sketchy ideas of how they function.
Good! I forgot this: understanding of evolution, social systems and hierarchically higher perceptions require the concept of RREV.
The difficulty, especially at this point in the development of the theory, is great.
The RREV focus would be on what perceptions can be detected from the particular RREV. What perceptions (if any) might be missed or incorrectly perceived by a subject. And how those perceptions present disturbances to achieving
control (or even prevent successful control).
From there, drawing in the possible “world view” perceptions one might begin to understand how and why various perceptual reference are altered to achieve purposeful behavior.
Even the William James famous example of the iron filings-magnet-paper, and Romeo-Juliet suggest that analysis of the ‘real world’ situation is essential for successful control.
For me, just that is the basis of the usefulness of that term and concept. It cannot be used in calculations, we get no data from RREVs but only from perceptions but with it we can better detail our assumptions
and understandings about what is happening especially in complex control situations like for example in evolutionary development and social systems.
Actually I agree with the above paragraph even though I think my conclusions differ. For the RREV to be useful, then the perceptions of the RREV
must provide data. Not necessarily calculation data but repeatable results.
Where you say “…but only from perceptions but with it…” is, I think, correct.
Here I must again stress that we get data only via perceptions. The RREV as an object of perceptions does not offer any data of itself past our perceptions. In a same way that we can say that our perceptions are perceptions about the RREV
we can sau that our data is about the RREV but that is dangerous. Data is always only recorded perceptions.
It is important to remember that everything we ‘know’ about the nature of an RREV is physics (or maybe meta-physics) based.
Thus, if you are studying how the feedback path influences the change(s) that will be perceived, and the RREV is understood to be the sum total of our physics conception (perception) of what we think
is actually present in the environment, I see it as potentially useful.
I further suggest that RREV is in the realm of physics and not behavioral science, thus not something to be included explicitly in PCT. It certainly can be thought to be included implicitly as is physics
itself.
I partially agree. Two notes:
-
The knowledge of physics is as much based on perceptions as any other knowledge (and thus it can also be depending on the diligence of the gnomes).
-
I refer to my favorite meta-physician John Heil who says that the (fundamental) physics has a special duty to (try to) tell the deep story about the reality but that does not mean that the stories of other sciences were less true (and reducible
to the stories of the physics).
PCT does not need to study the structures of RREV, it is not its duty. Neither needs it to study the structures of nerve cells and other structures of the interior of the organism. It has its own place in the division of the labor of the
sciences, but it can and must (critically) utilize the stories of other sciences.
Eetu
bill
Eetu
bill
On 4/23/19 5:22 AM, Eetu Pikkarainen (eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi via csgnet Mailing List) wrote:
[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-23_06:07:51 UTC]
[Rick Marken 2019-04-17_14:36:15]
[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-04-17_08:22:20 UTC]
EP: RREV is a so called theoretical concept, about which you cannot get any data. So in practice you may never need it yourself. The duty of the theoretical concepts is to help to explain some data, for example the
phenomenon that two observers get similar perceptions can be explained so that a) their perceptual functions are similar AND b) their perceptions are caused by same RREV. (Note that (a) can be explained with (b).)
RM: But the concept of an RREV seems inconsistent with two easily made observations.
One is that the same reality can result in two different perceptions. Here’s the famous wife-mother-in-law illusion where the same physical reality produces two different perceptions – in the same person or in two different people. So is the RREV the
wife or the mother in law?
No, neither, but the RREV is that something which I would call “picture� or “object of perception� which makes it possible and very probable that creatures with similar visual perceptual functions
and contextual knowledge as us will see either the wife or the mother in law, but not a tree, a car, an elephant or something else. It could very well be Adelbert’s office like Martin suggests, but I like somewhat simpler speculations
Another, even worse, problem is the fact that different realities can result in the same perception.
This happens in color perception where the same color can be produced by different combinations of wavelengths; add in context effects and the number of different realities that will produce the same color is very large. So which is the actual RREV that
corresponds to the color perception?
No one can require that there should be one to one correspondence between RREVs and perceptions. The important point is that not any but only some RREVs can produce a certain perception via
a certain perceptual functions and a certain RREV cannot be perceived as any but only some perceptions. A second point is that those wavelengths and their combinations are also perceptions and we should ask what is the RREV which produces both color perceptions
and wavelength perceptions.
RM: I think it’s the perceptual function – not an RREV – that is responsible for the stuff we perceive. As I said to Kent, I think the RREV is a concept that comes from confusing a perception (such as a table)
with the physical reality that is the basis of that perception.
Yes, perceptual function is responsible to create a perception from the effects it gets from the RREV. The RREV is responsible (especially from our point of view) to add the effects of our
output to the other possible effects called disturbance and then mediate them in a coherent way to our perceptual functions.
EP: Perhaps you do not accept that data could be explained with something from which you cannot get data.
RM: No, what I require of a concept like RREV is a demonstration of how it explains the data. This could be done by showing how the RREV functions in a working model that accounts for the data. I have done plenty
of modeling of control data and I have done it all quite successfully without using the concept of RREV. So did Bill Powers. As I said, it seems to me that the concept of an RREV is both unnecessary and an impediment to progress in PCT science. But if someone
can show me how the concept of RREV explains some control data that can’t be explained without it I’ll certainly reconsider and incorporate it into my work.
As I said, at this certain kind of the basic level research you can well do without it, you just abstract it away as a needless self-evidence. Still it is there and the affirmation of it would
gather more interest to PCT than the negation of it.
Perhaps RREV has a close relation to feedback functions (and disturbance functions)? This is just an initial thought. Anyway the functions how the output effects are mediated to input effects
is most we can know about RREVs, I think.
EP: …At least I personally find it difficult to get interested in data which had no connection to some structures in the real world.
RM: I think that all data is presumed to be “connected” to some aspect of the real world; whether it’s connected to structures (like molecules) or something else has to be inferred from the data and knowledge
of how it was collected.
Molecules are models of RREV. We can have models of them and these models are based on our experiences of controlling our perceptions. For me, molecules are somewhat more credible models than
Martin’s gnome armies, but that is maybe a question of taste. If we accept the there could be such structures like molecules in RR then we should also accept that there can be chemical compounds and physical bodies and stuffs and mixtures (like lemonade) and
further even organisms and other people and social structures etc. etc.
We cannot know for sure do these things exists and if they do, do they somehow resemble our perceptions of them, but the long history of evolution, during which our perceptual functions have
been developed to collect from our environment such combinations and transformations of effects which are somehow essential to our living and which are controllable, would suggest that there must be (often) quite close connection.
Eetu
Best
Rick
Eetu
From: Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2019 6:55 PM
To: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: CEV and RREV (was Re: Doing Research on Purpose…)
[Rick Marken 2019-04-16_08:54:18]
[Martin Taylor 2019.04.15.17.49]
RM: I think the concept of RREV is unnecessary for practical reasons; it seems to be irrelevant to doing research aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized. If this isn’t the case – if your concept
of RREV is indeed relevant to this goal, which is the main goal of research based on PCT – then please explain how it is; it would help me with my current project of explaining to conventional psychologists how to do PCT research.
MT: My main goal of research based on PCT, if I must name one of the many I have, is to work on the ways multiple control loops (in the same or different bodies) interact. In support of this goal, I may sometimes have a supporting goal of “d* oing research
aimed at determining the perceptual variables around which any particular example of behavior is organized*”. But that is certainly not my main goal of research based on PCT,
RM: Could you explain why the concept of an RREV is essential to your research on how multiple control loops interact. It would be nice to get back to a discussion of actual data and how the PCT model explains it.
Best
Rick
any more than getting the steering wheel to the correct angle is my main goal when driving a car in traffic. Some other goals of PCT research might include to examine the interactions among the control systems of the experimenter and the subject in a TCV, or
at the other end of the scale of importance, to study collective control by politically related and politically opposed groups, or to study how the processes of evolution and reorganization actually do work to enhance the effective operation of an organism
and its descendants in an unknowable, and apparently dynamic Real Reality environment. A couple at an intermediate scale are if and why interactions of the control loops involved in a simple barter imply that a stable economy requires steady inflation, and
to examine the initial development of language in mother-child interaction. There are lots of possible goals of PCT-based research that
The concept of an RREV might help you in your own main goal, however, because you might like to explain to your students why the hierarchy of control is rather more than a simple assertion or something that accounts for observed data. It gives you the fundamental
“why” of the hierarchy. No, it doesn’t help you to find the variable (which of many?) someone is controlling in a particular situation. If that is all you want to do, the concept of the RREV is not helpful in any way I can see.
RM: I think the concept of RREV is an impediment to the development of PCT as a science because it implies that how well organisms control depends on how accurately they perceive what is known to be “out there”.
Well, I have never claimed that a controller would or could know which gnomes sitting at which desks read our outputs to RR and which ones actually read the rule-books to determine how our sensors ought to be tickled to make us perceive what we do. In fact,
I never actually claimed that Real Reality even has such gnomes. And yet, RR does seem to produce reasonably consistent changes of perception when we do thus and so in what we perceive as this or that circumstance. That appears to be all that a controller
requires, in order for the hierarchy to reorganize effectively.
This implies that the observer knows what the behaving system should be controlling, which would lead researchers to believe that the goal of PCT research is to determine how well organisms control what an observer “knows” they should be controlling.
I’m sorry, but even if it were true that we would have to know whether the gnome doing the analysis for a particular instance of control was Adelbert or Zebonia, I don’t see where an outside observer would get into the action. Nor do I see where “should” comes
into play, even if the intrusion of an observer has a simple explanation.
Of course there are circumstances where we do want to know how well a person controls a variable that the person should be controlling, for example, in training pilots to do instrument flying.
Again, I don’t see any logical connection with the foregoing. I understand “should” in this case as referring to a reference value in the teacher, who appears here in order to provide a specific situation in which an observer is required. But this seems to
have little to do with your point that the concept of RREV is bad for PCT. Rather, it seems to support the idea that the concept of the RREV makes it easier to understand the inter-organism feedback loops involved in situations like teaching.
…
RM: So unless you can show me how the concept of an RREV contributes to our ability to understand what perceptual variables organisms are controlling when they are seen carrying out various behaviors I’m afraid I will continue to consider it an unnecessary
obstruction to the development of PCT science.
I don’t expect that I have been able to show you, but I hope I have shown other CSGnet readers (a) that there is more to PCT research, and to PCT-based research than the search for the controlled variable, and (b) that the concept of the RREV as distinct from
the CEV and from Powers’s CV, is useful in simplifying a PCT analysis of many different kind of problem at a wide range of social importance from the control of one variable by one control loop to the clash of cultures that can lead to war.Martin
–
Richard S. Marken
"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
–
Richard S. Marken
"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery