Fw: Controlled Variables

CSGnet Archive CSG2002
1

[From Shannon Williams (2002.09.29.12:00 CST)

[From Bill Powers (2002.09.28.0749 MDT)]

Would it be
permissible to say that her distress was a result of a conflict between her
reluctance to leave the session, and her being "disturbed" by what I had to
say?

"Leaving the session" is one behavior that might appropriately control
some people's perceptions, but you do not know what drove the lady
to your session to begin with. You don't know what else she is controlling
for. Or maybe she is trying to control her perception of you (or anyone who
speaks about the medical industry).

What about recieving a false report that a family member has been injured?

The

emotional reaction to such a false report in comonplace thinking attributes

the

resulting emotion to an external cause. I don't myself worry much about

such

issues, but I can anticipate encountering such questions/objections and I

don't

have a ready explaination.

I am not seeing a scenario that cannot be explained by PCT. Can you
elaborate on what behavior cannot be explained as a control of perception?

Thanks,
Shannon

2

[From Bill Williams UMKC 29 September 2002 2:30 CST]

[From Shannon Williams (2002.09.29.12:00 CST)

[From Bill Williams ]

"Leaving the session" is one behavior that might appropriately control
some people's perceptions, but you do not know what drove the lady
to your session to begin with. You don't know what else she is controlling
for. Or maybe she is trying to control her perception of you (or anyone who
speaks about the medical industry).

These are all possible. My understanding based upon what she said, was that my
excessively graphic description of some injuries, was upsetting. I'm confident
based upon other conversations that criticism of the medical industry wouldn't
disturb her.

>What about recieving a false report that a family member has been injured?
The
>emotional reaction to such a false report in comonplace thinking attributes
the
>resulting emotion to an external cause. I don't myself worry much about
such
>issues, but I can anticipate encountering such questions/objections and I
don't
>have a ready explaination.

I am not seeing a scenario that cannot be explained by PCT. Can you
elaborate on what behavior cannot be explained as a control of perception?

I didn't intend to say, the scenario couldn't be explained by PCT, only that I
didn't have a ready explaination. Not at least an explaination that would
preserve the notion that a person is completely in control of their own
behavior-- including in this their own emotions. This is why, I was thnking
about making a distinction about "steady-state" and "transient" effecxts.

···

Thanks,
Shannon

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3

[From Shannon Williams (2002.09.29.23:50 CST)

[From Bill Williams UMKC 29 September 2002 2:30 CST]

[ I am trying to ]
preserve the notion that a person is completely in control of their own
behavior-- including in this their own emotions.

So you are saying that emotions are behavior?

I think emotions are a lack of behavior. When no behavior will control your
perception, you are left with emotion.

4

[From Bill Williams UMKC 30 September 2002 0:30 AM CST

[From Shannon Williams (2002.09.29.23:50 CST)

>[From Bill Williams UMKC 29 September 2002 2:30 CST]
>
>[ I am trying to ]
>preserve the notion that a person is completely in control of their own
>behavior-- including in this their own emotions.

So you are saying that emotions are behavior?

I think emotions are a lack of behavior. When no behavior will control your
perception, you are left with emotion.

I was thinking of emotions in terms of floods of various sorts of chemicals.
So, when as you say, there's nothing you _can_ do to control your perception
you generate one sort of solution. But, there's also the case when what you do
finally eliminates a very long standing error-- then you generate an entirely
different set of solutions. Maybe there's somthing fundamentally wrong with
thinking of emotions as behaviors, and particularly with emotions as floods of
chemicals. But, I do think that it may be valuable to think of emotions,
however they are defined, as variables that can be controlled.

best

   Bill Williams

···

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5

[From Bill Powers (2002.09.29.1122 MDT)]

Shannon Williams (2002.09.29.23:50 CST)--

>I think emotions are a lack of behavior. When no behavior will control
your >perception, you are left with emotion.

My idea of emotion is something like that. I've proposed that emotions are
a combination of a cognitive (or perhaps "cognized" would be better) goal
and the somatic feelings that arise when we prepare to make an effort to
achieve the goal. Higher-order error signals are translated into
lower-order shifts in reference signals, which produces more error signals,
and at some level produces shifts in reference signals going to the
autonomic and endocrine systems, if that's the right term.

Normally the shifts in the somatic systems needed to support behavior are
not large, just enough to provide the energy and the state of the physical
system that is required to back up the behavioral -- neuromotor -- systems.
The biochemical preparations are used up by the motor systems as fast as
they are produced, so we do not remain in a heightened state of
preparedness when actions actually take place.

The time when we feel emotions strongly is when for some reason we have
errors and prepare to act, but do not act (as you indicate above). We're
"left with the emotion."

This model of emotions does not treat them as a separate sort of reaction
to external circumstances, or a separate mode of evaluation of experiences.
The emotion itself is not a direct reaction, but a consequence of the
reaction of a control system to error. The evaluation has taken place
before the emotion occurs. Of course others have proposed the opposite:
that the emotion is the reaction, which is then followed by behavior. But I
have yet to see any explanation of how that would work, and it doesn't seem
to fit my experiences.

I think that part of the reason for the alternative proposal is that
higher-order cognitions do sometimes seem to lag emotions. But in a
hierarchical model, we can have lower- and mid-level errors occurring,
giving rise to biochemical preparations, before the highest systems have
formed perceptual representations of what is happening, so it seems that
the emotion arises independently and has a causal relationship to higher
processes. But by my interpretation, what the higher systems are reacting
to are the consequences of the lower systems going into action as
appropriate to the current settings of the higher-level systems. The
nervous sentry is startled and shoots his buddy before remembering that he
is due to be relieved about now. That looks like the emotion reacting
first, but in a hierarchical model that's not the only possibility.

There hasn't been much discussion of the nature of emotion on the net.
What's you explanation of emotions?

Best,

Bill P.

6

[From Shannon Williams (2002.10.03.23:50 CST)

[From Bill Williams UMKC 30 September 2002 0:30 AM CST

I was thinking of emotions in terms of floods of various sorts of

chemicals.

So, when as you say, there's nothing you _can_ do to control your

perception

you generate one sort of solution. But, there's also the case when what

you do

finally eliminates a very long standing error-- then you generate an

entirely

different set of solutions. Maybe there's somthing fundamentally wrong with
thinking of emotions as behaviors, and particularly with emotions as

floods of

chemicals. But, I do think that it may be valuable to think of emotions,
however they are defined, as variables that can be controlled.

Chemicals are definitely part of the equipment for a biological PCT control
loop. They enable neurons, muscles, etc. I suppose, to the extent that the
chemicals can be perceived and that signals from the brain can affect these
perceptions, then a reference could develop for that perception.

7

[From Shannon Williams (2002.10.03.23:50 CST)]

[From Bill Powers (2002.09.29.1122 MDT)]

others have proposed the opposite:
that the emotion is the reaction, which is then followed by behavior. But I
have yet to see any explanation of how that would work, and it doesn't seem
to fit my experiences.

I agree with you.

'Emotion' seems to be one of those ideas that people tend to build a
reference for. People attribute a great importance to emotion, and most
people attribute purpose or usefulness with importance. They cannot
perceive the idea of emotion outside of these associated ideas, therefore I
think that they perceive 'emotion' as causing, rather than being a
by-product.

8

[From Bill Williams UMKC 4 September 2002 4:00AM CST]

[From Shannon Williams (2002.10.03.23:50 CST)

Chemicals are definitely part of the equipment for a biological PCT control
loop. They enable neurons, muscles, etc. I suppose, to the extent that the
chemicals can be perceived and that signals from the brain can affect these
perceptions, then a reference could develop for that perception.

Even though I think emotions can, to some extent, be controlled I don't have an
idea how this might be organized. And, If it is possible to control emotions,
it would seem to me to useful to know how to do it.

Bill Williams

···

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9

[From Bill Powers (2002.10.05.0729 MDT)]

My ISP's mail server has been down for several days. Now I can receive
mail, but when I try to send the server complains that it needs a "fully
qualified address" and quits. Of course by the time anyone but me reads
this the problem will have been fixed. I am attempting to confine my
desires to things over which I have control, and partly succeeding. See the
following.

Bill Williams UMKC 4 September 2002 4:00AM CST--

>Even though I think emotions can, to some extent, be controlled I don't
have >an idea how this might be organized. And, If it is possible to
control >emotions, it would seem to me to useful to know how to do it.

My proposal is that [unpleasant] emotions arise strictly as a consequence
of error signals. The extremness of the feeling component would depend only
on the degree and number of unreduced error signals in the hierarchy. So to
"control" emotions (in the dictionary sense of "limit or restrain") would
require learning to keep error signals smaller. This is partly a matter of
learning control skills (so controlled variables are more successfully
controlled) and eliminating internal conflict (which leads to large
uncorrected errors), and partly a matter of picking goals that can be
realized without extremes of action that one holds back from carrying out.
If I cease wanting to do somemthing violent to someone else, I will no
longer have the bodily feelings that are produced by having such desires --
in other words, I won't feel anger. So it's not the feeling of anger that
needs to be controlled -- it's the desire to do something violent that is
the problem.

At least that's the view that results from adopting my theory of emotion.
No one but Shannon has actually commented directly on this theory.

Pleasant emotions would, I think, work in similar ways, at least as far as
the sensations involved are concerned. But they don't seem as
straightforward, since we can get a pleasant feeling from having an
unpleasant feeling reduced. However, people seldom have a problem with
controlling their pleasant emotions.

Best,

Bill P.

10

[From Bill Powers (2002.10.05.08544 MDT)]

Ah, I see what's going on. They're dealing out the posts a little at a
time, so I just got a post from Shannon from the 3rd.

Shannon Williams (2002.10.03.23:50 CST)--

>Chemicals are definitely part of the equipment for a biological PCT control

loop. They enable neurons, muscles, etc. I suppose, to the extent that the
chemicals can be perceived and that signals from the brain can affect these
perceptions, then a reference could develop for that perception.

Very nice! Of course! That puts us forward by a long step.

I think there are lots of chemicals (or effects, immediate or indirect, of
chemicals) that we can sense, and that we do develop references for them. I
also think that learning to control these perceptions is tricky, because
what _causes_ them is not some effort we make, but the way we get organized
to control other things. This is starting to sound a lot like the
reorganizing system, to nobody's surprise I presume.

There are other examples of this sort of situation. We can feel hunger and
illness, and I would guess that we all develop references for these
perceptions, but there's no particular effort we can make to control them
immediately -- make them either worse or better. Hunger in particular can
be cured by eating something, but in a naive organism, why should there be
a connection between putting something in your mouth and swallowing and the
sensation of hunger? It's not like controlling your posture: there's no
effort you can make that will, all by itself, affect the perception. You
have to control _something else_ to make the perception of hunger go away.

I think that's how it must be with emotions. If we come to dislike the
feelings of anger, we can't just tense the right set of muscles and make
the feeling go away. Instead, we have to control something else, or change
the way we're already controlling something else. We have to realize that
the cause of the anger is not whatever it is we're angry at, but _what we
want to do_ about the thing we think we're angry at. If we alter that
desire so that what we want in its place doesn't call for violent action
(which we have to suppress), the sensations of anger will simply go away.
So the control process is very indirect.

Not everyone, of course, wants anger to go away. Some people think of it as
part of their repertoire of methods for making things happen, socially, if
they think of it at all as something they can affect.

Good question, Bill W. Good answer, Shannon.

Best,

Bill P.

11

[from Shannon Williams 2002.10.05.1430 CST]

[From Bill Powers (2002.10.05.08544 MDT)]

to the extent that the
chemicals can be perceived and that signals from the brain can affect

these

perceptions, then a reference could develop for that perception.

Very nice! Of course! That puts us forward by a long step.

Thanks! I am thinking that it is a little off-of the mark though. I think
that the statements below are closer:

    To the extent that chemicals can be perceived, a reference can develop
for that perception.
    To the extent that signals from the brain can affect this perception,
then a control loop can develop.

If we come to dislike the
feelings of anger, we can't just tense the right set of muscles and make
the feeling go away. Instead, we have to control something else, or change
the way we're already controlling something else. We have to realize that
the cause of the anger is not whatever it is we're angry at, but _what we
want to do_ about the thing we think we're angry at. If we alter that
desire so that what we want in its place doesn't call for violent action
(which we have to suppress), the sensations of anger will simply go away.

Here you describe the implementation of the control loop. Also, as we get
older I think that we tend to develop behavior patterns that avoid
situations(perceptions?) that we cannot control.

Thanks,
Shannon