[From Bill Powers (2004.05.31.0629 MDT)]
Bill Williams 29 May 2004 8:30 PM CST--
Bill Powers goes on to say that,
> I think the main difference is that I have followed the logic of perception
> to its final conclusion
What Bill Powers doesn't seem to realize is that _logic_ is perhaps one of
the best examples of an agreement of the sort you are talking.
Is that so? I think that logic, or rule-following, or reasoning (all
approximations to a particular kind of brain activity) is a basic function
of the brain, without which you couldn't do many of the things you do.
There are many examples of the way people use this facility, which do show
that there are social agreements of this kind. However, they are all
employing the same mental equipment, and identifying just what that
equipment is is more interesting (from the standpoint of a theory of the
brain) than arguing about any one example.
When Powers resorts to inserting logic into his argument, he is conceeding
that more is involved than merely our perceptions. As, he says, he has
followed "the logic." Now control theory adds a bit of refinement to our
understanding of what it means to have "followed the logic."
Logic is a particular kind of perception in HPCT. The "logic of perception"
to which I alluded is simply that whatever one is aware of, it has to be a
perception rather than a direct contact with the world (that's a
principle). This follows from the best and simplest of our knowledge -- our
observations, analyses, and agreements -- about how sensory endings and
nerves work. None of that information was available to any thinker before,
at the earliest, 1820 or so, and wasn't fully understood until the 20th
Century. This means that Kant, Hume, and other intellectual heros long dead
were not playing with a full deck, or at least a deck as full as ours is
now. I have read most of the philosophers you refer to, but have not been
inclined to make as many allowances for quaint beliefs and ignorance as you
do, and therefore don't read good sense into what has often struck me as
nonsense. Ideas don't become true just because one asserts them in a
bullying, persistent, persuasive, or clever manner.
Following didn't mean giving up being an autonomous control system.
However, when we arrive here we obviously don't invent the world into
which we arrive.
That's "obvious", is it? That's such a persuasive argument that I guess I
should believe you. Actually, I think that a great deal of invention is
involved, so the world a child experiences requires far more inventive
effort to bring into being than is assumed by the "tabula rasa" theorists.
The child can't help imposing his human nature onto the sensory impressions
received from the world, which, I have proposed, is why that world takes
the shapes it does: intensities through system concepts. Of course the
_particular_ intensities through system concepts that the child acaquires
by way of perceptions are influenced by the details of the world that
exists and that others have helped to shape, but those are so highly
variable across and within persons that we know they can't be innate.
That world doesn't and can't dictate what an autnomous control system
will do. But, the world into which we arrive has features that are
coordinated. How is this coordination achived, by control systems. Does
the coordination extend beyond the specimen's of the population taken as
organicly distinct control systems. Well, of course. Is this coordination
purposeful? Of course it is.
"Of course", is it? There you go again with those devastatingly effective
arguments. But somehow just throwing the word "coordination" in, without
definition or explanation, doesn't satisfy my desire to understand the way
it might have at one time. What coordinations? What coordinator?
Coordination, in my dictionary. carries a sense of someone who sees
multiple activities going on, and is able to direct them so that they are
coordinated -- all working in concert at the same level, order, or rank.
Bill claims that by pointing out that people come actually do come to an
agreement you are exhibiting a failure to understand control theory.
He says,
> you're still resisting,
[understanding PC by ]
> wanting to preserve at least your own area of expertise as dealing
with > facts, not perceptions and interpretations.
You were the one who inserted [understanding PC by]. Talk about invention!
My meaning was very specific but you managed to turn it into something
else. I meant that Bruce (like you, but not so radically) is resisting the
idea that _all_ of experience is perception, rather than just most of it.
This is a precursor to PCT, not an idea that depends on understanding PCT.
You can't really cite Kant or Hume or any of those guys; you can cite only
your faulty memory of what you read, your partial recall of what they said,
your private interpretation of what they meant, your 20th century
interpretation of words set down centuries ago -- in short, your perception
of your own memories and thoughts. If you think you have found some point
of view from which, at last, you can simply report the True Facts of
Philosophy As They Are, you have not taken the last steps to grasping the
real problem we face. In fact you've given up the effort.
Well, of course "facts" are a kind of perception and interpretation. But,
not all perceptions are equally valuable. Some perceptions are organized
so that they are more reliable than other perceptions. Science is both a
matter of reference levels and habits of perception. Some perceptions are
more organized by habits or norms than other perceptions. By making such
an accusation, Bill Powers is exhibiting an aspect of solipcism. He
hasn't been interested enough to find out what you actually think, and
instead presents this charge that doesn't have anything to do with what
you think.
Your grasp of True Reality is, as usual, breathtaking, but I am learning to
lean into the wind and hold my ground. I am far less a solipsist than you
are, because I realize not only that there is, most probably, a Real
Reality, but I realize how little I know about it. You, on the other hand,
seem to have it all figured out, without even a theory -- just some old
familiar words like habit and norm whose meanings (what few they have) long
predate theories like PCT. A reality that is that easy to understand just
has to be made up.
Powers goes on to say that,
> I don't preserve any area of expertise as exempt from the
> judgement that it's a perception, my perception.
When Powers says that it is a perception, and that it is his perception,
he is leaving out the consideration that his perception would have been
much different had he been a member of a different culture.
The contents of my perceptions no doubt would be different. The types of
perception I have I do doubt would be different.In Los Angeles, last
summer, I asked Zhang Hua Xia, a Chinese philosopher who has translated and
is publishing B:CP in China this year, if my proposed levels of perception
made any sense in the Chinese culture. He said very emphatically yes, they
were very close to Chinese thought. I have asked others, Europeans and
Russians, the same question and have got the same answers. My list may not
be exhaustive and it may not be quite right, but it seems to describe
aspects of brain operation that are human, not cultural.
Not you understand that the culture would have "influenced" him in the
sense of causing him to do things in a different way, but rather because
being in the culture he was, at the time and place that he was, he made
choices in an environment that had been purposefully organized. In a
culture without a vacumn tube it is likely that Bill Powers would not
have written _B:CP_.
I agree. There were other essential ingredients, too. Learning how to
analyze and design signal-handling circuits of several kinds. Studying
neuroanatomy. Learning about the mathematics of negative feedback loops.
Building and interacting with negative feedback loops (which involved
interacting with nature but not people). Learning alternate theories of
behavior and being dissafisfied with them. Reading various philosophers,
being impressed at first, then acquiring doubts. Watching how people
behave, in the wild and in organized experiments. All these experiences and
more went into B:CP and PCT.
So?
I don't think we ought to worry about speaking PCT. We can use control
theory to our advantage without having to become "individualist" in the
old fashioned sense.
I think it would be best to go back to the idea of "individual" in the old
fashioned sense. I know that this is a red-flag or knee-jerk word for you,
but it is highly descriptive of the human situation, and you should get
over your prejudice even if people you admired taught it to you (I'm sure
you wouldn't claim you invented it). People are individuals; their physical
boundary is their skin. It's very easy to distinguish them from their
environments, if you try sincerely.
Saying that people interact and learn from each other doesn't make them
less individual, any more than saying you can build things with Lego blocks
takes away the individual identity of the blocks. And most particularly,
saying that people can form groups doesn't magically give any of them the
ability to know more about the world than they can get from sensory
receptors. It doesn't give us, who are talking about these things, that
ability, either. What they know about the groups they are in depends
strictly on the perceptual systems they apply to their inputs; if they
misunderstand, they will build their social life on that misunderstanding,
not on the "reality."
A human civilization creates an enviornment ( All of the agency as we
understand it is expressed by the population of specimens each of them
acting autonomously. ) that is to some extent coordinated inorder to
achieve various purposes.
If somebody perceives in terms of coordination, and decides to act as a
coordinator, and finds an effective way to coordinate, and carries it out
successfully -- yes. Then we see the effects of that person's purposes. If
people develop "social perceptions" having to do with cooperation (meaning,
working together without supervision), we will see (if we, too, develop
similar perceptions) that coordination is being purposively controlled. Why
do we need to go beyond that, and reify the "society" or "culture" as if it
is something automonous itself? Why give purposiveness to the collective,
which is not even a control system?
Neither econmics nor linguistics makes any sense in the absence of an
assumption that behavior is purposeful. Neither economics nor linguistic
theory requires any mythic causal super-organic powers. But, neither
makes any sense without the conception of a cultural heritage that evolves
through time as the result of the purposeful behavior of a population in
an environment.
But you contradict yourself in successive sentences. We do not need any
mythic super-organic powers or beings. Period. Therefore we do not need to
reify something called a "cultural heritage", an evolving purposive being
separate from the individuals in the culture, having power over them. We
can explain the interactions among individuals by putting models of
individuals together in an environment and observing how they interact. We
can observe and predict the changes (some changes) that take place over
time. And we can see that everything that the culture is and does is a
product of what the individuals are and do.
It has been a long time since I thought there was any point to arguments
about what is really real and how could we know it.
Ah, an agreement at last. But I doubt that it will hold up. I no longer
worry about how much I experience of reality because the answer is "none of
it." You seem to agree that _some_ of it is simply our own perceptions, but
you reserve certain aspects of experience, such as your own reasoning or
the written works of other people, as being exempt from this generalization.
Basically Powers holds methodological and philosophic inquiry in contempt.
The result is all too evident. If you wish to go on arguing with Bill when
he isn't doesn't seem to be paying attention to your, or my position for
that matter either, I think that I will choose to enjoy the argument as a
spectator. Unless something productive emerges-- which is unlikely.
I'd say your contempt for Bill Powers exceeds mine for the philosophers. I
admire your unlimited self-confidence, even if it is misplaced.
Unfortunately, all that it means is that you are impervious to
disagreements; all you have to do is point out that any disagreement is
"obviously" wrong, for reasons that are "all too evident," or "absurd," or
results from ignorance or a character defect, and you have settled the
matter. Of all the philosophical arguments I have been unimpressed by, that
approach probably impresses me the least. I think that one Pope is more
than sufficient, and I don't even agree that that one can ever speak
infallibly.
Bill P.