From Stefan Balke (960219.1630 MEZ)
Rick Marken encouraged me in a privat post to ask my questions on the net.
Here is one of them.
I posted to Rick:
I know from myself, that I want to do the "right decisions", I control for
"right decisions". In order to do so, I guess based on my experiences and on
the available situational informations, which of the possible alternatives
would be the best for me to reach my goal. I do not calculate anything, but
I have to _decide_, which (counter-)action I will carry out. Steering the
wheel is a very direct behavior, but deciding which route will be the
fastest at a special daytime is a more complicated process.
My question is, how the thought to be best of the possible counteractions is
detected.
Rick answered to me:
I know from myself, that I want to do the "right decisions", I control for
"right decisions".This is a very interesting situation. I do it too, of course. But I don't
think I am controlling when I do it; when we consciously have to decide
something, we are _hoping_ to get the desired results, perhaps even
_expecting_ to get the desired results but, unless we are in control, we
are not necessarily _going_ to get the desired results. I'm sure you will
find this difficult to accept; but I think if you look carefully at what
you accomplish with your conscious decisions you will see that conscious
decision making occurs only when ypu are not firmly in control.This has been discussed before on the net; I think it's worth it to bring it
up again.
I´ll add the following question to make my request a little clearer.
Since everything we do (and think) is control (as Rick told to me in an
earlier direct post - and I agree with this view), it should be possible to
describe the process of conscious decision making as a (H)PCT negative
feedback model. I´m interested to know, how a PCT-model for making concious
decisions would look like.
Kent McClelland [960215.1445 CST] has pointed out
We control our perceptions, not our actions.
In order to control a perception . . .
We must have a memory or mental model of what we want (OUR REFERENCE
STANDARDS).
Our PHYSICAL ACTIONS must affect the thing to be controlled.
We need PERCEPTUAL FEEDBACK about to the thing to be controlled.We act to correct the errors when our current perceptions don't match our
reference standards.
I agree with this statements, but I want to know, how we close the gap
between the mismatch and the selected action.
Best
Stefan