[From Bill Powers (950223.0730 MST)]
Bruce Buchanan (950220.20:30 EST) --
And I still see controlled variables within PCT as theoretical
constructs - a kind of "intervening variable" posited to account
for observations - defined in a way that makes them amenable to
observation and measurement. However they must also be highly
complex functions, and inevitably subject to all kinds of emotional
and chemical influences, etc., as well as functions of higher
intentional sets or values. So I am perhaps reluctant to accept
terminology which might suggest a single-valued view so to speak,
operating only at the lower level, although I accept that level as
the primary reality and the level for most experimentation.
You keep proposing things that are already part of PCT. Of course there
is no single-valued view in PCT; of course there are higher levels of
intentions and values. That is what the 11 levels are all about. Perhaps
what you have failed to see is that at every level, we experience the
perceptions in those levels as if they were about the world -- as if we
can find not only sensations, but principles and systems in the exterior
world. One main point of PCT is to show what "the map is not the
territory" MEANS -- it means that no matter what aspect of the world
you're talking about, concrete or abstract, it's a perception, not the
world itself. What we mean by saying "it's all perception" is precisely
that the map is NOT the territory; it's a map, no matter how convenient
it is to treat it as if it were the world it represents.
I would have thought that the most interesting aspect of an
emergent phenomenon is what makes it unique, not just the
components involved.
You are preaching not only to the converted, but to another preacher. Of
course emergent phenomena have their own characteristics. A capacitor
and an inductor, when connected, are more than a capacitor and an
inductor; they are a resonant circuit. But just SAYING that emergent
phenomena are unique and distinct from their components doesn't get us
anywhere; what we need to understand is HOW they are unique, HOW they
are different from their components. This means you have to understand
the components, too -- otherwise how can you say there is a difference?
Without understanding at both levels, the statement that the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts is just a boring old platitude which
everyone can recite but few understand.
From the moment of birth we are all confronted with phenomena which
we had best try to grasp at their own level(s).
Again, you're preaching to the preacher. What do you think the levels of
perception in HPCT are about? They are about phenomena that we perceive
as intensities, sensations, configurations, transitions, events,
relationships, categories, sequences, programs, principles, and system
concepts. Each level is a whole derived from the parts which are
perceptions of the lower levels. There are controllable perceptions at
each level. These levels represent an analysis of experience that began
when I read Korzybski (I thought) at the age of 14. I took to heart his
statement that the map is not the territory, and that the most important
insight one can have is to become conscious of abstracting. I went on
for some years with an interest in General Semantics, and came to
believe wholeheartedly in the Tyranny of Words. It was only after many
years that the real meanings of all this stuff sank in, and I began to
realize that some perceptions depend on others, and that abstractions
are created by our brains rather than existing in some objective world.
I'm asking what makes rules POSSIBLE.
I guess I see this as either a philosophic question, or, which may
be much the same thing, as a question about the more abstract
aspects of human nature.
If that were all it is it would just be another philosophical remarks
that goes nowhere. When I ask what makes them possible I am asking what
mechanisms exist in the brain that make us capable of recognizing a
rule, and then recognizing whether we are or are not following it. I
dond't consider this an abstract aspect of human nature; it's just a
higher level of functioning of the brain, higher in the sense of being
located in physically higher layers of brain tissue. To me,
philosophical questions are simply activities in certain layers of the
brain, activities like those I am employing now to communicate. I don't
believe in a nonmaterial "mental" world which exists apart from the rest
of our physical reality. Whatever we do or think, we do or think with a
brain. PCT is about how the brain might be organized to produce and
control the experiences we have, at all levels of abstraction.
While one might see a rule simply as measure against which
perceptions are controlled, the higher level question of why THIS
rule can always be asked, until the sources are identified in the
environmental contingencies and their regularities - including
social relationships, as I see it, anyway.
But the sources are not in environmental contingencies and regularities;
they are in the brain. It is not the world that forces rules on it; it
is our capacity to invent rules that forces regularities,
generalizations, on the world. Our rules are always approximations; the
world does not depend on whether we invent rules to make it
comprehensible.
In all cultures at all times men have first been concerned with the
necessities of physical survival. Their next concern has been with
What does it all Mean and How can I be saved from error and
rejection. These are the invariable universal themes of myth and
literature. The same questions have led many to pursue careers in
science, which they consider somehow more meaningful (as I would
also understand the term) than idleness or crime. These questions
have had many contradictory answers, but the concerns and questions
themselves are, I think, obviously manifestations of human nature.
Exactly: they are manifestations of the organization of and activities
in brains. You are talking about WHAT WE THINK ABOUT OUR PERCEPTIONS. I
am more concerned with THE FACT THAT WE THINK ABOUT OUR PERCEPTIONS, and
I have tried to explain what this thinking process is, in terms of
controlling perceptions of various levels of abstraction.
How this relates to PCT may be important, and this is partly why I
pursue this. As I understand the hierarchy of perceptual control,
criteria at any level can only be set at a higher level. The
question How? is answered by describing operations at that level,
the question Why? goes up one or more levels.
That, in a nutshell, is HPCT.
For humans the higher levels bring the individual into extensive
relationships, shifting and evanescent as these may be, with a
world including other humans (this is also how the brain is
organized), and meanings are sought in this area.
You are still missing the major point of HPCT, which is that
relationship is a perception, the world is a perception, other humans
are perceptions, meanings are perceptions. It's all perception: the map
is not the territory. That there is a territory I do not doubt, but that
our perceptions are simply transparent windows to the territory is very
much doubtable. Whether you realize it or not, you are assuming a simple
1:1 correspondence between your perceptions and the world that gives
rise to them: you are assuming transparency. So you want to get on with
the job of formulating thoughts about that world, not realizing that you
are formulating perceptions that describe more abstract aspects of other
perceptions, not the world itself. And you are missing the point that
HPCT is supposed to be about HOW WE DO THAT, not about what we do while
we're doing it.
In other words, it seems to me, there are also controlled
perceptions at this level which are in fact not difficult to
observe, although this is not commonly considered part of science.
Nor are these matters simply vague abstractions.
But of course. There are controlled perceptions at the system concept
level, at the principle level, at the program level, and all the way to
the bottom. Each level of perception is derived from perceptions of the
level below: system concepts are derived from sets of principles,
principles from sets of programs, and so on. Principle-goals are
specified as the means of maintaining system concepts; programs are
specified as goals as the means of maintaining principles, and so on to
the level of muscle tensions. The brain operates simultaneously at all
these levels of perception and control; that is why we see the world as
containing such things.
What gives me and perhaps others a lot of concern is the type of
thinking involved in the current Scientific American (March/95),
where under the heading 'Can science "cure" crime', presumed
authorities in behavioral science are said to be optimistic that
"science will identify markers of maleficence" that "might
revolutionize our criminal justice system" by applying the "medical
model" based upon prevention, diagnosis and treatment" of the
(presumed) causal factors. This type of thinking just give me the
chills.
I join you in a shared shudder. I have seen a doctor at a funeral
offering a new widow to prescribe tranquilizers, as though feeling
sorrow and grief were not a functional thing to be doing but something
to be avoided. If the medical model of behavior were not so dangerous,
we could laugh at its simple-mindedness.
···
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Bruce Buchanan (950222.15:20 EST)--
1. While control systems can be considered hypothetically in
isolation they cannot be so in fact. At the least there are
agencies which have created and continue to maintain e.g. neural
systems i.e. the metabolism of neurons, etc., and a matrix of body
functions and other information sources.
This is well-recognized in PCT. Only practical considerations restrict
us to investigating one system at a time. Building up to being able to
model hierarchies of parallel control systems will take rather a long
time. Some progress has been made to open discussions of biochemical
control systems, but so far the committment to actually doing the
research, on the part of those capable of doing it, is lacking.
2. In principle it may be indifferent whether the control system is
being observed externally by an experimenter, or from within the
organism itself by a coordinate part of the hierarchical control
systems. (We do not need to imply or consider consciousness for
this.)
There is an enormous difference between the way control looks to the
controlling system and the way it looks to an outside observer. The
outside observe can see only the actions and their environmental
consequences; the perceptions which are actually being controlled are
visible only from inside the controlling system. The major effort in
building models of behavior is learning how to guess what another person
is perceiving and controlling.
4. In addition to observing that the map is not the territory,
Korzybski centered out what he called "time-binding" as a crucial
aspect of human thought and organization. Now, there is an inherent
lag or hyteresis in the basic feedback loop, which provides the
structure and functional relationships, through reiteration in
associated loops, for the possibilities of extensive connections
with other complex loops, short-term memory, and thus the
possibility of sustained patterns of reverberating circuitry which
provide the neural grounds for higher order representations (a la
Warren McCullcoch and Pitts).
I see little usefulness in generalizations like "time-binding." As for
lag or hysteresis in the basic feedback loop, the functions you assign
to it are verbal nonsense. "Sustained patterns of reverberating
circuitry" is an old idea which has long been known to come about a
zillion orders of magnitude short of being able to explain memory of any
kind. McCullouch and Pitts tried to build a neural model in which
individual synapses were logic gates; that model is now completely
rejected. Neurons are analogue devices, not digital computing elements.
The McCullouch-Pitts model requires a central clock for the nervous
system which makes all synaptic events occur in exact synchronism; this
is not how neural nets work, and there is no such clock.
This provides the neural basis also for consistency of behavior via
controlled variables.
Sorry: words like these just set my teeth on edge. What the hell does
providing for consistency of behavior mean? What does it mean to provide
for consistency via controlled variables? This is just gobblygook to my
ears. Behavior is certainly not consistent in a variable environment; it
had better not be, if the organism wants to create consistent outcomes.
5. While the nature of the disturbance cannot be known in an
isolated control loop at the level in question, it is the business
of higher levels to put together perceptual data from whatever
sources are available to identify the causes of disturbances, in
semantic terms, to assist adaptive response.
Advanced knowledge of disturbance is sometimes useful, but in most cases
the best strategy is simply to raise the gain of the control systems you
know are going to be disturbed and wait for the disturbance to occur.
You will never get the timing and quantitative details exact enough to
make your resistance coincide with the onset of the disturbance.
"Adaptive response" is word-magic from S-R theory. We would like, of
course, for responses to disturbances to be adaptive, but merely saying
that doesn't tell us anything about how it's accomplished. And
"adaptive" is a garbage word which just means "good" and covers just
about everything except suicide.
6. An implication of all these interacting hierarchical control
systems is that the behavior of part functions are in this way
integrated to serve the needs of the whole organism. This, to my
mind, is the explanation of how it can be that the whole, in
organized systems (not just collections of items), is greater than
the simple sum of the parts.
"Integration" is another magic word: it means "working together somehow
so as to produce the coordinated results we observe." And to say that
this leads to "serving the needs of the organism" simply begs the basic
questions: what is a need, how does it lead to actions which "serve" it,
and what do you mean by "serving a need?" HPCT gives us a much simpler
way of talking about these things, and moreover offers some hope of
discovering the details of how these processes work.
7. All this has further implication, e.g. in relation to the nature
and role of higher values, and I could go on, but is there anything
basically at fault in the foregoing views? It can hardly be said
that they are vague, for they are perfectly clear and exact at the
level of organization being addressed, as I see it anyway.
Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but these statements seem exactly the
vague kind that I have labored to avoid all my life. They are
generalizations, dead ends that lead nowhere, platitudes, cliches. They
sound like explanations, but in truth they avoid any substantive
explanation of anything.
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Bruce Nevin (Tue 930221 15:57:31 EST)--
Your discussion of the PBS show was fascinating. I think your precis of
the logic of Universal Grammar clarified the problem with this view
enough so even I could understand it (but let's wait for Avery Andrews
to rebut).
It really does my heart good to know that you are working away at
applying PCT in linguistics. Most pleasing is that some of my amateur
views on language, which are strictly derived from the PCT model and
rest on severe ignorance about linguistics, should meet with agreement
from you.
Your observations about why other primates don't have human language is
in line with my general idea that language uses skills that are applied
in all aspects of behavior. While we talk a lot about how skillful
animals can be, in fact their skills are rather limited compared with
human behavior. Animals can do a few things well (some of them can) but
as soon as complications turn up they get pretty helpless. Once you
discount strong muscles and sharp teeth, and rather mindless
persistence, there isn't a lot to admire about the way predators get
along in the world. We tend to scale down our expectations when we watch
animals being smart, so when we say that a tiger is extremely skilled as
a hunter, we tend to forget that we could shoot it at any time we
wanted, and it would then not look so skilled (of course we wouldn't
look too smart, either, but that's only in human terms). Wolves can
leave markings to indicate their territories, but people can write signs
and put up fences, which is more effective and informative ("Closed on
Wednesdays" is pretty hard to communicate by pissing on a rock). Apes
and monkeys can manipulate things with their hands, but face it, they're
pretty clumsy.
Of course some people will say "But you're forgetting about all the
skills that pertain to the animal's own life, which we can scarcely
appreciate; you're being anthropocentric." I think that's a rather
romantic view, considering that by definition we can't know what we
can't know. In the areas where we can make comparisons, we come out the
most skilled animal of all. As to the rest, we can generously assume
that animals must have compensating skills that remain a mystery to us,
but that is simply imagination.
Oddly enough I feel a kinship with all animals because I recognize them
as living systems like me and thus different from all other natural
phenomena. Being realistic about their capacities does not reduce my
love for many of them. I've even become rather fond of E. coli, as I
come to understand more of how skillful even such a small bit of
protoplasm is -- but compared with a rock, not with me.
I guess I am very suspicious about the idea that animals have or can
have language in the same sense that human beings do. They just aren't
good enough at controlling other things that require the same control
capacities that language requires. I loved Dr. Doolittle, but it was
just a story.
----------------------------------------------------
I noted your thanks to Bill Leach. Is something going on that I don't
know about? I mean, more than usual?
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Best to all,
Bill P.