Goal: minimize alienation

Fundamentals Goals for PCT
1

An important goal for PCT is understanding (and fostering) social arrangements in which the people enacting them are better able to identify and control their own CVs. Informally, such arrangements are more ‘fulfilling’ and less alienating. One metric for comparing different social arrangements is how much conflict there is between individual control and collective control. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict made a start at this in 1941 lectures, published by her students in 1965.

It may be that all social roles are necessarily alienating to some extent, because enacting a socially recognized role involves controlling socially recognized variables at socially accepted reference values. Any conflict between an individual’s control and the requirements for a role provides a metric for the degree of alienation in the role for that individual. Marx distinguished four forms: alienation from what I produce, from how I produce it, from other people (most obviously from co-workers and layers of management & subordinates), and from myself, i.e. alienation from control of or even knowledge of my own CVs. His goal for improving social conditions was to afford workers more control over what they produce and how they produce it. (That would include ‘immaterial’ things like service and delivery among products and forms of production.) Marx and Engels were anthropologists and sociologists of the 19th century. Marxists view psychology and psychiatry in terms of social constraints on individuals and on what we may call endogenous collective control, as distinct from the imposition of collective CVs and reference values by individuals who are privileged with authority. PCT can go beyond the limitations of 19th-century sociology to a more profound understanding of individuals in society.

2

I strongly disagree. PCT says that the behavior of living systems is organized around the achievement and maintenance of perceptual goals. But PCT is a theory developed by living systems, it is not a living system itself so it has no goals. However, PCT, once well supported by RESEARCH, can be used to justify the goals of living systems, such as yourself, regarding what they advocate as the best ways for such systems to organize their individual and social lives.

3

There are two parts to your reply. First, you strongly disagree with the category name “Goals of PCT” because it suggests that PCT is a control system. I have changed the name to “Goals for PCT”.

In the other part you do not disagree with the ‘minimize alienation’ goal, but you appear to endorse only a limited aspect of it.

Like any other science, PCT is a systems concept controlled by a number of people. Another important goal for PCT has always been for people to perceive it accurately. Again, this is not unique to PCT. Scientists in every field defend the principles, methodologies, and so forth which characterize their field. Centralizing the specification of CVs has been important for ensuring that people perceive PCT accurately.

PCT is a collectively controlled systems concept. To recognize that PCT, like any science, is collectively controlled doesn’t suggest that PCT or any other science is willy-nilly whatever people collectively think it is. People vary as to how far down the hierarchy their control of a science extends vs. how much they control in imagination. Control of quantum physics ranges from the specialist researcher to the casual reader of magazine articles, and a Nobel prize winner in genetics might well have only magazine-reader control of cosmology. The requirement to identify perceptual variables and test whether they are under control is what requires control of PCT to extend from the systems concept to lower levels of the hierarchy, to extend at least as far as the given variable and its controlled perceptual inputs. No, science is not willy-nilly whatever people collectively think it is. Nature limits collective control; or, better said, the principles and methodologies of the sciences require people to verify their proposals and that obligation to test ideas in comparison with nature limits collective control. In contrast to, say, social media, science seeks and emphasizes those limits.

Yes, as you say, PCT can justify people’s goals for organizing their individual and social lives. As a personal goal, people may seek justification or vindication of concepts, principles, etc. that they already have. A goal that I propose we ought to have for PCT goes beyond post facto justification. We can investigate different ways of organizing our social arrangements and transactions, and we can investigate which arrangements, or which characteristics of them, enable the individuals engaging in them best to control perceptual variables that matter to them. This is the research that, yes, is essential for pursuing this goal.

I am glad you said nothing that disagrees with the observation that PCT can help us understand and foster social arrangements in which the people engaged in them are better able to identify and control their own CVs, and the proposal that this is an important goal for PCT research and application.