Guilt and PCT

[from Gary Cziko 930420.2008 GMT]

Rick Marken (930419.0800) said:

There were no "mistakes" made in Wako [sic]-- everybody was trying to
control for perceptions that were important to them (for higher
order reasons) and doing the best they could. Saying that one group
or the other had the "wrong" goals (I've heard people say that the
FBI shouldn't have wanted to flush out the Davidians with gas) seems
pretty non-PCT to me; people set their goals to satisfy higher order
references and the particular setting of these lower order goals
depends on disturbances and other higher level goals as much as on
the higher order goal itself.

Dan Miller (930420.1200) said:

...it [the Waco affair] fits Isaac
Bashevis Singer's definition of tragedy in that innocent children died.

These constrasting posts have made me wonder about how and in what way any
of the adults were any more or less innocent than the children (I mean
"innocent" in the legal sense of "not guilty").

Rick says reference levels cannot be "wrong" which might suggest that one
cannot be really guilty of anything. And yet PCT appears from some angles
appears to provide the autonomy and capacity for responsibility that would
appear to be necessary for someone to be really guilty.

When I was sympathetic to behaviorism, the notion that one could be guilty
of anything made no sense to me (we were "beyond freedom"). When I first
understood PCT, I understood that were not beyond freedom and so we could
be guilty. But now I'm confused again. What could it mean in PCT to be
guilty?--Gary

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[From Rick Marken (930420.1900)]

Gary Cziko (930420.2008 GMT)--

These constrasting posts have made me wonder about how and in what way any
of the adults were any more or less innocent than the children (I mean
"innocent" in the legal sense of "not guilty").

It seems to me that legal guilt requires that two things be demonstrated
about the "offending" result (such as burning up 100 people in a house):
it must be shown that the result was intended and 2) that the person
who produced the result knew that it was "wrong". PCT shows that some
results are intended (controlled results) and some are not (uncontrolled
side effects of the outputs that produce control). Both adults and children
can produce results intentionally so there is no "guilty" distinction here.
HPCT suggests that the "wrongness" of a result is probably not perceived
until you get to the category level -- where you can percieve many
different lower order perceptual results as "wrong" and other lower order
perceptual results as "right". I think that it's possible that people don't
completely flesh out the categorical distinctions between right and
wrong (as defined in the context of interactions with other people, of
course) until they are well into their teens. I think society recognizes
this fact and, because of it, treats juveniles (who have intentionally
produced "wrong" results) differently that adults who have intentionally
produced the same results. Since the development of the hierarchy of
perception is likely to occur at quite different rates in different
people, the line between innocent children (who intentionally do
"wrong") and guilty adults will always be fuzzy, legally.

Rick says reference levels cannot be "wrong" which might suggest that one
cannot be really guilty of anything.

I never meant to say that reference levels cannot be wrong. What I
meant to say is that the "wrongness" of references (in a PCT sense) can
only be defined in terms of the higher order goals that they are
set to satisfy. In this sense, setting wrong reference levels just
means that you have not yet learned to control the higher level variable
whose value is influenced by the setting of the lower level reference.
When you are in control, then, by definition, your settings of the
lower level references that influence the controlled variable are, indeed,
always right -- because they result in control. Whether or not you, as
an observer, think that these reference settings are right or wrong is
quite another story. But, again, the wrongness of the other person's
reference settings FOR YOU depend on your own reference settings for
the same perceptual variables. Wrongness is always defined with respect
to the references of the observer.

And yet PCT appears from some angles
appears to provide the autonomy and capacity for responsibility that would
appear to be necessary for someone to be really guilty.

In terms of the two conditions required for guilt that I gave above, it
sure does. What it doesn't tell you is which results are REALLY wrong
(in the objectivist sense hoped for by many people and provided by
the right/wrong categorization of western religious beliefs).

But now I'm confused again. What could it mean in PCT to be
guilty?

Did what I said above help? I think that PCT shows that the
legal conditions for guilt (I think they are called mens rea?) --
intention and recognition of "wrongness" -- are real aspects of
human nature (in contrast to the behaviorist position which
attributes all behavior to the environment). What PCT doesn't
tell you is whether the results that are produced intentionally
are REALLY wrong. I think PCT can help us get away from the hopeless
quagmire of arguing about which results are REALLY right and which are
REALLY wrong and reframe ethics in terms of control. If it helps people
control, it's right; if it prevents them from controlling, it's wrong.
So control is right; conflict is wrong.

Best

Rick