[Mary Powers 9303.23]
Ken Hacker 9303.22
No, my message to you did not come out of thin air, but what do
you mean by
your response to my message (note how my messages GENERATED your
generation of messages; they did not arise from thin air)...
This implies that you caused me to send the message. I say that
you contributed to my message-sending by providing an input. I
compared that input to my reference signals and the resultant
error is why I produced my message. If I had no reference signals
for PCT your input would not have mattered enough for me to act.
The point is, the PCT model explains the "variability" of the
effect of messages. Saying that a message from you generates a
message from me does not.
There is more semantic tussling going on than real
explanation...
Last message was splitting hairs. Now semantic tussling. I think
you are resisting a disturbance to some precious ideas by
dismissing a different viewpoint as trivial.
I am not interested in defending traditional psychology and any
suggestion that I am is patently false.
Let's clarify our definitions of traditional psychology. I
include as traditional: trendy half-assed self-regulatory
versions of control theory that talk about feedforward, about
people giving (or withholding) feedback from other people, about
loops of messages sent and messages sent back, about people
generating messages in other people, about ideas like stimulating
feedback, and sign-offs like "thanks for the feedback, Bill".
I was taken back by your comments, because they constituted a
disturbance, both intellectually (this guy doesn't understand PCT
at all) and at a gut level (ohmygod, he's mad at me). It IS all
inside of me, Ken. Having reference signals, comparators, etc. is
not some cool, dispassionate arrangement; it's where we live.
Emotions are how we know what's going on. Better to locate their
origins inside than impute them elsewhere - by saying I am
arrogant you can blame me for saying you don't know as much as
you think you do, instead of entertaining that disturbing, error-
producing possibility and maybe having to change some cherished
concepts you don't even realize you are defending.
I am as prone to blame and name-calling as anyone else in order
to protect really important reference perceptions like my good
opinion of myself. PCT is trying to explain not just some
idealized system but the way people actually work, warts and all,
including externalizing by blaming and other defenses. I've had a
very interesting number of hours locating my disturbance at being
called arrogant in me rather than as being caused by you being
nasty. I'd much rather attribute my discomfort to you - it's how
we are trained in this culture to handle attacks and it protects
against uncomfortable self-examination. However, without getting
into it too far, I seem to find the idea that I am arrogant
absolutely terrifying, judging from the jolt of adrenaline I got
when I read your message. I don't think the intent of your
message was to scare me to death - that was the spin I put on it.
In an alternate universe, equipped with different reference
levels, I would shrug it off as irrelevant, or be mildly ticked
off, or whatever was appropriate. The point is, your message was
indeed, simply input, and how I interpreted it was ENTIRELY up to
me, as a result of a lifetime of social interactions, including,
apparently, times when being thought arrogant was pretty
dangerous.
The point of this self-analysis is a) to show that what I made of
your message is probably not what you expected and intended by
your "tone", and b) to suggest that you examine all those things
you call split hairs and semantics and arrogant statements to see
why you don't want them to interfere with your perfectly
satisfactory and correct understanding of control theory.
Mary Powers