[From Rick Marken (941223.0930)]
Lars Christian Smith (941223 12:45 CET) --
Bill Powers has proposed a structure of 11 levels in humans. What are the
levels, and how many are there in non-mammalian animals? In plants? In E.
coli?
Since very few people are actually doing PCT research, proposals about the
levels (as Bill has noted) currently serve mainly to provide a structure for
thinking about hierarchical control and a source of hypotheses for future
research (if anybody will do it). Bill's proposals about the levels in humans
are based on an analysis of his own experience; what kinds of perceptions
he noticed himself controlling and what kinds of perceptions were needed to
have those kinds of perceptions. So, for example, he noticed that he could
control a relationship like "on" or "beside". In order to perceive a
relationship you have to perceive it's components -- the "cup" and "saucer",
for example, which are controllable "configurations". You can't perceive and
control a relationship like "on" in and of itself; you also have to be
able to perceive and, possibly control, the components of the relationship.
By this process, Bill came up with seven, then nine (in B:CP) and, currently
11 TYPES of hierarchically related, controllable perceptual variables.
These are called 1) intensities (like "how hot it is"), 2) sensations
(dimension of intensity such as temperature vs brightness), 3) configurations
(collections of sensations, like a hot water bottle), 4) transitions (changes
in lower order perceptions, like a movement of the hot water bottle),
5) events (an identifiable collection of transitions, like _dropping_ the hot
water bottle), 6) relationships (functional, statistical, or other types of
relationships between lower level perceptions, such as one car moving
"faster" than another), 7) sequences (ordering of events, like "going faster"
then "going slower" rather than vice versa), 8) programs (perception that a
particular set of contingencies is in effect,ie. noticing the degree to
which the network of contingencies in a game like baseball is correctly
occurring 9) categories (perceiving any group of lower level perceptions as
"the same") 10) principles (perceiving the degree to which some "rule of
thumb", such as "honesty is the best policy" or "get control of the center"
is present in some lower level set of perceptions and 5) system concepts
(perception of a set of lower level perceptions, particularly principles, as
an interrelated group -- system).
This is not a hard and fast list or ordering of types. For me, one of the
most interesting things about the hierarchical anaysis has been the
realization that things like relationships, principles and system concepts
are PERCEPTIONS and they are VARIABLES. I can perceive relationships between
the objects around me, for example, and I can see that these relationships
are not "all or none"; some perceptions are better examples of "next to",
for example, than others. Similarly, I can perceive different degrees of a
principle like "honesty" in my own and others relationships with people.
Bill's hierarchical analysis of perception helps you pay attention to various
ASPECTS of the world of your own experience; what we typically refer to as
the "real world". The hierarchical analysis helps you notice that this "real
world" is a world of different TYPES of perceptual VARIABLES, many of
which we can easily control.
As to levels of perception in other species, there is actually some
research on this topic. The Plooij's (in the Netherlands) have provided some
evidence that chimps control in terms of the same perceptual categories as
humans -- they just don't have as many levels (I forget where chimps "stop";
maybe at programs). I suspect that perceptual control levels, if they are
real, are similar in evolutionarily related species' just as our overall
structure is an "embellishment" of what went before, so with brain structure.
There are unquestionably control systems in plants ("tropisms" are _slow_
control processes, for example) though, of course, they are not implemented
with neurons. Plant behavior (the controlling done by plants) has always
struck me as an unfortunate (and arbitrary) omission from the behavioral
sciences. I would not be surprised if plants have a hierarchy of control
systems and that the lowest levels of those systems control the same type of
variables as oppur lower level control systems (intensities -- surely true in
tropisms, sensations, and even configurations and transitions).
So be careful when you deck those halls; holly has feelings too;-)
Best
Rick