[From Mike Acree (2004.01.05.1135 PST)]
Rick Marken (2003.12.30.1020)--
To the Rand types, autonomous control
is an _ideal_. To the PCT types, autonomous control is a _fact_.
I think there may be an interesting and worthwhile point here, but, as is often the case, the whole discussion badly needs some finer distinctions. _Autonomy_, in particular, is being used in multiple senses which are not so marked. In one sense (which we might call the PCT, or biological, or metaphysical, sense), autonomy, as Rick says, "is not optional." Being a slave or a child, for example, reduces our ability to control, but not our autonomy. But in this sense it is meaningless to speak, as Rick does elsewhere in this post, of protecting or encouraging anyone's autonomy. In understanding his point, we are implicitly appealing to a different sense. In this latter (social, or political) sense, we want to draw an important distinction between the autonomy of free adults, on the one hand, and that of children or slaves, on the other. Given this equivocation in the term, I'm afraid Rick's contrast between Rand and PCT doesn't hold up. Calling for protecting the auton!
omy of "less capable" control systems seems to me to be holding autonomy as an ideal as much as the Randians do, and not just as a fact.
Our status as autonomous control systems does not preclude our subordinating ourselves to others or to ideology, so that we don't _experience_ ourselves as autonomous, and that is in fact just what most people want. Some delicate equivocation is involved, since it is still we who are subordinating ourselves to directives we perceive (or imagine) as external; we don't always take people at their word when they say, "The Devil made me do it," or "It was God's command," or "Circumstances forced me," or "I was just following the rules." In this (psychological) sense, of accepting responsibility for one's choices rather than externalizing it, autonomy is a rather rare achievement.
While the experience of autonomy is aversive to some people, others can't seem to get enough of it, and find it constantly threatened by arrangements that observers might label cooperative. Among those attracted to libertarianism, I have observed a few who resisted schedules, deadlines, dress codes, and every other social norm, as though compliance infringed their autonomy. Setting an approriate reference level for the domain under our control seems itself a remarkably difficult task.
Bill Powers (2003.12.30.1226 MST)--
I've worried about that -- could followers of Rand latch onto PCT and claim that it proves >them right? There are long stretches in Rand's books that make complete sense in terms of >PCT, all the parts about being responsible for your own life and learning to control your >own destiny.
For better or worse, I don't see much risk that doctrinaire Randians will be drawn to PCT. Exhibit A is Ed Locke. I've unfortunately not seen his criticisms of PCT, but I would expect at least the subjectivism and value-neutrality of PCT to be an obstacle (to say nothing of the intellectual rigidity that would make a radically different theory difficult to grasp).
For anarchists, who see a homogeneous distribution of political power as maximizing autonomy (in the maximizable sense), PCT offers an attractive new rationale. But the anarchist friends in whom I've been able to arouse an interest in PCT I could count on the fingers of one ear. So I think PCT is safe from such subversive elements for some time.
Mike
But PCT is not about predicting actions or the results of