Imagining, PCT and the Art

[From Rick Marken (971103.2145)]

Me:

Bruce imagined that his model was controlled by contingencies.

Bruce Abbott (971103.2000) --

Not at all.

Nice to see that you're still out there, imagining;-)

Bill Powers (971103.1524 MST) --

Whatever you observe about your own "I", it is an object of
observation, not the observer. If you think "I'm too fat" what
you mean is that your body is too fat. The point of view from
which you observe your body is not too fat (thin, angry,
fearful, etc.).

Heavy!

There is an Observer which remains the same no matter what is
being observed. When you shift attention from one aspect of
yourself to another, the content of consciousness changes but
the Observer does not.

Very heavy!

This is why all the I's to which you attend are unsatisfactory
as a definition of yourself; they are simply aspects of your
experience.

This post was so great for me (was it good for you too;-)) that
I'm going to do something that I haven't done in some time --
ask you a question.

When people talk in theraputic situations who is talking? Is
it the Observer (talking, via the language control systems of
the hierarchy, from the Observer's current point of view in
the hierarchy) or the Observed (just the hierarchy itself) or
what?

I guess I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about the
relationship between talk and consciousness. This seems like
a worthwhile thing to think about (become conscious of;-))
since talk seems to be the main tool of most approaches to
psychotherapy (and to self-help as well) and being able to
talk about what had not been talked about before (presumably
because it had not previously been accessible to consciousness)
seems to be the main _goal_ of most therapies.

Whaddaya think?

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/

[From Bruce Gregory (971104.1020 EST)]

Bill Powers (971104.0715 MDT)]

The trick as a therapist is to get a sense of the Observer in the other
person, and ally yourself with it. When a person says, "I don't know what
to do -- and that's the problem, isn't it?" you'e hearing from the
Observer. I think.

I Observe; therefore I know I think.

It seems to me that there is an inherent paradox in the
notion that any closed system (such as HPCT) can be "self
aware". Nevertheless, we _are_ self aware. Somehow we manage to
act (HPCT is a model of how we do this) and observe that we are
acting. The power comes when the Observer discovers that _what_
it is observing is HPCT system. This may be what it means to
be "awake".

Do you think I should get one of those sweaters with sleeves that tie
behind the back?

Order one for me. I wear a medium.

Bruce

[From Bill Powers (971104.0715 MDT)]

Rick Marken (971103.2145)--

When people talk in theraputic situations who is talking? Is
it the Observer (talking, via the language control systems of
the hierarchy, from the Observer's current point of view in
the hierarchy) or the Observed (just the hierarchy itself) or
what?

I don't think the Observer can talk. What the Observer does is operate the
machinery, some of the time, for purposes at which "I" can hardly guess.

It seems to me that one of the things I have been doing for some time is to
try to teach my logical level that it's not in charge of the whole system.
There are "I"s at the logic level which are pretty cocksure of themselves,
and pretty reluctant to admit that something is telling them (illogically)
what to think about. This self-teaching is part of building a model of
human organization, isn't it? I (as Observer) am trying to show my own
logic level where it fits into the whole scheme of Me. I (as logical level)
am trying to make sense of this model in terms of my own role in it.

When I speak of this logically, it is, of course, much less fuzzy than the
reality of my understanding. It's a nice story when told in words. But the
only sure thing is that sense of Observing you get at the terminus of the
Method of Levels. The hierarchy has to come to terms with the Observer, but
the Observer just has to Observe. The hierarchy worries; the Observer
doesn't. The hierarchy understands; the Observer doesn't. In fact, the
Observer is a concept in the hierarchy, when I talk about it. When I am
just the Observer, I just Observe.

The trick as a therapist is to get a sense of the Observer in the other
person, and ally yourself with it. When a person says, "I don't know what
to do -- and that's the problem, isn't it?" you'e hearing from the
Observer. I think.

I Observe; therefore I know I think.

Do you think I should get one of those sweaters with sleeves that tie
behind the back?

Best,

Bill P.

···

I guess I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about the
relationship between talk and consciousness. This seems like
a worthwhile thing to think about (become conscious of;-))
since talk seems to be the main tool of most approaches to
psychotherapy (and to self-help as well) and being able to
talk about what had not been talked about before (presumably
because it had not previously been accessible to consciousness)
seems to be the main _goal_ of most therapies.

Whaddaya think?

Best

Rick
--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken/

[From Bruce Gregory (71104.1220 EST)]

Bill Power (971104.1005 MST)

Bruce Gregory (971104.1020 EST)--

>It seems to me that there is an inherent paradox in the
>notion that any closed system (such as HPCT) can be "self
>aware". Nevertheless, we _are_ self aware.

I wonder if we really are. Whenever I'm aware, I'm aware of something
_else_ -- for example, my "self." There's my Self, and here's me looking at
it.

Good point. I should perhaps have said, nevertheless we _are_
aware. And awareness seems to be something other than
exercising control.

Bruce

Bruce

[From Bill Power (971104.1005 MST)]

Bruce Gregory (971104.1020 EST)--

It seems to me that there is an inherent paradox in the
notion that any closed system (such as HPCT) can be "self
aware". Nevertheless, we _are_ self aware.

I wonder if we really are. Whenever I'm aware, I'm aware of something
_else_ -- for example, my "self." There's my Self, and here's me looking at
it.

Best,

Bill P.

i.kurtzer (971104.1800)

guys, sorry to disturb you but there is a Kurtzerian awareness that what was
written by the persons Rick, Bruce, and yes even Bill is terribly disagreable.
  YES, experiences are personal. Yes, persons exist. But how that unity of
experience, the steam, is AFTERWARDS TALKED into two, the me and the other,
the subject and object , or reified into "things" like self or soul is a
mistake. A moment passes and what remains is called the me--that is totally
arbitrary! Come on, at no point in time is there this division--there are
experiences not "that over there and me over here". The division is from
looking back; a division talked into explanation by considering _the
essential_ Platonically: that which is me stands still. But from a hierachy
of experience the identification of kinds with a more essential something else
is absurd. People can talk _as if_ forever. Hell, we know they have done it
with science and so they can do it with the rest of their lives. How else did
so many philosphers disagree? Oh its different world-models!! how silly of
that awareness that is now gone. A hierarchical consideration of experience
does not a subject and object philosophy make.

i.

[From Bill Powers (971105.1030 MST)]

i.kurtzer (971104.1800)

guys, sorry to disturb you but there is a Kurtzerian awareness that what was
written by the persons Rick, Bruce, and yes even Bill is terribly

disagreable.

I don't know if it is disagreeable. It certainly seems that you disagree
with it.

YES, experiences are personal. Yes, persons exist. But how that unity of
experience, the steam, is AFTERWARDS TALKED into two, the me and the > >

other, the subject and object , or reified into "things" like self or soul

is a mistake.

At that level of discourse about all I can say is "No, it's not a mistake,
so there."

A moment passes and what remains is called the me--that is totally
arbitrary! Come on, at no point in time is there this division--there are
experiences not "that over there and me over here". The division is from
looking back; a division talked into explanation by considering _the
essential_ Platonically: that which is me stands still. But from a
hierachy of experience the identification of kinds with a more essential
something else is absurd.

Among the "me's" that are left there is one core that remains the same no
matter what the content of consciousness: the silent Observer; you. The
wather of the screen on which experience appears. The camera that notices.
The point of view. There is always a point of view of which you're not
aware, but from which you are aware.

"Absurd" means "it makes no sense to me in terms of my premises." If a
person is told that something he says is absurd, he is being told he's too
stupid to see the absurdity for himself. The use of this term usually
indicates a strong conviction on the part of its user that the user can't
defend.

People can talk _as if_ forever.

That's because there is no other way to talk. Nobody can say _what is_. All
you can say is _what is experienced_.

Your thoughts say to you, "There is NO awareness, no Observer of the
Observed." I'm sure you are aware of such thoughts. You could also think,
"There IS awareness, an Observer of the Observed." You would be aware of
that thought, too. You could switch back and forth between those thoughts
at will, if you were willing to try the experiment. After a while, you
would see that neither thought is relevant; they are only thoughts. The
thoughts can't influence the fact that you're aware of them while they're
happening: what they say in thought-language is irrelevant to the fact of
observing. The fact of observing comes before all else, including all that
you think about the fact of observing. Your thoughts may reject that fact,
but you don't. You go right on observing. If you stopped observing there
would be nothing observed, even if your brain remained active (as it does
when you're unconscious). Most of what is going on in your brain is not
being observed at a given moment. But some of it is. And the part that is
can be changed by observing elsewhere. Ergo, if you want logic, observing
is not the same as perceiving, because perceiving is happening whenever
there is a signal in an afferent channel. Why are you not aware of the
pressure of the seat you're in until I mention it? Because the sensory
endings were not responding? Not at all. The signals were there all along.
But the Observer was looking elsewhere in the hierarchy.

Our intellectual models of human experience have to include the fact that
there is something that can receive selectively from anywhere in the
hierachy, more or less independently of activities in the hierarchy
(although the degree of independence remains to be tested experimentally).
Maybe it's another kind of higher-level perceptual system. Maybe it's a
soul (i.e., a higher-level perceptual system). Maybe it's something we
don't know how to model in a material system. Who cares? There's a
phenomenon, and it's present all the time. Without it, the activities in
the brain are like a picture on a television screen that nobody is watching.

Best,

Bill P.

Hell, we know they have done it

with science and so they can do it with the rest of their lives. How

else did

···

so many philosphers disagree? Oh its different world-models!! how silly of
that awareness that is now gone. A hierarchical consideration of experience
does not a subject and object philosophy make.

i.

[From Rick Marken (971106.0745)]

i.kurtzer (971104.1800) --

guys, sorry to disturb you but there is a Kurtzerian awareness
that what was written by the persons Rick, Bruce, and yes even
Bill is terribly disagreable.

Don't apologize. I'm not disturbed because I am confident that
you will either hit on a way to bring whatever perception we
disturbed back under control or you will abandon the goal of
controlling that perception.

A hierarchical consideration of experience does not a subject
and object philosophy make.

You seem to have been put off by the notion that an aspect of
ourselves is like an Observer (a "subject") for which another
aspect of ourselves (the hierarchy of control) is an "object"
of awareness. I don't see the problem. The notion of an Observer
separate from the hierarchy seems to capture my sense of the nature
of my own consciousness. Anyway, this notion is currently more
of a heuristic than a model since the mechanism of operation of
this Observer and the observable consequences of its operation
have not, to my knowledge, been clearly (quantitatively) specified
yet.

I also don't understand how a "hierarchical consideration of
experience" accounts for my (as subject) awareness of these
different levels of experience (as objects of this awareness).

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken

i.kurtzer (971108)

You seem to have been put off by the notion that an aspect of
ourselves is like an Observer (a "subject") for which another
aspect of ourselves (the hierarchy of control) is an "object"
of awareness.

rick, if you try to commmit your science (hierarchical control) to philosophy
(Observer talk) then you will not be clarifying either but will bog both. At
the least you are suggesing that you have solved the mind-body problem, which
would then have to be explicated so you might tell me in just what way does
one "psychic shadow of self"- effort--have any connection to the (x*y) of some
quadrilateral being controlled. This is a really screwy area. so
i suggest lets not committ one to other but see how truthful we make our
committments to either separately.
By the way i use the word's "i" and "throughout" this posts so its is difficult
to escape from such yuckiness. The notion that for wherever there is some
identifiable then there must be an identifier is not based on experience but
on our talking of it. We can chop the SAME experience differently and so here
is me and that is other but, hell, why? I think that simply the explication
of a hierarchy of experience is on FAR MORE STRONG grounds. That is, i have
read philosophers talking of selves disagree ad infinitum but i have never
heard of anyone quick loud of a cliff.

I don't see the problem. The notion of an Observer
separate from the hierarchy seems to capture my sense of the nature
of my own consciousness. Anyway, this notion is currently more
of a heuristic than a model since the mechanism of operation of
this Observer and the observable consequences of its operation
have not, to my knowledge, been clearly (quantitatively) specified
yet.

when you do start quantifying the observable consequences of this Observer let
my know, i would like to ask it first why has it been so troublesome;-)

I also don't understand how a "hierarchical consideration of
experience" accounts for my (as subject) awareness of these
different levels of experience (as objects of this awareness).

Suggested above, suggested more below.
Well, awareness seems unexplainable. But i doubt that you are really aware of
this subject/object stuff in the sense i'm taking. That is, you're experiences
are of course self-consistant and you think you're explanations are as well.
But, I believe the former and disavow the latter. The later has been part of
Western philosphy for two millenia and its seems to have done zero to help.
Bruce Nevin could clarify me..but it seems that this subject/objectism is
little part of many other Eastern or Western process philosophies, including
the great W. James.
Instead, i focus to what everyone knows and somehow neglects to mention:that
experiences are NOT all interchangeble. Experience hinges such that we can
concieve some rearrangements whilst not others. And i have some suspicions
that the subject and object division stems from the paricular ways by which
two kinds of experience (demarcated by inconceivable substitution) articulate
to one another. For example, with kind Configuration and kind Sensation the
latter can be without the former and the former can be realized with many of
the later but requires at least some or it can' t be; and at the same time the
fromer is not identical to the latter. We have a very intresting relation
between these kinds., a peculiar necessity that is different from top to
bottom and from bottom to top. This to me contains the kernal of "something
changes" --the so-called object---and something remains--the so-called
subject. Blue cat, red cat, green cat, until cat on tree, tree on dog, and
moose on mouse. The possibilities explode and we identify with the kind that
remained whether cat or on and say "me" at least till that subject mask is
removed with the realization that that particular is again one of many
possibilities of which something selfsame remains. Maybe in a few more years
i can say more. Either way it seems clear that a hierarchical consideration
of experience is as fundamentally different from a subject-object philosophy
as a theory of control is from any I-O explantion.

i.

[From Bill Powes (971109.0639 MST)]

i.kurtzer (971108) (replying to Rick Marken)

You seem to have been put off by the notion that an aspect of
ourselves is like an Observer (a "subject") for which another
aspect of ourselves (the hierarchy of control) is an "object"
of awareness.

rick, if you try to commmit your science (hierarchical control) to

philosophy

(Observer talk) then you will not be clarifying either but will bog both.

At

the least you are suggesing that you have solved the mind-body problem,

which

would then have to be explicated so you might tell me in just what way does
one "psychic shadow of self"- effort--have any connection to the (x*y) of

some

quadrilateral being controlled. This is a really screwy area. so
i suggest lets not committ one to other but see how truthful we make our
committments to either separately.

My problem as an engineer is that I have great difficulty with imagining
receiverless information. Everything we know about the nervous system says
that it contains perceptual systems which receive information, convert it
to new forms, and pass the result on as signals which are received by still
higher systems. Until something has resulted in the reception of a neural
signal by some function, it does not exist for the brain.

The "sum-and-difference" example illustrates what I mean. If there are two
perceptual signals, a and b, it is possible to perceive and control both
their sum and their difference at the same time. To do so for the sum
requires a perceptual function that receives both signals, adds them
together, and emits a signal proportional to their sum. Same for the
difference signal. The sum and the differences can't exist as separate
experiences until they have been perceived in this manner, even though you
could build a control system in which the comparator received both signals
and added them together with appropriate signs while comparing them with
the reference signal. My assumption is that all experiences must correspond
to explicit perceptual signals. If that weren't true, then we would
simultaneously experience ALL POSSIBLE functions of a and b, because all
possible functions are implicit in the two values.

Even given the explicit perceptual signals, we must still account for the
fact that they do not just participate in the creation of error signals and
hence actions, but are "observed" as experiences. The observer can't be a
higher-order perceptual system, because the perceptual signal at the higher
level doesn't represent any one lower-level signal; it's a function of many
of them, and it represents something that no lower-level signal could
represent. There is, in fact, nothing in the neural model that can _note
the presence_ of a neural signal, in the manner of a receiver responding to
an input.

So what IS "conscious experience?" Is it merely the existence of signals in
perceptual pathways? If so, it seems entirely unnecessary. And this
interpretation doesn't explain why experience seems confined, at one
moment, to a small subset of all the neural signals that exist in the brain
at a given time, or why it should be confined to _afferent_ neural signals
(as it is). And most important, it doesn't explain how the field of
experience can change from one time to another, so sometimes we attend to
one part of it, and sometimes to other parts at the expense of what was in
experience before. The variable content of consciousness is a big problem
for any proposal that would leave out Observation as a separate phenomenon.

Of all the aspects of the variable content of consciousness, the most
telling one is the fact that we can attend at different levels of
perception. We can attend selectively to intensity information or to system
concepts or anything between. But if the hierarchical control model is
correct, in order for any higher-level perception to be controlled,
perceptions at all lower levels must also be under control. This means that
when we are attending, say, to the route we will be riding on our bicycle,
we are still controlling perceptions of balance, effort, and so forth.
Those perceptual signals MUST STILL BE PRESENT and they must be under
active control -- yet they are not part of experience at that time. If this
were not so, the higher levels of control could not be working. If the
lower perceptual signals did not go right on existing as usual while we
attend to higher ones, we couldn't be riding the bicycle while we tried to
remember whether to turn right or left at the next corner.

What this demonstrates is that the existence of a perceptual signal is
independent of the experience of the perceptual signal. When I try to think
of a model that would have that characteristic, all I can come up with is
some sort of receiver that can be connected selectively and variably to
various afferent signals in the hierarchy. When this receiver is receiving
information from some set of perceptual signals, those signals are
consciously experienced. When it is receiving from elsewhere, those same
signals, even though they continue to exist, are not experienced.

It is very convenient, therefore, to have some evidence of the existence of
this selective receiver: it's me. _I_ can attend selectively to different
subsets of the perceptual signals that exist in my body. This is not the
"I" that is characterized by my physical or mental attributes, because I
can easily attend to something other than those -- the form of the Orion
Nebula in an eyepiece, for example, while forgetting that my fingers are
freezing. This "I" that is not any of those other "I's" is the receiver,
tuned into this or that aspect of perception, at high or low levels.

I, stripped of all other attributes, am the Observer. I am the one who has
experiences.

How do the arguments of the philosophers stack up against that analysis?

Best,

Bill P.