[From Bill Powers (920922.0900)]
Cliff Joslyn (920921) --
So, a request: as a thread is coming to a close, SUMMARIZE! Just
something simple: Cziko said X, Bill said no, X', Marken retorted
Y, and they all came around to see that Bill was right (or
whatever).
A fine idea, provided we can figure out what we said. A lot of the
interchanges represent a process, not a conclusion. Sometimes most of
what's passed back and forth is junked because only the final form is
even coherent. If this were a journal, all the backtracking and false
starts would be hidden. I'm glad it isn't, because with this looser
format it's OK to change your mind any number of times before settling
down to a point of view. We don't have to give the impression that we
speak nothing but Truth.
But your point is a good one and I will occasionally see what I can
sum up.
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Greg Williams (920922) --
The changes in the kids' physical environment which are ... due to
Pat then influence (or "disturb," the technical term in PCT, which
has the unfortunate lay connotation of "harm," whereas "influence"
is more neutral) the operation of the kids' control systems such
that, given their unchanging reference signals at high levels
(here, perceiving their eating "tasty" food), some of their lower-
level reference signals will be altered so as to enable actions
which satisfy the high-level reference signals.
But the instance we're talking about -- controlling the nutritional
value of the food -- doesn't involve any disturbances technically or
otherwise; just the opposite. Pat is taking care NOT to disturb what
the kids are controlling for: eating, and taste. What she is
influencing (without evoking resistance) is a variable of no
perceptual significance to the kids: what is in the food she is giving
them. She hopes that this variable, the way she controls it, will have
some beneficial effect on their innards. Not being able to monitor
that effect, she can't have any systematic influence on it, or control
it. "It", to be perfectly clear, refers to the effect inside the kids
of ingesting one kind of food rather than another. All she can do is
manipulate the external variables that ought, theoretically, to have
an internal effect.
One reason we're having so much trouble on this simple point is that
you keep wanting to get "influence" into it when this is a very poor
example of influencing anything but Pat's own perceptions. When I try
to bear down on you to be explicit about the exact relationships
involved, you shoot out sideways like a watermelon seed and land
somewhere else.
The case you've actually landed on in the above paragraph is one of
directly applying a disturbance or an influence to a controlled
variable, thus eliciting a change of actions aimed at opposing the
effect of the disturbance and keeping the controlled variable
undisturbed. Rather than avoiding any effect that would be resisted,
you deliberately invite resistance by affecting something that's under
control.
To do this, Pat would have to, for example, present the kids with less
food than she knows they want, leaving their desire to eat less than
satisfied. Or she would have to present them with food with a taste
she knows they dislike. They would then probably take some kind of
action to get some more to eat or something better-tasting. If that
was what she intended, then she could be said to be influencing, on
purpose, their attempts to get more or better-tasting food, doing so
by creating a disturbance that could only be corrected by such
attempts. I don't know why she'd do that, but if she had that goal she
could control for it.
It's just too general to say that "changes in the environment"
influence actions. They may or they may not, depending on whether
those changes are sensed by the other, and whether the sensed changes
disturb some perception that's under control. If the changes are
designed deliberately to avoid disturbing any controlled variable,
then they will not affect any actions.
And it's too general to say that such changes, even if they do amount
to disturbances, "influence the operation of the .. control systems."
Influence WHAT about the operation of the control systems? All that
can be influenced is the action used to correct any induced error, and
that can be influenced only in the sense of making more or less of it
necessary. The nature of the action is already determined by the
organization of the control system, which takes into account the
environmental link through which action affects perception. This mode
of influence can have no effect unless there is a variable already
under active control by the system. That means that the organism is
already using a particular action or set of actions to maintain a
specific controlled variable at a reference level. By applying your
influence to the state of the controlled variable, you simply call on
the control system to increase or decrease the actions it is already
using for control. You can claim credit for those increases and
decreases, but not for the nature of the action. That was established
before you arrived on the scene.
From the standpoint of the control system whose actions are being
influenced by disturbances in this way, it doesn't matter whether
those influences are being used for a purpose or simply occur
accidentally. Similar influences probably occur all the time,
naturally. There's no difference in the action used to counteract an
accidental influence or an intentional influence. In either case, the
organism prevents any changes that matter to it, by varying that which
does not matter to it: its actions. It is of no concern to the control
system that another person wanted to see those actions, for private
reasons, either to provide some imagined help or some imagined harm.
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As I understand your goal in this argument, it is to prove that the
environment has influences on the organization of the organism's
control systems, shaping the organism in some causal way. This goal
includes proving an effect of both non-living and living influences on
the organism, independent of its heridity.
I have no objection to reaching such a conclusion. I don't think,
however, that it can be reached by the route you've taken so far. All
the specific examples of the shaping of behavior that have come up
turn out to be examples in which an already-existing control system
prevents environmental effects from influencing what matters to it,
its structure of goals. Even when a disturbance results in a shift of
lower-level reference signals, when the disturbance is removed those
reference signals go right back to where they were before.
Disturbances that are successfully resisted have no effects that
outlast the disturbances. At best, they illustrate how a control
system operates. They don't illustrate how its organization can be
changed so it will control something else or control by a different
means after the disturbance disappears.
If you want to find ways in which the environment can actually alter
the organization of a control system, rather than just inducing
transient changes in its actions, you will have to turn elsewhere. One
place you can look, and have already mentioned, is in areas where
reorganization becomes involved. Nothing important about a control
hierarchy is going to change unless there is reorganization. We've
been going around and around talking about changes in what the
organization is DOING. That's only changing the content of behavior,
not the form.
Mary brought this up the other day, and I'm just getting around to
seeing the significance in what she said. All that stuff about con-men
and advertisers and feeding kids healthful food is beside the point.
None of that stuff changes how people are organized. It just says that
they will do one thing instead of another, maybe. Whatever the people
do, they will do it with a particular organization of control systems,
and exercising those control systems or bumping them up against each
other is not going to change anything.
Over to you.
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Best,
Bill P.