Leading Questions - Chapter 6

Key Points

        Behavior as a whole results from the operation
        of many such [control] units at once. (p.70)

        The entire hierarchy is organized around a single
        concept: control by means of adjusting reference-
        signals for lower-order systems. (p.78)

        The simple structure I offer here appears to have
        considerable explanatory power, but it should be
        thought of as a preliminary sketch made for the
        purpose of suggesting research that will lead to
        further development of the model. (p.78)

        The conjectures in the rest of this book will go
        beyond what can be defended by experimental proof.
        (p.78)

        The hierarchy described here through chapter 13
        is meant to cover only performance. (p.79)

        None of what follows is intended to be a
        representation of situations, influences,
        relationships or interactions taking place in
        a social milieu or any such externalized
        imaginary locale. It is intended to describe
        the organization that is responsible for such
        representations. This is a model of a human
        being, be he subject, experimenter, or theorist.

Leading Questions

1. Can you find a way to create a tactile sensation
of pressure on the palm of your hand?

I can create a tactile sense of pressure on the palm
of my hand in several ways but most involve placing
the palm of my hand on something (e.g., my knee or
the arm of my chair) and then pressing my hand against
it.

    Can you create it without also creating sensations
of effort?

Just resting my hand on something will create a feeling
of pressure, with no effort beyond placing my hand there.
(I also asked my wife to put her hand on top of my mine
and press down, which transferred the effort to her.)

    Can you create sensations of effort without producing
the sensation of pressure on the palm of the hand?

I can create all kinds of sensations of effort without
creating a sense of pressure on the palm of my hand (e.g.,
simply by tensing muscles or by pressing the ball of my
foot against the floor by shifting my weight and using
my leg to press down) but I don't know if that's what
you're after with this question.

    Which perception is lower in the hierarchy?

I obviously don't understand because it seems to me
that they're at the same level, even after studying
the diagram on page 71. Effort and pressure are
both sensory inputs. Does the question pertain to
the reference perception for effort and for pressure
or to the perceived sensations of effort and pressure?
Again, based on page 71, it looks like pressure is
only an input at the lowest level. Effort has a
comparator that produces an error signal so I'll say
that pressure is lower than effort.

    Does the relative ranking ever reverse?

I'm not sure I answered the one above so I'll no doubt
botch this one. Common sense tells me that pressure
is sometimes the factor of interest and that other times
effort is the factor of interest. In my own experience,
one can take precedence over the other. But, frankly,
I have no idea how that plays out in terms of the diagram
on page 71.

2. You have been captured by an alien monster, a
psychologist from Jupiter. In order to obtain oxygen
to go on breathing, you are required by him to solve
a certain number of algebraic equations every day.
Does this necessarily place breathing higher in your
own hierarchy than solving algebraic equations?

At the top of my hierarchy is killing this jerk from
Jupiter. Frankly, I don't see that anything in my
hierarchy has changed. An unwanted contingency
relationship has been introduced by the jerk from
Jupiter, so I have to do the damn algrebra equations
to get oxygen but, assuming it's available, I don't
know that my biological systems have been altered as
a result. I assume I still inhale and exhale and
that oxygen gets into the blood and so on, so the
lower order systems function as usual--assuming
there is oxygen to breathe. I guess this is a
long way of saying No.

3. You are driving a car. Can you name a disturbance
which in no way affects the car of its relationship to
the road, but still requires you to use the steering
wheel to correct it?

Sure, the jerk from Jupiter pulls in front of me
and I honk my horn to express my annoyance. However,
assuming I've escaped and am safely back home after
driving for hours and hours, my arms are probably
tired or tense and so I use the steering wheel to
place my arms in different positions so as to give
them a break. The "disturbance" in this case is
a sense of tiredness or soreness or somesuch. I'll
bet you had something else in mind...

4. Starting with the goal of buying a quart of ice
cream, can you construct a descending series of goals
ending with the goal of tensing a specific muscle to
a specific degree? For example: in order to buy ice
cream, I must go to a place that sells ice cream. In
order to go to a place that sells ice cream, I must...

Cutting to the chase as they say, I have to get up
off my duff and go out to the car. I think there are
some muscles involved in that...

5. A fever results from a rise in the brain's reference
level for sensed body temperature. How does this explain
the chill that goes with a fever?

Presumably, with an increased reference level for sensed
body temperature (and assuming a constant temperature for
the outside air) the outside air would feel cooler. (As
you can tell, I failed biology.)

    One may feel either hot or cold. Which feeling would
go with a rising reference level, and which with a falling
reference level?

Okay, I'll bite. Assuming we're still talking about the
reference level for sensed body temperature, feeling cold
would go with a rising reference level and feeling hot
would go with a falling one.

    What could be altering that reference level?

How about the flu, a viral infection, some other system
resetting 98.6 to a higher number, or possibly that jerk
from Jupiter is performing biological experiments, too.

6. How is wanting something related to reference levels
for perceptions? How can a person stop wanting something
he wants?

I think wanting something relates to reference levels that
aren't being met, to being in what some call a "deprived"
state. One way to stop wanting something is to reset the
reference perception to a level that matches what exists,
as Aesop's fox did with the grapes and as human beings
have done for thousands of years when they discover that
their reach exceeds their grasp. Another way to stop
"wanting" something is to get it, to be in another state
that some call "satiated." Of course, this requires a
maintenance mode, unless what you want is to be dead.
You only have to achieve that state once. Everything
else tends to come around again.

I have this terrible sense that I'm going to get an "F"
on this chapter.

Regards,

Fred Nickols
Distance Consulting
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
nickols@worldnet.att.net
(609) 490-0095

[From Bill Powers (990114.0529 MST)]

Fred Nickols (990114)--

Leading Questions [6]

1. Can you find a way to create a tactile sensation
of pressure on the palm of your hand?

I can create a tactile sense of pressure on the palm
of my hand in several ways but most involve placing
the palm of my hand on something (e.g., my knee or
the arm of my chair) and then pressing my hand against
it.

Check.

   Can you create it without also creating sensations
of effort?

Just resting my hand on something will create a feeling
of pressure, with no effort beyond placing my hand there.

(I also asked my wife to put her hand on top of my mine
and press down, which transferred the effort to her.)

Hmm. I was counting on the reader going on from the previous situation to
the next -- i.e., "it" refers to the sensation of pressure being produced
by the sensation of effort in the previous question. So the answer was
supposed to be "no." But your answer is correct when you're allowed to
start over -- find a different situation in which pressure is felt. I won't
quibble about the effort needed to move the hand or to vocally ask someone
to press on it, etc.. The question was not asked precisely enough.

   Can you create sensations of effort without producing
the sensation of pressure on the palm of the hand?

I can create all kinds of sensations of effort without
creating a sense of pressure on the palm of my hand (e.g.,
simply by tensing muscles or by pressing the ball of my
foot against the floor by shifting my weight and using
my leg to press down) but I don't know if that's what
you're after with this question.

That was it. But I was trying to establish a hierarchical relationship
between two perceptions (effort and pressure) happening during _the same_
behavior. That's how I should have asked the questions.

Which perception is lower in the hierarchy?

I obviously don't understand because it seems to me
that they're at the same level, even after studying
the diagram on page 71. Effort and pressure are
both sensory inputs. Does the question pertain to
the reference perception for effort and for pressure
or to the perceived sensations of effort and pressure?

The poor framing of the previous questions left me open to this
misinterpretation.

The question is supposed to refer to which perception _must_ be altered in
order to affect the other perception, in the same example of behavior. In a
given situation, you can alter a sense of pressure by means of altering an
effort, but you can't alter the effort by means of altering the sense of
pressure. At least I can't. I wouldn't know how to make the sense of
pressure vary except by varying some effort.

Again, based on page 71, it looks like pressure is
only an input at the lowest level. Effort has a
comparator that produces an error signal so I'll say
that pressure is lower than effort.

   Does the relative ranking ever reverse?

By the time this question is asked, the poor framing of the previous
questions has left the result ambiguous. Sorry.

I'm not sure I answered the one above so I'll no doubt
botch this one. Common sense tells me that pressure
is sometimes the factor of interest and that other times
effort is the factor of interest. In my own experience,
one can take precedence over the other. But, frankly,
I have no idea how that plays out in terms of the diagram
on page 71.

Here's what I was trying to bring out:

When you're pressing down on a table, the amount of pressure you feel is
controlled by varying the amount of effort you feel. This makes the
effort-perception part of the means of controlling the pressure-perception.
The lower system is used as the means of controlling the higher perception,
so effort is at the lower level. We don't control effort by varying
pressure -- how would we vary the pressure, except by varying another effort?

What's confusing about this question is that all perceptions are basically
alike when you look closely at them. You have to look at how they relate to
each other to see which is higher or lower in the hierarchy -- and even
then, it's not always obvious, as the next question is supposed to show.

2. You have been captured by an alien monster, a
psychologist from Jupiter. In order to obtain oxygen
to go on breathing, you are required by him to solve
a certain number of algebraic equations every day.
Does this necessarily place breathing higher in your
own hierarchy than solving algebraic equations?

At the top of my hierarchy is killing this jerk from
Jupiter. Frankly, I don't see that anything in my
hierarchy has changed. An unwanted contingency
relationship has been introduced by the jerk from
Jupiter, so I have to do the damn algrebra equations
to get oxygen but, assuming it's available, I don't
know that my biological systems have been altered as
a result. I assume I still inhale and exhale and
that oxygen gets into the blood and so on, so the
lower order systems function as usual--assuming
there is oxygen to breathe. I guess this is a
long way of saying No.

The cause-effect relation between solving the problems and breathing exists
_outside of you, in your environment_. It's imposed by the psychologist.
Inside of you, you must control for solving a problem; when you don't solve
the problem, you are deprived of oxygen, so you must either reorganize to
solve problems, or die. The fact that you're still solving the problems
shows that you didn't die.

My real reason for asking this question was to show the reader that
questions of hierarchical relationship are not always easy to solve.

3. You are driving a car. Can you name a disturbance
which in no way affects the car or its relationship to
the road, but still requires you to use the steering
wheel to correct it?

Sure, the jerk from Jupiter pulls in front of me
and I honk my horn to express my annoyance.

Damn, I didn't foresee that use of the steering wheel. I forgot that the
horn button is on it. I was thinking of a disturbance of a higher-level
perception -- like a sign saying "Lane ends, 500 feet." Saying "use the
steering wheel" is too ambiguous -- I should have said "turn the steering
wheel."

4. Starting with the goal of buying a quart of ice
cream, can you construct a descending series of goals
ending with the goal of tensing a specific muscle to
a specific degree? For example: in order to buy ice
cream, I must go to a place that sells ice cream. In
order to go to a place that sells ice cream, I must...

Cutting to the chase as they say, I have to get up
off my duff and go out to the car. I think there are
some muscles involved in that...

A better question would have asked,"How many subordinate goals can you
name, in order from highest to lowest, before you have to mention an actual
muscle effort?"

So the sequence might go,

1. Get ice cream
2. Go to ice cream store
3. Drive downtown
4. Get in car
5. Go to garage
6. Get out of chair
7. Push up with arms

Note that each goal requires setting the goal beneath it. Also note that
this list works _backward_ through the causal chains. The highest goal
drives the setting of the next highest, and so on, going _against_ the
direction of cause and effect. Number 1 on the list is actually the last
thing to occur.

5. A fever results from a rise in the brain's reference
level for sensed body temperature. How does this explain
the chill that goes with a fever?

Presumably, with an increased reference level for sensed
body temperature (and assuming a constant temperature for
the outside air) the outside air would feel cooler. (As
you can tell, I failed biology.)

Your deduction is correct. The first thing that happens is that the
reference temperature rises, and you start doing the things that you do
when you feel cold. You shiver, turn up the heat, put on more clothes or
get under the bed covers, etc. I'm not sure whether I really feel coldness
under those circumstances, but I sure intepret what's going on as feeling
cold.

Note that this example implies that the feeling of body temperature
corresponds to the error signal, not the perceptual signal. This seems to
be true of many signals we identify as intrinsic signals.

   One may feel either hot or cold. Which feeling would
go with a rising reference level, and which with a falling
reference level?

Okay, I'll bite. Assuming we're still talking about the
reference level for sensed body temperature, feeling cold
would go with a rising reference level and feeling hot
would go with a falling one.

Don't give up before you start. After you said "I'll bite", you worked it
out quite correctly. While your reference level is rising or falling, the
actual perception lags behing it, exactly as you deduce.

   What could be altering that reference level?

How about the flu, a viral infection, some other system
resetting 98.6 to a higher number, or possibly that jerk
from Jupiter is performing biological experiments, too.

The only _direct_ answer you gave, the third one, is correct. All the other
answers merely describe circumstances that could, indirectly, lead to some
other system resetting 98.6 to a higher number. For example, the symptoms
of coming down with the flu might be sensed and controlled by a system
which acts by raising the temperature reference level (among other things
it does).

6. How is wanting something related to reference levels
for perceptions? How can a person stop wanting something
he wants?

I think wanting something relates to reference levels that
aren't being met, to being in what some call a "deprived"
state. One way to stop wanting something is to reset the
reference perception to a level that matches what exists,
as Aesop's fox did with the grapes and as human beings
have done for thousands of years when they discover that
their reach exceeds their grasp. Another way to stop
"wanting" something is to get it, to be in another state
that some call "satiated." Of course, this requires a
maintenance mode, unless what you want is to be dead.
You only have to achieve that state once. Everything
else tends to come around again.

Great answers, all of which I agree with. The only thing you didn't pick up
was the ambiguity in the term "want". It can mean either the lack (the
error signal) or the reference signal (the state of a perception that would
satisfy you). When you say "I want X" you may be emphasizing the fact that
you lack X, or the fact that being in a state of having X is the goal. "I
shall not want" always confused me, because I wondered how having the Lord
as my shepherd would stop me from wanting all the things I didn't have,
like a telescope. It never occurred to me that the Lord might give me one.

I have this terrible sense that I'm going to get an "F"
on this chapter.

Who's grading?

Best,

Bill P.