[From Bill Powers (950312.0700 MST)]
Bruce Buchanan 950311.20:30 (EST)--
So the question stands as to where the boundaries of one's
conceptual systems might most usefully be drawn. My own answer is
that there should be no arbitrary or preassigned limit, that the
boundaries of human experience are not limited to conceptual
categories, and therefore cannot be predefined or predicted.
I presume you're alluding to the question of individual versus social
systems. The properties of the system you study depend on where the
boundaries are drawn. When you study individual behavior, the most
useful place to draw the boundaries is at the input and output surfaces
of the individual. The system so defined has specific properties, which
I propose to be those of a hierarchy of negative feedback control
systems.
If you include more than one person within the system boundary, the
system properties change accordingly. Now you no longer have a hierarchy
of negative feedback control systems, but a network of elements which
can interact with each other in any imagineable way. The elements of
this system, instead of being organized into levels of exclusive
specialization (a relationship-controlling system is inherently
incapable of controlling intensities, and vice versa), are now all
equipped with the same internal levels of organization, and interact
only as wholes. The units of a social system are whole persons; the
social system does not have the same properties as the individual.
When you say "... the boundaries of human experience are not limited to
conceptual categories, and therefore cannot be predefined or predicted,"
this is something of a non-sequitur. It sounds suspiciously like saying
that human experience is too vast and complicated to be explained, so we
shouldn't try at all. While I could agree that our theories have a long
way to go toward explaining it, I wouldn't agree that the effort isn't
worth while. There are areas of explanation that are useful and
possible, and I believe they can include considerably more than some
people have heretofore assumed is possible -- like explaining what a
"value" is. I am quite confident that we will find answers to many of
the big questions that people have been concerned with. And I am also
quite confident that in finding those answers, we will discover much
bigger and much more important questions.
It also seems to me that, in the present state of our
understanding, we cannot with certainty predict from any particular
levels of perception what may be perceived at another level, either
subjectively or in others.
Yes, this is exactly what I was saying in my post:
There's no single rule that will allow you to deduce the next level up
from the existing levels; you just have to look and see what's there,
in your own experience. . . .
I have never been concerned with finding "certain" answers.
I am not sure that I can make complete sense of the ways in which
lower level perceptions may be a function of higher levels but I
think the question is important. And some of the answers which have
been given by persuasive individuals and groups appear real enough
to others to have power in the world.
That's a teaser -- how about laying out what some of these answers are?
In PCT, of course, we say that the _higher_ level perceptions are
functions of the _lower_. That is how the hierarchy is defined after
learning. It is also possible that lower perceptual functions can be
altered by higher-level _systems_ -- but the view I have maintained is
that both before and after the alterations, we would see the same levels
of perception, although not the same examples within a level.
I am also aware, as are many others in the csgnet, of the
implications of Goedel's Theorem i.e. that is not possible to
assess the adequacy and completeness of any self-consistent theory
or system of ideas from within that system.
Godel's theorem is suggestive, of course, but since it is itself a
product of a system of ideas, we can't prove that it is consistent with
that system of ideas. Remember, too, that Godel's theorem (conjecture?)
does not deny that a system of ideas may actually be (although not
provably from within that system) self-consistent, or that it may even
be proven self-consistent from the viewpoint of some _other_ system of
ideas (or through constraints imposed by reality). Also, consider
Godel's way of generating a statement not contained within all the
possible statements of a system (take the first term of the first
statement, the second term of the second statement, and so on). If this
method of generating new statements is added to the method that
generated the first set, the new statements become part of the system of
ideas. Godel's "proof" then becomes just another (initially overlooked)
way of generating statements within the same system. Finally, don't
overlook the fact that Godel equated a system of ideas with a list of
statements, which confines experience to a few levels of organization,
the levels involved in symbol manipulation.
In an experimental science there is always something outside the system
of ideas that works to expose inconsistencies of the system with nature,
as you hint.
Returning to the point with with which I began, and acknowledging
the messiness or inherent uncertainties of societal values, it is a
fact of daily experience that personal and social values provide
some of the framework of context and purpose within which lower
level perceptions do in practice occur.
I think that this discussion would be more fruitful if you could give an
example or two of what you mean by "social values" as opposed to
"personal values." There is nothing in PCT that argues against personal
values; all that is problematical is whether any of them are inborn or
necessarily implicit in a given social situation, and perhaps where,
physically, they exist. Is there any difference between "reference
level" and "value" as you use the terms?
These are realities of social life, and include economic and
political views and questions, as well as efforts by business to
clarify values and objectives to improve cooperation and
efficiency, some at least of which is generated by needs for
conflict resolution, which is a function for higher values and/or
evaluative criteria which makes sense to me.
I'm puzzled as to why you keep returning to these noncontroversial
assertions. You seem to be implying that the subject of values has been
left out of PCT.
In summary I do not see the alternatives as being either a bottoms-
up or a top-down approach, but rather an approach which accepts a
variety of starting points involving different levels as
potentially useful for a variety of purposes, and particularly for
conflict resolution.
In a hierarchy of closed-loop feedback systems there is no strict
bottom-up or top-down organization. The perceptions at the higher levels
are built from intensities on up, but the actions of the system are
guided in various ways from the top level on down. Again, an example of
"starting points involving different levels" would be helpful.
As for conflict resolution, have you found the analysis of conflict in
PCT useful, as well as the implied methods of resolving conflicts?
···
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,
Bill P.