[Mary Powers 9303.29]
Ken Hacker:
I hope that a number of people try answering your questions -
various approaches may yield one that's right on the money for
you.
a. The scope of PCT. Is it limited to describing and explaining
physical behaviors of human beings such as motor actions?
The problem with this question is an implication (that I
perceive, and think you intend, consciously or not) that movement
is the outcome or end result of whatever is going on in the
organism. In PCT, motor actions are the means by which
perceptions are controlled - all perceptions, at every level.
The idea that PCT is all very well for explaining mere movement
has been around in cybernetics for years - Klaus probably heard
it the same time I did, from Varela, in November, 1984. The idea
was that it did not explain having high thoughts about great
cybernetic ideas. How one went about speaking to an audience
about those great thoughts didn't enter into it.
b. if there is no information inside of input, what prevents one
from asserting behavioristic-like internal responses to internal
stimuli or a kind of reverse behaviorism?
I'm not sure I understand this question. Do you mean input as a
stimulus causing behavior? The point is joint causation - there
has to be sensory input AND a reference input to a comparator.
The difference drives the output. If both signals have the same
value, nothing happens, no matter how stimulating the input
appears to an outsider.
c. What happens to Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety.
I'll leave this to Bill.
d. How does PCT account for stored knowledge such as schemata
(or whatever term you choose).
I'll leave this to neurophysiology. It suffices for the moment
that knowledge is stored and can be accessed.
d. (again) What makes PCT more than intensive descriptions and
explanations of neural pathways and signals?
PCT is an explanation of the functional organization of neural
pathways and signals. There are a lot of pathways and signals
whose functions are unknown unless they are seen as components of
control systems. PCT is consistent with what is known to exist in
the nervous system, but a lot of what exists is not explained by
those unfamiliar with PCT.
e. Why must PCT be understood as some sort of revolution as
opposed to some sort of new and productive thinking?
Because of the active resistence and consistent
misinterpretations with which it has been received over the past
33 years. PCT was offered initially as simply something new and
productive. The idea that it is revolutionary was a gradual
development of an explanation for other people's reaction to it.
f. What are essential differences between PCT and cybernetics?
This would be easier to answer if cyberneticists were willing to
define cybernetics. Those I have asked have been unbearably coy.
I think the answer is that PCT IS cybernetics. In The Science of
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, PCT is
the science of control. No one in cybernetics has even come close
to PCT in developing it. PCT began when Bill P. read Wiener.
While waiting for further dvelopments of these marvellous new
ideas, he began working them out for himself. No one else seems
to have bothered over the past 40 years. So by default, PCT is
it.
g. What do axioms or propositions from PCT contribute to
everyday human adapting, living, changing, improving, that other
forms of analysis do not? Where is the proof of human behavioral
successes with PCT, as opposed to success in the abstract? Is
[it] too soon to ask this question?
PCT affirms and explains some principles that have been around a
long time. For instance, if you push on people, they push back.
Why? Because they are also control systems, resisting
disturbance. Terry Brazelton advises parents to let their
children be autonomous as much as possible, and only insist and
clamp down when it is really necessary, in order not to establish
a pattern of resistance to everything. This is empirical wisdom.
PCT explains it.
PCT explains why Rick has escalated over the years into the high
emotional pitch you see now - he keeps meeting resistance and
pushes back harder. Maybe some day he will reorganize and find a
new way to go about getting PCT across to people who don't want
to know about it. He's tried quite a few, and I hope keeps on
thinking up more demos and experiments. Meanwhile, ranting and
raving on the net keeps that error from getting too large.
(Incidentally, what's wrong with arrogant statements on the net?
This isn't formal publication, it's a conversation. Mostly
polite, sometimes not. Pretty mild compared to some, we are
told).
Control systems are all around us, and include us. Our
proposition is that people are doing their everyday adapting, etc
etc AS CONTROL SYSTEMS. Once you start analysing them this way,
it is obvious. PCT contributes a point of view.
It is probably too soon to ask about the practical value of PCT,
by which I assume you mean changing people. There are a few
therapists, a few people involved in education, a few in
management. What they are doing, primarily, is teaching people
that they, and others, are control systems. Adopting this point
of view seems to help people understand themselves, others, and
why some things they do don't and can't work in getting along
with people, resolving conflicts, achieving goals, etc. But so
far the evidence of success is anecdotal.
h. Most scientists are concerned with not only describing and
explaining phenomena, but also wish to predict and sometimes
"control" them. Why does PCT deny the desirability of
prediction...is prediction not always a part of human
anticipation, whether in ordinary life or science?
Sure. People want to predict and control. We act to prevent
anticipated errors all the time. I control for not running out of
milk, toilet paper and cigarettes by buying enough to last at a
predicted rate of consumption until the next time I plan to drive
into town.
Scientists and others who want to control behavior are not likely
to succeed unless they understand what behavior is FOR. The
behavior they want to control is now viewed as a bunch of
undesirable outputs. Ultimately, the only way to control those is
by physically preventing them - lock up the bank robbers, shoot
the abortionists, kick the trouble-makers out of school.
Everyone has goals. What their behavior is for is to achieve
those goals - that is, to make their perceptions match their
reference levels. If the behavior they are using to achieve those
goals is unacceptable, in some cases simply pointing this out and
asking for different behavior is enough. Sometimes teaching new
ways of behaving that hadn't occurred to the person is enough.
Sometimes nothing is enough, and then you have to get into the
particular structure of reference levels in the individual person
- what they want. Much of what they want may be unconscious,
conflicting, and impossible. I can't get into how a psychologist
can deal with that, but the PCT approach of going up levels and
developing awareness can work - and I think provides a rationale
for how therapy works. If therapy isn't available or successful,
control comes back down to physical force.
i. Where do reference levels or signals originate? In other
words, if my control system has error signals, what constitutes
the source of the error signals?
What is stored that makes me think that I do not like or wish to
accept certain input? How conscious are the processes of matching
input to the reference signals?
Reference signals originate in the brain. Where in the brain
depends on which reference signals you are talking about - for
breathing, walking, speaking, painting a picture, etc. See BCP.
The sources of error signals are comparators, which receive
reference signals and input signals, compare them, and generate a
signal representing the difference. That isn't the question you
thought you were asking, is it?
Not liking an input means that there is an emotional component to
error. I don't know where reference signals hide out. Not the
liver or the spleen.
The process of matching input to reference signals may be totally
unconscious or totally conscious or in between. One problem with
the self-regulatory folks is a preconception that it is all
conscious - thus Karoly mis-cites Bill as claiming that humans
are unique in the ability to achieve consistent ends by variable
means (so there, e. coli!). I personally have no idea how my body
weight stays the same month after month. I am conscious of hunger
periodically, and of buying and cooking and eating food, and I'm
certainly aware of the need to finish the digestive process,
though I don't consciously control intestinal contractions, or
any of the digestive processes that preceed them, or cellular
metabolism. Lots of control systems doing their thing, all me,
some conscious some of the time.
Mary Powers