[From Rick Marken (930823.1330)]
Hal Pepinsky (930823) --
I think it might help communication a bit if we could agree on some
basic facts about PCT. I still think the best place to get these facts
is from BCP (Behavior:The control of perception). I suggest that it
is VERY IMPORTANT to read and UNDERSTAND the first six or seven
chapters of BCP before going on to the "dessert" (the last chapter,
on social implications of PCT). Once you understand the PCT model
(and it is a real, implementable, working model of behavior -- not
just a bunch of words) then you would see, for example, that control
is neither peaceful or violent -- it just is. The interaction between
two or more control systems can appear peaceful or violent depending
on a number of factors such as the perceptual variables controlled by
each system, the reference settings for these variables, the relative
strength of each system and the state of the world in which these
systems are interacting.
At the tenth order, we are faced with a choice between two
fundamental models of perception control.
I don't see why the tenth order would pose any more of a problem
than any of the other orders. The problem of identifying a tenth order
is simply one of becoming aware of the kind of perception that would
be controlled by varying one's system concepts. What, for example,
is being controlled by changing oneself from a christian to a jew to a
buddhist? Do people actually control by manipulating system concept
goals -- or do they change system concept goals only as a result of
reorganization? I think the answer is probably different for different
individuals.
One is as you propose. The
model is of ultimately one of scarcity and entropic, I believe.
Scarcity and entropy could characterize the state of variables in the
environment in which the model operates; but they are certainly not
names I would apply to any aspects of the PCT model itself.
First, peaceful control presupposes that the reference perception at the
next moment is unpredictable from those at previous moments,
I don't understand this presupposition at all. Control will be perceived as
"peaceful" (according to PCT) if perceptions can be maintained in their
reference states without the production of extreme (violent appearing)
outputs.
Second, from a potentially infinite range of goal or referent choices at
the next moment, the one selected must somehow be an interaction term
^^^^^^^^^
between one's referents at preceding moments and the referents one
perceives in the other person or group.
Shouldn't the model explain HOW this is accomplished. People used to
say "Somehow, people carry out their purposes"; PCT explains how. I
think meta-PCT should at least explain how it carries out "peaceful
control".
Disturbance or conflict within the first model becomes grist for selecting
a new referent within the second.
This "second model" seems to be doing what is already handled by the
reorganizing system in the first model.
That is, I seek to discover ways in
which people are hurt or uncomfortable with my preceding referents to help
myself break with my own past--to make myself at once unpredictable and
purposeful to myself.
Yes. This sounds like the reorganizing system. The reorganizing system selects
new control organizations randomly (since it cannot know how to solve the
problem in advance) until the resulting organization returns the system
to "comfort" (in your example, by developing new perceptual goals that,
when they are carried out, don't hurt other people). The reorganization
process is unpredictable (because it is random -- you don't know what the
new organization will be that solves the problem) but purposeful (because it
does achieve the intrinsic goal of making the system "comfortable") . There
is an excellent discussion of reorganization in the last chapter of Powers'
(1989) book "Living control systems".
Best
Rick