[From Bill Powers (2005.07.03.1426 MDT)]
I worked with Mary for many decades, always feeling that we were on the same side and working together. But that made it hard to look directly at her as an independent person, so I missed the real significance of many things she wrote. She gave life and meaning to much that we understand as PCT today, far beyond what I put into it. Here is yet another example, from 1994 (when she wrote this post, she had just under eleven years of life left). She meant the last sentence, unhappily, far too literally.
Best,
Bill P.
ยทยทยท
=============================================================================
[from Mary Powers 940128]
It seems to me that there are a number of ways that people are
thinking about PCT. I split them up between agendas and metaphors.
I believe that Bill's agenda, fundamentally, is that he believes
that he and others are purposeful. Resisting efforts of others to
control him has been a front-and-center issue in his life. This is
a moral issue, that informs and affects his dealings with the
world, and attracted him to control theory in the first place. But
in his explorations of control theory, in detail and in depth, his
main concern is to understand how people are organized. If
rightness or wrongness enter into it, it is in terms of how well or
poorly they function as control systems. Therefore internal
conflict is a problem, because it is an impairment of good function
to have two control systems tie one another up trying to achieve
opposite goals. Social conflict, the practices of some people to
dominate, coerce, and deny others, AND the resistance to being
controlled by others, are viewed the same way. Not simply as a
moral issue, but as an inevitable consequence of a particular type
of organization.
Other people in PCT apparently feel the same way. They too doubted
the prevailing view - for instance the myth of the all-powerful
environment with eerie powers to shape and reinforce and cause
behavior - and were ready to welcome a theory that made more sense,
by, for one thing, locating purpose in the individual. PCT has
replaced theories they were reluctant to accept, for whatever
reason.
However, there are other types of agendas. Some people have based
their thinking, for various reasons, on the work and thought of
someone they admire and agree with. PCT justifies this investment,
this attraction. See? So-and-so (Mead, George, Dewey, James,
Buddha, Christ, etc.) came to the same conclusions (about purpose,
or perception, or whatever)! Therefore everything else that person
said about anything is also justified by PCT. But occasional points
of congruence does not mean matching all down the line. An
intuitive grasp by one's mentor of PCT-like principles does not
imply any detailed understanding of control theory, especially when
those principles lead one into complex social and political
agendas. Ditto for the person who encounters PCT and sees it as a
justification for what, and who, they have believed in all along.
PCT is not a generative theory in these cases, it is a more or less
well-understood rationalization.
This is also true for those who have adopted some ideas about
control theory without it affecting their basic agenda at all. This
is the behavior-as-a-consequence, planned output type of self-
regulation model. Which leads to the metaphoric use of control
theory.
Before PCT, there has never been a model of the organization of
the brain. There have been metaphors: hydraulic (Freud), the
telephone switchboard, a map room (Thorndike), a mechanical device
(Hull), Darwinian - selection by the external world (Skinner),
digital computers. Why merely metaphors? Because they are only
general notions, and, while serving as organizing principles, fail
in detail. A metaphor that is apt in detail ceases to be a metaphor
- "the heart is a pump" is not a metaphor: the heart is organized
as a pump and functions as one. PCT asserts that living systems are
organized as control systems and that is how they function.
Control theory is used by many people in the behavioral sciences as
a metaphor only. That is, it's ok as a general idea, but when their
understanding of it fails, they look to other metaphors rather than
questioning their understanding of control theory. Thus Lord and
his colleagues tack on a "decision-making mechanism" to solve some
problems their limited grasp of control theory fails to resolve,
and Carver & Scheier start talking about "override" and
"disengagement" - concepts which are totally irrelevant in a
control model.
Metaphor is the source of trendiness. Right now the trendy
metaphors are fractals, and chaos, and stuff like that. Something
about those ideas is currently very appealing (while control theory
is "old hat"). Just what it is is certainly not in the details, but
rather in an overall feeling, or attitude. Chaos, for example, can
be a metaphor for wildness, disorganization, and unpredictability,
and because it is now a Science it sanctifies those attributes and
makes them Good Things, for those who want that kind of
justification for that kind of thing. But metaphors mean different
things to different people, and can only communicate when different
people have had the same experience and felt the same way about it.
"The road less travelled by" may mean risk, adventure, and
excitement, or risk, danger, and disappointment, dpending on who
you are and the life you've had. One reason Hal Pepinsky is so
opaque is that his thinking is conveyed in private metaphors that
don't resonate with anyone else on the net.
So much for stepping on Hal's toes, and Jim's, and Chuck's, and
anyone else's. But I'm fairly lightweight, in body and mind, so I
can't have inconvenienced anyone too seriously.