[From Kenny Kitzke (2008.01.25.2100 EST)]
<Bill Powers (2008.01.22.0958 EST)>
In a message dated 1/22/2008 11:08:12 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, powers_w@FRONTIER.NET writes:
The disturbing hole in PCT theory which you have revealed, is why and how does a person change their references? Don't people control their references, their purpose. Of course they do! And, PCT has a limited view of how this happens. It suggests there is a "reorganization" system distinct from the hierarchal control system, that by random experimentation finds a new control system configuration to deal with an error, usually construed to be a conflict. But, this is not modeled or understood well in PCT by Bill Powers or anyone else. I think it is fair to say that people are not looking for a theory of behavior to help explain how to drive a car the way you want to under changing conditions or how to keep a cursor on a line when random disturbances move the line.[From Bill Powers (2008.01.22.0958 EST)]
Kenny Kitzke (2008.01.180} –
<Kenny, this comment puzzles me because HPCT definitely accounts for setting and changing reference conditions at all levels except the top one, system concepts in my way of accounting. And those reference conditions can change, if only slowly, through reorganization (and perhaps volitionally in an experimental way). So what you say in the above two paragraphs doesn’t seem to be true for most of the hierarchy.>
Bill, it is the exception that I am talking about. I understand that the higher levels 1-10 probably do change more slowly than the lower ones in the perceptional control hierarchy. But, if that hierarchy does not establish the Level 11 references, and some other functional human system does, how do you know it can’t change them quickly? You don’t think that after the death of a spouse, a person can wake up the next morning with a different self purpose for themselves, perhaps a new one they simply select that changes what they do for as long as they live?
I suspect people will only be interested in a new theory of behavior via scientific psychology can help people with the real errors that cause pain, not just physical pain, but emotional pain and dissatisfaction with one's emotions and purposes in life. As humans we have longings (matters of the heart) that appear to be hard wired into some human system. Do we learn over time that we want to be appreciated, respected or loved? Does it take time to learn by random reorganization that it feels as good to help others in need as it does to be helped?<I also don’t understand this comment. In my theory, emotion (such as psychological pain and other discomforts) arises as a consequence of large and persistent error signals in the hierarchy, so any time there is a significant difference between perception and reference, an emotion will appear (probably a negative emotion). It’s a perfectly “real” emotion relating to pain or dissatisfaction. Why do you think it’s not?>
What about purpose, like wanting to perceive myself as the most generous person in my stingy family. That is not really a temporary emotion issue like stress or fear.
<I don’t think you can claim to know what “matters of the heart” are wired in, and I’m sure you don’t believe they literally originate in the heart muscles.>
Bill, Valentine’s Day is coming up. Did you think that it about arteries?
Matters of the heart involve what you might call intrinsic human attitude needs, like the need for companionship and worth in the eyes of others. Don’t you think lonliness is a self-generated disturbance to one’s worth or purpose in life?
< Learning to find satisfaction in giving as well as receiving is not automatic and universal, but has to come out of experience, so yes, random reorganization is quite likely to result in that sort of thing if it appears in a given individual (it certainly doesn’t show up in every individual,>
You may be right on that one. But, I sense those who live to “get” and do get in spades are far more likely to end up with a drug overdose (sometimes purposeful) that kills them than those who are happy to give what they don’t need to someone who has nothing. They are not on the suicide danger list. It is not clear if you find that out by experience or have an urge, an instinct, then act and find that action satisfies a reference perception already there.
< and anyway it is not ALWAYS more blessed to give than receive --ask a conservative Christian what he thinks about giving welfare aid to the poor).>
OK ask me, privately. I am blessed beyond measure. Do you really want to know and understand or just cast everyone with that net?
< I do think we, or some of us, do learn that we want to be appreciated, respected, and loved, as long as the respect, appreciation, and love are real and appropriate in our eyes. But do any two people agree on exactly what those words mean?>
I somehow got the impression that we are autonomous control systems and unique human beings. All it takes is one person, one by one to explain their behavior. The meanings that matter are inside you, your inner man. My inner man knows. It may be in his genes. Ask your Observer how he determined he liked observing you being appreciated.
I think you’re taking it for granted that just because you value certain experiences, they are the same experiences everyone else values, and that you didn’t learn the need for them but were born that way. I dont’ see any reason to assume that.
You surely should not see any reason to assume that for me. I do my own. You can do yours. We do not need to have the same references or experiences. Thank God. By the way, is it your position that all experience perceptions must come before the reference perceptions?
<The question here is just how much organization we are born with and how much we acquire through interacting with others and the physical world in one lifetime. I don’t make any assumptions about that – that’s the sort of thing we will find out as we study more about human beings. I don’t think that you or anyone else knows the answers to that question.>
My point would simply be that until you do, you have not described the nature of human beings. At best you have described the nature of human behavior, valuable no doubt, but not complete. I want more of the knowledge, understanding and wisdom about such things. I think you do too. It would be nice to work on it cooperatively…you know that feeling of companionship that you learned was good along the way.
I think it is part of human nature to create goals and purpose for our lives. It is not a random event. It is an imaginative and deep inner searching activity for purpose and value.
<Certainly in HPCT the higher levels create goals and purposes for lower-level systems. The conscious search for purpose and value is one level of that process. But this search has to begin as a trial-and-error process because at first we have no idea what actions will result in a sense of purpose or value (whatever perceptions an individual means by those words). We simply have to try changing something, and if that makes things worse, change again. We retain the organization that makes our errors smaller, which is how we impose order on the results of these random changes.>
Please read and consider your own words. As I said earlier, how can trying things to see if it makes it worse or better be done if the reference is not already there??? Where did ones highest purpose come from before you experience/perceive it? It is the question I hope you will address. Dick thinks you should put forth your ideas so we can consider them carefully against both HPCT theory and our life experiences.
It may be hard wired, though you may be right that if so it takes time for us to bring these things into awareness and control. That might be an encouraging and converging concept? I am pretty sure I will have the time to get my thoughts together on this for a presentation at the Conference, probably called the Inner Man and its role in human nature. But, more likely, the Inner Man is establishing the references that control the mind that control the observable behavior of humans throughout life. I’ll bring ear plugs (action) to quell the laughter (disturbance). 
It is NOT part of the mental and nerve firing perception control system and therefore needs not to be in the HPCT model.I’ll just say flatly that you don’t know that. How could you possibly know what aspects of experience are or are not part of brain operations?
The same way I know that the swallows did not learn where Capistrano is by randomly visiting there and liking it so much they solve their error in missing it by returning each year. Tell me again how HPCT explains instincts and how you know that fish and birds and animals have them but advanced humans do not.
It is a different human system called the Inner Man, the self, the heart the spirit of a human being.<So you say, but I don’t think you can defend that statement. It’s just something you believe, not a conclusion that observations and reason have forced you to accept. You seem to think this is a desirable conclusion that doesn’t need justification, but it does.>
If so, then so do yours. So spell out and justify the Observer which you like to conjure up to explain what humans do and experience that HPCT does not cover.
But, however it is descrbed, it needs to be in any theory of human nature and human purpose to gain interest in people who are not satisfied with their actions in life. I think when PCT evolves to explain such things, it will rapidly replace all the ineffective theories of human psychology and what it takes to be content with oneself.<If you are dissatisfied or discontented with something, that is an error signal in a control system and it’s happening in a brain. I really don’t see how you can say these things are not included in PCT – to me, they are obviously already part of PCT and fit perfectly into the structure. Why do you think otherwise?>
Are you aware of what little fraction of the brain is used for anything known, much less what is needed for perception control? I really don’t see how you can say that whatever the rest does, or can do, is part of PCT? How would you know?
<Are you just automatically assuming that certain parts of experience are not brain phenomenon, embodied as neural signals? If so, what parts, and why? It seems to me almost as if you’re arbitrarily excluding some parts of human behavior and experience from being explained by PCT, so you don’t even try to find a PCT explanation for them – you just say there isn’t one, as if there couldn’t possibly be one.>
On the contrary, I am simply asking you, the inventor, to explain your inventions like 1) intrinsic variables, 2) reorganization systems that override the control hierarchy and 3) the Observer that you propose exists yet has no defined specific role in the your theory of behavior.
When I publish my thesis on the Inner Man, you can ask how it explains your experiences better than PCT. That seems fair.
<I guess that’s really what I don’t understand about your position. When you say people aren’t satisfied, why don’t you immediately translate that into an error signal resulting from a mismatch between a perception and a reference signal? That’s what I would do, and what I think most PCTers would do. What keeps you from applying PCT to that obvious case of control?>
I think I do. What I do that you can’t seem to do is to believe from my life’s experience that I (and I assume all human beings) can change my Level 11 references at will to reduce the error instead of taking actions on my environment. Are there no other PCTers who can conceive of this? You don’t seem sure. I’m not sure if all have even been asked or had their awareness tested? Perhaps some day.
So, if the models and theory do not help people achieve value in their lives, or it stays in computer models and equations, I doubt it will catch the attention of people searching for understanding of purpose for their existence.
<Only if they start out by assuming that a computer model and equations can’t possibly have anything to do with achieving “value” and purpose in their lives.>
Tell you what, do you have a prison in your town? Go there and show them the models and the equations and see how many rehabilitate themselves and find value in their lives. That will catch people’s attention. I think folks like Ed Ford and Glenn Smith have made some PCT application progress. I think I use it all the time and get better results in my consulting, but perfect results, no. I don’t think the theory is complete enough to deal with the top references. If it was, perhaps it would be a new paradigm worth everyone’s time to learn?
< If you start with that assumption, that’s where you’ll end up. There’s nothing I can do when people decide in advance what they will accept as truth. They are impervious to demonstration, reason, proof or anything else that might alter what they believe. They already know what the truth is. It’s futile to try to persuade them, because they have already decided not to be persuaded.>
Just so you are not like them regarding HPCT.
I don’t really think you’re that way, but I do think you’re being a bit intellectually lazy, proposing facts just because they fit your preferences and not because you have any real reason to believe them. I would agree that there are some aspects of experience that PCT can’t handle – yet – but they are not the aspects you’re talking about. It just seems to me that there are areas in which you don’t even try to apply PCT. Why not?
Best,
Bill P.
Because I am not you. I admit to being intellectually lazy and even deficient. Tis a shame, I suppose. But, I have applied PCT in ways you are not aware of and that should not in the least be a disturbance to you. They have enriched my life. All I can be is grateful to you. I hope that is enough.
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