ยทยทยท
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Bruce Abbott (961023.0900 EST) --
RE: method of levels
Bill Powers, meet Carl Rogers. Rogers called this approach "person-
centered therapy." Not surprisingly, you find it listed under
"humanistic therapies" in most psychology texts.
Already have. When I met Mary, she was an intern in his client-
centered therapy program (and Dick Robertson was there, too). See
Rogers' blurb on the back jacket of B:CP.
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Hans Blom, 961023 --
RE: method of levels
This is also called the Socratic method, that all philosophy depends
on. It consists of two parts: 1) mapping someone's belief system, and
2) finding inconsistencies in it. Then you point out to the speaker
that he simultaneously believes X and not-X.
OK, so the method of levels is nothing but client-centered therapy,
and it's nothing but the Socratic method. Any more nothing-buts out
there?
Re your nothing-but Hans, you seemed to change your mind a paragraph
or so later:
Bill:
It's very tempting to start giving advice or pointing out what the
conflict is, but I don't think that helps.
Hans:
I agree.
Hans:
This method is fun, isn't it?
Sure didn't take you long to learn it.
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Martin Taylor 961023 11:55 --
And if there are time lags in the reorganizing process, it can end
up cyclic can't it?
I don't think so, in this case. Cyclic behaviour always implies
memory somewhere in a system.
All it takes is for reorganization to persist for a time after the
error goes to zero. I suppose you could, loosely speaking, call that a
"memory" effect.
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Clark McPhail --
Thought this post was from Tim Carey, since his name appeared first in
the post. But fortunately I glanced at the header before deleting it,
and saw Clark's name in the From field...
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What about our experience and display of emotion when we witness the
success or failure of another person or group of persons for whom we
wish the best possible outcome. For example, fans who identify with
a team can do little or nothing to affect the actual play of the team
or the final score of a game. But is it not possible that fans
control for the perception of similar outcomes as those of the team
members themselves, even though the fans cannot directly affect the
outcome or the team member's perceptions?
The general principle that negative emotions are concurrent results of
error signals isn't changed by this. However, the good feelings in
this case may sometimes be related to another idea about emotions.
Some good feelings may simply be bad feelings going away. When you're
anxious about the team's winning, and they do win, you feel more
jubilant than you would if the game were a walkover from the start.
Relief from a bad emotion, even if it simply restores the status quo,
is often viewed as a positive emotion in itself. The suggestion is
that the first time derivative of a feeling-signal can be viewed as an
emotion independently of the actual state of feeling. Perhaps more
commonly, the feeling is simply "edge-enhanced", with changes being
exaggerated. So being plunged into gloom feels worse that just
becoming gloomy, and an unexpectedly fast recovery from illness feels
better than just an ordinary recovery.
Your main point was about vicarious feelings that arise as if you were
controlling something that someone else is actually controlling --
"body english" is an example. I think this may come from imagining
yourself in the other person's role, so you are doing everything but
actually producing outputs. When the other person's actions keep the
variable you'd like to control near your reference level for it, you
experience no error, but when there's a difference, your own error
signal makes you try to take some action (in vain, of course, since
you aren't actually controlling). This may be why, when being a
passenger in a car with someone whose driving you don't trust, you jam
your foot into the floorboards when the driver is late (as you see it)
in applying the brakes. And of course the emotion you feel is the
result of the uncorrected error.
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Hans Blom, 961024e --
I've always thought of the "intrinsic reference levels" at the top of
the HPCT hierarchy as being the common physiological homeostatic
variables such as the oxygen en carbon dioxide partial pressures in
the cells, the pH, Na, K and Ca concentrations in cells, etc., rather
than something as magical/mystical as a "feeling of unity" that Bill
Powers thinks of as the top.
I presume this little sneer refers to the experience I and others have
reported as one of the end-points of a session with the method of
levels. Actually, the HPCT model says nothing about that phenomenon,
nor have I ever tried to account for it with the model. It's just an
observation without, so far, any explanation. Also, if you were to review my
writings, I think you would find that I have NEVER referred to a "feeling of
unity." All you're doing here is revealing the sterotyped category into
which you've put me. Saves thinking.
I see the top of the hierarchy as being concerned with what I call
"system concepts," which are such things as a perception of organized
systems like control systems or baseball teams or governments or
religions or selves. A system concept like physics is composed of a
set of principles, which are generalizations about nature.
I do not see the intrinsic variables as being part of this hierarchy
at all. They exist outside it, and the reorganizing processes
associated with them can act on the hierarchy at any level, from the
lowest to the highest. Furthermore, in my scheme there is no direct
relationship between intrinsic error and the effects on the hierarchy
of learned systems: if there is, for example, an intrinsic error
having to do with blood pH, the result is not a command at the highest
level of the hierarchy to "do something about blood pH." But I've been
over than aspect of reorganization theory often enough that you don't
need me to explain it again. If you didn't get it the third or fourth time,
I don't expect that a sixth or seventh time will make much difference.
Anyway, this prompts the questions: What are the intrinsic reference
levels that determine all else? Why those? What do they need to
achieve through their use of the lower levels of the hierarchy? When
are they satisfied, if ever?
Since these questions are based on the mistaken idea that I consider
intrinsic variables to be at the top of the hierarchy of learned
systems, they aren't relevant to HPCT. However, putting that aside,
the question of what the intrinsic reference levels are concerned with
is valid. They specify, in general, the states of certain variables
intrinsic to the system that must be maintained in certain states for
proper functioning of the system. As I said a few posts ago, most of
the variables have a certain range of values under normal conditions,
so the intrinsic reference signals (whether real signals or virtual)
would probably be concerned with upper or lower limits for these
variables.
What might these variables be? I think we can make some good guesses.
The intrinsic reference level for pain is probably naturally set to
zero. The intrinsic reference temperature for blood going to the brain
is somewhere around 37 degrees c. There is something about lack of
nutrition that can lead to reorganization, and so on. Apparently there
are some signals relating to pleasure that serve as intrinsic
reference signals, so when the state of the body fails to reach the
specified levels, there is error, and when those levels are reached,
we describe the result is pleasant, or at least neutral. There are
many candidates, but I don't know them all, nor do I have any
definitive list in mind.
As to "what they need to achieve," a reference signal is by itself a
definition of what is to be achieved. A certain level of glucose in
the bloodstream is a possible example. The reference signal could
specify a certain concentration of circulating glucose, or perhaps a
minimum concentration. And what happens when they are satisfied? The
error goes to zero, and any reorganization that was being driven by
that error stops. When the error occurs again, reorganization starts
again (assuming the error is large enough to produce reorganization
instead of being taken care of by some existing control system,
inherited or learned).
I presume that you're thinking in terms of a single highest goal for
the whole system, but that concept doesn't apply in HPCT, where there
is no single highest goal. And goals, in HPCT, are not simply
"achieved" once and for all. They are simply states that are preferred
by one control system or another; when error occurs, the control
systems always act to keep whatever variables are involved near their
reference states, if they can.
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Somehow I find myself embroiled with a community of philosophers, with
200K of philosophical musings in the past two days to contend with.
That's not what I want to be doing with the rest of my life. I'm going
to have to give some serious thought to what I do want to be doing;
this, clearly, isn't it. Suggestions from PCTers welcome.
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Best to all,
Bill P.