# Observed reference value, inferred reference signal

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/observed-reference-value-inferred-reference-signal/15576>\
**Category:** Troubled discourse\
**Created:** [April 21, 2020, 6:32pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/observed-reference-value-inferred-reference-signal/15576 "2020-04-21T18:32:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 18

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**Author:** ![bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/user_avatar/discourse.iapct.org/bnhpct/32/34_2.png) [@bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/bnhpct)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 9:38pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/observed-reference-value-inferred-reference-signal/15576/18 "2020-04-24T21:38:28Z")

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Yes, that seems a reasonable paraphrase.

This post from August 2015 points to some empirical investigations  
[Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/why-control-of-perception-re-powers-2007/12472/24)  
I for one am equally bemused:

> [@Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007...)](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/why-control-of-perception-re-powers-2007/12472/24):
>
> It never occurred to me that anyone would ever think that people control “just” perceptions and not aspects of their environment. After all, perception is understood (in psychology in general and PCT in particular) to be a neural representation of aspects of the world (environment) on the other side of the senses. So saying that people control their perception is the _same_ as saying that they control aspects of the outside world (environment).

For a PCT devotee, grasping the insight that we control perceptual input (_perceptual_ variables) to deny dogmatically that our control outputs affect aspects of the environment (_perceived_ variables) so as to bring them under control and perceive them as we wish them to be, is no better than the old behaviorists denying that there can be such a thing as purpose, because a future state cannot have causative effect on present events. Yes, it’s true that we have no way of knowing about those environmental variables other than by perceiving them, but old Bishop Berkeley’s immaterialism does not follow.

Yes, other living things with sensory inputs and control hierarchies that may be radically different from ours must live in a universe of very different perceptual constructs, but we interact with them through our common environment. There are differences of this sort between human beings as well, a simplistic example being color blindness, and more subtly consider tyro vs. adept perceptions of music, dance, and other art forms. A walk across a public park in company with a military veteran with PTSD is a memorable experience. For examples we don’t even have to get into matters like politics, caste/class, and cultural disparities. Do these divergences lead often to conflict? Those conflicts are interactions along common environmental feedback paths, however differently we may place them among our perceptions.

I appreciate your care with equivocal words, such as ‘perception’. We do not experience perceptual signals; when we talk of perceptions almost always we refer to experience which we clothe in theoretical dress as rates of firing which could in principle be measured, except that doing so would be disruptively invasive. Henry has mice running around wearing skullcaps with optic fibers projecting into their brains. Not at all convenient. The only thing we can be quite certain of is perceptions as experienced now.

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