[From Dick Robertson] (941219.2059CST)
Thanks for all the nice comments on "A Clinician looks at reorg."
I have been chewing on Martin's post about "The Bomb..." and it seems to
fit nicely with the theme in a book called, "Descartes' Error," by a
neurologist, Antonio R. Damasio (Grosset & Putnam, 94). In the blurb it
says, "In the course of explaining how emotions and feelings contribute to
reason and to adaptive social behavior, Damasio also offers a novel
perspective on what emotions and feelings actually are: a direct sensing
of our own body states, a link between the body and its survival-oriented
regulations, on the one hand, and consciousness, on the other." [? I. e.
part of the intrinsic system?]
Compare [Martin Taylor 941213 20:15]
There is a concept that I have mentioned once or twice on the net...
that I call "The Bomb in the Hierarchy."...[It] depends on there being
multiple levels in the control hierarchy.
If some intrinsic variables are related simply to globalized error in the
main hierarchy, then the Bomb should be a major factor in reorganization.
It is triggered through environmental variation, since by definition when
perceptions are nicely under control in an environment, all the feedback
loops have negative gain. In that stable environment, reorganization has
done its job. But potential Bombs may remain, to be triggered when the
environment changes, and new ways have to be used to retain control of
higher-level perceptions...not all of those lower ECUs necessarily are
controlling at any moment, and if they are, not all may be sucessfully
controlling (those that aren't may be at saturation values, or drifting
around with zero effective gain at the moment)....the environment may
change--a normally open door may be locked, a road may become icy--and
some of the level N-1 ECUs might possibly lose control, their own loop
gains becoming positive, if only momentarily...and ECUs at level N+1, that
it supports, might also lose control. The observable effect looks like
"Dis-organization"; the organism does, at several levels, things that do
not seem to advance its ends, and indeed that is what is happening
internally. I see a temper tantrum as an example. It is "irrational
behaviour," in that the acts make no sense in getting what the actor
wants.
This seems to me as possibly suggesting that what we call "emotional"
behavior might sometimes (if not always) _be_ the outward aspect of dis-
organization going on under the conditions like those you suggest.
I'm getting closer to learning to model, but I'm not there yet. It seems
(in my present state of naivete) that it should not be impossible to
simulate a hierarchical control system in which some disturbances push the
lower levels out of control >> what does happen then?
C'mon Rick, can you introduce disturbances that send some 1st-order systems
in the spreadsheet hierarchy beyond bounds? I have a vague feeling that I
have already seen that when you were demonstrating something with it in
Durango. Is that so? (Not is it so I've seen it, is it so you showed it?)
...................................................
RE [Lars Christian Smith 941213 16:00 CET]
I was intrigued by the reference to "the behavior of defending a
self-concept against invalidation". What is the reference? Can the
paper be downloaded?
If you were referring to my papers with David Goldstein, sorry they can't
be downloaded, because I wrote them on Apple 2+ cp/m word star. We did
report them at the Haimowoods conferences -- The Self as a Control System
in 1986 and Testing the Self as a Control System in 1987, as Greg Williams
lists in Closed Loop v4, no.3. Might that mean that he has copies of the
papers in the archives?
I have copies somewhere myself and promised to send them to someone who
asked (Sorry, at the moment I don't have your name in front of me) but
since I retired from Northeastern Il U I haven't yet sorted out all of my
own archives. MEANTIME, however, there is a pretty complete summary of
"testing the self as a control system" in my paper in Closed Loop v4 n.1,
which I think you can still get from Greg. Hope I'm right on that last, if
not please correct me Greg.
Best wishes for Happy Holidays to all, Dick Robertson