From Ken Hacker [930328]
Some output in relation to some disturbances:
[1] I am trying to understand PCT
in two ways: first, as a explanatory perspective
or theory of human perception, and second, as a behavioral theory related
in some ways to other theories. To understand PCT, I ask questions,
probe, and query what does not make sense to me. If I ask questions
or raise objections that offend someone, I apologize for the personal
affront, but do not apologize for the intellectual challenge.
In science, there should be fewer articles of faith than testable and
tested propositions. I guess I am PCT-challenged and Theoretically
Incorrect at this point, but c'est la vie.
[2] Mr. Marken may want to debate the arrogance or hyperbole which I
argue are evident in PCT postings (by some), but he cannot win (or lose)
the debate for the simple reason that we are tussling over my perceptions
-- not empirical truths.
I really doubt that even Mr. Marken can tell a human being what his or
her perceptions are more accurately than the person themself. Good reasons
to me are not going to be good reasons for someone else unless we agree
on some ground rules. I believe that scientific discussion should be
grounded in the norms of education; multiple points of view are discussed
and evaluated in a climate of tolerance. I do not believe that scientific
discussion should be ground in norms of propaganda, whereby only one
point of view is assumed correct and others are dismissed.
[3] There are claims made on this net which I do, in fact, think are
problematic (arrogant or hyperbolic). These include the following (if
Mr. Marken wants more data, he should print out the notebooks and
start counting -- I don't have time to do it for him):
* All social science is wrong.
* All behavioral science is wrong.
* All social scientists and behavioral scientists
believe what is wrong.
* All social scientists and behavioral scientists do not
know what they are doing with research.
* Only PCT has something useful to say about how humans
regulate their behaviors.
* Communication theory is wrong.
* PCT equations (confirmed by PCT theorists) PROVE
that PCT is correct.
* PCT is real science. Other approaches to human behavior
are pseudo-scientific or "half-assed."
* People who challenge PCT are misguided, ignorant,
and not yet fully developed intellectually.
The claims above are simply the ones I could recall at the keyboard.
There are more, but these are enough to make my point: PCT theorists
need to be more receptive to INQUIRY, which necessitates consideration
of questions by those who are new to the ideas, concepts, models, etc.
[4] There are
several points which have been made that I think are useful and
insightful (from my view):
a. People are influenced by others, but only individuals
can control their own behavior.
b. While some views of behavior, such as common notions
in traditional psychology, assume that behaviors are
done in response to stimuli, PCT assumes that behaviors
are the independent variables, not dependent ones.
c. There are hierarchical orders of input-comparison in
human control.
d. Much of behavioral science is rooted in the belief
that operant conditioning still guides much of
those behaviors which appear automatic.
These are just a handful of points I have picked up and recalled.
There are many more I have not listed.
[5] There are many questions which I have about PCT, including:
a. The scope of PCT. Is it limited to describing and
explaining physical behaviors of human beings such
as motor actions?
b. If there is no information inside of input, what
prevents one from asserting behavioristic-like
internal responses to internal stimuli or a kind
of reverse behaviorism?
c. What happens to Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety?
d. How does PTC account for stored knowledge such as
schemata (or whatever other term you choose)?
d. What makes PCT more than intensive descriptions and
explanations of neural pathways and signals?
e. Why must PCT be understood as some sort of revolution
as opposed to some sort of new and productive thinking?
f. What are essential differences between PCT and cybernetics?
g. What do axioms or propositions from PCT contribute to
everday human adapting, living, changing, improving, that
other forms of analysis do not? Where is the proof of
human behavioral successes with PCT, as opposed to success
in the abstract? Is too soon to ask this question?
h. Most scientists are concerned with not only describing and
explaining phenomena, but also wish to predict and sometimes
"control" them. Why does PCT deny the desirability of
prediction? I can predict one PCTer; I have already deleted
some expletives because of that fact! Is prediction not
always part of human anticipation, whether in ordinary life
or in science?
i. Where do reference levels or signal originate? In other words,
if my control system has error signals, what constitutes
the sources of the error signals?
What is stored that makes me think that I do not
like or wish to accept certain input? How conscious are
the processes of matching input to the reference signals?
[6] So far, it seems to me that PCT is doing very productive work in
describing and explaining individual control and the complex
mechanisms or processes which are involved with physiological or
neural signalling. This is valuable and informative. It does not
explain social behavior, social systems, or interactions between
control systems, but it cannot be faulted with this, since its
focus is on single individual self-regulation. As PCT should not
be criticized by me or anyone else for not explaining social
behavior, social sciences which do focus on social behaviors should
not be excoriated for not explaining individual human control
mechanisms and processes.
[7] Finally, my interests in PCT are something like this:
a. Communication studies, unlike traditional psychology and maybe
other behavior/social sciences, no longer assumes that people
are simply affected by stimuli in varying conditions and ways.
Since the 1970s, my discipline has said that each human
TAKES from mass media, from interpersonal interactions, from
printed words, from any messages, and recodes what is decoded.
We threw out Shannon and Weaver's model in the 1970s as anything
useful to explain human communication. Both Aristotelian and
electrical engineering models of message sending and receiving
say little of importance to understanding the complexities of
human communication, mainly because people do not simply
take in messages. Nor do
messages do contain meaning. Meaning
is created internally by receivers of messages and the messages
themselves are only one part of meaning construction. Along
with this, I have thought
that humans, as Vygotksy and others note,
are always adapting and when they interact with others, they
attempt to adapt more by their communication behaviors.
b. I believe that each human being has needs, goals, and
reference levels and essential variables. When people interact,
they are attempting to accomplish their goals, minimize
instability in their own life, and regulate themselves to
gain what is important to them. I think PCT's descriptions of
how people control are very useful for understanding what each
communicant is doing endemically as a human being, so that we
describe social ineractions, we understand the behaviors that
each communicator naturally engages in while responding and
adjusting to the other human being.
c. I also acknowledge that social science methods have been
problematic and need to mature into studying more
integrated and detailed processes of social behaviors and
structures. As Chomsky points out, and Bill Powers does
also, social science needs to adopt more of the rigor of
the physical sciences and to produce clear explanatory
principles of phenomena. I think that today, much of social
science consists of scattered topics, perspectives, and
mountains of findings. I think much of it is interesting
and useful, but that there are strong needs to explain how
things work, as opposed to how various variables are related
to each other within a context of general topics.
I have to stop here for interests of brevity and to get back to grading
and other such exciting things. I truly enjoy the debate here and am
learning much from it. I will have more responses and comments later as
I catch up with about 4 days of messages I printed out. My goal is not
to win any arguments here, but to state my perceptions, check my own
thinking, and make sense out of what I see PCT doing and how it may
relate do what I study regarding human communication. For those who are
patient with me, I salute you.
Best, Ken Hacker