[From Rick Marken (940801.1115)]
Jeff Vancouver (940728)--
I will make a deal with you. I will send you the articles I referenced
and you send me the blind elephant article (Dept of Psych, NYU, 6
Washington Pl, Rm 550, NY NY 10003). I need your address.
I put the issue of Closed Loop that contains both my "Blind men" paper and
Tom and Bill's "Models" paper in the mail to you today. My address is:
10459 Holman Ave., LA, CA 90024
What I want to know is how does a belief like self-efficacy plug into PCT?
I think an interesting question is how ANY belief plugs into PCT. I think
one possibility is as follows:
A belief has two aspects: 1) a perception or imagination of a state of
affairs (like one's self-efficacy) and a reference for that perception or
imagination (the wanted level of self-efficacy). So belief is just a control
process -- keeping a perception (of self-efficacy, for example) at a
reference level. The greater the imagination component of the controlled
perception, the more we would call it "belief". For example, my "belief"
about my self-efficacy at work is not really a belief because I can perceive
how efficacious I am being and I am keeping that perception at its intented
level (pretty low, obviously;-)). My "belief" about my self-efficacy as an
astronaut is more like a "real" belief because I can only imagine how
efficacious I would be in that situation. If I wanted to be a very efficacious
astronaut (if I had a reference for perceiving -- imagining -- myself as very
efficacious) then I would resist any disturbances to this perception
(imagination) -- like people telling me I would be a non-efficacious
astronaut. I could (in principle) actually test my belief about my
efficaciousness as an astronaut; that is, I could become an astronaut and see
if I could bring my perception of my efficaciousness to my reference level.
So I would say that my belief about my efficaciousness as an astronaut is a
TESTABLE belief.
I bet that most of what we call "beliefs" are (I believe), in principle,
untestable -- such as the belief in god. I would say that perception of god
is a pure imagination -- it is a perception that we can only be self-
generated. Thus, regardless of one's reference for that perception (ranging
from no god to many gods), one will never be able to test that belief; ie.
one will never be able to have an actual perception of gods and be able to
see if one can bring that perceeption to the wanted level. But, of course,
people do continue to control for these perceptions (imaginations) -- and
rather successfully, since it is possible to compensate for any disturbances
by simply imagining the perception back into its reference state.
Best
Rick