PCT is the answer!

CSGnet Archive CSG1996
1

[Bruce Gregory 960415.1405]

PCT is the answer!

What was the question?

Question: How is it possible that organisms in general, and
human beings in particular, behave as if they were autonomous
entities acting to achieve their own goals? (See Rick Marken's
elegant arguments in _Mind Readings_.)

If this is not _your_ question, needless to say, PCT may not be
your answer.

I suspect that the above is _not_ a question that troubles the
vast majority of human beings, and that this fact goes far to
explain how easy it seems to be for most people to turn a blind
eye to the power of PCT.

The Principle (analogous to The Test) -- Human beings are
autonomous systems acting to achieve their own goals -- is
extraordinarily powerful. Once you really try it on for size,
it produces in the words of an old friend, "An experience over
which one does not get..."

Clearly, The Principle is extremely subversive. It must be,
because it is so taboo that it is never mentioned outside a very
small circle of initiates. The Principle must threaten the very
foundations of our civilization. Certainly no discussion of
social or economic change or educational "reform" even entertains
The Principle. For all I know, it fails to pass community
standards anywhere in the civilized world. Why is The Principle
so threatening? I have few ideas, but none of them seem persuasive.
I'd welcome other thoughts.

Bruce G.
STGS

2

[From Rick Marken (960415.2200)]

Bruce Gregory (960415.1405) --

Why is The Principle [control of perception] so threatening? I have few
ideas, but none of them seem persuasive. I'd welcome other thoughts.

I LOVE this question. I've been trying to answer it for over 15 years. As
an ex-psychologist (turned control theorist) I think I know why
conventional psychologists don't like The Principle of PCT; but I'm
still not sure why capable people in other fields (biology, cybernetics,
even control engineering) have a problem with it, but many do.

The problem psychologists have with The Principle of PCT is obvious; PCT
suggests that psychologists have missed the point of behavior completely;
it suggests that their whole science is based on the wrong idea; the
idea that perception controls, informs or causes behavior. That is,
psychological science is based on a cause-effect model of behavior.
Psychologists don't think of cause-effect as a model that might be
wrong, however; they think of it as an axiom that must be assumed if
there is to be a science of psychology at all. PCT shows that cause-effect
is a model, not an axiom; and it shows that this model is wrong.
Psychologists who get this implication of the Principle of PCT will
find it quit an unpleasant discovery: so The Principle is despised and
rejected.

Even psychologists who don't get the idea that _control of perception_ is
fundamentally different than _caused by perception_ notice problems
with PCT right off the bat; PCT doesn't try to explain conventional data;
PCT research differs substantially from most conventional research, mainly
because it has a different aim (to measure the variables involved in control
rather than to determine the effect of independent on dependent variables,
whether they are involved in control or not).

So psychologists (and all other behavioral and cognitive scientists for
that matter) are not going to cozy up to PCT until they are ready to
turn their backs on everything that they have learned to respect as
_great behavioral science_ over the last century and start all over again,
looking at behavior through a new pair of glasses which reveal that
behavior is in fact (not in theory) a process of controlling perceptual
input variables.

Given the huge investment that academia has in conventional behavioral
and cognitive science -- textbooks, professors, lab equipment, students,
etc. -- I think it's highly unlikely that much acceptance of PCT
principles will come from within that institution. PCT has to develop
outside of academia; if enough good work is done outside of the academia,
we might eventually get noticed by those on the inside. But I'm afraid that
even then it will still be years -- decades -- before behavioral and
cognitive scientists work under the assumption that behavior is the control
of perception.

That's why I love CSGNet so much; people like you are the only colleagues
I have and its really nice to be able to get together electronically to
discuss this stuff. It would be even nicer if you were just down the hall
at the Living Control Systems Institute -- but this will do for now.

Best

Rick

3

[Hans Blom, 960416]

(Bruce Gregory 960415.1405)

PCT is the answer!

What was the question?

Question: How is it possible that organisms in general, and human
beings in particular, behave as if they were autonomous entities
acting to achieve their own goals? (See Rick Marken's elegant
arguments in _Mind Readings_.)

Let me rephrase the question as I understand it, discarding the "as
if", because anything can be made into an "as if" analogy:

1) We observe entities ("organisms in general, and human beings in
particular"); 2) We observe that these organisms are autonomous (that
is, achieve their own goals); 3) We want to know why these organisms
are autonomous.

I cannot quarrel with 1, but I do with 2. It has been established to
my satisfaction (and yours, I assume) that in the PCT hierarchy ("PCT
is the answer!") a) goals at the highest level are fixed and b) goals
at lower levels are co-determined by the environment. Any simulation
of a hierarchical control system will demonstrate this. Thus there
are no goals that an organism can call "its own" in any meaningful
way. This makes "observation" 2 an (incorrect) interpretation rather
than an observation. Organisms, viewed as hierarchical control
systems, of course do achieve goals (this trivially follows when we
view organisms as control systems), but hardly "their own" goals. So
how "autonomous" is an organism? This makes 3 a meaningless question,
notwithstanding whoever's elegant arguments ;-).

I can as easily ask the question that is the negative of yours:

Question: How is it possible that organisms in general, and human
beings in particular, show behavior that is so easy to predict and
so easy to manipulate by external means? (See Rick Marken's elegant
arguments in _Mind Readings_.)

Withhold food for a while, and a rat (or a human) will eat as soon as
given the opportunity. Withhold water for a while, and (s)he will
drink as soon as the opportunity arises. Etcetera.

Now what question was it that PCT is the answer to? :wink:

Greetings,

Hans

···

================================================================
Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Medical Engineering Group
email: j.a.blom@ele.tue.nl

Great man achieves harmony by maintaining differences; small man
achieves harmony by maintaining the commonality. Confucius

4

i.kurtzer (960417.1500)

[Hans Blom, 960416]

I cannot quarrel with 1, but I do with 2. It has been established to
my satisfaction (and yours, I assume) that in the PCT hierarchy ("PCT
is the answer!") a) goals at the highest level are fixed and b) goals
at lower levels are co-determined by the environment. Any simulation
of a hierarchical control system will demonstrate this. Thus there
are no goals that an organism can call "its own" in any meaningful
way. This makes "observation" 2 an (incorrect) interpretation rather
than an observation. Organisms, viewed as hierarchical control
systems, of course do achieve goals (this trivially follows when we
view organisms as control systems), but hardly "their own" goals.

Then i suppose that the goals are the enviroment's? No,
there are no free floating platonic goals that we participate with.
A Goal is consequent of the organization of the creature and though
the environs might be such that control (i.e. the intersubjective
verification of goals/purpose/et cetera) might not be realized or that
that organism switches from this and that to control
something higher is NOT to be construed as creature not having goals
of its OWN.

Withhold food for a while, and a rat (or a human) will eat as soon as
given the opportunity. Withhold water for a while, and (s)he will
drink as soon as the opportunity arises. Etcetera.

This is simply not the case. People do deprive themselves to a great
degree sometimes and if they do not it was not under the caprice of a
goal-setting environs.

Now what question was it that PCT is the answer to? :wink:

a)how do creatures stabilize certain aspects of this willy-nilly world.
b)what does purpose mean in relation to a)
c)what does a conflict mean in relation to a)
d)what does learning mean in relation to a)
............a)
............a)

i.

···

J.A. Blom (J.A.Blom@ELE.TUE.NL) wrote: