[From Rick Marken (930315.0900)]
Bruce Nevin (Mon 930315 09:45:10) --
Sounds like you two have a good cop - bad cop routine going.
Actually, this was not intentional; Bill P. is just a truly
wonderful person and I am a schmuk.
Your description of learning to see the other figure in the
"wife-cron" drawing was wonderful.
What are good strategies when a controlled perception is
mistaken, supported by misconstruals (mistaken categorizations?)
and imagined perceptions on lower levels, and when the perceiver
regards disturbance of the higher-level controlled perception as
life threatening or almost so?
I don't think there are any. You might be able to drive a person
into reorganization but the result of that process is unpredictable
(you're as likely to end up with a muslim fundamentalist as a PCTer).
I like Bill P.'s approach using poise and patience. I also like my
approach because I'm a passionate fellow (sometimes). But I don't
think it makes a twig of difference in terms of convincing people.
Matter of fact, I'm SURE it doesn't make a twig of difference. I
have watched at meetings as Bill has patiently taken a bright, curious
and apparently very interested person through the demos and models --
the person always eagerly questioning, challenging, being astounded
and, finally, being completely convinced-- and then we never hear
from the person again (and when we do, it's in the pages of some
journal explaining their coordinative structure model of behavior or
something like that). There is no question that people will only
learn PCT if they want to and (most important) if they are (for what-
ever reason) willing to accept that they don't have most of the
answers already . This kind of person is a very rare bird -- especially
in the halls of science.
Martin Taylor (930315 11:00)
One doctrine I learned in graduate school and have not forsworn is
that when two schools of thought contend, each claiming the other is
dead wrong, they probably are both right except in that claim. It
just takes seeing the problem in a new way.
When the schools of thought are the different schools of psychological
thought that are taught in graduate schools to this day then that
doctrine is probably correct.
In our case, I don't
think you are wrong, except in saying that I am.
If you said that there is information about the disturbance in the
stimulus (or perception) then you are wrong. But I don't remember you
making that claim. What did I say you were wrong about?
When it comes to the "information about the disturbance in the
stimulus" claim, then I'm afraid we can't both be right about
this. If you are right then it means that the stimulus in a
control task has information that guides responses (so that they
are opposed to the disturbance) -- making PCT consistent with
conventional models of behavior. If I am right, then the stimulus
in a control task cannot POSSIBLY guide responses -- and the whole
process must be viewed (SERIOUSLY) in a new way -- as response
guidance of the stimulus (actually, of the perception thereof). This
fact about control is TOTALLY inconsistent with conventional approaches
to behavior analysis and modelling. I think that there can be no
compromise on this. If you try to compromise you end up producing
the kind of mish-mush that you find in all the articles described
in the Karoly paper. I don't want this do happen to you; save your-
self while there is still time; understand that there IS NO INFORMATION
ABOUT THE DISTURBANCE IN THE STIMULUS in control tasks and you will
be able to make beutiful PCT music -- not an ugly cacophony like that
produced by the Karolyans.
Best
Rick (canon on the loose again) Marken