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No matter whether the activity is
the part played by the organism in these two fields of
psycho-physical activity is common to both.
At first reading this sound impressive, but on second reading it says
nothing. What are the processes of conceiving, reasoning, and
understanding? He doesn’t say, and as far as I have seen, never does
say.
I hope it was an effort of a completely different kind. PCT is founded on
a theoretical framework and a method of modeling that have been worked
out (not by me) in careful detail from the ground up, with much
experimentation and practical application to back up the details of the
theory. There is a lot to understand and I am not surprised that it is
difficult for you, as it was for me. But what makes Alexander’s book hard
to read is precisely the lack of things to understand – you have to
labor to infer some kind of meaning from the words he uses, and there is
no help from him because it never occurs to him that his meanings are not
everybody’s. What does he mean by conceiving, reasoning, and
understanding? All we can do is use our own private meanings, because he
doesn’t say. You’re just supposed to know.
But that means that your “meaningful experience” is being
constructed by you out of your own experiences, which are not
Alexander’s.
Some of the
conceptual problems I have with PCT are:
I have been told that “ALL behavior is the control of
perception.”
Rick’s explanation is correct, as is Martin’s. To expand the slogan,
behavior is the visible part of the process by which people act on their
environments to control what they perceive of the environment (or
themselves).
I’ve also been told
that PCT may provide someone with MORE control.
You haven’t been told that by me. Does Newton’s theory of gravity provide
us with more gravity? PCT might help a person who has been trying to
control something he or she can’t perceive or affect, just by showing why
that is impossible. But it doesn’t cause more or less control. It
explains control, or lack of it.
From a strict
scientific view point. If all behavior is the control of perception and
B=CP then more control must be that either B has increased or
P has decreased.
You seem to be confusing an abbreviation with a mathematical formula.
What you wrote says that the quantity B is equal to the quantity C times
the quantity P. Whether that’s true depends on what definitions you give
the three variables. B:CP is an abbreviation of “Behavior: the
Control of Perception.” It has nothing to do with mathematics, etc.
– no more that etc has to do with the expression e times t times
c.
In other words if
ALL behavior is already controlled perception then no one can experience
MORE control.
This is not much different from the Alexander technique which claims to
help develope more sensory appreciation. Is a PCT presentation more
concise, more succinct? More scientific?
Yes. Is it problem free? No. Does that mean you are
“bamboozling” people? No.
I try very hard not to bamboozle people. Alexander seem to enjoy doing
so. What is the technical meaning of “sensory
appreciation”?
If all behavior is
autonomous control of behavior then the bamboozled controlled for
it. I don’t quite believe that.
I do. The bamboozled wish to get a feeling of understandingness, which is
not the same as actual understanding since it can be done without
actually understanding anything. So they work and work at putting
meanings into what they are trying to understand until they get that
feeling, and then they are satisfied. The bamboozler, of course, uses
language designed to allow any interpretation you wish to use, avoiding
mathematics completely, which makes it easy for the bamboozlee to create
the desired perception.
In my first post
over a year ago I asked if PCT was about some or all behavior and was
told all behavior. Later I read the book and got a different
answer. In “Making Sense of behavior” you say
PCT “is about a kind of
behavior”.
A kind of behavior that …? Finish the sentence. Falling off a building
is not the kind of behavior that PCT is about (though jumping off might
be). PCT is not about the behavior of a firecracker, or a lever, or an
automobile (save for the cruise control). Don’t invest too much energy in
understanding common-language terms.
Are you saying that
some kinds of behavior are not PC? That is not the same as saying
all behavior is the control of perception. Is this loose
verbiage?
No. “Behavior” is the loose verbiage as ordinarily used because
it applies to anything that happens. Ordinary terms need to be defined in
PCT terms before they can be used technically. The title of my book is a
very terse technical definition of behavior.
I would say also
that PCT IS behavior and that its incorporation by an individual results
in behavior modification.
I can’t grasp what you mean. A theory “is” behavior, all by
itself? And “behavior modification?” Are you aware that
behavior modification is also a technical term in a different theoretical
system based on the concept of operant conditioning? And what do you mean
by “behavior” – do you mean the output actions that affect the
environment, or the consequences of those actions that affect the
behaving system? Moving your fingernail against your skin, or scratching
an itch?
Part of the
modification is the result of thinking in terms of “controlled
perception”. That is part of “how it
works” That means that PCT is a behavior
modifier.
You’re confusing two antithetical theoretical systems. The only
“behavior modifier” in PCT is the central nervous system. But
of course we don’t use that term, because we know it will invite educated
listeners think of the wrong set of concepts.
You have said that “There is something strict” about PCT.
Why?
More to the point, when and where? If I ever used that quoted expression
I don’t remember it, and certainly don’t use it now. I don’t even know
what I meant, if I used those words. The lack of context or a reference
makes it hard to see what I intended here, if indeed I ever said
that.
There is something
strict about all theories, the strictness and discipline required to
maintain a commitment to the created system.
That’s fanaticism, not mathematical rigor. Believing makes it so, which
is the Walt Disney approach to theory. Are you sure I didn’t use the term
“rigor”? I have used that term.
Does PCT require a
different kind of strictness? There could be a theory of strictness
as well.
PCT, like any scientific approach, requires defining terms and using them
consistently according to well-defined procedures, which is the basis of
mathematics. That’s a different kind of strictness from, say, requiring a
person to memorize a slogan and repeat it without mistakes.
The same holds true
for AT and BBT. The terminology and maybe even the looseness of
that terminology is part of “how it
works”.
No, the terminology is designed to give the appearance of
scientific rigor without actually providing it, and has nothing to do
with how those procedures actually work. At present, nobody knows how
they really work.
Both AT and
BT emphasise “process”. Both AT and BBT are controlled
perceptions, which claim to address problem
perceptions. Therefore they must come under the purview of
PCT.
They emphasize the word “process”, but do they ever say what it
means? I think you will find that you’re just sort of supposed to know. I
don’t know what you mean by saying that AT and BBT, which are physical
procedures, are controlled perceptions. Are they carried out by
controlling certain perceptions? Probably, but I’m only guessing at what
you mean.
Is PCT not a
controlled perception and therefore come under its own purview. In
that controlling, terminology comprises some of the controlled peceptions
and participates in bringing about modification.
Oh, come on. Terminology participates in bringing about modification? How
does terminology do that? What does “participates in” mean?
What modifications of what system? You’re just flinging words around
now.
If I choose to
relinquish control is that a controlled perception? In the case of
letting go has a higher system changed a lower systems reference
signal?
Of course. Perceptions can be controlled to match high reference levels
or low ones, even zero. A zero perception means not perceiving any of
some variable. You can set your reference level for experiencing whatever
you mean by “control” to zero, and you will then act in
whatever way is possible that will reduce your perception of controlling
to zero. Of course you will still be controlling. If you actually ceased
all control, you would drop dead.
Another problem for
me, and it may be for others as well is the claim that as Rick Marken has
said, “we control perception not the reference signals”. Well
if I have no control over the reference signals, who does? How much
control do I really have?
If you have to ask that question, you need to study hierachical
perceptual control theory, which explains why reference signals vary and
what varies them.
Where does the
highest system get its reference signals from?
Itself?.
In B:CP I explain that since there are no control systems higher than the
actual highest level of control (whatever it is), we have to propose some
other sources for the highest reference signals. They might be set
genetically, they might be a sort of average value of the perceptual
signals at the highest level, they might exist as thresholds in the input
functions, they might be set by reorganization, or they might simply be
zero (a zero reference signal says “maintain this perception at
zero” – i.e., avoid it). Since we don’t know the truth, and the
truth may not be the same for every highest-level control system, all we
can do is make hypotheses and try to devise ways to test them. Nobody has
done that yet.
If so, how does
that highest system manage to be structured differently from all the
lower systems?
Your guess is as good as mine, as long as it’s just as testable as
mine.
These are
unanswered questions that might make some people think you are trying to
bamboozle. I don’t think you are. I think they are indicative
of some of the difficulties we face when using
words.
That’s what I said in B:CP: they are unanswered questions. Is that
bamboozlement?
My advice to my
daughter was "Please don’t try to explain how Bowen
Body Therapy works. The explanations are mostly nonsense – a lot of
words from textbooks strung together, with no theory at all to give
them substance.
You may be reluctant however to have PCT associated with a quasy quacky
method even if it does work. With your understanding of the nervous
system I thought perhap you could shed some light on the details of the
“what’s happening” part.
I’m not reluctant at all. But you don’t find a PCT explanation of such
phenomena just by sitting and thinking about them. The only useful
explanation will come from systematic experimentation and
hypothesis-testing. I’m not in a position to do that, but anyone else is
welcome to tackle it.
You
indicated that spinal reflexes may be excited, I will start there and do
some research further. Thanks. However, I doubt if spinal
reflexes alone can account for the changes I
experienced.
I’d be surprised if they did, since many of the changes that occur are
cognitive. Indeed, resolving conflicts can resolve many physical
problems. Many therapies that are nominally physical give people a chance
to experience reorganization at many levels, and I know of cases in which
the person was dead set against “psychotherapy” but perfectly
happy to experience it as long as it was called something else.
By doing research, do you mean you’re going to get some equipment to
study spinal reflexes and see what happens, or that you’re going to read
what other people have said about it?
My impression of
basic the PCT position is that all behavior is autonomous. Maybe I took
it too literally but if not then that also sounds like a contradiction or
at least loose verbiage.
As long as we stick to informal language there are bound to be loose
statements and ambiguities. In case of doubt, use the rigorous vocabulary
of PCT in which one word always has one meaning and different people
describe things the same way. “Behavior” is not a word that is
useful in most technical discussions unless you supply a more detailed
definition of what you’re talking about. “Autonomy” is another
word that needs careful definition.
Best,
Bill P.
in the sense of walking, playing chess, and so forth, can equally well be thought of as the direct effects (not side effects) of controlling for a perception of onesself walking, or of onesself playing chess. Muscle tensions, visual patterns and the like are lower level perceptions controlled becasue their reference values are set by the outputs of the higher level "perception of me walking" control system(s).