[From Bruce Buchanan 940915.23:35 EDT]
Bill Powers (940914.1445 MDT) writes:
Bruce Buchanan (940913.21:58) --
I am beginning to think many (all?) PCTers see perception in the
PCT framework as in the overall driver's seat for controlling all behavior.Ah-ah-ah! Perception does not control behavior. Behavior controls
perception (via actions on the external world). When this begins to seem
natural to you, everything will fall into place.
Rick Marken (940914.1900) also comments on this:
. . . I can't imagine any statement that all PCTers
could more confidently reject as false. Perception is not in the driver's
seat; rather perception is what is driven -- ie. controlled.
Point taken. Actually I had intended the focus to be on the first sentence
in that paragraph, as follows:
(Bruce Buchanan 940913.21:58)
I tend to see PCT as a theoretical construction within the framework of
language and the abstractions it represents to us, and language as verbal
behavior, only one aspect of overall or total behavior (which exhibits
mind.). I am beginning to think many (all?) PCTers see perception in thePCT framework as in the overall driver's seat for controlling all behavior.
While this is perfectly valid within a given framework it remains problematicfor me at the level of total behavior and its integration. (This might
have >>implications, for instance, for mental illness, but I have not thought
this >>through at all.)
I think that I did not clearly express my thought. I intended my emphasis
to be on "the PCT framework.... in the driver's seat. . .". Clearly this
was read as " perception . . .controlling all behavior". In any case I do
understand that in it is the role of behavior to control perception, i.e.
to reduce deviations in perception in comparison to reference variables.
The issue which I was trying to address, however, was the level within the
(human) organism of the functions of abstractions and language. I have
tended to see these as categories subordinate to and contained within
total performance (or behavior). In a clinical situation and in ordinary
affairs "actions speak louder than words".
Yet PCT is a theory, described in language. It is in this sense that my
comments were intended to locate PCT like all theory within the framework
of language and thought, and to distinguish PCT from an absolute frame of
reference that includes within itself all existence. However, I know that
for PCT the reference variables are very often not to be identified with
linguistic signals or language, and indeed may be at higher levels. And it
may be that I am somehow mixing up models, or failing to be fully aware of
the experimental - real-world - aspects of PCT in relation to the theory,
and so I must think more about this.
Some comments on: reorganization, neuroses and psychoses:
Bill's description of reorganization suggests to me interesting possible
parallels with the desperate attempts at psychic reorganization known as
mental illness.
In circumstances where behavior is unable to match actual to reference
perception, and anxiety ( i.e. fear without an object to fight or escape,
and disordered arousal) increases, substitute perceptual satisfiers may be
sought and reference signals adjusted, although these may fail to relate to
intrinsic reference variables. Such are the substitutions more or less
involved in neurotic reactions. With further and increasingly desperate
(because ineffective) attempts to reorganize, actual perceptions may lose
their relationship to the reference variables more completely, a more
complete break characteristic of psychotic reactions. These attempts at
reorganization, persisted in because they are failing, of course appear to
outside observers simply as increasing disorganization. In relation to the
environment and the satisfaction of physiological/intrinsic needs, of
course they are, but the perceptual processes may have another logic.
(These remarks are simply to comment on significant parallels to Bill's
hypotheses as I understand them.)
I might say that I am trying to accommodate my understanding of PCT not
only to existence philosophy (cf. Merleau-Ponty) but also to a framework
within which questions of constructive social morality can be sensibly
argued. And I have continued the discussion because the themes involved
might be of general interest also. I agree with Bill Powers's remarks -
Logic is fine in its place, but it must be used consistently with
principles, which are of a higher level.
Obviously the derivation of higher principles, indeed the whole
reorganizational potential and architecture of the higher levels, is
decisive, not only for individual perception and the behavior which
controls it but for productive social interaction and political stability,
etc.
(I said:)
The "us" that requires the perceptual signals stand for the total organism.
(Rick:)
This strikes me a being a bit vague. Could you, perhaps, draw a diagram of
how the perceptual signals are used by the "total organism" to tell what
is being perceived?
No - no diagram. This was an attempt to get at the same idea (as above),
i.e. that our thoughts and language do not contain the phenomena of the
external world which affect us, but are rather contained and conditioned by
that world, within which we perceive and behave in what is for us a closed
perceptual system. To try to diagram this - beyond indicating
non-conceptual territory - would be try to assimilate within our models and
diagrams things outside the boundaries of what we can specify. The value
problems that stimulate my cogitations in this regard are also as indicated
above. But I do not feel clear or confident enough about all this to try to
argue this position at greater length, at this time anyway.
Thanks to all for all the corrective feedback i.e. comments. You have
managed to convince me that the Modest Proposal with which I started this
thread was not as well founded as I had thought!
Cheers!
Bruce