perception, reality, and evolution

[From Bill Powers (940914.1445 MDT)]

Bruce Buchanan (940913.2200) --

... the perception _is_ a _function of_ reality. We are not aware of
_the perception itself_. We are aware of reality _through_ (albeit
conditioned by) the perception.

Suppose we are looking at a surface which physical measurement shows to
reflect two wavelengths out of all those in an illuminating white light:
a red wavelength and a blue wavelength. What we perceive in such a case
is a single color: purple. What we are aware of is purpleness; but there
is no purpleness reflected from the surface, only red and blue. I don't
see how, in such a case, we could say that we are aware of purpleness
_through_ our sensory perceptions. There is no purpleness there,
according to physics, to be aware of.

The basic problem is that single unitary perceptions are functions of
multiple environmental variables; this is the situation at all levels,
even at the lowest levels of sensory perception. The physics model
therefore disagrees with direct experience.

The only way I know of to resolve this disagreement is to assume that
the nervous system combines two signals, one standing for red and one
for blue, adds them together with appropriate weightings, and generates
an output signal as a result. And further, we apparently must assume
that the subjective perception of the color purple is associated with
the output signal from this neural computer, and not with either of the
input signals. If we make those two simple assumptions, the physics
model, the neural model, and subjective experience all come into
agreement.

There is great reluctance among some scientists to accept this simple
resolution of the difficulty. I think the reason is obvious: it has the
same sort of effect on our concept of the world that the Copernican
revolution had: it says that the appearances of the world are a matter
of our point of view. It says that no scientist, however good an
observer, can observe the world as it really is. We are all constrained
to see the world that is presented to us by human perceptual functions,
which are apparently, and fortunately, similar enough within our species
to allow us to have similar experiences of the world.

When Dr. Johnson kicked the stone and said "I refute it _thus_" he was
not refuting the subjectivity of the world of experience; he was
confirming it. The only way he had of verifying his visual impression of
the stone was to provide himself with a tactile impression of it which
he felt in his toe. However, he proved something that he did not know he
was proving; that there is in fact an objective world that we can't see
or feel. He knew that by acting in a certain way, he could alter his own
sensory world, and he did so. But if you had asked him to explain how it
comes to be that generating a certain action affects both a tactile and
a visual part of the world, he could not have told you; he wasn't a
physicist, and knew nothing of physical models of motion,
compressibility, mass, inertia,and so forth. If you had asked him how
intending to kick the stone results in actually kicking it, he couldn't
have told you that, either; he was not a control theorist.

What the epistomology of control theory says is yes, there is a physical
environment of which perceptions are a function, and no, the perceptions
do not necessarily have counterparts in the environment. The perception
of purple is a function of the intensities of red and blue light in the
environment, as we model that environment in physics. It depends on the
wavelengths of electromagnetic energy that are present, or the energy
contained in light quanta (pick your theory). But what we experience has
no simple connection with wavelengths or quanta, just as concepts of
wavelengths and quanta have no simple connection to whatever is actually
going on out there. There is no thing called purple that exists in the
objective environment. Purple is a way that our perceptual signals sum
up a set of environmental variables, a way peculiar to human beings.

···

-------------------------------
----, (940912.0649)--

My understanding is that any specific control system has a reaction to
disturbances which depends upon the deviations introduced as the
disturbance, not on its origins and nature. But the nature of the
problem, while outside the purview of the individual control system can
affect the system in other ways that [it] has no inkling of. This might
be important to the life of the system but not register with it as a
control mechanism.

You are re-inventing the PCT model, which is reassuring to me. This is
part of the model we are trying to build, to show how physical effects
of actions (assuming the physics model) may affect the organism in ways
other than through the senses. These effects are not conditioned by the
way we perceive the world and our bodies, but by the actual
relationships that exist, of which the behaving system has no direct
sensory knowledge and which our physical models can only approximate.

The reorganizing system is an attempt to take effects like these into
account. The basis for action by the reorganizing system is a set of
variables inside the organism which are affected physically by external
and internal events, without sensory systems intervening. Of course even
the reorganizing system must detect these variables before they can be
compared with reference signals, so there is still no direct knowledge
of the real world involved. But evolution has seen to it that certain
variables in the body are sensed, and that a reference signal is
provided for each one specifying its design-center state. Speaking
metaphorically, these sensor signals and their reference signals amount
to hypotheses made by the species, to the effect that these variables
are critical to survival, and that they must be maintained at specific
reference levels. Since these variables are directly affected by the
real world, they represent actual effects of behaviors and disturbances
on the organism, not hypothetical effects of variables created by
perceptual organizations.

The outputs of the reorganizing system alter the organization of the
learned hierarchy, including its perceptual functions, in ways not
reducible to any existing algorithm -- that is, at random. This is the
only way in which changes appropriate to the actual environment can be
made in the absence of direct knowledge about the actual environment.
Fortunately, this process or one akin to it can be quite efficient; that
is, it can actually produce changes in organization which result in
altering the environment (as a side-effect of controlling perceived
variables) so that actual effects on the critical variables bring those
variables closer to their reference states.

The very randomness of the output process bypasses the need for "true"
knowledge of the external world. Only some very permissive constraints
on the real world are needed to allow this process to work without
knowledge of actual external relationships. The main one is continuity;
that small changes have small effects. Where this condition doesn't
hold, reorganization may become difficult or impossible, and some other
process may be needed (if there is any process that can work). But
reorganization, as outlined here, can work in most ordinary situations,
or so it seems now.

The concept of reorganization and of the kind of system needed to
implement it bring us very close to phenomena like those responsible for
evolution. This is why I keep searching for a mechanism behind
evolution, and a criterion for "mutation" other than simple success or
failure. Reorganization would not work if the only criteria were "error"
and "no error." It would not work efficiently enough. There must be some
way to detect the difference between the existing state of affairs and
some desired state, and to tell whether this difference is increasing or
decreasing even if a substantial difference still exists. Otherwise the
process would be like a game of "hot and cold" in which nothing was said
to the player until she had actually found the hidden object.

All evolutionists tacitly recognize this problem. Look at the proposed
simulation that Martin Taylor came up with: the survival rate and the
reproduction rate did not depend on reaching the goal position, but only
on improving the position of the organism in a continuum of effects on
survival and reproduction. While the computation of improvement or
worsening of the situation was not explicitly attributed to the
simulated organisms, it was there in the program, and had to be there
for this approach to work. The model is _everything_ in the program that
is needed for its operation, whether or not the ancillary computations
are part of one's conception of the model.

Sorry that I keep veering back onto the evolutionary thread. It seems to
be much on my mind these days.
------------------------------

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
------------------------------

So, as I see it, logical relations are the sine qua non of any science.

Logic is fine in its place, but it must be used consistently with
principles, which are of a higher level. "Things which are equal to the
same thing are equal to each other" is not a logical deduction; it is a
principle to which all logical developments must conform. "A straight
line is the shortest distance between two points" is a principle which
dictates the kind of geometric logic you will use; change that
principle, and you will have to use a different logic (geometry on a
sphere, for example). Logic is a tool for reaching goals you want to
reach. The Nazis were very logical in their approach to genocide. Higher
levels than logic are at least as important as doing correct logic.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Best,

Bill P.

[Martin Taylor 940922 13:30]
Bill Powers (various) and Rick Marken and Tom Bourbon

There seems to be an AWFUL lot of misunderstanding about evolution and
natural selection, judging from some postings that came while I was away.
Some misunderstandings are about the process, and some on the readings of
my postings. For the former, I am in no position to judge whether the
misunderstandings are mine or theirs. For the latter, I think there are
easy fixes. Let's try again.

Tom Bourbon [940915.0645]

[From Rick Marken (940913.2250)]

I think the fast changes produced by Darwin's Hammer type selection
(like the beak of the finch or the color of the moth) are _not_ based on
mutation; they are based on "selection" from already existing
variations that make it possible for the population to deal with certain
kinds of environmental change.

Selection from a diverse population probably accounts for quite a few
instances of "rapid evolution."

I'd be inclined to substitute "all" for "quite a few" in Tom's comment. But
how does that relate to Rick's "_not_ based on mutation?" Where did the
variation come from in the first place? If there had been no mutations,
there would have been no variations for the selection to work within.
Partners in a mating don't have identical genomes. Their differences
(apart from the sex chromosomes themselves) are due to some past mutation,
and the fact that the children vary within a sibling group is due to the
differences in crossovers in different matings, bringing different alleles
into play.

So, "yes" Tom, and "yes but no" Rick.

Right on, Rick. In fact, I recall that as far back as the 60s people were
raising that same point anout the case of the moths. In the examples they
described, though, the full range of variation became evident when the
amount of heavy particulate pollution in the region declined. I know
of similar results from research on the variety of shades and patterns of
coloration within a species of rattlesnake here in Texas. (The coloration
in adult specimens "matches" the conditions and appearance of the soil in
their particular locations in the state; mismatches stand out and more often
become prey.)

Precisely. This is one standard mechanism of "natural selection."

Do all people have the same height? Is height influenced by genetic
background? Are all the genes that influence height the same in all people?
Have there been mutations in the past that affected the heights of different
people or families?

···

------------------

Bill Powers (940914.0915 MDT)

Since we know that organisms are
purposive at every level we have studied, it simply makes no sense to
see evolution as anything but a purposive process.

I find it somewhat inconsistent (to be very mild) that you strenuously
deny the idea of control in social organizations, which are distinctly
interactive assemblages of control systems, but insist on it for evolution,
on the grounds that:

Evolution is the result of interactions among purposive systems and
between purposive systems and the inanimate environment. These
interactions work out according to what the organisms want at many
levels, and according to the nature of the environment on which they
must act to get what they want.

If you change "Evolution" to "Social structure" and "inanimate" to "animate"
you have an equally true statement.

------------

I would truly like to get rid of this concept of natural selection,
because it implies purpose where there is none, and denies purpose where
it exists.

Also, it seems quite inconsistent for you to arrogate the term "perception,"
which has an everyday meaning, and use it as a technical term meaning a
defined scalar signal value, and at the same time be unwilling to permit
other people to use as a technical term "natural selection" on the grounds
that it carries the connotation that nature has a purpose.

"Natural selection" as a technical term has no stronger link with purpose
than "perception" has with consciousness. It refers only to the fact (yes,
fact) that some kinds of organism in some kinds of environment are more
likely to propagate than are others. I know you don't like statistical,
indeterminate, effects, but unless you can follow every organism in a species
and know what accidents will befall each one, you can't do better.

------------

Organisms have the capacity to adapt,
to vary their own forms within limits of amount of change per
generation; this capacity shows up at every level of organization.

No argument. Learning happens. Control improves.

One
result of it is evolution,

Whoa, Nelly! Taking that at face value says that what one organism learns
is passed to its offspring--straight Lamark. I know you don't mean that,
but you have a LOT of work to do to show that anything at all learned by
one individual can have a direct effect on its offspring. I don't deny
the possibility, but to assert it as a fact is something else again!

[evolution], a continual bias on changes that always works
in the direction of obtaining more complete control over aspects of the
environment that affect the organism.

Yes, that's the main result of evolution, as I see it.
------------------------------

Bill Powers (940915.0830 MDT)

With your abstract concept of the "target," we have lost some detail
that makes a difference. You're positing right away that there is a
continuum of effects; that small changes in the position of the organism
in this abstract space will have small effects on reproduction rate. By
leaving out the details, you don't bring up the case where there are n
things the organism might do (or places it might go), with only one or a
small number of them being correct for improving fitness.

If I understood you correctly before, I was using exactly the same space and
interpretation as you were in your e-coli proposed demonstration. In your
demo, a mutation that helped was in some (unexplained) way amplified so that
the fitness improved. The direction of mutation was biased so that the
progeny would continue to be fitter more probably than not. You were
working in a 2-D space, and so was I. I proposed extending the test to
N-D, which you said I didn't bring up. My intention in bringing it up
was that I have an intuition of which I am quite unsure, that the difference
between the e-coli and the simple random mutation will reduce as the
dimensionality of the space increases.

I've made a HyperCard simulation of what I proposed, but as yet only in
2-D with an unchanging environment, and without the e-coli comparison
condition. Improvements to come include N-dimensions, environmental drift,
and e-coli (though I'm not sure of the algorithm to use for the e-coli).
Evolution moves very fast to the target if there is a wide distribution
of original genotypes, but only slowly if all the organisms are initially
identical.

------------------

This is the
case where either the organism stumbles across the critical mutation or
it doesn't. If it doesn't, it dies.

You repeatedly talk about "the organism," when the proper unit to discuss
is a group of organisms with the same or related genetic characteristics.
An organism lives or dies quite independently of what happens to its egg
cells or its offspring. A genetic structure lives or dies according to
whether the number of organisms that carry it is positive or zero. It
doesn't matter if one or many of its carriers die without progeny, provided
that some have offspring.

Fitness is improved only when organisms get TO the target state.

On the contrary, fitness is improved when a slightly higher proportion of the
carrier organisms get TO the target state. (The target state in this case
being the reference value for some perception in the organism, such as being
not hungry).

In E. coli, its progress is organized around the smell of
food, but it has to get to the food to actually eat.

If you don't include this mechanism explicitly in the model, you won't
be able to tell the difference between directed and undirected
evolution.

I don't understand this at all. The difference between directed and
undirected evolution is whether a mutation is more likely than not to
aid the organisms that carry it IN THE FOLLOWING GENERATIONS
to get to the food. One can, at least in simulations, put
in such a bias or leave it out, with no regard at all to the mechanism
whereby the carrier organisms get to the food. In real life, I grant
you that it is harder to tell the difference, because it is very hard to
determine whether a mutation has occurred, if that mutation was immediately
lethal to the germ cell.

A highly efficient steering mechanism working off a basically
low probability of improvement per generation could be modeled without
the steering mechanism, but with a much higher probability of
improvement per generation being assumed. In a large population, the
rate of overall evolution could be exactly the same.

Yes, but in the simulations, you would (and do) see how the less fit
genomes tend to die off and the more fit ones prosper. But as Rick
pointed out before I went away (and as I had been at pains to point out
earlier), even very fit genomes can die out, especially when the population
of carriers is small, right after a beneficial mutation has occurred.

Anyway, my simulation used a low probability of improvement per generation
with no steering mechanism. You are right that large populations are part
of the key.

One thing that should be mentioned: the higher levels of control that
are developed from reorganization, once the genome can supply such a
mechanism, can greatly influence evolution. The finches, during the
worst of the drought years, simply stopped mating. Neither males nor
females developed the typical color changes signifying readiness to
mate. This reduction in the reproduction rate, while apparently
amounting to a drastic reduction in fitness, was actually adaptive,
because birds trying to support fledglings under such extreme conditions
would probably starve themselves and the fledglings as well. This
adaptive change implies a rather sophisticated mechanism evolved to put
a long-term benefit ahead of a short-term one.

I'm with you all the way to here.

But I don't understand where you get the connection to the next sentence.

This behavioral mechanism
would surely skew the results expected from blind selection.

Also, when mating was going on during high-stress conditions when larger
body and beak size were beneficial, and males greatly outnumbered
females, females selected as mates the larger males with the larger
beaks. So the reference signals in the female birds had a large effect
on which crossovers would be most likely to occur

Yes, Darwin had a bit to say about sexual selection as a potent driver of
evolution.

I think it's possible to be too simplistic in modeling evolution. The
simpler the model, and the less detail there is in it, the more it
amounts to a put-up job. If you just say that x percent of each
generation will reproduce itself by a factor k, the outcome is
foreordained. What makes such models interesting is trying to guess what
must be going on in order that x percent of each generation will
reproduce itself by a factor k. The hidden details contain all the
critical assumptions.

I would make the argument precisely the opposite. The more special mechanisms
you presuppose, the less you can assert that the results hold generally.
If all you say is that "some genetic change occurred that gives the offspring
a slight advantage in getting at limited resources" then you are not
affected by possible failures of specific mechanisms. Once you start
saying that "beak size mutated" or "the birds see accessible food better"
or "a new sense of extra-food-perception evolved" you are liable to fault
on the ground that it didn't happen that way.

In the models I have been simulating, the ONLY assumptions I make are that
there exists the possibility that some mutation makes the genome relatively
more fit, and that the population total is limited by resource availability.
I put a hard limit on the population, analogous to saying that there are
just so many cherries on the tree and they can support the life of only
so many birds. It would be better to put a survival probability on
individuals, and to make that probability conditional on the population,
but that's getting into more programming and slower execution, without
affecting the object of the exercise, which is to see how simple selection
and random mutation lead to changes in fitness.

----------------

Rick Marken (940915.1120)

Rick (Horatio Nelson) Marken seems to think that in the absence of controlled
mutation, natural selection will not occur--that all genomes will have an
equal probability of survival into the near future. At least that's the
only way I can interpret:

The question is whether e-coli or uncontrolled mutation based evolution
exists. You seem to think that we already know that the latter exists. Well,
it's kinnda like perceptual information; just because lotsa famous people
say it's so don't mean it's so. In fact, it probably ain't so.
...
Some low level of mutation does always exist in a population. But it's not
there to "ensure that there remains some variation in a population". In fact,
it is generally evolutionarily irrelevant.

Note that "in fact"! Even the original Nelson only said "I see no message"
or something to that effect. He did not say that there existed no message.

In order to accept the "fact," one has to assert that mutations have ZERO
effect on the ability of an organism to produce viable offspring, and ZERO
effect on the ability of those offspring to reproduce further.

And as for the "low" level of mutation that exists in a population, I can't
speak with any deep knowledge, but I seem to remember reading at one time
that there was a notion that the probability of cancer depended on the number
of mutations in a single somatic cell, and that after about four mutations
in a cell, cancer became very likely. I don't think that is now believed,
but it does suggest that the mutation rate isn't all that low, presuming
germ cells are as mutable as somatic cells. Most mutations result in eggs
or sperm that won't function at all, and most others are probably harmful,
but it is awfully hard to maintain the position that they ALL have ZERO
effect.

You assumed "total number of organisms in the population to be the same in
each generation". This violates a basic assumption of natural selection based
evolution (that evolution -- change in a species -- occurs when the existing
species can no longer reproduce at a rate that maintains the population).

Where on earth did you get that idea? It's certainly one that's new to me.
Changes happen all the time, but most of them don't improve the fitness in
the existing environment, which includes all the other predator, prey, and
competitor species as well as the climate and the availability of natural
resources. Once in a while a change does improve the fitness of its carriers,
and if those carriers don't die out, the fitter gene will tend to increase
at the cost of any competitor genes.

Your simulation does not work the way natural selection-based evolution
is supposed to work. Remember, evolution is suppose to occur because some
change in the environment has made it more difficult for organisms to control
long enough to reproduce;

Huh!?! What you are talking about is the occurrence of many of the overtly
visible changes in species, not "evolution." Who is it that supposes this is
"why" evolution occurs?

When you
run the simulation correctly (as I just did) you find that the mutation rate
has to be ridiculously high to make up for a non-replacement reproduction
probability. If the mutation rate is not high, the population disappears in
a few generations (depending on the replacement probability), before any
mutations can get a toehold.

If the environment changes too fast, species DO die out. There have been
millions of examples. Humanity is demonstrating this right now, and I
have no doubt that if there are any paleontologist-analogues a few million
years from now, they will note a great burst of evolutionary change around
the next few hundred thousand years.

"When you run the simulation correctly (as I just did)", you have many
species around, some of which become more fit when the environment changes,
and some of which die out.

I don't know what you did in your simulations, but the survival rate of
a "good" mutation is quite strongly influenced by the population size,
and by a few other variables such as the distribution of "family" size.

-----------------

Rick Marken (940921.1100)

Jeff Vancouver (940920)

I am not sure what constitutes "nice, clear, reliable data" without some
theoretical filter for interpreting it.

There are many examples in my "Mind Readings" book and in Bourbon and Powers'
"Models and Their World's" article.

And can fish perceive the water in which they swim? Can Marken perceive the
PCT filter through which the data are interpreted? I showed some of my
own "nice clear reliable data" from old experiments, a year or two ago.
Rick's response then was "nice data, bad theory" and therefore pointless.

Jeff--NO data will be accepted as valid in this discussion group unless it
was collected by a PCT-accredited individual using The Test. Psychophysical
data are useless because psychophysics was invented by someone who believed
in stimulus-response ideas. And it is --horrors-- statistical.

The theory says that reorganization is random and settles on whatever
hierarchy provides adequate control of the perceptions of the individual.
The theorists then say that data are inadequate unless they apply identically
on EVERY occasion to EVERY individual. If you need statistics, your methods
or your data are useless. To me that asserts that all reorganizations of
all individuals wind up with the same hierarchy.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds (or something like that), and
we have no small minds here!

Martin

Tom Bourbon [940923.1205]

[Martin Taylor 940922 13:30]

Skipping over your reply directed more or less to me, I'll break in on
something you said to Jeff Vancouver.

-----------------

Rick Marken (940921.1100)

Jeff Vancouver (940920)

Jeff:

I am not sure what constitutes "nice, clear, reliable data" without some
theoretical filter for interpreting it.

Rick:

There are many examples in my "Mind Readings" book and in Bourbon and Powers'
"Models and Their World's" article.

Martin:
. . .

Jeff--NO data will be accepted as valid in this discussion group unless it
was collected by a PCT-accredited individual using The Test.

As for the malarky about "PCT-accredited individuals," I find it malordorous.

Going quickly to the point, Martin, what on earth are you talking about?
Are you speaking of the phenomenon of control? If so, then some of us do
indeed hold a strict criterion for what qualifies as good data. I thought
you knew the kinds of data needed to justify a strong claim that a variable
is under control. Perhaps I was mistaken.

On the other hand, when someone serves us up a platter of claims that group
means and inadequate correlations tell us anything clear and unambiguous
about the phenomenon of control, then some of us will decline the platter
and challenge the claims. When we do so, we usually (but not always)
explain our reasons. Have you not noticed those explanations? If you saw
them, do you think them inadequate and if so, in which ways do you believe
them flawed? Can you tell us how _you_ would identify a strong candidate
for the title, "controlled variable?"

A request for another favor. Could you provide a citation or two or more
in which any of us say, as you claim we do, that:

Psychophysical
data are useless because psychophysics was invented by someone who believed
in stimulus-response ideas. And it is --horrors-- statistical.

No further comment on that strange remark, for now.
. . .

The theory says that reorganization is random and settles on whatever
hierarchy provides adequate control of the perceptions of the individual.
The theorists then say that data are inadequate unless they apply identically
on EVERY occasion to EVERY individual.

Martin, I believe you confuse the ideas (a) that the CRITERIA for good data
must be met on every occasion and (b) that the MODEL must apply to the
behavioral data of EVERY individual equally well every time, with the idea
that the behavioral DATA must be identical on every occasion for every
individual. The latter case is clearly impossible; the former two are much
to be desired. Reorganization probably will not make all individuals equal,
but the model (which includes reorganization) must apply to all individuals
no matter how they reorganize, so long as when reorganization ends they are
still perceptual control systems.

If you need statistics, your methods
or your data are useless.

They are not useless as polling data, as in data from an opinion poll
concerning opinions about US intervention in Haiti, _if_ the polling is done
properly. But if polling procedures are used inappropriately and to
compound the crime the data are used to support claims about specific
_individuals_, then the data are indeed useless -- useless in fact, not
just in my opinion. And a psychologist who commits those statistical crimes
is a dangerous person -- someone might take seriously the psychologist's
claims about individuals.

To me that asserts that all reorganizations of
all individuals wind up with the same hierarchy.

You mystify me.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds (or something like that), and
we have no small minds here!

What a nice touch.

Later,

Tom

[From Bruce Buchanan 940924.23:15 EDT}

Bill Powers (940914.1445 MDT) writes:

. . . sensor signals and their reference signals amount
to hypotheses made by the species, to the effect that these variables
are critical to survival, and that they must be maintained at specific
reference levels. Since these variables are directly affected by the
real world, they represent actual effects of behaviors and disturbances
on the organism, not hypothetical effects of variables created by
perceptual organizations. . . . .

The concept of reorganization and of the kind of system needed to
implement it bring us very close to phenomena like those responsible for
evolution. This is why I keep searching for a mechanism behind
evolution, and a criterion for "mutation" other than simple success or
failure. Reorganization would not work if the only criteria were "error"
and "no error." It would not work efficiently enough. There must be some
way to detect the difference between the existing state of affairs and
some desired state, and to tell whether this difference is increasing or
decreasing even if a substantial difference still exists . . .

I would like to offer an hypothesis, for comment and discussion, that
relates to the above. (And if I am travelling well-trodden ground I hope
someone will provide me with a suitable reference!)

The concept of Freedom, so central in Western history and culture, is
almost invariably understood in terms of absence of coercive restraint and
of power of various kinds. Some religious thinkers have associated freedom
with losing one's personal will to higher purposes. And so on, and on!
But this concept is vague, subject to many interpretations, mostly related
to societal power.

While I have not found much in PCT about freedom in explicit terms, it
seems to me that implicitly it is of the essence. The simple thermostat is
designed to free the designated output (at any rate in comparison to the
reference setting) from the effects of random contingencies. And this is
certainly a function of the negative feed-back loop - to free the effects
of that control system from random influences. It seems to me that this is
also the case at successively higher levels, where a kind of juggling act
of preferences and decision so-called may be seen, but where freedom or
relative (never total or absolute) independence of lower-level conditions
is the desideratum. Behavior is shaped by the requirement to control
perception and maintain the stance which seems to help free the organism of
the unpredictable contingencies of the environment.

This is almost part of folk psychology, i.e. how we experience our own
attempts to aquire freedom i.e. liberation from contingencies and/or
arbitrary constraints.

However it is also common experience that clear goals are required at
higher levels, and effective implementation of programs, etc. for
efficiencies and effectiveness at the lower levels. In other words,
freedom from some conditions and constraints requires behavior controlled
by other and appropriately selected or designed perceptions e.g. values to
be achieved, whether survival and progeny (as in animals), or culturally
sanctioned ideals of meaning that involve the coherence of society (as in
man cf. Durkheim's explanation of God), etc.

This note is necessarily brief, and can hardly suggest the possible
explanatory and strategic power of the age-old idea of freedom and liberty
which I think is really at the heart of PCT. And, to put it mildly, people
are more positively inclined to take an interest in better ways to
understand the nature and possibilities of freedom than in control theory.

In any case it does seem to me that the approach implicit in PCT has the
only true handle on how freedom actually works if properly understood. If
the idea strikes anyone as worth exploring in a PCT framework, and this has
not been done already, some dialogue could be helpful in raising initial
questions and suggesting useful avenues for development.

Re: Evolution -

In relation to evolution I am quite uncertain as to whether increments of
what may be perceived by the organism as freedom i.e. increased access to
needed goods and apportunities, and by the observer as mechanisms of
control, can serve as possible criteria for successful mutations or not.
On the evidence of the immense diversity of organic life it might be
suspected that anything that works is OK, and that the possibility of
formulating abstract generalizations about all the specific conditions
which might be necessary for increasing degrees of freedom (and therefore
control) might be insuperable. In a sense, evolutionary change may be such
an intrinsically creative and non-repeating process that the concepts of
any science can do no more that reflect it in broad terms.

Cheers!

Bruce B.