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[Bruce Nevin 2018-08-31_08:08:00 ET]
Thanks Bruce very much and sorry for the delayed reply. I really appreciate that you took time to read and comment. I just have the busiest time of the academic year. You gave very good and useful commets. I reply some of them below.
BN: Well done, Eetu! I salute the nobility of your concern with education, what it is and how best to do it. Our daughters benefited from Waldorf school (called Steiner
schools in some places). We would do well to revive the concept of Bildung (duly translated) in public discourse about education, to counter the
impoverished utilitarianism that prevails.
EP: Agreed
BN: In places, an unfamiliar metalanguage clogged my reading of your chapters with the feeling of swimming in a viscous liquid. Chapter 13 was especially slow going for
me.
EP: Yes, semiotics is its own language or rather a family of languages.
BN:
“For Greimas, meaning is an undefined main concept of semiotics about which can be said nothing more than that the meaning makes it possible to translate or paraphrase one
discourse into another.”
As a comment extraneous to your purposes here, this would be really inexcusable ignorance on Greimas’s part. It has been well known for far the better part of a century
that there is a formal basis for mapping a sentence into a set of informationally equivalent sentences, even more for the structured sequence of sentences that constitutes a discourse. There are aspects of meaning in addition to this–all perceptions, not
just language perceptions, are linked in associative memory to other perceptions which are thereby part of their subjective meaning to us–and we may try to preserve such of these that we may be aware of if and when we paraphrase one discourse in the form
of another (a good way to demonstrate comprehension and a basis for saying something further or other)–but the formal basis of objective linguistic information suffices.
EP: Yes, in some cases you can define a meaning of some expression by using other expressions, if the meaning of the other expressions is intuitively and unproblematically self-evident. But this is not the same as defining the concept of
meaning generally. Greimas assumes that the meaning of meaning is self-evident in such a way that it needs not and must not be defined. It is undefinable basic concept. I don’t in practice agree with him here because I have defined the concept of meaning using
the concept of action.
BN: You seem to say that Greimas et al. are aware of this:
“The meaning of an object/sign naturally depends on the structure and features of that object. An essential part of Greimassian and other kinds of semiotic study is to analyse
the internal structure of a meaningful discourse. In fact, the semiotic approach tries to analyse the meaning of a communicated discourse strictly from that discourse rather than from the intentions of the sending subject or the reactions of the receiving
subject. There is, however, a critically important proviso to this restriction: We cannot focus exclusively on the internal structure of the discourse, but must necessarily consider also the external relations, the external structure of the studied discourse.
Recently, this requirement has been acknowledged with the concept of intertextuality , which means the relations of the studied discourse to other respective discourses to which it can have explicit or implicit references. In the original Saussurean theory,
this idea was very clear: in a language, a sign/word attains meaning only in relation to other signs/words (Saussure 1983).”
The epitome of ‘intertextuality’ is sublanguage grammar, the vocabulary and structure of discourses in a restricted subject-matter domain, which is especially clear in the
sublanguage of a science.
For a similar point about subjective meanings you cite Watzlawick, a very interesting thinker about communication, decipherment of deception, spycraft, etc.:
" According to the first axiom of communication by Wazlawick, we always communicate when we act because our actions cannot help causing meaning effects in our possible observers
( Watzlawick, Beavin & Jackson 1967 )." And again: "“It is a well-known and very fundamental phenomenon for semiotic understanding that the similar or same object/ sign can lead to very different meanings and action consequences for different subjects and
even for the same subject at different times and in different situations.” (But in that place you lead into a critique of S-R notions.)
“A typical basic event is deed or doing where the subject directs a causal effect to an object usually causing a change in that object.” The covertly operative word here
is “directs”: a deed is defined as such by its purpose. I’m not faulting you for failing to frame this within an understanding of PCT–that is the work of Chapter 14–this is just to observe another slowing factor in my reading, as I do the reframing myself.
“[T]he reverse effect in action – from the oobject to the subject – is only partly realiised as a normal causal effect. Insofar as this effect influences the action of the subject, it occurs
as a meaning effect. The meaning effect is a result of this reverse effect which, as such, is called perception . To recapitulate: the subject instigates causal effects in the object by deeds, and the object causes meaning effects in the subject by perceptions.”
This seems to atomize the loop in the stepwise manner of T.O.T.E. Perhaps you are preparing the way for Chapter 14 by gentle stages.
EP: One thing I feel important is to try to build a bridge from common non PCT understanding to PCT understanding. On the other hand I am documenting my own way from more TOTE type of thinking to PCT type.
BN: Another instance farther on, identifying semiosis with control:
“Usually, we ourselves observe our own action and its results in objects: this simply means that our action forms a feedback loop and an instance of auto-communication. We perceive an object
in our environment and it causes a meaning effect to our action, which then, having altered the environment, creates a new object, which in turn creates a new meaning effect and so on. This circular process corresponds to the triadic semiosis, where the object,
via the sign in the Peircean model and via meaning in this model, creates an interpretant, a new object which again can give birth to a new meaning and so on.”
To control comprehending a discourse we integrate familiar and new word dependencies (“constructions”) perceivable in the discourse into a nonlinear network of language constructions and
non-language subjective meanings stored in associative memory. I mentioned this above as a factor slowing my reading. This can actually result in some objective information in the new discourse being ignored or distorted (as in “* Behavior: the control of
perception*? Of course perception controls behavior, everybody knows that.”). So I can’t be quite so optimistic as this:
“[I]f the literal denotative meaning of the sign is open to all competent language users, there can, however, be many different connotative meanings which open differently to different receivers
depending on their individual competences. Still more striking differences appear if we consider the ‘real’ meanings defined above, to which Jakobson (1960 ) referred as the conative function of communication. For example, a text about climate change can be
literally understood in a similar way by all readers who master the language by which it is written, but only some will change their action and habits in response to climate change.”
So I can agree that “a text about climate change can be literally understood in a similar way by all readers who master the language by which it is written” if we emphasize that little word
“can”. Differences in understanding arise not only from differences in associated non-language perceptions (subjective meanings) but also can be due to difficulties integrating the objective linguistic information in the text into prior knowledge/opinion,
the global, nonlinear network of associations established in memory.
EP: Good point. I should have written: “even if the text … could be liteerally understood…â€?
BN: Chapter 14 is altogether easier going for a PCT-imbued reader. A nit to pick on p. 206, where you say “the term negative is used in the mathematical sense so that the feedback tries
to reduce the initial source of the process.” This blurs the relations a bit for me. First, there is no ‘original source’ unless perhaps in the first creation of a given comparator and its several interconnections with others, circular causation in the loop
is continuous without start or stop. The presupposition in this statement is that the error signal is the initial source. Clearer to say explicitly that error is what is reduced (if error has been defined nearby), or the difference between perceptual signal
input and reference signal input.
EP: I was thinking – in a simplified teerms – a system initially (in the time zero of the observation) in the balance without error. The error is caused (if the system is in balance so that it does not change its reference) by disturbance.
The control trues to negate the disturbance or cause a negative effect compared to the disturbance effect. Again I was trying to talk to those who do not know PCT at all.
BN: It’s a bit hyperbolic to say “We have infinitely more organs for sensing our environment than organs to affect it.” However, and more importantly, that’s not the reason “We primarily
observe our environment or, strictly speaking, our relationship with our environment, and only secondarily and superficially our own doing.” The stronger point to be made is that we usually do not control our outputs; and in fact when we do we are apt to interfere
with the control that those outputs are to accomplish. There is some confusion of control with awareness hidden here in the choice of the word “observe”. The ambiguity is that you might mean it in a technical sense of Bill’s postulated “observation mode” (would
a non-IAPCT reader know that from your mention of it elsewhere?) but common usage suggests awareness.
EP: I must agree that there is a hyperbolic wording and a danger of confusion with awareness. But I believe it is true that we have much more input organs (or sense nerves) than output organs (or effector nerves). Again for laymen this
could be understandable as a phenomenon that we can get (perhaps even infinitely) more perceptions than we can control them.
BN: There’s a typo in the last paragraph of 28, where you mean “second” instead of “third” in the clause “The neural current goes to the third part of the control unit”.
EP: Yes, indeed!
BN: At another opportunity for you to present this, the discussion of hierarchy at the top of 209 might do well to emphasize the many-one relation between levels. p. 210
EP: Good point!
BN: “The program has been, however, always already there; and if we want to say that we have learnt in the problem-solving process, then we must also remember how we did it… [sic.]” The
phrase “always already there” might be read as a claim to innateness and universality. Mr. Chomsky would like that.
EP: Good note, if you understand it that way. It is a German based idiom used by many philosopher and it does not cause problems in Finnish, but in English it can be dangerous. I should have omitted “always� or stress that every time we
solve a problem using a problem solving program that program must exist already.
BN: In Chapter 15, the commentary on responsibility to consider side-effects includes stewardship ‘to the 7th generation’, a perspective that I value.
You posit that ‘modal dynamics of human learning’ is a process, “a special circle or loop above or inside the proper action loop” (i.e. control loop, whose features you then recapitulate).
Do the ‘modes’ want-can-must-know form a loop?
EP: This is a core problem which I must formulate much more detailed in future publications. I claim they do (or at least can) form a loop which contains smaller loops e.g. from
can back to want etc.
The “above� does not mean above in the hierarchy but rather is some kind of supervenience of modalities in a more abstract conceptual level of the thought model.
BN: *Want * is nicely identified with the reference signal, which is part of the output side specifying and bringing about the
desired input. It is certainly inside the entire ‘action loop’ of the higher-level system whose error output is a source of reference signals below; from the perspective of that higher-level system, the error output and those lower-level systems are all part
of its output function. From the perspective of the loop receiving the reference signal into its comparator the reference signal is outside its ‘action loop’. For those comparators with no reference input the effective reference value is zero and that reference
is neither “above nor inside the proper action loop”, it is literally nowhere.
EP: Good points.
The modality of
can you identify with access to appropriate environmental feedback paths (roughly aligning, at least in some cases, with Gibsonian ‘affordances’). But
can seems to me also to be a function of having developed appropriate input functions to recognize the perceptions to be controlled, including those environmental feedback paths; appropriate output functions to affect those perceptions; in short, an
appropriate organization within the control hierarchy.
“[T]he resilience or the insistence to try again and again is part of this modality of can.”
Is this a function of gain at the higher level so that it continues demanding control of the lower-level input? From that insistence in the face of error reorganization commences. The reorganization
system is conceived to be outside the control hierarchy, but not “above” it since its effects can be anywhere.
Digression: It is the cells that constitute the loop that do the reorganizing by making and breaking connections. For some reason, failure to control a signal which
necessarily cannot itself be a variable that is perceived and controlled by the cell has an effect on inputs that
are controlled by the cell, so that it starts randomly changing its synaptic connections. Maybe we could figure out ‘what’s in it for the cell’ by modeling rates of firing under conditions of failure to control. Conflict is an obvious case, and in conflict
the loop increases output to its maximum capacity. Perhaps sustained high rate of firing is the condition that the cell tries to control by randomly reorganizing.
(EP: Is that a quote from some publication?)
BN: Back to a review of your chapters, Eetu.
“The modality of knowing is a consequence of the trials, errors and successes caused by wanting and being-able – or nott being . It can simply be understood as a repository of these experiences.
It consists of records of what has been tried in which conditions and what succeeded or did not.”
Does this place knowing at the Sequence level and higher, as a matter of plans and strategies? Well, records and repositories suggest memory, and, specifically, reference values. A reference
value is retained in memory because it has ‘worked’ in the past. That would pervade ‘knowing’ throughout the hierarchy. And we must bear in mind that the very structure of the control hierarchy is a form of memory, so just as with the modality of
can the modality of knowing is also a function of having developed appropriate input functions to recognize the perceptions to be controlled, including perceptions of environmental feedback paths to be ‘afforded’; appropriate output functions
to affect those perceptions; and, in short, an appropriate organization within the control hierarchy.
So the distinction between
can and knowing (which is knowing how, wissen, not knowing about or perhaps also recognizing,
kennen) seems the weakest part of your in attempt to find a place for Greimasian ‘modes’ in PCT.
Must indicates necessity. If you desire to control X, you must be able to control a, b, and c, or you must have environmental
feedback through something that you perceive as Y. However, you talk about it (following Greimas?) as externally imposed compulsion in terms of resolving a conflict or evading a disturbance to control by controlling something else instead. This seems to me
an dissatisfying view of it.
EP: Very good questions for my further formulation of the model of modal learning!!!
I hope these reflections are of some use to you, Eetu.
/Bruce
PS–to read this, I found a way to ‘steal’ the text and create PDFs. Don’t tell anyone. But I could make them available if someone else is interested in having a form that’s easier to read,
and you would be blameless.
(Uh-oh … was that a knock at the door?)
EP: Thanks again!!!
Eetu
On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 3:56 AM Eetu Pikkarainen csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:
Thanks Warren. Chp 14 is really the most PCT based.
Eetu
From: Warren Mansell wmansell@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2018 3:13 PM
To: Eetu Pikkarainen eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi
Cc: csgnet csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Publication announcement
Fabulous work Eetu! I particularly like Chapter 14!
Warren
On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 12:42 PM Eetu Pikkarainen csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:
Hi all
I am glad to tell that the co-authored book by me and four remarkable colleagues:
Semiotic Theory of Learning: New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Education.
By Andrew Stables, Winfried Nöth, Alin Olteanu, Sébastien Pesce and Eetu Pikkarainen
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351725170
was published in this summer. My three chapters there are strongly based on PCT.
Now as part of Taylor&Francis’s new marketing strategy this whole book is 60 days freely available for reading online in: https://rdcu.be/4fqW
(no download or printing). Take a look
Best regards,
Eetu Pikkarainen
PhD (Ed.), (Title of) Adjunct Prof., University Lecturer (in Education)
Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Finland
Research Group:
https://wiki.oulu.fi/display/theored
Latest publications:
Semiotic Theory of Learning: New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Education.
By Andrew Stables, Winfried Nöth, Alin Olteanu, Sébastien Pesce and Eetu Pikkarainen
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351725170
Now temporarily readable in:
https://rdcu.be/4fqW
Schools in Transition: Linking Past, Present, and Future in Educational Practice.
Edited by Pauli Siljander, Kimmo Kontio and Eetu Pikkarainen
https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/other-books/schools-in-transition/
–
Dr Warren Mansell
Reader in Clinical Psychology
School of Health Sciences
2nd Floor Zochonis Building
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL
Email: warren.mansell@manchester.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 8589
Website: http://www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk/staff/131406
Check www.pctweb.org for further information on Perceptual Control Theory