[From Bruce Nevin (2003.04.01 22:43 EST)]
Rick Marken (2003.03.31.0950)--
I don't think people are any more stubborn (high gain) about keeping higher order perceptions under control than they are about keeping lower order perceptions under control. For example, I don't think people are any more willing to give up control of a configuration perception, like their upright posture, than of a system concept perception, like Christianity. At least I haven't found this to be true. I get as much resistance when I try to push a person out of their chair as when I try to push them towards PCT.
Depends on what they're doing by means of maintaining their posture. If they're controlling obedience to you, or not getting caught sitting down (or in that chair), or avoidance of you (or of everyone), and so on through infinite possibilities of higher-level control, their resistance may be brief.
A person will change their agenda (reference for a higher order perception) only if the agenda itself includes a basis for abandoning the agenda. The only agendas I know of that include such bases for self rejection are those that are scientific.
I agree with your characterization of how science should work. How it does work in practice depends on what the scientist is controlling aside from the principles of how science should work.
These principles are unusual. That is, usually we have some beliefs (principles & system concepts) that we take for granted, or assume to go on with, and if we tried to verbalize them at all we might say well that's so obvious it's hardly worth saying, it's just the way things are, it's what's really going on. Science isn't a set of beliefs about "the way things are, what's really going on", but rather a set of beliefs about how to find out the way things are and what's really going on, with an implicit corollary that what you believe to be so almost certainly isn't. These are meta-principles, if you will, principles about principles and system concepts, but not on a higher level of the perceptual hierarchy from them. But, as we well know, once a scientist arrives at some principles and system concepts (a theory) about the way things are, and has some experience of controlling these perceptions successfully, well then actually applying the meta-principles of science to challenge that established theory may be tough going, and when presented with an alternative theory even as excellent as PCT how many scientists are pushovers? Right there in that chair they sit. Their sitting there in that nice comfy theory isn't means for controlling a principle of challenging the theory - as I said, the principles of scientific skepticism are not on a higher level of the perceptual hierarchy from the theories that one must be skeptical about. Both the theory and the principles of skepticism must be means of controlling higher-level identity-type system concepts of what it is to be a scientist. And that ain't always the case.
The systems that are commonly lumped together under the category "religion" are not all identical in this regard. I agree that there are no meta-principles of Christianity that direct the adherent to question and challenge the principles and system concept(s) of the religion, and indeed faith is extolled in explicit contrast to skepticism, e.g. in the story of "doubting Thomas". On the other hand, doubt and skeptical critique are prominent in Judaism, though often limited to the legalistic verbalisms of Talmudic inquiry. Quakerism has a strong emphasis on experiential verification. This may be why Jews and Quakers have often also been scientists. Buddhist teachings are strikingly like the principles of science, urging the investigator to take nothing on faith and to test and verify everything experientially. To be sure, there are also branches of Buddhism that advocate what seem to be devotional practices. But many scientists, particularly theoretical physicists, have been drawn to Buddhism. Those religions (to continue to use that perhaps tendentious term) that incorporate skepticism and experiential verification are not themselves likely to be abandoned in the face of challenging evidence; rather, the evidence fits (or should fit) into the process of skeptical challenge and re-evaluation that is part of the practice of the religion. Just as counterevidence fits (or should fit) into the process of skeptical challenge and re-evaluation that is part of the practice of science. But not all practitioners (of any of these) are controlling the metaprinciples of doubt and skeptical critique as means of controlling their identity as a Buddhist, or a physicist, or a Quaker, or a psychologist, etc. with higher gain than they control a particular theory or a particular set of beliefs. And that makes all the difference in their control of their posture in that chair.
/Bruce Nevin
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At 09:49 AM 3/31/2003, Richard Marken wrote: