[From Rick Marken (940401.0900)]
Oded --
If having one god is an improvement over having many, then doesn't it follow
(like the night the day) that less than one god is better than one? And that
zero god is better than even a fraction of one?
Inquiring naive atheists want to know.
···
-----
Tom Bourbon asked my to post this; if it results in a repetition, I
apologize and curse the gods of the net, in whom I really DO believe.
---------
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 94 09:45:47 CST
From: "Tom Bourbon" <tbourbon@heart.med.uth.tmc.edu>
To: CSG-L@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: PCT Therapy
From Tom Bourbon [940331.0924]
<[Bill Leach 940330.22:50 EST(EDT)]
[Rick Marken (940330.1540)]
Rick;
I am not doubt gonna hafta wrestle with this one a bit and appreciate
your efforts at clearing the air. Trouble is, every explaination seems
to raise even more questions than it answers... so what's new?I can see that terminology and reference points are a killer in a
discussion such as this one.As I am viewing it "must have a 'nice marriage'" is indeed a perception
and not just A perception but several groups of them. It is also a want
and a reference somewhere.It is a perception in that the subject concludes via cognitive processing
that "must have a 'nice marriage'". That is, some control system (set?)
in the brain came up with this idea and the idea is a peception.Of course the idea is a single perception but it is made up of many
references that were generated in the same way (and therefore were
themselves perceptions).
Bill, it looks to me as though you are grappling with the idea that a
person can be "aware of" or "perceive" an intention, which we would model
as a reference signal. An example (that would be literally true for some
of you) would be a person who, before acting to create or defend specific
visual perceptions, literally "sees" images of the intended perceptions of
the world. However, I believe the point Rick was trying to make was a
little different. To better understand what he was saying, it might help
to look again at some of the basic diagrams of PCT models, whether they are
single loops or many. In the modeling, and in the theory behind the
modeling, we draw a careful distinction between perceptual signals and
reference signals. There are many reasons for doing so, not the least of
which is that you can't build (program) a working model unless you draw the
distinction.
In this group, you'll often hear the phrase, "it's all perception," meaning
that what we control is all perception, and the world we experience is all
perception; the phrase does not mean that everything in a working PCT model
is represented as perception -- as perceptual signals. I think that was
what Rick was getting at, that and the idea that when we talk or write about
PCT therapy, we might want to make those distinctions as clear as possible.
Happy Thor's Day.
Tom