Naive Realism and Constructivism
Traditionally, philosophers of perception have been divided between those who believe that “what we see is what we ge”, that we directly perceive real reality, and those who claim the the reality we perceive is one we construct for ourselves. In PCT, these claims can be translated into statements about perceptual functions. The “naive realist” would argue that the perceptual function simply maps a function in Real Reality (RR) and never deviates from what is directly enforced by RR, whereas the “constructionist” claims that what we perceive is merely a projection into an apparent environment created by the perceptual function itself.
I do not think PCT lends itself to either of these positions. Intsead, it leads to the conclusion that both are partly right. While I agree with the constructionists that what we perceive to be in the environment is a projection of the forms of our perceptual functions, I also partially agree with the realists (but not the naive realists) in saying that the nature of Real Reality determines how perceptual functions evolve toward becoming better and better representations of components of real Reality.
Two Parallel Problems of Living Control
This message continues to use the Wiener “Black-Box White-Box” process as an analogy. Message 1 of this thread discussed Real Reality (RR) as analogous to a “Black Box” (BB), and to our perceptual functions as Norbert Weiner’s “White Boxes” (WBs), each of which emulates something that happens inside a Black Box. Wiener was talking as an electrical engineer who wanted to investigate what the Black Box did, given that he could not measure anything about the Black Box except the signals sent to or emitted from two sets of terminals on its surface. All Wiener’s hypothetical investigator could do was to try to create a White Box with the same sets of terminals, that generated the same outputs as the Black Box when it was presented with the same patterns of signal inputs.
Wiener’s problem maps onto two separate problems related to living control systems. One is the problem faced by a psychologist or physiologist who wants to know what processes operate within a living organism, and does so by building models that can be realized in simulations. By successive refinement, the models produce results more and more like those of the living organism in their interactions with the environment. In this first problem, the BB is the living organism and the WB is a functional model of the organism made by the investigator, a psychologist or physiologist.
The second problem, which is the one that most concerns this message, is that of the living organism that has to survive in its interactions with Real Reality (RR). The White box in this problem is the set of processes inside the organism directly concerned with the organism’s interactions with its sensors and effectors, while the “investigator” is the reorganization process(es) that modifies those interactions and builds functions that use the previously built simpler functions.
In basic PCT, these mini-WB “functions” are Elementary Control Units (ECUs), each of which consist of a Perceptual Input Function that provides the perceptual variable to be controlled, a Reference Input Function that determines how the reference value is built from higher-level output variables (if there are any), a comparator and an Output Function. The internal part of every control loop has such an ECU as its operational component. All else, at lower WB levels, is, to this ECU only communication between the perceptual function or output function and Real Reality , eventually creating a loop whose environmental feedback path passes only through RR, not PR.
Wiener’s “investigator” engineer is, in principle, capable of discovering whether the functional properties of the Black Box change over time. If they do, the WB that the engineer builds must emulate that property of the BB just as it emulates how the BB relates signals at its inputs and outputs at any defined time. Wiener simplified the general problem by specifying a procedure whereby the engineer could build up a WB of increasing complexity, changing the interconnections and even the functions of a growing network of “mini-WB” components, beginning with very simple ones that work directly with small and consistent patterns of relationships among the signals between the input and output terminals, and building on those to produce mini-WBs that perform ever more complex functions and connections that change dynamically in tune with RR.
A “complete” WB, however, would have to match these complex functions without needing to be rebuilt by an outside engineer. It would reorganize itself to change along with changes in functions and functional connectivity it can detect in RR. The reorganization process would need to be an intrinsic part of the WB.
Wiener’s hierarchic network consists of levels of mini-WBs that take their inputs from lower-level mini-WBs and send their outputs to other (or possibly the same) lower-level mini-WBs. In other words, if the engineer does not use connections within a level of mini-WBs, Wiener’s investigator reorganizes the internal structure of the WB in a way that is difficult distinguish from maturation of the Powers control hierarchy.
We cannot know whether Wiener’s work might have had any influence on Powers, but it doesn’t matter either way. What does matter is that the structural similarity allows us to map the Wiener engineering problem more exactly onto the living organism problem. If Weiner’s BB exhibited control behaviour, the network of mini-WBs would probably come to look like Bill’s hierarchic network of control units, which the psychologist investigator investigates with the objective of producing ever more faithful emulations.
As with any WB-BB emulation investigation, even though the functions of the mini-WBs and of network in which they are embedded may come to match properties of RR increasingly exactly, there is no guarantee that the mechanisms are the same in the mini-WBs as in their corresponding mini-BBs. A hierarchy of mini-WBs might be realized in software, in hardware, in mathematical equations, in hydraulic microcircuits, or what have you. Functionally it makes no difference.
What one can say, however, is that if the mini-WBs in a part of the network faithfully emulate corresponding mini-BBs in a part of the unknowable Black Box, the connections among them must also correspond to connections in that part of a network in the BB. The two networks of interconnections would be essentially identical, but only in their functionality, not in their mechanism. The bureaucratic network of industrious message-passing gnomes would serve, as would a massive parallel computer or an organic neural network.
Much of the above applies mutatis mutandis to both of the problems identified at the beginning of this message, the problem of the psychologist trying to understand the organism or that of the organism trying to survive in a Real Reality of unknowable content. Both can approach a solution to their problem only by reorganization that produces mini-WBs that better emulate “stuff that happens” in their particular BBs, and also arranges the hierarchy among these mini-WBs so that their network better allows the mini-WBs individually to do their jobs.
The rearrangement of the hierarchy of mini-WBs will be ineffective if the lower-level mini-WBs inaccurately represent the current functioning of a corresponding mini-BB. One could not live in a reality that changes its “Laws of Nature” rapidly and capriciously. Some things must be stable over many generations, others over much or all of a lifetime, if they are to support a network of interacting functions that allows the organism to construct stable low-level mini-WBs on which a useably stable functional hierarchy can be built level by level to enable complex behaviours.
So what are the “objects” we perceive?
What this all seems to imply is that we can identify in the Black Box of Real Reality only functional relationships, linkages among properties that tend to occur together in stable structural patterns or “bundles”. If this is so, why would we perceive any objects at all in our perceptual reality? Consciously, our Perceptual Reality (PR) largely consists of objects, though we also perceive some relationships among the objects. We must ask what actually constitutes an object in our conscious perception. Within the control hierarchy, the perceptual signals are not of objects. They are only scalar variables, the values of various properties of the object, as filtered by many perceptual functions.
Objects, if the Powers hierarchy of scalar control loops is correct, must be conscious constructions built from sets of perceived properties that somehow persistently “go together”. Indeed, “objects” seem very much like vector-valued perceptions, outputs of perceptual functions that produce more than scalars.
Within the Powers hierarchy, there are no vector-valued perceptions. But there are “category perceptions” that segregate perceived structures of scalar property perceptions into classes such as “tree” or “penguin”. I think it is such “perceived property” bundles that create conscious perceptions of objects. So, we ask in light of the preceding WB-BB discussion, what is a “property”. I propose that it is a name for a mini-WB that takes a particular input pattern and performs some function on them, which it distributes to other parts of the network.
Many “objects” can have the same “properties”, though at different levels, perhaps. For example. solid objects are perceived to move coherently when pushed. They have the property of “solidity”. Some solid object move as a unit more precisely than others; these have a high value of “stiffness” and a low value of “flexibility”. One can present myriads of other such examples, but in all of them the “property” defines a functional relationship between what the object does in its perceived environment when it is affected by some perceived influence from elsewhere — usually another perceived object. I think it is reasonable then to think of any object as being no more than a coherent bundle of perceived properties, the inputs to the perceptual function that creates the perception of the likeness of the object to a tree, a clock, or an eagle.
In this sense, and in this sense only, we may expect Real Reality to incorporate functional bundles resembling the property bundles of perceived objects that have reorganized into some kind of perceptual stability. In that sense, it may be not unreasonable to suggest that a perceived object is likely to have a counterpart bundle of properties in Real reality, though the constituent parts that implement the properties may be very different.
Summary of this Message 2
Reorganization in PCT suggests that, as a professor told our class 60 years ago: “When two schools of thought each claim the other is wrong, probably they are both right.” What we perceive as being in the environment is constructed by each perceptual function, but at the same time, each perceptual function is subject to the processes of reorganization, and tends over time to approximate reality ever more closely. Realism is not “Naive”, and works in tandem with constructivism to prolong the life of living control systems in a potentially hostile Real Reality environment.
There may be a future “Message 3” that extends the thread to dynamic and social environments, but no promises. Comments from the community on Messages 1 and 2 would be welcome, especially if they are rationally critical or ask reasonable questions.