From[Bill Williams 31 May 2004 4:30 PM CST]
From [Kenny Kitzke (2004.05.31)]
<Bill Williams 29 May 2004 9:30 PM CST>
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
John Lennon (1940-1980)
<Kenny, this is a nice quote, profound too.>
What we perceive as "reality" seems to have as much to do with what we
imagine as what we "experience."
Both I think are involved. And, I think it is a mistake to neglect that
we have a capacity for immagination.
Is this profound? Well, it may be, especially to a PCTer. I think a
weakness of PCT is an emphasis on what we sense of the environment as input >that leads to action. As Abrams has repeatedly opined, PCT's limited focus >on imagination, emotions, feelings and even memory in the model (which is so >"real" to humans and their own behavior) may limit the widespread acceptance >of PCT by "professional" psychologists.
You might be right. I continue to think that the slogan, "Behavior is the control of perception." has its uses. However, despite what he claims Bill Powers doesn't stick to this slogan himself. He allows himself to distinguish between illusions and real perceptions. Maybe Bill Powers' problem is that he has thought too much by himself. Thinking by one's self without the involvement and correction of other people can lead to peculiar results. The current dispute about what is "really real" might have the potential for constructive results, but I don't see Bill Powers having any willingness to participating in creating a more adaquate sophistologic retoric in which to discuss applying control theory to human experience.
<When I said that, "It has been a long time since I thought there was any
point to arguments about what is really real and how could we know it." >>What I
meant to communicate was my dismay concerning Bill Powers' monolog. He isn't
conducting a dialog. What he said in his post to Bruce Nevin, doesn't, if I >>to
some extent understand Bruce Nevin's thinking, have much to do with the merits
of Bruce's position. Rather, what Bill is doing is repeating a classic
philosophic argument-- it began with Plato and his cave, and Kant gave it an
enourmous elaboration. But, the basic argument is simple enough, we can't "know"
reality, all we can "know" is what we perceive.>
What Plato and Powers thinks or argues or philosophizes about are just inputs
for us.
Not, even really inputs unless we choose to attend to them.
We can compare them to our own perceptions and accept or reject
them. I like this autonomy, don't you?
Sure. The parting of the ways comes when Powers makes a decision to go back the notion of an "individual." The people we become is a result of _both_ the biological specimens we are, and the cultural context in which we mature. As I understand it, Powers is rejecting what Martin Taylor calls "a fact" that the context of life is filled with purposeful agreements. As a cultural theorist Bill Powers is an atomist. Only the "individuals" in the culture are real, the heritage of agreements that the specimens have arrived at doesn't appear to meet his criteria for reality.
<This is one way of conceiving of knowledge. Marx isn't neccesarily my
favorate philosopher, but he expressed a more modern conception of science >when he
said, that the point isn't so much to understand the world as to change it.
If you adopt this sort of attitude then the questions about the "really >>real"
and how do we know the "really real" go away, and in their place knowledge is
defined in terms of an understanding of how things work. The understanding of
how things work drops the pretense of knowing about the "really real" and
considers instead what is going on. Knowledge then becomes an understanding of
what is going on, and this understanding is of a character that allows you to
control what is going on. If you can control what is going on then in modern
terms this is evidence that you understand what is gong on. And, this
understanding takes the place of the older conception of knowledge about the "really
real." Bruce may have some interest in the "really real" but for my part, I
regard such questions as a completely outdated way of approaching a methodological
question about how we think concerning social theory. Social theory in my view
should be a field of inquiry that is concerned with solving everyday
problems-- such as excessive unemployment, a wasteful health care system, a >>failing
school system.>
My assesment of the "knowledge" today concerning the economy, health care or
public schools shows that no one seems to know very much. Very archaic.
Where are the Platos of today when we need one?
Where for that matter is Napoleon?
<So, when I think about how best to organize inquiry so as to provide methods
to use in solving these problems what I am concerned with is not the problem
of what is "really real" and how can we know it, but rather what conceptions
should I select in order to effectively organize the development of solutions
to social problems. Mine is a pragmatic attitude which discards both sides of
the classical philosophic aproach.>
I don't know that much about pragmatism (even being an engineer), but it
strikes me as rather unsophisticated. 
I would prefer to describe pragmatism as being "unpretentious." And, consider from some angles being "unpretentious" might be considered a higher form of sophistication.
The basic idea is that if you have a problem, and most people perceive that they have some problem or other, then what you might want to do is pay attention to figuring out how to solve the problem.
<The two sides of the classic European approach to experience are realism or
materialism and idealism. Neither side in this family arguement in European
thought was directly intended to be a problem orriented or problem solving
methodology. Basicly, I think that these two sides of what is called modern
european philsophy-- modern being post 16th century or so, are the result of
translating an earlier era's question -- "How can we know God?" into a developing
more secular world associated with the rise of industry and commerce in the half
dozen centuries in Europe. In the older theological pattern of thought, our
problems would be solved if only we could know God.>
The bait is tempting, but I stand silent.
I genuinely was not baiting you. I think there is something wrong in the way this argument is constructed, rather than there neccesarily being a neccesary connection between the argument and a Christian belief. Maybe, I should have put this disclaimer at the head of the post rather that as a trailer.
<In a more secular age the same form of argumentation was retained, but the
content shifted. Implicitly the "modern" european philophers assumed that if
we only know what reality was really like, then we would be in a position to
organize our lives properly. In doing so "modern" philosphers thought that they
were doing something entirely different, asking quite different questions
than had the earlier theologians. And, the "moderns" were doing some things
differently, their attention had shifted to some extent from the sort of things
that had occupied the theologians. No one took the question of how many angels
could dance on a pinhead seriously anymore. But, Kant still thought that
animals were machines built by god. Kant didn't think biology could ever be a
science in the same way that physics, with Newton and all, had become a science.
And, it took a couple hundred years for biology to become-- molecular biology
-- a science that is comparable to physics. Molecular biologists don't as a
part of their research ask, the sort of question that Kant was asking when he
argued that biology could never be a science-- working biologists aren't during
working hours concerned about what life "really" is. Perhaps they should, but
what they do now is instead to try and find out how in causal terms biological
things work.>
One can spend a lifetime trying to figure out how things work. It is human
nature, I suppose, to be inquisitive. The same thing applies to how things
came about and what the future will be. Seems to me these are meaningful
endeavors, at least to those who have such reference goals in life.
I would agree.
<The questions about what life really is just go away. This has the side
effect of limiting the biologist interest in fundamental theory so that work in
the biological sciences is disorganized, and probably there is quite a bit of
wasted effort that could be avoided if more effort were put into developing a
theoretic side to biology. But, on the whole I think it is a good thing to
discard the questions about what is really real-- especially if what you genuinely
what to do is make some changes that will make your life better.>
If you can't separate what is real from what is imagined, I would think that
life would always be pretty confusing and often frustrating.
I would agree. But, it isn't as if no one has thought about this stuff before. However, the way that Bill Powers is approaching this question is one that has some recognized defects. The notion of individualism has been around for a long time. It it a notion that orthodox economics has formalized for more than a century. The result at least according to what some people concluded was that the conception of individualism-- which had little or no place for the notion of a social heritage -- was inconsistent. You couldn't run a market without police. And, Rick to the contrary not everyone will make a good police officer. A police officer has to have reference levels that are not entirely self-interested. Anyway, the notion of inividualism is such an impoverished conception of what it means to be a human being that you can't such much as run a market in terms of individualisms conception of what it means to be a person. There really are human communities. They aren't causal agency in the way some sociologists once thought of culture, but that doesn't make this aspect of human experience less real than perceptions are real. What I probably ought to have said, was Bill Powers approach to defining what is really real, is one that is deficient. I don't really think that this has much to do with control theory. Rather Bill Powers not having had sufficient training to think about these issues in a consistent or productive way. While Bill Powers may think that what he is saying makes a lot of sense, other people find it rather strange.
ocusing on how things work seems to me to be a better approach than one
based upon the classic tradition in theology and 17th century philosophy. But,
Bill is insistent upon approaching things from the same starting point and
treading down the same path as the Medievel theologians used when they asked, "How
can we know God?" It really is an attempt to employ a very personalized
approach to "knowing" And, there is an added difficulty if you introduce the
assumption that there is only one God that can be known. It is a system that is
well known for generating intense conflict. Not, only has this been the
experience when the context is theology, but when the same form of question was used
in a secular domain, an assumption that the problem of knowledge was defined
in terms of determining what was "really real" combined with the assumption
that there could be only one reality that was genuine continued to generate
intense conflicts.>
I am becoming sorry I wrote the post. This is way too much philosophy for
me---and too much theology. Conflicts indeed, even to the death.
I would rather try and think these things out rather than fight them out.
<It also generated a lot economic and technological advancement. War has
provided the best market anyone has ever seen. The problem now is that if we
continue to approach life in general while employing a secularized form of the
"How can we know god?" question and a secularized monothesism the result would be
quite destructive. The source of the destructiveness of this approach has
its source in a perception that any differences between people with regard to
which God is the true god when it is imbedded in the "How can we know God?" is
a difference that is a threat. A threat to the belief that the one's own
God is the true god. And, even the question surrounding "How can one know God?"
becomes a pretext for an argument that "My way of knowing God is the only
true way to know the true god. All the other ways of knowing god are obviously
faulty and the different god is a fraud.>
I have been in two ONE and ONLY true Churches during my life. I do not want
to strike out!
This can get carried to comic and tragic extremes! From the standpoint of a somewhat sympathetic assessment of Christianity I don't think this aspect is neccesarily true of all expressions of Christianity. But, it may be something to watch out for.
<When this style of argumentation got shifted into secular terms it generated
the same conflicts, only this time the conflict was over issues about
capitalism and for a while communism, and facism. The history of Faicism is by the
way a topic well worth studying for what it discloses about the effects of
this idea when taken rather literally and applied, or at least attempted to be
applied, consistently to an entire community.>
It seems us humans can fight over almost anything: theology, science,
psychology, religion, economics, oil and even baseball! Darn human nature.
And Damn Darwin.
And,
PCT/HPCT don't seem to diminish the fighting. It is only one more thing to >fight about.
However, just as I wouldn't condemn all of Christianity because some Chruches do silly, or even vicious things, just because there has been conflict on the CSGnet doesn't, in my view imply that control theory need be a contensious subject. Aside from one problem that we had early on, the ECACS Forum discussions have been free from the sort of _ad homien_ disputes that characterize CSGnet where seeming no one understands or respects people that the do not agree with.
<Reviewing the history of the idea that the primary questions should be "What
is really real" some people have gotten the idea that it is a unfortunate
and even dangerous idea.
What can happen as a result of this style of thought is that a useful idea
such as the slogan that behavior is the control of perception can be translated
in a ultimate truth. The slogan has it uses. Control theory in the 1950's
was often or even almost always thought of as an input-output system, and thus
assimilated to behaviorism. "Behavior is the control of perception." Is an
effective way of countering behaviorisms mistakes. However, if the slogan which
is a somewhat misleading way of describing behavior is made into an ultimate
truth, then the result is that an argument is generated that since all we can
know is what we perceive we can never "really know" whether people can come to
an agreement. In a curious inversion this version of "really knowing" is held
should over rule what "we know" from everyday experience in which people do
come to reach agreements and even act upon these agreements.>
IMHO, Bill Powers has been reasonably humble in what his doctrine on behavior
can and can't seem to accomplish in and between human beings. I think he has
admitted how much work is left to do to really understand how real behavior
really works. 8-))
In my equally IMHO, while Bill Powers may appear to be "reasonably humble" he is has been dogmatic in an areas in which he knows too little about the issues involved to hold any opinion that is worth paying attention to.
<Basically the question of what is "really real" can in some circumstances
get in the way of doing things that are useful in an everyday sense of useful.>
It can. But, not comprehending what is really real could too, no?
Sure. However, the way this question got set up in Western thought, it is a question that can not be answered. And, as a result if you are not aware of the history of how this pattern of thought developed, you are likely to go down the sort of path that Powers has taken and develop a system of thought that makes characteristic mistakes-- such as this notion of the individual. It is like a novice chess player making mistakes that are readily recognizable if you know a bit more about the game. Certain moves have consequences. Knowledge of this history of the game includes a knowledge about where certain moves lead. Bill Powers is determined to try out this stuff from scratch, and pay no attention what has happened in the past when the ideas were applied.
<Kenney says that,
My spirit is heavy this Memorial Day weekend recalling all those who went
away to war; but did not return. For what reality did they die? So we could
ponder "what is really real?"
<I think that rather than "ponder[ing] "what is really real?" I would rather
reflect upon what is important to us and why we hold such things to be
important.>
I can't argue with that, however, knowing what is really real can be
important to some folks.
Ok. Sure it is, in some sense. But, not in the way that Powers is approaching the issue.
<Developing a sense of contiuity with the past is one way of coming to
conclusions about what is genuinely important. However such conclusions may be in
error and lead to mistakes in the future.>
Ain't that the truth!
<<I think I will hang my 4 x 8 American flag up on the carriage house. Those
who drive by this weekend will see what I did. But, will any know my
purpose?>>
<I for one "don't know" your purpose. I could make a guess that would be to
some extent an informed guess.
Will any know my perception of reality?>
My point precisely. You can't be certain without some testing. So why are
you so concerned about what Bill Powers intends based on what he thinks and
says?
It isn't so much that I am concerned with what Bill Powers thinks. Rather I am very much concerned that control theory not be identified with a mistake that Bill Powers is making-- that is that his version of control theory PCT, or HPCT -- neccesarily means that control theory implies individualism.
Seems to me to be one of the valuable/important findings of PCT to "let it
be" (the John Lennon connection revisited).
I think John may have gotten somethings wrong. I think Bill Powers has this thing about individualism wrong. I think some other people have it right. I think it may be important not to let an impression develop that Bill Powers' conception of conrol theory is neccesarily the only possible conception or even the correct conception.
<It depends upon whether you have an opportunity to communicate with people
driving by. To the extent to which you can communicate your perception of
reality to them then they would "know" about your perception.>
No one has stopped to ask me. Nor, have I waved down the cars to ask them if
they want to know my intention. I might get a punch in the face or ran over
with their SUV!
You could be right. But, then those are the risks you take when you attempt to communicate.
<Know can be a slipry word. It can mean different things. The word "know"
can be used to argue that we are really all alone. And, people can attempt to
convince us that we are "really" all alone. But,then there is the joke, about
the solipicist who was puzzled by why everyone wasn't a solipicist. I think that
we might agree that there is something wrong with such arguments. Or, at
least I agree with some people who find that there is something wrong about such
arguments.
Now, having said all this, I hope you won't view what I have said as an
attack upon Christianity. What I have criticized is a particular form of
scholasticism that has often been assoicated with Christianity. I think you might find
in the New Testament a version of Christianity that doesn't depend upon the
argument I am criticizing.>
I have attacked Christianity quite often myself. It hasn't changed the real
world much. Nor would your attack, even if it was one. Reality includes
things unseen and unreproducible, as least my thoughts are like that.
If your reality includes "things unseen" then you are not in the "PCT boat." Neither am I, but for perhaps different reasons.
Some Memorial Day! It has rained out my tennis match and dampened my spirit
even more than my flag. Darn, can I control the rain, or the sun? How about
playing tennis with an umbrella and rain boots? Can you imagine that?
I don't know about playing tennis, but I do remember skiing when it was snowing.
My opponent could not when I suggested that. He just laughed.
Maybe he knows something you don't know. About tennis that is.
But, maybe we could learn from you friend. When Bill Powers comes out with silly ideas maybe we should just laugh.
Bill Williams
