Response to Dag Forssell (4.23.93)
From Ken Hacker [930427]
Dag, you do a nice job of clarifying the closed loop of causality described
by PCT. Thank you. But, please notice that PCT authors use causality
in other senses, while staunchly blasting everyone else for referrring to
causes of behaviors, feelings, actions, etc. etc. Two examples:
Ex. #1: Bill Powers (April 22, 93) says, "I am responsible for what I
cause, as rain is responsbible for the ground getting wet." This makes
the case better than anything I can say; we think and speak in terms of
causes all day long, no matter what field we are in. We can deny it, but
we do it. Powers' statement shows how humans, even scientists studying
perceptual control, use causality figuratively and literally.
Ex. #2: Rick Marken (April 24, 93) says, "Bosnia is an example of a very
common problem [sounds like social science talk to me -kh] in human
interaction --bullying. This occurs when a stronger control system
[what is a stronger control system??? --kh] has goals whose achievement seems
to be based on hurting, displacing, humiliating, or eliminating weaker
control systems." This just might be the mother of all PCT contradictions!
Marken is saying that a human can hurt another; hurting involves causing
pain -- as causal as you can get. Or is he now going to say that no, hurting
is felt only from within the hurtee? Hitler might make that argument...
He says that humans can displace others; displacing involves forced movement,
and maybe coerced movement. Any causation there as when U.S. bombers
"displaced" or "relocated" Vietnamese peasants by bombing their huts? Or
were the Vietnamese simply responding to internal signals?
Marken says that humans humiliate other humans; does this mean that mortifying
someone is possibly the result of the act of mortification?
And of course, he says that control systems can eliminate other control
systems. Does this maybe hint the removal of something used by another
system or the other system itself causes something?
Dag, how much of the Powers' book I have read or not read is a red herring.
You can either deal with my questions point by point or you cannot. If I
read back every technical point in the book to you, that does not mean that
I accept them. If you think that package approvals are valid, consider the
fact that I can lump everything in the book in many different ways. One,
I can say, yes it is IT (like Ehrhard once claimed about his Truth). Two,
I can throw up my arms and say, ok, done, it's all a croque. Either way is
probably wrong.
I do not believe that theories about human behavior are totally true or
totally false. I agree with Chomsky that the human brain has a strong
handicap understanding itself and we are fearful of facing the possibility
that we may never fully comprehend it. I think that theories of human
behavior (at least for the next 50 years) will either be useful or not
useful. None will replace all others. PCT, whether used by sociologists,
engineers, psychology majors, or communication scientists, has certain
utilities which cannot be discounted. I think that the main contributions,
at this point in time, are for explaining perception, perception-behavior
connections, individual-level behavior, and problems with individual-level
behaviors (such as self-defeating behaviors). For social and large systems
behaviors, the theory falls short. If you do not believe this, look at the
recent attempts to use PCT to explain the situation in Bosnia. My God, I
can find more insight watching Crossfire on CNN and I know that must sound
insulting, but it's true. Here is why Rick Marken, for example, will never
receive a phone call from President Clinton to serve in foreign policy
planning. Marken's analysis of the crisis is something like this: Living
systems are working agains other living systems. Each systems has
reference signals. Some are good and some are bad. Maybe the good should
bomb the bad. What is happening here in terms of application? This, my
friends is why you are gnashing teeth about journal rejections. You
excoriate every discipline in sight and then dont offer them any knowledge
that they believe they can produce with extant perspectives and methods.
Now, personally, I believe that this can change. But, face it, you aren't
there yet. For societal and international problems, PCT is not going to
say anything new because PCT is not accounting (I mean accounting, not
transforming) for history, power struggles, political forces, ideologies,
cultures, and other collective and social formations which cannot be
explained by singular or additive accounts of individual-level behaviors.
Systems level phenomena like the crisis in Bosnia requires and understanding
of history and culture just to get started in explaining in what is going
on. Why? Yes, in part because individuals are getting reference signals
from history and culture, but also because social systems have systemic-level
structures which constrain what individuals can do. Those must be analyzed
in terms of cultures, systems, struggles, etc.
Before we start bombing (or incessantly criticizing) anyone, perhaps we
should think about the multiple consequences that are likely to follow.
KEN