[From
Bjorn Simonsen (2205.09.26,14:35 EST) ]
[From
Bill Powers (2005.09.25.0840 MDT)]
From BCP
“….For
example, it is feasible to think that
the
reorganizing system senses certain types of signals in the
learned
hierarchy, independent of specific perceptions of [or]
behaviors.
Total error signal would be such a piece of information.
… There
may be intrinsic reference levels pertaining to rather
abstract
needs, such as the need for some degree of harmony or beauty
in our
perceptions, necessarily vague and general attributes."
Yes,
reading your mail and BCP again I don’t see any difference between a perception
of physiological variables and perception referring to not extinct errors when
a perception is controlled. This control can result in reorganization on all
levels.
I think I
am able to explain reorganizing better today. Thank you.
But
your comment, Bill, raise some associations within me.
If
I enter a sailboard and will teach myself how to handle it, I
perceive
some perceptions. I tumble in the sea and start again. Now
I
imagine some configurations, transitions and more and then I make it.
Why
would just imagining those perceptions allow you to handle a
sailboard?
You must learn to produce actions that alter real (that
is,
sense-based) perceptions at various levels in such a way that the
sailboard
is mastered. Imagining might lead you to realize that you
must
do certain things. You might realize that you can’t hold onto
the
mast with both hands and manage the sail at the same time. In
imagination,
you might then work out a way of using your hands that
is
feasible. But then you must learn to actually make your real-time
perceptions
of your hands behave the way you imagined them to behave,
and
at first the real perceptions do not behave that way. You will be
able
to control the real perceptions only after some reorganization.
Controlling
imagined perceptions is easy, since as soon as you
imagine
what you want, it is accomplished. But controlling real
perceptions
is not easy because you have to adjust reference signals
for
lower systems, and they have to act through the outside world to
alter
all the lower-level perceptions involved.
I think
you misunderstood my comment above. I expressed myself not very well.
My point is
that I can sit in my chair in my house and imagine how it is to master a
sailboard. It may be easy to work out a way to use hands that are feasible. But
this is just imagination with none reorganizing.
When I
imagine the same on the sailboard in open sea, copies of imagined perceptions
travels to higher levels and initiates new outputs and new loops. Reorganizing.
And my
point, after your mail, is that imaginations put into real time may provoke
intrinsic signals from perceptions of not extinct errors when I train myself on
the sailboard.
Imagination
may via not extinct errors result in reorganization. Is that wrong?
This
brings me to your objections to terms like “right” and
“wrong.”
I
think you’re confusing different ways of using these words. If you
say
that it’s wrong to kill someone, you’re describing your own
preference,
and recommending that others adopt the same preference.
But
if you say it’s wrong to shoot someone in the head and expect
them
to live, you’re making a prediction: you’re
saying that in your
experience,
almost everyone who is shot in the head will die, so
saying
they will live is wrong. It’s not morally wrong, but factually
wrong,
and you can cite evidence to show it’s wrong.
Maybe you
are right, but aren’t you just talking about controlling perceptions on
different levels?
If I say
it is wrong to kill someone and will form a group of people thinking the same.
Then I or we control our perceptions at the System concept level.
If I say
it’s wrong to shoot someone in the head and expect them to live, I control my
perceptions at the Relationship level (I think).
It’s
in this second meaning that we can say perceptions or imaginings
can
be right or wrong. If you imagine shooting someone in the head
and
seeing that person walk away alive, your imagination is
incorrect.
If you actually try this, you will most probably discover
the
perceptions you imagined were incorrect – they don’t happen. If
you
actually perceive this happening rather than imagining it, you
should
seriously wonder if there is something wrong with your
perceptual
input functions, as you would do if you actually saw a
lady
being sawed in half.
In what you
call the second meaning, perceptions are controlled on lower levels, not
logical levels.
Of course
there are perceptions we can’t bring to our reference values. There are many,
many of them. Some times this results in reorganization. Some times we dye before
reorganization is effective (BCP).
I think
it is more PCT-ish if we say that it is difficulty to bring our perceptions to
the reference level than saying that some perceptions are wrong.
Let me
name another example. Mr: A controls his perceptions when he talks with Mr. B
standing next to him. 100 people standing around Mr. A can’t see nor hear Mr.
B. They say there is something wrong with Mr. A’s perceptual input functions.
They think as Aaron T. Beck in his "Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional
Disorders” and say “me doctor, you patient” and they are the one who
shall do the correcting.
I agree
with Martin when he say that PCT shows the way out of (my words) the fog of philosophy when we say that
people control their perceptions and don’t say that people have wrong
perceptions.
This
gets more complicated when you imagine things that do not exist
even
when not being imagined – when you perceive them using your
senses.
I used the example of the taste of lemonade in B:CP. There is
a
certain mixture of oils, acids, and sugars that tastes “just right”
to
you. But these oils, acids, and sugars do not form some new
chemical
compound called “lemonade.” They simply exist in the same
volume,
stimulating different sensory nerves. Your brain then
constructs
a perception you call “lemonade” by applying a certain
input
function to the signals coming from the individual sensory
nerves.
One state of this perception is the one you prefer. That’s
the
“right” taste. If someone puts too much or too little sugar in
the
liquid, you get the “wrong” taste.
Brewing
my lemonade, I will prefer to say that I control the taste of my lemonade. Of
course it takes some time and of course I meantime perceive tastes referring to
not extinct errors.
My point
is that I control my perceptions, I don’t have a wrong perception until it
reaches the reference level.
…………….There
is no such
thing
as an objective taste; tastes are sensations manufactured by
perceptual
input functions of second order as they receive
first-order
intensity signals.
Yes I
agree from the time I read BCP first time in 1998.
The
point of all this is that you have to distinguish between “right”
as a moral judgement, “right” as a perception matching a
reference
level.
and “right” as a prediction of a sense-based experience. There
are eight combinations of these three kinds of right/wrong judgments,
and
each of them applies in some situation. Shooting someone in the
head
and killing them is morally wrong (I say); I perceive myself as
not
shooting anyone, and that is what I consider the right value of
that
perception; it is right to say that shooting people in the head
will kill
them (even if one or two might live). So that combination
is
wrong-right-right, or 011.
I
understand what you say, but I don’t see the profit using the concepts “right”
and “wrong”. If you perceive yourself as not shooting anyone, that’s the way you
perceive yourself. If another person perceives himself as a gunner (shooting
terrorists is morally right (he says)), he controls other perceptions than you.
So is the
world.
I
understand that it would be problematic for people controlling opposite perceptions
to establish social contact. But that is another problem. PCT can teach them
how to handle conflicts.
When
we say that some theories are more correct than others, what we
mean
is that some theories are better at predicting what we will
experience
when we actually do something or observe something being
done.
Presumably, there is a real world out there, and theories that
predict
experiences more accurately than others do are probably, in
some
way, closer to being correct descriptions of the real world. We
can’t
prove that, of course, but it has a logical appeal.
Yes I
know you prefer classical mechanic before Quantum mechanics.
The way I
see it is that theories are our meanings about the extern world. I have my
theories and you and other people have your/their theories. When we control our
perceptions, the theories are references in our systems. Some of us control
perceptions referring to extinct error. Other people control perceptions
referring to not extinct errors. They sometimes reorganize, they sometimes die
or they some times live a conflicted life. Both parts control their perceptions
as well as they can. Which prise do we obtain by using the concepts “right” and
“wrong”? What is wrong today is maybe right tomorrow.
More generally,
there is always some degree of
difference
between what is predicted in imagination or by calculation
(calculation being systematic imagination) and what is then
experienced,
If the difference is small, we say the prediction, or
the
means we used to obtain the prediction, is correct. If it’s
large,
we say it’s incorrect. “Small” and “large” allow some
leeway
for
accepting less than perfect predictions, and rejecting
predictions
that to some trivial degree predict correctly (as for
hypotheses
that” explain" 10% of the variance).
I liked
this section better. Here you talk about differences and that is an adequate
concept for me.
I
hope this rather long response clarifies some matters rather than
making
them more confusing.
Yes I appreciated
your long response. I understand very well what you say and I can live with
“right” and “wrong”, “correct” and “incorrect”. But I become enthusiastic over
the way PCT/HPCT explains why people do as they do. They control their
perceptions. They neither control my perceptions nor the doctor’s perceptions.
They are on their way. Why shall we emphasize that their perceptions are wrong?
I hope
you understand that my repugnance against those adjectives is rooted in the way
I understand PCT. (Maybe that’s the problem)
bjorn
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