# Research, Circular Causation

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/research-circular-causation/9866>\
**Category:** CSG1996\
**Created:** [September 13, 1996, 5:02am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/research-circular-causation/9866 "1996-09-13T05:02:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Marken1](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Richard\_Marken1](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Richard_Marken1)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 1996, 5:02am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/research-circular-causation/9866/1 "1996-09-13T05:02:33Z")

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[From Rick Marken (960912.2200)]

Martin Taylor 960912 11:00 --

> In fact, when the human controls accurately, almost ANY control \>system  
> that controls accurately will provide a good fit to the \>human data. It is  
> only when the human has problems that different \>simulated control systems  
> will have appreciably different fit values.

Bruce Abbott (960912.1640 EST)]

> Martin, now that you mention it, this is one of those "interesting
> 
> > points" I was going (am going?) to introduce that Simon raises \>about
> 
> artifacts in \_The sciences of the artificial\_, the book Rick \>doubts has  
> anything to say of relevance to PCT. Rick, what do you \>think: is this  
> point relevant?

The idea that "ANY control system that controls accurately will provide a  
good fit to the human data" seems to be based on the notion that good  
control is simple and that poor control is complex; good control can be  
simulated with ANY high gain controller (controlling the same perceptual  
variable as the human, of course) but poor control really separates the men  
from the boys. The output of a good controller (human and model) matches  
the disturbance; big deal. The output of a poor controller is all over the  
place; it's a good model, indeed, that can explain all the human  
controller's apparently random output variations.

One problem with this idea is this: suppose you see a person who is  
apprently controlling poorly; the controlled variable is moving all over  
the place and outputs are only roughly (negatively) correlated with the  
disturbance. The problem is that you have no idea whether the variance in  
output (and input) is a result of poor control or good control relative to  
a changing reference for the controlled variable. I gave a demonstration of  
the equivalence of these two possibilities during my talk in Wales. I  
showed a plot of cursor and handle position for a low gain control system  
and for a high gain control system controlling relative to a variable  
reference (varying as the cursor had varied for the low gain control  
system). The plots for the two systems were, of course, identical. There  
was no way to distinguish the behavior of the low gain from the high gain  
controller.

This demonstration was part of a talk about why manual control theorists --  
psychologists in the 50s and 60s who used control theory to model behavior  
-- never understood what was actually going on in these control tasks  
(control of input); a manual control theorist, thinking that input guides  
output, would have seen the apparently poor control in only one way -- as  
poor control; the idea that they might have been looking at good control  
relative to a changing reference would have never occurred to them.

I suggest that the way to compare control models is not to make behavior  
noisy but to create situations where the models make different predictions.

Avery Andrews (960913:1051 Eastern Oz Time)

> One of the cases that Sacks describes provides, I think, quite nice
> 
> > evidence for a certain amount of modelling in the human perceptual  
> > system... She found that she couldn't deal with social situations \>or
> 
> indeed almost any aspect of the outside world because people, \>cars, etc.  
> kept popping up in utterly unexpected places.

Why is this evidence for modeling in the perceptual system? I think Sacks  
had it right: the patient lost a perceptual function that computed a  
perception of motion or transitions; so she couldn't control perceptions  
that depended on the ability to detect change. I would find it very  
difficult to control my social distance from people if a person who had  
recently been "over there" was suddenly "right here".

Bruce Abbott (960912.2025 EST) --

> Is is your hypothesis that, where we disagree on an issue, it  
> must be because I don't really understand circular causation, or \>must not  
> think it's important?

No. My hypothesis is that you are controlling for the idea that PCT can  
exist comfortably in the context of conventional psychology. So far,  
everything I have said that would be a disturbance to that idea -- eg.  
"Simon has nothing to contribute to our understanding of purposeful  
behavior", "psychologists who study the causes of behavior are on the wrong  
track" -- has met with strong resistance.

> If the "causes of behavior" reside in the organism's purposes, and \>one  
> wishes to identify what those purposes are, then I don't know \>of any  
> other way to do so than to apply disturbances and observe \>how the  
> organism responds to them. Do you?

You bet. Applying disturbance and observing how the organism responds tells  
you nothing about an organism's purposes. This is just standard IV-DV  
methodology. What is missing -- the essential step -- is applying these  
disturbances to a \_hypothetical controlled variable\_. The important thing  
to watch for is \_lack\_ of effect of the disturbance.

Any disturbance is bound to have an effect on many controlled variables; so  
there will be many systems pushing back, to varying degrees, against any  
arbitrarily selected disturbance Similarly, any arbitrarily selected  
response measure is bound to reflect, to varying degrees, the "pushes" of  
the many system's acting to resist the disturbance in different ways. So  
there is bound to be at least a statistical relationship between any  
arbitrarily selected disturbance and any arbitrarily selected response.  
This is what psychologists have been looking for when they search out the  
"causes of behavior". Such relationships tell us nothing at all about any  
of the organism's purposes.

\>I would call that "studying the causes of behavior."

If you used The Test properly then I suppose you could say that you are  
looking for the "causes of behavior". But then you are conflating what you  
are doing -- looking for the purposes of behavior -- with what  
psychologists have been doing for the last 100+ years -- looking for the  
external variables that cause behavior via the organism. I think it would  
be much clearer if, when you do experiments to determine an organism's  
purposes, you call it what it is: studying the purposes of behavior.

> I think I am leaping at the word "cause" in lineal and circular \>causality  
> because you said that behavior is not caused -- a \>demonstrable fallacy.

Behavior -- controlled perceptual variables -- is not caused: it is  
controlled. There's a difference.

> Now you're trying to weasle out of it by suggesting that I'm \>somehow to  
> blame for this error.

I'm not trying to weasel out or to "blame" you for anything; I'll say it  
again if you like (though I don't recall saying it the first time).  
Behavior is \_not\_ caused. Behavior (controlled perceptions) is controlled.

Best

Rick