[From Rick Marken (930813.1730)]
I saw Gary's note about the great deluge so I am reposting my
post from yesterday, which was not ACKed. I also saw a note
from Tom Hancock -- Tom, I have your last post at work and
I will try to write some comments on it next week (I'll be
out of town on monday and tuesday).
···
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[From Rick Marken (930812.1900)]
Dag Forssell (930808 1705) --
You have a mountain of evidence that (most) life scientists do NOT
want to understand how the phenomenon of behavior works, but choose
to ignore the results of the tests you have administered.
I don't think that the evidence I have (which consists mainly of reviews
of my papers) shows that life scientists "do NOT want to understand how
the phenomenon of behavior works". I think it shows that these scentists
want to perceive behavior in a particular way -- a way that happens to
be incompatible with the basic tenets of PCT. For example, in my papers
on operant control (the "E. coli" series) I tried to show that stimuli
(discriminative or reinforcing) are controlled BY behavior; they do not
control (guide, select) behavior. The reviewers (life scientists all)
had a hard time understanding the experiments and the model because
they simply could not conceive of the idea that behavior controls
stimuli. They couldn't even SAY it! Nearly all reviewers, at some point in
the review, would say something about the control exerted by the stimuli
or about my not having identified the "controlling stimuli", etc. I think
it is very unfair to say that these scientists do not want to understand
behavior. I think they are simply controlling for things (like the
idea that stimuli or perceptions guide behavior or the idea that consequences
select responses, etc) that are incompatible with understanding what
is happening in front of their eyes. The experiments I do are very
informative; and, as we all know, control systems are extremely good
at filtering out information (disturbances).
But I don't want to write off these scientists. My goal is to get them
to look at what they are doing from a higher level -- I want them to
see that they don't need to control for perceiving stimuli or
reinforcements as the cause of behavior in order to achieve their
higher level goal (which is probably to be what they perceive as
"scientific"). The fact that life scientists have not yet gone up
a level "en masse" suggests to me that I haven't been doing my
job as well as I could. I need to do experiments and present them in
a way that makes it easier for life scientists to see what they are
missing by not even trying to set their "theory of behavior" reference
level to "control of perception" instead of "cause-effect".
My goal is really not to "force" life scientists to believe in PCT
(though I imagine that it may seem so sometimes -- dealing with human
control systems that are just as smart -- smarter even -- than yourself
can be quite frustrating). My goal is to direct their consciousness "up a
level"; I just want life scientists to try the PCT reference signal on
for size (and really try it -- which requires LEARNING it -- not just
try verbal agreement of the Carver and Scheier variety). A life
scientist who has tried PCT -- really tried it -- never turns back.
I think it is true that people (like Tom and I) who have gotten into
PCT on their own have done so as a result of reorganization aimed at
solving some persistent "problem" (in my case, it was the problem of
understanding what's going on when people "control" human behavior).
But I can't believe that you have to wait until lots of life scientists
have a group intellectual crisis before you can start trying to pro-
mulgate a profound new scientific approach to understanding behavior.
I'll buy the idea that I might be able to do the science and the pro-
mulgation thereof better, but I'm not going to stop doing either -- with
life scientists as my main (if often antagonistic and disinterested)
audience.
Best
Rick