[From Rick Marken (930929.1400)]
Hal Pepinsky (930929) says:
I've explained that I recently used
an entire monograph to describe the model I'm presenting.
Meanwhile, I try to
describe the model in various ways, in bits and pieces,
as people ask me about particulars.
OK. Here's a person (me) asking about a particular;
could you give me a one paragraph overview of your
_particular_ model of human nature. I can give you
such an overview of PCT; I know that such an overview
of ANY model would leave out a lot of important details
but such an overview of your model would at least give
me a ballpark notion of what in the world you're talking
about when you talk about this "other model" of yours.
At the moment I have no idea at all what your model
of people is. All I know is what it's not --violent.
Here is a one paragraph description of PCT: could I
get a similar description of your model?
···
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Description of the PCT model:
PCT is a model of control: the ability to stabilize
variables in an environment of continuously-acting de-
stabilizing influences. The process of control, when
carried out by living organisms, has always been referred
to as _purpose_. So PCT is a model of purposful behavior.
The model hypothesizes functional relationships between
components inside and outside of the organism that give
rise to the observed phenomenon of control. According
to the model, controlled environmental variables are
represented as neural (perceptual) signals that are
continuously compared to other neural (reference) signals
which originate inside the organism's nervous system.
The result of the comparison is a continuously changing
error signal whose amplified effects influence (via the
external environment and the perceptual signal) the error
signal itself; there is a closed loop of functional
relationships in the model. When this loop is dynamically
stable, the perceptual representation of the controlled
environmental variable is kept NEARLY equal to the
reference signal: purposeful behavior is the control
of perceptual variables. In order to control perception,
the outputs of the model are continuously opposing
disturbances to the controlled environmental variable,
giving purposeful behavior the appearance of being a
response to stimulus inputs (disturbances). Since
the organism itself is the source of the reference signal
value that specifies the value of the perceptual signal,
PCT describes a system that is autonomous in the sense that
it guides -- and is not guided by -- what happens to itself.
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You can use two or three times the space if you like; I
don't think anyone on CSG-L would mind.
Best
Rick