from Kent McClelland (2017.07.05)
re [Eetu Pikkarainen 2017-07-04] and Boris Hartman’s reply on 2017.07.05
It’s an interesting question how best to describe what happens to the portions of the physical environment that correspond to a controlled perceptual variable and which are affected by the physical actions of the person controlling the perception.
I’ve generally used the term “stabilized�, because, unlike Rick Marken, I think that in a perceptual control process the term “controlled� should be reserved for what happens to the perceptual variable and not to the corresponding environmental variable. Furthermore, it seems to me that what most often happens to the environmental variable is that the person tries to eliminate unwanted variation in the physical variable in order to keep the perception controlled. Thus, the physical actions to counteract disturbances that affect the perceptual variable tend also to reduce the variation in the physical variable, which sounds like stabilization to me. (Of course, Rick would prefer to call it control.)
However, things may be not quite so simple as I’ve just described. As Eetu notes in his post, the stabilization of the physical variable may sometimes look to an observer like destabilization, as when the perception controlled is one of physical movement, and the error eliminated in the process of controlling the perception is the difference between the intended movement and the perceived movement (say, of feet walking or fingers writing, as Eetu suggests). I guess I would describe this kind of effect as the “dynamic stabilization� of a pattern of movement. Or, as Eetu suggests, you might call it a matter of “adjustment� of the physical environment, including one’s own physical body, in the service of controlling one’s perceptions.
Things get even more complicated when you consider actions that are intentionally violent. In everyday life we are always, of course, controlling perceptions at many different perceptual levels all at once. When there is physical stability—that iss, stability of the parts of the environment that correspond to our low-level perceptions—it’s generally useful to us for controlling our higher-level perceptions. Extreme variations in heat or cold, for example, as is happening outside on this hot day in Iowa, it make it hard for a person to get anything else done. Luckily, I’m still able to pursue my higher-level goals today in spite of the heat, because I an fortunate to have a stabilized physical environment inside my house, with the air conditioner chugging away, making it possible for me to do more today than just try to stay physically cool. My point is that stability in the physical variables that correspond to our lower-level perceptions gives us a solid platform, as it were, for controlling our higher-level perceptions.
Getting back to violence: We describe actions as violent when one person intentionally destabilizes the environmental variables that correspond to another person’s controlled perceptions. The most extreme kind of violence, of course, is destruction of the other person’s physical body by killing the person, immediately ending the victim's perceptual control of anything at all. But when a person beats another person up or vandalizes the other person’s home, we also describe that as violence. In all of such cases of violence, the intention of the perpetrator is not to stabilize some portion of the physical environment but to damage or destroy it, making it unusable by the victim to control the perceptions that had previously been supported by that aspect of the physical environment. Perpetrators of violence are apparently able to control higher-level perceptions of their own by means of actions that inflict severe disturbances on the physical environment.
In violent actions, then, “stabilization� doesn’t quite describe what’s going on. “Adjustment� also seems a little tame for it. Other words I’ve sometimes used to describe what is happening, such as “modification� or “manipulation� of the environment, may also be inadequate. To use the word “control� seems even more far-fetched to me, when we’re describing what happens to an environmental variable corresponding to a perpetrator’s perceptual variable. The perpetrator is intentionally messing things up!
Anyhow, I don’t think there’s a perfect PCT description for what happens to the corresponding environmental variable in every case, but I do think it’s important to pay attention to what is happening in a perceptual controller's environment as well as what is happening in the perceptual controller's head.
Kent
Dear Boris
Just a quick reply. I agree that stabilizing is often a good term. But there are at least two problems that Martin has noted. 1. All output does not stabilize but rather destabilize, like feet in walking or fingers in writing. 2. Also stabilizing like control mainly takes place inside as stabilizing the relationship between perceptions and error.
If you think that adjusting is too much a synonym for control then I have to contend myself just to "affecting".Eetu
(Lähetetty kännykästä / Sent from mobile)
Boris Hartman <<mailto:boris.hartman@masicom.net>boris.hartman@masicom.net> kirjoitti 5.7.2017 kello 14.26:
Dear Eetu,
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2017 9:50 PM
To: <mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: VS: Conflict (was ... long live William T. Powers
[Eetu Pikkarainen 2017-07-04]
···
On Jul 5, 2017, at 10:26 AM, Eetu Pikkarainen <<mailto:eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi>eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi> wrote:
From: Eetu Pikkarainen [<mailto:eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi>mailto:eetu.pikkarainen@oulu.fi]
[snip]