[From Dick Robertson, 2001.0419.0400CDT]
It is 4 am. I haven't been able to get back to sleep for a couple of hours.
I have so many error signals floating through my consciousness pertaining to
posts on CSGnet from the last few days that I guess I better get them out of my
head on to the keyboard.
I have been feeling increasingly sad, over the last couple of years actually,
about what has seemed to me to be a kind of occupation of the net by verbal
duels that, although they usually began with some attempt to refine genuinely
interesting points, would often deteriorate into ad hominem attacks that seemed
more like grade school "king of the hill" contests than anything else. I admit
that at first I found many of these interchanges somewhat amusing, and since I
wasn't going to put myself in the line of fire, I could indulge myself in the
myth that of course nobody would take it personally. My clinical judgment
refuted this but I usually couldn't think of anything useful to encourage
greater objectivity. I did attempt that now and then.
But as I reflect on it all now I realize a couple of things I didn't clarify
for myself earlier. I was lurking for two kinds of intellectual treasures
(besides the occasional entertainment I noted above): first, the experiments
and demos from Bill and Rick Marken and earlier on from Tom Bourbon and his
students and a few others--you know who they are. Second the excited and
exciting ventures into applications by David Goldstein, Tim Carey, the various
theses and experimental ventures: Thalhammer, Christensen, Jeff (sorry, last
name eludes me for the moment) and many more too numerous for my old brain to
recall quickly. But, I realize only now that -- unless you were specializing
in the same topic as the contributor, and thus a cooperating competitor, in the
form typical of modern science specialization -- I could only give a momentary
comment and appreciation before going back to my own interests. I hope all
of you who are tuned into this are continuing what you were doing, and that you
bring the rest of us up to date from time to time.
But, in any case I continue to hold my view that there is something about email
that conduces to playing "king of the hill" in the 5 to 10 minutes that it
takes to dash off a post more readily than to the lengthier and more thought
out discussion that one would do in the older forms of scientific
communication.
I am now going to proceed with my reply to Bruce Gregory in what I hope is a
more thoughtout comment -- and hopefully not engage in playing king of the
hill.
Bruce Gregory wrote:
[From Bruce Gregory (2001.0418.1157) & (2001.0418.1510)]
Rather than engaging in unsupported speculations on the motives of those
who post on CSGnet,...
I, for one, am unwilling to agree that psychological barriers prevent
people from understanding PCT. PCT is, by almost any standard, an
exceedingly simple model of control (that is its great virtue). If you
cannot understand how a thermostat regulates the temperature in a room, you
will be unable to understand PCT. Otherwise you will have few difficulties.
PCT is ignored by most psychologists because they do not conceive of
themselves as studying control. This is short-sighted in many cases, but it
is difficult to see how to rectify the situation.
I like those first two paragraphs, but I want to comment on what you said next,
Bruce,
Problems arise only if you claim that _all_ human experience can be
modelled as a form of control. In an earlier discussion, the claim was made
that we would become upset if the sun rose in the west because we have
established a reference level for the sun rising in the east. As far as I
can tell, this is simply verbal gymnastics. We have absolutely no reason to
believe that the path of the sun is a controlled perception.
In regard to that last sentence, I have to say, "In my mind it depends on what
you mean." First of all I want to make clear that I could never make that
statement, any more than I could make the statement, "I believe the path of the
sun IS a controlled perception."
I can accept the whole of your statement as saying something that is important
to you, but I am putting my own thoughts on the matter on to the net only
because I could not tolerate that any observer would take my silence to mean
that I agree with its tendency. First, let me say that I will use "PCT" as
shorthand for referring to everything that embraces MY understanding of B:CP,
the various experiments and demos, etc.
When I think about how it might come about that I would remark to myself
(wordlessly or not), "that is a sunset" I think about Powers's proposal about
how the particular set of light signals transduced by the retina into neural
signals as part of the "booming, buzzing confusion" of my infantile experience
gradually were transformed by repeated reorganizations of my brain circuitry
into the various components and finally complex perception that I could call a
"sunset." During this process many reference signals developed out of
previously recorded perceptual signals as random actions were organized by my
various efforts to "do something" (many somethings in fact). This is all a
just-so story as far as the science of PCT is concerned, as I think you
correctly point out, on many occasions. However, this just-so story is to my
mind so superior to any other proposals (all of them much less complete besides
being cognitively inferior) for a framework for thinking about experience that
I resort to it almost continually in my daily life. There are dangers of
falling into taking a proposed conceptual scheme as "the facts of reality,"
something that Bruce Abbot and you, especially, have often pointed out. And
you are right. All I can say is keep those warnings coming. But, I am not
going to let them have the effect, on me, of dispensing with the best way of
thinking about my experience that I have until a better one comes along, if it
does.
Therefore there is no reason to talk about a reference value for the position
of the
sunrise. We have an _expectation_ that the sun will rise in the east, but
as far as I know, PCT says nothing about expectations since they are not
controlled perceptions. Nor does PCT say anything about memory,
imagination, planning, or learning (other than learning how to control a
perception). This is not a criticism of PCT, unless one is persuaded that
all these experiences involve control.
So, in what I have said above other observers might conclude that you and I
have rather different conceptions of PCT as conceptual scheme. That is all
right as long as you allow me to take some exception to the last sentence
above. If I take it literally, I would read you to be saying that you
criticise My conception of PCT, because I Am persuaded (tentatively) that all
these experiences involve control -- in the sense I described above. But I
think I can see that that is not the sense you intended to imply.
If you are so persuaded, it behooves you to present a model and data to
support that claim. That is, if you want to maintain that you are doing
science.
Well, that is too big an order for me in one chunk, but I do make a small
claim to all the experiments and demos that have come along so far, in the
sense of saying I subscribe to what their authors have added to the substance
that PCT stands for. In my mind a good many of them are examples of
superlative science. But admittedly, the job you seem to be asking for is far
from accomplished.
I have some idea from my own experience just how hard it is to nail down more
than a little chunk with even a lot of effort. I tried to model, with Bill's
help, a higher order process--program level, I thought--during the years 1990
and 1993. I repeatedly gave an intro psych course, based wholly on IMP, that I
did my best to make into a demonstration of what it intended to convey. I told
students the concept of controlled variable as the first topic and proposed
that they see the whole couse as an instance of controlling their own grade. I
wrote multiple alternative 20-item tests for each chapter, imposed a rule of
having to pass each chapter at at least 60% before testing for the next; had
students submit their reference grade in terms of percent at the beginning of
the course and review it and modify/or not after each test; compute their own
error signal and comment on their intentions for the next test; graded each
test immediately after completion by assistants, etc. It could take a whole
book to enumerate all the details both of design and execution. I have
reported on it in more detail on the net in the past. Well, after all this
effort and with generous help from Bill -- the project failed. It demonstrated
Bill's caution, repeated here on CSGnet numerous times, that you have to have a
consistent phenomenon and be able to operationalize every aspect of it before
you can construct a model. I did learn some interesting facts informally. Some
of my students assiduosly persued the goal and reported varying their output in
terms of study time, in accord with magnitude of error. Others discovered
(some to both themselves and me, others only to me, I think) that their
reference value for grade in this course was under the control of a Principle
(or several) having to do with valuing this particular course in terms of study
time allocations in their life as a whole -- and consequently varied RS rather
than output to reduce error. Was this a wasted effort? It depends on how you
evaluate it in the context of all PCT developments going on. As compared with
moonlanders crashed on Mars I think enought might have been learned to say
yes. I would love to see some one eventually make a better attempt, but I
myself am too old. I retired from the university in '93.
Look at how much it took me just to comment on a couple of your sentences,
Bruce. And you don't know how much I edited and revised. If you spend as much
time on your posts I think I can see how discussions on the net could easily
consume large chunks of one's time and increase the temptation to toss off a
comment from the top of one's head in the few minutes one can assign to posting
on the net.
Best, Dick R.
-- but what is this word "expectation" if not a verbalized