[from Mary Powers 941212]
Bruce Abbott says:
Behavior varies (reorganization is in progress), affecting
the environment, changing the state of a perceptual
variable, changing the error between that variable and its
reference level. If the error is reduced, that behavior,
which a higher-level system has 'selected', remains selected
and thus becomes part of the output function of the lower-
level system controlling that perceptual variable...
[This description] is PCT, if I've described it correctly...
But I don't think you have described it correctly. The giveaway
is that parenthetic (reorganization is in process). Behavior
always varies, whether or not reorganization is going on. Even
the most 'repetitive' or 'stereotyped' behavior. A repeated
pattern or sequence is a perception, brought about by variable
means. If a ballerina doing 30 fouettes in a row 'selected' the
same behavior for the 30th as the first, she'd fall down -
because of fatigue she must use her muscles in an entirely
different way to repeat the pattern successfully.
In order to learn to do the turns, she has to learn to balance on
point, to whip her other leg so that she turns, to spot on each
turn so she won't get dizzy, etc. But this is all learning
perceptions, not behaviors. She learns it looking in a mirror, by
voice instruction from her teacher, and primarily
kinesthetically. The outcome, to the audience, is repetitive
behavior. How it's done is by controlling perceptions. That is
not just the mechanistic explanation, but also the functional one
- at least from the PCT point of view. To say
Those responses in the situation that are followed by a
satisfying state of affairs become more strongly connected
to the situation so that, when the situation recurs, the
response is more likely to occur
is a functional explanation seems wide of the mark to me. This is
a conclusion drawn from appearances, and begs the question of how
connecting responses to a situation can do anything successfully
when both the responses and the situation vary.
The problem is that what appears to be going on is not what is
happening. It's like watching the sun come up, cross the sky, and
go down. Lots of 'functional' explanations for that appearance,
but the only explanation that we accept today is that the earth
is turning. PCT is an 'earth is turning' theory, in a pre-
Copernican world of psychology.
Mary P.