[From: Bruce Nevin (Wed 950315 11:13:31 EST)]
( Bill Powers (950314.0815 MST) ) --
I will now say the obvious for perhaps unobvious reasons.
"Actions are produced by organisms as a means of keeping a perceived
state of affairs congruent with an internal specification of what is to
be perceived." Behaviors are the means by which an organism governs
those perceptions that matter to it. Perceptions are governed by doing
whatever it takes, by actions in the environment, to make the perceptions
that matter to the organism conform to its internal standards for those
perceptions. Even speaking of actions and behaviors is misleading. The
organism in general does not attend to its own actions or even perceive
them as such. (The exceptions are few and artificial. Indeed there is
some evidence suggesting that only humans and perhaps a few other species
with very complex nervous systems are even capable of this self
perception. For example, nonhuman primates appear not to be capable of
imitating the manner in which one brings about a desired result,
something that a human child readily does.) What an outside observer
perceives as actions or behaviors are the observer's perceptions of the
means by which the organism is governing its own perceptions.
Once again this frustrating situation has led me
to think about trying to find some other word for what we call control
in PCT.
A lot of our problems would go away if we could find a word
that could be attached exclusively to the phenomenon of negative
feedback control, without also meaning either "influence" or
"determine."
If we are to go on using the word control in situations to which
influence or determination could apply, then we clearly need a new word,
because the common usage of the word control does not make the necessary
distinctions.
It should be a
word that would never be used in place of influence or determine. It
should be a word that has not been pre-empted by engineers or
psychologists or philosophers to mean something other than X. And it
should be a simple familiar word, not jargon.
... cybernetics ... has been pre-empted.
Why don't we try the commonplace words of English that derive from the
same Greek root as "cybernetic"?
It might be objected that the words govern, governing, government have
associations to human social arrangements and politics that would be
confusing and distracting. I believe that the two domains are so
disparate that the specialization of these words for the study of living
things is clear and obvious. Where there is any uncertainty, include the
word "perception". So, we would talk of perception-governing systems,
and possibly governing systems for short, but certainly not government
systems. A name for the theory might be problematic. Reread the
paragraph at the top of this message for examples in context.
Behavior is the governing of perception.
As an acronym, PG surely has more appropriate associations than PC!
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Now that you are feeling all that is objectionable about Perception
Government Theory as a label, we can move on to another suggestion.
( Avery.Andrews 95.03.15 ) --
One problem is that all
if these words (control, stabilize, govern, maintain, ...) refer to
doing things that get things to be the way you want them, without reference
to how. So if somebody thinks open loop will work, they'll use the
word to apply to an open-loop idea.
( Bill Powers (950314.0815 MST) ) --
it looks as if we have to go back to the Greeks and make up a word
with the right roots and that is not already in common usage.
We can just put the Greek prefix en- on the kybern- stem, as in
"entrainment":
Behaviors are the means by which an organism engoverns those perceptions
that matter to it. Perceptions are engoverned by doing whatever it
takes, by actions in the environment, to make the perceptions that matter
to the organism conform to its internal standards for those perceptions.
What an outside observer perceives as actions or behaviors are the
observer's perceptions of the means by which the organism is engoverning
its own perceptions. The science that investigates the phenomenon of
engovernment is known as Perception Engovernment Theory (PET).
Think of the confusion we could sow among internet topic surfers, with
that acronym!
Rick, you should be especially happy that the gadfly character of the
theory is faithfully represented in the more explicit phrase "Perception
Engovernment System Theory," or PEST! !-)
Bruce