What's wrong with schizophrenics?

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2009.05.04.1505)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.04.1440 EDT)]

BA: But then, you are not working for the CIA and you
weren’t even looking at the guy. Unless of course you’re Rick Marken.

Bill Powers (2009.05.04.1028 MDT) –

BP: Fight with Rick on your own time (I left out that part).

Geez, Bill, lighten up! Everyone knows that Rick would be
the last person to be working for the CIA. But wait a minute – that’s
just what they’d be expecting . . .

Now don’t fight over me, guys. It’s not legal in your part of the country yet anyway.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t even read Bruce’s original comment and then when I saw Bill’s comment and went back and read Bruce’s I didn’t even understand it. So if anyone was trying to insult me, they’ll have to bring down the level a bit so that I can understand it. Thanks.

Best

Rick

PS. I have some fun schizophrenia stories too but I’m kind of busy working on my Don Rickles routine so I’m afraid I can’t really get into it right now.

···

–
Richard S. Marken PhD

rsmarken@gmail.com

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.05.1143 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (1006.05.04.12:50 EDT) –

BA: In this discussion about
schizophrenia, I understood that our task was to speculate on how
Perceptual Control Theory might be applied in understanding the
disorder. However, Bill Powers� commentary seems more aimed at
applying the Method of Levels as a therapeutic
approach.

BP: It’s a little hard to stay on target here because everyone has
different, but interesting, comments to make. However, the organizing
principle I’m trying to return to after every excursion is that of
figuring out how to state the PCT position on all these subjects in
ordinary, but still precise, language. It’s meant to be like the way
politicians try to stay “on message” during a campaign because
they get only a limited time with each audience and have to get something
across in plain easy terms. I think we need to do this because we’ll be
looking for support from people we can’t expect to learn the technical
aspects of control theory in a brief presentation.

There are lots of problems we haven’t solved using PCT, including
questions like what “schizophrenia” (split mind) actually
means. So we can’t state the PCT position on that disorder (if that’s
what it is). There isn’t a position, yet. But as we explore various ideas
about mental illnesses in relation to PCT, we can see differences from
conventional scientists in how we would and wouldn’t approach the
problem. That’s how we can get to the heart of the differences.

BA: Schizophrenia appears to
pose special difficulties in that much of what appears to be going wrong
(from my point of view, not the person diagnosed with the disorder) seems
less to do with problems of control (although such problems arise
secondarily because of the ways in which family members, friends,
coworkers, therapists, and others behave toward the afflicted person) and
more to do with perceptual and logical functions.

BP: I agree that in the traditional view, what is wrong with a person
tends to be expressed in terms of effects on other people that they don’t
like. I think of that kind of problem as a social one, not a question of
whether anyone is malfunctioning. The PCT interest would be in
malfunctions rather than interactions with other people. If someone is
schizophrenic and all systems are working perfectly, then it’s up to
others to get used to it, or pass laws saying you can’t be that way, or
shoot them all – but it’s not a psychological problem.

BA: I�ve already mentioned two
areas in which failures of control systems may be implicated: difficulty
focusing attention (including distractibility) and high-level motor
control, which may be involved in catatonia. With respect to the latter,
I wonder how one would model the situation in which skeletal positional
references are in a sense frozen, yet one can establish new reference
values simply by manipulating the person�s limbs and torso. (Wherever you
place things, that becomes the new reference value.) In fact, how does
one model the situation in which a person (any person, not just one
displaying catatonia) doesn�t care about these positions, but is simply
interested in making no voluntary movements from whatever positions the
limbs and torso are currently in.

BP: Actually this is fairly easy to model, your suggestions being one or
two ways. Another way is to create a control system with high gain
in which only transitions are controlled, but with no control of
configurations (or only weak control). A rate-of-change control system
will keep rates of change near a reference level. If the reference level
is zero, then the rate of change will be held near zero. When you apply a
disturbance to a rate-controlled variable, the action will oppose the
error, keeping it small – but not exactly at zero. A steady disturbance
will cause the variable to start changing at some slow rate. If the gain
is very high, it will take a large disturbance to cause an appreciable
rate of change to occur, and when the disturbance is removed, the rate of
change will drop very nearly to zero, leaving the variable almost
constant at a new value.

That would give the appearance of “waxy immobility” or
“waxy flexibility,” including the tendency to slowly drift
downward under the influence of gravity which I understand is sometimes
seen. You can model that, Bruce – try it. The “waxy” part is
meant as an analogy to soft wax, which gives way and flows slowly under
persistent pressure.

This is from a Wiki page:

···

============================================================================

Individuals with catatonic schizophrenia often show extreme immobility.
They may stay in the same position for hours, days, weeks, or longer. The
position they assume may be unusual and appear uncomfortable to the
observer; for example, the person may stand on one leg like a stork, or
hold one arm outstretched for a long time. If an observer moves a hand or
limb of the catatonic person’s body, he or she may maintain the new
position. This condition is known as waxy flexibility.

…

Catatonic stupor is characterized by extremely slowed motor activity,
often to the point of being motionless and appearing unaware of
surroundings. The patient may exhibit negativism, which means that he or
she resists all attempts to be moved, or all instructions or requests to
move, without any apparent motivation.

===========================================================================

One really wishes people knew something about physics and control theory.
The above does not, of course, indicate “extremely slowed motor
activity”; it shows extremely active motor activity that opposes
disturbances of position or velocity. If the muscle forces did not
rapidly change to oppose disturbances of limb position, the limbs would
not stay in one position. The joints are not welded in place, are they?
The quoted passages indicate excellent control of position or velocity,
with the reference signals for position being constant at fixed values,
or the reference signals for velocity being set to zero producing a
highly-overdamped system. Perhaps both.

This is why the world of psychology needs PCT. They don’t know enough
about physics even to observe properly. Can’t they see the difference
between a muscle force and an effect of a muscle force?

BA: There may be other disorders
in which a PCT application seems more direct. For example, in Parkinson�s
Disease, the deaths of midbrain neurons whose terminals synapse with
neurons in the basal ganglia result in a characteristic oscillation of
the limbs at about 4 cycles per second, accompanied by increasing motor
rigidity as the disease progresses. Those terminals release the
neurotransmitter dopamine, which has the effect of inhibiting the
activity of the target neurons in the basal ganglia.

BP: I’m afraid I start to lose my temper when it comes to this point.
Dopamine, shmopamine. It’s just a neurotransmitter and it has no special
effects other than transmitting signals. Inhibition is known in modeling
circles as a negative sign; it doesn’t keep things from happening, it
just makes one signal’s effect subtract from the effect of another
signal. Every analog computer needs negative signs.

Here’s more Wiki:

==========================================================================

Inhibition, neural

In biology, the process in which activity in one nerve cell suppresses
activity in another. Neural inhibition in networks of nerve cells leading
from sensory organs, or to muscles, plays an important role in allowing
an animal to make fine sensory discriminations and to exercise fine
control over movements.

===========================================================================

If inhibition is linear subtraction, yes: you can get exact inhibition in
a comparator at the same time that the system has a high loop gain. But
people who write things like the above use words like
“suppression,” which don’t tell you whether you mean
subtracting a specific amount from the effect of another signal or
dividing the other signal’s effect by a given amount. The former has no
effect on loop gain, the latter does. Of course “fine control over
movements” requires high loop gain, so linear inhibition is
implied.

And “control over movements”? What is a “movement?”
Is that like a “muscle contraction?” Position or rate of
change? Or could it be an effect of a change in muscle force?

BA: A rather straightforward PCT
explanation would be that the loss of inhibition has the effect of
raising the gain on the motor system to the point of instability. (I�m
uncertain how to include the increased rigidity, which also seems related
to the loss of inhibition and mimics the raising of the reference level
for muscle tonus.)

BP: You almost got it, but you forgot that the rigidity is caused by an
increase, not a decrease, in motor activity. Loop gain goes up, system
becomes more active and therefore more rigid against disturbances.
Anyway, inhibition doesn’t neccesarily lower gain; if it’s a linear
subtraction it doesn’t effect gain at all.

BA: A second example, which Bill
P. alluded to earlier, is bipolar disorder, with its mood swings between
mania and depression. There is evidence to suggest that our emotion
subsystems are regulated in such a way that the continued presence of a
constant disturbance to a given emotion system eventually results in a
negative feedback counteraction that tends to neutralize the
emotion.

I don’t believe there are any emotion systems. There are systems that
raise and lower reference signals for the somatic systems, largely via
the hypothalamus and neurohypophysis, and these systems receive reference
signals from higher systems like the amygdala, which in turn get their
reference signals from still higher up. The emotions represent the
modification of the biochemical activities as appropriate for support of
the activities of the motor systems, and the whole thing is set into
motion by higher-order error signals. An emotion goes away after
continued disturbance because the error driving it is gradually
corrected. That is all there is to emotions. If you don’t think that
model works, just say so, but don’t just keep repeating the party line on
emotions that has been the dogma for a hundred years or so. I think I’m
still mad from a couple of paragraphs ago. This would never do for public
consumption, of course. You’ll have to send in my backup until I calm
down.

For this reason we
normally are unable to sustain any strong emotional state for long. (The
process has been likened to the development of drug tolerance.) If mania
and depression are manifestations of different levels of activity in a
single emotion system (or perhaps in two coupled emotion systems), then
the constant cycling between mania and depression that characterizes
bipolar disorder can be explained in terms of control theory as the
result of a system in which there is too much lag in the negative
feedback output, given the gain of the system. The result is a cycle of
overshooting and undershooting of the reference level. Drugs that
prove effective in controlling these swings may do so by effectively
lowering the loop gain or slowing the rate at which the feedback variable
changes value.

Getting there, except for “emotion systems.” And we’re off
message again, except that I suppose we have to settle all these issues
before we can know what message to send.

Best,

Bill P.

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

[From
Bruce Abbott (2009.05.05.1830 EDT]

BP: Bill Powers (2009.05.05.1143
MDT) –

BA: Bruce Abbott (2009.05.04.12:50 EDT)

BA: I’ve already mentioned
two areas in which failures of control systems may be implicated: difficulty
focusing attention (including distractibility) and high-level motor control,
which may be involved in catatonia. With respect to the latter, I wonder how
one would model the situation in which skeletal positional references are in a
sense frozen, yet one can establish new reference values simply by manipulating
the person’s limbs and torso. (Wherever you place things, that becomes
the new reference value.) In fact, how does one model the situation in which a
person (any person, not just one displaying catatonia) doesn’t care about
these positions, but is simply interested in making no voluntary movements from
whatever positions the limbs and torso are currently in.

BP: Actually this is fairly easy to model, your suggestions being one or
two ways. Another way is to create a control system with high gain in
which only transitions are controlled, but with no control of
configurations (or only weak control). A rate-of-change control system will
keep rates of change near a reference level. If the reference level is zero,
then the rate of change will be held near zero. When you apply a disturbance to
a rate-controlled variable, the action will oppose the error, keeping it small
– but not exactly at zero. A steady disturbance will cause the variable to
start changing at some slow rate. If the gain is very high, it will take a
large disturbance to cause an appreciable rate of change to occur, and when the
disturbance is removed, the rate of change will drop very nearly to zero,
leaving the variable almost constant at a new value.

That would give the appearance of “waxy immobility” or “waxy
flexibility,” including the tendency to slowly drift downward under the
influence of gravity which I understand is sometimes seen. You can model that,
Bruce – try it. The “waxy” part is meant as an analogy to soft wax,
which gives way and flows slowly under persistent pressure.

O.K.,
so positional control is turned off but rate of change in position is being set
to zero?

BA: There may be other disorders in which a PCT application seems more direct.
For example, in Parkinson’s Disease, the deaths of midbrain neurons whose
terminals synapse with neurons in the basal ganglia result in a characteristic
oscillation of the limbs at about 4 cycles per second, accompanied by
increasing motor rigidity as the disease progresses. Those terminals release
the neurotransmitter dopamine, which has the effect of inhibiting the activity
of the target neurons in the basal ganglia.

BP: I’m afraid I start to lose my temper when it comes to this point. Dopamine,
shmopamine. It’s just a neurotransmitter and it has no special effects other
than transmitting signals. Inhibition is known in modeling circles as a
negative sign; it doesn’t keep things from happening, it just makes one
signal’s effect subtract from the effect of another signal. Every analog
computer needs negative signs.

I
fail to understand why my citation of an established fact about the brain
should create such a disturbance for you. I agree with you that Dopamine has no
special effects other than transmitting signals and didn’t either state
or imply otherwise. (It does turn out to be relevant for therapy:
replacing dopamine in the basal ganglia reduces the motor rigidity and tremors
of Parkinson’s Disease.) Dopamine acts to inhibit neural activity in the
post-synaptic neurons. In a system that receives this inhibitory input, the
loss of that input means that the post-synaptic neurons will fire at higher
rates than they otherwise would, everything else being equal.

Behaviorally,
the loss of this inhibitory input correlates well with the characteristic symptoms
of Parkinson’s Disease. If the loss of inhibition effectively raises the gain
on the system, then, as you say, both the tremors and muscular rigidity make
perfect sense. What’s to be angry about?

BA: A second example, which Bill
P. alluded to earlier, is bipolar disorder, with its mood swings between mania
and depression. There is evidence to suggest that our emotion subsystems are
regulated in such a way that the continued presence of a constant disturbance
to a given emotion system eventually results in a negative feedback
counteraction that tends to neutralize the emotion.

BP: I don’t believe there are any emotion systems. There are systems that raise
and lower reference signals for the somatic systems, largely via the
hypothalamus and neurohypophysis, and these systems receive reference signals
from higher systems like the amygdala, which in turn get their reference
signals from still higher up. The emotions represent the modification of the
biochemical activities as appropriate for support of the activities of the
motor systems, and the whole thing is set into motion by higher-order error
signals. An emotion goes away after continued disturbance because the error
driving it is gradually corrected. That is all there is to emotions. If you
don’t think that model works, just say so, but don’t just keep repeating the
party line on emotions that has been the dogma for a hundred years or so. I
think I’m still mad from a couple of paragraphs ago. This would never do for
public consumption, of course. You’ll have to send in my backup until I calm
down.

We’ve
had a discussion about this before, although it’s been a while. I do
believe that we have emotion systems, which are a part of our inheritance from
our evolutionary past. As I see them, they are innately organized control
systems “designed” to deal with particular situations often faced by
our ancestors over the course of evolution. Certain inputs act as disturbances
to one or another of these systems; the behavioral and physiological
manifestations of a given emotion are the actions that often have been
successful in the evolutionary past in opposing those disturbances. For
example, either innately or because of prior experience we may interpret
certain conditions as threatening. This perception of threat is opposed by what
might be called a “threat control system” whose reference is to
keep perceived threats close to zero. When threat perception rises above this
reference, this error produces behavioral outputs (e.g., running away from the
source of the threat) and physiological changes to support vigorous behavior
such as running or self defense. (The latter outputs are generated by changing
the references of appropriate lower-level systems.)

A
detailed model of all this would be more complex than this condensed
description suggests. For example, what is perceived as threatening may
involve a complex calculation that includes one’s own capabilities,
availability of weapons, etc. Because learning is involved, the actual
behaviors engaged in may be quite diverse. (I could generate other descriptions
suitable for other emotion systems, such as those involved in the experiences
of anger, grief, curiosity, love, and so on, but this example gives the general
flavor of the approach.)

So,
what do you find objectionable about this conception of emotion systems? It’s
still turtles, er, control systems all the way down.

BA: For this reason we normally are unable to sustain any strong emotional
state for long. (The process has been likened to the development of drug
tolerance.) If mania and depression are manifestations of different levels of
activity in a single emotion system (or perhaps in two coupled emotion
systems), then the constant cycling between mania and depression that
characterizes bipolar disorder can be explained in terms of control theory as
the result of a system in which there is too much lag in the negative feedback
output, given the gain of the system. The result is a cycle of overshooting and
undershooting of the reference level. Drugs that prove effective in
controlling these swings may do so by effectively lowering the loop gain or
slowing the rate at which the feedback variable changes value.

BP: Getting there, except for “emotion systems.” And we’re off
message again, except that I suppose we have to settle all these issues before
we can know what message to send.

Bruce
A.

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.06.0906 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.05.1830 EDT) –

BP earlier: That would
give the appearance of “waxy immobility” or “waxy
flexibility,” including the tendency to slowly drift downward under
the influence of gravity which I understand is sometimes seen. You can
model that, Bruce – try it. The “waxy” part is meant as an
analogy to soft wax, which gives way and flows slowly under persistent
pressure.

BA: O.K., so positional control is turned off but rate of change in
position is being set to zero?

BP: Yes, the reference signal for a rate-of-change control system is set
to zero. The system perceives the first derivative of the variable in
question.

BP earlier: I’m afraid I start
to lose my temper when it comes to this point. Dopamine, shmopamine. It’s
just a neurotransmitter and it has no special effects other than
transmitting signals. Inhibition is known in modeling circles as a
negative sign; it doesn’t keep things from happening, it just makes one
signal’s effect subtract from the effect of another signal. Every analog
computer needs negative signs.

BA: I fail to understand why my
citation of an established fact about the brain should create such a
disturbance for you. I agree with you that Dopamine has no special
effects other than transmitting signals and didn�t either state or imply
otherwise.

BP: Sorry to unload on you, old friend. I’ve been seeing naive talk about
brain chemicals for a long time, and in the pages of Science in
particular it’s been getting worse. The biochemistry, I presume, is fine,
but neuroscientists are trying to link chemistry to such vague and naive
concepts of behavior that it drives me nuts. The failure to think in
terms of closed loops makes everything these people are doing highly
vulnerable to the “behavioral illusion,” in which they
interpret a behavioral effect of changes in chemistry exactly backward.
They stop looking when the cause of a change in brain activity is traced
back to a chemical change, and forget that in the brain, chemical changes
are largely caused by brain activity. It’s a stubborn reductionist
viewpoint.

BA: (It does turn out to
be relevant for therapy: replacing dopamine in the basal ganglia reduces
the motor rigidity and tremors of Parkinson�s Disease.)

BP: That’s great, but so what? That’s not a cure. Finding a cure means
discovering what is causing the deficiency in dopamine, and fixing that
if that’s the end of the line, or looking even farther back in the chain
until the REAL reason for the problem is found. There are some rumblings
about “systems biology” in the air, but few signs that it’s
getting anywhere.

BA: Dopamine acts to inhibit
neural activity in the post-synaptic neurons. In a system that receives
this inhibitory input, the loss of that input means that the
post-synaptic neurons will fire at higher rates than they otherwise
would, everything else being equal.

But that tells me nothing useful because it doesn’t say what form this
inhibition takes, and that makes a great deal of difference. Does the
inhibiting signal reduce the gain in the other signal path, or does it
simply subtract from the effects of signals in the other path? If the
inhibition reduces the gain, the loop gain would be reduced and control
would relax, stabilizing the system. If the inhibition simply subtracts
from the other signal, as in a comparator, there would be no effect on
loop gain, but the subtraction would establish a reference level for the
control system, or act like a disturbance that could be canceled by
changes in the other signal. I’m sure that what is known about dopamine
chemistry is factual and accurate, but what is said about its meaning
just looks amateurish to me. Neuroscientists don’t seem to know anything
about systems analysis, or if they do, they aren’t publishing it where I
can see it.

Behaviorally, the loss of this
inhibitory input correlates well with the characteristic symptoms of
Parkinson�s Disease. If the loss of inhibition effectively raises the
gain on the system, then, as you say, both the tremors and muscular
rigidity make perfect sense. What�s to be angry about?

But does it raise the gain or just subtract from the other signal? Just
saying “inhibition” doesn’t tell you that critical piece of
information.

I’m angry because neuroscientists don’t say that in the literature yet
they pretend to know more about their subject than anyone else does. And
they seem to think that there’s something important about the fact that
in this case dopamine is the transmitter rather than, say, seratonin or
acetylcholine. That’s because they’re chemists, not system modelers, and
they’re convinced that the chemistry is all that matters. They don’t
realize that if acetylcholine were the transmitter, exactly the same
effects would be seen when there was a shortage, and we would still have
to find out why there is a shortage before we can understand what is
going on. Just knowing the chemistry tells you very little about how the
system works, which comes from its organization, not its chemistry. Maybe
they might appreciate this better if they had started out, as I did,
designing circuits with vacuum tubes and then had to switch to
transistors that employ a totally different mechanism of amplification.
In fact the physical mechanism of amplification makes almost no
difference. The organization of a flip-flop or a operational amplifier is
the same in either embodiment. To me, the fact that the brain works with
neurons and biochemicals instead of transistors and electricity is
insignificant. Only the organization matters when it comes to
understanding the system.

New subject:

BA: We�ve had a discussion about
this before, although it�s been a while. I do believe that we have
emotion systems, which are a part of our inheritance from our
evolutionary past. As I see them, they are innately organized control
systems �designed� to deal with particular situations often faced by our
ancestors over the course of evolution. Certain inputs act as
disturbances to one or another of these systems; the behavioral and
physiological manifestations of a given emotion are the actions that
often have been successful in the evolutionary past in opposing those
disturbances.

That sounds convincing until you start asking for details. I won’t argue
against the idea that there are some inherited control systems; at the
lowest levels there are a lot of them. But the concept of a separate set
of “emotional” control systems just doesn’t hold water. How can
a primitive inherited control system know whether there is danger or not?
How does it know anything about the outside world or its relationship to
the organism? Considering all the things we get emotional about, you have
to give these inherited systems all the perceptual levels that are in the
PCT hierarchy, and all the abilities to send reference signals to other
control systems that the hierarchical systems have. When you get done you
have two hierarchies, one learned through reorganization and variable in
its properties, and the other inherited in a fixed form, and interacting
in suspicious detail with the first hierarchy.

What my proposal about emotion does is to eliminate all the problems of
duplication of and conflict between functions that are raised by the idea
of an inherited emotion system. We don’t have to explain how the emotion
system can recognize a lion, see that it is in a cage, and not be afraid,
or see that it is loose and cause the legs to run like mad, presumably
wresting control of the legs away from the hierarchical systems that had
been using them. If you propose that the emotion system reaches into the
hierarchy and alters the reference signals for running, you have to
explain why the learned systems don’t simply cancel out that disturbance.
You’re trying to fit an old idea about emotions into the PCT system, and
it just doesn’t work.

For example, either
innately or because of prior experience we may interpret certain
conditions as threatening. This perception of threat is opposed by what
might be called a �threat control system� whose reference is to keep
perceived threats close to zero. When threat perception rises above this
reference, this error produces behavioral outputs (e.g., running away
from the source of the threat) and physiological changes to support
vigorous behavior such as running or self defense. (The latter outputs
are generated by changing the references of appropriate lower-level
systems.)

Doesn’t that sound very much like something the learned hierarchy of
control systems does? Why do you need a built-in system to recognize
threats when you already have a learned one that can do the same thing –
and how do you explain the fact that most threats are not initially
reacted to as threats? Children happily trot out into traffic in ways
that would scare them to death a few years later. Do those inherited
emotional control systems have to learn about traffic, about the
bogeyman, about strangers offering candy, about sharp knives in the hands
of maniacs, and so on? And if that is true, aren’t we just talking about
the one hierarchy of perception and control that is already posited in
PCT? Exactly what does the idea of an emotion system add?

I think the idea of a separate emotional system arose because awareness
is not always connected to all control systems at all levels. Control
systems operating outside awareness, automatically, can still react to
disturbances by adjusting reference signals in lower system, so when
awareness is engaged elsewhere, it would seem that the reactions were
caused from outside somewhere. If a change in biochemical state
accompanied the automatic motor reactions to disturbances, the first the
systems currently in the conscious mode would know about it would be a
set of bodily sensations and awareness of some automatic action taking
place. Of course attention would quickly go to the problem and all the
“reactions” would then appear as normal control behavior.
Doesn’t that cover all the evidence anyone has ever come up with for the
existence of an independent emotion system?

A detailed model of all this
would be more complex than this condensed description suggests. For
example, what is perceived as threatening may involve a complex
calculation that includes one�s own capabilities, availability of
weapons, etc. Because learning is involved, the actual behaviors engaged
in may be quite diverse. (I could generate other descriptions suitable
for other emotion systems, such as those involved in the experiences of
anger, grief, curiosity, love, and so on, but this example gives the
general flavor of the approach.)

But now you’re not talking about an emotion system: that’s just the
normal hierarchy of control systems you’re describing. I’ve taken care of
the feeling component by proposing that motor actions are accompanied by
adjustments of the endocrine and other control systems, so what is left
to account for?

Surely you’re not proposing that an inherited system separate from the
PCT hierarchy can perceive capabilities, availability of weapons,
and other things that an inherited system could not possibly know about,
are you? With what eyes would such a system see weapons? With what brain
would it assess capabilities? How could it seize control of
reference signals for lower systems without coming into conflict with the
learned systems?

So, what do you find
objectionable about this conception of emotion systems? It�s still
turtles, er, control systems all the way down.

All I object to is the idea that you need something other than the one
hierarchy of control that we talk about in PCT. In my proposal, what we
experience as and label as emotion arises naturally in the course of
normal behavior, as a consequence of error signals and the actions that
follow from them. I have added only the idea that when actions are called
for, the state of the body is also adjusted as appropriate to the action,
and that we feel the result of that as a change in feeling
state.

Why propose two different systems that do the same thing, when one of
them will suffice?

Best,

Bill P.

[Fred_Nickols1]

[From Fred Nickols (2009.05.06.1219 PDT)]

Re this snippet from a Bruce Abbott post which I spotted in Rick's post:

[From Rick Marken (2009.05.06.1150)]

Bruce Abbott (2009,05,06,1330 EDT)--

When we experience an emotion,
we not only experience those physiological changes, we become highly

focused

on certain inputs from the environment and begin to act in ways that impel
us toward particular goals.

Here's an incident from my Navy days. We were rammed amidships at moderate
speed by another destroyer. She rode up on and then slid down the main deck
on our starboard side, ripping out a great deal of our aluminum
superstructure between the main deck and the 01 level. Afterward, when
things had calmed down, all were agree that the responses of crew members
could be sorted as follows:

Those who panicked and those who didn't.

Those who panicked fell into two additional categories: (1) those who
panicked and froze in their tracks; and (2) those who panicked and ran.

Those who didn't panic also fell into two additional categories: (1) those
who took charge of their piece of the action and began giving directions to
those who weren't panicked; and (2) those who were looking around for
directions.

I know of no one who didn't "experience" an "emotion" during that incident.
However, I suspect the emotions experienced were quite different and clearly
the reactions to the emotions (or the incident) differed greatly. I also
believe the intensity of the emotion and the nature of the response varied
with the person's proximity to the point and path of the collision. Those
on the mess decks, which the bow of the other destroyer pierced, ran like
the dickens. Many of those not so close, simply froze. Those further
removed remained calm and cool. I'd hazard the guess that all were acting
in ways meant to increase their odds of surviving what was initially a
situation posing a potentially life-threatening circumstance. Adrenalin, in
varying amounts, was likely a factor in everyone's chemistry.

How might PCT explain those various behaviors? I don't know and, to the
tell the truth, I don't really care. Here's why...

I learned a long time ago that I can do three things with behavior: (1) I
can describe it; (2) I can explain it; and (3) I can predict it (not at all
reliably but, on occasion, pretty good). I can describe behavior about as
well as anyone I know. I can explain it using PCT to my own satisfaction
and I find PCT a far more satisfying explanation in general than any other
explanation of behavior. What I can't do with PCT just yet is figure out
how to better predict behavior. Figure that out and there's a pot of gold
at the end of that rainbow.

Regards,

Fred Nickols
Managing Partner
Distance Consulting LLC
nickols@att.net | www.nickols.us

"Assistance at a Distance"SM

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.06.1619 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.06.1810 EDT --

BA: ...in the case of Parkinson�s Disease, the symptoms are known to originate in the loss of dopamine-secreting neurons that make synaptic connections in the basil ganglia. Patients are treated by giving them L-DOPA, a precursor of dopamine that is able to cross the blood-brain barrier where it is synthesized into dopamine in dopaminergic neurons. This increases the amount of dopamine available for release at the synapse during each action potential, helping to offset the loss of inhibition resulting from the loss of neurons. Unfortunately, the afflicted neurons continue to die off so that ultimately there are insufficient numbers to maintain the required levels of inhibitions and Parkinson�s symptoms return.

That much is understood. Unfortunately, no one has yet figured out what is killing off the neurons. As for a cure, current efforts are aimed at getting injected replacement cells (e.g., adrenal tissue) to survive and produce dopamine in the basal ganglia � not a perfect replacement for the missing neurons but at least replacing some of the missing inhibitory influence.

Is the inhibitory influence what matters? Perhaps it is simply the signal that matters, whatever the sign of its effect is at that point in the loop. If the source of dopamine were something other than a neuron, we might think that it is simply a shortage of dopamine that is the problem, so replacing it would enable the re-uptake of dopamine in the synaptic gap so the maximum impulse rate could be sustained. Obviously just supplying dopamine would be like adding a constant signal to the input of the receiving neuron, which would not help with control because the signal would not vary as the natural dopamine concentration would vary with impulse rate. But it might facilitate the operation of the remaining neurons.

Loss of dopamine equals loss of signal, and it's hard to tell what matters. Adding more dopamine, if effective, has to act by allowing the remaining neurons to generate a normal range of impulse rates, which is why I suggest an effect on vescicular re-uptake.

However, one can't argue against a treatment that alleviates the problem, even if it's not a solution. I'm sure there are people looking diligently for the cause of the neural die-off. Perhaps some other system is of the opinion that there's too much dopamine floating around, in which case the treatment is going to meet with opposition.

Best,

Bill P.

[Kenneth_Kitzke_Value]

[From Kenny Kitzke (2009.05.06.2130)]

Nice try on the evolution bait Rick. Why would I care if you or Bruce believe your family tree includes an amoeba? Ha. But, let’s not get emotional about it on CSGNet.

In a message dated 5/6/2009 12:29:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, rsmarken@GMAIL.COM writes:

···

[From Rick Marken (2009.05.06.0930)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.05.1830 EDT)–

BP: I don’t believe there are any emotion systems. There are systems that
raise and lower reference signals for the somatic systems… The emotions
represent the modification of the biochemical activities as appropriate for
support of the activities of the motor systems, and the whole thing is set
into motion by higher-order error signals.

BA: I do believe that we have emotion systems, which are a part of our
inheritance from our evolutionary past.

If you’re going to just go on belief, then I think Bill wins hands
down. Since no evidence has been presented to discriminate your
beliefs, Bill’s belief would be preferred on the basis of Occum’s
razor: it’s the most parsimonious explanation of emotion. Also, as I’m
sure Kenny would be happy to tell you, the jury is still out on this
evolution stuff;-)

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

---

Remember Mom this Mother’s Day! Find a florist near you now.

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.07.1123 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.07.1240 EDT) –

BA: I hadn�t thought of these
systems as lying outside the normal control hierarchy. The question
then becomes how they got there, inside the normal control
hierarchy. From my perspective, the cores of these systems are
inherited rather than emerging from random reorganization.

…

For example, in hungry newly
hatched robins, any appropriately sized object seen looming overhead
induces a stereotyped gaping behavior (beak wide open and head turned
up). Normally the object looming over the chick its parent and the
consequence of this action is that the parent drops food into the chick�s
mouth. Here is a fully functional control system that gives the infant
bird some degree of control over its nutrient intake. (In this case it�s
a temporary one that fades away as the chick matures and develops more
independent ways of getting its food.)

BP: OK, I think I see some ways of finding agreement. Let’s start with
the idea that there are some already-functioning control systems in the
newborn’s control hierarchy. I can readily agree to that. These would
result partly from evolutionary processes and partly from prenatal
experiences and reorganization (like the arm in the ArmReorg
demo).

These pre-existing control systems would give reorganization a head
start. As you note, however, the “reflexes” that function right
after birth (or hatching) are temporary organizations and are soon
replaced by more competent systems. I propose, however, that they’re not
“replaced” but simply reorganized into different forms,
including new connections to the rest of the hierarchy. Reorganization
works as usual, either creating new systems or modifying existing ones.
The neurons that were part of the original built-in systems become part
of more highly-organized systems at the same level, and set reference
signals for new lower-order systems while receiving them from new
higher-order systems. Reorganization begins with the systems that exist
at a given time, and goes on from there.

As usual, I propose that reorganization is driven by intrinsic error,
where we now understand that to include not only things like hunger and
pain, but any error signals in the hierarchy. The initial inherited
systems are crude and depend a great deal on outside help. After
reorganization, they become much better at keeping intrinsic errors
small, so reorganization slows or stops.

BA: As I see it, emotion systems
evolved rather early and have been elaborated, but not replaced, over the
course of evolution. As higher-level cognitive processes developed, the
range of inputs that could serve as disturbances to these systems
enlarged as well as the kinds of actions available as outputs. An infant
experiences fear in a limited range of circumstances; later, experience
enlarges that range. The infant�s actions when error occurs in the fear
system also become more varied and flexible.

BP: Here is where the bias shifts to my side. I still don’t believe in
“emotion systems.” What I do believe, sort of, is that emotions
like fear are a consequence of error signals in control systems, and that
they have two main components. One is the reference signal that is not
being matched by a perceptual signal, and the other is the effort and
the changing state of the somatic systems that results from the
error.

The basic identifying feature of such a system is not the name of the
emotion we associate with its action, but the error signal in that
system. Experientially speaking, we are aware of what we’re trying to do
(attack, flee, hide, give up) and of the altered state of the somatic
system that results from the error signals, and we give names to the
feelings according to what the reference signal is:

attack --> anger

flee --> fear

hide --> terror

give up -> apathy, depression

The somatic changes involved could be quite similar in the first three
examples (and are), with the name of the emotion relating more to the
reference condition than the feeling. Many different systems can engage
in activities like these, and depending on the kind of action they take
they could belong to different categories of “emotion systems.”
The same control system, under different circumstances, could belong to
any of those categories.

BA: But the basic system is
still there and still activating the same physiological changes needed to
support the vigorous physical actions that characterized the output of
the primitive system.

BP: … and characterize the output of the more developed system, too.
Vigorous physical actions occur when there are large errors, not simply
when the control system is primitive. If primitive systems seem to act
more vigorously than more developed ones, the reason would be that they
are not as good at correcting errors, so larger error signals are driving
their actions.

BA: So, for example, a student
must give a talk and interprets this situation as threatening. (What if I
perform badly and look foolish in front of my peers?) This interpretation
of this situation as threatening acts to disturb the fear system, which
among other preparations changes the reference levels of various
physiological systems, producing a racing heartbeat, increased breathing
rate, and tremors in the limbs and vocal apparatus, among other
effects.

BP: That happens in my theory of emotion, too, but without any
specialized fear system. Fear is just the name we give to feelings
resulting from large error signals when the goal is to escape, avoid, get
away and so on. Every control system concerned with being somewhere or
doing something can get into that situation. It is not thinking that one
might look foolish in front of one’s peers that causes strong feelings
and a desire to escape. It is imagining looking foolish AND NOT WANTING
TO LOOK FOOLISH that causes the action. It is an error signal, not a
perception, that results in the emotion.

BA: The person has difficulty
focusing on the speech. The result is that these changes make it
far more difficult for the student to deliver the speech smoothly and
competently.

BP: Yes, and that is not because of the emotion, but because of the
conflict between wanting to deliver the speech (to get praise or a grade)
and at the same time wanting NOT to deliver the speech (to avoid looking
foolish). The conflict makes sure that neither goal can be fully
achieved, and thus produces the abnormally large error signals that drive
strong emotions.

BA: So here is an example of the
actions of an emotion system interfering with other systems of the
control hierarchy. Such effects are well known � people often experience
such effects as �taking over� their behavior and, consequently, we learn
techniques to suppress these actions when they interfere with our ability
to maintain control over other variables.

BP: Yes, and with the modified view I’m presenting now those conclusions
follow from our understanding of the normal control hierarchy without
having to give any system a special connection to emotions. They are all
connected to emotions.

BA: For example, either innately
or because of prior experience we may interpret certain conditions as
threatening. This perception of threat is opposed by what might be called
a �threat control system� whose reference is to keep perceived threats
close to zero. When threat perception rises above this reference, this
error produces behavioral outputs (e.g., running away from the source of
the threat) and physiological changes to support vigorous behavior such
as running or self defense. (The latter outputs are generated by changing
the references of appropriate lower-level systems.)

BP: This is exactly my theory of emotion.

BA: It�s very much like
something the learned hierarchy of control systems does. The question of
why you need a built-in system to recognize threats and organize actions
appropriate to dealing with them can be addressed in at least three
ways. First, at least a primitive version of the system allows the
organism to have an organized and potentially adaptive way of dealing
with certain kinds of threat from the outset, before there has been much
opportunity to learn. (Infants in the crawling stage, for example, have
an innate ability to recognize sharp drop-offs and will refuse to crawl
off the edge of one, as shown many years ago by the �visual cliff�
experiments
(
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461547576/visual_cliff_experiment.html
). Second, it may provide a kind of scaffolding on which a more capable
system can be elaborated. Third, as I see it, the evidence strongly
indicates that such a system is present and operates in much the same way
across individuals and even to a large degree across species. (So, even
if it weren�t �needed� on theoretical grounds, I believe that it is
needed on empirical ones.)

BP: Again, no problems at all, and no important differences I can see
between our positions, if I haven’t missed something. All you need to
change is the background idea that these are emotion systems we
are talking about. They are just control systems, and as in all control
systems involved in behavior, their actions produce both motor effects
and somatic effects. We give emotion-names to the combination of goal and
somatic feeling, especially when large errors are involved.

BP earlier: Doesn’t that cover
all the evidence anyone has ever come up with for the existence of an
independent emotion system?

BA: Yes, but this suggestion does not argue against the sort of system
I�m suggesting, which is part of the normal control hierarchy but whose
organization depends more on innate factors and less on random
reorganization than some other parts of the hierarchy presumably
do.

BP: Whose INITIAL organization depends on innate factors. I’m just saying
that the initial organization is then reorganized according to
experience, to become a more competent kind of controller that keeps
errors smaller. You’re proposing that the initial organization persists
and is specialized to produce those reactions we call fear (or anger or
excitement or apprehension or exhilaraton). The intensity of the emotion
depends only on the size of the error. I’m saying that ALL control
systems produce those reactions in various combinations (through their
actions on lower-order systems), and that the control systems we end up
with are simply those we began with, reorganized, or new ones constructed
from scratch.

…

BA: It looks to me that we may
be much closer together on this than may have been apparent at the
beginning of this discussion.

BP: The same conclusion I have reached. When we clean up the details I
think we will have quite an elegant theory of emotion that will appeal
even to those who know only the conventional views. You have brought in
many details that, once assimilated into our explanations, will make
communication much easier.

Best,

Bill P.

[Bill_Powers1]

KK: Nice try on the evolution
bait Rick. Why would I care if you or Bruce believe your family
tree includes an amoeba? Ha. But, let’s not get emotional
about it on CSGNet.
[From Bill Powers (2009.05.08.1048 MDT)]

Kenny Kitzke (2009.05.06.2130)

···

–

Sorry to butt in on the conversation. but I’m quite proud that my family
tree goes back 3.5 billion years. It could be even farther back than that
according to some hypotheses. Imagine! Astronomers tell us that the very
materials of which our bodies are composed were created in supernova
explosions, the only furnaces in which the elements at the bottom of the
periodic table can be cooked hot enough to fuse into the heavier
elements, furnaces which explode to spread the new elements abroad. If
life on earth came from basic processes that are inherent in matter
produced in the stars, that must mean that our universe is just teeming
with life. When we learn how to communicate with others, what incredible
stores of new knowledge will we tap? And if the barrier of the speed of
light can ever be crossed, what can then limit our explorations? The
noblest visions of science fiction are really joyful prophecies of things
to come.

I simply don’t see what is so attractive about the idea that we were
created at the whim of some supernatural power who can override and mock
all natural law; that we haven’t existed more than a few thousand years;
that the evidence on which we base our knowledge is just an illusion
created to test our faith; that we have no part in or connection
with the great panorama of life extending over space and time; that
everything of value was handed to us and not developed by us and our
ancestors through long interactions with the real universe; that we are
alone on this tiny ball of mud and have nothing to look forward to but an
eternity of flattering an immature god who has an unsatisfiable need for
worship (to me, a definition of hell).

I am awed and inspired by the idea of being a part of something huge and
perhaps universal called Life, and I embrace all the forms of life who
have evolved in their own ways from our common and cherished little
ancestors. In one lifetime I have changed forms from a pair of single
cells to a floating blob to a sentient infant to a struggling person to
an old man approaching the end of this cycle. I see nothing repulsive or
demeaning in thinking that I was once just a microscopic cluster of
cells. I see nothing repulsive or demeaning in thinking that this same
kind of development has been happening to Life Itself since some
beginning on this planet and probably many others, countless lifetimes
ago.

We are part of a story that is still being told, a story in which we are
actors along with many others, and also authors who are making up the
plot as we go. We can only guess at the beginning and the end of this
story. It may never end; Life may not allow it to end. Life is the one
purposeful entity that exists. We are part of it.

Best,

Bill P.

[Fred_Nickols1]

[From Fred Nickols (2009.05.08.1115 PDT)]

May the force be with you.

···

--
Regards,

Fred Nickols
Managing Partner
Distance Consulting, LLC
nickols@att.net
www.nickols.us

"Assistance at A Distance"

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

[From Bruce Abbott (2009.05.07.1050
EDT)]

Bill Powers (2009.05.07.1123 MDT)

···

–

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.07.1240 EDT)

BA: I hadn’t thought of
these systems as lying outside the normal control hierarchy. The question
then becomes how they got there, inside the normal control hierarchy. From
my perspective, the cores of these systems are inherited rather than emerging
from random reorganization.
…

For example, in hungry newly
hatched robins, any appropriately sized object seen looming overhead induces a
stereotyped gaping behavior (beak wide open and head turned up). Normally the
object looming over the chick its parent and the consequence of this action is
that the parent drops food into the chick’s mouth. Here is a fully
functional control system that gives the infant bird some degree of control
over its nutrient intake. (In this case it’s a temporary one that fades
away as the chick matures and develops more independent ways of getting its
food.)

BP: OK, I think I see some ways of finding agreement. Let’s start with the idea
that there are some already-functioning control systems in the newborn’s
control hierarchy. I can readily agree to that. These would result partly from
evolutionary processes and partly from prenatal experiences and reorganization
(like the arm in the ArmReorg demo).

Yes.

BP: These pre-existing control systems would give reorganization a head start.
As you note, however, the “reflexes” that function right after birth
(or hatching) are temporary organizations and are soon replaced by more
competent systems. I propose, however, that they’re not “replaced”
but simply reorganized into different forms, including new connections to the
rest of the hierarchy. Reorganization works as usual, either creating new
systems or modifying existing ones. The neurons that were part of the original
built-in systems become part of more highly-organized systems at the same
level, and set reference signals for new lower-order systems while receiving
them from new higher-order systems. Reorganization begins with the systems that
exist at a given time, and goes on from there.

O.K.

BP: As usual, I propose that reorganization is driven by intrinsic error, where
we now understand that to include not only things like hunger and pain, but any
error signals in the hierarchy. The initial inherited systems are crude and
depend a great deal on outside help. After reorganization, they become much
better at keeping intrinsic errors small, so reorganization slows or stops.

O.K.

BA: As I see it, emotion systems
evolved rather early and have been elaborated, but not replaced, over the
course of evolution. As higher-level cognitive processes developed, the range
of inputs that could serve as disturbances to these systems enlarged as well as
the kinds of actions available as outputs. An infant experiences fear in a
limited range of circumstances; later, experience enlarges that range. The
infant’s actions when error occurs in the fear system also become more
varied and flexible.

BP: Here is where the bias shifts to my side. I still don’t believe in
“emotion systems.” What I do believe, sort of, is that emotions like
fear are a consequence of error signals in control systems, and that they have
two main components. One is the reference signal that is not being matched by a
perceptual signal, and the other is the effort and the changing state of the
somatic systems that results from the error.

I
can agree with that, but note that the physiological changes often precede rather
than follow any skeletal-muscular activity. Such activity can itself disturb
controlled variables (e.g., level of oxygenation of the blood) and therefore
lead to counteracting physiological actions (e.g., breathing rapidly and
heavily), but when the physiological changes precede the activity, one can
imagine that the higher-level system involved in the skeletal-muscular behavior
is changing the reference levels for these physiological control systems in
advance, preparing the organism for vigorous action.

BP: The
basic identifying feature of such a system is not the name of the emotion we
associate with its action, but the error signal in that system. Experientially
speaking, we are aware of what we’re trying to do (attack, flee, hide, give up)
and of the altered state of the somatic system that results from the error
signals, and we give names to the feelings according to what the reference
signal is:

attack --> anger

flee --> fear

hide --> terror

give up -> apathy, depression

BP: The
somatic changes involved could be quite similar in the first three examples
(and are), with the name of the emotion relating more to the reference
condition than the feeling. Many different systems can engage in activities
like these, and depending on the kind of action they take they could belong to
different categories of “emotion systems.” The same control system,
under different circumstances, could belong to any of those categories.

Those
examples are consistent with my view of emotion systems and, interestingly
enough, agree with Robert Plutchik’s classification of the emotions.

BA: But the basic system is still
there and still activating the same physiological changes needed to support the
vigorous physical actions that characterized the output of the primitive
system.

BP: … and characterize the output of the more developed system, too. Vigorous
physical actions occur when there are large errors, not simply when the control
system is primitive. If primitive systems seem to act more vigorously than more
developed ones, the reason would be that they are not as good at correcting
errors, so larger error signals are driving their actions.
…

BA: It’s very much like
something the learned hierarchy of control systems does. The question of why
you need a built-in system to recognize threats and organize actions
appropriate to dealing with them can be addressed in at least three ways.
First, at least a primitive version of the system allows the organism to have
an organized and potentially adaptive way of dealing with certain kinds of
threat from the outset, before there has been much opportunity to learn.
(Infants in the crawling stage, for example, have an innate ability to
recognize sharp drop-offs and will refuse to crawl off the edge of one, as
shown many years ago by the “visual cliff” experiments (
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461547576/visual_cliff_experiment.html
). Second, it may provide a kind of scaffolding on which a more capable system
can be elaborated. Third, as I see it, the evidence strongly indicates that
such a system is present and operates in much the same way across individuals
and even to a large degree across species. (So, even if it weren’t
“needed” on theoretical grounds, I believe that it is needed on empirical
ones.)

BP: Again, no problems at all, and no important differences I can see between
our positions, if I haven’t missed something. All you need to change is the
background idea that these are emotion systems we are talking about.
They are just control systems, and as in all control systems involved in
behavior, their actions produce both motor effects and somatic effects. We give
emotion-names to the combination of goal and somatic feeling, especially when
large errors are involved.

BP earlier: Doesn’t that cover all
the evidence anyone has ever come up with for the existence of an independent
emotion system?

BA: Yes, but this suggestion does not argue against the sort of system
I’m suggesting, which is part of the normal control hierarchy but whose
organization depends more on innate factors and less on random reorganization
than some other parts of the hierarchy presumably do.

BP: Whose INITIAL organization depends on innate factors. I’m just saying that
the initial organization is then reorganized according to experience, to become
a more competent kind of controller that keeps errors smaller. You’re proposing
that the initial organization persists and is specialized to produce those
reactions we call fear (or anger or excitement or apprehension or exhilaraton).
The intensity of the emotion depends only on the size of the error. I’m saying
that ALL control systems produce those reactions in various combinations
(through their actions on lower-order systems), and that the control systems we
end up with are simply those we began with, reorganized, or new ones
constructed from scratch.
…

BA: It looks to me that we may be
much closer together on this than may have been apparent at the beginning of
this discussion.

BP: The same conclusion I have reached. When we clean up the details I think we
will have quite an elegant theory of emotion that will appeal even to those who
know only the conventional views. You have brought in many details that, once
assimilated into our explanations, will make communication much easier.

I’m
preparing to head for Indianapolis, so I’ve cut this reply a bit short in
order to get it out. I think that we’re in basic agreement.
However, where we may continue to differ is in the matter of how much of the
control (and perceptual) hierarchy self-organizes through reorganization and
how much of it develops as a function of genetic “programming.” I
can get into the evidence I see for my position later if you like.

Bruce
A.

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.10.0707 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.07.1050 EDT) –

BP earlier: What I do
believe, sort of, is that emotions like fear are a consequence of error
signals in control systems, and that they have two main components. One
is the reference signal that is not being matched by a perceptual signal,
and the other is the effort and the changing state of the somatic
systems that results from the error.

BA:I can agree with that … one can imagine that the higher-level system
involved in the skeletal-muscular behavior is changing the reference
levels for these physiological control systems in advance, preparing the
organism for vigorous action.

BP: Yes, that does sound likely. Judging from my own experience, chances
are that during the preparation period one is imagining the action to be
undertaken, and that might be enough to start the physiological
preparations. One of my favorite memory images is of Fosbury when he
introduced the Fosbury Flop in high-jumping. He would stand at the start
of the approach run and you could see his head bob up and down and his
eyes trace out the path as he planned the perceptions of the attempt,
including a sort of heave and twist upward at the end, just suggested by
body language. Then he would take a big breath and do it. I’m sure that
in sports medicine they recommend exactly that sort of thing –
visualization, they call it.

BP earlier: The basic
identifying feature of such a system is not the name of the emotion we
associate with its action, but the error signal in that system.
Experientially speaking, we are aware of what we’re trying to do (attack,
flee, hide, give up) and of the altered state of the somatic system that
results from the error signals, and we give names to the feelings
according to what the reference signal is:

attack --> anger

flee --> fear

hide --> terror

give up -> apathy, depression

BA:Those examples are consistent with my view of emotion systems and,
interestingly enough, agree with Robert Plutchik�s classification of the
emotions.

BP: Good. The pleasant emotions are harder to figure out, but may have to
do with errors going away.

BA: But the basic system is
still there and still activating the same physiological changes needed to
support the vigorous physical actions that characterized the output of
the primitive system.

BP: Yes, but it’s not a smart system. All the cognitive content is
just the ordinary cognitions in the learned hierarchy (though perhaps
with a crude head-start early in life). It’s the learned hierarchy that
decides to attack or flee, and learns how to carry out the appropriate
strategies and actions. The system you talk about is just the lower-level
organizations that receive reference signals from above and produce the
effects they’re told to produce.

The question of why you need a
built-in system to recognize threats and organize actions appropriate to
dealing with them can be addressed in at least three ways. First,
at least a primitive version of the system allows the organism to have an
organized and potentially adaptive way of dealing with certain kinds of
threat from the outset, before there has been much opportunity to learn.
(Infants in the crawling stage, for example, have an innate ability to
recognize sharp drop-offs and will refuse to crawl off the edge of one,
as shown many years ago by the �visual cliff� experiments
(
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461547576/visual_cliff_experiment.html
). Second, it may provide a kind of scaffolding on which a more capable
system can be elaborated. Third, as I see it, the evidence strongly
indicates that such a system is present and operates in much the same way
across individuals and even to a large degree across species. (So, even
if it weren�t �needed� on theoretical grounds, I believe that it is
needed on empirical ones.)

BP: Well, I have a fourth way. I don’t think the lower systems know
anything at all about threats from outside. I doubt that they even know
there is an “outside.” Only the higher systems which perceive
in terms of vision and sound, and can identify objects and spatial
relationships, can possibly perceive or control such things. The reason
everyone cites the visual cliff experiment is that there are so few
things like that that a baby can recognize, and it has to be a higher
system, not one associated with the amydala or hypothalamus. As far as I
know, the amygdala can’t recognize objects. It doesn’t have a visual
cortex.

I’m not arguing against the idea that there are a few built-in systems at
higher levels of organization. In animals like dogs and cats and horses,
there are probably a lot more of them in proportion to the number of the
adult systems, and they may be less subject to reorganization. But in
human beings, practically all of the initial complement of reflexes gets
reorganized out of existence quite rapidly. With respect to many kinds of
behavior, like walking, the head start is practically nonexistent. And
it’s certainly not very effective – a baby won’t survive long without a
caretaker.

But again we may just be talking about the same ideas with a different
slant. My slant is that emotions have been overrated and misunderstood,
and that they are just a side-effect of normal operation of the learned
hierarchy. We don’t act because of them, they appear because of how we
act. You don’t have to tell me this is a minority view.

BA: Yes, but this suggestion
does not argue against the sort of system I�m suggesting, which is part
of the normal control hierarchy but whose organization depends more on
innate factors and less on random reorganization than some other parts of
the hierarchy presumably do.

I�m preparing to head for Indianapolis, so I�ve cut this reply a bit
short in order to get it out. I think that we�re in basic
agreement. However, where we may continue to differ is in the
matter of how much of the control (and perceptual) hierarchy
self-organizes through reorganization and how much of it develops as a
function of genetic �programming.� I can get into the evidence I see for
my position later if you like.

BP: I don’t think there can be any genetic programming of behavior
at all. That’s because behavior has to be able to vary however needed to
counteract disturbances and changes in the local environment, neither of
which evolution can anticipate. At best, there could be genetically
organized perceptual functions and reference signals to go with them.
Organisms that do seem to inherit stereotyped behavior usually turn out
to have inherited goals for perceptions, like the famous wasp that
manages to drag its prey into its lair even if someone keeps dumping dirt
in the way. If it inherited a behavior, it would just go through the same
motions even if they were futile. Maybe some organism have inherited
behaviors, but if so, they’ve all been eaten by the others that
didn’t.

Best,

Bill P.

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

[From Bruce Abbott (2009.05.10.1700
EDT]

Bill Powers (2009.05.10.0707 MDT)

···

–

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.07.1050 EDT)

BA: But the basic system is still
there and still activating the same physiological changes needed to support the
vigorous physical actions that characterized the output of the primitive
system.

BP: Yes, but it’s not a smart system. All the cognitive content is just
the ordinary cognitions in the learned hierarchy (though perhaps with a crude
head-start early in life). It’s the learned hierarchy that decides to attack or
flee, and learns how to carry out the appropriate strategies and actions. The
system you talk about is just the lower-level organizations that receive
reference signals from above and produce the effects they’re told to produce.

BA:
The question of why you need a built-in system
to recognize threats and organize actions appropriate to dealing with them can
be addressed in at least three ways. First, at least a primitive version
of the system allows the organism to have an organized and potentially adaptive
way of dealing with certain kinds of threat from the outset, before there has
been much opportunity to learn. (Infants in the crawling stage, for example,
have an innate ability to recognize sharp drop-offs and will refuse to crawl
off the edge of one, as shown many years ago by the “visual cliff” experiments
(
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461547576/visual_cliff_experiment.html
). Second, it may provide a kind of scaffolding on which a more capable system
can be elaborated. Third, as I see it, the evidence strongly indicates that
such a system is present and operates in much the same way across individuals
and even to a large degree across species. (So, even if it weren’t
“needed” on theoretical grounds, I believe that it is needed on
empirical ones.)

BP: Well, I have a fourth way. I don’t think the lower systems know anything at
all about threats from outside. I doubt that they even know there is an
“outside.” Only the higher systems which perceive in terms of vision
and sound, and can identify objects and spatial relationships, can possibly
perceive or control such things. The reason everyone cites the visual cliff
experiment is that there are so few things like that that a baby can recognize,
and it has to be a higher system, not one associated with the amydala or
hypothalamus. As far as I know, the amygdala can’t recognize objects. It
doesn’t have a visual cortex.

An excellent point; I guess I
simply assumed this implicitly. Ethological studies of these preorganized
systems indicates that the perceptions involved tend to be relatively simple
ones, like the red underbelly of the male three-spined stickleback fish, which
is the crucial feature eliciting attack by another male that is defending the
territory around its nest from intrusion by competing males. Even a simple disk
with a red underbelly is sufficient to elicit attack; the recognition system
doesn’t care whether the object looks like a fish, let alone another male
stickleback. (See Tinbergen, 1954).

BP: I’m not
arguing against the idea that there are a few built-in systems at higher levels
of organization. In animals like dogs and cats and horses, there are probably a
lot more of them in proportion to the number of the adult systems, and they may
be less subject to reorganization. But in human beings, practically all of the
initial complement of reflexes gets reorganized out of existence quite rapidly.
With respect to many kinds of behavior, like walking, the head start is
practically nonexistent. And it’s certainly not very effective – a baby won’t
survive long without a caretaker.

It does seem rather obvious that
such systems are more evident in the behavior of animals other than ourselves,
especially in animals with far less brain mass. But we shouldn’t
make the mistake of assuming that the human brain (or mind) is a tabula rosa or
blank slate, as John Locke proposed. There is quite a bit or
genetically-programmed organizing going on even in our case. The evidence
indicates that newborn infants can perceive and distinguish objects in their
visual fields and even track their movements with the eyes. (A particularly
dramatic example of this was provided by my daughter within hours after her
birth. I went to see her in the hospital nursery. She was lying on
her back and a nurse walked by her as I watched. I was astonished to see her
eyes and neck move to follow the nurse’s outline (although it may have been
a blury shape to her).

Studies of cats have shown that
perceptual mechanisms for detecting line orientation are present at birth.
These mechanisms must be “exercised” (i.e., have features presented
to them that match what they are filtering for) or they eventually degenerate
and the cat loses the ability to perceive them. Indeed, newborns appear to have
far more synaptic connections among the neurons in their brains than they do later,
implying that much of the “tuning” that takes place involves
pruning away those connections that do not contribute adequately to some
function that a particular area normally would be carrying out. Of course, that’s
entirely consistent with the reorganization process of PCT. But what I’m
suggesting that may be different is that these functions may develop largely
independently of experience (as a result of genetically programmed neural
development), and then receive their fine tuning via the reorganization
process. In addition, reorganization can create new perceptual “filters”
based on experience. Newly hatched ducklings have a built-in control system that
keeps them close to their mothers (and siblings), as illustrated in one of the
Crowd demos. But genetics cannot specify in detail what “mother”
will look like; instead, a mechanism directs the newly-hatched duckling to
attend to any object moving close by that is within a certain size range and
preferably making certain low sounds. The duckling memorizes the features of
this object and learns to distinguish it from other very similar objects (other
female ducks). Keeping within a certain distance of this object then becomes
the reference for a control system. This is highly adaptive for the duckling,
as it keeps the duckling close to its mother where it can be nurtured and
protected.

BP: But again we may just be talking about the same ideas with a different
slant. My slant is that emotions have been overrated and misunderstood, and
that they are just a side-effect of normal operation of the learned hierarchy.
We don’t act because of them, they appear because of how we act. You don’t have
to tell me this is a minority view.

BA: Yes, but this suggestion does
not argue against the sort of system I’m suggesting, which is part of the
normal control hierarchy but whose organization depends more on innate factors
and less on random reorganization than some other parts of the hierarchy
presumably do.

BA: I’m preparing to head for Indianapolis, so I’ve cut this reply
a bit short in order to get it out. I think that we’re in basic
agreement. However, where we may continue to differ is in the matter of
how much of the control (and perceptual) hierarchy self-organizes through
reorganization and how much of it develops as a function of genetic
“programming.” I can get into the evidence I see for my position
later if you like.

(I’ve just laid out some of
this evidence above.)

BP: I don’t think there can be any genetic programming of behavior at
all. That’s because behavior has to be able to vary however needed to
counteract disturbances and changes in the local environment, neither of which
evolution can anticipate. At best, there could be genetically organized
perceptual functions and reference signals to go with them. Organisms that do
seem to inherit stereotyped behavior usually turn out to have inherited goals
for perceptions, like the famous wasp that manages to drag its prey into its lair
even if someone keeps dumping dirt in the way. If it inherited a behavior, it
would just go through the same motions even if they were futile. Maybe some
organism have inherited behaviors, but if so, they’ve all been eaten by the
others that didn’t.

Your statement about genetic
programming of behavior might be taken to imply that I have suggested that
behavior is programmed, so I want to be clear that I’m talking about
genetic programming of systems that perceive and behave, not behaviors.
As you note, behavior has to vary as necessary to counteract disturbances to
whatever controlled variables are involved. But it does seem to me that many of
the behavioral tactics involved in so-called instinctive behavior are built
into the systems involved. The tactics themselves would be executed by control
systems acting in the service of the higher-level goals of these systems. In
more capable brains, these systems develop greater flexibility as the individual
learns more effective ways of acting.

Bruce A.

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.10.1620 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.10.1700 EDT] –

BA: Your statement about genetic
programming of behavior might be taken to imply that I have suggested
that behavior is programmed, so I want to be clear that I�m talking about
genetic programming of systems that perceive and behave, not
behaviors.

BP: Well, then I have to ask if you’re saying it’s possible to
“program” systems of that kind, and if so, what you mean by
programming them. I can see a few things like a startle response or a
stickleback going after a red spot on something, but those are so far
from being working control processes that they would need a lot of
improvement before becoming effective. And remember that the people
observing these things haven’t been looking for signs of reorganization
or control. We don’t know whether the stickleback learns how to control
for approach to a red patch, or knows the coordinations from the moment
of hatching. The bower bird, it is said, instictively and under genetic
programming decorates its nest with “any bright objects.” How
the heck do you inherit a desire as well as the skills necessary to make
“any bright objects” from fragments of broken taillights to
diamond rings into “decorations” on a nest? Could the bower
bird inherit a desire to see some visual nest-pattern and then have to
learn how to bring it into being in the current environment, via
reorganization? Tinbergen’s goose retrieving the egg (real or fake)
back to its nest was in fact controlling it by feel, not sight (as we
decided a few years ago on CSGnet after seeing film clips) but again we
have no idea whether it had to learn this or inherited a complete control
system. And so on down the list. What WE have inherited is a lot of data
seen through the eyes of behaviorists and SR theorists who wouldn’t have
known a control system if it had bit them, and who put their own
ideosyncratic interpretations and interpolations on what they actually
observed.

You just can’t trust reports by people who didn’t know anything about
control theory. In every case I have encountered, they simply don’t know
what to look at, and their descriptions are slanted in favor of what they
believe is going on, not what they see. It’s not their fault; I’ve
described how hard it is, sometimes, for me to find the TV clicker even
when it’s sitting six inches away from my hand but not in the orientation
I was looking for. You can’t look for something if you can’t form a
reference image of it. So all those classical old experiments just have
to be done over. I’m reminded of those videos of rats in a Skinner box
that you sent me. I was looking initially for a sequence of food in dish
followed by increased bar pressing followed by more food in dish, and it
took me quite a while to realize that wasn’t happening. Whoever reported
it that way was describing an idealized imaginary behavior, not what was
actually going on.

BA: As you note, behavior
has to vary as necessary to counteract disturbances to whatever
controlled variables are involved. But it does seem to me that many of
the behavioral tactics involved in so-called instinctive behavior are
built into the systems involved. The tactics themselves would be executed
by control systems acting in the service of the higher-level goals of
these systems.

BP: But I don’t know what you mean by “tactics.” Don’t tactics
include adjusting your own actions on the basis of what some other system
is doing? Do you mean literal programs, thought-out and purposive? How do
such control systems know what disturbances are going to happen? How can
they even see what is happening? “Tactics” is a pretty
high-falutin’ word to use for something as crude as centering a red patch
in the visual field while swimming. We very easily read more complexity
and cognition into behavior than is really there – look at the
interpretations people put on the behavior of the agents in the Crowd
program. This is the flip side of not seeing what you don’t know exists;
you see what you imagine is there. I just don’t accept most of the
descriptions of things like this that I hear or read until I see the
phenomenon for myself. It often turns out that the original observer had
an active imagination combined with some strategic blind spots. Just
think of Lorenz, not realizing that only the first gosling imprinted on
him, while the others were following another gosling.

BA: In more capable brains,
these systems develop greater flexibility as the individual learns more
effective ways of acting.

BP: I think the systems themselves undergo reorganization and become more
effective. Or maybe that’s just what you’re saying. To say they gain
“greater flexibility” sounds like trying to make them go on
being the same systems, but just being a little more flexible. It’s much
more parsimonious just to say that reorganization starts with some
primitive suggestions of control systems – perhaps only a perception and
a reference level for it, like zero – and changes them into more useful
and effective systems through interactions with the environment that
actually exists (rather than the average environment over a few hundred
generations).

At some point this argument either has to be put on the shelf or turned
into proposals for experiments that will settle the issue.

Best,

Bill P.

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

[From Bruce Abbott (2009.05.03.0655 EDT)]

BP: Bill Powers (2009.05.03.08523 MDT)] --

BA: Bruce Abbott (2009.05.03.0945 EDT)

BP: An excellent start on the discussion of PCT and disorders. Let me stir
the pot a little more.

BA:

The behavioral manifestations that lead to a diagnosis of schizophrenia
are diverse. These may include hallucinations (typically, hearing
voices),

BP: This is a problem for other people who worry about the reality of the
voices and what that implies, but how is it a problem for the person having
the hallucinations? That's what I would ask about. Is it all right with you
to be hearing these voices? If not, why not? If it's OK, we can move on to
something else. I've discussed hallucinations with people who had them, and
most of them were very bothered by having them. If I'd known about MOL then,
we might have got further, but I did explore the hallucinations with them,
asking things like whose voices they were, and so on. Maybe just my not
being upset by knowing the person heard voices was helpful. They didn't seem
so bothered afterward. The voices didn't necessarily stop, but people would
say, "Oh, there's Grandma Harriet again."

Many who experience these voices find them distressing, in that often what
is heard consists of condemnations and accusations. The person feels
harassed by them and would like them to go away.

BA: delusions (beliefs that are manifestly false to most of us),
possibly including delusions of grandeur and/or persecution (the
so-called paranoid delusions),

BP: Again, that is defining the problem that other people have with the
person who is deluded (that's a social problem).

Yes, of course. But I was describing behavioral manifestations of
schizophrenia, as viewed from the outside by others. Whether these
manifestations are a problem for the person is another question, and a quite
legitimate one to ask.

BA: disorganized speech (rambling discourse that may include
"neologisms" or made-up words), which in severe cases degenerates into
"word salad" that still follows grammatical rules but is meaningless to
others,

BP: I wouldn't have the least idea what to do with that. Maybe ask the
person what the words or pseudo-sentences mean? Maybe I'd say "I didn't
understand any of that -- is that all right with you?" But I would try to
determine if there was something about this behavior that was a problem for
that person, not just for other people.

When I was a teenager our across-the-street neighbor had a 40-year-old son,
Harry, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, living with them. One
summer I contracted to mow the lawn for these neighbors and on one occasion,
as I was putting the lawn mower away, Harry came up to me and said "I see
you have a scratch." (I had scratched my arm on a rose bush.) "Our car has a
scratch; we went to Florida; I got a watch; . . . ." This rambling
monologue continued for ten minutes. Later I realized that the only thing
stitching the sentences together was a chain of associations. My scratch had
reminded him of the scratch on the car, which reminded him of the trip he
had taken to Florida in that car, which reminded him of the watch his
parents had bought for him in Florida, and so on. There seemed to be no
"executive" up there to organize his thoughts, just an associative chain.

Harry's parents told me that his problems began in high school. He had been
an excellent math student and gradually became obsessed with mathematics.
They believed that his disorder was caused by this obsession with math: put
simply, it had driven him crazy. (There's a lesson for you! Don't be too
studious!) More likely it was the other way around. I suspect that Harry
was aware that he was losing his ability to think rationally and stay
focused; that his obsession with mathematics may have been an attempt to
preserve control over his thought processes by focusing on an area he was
good at, one with structure.

BA: distractibility (difficulty maintaining attention), odd repetitive
behaviors, inappropriate emotional outbursts (e.g., suddenly screaming
at someone for no apparent reason), catatonia (remaining immobile in a
state of "waxy flexibility, often for periods lasting hours), apathy
and withdrawal from the social world, and an apparent inability to
experience positive emotions such as happiness, joy, or love.

BP: in each of these examples, I'd try to find out, if I could, if the state
in question bothered the person demonstrating it. If a person suddenly
screamed at me "for no apparent reason", I'd ask if there were any reasons
for that, not say it was "inappropriate." Or I'd just ask if the person is
feeling very angry, or ask what the person would like to happen just then.

"Inappropriate" is of course in the eye of the beholder, not the person
doing the screaming. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that the
person believed that you were giving him that certain "look" that indicates
that you are a member of the CIA and are spying on him. (He thinks that he
can "tell" these things just by looking; no other evidence is necessary.)
You know nothing of this; from your point of view this person has simply
started screaming epithets at you for no apparent reason. But from the
person's point of view, this behavior is quite justified and not at all
irrational. But then, you are not working for the CIA and you weren't even
looking at the guy. Unless of course you're Rick Marken.

BP: The whole theme I'm trying to get across here is the idea of trying to
find out what errors the person is trying to correct, or what difficulties
there are with correcting them. My own opinions of what is wrong with the
person are irrelevant from the PCT point of view. I can't reorganize the
other person (though plugging his brain into a wall socket might do some of
that, if not in a very organized way).

In my imaginary scenario, the person is trying to get you (and the CIA in
general) to stop spying on him. Screaming at you is one possible way to do
this. But it isn't working -- after you leave, there will be others. Now
that we know what the person has difficulty controlling, what now?

BA: I worked as a ward attendant at a large state mental hospital for a
short time while in college and had the opportunity to observe a number
of persons who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The dominant
impression I had was that these were people like you and me. With most
of them, most of the time, you could have an ordinary conversation
(anti-psychotic medications were just then coming into use). But I
don't mean to convey that there was nothing wrong with them.
Schizophrenia is no illusion. It is a highly debilitating disorder --
although of course there are degrees, from mild to severe.

BP: Yes. But "debilitating" is in the eye of the beholder -- it depends on
what someone thinks the person ought to be able to do. If that someone is
the person in question, fine, but if it's someone else, nobody is going to
reorganize in any fundamental way just to make someone else feel better.

Excellent point. Many of those diagnosed with schizophrenia seem to believe
that there's nothing wrong with them; it's all those other people who are
wrong. But they're not happy, either, and they know it.

BP: And somehow I doubt that the same thing was wrong with every one of
those "schizophrenics." That's just a category, isn't it?

Yes, it's just a category. As I noted, the "symptoms" are varied and tend
to change over time. There's likely to be a wide range of causal factors
involved.

BP: In high school I sometimes played boogie woogie piano in the mental
wards of the VA hospital in Hines, Illinois (my mother was a Gray Lady
there). I had the same impression that you got: I wasn't very different from
the guys locked up there. Perhaps I was even a bit less different from them
than you were. Even they, however, told me they were different (but that I
didn't need to worry about it, which I learned not to do). But the question
I had and still have comes down to this: what did THEY think their problem
was, and was anyone trying to help them with that?

One problem they have is that they've been diagnosed with schizophrenia,
with all the negative connotations the diagnosis entails. By the way, I've
been using the rather awkward phrase "behavioral manifestations of
schizophrenia" partly to avoid calling those who have been diagnosed with
schizophrenia "schizophrenics" (which I think is depersonalizing) and to
emphasize that these "symptoms" are (or are inferred from) observable
behaviors. You can observe catatonia and can infer disordered thought from
what the person tells you.

BA: From the PCT perspective, it may be easier to state what isn't
wrong than what is. A person diagnosed as schizophrenic does not appear
to have any problems with lower-level control systems, unless
dyskinesias develop as a side-effect of medication. (Catatonia may be
an exception, but see below.) The person has normal use of skeletal
musculature. He or she can walk, talk, manipulate objects, and so on.
Ordinary perception is intact: the person doesn't walk into walls or
step off a sheer drop. Memory seems to function normally.

BP: Yes, it's clearly a higher-level problem, though in many cases I think
it's a problem with how to deal with lower-level problems like
hallucinations. There isn't anything abnormal about hearing voices that
aren't really there; sometimes that's how I remember parts of a
conversation. It's just the imagination connection. The real problems arise
in the higher-order interpretations of what the voices say, or of the fact
that they are experienced.

BA: On the other hand, the person may be perceiving things that aren't
there, such as a scolding inner voice. Is this the imagination
connection run amuck?

BP: Why "run amuck?" That's how it's supposed to work. Maybe the problem is
with a higher-order system that keeps the voices turned on all the time, for
some reason we might explore.

I can "hear" my own internal speech, but I'm not prone to believing that
what I'm "hearing" is being beamed into my head by space aliens or is the
voice of God. "Amuck" in the sense that the person seems to have lost the
ability to make that distinction.

It just occurred to me that these alien inner voices might reflect some
autonomous process going on in the brain, similar to "autonomous arm
syndrome." In the latter case, a person's arm seems to have a mind of its
own -- moving about, grabbing onto things, and so on against the will of the
person. It can result when certain parts of the brain are isolated from the
rest by disease or damage. It would be interesting to see what would show up
in a brain scan for brain activity while the person is hearing "the voice"
as opposed to when hearing what he attributes as his own inner voice.

The voice seems real enough to the person and entering the head from
some external source. The ability to "reality check" is compromised:
the person may hold fast to beliefs that are contrary to fact, logic,
or common sense. The person may have difficulty controlling attention.
In the severe case of "word salad" an entire monologue may consist of
sentences whose only connections are associative.

BP: That's what I would focus on: do the voices sound real, and does the
person think they are really real? In the worst cases you describe,
naturally we have to suspect some kind of organic problem that can't be
dealt with psychologically, but I'd never assume that to start with. You and
I have debugged enough programs to know that a wise analyst never starts out
by blaming the hardware.

My experience was that most of those diagnosed with schizophrenia had fairly
rational periods when one could explore these issues, especially if the more
florid symptoms are being well-controlled by antipsychotic medication.
During more severe episodes, it might be more difficult to conduct such a
session.

Bruce A.

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

[From Bruce Abbott (1006.05.04.12:50 EDT)]

In this discussion about schizophrenia, I understood that
our task was to speculate on how Perceptual Control Theory might be applied in
understanding the disorder. However, Bill Powers’ commentary seems
more aimed at applying the Method of Levels as a therapeutic approach. Be
that as it may, I’m going to continue focusing here on explanation rather
than therapy. Of course, a correct understanding of the mechanisms involved
would point to effective therapies.

Schizophrenia appears to pose special difficulties in that much
of what appears to be going wrong (from my point of view, not the person diagnosed
with the disorder) seems less to do with problems of control (although such
problems arise secondarily because of the ways in which family members, friends,
coworkers, therapists, and others behave toward the afflicted person) and more
to do with perceptual and logical functions. I’ve already mentioned two
areas in which failures of control systems may be implicated: difficulty
focusing attention (including distractibility) and high-level motor control,
which may be involved in catatonia. With respect to the latter, I wonder how
one would model the situation in which skeletal positional references are in a sense
frozen, yet one can establish new reference values simply by manipulating the
person’s limbs and torso. (Wherever you place things, that becomes the
new reference value.) In fact, how does one model the situation in which a
person (any person, not just one displaying catatonia) doesn’t care about
these positions, but is simply interested in making no voluntary movements from
whatever positions the limbs and torso are currently in.

There may be other disorders in which a PCT application
seems more direct. For example, in Parkinson’s Disease, the deaths of midbrain
neurons whose terminals synapse with neurons in the basal ganglia result in a
characteristic oscillation of the limbs at about 4 cycles per second,
accompanied by increasing motor rigidity as the disease progresses. Those
terminals release the neurotransmitter dopamine, which has the effect of
inhibiting the activity of the target neurons in the basal ganglia. A rather
straightforward PCT explanation would be that the loss of inhibition has the
effect of raising the gain on the motor system to the point of instability. (I’m
uncertain how to include the increased rigidity, which also seems related to
the loss of inhibition and mimics the raising of the reference level for muscle
tonus.)

A second example, which Bill P. alluded to earlier, is
bipolar disorder, with its mood swings between mania and depression. There is
evidence to suggest that our emotion subsystems are regulated in such a way
that the continued presence of a constant disturbance to a given emotion system
eventually results in a negative feedback counteraction that tends to
neutralize the emotion. For this reason we normally are unable to sustain any
strong emotional state for long. (The process has been likened to the
development of drug tolerance.) If mania and depression are manifestations of
different levels of activity in a single emotion system (or perhaps in two
coupled emotion systems), then the constant cycling between mania and
depression that characterizes bipolar disorder can be explained in terms of
control theory as the result of a system in which there is too much lag in the
negative feedback output, given the gain of the system. The result is a cycle
of overshooting and undershooting of the reference level. Drugs that
prove effective in controlling these swings may do so by effectively lowering
the loop gain or slowing the rate at which the feedback variable changes value.

Bruce A.

[Bill_Powers1]

[From Bill Powers (2009.05.04.1028 MDT)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.03.0655 EDT) --

BA: Many who experience these voices find them distressing, in that often whatis heard consists of condemnations and accusations. The person feels
harassed by them and would like them to go away.

BP: Again, this is a higher-order problem. The hallucinations are working fine. I wonder if this might not be a version of the way people often deal with conflicts, by picking one side as "right" and suppressing the other (without actually turning it off). The fact that the conflicting thoughts come across as lifelike imagined voices may not be important. People could have essentially the same conflict, and the same problems because of it, without the hallucinations. If that's the case, the method of levels should work with hallucinations as well as with ordinary conflicts.

When I was a teenager our across-the-street neighbor had a 40-year-old son,
Harry, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, living with them. One
summer I contracted to mow the lawn for these neighbors and on one occasion,
as I was putting the lawn mower away, Harry came up to me and said "I see
you have a scratch." (I had scratched my arm on a rose bush.) "Our car has a
scratch; we went to Florida; I got a watch; . . . ." This rambling
monologue continued for ten minutes. Later I realized that the only thing
stitching the sentences together was a chain of associations. My scratch had
reminded him of the scratch on the car, which reminded him of the trip he
had taken to Florida in that car, which reminded him of the watch his
parents had bought for him in Florida, and so on. There seemed to be no
"executive" up there to organize his thoughts, just an associative chain.

I'd still want to see if he was aware of that. "Funny how one memory leads to another, isn't it?" A little conversation about that could lead somewhere. That's worth a try, anyway.

Harry's parents told me that his problems began in high school. He had been
an excellent math student and gradually became obsessed with mathematics.
They believed that his disorder was caused by this obsession with math: put
simply, it had driven him crazy. (There's a lesson for you! Don't be too
studious!) More likely it was the other way around. I suspect that Harry
was aware that he was losing his ability to think rationally and stay
focused; that his obsession with mathematics may have been an attempt to
preserve control over his thought processes by focusing on an area he was
good at, one with structure.

Perhaps he solved the problem to his own satisfaction. I guess the first thing I'd want to know would be how Harry assesses his own life. If everything's OK, that's too bad for his parents because he's going to be a burden on them. Any solutions to that problem wouldn't involve therapy.

"Inappropriate" is of course in the eye of the beholder, not the person
doing the screaming. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that the
person believed that you were giving him that certain "look" that indicates
that you are a member of the CIA and are spying on him. (He thinks that he
can "tell" these things just by looking; no other evidence is necessary.)
You know nothing of this; from your point of view this person has simply
started screaming epithets at you for no apparent reason. But from the
person's point of view, this behavior is quite justified and not at all
irrational. But then, you are not working for the CIA and you weren't even
looking at the guy.

Fight with Rick on your own time (I left out that part). Assuming that the therapist's role is the appropriate one, I'd try to find out these things and go into them in more depth, not trying to talk him out of the delusion but just looking at it in more detail and finding out what he thinks about this situation. This particular delusion might be hard to work with because it involves the therapist; maybe a change of therapist would be necessary. But maybe trust could be established somehow. Glad I don't have to deal with that one and can stick to armchair therapy.

BA: In my imaginary scenario, the person is trying to get you (and the CIA in
general) to stop spying on him. Screaming at you is one possible way to do
this. But it isn't working -- after you leave, there will be others. Now
that we know what the person has difficulty controlling, what now?

BP: Go up a level if you can. Does it really bother you to be spied upon? What bothers you about it? If you weren't spied upon, what difference would it make in your life? Are you angry with me about something else, too? Am I doing something right now that bothers you?

Remember that the objective isn't to cause a change in the person or solve his problems; it's to get his attention to move around so his viewpoint changes and he reorganizes in new ways. As long as he's looking into himself and describing what he sees, he's in some other viewpoint than the one he's telling you about, and presumably is reorganizing. The longer you can keep him doing that, the more change there will be.

Also remember that the only way to find out if these proposed methods would work is to try them out. If they don't work you try something else. That's how we all solve problems when we don't have any other way to do it.

BA: Excellent point. Many of those diagnosed with schizophrenia seem to believe that there's nothing wrong with them; it's all those other people who are wrong. But they're not happy, either, and they know it.

BP: If they know about it, maybe they can tell you what they're not happy about. If they can do that, you're on the way.

BA: One problem they have is that they've been diagnosed with schizophrenia,
with all the negative connotations the diagnosis entails. By the way, I've
been using the rather awkward phrase "behavioral manifestations of
schizophrenia" partly to avoid calling those who have been diagnosed with
schizophrenia "schizophrenics" (which I think is depersonalizing) and to
emphasize that these "symptoms" are (or are inferred from) observable
behaviors. You can observe catatonia and can infer disordered thought from
what the person tells you.

BP: Right, but as I see it, we don't need to do a lot of inferring. The goal of the therapist is to get the client to communicate what it's like to be the client, and to ask enough questions to be pretty sure of understanding what is said. The process of answering the questions is what makes awareness move around.

BP earlier: Why "run amuck?" That's how it's supposed to work. Maybe the problem is with a higher-order system that keeps the voices turned on all the time, for some reason we might explore.

BA: I can "hear" my own internal speech, but I'm not prone to believing that
what I'm "hearing" is being beamed into my head by space aliens or is the
voice of God. "Amuck" in the sense that the person seems to have lost the
ability to make that distinction.

BP: I agree, but it's not the system in the imagination mode that is the problem; the problem is in how higher systems perceive those imaginings. It's the explanation of what you hear that is different; you could hear the same voices and be delighted: what a nice clear hallucination! We don't want to stop the hallucinations; we just want to find out what the person thinks about them, how he explains them, what they mean to him. Depending on circumstances I might even take a time-out to explain how the imagination mode works. It could be that the person lacks an understanding that the brain can produce perceptions all by itself, which would open the way for all kinds of odd theories.

BA: It just occurred to me that these alien inner voices might reflect some
autonomous process going on in the brain, similar to "autonomous arm
syndrome." In the latter case, a person's arm seems to have a mind of its
own -- moving about, grabbing onto things, and so on against the will of the
person. It can result when certain parts of the brain are isolated from the
rest by disease or damage. It would be interesting to see what would show up
in a brain scan for brain activity while the person is hearing "the voice"
as opposed to when hearing what he attributes as his own inner voice.

BP: I've speculated about that too -- referring to the way people commonly favor one side of a conflict and try to suppress or overcome the other. This must also be related to the multiple-personality phenomenon, in which alters are unaware of each other but experience the effects of what others do.

>BA: The voice seems real enough to the person and entering the head from
>some external source. The ability to "reality check" is compromised:
>the person may hold fast to beliefs that are contrary to fact, logic,
>or common sense. The person may have difficulty controlling attention.
>In the severe case of "word salad" an entire monologue may consist of
>sentences whose only connections are associative.

BP: Well, it might be worthwhile to follow up on those associations. Freud thought so. If you don't get too fascinated with what the person is saying or doing, the best thing to do in my limited experience is just to look for ways to direct attention up a level. That may not always be possible, but it's worth a try.

BA: My experience was that most of those diagnosed with schizophrenia had fairly rational periods when one could explore these issues, especially if the more florid symptoms are being well-controlled by antipsychotic medication. During more severe episodes, it might be more difficult to conduct such a session.

BP: I know. I wonder about that but you could be right. David Goldstein thinks the medications can "take the edge off" and make progress possible. But I always wonder how you can approach a problem when you give medicine that makes it go away temporarily. If the person is having a rational period, that's not what he needs help with. It's a lot harder to deal with an irrational person, but I don't think it's impossible. I want to discuss things, or just interact, with the irrational person, not the person who is temporarily rational and has no current contact with the problem.

For me that's pretty theoretical. I don't get a lot of practice dealing with irrational nuts other than my friends.

Best,

Bill P.

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

[From Bruce Abbott (2009.05.04.1440 EDT)]

BA: But then, you are not working for the CIA and you
weren’t even looking at the guy. Unless of course you’re Rick Marken.

Bill Powers (2009.05.04.1028 MDT) –

BP: Fight with Rick on your own time (I left out that part).

Geez, Bill, lighten up! Everyone knows that Rick would be
the last person to be working for the CIA. But wait a minute – that’s
just what they’d be expecting . . .

Bruce A.

[rsmarken]

[From Rick Marken (2009.05.06.0930)]

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.05.1830 EDT)--

BP: I don't believe there are any emotion systems. There are systems that
raise and lower reference signals for the somatic systems... The emotions
represent the modification of the biochemical activities as appropriate for
support of the activities of the motor systems, and the whole thing is set
into motion by higher-order error signals.

BA: I do believe that we have emotion systems, which are a part of our
inheritance from our evolutionary past.

If you're going to just go on belief, then I think Bill wins hands
down. Since no evidence has been presented to discriminate your
beliefs, Bill's belief would be preferred on the basis of Occum's
razor: it's the most parsimonious explanation of emotion. Also, as I'm
sure Kenny would be happy to tell you, the jury is still out on this
evolution stuff;-)

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

[BRUCE_STEPHANIE_ABBO]

Bruce Abbott (2009,05,06,1330 EDT)]

Rick Marken (2009.05.06.0930) --

Bruce Abbott (2009.05.05.1830 EDT)

BP: I don't believe there are any emotion systems. There are systems
that raise and lower reference signals for the somatic systems... The
emotions represent the modification of the biochemical activities as
appropriate for support of the activities of the motor systems, and
the whole thing is set into motion by higher-order error signals.

BA: I do believe that we have emotion systems, which are a part of our
inheritance from our evolutionary past.

RM: If you're going to just go on belief, then I think Bill wins hands down.
Since no evidence has been presented to discriminate your beliefs, Bill's
belief would be preferred on the basis of Occum's
razor: it's the most parsimonious explanation of emotion. Also, as I'm sure
Kenny would be happy to tell you, the jury is still out on this evolution
stuff;-)

You're right: I didn't present any evidence to support my belief in the
existence of emotion systems in the brain. But that doesn't mean that I'm
just going on belief (there is plenty of evidence for the existence of such
systems). My purpose then was not to defend the idea but to describe it.

The notion that emotions are nothing more than perceptions of changes in our
physiological state (e.g., trembling hands, racing heart) doesn't cut it: As
the physiologists Walter Cannon noted long ago, many emotional states
involve very similar physiological adjustments that are difficult to
discriminate purely based on how they feel. When we experience an emotion,
we not only experience those physiological changes, we become highly focused
on certain inputs from the environment and begin to act in ways that impel
us toward particular goals. When we experience fear, we pay close attention
to potential or actual sources of threat and attempt to neutralize that
threat through behavioral means, whether by hiding, by running away, or by
attacking the source of the threat. Animals across an extremely wide range
of species exhibit species-typical actions that occur to various types of
threat, and we humans have no trouble recognizing the signs of fear in many
animals not too distant from us on the evolutionary scale. Our own body
language when subjectively experiencing various emotions is relatively
little affected by experience and is seen universally across all human
cultures. Some of these are present at birth and others emerge early in
development. Even those born blind exhibit them. Fear, anger, jealousy,
love, grief, happiness, disgust all have distinct subjective feelings to
them as different from each other as the colors of the rainbow. Each appears
under different rather specific conditions, focuses attention on specific
aspects of the situation, and tends to activate specific desires and actions
that seem tailored to deal with the situation the person is facing.

Now, what evidence does Bill call on to support his contention that emotion
systems do not exist?

Bruce A.