You search for ways to show that we do not agree, and then assert that I am wrong and you are right. Your persistence in this over many years, with many people, suggests that finding disagreements and then demonstrating that you are right is important to you. Possibly you now blink and say yeah, of course, doesn’t everybody? No, people sometimes make other choices.
To seize upon verbal differences and refute them piecemeal as they occur polarizes apparent contrasts at each point independently. This often has the effect of distorting the relationship of that bit to its context, and sometimes has the effect of changing or even reversing its intended meaning.
An example:
When was the last time you conducted an experiment in physics or chemistry or biophysics or biochemistry? Scientists routinely rely on the scientific consensus in other fields that are epistemically prior to theirs. That is what the words “the authority that we assign to science” mean. (In passing, note that a scientific consensus is a collectively controlled perceptual variable.)
You and I agree that these physical variables are theoretical entities in physics, chemistry, etc. We agree that we treat them as physical variables because they explain the results of experiments. These variables may help explain biophysical experiments into the generation of neural impulses by environmentally sensitive cells in sensory organs. Those are not our PCT experiments. Those are experiments by other scientists. PCT experiments have been consistently at higher levels of perception than perceptual intensities generated by sensors. We refer to intensity perceptions as being at the foundation of the perceptual hierarchy, but that is a gesture in principle, the practice is in prior sciences.
Rather than seeking out and magnifying our differences, I propose that we start by identifying our agreements before proceding to questions with less clear answers. A project of seeking out error in anyone’s understanding of PCT and correcting it is not the only difficulty before us. We know that understanding PCT takes time and persistence and depends upon prior understandings that may be in the way, differently in different people. For this, reiterating and emphasizing what we agree on is important. The difficulties before us in this topic are in questions to which PCT currently does not have clear answers.
Here are some things that I think we agree on:
- That it’s all perception, we have no privileged access to what’s going on other than our perceptions.
- That higher-level perceptions are functions of lower-level perceptions.
- That at the lowest level biophysical stimulations of sensors are functions of we-know-not-what in the environment.
- That various sciences have models of what is in the environment, which help to explain how our sensors and nervous systems construct our perceptions.
- That those models are themselves high-level perceptions.
- That the physical variables {v1 … vn} to which we refer to account for intensity perceptions at the lowest level are theoretical entities within explanatory models controlled in the practice of the physical sciences.
I will be surprised if you disagree with any of this. If you find some words to carp about then we can drill down to the intentions.
Now let’s consider some matters that are less clear.
Perceptual signals are theoretical variables in the model. Our actual perceptions are subjective experiences. Subjectively experienced perceptions are the only reality we know. As Bill put it in his post “PCT is about experience” (the origin of the ‘taste of lemonade’ example):
Experiences are not in the PCT model. What is in the model are quantitative relationships. Quantitative relationships are theoretical (e.g. the loop reduces error asymptotically to within a tolerance range corresponding to loop gain). Specific quantities are not in the model either. Specific quantities are experimental data and data displayed by working simulations of experimental results. None of this escapes the fundamental condition that it’s all perception.
We talk as if perceptual signals in neurons were our perceptions, as if theoretical entities in the PCT model were our experiences which are being modeled, but we know better. Or we should. This does lead to unfortunate confusions for students, as when people talk of experiencing or feeling error, when what they usually mean is (according to Bill’s model of emotion) that they experience perceptions of somatic conditions that result from unreduced error, which may feel distressing, and they experience higher-level perceptions which we call emotions, which include the somatic states and feelings of distress among their inputs.
Perceptual signals and all the other objects and relations in the PCT model are also in the universe of subjectively experienced perceptions. It’s all perception, and the only perceptions we know are subjective experiences, not perceptual signals. The PCT model tells us they are perceptual signals. Experiment tends to confirm the PCT model. Experimental confirmation in the epistemically prior sciences of neurology and neurobiology still lags.
You object to the phrase ‘projected into the environment’. The 1992 quote above is fairly early in the ‘mirror world’ discussions of how the experienced world is the perceptions constructed in the perceptual hierarchy, but experienced as intensities, edges, objects, relations, etc. present in the environment. That is what the phrase ‘projected into the environment’ meant then and that is what it means here. PCT is about experience. It explains experience.
‘Projecting’ is experiencing internally constructed perceptions as though they are present in the environment. The computer program has no experiences. Living control systems do. PCT currently has no explanation for the difference. ‘Projecting’ experienced perceptions as though perceived environmental phenomena is not necessary for control (viz. various kinds of automata).
Yes, I agree. My subjectively experienced perceptions are the only reality I know. Among my subjectively experienced perceptions are system concepts, principles, and procedures of various kinds that make a distinction between more objective (the lamp) and more subjective perceptions (the lingering perceptions of light intensity and form after looking away). Importantly here, theoretical and experimental work in science are ways of controlling subjective perceptions on the basis of which we perceive more confidence that they are objective. That kind of difference is the distinction I was making.
That last sentence seems backward. Our ability to control tells us that the perceptual variables that we control are sufficiently analogous to the environmental sources of those perceptual variables, whatever those environmental sources may be. But we experience the taste of lemonade, the color purple, and someone saying something wrong about PCT, as though these were actually present entities in the environment.
(We do act in ways that appear to make environmental realities more closely analogous to perceptual variables that we control, but that’s the negentropic nature of control. Not the point under consideration here.)
Your mentioning that context does not disqualify it from this discussion. It is true in any context, isn’t it?
No one is contesting the fundamentals of PCT. This is a discussion of questions to which PCT currently does not have clear answers. The model is necessary for explaining quantified data of behavior which are understood to be numerical analogs of perceptions. But people also look to PCT for understanding of what they experience. And not clinicians and their patients alone. The relevance of PCT to subjective experience is crucial to the spread and adoption of PCT. In that process of spread and adoption, to minimize and correct the distortions and misconceptions to which learners of PCT are so abundantly prone we must address those learners where their interests lie, and that means we need a coherent account of the relation of the quantitative theoretical objects and relations in the model to people’s subjective experience. The relation of perception as signal to perception as experience is right at the heart of the famous old mind-body problem. Some folks pretend that it’s a pseudo-problem, that it doesn’t exist because mind and consciousness are epiphenomena, nothing but matter all the way down (or up). Skinner headed that way. Thomas Huxley and William James fenced over this. Frankly I doubt that anyone really believes it. Like the determinists they just say dourly that’s what logic compels them to believe and are unable to reevaluate their assumptions.
You speak of facts. Facts are perceptions to which we give credence for good and sound reasons (and those reasons are also perceptions). Here’s a voice from 2014:
I agree that perceptions (including facts) can be of different levels of complexity. I indicated several levels of complexity or abstraction. [1] The color purple or the taste of lemonade are perceptions at a low level of complexity, and [2] the PCT model is a perception at a high level of complexity. (In PCT we can refer to their complexity e.g. according to their level in the hierarchy, but elsewhere this distinction is expressed by words like concrete or material vs. abstract, conceptual, theoretical.) In both cases these are perceptions closed by loops passing through one control hierarchy.
[3] The third degree of complexity is when control loops through several control hierarchies are closed through intersecting environmental feedback paths, so that they non-identically influence physical properties of the same aspects of the environment, of which they control their non-identical perceptions. Of this kind of complexity I gave as an example a virtual controller, a theoretical entity in modeling collective control.
[quote=“rsmarken, post:49, topic:16019”]
Yes. But when you model more than one individual interacting in a common environment, in addition to each potentially influencing variables that others are controlling (purposefully or not), each may control perceptions of some or all of the others, including perceptions (mistaken or not) of others’ purposes. One individual may have responsibility for actively controlling a variable. One may delegate responsibility for control of a variable to another. One may communicate to another that it is their responsibility or their turn or would you please. Such communication may be nonverbal, e.g. ostensive incapacity or unwillingness or non-perception. Importantly, one who delegates control to another has not necessarily stopped controlling the delegated CV. Possible situations among interacting control hierarchies can be quite complex.
Much too broad an interpretation. What I said, a bit more fully, was:
In part mentioning physics was nod to your objection to Eetu’s talk of lifting a heavy stone, but more immediately it led into discussion of a ‘virtual controller’. The theoretical entity ‘virtual controller’ does not exist in physical terms, but it is a useful concept for grappling with the complexities of collective control. Just testing and confirming that a variable is consistently restored to a reference value cannot distinguish between individual control and collective control. Determining where the control outputs come from is more complicated for collective control because the participating control hierarchies may exert control at different times. Verifying that each can perceive the CV, can exert outputs that affect the state of the CV, when doing so is in fact perceiving the CV (i.e. control stops when perceptual input is blocked), etc.—all those steps of the Test in addition to disturbing the CV are more difficult to carry out in an interactive collective control situation.
The part of the PCT model in which we model physics is the environmental feedback function. (We don’t do a whole lot with the psychophysics of peripheral, environment-facing input and output functions, and next to nothing with biophysics, neurochemistry, and neurophysiology within the hierarchy, but they also ground us in physical sciences.) The PCT model has been applied mostly to one individual control hierarchy at a time. In modeling collective control, the concept of a virtual controller models the observed fact that a collectively controlled variable is controlled at a reference level as though one control system were controlling it. Just as the PCT model is abstract, a virtual controller is an abstract part of the PCT model when we consider collective control. In principle, it is possible to resolve the inputs and outputs of the virtual controller to the inputs and outputs of the individual autonomous control hierarchies participating in that collective control, but in actual social situations it may often not be practicable. There are just too many potentially asynchronous variables for the experimenter to bring under control in an experimental design, or for the observer to bring under control in a program of naturalistic investigation.
That’s fine. Nothing compels you to have anything to say about it.