Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007...)

CSGnet Archive CSG2015
1

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

···

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.
Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental variables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Control of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perception because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control * of* perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psychologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an accurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control systems is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity control system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corresponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system concept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

2

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

···

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.
Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var
iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book * Behavior: The Contro
l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book * Behavior: The Control of Perce
ption* because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control * of* perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc
hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a
ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environmen t. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste
ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont
rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr
esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con
cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
font>
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

3

I agree it would make sense to tie the two together in this way. It would help explain how ancient civilisations might have controlled perceived aspects of their environment of which we currently have no conception, and how animals might extract signals from their environment to form perceptions that we cannot currently measure…

···

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.
Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var
iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book * Behavior: The Contro
l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book * Behavior: The Control of Perce
ption* because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control * of* perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc
hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a
ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environmen t. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste
ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont
rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr
esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con
cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

4

Even though I tend to be with Rupert on this topic, my son seems to support Rick’s view of PCT. He is three and a half.

Last night I was reading him a children’s book about space and it said ‘astronauts fire the booster rockets’. He said ‘Daddy, what’s a booster rocket’. I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe they are additional rockets that a spacecraft uses when the main ones are not enough. But that sounded too complicated. He pointed to a picture of the directional rockets (ones used to direct sideways for landing) on a picture of a lunar module and he asked ‘are they booster rockets?’. I wasn’t sure so I said ‘you could call those booster rockets’. My answer smacked of resigning myself to subjective perception. Samuel was not satisfied with this answer and then pressed me, "but Daddy, what ACTUALLY are they?'.

Samuel clearly believed that what we were controlling in that interaction had an exact parallel in the environment that was not subjective. But then we used words and pictures to try to establish this, not real booster rockets…

···

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.
Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var
iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book * Behavior: The Contro
l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book * Behavior: The Control of Perce
ption* because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control * of* perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc
hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a
ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environmen t. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste
ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont
rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr
esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con
cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

5

Hi Fred…

···

From: Fred Nickols (fred@nickols.us via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 1:44 AM
To: rsmarken@gmail.com
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Best,

Boris

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

6

barb: Fred's statement below makes sense to me. I'm thinking of an example I threw out there some time ago, the three people standing outside in their jackets, when the sun comes out. One took off their jacket, one zipped theirs up, and the last kept it on but open. They each were reacting to the temperature as they perceived it.

···

FN : So would it be correct to say "Behavior is control of the perceived environment"?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it's just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

>

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (<mailto:rsmarken@gmail.com>rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) <<mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>csgnet@lists.illinois.edu> wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don't "contribute" to a perception; they _are_ the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase "Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment" if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment' means (to me) the same thing as "functions of environmental variables" which means the same thing (to me) as "perception" (or "perceived aspects of the environment"). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my "Control of Perception" demo at <Control of Perception.

RM: Maybe it's because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word "perception" I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is "out there" in the world -- physical (environmental) variables -- into our experience of the world -- perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don't see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it's hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person's environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable -- the baseball -- going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment -- balls, bats, mits, etc -- that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book Behavior: The Contro l of Perception (hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase "control of perception" rather than "control of perceptual aspects of the environment" or just "control of the environment" in the title of his book? The word "perception" is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable -- temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as "output" and perception is seen as "input". So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says "behavior is the control of perception" gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that's the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it's the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don't make a clear distinction between "cause" and "control",by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word "perception" in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the "input" of an organism, while the word "behavior" would be seen as referring to the organism's "output". But if that's true then why not call the book "Behavior:The control of the environment"? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used "perception" rather than "environment" in the title, not only because "environment" is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects -- functions -- of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word "perception" refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism's environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers' book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism's environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It's the first claim -- that output controls input -- that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman "perception" is just another word for "reality is just a subjective opinion". So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called "post modernists" who seem to think that there is no way to know what's really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that "control of perception" means that we shouldn't disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the "Mikado" when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: "And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct." Of course, once such people figure out "control of perception" doesn't mean that everyone's right -- that it doesn't deny science -- they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill's choice of the phrase "control of perception" to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets' psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other "radical subjectivists") upset because it doesn't mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term "perception" usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn't been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a "sensation" type perception in PCT. But I don't think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word "perception" seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that's what the humidity control system is controlling -- a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call "humidity".

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity -- such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does -- control how honest it is in various encounters -- we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment -- a hierarchy of perceptions -- is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase "control of perception" in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like "honesty" or a system con cept like "Dodger fan" from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That's why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception -- a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot's environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn't consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an "aspect of the environment" as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn't consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view "perceptoin" as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick
--

Richard S. Marken

<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__urldefense.proof-2520point.com_v2_url-3Fu-3Dhttp-2D3A-5F-5Fwww.mindreadings.com-26d-3DAwMFaQ-26c-3D8hUWFZcy2Z-2DZa5rBPlktOQ-26r-3D-2DdJBNItYEMOLt6aj-5FKjGi2LMO-5FQ8QB-2DZzxIZIF8DGyQ-26m-3D0HMm9WxWTgA3hJX9yJ37QqrE5Aq5z4FFSRpHyqJqY-5F0-26s-3Dw5JHNFgx2Lft4RCE8oxqqhSdO6UxR-2D8cIRve-5FZQPWVo-26e-3D&d=AwMFAg&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=-dJBNItYEMOLt6aj_KjGi2LMO_Q8QB-ZzxIZIF8DGyQ&m=xXqEtwXJYXfh32rpCZron8ieFdcm5fJVLNIJU9j_d28&s=80EHQAuQIPq1zOLeWC1BF0_-WIaWmAR3RfdhbZKxeWs&e=&gt;&gt;&gt; www.mindreadings.com
Author of <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.amazon.com_Doing-2DResearch-2DPurpose-2DExperimental-2DPsychology_dp_0944337554_ref-3Dsr-5F1-5F1-3Fie-3DUTF8-26qid-3D1407342866-26sr-3D8-2D1-26keywords-3Ddoing-2Bresearch-2Bon-2Bpurpose&d=AwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=-dJBNItYEMOLt6aj_KjGi2LMO_Q8QB-ZzxIZIF8DGyQ&m=0HMm9WxWTgA3hJX9yJ37QqrE5Aq5z4FFSRpHyqJqY_0&s=tt1LMJoWLJIoSpMqZcgfm0aR1ks3ETI6-mhSZtphDtw&e=&gt;Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

7

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0920)}

I’m happy to modify the wording, Boris. How about this: “Behavior is an effort to control some selected aspect of the perceived environment.”

Clearly, none of us can control our entire environment and I don’t think any of us try to do that but I do think we all try to control certain selected aspects of the world we perceive.

It’s probably worth mentioning that some of our efforts are conscious and deliberate and others are more or less automatic.

Fred Nickols

···

From: “Boris Hartman” (boris.hartman@masicom.net via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 4:17 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: RE: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

Hi Fred…

From: Fred Nickols (fred@nickols.us via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 1:44 AM
To: rsmarken@gmail.com
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Best,

Boris

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

8

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0925)]

Nice example, Barb. I wonder if what all three are trying to control is their feeling of warmth and doing so against different (i.e., individual) reference values. I guess we’d need the test.

Fred Nickols

···

From: “bara0361@gmail.com” (bara0361@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 8:58 AM
To: Boris Hartman
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

barb: Fred’s statement below makes sense to me. I’m thinking of an example I threw out there some time ago, the three people standing outside in their jackets, when the sun comes out. One took off their jacket, one zipped theirs up, and the last kept it on but open. They each were reacting to the temperature as they perceived it.

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

9

barb:  Like the way we’re trying to control the words you choose, Fred? lol…

Â

Just musing over my coffee… I see how we are continually trying to control our environment and how that leads to frustration and exhaustion whenever other entities are interfering.  I find the most success at controlling small, inanimate objects. I can move my coffee cup closer, and it’s satisfying to know that once I move it, it will stay put!

Â

Once we realize that it truly is only ourselves over which we have control, then we can relax and set about our business of making adjustments accordingly to remain in our comfort zone, if we perceive a disturbance. Of course, there are many perceptions to which we choose not to react, which in itself, is another form of control, deciding not to decide. Or compromising, allowing for smaller disturbances, while choosing not to allow them to disturb us.

Â

Thank you for indulging me. This is the kind of conversation I’d wake up to back home, Dad having already been up for several hours, and through several cups of coffee. I’d walk in the back room to say good morning, and next thing I knew, I was playing with rubber bands. Dad was a master of control…

Â

Ok, back to my coffee…

Â

···

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 7:25 AM, “Fred Nickols” csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0920)}

Â

I’m happy to modify the wording, Boris. How about this: “Behavior is an effort to control some selected aspect of the perceived environment.�

Â

Clearly, none of us can control our entire environment and I don’t think any of us try to do that but I do think we all try to control certain selected aspects of the world we perceive.

Â

It’s probably worth mentioning that some of our efforts are conscious and deliberate and others are more or less automatic.

Â

Fred Nickols

Â

From: “Boris Hartman” (boris.hartman@masicom.net via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 4:17 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: RE: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

Â

Hi Fred…<

Â

From: Fred Nickols (fred@nickols.us via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 1:44 AM
To: rsmarken@gmail.com
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

Â

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

Â

Â

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Best,

Boris

Â

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Â

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Â

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

Â

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

Â

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

Â

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

Â

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

Â

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

Â

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

Â

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

Â

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control]. Â

Â

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.Â

Â

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) Â output controls input and 2)Â input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

Â

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.Â

Â

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality). Â

Â

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

Â

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.Â

Â

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized. Â

Â

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

Â

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT. Â

Â

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

Â

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:Â

Â

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Â

BestÂ

Â

Rick

Richard S. MarkenÂ

www.mindreadings.com
Author of  Doing Research on Purpose.Â

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

10

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.12.0915)]

···

Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

FN: So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

RM: Yes. But it really depends on who you’re taking to. If you are talking to psychologists then, as I said, they will get what is most important about PCT if you just say that, “according to PCT behavior is the control of perception”. Psychologists will understand that to mean that behavior is the control of input rather than output, regardless of what their theory of perception is (and there are several). But if you are talking to lay people it’s probably best to lay off the word “perception” (and the word “control” for that matter) and just say “according to PCT we behave in order to keep our world the way we want it to be”.

RM: As I said, many people take “perception” to mean something similar to “illusion”. They think perception is different than what they are experiencing as the “real world”. They don’t understand that the real world they see is perception. That very real looking (and feeling and smelling and tasting) cup of coffee out there is a perception – actually a collection of perceptual variables. But people certainly don’t think of the cup of coffee that way; it’s a real, tangible thing to most of us. It certainly is to me.

RM: One has to be trained to understand that the reality we see – that cup of coffee sitting there – is just a collection of perceptual variables that exist only in your brain. In order to understand PCT you do have to understand this. But it takes a long time to get it; the study of perception is hard; very complicated. So I’d wait before getting into what is meant by perception (a topic that even many psychologists don’t really understand; it’s a specialty that is considered arcane; few people got excited when I told them that I was studying auditory psychophysics in grad school).

RM: So when I talk to students about PCT I avoid talking about perception at first and just say that PCT is about the fact that we control (or try to control) things in the world around us, we are not controlled by those things. We control the cup of coffee, bringing it to our lips to drink, the cup of coffee doesn’t control us, causing us to bring it to our lips. That’s the main point of PCT. Once people get that, you can move on to explaining that the cup of coffee is actually collections of perceptual variables and it is those that are actually being controlled. So we control the perceived position of the coffee cup relative to our lips (with our hand and arms); the perceived hotness of the coffee (by blowing or not on it), etc. We don’t control perceptual aspects of the coffee cup, like the color or shape of the cup – at least not while we’re drinking the coffee.

RM: So we are controlling perceptual aspects of the presumed reality out there, not the reality itself. But I think this more complicated aspect of PCT can wait until people get the idea we control what we experience as reality – the world around us – the world doesn’t control us (the inanimate aspect of that world anyway; other control systems in the world can control us, but this, along with a detailed explanation of perception, can also be left for later).

Best

Rick

–
Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

11

barb: Yes, the point being that the sun, or change in temperature, is not controlling what each person does with their coat. Each of them has a different reference value, and makes a change (or not) in order to maintain their desired value.

···

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 7:30 AM, “Fred Nickols” csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0925)]

Nice example, Barb. I wonder if what all three are trying to control is their feeling of warmth and doing so against different (i.e., individual) reference values. I guess we’d need the test.

Fred Nickols

From: “bara0361@gmail.com” (bara0361@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 8:58 AM
To: Boris Hartman
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

barb: Fred’s statement below makes sense to me. I’m thinking of an example I threw out there some time ago, the three people standing outside in their jackets, when the sun comes out. One took off their jacket, one zipped theirs up, and the last kept it on but open. They each were reacting to the temperature as they perceived it.

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

12

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.12.0940)

···

barb: Yes, the point being that the sun, or change in temperature, is not controlling what each person does with their coat. Each of them has a different reference value, and makes a change (or not) in order to maintain their desired value.

RM: Yes! Different strokes for different folks because different folks have different references for strokes!

Best

Rick

–

Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0925)

FN: Nice example, Barb. I wonder if what all three are trying to control is their feeling of warmth and doing so against different (i.e., individual) reference values. I guess we’d need the test.

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

13

barb: Fred’s statement below makes sense to me. I’m thinking of an example I threw out there some time ago, the three people standing outside in their jackets, when the sun comes out. One took off their jacket, one zipped theirs up, and the last kept it on but open. They each were reacting to the temperature as they perceived it.

barb: Yes, the point being that the sun, or change in temperature, is not controlling what each person does with their coat. Each of them has a different reference value, and makes a change (or not) in order to maintain their desired value.

HB : Barb, think. First statement is wrong. People are not »reacting« on what they perceive.

Second statement seems to be O.K. Perception is matched to reference, and form »error« signal…… and so on arround the loop…

Best

Boris

···

From: bara0361@gmail.com [mailto:bara0361@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 2:58 PM
To: Boris Hartman
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

14

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Best,

Boris

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

···

From: “bara0361@gmail.com” (bara0361@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 4:38 PM
To: Fred Nickols
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

barb: Like the way we’re trying to control the words you choose, Fred? lol…

BP : Just musing over my coffee… I see how we are continually trying to control our environment and how that leads to frustration and exhaustion whenever other entities are interfering. I find the most success at controlling small, inanimate objects. I can move my coffee cup closer, and it’s satisfying to know that once I move it, it will stay put!

HB : We can’t control our environment. It’s just your perceptual illussion that you control environment with hands, moving coffee and so on. We control perception. Perception is all there is.

Bill P.:

Our only view of the real world is our view of the neural signals that represent it inside our own brains. When we act to make a perception change to our more desireble state …¦ we have no direct knowledge of what we are doing to the reality that is the origin of our neural signal; we know only the final result, how the result looks, feels, smells, sounds, tastes, and so forth…

HB : I hope you understand. With behavior you change perception to a more desirable state. You don’t control anything or move your cofee with hands. You can’t control environment or something in environment. Only perception is controlled.

BP : Once we realize that it truly is only ourselves over which we have control, then we can relax and set about our business of making adjustments accordingly to remain in our comfort zone, if we perceive a disturbance. Of course, there are many perceptions to which we choose not to react,

HB : Sorry barb. Maybe I don’t understand you right, but you can’t choose to react or not react on perceptions. It’s not stimulus – respons or deciding that it’s stimulus – respons. Percepteption is always matched to references. There is nothing to decide. Difference between perception and reference always decide. There is no direct connections between perception and »reaction«. So you can’t react on preception or decide that you will or you will not »react«.

Best

Boris

which in itself, is another form of control, deciding not to decide. Or compromising, allowing for smaller disturbances, while choosing not to allow them to disturb us.

Thank you for indulging me. This is the kind of conversation I’d wake up to back home, Dad having already been up for several hours, and through several cups of coffee. I’d walk in the back room to say good morning, and next thing I knew, I was playing with rubber bands. Dad was a master of control…

Ok, back to my coffee…

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 7:25 AM, “Fred Nickols” csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0920)}

I’m happy to modify the wording, Boris. How about this: “Behavior is an effort to control some selected aspect of the perceived environment.�

Clearly, none of us can control our entire environment and I don’t think any of us try to do that but I do think we all try to control certain selected aspects of the world we perceive.

It’s probably worth mentioning that some of our efforts are conscious and deliberate and others are more or less automatic.

Fred Nickols

From: “Boris Hartman” (boris.hartman@masicom.net via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 4:17 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: RE: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

Hi Fred…

From: Fred Nickols (fred@nickols.us via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 1:44 AM
To: rsmarken@gmail.com
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

15

Hi Fred…

···

From: “Fred Nickols” (fred@nickols.us via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 3:26 PM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: RE: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.12.0920)}

I’m happy to modify the wording, Boris. How about this: “Behavior is an effort to control some selected aspect of the perceived environment.”

HB : Why bother Fred if Bill has put it as it should be put :

“behavior is effect of output on input”. That’s what “feed-back” is. That’s all what behavior is doing in the external environment. In Bill’s diagram is this the only thing I can see about behavior. This is general explanation. There is no “controlled aspect of environment” .

It’s not control of output to any “aspect of environment”, specially not perceived. “Perceived environment” (perception) is to some extent controlled in comparator not outside (see Bill’s diagram). But maybe I didn’t clearly understood you. It’s quite a complicated definition you put for behavior. But I think it’s not worth. Bill explained everything quite simple.

Behavior is not control. It’s just effect of muscles on environment, transformation of control into environment, affecting also input. That’s all what I see in Bill’s diagram. Maybe you see something more. What if something is tickeling you on the skin in the back ? What do you control in external environment (which aspect of environment) if you scratch on the place of tickeling on the skin ? PCT is theory that tends to explain all behaviors, not just those with side effects on some “aspect of environment”. Bill knew what he was doing with not putting “controlled variable” or “aspect of environment” into external environment.

FN : Clearly, none of us can control our entire environment and I don’t think any of us try to do that but I do think we all try to control certain selected aspects of the world we perceive.

HB : This is quite behavioristic or self-regulation view. Thinking that entirely or some “aspect of environment” can be controlled with behavior is not PCT reasoning. Bill’s diagram of “Control of perception” was meant for all behaviors, not just those which “control loop” effects goes through “aspect of environment”. As the behavior one above (scratching) there are also other behaviors that don’t affect any “aspect of environment”, but affect directly input (perception). There are just effects of control perceived outside in external environment. Control is done inside organism.

FN : It’s probably worth mentioning that some of our efforts are conscious and deliberate and others are more or less automatic.

HB : Depends on which level of hierarchy perception is controlled.

But maybe I didn’t understood you quite well. Are you saying that you can make conscious or more or less automatic efforts (directly contract muscle), not with “Control of effort perception” ? Maybe you could go and read B:CP about this one J.

Best,

Boris

Fred Nickols

From: “Boris Hartman” (boris.hartman@masicom.net via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 4:17 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: RE: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

Hi Fred…

From: Fred Nickols (fred@nickols.us via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 1:44 AM
To: rsmarken@gmail.com
Cc: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

[From Fred Nickols (2015.08.11.1945)]

FN : So would it be correct to say “Behavior is control of the perceived environment”?

HB : Which environment Fred ?

Behavior is not control, it’s just one of means of control that is affecting external environment.

Best,

Boris

Fred Nickols

Managing Partner

Distance Consulting LLC

Be sure you measure what you want.

Be sure you want what you measure.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 11, 2015, at 7:16 PM, Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)]

Rupert Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

RM: Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a perception; they are the perception.

RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase “Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about, which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside) functions of physical (environmental) variables.

RM: Because "aspects of the environment’ means (to me) the same thing as “functions of environmental variables” which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or “perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for example, is one aspect of physical (environmental) variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to be two different ways of perceiving the same physical environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact that you can control different perceptual aspects of the same environmental var iables is my “Control of Perception” demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

RM: Maybe it’s because my main field of study in psychology was perception but when I hear the word “perception” I automatically think of that word as referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect of the environment. The study of perception is all about how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the world – physical (environmental) variables – into our experience of the world – perceptions.

RY: As I mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests that the controlled variable is something in the environment.

RM: I don’t see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed, there are many prominent psychologists who are students of perception who believe that perceptions are a direct reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J. Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were controlling the location of the ball relative to the strike zone, batters were controlling the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were controlling the location the the ball relative to their mits, etc. I know that the players were actually controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual variables are being controlled when we see people carrying out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about control informally we can talk about it in terms of what we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls, bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

RY: This may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are involved.

RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth considering why Powers called his book *Behavior: The Contro l of Perception *(hence the new name for the thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of the environment” or just “control of the environment” in the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling their perceptions, though those systems do control their perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They talk about a thermostat controlling a physical (environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about living control systems Behavior: The Control of Perception rather than, say, Behavior: The Control of Physical Variables?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book Behavior: The Control of Perce ption because he wrote it for an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that title would catch their attention (as it did mine). Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as controlled by perception, where behavior is seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. So when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a title that implies that behavior is the control of perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

RM: To a psychologist, a book that says “behavior is the control ** of** perception” gets it exactly backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output. And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to the psychological establishment. His book is about the fact that it’s the psyc hologists who got it it backwards, not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that input causes output when, in fact, output controls input. [Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between “cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP was explain the difference between cause and control].

RM: So I believe Bill used the word “perception” in the title of his book because he knew that psychologists would see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”? Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by environmental variables so the environment is as much an input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception” rather than “environment” in the title, not only because “environment” is not an a ccurate description of what is controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of the environment that are controlled) but because he knew that psychologists would understand that the word “perception” refers not only to the input to an organism but also to the fact that this input is a function of the organism’s environment.

RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) output controls input and 2) input is a function physical variables in the organism’s environment. A psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial (perceptions are understood to be functions of physical variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and how they work). It’s the first claim – that output controls input – that is the tough one (for psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT for more than a few seconds.

RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not psychologists see the title Behavior: The Control of Perception what they often find most intriguing is not the idea that output controls input but that what is controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is just another word for “reality is just a subjective opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get people who believe that “control of perception” means that we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can know what is really true so we are all equally right. Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science. But apparently this philosophy has been around for some time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert & Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course, once such people figure out “control of perception” doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

RM: So Bill’s choice of the phrase “control of perception” to describe PCT has managed to get lots of people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it means what they think it means: that output controls input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an important concept in control theory when applied to living organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical control syste ms is because the perceptions controlled by the latter typically correspond to simple physical variables. For example, the perception controlled by a thermostat is a function of a single physical variable, temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term “perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of the environment than just a single physical variable it hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by mechanical control systems that control simple physical variables.

RM: There are mechanical control systems that control more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity control system, for example, controls a perception of humidity, which is a complex function of two physical variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity control system controls what would be called a “sensation” type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would say that a humidity cont rol system controls a perception of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect of the environment that we call “humidity”.

RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior is control and that control is organized around perceptual variables) was that the behavior of living things can be explained in terms of control of perceptions that can represent aspects of the environment of increasing complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences, programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some things people do can be explained by assuming that they are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty. In order to build a machine that could do what a person does – control how honest it is in various encounters – we would have to give it the ability to perceive the aspect of the environment that corr esponds to the perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is organized around control of perceptions of increasingly complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT. Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed as the types of perceptions around which human behavior seems to be organized.

RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase “control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about explaining behavior in terms of the types of perceptual variables that people control. All those perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts, are functions of environmental variables, functions that are computed by the neural networks in our afferent nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we figure out how to compute the perception of a principle like “honesty” or a system con cept like “Dodger fan” from the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface. But these perceptions, like all others, must be a function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What else could they be a function of?

RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you, Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior (control) only when they control the same kinds of perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it was controlling a high level perception – a function of lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent illustration of robotics based on PCT.

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

RY: What is the difference between this and a perception?

RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph above as follows and it would mean exactly the same thing:

RM: In the above example, the environment is three variables: t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view “perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical (environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

16

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.12.1600)]

image51.png
image51.png960×720 660 KB

···

HB : Why bother Fred if Bill has put it as it should be put :

“behavior is effect of output on inputâ€?.

RM: Really? Where does Bill say that?Â

Â

HB: That’s what “feed-backâ€? is.Â

RM: Sort of. I like to think of it in terms of the entire “feedback” loop, so the feedback is output “feeding back” on itself via its effect on input and error, the latter being the cause of that same output. Â Â

HB: That’s all what behavior is doing in the external environment. In Bill’s diagram is this the only thing I can see about behavior. This is general explanation. There is no “controlled aspect of environmentâ€? .

 Â

RM: Here is Fig. 1 from Powers 1973 Science paper. Notice that what the output affects is a variable in the environment called the Input quantity. This Input quantity is a function of physical variables (the v’s) and it represents the aspect of these physical variables (the environment) that corresponds to the controlled perception (called the Sensor signal in the diagram).Â

Â

HB: It’s not control of output to any “aspect of environmentâ€?, specially not perceived. “Perceived environmentâ€? (perception) is to some extent controlled in comparator not outside (see Bill’s diagram). But maybe I didn’t clearly understood you. It’s quite a complicated definition you put for behavior. But I think it’s not worth. Bill explained everything quite simple.

RM: Perhaps not simply enough. Bill’s diagram shows a feedback control loop organized around the control of an Input quantity. This Input quantity is represented as a Sensory signal in the control system. The controlling is done by the operation of the entire loop; there is no control of Output and there is no controlling done by the comparator. The comparator just compares.Â

HB: Behavior is not control. It’s just effect of muscles on environment,

RM: This is true if by “behavior” all you are referring to is output effects on a controlled Input quantity. But most of the things we call behavior are both outputs and controlled input quantities. So a behavior like “lifting a book” is both an controlled Input quantity (an end result ) and an output (a means of controlling some other input quantity, like putting the book back up on the shelf). Because most things we call “behavior” are both outputs and controlled Input quantities, we say “behavior is control”.Â

Â

HB: Bill knew what he was doing with not putting “controlled variableâ€? or “aspect of environmentâ€? into external environment.

HB: Bill referred to the perceptual variable that is controlled as the “controlled variable” and its environmental counterpart, the aspect of the environment that is controlled, as the “input quantity”.Â

Â

HB : Thinking that entirely or some “aspect of environmentâ€? can be controlled with behavior is not PCT reasoning.

RM: Actually, thinking of living (or artificial) control systems as controlling some aspect of the environment is perfectly good PCT reasoning. When you control the shape of the rectangle in the “Control of Perception” demo (http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html), for example, you are controlling the shape rather than the orientation or size aspect of the environment; when a thermostat controls air temperature it is controlling  the temperature rather than the humidity or water vapor aspect of environment.

BestÂ

Rick     Â

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

www.mindreadings.com
Author of  Doing Research on Purpose.Â
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

17

[From MK (2015.08.14.2015 CET)]

Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)--

Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science.

"Philosophy matters in all sectors of intellectual culture because a
philosophical opinion may either encourage or obstruct the exploration
of reality. For example, Joseph Needham, the great expert in Chinese
culture, asked the question "Why was modern science not born in the
most advanced civilization of its time, namely China?" His answer was
roughly this: Because traditional Chinese intellectual culture was
dominated by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The Buddha had taught
that all is appearance and illusion; Lao-tzu, that contemplation
trumps action; and Confucius, that what matter are only peaceful
coexistence and obedience to tradition. None of the three masters
challenged people to go forth and explore the unknown, let alone alter
the known."

-- Mario Bunge, pg 3 of _Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry_,
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 287, 2010 DOI:
10.1007/978-90-481-9225-0

M

18

[From Rupert Young (2015.08.14 22.10)]

Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)

Thanks for the extensive response. I certainly concur with your

points about the importance of perception, and I think we’re mostly
on the same page, though I’m not quite clear on whether you are
saying that environmental variables are being controlled. But let me
give my take on things and you can let me know where I might be
going awry.

When we are controlling we are always controlling perceptions. There

may be an environmental variable that only appears to be
controlled as well. After all, you couldn’t have an environmental
variable being controlled without the control of an associated
perception. So, there may be an environmental variable, that can be
objectively measured, which correlates with the perception but it is
the perception that is actually being controlled not the
environmental variable. Incidentally, there may not be an objective
environmental variable that can be determined when perceptual
control is taking place, as Bill says, “The controlled quantity is
defined strictly by the behaving system’s perceptual computers; it
may or may not be identifiable as an objective (need I put that in
quotes?) property of, or entity in, the physical environment” (B:CP
p235).

When there is an objective environmental variable, that is, it is

independent of the perceiving system then the TCV can be used. As
perceptions (the controlled variables) are private we hypothesise
what they are in relation to correlating environmental variables
that can be measured. So in my shower example we might hypothesise
that a perception related to (is dependent upon) the temperature of
the water is being controlled. And if we disturb the temperature of
the water (by secretly injecting cold water) then the subject will
act by turning the heat dial to bring the water temperature (as we
measure it) back to the previous value. We can be confident then
that the subject is controlling some perception related to the water
temperature. But it is not actually the water temperature that is
being controlled but some perception of it. In this example the
water temperature is one of the v’s in the input quantity in the
diagram you sent (attached). The heat dial (the output quantity?) is
varied which affects, through the feedback path, the water
temperature (v) which is an input to the perception.

In the case of control of area, from your demo, there are two v's, w

and h, which are inputs to the perceptual function. Though,
according to the diagram, the “input quantity” is not an input to
the perceptual function but the individual environmental variables
(v’s); the arrows go from the v’s not the input quantity circle.
There is not actual input quantity in the environment, but it may be
possible to determine one from an observer’s point of view (in a
computer), that correlates with the hypothesised perception.

In terms of controlling the sweetness of my tea I vary the amount of

sugar to control my perception of the sweetness. I guess a
corresponding environmental variable would be the proportion of
sugar solution in the liquid. If it is not sweet enough I add sugar,
if I it is too sweet I take out sugar (ok, can’t do that but can add
liquid). So the amount of sugar is not being controlled. Though in
this case the amount of sugar probably correlates with the sugar
solution proportion, so it is both the environmental correlate of
the perception and the output quantity.

There is, it seems to me, a distinction between the use of the word

“control” in the informal and formal, technical sense. An important
distinction. Informally it might look as if someone is controlling
the heat dial when taking a shower, when it is actually being varied
to control the perception. Likewise with some of your baseball
examples. Informally it could be said that batters were controlling
the location of their bat relative to the pitched ball. But formally
they may actually have been varying the location of their
bat in order to control the perceived relationship between
the bat and the pitched ball. The use of this informal sense may,
perhaps, lead those new to PCT to not appreciate the difference
between our manipulation of the world and the control of
perceptions, and miss the essence of PCT.

So, we're never really controlling things in the environmental,

though there may be environmental correlates with the perception.
So, maybe a more accurate definition than,

      "Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the

environment"

would be,

      "Behaviour is the control of perceptual

variables, of which there may be correlating
environmental
variables"

  or for less of a mouthful Fred's,     "Behavior is control of

the perceived environment" or your wording from your “Control of
Perception” demo, “Behaviour is the control of perceptual
aspects of the environment”

Though these last two raise a question for me of whether there are

always environment variables involved in perceptual control; is it a
general principle as is “Behaviour is the control of perception”?
In line with this question I can think of a number of different
cases of perceptions in relation to environmental variables:

**Independent**      - perceptions which have associated

environmental variables which are independent of the perceiver, such
as with w&h in your area demo or the water temperature in the
shower example.

**Dependent** - perceptions which require the presence of the

perceiver, such as when swimming I control something like my
perception of my direction in relation to the blue line on the
bottom of the pool. So could there be said to be an environmental
variable that corresponds to the perception?

**Mixed** - perceptions that are a combination of variables

coming from the environment and imagination.

**Imagination** - perceptions that are solely based upon internal

variables; and not current environmental variables .

If these are valid then it doesn't seem valid to regard the
  control

of variable aspects of the environment as a general principle.

This leads on to the question of whether all perceptions are

ultimately a function of physical variables. Regarding high-level
and abstract perceptions, such as, honesty or god, I can’t see how
it can make sense that these are functions of physical variables.
This would seem to imply that all information related to abstract
perceptions is out there in the objective environment and it is just
a matter of us finding it. If there is a sound explanation for it
I’m happy to be persuaded, but how can things that don’t exist be a
function of physical variables?

If they're not then I'm not sure I have a satisfactory resolution

but the answer would seem to lie in imagination. What arises from
thinking is the ability to put together different concepts and
abstractions to create new, previously un-thought thoughts. This
results in new concepts, abstractions and ideas of non-reality; of
gods and unicorns, and Harry Potter. All are perceptions, created
and modified by internal loops of control systems whizzing around in
the head creating new perceptions and references without recourse to
feedback going through the environment.

What seems key is that perceptions are of a different nature to

objective physical variables in that they are subjective, being as
they are only in existence, or have meaning, with respect to the
perceiving organism. Physical variables are, I would say, individual
and primitive, without any ability to create new combinations, so
are finite. Perceptions though (with the nervous system) with their
subjective nature can be continually created with respect to
physical variables and to each other so are, in essence, potentially
infinite, and not merely functions of environmental variables.

Regards,
Rupert

image51.png
image51.png960×720 660 KB

··· 
              RM:

Aspects of the environment don’t “contribute” to a
perception; they are the perception.
Rupert
Young (2015.08.10 20.30)

                        RY: Then I am wondering why you use the phrase

“Behaviour is the control of variable aspects of the
environment” if it is perceptions we are talking about,
which, I think, we all understand are (imagination aside)
functions of physical (environmental) variables.

          RM: Because "aspects of the environment' means (to me)

the same thing as “functions of environmental variables”
which means the same thing (to me) as “perception” (or
“perceived aspects of the environment”). Area, for
example, is one aspect of physical (environmental)
variables (width, w, and height, h) that make up a
rectangle; perimeter is a different aspect of those same
variables. That is, both are f(w,h); area = w*h and
perimeter = 2(w+h). Area and perimeter can also be said to
be two different ways of perceiving the same physical
environment. By the way, another demonstration of the fact
that you can control different perceptual aspects of the
same environmental variables is my “Control of Perception”
demo at http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html.

          RM: Maybe it's because my main field of study in

psychology was perception but when I hear the word
“perception” I automatically think of that word as
referring to a mental (or neural) correlate of some aspect
of the environment. The study of perception is all about
how our nervous system turns what is “out there” in the
world – physical (environmental) variables – into our
experience of the world – perceptions.

          RY: As I

mentioned before it is a bit misleading as it suggests
that the controlled variable is something in the
environment.

          RM: I don't see this as a terrible mistake. Indeed,

there are many prominent psychologists who are students of
perception who believe that perceptions are a direct
reflection of things out there in the environment, J. J.
Gibson being one. And in many cases when we talk about the
things that people control it’s hard to avoid talking
about them in terms of variables that we perceive as being
in the person’s environment. For example, I was watching a
baseball game last night and it was hard to avoid noticing
that there was a lot of controlling of an environmental
variable – the baseball – going on. Pitchers were
controlling the location of the ball relative to the
strike zone, batters were controlling the location of
their bat relative to the pitched ball, fielders were
controlling the location the the ball relative to their
mits, etc. I know that the players were actually
controlling their own perceptions perceptions. But even
Vin Scully would have a tough time talking about baseball
this way. A technical understanding of what perceptual
variables are being controlled when we see people carrying
out particular behaviors is, of course, essential when
doing PCT science. But when we are just talking about
control informally we can talk about it in terms of what
we perceive as the aspects of the environment – balls,
bats, mits, etc – that are being controlled.

          RY: This

may be what a newcomer to PCT might think, faced with this
phrase, without even any appreciation that perceptions are
involved.

          RM: This leads me think it that it might be worth

considering why Powers called his book * Behavior: The
Control of Perception * (hence the new name for the
thread). Why did Bill use the phrase “control of
perception” rather than “control of perceptual aspects of
the environment” or just “control of the environment” in
the title of his book? The word “perception” is never used
in engineering texts on control theory. Engineers never
talk about their mechanical control systems as controlling
their perceptions, though those systems do control their
perceptions. Engineers never point out that a device like
the thermostat controls a perception, though it does. They
talk about a thermostat controlling a physical
(environmental) variable – temperature. And that seems to
work for them. So, again, why did Bill call his book about
living control systems * Behavior: The Control of
Perception* rather than, say, * Behavior: The
Control of Physical Variables*?

RM: I believe that Bill called his book * Behavior:
The Control of Perception* because he wrote it for
an audience of psychologists (like me) and he knew that
title would catch their attention (as it did mine).
Psychologists are trained to think of behavior as
controlled by perception, where behavior is
seen as “output” and perception is seen as “input”. S o
when a psychologist (like me) passes by a book with a
title that implies that behavior is the control **of
** perception they do a double take (as I did) and pick
it up to see what the heck it could possibly be about (as
I did back in 1974, the year that changed my life;-).

          RM: To a psychologist, a book that says "behavior is

the control * of* perception" gets it exactly
backwards. It seems to be saying that output causes input
when, as every psychologist knows, input causes output.
And that’s the challenge that Bill wanted to present to
the psychological establishment. His book is about the
fact that it’s the psychologists who got it it backwards,
not him. Their discipline has been based on the idea that
input causes output when, in fact, output controls input.
[Psychologists don’t make a clear distinction between
“cause” and “control”,by the way. Indeed they treat these
words as synonyms; so another thing Bill had to do in B:CP
was explain the difference between cause and control].

          RM: So I believe Bill used the word "perception" in the

title of his book because he knew that psychologists would
see it as referring to the “input” of an organism, while
the word “behavior” would be seen as referring to the
organism’s “output”. But if that’s true then why not call
the book “Behavior:The control of the environment”?
Psychologists know that perceptions are caused by
environmental variables so the environment is as much an
input as is perception. I think Bill used “perception”
rather than “environment” in the title, not only because
“environment” is not an accurate description of what is
controlled by organisms (it is aspects – functions – of
the environment that are controlled) but because he knew
that psychologists would understand that the word
“perception” refers not only to the input to an organism
but also to the fact that this input is a function of the
organism’s environment.

          RM: So for a psychologist (like me) the title of

Powers’ book is making two claims: 1) ** output controls
input** and 2) ** input is a function physical
variables in the organism’s environmen** t. A
psychologist would find the second claim non-controversial
(perceptions are understood to be functions of physical
variables; the whole field of perceptual psychology is
aimed at trying to figure out what these functions are and
how they work). It’s the first claim – that output
controls input – that is the tough one (for
psychologists), so tough that it has been nearly
impossible to get psychologists to pay attention to PCT
for more than a few seconds.

          RM :Unfortunately, when people who are not

psychologists see the title * Behavior: The Control of
Perception* what they often find most intriguing is
not the idea that output controls input but that what is
controlled is perception. To the layman “perception” is
just another word for “reality is just a subjective
opinion”. So PCT has attracted a lot of what I believe are
called “post modernists” who seem to think that there is
no way to know what’s really out there and facts are just
what people perceive them to be. In other words, we get
people who believe that “control of perception” means that
we shouldn’t disagree with each other because nobody can
know what is really true so we are all equally right.
Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science.
But apparently this philosophy has been around for some
time since it was satirized in the late 1800s by Gilbert
& Sullivan in the “Mikado” when the Mikado himself
sang the lyric that I quoted earlier: “And I am right and
you are right and everything is quite correct.” Of course,
once such people figure out “control of perception”
doesn’t mean that everyone’s right – that it doesn’t deny
science – they get very mad and eventually leave.

          RM: So Bill's choice of the phrase "control of

perception" to describe PCT has managed to get lots of
people upset. It gets’ psychologists upset because it
means what they think it means: that output controls
input. And it upsets post-modernists (and other “radical
subjectivists”) upset because it doesn’t mean what
they think it means: that there is no reality (or that our
perceptions are somehow independent of reality).

          RM: One last thing. The reason that perception is an

important concept in control theory when applied to living
organisms but not so much when applied to mechanical
control systems is because the perceptions controlled by
the latter typically correspond to simple physical
variables. For example, the perception controlled by a
thermostat is a function of a single physical variable,
temperature (the perception exists in many thermostats as
the diameter of a bimetallic strip). Since the term
“perception” usually refers to a more complex aspects of
the environment than just a single physical variable it
hasn’t been used to describe the variables controlled by
mechanical control systems that control simple physical
variables.

          RM: There are mechanical control systems that control

more complex aspects of the environment; a humidity
control system, for example, controls a perception of
humidity, which is a complex function of two physical
variables, temperature and water vapor. So the humidity
control system controls what would be called a “sensation”
type perception in PCT. But I don’t think engineers would
say that a humidity control system controls a perception
of humidity possibly because the word “perception” seems a
little too anthropomorphic. But that’s what the humidity
control system is controlling – a perception of an aspect
of the environment that we call “humidity”.

          RM: Powers great insight (other than realizing behavior

is control and that control is organized around perceptual
variables) was that the behavior of living things can be
explained in terms of control of perceptions that can
represent aspects of the environment of increasing
complexity – such as relationships, events, sequences,
programs, principles and system concepts. That is, some
things people do can be explained by assuming that they
are controlling a perception of a principle like "honesty.
In order to build a machine that could do what a person
does – control how honest it is in various encounters –
we would have to give it the ability to perceive the
aspect of the environment that corresponds to the
perception of honesty. Indeed, the idea that behavior is
organized around control of perceptions of increasingly
complex aspects of the environment – a hierarchy of
perceptions – is really the main substance of PCT.
Chapters 6-13 of B:CP discuss the different perceptual
aspects of the environment that Powers originally proposed
as the types of perceptions around which human behavior
seems to be organized.

          RM: So this is another reason for using the phrase

“control of perception” in the title; PCT is all about
explaining behavior in terms of the types of
perceptual variables that people control. All those
perceptual variables, from intensities to system concepts,
are functions of environmental variables, functions that
are computed by the neural networks in our afferent
nervous system. It will surely be a long time before we
figure out how to compute the perception of a principle
like “honesty” or a system concept like “Dodger fan” from
the physical variables impinging on our sensory surface.
But these perceptions, like all others, must be a
function, ultimately, of these physical variables. What
else could they be a function of?

          RM: I think the message of PCT to roboticists like you,

Rupert, is that robots will produce human like behavior
(control) only when they control the same kinds of
perceptions that humans control. That’s why I liked your
robot that clearly controlled a sequence of activities; it
was controlling a high level perception – a function of
lower level perceptions that were ultimately a function of
physical variables in the robot’s environment. It was not
just producing a sequence of outputs. It was an excellent
illustration of robotics based on PCT.

              RM:

In the above example, the environment is three
variables: t, c and s. One aspect of that environment
is k (t-c); another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still
another (which I didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other
words, I view an “aspect of the environment” as a
mathematical function of physical (environmental)
variables.

                        RY: What is the difference between this and a

perception?

          RM: Absolutely nothing. You could rewrite the paragraph

above as follows and it would mean exactly the same
thing:

          RM:

In the above example, the environment is three variables:
t, c and s. One perception of that environment is k (t-c);
another is arcsine [(t-c)/s]; still another (which I
didn’t consider) is t-c+s. In other words, I view
“perceptoin” as a mathematical function of physical
(environmental) variables.

Best

Rick

      --

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com

                    Author of  [Doing Research on Purpose](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.amazon.com_Doing-2DResearch-2DPurpose-2DExperimental-2DPsychology_dp_0944337554_ref-3Dsr-5F1-5F1-3Fie-3DUTF8-26qid-3D1407342866-26sr-3D8-2D1-26keywords-3Ddoing-2Bresearch-2Bon-2Bpurpose&d=AwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=-dJBNItYEMOLt6aj_KjGi2LMO_Q8QB-ZzxIZIF8DGyQ&m=0HMm9WxWTgA3hJX9yJ37QqrE5Aq5z4FFSRpHyqJqY_0&s=tt1LMJoWLJIoSpMqZcgfm0aR1ks3ETI6-mhSZtphDtw&e=). 
                      Now available from Amazon or Barnes &

Noble

19

Rick,

I think that the main problem we have is your »control of behavior«. Put the citations from Bill’s literature where he is talking about »behavior is control« or that generaly we control some »aspect« of environment wth output.

Bill P. and others (50 Aniversary) :

HB : Cooperating in this article you agreed that behavior is means of control, so it’s consequence of control not bearer of control. Muscles don’t think,

Make a simple test. Start looking arround and you will see that you are not controlling any »aspect of environment » or »input quantity« with your behavior. Everything what you are doing is : affecting input (sensors) with your output, chanding actual perception into wanted. With neck muscles (behavior, output) you are affecting input (eyes) to the desired state. You are controlling perception as perception is all there is.

This is generaly what you are doing in all activities. Even if there is some »aspect of environment« that is affected by your output, is just changing perception to the desired state. You are just doing what Bill says in his theory. You are not controlling »variables in outer environment« with behavior. You are »controlling your perception« all the time.

Bill P.:

Our only view of the real world is our view of the neural signals that represent it inside our own brains. When we act to make a perception change to our more desireble state … we have no diirect knowledge of what we are doing to the reality that is the origin of our neural signal; we know only the final result, how the result looks, feels, smells, sounds, tastes, and so forth…

HB :

I think this is the point of his theory. That’s all what you or we are aware of : perception. You don’t know exactly what you are doing to the environemnt, you know it when you perceive it. So you can’t control anything in outer environment with »controlling« behavior if you are not aware of what you are doing to the environment in the time of acting. Everything is hidden in perception. All the time you are controlling perceptions. Some times perception can really reflect what is happening in environment and sometimes not. But that’s all you can relly on. Every interpretaion of perceptions is different. Not two persons see the world outside the same. So there is no fixed, objective »controlled aspect o environment«, that we could all say that it is the same for eveybody by observing it. It always depends form individual perception and their control. Sometimes you perceive the world as you want to perceive it, and sometimes more or less as it is. Depends from your perceptions and «control of perceptions«, what you want.

image0025.png

···

From: Richard Marken (rsmarken@gmail.com via csgnet Mailing List) [mailto:csgnet@lists.illinois.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2015 1:06 AM
To: csgnet@lists.illinois.edu
Subject: Re: Why Control of Perception? (Re: Powers, 2007…)

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.12.1600)]

HB : Why bother Fred if Bill has put it as it should be put :

“behavior is effect of output on input�.

RM: Really? Where does Bill say that?

HB : From the Bill’s diagram (LCS III) or any other. I just wanted to make it clear what is output and how is related to behavior.

Bill P.: This output function too, can be either simple or complex depending on the kind of behavior we’re modeling.

HB : O.K. Maybe you can explain relation about behavior, action and output ? What is behavior in PCT by your oppinion ?

RM : But most of the things we call behavior are both outputs and controlled input quantities

HB : I don’t understand this one, but here it is. One thing is sure. You are equating »output« to »behavior« and something else. Maybe because output (behavior) affects »input quantitty« and so there is behavior also present in »input quantity«.

How do you explain the title of the book, »Behavior : the control of perception« ?

HB: That’s what “feed-back� is.

RM: Sort of. I like to think of it in terms of the entire “feedback” loop, so the feedback is output “feeding back” on itself via its effect on input and error, the latter being the cause of that same output.

Bill P (LCS III) : … the action of the system »feeds-back« to afffect it’s own input, the controlled variable. That’s what feed-back means : it’s an effect of a system’s output on it’s own input. You can’t give a control system a feed-back. It gives itself feed-back.

HB : You can notice that Bill is talking about control system giving itself a feed-back not output itself. Your imagination and interpretations are sometimes real inventions but it woud be maybe fine if you would stick to Bill’s definition.

It’s good that you put »feeding back« into »inverted commas«, because somebody could think that muscles are »thinking« while »feeding-back« to input. That would really be «control of behavior« which you are advertising.

HB: That’s all what behavior is doing in the external environment. In Bill’s diagram is this the only thing I can see about behavior. This is general explanation. There is no “controlled aspect of environment� .

Inline image 1

RM: Here is Fig. 1 from Powers 1973 Science paper. Notice that what the output affects is a variable in the environment called the Input quantity. This Input quantity is a function of physical variables (the v’s) and it represents the aspect of these physical variables (the environment) that corresponds to the controlled perception (called the Sensor signal in the diagram).

HB : Yes the emphasis is that »output« affets a variable called the input quantity. The emphasis is on affect not control.

Bill P. :

….ffirst order perceptual signal reflects only what happens at the sensory ending : the source of the stimulation is completely undefined and unsensed.

HB :…so it doesn’t matter whether you pput in front sensors (input function) elephant or any other »input quantity«. It’s the same effect on sensors.

Bil P :

If any infromation exists about the source of the stimulus, it exists only distributed over milions of first-order perceptual signal and is explicit in none of them.

HB : The emphasis is on »if«, there is nothing in enviroment that would  clearly »correspond« to produced neural currents. But it could be »mixed« somewhere among milions of them.

Bill P :

The significance of any first-order perceptual signal is therefore extremely limited and local; this applies even in the eye…. Theere is no information in any one first-order visual signal to indivicate the origin of the light the input function aabsorbs : the source can fluorecence inside the eyeball or an exploding star a hundered milion years removed in space and time, with no change of the erceptual signal.

The perceptual signal from a touch receptor does not reflect whether the cause is an electrical current, a touch, or a chemical poisoning, or whether a touch occurs to the left or right of the exact receptor location.

HB : So no matter which sensor or nerv end is stimulated, the effect of the source is unknown to the control system.

Bill P : All informations contained in first-order perceptual signals is therefore information about what is happening to the associated input functoon and about nothing else.

RM (earlier) : I will just add that, in the LiveBlock demo all we know is q.i; we don’t know how q.i is derived from environmental variables, v.1, v.2…v.n. So the LiveBlock demo, though a great way to demonstrate the behavior of variables a control loop, cannot be used to demonstrate anything about the relationship between q.i and p.

HB: Maybe this is related to what Bill is explaining in relation ; environment - sensor – perceptual signal.

What I can see here is that there isn’t any »imagined input quantity« that could be present in perceptual signal. So it matters only that input function is affected and that first order perceptual signal refelcts only what is happening at the sensory endning. So whatever is stimulating sensory organs or nerv ends, are physical variables which can not be defined (it may be any in environemnt).

If everything outside is completely undefined why put »input quantity« in environment as pure »imagined » construction right in front of input function. Is this suggesting that only »input function« is represented in perceptual signal ??

So physical variables in outer environment probably stimulate input function to produce neural currents no matter if they are »input quantity« or any other physical variable in environment that is not afected by ouptut and disturbances. They have all equal chances to be transformed.

So it seems that it is not important whether environment or »input quantity« or any other part of environment was affected. It matters only what directly affects input function as that is all that control system will perceive. All other explanations in external environment are just imagination of individuals.

So if we are turning our heads we are affecting directly perceptual organs, which produce milions of neural currents with no definite origin. We don’t affect any imagined »input quantity«. We directly affect input function. That’ what output is doing.

There is no control in environment that could be sensed by sensor organs, just some changes on »surface« of perceptual organs. Whatever brains »construct« from perceptual signals after many interesting operations in nervous system (question how nervous system works), is something that is later »recognized« on higher levels.

Bill P:

…… using higher levels of organization we »know« that light can come from distant objects

HB : My oppion is that nervous system is constructing perceptual reality inside nerv-net in his own way, manipulating neural currents in some specific way (which are described in B:CP, 2005).Â

RM (earlier) : Since this is a rather verbal group I think it’s better to say that that perceptions (perceptual signals) are constructed, not derived, from lower level perceptual inputs and, ultimately, sensed effects of physical variables.

HB : Well I must say that these are extra points for you Rick in my higher oppinon about you. It’s rising. I must say Rick (although unwilingly J) that I perfectly agree with you.

I think Rick that you could maybe compare this »findings« with your »new findings« in post where you are admtting your mistake in discussion with Rupert ? Lately you had so many progresive findigs that’s it worth of putting them together.

RM : The controlling is done by the operation of the entire loop; there is no control of Output and there is no controlling done by the comparator. The comparator just compares.

RM earlier : Perhaps not simply enough. Bill’s diagram shows a feedback control loop organized around the control of an Input quantity.

RM : Because most things we call “behavior” are both outputs and controlled Input quantities, we say “behavior is control”.

HB : I’m not sure that I understand what you meant. Could you arrange this statements to have some sense or just I don’t understand them. If the controlling is done by the operation of entire loop, how can we »control input quantity«. Once there is no control of output, and once we can »control behavior«.

Bill P. :

COMPARATOR (B:CP) : The portion of control system that computes the magnitude and direction of mismatch between perceptual and reference signal.

HB : So comparator is not only comparing  it’s also computing the difference between reference and perceptual signal (error signal). And this is control.

HB: Behavior is not control. It’s just effect of muscles on environment,

RM: This is true if by “behavior” all you are referring to is output effects on a controlled Input quantity.

HB : I still can’t grab the term »controlled input quantity«. What is making »Input quantity« controlled ? What is controlling »input quantity« ?

»Input quantity« seems to imply that this is the only thing people or living beings can perceive through »input function« because it’s in front of our »nose«. But we know that people can perceive in the dark monsters instead of trees, that people can perceive dear persons living with them although they are long time dead, we see colors differently although »input quantity« seems to be the same, people can perceive text differently…and so on.

So it’s not some objective »input quantitty« (which is the same for anyone) responsable for differently perceived results (like you and me reading the same Bill’s text differently), but nervous system that is somehow constructing »meaning« from perceptual input. What is the role of »input quantity« in all these cases ? Is really only »input quantity« responsable for what we are perceiving from environment ?

The other problem with »input quantity« as Martin pointed out is, that it is presenting just »controlled perception«. So it’s containing just effects of system’s output and disturbances. But that is not all what it is transformed from environment into perceptual signal. Any physical variable that can affect sensor will be present in milions of neural currents progressing toward comparator. The »input quantitty« shows just one part of transformation proces in input function.

RM :

But most of the things we call behavior are both outputs and controlled input quantities. So a behavior like “lifting a book” is both an controlled Input quantity (an end result ) and an output (a means of controlling some other input quantity, like putting the book back up on the shelf). Because most things we call “behavior” are both outputs and controlled Input quantities, we say “behavior is control”.

HB : Now first you say behavior …… iss output (a MEANS of controlling some other input quanttity) and on the end »behavior is control«. How can something that is not existing in external environment (input quantity) be behavior ??? »Input quantitty« is affected by behavior… if… it can 't be behaviorior… think…

Maybe you could describe »lifting book in PCT manner.

»Lifting a book« is a perception when you are acting to make a perception change to more desireble state (affecting input) …you have no direct knowledge off what you are doing to the reality (moving book) that is the origin of your neural signals; you know only the final result, how the perception of the book was changing to the desired perception.… Any other analysis inn outer environment is imagination which can be interpreted by any individual differently.

I borrowed terminology and the whole meaning from Bill

HB : Thinking that entirely or some “aspect of environment� can be controlled with behavior is not PCT reasoning.

RM: Actually, thinking of living (or artificial) control systems as controlling some aspect of the environment is perfectly good PCT reasoning.

HB : Well I hope it’s clear that generaly we can’t speak of »controlled« aspect of environment as there are behviors that do not affect any »aspect of environment« (turning you head, scratching, sitting in the park and observing, walking, etc.) but affect directly input (sensory organs, nerv ends).

If PCT is theory that can explain all behaviors, then we have to talk only about »output affecting input (sensory organs or nerv ends) as this is in accordance with Bills’ writings B:CP about 1.level sensor function, and physiological facts).

In this context we can explain all behaviors also those which are affecting some «aspect of environment« in order to affect perception.Â

But whatever is happening outside (whether something is affected or not) is of secondary importance. First control system has to be »closed« to keep homeostasis, and in some cases »affect environment« to help achieve and maintain preselected state in controlling system, what is of primary importance and is running cntinuously. Behavior (output) is not continuous.

If organism is not producing internal control enough to survive, no behavior or any effect in environment will not help to survive. Many times organism must help itself. Many times doctors just wait what will happen in organism whether internal control systems will »win« or «lose« battle for life. I’m talking here about »general theory of control of perception« what I make equal to understanding how organisms function, not whether or not we control all the time »variables« in external environment. PCT is the theory about how organisms function not how we »control aspect of environment« ??

RM : When you control the shape of the rectangle in the “Control of Perception” demo (http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/ControlOfPerception.html), for example, you are controlling the shape rather than the orientation or size aspect of the environment; when a thermostat controls air temperature it is controlling the temperature rather than the humidity or water vapor aspect of environment.

HB : Living and artificial control systems have some principles in common, but sure they are not working the same. Maybe when analyzing artificial control system you could talk generaly about »controlled aspect of environment«, but not when humans are in question. I think you went to far.

O.K. Rick I was really surprised last time with your correction of PCT thinking, and I was pleasently surprised with your »construcitivist« thinking.

Maybe we’ll reach the point of understanding PCT. But for that I think you will have to leave »selfregulation« thinking and »control of behavior« and contribute to more understanding of »control of perception« and how organisms really work.Â

Best, Boris

Best

Rick

–

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.

Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble

20

[From Rick Marken (2015.08.15.0900)]

···

MK (2015.08.14.2015 CET)

Rick Marken (2015.08.11.1615)–

RM: Such a philosophy is not very conducive to doing science.

MK: "Philosophy matters in all sectors of intellectual culture because a

philosophical opinion may either encourage or obstruct the exploration

of reality. For example, Joseph Needham, the great expert in Chinese

culture, asked the question "Why was modern science not born in the

most advanced civilization of its time, namely China?" His answer was

roughly this: Because traditional Chinese intellectual culture was

dominated by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The Buddha had taught

that all is appearance and illusion; Lao-tzu, that contemplation

trumps action; and Confucius, that what matter are only peaceful

coexistence and obedience to tradition. None of the three masters

challenged people to go forth and explore the unknown, let alone alter

the known."

– Mario Bunge, pg 3 of Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry,

Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 287, 2010 DOI:

10.1007/978-90-481-9225-0

RM: This is very interesting Matti, thanks. These philosophies would be controlled system concept perceptions in PCT. And clearly the system concept perceptions people control for do make a big difference in the kind of society one lives in and what that society accomplishes. Whatever is good about Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism – and there is much that is good – these system concepts were really not conducive to scientific discovery. Of course, we saw this change in the West as well. The Greeks got almost everywhere before the burning of the library of Alexandria and the beginning of an age where Western thought was dominated by control of religious system concepts (the so-called “Dark Ages”).

RM: So rather than saying that philosophy matters I would say that the system concepts people control for matter.

Best

Rick

–

Richard S. Marken

www.mindreadings.com
Author of Doing Research on Purpose.
Now available from Amazon or Barnes & Noble