Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 14 Sep 1992 11:58:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      More science, more ideology

From Greg Williams (920914)

>Bill Powers (920913.1300)

>Control that works strictly through disturbance of perceptions, with
>the manipulee's actions countering that disturbance and causing no
>errors in the manipulee by being performed, is by definition
>unimportant to the manipulee. So the manipulator is doing things that
>are satisfying to the manipulator, but irrelevant to the manipulee.

"Irrelevant to my controlling (now)" might or might NOT be "important" to me
LATER.

>In order to find some effect of manipulation that IS important to the
>manipulee, we will have to find some other form of manipulation than just
>disturbing perceptions.

Why should we be needing to do this? I can grant that, in your sense, ALL
workable purposeful influence MUST be irrelevant to the influencee's
controlling -- except for the possibility of setting the stage for
reorganization -- and still preserve MY point that successful purposeful
influence is often considered important AFTERWARDS by the influencee. You
don't think this is an important point? However, that said, I still think that
one could claim "relevance" (differently defined than yours) to the influencee
because the DETAILS of what the influencee is controlling (and therefore is
"relevant" to the influencee) depend in part on the influencer. If that mark
had never met that con man, the mark wouldn't have (with high loop gain!)
wagered on that "sure-thing" horse.

>When I say "important to the manipulee," I DO NOT mean important in
>some objective sense, like performing the act will get the manipulee
>killed or fired or hurt.

Neither do I -- I mean how the influencee judges the outcome for him/herself.
You can't get much more subjective than that! As I said in my post, some folks
have preferred death to dishonor.

>The only importance that counts in a functional analysis of interactions is
>importance to the control systems involved.

With all due respect, this is beginning to sound positively Skinnerian.
Nevertheless, I am willing to proceed along the "functional analysis" route if
you think it best. I just think that sometimes it makes sense (contra Skinner,
and maybe contra you) to ask the parties what THEY think.

>Third-party judgements have nothing to do with the scientific analysis.

I'll let it go, but I still think that if the "third party" is the influencee,
it makes sense to consider his/her notions when conducting an analysis. Again,
your tack has, to my thinking, a Skinnerian restrictiveness which I think
might compromise the fruits of a more open scientific analysis.

>When I speak of a malfunction, it is always in relation to
>the idea that proper functioning results in survival.

When I speak of a "manipulation," I am talking about purposive influence.
Neither "malfunction," as you use it, nor "manipulation," as I use it, exactly
fit all (or major?) dictionary definitions of the words. Tell you what... I'll
not complain about your use of "malfunction" if you'll accept my use of
"manipulation."

>What other definition of "proper" functioning could there be?

"Proper," of course, also has lay connotations of "good."

BP>>>So in the final analysis, the manipulator's hand position
BP>>>(the instrumental variable) is not under the control of the
BP>>>manipulator, and the manipulee's hand position is not under the
BP>>>control of the manipulee.

GW>>In the final analysis, neither is controlling for his/her perception of
GW>>his/her own hand position. Is that what YOU just said?

BP>Yes, but more prolixically.

Good. I agree. The manipulator is controlling his/her perception of the
manipulee's hand position, and the manipulee is controlling his/her perception
of the position of the knot.

BP>>>The manipulee can control the manipulator's hand position by varying
BP>>>the reference position of the knot; the manipulator can control the
BP>>>manipulee's hand position by varying the reference position of the
BP>>>hand.

GW>>No, the manipulee doesn't give a whit where he/she sees the
GW>>manipulator's hand, so he/she is NOT controlling it. If the manipulee
GW>>started to control thusly, then the manipulation wouldn't work as the
GW>>manipulator planned (on the basis of his/her previous knowledge of the
GW>>manipulee's controlling); in this case, the manipulator would say
GW>>he/she had a "bad" model of the manipulee.

>I said CAN. If the manipulee decides it is more important to control
>the manipulator's hand position than to maintain a fixed reference
>position for the knot, the manipulee can vary the reference position
>for the knot while watching the manipulator's hand, and put that hand
>anywhere the manipulee pleases. At the same time, the manipulator can
>keep the manipulee's hand where the manipulator wants it. Try it.

OK. Sorry. Now I understand that you are noting the possibility of a SPECIAL
CASE (involving mutual influence) of rubber-banding. I had thought you were
trying to say that this is what can happen in "standard" rubber-banding.

Here we have a simple example of the (sometimes complex) "dance" of (some)
manipulations which I spoke of in earlier posts. As I said then, it is
perfectly possible for the mark to be "in charge" of the con at times -- but
the con attempts to stay "in charge overall." If it suited the con's purposes,
he/she would ENCOURAGE the mark to (in analog) "control the manipulator's hand
position" for a while -- one example is "letting" the mark win the first few
games of cards to "build the mark's confidence," before cleaning out the mark
on a high-stakes hand.

>Why is this a slippery use of the word control?

It isn't. My mistake. I apologize.

>Organisms perceive. There is nothing the environment (animate or inanimate)
>can do to help or hinder the processes by which neurons respond to energy
>inputs by creating output signals; there is nothing any external agency or
>thing can to to aid or oppose the combining of such signals through neural
>computations to produce new perceptual signals. Not, that is, without surgical
>or chemical intervention.

Right, but beside the point.

>There is nothing the environmentalive or dead, can do to help carry out the
>processes of perception, comparison, and acting.

Here's why it is beside the point. I am trying to argue that one's current
controlling is the result of one's history. That history includes BOTH
internal and external influences. While it is true that the external
environment (living or dead) does NOT "aid or oppose the combining of...
signals through neural computations to produce perceptual signals," I claim
that the one's external environment significantly influences how one will
control in the future. An example is Gary's: his children wouldn't be speaking
in French today, but for him (as necessary but not sufficient condition).

>No, the environment, organismic or not. Only the organism can find
>ways of making sense of its raw intensity signals. That process is an
>endogenous function, part of the physical and functional makeup of the
>organism. There is no way anything in the environment can suggest
>weightings, forms of functions, or anything of that sort that will be
>of the slightest help in creating a new perception or modifying an old
>one.

Again, I think this overstates the case. But as long as you aren't saying that
one's environment now CANNOT affect the "trajectory" of one's controlling in
ANY way, I won't argue.

>The mechanisms that do these things operate independently of the outside
>world.

So, are you saying that "raw intensity signals" can NEVER affect the
trajectory of control? If so, I think you need to go back to diff. eqs. 101
(well, 201 -- the equations themselves are time-varying) -- all we need is ANY
sort of connection between the equations' (of control) parameters and inputs
(intensity inputs will due nicely) to the equations to have a causal
relationship between the equations' structure and the environment.

>No, nothing in the environment can be of any help or hindrance in the
>process of comparing two neural signals, nor can it reach inside an
>intact organism and tell it what state of the environment should be
>indicated by the reference signal.

If we're NOT talking about (presumed purposeful) "help or hindrance," but
CAUSAL relationships, I can say explicitly that I claim causal efficacy
between inputs to an organism and the trajectory of control of that organism.

>The environment can alter input stimuli, but that is as far as its direct
>influence reaches. Nothing at all would happen beyond that point but for the
>internal processes of the organism.

OK, we agree on that. The important point that you seem to be obscuring is
that those "internal processes" (now) are the products of BOTH previous
internal processes AND inputs from the environment. Do you disagree with this?

>Levels of control come into being only when neurons become physically
>organized into new layers of control. The processes that do that can't
>be carried out by any mechanism outside the organism. You're talking
>about making it NECESSARY for such processes to occur. Making it
>necessary doesn't make it possible, not does it select what actual
>changes inside the organism will cope with the necessities imposed by
>the external world. All the mechanisms that change an organism are
>inside it.

All the mechanisms that PURPOSIVELY change an organism are either inside the
organism OR in other organisms. They are NOT in the non-living environment --
I agree with that much. The environment (non-living OR living) does NOT
determine EXACTLY what the trajectory of control will be. But it influences
the trajectory.

>That is why torture sometimes works, and dieting doesn't.

Dieting worked for me. (:->)

>Do you claim that it is the environment that specifies what function
>of a set of input signals will be computed? Are you saying that the
>organism does not have to discover FOR ITSELF what settings of
>reference signals will result in consequences that it prefers?

No.

>I've tried to explain how a reorganizing system has the ultimate say over
>what inner states will and will not be preferred by the organism, and
>therefore over what will and will not become controlled by the organism.

And I've tried to explain how environmental inputs have SOME say in
reorganization.

>But that's precisely what I have been giving up. If disturbances
>control your actions, and if even reference levels can be controlled
>from outside by disturbing higher-level perceptions, where is there
>any moment-by-moment autonomy of action OR of goal-selection?

***
There is none, according to PCT. But if you take "autonomy" to mean
unconflicted current operation of one's control system, then we ARE autonomous
(unless conflicted) in our moment-to-moment behavior. If you take "autonomy"
to mean that our current controlling has no relationship to any of our past
environmental inputs, then I claim that we are NOT autonomous (in this
"historical" sense). So that is what I mean by reconciling Skinner's
ideology of "historical" non-autonomy with an ideology of "current" autonomy.
PCT says that we are autonomous in the current moment (if not conflicted) AND,
I think, NOT autonomous vis-a-vis our histories. PCT shows that Skinner's
extreme environmental determinism is wrong on two counts: historically, the
environment is not the SOLE influence on the trajectory of controlling;
currently, environmental inputs are highly circumscribed and subject to
current controlling.

>There's no argument about free will. It exists, as anyone can verify
>from direct experience. You can voluntarily and consciously step into
>the operation of many of your systems at any level and cause arbitrary
>changes in their operation (the result is usually not great). This
>phenomenon is, I agree, difficult to account for within any current
>theoretical framework. But it occurs. I, too, say "no thanks" to any
>explanation of it that anyone has offered so far. Including theories
>that say it doesn't exist.

(Against my better judgement -- whatever that means!?!?) Unfortunately, there
ARE (raging!) arguments about "free will." Especially the "free" part. Will
certainly occurs, I agree.

>I see that ideological autonomism is a disturbance to some sentiment,
>and contrary to progress in some direction. Would you care to
>elaborate on what that sentiment is, other than by giving everything
>an interpretation that supports it? I see lots of arrows pointing in
>some direction, but I don't yet see what's there at the convergence.

See my previous post where I attempted to spell out my ideology with regard to
promotion of PCT, and the above comment marked with ***.

>What if ideological autonomism turns out to be the right approach? If
>so, so what?

I think it conflicts with PCT science. But nobody ever said that ideologies
had to jibe with science. There is something to be said for giving the masses
what they want, even if it is at odds with what you think scientifically.
Even the Buddha opined that individuals should be taught in ways they can
appreciate, given where they are on the karmic road. In the case of PCT, vague
claims that it is the basis for anti-environmentalism might attract quite a
few folks. Eric Hoffer called them "True Believers."

Best,

Greg
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