Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Mon, 7 Sep 1992 00:24:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Sciences and Ideologies - III

From Greg Williams (920906 - 2)

>Bill Powers (920906.0700)

>Greg, you keep wanting to make me say that people can't influence each
>other, when what I'm saying is that they can't control each other
>(except with respect to output).

No, I am not. I realize that you know that people CAN influence each other,
and I realize that we are in agreement on this. But you also say that such
influence is "not important"/"doesn't matter" to the influencee. I agree with
you that it is not important in the sense that it doesn't cause conflicts for
the influencee or prevent the influencee from continuing to control. But
influence often has other results which I think are important for the
influencee, including, possibly, the demise of the influencee, as we've
discussed before. At this point, twice recently, you have interjected that
influences due to one's inanimate environment can also have nasty results like
killing the influencee. I agree with that, of course, but the point I was
trying to make is that people can PURPOSEFULLY influence others. You told me
in no uncertain terms a few posts back that such purposeful influencing (if
possible at all, I'll add here in an attempt to be diplomatic) is "garden
variety control." And I immediately agreed that it is. It is control simply
because the influencer is matching certain of his/her perceptions with certain
of his/her reference signals. Then I tried to codify the explanations I had
gotten from you regarding "controlling other people" into a
definition/specification purportedly (my purport) setting forth your ideas. I
asked you whether you had any problems with the definition, and you said no
(with a caveat which I haven't addressed so far, but plan to eventually).

After your last post, I think we need to reconsider the definition of what you
mean by "controlling other people." Why all of this homing-in on what you
mean? Because I think it is important to make explicit what PCT says about how
people can interact. I think it is important because I think PCT has a LOT to
say about the nature and limits of such interactions, and I (and, I believe, a
lot of other folks -- some of them applied psychologists, some clinicians,
some sociologists, some political scientists, some laypersons, etc.) would
appreciate having a solid theoretical foundation for thinking about human
interactions. That's part of my ideology, since you asked. Furthermore, my
ideology includes getting more folks interested in and working with PCT,
because I think more work on PCT probably will lead more quickly to the BIG
problem which I'd like to see solved in enough detail to satisfy me: how
complex perceptual signals are built up. This leads to mentioning another part
of my ideology, which is my belief that more work on PCT can be fostered by
emphasizing how it connects to other ideas, rather than how everybody else is
wrong. No, I don't think PCTers should NOT tell folks when they are wrong
(witness our highly critical paper being submitted to SCIENCE in my name as
well as yours); but I think it will help to tell folks when they are right or
close to right or have something that could tie in to PCT. I think it is not
very helpful to emphasize the isolation of PCT ideas from "all" or nearly all
previous ideas in the biological and social sciences. I don't want to have a
"revolution" that nobody attends. Getting back to particulars in my ideology
with respect to PCT, I think that the tone of interactions with nonPCTers
needs to be less "us" against "them" and more "give-and-take." This is most
obvious, in my opinion, in the ideology of some PCTers which denies any
"importance" to a person of the influences (current and historical) of other
people. This ideology, which I think is not supported by PCT (and have been
trying to show why I think that in recent posts), makes a mockery of common
sense, as does Skinner's opposing ideology of environmental determinism. I
think each view is a partial truth, or perhaps even a whole truth from a
single point of view -- but not the whole truth from all points of view. I see
PCT as saying that the organism is in control (usually) in the here-and-now,
but "the here-and-now organism" is not solely the product of itself, nor
solely the product of its ancestors and itself. PCT is a CYBERNETIC theory
that shows how -- precisely in what ways -- no organism/lineage is an island.
That that theoretical image "fits" with common sense is a testament to the
truth in control theory. To try to dismiss the effects of either "outside" or
"inside" the organism-environment line will be seen as folly by clinician,
researcher, and laymen alike. As Skinner's environmentalism was rejected, so
will the organismism of some PCTers. I can't say that I am sad that Skinner's
science was also rejected in part because of his ideology, but I would be
very sad if PCT science is rejected because of the ideology of some PCTers. So
much for my ideology.

>The confusion is coming partly from your using influence not just to mean
>"have some effect on" but in the sense of "have a particular preselected
>effect on," which is not influence, but control (that is, it can't be done by
>any means but control).

I defined "influence a person" very strictly as what happens when don't-care
perceptions of the person are altered. They could be altered by inanimate
portions of the environment or by animate portions of the environment.
Skipping microbes, higher plants, and non-human animals, if the perceptions
are being altered by another person, the person might or might not be
controlling certain of his/her own perceptions which are related in some way
to altering the first person's don't-care perceptions. Here, I think, is the
breakdown in our communication. You say above that control is "having a
particular preselected effect on." In the definition of "controlling another
person," the controller has a preselected effect on his/her OWN perceptions,
and so is controlling; the controller has some effect on a variable associated
with another person, but is certainly (I thought I made this clear in the
Prolegomenon) NOT controlling a variable associated with the other person. Is
THIS why we're not communicating very well?

Back to square (nearly) zero. A person controls his/her own perceptions, not
ANYTHING else. To belabor the point a bit, a person CANNOT control ANY
variables (actions; perceptions, controlled or not; reference signals; control
structure) associated with another person in the sense that the first person
CANNOT control ANYTHING except his/her own perceptions. What happens in
manipulation, I have said and maintain, is that one person alters (doesn't
control, since they aren't the first person's perceptions) another's don't-
care perceptions PURPOSEFULLY so as to achieve control of certain of his own
(the first person's) perceptions. Manipulation is the subclass of influence
where influence is PURPOSEFUL, and can be done only by control systems. Now I
can put forth the suggestion that successful manipulation requires some sort
of connection between the first person's controlled perceptions and the
second-person's influenced (don't-care) perceptions. Otherwise, the first-
person's supposedly controlled perceptions would be independent of the second-
person's influenced perceptions, and the feedback loop would be broken.

Notice that I am forced by the basic PCT definition of control to surrender
any claims that I can control ANY variables associated with you, not just the
ones we have been disputing about. All I can control (I promise I won't
belabor it again after this) is my own perceptions. But I CAN control those
perceptions by altering at least some of the variables associated with you.
(At least that is my claim, and has been all along.) Given this refinement in
language, perhaps we can make some progress toward resolving our dispute.

Now, I am controlling certain of my perceptions. The question, for me, is
whether I can do that by altering some of your don't-care perceptions, by
altering some of your reference signals, by altering some of your controlled
perceptions, or by altering something else about your controlling. I think the
answer is yes in all cases. There is also a further question as to whether I
must threaten to or use force to do any of this.

You have agreed that, if I have a good enough model of your controlling, I can
alter some of your don't-care perceptions so as to control some of my own
perceptions. (Again, this is my "manipulation," and it could be divided into
"facilitation" and "exploitation," based on whether, after a manipulation had
been successfully completed, the manipulee judged the manipulation as "good"
or "bad" for him/her.) I further claim that manipulation can have consequences
for the manipulee judged by him/her to be important to him/her. And I claim
that "facilitation" happens a lot in education/training, and con games are
frequently occuring examples of "exploitation." Propagandizing, advertising,
and patriotic urging-on also include many instances of manipulation, which
tend to be harder for the manipulees to judge as "good" or "bad" for them.
Finally, I claim that physical force or threats of physical force need not be
present for manipulation to be successful. You have agreed.

Despite your arguments, and partly because I don't think your model of
reorganization has matured sufficiently beyond the preliminary verbal stages
to the simulation testing level, much less the empirical testing level, I'll
be recalcitrant for now and continue to claim that it is possible, at least
under some PCT models of reorganization (yours doesn't have to be the only
one, does it?), to sometimes alter another's reference signals and/or
something else about their controlling besides reference signals, actions, or
controlled perceptions so as to control certain of one's own perceptions. For
now, we can agree to disagree. Basically, I'm satisfied with your
acknowledging that manipulation can exist, even though you seem to think it
unproblematic/uninfluential in everyday life, in contrast with human
interactions leavened by physical force or threats of physical force. I see
this as an empirical question which won't be decided by your examples and my
counterexamples. Be that as it is, I claim that physical force or threats of
physical force needn't be present here, either.

The bottom line here is that I believe one can often (i.e., in education/
training, therapy, cooperative work, etc., etc.) guess correctly enough about
another's controlling structure and dynamics to allow reliable control of some
of one's perceptions (related, of course, through the other's actions, to
their altered reference signals, and/or "something else" about their control
structure). NOTE THAT THE ALTERED VARIABLES ASSOCIATED WITH YOU WHICH I ALTER
ARE NOT CONTROLLED, AND DO NOT NEED TO BE ALTERED IN PARTICULAR WAYS EXCEPT SO
I CAN CONTROL MY CHOSEN PERCEPTIONS. I NEED KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HOW YOUR
VARIABLES ARE ALTERED (translation: I need not know anything about the source
of disturbances to my control), I NEED ONLY CONTROL. An aside: Altering
internal variables of another control system is not guaranteed to result in
changes in the control system's actions which will allow control of your
perceptions. Knowledge of the control system is important for the would-be
controller here, too. I leave the mathematics of possible control-by-
alteration for the future.

Last (thankfully), there is the possibility of altering some of another's
controlled perceptions so as to control some of your perceptions. A private
post by Martin Taylor has swayed me to think that even this might be possible
without threat or force (though probably not likely). As Martin says, control
isn't perfect. If your gain is about equal to mine and we each want a lever to
be at a different place, the lever will end up between the two places, and
both of our (I suppose I would say) "trying-to-be-controlled" perceptions of
the lever will be altered. But perhaps you count this as an incident involving
physical force. Is it "overwhelming"? I don't know. Maybe we need to define
"overwhelming physical force" better (ugh!).

And so, we continue (mutually) to push back -- and I, for one, am learning a
lot.

Greg

P.S. Are you going to send me the figure captions for 300-dpi output? I think
you could go ahead and use TrueType fonts on your new dot-matrix if you want
to save time -- SCIENCE doesn't EXPLICITLY say that the captions MUST be
laser-printed, and I don't think they'll disqualify on that basis. But I'd be
happy to do it here if you think it best.
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU