Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Sun, 13 Sep 1992 11:59:00 GMT
From:         Hortideas Publishing <0004972767@MCIMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Catching up on purposive influence

From Greg Williams (920913)

>Gary Cziko 920911.1000

Nice example of how a purposive influencer can employ reorganization of the
influencee!

>So I think Greg is right when he considers education as (his nice) form of
>manipulation.  The only was to push reorganization is to cause error in
>students.  It doesn't always work, but in some situations its pretty
>reliable.

It is nice to know that at least one netter understands how I am using
"manipulation."

>Rick Marken (920911.0900)

>After making the mistake of watching the news last night I realized why
>PCT will always have a hard time; people just don't like to believe
>in autonomy for anyone but themselves. And they will apparently
>continue to wage war on autonomy even though the consequences of that
>war are precisely the opposite of what they hope to produce. I am
>speaking, of course, of the "war on drugs" -- the greatest and most
>sustained crime creation program in history.

I think a much different hypothesis may be offered regarding the motivation
for the "war on drug[ee]s": that, generally speaking, people are QUITE AWARE
(in a non-technical way) that others are control systems like themselves, and
that extreme methods (threats and overwhelming physical force) are necessary
to make others quit doing what they very much want to continue to do (i.e.,
not suffer from drug withdrawal pains), and so the "war" results from the
influencers escalating their methods knowing full well that less ruthless
techniques won't be effective against control systems.

The result, of course, is STILL not as the influencers desire, since the
countermethods of the drugees tend to offset the (even nearly overwhelming)
forces arrayed against them (grow dope indoors to avoid helicopter detection,
start carrying guns to help prevent getting arrested, etc.). This is addiction
on a grand scale, with "co-evolution" of a technology (including arms) race --
and what drives the escalation is both sides' knowing that the other will
attempt to offset their disturbances.

I think this argues for attempting to figure out how purposive influence
without direct coercion (that is, generation of conflicted control systems)
might substitute for violence. I realize it's difficult for an influencer to
make use of a potential influencee's controlling when the latter basically has
one huge desire: keep blood concentration of such-and-such drug at so-and-so
level, within a small tolerance. (When I was in the neurophysiology lab at
MIT, one visiting professor who had used heroin one time advised me that "it
feels so good you don't even want to try it.") I even suspect that effective
influencers will NOT be case workers or other "outsiders," but neighborhood
folks who have non-drug desires.

In sum, I argue that the PCT explanation for the continuing "war on drugs" is
NOT that we tend to see others as NOT being control systems, but rather that
we see ALL TOO WELL, and then want IDEOLOGICALLY ACCEPTABLE solutions. I also
argue that PCT shows how the problem can be addressed without violence.

>Bill Powers (920911.0900)

>The manipulator, it should be pointed out, cannot freely choose the
>reference level for the instrumental variable.

Certainly. And, it should be pointed out, the manipulator's knowledge of the
manipulee's (past) controlling -- in essence, by performing The Test -- can be
decisive in making the appropriate choice of reference level.

>Thus the manipulator's action (positioning the instrumental variable)
>must depend on the manipulee's choice of reference position for the
>knot, and on the amount and direction of any third-party disturbances
>of the knot.

Exactly -- and this generalizes to more elaborate types of this kind of
manipulation, as I've pointed out time and again.

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

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

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

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

>Each one controls the other's means of achieving the same other's goal.

This is an example of slippery use of the word control. Are you doing this on
purpose, or by innocent error? Regardless, this is the sort of problem I've
been up against repeatedly in this discussion. In this case, the manipulator
is controlling his/her perception of the manipulee's hand position, but if
the manipulator's model of the manipulee's control is "good," the manipulee is
ONLY controlling his/her perception of the position of the knot. Sorry.

>The environmental feedback function expresses the way the manipulee's
>perception depends on the manipulee's actions. Such a function can be
>expressed as a polynomial in ascending powers of the action variable,
>or as a nonlinear differential equation. If a constant term is
>included, then the most general means of purposefully manipulating the
>action of another control system could be described as "control by
>changing coefficients in the environmental feedback function." An
>externally-adjustable constant term is, of course, a direct
>disturbance of the controlled variable.

I understand what you're talking about now...

>So this last mode of manipulation covers all cases so far.

... and that's what I had a more intuitive feeling about before.

>The method of "giving new information" still remains as an alternative.

I still think this might be subsumed under your second type.

>Bill Powers (920911.1200)

>Your [Chuck Tucker (920911)] comments are on the money. Be patient. We are
>working our way toward conclusions you will find acceptable.

Aren't we there already? I AGREED with every single one of Chuck's comments,
too!

>Dennis Delprato (920912)

>We continue to find one or another theorist suggesting that the answers as to
>why people do what they do, think what they think, experience what they
>experience are to be found solely under their skin (inside the Great boundary
>of the Skin)....
>I do not find that PCT calls for the sort of autonomy given us by cultural
>tradition.  The equations are not restricted to internal variables in the
>sense of taking the skin as a Magical boundary.

Exactly my sentiments!

>Thus, I find PCT progressive on the venerable internal-external issue.  It
>takes neither side *and* does not take a common interactionist position that
>there is a sequence of I-->E, THEN E-->I, THEN I-->E, THEN E-->I.

Exactly my sentiments! May that progressiveness not be harmed by ideological
"autonomism"!!!

>I am questioning that the "inner workings" of PCT call for autonomy of the
>behaver--autonomy with referents going back to Augustine and still found in
>mainstream psychology.

Welcome to the beef-of-the-month club.

>Nor, do I suggest that Rick's and Bill's use of autonomy above calls for an
>autonomy postulate of the sort found in mainstream psychology.  I find them
>saying (a) people have a right to be left alone unless they harm others and
>(b) a fundamental outcome of the way that people function psychologically is
>that given certain (unnecessary) disturbances they may adjust in ways that are
>unpredictable, not liked by others, disruptive to themselves....  Thus, the
>autonomy is more social than psychological.

I would say "more ideological than scientific."

>So I suggest the second state of affairs (class of referents to autonomy) to
>be politico-socio.  As a recommendation it might read something like: "We know
>enough about how people adjust to certain things that are done to them to
>suggest it is desirable to follow a policy of minimum intrusion.  In fact, it
>might be useful to think of each individual as having a right to personal
>autonomy."

This can follow from PCT PLUS certain ethical postulates, but not from PCT
alone. PCT alone doesn't say that control-system conflict is "bad" -- not even
if it results in death of an organism. It doesn't say that one's death is
necessarily bad (or good, either)!

>Instead of individual autonomy as a basic postulate of PCT, I find it useful
>to think of self-control--as opposed to external control.  Thus, PCT's message
>here is that psychological events are under self-control with-out autonomy (in
>the traditional, internalistic sense).

Now you're cookin' -- this is where I came in, with the Prolegomenon.

>Rick Marken (920912.1700)

>I think "autonomy" is just a word (with some existing connotations that seem
>appropriate, and, perhaps, some that are not) that is used to describe the
>operation of the HPCT model; at least, that's how I meant to use it. Instead
>of saying "autonomy" I could have loaded up my spreadsheet model, hit the F9
>key to start it and stood pointing silently as higher level systems told lower
>level systems what to perceive in order to satisfy the perceptual goals of the
>higher level systems.

I have no problem with this technical PCT-sense of "autonomy." Do you have a
problem with my saying that what I do now is NOT solely the result of what I
(and my ancestors) did in the past? That is, do you have a problem with my
current control being the result of BOTH my and my ancestors' pasts AND my and
my ancestors' environments?

>What I was discussing was malfunctions, not morals. If there is
>a fundemental postulate of PCT it is that organisms are control
>systems.

Here, too, I think we must begin to be more precise. Doesn't PCT say, more
precisely, that organisms constitute PARTS of ("natural") control systems?
Non-living parts of organisms environments can also constitute parts of these
control systems, which must ALWAYS have a loop through at least one organism.

>A functioning control system is able to make its perceptual experience match
>it's references for that experience; I call this "autonomy" -- the normal
>operation of a control system.

So far, so good.

>Anything that prevents normal operation is the cause of a malfunction.

But (maybe) here comes the moralizing. "Mal-"???

>Conflict is an example of a control system malfunction; conflict prevents
>autonomy -- ie. the ability to control.

But conflict allows "growth" via reorganization. (And "conflict" itself is
subject to the kinds of criticisms I've been subjected to from various netters
regarding my notion that "manipulation" needn't always be "bad" -- if
"manipulation" is supposed to be a loaded word, how much more so is
"conflict." The first definition of "manipulation" in my dictionary is value-
neutral; not so for "conflict.")

>The drug war is an example of control systems IN CONFLICT. So
>the drug war is an example of control systems that are MAL-
>FUNCTIONING. There is no moral judgment here; that would
>imply that I LIKE the goals of one group (the drug warriors)
>better than I like those of another (the drug takers).

There IS a moral judgement here: that control-system conflict is BAD and a
MALFUNCTION.

>Bill Powers (920912.1400)

>Greg Williams is perfectly correct in wanting us to develop a theory
>of interaction.

Thank you, thank you.

>To cast the problem in terms of manipulation, however, is to beg a question,
>because we don't know, without analyzing the possible mechanisms, what can
>actually be manipulated by another and what can't.

I'm not begging the question, I'm calling for answers to it. My "manipulation"
was defined, from the beginning, in as fundamental a way as I could see how.

>Understanding autonomy is especially difficult in a hierarchical system,
>where combating a disturbance at one level entails altering goals at lower
>levels. Goal-directed behavior is not, per se, autonomous -- in a hierarchy.

This can of worms is why I was ORIGINALLY trying to stick with implications of
PCT, not HPCT.

>There are certain processes in the human organism that are carried out
>simply because of the way the organism is put together, inside.
>Control itself is an example, as is reorganization. The environment
>contains no means of carrying out these processes for an organism,
>either to help it or hinder it.

The NON-ORGANISMIC environment, you mean, right?

>A human being must acquire perceptual functions that produce consistent
>perceptions, perceptions that vary in sensible ways and relate to each other
>without contradiction. The environment can't do that kind of making-sense;
>only a brain can.

The NON-ORGANISMIC environment, you mean, right?

>Once a perceptual signal exists, it is the brain that must carry out
>comparisons with reference signals, to generate an error signal. The
>environment does not inform the human organism of how it, the environment,
>should be, nor does it tell the organism what constitutes a discrepancy with
>the organism's goals.

The NON-ORGANISMIC environment, you mean, right?

>Each level of control, therefore, comes into being through the action
>of internal mechanisms for change and development, but the final
>result, the control organizations that come into existence, must be
>designed to work through the properties of the world that actually
>exists, however we may perceive it.

I suggest that the "coming into being" of levels of control depends on the
actions of BOTH internal AND external mechanisms for change and development.

>Finally there are the intrinsic variables, their inherited reference
>levels, and the process of reorganization driven by intrinsic error.
>These are defined for the organism by its heritage.

A heritage, I suggest, both hereditary AND environmental (think, for example,
of physiological set-points changing when you move to a high altitude; and
note that some of the "thou shalts" can be overridden: one can choose self-
respect which requires feeling much pain, for example, if one is being
tortured to reveal secrets).

>The environment can affect intrinsic variables, but it can't say what
>will constitute an intrinsic variable, or a reference level for one.

I think it can't redefine types of i.v.'s, but it can affect their settings.

>The environment may determine what must be done
>to affect a given perception in a given way, but it is the
>reorganizing system that decides what will constitute a perception,
>and whether any particular state of it is to be sought or avoided.

I disagree.

>With respect, at least, to the current environment, these built-in
>systems define the true autonomy of an individual.

I have no problem with this definition of "autonomy." Just don't try to say
that current controlling is solely the product of past controlling.

>So autonomy, in any one lifetime, is awarded to the organism, in
>particular to its reorganizing system.

No. I'll only award a moment-by-moment autonomy to the individual.

>I won't follow that trail any further; the point is only to show that
>the same principles of autonomy can be extended into the past, with
>the environment providing the stage and acting mindlessly to disturb,
>but being incapable of carrying out the processes of change, which
>continue to reside in the species.

The NON-ORGANISMIC environment, you mean, right?

>Here and now, we live in a world whose properties are largely unknown
>to us and which determine for us the effects of our actions.

Yes.

>We, however, choose our own goal structures, as our means of preserving
>ourselves in the state that our natures tell us is right.

What is this "choose"? PCT says that there is NO choice in the present -- one
simply controls as one's control system allows. Are we getting back to the
"free-will" argument? No thanks!

>Between this ultimate personal autonomy and the impersonal events in the
>nonliving universe, there comes to be a hierarchy of control systems that
>reflects both our overriding inner needs and the conditions the environment
>places on meeting those needs.

A nice way of putting the (PCT) science underlying the (partial)
reconciliation of extreme environmentalism and extreme organismism, which I
have been calling for. However, I'm not sure you really mean it as I can take
it.

>This still leaves open the question of interactions among organisms;
>organisms with similar organizations, and organisms assymetrically related to
>each other.

So you DID mean the non-organismic environment ONLY, all those places above.
OK.

Best wishes,

Greg
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU