Break out of Stimulus ->Response thinking
Unedited posts from archives of CSG-L (see INTROCSG.NET):
Date: Thu May 05, 1994 1:45 pm PST
Subject: Epiphanies
[From Bill Powers (940505.1150 MDT)]
In a private post, Clark McPhail said this (cited with permission):
Most people find it very difficult to break out of Stimulus->Response thinking. Of those who do, most either reject any form of systematicscientific thinking and research on human experience and action and resort tophilosophical nonsense or post-moderninterpretations and the like; the remainder who reject Stimulus->Responsethinking sometimes view cognitive models as a useful alternative to Stimulus->Responsemodels. That was my entre' to PCT and it took a while to understand that PCTwas not about the control of action outputs. My perception is that this alwayscomes as a shock when newcomers on the net realize this counter-intuitive"truth". It is a disturbing epiphany. They have to reorganize, to start overagain and re-thinktheir way back through the entire PCT argument.
And, in giving permission, Clark also added this, cited in anticipation ofpermission:
Maybe someone should forewarn those who "rush to judgment" that they don'thave it until they can wake up in the morning, walk around throughout the day,and try to fall asleep in wonderstruck realization that "all I know about theworld and all I can accomplish regarding what I and others do in the worldreduces to my perceptions".
It's somewhat frustrating knowing that there are 120+ long-timesubscribers to this list, and not knowing how many of them have experiencedthese "epiphanies." Most people come to some sort of understanding of PCT quiteearly in the game. I hope that Clark and others will write about what it waslike to "understand" PCT _before_ these crucial insights penetrated, whilecontrol still seemed to be controlling actions, and while perception wassomething that one still considered as a theoretical aspect of _other_ people'sfunctioning (or however it was conceived). I suspect that many people here havenot crossed the threshold yet, and perhaps hearing how others see their pre-thresholdunderstanding they will realize that there is yet another step to take inreaching complete understanding.
Clark described the critical experience: "They have to reorganize, to startover again and re-thinktheir way back through the entire PCT argument." This is the big AHA. When youreally understand that control systems do NOT control their own actions, andwhen you understand that ALL they can control is their own --your own --perceptions, the first thing that happens is that all your previousunderstandings of PCT flash back through your mind and _change_. It isabsolutely amazing how one can make sense of something and still not have itright, and then how one little change of interpretation can cascade all the wayback through everything you thought you understood and totally revise it.That's what "getting it" with respect to PCT means. That's why some people makesuch a big deal of this experience, and even doubt the claims of others tounderstand PCT when they show no signs of having gone through thisupheaval.
Of course it's possible that for some people nothing ever stood in the wayof getting the picture correctly on the first exposure to PCT. But that doesn'tseem very likely to me; I haven't yet encountered any examples. It's hard toreach adulthood without having formed some explanatory concept of humanbehavior, particularly one's own behavior. Everybody comes into PCT with somepreformed system concept about human nature. What makes PCT difficult to graspis the very effort one naturally makes to "make sense" of the theory, meaningto make it fit in with what one already understands. We are, in fact, very goodat doing this. All we have to do is bend the meaning of one sentence one way,another sentence a different way, and the new idea slips neatly into placeamong the old ideas. When we succeed in doing this, as we usually do, we say we"understand." We say the new idea "makes sense." We even say it improves ourunderstanding.
But this form of understanding is specifically designed to leave intactwhat we understood before. This is a control process, by which system conceptsare protected against disturbance. The purpose of this way of treating a newidea is exactly to counteract any disturbance it might create among the systemconcepts one is already maintaining. This is not an epiphany; the pleasure ofmaking sense of the new idea is not the dangerous thrill of discovery, but thepleasure of finding reassurance that all is well with the world the way it is --or even better than before.
Again, is it possible that for some people the principles of PCT fit rightinto their previous system concepts without any need to distort or reinterpretthem to make them fit. But again, I haven't encountered any examples of this.It's really not to be expected. There are no existing disciplines or lines ofthought that were based from the start on the idea of control of perception andnon-control of action. Yet each discipline or line of thought has attempted toproduce explanations of human behavior, the same human behavior with which PCTis concerned. It must be realized that control of perception and noncontrol ofaction are _fundamental premises_ in any explanation of behavior. So otherexplanations that have done without these concepts, and this is true of allconventional approaches, must have substituted some _other_ fundamentalpremises.
There are only two basic kinds of fundamental premises that were adopted(singly or in combination) prior to PCT. One was that events in the environmentcause the behaviors we see, and the other was that internal processes, traits,properties, or cognitions cause the behaviors we see. Whatever superstructureis built on these premises, the fundamental premises are absolutely crucial atevery step.
As a result, the main misinterpretations of PCT that occur are those thatleave one or the other of the conventional premises intact. The simplestmisinterpretation is quite straightforward; as an example, I have seen thetitle of my first book cited (in an approving way) as "Perception: the controlof behavior." That leaves the environment as the causative agent. Anotherstraightforward confusion is the identification with _Plans and the structureof behavior,_ citations in which my work is described as being inspired by theTOTE unit: the TOTE unit is described as a way of producing planned actionsuntil the desired result is achieved.
So, getting back to the main thread, the most likely outcome of anencounter between PCT and ANY conventional theory is that there will be a clashthat traces back to fundamental premises. But the clash is not necessarilyobvious. The basic statements of PCT, which we try to make as clear andunequivocal as possible, can too easily be taken as rather clumsy ways ofsaying that the environment causes behavior, or that plans or traits and soforth cause behavior. To add to the difficulties, people who work under eitherof the conventional sets of premises are not often conscious of the crucialways in which their observations and arguments rest on those fundamentalpremises. There is a tendency to pit the _conclusions_ of another theoryagainst the _conclusions_ of PCT (or else to emphasize the similarities),without any realization that the roots of the problem (or the apparentagreement) rest in incompatible sets of fundamental premises. So arguments tendto occur at the wrong level of abstraction --at the level of talking about goals or purposes, properties of perception inpsychophysical terms, specific explanations of bizarre behavior or behaviorseen under unusual circumstances, specific designs for control processes. Allthe while, the real problem is a basic difference in conceptions of whatbehavior is and how it works.
The epiphanies of which Clark speaks are not just statements that oneaccepts as one accepts the premises of a logical argument. For some reason, onecatches oneself in the act of controlling some perception, and realizes thatthe _actions_ by which this control is brought about are _not_ under control,but vary with every disturbance. One suddenly understands "control ofperception" as applying to one's _own-perceptions, and realizes that --of course --_there is nothing else to control_. One suddenly realizes that the basicpremises are in fact true. That, and not the acceptance of the arguments aslogical premises, is what leads to the sense of revelation, the epiphany. Thecritical moment occurs when one makes the connection between the abstractstatements and direct experience, discovering that the abstract statements arenot abstract at all: as Clark said, they are counterintuitive truths. Theintuitions to which they run counter are the fundamental premises of most othertheories of behavior.
Best to all, Bill P.
Date: Sun May 15, 1994 1:04 pm PST
Subject: Epiphanies
[From Dag Forssell (940515 1400)] Bill Powers (940505.1150 MDT)
Bill, your post on epiphanies (I looked it up in Webster's) is one of thosetimeless classics. Thanks!
I cannot remember clearly any conversion of mine similar to ClarkMcPhail's. In some ways mine is still ongoing, fresh and exciting every smallstep of the way. Particularly as I find ways to understand PCT myself and waysto explain to others. As examples:
Recently, I posted in "PCT in a nutshell" that: *Behavior is not an endresult*. I have since simply asked an acquaintance: What is the focus ofcontemporary psychological theories? The answer is: Action/Behavior! I agree.How is behavior described? By the outcome! Confusing? Now I ask if they areaware of and can remember the actions they took when they sneezed, took a glassof water, --whatever I saw them do --in the last minute. Do they pay attention to the hand movements when theydrive, or to the position on the road? My friend became interested and wantsto read Ed's book.
Another oh-so-simpleidea I had the day before yesterday is to emphasize (in class) what a controlsystem looks like from the outside: The only thing you can see isaction/behavior --thus the science of psychology. When you look from the inside; your ownperspective on your own existence, the only thing you can see (and control) isyour perceptions --thus the science of PCT.
Third, listening to a parent describe how s/he and a child routinelyconflict, it struck me that given the fundamental focus on behavior --judgement, of it, snyde comments on it etc., it is IMPOSSIBLE to convey respectfor another human being. Ed Ford shows the way to conveying respect, by asking(not telling) about wants. The fundamental concept and focus each personinternalizes makes a MAJOR difference in our ability to lead satisfyinglives.
Best, Dag
Date: Sat May 14, 1994 9:10 pm PST
Subject: Time to come back to basics
[From Bill Powers (940514.2025 MDT)]
. . . What was the disturbance that Rick Marken kept insistently applying?What was most disturbing was not his manner of speaking, but his message, whichis my message, Tom Bourbon's message, and the message of anyone who hasunderstood PCT. The message is very simple: the behavioral sciences have missedthe boat, and so have even most of those who have tried to apply control theoryto behavior. All the elaborate theorizing that has gone on for Descartes onlyknows how many decades has been almost totally a wasted effort, because themain simple facts about how behavior works have been grossly misunderstood orcompletely overlooked.
There is a simple and direct way of understanding behavioral organization,one that gives us a realistic hope of actually understanding behavior in greatdetail --first simple aspects of it, then more complex aspects as we establish our baseand build upon it.
But this simple and direct approach has essentially no relationship to anymainstream line of reasoning that now exists or has existed in the past. Andthat is the problem. It is very hard to grasp the message of PCT when the priceof doing so is to realize that one has been on a false track; the longer onehas been on that track, the harder it is to accept its falsity. It is perhapsthe hardest to accept by people who actually grasped a part of the picture, butfollowed the hints in the wrong direction. As we have seen illustrated clearlyin the recent past, the automatic human response is to cry "But if what you sayis true, then my life's work, my career, my sense of understanding, my beliefsare worth nothing!" And it is equally human and automatic to conclude, in thegreatest _non sequitur_ of all, "Therefore you must be wrong and I must stillbe right!" This is the simple human refusal to gaze directly on a personaldisaster, to avoid the despair that would follow on accepting itsreality.
To those who defend other approaches, these pronouncements can only soundlike arrogance and religious fervor. That way of seeing them is one effectiveway of defending against a threat. In fact, the principles of PCT are extremelysimple; they are in conformity with normal scientific thinking and they arebased on easily demonstrable facts. In this area of simple tests anddemonstrations, no advanced rhetoric is needed, no extraordinaryinterpretations, no flights of mathematical abstraction, no leaps of faith. Theobserved relationships are simple, clear, and reproducible, as are thepredictions of the simple model that suffices to explain them.
The arrogance and religious fervor are not on the side of PCT, but rangedagainst it. The principles and demonstrations offered under PCT are simple,embarrassingly simple. It is beyond its critics to accept that they could haveoverlooked such straightforward and obvious facts. The arrogance of thesecritics lies in assuming that nothing as new as PCT claims to be could possiblehave escaped their notice; the religious fervor lies in the assertion thateverything observed under the label of PCT could, somehow, some day, beexplained by some other existing theory --even if it happened that nobody who believed in that theory saw therelationships that PCT exposes and explains.
The greatest sign of religious fervor is the belief that if we justcontinue developing the existing lines of research, we will eventually solvethe problem of understanding behavior. This is the illusion that keeps peoplefollowing conceptual schemes that are fraught with difficulties andcontradictions and that do not even consider the simple facts that PCT hasdemonstrated. The difficulties and contradictions, it is fervently believed,are merely technical problems, to be overcome by persistence and effort --more effort of the same kind, not by starting over from scratch. To those whoare engaged every day in the effort to overcome these problems, the presence ofanother entirely different direction, based on entirely different assumptionsand observations, is simply a distraction and an irrelevancy. I know what I'mdoing, so please let me get on with it!
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I can see only one way to avoid spending the rest of my life pushingagainst prejudice and self-defense,and that is to stop pushing. In other words, Rick Marken is right. The onlypeople who are going to join the work on PCT and carry it further are those whohave been able to grasp its basic principles and who have seen that theyreplace a host of confused and aimless attempts to explain behavior by thosewho have failed to notice the basic facts of behavior.
PCTers have, from the very start, been self-selected.They read the books, they read the articles, they asked the questions, and theydecided that this was the way to go, all without argument or arm-twisting.They saw for themselves what was wrong with whatever theory they had believedbefore; for many of them it was seeing the flaws in their own disciplines thatinitially led them to look for something new.
I think that our basic presentations of the principles of PCT are quitesufficient to convince an unprejudiced person that there is somethingfundamentally new and different here. As I look back on my arguments with yes-buttersand nay-sayers,I realize that all my effort has gone into trying to elaborate on and make evenclearer what is basically simple and already clear.
By trying to deal with slippery and ever-changingarguments at higher and higher levels of abstraction, I have been overlookingthe obvious: that for these debaters, understanding the simple demonstrationsand relationships is not the point. The point is to try to negate apparentcontradictions of their own theories and interpretations, and to avoid talkingabout behavior at a simple and direct level where everything is clear andunderstandable. I have let myself be suckered into debating on shifting groundsabout vague concepts and imaginary situations. It is time to return to basics,and take my stand on the solid foundations of PCT where definitions do notchange, the reasoning is public, clear, and understandable, and the threat ofexperimental test with real human beings looms over every confidentpronouncement. ----------------------------------So, Rick, I think it's about time to come back. We have experiments to designand carry out, programming to do, and progress to make. That's what CSGnet wasoriginally supposed to be about. Let those who want to learn more, ask. Letthose who want to join in the effort, join in. And let those who just want toshow how much they already know go fly a kite.
Best, Bill P.
The article below deals in a very intuitive way with the importance of thesubjective principles and systems concepts perceptions we develop, and echoesBill Powers' observation in the post on epiphanies that we protect what wealready know (no matter how well or poorly it serves us) and resist anydisturbances to it. As the author observes, objective facts have very little todo with it. That condemns us to many arguments and conflicts, unless weunderstand more about how perceptions are formed and controlled and resolve toquestion the fact versus fantasy discrepancies that often cause realconflict.
Date: Mon Jun 13, 1994 12:39 pm PST
Subject: Systems Concepts
[From Dag Forssell (940613 1110)]
Article in today's Los Angeles Times. Submitted without comment, butinspired by Rick's thread on control of systems concepts, and the importance ofrecognizing systems concepts for what they are.
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THE FIGHT TO BE RIGHT
In our hearts, we know our opinions to be the truth --and not even a few lousy facts can change that.
Story by MICHAEL HAEDERLE Special to the times
Given the choice of being right or being happy, we cling to our opinions.It's an inescapable fact of human nature. We spend our lives wrangling andfussing going toe to toe over who's right and who's wrong.
We pay a big price for our stubborn insistence on correctness. Friendshipsfracture, marriages burst and, on a global scale, nations go to war.
Oh, we might compromise here and there, but there always lurks in eachperson's heart the secret conviction that he or she alone knows thetruth.
Why is it we must always be right?
One reason may be that it makes evolutionary sense to have all theanswers.
"In terms of survival, it's better to be right than not right," saidFrederick Koenig, a professor of social psychology at Tulane University in NewOrleans.
"When we're brought up, 'wrong' is counterproductive and negative," Koenigsaid. "People who are right more often than others are considered superior,because that's a sign of intelligence."
And as everyone knows, he added, "There's a certain amount of gratificationin being smarter than somebody."
There are really two ways to be right, Koenig contended.
One has to do with factual correctness. Right in this sense means that afact or statement can be checked.
This kind of rightness doesn't usually cause much human suffering (with thepossible exception of those who live with "Jeopardy" contestants and baseballtrivia nuts).
But _right_ also refers to moral or emotional rightness, arising frompersonal values--andthis is where things get really sticky.
"When you get to value questions, being right is very important to yourwhole world view," Koenig said. Opinions about abortion, gay rights or capitalpunishment spring from broad beliefs about how things are or ought to be.Likewise, we nay have a deep psychological need to see ourselves as good orrighteous (even when we're at fault).
When the emotional and moral stakes are high, Koenig said, "there's not anyroom for equivocation."
Koenig cited the example of those who are convinced there was a conspiracyto kill President Kennedy.
"From the beginning it seemed to me very clear it was done by Oswald, andthat's all there was to it," Koenig said. "I couldn't see what the fuss wasabout, but there are people who devoted 30 years to this on the assumption theCIA and the government can't be trusted.
"It's somehow important to people. not only because of their distrust ofthe government, but a 30-yearinvestment in this belief."
Ultimately, when defending your world view, "you have to be consistent,"Koenig said. Seeking to eliminate the dissonance between inconvenient facts andtheir beliefs, people often simply dismiss the offending evidence.
Rigidity, experts say, can be related to self-confidence.
"People who have a strong ego-whoare self-satisfiedand confident about themselves--don'thave to win every argument," Koenig said.
Gender differences also arise.
Generally, "women are more willing to try to compromise," he said. "It'snot so important for women to triumph."
Writer Alfie Kohn thinks much of our need to be right comes from ourcultural upbringing, which emphasizes the gulf between winners andlosers.
Kohn, author of the influential book ' No Contest: The Case AgainstCompetition" (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), argues that many disputes are reallypower contests.
"There's a difference between trying to be accurate and having a pridefulinvestment in not giving in," he said. "If you and I get in an argument and Istart defending my position because I want to score points, it's moreproblematic."
A former nationally ranked high school debater, Kohn knows whereof hespeaks.
In debating, "the goal is not to reach the truth. The goal is to marshalarguments selectively to win," he said. "It took years after my debate trainingto say, 'Huh. That's a good point--Inever thought of that.' " It's a short step from debate club to law school,where students learn that no idea is intrinsically better than another becausean argument can be made for either side. Kohn calls this aspect of legalreasoning "a very cynical world view."
Kohn blames it all on America's "state religion" --competition. "People in this culture are raised to look upon others asobstacles to our success. That pernicious world view is stamped on us withmusical chairs, spelling bees and Little League, and even parents who say, 'Allright, kids, who can get in their pajamas fastest?'"
All this, he said, leads to "either-or"thinking.
"From either-or,we start to think in terms that are black-and-white,"he said. "That becomes 'we-they'--usagainst them."
People from other cultures, especially non-Westernsocieties, see our preoccupation with winning and losing as baffling, Kohnsaid.
Like Koenig, Kohn sees gender differences in how badly people need to beright, in particular "the famous macho need not to back down, on which altarmillions have lost their lives."
One example, he said, was Lyndon Johnson's refusal to pull American troopsout of Vietnam: LBJ is said to have declared that he wasn't going to be thefirst President to lose a war.
"The ultimate false dichotomy is thinking, 'Am I going to be a winner or aloser?'--inconversation, in business or world affairs," Kohn said.
"There is no hope for us unless we realize those are two versions of thesame competitive world view. The real alternative to being No. 1 is not beingNo. 2, but to dispense with these categories altogether."
The obsessive need to be right ( and for everyone else to be wrong) haspoisoned our public discourse, contends Virginia author Andrew Bard Schmooker,who explored human conflict in his book "Out of Weakness: Healing the WoundsThat Drive Us to Make War" (Bantam, 1988).
Political pundits spouting pithy televised sound bites exemplify the trend,Schmooker said.
"There's a great temptation to take simplistic black-or-whitepositions, because the market will reward them more," he said. These sameforces shape our expectation of how leaders should lead.
"People would rather have someone who speaks without a wavering ofuncertainty," Schmooker said. "One has to posture as if one is already there.Otherwise, people are uncomfortable."
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Best, Dag