RESPONSI.BLE 

Thread on responsibility

Unedited posts from archives of CSG-L (see INTROCSG.NET):

Date: Fri Feb 03, 1995 8:00 pm PST

Subject: Re: responsibility

[From Bill Powers (950203.1450 MST)]

Joel Judd (950203)--

I think Rick set the condition that we must be intentionally controlling a consequence if we're to be said to be responsible for it. An unintended side-effect of reaching for the phone may be to knock over the juice glass, but that is an accident, not a purposive act. There was no reference level for a knocked-over juice glass. A person is considered a murderer only when the intent of the person was to kill someone. Accidentally causing a death may open one to a charge of negligent homicide, but only because others deem certain precautions to be reasonably expected. Causing a death purely by accident is not usually considered murder in any degree.

I would suggest that we are responsible only for the intended perceptions, and their external counterparts. The means by which we control perceptions depend on the state of the environment. If an environmental disturbance appears, our control systems will automatically change their outputs to oppose the disturbance, and that change may have unwanted side-effects considerably before we could consciously refrain from opposing the disturbance (even if we wanted to).

The main problem here is the difference between _being_ responsible and _being held_ responsible. I can hold you responsible for anything I please, reasonable or unreasonable. That doesn't make you in fact responsible. A terrorist may say that if his comrades are not released from prison, the terrorist will set off a bomb in an airplane. And then he may say "So the consequences are up to you: if you don't release the prisoners, you will be responsible for the deaths of a planeload of innocent people." This in no way changes the fact that if the people die, it will be the terrorist who caused them, intentionally, to die. Simply holding someone responsible doesn't make that person automatically responsible for any effect in the world. We are responsible only for those effects we control. No other reading of the word makes sense.

I had some doubts about Ed Ford's use of the term responsibility for just this reason. A school administrator may set up a rule that a certain kind of behavior is forbidden, and that infractions are to be followed by certain consequences for the student. So far, so good: rules are needed. But when a student does break the rule, administrators tend to say "Well, you knew the rule, so the consequences are your responsibility, not mine." That is dishonesty, because whatever happens to the student is not intentionally done by the student; it is intentionally done by the administrator, just as setting off the bomb is intentionally done by the terrorist, who could have chosen to do otherwise. The administrator is obeying his or her own rule, which he or she voluntarily proclaimed and is therefore responsible for -- including its application. Merely holding another person responsible for an outcome does not make that person in fact responsible.

I think the only honest way to deal with responsibility is to recognize at all times who is actually responsible. The administrator does not need to shift responsibility onto the student. It would be perfectly reasonable to say "I told you what I would do if you committed that act, and now I am going to do it." This doesn't create the pretense that the administrator is out of the picture, and that some abstract rule is somehow enforcing itself. In fact, it makes perfectly clear the fact that the student would do well to believe the administrator when told that the administrator will take certain actions if certain behaviors are carried out. This actually gives the student control, because the environment is now predictable and the student is free, as always, to decide whether a consequence of behavior is wanted or not.

This is what Hugh Gibbons calls "respect for the will of others." When we take responsibility for what we ourselves control, and recognize that others are equally responsible for what they control, and that we all have the right to control our own lives, the door is opened for good- faith negotiation. If a teacher says to a student "I am going to protect my right to teach without interference," the student can learn to respect that right if the teacher also respects the right of the student to be in control. If neither one tries to lay off responsibilities onto the other, a practical arrangement can be worked out that respects the will of both parties. The process of working it out will teach the student about a way of dealing with others that will be valuable for a lifetime.

Responsibility can be taken, but not given away.

Best, Bill P.

Date: Sat Feb 04, 1995 2:05 pm PST

Subject: Responsibility

[From Bill Powers (950204.1145 MST)]

Bruce Buchanan (950204.1245 EST) --

My point is that responsibilities don't become effective until they are accepted. When they are imposed from without, the attempt to impose them can easily be unsuccessful because behind them is an attempt by one person to control the intentions of another person. It doesn't matter whether it is important or even vital for a person to accept proposed responsibilities; if he or she doesn't accept them, they will not come under that person's control and that person will not, in fact, become responsible for them.

The "importance" of taking on certain responsibilities is in the eye of the beholder and dependent on the beholder's structure of goals. All of society might be of the opinion that an absent father is responsible for paying child support, yet there are millions of absent fathers who are not factually responsible for paying it: that is, they have not set paying child support as a goal of their own, and hence are not, factually, causing child support payments to be made.

Your comment seems to be from the prescriptive point of view, not from the factual point of view. Of course we can discuss, argue, and reach agreement about what responsibilities people OUGHT to take. But if they don't in fact take them, they are not factually responsible for making whatever happen that is supposed to happen. If it happens anyway, someone else was responsible. Your way of putting it simply exemplifies how people go about trying to get others to assume responsibilities, in this case by trying to convince them that there's a sort of natural law at work, or that all right-thinking people would assume the responsibilities. None of that bears on the question of who is factually responsible for what.

Again, this is how a person would argue who is trying to get someone else to assume a responsibility. It's no problem for PCT to explain how a person accepts a responsibility and carries it out, or how a person can reject a responsibility and thus not carry it out. Real people do both. PCT has nothing to say about what people become responsible for -- that's a matter for individuals to work out with their friends, family, colleagues, governments, and so on.

PCT isn't about what some people do, or what most people do; it's about what ALL people do. So from the PCT standpoint, all that can be said about assuming responsibility is that doing so is intentionally taking control of something and bringing it to or maintaining it at some specific reference level. Whether most people will choose to accept responsibilities that others want them to take, or whether they will reject them, is irrelevant. Again, most people accept some responsibilities and reject others; the theory has to cover both outcomes, as it does. If a person does not adopt a suggested goal and start working to carry it out, then those who still want that person to adopt that goal can only start trying to control that person, with the automatic result of resistance (as all control systems resist disturbances). If the person does accept the goal, then that person becomes factually responsible for whatever perception is now being controlled by that person.

Fine, if that's true. Finding out if it's true isn't a theoretical question: it is or it isn't true, an empirical question. A theory has to handle not only the positive instances but the negative instances, too. "Most people" isn't "everybody." PCT explains what is going on when a person takes on a responsibility, and what is going on when he or she doesn't, and what is going on when someone else tries unsuccessfully to make another person adopt a responsibility.

I think it's very useful. People are always talking about responsibilities that people "have" and become frustrated and confused when it turns out that in fact, they don't have them even when they "should." The confused language in which we talk about responsibility reflects confused thinking about it. The frustration and confusion show up in the way we try to set up rules and apply them as customs or laws. When, despite all our persuasions and threats, large numbers of people simply refuse to behave as if they have the responsibilities we claim they have (meaning "should have"), we have no way of dealing with this but to apply physical force. In effect, we are baffled. We end up concluding that there are good people in the world, who just naturally know what their responsibilities are and carry them out, and evil antisocial people who don't know their responsibilities and fail to carry them out.

PCT tells us what a responsibility IS, where it resides, and how it works. Once we understand that responsibility is not a THING that exists in the air or can be passed on or injected into someone else, we can begin to talk about social responsibilities in a rational way. The real problem lies in how we negotiate with other people to share the work of maintaining a livable world for everyone.

Do you always volunteer to do every good work that everyone you meet wants you to do? Do you always agree with others as to what your responsibilities to them or someone else or the nation or the environment are? Do you know anyone who has different concepts of personal responsibility from those that you accept? Do you agree with every government regulation that affects you? I think that a person doesn't have to be "emotionally arrested" (whatever that means) to rebel against some attempts to impose unwanted responsibilities. You have to get out of the parochial frame of mind in which you take it for granted that all right-thinking people will accept the same social goals as personal goals. What's your attitude to Palestinians, who say that the West has a responsibility to right all the wrongs the Jews have committed under Western protection? How do you feel about the ayatollahs who claim that you have a responsibility to keep your wife's face concealed and to pray five times a day facing Mecca and to shun pork and alcohol?

I think you mean "most adults who are reasonable intelligent people of the kind I would like them to be." I don't think you're talking about real people. In my experience, large numbers of people regularly deny responsibility for their own actions and try to put them off onto other people -- "You're making me angry!" You're right that when people are on the receiving end of this sort of treatment they do see it as a con, but then they turn right around and do it to other people with perfect self- justification.

It's not precluded by PCT; PCT has to accept what we see happening and explain it. But even making a promise or agreement to perform is no guarantee that a person will in fact be responsible for performing the act. That depends on whether the person has accepted keeping promises and agreements as a personal responsibility. There is no natural law that says people have to keep their promises, live up to contracts. The mass of laws on contracts attests to that. If they accept keeping their word as a personal goal, they will probably keep their word. If they haven't, they probably won't, or will do so only when it's convenient.

There is simply no level at which we can claim that people HAVE responsibilities. They accept some and reject others, with whatever consequences result.

It is dishonest because it conceals the intentions of the person who actually decides to enforce the rules. That is why I spoke about the terrorist first, who said that if the airplane gets bombed it's the responsibility of the people who refused to free the prisoners -- they knew the conditions, didn't they? It's easy to see the dishonesty when you're on the other side. When you are the person laying off responsibility, it's easy to point to all the good reasons there are for the rules, and thus why enforcing them is necessary. But the honest way to do this is to say "I believe in this rule and I intend to enforce it, whether you agree or not." In other words, you take responsibility for your own beliefs and the actions you use to maintain them in force. This is much harder to do, because often people feel ashamed of the things their own rules seem to require them to do to other people, and they would rather that some group entity or abstract principle take the blame for the part of the situation they aren't enjoying.

I disagree. If the students have not accepted the rules for themselves, then the situation is not at all what the administrators think it is. The administrators think that the problem is "disobedience", when in fact it is the failure to take into account that students are also control systems and can't help acting like control systems. If the administrators take a punitive, stern, implacable, controlling attitude toward the students, then of course the students are going to resist. If they didn't, there would be something wrong with them.

A theoretical position can't be mistaken just because it leads to conclusions that are inconvenient for someone. The fact is that students do often oppose administrative rules, and this probably indicates something wrong with the administration, or the rules. The students are being required to do something that is contrary to human nature. But this is the last thing administrators want to hear -- that they are creating the problem themselves. What they want is for the students to behave.

Ed Ford's associates have produced some startling effects by using PCT in the classroom. There are definitely rules, but certain rules have simply disappeared. As one of his associates put it, they have redefined what is meant by a "discipline problem." A discipline problem is behavior that infringes on the rights of the teacher to teach and the other students to learn. Coming late to class, forgetting pencils and paper, not doing homework, falling asleep in class, and other such problem behaviors are not discipline problems. They may be academic problems, or social problems, or emotional problems, but they are not discipline problems and they do not call for disciplinary measures. They call for help.

And even a discipline problem is handled by offering choices within the rules. The disruptive student can remain in class by ceasing to disrupt. Or the student can go to what used to be called "detention" but has been changed into a social skills class -- but even in that class the student has the option of just sitting there, as well as the option of working with an adult to figure out how to solve the problem. And the student can get back into class at any time by negotiating with the teacher to try some different kind of behavior to get what is wanted. Sure, all this takes place within a framework of clear rules, but the discipline that takes place has become self-discipline, not punishment. The students are treated with respect at all times, even in the "social skills class" and even after they return to class. They are treated as human beings, as we understand them under PCT.

My point is that it's easy to blame the victims, but far more effective to understand what is going on and act accordingly. PCT doesn't prescribe any ways of dealing with children or anyone else. But knowing PCT, people like Ed and his associates can start trying out different approaches, gradually changing the relationships between rule-givers and rule-livers in the light of our new understanding of how people work. And this seems to solve some rather severe problems.

Interestingly, the teachers, students, bus-drivers, cafeteria workers, and advisers are all quite happy with this program. But the administrators, apparently, hate it.

But you never obey a rule unless you have given your personal assent to it, and adopted it as your own rule. It would be impossible to act according to a rule that has not become your own goal -- who would operate your arms and legs? You might adopt it because you really agree with it, or because you fear the consequences of not adopting it, but if you obey the rule, adopt it you did. I am open to a theoretical discussion of how it could be otherwise.

The real question is how much conflict has been created by your adoption of the rule. If you agreed with the rule, there was probably none. But if you disagreed, you disagreed because following the rule would cause errors relative to other goals you have. Being threatened with even greater errors if you do not follow the rule may persuade you to adopt it, but the other goals have not been dealt with and the errors are still there. Unless some way is found to reduce the internal conflict that results from accepting an unwanted rule, the person accepting it is going to be under great internal stress and will continually be looking for a way to lessen the other errors. So you'll end up with kids running in the hall when no teacher is looking, or popping pills in the restroom stalls, or sneaking out behind the gym to show off a new gun, or waiting until school is out and then knocking up a cheerleader, or getting knocked up. When you see shrieking kids exploding out of a school every day at 3:15, you know there is something wrong. What are they celebrating?

-------------------------

The first thing you have to do to get along with other people is to learn what they want and how their behavior enables them to get it. This is just as true when you're dealing with the Mafia as when you're dealing with a saint. Other people will always act to control their own worlds in the states they prefer. And as long as that doesn't harm you or anything or anyone you care about, more power to them. Sometimes, however, you don't accept their goals; to respect the will of another is not necessarily to agree with it. Before you can act rationally toward another person, you have to understand how that person works. If you decide to use force on the other person, you should understand what the likely result is. If you're caught in an irrational system, such as Nazi Germany 60 years ago, you need to understand that there are people whose wills are causing the situation, and you need to respect that fact before you start thinking of ways out. It would probably be to your advantage to understand what the administrators of that system will do if you break the rules they have set, and plan accordingly. Wishing that they would change the rules, or hoping that you could persuade them to make an exception, would not be realistic and would decrease your control over the situation.

Well, I would be very interested in hearing how you would propose to assign responsibility unilaterally. Isn't the whole problem the step of it's being "understood and accepted"? AFTER it's accepted, there's no problem with assigning it; it's already been taken. All the problems come BEFORE it's accepted. I may understand completely what responsibility you would like to assign to me, but that may only increase my resolve to reject it. What, I'm supposed to turn on the gas every morning in the "shower room"? No, but thanks for thinking of me.

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------ (950204.1245 EST)

That sounds pretty harmless, a "legitimate way to describe one perspective." I don't think it would be very satisfying to anyone who wants to know whether the feeling of freedom is an illusion, and if so, in what respects.

But that just pushes the problem up a level. I don't think we can go on doing that forever; our brains are finite and when we try to go up one level too many we find ourselves looking at bone.

Best, Bill P.

Date: Sun Feb 05, 1995 12:36 pm PST

Subject: Good "discipline" vibrations

[From Rick Marken (950205.1120)]

Bill Powers (950203.1450 MST) --

Me too. Indeed, the subtitle to Ed's most recent book ("Discipline for home and school") is "Teaching children to respect the rights of others through _responsible_ thinking based on perceptual control theory".

When a hot-headed control theorist, like myself, hears talk of "teaching people to think responsibly" he hears it as a code for "teach people to think the way I think they should think". Teaching responsible thinking implies (to me) that the teacher knows what another person should control for and that "discipline" (punishment) will be used if the person doesn't control for what the teacher thinks (responsibly) should be controlled for. Nazi's knew how to teach responsible thinking; Muslim fundamentalists are teaching Salman Rushdie how to think responsibly.

Of course, Ed's book is not about how to be a Nazi or a Muslim fundamentalist. But, as Bill says in his forward to Ed's book.

"If you just listen to the words used in this book, you might get an uncomfortable feeling... Discipline, establishing rules, obedience, making commitments, responsibility... they mean _shape up_!"

Bill might have been talking to me when he wrote this. Now, after seeing the presentation by Ed and his colleagues last year in Durango, and after reading Bill's description of Ed's program in the Forward, I think I have a much better idea of what Ed is up to -- and I like it! Here's how Bill described Ed's "discipline" program in the Forward:

"Achieving discipline in the classroom is no longer a question of cowing children into sitting quietly in rows; it is a question of communicating to children their own power to make choices and decisions, to pick workable goals and achieve them, to find a reasonable and pleasant way to live with others...".

That is, Ed's program is about teaching kids how to be in control while allowing others to be in control too. Ed might not describe what he does (which is to teach cooperative control) the way I would describe it, but what he does is apparently what I would do -- which is sure more than I'm doing;-).

Best Rick

Date: Mon Feb 06, 1995 5:24 pm PST

Subject: Discipline and Responsibility

(From Ed Ford 950206.near noon MST)

Rick Marken (950205)

Rick, you spoke well about what I do. When you teach children to respect the rights of others, this is primarily done by example. Thus teachers must respect their students when dealing with a disruption, as well as at other times. For humans to get along, respect for another's rights is critical. Even on the CSGnet. Just let someone invade with a self-serving advertisement and you'll get a perfect example.

The program continues to evolve and develop. One interesting thing we discovered is that those teachers and staff members whose own lives are filled with disharmony are finding it hard to teach a "life skill", which is what we're really doing, to children when teachers and staff themselves lack those very skills. We got a powerful letter from a teacher on that very issue. She admitted she had never taken responsibility for her own life, continually blaming others, and admitted it was hard to teach her students to do something she had never done. She also admitted attempting to re-build her own life, using the very materials and program we were using with the students.

I think that responsibility has to do with keeping one's own system in harmony with itself. The best understanding of this comes from the three highest levels of HPCT. I've translated Bill's terms to read choices (program level), standards or rules (principles) and values or beliefs (systems concepts level). For me to operate in a way consistent with how I've designed or created my perceptions at these three levels, they should consistently operate in harmony with each other. Thus the choices I make should be in harmony with my standards or rules as well as those of the culture where I choose to be, and those standards and rules should be in harmony with my values or beliefs.

In private counseling (I've just this year given up my private practice because of the demands from my educational consulting), I've always worked with people using the questioning technique (the only way I've found to initially get people to think and learn to use their internal world). Asking them such questions as what they're doing, what are their standards or the standards of those around them, what the consequences to breaking their own or another's standards are, is that what they want to happen, what they want now, what their priorities are (at the systems concepts level), what will happen if they keep doing what they are presently doing in the area that is concerning them, is what you're doing work for you -- such questions get people to exam their own worlds in such a way as to help them to reorganize with the least amount of disruption and the most amount of efficiency. Teaching comes in when they need help building plans in areas where they have little or no expertise. In other words, teaching them to use the internal feedback loop such that they can learn how to imagine, plan, and think in various areas where they are presently finding conflict.

With children, this works remarkably well. It has had powerful effects on the schools where this has been implemented. Since a frontpage article appeared in the Arizona Republic (cir. 600,000) about my program, followed by a half hour news report by a local TV station, I have been overwhelmed with schools interested in what I'm doing. That's why I haven't been active on the CSGnet.

The wonderful thing about all this is that PCT is at the very heart of the program. Every action we take, every new twist to the program that is taken, it is all consistent with PCT. It has to be. Schools are excited and the model is being taught. A Canadian school bus company which contracts with schools to bus their children throughout the US and Canada has contracted with me to create a program for their drivers, 25,000 of them. We will be creating videos with commercial quality delivery and I'll be using the PCT concept as the model. Another national professional broadcasting company has produced a minute and a half TV spot which is soon to be released nationally to a syndicated group of stations about my program. That's what I mean by being overwhelmed.

One of my favorite prayers is one from St. Francis "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." Wouldn't it be nice to see peace come to the chaos now found in so many schools, all through a better understanding of PCT. That's what happened at our model school. There's no reason it can't happen in all schools. A little overwhelming, isn't it?

Best, Ed.

Date: Mon Feb 06, 1995 5:41 pm PST

Subject: Do you have to teach what's natural?

[From Bill Powers (950206.1600 MST)]

Bruce Nevin (Mon 93026 11:38:51 EST)--

If these are intrinsic values for mammals, then all baby mammals would be born having such values and nobody would have to teach the babies, reward them, or punish them into having these values.

The fact that children (apparently) have to be taught so-called responsibility is direct evidence that this and related concepts are not products of evolution or inheritance. It tells us that responsibility etc is a human invention, passed along and modified or reinvented by each new generation, each new group within each new generation.

If we look at WHAT is taught, we find that some people want to control others because of the effects others have on them, and in doing so they employ all the methods of control that work. This includes reasoning, persuasion, negotiation, demonstration, being an example, withholding necessities until the desired behavior is seen (reward), and causing intrinsic error until the desired behavior is seen (punishment). What behavior is wanted from others is a highly individual matter and varies radically across the population and even within so-called "groups."

This idea of "shared notions of social relations and expectations" is a myth. When we start using such terms, we have stopped speaking of society and are speaking of the small part of it we have experienced and from which we have drawn generalizations of dubious generality. Every time we speak of what "people" do, we're speaking of people who live on Park Avenue, in a Black or Jewish or Irish or Haitian ghetto, on Indian reservations, in the Deep South, in igloos, at the edge of rice paddies, and in jungles -- to mention a few places. We're speaking of people who will grow up to be or already are criminals, judges, scientists, sociologists, linguists, group leaders, loners, day laborers, explorers, technicians, suicides, Republicans, Democrats, terrorists, Moslems, generals of private armies, faith-healers, cops, preachers, cult leaders, paid assassins, kings, and mathematicians.

What I've been trying to get across is that responsibility is whatever you decide it is. It's like "family values," which are also whatever you decide they are. There is nothing mysterious here, no mysterious forces from evolution or "society" that lead us to adopt responsibilities or values. There are only interactions with other people, other people who have an incredible array of different desires and beliefs, other people who always assume that THEIR concept of the good society and right behavior toward others is the only one. Trying to generalize is hopeless; inevitably it creates a parochial view of what "social factors" are important.

What we need to understand is how people interact with the people around them. We can't understand this by looking at any particular values, beliefs, customs, rules, and so forth. Those are all happenstance and could have come out completely different. The point is to explain how a group of people arrive at equilibrium positions on various subjects like family values or responsibility or religion. Doing this requires a theory that doesn't take sides. If people do arrive at accommodations with each other, it isn't because they inherit a tendency to do so, but because of how living control systems work. And if the theory's any good, it should work for a soldier of fortune just as well as for Albert Schweitzer.

Yes, lazy con artists and gullible individuals do exist and interact, and PCT ought to be able to explain the interaction. But PCT also works in cases where an adult decides that children ought to be responsible for certain things like personal cleanliness, saying the proper prayers, and sitting quietly in school, and in fact many children are successfully taught these things. PCT has to explain that, too, as well as the children who fail to go along with the teaching.

The moment you start trying to explain why taking certain responsibilities and showing certain social behaviors is good and natural, you've admitted that they are arbitrary. If they were objectively good and natural, you wouldn't have to persuade anyone to go along with them. The moment you start giving the reasons why some particular behaviors are better than others, you have ceased to think as a theoretician and are simply acting out your own reference levels. You're just being an example of a person trying to change other people's behavior to fit certain private goals.

Best, Bill P.

Date: Wed Feb 08, 1995 5:38 pm PST

Subject: Responsibility; social conflict;

purposive light bulbs

[From Bill Powers (950208.1640 MST)]

[Martin Taylor 950208 10:30]

For the past 10 days it's been beautiful, clear and warm. Today, after we had breakfast 40 miles down the road, we turned around and came back. Yes, Utah is snowy in winter. We waited a bit too long.

----------------------------------

Put the shoe on the other foot. Isn't the point that I'm arguing against that there are, in fact, responsibilities that people "have?" For example, you say

To say it "has a value" is clear enough if we all understand that it has a value for the person who has adopted the responsibility. The value is the reference state of the variable for which the person has decided to be responsible.

What you or I say about the driver's responsibility is irrelevant, because that is OUR perception of consequences of the DRIVER's action. We have no control over those consequences, unless we decide to erect safety barriers, take away drivers' licenses of people who drive dangerously or suicidally, and so on.

The point I am trying to make is that when we say another person "has" a responsibility, we are either trying to describe a fact, or to prescribe the adoption of a goal. If the former, the only meaning that makes sense is that we are saying that the driver does in fact have control of the event for which we say he or she has responsibility. If the driver does not have control of the event, then saying the driver has a responsibility for it is simply false unless we really mean to be prescribing, saying the driver _should_ take responsibility, _should_ take control of the event.

This leaves out one possible meaning of saying that a person "has" a responsibility: the meaning that says that responsibilities objectively exist, independently of the person who has or should have or wants someone to have them. This is the position of many moralists.

This is a subtle way of proposing moral rules as if they are natural laws, imposed from outside any mere human agency. The god in the volcano says you are responsible for providing sacrifices of virgins once each year, whether you want to be or not. This purported imposition of responsibility by a superhuman agent is a ploy to keep the person informing you of this responsibility from being blamed personally for telling you that you must accept the goal of sacrificing virgins every year.

Even this attempt to shift blame is revealed as an attempt to control a person's intentions when the question arises, "What if I don't take responsibility for sacrificing virgins?" Ah, says the High Priest, then you will be horribly punished. Your crops will fail, you will suffer disease, you will be characterized as a witch, and the volcano god will command the other villagers to dismember you and burn you. And don't look at me like that, I'm just telling you what the volcano god told me.

So my argument is that there is no reasonable way in which we can talk about responsibility that makes it into something objective, independent of people's intentions.

----------------------------

One last point: the perception of being a responsible person is a different matter entirely. That is a self-concept, and people can consider themselves to be responsible people without actually taking responsibility for any specific thing. I am talking here about being responsible for specific outcomes of behavior, not about ways we characterize ourselves in general.

------

Joel Judd (950208.0800CST)--

An interesting point you bring up. I think we all know the advantages of forming social systems -- every word I write in the manner and for the purpose I write here is an example -- but nobody in this discussion has mentioned the disadvantages before.

Living with other people is a problem of collision avoidance in hyperspace. You not only have to avoid physically bumping into others, but you have to avoid using means of control that create serious disturbances of many controlled variables maintained by all others in your vicinity. There's a conflict involved: you need the other people to make your own control easier, yet the other people start to snap and growl when you start encroaching on their sets of controlled variables (and you snap and growl right back when they do it to you). The more people you have to interact with, the greater the conflict gets.

I can see a kernel here for an extremely interesting sociological analysis of human interactions. To resurrect an old term, it's an approach-avoidance conflict in multiple dimensions. One way we try to minimize it is to propose rules: here, you hold my package for a minute and I'll go through first, then you can hand all the packages to me and come through after me -- OK? We set up and agree on little temporary rules like that all the time, to help each other do things while avoiding collisions. Laws and customs are just larger and somewhat more permanent versions of the same thing.

---------------------------------

Bruce Buchanan (950208.1300 EST) --

The citation from Pierre de Latil is science fiction (maybe that's why the forward to his book was written by Isaac Asimov). Latil's great discovery about classes of effectors is pure sophistry. I don't know why it has greatly influenced you for 40 years, unless perhaps it triggered off thoughts of your own that were considerably more competent than Latil's.

I agree completely with Martin Taylor's reply.

Best to all, Bill P.

Date: Fri Feb 10, 1995 12:19 am PST

Subject: Re: responsibility

<[Bill Leach 950209.21:37 EST(EDT)]

>[Bill Powers (950203.1450 MST)]

I must be reading Ed a bit differently than you... except that you say "administrators tend to say".

People do attempt to control their own environments (rightly or wrongly) and that includes those that "run" schools. While the student has little choice about attending school or not (from a legal standpoint that is), in my opinion what Ed has attempted to do is to establish a "system" where a student may actually learn something about "consequences of actions" as opposed to "just being dumped upon".

While in the purest sense (and essentially turning around your terrorism example), if the Fed throws me into jail for refusing to pay taxes to what I perceive as a "corrupt" government, it is not really a case of "Well, you knew the rule, so the consequences are your responsibility, not mine." However, I do know the rules (at least in a general enough fashion to know that I must pay the taxes that the government claims that I owe or suffer the consequences).

To deny or especially to teach that one does not have to be concerned at all about the perceptions that others form concerning one's own actions would be irresponsible at best. The "gap" between a PCT understanding of the world and the "common" understanding is hugh but I believe that the work of Ed Ford will help to reduce the difference.

Now I ask you to help me... If the preceding IS NOT the gist of what Ed has been teaching, then I have been misunderstand Ed and I suppose that I need some help seeing how I missed it...

-bill

Date: Mon Feb 13, 1995 8:57 pm PST

Subject: Re: Inverted-T; E. coli analysis

[Bill Leach 950213.22:42 EST(EDT)]

I just got off the phone after a fascinating discussion with Ed Ford.

I all but accused Ed of using PCT to implement a discipline program designed around standards THAT HE SET. I did not intend to be "negative" with my comments (nor do I feel that Ed took them as negative) but rather he pointed out something of vital importance that was not explicitly understood by me concerning application of PCT to solutions for real world system problems.

As most (if not all) on the net are aware, Ed has designed and directed the implementation of a public school discipline program in some Arizona schools based upon the understanding of how people actually function as explained by PCT. He has published a book concerning this program (listed in the net intro message): "Discipline for home and school". The success of the program has created considerable excitement among teachers and parents (in particular) and of course among many PCTers.

My own mind may well have been working "overtime" with the "morally and ethically neutral" assertion of PCT argument raging here lately (I need SOME excuse). The point that I was missing is that Ed is not and does not try to evaluate or judge the rules and standards of the school AS A PART OF THE PROGRAM.* His program tries to teach the idea that when rules exist for a particular activity (with the necessary enforcement) then a choice exists to either comply with the rules and participate OR not comply and not participate.

It seems to me that there are two aspects of this program that are equally vital. The first is that students actually be taught that they really do have choices concerning how they choose to control their own perceptions (that is, how they react to disturbances) and "authority" (teachers and administrators) ALSO recognize the truth of that situation.

Of course learning to "go up a level", identify and resolve internal conflicts and the like are also important (and naturally are an extremely important part of the program).

The idea is that the "world is" and is often (usually?) beyond our influence (at least in some matters) but must be dealt with as it is found, is (I believe) the essence of what Ed is doing. In the "long run" if what he is doing really catches on then the rules themselves will "improve" but that is not the point NOW.

Indeed, the problem will always be how to deal with the world as it is not with how it should be. How it "should be" we can work on (or not -- as we choose individually) but how it "is" we ignore at our own peril.

I recognize that this may be so obvious to everyone else that they (you) are wondering where "this nut" is coming from. I suppose that for me, it is a case of "I sorta saw that before" but now it is "real".

* Though I did not ask, I don't doubt that Ed does do a lot of work on getting teachers and administrators to examine their rules for consistency with their goal.

-bill

Date: Sun Feb 19, 1995 1:49 pm PST

Subject: Creating Interest in PCT

Ed Ford 950219.1220MST

Marc, Rick, others

Regarding getting others interested in PCT. I find the best way to do this is first find those who need a practical solution to what you have to offer. In my case, I teach techniques for dealing with others, especially in difficult situations, such as public schools, probation work, residential treatment centers, etc. Public schools are having to deal more and more with very disruptive children. Some find out about me and look to me for help. Once things get a lot better, perhaps there may be someone who expresses more than just a casual interest in PCT. Not that I haven't been explaining it, using it as the basis for the practical applications that have been working for my clients. The problem is that most people could care less. You saved their butts and that's what they were controlling for. I've had four educators out of the thousands that have heard me, show an intense interest in PCT, enough to attend our annual conferences. My friend Jim Soldani, when he successfully managed a plant for Intel, and got unbelievable results for eight straight months, told me no one, but no one cared how he did it and about the theory (PCT) upon which it was based.

Marc Abrams said it to me recently. No one has tied their theories to practical solutions of every day problems. But even if you do, and to some extent I have, very, very few care. I guess there are very few humans with enough "fire in their belly" (my latest expression) who really want to think things through sufficiently to learn why and how it all works. The most fascinating thing about PCT is not the theory itself, but the delightful way you can use it when looking for practical solutions in difficult settings. I just perceive things now through my PCT perceptual glasses. And when dealing with those who could care less about your glasses, you realize, as you look through those glasses, you can't set another's reference levels nor get them to perceive the world as you do. As one school bus driver said after learning to deal with children, "I'm calmer and so is my bus." The theory had little appeal to her. Only the fact she now "enjoyed driving all those crazy kids to and from school."

Enough said. Best, Ed.

Date:Thu Feb 23, 1995 10:53 pm PST

Subject: Knowing What You Want..

Ed Ford 950223.2140MST

Both in corrections and education along with counseling, "knowing what you want" is a very commonly heard. I think the problem can be one of conflict, which means not being able to decide which reference level or want you want to decide on. Thus, the wants are known, but the priorities for those wants have never really be thought out or mutually exclusive. For example, a single parent with three children desiring an adult relationship could easily create conflict within herself (or himself) if the relationship began to take needed time away from her children.

The other "not knowing what we want" that occurs to me is a conflict "at some level." I might have a hard time as a veggie deciding which kind of apple I want, but not whether I would eat a steak meal over a salad. One is totally compatible with my Veggie values and the choice would have nothing to do with my systems concepts. The steak choice would be dictated by my higher order "veggie" value. Often times, when children are in conflict, saying "they don't know what they want" really means they don't want to decide. But in any case, I'll just ask them if, for example, they want to stay in the classroom and obey the rules or go to the social skills room (which are their obvious wants). However, there could be other wants, such as wanting to go home, to see the school psychologist or an administrator. When you ask and name specific wants, I find it helps people, whose internal conflict(s) have them somewhat confused in their thinking, direct their thinking and make clear distinctions so they can more easily make a judgement.

Knowing the three top levels helps a person deal with highly conflicted people because you can ask questions at one level or another and help the person discover at what level their conflicts reside. No matter if it's at program level (choices), principles level (standards, rules, criteria) or systems concepts level (values, beliefs), it helps to articulate what you perceive as the possible options or possibilities to those who struggle to deal with their own internal world of conflicts.

______

The other night I was trying to cut some hair around my ear and in front of my eyes and it seemed to me that here was a clear example of controlling a perception. In fact, if you were trimming someone else's hair and trying the same thing, there wouldn't be much difficulty. But cutting your own hair while looking in the mirror makes you painfully aware that you really are trying to control a perception that doesn't represent the reality of what you are trying to do. At least it did for me....

Best, Ed.

Date:Sun Feb 26, 1995 8:38 am PST

Subject: Re: punishment, teaching responsibility

[From Bill Powers (950226.0730 MST)]

Bill Leach (950225.19:59 EST(EDT))--

Yes, I agree. Look at it this way: punishment is not an act (i.e., hitting someone) but setting up a contingency so that certain behavior on another person's part will lead to consequences that person doesn't want to happen -- consequences that amount to errors. Hitting someone for no reason is just an attack. It's only a punishment if it's understood that it follows from a rule: do that and I'll hit you (implying: don't do it, and I won't hit you).

There are natural contingencies of this sort, but we don't call them "punishment." If you're careless with a favorite toy it will break, and that's just the nature of things. We would only call this consequence a punishment if someone else made a rule like "Every time you talk back to me I am going to break one of your toys." A punishment is something that one person does to another because of a rule that person made (or adopted from someone else) and is acting out.

At the very least, wouldn't the punishee have to be able to understand a rule like "Each time you do X, I will do Y"? If the cause-effect rule isn't understood, the punishing act Y will simply be perceived as an attack delivered for no reason. When very young children are punished by a parent, I think the message they get is simple: daddy or mommy hurts me, or doesn't like me. Do this enough, and the child concludes "I am unlovable and worthless." The idea that an abstract cause-effect relationship is intended can't be understood before some age. If you depend on reorganizing effects due to the punishing act itself, without understanding, there is no predicting what kind of change of behavior will occur. Skinner was against punishment for this reason. While it could apparently cause a specific action to cease, what took its place was completely unpredictable.

I think there's a finite window in childrens' development where punishment -- if not sadistic -- will simply be accepted as a part of life. Most games contain punishments: "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200." There isn't even anything one can necessarily do to avoid them; they're just the breaks of the game, a consequence of landing on the wrong spot. Other games have punishing consequences, such as loss of points for lying about the cards you have in your hand -- teaching the lesson that the crime is not lying but getting caught lying. Games with winners and losers automatically punish all but one person, the winner. I'm not quite sure what moral lessons such games are getting across, but children accept the rules without too much fuss. The main lesson they learn is that they have to accept the rules if they want to play.

This window ends, I think, somewhere near adolescence. It ends when children become aware of who is making the rules that lead to punishment. One of the great insights is that if the rule didn't exist, there wouldn't be any punishment. So if the rules are arbitrary and the child doesn't see any general good in them, chances are that there will be a rebellion against the rule-makers, who are seen simply as bullies who insist on getting what they want (however, see below for a caution that this may not be a universal truth).

This is why I was a problem child. I had to see for myself some good in the rules before I would accept that they were worth living up to. A great many of the rules that were imposed by elders seemed totally capricious to me; the only consideration was not offending the rule- makers enough to bring them down on my head. I was probably about two steps from a life of crime. It took me quite a while to get all this sorted out and develop my own ethical system so I could begin to have some concern for promoting goodness in the world. Neither reward nor punishment succeeded in making me docile, as some of my colleagues here may attest.

When people speak of responsibilities they and others should have to society, they're almost always thinking about the society they like, the one they grew up in. So it appears that teaching children to go along with the rules of their society is a good thing, promoting social harmony and mutual support. What they don't seem to realize that this is much too simple a principle and not at all a good thing to teach children past a certain age. What it does is to bring up children to believe that they must be loyal to their own society _no matter what it does_. Then, when their horizons broaden and they come into contact with other societies, they are unable to understand how other people could be just as loyal to a social system that breaks many rules they were taught (by reward and punishment) are important. Instead of promoting the general social welfare, this principle of upbringing creates innumerable little groups who are fiercely loyal to those they agree with, and fiercely hostile to everyone else. There is a very fine line between teaching mutual support and cooperation and teaching xenophobia.

If I were teaching responsibility to older children, I would follow most of Ed Ford's method, but I would go beyond it. At some point I would explain to children what rules are, and who makes them, and why. I would explain not only why it is good to seek agreement and cooperation with others, but why it is even better to figure out your own ways of living with others. I would ask children of Democrats to imagine what it would be like if they had been raised by Republicans, or Nazis, or hippies, or atheists, and of course all the other combinations. I would ask them if the things they believed in were true ONLY because they had been raised to believe them, or whether they could find some reason to believe them -- or something else -- that didn't depend on how they were raised. I would give them problems, like supposing they had been raised in some other society they know about, like North Korea, and imagining what they would think of "right" and "wrong" as a result. In short, I would introduce them to the study of ethics, which goes well beyond accidents of upbringing.

Of course I would probably get tossed out by angry parents and administrators, who definitely think that THEIR social rules are the RIGHT ones, and everyone else's are wrong.

A question to ponder: if some children are found to "control around" some of the requirements, why are they trying to do so? Are they just nasty evil bad kids? Or is the system somehow trying to make them violate something important to them? I'm reminded of one of the most striking effects of Ed's program, which has been not a change in the kids but a change in the rules. The definition of a "discipline problem" has been changed so it does not apply to trivia like forgetting pencils and not doing homework, but concerns only violations of the rights of others to learn or to teach. We have to fix what's wrong with the social system as well as what's wrong with kids' behavior.

---------------------------------------

Bill Leach (950225.18:50 EST(EDT))--

What is provable is that we can learn how to control our perceptions. If action is properly related to error (inside us), our perceptions will be affected so as to stay near their preferred values. It's only a short step to infer that between the actions and the perceptions they affect, there must be some reasonably consistent laws, out there where we can't see them. We can't prove that there aren't some other, but operationally equivalent, laws, but that there are laws seems beyond doubt.

By this I mean that there really may be 'inborn' reasons why people generally have similar conceptions of 'right' and 'wrong'. Now PLEASE don't let this set a _flag_!!

Who, me? I completely agree with you, totally, one hundred percent. People generally believe that reincarnation is right and being bound to the wheel of desire is wrong. It is right to raid your neighbors to take their heads, as long as you do it for a good reason and show proper respect while you eat the brain. It is wrong for races to mix, wrong to be an atheist, wrong to be a Democrat. Everybody knows that. It's good that we all have similar conceptions of "right" and "wrong." Otherwise, we'd always be fighting with each other, wouldn't we?

;-)> Best to all, Bill P.

Date: Tue Mar 07, 1995 4:34 pm PST

Subject: musings

[From Bill Powers (950307.1625 MST)]

Bill Leach (answer to direct post) --

Your musings seem on the mark to me, for the most part. But I think the one you were most concerned with is the question of "right and wrong."

If "right" means "matching my reference level" then there is an inborn sense of right and wrong. But most of us, I think, have or once had a feeling that there are _specific_ rights and wrongs that are built into us, and there I no longer agree. I was raised by a person who thought that if you didn't just _know_ what was right and wrong, there was something wrong with you, right? I now see this view as reflecting a rather severe lack of self-understanding. What tipped me off was the realization that different people have different senses of right and wrong, plus the sudden jolt that came from seeing that if something is really inborn, you don't need to be taught it; you'll do it without even thinking. when you figure out _why_ certain things seem right or wrong, you'll understand your own organization better, as well as understanding human nature better.

Best to all, Bill P.