NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/bit/listserv/csgl/2009

Text File | 1992-12-30 | 5.7 KB | 100 lines

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Date:         Wed, 30 Dec 1992 16:01:33 EST
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Subject: Re: Beliefs/Conflicts
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[Martin Taylor 921230 14:45]
(Rick Marken 921230.0900)

>I think it would be worthwhile to say what beliefs are in the context
>of the PCT model; describe examples of the everyday beliefs that
>people are walking around with (from the divine, like religious
>beliefs, to the profane, like beliefs about the "right" foods to eat); also,
>it would be nice to discuss the difference (from a PCT perspective)
>between belief and knowledge.  I know this is a difficult discussion to
>have -- precisely because beliefs are so important to people. With Bill
>I ask "WHY is this so? Why do people "fight and fight to prove that what
>they do not know is so?" There must be a reason that this species has
>been willing to persecute itself for millenia over fantasies. It must be
>an aspect of our nature as control systems. What is it? I think
>that this could be a very satisfying (and even theraputic) investigation.

At this moment I don't want to speculate about what beliefs "are."  That
impinges on the question of consciousness.  But I would like to make an
analogy that could be helpful.  (Since writing this, I succumbed, and added
a final paragraph in which I do so speculate.  I plead irresponsible
festivity).

The argument is that normal reorganization leads to superstitious actions,
defined as actions that are neither helpful nor hurtful to the control of
the perceptions in the ECS (Elementary Control System) whose output leads
to those actions.  Superstitious actions are more likely to persist at
higher levels of the hierarchy than at lower.  The speculation is that
we believe that what we do is what we *should* do, in the absence of
evidence to the contrary, and that much of what we do is superstitious
in the sense I just defined.

What does reorganization do?  It modifies connection patterns and strengths
within the hierarchy, makes new ECSs that control for previously undetected
patterns (e.g. configurations, intensities, sequences, principles--it doesn't
matter which level, I use "pattern" as the input to any Perceptual Input
Function (PIF)), and perhaps modifies existing PIFs.  We assume that
reorganization occurs as a consequence of error, particularly growing error,
in some intrinsic variable.  When a reorganization event occurs, it is
a random event, subject to some (unspecified here) constraints.  If the
reorganization event succeeds in creating connections that result in behaviour
that reduces the error in the intrinsic variable, reorganization stops,
leaving the connections as they are "forevermore."

In a complex hierarchy, each output of an ECS branches many ways to
contribute to the reference inputs of lower ECSs.  Another way of saying this
is that many lower-level behaviours are actions that form part of the
feedback loop involved in the control of any perception.  These lower
level behaviours are independent of each other, except insofar as the
nature of the world (and of their support structure in lower ECSs) creates
conflict.  Ignore conflict, for now.  But consider--the reorganization
that linked these lower-level actions to the ECS output was random.  That
means that there can be actions that neither support nor conflict with
actions that support the perceptual control performed by the higher ECS.
Nevertheless, when the higher ECS is generating output, these actions are
performed in addition to the ones that actually provide the negative
feedback.  I call them "superstitious" actions.  A golfer's waggle before
starting the swing might be an example.  Things work when you perform a
superstitious action in support of a "higher purpose," but not because of
the superstitious action.

But would you believe the superstitious actions had nothing to do with
your success?  Not unless you tried to control the higher-level perception
without using those actions, and why would you do that?  Reorganization
has left you with a perfectly workable system of output-to-reference links,
and there is nothing to tell you that one action is important and another
pointless--WITHIN the construct of control for that higher ECS.

At low levels of the hierarchy, any ECS may be part of the actions of many
higher ones, and if it is irrelevant in the context of one higher-level control
loop, it may be important in the context of another.  So its connections
may be reorganized without affecting the behaviour that happened to result
in control of the intrinsic variable we first considered (in the previous
two paragraphs).  One might expect much of the low-level superstitious
behaviour to be washed away by the random currents of reorganization.  But
not a high levels, because there is less opportunity for the kind of conflict
among system-level and principle-level perceptual control than there is
at lower levels.  There are (I would speculate) fewer of them, and they
operate more slowly (it makes no evolutionary sense to reorganize a control
system more rapidly than it can operate).

What this seems to result in is that high-level superstitious behaviour
is likely to persist.  If we make an assumption that we generally believe
that what we do is what we should do, provided that it doesn't lead to
internal conflict, we arrive at the proposition that people might be
expected to have and to maintain belief systems that are unsupportable
by perceptual evidence.  (This paragraph is even more speculative than
the rest, but it's the fextive season, so why not indulge?).

Martin