In the specific case of PCT, the model treats everything as closed-loop homeostasis occurring within the organism being modeled.
That is not the case. Indeed, most of the experimental work on PCT involves creatures controlling perceptions of things outside themselves, e.g. cursor-tracking experiments, or ball catching. Indeed, this is where the important applications are. Homeostatic processes within the organism, such as control of deep body temperature, are well understood to be control processes, and in the case of body temperature, I believe it is known where the temperature sensor is. It is for interactions with the environment that many still think in terms of stimulus-response, or plan-then-execute, or sensing and compensating for disturbances, none of which are control processes, and therefore cannot explain how organisms achieve consistent results in the face of varying environments.
When I say “closed loop within the organism” I mean “having within the organism all the error detection and machinery for reducing the error”, not that the subject of perception is also within the organism.
Note, too, that It’s possible for people to display apparently-homeostatic processes where no such process is actually occurring.
For example, outside observation might appear to create the impression that say, a person is afraid of success and downregulating their ambitions or skill in order to maintain a lower level of success.
However, upon closer observation, it might instead be the case that the person is responding in a stimulus-response based way to something that is perceived as a threat related to success.
While you could reframe that in terms of homeostasis away from anxiety or threat perception, this framing doesn’t give you anything new in terms of solving the problem—especially if the required solution is to remove the conditioned threat perception. If anything, trying to view that problem as homeostatic in nature is a red herring, despite the fact that homeostasis is the result of the process.
This is a practical example of how using PCT as an explanatory theory—rather than simply a modeling paradigm—can interfere with actually solving problems.
In my early learning of PCT, I was overly excited by its apparent explanatory power, but later ended up dialing it back significantly as I realized it was mainly a useful tool for communicating certain ideas; the number of high-level psychological phenomena that actually involve homeostasis loops in the brain appear to be both quite few and relatively short-term in nature.
Indeed, to some extent, looking at things through the PCT lens was a step backwards, as it encouraged me to view things in terms of such higher-order homeostasis loops when those loops were merely emergent properties, rather than reified primitives. (And this especially applies when we’re talking about unwanted behavior.)
To put it another way, some people may indeed regulate their perception of “success” in some abstract high-level fashion. But most of the things that one might try to model in such a way, for most people, most of the time, actually involve much tinier, half-open controls like “reduce my anxiety in response to thinking about this problem, in whatever way possible as soon as possible”, and not some hypothetical long-term perception of success or status or whatnot.
That is not the case. Indeed, most of the experimental work on PCT involves creatures controlling perceptions of things outside themselves, e.g. cursor-tracking experiments, or ball catching. Indeed, this is where the important applications are. Homeostatic processes within the organism, such as control of deep body temperature, are well understood to be control processes, and in the case of body temperature, I believe it is known where the temperature sensor is. It is for interactions with the environment that many still think in terms of stimulus-response, or plan-then-execute, or sensing and compensating for disturbances, none of which are control processes, and therefore cannot explain how organisms achieve consistent results in the face of varying environments.
When I say “closed loop within the organism” I mean “having within the organism all the error detection and machinery for reducing the error”, not that the subject of perception is also within the organism.
Note, too, that It’s possible for people to display apparently-homeostatic processes where no such process is actually occurring.
For example, outside observation might appear to create the impression that say, a person is afraid of success and downregulating their ambitions or skill in order to maintain a lower level of success.
However, upon closer observation, it might instead be the case that the person is responding in a stimulus-response based way to something that is perceived as a threat related to success.
While you could reframe that in terms of homeostasis away from anxiety or threat perception, this framing doesn’t give you anything new in terms of solving the problem—especially if the required solution is to remove the conditioned threat perception. If anything, trying to view that problem as homeostatic in nature is a red herring, despite the fact that homeostasis is the result of the process.
This is a practical example of how using PCT as an explanatory theory—rather than simply a modeling paradigm—can interfere with actually solving problems.
In my early learning of PCT, I was overly excited by its apparent explanatory power, but later ended up dialing it back significantly as I realized it was mainly a useful tool for communicating certain ideas; the number of high-level psychological phenomena that actually involve homeostasis loops in the brain appear to be both quite few and relatively short-term in nature.
Indeed, to some extent, looking at things through the PCT lens was a step backwards, as it encouraged me to view things in terms of such higher-order homeostasis loops when those loops were merely emergent properties, rather than reified primitives. (And this especially applies when we’re talking about unwanted behavior.)
To put it another way, some people may indeed regulate their perception of “success” in some abstract high-level fashion. But most of the things that one might try to model in such a way, for most people, most of the time, actually involve much tinier, half-open controls like “reduce my anxiety in response to thinking about this problem, in whatever way possible as soon as possible”, and not some hypothetical long-term perception of success or status or whatnot.