Feedback: Beyond Behaviorism

Abstract

Consistent behavior patterns are created by variable acts, and generally repeat only because detailed acts change. The accepted explanation of this paradox, that "cues" cause the changes, is irrelevant; it is unsupported by evidence, and incapable of dealing with novel situations. The apparent purposefulness of variations of behavioral acts can be accepted as fact in the framework of a control-system model of behavior. A control system, properly organized for its environment, will produce whatever output is required in order to achieve a constant sensed result, even in the presence of unpredictable disturbances. A control-system model of the brain provides a physical explanation for the existence of goals or purposes, and shows that behavior is the control of input, not output. A systematic investigation of controlled quantities can reveal an organism's structure of control systems. The structure is hierarchical, in that some quantities are controlled as the means for controlling higher-order quantities. The output of a higher-order system is not a muscle force, but a reference level (variable) for a lower-order controlled quantity. The highest-order reference levels are inherited and are associated with the meta-behavior termed reorganization. When controlled quantities are discovered, the related stimulus-response laws become trivially predictable. Variability of behavior all but disappears once controlled quantities are known. Behavior itself is seen in terms of this model to be self-determined in a specific and highly significant sense that calls into serious doubt the ultimate feasibility of operant conditioning of human beings by other human beings.

Prospective organization of neonatal arm movements: A motor foundation of embodied agency, disrupted in premature birth

“…This control structure yields an umbrella of organization where movement units are subsumed under action units. This notion concurs with the neuromotor control hierarchy put forward by Powers (1973) and more recently developed into Perceptual Control Theory (Mansell & Carey, 2009). The τ G ‐ coupling system acts as an integrative one functioning to maintain a parsimonious constancy of form of a perception‐action event.…”

Emotion: The self-regulatory sense

“…117 As in Figure 4, they constantly monitor the environment, comparing the relative concentrations at time one with those at time two (your classic negative feedback homeostat motif), with the increase or decrease in bound receptors serving as a positive feedback signal informing the cell that a significant deviation from stable set-points (negative feedback limiter) has occurred. (As the core sensory organ, the outside "heads" of the receptor complexes deliver Powers' "sense signals," 89 and subsequent alterations of the inside "tails" serve as Haugeland's first criteria for an internal representation-the direct detectors of relevant environmental stimulus that may not always be present. 154 For from there, a coupled positive feedback exchange between CheA and phophatase CheZ takes place inside the cell, which adds or removes phosphorous (respectively) to and from second messenger CheY, which directly initiates the regulatory (negative feedback) motor response, the switching between CCW and CW flagellum rotational modes that controls the bugs behavior.…”

“…Original Article mismatch is detected, and self-corrects back toward the optimal state (it "effects" 89 an observable behavioral response). In a home heater, for example, the actual room temperature is compared to the desired preset temperature, and when the house gets too hot or too cold, the thermostat rebalances the system by kicking the heat on or off.…”

“…(This second messenger protein, serves as Haugeland's second criteria for mindful representation, the "something else" 154 that stands in for the missing stimulus, yet still mediates the stop and go behavior. In the Powers model, this is an internal extension of the sense signal 89 (and perhaps the simplest example of the evermore complex signal transduction cascades observable in more complex organisms, those that include neurotransmitters and hormones in humans. )…”

“…89 It was a theory of how a system controls its somatosensory experience of being-its hedonic feeling of what is happening. 46 But this seems just a convoluted way of saying that a regulatory control system delivers (ushers or creates) perception itself.…”