🚀 go-pugleaf

[From Rick Marken (990506.0740)]

Tim Carey (990506.0550)--

> This is all way too hard for me.

I think you're making it way harder than it is.

> coercion as it is explained in PCT is one of those elusive
> concepts

"Coercion" is control of behavior. That's not elusive, is it?

> 3. This definition [of behavior] doesn't clarify the situation
> much

Again, you don't need a definition to understand this. Are there
any people around where you are? Look at what they are doing:
sitting, talking, walking, whatever: that's their behavior;
those are perceptual variables that you can control (if you are
willing to do whatever it takes, including the use of force); you
can control where a person sits, what they say, how fast they
walk, etc.

> 4. From your definitions though (of both coercion and behavior)
> you seem to be saying that coercion is controlling another
> person's qo and qi

All you control is a perceptual aspect of what the "victim"
is doing. The behavior controller has no idea (or interest in)
whether what the victim controls corresponds to what, in PCT,
we call an action, a controlled perception or an irrelevant
side effect of controlling.

> if I send someone  from a room into another room and if this
> was what they wanted  to have happen then it wouldn't seem to
> me that I have "nullified their will".

But the behavior controller knows (and cares) nothing about this.
The behavior controller is controlling behavior even when he has
to make no special effort to keep the behavior at the reference
(kid in the other room). If you simply cannot use the word
"coercion" to describe the rare (and unknown to you) times when
you force a person to do what he wanted to to anyway, can you
at least see that you are, nevertheless, controlling the kid's
behavior? It's the same in the car driving situation; the driver
is still controlling for the car being in it's lane even when he
has to make no steering wheel movements to correct the car's path
because the car already "wants" to stay in the lane.

> The PCT stance on coercion however seems to suggest that you
> can render ineffective a person's will by controlling their
> actions.

The PCT "stance" on coercion (behavior control) is that when you
control a perception of someone else's behavior you will
be depriving that person of their ability to control one of
more of their own perceptions.

> I've been trying to fit a coercer, therefore, into either the
> d or f part of the model.

A coercer is a control system in the environment of the "victim"
control system (and the victim is in the environment of the
coercer control system); the coercer's outputs (the actions used to
control the coercer's perception of the victim's behavior) will
be an insuperable disturbance to one or more of the perceptions the
victim controls.

Best

Rick
--
Richard S. Marken                 Phone or Fax:  310 474-0313
Life Learning Associates         e-mail: rmarken@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~rmarken