p.56 In any field in which men function, the relevant facts and forces include not only what is happening
but also what men think is going to happen... The inner world is fundamentally strucured by human values.
It is thus a dynamic structure, a configuration of forces; and it behaves like other dynamic systems.
p.100 The situation to which the policy-maker attends is not a datum but a construct,
a mental artifact, a collective work of art. It has to be simplified, or it becomes unmanageable; yet if it is over-simplified,
it will be no guide to action. It has to reflect present and future reality
p.101 The object of these procedures is, first, to ensure that action serves policy; secondly, to improve
the information on which to choose
p.103 Even a chess-playing computer, I understand, when involved in the complexities of the middle game,
cannot guide its play by a strict analysis of costs and benefits but has to rely on general principles.
p.104 The solution to any multi-valued choice is a work of art combining in a unique way the regulation
of the various relations involved... he cannot tell in advance what combination will prove attainable or even preferable.
p.127 Wildly disparate aims... fight for realization, each an expression of the urge to bring some
relation up to standard. No built-in hierarchy or order of priorities decides how far each shall have its way. The
choice is multi-valued.
p.128 the recognition of policy-making as the regulation of relations
stresses that the standards by which these relations are judged are not goals to be attained once and for all
but, like the mariner's course, must be constantly be sought anew. I will call them norms.
p.134 We notice only those aspects of reality that 'interest' us... Interest is
the basic fact of mental life - and the most elementary act of valuation... Predators soon learn to notice
whatever is relevant to catching their prey... All the psycho-social sciences... have shown that mental life and
hence personal and social regulation are based on the development of schemata for classifying experience... The multi-valued
choice always involves different ways of seeing the same situation, ways to which different values are attached.
p.142 It is very odd that we have no name for these states of readiness to discriminate and to evaluate
which are both the product and the condition of human communication - unless, indeed, their name is 'mind'... I call it an
appreciative system, because these readinesses are organized systematically and enable us...
to discriminate and to value... This nameless faculty is fundamental to many human problems.
[JLJ - such as programming a machine to 'play' a game. The fundamental problem in computer chess is creating a perception
(and from this, an orientation) that can be used as an effective guide to action. 50 years from now, this will still
likely be the fundamental problem in computer chess. ]
p.161 the objects of our attention include relations extended in time. This we should expect; for organisms
and organizations are relations extended in time. Their continuity depends on keeping the more essential of these
relationships within critical limits.
p.162 A man who wants to become Prime Minister may and probably does seek
the satisfaction of being appointed to that office and he may properly regard the attainment of this as a goal; but it
is to be hoped that he also looks forward to supporting the complex relations which attach to the role and which must be sustained
as long as it is held.
p.162 I stress the importance of ongoing relations as objects of attention because they seem to
be unduly ignored... we do not seek or shun objects but relations with objects. No one wants an apple; he wants to
eat it, sell it, paint it, perhaps just to admire it, in any case to relate to it in some way or another.
p.164 Appreciative behaviour involves making judgements of value... It is convenient first
to separate judgments of 'importance-unimportance' from other kinds of value judgement... I will describe judgements of importance-unimportance
as judgements of interest. Interest is the selector. It must precede reality judgement, even though
other kinds of value judgement may follow later.
p.164 Men maintain expectations of the future course of their manifold relations and constantly
scan the unfolding present for confirmation or disproof.
p.172-173 But soon communication engineers, devising controls for spacecraft and automatic factories, were
having to design their own senders and receivers in a communication network and to furnish them with programmes, determining
what they should notice, how they should evaluate it, and what they should do about it. They had thus distinguished
the three main functions of any regulator, including the human mind in its regulative capacity; and they had become
directly involved in problems of meaning.
p.174-175 So the subject-matter of science is a hierarchy of systems... the object of attention is a dynamic
system, a configuration of forces... organic forms rely on information to regulate their internal relations... they develop
means of using information to regulate their external relations also.
p.178 The simplest decision on action - 'In these circumstances this should be done' - is the selection
of a response from a repertory by rules which determine what is suitable to what occasion. The categories by which
we discriminate, the standards by which we value, the repertory of responses from which we select, and our rules for selection
are all mental artifacts, evolved, learned, and taught by the cultural process
p.179 It is the comparison of actual with norm which generates in thermostat or automatic pilot the signal
which evokes the regulative response. However complex be the process which constructs its representation of the actual and
selects the strategy of regulation, neither is either possible or meaningful except in relation to the norm, the setting which
the system is trying to maintain.
p.180 one should never lose sight of the fact that information is an incomplete concept. Whether
it informs and, if so, what meaning it conveys, depends on the organization of the participants in the network in which it
is used; and this organization is in turn developed by participation in the network.
p.193-195 This circular process of 'education' is seen at its simplest and best attested in the growth of
perception... Perfect vision conveys no message to the mind, until experience has built up schemata to order the 'blooming,
buzzing confusion' [JLJ - uncited reference to William James, The Principles of Psychology Vol.1, 1890, p.488]...
These schemata are 'readiness to see' things in one way, rather than another; habits of selecting and grouping
for attention, which develop cognition out of recognition. Facilitating the seeing of things one way, they impede
the subsequent seeing of them in another way... Not only perception but all cognition depends on recognition by the
use of schemata... Whatever the mind can represent to itself, from a cow to a contract, from a law
of nature to a legal principle, is recognized by applying schemata - 'readiness to see' which are themselves developed...
by their further use... This circular process... is ubiquitous through the whole range of human learning. It
is the commonest fact of life... An outstanding characteristic of the circular process is its capacity for admitting change
without losing continuity... the schemata by which our conceptual world is organized... serve effectively as an
interpreter of experience, a basis for communication, and a guide to action.
p.197 What selects these, rather than other aspects of reality for our attention? What
kinds of attention are bestowed on them? They are selected because they are relevant to the needs of the creatures
that select them, and the kinds of attention bestowed on them are as various as the needs; but these 'needs'
have become immensely varied by the same process as has generated so complex a reality system.
p.198-199 Only by comparing the two - comparing 'what is' with 'what ought to be' - can it [an automatic
pilot] derive a signal to select an appropriate rudder movement. It cannot make the 'appreciation' which
leads to selective action, unless it has both the relevant information and the standard which gives the information meaning
for it. It would be absurd to suppose that the human mind, which, whatever else it does, clearly
functions as a regulator, would or could select facts without values to make them relevant.
p.205 This view of scientific method assumes that all scientific activity starts with a problem.
p.213 Each of us is bombarded by potential information from all manner of sources, from which we accept
only what the current set of our attention and the current setting of our appreciative system allows us to notice and interpret.
