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Quick guide to PCT

Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) has been around for over 50 years, leaving a trail of papers, books, websites, posts, conversations, videos all over the web. This is a quick guide to get started with the most basic materials: introductory texts, books, demonstrations, papers, websites and finding others interested in PCT. Welcome! [...]
PCT in 11 steps - introduction by Bill Powers

Control is a process of acting on the world we perceive to make it the way we want it to be, and to keep it that way. Examples of control: standing upright; walking; steering a car; scrambling eggs; scratching an itch; knitting socks; singing a tune. Extruding a pseudopod to absorb a nanospeck of food (all organisms control, not only human beings). The smallest organisms control by biochemical means, bigger ones by means of a nervous system. [...]
A simple introduction to PCT

A simple start… PCT stands for Perceptual Control Theory. Big words, eh? The ‘big idea’ behind PCT is simple but don’t be surprised if it takes a while to get your head around. This is it…. ‘Behaviour is the control of perception’ That’s it. Or more simply, we do things to get what we want – now that sounds too simple! Let’s take it a step at a time… [...]
Once around the loop

Elements of the control loop have been labeled slightly different by different people at different times and for different purposes, whether for a very plain explanation or for more mathematical treatment of the physical functions. Dag Forssell describes the elements of the control loop step by step, as an introduction to the basics of PCT. [...]

Newsletter

December 16, 2024

Welcome to the Control Loop – the IAPCT newsletter. This newsletter shares updates on the latest developments in Perceptual Control [...]
New website

April 23, 2022

We proudly present to you our new IAPCT website. This site is build in wordpress by Eva de Hullu and [...]

Robotics & Artificial Intelligence

January 30, 2022

PCT is emerging as a force in robotics. PCT lends itself well to the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics because it provides an exact mathematical framework to model psychological processes. […]

Law

January 30, 2022

At present, the application of PCT to Law is at its early stages. Hugh Gibbons is one exception. He has co-authored a biological model of human rights based around the tenets of PCT and he also illustrates a case using PCT in this book, “The Death of Jeffrey Stapleton”, published online. […]

Psychology

January 30, 2022

In explaining how living things control their perception, PCT is clearly highly relevant to psychology. Contemporary articles are making the case to the wider establishment that closed-loop, circular causality is much closer to how living systems actually function than the approach researchers still use. […]

mental health

Interventions for Mental Health Problems

January 30, 2022

When people find themselves struggling control has been disrupted. It is the loss of control not control, therefore, that is the problem when people are psychologically distressed. […]

Stairs

Method of Levels

January 30, 2022

Method of Levels introductory text to follow

Biology and Neuroscience

Bill Powers developed PCT with biology in mind. We can split the relevance of PCT into two parts – function and structure. […]

Politics and Philosophy – a PCT introduction

January 30, 2022

PCT takes a strongly scientific approach to human nature. It proposes that people and other living systems are purposeful – and that the systems that are responsible for purposeful action are explainable in mechanistic terms. […]

Education

January 30, 2022

Education is about more than teaching. Within education we need to know how to motivate students, how can we maximise the degree to which people learn, and often, how do we manage students or pupils when they don’t want to learn, or they disrupt others? […]

Economics & Marketing

To manage a successful business, you need to know what people want, how your business is perceived, and how to deal with people. It’s ripe for a PCT approach! […]

Patient-Perspective Care: A New Paradigm for Health Systems and Services

December 11, 2022

Timothy A. Carey Routledge; 1st edition (December 1, 2017) Book description Inappropriate health care is an escalating and expensive problem. It affects high income, middle income, and low income countries and wastes billions of dollars […]

Living Control Systems II

About Bill Powers Contents Page Foreword In 1979, Bill Powers wrote a prophecy: “A scientific revolution is just around the corner, and anyone with a personal computer can participate in it…. [T]he particular subject matter […]

The Study of Living Control Systems

February 28, 2021

The Study of Living Control Systems, a handbook of research methodology in psychology by Richard S. Marken is available from Cambridge University Press and from booksellers (February 2021).

Behavior: The Control of Perception

January 29, 1973

William T. Powers Preface This book represents, I hope, a step on the path back to a concept of man as autonomous, and away from the concept of man as automaton. Yet in allowing my […]

Control in the Classroom. An Adventure in Learning and Achievement

Timothy A. Carey “This new book is a great addition to the educational literature. It introduces educators to the most important and revolutionary new development in psychology in decades, PCT. And it does this in […]

PCT Tutorials and Simulations

NOTE: Bill Powers’s work Living Control Systems III : The Fact of Control (2008) with updated Windows programs is recommended. These programs and the book explaining them provide an excellent introduction to PCT. The programs themselves are superior […]

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