Book Review: Behavior – The Control Of Perception

Review of William Powers' Behavior: The Control Of Perception, the cybernetic Perceptual Control Theory that everything in the brain is a hierarchy of thermostat-like control systems. Scott is convincingly persuaded by the low-level story (muscle/position/sequence tiers, and PCT as the clearest explanation he's seen of tremors as control-system failures at different levels) and openly skeptical of the high tiers ('controlling for communism' becomes unfalsifiable, like the police-as-control-system metaphor). Honest 'I only partly understood this' framing; strong on the phenomenology of automatic-vs-conscious action. Top of the Strong band.

Quality 69 · Strong. Strong (69): an original, memorable exposition (the tremor account, the communism-thermostat critique) of an obscure theory, with genuine engagement and calibrated skepticism; not Excellent because Scott concedes partial understanding and PCT's predictive record is 'so-so'.

Claude’s paradigm shift 48 · Moderate. Moderate (48): PCT is Powers'; the review's contribution is a clear synthesis + the honest lower/higher-tier split, modest novelty when published.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Minor-plus (2): niche/within-blog interest; PCT remains a fringe framework and the review didn't move that.