Mental models and the 7Es LO29456

From: Terje A. Tonsberg (tatonsberg@hotmail.com)
Date: 11/05/02


Replying to LO29450 --

At said:

> I agree with what you have written, but only so far as it concerns the
> explicate (a-la D Bohm) side of a system. It concerns the essentiality
> openness ("open-transfer") But what about the implicate side of it?
> Here the observables can at most give us a hint of it, but never mirror
> it exactly.

> The question now is -- are Mental Models explicate or implicate
> to the mind?

> By explicate i mean that i have taken up in my thinking "parcels" of
> information (coming from outside me) which i did not question
> seriously. For example, up to adulthood i considered English as
> an enemy to my mother tongue Afrikaans and my way of thinking.
> If i were to think in English, i would become as bad as the English
> people -- snobs and imperialistic. Can you believe it? Let me try
> to explain why.
> I grew up among people who were victims of the terrible British-Boer
> War (1899-1902) and what they said made me think so.

Greetings At and group,

I believe it, but why call this a mental model? Why not just call it an
error in reasoning, a fallacy, an overgeneralization, a failure to examine
the evidence? Words we are all familiar with. The term mental model here
adds nothing and explains nothing, and only leads to disrupt communication
and wholeness as I mentioned in my first mail.

The same goes for implicate MMs, it was an overgeneralization what you
mentioned. I do not see any big difference between the explicate or
implicate, the way to get rid of both errors (if errors is what they
really are) is through the environment by being exposed to
counter-examples. Are MMs just errors in reasoning? If so, then I suggest
that the word be assigned to the recycling bin in favour of familiar
terms.;-)

This is for looking at ones own behavior, but the usefulness of the MM
idea is much more dubious in looking at the behavior of others. If someone
hates the English language, I cannot assume this is because of an error in
reasoning. I need to take a careful, observational approach to define the
exact behavior that defines hate, and then study the environment and
history of this behavior to even hope to understand it.

Thank you for stimulating my thoughts on this issue.

Terje

-- 

"Terje A. Tonsberg" <tatonsberg@hotmail.com>

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