Greeting FelLOwers
This Christmas I set out in pursuit of Mental Models (MM). I don't know if
you know but during the course of this past year a whole new order of
insect was found in Namibia, on (and in the vicinity of) the Brandberg. To
be sure, I feel k(no)w less an intrepid entomologist.
A few good sightings (or is it citings?) were reported by fellow
LOrginologists in recent months and I decided it was a good place to start
my search for MM's. Please be forewarned I am about to perpetrate a gross
generalisation! It seems as if those of us who think and write about MM's
fall into two classes: those who like them and those who don't. For the
latter it is not a phenomenon (or object) of delicate and compelling
beauty. It is more like a troublesome pest which should be eradicated on
sight and that will never make the endangered species list. For the former
it ranks among creatures wonderful like the unicorn and mermaids (ever the
dreamer, I am one of those). We all share one thing though: it seems that
none of us have ever seen a real MM although we each own several, hence my
quest.
The Brandberg beauty (Mantophasmatodae) became an object of focussed
interest because bits and pieces of fossilised insects defied uncritical
classification especially as far as Oliver Zompro (Max Planck Institute)
was concerned (refer Scientific American November 2002). Several
collaborators started sending him more bits and pieces none, surpassing
the the specimens presided over by Eugene Marais, Curator of the National
Insect Collection in Windhoek (Namibia). Oliver decamped to Nam and the
rest is entomological history.
I will restrict my search for specimens of the cognitive order MM
(Mentalmodae Modelia ;>) to more recent finds, though not those everyone
cites frequently like Craik 1943 et seq. Besides, At (de Lange) dealt with
those in LO29391 anyway.
I am the proud owner of one of a very few surviving copies of Count Alfred
Korzybski's classic book Science and Sanity in which he almost
single-handedly cast the foundation for modern semantics. It is a
veritable museum of a book because you can wander (or dwell) among the
pages and just enjoy the exhibition of insight. It is far too
encyclopaedic for my fragmented learning skills. Chapter IV deals with
Structure and he starts off by reminding us that 'a number of isolated
facts does not produce a science any more than a heap of bricks produces a
house.' After a brief introduction he starts talking about the
relationship between maps and the territories they (are supposed to)
represent. On page 58 he coins a phrase that he has become well known (if
not famous) for: the map is not the territory, 'if correct it has a
similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.'
'If', continues Korzybski, 'we reflect upon our languages, we find that at
best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it
represents.' It is worth noting that Korzybski's main point is that the
language (map making tools and indeed the maps) we have inherited from our
ancestors differ in a very critical kind of way from the post-Einsteinian
world (the territory) we are stumbling into looking backwards.
I am also the proud owner of the book Steps to an Ecology of Mind by
Gregory Bateson, although this book is more freely available. The Chapter
Form and Substance (p 454) is a reprint of the 19th Annual Korzybski
Memorial Lecture (delivered in January 1970). A close reading of Bateson
brings the realisation that we can't really say much about 'mental' before
we say much more about 'Mind'. The biggest problem with the latter is
keeping up with what is being said and studied and published but we will
return to that subject shortly. Bateson asks: 'what is the unit of mind?',
which is so typical of the things that intrigued him like 'why do things
get into a muddle?' This is important, so I am going to dwell on it for a
while. According to Bateson, Darwin got the unit for the analysis of
evolutionary survival under natural selection wrong. Then follows a piece
of pure wisdom which if heeded by Ordinary Organisation's would have made
a huge difference in our time: 'if an organism or aggregate of organisms
sets to work with a focus on its own survival and thinks that that is the
way to select its adaptive moves its progress ends up with a destroyed
environment.' Wow, this is incredible, how often have organisations bent
on individual competitive advantage not ended up destroying the industry
they depend upon. I have often said (metaphorically speaking) that the
best cabin (i.e. market leadership) on a sinking ship means that the only
difference between you and some one else on the same ship is that you go
down in style.
To identify a better unit of mind, Bateson returns to the question posed
by Korzybski and asks 'what gets onto the map?' and argues that it is
'difference. a peculiar and very obscure concept'. It is useful at this
point to bear in mind that difference plays a special role in our
LO-vocabulary too, difference in the intensive quantity of being (see
references in the archives to the essentiality Liveness) acts as an
entropy producing force. In LO29007 'The Dialogue' At wrote: ...snip... If
I have a certain thought which differs from yours and I maintain this
thought despite all your thoughts to convince me to think the same as you,
the difference between your thought and mine is an entropic force while
all your other thoughts to convince me is the entropic flux. This force
and flux together is an entropic force-flux pair which produces entropy.
This entropy is manifested as modifications to our past thoughts. These
modified thoughts are usually in the manner of questions such as "What do
you mean by this word or phrase?", "How can you make such a conclusion?"
and "Why cannot you follow the trail of my thoughts?" They reflect a
"diversity of becoming" which is better known as chaos.<unsnip>
I am beginning to understand that much of what we believe are valid and
reliable representations of the world (both concrete and abstract) have
its origin not in the world (the territory) but in the way we speak(i.e.
describe our maps). I believe that it bugged Korzybski too and it lies at
the base of the difference that produced his personal entropy i.e. the
Aristotelian vs the non-Aristotelian mental models. What do we mean when
we say 'I have a certain thought which differs from yours?' What it means
to me is 'I have a many-to-one map which differs from your own many-to-one
map concerning a more or less common aspect of the territory which we are
talking about.' Right now I have shirt which probably differs from the one
you are wearing (although there are important similarities which we chose
to ignore). I can't see myself having a single unitary self-contained
thought in isolation as if it was a shirt or a blouse. Being in pursuit of
MM's as I am and getting closer, I am beginning to feel that MM's are like
maps. I am not sure enough yet to claim that MM's are equal to maps in the
sense of the word used by both Korzybski and Bateson. I do have an open
source code map with a bold heading Mental Models. What continues to get
onto the one map is some of the many differences implicit in the writings
of Korzybski, Bateson and LOrganologist's on this list. All of us who
drive or travel to work everyday using the same route, experiences
something which puzzled Bateson too. (i) We get to the destination with
pretty much no tangible experience or recollection of what happened on the
way unless (ii) the territory did not equal the map. If a large tree that
stood there for many years was removed over-night its absence would
literally leap out and hit you in the eye. It would be the proverbial
difference that makes a difference, a bit of information or an elementary
idea with the potential of setting off a whole train of thoughts, and
argument or perhaps a war. Do we know how and where we differ on this
issue of MM's? No!, and no wonder we get into muddles.
If you have kept up with me in pursuit of a better understanding of mental
models we may by now have some common experiences which in themselves are
as interesting as they are important. The MM subject matter is
complexifying and I am running out of free energy. No one of us can
maximise understanding on every single issue. It is at best a process with
trade-offs. How important is it to understand xyz or MM's? How much time
will I have to invest? How much time do I really have? Do we bail out
(like I often have in marathons, lacking in fitness) or do we carry on.
Before we tire and drop the subject, let us at least consider the matter
of Motion Induced Blindness (MIB) remembering that blindness to wholeness
is a recent much pursued thread. ...snip... Phenomena like "Motion Induced
Blindness" reveal that the brain uses mental models to approach reality.
Sometimes these models are in conflict and we don't see what is in the
very front of us. http://www.infovis.net/E-zine/2002/num_92.htm. This
phenomenon is called Motion Induced Blindness (MIB) and has been described
thanks to the work of professors Yoram Bonneh, Alexander Cooperman and Dov
Sagi that published their work last year in the prestigious scientific
journal, Nature. It seems that the brain has different "theoretical
models" about the appearance and nature of the world that surrounds us.
Usually sensorial stimuli allow the brain to select one of them, but in
certain situations, like the one seen before, several models enter into
conflict and the brain cannot decide on only one of them. <unsnip>
To summarise and conclude: I think (and I means this in the colloquial
sense of the phrase) that the lack of free energy to pursue every thought,
idea or concept is real and it is among other things the cause of a
diversity between all of us that is important. My internal landscape is in
large parts poorly mapped. I have just recently discovered that the map
headed by the words 'A brief personal history of Time' is in serious need
of updating. Some other parts are slightly better mapped. Our internal
landscapes definitely differ. Some, or even most of our cognitive maps do
too. Some don't. 'As words are not the objects which they represent,
structure and structure alone, bomes the only link which connects our
verbal processes with the empirical data' (Korzybski p. 59). When we have
a shared vision, a common organisational destination in mind and we have
to learn how to get there it will certainly help if the differences
between our maps are not too large. Which, come to think of it, is what
Peter Senge said? What then is a large difference? It is when my view of
what an organisation is like is stranded on a mechanistic Newtonian
architecture and yours is based on the kind of Living
Organisation/organism architecture Arie de Geus, Fritjof Capra and others
support. When we find bits and pieces of interesting organisational
behavior we - like Oliver Zompro - will have the choice to force-fit it
onto a known map or to question the validity and reliability of the maps
we use.
Enjoy the trip through 2003
Chris Klopper
--"syntagm" <syntagm@icon.co.za>
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