Mental Models & Identity LO20975

Gavin Ritz (garritz@xtra.co.nz)
Tue, 23 Mar 1999 20:16:17 +1200

Replying to LO20941 --

George jorge Bartow wrote:

> Gavin -
>
> Thanks for explaination.
>
> > Now that I am in human resources I do the same thing, rightly or wrongly.
> > I use a mental model to profile people. Now this is only a model of how we
> > think & act. It it is not the real thing.
>
> Talking with my brother last night, we hit upon why some of us have
> trouble with modelling in general and mental models per se.
>
> It has to do with "being." At first, it was difficult to put into
> words...actually, it still is!
>
> If one comes from a technological/scientific grounding, modelling is part
> and parcel of the way one thinks. Modelling helps put the "thing" we are
> talking about "out there" and makes it (seem) observable.
>
> On the other hand, a different grounding - say linguistic or experiential
> or? - would necessarily lead to a different conversation.
>
> In talking with a high school assistant principal who is very competent in
> many areas dealing with kids and their parents made the statement to me
> that he doesn't "model" the right kind of approach, he "is" that right
> kind of approach. "They know if you're the real thing or not."

Dear George This is quite a statement, one of the rules of scientific
thought is that the model is not the territory, how can some one say the
he "is' the right kind of approach. There must be many approaches and
obviously this approach must be very good. Incidentally linguistics can
definitely be modeled. In fact it is one area that has excellent modeling
examples. for example NLP is just a model.

> I've also noticed that many learning organizational theorists come from a
> scientific background. Does this make a difference?

I don't think so but maybe it helps who knows. We are really all clones of
the scientific system so maybe others from different areas can take a
fresher different look.

> George "jorge" Bartow

-- 

Gavin Ritz <garritz@xtra.co.nz>

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>