The Nature of Belief

R. Dilts, Changing Belief Systems with NLP:

Let’s say that a child doesn’t do well on an exam. 
The teacher could say, “It is not your fault at all. Either there was noise in the room or something in the environment that interfered with your performance on the exam”. In other words, the problem is in your environment and has nothing to do with you at all. Of course, this has the least impact on the student.
The teacher could say, focusing on a specific behavior, “You did poorly on this text.” That puts the responsibility with the student.
At the capacity level the teacher could say, “You are not very good at this kind of material, your capabilities for math or spelling – or whatever it is – are not well developed”. This has a wider implication.
On a value level the teacher could say, “Oh well, it is not important. What is important is that you enjoy learning”. The teacher is reinforcing the belief that it is not important ti get a good grade, but that enjoying learning is important. Now we have jumped to the level of belief. This goes beyond the subject area to the whole process of learning.
On the level of identity, the teacher can say, “You are a poor student” or “You are a learning disabled person” or “You are not a mathematician”. This touches the child’s whole being. This level of identity is different from level of capability. It is different to believe that I’m not capable of excelling in a particular subject than to believe that I am a stupid person.
If I take something on as part of my identity it begins to have a very profound impact.

We are deserts

We are deserts but populated by tribes, flora and fauna. We pass our time in ordering these tribes, arranging them in other ways, getting rid of some and encouraging others to prosper… The desert, experimentation on oneself, is our only identity, our single chance for all the combinations which inhabit us (G. Deleuze and C. Parnet, Dialogues, Paris, Fiammarion, 1977).

Architecture as Experience

From Architecture as Experience, D. Arnold and A. Ballantyne:

Michel de Certeau has suggested drawing a distinction between the use of the words ‘place’ and ‘space’ such that the ‘place’ would be the unmediated fabric (e.g. the stones of Stonehenge) but the ‘space’ that visitors experience would be a ‘practised space’ – the place refracted through the visitor’s culture, experience and use of the place (M. de Certeau, ‘Spatial Stories’, in A. Ballantyne, What is Architecture?, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 72-87).

Heterotopia a place that is different from itself, on account of the plurality of readings of its events (Michel Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, in Diacritics, Spring 1986). In the light of such readings, it is necessary to draw a distinction between a building as an object and the various experiences of the building (the ‘misprisions’ of the place) which can properly be called ‘architecture’ – which is to say that architecture is our experience of buildings.

The architecure which is produced will depend partly on the kind of stimuli and sensations that are caused by the building (as an inert object) and partly by the cultural apparatus in the mind of the person – the instincts, concept and habits through which the stimuli are refracted. Both the buildings and the person’s mind are necessary to architecture, and different minds might produce different architectures when brought into contact with the same building – as in the heterotopias mentioned above.

Early afternoon in Lund

Reading Cary´s book, this afternoon in Lund, I found a couple of interesting ideas.

Saussure: “The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (Course in General Linguistic).

Derrida: “Each signifier points towards a signified which is itself another signifier. In other words, signification is itself a process of infinite play” (Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences).

Cybernetics definition of stress

Stress: Lack of entropy, a condition arising when the external environment or internal sickness makes excessive or contradictory demands on an organism’s ability to adjust. The organism lacks and needs flexibility, having used up its available uncommited alternatives. (G. Bateson, Mind and Nature)

Systems philosophy

Systems philosophy is the study of the development of systems, with an emphasis on design and root cause analysis.

According to systems philosophy, there are no “systems” in nature. The universe, the world and nature have no ability to describe theselves. That which is, is. With respect to nature, conceptual systems are merely models that humans create in an attempt to understand the environment in which they live. The system model is used because it more accurately describes the observations.

Because systems are models created only for understanding, the most fundamental property of any system is that a system has an arbitrary boundary. Humans create the boundaries to suit their own purposes of analysis, discussion and understanding. This is true of every conceptual model that was devised through which humans try to understand the universe.

Systems are further expressed by listing the elements relationships, wholes, and rules associated with that system. Again, this is an arbitrary exercise true of all models humans create.

What are system elements? Elements might be tangible or intangible, real or imaginary. Conceptually, elements are merely terms and definitions. For example, in the system or model of measurement, the arbitrary terms of height, width, and length describe the three dimensions of physical space. Additional elements of that system describe those three fundamental elements: inches, feet, meters, kilometers, etc. However, those elements are meaningless without definitions. Definitions are necessary for all terms, whether or not those terms represent tangible or intangible elements. Definitions and terms are added as necessary help understand any model.

Relationships are ontologically different from elements, just as the meaning of these words differ from the letters making it up, an element is a thing, a relationship is what a thing is doing. The relationship constrains the system into having at least two elements. Often the relationship has an emergent property, and in most cases these elements and relationships emerge as a whole.

A systemic whole is directly related to the relationships of elements, in that our experience of such a relationship is as a whole. One of the significant characteristics of a system of this type is that there are properties of the whole that cannot be found in the elements. Meaning, for example, is not found in the properties of these letters you are reading.

A rule is anything describing how the elements are related or behave dynamically. Rules describe how a system functions. Rules describe how system elements interact, and those original arbitrary boundaries establish finite limits of how the rules affect the elements. Inches and feet, or meters and kilometers, are elements of the system of measurement, but the relationship of those elements are rules. There are twelve inches in a foot, 1,000 meters in a kilometer, etc.

A system with no elements and no rules—boundaries only—is called a null system.

Change any boundary, element, or rule in any system and a completely new system appears. Observations made in one system might, or might not, hold true for a different system.

Systems philosophy. (2007, October 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:06, November 4, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Systems_philosophy&oldid=163991182

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Secondo la teoria generale dei sistemi di von Bertalanffy, a cui Bateson si è ispirato, è possibile una descrizione formale di qualunque sistema in quanto tale:

• il sistema è un tutto che si comporta in modo diverso dalla semplice somma delle sue parti;
• è una totalità ordinata e il modo in cui è ordinata ha conseguenze significative sul suo modo di comportarsi;
• in esso vige il principio di equifinalità, per cui da identici antecedenti possono derivare conseguenze diverse e viceversa.

Bateson riteneva che a un certo livello di struttura ci sia una congruenza tra le leggi che regolano eventi di tipo diverso. La sua visione era olistica: tutto è connesso a tutto e quindi i confini usuali fra le discipline sono da superare; quello che conta sono le forme che sono astratte e pertanto trasferibili da un dominio all’altro. Questo atteggiamento di base lo portò a spostare l’interesse in campo psichiatrico dal contenuto ai processi e ai pattern.

Il gruppo Bateson puntò l’attenzione sul sistema familiare inteso come totalità piuttosto che come agglomerato di individui. Ciò consentì l’elaborazione di un linguaggio nuovo che descriveva fenomeni sovra individuali piuttosto che processi intrapsichici quali affetti e motivazioni. L’individuo e ogni gruppo sociale, in ordine di crescente complessità, erano intesi in relazione reciproca, sottosistemi di svariati sistemi contestuali differenti.

Nella visione cibernetica del mondo ogni sistema organizzato si caratterizza per la coordinazione delle sue parti componenti e per il controllo che alcune di esse esercitano su altre, tramite uno scambio di informazioni di tipo circolare. La retroazione è il concetto basilare: l’informazione che giunge da un dato comportamento viene immessa nuovamente nel sistema e consente la regolazione e la modulazione del comportamento successivo, apportandovi una modificazione. Il feedback è definito positivo quando un messaggio attiva risposte che amplificano il movimento di un sistema nella stessa direzione (retroazione positiva); è definito negativo quando la risposta è una disattivazione dell’amplificazione per ritornare a uno stato di equilibrio (retroazione negativa).

http://www.terapiasistemica.it/sistemica.htm

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An open system is a state of a system, in which a system continuously interacts with its environment. Open systems are those that maintain their state and exhibit the characteristics of openness previously mentioned.

Open system (systems theory). (2007, September 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:33, November 4, 2007