home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!stanford.edu!bcm!convex!darwin.sura.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!CCB.BBN.COM!BNEVIN
- Message-ID: <CSG-L%92111110034711@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
- Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 10:53:39 EST
- Sender: "Control Systems Group Network (CSGnet)" <CSG-L@UIUCVMD.BITNET>
- From: "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
- Subject: unwanted meanies
- Lines: 48
-
- [From: Bruce Nevin (Wed 921111 10:37:20)]
-
- (Bill Powers (921110.1430) --
-
- >Do you agree that we also control for unwanted meanings?
- >I.e., some traversals lead to words that have unwanted meanings that
- >stick out enough to cause us to switch to a different traversal, or to
- >insert a specific denial of the unwanted meaning, or to loop back and
- >repeat part of the traversal in different terms.
-
- Yes, skill in using language is largely avoiding such built-in pitfalls.
-
- >>It seems to me that we use the socially learned structure of
- >>language as an framework for organizing how our attention traverses
- >>our perceptions (the combination of perceptions from the
- >>environment with perceptions from memory and imagination).
- >
- >Yes, I agree that when we think in words (not always the case) we use
- >the socially (well, individually) learned structure as a way of guiding
- >the traversal of meanings -- for creating a scenario to go with the words
-
- I suspect that reference signals that get set when we tell stories about
- our perceptions persist when we're not thinking in words.
-
- >>Failure of social agreements is probably occasion for intrinsic >error
- >in mammals (possibly in other creatures as well).
- >
- >I can think of lots of ways in which such failure would lead to
- >intrinsic error without the failure itself being an intrinsic error.
-
- Bateson was starting a lecture and suddenly began demanding of the
- (small) audience "What are you sitting there looking at me for?" etc. in
- a way that they did feel (as they afterwards confessed) that they were
- doing something inappropriate. He then went on to talk about this
- distress at being wrong--existentially wrong, not belonging, odd man out
- goes y o u yes I mean YOU! This feeling of distress, which I suspect we
- can all identify in our memories somewhere or other, does not so far as
- I can tell depend upon consequences of a failure of agreement nor even
- upon such consequences as anticipated in imagination. It is very
- immediate. Many social arrangements, from club membership to the
- cultivated persona of a tough, independent outsider, are strategies for
- avoiding this distress. Peer pressure, and all that.
-
- Bruce
- bn@bbn.com
-
- PS--oh, yes, Bateson talks about this in connection with mammalian
- communication, not just human double bind, etc.
-