Australian General Semantics Society
AGS Monthly Seminar
June 2009 at Gavan's
"Developing
Skills for Applying
General
Semantics Formulations"
Led by David Hewson
1.
Catching-up
We “always” allow a little
time for review of our lives and activities.
This month it was .
2. Introduction
This was a day of application
practice, starting off with the application of simple formulations to easy
issues then progressing through to more challenging topics.
3. We started with Ross
Gittin’s SMH article about the advantages of positive thinking.
The article suggested that from a
psychological viewpoint one could usefully be slightly more optimistic about
things than they actually are. Laurie disagreed with this stating that
things should always be correct symbolism to fact (i.e. one's maps should
be as accurate as possible)
Then we went onto to
discuss "How many in this group think that they are above average
drivers?" and "How many in this group think that they are
above average students of GS for this group?" as extensional examples of
how we behave relating to Gittin's article. Most in the group
thought that they were above average drivers but below average GS students.
4. We then discussed the
GS formulation we would practice during the day:
a) Identification,
b) Projection,
c) Either/Or,
d) Viewpoints,
e) Extensional devices (date,
index, etc, quote, hyphen),
f) Allness,
g) Bypassing, etc.
And three questions that GS people
find useful:
a) What do you mean?
b) How do you know?
c) And what then? I.e.
formulations from the basic books.
For each formulation we did:
a) A quick review of the basic
formulations. The name and definition of each of the formulations.
b) What is wrong in the old Aristotelian system that relates to this formulation?
c) How to use it or not to use it (E.g. do not beat people over the head
with it.)
An example of our discussion was
the formulation of "Either/Or", thus:
Instead of using "Either you
are good or you are bad", the New Zealand Police use three categories of:
good, neutral and bad.
In an experiment, someone left
a $10 note on car seat of parked car with window down and the door
unlocked. Well ..
a. 10% of the people who walked
by, closed the window and locked the door or did something similar to reduce the
risk of theft of the note. (The good)
b. 80% of the people just walk on
by ignoring the note. (The neutral)
c. 10% of the people nicked the
note. (The bad)
So this shows up the limitation of
using just two categories "Either good or bad" where 80% of the
people's behaviour fits into neither.
5. Then we looked
at combinations of formulations.
E.g. “the grass is
green”-projection and “the salt shaker is on the right”-viewpoint. Then the
combination is “The green salt shaker is on the right.” –a combination of
projection and viewpoint.
E.g. “Laurie is a very intelligent
man.” Can be broken out into “Laurie is very intelligent”-projection and
“Laurie is a man”-identification.
E.g. “The racing car’s engine is
making a high pitch. No its making a low pitch. No its a middle pitch.”
-Three viewpoints each projecting.
6. Then we
tried applying GS to common situations.
E.g. Wilma and Fred Flintstone
have just got married. They are having a big argument. Fred has
cooked lunch and he ate by himself as Wilma was out. Then Fred just left
the dirty dishes and pots on the kitchen bench to watch his favourite NRL
football team “The Bed Rocks” on afternoon TV. Wilma has just come home
and is in a rage about this because she wants him to clean up so that it will
be easier for her to the cook dinner. He said “You are anal.
Chill out baby.” in response.
So what is your abstract
description of this situation? How would GS help this situation?
7. And we also tried to
find problems (from a GS viewpoint using the above formulations) with the
following statements.
E.g. “Should parents teach their
teenage children to drive?”
E.g. “Religion is the root of all
evil”
E.g. “Our primary purpose is to
merge knowledge and morality to create individuals with noble morals that
reflect the teachings of our great religion…”
E.g. “Us Aussies are not racist
Sol. We just don’t like you.”
E.g. “The King is dead, long live the king.”
E.g. “Do unto others what you want
others to do unto you.” and compare to “Don’t do unto to others what you
want them to do unto you, as they may have different tastes.”
Etc.
8. Finally we looked at
Guttman's (1983) three main categories of errors and how they could relate to
use of GS formulations:
a)
Errors of omission - where the required action(s) is not carried out
i) Entire task omitted.
ii) Step in task omitted
b)Errors
of commission - Where the required action(s) is performed incorrectly
i)Selection error - Wrong object/method
selected, object mis-positioned or wrong command or information issued.
ii)Sequence error - Acts carried out in wrong order.
iii)Timing error - Acts carried
out too early or too late. E.g. "Bolting the stable door after the
horse has bolted."
iv)Qualitative error - Acts
carried out to too great or too little extent, or in the wrong direction.
I.e. the degree is incorrect
c)Extraneous acts - Wrong or
unnecessary acts are performed.
9. We had planned
to try evaluating some complex situations which need multiple techniques
but we ran out of time.
10. AGS Business
We considered possible topics for remainder of
the year, based, for example, on:
a. Revision / application
of GS principles,
b. Issues of “universal”
concern to participants, such as health and fitness, long life,
c. History and status of
GS, including relationship to other disciplines,
d. Reviews and study of
published books and papers, eg from Milton Dawes.
e. Plans to meet some AGS
enquirers in Melbourne in July.
7. Close
Next Meeting: Mid-July, to be presented by
Laurie Cox.
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(Updated 19 July, 2009)