Australian General Semantics Society
AGS Monthly Seminar
Sunday 19/04/09 at Gavan's
"The
Non-Identifying Personality"
Led by Laurie Cox.
What do we mean by identification and non-identifying?
How would a person who does not identify behave?
And how can we change our
behaviour to act in a more non-identifying manner?
1.
Catching-up
We “always” allow a little
time for review of our lives and activities.
This month it was weddings ‘n
property-renewals ‘n stuff.
2. Introduction
Laurie explained that he has been
a serious student of GS for over 50 years, with some gaps of time not strongly
focussed on the discipline. However, on
“returning to the fold”, he found that he could read “even Science and Sanity”
just like reading a novel!
3.
Summary of some GS formulations
We
looked at some GS formulations, eg:
Semantic reactions
(“reacting
to the meanings”),
Consciousness of abstracting,
Intensional / extensional orientations,
The “is” of identity / predication / existence /
auxiliary verb,
Sanity / Unsanity / Insanity,
Organism-as-a-whole,
Agreeing to disagree,
Creative disagreement,
Proposition
Uncertainty / Probability,
Critical thinking / Critical evaluating,
(Used
constructively!)
Timebinding,
Over / under-defined terms
(a term can
be under-defined by intension, over-defined by extension),
Identification
Assuming “absoluteness”,
Confusing
words (“the map”) with the object (“the territory”),
Confusion
of object and verbal levels of abstraction,
Making
concepts etc “concrete”,
Confusion
of descriptive and inferential levels,
Consequential erroneous evaluations.
Some
comments:
“We cannot have a conflict / disagreement without
using words.”
“GS is not a form of counselling – It’s a preventative
training.”
“In an existing difficulty, GS can minimise the
damage.”
“Confusion of ‘the similar’ with ‘the thing’ must be
pathological”.
“All conflicts (war etc) relate to our failure
in using
language to reflect the Structural Differential”.
4.
Consideration of case-studies from our own experience:
a. Jan (not her real name) heard loud knocking on
the door at 10pm, and was confronted by a lady aggressively complaining out Jan’s
dog out the front of the house. Jan called the dog in, and disposed of the
visitor with minimal engagement.
We considered lessons to learn, such as not
jumping to conclusions (“It must the Police at the front door!”) when something
unusual (eg ominous) occurs!
b. Larry was visiting his wife, resident in a
nursing home, at lunch time. The
establishment rule was that visitors should pay $10 for meals, but Laurie was
often supplied them at no cost. On this
occasion, a staff member refused to supply the meal, and Larry’s wife was
arguing with them about this. Larry
became embarrassed and they both left for lunch elsewhere.
We had a job to separate the various issues, eg
·
Should Larry accept free meals when the rule is to
pay for them,
·
Was it fair to have such a rule, when the home had
a high monthly cost for services anyway?
·
Could we identify any processes of “identification”
by the staff / Larry / Larry’s wife?
·
How can mastery of these GS tools assist in
managing such conflicts in future?
5.
Case-studies from newspapers
The
group spent half an hour working in pairs to find and consider examples of
identification behaviour in newspapers.
We
re-convened to share thoughts on how the newspaper stories revealed examples of
identification. One of these was the
current tragedy of a refugee boat en route from Indonesia to Australia, which
experienced “an explosion” soon after being taken in tow by an Australian Navy
ship. Three people were killed, two
disappeared (drowned?) and 30 or so injured, some very badly.
It
was clear that the people-smugglers’ “Guarantee of safe passage from Iraq/Afghanistan
to Australia” should not be identified as “the reality” of the service that
they were offering.
Our
study and discussion of these articles and application of GS principles was
considered by some to be the highlight of today’s seminar.
6.
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.
Possibility of holding a one-
or two-day seminar in Melbourne.
7.
~ Close ~
Next
Meeting: Mid-May, probably presented by Robert James.
~ 0 ~
(Updated 19 April, 2009)