Australian General Semantics Society Inc.

 

 

Comm15            

Seminar Summary - 20 November 2016

 

"Behavioural Change via Changing Our Premises"

We used Differential Diagnosis to go from the faulty theory T1 to the faulty premise P1.  This is then changed to a better premise P2, from which logically flows the better theory T2.  It was indeed a challenging day.

Led by Mr David Hewson

Our seminar
at "Cifftop View" Bonnet Bay in Sydney was again hosted by Pauline and Gavan - Thank you both!

 

"Catching-Up"
It was a while since our last seminar, so there were some triumphs and tragedies to relate and yarns to swap.

 

GS Diary
In the spirit of "applying general semantics principles" to our lives, as opposed to dwelling in theory, we considered members' accounts of observations and applications relating to the principles and formulations of our discipline.

 

"Behavioural Change via Changing Our Premises"

“Life has no remote control.
You have to get up and change it yourself.”


So if you need to change and do not, then you reap the consequences.  It is elementalistic to think that an action has no consequences.

We discussed irrational thinking and the negative consequences of it.

Then we viewed a video on abstraction which was related to the object level on the structural differential diagram.  Mostly these were perceptual illusions. We tested ourselves on a few fact inference confusions and looked at open /closed, problems and solutions.

Many of us have a model of how we get upset, thus:

Situation => emotional reaction

i.e. we think that situations cause their reactions and that we have no control over them.

We showed that  the actual evaluation process is more complex:

Situation
   v
Perception
   v
Interpretation                                 => Distortions
   v
Automatic thoughts/evaluations => Assumptions / rules / premises
   v
Emotional reactions


We discussed examples of situations, interpretations and evaluations.We looked at various types of distortions, misevaluations and irrational beliefs.We used the Korzybski bypass or P1 => T1 diagram, as a method for changing assumptions/premises.

Differential diagnosis was used to work back from the T1 theories to the P1 premises.  One then changes the P1 premises to P2 (rational) premises from which follow T2 (rational) theories and hence useful behaviour.

 

Business Meeting

Planning for next year!


Next Meetings - in 2017:

January: Picnic at Towradgi,
March:  "Buddhist GS (Continued ... ).


Disclaimer: This "summary" is a collection of notes derived from our discussion by a number of means.  It is by no means a scholarly dissertation on the subject as presented.  It does not purport to be the "policy of AGS".  Comment and criticism (constructive or otherwise) is welcome.  If anyone has been misquoted, copyrights infringed or confidences betrayed, please Contact us.

 

 

Updated by RJ 20 November 2016

For details of our discussion meetings and seminars, locations and membership, Contact AGS

 

 

 

 

 

 .....