Re: Values

Fred Reed (freed@cc.atinc.com)
Mon, 23 Jan 95 11:36:03 EST

Hi

I would like to respond to a series of posts including several by Jack
Hirschfeld, Steve Wehrenburg, and Jim Michmerhuizen. First, I would like
to emphatically apologize for any offense the tone of my previous posts
may have inadvertently caused. I am but an enthusiastic student (I
believe the current euphemism is "mature student") of philosophy and
science and often speak with more conviction than is supported by my
wisdom.

Which leads to my second point. In accordance with the philosophy I have
been espousing, I am guided by a pragmatic notion of truth: what works,
rather than correspondence with "the real". Jim Michmerhuizen's post
applies:

<One of the most fundamental attributes of human thought and experience is
the ease with which we transpose from structure to process and back again.
It happens every time one composes a sentence or a piece of music... .
Under those circumstances, it seems pointless to argue that one of those
two is closer to reality (or whatever) than the other. The mental model
thread contributors have, I believe, quite consistently used that
expression to refer to the structural pole of the structure/process
duality: to figure out somebody's model, watch what he *does*.>

I agree that it is pointless to argue which is closer to *reality*, which
would be to adhere to the correspondence notion of truth I have been
arguing against. However, I think it *is* important to discuss the
*practical* implications of believing or emphasizing one or the other. In
other words, if one looks at the concepts as "tools", which one seems to
be more useful for *doing* the kinds of things that the notion of Mental
Models was intended to support. IMHO, emphasizing the "structural" to use
Jim's dichotomy, is less useful than emphasizing the "process" when trying
to overcome the effect of past knowledge in synthesizing new behaviors
(e.g., the intended application of Mental Models ala Senge, I think). I
recommend Gareth Morgan's book "Images of Organization" to others (and
sometimes to myself) as a "tonic" when I think a conceptualization, or
image, is getting too "right" to the exclusion of other possible images.

As for the discussion of signals, perceptions, and values, I was only
trying to point out that there are serious alternatives to the model of
perception generally accepted today, or as Steve Wehrenburg put it, what:
<Cognitive psychologists seem to believe...>. It just so turns out that a
related thread is being followed on a Cybernetics list I also subscribe
to. I provide a brief cut from a message there by Stuart A Umpleby:

<Winograd and Flores credit the influence of Humberto Maturana, a
biologist who recasts the concepts of "language" and "living system" with
a cybernetic eye [Maturana & Varela], in shifting their opinions away from
the AI perspective. They quote Maturana: "Learning is not a process of
accumulation of representations of the environment; it is a continuous
process of transformation of behavior through continuous change in the
capacity of the nervous system to synthesize it. Recall does not depend on
the indefinite retention of a structural invariant that represents an
entity (an idea, image or symbol), but on the functional ability of the
system to create, when certain recurrent demands are given, a behavior
that satisfies the recurrent demands or that the observer would class as a
reenacting of a previous one.">

My point was that the notion of Mental Models *sometimes* leads one down
the path of emphasizing "structural invariants" rather than "behaviors.'

Although I suspect that the discussion on the mechanics of perception has
probably gone outside the bounds of the L.O. list (as most might desire
them to be), I strongly believe that what one believes about knowledge
(i.e. epistemology) will significantly influence the more practical
aspects of learning organizations. So, if I may, I would like to "turn"
this thread back to more practical considerations. The challenge I have
presented to myself, and others who may be interested, is to examine and
test through use, the potential practical value of replacing the notion of
"Mental Model" with the notion of "habitual acts, both physical and
intellectual". For example, does simply choosing to use the alternate
terminology in the context of a workplace process for "eliciting mental
models" change the nature of what is discussed and examined. I honestly
don't know.

Fred Reed
freed@cc.atinc.com

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