Re: Philosophy underlying LO? LO394

Jim Michmerhuizen (jamzen@world.std.com)
Sun, 12 Mar 1995 18:24:52 +0001 (EST)

On Thu, 9 Mar 1995 jack.hirschfeld@his.com wrote in LO392:

>
> Looking for a lost message in my out box, I encountered this one which I sent
> last Sunday to Jim Michmerhuizen, meaning to share with the list:
>
> "Subject: Re: Philosophy underlying LO? LO306
>
> In a dialogue with Mike McMaster, Jim Michmerhuizen says:
>
> "Imagine conducting some intense daylong seminar or discussion of some
> sort in which the participants become aware of their individual and group
> models or metaphors. By the end of the day each model is fully
> articulated and everybody is comfortable discussion his or her model.
>
> Now imagine the same process in reverse. A concept or set of concepts is
> introduced, discussed, becomes a model, begins to affect conduct, group
> dynamics, and is eventually wholly assimilated AND IS NO LONGER TALKED
> ABOUT. If I try to imagine this reversal in full lifelike detail, I am led
> to the almost paradoxical conclusion that at the very moment when the
> model becomes most effective and pervasive, it ceases to have a name."
>
> In another conversation, Mike helped unfold my use of the word
> "practices". In Jim's example, conversation is a practice which - in his
> description - leads to understanding. In the "reverse", practices
> engender behavior habits which render naming unnecessary. This is a bit
> spooky, and not typical of our culture where naming is a practice pursued
> for its own sake (I view a lot of the conversation here as having that
> character). I try to imagine a culture which is envisioned in Jim's
> comment, that is, a culture in which people use practices to get "there"
> but no longer need the practices when they are "there" because the
> practices are only a mode of transportation, so to speak. Joe Campbell,
> in one of his talks, tells the story of the Buddha when asked about
> practices. The Buddha says something like, "Thank the ferry when you
> reach the other shore, for the service it has rendered; but there's no
> need to hoist it on your back as you wander inland."
>
> I agree with Jim that The Fifth Discipline's subtitle says in effect "this
> is not about theory" but one looks throughout for "pass the salt and
> pepper". This is because we have learned in our culture to equate
> prescription with practices. We want the guru to give us a mantra, not to
> say "find a mantra". And when he does, we respond by trying to create a
> framework of understanding for what he has said (theory) rather than going
> to find a mantra.
>
> Is it possible in our culture to say something so simple without becoming
> obtuse?"

Um...I think you just succeeded. That is a victory for you and a
defeat for the culture you were referring to. Equally, it seems to be a
victory for all of us in this group.

Two statements of yours, mildly paraphrased, are noteworthy:
[1] "We have learned to equate prescription with practice".
[2] "We respond by trying to create...[ a theory ] rather than going out [ to
practice ]".

The first one shows me, finally, what's been so unsatisfying about the whole
deluge of self-help books both personal and corporate. "Prescription" is a
verbal exercise; practice isn't. Wittgenstein said once, reflecting on the
role of explanations, "Explanations have to end. If they don't, they're not
explanations."

The second relates directly to the facts - about us humans and our language
and behavior - that I was alluding to in the little thought-experiment you
were commenting on: we do things, we have words for what we do, we have words
for the words we use for what we do, and layers and layers more of the same.
In all of that, the bottom-most relation -- between what we do and the words
we use for what we do -- cannot, in general, be reasoned about, since every
attempt to do so can only use words from "higher" levels of abstraction,
correspondingly more distant from the "what we do" foundation.

It seems to me that this bottom-most level deals, in some utterly primitive
way, with the *naming* of things. Where things are not properly named,
reasoning about them can only generate delusions. The two fundamental
activities we are engaged in here are a) finding the right names of things,
and b) reasoning about things rightly named. The very phrase "Learning
Organization" is a gesture towards finding a better name for something --
maybe the first time it's been named at all.

It may not be a coincidence here that many years ago I read (in one of those
Dover reprints of 19th scholarship whose copyrights had expired) about
"Buddhist Logic", that buddhist expressions of classic syllogistic logic
always had two more propositions than in the Aristotelian version. The role
of these two was to relate the subject of the syllogism to some immediate
interest of the person(s) doing the reasoning. So where Aristotle might
offer, for our contemplation, a train of reasoning such as

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal

...the buddhist thinkers would consider such an expression incomplete, and
would instead formulate it as (something like this -- I long ago lost the
book and am making this up out of what little I remember)

Here is my friend, the man Socrates
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal
My friend Socrates will die someday

Now, if I remember right, the buddhist logicians who were the subject of the
book were not at all inferior to Aristotle in formal rigor. But clearly,
they never "snipped the umbilical" that has to relate abstract formal logic
to the interests of real individual thinkers.

And aren't we trying to avoid the same error on this thread? Where, when it
comes right down to it, are we going to find the words that will relate our
practice to the words that are our names for what we do? If we could find
them, I guess they would constitute a "theory" of Learning Organizations.

Regards
jamzen@world.std.com
-----------------------------------------------------+---------------------
- - - - There are far *fewer* things in heaven and earth, Horatio, - - - -
- - - - - than are dreamt of in your philosophy... - - - - -