Conversational Paradigm LO5571

Doug Seeley (100433.133@compuserve.com)
12 Feb 96 22:58:34 EST

Responding to Michael McMaster in LO5473 (Use of metaphors)...

Michael you indicated... >What I think we are developing is a theory of
language based beings - and their institutions - and that we can learn
many principles from living systems but must then account for (at least)
two additional phenomena. One is that our connections and response don't
come hard-wired but exist in the medium of language. Two, that we have
access to our language and thus design access to our connections and
responses.

Are you indicating that ALL of our connections are via the medium of
language? In my experience, we have at least emotional (energetic)
connections, psychic connections, and non-phyical connections (without
trying to be controversial). Are you saying that since any connection
involves at least one distinction (i.e. connected or not) that they are
essentially linguistic?

If this is so, the part with which I have the most difficulty is the
implication that all these connections can be captured linguistically by
our intellect. The intellect will always IMHO be an indirect mediusm of
connection, the essential vibrancy of life and my relationship to others
is direct.

Hoping to understand your viewpoint on this...

--------------------

And further responding to Michael in LO5457 .... where he said,

>I would say, at a different scale, that there are *only* incomplete
conversations. None has a clear beginning nor end and none has an
author that is the sole source. A conversation is an emergent
process that requires simultaneous co-emergence (to qualify for my
operational definition) and will be always incomplete on that
account. It will also be incomplete in that understandings,
information and assessment of status will all be different for each
participant at different times.

Are you saying that it is because a conversation (or any interaction?)
involves more than one party that the conversation cannot be completed? In
the original work by Flores in this area, I understood that it was by
completing conversations that things actually got done in the world.
Moreover, I wonder if there is an imposed time element behind your
observation? In my experience I have completed connections with others
where the deep understanding went beyond the intellect, even the heart
into the non-physical, but were not permanent in the physical sense, but
seemed timeless.

I know of one metaphysical perspective in which what would be equivalent
to breakdowns between non-physical entities (i.e. us) manifests as the
physical world.....

Doug

--
Doug Seeley:	100433.133@compuserve.com
		Is it emergence all the way down?
 

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>