A FINAL WORD ABOUT EPISTEMOLOGY

Not long before his death, Gregory Bateson flew to London to give a lecture. He titled it, “Last Lecture” and in it he said “I want to offer you the thinking which I have done” over all these years. As his going-away speech, and as a way to summarize his life, his discoveries, all of the ideas and models that he created, he thought that central to everything was his thinking. It was the greatest gift.

In that speech, he spoke about different kinds of thinking that he discovered which had been the focus of his career. He spoke about holistic thinking—thinking about mind-body as one phenomenon and not ‘mind’ and ‘body.’ He spoke about relational thinking—how everything is related to everything else and that thingish thinking misdirects us. He spoke about the heart of thinking —ideas or information as “the difference that makes a difference” and that the only thing that gets onto the map (in the mind) is “news of difference.” He spoke about hierarchical thinking since we have “ideas about ideas.”

“Viewing the world in terms of things is a distortion supported by language ... the correct view of he world in in terms of dynamic relations.” (1990, p. 311) “The bridge between map and territory is difference. It is only news of difference that can get from the territory to the map, and this fact is the basic epistemological statement about the relationship between all reality out there and all perception in here; that the bridge must always be in the form of difference.” (1990, p. 218) “Our epistemology is structured in hierarchic form.” (Ibid., 220) “In thought what we have are ideas. There are no pigs, no coconut palms, no people, no books ... nothing. There are only ideas of pigs and coconut palms and people and whatever. Only ideas, names, and things like that. This lands you in a world which is totally strange.” (Ibid., p. 237)

The bottom line in this: Epistemology is a fancy word for “thinking,” for your way of thinking, for how you organize your understanding and your processes for knowing which then shape and limit what gets from ‘outside’ through your sense organs. And because NLP is a process for “running your own brain,” NLP is essentially this new epistemology from Bateson. And as we update the NLP model in Neuro-Semantics, that means that— Neuro-Semantics as an epistemology—is a way of thinking and a habit of mind for paying attention in specific ways which allow us to manage our minds and emotions, our behaviors and speech more effectively.

To the extent that we are actualizing the kinds of thinking and the thinking patterns that Bateson described, I think Bateson would have been thrilled with what we are doing in Neuro-Semantics. This is, to a big extent, Neuro-Semantics has been upgrading NLP. Accordingly, using the reflexivity of both the mind and language, we have mapped out how the logical levels work thereby understanding how our beliefs, concepts, values, and all of the other meta-level terms

work.

“If we have wrong ideas of how our abstractions are built—if in a word, we have poor epistemological hab its—we shall be in trouble —and we are.” (Ibid., p. 233)

We have also been mapping out the structure of thinking itself. This has enabled us to specific the many different kinds of thinking and ‘thinking’ as a system. To this Bateson has contributed a lot. He has taught us how to — Think systemically and in terms of relationships. Think directionally. Where is your thinking taking you? Is that where you want to go? When thinking is too purposeful, then we make the epistemological error of “the ends justify the means” and that is not only immoral, but unecological for the system. Think in terms of self-corrective systems. Ecological thinking needs ongoing feedback as it operates so as to check itself and not become a runaway system. Think hierarchically regarding the levels of ideas. This avoids the confusion of levels that creates the epistemological errors of paradox and schizophrenia. Think in terms of dynamic change. This process thinking of seeing interactions then solves the medieval thinking of ‘things’ (nominalizations, adjectives).

In the end, it is all about thinking. And while that may seem so simple and obvious, it is not. As it turns out—thinking is ultimately the most challenging thing you will ever do. That’s because you have to use your thinking to become aware of your thinking and to then keep updating your thinking. All of this requires meta-thinking.