CRITICAL THINKING AND META-STATES

At the primarily level critical thinking is the “Disciplined thinking that’s clear, rational, open- minded, and informed by evidence.” I described that more fully in the first Meta Reflection for this new year (#1). That is the kind of first level thinking that enables you and me to more effectively unleash our ability to think so that we can be as clear and accurate as possible. Then our mental map will correspond more closely with the territory “out there.” We do that because our “map” is not the “territory.”

This formulation came originally from Alfred Korzybski, founder of General Semantics, and is the foundation of NLP and Neuro-Semantics. Here is what he wrote in Science and Sanity (1933): “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. ... If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse languages by linguistic means. This self- reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multi-ordinality. The disregard of these complexities is tragically disastrous in daily life and science.” (p. 58)

Classic NLP (1972-1994) quoted Korzybski on the first part (“A map is not the territory”) and focused on modeling due to the fact that at the source of “knowledge” is structure. Does our mental mapping have a similar structure to the facts, events, and experiences “out there” in the world beyond our nervous system? If so, then it is useful. If not, then it probably will not serve us well in using it as a map to navigate the territory.

"Antiquated map-language, by necessity, must lead us to semantic disasters, as it imposes and reflects its unnatural structure... As words are not the objects which they represent, structure, and structure alone, becomes the only link which connects our verbal processes with the empirical data. "Words are not the things we are speaking about... If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone. The only usefulness of a map or a language depends on the similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map-languages." "That languages all have some structure ...we unconsciously read into the world the structure of the language we use..." (Science and Sanity, 1994 Edition, pp. 58-60).

While NLP used the first part of Korzybski’s distinction, it did not use the second. It did not pick up on the importance of self-reflexivity or multi-ordinality. Ask most NLP Practitioners or even trainers about the Theory of Multi-Ordinality and they won’t know what you’re speaking about. So, quoting Korzybski again: “This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multi-ordinality. The disregard of these complexities is tragically disastrous in daily

life and science.” (p. 58)

So when I discovered the Meta-States Model in 1994, that took NLP to a new level. 1 That’s because we humans do not just think, we think about our thinking. We emote about our emotions, we think- and-emote about our thoughts-and-feelings, we experience these mind-body states about our states. This is the reflexivity that creates multiple problems and paradoxes. Nor do we layer just one thought upon another, we do this repeatedly, again and again, layer upon layer. So in terms of critical thinking, if you want to exercise a thoroughness in your critical thinking skills—you have to go meta.

Now going meta to your thinking, reasoning, metaphoring, imagining, theorizing, remembering, conceptualizing, etc. means that you have to engage in what Chris Argyris called double-loop learning. He spoke about this as climbing the inferential ladder so that you can get to the kind of thinking, to your assumptions, to your expectations, to your beliefs, etc. which govern our thinking. Nor was Argyris alone in noting this. The pioneer thinkers at Mental Institute Research (MIR),, Paul Watzlawick, John Weakland, Richard Fisch and Gregory Bateson worked in this area of the meta-levels. These were the influences that came together in the Meta-States Model.

To engage in high quality critical thinking using meta-levels, use the special kind of questions that come from Meta-States— meta-questions. To climb the inferential ladder, the layers of states about states, hold the first state or experience and ask about what informs it.

“Let’s say that is true, what do you believe that supports that?” “Given that you think or feel that, what idea (meaning, understanding, concept, etc.) supports you thinking that? Or maybe it is a metaphor? An experience you remember?” “Great, let’s start there. Holding that in mind, what do you expect? And if that is your expectation, what rule or truth or idea informs that?”

In this way, you hold the current frame and move upward to the higher frames which support, enable, and govern the primary state. In this way, you can open up a belief system and find the higher level beliefs that hold the lower beliefs. You can open up the ideas, assumptions, expectations, and reasoning processes that are behind the surface statements that a person makes.

If critical thinking the disciplined thinking which is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence, then by moving to the meta-levels and exposing your own or another’s higher level style of reasoning and the specific thoughts that govern his or her thinking (the person’s frames), you become even more clear about how a person reached his or her conclusions.

In terms of critical thinking, this is where what we call “intuition” lives. That’s because thinking that’s repeated over the years drops out of conscious awareness. Then that process and way of thinking becomes your assumed way of thinking, it operates without you being conscious of it. Also what you learn and repeat drops out of awareness to becoming your assumed frames of reference. If it is accurate, then your “intuitions” are appropriate and helpful. If inaccurate (which is more often the case) then your “intuitions” are not appropriate and do not help you. In fact, they get in the way.