Presuppositions2

Theoretical underpinnings of Symbolic Modelling Page 2

1. Experiential Constructivism (as a core philosophy)

This way of thinking is summed up in Alfred Korzybski’s famous remark, “The map is not the territory”.

Or, in full: "The map is not the territory; the map doesn't cover all of the territory; and the map is self-reflexive (it becomes part of the territory).

(Korzybski, Alfred,Science and Sanity, an Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, International Society for General Semantics, 1933)

Like Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Symbolic Modelling accepts that each of us creates our own experience of reality, which may have little relation to any external world "out there" in space-time.

Each of us, all the time, is “making it up as we go along”!

However we are constrained by our biological and psychological experiences. Mark Johnson says in The Body in the Mind: “Our reality is shaped by the patterns of our bodily movement, the contours of our spatial and temporal orientation, and the forms of our interations with objects." (p. xix)

Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life, p260, quoted in Metaphors in Mind, looks at things slightly differently: “Cognition is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth a world through the process of living.”

Suggested reading:

Bandler, Richard, and John Grinder, Structure of Magic I, Science and Behaviour Books, USA, 1975

Bandler, Richard, Using Your Brain for a Change, Real People Press, Moab, UT, 1985

Capra, Fritjof, The Web of Life, Harper Collins, London, 1996

Dennett, Daniel C, Consciousness Explained, Penguin Books, London, 1993

Johnson, Mark, The Body in the Mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987

Maturana, Humberto, Francesco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge, Shambala, Boston, 1992.

Robertson, Ian, Mind Sculpture, Bantam Press, London, 1999

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh

Varela, Francisco, et. al., The Embodied Mind

Anything by Paul Watzlawick but in particular, The Invented Reality, Paul Watzlawick editor, W W Norton

and Munchhausen's Pigtail, W W Norton, 1990

2. Cognitive Linguistics

(the academic study of metaphor, cognition and language)

Cognitive Linguistics brings together aspects of two academic fields – cognitive science and linguistics – to examine the influence of language on cognition, and of cognition on language. Metaphor is frequently seen as important within this academic field, and, of course, takes centre stage in Symbolic Modelling.

Metaphors in Mind (p18) says, for example: “Metaphorical expressions… have a coherent and consistent organisation because there is a coherent and consistent organisation to cognition. Many cognitive scientists now conclude that people not only talk in metaphor, but also think and reason in metaphor, they make sense of their world through metaphor, and they act in ways that are consistent with their metaphor…

“Thus the organisation of a client’s language and behaviour will be isomorphic with the organisation of their cognitive processes, and both will be grounded in the embodied nature of experience.”

Metaphors in Mind p29: “People can be regarded as self-organising systems – and so can their Metaphor Landscapes.”