[FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

[Nick Thompson]

Or to put it even more simply, an onion is never an onion. 

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 9:31 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

On 06/14/2017 05:36 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> Hairsplitting here (again), but I don't see what Nick or I did as *premature* registration, maybe *mis*registration?     Or am I being "premature" again?

Well, you could be right.  But I do think it's premature, not merely mis-.  What I think happened was y'all had been pre-adapted to perceive the onion as a source and complex systems as the target.  Because of the conversation we were having, your perception was oriented that way.  All your conceptual categories were ready, waiting to filter/parse any incoming signals according to that structure.  You were a "complex systems perception machine".  So, pretty much _anything_ I said would have been interpreted/filtered according to that pre-adapted conceptual structure.

Hence, when you started reading that email (wherein I tried to distinguish level vs layer with the onion example), your registration machinery was already engaged.  A way to avoid that _premature_ classification of what you saw would have been for you or Nick to read the email and ask whether that was the intention.  If, after asking, you had still decided it was what I intended, despite my saying it wasn't, then maybe it would be more correct to call it (merely) mis-registration.

BC Smith's point is simply that we don't approach reality with a (completely) open mind.  We are structured to impute an organization on the ambient milieu.  And the fact that it was so difficult to break out of that preconceived structure of what we were talking about is evidence that it was premature, not merely mis-.

We all do it.  It's the human/animal condition.

--
␦glen?

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