> Not wanting to rekindle a sometimes rancorous discussion (as opposed to
> dialogue) on the Complexity list, never-the-less let me say that there are
> a few of us out here who have yet to purchase the "mental model."
> I promise not to belabour this important question, but if you are a
> proponent of "modelling" and specifically "mental models" please share
> what you mean by these terms/phrases.
Somewhere in here is an elegant recursive loop -- if you don't purchase
the idea of "mental model", which is itself just an instance of a mental
model then I'm not sure how sharing my meaning is going to make any
difference.
There are a multiplicity of meanings for phrases as broadly drawn as this
and several of them have already been posted in reply to your note George.
For me it a way of making meaning out of the sensory data that I
experience. For example, it's really useful to me to write this thinking
that I'm replying to a George that really exists when all the sensory
experience of you is a few dots on a computer screen. All of the rest I
have to construct for myself.
If I had to start from scratch with the dots then I probably wouldn't
bother but I have some 'stuff' in my mind that helps me on the way. I
"assume" that you are male; your name is George which in my 'model of the
world' is male -- yet if I had been a close intimate of George Sands then
I might have a different model. You have a typo in your home page address
-- from which I make some deductions -- and I suspect that you make some
about me because I chose to comment on that (Oh, he must be a XXX kind of
person). You may or may not be right but to make that inference you need
to have some internal reference to work from.
A different (but related) kind of model is the use of metaphor 'rekindle'
is a very expressive term and communicates what you want. Yet I wouldn't
know how to literally 'set fire' to a discussion. There's no blue touch
paper. In using this metaphor you are assuming another shared 'mental
model' that there will be enough commonality between us that I can
'translate' the concept of re-kindle from a camp-fire to a discussion and
thus make my own sense and meaning from your words.
These day-to-day examples are sometimes complex enough to deal with yet so
common that they usually pass by without comment. When the 'models' reach
higher levels of abstraction the amount of sharing needed to build 'common
understanding' becomes extraordinary (vide At's teachings on entropy) and
our awareness of our personal set of assumptions, values and beliefs moves
further out of our awareness.
So for me, 'mental models' are both the way that I try to make meaning out
of my sensory experience and the building blocks I assume in communication
with other people and hence, taken together, the framework that decides
how I interact with the world. And, sometimes, when that doesn't work
quite how I expect it's useful to go back and see if I can find which
assumption of mine didn't work that time around.
Regards
Bob
--Bob Janes Webster & Janes Ltd PO Box 211, Welwyn AL6 0EX UK +44 (1438) 84-0206 mailto:bob.janes@webster-and-janes.co.uk http://www.webster-and-janes.co.uk/co.re/
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