I've been enjoying the conversation on this and a couple of other threads.
It occurs to me that a part of your problem with mental models has to do
with the need to use them practically in the accomplishment of some task
that you set for yourself. Because that task has its own demands, the
model becomes a kind of pollution to the task and vice-versa. In short,
there is a conflict of interest. This has been pointed out on a couple of
posts.
In my work, the Fine Arts, a product or task is the result of a
psycho-physical pursuit of values in a given medium for its own sake as
its primary impulse. The needs of consumers are not taken into account,
because the value to the culture is found within the most accurate and
beautiful solution to the expression of the models within the head of the
artist as well as his dialogue with the structures of the external
culture.
It is often said that math is abstract but in reality most math
applications are concerned with an abstraction that is limited to
literacy. Music on the other hand is both aural and literate and is
always purely abstract with no clear external meaning possible in the same
way that Math has meaning. Music is pure form for its own sake and is
totally self referential. For that reason music, the most abstract of all
art forms, is a pure expression of a mental model within a person embedded
in a culture. It has no reason for existence beyond itself and is an
expression of the history of the artist's struggle with it's values.
Reference to the artist's dialogue with the culture does not mean that the
artist is relating to the culture for a consumer purpose external to pure
exploration. They don't care if the audience "gets it" or not. They
simply use the audience' structures as material for their own exploration
of their mental models.
In the dialogue on the value of monetary payment, you seem to scratch this
issue a bit when exploring motivation for e.g. teachers, but the artist
provides a dilemma for you that has created a colossal failure in the
cultural life of America and financial ruin for America's Fine Artists.
We experience the two models even in my daughter's high school of the
Performing Arts in New York City. The academics are concerned with tasks
accomplished in a given time frame whether finished or not. How much
correctness can be achieved in a given time frame. Correctness and amount
are requirements but depth is not a requirement. This causes the more
facile and often shallower thinkers to do better on the academic tests.
On the other hand the Performing Arts teachers don't care if the student
attends classes at all, except failure to do so will simply mean failure
to proceed. They are teaching that the accomplishment of the task is the
most important element in their universe. Speed is related to depth,
quality and completion. You may go no faster than you can be a virtuoso
at what you are doing completely.
This is a problem for many students in that they don't perceive that there
are two models at work here and that they must speak in the language of
the proper model at the proper time or fail. I've worked very hard with
my daughter to impart that to her and she is functioning in both but it is
possible to stress students in such a schizoid atmosphere that their
health becomes an issue. I've found the same to be true for employees.
The musical concept of styles of integrity may even be a better term than
"mental models" although there is a certain hipness to Senge that I enjoy.
I would suggest that understanding the Artistic process, as Donald Schon
and Peter Senge has, in both the "Reflective Practitioner" books and the
book inspiration for this list, is a prerequisite for understanding the
history of Western mental models. That concepts like balance, ugliness,
insanity, beauty, skill, creativity, inspiration and value are found in
their pure forms only in the arts, (although a tenor I taught once, who
had made his fame in pure physics, claimed the same for that field as
well). But the historical purpose of the Fine Arts in Western thought is
to serve as a pure frame for the exploration of these structures which
will later be used in a practical commercial manner. I guess that is like
pure physics. I'm sure that you all are much more capable than I at
deciding that, considering my reservation physics (non-existant).
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York, Inc.
mcore@idt.net
Fred Nickols wrote:
> I am replying to the thread in general and to no particular message,
> although this message was triggered by Robert Bacal in LO21021 --
>
> "Reification" is a word that refers to treating abstractions as though
> they are concrete.
>
> "Mental models" is a term, an abstraction, an idea, a notion, a
> theoretical construct, a conjecture, or whatever label you prefer.
> "Mental models" are not concrete, tangible, solid things to which we can
> point or weigh or grasp physically. They exist in language and thought
> but we are so far unable to establish unequivocally that they exist
> anywhere else, especially in concrete, tangible form.
>
> So, when someone refers to mental models, it is pointless to defend or
> attack them; in the abstract they exist as surely as the keys on your
> keyboard; in the concrete, they have no more tangible existence than your
> belief that Rick Karash is a first-rate host. Both are true, of course,
> but truth itself has no tangible form.
>
> What is useful -- and quite productive -- is to explore the words -- and
> diagrams -- that people claim represent their "mental models" for these,
> more than anything else, predict what they will do in this or that
> situation and, in the last analysis, predicting a specific person's
> behavior in a specific situation is something I'd like to be able to do.
> What about you?
>
> Fred Nickols
> nickols@worldnet.att.net
--"Ray E. Harrell" <mcore@idt.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>