On 28 Mar 99 at 17:44, Fred Nickols wrote:
> "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.
I agree, and this tweaks more questions at this end. I am wondering if the
terms "mental model", construct, and concept are the same thing. Anybody
got any opinions?
> 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.
If your point is that it is pointless to defend the existence of mental
models in general, absolutely. It's like defending breathing, or the
heart.
What may be useful is discussing how some mental models may be better than
others for specific purposes, or whether there are some characterstics of
models that are "better". For example, flexibility.
> 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?
I'm not sure this is useful unless it is a very disciplined systematic
inquiry. Our mental models, as constructs, cannot be known by looking at
them, but only by the implications of them in action. So we need to be
careful about espoused models vs. models in action.
We cannot diagram them through introspection, for example, because it the
introspection is a model looking at a model looking at a model....
However, more systematic tools (eg. Kelly's REP test) might be useful in
doing this kind of mental mapping.
Robert Bacal, author of PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT,(McGraw-Hill). Details at
http://members.xoom.com/perform and http://members.xoom.com/cooperate.
"Performance management - about people and creating success"=
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