Perceiver/Subject/Space of A - same?

[phil]

This is a discussion started by email and to be continued here:

-----Original Message-----
From: Corrie van Wijk
Sent: 29 December 2005 11:28
To: Phil Swallow
Subject: Perceiver, Perceived and the Space Between



Corrie:
P.S. Thanks for the report on the December 12 meeting (here (http://www.cleanforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=227#post227));

I object to the use of A, B and C though in any other context than clean space. It's difficult enough not to confuse CL and CS.

Phil:
Well, I am interested to point out that A, B & C are much like Perceiver, Perceived and the Space Between (an old model of David’s).

Corrie:

How would that relate to Object, Subject and Verb, as I understood you did in the exercises at J&P's?

Phil:

Perceiver = Subject = A

Perceived = Object = B


Space Between
(i.e. relationship) = Verb = C

Corrie:

Gee, I figured that out, I mean what's the similarity?

Phil:

The similarity is that the structure of the system in the three models is identical:


The [ Perceiver/Subject/A ] relates to [ the Perceived/the Object/B ] via [ the Space Between/ a Verb/ the space of C ]


The interest for me is in noticing that David’s current interest in A, B, C seems to have connections to a) his earlier work and b) the grammatical structure of (at least) most European languages.


It also awakens for me a question about which came first: the way that we conceive/perceive our world or how we represent it?

In other words, do we use a subject-verb-object structure in our language because it represents the way we perceive the world? Or do we perceive the world in a subject-verb-object way because we language it that way?


Perhaps ‘neither came first – there was a gradual emergence’ is the answer, as it might be to the chicken/egg question. Or maybe ‘both came first and second’...


Are you okay with me moving this discussion to the forum?

Corrie:
Yes.

I agree that, by definition,The [ Perceiver/Subject/A ] relates to [ the Perceived/the Object/B ]. However I doubt if that relationship necessarily involves a Verb.

A (transitive) verb qualifies the relationship between object and subject, space need not.

And how would 'perceiver' relate to 'subject' and 'the perceived' to 'object''?

[phil]

Corrie:
I agree that, by definition,The [ Perceiver/Subject/A ] relates to [ the Perceived/the Object/B ]. However I doubt if that relationship necessarily involves a Verb.

I think it's worth remembering that all three of these models that I am comparing structurally are ONLY models, designed to highlight one aspect of relationship between discrete elements of a system:

The Perceiver, Perceived and the (perhaps it should say) Perceived Space Between highlights a 'perceiving' kind of relationship.
Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) highlights action of one element in relation to another. An alternative description of SVO is 'the Do-er, the Doing and the Done-to'. 'Perceiving' is one example of Doing.
A-B-C highlights spatial relationships between elements.I think a verb will appear or be implied in the description of the relationship. Even if the relationship is conceived of as being spatial, a metaphor will be used to describe it.

For example, look closely at these letters and ask yourself 'is there a relationship between them?':

A


B

One possible relationship is spatial, of course. How to describe it?

Well, the space separates the two letters, or it connects them or it maintains a distance between them. Even if we say there is a space between them, we use the verb 'to be'. Was it Maturana and Varela who said: "All being is doing and all doing is being"?

A (transitive) verb qualifies the relationship between object and subject, space need not.

I see it like this at the moment:

The space between A and B is perceived by the person at A.

That the space between A and B is a relationship between A and B is conceived by the person at A - and so is qualified (I mean 'given particular qualities)' by them.

For one person at A, having B at 3 metres away from them may seem a huge distance, for someone else the 3 metres may seem close.

And how would 'perceiver' relate to 'subject' and 'the perceived' to 'object''?

'Perceive' is an action and a transitive verb (a verb that takes an object). In the SVO model, the Perceiver is the Subject who perceives (Verb) the Object.

So a Perceiver is an example of a Subject. Ditto for Perceived and Object.

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

So: A, B, and C are an example of the set of subjects, verbs and objects, but not the other way round. So let's take S, O, and V to refer to those.

The language to describe an experience is a means of thinking or communicating about it: to me A, B, and C refers to (clean) space.

That is also important to me, because my sense of space has direct access to my emotions (limbic system); language is a function of the neocortex and is secundary, also in time (be it in milliseconds). When I stood between the polar bears, they were checking out each other (and me!), the mother with her cups moving away to protect them, the males finding a balance of territory and power in a triangle shape (and me standing my ground, so as to not look like a prey). So animals have a sense of space, without being able to put that into (verbal) language, except perhaps through (threatening) sounds.

[JamesLawley]

A fascinating discussion that I'm glad you decide to conduct on the forum.

The kind of discussion you have been going through is exactly why Penny and I decided to go with:

Perceiver - relationship - Perceived (see p. 123 of Metaphors In Mind)

In this model 'relationship' is such a general word that it can include relationships of space, time and form. As Phil said, the moment the Perceiver perceives a Perceived there IS automatically a relationship -- be that visual, auditory, tactile, proprioceptive, limbic or any other construct of the Perceiver).

In addition, we added a fourth component of the model which does not fit easily into Subject-Verb-Object categories, and that is Context. Our thinking was that all perception takes place in a context and that context massively influences what the Perceiver perceives. The difficulty is that 'context' is not easily definable. It can be almost anything. I think of it as the entire history of spatial, temporal, formal, cultural, etc. etc. patterns encoded in the Perceiver's system. And by definition is in the 'background'. As soon as 'context' becomes the Perceived, as it has here, another context emerges, and it's "turtles all the way down".

Happy New Year to you both.

James

[Corrie van Wijk]

Hi James, I was already hoping you would join our discussion.
Happy New Year to you and Penny as well (and Phil, and everybody else who's reading this).

You wrote: "Context is not easily definable".

Our language though, does provide the possibility to add a 'spacetime address' like 'now', 'yesterday' or 'for ever' and 'here', 'there' and 'everywhere' to the subject-verb-object 'doing' or 'being', as well as other references to the context.

[JamesLawley]

Happy New Year to you too, Corrie.

I'm not sure if you are suggesting by your examples that context IS easily definable. I would say that an individual can "specify" an aspect of their context, as in your excellent examples, but that is not a definition.

My dictionary defines context as "the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea" and those circumstances can be virtually anything and virtually everything.

I think it is important for us to be able to pick out the clients' references to the context and be able to work with them. One of David Grove's principles in his Child Within days was that if you could get the client to change the context of their perception, their whole perception changed (not that he used this kind of description), e.g. If you could get the "just before being traumatised" Child Within, at T-1, out of the bedroom, then s/he could grow up without having to go through the trauma at T.

Another classic example would be to get the knot in a person's stomach outside their body (i.e. into a different context) then it could be used for some other function, like tying up the perpetrators hands.

Equally the principle of change context and you change perspective applies, imho, to Clean Space and his latest work as well.

David has the client change context by asking about "inside" and "outside" of where ever the client happens to be. This works because we so often use the container metaphor to conceptualise context.

And I note that one of the contexts of this thread was the Perceiver-relationship-Perceived, ABC, Subject-Verb-Object discussion. Am I inside, outside, or off on a tangent?

James

[Corrie van Wijk]

Hi James,

You wrote: "An individual can 'specify' an aspect of their context, which can be virtually anything or everything". Now, isn't that beautifully clean?

Phil made me (thank you!) realize (=becoming conscious) that my perception of space of C already qualifies it as 'being' 'there'. Then, at an unconscious level, my limbic system evaluates it and makes me move away (flee), stay (freeze) or go towards it (fight).
In the case of the polar bear, I was taught to suppress my natural propensity for doing precisely the wrong thing, which would be to run away. So, when my neocortex forces my body to stop, it starts thinking (still carefully watching this polar bear!) about the size, the shape and the boundary of space of C. But my limbic system already 'knows' then that none of this is relevant if the polar bear's perception at B qualifies me at A as a prey. If he does so, he'll cover space of C in no time. So, I need to think again and find a way to communicate to B(ear) that I'm not a seal. So my guide taught me to shout at the bear (which also seemed 'unnatural' to me, since I rather keep quiet) and make myself known as human (in an earlier discussion on the e-mail you mentioned 'flow').

This experience certainly changed my perception in similar situations: although I'm not able (yet) to shout, I will stand my ground.

[Corrie van Wijk]

P.S. My 1964 concise Oxford defines 'adverb' as: 'word that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance, manner, etc. (e.g. gently, so, now, where, why)'.

We have clean questions for space and time, but what about the others?
Who could come up with clean questions for adverbs, other than "What is the relationship between [...] and [...]?

[phil]

Thanks for reminding us of the Context, James. It's so permanently 'there' that it's easy to take it for granted!

So we take an experience like communing with polar bears... second thoughts, YOU take that experience, Corrie, you seem to have a taste for it!

So we have a sensory experience and depending on the context, we may describe it differently. If (for the sake of having some imaginary and temporarily-fixed point of reference in all this) we let:

[ [Perceiver - Relationship - Perceived] Context ]

represent a class of sensory experience that human beings can recognise then I guess the following also work:

[ [ Subject - Verb - Object ] Language ]

[ [ A - C - B ] Space in David's current process ]

[ [ Corrie - Icy Ground - Polar Bear ] Faced with Bears* ]

In fact, any of these examples could serve as a representation of any of the others if we remember our Lakoff and Johnson:

"The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in
terms of another"

What this debate reminds me of yet again is the difference between our experience of the world and our attempts to describe it. We can debate words as if they are the sensory experiences that they describe and can easily forget that they are just labels.

Small wonder that we lionise our writers and musicians and artists who, in whatever medium they employ, can produce something that can have us respond: "Yes! I know that! I recognise that in my own experience!".

And again small wonder that we like it when people treat our own words with respect. That they do so will incline us to believe that they are treating our experience with respect too, and we like that!

Phil

* or is that Bear-Faced Cheek? :)

[Corrie van Wijk]

So, as I try to summarize it right now, the perception of a (sensory) experience can be thought of or described in a word, represented by a symbol or expressed through a non-verbal communication.
As soon as a relationship between the perceiver and the experience needs to be figured out (and/or a relationship between different experiences or several aspects of the experience), some sort of pattern symbolizes the kind of relationship. This may be expressed through a grammatical (subject - verb - object + adverbs), a geographical (A - C - B; a landscape of symbols) or temporal structure (T-x -- T -- T+x) within some context.

It's always nice if somebody else is able to express what you experience, because it is not easy to recognize something that really represents it (for you). On the other hand, we are confused if someone alters our representation, because that doesn't (always) express our experience correctly. If we want to change the way we feel about it, it's crucial (clean!) we start at the right synapses, not at somebody else's.

[phil]

Ah thanks for bringing time in! This

[ [Perceiver -> Relationship -> Perceived] Context ]

or
[ [Pr -> Rel -> Pd] Cxt ]

works well if we see time as being separable:

[ [Now -> Elapsed Time -> Past] Some Memory ]

"I thought back to my old school days"


The mapping also works with the old NLP process:

[ [Present State -> Resources -> Desired State ] Desired Outcome ]

and Wounded-Child-Within-spracht gives us:

[ [Now -> Elapsed Time and Trauma -> T minus 1 ] Current Pathology ]

and when the client has gone back to before T and is perceiving from there (I could do with some external clarity on what the Relationship and Context are in this and the previous one - it's late here and my brain hurts!):

[ [T minus 1 -> Growing Up WIthout the Trauma -> T plus 1 ] Awareness / Different Desired Outcome ]

Of course these linear one-way perceptual chains are only part of the story. Drawing arrows made me notice that I had assumed Perceiving to be an active rather than a passive process, from the Pr to the Pd:

"I -> perceive -> that"

...yet it may also be a passive process from the perspective of the Pr:

"My attention <- was caught by <- a strange noise"

...however in this example the passive voice really only describes another Pr as a Pd from the perspective of THIS Pr

"A strange noise -> caught -> my attention"

... shows that there is still action on the part of another Pr, this time the Pd.

Then there is also the intransitive (no stated Object)

"I look"


[ [Pr -> Rel -> Pd] Cxt ] still holds up as a basic building block of our perception of the world.

[Corrie van Wijk]

Phil, you state that "{[Pr - Rel - Pd] Cxt}" works well if we see time as being separable."

Unfortunately Einstein reframed our concept of space and time 100 years and eight months ago with his theory of special relativity: time and space are in the eye of the beholder. Relativity of simultaneity means that events in space only take place at a given moment of the observer's time. Another observer, moving relative to the first, will declare that the events do not all happen at the same time. It's like a still frame in a filmstrip that shows what happened in a region of space at one moment in time. To see what happened at a different moment in time, you skip to a previous or next frame. (Brian Greene in 'The fabric of the cosmos', 2004)

So everyone makes his or her own movie. We only know that time has passed if something has changed in a previous or next frame. If you think of another moment in time, you get a different [Pr - rel - Pd].

I wonder how a passive voice relates to the clean space question: "And what would [a strange voice] know about you?"

[phil]

Unfortunately Einstein reframed our concept of space and time 100 years and eight months ago with his theory of special relativity: time and space are in the eye of the beholder. Relativity of simultaneity means that events in space only take place at a given moment of the observer's time. Another observer, moving relative to the first, will declare that the events do not all happen at the same time. It's like a still frame in a filmstrip that shows what happened in a region of space at one moment in time. To see what happened at a different moment in time, you skip to a previous or next frame. (Brian Greene in 'The fabric of the cosmos', 2004)

So everyone makes his or her own movie. We only know that time has passed if something has changed in a previous or next frame. If you think of another moment in time, you get a different [Pr - rel - Pd].

Not sure why you say unfortunately. Certainly our perception of space and time are 'in the eye of the beholder' - they are constructs of our mind after all!

Well since time AND space are relative (to each other and to the perceiver), I thought it would be interesting to swap terms of space and time in your paragraphs above (I hope you will pardon the total non-cleanliness!) and see what happens:


Unfortunately Einstein reframed our concept of space and time 100 years and eight months ago with his theory of special relativity: time and space are in the eye of the beholder. Relativity of simultaneity means that events in time only take place at a given place of the observer's space. Another observer, moving relative to the first, will declare that the events do not all happen in the same place. It's like a still frame in a filmstrip that shows what happened in a period/point of time at one place in space. To see what happened at a different place in space, you skip to a previous or next frame. (no-longer-Brian-Greene in 'The fabric of the cosmos', 2004)

So everyone makes his or her own movie. We only know that space has changed if time has passed in a previous or next frame. If you think of another place in space, you get a different [Pr - rel - Pd].


Well, I thought that was quite successful really!

You will note that I made up time passing to equate to space changing

Not surprisingly for those who know me, a long-held niggle has resurfaced. In the Clean Space process, the word 'space' as in 'Find a space' or 'What does that space know?' does not mean the same as when one is talking about unbounded, undefined space or a particular position or place in space. Currently in Clean Space, I think of 3 kinds of space relative to the perceiver (this is not a finished cogitation so please all feel free to add/amend/disagree):

a) Place: a 'reference point' in space where the Pr exists (and perceives from) without moving around and where time is 'held still'

b) A Space: an area perceived by and relative to the Pr defined either by:
a perceptual boundary (e.g. the horizon, 'within my grasp', 'this feels right')

a static physical boundary (e.g. the walls of a room, in the corner, by the fire, inside my body)

a space defined by movement (e.g. rocking back and forth, walking, waving arms)
c) Space everything outside a) and b)
This is not to say that that's how it is. I just find that a useful distinction FOR ME when working with a client.

I wonder what happens inside us when someone says to us: 'Find a space'?


I wonder how a passive voice relates to the clean space question: "And what would [a strange voice] know about you?"


To consider this I have removed the conditional 'would' as being unnecessarily complicated. After all a client could reasonably answer "Under what conditions?" or even "What would [a strange voice] know about me if what?"

Active: "What do you know about strange voice?"
"It's loud"

Passive and weird:
"What is known about the strange voice by you?"
"It's loud"

The next looks like a Passive but is a bit strange because it is like talking to the Object and asking what the Subject is doing!

Transferred Active?:
"What does strange voice know about you?"
"Why ask me? Ask strange voice - it can talk, you know!"

In fact one of the reasons I like CS is because the Pr PHYSICALLY GOES TO each space to report from there (...find a space that knows about strange voice... what does this space know?) rather than staying in one place and imagining what it might be like in those spaces. The latter seems to me to generate more information from A.

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

I'm not sure if time and space are exchangeable this way: these two kinds of motion are always complementary; motion in time can be diverted into motion through space.

You can think of something being in the same place, but at the previous or next moment, but, from the point of view of the pr, it is physically impossible for something to be in a different place at the same moment (except from the point of view of another pr). Time is irreversable.

As for the space of B: if you move to B, would that be similar to NLP's second position?

[phil]

I'm not sure if time and space are exchangeable this way: these two kinds of motion are always complementary; motion in time can be diverted into motion through space.


As I'm sure James will point out if I don't, time is always referred to using metaphors of space, like 'motion through' so it is very hard to talk about them separately. Perhaps time and space are really only our representations of different aspects of the same thing (the Universe? Crikey!)

You can think of something being in the same place, but at the previous or next moment, but, from the point of view of the pr, it is physically impossible for something to be in a different place at the same moment (except from the point of view of another pr). Time is irreversable.


Okay same experiement:

You can think of something being in the same time, but at another place, but, from the point of view of the pr, it is physically impossible for something to be in a different time at the same place (except from the point of view of another pr). Space is irreversable.


Time and space seem to me inextricably entwined, like the honeysuckle and the bindweed from that old Flanders and Swann song:

Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed bindweed,
"Oh, let us get married, if our parents don't mind, we'd
Be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined, we'd
Live happily ever after" said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.

Lyrics (http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pennywyatt/Interests/FlandersSwann/DropOfaHat/At%20the%20Drop%20of%20a%20Hat10.html)

We simply can't discuss one without the other.

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Brian Green says: "... don't confuse language with reality. Human language is far better at capturing human experience than at expressing deep physical laws." (p.142)

[phil]

Oh, I don't know - one metaphor ('deep physical laws') may be as good as another ('capturing experience').

Or as bad.

:D

[Corrie van Wijk]

From the pr, it is physically possible for something to be in a different time at the same place: just wait a second. Space is reversable: left and right, back and forth, and up and down are all on equal footing. Time is irreversable, a low entropy (the measure of the amount of disorder in a physical system, S= k log W) at the big bang has gradually driven toward higher disorder ever since, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, even though gravity has formed galaxies and plants decrease entropy through photosynthesis. (Brian again)

So, deep 'physical laws' are different from 'capturing human experience'. Our individual perception and our description of it, may be very different from scientific findings.

Scientists may think that our perception is not objectivily true: I think that in the case of anyone's brain that is not relevant. Unlike a computer that functions regardless of the nature of its contents, a brain and a nervous system are formed by what happened to them, including the dispositions they inherited from previous generations. So, if someone wants to change his or her perception because it hurts or is disfunctional, all you can go by is the perceived, so 'clean queationing' is all you need.

I said earlier that 'unfortunately' there is no separation between space and time: any event happened at a certain point in time, so they are associated in our brain with the space in which it happened or the part of the body it happened to, and all the sensory input at the time, which makes it more complicated to change.

The beauty of clean space is that if you associate into that particular spacetime and map it or project it outside of you, you can walk around in your own 'landscape' or 'movie'. Then space of B or C gives you a different perspective than the one at A, which might alter the synapses that hold the memory, hopefully in such a way that they don't haunt you any more.

[phil]

Well, if space and time are inseparable, does it not follow that if one is reversible so is the other? Maybe in language but not in maths or astrophysics? Who knows? Someone who knows, not me!

Anyway we are well off topic here and thanks for bringing us back to Clean Space*, a perceptual process where Perceivers perceive benefits in perceiving that way. Nothing to be proven, scientifically or otherwise, no linguistic description comes close to capturing the experience - it must be experienced physically to get anything from it.

*this is actually the Clean Language forum - and like time and space CL and CS seem inextricably entwined these days too. So I would expect there to be conceptual blending between these forums.