I have thought of the “substance-form” idea (also Gregory Bateson - form, pattern and relationship rather than content, related persons/phenomena etc.) as something important to understand, however, I haven't quite wrapped my head around it. How to describe the form of a problem? It’s not clear to me what it means to focus on form and pattern rather than on the content and substance when describing a situation.
I was also reminded of Bateson’s description of how the lions in Trafalgar Square could have well been some other beasts but would have held a completely different meaning if they were made out of wood. Is this related to the same idea?
Hi Morris, thank you for your thought-provoking question. I'm always excited to hear someone talking about Bateson - when I first was learning Bateson in college, and for a while after, James was the only other person I knew who had ever heard of him and I so wished to have somebody else who was as into it as I was.
Since like me, you’ve already been interested in exploring Bateson and the crew, hopefully some of this is new and answers your questions -
I know this wasn’t entirely the focus of your question, but I think it’s an important detail – we tend not to talk about the form of a problem. We could, and if we did, thinking in terms of form and pattern, we would think of the invariances in the existing situation – pattern being the existence of invariance.
But the form of a problem is pretty useless to us if we want to create change – much more useful to focus on the form of the desired state-of-affairs (what we call DD) we wish to bring about, and the problem will gradually dissolve as we start defining and creating a new reality centered around that desired state of affairs, and looking at the existing state-of-affairs (DE) only in its relation to that desired state.
I like the example of the lions in Trafalger Square – and everything is related in some way, so let’s see if we can find the connection –
“Substances-and-forces” is our shorthand for a point-of-view from physics that currently gets applied to all phenomena, even in areas in which other paradigms have greater explanatory value, in our experience. It’s the idea that the universe is made up of various substances, and these substances interact with other substances with forces – like how one object has an equal and opposite effect on another.
The purely physical interpretation of substance-and-forces has nothing to say about the meaning that the lions in Trafalger Square convey.
But we have superimposed the substance-and-forces lens onto our concept of the mental world. Applying “substances-and-forces” to the mind, the “substances” are no longer physical substances, but are linguistically constructed psychical forces that are supposedly “driving” us, acting on us like one physical object acts on another. From our perspective, even cognitive psychology is still stuck in the realm of substance-and-forces because like behaviorism, it takes us to be pushed or impacted by mental forces.
We step out of the substance-and-forces paradigm with Perceptual Control Theory, the idea that living things are not pushed by causes, but are pulled by purpose – behavior is input, not output. Have you explored PCT? I love this 10-minute explanation – I think it’s a great starting point. Unfortunately, the original book by Powers, Behavior: The Control of Perception, can be hard to get, but I’ve found it in libraries before.
When we are thinking about living things as pulled by purpose rather than pushed by mental forces, we can see that when we control for a certain outcome, we do so by creating a pattern – we are creating an invariance in reality, a pattern, the way we want things to be. That invariance, that pattern, might be keeping a car in between the lines while we’re driving, it might be keeping our budget under a certain limit.
So when we look at a situation in terms of pattern-and-constraint, we are looking at what variables people are controlling for, what they are trying to keep invariant, and what about their behavior is invariant.
In the Trafalger square example, the meaning of the animal and the material are possible because of context, and context is possible only through pattern.
I see, as James has previously written — the problem/the existing situation can be mostly forgotten about and instead attention should be focused on the desired state-of-affairs.
The use of the word "invariance" to describe what pattern means in this context really does make it more understandable to me. Thank you for the explanation!
I haven't come across PCT before but the video was very good and thought-provoking indeed. Really helps with tying things together. I feel like I need to give it another watch soon.
About Bateson — I feel like he's writings are an endless source of knowledge on almost any subject. James introduced me to "Steps" a few years ago and it has really influenced my thinking. And will do so in the future as there's so much I don't fully understand yet.
Yes, exactly, the problem can be forgotten about completely. This sounds really simple and even obvious, at least it does to me now after working in this way, but it’s actually really difficult to both trust that this is a safe and more productive thing to do, since when we have a problem, our knowledge and consideration of the problem feels like our only chance of solving it, and it’s also really difficult to do because we’re absolutely unused to thinking in this way. In an MI session, changing the orientation from the problem to the solution is iterative and takes time.
I’m glad that “invariance” is a helpful concept for thinking about pattern! And so glad you liked the PCT video. And I agree that it takes revisiting to let it sink in – it’s so different from the way we’re used to thinking about how behavior and thinking works and it takes some time to integrate it into our understanding. There are many more delightful resources on PCT and maybe I’ll put something together. Probably my favorite is the demos on mindreadings.com – little games that illustrate the concepts with detailed descriptions below.
Totally agree that Bateson is an endless source of knowledge and inspiration. I’ll have to revisit Steps soon – I haven’t read it in some years and I remember feeling like I would never be done learning from it. Do you have a favorite chapter in it?
That's a good question. I'm not sure I can name a favourite chapter — most of them (if not all) are interesting in some way. And I don't have Steps organised in my head in chapters. However, some ideas/topics I have found most inspirational:
- Unit of mind, unit of survival, and their relationship to each other --> How to think about evolution.
I have thought of the “substance-form” idea (also Gregory Bateson - form, pattern and relationship rather than content, related persons/phenomena etc.) as something important to understand, however, I haven't quite wrapped my head around it. How to describe the form of a problem? It’s not clear to me what it means to focus on form and pattern rather than on the content and substance when describing a situation.
I was also reminded of Bateson’s description of how the lions in Trafalgar Square could have well been some other beasts but would have held a completely different meaning if they were made out of wood. Is this related to the same idea?
Hi Morris, thank you for your thought-provoking question. I'm always excited to hear someone talking about Bateson - when I first was learning Bateson in college, and for a while after, James was the only other person I knew who had ever heard of him and I so wished to have somebody else who was as into it as I was.
Since like me, you’ve already been interested in exploring Bateson and the crew, hopefully some of this is new and answers your questions -
I know this wasn’t entirely the focus of your question, but I think it’s an important detail – we tend not to talk about the form of a problem. We could, and if we did, thinking in terms of form and pattern, we would think of the invariances in the existing situation – pattern being the existence of invariance.
But the form of a problem is pretty useless to us if we want to create change – much more useful to focus on the form of the desired state-of-affairs (what we call DD) we wish to bring about, and the problem will gradually dissolve as we start defining and creating a new reality centered around that desired state of affairs, and looking at the existing state-of-affairs (DE) only in its relation to that desired state.
I like the example of the lions in Trafalger Square – and everything is related in some way, so let’s see if we can find the connection –
“Substances-and-forces” is our shorthand for a point-of-view from physics that currently gets applied to all phenomena, even in areas in which other paradigms have greater explanatory value, in our experience. It’s the idea that the universe is made up of various substances, and these substances interact with other substances with forces – like how one object has an equal and opposite effect on another.
The purely physical interpretation of substance-and-forces has nothing to say about the meaning that the lions in Trafalger Square convey.
But we have superimposed the substance-and-forces lens onto our concept of the mental world. Applying “substances-and-forces” to the mind, the “substances” are no longer physical substances, but are linguistically constructed psychical forces that are supposedly “driving” us, acting on us like one physical object acts on another. From our perspective, even cognitive psychology is still stuck in the realm of substance-and-forces because like behaviorism, it takes us to be pushed or impacted by mental forces.
We step out of the substance-and-forces paradigm with Perceptual Control Theory, the idea that living things are not pushed by causes, but are pulled by purpose – behavior is input, not output. Have you explored PCT? I love this 10-minute explanation – I think it’s a great starting point. Unfortunately, the original book by Powers, Behavior: The Control of Perception, can be hard to get, but I’ve found it in libraries before.
An Explanation of Perceptual Control Theory by Rick Marken - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj18bYqm4ZQ
When we are thinking about living things as pulled by purpose rather than pushed by mental forces, we can see that when we control for a certain outcome, we do so by creating a pattern – we are creating an invariance in reality, a pattern, the way we want things to be. That invariance, that pattern, might be keeping a car in between the lines while we’re driving, it might be keeping our budget under a certain limit.
So when we look at a situation in terms of pattern-and-constraint, we are looking at what variables people are controlling for, what they are trying to keep invariant, and what about their behavior is invariant.
In the Trafalger square example, the meaning of the animal and the material are possible because of context, and context is possible only through pattern.
Thank you for the thorough answer!
I see, as James has previously written — the problem/the existing situation can be mostly forgotten about and instead attention should be focused on the desired state-of-affairs.
The use of the word "invariance" to describe what pattern means in this context really does make it more understandable to me. Thank you for the explanation!
I haven't come across PCT before but the video was very good and thought-provoking indeed. Really helps with tying things together. I feel like I need to give it another watch soon.
About Bateson — I feel like he's writings are an endless source of knowledge on almost any subject. James introduced me to "Steps" a few years ago and it has really influenced my thinking. And will do so in the future as there's so much I don't fully understand yet.
Yes, exactly, the problem can be forgotten about completely. This sounds really simple and even obvious, at least it does to me now after working in this way, but it’s actually really difficult to both trust that this is a safe and more productive thing to do, since when we have a problem, our knowledge and consideration of the problem feels like our only chance of solving it, and it’s also really difficult to do because we’re absolutely unused to thinking in this way. In an MI session, changing the orientation from the problem to the solution is iterative and takes time.
I’m glad that “invariance” is a helpful concept for thinking about pattern! And so glad you liked the PCT video. And I agree that it takes revisiting to let it sink in – it’s so different from the way we’re used to thinking about how behavior and thinking works and it takes some time to integrate it into our understanding. There are many more delightful resources on PCT and maybe I’ll put something together. Probably my favorite is the demos on mindreadings.com – little games that illustrate the concepts with detailed descriptions below.
https://mindreadings.com/demos.htm
Totally agree that Bateson is an endless source of knowledge and inspiration. I’ll have to revisit Steps soon – I haven’t read it in some years and I remember feeling like I would never be done learning from it. Do you have a favorite chapter in it?
That's a good question. I'm not sure I can name a favourite chapter — most of them (if not all) are interesting in some way. And I don't have Steps organised in my head in chapters. However, some ideas/topics I have found most inspirational:
- Unit of mind, unit of survival, and their relationship to each other --> How to think about evolution.
- Everything about dreams.
- Mammalian communication.
- Double-bind and schizophrenia.
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out!