Speaker A You.
Speaker B And more particularly to explain the reasons, justifications for any judgments or in fact, why you couldn't make any judgments if that was the case. So can I ask group A?
Speaker C Well, we actually had a range on.
Speaker B Come up, actually, George, because then it'll pick up on the microphone and also you'll be on that's right on television.
Speaker C Does it need the mic?
Speaker B It should be all right.
Speaker D Okay.
Speaker C We had a range on each of the people. The woman's range was from high one to four. The young doctor was two to four. And I think I'm not sure we completely finished on the is this mood or current level? Current level. Current level. On the journalist, it was pretty unanimous at five with him, two to four. Different rationales for different ones. With the woman, the fact that we liked her and her passion was so attractive tended to drift. A first reaction to saying this is a really capable person who make this world a better place for us all to die in. And that kind of carried through in some ways with the others. There was clearly a sense with her that after talking about it, that if we think of her as a work situation, though, it brought the four back to more operations. She certainly was very hands on sort of person. We had three people in our group who had seen the tapes before and had other discussions already with Elliot. So we did come to a definitive conclusion, which I'll leave with the young doctor. The clear jump from her, from the woman of more polished, educated way of organizing information and so forth, and dressed nicely and all that kind of stuff tended to bias the thinking, though there was a lot of consensus at two and then one jump up to four. And with the journalist, I guess the sense was of considerable depth and breadth and the contrast between the journalist talking about whole systems, very large, complex issues and the interviewer kind of interrupting that process with cause effect kinds of questions yes, but does this make a difference? Or how about that? Or what this? And then his kind of graciously accepting the question and trying to fill it into a larger contest.
Speaker B Group B.
Speaker E We did not assign any levels to anybody, either current or future. When we began talking, we looked at what judgments had we made about these people and what were our criteria. And we agreed with Group A that our first criteria were just our personal feelings about the person. Then we talked about values and said, what values? And the answer was my values. If they agreed with mine, they're pretty good. Then we got into looking at other things, scope of the data they talked about. How many different aspects of the situation did they bring into their conversation? The sense of the reporter sensing the situation was really bigger than he was and that sense of understanding the complexity of the situation. We talked about our own biases, the way people address and present themselves. We talked about the kind of logic people use and whether they considered alternatives were all things we use to judge people about. And then we switched and said, role of the person for what? What's their role now? And how did that determine what they talked about and for what role would we be judging their potential? And that seemed to make a pretty significant difference. We decided that if a group of aliens landed and wanted to do battle, we'd choose the little old lady to lead the troops. That a lot of folks had a hard time with the Doctor. Some of us wanted to judge the doctor quite harshly as being inhuman, and others of us wanted a lot more data about the doctor before we'd make a judgment. And then finally, I think the consensus was, in terms of if we were picking someone to head up an agency that would make decisions about social policy, we'd go with the reporter at this point.
Speaker B Okay? Particularly with the doctor, you wanted more information. What sort of things were missing?
Speaker E The people who wanted that didn't say. Those of us who were who were finished with the doctor said we were.
Speaker B Finished with him, and we unambiguous. Thanks, group.
Speaker F There was some consensus in the group about the difficulty of the task that you had given us and how, unlike the CPA situation, it would be desirably. I said that if I was held up against the wall and my arm was twisted that I would make these kind of judgments. And so we proceeded to make some beginning judgments, beginning hypotheses about what we would start setting the individual at what level? We talked both about current level and about mode. So we started to elaborate what our hypotheses would be and what sort of information we would need to complete some kind of judgment of where these people were. So we put the woman operating on current level two and potential three. The young doctor, same thing. And the MB on the four or five boundary four, current level, potential five. Now, the reasoning behind this is, although the older woman talked about value issues, it was primarily based on her own personal experience. And she described rather well the operation of a particular system that was based on value position. But there didn't seem to be any alternative consideration of other value systems and how that would affect the operation of this process that was going on. So on that basis, on the basis of the personal aspect of her experience and the lack of extensive consideration of other value positions, although she did in the interview, beginning of the interview, some of the people felt I couldn't pick up the cockney accent. I had difficulty listening to that and hearing that that was my own personal experience. Some of the others felt that there was some indication in the beginning that she did have some perspective on the value questions that were being raised. So that was the basis for perhaps having potential three on the young doctor. The group pretty much felt that this was a citation of research findings from a pretty well practiced system of research methodology and defined the output of that research methodology as being the answer to the question. In what we felt was a level two approach, there was some consideration of the panorama of people who have moved through what we thought was probably a level three system that the doctor was working in and that he had some kind of overall perspective of what was happening in that system. And so that was the basis of talking about potential three on the final person. MB. The discussion focused around whether the consideration of the value systems that were underlying the conflict in Ethiopia were going to be taken any further in terms of personal action orientation, the creation of some new system to deal with the injustices that this individual had observed, the fact that he had devised a way to make people sit up. I used the phrase couch potatoes. He made a lot of couch potatoes in the UK. Sit up and feel and observe what had been happening in Ethiopia with, as you said, Ian, I don't know about this personally in some dramatic way that felt like level four. Level four because taking some established system of communication, namely the television, broadcasting, media, and changing a part of it to introduce this news material in a way that would make people sit up and listen. The potential five was that most of us felt that this individual was not going to simply go to another story and talk about it in the same way and try to excite people about it and leave that one. That he was probably going to get more involved in the happenings in Ethiopia and try to do something about changing the system and creating a new one. We'd like to have information about all of these points that I raised. These are the hypotheses that we generated. I have to reiterate that many of us felt very uncomfortable making these kind of judgments, but these are the hypotheses that were generated.
Speaker B Thanks, Tom.
Speaker D I think it's necessary that there'd be.
Speaker G One direction it wasn't cockney and strine.
Speaker B Yeah.
Speaker D This that's, um a lot of time at the beginning of our group was spent with all the conditions as to and considerations as to why this was.
Speaker G A very difficult, if not possible, task at this point.
Speaker D They included the problems of cultural differences, stereotypes.
Speaker G There's a discussion about whether the communication.
Speaker D Style of the participants figure since they were on television or they were being.
Speaker G Interviewed, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker D Whether this would have any effect on the way they expose if there was.
Speaker G A dialogue and you are speaking to someone else, whether that would affect in.
Speaker D Any way the level at which you're speaking at.
Speaker G So after a lot of considerations tossed out, two or three people in the group decided to take a crack at it. And basically with the lady, a lot.
Speaker D Of us felt she was fairly concrete in terms of due to the fact.
Speaker G That there was a lack of pause.
Speaker D And there seemed to be a lack.
Speaker G Of being able to stop and develop.
Speaker D A concept about what was going on.
Speaker G And so we had a couple of.
Speaker D Us when I say we, it's really.
Speaker G A couple of us. I don't want to take the claustillic or a lot of others that just said it was too difficult, that there.
Speaker D Was a lack of pauses and some fairly concrete level with the psychiatrist. A few of us noted the fact that he seemed to be talking in.
Speaker G Terms of some kind of trend going.
Speaker D On, some sequence of events, that there was a sequence and then a change in what happened and that this was.
Speaker G The primary data for looking at the psychiatrist and with the journalist. We noted the fact a couple of things. One, that when he was asked a.
Speaker D Question, he didn't answer just to the question, but rather he seemed to reconfigure the elements of the situation in answering the question.
Speaker G And so we thought that he would.
Speaker D Be of a more general kind of.
Speaker G Higher level capacity, maybe low five or possibly even six or something like that.
Speaker D And finally there was some consideration. I said the best I could do.
Speaker G Was think of this as conceptual mode.
Speaker D I don't know if they could work at this level.
Speaker G All I know is they're talking, so they conceptualize.
Speaker D Then there was a distinction made that we should consider current capacity and future capacity. And most of what I've just spoken of is our assessment of current capacity. And I don't believe we really got.
Speaker G Into any discussion of future capacity.
Speaker A Thanks.
Speaker H Group Egg had an interesting discussion about the lady, the first woman. It's very clear that she created a set because she took the sending the people away to battle and die early with people later on. So it's very clear she made a set, but there was interest, which makes her anybody create a set could be thinking it too. But then the interesting dilemma about that, I think one of our members pointed out was that there was no relationship necessarily between the pieces in the set. And that was very interesting until I was talking with Catherine and I think for the first time I've seen somebody going backwards. Usually people are going up, they have a potential to go up or stay where they are. But I think she may have been two going down to one. I haven't seen that very often. The doctor was thinking serially. He used serial thinking in terms of time, one time two. And that was very clear that he was able to create and think in terms of serial observations. And that made the doctor would be a level higher than the woman for sure at level three, stratum three, the Burke was interesting. Burke was using I didn't hear I didn't concentrate so much on the Ethiopian one. I heard Burke using intangibles third order consequences example, the comment about the sanctions not having an effect, in fact having the opposite effect, the notion of having censorship covering up something positive as opposed to necessarily covering up something negative. So he was able very quickly to grasp and use intangible thinking. With that, I would see Burke more along stratum six thinking than dowd four or five. That was what we didn't do a lot of scoring about that. We talked about some other things, but anybody else in group want to comment?
Speaker B Okay, thanks. And rupette.
Speaker G Michael.
Speaker D As we spent a little time trying to clarify some of the terms that we were using current capacity, mode and.
Speaker G So forth, and we kind of had several passes. Several people, in kind of an intuitive.
Speaker D Sense, were able to make some statements.
Speaker G Where they felt like people were operating and where that might put them in some type of potential growth band. We focus then a little bit on the concepts that I'm working with or.
Speaker D That my work is referring to, is.
Speaker G Looking at language of sets as a.
Speaker D Basis for making that kind of distinction.
Speaker G And we close the parallel.
Speaker D In some ways, what Steve was saying felt like that the lady was level two. What she did was she spent the.
Speaker G Whole time defining a set. She was putting things into the in.
Speaker D Fact, she named that set the Situation. She spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the elements and.
Speaker G She was very frustrated when somebody tried to stop her from putting all the things in there that she thought needed.
Speaker D To go into her set for it to be that.
Speaker G Catherine did make the observation that Steve's.
Speaker D Already mentioned that her sense was this was a person who had that kind.
Speaker G Of capability, was actually deteriorating her capacity.
Speaker D And then may have reached an age.
Speaker G Where she was able to construct a.
Speaker D Set but then wasn't able to manipulate it.
Speaker G In fact, not only wasn't able to.
Speaker D Manipulate up into three and four, but couldn't get a handle around the one that she had created and might indicate.
Speaker G A downward regression in level one.
Speaker D Back to one. We didn't spend that much time on.
Speaker G The young doctor as a group. I throw in my perception on is.
Speaker D That it was a pretty straightforward three where he said he took a serial.
Speaker G Look at, well, early in stage one.
Speaker D This is a situation which, with this kind of wrenching, leads to two where.
Speaker G People change their mind and after they.
Speaker D Feel better or glad they didn't. Which leads to three, which is, even if people are getting out and we look back, they say these kind of things which leads to the possible determination.
Speaker G That you shouldn't take people's thoughts at.
Speaker D The darkest hour as if they were.
Speaker G Really in their own best interest at any point. He was looking at a series of events and how those interacted. And then fourth.
Speaker D I felt like and.
Speaker G We had some discussion about was demonstrating.
Speaker D Level four, which would be parallel processing.
Speaker G Or able to recognize the interaction on multiple kind of processes. In my perspective, he started out real clear three line of reasoning, which was back and said, well, I first got.
Speaker D In touch with this back way back.
Speaker G When, back in 63.
Speaker D And then we seemed to be doing well. And then some years later it seemed to slow down.
Speaker G And now as we look out in the future, it looks bleak. So it was a real brief sort of serial review.
Speaker D And then he started looking at some.
Speaker G Of the interactions of what the government had done to that and maybe what censorship had that had affected that sequence and started showing some pretty agile four type of reasoning. I thought it was interesting when I asked a question about the political issue from my perspective, he dropped way back and responded that on a level one, just labeled it as political and really did not engage that.
Speaker D And then came back about his own experience. And again, I thought it was classic from my sense of kind of level.
Speaker G Four reasoning where he asked how do you do that kind of thing?
Speaker D And he cited what if he had.
Speaker G Gone to a different school and if.
Speaker D Only this and cited a number of.
Speaker G Parallel kinds issues, some of which had not been proposed.
Speaker D And looked at those interactions.
Speaker G As I said in the group, I have a hard time.
Speaker D In general taking.
Speaker G Observation and making some statement about potential.
Speaker D But my sense is that he was clearly higher than four and was working.
Speaker G With a piece of his overall picture at level four.
Speaker D And I think we'd said five.
Speaker B Okay, thanks. Flint particularly concerned about some absolute statement with regard to these particular examples. One of the problems, obviously, is that there is no opportunity for interaction. You can't ask somebody, what do you mean by Chris? You can't try and see if it goes beyond the sort of things you were raising. And they were very short sequences. The important element, as far as I'm concerned, is much more these sorts of issues and is there any commonality in the justification for the judgments. And it's clearly not a simple process. And the concern being that if we're involved in these processes, how do we explain to individuals the basis of why you've come to that particular judgment? One of the important issues I think that came out generally is the distractions of how you get talking about the particular group saying whether you like the person or not. That woman to begin with is certainly she's not frightened of the occasion. She's not going to be put off by this dumb interviewer. But on the other hand, what is it that she's actually saying? What is the nature of the argument that she's putting forward? There was the young doctor, I think also was referred to polished and educated. How far do these these issues actually affect people's judgments and set you up to make hypotheses prior to hearing or actually interacting in person in the first place? Which goes back to one of the original questions, which is saying in terms of assessment, well, maybe all you do is get a group of people who are successful in an organization and get them to select people that are just like them and not worry about all of those things. If you like them and they behave like you and someone, they're in. Can you go beyond that? The other issue with Michael Burke is how far his presentation, which is much more confident, is to do with him being on TV, used to that medium and people talked about the differences. Presumably the first two, to my knowledge, I've no idea aren't used to being on television, aren't used to that sort of interaction underlying it. Go back to one of the previous points is there is difficulty in distinguishing between current and potential and the extent to which we have access to somebody talking about some real work that they'd done. And I think that only came out in the third interview. I mean, here was somebody actually talking about something that they had done. You could check that this fellow actually did do these broadcasts as people said he did make an influence on people. So in some senses that's closer to the sort of information we might get in a career path appreciation about talking about the sort of experiences that people have felt satisfied with or times when they've underused or overextended. Now, when we look at what about the content, then there are a range of descriptions here. There was some commonality about talking about set theory, defining sets, making sets. Interesting that two groups actually talked about that woman going backwards. What does that mean? We looked at using words like concrete. She didn't. Morris where were the pauses? Development of context notions of looking at a series of events, the serial nature in terms of the doctor, in terms of Michael Burke, we start off with general statements of the depth and breadth of the person whole systems and then reconfigured figured the elements grasped intangibles. What do those concepts mean? Do we mean the same thing by them? Do we share those sorts of judgments? Not so much in terms of in this exercise, making a definitive statement, but what are the methods that we're using? Look at the two situations I've referred to earlier of current capability being concerned with and I think the last interview is easier or gives us more clues, let's say, between somebody talking about the actual work and task they've completed. That is talking about resolution of events, actually working through something over a period of time, completing a task in the way in which they did it. And I think there's a lot of information which Flyn was calling parallel processing. In that example where clearly when he was really talking about I thought there was a lot of information, he was really talking about how he made those judgments, how he used his discretion when he was saying he had something to do, he had a report to do. And whilst he had that in his mind, he was aware of how he was being affected by his own experiences, his own direct experiences and how that was influencing what he was doing. He was also talking about how he felt maybe he ought to have been a doctor. Those sorts of examples. Can we be clear about others and what is it we're seeing when people are talking about their work in the more open ended situations? The first two well, the young doctor talked a little bit about his work, but he was also attempting to answer much more open ended questions. The first two were both in much more open situation. They were not talking about some work that they had to do. How is it they constructed the situation? Perhaps one of the points about the woman was the extent to which she was completely comfortable with what she was saying compared to and I'll show the taste again compared to the younger fellow who didn't necessarily put his arguments together. I found that first of all, when I watched, it very difficult to even understand what it was he was saying and what he was grasping for. Some of the clues, let's move this.
Speaker D Out of the way.
Speaker B Like to consider I'll run through this quickly. I've put this material together in a paper necessary to note all these down. Looking at, for example, the use of.
Speaker D Language.
Speaker B What sort of language do people use? Terms of thoughts and words that are actually very directly related to objects, very much tied into I think perhaps somebody was talking about meaning by concrete. They're actually there the words refer to objects that actually can be pointed to or seen and that's usually childhood. But certainly, as I was saying, in my experience, it's very much part of the adult world. In mental handicap, we looked at.
Speaker G What.
Speaker B We'Re more used to seeing is in those sorts of extracts using language which are not tied directly to the objects anymore. We're talking about using them as symbols. We're talking about a word which is not necessarily the differences. For example, give you very clear example the difference between childhood and adulthood. If you've ever talked to children or young children about their school, I'm talking about five or six year olds when they tell you about school and they'll be talking about their experiences and they will use the names of people as if you must know them. They'll talk about Mrs. Brown, they don't generalize into teacher and they'll talk about their friends as if the actual word itself conjures up the whole picture of the person. And you should know about that if you've ever been in that sort of discussion and how stupid you can feel because you can't pick up on what's so obvious to the child when we're talking about this order of language. You don't need to talk in that way. You can talk about teachers, you can talk about friends. When we move on third order of language we're talking about now concepts that are actually more than once removed from a tangible object. So the important issue going, thinking about the use of this as a method of analysis is not the actual use of the words. And it's important to say that language is not same, obviously as vocabulary. Anybody can use third order language. People can talk about political systems, for example. They can actually use those words. Are they using them as part of an actual reasoned argument so that they're actually doing some work for the person? There's another part of the tape which is a very good example of somebody talking about political systems, an analysis of the whole world where if you listen to the words that he used you'd think that the person had a grasp of all political, social and economic realities. Think about how a lot of politicians talk using that sort of language and they're not necessarily using those to work flyn who will talk in a moment developing the use of language. I think the modeling that he's used is not a million miles from these sort of looking at somebody who is solving problems using a practical judgment. The direct experience when you meet a problem, the way that you solve it is by directly manipulating it, by using judgments. And I think one of the comments earlier was somebody said the woman in that example was using although she was talking about values, she was actually using very much her own direct person experience. Well, maybe that was the case in.
Speaker D That situation.
Speaker B From sorry, that's not very clear solving problems by using diagnostic accumulation, sorting out significance from a series of events or this one, which was I think much closer to the sorts of examples that were given in terms of serial and sequences of events. You're actually constructing alternative routes, but they are linear. And then the final example came up in a couple of groups that parallel processing, which I think is evidenced in that last example of whether a person can actually see the interactions between those serial pathways and understand the importance of those interactions or whether they are just a set of unconnected, a series of series where the interaction between them are not noticed. Would you just like to see those tapes again? Having gone through all of those examples or would you like to move on now? Many people like to review that. Yeah, okay. I'll just quickly run through those again. And then, Flynn, if you'd like to.
Speaker G Quite prepared to go along with that.
Speaker D The day that the director of public.
Speaker G Prosecutions in Victoria will launch a case.
Speaker D Like that, there'll be revolution in the streets.
Speaker A Yes. You talked about killers. To start off, you say killers and carers. We're in a society of things to me, that doesn't hesitate to take the cream of our youth, chop them up to another country and kill them off, not even in defense of our own country. And then at the same time, we're talking about, well, how far can we go? How far are they going to have to be? Will the doctors be able to have a say? And I think they have far too much say. And the thing is that will somebody else be rational, be able to talk about it? But what or will they be depressed? I think it's a whole lot of hypocrisy. Do you realize that the women in the world are the carers that we are? We sit and we watch someone that we've loved and cared for most of our lives slowly disintegrately before our very eyes. And either we've got to be as brave as this lady over here, and it's made a pact with her husband that she'll take the chance that she'll be had up for murder and that or we go, we we sit passively by and wait it happens. Surely. Wait a minute. Don't interrupt. The thing is, I want to know the conclusion. Well, let me get to it. If you haven't interrupted, I'll be finished by now. The whole thing is that here we are in the situation, and there are going to be hundreds, if not thousands of older people in our aging society that are going to be as they are, already homeless and neglected in the situation, that they've got nothing really to live for. They don't have enough to frame the leaf to start off with. Wait a minute. My only chance. So if you didn't have to interrupt, I've been finished. I think that we've got to have the freedom of choice if we're going to be brought up in a world that is supposed to be that we are mature adults. We can make a decision early if you want to, but if we should have the freedom, be able to die indignity. And all this yak is not getting us very far towards it.
Speaker B And in my experience in that unit.
Speaker D Many patients have expressed the wish to die in particular that occurs early on.
Speaker G In the course of their convalescence. And what we find is that as.
Speaker D They rehabilitate, the vast majority of patients lose that wish to die.
Speaker G And many of the patients I'm sorry, you say the vast majority of those that you can't really help. Yes.
Speaker B There are those who in.
Speaker G Fact continue to express the wish to die.
Speaker D But what we have found is that.
Speaker G The majority of those who express that.
Speaker D Wish are in fact depressed.
Speaker G And what we have found is that.
Speaker D The majority of patients and I can't give you an exact figure, but we.
Speaker G Know that the figure who are depressed when they leave the hospital is approximately 10%. But 90% of patients, despite having come from a wide variety of levels of injury and degrees of disability, in fact.
Speaker D Don'T express that wish.
Speaker G And many patients have expressed to us that they are very glad that no.
Speaker D One in fact acted upon or allowed them to act upon their wish to die at that early stage.
Speaker G I'd like to take yours as someone.
Speaker A Who'S.
Speaker D A newscaster for the BBC for 15 years.
Speaker G There was this reports from Ethiopia and.
Speaker D South Africa that brought the plight of.
Speaker G Those countries into lounge rooms right around.
Speaker D The world and that ever so famous.
Speaker G Voice we now meet the face Michael Burke joins us this morning. Good morning. Good morning, michael, what you've done has.
Speaker D Awakened the world to what goes on in South Africa and Ethiopia and other countries.
Speaker G Are things getting any better in South Africa?
Speaker I Not really, no, I don't think so. Certainly when I went to South Africa in 1983, things seemed to be rather hopeful that some of the Parth Eight laws were being reformed, as you know, and seemed to be moving forward in a way. But then there was this almost kind of uprising that came that's been put down there and the whole thing seems to have stagnated and the changes to the partheid and the racial laws seem to have come to a halt.
Speaker D Censorship is obviously hindered.
Speaker I Yes, I think so, because the uprising has been suppressed in a way and because I think those people who were out rioting have got tired and it's waiting for the next time it comes up. But because of censorship, people don't really know whether there's any violence around or not because, of course, reporting or not is not allowed. So in a sense, perhaps that's working.
Speaker B Against the South African government. If things really have wiped them down.
Speaker D How can we possibly help the black people in South Africa?
Speaker G Sanctions more a help or a hindrance?
Speaker I Oh gosh, that's a real political question to ask a reporter, isn't it? My personal view is that the sanctions imposed by the outside world or the level of sanctions imposed by the outside world don't do anything really more than make the white governments in South Africa more determined to stick to his own path. Certainly the sort of sanctions that have been contemplated by the Western government so far.
Speaker G Let's have a look now at one of your reports on Ethiopia.
Speaker D How on earth, Michael, how could you possibly cope with walking into that mean?
Speaker I It was very think, you know, as a journalist and particularly a reporter in Africa, you do become hardened to lots of things. But it's very difficult to become heartened to misery on that scale. Both the numbers and the way that people were suffering. And you stood there in the middle of it and you thought to yourself all those confused emotions going through your mind, smelling it, feeling it, touching it, having people holding babies in front of you because you're a white man. They think you're a doctor and can help. And you're just a reporter and you can't. And you wished you'd have been better at biology at school and been a doctor. All those things running through your mind and great confusion wondering how you can communicate to people sitting at home and experiencing it thirdhand through a television screen in their own comfortable lounges. How you can communicate all the things that you're feeling through to those sort of people and wondering if you're ever.
Speaker B Going to be able to.
Speaker D Did you also wonder how we've remained.
Speaker G Ignorant for so long about.
Speaker D I would.
Speaker B Like to now ask Flyn to talk about his work on language.
Speaker G I feel a little bit.
Speaker D Ill prepared to try to address the broad range.
Speaker G Of subjects that Elliot spent most of.
Speaker D The morning putting commas and things aside. And the table was stacking up and.
Speaker G Elliot again, we came back this afternoon with Ian and he described some more.
Speaker D Issues that I think were left unresolved.
Speaker G We talked about this. He said, Would you mind sharing some of your work and talks just to.
Speaker D Start on a little light note? It reminded me my sense of that.
Speaker G Was that when I went to college I played football and I was all eager to get in the game and get in play. And as a freshman I was sitting.
Speaker D On the bench and got frustrated at.
Speaker G And I got my father and the.
Speaker D Other parents who sat right behind the.
Speaker G Team and we finally got far enough.
Speaker D Behind in one game. So I gave them the high sign.
Speaker G And started chanting, we want busey. We want busy.
Speaker D While the coach looks around and says, Busy.
Speaker F Come here.
Speaker D I get my home down there. What are they saying?
Speaker G We want busy.
Speaker D Go up there and see what the hell they want. In kind of the same way I've got several people have come up and I'm not sure which dimension of what.
Speaker G I've been doing is of interest or.
Speaker D How to best start from set some.
Speaker G Context to put that in.
Speaker D I want to take just a brief.
Speaker G Moment and give a little bit of that background. Kind of how I wandered into this process up to here. In fact, I thought it found it.
Speaker D Interesting to ask each of you that.
Speaker G How did you wind up here seeming like such a normal person? Give you just a little bit of.
Speaker D That background and then sort of pose.
Speaker G The question or the problem that I was essentially dealing with. And then instead of simply talking about.
Speaker D The little methodology of Snow.
Speaker G I want to see if I can have you do a little exercise and.
Speaker D Again wrestle with it a little bit.
Speaker G And we'll come back and talk about.
Speaker D Applying that methodology and some of the questions or some of the issues that.
Speaker G You might be wrestling with as you're.
Speaker D Trying to understand what I'm talking about.
Speaker G Figure out how to apply it or argue with some of the places where it doesn't match what your previous understandings are or what your observation. Just a little bit of background.
Speaker D I was stumbling around in college and trying to get out, get my dissertation done, and I made the mistake of.
Speaker G Choosing something I was interested in as a dissertation topic.
Speaker D And I had always been interested in.
Speaker G How different people make moral judgments, how we go around the world acting as if we know how it should be. And so I sort of started with the work of Kohlberg P-I-J And some.
Speaker D Other people and then through another direction.
Speaker G Became Web Elliott's work and the same.
Speaker D Sort of hierarchical notion. I thought it'd be nice to overlay.
Speaker G Those and see what the relationship was.
Speaker D Very quickly after I got into it.
Speaker G I came across what I consider to.
Speaker D Be a pretty important distinction.
Speaker G And in my mind that's a distinction.
Speaker D Between cognitive processing and levels of abstraction.
Speaker G Ways of thinking about things on the one hand, on the other hand, task.
Speaker D Complexity or the complexity of a problem that you're trying to solve. And one of the features of taking a moral problem is that it doesn't necessarily have the predefined kind of starting point, ending point complexity defined that many tasks do.
Speaker G If someone assigns you a task, there's.
Speaker D Been a pre structuring of that task in order to be able to be assigned.
Speaker G Whereas with a moral problem we find.
Speaker D Ourselves in an open kind of context.
Speaker G Where what we understand to be the situation and what we ought to do can range all over the map. And it's difficult for any one person.
Speaker D To stay and say, well, this is.
Speaker G The real situation, whereas your version is.
Speaker D Less complete or is too detailed or whatever. In that process, I came to make.
Speaker G A distinction and to move away some.
Speaker D From the notion of stratum one, two, three in an organizational kind of context.
Speaker G And focusing almost specifically in this work on the Quintave model where we're looking.
Speaker D At four discrete types of reasoning, four.
Speaker G True categories of reasoning, and that these.
Speaker D Have identifiable kind of characteristics that Elliot initially set out in terms of set theory.
Speaker G Forgive me. For those of you overly redundant, let.
Speaker D Me jot up a couple. Just a real quick picture of this.
Speaker G For those that might not have it on top of your mind notion that there are four different types of reasoning or four different categories of reasoning, with the first type being repeated as the fifth type in a sequence. And then this becomes the first level.
Speaker D Or next level complexity.
Speaker G So what we have just with this.
Speaker D Little bit is two very important distinctions. One is the difference between the levels of abstraction and the other is the difference between levels of complexity. Whereas anything can start off when you.
Speaker G Start off with something concrete or anything when you have something and you deal.
Speaker D With it as if it's a thing.
Speaker G Then that establishes a basis for the lowest level of abstraction and then it works up there from there.
Speaker D What else is described as a set theory. The first level of abstraction is where there are no sets created or.
Speaker G Rework that to make that positive statement. Whereas it's actually someone is utilizing previously constructed sets. So what they're doing is using things.
Speaker D Concepts, categories of things, sets that they already have.
Speaker G Second of where there is the creation of new primary sets.
Speaker D And I find somewhat comes in a notion of sets.
Speaker G I think as you work with it, it's a useful concept because of the.
Speaker D Way it relates to mother. Richard my general way of using easier.
Speaker G Words to understand are categories.
Speaker D You start off with a category or.
Speaker G A thing and that's my most layman way of putting something. Level two is where you're able to define something or create something, a thing.
Speaker D That you can talk about and describe.
Speaker G Its characteristics or you can distinguish that thing from a different thing.
Speaker D A second level of abstraction. Third level is where you have interactive primary set where this one tends to.
Speaker G Be static an event as if it were a thing. You can describe that as opposed to the next one where those things start.
Speaker D Interacting and one causes an extra one.
Speaker G Leads to the next. There's clear places where one evolves into the next.
Speaker D There's fundamental characteristic of movement process as opposed to a single thing that's been.
Speaker G Defined here or just being used here without having been defined.
Speaker D A fourth level of.
Speaker G What do we call it? Interactive.
Speaker D Secondary set, partial secondary set.
Speaker G Where again I'm not sure how much time.
Speaker D To spend on this, but if I was going a little time on it and you don't understand nothing.
Speaker G Interesting, he has drawn pictures of these.
Speaker D To help for those more visually oriented.
Speaker G As opposed to those more linguistically oriented.
Speaker D Like himself, where the words tend to carry the meaning. By having pictures of those secondary sets you can see that there are some.
Speaker G Parts of the fifth which is really.
Speaker D Again the first level is using secondary sets. One of my simplistic and therefore it doesn't hold under complete pressure analysis is.
Speaker G A metaphor for furniture where you start off looking and we can describe this.
Speaker D As a what makes it a table?
Speaker G How much deconstruction do I have to.
Speaker D Perform ceases to be a table and.
Speaker G Just is pieces of metal and chopped.
Speaker D Up pieces of board. You don't think about what makes a table, it's just a table kind of concept.
Speaker G You may.
Speaker D Include in a set of.
Speaker G Furniture, not only tables, but chairs and.
Speaker D Lamps and other things. And you can describe a new category of furniture by putting in there things, you know, you can say, this is.
Speaker G All the furniture in this room, and you can look around and define a set of the furniture in this room. You know, the next level would be that if you bring chairs or tables in and out, the amount of furniture in this room is different today maybe than it was yesterday, and maybe again different tomorrow. So describe the furniture in the room.
Speaker D You have to have some kind of.
Speaker G Sense of when the furniture in the.
Speaker D Room is not a static thing, more furniture come in or it can go out. It's still this category of the furniture in the room, even though the specific piece of furniture may be different.
Speaker G At.
Speaker D The next level with partial secondary sets. You can look at furniture as one category of household furnishings and you can.
Speaker G Look at household furnishings as a secondary.
Speaker D Set that contains furniture and appliances and.
Speaker G Clothes and other discrete sets. When you look at it at this.
Speaker D Level, even though you realize furniture is.
Speaker G Just one of the categories, you can.
Speaker D Still see that there are tables and.
Speaker G Chairs and so forth in that set.
Speaker D To this point. These are fairly discreet ways of defining.
Speaker G Levels of abstraction, and I gave these.
Speaker D Names that help to some degree to describe their characteristics.
Speaker G I used these shaping reflecting some earlier.
Speaker D Version of Elliot's use of these things.
Speaker G Extrapolating parallel processing are the four distinct types. And then what I tried to do was to see if I could observe and create some kind of method to identify these different types of thinking and.
Speaker D To develop a criteria that I could.
Speaker G Evaluate some language and see if they.
Speaker D Were creating sets or if they were.
Speaker G Using these easier labels. All of the equipment, if they were.
Speaker D Using shaping mode, or if they were using parallel processing mode, or if they.
Speaker G Were building those up and using some.
Speaker D Of each, or how they were using.
Speaker G Those different types of thinking.
Speaker D I think it's a fairly large step to take the fact that someone is.
Speaker G Currently using parallel processing and to make some statements about their growth potential or.
Speaker D Even their current potential, because they might.
Speaker G Not at that moment be using their highest capable. They can solve that problem, or the.
Speaker D Way they dealt with it can be.
Speaker G Inadequately addressed other than their highest level.
Speaker D I also think there's a major question, at least in my mind, between looking.
Speaker G At these fairly discreet and I've come to believe, fairly identifiable kind of levels of abstraction. For me, watching the tape or watching.
Speaker D Interviews or so forth, it's fairly easy for me to pick out the structural characteristics associated with each of these four types of thinking.
Speaker G I think it's another issue entirely to say, well, where does that put someone.
Speaker D In their ability to handle problems of.
Speaker G Different complexity because you can see in.
Speaker D Children they use all four types, or you can see in someone who consider to be a wise sage, they're using all four types.
Speaker G And to me the issues are more around what kind of circumstances affect the type of reasoning people use.
Speaker D And someone's a term I use called cognitive agility that I think is a very valuable kind of skill, which is to if someone you're talking to is talking in parallel processing kind of terms to communicate with that person.
Speaker G If you can also use that kind.
Speaker A Of.
Speaker G Structure in the way you're dealing.
Speaker D With the world, my sense is your communication will be much better and they'll.
Speaker G Be understanding you better and you understand them better. If you're using a similar level of abstraction, it does not begin to rest over the fact that people use children.
Speaker D Use all four levels, adolescents do, low level, adults do, high level, adults do whatever. And I think so. I think there's still some real work.
Speaker G There to relate the level of abstraction.
Speaker D To the level of complexity inherent need of the task that's assigned to them.
Speaker G What I have found much more insightful.
Speaker D In my own efforts to do that.
Speaker G Is how big a chunk of the.
Speaker D World they take when you don't prestructure the problem. If you just give someone an open.
Speaker G Shot at the world, how big do.
Speaker D They chunk the problem that they're going.
Speaker G To start chewing up and looking at and telling you about and understanding its implications and so forth.
Speaker D One of us, my senses of some of the early moral development kind of stuff was that they made the mistake of identifying higher levels of abstraction with higher levels of moral development.
Speaker G And I found that very unsatisfactory because.
Speaker D I know some people who are quite.
Speaker G Plain, simple people who are wonderfully moral. Their values and their integrity and the.
Speaker D Way they live their life I would.
Speaker G Classify as very moral, although they can't.
Speaker D Think about that and talk about that very abstractly.
Speaker G I've known other people who are quite agile in their ability to hook the world around conceptually, but in the way they live their life and the way they treat other people, I would classify as not morally mature or developed.
Speaker D And so I try to make a.
Speaker G Pretty clear distinction between thinking about things abstractly or even big things extractly, and the implication that just because you're thinking about those in that way.
