GOING DEEPER: Elements of the Experiential Array

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Beliefs I: The Primacy of Beliefs

Beliefs are anything we hold to be self evident, and it is this quality of self evidence that makes beliefs so compelling. Furthermore, the pervasive influence of beliefs makes them of central importance in giving rise to most human abilities. Beliefs have structure, and that structure will take the form of either equivalence relationships ("this means that") or causal relationships ("this causes that").

In 1989, Russian psychic and mentalist E. Frenkel stepped onto the train tracks in the city of Astrakhan and, lowering his head in concentration, held up his hands to stop an onrushing train. In a note left nearby, Frenkel explained, "First I stopped a bicycle, cars and a streetcar. Now I am going to stop a train." Whatever powers Mr. Frenkel may have had, they were not sufficient to stop the train, which ran over and killed him ("Soviet who relied on psychic power killed," The Associated Press, in The Denver Post/International, October 2, 1989). Mr. Frenkel's belief in his psychic powers, however, were sufficient to allow him to do something he surely recognized as normally extremely dangerous. And this despite the apparent drive for self-preservation that all animals - including human beings - demonstrate. How could he have done such a thing?

We can simply dismiss Mr. Frenkel as another deluded person who foolishly sacrificed himself to his delusion. But if we do that we will miss the wonderful lesson his actions exemplified. That lesson is that behavior springs from beliefs. Nor is his an isolated example. It is not even uncommon. Throughout history millions of men and women have put themselves in the path of mortal danger, even certain death, in the service of their beliefs: Crusaders, American revolutionaries, Jeanne d'Arc, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay, Thor Heyerdal, Jesus of Nazareth, Chief Joseph, Yuri Gagarin, Mahatma Ghandi, the "freedom riders" of the 1950s, Che Guevara, and the anonymous Chinese man standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Certainly, all of these people had their own reasons for doing what they did. But in every case they had reasons. None of them did those things because they happened to be in the neighborhood at the time.

Of course, the neighborhood you happen to be in does matter. During times of war, citizens are often swept up against their will (or at least better judgement) into military service. Given a choice, they would stay home. Yet, they go. Is their submission an argument against Mr. Frenkel's object lesson on the primacy of beliefs? No. After all, there would also be citizens that refused to put on a uniform (themselves risking ostracism, jail or death by their refusal). Both groups are living in the same world, but respond differently to the situation. The biggest determinant of their differing responses are the beliefs they hold. For instance, those who join the army perhaps believe that they have no choice in the matter. Or that the needs of the State are more important than those of the individual. Or that religious faith requires fearless sacrifice. Or that it would be cowardly to refuse. On the other hand, those who refuse to join the army may believe that they do have a choice. Or that the individual is more important than the State. Or that religious faith requires doing harm to no one. Or that it would be cowardly not to refuse. The possible reasons are endless; what is finite is the fact that there will be reasoning based on certain beliefs. And the nature of those beliefs will profoundly affect the behavior that results from that reasoning.

The situations that most reveal the compelling nature of beliefs occur when one of our strongly held beliefs is challenged by apparently disconfirming events. Extensive and clear examples of how compelling beliefs can be was documented by Festinger, Riecken and Schachter in their now classic study of a doomsday group (Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of Modern Groups That Predict the Destruction of the World). Members of this group believed aliens were about to destroy the world, but would pluck the faithful of the group to the safety of space just prior to Armageddon. They quit their jobs, gave away possessions and endured scorn and ridicule. The appointed day arrived and the members assembled to await the flying saucers that would take them to safety. Not only did the saucers not show, but the destruction of the world did not occur either. This created a serious problem for these people who now had to somehow square their beliefs regarding the prophecy with the fact that it did not come true. For a few members of the group, the lack of fireworks was too difficult to reconcile with the beliefs they held and so they left the group. The solution for most of the group members, however, came in the form of a new "communication" from the extraterrestrials: because of the group's demonstration of faith, the aliens had decided to give humankind another chance.

We can debate about whether or not there are aliens, whether or not these people were justified or not in holding their beliefs, and whether or not they are appropriate beliefs to hold. But what is, in any case, evident is that beliefs significantly influenced these people's choices and behaviors, and that when faced with the necessity of resolving a challenge to these closely held beliefs, most of them responded by finding a way to perceive events so they did not disconfirm their beliefs. In fact many found ways to understand the events so that they supported their original beliefs. To have denied the beliefs they held so ardently would have been to deny the world as they knew it. Not a small thing for them.

Nor is it a small thing for any of us. The extreme circumstances in the examples we have been considering make obvious the central significance of beliefs in compelling behavior. But of course this same process is also at work in all of us in the most mundane of daily circumstances. Indeed, the organizing influence of beliefs is evident in virtually everything we do. A moment's reflection upon the subtle, swift and often unconscious background to any of our thousands of daily choices and responses makes evident the pervasive impact of beliefs:

* Walking down the street you finish a candy bar and, not wanting to litter, cast about for a trash can. You make your way to one and toss the wrapper. Looking up, you spot someone else casually dropping their candy wrapper on the sidewalk! You are suddenly flooded with disgust that someone could be so disrespectful of the environment.

* You are trying to get that report done, but not getting very far. Thinking about what is making it so difficult, you remember that you always seem to have done your best work when you have Afro-Cuban music playing. So you put some on.

* A friend calls to ask you to help him move next weekend. You had planned to go skiing. Nevertheless, you agree to help him. After all, what are friends for?

Each of us can multiply these examples a thousand-fold. And in every case the pattern is the same: Your response to the situation is significantly influenced by the beliefs you are holding in that situation.

SO WHAT ARE "BELIEFS"?

The notion of "beliefs" covers a lot of experiential ground. People believe in God, atheism, self-interest, charity, self-sacrifice, self-satisfaction, capitalism, communism, control, and freedom. People believe that the world is round, that we never went to the moon, that whales and redwoods must be preserved, that if you drop a glass it is likely to break, and that Elvis is still alive. People have beliefs about themselves, about others, about the world in general, about certain aspects of it in particular, about what is possible, and about what is not possible. The range of beliefs is as wide as human experience itself.

The quality that makes these endless judgements about experience "beliefs" (rather than "observations," "speculations," or "interpretations") is that they are considered by the person who holds them to be self-evident. That is, that person has acquired enough evidence of the truth of the proposition that s/he no longer requires additional evidence to take it as true. (To "know" that something is true, is to cross over into believing that there is no evidence that could prove otherwise.) Of course, what constitutes sufficient evidence for one person regarding a particular belief may be different from that required by another person. Evidence may be personal experiences, testimonials or arguments made by a respected source, an idea that fits with other ideas we already have, or our observations of others. We may require one example or a hundred examples. It may only need to be something small, or it may require an earth shattering experience. But however we get there, the destination is the same: we have sufficient evidence to no longer need evidence of the truth of something. It is self-evident. It is a belief. (Obviously, established beliefs continue to be subject to the same process that originally brought them into being. That is, established beliefs can be changed as the result of sufficient evidence of the "truth" of a challenging proposition or experience. We will have more to say about this process in the essay on Acquisition.)

What is more, most of our beliefs are implicit, rather than explicit. We often talk about and relate to them as though they are always explicit and at hand, as if each of us has a list of beliefs to which we can refer when asked, "So, what do you believe about this?" While all of us certainly do have some consciously held beliefs, we are not conscious of the vast majority of them. Most of what we come to believe seems so evident, so thoroughly a part of our subjective worlds, that they become transparent. For instance, the belief that there is some kind of hierarchy in nature (whether as the result of a divine plan or evolutionary pressure) is a belief that is operating in most of us, unacknowledged, unexamined, transparent. And tremendously influential. It is a premise that has, for example, justified slavery, the class system, castes, stratification, organizational structures, and humanity's dominion over the planet. Even taking the position that "human beings are responsible for preserving the planet and its natural resources" is based on that same, underlying premise. (For many examples and a deeper discussion of these points, see Stephen Jay Gould's Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, and Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh, and Lakoff and Turner's More Than Cool Reason.)

The fact that a belief can be implicit in one's experience does not, however, mean that it is beyond the reach of consciousness, that it cannot be articulated. It means only that there has been no need to explicitly articulate it. Because it has served to effectively guide our responses and maintain the coherency of our subjective worlds, there has been no occasion requiring that it be made explicit and, perhaps, examined. Similarly, we do not have to monitor or understand the beating of our hearts - indeed, we do not even have to know of its existence - for it to fulfill its systemic role in our bodies. But when we discover that we can no longer bound up the stairs without getting woozy, we suddenly become very aware that our heart is there, and it becomes useful to understand explicitly how it functions.

Beliefs, then. are explicit or implicit propositions that - for the individual - are valid to the point of being self-evident.

THE RELEVANCE OF BELIEFS TO MODELING

In essay 2 (Getting Started) we introduced the notion of "maps" as a way of describing what a model is. Within that analogy, a model is a map of a particular experience or ability. We also noted that we can make different maps of the same territory, and that a useful map/model is one that portrays the experiential landscape in a way that allows us to navigate through it. That is, the usefulness of a model is largely determined by the distinctions used to create it.

The fundamental and pervasive influence of beliefs upon our thoughts, feelings and actions clearly make beliefs a distinction worth including in any mapping or modeling of human experiences and abilities. In fact, we find very few examples of human abilities in which beliefs do not play a significant and even necessary role. But how are we to make our way through a territory as vast and endlessly diverse as that of beliefs?

Despite the infinite richness of content and linguistic expression of human beliefs, there are nevertheless discernable structures that give rise to that endless variety. (Identifying these structures is the specific topic of the next essay.) There are two formative patterns in these structures: "equivalence relationships" and "causal relationships." These two patterns are the basis of all beliefs, and it is to them that we now turn.

Equivalence Relationships

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
         (from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky)

One of the remarkable things about Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, Jabberwocky, is that we do not read it as nonsense. Every noun and verb in its opening lines is, well, not a noun or verb, or at least none that are known to anyone other than Carroll himself. And yet we do not simply dismiss it as gibberish and toss it in the trash. Quite the opposite. Instead we search for associations with the words. Read it again and you will discover images dancing in your head and perhaps feelings doing the same in your body. Your images may be of familiar things or of phantasmagoria, and they may be clear, hazy or fleeting. But whatever they are, they are you trying to make meaning out of Carroll's words.

Human beings are meaning-making creatures. That is, we are consciously and unconsciously making meaning out of our perceptions and experience as they occur. We do not run around all day having experiences, then sit home in the evening trying to figure out what they meant. We make meaning as part of the experience itself. As we discussed in previous sections, the process of ongoing meaning-making dramatically influences what we do - choices, judgements, behaviors, feelings - from moment to moment. This process is ongoing and endless. As we move through the world and our daily lives, new distinctions are made for us and by us, constantly expanding our experiential vocabulary of meanings.

For instance, in her memoir, An American Childhood, Annie Dillard describes a trip with her mother to a branch of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh. It was the early 1950's, and the library was in Homewood, "a Negro section of town." Getting out of the car, they encountered Henry Watson, the beau of the Dillard family's maid, walking with some other men:

"It would embarrass him, I thought, if I said hello to him in front of his friends. I was wrong. He spied me, picked me up - books and all - swung me as he always did, and introduced Mother and me to his friends. Later, as we were climbing the long stone steps to the library's door, Mother said, 'That's what I mean by good manners.' " (p.80)

Dillard's mother made a connection for her between Henry Watson's behavior and "good manners." She was telling her daughter, "this means that," establishing an equivalence relationship between the two. We create equivalence relationships any time we mark out an aspect of experience as being distinct by attaching to it a particular significance. ("Marking out" is an essential process in establishing equivalence or causal relationships. The potential richness of distinctions to be made about experience is infinite. You have only to learn how to really taste wine, see colors, or anything where your experience is opened to distinctions not noticed before, to realize the scope of this potential.)

Anything in the infinite range of human experience can become distinct in this way. The process of building up a vast and limitless lexicon of equivalence relationships begins in childhood. Awash with undifferentiated experience to begin with, over time the world was marked out and labeled for each of us. There were objects (mommy, daddy, cow, building, Christmas present, George, spinach), qualities (red, rough, soft, loud, sour, fresh), relationships (too much, enough, closed, above, inside), behaviors (running, thinking, whining, squirming, babbling, smiling), personality characteristics (smart, inconsiderate, lady-like, gentlemanly, happy, polite,) and abstractions (mind, democracy, ideals, good, bad, relative), and so on. Soon our world was filled with distinctions.

As human beings, the significance of a distinct experience is often captured for us by a word (or words). Indeed, all words are examples of equivalence relationships. That is, words have meaning and operate as words only when they are made equivalent to (attached to, connected to) some kind of experience. Once that equivalence relationship has been established, hearing, reading or thinking the word "calls up" consciously or unconsciously the experience with which it is connected. And of course, as two sides of an equivalence relationship, experiencing something (for example, seeing a red ball) can "call up" in internal dialogue the words that label that experience. This is how words work. (Marking out experiences does not necessarily involve linguistic labeling. One can create meaningful equivalence and causal connections unmediated by language. Animals do it; so do we.)

HOW EQUIVALENCE RELATIONSHIPS RELATE TO BELIEFS

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
                - George Bernard Shaw

Once an equivalence relationship has been established, it tends to operate in the person's experience as a given, as something that is self-evident. As we talk with our friend, Susan, for example, we notice that her scarf is red and that she is happy today, and we find her a warm person. The redness of Susan's scarf, her happiness, and her warmth are self-evident, obvious to anyone. We do not need to ask ourselves, "What is that color?" (red), "What does her constant smiling and frequent laughter mean about her emotional state?" (happy), or "What does her frequent touching of our arm and her probing questions say about who she is?" (warm). The fact that these equivalence relationships are beliefs (that is, accepted as true) and not truth itself is revealed when someone else joins us who has somewhat different equivalence relationships for these same experiences. For this person, Susan's constant smiling and frequent laughter mean that she is "nervous," and her frequent touching and probing questions mean that she is "intrusive." Furthermore, this person is an artist and does not even see the scarf as red. Instead, he insists, "It is actually maroon."

Some beliefs, then, are the equivalence relationships through which we identify or evaluate something. For example, when we identify an acquaintance as being "a kind man," that assessment of him is based on an equivalence relationship we have between "kindness" and the behavior this man exhibits. That is, the observation that the acquaintance is a "kind" man is based on a belief we hold about what constitutes "kindness." Whether we are explicit or implicit about it, in judging this man "kind" we are saying this man's actions match our belief that (for example) "Kind people are those who try to help others feel better." The equivalence relationship here is between the label "kind" and the action "helping others feel better." (Taking a few moments now to list a few of the characteristics you value in yourself and others, and then considering what each of those characteristics is, will quickly repay you with a firmer understanding of equivalence relationships as one form of beliefs.)

Causal Relationships

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
                - Thomas Jefferson

Causal relationships are established when we perceive that "one thing" consistently and predictably leads to "something else." Perhaps you have seen a child sitting in a high chair discovering gravity. She lifts her spoon, lets go, and stares in wonder as it clatters to the tray. Hesitantly, she picks it up again and lets go. After a few more trials, the causal relationship between letting things go and their falling is established. Now she lifts her bowl, dangles it over the side of the high chair and looks at you as she lets go of the bowl. Now she knows what is going to happen to the bowl, and is free to explore the causal relationship between dropping things and your reaction. With enough examples of the reliability of a cause-effect relationship, it becomes a given, something self-evident, and takes its place in the transparent fabric of our reality.

Similarly, Mr. Frenkel (with whom we began this essay) noticed that there was a causal relationship between his having the intent to stop moving objects and their stopping. Perhaps he had been threatened by an oncoming bicyclist and thought fiercely, "Stop!" and the cyclist screeched to a halt. Surprised, it may have occurred to Mr. Frenkel to try it again with another cyclist, and then he had enough such successes that he came to believe that there was, indeed, a causal relationship between his intent and moving objects. Then came the train.

While the association in equivalence relationships is one of "this means that," the association in causal relationships is one of "this causes that." As with equivalence relationships, causal relationships are established for us when two or more "things" in our experience are marked out as relating to one another. For instance, you might notice that when you exercise regularly it causes you to have more energy, that rubbing your hands together quickly makes them feel warmer, that the smooth voice tones of your lover make you feel content, or wearing snappy clothes tends to engender more respect from your business associates.

What is more, people can "perceive" causal relationships between any of the distinctions we make in our experience: masturbating causes blindness (behavior to physical condition), tallness causes stooping (physical condition to behavior), planning causes success (cognitive activity to outcome), hearing owls hoot at night cause blood to thin, violent movies cause social violence, social violence causes violent movies to be made, and so on.

HOW CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS RELATE TO BELIEFS

Causal relationships form a substrate of beliefs in just the same way that equivalence relationships do. That is, many beliefs are expressions of some causal relationship a person has accepted as self-evident. And once formed, it will operate either explicitly or implicitly to guide the sense or meaning that person makes and how he responds. If, for example, you have had some formative experiences in which you treated others well and they treated you well, you might establish a causal relationship between the two events. Expressed as a belief it might come out something like, "If you treat people well, they will treat you well." The expression of this belief in patterns of thinking will probably include noticing when you are treating people well and when you are not, noticing when others are treating you and other people well and when they are not, and considering how you can treat someone well. And in behavior, you will try to treat people well. (To be clear, having the belief does not guarantee success; only that you are likely to organize your perceptions and behavior with respect to it. Whether or not you actually succeed in treating someone well in a particular situation will be a function of who that person is, the nature of your perceptions of that person, what you know to do, factors operating in the context, and so on. We will have more to say about this topic in the essay on Acquisition.)

As you continue to attune yourself to recognizing the distinctions of equivalence and causal relationships, you will discover just how rampant they are in discourse of any kind (internal musing, conversation, media, literature, film, theater). Even so, it is not often that people talk about their equivalences and cause-effects, presenting them in the neat packaging of a classic belief (as with, "If you treat people well, they will treat you well"). (For a masterful and instructive example of the pervasiveness and power of equivalence and causal relationships, see James Clavell's novelette, The Children's Story.)

Nevertheless, it is still the case that we can often find expressions of our beliefs in the things we say. And these beliefs may be expressed either explicitly or implicitly. When a visiting friend says, "Could I turn on some more lights? It's kind of gloomy in here," he is expressing a causal relationship between levels of light and his mood, specifically, that too little light makes him feel "gloomy." (Remember, someone else may experience low levels of light as, say, "comforting," or "romantic," or in fact may experience no causality between levels of light and mood.) Similarly, someone who says, "She's a real pistol, the way she is always doing what she wants and telling folks what she thinks of them," is expressing an equivalence relationship: a "pistol" is someone who "does what she wants to do and tells others what she thinks of them." In both examples, the equivalence and causal relationships are not put in the neat form of a standard belief statement. Even so, the elements of the beliefs are there and stated.

It is also often the case that the elements of the belief are not stated, but are implicit. For example, Tom says, "I like taking care of my tools." His statement implies that he believes it is important to take care of tools. What is neither expressed nor implied is what "caring" for tools means, that is, what the equivalence is. Nor does he express any causality in relation to taking care of tools. But that does not mean he does not have equivalence and causal experiences in relation to "caring" for tools. If we ask Tom to explain, we may discover "Caring for tools means keeping them clean and putting them where they belong," an equivalence relationship. For Tom, caring is not about showering your tools with affection, or scratching your name into each piece, or "using the hell out of them." Tom might also reveal a causal relationship he holds, such as, "If you care for your tools, you tend to do better work with them." Again, for Tom, it is not the case that caring for your tools necessarily causes you to be admired by others, or find things easily, or keep from getting injured. Instead it is Tom's experience that caring for tools affects the manner in which you use them.

Since beliefs represent an essential and pervasive set of distinctions organizing our experience and behavior, why are we usually not explicit about them when expressing ourselves? Why do we say, "Martin is a very considerate person" and let it go at that, without describing what we mean by "considerate?" The answer is that it rarely occurs to us that it is necessary to explain. As long as we share the same language and culture, we assume that what is evident to us is just as evident to anyone else who shares our language and culture. "We" know what it means to be considerate. There is no need to state the obvious.

However, what is obvious to one person may not, in fact, be obvious to another. And so there are frequent misunderstandings between individuals, regardless of how close they are linguistically and culturally. There have been times when you and a friend have been as far apart on the meaning of a particular concept as a New York stock broker talking with an Mbuti pygmy from the Ituri forest about "security."

The degree to which we can and do take these shared equivalence and causal relationships for granted often becomes more obvious when we find ourselves in a different culture. Of the authors, one is American (David), the other British (Graham). In the liner notes from a Keith Jarrett recording ("La Scala"), they read Jarrett's account of being thanked by a man who had attended every performance at the La Scala theater during the previous twenty-five years. "He said it was the strongest, most moving (again putting his hand to his heart and with tears in his eyes) musical experience he ever had..." Graham was aghast at the "shamelessness" of Jarrett writing something so self-congratulatory. David disagreed, pointing out that the last line of the story is, "The heart is where the music is," which entirely changes the frame of reference for the incident. For David, that is. For Graham, that line in no way mitigated the shamelessness, and we had a lovely argument. And we speak the same language! ("Some of us speak English." - Graham) (Obviously, the opportunity for miscommunication is exacerbated when people are trying to communicate using a language that is not native to them. These differences can also be the source of new and wonderful experiences. For a fascinating presentation of equivalence distinctions that are made by people in various cultures, see Howard Rheingold's, They Have a Word For It.)

Equivalence and Causal Relationships and Modeling

In modeling, we want to create a description of the exemplar's experience that includes those patterns most significant in organizing that person's thinking and behavior when manifesting their particular ability. It is clear that the exemplar is using distinctions that are effective for organizing their experience in that context. It is also clear that the exemplar's patterns of distinctions are different than those used by people who do not naturally manifest that same ability. To a significant extent, this is the difference between "those who can" and "those who cannot." (An additional factor of considerable significance is "practice," something we will have more to say about in the essay on Acquisition.)

For the most part, the distinctions that make up the warp and woof of the fabric of our reality are equivalence and causal relationships. The infinite possibilities of perception and meaning present in each moment are sifted through that weaving of equivalences and causes. And, as we discussed under the notion of "flow of effect," the perceptions and meanings that emerge from this sifting significantly orient - indeed, profoundly affect - our coincident thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

In pursuing our model we will certainly want to discover and understand the exemplar's feelings and behaviors. But we also need access to the fabric of beliefs that organizes those other "expressive" elements of the ability. Without access to the exemplar's beliefs, we are in the position of someone asking a wine connoisseur for tutoring, but wanting only to be told which are good wines to order and which are to be avoided. No matter how extensive a list we memorize, we are confined to the list. What is more, we are in fact not being wine connoisseurs, but mimicking the behavior of one by ordering the correct wine. What we really want from our teacher is to know what to taste in wine, what distinctions to make as the wine swirls in our glasses and spills upon our tongues. If we can do that, we do not need his list. We can make our own.

* * *

It is not possible to enumerate every belief operating in the exemplar's experience; each one of us is infinitely rich, the deepest of experiential wells. No matter how big the bucket or how furiously and diligently we dip into that well, it will always come up full. We must remember that our intention is not to drain the well, but to quench our thirst. We need, then, to discover only those beliefs - in the form of equivalence and causal relationships - that are most significant in manifesting the ability. In the next essay, we will explore the distinctions we can make about beliefs that are essential to an ability.

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