>What information does a person act upon that enables them to
>know that the first sentece has the right syntax and the second
>syntax has the wrong syntax.
I presume that this question is meant to test whether a "mental model"
explanation of grammar is better or worse than an "act/habit" based
explanation. I propose that it is entirely feasible to explain language
competency in terms of acts without any recourse to "representational"
knowledge, such as what, in an objective world, the words stand for.
Rather than taking language to be a means of transmitting information, one
can view language as a means of coordinating action between people, such
as expression of the "ends" to which a group has committed itself, or what
means (*acts*) it has adopted to achieve those ends, and so on. Maturana
and Varela in their theory of autopoiesis take this general point of view.
However, I am not a linguist and am unable to go much further with this.
With regards to your use of this well-known example, I suppose that
the first sentence is recognnized as "correct" although meaningless
because we habitually recognize certain words, word orders, and
morphologies (e.g., color + less) in common usage as present in the first
example, even though its pragmatic value is in doubt (*why* would someone
say this). As an aside, I have recently seen an analysis of this problem
that proposed a reasonable "scenario" under which the first sentance "made
sense." (some kind of poem or another). The second sentance appears
incorrect because there are no habitual acts of syntactic analysis that
fit the case. However, I might expect that the sentance would look just a
little less "incorrect" to a German speaker who habitually expects verbs
to fall at the end of sentences.
My point still is that there may practical value in introspecting
organizational behavior as the result of intellectual habits rather than
logical implications of a particular internalised "world model". Rather
than eliciting a mental model "in a vacuum", one could decribe catagories
of cases under which certain acts are habitually performed and the degree
of success these habitual acts have produced in the past, while
differentiating between the value of the "end" to which these acts were
directed, and the value of specific acts as "means" to a given end.
Andrew also wrote:
>Regarding values, how do one know that another person's or
>organization's definition of a value is the same as theirs?
>For example, success. For me, success may be a wife, two kids, a
>labrador retriever and a house in the mountains with a satellite
>net link. For someone else, success may be a Ferrari, a gold
>Visa card and weekend trips to popular nightclubs.
The examples you give I would call likes and dislikes rather than
values. Nobody would propose that likes and dislikes could or would be
the same. However, a wide variety of likes and dislikes might originate
from the same "value profile." Jack might measure success by how
"honorable" his work is, while Jill might gauge success by how much money
she makes. While some people would say that these perspectives were miles
apart, they actually both are "systemic" values. Both are "valuing"
something, in this case their work, by a system or "law" that judges by
established criteria (even the word "success" often implies a go/no go
decision). In Jack's mind, there is an enumerable set of criteria by
which one determines "honor" (a "law" of ethics) and he expects that that
social "system" will respond accordingly to his honorable work. Jill, on
the other hand, values her work in terms of money as part of a larger
economic system that says what her money is good for, what she has to do
to get it, and so on.
On the other side of the coin, consider Moe the motorcycle daredevil
and Sally the Nun. Moe values his work because of the adrenilin rush he
gets when he jumps barrels, not because he thinks he does it
well(extrinsic), or because barrel jumping is important or valuable to
society(systemic). Sally values her work by the feeling of compassion and
love she has for those she takes care of. Both value their work
intrisically, or according to "classes" which have an unnumerably infinite
number of properties; and therefore must be "felt" rather than
rationalised according to a numerable or finite set of properties. Moe
and Sally share a much more similar value than they do to either Jack or
Jill, even though our culture would tend to group "honorable Jack" and
Jill the Nun together has having the similar values. What I am proposing
is that the "shared values" that everyone seems to be talking about these
days is this kind of value, not moral values, likes/dislikes, and so on.
Robert Hartman's theory of value puts this in much more rigourous
form, and he devised a "test" to determine one's value profile in these
terms (actually, how one values oneself and values the world). In
addition to whatever other social mechanisms exist for identifying "like"
people, one *can* use this test to quickly determine similarities and
differences between values in a group of people. A simple use of this is
to just bring out in the open these value differences as part of a group
facilitation process to help people understand the basis for different
perspectives and make more effective/explicit use of this diversity.
Hartman's major work in this area was a book: "The Structure of Value:
Foundations of Scientific Axiology" (So. Illinois Press, Carbondale, 1967)
Other than that, I can only speak of the related work done by the
Autognomics Institute and its associates.
Fred Reed
freed@cc.atinc.com