Semantic Restructuring is the pursuit of enlightenment, enlivenment, empowerment through the creative re-arranging of the building blocks of meaning. For a better description, Start Here.
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Bateson, books, cogling, context, CPB, embodiment, framing, I Ching, paradox, perception influence, prisdem, semantic punctuation, sensation, techniques, unconscious
Patterns of thought that admit of inifite loops are disallowed. A classic example is the Prisoners' Dilemma. Most presentations on this mental experiment deal with the thinking loop that goes "If I think he thinks I think he thinks I will do X..." The problem is one can always add one more cycle of loop to this process, so any such line of reasoning will always be inconclusive. The only thing to do when faced with such pseudo-reasoning is to reject it outright.
Loopy thinking is most often a sign that more data must be gathered. Korzybski's treatment of the Spanish Barber paradox is a good example; rather than spinning one's wheels about it, why not just go and look? And if a conundrum is constructed such that one can't gather more data, beware: you have probably simply wandered into the area of nonsense. "Can God create a rock so big he can't lift it" is one of my favorites. This is the kind of nonsense that comes from thinking logic has any actual substance in reality. Not that the tool of thought, logic, hasn't its merits, but, as with Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, logic can lead to wrong asnwers just as easily as right; it is a blade that can wound you as easily as your foe.
This is the crux of my solution to the Prisoners' Dilemma. Having refuted the inifitely looping interdependent-choice line of reasoning, I point out that there is another model one can make for the choice. Imagine two coins: Coin A has 0 stamped on one side and 6 on the other; coin B has 24 stamped on one side and 240 stamped on the other. You get to choose which coin to flip, and the number that comes up represents the number of months freedom you will lose. You can not control which number comes up, but you can control which set of numbers you work with.
But more important than any specific application to the Prisoners' Dilemma is the general recognition of the limits of formal logic, gaining the ability to use this tool wisely, when it applies, and not letting out time and energy be wasted every time some fool comes along and tells us what logically must be.
Which brings us into another slippery subject, how is it that so few people understand logic well enough to work the simplest syllogism, and yet so many bow down before the mere invocation of it? Why is it that someone like Bill O'Reilly can get away with calling his show a "No Spin Zone" while leaning on the notoriety of known linguistic abuser Newt Gingrich, who serves as political commentator appearing on Bill's show? It's on a par with the abuse of the word "Science" following the word "Christian" or "Religious". Sadly most people simply haven't the intellectual training or wherewithal to parse such nonsense. And I despair that significant numbers ever shall. But we keep trying.
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