In Awe of the Frog (with December 05 insights)

NOTES PULLED FROM HERE AND PUT INTO ONENOTE. Follow this link for important
info to add in & consider here
..\My Notebook\Vault\Chapters\Frog

Intro
One day I stumbled in a
Conversation with son Michael over a sandwich at the Duncansville Subway, 7 days before
completing 12 years of formal schooling and going on college-

Mike, what did you guys learn about the brain and how it works?
Son: Not much, a little about the physiology but not much.

How about how the brain works, how we think, how we learn
Son Michael: No, nothing about that.

How about language, the origin or words and symbols?

Son Michael: No, nothing like that

How about creativity, how humans create. Certainly you learned somethings about these three
things that give us our humanness didn't you. 12 years of school and nothing. You spent months
studying plants and flowers. You memorized capitals of the United States. You learned more
about the guts of a frog than how the most sophisticated device in the whole universe that sits
there on top of your head works?

Son Michael: No nothing like that Dad. What class would we learn that in?

He's right.
WHAT CLASS WOULD WE LEARN THAT IN?
WHAT CLASS WOULD WE LEARN THAT IN?
WHAT CLASS WOULD WE LEARN THAT IN?

Unfortunately we spend more time dissecting frogs than we do learning about the most
sophisticated, incredible device in the universe. Maybe just a little peering into the human brain
would be as beneficial as peering into a frogs gut. Heck, what about the frog’s brain? What is a
frog’s view of the world? (IDEA: make this funny later by asking “Are some in the org like
Frog’s? Do they keep their views limited to their bugs, bodies of water, lilly pads and large
looming objects? And does this limited view get in the way? IS this part of the underlying
problem we’ve never applied enough rigor to this? Never expanded it like in the other
paradigmatic disciplines???)

Where to add the following:

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§ Black box and behaviorism stuff—down below around James?
§ Time lag stuff re: behaviorism and how our current views are based on old science and fact
that this is not just what we are taught but our more basic and everyday social views around
success, control, organization, the brain, behavior, the brain, etc.
§ Much of our view is old science when generally accepted view was black box…go into HEBB
and then entry to James?
§ And fact that James views were bulldozed in favor of nice, simple linear stimulus response
model- a model that could be observed from outside- a surface view of things (tie to Taylor
and linear cause and effect? Later contrast using Lizard?)

IDEA: go into representations and how they are like a map or model inside our head AND WARN
them that analogies are useful but dangerous because of comlplex nature of brain…no map or
model comes close to describing it’s real power or complexity…

How Creatures Form Views

New Insights Based on Rewrite of Intro and Other:
Change view part in beginning to behavior, actions and emphasize relationship between
behavior/ response, view/representation, stimulus, etc…baffled about the role of the brain-
the space, the box, the great device and it's role…and what is basis or structure of it…
structured or not…blank slate…how much of the software was installed and
unmodifiable…and how much plasticity….

A stone has no view of the world. It is inanimate. It does not react or respond to the
environment. It just lies there until heat and frost crumble it to death. It has no view of it’s world
because it has no capacity to represent it (Nino: describe or define representation)– it has no brain
or no neural system. No “space” dedicated to sensing, processing or responding to things. (Make
this all better based on red note above- emphasize space or box- relate to engine? YES)

Also add this somewhere:

We have to stop and think about this. It is the view in our brains that direct our actions or
responses. It’s the space “in the middle” and how it is organized that determines how we react
and respond. The question is this: how does that “organization” work? How does it come to be?
How is it formed in our brains and how does it react as a system? How does this view and the
organization within our brains differ? And most important, by learning something of this view
and how it works or how is it organized can we improve upon it so that the actions we take can
lead us to improvement? Is this the fundamental basis for management?

Add this?? Or use to budge thinking: remember our goal is to figure out how to represent the
domain of business and it’s inner-workings. Part of that challenge is to make a connection
between the space between our ears and the actions that we take, for, at the most fundamental
level of human nature this is where it occurs- so we start with the human brain. But the human
brain is complicated. Dennet says we should start with something simpler to understand it… so
let’s start with objects that have no brain and go from there…up the ladder if you will of
increasing processing capacity and complex structure. A brain that is sophisticated as ours would
have a complex structure wouldn’t it??? We’ll get to the frog but let’s work our way up because
even a frog’s brain is an abstract entity…???

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JAMES QUOTE:
James believed that our experiences and our learnings “shape” the thoughts in our brains and this
thoughts or this composite structure acts like a mental map or mental model which directs our
response to outside stimulus. In James view, our brains served a purpose and did not simply
react and respond to outside stimuli. He wrote:

The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus
the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomena. We all use
this test to discriminate between and intelligent and a mechanical performance.
We impute no mentality to sticks and stones because they never seem to move for
the sake of anything, but always when pushed, and then indifferently and with no
sign of choice. So we unhesitatingly call them senseless. (Nino: connect to
sensemaking…WE are sensemakers…)

(Added: Sticks and stones have no view of the world, no capacity to act, no theories or bodies of
knowledge, no representations of the world around them- add before James? )

Add this as of Feb 05: Notice James use of the phrase “the pursuance of future ends and the
choice of means for their attainment (or just “the pursuance of future ends”) Of course that’s
what we are interested in because fundamentally an organization or management or knowledge
work is about “the pursuance of future ends”. Animate object pursue future ends from flies and
other forms of food to sex and other forms of pleasure to building steam engines or theories about
them.

Let’s move from stones to creatures. Before any animate creature can react and respond – before
it can exhibit behavior of any kind – there must be something to react to – some information must
pass from environment to creature. (Nino note: this is key re: Christensen & responding to
environment- info must be “recognized” in environment so must be capable of representing it
AND must actually represent it…science about extending into previously invisible stuff i.e.
recognizing phenomena and patterns in universe so that we can control, etc…play on this…
simple ex from business here? Recognizing a need and/or creating a need in the market?)
Scientists generally classify the information that a creature senses and responds to as “stimuli”.
Anything outside – any stimuli in the environment that a creature inhabits that is recognized in
any way is recognized by the creature’s neural system as information. (This is critical. Info is the
basis of neural representation and therefore the basis for behavior—tie to paradigm in intro and
whole concept of view…) Creatures, including humans, do not process concrete “things” they
only process a neural representation of the thing. The thing is processed as information. (how
this works) In order to recognize information, the creature must have some mechanism capable
of recognizing or representing the information. In addition, the creature must have some capacity
to respond to what it senses. All autonomous creatures have a capacity to sense and respond to
information. (we don’t respond to an animal per se…we respond to it’s representation…you
don’t react to your pitbull because the rep in your brain is different than mine…NEW AS OF JAN
04…important: it’s ALL PERCEPTION- later tie in with PCT—for example it’s not the object but
how I think about it = how it is represented in my brain—tie into ramifications for management =
understanding how a “brand” is position in customers mind—not the object but what it

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represents…OR a particular org chart or financial statement—only is a representation of some
category of reality)

Note: IS THIS BEST PLACE FOR OLD VIEWS? go into how old views put the power in the
stimuli..that our brains were more or less blank slates…that humans could be controlled and
manipulated from the outside…an outside, observer point of view…??? Or somewhere else?

(Nino: introduce Bickerton? And include some pictures of the following? Set this up, introduce it
in some way…)
The sundew plant has leaves covered with sticky hairs. When a fly becomes attached to one of
those hairs the leaf closes around it imprisoning the fly for digestion by the sundew. The cells
that gather or “sense” the information – in this case that something has landed on it – are distinct
from the cells that cause the leaf to close. The sensory cells signal the response cells to take
action, in this case “to close”.

Let's contrast this with how a human might sense and respond to a fly. We might reach for a fly
swatter, ignore the fly, try to determine what kind of fly it is, cover it with chocolate and eat it or
even write a poem about it. If we were an entomologist we may even try to determine which
subcategory the fly belongs to - is it a ______ or a ________.

In a simple sense, the difference comes about because in the sundew there is nothing between
“sense” and “respond” – there is no “space”, no processing capacity. Instead, there is a
hardwired and direct connection between the sensory cells and the response (motor) cells. In the
human however there is much between “sense” and “respond”. In the human, there are
intermediate processing cells between the cells that sense and the cells that respond. These
intermediate processing cells create a capacity for sophisticated creatures like humans to maintain
a “view” of their world. (Introduce behaviorism stuff here? Black box type stuff???)

(Set of picture, one with sense and respond and one with sense – process – and respond)

Reword to make clearer and less like Bickerton:

Besides the fact that the sundews response is hardwired and ours is not, there is another important
distinction. We can distinguish flies from other insects and even different species of fly, whereas
the sundew cannot even distinguish flies from other insects or from bits of earth or even a stick
that a curious observer might place on it. The sundew's sensory cells is capable of distinquishing
only between two states, a state of 'contact' and a state of 'not contact' with something.

While our world is made up of an unlimited number of distinctions – of categories or chunks of

neural distinctions, to the sundew everything is either a ‘contact’ or a ‘not contact’. Our views
are more sophisticated – we have more breadth and depth- (and as we shall see special
mechanisms) TIE INTO EXPERTISE here or somewhere later add Ed??

As we move up the intelligence ladder, a creature view of the world – the categories or chunks of
neural distinctions – expand.

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Make this easier to follow, see reds (change to be less like Bick…e.g. There is a species of sea
anemone known as…)
Take a species of sea anemone known as Stomphia coccinea, or Stomphia for short. The
Stomphia’s habitat Their habitat is frequented by eleven species of starfish. Of the eleven species
of starfish, two prey on Stomphia. If a member of one of the nine species who do not prey on the
Stomphia touch it, it takes no notice. (But or on the other hand,) If a member of one of the two
predator starfish touch it, it withdraws immediately. This behavior demands a recognition process
that was absent in the sundew’s case. To execute the reflex, the Stomphia must be able to
distinquish (tell the difference) between members of different starfish species. It must be able to
tell the difference between a starfish who wants to eat it and one that doesn’t. (intro distinctions
re: distinquish?)

Recall that the sundew’s (simple view is made up of two categories) categories consisted of
‘contact’ and ‘not contact’. In the case of the Stomphia, the ‘contact’ category breaks out into
two sub-categories, ‘contact with predator starfish’ vs ‘contact with non-predator starfish’. The
Stomphia has a more sophisticated “view” because it’s neural cells are capable of recognizing
more “chunks” and layers (and/or levels?) of information. (SHOW LEVELS HERE?)

Even at this level of simple intelligence, we can see the relationship between information (stimuli)
and behavior (response). First, behavior of any kind depends on information. (POST NOTE:
Nino this needs to be emphasized specifically the relationship between information and behavior
OR the fact that behavior that is not hardwired is generated from ONLY one place- the
information that resides in the chunks of our brains--- in chapter 14 Jar Jars Ears we will relate
back to this specifically relative to how information is the ONLY thing we have to go on. And see
next sentence- “if the necessary information is available…<maybe relate this to the ants re:
metaphor>) If the necessary information is available the behavior will be performed – if ‘contact’
then ‘do something’. If the appropriate information isn’t available the behavior will not happen or
will happen in dysfunctional ways. For example to a sundew a stick ‘contact’ is responded to as a
fly ‘contact’ – ‘stick’ will be mistaken for ‘fly’. (GO INTO BIZ EXAMPLES HERE?)

Notice too the relationship between the range of information a creature can sense and it’s range of
responses. (NINO: more on this? Where is this coming from? EXPAND ON THIS = no wasted
capacity)

In addition, what is presented to any species including humans, by it senses is not “reality” but a
species-specific view of reality – not ‘what is out there’, but what is useful for the species to know
what is out there. Or, said another way, not ‘what is out there’, but only what what the species
can recognize is out there in the form that it can recognize it in. A sundew cannot tell a fly from a
spec of dirt. We can. Certain of us can tell the difference between an A chord and a C chord,
others can’t. (embellish this). What is education and learning besides an expanded view – an
ability to recognize more chunks of the world more categories and how they related just like
Helen Keller expanded her view and from there ______. (No true view…only an interpretation…
some more accurate than others and some not knowable what is the purpose of life)…But in
organizing and human effectiveness we have no structural view – no categories to learn etc. etc.
(or instead express concern re: the right ones and why it is important- with examples…)

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TIE INTO ALL ISSUES:
 Function specific views and conflict (relate back to my experiences in intro)
 No God’s Eye POV—all relative
 Expertise
 Christensen

But the lesson for us isn’t that we are “smarter” than the sundew. We already knew that. The
point is this: just like the sundew’s view of the world – what it recognizes – is enabled AND
limited by it’s neural capacity so is our’s. We “grasp” what we are capable of “grasping” in the
form we are capable of “grasping” it in. In other words, our “view” of things is enabled and
therefore constrained by our brains. (Use this in conjuction with above notes = tie to expertise
etc--- also----go into tool and trap nature? Enables and constrains…and how we have to
understand this fundamentally???) That is why we cannot hear some sounds a dog can hear. We
have a limted “reality” of sounds compared to a dog – the number of sound categories or chunks
of neural distinctions relative to sounds – is more sophisticated for a dog than for a human. The
reason dog’s can hear more sounds than we can is because a dog needs to hear sounds more than
we do. (NINO: go into why- because we have no use or didn’t use them…it is not necessary for
our survival and so it is “obscured” by our brains)

The senses of creatures in general do not provide them random and massive amounts of
information, but only the information they need to perform those behaviors they (are equipped to
or are supposed to or need to) perform (example and how elegant this is) Our neural abilities
filter in and out of our consiousness (more on this!) (Go into stone age view? Variant vs invariant
re: learning = adaptiveness = more categories, more relationships

As leaders, as managers, as workers, as spouses and parents, as gardeners, as _________ our

effectiveness is directly related to our ability to sense, organize and respond to things. To our
human capacity – our brains – every “thing” is information. So our ability to sense, organize and
respond to information is fundamental to our effectiveness. Remember, our views govern us (this
is true to a certain degree…part view and part genetic hardwiring (note- it’s tricky re: Geary stuff
and variant vs invariant above red—some is hardwired, some is not—it’s PLASTIC which
enables us to respond or adapt to changing circumstances in the environment or variant features!!
). So how we “get” our views and how we “organize” our views and how we “connect” our views
to our actions is fundamental. Therefore, understanding our capacity to form views…is
fundamental (?) (nino: put up further that our brains are not blank slates- the come with
predefined categories AND an ability to learn new ones—Geary stuff re: variant vs invariant
nature of world- a sophisticated design!!)

Expanding Views = Expand Capacity

In the kinds of creature we have considered so far, there is no intermediate level of processing.
Stimulus and response - the touch of the 'bad' starfish and the anemone's withdrawal - are directly
linked. (need picture)

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Increases in the size of creatures cause the appearance of cells intermediate between sensor and
motor cells. This intermediate level incorporates both external and internatl information. For
example, predators looking for food or their next meal have to decide not only, is this object prey
or not (external) but also, am I hungry or not (internal)?

Make this paragraph simpler and easier to picture

Also, important re: categorization = circular tie in re: multidimensional and hierarchical—NOT is
is linear (christensens attempt to make spatial?!!)
Make point re: species specific is guided by internal = always filtered by mechanisms inside brain
(later bring out in Pitt re: emotions)
Consider a lizard on a wall stalking a fly. The lizard must continually monitor the fly’s movement
and it’s degree of restlessness to determine the right moment to strike. The angle at which the
lizard moves, the distance it covers and the time that elapses between movements are all variable
and dependent on the level of activity or inactivity shown by the fly. The lizard's hunger and its
knowledge that it is within striking distance of the fly will urge it forward, while its observation
of the fly's extreme restlessness will hold it back. A balance has to be struck: a complex and
unconscious computation has to be made to determine the exact right moment for the lizard to
strike. This process of _____ inputs can be described as an evaluation process. The lizard
weighs the information and on the basis of that information, determines its next move. This is a
fairly complex process that involves not only inputs from different senses and its own external
and internal states, but also elements of experience that are exclusively its own. Although these
decisions may be unconscious and automatic, the place where the decisions are made no longer
lies between the creature and its environment (which is where we might suppose that the
decisions of amoebas, or anemones, or sundews take place). Rather it rests firmly within the
brain of the creature concerned- in other words there is a dedicated “space” where this
(mediation?) occurs. (key sentence there---NINO: introduce mediation and at some point here
summarize sense, respond, stimulus, mediation, space etc and how they relate- picture needed?)
Species, p. 85

Contrast lizard view with sundew, Stomphia = no decision made, no choice points, relate to DM
process or mechanisms have evolved in higher level creatures…knowing what they are could help
us KEY POINT TO BRING UP SOMEWHERE…SET UP TENSION…

It is interesting to note that as we move up the “intelligence ladder” there is a progressive

distancing of the creature from the actual world of external objects and events. (intelligence is
relevant?) Progressive distancing from the world is the price paid for knowing anything about the
world (quote Bickerton or reference?). The deeper and broader our knowledge of the world
becomes, the more layers between sense and respond – a stimulus and a resultant behavior.
(implications: entry for or to refer to whacy views OR IN NEXT CHAPTER???)

For perspective, let’s go back to the stone…

For a stone, no level of representation intervenes between it and the rest of nature. At lower
levels of organic life, there are simple representations consisting of the activity of sensory cells.
From the higher vertabraes on up there are intermediate processing mechanisms that increasingly
intervene between sensory and motor cells to summate and evaluate sensory cell input. As in the
case of the fly-catching lizard, it is these representations, rather than external events in and of

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themselves, that determine action. (NOTE: critical re: PCT—what dominates? Tie into Norber
too..) (NINO: go into Maturana stuff re: structure…INTRODUCE STRUCTURE HERE?)
NOTES re above:
 in this paragraph add more stuff between sentences to make more followable…
 Go into behaviorism- tie to orgs and basis for actions- where does it reside in the org? what is
it’s condition? Organized and clear, etc BOTH FOR DOMAIN and YOUR ORG…do they
match…does discipline HELP???
 How complex, complete, organized is your view? Is it like Ed’s?? Like Lizard, depends on
both outside and inside information—tie to Christensen…

In the words of Steven Pinker "The only reason that humans are smarter than rats is that our
networks have more hidden layers between stimulus and response and we live in an environment
of other humans who serve as network trainers." (pick up on this relative to deep knowledge and
theories…) (NOTE: tie into ONENOTE cut re: WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR CATEGORIES
FROM???)

This may be a sobering and even a controversial thought to some. But it is in this space between
stimulus and response and in the capacities in our species that developed where the secret to
organizational theory lies. If we can understand the basis for this intermediate capacity in our
species and our species alone. (this is the black box – the engine of the org- tie back to Carnot…)

It is this capacity that we want to discuss, the same capacity that Anne Sullivan tapped into within
Helen Keller.

Enter Hebb here? Get into climb out of the black box of our understanding of the brain
and human intelligence…

The Chunks That Guide Us

For this below, do I want to get into layers and complexity? Why human brain is a CAS? Also,
look up categories in research…
We’ve already discussed that there is no true view of the world, only a creatures perception. This
perception is made up of what I’ll call neural chunks but what is formally referred to as a system
of categories. A category refers to a “part” (or chunk) of information represented by the creature
– how it “divides up its world”. The Stomphia divides the world into ‘prey’ and ‘nonprey’, then
divides nonprey into ‘potential predators’ and ‘others’. A frog divides the world into ‘frogs’,
‘flying bugs’, ‘ponds’, and perhaps a few other categories like ‘large looming objects (potential
threat)’. An accountant divides up his or her accounting world into debits and credits and
accounts of assets and liabilities and how those form into bigger chunks or categories represented
by income statements and balance sheets. An accountant may also view business from this
perspective – everything is seen as an investment with a potential return or not – how it affects the
income statement or balance sheet in the current or subsequent period. These neural categories
(more from Bickerton re: categories). These categories can be thought of as ‘chunks’ of
information that form with other ‘chunks’ of information to make up a creatures view. As
creatures grow increasingly complex, the number of categories or chunks into which things can be

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divided increases AND the creatures ability to form relationships between these categories or
chunks of information expands. What chunks are formed and how these chunks relate determine
behavior. (post note? just as there are species specific views there are views within species
specific e.g. accountant specific vs marketing specific…we chunk our world the same or in
universal ways (species-specific) and in distinct ways among humans (human-specific)

Note below the relationship between category and action OR effectiveness of action—anything
from Christensen to add at end??? Of examples below accounting, marketing, etc…
Suppose you are alone at home and you hear a noise. You’re first reaction is to assign that noise
to a category called ‘noise’. But right away you want to assign it to a more specific category –
what kind of a noise is it? Is it a “pot shifting in the cupboard noise” a “dog noise” a “broken
furnace noise” or a “burglar noise”. Only if you can do this can you make the right response:
ignore it, let the dog out, fix the furnace or call the police. So the noise and what it relates to
form a view that dictates the type of action to take.

In this next part go into selection from among a number of possible choices…
Add example re: “outgoing” category…in other words not just how we perceive or
categorize stimuli but how that later effects our actions…what I and/or org does on daily
basis…do these views come from Fortune magazine or _____ (Kant and herd mentality stuff
somewhere around here? Where DO they come from (see OneNote cut re: this) and has our
discipline identified the important ones…like Carnot did???
In much the same way an accountant processes a transaction or a service rep processes an order.
A transaction comes into the organization. The accountant has to classify it into it’s proper
account – is it a check we received or a bill of some sort. If it is a bill for example, it has to be
determined what account it should be coded as (what account category). Whatever category it is
assigned would determine the account it was posted to. (post note: in a manner determined by
Pacioli and double entry accounting I might add!) Again, there is a relationship between
perception and action. Think of a service rep who takes a call from a customer. Immediately the
service rep assigns it to a category. Is this a call for an order, a complaint, a compliment, a
technical question, a service problem? At the same time, the rep may relate the type of call to the
customer’s value to the firm. A service problem from a high value customer may receive a
different treatement than a service call from a lower value customer. Again we see the relationship
between how we categorize or chunk perception and the actions or behavior taken. These are not
meant to be example of how an organization processes information but only how the way our
brains process information works. But at the same time these example do illustrate the
fundamental connection between how we perceive and view things and business processes. We
can make the same illustration with a more abstract strategic example.

(note: point this somewhere else?) A large customer threatens to leave us for a large competitor.
Immediately we categorize the threat. Is it price, service, quality or some other category. Our
ability to sense and respond appropriately will determine the outcome of this threat. (actually we
could just react and respond or, we could stop and think about it) But it is in how we process this
information – how we form the categories and their relationships – how the chunks form in our
brains – that will determine our response. (for this paragraph use or add Christensen ex or
something from Enron

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(Any stories from Enron to insert here? Or save the same kind of example above for after we
introduce tension?)

POINT OF ABOVE STORIES RE: ACCT, MARKETING, STRATEGY is that same underlying
mechanisms at play in all three = identification of a regularity—tie to Carnot and complexity =
idenfity invariants = regularities…anything from Alexander? Identifying regularities is how we
form STRATEGIES and basis for effective actions…also how we define structure of our theories
= based on invariants…tie back to Carnot…

(Placement) Perception is construction. And the categories or chunks of information that we

perceive and grasp build up our views just as Helen Keller’s view was built. (Perception is
construction of a schema??!!!? An abstraction from the flux and flow (go to Batch 6 and Jack and
Lakoff? Go into problem with W1 vs W2 here? And bias of species specific view!!! THIS IS A
KEY POINT…OR SAVE THIS FOR HELEN??? Later in Levi’s talk about how Haas or ???
pushed certain categories on them causing them to SEE and NOTICE the wrong things although
they might not understand this until PITT)

When we say we have perceived something, we are simply saying that we have responded to
some stimulus that seemed to arise in the external world and have assigned that stimulus to some
category or other determined by a process of selection from all of the categories available to us.
No perception is anything more than a category assignment, a best guess at what might be out
there.

The set of categories from which a creature can select is largely determined by its species
membership, and will vary according to whether the creature concerned is an anemone, a frog, a
rat, or a human. Even within the human species, the categories or chunks of neural information
vary. An accountant and a and a marketer (probably?) divide the world of business into different
categories. The fact that these categories vary according to species and within species follows
naturally from the fact that they have no separate existence in the external world. [jul 05- so in
effect we have a within species view also- diff view good and bad] They exist only as internal
representations, specialized mechanisms for apprehending and ____________ the world. This is
important because we seldom recognize that the views we form are negotiable and therefore
subject to misrepresentation (and able to change. (more on Bohm re: views) Sometimes our
guesses are accurate and sometimes they are not. How we process what we sense and the
connection between what and how we sense and process and respond determines our individual
and group effectivness. ) EXPAND THIS AND SET UP FOR BLUE BANNER…

[Jul 05- see Weick stuff on categories in mindfulness captured in ‘sensemaking from whiz- 86
pages’ doc
ALSO- we are making the connection here between perception and action and fact that perception
is information in brain- sets up Norbert!! IS WEICK SENSEMAKING STUFF HERE OR IN
HELEN???]

SUMMARIZE KEY POINTS HERE: different POV, cube? Some good some bad depending on
circumstances (relate back to Lizard) tie into Christensen?

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A key point for us is this: What are the categories or chunks that form the view (note: in line
with PCT tie view into or with perception— and how perception is the basis for all) of an
organization? Or a particular function within an organization? ( Next sentences added
later--- Or for that matter, that are in your head and form the basis for how you perceive
things, take action, lead your life or your area of the organization? And, are they THE RIGHT
ONES or are they ______ and organized in such a way that they HELP or HURT you get to
where you want to go. And to a larger ______ are the categores that have evolved in business
formally and informally, through academia and entrepreneur magazine say…the right ones
organized in the right way???) Are the categories of business clear and understood, or
ambiguous and ___________. We’ll get to that but before we can fully understand the
importance and power of category formation we need to understand how they work in a little
more detail. IS the outside world clear and unambiguous? Which is which? (it makes sense
to explore this. If we are to get people, departments, organizations, or world governments to
work together or to work effectivevly then we have to ask these simple question- how do we
“view” things? Where do our ______ come from? What is the basis for our human capacity?
(or the basis for our creativity or collaboration? Are they different or the same? Is there a
fundamental invariant at play here like in Carnot’s engine that we can identify and leverage or
that is always at play like the invariant laws of thermodynamics?)))) (This is the space and
categories are the parts that form the patterns that________ NOTE: later in purpose and core
elements relate back to this and how we need to agree on top level categories so that we keep
straight that which we should focus on or that which our actions and thought should POINT
TOWARDS or support!!)
Let’s stop and do a quick summary of where we are.
There is a relationship between sense and respond
As intelligence increases ther is a space between that builds a view of the world.
This view is made up of categories or chunks of neural space (cell assemblies)
What these categories are and how they relate process what we sense and determine response.

Here is where it get’s interesting. But there is much more than how we process or perceive and respond to information. The capacity is much
more. We can assign these categories either Our views are built up from our perception.

Our views are made up of our mental representations. Views govern.

In this paragraph- relation between circumstances & purpose- important but too early???
While the lizard was making it’s decision about when to eat the fly based on where fly was and
what state it was it and how hungry the lizard was, I was driving around last night trying to decide
which restaurant to stop at to eat based on the type of restaurant and my hunger. Earlier in the
day, we made a decision relative to a contractual agreement based on what we wanted in relation
to the current condition of our business and the particular conditions of the supply contract. Yes,
you see the relationship between the mechanics of a lizards decision to strike the fly and our
decision to offer that customer the special deal he requires to make the purchase. In each
instance, there is a set of recognizable categories or chunks of information that relate in some
way in our brains and form a pattern from which we take action – make a business decision, eat,
change prices, etc. (move into Christensen stuff re: categories and/or how discipline provides
them for abstract domains… “categorization big part of Christensens insights…go into??) NOTE
ON THIS PARAGRAPH—make easier to get main point = mechanics…

Added later…

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I know talking about _____ and _____ and _____ is odd stuff. What we need to carry over from
this is a simple but usually overlooked aspect of how we think because I will make the case later
that our current theories about ____ and ____ often circumvent this natural and effective
process… (EMBELLISH?)

How We Divide Up the World

If knowledge – knowing the world – consists of dividing and sorting into categories then how are
such categories derived? Not only knowing but NAVIGATING = same basis cause all for same
purpose- knowing cannot be separated from actions (GO INTO BOHM STUFF IN CREATIVITY
and how we fragment??!!!)

What following means is that some responses will be innate in people- we can’t expect people
NOT to look out for themselves, protect their kin, be afraid of certain threats…and yet we treat
this things with a or IN A naïve and romantic way…important for us to KNOW the difference—to
know which neural _______ are hardwired and which are softwired…effects how we manage and
initiate change…guides us through the process!!! PUT THIS AT END???
In some cases, categories are innately given. A captive monkey raised in isolation will react to it’s
first sight of a snake with fear and avoidance even though it’s never seen a snake. Other
categories are learned. If a monkey sticks his hand in a certain tree hole and gets bitten enough
times, it will form a category such as “painful tree hole”. (added in apr 04--Of course the
monkey doesn’t talk to itself using any form of language but in it’s neural system there is a
representation etched into it’s neural circuitry…) (Nino: Later relate to human walking into
bosse’s office and getting stung “painful office visit” or “Can’t speak what I think”) A category is
simply a tacit concept. A concept is a name we (humans) give to a category when we know that it
is a category that we have at our disposal for sorting raw experience. The categories by which
other creatures operate exist outside of their conscious awareness and may perhaps be more
appropriately referred to as protoconcepts1. But for clarity of this discussion we will refer to all
chunks of neural _________ in any creatures representation system as a category and will
sometimes refer to categories that have been formalized and given a name as a concept. A
concept is an acknowledged category (?) (but whatever we call it it simply represents a neural
impulse or neural connection)

The important point is this:

A creatures behavior is determined by the information it processes and how that information is
represented inside the creatures head. The organization of that representation is made up of
categories or chunks of neural circuitry and how they relate. This whole representation makes up
the “species-specific” view of the world.

If the only categories a frog has are 'frog', 'pond', 'bug', 'large looming object' and 'what's left
(irrelevant to frogs)' then these categories compose the frog's world and everything the frog
perceives must be assigned to one category or another. This view determines what the frog reacts
and responds to – in effect it’s behavior. A frog doesn’t get upset (i.e. respond) when the stock
market dives 50% because a frog has no concept of a stock market. (as james says we cannot
1
Bickerton

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respond to what we do not recognize…how and expert recognizes stuff???) ( I didn’t know jazz
chords or _______ (debits credits) didn’t know positioning and branding and marketing and
______ until I went into those areas in private practice…)

We on the other hand have many more things to react and respond to because we have a far richer
view of the world than the frog does. Our category base is much larger and more complicated and
as a result we can distinquish and respond to a larger number of external stimuli with a larger
number of responses.

While the frog has a limited level of perception and therefore of things to react and respond to we
have a whole wide world full of stimuli which to categorize and

TO ADD SOMEWHERE: I am introducing a basic language that I believe as expert business

people we need to understand. Kind of like the doctor who understands the human cell because in
order to understand the connections in a human body, one must understand the basic unit. Or to
understand accounting, one must understand the T account or the simple journal entry. It’s not
like these things are things that one discusses at the day to day level- they simply form the BASIS
for really knowing a domain. But in business, we are missing this fundamental level. How can
we either as workers or as managers or leaders TRULY know what we are doing unless we have a
fundamental grasp of the fundamentals of human behavior or the fundamental of knowledge
work. It’s not that we are trying to create psychologists in the org it’s that when fully described
and made into a sophisticated discipline, the discipline or the new organization will include as
part of it’s interdisicplineary ______ a part on cognition or how humans think. Doesn’t this make
sense? How could we exclude this from ANY educational ______ and really claim to have a
well grounded discipline? (Go into ESPECIALLY business management which at its heart is
about maximizing human effectiveness. How can we do that WITHOUT a deep understanding of
“how it works” much like the engine?

It’s important to understand the relationship between the elements we have been discussing.
(we’ll need this basic language to understand the build up of our theory…we need to understand
clearly the terms I am laying out such as ______ (go into basic language I’m introducing that they
will need to become comfortable with such as stimulus-response, perception, categories, sensory
cells, stimuli, motor cells etc stuff plus here!?)

(Picture of Stimuli – Sense – Process – Respond (Behavior))

Creatures sense through their firing of special neurons referred to as sensory cells located in their
brain.
Those sensory cells are fired by some external stimulus sometimes referred to as stimuli.

IS THIS ALL SORT OF A REPEAT? ALL THIS INDENTED STUFF??

A creature responds to external stimuli through the firing of motor cells (also referred to as
response cells) also located in the brain.

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 At lower levels of intelligence, the sensory cells and the response cells are directly
connected. When the fly lands, the sundew automatically responds by closing it’s leaf.

At higher levels of intelligence, between the sensory cells and the response cells there
exists an intermediate level of processing cells. The processing cells form a creatures
representation of reality via category formation – the chunks of neural circuitry that form
the creatures perception or knowledge or picture of it’s species specific world. The
resultant pattern of categories that form in the creatures brain is referred to as the creatures
view and not only dictate behavior but also form the basis for a particular model
intelligence commonly referred to as the stimulus-response model.

Although all levels of intelligence intermediate in some way between a stimulus and a
response, this basic level of intelligence is guided by and dominated by external stimulus
and relatively fixed response _________. In this model, a creatures intelligence is
determined by two sets of factors:
1. It’s ability to distinquish between various stimuli and
2. It’s ability to relate stimulus and response.

(Dog and how to train it and how a dog puts patterns together…when you play ball or Frisbee
with it…can’t sit down and talk with a dog…words can act as stimulants but that’s it). ?????

NOTE: as of Apr 2005 connect these parts with behavioirism? With Miller stuff and other
batch 6 stuff? Relate back to abstract causal structure? The key point or a key point could
be around orientation etc and common view and where actions COME from!!!!! Basis of
behavior/actions and therefore must be “set-up” properly…also this is the medium of the
manager!! Like the painter is the canvas and the ledger is the accountant and the basketball
court is the basketball player…that’s what makes this a complex discipline…much more so
than putting paint to paper or ??? (a managers job- your job is to get the categories right =
structure them…why? Basis for actions…accountant = ledger, new musician = ______,
quarterback = _________.

IS THIS MOVE INTO HELEN = from “A managers job is the management of this space…but
we’ve only covered a small part of it…to understand it’s real power we have to go back about
________ years…back to a cave in _____ but in order to understand the significance of that event
and what it enabled, we start with someone in whom it was BLOCKED from use…someone who
had no way to access it…

In this _______ the creatures behavior is largely determined by external stimuli. How it senses
that stimuli and how it responds to that stimuli is determined by more or less fixed or rigid action
patterns (manifested as relationships between the “categories” of representations stored in it’s
neural network). We can describe this as a reactive/responsive orientation. In a
reactive/responsive orientation __________.

This was the primary orientation that existed in our ancestors the Homo Erectus. And of course it
forms a big part of our behavior patterns…go into behaviorism…but…(Go into their view of the
world).

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This is the orientation that kept our anscestors alive but what a life they lived. Forever confined
to life in a cave sitting around eating bats for dinner.

Then something happened.

Potential Ending
GOOD STUFF
The focus of this chapter has been an introduction to the space between stimulus and response-
the mediating space- or what occurs in the brain from an information processing point of view.
(Summarize how our views- the categories and how they relate- determine our orientation and the
two types and go into how we were predominalty reactive responsive- like the other species until
we somehow acquired this special capacity or special information processing capacity or ability.
To get to the root of organizational structure, we must go here to this mysterious acquisition with
an unknown origin..next…is this it? This was put in after the following stuff. Is this all I need)
The human brain is the device that enabled the birth/creation of commerce, business, the human
organization…Since the enabling capacity is the human brain, we have to understand something
about it for it. The history of behaviorism or the knowledge of behavior refused to “look inside”
or examine this space. (go into?) This “black box” view of the human brain persisted at least
through the 1960’s and engaged itself into most of our current views or therefore it “lingers”
among us- it is caught up in our social fabric. And so, in the social sciences most of our views are
from an outside observer point of view…they emphasize formulas and accolades and
motivational crap and “should do’s” vs if…then…else. The new view is that the brain is
structured (go into…) a combinatorial space with mechanisms for managing information and ???
(human orientation, creativity, etc) It is this space that determines our orientation, our behavior—
the inside of the brain is the dominant force and not external stimuli. It is this structuring or these
mechanisms that give us our creative ability = the root of organizational effectiveness or the root
of organizational existence period. The reason we create human organizations and all of the
things they make and do is due in fact to a special ability or a special structuring or information
processing capacity. One that is unique to humans. And one that forms the basis for human
___________. To begin to understand the underlying fundamentals of management- of
knowledge work in general it is here we must go- deeper into this space.

OR
This chapter has been an introduction to the human brain and how our actions come from it. The
big issue in the history of the understanding of human behavior is how this works in terms of
what is primary- external stimuli or, the internal mechanics. Early work either ignored the brain
and how it works. Behavior was determined to be outside- we can manipulate and control
humans via stimuli like rats and pigeons…as work in the cognitive sciences took hold around the
late 1950’s a new view of the human brain has emerged. A view that recognizes key differences
between species (go into) and in particular the unique capacity or unique capacities of the human
brain. These capacities allow us to make discriminations between stimuli and create categories
that are richer or give us a richer view of the world and therefore to recognize and be able to
respond to more things or ability to create a richer map or schema (do I need to intro schema

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here?? And go into relation between schema and behavior—richer schema = richer behavior…
different orientations, respond to different things (smells, sound waves, sonic vibrations, etc—
different forms of stimuli) More categories and combinations of categories = sophistication of
view…but there is a special capacity that has largely been ignored, undervalued and
underappreciated. The origins of this special capacity and it’s presence may be the single most
important difference between our species and those that preceded us or those in the animal
kingdom. This is the thread we need to follow to weave together the fundamental basis of
management and knowledge work. (leftover: A capacity to categorize in a special way- to invent
categories that are uniquely human, to imagine different categories)

Potential add in:

Mysterious capacity perhaps. It would take the cognitive sciences until the last half of the xx
century to figure it out. What is interesting though is that it’s power and significance was
understood much earlier by a teacher. A teacher by the name of Anne Sullivan- a good metaphor
for a new view of management. A human being that perhaps had the greatest management
challenge we could ever – we worry about how to get humans … as managers we worry about
how to get mostly normal humans to act in specific ways- to create, to lead. In 1908 Anne
Sullivan had a much more basic and more difficult issue- how to get a deaf, and dumb human
being by the name of Helen Keller to communicate and to think and to behave like other humans.
It should be no surprise that in doing so she touched on this mysterious, undervalued and under
explored capacity long before it was appreciated by mainstream psychologists and _______ and
even modern managers for it forms the basis for the basis of the real theory of management and
knowledge work (or for the body of knowledge we want to create??)

Add: the story of Helen Keller gives us an interesting perspective into this special capacity for in
many ways Helen’s life before Anne Sullivan describes a void similar to that which exists in the
current management (knowledge base? Body of knowledge?) She would describe it as follows:

Put quote here?

Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that
was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet
conscious time of nothingness…Since I had no power of thought, I did not
compare one mental state with another. (Dennett 1)

HELEN KELLER, 1908 P. 227

IMPORTANT: KELLER had not categories- much like current view of biz = wrong ones, only
surface ones TIE BACK TO INTRO- either here or move this to next chapter and end with stuff
from above…

It is this transformation from a structureless “no-world” that provides an understanding of the

deeper levels of managerial science as it could or should be. So it is here we must go…

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