Glossary
Abstracting:
The selecting, picking out, separating, summarizing, deducting, removing, omitting, disengaging, taking away of 'characteristics'. The term "abstracting" implies structurally and evaluationally the activities characteristic of the nervous system and so serves as an excellent functional and physiological term.
Adulthood of Humanity:
When a large majority of the planet's women and men achieve consciousness of abstracting and internalize up to date evaluational reactions.
Adjustment:
The degree that the structure of our particular "maps" (neuro-linguistic, neuro-evaluational, etc.) corresponds to the specific structure of the verifiable "territory."
Consciousness of Abstracting:
Awareness in our neurological process of abstracting, we have left out characteristics and combined others. Or, remembering the "is not," and that some characteristics have been left out. See the Structural Differential. Achieving Consciousness of Abstracting represents the "ultimate" goal of The SevenSimpleSteps(R) Way.
Development:
Fostering and encouraging the advancement and/or evolution of existing theories, assumptions and formulations.
Education:
A system or program of instruction and/or training, verbal and/or non-verbal, to achieve internalization of a specific body of knowledge, formulations and behaviors.
Epistemological:
The functional, operational, scientific study of how we humans come to know what we say we know about our world, and our interactions, including ourselves. NOT simply philosophical words about more words.
Evaluational Reactions:
A person's total, organism-as-a-whole (biological, physiological, neuro-linguistic, emotional-intellectual, body-mind etc.) response to words and language and other symbols in connection with their non-elementalistic meanings to the given individual at a given moment. Evaluation constitutes a non-elementalistic term as it involves conjointly 'emotional' as well as 'intellectual' factors. Usually contains habitual as well as unconscious aspects. Changing evaluational reactions cannot take place using only verbal methods. The affects must be effected.
Extensional Orientation:
In contrast to the undesirable intensional orientation, made by words and definitions alone. An extensionally oriented person is habitually open to new "facts" and data, is habitually able to say "I don't know; let's see." Orientation by unique individuals, objects and processes.
Insane:
a) Disordered . . . to such a degree as to be unable to function safely and competently in ordinary human relations (Unabridged Dictionary, copyright © 2006 by Merriam-Webster, Inc.).
b) A person who builds an internal world and beliefs and acts upom them and so cannot adjust themselves to a world which is quite different from their fancies.
Multi-Dimensional:
A term applying to the amount of data points needed to uniquely specify an event. Definitely not a science fiction term. We generally live in a four dimensional space-time world but if we wanted to distinguish a particular shirt on a linear close-line, we would need a 'fifth' dimension. To specify a particular jet in flight above the earth we would need more than four numbers or dimensions.
Multi-Ordinal:
A term which has different meanings depending on the level of abstracting it is applied to. take the multi-ordinal word 'yes' for example. If we ask someone if they arrived by a bus they would answer 'yes', and in this case the multi-ordinal word 'yes' has a specific 'meaning', namely 'the bus'. If we ask someone else if they arrive by car and they said 'yes', the 'meaning' of 'yes' in this case would be 'the car'. And so on.
Neuro-Evaluational:
Let's start with Evaluation, a non-elementalistic term (a word that does not split verbally what is not split on the non-verbal or object/event levels). Evaluation includes every reaction we have to events, objects and language (verbal reactions, non-verbal such as blood pressure, images, movements, etc.). The prefix "neuro" shows the ubiquity of the nervous system in every evaluation, and thus habits of greater and lesser degree.
Neuro-Linguistic:
A non-elementalistic term, implying that no language exists without a nervous system to read, write, speak, hear or understand it. Not ever. The prefix "neuro" shows the ubiquity of the nervous system in every use, and thus the ensuing habits of greater and lesser degree.
Non-Allness:
An orientation that we do not abstract 'all' about an object, a process, or say all about an object or about an inference about an object or an inference about an inference. Our nervous system, by its construction, leaves out by its very make-up, and on verbal levels, we can go on making statements about statements about statements without end.
Non-Elementalistic:
Not splitting illegitimately organism-as-a-whole-in-an-environment processes into separate 'emotional' and intellectual' 'components' including 'body' and 'mind', 'soul' and 'psyche', etc. Non-elementalistic meanings also include the affects that accompany the verbal definitions.
Non-Identity:
Say whatever you choose about an object, but whatever you might say is not it. We cannot sit on the noise we make or the name we apply to the object.
Objectification:
The confusion of orders of abstractions. The confusion of inferences for descriptions (and visa versa). The confusion of labels or descriptions for objects or processes or events. the confusion of objects for processes or events.
Order:
One of the three undefined terms of The SevenSimpleSteps® Way (relations and structure constituting the other two). Order can be seen as betweeness, as in mathematical counting; "2" comes after "1" but before "3." Objects and words can also be placed in different orders, resulting in different non-elementalistic meanings.
Organism-As-A-Whole:
To give the full term, an Organism-As-A-Whole-(internal and external)-In-an-Environment-at-a-Date. No living fish without without water. No living humans without oxygen or a nervous system or some version of language or communication.
Predictability:
a) [The capablity] of being foretold (Unabridged Dictionary, copyright © 2006 by Merriam-Webster, Inc.).
b)[The ability] to declare or indicate in advance; especially : foretell on the basis of observation, experience, or scientific reason (Unabridged Dictionary, copyright © 2006 by Merriam-Webster, Inc.).
c) Impaired by inadequate orientations and evaluation.
d) Enhanced by a similarity of structure between our (neurologically-based) language and the external world.
Relations:
One of the three undefined terms of The SevenSimpleSteps® Way (structure and order constituting the other two). To exist a relation must exist as we have no object in complete isolation. Greater than, less then, symmetrical, asymmetrical, hotter than, heavier than, etc.
Research:
The (scientific) investigation into verbal and non-verbal levels of knowledge and the attempt to discover new facts and data and formulate them into testable verbal structures.
Sane:
a) Being without delusions; LOGICAL, RATIONAL, SENSIBLE (Unabridged Dictionary, copyright © 2006 by Merriam-Webster, Inc.).
b) Non-elementalistitally, evaluationally balanced.
Sanity:
On a seat-of-the-pants graduated scale of one through one-hundred, measured by confirmable adjustment to multi-ordinal 'reality' with one through nine considered 'insane', ten through ninety considered 'unsane' and ninety-one through one-hundred considered 'sane'.
Science:
The pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social worlds (inside and outside of our skins) following a systematic methodology (observation/research, hypothesis, prediction, experimentation and conclusion) based on evidence. (Paraphrased and modified from the UK Science Council and Science Made Simple.)
Scientific:
A testable, verifiable form of human behavior that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of hypothesis, theorems, explanations and predictions about the universe. (Paraphrased and modified from the UK Science Council and Science Made Simple.)
Space-Time-Matter:
Necessary for the minimum of existence in our known universe (2013). Take an object we call a "pencil." If if doesn't exist in 'space' it has no existence. If it doesn't exist in 'time', it has no existence. If it consists of no 'matter', it has no existence. Two out of three is not good enough. Also, you can't give 'time' without 'space' and 'matter' (a watch, for example). Similar examples can be shown for 'space' and 'matter'.
Structure:
One of the three undefined terms of The SevenSimpleSteps® Way (relations and order constituting the other two). "How 'things' are put together." Structure can be defined in terms of relations. Relations can be defined in terms of multi-dimensional order. To have structure implies no 'infinite' velocities, including Newton's gravitational force and nerve impulses, to name two.
Time-binding:
The transmission of tens and hundreds and thousands and millions of hours of human learning and experience without end, from person to person and generation to generation, through language and other symbolic means.
We're not saying that dolphins and gorillas don't have 'language'. They do. We're also not saying that birds and monkey's don't teach their young to sing or to use tools to forage for ants. They do. But, they are not time-binders. They do not have books and libraries and neuro-linguistic structures to extract and summarize years of learning, extracting them from their nervous systems to later putting them back through studying, etc. and re-internalizing this vast experience. Only time-binders, only humans can do this. The functional, operational characteristic distinguishing human beings from every other form of life on our planet. What humanity does that other species do not.
For example, let's look at travel. Social and physical anthropologists, etc., tell us that men and women traveled in hollowed out logs on the water many thousands of years ago. Sticks and eventually oars helped them to navigate and stabilize their crafts. After several more generations a thicker piece of wood with an attached sheet may have been attached to the center of the boat to catch the wind and to further increase their stability and navigational abilities. These boats now represented the creation of dozens of generations of humans. But they didn't stop there. Generation after generation of increased knowledge and accumulated experience created larger and heavier craft to carry more people further and further. Eventually the three ships commanded by Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic ocean and landed in the West Indies. In the 1960s, three humans roared across the sky and visited the moon and returned home safely. And so on. An exponential increase in knowledge that continues to accelerate to this day (2013). The continued journeys of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft have now reached the 'boundary' of our solar system (approximately 18 billion kilometers) from the sun.
Unsane:
a) Lacking in sanity. (Unabridged Dictionary, copyright © 2006 by Merriam-Webster, Inc.)
b) Lack of consciousness of abstracting, confusion of orders of abstractions resulting from identifications, etc. (Science and Sanity, copyright © 2000 Institute of General Semantics, Brooklyn, New York.).