Logical levels of training and psychotherapy

Coaching does not teach, but helps to learn.

Timothy Golvi

We can learn, learn to learn,
maybe learn learn learn.

Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson is one of the most influential thinkers of our time (according to Fridtjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics”), whose work combines knowledge from epistemology, cybernetics, anthropology, psychology, ecology. One of the most fundamental concepts of Bateson is the idea of ​​logical levels of learning and communication.

Its basis lies in the theory of Bertrand Russell's logical types, which can be briefly summarized as follows: all objects of thinking are organized into a peculiar hierarchy, the zero type of which includes individual objects (for example, a spoon). The first type includes sets of objects of zero type (for example, spoons as a set); to the second, there are sets of sets of these objects (for example, “cutlery” as a set that unites spoons, forks, knives and other appliances) , etc. Thus, a strict distinction is made between objects, properties of objects, properties of properties of objects , etc. d.
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Applied to learning, the theory of logical types is as follows.

Levels of learning

A zero level of learning is a linear response to a changing environment. For example, when a person “learned” to recognize, by the fight of hours, that it is twelve hours. This happens in the simplest cases - laboratory training of animals, genetic determination, in simple electronic circuits, and so on.
(Bateson, by the way, notes that as part of his definition, many very simple mechanical devices show at least the zero learning phenomenon, so the question is not “can machines learn,” but “what level of training can a given machine ". The ability to achieve a certain level of education is directly related to the ability of the system (in the case of a person - brain neurosubstrate) to form contours with an appropriate level of recursiveness.)

Primary learning — Learning I — occurs when the subject of learning can, in different contexts, give a different response to the same change. This is, for example, addiction or conditioning in Pavlov's experiments, in which the dog, after training, gives out saliva in response to the call, but does not, before training.

Here, Bateson introduces the concept of “context”, which defines a choice from different sets of responses: Learning I is changing the response by adjusting the choice from a given set of responses. Learning II is a change in the learning process — I , that is, it is an adjustment to the set of alternatives from which to make a choice; or it is a change in the division of the sequence of experience
As an example of learning-II, Bateson cites, for example, the phenomenon of “transference”: N. brings into his relationship with another (for example, the therapist) his past ideas about interactions with some significant other. Accordingly, N. will act and speak in such a way as to force the therapist to respond in a way that reminds N. of the treatment of this significant other with him (in the case of Freud, these were the only alternative parents, in practice the picture can be significantly more complicated). That is, in terms of Bateson, N. will try to arrange an exchange with the therapist in accordance with the premises of his (N.) past training II .

Training-III and psychotherapy

“Learning III is a change in the learning process II” , that is, it is an adjustment in the system of those sets of alternatives from which a choice is made. Since the prerequisites of learning-ll are self-affirming, it is clear that learning-III must be difficult and rare even in human beings. And scientists, who are also people, are hard enough to imagine or describe this process. However, something like this happens from time to time with psychotherapy, coaching, religious conversion, “enlightenment” and in other situations where a deep reorganization of character occurs.

In the understanding of Bateson, the effectiveness of psychotherapy is determined by replacing the assumptions obtained during training II - which is not an easy task in itself, especially considering that these prerequisites are self-confirming, and besides, they are mostly not conscious by man. (Their unawareness follows from the characteristics of human evolution and physiology: “any characteristic — anatomical, physiological, or behavioral — if it remains adaptive for a considerable period of time, it will sink deeper and deeper into the organizational structure of the system”).

(There is also a close connection between the notion of “I” and the levels of learning, since by itself feeling and the notion of “I” is to no small extent a product of learning-II - accordingly, learning-III should be connected with going beyond the boundaries of this concept, this concept and of this understanding: “The concept of“ I ”no longer functions as a central argument in the punctuation of experience.” This thesis echoes many descriptions of religious experience, where “personality” no longer matters, and the characteristics of the trance state many times described in the literature I, where the boundaries of "I" are modified and blurred.)

“ Learning-IV will be a change in learning-III , but it seems that it does not occur in any adult terrestrial organisms.”

Learning Achievement Level III Experiment

Training and reinforcement at different levels occurs in different ways . At training level I, receiving a positive response (for example, receiving dolphin fish from a trainer) confirms the “correctness” of some action. At the level of training II, the same response confirms an understanding of the context (for example, the dolphin’s understanding of his relationship, perhaps instrumental or dependent, with this trainer).

But “reinforcement” at training level III is no longer so obvious. As Bateson suggests, “the being is pushed to the level of training-III by “ contradictions ”generated at the level of training-II , then it can be expected that the resolution of these contradictions will be a positive reinforcement at the level of training-III . Such permission can take many forms. ”

The classic experiment for reaching the level of training-III is as follows:
- the dolphin in the demonstration pool was used to show the public the mechanism of training or, to put it cybernetic, the mechanism of "operant conditioning";
- when the dolphin showed a new action at a public demonstration, the trainer whistled to the whistle and gave the dolphin a fish;
- on the next presentation, when the dolphin for about two-thirds of the time repeated the movement that gave the result last time, the trainer did not give him fish;
- when a new distinct movement appeared, the trainer whistled to the whistle and gave the dolphin a fish;
- since with each demonstration the dolphin's anxiety grew, the trainer retreated from the rules and started to give the dolphin “unearned fish” from time to time in order to keep the context of relationships and training.

The result of this sequence was that the dolphin seemed very agitated between the fourteenth and fifteenth sessions, and when he appeared in the demonstration basin for the fifteenth time, he gave a lengthy show of eight distinctly distinct behavioral units, four of which were completely new, i.e. have never been observed before in this species of animals.

An extremely important principle follows from this experiment, common to both psychotherapy, coaching, Zen Buddhism , and other transforming practices, such as programming: “ First , putting the mammal in the wrong position according to its own rules of understanding important relationships with another mammal, you can cause him extreme pain and disorientation. but this pain is of a general kind, which Samuel Butler called a virtue, a pain that precedes the solution of the problem ...
Secondly , if you manage to fend off or resist this pathology, this kind of experience, taken as a whole, can contribute to creativity ... a new level of insight into things ... ".

UPD. Summarizing, I will make several conclusions and assumptions:
1. Life in general and learning in particular as a process can occur at different logical levels and these levels must be distinguished from each other in order not to confuse a bulldog with a rhino and not to fall into the trap of “double ligaments” - both in the outside world and in their own thinking .
2. Mixing logical types is a very frequent thing in both thinking and life - and it can be not only negative and paralyzing, but also contribute to creativity and the exit (consciousness and practice) to a new level.
3. Psychotherapy and coaching are cybernetically sound and extremely useful practitioners to improve the quality of life in general and thinking in particular.
4. Structuring contexts is a way to organize a person’s perception in one way or another, which is constantly happening in human life and interaction. A vigilant attitude towards this can serve both to improve the quality of life and the emergence of fundamentally new ways of teaching and transmitting information - in IT projects as well.