You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

The structural differential diagram / 45
ship, choosership, ownership, and volition, imagining that it is,
was, will be, has a purpose, mission, etc. In this way, not only
is all perception and what is perceived in the past, but so all
experiences and concepts of choice have already occurred by
the time the nervous system produces, perceives, thinks, posits,
experiences, or, in a word, appears an “I,” which formulates
“I chose this.”
“For all these reasons and more, we have strings in
the object level disk, which do not connect with the
label level tag. Any description of something is always
going to leave out some aspects or features of the thing
described—a map is not all of the territory. Each point
on the label level tag where strings from the object level
disk connect represents a perceived feature of the unique
object, which is a part of the definition of the word for
that object. The feature, which is left out of the label
apple, is represented as one of the free-hanging strings
in the object level disk.
When people do not know that there is much more to
something than the meaning of a word for it can cover,
they are in danger of allowing the word to determine
their attitude toward that something, rather than finding
out for themselves through experience what their
attitude should be. (Johnson, People in Quandaries, p.
261) This problem is especially serious when a person
prejudges a stranger on the basis of how he labels the
stranger. (Weinberg, Levels of Knowing and Existence,
p. 56) Labeling a person does not define what a person
is. Labels do not necessarily represent accurate or true
definitions of people. To a great extent, labels reflect
the assumptions and points of view of the person who
does this labeling.”
Getting back to the object level, and label level, each
represent different levels of abstraction in the label level