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

48 / You Are Not
belong to different levels of abstraction? I would say no,
you couldn’t make an inference about something without
first having a description of that something. There is a
structural character to the successive levels of abstraction
[condensation], represented by tags linked to tags
in the diagram, just as there is a structural character to
a ten-story building. You do not construct the frame
for the second floor until you have built the frame for
the first floor. So it is in making statements: we build
descriptions on labels, we build inferences on descriptions,
we build conclusions on inferences, etc. This is
how we use language to deal with reality. This process
of making statement about statements potentially can
go on indefinitely in humans. (Korzybski, Science and
Sanity, p. 392) It is always possible to make a new statement
about a previous statement. For example, the new
statement can be a criticism or further development of
a previous statement.
Eventually, this chain of tags, representing higher and
higher levels of abstraction [condensation], lead back to
the process level [consciousness or SUBSTANCE]. This
takes the form of a projection onto reality of a person’s
belief (map) about what reality (territory) is. A person’s
maps of reality can be called “as if” formulations.
(Chisholm, Introductory Lectures on General Semantics,
pp. 105-106)
As if formulations are the mental maps that people
have which they believe corresponds to the territory of
reality. These formulations can be theories or just beliefs
about the nature of reality. “ (Sawin)
This is particularly critical when looking at “spiritual”
or “religious” understanding. This projection of belief by a
nervous system is described in the following example.
To illustrate, a nervous system will project onto the process
level or consciousness level or THE SUBSTANCE (called