In Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972/2000), Bateson defines “logical types” in terms of levels of abstraction and quotes Korzybski’s map-territory distinction (p. 180). The following highlights his use of levels and types.

“… a frame is meta-communicative. Any message, which either explicitly or implicitly defines a frame, ipso facto gives the receiver instructions or aids in his attempt to understand the message included within the frame.

… Every meta-communicative or meta-linguistic message defines, either explicitly or implicitly, the set of messages about which it communicates, i.e., every meta-communicative message is or defines a psychological frame. (p. 188)

“No class can be a member of itself. The picture frame then, because it delimits a background, is here regarded as an external representation of a very special and important type of psychological frame — namely a frame whose function is to delimit a logical type.” (189)

In his chapter “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia” Bateson describes “how humans handle communication involving multiple Logical Types” (p. 203). In that section he writes the following:

“Multiple levels of learning and the Logical Typing of signals. These are two inseparable sets of phenomena — inseparable because the ability to handle the multiple types of signals is itself a learned skill and therefore a function of the multiple levels of learning.” (204)

From Mind and Nature (1979), Bateson defines “mind” as involving processes of transformation that discloses “a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena.” (p. 122).

“I shall try to drive home the importance of this criterion by exhibiting cases in which the discrimination of levels of communication has been so confused or distorted that various sorts of frustration and pathology have been the result.” (122)

In the index of Bateson’s book Mind and Nature (1979), he writes this under the list of “Logical Types.” A series of examines is in order:

1. The name is not the thing named but is of different logical type, higher than the thing named.
2. The class is of different logical type, higher than that of its members.
3. The injunctions issues by, or control emanating from, the bias of the house thermostat is of higher logical type than the control issued by the thermometer.
4. The word “tumbleweed” is of the same logical type as “bush” or “tree.” It is not the name of a species or genus of plants; rather, it is the name of a class of plants whose members share a particular style of growth and dissemination.
5. “Acceleration” is of a higher logical type than “velocity.”

 

In another place Bateson defined logical types in the following way:

Logical Type: 1) The name is not the thing named but is of different logical type, higher than the thing named. 2) The class is of different logical type, higher than that of its members. (Mary Catherine Bateson, 1987, pp. 209-210).

Criteria for “logical levels:”

1. Hierarchies of experience.
2. Higher levels organize and control information on lower levels.
3. The modulation effect of the system necessarily works downward.
4. The modulation effect of the system does not necessarily work upward.
5. Higher levels operate more encompassing and impactful than the lower levels.
6. There exists a discontinuity between the levels — a break.
7. The relationship of logic between levels creates “paradox” if we don’t sort phenomena on different levels.
8. Hierarchical logical levels function as a system, the higher levels arise out of the lower and feed back information into the system to influence the lower levels. This creates recursiveness within logical levels.
9. As a cybernetic system, as information moves up logical levels new features emerge that does not exist at the lower levels. This emergence at higher levels involve, in systems language, summitivity. In other words, the emergent property does not exist only as the sum of the parts, but new properties and qualities arise over “time” within the system.
10. Reflexivity describes one of the new features that emerge in logical levels. In living organisms this results in self-reflexiveness or self-consciousness.
11. As a system with feedback properties, logical levels operates by self-reflexiveness, the whole system becomes cybernetic. It becomes a “system that feeds back onto and changes itself” (Dilts, 1990, 33). This makes it self-organizing.

1. a) in mathematic, by the restriction that a class cannot be a member of itself nor can one of the members be the class.
2. b) in logic, by the solution to the classic logical paradox, ‘This statement is false.’ (If the statement is true, it is false, and if it is false, then it is true, and so on.) The actual truth value of the statement is of a different logical type than the statement itself.
3. c) in behavior, by the fact that the reinforcement rules for exploration in animals is of a completely different nature than those for the process of testing that occurs in the act of exploration.” (1983: 24).

“The informational effects between levels and types is called feedback and is probably the major distinguishing feature of cybernetic systems.” (1983: 39)

“Differences of the same or different logical type interacting at different levels (hierarchical or logical respectively) will result in the modulation of the difference on the lower level.” (1983: 49)

 

Gregory Bateson:

A Logical Type: 1) The name is not the thing named but is of different logical type, higher than the thing named. 2) The class is of different logical type, higher than that of its members. (Mary Catherine Bateson, 1987, pp. 209-210).

 

When we move from one level to the next higher “logical” level, to its classification, it is simultaneously at a higher logical type. In this the terminology of level and type are synonyms of each other. When you put one thought-feeling at a meta-relationship to another, the higher level operates as a category of the lower level. This is what we mean by both “logical types” and “logical levels.” One state is a “logical” relationship to another so it is at a higher level and is about the other.

---

The phrase “logical level” is comprised of two abstractions or nominalizations. For “logical” we have logic, logos, so the hidden verb is reasoning, a way of computing information. For “level” we have layers and the hidden verb layering. So with a “logical level” we refer to the process of reasoning that layers one thing upon another. When you hunt for a “logical type or level” you look at how a mind is classifying, categorizing, or punctuating things. That’s where a “logical type or level” exists — in a mind that represents categories and levels or orders of abstractions.

---

What is a logical level?

---

“In our brain structure, language, and perceptual systems there are natural hierarchies or levels of experiences. The effect of each level is to organize and control the information on the level below it. Changing something on an upper level would necessarily change things on the lower levels; changing something on a lower level could but would not necessarily affect the upper levels.” (Dilts, Epstein, Dilts, 1991, p. 26, italics added).

---

“Logical Levels: an internal hierarchy in which each level is progressively more psychologically encompassing and impactful” (1990: 217, italics added).

---

“Logical typing occurs where there is a discontinuity (as opposed to a continuity, as with the hierarchies) between levels of classification. This kind of discontinuity is exemplified:

When we put a state like anger or fear inside another state (i.e., calmness, respect, gentleness, courage, etc.), we change the internal logic of our nervous system. And in doing this we also change our way of thinking. We create what Alfred Korzybski called “psycho-logic.”

---

Anger now becomes a member of the class of calmness. Or it could become a member of the class of respect. This completely re-creates one’s “logic,” way of reasoning and generates a very new and different way of responding. Normally (what’s the norm in most cultures) anger is a member of the class of threatening things or personal insult. To put it into a new classification re-creates a new psycho-logic for a person’s state and experience.

Imagine embracing your power to take action in the world with acceptance and appreciation. Imagine engulfing it with ownership, excitement, and joy. Imagine applying hope, desired outcomes, willingness to take intelligent risks, love, and concern for others, to it. Mix all of these well in a state of contemplative relaxation. Let it bake as you learn and explore and develop…

---

Do this and you will texture your state. You can now create calm respectful anger. If you take charge of the process, you can design the kind of quality states that will enhance your life. To transcend an everyday state, begin with the primary level of consciousness, notice your thoughts and feelings about something. As your primary state, your awareness focuses on something external to yourself. You fear driving fast, closed in places, particular tones of voices. You get angry at insults. You delight in and enjoy the beauty of a scene or a piece of music.

---

You then transcend this experience including it as you move up to a chose meta-awareness. This creates a new level of organization. You now have something higher that still contains the essentials of the lower plus something else.

---

In respect, considerate, and patient anger — you still have anger. You still have the sense of threat or danger to your person, yet the anger is now textured in larger levels of mind and emotion causing something new to emerge. You have the anger state plus something that transcends the anger. Perhaps you have thoughtful anger or respectful anger.

---

By transcending the lower, you add new features, qualities, properties, and characteristics. You now have the ability to engineer new emergent properties for your states. It gives us the key to the structure of subjectivity as experiences become more complex and layered.

---

When your learning is taken up into playfulness and appreciation, when you engulf it with passion and the intention to improve the quality of life — something new emerges. You have a passionate and accelerated learning state.

When we tease apart the structure of our higher frames-of-references (or meta-states) from the primary experiences we do so to create clarity about the inherent structure within complex states. In actual practice, however, primary and meta levels of experiences or states merge into one unit. Research scientist Arthur Koestler introduced the term “holons” to describe reality as composed of “whole/parts.” These whole/parts holons refer to any “entity” that is itself a whole and yet simultaneously a part of some other whole.

---

“To explain the observed phenomena we always have to consider the wider context of the learning experiment.” Why? “The larger context may change the sign of the reinforcement proposed by a given message, and evidently the larger context may also change the mnode – may place the message in the category of humor, metaphor, etc. … The context (or meta-message) classifies the message, but can never meet it on equal terms.” (Bateson, 1972, p. 246-247)

---

This means several things. First as holons, we experience our “states” as a whole. We experience confidence, courage, commitment, playfulness, joy, flow, etc. as a whole experience and not as the various variables that make up the experience. Yet second, each exists as a part of some larger whole. Within the holistic experience there is a part/whole structured experience — inner contexts and contexts-of-contexts.

---

As a system, we now have systemic properties arising. We have the emergence of new qualities. By transcending the current state or experience and including it, we put the experience within a higher frame.

---

In systems, the new gestalt is “more than and different from the sum of the parts.” Merely adding all of the parts together does not, and cannot, explain what emerges. Emergence occurs as new properties arise and there is a leap upward to a higher form of organization.

---

“So there are both discontinuties in evolution —mind cannot be reduced to life, and life cannot be reduced to matter; and there are continuities ..” (Ken Wilber, 1996, p. 24)

---

Each higher level embraces and engulfs the lower. When you take a primary state like anger or confidence and set various frames on it, you create the possibility for new emergent properties to emerge.

---

Imagine embracing your anger with acceptance, appreciation, and then wonder. Imagine engulfing it in love, respect, and honor. Imagine applying mindfulness, values, and patience to it. Imagine bringing ecology concerns, moral uprightness, and honor to it. Mix well. Put into the oven of your mind, let it bake for awhile…

A word that is a close synonym of meta is frame. A frame is a perceptual filter, it sets a category or a class, it is an interpretative schema as a structure whereby we attribute meaning to things. And similar to meta, it does many things simultaneously. As such it manages meaning, governs attention, controls responses, creates an orientation, orders (organizes) perception, punctuates a series of events, etc.

---

“Within dream or fantasy the dreamer does not operate with the concept ‘untrue.’ He operates with all sorts of statements but with a curious inabiity to achieve meta-statements. He cannot … dream a statement referring to (i.e., framing) his dream.” (Bateson, 1972, p. 185)

---

“The first step in defining a psychological frame might be to say that it is (or delimits) a class or set of messages.” (p. 186)

---

“While the analogy of the mathematical set is perhaps over abstract, the analogy of the picture frame is excessively concrete. The psychological concept which we are trying to define is neither physical nor logical. … Psychological frames are exclusive, i.e., by including certain messages within a frame, certain other messages are excluded. Psychological frames are inclusive, i.e., by excluding certain messages certain others are included. …” (187)

---

“A frame is meta-communicative. Any message, which either explicitly or implicitly defines a frame, ipso facto gives the receiver instructions or aids in his attempt to understand the messages included within the frame.” (188)

Structurally, a meta-state stands in special relationship to a state. The second state relates to the primary state as a higher awareness about the lower state. The junior state functions as a member of the class defined by the higher state. The higher or meta-state functions as a category for understanding and feeling about the lower.

---

That’s why “fear of our anger” (fearful anger) differs in texture so much from “respect of our anger” (respectful anger).

---

That’s why “shame about getting angry because it only turns things nasty” differs so much in texture to “appreciation of my powers to get angry because it informs me that some perceived value or understanding feels violated and allows me to respectfully explore the situation anger.”

---

As a higher logical level, the mental and emotional frames that we bring to our primary experiences represent the governing influences of beliefs, decisions, identities, etc. The higher frame, as a message about the lower experience, modulates, organizes, and governs it. It functions like a self-organizing attractor in the mind-body system. In your meta-states, you will find values, beliefs, expectations, understandings, identifications, etc. Some will be obvious and explicit, others will be hidden and convert.