"Becoming familiar with the characteristics of organisational levels of Metaphor Landscapes means you will be able to distinguish between them, to shift your attention from one to another and to recognise how each level influences the Landscape as a whole. This in turn will enhance your ability to cleanly invite clients to switch their attention within and between the four levels (symbols, relationships, patterns and pattern of organisation)." Metaphors in Mind, p. 31

Pick almost any book on popular science or psychology and somewhere the author will refer to things, ideas, processes, etc. as organised in 'levels'. However, it is much harder to find a book that defines what levels are, or how to distinguish between. Even rarer is a description of the subjective experience of perceiving levels and moving between them.  The key to understanding levels is to get clear about what defines the relationship between them and to remember that all levels are a construct of the mind of the perceiver; they do not exist as an inherent attribute of the perceived.

So this Developing Group Day will be an exploration of your subjective experience of Levels.

About Levels

While 'levels' is a common metaphor for arranging experience, authors also use other metaphors to describe similar distinctions:


As you will notice, most of these metaphors use an up-down motif.

Levels are a means of ordering and categorising experience. They are therefore usually referred to as 'Levels of' something:


We want to distinguish between these kinds of levels and when 'level' is simply used to mean 'category', 'scale', 'position' or 'rank', e.g.:


What distinguishes the first group from the second group is that going from one level to the next does not simply mean more/less of something.  Neither does it mean just going up/down. There is a qualitative difference between the levels  The nature of whatever is perceived at each level is of a different kind; it has its own characteristics and logic.  

We will be investigating the first group of levels.

Three Kinds of Levels

This topic gets even more interesting.  We have identified three different kinds of levels which are sometimes mixed up and rarely distinguished:

    1.    Part/Whole
    2.    Logical Inclusion
    3.    Aboutness

1.    Part/Whole

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, p.55, Ken Wilber emphasises that levels may be metaphors but they are not arbitrary:


A common example of part/whole levels is:


The defining characteristics of a part/whole hierarchy is the higher up the levels, the greater the scope, but also the smaller the number of items.  Organs "transcend and include" cells, but there are many less organs than cells in the universe.  If you were to take an entire part/whole level away, then all the above levels would cease to exist.  Without cells there can be no organs, organisms or societies.

2.    Logical Inclusion

Carmen Bostic St. Clair and John Grinder in Whispering in the Wind define Logical Inclusion as a hierarchical "ordering relationship specified by two properties:


As always, an example makes this much clearer:


Here lower levels are defined by more specific examples of higher levels.  Once again the higher the level the more inclusive, but in this case, the higher the level the greater the number of items.  There are many more things which can be classified as a 'means of transport' than things that can be classified as 'a water craft'.

3.    Aboutness

This kind of level is a feature of Michael Hall's Meta States and refers to the human capacity to reflect on our own states of being (Hall borrows from Korzybski):


More complicated states about states are:


Michael Hall says "When we bring one state to bear on another and apply one to another, the higher state functions as a contextual meaning or frame for the lower. ... By transcending - going meta - to the first state, the meta state includes the previous state.  But it does not collapse the states.  It textures the states with the higher state" (Rapport, Spring 2003).  Whether we go up or down these levels, the experience is of a single state of mind.



Comparing The Three Kinds of Levels

If we compare the three kinds of levels specified above, we find that in each case going up always provides more inclusively and going down results in more exclusivity, i.e. the higher logical levels transcend and include the lower logical levels. And that each level has its own 'logic' or integrity.

The difference is in the number of items at each level.  With 'part-whole' levels, there must always be less wholes than parts.  With 'logical inclusion' there must always be more examples at each successive higher level.  With 'aboutness' there is always just one state whether you go up or down the levels.

Note that each level has an "informational effect" (Bateson) on the other levels, "the lower sets the possibilities of the higher; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower" (Wilber).  


Moving Between Levels

Words commonly used to describe a shift, or relationship between levels are:

Up            Down
Higher        Lower
Transcend        Dissolve
Include        Exclude        
Deeper        Shallower
Go meta        ???


The following questions will help you to shift between levels:

1.    Part/Whole
    What is X a part of?        (Part to whole)
    What is a part of X?        (Whole to part)

2.    Logical Inclusion
    What is X an example of?    (Less to more inclusive)
    What is an example of X?    (More to less inclusive)

3.    Aboutness
    What is a state about X?        (Going meta)
    What do you experience about X?
[Any ideas what question would help you return from a meta position?]


For more about the organisation of Metaphor Landscapes into levels, see pp. 29-39 in Metaphors in Mind.