Steve Andreas > Articles > Whispering in the Wind

Scope and Category

I also appreciated the distinction made in this book between:

Hierarchies of wholeness or inclusion (what I have been describing as change in scope) in which the change is one of increased, and/or different information in sensory-based experience (what this book calls “First Access” FA) and
Hierarchies of logical levels which are created as a result of categories of experience—and categories of categories, etc. (which this book refers to as f2 verbal descriptions).

Bateson, Keeny, and many other illuminati of systems theory have completely missed this difference, which is quite significant and useful in tracking how a person responds in a given situation, and also as a guide to changing that response.

Changing scope is the basis for context reframing, which changes the kind and amount of “sensory” information in someone’s representation. Expanding scope is sometimes called “seeing the big picture.” Change of scope is the underlying basis for a number of the content reframing or “sleight of mouth” patterns (justification, consequences, etc.)

In contrast, a category is a group or set of experiences. When someone thinks of a category, they focus on the criteria used for creating the category, and tend to ignore most of the sensory-based information in the individual experiences in the group. This is the difference between FA (perception of a specific dog) and the f2 category “dog.” The category typically elicits a representation of an “average” or generic dog, rather than a specific dog. Categories provide the underlying basis for a different set of content reframing patterns, such as “redescription,” “model of the world,” “apply to self,” etc.

Charles Faulkner and I have been exploring the many ramifications of this important distinction between scope and category for the last couple of years. We continue to find uses for it, and have been teaching what we have learned so far in a seminar titled “Changing Levels of Meaning and Experience.”