On Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics
ISBN: 978-1-83753-347-3, eISBN: 978-1-83753-346-6
Publication date: 16 July 2024
Abstract
Executive Summary
All four propositions, assumptions (A), presumptions (P), suppositions (S), and presuppositions (PS), are, in general, part of human language and its usage, usually studied under the domain of linguistics. Critical thinking, as we understand in these volumes, is critical analysis of human language and its linguistics and narratives and arguments, which freely or spontaneously use A, P, S, and PS. These in turn are composed of signs, symbols (e.g., the alphabet) that bear meanings (semantics), messages and information (informatics), and motivation and persuasion via argumentation (pragmatics). We elaborate on these in this appendix.
Our major thesis here is the epistemological quasi necessity of A, P, S, and PS, which we freely and spontaneously use in linguistics, informatics, semantics, semeiotics, and pragmatics in our day-to day discussions, dialog, research, teaching, conversations, and conventional rationalizations. These can be both good from the viewpoint of transparency and honesty, opacity, and human exchange information asymmetry. They are dangerous since such A, P, S, and PS could be based on false dichotomies of man/Nature, male/female, truth/falsehood, objectivity/subjectivity, riches/poverty, equality/inequality, and the like; most of the negative aspects of such dichotomies are being used for self-serving, profit-maximizing, wealth-accumulating, poverty-perpetuating, and socially polarizing purposes. Human Anthropocene history is dotted with them, especially in the developmental context of industrialization and economic infrastructure development.
Hence, the vital necessity of critical thinking for critical self-examination, especially in current MBA curricula. All the three volumes of this book on critical thinking are expressly designed for this purpose.
Citation
Mascarenhas, O.A.J., Thakur, M. and Kumar, P. (2024), "On Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions", A Primer on Critical Thinking and Business Ethics, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 223-253. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83753-346-620241008
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Oswald A. J. Mascarenhas, Munish Thakur and Payal Kumar. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited
Introduction
Almost every one of the hundreds of critical thinking exercises included in the three volumes of the primer on critical thinking welcomes the student/teacher/reader/researcher to the primary critical thinking task of checking hidden “assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions” underpinning their thinking, rationalizing, conceptualizing, argumentation, theorizing, believing, asserting, and other cognitive operations involved in the context or core of the critical thinking exercise. Hence, our first undertaking in this appendix, which is the resource chapter for critical thinking scholars, is to define, clarify, and illustrate these four basic terms: assumptions (A), presumptions (P), suppositions (S), and presuppositions (PS), as well as their conventional and theoretical uses.
Linguistics, Pragmatics, Semantics, and Informatics
The ability to speak and to create and develop language is one of several unique human skills. Language as communication, conversation, discussion, dialog, discourse, and argumentation is constituted of many assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, among other cognitive expressions and activities (such as biases, prejudices, stereotypes, and mindsets). This branch of language development and analysis involved is called linguistics.
Linguistics is the actual choice and use of specific assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions that relates to the choice and use of meanings, values, beliefs, principles, convictions, culture, usage, and conventions. Written words (e.g., texts, communications) are a function of linguistics devices we use every day (e.g., phones, Google, information magazines, journals, dictionaries, and the like). They also pertain to the field of semantics that deals with signs, symbols, images, figures, metaphors, and numbers that constitute the inner structure of a language. The practical side of linguistics and semantics deals with actual meanings and values of signs and symbols and the way we use them, to assign meanings to the specific utterances expressed in the form of assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions – this specific domain is also called pragmatics.
Pragmatics is the branch of study concerned with the study of meaning as communication by a speaker (or writer) and interpreted by a listener (or reader). It has consequently, more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves (Yule, 1996). It means that when someone speaks (or states sentences), there are unspoken meanings from the speaker to the listener, and the listeners analyzed what the speaker meant of their utterances, and the analysis of the listener must include the linguistic, social, environment, and physiological factors to reach the goals in communication. In pragmatics, one's principles are often different from those of another. Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies have reported that what is considered polite in one language is sometimes not polite in another.
Pragmatics, in turn, as much as it deals with the signs, symbols, images, and metaphors that we use in linguistic utterances, also belongs a specific field called semeiotics, a subset of semantics. Semeiotics can customize and personalize all the four elements of language – assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, often ambiguous and confused – thus making them challengingly interesting. Semantics, pragmatics, and linguistics ultimately deal with information, the way information is understood, designed, extracted from data, structured, packaged, and delivered, currently called informatics. Given information technology (IT) and its major developments, presently, informatics is getting prime importance in the form of data analytics.
Exploring Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
Assumptions
The word “assume” is derived from the Latin word, adsumere, which means to think or accept or believe something is true or sure to happen (when it has not happened yet) or without having proof of it happening, but is reasonable to assume it will happen. For example, you assume it is going to rain today, or that it is going to be a sunny day tomorrow, or more seriously, you assume that the economy will continue to improve. Or you assume something worse, e.g., it is generally assumed that stress is caused by too much work, or that too much smoking causes lung cancer. Alternatively, you assume something less serious, e.g., you assume all will come for dinner who were invited. Generally, you do not assume something bad or serious, e.g., that a tsunami will kill most of us, that World War III will be triggered by the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and so on. In general, assumptions are about commonplace events, incidents, or happenings. Serious and devastating predictions are suppositions or presuppositions.
Grammatically, “assumption” is a noun related to the verb “assume” and refers to the act of taking for granted or supposing something; it is a belief based on reasonable grounds or probable evidence (Plumer, 2017). In argumentation, an assumption is something that is (a) taken for granted without any evidence or (b) taken to be true tentatively, for hypothetical and theoretical purposes. For example, women are prettier than men; women are more intelligent than men.
Presumptions
On the other hand, the more serious, impacting, and consequential “presumption” comes from the Latin word, presumere, which means to assume beforehand and deliberately; it is to take for granted something is true in the absence of proof to the contrary. To presume is to constitute reasonable evidence for presuming; in this sense, presumption is to venture without authority or permission; to dare. As an expression by itself, it has also come to mean impudence; to take the liberty to be impudent enough to presume. For example, I presume mankind as we have now is or will be too fragile and vulnerable to survive in a highly depleted and unstable earth, I presume the earth's ecological inhabitability is steadily decreasing or shrinking, unless we do something radical to stop it, and so on.
A presumption is the acceptance of something as true although it is not known for certain. For example, you presume the markets will be bullish and strong for the coming year. Similarly, you assume the economy is going to be positive and creating jobs for all. In this sense, presumptions are wishful and hopeful utterances.
Suppositions
Supposition is a message expressing a purposeful or deliberate opinion based on incomplete evidence; it is a hypothesis that is taken for granted; it is also the cognitive process of supposing. While an assumption is an idea or theory that is usually made without proof, a supposition, on the other hand, has the connotation that the idea or theory is testable and provable. There is a difference between a question and an assumption. A supposition is always open to question: someone puts forward a supposition as a possibility that might get shot down by new information or new theories.
The word “supposition” can be traced to the Latin word, subponere, which means to place under as support, base, and ground to other linguistic expressions such as assumptions, presumptions, and presuppositions. For instance, global warming, climate change, and shrinking of livable spaces – all these “hyperobjects” (Morton, 2013) or suppositions that are long happening, helplessly enduring, that it is better to suppose the world is coming to an end (Morton, 2013). In this sense, a supposition is a theoretical postulate or stance, a more serious argumentative position. For example, you suppose c = the velocity of light can be surpassed by other subatomic particles; you do not just assume it.
Presuppositions
The “presupposition” is one of the most important and most studied concepts in linguistics. It refers to implicit inferences made in communication between people. Yule (2010) states that as a use of means, the presupposition can be found in any sentence or phrase. These inferences as presuppositions are necessary to understand utterances correctly. A presupposition of an argument is best understood as pertaining to a propositional element (a premise or the conclusion). In contrast, an assumption of an argument pertains to the argument as a whole, in that it is integral to the reasoning or inferential structure of the argument.
A presupposition is to assume beforehand; to imply the existence of; is a piece of information that is taken for granted or assumed to be true in order for the sentence to be meaningful; a preliminary conjecture or speculation. For example, in the sentence “John is taller than Bill,” the presupposition is that John and Bill are both known people. An assumption, on the other hand, is a piece of information that is not explicitly stated in the sentence but is inferred or implied. For example, in the sentence “John is taller than Bill,” the assumption is that both are men meaningfully comparable in age and stature. A presumption is both are male models competing with each other on critical features.
For an utterance to be a presupposition, it must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee and the utterance is considered appropriate in context (Yule, 1996). Presupposition is the information that a speaker assumes to be already known; it is the implicit meanings conveyed by the speaker; a type of inference (*) associated with utterances (**) of natural language sentences. For example:
“The Cold War has ended” presupposes that there was a Cold War.
“Tom's car is new” presupposes that Tom had a car that was getting visibly “old” and which had to be replaced by a “new” car.
In epistemology, a presupposition relates to a belief system, or Weltanschauung, that is required for the argument to make sense. We presuppose when we assert, humans are rational and rationalizing; both are belief systems. We also presuppose (and believe) that humans are irrational and unpredictable; it could also be a negative belief system. Similarly, we presuppose nonhumans are nonrational as lacking reflexive consciousness required for rational thinking. We also thereby presuppose that reflexive consciousness is required for rational thinking!
Presupposition is the phenomenon whereby speakers linguistically mark information as being taken for granted rather than being part of the main propositional content of a speech act. Expressions and constructions carrying presuppositions are called “presupposition triggers,” forming a large class including definite and factive verbs. Presuppositions have long been used as a property of language to shape the audience's ideology. Using presupposition triggers, the author or speaker may subject to the reader's or listener's interpretation of facts and events, establishing either a favorable or unfavorable bias throughout the text. Presupposition deals with implicit meanings conveyed by the speaker through the use of particular words.
Some presuppositions arise by default from specific words. “As”, which has a similar meaning to temporal “while,” is a presupposition trigger. Similarly, “this” is a presupposition trigger requiring something salient to refer to, the bare plural is a presupposition trigger requiring existence of multiple individuals, and “would” is a presupposition trigger requiring a salient future or hypothetical circumstance.
A presupposition of an argument is best understood as pertaining to a propositional element (a premise or the conclusion). In contrast, an assumption of an argument pertains to the argument as a whole in that it is integral to the reasoning or inferential structure of the argument. Although in some contexts the notions of an ordinary argument's presumption, assumption, and presupposition appear to merge into the one concept of an implicit premise, there are important differences between these three notions. It is argued that assumption and presupposition, but not presumption, are basic logical notions. A presupposition of an argument is best understood as pertaining to a propositional element (a premise or the conclusion) e of the argument, such that the presupposition is a necessary condition for the truth of e or for a term in e to have a reference.
See Exhibit A.1 for a summary of important aspects of assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions and how they can be contrasted.
Contrasting Assumptions, Presumptions, Supposition, and Presuppositions.
| Argumentation Characteristics | Common Parts of Argumentation in Linguistics | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assumptions (A) | Presumptions (P) | Suppositions (S) | Presuppositions (PS) | |
| Definitions (Yule, 1996) | An assumption is something that is (a) taken for granted without any evidence, or (b) taken to be true tentatively, for hypothetical purposes. Assumption is to believe something is true or sure to happen (when it has not happened yet) or without having proof of it happening, but is reasonable to assume it will happen. Assumption is making a judgment based on fact or information available although without proof. An assumption is anything said or believed that is accepted without proof as true or is certain to happen. |
A presumption is the acceptance of something as true although it is not known for certain. To presume is to take something for granted as being true in the absence of proof to the contrary. It is to constitute reasonable evidence for assuming; appear to prove; to venture without authority or permission; to dare; to be presumptuous. |
A supposition is something that the speaker assumes as the case prior to an utterance. It is to assume beforehand or to imply the existence of something. |
A presupposition is something that the speaker presumes as the case prior to an utterance. A presupposition is to assume beforehand; to imply the existence of; it is a piece of information that is taken for granted or assumed to be true in order for the sentence to be meaningful. |
| Typical example | Men are superior to women. | Men are wiser than women. | Men and women are comparable without prejudice. | Men and women have common accepted reference point for comparison. |
| Trigger | Assumption works off a belief or expectation. | A belief or expectation that is presumed. | Something that the speaker assumes as the case prior to an utterance. | Something that the speaker presumes as the case prior to an utterance. |
| Function | Supports expectation with little or no substance. | Supports expectation with little or no substance. | Supports assumption with little or no evidence. | Supports presumption with little or no evidence. |
| Data status or evidence | With no evidence or proof. | With enough data to support. | With no evidence or proof. | With no evidence or proof. |
| Outcome | Unknown but close to being known. | Not known but may be known in the future. | Unknown but close to being known. | Not known but may be known in the future. |
| Nature of argumentation | Guessing what is happening or what has happened. | Subset of assumption. | Subset of assumption. | Subset of presumption. |
Source: Authors' compilation.
Structure of Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
In linguistics, a supposition and an assumption are closely related concepts that refer to the background information that is required for a sentence or statement to make sense. Assumptions and presuppositions are part of background information. Suppositions and presuppositions are often part of the “projected” background information. Linguistic research particularly endeavors to focus on the linguistic constructions that activate presuppositions. At this stage, research aims at analyzing and identifying the types of presuppositions and the forms of presupposition triggers employed in human conversations. Thus, the identification and analysis of assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions must include theories and principles of linguistics, pragmatics, semeiotics, and semantics which enable their conception, design, and use. One way of characterizing the relationship between assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, and linguistics, pragmatics, semeiotics and semantics is portrayed in Fig. A.1.
As Fig. A.1 (a stacked Venn diagram) suggests, the largest outermost set stands for the grammatical and literary linguistic structure of most of our conversations, dialogs, discussions, discourses, and arguments under the domain of linguistics, where most of our presuppositions, suppositions, assumptions, and presumptions get conceived, designed, and framed as specific linguistic expressions. Presuppositions are presented and studied as most comprehensive in denotation and connotation and more universal than suppositions, assumptions, and presumptions (see Plumer, 2017; Yule, 1996); this spread is reflected in Fig. A.1.
The next most comprehensive set is semantics, which includes and controls the specific sub-domain of signs, symbols, images, and metaphors with which we dress our language and utterances. The next still more specific defining subset is informatics, which describes the more focused and specific informational content of our thinking and argumentations, message and cultural value of our assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions. Lastly, the innermost layer of pragmatics is the actual use and choice of specific meanings, values, in discussion, dialog, and discourse and ideologies that are primarily expressed as presumptions. Thus, Fig. A.1 structures presumptions as underpinning and grounding long-standing assumptions, biases, stereotypes, texts, narratives, and stories of our language, social constructions deconstructions, and conversations. Mutatis mutandis, Fig. A.1 can serve as a general [linguistic] structure of critical thinking.
Types of Presuppositions
There are six types of presuppositions or presupposition triggers (Yule, 1996) – existential, factive, lexical, structural, nonfactive, and counterfactual. According to Yule (1996, p. 27), “A potential presupposition is an assumption typically associated with the use of a linguistic form (words, phrases, structure).” He stated that the use of proper means as a presupposition can be found in any sentence or phrase (Yule, 2010). Set out below are examples of types of presuppositions or triggering elements.
Existential Presupposition
It is the assumption of the existence of the entities named by the speaker and assumed to be present in the noun phrase and possessive constructions. For example:
Old Andy taught math – the existential presuppositions (EPS) triggered are: >> there is a teacher Andy, Andy is a professor of math, Andy is an old man but still teaching, and the like.
Your car is dirty >> you have a car and that it is dirty.
My mother's dress is dirty >> my mother exists and that she has a dress.
Factive Presupposition
It is the assumption that something is true due to the presence of some other factive presuppositions (FPS) triggered by factive verbs such as “know,” “realize,” “regret,” “be,” “aware,” “odd,” and “glad.” For example:
Michael didn't realize that Cano was wrong >> are Cano was wrong.
Cano regrets telling us >> Cano told us.
Jane didn't realize he was ill >> Jane's husband was ill, he was seriously ill, we regret telling her about it.
Lexical Presupposition
“Lexical” refers to the use of words as in a lexicon, dictionary, or thesaurus. It is the presupposition that uses one word whose meaning is asserted conventionally. The speaker can act as if another (nonasserted) meaning will be understood. In this case, the use of the words “stop,” “start,” and “again” presuppose another (unstated) concept. For example:
She stopped smoking >> he used to smoke, he was a serious smoker, he stopped smoking, but he started again, and he did this often before.
They start complaining >> they weren't complaining before.
You're late again >> you were late before.
Structural Presupposition
It is the assumption associated with the use of certain structures. The listener perceives that the information presented is necessarily true rather than just the presupposition of the person asking the question. For instance, the “wh” question construction in English is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the “wh” form is already known.
For example:
When did he leave? >> He left.
Where did you buy the bike? >> You bought the bike.
When did you stop beating your wife? >> You have a wife, you have been beating her, some have observed it, you have stopped beating her now.
Nonfactive Presupposition
It is an assumption referred to something that is not true and which is identified by the presence of some verb such as “dream,” “image,” or “pretend.” For example:
I dreamed that I was rich >> I was not rich.
We imagined we were in Hawaii >> We were not in Hawaii.
Some pretend there is no poverty >> Some deny there is poverty, they believe poverty is a social construction.
Counterfactual Presupposition
It is the assumption that what is presupposed is not only untrue, but is the opposite of what is true, or contrary to facts. For instance, some conditional structure, generally called counterfactual conditionals, presupposes that the information in the “if” clause is not true at the time of utterance. For example:
If you were my friend, you would have helped me >> You are not my friend, you are not helping me.
If I were not short, I would have become a stewardess >> I am short, I am not a stewardess.
Relative and Adverbial
Relative and adverbial clauses are also found to presuppose information. For example:
The incident occurred in a region where there is a large Kurdish population >> There is a large Kurdish population [relative].
It started when Tehran's vice president this week warned >> This week, Tehran's vice president warned [adverbial].
Referential Presuppositions (Entailment)
When it is claimed that A entails B, B is taken to be a necessary consequence of A in the sense that it is impossible for A to be true without B being true. Often, though not always, B is required to be a priori deducible from A, as well. The relata, A and B, are naturally thought of as propositions, or statements – in the sense of that which is stated by an assertive utterance of a sentence. However, sometimes theorists speak of sentences themselves as entailing other sentences. In such cases, it is natural to construe the relation holding between sentences as deriving from the primary entailment relation holding between the propositions they express. These are also sometimes called referential presuppositions.
General Cognitive Antecedents of Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
All four utterances (assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions) are nouns or can be treated or converted into nouns; all four presuppose facts, views, or some information as part of argumentation. Thus, a presupposition connects and includes all four (i.e., assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions).
Utterances are a function of assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, which we use in our speech and conversations. All four elements of speech are a function of linguistics, which is a function of semantics, and semantics in turn is a function of pragmatics. Fig. A.1 captures these sequential inclusions. Pragmatics describe meanings that we assign to written words in our conversation.
Presumptions of arguments are inherently conventional in ways that their assumptions and presuppositions are not. So, not all assumptions and not all presuppositions of arguments are presumptions of those arguments, although all presumptions of arguments are either assumptions or presuppositions of those arguments. For example: A major assumption (A) is, man is the central purpose of the universe. This is often cited and implied as an anthropocentric assumption, presumption, supposition, and presupposition of our language, conversation, or argumentation.
It presumes presumption (P) that there is purpose for the universe; a major presupposition (PS) that man can be a central purpose of the universe; a connected major presupposition (PS) is also that man is or can be a superior intelligence in the universe; it supposes (S) that man is superior in the universe by nature, function, and dignity. It presupposes (PS) that man exists, that the universe exists independent of man; that the universe exists for man and not vice versa, that man is more intelligent than Nature or the universe, and the like. Assumption A triggers all others – presumption, supposition, and presupposition.
A presupposition of a sentence must normally be part of the common ground of the utterance context (the shared knowledge of the interlocutors) for the sentence to be felicitous. Sometimes, however, sentences may carry presuppositions that are not part of the common ground and nevertheless be felicitous. Furthermore, Levinson (1983, pp. 179–180) states that a presupposition is a background belief, relating to an utterance, that:
Must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee or utterances to be considered appropriate in context.
Will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterances in the form of an assertion, denial, or question.
Will generally be associated with a specific lexical item or lexicon, dictionary, or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.
Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that presupposition consists of a relationship between two propositions. For example:
Positive sentence: a. Benny's dog is cute (p) supposes b. Benny has a dog (q).
Negative sentence: a. Benny's dog is not cute (= NOT p)
b. Benny has a dog (= q).
c. NOT p >> q (NOT p presupposes q).
The sentences in the example above (a) contains the proposition (p) and the sentence in (b) contains the proposition (q), using the symbol “>>” to mean “presupposes” either in positive or negative sentences, because negation of an expression does not change its presupposition. The relationships of proposition are represented as in (c). This property of presupposition is generally described as constancy under negation. Basically, it means that the presupposition of a statement will remain constant (still true) even when the statement is negated.
At a more basic level, all four utterances (i.e., assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions) are framed, justified, and sustained by several antecedents and constraints such as those set out below:
General uncertainty, unpredictability, and unforeseeability, such that assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions seek to counteract or compensate the uncertainty. Typical assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions (highly questionable) in this context are:
The world is safer and healthier than in the past years.
Our country or the world or the earth is the best place to live.
Man is the best citizen of the world.
Man is the friendliest species of the universe.
Man is the most social entity in Nature.
Man is superior to Nature.
Men are superior to nonhumans.
Men are superior to women.
Humans are superior in regard to all nonhuman species.
Men have been given charge and dominance over all the earth.
Ignorance of facts, and relevant moral principles; ignorance of the universe, its relevant scientific or structural laws and principles. Hence, typical ignorant or unproven assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions in this context are:
Mother Nature arrived several centuries before man, and for man.
Thus, man is superior to Nature given their superior intelligence, consciousness, and genetic structure compared to nonhuman sentient animals.
Hence, the latter can serve as table food or raw material to the meat industry and animal husbandry.
Men are superior to women.
Hence, they can be dominated by men in terms of power, politics, position, money, sex, culture, business and opportunity, and the like.
Human unwillingness to change behavior, lifestyle comfort, status quo, and popular over-demand for capitalist market production, product distribution, and limitless consumption currently provided by free market capitalism that mankind has conceived, engineered, designed, and delivered by their creativity, imagination, and capacity for technological innovation and progress; hence human unwillingness to accept our role in the origin or origination of endless mining, depletion, and degeneration of Nature for industrial development; hence our role in generating social inequalities of income, wealth, job markets, education, health care, life skills, and quality of life; hence also our defensive routines to claim these inequalities as natural evolution, collateral damage, and market justifiable.
Hence the great divide between the rich and the poor, the advantaged and disadvantaged (see Stiglitz, 2015), the educated skilled and the undeservedly uneducated and marginalized left behind or impoverished (Sen, 1996) and to deem that current global poverty that compromises human dignity is a capitalist market necessity or collateral damage that the rich cannot control or feel guilty about poverty for any related wrongdoing, or accept moral obligation to combat and eradicate, retribution, or reverse it.
The great Anthropocene is characterized by national and international infrastructure development, for roadways, railroads, shipping (seaports), aviation (airports), and transportation (auto industrial hubs) networks, currently caught up in the presumed transformative empowerment of globalization, global democracy, and global equalization.
All of this is basically still supported by continued terrestrial extraction, excavation, and deep-mining (all for energy production based on coal, oil, gas, water, hydrocarbons, and minerals excavation), resulting in regressive Nature denudation, degradation, deforestation, encroachment, consequent land erosion, ocean-dumping of industrial effluents and toxicities, contributing to high ocean acidification, planetary emasculation, degeneration, and overmining, consequent planetary global warming, climate change, reduced planetary inhabitability, and cosmic depletion. Typical assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions in this regard are:
Humans are most superior beings on this planet.
Hence, Mother Nature has inevitably chosen to serve humans and support human dominance for infrastructure development.
Humans are superior to nonhuman sentients which are for human food, growth, and civilization.
Nonhuman sentients have no rights or choice in this context.
Instrumentality of nonhuman resources totally for human aggrandizement, and so on.
Hence, the consequent cumulative effect or condition of institutionalized greed, avarice, envy, corruption, bribes, Mafia-supported drug cartels, money laundering, buyer–seller information asymmetry, deception, exploitation, profiteering, profit maximization, trade wars, war economy, terrorism, nuclear missile overproduction and proliferation, polarization and global tension, global peace crisis and disharmony, and the like. All these are ethical pressure points that may trigger specific defensive or counteractive assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions that try to seek legitimacy and justification, despite being self-serving, anthropocentric, and egocentric.
Amid anxieties of shrinking and polluting, currently terrestrial inhabitable spaces and fast depleting energy sources, NASA and privately funded billionaire-trillionaire entrepreneurs are currently jointly engaged in outer space exploratory and audacious manned or unmanned (robotic), operations, experimentations, and ventures that are primarily targeting safe, repeatable, and economic human colonization of promising planetary spaces such as Mars, Moon, Venus, Pluto, and other galactic spaces that promise safe arrival, survival, and sustainable human populations within this or the coming decade. In this outer space research and experimentation, additional and complementary support is planned and offered by advances in AI-supported ecology, cosmic sustainability, increasing terrestrial inhabitability via terraforming (changing or altering new planetary spaces to enable human habitation), or posthumanizing (changing or genetically modifying humans considered currently frail and fragile for outer space human life into tougher and more robust humans for surviving and thriving under conditions in challenging outer space environments. Typical assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions in this context are:
Humans can alter humans in posthumanizing them without violating human nature.
Humans can alter solar spaces by terraforming them without substantially harming or violating Mother Nature.
Humans have plenipotential powers to alter both humans and solar spaces in planning and executing posthumanization and terraforming without foreseeing and taking moral and ontological responsibility for currently foreseeable or unforeseeable but highly probable and harmful consequences of outer space modifications.
Humans can own, expand, deploy, and occupy terrestrial and extraterrestrial spaces or interplanetary, solar, galactic, and cosmic spaces for highly risky, energy-intensive, usable or non-reusable outer space rocket missions, and inter-satellite explorations.
The Science of Presuppositions
Herbert Simon, the great economist believed (or presupposed) that our brains are large optimizing machines that had built-in rules to stop somewhere (see Taleb, 2004, p. 187). Later, however, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky studied uncertainty with controlled experiments of a repeatable nature and argued that we do not know how much we do not know, that we are not perfectly rational, and that our thinking involves approximations. We surmise that the heuristics we come up with to prove that we are rational and rationalizing often come with side effects of biases, assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, which affect our thinking habits making us bounded rational or “predictably irrational” (Ariely, 2008) or “satisficing” and approximating (Simon, 1947).
We propose that most of these biases are linguistic in content and structure and often take the form of heuristics expressed as assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, presuppositions, and approximations. Kahneman and Tversky showed that these biases are sticky; they do not disappear when stakes are large or when we are provided with incentives, which means they are not necessarily cost saving. They represented a different methodology and category of reasoning and where the probabilistic reasoning is weak (Taleb, 2004, p. 190). 1
A Taxonomy of Human Rational Activities That Seemingly Justify Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
We further analyze functional linguistic activities as grounding assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions.
Regarding the environment, one of the central functions of critical thinking is to analyze our foundational mental activities, such as:
Ground-level biological sense activities, such as seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, sniffing, sensing, eating, cooking, tasting, feeling, and enjoying, ill-feeling and suffering, and the like. These ground-level biological sense activities provide the empirical origin, support, or trigger for most of our linguistic assumptions and presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions.
Ground-level bio survival activities, such as moving, grazing, seeking food, hunting, self-feeding, mating, offspring/calves-feeding, group-consuming, herding, communicating, calling, courting, birthing, breeding, parenting, protecting offspring, rearing, feeding, serving, caring; aggregating, predator-watching, defending, daring, fleeing, group-hunting, bonding, group-sharing of group-hunt, and group-fighting for food and hunt animals, and the like. These ground-level bio survival activities provide the evolutionary justification and development of body organs as weapons and defenses and most of our defensive gestures, codes, assumptions, and presumptions.
First-order bio-cognitive activities, such as remembering, recalling, perceiving, knowing, comprehending, understanding, connecting, getting connected, communicating, sharing, speaking, hearing and listening, belonging, enjoying, playing, having fun, learning, growing, maturing, and the like – most of these activities are trained as growth skills in primary schools or institutions of learning. They also provide the material, reason, and rationalization of our rudimentary assumptions and presumptions, biases, prejudices, and positive/negative outlooks.
First-order organizational activities, such as planning, new market scanning, new product development, producing, manufacturing, purchasing, buying, selling, storing, inventorying, distributing, supplying, financing, hiring, wages management, margins strategizing, assessing fixed costs, variable costing, pricing, cost management, discounting, marketing, revenues management, profits management, reinvesting profits, banking, borrowing, lending, debt and equity management, and the like. These first-order organizational activities normally provide the reason, rationalization, and motivation for all our business activities, negotiating, and bargaining strategies, especially in the form of rewards, punishments, assumptions, and presumptions, suppositions, or presuppositions, rules and regulations, conventions, attributions, and compensations.
Second-order cognitive activities, such as thinking, hypothesizing, postulating, theorizing, researching, data collecting, data analyzing, experimenting, problem detecting, formulating, specifying, resolving, case analyzing, designing, imagining, intuiting, in-sighting, foresight, hindsight, forecasting, predicting, managing, futurizing, and the like. These first-order and second-order cognitive activities most often provide the theoretical foundation for all our argumentations and rationalizations and for most of our discussions, discourse, dialog, and deliberations and decision-making, including assumptions (e.g., assuming indefinite production distribution and consumption [LPDC]), lifestyle expectations, potential and demands and supporting presumptions, suppositions, or presuppositions. That is, most of these activities ground, create, and constitute our assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions for acquisitions, mergers, expansions, competition, and sustainable competitive advantages.
Second-order organizational activities, such as teaming, joint venturing, partnering, competing, strategic alliances, nation-building, creating, imagining, innovating, technologizing, knowledge-building, collaborating, experimenting, teaching, training, consulting, discussing, dialoguing, discoursing, planning, analyzing, problem-detecting, problem formulating and resolving; discovering, inventing, patenting, manufacturing, distributing, marketing, branding, exchanging (buying–selling), acquiring, merging, divesting, profiting, wealth creating, asset building, owning, debt–equity balancing, political affiliating, policymaking, framing laws, governing, adjudicating, judging, sentencing, jurisprudence, convicting, imprisoning, freeing, and forgiving. These second-order organizational activities provide the rational, theoretical, or empirical, and moral foundation for most of our argumentation and rationalization of our assumptions and presumptions, suppositions, or presuppositions including laws, policies, and ideologies.
Second-order conceptualizing activities, such as theorizing, framing ownership, rights, duties, philosophizing, meta-conceptualizing, hypothesizing, inferencing [deductive and inductive generalizing are forms of assuming, presuming, supposing, and presupposing], reasoning, rationalizing, justifying, believing, behaving moralizing, judging, convicting, acquitting, stereotyping, scheming, conspiring, envying, coveting, avarice, greed, envy, retributing, revenging, impacting, controlling, causing, influencing, determining, conditioning, monitoring, assessing, evaluating, framing laws and order, adjudicating, counseling, and coaching. That is, most of these second-order conceptualizations originate, explain, justify, and seek to rationalize, expand, perpetuate, and legitimize our assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions and other linguistic paraphernalia such as rhetoric, oratory, orations, argumentation, bargaining, negotiation, and arbitration.
As humans, we share the first two activities with most nonhuman sentients while sharing the third activity with most mammals and pet animals. As far as we know, study, and observe, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh activities are found mostly among humans and among highly developed mammals and, arguably, activities under items 3–7 currently seem to define humans, and presumably we share only among humans. In general, first-order or ground-level sense or bio-cognitive activities are directly dependent on our environment and/or derived from our senses and their basic capacities; second-order activities are reflections on, derivatives of, or dependent on first-order activities. All activities can and should be subject to critical thinking, as we have defined and characterized in the three volumes.
Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions Regarding Environment, Nature, and Hierarchy
Environment and Nature, which houses it, is the world external/internal to us, supporting and sustaining us. It provides us with clean air (oxygen), water, greenery, plants and forestry, rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, marine life, fruits, herbs, barks and berries for our food, and most importantly, supplies us with mines and minerals, oil and gas, heat, fire, fuel energy for our industries, industrialization, and infrastructure. In this regard, our major assumptions and presumptions regarding Nature, hierarchy, and the environment are and have been:
Anthropocentrism, which assumes man is the central point and purpose of the universe.
Anthropo-supremacy, which is that all environment and its resources are for man, human growth, progress, and civilization.
The world has been run and managed based on these two cardinal assumptions, both of which are not yet proved nor provable; hence, they are abiding and lasting uncritical or unexamined self-serving assumptions or presuppositions.
Anthropo-speciesism, which is the third major assumption or presupposition that supposedly follows from the first two, is that man is superior to all other nonhuman species in intelligence, power, governance, and achievement – a major arrogant presumption and presupposition of human history and industrial civilization, which is being currently questioned and challenged by modern egalitarian understanding of Nature, being, and becoming, by which we believe in democracy and equality of all being, including all humans.
Hitherto – wrongly – we have made sustainability an anthropocentric project. That is, we have assumed and presumed that sustainability is for mankind – a selfish and self-serving project with limited, often destructive, scope. Instead, we could focus on an anthropogenic project of sustainability. That is, given the nature, dignity, and meaning of human and nonhuman beings endowed with sacred and unique domains of individuality, sociality, immanence, and transcendence, we are better positioned as socially equal in dignity, value, and destiny.
What are the genetic obligations of humankind, individually, collectively, organizationally, nationally, internationally, and cosmically, toward sustainability of the planet and, the cosmos we are part of? Why can't all these activities and assumptions be for all humankind and for the sake of Mother Nature herself, rather than selfishly appropriated by mankind? This new and promising anthropogenic concept and paradigm of sustainability, accordingly, has four anthropogenic sources of social, ethical and moral obligations: (a) corporate human individuality; (b) corporate human sociality; (c) corporate human immanence; and (d) corporate human transcendence.
Epistemological Necessity of Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions and the Human Cognitive Gap
Is truth objective? Is truth objectively identifiable or discoverable or even understandable by humans? Is it the sole privilege of humans to discover, understand, and internalize objective truth? If answers to all these questions are not in the affirmative nor uniform nor unanimous, then is there an epistemologically and linguistically sound way for humans to approximate objective truth via various utterances such as assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions? That is, we are constrained to freely assume, presume, suppose, and presuppose truth and its equivalents and antecedents in approximating truth.
The gap between what we perceive in reality and what is reality has been emphasized by Aristotle and Kant. Aquinas wrote, “Nil in intellectu nisi per-prius in sensu” (Nothing in the intellect unless it is first in the senses). If so, Aquinas supports the gap theory. If all truth must be mediated via senses, opaque and coarsely blind as they are, then we are still farther from the truth. Further, if and when we do understand truth, our mind and thinking are basically fallible and vulnerable. That is, we do not have some immediate hotline to the truth (Morton, 2013, p. 147).
The gap shows between the subject and the object, between the phenomenon and the noumenon; between Nature and our perception of Mother Nature, between reality and our sense perception of reality (Morton, 2013, p. 182); between noumenon and phenomenon, between reality perception by the intellect versus the senses (Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Merleau, Ponty), between Essein and Dassein (Heidegger) supposedly between humans and nonhumans (Latour, 2004), between causality and actuality, between existence and essence, between a narrative and its history, between constructivism and deconstructivism (Morton, 2013, p. 188); between simplistic reductionism and its parsimonious classification, between value and its commodification, between the rich and the marginalized, riches and poverty, between power and freedom, between capital limits and indefinite human consumption, between choice and irrationality, between capitalism and wealth accumulation, between democracy and inequality, between egalitarianism (basic equality of all) and instrumentalism (which justifies subordination of the marginalized to the moneyed classes), between caste and religion, between exclusivism and inclusivism, between hate and intimacy, between conversation and silence, between sincerity and deception, between war and peace, between ecology and nuclear waste, between Hiroshima and the Holocaust (Morton, 2013, p. 170).
In general, all (false) dichotomies (as either/or linguistics) feed or generate assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions. Most dichotomies associated with the “gaps” listed earlier are counteracted and compensated by assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions. Assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions become vital parts of our language skills, expressions, and utterances in argumentation, dialog, discussion, and discourse. Postmodernists even go further to assert that human language and truth is possible only through metaphors and through assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, which are all ultimately metaphorical.
All these gap theories make our spontaneous use of assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions necessary and epistemologically justified. We could even add that we cannot think, utter, or express the truth unless through assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions, hence the importance of critically examining our assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions via critical thinking and the rationale and imperative for developing critical thinking skills in MBA students and scholars exposed to uncritical thinking in MBA curricula.
Further, according to the theory of hyperobjects proposed by Timothy Morton (2013, pp. 4–28), there is no metalanguage (of meta-linguistic utterances) for humans to seek recourse in obtaining objective truth, other than the language of assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions. Morton uses the term “hyperobjects” to describe objects that are so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal specificity, such as global warming, Styrofoam, and radioactive plutonium. Hyperobjects, according to Morton, pose numerous threats to individualism, nationalism, anti-intellectualism, racism, speciesism, anthropocentrism, and other “isms”, possibly even capitalism itself (Morton, 2013, p. 22). He says that humans are playing catch-up with reality, which is elusive, owing to the anthropocentric force of accumulated human prejudice (Morton, 2013, p. 23). Hyperobjects, he notes, are additional constraints that blind humans from the truth.
Corporate Individuality, Corporate Sociality, Corporate Immanence, and Corporate Transcendence as Positive Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
Consider the following positive presuppositions:
All humans [not to speak of nonhumans] are by Nature endowed with intrinsicality.
Thus, all humans are by Nature endowed with intrinsic individuality.
Thus, all humans are by Nature endowed with intrinsic sociality.
Thus, all humans are by Nature endowed with intrinsic immanence.
Thus, all humans are by Nature endowed with intrinsic transcendence.
We have elaborated on each of these four intrinsic human features earlier, in the context of grounding our concepts of and claims for intrinsic dignity of all humans; we revisit them here with specific corporate legitimacy and social justification goals and objectives. These utterances are best described and studied as positive presuppositions since these are philosophical assertions based on modern scientific theories such as complexity, chaos theory, intrinsicality, anti-network theory, systems theory and inter connectedness and interdependence of all Nature. Specifically, presuppositions on individuality, sociality, immanence, and transcendence should help us in formulating linguistic utterances counteracting negative assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions by positive ones when we confront them in discourse and dialog. This is a necessary task for most of the critical thinking exercises proposed in this volume.
Corporate Individuality
Corporate individuality implies, among other things, uniqueness, intrinsic singularity, wholesomeness, adequacy in corporate unique identity, and its product/service offerings, for claiming social legitimacy, patents and brand recognition, and social contribution, market entry, and fair competition. Adam Smith (1776) had this in mind for fair and moral competition to benefit society via the “invisible hand.”
Discussion points in connection with corporate human individuality are:
How can the “individuality” of your company contribute to sustainability?
How do you understand your company's unique individuality in terms of:
company registration and social legitimacy;
company brand and its major products and services;
corporate's history, growth, and development;
corporate climate;
power sharing;
organizational change, etc.
How can each component of your unique organizational individuality naturally contribute to sustainability, and with what effect on the environment?
Today, we ask additional questions:
How can the ‘individuality’ of your company contribute to global sustainability?
How do you understand your company's unique individuality – company origination, registration, and social legitimacy; company brand identity, personality, and performance; corporate history, growth, and development – in terms of how they contribute to global sustainability?
How can the “individuality” of your company – circumscribed by your corporate climate, labor relations, honesty, integrity, ethics, harmony and solidarity, competitive sharing of scarce national resources and opportunity – contribute to global sustainability?
How can you position organizational strategic change, design, and corporate restructuring to contribute to global ecology and sustainability?
How can each component of your unique organizational individuality and entity naturally contribute to corporate and national sustainability and nation-building, and with what salubrious effect on the environment?
Serious responses to these and other related questions, we submit, should generate positive assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions to fight self-serving assumptions, presumptions, suppositions, and presuppositions that get arbitrarily formulated and remain frozen in your company and which critical thinking demands they be eradicated.
Corporate Sociality
Corporate sociality, among other things, implies social inter connectedness and interdependence, corporate accountability and unique social responsibility, corporate contribution to real social progress, welfare and community development, and the like. Usual discussion points include:
How can the unique “sociality” of your company contribute to sustainability?
How do you understand and appreciate the unique sociality of your company relative to:
reporting to society that legitimizes you;
teamwork and organizational dynamics of work;
strategic planning;
new product development and its social impact;
marketing and communication;
involvement with customers.
Unique critical questions in this regard are:
How do you understand and appreciate the unique sociality of your company relative to:
your specific social geographic environment;
honest reporting to society that legitimizes you;
teamwork and organizational dynamics of work that ensures corporate learning and growth, honest statement and payment of corporate taxes with no evasion or undue tax exemption;
strategic planning, social analysis, and discernment;
new product development and its social impact and social contribution;
marketing and communication to society and community;
involvement with customers along entire upstream, midstream, and downstream product chain stages and social pressure points.
How can each component of your unique organizational sociality naturally contribute to sustainability, and with what social development effect on your environment?
Corporate Immanence
Immanence (Latin, in + manere = immanence or immersion) implies unique origination and local nascence, unique growth and maturity because of social geographic environment. That is, the immanent nature and foundation of the company in terms of its unique strategic combination of time, place, space, geography, gravity, motion, and planetary (solar, lunar, stellar, planetary, constellation, galaxy, etc.) location and presence that makes and positions you as also grounds your unique sustainable market and revenue advantage. Hence, how could you understand and internalize your company's unique immanence, unique geography and history and unique immersion in cosmos as your unique social community and sustainable competitive advantage and social obligation to provide unique production and services to target markets and humankind?
Thus, how does the unique “immanence” of your company contribute to global sustainability? That is, given its sustainable competitive advantage, which originally enabled your social legitimacy and market entry, how are these reflected and justified by the products and services you offer to the market and society, and that they continue to be arguably good, unique, rare, irreplaceable, nonsubstitutable, nontransferable, and nonduplicable and hence ecologically sustainable (Jones, 2000)?
Hence, how do you assess your unique corporate contribution and obligation to ecological sustainability and how should it be automatically part and parcel of your immanent vision and mission, goals and objectives, planning and strategies, growth and development? Hence, reassess your corporate immanence in your unique customer relationship management, your unique supply chain relationship management, your unique distributor partnership relationship management, and your unique employee relationship management. They should also be an integral part of your brand, sustainable competitive advantage, and reason for existence. Thus, can each component of your unique organizational sociality naturally contribute to sustainability, with optimal societal effect on the environment? That is, how could each component of your unique organizational immanence inherently contribute to ecological sustainability, and with positive effect on the environment?
Corporate Transcendence
Transcendere in Latin means unique capacities to go beyond and surpass. Corporate transcendence means, among other things, your unique ability to “transcend” local geographic limits and limiting constraints and challenges of time, space, energy, and other scarce resources to contribute to global and cosmic sustainability. Hence, specifically how do you understand, share, and assess your company's unique transcendence in terms of its unique:
Transcendent mission that takes you beyond you, your time and geographic space of responsibility.
Transcendent vision that lifts you beyond current limiting horizons of time, geography (place), space, gravity, motion, and cosmic position in the industry, markets, and economies.
Noble corporate calling, vocation, motivation, and destiny beyond wealth and power, fame, and fortune, capital and wealth accumulation.
Planning your immediate and distant transcendent future surpassing yourself in goals, objectives, ends, ideals, inputs and processes, outcomes and impact.
Outreach to experience heights and horizons greater than yourself and still be real and sustainable.
Finally and concretely, how can your corporate transcendence that intrinsically connects your corporate destiny with global ecological sustainability mandate you to refrain from further augmenting planetary depletion and decreased human inhabitability by steadily reducing mining and extraction, excavating, deforestation, encroaching, and other depleting activities but instead spearhead positive projects that restore, replenish, regenerate, and rejuvenate Mother Nature to cosmic wholeness? How can each component of your unique organizational transcendence naturally contribute to sustainability, and with what transcendent effect on the environment?
Major Presuppositions Regarding Poverty (Local and/or Global)
Set out below are some sequential presuppositions in this regard:
Poverty is caused. Here, the presupposition or antecedent of A is: poverty has a cause.
The presupposition or the anaphor is that the cause can be identified and eradicated.
A possible theoretical presupposition is that the cause of poverty is monistic or poverty has a single root cause.
Another supposition or presupposition is that the root cause of poverty can be pluralistic or a related group of causes (like social inequality, wage injustice, gender inequity), that can be identified, combatted against, and thus eradicated by an institution other than the poor.
Despite the first three presupposition A, B, and C, or perhaps, because of them, the world is divided between the rich and poor, between the skilled and the advantaged versus the marginalized and undeservedly disadvantaged and unskilled. The actual global situation is: there is poverty, local and global.
This is an “existential” or factual presupposition (Yule, 1996).
A major presumption of poverty is that it is caused by the poor. In this context, several presuppositions or antecedents are hypothesized or conjectured:
Poverty has a cause.
The cause of poverty are the poor.
The poor have the power or the bad will to cause or perpetuate poverty.
The poor – who are on welfare and who want to be on welfare – are the root cause of poverty.
The root cause of poverty can be eradicated by the rich, by empowering the poor to be rich with or without welfare.
Poverty has a unique cause (presupposition) that can be eradicated (supposition). The counterfactual presupposition is that poverty has multiple causes (like laziness, disability to work, lack of meaningful jobs, income inequality, social inequality, caste or gender inequity, corruption, money laundering, theft, greed, avarice, envy, or bribing) (presuppositions). Any of these causes can cause or perpetuate poverty (presupposition). That is, poverty has multiple causes that have been perpetuating poverty for hundreds of years. Thus, poverty cannot be eradicated (presumption) as long as income and social inequalities and caste-based structural inequities are not erased (presumption).
Yule's (1996) Characterization of Poverty
Poverty is social violence. This is an assumed fact (F); it is an example of existential presupposition. Poverty violates or compromises human dignity. This fact is another example of an existential presupposition or a counter-factive or nonfactive presumption, which is that poverty as such does not compromise human dignity. Abject or desperate poverty violates human fundamental rights and therefore one's constitution (F). Corporate profit-maximizing capitalism perpetuates poverty by generating income inequalities (F). Corporate capitalism perpetuates poverty via profit maximization that eventually causes and sustains or perpetuates global poverty.
Modern existential presuppositions regarding poverty are:
Mother Nature abhors poverty as something unnatural (F).
Since she believes in democracy and equality of all beings (F).
Cosmic sustainability is compromised by global poverty (F) and vice versa.
Global poverty is incompatible with cosmic sustainability (F).
Cosmic sustainability cannot be achieved with global poverty.
Free market capitalism as Adam Smith (1776) conceived it has no place for local or global poverty (assumption); it disallows social inequalities. Unbridled capitalism that promotes monopolistic concentration of wealth fosters poverty (presupposition). Uncontrolled industrialization breeds poverty. Globalization that thrives on cost minimization and not on revenue maximization stimulates poverty (presumption).
Wishful Presuppositions
Globalization, however understood and operationalized, is good for humanity (presumption).
Globalization, however understood and operationalized, is good for global ecology (presupposition).
Globalization, however understood and operationalized, is good for global sustainability (presupposition).
Industrialization and infrastructure development, however defined and rationalized, is good for humanity (assumption).
Industrialization and infrastructure development, however defined and rationalized, is good for poverty eradication (assumption).
Industrialization and infrastructure development, however defined and rationalized, is good for boosting global productivity and development which is good for poverty eradication (assumption).
Industrialization and infrastructure development geared for limitless production, distribution and consumption goals and objectives stimulates creative innovation of new industries that generate new jobs and new opportunities that can reduce inequalities, thus combating global poverty (presumption, presupposition).
Industrialization and infrastructure development, dependent on extraction and productive of natural nonrenewable resources, is good for ecology (assumption).
Industrialization and infrastructure development, dependent on extraction and overuse of natural nonrenewable resources, is not good for ecology even as collateral damage (assumption).
Globalization, however understood and operationalized, is good for global income equalization (presumption).
Globalization, however understood and operationalized, is good for global sustainability and ensuring increase of global human inhabitability (presupposition).
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Presuppositions as Positive Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
NLP is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy, which first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book, The Structure of Magic. 2 NLP asserts that there is a connection between neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”), and acquired behavioral patterns (“programming”) and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Presuppositions increase our empowerment and choice. Specifically, there is no desire or requirement to change our belief or values system, merely to remove limitations within the models to allow them to experience more freedom.
Respect All Models of the World
Everyone has a different view or “model” of the world, based on their experience of the world, which is linked to geography, family, community, economy, education, religion, experience, and consequent mindset (similar to corporate immanence in our view). We do not have to agree on values and beliefs. Actually, we are merely interested in ensuring that our own values and belief system offer us the greatest level of choice and opportunity.
Ecology Is Critical
We assess whether behavior or change is appropriate, based on the context, environment, and ecology. For example, a behavior in the workplace may be appropriate; however, that same behavior in a personal relationship may not be.
Signals of Resistance Indicate Lack of Rapport
Often, we assume that rapport exists only between people. However, often we lack rapport with an idea, value, or concept. So, if we are resisting making a change in our behavior (and this is most frequently an unconscious conflict with our desires), we must look beyond people. Specifically, we are either out of rapport with the person we're working with, or there is a negative emotion or protection mechanism operating within our mind to prevent rapport with an idea. Whatever the reason, there are solutions to rebuild rapport with a person or an idea.
People Are Not Their Behavior
For success in our own lives, we must operate from a foundation of acceptance. If we can't accept ourselves, just as we are, we limit our options and choices. Moreover, no matter how behavior may appear to the outside world, there is always a positive intention. Frequently, the positive intention behind unhelpful behavior is self-protection. We are not the story we tell in words or action. In fact, we are beings of wholeness with infinite potential, that is to say, our behavior is not who we are. If we can view everyone in this way, we can then choose if we want to accept or reject specific behavior. Moreover, we confirm in our minds that behavior can be changed.
Everyone Is Doing the Best They Can
Just like everything in Nature, we evolve, develop, and grow. This means that the internal resources we have also expand over time. As a result, it is purposeless to berate ourselves for something that happened in the past because our perspective, experience, or behavior was less developed than it is now. We are always doing the best that we can with the resources we have available. Think about the context of a young child learning to walk. Do we berate them the first time they fall down after standing up? No. We encourage them because we know that they are strengthening their muscles and their ability to balance through practice. Everything we do in life and the way we perceive the world operates in the same way.
Calibrate on Behavior
The most important information we have about a person is their behavior. We all have our masks, and we all have our stories. Sometimes, our real behavior is outside of our conscious awareness. So, we always assess willingness to change, and actual change based on behavior, rather than what we say.
Territory Is Not Defined by the Map
We know that words are symbolic and, as a result, ambiguous. Therefore, the words that we use do not necessarily represent the situation we are describing when we use them. Moreover, we can acknowledge that although words may not be representative of an event itself, they are indicative of direction of focus and expansion or limitation in the mind.
You Are in Charge of Your Behavior
When we exist in the present moment, we are aware of our thoughts and feelings. Moreover, when we consciously acknowledge them, we can direct our thoughts in any way we choose. This choice gives us power over our behavior. Specifically, when we choose to think specific thoughts, and choose to communicate thoughts in a specific language, we choose our (linguistic) behavior. Unconscious behavior (operating outside of our awareness) can be addressed by releasing negative emotions and limiting beliefs. To put it another way, we integrate the parts of us which appear separated.
Resources Are Ever Present
We are trained by society to look outside for strength, guidance, and knowledge. However, we have all the resources inside us to achieve anything we desire. All we need to do is look within to access them. There are no un-resourceful people, only un-resourceful states.
Wholeness Is the Ultimate Objective
Everything operates as one, in flow. Our emotions are linked to our thoughts and behavior. Subsequently, our mind is linked to our body and our health. The more wholeness we can perceive within ourselves, the more we are able to live long, happy, and healthy lives. Moreover, the less separation we perceive in ourselves, especially our behavior, the more authentic we can be. We can remove any masks we wear, and we should operate from our authentic place of being. We can operate from wholeness. The greater the level of wholeness in ourselves, the easier it is to see that we are part of the universe and everything within it.
Only the Concept of Feedback Exists
In simple terms, there is no failure; there is just feedback or a universal reaction to a test. We are always operating in a testing and feedback loop in every area of our lives. In fact, what seems like failure can be considered as a successful outcome we did not pursue to its outcome. With this insight and perspective, we can stop blaming ourselves and others, find solutions, and improve the outcome of our effort. Additionally, we learn to be tenacious and flexible.
Response Is the Meaning of Communication
We are always communicating. In fact, even when we remain silent, we are communicating. Consequently, nonverbal communication can account most of our communication. Moreover, while your intention may be clear to you, it is the other person's interpretation and response that reflects how effective your communication is. NLP teaches the skills and flexibility to minimize miscommunication and to increase clarity. It's always useful to remember that we receive communication through our own filters of perception. As a result, we cannot control how communication is received.
The Law of Requisite Variety
The person with the most flexibility has the greater level of control or potential to control the environment. If something isn't working, stop and do something else. The more flexible we are, the greater chance of achievement we give ourselves. Flexibility and creativity are the keys to success.
Design Procedures to Increase Choice
We want to have a couple of ideas in our awareness. First, there is always a choice. Even if choices are all unattractive, there is always a choice. Second, all discussion and direction of thought and intervention want to increase choice. The more choices we have, the more freedom we feel. When we feel free, we are empowered.
Empowerment Is a Choice
The more we exercise choice freely, the more empowered we are.
See Volume 1 of this primer for more discussion on this topic.
Bandler and Grinder (1975, p. 6) claimed that their methodology could codify the structure inherent to the therapeutic “magic” as performed by Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, and Fritz Perls, and then from that codification, the structure and its activity could be learned by others. Their book was intended to be a codification of therapeutic techniques.
- Prelims
- Chapter 1 Critical Thinking to Restore Human Dignity Compromised by Global Poverty
- Chapter 2 Ecozoic Critical Thinking Applied to Cosmic Sustainability and Developmental Goals
- Chapter 3 Critical Thinking Applied to Ecofeminism
- Chapter 4 Critical Thinking Applied to Animal Ethics, Animal Rights, and Animal Welfare
- Chapter 5 Natural Sustainability Space Ethics and Critical Thinking for Assessing Outer Space Advances
- Chapter 6 Epilogue: Aesthetic Rationality, Spiritual Capital, and Human Mindfulness to Support Global Social Well-Being
- Appendix (Resource Chapter) On Assumptions, Presumptions, Suppositions, and Presuppositions
- References
- Index