Category: Nominalization

Critics of NLP practitioner often find the arrogant.

The spiritual arrogance and disgust of anyone who has suffered deeply (order of rank is almost determined by just how deeply people can suffer), the trembling certainty that saturates and colors him entirely, a certainty that his sufferings have given him a greater knowledge than the cleverest and wisest can have, that he knows his way around and was once “at home” in many distant and terrifying worlds that “you don’t know anything about!” … this spiritual, silent arrogance of the sufferer, this pride of knowledge’s chosen one, its “initiate,” almost its martyr, needs all kinds of disguises to protect itself from the touch of intrusive and pitying hands, and in general from everyone who is not its equal in pain. Profound suffering makes you noble; it separates. One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicureanism, and a certain showy courage of taste that accepts suffering without a second thought and resists everything sad and profound. There are “cheerful people” who use cheerfulness because it lets them be misunderstood: – they want to be misunderstood. There are “scientific people” who use science because it gives a cheerful appearance, and because being scientific implies that a person is superficial: – they want to encourage this false inference. There are free, impudent spirits who would like to hide and deny that they are shattered, proud, incurable hearts; and sometimes even stupidity is the mask for an ill-fated, all-too-certain knowing. – From which it follows that a more refined humanity will have great respect for “masks,” and will not indulge in psychology and curiosity in the wrong place.

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 270

Believes are very important within NLP. First of all one must make a distinction between believes and convictions. Second of all, one needs to take into account that a belief is a nominalization.

That a beliefs strength alone guarantees nothing whatsoever about its truth, in fact is even capable of slowly, slowly distilling out of the most reasonable thing a concentrate of folly: this is our real European insight in this, if in anything, we have become experienced, been made cautious, shrewd, wise, apparently through much injury … ‘He that believeth shall be saved’: fine! Now and again, at least! But he that believeth shall most certainly be made stupid, even in the rarer case that the belief is not already stupid, that it was an intelligent one in the first place. Every long-held belief finally becomes stupid, which means (to express it with the clarity of our modern psychologists) that its reasons sink ‘into the unconscious’, disappear there – from then on it no longer rests upon reasons but upon affects (that is, whenever it needs help it gets the affects, and no longer the reasons, to fight its cause). Supposing one could discover which was the most strongly believed, longest held, least disputed, most honest belief that exists among men: it would then be highly justified to conjecture that this belief could also be the most profound, most stupid, ‘most unconscious’, the most thoroughly defended against reasons, the longest abandoned by reasons. – Agreed: but which is that belief? – Oh, you’re curious! But since I’ve started setting you riddles, I’ll be fair and come out quickly with the answer and solution – they won’t be easily anticipated. Man is above all a judging animal; but in judgment lies concealed our oldest and most constant belief. Every judgement rests on a holding-to-be-true and an asserting, on a certainty that something is thus and not otherwise, that in it man has really come to ‘know’: what is it that, in every judgment, is unconsciously believed to be true? – That we have a right to distinguish between subject and predicate, between cause and effect – that is our strongest belief; in fact, at bottom even the belief in cause and effect itself, in condition and conditioned is merely an individual case of the first and general belief, our primeval belief in subject and predicate (as the assertion that every effect is a doing and that every conditioned presupposes something that conditions, every doing a doer, in short a subject). Might not this belief in the concept of subject and predicate be a great stupidity?

Notebook 4, beginning of 1886 – spring 1886 paragraph 8

Conviction is a nominalization and as such a distortion of reality according to NLP. Convictions are stronger than believes. Most of our convictions are trival like for instance the conviction that tomorrow the sun will still shine. Relevant convictions are way more uncommon than relevant believes. As there is a difference in meaning between conviction and belief it is important for the NLP practitioner to know whether a certain idea is a conviction or a belief because the submodalities of those two will differ. Confusing the two leads to working with the wrong set of submodalities.

As convictions limit people’s options the correct application of NLP entails breaking down negative convictions to the level of things you believe could happen (or they could not). It is wrong to use NLP to build strong positive convictions and certainty. This not only leads to less options for the person involved but it also leads to arrogance without competence as people use NLP to become convinced that they are able to do so whereas in fact they can’t.

Enemies of truth. – Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Human, All Too Human part 1, paragraph 483

Conviction is the belief that on some particular point of knowledge one is in possession of the unqualified truth. This belief thus presupposes that unqualified truths exist; likewise that perfect methods of attaining to them have been discovered; finally, that everyone who possesses convictions avails himself of these perfect methods. All three assertions demonstrate at once that the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thought; he stands before us in the age of theoretical innocence and is a child, however grown up he may be in other respects. But whole millennia have lived in these childish presuppositions and it is from them that mankind’s mightiest sources of energy have flowed. Those countless numbers who have sacrificed themselves for their convictions thought they were doing so for unqualified truth. In this they were all wrong: probably a man has never yet sacrificed himself for truth; at least the dogmatic expression of his belief will have been unscientific or half-scientific. In reality one wanted to be in the right because one thought one had to be. To allow oneself to be deprived of one’s belief perhaps meant calling one’s eternal salvation into question. In a matter of such extreme importance as this the ‘will’ was only too audibly the prompter of the intellect. The presupposition of every believer of every kind was that he could not be refuted; if the counter-arguments proved very strong it was always left to him to defame reason itself and perhaps even to set up the ‘I believe because it is absurd’ as the banner of the extremest fanaticism. It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions. But if all those who have thought so highly of their convictions, brought to them sacrifices of every kind, and have not spared honor, body or life in their service, had devoted only half their energy to investigating with what right they adhered to this or that conviction, by what path they had arrived at it, how peaceable a picture the history of mankind would present! How much more knowledge there would be! We should have been spared all the cruel scenes attending the persecution of heretics of every kind, and for two reasons: firstly because the inquisitors would have conducted their inquisition above all within themselves and emerged out of the presumptuousness of being the defenders of unqualified truth; then because the heretics themselves would, after they had investigated them, have ceased to accord any further credence to such ill-founded propositions as the propositions of all religious sectarians and ‘right believers’ are.

Human, All Too Human paragraph 630

To what extent even we are still pious. — It is said with good reason that convictions have no civic rights in the domain of science: it is only when a conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of an hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experiment, or a regulative fiction, that its access to the realm of knowledge, and a certain value therein, can be conceded, — always, however, with the restriction that it must remain under police supervision, under the police of our distrust. — Regarded more accurately, however, does not this imply that only when a conviction ceases to be a conviction can it obtain admission into science? Does not the discipline of the scientific spirit just commence when one no longer harbors any conviction ? . . . It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked whether, in order that this discipline may commence it is not necessary that there should already be a conviction, and in fact one so imperative and absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other convictions. One sees that science also rests on a belief: there is no science at all “without premises”. The question whether truth is necessary, must not merely be affirmed beforehand, but must be affirmed to such an extent that the principle, belief, or conviction finds expression, that “there is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value” — This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will not to allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could also be interpreted in this fashion, provided one included under the generalization, “I will not deceive” the special case, ” I will not deceive myself” But why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be deceived? — Let it be noted that the reasons for the former eventuality belong to a category quite different from those for the latter: one does not want to be deceived oneself, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived, — in this sense science would be a prolonged process of caution, foresight and utility; against which, however, one might reasonably make objections. What? Is not-wishing-to-be-deceived really less injurious, less dangerous, less fatal? What do you know of the character of existence in all its phases to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of absolute distrust, or of absolute trustfulness ? In case, however, of both being necessary, much trusting and much distrusting, whence then should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth and untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful : as is the case. Thus — the belief in science, which now undeniably exists, cannot have had its origin in such a utilitarian calculation, but rather in spite of the fact of the inutility and dangerousness of the “Will to truth” of “truth at all costs” being continually demonstrated. “At all costs”: alas, we understand that sufficiently well, after having sacrificed and slaughtered one belief after another at this altar ! Consequently, “Will to truth” does not imply, ” I will not allow myself to be deceived,” but — there is no other alternative — ” I will not deceive, not even myself”: and thus we have reached the realm of morality. For let one just ask oneself fairly: “Why wilt thou not deceive?” especially if it should seem – and it does seem— as if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view to error, deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous devious. Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly, be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle, hostile to life “Will to Truth, that might be a concealed Will to Death.- Thus the question Why is there science? leads back to the moral problem: What in general is the purpose of morality, if life, nature, and history are non-moral? There is no doubt that the conscientious man in the daring and extreme sense in which he is presupposed by the belief in science, affirms thereby a world other than that of life, nature, and history; and in so far as he affirms this “other world” what? must he not just thereby— deny its counterpart, this world, our world? … But what I have in view will now be understood, namely, that it is always a metaphysical belief on which our belief in science rests,— and that even we knowing ones of today, anti-metaphysical, still take our fire from the conflagration kindled by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine. But what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and falsehood; — what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent lie? —

Gay Science paragraph 344

 

Conviction is the belief that on some particular point of knowledge one is in possession of the unqualified truth. This belief thus presupposes that unqualified truths exist; likewise that perfect methods of attaining to them have been discovered; finally, that everyone who possesses convictions avails himself of these perfect methods. All three assertions demonstrate at once that the man of convictions is not the man of scientific thought; he stands before us in the age of theoretical innocence and is a child, however grown up he may be in other respects. But whole millennia have lived in these childish presuppositions and it is from them that mankind’s mightiest sources of energy have flowed. Those countless numbers who have sacrificed themselves for their convictions thought they were doing so for unqualified truth. In this they were all wrong: probably a man has never yet sacrificed himself for truth; at least the dogmatic expression of his belief will have been unscientific or half-scientific. In reality one wanted to be in the right because one thought one had to be. To allow oneself to be deprived of one’s belief perhaps meant calling one’s eternal salvation into question. In a matter of such extreme importance as this the ‘will’ was only too audibly the prompter of the intellect. The presupposition of every believer of every kind was that he could not be refuted; if the counter-arguments proved very strong it was always left to him to defame reason itself and perhaps even to set up the ‘I believe it because it is absurd’ as the banner of the extremest fanaticism. It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions. But if all those who have thought so highly of their convictions, brought to them sacrifices of every kind, and have not spared honor, body or life in their service, had devoted only half their energy to investigating with what right they adhered to this or that conviction, by what path they had arrived at it, how peaceable a picture the history of mankind would present! How much more knowledge there would be! We should have been spared all the cruel scenes attending the persecution of heretics of every kind, and for two reasons: firstly because the inquisitors would have conducted their inquisition above all within themselves and emerged out of the presumptuousness of being the defenders of unqualified truth; then because the heretics themselves would, after they had investigated them, have ceased to accord any further credence to such ill-founded propositions as the propositions of all religious sectarians and ‘right believers’ are.

Human, All Too Human, part 1, paragraph 630

Denominalization is the process of turning a nominalization back into the active process that lies behind the noun.

On ‘causalism’: It’s obvious that things-in-themselves cannot stand in a relation of cause and effect to one another, and neither can phenomena: from which it follows that within a philosophy which believes in things-in-themselves and in phenomena, the concept ’cause and effect’ cannot be applied. Kant’s mistakes – … In fact the concept ’cause and effect’, considered psychologically, only arises from a way of thinking that believes will to be working upon will, always and everywhere – that believes only in what lives and at bottom only in ‘souls’ (and not in things). Within the mechanistic view of the world (which is logic and its application to space and time), that concept reduces to the mathematical formula – using which, as must be emphasized again and again, nothing is ever understood, but is denoted, distorted. The unalterable sequence of certain phenomena does not prove a ‘law’ but a power relation between two or several forces. To say: ‘But precisely this relation remains the same!’ means nothing more than: ‘One and the same force cannot be a different force as well’. – It’s not a matter of one after another – but of one in among another, of a process in which the individual factors that succeed one another do not condition each other as causes and effects…. The separation of ‘doing’ from the ‘doer’, of what happens from a something that makes it happen, of process from a something that is not process but is enduring, substance, thing, body, soul, etc. – the attempt to grasp what happens as a kind of displacement and repositioning of what ‘is’, of what persists: that ancient mythology set down the belief in ’cause and effect’ once this belief had found a fixed form in the grammatical functions of language.

Notebook 2, autumn 1886 – autumn 1886 paragraph 139

One of the biggest mistakes that mankind has made and that is still made often by various people and teachers, is the idea that things have an essence. Or even that something like an essence really exists. Of course, essence is a nominalization and as such a distortion of reality.

In short, the essence of a thing, too, is only an opinion about the ‘thing’. Or rather: ‘This is considered to be’ is the real ‘This is’, the sole ‘This is’.

Notebook 2, autumn 1886 – autumn 1886 paragraph 150

Intention is a nominalization and as such a distortion of reality. Nevertheless, it is often used in NLP. NLP can be used for good or for evil. The NLP techniques are basically tools that change the way your brain or someone else his brain work. Most of the time this is done in such a way that the person improves and for the greater good. Unfortunately, there are exceptions where people use NLP for the worse. Although it is better to discourage such use of NLP, this has nothing to do with whether NLP is done with good or bad intentions as Nietzsche explains below. The reason is that it is wrong to think that an intention can cause anything at all.

Man believes himself to be cause, doer – Everything that happens relates as a predicate to some subject Every judgment contains the whole, full, profound belief in subject and predicate or in cause and effect; and the latter belief (namely the assertion that every effect is a doing and that every doing presupposes a doer) is, in fact, a special case of the former, so that the belief which remains as the fundamental belief is: there are subjects I notice something and look for a reason for it – that originally means: I look for an intention in it, and above all for someone who has intentions, for a subject, a doer – in the past, intentions were seen in all that happened, all that happened was doing. This is our oldest habit. Do animals share it? Do they, as living creatures, not also rely on interpretations in accordance with themselves? – The question’ Why?’ is always a question about the causa finalis, about a ‘What for?’ We do not have a ‘sense of the causa efficiens’: here Hume is right, and habit (but not just that of the individual!) makes us expect that one particular, frequently observed occurrence will follow another, nothing more than that! What gives us the extraordinary strength of our belief in causality is not the great habit of the succession of occurrences but our incapacity to interpret what happens other than as happening out of intentions. It is the belief that what lives and thinks is the only thing which effects – belief in will, intention – belief that all that happens is doing, that all doing presupposes a doer; it is belief in the ‘subject’. Might not this belief in the concept of subject and predicate be a great stupidity? Question: is intention the cause of something happening? Or is that, too, illusion? Is intention not itself that which happens? ‘Attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ in the purely mechanical sense is a complete fiction: a phrase. We cannot conceive of an attraction without an intention. – The will to gain power over something or to resist its power and push it away – that ‘we understand’: that would be an interpretation we could make use of. In short: the psychological compulsion to believe in causality lies in the unimaginability of things happening without intentions: which, of course, says nothing about truth or untruth (the justification of such a belief). The belief in causae falls with the belief in final causes (against Spinoza and his causalism).

Notebook 2, autumn 1886 – autumn 1886 paragraph 84