What Can You Detect?

Discover The Awesome Power of Presuppositions To Generate Insights

Tom O'Connor

Learning to detect and use presuppositions well can be tremendously powerful. In fact, people might start thinking there is an air of Holmes about you...

While Holmes himself was reluctant to share his secrets, proclaiming: ‘You know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all', I am going to reveal how one of the most magical aspects of NLP works.

So let’s jump in and take a closer look at a simple statement:

"The Martians can’t be trusted. Their culture is toxic. We must not do a trade deal with them!”

What presuppositions can you detect?

(If you haven’t already done so, take a moment now to think through the presuppositions in the above sentences. It will help you make a deeper connection to the material.)

Next, I’ll walk through the response I got from a student (we’ll call him Robert) and the comments I shared so you can see how learning to pattern for what isn’t said explicitly but must be there or is likely to be there, can be really powerful.

Here’s Robert’s response:

“Hi Tom,

Here are the presuppositions I can detect.

There are criteria which can define who can be trusted and whose culture is toxic or not. The speaker has certain power that make people don’t do any trade with the Martian in some degree. Not doing any trade with Martian will have negative impacts on the Martian. The speaker think the Martian must be punished.

Could you please give me some feedbacks?”

Here’s my reply:

“Hi Robert,

Well done! Reviewing what you wrote, you've made several assumptions without realising and overlooked other important presuppositions... for example:

A key first order presupposition is one of existence.

Let's go in closer to see what they are, first off - the speaker presupposed that there are Martians!

There is something called 'culture'.

There is a someone who is making the evaluation of the group called Martians. '

We infer the speaker is speaking on behalf of more than one person.

We have someone or some group called the Martians. There is something about them that makes it impossible to trust them (in the map/model of the speaker). Plus there is are at least 2 groups of people involved in this situation.

Now let's look at the second order presuppositions:

Culture infers there is more than one in each group and the phrase is typically used when referring to larger groups.

There is commerce (inference from trade) etc. There must be a way for these two groups of beings to live. Note we don't know yet if the Martians are human, actual Martians or a nickname given to something/someone.

The inference is they are living beings, if the beings trade and have a notion of trust (at least the speaker's group knows of this thing called trust) then there is likely a society.

This thing called trust is valued highly by the speaker's group.

Let's extend the chain of infereces from the second order presuppositions and see what third order presuppositions we have

Here's a few of the good ones: Time and universe.

When you hear 'The Martians can’t be trusted. Their culture is toxic. We must not do a trade deal with them!”, we are hearing about causality and the passage of time. Also we are hearing about the future and inference the Martians will break their word and we (the humans?) will be betrayed(?) by the Martians.

If for the moment, we assume Martians come from Mars, then we now have a Universe. We have movement, we have commerce, we have society, we have people who value things... etc.

I haven't run the full expanded set of presuppositions and inferences on this statement but you can see how one simple sentence can reveal so much and contain many presuppositions.”

So how’d you get on?

Were you able to detect and pattern the 1st, 2nd and 3rd order presuppositions before reading them above?

The fascinating thing about presuppositions is we are literally surrounded by them all the time.

Every time someone opens their mouth and speaks, presuppositions flow. Combine the ability to hear presuppositions, along with the ability to ask great questions and you can generate some tremendous insights about how people manage to keep 'reality' fixed and limited so you can determine what needs to change.

As Sherlock Holmes repeated again and again, and as demonstrated here - all the potential scenarios and explanations come from the initial set of presuppositions and observations, and a Homes like - natural skepticism, inquisitiveness and willingness to prove yourself wrong.

This is one of the ways experts of NLP can creates changes so quick.

But before you can hear what isn't said but must (or is likely) to be there... you must be able to get your mind to move. That's where penetrating beyond the surface labels of the Meta Model to understanding the underlying structure and function of how thi model operates can really help.

In fact, presuppositions are just the beginning of getting your mind to move and to generate insights about how other people's (or indeed your own) map or model of the world, works.

Masters of NLP, like Holmes pay attention to the presuppositions people express and quickly map the chain of presuppositions expressed several levels deep. The net benefit is this allows them to tailor the intervention for the client or person they meet, resulting in them being able to create rapid changes and deep insights.

... frequently from very little knowledge of a situation.

Presuppositions are just one pattern from the Meta Model. There is so much more one can do to be insightful, create transformations and solve problems quicker when you combine all the patterns within the Meta Model and Framing Tool together.