This book is written by Steve Andreas and refers to some applications of what he calls Scope and Category. So let's start with how I understand scope and category. This book is mainly chunking down, and I'm chunking up so I'm going to give a brief overview.

Scope could also be called focus or attention.
Category could be called a generalization, or a belief (although values are sometmies mentioned in here)

Andreas outlines Scope > Category > Meaning you could also say the same thing as:
Focus > Generalization > Meaning

This means whatever we focus on, will help ultimately contribute to a meaning. Andreas gives plenty of examples of ways we can change our scope, or attention, to change what we generalize (what category we put it in) and ultimately what meaning we assign it.

He breaks the scope and category down into many possible types.

We only have a limited scope/focus. Scope can be broken down into space and time.

We often build our category's or generalizations by comparison. We sort for similarities or differences. If a man see's his wife being inattentive and he categorises this as her not caring and gives it the meaning that she doesn't love him. He may do this by comparing her actions to some of his previous girlfriends.

If we want to change the meaning, we need to change what we focus on (what scope we pay attention to) and ultimately what category we put it in. More information, or a larger scope will give us more potential information to focus on.

Our scope or attention is limited to 7+-2 chunks, and he cites recent study that says we consciously pay attention to less than that. Scope applys to external or internal experience. Andreas also divides categories up into logical levels.

This is an overview. Now scope and categorys are divided into potential groups (funnily enough you could also call these categories inthe English language) . Scope is broken up into space and time (which is further broken up into perceptual and nested). Each aspect of scope has advantages and disadvantages.

he defines analog and digital. Interestingly, digital is from the latin word 'digit', the latin word for finger, meaning an abrupt change or on/off.

He defines an example of a category being a mistrated dog by a man, who then dislikes all men.


Without making excuses I was working against extreme tiredness when I read this book and summarized so clarity from any other sources is welcome. I'll edit this and add much more to this later.