Sometimes we are stuck in an addictive personal behavior pattern, an example of what Korzybski called unsane functioning. Richard Messing explains how unsane functioning is characterized by an inability to exercise free will and can be corrected by learning the nuances of free will.

The Logic of Free Will is a semantic framework that describes and explains the etiology of a chronic personal problem, unsane functioning, and its remedy. Richard Messing will present the following four paradigms and how together they constitute this new semantic framework: The Logic of Survival, The Logic of Perception, The Logic of Paradox, and The Logic of Causality. He asserts that free will is the ultimate source of a human being's personal power, and conversely, the source of great suffering when a person's ability to exercise free will is constrained.

If a person does not fully understand the nuances of free will, they run the risk of perceiving themselves exercising free will when in fact they are not, in which case, they lose self-control and do not know it. Therefore, to reduce the risk of not knowing when oneself is out of control, it behooves a sane person to ensure a full understanding of free will.

Choose to follow the maxim "Know Thyself" by attending this eye-opening presentation on The Logic of Free Will.

Richard Messing is a philosophical counselor, specializing in personal and inter-personal effectiveness. He teaches The Logic of Free Will and coaches clients in its application. In September he presented a paper entitled "The Logic of Free Will" at the annual Conference of the Institute of General Semantics.

On Friday evening, September 11, 2009, author and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson will deliver the 57th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture titled "The Changing Shapes of Lives: Making Meaning Across Time" in Pope Auditorium, Lowenstein Hall, at Fordham University's Lincoln Center Campus in New York City. The lecture will be preceded by a dinner in the Lowenstein Hall Atrium at Fordham University. (See the next event for details on the AKML.)

For more information, including details on registration, please visit http://www.generalsemantics.org/register.

Mary Catherine Bateson is a cultural anthropologist and President of the Institute for Intercultural Studies. Until recently she was the Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University, and is now Professor Emerita. Since the Fall of 2006 she has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College and is a special consultant to the Lifelong Access Libraries Initiative of the Libraries of the Future. Recently she completed three years as a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Bateson is a Fellow of the International Leadership Forum, and her many articles are available on their website.

Dr. Bateson is the daughter of the famed anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who was the Korzybski Memorial Lecturer in 1970. She co-wrote with him Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (1987). She wrote the Foreword to the new University of Chicago edition (2000) of Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind, with important insights into his scholarship. Among her other books she wrote With A Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (1984). For more information, including details on registration, please visit http://www.generalsemantics.org/register.