The framework for "sensemaking" I've come up with is based on six famous mathematical operations:

• PLUS : Interconnection
• MINUS : Simplification
• TIMES : Praxis
• DIVIDE : Control
• DERIVATIVE : Motivation
• INTEGRAL : Experiment

Coming up with this table was a sort of reference to something I once read in "Categories for the Working Mathematician" (namely, that "+, -, *, and /" are somehow "the" fundamential operations).

After the fact we could imagine this as a condensing layer superimposed over Kant's 12 categories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_(Kant)) in other words, the possible predicates that may be attributed to any possible object. These are supposedly:

1. Unity
2. Plurality
3. Totality
4. Reality
5. Negation
6. Limitation
7. Inherence and Subsistence (substance and accident)
8. Causality and Dependence (cause and effect)
9. Community (reciprocity)
10. Possibility
11. Existence
12. Necessity

Note also that they fit into 4 easy-to-remember meta-categories: Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality.

However, working with Nishida's more evolutionary-procedural-refining thinking based on ''basho'', predicates of this sort aren't supposed to be so useful (cf. this blog post). More succinctly, the sensemaking behaviors I have in mind are activities, not predicates or "judgements" (see below).

Connection to acts of judgment

Kant's categories are based on his idea of 12 kinds of judgments:

1. Universal
2. Particular
3. Singular
4. Affirmative
5. Negative
6. Infinite
7. Categorical
8. Hypothetical
9. Disjunctive
10. Problematical
11. Assertoric
12. Apodictic

Looking for some patterns

According to my trained eye, it seems to me that

• control ''is similar to'' substance,
• experiment ''is similar to'' totality
• simplification ''is similar to'' negation
• praxis ''is similar to'' existence
• motivation ''is similar to'' cause
• interconnection ''is similar to'' reality

Some of these comparisons may seem quite strange or ad hoc. Another concern is, what about the categories that have been left out of the list above? Well...

• unity ''is similar to'' experiment
• plurality ''is similar to'' interconnection
• limitation ''is similar to'' simplification
• possibility ''is similar to'' motivation
• necessity ''is similar to'' control
• community ''is similar to'' praxis

(Maybe?)

However, aside from being potentially fun, it's not totally clear how this sort of kabbalistic rearranging of things is useful. Except maybe that it shows that we can make ''some'' case for the philosophical generality of the 6 sense-making behaviors I thought up.

Also, this sort expansion (or shall we say "schema") may help plug ''other'' ideas of sensemaking into my framework.

For example, PLANNING might be mostly like a combination of praxis and interconnection, with some simplification thrown in as well -- insofar as it deals with a collection of related things and events, and limits complexity by making a map of the relationships, a map that can ultimately be "run" to effect some rearrangement of the basic elements.

Another tack:

Harry Stack Sullivan: interpersonal theory and psychotherapy