Hi, Sarah: In the first post of this thread, you wrote: "... define 'choice' in the context of NLP as you understand it.  ... locate the agent of choice so that one couldnt simply say, 'but that 'choice' was necessarily determined by some other set of programming'" If someone said to me, "Your behavior is necessarily determined by some set of programming.", the person might be communicating with me about: 1. my pride in my accomplishment of an outcome 2. my sense of self 3. my sense of mystery and excitement about the unknown 4. my sense of spirituality 5. my religion 6. my discomfort with their behavior toward me 7. my thoughts on NLP 8. how important computers are 9. my values 10.how I spend my time . . . But if someone put a friend of mine in a funk by saying 'your behaviors are necessarily determined by some set of programming.', I would tell my friend the following: "Ignore whatever they described to you as your choices when they told you (or hinted at you) what they thought your programs are (or are like).  That person was either deceiving you or is deluded.  Don't do what they want or think how they want if it bothers you.  Whatever they told you to do was a poor choice and how they thought was a poor way of thinking.  If communicating with them bothered you, avoid experiencing another communication act from them. Instead..." ...and then I would offer my friend a model of how to respond in future to the speaker of the phrase 'Your behavior is necessarily determined by some set of programming'.  Actually, no matter how my friend felt, the conversation my friend engaged in probably had other issues to address than the proper use of the terms 'choice' and 'program'.  Unless my friend was an NLP professional depressed about the lack of an NLP dictionary accepted by the NLP community.  Until the entire NLP community has accepted an NLP dictionary, I'd encourage my friend to help the NLP community create and accept an NLP dictionary. -nj