TOP Quarterly Update #13: 12 July 2014

Dear Member,

Change.

My bête noire.

How to embrace it. How to survive it. How to formulate it.

I still don’t know what oscillating dualities do. But it was almost a relief to see that in their forced reversals, PH3-Change elements became all L7 elements and conversely, PH7-Willingness elements became all L3 elements. The Seventh Level provides the experiential-imaginative-spiritual drive within the Taxonomy, something that can be so hard to grasp and communicate. Perhaps that explains the difficulty we have with change.

Anyway, the force is visiting me now.

With the first big chunk of the levels-of-work material now posted, website development will have to take second place for the first time in over 5 years. I’ll do what I can as opportunity allows, but other potentials and pressures are emerging. That is what this Update is about.

Experiences in Revision

The satellites and their frameworks have, unfortunately but inevitably, many errors. I am comforted in this regard after reading a fascinating and definitive story of the discovery of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements in a book by E. Scerri. Making mistakes is the norm in scientific work. It is surely inevitable in the present endeavour where the range of topics is so varied, the field so chaotic, and my expertise necessarily limited.

My goal in publishing via a website was to extend the taxonomy as rapidly as possible by providing formulations that were pointing in the right direction. Perfectionism would have bogged down the project. Equally importantly, I hoped to involve visitors to become reflective users—peer reviewers as it were—who would identify and correct errors. As it turned out, visitors have been hesitant to criticize and contribute.

The resulting situation is therefore somewhat challenging. My recourse at present is to progressively revise frameworks in terms of integration across the site, correction, and styling/drafting improvement. I continue to seek specialists willing to assist in refining and improving frameworks.

Revising Politics

There are two ways to correct and refine frameworks. There is the “method of fundamentals”. I talked about that in the last Newsletter. It was a breakthrough to realize that Governance is a «Primal Need» for handling communities, and indeed any enduring social group, while Politics is a «Primal Means» to enable Governance.

Using this “method of fundamentals” provides aesthetic gratification. It has also led to quite a few revisions. In particular, I found that I had specified the Individualist Stage rather poorly and, although its spirit remains the same, the formulations have been adjusted.

The other way to get a clearer fix and deeper knowledge might be called the “method of intervention”. That entails getting involved in helping people achieve something in their area of concern. This complementary method provides a more personal gratification which comes from being useful and feeling needed.

I was fortunate to be in touch with someone with a lifelong active interest in politics who knows at first hand what government is like. He would like to help bring about the move to Conventionalism: but how might he go about that?

In turning my mind to this challenge, I had to become wholly practical. What could a small group actually do? How might people be persuaded to join his initiative? What were the applicable principles for progress? How would any success be expected to evolve? And how to handle the range of issues that might de-rail any effort?

As a consultant, it would be wrong to send people on wild goose chases or proffer abstract ideals rather than genuine solutions that recognize inevitable obstacles. As it turned out, although probably most of what I had written about the transition on the Conventionalist Stage was tentative and imprecise, it had that kernel of rightness inherent in its origin within the ethical choice typology-PH’6 and the nature of Cycle-2 of the Spiral. With ideas and down-to-earth queries coming at me from my client-friend, I was able to build on those basics to produce some guiding documents suitable for the UK scene.

I then went back to the website framework and amended the pages in the Conventionalist section. I think this Stage is now formulated more precisely and coherently: shall we say 60% correct? I hope to learn more as and when developments occur. You can see a rather informal video in which I am interviewed about this on the TOP YouTube channel.

I noticed, however, that this work did not help me improve my formulations of the Transcendentalist and Communalist Stages. They will have to stay at 30% correct for now but, who knows, technology developments may allow me to be around to assist in those transformations too.

Scientific Reflections

If a pattern appears once, it may be unique. It is scientifically foolish, possibly dangerous, to generalize from a sample where n=1. But if a pattern appears twice, then induction in the past has often correctly identified an architectural feature of the taxonomy. But induction is not a certainty. The pattern might reflect something about the method, not the object of inquiry. Or the observations might be in error.

At present, in trying to understand the architecture, I am looking for higher order patterns: patterns of patterns. One recently emerged unexpectedly in regard to Tree frameworks.

I always focus on the internal duality of Trees because their inner pattern is so strong. In general terms, the duality is based on L7-L5 forming a context for L4-L1 forming a content, and similarities/correspondences occur between L1 and L5, L2 and L6, L3 and L7. I would like to share a further pattern that has just appeared in relation to these. I do not yet know where it will lead.

The Q Structural Hierarchy Tree that represents participation dynamics in organizations has Energy v Outcome as its internal duality. When I went to look at the Q Hierarchy Tree dealing with accountability dynamics to see if I was repeating myself, I saw that it was: Outcome v Output.

I then remembered that there had been a pattern just like this in Politics. I had assumed then that it was a one-off. The Spiral-derived Tree there is: The People v The Powerful. While the Spiral-derived Structural Hierarchy Tree is: The Power of the People v The People.

Let me put these two findings in a Table.

	PH’5Q2HK	PH'5Q2sHK	PH’6CHK	PH’6CsHK
	Accountability Dynamics	Participation Dynamics in Organisations	Determinants of Political Choice	Political Participation
Context L7-L5	Outcome	Energy	The People	The Power of People
Content L4-L1	Output	Outcome	The Powerful	The People

The similarity is obvious. The context in the originating hierarchy becomes the content in the structural hierarchy. There also seems to be a similarity between the ultimate contexts: Power and Energy. But what does this pattern mean? Why is it there?

The two examples come from different Primary Hierarchies and differ in that one derives from a Primary Spiral and the other from a Q- framework (possibly a Q-spiral). The only other type of Structural hierarchy is that found in the Primary Hierarchy. So I went to look there specially for this Newsletter. The work is more tentative, but the same pattern appeared.

	PH5K	PsH5K	PH’6CHK	PH’6CsHK
	Communicative Event	Being Understood	Intentionality in Practice	Realizing Values
Context L7-L5	Intention	Group Strength	Sustaining Social Life	Community Potentials
Content L4-L1	Expression	Member Intentions	Sustaining Projects	Community Sustenance

This finding is not an answer to anything at this point. Rather it is a question: what are structural hierarchies about?

The New Abyss (or is it a Mountain to Climb?)

The time is definitely right to understand structural hierarchies. They appear everywhere but what function do they serve? What do correspondences of groupings with Root Levels mean?

To give me a clearer overview, I have found myself sticking lots of diagrams on a wall. But with structural hierarchies the wall isn’t big enough. There are just too many frameworks to simultaneously appreciate—over a hundred—and far too many are not yet complete enough to have confidence.

I will try to make progress by focusing just on the 7 Primary Structural Hierarchies. But my conclusion, from an initial foray, is that such research requires the taxonomy to be coded in software in a way that facilitates comparisons.

Coding is not a new idea, but it is now a definite and new challenge.

In thinking about coding the Taxonomy into software, I became aware that this software would have to mirror the dynamic structure of the mind. It would be the «mind app». More or less as indicated in the sub-title of my book: Software of the Mind.

That means the TOP website is the «manual» for that app.

But who reads manuals? No one that I know. (Yet another reason for the difficulty my loyal website readers have with the posted material.) With an app, we just want to play with it in our own way.

Coding the mind is a grand project—perhaps not as big as sequencing the genome but still substantial. It is well beyond my personal capabilities, but I can perhaps explore what is involved.

Meanwhile back in the Lab …

Having clarified that the Taxonomy is to personal and social functioning like grammar is to speaking or writing, I am ready to build on the theoretical speculations that have been developed in the Architecture Room.

These speculations explain how the mind relates to the brain. Properly formulated, they will be able to guide meaningful neuroscience research.

Existing neuroscience research deals with the mind in a limited and often seemingly superficial way. This is not just my view. Read, for example, Robert A. Burton’s A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Do. (Try this free Chapter first.) Dr. Burton is a neurologist-scientist. He shows repeatedly how inappropriate and incorrect current neuroscience claims are, and how neuroscientists are typically unreflective on their own mental activities.

One significant difference between the standard neuroscience view of the mind and mine is that the former is focused on microscopic features that we probably share with animals, and even amoeba. By contrast, I believe we must focus on endeavours that only the mind of a human being can generate.

Endeavours are the pivot around which everything in the mind revolves. Yet neuroscientists study the mind by focusing on lifting a finger, on Dr Strangelove’s anarchic arm syndrome, or on perceptual illusions. These certainly deserve study, and say something about neural circuits, but do you think they are adequate as examples of our distinctively human minds at work?

If I am to pursue this line of thinking, I have to give more attention to the crucial concepts that I use in making all those observations that make up the taxonomy.

Providing a usable and meaningful conceptual-explanatory structure to underpin the Taxonomy is now capturing my interest. Following closely behind is integrating that conception with modern findings in neurobiology. Life has a way of surprising you. Although I started my research life in neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, I never expected to return there.

That’s how the land lies.

Take care till next time,

Warren

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