TOP Quarterly Update #16: 20 April 2015

Dear [Member]

Let me tell you about what’s been preoccupying me over the past 6 months or so.

I have found that naming taxonomic elements is not too hard and rather gratifying. “I’ve nailed it now”, I say to myself. By comparison, I have found naming frameworks to be very difficult and, worse, unsatisfying. Why? I have had no overall conceptualization of the taxonomic architecture to guide me. So I didn’t know what part the various framework-structures were supposed to play within it.

Every framework (i.e. structure) has to have a natural language name—otherwise how can we refer to it in our conversations? That name has to say something about what the structure is about, more specifically what it should be used for in practice. But such naming must fit with a proper conceptualization of the architecture, which has been weak if not lacking. So I fell back on naming by making my best guess. It is easier to conceptualize a structure when its name makes sense, and I have used my better names as pointers to the overall picture.

Let me make this relation between naming and conceptualizing just a little more concrete: each Tree framework that is derived from a Spiral must have its own unique name. But all Spiral-derived Trees have something in common and all those different names should surely reveal that common nature. The 'common nature' is the concept which the chosen name must suit.

These two complementary projects—naming and conceptualizing—have fed into each other, and there has been considerable progress since my last Update. Most of it is currently being posted or will be posted soon in the Architecture Room.

Let me now give you a sense of where I have got to.

Progress on Conceptualization

Over the years, many have complained to me about my inability to give them a short understandable big picture account of THEE. But it was not reasonable for me to attempt to offer that until sufficient main parts of the Taxonomy had been confidently identified. That time was reached a couple of years ago.

Dedicated studies since then have now born fruit. I now propose that the Taxonomy deals with affect-driven and experience-based personal functioning.

I have always emphasized that the function of an element is its defining essence. Now I realize that this function is just one aspect of whole person functioning. In short, it is 'a person' who compares, judges, arbitrates, risks, signals, manages, decides, stabilizes, enjoys etc. Note that neurons cannot do such things, even if they are in some fashion the biological cause. Nor does it make much sense to say that ‘the mind’ does these things i.e. your mind does not take a risk, you take a risk.

The Taxonomy as a whole is therefore a unified model of personal functioning. But what happened to ‘endeavour’, which up to now has had such a prominent place? The answer is that endeavour is still prominent. Personal functioning emerges through endeavours. I believe that it is not possible to study functioning sensibly except in the context of endeavours.

This is because our success in the evolutionary battle with other species has been based on our ability to design and pursue endeavours in group settings. Taking a single personal function out of this context (as is routine in social science and neuroscience) devitalizes it and deprives it of meaning and necessary influences from other functions—as well as being conceptually confusing.

What makes it so hard for modern science is the brute fact that personal functioning is non-physical—metaphysical would be the philosophical term. The metaphysical world may be based in the brain, but that does not make it physical. Our functioning occurs in what Popper calls World 2 and interacts with the physical world, Popper's World 1. World 2 is created, even illusory, but those metaphysical illusions have substantial effects because we use them to change the physical world.

This metaphysical world—psychosocial reality as I have long called it—is not just about what is important to us in some experiential sense. It is something we absolutely need to survive. Our survival is not just about meeting biological needs. It also involves competing, cooperating and peacefully co-existing as unique persons within a social setting.

The Conceptual Schema

Personal functioning is a non-physical system of systems, and THEE reveals that it is best categorized within two sorts of interlocking Domains. I first discovered what I now call Primary Domains i.e. purpose, inquiry, action etc. Eventually I discovered how these interacted and consequently stumbled on the Root Hierarchy, which structures the Will Domain. (The discovery is explained here.)

The Will Domain at the Root of the Taxonomy is purely personal in the sense that it is driven by survival pressures. It deals with our endeavours and our unique creativity, with coping and thriving, with happiness and goodness. Here, each of us decides or feels impelled to decide for ourselves what is real and what matters to us.

Each level of Will forms a distinct Primary Domain. These Domains are subject to social control, or rather social-reality control. The group plays a major part in deciding what is real and creates social entities to enable and even enforce that—as proposed in the Work and its Organisation satellite. See more speculative analysis here. (Note that the website still refers to ‘Domains in Society”. I intend to re-label any Q-expansion entity as an “Arena” to distinguish it from “Domain”. Sorry for any temporary confusion but you are part of a work in progress.)

So Domain is the second essential concept. (Personal functioning was the first). As you know, each Domain is constituted out of 7 elements hierarchically ordered. Everything within the Domain derives from and affects these 7 elements.

The next conceptual requirement is to distinguish a Domain’s fundamentals from controls over their use. The fundamentals are a triplet made up of a Vehicle (the Primary Hierarchy Tree), an Effect (the Structural Hierarchy) and a Field (the Structural Hierarchy Tree). Let me give an example: In the Action Domain (RL1), the field is a credible course (PsH1K), the vehicle is deliberate activity (PH1K), and the effect is producing results (PsH1).

In working this out, I clarified and improved formulations of the internal dualities within Trees and used those results to develop their names. See my new Architecture Room section. An overview page showing names and dualities for all the fundamentals is available here.

By the way, this Field turned out to be the same psychosocial field that is specified by the axes defining a Typology Essences Table (TET)—which was a nice integrating coincidence.

That takes us to what controls the fundamentals.

Controls are all found within the 6th Level of the Domain commencing from the nested Typology. A variety of structures derive either from the Typology transformation into a Spiral or from its generation of Subsidiary Arenas of control. These controls contain the bulk of the taxonomic entities.

To understand and name controls, it is necessary to re-focus on the idea that Will and each of its Levels/Domains are evolutionarily subject to a specific Psychosocial Pressure and dedicated to meeting a specific Primal Need. That Primal Need is met by a specific Primal Means which itself requires control. These concepts are what control is for, so they naturally and rather simply lead to framework names within the controls.

For example, the main Spiral for Action control is named Strengthening Management i.e. the Primal Means; and its Tree is named Determinants of Achievement i.e. the Primal Need. Listings of Pressures, Means and Needs for the Primary Domains is available here, but I must report that puzzles remain in regard to naming all the many control structures.

Finally, I must mention the two over-riding ethical control systems in the model. The Will Domain (RH) provides ethical controls that maintain our humanity. You will remember their development in the Your Better Self satellite. It is now evident that use of these controls is driven by a pressure for well-being—which is gratifying. The Purpose Domain (RL6) provides ethical controls that maintain a society—with all its faults and injustices. They are selflessness-driven, which seems a shocking indictment of selflessness. See details here.

So there you have it: THEE is a unified model of personal functioning necessary for our survival through willed endeavours that are driven by psychosocial pressures to meet evolutionarily-determined needs.

The 8 psychosocial pressures, one for each Domain, are what unifies and integrates the whole complex system. I believe these pressures are generated neurobiologically. More investigation is required and I expect to report on that in due course.

Take care till next time,

Warren

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