Stage-6: Unitary Standards

ClosedReminder of the clarification process so far:

Communal Acceptance follows in the Unitary Mode

It is significant when many individuals freely commit to a sufficient explanation and accept that it fits the situation. By extension and appropriately generalized, that explanation would be applicable to similar situations.

So, at this point, the explanation is potentially a practical framework for all in determining whether change is appropriate and with indications of how change might be pursued.

A personal confident assertion of such a framework and even its successful demonstration is equivalent to a socially-effective validation. It may be persuasive in a face-to-face interaction or where a trusting personal relationship exists, but what is now needed is impersonal social dissemination of the explanation that can be acceptable to those who are doubtful.

The wider community requires some sort of guarantee which can only be provided by independent relevant standards that are unequivocally and uniformly applied and, at least within that culture, call for conformity. Such standards will work if they are routinely respected, used and enforced formally or informally.

Examples include:  

  • rules of evidence
  • a current scientific paradigm
  • relevant cultural ethic
  • principles developed from related explanations

Application of such standards puts the sufficient explanation firmly into the social arena and controls its quality. This provides further clarification and may naturally lead to some adjustment, extension or re-phrasing of the explanation.

Oscillation:

The Unitary mode is about clarification by imposing existing ethical or social standards: a process which is necessarily objective and which must be applied in a comprehensive fashion.

Values & Assumptions

Stage-6-unitary to conform the explanation to a standard.

Promoting Acceptability

ClosedEssence: Authoritative Standards

The critical choice to generate a sense of irrefutability is what standards are to be applied. These are usually self-evident: e.g. rules of logic, standards for evidence, principles of coherence. We are naturally inclined to follow or apply such standards or rules because they have proven their value repeatedly in similar cases. They become authoritative if they are regularly expected, used and demanded by a group. When these standards are applied, the credibility of the explanation rises greatly for all in the group.

ClosedDesired Benefit: Social Conformity

Social conformity will result when the explanation is shown, perhaps with mild re-shaping, to accord with a given established cultural ethos, or a particular accepted scientific paradigm. While this is no more a guarantee of truth than personal adoption, if the group as a whole willingly adopts an explanation, this increases the willingness of each person to believe it and affects group attitudes.

ClosedMeans: Trust Axioms

What is desired is an overarching resolution of differences. Creation of authoritative standards generates a socially acceptable force for uniformity and conformity that cannot be argued against. Intrinsic to this process is a general trust in certain axioms and assumptions related to evidence, reasoning and analyses. Trust in these is required to generate inevitability, definitiveness and irrefutability.

Handling the Group

ClosedParticipation: Submit to Consensus

Groups can only take action if there is sufficient consensus around an explanation. If suitable standards are applied and met, then it is reasonable to both feel pressure to join the consensus and to exert pressure on others to conform. That may involve confronting dissenters or labelling certain views as unreasonable, deviant or even heretical.

ClosedCommunication: Confirm Adjustments

People like explanations to be neat and complete and certain. So the group is assisted by a confirmation that adjustments made to the explanation are appropriate and flow from explicit and recognized standards. The removal of inconsistencies, incompleteness or doubtful evidence leads to a rounded and persuasive story that helps with communal acceptance.

ClosedIndividualization: Highlight Principles

Different types of standards can usually be applied to strengthen the explanation. Whatever seems to be most powerful and useful principles should be chosen and explained to those concerned so that its imposition can be defended as essential. Highlighting and explaining particular principles that have been applied reinforce the integrity of the way differences of view have been resolved.

Channeling Your Functioning:

ClosedGain Support: Consistency

It is essential that you have a disciplined alignment with the principles and standards that are applied to any particular explanation. This perspective is necessary for effective application to other related situations in a consistent and persistent way. There must be no exceptions for any reason.

The framework for purpose that has proven itself so valuable in consulting services has the potential to resolve problems with purpose and value in wider society.

For example, AI systems can be programmed with explicit sets of values that influence decision-making processes and be including in the algorithms that dictate the AI’s behaviour. However, the concept of value being used by AI researchers does not adhere to any taxonomic framework. Fears have naturally developed in relation to the further development of AI.

But how can the THEE framework be made acceptable to AI researchers?

While it is easy to persuade individuals in face-to-face interactions of the strength and powerful of the framework, something more is required for wider society. This website has therefore been developed with a focus on diverse and well-established methods of validation, that are independent of any specific taxonomic investigation. These principles should persuade reasonable members of any community with a scientific ethos to give the framework a hearing and even to look into it more deeply in relation to their own efforts.

Limitations

The result here is the provision of a explanation of the situation that has, or at least deserves, group consensus. Such an account naturally does not deal with the small variations in situations and circumstances that are inevitably faced by particular small groups, families or organizations.

Settling at this Stage

There may not be multiple groups dealing with the same or similar situations. In that case, a general or majority view may well suffice and there is no felt need to seek further clarification.

Transition

However, if there is a multiplicity of situations of that type, then any particular individual or small group that wishes to operate with the explanation in their particular socio-physical situation may find themselves wishing to make adjustments in order to handle it better.

The mode that naturally provides for such contextual adjustments is the Unified.

This also fits the mode oscillation because the choice of context switches back to subjective with any adaptation necessarily being limited to that particular context.

ClosedRuling Out the Alternative Move

The Unified-L'5 modes is the final mode. There is no alternative available.

Originally posted: 30-Oct-2024. Last amended: 30-Apr-2025.