Stage-6: Unitary Standards

ClosedReminder of the clarification process so far:

Communal Acceptance follows in the Unitary Mode

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

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

A personal confident assertion of such a framework and even its successful demonstration is not a form of validation that spreads easily. 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 that is meaningful to those who are doubtful.

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

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 framework.

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

Promoting Acceptability

ClosedEssence: Overarching Rules

We are naturally inclined to follow or apply certain rules that are long-standing and systematically used by a group. It does not seem right to admit an exception if the rules are applicable to a particular case. If the rules are applied, then the outcome should be automatically respected by 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 adopts an explanation, this increases the willingness of each person to believe it and affects group morale.

ClosedMeans: Paradigm Application

The critical choice is what paradigm or what standards are to be applied. If a suitable paradigm is applied, then further clarification does occur through increased refinement and precision. If inappropriate standards are applied, the effect is to reveal the explanation to be faulty, harmful or eccentric. Individuals promoting the explanation are then labeled as oddballs or deviant.

Handling the Group

ClosedParticipation: Promote Consensus

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

ClosedCommunication: Improve Coherence

People like explanations to be neat and complete, to have no ragged edges, inconsistencies or marked contradictions. So adjustment of the explanation to provide a rounded and persuasive story helps with communal acceptance.

ClosedIndividualization: Highlight Principles

Different types or sets of standards can usually be applied to strengthen the explanation. Whatever seems to be most powerful and persuasive should be chosen and explained to those concerned before it is imposed and defended as essential.

Channeling Your Functioning:

ClosedGain Support: Consistency

It is essential that the principles and standards that are applied in any particular situation are consistently and persistently applied to other similar situations. 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 does not adhere to the framework and therefore fears have naturally developed in relation to the further development of AI.

But how can this 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 situation may find themselves wishing to make adjustments in order to handle it better.

The mode that naturally provides for 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.