IDM

The Properties and Methods of Personal and Social Identification

(copyright © 2002-2003 C. J. Lofting)

Introduction

Reading through the literature of the Neurosciences, Cognitive Science, and Psychology, it is possible to identify two fundamental functions sourced at the level of the neuron that seem to be generalised and so reflected in behaviours of the columns, lobes, hemispheres of the brain and 'out' into the behaviours of the individual, collectives, and species.

These functions I will label as the Transformation, or Compliance, function and the Transcendence function. These functions depend on two more primitive processes of the brain, that of differentiation and that of integration and as such we need to cover these processes first since they form the foundations upon which the transformation and transcendence functions rest.

As such the qualities derived from entangling the primary processes of differentiation and integration become the qualities we use at a general level to identify both ourselves, others, and in fact all objects and relationships. As such the IDM model give us insight into the information categorisation methodology we use at the species level, and so spanning the general method used by all collectives/individuals within the species.

This IDM model has its roots in the author's interest in neurocognitive processes of the brain and on the ease in which meaning is derived apparently from recursion of basic dichotomies. The IDM work has therefore developed from a different path, but finds much correlation with elements of, George Kelly's Personal Construct Psychology where Kelly writes:

"Our psychological geometry is a geometry of dichotomies rather than the geometry of areas envisioned by the classical logic of concepts, or the geometry of lines envisioned by classical mathematical geometries. Each of our dichotomies has both a differentiating and an integrating function. That is to say it is the generalized form of the differentiating and integrating act by which man intervenes in his world. By such an act he interposes a difference between incidents -- incidents that would otherwise be imperceptible to him because they are infinitely homogeneous. But also, by such an intervening act, he ascribes integrity to incidents that are otherwise imperceptible because they are infinitesimally fragmented. In this kind of geometrically structured world there are no distances. Each axis of reference represents not a line or continuum, as in analytic geometry, but one, and only one, distinction. However, there are angles. These are represented by contingencies or overlapping frequencies of incidents. Moreover, these angles of relationship between personal constructs change with the context of incidents to which the constructs are applied. Thus our psychological space is a space without distance, and, as in the case of non-Euclidian geometries, the relationships between directions change with the context." (Kelly, 1969)

The IDM material focuses upon the creation by neurocognitive processes of a set of universal qualities used by all neuron-dependent lifeforms to derive a sense of meaning, where these universals are associated with a specific context and from that association comes meaning. In humans this is highly developed such that from the association of qualities with a specific context stems a language which enables high precision communications about that context. As such, the universals are re-labelled through the use of words and so from generic sameness we derive a sense of difference. Despite all of the different labels, they all 'point' to the one set of generic qualities derived from the self-referencing of the dichotomy of differentiation/integration.

The focus of the process of differentiation is extremely intense where the process reflects attempts to identify the one from the many and as such reflects the more common neurocognitive term of identifying the WHAT, thus reflecting an 'Object' perspective where the intense focus acts to isolate whatever it is we wish to analyse. On the other hand, the process of integration focuses on at least TWO objects to link (be it text to text or text to context or context to context) and as such reflects the more common neurocognitive term of identifying the WHERE, thus reflecting a 'Relationships' perspective.

The GENERAL term of WHAT can be differentiated (!) into the more particular terms of what, who, and which. The GENERAL term of WHERE can be differentiated into the more particular terms of where, when, and how. All of these terms stem from the identification of the expressions of the processes of differentiation and integration and we can convert object perspectives into relational perspectives and visa versa as part of our attempts to identify/re-identify reality. As the reader will discover, in IDM the focus is on differentiation/integration, a dichotomy synonymous with the more common neurosciences dichotomy of WHAT(object)/WHERE(relationship).

The WHAT/WHERE pathways from the visual system to the frontal lobe areas are split between the WHAT path that is VENTRAL (pass through temporal lobes etc) and the WHERE path that is dorsal (passes up and over through the parietal lobes etc).

Note that the WHERE path links with the IDM focus on integrations and so a more IMPLICIT perspective *when compared* to the IDM focus on differentiations, the WHAT, and so a more EXPLICIT perspective. We can categorise these as a COVERT pathway (WHERE) as compared to an OVERT pathway (WHAT). (recall also the precision issue, differentiation to one, integration to no less than two) It is the interactions of these pathways that act to give us the 'whole picture' on something.

If either of these pathways are damaged we get two conditions:

(1) prosopagnosia = the complete inability to recognise previously familiar faces. This reflects a breakdown of the OVERT pathway (the WHAT) such that some recognition is possible but IMPLICIT in form, reflecting the still functioning COVERT pathway (the WHERE) and as such a 'sense' of recognition. (a bit like 'blindsight'. Skin conductance responses reflect the recognition in that the audition system is independent here re vision and so can serve to identify the person from their voice and so cannot be used to verify the implicit visual recognition).

(2) Capgras delusion = the recognition of the face but the belief that the person is an impostor/alien; someone has 'taken over' the person. This problem reflects the functional OVERT pathway but a dysfunctional COVERT pathway - the underlying threads that integrate what is seen with a set of implicit links to associations that add 'depth' to the identification have gone, leaving a sense of 'right face; wrong person'; there is an implicit sense of 'unknown' conflicting with the 'known' face.

What we see here is the dynamics of differentiations and integrations, as reflected in the composite forms of the differentiate/integrate dichotomy presented in the IDM material. As such, we use both to give us the 'full picture' but can also bias perspectives to one or the other but with an obviously skewed set of meanings within each, where the object nature of differentiations is found to be lacking 'depth', as compared to the relationships nature of integrations where there is a lacking in precise, clear, expression; In other words there is a lack in congruency, there is something 'not right' in both cases. This also takes us into the realm of the dichotomy of KNOWN/UNKNOWN in that the realm of the UNKNOWN has previously been mapped in the IDM work to the relational realm where we seek links to context to develop an identity and so to label those relationships and make a KNOWN. In (2) above we see this confirming element of 'known' reduced to its base state of 'unknown' but the image is labeled as KNOWN and so the notion of an impostor etc emerges.

We can thus add another dichotomy to our list (given below), that of overt(differentiations)/covert(integrations).

(For an interesting read see: Ellis, H.D., and Lewis, M.B. (2001) "Capgras delusion : a window on face recognition" IN Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol 5. No 4 2001 : 149-156)

Through an IDM-focused analysis of such current work in neurosciences/cognitive sciences we can come to some conclusions re the nature of our species and of our personal senses of awareness - and from that identify some 'issues':

Physicist David Bohm touched on some of the following in his book "Wholeness and the Implicit Order" (RKP, 1981) through reference to 'fragmentation and wholeness'. Research in neurosciences and cognitive science now allows us to look under the hood of the brain and 'see' where such notions of fragmentation come from. The following stems from taking a look under the hood from an IDM perspective:

We can make two major distinctions re our nature - as individuals and as members of a collective (elsewhere I cut 'collective' into two - collective meaning a social group, a culture, as compared to our species as 'just another lot of primates')

Our development seems to be sourced in a few million years of species development such that our instincts, our senses, etc etc have all developed from the species perspective.

An example of the 'mindless' stimulus/response process of instincts is where in Baboon troops that start to move across country a particular pattern forms instinctively where young and elderly are in the middle of the troop surrounded by the 'warriors' etc.

The "flocking" behaviour concept, common in collectives, reflects the development of rich patterns of social behaviour that are not sourced in any one individual - these behaviour comes from all individuals making local distinctions and that activity being amplified and so spreads across a collective with a life of its own.

The species operates in the everyday of the universe through instincts/habits and as such works off full spectrum responses to stimuli - whole responses to whole stimulus. There is a strong collective perspective here.

The refinement of the brain, especially in our species, where from the GENERAL wholeness perspective has emerged a PARTICULAR partness perspective, means the emergence of a problem in that:

(1) as species members our instincts/habits work 'holistically'. As a species we operate in the everyday of the universe, the universe "AS IS". This is a realm of unconscious activity, stimulus/response.

(2) as a refined species, where the evolution of neurology has allowed for the focus on parts of wholes, we can refine our instincts/habits through parts analysis (details processing) and so make our holistic responses more context sensitive, be more refined. This can take time in that it is 'mindless' feedback processes but the process gives the species leverage in dealing with sensations and so developing a dominant position on the planet.

(3) the development of individual consciousness as a consequence of increased sense of the particular, increased neural complexity, introduces a distortion in the species, namely that the species' whole responses to the environment, and so a focus on whole as whole, conflicts with the parts nature of our responses where, given consciousness, so this parts realm is considered from the individual mind as a whole, it is the realm of "AS INTERPRETED".

(4) What comes from (3) is that, at the LOCAL level of perception, and so the parts perspective, the individual perspective, we experience paradox in that we fail to recognise our parts nature in sensory processing (where our senses reflect species adaptations not individual adaptations) and so interpret parts expression as wholes expression and so can experience paradox.

(5) (4) is supported by the ability of the brain to see a 'complex line drawing' just prior to our focusing on details and our consciousness 'naming' the parts of the 'complex line drawing' as if wholes sharing the same space. (see the page on paradox )

(6) in summary, our species nature precedes our individual and so awareness natures but our individual nature does not make the distinction and as such will interpret parts perspectives as if wholes perspectives; a species activity of metonymy, part-FOR-whole mapping, has been transformed by consciousness into part-AS-whole. This can lead to 'error' and we see these 'errors' all the way 'up' from basic sensory processing of paradox to the so-called EPR 'paradox' where the structure of the experiments are parts oriented but interpreted as wholes oriented.

(7) OUR individual reality is LOCAL, we as a conscious species are more precise than the universe. The reality of the universe is NON LOCAL and contains within it our unconscious species nature where that nature is part of the integrated whole that is the universe as is each individual a part of the whole species. Consciousness is NOT fundamental, it is derived and causes problems in perceptual processes in that it shares the same experiential space as does the 'parts' focus of our species nature, our primate nature - a nature that 'sees' parts whereas consciousness can see these as 'wholes' and in doing so get 'confused' in interpreting reality and our species.

Carl Jung made the point:

"... it must be remembered that our individual conscious psychology develops out of an original state of unconsciousness and therefore of non-differentiation... Consequently, consciousness of differentiation is a relatively late achievement of mankind and presumably but a relatively small sector of the indefinitely large field of original identity. Differentiation is the essence, the sin qua non of consciousness. Everything unconscious is undifferentiated , and everything that happens unconsciously proceeds on the basis of non-differentiation - that is to say, there is no determining whether it belongs or does not belong to oneself. It cannot be established a priori whether it concerns me, or another, or both. Nore does feeling give us any sure clues in this respect." The Relation Between the Ego and the Unconscious IN S. de Laszlo, V., (Ed) (1990) The Basic Writings of C.J. Jung. p181 PUP

So... through reflections upon the findings of IDM, presented below regarding how our species derives meaning, we can identify empirically-derived data that shows that species nature came before self, and others, awareness, before 'consciousness' emerged as we know it. With the emergence of consciousness so confusion can develop where we conflict as 'whole individuals' vs 'parts of a species' and this confusion is reflected in our interpretations of, and the structuring of our experiments upon, reality.

To recognise our 'special' talents re consciousness etc we need to understand that consciousness appears to be a 'mutation', sourced at the PARTS level and so allowing for individuals to feel 'whole' rather than as parts of a collective, a species. As we see in studies on apes etc, so the sense of self-awareness needs an additional development of neural complexity to allow for the development of a sense of others-awareness, a theory of mind so vital for high detail communications other than that of instincts.

This feeling of unique identity, of personal 'wholeness' manifests the development of consciousness BUT out of our species nature, not preceding our species nature. When we use consensus to agree on things, that consensus acts to re-affirm the parts perspective as if 'whole' - an error when trying to interpret reality (reflects the neurocognitive foundations of metonymy - part-for-whole association - VERY useful for a species member where we see only a part of something, like the tail of a snake etc, but can become a problem when individual consciousness comes to the fore and we start to use self-referencing to derive our identity and in doing so take part-for-whole (an INDICATIVE perspective) for part-as-whole (an ICONIC perspective)

When we, as a collective of 'scientists' etc, create experiments to 'map' reality, when we get down to the nitty gritty so we can 'err' in that our consciousness forces a 'wholes' perspective out of a parts perspective and we can get paradox, where the IMPLICIT whole that is A AND B is replaced by our high detail, high 'parts' perspective, brains that demand A XOR B, a
demand sourced in our sensory systems adaptations to the immediate context and the generalisation of those adaptations to general information processing.

Shift to the wholes perspective of the species and you shift to IDM areas - a realm of 'differentiations', 'integrations', 'objects', 'relationships'. Shift further and you enter the realm of AS IS, a realm of instincts/habits, full spectrum responses to stimuli. We cannot communicate precisely here, other than in the precision of a mindless response to a stimulus, we need to specialise, to localise by deriving different names for all of the wholes, parts, etc etc and then communicating by stringing parts together - the spoken/written word (and even then we spend a lot of time trying to decipher what was said, what was IMPLIED)

These issues come up in, for example, the context of ANY modern interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) reality where, until the physicists and philosophers start to understand the neurocognitive processes of their species they will continue to wander around in the dark. Such esoteric metaphors as the I Ching (the Chinese divination system using 'yin' and 'yang') can help in that through it we recognise the 'partness' of yin/yang and how that partness gives us leverage in understanding the whole but is not the whole. Thus for our species-nature the whole is the state vector (also see the page on our senses and map making ), the implicit integrated whole of our species nature, the AS IS of our senses and our instincts; a realm closer to what the Chinese call T'ai chi than yin/yang (In taoism true T'ai Chi is when you can no longer see parts). Our consciousness, our individual sense, comes out of our parts nature and as such creates illusions that we then live by and so experience delusions.

As the link to the EPR 'pardox' of Quantum mechanics shows, If I take the binary distinctions and apply then recursively with some indeterminacy I will get a pattern that suggests wave interference at work The pattern comes from the method that includes a distortion. ANY experiment based on this sort of 'yin/yang', 'left/right' mapping, as done in the double slit experiments, will come up with these patterns due to the structure of the experiment, its parts focus. This has nothing to do with reality, it deals with the interpretations and the methodology used.

QM is living off a 'distortion' in that the originators had no idea about how our brains process information and categorise. From those processes come all of our ideas re experimental design etc IOW our brain processes act to determine our experiments. Since consciousness comes out of a parts perspective, but does not seem to understand that, so we get 'paradox'.
Locality is the 'parts' realm of our species brain where species wholeness, the realm of mindless stimulus/responses is the realm of non-locality, of an integrated whole but out of conscious awareness. Neural complexity has led to our consciousness being local and in doing so believing it is 'reality' - it isnt, it is a mutation - we are creating our reality day by day, a hybrid of our idealism plus the everyday of the universe.

We see this 'parts' nature in such area as persona typologies in the form of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® and its clones where the wholeness of the species, is broken-down into conscious individuals that reflect PARTS of the species and yet interpret their partness as a WHOLE.

As the above linked page on paradox shows, just a moment before our parts nature cuts in our brain 'sees' a complex line drawing, THAT is our species level 'wholeness'. When the parts level starts to cut up the whole, and our consciousness starts to label, so out pops paradox. There is no paradox in the 'real' world, only that created by our parts perspectives.

As we shall see in the development of the IDM perspective, through reflections upon the findings of IDM re meaning derivation we can identify empirically-derived data that shows that species nature came before self, and others, awareness, before 'consciousness' emerged as we know it.

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