Paper 5:Why we do what we do

Dr Graham R Little PhD AFNZIM 2001

Copyright: this article as with all the articles at this site are copyright. However permission is granted to reproduce provided recognition is clearly afforded to the source of the ideas.

The paper presents the structure of general theory of psychology, key characteristics of the theory and how it resolves many fundamental questions. Some of these questions include - consciousness, nature versus nurture, relation between body and brain, the nature of psychology as a non-reducible domain of science - along with other important issues such as free will and intention, sleep and dreams, the unconscious and mental illness.

The theory of the person consists of a conceptual diagram and supporting discussion. The theory is precisely the description of the causality of all aspects of human conduct specifying the variables, and the immediate relations between those variables when a perturbation is applied to the system. It does not offer immediate explanation of the behavior of some person in some actual situation, and nor can it, for this is impossible in principle. The theory does however specify the variables and datasets, and how those datasets interact, then by placing the data in the theory prediction is at least possible in principle.

The study of people is relatively recent. But even today, in this not so enlightened age such study remains bedeviled by issues of religion, and questions of faith, hope and the human spirit. This being so, I feel it necessary to repeat my position.

I believe deeply in human spirituality. This to the point that I believe there will emerge in the world an age of the spirit, and this will be the lasting age of human kind. I see our forbears having come through two previous ages - of establishment and of consolidation and globalization - and us being in a third, that of wealth creation. It would be a mistake to attribute any aspect of human motivation to any of these ages at any time. The ages are merely ways of grouping very great sweeps of time and human endeavor in order to make some sense of them. But I do believe it problematic, given the current framework of attitudes on this planet, to move into some ‘age of the spirit’ with such diversity of wealth and with so many still so poor. Before ethical and spiritual and moral concerns emerge as the dominant focus on this planet, we need redress the issues of hunger and shelter and leisure.

I have a positive, humanistic faith, which underlies my views. But it is too early in the development of the ideas for this to be presented in detail, but I can discuss the process by which I explore the questions.

I know that no lasting understanding of humanity is possible without fundamental questions being addressed, and at root these questions are scientific, or at least strongly rational and conceptual. The principle reason is that in the absence of adequate theory we have only conjecture and opinion no matter how deep the tradition and how deeply held the beliefs.

The core questions under study can be put as follows.

1. What is the nature and structure of a general theory of knowledge, and what does it tell us and what can it tell us of what we can and cannot know?
2. What is the nature and structure of a general theory of psychology, and what can it tell us of some particular person in some particular place at some particular time?
3. What is the nature and structure of a general theory of sociology and society, and what can it tell us of some actual society in some actual situation at some particular time?
4. What are the relationships between valid answers to these questions?
5. How can we best understand the human spirit and the dominant place of hope, faith, spirit and belief in human affairs?

The final question is in effect the one that drives the rest. The questions arose in almost the reverse manner as presented. The first four questions a consequence of five. This, since it became apparent that without answering the first four, any answer to five rested on sand.

This is a strong and challenging position, but to deny it is to deny important issues such as the following.

• That human psychology influences faith and hope and spirit.
• That society influences faith and hope and spirit.
• That full and accurate understanding of psychology and society would not alter nor add to any understanding of hope and faith and spirit.

It is possible to deny questions one to four. This global denial as I call it, is based on the idea that answers to question five are beyond science. This is the weaker version of the global denial, the stronger version has it that they are not only beyond science but also beyond humankind’s conceptualization abilities and will always remain so.

To those holding the global denial I would say I respect their right to hold their views and present them forcefully in a free and open society. But I decline any debate, and in fact decline any form of serious discourse for such inevitably degenerates to conflict of persons, and I wish for none of such. The turning point of difference lies in what it is precisely that is accepted on faith. For some it is in notions of soul and spirit and God that are accepted on faith. For me, Humanist as I am, I take on faith that it is our reason, quiet and thorough that is passions best guide, that the only bounds to our intellect are ignorance, superstition and fear, and that there is nothing in this universe, vast as it is, that is in principle beyond our understanding.

The challenge faced is to seek answers precise and clear, to see us in the clarity of reasons light, and to conceptualize ourselves without prejudice or assumption. Then and only then can we decide our faith, then and only then are we truly able to determine what we ought do with ourselves.

In previous papers I have addressed questions one and four of the preamble. That is a general theory of knowledge has been developed and in so doing, there has been established clear statements on the nature and structure of knowledge.

The two questions remaining that of psychology and society exist in two parts, the first part relating to the nature and structure of a theory can be immediately answered. We already know the nature of scientific theories they can only be Variables and systems of Variables (note capitals, see earlier papers for the significance and definitions) and the relations between those variables (without capitals, then covers both Variables and systems of variables) describing perturbations traveling through the system. The relations can be mathematical since the fundamental base of knowledge is intrinsically mathematical. To describe any actual situation requires that there is a theory, and that the appropriate datasets are obtained and then placed in the theory whereby the value of the unknown parameter may be calculated.

From the notes above it could be inferred that a scientific theory leads to precision and accuracy. Such a conclusion is not valid and is not intended. The overall nature of a scientific theory and the relationship of theory to Reality have been discussed, but we have not fully explored the implications of the internal structure of a theory.

We know that any theory consists of variables as groupings of events using some set of properties. We also know that at the highest levels of conceptualization every variable within the system interacts with every other, and that elaborating the causality is to identify those interactions that are immediate effects relative to the ultimate effects, and simultaneously to reduce all variables to their most fundamental level while retaining the necessary quality of description of those variables.

It follows from this fundamental structure of any theory that to acquire the values of one variables in such an interconnected system while introduce a perturbation such as to alter the values of every other variable. This is the necessary relationship between the observer and the system under question. It follows that it is not possible to know the values of two variables or more in any system if the acquiring of the values in any manner interacts with the system, for the act of acquiring the value of one variable will alter the others.

This fundamental relationship applies to the very structure if science and scientific theories. It is a function of conceptualization, a function of knowledge itself. For example, if this epistemological understanding was in place prior to the Hiesenberg Uncertainty Principle, then it would have been seen for what it is, an expression of the interrelatedness of the variables that comprise some physical systems. In this instance, a photon and electron are seen as systems of variables, we do not know what they all are, nor do we know how they all interrelate, nor do we know fully of the links such variables make to the environment of the electron or photon.

With the understanding afforded the epistemology described here, we can reverse the role of the Heisenberg Principle and state that its existence and the reality of it clearly indicates that the particles and situations to which it applies must have internal structure, and this must consist of variables interacting in some way, for if this was not so, then the Hiesenberg Principle would not apply.

The process for proceeding has also been detailed in earlier papers. In brief, it is as follows.

1. Define the system to be studied. That is establish what the system is and what it is not. This act is conceptual involving determining boundaries, which to some degree are arbitrary.
2. Identify the likely variables of the system, noting that it will not necessarily be known whether or not those chosen are in fact variables or Variables, with variables consisting of parameters with more than one property.
3. Apply the conceptualization tools as per previous papers to the system. That is to repeatedly create a perturbation and seek to assess which of the variables is immediately affected.

Previous papers have merely provided the base from which we can develop a general theory of psychology confident in the conceptualization tools and with thorough understanding of the necessary structure of the theory and what it is and is not able to tell us. The theory may offer no new or radical insight into humankind, but it will integrate the insights that already exist. The theory is thus intended as a growth in understanding, not a growth in knowledge. It is the product of the theorist working with current knowledge.

The application of the tools to the elucidation of the system person, and to the integration of what insights we have into the system person is merely a specific example of the application of what are general tools of theoretical social science. The process to be adopted is one of beginning with an unstructured system in the sense that no conceptual structure is assumed, then to progressively elucidate the system by introducing conceptual structure that makes the best sense in terms of what we see and what we know. We begin at the highest conceptual level then progressively elucidate the systems, by reducing them to variables, and to elucidate the arrows by identifying the mechanisms whereby Aè B.

The theory we produce is conceptual and intellectual, as is any scientific theory. But I will show the theory to be robust, and with a breadth of explanatory power beyond any of the schools currently in vogue. This should however be of no surprise since the starting point for this theory is every useful and intelligent insight on which each of the current schools is based. The intellectual schematic and supporting comments feel far removed from the realities of manic depression, or even the everyday occurrence of someone losing their temper, or the pain from the loss of a loved one. I can say now, that while the theory can account in considerable part for these life events, it does not nor can it account for the conscious, living experience. For the theory establishes most thoroughly that every person is a unique example of the theory in action, each person an ‘instance of ’ the theory.

How consciousness arises is explained. The experience, consciousness and the nature of the experience, the ‘what it is like to be because it is unique for every person, can only be left to the novelist and poet. And the world is rich already in literature that throws much light on what it is like to be alive. Forever the scientist bounded by variables and their relationships. To claim otherwise or to seek otherwise, then the scientist must don the cloak of the poet or the politician.

The starting point for developing the model is to define the system. In the first instance we can start with our perception, defining the system as a person, all that which is encompassed within the physical body of the person, while all that beyond the body is classified as the environment. The system under study can be conceptualized using the tools as discussed and we can create the system of ultimate effects as below.

The variables in the diagram have been defined by a ‘box’, which is merely a diagrammatic expediency enabling clear conceptualizing and results in a tidier, more explicit diagram.

Now this is a crude and all-embracing diagram, but even so questions immediately arise, for instance, is an implement attached to the body part of the system or part of the environment? At this point prior knowledge comes into play, for it not to would require we retrace the steps of science in uncovering what we already know today. We know from other studies that the body is activated by the brain and central nervous system, and that those aspects of the system related to our psychology are also manifested from the brain and central nervous system.

From this knowledge we can refine our definition of the system into four initial components. First the environment, second the body, third the brain and nervous system and fourth the psychological aspects, or the content aspects of the brain and nervous system. I say 'content' aspects because our psychology is the content, that which is processed, of the physical system of the brain system (I will use this term as a shortened version of brain and central nervous system). For example perception, whereby photons of light are converted to biochemical impulses, containing elements of interpretation, for it is rare if not impossible to see an object without classifying it as 'tree', 'flower', 'table', or 'tree-like', 'table-like', and so on.

It follows that we can subdivide the system the following components:

• Brain & central nervous system.
• Body
• Psychological components.
• The environment, all that beyond the body.

There need be no discussion on whether, say, an artificial limb is part of the body or not, since the term ‘body’, while having the equivalent perceptual structure in reality, is simply a system within the epistemology. As such it already has by definition, complexity, and an artificial limb would merely add a further dimension to that complexity. Furthermore, as I will show, the issue is irrelevant to the theory.

The system identified operates in an interactive manner, the environment interacting with the body, this interacting with the brain system, which in turn interacts with our psychology.

We could now apply the tools and create our first conceptual schematic of the system as below.

This is of the status of a set of ultimate effects, describing a person in their environment. This schematic has all the characteristics and qualities of knowledge as discussed previously. It is important to understand, even at this initial stage that diagram 2 relates to diagram 1 as a causal description. That is, diagram 2 is the (beginnings of) unraveling of the mechanisms whereby diagram 1 is manifest.

This is obviously a crude and unsatisfying model. But within the history of science, perhaps a thousand years ago, human understanding was not even this systematic. In some respects, the conceptual process we are following parallels the progress in our knowledge and understanding over hundreds of years, where we have the benefit of the efforts of generations of scientists and thinkers and can so avoid the dead ends and conceptual problems to which their thinking might have been prone.

This is of the status of a set of ultimate effects, describing a person in their environment. It is this system of ultimate effects that we now must analyze to uncover the best system of immediate effects that explains its features and properties.

Further detailed observation and questioning will establish that some of these systems can involve psychological factors at some times and sometimes not. For example, sometimes a person will pay attention to the act of walking, if say over uneven ground, or sometimes attention will be drawn to a ‘rumble’ in the digestive tract, and so on. Sometimes, also, some level of attention can be focused on walking while the remainder is focused on the discussion.

This analysis and set of observations can be summarized as follows.

The diagram can now be developed as below.

From simple observation of the stroll on the beach we can also deduce that some of the systems are able to be made automatic as a deliberate act, but that psychological factors can also be either drawn or deliberately refocused into that system. Further that the locus of psychological factors can be either spread across several of the reacting part systems or can be focused in one or a few. In principle, there are three types of reacting part.

1. Those not accessible to psychological factors.
2. Those accessible but not currently being accessed by psychological factors.
3. Those accessible and currently being so accessed by psychological factors (bearing in mind that at this stage there has been no attempt to identify what those psychological factors might be).

The following convention will be adopted: that reacting parts not being accessed by psychological factors will be shown as having no connection with the psychological factors. This has the effect of not distinguishing between those that could be accessed but are not and those that cannot be accessed. However, as will be shown, in any practical situation that is being analyzed this proves no significant problem.

The final question is whether and to what extent the reacting parts can interact. Consider again simple situations such as a stroll on the beach. If we walk far or too quickly we will tire and our heart rate will increase, or if we have eaten and walk too quickly we may notice some indigestion. These observations lead to the conclusion that each reacting part is able to influence each other. And though one reacting part may not be able to influence another directly, as an immediate effect, it can influence all reacting parts as an ultimate effect. This is summarized as arrows between reacting parts. In short, what happens in one part of the brain and central nervous system can influence that which happens in every other part.

If we now examine a reacting part at some time t, what will follow will be solely determined by the physical state of the system unless there is an intervention from outside the system. This is based on the proposition that a chemical reaction or physical reaction cannot change itself, it can and will follow its mechanism unless there is an intervention from outside.

The factor of ‘flow’ can be represented t¹, s¹ è t², s² etc. Now while the reacting part itself is a system (a complexity consisting of more than one Variable), able to be reduced to a considerable number of underlying variables, this property of flow is not, it is an intrinsic singular property of the neural structure of the brain and central nervous system. This property can be isolated as a variable, and can be called brain system structures or brain structure for short, since the flow patterns are implicit to the neuro-biological structures.

The conceptual schematic can be modified to reflect this additional variable. But first we must establish where and in what way it enters the diagram. Just to review, the reacting part now consists of neurons and synapses and nerves and the multitude of bio-chemicals that make up these and the surrounds of these. The brain system structures represent a potential of the system that may or may not be realized. Essentially it represents the state of the system that will occur next provided nothing intervenes to stop it occurring. Brain system structures express the biochemical issue that left to its own devices the reacting part will exhibit certain states, these states implicit within the neuro-chemistry of the reacting part.

We now need ask how can and do these states arise? The nature of the reacting part itself can affect the brain structures, for example temperature or the amount or absence of water or some other chemical could influence the flow of the neural energy. Conversely, a brain structure can affect the reacting part, for example through use some flow system may become more likely than others. This is in fact the neural definition of the development of habit. The system described above offers explanation of the ‘force of habit’. Philosophically, humankind is not entirely free, the mechanism above representing the extent to which human behavior is physically determined.

At this stage we have not examined what the psychological factors are or might be. We have merely postulated that they exist and exert an influence on the properties of the system called ‘a person’. The question now is how the psychological factors affect the reacting part? Is it also via the brain structures? The brain structures are the intrinsic direction of neural flow, determined solely by biochemistry. They are an implicit state of the reacting part. As such, for the flow to be altered, the state of the reacting part must be altered, and this change must be before the change in the flow potential of the system. In short, if the flow is to be altered, the reacting part must alter first. It follows that the psychological factors do not interact directly with the brain structures rather they have an immediate effect on the reacting part.

A consideration at this point is the relative time scales of the physical system and the psychological intervention. If ‘ Tph’ is the typical time of the physical system, and ‘ Tps’ the typical time scale of the psychological, then it is proposed that Tps > Tph. This leads to the situation where neural activities are being affected in retrospect. At the psychological level, the person has already reacted to some degree before they ‘catch themselves’ (that is if they bother to ‘catch themselves’ at all).

The psychological factors interact with the reacting part so causing alteration of the actual flow and the potential flow. The latter in the sense that psychological factors are able to alter the underlying biochemistry such as to alter the energy barriers between states and where sº è s¹ was the high probability route, it becomes sº è s². This does not mean that sº è s¹ ceases to be a possibility. Early in the development of any new behavior, such as sº è s², there will be a time when the two states may have the same energy barrier and be nearly equally likely. Even when the new behavior is established, the old may still unpredictably emerge.

Many questions remain, such as how these flow structures arise and are developed within the person? How can the psychological factors affect them, and in what way? And from all of this, how is humankind free? Can freewill be clearly conceptualized? These and other questions will be considered as the model is progressively developed and applied to explaining the properties of the system.

Without flow, without sequences of neural activity, the value of the psychological variables is zero. This has important consequences, for it means that if we ever acquire the technology to precisely assess the state of the brain system in a person this will not tell us what they will do next. We will be only able to do that if we know the exact values of their brain structures. The picture is further complicated in that even if we have the details of the brain structures, and so have the sequencing, we then must assess the state of the brain system on time scales relative to psychological events. Since those events are able to intervene in the neural flows to make states follow states that otherwise would not occur.

The schematic that reflects the discussion and argument is below.

1. The environment, body and psychological systems remain as before.
2. As discussed, the crucial aspect of the overall system is the notion of flow in the brain and central nervous system. In the absence of all flow, a person is dead, although the brain and central nervous system will, immediately after death still implicitly contain the values of the variable brain structure. That is were the system re-vitalized, then should the system enter state s(1) what would follow would be state s(2), and s(2) would follow if and only if there was an intervention from without the system containing s(1) and s(2). The brain degrades very quickly on death but the brain structures remain, albeit briefly.
3. The brain and central nervous system is divided into multiple reacting part system as in diagram 3.
4. In diagram 4, and after the discussion the reacting part systems are further refined, being separated into the physical biochemical systems, the ‘reacting part’, and the variable reflecting the flow potential of the neural energy, the ‘brain structure’ (short for brain and central nervous system structure).
5. As per the discussion the psychological factors can only influence the flow of neural activity by influencing the reacting part, that is the psychological factors are not able to directly affect the direction of neural flow by altering the brain structures directly this is illustrated by the arrows from psychological factors to the reacting part.
6. There are also reacting parts that do not influence nor are influenced directly by the psychological factors; the brain and central nervous system cells that control the autonomic nervous system are such cells. This premise remains open to research and proof, all that is being established here is that the principle of some aspects of the brain and central nervous system do not directly interact with the psychological factors, but because the system of reacting parts are highly interconnected changes in some of these systems can quickly have an impact on psychological factors and vice versa.
7. The brain structures are directly influenced by the reacting part. That is the physiochemical state of the reacting part will affect the flow of energy through the reacting part.
8. The brain structures also directly affect the state of the reacting part, for example repeated flow of energy along one path can reduce the energy of activation of that path making it more likely.
9. In the overall system of interaction between the brain and central nervous system and the body the theory already proposes a system of two loops. One is the proposed fast loop, embodied in the interaction between the reacting part and the body. This is the automatic, habituated and physically determined interaction involving no psychological factors, although it does involve brain and central nervous system cells. The second is the slower loop involving the psychological factors, whereby those factors intervene in the reacting parts this intervention shown by the arrows from the psychological factors to the reacting part.

The nature of the psychological factors has not been established, yet already the diagram has considerable complexity reflecting the overall complexity of the system under study, namely the system person in the environment. Three important issues are expressed in the diagram.

1. There is considerable and complex interaction between the person and the environment, and given that we know that much of that interaction is in the form of energy, and that the development of brain structures and even the state of the reacting part itself is greatly affected by energy inputs, then we can assume that the nature of the environment will greatly affect the reaction of the person. In psychological terms we have the essentials of the psychological doctrine of behaviorism.
2. The second striking feature of the diagram is the multiplicity which can extend to any number limited only by the number of cells in the brain and central nervous system since a reacting part has to have at least one cell. This is probably too extreme, so if we suggested the reacting part had to have at least a million cells to be an effective unit, then the brain and central nervous system is capable of millions of operational units in the form of reacting parts. And as I will show, this complexity is not merely physical, for each of these operating units is able to contain and support an independent psychological structure. This multiplicity is not well embraced nor well expressed in previous psychological theories, which tended to seek some form of unification in the overall design.
3. The third issue lies in the flow of the arrows, the nature of what is able to affect what and when. The argument is as follows.
1. The brain structures reflect the flow of the reacting part from one state to the next. Once at state s¹ the system will flow to s ² of its own accord and due its inherent mechanisms all of which are biochemical.
2. For the next state not to occur, then there must be some form of intervention from without the system. And given the nature of the system, this interaction can occur either from the body or environment, or from the psychological factors, and this intervention can and only can be via an alteration in the state of the reacting part such that the flow from s^1è s² is changed.
3. The influence of the environment and body functions is not very exciting. However, the influence of the psychological factors is most exciting because without defining the nature of the psychological factors, we can now state, that if we assume that consciousness and intelligence are embodied in some manner in the psychological factors, then the influence of them, that is the influence of intelligence in the universe is to make happen states that if the universe is left to its own devices would not otherwise happen.

 

There are a large number of psychological factors to select from. The problem is to identify the factors at the same conceptual level and so identify the immediate effects from the ultimate effects. The psychological variables selected are as follows.

• Thought (Th).
• Emotion (Em).
• Attention (Atte).
• Attitude (Attu).

There are a number of psychological factors that could be selected. The problem is to identify those that are a result (the dependent factor) and those that seem primary, and so only include the primary factors in the descriptive explanation. A guide is to identify those factors that are systems of variables and those that are Variables (see previous papers for the discussion on these terms and definitions, I have found the user of capitals to be cumbersome, but as yet have not come up with a better system for distinguishing between a system of coherent variables, and the singular coherent variable).

In situations with a high level of complexity, separating systems from Variables is not obvious. The reason is that in determining the property of the factor it is not necessarily obvious whether or not there is or could be more than one property, and where there appears to be only one, whether it is coherent or complex. If a factor is complex, then it can in principle be reduced to more fundamental systems.

The variables selected seem to be the simplest set, and others can be either analyzed into these factors, or are values of these factors under specific sets of circumstances.

The other reason for selecting this set of factors is that they lead to the creation of a descriptive explanation that is very robust, able to offer explanation of all aspects of the person. By the rule of parsimony, this alone is enough to justify initial selection of this set of factors. That is, to some considerable degree the variables selected have arisen by trial and error, for I have found no method to a priori decide which is valid and which not.

The internal structure of Thought describes individuals, and while averages can be taken across groups, they remain averages, and no technique that seeks the best fit will alter the fundamental limitations of such data.

As a psychological factor, is Thought a variable or a system? The internal structure is complex, and the range of values is complex and broad, but as a psychological factor, its properties are quite singular. It is available to attention, that to which a person may attend. It is also not reducible to any underlying factors. For while a particular idea may be reduced to some components, this is a process of an idea being reduced to other ideas, it is not the process of Thought being reduced to more fundamental variables. This leaves Thought as a Variable, with the single property of having the objects of Thought as being available to attention (note, that as per the convention put in earlier papers, the Variable will be given a capital so as to distinguish it as such, this is also quite important for Thought, so that we clearly distinguish between the Variable and some value of it which will often be referred to as a thought, or idea or concept or belief or value. There being no significance attached for now on these different aspects of Thought, they are all merely different values of the same variable to which we attribute different significance, this significance yet to be proved within the emerging theory).

There are several important considerations on the nature of the objects of Thought. First, are there any special objects of Thought? (Such as self, mother, father or God.) Second, are there qualities of Thought that relate to properties of the system as a whole (a quality being the how we think about an object, and the integration of a persons thought into a coherent whole, issues of hope, helplessness, good and evil and spirituality)?

Does what we think influence what we do? By 'think', I mean the content of our thoughts, not the processes of thought. The answer 'yes' to the question is so overwhelming as almost to be beyond discussion. Unfortunately, this has not been the history of psychology, which has at times sought vigorously to avoid accepting that what we think effects what we do. Accepting 'yes', immediately raises the body-mind problem. Within the knowledge here created this problem comes as no major concern. For within this knowledge arrows represent acceptance that one variable influences another, but we do not always know how that influence occurs. Historically, however, science and psychology in particular has not been as clear on separating these epistemological issues. Thus the body-mind problem, or the problem of how can a metaphysical object (a thought) produce physical events (behavior), will be given its due status later in the discussion.

The second issue is the content of Thought is there any necessary structure to the content of Thought? There are a very wide range of terms that define various aspects and categories of thought. These include the following: schema, cognitive set, construct, idea, model, paradigm, concept, proposition, theory, belief and knowledge. In addition, there are objects of thought generally accepted as important these include self, mother, father and God.

The variable, Thought, that we are in the process of defining does not rely on any particular system of categories, nor any set of priority objects of thought. This has the effect of making all the above-mentioned categories and objects as equal. If there are priority systems of categories, or objects of thought then these are defining features of an individual and as such have no place in a general theory of the person.

It is possible that what was once 'thought' about, might now be a habit and no longer the object of conscious thought. If this and related unconscious factors exist then they will emerge from the analysis. Similarly, if 'self' or ego' exist within the system, then the conceptual analysis will either produce them, or the system under study can be explained without including them. Thus we must continue, one step at a time.

The question is whether the factor emotion is a Variable or a system. If it is a system, then it can be reduced to more fundamental variables that retain the quality of psychological experience. The conclusion is that Emotion has the singular psychological property of affect and is a Variable not a system.

Emotion is defined here as feeling or state of being excluding Thought. That is, Emotion is seen as distinct from Thought, though thoughts and emotions frequently occur together.

There is an immense range of Emotion, however this internal structure of the variable begins to define emotional states of individuals and, as with Thought, the internal structuring of the variable has no place in a general theory of the person. There does appear to be a small group of primary emotions, then the multitude of blends and subtitles flow out from this primary range. There are then aspects of emotions such as moods, where we may be happy or grumpy. If grumpy, we may be subject to bouts of primary emotion such as anger. Then, both emotions and moods may persist such as to give rise to our temperament. However, with temperament we go beyond mere emotion, we begin to explore questions of personality and how the system gives rise to our personality. This will be discussed later.

All the variation of Emotion are variations of the value of the variable as such they tell us nothing of the place of emotion in the schematic. Emotion arises as a consequence of activity within the system being generated by the neural flow as represented by the brain structures. Thus it is determined by those brain structures, but not in turn able to influence them directly.

The existence and the influence of attention are evident to each of us. We all know when we attend, and when not. We can also see it at work in others as they attend, visibly, to some things and not others. This raises further questions on consciousness, and the nature of consciousness. For now, these questions are acknowledged and will be considered later once we establish the place of attention in the schematic.

Often we can have thoughts that we 'sort of' notice but do not really attend to, also, we may have thoughts that fully grab our attention. Yet again, we may be searching for a thought we know we have, and concentrate fiercely on the process of uncovering it. And so on. Thus thought interacts directly with attention but attention can only influence thought via the reacting part because Thought arises from states of the reacting part, therefore no thought can arise before the reacting part achieves the physiochemical state consistent with that thought. Again, I stress that the arrow in the schematic demonstrates a communication channel the mechanism whereby this occurs needs further analysis.

Our neural flows, brain structures, give rise to emotions these in turn can and do attract our attention. We become aware we are angry, sad, or happy or hurt and so on. We have an arrow from Emotion to attention. Attending to an emotion, however, is an act of awareness. It does not involve influence. It is proposed that there is no direct interaction where attention directly influences Emotion and an Emotion or a Thought necessarily involves the intervening function of attention, and we have already established that can and does only occur via the reacting part.

The final psychological factor is attitude. This factor immediately implicates the nature of the idea about an object, and the orientation to that idea or object or both. Attitude is then complex, and thus a system. The complexity described is reducible to Thought and Emotion. However, on doing this some quality of description is lost.

Attitude is taken as the emotional tone and the conceptual orientation surrounding some particular thought. It can have the breadth of emotion itself so is not merely positive or negative. It is often conscious, when it is an explicit attitude, but can be unconscious, when I call it implicit. Both explicit and implicit attitudes can be exhibited in behavior.

From the above, Thoughts directly influence attitudes, and attitudes directly influence Emotions. Our attitudes also influence the thoughts we have. For example, our attitude to business and to profits may directly influence how we treat people at work, and can influence or how we view and express ourselves about business issues and social issues on business.

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The schematic is presented followed by discussion of why it is this set of immediate effects and not some other. This because in working with the system of problems and issues I found no a priori arguments or way of thinking that could deal with the complexity. The schema below was arrived at only be repeated attempts at creating a solution, then applying the schematic to all the problems and issues implicated. In the manner of computer generations I now estimate this solution to be between 5.4 and 5.9 depending on what variations are counted.

1. The schematic is a diagram of immediate effects at a given conceptual level therefore is a descriptive explanation of what happens in the system under study at that conceptual level. (See the previous papers for the definitions of these terms.)
2. The arrows indicate the immediate effect of a perturbation being placed on the system and so represent the communication channels of the system, or the mechanisms of the system. They infer nothing else, and do not infer movement of either physical objects or energy they only infer the flow of the effect of change. (See the previous papers for the definitions of these terms.)
3. The following convention is adopted.
1. The boxes represent the variables of the system, we can then adopt the convention that the content of the boxes represents the values of those variables.
2. The system contains eight variables as follows. Environment, body, reacting part (RP), Brain structures(BS), Thought(Th), Emotion(Em), Attitude(Attu), and Attention(Atte).
4. When we compare Diagram 1 with Diagram 5, then we have a causal description of the system of diagram 1. That is, the variables of diagram 5 and how they interact is the casual description of diagram 1. Diagram 1 is now seen as a system of ultimate effects, produced by this system of immediate effects. (Note that systems of immediate effects and ultimate effects are relative, not absolute, and it is this that gives rise to the conceptual level within which all understanding is embedded.)
5. Given the variable Environment remains the same through out the analysis, then the variable ‘person’ of diagram 1 has been ‘reduced’ to the system of variables of diagram 5 excluding the environment. This is an example of how ‘reductionism’ occurs in this theory of knowledge. If any variable in the system is a ‘system of Variables’, then it can in principle be reduced to yet its more fundamental components. If the variable is a Variable, then it cannot be so reduced without losing the quality of description, which is to say it cannot be reduced without shifting to another conceptual level. At which point it is no longer in the same domain of science, but has entered a new domain, and if the two are linked, then the new and lower level domain will and can only be the mechanisms whereby that manifest at the higher level comes to be. So Thought, being a Variable cannot be reduced to neuro-physiology without losing all reference to any particular thought, and so is no longer a level of description relevant to the psychology of a person.
6. In diagram 5 are shown three systems of reacting parts. Two, RP1 And RP2 have associated psychological elements. The third is shown as having no associated elements (RP3).
7. The variables attention is shown as one unit, but it may be distributed and can be shown as multiple units in the same manner as the reacting part.

All mental events have a counterpart set of neural events. Each group of neurons has some function, with mental events being a result of the sequence of activation of the neurons. Further, that while there is a broad correlation of neuron function between people, the exact neuron flow for people experiencing the same mental events in the same way (were such a thing possible) would still likely be different. The congruence between mental events and neural events is unique to the person, being a set of values for, an ‘instance of ‘, the variables involved. Any correspondence of neural functioning that was identical between people in identical circumstances would be a remarkable coincidence. Further, within the same person, it is proposed that even for the same mental events, or what is described as the same mental event, there are different neural events giving an oft-exhibited variation to the occurrence of the same idea or feeling.

Brain Structures represent the flow of activation, and result in mental events, but the structures themselves are not the mental events. The brain structures exist implicitly in the brain of a person immediately deceased whereas Thought does not.

Thought, in the first instance, is a variable dependent on the brain structures and neural flow. To alter the brain structures require changes to the reacting part. So if the variables Thought or Emotion are to directly influence the neural flow, they must have an influence on the reacting part. Imagine inside a neural flow, at the instant t¹ state s¹. The state s¹ has effectively ended and the mental event (say a thought) T¹ has just occurred. The next event will be s² with the thought T², this will occur, unless there is some intervention from without the system. This intervention cannot come from Thought, which is immediately a consequence of the neural flow. Any intervention requires energy sufficient to have state s³ follow, rather than the state that would follow had the intervention not occurred. The mechanism for achieving this type of intervention is Attention, not Thought.

A question is to what extent can Thought be reduced to neurons or systems of neurons as in Hebb’s cell assemblies? And further, can ideas be reduced to the firing of a single cell? The most significant aspect of the response is that the psychological impact of Thought is not dependent on the underlying mechanism. Thus while such questions are important in leading to the elucidation of the mechanism, they will not alter the general theory and Thought is not able to be reduced to cell assemblies without losing the quality ‘thought’. To that extent the answer does not matter.

Attitude has previously been analyzed as a system, not a variable, involving both emotional bias and ideological bias. Attitude is implicit in Thought through the selection and intrinsic shaping of the ideas. Given also that Thought in the first instance is driven by the neurological flows, this orientation is also driven by those flows. This will be evident in the aspects of the object bought forward, and the words used to describe and present those aspects. It follows that Thought immediately effects Attitude.

The orientation or prejudicing of our thoughts as a result of our attitude, will spill over into our and influence the words we use, the things we note and do not note, and will shade our views on related issues. Thus our Attitude also has an immediate effect on Thought.

A similar argument leads to the effect of Emotions on attitude. That is, that the Brain Structures give immediate rise to Emotions with intrinsic orientation to some object of Thought. In addition, Emotion is generated by the orientation of the thought, the idea on the object of Thought. So then our attitude effects our Emotions in two ways, directly, emotions arising from the object, and ‘indirectly’, emotions as arising from the way we think about the object. For example, a person may like animals and have deep positive feelings to horses. However, on seeing the horse that injured their daughter there may arise first, feelings directly reflecting our overall attitude, positive love of horses, and from the actual sighting of this horse, the feeling of anger and revulsion at the damage done to the daughter.

That emotions and Thought both immediately effect attention is readily understood. It is here that the system could and does have ‘cascade cells’, that is if a flow impinges on these cells, the energy in that flow is increased and this cascades in many other aspects of the system. The effect would be to grab our attention and to begin to prepare the body to respond.

An important question is why does attention not immediately effect Thought and emotion? To alter, say Thought requires that the neural flow is changed and this can only occur by a change in the reacting part, similarly with Emotion.

Attitude cannot and does not immediately effect attention since attitude is an aspect of both Thought and Emotion. That is, Attitude describes the flavor of the Thought and Emotion, and as such we are not immediately aware that it is flavored. Becoming aware of our Attitude requires us to conceptualize it and to see it as knowledge. Encased on our own feelings and thoughts is to be totally unaware of any bias orientation or flavor to them.

The process of action could have stages as follows.

The extent of the learning and the speed of the process make identification of the steps difficult, it just seems to happen. This does not rule against the process or steps, merely means that more work and research is required to unravel and verify them. One issue could be the question of where the decision to act is made? What is proposed is that the monitoring by attention notes the thought (Thought being a dependent variable) then proceeds to set the pre-potentials, this potential then may or may not be released. It is this process that the habit, or the physical urge to do something may conflict with will, or the determined decision and intent to do something else. For example, the release of flow may be the firm clamping of the mouth to not say what one would really like to say, despite the words already fully formed in mind.

Purpose arises in the model, first, implicitly as an aspect of the ideas that have developed within the person and the relationship of those ideas to the environment, to this extent purpose is also an aspect of attitude. Some of those ideas will be acquired unknowingly, others will have been acquired knowingly and forgotten, and others will be implicit. Second, purpose arises by way of intent, intent being a function of attention. It is important to note that Thought, as defined here, has no aspect of ‘current intent’ and only reflects ‘historical intent’. This is because Thought is in the first instance a consequence of Brain Structures, and within any situation the ideas used to manage that situation is a function of the person’s history. If previously, the person learned to manage some situation in some particular way. And if that habit is not altered, and if that learning reflected some intent on the part of the person, then in that situation that historical intent would be manifest even if that were not the current intent.

Only full attention carries current intent, that is our attention is directed to those aspects of Thought that reflect what we are trying to do or achieve, in this way attention focuses effort or energy, reinforcing some aspects of Thought over others. It is this structuring within the person, unique to the person that gives rise to ethics, morals and values of the person both in what they say and how they conduct themselves. Some of this is socially derived, and this will be considered in a later section. (I trust it can also be seen how this discussion gives rise to notions of ‘comfort zones’, and why in order to alter them takes energy and effort.)

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The aspects able to be reduced are those with two or more properties, the rest are Variables and not reducible, this includes Thought. Below is a table on which aspects of the system are proposed as Variables and so non-reducible, and those proposed as variables, and so reducible.

It is the fundamental non-reducibility of Thought, Emotion and Brain Structures that makes psychology a mental/social science and not reducible to underlying physical correlates.

The brain and central nervous system is the mechanism whereby our psychology is manifest, but detailed study of the brain and central nervous system, detailed and complete understanding of the processes and mechanisms of the brain and central nervous system, no matter how detailed and complete, can never describe a person, only the mechanisms whereby a person comes to be.

Neuro-physiology determines psychology to the extent that if the neurological system is not functioning, if diseased, then what people do will be distorted as a result of the disease. But this is not psychological, no more so than the distortion of the behavior of a person with a broken leg and five broken ribs is psychological. There will be a psychological impact of such an injury, but this can be understood in psychological terms, this must be kept quite separate from the distortion of behavior arising from physical fact of the injury.

When the neural system is operative within the range of ‘normal’, then people are understood in terms of psychology, and will not be understood at all in terms of their neural functioning. The only exception is where a person, their psychology and their neural functioning are understood to the degree that every neuron is correlated with a psychological state, and the functioning of every neuron understood in relation to the person’s psychology. Then, and only then are the descriptions of neural functioning and the description of psychological functioning merely alternatives of the same events. Three crucial provisos must be stressed, first having achieved that for one person, does not mean the same neurons are correlated in the same way for any other person, so that such understanding of a person is not general and tells us little of what may or may not happen for other people. Second, the fixity of this system must be questioned, it seems to me doubtful that neurons remain locked into definite relations with our psychology, that learning, experience and training all have the effect of altering these relations. Third, uncertainty factor, the obtaining one dataset will alter the values of the other datasets in the system. So that building the complete model of neural functioning relative to psychology for person A, is only totally valid at the time it is done, and at some later time neural functioning may give a broad guide to the person’s psychology, it will not be as precise nor as fully detailed as it was when first done.

Psychology is not a physical science. It is the core and fundamental discipline of all social science.

The theory has the expected structure. Even so, it feels different from what a theory of psychology should be. It has a lack of immediate intuitive feel of a person. This is because the theory is intellectual not intuitive it is conceptualised not grasped as a whole essential insight. Its power and explanation comes slowly to mind as the paradigm is accepted and does its work as an integrating idea.

In adding the psychological factors it was concluded that any change in the environment would influence the reacting part before that change was noted by the psychological factors and that if the psychological factors were necessary to initiate a change in response, then this would be slower than the initial physical reaction to the change in the environment. This then is the force of habit. Human behavior determined by wholly physical response, neural action and not mediated by thought.

If we ask ‘what is the cause of Aè B?’ The answer is an infinite regress of knowledge ranked in an infinite number of conceptual levels. If A and B are variables, so that they are not able to be further reduced, then there exists an infinite of A’ and B’ such that Aè A’……è ……B’è B, where A’ and B’ represent the conceptualized intervening variable between. The cause of Aè B is found in the immediate effects that underlie the ultimate effects expressed by the arrow.

What then of human psychology? What causes us to do what we do? The answer is similarly an infinite regress there being no ultimate cause as a matter of principle. However, this does not mean that we cannot make statements useful in an everyday sense.

Consider at the highest conceptual level. We have the interaction of a person with the environment, PERSON ç è ENVIRONMENT. It is this with which we deal in normal circumstances seeking to understand why so-and-so did this or that and is a diagram of ultimate effects. Understanding the ‘cause’ of this diagram lies in the underlying immediate effects these are expressed in the diagram 5 which is itself another system of ultimate effects, the ‘cause’ of which is in the underlying system of immediate effects.

Examining diagram 5 in relation to the ultimate effects personç è environment we can make a number of causal statements.

• The variables thought, emotion, attention, attitude, and the person’s neural network are all causal in shaping what they do.
• The cause of any actual behavior is a blend of these variables, the resulting response being shaped by the exact change with which the person is faced, that change traveling through the person and producing the response as illustrated in diagram 5.
• Any simple statements such as ‘they did this because…’ is merely an abridged assessment of these factors, highlighting the factor or factors thought to be the priority for that person in that situation at that time.
• Thought is causal in behavior. This is non-equivocal, but it does not imply that a thought, non-physical influences a physical event, such as the firing on otherwise of a neuron. Intervention of psychology into the physical system, the reacting part occurs only via the attention system and in particular the ‘intervention processes’ embedded in that system.

The intervention mechanism is summarized in the arrow attentionè reacting part. What happens when we want to act a certain way? Or when we are seeking an idea or a response? My experience is that I ‘seek’. By that I mean I, often quietly, inside my mind, push this way or that searching, sometimes for something that I know is there, somewhere, other times searching for something knowing I will know it when it turns up.

My hypothesis is that the development of this skill, that of knowing what to do inside our mind to make this-or-that happen with our body or our thoughts, is precisely learning how to alter the reacting part so that the neural pathways alter. It is this development that makes human development so long and so crucial. This is not a mechanism of an idea influencing a physical object. It is strictly us knowing how to alter the electrochemical balance to open and close neural pathways. Physical objects influence physical objects. Our conscious experience is of seeking, adopting some given state in our mind and the response occurs. But this experience often tends to overlook the years of life spent learning this skill. It feels as if ‘we think this and that happens’. In fact, we think this, in one sub-system, we decide to do this in another, and we alter the neurons and so alter the neural pathways in another. No metaphysics just a lot of complexity.

In the ability to act out our ideas, human intelligence has the potential for freedom, but habit and physical forces drive us, and for the ideas to liberate us demands some considerable effort. Free will is not free for it demands we work and overcome entropies degenerative slide into mediocrity.

The general uncertainty principle proposes that in any system of interactive variables, to acquire the value of any one variable will alter the values of all others. The result is that it is not possible to know the value of two or more variables in any such system.

Imagine for the moment that we knew the nature of and extent of any perturbation involved in measuring the variables, and that we could calculate the effect of this perturbation on existing variables. It would seem we could then defeat the uncertainty principle, however, to apply this knowledge means we need to know the values of the variables at the time the perturbation has it effect. And we cannot know this to any degree of certainty.

We have the theory of psychology consisting of a system of variables, some being coherent, some not. We can at any time explore the system to assess the value of any one variable, but in so doing we do disturb the system such that the values of other variables are not able to be known with certainty.

In practical terms, if we do an attitude survey at the moment taken it is valid, but may merely due the acting of taking it, cause a change in both the Thought and Emotion surrounding the topic. At very least, we are not able to assume that this has not occurred, so cannot assume the Attitude to remain valid some time later.

In the case of physical science the issues are the same, but the time scales nature of variables obviously different. For a photon, this epistemology proposes that the full and general theory of the photon will appear the same as this theory of psychology this is illustrated below.

The crucial conclusion within this body of understanding of epistemology is that there is intrinsically no difference between social and physical science, they both are limited in exactly the same manner, both constrained by the implicit limitations of the act of conceptualization itself. The inherent structure of the two disciplines is identical, drawn from the same root, and merely applied to different aspects of the universe, but both able to produce theory with the same explanatory power and same need for statistics to circumvent limitations to our understanding and to manage the scattering of data inherent in the general uncertainty principle. (As an aside, while I postulate the existence of variables for photons as above, based on this and all other papers in this series, I have no idea what they might be.)

The representation of a person in some actual situation requires two important steps: first, identification of the components operative within that situation, second, determination of the values of the variables. A ‘person’ is an extremely complex system, not only in a ‘here and now’ sense, but also due the fact that they carry with them learning about similar situations from their past and these structures can and will be active in the ‘here and now’. The conscious experience of the person, say represented below, is the blend of emotion and thought from systems RP1, RP2 balanced and focused by that which is attended to, and that not. Some of the experience the person will understand and be able to discuss, some they will not, arising as it does from experience which they cannot remember and which can easily predate development of attention, verbal or conceptual competence to deal with it or understand it.

1. Definition of the symbols.
1. This is a diagram of immediate/ultimate effects. The boxes represent variables being either Variables or systems of Variables. The arrows convey the proposition "having an immediate effect on", this definition in line with the work of W. Ross Ashby.
2. RP is reacting part there being six sub sets identified in this diagram, RP1 to RP6. It is NOT intended that these six subsets represent all the central nervous system (CNS), but in principle the CNS could be so represented resulting in a diagram of much greater complexity that the one above.
3. BS represents the brain structures associated with that part of the CNS implicated in the reacting parts as represented above.
4. Att represents attitude; Em represents emotion; Th represents Thought.
2. Attention in the diagram is shown as a single unit, but it can be split between different systems for example, in the diagram Attention is shown as engaged in systems RP1 and RP2.
3. Each of the systems RP1 to RP6 is a mental set, see the descriptions below.
4. It is crucially important to understand two very different points of view.
1. First is the point of view of the scientist that is we can talk and think in terms of a diagram such as diagram 6.
2. Second there is the point of view of the person, they do not ‘see’ nor think in terms of the structures of diagram 6, they merely experience the consequence. The dialogue explored in psychotherapy is crucial to gather information about the person, but the models of psychotherapy are quite inadequate for enabling understanding what is going on.
5. Discussion:
1. Imagine we are engaged in a discussion with our spouse and it is becoming heated, as we know it does. We very much want to avoid the sorts of problems that have been encountered. We have thought of this previously, and in fact at a business training session on emotional intelligence we applied some of the ideas to this situation, and now look to apply those ideas.
2. As scientist, we can begin to explore this. In RP1 we have the ‘typical’ system of reactions, attitudes, and emotions that arise in situations with our spouse.
3. In addition, we have arising in RP6 emotions from early experience, and these are clouding and affecting us in this particular circumstance. These inarticulate feelings arose in us at a very early age, relate to the manner of early family experiences and compounded by late life experiences where we acted a certain way at school to the school bully then to a harsh boss. These should not really be present in relations with our spouse, but they flow over, and as the person we do not see nor understand from whence they come, merely feel the feeling rise up in us, as natural, the way we are.
4. In yet another part of us, we know and dislike the way these conversations go, we seek to get detached about it, but the emotions and the habits keep pulling us back in. This detachment is represented in RP3, where there is knowledge and ideas, but no real emotion involved.
5. As the person, we will not be able to distinguish between RP1, RP3 and RP6, there will merely be a swirl of complex emotions, and we will feel pushed to act in certain ways. In a later paper I will discuss therapy, but for now, make the point that very likely, if the emotions in RP6 are dysfunctional, the only route for them to be resolved is psychotherapy, where the structure is isolated and identified and seen for what it is. From the point of view of the scientist it appears a person needs only to pay attention to the structure of RP6 and to then intervene to control the reaction. But of course the person cannot do this, for they are not able to distinguish RP6 as a unique and singular structure in their psyche. To do this, requires the person conceptualize the system, via psychotherapy, then via the control routes so created, that is via their understanding of what is going on in their psyche they are given tools to control and modify the structure should they choose (although the very act of conceptualizing the structure and seeing it for what it is will have in and of itself some degree of moderation of its affect).
6. In RP4 and RP5 are represented aspect of our autonomic functioning, they could be breathing, or digestion or… They are not generating any thoughts, or any emotion, and are not accessible to attention.
7. Our attempts to create new and better ways of handling this situation are represented in RP2, here we have and can see a new way, involving emotions and thoughts. But we have not tried it, it is not actively engaged with our body, so we are still at the stage of ‘thinking and ‘seeing it’ but we are not ‘doing it’. The emotions associated with this system could be one’s of uncertainty, anxiety, and a reluctance in that it demands we make some concessions, make some effort to curtail our own feelings and reactions when they do not seem to be making any effort at all, ‘why should we…’ we think, and hesitate.



8. Let us now propose the person implements the new behaviors the ones they have been thinking about. And that it begins to work, they feel better about it, they also feel less of the driving emotion that had been part of the problem in this situation. But old habits die hard, and they still exhibit some of the previous patterns of behavior in body and facial actions, with the face and eyes at times being not quite congruent with what they say and do.
9. From the point of view of the scientist, these changes can be analyzed as follows. The overall focus is now in RP2. Virtually all attention is focused in this system. No attention is being given to RP1, but its influence on the body language is shown as the dotted line, old habits have not gone, merely being held at bay. Feeling of resentment in RP3 has diminished as RP2 was implemented and began to work. RP3 and RP2 have tended to move closer together, that is the thoughts and knowledge and of RP3 are being more strongly influenced and channeled through the attitudes of RP2 and this is what is moderating them, taking away their bite and bitterness.
10. The emotional reaction of RP6 is still present, but again held at bay by the focus and the will to do it a better way, but the feelings are still present and having some affect as shown by the dotted arrows.

In the diagrams, the changes are shown as shifts in arrows or arrows removed or reduced to ‘dotted lines’ to show reduction of influence. The living reality can be very different, and any one of the changes illustrated by shifts in the arrows may represent a major effort and could have quite dramatic effects on the life and relationships and self-confidence of the person. Again I stress the two very different points of view, that of the scientist, where the diagrams can seem removed from life, and that of the person, who does not see nor think in such structures, but whose very life experience is a result of them.

The model offers a view of human action and feeling that is complex and subtle. It is very possible that diagrams such as those above do not even begin to describe the complexity of active and independent structures in the brain that form the blending of our feeling and thought and habit and so lead into our actions.

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From emotion, Thought, attitude and reactive habit (from brain structures), matched to a situation, we can concept the notion of an overall response. I have called this response a 'mental set' ('set', in the sense of containing various elements; but also, in the sense that, as adults in particular, there is an in built resistance to change). The overall system of thought a person uses or has or both, I call their 'world-view'. Thus, a world-view is conscious, whereas elements of a mental set may be both conscious and unconscious (for example, a nervous tic in a stressful situation). Finally, the collection of mental sets I call a person's 'novel'. We each have our own novel, part writ, part evolving; part conscious part not; part emotional. This novel is the essence of our life experience to date and from this novel flows the next part of our life.

Multiplicity is the very essence of the theory. The common patterns of behavior that are described as personality reflect a coherence of thought, and a congruence of attitude from one situation to another that is the same or sufficiently similar. This coherence, however, must constantly be held as a generalization. The reality is that the packets are unique, and each expression of them is a unique event. At any time, given appropriate circumstances, quite different behaviors could emerge, behaviors never seen before from the person. It is all determined by their history, by their skill at managing their emotional states and the extent they have ‘worked through their lives in their mind’, and by the circumstances.

The four types of mental set are habit, an unconscious emotional set, a full involvement set, and a set involving only Thoughts. These are illustrated in the diagrams below. These diagrams have been shortened for simplicity.

A mental set can involve any level of emotion or action or thought. A mental set can be activated in one of the following ways.

• By perceiving the object central to the set.
• By perceiving an object similar to or perceiving circumstances which relate directly to the central object.
• By bringing to mind the ideas related to the object, or when the object is itself an idea.
• By bringing to mind thoughts that relate directly to the object.
• Through accidental activating of the mental set i.e. when the energy from one mental set (totally unrelated to the object) crosses into the mental set of the object.
• If the object is a major orientating object within the world-view, then it could have links into virtually all other mental sets and could represent a pervasive aspect of the person's psyche. A maladaptive example would be when the object was a parent, and the emotions were of pain, loneliness, hurt and a desire for revenge. If this was transferred to all caregivers and to authority, then such a structure would seriously distort the world-view and could be explosive and potentially dangerous. If the person was adept, then they could seem socially normal, yet liable to explode in particular circumstances.

A mental set does not have to be fully triggered. It can be partly enacted and so provide a 'flavor' or 'tone' or 'nuance' or a 'fleeting insight' into some other mental set to which it is not currently linked.

The idea of mental set, of systems of habit, emotion and thought linked with a situation or an object of thought, or some part of that system, is the basic structure of personality. Variations in both structure and content of mental sets between individuals explain differences in the personality of those individuals. However, mental sets are not always readily identifiable by the person, most often they can be, but could take considerable time and guidance requiring reflection and exploring of history before the structures emerge.

It is useful to use a grouping of mental sets, typically related to some situation or type of situation, this grouping I call a role and matches the typical use of the term in the literature. A role is defined as a set of behaviors and feelings related to some situation. So roles would include father, mother, friend, lover, manager, coach etc.

If personality describes the overall structure and content of the mental sets of a person that is personality is a term grouping all mental sets, then a role describes the sub-groupings relative to a type of situation.

Roles are useful tools for assisting people to explore and best make sense of what they do. For example, Eric Berne’s transactional analysis is based on roles of parent, adult and child. In this system the concept is taken further, and based on a more structured and fundamental theory of psychology.

Roles may be explored and used in two ways. First, by looking at how a person typically acts in a situation, this explores their role structure in that situation. It may then be useful to explore deeper and uncover why they feel that way, and what in their history has resulted in the mental sets that underlie the role. In this way roles can be explored in a personal development manner, highlighting thoughts, attitudes and emotions that are helpful and those not so helpful, enabling change of the role or removing role confusion, or they are used as the start point for much deeper exploring of the person’s history and hence their psyche.

The second way of using roles is as training tool. Situations are identified, desirable outcomes agreed then the competencies and skills, attitudes and thoughts that best enable the outcomes are identified and offered to the person. Emotions need to be discussed, and the person needs to understand the emotional tone important for the effective enacting of the role. But quite likely the emotions will not initially be felt by the person, but emerge as the person builds fluency with the role and those aspects of thought and action that constitute delivery of the role.

Building and consolidating roles is not only an important therapeutic tool, but also an important aspect of personal growth, and an important aspect of development in business and other professions.

All experience is personalized within our mental sets. As babies, this objectification is of our perceived and experienced world. These infant structures and infant world-view then form the basis of progressive elaboration where thought itself becomes a major part of our experience and becomes an object within mental sets. Language plays a crucial role within the elaboration, though not an essential role. Language enables development and elaboration of the world-view (and associated mental sets) beyond that possible without language. Language also provides a tool for direct access to a mental set. This is particularly important for mental sets formed early in life that are significant in shaping the thought, feeling and behavior of the adult. The primary means of dealing with and modifying these mental sets is via their conceptualization, acceptance and progressive working through and restructuring of the particular mental set and every linked mental set. This would be impossible without a language.

The structure and linkage of mental sets can give rise to addictive patterns of thought. This occurs when the object of the addiction becomes linked into virtually all other mental sets. The result is that the individual's thoughts and feelings tend to flow to that object. All mental sets, no matter how removed from the object link to mental sets closer to the object, so the individual spirals back to an object they may not wish to think about at all (the type of behavior that can occur when couples separate).

There is no necessary link between mental sets. That is, it is possible to have two separate and unrelated world-views and associated mental sets. This would be an extreme situation. There can be independent and substantially incongruent mental sets within each domain so people (with good faith) say one thing and act and feel in ways opposite or act quite differently in the same or similar situations.

Interpretative forces come to us in three primary ways.

• Language itself carries an interpretation of the world and has a powerful shaping influence on the emergent world-view.
• The objects to which the group or culture attends also shapes the world-view, providing explicit and implicit referencing as to what is important and what is not.
• Finally, there are stated values of belief, good and evil, right and wrong. These are not necessarily the same as the referencing noted above, which tends to be drawn from observations and following of what people do as opposed to what they say they believe.

These forces influence mental sets in four primary ways.

• They way objects of thought are conceptualized.
• Attitudes.
• Emotions associated with the object of thought.
• How the mental set and object of it are integrated into the world-view.

Mental sets can be changed. The process requires the issues be conceptualized. Sometimes, there needs to be a grieving process in relation to past events, cathartic release. Then the changes need to be worked through. Success of the process also depends on pre-existing attitudes toward the process, belief in ability to change, rigidity of thought, desire and willingness to change. An individual is the only person with full access to their mind and hence neural processes. Without motivation, the changes won't happen. Often another person is necessary to facilitate accurate, unbiased conceptualization of structures. These issues represent therapy as a technology concerned with the values of the variables and how to best manipulate those variables to the benefit of the person.

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Our personality arises as a consequence of the operation of the model. Immediately we can identify six aspects of the model that provide the structural basis of our personality.

1. Multiplicity. We can and do have many sets of thought, action, attitude and emotion that can be linked into any particular situation. These are the mental sets involved. The situation does not have to be physical, so a particular thought may be ‘the situation’, for example mention of one’s ex-spouse may throw one into a set of thoughts and feeling not directly related with the physical situation. There can be a broad spread of this multiplicity, both in terms of the range of mental sets and in terms of the range of roles intrinsic to the person.
2. Integration. Opposing multiplicity is integration of the systems of emotion and thought and action so that there are congruent patterns across circumstances. This integration is a function of maturity, experience and reflection and self-awareness of the person. We would often call aspects of this integration a person’s ethics or morals, but it must always be balanced with the fundamental multiplicity of the psyche of a person.
3. The unconscious. There will be mental sets related to a situation that were embedded at an early age. Where such mental sets have no Thought associated, that is they are not conceptual, so therefore not open to verbal description and cannot be understood through ideas, then these mental sets can be understood as our unconscious. They result within the person of emotions that arise from within, often deep from within, but are the result of our history and are not necessarily useful in the present, but nonetheless they can be very powerful.
4. Attitudes. These are the bias to Thought. Again, they can have unconscious elements, in that we may feel afraid, when we think we should not, but from within arises an inarticulate fear, and as we develop, so this flavours attitudes to many objects with which we must deal today. But also, attitudes can arise from deliberate choice we like this, and do not like that, etc.
5. Thought. We may think this and not that, we may have learned this and that, but now, for our reasons believe this not that. And so on, some of our thoughts are related to and arise alongside emotions that are here and now and also historical. So, Thought can have a substantial aspect of choice, but also be instilled in us by the social norms within which we matured and developed. Associated with both Thought and habit and feeling is our ability to see us for how we are, and to be able to adopt and adapt to new ways that are more effective for us. This would result in us being described as creative, imaginative, flexible, adaptable etc.
6. Habit. We act and react in structured ways, some of these acquired early in life, and so can represent another aspect of the unconscious in us, mental sets involving action that are quite compelling in us, yet we are unsure of why they ought to be, they merely are our way of doing this or reacting to that. Habits can begin in us while in the womb, in that we can be acquiring disposition to act in some ways and not others depending on the experiences of our mother while carrying us.

For now, no further effort is made to explore the structure of personality.

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A mental set is a coordinated sequence of thoughts combined with behavior or emotions. Brain structures are the neuro-physiological factors that underlie the mental set.

The neurons from a particular region fulfill a particular type of task. It is likely that the same region fulfils the same role in different people, but this currently is a very broad proposition and is not necessarily so at more detailed levels. This means, for example, that when some idea, a thought, a value of the Variable Thought comes to mind on different occasions the precise same neurons are not always involved. The activation of one region of neurons after another is a mental set this flow obeying the known rules and laws of physics and biochemistry, it is also this physical system obeying the second law of thermodynamics, with energy distributing itself among the greatest number of states available to it.

We have the inherent conflict of will against the universe. The driving force of the universe, measured by entropy leads to a leveling of the distribution of energy in a system. In the brain and central nervous system this leveling results in a mediocrity of performance. The pressure of entropy to a degenerative mediocrity of performance only offset by the determination of the person to overcome this factor, by working hard the focus of the energy remains localized, The energy of activation remains lower in some path ways than others, which in behavioral terms means that the accurate habits consistent with high performance remain preferred routes for the flow of energy. But we all know how short the time before the sharpness is lost, which is to say before entropy has its way and there is a leveling of the activation energies, so that with more choices, the flow is dissipated, accuracy lost in the divergent flow of the energy.

But force of our will can and does overcome entropy. In the absence of will we are mediocre plates pieces never coming together; but in the presence of its determination we are supreme over matter and its forces. This a quite different picture from the pessimism painted by Bertrand Russell in his famous essay A Freeman’s Worship.

Current research suggests that newborn babies seek and respond to certain types of adult attention. The implication is that the baby has genetic brain structures that determine this response. The survival qualities of this are obvious. Research over the first twelve months of life show clearly the rapid evolution of quite sophisticated responses some of survival value, others not necessarily so. The brain structures emerge, then, from a mixture of genetic predisposition and interaction with the physical and interpersonal environment.

An existing set of brain structures leads to certain actions and from the feedback the brain structures are modified. This process continues for life. However, research shows that this learning and brain plasticity diminishes with age. It can also diminish due to an attitude and psychological set, which brings an emotional, attitudinal, behavioral and mental rigidity.

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The model could be seen to reduce consciousness to mere self-monitoring. Can it be more than this?

Consciousness is more than self-monitoring as expressed by the equation below.

Self-monitoring + content = living awareness.

The neural system of the brain provides the mechanistic structure enabling self-monitoring. The complexity of the monitoring ability should not be underestimated. It is not merely some equivalent of a single central algorithm. There are a number of monitoring structures. Secondly, the monitoring involves many modalities, mental imagery, audio, and emotional, chemical, electrical, and stereo-chemical. The latter are likely aspects of the mechanisms whereby the first occur, but it also seems likely that these latter can occur without the former, that is these latter communication and monitoring systems occur below the level of awareness.

This complexity currently exceeds any artificial self-monitoring of, say, a computer.

The second crucial issue is that without content there is nothing to monitor. Some of the issues are summarized below.

• Differentiation of 'me' as something different from everything else.
• Differentiation of 'self' as a 'thinking thing'. Different from the body and parts of the body.
• Differentiation of 'I' from 'what I am currently thinking'.
• Differentiation 'I' from 'what I am currently doing'.
• Having plans and goals.
• Having public and hidden agendas.
• Having hopes and ambitions.
• Having self-doubt.
• Concern over whether other people will see how I really feel.
• Watching me do what I do.
• The feeling of detachment of 'me' from 'what I am currently doing or thinking or feeling’.
• All in the discussion of spirituality is content. Any item of the list can be combined with any other to any degree, thus producing a rich, subtle and ever-changing hue of awareness.

When combined with the truly enormous range of thought beyond these self-awareness issues, thought that structures our perception, enables us to see beyond perception and see into Reality, we then begin to see the full scope of the living human awareness.

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The model does propose an unconscious, and that unconscious influences on human behavior are extensive. The unconscious is the brain structures. The unconscious parallels the Freudian ideas that is, structures in the brain that shape our responses without us being aware of their existence or their influence but the mechanisms whereby the influence is exerted is very different.

In this model there is no ego, id or super ego, no psychological or psychiatric structures, only the inherent mechanisms of the brain and central nervous system driven by the tendency of energy to distribute itself among all available energy states.

There are many ways whereby unconscious factors can arise to influence behavior. During the period from completion of cell division, through birth, and up to the time of the intellectual development of early childhood, all predispositions, experiences, the creation of objects of thought, and the activity of thought will create brain structures and mental sets. Some of these will predate self-awareness, all of them predate the evolution of language enabling description and discussion. This produces an influential set of unconscious to semi-conscious elements, these forming a core of further development (not the least of which is self).

• During formative childhood and teenage years we learn many responses. For example, to be passive before adults, to be aggressive or abusive etc. Often we adopt these as coping strategies implicit in our behavior, while our emergent world-view many contain ideas quite opposite.
• During the infant through teenage years we can develop often influential mental sets surrounding important objects of thought such as mother, father, family, sisters, brothers, friends and so on.
• During adulthood we can also have experiences that form important mental sets, these sets influencing our response in similar situations, and also influencing associated mental sets.

Many unconscious elements can be embedded in the thoughts that are our world-view.

• Ideas never reflected upon can be embedded and be influential without our being aware of that influence,
• Strongly held views in one area can influence our responses in an unrelated area,
• We can develop attitudes and prejudices without our realizing it,
• We can have non-integrated aspects of our world-view causing our responses to differ in the same situation depending on which part of our world-view is active.

The theory proposes an inherent conflict between intelligence and of the physical substrate of that intelligence. That is intelligence, to be such must overcome the inherent mechanisms of the universe, the first being the tendency of energy to distribute itself across the energy states available to it.

Within the model, humankind has within itself a ‘scratch’ pad that is we can create, manage and play with or otherwise manipulate ideas. Once we see the idea, we can then visualise our own actions in relation to that idea. In addition, during our long childhood we learn what internal states result in certain body responses, so we know how to manage our actions. We also have memory, so we can recall what happened last time, and now we have communication so know what happened way over there, or what happened years ago. All this adds to the fact we assess an outcome prior to actually experiencing it. As has been said by Popper and others, our ideas die or suffer in our stead.

Why do some people have more will in the form of determination than others? The model offers no physical or structural account of that question. It is a question of spirit, not of scientific psychology. Few people today do not know how to exercise will power do not know about self-motivation and the power of visualisation. They know and know they can do it, yet the effort the will to do it eludes them. There is an element, elusive, beyond the diagrams and far beyond physics and chemistry pertaining not to the structures of how we come to be, but to the content of what we have come to be, embedded in our content, in the values of those variables that make up how we come to be, is that part of spirit that results in this person doing this while the next person, with the same apparent attributes not being able to do it.

Intent lies in our decisions about goals and futures for ourselves. Goals and intentions are merely ideas as any other, the commitment to the goal then evidenced in the structuring of our actions in relation to the goal. An instant conflict with the tendencies of the universe as measured by entropy, that is we must wrestle within ourselves to focus and channel the energy into some pathways not others, and if some part of us does not quite agree with the goal, this may not occur to the degree needed to overcome the excellence or effort of another who is without the inner conflict. This internal self-defeat can be due mental sets established in early childhood and quite beyond the reach of consciousness or attention.

Some of this was bought sharply to attention as I recovered after a heart attack Green Lane Hospital in Auckland New Zealand. I was interviewed by two young interns seeking to uncover why I did not die when in fact I should have, or at least have been mentally damaged much more than I was. They had been conducting such interviews for some time, and when asked what had been uncovered could only reply ‘some people have a greater will to live, others die even allow themselves to die’.

Without spirit, hope and self-belief we become mere husks of what we are capable, but that is not explained by the mechanisms of how we are, but by the content of what we are.

Freewill also involves thinking, and this introduces three levels of freewill available to us.

• Solely as a consequence of the neural flows of the habituated response there will be ideas produced but the mere generation of ideas is not thinking. These ideas may or may not be attended to, with attention only involved in the habit as an observer, with minimal intervention.
• The need for this distinction arises because of the extent that there are habituated responses, and the force of habit is a real and pervasive factor in shaping human action and feeling.
• The notion of thinking is thus seen to embody some aspect of attention as an intervening factor, not merely observing. Thus thinking implies current intent, whereas thought as it arises in a habit carries only historical intent, and the person may not even be aware of the nature of some of that historical intent.
• The distinction between thought and thinking leads to the concept of the first level of freewill involving the selection between possible habituated responses. This may or may not be difficult for the person depending on the emotional force of the habit. The imagery is one of a person making the effort and swapping from one rail track to another. Such an act also defines the first level of free will as it arises in the theory. That is, the freedom of being able to choose between habituated responses.
• The second level of free will involve the manipulation of knowledge to produce objects of thought that are not otherwise perceived. That is, creating ideas testing them in our minds and then acting according to our judgment of what is most likely to happen. This goes beyond merely selecting between habituated responses, and is the actual creation of alternative responses that then can become a habit and so one of the options for the first level of free will, from conscious competence to unconscious competence.
• The final level of free will involves the ability to create tools to lead the conceptualization process. And where the objects being manipulated are completely conceptual.

Free will is enabled by knowledge. An important object of that knowledge is self, or ‘I’. Species with the higher levels of free will are able to conceptualize how they as individuals are or will be. Within humankind this process also has profound influence on the individual, since the crucial object of thought ‘I’ is intimately bound into many of the most significant emotional states.

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‘I’ is an important object of thought. ‘I’ is that attending. We are not aware of neural functioning, only the consequence of that functioning. A schematic of ‘I’ is shown below, and notes as follows.

• Within the theory ‘I’ and ‘self’ are objects of Thought embedded in one or more mental sets.
• The emotions are shown as being positive and negative. One or other or a confusion of both could be involved in any particular situation.
• There are and could be many other thoughts. The precise nature of the thoughts will depend on the individual. Although there are likely to be common themes or types of thought across people who share common environments and upbringing.
• The shaded section represents where this structure interacts with the remainder of the system.
• This structure does not exist in a newborn infant. Evolution of this structure is a crucial aspect of the development process.
• The first crucial step is the development of the idea that I am something distinct from everything else. This is first learned experientially. Second learned conceptually, then fully elaborated in the adult mind. The beginning of this experiential learning could easily begin in the womb, this representing the initiation of awareness at some point in the development of the cell structure during cell division.
• ‘I’ and ‘self’ are ideas like any other, but particular important ideas with particularly important sets of emotions and thoughts intertwined with the ideas.
• These tend also to result in a sense of what is and is not ‘me’, but again there is no need for components outside the model to explain this experience of ‘me’.
• The idea ‘I’ or ‘me or ‘self’ is not located at any special place, there is no single seat of this ‘consciousness’ or ‘self-awareness’, but neither it is an epiphenomenona, there are definite structures that will constitute ‘I’ and ‘self’ and ‘me’ in each person, but these may not be identical for each person, and may not involve the exact same neurons.
• The diagram below is intended to illustrate how the structure of "I’ or ‘self’ can come to be and how the factors can combine to create the richness of the experience of ‘me’.

To talk of the human spirit is to talk of a certain quality of being that permeates the world-view and psyche generally. It is a resilient, determined and fighting quality. It is a core of strength and purpose, a commitment to life even if the face of inevitable death. It does not exist in us all equally and this is what we need to understand. For within the model our spirit, like our self, is constructed by us and not given to us. It arises as a product of the operation of the model, beginning with the first cell division and ending in death.

To talk of a spiritual person is to talk of a person exhibiting qualities of being. We need also to understand what these are. These notions lead to a humanistic spirituality. They do not include religious notions of spirituality, or do so only to the extent that religious spirituality includes descriptions of and guidelines of how to achieve a specifically human spiritual state.

I would describe a spiritual person as one who has achieved the following.

• Do what they say and say what they do, congruence between belief and action.
• Knowledge of self is complete to the extent that they have no more surprises in store for themselves.
• Their acceptance of themselves is complete. They are at peace and satisfied with themselves.
• Acceptance of their current life space. They are at peace and feel fulfilled within the charter of successes and failures that is their life.
• They enjoy the moment. Alive now, knowing now is a moment precious in their life.
• They are at peace with life itself, its capriciousness and its fullness. They feel neither graced nor cheated by life, but accept it as an opportunity and a journey.
• They know the good and evil in themselves.
• They fully know the good and evil in humankind, and the limits of acceptability.
• Their self-doubt and humility is evident as is their strength and purpose. They regularly wrestle their conscience to seek the balanced way.
• They offer leadership through firmness and gentle reason, while allowing each person to choose their own path in full understanding of the consequences.
• They have faith in the present and hope for the future.
• They are comfortable being alone.

These qualities are more than being at peace. More than the simplicity of meditation or any other tool and in the living elegance of such people all the elements in the model transcends themselves, the whole being immeasurably beyond the sum of its parts.

Such people are not always gentle, nor always kind. They may be passionate, sensual, and sexual. They can and do choose to protest, being willing to destroy false images to protect what they see as essential. But never is it done casually.

Living every moment precious seems to so fill their life that at the moment of death they can be content. And when they feel their destiny fulfilled, they are at peace with death and when it is due, do not unduly resist. But when believing their life to have purpose yet unfulfilled, they resist death with all their spirit and will.

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Thought shapes action. Ideas have social existence; they do not exist in the manner of physical objects any physical expression of an idea being rendered through behavior. Karl Popper has considered these issues at length, and broadly the position here follows Popper. Ideas are seen as being implicit in a book, say these words as a book. Were English to disappear as a language then the influence of these ideas on action would disappear, and any understanding of this book would disappear. But if tools were developed whereby these words could be interpreted, then the ideas would again be available to those interested in exploring them. There is and will always be problems of interpretation, these issues exist even when all involved speak English and translation into or from other languages merely compounds these problems of interpretation and understanding. These problems occur because as is made clear from the model, every person is unique the content of each person’s mind unique, every event for every person is unique. It follows that issues of meaning will be unique, therefore what I say will mean something to me, and I must be careful to use words and language and imagery that as close as I can tell will mean the same to you, but ‘as close as I can tell’ leaves much room for error and misinterpretation.

The distinction between Thought and a thought is not always well understood in the literature on psychology. A thought is a value of the Variable Thought, which means that every unique thought is a value of the variable and no particular general observations arise from any set of thoughts, since they are merely different values of the same Variable. Some particular thought or set of thoughts may be important for the person, since who we are lies in the values of the Variables, but it is only how we come to be that is understood in the structuring of those variables into a general theory. By understanding types of people we can extend our learning from one person to another, but this is not ‘theory’, merely technology and this technology will be bound by culture and person type, so persons of certain dispositions from culture A may be understood and able to be helped, but this may not be of any help to a person of the same dispositions from culture B.

How ideas exist is a function of neural physiology. I can close my eyes and ‘see’ (as in visually see) letters and words, if I concentrate on an image then quickly close my eyes I can see the after image and watch it degrade and disappear. I also ‘see’ in the form of understanding, I ‘see’ the shape and form of a concept but do not exactly see it in a visual sense, but can immediately write it down. I also ‘hear’ ideas, pretty much as I hear in an audible sense. Sometimes, but not often for me ideas have an associated taste or smell, almost a ‘flavor’ to them of sound, seeing and taste. These are the experiences of ideas for me, each person having their own experience of them.

The fact is then that in the ways and manner described ideas exist. By then relating my personal actions to the idea I can then see how I need to act to live the idea, to make it real in and through my conduct. ‘Seeing’ how to relate the idea to my behavior is just more ideas, and exist as above. Translating the ideas into action involves the mechanisms of attention, the largely learned ability to intervene in our own physiology, knowing what state achieves what result in relation to our conduct, often without being able to quite describe what we do or how we do it, just knowing we can. It is this we learn in the long involved childhood.

How ideas exist in the way they do is not a question involving the existence of ideas, but a question of how the neural mechanisms do what they, how they in fact create the experiences I call ideas. Our understanding of this is yet some way away we barely understand how the brain creates an image when we use our sight. But the unraveling of our neural mechanisms will occur, and with better understanding we may learn how to yet train and retrain ourselves to do and be more of what we choose. However, unraveling the mechanism will not alter the existence of the idea, nor alter the fact of its power and usefulness in shaping all we do and can do and can be.

Thought is the generic term, the variable. Ideas are the content of Thought, the values of the variable. To think is not merely to have a thought, for they can arise as purely consequential products of physical and deterministic mechanisms, having no effect on those mechanisms. To think is active, an intervention, or a judgment. How do people think? What processes Thought?

Having now developed the understanding of knowledge, its structure and the manner it comes into being the processing of Thought is clearer. The perceptual system is a physiological system that receives from differentiated perceptual fields and produces the image or sound, etc, as an immediate interpretation of the field (it is an interpretation since it is relative to the physiology of the observer). Knowledge is the classification of these unique events that is subsequently used to describe all similar events, and frequently used as metaphor in discussing events of certain and uncertain similarity. There is no algorithm in this process it is totally conceptual in its structure. Knowledge once created processes subsequent immediate perception.

We use knowledge to understand knowledge. This is different from the idea we use neurons to understand and process knowledge. A neuron is the substrate of knowledge, the mechanisms whereby ideas come to be, but knowledge is the content of those mechanisms, and to claim a neuron knows or even is influenced by its content stretches too far the idea of ‘knowing’. Different neurons may do different things, but these differences will be neutral to the content, and that a neuron will do what it does with good and bad weak or poor and effective and ineffective ideas, it does not evaluate, only people do that.

Are cells specialized such that certain cells enable certain ideas? And are certain regions of the brain predisposed to certain types of thinking? Such questions can only be partly answered, undoubtedly detailed answers will emerge with this model suggesting a loser arrangement or structuring between neurons and thoughts than the model proposed by such as Hebb’s cell assemblies. These answers however will not influence the theory of psychology. Or only influence in ways now able to be predicted, this is because the answers relate to the mechanisms that are now understood to exist, they will not alter the product of those mechanisms, again, answers to understanding our psychology are not to be found in neural activity or only to the extent our central nervous system is diseased and so disrupting our psychology.

Arguably the least understood mechanism within the brain is the process whereby we are able to alter the electrochemical balance such as to enable some neural pathways and not others. Pre-potentials are an example, and are evidence that the type of intervention mechanisms postulated do exist in the brain. They are ready consequence of this model, for example, in any sequence of neural activity Aè Bè C, the activation of A, because of the brains interconnectivity could very easily cause subtle changes in C preparing those cells to fire. Whether or not they did would depend on the relative time scales of the neural sequence Aè Bè C versus other possible interventions, such as a psychological decision not to do that. Detailing of this mechanism will not alter the reality that it happens.

There are many popular ‘isms’ relating to the brain and ideas, interactionism, parallelism, etc. I remain unsure which of these categories this model might fall in to. These categories do not help, and we must beware their influence. Science is not analogy, but the process of careful conceptualization of events and the relations between events. That is the flow of change manifest to us, as it can only be, through the change in some aspect of some part of a perceptual field being followed by a change in some other aspect of some other part of a perceptual field.

We need to shed inadequate philosophies that deny accurate conceptualization on the basis that we do not know the mechanism. As an example, it has been understood for centuries that ideasè behavior (this is strictly intended as an ultimate effect). That is, a change in the thinking of a person can have an influence on how they conduct themselves. Yet the history of psychology for the past nearly one hundred years has avoided this simply and very obvious proposition on the grounds of naive conceptions of science and that we could not explain the mechanism.

Are there any psychological states that enable some forms of intervention over others? What types of intervention can we identify? What parts of the brain are implicated with what type of intervention? What parallels can we produce of the type Psychological stateè type of intervention? Can we then develop nouskills such as to teach people how to intervene more effectively and so offer people greater levels of free will, peace, and personal agency? What would be the implications of refining the ability to teach people how to intervene in their brain and so achieve change, on the management of mental disorder? These are but some of the exciting questions that emerge, offering an exciting and useful future to a well-formed and well-grounded theory of the mechanisms of how we come to be.

The role of ideas in individual psychology has been reviewed, but what of groups and societies? Do ideas have any form of social existence? And what is their role in explaining the behavior of groups?

It is beyond the scope of this work to explore how this model needs to be summed in order to create the base of a theory of sociology. Such a summation must be possible on the grounds that societies consist of people, therefore any general theory of sociology must be grounded in some manner in individual psychology.

The only aspect of these issues I wish to summarize here is a response to the question of whether or not the argument above results in sociology being reducible to psychology.

Imagine a group of people facing some situation and being required to act. The sociological question is how can we understand the response of the group? We know that if each individual’s response was independently assessed, it would often be different from their response in a group. This due to the group dynamics, there are, for example, a greater pool of ideas in the group from which a response can be constructed. There are also various emotional factors operative which may not be operative when the person is asked to choose on their own.

We have the situation where the response of the group is based on some idea, say AB, where individually no person of the group had the idea, and would on their own not have acted in quite that manner. The argument can be taken further, in that even when the group is not faced with producing a response, the idea AB is implicit to the group. In this way, social structures give rise to implicit social ideas, and that these ideas are values of the true sociological variable, Social Thought. These do not necessarily exist within individual psychology, the main reasons being that not everyone has all the ideas. In a similar manner there are social attitudes because not everyone has the same attitude to the ideas that people know they share.

For the above reasons sociology, like psychology, is a non-reducible domain of science. They are related, and must flow one into another, but they are identifiably different, with individual psychology being an important aspect of the mechanisms of sociology.

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The neurological assumptions that underpin the model are well within the bounds of that already known of the brain and central nervous system. In no small part, this reinforces the view that the unraveling of the detail of the operation of the brain will afford no further insight into our psychology, and will only be elucidation of the mechanism whereby our psychology is manifest.

• That neurons are specialized. Different neurons and different sets of neurons do different things.
• That even our most complex mental functions are the result of discrete and specialized groups or regions of neurons interacting in particular ways.
• Significant processing is done at that neuron level. For instance, particular neurons respond to particular cues.
• Neurons communicate freely and rapidly, and it is likely that no more than a few synaptic connections separate any two neurons.
• Neurons receive input from a very large number of other neurons.
• The balance of input shapes the neural activation, not only whether it fires but also how it fires and the chemical messages it transmits through its synapses. There are two levels of neural communication. The first is the firing of the neuron. The second is the shift in the chemical balance without firing. Physics and chemistry determines the functioning of neurons.
• Neurons act in coordinated sequences with precise timing.
• Neural functioning is quite plastic across broad regions.
• Neurons change the nature of their communication systems by rapid reversible mechanisms and slower non-reversible mechanisms. This process is essentially the mechanism of memory.
• Different sets of neurons can be active at the same time, doing different things, without interfering with each other.
• Current neuron action is influenced by previous neuron actions and this is the physical basis of learning.
• A basic structure of the CNS is in place before birth. The greater part of the fine development of the neural network and detailed allocation of neurons occurs from birth through childhood and adolescence and is the result of interaction with the environment, and the reflective processes within the psychology of the person.
• Neurons are ordered in both parallel and hierarchical systems.

The issue is to determine the extent that our development depends on genetics or on experience and development. The developmental processes have been accounted for in the model. To allow an influence from genetics we must more clearly show how that influence is exerted.

Genetics exerts its influence through biochemistry, in a physical manner. The influence is also in place at first cell division and, of course, at birth. The development processes that largely dominate from birth consist of a progressive elaboration from that which existed before. At birth, the existing set of brain structures can be regarded as being produced by the genetic history of the individual. This assumption ignores the developmental processes occurring in the womb. Thus in reality the brain structures at birth are a blend of genetics plus developmental influences pre-birth. For these purposes I propose to ignore development pre-birth as a most minor aspect of development. Please note also, that this assumption does not ignore chemical contamination of the fetus, this not being classified as 'developmental'.

Brain structures have various energy barriers. The brain structures of habit have the lowest barriers to activation in that situation. The moments of being alive are the actual state of activation. Brain structures are implicit, and the neural flow will follow these routes unless there is an intervention. The newborn baby has a system of brain structures derived primarily from genetics.

The genetically derived brain structures are not 'hard wired'. This analogy is not apt. The strength of the brain structure depends on the numbers of neurons committed or that could be committed, the nature and type of chemical transmitters and the synaptic interconnectivity of the neurons. The system at birth is plastic within bounds. Thus may be strengthened or lessened depending on experience.

Consider a simple competence such as hand-eye coordination. Now, let us imagine we can measure the strength of the genetic potential of the newborn baby and rate it on a scale of one to ten; ten being excellent hand-eye coordination potential. Thus we could take zero to be no hand-eye coordination such as might occur in a baby paralyzed from the neck down.

In rating this potential competence we must also allow for the plasticity of the neural system. Thus the potential competence would exist as a range, the upper limit representing the maximum possible, and the lower limit representing the minimum for this person, the minimum that was going to be regardless of whether the person's experience encouraged the competence.

Now, imagine two babies. One with the potential competence rated at four to seven, the other rated at six to nine. Now also assume that the first was encouraged to play sport, say tennis, the other was not. By late teens, the first had made the most of their potential. The second child had made nothing of their potential, but on picking up tennis racquet could play quite well.

The example above discussed hand-eye coordination as if that was all that was occurring in the brain. This is simply not so. Imagine the two babies as above. Now, assume they have equal opportunity, equal encouragement and coaching. But the second, with the greatest hand-eye potential, has emotional structures that produce highs and lows of emotion, outbursts and so on. They reject the disciplines of training, and their ego (self-perception) prohibits them from listening to sound, constructive criticism. The first baby, with the lowest hand-eye potential, is the opposite. Furthermore, with careful thought and court craft, they learn to compensate for their sometime lack of reflex and power and play tennis to a level beyond that predicted by the core competence of hand-eye coordination alone. While these examples are imaginary, they are familiar enough in life. There is no need for explanation beyond the model, and that genetics determines the initial system of brain structures and the plasticity of those brain structures.

Imagine two societies. The first is gentle, rather passive, where conflict is avoided and people are warm and friendly to each other. The second society is aggressive and confronting, people mistrust one another. Assume we could rate the behaviors in these societies on a scale of one to ten, where ten was extremely aggressive bordering on physical violence, and one was passive and meek, bordering on total retreat. Further that the first society had a range of behavior one to five and the second, a range of behavior four to eight.

This is shown graphically below.

Assume that the people are distributed evenly across these ranges and that individuals above aggressiveness five, in society one are locked away as dangerous, and that people with passivity below four in society two are ridiculed. Now, imagine twins born with identical emotional brain potential. This potential was such as to predispose them to aggressive behavior, with strong expression of emotion. Now, imagine that one child was placed in families in each society, and that all members of these families were rated the median of their respective societies.

The theory proposes that each of the children will develop behaviors at the upper aggressive end of the scale, in the first society, in the range four to five, and in the second society, in the range seven to eight. Within their respective societies, the children are seen as aggressive. Yet, considering they began with identical genetic potential, one child is very much more aggressive than the other.

This thought experiment is intended to illustrate several important points. Namely, how social circumstances combine with genetics; how it is not merely 'the family' that determines behavioral development; and how perceptions of 'what is aggressive', for example, become culture bound. Thus a person who has instinctive feelings of aggression can have them reinforced in their society, people saying 'you're aggressive', despite the fact that in some other society that same person may be perceived as passive and weak. If, for instance, the child in society one was placed in a family whose members were all rated in the range one to two, then the child may only develop aggressive behaviors three to four, rather than four to five. The family experience alone is thus seen as moderating the emotional expression that develops, but other social factors are seen as dominant.

The model above applies to all competencies and qualities. The only difference is that some neurons move our hand, while others generate emotions and thoughts. And while there may be detailed physio-chemical differences between these neurons, the model does not depend on these differences. These are the underlying immediate effects, the mechanisms by which the model occurs, but we do not need this detail in order to understand and explain why we do what we do.

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Conceptualization is the process of producing Thought.

The act of classifying events and so creating knowledge is the first level of conceptualization. It is the conceptualization of the universe, specifically conceptualizing the flow of change in the universe, such knowledge providing prediction of the universe, which in turn enables survival of the species.

The creation of knowledge is the first level of abstraction from Reality and is the creation of ideas as groups of event with common properties.

The second level of conceptualization is the creation of skills and tools to better manage the product of the first level conceptualization. These are the conceptualized tools to manage knowledge I have called nouskills. For example a simple sequence for decision-making or problem solving. The nouskills are conceptualized processes whereby our knowledge is managed, and is thus a second level abstraction from Reality.

The third level of conceptualization is where the process of conceptualization is applied to itself. These are tools able to lead and to advance the very process of conceptualization. Mathematics is one such tool. The tools used in this paper are the conceptualization of how humanity creates knowledge, thus are the conceptualization of the act of conceptualization and are a third level abstraction.

At this third level of conceptualization the process of conceptualization itself is conceptualized, there then can be no further level of abstraction in relation to the creation of knowledge.

At each level of abstraction the degree of difficulty increases. It is one thing to learn mathematics as a set of equations and rules, quite something different to concept those equations and rules in the first instance. Few people have had the conceptual and intellectual powers to concept new and additional mathematics, this alone is evidence of the difficult at each level of abstraction.

It appears that a cat or dog or ape or dolphin has first level conceptualization competence. This level of competence leads immediately to multiple objects of thought (ideas) embedded in mental sets, the outputs of the mental sets being known, and the option of selecting one or other or combining several mental sets to create choices of behavior. This then represents the minimum level of free will evident in animals and repeatedly verified by experiment. They think and they choose.

There is, however, no evidence that these animals engage in second or third level abstractions. It is this that separates mankind.

Quantum electrodynamics, as a set of equations, bears the same type of relationship to Reality as does the model in this book. It could be argued that if they are first level abstractions, then why are they not evident in animals?

The difference is that both quantum theory and the model in this book both depend on tools of thought: Mathematics and immediate effects. These tools are second level abstractions, and third level abstractions to the extent the tools lead the conceptualization process rather than only describing the thought once conceived.

It remains an open question whether the highest animals, likely to be apes and chimpanzees are capable of being taught tools of thought. It is an even more difficult question to establish that they can build on the tools of thought by creating more tools, or creating completely new tools. If they cannot, and there seems no evidence to date then the gulf between our intelligence and animal intelligence is not merely a matter of degree.

Can conscious be modeled? Can algorithms result in anything remotely similar to that exhibited by people, and further recreate that felt by people?

Consider an extremely simple example, the toy motor vehicles that change direction when they encounter an obstacle. It has an elementary perceptual system which tells it when it is blocked from going forward or backward. It has two basic equivalents of mental sets: forward directions blocked go back; backward direction blocked go forward.

Now, imagine a similar system that had 200,000 such mental sets, the majority of which provided the machine with responses to the normal events encountered in a day in an office, including social exchanges. The responses were all programmed and deterministic. This would be a more than adequate robot.

Now, imagine the same robot given guidance by having aims, goals, purposes and a system of values in how it sought to treat people. And that the robot had the ability to relate a situation, its purposes and its available mental sets so that is actions and responses took best advantage of the situation to advance its goals.

This would be a sophisticated robot.

Obviously these robots would need sophisticated perceptual apparatus that offered depth and tonal qualities to sight and sound. This apparatus would also need to be supported by a powerful memory system able to quickly identify objects to the extent of being able to identify and respond to facial expressions, gestures, and cues of tone in the voice. And these technological devices would need to match or better the range of nuance and subtlety available in humans.

Now, imagine the robot with 20,000,000 mental sets. Also, that it had the range and complexity of differentiation outlined in above in the section on consciousness. Would the robot be conscious? The issue of consciousness comes down to the question ‘what it is like to be' (in this case, the robot in question)? Is it not possible to provide the robot with sophisticated devices to assess and understand its internal states? Would it not also be possible to install systems such that if the state was in a certain range the robot experienced what for humans would be pain or fear or anger, etc, and that this range of states was equal to or parallel human range of states? Finally, the robot learned from its own actions how to improve the achievement of its goals.

This would be an extremely sophisticated robot.

But even with this level of sophistication there remains problem of reproducing the processes of second and third level conceptualization. Would the robot be able to create nouskills that is second order concepts for the management of its own thinking processes? And would it be able to create new and better models of conceptualization itself? At very least able to create new tools for improving and refining and leading the conceptualization process. It is these processes that defines us and draws sharply the dividing line between us and the other animals. We are a long, long way short of even a sophisticated robot, never mind an extremely sophisticated robot. Consideration of these next, crucial steps will need to be left for another generation of psychologists, technicians and thinkers.

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Sleep can be described using the model and is the state depicted below.

The two crucial changes are.

• There is no longer any feedback from attention to the reacting part.
• There is a large reduction in the interaction between the system and the environment this is shown by the dotted arrows in the diagram.

Other than these changes we can visualize the rest of the system as functioning normally. The effect of these changes is significant. For the system now has no enforced ordering from our attention processes or from the environment. It can now 'free wheel', subject only to its inherent dispositions. With attention shutdown, there will undoubtedly be a general reduction in the energy expended. Also, with the system able to 'freewheel', with the elimination of the impositions from sensory input and attention, we can begin to see how this period of release can have a replenishing effect.

Mental sets are still operational. Our attention is still able to be drawn to them, but not able to influence them. The system is able to think and feel according to what is inherent in it. And we can remember.

If there are crucial objects of thought, crucial systems we are wrestling with, or crucial subconscious issues, then these may arise in dreams. And because the system is not constrained, the influence of these issues may be indirect. That is, they do not necessarily arise as direct issues in the dreams. Thus dreams can or could have meaning.

Conversely, dreams are the free functioning of the complex structures that forge our psyche. They are a reflection of us, but are as likely to be nonsensical as meaningful.

The interpretation of dreams as having any necessary relevance to our lives must proceed cautiously. And at best can only be regarded as our semi-conscious and subconscious structures bringing forward issues that offer a guide, and need other, direct support before being used in framing our judgments.

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If we create a full and valid general theory of psychology then it must address the question of what is mental illness?

Having developed this theory to this point, it seemed initially that the theory had little to say on the subject. It was only after considerable reflection and some difficulty that I came to understand the issues. The argument is as follows.

1. Imagine for the moment that we in fact have a valid and complete theory of the person.
2. Also accept that there is in fact a distinction between a variable and its value, so that the theory deals with the variables and their relationships, while any specific situation involves establishing relevant values for those variables and inserting them in the theory to establish the value of the remaining variable.
3. Where would such a structure in fact lead us in relation to mental illness?
4. I cannot imagine how any actual emotions and thoughts and reactive habits are anything but values of variables. Real people in any real situation experiencing any real and immediate thought, feeling or reaction is and I argue can only be an ‘instance of’, the instance of the theory consisting of the variables and the relations between them.
5. This type of logic must persist even if, for example we choose different variables, such as ‘beliefs’. We face the same issues, with the actual belief in any actual situation being the ‘instance of’.
6. As the result of this type of discussion we then can draw some initial conclusions as to the nature of mental illness that can and must arise.
1. First there can be malfunction of the mechanism whereby our psychology comes to be. If, as in the theory I have developed, this relates to the physiology of the brain and central nervous system, then any malfunction of this is beyond the immediate control of the person, or at least in the same relation to the person as breaking one’s leg because of climbing onto a rickety table to hang a picture. So we may suffer some neural damage or degeneration due drug or alcohol abuse, but once caused, once the mechanism has been damaged, the condition is beyond our immediate control and ability to correct.
2. Second, that is the second manner of malfunction is that the values of the variables adopted may be dysfunctional. That is, for example the exact belief adopted if belief were a variable in the theory in and of itself caused maladaptive behaviour.
7. These initial conclusions then arise in fact from the epistemological position, an inevitable epistemological position that can never be circumvented. To deny this dichotomy of mental illness is in fact to trace an argument back to very fundamental epistemological issues.

I never saw these issues coming that is as I forged the epistemological position I could have seen the potential consequence for our definitions of mental illness, but I did not.

To precisely relate the issues to the theory I have developed. There are two ways in which the theory can malfunction (note I will use this term, it is appropriate and I intend it to stress that for now we are discussing mental illness in terms of how it could arise in theory, not the reality of mental illness as we see it in practice).

• The underlying mechanisms of the brain and nervous system may malfunction. This can obviously emerge in the person as inappropriate and deviant behaviour. Such causation is beyond immediate control by the person and is truly ‘illness’ as commonly understood, comparable in every way with disease.
• The second way in which the system may malfunction is not in fact malfunction at all. Values of some variables may result in other variables falling outside the range of that regarded as ‘normal’. So thoughts may be adopted that if acted out result in behaviour regarded as illegal, immoral, deviant or inappropriate.

The point of my opening is that these two means of malfunction were in part determined by the separation of variables and their values in the initial epistemological analysis. It is crucial to understand that the theory in no way determines or dictates the nature of that which is encoded in the neural system. From the point of view of the neural mechanism, there is no difference in encoding and enabling a simple humane idea, and encoding and enabling the most horrific idea one can imagine. Both people are ‘normal’ in terms of their physiology. And in strict terms of the theory, both have normally functioning systems, however the actions and statements of one person may be so variant as to be incomprehensible to the second person.

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The discussion and theory leads to two quite distinct definitions of mental illness.

1. Where the neural mechanisms fall outside the range of normal, the mechanisms whereby the psychology of the person is manifest is malfunctioning, then the person can be said to be mentally ill. The illness then comparable in every respect with accepted definitions of ‘illness’.
2. Where there are encoded and played out by the mechanisms values of the variables Thought or Emotion or structures that draw Attention and behavioural reaction such that the person acts in a manner significantly beyond that regarded as ‘normal’. Then if we so choose such people can also be determined mentally ill. In this case the determination of mental illness is made on moral and ethical and legal grounds and has no absolute basis.

The theory of the person does not and cannot offer any guide as to which values of the theory, which ‘instances of’ the variables are to be preferred. The theory contains no morality, merely provides understanding and insight into how our psychology comes to be. This is as it must be if science is to be something other than a vehicle for personal opinion and prejudice.

The problem with the emergent and correct position is in determining the causality, for if the person does what they do because their neural system is malfunctioning then they are indeed ‘ill’, and need treated as such.

If however there is no underlying neural malfunction, then the theory contends that the person at least to some degree, can control what they do and is accountable for it. Relaxing of this being a function of the degree of variation of the values of the variables beyond the norm, and the circumstances within which the variables did so deviate.

Currently there is only limited technology for assessing and determining with authority whether or not the neural system of a person is within the range of ‘normal’ (the term used in the same sense as the heart of a person may be in the range of ‘normal’ and so not seen as ‘diseased’)

If and when such technology were available then there would be a certain process for determining whether or not decisions on the conduct of some person should be regarded as resulting from some true ‘illness’, or whether the decision must be made on grounds of permanent or temporary deviation of the values of the variables for that person and whether or not there exist in the history or circumstances of the person sufficient mitigation for the person to be held not responsible for their conduct. In short, effective technology would greatly aid separating illness in the true sense from moral, ethical and legal judgements only able to be made on normative grounds.

Assume there are people of generally ‘normal’ neural functioning but for whom social judgement is such as to label their actions ‘unacceptable’. That is they cannot take care of themselves, or they are dangerous to themselves or to others.

For purpose of definition, insanity is when such people are incapable of controlling their conduct. Which is to say, they have world-views role and systems of mental sets as to make their conduct inevitable.

For this criteria of inevitably to apply, then the structure of the psyche of the person, the structure of their mental sets must be all embracing, there can be nothing beyond the mental sets that lead to the unacceptable actions, for if there is, then the question is not one of inevitably, but questions of skills of control of self and the willingness to wrestle with urges in self to assert control.

Insanity then becomes a situation where all mental sets of the person results and lead to actions deemed wrong or unacceptable, and that the person must and will inevitably act this way because for them there is no other choice. The psyche of the person is thus ‘normal’ in the sense it is fully integrated, it is rational (within its own framework), and it can even be calm and deliberate.

In terms of the model, the issue is that the values of the variables for this person places the conduct in the bounds of ‘unacceptable’, and the level of integrity of those values in the person means the conduct is inevitable that labels them insane.

As these issues arise within the theory and because of the degree of integration of the personality required to justify stating that the person could do not other than as they did, it seems most unlikely that it would or could occur on a ‘temporary basis’. This leaves decision of problems of ‘temporary insanity’ based on the moral and ethical grounds of ‘circumstances beyond that which a reasonable person could be expected to cope’; and while such circumstances are not ‘insanity’ they can drive people to deviant behaviour not normally or otherwise observed of the person, such behaviour being beyond the control of the person.

Those people who exhibit conduct that is unacceptable but who have a role structure and system of mental sets that are not so integrated as to define them as insane, are then defined as having ‘personality’ disorders. They are not insane, but can be having very serious difficulties in their lives. Depression would fall into the category of ‘personality disorder’, or ‘psychological problems’. This definition would seem reasonable, for people with personality disorder would know what they are doing, either before or after. At the time, they may have released themselves into the disorder, but this is not ‘temporary insanity’, since the level of integration is not complete in the person. This means the person did have choices prior, no matter how hard those choices may have been. It is over then to society to determine whether or not the choices were ‘harder than those expected of a reasonable person in the situation’.

The above issues are complex, and significant and it is crucial that the issues of science and theory draw the necessary lines so that we understand clearly the nature of the decision and social and legal choices that must be made.

This outline of the theory is complete. There remain many questions, and as said at the beginning, there is still much detail to be considered and reviewed.

In the next paper in this series I will relate the theoretical system that is now presented to you, to the literature, seeking to explore the details of the vast literature of excellent empirical research into people and how this theory explains and interprets this body of research. The details of such things as development, personal growth, personality, intelligence, values and belief, faith and hope, mental illness and personality disorders will be reviewed and considered.

This paper will not be available until August/September 2002.