SECTION 5

THE SEMANTICS OF INFORMATIONAL ASPECTS — WHAT, EXACTLY, DO THE AUTHORS HAVE IN MIND?

(an example of a complex and conscientiously argued error)

Commentary on the work of L.A. Kochubeeva, V.V. Mironov, and M.L. Stoyalova

[Translator’s note: this is Section 5 of S.I. Churyumov’s commentary. Abbreviations kept as in the original: IA = informational aspect; ARP = Augustinavichiute–Reinin trait; TIM = type of information metabolism; SF = socionic function; PF = psychic function; IP = information flow; DP = differentiating trait; PR = Reinin trait; IMEE (Rus. ВМВС) = internal model of the external environment; UChK (УЧК) = Churyumov’s book “The Smile of the Cheshire Cat”.]

The St. Petersburg Working Group has presented the results of its three years of research in the book Socionics: THE SEMANTICS OF INFORMATIONAL ASPECTS. The authors have carried out a large and interesting piece of experimental work. However, their theoretical premises, from the standpoint of modern scientific methodology, contain a number of inaccuracies that cast doubt on part of the results they obtained. The analysis of this work is especially instructive because the authors understand methodology and quite consciously formulate their positions. Their combined methodological complex naturally divides into experimental methods and general scientific methodology. I personally believe that with their experimental methods everything, or almost everything, is in order — which is easily explained by their belonging to the St. Petersburg scientific school. As for general methodology, unfortunately, most domain scientists who directly produce scientific results do not always have the opportunity to rely on the achievements of the leading edge of methodology. The cause of this is a certain inertia of the scientific mentality. Scientists in the main tend to hold to what is tested, established, and officially approved. This can explain the still-remaining vestiges of positivism in the scientific milieu, although advanced philosophical thought long ago overcame its one-sidedness. It is also plausible that various forms of positivism, entrenched in the West as the methodological basis of scientific research, are quite deliberately being implanted into the consciousness of the bearers of post-Soviet science. The scientist is immersed in a disciplinary paradigm, and any paradigmatic novelties are met by him with distrust. But, as we now understand it, at the base of socionics lies a paradigm that differs significantly from the one that has established itself in science over the last 100 years. This is one of the reasons why official psychology has taken a negative position toward socionics. The main components of the socionic paradigm are the notions of the essential role of information in metabolic processes at any scale, and the concept of a unified field, without appeal to which any scientific research and its results lose their primary foundation, remaining scattered empirical findings of a recipe-book kind.

As for the overall characterization of the work under analysis, it deserves any positive dissertation-level assessment, despite the significant number of methodological deficiencies it contains. Moreover, it is the authors’ personal affair whether they find it possible and necessary to respond in some way to my analysis. What matters to me here is only that future generations of socionists have the opportunity to compare different points of view on one and the same theoretical phenomenon.

I will also note that the authors — owing to their psychological literacy — are a pleasure to read, unlike certain “pure” socionists who are almost unacquainted with the fundamental psychological literature. Nevertheless, I diverge from the authors in the understanding of what an informational aspect is — a construct that occupies a substantial part of their study.

Authors: For three years the Working Group (WG) on socionics (formerly the working group on socionics at the laboratory of interdisciplinary research of the Institute of Biology and Psychology of Man, St. Petersburg) was engaged in research on informational aspects, analyzing and describing the results of a large and painstaking effort.

Commentary: Everything here is impressive: the duration, the group character of the work, the laboratory, the institute, the subject matter, and the painstaking attitude toward the work.

Authors: Work on the project went hard. Only enthusiasm and an unquenchable research interest allowed us to put the final full stop in this book (though not in our work).

Commentary: After more than a quarter century of work with socionic subject matter, I have several times had to state at conferences that socionics is both complex and difficult to understand, despite its obvious popularity and seeming transparency. Alas, it is transparent only for beginners, who chirp with ease in its blossoming crown, “without the slightest doubt” re-discovering what has already been discovered by others whom they have not read, and proposing to completely remake it in accordance with their treetop-level notions. Whoever has reached the deep levels of socionics feels the resistance of its far-from-simple material.

Authors: We must give due credit to our predecessors, whose works describing the speech peculiarities of the socionic types helped us considerably in our research.

Commentary: This is right — to give predecessors their due and to cite them properly.

Authors: At the same time, our approaches and the approaches of our colleagues differ substantially in the criteria on the basis of which the dictionaries were compiled.

Commentary: This is an important statement. It is not excluded that the authors will reach the paradigmatic level and propose their own variant of understanding socionics.

Authors: The dictionaries of aspect lexicon previously encountered in the socionic literature were based on such methods as direct observation (collection of empirical material) and certain theoretical premises (ideas about how exactly representatives of particular types ought to express themselves). This state of affairs corresponds to the primary stage of development of any new science or scientific paradigm. At the same time, we believe that this stage is ending, and the stage of sorting data and testing previously advanced hypotheses and assumptions is beginning. This is one of the tasks we pursued in our work. The second is connected with the search for adequate methods of experimental research, which, in our opinion, can be worked out only by taking into account the experience of adjacent sciences.

Commentary: It appears the authors are insufficiently acquainted with the works of other researchers of socionic theory, who long ago passed the primary stage and proposed a fundamental grounding of socionics (see the works of Bukalov, Prokofieva, Filimonov, Churyumov).

Authors: Undoubtedly, this study is another step toward the establishment of socionics as a scientific discipline, where one of the criteria of scientificity is the reproducibility of experiments. To this end we have described in detail the methods and results of our work.

Commentary: It would be interesting to know whether the authors’ result is reproducible if other focus groups are used.

Authors: The focus group (resonance group) for an aspect itself checked the lexicon; if a word or phrase caused difficulty or dispute in the group, such lexicon was not taken into account in further work.

Commentary: The focus group is perhaps the main peculiarity of the authors’ method in the attempt to sort out the concept of the IA. However, let us note at once that one such group, or a small number of them, is entirely insufficient for obtaining reliable results. After all, people are used here as empirical bearers of the language, and their production will, of necessity, have merely the character of opinion, in no way binding for others. Here, as always in humanities empirics, statistics and the requirements imposed on a statistical experiment must be of essential significance. But the main thing here is that the “resonance” methodology is merely a beautiful idea, which can be used at the level of a hypothesis but which cannot be considered a reliable source of truth; it would be reasonable first to ground and develop it experimentally and theoretically. Without this, accepting the results obtained with its help as absolute would be premature.

Authors: Inviting colleagues to a discussion and proposing that those who wish repeat our experiment, we nevertheless note the necessity of observing safety procedures as a guarantee of the psychological health of the participants of the resonance groups.

Commentary: In any case, I am ready to take part in the discussion, and I accept the authors’ challenge.

Authors: For the first time in the history of socionics we give definitions of such generally accepted and commonly used terms as informational aspect and Reinin trait, and we also define a number of the Reinin traits used in the work.

Commentary: I do not even know how to take such a claim. As if that very history had never existed, or as if it consisted solely of the authors’ impressions of socionics as it happened to come to hand. As if it were not Aushra who discovered the IAs, and as if her works did not contain implicit definitions of these entities and attempts at their deductive construction. As if the works on the grounding of the IAs carried out by Medvedev, Ermak, Shepetko, Ritchik, Filimonov, Sedykh, Gut, Prokofieva, and finally Kalinauskas had passed the authors by. And, of course, my own [3]. These should at least have been analyzed in a literature review. And yet a few paragraphs earlier the authors spoke of their readiness to give predecessors their due.

As for the ARP (Augustinavichiute–Reinin traits), the initial phase of their development by both Reinin and Aushra unquestionably deserves the closest attention, to say nothing of respect for authorship. Perhaps the authors have made some stunning discovery refuting all their predecessors — but then this still has to be proved. It is also not excluded that the authors have discovered something quite different but do not yet know it, though they spent three years of creative time on it. Columbus, too, thought he had merely discovered a route to India…

Authors: The semantics of aspects in TIM diagnostics…

Commentary: And by the way, do the authors even know who first formulated the problem of the semantics of the IA, the SF, and Model A — or do they consider that inessential?

Authors: A fundamentally important point in diagnostics by speech is the principle voiced by G. Reinin: “not in awareness — not in language.”

Commentary: Evidently the authors ignore the psychoanalytic observations going back to Freud, connected with the manifestation of subconscious tendencies in speech and in nonverbal reactions in the form of erroneous actions, slips of the pen, slips of the tongue, and speech forms employing specific lexicon that points to unconscious factors. Did G.R. Reinin really formulate his principle in exactly this way — without taking into account the rich clinical experience of the psychoanalysts? As I understand it, such a principle could sound quite different: “elements whose content is not conscious may be present in human speech.”

Authors: …speech reflects the peculiarities of the psyche, including typical characteristics.

Commentary: But also subconscious tendencies, which in no way contradicts the manifestation of typological markers — for these, too, are not fully controlled by consciousness and, in people untrained in typology, are for the most part not only not conscious but possibly absent from the subconscious as well, which is of course hard to verify owing to the absence of reliable methods for working with the subconscious.

Authors: The study of aspects in the broad sense of the word is an area where the socionist’s foot has practically “never trodden,” and over which much work still lies ahead.

Commentary: As an editor, I note that the phrase “in the broad sense of the word” should be set off with commas — otherwise it has quite a different meaning from the one the authors presumably intended. But of course the authors are right when they say that the topic of aspects needs work; however, references to predecessors — at least to Medvedev, Shepetko, Ritchik, Filimonov, and Ermak — must be made. And as for the “socionist’s foot” — an obvious exaggeration. So I find myself wondering, after at least two “dashing” claims by the authors, whether exaggeration is the basis of their intellectual stylistics.

Authors: In many cases the content of the aspects is derived from the model and verified by nothing: it is presumed that this is how it must be.

Commentary: Here we are dealing with a subtle point concerning the relation between theory and practice. Aspects, unquestionably, must be theoretically grounded — that is, after all, where they came from. In order to verify something, a scientist must have at least some image of the construct being verified. The construct itself is always the result of some generalization of empirics, though such a generalization may have been made by someone else and be present in the research field at the level of a hypothesis, a prejudice, or something taken for granted. Moreover, I have proposed (see UChK) a scheme for the deductive derivation of the aspects, which secures their theoretical status. But, naturally, their concretization must be provided by experimental work, which in turn must correspond to the theoretical notions. It is precisely such theoretical-empirical iterations that must, in the end, ensure the full validity of this construct — and not only this one. The authors’ claim is simply unsubstantiated — yet another exaggeration. Apparently the authors do not understand that empirics is not reducible to experiment — there is also clinical and everyday experience, which may be quite sufficient for introducing primary concepts. Aushra Augustinavichiute introduced the concept of the IA as the basic partition of the information flow (IP); but, of course, someone might wish to replace her construct with his own, in which IAs are understood differently — for example, as arbitrary taxonomic subdivisions of information — but for that they must first be introduced. And not simply introduced: their full spectrum must be obtained.

What, then, could such presumed taxonomic subdivisions of information be? How, in general, can information be divided into units that are maximally general and yet more concrete than the very concept of information? For that, first of all, one must know what information is. Not at the level of intuitive insight — at that level everyone knows what information is — but at the level of a logical concept. Without this, any work in this direction will be a wandering in intuitive darkness. I fear that precisely this is happening with the authors.

We know that a large number of informational units exist, but in socionics we are talking about a high level of generalization. To such a level belong the informational types or, what is the same thing, the types of information metabolism. But the set of informational types is not limited to the number 16. It is arranged on levels determined by powers of two. Aushra chose the level 2³ = 8 (the third level), which corresponds to the number of functions in Model A and by whose symbols these functions are denoted. This last remark is important, since the choice of the third level for fixing the set of IAs corresponds to the requirement of necessity and sufficiency for the constructive support of the socionic model of the psyche. Possibly, for other purposes, other levels might be needed, but in each such case a justification and the introduction of corresponding definitions are required. An understanding of this is absent from the authors’ work.

Authors: Meanwhile every author writing a book on socionics gives his own description of the aspects, but practically none of them refers to experimental data.

Commentary: Here we have a situation entirely characteristic of the initial stages of the “wild” formation of a scientific direction. One should not lament this — one should make use of it. Scientists who write books express in them both their theoretical notions and their own, often weakly grounded and almost unreflected, empirical findings. The subsequent conscientious criticism of these is a form of diachronic dialogue and a pledge of the further development of the science. However, from the methodological point of view, one ought to sort out the taxonomy of experimental data. After all, this also includes the scientist’s empirical experience of everyday language use. We are all bearers of the language and know a thing or two about it, and for primary formulations that may suffice. How else could Aushra have formulated the idea of the IA, fundamentally new for science? Here her brilliant intuition did the work.

Authors: The task of the present work is to order and supplement the existing knowledge on the semantics of informational aspects, testing it against factual material.

Commentary: …you see — to order and supplement; so there is, after all, something to order and supplement, and yet so much was said… The stated intention is a good one; however, as the authors’ further text shows, it destroys the theoretical supports already proposed by their predecessors. This does not mean that the achievements of predecessors must be accepted as dogma, but it does mean that one must reckon with them and respond to them, at least in the form of conscientious analysis and criticism, rather than by a voluntarist replacement with one’s own theoretical impressions.

Authors: The personality, as a totality of innate and acquired traits, manifests itself in activity and through activity, in the ways it organizes the environment and contacts the environment.

Commentary: A very correct remark — however, one resting on pre-socionic notions of “activity,” which was an ideological bogeyman of Soviet philosophy and psychology. No, activity is not at all a bad category, provided it is not tied to the Soviet ideology that turned it into one of the arguments for the enslavement of citizens by servile labor. In socionics the concept of “activity” corresponds to the IA of extraverted thinking, but here this concept is given a fundamental status not through ideological manipulations but thanks to a precisely found axiomatic base corresponding to the scientific notions of the unity of the world and the possibility of adequately reflecting its fundamental invariants in consciousness.

Authors: Speech is a kind of activity. No one disputes that it reflects the peculiarities of the culture (and subculture) to which a person belongs, national, gender, and age peculiarities (the speech of a child and the speech of an adult differ — an obvious fact), psychic norm and pathology, etc.

Commentary: Here we have a subtle substitution of the concept of “speech,” connected with pre-socionic notions of it. In socionics, speech is linked with the IA of introverted thinking, its primary objectivation, where its products — algorithms of possible activity — undergo a primary check at the level of the orienting reflex, whereas activity is a category of extraverted thinking, that is, of the real (extraverted), and not ideal (introverted), purposeful transformation of reality. Here we are dealing with the opposition of word and deed: words can contain only the idea of a purposeful transformation, while deeds — that is, activity — are the transformation itself. Failure to distinguish these is a standard methodological error. Clearly, a distortion of the theoretical notions of speech is fraught with both overt and finely camouflaged errors in further theoretical and experimental work.

Authors: “It is precisely the linguistic personality (i.e., the human being in his capacity to perform speech actions) that has become the integral object of numerous spheres of the science of language, which have formed the various fields of anthropocentric linguistics.”

Commentary: Here, in the concept of the “linguistic personality,” one can observe the initial stage of the dismemberment of the integral concept of “personality” into fragments convenient for study in the subject area of psycholinguistics. As a working device this is normal; however, one must not forget that after such fragmentary study the integrity of the concept must be restored. But the authors evidently do not understand that “speech actions,” although they can become the basis of activity — that is, of a real purposeful transformation of the environment — do not by themselves transform the environment and therefore are not activity.

Authors: It would seem that in socionics too it is legitimate to apply the methods of psycholinguistics to increase the accuracy of diagnostics and the understanding of the worldview of each TIM.

Commentary: One can fully agree with this, adding the requirement of introducing socionic corrections into psycholinguistics — which will in no way destroy its disciplinary purity but will connect an already established science with new and highly effective socionic ideas, especially in their methodological aspect. Without taking into account the socionic contribution to the understanding of the human psyche as a structure of information metabolism, psycholinguistics may simply turn out to be inapplicable to socionics.

Authors: Traditionally in socionics it is considered that each informational aspect processes its own part of the information flow entering the psyche.

Commentary: That is what the authors think about the socionic tradition — while using the words incorrectly. IAs do not process anything — functions process. But the authors have a “new vision” of the IA and the ARP — a non-traditional one. They said what corresponds to their understanding of Model A. And this means that, strange as it is for scientists of such caliber, they have not understood Jung’s main discovery — the positioning of the functions in the psyche. But, as I have understood, most socionists do not understand this, and one may say that it is traditional in socionics. Moreover, Jung himself did not fully reflect on this side of his typology. The positional semantics of the functions — answering the question “what place does a function occupy in the chain of intrapsychic information metabolism and what does it do?” — was extremely approximate in Jung: a leading function, a subordinate one, an auxiliary one. He worked mainly with aspect semantics, which answers the question “what information does the function process?” And herein lies Jung’s primary contribution to the semantics of the IA, though he never knew it. In this contribution of his, the theoretical and empirical sides of research are present in syncretic form. Of course, his rich clinical experience can in no way be ignored as the empirical foundation of his understanding of the meaning of the psychic functions. And, of course, he relied on the theoretical and experimental groundwork of his predecessors, who likewise cannot be discounted. All this creates the prehistory of the semantics of the IA and is subject to consideration and adaptation. So no “traditionality” in the understanding that “each informational aspect processes its own part of the information flow entering the psyche” has yet taken shape.

Authors: The question of whether the division into aspects is internal or external seems to us conceptual. That is, is information initially divided into certain segments, or is its differentiation (in particular, into aspects) a product of the work of certain psychic mechanisms? On this question we hold to the subjective conception, within which it is presumed that in nature there is no aspect division, and that all division is performed by our psyche (brain) to facilitate the perception of information. In modern psychological science it is considered axiomatic that our psyche not only reflects but also transforms reality.

Commentary: Here the authors demonstrate a mature methodological position: they understand the fundamental character of the problem of the IA, formulate it precisely, and consciously make their choice in favor of the “subjective conception” — that is, they proceed from the premise that “in nature there is no aspect division, and all division is performed by our psyche (brain) to facilitate the perception of information.” There is no point in trying to dissuade people who act consciously. Therefore the following arguments are not for the authors but for the reader.

First of all, in the reasoning about the division of information “into certain segments” there is a subtle logical error connected with the axiom of identity. When the authors speak of the “initial division of information,” they thereby, by default, acknowledge the “initial” existence of information. What does “initial” mean? Apparently — before it is perceived by a subject. Let us note that some scientists do not acknowledge the existence of information before it is perceived by a subject. In that case it is appropriate to ask: where, then, does it come from? This misunderstanding points to the underdevelopment of certain theoretical points in information theory. And if the authors acknowledge the existence of information prior to its perception by a subject, they will have to acknowledge its initial division as well. If, however, they take the position that information does not exist without a subject, then they cannot speak of the “initial division of information” without violating the axiom of identity. Therefore, if we speak of an information flow which is apparently directed from outside toward the subject and is perceived by the subject, there are no grounds to suppose that this flow has no divisions; and these divisions, too, will be perceived by the subject — and, of course, there is nothing surprising in the fact that they will be perceived subjectively. But the flow is an informational one — that is, it is the flow that carries the information.

On the other hand, the concept of “wholeness” should not be used as a bogeyman by insisting on the indivisibility of nature. That would amount to an admission that nature is a single undifferentiated mass — which may appeal to certain atavistic components of the scientific consciousness but certainly does not correspond to the conclusions of integral human practice, which deals with an environment that is a relatively organized multitude of heterogeneous objects. The unity of the world is a lofty point of view. But the world is one at its very foundation, while at the level of the physical world it is obviously manifold — let us not forget the lessons of dialectics.

As for whether the IAs are objective entities or subjective impressions, here we are dealing with a misunderstanding. The fact is that Aushra from the very beginning considered the IAs, first, subjective images of certain ontological entities (field — body, etc.) and, second, real components of the IP as well, denoting both hypostases of the IA by the same symbols — though they could have been distinguished by introducing some index; but this is not a matter of principle, even though we do have here a case of terminological synonymy.

The decision partially adopted by Aushra is explained by difficulties of interpretation, but this state of affairs should not be perceived as overly complicated. In the end, behind both of these entities stands one and the same archetype. And in time this could be sorted out in more detail. So let us, at last, sort out what the subject perceives and what the subject adds that was not in the object.

Let us begin with the definition of the ARP. The ARP is, first of all, the fundamental set of differentiating traits that make it possible to distinguish some TIMs from others. This set is characterized by completeness, consistency, necessity, and sufficiency, although the requirement of independence does not hold on it — something that should be specifically stipulated and recognized. All this means that apart from this set there exist no other DPs of the same level of generality. The ARPs — that is, the DPs entering into this fundamental set — are elementary entities, i.e., indecomposable at this level of generalization. However, unlike the ARPs, in personality psychology a large number of DPs of a lower level of generalization have been identified and are studied, which allow one to distinguish, with a high degree of detail at the everyday level, one personality from another and, in numerous typologies, one type from another. In socionics, the DPs by which one TIM is distinguished from another are precisely the Augustinavichiute–Reinin traits (ARP). They are maximally generalized traits, features, properties of character. As applied to socionics this is easy to understand if one considers that a TIM is precisely a generalized character. The three terms — traits, features, and properties — are synonymous here. In socionics this generalization is based on the fact that socionics deals with maximally generalized functions. Character traits, in psychological terms, are parameters which, with a suitable choice of terms, can be identified with elements of behavior. If, for example, we single out the type of brave people, this means, in behavioral terms, that in certain situations they will act in defiance of danger. At a high level of generalization these are frame parameters setting the broad boundaries within which the behavior of the personality is realized. Such parameters in socionics are extraversion and introversion, intuitiveness and sensoricity, rationality and irrationality, the leading or subordinate role of thinking or emotionality, and so on. The bearer of any TIM acts within the limits of each of these poles and never crosses its constraints. Each of these poles can appear in two hypostases: objective and subjective. Can arbitrary DPs — and in particular the ARPs — be redefined as functions? For this one must return to the definition of a function as the process and result of the work of some part of the psyche. Can, for example, extraversion be defined as a function? Is extraversion the process and result of the work of some psychic organ, however generalized or utterly concrete that organ might be? Extraversion is a psychic quality, and as such it is the functional realization of an informational program recorded in one way or another on a psychic carrier. By now there is no longer any doubt that there exist psychic and physiological mechanisms for reading such programs off their carriers and functionally realizing them as a behavioral component. Of course, it would be splendid if experimenters managed to identify these considerations in the laboratory. The understanding of DPs — and in particular of the ARPs — given here is sufficient to allow them, if necessary, to be interpreted as functions. Incidentally, one can add here also the functional interpretation of relations, where the function turns out to be the combination of two functions belonging to different partners. But refinements are needed here.

Objectively, the ARPs are generalized parameters of the object, while subjectively they can be understood either as generalized standards by which the subject recognizes a generalized parameter of the object, or as a generalized psychic function (PF) that extracts from the IP a quite definite part of the information and processes it. This understanding of the PF rests on the definition that a psychic function (PF) is the process and result of the work of a definite structure of the psyche. From this point of view, an ARP is a PF. For distinguishing this information the subject possesses subjective standards which were developed both in the course of the evolution of the animal species and in the process of phylogenesis. The study of the process of formation of such standards in the course of a species’ adaptation to its habitat constitutes an important scientific problem. The work of the ARPs, which are PFs of a high level of generalization, is easy to interpret as the comparison of an objective signal with a subjective standard.

In connection with what has been said, the question arises: “what, in reality, corresponds to the subjective standard?” Since we are dealing here with generalized functions, generalized traits of behavior, and generalized subjective standards, we should turn to the problem of the existence of what in logic are called general concepts.

It was laconically and vividly expressed in his time (3rd century BC) by the little-known Greek philosopher Prodicus. He said: “A horse I see, but horseness I do not see.” This problem divides philosophers to this day. And it has a direct bearing on the problem of the IA. One may say that the IA is Prodicus’s maximally generalized “horseness.” It is the “aspectness” of everything there is in the world. A modern Prodicus might say: “Objects I see, but their aspectness I do not see.” As we can see, the old problem of the existence of general concepts becomes frankly topical in socionics. And a single understanding of it for all socionists — let alone for all philosophers — does not yet exist. Yet an artist, with one stroke of the pen, drawing a wavy line imitating the contour of a horse from muzzle and mane to tail, thereby invites us to see pure horseness without a horse — and even small children who have ever seen a horse will not confuse it with anything. Thus one can state that horseness is a trait, or a set of traits, by which we recognize a horse. If we acknowledge the real existence of traits as a combination of an object’s parameters, then we should have no problem acknowledging that horseness exists really — and, by analogy with it, aspectness really exists as well. Let us not forget, all the same, that people, owing to the contiguity of phenomenon and concept, easily conflate the trait as an objective parameter and the trait as a criterion of distinction behind which stands a subjective standard. The first is objective, the second subjective. Let us turn to concrete examples. When a person sees the color red, this is a parameter of the object perceived by the person in subjective codes. Red in nature corresponds to an electromagnetic wave of a definite length, and thus the object’s parameter is coded in natural codes — in this case, in the modulations of electromagnetic radiation. The generalized frames of subjective standards correspond to generalized frames in the modulations of the signal. It is precisely such generalized frames that the IAs are — but the subject will perceive them in his own codes, in the capacity of which the ARPs act. Thus, if a parameter of an object belongs, for example, to the IA of introverted sensorics (s) — meaning that behind it stands a resource necessary to a living being — then in subjective codes it will be perceived as an experience of usefulness, comfort, aesthetic pleasure.

Thus, in socionics this problem of the existence of general concepts is solved thanks to the adoption of the informational paradigm, according to which information, as a modulation of a material-energetic carrier, exists really and not subjectively, and is capable of really influencing the behavior of people and other entities that are non-transparent to information (see the section on truth in the humanities). The names and classes of objects are informational entities, and they are real in the sense stated above.

However, without recourse to the informational paradigm (see the section on truth in the humanities in this book) it is difficult to sort this out. According to the informational paradigm, information exists in two hypostases — objectively, as the set of modulations of all media coexisting in the world, and subjectively, as the perception of these modulations in subjective codes. Correspondingly, two definitions of information must be given: an objective and a subjective one. Objectively, information is the codes of form in the modulations of any material-energetic process, which in this case is understood as a signal process. Subjectively, information is that which changes the state of the subject. Failure to understand the dual nature of information leads to all manner of misunderstandings, above all philosophical ones. Precisely such a misunderstanding is the opposition of materialism and idealism, each of which copes somehow with solving problems within the limits of its own competence.

Any object perturbs the medium, or media, in which it is located. These perturbations exist independently of the subject perceiving them. These perturbations are represented in the medium as its modulations. These modulations, in turn, are codes of the object’s parameters — its dimensions, position in space, the material of which it consists, and so forth. It is precisely the totality of all the medium’s codes that constitutes the objective hypostasis of information as a “coded reality,” or encoded reality. Thus the real world and the real objects in it are present simultaneously in material-energetic and in signal-code form. The subject, in his adaptation to the habitat, acquired specific organs allowing him to transcode the modulations of the medium into subjective images, whose essence, nonetheless, does not in principle differ from the objective coding modulations. The differences here relate only to the media whose modulations code the objects. The psychic medium of the subject, in its modulations produced by the organs of perception, contains the image of the object — but, thanks to its psychic nature, it is also aware of it. The recognition, in accordance with the informational paradigm, of the objective existence of information entails the necessity of recognizing also the objective existence of the classes into which objects are divided. And this means that to the materially represented set of objects there corresponds a class of these objects encoded by the modulations of the medium. The codes carrying information about classes are frame subsets of the sets of codes carrying information about concrete objects. The same can be said of the IAs, since they are maximally generalized classes of objects, processes, phenomena, and any other wholes objectively existing in our world. This is one possible solution of the problem of the existence of general concepts.

A well-grounded form of idealism is its objective variant, whose adherents hold that the ideal is primary and the material secondary. But in that case there are no grounds to suppose that the aspects, as ideal yet objective entities, are not initially present in the world and appear only at the moment of subjective perception — as subjective idealism might insist. On the other hand, if a concrete person sees, for example, the Sun, a tree, or a crocodile, the position of naive materialism proceeds from the premise that these objects do not appear at the moment of their perception but exist independently of whether anyone is looking at them or not. Nor does the naive consciousness doubt the existence of the entire set of trees and crocodiles, and it confidently assigns individual representatives of these sets to the corresponding classes of objects. Clearly, one must not conflate the concepts of set and class — the first is ontological and is really found in nature, while the second remains a mental operator of the subject and allows him to orient himself in the real articulation of the world. However, the contiguity of the concepts of set and class easily leads to their non-distinction, which is the cause of basic errors and misunderstandings.

Adherents of idealism find the position of naive materialism primitive and offer corresponding arguments. The main one here is the problem of consciousness, which within the framework of materialism has never had a sufficiently convincing solution — convincing for others, and not for the materialists themselves.

The authors hold to their own notions of the IA, but, as we shall see later, these notions contain many contradictions and logical incorrectnesses, for the sake of which it was not worth exchanging the solid construct created by Aushra for the authors’ dubious set of contradictory intuitive improvisations.

Several variants (hypotheses) for solving the problem of the existence of general concepts can be proposed. The variant traditional for socionics — that is, as Aushra conceived it — comes down to this: the IAs are highly generalized classes and, simultaneously, the sets of objects and phenomena connected with them. It is here that the demarcation line between the objective and the subjective runs: the sets are objective, while the classes are subjective. However, the IAs, being highly abstract categories, point simultaneously both to ontological entities and to the subjective operators for fixing these entities. This is analogous to the way IAs exist both in themselves and as parts of the SFs, being in both cases denoted by identical symbols. Of course, such a situation can be regarded as a certain inconvenience capable of leading to the non-distinction of different entities; but one can also see here the primary unity of entities which at subsequent stages of concretization will be counterposed. In principle, such an inconvenience can be removed by adding ontological and functional markers — for example, primes — to the primary symbols. So the term “informational aspect” is homonymous and points to two different concepts. Aushra used it to point to ontological entities, from whose subsequent combinations and fragmentation the sets of real objects arise. The concrete thinking of a scientist does not always cope with this. One must maintain a high level of abstraction in order to admit such a possibility and not confuse the objective and subjective sides of information — something that is not generally accepted in contemporary science.

Using the example of a hen’s egg (and not only a hen’s), one can see how a relatively undifferentiated mass turns first into an embryo and then into a chick, passing through successive stages from maximal indeterminacy to concrete embodiment. In this process the primary ontological frame — the internal content of the egg — is the ontological frame of the future embryo, the chick, and then the hen. But within this ontological substrate there is present, in the form of modulations of this substrate, a program for transforming it, ensuring the development of a living being out of it. The ontological frame corresponds to the IA in its material existence, and it is the ontological frame of the entire set of objects that we associate with the given IA. Before any object there exists the material or substance of which it consists. However, before the real emergence of any object there also exist the informational programs for turning the ontological substrate into the corresponding concrete object.

This substance or material is the ontological part of the frame of the corresponding object. The object arises from this material as a result of its differentiation and transformation in accordance with the program of its form and functioning. Such differentiation may be external, as when a craftsman makes a wooden spoon from a piece of wood; internal, as with the hen’s egg; or the result of the play of natural forces, as with the formation of a cloud, a mountain range, or the outline of a continent. But we always have a passage through stages of increasing determinacy. In all these cases the primary informational-ontological frame is an analogue of the IA, into which all the subsequent details of the developing object are inscribed. The difficulty of accepting such a notion lies in the peculiarities of how the term IA is perceived. In the scientist’s consciousness it is easily, and first of all, identified with a subjective classificatory criterion. As for the subjective classificatory criterion, it too exists objectively — as a program radical recorded on psychic carriers and capable of being realized, in the course of the subject’s intellectual activity, in the form of concrete behavior. Only its perception by the subject is subjective; but behind it stands the long process of the subject’s evolution.

As was shown above within the framework of the informational paradigm, the IAs — or maximally generalized classes of objects — exist not only in the subject’s consciousness but also in the form of subsets of the medium’s modulations, and such existence is objective, since it does not depend on the subject who uses them.

The socionic names of these classes point to generalized criteria for assigning a concrete object to one or another class, to one or another IA. But what does it mean that “a class of objects exists objectively”? Let us take the logicians’ favorite example — the table. It is easy to agree that the table-in-general does not exist, and that only concrete tables exist — as metaphysicians of all times and peoples so doggedly and obtusely insist. The set of all tables is a real aggregate object existing objectively in the world. Simultaneously with this aggregate object, its code is also present in the medium’s modulations, being a subset of the codes of all concrete tables. From this code one can always extract an informational frame that describes any of the tables belonging to their real set. The subject, perceiving this code as an objective signal, transforms it into a subjective image both of a concrete table and into the concept of the table in general, which is the frame part of the subjectively transformed objective code of the whole set of tables. Let us recall that in our world objective information is capable, one way or another, of being transferred from one carrier to another. In our time this is easy to appreciate in the transmission of a television broadcast, when subjectively coded information is turned by the vocal cords into corresponding acoustic codes, then into mechanical vibrations of the microphone’s membrane, then converted into electromagnetic waves, then converted into mechanical vibrations of the receiver’s membrane, then into the acoustic waves of the receiving room — and these are transformed by the physiological devices of the ear into the subjective perception of sound. Visual information is transformed analogously. Of course, science has still not found a satisfactory answer to the question of how objective information turns into its subjective forms; but that this is a constantly occurring process every person knows from everyday experience. Now we can say that the general concept of the table exists in two variants: subjectively, as a subset of subjective codes, and objectively, as a subset of the medium’s modulations generated by real tables, both each separately and by their entire totality. In exactly the same way one can speak of classes of living beings, classes of technical objects, classes of musical works, classes of theoretical concepts, and so on. But there will always be ten thousand philosophers who will disagree — and by no means because they are so very stupid. They may have other reasons for it, including subjective ones. They may say that if someone gathered all existing tables together, this would be neither the table-in-general nor the class of tables. It would be the plural object “tables.” It really exists, but it also really differs both from its name and from the generalizing category “class of tables.” But such reasoning indicates that these philosophers have not yet arrived at the conclusion of the objective existence of information.

One can, like Kalinauskas, assign the IAs to the “psychological function of thinking” (see the section on Kalinauskas). One can, like Bukalov, simply accept as an axiom that “the information flow perceived by the individual or social psyche is divided into 8 different semantic aspects, just as white light is decomposed into the various colors of the rainbow” — the analogy with the rainbow is a substitute for proof, and the author ignores the fact that the rainbow has a physical explanation, whereas the aspects still need to be explained (see the section on Bukalov).

One can, like the authors of “Semantic Aspects,” hold that the IAs are created by the psyche at the moment of perception of real objects, and that this is done “to facilitate the perception of information.” A rather odd expression. It is like saying that people eat “to facilitate their lives.” What is at issue here is not the “facilitation of the perception of information,” but the fact that information is perceived precisely in this way, since this is the adaptation of the species homo sapiens — since living beings must adapt to their habitat, developing ways of subjectively perceiving information suited to the peculiarities of their physiology.

Or one can do as Shulman does in his review of this book: “And, perhaps, I will nonetheless voice one single remark. Both the authors ((Ritchik D.Yu., Filimonov S.V., Shepetko E.V., Methodological Manual on the Topic: ‘Introduction to Socionics. Semantic Fields of the Aspects’)) and the authors of the work under review formulate the definition of an aspect of the information flow by unconditionally linking it to the Reinin Traits: ‘An aspect is a functional-informational complex of any three interdependent Reinin traits (hereafter RT). (Fig. 1) The bearers of a given aspect form a small subgroup of four TIMs.‘”

Commentary: Shulman’s opinion here comes down to repeating the opinion of other authors without troubling himself with theoretical complexities. As in Pushkin: “…with the learned air of a connoisseur, to touch on everything lightly…” — while in fact profaning a serious and difficult theoretical topic. His reasoning is not logical but opportunistic in character, since he tries merely to catch the peculiarities of the situation and lend his utterance an air of significance in the absence of any real meaning in it. Incidentally, Reinin — a subtle and profound analyst — never said anything of the sort. He mathematically rigorously proved Ekman’s theorem on the existence of N−1 traits for describing an N-component set, which in the case of socionics turned out to be 15 ARPs. Reinin also showed that in the case of an analytic set, such as the socion, only 4 DPs can be independent, and all the rest will be linear combinations of them. It also turned out that although 3 ARPs suffice to single out 4 TIMs, owing to the linear dependence among part of the ARPs such a triple can be chosen in three different ways — whence, apparently, the authors got the idea, in contradiction to Aushra’s approach, of expressing the IAs through triples of ARPs.

Commentary (continued): It appears that Shulman is trying to demonstrate competence in questions where his socionic knowledge is insufficient; otherwise it is hard to explain why he quotes the authors’ highly dubious understanding of the IA, evidently without fully realizing what negative consequences such a definition of theirs may lead to. But he himself — how does he define the aspects?

And here is the continuation of the quotation: “I will venture to suppose that a certain shift of concepts takes place here, a certain confusion between the essence of the IA and its meaning, and the way it can be used. It is another matter that, thanks to them — already as ‘functional-informational complexes of any three interdependent Reinin traits’ — ‘the bearers of a given aspect form a small subgroup of four TIMs,’ with which one can already do whatever one likes. This remark and the point of view expressed are of a particular character and have no bearing on the opinion stated about the work as a whole.”

Commentary: Obviously Shulman does not see the authors’ gross substitution of the concept of the IA introduced by Aushra — more on that below. He speaks merely of a “certain shift of concepts.” But what does this shift consist in? He specifies it as “a certain confusion between the essence of the IA and its meaning, and the way it can be used.” So what is the essence of the IA, and how does this essence differ from the meaning of the IA? That remains unknown. The subsequent reasoning only strengthens the impression of — to put it mildly — the indeterminacy of Shulman’s reasoning.

Shulman: The point is that the aspects of the TIF — like the Total Information Flow (TIF) itself — exist simply because they exist, independently of anything. They exist insofar as there exist the TIMs that form these aspects, dividing the TIF into them for the facilitation (or, to speak more precisely, for the securing of the very possibility) of perceiving the information carried by the TIF.

Commentary: Here we have an example of Shulman’s oratorical wit — one must give Shulman’s poetic talent its due: it is twisted rather dashingly. He turns a standard psychological term into an abbreviation with an entirely different meaning [translator’s note: in Russian, Shulman’s coinage “ТИП” (Total Information Flow) is homonymous with the word “тип,” “type”], thereby homonymizing this term and creating a parasitic meaning for the concept of “type,” and by this means he establishes aesthetic contact with the listeners — in effect profaning the situation. Furthermore, the device of tautology is used here as an illusory explanation, along the lines of “the law is the law” — “they exist… because they exist.” Yet in logic the argument from tautology is considered misleading. Here we are dealing with the replacement of scientific logic by poetry.

The witty-parasitic meaning introduced earlier for the term “type” now creates an impression of demonstrative persuasiveness, whereas we are dealing with a poetic trick — and when the reader discovers this, he understands that his head is being fooled with. Even the most total of total information flows is not generated by a TIM; quite the reverse — the TIM is the adaptive response of the species homo sapiens to the manifold informational influence of the environment. From Shulman’s reasoning it should also follow that the information flow (IP) does after all consist of IAs — which, incidentally, does not correspond to the authors’ position, though this in no way affects the content of Shulman’s review. But from the same reasoning it follows that it is the TIMs that “form these aspects, dividing the TIF into them.” This is a standard logical error connected with the violation of the axiom of identity. However, the artificially created punning play on words, diverting the reader’s attention from the real meaning of the IA and paralyzing his attention, produces the impression that you have received a full-fledged explanation — of what, admittedly, is unknown, but the impression remains. So, do the TIMs really form the IAs? Let us sort it out. For this it is necessary, first of all, to understand where the IAs come from. I did this work in the second chapter of UChK. And the conclusion here may seem paradoxical: behind the IAs stand three more fundamental entities — matter, energy, and information.

Shulman: And these aspects were first designated by N.N. Medvedev, “rigidly” linking them with the “primary building blocks” of the universe, which in socionics received his name. And that is enough. Nothing more needs to be done with them, and there is no need to incriminate them with conditions of existence — they exist as it is.

Commentary: What a word — incriminate! But by the laws of poetic influence on consciousness (or, what is the same thing, NLP), a word with a negative meaning — and one incompatible with the given situation at that — suggests to you the inappropriateness of further reasoning, while explaining nothing on the merits. As for Medvedev’s attempt to construct the IAs deductively using what Shulman here calls the primary building blocks of the universe — the reference is to the four fundamental concepts of energy, matter, space, and time — in UChK (chapter 2) I showed the errors Medvedev committed in this, which Ermak later tried to correct, only aggravating the former’s methodological inaccuracies. So let us not rush into dithyrambs, but let us get to the heart of the matter. [see 3]

Shulman: It is another matter that, thanks to them — already as “functional-informational complexes of three any interdependent Reinin traits” — “The bearers of a given aspect form a small subgroup of four TIMs,” with which one can already do whatever one likes.

Commentary: Well, this phrase is already a specimen of nonsense — not even poetic nonsense, but simply a retelling of what was said earlier, without clarification and at the level of tautology. Here Shulman retells the authors’ intuitive opinion regarding their understanding of the term “informational aspect.” As will be shown, this opinion is erroneous.

Below are quotations reflecting the opinion of official psychology. They give an idea of the initial concepts on which the authors rely in their work.

Stolyarenko: “Psychic reflection is not a mirror-like, mechanistic copying of the world; in psychic reflection the incoming information undergoes specific processing… The psyche is ‘a subjective image of the objective world,’ it is the totality of subjective experiences and elements of the subject’s inner experience.”

Commentary: This is a quotation from a conscientious author who in his book is maximally tolerant toward all psychological schools and directions. But he transmits the point of view of official psychology — that is, of a scientific organization maintained by the state and therefore compelled to adjust itself to the interests of those in power, sacrificing objective truth as circumstances require — let us recall repressive psychiatry under the Soviet regime. However, let us read attentively what L.D. Stolyarenko writes. Let us determine for ourselves what “mechanistic copying of the world in psychic reflection” could mean. A good analogue here would be photography, which with some stretch could be called a mechanistic copying of the world, since a camera contains mechanical parts — though, of course, photography is not reducible to pure mechanics. Now, can it be asserted that on the physiological carriers of living beings the informational recording of an image differs in principle from such a recording in a digital camera? There are no special grounds for this — and, what is more, it is of no particular significance for the problem under consideration. Let us recall that information can easily be recorded and re-recorded from one carrier to another. An announcer in the studio codes a text in an acoustic stream, having first modulated it on his vocal cords. The acoustic stream is converted by the microphone into a sequence of electrical impulses, transcoded by the transmitter into electromagnetic waves. These waves are transcoded by the receiver into an acoustic signal, and the listener, having heard the message, can write it down on a sheet of paper and pass it on for someone else to read. Properly speaking, in the present case we need not be troubled by the problem of recording information on psychic carriers, whose nature, incidentally, is unknown to us — though it is, of course, interesting. It is enough that we freely use information, and the phrase about “mechanistic copying,” within the framework of the informational paradigm, long ago changed its meaning, ceasing to be an ideological bogeyman. For us, in the proposed context, it is inessential precisely how information about the external world is recorded on psychic carriers — let the neurophysiologists deal with that; but the very fact that we are capable of summoning full-fledged color images on our inner screen, of hearing music and speech within ourselves, is quite sufficient for reckoning with the reality of informational complexes.

Now the reader is sufficiently prepared to recognize the reality of such informational complexes as programs of behavior. They are recorded on psychic carriers and, under certain conditions, can be turned into real behavior. What is essential here is that behavior can be decomposed into components of varying degrees of generality. In programs this is expressed in the existence of different program levels — high, middle, and low. The high levels belong to metaprograms that set frame, boundary behavior, which may be common to many units of concrete behavior. For example, the movements of the legs in the metaprogram “go somewhere” can lead to different places, which are specified by concrete goal programs. At the lower level are the concrete working complexes of movements aimed at obtaining a concrete result. From the point of view being developed here, one can assess such abstract notions as, for example, philosophical categories or political slogans. Necessity, chance, form, content — these are philosophical categories of a high level of abstraction. Liberty, equality, and fraternity — an example of political slogans. Within the informational paradigm they can be represented as fragments of behavioral metaprograms providing the settings for obtaining a concrete result — such as the storming of the Bastille. And since the recording of programs on psychic carriers is as real as the carriers themselves, the need to clarify the ontological status of informational complexes falls away. They are as real as the texts of books or the sounding of musical works — but their existence, unlike the existence of the Sun, trees, and crocodiles, is introverted.

However, still greater bewilderment is caused by the second part of the quotation under consideration. Think about it — “The psyche is ‘a subjective image of the objective world’“… If someone fails to catch the distortion of the concept of the psyche here, let me explain. The psyche is an organ in which the subjective perception of the objective world is carried out. We would commit an analogous error if we said that a television set is the picture we see on its screen. We distinguish the television set from the picture on its screen as the result of its functioning — yet for some reason we do not distinguish the psyche from its product.

Evidently the authors share the official opinion, which in the final analysis comes down to understanding the psyche as a subjective image — that is, as something ephemeral, uncontrollable by either an external or an internal observer. Something whose ontological status is inferior even to a television image. To this official opinion one can counterpose, in socionics, the notion of the psyche as an informational-energetic complex ensuring the survival of a living being in its habitat. And this informational-energetic complex is a real entity, not a mental construct. As for the claim that “in psychic reflection the incoming information undergoes specific processing…” — within the informational paradigm this looks like a phrase that lost its meaning long ago, for it was never said what this specificity consists in.

Stolyarenko: “Psychic reflection, belonging to a concrete subject, depends on his interests, emotions, the peculiarities of his sense organs and level of thinking…, thus subjective psychic reflection, subjective reality, may differ partially or significantly from objective reality.”

Commentary: With the first part of the quoted judgment one can agree almost completely. The only thing is that, within socionics, one can speak not simply of psychic reflection but, more concretely, of the internal model of the external environment (IMEE). But this model has two components — an objective and a subjective one — which finds its reflection in Model A as well. Here the EGO block maximally reflects the subjective component of the IMEE, that is, what can be under the subject’s control. The SUPEREGO block, by contrast, has for the subject an objective status, as that with which one must imperatively reckon. Clearly, such a refinement is quite essential — for without its objective part the IMEE would be something like pure fantasy.

The second part of the judgment is considerably more difficult to analyze, since it has a conceptual-worldview component: here the psychologist assesses the degree of possible coincidence or divergence between subjective and objective reality. As far as I understand, at present psychologists possess no highly reliable instruments for assessing subjective reality, so the psychologist’s statement here must be regarded as a hypothesis. In any case, lacking scientific definitions of subjective reality, we lose the subject of discussion.

But still, let us discuss the question of the degree of difference between the two realities — subjective and objective. Korzybski once formulated his sophism that “the map is not the territory,” and since then this sophism has turned into an NLP bogeyman. On the one hand, no proof seems to be required here. Of course a map is no more than a simplified depiction of a territory. But what is at issue, after all, is not a sheet of paper with a diagram of a territory drawn on it, but the psyche of a living being, about whose energetic carrier official psychologists know nothing, or almost nothing. And if, for example, at the base of the psyche there lies something resembling a volumetric holographic mirror, then it is entirely possible that the image of the external environment in the psyche coincides, up to scale, with the environment itself — and then the differences between Korzybski’s environment and territory become simply inessential. However, one can look at the relation between the environment and its subjective model quite differently from the way Korzybski did. On what grounds must we demand the identity of these two entities? It seems this is merely a conclusion drawn from the obvious difference between territories and maps. But it is obvious that the nature of the IMEE (the internal model of the external environment) is not identical to the nature of a sheet of paper with a diagram of a territory drawn on it. The very principle by which the psyche constructs the IMEE differs significantly from the principle of the paper map. It is known, for example, that in dramatic cases of brain surgery, when the surgeon unintentionally touched certain areas of the brain with the scalpel, random pictures from the patient’s past life would suddenly arise on the patient’s inner screen; in one of them a patient saw himself walking past a church on a bright summer day, and saw details he could not have recalled even if earnestly asked to — for example, random spots on the pavement and the concrete pattern of birdsong, as well as background sounds consisting of human voices, automobile noises, the rustle of leaves, and so on. From this scientists have supposed that a person remembers absolutely (!) everything, though he is not always able to reproduce particular fragments of his experience. This is because the mechanism of remembering is opposed by a mechanism of forgetting. But the point is not only the external resemblance of the topographic map and the IMEE — in the psyche fine subjective markers are set out, allowing one to orient oneself in the environment with high precision and to attain one’s goals, though errors are possible too. But that, as they say, is another story.

Korzybski’s bogeyman is a sophism if only because it crudely identifies topographic maps with the psychophysiological structures of a living organism — here he commits one of the gross errors spoken of in NLP itself: the illegitimate identification by analogy. But one’s own are forgiven everything.

Authors: The above is well demonstrated by a simple example: physically we live in one world with, say, a snail — but clearly the snail’s picture of the world and the human’s differ. The more complex a system, the more differentiated it is; the more developed perception is, the more selective it becomes, for otherwise the organism is threatened with informational overload. Speaking of selectivity and differentiation, we have in mind first of all the differentiation of the psychic functions, which, being innate (or forming very early), take upon themselves the division and selective processing of the information flows.

Commentary: Naturally, not being snails, we can only suppose what its picture of the world is like, but we believe that the pictures of the snail and the human differ greatly. However, this is only a hypothesis. One can convincingly assert that the human and the snail differ greatly in their way of life and their influence on the environment — but for assessing the world-pictures of different subjects we lack the means. The highlighted part of the judgment is, in form, the formulation of a certain psychological law; but in the absence of definitions of the differentiatedness and complexity of a system, it is not excluded that identical concepts are at issue here — and then the given formulation is simply a tautology, of the type “the greater a person’s height, the taller he is.” If the concepts of “complexity” and “differentiatedness” are unambiguously connected by the proportional dependence “the more…, the more…,” then their difference must be spelled out with maximal precision. The same applies to the concepts of the “developedness” and “selectivity” of perception. Can perception be developed but not selective, and, conversely, selective but not developed? To answer these questions, definitions and empirical confirmations are needed. Accepting the meaning of scientific concepts by default is a standard methodological error. Let us try to give presumptive definitions.

A complex system: a system is considered complex if the number of connections among its elements exceeds the subject’s capacity to hold them in operational memory. Other definitions can be given as well. For example: a system is considered complex if the time needed to process the information connected with it exceeds one hour. A system is considered complex if the subject experiences difficulties in dealing with it. A system is considered complex if the time needed to train the subject for its practical use exceeds 0.01% of the length of his life. And so on. Clearly, if there is no generally accepted definition, the discussion loses its foundation.

A differentiated system: a system is considered differentiated if it contains more than one element. In that case, the more elements a system contains, the more differentiated it is.

It is easy to see that with such definitions there can be no question of any direct proportionality between the concepts under consideration. But perhaps the authors have other definitions — then one would like to see them.

Developed perception: perception is considered developed if, thanks to it, the subject unambiguously distinguishes objects essential to his life — in particular, those belonging to the category of resource.

Selective perception: if perception is limited by certain conditions or parameters, it is selective. For example, the subject sees only in the dark. Or, like frogs, distinguishes only moving objects. Or hears only in the range from 14 to 18,000 Hz. Or, among birds, pays attention only to sparrows.

And on this example we see that the concepts chosen by the authors are not connected by direct proportionality. The analysis performed shows that the authors work from the very beginning with blurred concepts — and this entitles one to conclude that the results they obtain will remain dubious; possibly valuable as well, though of course that too is not guaranteed — but blurred they will be, without fail.

As for the part of the judgment about the connection between the selectivity and the developedness of perception: in content, it has the character of a justification of the necessity of a proportional dependence between these concepts; but if there are no experimental confirmations behind it, then it is no more than a hypothesis, and there is no point in speaking of informational overload. Incidentally, what could that mean? Does informational overload not depend on the capacity of memory, on training, on the capacity to adapt, on goal-setting, and on other factors? Why must it be unambiguously linked with selectivity? Is selectivity not itself the result of the species’ adaptation to the environment, in which signals irrelevant to the attainment of the species’ goals — for example, the search for food or a sexual partner — are cut off? This renders overload non-topical, though of course it does not exclude stress situations; but these should still be counted as loads, not overloads — though that again depends on definitions. And if a concrete individual, owing to circumstances, does experience informational overload, this can in itself be regarded as a training factor — and it is unclear who would eliminate it, why, and how.

Authors: As it seems to us, the so-called objective conception rests on an outdated scientific paradigm. The ideas that “the psyche is a reflection of reality” (in Marxism), or simplified behaviorist schemes of the “stimulus–response” type (without an intermediate link), have long and justifiedly been criticized or have gone out of scientific circulation.

Commentary: Here we are already dealing with a worldview position. I too consider that the concept of gnoseological reflection is somewhat outdated and should long ago have been replaced by the construction of the IMEE (internal model of the external environment) — and in cybernetics such a category was introduced. In developing the classical core of socionics laid down by Aushra, I use precisely this concept — but I do so not in accordance with scientific fashion, but in accordance with conceptual adequacy. As for behaviorism, it is one of the extreme forms of positivism; and in criticizing it, one must not forget that positivist attitudes are still deeply rooted not only in the minds of scientists but also in their experimental methods and in their choice of theoretical constructs. Signs of positivist attitudes are present in the authors’ analyzed text as well. So scientists are divided not only by questions connected with concrete experimental methods, but also by uncritically assimilated worldview maxims.

Authors: Linguistic thinking is built on the associative principle. There even exist dictionaries of stable associative norms for various languages. “The associative connections between words are motivated not only by the peculiarities of the culture to which the bearer of the language belongs. They reflect a person’s social being: his profession, place of residence, age, social origin, etc.”

Commentary: Of course, it is the authors’ personal affair which textbook they choose their paradigm of thinking from. But since the authors give no definition of linguistic thinking, we are again dealing with looseness and blurredness of concepts. In psychology there exist at least a dozen definitions of thinking. Personally I like my own: thinking is the processing of information aimed at refining the IMEE and constructing, on its basis, algorithms of strategic and tactical behavior. Linguistic thinking is a subsystem of general thinking, resting on verbally formed concepts and categories with the use of mental operators such as induction, deduction, generalization, nominalization, comparison, classification, association, and so on. Of course, dictionaries of associative norms exist; but other scientific texts exist as well, in which other sides of thinking are reflected — for example, textbooks of logic, without which even the poorest human thinking cannot do.

As for associations: despite their real presence in language and a certain role in the formation of thought, they deal with the superficial layer of thinking, indirectly connected with emotionality and, through it, with poetry. Socionics allows a new approach to the understanding of thinking as a psychic function. First, for the first time in linguistics, thinking is divided into extraverted and introverted. Second, linguistic thinking is a variety of introverted thinking — its objectivated form, in which its results, in the coded form provided by the national language, become accessible to partners. In conducting a socionic study, it is unquestionably necessary to take the socionic notions of thinking into account.

Authors: “Associations in people’s linguistic consciousness form associative (semantic) fields, in which words close in meaning are united into groups. The nature and distinctiveness of semantic fields are well shown by the now-classic type of associative experiment — the psychophysiological one. A series of brilliant experiments was carried out by A.R. Luria together with his student O.S. Vinogradova.”

Commentary: Semantic fields, though playing an important role in thinking, are merely its raw material — like the pieces in chess, or like databases in computer technologies. As for Luria’s remarkable experiments, their main goal was the construction of associative methods aimed at detecting neurophysiological pathologies. This does, of course, bear on thinking, but only incidentally — which, naturally, casts no shadow on the outstanding works of Alexander Romanovich.

Nonetheless, all works on associative connections, including Luria’s, may have a bearing on the problem of the IA. But what bearing, exactly? That still remains to be clarified.

Authors: 1. …one can state the presence in linguistic consciousness of semantic fields comprising words united by a common concept. 2. …in a semantic field one can distinguish a center and a periphery, where the connections between words weaken. 3. …the meanings of words belonging to various semantic fields are concretized in the speech context. 4. …words in our consciousness are connected not only by meaning but also by form.

Commentary: These are good working premises for work on the problem of the semantics of the aspects. However, I would refine a few things in them. First, this list lacks a definition of the semantic field. The authors leave it at the level of an intuitive impression. For further work, I would propose the following. A semantic field is a system of the meaning-spectra of concepts connected with the lexical units of a language. Refinements: lexical units are not only words but also their meaningful parts — roots, prefixes, suffixes, endings — as well as their combinations, up to and including texts of arbitrary length. A concept is the functional specification of a denotatum. The meaning-spectrum of a concept is the set of variations and shades of sense that can be initiated by the subject’s situations on the array of meanings of the lexical units. Here one should also emphasize the difference between meaning and sense, first identified in the works of Frege. The meaning of a lexical unit is its denotatum, that is, the object it codes. Sense is the pragmatic realization of meaning in relation to the subject’s interests. If a lexical unit codes several denotata, this is equivalent to its having several meanings. This is observed in the case of homonymy. In the case of synonymy, several lexical units have common meanings. In the case of paronymy, several lexical units have meanings in a common subject area. In all three cases the senses, unlike the meanings, can vary within wide limits. Depending on the scientist’s position, the semantic field may be connected either with the set of meanings, or with the set of senses, or with both sets. Correspondingly, work with semantic fields will have its own peculiarities in each case.

Refinement to point 1. What enter into semantic fields are not words but their senses, provoked by the meanings of words in connection with the subject’s interests. Of words one can say that they are sensory provocateurs of linguistic thinking. Refinement to point 2. Semantic fields have a complex structure determined by the topology of sense connections and zones.

Refinement to point 3. The speech context generates its own semantic field.

Refinement to point 4. The form of words — that is, their phonetic, graphic, symbolic, intonational, mimic, kinesic, or other representations — sets its own semantic fields, which interfere with the basic semantic field of the lexical unit and with one another.

Authors: Thus it emerges that the principle of organization of semantic fields is not a rigid categorial one but a network one, with a maximum of intersections (node, core) and “threads” diverging from it (periphery). Moreover, a word, depending on the context, is recognized as belonging or not belonging to the given field. As a rule, this concerns the periphery to a greater degree than the core.

Commentary: In the previous commentary I introduced my notions of semantic fields. Here I can say that the substitution of graphic depictions of lexical units for semantic fields must be regarded only as an unavoidable limitation connected with the absence of means for the direct depiction of senses. As for structural-topological distinctions such as nodes, cores, and diverging threads — these are secondary constructs superstructed over the conventional graphic representations of semantic fields. Toward secondary constructs the scientist must exercise heightened vigilance, since they can induce parasitic semantics connected with their own formal parameters. Furthermore, I would insist that semantic fields have a continual structure masked by the discrete form of the lexical array. As for the connection of words with semantic fields, such a connection, depending on the context, may be confirmed or denied — but this depends heavily on the competence of the expert, and to neutralize that, the introduction of a special language of senses is required.

Authors: It is impossible to enumerate all the lexical units of one field. We may encounter a word clearly belonging to the field of an aspect but omitted from the dictionary. We would like to note that lexicon may change depending on the time, cultural, educational, and social level — i.e., the words will be different, but the field will remain the same. The core will remain constant, while the peripheral lexicon will be subject to changes.

Commentary: This is a good linguistic result, but the empirical component predominates in it, and the theoretical component is almost entirely absent. The memory of modern computers allows one to work with arrays comprising hundreds of thousands of lexical units — which, however, is beyond the strength of a small working group. This reasoning of the authors is an argument in favor of the continuality of semantic fields.

Authors: Now we must determine what an aspect in information metabolism actually is. Here we have arrived at the key moment of the work — the definition of the concept of the IA.

Commentary: Here the word “aspect” is used without the qualifier “informational” — that is, as a general scientific term, and hence in a somewhat different semantic field. And at once lines of sense stretched from it toward all the other basic concepts of socionics. The invisible prohibition on combinability is lifted from this word, and in the semantic field of socionics “aspect phantoms” appear: now all socionic categories can be regarded as aspects — that is, as concepts acquiring relative determinacy depending on the angle from which one views them — but no longer as objective entities.

Authors: In our opinion, each psychic process (a psychic function in socionic terminology) recognizes, in the general information flow, among the whole totality of internal and external signals, those signals that correspond to it (in whose processing it participates).

Commentary: In this paragraph the authors use the terms “process” and “function” as competing synonyms, evidently considering the first more appropriate in general psychology while using the second in socionics. However, the existing difference in the semantics of these words ought to exclude such a possibility. The first word has the more general meaning of “something taking place,” while the second singles out a definite class of processes connected with the work of physiological, physical, technical, or social organs — on the condition that this work is aimed at obtaining some concrete product. The first term points to greater indeterminacy in structural support, while the second is more concrete, since it correlates with a psychic and physiological organ. In the psyche the functional products are sensations, emotions, thoughts, volitional acts, purposeful actions — but here one may also include psychic traits, of which the ARPs are a variety. Moreover, the general scientific concept of function is, of course, used not only in socionics but also in psychology, whence it came to socionics on entirely lawful grounds from the works of Jung.

Evidently the authors acknowledge that the IP is composed of signals — that is, that it is a set of signals. And each function — what the authors designate a “psychic process” — is selective with respect to definite signals. However, the authors take as self-evident that each function “recognizes in the general information flow, among the whole totality of internal and external signals, those signals that correspond to it.” This is true, but the authors as it were omit the evolutionary process as a result of which psychic functions with precisely such properties appeared. Without such a refinement it comes out as though someone assigned the correspondence of functions to signals, and as though it could have been done otherwise. Of signals one can say that they are not the objects about which they carry information, but they exist before they are perceived by the psyche. Why, then, do the authors deny such signals the possibility of being assigned to one or another subset of the entire set of signals? The IAs are precisely a variety of such sets — only they are sets of a high level of generalization. There are more concrete sets — for example, the set of tables — and there are sets into which all material objects, or all energetic processes, and so on, can be included. But possibly the misunderstanding arises here because behind the term IA stand two entities — the real sets of signals in the medium, and the subjective classificatory categories in the psyche. One could, trying to remove this duality, separate these concepts by introducing some other term for the sets of signals; but, considering the duality of the concept of information as simultaneously an objective and a subjective entity, there is no particular point in this, since the term itself is a good one.

Authors: In the process of metabolism it ((the psychic process)) transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings. Thereby each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow.

Commentary: It is by no means obvious that all psychic processes transmit into the environment signals corresponding to their modalities. The sensory system receives signals — but what does it transmit? For example, the eyes — what do they transmit? True, it is said of the eyes that they are the mirror of the soul, but what they see is something else entirely. Admittedly, the literature contains mentions of instrumentally recorded cases of rays of unclear nature emitted from the eyes, capable of exposing photographic film — but what relation does such radiation have to the function of visual perception? And yet the authors speak of “the same domain of meanings.” And the ears? Do they transmit anything at all? From the same domain of meanings — that is, sounds intended for acoustic communication? Do the psychic functions send any signals, and if so, where? Clearly, L/l and E/e [extraverted/introverted thinking and emotionality] do send signals, but in different directions. L — directly into the habitat; l and E — to other people; e — is stored within the subject. The irrational functions only receive, and therefore for them the expression “from the same domain of meanings” has no sense. For the rational functions this question needs to be analyzed better.

Also unclear is the authors’ use of the conjunction “thereby” at the beginning of the second sentence. This conjunction establishes a consequential connection between judgments. It thus comes out that “each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow” because it “transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings.” We get something like the cart before the horse. This is an editorial oversight — of course it should be the other way around: the function singles out its part of the information flow and transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings. But that is on the condition that it transmits signals at all that bear on its direct purpose.

Owing to the inexact use of the conjunction “thereby,” the impression is created that it is the psychic functions that create the qualitative determinacy of the IP — whereas it is exactly the reverse: the psychic functions are formed in the process of the evolution of the animal species under the action of the IP.

Let us represent the authors’ reasoning above in symbolic form. IP/SF1 = IP′1 — that is, when the IP meets an SF, the part IP′ corresponding to it is singled out (0). Here it is appropriate to ask: what was present in the IP that turned into an IA after meeting the SF? In the example with taste it could be, say, salt. Salt is not saltiness, but, meeting the organ of taste, it becomes the cause of the subjective experience of saltiness. However, this masks the fact that salt transmits into the surrounding medium signals about its properties, and it is the already-perceived signal that, in the psychic medium, turns into subjective information — including about such a parameter of it as saltiness. Analogously, the IA, in the authors’ opinion, appears when an SF meets the IP. But in this flow there must be something that is the cause of the corresponding subjective experience. Thus, to each IA there corresponds a certain ontological entity, which may be designated by the same symbol as the IA. Such an ontological entity is the signal field and, behind it, the object — the source of the signal field. This is exactly what Aushra did. The authors’ point of view here is understandable and can be accepted — provided they do not forget about that part of the IP to which the concrete IA corresponds. And, of course, they would need to designate it somehow as well.

The authors, evidently getting ahead of events, try to fix for the concept of “psychic process” a possible particular meaning connected with the recognition “in the general information flow, among the whole totality of internal and external signals, of those signals that correspond to it ((the process?))” — and the authors add, “in whose processing it participates.” Whence does it follow that a psychic process — that is, any psychic process — is specialized in the recognition of signals? In general psychology only some psychic processes could be defined this way — for example, processes connected with the work of the sense organs. However, such terminology, before the appearance of socionics, was never applied to such psychic processes as, say, emotions, will, imagination. Such a situational redefinition of the psychic process can be held against the authors as a departure from strict scientificity. Of course, one ought first to have described the psychic process as having an informational input and output.

Within the informational paradigm that is how it must be — but this is only an initial premise requiring at least some theoretical refinements. Consider, for example, the WILL. As a psychic process it is launched by certain signals. But these signals may differ considerably from one another in their nature. Such a signal may be formed by a situation, an emotion, or a conscious attitude. Can such signals be considered as belonging to “one domain of meanings”? And what signal does the WILL send into the environment? And is it into the environment that it sends its signal? Does this signal not remain within the psyche, provoking muscular or mental efforts, which, properly speaking, are the products of the WILL as a psychic function? And mental efforts and purposeful muscular tensions — those are, after all, other functions. In any case, not everything is clear here, and further theoretical and empirical research is needed.

Let us note that three important conclusions follow from the paragraph under consideration: 1) the authors acknowledge the objective existence of the IP; 2) each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow; 3) each psychic function transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings of the information flow. The second consequence can be rewritten symbolically as IP/SF1 = IP′1 — that is, when the IP meets an SF, the part IP′1 corresponding to it is singled out; here the prime is read as “part,” and 1 is the index of the corresponding function.

Authors: Three such parts, together with the corresponding psychic functions, constitute an aspect. (0)

Commentary: In symbolic form this might look like: 3IP′j + PFj = IAj (0). It is entirely unclear where this assertion — which in meaning is a definition of the IA — comes from. It appears the authors accept this assertion as an axiom. Incidentally, it is not specified: any “three such parts,” or not any? Later the authors will set about justifying this. But at this point the concept turns out to be unprepared by the preceding text and provokes bewilderment — like a tub of cold water over one’s head. I would not want to assess in advance such a strange (in my view) definition, but I would like to get to the bottom of it. So, let us begin.

Authors: At present, socionics distinguishes eight psychic functions, whereas the works of Reinin describe fifteen binary traits characterizing definite sides of information metabolism, which fall under the given definition of a psychic function.

Commentary: Everything is clear except how the authors connect the SFs and the ARPs — that is, the socionic functions and the differentiating traits of Augustinavichiute–Reinin. Even if we understand the ARPs as functions, they are other functions. Whence follows the logical connective “whereas…,” and under what “definition do they fall”? Or are the authors here once again first offering their conclusion and only then beginning to unfold arguments? How would you assess a phrase like “at present 10 planets are known, whereas the star nearest the Sun, Alpha Centauri, is located at a distance of four light years”? Both parts of this compound sentence have their own meaning, which may or may not answer to reality, but no direct logical connection between them is visible — apart from their belonging to one subject area. I specially note such deviations from logical correctness, since this characterizes the authors’ scientific stylistics; and upon reaching a “critical mass” of alogicality, such inaccuracies — or carelessnesses (?) — may cast doubt on their entire work. Speech figures of this kind are called in stylistics “anacoluthon,” which is understood as an unmotivated change of subject. An example of the artistic use of this device is the famous phrase from Chekhov: “Approaching the station, my hat flew off.” That phrase produces a comic effect. But in the authors’ work we are dealing with scientific stylistics, where logical errors are inadmissible.

The eight psychic functions of a high level of generalization directly enter into the structure of Model A. Their positional status was discovered by Jung in his clinical practice and is grounded deductively [3]. Their set is sufficient and necessary; moreover, it satisfies the requirement of completeness — that is, it can be neither reduced nor enlarged. These functions cannot be assigned by a scientist; they constitute an objectively existing set corresponding to the objective set of fundamental entities that Aushra Augustinavichiute designated as the IAs. And this is in itself a remarkable fact, since it sheds light on the origin of the psychic functions.

Authors: A Reinin trait is a combination of an information flow and the process of its processing (a psychic function). Since this combination is stable, the Reinin trait itself is a property of the psyche. (3)

Commentary: So the authors have given a definition of the ARP — their own definition. Definitions are not disputed — they are either accepted or not. But they can be analyzed, and one’s own understanding of the object under study can be counterposed to them. Let us note that psychic functions are numerous — considerably more numerous than the ARPs. Take any such function — say, attention. It is one of the most important psychic functions. But of the 15 ARPs not one corresponds to it. Moreover, with a suitable choice of terms the ARPs themselves can be understood as generalized psychic functions, to each of which one can assign its own part of the IP — and then, if we follow the authors’ logic, they must generate some other ARPs. But which? After all, apart from these 15, no others exist. If, on the other hand, one admits that the ARPs as functions generate themselves, we arrive at a situation of logical circularity. Evidently the authors neglect the logical consistency of their reasoning.

It is entirely unclear why the PFs, in processing the informational field, should begin to produce ARPs rather than images of objective reality. The ARPs are informational entities that set certain generalized parameters of behavior and by means of which the relation between the octaves of the TIMs is established. The TIMs themselves are systemic structures in which two semantic fields are combined: the positional and the aspectual. From the logical point of view, the ARPs are the criterion on whose basis the opposition of the correct octaves of TIMs is carried out — the OKA, the octaves of Aushra Augustinavichiute. Here “correctness” indicates that not just any octaves possess psychological content, but only the 15 × 2 = 30 octaves satisfying the requirement of internal symmetry. From the informational point of view, the ARPs are program radicals setting a behavioral frame — something partially discussed above. A program radical is a coded system of commands stored on a psychic carrier and setting a behavioral tendency: for example, decisiveness, caution, a propensity for risk… These radicals are the informational reflection of the evolutionary adaptation of the animal species. A behavioral frame is a background element of behavior that supports concrete instrumental actions and corresponds to certain generalized situations of the habitat. From the philosophical point of view, the ARPs have a dual status: ontological and psychological. On the one hand, they point to objective peculiarities of behavior. These peculiarities can be observed and recorded in experiment either directly or with the aid of technical means. On the other hand, they are subjective images of such peculiarities, which is reflected in their verbal expression.

And what do the authors propose? The first impression is that we are dealing with a conceptual centaur. The IP is united with the process of its processing, and the ARPs result. After Aushra’s semantic support of the traits formally predicted by Reinin, everything seemed clear. The socion can be divided into correct octaves in exactly 15 ways. Each pair of such octaves corresponds to a pair of poles of a binary trait. What more could one want? What else can (and needs to) be clarified here? And above all, it is hard to understand how the authors “thought up” their centaur. True, they said earlier that the IP is an indivisible wholeness and contains no DPs within itself, and that these appear at the very moment when the IP is detected by an SF. It comes out as though the SF “manufactures” the DP — but how? By extracting it from the IP? But no — by the authors’ definition, it is not there. Let us turn to the example of light. White light, as is rigorously proved in physics, is from the outset a mixture of electromagnetic waves of different lengths, which the eye ought to perceive as a mixture of colors; but the eye does not decompose it into colors — on the contrary, it perceives the mixture of colors as a single white stream. That is, it turns out exactly the other way around: in nature there is dividedness, while the subject perceives the stream as something undivided. Of course, other variants exist as well. A person takes an undivided lump of clay and makes from it a plate, a jug, a toy in the shape of a bear or a parrot, or something else that was not contained in the lump taken — at least not in explicit form. However, it is easy to notice that each of these two variants correlates with a quite definite function: perception is passive, in the sense that it must perceive what is present in reality, while technology is active, in the sense that by its means a transformation of the environment or its fragments is accomplished.

Perception fixes what is present; technology transforms. Of course, the example with the clay is of a particular character, since there are many situations in which, in a technological process, something whole is manufactured from a multiplicity — for example, an airplane is assembled. The examples given work against the authors’ methodological premise of the undividedness of the world. It is quite obvious that the world is represented by a multitude of objects, whereas arriving at the thought of its wholeness is not at all simple — the Greeks thought their way to it only in the 5th century BC. Apparently the authors have uncritically assimilated the presupposition present in some variants of NLP — that is, a premise accepted without proof — that the world is an undivided unity and only in the subject’s consciousness looks manifold.

From the point of view of dialectical methodology, there is no contradiction between these two approaches. They are merely two levels, two poles of the world’s existence: it is both whole and manifold. From this point of view, the set of SFs reflects the dividedness of the IP into IAs, since the structure of the psyche corresponds to the objective world. However, failure to understand the dual nature of the IA leads to the misunderstanding that they appear only in the subject’s informational field, while the structure of the object’s informational field is neglected by the authors. Thus, there exists an object which generates its own informational field, represented by the set of the medium’s codes of the object’s parameters. The object’s informational field is processed by the subject’s SFs, in which positional and aspectual semantics are combined, and as a result the subjective image of the object appears. In this case no centaurs need to be invented. Moreover, the very set of SFs appeared in the process of the evolution of homo sapiens as the subject’s adaptation to his habitat, and therefore corresponds to it semantically. What has been said above can be illustrated by the scheme presented in Fig. 11.01.

Fig. 11.01. 1. The object. 2. The medium codes of the object — the signal, or objective, informational field, represented by the medium codes of the object. 3. The psyche. 4. The subjective image of the object — the subjective informational field. 5. The information flow.

Authors: Three such parts, together with the corresponding psychic functions, constitute an aspect. (1)

Commentary: Let us first sort out where this notion of “three parts” comes from. Precisely three — not two, four, or some other number. It is quite plausible that this idea arose in the authors in connection with the existence of the linearly dependent triples discovered by Reinin in the algebraic grounding of the full spectrum of DPs in a combinatorial typology resting on four linearly independent traits. Reinin showed how, by combining the poles of two DPs, one can obtain a third DP derived from them, thereby forming a dependent triple. I see no other reasonable grounds for singling out triples of DPs. As is known, in attempting to identify a TIM by its traits, the procedure of the logical intersection of the semantic fields of the DPs is used. Using one DP, we single out an octave of TIMs. Adding a second DP, we obtain a quadruple of TIMs. Adding a third DP, we arrive at a dyad. But whereas the second DP could be chosen arbitrarily from the entire set of ARPs, the choice of the third DP is subject to a constraint — it must be linearly independent of the other two. This means that this DP must not be obtainable as a combination of the poles of any other DPs. The same applies to the choice of the fourth DP, when we must arrive unambiguously at the TIM; but in this case the fourth DP must be linearly independent already of the three pairs of DPs entering into the previously chosen triple. Thus, the triple here turns out to be the first critical number in connection with which linear dependence must be taken into account.

However, one can take three DPs and, combining their poles, obtain now a fourth DP derived from them, thereby producing a linearly dependent quadruple. And in exactly the same way one can take all four linearly independent DPs used as the basis of the typology and obtain a fifth DP, thereby forming a linearly dependent quintuple. Thus, the idea of representing an IA as “three parts” singled out by three psychic functions, together with these functions, is, it seems, yet another socionic myth.

Reinin proved that the 35 linearly dependent triples of ARPs determine the existence of 35 quaternary groups of correct quadruples. “Correct” here means that constraints connected with symmetry requirements are imposed on the quadruples of TIMs. But the quadruples themselves are composed of TIMs, and projections of the IAs enter into the structure of the TIMs.

Authors: The combination of three psychic processes (three interdependent Reinin traits) corresponds in scope to a psychic function in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute. (2)

Commentary: As was shown above, there exist no reasonable grounds for fixing the triple as some special number providing and guaranteeing specific functional qualities of combinations of functions. Moreover, the algebraic sum of three interdependent ARPs is equal to the group identity — that is, to the neutral element of the group, group composition with which is equivalent to the absence of any action. For example, LG + ST + VE = E; that is, LOGIC, STATICS, and MERRY in sum give the group identity E. So it is appropriate to ask here on what grounds the authors believe that the result of the interaction of three connected DPs will, first, function at all in some way, and, second, will not be one and the same for any such triple. There is no such ground; on the contrary, the fact proved by Reinin — that the ARPs constitute an algebraic group, in which, naturally, there is a group identity — points precisely to the fact that the linear dependence among ARPs nullifies any functionality of theirs whatsoever, apart from simple presence in the system. What has been said suffices to disavow the authors’ definition of the IA. Nevertheless, let us continue — for the sake of science.

Let us note that there is a great difference between the determination of the Reinin tetrads by means of connected triples and the group composition of DPs. But does a “combination” not presuppose composition? Without answering such questions and without giving constructive definitions, it is impossible to draw any far-reaching conclusions about “combinations” of three or any other number of psychic functions.

Suppose, all the same, that the authors’ assertion is valid. Well, so what? Even if it were so, what follows from it? Does it follow that it is precisely “three interdependent Reinin traits,” and not, say, four, that act as a function? And why can one not regard 1, 2, 4, or more ARPs as a function? Here the authors introduce a ground for choosing the triple of ARPs as the functional unit by means of which, in their opinion, the IA can be described — they have in mind only “triples of interdependent Reinin traits.” Obviously their choice is too weakly grounded to be taken seriously. Interdependent triples of ARPs, as Reinin rigorously proved, single out the set of 35 partitions of the socion into quadruples, and each such partition sets a certain highly generalized psychic quality — which is in itself interesting both practically and theoretically. Moreover, I have managed to prove that each such quadruple answers to the psychological definition of temperament; but neither all of them together nor any one separately in any way grounds either Model A or the IAs.

Let us also note that when the authors write “The combination of three psychic processes … corresponds in scope to a psychic function in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute,” the question immediately arises: “Any psychic processes?” The authors explain in parentheses that they have in mind “three interdependent Reinin traits.” However, such an explanation is not sufficient — it does not rest on preliminary theoretical work. They introduce their assertion as an axiom. One might have expected the authors to give a definition of the concept of the psychic process; otherwise, the way they use this concept creates the impression that any psychic phenomenon whatsoever can be so called. And if that is so, then three such psychic processes as “statics–dynamics,” “memory,” and “the Mona Lisa’s smile” must “correspond in scope to a psychic function in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute.” Obviously this is absurd — but it follows quite naturally from the authors’ superficial and careless theorizing. The authors do not explain what sense they invest in the concept of “interdependent” functions. Possibly the authors have in mind the algebraic concept of the linear dependence of vectors, on which Reinin relied in his constructions; but Reinin was considering a concrete class of combinatorially constructed objects, which can be expressed through their components and even, with a suitable choice of terms, represented in a coordinate system. And since arithmetic operations can be performed on coordinates and multi-component sets, situations of linear dependence can arise there — and therefore Reinin’s terminology corresponds to the method he used. The authors, however, uncritically transfer terminology justified in one case onto cases where it is at the very least dubious. Can the term “linear dependence” really be applied to such functions “in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute” as, for example, the program, creative, and suggestive functions? To do so, one must correctly introduce the corresponding algebraic operation.

But what, after all, do the authors understand by “psychic functions in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute,” and what connection do they discern between these functions and the Reinin triples? Since they gave no explicit definition, and no generally accepted understanding of this exists in socionics, one has to guess from the context. Just before this the authors spoke of the correspondence of the “scopes” of three interdependent Reinin traits and a psychic function in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute. It is not very clear what is understood here by scope. Is it the scope of a concept, or the scope of functional production, or simply the claim that 3 ARP = SF? However, at best, one could thus ground only the aspectual semantics of a function, but not its positional properties. The authors do not mention positional semantics — which suggests that they either do not know of it or presume it can be dispensed with, and concentrate all their attention on the aspectual side of the SF. If so, then there can be no talk of any correspondence with Aushra’s notions of the socionic functions. This means the authors are working with their own intuitive, logically unverified notions on this question.

Let us now return to the concept of the psychic function “in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute.” As a matter of fact, Aushra gave no special definition of the psychic function. She accepted this term and its presumed meaning by default, since it was used quite effectively in psychology and, in particular, in Jung’s typology. However, the use of this term in the practice and theory of socionics requires its explication and an explicit definition. I did this in [1], and those interested may turn there. But let us make a few refinements here.

First let us list all the basic concepts of socionics: TIM, IR [intertype relations], ARP, IA, SF, the octaves of Aushra (OKA), the Reinin tetrads (TR), the Churyumov dyads (DCh). Let us note that the sets TIM, IR, and ARP are isomorphic, which allows one to suppose that one and the same archetype stands behind them. This is important in that, on this basis, a mutual correction of their semantic fields is possible. A TIM can be represented, on the one hand, as an extensive set of ARPs and, on the other, as an intensive — that is, systemically organized — set of SFs. The set of SFs is isomorphic to the set of IAs and can be regarded as its projection in the psychic structures of the subject. The set of TIMs can be constructed without recourse to the ARPs. For this it suffices to construct deductively the positional structure of the psyche corresponding unambiguously to the model of Don Quixote [1], and then to derive from it all the remaining TIMs by introducing the operator of “aspect quantization,” represented in [1: Fig. 3.06] by the “bottle of the socion.” Let us reproduce this operator here in the form of a flat projection (Fig. 11.02). Here, for compactness of depiction, the mental and vital rings are arranged horizontally. The inner surface corresponds to positional semantics, the outer to aspectual semantics. In Fig. 11.02 A) both surfaces are in the initial position, corresponding to the model of Don Quixote. B) The outer surface is turned relative to the inner by 90° clockwise, as a result of which the model of Don Quixote is transformed into the model of Dostoevsky. If the outer surface is turned relative to the base position by 90° counterclockwise, the model lS (Gorky) results. If a turn of 180° is performed in either direction, the model of Napoleon results. These same models, read counterclockwise, are transformed into the models of Huxley, Dreiser, Zhukov, and Robespierre. The inverse reading of a model is likewise a group operation. Thus, the set of TIM models is a quantum group of rotations, flips, and inversions.

Fig. 11.02. Flat projection of the bottle of the socion.

Here the set of rotations of the outer surface by 90° clockwise and counterclockwise is an algebraic group, in which each element can be regarded as a quantum state of the “Bottle of the socion.” However, to obtain the models of all the TIMs from the model of Don Quixote, one more group operation must be introduced — vertical flips of the “Bottle,” in which the vital ring is transformed into the mental one and vice versa. Since, apart from the indicated rotations, all intermediate positions are excluded, we have a quantum system modeling certain real processes connected with the appearance of typological differentiation. It goes without saying that the nature of these processes awaits its experimental investigation.

Having adopted the corresponding axiomatics, one can obtain the models of all the TIMs without appealing to the concept of the differentiating trait. And only afterward, discovering the invariants connected with the OKA, can one formulate the concept of the DP. There exists another way of obtaining the set of DPs as well, but that will be spoken of in the appropriate place.

The reasoning above disavows the authors’ approach, implicitly based on introducing axioms of the a priori existence of the ARPs and of the specific valence of their dependent triples. As for Reinin’s constructions, they are based on the empirically discovered prior existence of the set of TIMs, which secures the correctness of his conclusions.

Authors: A Reinin trait is a combination of an information flow and the process of its processing (a psychic function). Since this combination is stable, the Reinin trait itself is a property of the psyche. (3)

Commentary: Reinin never said any such thing. Here are his words: “The traits, as ways of dividing the socion, are explicitly presented in the corresponding table, and their existence needs no additional proofs” [2]. An ARP is a criterion for dividing the set of TIMs into two antisymmetric halves. As a psychic quality, an ARP is a personality trait determining peculiarities of behavior. Within a theoretical generalization such a trait may be considered a function, though in psychology no necessity was seen in this. Within the informational paradigm, any ARP is one of the metaprograms of behavior recorded on psychic carriers, whereby its operational existence is secured. Since all psychic qualities are determined by corresponding metaprograms, they can all be assessed as functions, insofar as they “produce” some behavior.

However, read the authors’ assertion attentively and compare it with what the authors said earlier. From the authors’ assertions it follows that RT = IP + PF (3), which in shorthand expresses the Reinin trait through the information flow and the psychic functions. But the PF itself, for the authors, equals 3 RT (2). If we perform a simple substitution, we obtain RT = IP + 3 RT — which is very hard to understand within the framework of strict logic and elementary mathematics.

Authors: In our opinion, each psychic process (a psychic function in socionic terminology) recognizes in the general information flow, among the whole totality of internal and external signals, those signals that correspond to it (in whose processing it participates). In the process of metabolism it transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings. Thereby each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow. (4)

Commentary: Here we again run into a contradiction in concepts. Earlier, after all, it was said that in the IP there is no differentiation whatsoever (“in nature there is no aspect division,” as was stated above); yet here, it seems, the point is that the IP is “a totality of internal and external signals,” each of which is recognized by a separate psychic process, by which the authors understand an SF. And further it is directly asserted that “each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow,” from which it again follows that the “general” IP consists of parts from the outset, even before meeting the SFs. So what are these parts, if not the IAs? Yet the authors from the very beginning, at the level of definition, accepted that the IA is a subjective classificatory category — which is easily explained by their somewhat simplified understanding of information as a purely subjective phenomenon. The resulting muddle would suffice to abandon further analysis — but let us continue it nonetheless, for methodological reasons.

Authors: An aspect is a functional-informational complex of any three interdependent Reinin traits (hereafter RT, as the authors understand them).

Commentary: This assertion sounds like an axiom, or the authors’ initial conviction, but in content it resembles a theorem. That is, it ought to be proved, or at least explicated, rather than offered for acceptance on faith. What is a functional-informational complex? The joining of a function with information? Or a function that processes information? Or is it simply an authorial turn of phrase pointing to the SF? Are there any grounds for considering an ARP a psychic process, and on what basis do the authors establish a correspondence between an SF and three ARPs? In contemporary psychology the concept of the psychic process has gained wide currency — but the reason for this, it seems, lies in the positivist paradigm, more inclined to formal descriptions of the object as opposed to essential descriptions of it. It is precisely this that pushes psychologists to replace essential concepts, like function, with the less differentiated concept of process. Psychologists can treat any phenomenon in psychology as a process. Above, the authors offered their opinion that each psychic process recognizes in the general information flow those signals that correspond to it — which is a tautology — and moreover equated any psychic process with a psychic function in socionic terminology. Since the first is an opinion, it obliges no one to anything. The second is illegitimate, if only because psychic processes are many, while there are only eight SFs (socionic functions). As for the noted tautology, it is analogous to an expression like “every person has the right to that to which he has the right.” The vagueness and muddle in the formulation of their thoughts compromises the authors’ position, since it is simply unclear what can be discussed here. But let us continue all the same.

Authors: The bearers of a given aspect form a small subgroup of four TIMs.

Commentary: The authors have here substituted their own concept of the aspect for Aushra’s. That, of course, is their business — but what has Aushra’s classical socionics to do with it? According to Aushra, an IA is an elementary informational signal — that is, a signal that does not decompose further into simpler parts. Nor do I know why the authors call the Reinin quadruples small subgroups. What, then, should be understood by “large subgroups”? Of course, a scientist has the right to introduce neologisms and new terms as needed, but this must be done carefully. Reinin never connected his quadruples directly with the IAs — that is the authors’ innovation.

Let us note the logical inconsistencies in the authors’ definitions. In definition (3) they say that “a Reinin trait is a combination of an information flow and the process of its processing (a psychic function).” Reinin never said any such thing. Note that this is not a criterion for the opposition of octaves of TIMs — which is what Aushra and Reinin proceeded from — but a combined object consisting of IP and PF, which, excuse me, needs explanation. Since PFs, in comparison with SFs, are very numerous, and all of them process some information, then, correspondingly, the RTs (Reinin traits) answering to the authors’ definition should be very numerous — whereas the ARPs, that is, the DPs bearing the double name of Augustinavichiute–Reinin, number only 15, or more precisely, with the Karpenko–Churyumov correction, 16. Note also that the IP comes from outside, from the external world — external, of course, in relation to the psyche, to the subject’s psychic world. And, if I understand the authors correctly, at the moment of meeting a PF — that is, joining with it — the IP turns into an RT. I deliberately keep RT and ARP apart here, because different definitions and different objects stand behind them. It comes out that before this the RT does not exist — that is, it is not in the IP — and for an RT to arise, the IP must join with a PF.

To make some sense of this, let us resort to a graphic analogy. For example: food acquires taste only upon finding itself in the oral cavity. Before that, the taste does not exist. From this analogy one may conclude that the RT is like taste — that is, a purely subjective characteristic of a part of the IP. This, properly speaking, was to be expected once the authors declared a subjective position with respect to the IA. But what — does nothing in the food correspond to the taste? Something does. This means the food, even before its ingestion, contains within itself different parts that will evoke different tastes. Taste is merely a totality of introverted indicators of what objectively — that is, extravertedly — exists in nature. Saltiness is the subjective code of objectively existing salt.

For greater clarity of analysis, let us gather together the axiomatic judgments of the authors encountered above.

(0) Authors: In the process of metabolism each psychic process transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings. Thereby each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow.

(1) Authors: Three such parts, together with the corresponding psychic functions, constitute an aspect.

(2) Authors: The combination of three psychic processes (three interdependent Reinin traits) corresponds in scope to a psychic function in the terminology of A. Augustinavichiute.

(3) Authors: A Reinin trait is a combination of an information flow and the process of its processing (a psychic function). Since this combination is stable, the Reinin trait itself is a property of the psyche.

(4) Authors: The bearers of a given aspect form a small subgroup of four TIMs.

Commentary: According to definition (1), three RTs in their combination constitute an aspect — which apparently must be understood as an informational aspect, an IA. According to definition (2), three interdependent RTs correspond to a psychic function. Reader, have you understood anything in this? It comes out that the aspect — that is, the IA — corresponds to the PF. But how should “corresponds” be understood here? In the sense of the coincidence of these concepts? Or in the sense of comparing the lists of IAs and PFs? To make the author’s definitions more graphic, let us rewrite them in symbolic form as equations, using the abbreviations given above.

IP/PF1 = IP′1 — that is, when the IP meets a PF, the part IP′1 corresponding to it is singled out.

IP/PF1 + IP/PF2 + IP/PF3 = IP′1/SF1 + IP′2/SF2 + IP′3/SF3 = IA. Here IP/PF1 means that some IA is processed by the function corresponding to it; but since it does follow from the authors’ reasoning that PF = SF, the corresponding substitution can be performed.

The authors’ definition of the IA can also be rewritten as follows: IA = F(RT1-2, RT2-3, RT1-3) (5)

With paired indices of the type 1-2 I have designated the dependence within the triples of RTs, though it would be more correct to designate them as i-j, j-k, k-i, where the letter indices can independently take values from the natural numbers. These values are not arbitrary, but their connection has a more complex character and must be derived from the properties of the set of RTs. However, I note at once that one can speak of dependent triples of RTs only in connection with a basis of four independent DPs generating 16 types (not necessarily TIMs!), which can be described by 15 RTs. Here we speak precisely of RTs and not of ARPs, since the latter are connected only with TIMs, whereas RTs should be applied to arbitrary discrete sets — for Reinin developed his theory of typologies in relation to arbitrary sets. But then such DPs ought to be called RETs — Reinin–Ekman traits.

PP1 + PP2 + PP3 = RT1 + RT2 + RT3 = PF = SF, where PP is a psychic process in the authors’ understanding.

IP/PF1 = IP′1 = RT — that is, the information flow, meeting a PF, singles out of itself the part corresponding to PF1, and such a part is RT1, which corresponds to (0).

(4) [TIM1(IA1), TIM2(IA1), TIM3(IA1), TIM4(IA1)] — which is the symbol of an arbitrary Reinin quadruple connected with one and the same IA1.

I have written these equations as best I could understand a text which, it must be said, is not distinguished by logical clarity. Now try to make sense of this system of equations.

First, how I understood it.

The authors proceed from the premise that each psychic process (PP) singles out from the IP the part that corresponds to it — or, what is the same, in whose processing it participates. The term “psychic process” the authors apparently use as a synonym of the term “psychic function,” though complete clarity on this cannot be extracted from their text; in any case, this is an official psychological term assimilated by the authors during their university education. In the process of metabolism the PP transmits into the environment signals from the same domain of meanings to which the signals it singles out, or receives, belong. Thereby each psychic function singles out its own part of the information flow.

Commentary: Let us try to separate the concepts of PP (psychic process) and PF (psychic function). From the point of view of logical taxonomy these two concepts are related as genus and species. That is, all PFs are PPs, but not all PPs are PFs. Scientific stylistics requires that generic concepts not be used in place of specific ones.

The authors hold that only three such parts can be called an aspect (the IA, of course, is meant) — but together with the corresponding psychic functions (1) — and that three interdependent ARPs “correspond in scope to a psychic function.” What “in scope” means is unclear, because the concept of the scope of a function and the scope of an RT has not been introduced — and I think this is not at all simple. The latter I understand thus: three ARPs together “are housed” in a function, whereas in the position of a function in the model there was always only one aspect. Perhaps the authors have the right to call an aspect whatever they understand by it — but Aushra understood by an IA a class of objects united by the semantic field of the same archetype that stands behind the concrete SFs. It seems Shepetko and his co-authors understand the IA in the same way, as does Ermak, who continued their work, when in their dictionaries they match concrete objects and phenomena to the IAs.

However, let us turn to the arguments. 1) The 35 ARP-triples generate 35 correct quadruples, and with that the semantic potential of the linearly dependent triples of ARPs is exhausted — beyond that one must turn to the quadruples themselves, which, as I have managed to show, constitute one of the varieties of partial temperaments. 2) Of considerably greater interest are the linearly independent triples of ARPs (there are 70 of them) and the linearly independent quadruples — as Reinin proved, there are 840. This means that exactly that many bases for the identification of a TIM are possible. But does this mean that to each basis one can assign its own set of IAs — that is, eight highly generalized sets into which the entire phenomenology of the world can be partitioned, on the one hand, and eight subjective categories for singling out such sets, on the other? 3) Although formally-logically all ARPs can be considered equal in rights — so Reinin said — such an assessment relates to their mathematical status; semantically, however, they are unquestionably qualitatively different, which means they set different positional semantics. For example, only extraverted intuition can set the PPF (program-potential function), and only introverted emotionality can set the positional semantics of the CCF (conservative-critical function), and so on. But for the final solution of this problem further research is needed.

Authors: In this connection we may in fact say that an aspect is an emergent property of these traits or scales, where the whole is greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

Commentary: As an editor, I do not quite understand why the parenthetical word “in fact” is used here, and without commas at that. “In fact” presupposes the possibility of direct observation of the object. On the other hand, I hold that the ARPs, being traits, are not scales. Scales presuppose a continual transition between poles, which occurs, for example, in the case of contradictoriness. In the case of contrariety, the transition between qualities occurs by a leap, which allows one to speak of quantum states of the human psyche. This means, for example, that between extraversion and introversion no smooth transitions exist — but this difference may be masked by the superposition of a large number of other, non-socionic, factors.

Emergent means arising in the synthesis of an extensive set with its passage into an intensive one — that is, into something whole, into a system in which feedback connections are established among the elements in one way or another. Of course, this is very interesting, but it must somehow be explained. Without explanation it looks either like a discovery awaiting its laboratory substantiation, or like an axiom — but one far from obvious. Yet the authors want to say that an IA arises as the result of the synthesis, or holistic manifestation, of any three linearly dependent ARPs. But since there are 35 interdependent triples of ARPs, there should then be 35 IAs. Certainly, this is an innovation in socionics. And it is either an authorial discovery or a direct indication of their basic error. The latter means that the authors’ entire work contains a systematic error, and the first rule of scientific communication requires the elimination of discovered logical defects, up to and including the elimination of the constructs containing them.

Yes, in the synthesis of elements into a system a new quality arises, and it is often said that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But greater in what sense? For example, an atom of helium is synthesized from two hydrogen atoms and two neutrons, whose total weight is greater than the weight of the helium atom — so that here, by atomic weight, the whole turns out to be even less than its parts, although in the process we obtain an entirely new quality, in which weight remains merely a quantitative characteristic. But of course in each of these two cases we are dealing with different qualities. And in every case of synthesis we obtain a new quality; but as regards its quantitative characteristics, in each concrete case this must be established separately. This last remark may be counted as a quibble — I am simply for maximal accuracy in logical argumentation.

Authors: From this it follows that, since a combination of three interdependent RTs yields a small group, the total number of aspects equals the number of Reinin small groups and is not limited to the 8 aspects known to socionics.

Commentary: This is a very beautiful, but evidently hasty and immature, piece of reasoning. Have the authors taken into account that the ARP is a bipolar construct, while the correct Reinin quadruples are a quadripolar one? But perhaps the authors do not know that there also exist the correct Churyumov dyads, and they are octopolar. And polypolarity must somehow be explained and adapted into the general theory. Without this, the development of the semantics of the aspects will be defective. I personally think that the polypolars are entities derived from the ARPs through combinations. Apparently one can connect with them more complex DPs of a higher level of generalization, but they must not be confused with, or placed on the same level as, Aushra’s primary IAs — which is, in effect, what the authors are trying to do. Just as little do the ARPs have any direct bearing here, for they can be derived from Aushra’s IAs.

And the truth here is that the TIMs are human temperaments — in contrast to the Hippocratic ones, which we share with the animals [3]. However, the TIMs should be assigned to the category of tetra-temperaments, since they (the TIMs) are determined by four ARPs; obviously there are 16 such temperaments. In addition, the partial temperaments must be taken into account: the tri-temperaments (on the basis of the correct Churyumov dyads) — 120 of them; the bi-temperaments (on the basis of the correct Reinin quadruples) — 140 of them; and the mono-temperaments (the poles of the ARPs of Aushra Augustinavichiute) — 30 of them. In all we have 16 + 120 + 140 + 30 = 306 varieties of human temperament — though, naturally, there are many linear dependencies among them. That is what the authors have confused the IAs with. I managed to identify the TIMs with temperaments thanks to recourse to the psychological definition of temperament. And, properly speaking, the human being differs concretely from other animals by a specifically developed intellect — which is what gives grounds for the appearance of human temperaments distinct from the animal ones. From this point of view the authors’ work should be considered significantly more interesting than they themselves think. For they, without even knowing it, have set out on the path of studying the verbal semantics of all the partial temperaments at once. All that remains for them to do is to somewhat reorient and redefine the direction of their searches.

Authors: Clarifying our thought, we may say the following: the properties of an aspect will be possessed, for example, by the combination of such scales as democratism + negativism + introversion ((ar+po+ek = lg+it+ek+lg+it+ek = E → yes, this triple is interdependent, but in table 20, where Reinin enumerates the triples, there are 22 oversights)), forming a subgroup entering into the group defined by G. Reinin under number 6.

Commentary: So now it becomes perfectly clear that the authors are trying to construct an entirely new theory of aspects. That is perhaps their right — but to begin with, they still ought somehow to have criticized, refuted, disavowed the notion of the IA proposed by Aushra. It was she, after all, who discovered the IAs, and this is a genuine scientific discovery, entirely unappreciated by official psychology. And what the authors have called an aspect in the paragraph under consideration is a bi-temperament based on three mutually dependent ARPs — democratism + negativism + introversion — which single out four TIMs: Du (SEI), Ro (LII), Dr (ESI), and Ba (ILI). The dependence among the ARPs here is expressed in the fact that any two of them suffice to single out the given quadruple.

Authors: As the object of study we took the A-aspects (of small groups No. 9 and No. 15): Table 1 presents the group of traits of the Reinin dichotomy of the socion obtained in work [2].

Commentary: In Table 1 I have added one column confirming the dependence of the corresponding ARPs. Algebraically, such dependence is expressed in the fact that the group operation (composition, here conventionally denoted by a plus sign) on the elements of the group yields as a result the neutral element E.

Structure of the aspects (Table Kch.01)

Aspect	Traits constituting the aspect	Dependence
Extraverted logic	Logic, dynamics, objectivism	Dependent 32: Lg+st+ve = lg+ek+ir+ek+ir+lg = E
Extraverted ethics	Ethics, dynamics, subjectivism	Dependent 32
Extraverted intuition	Intuition, statics, judiciousness	Dependent 18: It+ek+ir+ek+ir+it = E
Extraverted sensorics	Sensorics, statics, decisiveness	Dependent 18: Sn+ek+ir+ek+ir+sn = E
Introverted logic	Logic, statics, judiciousness	Dependent 32
Introverted ethics	Ethics, statics, objectivism	Dependent 32
Introverted intuition	Intuition, dynamics, decisiveness	Dependent 18
Introverted sensorics	Sensorics, dynamics, judiciousness	Dependent 18

The essence of this element is that its composition with other elements and their sets changes nothing. The mathematical details concerning algebraic groups and operations on them for the given case can be found in Reinin’s book Socionics.

Author[s]: This choice is conditioned by the fact that they are the most fully described in the socionic literature and we had initial material to work with. In addition, we needed to work out the methodology, which was considerably easier to do on known aspects. It may be said that some of the N-aspects will partially overlap with those already known, while others will not overlap at all.

Commentary: So the authors settled on the classical IAs, but, in accordance with their own understanding, expressed them through ARPs. Incidentally, this is one more variant of the decomposition of the IAs, and it differs considerably from the decompositions of Aushra, Sedykh, Filimonov, Gut, and Prokofieva — but it possesses the same defects as its predecessors. In itself this amounts to their decomposition containing logical errors, above all a disguised circle in definition. For example, extraverted logic as an aspect is decomposed into three elements, among which figures “plain” logic as an ARP; and in the decomposition of extraverted intuition, plain intuition is present. In any case this requires theoretical explanation. The same applies to all the remaining IAs presented in the table. Since, in a decomposition, the elements into which an object is decomposed must belong to a more fundamental level, it appears the authors consider the ARPs the most fundamental elements in socionics. Such a hypothesis needs serious substantiation. In its absence, all the authors’ remaining reasoning will likewise have a hypothetical, preliminary, and unsubstantiated character.

And it is entirely unclear where the authors got the idea that, for example, extraverted thinking (“logic,” for the authors) can be represented as a synthesis of logic, dynamics, and objectivism. This applies to all the other IAs as well. If we turn to small group No. 9 (No. 32 by Churyumov), we shall indeed see there the coincidence of the traits LOGIC, DYNAMICS, OBJECTIVISM (the authors’ replacement for the term SERIOUS introduced by Aushra). Well, so what? How is EXTRAVERTED THINKING (the authors’ EXTRAVERTED LOGIC) derived from this? That remains unproved. Evidently the authors are unacquainted with my analysis of the attempts at decomposing the IAs by Aushra, Sedykh, Filimonov, Prokofieva, and others — otherwise they would not have treated their own attempt at decomposing the IAs so light-heartedly.

The defects identified in the authors’ paradigmatic apparatus render a considerable part of their reasoning doubtful — but do not, of course, diminish the value of their efforts.

Authors: The peculiarities of aspect perception consist in different degrees of awareness of particular objects/phenomena and in the choice of linguistic means for describing them.

Commentary: A very clear assertion. But let us think its meaning through. What does aspect perception mean? I understand it thus: it is the subject’s capacity to detect in the environment objects of one or another aspect class. That is all. But the authors write of the awareness “of particular objects/phenomena,” and moreover of “the choice of linguistic means for describing them.” It turns out that for the authors perception is not detection at all — as is the case with such organs as the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or fingers — but precisely awareness. Perhaps the authors understand awareness in some way of their own, but the general scientific meaning of this term stands next to such words as comprehension and understanding. Yet comprehension and understanding are connected, above all — as I understand it — with intuition. Perception, meanwhile, is closest to sensorics. So what, after all, do the authors have in mind? It looks very much as though we are dealing with the use of general scientific terminology in their own subjective understanding. Though, in some approximate sense, one can guess what the authors mean: something to the effect that different people perceive the world differently and describe it differently, using rather different verbal means. But do the authors really not discern the difference between perception and awareness? As Fonvizin’s hero would say: “Perception is one article, and awareness is another article.” But we are within the bounds of science; we appeal to informatics and linguistics, and our concepts must be scientific — that is, they must correspond to definitions and be adequate to the situation.

But the subject possesses not only perception but other functions as well, and it would be regrettable to mix them up uncritically.

So let us at last sort out how perception is reflected in Model A.

There exists an assertion (Bukalov) that all SFs perceive information directly from the surrounding space. This is tantamount to saying that each SF has sensory inputs — or, put differently, its own organs of perception — which somehow casts a shadow on socionic sensorics. As if socionic sensorics were not perception at all, but something with an accent on bodily well-being. I personally insist that socionic sensorics is a generalization of the system of perception; but into it, besides such systems as sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, there also enters bodily well-being as the perception of the general state of the organism. The corresponding term exists: interoception.

Proceeding from what has been said, the question must be posed: where in Model A is perception located — or what in Model A corresponds to perception? The answer to this question is closely connected with the notion of the semantics of the functions. In accordance with my work on this topic, and in full accordance with Aushra’s notions, in Model A there are two functions responsible for perception — the ANF (adaptive-load function) and the ERF (expectation-resource function). The distorted notions of the semantics of the functions current in socionics mask the sensory input in Model A, calling the corresponding functions the normative (or role) function and the suggestive function, respectively. True, the concept of suggestion can quite well be connected with input influence — but it reflects the negative part of such influence, connected with possible manipulation. As was shown in [3], the ERF is the function connected with the expectation of a resource and the capacity to assess its parameters adequately for correspondence to needs. Simply put, this function evaluates the resource. But if one manipulates the resource, one can turn this function into a suggestive one.

The ANF is likewise an input function, but it works with the load-bearing influence of the environment and generalizes the means of withstanding this influence. Yes, in this function one can detect the semantics of normativity as the necessity of conforming to the demands of the environment — but this part of the semantic field has a secondary character, derivative from the necessity and capacity to withstand external pressure. It is easy to understand that the pressure of the environment forces the organism to adapt to it. And only afterward can the parameters of adaptation act as normative constraints.

Now the question can be posed: how, then, do the other functions perceive information? Here, it seems, it would be more correct to speak not of perception but of reception: all the remaining functions receive information from the preceding one in the chain of information metabolism. And this is not some intuitive-theoretical fantasy, but a conclusion from the deductively grounded notion of the semantics of the functions of Model A.

Let us see how, from the point of view expounded, the functioning of the models of individual TIMs looks.

The ILE (Don Quixote), who has in the ANF the aspect S, responsible for withstanding the pressure of the environment, perceives the world as dangerous; while by the ERF, where he has the aspect s, the world is for him a source of resource. Such a dual perception of the world launches two informational-metabolic chains. The perception of the world as dangerous is passed to the CCF (conservative-critical function), where Don Quixote has the aspect e — that is, an introverted emotional assessment of something as unacceptable. But, owing to the ambivalence of symbolic constructs, this same function also demands of the subject himself a correct attitude toward the object, even if it proves a source of danger. An imperative of this kind, formed by Don Quixote’s CCF, requires of him a careful attitude toward the habitat; and for this he must have formed an adequate internal model of the external environment (IMEE). This is precisely what his PPF (program-potential function) with the aspect I is engaged in. Here extraverted intuition provides cognition of the laws of functioning of the objects of the external world. This information is passed to the CPF (communicative-probing function), where Don Quixote has the aspect l, responsible for the verbal-logical structuring of the regularities discovered at the previous stage and for their translation into the subject environment in the form of messages, teachings, theories.

In the TIM kindred to Don Quixote — Huxley (IEE) — this chain looks somewhat different. S(anf): Huxley, like the Don Quixotes, perceives the world by this function as a source of danger, and this is passed to his l(ccf), which, unlike the Don Quixote’s e, assesses the world as “incorrect” — but one that must be handled correctly, for which his I(ppf) must work out an adequate IMEE. The corresponding information is passed to Huxley’s e(cpf), which forms the means of adequate communication with the subject environment. These are means answering to the creative, virtuosic use of introverted-emotional information, to which belong all varieties of non-logical charm — which provides the bearers of this TIM the capacity to establish contacts with partners quickly. Analogous interpretations of the symbolic formulas connected with Model A can be offered for all the TIMs.

Authors: Phenomena of which a person is aware may be described by statements from different aspects that are equivalent in sense but not in meaning. Thus the semantic fields of individual aspects may contain both unique meanings and overlapping ones.

Commentary: Here there are two judgments formally connected by a cause-and-effect relation, as the operator “thus” testifies. However, it seems that such a consequence is not supported by the content of these judgments. To convince ourselves of this, let us examine the two judgments. In the first assertion the authors use the distinction between sense and meaning introduced in his time by G. Frege. The meaning of a statement has an objective character and is connected with the denotatum — or, what is the same, the extension — or, simply put, with the object to which the corresponding sign points. In the present case, these are words. Sense has a subjective character and is connected with how the subject relates to the denotatum. Proceeding from this, one can partially agree with the first statement, since in speech there can exist statements having the same sense expressed through reliance on different denotata. Thus one can say “yes,” “I agree,” or “it’s a deal.” However, a variant is possible in which different senses are expressed by one and the same denotatum. Thus, by means of the word “yes” one can express very different senses, up to and including opposite ones. Remember the joke: “When a diplomat says ‘yes,’ it means ‘maybe’…”

Returning to the quotation from the authors, one must admit that the second judgment in no way follows from the first — which is what the connective “thus” was supposed to indicate.

Authors: The language of the “sensorics of sensations” gives greater possibilities for describing bodily states and processes. The semantic field of this aspect includes a multitude of unique meanings for their fine discrimination. However, these same bodily processes can be approximately described also in the language of the “logic of systems” (the “geometry” of the body: “full up to the roof,” “legs wet up to the fork”), and in the language of the “ethics of emotions” (when something inside “thuds,” “skips,” “rises,” and “yelps”), and in the intuitive language, metaphorically (“fog in the head”). In other cases, using the language of introverted sensorics, the language of corporeality, one can describe, for example, a geographic map or the movement of the planets around the Sun.

Commentary: The authors use jargon lexicon — “sensorics of sensations,” “logic of systems,” and the like — which is unacceptable from the editorial point of view, which takes into account the normative lexicon of the Russian language. These homegrown jargonisms, like a psychic contagion, were irresponsibly thrown into socionics under the pretext that “it is better for practice” — they are, supposedly, easier to remember and more comprehensible to the end consumer. Only people who — strange as it is — never understood the meaning of the scientific terms introduced by Jung can motivate this defective terminology in such a way. However, after many years of work with socionic material, I have understood that, despite its seeming simplicity, socionics is difficult — its complexity is masked — and therefore many intelligent and very intelligent people have fallen into the trap of light-minded self-assurance and their own self-importance as connoisseurs and “maîtres” of socionics. However, there is an explanation of why people can successfully earn money on socionics while not fully understanding its basic concepts. The names of the TIMs, their more or less felicitous characterizations, and the relations between them — that which constitutes the core of socionics worked out by Aushra — are easily learned and become the basis of a socionic understanding of people. It does not matter that people do not fully understand what extraversion and introversion and the other differentiating traits are; at the level of words they are not hard to use — the more so as the others, after all, are also at the level of approximateness. Teaching this is not difficult, and the first teacher in any field easily becomes a respected figure, and on this ground it is easy to assert oneself. Along with self-assertion comes self-assurance, and in some — conceit.

To show the divergence in senses between the Aushra–Jungian terminology and the homegrown terminology of the “maîtres,” I will give just a few examples.

Introverted sensorics the maîtres replaced with “sensorics of sensations.” A cultured bearer of the language feels the defect of this term, since it consists of two words with the same meaning. In editorial practice this is called pleonasm — the pattern of “buttery butter.” Extraverted thinking the maîtres replaced with “business logic” — which is reminiscent of the program of courses for businessmen, while all the varieties of productive activity remain in the shadows, resting on an enormous number of varieties of technological processes, from knitting on needles to the smelting of iron and steel, from cooking borscht to building space rockets. Whereas “business logic” is something about how better to “spin” stale goods or “palm off” a doomed project on a partner. Perhaps the official programs of such courses will contain no such items — but experienced instructors will certainly devote a significant part of the class time to precisely this.

Authors: Overlaps can also arise in the sense component — the content of the aspect — as happens in the theme of “foresight” in the extraverted and introverted intuitions. (For details see the section “Overlaps of Aspects.“)

Commentary: Here we have come to a very important point, connected with the independence of the aspect lists. From general methodological considerations it should follow that if the semantic fields of the IAs intersect, then the peculiarities of such intersections should be uniformly represented for all the IAs. But here we touch on the vast topic of set-theoretic operations, which goes beyond the bounds of my interests connected with the IAs.

Authors: A scrupulous analysis of the entire vocabulary obtained allowed us to single out the main themes and subthemes for each aspect; moreover, between adjacent aspects (i.e., aspects having a common scale — see Table 1) parallels were clearly noticeable.

Commentary: What, then, is the methodological toolkit of the “scrupulous analysis” performed by the authors? It appears to be the same old “intuitive peering” into words and reliance on the intuitive insights arising in the process. This is the common basis of any scientific method — but concrete research techniques proper to the concrete subject area are also necessary.

Authors: In some cases the following effect was observed: one and the same word could be recognized as belonging to different semantic fields.

Commentary: There it is! So the “effect was observed” after all! And consequently there is no guarantee that this effect does not extend to all words — that is, that all words are polysemous and can be connected with each of the IAs.

Authors: Therefore it is important to listen not only to what a person speaks about, but also to how and by what means he does so. In this way we substantially broaden our possibilities for diagnostics. It is not necessary to ask targeted questions about saucepans, about illnesses, about whether he likes fantasy and how he feels about tourism. There is less risk of taking a personal history for a typological structure (and an ESE who does not cook and is not ill, but goes hiking and reads fantasy — for an LIE). One can ask any questions, converse with a person on any topic that interests him (be it politics or a second cousin’s aunt), noting in his speech either patterns relating to the poles of the trait scales, or those same traits in “folded” form — that is, the lexicon of the aspects.

Commentary: The authors draw an important conclusion relating to socionic diagnostics with reliance on projective methods, as counterposed to methods relying on the analysis of verbal answers. It is only a pity that the authors do not cite the predecessors who drew this conclusion many years ago (Gulenko, Bukalov). Unfortunately, this conclusion has in the authors a spontaneous character and is not built into a systemic assessment and comparison of diagnostic means. Otherwise it would be clear that projective methods should not be too rigidly counterposed to content analysis, since verbal content also contains projective components within itself. And is not the work under analysis devoted precisely to the detection of such components in verbal content?

Conclusion

The authors have carried out a large and interesting piece of work, although many of the concepts they hold to either contain logical errors or are dubious in worldview terms. They attempted to develop a new notion of the IA and to construct the corresponding semantic fields on that basis. However, their definitions of the IA and the ARP lack sufficient grounding — and therefore do not deserve trust. It is entirely incomprehensible why the clear and correct concepts of the IA and the ARP proposed by Aushra and Reinin should be replaced by unsubstantiated conjectures. I have discovered and pointed out various kinds of inconsistencies in the authors’ elaboration of this concept. If I am right, then any superstructures over a defective construct, however plausible they may seem, will necessarily contain the defect within themselves. Therefore I do not wish to examine their work further, since, without agreement on the basic terms, there is no point in building far-reaching conclusions.

I will draw attention to just one theoretical circumstance. The fact is that all the basic concepts of socionics are abstractions of a rather high level. For example, we cannot equate extraversion, in level of generality, with such psychic qualities as, say, tidiness, cheerfulness, decisiveness. And all the ARPs are categories of that level of generalization. But, apparently, their semantic fields may include senses and objects of any level of concreteness whatsoever.

The work is unquestionably unfinished and unquestionably must continue, and the results already obtained need careful analysis — both from the methodological and from the socionic point of view. The authors — psychologists by education who have managed, as far as possible, to work their way into socionics — have undertaken a work that has deep foundations in philology. Therefore such a work cannot do without philological expertise. Without such expertise it will of necessity have a preliminary, agenda-setting character.

Let us note that the authors, relying on socionics as a methodological instrument, undertook an attempt to organize linguistic material in accordance with the socionic notions of the IA. However, this very notion is insufficiently clarified in their work. They try to introduce their own concept of the IA, representing it as a composition of linearly dependent ARPs — evidently without fully understanding that the ARPs can be expressed through the IAs, which leads us to a circle in definition. The authors must also be reproached for the fact that the divisions of concepts within the arrays tied to concrete IAs are of that same empirical character.

The authors must be thanked for boldly intruding into a weakly developed theoretical area and exposing themselves to the point of methodological criticism. And, of course, one must not think that their text consists of nothing but errors. These are intelligent people, and professionals besides. Unquestionably, much of use can be extracted from their work — but this will require additional effort.

The hypothesis that an IA unites quite definite objects was first voiced by the Vilnius group of socionists — Shepetko, Filimonov, Ritchik — and it was they who presented the first lists illustrating this hypothesis. Later Ermak supported this hypothesis with his expanded lists. Evidently, behind this hypothesis stands the tacitly accepted conviction that the IAs have an ontological nature — that is, that real objects stand behind them, and not the subjective impressions of human individuals. The authors of the work under analysis have quite definitely declared their position with respect to the IAs, considering them subjective categories performing the role of classifiers that operate at the moment of a person’s perception of the IP.

As far as I have been able to understand, the authors in their work proceeded, consciously or subconsciously, from the premise that there exist typological verbal markers closely connected with the IAs and manifesting themselves in speech in connection with the IAs most actualized in the work of the functions of a concrete bearer of one or another TIM. And this, presumably, can be used in socionic diagnostics.

References

1. Kochubeeva L.A., Mironov V.V., Stoyalova M.L. Socionics. The Semantics of Informational Aspects. — St. Petersburg: Aster X, 2006. — 176 pp.
2. Reinin G.R. Some Remarks on the Discussion of the Reinin Traits. SMiPL 3, 2003.
3. Churyumov S.I. The Smile of the Cheshire Cat. Drohobych, 2007. — 560 pp.