Connection_Theory_-_Theory_and_Practice_-_5-24-10_-_3.2_-

Connection Theory

Theory and Practice

Version 3.2

Table of Contents

Introduction
Theory

Connection Theory
Consequences – not done
Explanation of Phenomena – not done

Practice

Giving Explanations
Creating CT Charts
Making Predictions – not done
Creating CT Recommendation Plans – not done

Evidence

Current Evidence
Gathering Further Evidence

Variations

Theoretical Variations
Areas for Improvement

I. Introduction

Connection Theory (CT) is a near-total theory of the mind.^[1] It purports to state the rules that govern all of a person’s beliefs and actions. It then shows how these rules can be used to explain virtually all mental phenomena, including all of a person’s beliefs, desires, actions and thoughts. On the basis of these explanations, CT shows how it is possible to not only explain mental phenomena but also predict them.

A near-total theory of the mind has an enormous range of potential practical applications. Thus far, CT has been used to explain isolated mental phenomena, make and test predictions regarding future mental phenomena, create detailed charts that represent nearly all of the significant elements of individual people’s minds and create individualized recommendation plans that, when followed, permit a person to change their beliefs, desires, actions and thoughts in a number of ways.

Beyond these, CT has many other potential practical applications that are just now beginning to be developed. In particular, it appears likely that CT will be able to be applied to group dynamics, yielding significant advances in the understanding of groups, organizations and societies. It appears even more likely that CT will be able to be applied to education, providing a theoretical basis for developing superior educational techniques.

This said, CT is not a total theory of the mind. In particular, CT does not currently discuss emotions. It does not explain emotions, predict emotions or show a person how to alter their emotions. This is not because emotions seem to conflict with CT in any foreseeable way. On the contrary, we anticipate that future versions of CT will explain emotions in the same way it explains everything else. We simply have not yet had the time to develop the needed explanations.

Is CT true? We do not know. There is a small but growing body of evidence in favor of CT. We will review this evidence below. Does CT work? So far, yes. In the range of cases tested so far it has worked astonishingly well. Despite these successes, however, the current evidence in favor of CT is insufficient to permit us to make solid judgments about either its truth generally or its usefulness in cases we have not tested.

As a result, we are currently seeking additional evidence through further tests. The additional evidence we collect will either serve to confirm or disconfirm CT. If after a thorough search we find significant evidence in favor of CT and no evidence against, then we will be able to judge solidly that CT at least closely approximates a theory that is functionally equivalent to the true theory. With such a theory, one could change the world.

On the other hand, if we find anomalies, things CT cannot explain or predictions that go wrong, we will keep close track of them. Once we’ve compiled a list of anomalies, we will seek to develop a new theory that handles all of the anomalies and preserves the virtues of the old theory. CT is already very useful. Any future theory that replaces it will be even better. Once we have the new theory, we will again collect evidence and the process will repeat. After a finite and hopefully small number of iterations, we should have a theory that handles all cases and that we can use with confidence.

II. Theory

Part 1: Connection Theory

§1. Statement of Connection Theory

Let’s begin with a statement of Connection Theory:

Connection Theory

Everything a mind is aware of is (a) a sensation, (b) a spatial relation between sensations, (c) a representation, (d) an awareness of something, or (e) a combination of these.

Every mind is such that its representational content at a moment is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of its representational content at the preceding moment, if it had any, and its current sensations, given the restriction that it believe that each of its intrinsic goods will be permanently achieved.

Every mind is such that at every moment it exists, it acts exactly in the way it believes will lead to each of its intrinsic goods being permanently achieved.

Every mind is such that something is one of its intrinsic goods if and only if it is one of that mind’s concepts and it is on the List of Intrinsic Goods.”

This part will be devoted to explaining these claims and many of the terms used.

§2. Definitions

We will define terms as we go. For convenience, though, all of the definitions and partial definitions we employ are also stated in the following list:

“X believes that Y is permanently achieved at time T” =def

“X believes <Y is the case at time T> and for all times Ti after T, X does not believe <Y is not the case at time Ti>”

“constrained elegant updating” =def

“a mind having representational content that is the result of updating as elegantly as possible, given the constraint that the mind believes that each of its intrinsic goods will be permanently fulfilled”

“CT” =def

“Connection Theory”

“elegant updating” =def

“a mind having representational content that is the result of updating elegantly”

“IG” =def

“intrinsic good”

“IGs” =def

“intrinsic goods”

“X is an intrinsic good” =def

“every mind that has the concept <X> has X as an intrinsic good”

“X has Y as an intrinsic good” =def

“Y is one of X’s intrinsic goods”

“X is one of Y’s intrinsic goods” =def

“for some action A and some Z, Y does A because Y believes <Z will occur after A>, X is not a conjunction and either X is identical to Z or X is a conjunct of Z>

“X has mental content Y” =def

“X is aware of Y”

“mental content” =def

“something that something is aware of”

“mental content of X” =def

“something that X is aware of”

“mind” =def

“a thing that is aware of something”

“Y is permanently achieved at time T” =def

“Y is the case at time T and Y is the case at all times after time T”

“person” =partial def

[if something is a person, then it has a mind]

“relata” =def

“things related by one or more relations” (singular: relatum)

“relatum” =def

“a thing related by a relation” (plural: relata)

“representation” =def

“something that refers to something and/or represents something”

“representational content” =def

“that which a representation narrowly attempts to refer to and/or represent”

“representational content of mind X” =def

“the mental content of mind X that is representational content”

“sensation” =def

“a mental content that is not a relation and does not contain any relations”

“X has representational content that is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of representational content Y and sensations Z” =def

“X has the representational content A that fulfills the elegant updating conditions as best as possible”

“X updates elegantly” =def

“X updates its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of the representational content it had at the preceding moment and its current sensations”

“X updates its mental content” =def

“X has mental content”

“X updates its representational content” =def

“X has representational content”

“X updates its representational content on the basis of Y”

“X has representational content Z, such that Z is determined by a function which takes Y as an input and yields Z as an output”

§3.1. Types of mental content

Now let’s go through CT claim by claim. The first claim in CT states:

Everything a mind is aware of is (a) a sensation, (b) a spatial relation between sensations, (c) a representation, (d) an awareness of something, or (e) a combination of these.

Looking through our minds, we encounter many different types of mental phenomena. We find less complex mental phenomena, like thoughts, sensations, hopes, feelings and dreams, as well as more complex mental phenomena, like our awareness of an awareness of a series of mental images. According to CT, everything a mind is aware of falls into four categories or else can be completely broken down into things that fall into those categories. Those categories are:

sensation
spatial relation between sensations
representation
awareness of something

Now a mind is “a thing that is aware of something” and “something that something is aware of” can be called mental content. Thus CT says: take the mental content of anything that has mental content. That mental content will break down into the four categories stated above.

What are sensations? Spatial relations? Representations? Awareness? Each of these will be examined in the following sections.

§3.2. Relations

To understand the types of mental content CT recognizes, one first needs to understand what a relation is. As far as I know, the concept <relation> cannot be defined. Nevertheless, it is possible to grasp by considering a list of examples. The following are all relations:

Spatial. e.g., is longer than, is between, is five meters from, etc.
Temporal. e.g., is before, is faster than, is slower than, etc.
Causal. e.g., causes, is an effect of, is one of the partial causes of, etc.
Part/Whole. e.g., is part of, has as a part, is a part of the same thing as, etc.
Similarity. e.g., is similar to, is dissimilar from, is perfectly similar to, etc.
Identity. e.g., is identical to, is distinct from
Representational. e.g., represents, is represented by, etc.
Mental. e.g., is aware of, believes, understands, etc.
Affection. e.g., loves, is loved by, gets along with, dislikes, is hated by, etc.
Various. e.g., owns, is richer than, is less famous than, etc.

Each of these, and anything like these, is a relation. These can be contrasted with the following things, which are not relations:

chairs
spatial points
red squares
human minds

A few distinctions are in order. First, being a relation is not the same as being related to something. A chair might be five meters from a wall. In that case, the chair would be related to the wall. But it would not itself be a relation. Likewise, a color patch might be perfectly similar to another color patch. If this is true, then the color patches would be related to one another. But neither would be a relation.

Second, being a relation is not the same as containing a relation. Consider a chair with four legs, a seat and a back, all distinct from one another and all spatially related. In this case, the chair would contain a relation: the spatial relation between its parts. Nevertheless, the chair would not be a relation. The distinction between being a relation and containing a relation will become important in the discussion of representations (§3.5).

The things related by a relation are called relata (singular: relatum). One might think that one could define the concept <relation> as <a thing with two relata>. This does not work for several reasons. First, relations might have just a single relatum. Instances of the relation of self-identity, i.e., “is identical to”, only ever relate a thing to itself and thus only ever have a single relatum. Second, relations might have more than two relata. Instances of the relation “is between,” for instance, may have three or more relata. Finally, the concepts <relata> and <relatum> themselves are defined using the concept <relation>, and one cannot define a concept using itself. This is a problem, actually, that holds for many ways of trying to define the concept <relation>: the proposed definitions themselves include the concept <relation> and thus fail to be true definitions.

§3.3. Sensations

The first category of mental content, according to CT, is “sensation.” We will define “sensation” in a moment. First, let’s consider some examples. All of the following are sensations:

Color.^[2] e.g., red sensations, white sensations, black sensations, etc.
Sound. e.g., loud high-pitch sensations, quiet low-pitch sensations, etc.
Touch. e.g., hot sensations, hard sensations, etc.
Smell. e.g., rose-smell sensations, mint-smell sensations, etc.
Taste. e.g., sweet sensations, bitter sensations, etc.
Feelings. e.g., pleasure sensations, pain sensations

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. The subdivisions are also not meant to be important. It could be that smell sensations and taste sensations are actually the same. Whether or not this is so is not important for our purposes. What matters is being able to identify which things are sensations and which are not.

What is a sensation? A sensation is “a mental content that is not a relation and does not contain any relations.” Take any of the above examples, for instance, a feeling of pain. Is the pain feeling a relation? No. Does it contain any relations? No. So it is a sensation. Of course, the pain feeling may stand in various relations. It will be similar to some sensations, dissimilar from others. It may occur before some sensations and after others. As a mental content, it is a thing that a mind is aware of. So the pain feeling stands in various relations. Nevertheless, it is not a relation and does not contain any relations.

The same is true for the other examples. In some cases, the names of the sensations may be misleading. For example, consider a “hot sensation.” The word “hot” is usually used as a comparative term. But when we talk about sensations, we can use the word “hot” differently. Consider some sensation that you would regularly describe as “hot.” Name that particular feeling “hot.” Now “hot” is a name for a particular feeling and is not a comparative term at all. That is how the words “loud,” “quiet,” “hot,” “hard,” “sweet” and so on are used above. If one has multiple distinct feelings that one would like to call “hot,” then one can use subscripts: “hot1,” “hot2,” etc. Then each of these will be a name for a particular sensation and not a comparative term at all.

From the preceding, it should be clear that we are not using the word “sensation” as it is always used. Sometimes people use the word “sensation” to mean “the operation of the sense-organs” or “the product of the stimulation of the sense-organs.” In the context of CT, however, we will use the word “sensation” only to refer to the type of mental contents we’ve described above. By our use, to say that something is a sensation is only to say that it is a mental content that is not a relation and does not contain any relations. It is not to say anything at all about the thing’s relation to sense-organs. Of course, it may turn out that every sensation is caused by the stimulation of our sense-organs. But this is not something that is insured simply by the meaning of the term “sensation” as we use it.

§3.4. Spatial relations between sensations

The second category of mental content, according to CT, is “spatial relation between sensations.” What is a spatial relation? As noted in §3.2, the concept <relation> is difficult or impossible to define. Similarly, the concept <spatial relation> is difficult or impossible to define, even in terms of the concept <relation>. Instead, the best thing to do is to grasp it by means of examples. These are all examples of spatial relations:

Metric. e.g., is five meters from, is two million kilometers from, etc.
Directional. e.g., is to the left of, is above, etc.
Adjacence. e.g., is adjacent to, is not adjacent to
Other. e.g., is between, is inside of, is outside of, surrounds, etc.

Are we aware of any spatial relations between sensations? The answer is yes, as we will see in II.3.§n.

It should be noted that spatial relations between sensations are not spatial relations between minds and sensations, unless it turns out that some mind is a sensation. This means that this category of mental content does not include any spatial relations between you and your sensations, unless you yourself are a sensation. This might seem puzzling: what about depth-perception and the awareness of color sensations as being some distance away? This will be discussed later. In IV.1.§n, we will see a demonstration that one cannot be aware of spatial relations between oneself and one’s sensations. In §II.3.n, we will see how CT interprets the phenomena of depth-perception.

§3.5. Representations

The third category of mental content, according to CT, is “representation.” A representation is “something that refers to something and/or represents something.” The following are a few examples of representations:

Concepts. e.g., <cat>, <necessity>, <before>, <red sensation>, <uranium>, , <golden mountain>, <the highest even natural number>, etc.
Beliefs. e.g., , <cats are not made of uranium>, <something exists>, <this is a red sensation>, <the Earth has one moon>, etc.

In this document we will indicate representations using angle brackets (< … >), just as we have done above. The angle brackets themselves will indicate that the thing in question is a representation; the word(s) enclosed within the angle brackets will indicate what the representation represents or refers to. Thus, for instance, is a representation that refers to me, <this is a red sensation> is a representation that refers to something and represents it as being a red sensation, <cats are not made of uranium> is a representation that refers to cats and uranium and represents one as not being made of the other, and so on.

In many cases, a representation will refer to or represent something that exists. For instance, the representation refers to me. I exist, so refers to an existing thing. Similarly, the representation <mind> represent minds. My mind exists, so <mind> represents at least one existing thing. In other cases, though, a representation will not successfully refer to or represent something that exists. For instance, the representation <golden mountain> represents golden mountains. But it may be that there are no golden mountains. The representation <the highest even natural number> refers to the highest even natural number. But of course there is no highest even natural number. Thus the representation <the highest even natural number> does not refer to any existing thing.

What is it to refer to or represent something? As with some of the other concepts discussed above, it is difficult and perhaps impossible to provide definitions here. As a result, it is best to understand referring and representing through examples. Some examples have been provided in the preceding paragraphs.

Representations are like sensations in that neither are relations. Representations are unlike sensations, though, in that representations contain relations while sensations do not. In particular, each representation contains a relation to whatever it refers to and/or represents. This contained relation is peculiar in the thing referred to or represented need not exist. For instance, consider the representation <golden mountain>. This representation contains a relation to golden mountains. And it does so even if there are no golden mountains.

The word “representation” is often used in many different ways. It is used as we have used it just above. But it is also used to refer to other phenomena. Sometimes, for instance, people use the word “representation” to refer to any thing such that using that thing and one or more rules, one can infer to the features of one or more other things. For instance, using a map and the rules for reading maps, one can infer from the features of the map (e.g., “1 inch between these two dots”) to features of cities (e.g., “2,000 miles between these two cities). As a result, people will say that the map “represents” the cities and the distance between them. This is a fine use for the word “representation”; however, it is not the use we will employ. We will use the word “representation” to refer only to things that themselves represent or refer to things, not things that require us to bring in some external rule.

§3.6. Awareness

The fourth category of mental content, according to CT, is “awareness of something.” What is awareness? A synonym for “awareness” is “consciousness.” To have awareness is to have consciousness; to be aware of a thing is to have that thing in one’s consciousness. However, synonyms only help to convey the meaning of a word if one already understands the synonym. And just as we asked “What is awareness?”, we might also ask: “What is consciousness?”

The concept <awareness of something>, like <spatial relation> and <relation>, is difficult or impossible to define. Examples may be illuminating:

Of sensations. e.g., awareness of blue sensations, awareness of hot sensations, etc.
Of spatial relations. e.g., awareness of a blue square being adjacent to a red circle, awareness of a blue square being between a red circle and a green triangle, etc.
Of representations. e.g., awareness of the concept <cat>, awareness of the belief <there is a reason for everything>, etc.
Of awareness. e.g., awareness of awareness of blue sensations, awareness of awareness of a blue square being adjacent to a red circle, etc.

These examples, of course, accord with the first sentence of CT.

The best way to understand awareness, and in fact the best way to understand all of the mental contents described in §§3.3–3.6, is to examine one’s own mental content. There one will find examples of sensations, spatial relations between sensations, representations and awareness. This is so whether or not CT is correct. Even if the first sentence of CT is false and there are actually twelve different irreducible types of mental content, not four, one still would be able to understand sensations, spatial relations between sensations, representations and awareness best by looking for them in one’s own mind.

As with the terms “sensation” and “representation,” the term “awareness” is used in many different ways. Sometimes, for instance, people use the word “awareness” as a synonym for the word “knowledge,” as in the sentence “I am aware that tomorrow is Tuesday,” or the word “acquaintance,” as in the sentence “I am aware of the history of this building.” That’s not how we’re going to use the term, though. We’re just going to use as indicated above.

Once the concept <awareness> is understood, it should be noted that saying that CT recognizes awareness of something as a category of mental content is not merely saying that minds can be aware of things. It is saying that minds can be aware of being aware of things.

§3.7. Combinations

Every bit of mental content falls into one of the four categories described in the preceding sections (§§3.3–3.6) or is a combination of mental contents that fall into those categories. Consider the following examples:

understanding a sentence that is heard or seen
having an internal monologue
having emotions
changing one’s beliefs
having temporally extended experiences

None of these are sensations, spatial relations between sensations, representations or awarenesses. Thus according to CT, each of them must break into these things. How exactly different combination mental contents break down will be described in II.3.§n.

§4.1. The Belief Rule – Standard formulation

The second claim in CT is a rule that determines exactly what a mind’s representational content will be at each moment. It says:

Every mind is such that its representational content at a moment is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of its representational content at the preceding moment, if it had any, and its current sensations, given the restriction that it believe that each of its intrinsic goods will be permanently achieved.

This rule is called the Belief Rule. It can be formulated in various different equivalent ways, including the way just stated. We will look at one of these other formulations later. First, we will explain some terms. What is representational content? What is it to update elegantly? What are intrinsic goods? We will answer these questions first.

§4.2. Representational content

The first term to define from the Belief Rule is “representational content.”

In §3.5, we said that representations could represent and/or refer to things even if those things didn’t exist. This permits us to make a three-way distinction. First, there is the representation itself. Second, there is what the representation attempts to represent and/or refer to. Third, there is what the representation successfully represents and/or refers to.

For instance, consider the representation <red square>. Here, there is the representation itself. Then there is what the representation attempts to represent and refer to: all red squares. Then there is what the representation ends up successfully representing and referring to: all existing red squares.

This three-way distinction, however, can be expanded to a four-way distinction. Consider the example of <red square>. This representation does not mention anything specifically about pentagons. It is also a fact that every red regular polygon with one less side than a pentagon is a red square. With these two things in mind, question: should we say that the representation <red square> attempts to refer to and/or represent red regular polygons with one side less than a pentagon. One way of thinking is this: “The answer is no. The representation <red square> does not mention anything about pentagons. So it cannot attempt to refer to and/or represent anything about pentagons. Thus the representation <red square> does not attempt to refer to and/or represent red regular polygons with one less side than a pentagon.” Another way of thinking is this: “The answer is yes. Any thing X the representation <red square> would successfully represent and/or refer to, were X to exist, would be a red square. So the representation <red square> does attempt to refer to and/or represent red regular polygons with one less side than a pentagon.”

On the first way of thinking, the only features that get included in what the representation attempts to refer to and/or represent are those specifically mentioned in the representation. On the second way of thinking, what the representation attempts to refer to and/or represent include all of the features the things would have, were they to exist. This permits us to make a distinction between what the representation narrowly attempts to refer to and/or represent, corresponding to the first way of thinking, and what the representation broadly attempts to refer to and/or represent, corresponding to the second way of thinking.

This yields a four-way distinction:

the representation
what the representation narrowly attempts to refer to and/or represent
what the representation broadly attempts to refer to and/or represent
what the representation successfully refers to and/or represents

We will call “what the representation narrowly attempts to refer to and/or represent” its representational content. Then we will say that the representational content of a mind is “the mental content of a mind that is representational content,” which is to say, all of the representational content that mind is aware of.

It is worth nothing that in at least some cases, some of the elements of the four-way distinction above will be identical. Consider the representation <this representation>. In that case, the representation, what the representation broadly attempts to refer and/or represent, and what the representation successfully refers to and/or represents are one and the same.

§4.3. Explanation

The next major term to define is “updating elegantly.” To define that term, we will first need to introduce the concept of explanation.

An explanation for something is answer to the question “Why is this the case?” Since there are several ways to answer that question, there are also several types of explanation. Here are a few:

Explanation via a cause.

Thing to be explained: Why did my hand go up?
Explanation: Because I chose to raise it.

Explanation via subsumption under a regularity.

Thing to be explained: Why does the pencil fall when dropped?
Explanation: Because all things fall when dropped.

Explanation via an essence/definition.

Thing to be explained: Why are bachelors unmarried?
Explanation: Because that’s part of what it is to be a bachelor.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive.

Most explanations, if not all, leave something more to be explained. If one explains something by stating that it was caused, one ask why the cause occurred. If one explains something by subsuming it under a regularity, one can ask why that regularity holds. If one explains a feature of a thing by referring to that thing’s essence, one can ask why something with that essence exists.^[3]

Despite the fact that at least most explanations leave more to explained, it is possible to reduce the total number of unexplained things in a system by explaining many things in terms of fewer things. For example, suppose that one is presented with the following occurrences:

when the book was dropped, it fell
when the flute was dropped, it fell
when the sword was dropped, it fell
when the water was dropped, it fell

There are several different ways to attempt to explain these occurrences. Here are two:

Explanation A

Athena, a god, commanded the book to seek the ground.
Apollo, a god, commanded the flute to seek the ground.
Ares, a god, commanded the sword to seek the ground.
Poseidon, a god, commanded the water to seek the ground.

Explanation B

All things fall when dropped.

Both leave something to be explained. Explanation A leaves to be explained the purposes of Athena, the purposes of Apollo, the purposes of Ares and the purposes of Poseidon. Explanation B leaves to be explained why all things fall when dropped. But if we count up the things to be explained, we find that Explanation A keeps the number at four while Explanation B reduces the number to one.

Of course, this tally of things to be explained is incomplete. With Explanation A, it also remains to be explained why each of the gods exist. With both explanations, it remains to be explained why each of the original items were dropped and why each of the items exist. The point of the example was to illustrate the point that one system of explanation can leave less unexplained than another, even if both leave some things unexplained.

Right now, CT does not contain precise methods for comparing how much one system of explanation explains as compared to another. This is an area for future development.

§4.4. Elegant updating

Having explained “explanation,” it is now possible to define “updating elegantly” and related terms. The definitions we present here will be somewhat complex to start, but will be abbreviated and easy to use by the end.

First, to say X updates its mental content is simply to say “X has mental content.” So to say X updates its representational content is to say “X has representational content.” Second, to say X updates its representational content on the basis of Y is to say “X has representational content Z, such that Z is determined by a function which takes Y as an input and yields Z as an output.” Third, to say X has representational content that is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of representational content Y and sensations Z, or to say any of a number of close verbal variants of that, is to say “X has the representational content A that fulfills the elegant updating conditions as best as possible.”

What are the elegant updating conditions? There are three. Let A, Y and Z mean the following:

A = the current representational content

Y = the previous representational content

Z = the current sensations

Then the elegant updating conditions are as follows:

#1. Explanatory Power: the more of Z explained within A, the better.

#2. Explanatory Completeness: the more explained within A, the better.

#3. Minimal Change: the less change from Y to A, the better.”

This means that a mind has representational content that is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of its previous representational content and current sensations when it (a) has the representational content that explains as many of the current sensations as possible, (b) has as much explained within it as possible and (c) is as close to its previous representational content as possible.

Since the terms just defined are somewhat cumbersome to use, let’s introduce an abbreviation. Let’s use X updates elegantly as an abbreviation for “X updates its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of the representational content it had at the preceding moment and its current sensations.” Now when we mean to say “X has representational content that is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of its previous representational content and current sensations,” we can simply say “X updates elegantly.”

The concept of elegant updating depends on the three elegant updating conditions listed above. How are these conditions weighed or balanced against one another? The current version of CT leaves this question open. One potential answer is given in V.1.§2.

Now for a few examples. Let suppose that a person with a relatively normal belief system is sitting under a tree. The person looks up and has the sort of sensations one has when one is looking at a bird. We might consider four cases:

Case #1.

The person updates their representational content in a way that does not in any way respond to the bird-image they’re aware of. This would not be the most elegant update, as to be most elegant, the person’s new representational content would need to explain the person’s current sensations as much as possible. (So, this update fails the Explanatory Power condition above.)

Case #2.

The person updates their representational content by adding in the following beliefs: <there are aliens>, <aliens sometimes shapeshift>, <I’m looking at a shapeshifting alien in a tree>. This would not be the most elegant update, as to be most elegant, the person’s new representational content would need to have as much explained within it as possible. The new representational content, however, adds in factors (i.e., the shapeshifting aliens) that raise more questions than, for instance, simply positing that one is looking at a bird. (So, this update fails the Explanatory Completeness condition above.)

Case #3.

The person updates their representational content to now believe absolutely everything taught by the philosopher G. W. Leibniz and to believe <I’m experiencing a bird-image because that is what my natures calls for me to experience now.> This representational content would explain the person’s current sensations. It would also substantially diminish the number of unanswered questions in the person’s belief system: Leibniz’s philosophical system has explanations for almost everything. But it would not be the most elegant update. This is because it would involve too much change from the person’s preceding representational content. (So, this update fails the Minimal Change condition above.)

Case #4.

The person updates their representational content to now believe <I’m looking at a bird>. Little else changes. This involves very little change, explains the person’s current sensations and also does not substantially alter how much is explained within the person’s representational content. Thus this update may well be an elegant update.

The preceding explains the idea of elegant updating. According to CT, though, minds do not elegantly update. Instead, they update as elegantly as they can, given the restriction that they always believe that each of their intrinsic goods will be permanently fulfilled. Let’s call this constrained elegant updating. Of course, we might conceive a case where the constraints on elegant updating do not affect the mind’s updating at all. In those cases, constrained elegant updating will be the same as elegant updating.

§4.5. Concepts and beliefs

The next terms to consider are “concept” and “belief.” Concepts and beliefs are types of representations. Some examples have already been given in §3.5. In the future, we expect to be able to provide a definition of “concept” and “belief.” For now, each should be taken to mean what it means in everyday discourse, given the constraint that each be understood to be a type of representation.

§4.6. Intrinsic goods

One of the most important terms employed in CT is the term “intrinsic good.”

Informally, a mind’s intrinsic goods are the things that are the ultimate goals of its present action. Take a mind. Take its present action. Consider what results that action is aimed at accomplishing. Take those results and consider what further results those results are supposed to lead to. Continue the process until you find the ultimate intended results of the action. Those are that mind’s intrinsic goods at the time of its action.

Formally, to say G is one of M’s intrinsic goods, or equivalently, to say M has G as one of its intrinsic goods, is to say “for some action A and some Z, M does A because M believes <Z will occur after A>, G is not a conjunction and either G is identical to Z or G is a conjunct of Z.”

A few notes. First, the definition of “one of a mind’s intrinsic goods” explicitly rules out conjunctions. No conjunction is an intrinsic good for any mind. Second, the mere fact that a mind believes that something will occur after one of its actions is not enough to make that thing one of its intrinsic goods. It has to be that the mind performs the action because of that belief. Third, the fact that we’re using the word-phrase “intrinsic good” here should not be taken to imply that any of a mind’s intrinsic goods are good either metaphysically, according to all people, according to any particular society or according to any system of morality.

Given this definition of “a mind’s intrinsic goods,” it is open that every mind has the same intrinsic goods or that different minds have different intrinsic goods. It is also open that there might or might not be things that are intrinsic goods for any mind that understands them. Let’s call such things, things that are intrinsic goods for any mind that understands them, intrinsic goods. This choice of terminology can lead to contradictory-sounding sentences that are not actually contradictory, such as “Every mind has things as intrinsic goods, but there are no intrinsic goods.” In practice, we have not seen this cause any problems.

In what follows, we’ll be using the term “intrinsic good” frequently. For the sake of brevity, we will often use the abbreviation “IG” for “intrinsic good” and “IGs” for “intrinsic goods.”

§4.7. Permanent achievement

The last term we need for now is “permanent achievement.”

For something to be permanently achieved at a time is for it to be the case at that time and all subsequent times. For someone to believe that something is permanently achieved at a time is for someone to believe that it is the case at that time and to not believe that it will not be the case after that time. This means that we will consider someone to “believe that something is permanently achieved” if the person believes that it is the case now and believes that it will be the case at all times in the future, or if the person believes that it is the case now and has no beliefs about whether or not it will be the case at any time in the future.

§4.8. The Belief Rule – Rule formulation

The terms just introduced help to clarify what the standard formulation of the Belief Rule (§4.1) says. In this section, we will present an equivalent formulation: the Rule formulation.

The Elegance Rule: “Every mind’s representational content at a moment is determined entirely by it updating its representational content in the most elegant possible way on the basis of its representational content at the preceding moment, if it had any, and its current sensations.”

The Goodness Rule: “Every mind believes that each of its intrinsic goods is going to be permanently achieved.”

The Belief Rule: “Every mind obeys the Goodness Rule and obeys the Elegance Rule as much as it can, given the fact that it must obey the Goodness Rule.”

§4.9. Diagrams of representational content over time

The following diagram represents the process by which, according to CT, a mind’s current representational content is determined. In the diagram, every “Bn” is a bit of representational content:

The following diagram represents the same thing occurring over a stretch of time:

§5.1. The Action Rule

The third claim in CT is a rule that determines exactly what a mind’s actions will be at each moment. It says:

Every mind is such that at every moment it exists, it acts exactly in the way it believes will lead to each of its intrinsic goods being permanently achieved.

This rule is called the Action Rule. The only thing that needs to be explained here is what an “action” is.

§5.2. Action

As yet, we do not have a definition of the term “action.” Instead, we can give rules that cover the case of bodily movements. In particular, it is correct to interpret some movement of a person’s body as being an action if and only if the best explanation of that movement involves it arising from the person’s representational content in some way.

For example, suppose that a person picks up a book. The best explanation for their picking up the book is that they wanted to examine it. This explanation involves a desire, which involves representational content. Thus it is correct to interpret the person’s picking up the book as an action.

Now suppose that while picking up the book, the person slips and falls over. The best explanation for their falling does not include any reference to their own representational content. Thus it is correct to interpret the person’s falling as not being an action.

The rules stated above cover bodily movements. They do not cover the production of sensations. As we will see, in some cases (e.g., imagination), we will interpret the production of sensations as an action. In other cases (e.g., sense-perception), we will not. For more on this, see II.3.§n.

§6.1. Constraints on intrinsic goods

The fourth and final claim in CT restricts what intrinsic goods a mind can have. It says:

Every mind is such that something is one of its intrinsic goods if and only if it is one of that mind’s concepts and it is on the List of Intrinsic Goods.”

What is the “List of Intrinsic Goods”? This will be discussed in the next section.

§6.2. The List of Intrinsic Goods

According to CT, there is an unchanging list of intrinsic goods. We call this list, quite aptly, the “List of Intrinsic Goods.”

Which intrinsic goods are on the List? This is something we would very much like to know. Empirical investigation thus far seems to reveal that intrinsic goods far into two categories. The following are a list of things that may be intrinsic goods. They should at least suggest the flavor of the things that seem to be intrinsic goods so far.

Universals.

truth
pleasure

Relationships.

being accepted by society
being respected by one’s mother
getting along with one’s father
mutually understanding one’s sister
being loved by someone
mutually liking someone
having a group of friends

Again, this list is not meant to be complete or even accurate. It is merely meant to suggest what some of the intrinsic goods are like

In the future, we hope to have a comprehensive list of intrinsic goods.

Part 2: Consequences

To be filled in.

Read “Theory of Mind – presentation – 1.3.docx” for relevant material and for unfamiliar terms from the remainder of this document.

Part 3: Explanation of Phenomena

To be filled in.

III. Practice

Part 1: Giving Explanations

§1. How to explain phenomena using CT

CT can be used to explain a wide range of psychological phenomena. To give a successful CT explanation, one must complete the following four steps:

Become sufficiently acquainted with the phenomena. (Acquaintance)
Break the phenomena down into its basic components. (Analysis)
Explain components via Belief Rule and Action Rule. (Initial Explanation)
Give a full explanation via a person’s belief system. (Full Explanation)

Let’s look at each of these steps in turn.

§2. Becoming acquainted with a phenomenon

The first step in explaining some phenomenon is to become sufficiently acquainted with it. This means simply that one must gain enough information about the phenomenon to be able to successfully analyze it, i.e., break it down into its basic components.

For example, suppose that someone says “I have low self-esteem” and asks you for an explanation. At that point, the only information you would have is that the person has said “I have low self-esteem.” But what exactly does this person mean by “low self-esteem”? The person could be saying that they have low self-esteem for any number of reasons. The person could have recurrent negative verbal thoughts about themselves, lack a feeling of confidence, and/or act shyly in social circumstances. Or the person might mean something else entirely. To successfully explain the phenomenon in question, you’ll need to get more information.

§3. Analyzing a phenomenon

The second step in explaining some phenomenon is to break it down into its basic components. These basic components will be:

Sensations
Spatial relations between sensations
Representational content
Awareness
Actions

…at a time or in a temporal sequence.

Consider the example from the preceding section (§2). The person has said “I have low self-esteem.” Further questions have revealed that the person means that they feel anxiety when around other people and that they don’t talk to people whom they like. These things – the feeling of anxiety, the avoidance of social interactions – are the things to be broken down into basic components. The result might look like this:

First phenomenon: anxiety when around others

First stage

The person becomes aware of people-indicating sensations.

e.g., visual sensations of people’s faces
e.g., auditory sensations of people’s voices

The person comes to believe that they are around people.

Second stage

The person becomes aware of anxiety sensations.
The person comes to believe that it is a live option that something bad is about to happen.

Second phenomenon: not talking to people liked

First stage

The person becomes aware of liked-people-indicating sensations.

e.g., visual sensations of liked people’s faces
e.g., auditory sensations of liked people’s voices

The person comes to believe that they are around people whom they like.

Second stage

The person fails to perform the action of talking to the people.

For ease of practice, the obvious elements can be left unstated.

§4. What CT purports to explain

The next two steps involve using CT to explain what CT purports to be able to explain. What does CT claim to explain? Here is the breakdown:

Sensations. In general, CT does not purport to explain sensations. However, some sensations are best interpreted as resulting from actions and not via the stimulation of the sense-organs. Sensations like these should be identified. Then the associated actions should be explained.

Spatial relations between sensations. CT does not purport to explain these. In practice, the only spatial relations between sensations in a person’s mind are those present in the visual field. These are, for practical purposes, fixed.

Representational content. CT purports to explain all representation content, including all concepts and beliefs. As a result, a CT-compliant explanation should be given for all representational content had as well as all representational content lacked.

Awareness. By purporting to explain the representational content every mind has, CT also purports to explain every instance of awareness of that representational content. (To “have” representational content is simply to be aware of it.) Beyond this, CT does not purport to explain what we are aware of. In particular, it does not purport to explain where and when we have awareness of awareness of something, i.e., meta-awareness. This will not pose any practical problems in explanation, though, as it appears that in practice our structure of awareness and meta-awareness is fixed. We do not gain awareness of awareness of awareness of awareness of some red sensations at one moment and then drop down to a mere awareness of red sensations with no meta-awareness at the next.

Actions. CT purports to explain all actions. As a result, a CT-compliant explanation should be given for every action and every failure to act.

In sum, a complete explanation of a particular phenomenon will include:

a CT-compliant explanation of all representational content had
a CT-compliant explanation of all representational content lacked
a CT-compliant explanation of every action performed
a CT-compliant explanation of every action not performed
the identification of every sensation produced via action and not via the sense-organs

Applying this to the example from the preceding two sections (§§2-3), a complete explanation of the phenomenon would include an explanation of some things and not others:

Phenomenon Explanation Needed?

Person becomes aware of people-indicating sensations. No
Person comes to believe that they are around people. Yes
Person becomes aware of anxiety sensations. No
Person comes to believe that it is a live option that
something bad is about to happen. Yes

Person becomes aware of liked-people-indicating sensations. No
Person comes to believe that they are around people whom
they like. Yes
Person fails to perform the action of talking to the people. Yes

§5. Giving an initial explanation

The third step in explaining a phenomenon is to give an initial explanation of the basic components that CT purports to be able to explain using the Belief Rule and the Action Rule. How precisely does this work?

Representational content. If a person has some representational content, the explanation for this is stated by the Belief Rule. In particular, if a person has some representational content R, CT says that this is because having that representational content was the result of constrained elegant updating. The person was aware of some representational content at the preceding moment, received some new sensations, updated its representational content as elegantly as it could given the restriction that it maintain its connection to all of its intrinsic goods, and as a result ended with representational content that includes R.

A lack of representational content. If a person lacks some representational content, the explanation for this is also stated by the Belief Rule. If a person lacks some representational content R, CT says that this is because the mind engaged in constrained elegant updating and as a result did not end up with representational content R. The person was aware of some representational content at the preceding moment, received some new sensations, updated its representational content as elegantly as it could, given the restriction that it maintain its connection to all of its intrinsic goods, and as a result updated to representational content that did not include R.

Action. If a person performs an action, CT’s explanation for the action is stated by the Action Rule. In particular, CT says that if a person performs an action, that is because the action is part of what the person believes will eventually lead to the permanent achievement of their intrinsic goods. In other words, if a person performs an action, that’s because the action is part of the person’s best plan for achieving their intrinsic goods.

Failure to act. Likewise, if a person fails to perform an action, CT’s explanation is stated by the Action Rule. In particular, CT says that if a person fails to perform a particular action, that is because that action is not a part of what the person believes will eventually lead to the permanent achievement of their intrinsic goods. In other words, if a person fails to perform a particular action, that is because that action simply is not a part of the person’s best plan for achieving their intrinsic goods.

Sensations produced via action and not via sense-organs. CT does not say where our sensations come from. In some cases, though, the best explanation for one or more sensations is that they are caused directly (or almost directly) by an action, and not via the stimulation of the sense-organs. In these cases, the sensation is explained by the action; the action is explained by CT as described above.

Continuing the example from the preceding sections (§§2-4), the initial explanation of the components of the phenomenon are as follows:

Person becomes aware of people-indicating sensations.

No CT explanation provided. The sensations arise from sense-organs.

Person comes to believe that they are around people.

CT Explanation: Constrained elegant updating. Believing that they are around people is part of the most elegant possible update that preserves their connection to their IGs.

Person becomes aware of anxiety sensations.

No CT explanation provided.

Person comes to believe that it is a live option that something bad is about to happen.

CT Explanation: Constrained elegant updating. Believing that being around people makes it a live option that something bad will happen is part of the most elegant possible update that preserves their connection to their IGs.

Person becomes aware of liked-people-indicating sensations.

No CT explanation provided. The sensations arise from sense-organs.

Person comes to believe that they are around people whom they like.

CT Explanation: Constrained elegant updating. Believing that they are around people whom they like is part of the most elegant possible update that preserves their connection to their IGs.

Person fails to perform the action of talking to the people.

CT Explanation: Talking to the people the person likes is not a part of the person’s best plan for achieving their IGs. So they don’t do it.

This yields the beginning of the explanation of the phenomenon. But more will remain to be explained. In the example, why is it that constrained elegant updating leads the person to believe that being around people makes it a live option that something bad will happen? Why isn’t talking to people whom they like part of the person’s best plan for achieving their intrinsic goods? The next section will explain how the explanation is completed.

§6. Completing the explanation

In the preceding section, we showed how to give initial explanations for people having or lacking representational contents and performing or not performing particular actions. In this section, we will show how to give a full explanation.

Let’s start with representational content. In the last section (§5), we explained a person’s having (or lacking) some representational content by saying that that representation content was (or was not) part of the representational content reached by constrained elegant updating. This is a general explanation, applicable to every case of representational content. To turn it into a full explanation of some specific representational content, we need to answer the question: Why did constrained elegant updating yield representational content that included (or did not include) the representational content in question?

To answer this question, we need to state the representational content the person had at the previous moment and the sensations the person is aware of now. Those plus the Belief Rule will yield the full explanation of the person having (or lacking) the representational content in question.

In practice, it is usually not necessary to state all of a person’s previous representational content or all of a person’s present sensations. One can safely omit everything that is not relevant.

Often when one attempts to ascertain the relevant previous representational contents, one will find that there are many possible candidates. This means that there will be many candidate full explanations. For instance, consider the initial explanation of a representational content given in the preceding section (§6):

Person comes to believe that it is a live option that something bad is about to happen.

CT Explanation: Constrained elegant updating. Believing that being around people makes it a live option that something bad will happen is part of the most elegant possible update that preserves their connection to their IGs.

Here we have a person who sees that there are some people around and comes to believing that it’s a live option that something bad will happen. The initial explanation here applies the Belief Rule; a full explanation will state what the relevant preceding beliefs were that made it so constrained elegant updating yielded the belief <it is a live option that something bad will happen>. We can think of many possible sets of preceding beliefs that would do this:

Potential explanation #1

At the preceding moment, the person believes that if other people are around, it is likely that the people will make fun of them. The person also believes that people aren’t really friends with people that they make fun of. Furthermore, the person has an intrinsic good of having friends and has the plan of being friends with the people around them. When people show up, the person updates their beliefs and starts to believe that it is a live option that they will now be made fun of and that their plan to be friends with surrounding people is about to fail or suffer a big setback. They believe that this would be bad.

Potential explanation #2

At the preceding moment, the person believes that they are likely to blurt out what they are thinking if other people are around. The person also believes that they think all sorts of things that are socially unacceptable to say when around other people. Further, the person has an intrinsic good of being accepted by society and part of their plan is to not say socially unacceptable things. When people show up, the person updates their beliefs and starts to believe that it is a live option that they will blurt out something socially unacceptable and that this will mess up their plan to be accepted by society. They believe that this would be bad.

It is easy to come up with other potential explanations.

If there is only one CT-compliant full explanation of some phenomenon, then according to CT, that explanation is the correct one. If there are many potential explanations, then what to do depends on whether the phenomenon being explained is taken from an actual person or is taken from a partially-specified hypothetical case. If the phenomenon is taken from a partially-specified hypothetical case, then one can either choose to add further details to the case or not. If not, the best that one can do is to list the different possible explanations. If one adds further details, one can use those details to attempt to rule out some of the possible explanations. If the phenomenon is taken from an actual case, then one should try to get further information about the person. With the new information, one can try to rule out as many of the possible explanations as one can.

Now let’s consider actions. In the preceding section (§5), we explained a person’s performing (or failing to perform) an action by saying that that action was (or was not) part of the person’s best plan for achieving their intrinsic goods. This is a general explanation that applies to all cases of action and inaction. To turn it into a full explanation of some specific case of action or inaction, we have to answer the question: Why is the action part (or not part) of the person’s best plan for achievement their intrinsic goods?

To answer this question, we need to state the representational content that the person has at the time of the action. That representational content will include the person’s best plan for achieving their intrinsic goods. That plan plus the Action Rule will give the full explanation of the person performing (or failing to perform) the action.

The same things hold here as with representational content. In practice, it is usually not necessary to state of all a person’s present representational content. In attempting to determine the person’s relevant present representational contents, one will often find that there are many possible candidate answers. Once one has the CT-compliant potential full explanations, one can either stop there or one can seek out greater information about the case in question.

§7. The order of steps

In §1, we stated four steps you have to complete in order to use CT to give a complete explanation of a phenomenon. In general, it makes sense to perform the steps in order. Become acquainted with the phenomenon first. Break the phenomenon down into components second. Explain the components using the general Belief Rule / Action Rule explanations third. Give the full explanations last.

This said, it is fine to go back and forth between steps as needed. One might gain an initial acquaintance with the phenomenon, try to break it down, find that more information is needed, go back and gain greater acquaintance with the phenomenon, break it down, try to explain the resultant basic components using CT, go back and learn more about the phenomenon, and so on. One should do whatever works best.

§8. How to check explanations

People often expect that if one manages to articulate to a person the true explanation of some psychological phenomenon the person is exhibiting, that explanation will ring true to the person or resonate with them in some way. Is this what we should expect? Should an explanation resonate with the person?

According to CT, whether or not an explanation resonates with a person is simply a matter of whether the person believes the explanation or comes to believe it upon hearing it. Whether a person will believe the explanation upon hearing it is determined by the Belief Rule. There will be cases where the person’s constrained elegant updating will cause them to believe that a proposed explanation is correct. There will also be cases where the person’s constrained elegant updating will cause them to not believe that a proposed explanation is correct. In general, the explanation’s resonating or not resonating with the person are not good signs of the explanation’s truth or falsity.

If we can’t check an explanation by seeing whether it resonates with the person, how can we check them? One could be asking two questions here. The first is “How can we tell that the explanation is correct?” The second is “How can we tell that the explanation is correct, given the truth of CT?” The first question pertains to our evidence for CT itself; this is discussed in Chapter IV. The answer to the second question is that in practice, we can’t tell with certainty. We simply apply the framework as carefully as we can, seeking to use it give the best, most elegant total explanations of observed phenomena. This is what we do with all scientific theories.

Part 2: Creating CT Charts

§1. What a CT chart is

Connection Theory can be used to explain individual psychological phenomena. It also can be used to create a diagram (“CT chart”) of a person’s entire mind. A person’s CT chart will include:

A complete list of the person’s intrinsic goods.
A complete list of the person’s modes.
An analysis of each of the person’s modes.
Diagrams that display the person’s paths to each of their IGs in each of their modes.

It may also include:

An explanation of various psychological phenomena the person experiences.
A recommendation plan for altering particular psychological phenomena.
A diagram of the recommendation plan’s recommended actions and the predicted effects.

For an example CT chart, see the Excel document “Example Chart A (Ethan).xlsx”.

§2. What a CT chart explains

A person’s CT chart, if properly constructed, will provide a specific explanation for:

Each of the person’s beliefs.
Each of the person’s actions.
How a person’s beliefs and actions typically change over time.

These in turn can be used to explain virtually all of the psychological phenomena the person experiences.

§3. What you need to create a CT chart

In order to create a CT chart, you will need time, charting materials and a person to chart.

Regarding time, the amount of time it takes to create a full CT chart depends on the skill of the charter and the state of the mind of the person being charted. With a fair degree of skill and a cooperative person, creating a full CT chart takes about 40 hours. Since 40 hours is a substantial amount of time, we are currently working to diminish it. We are testing various techniques that would expedite charting and we hope to bring the total average charting time down to 20 hours relatively soon. We also have a number of techniques that permit one to use CT without having a full chart.

Regarding charting materials, our current recommendation is to use a spreadsheet program. (Our preferred program is Microsoft Excel.) If one prefers a lo-tech alternative, one can use a large notepad and a set of erasable colored pencils. Charting goes more quickly with a spreadsheet, but at least one full CT chart has been created using only paper and pencils.

As for a person to chart, one can chart oneself or another person. If charting another person, the typical thing to do is to have conversations with the person with the explicit purpose of collecting data that will help one create the chart. Is it possible to chart someone else’s mind without having those sorts of conversations? This (i.e., “remote charting”) is an interesting possibility whose feasibility we have not yet fully assessed.

In what follows, we will assume that one is using Excel. What is said can easily be translated so as to apply to other spreadsheet programs or to pencil and paper. (With pencil and paper, “tab” can be replaced with “sheet of paper.”)

§4. The structure of a CT chart

A CT chart can conceivably be structured in a number of different ways. The standard format we currently use is this:

One tab for a list of the person’s intrinsic goods.
One tab for an analysis of the person’s modes.
One tab for each intrinsic good and the person’s path to that IG in each of their modes.

Alternatively, all IGs and paths can be put on a single tab.

Putting all IGs and paths on a single tab has advantages and disadvantages. It makes it easier to see the total role that actions, states and beliefs have in a person’s mind. On the other hand, the complexity may make it more difficult to understand the person’s paths individually. In addition, having all IGs and paths on a single tab makes it more difficult to navigate through the chart. This will be discussed further in §n.

In addition, the chart may include:

One tab for a list of the person’s psychological phenomena and the explanations given.
One tab for the person’s recommendation plan.
One tab for the diagram of the recommendation plan actions and predicted effects.

§5. The list of intrinsic goods

The first component of a person’s CT chart is the “Intrinsic Goods” tab. It includes a list of the person’s intrinsic goods. The list should be numbered. At one’s discretion, the list can be divided into groups according to theme. Along with each intrinsic good there should be an indication of who the intrinsic good involves. At the bottom of the sheet, any extra diagrams (see §n) used in the chart should be noted.

In the example here, the list marked “A” is the list of the person’s intrinsic goods. Here, the person has seven intrinsic goods which have been divided into groups on the basis of the themes “society/world,” “family,” “friends” and “other.” The list marked “B” shows which people are involved in each of the intrinsic goods. The list marked “C” notes any extra diagrams in the person’s chart.

While the list of intrinsic goods is the first component of a person’s CT chart, it is not assembled first. The order in which the components of a CT chart are assembled will be discussed after the components themselves are introduced.

§6. The description of modes

The second component of a person’s CT chart is the “Modes” tab. It includes a list of the persons’ modes with an indication of the associated color-coding, a list of inelegant beliefs the person holds across all modes and then a description of each mode individually. The individual description of each mode includes the central beliefs that the person holds in that mode but does not hold in all other modes, as well as a list of known triggers for the mode.

In the example just above, the list of modes and associated colors are marked “A.” The person here has two modes, “Regular” mode and “Submissive” mode, color-coded blue and green respectively. The area marked “B” states the inelegant beliefs the person has in both modes. The areas marked “C” are the specific descriptions of the person’s Regular mode and Submissive mode and include the central beliefs of those modes as well as their known triggers.

§7. Path diagrams

The third component of a person’s CT chart are the tabs devoted to paths to intrinsic goods. As noted above (§4), one can either put each intrinsic good and associated path diagram on their own tab, or one can put all intrinsic goods and associated path diagrams on a single tab. In what follows, the examples will assume that one has chosen to give each intrinsic good and associated path diagram its own tab.

Every path diagram is composed of a number of boxes and arrows. The boxes form overlapping and interconnected chains, starting from one or more boxes at the top of the diagram and going down to a single box at the bottom. The boxes in the chains are connected by arrows in various patterns. The arrows head downward, linking the boxes together and ultimately point to the one box at the bottom.

These interconnected boxes display the person’s path to a single intrinsic good. The box at the bottom of a path diagram contains a description of the person’s intrinsic good. All of the remaining boxes contain descriptions of actions or states that are part of the person’s path to the intrinsic good in question in at least one of the person’s modes. The solid arrows connecting the boxes indicate what is needed for what. A solid arrow from box X to box Y indicates that the contents of box X at least partially leads to Y, i.e., at least partially makes Y possible or actual.

The example just above is a path diagram. The box marked “C” is the intrinsic good. In this case, the intrinsic good is “being understood by my father. The boxes marked “A” are the steps in the person’s plan for achieving the intrinsic good. In this case, the steps are “keep track of the important changes that take place in my life” and “tell my father about important changes in my life.” The arrows, marked “B”, indicate which steps in the persons’ plan lead to which. Here, in the plan, the step “keep track of the important changes that take place in my life” is supposed to make possible the step “tell my father about important changes in my life,” which is then supposed to cause the intrinsic good “be understood by my father” to be achieved.

The example just given displays a very simple path diagram. In it, one step leads to the next, which leads to the intrinsic good. Not all path diagrams are so simple. In many cases two or more steps will lead to a single step. This can occur in two ways. First, it could be that a single way of achieving some step involves two or more immediately preceding steps. Whenever this happens, we use “joint arrows,” i.e., multiple arrows meeting at a single point. Second, there could be multiple ways of achieving the same step. Whenever this happens, we use “independent arrows,” i.e., multiple arrows that point to the same box but do not meet at a single point on that box.

For example, consider the above path diagram. The path diagram here includes both joint arrows and independent arrows. The circled arrows marked “A” are a case of joint arrows. The fact that there are arrows coming from “call my mother on holidays” and “give my mother thoughtful Christmas and birthday gifts” and meeting at the same point on “do ‘good son’ activities” indicates that the person believes that calling their mother on holidays and giving their mother thoughtful Christmas and birthday gifts are individually insufficient but are together sufficient for doing what they consider to be “good son” activities. The circled arrows marked “B” are a case of independent arrows. The fact that there are arrows coming from “interact with my mother and do not act in an irritating fashion” and “don’t interact with my mother” and reaching different points on “don’t irritate my mother” indicates that the person believes that each of these activities is individually sufficient for not irritating their mother.

The boxes and arrows in a path diagram can be modified in various ways to encode different types of information. Boxes and arrows can be color-coded. Boxes can be given borders of different styles. Arrows can be solid or dotted. Right now there is a semi-standard way of encoding different things:

Boxes

Red border – intrinsic good
Black border – part of the person’s path in every mode
Other color borders – indicates different modes
Gray sunburst – person believes themselves powerless to achieve this
Filled with white text – person has an attainment reaction regarding this

Arrows

Solid – leads to, i.e., at least partially makes possible or causes
Dotted – helps with but is not essential to

We’ve already seen examples of some of these. Here is an example with all of them:

The intrinsic good is indicated by a red border. The presence of two colors besides black and red indicates that the person has two modes and thus two different paths to that intrinsic good. Things that are part of the first path only are in blue. Things that are part of the second path only are in green. Things that are part of all (i.e., both) paths are in black and do not have a gray sunburst. The box with a black border and a gray sunburst, on the right, indicates something that the person believes themselves powerless to accomplish. The dotted arrow at the top indicates something that helps but is not essential for the box the arrow is pointing to. Finally, the two boxes with colored fills and white text indicate attainment reactions. The box with blue fill and white text indicates that while in the blue mode, the person automatically believes that they believe what their current friends believe. The box with green fill and white text indicates that while in the green mode, the person automatically believes that they have overwhelming charisma.

It is possible to use different methods to encode information in a chart. For instance, if one does not want to use color-coding, one can give boxes different style borders and use different style fills.

If you encode information in the chart in a non-standard way, it may be useful to to add a new tab to the chart entitled “Key” and include a description there that will show others how to read the chart.

§8. The explanation of psychological phenomena

In addition to the list of intrinsic goods, description of modes and path diagrams, a person’s CT chart can also include a tab devoted to tracking the noteworthy psychological phenomena the person exhibits. This tab should include a running list of the phenomena, an indication of the type of each phenomenon and a CT-compliant explanation of the phenomena once one has been given.

In the above example, the list marked “A” are the phenomena, the list marked “B” shows the type of each phenomena and the list marked “C” states the explanation of each phenomena, once that explanation has been given.

§9. The stages of creating a CT chart

The process of creating a CT chart can be broken down into three stages.

Stage 1: Initial construction of path diagrams (§12)
Stage 2: Recognition and addition of modes (§20)
Stage 3: Completion of chart (§26)

These stages are followed in a roughly linear fashion. This means that one will shift from doing mostly Stage 1 activities to doing mostly Stage 2 activities, then finally to doing mostly Stage 3 activities. All the while, though, one will probably be doing activities from the other stages.

Each of these stages and the associated activities will be described in the following sections.

§10. Interpreting the stream of phenomena

Before going through the stages of constructing a person’s CT chart, it is important to understand the primary task involved at every stage. That task is: interpreting the stream of phenomena exhibited by the person.

Every person exhibits a stream of phenomena. The person moves, talks, pictures things, has verbal thoughts, has emotions and so on. It is the job of the person creating the CT chart to carefully examine this stream of phenomena, to discern which phenomena should be explained and then to provide the best possible explanations for those phenomena.

To do this, the person creating the chart will need to be able to do various things. The person will need to be attentive; some phenomena are very subtle and will escape notice if one is not careful. The person will need to be able to discern which phenomena are important and which are not. Most importantly, the person will need to be able to generate explanations and test those explanations against the evidence. In this regard, the person charting is like a detective or scientist. In fact, while creating a CT chart it is useful to think about oneself as being a detective. The phenomena are the clues; the question to answer is: “How is this person’s mind structured?”

This sort of detective work is not necessary in all cases. In some cases the work has already been done; we have a small collection of phenomena that have already been explained. When one encounters these phenomena, one can apply the ready-made explanations. For all other phenomena though, the detective work is necessary. In the future we will attempt to develop an exhaustive collection of psychological phenomena and attendant explanations. After we have done this, the total amount of detective work needed will significantly diminish.

§11. The amount of detail to include

As one notes and explains psychological phenomena, one will add information to the person’s CT chart. Now if one wanted, one could add a truly enormous amount of detail, breaking down every single step on every path diagram into its tiniest components, listing on the “Modes” tab every single inelegant belief held in every mode, and so on.

This amount of detail, however, is not necessary. In fact, it would be counterproductive. Trying to read a chart that broke down every step into its tiniest components and that included every single inelegant belief a person had would be enormously difficult.

How much detail should one include? The answer is: include all information that is psychologically significant, including enough information to make each of the person’s path diagrams fully understandable. What counts as “psychologically significant”? How much information is needed to make a path diagram “fully understandable”? One will have to make judgment calls here.

One might worry that if one has to make judgment calls, one might choose incorrectly. But there is no need to worry here. If one omits some psychologically significant factor, one can go back and add it in later. If one includes too much detail, the extra information can be removed. In general it is probably best to err on the side of adding more information rather than less. As one gains practice making charts, it becomes clear fairly quickly what information needs to be included and what information can be omitted.

§12. The degree of precision required

Now while one does not need to include every detail on a chart (§11), it is extremely important that what is included is extremely precise. There is an enormous difference between the step “follow all of the social rules” and “follow almost all of the social rules.” The former does not permit exceptions; the latter permits exceptions and allows for much more flexibility.

Precision is especially important when it comes to the statement of intrinsic goods. There is a world of difference between “being understood by someone” and “understanding someone” or between “being understood by someone” and “being cared for by someone.” Thus when one thinks that one has found an intrinsic good, it is definitely worthwhile to take some time and try to state that intrinsic good as precisely as possible.

§13. Stage 1: initial construction of path diagrams

When one begins a new CT chart, the chart will be blank. The first major task is to construct the path diagrams. At this point, one will not know what the person’s intrinsic goods are or what their modes are. So one will have to create the path diagrams without having this information. Eventually, as a result of creating path diagrams, one will pinpoint the person’s intrinsic goods and determine what modes they have.

We will discuss the construction of path diagrams over the new several sections (§§14-19).

§14. The action charting procedure

The primary way to begin constructing path diagrams is by what we call the “action charting procedure.” At this point one will not know what “IG + path” tabs to put boxes on, so one can put all of the boxes and arrows on a single tab. Later it will become clear which boxes and arrows can be moved to their own tab.

This is what the CT chart will look like before you start adding boxes. All four of the tabs here should be included.

The action charting procedure goes as follows. Start by selecting any action that the person performs. Now add a box describing that action to the chart. Do not connect the new box to other boxes with arrows yet. If you know what mode that action is performed in, you can modify the box to indicate the mode. If the action is performed in all modes or if you don’t know what mode the action is performed in, have the box indicate that the action is performed in all modes.

The box in the example just above has a black border to indicate that this is something the person does in all modes. We’re defaulting to that right now because we have not yet ascertained what the person’s modes are.

The next part of the action charting procedure involves working both upwards and downwards from the box just added. To work upwards from box X, consider the question: “What does the person believe needs to be the case for X to happen?” In some cases, there won’t be anything worth noting that the person believes needs to be done for X to happen; the person will believe that X is something that is already the case, they can simply do or they must simply wait for. In those cases, there are no boxes above box X. In all other cases there will be one or more things worth noting that the person believes need to be the case for X to happen. Whenever there are such things, those things should be put into one or more boxes above box X and arrows should be added coming down from those boxes to box X in the appropriate configuration.

In this example, the person has two different answers to the question: “What needs to happen for me to do well in my classes?” First, the person believes they can do well in their classes by studying hard and by doing all the work. Second, the person believes they can do well in their classes by doing just the bare minimum and then getting out of the rest of their work by giving various excuses. Each of these answers involves two different actions or states, so the person’s answer yields four boxes, two pairs of two boxes each, that go above the original “Do well in my classes” box.

That’s how to work upwards from a box. To work downwards, consider the question: “What does the person believe X helps them accomplish?” In some cases, the person does not believe that the thing will help them accomplish anything further. In that case, there are no boxes below box X and box X is an intrinsic good. In all other cases, there will be one or more things worth noting that the thing helps the person accomplish. Those things should be put into one or more boxes below box X and arrows should be added coming down from box X to those boxes. (It is worth noting that while having no boxes below implies being an intrinsic good, having boxes below does not imply not being an intrinsic good. Both intrinsic goods and non-intrinsic goods can have boxes below them; however, only intrinsic goods can fail to have boxes below them.)

Continuing the example from before, we might imagine that the person think that doing well in their classes helps them accomplish three things: first, it helps make their parents happy, second it helps confirm that they’ve learned something from their classes and third, it helps them to be what they consider to be a high-achieving person.

The process can now be repeated, working upwards and downwards from all of the new boxes that have been added to the chart. Once all of the new boxes on the chart have been exhausted, one can start again by taking some action not yet accounted for, adding it to its own place on the chart and then building upwards and downwards again. If new boxes being added connect to the boxes already on the chart, connect them with arrows in the appropriate manner.

This explains the action charting procedure. The ultimate goal is to fully chart all of a person’s intrinsic goods and their paths to their intrinsic goods.

Now there are a few questions one might have. How does one determine what a person’s actions are? Or a person’s beliefs? Or a person’s intrinsic goods? This is where the detective work comes in (see §10). Look at the explanations of action (II.1.§5.2) and belief (II.1.§4.5). Look at the definition of intrinsic good (II.1.§4.6). Look at what CT says about actions, beliefs and intrinsic goods. Pay attention to what the person says and does, and if the person is yourself, what the person thinks and feels. Then construct the best explanations you can of the observed phenomena. Those explanations will include identifying various things as actions, postulating that the person has particular beliefs and intrinsic goods, and so on.

Of course, in some cases this can be difficult, especially when it comes to determining a person’s beliefs and intrinsic goods. As a result, we will spend the next two sections discussing in greater detail how to determine a person’s beliefs (§15) and intrinsic goods (§16).

§15. Determining what a person believes

Determining what a person beliefs is not as straightforward as it might seem.

Let’s begin by considering speech actions. Speech actions include speaking and writing, as well as having verbal thoughts, i.e., saying or hearing words in one’s mind. One way people typically try to determine a person’s beliefs is by examining that person’s speech actions and taking those to be accurate reflections of the person’s beliefs. If a person is trying determine their own beliefs, they examine the things they say and write as well as their verbal thoughts. If a person is trying to determine someone else’s beliefs, they examine the things the other person says or writes. The various speech actions are then taken to indicate the other person’s beliefs.

For example, suppose that a person frequently has the verbal thought: “I’m a stupid person.” This person might try to ascertain their own beliefs, note that they frequently think “I’m a stupid person” and conclude that they believe that they are a stupid person. Or suppose that a person is trying to determine another person’s beliefs. The first person asks the second whether they care about making the world a better place. The second person says “Yes, of course!” The first person may conclude that the second person cares about making the world a better place. “Caring about something” is currently interpreted as believing that that thing is part of what will lead to one’s intrinsic goods being fulfilled (II.3.§n). Thus the first person may conclude that the second person believes that making the world a better place is part of what they believe will lead to their intrinsic goods being fulfilled and hence is present on one of their path diagrams.

Unfortunately, this method frequently yields incorrect results. CT can explain why. First, speaking and writing are actions. These actions are typically performed in order to cause some effect in one or more interlocutors. The same is true for verbal thoughts. As discussed in II.3.§n, the best current interpretation of verbal thoughts is that they are actions the person does for the sake of an interlocutor whom they believe knows their thoughts. Hence all types of speech actions are actions performed in order to cause some effect in one or more interlocutors. We would like the person’s goal to be:

Accurately conveying their beliefs.

Many times this will be the person’s intention. However, in many cases the person will have other goals, such as:

Gaining acceptance by indicating agreement.
Gaining acquiescence by verbal force.
Proving intelligence by displaying particular statements.
Accurately conveying their beliefs about their beliefs.

If a person is speaking, writing or having verbal thoughts to gain acceptance by indicating agreement, then the person may not be accurately conveying their beliefs via what they say, write or verbally think. Likewise if the person has other goals beyond merely accurately conveying their beliefs.

Consider again the examples from above. Suppose a person notices that they have frequent verbal thoughts like “I’m a stupid person,” and concludes that they believe that they are a stupid person. This could be correct. But it also could be a mistake. The person could have an intrinsic good of social acceptance, believe that society must know them in order to accept them and believe that they are powerless to get society to know them unless society automatically knows everyone. This would cause the person to come to believe that society automatically knows them and hence automatically knows their thoughts. With this in place, the person might verbally think “I’m a stupid person” for all sorts of reasons. They could be aiming the speech action at society with the intent of accurately conveying their beliefs to society. Or they could be aiming the speech action at society with the intent of gaining acceptance by indicating agreement with society. The person might believe that society considers them to be stupid and has a higher opinion of people who agree with society than of those who disagree. Then the person could be indicating agreement with society for the sake of improving society’s opinion of them. And the person could do this while believing that they are an extremely intelligent person and not at all stupid. The same motivation – gaining acceptance by indicating agreement – could be at work in the second example above as well, when the person answers “Yes, of course!” to the question “Do you care about making the world a better place?”

Having noted that there are all sorts of potential motivations at work when a person performs a speech action, it is still possible for a person to report their own beliefs. As a result, one of the ways we determine a person’s beliefs is as follows:

Examine the person’s speech actions.
Rule out motivations other than accurately reporting their beliefs.
Conclude that the person’s speech actions accurately reflect their beliefs.

It is important to realize that ruling out motivations other than accurately reporting beliefs is not the same as “discerning liars from truth-tellers.” It is quite possible for a person to be completely convinced that they are performing a speech action only for the sake of accurately reporting their beliefs and yet actually be performing the speech action for some other reason entirely. For instance, suppose that a person has an intrinsic good of social acceptance and believes that in their current circumstance it is completely socially unacceptable to perform speech actions other than for the sake of accurately reporting their beliefs. Suppose further that the person believes something that it is socially unacceptable to believe, for instance, that white people are intrinsically superior to non-white people. Then the person is in a bind. They can’t accurately report their belief and they can’t other than accurately report their belief. What might happen? Several things might result here. One thing that might happen is the person might have an attainment reaction and come to believe that they believe that people of all skin colors are intrinsically equal. Then the person would believe that they believe that people of all skin colors are intrinsically equal while believing that white people are intrinsically superior to non-white people. Then the person might report their belief about their belief and say “I really do think that people of all skin colors are intrinsically equal” while speaking honestly and yet while believing that white people are intrinsically superior to non-white people. How can the person say something other than what they believe and yet be speaking honestly? By being wrong in their beliefs about what they believe.

Beyond taking appropriately screened speech actions as indicators of beliefs, there are a few other ways to ascertain a person’s beliefs. First, one can look for tacit suppositions. If a person says X but it only makes sense for them to say X if they are tacitly assuming Y, then one can infer that they believe Y.

Next, one can use thought experiments. Suppose one is trying to figure out why a person spends so much time talking to their parents. One can use various thought experiments. “Suppose that you knew your parents hated talking to you. Would you still spend the same amount of time talking to them?” “Suppose you knew that your parents would understand you better if you talked to them less often. Would you still spend the same amount of time talking to them?” And so on. Regarding using thought experiments, two things are worth noting. First, it is important to make sure that the person is actually doing the right thought experiment. There is an enormous difference between “Would you, as you are right now, be unhappy if you found out you were going to stop caring about professional success?” and “Suppose you stop caring about professional success. Would you be unhappy?” Second, the goal of a thought experiment is to get a person to report a belief that they would have if they were in a particular circumstance. Sometimes when people do thought experiments and report the results, they report the belief they would have had, had the circumstance in the thought experiment been real. Other times, though, they just report what beliefs they believe they would have. In such cases a person with an inaccurate self-conception may give incorrect answers.

The last technique we will mention for ascertaining beliefs is checking for emotional resonance. This technique has only been tested briefly, so the results of using it should be accepted only with caution. To check for emotional resonance, a person should say aloud or in their minds some statement. Then the person should introspect and check their emotional reaction to the statement. We currently tentatively believe that there is a difference in emotional feeling after saying statements that are believed and after statements that are not. We don’t know how to describe the feeling. Instead, one should simply try the technique and look for patterns of similarity. One of the feelings will be the “this is something I believe” feeling. While using this technique, it is important to remember that checking for emotional resonance is not the same as having a verbal thought. Checking one’s verbal thoughts involves listening to what one says in one’s mind. Checking for emotional resonance involves pay attention to the feelings one has when one says various things either aloud or in one’s mind.

Two last notes. First, when attempting to determine what someone believes, it is important to distinguish between the person’s beliefs and the person’s beliefs about their beliefs. Sometimes when a person tries to report their beliefs they succeed. Other times they end up reporting their beliefs about their beliefs. Beliefs about beliefs can be useful if the person has formed the meta-beliefs as a result of carefully paying attention to themselves, weighing evidence and updating elegantly. Beliefs about beliefs are less useful when a person has an incorrect understanding of themselves, either as a result of inadequately examining the evidence or because of inelegant updating.

Lastly, it should be stated explicitly the CT state-of-the-art on ascertaining beliefs is something of a hodgepodge. We have very good reason to believe that people can accurately report their beliefs. This is for two reasons. First, it seems that one of the primary skills a person acquires during language acquisition is the ability to describe their own past experiences. It seems that this would be difficult or impossible if a person did not have the ability to report their own beliefs. Second, the success of CT charting depends on it and we have successfully created some CT charts. So we have good reason to believe that people can report their own beliefs correctly. Despite this, we do not currently understand how it is possible for a person to report their beliefs. Does reporting belief X involve acting on belief X? Or does it require acting on the belief that one has belief X? On one hand, it seems obviously that reporting belief X requires acting on the belief that one has belief X. On the other hand, in practice it seems that people can report both beliefs and meta-beliefs. We hope to resolve this issue in short order.

§16. Determining a person’s intrinsic goods

One of the most important goals in creating a person’s CT chart is finding and correctly articulating all of their intrinsic goods.

There are several ways to identify intrinsic goods. The first is by the action charting procedure (§14). Select a box on the person’s chart. Try to find any boxes beneath it. If there are no boxes beneath it, i.e., if it does not help the person accomplish anything further, then it is an intrinsic good.

Two notes on this. First, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether some state helps the person accomplish anything further. So it is sometimes difficult to tell whether there are any boxes beneath a given box. When it is difficult, it is perfectly fine to tentatively postulate that something is an intrinsic good. If something turns out to not be an intrinsic good, this can easily be fixed when the mistake is discovered. (Also, in many cases not getting all the way down to the intrinsic good will not cause serious problems in many regards, since deep goods often behave like intrinsic goods (II.2.§n).) Second, when used flawlessly, everything revealed by this method to be an intrinsic good is in fact an intrinsic good. But even when used flawlessly, this method may not reveal all of a person’s intrinsic goods.

This may seem strange. For an intrinsic good to not be identified as such by this method, the intrinsic good would have to occur somewhere in a path diagram other than the very bottom. But that would mean that the so-called intrinsic good would be part of the person’s plan to achieve something further. So how could it still be an intrinsic good? The answer is that being an intrinsic good is not the same as not being useful to a person for anything further. Instead, being an intrinsic good is being one of the ultimate motivators of a person’s actions (II.1.§4.6). But something can be an ultimate source of motivation and yet still be useful for achieving other things. Consider the common intrinsic good “being accepted by society.” For those who have it, being accepted by society is an ultimate source of motivation. But being accepted by society is also very clearly useful for a large number of other things, and so being accepted by society may be part of a person’s plan for achieving other intrinsic goods. This is a case where the same thing is both an intrinsic good and part of a person’s plan for achieving something further.

Let’s call any box that has boxes beneath it an “instrumental good” and say that such things are “instrumentally good”? How does one identify intrinsic goods that are also instrumentally good? One can consider hypothetical situations. If something is an intrinsic good for a person, then that person will still pursue it even if every other intrinsic good is already fulfilled. If something is an intrinsic good for a person, the person will still pursue it even if they know that doing so will make it harder for them to achieve all of their other intrinsic goods. Thus one can have the person consider: “Would you still pursue this even if all of your other intrinsic goods are fulfilled? Would you still pursue this even if you knew that doing so would make it harder to achieve every one of your other intrinsic goods?” If the person’s answer is yes, then the thing in question is an intrinsic good.

Two notes on this as well. First, as with everything it is important to be sure that a person’s answers to your questions actually reflect the state of their mind. See §15 on this. Second, in using this method one should exercise caution if one asks the question: “Would you still pursue this even if you knew that doing so would make it impossible for you to achieve your other intrinsic goods?” The mechanism by which people consider hypotheticals is not well understood and asking this question may lead a person to consider a circumstance that it is psychologically impossible for them to be in – a case where they cannot achieve all of their intrinsic goods. So it is open that this sort of question would yield misleading answers.

Another way to identify intrinsic goods is by looking at the current List of Intrinsic Goods. According to CT, if a person has any concept that appears on the List of IGs, then that person has that thing as an intrinsic good as well. So if a person has the concept “social acceptance,” for instance, and “social acceptance” appears on the List of IGs, then that person has social acceptance as an intrinsic good.

Of course, this recommendation is not particularly useful right now as we do not yet have an intrinsic goods officially on the List of IGs. Nevertheless, one can use a modified version of this recommendation: if a person has some concept that appears on the tentative list of intrinsic goods (see II.1.§6.2), then it is worth considering whether that concept is the concept of an intrinsic good.

Finally, the intrinsic goods that have been observed so far are quite similar to one another (see II.1.§6.2). As a result, it seems somewhat likely that the other IGs will resemble the IGs on the tentative list. Thus one can use the tentative list to provide some guidance in terms of what sorts of things to look for.

These last suggestions that refer to the List of IGs and the tentative list should be employed cautiously. It is often difficult to tell what concepts a person has. Most people use the word “truth”; it does not follow that most have the concept of an objective reality.

§17. Including self-perceptions of powerlessness

In addition to the actions and states that are part of a person’s plan to achieve their IGs, path diagrams can also include indications of the relevant ways in which the person believes themselves to be powerless. This is done by including a specially marked box; the standard color-coding is a gray sunburst in a black box. The box contains the action the person believes they are powerless to perform or the state they believe they are powerless to bring about. The box is then linked by an arrow to the box that would follow, if the original powerlessness box actually were a part of the person’s plan. That is to say, if person has X as part of their plan, the person would achieve X via Y if Y were part of their plan and the person believes that they’re powerless to do Y, then Y should be added in a powerlessness box and connected to X with an arrow.

In the example above, both the boxes marked “A” and “B” indicates ways in which the person believes themselves to be powerless. First, the person believes themselves to be powerless to gain overwhelming charisma. According to the person, they either have it or they don’t, but if they don’t, they can’t get it. This is indicated in the box marked “A”. That box is connected to the box that says “use my overwhelming charisma.” Why? Because if “gain overwhelming charisma” now became a part of the person’s path to the IG of having some friends, the next step in the path would be “use my overwhelming charisma.” Second, the person believes themselves to be powerless to make friends without using overwhelming charisma. This is the box marked “B.” That box is connected to the box “make new friends” because if gaining the ability to make friends without using overwhelming charisma became part of the person’s path, the next step in the path would be “make new friends.”

There are a few ways to locate relevant areas of powerlessness. One is by going through a person’s paths step by step and examining each step. For each step, there will be something the person is trying to achieve. One should ask: “Does this step make sense? Is there a better way to achieve the thing the person is trying to achieve?” Whenever one encounters a step where a person is not taking the most effective means to their goals, it may be worthwhile to ask the person questions to determine if some self-perception of powerlessness is leading the person to take sub-optimal means.

Another way to locate areas of powerlessness is by looking at attainment reactions. A person can only have an attainment reaction if they believe that they would be powerless to make the relevant thing switch from not being the case to being the case.

Consider the above example. Let’s examine the steps first. The first step goes from having overwhelming charisma (and perhaps dressing well) to using the overwhelming charisma. Does this make sense? To use charisma, one must have it first. So that makes sense. And the use of charisma may require looking a particular way. So that makes sense. So the first step checks out. The next step goes from using overwhelming charisma to making new friends. Does this make sense? Certainly, one might be able to make new friends by using overwhelming charisma. But doesn’t that seem like a bit of overkill? Wouldn’t it be easier to make friends in the normal ways people make friends? This indicates that the person may have some self-perception of powerlessness here. We could imagine asking the person and finding out that they believe that they don’t have the ability to make new friends unless they can have some enormously overwhelming affect on people. If a person answered this way, this would show that they believed themselves powerless to make new friends without using overwhelming charisma. Then we would put the relevant powerlessness box on the chart to indicate this; this would be the box marked “B” above.

Now let’s look for attainment reactions. The person has one, as indicated by the box with white text and green fill. In particular, the person believes themselves to have overwhelming charisma as a result of an attainment reaction. This indicates that the person believes themselves to be powerless to gain overwhelming charisma if they turn out to not have it already. This self-perception of powerlessness is indicated by the box marked “A” above.

If one is making a chart for oneself, it is often difficult to locate one’s own relevant self-perceptions of powerlessness. Consider any self-perceived area of powerlessness. Either the person will believe they can overcome it or not. If they believe they can overcome it, then it shouldn’t be included on the chart as a self-perception of powerlessness. Why? If a person believes that they are powerless to do X but believe that they can overcome this, then the person’s path can simply involve first, overcoming the powerlessness to do X, and second, doing X. (One way to summarize the conclusion here: one should only chart self-perceptions of inescapable powerlessness.) So the person should not chart the self-perception of powerlessness if they believe they can overcome it. But if they believe they can’t overcome it, why bother charting it? It is impractical to chart every thing we’re inescapably powerless to achieve. We can’t alter the past. Should we chart that? We can’t undo mathematics. Should we chart that? It only makes sense to chart self-perceptions of powerlessness that can feasibly be overcome. But then for every self-perception of powerlessness, a person charting themselves will either think that it can be overcome and so should not be charted, or cannot be overcome and so should not be charted.

This problem does not arise when charting other people. Someone can believe that they are inescapably powerless to do X, and one can simply disagree with them and believe that in fact it is quite possible for them to gain the ability to do X. In that case, one could record the self-perception of powerlessness on the chart. The person being charted will not see the point, but that does not matter.

In practice, this obstacle to charting one’s own mind can be overcome in a number of ways. The easiest is to invent some independent criteria to use when marking down self-perceptions of powerlessness. For instance, one might make it a rule to mark down self-perceptions of inescapable powerlessness whenever one knows that others would consider them irrational for believing themselves to be inescapably powerless. Then so long as one can be motivated to follow the rule, one will bypass the obstacle.

§18. Common mistakes on path diagrams

This section will note some common mistakes that are made on path diagrams:

Including beliefs relevant to a path but not part of the part as part of the path.

Consider the following example:

Let’s suppose that the person in question here does not believe that their beliefs literally shape reality. Given that, it is clear that there is a mistake here. The last step, from “have everyone live in harmony” to “help a lot of people,” makes sense. If one can have everyone live in harmony, then one will have helped or be helping a lot of people. The first step though, from “convince people around me to live in harmony” and “believe that the people I affect will be examples to others,” does not make sense. How could convincing some small group of people to live in harmony and then believing that those people will be examples to others lead to everyone living in harmony? What is needed here isn’t the belief that those people will be examples to others. One actually needs those people to be examples to others.

Here’s what happened. The person charting found that the person being charted believed that the people they affected would be examples to others. Given that belief, the person being charted had a path involving convincing the people around them to live in harmony while also having the people they affected be examples to others. This would lead to the people around them being examples to others, which would lead to everyone living in harmony, which would fulfill the intrinsic good of helping people. So the belief “the people I affect will be examples to others” is a belief that’s relevant to the person’s path. But it’s not itself part of the path. Rather, the path should look like this:

Beliefs should only be a part of a path diagram when having some belief is actually one of the steps in a person’s plan. There are some common situations where this happens, such as when a person needs to have some set of beliefs in order to gain social acceptance. And there are some less common situations, such as when a person plans to purposefully induce specific beliefs in themselves later on in order to cause some effect. But most commonly the having of beliefs is not part of the path to an intrinsic good at all. The person has beliefs regarding the steps of the path. But those beliefs are not themselves steps in the path.

(Other common mistakes will be added as I come across them.)

§19. Tracking phenomena to explain

At all times while creating a CT chart, one should record any noteworthy psychological phenomena the person exhibits or mentions. These include, but are not limited to:

Beliefs that seem inelegant
Desires that seem contrary to a person’s goals
Actions that seem pointless or contrary to a person’s goals
Emotions that occur at counterintuitive times
Any phenomena the person wants to change or eliminate

These should be recorded on the “Phenomena to Explain” tab.

There are several reasons to keep track of the noteworthy psychological phenomena a person exhibits. First, one of the purposes of CT charting is to explain these phenomena. Second, keeping track of these phenomena will help with the construction of the chart. If there are any phenomena recorded that cannot be explained using the chart as it is, then according to CT the chart is either incomplete or inaccurate. Either way, the chart needs to be improved. Once one finds explanations for the phenomena, then those explanations will indicate what needs to change on the chart.

For example, suppose one discovers that the person being charted believes that society is always watching them. That’s almost certainly an inelegant belief. Why? When the person is alone there is overwhelming evidence that no one is watching them. And yet the person believes that society is watching. It follows that the person is believing against the evidence and thus has been updating inelegantly. After noting this, one records the fact that the person believes that society is always watching on the “Phenomena to Explain” tab.

This is marked “A” on the above diagram. “B” marks the fact that the phenomena has not been explained yet.

Now that one has noted the unexplained phenomena, one can try to explain it. There is a standard explanation for the belief that society is always watching, which is that the person has an IG involving society (e.g., social acceptance), believes that to fulfill it society must see them and believes that they would be powerless to get society to see them if it didn’t automatically do so. The mechanism is this. The person has an IG involving society (e.g., social acceptance). Thus the person needs to believe that they will stand in some relation to society (e.g., being accepted by society). But the person believes that to stand in this relation to society, society has to see them. So the person believes that society will see them. But the person believes that they don’t have the power to get society to see them if it doesn’t already. So they come to believe (attainment reaction) that society already and always does see them.

Having explained the phenomena, we can now go back to the chart, record the explanation and then modify the chart so as to accommodate the explanation. In the diagram above, we can see that the person has the IG of social acceptance; this is marked “C”. That fits. Then we go to that tab and add the relevant material to the path diagram. This may involve add various things. For instance, suppose the person’s current path diagram looks like this:

There is no indication here of the need for the person to be seen by society for the sake of fulfilling their IG. So this should be added. This can be accomplished as follows:

The circled boxes and the arrows coming down from them are the new components. They make it so the chart now displays the person’s believing that they are always seen by society and shows the role that being seen by society plays in their pursuit of the IGs.

By keeping track of noteworthy psychological phenomena, one will have a ready supply of puzzles to solve that will help make the person’s chart more accurate and more complete. If one wants, one can begin the charting process by asking the person if they know of any noteworthy psychological characteristics they have or want to explain. People often know some of the unusual features of their psyche and can simply tell you. Also, many times when a person wants to have their mind charted it will be because the person wants to alter or eliminate various features of their mind. All of the things that a person wants to change or eliminate can be recorded as well. This will enable one to create a partial list of phenomena to start off with.

§20. Stage 2: addition of modes

After working on path diagrams for a while, it is very likely that one will encounter evidence of modes. This is not a necessary fact. Some people, especially people who have already completed a CT recommendation plan, may not have any modes (or, what is the same, may have just one mode). But most people, especially people who are having a chart made for the first time, will have at least two or three major modes.

In the new few sections we will discuss detecting, analyzing and charting people’s modes.

§21. Detecting modes

There are two main ways to detect modes. The first is by finding different paths with mutually inconsistent elements.

In the above example, the person charting is working in the “Initial Path Worksheet” tab, trying to figure out the person’s various intrinsic goods and paths. It seems, though, that there’s a conflict. On one hand, it is part of the person’s plan for having some friends that they believe what their current friends believe. On the other hand, it is part of the person’s plan for some as-yet-undetermined intrinsic good that they determine the truth about morality and society. This isn’t a conceptual conflict; it could be that their current friends happen to believe the truth about morality and society. But let’s add that in this case, the person explicitly believes that their friends’ beliefs about morality and society are false. Then there is a conflict. The person’s path to having some friends is inconsistent with the path fragment that pertains to knowing the truth about morality and society.

What does this mean? It could mean a few things. First, it could mean that there is an error in the chart. Perhaps the person doesn’t need to agree with their current friends about everything. Or perhaps the person doesn’t need to find the truth about morality and society; perhaps they only need to come to have reasonable beliefs about morality and society. If the chart has been properly constructed, it could mean that the person simply has never realized that there is a conflict. In many cases this can be remedied simply by informing the person. But if the chart has been properly constructed and the person recognizes the conflict, it follows that the person has modes.

Speaking more generally, no person will have paths at any specific time that they recognize to be inconsistent at that time. This means that if a person has paths that they recognize to be inconsistent, then they don’t have those paths at the same time. Rather, they have modes. At some times, they have one set of paths. At another time, they have another set.

The second main way to recognize modes is simply by noticing consistent patterns of belief change. If a person switches back and forth between identifiable sets of beliefs and actions, that also indicates that the person has modes.

§22. Determining the features of modes

Modes are essentially characterized by a small number of beliefs. These beliefs have two important features. First, they play an important role in determining one or more of a person’s paths, so that a change in the beliefs will result in a noteworthy change in one or more paths. Second, they are tenuously held, so that the person will go back and forth between having the beliefs and not having them on the basis of elegant (yes, elegant) updating.

To fully include modes in a chart, information needs to be recorded in two places. particular types of information need to be recorded in two places. Each mode needs to be analyzed. The analysis of the modes gets included on the “Modes” tab. And each mode needs to be incorporated into every path diagram. When the modes are fully charted, every mode will have an analysis on the “Modes” tab and there will be a path to each intrinsic good from each mode included in the path diagrams.

In order to gather the needed information, as soon as one determines that there are modes one can start keeping notes on the modes. This can be done on the “Modes” tab, on a new tab or on the relevant Intrinsic Good + Path tab. One should keep track of and/or try to determine:

The beliefs that a person has in a mode but not in all modes
The actions that a person takes in a mode but not in all modes
Things that trigger a person entering a mode (i.e., “triggers”)
Things that trigger a person exiting a mode and entering another (i.e., “anti-triggers”)

For beliefs and actions, the first step is to accumulate pairs of mutually inconsistent beliefs that a person switches back and forth between. As one accumulates pairs, look for coherences among the beliefs. Some beliefs will fit in nicely with other beliefs, at least within the context of the person’s constantly held beliefs. The goal will be to divide up the beliefs into as small a number of internally coherent sets as possible. While you’re doing this, you’ll be able to see that some paths require that the person have particular beliefs. This will allow you to associate different conflicting paths with the different inconsistent sets of beliefs.

After one has begun to piece together the sets of beliefs and associated paths, it is convenient to name the modes. Names should be short and easy to use and also should very clearly indicate, at least to the person charting and the person being charted, what essentially characterizes the mode or what distinguishes the mode from other modes.

Once one has linked enough beliefs and actions to a mode, the next step is to find the beliefs that essentially characterize the mode. Let’s suppose that there are seven beliefs that are unique to some mode. When the person is in that mode, they have those beliefs. When the person is not, they do not. Now we should expect that just one or two (or maybe three) of those beliefs will be the central beliefs. Those beliefs will be the ones that the person goes back and forth on as a result of elegant updating. When those beliefs come, all of the other beliefs unique to the mode come. When those beliefs go, so do all of the others. To find these beliefs, go through the beliefs had in the mode and see which of them are highly sensitive to new evidence, i.e., which the person will change back and forth on as a result of encountering new evidence. If those beliefs switching back and forth would cause the others to switch back and forth as well, then those are the beliefs that essentially characterize the mode.

Once one has located the beliefs that essentially characterize the modes, the analysis of the modes can be completed on the “Modes” tab. The analysis can include the beliefs that essentially characterize the modes, the beliefs that are had in each mode that are not had in all modes, as well as the various things that cause a person to enter a mode (i.e., triggers) and exit a mode (i.e., reverse triggers). Triggers and reverse triggers can be ascertained by observation. If one has a sufficient good understanding of the modes, one can also figure out what should trigger or untrigger a mode by reasoning it out. Then one can, so long as it is consistent with the wishes of the person being charted, try to induce a mode-switch by presenting the conjectured trigger. If it works, then it is a legitimate trigger and should be included among the triggers in the analysis of the mode.

In the above example, “A” marks the essential beliefs that characterize the mode, “B” marks the other beliefs that change when the essential beliefs change, “C” marks the triggers and “D” marks the reverse triggers.

§23. Determining paths in modes

While collecting information about and analyzing modes, one should also work on adding the modes to the path diagrams. This involves adding new paths to the already existing path diagrams; when one is done, there will be one path to each intrinsic good in each mode. The process is similar as with the initial construction of path diagrams, with just one difference.

In particular, now when one ascertains some path or some part of a path, one will have to correctly identify which mode that path belongs to. This can be determined by reasoning it out. In some cases, one can also just ask the person being charted. Thus far it seems that as people become familiar with their modes they gain the ability to tell to at least some degree what mode they’re in.

§24. The triggering technique

When using the action charting procedure, one will often want the person being charted to be in the mode being charted while answering questions. To get and keep someone in a mode, one can use the triggering technique. This technique involves the following steps:

Determine a trigger for the target mode.
Keep the person in the target mode by using the trigger.
While the person is in the target mode, proceed with charting as usual.

For example, suppose that someone goes into a particular mode while they are touching their wedding ring. Then one can work on charting that mode by having the person touch their wedding ring. When the person touches their wedding ring it will trigger the mode and then one can ask the person questions as usual.

This technique is especially useful if one is trying to produce a complete chart. In many cases, some paths in some modes will be so inelegant than the person will immediately switch out of the mode as soon as they consider anything having to do with that path. This can make it very difficult to chart particular highly inelegant paths. Through the triggering technique though, one can prevent the person from switching out of a given mode.

For example, we might imagine a person whose mind looks like this:

To fill in some details, let’s suppose that the person’s father has provided ample evidence that he will only respect the person being charted if they become a leader in their field. Let’s also suppose that the person’s friends are consummate slackers and have indicated in a thousand ways that they have no interest in professional achievements and have no intention to ever change. Let’s also suppose that the person in question believes themselves to be powerless in crucial ways: powerless to find new friends, powerless to change his friends or his father and powerless to work enough to become a leader in their field while still having time to hang out with their friends.

Now as you can see, this produces a problem for the person. The person needs to have some path to both being respected by their father and having some friends, but the requirements for each seem to be diametrically opposed. One thing that often results, and has resulted here, is that the person has multiple modes. In each of the modes, the person has a very sensible path to achieving one intrinsic good and a not-at-all sensible path to achieving the other. In particular, in the Blue Mode the person has a plausible way of gaining their father’s respect but a deeply implausible way of having some friends; in the Green Mode, the person has a plausible way of having some friends but a deeply implausible way of gaining their father’s respect.

This example is instructive because it is something that happens frequently with people whose intrinsic goods seem difficult to reconcile. Returning though to our original point, consider something further that might happen. It might be that whenever the person explicitly considers the question of how they intend to gain their father’s respect, they instantly discard the deeply unlikely plan of having their father hit his head and come to have the plan of working all the time and becoming a leader in their field. And it might be that whenever the person explicitly considers the question of how they intend to have some friends, they instantly discard the deeply unlikely plan of having their friends wake up miraculously transformed. The result will be that it will be easy for the person charting to locate the person’s Blue Mode path to gaining their father’s respect and Green Mode path to having some friends, but that it will be very difficult to locate the person’s Green Mode path to gaining their father’s respect and Blue Mode path to having some friends.

The trigger technique can help with this. A suitably reliable trigger will keep the person in Blue Mode even while considering how they should go about having some friends, and another suitably reliable trigger will keep the person in Green Mode even while considering how they intend to gain their father’s respect. This will help the person charting to find all the paths in all of the modes.

§25. Indicating modes on path diagrams

To indicate modes to a path diagram, select a way of indicating the modes. This can be done by color-coding or using distinctive borders for the boxes (see §7).

Once you’ve selected a way to indicate modes, you’ll need to add the relevant information to the path diagrams. As mentioned earlier (§22), this involves having there be one path to each intrinsic good for every mode. So if a person has three modes and nine intrinsic goods, then a chart with completed path diagrams will indicate twenty-seven paths: nine paths in each mode, three paths per intrinsic good.

Lots of intrinsic goods, several modes and one path per intrinsic good per mode can add up to a lot of paths. Happily, there is typically a lot of overlap between paths. In some cases, for a given intrinsic good all of a person’s modes can perfectly overlap. That is to say, in some cases, a person may pursue some intrinsic goods in exactly the same way, regardless of what mode the person is. Whenever there is overlap, there is no need to chart multiple copies of paths or partial paths. It’s enough to include one instance of something whenever there are duplicates, so long as some method is used to indicate which paths and partial paths belong to which modes.

The above path diagram shows a person with three modes, the intrinsic good “know important truths” and shows the person’s path to that intrinsic in each mode. In this case, there is no overlap. The person takes three completely distinct routes to their intrinsic good depending on what mode they are in.

This diagram displays several things. First, it shows a person with the intrinsic good of experiencing pleasure. Second, it shows that the person has two independent paths to achieving that intrinsic good: eating delicious food and having enjoyable sex. The color coding reveals which modes are associated with which paths. The half blue, half orange coloring of the “have enjoyable sex” box indicates that the person pursues experiencing pleasure by means of having enjoyable sex in two different modes. The black coloring of the “eat delicious food” box indicates that the person pursues experiencing pleasure by eating delicious food in every mode. This gives us two examples of overlap: instead of two “have enjoyable sex” boxes, one blue, one orange, there’s just one half blue and half orange. And instead of three or more “eat delicious food” boxes, there’s just one, colored black to indicate that that box is a part of the person’s path in all of their modes.

For an example of a different pattern of overlap, see the last two diagrams in §7.

Having differently colored modes makes it easy to understand a person’s mind at a time. As a person switches through modes, different parts of their path diagrams become “active.” If a person is currently in a mode one has color-coded blue, for example, then one need only look at the part of the diagram marked in blue to understand why the person is currently acting as they are.

§26. Stage 3: completion of chart

A chart is complete when:

All of the intrinsic goods have been located
All of the modes have been identified and analyzed
A complete path diagram has been constructed for each intrinsic good, such that each path diagram includes a path to the relevant intrinsic good in each mode.

When one comes to believe that a chart is complete or virtually complete, there is a last sequence of things to run through.

Explanation check.

Check the “Explanation of Phenomena” tab, if there is one. Be sure that all of the phenomena have been given satisfactory explanations.

Self-perception of powerlessness check.

Go through every path diagram. Be sure that every noteworthy self-perception of powerlessness has been noted.

CT-compliance check.

Go through every path diagram. Check to make sure that the rules of CT have been followed everywhere.

Doing a CT-compliance check involves various things. These include:

Path integrity check.

Go through every step in every path on every path diagram. Make sure that every step makes sense, given the assumption that the person’s beliefs are true.

Inelegant belief check.

Be sure that every inelegant belief every path relies on has been successfully explained.

Powerlessness check.

Be sure that every self-perception of powerlessness noted is such that the person does not believe that they can overcome it.

Congratulations! If you made it this far, you’ve successfully constructed a full CT chart. You have created a full blueprint of a person’s mind.

Part 3: Making Predictions

[This will be added in a future version of this document.]

Part 4: Creating CT Recommendation Plans

[This will be added in a future version of this document.]

IV. Evidence

Part 1: Current Evidence

§1. Overview

The best we could conceivably do in this investigation is come to possess knowledge of the truth regarding the mind. At this point, however, we would be satisfied to have excellent evidence that some theory of the mind was functionally similar to a theory that was functionally equivalent to the true theory.

Unfortunately, we do not yet have excellent evidence in favor of CT. Instead, what we have is a small but growing body of evidence and a plan to acquire more. This evidence does not justify confident belief in the truth of CT. Instead, we believe it justifies further investigation into CT, justifies tentative acceptance of CT for the purpose of investigation and permits the tentative use of CT in low-stakes circumstances. In time, as we gather further evidence, we hope to be able to judge more confidently regarding CT’s truth and/or usefulness.

The current evidence in favor CT comes from three sources: empirical evidence, philosophical arguments and global considerations of elegance. We will now briefly consider the evidence from each of these.

§2. Evidence for CT – empirical evidence

The empirical evidence for CT comes in a number of forms. In particular, we have:

Tested the predictions of CT recommendation plans.
Explained mental phenomena using CT charts.
Given speculative CT-compliant explanations of various observed psychological and sociological phenomena.

The best empirical evidence for CT thus far comes from testing the predictions of CT recommendation plans. Once a CT chart is created, it is possible to create a CT recommendation plan and predict what mental and behavioral changes a person will undergo when they follow the plan. Testing predictions in this way requires creating an accurate CT chart, having the person follow the recommendation plan and correctly interpreting the resultant mental and behavioral phenomena.

Thus far we have tested one set of predictions. This testing was informal, performed by me upon myself. I began the test on 12/26/2008 and completed recording results on 4/22/2009. The following is my summary of the results of the test:

After I had completed the first mapping of my mind, I devised a recommendation plan. This recommendation plan included 30 specific recommendations. Regarding these 30 recommendations, Connection Theory made 29 predictions. (Each prediction was of the form: “If you do recommendations #a, #b and #c, then result X will occur.”)

I ended up fully completing 11 of the 30 recommendations and partially completing 7. I did not work on 12 of them. (The choice of which recommendations to work on and complete was unrelated to the predictions made regarding each.) Regarding the 11 completed recommendations, Connection Theory made 15 predictions.

It was sometimes difficult to tell whether the predictions of the theory came true. Examining my records of the changes I experienced after following the recommendations, it seems that 9 of the 15 definitively came true, 1 partially came true and 5 were such that what happened did not conflict with the predictions made by the theory. (The one that “partially” came true was also such that insofar as it did not come true, that was consistent with the predictions of the theory. “Partially true” should be read as “the prediction came true partially; why the remaining part did not is straightforwardly explained by the theory.” Probably if the prediction were stated more accurately, this would just be another success.)

Ignoring the 1 partial success and the 5 cases of “no conflict,” 9 out of 9 of the predictions that were tested were successful, giving a 100% success rate. (It makes sense to ignore the partial success and cases of “no conflict” as neither contradict the predictions of the theory and neither completely confirm the predictions of the theory.)

I did not continue this particular test because I moved on to other tasks.

Overall, I believe the results of this test were extremely positive. It is difficult to overestimate the degree of change I experienced as a result of following the recommendation plan as far as I did. Features of my mind that had been around for 10+ years vanished; many of the details of my day-to-day inner life changed significantly.

This is the strongest empirical evidence that we have for CT. Nevertheless, the test was only done informally (i.e., not under controlled circumstances) and was only a test on one person. Moreover, it was a test performed by and on me, the creator of the theory. As a result, from the perspective of an outside observer it may seem plausible that I accidentally injected some degree of bias into my assessments.

Apart from predictions, we also have reports of success from three people (myself and two others) who claim to have successfully used CT to change their minds in various desired ways. These success stories provide some evidence in favor of CT. Of course, it remains open that the changes merely occurred during the use of CT, not because of it, or occurred because of the use CT, but not for the reasons stated by CT.

The next quantity of empirical evidence for CT comes from the results of CT mind-charting. Using CT, it is possible to create a chart of a person’s mind. If the chart is properly constructed, it should explain all of a person’s noteworthy mental phenomena other than emotions.

Thus far, I have created five full CT charts, two for myself (one before following the recommendation plan, one after), three for other people. A further person has reported that they have successfully created a full CT chart, though I have not had a chance to examine it. In each case, a large number of mental phenomena were explained by the charts and no phenomena were observed that conflicted with CT. I only gathered statistics on my own charts; between them, 96 noteworthy psychological phenomena were noted, 81 were successfully explained, 15 were not explained and 0 seemed to conflict with CT. This means that my charts explained 84% of the observed mental phenomena, and 0% of the mental phenomena appeared to conflict with CT.

There are typically many plausible-seeming explanations for any given mental phenomenon. Thus the fact that CT gave seemingly successful explanations does not mean that CT gave explanations that were actually correct. That said, every seemingly successful explanation a theory can give provides some evidence in favor of that theory. Thus the results of CT mind charting provides some evidence in favor of CT.

The remaining empirical evidence in favor of CT comes from the fact that CT can give plausible explanations of a wide range of psychological and sociological phenomena. Some of these phenomena are explained above (II.3). A list of these phenomena and their CT-compliant explanations has not yet been compiled.

§3. Evidence for CT – philosophical arguments

Historically, philosophers have disagreed with each other about everything. As a result, many will be skeptical that any philosophical argument could actually demonstrate some important claim to be. Nevertheless, I maintain that some claims relevant to CT can be demonstrated philosophically.

For example, consider the first statement of CT:

Everything a mind is aware of is (a) a sensation, (b) a spatial relation between sensations, (c) a representation, (d) an awareness of something, or (e) a combination of these.

This statement implies that no mind is aware of change. That is not to say that there cannot be a changing awareness, with the mind aware of different things at different times. It is to say that at no time is a mind aware of a change.

This may seem very strange. Wave a hand in front of your face. Yes, there is a changing awareness, a temporal sequence of awarenesses, with each awareness being of different things. But isn’t there more? Isn’t there also an awareness of change? CT implies that the answer is no. And I maintain that this implication can be demonstrated philosophically:

The present is a time. Every time is either not composed of further times or is composed of at least two times, one before the other. Therefore, the present is either not composed of further times or is composed of at least two times, one before the other. Call a time not composed of further times a “moment.” Thus the present is either a moment or is composed of at least two times, one before the other. The present exists. If something exists, then everything it is composed of exists. Therefore the present is either a moment or is composed of at least two existing times, one before the other. However, if one time is before another, then either the first exists and the second does not, the second exists and the first does not or neither exist.^[4] Therefore it is not the case that the present is composed of at least two existing times, one before the other. Therefore the present is a moment. At any moment, a mind can only be aware of what is happening at that moment. Change cannot occur at a moment; change requires at least two times. Therefore, a mind cannot be aware of change at any moment. Therefore, a mind cannot be aware of change at the present time. This argument can be given at any time. Thus at every time, a mind cannot be aware of change.

The purpose of this was to give an example of something relevant to the truth of CT that I believe can be demonstrated philosophically. If my argument is accepted, it provides some evidence in favor of CT by confirming one of CT’s consequences. This would be an example of philosophical evidence in favor of CT.

I have further arguments which demonstrate other claims relevant to CT. I will present these in a later version of this document. For now, I am unable to philosophically demonstrate any of the claims of CT itself. This is something I am continuing to work on. Based on my recent work, I am somewhat optimistic that I will eventually be able to demonstrate claims that are at least similar to some of the four statements of CT. In particular, at this point the first and second statement appear to me to be the most philosophically tractable.

§4. Evidence for CT – global considerations of elegance

The last type of evidence for CT comes from global considerations of elegance.

Humans have observed a vast array of phenomena: astronomical, biological, chemical, physical and so on. Current scientific theories ultimately explain these phenomena by means of a small number of extremely simple equations. Where current theories conflict, as in the case of quantum mechanics and general relativity, scientists expect that the conflicts will ultimately be resolved when our current extremely simple theories are replaced by another extremely simple theory. Indeed, considerations of simplicity and elegance often guide scientists in their selection of theories.

Philosophically, there is no known connection between simplicity or elegance and truth. Thus we cannot currently offer considerations of simplicity and elegance as solid indications of the truth of CT. But it is worth noting that CT is an astonishingly simple theory. It purports to explain an enormous range of phenomena. If we are to allow considerations of simplicity and elegance to guide us in our selection of theories, then this provides a further reason in favor of the adoption of CT.^[5]

§5. Reiteration of strength of evidence

We have just reviewed some of the evidence in favor of CT. As noted above (IV.1.§1), we believe that this evidence justifications further investigation into CT and tentative acceptance of CT for the purpose of investigation, as well as the tentative use of CT in low-stakes circumstances. We do not believe that the current evidence justifies strong belief in CT.

Part 2: Gathering Further Evidence

§1. Current efforts

Right now several people are helping to further test CT. Each person is attempting to see whether they can generate a CT mind map and use it to explain all of their noteworthy psychological phenomena apart from emotions. Once this is complete, we will generate a recommendation plan for each person, make predictions on the basis of that recommendation plan and then see whether those predictions come true when each person follows their plan.

If successful, this will more than double the total amount of evidence in favor of CT. It also will show that the theory can be used in a predictive capacity with people other than myself. (Note added later: The second full-scale predictive test is now under way. All tested predictions have come true so far. The number of tested predictions is 2-5.)

V. Variations

Part 1: Theoretical Variations

§1. Origin of theoretical variations

Not every aspect of CT has been thoroughly tested. As a result, in formulating CT, at various points I had a choice about how to formulate the theory. In general, I tended to:

prefer theories that were simpler and more elegant
prefer theories that purported to explain more
prefer theories that were better supported by current evidence

In some cases, these criteria pulled in opposite directions. As a result, the current formulation of CT is dependent to some degree on various judgment calls I made.

For example, I formulated CT so that all intrinsic goods are being drawn from a single List of Intrinsic Goods. I could have formulated it, though, so that every person had their own personalized List of Intrinsic Goods. As another example, I formulated CT so as to not include any specific rules for weighing the elegant updating conditions against one another. I could have formulated it to include an exact specification of how the criteria interrelated. I made other judgment calls as well.

Over the course of time, hopefully we will gather sufficient evidence to be able to rule on these questions empirically. Ultimately, we hope that the formulation of the theory will end up not depending on any judgment calls at all.

In the meantime, CT is as it is. It will be useful, though, to list some of the theoretical variations that are available. In the next few sections, I will state some theoretical variations of CT as well as the reasons those variations were not selected to be the standard version of CT.

§2. Variation A: Precisified elegant updating conditions

In the standard version of CT, the Belief Rule says that minds update their representational content as elegantly as they can, given the constraint that they always believe that their intrinsic goods will be permanently achieved. Now let A, Y and Z mean the following:

A = the current representational content

Y = the previous representational content

Z = the current sensations

Then to update representational content as elegantly as possible is to come to have representational content that fulfills the following three elegant updating conditions as best as possible:

#1. Explanatory Power: the more of Z explained within A, the better.

#2. Explanatory Completeness: the more explained within A, the better.

#3. Minimal Change: the less change from Y to A, the better.”

This formulation, though, gives no hint as to how these three factors should be weighed against one another. What happens if just a little more change from the past representational content would yield a lot more explanatory completeness or explanatory power? What if just a little less explanatory power could permit much greater explanatory completeness?

In II.1.§4.4, when this material was introduced, I noted that CT did not explain how the elegant updating conditions were weighed or balanced against one another. I also said there was at least one proposal. Here is that proposal:

“The representational content A that fulfills the elegant updating conditions as best as possible is the one that has the most explained within it [Explanatory Completeness] of the representational contents that involve the addition, subtraction or alteration of exactly one posit (i.e., one concept or connection between concepts) from Y [Minimal Change] and that involve an explanation of every sensation in Z [Explanatory Power]. Regarding which representational contents have the most explained within them, there are never any ties. [No Ties].”

This gives a fully specified and fully deterministic way for the elegant updating conditions to interact.

Why was this not adopted into the standard version of CT? It may be in the future. For now, I judged the specific description of explanatory completeness to be too speculative. I have not yet had the opportunity to try to precisify the notion of explanatory completeness. As such, I do not want to commit to a particular description yet.

§3. Variation B: Personalized Lists of Intrinsic Goods

In the standard version of CT, the statement that places constraints on intrinsic goods says:

Every mind is such that something is one of its intrinsic goods if and only if it is one of that mind’s concepts and it is on the List of Intrinsic Goods.”

This limits everyone to drawing from the same pool of potential intrinsic goods. Not everyone needs to have the same intrinsic goods, since not everyone needs to have the same concepts. But if anyone has a particular concept as an intrinsic good, then everyone who has that concept has it as an intrinsic good.

One might not want to commit to the claim that the intrinsic goods are so similar between people. As a result, one might want a version of CT that allows different people to have different Lists of Intrinsic Goods, as it were. Such a variation could take the remainder of CT unchanged, but then alter the above statement to the following:

Every mind is such that something is one of its intrinsic goods if and only if it is one of that mind’s concepts and it is on that mind’s List of Intrinsic Goods.

Why isn’t this the standard version of CT? As yet, we do not have much evidence that the personalized Lists of Intrinsic Goods, so to speak, are identical to one another. So one advantage of taking it this as the standard version would be that then CT would make fewer claims that are not yet supported by the evidence. That said, there is at least a small amount of evidence in favor of the Lists overlapping in a least a few regards. More importantly, postulating that the Lists are the same significantly increases CT’s usability and explanatory power. Finally, there are some philosophical considerations in favor of the Lists being the same.

The considerations are not particularly strong on either side. Hopefully we will soon have enough evidence to allow us to decide this matter empirically.

§4. Variation C: Indeterminism via a one-way power

Finally, the current version of CT is deterministic. This may upset those who believe in indeterministic free will. There are various ways to alter CT to permit indeterminism. One of them is to take the Action Rule:

Every mind is such that at every moment it exists, it acts exactly in the way it believes will lead to each of its intrinsic goods being permanently achieved.

and modify it as follows:

Every mind is such when it acts, it acts exactly in the way it believes will lead to each of its intrinsic goods being permanently achieved.

This leaves it so that the Action Rule does not require that a mind act at every moment. If we take the Action Rule to state the full truth about the conditions under which action takes place, it will follow that whether a mind acts or not is not determined. This gives minds a one-way power: minds would indeterministically be able to act or refrain from acting.

This is not the standard version of CT because I believe that philosophical considerations show that there is no indeterministic free will and in fact nothing deterministic at all.

§5. Other variations

There are other variations of CT. These will be discussed in future versions of this document.

Part 2: Areas For Improvement

§1. List of areas for improvement

However good CT may be, by its own lights it is imperfect. Here is a list of ways in which CT can and should improve in the future:

Obtaining the List of Intrinsic Goods

What are the intrinsic goods? Right now CT claims that there is such a list. However, we are not yet in possession of it.

Balancing the elegant updating conditions

How do the elegant updating conditions (II.1.§4.4) interact with one another. We have one proposal (V.1.§2). Is it correct? Or is something else correct?

Explicating “Explanatory Completeness”

The elegant updating conditions include the criterion of “Explanatory Completeness.” Roughly, this is how much is explained within a representational content. But what exactly is explanatory completeness? How can the explanatory completeness of two representational contents be compared precisely? Can they? There is a proposal regarding this stated in V.1.§2. Is it correct? Or is something else correct?

Gaining further evidence

There is currently some evidence in favor of CT. But we need more. Further evidence will serve to confirm or disconfirm the theory. Until we get more evidence, we cannot be confident that CT is functionally similar to a theory that is functionally equivalent to the true theory.

Expediting charting

Right now, creating a full CT chart often takes 40 hours or more. We would like to diminish this significantly.

Most important, at this point, is gaining further evidence. Next most important is getting the List of Intrinsic Goods.

℘

[1] Connection Theory (CT) was developed by Geoff Anders in October 2008.

[2] Here and elsewhere, we use the term “color” broadly to include white, black and gray, as well as red, orange, blue, green, etc., and all intermediate shades.

[3] Some philosophers attempt to stop the regress of explanations by positing something whose essence includes existence. Then when one asks “Why does this exist?” the answer is: “Because of its essence, i.e., because of what it is.” (One cannot then ask: “Why does this thing have the essence that it does?” since there is no distinction between a thing and its essence.)

[4] The reader familiar with contemporary philosophy will note that presentism is assumed here. To generalize, let the argument refer only to presentist change. Then either presentism is true or eternalism is true. If the former, the above argument applies. If the latter, then there is no presentist change. But one cannot be aware of that which does not exist. Either way there is no presentist change. (The text of this document uses the term “change” to refer to “presentist change,” as is only natural.)

[5] Actually, the issue is slightly more complicated than this. I will describe this more in the next version of this document.