C-151. R-protocols

We have, already, many ways of doing things, “actions” that we take and retake. What about new ways, ways that could do a better job of improving our quality of life (0)? Do we leave this to “gifted, imaginative” individuals and evolution (C-97,114, 121), such as in matters of “style”? Or can we all be helped to fashion new steps, to compose more effective behavioral molecules, to become more material, more consequential (C-78)?

We use terms like “actions” and “practices” in talking about these ways. But much of this behavior, like Topsy, “just grew” … pieced together in body-body relationships addressing situational problems. We need to do better. More systematically, if we are to make needed invention a skill open to all. The R-transform (C-111) establishes a foundation for such a formal approach via R-protocols … which can be used to craft new ways and to sharpen and smooth some of the old ways. R-protocols are a Help technology (App. I,VII).

Help for building steps, as for making Excaliburs of ourselves (C-149). Behavioral architecture (C-90), the making of steps, is what we are talking about. Architecturally, this implies that we develop technologies of scaffolding, blueprinting, support, education (of architects), etc. to complement and advance the composing of our emergent step(s).

Actions, like relationships or just about anything else, can be characterized (with identifying features) via the BPO bias … as (particular: P) foci of attention (entity-ness: B), despite their chunkiness – i.e., their incompletely and inaccurately specified compositional units. (As stones and pebbles are described, relative to rocks’ and minerals’ compositional units, and those in turn relative to chemistry’ and physics’ compositional units.) But “materials science” (actually material art together with material science?) is showing us that an alliance of knowing by trying, Kt, and knowing by finding, Kf (C-93) – itself seen as a marriage of science and technology -- can be molecularly productive of substances (bodies) meeting needed functionality. Should step development come to anything less?

(Compositional units because more material step molecules require building. It is well known that structures comprising other structures can have distinctive functionality as well as other distinctive features. Note, for instance, the structural and functional aspects of a river relative to those of the drops of water of which, but not by which, the river is constituted. Note also the difficulties ahead for “brain mappers” [C-116] if they neglect this consideration. What and how will they map?)

What aids can we offer behavioral architects?

Technologies, we said (App. VII), comprise four lines of development: tools, procedures, procedural tools and tool-using procedures. All of these bear on Realization, from needed functionality to constructions of body and/or step that can deliver some, if not all, of that needed functionality. Thus, for example, a trial in court utilizes a tool (a gavel), a procedure (introduction of evidence), a procedural tool (the role of judge) and a tool-using procedure (the judge pounding the gavel to restore order). All these in a protocol (the legal proceeding) implementing the interdependence of tool and procedure.

Realization protocols can be seen as technologies for step making that are responsive to the needs of behavioral architecture … most especially perhaps for technologies of procedural tools and of tool-using procedures, where faltering interdependence of tool and procedure appears to sabotage Realizations. (Neglect of the behavioral problem, I:Pbeh, in favor of situational problems, I:Psit, [C-148: Psit/Pbeh >2 or 3] would seem to be working here.) Contrast, for example, the joint-strengthening effect of bracing technology in carpentry with the less- than-formal building of a friendship. Where is the architectural (e.g., educational) technology for the latter? We know what friends are for (C-97: late-stage functionality), but do we know enough about behavioral architecture and needed functionality to do better at making friendships? (Beyond, “A friend in need is a friend indeed”?)

The concept of “actions” represents innumerable instances of behavioral molecules – and molecular fragments -- in which technologies of one or more kinds figure. But this massive category does nothing to shed light on the need for, and the composition of, more effective and/or efficient step-making technologies. R-protocols use the Involve of Realization to make the Grasp of these needed technologies stronger.

Consider the protocol introduced in App. IX, in which we try to improve our record in Realization by analyzing performances not as successes or failures, but rather in an accident framework. Development, the process, breeds accidents. Developments, the products, have successes and failures. In the process, we are before the fact, AT and IN the Frontier (C-118). For the product, we are after the fact. Analysis has to respect this difference. As someone works at Realization, EHAC’s approach provides supportive scaffolding for needed constructions (of that someone’s self in addition to contemplated situational objectives).*

We can continue the practice of talking about actions, about making better decisions about actions to take … continue to think and talk about particular behaviors in such unit terms … but building anything works a lot better if we have a strong Grasp of a step’s basic building units (VII; App. XXIII) and principles relevant to the Involve of building as act.

* The R-transform is an exemplar of an R-protocol. Other applications, such as App. XVII’s Dynamic Profile Assay, DPA, and pointed questions (X), offer relevant R-protocols. BFEPS itself constitutes such an R-protocol effort, pointing TO, as it does, the need for more attention to be paid to the behavioral problem in consequence of the Nature of Things -- and the body step interdependency in consequence of that (III). BFEPS offers itself as a platform for asking questions about Everything (the Nature of Things and its general persisting conditions) and everything (steps as well as bodies – and not just as body properties) – i.e., the SGN correction (C-135) via the R-transform.

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R-words (107; passim) constitute a critical R-protocol. They address the problem of the relationship between what is said about (WISA) and what is being talked about (WITA) – which is critical to responding to the matter of what is called for (WICF: C-110) as needed functionality.

That a word is considered an R-word urges us to Read it more thoroughly, using the Involve of Realization to better Grasp WITA. In this way we have already seen many examples of words incompletely Read … whose message (App. XX) might be radically different in this new light.

Take “faith” in this light, for example. As noun (noun 1), it can be Read as a needed entity (for guidance); as verb (verb 1), it can be Read as the commitment to moving from minding within in the step; as verb (verb 2), it can be Read as the direction for a step (“faith moves us”); as noun (noun 2), it can be Read as the cognitive product of minding (“my faith”). Take all this in the context of Realization, where CEM-history’s precept of interdependence obtains for multi-step R-entities (e .g., body step, minding moving [such that the consequentially of moving => minding, evaluating step outcomes [IX] comes into play continually along with that of minding => moving]) … and then we begin to have a better Grasp of WISA re WITA – not to mention WICF. (How, for example, would Augustine’s “knowledge through faith” look in this light? As much a matter of knowing by trying as by knowing by finding [C-93] – and of their interdependence?)

The R-protocol of R-words is one way to replace the conceptual license of “deconstruction” with a formal tertiary Read (C-9) procedure that has compositional – i.e., constructive – potential with respect to WICF, toward an answer to the solutions we need (0).

(c) 2016 R. F. Carter
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