‘Level 6 – Bonding’ by Dennis Stephens

This is a new edited transcription as discussed in a previous post.

You can download the 125Kb pdf file from this link

Stephens initially called this material the sixth level of TROM and suggested that it would only be fully understood by those who had completed the other five levels. However, he later restated that completion of level five really is the end of a person’s ‘case’, and resolving bondings is a separate matter to the TROM levels. Because he defined the concepts of single and double bondings in this lecture, it’s useful to read it before reading the material on Insanity and Sensation, which build on the concept of double bondings.

A relationship between two things is created by a bonding postulate such as “if A then B”.

A class can be defined as a group whose members all have one or more things in common, such as “all red objects”. The component parts that make up a machine are a class defined by a common purpose.

A common class is the conjunction of two or more classes, its members have the common features of both these classes. A null class is an empty class with no members.

No matter how complex logical propositions may be, they can be broken down into a series of “if A then B” propositions. A computer program can be analysed into a series of sequential “if A then B” relationships, or constructed by combining “if A then B” relationships.

The basic form of a relational postulate in the field of logic is called Implication or single bonding “if A then B”, i.e. if A exists then B exists. However, it does not say whether A actually exists or not. It is called bonding because A is bonded to B and cannot be found without B. The postulate makes the class of A, not-B null. There are three possible common classes left – A,B; not-A, not-B; and B, not-A.

The converse is not true, as long as this is a single bonding of A to B. For example, if A stands for penguins and B stands for birds, “if A then B” means that any penguin must be a bird, but not that every bird is a penguin. Taxonomy – the scientific classification of plants and animals – is structured from this kind of nested single bondings, species within genus and so on.

Any bonding is a limitation of freedom of choice. Every relationship that is made represents a loss of some freedom. A single bonding of A to B restricts A but it does not restrict B. The trouble with bonding is that having made an “if A then B” postulate one may get trapped within it. It’s easier to justify the postulate than to walk back out of it again.

A double bonding is a single bonding plus its reverse. In formal logic this is called the biconditional relationship. The reverse of “if A then B” is “if B then A” so if we have a situation where if A then B maintains and coupled with if B then A then that is a double bonding. We now have A bonded to B, and B bonded to A. The possible common classes are reduced to two: A,B and not-A, not-B. This double bonding restricts both A and B. Logically the effect of the two postulates is to make A equivalent to B in the mind. This is fine if they really are identical or synonymous; but in the example above, an ornithologist who thought all birds were penguins would be mad (at least on the subject of penguins).

The original audio can be found online at Tromology and TROM World.

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