Four Concepts at the Intersection of RM-ODP, Jung, and the Model of Consciousness
At first glance, the word interest seems to denote a fairly clear psychological phenomenon. We are interested in a person, a scientific question, a book, an activity, or an event. Something interests us or does not interest us. We can lose interest, develop a new interest, or remain interested in the same subject for years.
As soon as we try to determine more precisely what is actually happening, however, the seemingly unified concept begins to break apart.
Is interest a property of an object? Is it a relation between subject and object? Is it the direction of psychic energy? Is it significance for the subject? Is it the direction of attention? Or does interest merely mean that something is relevant within a particular context?
These questions become especially clear when we compare three very different uses of the concept: the technical expression thing of interest in the Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP), Carl Gustav Jung’s psychological concept of interest, and Juliette Vazard’s philosophical analysis of interest as an open-ended orientation towards an object.
The Model of Consciousness developed here suggests that the single word interest encompasses several fundamentally different phenomena that need to be distinguished theoretically.
Three concepts are particularly important:
relevance, significance, and attention.
A fourth element must also be considered: the subject’s action.
Within the Model of Consciousness, these four elements belong to different contexts. Relevance is connected with the distinction between the extraverted and introverted attitudes. Significance is psychic content generated by the function of feeling. The direction of attention is determined by the subject and is decisive for which path of consciousness is actualised. Action, finally, closes the connection back to reality independent of the psyche.
It is precisely this separation that allows the different meanings of “interest” to be understood more clearly.
1. “Thing of interest” in RM-ODP
In RM-ODP, interest is initially not a psychological concept. A thing of interest is something that becomes the object of statements within a particular discourse or model.
This is a remarkably sober use of the word. A thing of interest does not have to fascinate anyone. It does not have to evoke an emotion. It does not even have to be personally important to any particular person.
It is an object that matters within a particular context.
For precisely this reason, there appears to be a connection with the concept of relevance.
A model can never reproduce all the properties of reality independent of the psyche in their entirety. It singles out certain objects, relations, and properties. Others remain outside the context under consideration.
RM-ODP thus leads to a fundamental question:
What is relevant within a particular context?
This initially technical question acquires psychological significance in the Model of Consciousness.
Psychic content likewise does not contain indiscriminately everything that exists in reality independent of the psyche. What is crucial, however, is that the extraverted and introverted attitudes differ fundamentally with regard to relevance.
2. Extraversion: the concrete object
In the extraverted attitude, the object is posited as independent of the subject.
For psychic functions in the extraverted attitude, this means that their content refers to the concrete object, without its properties first being selected according to which of them are relevant to the subject.
This does not, of course, mean that a person could perceive every property of an object. Perception is always limited. Rather, it means that relevance to the subject is not the principle according to which psychic content is generated.
This can be seen particularly clearly in the perceptive functions.
Consider an adolescent going through puberty.
Extraverted perception of changes may register:
He has grown taller.
His voice is changing.
His first facial hair is appearing.
His face is changing.
His shoulders are becoming broader.
His movements are changing.
Individual changes may be large or small, essential or incidental, lasting or temporary. They belong to the concrete object and can therefore become content of extraverted perception.
The same can be demonstrated with the perception of invariants.
A person looks at another person and perceives how they are dressed: colour, cut, fabric, individual garments, shoes, jewellery, hairstyle, and the way the clothes fit the body.
Here too, the content consists of concrete properties of a concrete object.
The object appears in its individuality.
The multitude of apparently incidental details may be particularly important here. They are not content because they fulfil a particular function for the subject. They are content because they belong to this particular concrete object.
3. Introversion: what is relevant to the subject
Something fundamentally different happens in the introverted attitude.
Here, the properties of the object are distinguished according to their relevance to the subject. What is irrelevant is abstracted away.
This may explain an essential characteristic of introverted psychic content: its abstractness.
Abstraction would then not itself be the primary definition of introversion. Rather, it would be a consequence of relevance.
What is irrelevant to the subject does not become content of the respective psychic function. Individual details therefore disappear, leaving what is apprehended as relevant or essential.
The difference becomes particularly clear in the example of the adolescent.
Extraverted perception of changes may generate:
He has grown taller. His voice is becoming deeper. He is beginning to grow a beard.
Introverted perception of changes, by contrast, may generate:
He is growing up.
Or:
He is becoming a young man.
“He is growing up” is not one additional concrete detail alongside height, voice, and facial hair.
It is an abstract change.
Numerous individual changes are abstracted away. What is perceived is what unites them as relevant with respect to the subject.
Similarly, extraverted perception of invariants may apprehend many individual details of someone’s clothing, whereas introverted perception of invariants may generate content such as:
She is elegantly dressed.
“Elegant” is not an individual item of clothing that can be pointed to. The concrete details recede. What remains is an abstract characteristic.
The fundamental distinction can therefore initially be formulated as follows:
In the extraverted attitude, the psychic function is directed towards the concrete object without selecting its features according to their relevance to the subject.
In the introverted attitude, what is relevant to the subject becomes psychic content; what is irrelevant is abstracted away.
This gives rise to the contrast:
extraverted – concrete
and
introverted – abstract.
But this contrast would not be the deepest explanation. Beneath it lies a different relation to relevance.
4. Relevance and significance are not the same
At precisely this point, conceptual confusion can easily arise.
If something is relevant to the subject, this does not mean that it is already significant to the subject.
Relevance and significance have different theoretical statuses in the Model of Consciousness.
Relevance belongs to the structure of the attitude. It helps explain why, in the introverted attitude, certain features of the object become psychic content while others are abstracted away.
Significance, by contrast, is itself psychic content.
It is generated by a particular psychic function:
The function of feeling generates the significance of an object for the subject.
This formulation is crucial.
Feeling does not discover significance.
It does not read significance off the object.
It does not process significance that already exists.
Nor does it decide what significance an object “really” has.
It generates significance as psychic content.
Significance therefore belongs to psychic reality.
5. Psychic functions generate content
This formulation follows a general principle of the Model of Consciousness.
Psychic functions are not merely different ways of processing already existing psychic material. They generate different kinds of psychic content.
The perceptive functions generate knowledge.
One perceptive function generates knowledge of changes; the other generates knowledge of invariants.
Thinking represents knowledge as information, that is, in a form suitable for transmission, interpretation, and processing.
Information can be processed. Knowledge itself is not “processed.”
Feeling, in turn, generates the significance of an object for the subject.
Perception, thinking, and feeling are therefore not different ways of processing the same material. They generate different kinds of content.
This distinction becomes especially important when we ask about the relationship between significance and attention.
6. Attention is not a product of feeling
In everyday thinking, one particular idea seems almost self-evident:
Something is important to me, therefore I direct my attention towards it.
This idea connects significance and attention causally.
The Model of Consciousness does not do so.
Within the model, significance and the direction of attention are categorically distinct.
Significance belongs to psychic content and is generated by feeling.
The subject, by contrast, determines the direction of attention.
The function of feeling therefore does not direct attention.
It does not keep attention fixed on an object.
It does not decide which function receives attention.
And a high degree of significance does not automatically mean that attention must be directed towards the significant object.
This distinction is not incidental. It belongs to the architecture of the Model of Consciousness.
7. Attention and the two paths
The direction of attention has a particular function within the Model of Consciousness.
It is connected with the alternative between the right and left paths.
On the right path, attention is spontaneously directed towards the auxiliary, or second, function.
On the left path, attention must instead be voluntarily maintained on the fourth function.
The two possibilities are alternatives. It is not a matter of first “checking” the fourth function and then returning to the second, or vice versa.
Rather, the direction of attention, or its voluntary maintenance, belongs to the mechanism by which one of the two paths is actualised.
Attention is therefore directly connected with the subject.
The subject has a direction of attention.
Feeling, by contrast, is a psychic function and generates a particular kind of psychic content.
For this reason alone, the two must not be identified.
8. The position of feeling in the Model of Consciousness
The role of feeling cannot be described completely by saying only:
Feeling generates significance.
For every psychological type, the function of feeling occupies a particular position within the structure.
This position defines its role in the course of psychic activity.
For one type, feeling may be the auxiliary function.
For another, it may occupy the third position.
For yet another, it may be an unconscious function.
The kind of content remains associated with the same function: feeling generates significance for the subject. But the structural role of this content depends on the position occupied by feeling in the Model of Consciousness and on the functions with which it is structurally connected.
The Model of Consciousness therefore differs fundamentally from a theory that treats “interest” as a single psychological mechanism.
There is no single mechanism called “interest” that performs the same task in the same place for every person.
9. Where does significance have its effect?
If significance generated by feeling does not direct attention, the question arises: what is its function?
The answer given by the Model of Consciousness leads beyond the boundary of psychic reality.
The significance of an object for the subject, generated by feeling, influences the subject’s actions in reality independent of the psyche.
This is a crucial point.
Psychic reality must not be conceived as a closed inner world.
Reality independent of the psyche causally affects the organism. Psychic functions generate psychic content. The subject, in turn, acts in reality independent of the psyche.
The causal relation is therefore preserved in both directions, although reality independent of the psyche does not transmit ready-made psychic content into the psyche.
The subject acts.
Those actions affect reality independent of the psyche.
The significance generated by feeling influences these actions.
Thus the circuit does not close within the psyche. Through action, it closes back upon reality independent of the psyche.
10. Two fundamentally different directions
This makes the separation between attention and significance particularly clear.
Attention affects the organisation of psychic activity.
Significance affects the actions of the subject.
In a highly simplified form:
Direction of attention → path within the Model of Consciousness
and:
Significance → influence on actions in reality independent of the psyche
These are two different relations.
For this reason, the intuitive sequence
significance → attention → action
is not appropriate to the Model of Consciousness.
The model separates the two transitions.
The direction of attention belongs to the relation between the subject and psychic functions.
Significance generated by feeling belongs to psychic content and influences the subject’s activity in relation to reality independent of the psyche.
11. Jung’s interest: the direction of libido
Against this background, Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of interest can be situated more precisely.
Jung uses the term libido for psychic energy in a general sense. Interest is closely connected with the direction of this libido; at some points, interest and directed libido appear almost as different terms for the same dynamic phenomenon.
This direction is fundamental to Jung’s distinction between extraversion and introversion.
In extraversion, libido is directed towards the object.
In introversion, libido is withdrawn from the object and directed back towards the subject.
This is remarkably close to a problem that also plays a central role in the Model of Consciousness: the direction of psychic activity.
Nevertheless, Jung’s libido must not simply be equated with attention in the Model of Consciousness.
The theoretical systems are different.
What can be said, however, is that Jung’s concept of interest lies much closer to the problem of direction than to the concept of significance generated by feeling.
This also makes clear why it would be problematic simply to assign Jung’s “interest” to the function of feeling.
12. Vazard: interest and worthiness of attention
Juliette Vazard approaches interest from a different philosophical perspective.
Particularly important is her distinction between curiosity and interest.
Curiosity is typically directed towards a question or an epistemic gap.
A person does not know something and wants to find out.
“Who wrote this book?”
“Why does this phenomenon occur?”
“How does this mechanism work?”
Once the answer has been found, curiosity may be satisfied.
Interest, by contrast, need not presuppose an already formulated question.
A person may find an object interesting without knowing what question to ask about it.
They continue reading.
They continue observing.
They return to the object.
They notice new details.
New questions may arise only in the course of this continued engagement.
Vazard therefore connects interest with the idea that an object merits further attention.
From the perspective of the Model of Consciousness, this formulation is particularly revealing.
It combines two phenomena that the model separates:
a dimension of value,
and
the direction or continuation of attention.
The Model of Consciousness would first separate these analytically:
What is psychic content?
What significance is generated?
And where does the subject direct attention?
This does not necessarily mean that the model contradicts Vazard. Rather, it asks a different kind of question.
13. Interest can precede a question
Vazard’s distinction is especially interesting for understanding scientific and creative activity.
A common ideal of scientific work runs as follows:
First, a research question is formulated.
Then a hypothesis is proposed.
Then data are collected.
Then the hypothesis is tested.
A great deal of actual research, however, develops differently.
First, something attracts notice.
A person continues to engage with it.
They collect observations.
They read texts.
They compare cases.
They notice similarities.
Then differences.
Sometimes only after a long period do they notice what question they have actually been investigating.
Interest can therefore be epistemically prior to the formulated question.
This is particularly important for the emergence of new concepts.
Someone who searches only for answers to already formulated questions moves within an already structured problem space.
Someone who continues attending to an object without yet knowing the question may discover distinctions for which no concepts yet exist.
That may be one source of conceptual innovation.
14. RM-ODP and relevance
We can now return to the starting point: the thing of interest in RM-ODP.
Of the three concepts of interest considered here, this one is the least psychological. For precisely that reason, it may be conceptually especially useful for the Model of Consciousness.
A thing of interest is an object that matters within a particular context.
Within the Model of Consciousness, however, relevance acquires additional significance through the distinction between extraverted and introverted attitudes.
For the extraverted attitude, the concrete object is primary.
For the introverted attitude, what matters is what is relevant to the subject in the object.
What is not relevant is abstracted away.
The apparently straightforward use of interest in RM-ODP may therefore draw attention to a concept that is particularly important for a more precise definition of introversion and extraversion.
15. Concrete and abstract as consequences of attitude
This consideration also changes the meaning of the opposition concrete – abstract.
Initially, one might propose:
Extraverted functions generate concrete content; introverted functions generate abstract content.
This may correctly describe what we observe.
But it does not yet explain why.
The explanation may lie in relevance.
Extraverted functions refer to the concrete object independently of which of its properties are relevant to the subject.
Introverted functions, by contrast, refer to what is relevant to the subject and abstract from everything else.
Abstract content therefore emerges.
Thus,
concrete ↔ abstract
would not be the fundamental dichotomy, but the manifestation of a deeper dichotomy:
object independent of the subject ↔ relevance to the subject.
This formulation connects the newly identified distinction with the fundamental dichotomy subject – environment on which the Model of Consciousness is based.
16. The two perceptive functions in both attitudes
This can be seen particularly clearly in the two perceptive functions.
One generates knowledge of changes.
The other generates knowledge of invariants.
Both can occur in either the extraverted or introverted attitude.
This gives rise to four different kinds of perceptive content.
Extraverted perception of changes generates knowledge of concrete changes in a concrete object:
He has grown taller.
His voice is becoming deeper.
He is beginning to grow a beard.
Introverted perception of changes generates knowledge of abstract changes relevant to the subject:
He is growing up.
He is becoming a young man.
Extraverted perception of invariants generates knowledge of concrete stable properties of a concrete object:
She is wearing a dark-blue coat, a red scarf, and black shoes.
Introverted perception of invariants generates knowledge of abstract invariants relevant to the subject:
She is elegantly dressed.
This shows that introverted perception is by no means necessarily perception of invariants.
Changes can also be perceived abstractly.
Conversely, extraverted perception is not limited to changes. Invariants can also be perceived concretely.
The two dichotomies are independent:
change ↔ invariant
and
extraverted ↔ introverted.
17. Thinking in the extraverted and introverted attitudes
The same principle can be applied to thinking.
Thinking does not generate knowledge; it represents knowledge as information, that is, in a form suitable for transmission, interpretation, and processing.
In the extraverted attitude, this information remains related to the concrete object.
Extraverted thinking therefore represents concrete knowledge as information.
Introverted thinking, by contrast, abstracts from what is irrelevant and represents abstract knowledge as information.
This helps explain why introverted thinking so readily operates with concepts, classes, principles, general relations, and theoretical objects.
This does not mean that an introverted thinker is unaware of concrete reality.
It means that the content of the function arises through abstraction from what is irrelevant with respect to the subject.
18. Feeling in the extraverted and introverted attitudes
The same basic structure appears in a different form in feeling.
Feeling generates the significance of an object for the subject.
Extraverted feeling can be described, in a deliberately abbreviated formula, as:
“I for the other.”
The concrete other remains present as object. Their individuality, needs, and particular characteristics can be part of the relation.
Introverted feeling, by contrast, can be described as:
“the other for me.”
The other appears in terms of their relevance to the subject.
They may appear, for example, as a son, partner, helper, rival, teacher, student, supporter, or threat.
At the limit, another person may even be perceived primarily in terms of the function they perform for the subject — as a means towards a particular end.
This does not imply that people with introverted feeling necessarily instrumentalise others. Such a moral claim does not follow from the structure of the function.
It means only that the relation to the other can be structured by their relevance to the subject and can abstract from other individual characteristics.
This is precisely where Kant’s demand that a human being should never be treated merely as a means but always also as an end becomes interesting. “The human being as an end” is itself an abstraction. Kant does not replace abstraction with concrete perception of a unique individual. Rather, he formulates a normative requirement concerning which abstract relation to another human being is morally permissible.
19. Relevance and significance in introverted feeling
Relevance and significance can be especially easy to confuse in the case of introverted feeling.
If another person is relevant to the subject, for example, as a “helper,” then helper initially describes the relation of the object to the subject.
Feeling, by contrast, generates significance.
The other person may have a high degree of significance for the subject.
This significance, however, is not identical with the dimension of relevance under which the person is apprehended.
A person may therefore be relevant in a particular role and at the same time possess a particular significance for the subject.
The two phenomena belong to different theoretical categories.
This distinction prevents “relevant,” “important,” “significant,” and “interesting” from being used unnoticed as synonyms.
20. Interest may not be a basic concept
This raises the question of whether the Model of Consciousness needs interest as a basic concept at all.
Perhaps it does not.
In everyday language, the sentence
“I am interested in this.”
may combine several different phenomena.
The object may be relevant to me.
The object may possess high significance for me.
My attention may be directed towards it.
I may want to continue directing my attention towards it.
I may act because of the significance it possesses for me.
Several of these may occur together. But they need not coincide.
A person may regard something as highly significant while not attending to it at the moment.
They may voluntarily direct attention towards something that has little significance for them.
Something may be highly relevant to solving a task without possessing much personal significance.
And an object may have high significance although some of its properties are wholly irrelevant in the context currently under consideration.
The everyday concept of interest conceals these distinctions.
The Model of Consciousness makes them visible.
21. Three theories, three selections
This also explains why RM-ODP, Jung, and Vazard appear to discuss different things under the same word.
They select different aspects.
RM-ODP is concerned with the object of a discourse and therefore with a structure that can be connected to relevance.
Jung is concerned with the direction of psychic energy.
Vazard is concerned with why an object appears to be one to which further attention should be given.
The Model of Consciousness does not subsume these approaches under a new unified concept of interest.
It does the opposite.
It decomposes the concept of interest.
What appears linguistically as one phenomenon is resolved into different structural relations.
22. Relevance, significance, and attention
The three central concepts can now be set beside one another succinctly.
Relevance concerns the relation between object and subject with respect to what, in the introverted attitude, becomes psychic content. What is relevant remains; what is irrelevant is abstracted away.
Significance is psychic content. It is generated by the function of feeling. The role of this function depends on its position within the structure of the respective psychological type.
Attention is not significance generated by feeling, nor is it psychic content of the same kind. It has a direction determined by the subject. On the right path it is spontaneously directed towards the auxiliary function; on the left path it must be voluntarily maintained on the fourth function.
These three quantities must not be collapsed into a causal chain.
In particular, the following does not hold:
significance → attention.
23. From significance to action
Significance has a different consequence within the model.
It influences the actions of the subject.
This creates a connection between psychic reality and reality independent of the psyche.
Reality independent of the psyche affects the organism. Psychic functions generate psychic content. The subject, in turn, acts in reality independent of the psyche.
The psyche therefore does not form a closed inner world.
The causal relation is preserved in both directions, even though ready-made psychic content is not transmitted from reality independent of the psyche into the psyche.
Feeling plays a decisive role in the return to action: the significance it generates influences what the subject does.
24. Attention and significance point in different directions
This may be the most important distinction developed in this article.
Attention and significance have, within the Model of Consciousness, what might be called different directions of effect.
The direction of attention affects the course of psychic activity:
Which function receives attention? Which path is actualised?
Significance, by contrast, acts through the subject outward:
How does the subject act in reality independent of the psyche?
This does not mean that there can be no empirical relation whatsoever between attention and significance.
It means only that the Model of Consciousness does not derive one from the other.
Their theoretical functions are different.
25. What remains of the concept of interest?
After this analysis, the concept of interest does not disappear.
But its status changes.
It no longer appears to be an elementary psychic quantity.
It becomes a word that may designate different configurations.
Something may be relevant.
The function of feeling may generate significance for the subject.
The subject may direct attention towards the object or towards a particular psychic content.
Significance may influence action.
When several of these relations occur together, we may say:
“I am interested in it.”
A theory of consciousness, however, need not be satisfied with this everyday unity.
It can ask which different relations are concealed within it.
Conclusion
The comparison of RM-ODP, Jung, and a recent philosophy of interest does not lead to a single unified definition of interest.
It leads to something potentially more productive: the decomposition of the concept.
The Model of Consciousness distinguishes at least three phenomena that may be gathered together under the concept of interest in other contexts:
relevance – significance – attention.
Relevance also leads to a possible refinement of the fundamental distinction between extraversion and introversion.
The extraverted attitude is directed towards the concrete object independently of its relevance to the subject.
The introverted attitude is directed towards what is relevant to the subject and abstracts from what is irrelevant.
This can explain why extraverted psychic content is concrete and introverted psychic content abstract.
Significance belongs to a different level.
It is psychic content and is generated by the function of feeling.
Its structural role depends on the position of this function within the respective psychological type.
The direction of attention, in turn, is determined by the subject. On the right path, attention is spontaneously directed towards the auxiliary function; on the left path, it must be voluntarily maintained on the fourth function.
Finally, the significance generated by feeling does not operate by directing attention. It influences the subject’s actions in reality independent of the psyche.
Two relations that are easily confused therefore become visible:
Attention structures the path of psychic activity.
Significance influences the action of the subject.
Perhaps this is the most important gain from the analysis.
The question is no longer simply:
“What is interest?”
but rather:
What different phenomena do we refer to when we speak of interest?
RM-ODP, Jung, and Vazard give different answers because they focus on different relations.
The Model of Consciousness makes it possible to separate these relations and assign them to different places within a common structure.
The apparently simple word interest thus turns out not to name a single psychic mechanism, but a point of intersection between different relations involving subject, environment, psychic content, attention, and action.