IPS thread on involutionary givens

inthesaltmine started this thread. My comments so far follow.

Involution is a 'myth' for him [Wilber] only insofar as it holds to actual immutable forms. His postmetaphysics to be consistent cannot allow for that. Hence he updates it to a morphogenetic gradient, which provides the impetus to evolve but he still retains this a priori involutionary thrust from which evolution must 'return.' Just retaining that notion though keeps him hitched to a metaphysical premise, one avoided by the embodied immanentists like SR and OOO.

So I take your point about envolution. I do not though see evolution beginning after the big bang. That is, there was never a time when there was nothing and then magically there was something. Even before the big bang there was something, hence there is an ever present evolutionary (though not necessarily 'progressive') movement. Hence the emphasis on embodied immanence instead of disembodied transcendence.


I'm also moving this one over from the OOO thread, since I like its more immanent frame. (Or would that now be enmanent? As is, eminent immanence?) My use of after was merely a rhetorical inference to indicate what I more explicitly said above. And per Balder's post, they are entangled or mutually entailed (in more Buddhist terms).

I like this from Edwards in "Through AQAL eyes part 3," consonant with my view of involution as integration and downward causation after something has evolved. Also how dream and deep sleep are related to subtle and causal state-stages via this downward and causative integration by the ego. I also criticize Edwards in some respects on this in the thread bearing his name.

"The within-quadrant drives and motivational dynamics include evolutionary forces (emergence) expressed as a holon's self-transcendence, and involutionary forces (integration) expressed as a holon's self-immanence. These motivating drives are also known at the Kosmic level as the Ascending and Descending movements and as the Eros and Agape drives. State dynamics can also be considered to be the result of within-quadrant dynamics. [...] I do not see the involutionary 'states' of sleep and deep sleep as being within this category of altered states. They are not states in the formal sense in that they are not episodic, unusual, or induced. Sleep and deep sleep are simply the integrated presence of previous forms of identity as they appear in a rational-egoic identity."

[In response to wondering if Joe and I were coming at the same thing from opposite directions]

I'm not thinking in terms of opposites but of the transcendetal condition for them. It's like the term multiplicity is not an opposite to the term unity here, or nonlinear is not the opposite to the term linear here. Such oppositional framing is itself one definition of a metaphysics of the ontotheological kind. Hence I often create neologisms to indicate the distinction, so I'm all for envolution for that purpose. So no, I don't see Joe and I coming at the same thing from opposite directions, since I see him abiding by those type of metaphysical distinctions inherent to some of Wilber's statements.

As but one example, this post and continuing commentary for the next couple of pages goes into Wilber's metaphysical commitments in Integral Spirituality.

I'm also reminded of this post, since Wilber bases much of his 20 involutionary tenets (from excerpt A) on the holon concept. Whereas the holon concept can be better postmetaphysically described via image schema. It does though, as I noted elsewhere, turn holarchies inside out instead of how they are typically structured.