But who profiles the profilers?

Continuing from this post, the above question is necessary. Who determines what 'integral' means? As if obvious from this forum, there is quite a bit of debate about what an integral level is, what it means, how it is conceived. It's far from settled so as to use it as some kind a profiling system.

I'm also reminded of Montouri's reflections on the last ITC conference.

"One of the historical criticisms of hierarchical theories of development is that the person developing or using the hierarchy almost inevitably finds himself at the top of said hierarchy. Whoops! There’s a not-so-subtle tendency to feel like a master of the universe when the whole map of creation from soup to nuts appears to be laid out before you."

So that's one trap. If we find ourselves at the top of any system we need to wonder about that system.


"The role of systems and complexity thinking in Integral Theory is still not particularly well articulated, in my mind. [...] Interestingly, postformal thinking has been irrigated by two streams, as it were—the dialectical stream, which started out in the pioneering work of Klaus Riegl, Basseches, and the more contextual stream, with Arlin, Commons, Koplowski, Kegan, and others."

This relates to one of my points above, the kind of complexity we use to determine what is even 'integral' in the first place. I've posted quite a bit on this in the pomo and complexity thread and elsewhere. And it really isn't as simple as saying we 'integrate' these two forms into a higher level, as that very sentiment is what is being challenged.

We might also recall when I asked Commons about Morin's variety, he immediately reduced it to his own horizontal complexity saying it doesn't account for the vertical. Elsewhere I used Lakoff to show how such varieties like Commons can only see it in these two versions.