What "is" the differance?

It struck me that Derrida's descriptions of khora and differance sound reminiscent of Wilber's description of consciousness per se in Integral Spirituality (Shambhala, 2007). For example Wilber says in Chapter 2:

"This happens to fit nicely with the Madhyamaka-Yogachara Buddhist view of consciousness as emptiness or openness. Consciousness is not anything itself, just the degree of openness or emptiness, the clearing in which the phenomena of the various lines appear (but consciousness is not itself a phenomena—it is the space in which phenomena arise)" (66).

Compare with this from Deconstruction in a Nutshell (Fordham UP, 1997):

“But something like khora is 'indeconstructible' not because she/it is a firm foundation, like a metaphysical ground or principle... Rather her indeconstructibility arises because she is...the space in which everything constructible and deconstructible is constituted, and hence...older, prior, preoriginary. Far from being a likeness to the God of the monotheisms...[it] is better compared to...the incomparable, unmetaphorizable, desert-like place without properties or genus....which is not be to confused with the Eternal, Originary Truth...of the intelligible paradigms above” (97-8).

I went into an exploration of Wilber's use of CPS on pages 4 and 5 of the IPN thread, how I think he uses the distinction metaphysically. So let's see how Derrida might be different. “Let us then, like the fool...ask 'what' differance 'is,' in a nutshell....[it] doesn't 'mean' anything at all” (99). After that quote Caputo launches into a discussion of linguistics, about how any word can only be defined in context with other words, and how that definition will change depending on the context of different words around it. In that sense meaning is all within relative context, and yet that differential between meanings, that space or interval in which meaning takes place, is itself not part of the context or meaning. Thus there is not one “essential” meaning of any word because it is contextualized within this play of differences, the play itself being a groundless ground in which meaning takes place.

This seems different than Wilber's metaphysical ground wherein all forms arise. The latter seems much more like Plato's archetypal realm of Ideal forms that step down into the sensible world and “in”form it. Granted Wilber doesn't see them as “pre-formed” but rather much more amorphous involutionary and morphogenetic “potentials.” Still, it seems this is part of the involutionary versus evolutionary dualistic scheme with one side being origin and absolute, with the other being result and relative. Derrida's differant khora is both outside and within that duality, not taking sides, as it were, but providing the stage upon which they play out their differences and similarities.

“He does not stake out the ground of a higher principle but concedes a certain an-arche at the bottom of our principles. Derrida is not denying that we have 'principles' or 'truth'.... He is just reinscribing our truth and principles in the an-arche of differance, attaching to them a co-efficient of 'contingency.' For the only 'necessity' he acknowledges is the necessity that precedes all oppositions...inscribing them in a vast and meaning-less receptacle called differance. This is why you cannot ask what differance 'is,” for its 'meaning' or 'truth'....[it] but points a mute, Buddhist finger at the moon” (102).

This differant khora is thus a way to keep meaning open so that it doesn't become fixed and rigidified. All possibilities reside therein so that different contexts as yet unseen will provide new meaning. It requires that we are ceaselessly pushing out boundaries and testing our limits, boldly going where no one—except perhaps Jean Luc and crew—have gone before.

Or maybe those Buddhists to whom Wilber refers? Balder and Bonnitta have made the case for a similar type of open, groundless ground that is in Dzogchen. Maybe so. And that perhaps Wilber, while using that Buddhism, still retains some metaphysics in his interpretation?

As context we discussed many similar themes in the Meillassoux thread, where contingency was explored as a non- or postmetaphysical ontology. As one example I said:

I just read Caputo's interesting review of a book about a debate between Millbank and Zizek. Here are some excepts highlighting my point from the next to last post, and related to what I've read so far about Miellassoux:

"The core theoretical debate in this book goes back to Hegel, about which Milbank and Žižek share considerable agreement. For Hegel, the fundamental motor of time and becoming is dialectical reconciliation of the members of a binary oppositional pair in virtue of which each one tends to pass into the other on a higher level. But Žižek rejects Hegel's invocation of "reconciliation" of opposites in a happier harmony. For Žižek the next step, the negation of the negation, does not mean a step up (aufheben) to a higher plane of unity but instead a more radically negative negation in which we are led to see that this mutual antagonism is all there is and that we are going to have to work through it. The unreconciled is real and the real is unreconciled. The only reconciliation is to reconcile ourselves to the irreconcilable, to admit that there is no reconciliation, and to come to grips with it. The negation of the negation leaves us with a deeper negation, not with an affirmation. It is not that the spirit is first whole, then wounded, then healed; rather such healing as is available to it comes by getting rid of the idea of being whole to begin with. The antithesis is already the synthesis (72).

"Žižek provocatively suggests an odd kind of 'positive' unbelief in an undead God, like the 'undead' in the novels of Stephen King, a 'spectral' belief that is never simple disbelief along with a God who is never simply dead (101). God is dead but we continue to (un)believe in the ghost of god, in a living dead god. If atheism ("I don't believe in God") is the negation of belief ("I believe in God"), what is the negation of that negation? It is not a higher living spirit of faith that reconciles belief and unbelief but a negation deeper than a simple naturalistic and reactionary atheism (like Hitchins and Dawkins). Belief is not aufgehoben but rather not quite killed off, even though it is dead. It is muted, erased but surviving under erasure, like seeing Marley's ghost even though Scrooge knows he is dead these twenty years; like a crossed out letter we can still read, oddly living on in a kind of spectral condition. Things are neither black nor white but shifting, spectral, incomplete. We have bid farewell to God, adieu to the good old God (à Dieu), farewell to the Big Other, Who Makes Everything Turn Out Right, Who Writes Straight with Crooked Lines, who maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Still, that negation of negation does not spell the simple death of belief but its positive mode in which belief, while dead, lives on (sur/vivre). This unbelief would be the 'pure form' of belief, and if belief is the substance of the things that appear not, Žižek proposes a belief deprived of substance as well as of appearance. Žižek mocks Derrida mercilessly, but when spaceship Žižek finally lands, when this buzzing flutterbug named Žižek finally alights, one has to ask, exactly how far has he landed from Derrida's 'spectral messianic.'"

Remember this from the comment to my last post, from DIAN:

“When we think of Plato we think of the two worlds or regions allegorized in the cave: the upper world of the intelligible paradigms, the sphere of invisible and unchanging being in the sun of the Good that shines over all, as opposed to the sensible likenesses of the forms in the changing, visible world of becoming.... When presented with a neat distinction or opposition of this sort—and this distinction inaugurates philosophy, carves out the very space of 'meta-physics'—Derrida will not, in the manner of Hegel, look for some uplifting, dialectical reconciliation of the two in a higher third thing, a concrete universal, which contains the 'truth' of the first two. Instead, he will look around—in the text itself—for some third thing that the distinction omits, some untruth, or barely remnant truth, which falls outside the famous distinction, which the truth of either separately or both together fails to capture, which is neither and both of the two" (83)

Recall Balder says this in the M thread:

"What isn't clear to me is whether this completely invalidates the evolution of meaning-systems that Kegan describes, or whether it just undermines the 'closure' we might expect any new emergent meaning-making system (including a meta-system like Kegan's) to exhibit.... If contingency is taken at an extreme...[then] there is no possibility of speaking of 'systems' at all."

Perhaps you can see from above that Derrida (and perhaps M, not sure) is not taking contingency to an extreme, that it doesn't undermine meaning and truth, just grounds and opens the latter's closure?

And as kela noted in the M thread "his [M's] idea of unreason sounds somewhat anarchic to me." Recall the an-arche of khora/differance above, and the type of reason that apprehends it from this excerpt of the "con and decon pomo" thread quoting DIAN:

"Plato says it is not a legitimate son of reason but is apprehended by a spurious or corrupted logos, a hybrid or bastard reasoning."

One of M's critiques or correlationism in that thread was that it accepts ontology as unknowable. To the contrary it would indeed appear one can apprehend it with a bastard form of (un)reasoning much like his own.

And this from DIAN:

"The last thing Derrida is interested in doing is undermining the natural sciences or scientific knowledge generally. A 'deconstruction' of natural science...would be to keep the laws of science in a self-revising, self-questioning mode of openness to the...'anomaly'...to the upstarts, the new ideas" (73).

But this is not done in an arbitrary fashion by simply questioning the underlying principles of science or any knowledge base without having a firm grounding in that base. For one must first know the thing one deconstructs inside-out from the point of view of those holding such knowledge. For example:

"To read Aristotle and Plato well one must learn Greek, learn as much as possible about their predecessors, contemporaries and successors, about their religions, social, historical and political presuppositions, understand the complex history of subsequent interpretations of their works, etc." (78).

It is this type of thorough understanding of Plato that Derrida brings with his deconstructive reading, and the implications are right in Plato's text.

"The very idea of a deconstructive reading presupposes this...classical reading....only after that reading, or through it, or best of all along with it, does a deconstructive reading settle in.... The idea is not to jettison the classical discipline but to disturb it by way of exploring what systematically drops through its grid and, by so disturbing it, open it up" (76-7).

One of Wilber's criticisms is that deconstruction is not a praxis that leads to a direct apprehension of emptiness, it's all words and concepts, all lingusitic, all "relative." As we can see, it most certainly is a practice that leads to apprehension, albeit a different praxis and a different, non-relative (and non-absolute) emptiness.

Also for reference here are the links to the prior Gaia threads on Derrida and Desilet's synergist spirituality. The documents are so large that Google docs sometimes cannot load them for viewing but you can download them quickly and then open them in any word processing program. I did so just now with the Derrida thread. It is 183 pages so you can see why sometimes (ofttimes) Google docs has difficultly displaying them. (Desilet's thread is "only" 155 pages.)

Context-transcendent meaning?

Here are some posts from a discussion by this name at the IPS forum:

bonnitta:

I am researching a working paper tentatively called "The search for context-transcedent meaning." In this post-metaphysical age, is there any context - independent knowledge or context-transcendent meaning? If maybe so... what kinds of categories, notions, meaning-drivers, values do you suppose they would be?

theurj:

It depends on what you mean by "context," i.e., in what context are you referring to the term? If you mean can we have meaning or knowledge without a physical body, then I'd say no and any such assertion is one of the many definitions of "metaphysical." But if you mean cultural context, then the embodied realists Lakoff & Johnson would say a qualified yes. For example, in Philosophy of the Flesh (Basic Books, 1999) they note that "there is no poststructuralist person, no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent" (5-6), all because we are embodied and that is a qualified universal beyond solely cultural constructs.

If you mean can knowledge or meaning be category-free, as if categorization is some kind of cultural context, then L&J would say no. "The categories we form are part of our experience.... We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, 'get beyond' our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience" (19). Just as there is no strictly poststructuralist person there is no strictly phenomenological person who can discover or experience reality as it is sans embodied categorization (5).

Also regarding cultural contexts and constructs, I quoted the following on p. 3 of the con and decon pomo thread:

"That Derrida here could be said to hint towards a form of context-transcendent meaning based in ‘otherness’, that is to say, outside the realm of ‘ownness’ and thus in between subjects, is not picked up by Habermas.... Critchley then argues that there might be a universal, ‘undeconstructable’ ethical moment in deconstruction."

Ironically Derrida was labled a relativist by the constructive postmodernists like Habermas, Griffin and Wilber. But as that article and John Caputo make clear that is just a straw man Derrida knocked down by their own inherent misunderstandings. For example this from Caputo, from Deconstruction in a Nutshell (Fordham UP, 1997):

"Every deconstructive analysis is undertaken in the name of something...affirmatively un-deconstructable.... What is undeconstructable...is neither real nor ideal, neither present nor future-present, neither existent nor idealizable" (128).

That is, deconstruction only operates on the relative, a relative that assumes a universal but only through an unconscious (or sometimes conscious) ignorance of its relative compliment. However there is a (quasi) universal beyond such relativity, beyond such cultural constructs like language, that doesn't partake of its dichotomies.

bonnitta:

How about pre-reflective meaning?
Something like Heidegger's in-dwelling

Where do our categories-in-experience come from?
Is there a kind of pre-reflective existential situation?

Balder:

I would think Heidegger's in-dwelling or pre-ontological understanding -- which, of course, is a significant topic in Levin's work -- would be such a candidate. In The Listening Self, Levin explores this (as I expect you're aware) through the concept of Zugehorigkeit, the infant's "primordial" experience with the pre-reflective field of hearing, which is later "recovered" through the phenomenological-hermeneutic task of his Stage IV work (Gelassenheit). As Levin stresses, there never really was an absolutely pure experience of total presence -- never, perhaps, an entirely context-free experience or field of meaning -- but this pre-ontological experience nevertheless approximates that (from the point of view of the conventional self), as a field of experience that is " global, holistic, syncretic, synergic, ek-static," and can be appreciatively recovered through spiritual, existential praxis. In the passage I quoted on my recent Levin thread, he adds some additional archetypal images to represent the qualities of this pre-reflective / post-reflective condition: "the 'uroborus,' roundness, wholeness, openness, receptiveness, embodiment, feeling, communion with the matrix of [experience]."

Are some of these terms in line with what you are exploring in your paper? As a field which is at least self- or ego-transcendent, if not entirely free of all possible contexts (the assertion of which would likely push us into metaphysical territory)?

theurj:

Pre-reflective experience, of course. Even so our embodiment delimits what pre-reflective experience will be. That's where inherent, basic-level categories come from, our embodiment that developed in relation to the environment, and why those basic categories are so close to a 1-to-1 representation of that environment. Notice the terms Balder uses above for the reflective, recontextualization of that experience: global, holistic, syncretic. Compare this with the descriptions of basic-level categories discussed in the “real and false reason” and “integral postmetaphysical nonduality” threads.

bonnitta:

I guess what I am trying for -- what I would love to put in the article, is some direct understanding or phenomenology of what it might mean/ be that some awareness, understanding, experience, knowing ... is context transcendent. Isn't there ANYTHING in you/ your life/ your existential situation/ your experience that you feel is true or real without interpretation, or pre-reflectively? or is your primordial existential situation/ experience/being/ embodied presence enfolded in an interpretive or reflective understanding?

And when you go "check into" that something that might be pre-reflective, or non-whatever ... how might you explain (with metaphor after the fact) what that was like?

e:

OK how do we normally cognize experience? We feel there is a self somewhere inside our head maybe 2 inches behind our left eyeball or some such. Or maybe not so much of a self but a vantage point of existing “in here” and interpreting what is happening “out there”. When that meaning making basis of division of re-presenting stops, it is not so much a “transcending” of context to a new meta-context or synthesis of opposites but the previous ways of interpreting based on the that division flush out of awareness so there is no longer an intuited “in here” vs “out there”. You talked about figure and foreground perspectives and that is not quite it as there is still a meaning making division between the two i.e. we accept the division or differentiation as actual. (Although shifting figure and fore/background exercises can help begin to loosen the belief in said separation.) I don’t feel pre-reflexive gets to it either as when “in here” and “out there” lose all meaning, “before” and “after” is flushed out as well.

bonnitta:

The idea here being that there is some process of a-waring that is not defined by the scholastics, but seems inevitably to require constantly being brought into new context, depending not only on the period or culture, but also, on an individual basis either i-thou, or i-awe.. and that the "dharma" is not something that is formulaic, but a process that continually re-news its form or structures... so perhaps it is this process that is context-transcendent, but the forms are context-dependent.

Now I am thinking of a kind of Platonic Ideal - which i do not like or adhere to-- brought into the post-postmodern era. That the forms are not "shadows" of separate Ideas outside the cave, but are elementals of their generative process... the generative process is like a "developmental modality" that itself transforms through time, so what arises through the process, evolves.

theurj:

"...require constantly being brought into new context, depending not only on the period or culture, but also, on an individual basis either i-thou, or i-awe...and that the 'dharma' is not something that is formulaic, but a process that continually re-news its form or structures.... Now I am thinking of a kind of Platonic Ideal."

I know from our past conversations that you think Derrida is not a candidate for what you seek but perhaps that has changed? Nevertheless I find a lot of him in what you describe. For example, as to your point about the singular event free from the formulaic context, here's Caputo in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida (IUP, 1997):

"Like the singularity of an event whose uniqueness makes each occurrence both an unprecedented first time and an unrepeatable last time.... The wholly other is any singularity...[that] we cannot lift up, cannot generalize, cannot universalize, cannot formalize" (51-2).

And as to a kind of Platonic ideal, recall D's take on Plato's khora:

"Derrida's concern is with 'something' which is neither the one nor the other, which is anterior to both, something which is not a thing, 'something like an indeconstructable khora,' not because it is invulnerable to deconstruction but because it is 'the very spacing of de-construction'" (53).

DIAN (cited above) devotes the entirety of Chapter 3 to Derrida's take on Plato's khora. A sample:

“Khora is not a universal (abstract place in general), nor a particular (a contained place), but something radically singular: place itself—within which multiple places are inscribed” (95).

Con & decon pomo continued

I will be referencing some sources in this post that were cited in the comments section from the last post, so check out those comments for the citations. And all of this comes from my posts at the IPS discussion forum on the topic.

More from Gare:

[criticizing Fichte] "it is inconceivable that an Absolute I could become conscious of itself, Schelling argued that the self-conscious I needs to be explained as the product and highest potentiality of nature....he claims, moreover, that the 'unconscious' stages through which consciousness emerges can only become conscious to an I that has developed out of them and realizes its dependence upon them" (34).

"Hegel's attack on Schelling provoked a sustained response from Schelling, who defended and elaborated his philosophy to expose the defects in Hegel's philosophy. He charged Hegel with producing a self-enclosed dance of abstractions dealing with essences without any place for existence. The crucial move made by Schelling was to show that a system of reason cannot explain the fact of its own existence" (38).

He does later on though note that process philosophers are in a better position to integrate early and late Schelling since they start from Schelling's early work whereas poststructuralists reject it (47). We'll see about that! Especially in light of the American pragmatists, one being Pierce who is cited as one of those process folks who adopted Schelling's early works.

The following are some excerpts from Schelling's entry in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy regarding his early work. Tell me this doesn't sound like Desilet's descriptions of Derrida as "not one, not two," I dare you! The latter rejects Schelling's early work indeed.

"The model is a magnet, whose opposing poles are inseparable from each other, even though they are opposites....the ‘principle of all explanation of nature’ is ‘universal duality’, an inherent difference of subject and object which prevents nature ever finally reaching stasis. At the same time this difference of subject and object must be grounded in an identity which links them together, otherwise all the problems of dualism would just reappear.

"One aspect of being, the dark force, which he sometimes terms ‘gravity’, is contractive, the other expansive, which he terms ‘light’. Dynamic processes are the result of the interchange between these ultimately identical forces. If they were wholly separate there would either be no manifest universe, because contraction would dominate, or the universe would dissipate at infinite speed because expansion would dominate. The result would be the same: there would not be a world....the One comes into contradiction with itself and the two forces constantly vie with each other. Differences must, however, be grounded in unity, as otherwise they could not be manifest at all as differences.

"This interaction between what is contained in itself and what draws something beyond itself is also what gives rise to consciousness, and thus to an inherent tension within consciousness, which can only be itself by its relation to an other."

(For some not familiar with Desilet, he participated in a couple of threads at the old Gaia forum. Here are links to two of those threads: Derrida and synergist spirituality. They are stored at Google documents which is sometimes slow in loading these large documents, and sometimes they don't load at all due to system overloads. Keep trying and eventually you'll get them.)

Here's what Mead said about Schelling, from Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Read Books, 2007):

“The antinomy in knowledge, instead of being the indication that we are trying to know something we cannot know, is the very process by means of which knowledge itself arises. The antinomy is a stage in the process of knowledge” (120-1).

He then goes into an examination of the Sophist tradition of ancient Greece, how they used “the dialectic” to trap opponents in contradictions. For when one sets up a universal definition there will always be particular instances that refute such “orienting generalizations.” Socrates was the champ at such sophistry but for him “it was a means for getting back to certain fundamental realities” (121). That fundamental reality is that there is no perfect, ultimate or universal category as such. Nonetheless, it is in positing such universals that we discover this through the process of antinomy, the process of differánce (not difference) as such! It is a postformal dialectical relationship between the universal and the particular that is not one, not two.

Mead went into an investigation of Kant as prelude to Schelling, given the former's influence on all subsequent philosophical investigation. So let's take a brief look of his critique of metaphysics from a concise, reliable source, the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. First off, K said that we cannot know the thing-in-itself by reason alone, but that reason and sensibility (experience) combined might enact such knowledge. Reason alone generates a "formal" dialectic and irreconcilable contradictions. This type of reasoning generates an a priori world of ideas from which the world of form depends. Sound familiar? (See real and false reason thread.)

Given this split or antinomy reason seeks to find ultimate or transcendental causes to ground all conditions, to find the ultimate generalization to ground all particulars, to seek "theories of everything." Which of course presumes an ultimate as already given to be found, the now infamous myth of the given. However, this propensity of reason to seek out the ultimate or unconditioned has its functional use if not taken metaphysically, "so long as they are construed 'regulatively' and not 'constitutively.'”

Continuing with Kant's SOP entry, what the author means by regulative use is "as devices for guiding and grounding our empirical investigations and the project of knowledge acquisition." To construe constitutively "is provide the concepts through which we might access objects that could be known through the speculative use of reason." Take away the literal belief in an ultimate but use conditional generalities (quasi-ultimates via metaphor) as categories to organize, manipulate and add meaning to events. Here we seem some roots of the American pragmatists and their offspring the cogscipragos in grounding reason is empirical events and embodiment sans the metaphysical commitments. And again, in this way the ultimate and the particular are in relation, not diametrically opposed, both and neither.

However it doesn't appear Kant went all the way to this conclusion, instead postulating a transcendental idealism (at least according to Mead) as the solution to the antinomies. It seems Fichte went along with this but it was Schelling that took the more "pragmatic" turn.

By transcendental idealism I mean that Kant thought the “categories” were not only inherent to the mind but also the objective world, that they were originary or causal. So even though one could not know the thing in itself with reason alone, one could apprehend it nonetheless because the categories were inherent in the sensible world and in our intelligible mind and this was the connection point. All of which transcended our reason because these ideal categories existed both within and without us. Kant started us down the postmetaphysical trail but this remnant of it remained behind to haunt his philosophy. A remnant we still see in Wilber's transcendental subject (that he got from Fichte and manifested in his transrational “states”) and mathematical models like the MHC with their ideal Platonic forms.

Now Kant was right that the categories are inherent to our mind but not like he envisioned. We know from Lakoff & Johnson (see real and false reason thread) that categorization is indeed inherent to the way or brain-mind works and it cannot be otherwise. But they do not extend this to the world in itself as a causal agency that we just apprehend. We certainly utilize our categorization to organize and manipulate the world for our benefit but they don't confuse this with this remnant myth of the given; they still maintain this every so small separation that we don't actually know the thing in itself but nevertheless well enough within our relationship with it to effect useful change. Recall they warned that because this gap is small it is easy to make the confusion that it is nonexistent which led us down the primrose path of false reason, i.e. metaphysicality.

In criticizing Fichte Schelling turns us back from the transcendental subject (object) by noting it is not originary but arises from the unconscious processes of nature and thus not transcendental in the sense Fichte intends. This was also his criticism of Hegel, who also maintained originary “essences.” While the early Schelling went along with this agenda, the mid- to late Schelling did not. Hence you get Wilber citing early Schelling, Fichte and Hegel as corroborating evidence for his own transcendentalism while ignoring later Schelling and the subsequent American pragmatism that sprang from it (e.g. Mead), and the cognitive science movement that evolved from that (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson). But Wilber himself was not “originary” in that, getting it from the likes of the constructive postmodernists like Griffin, who still retain (as Pedraja notes) a “centeredness” in Whitehead's philosophy.

And along came the likes of Derrida, who Hampson asserts is not strictly of the deconstructive variety but also constructive. The likes of Griffin and Wilber, themselves emphasizing one side of this coin with their essences and formalisms, cannot see like Hampson that Derrida combined both sides in his postformal dialectics. Recall above the quotes from Schelling's mid to late period on the relation of opposition and compare with Desilet's discussion of Derrida.

Constructive and deconstructive postmodernism

Continuing the theme from the postformal enaction post, Hampson in his Integral Review article “Integral re-view postmodernism” (link in previous post) discussed how Wilber distinguishes construction and deconstructive postmodernism. The latter is a lower level of postformal development (green) while the former is a higher postformal development (teal and above). Aside from Hampson questioning the validity of deconstruction as relativistic he also questions this placement and suggests that perhaps they are both sides of the same postformal coin (level).

In this regard Mark Edwards (2010) says this:

“I regard integral metastudies as a counterpart to the more typical forms of decentering and deconstructing postmodernism which seeks to identify and give voice to the personal story, the local history, the grounded experience, and the marginalized instance. These two postmodern activities are fundamentally different and provide critical counterpoints for each other’s development. Decentering, pluralist postmodern research is not something I believe is to be integrated within an integral metastudies. Decentering postmodernism and integrative postmodernism are complementary forms of knowledge building. Where integral postmodernism develops abstractions, decentering postmoderism develops grounded stories. Where integral postmodernism creates imaginative generalized frameworks, decentering postmodernism creates particular narratives and personalized accounts of human experience.

“This is not a developmental modernism versus postmodernism battle. It is an ongoing complementarity (e.g., Plato and Aristotle). An integral metastudies should not be seen as a rational project of integrating every perspective, concept, paradigm, or cultural tradition within its domain. There must be some things that, by definition, lie outside of its capacities to accommodate and explain. Consequently, an integral metastudies needs a decentering postmodernism that it cannot integrate, that lies outside of its scientific and systematic purview, which continually challenges it and is critical of its generalizations, abstractions, and universalizings. The decentering form of particularizing postmodernism is not something that integral metatheory can locate or neatly categorize somewhere within its general frameworks. Decentering postmodernism will always provide a source of critical insight and substantive opposition to the generalizing goals of an integral metastudies. In the same way that postmodernism often misunderstands integrative approaches as just some form of scientific monism, there is a danger that integral researchers can misrepresent the decentering and localizing concerns of postmodernism as simple relativism” (408 - 09).

Recent work on metatheory suggests that postmodern decentering is itself a form of metatheory, a compliment to the more constructive kind. For example in the special Integral Review issue on metatheory Steven Wallis (2010) says:
 
"It may be noted that six of our authors describe metatheory as making implicit assumptions explicit analysis of assumptions analysis of underlying structure, and the analysis of structure. These are essentially deconstructive approaches.

"In contrast to this deconstructive approach, metatheory may also be understood to integrate multiple theories. The two approaches may be inseparable as one cannot combine integrate two theories without also integrating the assumptions, structures, and concepts of those theories. In short, metatheory (as the study of theory) may be conducted in at least two ways. It may be integrative (where multiple theories are combined). It may be deconstructive (where theories are parsed into their constituent components for analysis and/or recombination). Either way, the process leads to the creation of a metatheory, metatheorum, or a 'theory of theory'” (78).

In the same issue of IR Latha Poonamallee sees Advaita non-dualism as one of the deconstructive metatheories. She says in "Advaita (non-dualism) as metatheory":

"Another school of thought takes the position that examining metatheory as a constellation of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions is a useful one. This paper is more aligned with the latter view that an examination of the underlying assumptions about theorizing can increase 'theoretical consciousness'and provide an alternate framework for inquiry” (190).

I will have more to say about nondualism as a legitimate metatheory in itself later, which disagrees with using such traditional notions of nondualism because they retain metaphysical elements.

Edwards, M. G. (2010) ‘Of Elephants and Butterflies: An Integral Metatheory for Organizational Transformation, in Integral Theory in Action: Applied, Theoretical, and Critical Perspectives on the AQAL Model, Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (Ed.) Albany, NY: SUNY Press, pp.385-412.

Wallis, S. (2010) "Toward a science of metatheory," Integral Review 6:3, July.

Mark Edwards' Ph.D. dissertation

can be found at this link: "An integral metatheory for organisational transformation." In Chapter 8.4 he details the inadequacies of the AQAL model. On p. 224 he lists lenses that are missing, including system dynamics, social mediation, postmodern decentering and evolutionary process. It sounds like a partial table of contents for my critiques over the years. In my modesty I'm almost embarrassed (not) to note that I'm given an honorable mention in his Acknowledgments.

You might also check out his blog over at the Institute for Integral Studies. Here's a post on altitude sickness.

What is postformal enaction?

Commons et al recently published an article that is available at Integral World called "Why postformal stages of development are not formal but postformal." To justify this claim they use the mathematical model of hierarchical complexity (MHC). The rationale is that a stage is higher if it is more complex based on 3 principles:

"Axiom 1...posits that...higher order actions are defined in terms of two or more lower-order actions; Axiom 2...that the higher order action coordinates lower-order actions; Axiom 3 states that the ordering of actions is not arbitrary."

Here we have the infamous Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis and higher integration. Otto Laske reiterates this in his recent ITC presentation wherein he says:

"Dialectical thinking preserves the essential gift of formal logic – making distinctions – but subordinates the latter’s “A is always A” to the notion that “A is never only A but always already non-A, and therefore always tends toward synthesis in Aprime....only to become thesis again for a subsequent cycle of dialectical motion and comment. However, one need not fear the 'bad infinity' Hegel found in formal logical thought since A-prime is a qualitatively transformed A, not something that remains on the same level of complexity that A was located on."

It is this very thesis of thesis-antithesis-synthesis (TAS) on a new level that is questioned by some postmodern, postformal thinkers. Granted the likes of the MHC might agree that they have advanced beyond formal operations but only to the next stage, often dubbed pluralistic or relativistic in kennilingus. That they haven't yet accepted the premise of TAS is by definition a lower order of complexity. But I think it is at this postmodern juncture that there is a legitimate debate as to what constitutes a more pragmatic, postformal enaction. It may or may not be more "complex" in terms of the MHC's math, but is further complexity really the measure of your postformality?

This very issue was discussed on the old Integral Review form in response to Gary Hampson's article "Integral reviews postmodernism." While much of that discussion has since disappeared from IR's archive I retained much of it at Open Integral in 3 links: Parts 1, 2 and 3. Therein Bonnitta Roy begins by asking:

"It is my feeling that dialectics in the above forms, is formal, not postformal, because it relies on the positing of opposite pairs, which it considers in some kind of tension. I believe that post-formal thinking sees dialectical pairs as self-defining, and therefore the tension is ‘resolved’ or ‘dissolved’ before the is any kind of movement toward synthesis. This open up into entirely new ways of thinking/perceiving more in terms of 'constellations'(hunting for the right words here) and what the Buddhists call co-dependent origination."

So is classical Hegelian dialectics, even upgraded in the MHC, itself postformal or just an extension of formal operations? In “The evolution of consciousness” Gidley talks about the difference between research that identifies postformal operations (PFO) from examples of those that enact PFO. And that much of the research identifying PFO has itself “been framed and presented from a formal, mental rational mode” (109). (Commons admits that "whereas the Model’s unidimensional measure is linear, the tasks it measures are nonlinear performances" (306).) Plus those enacting PFO don’t “necessarily conceptualize it as such” (104), meaning the way those that identify it do, i.e., from a formal operational (FO) mode. Is the way PFO is identified through FO really just a FO worldview interpretation of what PFO might be? Especially since those enacting PFO disagree with the very premises of the FO worldview and its 'formally' dressed PFO?

Gidley sees it more from a Gebserian aperspective:

“For Gebser, integral-aperspectival consciousness is not experienced through expanded consciousness, more systematic conceptualizations, or greater quantities of perspectives. In his view, such approaches largely represent over-extended, rational characteristics. Rather, it involves an actual re-experiencing, re-embodying, and conscious re-integration of the living vitality of magic-interweaving, the imagination at the heart of mythic-feeling and the purposefulness of mental conceptual thinking, their presence raised to a higher resonance, in order for the integral transparency to shine through” (111).

Because the MHC assumes that it is only an objective and quantitative model that purports to eliminate qualitative content and distinction (formal, metaphysical claims), you find very different descriptions of the postformal levels than one might in the more domain-specific models like cognitive or ego development. For example see Torbert’s "Cultivating adult postformal development." He defines formal operations as being logic oriented whereas the first postformal stage a Strategist seeks “to construct an explicit and distinctive integrative theory of self and world that recognized development (e.g., theories such as Hegel)” (185). So far this sound more like an extension of formal logic I’ve been criticizing. However he also notes that the Strategist is “aware of paradox” and “relativistic” (186) so this is not quite in line with Hegalian dialectics.

The next stage though, Magician/Clown, has some interesting characteristics. For example: “ego identity disintegrates, creates mythical events that reframe situations, blends opposites, treats time and events as kairatic, symbolic, alalogical, metaphorical” (186-7). Here we get into the kind of postformal dialectics discussed at length in an Integral Review forum on Gary Hampson’s article (cited above). The whole notion of a Hegelian dialectic is replaced by understanding that core dualities cannot be “resolved” into a higher integration but rather a Magician “blends opposites” dynamically according to context through analogical, metaphorical narrative. This is further reinterated in his last stage, Ironist, who “cultivates a quality of awareness and action that highlights dynamic tensions of the whole enterprise” (189).

Nothing of this sort is seen in the MHC. As Hampson’s article suggests, “the way out [of postmodernism] is through it.” I suggest Hegelian models like MHC have yet to sufficiently go through this “stage” and hence, much like Wilber, continue to conflate, exaggerate and project formal operations into postformal stages via more "complex" yet possibly less "integrated" perspectives.

This is just the tip of a very big iceberg. To be continued.
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More on dynamic systems

Here's a link to a very technical paper called "The 'dynamic turn' in cognitive linguistics." The abstract:

"The introductory sections of this paper ask the following basic questions about the proper goals of linguistic theory: Why did linguistic structuralism fail as an explanatory endeavour? Why is the understanding of the dynamics of language a primordial goal of linguistic theory? In order to give an explanation of the notion "dynamics" basic notions of dynamic systems theory are introduced informally. Following these questions the paper considers major proposals by Talmy, Lakoff and Langacker and asks how they account for the dynamic aspects of causing/enabling (Talmy's force dynamics), for iterated metaphorical mapping (Lakoff) and for syntactic composition ("construal" in Langacker's terminology). The ad-hoc pictorial models proposed by these authors are compared to mathematically controlled models in dynamic semantics (based on catastrophe, bifurcation and chaos theory). Shortcomings and advantages of the informal and pictorial versus the mathematical description are discussed. The dynamics of phrasal and sentential composition is currently one of the central topics of neurodynamic models based on ERP and fMRI brain scanning. This perspective must be further developed in order to specify the possibilities of future dynamic semantics of natural languages."

Dynamic systems approaches

Continuing the discussion at IPS:

In my research I found an ebook called Continental Philosophy of Science and started a thread elsewhere in this forum. Therein I quoted from a chapter on Deleuze which is relevant here so it is copied below:

"Deleuze reads differential calculus not as a pragmatic matter of using differential equations to discover the slope of a particular function at a particular point. Rather, he sees in the differential an entire ontology of difference that can actualize itself into various functions and, consequently, specific curvilinear patterns" (247).

"In the later collaboration between Deleuze and Guttari, the writings of Ilya Prigogine become increasingly important. Prigogine, whose book La nouvelle alliance appeared in 1979, argues for a self-ordering of chemical components into patterns and relationships that cannot be read off from the previous state of chemical disarray.... It is not the introduction of some sort of ordering mechanism that makes the chemical clock appear. It is an inherent capability of the chemicals themselves for self-organization that gives rise to this phenomenon. It is as though there were virtual potentialities for communication or coordination contained in the chemicals themselves, or at least in their groupings, that are actualized under conditions that move away from equilibrium. As Manuel De Landa notes, in an echo of Deleuze’s treatment of Spinoza, ‘Matter, it turns out, can express itself in complex and creative ways, and our awareness of this must be incorporated into any future materialist philosophy'" (247).

Dynamic systems remind me of Henri Bortoft from our previous discussion here. Here's an except from that relevant to many of the comments in this thread:

'Bortoft distinguishes between two types of wholeness: the counterfeit and the authentic whole. Both notions of wholeness are based on different faculties of cognition. The counterfeit whole is based on the intellectual mind abstracting from concrete sensual perception. That is, the mind is moving away from the concrete part to get an overview. The result leads to an abstract and non-dynamic notion of the whole. In contrast, the authentic whole is based on a different cognitive capacity, the intuitive mind that is based on opening some higher organs of perception. The intuitive mind is moving right into the concrete parts in order to encounter the whole. This encounter leads to perceiving the dynamic and living multiplicity of the whole.

'The distinctions between the two types of whole (the counterfeit and the authentic) correspond to two cognitive capacities (the intellectual mind and the intuitive mind) and to two notions of generalization (the abstracting general versus the concretizing universal) which are at the heart of Bortoft's work.

'Says Bortoft (1998, 285): “We cannot know the whole in the way in which we know things because we cannot recognize the whole as a thing. … The whole would be outside its parts in the same way that each part is outside all the other parts. But the whole comes into presence within its parts, and we cannot encounter the whole in the same way that we encounter the parts. We should not think of the whole as if it were a thing.”

'Bortoft claims that we can not know the whole in the way in which we know a thing, because the whole is not a thing. Thus, the challenge is to encounter the whole as it comes to presence in the parts. Says Bortoft (1998, 284):

“If the whole presences within its parts, then a part is a place for the presencing of the whole. … a part is special and not accidental, since it must be such as to let the whole come into presence. This specialty of the part is particularly important because it shows us the way to the whole. It clearly indicates that the way to the whole is into and through the parts. It is not to be encountered by stepping back to take an overview, for it is not over and above the parts, as if it were some superior all-encompassing entity. The whole is to be encountered by stepping right into the parts. This is how we enter into the nesting of the whole, and thus move into the whole as we pass through the parts.

* * *

As in dynamic systems the parts have an inherent capability (the "whole") for self organization that rearrange themselves into new organizational patterns during disequilibrium. But this new (and temporary) equilibrium, while still containing the parts, isn't of itself a new "whole" that included the former wholes a la cognitive models of hierarchical complexity (the counterfeit whole of Bortoft).

I'm reminded of Wilber's differentiation of enduring and transitional structures (that we've discussed here), where the former are transcended and included while the later are transcended and replaced. It seems he had the gist of the above but that it only applied things like worldviews, values and other self-related lines. He still maintained though that the actual cognitive structures were of the enduring kind. 

Here's an excerpt from "Dynamical systems hypothesis in cognitive science":

"It should be acknowledged that the most widespread conceptualization of the mechanism of human cognition is that cognition resembles computational processes, like deductive reasoning or long division, by making use of symbolic representations of objects and events in the world that are manipulated by cognitive operations (typically serially ordered) which might reorder or replace symbols, and draw deductions from them. This approach has been called the computational approach and its best-known articulation is the physical symbol system hypothesis (Newell and Simon, 1972). The theoretical framework of modern linguistics (Chomsky, 1965) also falls within this tradition....the traditional approach hypothesizes that all processes of cognition are accomplished by computational operations that manipulate digital representations in discrete time. The mathematics of such systems is based on an abstract algebra dealing with the manipulation of strings and graphs of distinct symbol tokens. Indeed, Chomsky's work on the foundation of such abstract algebras (Chomsky, 1961) served as a theoretical foundation both for computer science and cognitive science, as well as modern linguistic theory."

Compare to this statement by Commons:

"Lastly, in the early 1960s, many others’ work (e.g., Krantz, Luce, Suppes, and Tversky, 1971; Suppes, Krantz, Luce, and Tversky, 1989; Luce, Krantz, Suppes, and Tversky, 1990) introduced the representational theory of measurement. It is the basis for the Model of Hierarchical Complexity" (315).

Here are some interesting excerpts comparing different schools of cognitive science: classical, connectionist, pragmatist, reductionist. From “Intertheory relations in cognitive science” by Jesus Ezquerro (in CRÍTICA, Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía. Vol. 36, No. 106, April 2004: 55–103):

"Functional properties have a mathematical nature, and the classical view takes algorithms as the best
way to capture them, because algorithms are specially apt to describe state transitions between formal, discrete, symbol-like representational structures. In this sense, an algorithm would be constituted by a set of formal rules that operate on representations. Yet, algorithm theory is only a part of mathematics. Other mathematical descriptions may be able to account for that intermediate level between mental and physical properties....level-2 explanations are not necessarily algorithmic but they admit of a different sort of mathematics, such as dynamic systems theory.

"The classical view, Horgan and Tienson contend, entails that cognitive functions have to be specifiable by means of general laws about cognitive states. These laws are realized in particular cognitive transitions, which can be specified by rules on the algorithmic level, so a computation can be determined. However, if there are no such general laws, then the cognitive function will not be tractably computable. In fact, they argue, this is the actual situation in cognitive functions (73).

"Connectionist systems could be thus characterized in this mathematical framework: their transitions do not generally conform to algorithmic relations but can be captured by dynamic mathematics (74-5).

"It might be that our mental life can better be modeled by means of dynamic systems mathematics, as Horgan and Tienson contend, instead of algorithmic operations" (77).

More on measuring altitude

The below are posts continuing in the IPN thread @ IPS:

theurj:

In Balder's new thread on kosmic addressing I was reminded on our previous discussion in the "status of states" thread. Therein I provided an alternative explanation for what is going on in the so-called causal emptiness experience. I will copy some excerpts below:

"Here are some excerpts from New Developments in Consciousness Research by Vincent Fallio (Nova, 2007). For me it indicates that so-called 'spiritual' states of consciousness probably arise in very early levels of consciousness and associated brain structures. Hence there is a very real sense in which 'primordial' awareness is ancient, in that it arises from these early brain structures. But it is not timeless or absolute; it is grounded in our psychoneurophysiology.

"The excerpts:

'…we think it appropriate to consider that consciousness is not something unitary but that it has several levels of complexity, and that these levels have been forming ontogenically and philogenetically.

'On a lower level can be found the state of alertness or of being conscious, which refers to a basic level of consciousness or matrix as a generalized state in which the system is receptive to information. This aspect of consciousness is clearly related to the concept of tonic attention, and is also related to neural mechanisms in the stimulatory reticular system, the thalamus, the limbic system, basal ganglia, and the prefrontal cortex (81).

'[It is] a basic level of consciousness as a generalized state in which the system is receptive to information. In this sense awareness could be related to a tonic or basic attention; it is therefore important to realize that this type of consciousness should be understood as a 'condition for' and not so much as a function or cognitive process. As a result of this it can be affirmed that this notion of consciousness, this state of being aware, is a state that does not contain information' (68).

Your contentless, nonconceptual awareness in a nice postmetaphysical package. Also see the other excerpts in the kosmic addressing thread, on how the ego-witness is used to observe and integrate the process of unwinding back down to this 0 level of complexity.

A point of clarification. As I explored in the "real and false reason" thread, there is no inherently existing self a la Buddhism. Even the conventional self otherwise known as ego, while we can measure something of its altitude, is not a monolithic, consistent entity that permanently resides at the same altitude. Some of the research referenced in that thread makes clear this "self" is all over the place at different times and in different contexts. And it can, and often is, in itself "split," i.e., at different levels depending on particular issues. So while Wilber can be postmeta on some issues and still retain metaphysical notions on others is not a criticism of him personally but rather just acknowledging this phenomena in all of us. It takes a community to point this out to each other specifically how we do so in particular instances.

For example, see Fischer’s chapter in the Handbook of Developmental Psychology wherein he says:

"There is no single level of competence in any domain" (494).

And this:

"Dynamically, adult cognitive development moves forward, backward, and in various other directions. It forms a dynamic web, and even each separate strand is dynamic (and fractal), not a linear ladder" (508).

"The wisdom and intelligence of an adult cannot be captured by one developmental level, one domain, one pathway or one direction" (512-13).

So much for CPS as the single, unifying measure of altitude. Fisher, by the way, indeed makes ample use of hierarchical complexity for measuring altitude. He just seems to de-substantialize (post metaphysicalize) it.

* Kurt Fisher et al, “Adult cognitive development” in Handbook of Developmental Psychology (Sage Publications, 2003).

Balder:

Yes, I think that does really problematize the CPS notion. Even the notion of consciousness as a quality-less, empty, insubstantial clearing which yields greater or lesser degrees of "depth" is not really coherent, on its own terms. How can something empty, insubstantial, and "without quality" be any more or less deep (or high)? You've got to smuggle in "substance," quality, and reification, to some degree, to even speak in those terms, it seems to me.

IMO, the "spectrum" line could still be a useful "dipstick" if it is used as a device for correlating similar systems, but only if you avoid the metaphysical step of identifying that device with (or as) the "essence" of the human subject.

theurj:

And the other side of that coin is of course the Platonic, objective and contentless math of the MHC. Its still a metaphysical view not realizing that math itself is an enacted view-practice. L&J pretty much deconstructed that myth while still retaining the highly pragmatic value of its measuring stick.

And as all men know, their own dipstick has varying height, breadth and depth depending on context. So much more so for their fragile ego.

 Since I'm on a Fisher kick I want to reference his article "Dynamic development" in The Cambridge Companion to Piaget (CUP, 2009). Talking about Piaget he says:

"The problem of classic concepts of structure is that they treat structure as form--an abstraction existing in its own right--instead of dynamic organization that emerges as the components organizing themselves together."

He uses the example of how an orange is dynamically organized and then says:

"In contrast to the orange itself, the concept of sphere is an abstract form that describes one characteristic of the dynamic structure--its shape--which applies across many situations. The Greek philosopher Plato suggested that these abstract, idealized forms actually exist in an arena beyond the physical world. The uniformity of the sphere concept makes it useful for characterizing many objects" (402).

He goes on to note that the neo-Piagetian movement intends to retain Piaget's core insights like hierarchical development sans the "universal structures of formal logic" (403). Like the nondual pragmatic approach, "psychological activities do not exist outside of activity--like the concept of sphere--but instead they arise from action systems embedded [embodied] in what people do on a daily basis" (403). However he does emphasize that one element in going post-Piaget is "mathematical modeling" (401), so we'll hopefully see how he uses this measuring stick not as an ideal, Platonic form a la Commons or Wilber. Or even if he can avoid using it as a more conventional "universal structure of formal logic," the criticism of L&K when it comes to set theory, the foundation of mathematical, hierarchical complexity.

Here's what I'm not getting, yet. Fisher notes the difference between the abstraction "circle" from the dynamic process of an orange. And that the former is based on a universal structure of formal logic, hence it missed all of the other characteristics and relationships in the orange by reducing it to one abstract characteristic. Nonetheless mathematical modeling is used to measure altitude in any particular domain. While Fisher will allow the variability of altitude due to this messy process of a living thing, nonetheless from what I've read the altitude stick devised from nested formal operations (aka hierarchical complexity) is never examined. As I demonstrated in the real and false reason thread, this mathematical model is based on set theory, and what goes into each mathematical set is indeed just an abstract portion of any given living "part" that it represents, which then is nested within a larger set (part-whole aka holon), etc. As Fisher admits, such living parts themselves do not fit into any abstract category (set) and yet they can be measured with math that does exactly that? I certainly get the idea that lower skills are needed to build on more complex ones but something is not right in the mathematical modeling of altitude. I must sit and stew and await my Muse to speak to this.

Per above Fisher is into the dynamics of development but seems to be using, like Commons, a static mathematical model to measure it. So why not a dynamic mathematical model based on living systems? Just such a mathematical model exists in dynamic systems theory applied to cognition, which uses differential equations instead of nested algebraic sets. Recall Commons said that "whereas the Model’s unidimensional measure is linear, the tasks it measures are nonlinear performances" (306). Why not a multidimensional, nonlinear measure? And in the same article he admitted: "The MHC is a mathematical theory of the ideal. It is a perfect form as Plato would have described it. It is like a circle. A circle is an ideal form that exists" (315).

In the article cited below it says something interesting about the kind of increasing complexity in dynamic systems:

"Complexity does not have to be constructed from preexisting forms nor follow a universal direction" (39). Emergence comes about through instability when old patterns break down. They are not included or enfolded in the set of a more complex level. Complexity yes, hierarchy not so much.

Lewis, M. (2000). "The promise of dynamic systems approaches for an integrated account of human development." Child Development, 71:1, 36-43.

From the essay "Piaget, DeLanda and Deleuze":

"it is a central concern for Deleuze...to do away with all ideas about structures...with ideas about ‘timeless forms’ or ‘essences’ that emanate from some Platonic heaven to give shape to the world of real things. Deleuze finds that such ‘essentialism’ pervades our normal perception and ways of thinking...things are thought of as belonging to categories and sub-categories which are defined in terms of invariant properties or, again, essences.

"This is all the more noticeable since Deleuze draws on almost all other branches of mathematics – number theory, the theory of sets; catastrophe theory, the theory of fractals and other branches of topology and in particular calculus and differential geometry.

"I would like to elaborate on this by jumping to one of the places where DeLanda discusses evolution. He says that the idea that evolutionary processes possess an inherent drive toward increased complexity reintroduces teleology – another kind of essentialism – into Darwinism. In this connection he mentions a mechanism in biological evolution called neoteny, which shows that novelty need not be the effect of terminal addition of new features; on the contrary it can be the result of a loss of certain old features.

"It is from the standpoint of this ontology...that Deleuze refutes evolutionism.... Returning to DeLanda’s example, in terms of genetic structuralism neoteny is a fine example of the way structure grows out of structure in a process that at bottom yields increased complexity by generating a new developmental level. The problem that makes discussions of evolution difficult is that Deleuze rejects the notion of epistemological and developmental ‘levels’, which is essential to Piaget. Instead, Deleuze introduces the concept of ‘strata’, which are intermingled or folded into one another and shot through by escape routes or ‘lines of flight’. At one point Deleuze says that among strata there is no fixed order, and one stratum can serve directly as a substratum for another without the intermediaries that one would expect from the standpoint of stages or degrees. Or the apparent order can be reversed.

"As mentioned earlier, Deleuze’s arguments draw heavily on calculus."

Kosmic addressing of mysterical experience

Balder started a new thread by the above name at the IPS forum. Here is his post and then some comments.

Balder:

Recent discussions on the Integral Postmetaphysical Nonduality and the Privileged Access threads have prompted me to start this thread, which was originally a discussion I initiated at other Integral forums.  I think the issue raised here (Wilber's addressing conventions in relation to certain central terms, such as Emptiness) is relevant to other discussions we've been having.

In Integral Spirituality, Wilber proposes that a minimal Kosmic address should involve altitude/level plus quadrant/perspective (p. 264), and he also states that any positive statements about Spirit(+) must be replaceable with injunctive (!) language  or indications of address (ka) in order to avoid metaphysics (p. 269).  But when he mentions particular spiritual ultimates, he usually only indicates "state" and doesn't provide a full kosmic address (that is, if a full address requires an indication of altitude).  For instance, he writes Ayin (1-p, c/S) or Big Mind (1-p, nd/S), without indicating altitude.


For example:

"...[I]f I want to know if there is a referent to the signifier Ayin or Godhead, then one among the necessary routes is to take up a concentrative form of meditation, and learn to be able to keep my mind focused unwaveringly on an object for at least 30 minutes. (The longest the average adult can focus on an object in an unbroken fashion is for less than one minute.)  Once I can do that, which usually takes daily practice for about 3 years, then I need to look in an unbroken fashion at the nature of phenomenal reality as it arises moment to moment and see if there is, as directly seen or cognized in my own consciousness, anything that appears to be an empty ground to all of them. And then I need to compare this reality with my ordinary state of consciousness and decide which seems more real. Although exact numbers are hard to come by, a clear majority of those who complete this experiment report that the signifier Ayin or Emptiness has a real referent as disclosed by injunctive paradigm. That is, those who are qualified to make the judgment agree that it can be said that, among other things, Spirit(!) is a vast infinite Abyss or Emptiness(c/S, 1p), out of which all things arise" (Wilber, IS, p. 268).

In this example, and throughout the text, Wilber only represents Emptiness and related terms with a perspective and state indicator.  This raises the following questions for me:

• Does Wilber avoid indicating altitude for terms such as Ayin, Big Mind, or Emptiness because he believes "altitude" does not play any role in the experience or realization of these particular things, or was he perhaps just trying to keep things simple in his initial presentation?
• More directly, does realization of "Ayin" or "Big Mind" involve altitude?  (If so -- which I suspect -- then I do wonder why Wilber has avoided explicitly indicating that in his writings so far (that I can recall)).
• Related to this, as I discussed in a recent blog, when we find substantial agreement among mystics about "what" they are encountering, what degree do you think "altitude" is involved in that agreement?  To what degree is subtle, causal, and nondual experience the same across altitudes, and to what extent does it differ?  For instance, would a first-tier individual likely agree with a third-tier individual on the nature, meaning, role, implications, etc, of causal-state experience?

As I mentioned above, one of the things that prompted these questions for me was the fact that Wilber started a section his appendix on postmetaphysics (Appendix II) with a comment that he was going to look at the Kosmic addresses of several signifiers, namely dog, Santa Klaus, the square root of negative one, and Emptiness.  And I've read through the section several times and don't really find any explicit addressing of Emptiness (or Big Mind, Ayin, etc), other than the reference to it as a state, although he reiterated a number of times that a Kosmic address requires perspective and altitude at a minimum. So, I have been wondering to myself if he just skipped doing that for some reason, or whether there was a theoretical reason for specifically not indicating it.

I am interested in looking at this because, even if we keep certain elements in the addressing system themselves unaddressed (because they are components of addresses, like states, types, levels, etc), I don't feel comfortable simply equating things like Big Mind, Ayin, Emptiness, etc, with "state" (causal) and leaving the altitude marker off entirely. In my view, Big Mind, Ayin, Emptiness, and so on, are soteriologically efficacious realizations, which demand a certain level of cognitive and discriminative capacity, and so should not be simply equated with something like the deep sleep state -- even if we do find, through simultracking, that the causal/deep sleep state is always correlated with these experiences.


With that said, while I don't find any explicit altitudinal addressing, in looking through Appendix II of IS, I find it does contain several statements which, taken together, would appear to support my main contention here, that even though Wilber didn't formally include altitude in the examples where he gave an address for things such as Big Mind, Ayin, and Emptiness, an altitude marker for these items nevertheless is appropriate:

"A more complete Kosmic address would include the full AQAL aspects of any occasion, but the point is that, at the very minimum, you need quadrants and levels, or perspectives and altitude." ~ p. 253.

"There simply is no such thing as 'the dog' that is the one, true, pregiven dog to which our conceptions give varying representations, but rather different dogs that come into being or are enacted with our evolving concepts and consciousness." ~ p. 260.

"The point is that any ontic or assertic mode (+) must be able to specify the Kosmic address of the referent of the signifiers, and this is true whether the referents are material, emotional, mental, or spiritual, it doesn't matter. Spiritual realities are on exactly the same footing as electrons, Gaia, rocks, and the square root of negative one." ~ p. 264.

"And one of the first things you find in the GigaGloss is that, to put it crudely, there are levels of God. That is, levels of the answers that spiritual intelligence delivers to the question, 'What is of ultimate concern, or ultimate reality, or ultimate ground?' There is a magic Ground, a mythic Ground, a rational Ground, a pluralistic Ground, a second-tier Ground, a third-tier Ground, and so on. As well as a gross, subtle, causal, and nondual version of each of those. But all of those signifiers have real referents in the only place that referents of any sort exist anyway: in a state or structure of consciousness. All referents exist, if they exist at all, in a worldspace, whose address is given minimally by quadrant (perspective engaged) and altitude/level (structure of consciousness enacted)." ~ p. 266.

Weaving these things together, (and, of course, in a more general sense, just approaching these questions postmetaphysically), I think it is justifiable to say that there is no single altitude-independent "Emptiness" or "Big Mind" showing up across multiple stages, (although a particular altitude-specific "Emptiness" can be retro-read back into prior stages and posited as "subsistent," from the perspective of the one making the assertion), and therefore, to avoid making metaphysical assertions, we need to include "altitude" on these terms as well.

Tentatively, just using the term Emptiness, I suggest that the sort of Emptiness described by Wilber in the quote above likely requires at least Amber-level cognition (for the individual to take the injunction and perform the interpretive analysis recommended), so the address would be something like (1p, 4/L, c/S), at minimum.  And for the Emptiness described and disclosed by Nagarjuna, I expect post-formal cognitive capacity is required, so I would address its altitude, minimally, at 6/L (if not higher).

I also started a conversation about this on the Integral Life website. In that discussion, our general consensus was that Wilber might have left "altitude" out of his addressing of "state" terms such as Emptiness or Ayin or Big Mind for simplicity's sake, and I do believe that's possible; but considering some of his other conventions, such as tying addressing to "degree" or "depth" of consciousness as such (as Theurj is discussing), and his use of states (as "horizontal" constants or givens in the Wilber-Combs lattice, as we discussed in the Status of States discussions), it may be that he actually does want to exempt them from the altitudinal component of addressing, despite some of the statements I quoted above that seem to indicate that this would be inappropriate (and metaphysical).


Theurj:

It might've been in the status of states thread, and I'm sure in several others, that I've suggested that states and stages are not two different animals. It requires at least a formal operational cognition to even have these so-called subtle, causal and nondual state experiences via meditation, since they are, in fact, how formop integrates earlier cognitive levels/brain structures. So yes, we all sleep and dream but these states are not in themselves subtle and causal. They only become the latter through conscious(ness) practice. However, since formop is still representational it is "metaphysical" by definition and interprets a separation between states and stages, absolute and relative, and so on.

Graphically, instead of the WC lattice, put formop in the mid-point of a figure 8, with the "states" above and the "stages" below. This pictorially shows the inverse relationship.

Postmetaphysicality emerges at the postformal, but not sure specifically which particular stage, since there is no valid empirical research on this that I know of. Graphically this could be displayed as that midpoint expanded laterally into 4: systematic, metasystematic, paradigmatic and cross-paradigmatic. Get the picture?

PS: I did note previously though that one who moves into postformal cognition does not necessarily integrate the earlier stages because they might not enact that transformation via meditation practice. So we can have the case of an un-integrated postformal, postmetaphysicist as well as an integrated, formal metaphysicist. And of course an integrated, postformal postmetaphysicist.

But a pre-formal causal meditator? Unlikely. Recall that such traditions didn't start until the advent of formop in the Axial age. And that today it requires one be of a certain age to meditate, to have at least a rational ego, which I've said all along IS THE WITNESS! Ironically this witness in interpreted metaphysically, and how could it be otherwise since it arises in formop.

Recall this from the Buddhism and Psychoanalysis thread on Epstein:

"The development of mindfulness...involves a 'therapeutic split in the ego' in which the ego becomes both subject and object, observer and observed.

"Advanced stages of insight meditation involve profound experiences of dissolution and fragmentation, yet the practitioner, through the practice of 'making present,' is able to withstand these psychic pressures. It is the ego, primarily through its synthetic function, that permits integration of the experience of disintegration. In true egolessness, there could be only disintegration, and such a state would manifest as psychosis.

"Thus, mindfulness is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe its own manifestations."

Also the following from that thread, quoting Epstein from Chapter VI of the book:

"Beyond the Oceanic Feeling

"The equation of meditation with preverbal, symbiotic union or regressive oneness with the mother has gone virtually unchallenged within the psychoanalytic community" (124).

"Meditation practices that produce an experience of one-pointedness, of dissolution of ego boundaries and fusion with a primary object, do gratify the desire to unite the ego with that which it yearns to become. While recognizing the stabilizing impact of such experiences, traditional Buddhist psychology rejects the sole pursuance of such states" (134).

"The traditional psychoanalytic formulation of the relationship between meditation and primary narcissism is correctly conceived but incomplete and undeveloped. Buddhist meditation seeks not a return to primary narcissism but liberation from the vestiges of that narcissism. Concentration practices do indeed evoke the ego ideal and the oceanic feeling in a manner well described by generations of analytic commentators, but the mindfulness practices, which define the Buddhist approach, seek to dispel the 'illusory ontology of the self' encapsulated within the ideal ego" (136).

As I commented in the thread, Epstein is comparing types of meditation I'd call "causal," i.e., dissolution, as creating the ego ideal, a primary narcissism of regressive, oceanic union with the mother. Whereas mindfulness as he describes it uses the synthetic ego, per the previous post. Could it be that the kennilingus with his causal emptiness is guilty of the pre-trans fallacy here? Such irony...

And recall Sara saying this in the "status of states" thread:

"States and stages are two terms that originated from thinking at the Formal Operations order of complexity.... For example, how about the state of meditation, the ‘witnessing’ kind where the person watches their thoughts go by? It, too, is a formal operations activity, not 'transcendent' at all unless someone wants to project 'transcendence' on it.

"So, if I’m in the 'watching thoughts and objects' meditative mode, per above, I’m functioning with formal operations’ ability to reflect on thought. My physiological system is just humming along in 'on' position, and my brain (neurological) is active, though will gradually slow to alpha wave, a nice and relaxed neurophysiological condition. When my thoughts and visuals cease, my neurological activity goes not 'off' but to like an idling phase and my overt mental actions slide down the orders of complexity to doing nothing - order zero. Total inner silence, except for the awareness that there’s inner silence, nothing going on. While there is nothing going on, zero complexity. During or after (depending on the practice) formal operational reflection on the absence of thought, visuals, etc., along with enjoying the after-effects. In this analysis, rather than transcending (I cannot find anything that’s transcended - can anyone help me out here?) it is gradually turning off cognitive operations till maybe we hit zero complexity (with caveat repeated: if we are reflecting on the silence/void, we are performing formal operations cognitively and are still active, and something would likely be showing up on fMRI brain imaging).

"The real-time experience is relaxing - as Tom points out, the entire system is relaxed. The after-effects are pleasant. So, might we conclude that the subjective meaning we later assign to that state of relaxation could be whatever we individually want it to be? (this reminds me of the very old song, 'you say po-tah-to, I say po-ta-to'). Could be relaxing, spiritual, healthy, any number of classifications are possible, it seems to me."

In Balder's new thread on kosmic addressing I was reminded on our previous discussion in the "status of states" thread. Therein I provided an alternative explanation for what is going on in the so-called causal emptiness experience. I will copy some excerpts below:

"Here are some excerpts from New Developments in Consciousness Research by Vincent Fallio (Nova, 2007). For me it indicates that so-called 'spiritual' states of consciousness probably arise in very early levels of consciousness and associated brain structures. Hence there is a very real sense in which 'primordial' awareness is ancient, in that it arises from these early brain structures. But it is not timeless or absolute; it is grounded in our psychoneurophysiology.

"The excerpts:

'…we think it appropriate to consider that consciousness is not something unitary but that it has several levels of complexity, and that these levels have been forming ontogenically and philogenetically.

'On a lower level can be found the state of alertness or of being conscious, which refers to a basic level of consciousness or matrix as a generalized state in which the system is receptive to information. This aspect of consciousness is clearly related to the concept of tonic attention, and is also related to neural mechanisms in the stimulatory reticular system, the thalamus, the limbic system, basal ganglia, and the prefrontal cortex (81).

'[It is] a basic level of consciousness as a generalized state in which the system is receptive to information. In this sense awareness could be related to a tonic or basic attention; it is therefore important to realize that this type of consciousness should be understood as a 'condition for' and not so much as a function or cognitive process. As a result of this it can be affirmed that this notion of consciousness, this state of being aware, is a state that does not contain information' (68).

Your contentless, nonconceptual awareness in a nice postmetaphysical package. Also see the other excerpts in the kosmic addressing thread, on how the ego-witness is used to observe and integrate the process of unwinding back down to this 0 level of complexity.