Integral Paradigm

[Anachronous Rex]

I've never heard of anyone say, "don't vote for candidate x, they're not self actualized." I wouldn't be surprised to hear, "don't vote for candidate y, they're not 'green.'"

200 years ago in the U.S., most probably there were more people who would vote for pro-slavery candidates than today. Since then slavery has seen its demise, because it's an inferior (less inclusive) mindset (vMeme) to egalitarian mindsets. And it's reasonable to assume that this demise corresponded with the increase in the number of people who would not vote for pro-slavery candidates. The general criteria changed. When they today see a candidate advocating slavery, they would know it could be a very bad decision to vote for that candidate. This is because people's general consciousness has made an advancement. What if they keep advancing? More and more areas of interest would be elucidated and recognised. And they would have known that candidates of the trans-personal stage can more deal with pre-personal and personal interests than those of the personal stage can.

Yup, economics and westward expansion had nothing to do with it.

Obvious flaws in your example aside... you're asserting your hierarchy with no actual evidence that it even exists, and then retroactively applying it to historical trends (badly, I might add) as a sort of evidence. If you can't see what's wrong with this, then I don't know why I bother.

But more to the point, they're arbitrary. Why 1000 AD for Orange? The 12th Century was when Europe's recovery got going... 1000AD was just barely past the hight of the Viking invasions; seems more 'red' to me.

Orange is the scientific/strategic stage. According to Wikipedia:

"By 1000, Muslim traders and explorers had established a global economy across the Old World leading to a Muslim Agricultural Revolution, establishing the Arab Empire as the world's leading extensive economic power."

"By the late 11th century the Song Dynasty had a total population of some 101 million people an average annual iron output of 125,000 tons and had bolstered the enormous Economy of the Song Dynasty with the worlds first known "Banknote" paper printed money."

"Scientific achievements in the Islamic civilization reach their zenith, with the emergence of the first experimental scientists and the scientific method, which will form the basis of modern science."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_AD

You still miss the point. Why not the scientific revolution of ancient Alexandria? Why not Rome? Why not Qin or Han China? They were easily more innovative then the Song.

You argue it's the zenith of Islamic civilization? Wouldn't that make the years that follow it a decline in science? What about the Song? How did they fair (I encourage you to look it up)? How about Europe? Things got worse before they got better, no?

Just so we're clear, I can easily find three prosperous and innovative civilizations in damn near any century. Shot in the dark... Ashoka's Empire, Qin dynasty, and the Ptolemaic dynasty. This isn't scientific, it's some guy's opinion.

Do I really have to bring Dennett into this?

Right, according to him, qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us." The interior aspect is one of the ways things appear to us, yes.

He has more scathing things to say then that, and you know it.

define a "non-physical event" and demonstrate how it can be empirically studded.

A non-physical event is a subjective content of any phenomenon. Its effective theoretical status comes from psychological and philosophical phenomenology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(psychology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)

Any subjective experience is by definition empirical. Anyone can empirically study their own emotions or meditative visions, for example. But the point is that scientists should realise that science can treat the exterior evidence and the interior evidence in the same line of investigation.

Neuroscientists are increasingly convinced that subjective experiences such as the perception of certain colours or emotions or even a detailed image of somebody's face have corresponding observable patterns in brainwaves and magnetic fields, suggesting that these qualitative contents can be quantitatively measured and mapped out:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/brain-scans-reveal-what-youve-seen/
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/mri_vision
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/mind-reading-ma/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
These findings support the Integral scheme that identifies the exterior and the interior as two sides of the same reality. A reality of 'red' consists of events on the exterior (objective, physical) quantitative side and events on the interior (subjective, mental) qualitative side. Given sufficient clinical studies and statistical data, scientists could start formulating a scientific model for these subjective non-physical contents of reality by integrating evidences from the exterior and from its interior correlates.

Neuroscience does not require your ideology to achieve any of this. Way to render yourself meaningless.

I am not fond of 'total solutions.' They breed dogmatism and circular logic.

Where do you find them forcing 'total solutions'?

Your ideology is a total solution, that's the point. It is the answer to everything. I never mentioned forcing, although dogmatism breeds this in turn. Heh, I sound like Yoda.

All I see is you blindly asserting 'types' of reality to account for experiences almost certainly neurological in origin. This is not to demean them, it is simply to address them maturely. These men do that. Your "National Values Center, Inc" does not.

You say "neurological in origin", but it's more like "with the neurological". The red-ness is a simultaneous correlate of a certain physical process involving a light and nerves rather than a secondary property of it.

So again, you offer nothing outside of neurology.

The Orange (rational/scientific) stage enabled people to differentiate types of truth. The physical sciences took this idea and ran with it, but too far. They not only differentiated (separated) them, they dissociated (divorced) them. And then the hard sciences claimed that their truth was the only truth. The former absolutism of the Church was replaced by the absolutism of the hard sciences. (This is the historical root of the so-called 'Flatland', a shrunk perspective that grants reality only to things that have simple location -- things that we can point to, or put a finger on.)

I never tire of hearing how close-minded scientists are, it must be hard for them. Oh, and I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate this other 'truths' with something beyond your ideologies assertions.

Just like Feudalism transcends and includes lower classes aye?

You are mistaken on the meaning of transcendence. Dialectic is the key:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

Someone can't take a joke.

Okay, cheep blow, but you're being naive. Just because your ideology has a place for the 'lower ones' doesn't mean that they will just bow down and accept it. Them, or anyone else.

And that is not what an integral level requires. It's primarily a mode of consciousness, not a social contract. If someone's consciousness doesn't agree with a more inclusive consciousness, that would just mean their consciousness is less inclusive. If someone doesn't move to a more inclusive level, that would mean they aren't ready for that level.

How delightfully condescending. I'm sure they'll just love you 'superior' people.

Your ideology's expansionism will make it enemies in the ideologies it seeks to supplant. They will vilify you, and with you your message.

That vilifying would be analogous to the Christian reactions to Galileo and Darwin. The heliocentric view was more inclusive of reality; so it eventually started to prevail. So was and did the evolutionary view.

Global Climate change can't wait for you to assert your Reich, and given that this is all pseudo-scientific nonsense it's probable that you never will gain any notoriety (one can only hope), in the meantime you damage legitimate efforts.

If you want to help the environment, do not associate it with your movement.

I'll put it another way, you are damaging environmentalism by trying to associate it with you.

I would appreciate a more detailed criticism of its alleged negative impact on environmentalism.

I don't see what is confusing, it's an obvious social and political trend. An unpopular group - let's say the Democrats - takes on an issue of some importance - let's say environmentalism, and adopts it as core policy. Before long, environmentalism becomes commonly associated with democrats. Soon it becomes difficult to be a Republican congressman and vote for environmental policies, fox news starts running propaganda against climate change. Hundreds of scientists are accused of fudging research, apparently at the behest of Al Gore, and the issue is stagnated.

See how this works?

It would be one thing if you could demonstrate yours to be a legitimate branch of inquiry. I'd readily take a hit to, for instance, popular conception of science for the sake of Darwinism. But you just keep stating your position over and over again, or link to it, I want evidence.

Please note that I made this thread so that I could talk about a subject that I'm interested in. I'm defending the Integral position for the sake of finding out more about it, including its limitations.

Oh, well for that you're better off listening to Andiferous or ArthurWilborn.

I'm just here to expose the wrongness of it all.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

The Integral sense of mysticism involves no non-empirical or supernatural or anti-scientific assumptions; it's the empirical affirmation that the mental modes that take place on extremely inclusive levels of awareness are as valid sources of knowledge as that of the sensorimotor (eyes, ears, etc.). But when the mental/rational levels look at the mystic levels such as the Causal and the Non-Dual, they see only paradox. The Causal level is the "cause" of the lower levels; pure awareness before it becomes aware of any object. It is related to what William James called 'radical empiricism':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_james#Epistemology
It is 'mystic' because it is a mystery to the lower levels that cannot but perceive divisions of objects, not because it is foreign (supra-natural) to the cosmos itself. The Causal is the mode of formless mysticism. This gives way to the next Nondual mysticism. It is even more paradoxical; it's where "Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form". Nonetheless, according to Integral thinkers, even such an extensive interior reality proves to have its exterior correlates in the form of brainwaves and magnetic fields. But research on them involving actual 'mystics' is still scarce. If general studies currently appear to contain no 'extra baggage of mysticism', that's why. It doesn't mean that the baggage is essentially uncalled for in a more comprehensive pursuit for truth.

Uh... I think I understood this. This is what most people call "navel gazing". The fact that you're thinking about something mystical and it produces an unusual brainwave pattern doesn't really prove anything. It's interesting, and it could offer insight into how the brain works. However, assigning fancy labels to it doesn't give it any inherent validity.

Meditators observe certain interior phenomena. They then come up with a hypothesis about it. They want to test it. They discover that every interior experience has an exterior correlate. They then want to see if the correlations can repeatedly be verified. So they invite people to introspectively observe the contents of consciousness by means of meditative process, and scientists are more than welcome to investigate the hypothesised exterior correlates.

I think what you're saying is that you can somehow take a measurement of the brain, and then correspond that measurement to the specific thought that caused it. Interesting. I know this is being tried, but I don't know how successful it will wind up being. A fascinating study; and one that has absolutely no relation to the artificial color-structure spiral nonsense from your first post.

What sense datum did Galileo rely on as the epistemological basis of evidence in his investigation of the solar system? Mostly that of the eyes. So do other modern scientists. They epistemologically rely on the eyes (or sometimes other sensorimotors) in order to visually confirm what the computer screen shows, for example. If it displays certain patterns of brainwaves and magnetic fields obtained from an experiencer of "love", they would then logically deduce that's the exterior truths of "love". But how would they know the interior truths of "love"? They would have to observe the subjective experience itself; they themselves would have to be the experiencer. But if they instead decide to claim "love" has only exterior (neurological) processes as its truths, that would be intellectually dishonest, fallaciously reducing the interior experiences to a sort of sub-reality or even non-reality.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Science is attacking this from multiple angles. There are neurologists, who are trying to crack the brain's data transmission methods to build prosthesis; up to and including prosthetic eyes. There are computer engineers, who are working on the patterns of intelligent thought to develop AI. There are behavioral psychologists, who relate how subjective experience effects behavior. There are significant cross-overs in all of these fields.

Interior realities, as you put them, are not scientific. You could use science to categorize and make predictions in statistically significant populations; but not for an individual. Each person experiences these things differently based on a chaotic interaction of genetics, body state, and experiences. What "love" is and feels like varies between people, and not everyone would agree what it is, how it feels, or how it affects them. I doubt you could extract a single measurement that you could call "love". This isn't a denial; but a recognition that something falls outside of purview.

He is an expert of meditation; in the video, he experimented different types of meditation; for each type, the EEG machine showed different non-random patterns of his brainwaves. Does that not say anything about the correlation between the interior/subjective experience and the exterior/objective process?

Yes; it says that he can control the bars on an EEG machine. This probably also means he can, in fact, alter his brain waves. He probably experiences a different subjective state with each level of activity; I'm not denying that. That this change in subjective state actually means anything useful; I doubt it.

Biofeedback is fascinating, I'll admit. It's easy to use it to perform some minor parlor tricks. I've taught myself to control my goose bump reflex and to ignore any temperature that doesn't cause actual pain. If I had an EEG machine I could probably duplicate his results with some practice. This doesn't mean that any of his psuedo-mystical explanations for why he's getting those results is accurate. There may be and probably is some use to these altered states; if he explored that, he could have some interesting and useful research. If he's just looking to tack on more inane vocabulary to his already needlessly complex models; then his work is psuedo-scientific crap.

Like so:

1. psychoses <-- physiological/pacification
2. narcissistic-borderline <-- structuring-building techniques
3. psychoneuroses <-- uncovering techniques
4. script pathology <-- script analyses
5. identity neuroses <-- introspection
6. existential pathology <-- existential therapy
7. psychic disorders <-- the path of yogis
8. subtle pathology <-- the path of saints
9. causal pathology <-- the path of sages

... What? I'll give you a pass on the first 6 levels, but the last three seem like undefinable nonsense. What is a psychic disorder? A ghost? How in the world does "subtle" apply to psychology? What does that even mean? How are saints "subtle"? What do you mean by "causal"? How does it relate to psychology? Why are we placing yogis and sages over scientists, when for hundreds of years they attributed psychological problems to possession by evil forces?

 

[Exmortis]

I have a headache...

Can't you just sum up your rant in one sentence or a very least a simple paragraph...?


... S I M P L I F Y ...

 

[Deleted member 619]

I can do that:

WoooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!

 

[Light]

I know there's a FF13 joke in here somewhere.

Something to do with Paradigm Shift...

 

[mirandansa]

Obvious flaws in your example aside... you're asserting your hierarchy with no actual evidence that it even exists, and then retroactively applying it to historical trends (badly, I might add) as a sort of evidence. If you can't see what's wrong with this, then I don't know why I bother.

A more conspicuous set of evidence for the change in general human consciousness comes from art such as paintings, architectural designs, poetry, etc., as the ones elaborated in Jean Gebser's The Ever-present Origin. Consider the changes from the pre-Renaissance 2-dimensional paintings

(Egyptian papyrus, circa 1200 BCE)

to the Renaissance 3-dimensional (incorporating space) paintings

(Leonard Da Vinci's Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena, 1498)

and to the post-Renaissance 4-dimensional (incorporating time) paintings

(Pablo Picasso's Dora Maar au chat, 1941)

; note that at each stage a dimension is added -- the depth (near/far) for Da Vinci's, and then the time (past/present/future) for Picasso's. Also consider the shift from Euclidean to Non-Euclidean geometries since the 19th century:

(a Euclidean conception of the Earth, T-O world map, 12th century)

(Today's non-Euclidean conception of the Earth)

Together with numerous other examples they present a transition of mankind's general consciousness with augmentation in perspectives. Gebser summarised the process into three stages:

Unperspectival
Perspectival
Aperspectival

The Unperspectival gave way to the more inclusive Perspectival, which then gave way to the yet more inclusive Aperspectival. These modes of perspective are hierarchical because they made their first emergence sequentially and once emerged they started to become the dominant mode thereafter. Note that each perspective does not reject the previous ones; this is why in the age of the Aperspectival we can still identify and observe the Unperspectival and Perspectival elements, in such a way not that the world is of these perspectives but that the world contains these perspectives -- integral.

You still miss the point. Why not the scientific revolution of ancient Alexandria? Why not Rome? Why not Qin or Han China? They were easily more innovative then the Song.

You argue it's the zenith of Islamic civilization? Wouldn't that make the years that follow it a decline in science? What about the Song? How did they fair (I encourage you to look it up)? How about Europe? Things got worse before they got better, no?

Please, I'm just trying to provide you with some historical facts to which Don Beck and Chris Cowan may have referenced in order to decide on the approximate year of the global onset of the Orange meme; I'm not missing your point, I understand that the date may appear arbitrary.

Just so we're clear, I can easily find three prosperous and innovative civilizations in damn near any century. Shot in the dark... Ashoka's Empire, Qin dynasty, and the Ptolemaic dynasty. This isn't scientific, it's some guy's opinion.

Right, the dates of the general origin of each vMeme can vary as much as the scope of what you take as the whole in question. We can talk about, for example, the origin of Blue (rule/role; religious/mythic) on the individual level, which according to developmental psychology is between the age of 6-11 in the U.S.

In biology, scientists find archaeological evidence for biological evolution across geographical strata; they use these evidence, along with others, to formulate a model of biological evolution; we don't call that unscientific. Now, if we find archaeological evidence for civilizational innovation across the human history, and some thinkers use these evidence to formulate a model of civilizational advancement, why would you call that unscientific?

Right, according to him, qualia is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us." The interior aspect is one of the ways things appear to us, yes.

He has more scathing things to say then that, and you know it.

I would like to be educated on that.

Neuroscience does not require your ideology to achieve any of this.

Right, the findings in neuroscience are the findings in neuroscience. Then: Will a colour-blind person be able to know the subjective experience of 'red' if they learned those findings in neuroscience? I think not. Neuroscience obtains exterior truths, not interior truths. Current narrow science presumes the latter has no significance in empirical, scientific investigation; the Integral claims that both sides of truth deserve empirical, scientific investigation.

Where do you find them forcing 'total solutions'?

Your ideology is a total solution, that's the point. It is the answer to everything. I never mentioned forcing, although dogmatism breeds this in turn.

If you are on Red, your immediate solution is not the remote Yellow but the next Blue; if you are on Blue, your immediate solution is still not the remote Yellow but the next Orange. Gradual process. Unperspectival paintings were followed by Perspectival paintings, not Aperspectival paintings. Different immediate solutions for different current perspectives. There is no 'total solution' for all individuals at the same time.

You say "neurological in origin", but it's more like "with the neurological". The red-ness is a simultaneous correlate of a certain physical process involving a light and nerves rather than a secondary property of it.

So again, you offer nothing outside of neurology.

The Integral is about the development of the consciousness integrating more perspectives; and its exterior aspects are to be best quantitatively tackled by brain sciences.

The Orange (rational/scientific) stage enabled people to differentiate types of truth. The physical sciences took this idea and ran with it, but too far. They not only differentiated (separated) them, they dissociated (divorced) them. And then the hard sciences claimed that their truth was the only truth. The former absolutism of the Church was replaced by the absolutism of the hard sciences. (This is the historical root of the so-called 'Flatland', a shrunk perspective that grants reality only to things that have simple location -- things that we can point to, or put a finger on.)

I never tire of hearing how close-minded scientists are, it must be hard for them. Oh, and I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate this other 'truths' with something beyond your ideologies assertions.

You seem to think that the perceptive qualities of colours, sounds, emotions, etc. do not belong to a type of truth. I think these are of their own type of truth. You are asking me to demonstrate how this is a type of truth. But demonstration takes place on the exterior domain. We cannot demonstrate how a subjective content of our own consciousness is a truth; we can only experience it (as one form of truth). What we can demonstrate is the correlation between a subjective content and an objective process.

And that is not what an integral level requires. It's primarily a mode of consciousness, not a social contract. If someone's consciousness doesn't agree with a more inclusive consciousness, that would just mean their consciousness is less inclusive. If someone doesn't move to a more inclusive level, that would mean they aren't ready for that level.

How delightfully condescending. I'm sure they'll just love you 'superior' people.

Whether a statement sounds condescending has no relevance to its veracity. If a newbie guitarist tries to play an extremely technical Iron Maiden song upon receiving his first guitar, an experienced guitarist could say "You are not ready for that yet. Take your time to step up from easier songs", which would be a valid and considerate statement.

That vilifying would be analogous to the Christian reactions to Galileo and Darwin. The heliocentric view was more inclusive of reality; so it eventually started to prevail. So was and did the evolutionary view.

Global Climate change can't wait for you to assert your Reich, and given that this is all pseudo-scientific nonsense it's probable that you never will gain any notoriety (one can only hope), in the meantime you damage legitimate efforts.

The Integral paradigm does not prescriptively dictate what the world should come to at which moment in time; it is a descriptive way to comprehensively interpret your existence at a given time & space.

An unpopular group - let's say the Democrats - takes on an issue of some importance - let's say environmentalism, and adopts it as core policy. Before long, environmentalism becomes commonly associated with democrats. Soon it becomes difficult to be a Republican congressman and vote for environmental policies, fox news starts running propaganda against climate change. Hundreds of scientists are accused of fudging research, apparently at the behest of Al Gore, and the issue is stagnated.

Environmentalism is not the tenet of the Integral. Environmentalists identify the ecology, but they often fail to retain the individual perspective, claiming for example that a forest is more important than a human individual; upon differentiating the ecology, they also erroneously dissociate it from the previous perspectives rather than integrate them. The Integral is not about favouring the environment over the individual; it's about integrating both perspectives (in the consciousness).

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Neuroscience obtains exterior truths, not interior truths. Current narrow science presumes the latter has no significance in empirical, scientific investigation

At the risk of repeating myself, the branch of science that considers these kinds of things is called behavioral psychology. Why would we want it in, say, physics? The internal experience of color does nothing to help explain redshifting, mass spectrometry, or any of the physical sciences that consider the color of things.

 

[Andiferous]

I think this is about an individual and society evolving to a place of greater awareness (awareness of, for example, those issues affecting society itself. Poverty, discrimination, pollution, injustice, etc.).

It's also about overcoming internal hardships, such as anxiety and self-hatred. If you hate yourself, that could mean you have erroneously dissociated the ego-centric perspective upon moving to the social level rather than integrating it into what could then have been your more inclusive perspective. This is an accident that happens on a 'fulcrum' of transition. At each fulcrum, persons can either (1) proceed normally to the next stage, or (2) branch off and be stuck in a pathological condition. A person may seemingly continue normally, but leave behind a portion of themselves that is stuck at the prior stage (Wilber calls that a 'blob').

I think "greater consciousness" is probably the wrong term when mixing with psychological and sociological concepts. "Spiritual" is a loaded term, though - and I don't understand why the two must be linked.

Did I say "greater consciousness"? I think I didn't.

I apologise, you didn't say this in those terms, what you said was:

Debunking/pwning mythical irrational religious craps is one thing; it helps those believers move on to the next, better level of consciousness.

Which is essentially saying the same thing.

The spectrum of consciousness can be less-loadedly described as:

Each structure has a corresponding fulcrum & characteristic pathologies & treatment modalities:

1. psychoses <-- physiological/pacification
2. narcissistic-borderline <-- structuring-building techniques
3. psychoneuroses <-- uncovering techniques
4. script pathology <-- script analyses
5. identity neuroses <-- introspection
6. existential pathology <-- existential therapy
7. psychic disorders <-- the path of yogis
8. subtle pathology <-- the path of saints
9. causal pathology <-- the path of sages

And from my point of view, linking Piaget and other psychological theories willy nilly doesn't make the connection any easier to understand.

Could you point out some specific point of incompatibility or irrelevance?

The major problem I am having with the breakdown of this approach (aside from the confusing presentation), is that it is just another judgemental model that tries to gain credibility by borrowing bits and pieces from psychological and scientific theories and studies. The difference is that any scientific or psychological theory or study with any credibility will go out of its way to avoid making value judgements on that which it is studying, and will avoid making these oblique and unsupported associations.

I criticised linking these many and various references because you have neglected to explain their pertinence, and at the moment they are adding to our confusion. This is not to say I or others are not already familiar with those references. Which seems a bit telling of this model - because I suspect it appears to dip into scientific territory, but cannot maintain a connection that can hold up to scrutiny, and thus relies somewhat on confusing the issues.

I am somewhat skeptical that a higher level of consciousness necessarily includes condescension.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

A more conspicuous set of evidence for the change in general human consciousness comes from art such as paintings, architectural designs, poetry, etc., as the ones elaborated in Jean Gebser's The Ever-present Origin. Consider the changes from the pre-Renaissance 2-dimensional paintings

So now I have to do art now too?

Your examples aren't even from the same cultures? They have nothing to do with each-other (well okay, maybe the last two.) This isn't evidence of forward progress, it's evidence of separate progress. Or more correctly, progress in one region and the death of a tradition in another.

Human progress is not linear. For instance:

This is an Acheamenian inscription.

This is typical of Parthian work.

Clear forward progress isn't it? Or rather, not. The Acheamenian were better artisans then any of the following Persian dynasties... even my beloved Sassanians.

Or, for instance, take this 10th Century piece:

This is arguably a better artistic work then the bulk of Renaissance sculpture, the masterful and intentional distortion of certain features is the sort of thing you don't see in Europe until the 1800s. Again, this is 10th Century.

Your "change in human consciousness" only works if we confine ourselves to the European continent alone... and Egypt for some reason. I don't know why but sophomoric history loons always throw Egypt into the development of Western Civilization....

Please, I'm just trying to provide you with some historical facts to which Don Beck and Chris Cowan may have referenced in order to decide on the approximate year of the global onset of the Orange meme; I'm not missing your point, I understand that the date may appear arbitrary.

It doesn't just appear arbitrary, it - in fact - is. Moreover it is criminally insulting to every cosmopolitan society that achieved any scientific greatness prior to this date, and grants far too much credit to the society that launched the crusades. Is it Thomas Aquinas that renders this an era of science? Surely not. This is insanity. How are the proud denizens of ancient Athens not green? How do crusaders get the scientific moniker?

Right, the dates of the general origin of each vMeme can vary as much as the scope of what you take as the whole in question. We can talk about, for example, the origin of Blue (rule/role; religious/mythic) on the individual level, which according to developmental psychology is between the age of 6-11 in the U.S.

In biology, scientists find archaeological evidence for biological evolution across geographical strata; they use these evidence, along with others, to formulate a model of biological evolution; we don't call that unscientific. Now, if we find archaeological evidence for civilizational innovation across the human history, and some thinkers use these evidence to formulate a model of civilizational advancement, why would you call that unscientific?

Because, if you'll extend your metaphor of archeology to paleontology, I can find a bunny not just in the precambrian, but in every strata.

Then: Will a colour-blind person be able to know the subjective experience of 'red' if they learned those findings in neuroscience? I think not.

I very much doubt your organization has ever, or even can, accomplish this either. Instead you just make up that red is 'vikingish,' and that orange is somehow scientific. Sounds to me like you're just suffering from Synesthesia.

Neuroscience obtains exterior truths, not interior truths.

This is actually not true.

Current narrow science presumes the latter has no significance in empirical, scientific investigation; the Integral claims that both sides of truth deserve empirical, scientific investigation.

Again, this is simply wrong. Neuroscience in particular pays very close attention to the subjective. You'd know this if you had ever bothered to investigate, just listen to anything by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. This is not an endorsement of Ramachandran, but you cannot deny he does not fall under your understanding of what "Current narrow science presumes."

Once again, real science is doing everything that your organization does, but without the mumbo-jumbo.

If you are on Red, your immediate solution is not the remote Yellow but the next Blue; if you are on Blue, your immediate solution is still not the remote Yellow but the next Orange. Gradual process. Unperspectival paintings were followed by Perspectival paintings, not Aperspectival paintings. Different immediate solutions for different current perspectives. There is no 'total solution' for all individuals at the same time.

You seem to be trying very hard not to understand what I'm trying to say. Your ideology constitutes a total solution not because it claims to have a single answer to every problem, but because it claims to hold the answer to every problem. It is the answer to every problem, and if we all just went along with it the world would be a utopia (sorry PAB), of happy good feelings and universal bliss.

You seem to think that the perceptive qualities of colours, sounds, emotions, etc. do not belong to a type of truth.

They don't get their own category, no. They are true to the extent that they are really perceived.

I think these are of their own type of truth.

Evidence, please?

You are asking me to demonstrate how this is a type of truth. But demonstration takes place on the exterior domain. We cannot demonstrate how a subjective content of our own consciousness is a truth; we can only experience it (as one form of truth). What we can demonstrate is the correlation between a subjective content and an objective process.

Unsatisfiability is a problem for anything that dares to call itself truth. On a side note: don't you realize who you sound like? ... and you say this isn't religious.

Whether a statement sounds condescending has no relevance to its veracity. If a newbie guitarist tries to play an extremely technical Iron Maiden song upon receiving his first guitar, an experienced guitarist could say "You are not ready for that yet. Take your time to step up from easier songs", which would be a valid and considerate statement.

The difference is that your hierarchy comments on the thinking ability of others, not their musical skill. This is the sort of thing that requires proof! It's one thing to say, without evidence, "you probably can't play that," But when it's, "you shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're only blue" that's a fucking big problem.

The Integral paradigm does not prescriptively dictate what the world should come to at which moment in time; it is a descriptive way to comprehensively interpret your existence at a given time & space.

So it won't do anything to address global climate change, and you were lying earlier.

Environmentalism is not the tenet of the Integral. Environmentalists identify the ecology, but they often fail to retain the individual perspective, claiming for example that a forest is more important than a human individual; upon differentiating the ecology, they also erroneously dissociate it from the previous perspectives rather than integrate them. The Integral is not about favouring the environment over the individual; it's about integrating both perspectives (in the consciousness).

Way to stawman and not address the comment at the same time.

 

[mirandansa]

Uh... I think I understood this. This is what most people call "navel gazing". The fact that you're thinking about something mystical and it produces an unusual brainwave pattern doesn't really prove anything.

It's not really a thinking process; it's a sheer experience. You perceive red-ness not because you 'think' it is red-ness but because it's simply what the experience is.

It's interesting, and it could offer insight into how the brain works. However, assigning fancy labels to it doesn't give it any inherent validity.

Sure. This is where the theory of truths comes in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber#Theory_of_truth
The Integral does not undermine the validity claim of the exterior. If an alleged subjective experience doesn't match to the expected exterior correlate (the correlation being a scientifically induced fact from previous clinical studies), then that could mean the experiencer had misinterpreted the experience.

What sense datum did Galileo rely on as the epistemological basis of evidence in his investigation of the solar system? Mostly that of the eyes. So do other modern scientists. They epistemologically rely on the eyes (or sometimes other sensorimotors) in order to visually confirm what the computer screen shows, for example. If it displays certain patterns of brainwaves and magnetic fields obtained from an experiencer of "love", they would then logically deduce that's the exterior truths of "love". But how would they know the interior truths of "love"? They would have to observe the subjective experience itself; they themselves would have to be the experiencer. But if they instead decide to claim "love" has only exterior (neurological) processes as its truths, that would be intellectually dishonest, fallaciously reducing the interior experiences to a sort of sub-reality or even non-reality.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Science is attacking this from multiple angles.

There are neurologists, who are trying to crack the brain's data transmission methods to build prosthesis; up to and including prosthetic eyes. There are computer engineers, who are working on the patterns of intelligent thought to develop AI. There are behavioral psychologists, who relate how subjective experience effects behavior. There are significant cross-overs in all of these fields.

The category of the exterior that the Integral observes is not the category of effect. The interior quality of red-ness has its exterior correlate such as the physical process between a wavelength and brain nerves, but they are not the effects of red-ness. Nor is red-ness really the diachronic (temporally remote) effect of the physical process; it is what the physical process synchronically (simultaneously) looks like from the interior perspective.

The basic four quadrants are not subject to whether the eyes or even the brain are biological or artificial. Every unit of reality has interior/exterior and individual/collective aspects, so say Integral thinkers.

Interior realities, as you put them, are not scientific. You could use science to categorize and make predictions in statistically significant populations; but not for an individual. Each person experiences these things differently based on a chaotic interaction of genetics, body state, and experiences. What "love" is and feels like varies between people, and not everyone would agree what it is, how it feels, or how it affects them. I doubt you could extract a single measurement that you could call "love". This isn't a denial; but a recognition that something falls outside of purview.

Right, but those various perceptions of "love" will still each have its own exterior correlate (to deny that will be to commit dualism, which is not what the Integral is). And whether we should attempt to extract a single measurement for that correlation would depend on how useful that measurement would be.

Yes; it says that he can control the bars on an EEG machine. This probably also means he can, in fact, alter his brain waves. He probably experiences a different subjective state with each level of activity; I'm not denying that. That this change in subjective state actually means anything useful; I doubt it.

If the change proves to have relevance to developmental psychology, wouldn't that indicate a practical significance of the endeavour to achieve that change in the state of consciousness as a problem-solving skill?

If I had an EEG machine I could probably duplicate his results with some practice. This doesn't mean that any of his psuedo-mystical explanations for why he's getting those results is accurate.

It's worth mentioning that he asks in his books that we do not accept anything on faith. He asks that we experiment for ourselves. Remember: the Integral is not about taking the interior-individual as the dominant validity claim; equally crucial to a comprehensive understanding of reality are the interior-collective, exterior-collective, and exterior-individual. If the majority of properly trained meditators don't agree with Wilber on the interior-collective domain about his alleged interior-individual experiences, that would mean he might have misinterpreted the experiences. And it could be further tested by observing its correlations to the exterior sides.

1. psychoses <-- physiological/pacification
2. narcissistic-borderline <-- structuring-building techniques
3. psychoneuroses <-- uncovering techniques
4. script pathology <-- script analyses
5. identity neuroses <-- introspection
6. existential pathology <-- existential therapy
7. psychic disorders <-- the path of yogis
8. subtle pathology <-- the path of saints
9. causal pathology <-- the path of sages

... What? I'll give you a pass on the first 6 levels, but the last three seem like undefinable nonsense. What is a psychic disorder? A ghost?

Right, it means that if you are on that stage but with some fixation on elements of previous stages, you would likely misinterpret your subjective experiences there in a way that is characteristic to that level. On this level, you would have experiences of being conscious during dreaming and deep sleep; and if you for example have some unnoticed fixation on the mythic level, you might erroneously interpret that as some supernatural phenomenon. This level is also where the main mode of consciousness shifts from 'the ordinary, gross-oriented reality -- sensorimotor and rational and existential -- into the properly transpersonal domain', giving rise to 'an awareness that is no longer confined exclusively to the individual ego'. Shamanism is an example of this level, and you probably know what its pathologies can be. A successful example of this level is said to be Ralph Waldo Emerson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

How in the world does "subtle" apply to psychology? What does that even mean?

It means that the features and pathologies on that level are subtle. The experiences are more elusive than the gross, ordinary, waking consciousness.

How are saints "subtle"?

While the Psychic is a union with the natural world, the Subtle goes beyond that. On the Psychic, you are confined to the nature; on the Subtle, the consciousness transcends the category of the nature and includes it. And this is where you would start to perceive your own archetypal form, a form from which you as a natural being derives. The pathology of this level could be called "Cosmic terror", and people with this pathology would mistake the archetypal form for "God" as some discrete existence. The Subtle also involves interior luminocities and sounds, and a Christian might see it as "Christ" or an "angel" or a "saint", people with other cultural backgrounds might see it as something else. As long as you don't fall into the pathology and misinterpret the experiences, it doesn't matter which label you give to those experiences. This is what divides a mystic Christian and a crazy Christian. A crazy Christian on this level would pathologically associate the experiences there with the literalistic interpretation of the Bible so as to claim that "Jesus is by my side" or something to that effect. A mystic Christian would treat the experiences as just what they are with no literalistic assumption from the Bible, and he/she would have been a 'Christian' because the method they employed in order to attain this level is of Christianity. But it doesn't have to be Christianity. You could be irreligious and attain the same level. It's a methodical difference. Wilber attempts to account for religious experiences, so he calls the treatment modality for this state "the path of saints". Specifically, he draws an example from Saint Teresa of Avila:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila

What do you mean by "causal"? How does it relate to psychology?

The Causal is where the Seer which gives rise to forms is (but it is not where forms are). The Seer is ordinarily "I", but it is fundamentally the universal sense of I-am-ness, different from the ego. The ego is specific to each individual; the Seer is not. But both pertain to the formulation of consciousness and therefore to the psychology of the individual.

Why are we placing yogis and sages over scientists, when for hundreds of years they attributed psychological problems to possession by evil forces?

Firstly, there are bad pathological yogis, sages, and scientists as well as good non-pathological ones. Secondly, what most people have in mind for "scientist" is that of hard, physical sciences; and those scientists, even if they occasionally have some experiences by temporarily being on upper levels (which is said to be possible), they typically would not consider the experiences as valid sources of knowledge; non-pathological yogis and sages don't have that bias, they treat both exterior and interior events with equal care, so they are more inclusive. Thirdly, according to the Integral conception of 'broad science', yogis and sages can be a scientist i.e. a strictly empirical investigator of observed reality.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

I suspect that mirandansa would benefit from the first few minutes of this:

 

[mirandansa]

The major problem I am having with the breakdown of this approach (aside from the confusing presentation), is that it is just another judgemental model that tries to gain credibility by borrowing bits and pieces from psychological and scientific theories and studies. The difference is that any scientific or psychological theory or study with any credibility will go out of its way to avoid making value judgements on that which it is studying, and will avoid making these oblique and unsupported associations.

You have rightly pointed out one of the major issues in Wilber's thought. It is criticised by other Integral thinkers such as William Irwin Thompson as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Irwin_Thompson

I criticised linking these many and various references because you have neglected to explain their pertinence, and at the moment they are adding to our confusion. This is not to say I or others are not already familiar with those references. Which seems a bit telling of this model - because I suspect it appears to dip into scientific territory, but cannot maintain a connection that can hold up to scrutiny, and thus relies somewhat on confusing the issues.

My initial hope was to invite people with relevant expertise to discuss this subject with real advocates of the Integral movement. I presented you with those references because those are what Integral thinkers say are relevant to it. I may have some understanding of some of them, but I may not to the extent of being able to respond to all your critical remarks. I regret that.

Ken Wilber's scheme may well be a problematic one. But there's much more to the Integral circle than his.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Sure. This is where the theory of truths comes in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber#Theory_of_truth
The Integral does not undermine the validity claim of the exterior. If an alleged subjective experience doesn't match to the expected exterior correlate (the correlation being a scientifically induced fact from previous clinical studies), then that could mean the experiencer had misinterpreted the experience.

This is precisely why "interior evidence" is so frequently disregarded. An observer's impression of events is frequently inaccurate, and extremely prone to outside influence. Here's a classic example:

http://www.holah.co.uk/summary/loftus/

The category of the exterior that the Integral observes is not the category of effect. The interior quality of red-ness has its exterior correlate such as the physical process between a wavelength and brain nerves, but they are not the effects of red-ness. Nor is red-ness really the diachronic (temporally remote) effect of the physical process; it is what the physical process synchronically (simultaneously) looks like from the interior perspective.

The basic four quadrants are not subject to whether the eyes or even the brain are biological or artificial. Every unit of reality has interior/exterior and individual/collective aspects, so say Integral thinkers.

This is true in the most basic sense; the data is stored in the brain as a series of chemical and electrical interactions, not as actual beams of light. You can measure what reactions people will likely have via behavioral psychology.

This view of mind-body dualism is useful in a philosophical sense, but not in a scientific one. Objects and sensations in the mind are demonstrably linked to the physical structure and activity of the brain. Stimulate the right part of the brain and people will see trees, or hear music. The mind, including all the "interior" or subjective experience are ultimately a subset of the physical or 'narrow' sciences.

Right, but those various perceptions of "love" will still each have its own exterior correlate (to deny that will be to commit dualism, which is not what the Integral is). And whether we should attempt to extract a single measurement for that correlation would depend on how useful that measurement would be.

You think so? I don't think love, or most human emotions, could be defined that strictly. I might be wrong on that one, I'll admit.

If the change proves to have relevance to developmental psychology, wouldn't that indicate a practical significance of the endeavour to achieve that change in the state of consciousness as a problem-solving skill?

Sure! Biofeedback is a great technique in developmental psychology. Every year I teach my kids biofeedback techniques, and often I have some structure or mnemonic so that my kids can keep the techniques straight. Even techniques as simple as deep breathing can be useful. What I don't do is pretend any system is absolute truth or tack on needless fluff.

It's worth mentioning that he asks in his books that we do not accept anything on faith. He asks that we experiment for ourselves. Remember: the Integral is not about taking the interior-individual as the dominant validity claim; equally crucial to a comprehensive understanding of reality are the interior-collective, exterior-collective, and exterior-individual. If the majority of properly trained meditators don't agree with Wilber on the interior-collective domain about his alleged interior-individual experiences, that would mean he might have misinterpreted the experiences. And it could be further tested by observing its correlations to the exterior sides.

Sorry, asking people to find their own evidence is a common feature of many religious dogmas. It encourages confirmation bias; you find things you think are evidence because that's what you're looking for.

Also, how is what you're describing different then the way science works anyway? Wilber thought he saw something, so we go out and rigorously test it. You're mistaken if you think subjective criteria couldn't be used; research is conducted all the time based on subjective criteria that is properly defined.

What is a psychic disorder? A ghost?

Right, it means that if you are on that stage but with some fixation on elements of previous stages, you would likely misinterpret your subjective experiences there in a way that is characteristic to that level. On this level, you would have experiences of being conscious during dreaming and deep sleep; and if you for example have some unnoticed fixation on the mythic level, you might erroneously interpret that as some supernatural phenomenon. This level is also where the main mode of consciousness shifts from 'the ordinary, gross-oriented reality -- sensorimotor and rational and existential -- into the properly transpersonal domain', giving rise to 'an awareness that is no longer confined exclusively to the individual ego'. Shamanism is an example of this level, and you probably know what its pathologies can be. A successful example of this level is said to be Ralph Waldo Emerson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

This is what we call a "hallucination". In order to demonstrate that awareness can spread beyond an individual ego, you first have to demonstrate where exactly it's expanding to. Are you positing some kind of astral plane? Some kind of pantheistic universe where all things are one and individuality is illusion, as per esoteric Buddhism? Can you prove the existence of such a plane, by any means except anecdote?

It's trivially easy to gain the subjective sensation of your consciousness expanding beyond your body. Meditators do it by shutting down the part of the brain responsible for spatial awareness. Again, easily duplicated by even those without an ounce of mysticism in them.

Or is this a metaphorical expansion, as in a person sees beyond their own interests and becomes aware of the interests of others?

How in the world does "subtle" apply to psychology? What does that even mean?

It means that the features and pathologies on that level are subtle. The experiences are more elusive than the gross, ordinary, waking consciousness.

This is what we call "visions".

How are saints "subtle"?

While the Psychic is a union with the natural world, the Subtle goes beyond that. On the Psychic, you are confined to the nature; on the Subtle, the consciousness transcends the category of the nature and includes it. And this is where you would start to perceive your own archetypal form, a form from which you as a natural being derives. The pathology of this level could be called "Cosmic terror", and people with this pathology would mistake the archetypal form for "God" as some discrete existence. The Subtle also involves interior luminocities and sounds, and a Christian might see it as "Christ" or an "angel" or a "saint", people with other cultural backgrounds might see it as something else. As long as you don't fall into the pathology and misinterpret the experiences, it doesn't matter which label you give to those experiences. This is what divides a mystic Christian and a crazy Christian. A crazy Christian on this level would pathologically associate the experiences there with the literalistic interpretation of the Bible so as to claim that "Jesus is by my side" or something to that effect. A mystic Christian would treat the experiences as just what they are with no literalistic assumption from the Bible, and he/she would have been a 'Christian' because the method they employed in order to attain this level is of Christianity. But it doesn't have to be Christianity. You could be irreligious and attain the same level. It's a methodical difference. Wilber attempts to account for religious experiences, so he calls the treatment modality for this state "the path of saints". Specifically, he draws an example from Saint Teresa of Avila:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_%C3%81vila

Hmm... in my data view I would call those buried sub-routines of the brain's operating algorithms. I suspect if you head up from my perspective and down from yours they'd eventually meet. However, my view is much more useful if you actually want to accomplish something. If we figure out the brain's data transmission methods well enough I could eventually program in any result you wanted at this level. Within your own mind, these kinds of things are buried far too deep to change or even interpret well.

Of course, the big problem comes when people claim that these buried impulses start talking to them. This introduces error at an exponential rate. Even a cursory examination of there world's various cults and religions will tell you that interpretations of this level are widely varied and almost universally in opposition to each other.

What do you mean by "causal"? How does it relate to psychology?

The Causal is where the Seer which gives rise to forms is (but it is not where forms are). The Seer is ordinarily "I", but it is fundamentally the universal sense of I-am-ness, different from the ego. The ego is specific to each individual; the Seer is not. But both pertain to the formulation of consciousness and therefore to the psychology of the individual.

In other words, you're recycling pantheism? Demonstrate the existence of this "seer".

Why are we placing yogis and sages over scientists, when for hundreds of years they attributed psychological problems to possession by evil forces?

Firstly, there are bad pathological yogis, sages, and scientists as well as good non-pathological ones. Secondly, what most people have in mind for "scientist" is that of hard, physical sciences; and those scientists, even if they occasionally have some experiences by temporarily being on upper levels (which is said to be possible), they typically would not consider the experiences as valid sources of knowledge; non-pathological yogis and sages don't have that bias, they treat both exterior and interior events with equal care, so they are more inclusive. Thirdly, according to the Integral conception of 'broad science', yogis and sages can be a scientist i.e. a strictly empirical investigator of observed reality.

Here's where the rubber meets the road. If yogis and sages could be successful scientists, and as you allege even more successful for observing a wider data set, then why weren't they? Introspection and prayer did almost nothing against smallpox; scientists wiped it out. Saints thought deep thoughts and determined the craters on the moon were a reflection of the evils of the people on earth; scientists found out about meteor impact. Sages believed that the motion of the planets had an effect on your personality, which has been proven wrong over and over again. The fact that you scorn science for ignoring methods that have repeatedly proven themselves so fallible is quite ridiculous.

The belief that your internal experiences have a correlation to any external events other then behavior has a name; magical thinking. Magical thinking has been tried, for centuries, by many different cultures. It rarely produced beneficial results.

I don't disparage this gentlemen his philosophy; if that's how he chooses to make sense of the operation of his mind, fine. I applaud his research in so far that he tests things that he can actually demonstrate. However, the various systems of explanations he comes up with are not science and should not be confused as such.

 

[mirandansa]

Your examples aren't even from the same cultures?

If the samples should be from the same cultures, why did you ask:

Why not the scientific revolution of ancient Alexandria? Why not Rome? Why not Qin or Han China?

Clear forward progress isn't it? Or rather, not. The Acheamenian were better artisans then any of the following Persian dynasties... even my beloved Sassanians.

Right, presumably the Parthian and the Sassanian did not inherit the techniques from the Acheamenian. Do you know why that is?

This is arguably a better artistic work then the bulk of Renaissance sculpture, the masterful and intentional distortion of certain features is the sort of thing you don't see in Europe until the 1800s. Again, this is 10th Century.

If you further go 3500 years back, you'll find this, again from India:

Although I don't see any particular indication of 'shift in consciousness' between these two sculptures, I can say that the features you noted above are less evident in this older one.

As regards sculptures, the Integral thinkers note the shifts between Gods and Goddesses across the civilizational stages, namely:

Foraging
-- hunting and gathering; 'the invention of the role of the father'
-- typical memes: Beige & Purple

horticultural
-- agriculture based on simple tools, and 80 percent of foodstuffs were produced by women; matrifocal (focused on women), tracing ancestry through the mother, but men and women had roughly equal status; about 1/3 of these societies had female-only deities, and virtually every known 'Great Mother' society was horticultural
-- typical memes: Purple & Red

Agrarian
-- agriculture based on heavy animal-drawn plow, which was not easy for a pregnant woman to handle, so both men and women decided that heavy plowing was male work; men was also conscripted for defense; more Gods than Goddesses
-- began with Red and grew into Blue

(and on to the Industrial and then the Informational.)

By the way, since you appear to be knowledgeable on this subject, I would be interested to know your thought on this peculiar one:

It's from Japan of the late Jomon period (14,000 - 400 BCE). What is its symbolism?

Your "change in human consciousness" only works if we confine ourselves to the European continent alone... and Egypt for some reason. I don't know why but sophomoric history loons always throw Egypt into the development of Western Civilization....

Are there any known invention of perspective outside the European continent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)

It doesn't just appear arbitrary, it - in fact - is. Moreover it is criminally insulting to every cosmopolitan society that achieved any scientific greatness prior to this date, and grants far too much credit to the society that launched the crusades. Is it Thomas Aquinas that renders this an era of science? Surely not. This is insanity. How are the proud denizens of ancient Athens not green?

They were not egalitarian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece

How do crusaders get the scientific moniker?

The Orange includes the strategic. The Crusades were strategic.

Then: Will a colour-blind person be able to know the subjective experience of 'red' if they learned those findings in neuroscience? I think not.

I very much doubt your organization has ever, or even can, accomplish this either. Instead you just make up that red is 'vikingish,' and that orange is somehow scientific. Sounds to me like you're just suffering from Synesthesia.

First of all, I'm not part of the movement. I have read their literature, but I've never been to their institutes. It is not 'my' organization.

The choice of colour is not meant to be a deep philosophical representation of anything.

Neuroscience obtains exterior truths, not interior truths.

This is actually not true.

The nervous system belongs to the exterior domain.

Current narrow science presumes the latter has no significance in empirical, scientific investigation; the Integral claims that both sides of truth deserve empirical, scientific investigation.

Again, this is simply wrong. Neuroscience in particular pays very close attention to the subjective. You'd know this if you had ever bothered to investigate, just listen to anything by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. This is not an endorsement of Ramachandran, but you cannot deny he does not fall under your understanding of what "Current narrow science presumes."

Apparently you are confusing "paying attention to the subjective from the exterior" with "paying attention to the subject from the interior". Any quantified datum belongs to the exterior domain; neuroscience does the exterior, even if it's about the subjective experiences.

Once again, real science is doing everything that your organization does, but without the mumbo-jumbo.

If by 'organization' you mean something like the Integral Institute, its branches include business, politics, education, law, and art. It's not about doing just physical sciences; it's about integrating findings from various fields of human activity into a comprehensive paradigm of understanding.

If you are on Red, your immediate solution is not the remote Yellow but the next Blue; if you are on Blue, your immediate solution is still not the remote Yellow but the next Orange. Gradual process. Unperspectival paintings were followed by Perspectival paintings, not Aperspectival paintings. Different immediate solutions for different current perspectives. There is no 'total solution' for all individuals at the same time.

You seem to be trying very hard not to understand what I'm trying to say. Your ideology constitutes a total solution not because it claims to have a single answer to every problem, but because it claims to hold the answer to every problem.

I don't think it claims to hold the answer itself; it seeks to offer as comprehensive a paradigm as possible from which each individual may derive an appropriate answer for their own problem at a given condition. It's somewhat like the difference between a programming language and a program; the more versatile the language is, the better the programmer would be off in solving computational problems.

and if we all just went along with it the world would be a utopia (sorry PAB), of happy good feelings and universal bliss.

What do you mean by "went along with it"? Even if we all accepted the scheme, as long as each of us didn't actually try to develop our own consciousness, there wouldn't be any significant advancement. If we did try and all successfully reached Yellow or even Turquoise, that would be a beginning of a utopia. But it would be ridiculously too optimistic to believe such a day will come in the near future.

I think [the perceptive qualities of colours, sounds, emotions, etc.] are of their own type of truth.

Evidence, please?

Those non-physical qualities are sheer part of empirical reality. Physical sciences can tell what they are on the exterior domain but cannot show what they are on the interior domain. Two domains, two truths (actually four truths, because the two domains each have two modes, individual/collective).

It's one thing to say, without evidence, "you probably can't play that," But when it's, "you shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're only blue" that's a fucking big problem.

Of course that's a big problem. And that's also a gross misrepresentation of what Integral entails. Can you name any Integral thinker who says "you shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're only blue"?

The Integral paradigm does not prescriptively dictate what the world should come to at which moment in time; it is a descriptive way to comprehensively interpret your existence at a given time & space.

So it won't do anything to address global climate change, and you were lying earlier.

The Integral is a paradigm. That which actually addresses problems is the individual.

Environmentalism is not the tenet of the Integral. Environmentalists identify the ecology, but they often fail to retain the individual perspective, claiming for example that a forest is more important than a human individual; upon differentiating the ecology, they also erroneously dissociate it from the previous perspectives rather than integrate them. The Integral is not about favouring the environment over the individual; it's about integrating both perspectives (in the consciousness).

Way to stawman and not address the comment at the same time.

I don't know what to say.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Your examples aren't even from the same cultures?

If the samples should be from the same cultures, why did you ask:

Why not the scientific revolution of ancient Alexandria? Why not Rome? Why not Qin or Han China?

Because the 'progress' from picture 1 to pictures 2 and 3 is unrelated. To suggest a link between them is deceptive... or foolish, take your pick.

This is likewise entirely unrelated to my separate point that many cultures prior to 1000 CE had scientific revolutions, and your dating was therefore arbitrary. To suggest a link between these points is deceptive... or foolish, take your pick.

Clear forward progress isn't it? Or rather, not. The Acheamenian were better artisans then any of the following Persian dynasties... even my beloved Sassanians.

Right, presumably the Parthian and the Sassanian did not inherit the techniques from the Acheamenian. Do you know why that is?

In fact I do. The true answer is quite complicated, I'm quite certain you have a short version of it, however. The point is that humanity has not made linear progress, and that all of the elements related by the 'colors' were noticeably present even in ancient cultures.

This is arguably a better artistic work then the bulk of Renaissance sculpture, the masterful and intentional distortion of certain features is the sort of thing you don't see in Europe until the 1800s. Again, this is 10th Century.

If you further go 3500 years back, you'll find this, again from India:

Although I don't see any particular indication of 'shift in consciousness' between these two sculptures, I can say that the features you noted above are less evident in this older one.

Well I dare say that if you don't see a substantial difference in the ontos of these two statues art may not be your thing... but otherwise exactly, because humanity's consciousness has not shifted in recorded history. People today are the same as people in ancient times, they simply have better tools. With regard to the artistry, the point is that this has many of the features not seen in Europe (at least not after the Romans) until the 1800s. This statue is not "primitive" or "inferior," it is the product of a highly developed style; as were the Achaemenian reliefs.

As regards sculptures, the Integral thinkers note the shifts between Gods and Goddesses across the civilizational stages, namely:

Foraging
-- hunting and gathering; 'the invention of the role of the father'
-- typical memes: Beige & Purple

horticultural
-- agriculture based on simple tools, and 80 percent of foodstuffs were produced by women; matrifocal (focused on women), tracing ancestry through the mother, but men and women had roughly equal status; about 1/3 of these societies had female-only deities, and virtually every known 'Great Mother' society was horticultural
-- typical memes: Purple & Red

Agrarian
-- agriculture based on heavy animal-drawn plow, which was not easy for a pregnant woman to handle, so both men and women decided that heavy plowing was male work; men was also conscripted for defense; more Gods than Goddesses
-- began with Red and grew into Blue

(and on to the Industrial and then the Informational.)

All of which are better explained by superior tools, trade, cosmopolitan society, and the economics to support an artisan class, then by a shift in human consciousness.

By the way, since you appear to be knowledgeable on this subject, I would be interested to know your thought on this peculiar one:

It's from Japan of the late Jomon period (14,000 - 400 BCE). What is its symbolism?

No idea. It would be an agrarian society, so probably related to agrarian concerns, perhaps something related to early Shinto.

Your "change in human consciousness" only works if we confine ourselves to the European continent alone... and Egypt for some reason. I don't know why but sophomoric history loons always throw Egypt into the development of Western Civilization....

Are there any known invention of perspective outside the European continent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)

Yes, actually, but this is irrelevant. Perspective is not the measure of all things. The obsession with perspective in European art does not magically render it superior, or more advanced. In most cultures a bit of surrealism is appreciated, a fact which Europe has only recently re-discovered.

It doesn't just appear arbitrary, it - in fact - is. Moreover it is criminally insulting to every cosmopolitan society that achieved any scientific greatness prior to this date, and grants far too much credit to the society that launched the crusades. Is it Thomas Aquinas that renders this an era of science? Surely not. This is insanity. How are the proud denizens of ancient Athens not green?

They were not egalitarian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece

They were sexist too, don't forget that. Oh, and they worshiped natural spirits! But to call them unegalitarian is to display a total lack of knowledge of Athenian society. These people were obsessed with the concept, enough so that not being regarded as remotely egalitarian got you (quite literally) ostracized.

They would have been utterly appalled at the lack of financial equality between the free citizens of, for instance, the United States. They would have been appalled at the inaccessibility of the legal system to the common man. They would have been shocked that we so readily allow ourselves to be spoken for. And, once corporations were explained to them, they probably would have resented that too.

They would have accused us of not being egalitarian.

How do crusaders get the scientific moniker?

The Orange includes the strategic. The Crusades were strategic.

Yup, unlike their non-strategic predecessors. You know, the Romans, Macedonians, and Greeks; what would a strategos know about strategy?

I very much doubt your organization has ever, or even can, accomplish this either. Instead you just make up that red is 'vikingish,' and that orange is somehow scientific. Sounds to me like you're just suffering from Synesthesia.

First of all, I'm not part of the movement. I have read their literature, but I've never been to their institutes. It is not 'my' organization.

The choice of colour is not meant to be a deep philosophical representation of anything.

For someone who is indifferent, yous seem to be going out of your way to defend it's more ridiculous notions. But I care not. Well it's hard to keep track of when you're using the 'experience of orange' to mean science and when you're actually talking about actual orangeishness; the point is this organization talks big, but seems a little short on knowhow.

The nervous system belongs to the exterior domain.

Experience is a product of the operation of the nervous system. The distinction you place between the two is a false one.

Again, this is simply wrong. Neuroscience in particular pays very close attention to the subjective. You'd know this if you had ever bothered to investigate, just listen to anything by Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. This is not an endorsement of Ramachandran, but you cannot deny he does not fall under your understanding of what "Current narrow science presumes."

Apparently you are confusing "paying attention to the subjective from the exterior" with "paying attention to the subject from the interior". Any quantified datum belongs to the exterior domain; neuroscience does the exterior, even if it's about the subjective experiences.

And how is this organization going to pay attention to other people's subjective from the interior? What is it, exactly, you are able to do empirically that neuroscience is not? Please be specific.

Once again, real science is doing everything that your organization does, but without the mumbo-jumbo.

If by 'organization' you mean something like the Integral Institute, its branches include business, politics, education, law, and art. It's not about doing just physical sciences; it's about integrating findings from various fields of human activity into a comprehensive paradigm of understanding.

This has been tried before, we call it religion. The problem is 'paradigm of understanding' quickly becomes 'unquestionable dogma.' And since, as ArthurWilborn wisely pointed out, this ideology approaches science backwards, this seems distinctly likely to occur in this case.

I don't think it claims to hold the answer itself; it seeks to offer as comprehensive a paradigm as possible from which each individual may derive an appropriate answer for their own problem at a given condition. It's somewhat like the difference between a programming language and a program; the more versatile the language is, the better the programmer would be off in solving computational problems.

So instead of being the only solution, yours claims to be the only format in which the proper solution can be found. Two ways of saying the same thing really.

and if we all just went along with it the world would be a utopia (sorry PAB), of happy good feelings and universal bliss.

What do you mean by "went along with it"? Even if we all accepted the scheme, as long as each of us didn't actually try to develop our own consciousness, there wouldn't be any significant advancement. If we did try and all successfully reached Yellow or even Turquoise, that would be a beginning of a utopia. But it would be ridiculously too optimistic to believe such a day will come in the near future.

You know, this is actually a good disclaimer for any quasi-totalitarian ideology to make. It keeps the proles from having unrealistic expectations, and provides for a work ethic.

Those non-physical qualities are sheer part of empirical reality. Physical sciences can tell what they are on the exterior domain but cannot show what they are on the interior domain. Two domains, two truths (actually four truths, because the two domains each have two modes, individual/collective).

Neuroscience is coming very close to doing exactly that. Again, look to Ramachandran.

It's one thing to say, without evidence, "you probably can't play that," But when it's, "you shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're only blue" that's a fucking big problem.

Of course that's a big problem. And that's also a gross misrepresentation of what Integral entails. Can you name any Integral thinker who says "you shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're only blue"?

You're the first one I've come across, so unless you say it, no. But an ideology which distinguishes people by superior and inferior thought positively waxes this potential. This isn't like misinterpreted Darwinisms, where "survival of the fittest" was taken to mean, "sterilize the retarded;" your ideology actually does condone a hierarchy, and states that leaders should be chosen on the basis of their place in this hierarchy.

Meritocracy in principal may appear innocuous, but in practice it tends to produce oligarchy.

So it won't do anything to address global climate change, and you were lying earlier.

The Integral is a paradigm. That which actually addresses problems is the individual.

Why do I bother? If all you're doing is backing people in an undirected fashion then you cannot make claim to an outcome. If you are backing them in a directed fashion, then you have an agenda. Which is it?

I must admit, I'm getting a very strong "non-overlapping magisteria" vibe from you, and I'm not sure how you justify it. There seems to be an implied dualism to your words, and I'm not sure where you're getting it from. You certainly haven't given evidence.

 

[mirandansa]

Sure. This is where the theory of truths comes in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber#Theory_of_truth
The Integral does not undermine the validity claim of the exterior. If an alleged subjective experience doesn't match to the expected exterior correlate (the correlation being a scientifically induced fact from previous clinical studies), then that could mean the experiencer had misinterpreted the experience.

This is precisely why "interior evidence" is so frequently disregarded. An observer's impression of events is frequently inaccurate, and extremely prone to outside influence. Here's a classic example:

http://www.holah.co.uk/summary/loftus/

That example is about an observer's impression of exterior events. Sure, in order to have an accurate account of an exterior event, we need an exterior confirmation, which is what physical sciences are about. However, there is nothing which an exterior account of an exterior event could undermine about an interior account of an interior event. The exterior fact that the red colour has the physical/spatial property of the wavelength range of 630-740 nm correlates to but does not affect the interior fact that the red colour has the non-physical/non-spatial quality of red-ness. This is why people's perceptive content of 'red' always manifests along with its physical property but can vary significantly independent of its physical property; many people may share a very approximate quality because of their genetic commonalities, being of the same biological species, but some people may experience a different quality to that due to some biological variations, and even if you didn't have any eye at all, you would still theoretically have a subjective experience that is a correlate to the wavelength, however extremely subtle and unnoticeable that experience might be.

The observer in the above example erred in the description of events of the exterior domain, but he did not err in the description of events of the interior domain. The inaccurate set of memories is what he did have. It constituted his empirical reality. But he misinterpreted that interior events. And that kind of mistake is what Wilber does recognise and think can be therapeutically dealt with according to his scheme for developmental consciousness.

Right, but those various perceptions of "love" will still each have its own exterior correlate (to deny that will be to commit dualism, which is not what the Integral is). And whether we should attempt to extract a single measurement for that correlation would depend on how useful that measurement would be.

You think so? I don't think love, or most human emotions, could be defined that strictly. I might be wrong on that one, I'll admit.

I do not argue that such a measurement should be established nor that the parameters should be strict and free of any margin of errors. I think the significance of such an attempt is just up in the air. Personally, I don't think it would be useful in the foreseeable future.

If the change proves to have relevance to developmental psychology, wouldn't that indicate a practical significance of the endeavour to achieve that change in the state of consciousness as a problem-solving skill?

Sure! Biofeedback is a great technique in developmental psychology. Every year I teach my kids biofeedback techniques, and often I have some structure or mnemonic so that my kids can keep the techniques straight. Even techniques as simple as deep breathing can be useful. What I don't do is pretend any system is absolute truth or tack on needless fluff.

Do they pretend their systems are 'absolute' truth? I think their overall approach is more like that of Noam Chomsky. I have a note of his response to his critics I took from somewhere:

"The so-called humanistic objection is an exquisite example of anti-intellectualism. Once you begin to abstract from a system in order to study it, you are accused of being a kind of anti-humanistic, philosophical vivisectionist. We have to look for explanatory theories to understand the world, and abstract systems are a perfectly proper way to proceed."

It's worth mentioning that he asks in his books that we do not accept anything on faith. He asks that we experiment for ourselves. Remember: the Integral is not about taking the interior-individual as the dominant validity claim; equally crucial to a comprehensive understanding of reality are the interior-collective, exterior-collective, and exterior-individual. If the majority of properly trained meditators don't agree with Wilber on the interior-collective domain about his alleged interior-individual experiences, that would mean he might have misinterpreted the experiences. And it could be further tested by observing its correlations to the exterior sides.

Sorry, asking people to find their own evidence is a common feature of many religious dogmas. It encourages confirmation bias; you find things you think are evidence because that's what you're looking for.

The kind of 'evidence' religious people falsely claim to have is the evidence for events of the exterior domain. Think of a Christian who claims "I hear Jesus' voice, this is the evidence He exists!" They might admit that the kind of existence they claim is supernatural, but they place their validity claim on the exterior domain by believing that the "Jesus's existence" must be true for other people as well. This kind of error is to be discerned and avoided in Wilber's system.

Also, how is what you're describing different then the way science works anyway? Wilber thought he saw something, so we go out and rigorously test it. You're mistaken if you think subjective criteria couldn't be used; research is conducted all the time based on subjective criteria that is properly defined.

I do not think subjective criteria is not used in current science. A criterion is an interior collective item, scientists may well have been incorporating that. But that is not an interior individual item. Consider this: an example of the interior collective aspect of 'red' is the symbolic meaning of danger, like the one used for the traffic light; when we see the red traffic light, we internally and culturally know that it means 'stop, danger ahead'; but this interior collective quality is different from the interior individual quality, the one which we individually perceive as 'red-ness' (including the 'red-ness' that a colour-blind person may perceive). Subjective 'collective' criteria are different from subjective 'individual' experiences.

Right, it means that if you are on that stage but with some fixation on elements of previous stages, you would likely misinterpret your subjective experiences there in a way that is characteristic to that level. On this level, you would have experiences of being conscious during dreaming and deep sleep; and if you for example have some unnoticed fixation on the mythic level, you might erroneously interpret that as some supernatural phenomenon. This level is also where the main mode of consciousness shifts from 'the ordinary, gross-oriented reality -- sensorimotor and rational and existential -- into the properly transpersonal domain', giving rise to 'an awareness that is no longer confined exclusively to the individual ego'. Shamanism is an example of this level, and you probably know what its pathologies can be. A successful example of this level is said to be Ralph Waldo Emerson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson

This is what we call a "hallucination". In order to demonstrate that awareness can spread beyond an individual ego, you first have to demonstrate where exactly it's expanding to.

An individual ego is not a spatial entity, so, 'spreading beyond that' is not strictly an 'expansion'.

Are you positing some kind of astral plane?

It depends on what you mean by 'plane'. Does the difference between 'a mitochondrion' and 'a human' and 'a nation' forms different 'planes'?

Some kind of pantheistic universe where all things are one and individuality is illusion, as per esoteric Buddhism?

Pantheism (pan-theo, everywhere-god) is the view that every individual entity has an intrinsic divine character, which can also technically mean that the universe and (non-personal, non-creator) god are identical, but not the view that 'all things are one'. It doesn't undermine individuality.

Buddhism essentially does not question 'what is god'. (There certainly are theistic forms of Buddhism especially among lay people, but any theistic belief is fundamentally in conflict with Gautama Siddhartha's radical skepticism.)

It's trivially easy to gain the subjective sensation of your consciousness expanding beyond your body. Meditators do it by shutting down the part of the brain responsible for spatial awareness. Again, easily duplicated by even those without an ounce of mysticism in them.

I don't think that's relevant to the Integral purpose of meditation. The purpose is to have an immediate and lasting sense of the whole. Why? Because it can help the consciousness to radically and actively cope with problems that are rooted in the objectification and otherisation. This is fundamentally different from dealing with things that you dislike or aren't interested in by trying to be tolerant or remaining indifferent. Tolerance and indifference are both forms that are still confined to the ego. On the other hand, when your consciousness makes a radical step-up, the ego would be integrated into a larger whole in systematic terms; and this is not to say that the ego would disappear, but that it would become an item in the perspective such that the consciousness would be of us rather than of me. Again this is not of course to posit an inter-personal entity on the exterior domain; the trans-personal consciousness would just be what the interior experience is.

It means that the features and pathologies on that level are subtle. The experiences are more elusive than the gross, ordinary, waking consciousness.

This is what we call "visions".

Yes, hence the label "vision-logic" in the upper-left quadrant:

The post-rational stages are vision-logic, because the consciousness would be integrating 'visionary' elements with logical elements.

Hmm... in my data view I would call those buried sub-routines of the brain's operating algorithms. I suspect if you head up from my perspective and down from yours they'd eventually meet. However, my view is much more useful if you actually want to accomplish something. If we figure out the brain's data transmission methods well enough I could eventually program in any result you wanted at this level. Within your own mind, these kinds of things are buried far too deep to change or even interpret well.

Of course, the big problem comes when people claim that these buried impulses start talking to them. This introduces error at an exponential rate. Even a cursory examination of there world's various cults and religions will tell you that interpretations of this level are widely varied and almost universally in opposition to each other.

Noted, thank you.

The Causal is where the Seer which gives rise to forms is (but it is not where forms are). The Seer is ordinarily "I", but it is fundamentally the universal sense of I-am-ness, different from the ego. The ego is specific to each individual; the Seer is not. But both pertain to the formulation of consciousness and therefore to the psychology of the individual.

In other words, you're recycling pantheism? Demonstrate the existence of this "seer".

The Seer is not an existence; it's a structural matrix, like the one which bears the geometric difference between 'left' and 'right'.

Firstly, there are bad pathological yogis, sages, and scientists as well as good non-pathological ones. Secondly, what most people have in mind for "scientist" is that of hard, physical sciences; and those scientists, even if they occasionally have some experiences by temporarily being on upper levels (which is said to be possible), they typically would not consider the experiences as valid sources of knowledge; non-pathological yogis and sages don't have that bias, they treat both exterior and interior events with equal care, so they are more inclusive. Thirdly, according to the Integral conception of 'broad science', yogis and sages can be a scientist i.e. a strictly empirical investigator of observed reality.

If yogis and sages could be successful scientists, and as you allege even more successful for observing a wider data set, then why weren't they?

Because they don't affiliate with the academia for whatever reasons. Alan Watts comes to mind. He had a very scientific mind as well as a 'spiritual' mind, and produced many valuable and entertaining 'integral' discourses about the nature of reality. But his literature seems to have seldom attracted academic attentions. Note also that most yogis and sages, unlike Alan Watts, have no Western backgrounds; the current 'international' academia revolves around Western linguistic environments and social traditions.

There was an innovative philosopher called Nishida Kitaro, prominent in his country Japan for critically integrating Western philosophy with Eastern philosophy, but he wrote his books in Japanese in a way that defies authentic translations into European languages and has naturally been reduced to an obscure figure in the Western academia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishida_Kitaro

Introspection and prayer did almost nothing against smallpox; scientists wiped it out. Saints thought deep thoughts and determined the craters on the moon were a reflection of the evils of the people on earth; scientists found out about meteor impact. Sages believed that the motion of the planets had an effect on your personality, which has been proven wrong over and over again.

Right, they were ignorant and pathologic. Non-pathologic yogis and sages can be more inclusive than physical scientists who do not consider the interior-individual experiences (not to be confused with the interior-collective criteria) as a valid source of knowledge. An example is Sri Aurobindo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo

The fact that you scorn science for ignoring methods that have repeatedly proven themselves so fallible is quite ridiculous.

What methods? The pathologic people with those irrational beliefs did not fully take into account knowledge from physical sciences. Their ''methods' fundamentally differ from the Integral methods.

The belief that your internal experiences have a correlation to any external events other then behavior has a name; magical thinking. Magical thinking has been tried, for centuries, by many different cultures. It rarely produced beneficial results.

Right, that's Purple, the magic stage.

 

[Andiferous]

My initial hope was to invite people with relevant expertise to discuss this subject with real advocates of the Integral movement. I presented you with those references because those are what Integral thinkers say are relevant to it. I may have some understanding of some of them, but I may not to the extent of being able to respond to all your critical remarks. I regret that.

Ken Wilber's scheme may well be a problematic one. But there's much more to the Integral circle than his.

Fair enough.

I do have a question about the philosophical roots of the Integral movement. From this statement:

Current narrow science presumes the latter has no significance in empirical, scientific investigation; the Integral claims that both sides of truth deserve empirical, scientific investigation.

...and others, it appears that the Inegral may support some concept of absolute truth. Is this correct? Because though the word is bandied around from time to time for convenience, in any official capacity science does not claim "truth."

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Please excuse my brevity, but I'm getting a bit tired of this.

That example is about an observer's impression of exterior events. Sure, in order to have an accurate account of an exterior event, we need an exterior confirmation, which is what physical sciences are about. However, there is nothing which an exterior account of an exterior event could undermine about an interior account of an interior event.

Those interior events are malleable. Look at a study of memory - any study. It will tell you that "interior accounts" change rapidly, contradict themselves and eachother, and are frequently self-created. Such unreliable stuff does not make for good science.

even if you didn't have any eye at all, you would still theoretically have a subjective experience that is a correlate to the wavelength, however extremely subtle and unnoticeable that experience might be.

Only if you had a functioning "red" algorithm in your brain.

The observer in the above example erred in the description of events of the exterior domain, but he did not err in the description of events of the interior domain.The inaccurate set of memories is what he did have. It constituted his empirical reality. But he misinterpreted that interior events. And that kind of mistake is what Wilber does recognise and think can be therapeutically dealt with according to his scheme for developmental consciousness.

... What? He misremembered events, but that false memory was real to him, but it was at the same time a misinterpretation?

All I can say is, you have no idea how memory actually works.

Do they pretend their systems are 'absolute' truth? I think their overall approach is more like that of Noam Chomsky. I have a note of his response to his critics I took from somewhere:

"The so-called humanistic objection is an exquisite example of anti-intellectualism. Once you begin to abstract from a system in order to study it, you are accused of being a kind of anti-humanistic, philosophical vivisectionist. We have to look for explanatory theories to understand the world, and abstract systems are a perfectly proper way to proceed."

They are, as long as they remain firmly grounded in reality.

The kind of 'evidence' religious people falsely claim to have is the evidence for events of the exterior domain. Think of a Christian who claims "I hear Jesus' voice, this is the evidence He exists!" They might admit that the kind of existence they claim is supernatural, but they place their validity claim on the exterior domain by believing that the "Jesus's existence" must be true for other people as well. This kind of error is to be discerned and avoided in Wilber's system.

Noo... usually it goes "still yourself and feel god's presence", which you would classify as interior individual. As I've noted repeatedly, that kind of sensation is the most unreliable and thus the easiest to fake, even to one's self.

If you haven't noticed, Wilber is also taking internal events and claiming they have validity in the exterior world. He does that the moment he stops claiming to be a philosopher and starts claiming to be a scientist.

Also, how is what you're describing different then the way science works anyway? Wilber thought he saw something, so we go out and rigorously test it. You're mistaken if you think subjective criteria couldn't be used; research is conducted all the time based on subjective criteria that is properly defined.

an example of the interior collective aspect of 'red' is the symbolic meaning of danger, like the one used for the traffic light; when we see the red traffic light, we internally and culturally know that it means 'stop, danger ahead'

Nope! For most humans red corresponds with desire, hunger (see: McDonalds) and happiness (see: Russia and China). Some scientists now speculate that this is because seeing in red allowed our primate ancestors to pick out the delicious red young leaves from the trees.

This is what we call a "hallucination". In order to demonstrate that awareness can spread beyond an individual ego, you first have to demonstrate where exactly it's expanding to.

An individual ego is not a spatial entity, so, 'spreading beyond that' is not strictly an 'expansion'.

Are you positing some kind of astral plane?

It depends on what you mean by 'plane'. Does the difference between 'a mitochondrion' and 'a human' and 'a nation' forms different 'planes'?

Some kind of pantheistic universe where all things are one and individuality is illusion, as per esoteric Buddhism?

Pantheism (pan-theo, everywhere-god) is the view that every individual entity has an intrinsic divine character, which can also technically mean that the universe and (non-personal, non-creator) god are identical, but not the view that 'all things are one'. It doesn't undermine individuality.

Buddhism essentially does not question 'what is god'. (There certainly are theistic forms of Buddhism especially among lay people, but any theistic belief is fundamentally in conflict with Gautama Siddhartha's radical skepticism.)[/quote]

Don't dodge the question. Quantify expansion. Define what dimension or attribute expansion is taking place in. Demonstrate the existence of that dimension. You want to play with science, start using some scientific vocabulary.

I don't think that's relevant to the Integral purpose of meditation. The purpose is to have an immediate and lasting sense of the whole. Why? Because it can help the consciousness to radically and actively cope with problems that are rooted in the objectification and otherisation. This is fundamentally different from dealing with things that you dislike or aren't interested in by trying to be tolerant or remaining indifferent. Tolerance and indifference are both forms that are still confined to the ego. On the other hand, when your consciousness makes a radical step-up, the ego would be integrated into a larger whole in systematic terms; and this is not to say that the ego would disappear, but that it would become an item in the perspective such that the consciousness would be of us rather than of me. Again this is not of course to posit an inter-personal entity on the exterior domain; the trans-personal consciousness would just be what the interior experience is.

... Huh? I don't need to meditate in order to consider the implication of things to others or to society. Basic courtesy and consideration don't require metaphysical claptrap for support.

This thing...

An exercise for you. Compare that chart with this chart: http://www.whatisscientology.org/html/Part02/Chp06/img/grdchart.gif

Tell me why your chart is less of a ridiculous and arbitrary set of conditions then that one. Use evidence and some of that shiny science vocabulary. Note: rambling about interior or exterior is not evidence.

The post-rational stages are vision-logic, because the consciousness would be integrating 'visionary' elements with logical elements.

No, that would be pre-rational thinking. We tossed out visions because they sucked as data sources. If they worked, we would use them.

In other words, you're recycling pantheism? Demonstrate the existence of this "seer".

The Seer is not an existence; it's a structural matrix, like the one which bears the geometric difference between 'left' and 'right'.

Is it anything that has an independent existence outside of your definition; that is, is it any more real then fairies or unicorns?

If so, give evidence.

If not, why should I care?

Right, they were ignorant and pathologic. Non-pathologic yogis and sages can be more inclusive than physical scientists who do not consider the interior-individual experiences (not to be confused with the interior-collective criteria) as a valid source of knowledge. An example is Sri Aurobindo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo

That gentlemen posited the existence of a lot of things, such as a "supermind", which he couldn't prove. Fine if you're a philosopher, ridiculous if you're a scientist.

Also, you're saying that mysticism was hugely ineffective for thousands of years, but now this guy has come up with a purified form that will really really work this time? It's hardly compelling when your philosophy closely resembles the pitch for most diet pills.

The fact that you scorn science for ignoring methods that have repeatedly proven themselves so fallible is quite ridiculous.

What methods? The pathologic people with those irrational beliefs did not fully take into account knowledge from physical sciences. Their ''methods' fundamentally differ from the Integral methods.

Integral thinking, like most pseudoscience, is a parasite on real science. People claim ridiculous, unprovable, and flat-out wrong things are scientific all the time. Why? Because science has gotten a huge amount of credibility by actually providing results. Sages promised that men could fly, that they could cure disease, and all matter of fantastic things. However, they consistently failed to deliver. Science did. If a priest told you that you could fly using faith, you would doubt him. If a scientist told you that could fly using scientific principles, you wouldn't doubt him for a moment. Integral thinkers want to claim to be scientific in order to get a glimmer of that respectability, despite relying on failed and disproven methods based on their feelings along.

I have no problem with this as a philosophy; it is somewhat interesting and does help to explain some of the deep aspects of human thought and consciousness. However, it isn't even close to science. If they stick to their sandbox I won't have an issue with them.

 

[mirandansa]

Because the 'progress' from picture 1 to pictures 2 and 3 is unrelated. To suggest a link between them is deceptive... or foolish, take your pick.

I take foolish. I didn't mean to deceive you. I wanted to show an example of non-spatial consciousness. (The Ancient Egypt culture of oasis cultivation and the Euclidean megalithic tombs or dolmens in Europe are also said to be 'spaceless' or 'pre-space'. There are many other such examples which together with a good narrative could probably help you see a pattern of continuous local transition in people's consciousness, but I fail to be a good narrator.)

This is likewise entirely unrelated to my separate point that many cultures prior to 1000 CE had scientific revolutions, and your dating was therefore arbitrary. To suggest a link between these points is deceptive... or foolish, take your pick.

It is not my dating. It is not me who came up with this. But I failed to fully explain all the possible reasons behind it. I think I have to take foolish again.

Right, presumably the Parthian and the Sassanian did not inherit the techniques from the Acheamenian. Do you know why that is?

In fact I do. The true answer is quite complicated, I'm quite certain you have a short version of it, however. The point is that humanity has not made linear progress, and that all of the elements related by the 'colors' were noticeably present even in ancient cultures.

When did I say the progress must be linear? Note the term: Spiral Dynamics. It's a progress towards a higher, more inclusive perspective, but the process takes place in such a way that can be a circular stagnation or even 'devolution'.

Although I don't see any particular indication of 'shift in consciousness' between these two sculptures, I can say that the features you noted above are less evident in this older one.

Well I dare say that if you don't see a substantial difference in the ontos of these two statues art may not be your thing...

I don't understand this comment. What does 'ontos' mean? I can see a substantial difference between the artistries of these statues, but not one that could suggest a shift in people's consciousness.

but otherwise exactly, because humanity's consciousness has not shifted in recorded history. People today are the same as people in ancient times, they simply have better tools.

I think a native English speaker could elucidate the antithesis to your view better than I can:

With regard to the artistry, the point is that this has many of the features not seen in Europe (at least not after the Romans) until the 1800s. This statue is not "primitive" or "inferior," it is the product of a highly developed style; as were the Achaemenian reliefs.

I understand that. I never denied that. I don't see your point. What I'm saying is that complexity comes from simplicity.

As regards sculptures, the Integral thinkers note the shifts between Gods and Goddesses across the civilizational stages, namely:

Foraging
-- hunting and gathering; 'the invention of the role of the father'
-- typical memes: Beige & Purple

horticultural
-- agriculture based on simple tools, and 80 percent of foodstuffs were produced by women; matrifocal (focused on women), tracing ancestry through the mother, but men and women had roughly equal status; about 1/3 of these societies had female-only deities, and virtually every known 'Great Mother' society was horticultural
-- typical memes: Purple & Red

Agrarian
-- agriculture based on heavy animal-drawn plow, which was not easy for a pregnant woman to handle, so both men and women decided that heavy plowing was male work; men was also conscripted for defense; more Gods than Goddesses
-- began with Red and grew into Blue

(and on to the Industrial and then the Informational.)

All of which are better explained by superior tools, trade, cosmopolitan society, and the economics to support an artisan class, then by a shift in human consciousness.

Hold on, I am not saying that a shift in human consciousness is the cause of all this socio-economic process. The shift concurred with the socio-economic process. The interior and the exterior are synchronic aspects of the same reality, not diachronic aspects of different realities.

Are there any known invention of perspective outside the European continent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)

Yes, actually, but this is irrelevant.

I'm genuinely interested in that.

Perspective is not the measure of all things.

(Please note that 'perspective' in this case means the graphical one, semantically different from the one that refers to the stage of consciousness. Although the advancement in graphical perspective has corresponded to shifts in the consciousness perspective.)

It is evidence of a change in the way people see the world around them.

The obsession with perspective in European art does not magically render it superior, or more advanced.

More dimensions, more inclusive. That is the point.

In most cultures a bit of surrealism is appreciated, a fact which Europe has only recently re-discovered.

I suggest you think carefully about what "re-discover" entails and observe its difference from "discover".

First of all, I'm not part of the movement. I have read their literature, but I've never been to their institutes. It is not 'my' organization.

The choice of colour is not meant to be a deep philosophical representation of anything.

For someone who is indifferent, yous seem to be going out of your way to defend it's more ridiculous notions.

I'm going out of my way for the sake of discussion. If I don't attempt to defend the position, we won't see how much ridiculous or not ridiculous this position is. And I have no concern for the impression people here have of me. My concern is how viable the Integral is. That's what I'm testing with you.

the point is this organization talks big, but seems a little short on knowhow.

(The Integral is not an 'organization' in the sense of group of people, it's a paradigm.)

What kind of know-how?

The nervous system belongs to the exterior domain.

Experience is a product of the operation of the nervous system. The distinction you place between the two is a false one.

I say experience (the interior) is a synchronic (simultaneous) concomitant of the nervous operation (the exterior). And the distinction you have suggested here by saying "is a product of" is presumably diachronic (temporally remote), so it's of a wider gap. You are placing a larger distinction.

Apparently you are confusing "paying attention to the subjective from the exterior" with "paying attention to the subject from the interior". Any quantified datum belongs to the exterior domain; neuroscience does the exterior, even if it's about the subjective experiences.

And how is this organization going to pay attention to other people's subjective from the interior?

'paying attention' here means 'respect so as to not miss what the experiencer has to say'. Unlike the interior-collective, the interior-individual is always specific to the individual.

If by 'organization' you mean something like the Integral Institute, its branches include business, politics, education, law, and art. It's not about doing just physical sciences; it's about integrating findings from various fields of human activity into a comprehensive paradigm of understanding.

This has been tried before, we call it religion. The problem is 'paradigm of understanding' quickly becomes 'unquestionable dogma.'

The schemes can be questioned and falsified. But critics would have to keep in mind that a statement of a particular validity claim can properly addressed only with a statement of the same validity claim. An exterior-based statement such as "the sun orbits the earth" can be addressed only with other exterior-based statements such as "the earth orbits the sun", not by an interior-based. Likewise, if you were to properly examine someone's interior-based statement such as "Bjork's Vespertine is a delicate, nocturnal, distraught, elegant album', you would have to attempt to replicate the same situation in which that person were listening to the music and observe the emergent experiences there in the interior domain. The same applies to statements based on meditative experiences.

I don't think it claims to hold the answer itself; it seeks to offer as comprehensive a paradigm as possible from which each individual may derive an appropriate answer for their own problem at a given condition. It's somewhat like the difference between a programming language and a program; the more versatile the language is, the better the programmer would be off in solving computational problems.

So instead of being the only solution, yours claims to be the only format in which the proper solution can be found..

Note where I said "seeks to offer". And that's because the Integral is dialectic in practice and requires active participation from the individual consciousness. It's different from, for example, imposing a statement that "If we don't do something about the global climate change, we'll be done for" and people trying to be environment-friendly because they have been logically convinced the statement is valid. No, that's not exactly what the Integral process is all about.

'the only format', did I ever say that? What I'm saying is 1) that our consciousness can develop in such a way that we can become aware of more and more perspectives and 2) that there have been various attempts to formulate a theory to account for that progressive nature of the awareness so as to help people understand more about the context of their own awareness.

What do you mean by "went along with it"? Even if we all accepted the scheme, as long as each of us didn't actually try to develop our own consciousness, there wouldn't be any significant advancement. If we did try and all successfully reached Yellow or even Turquoise, that would be a beginning of a utopia. But it would be ridiculously too optimistic to believe such a day will come in the near future.

You know, this is actually a good disclaimer for any quasi-totalitarian ideology to make. It keeps the proles from having unrealistic expectations, and provides for a work ethic.

Do you think that's my intention? Do you think I'm pro-totalitarian?

Those non-physical qualities are sheer part of empirical reality. Physical sciences can tell what they are on the exterior domain but cannot show what they are on the interior domain. Two domains, two truths (actually four truths, because the two domains each have two modes, individual/collective).

Neuroscience is coming very close to doing exactly that. Again, look to Ramachandran.

Right, that means neuroscience is becoming more integral.

Of course that's a big problem. And that's also a gross misrepresentation of what Integral entails. Can you name any Integral thinker who says "you shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're only blue"?

You're the first one I've come across, so unless you say it, no. But an ideology which distinguishes people by superior and inferior thought positively waxes this potential.

Your alleged distinction of 'superior' and 'inferior' are actually just the difference between 'more inclusive' and 'less inclusive'. The militant Red does not respect the suffering of others (other perspectives); the pacific Green does respect others' perspectives; so Red is less inclusive in perspective than Green. That's what the map is all about. Note also that strictly speaking what's Red or Green or else is not people per se but the awareness.

This isn't like misinterpreted Darwinisms, where "survival of the fittest" was taken to mean, "sterilize the retarded;" your ideology actually does condone a hierarchy, and states that leaders should be chosen on the basis of their place in this hierarchy.

Please, I did not state that leaders should be chosen that way. The earlier example of voting was just to illustrate how people's criteria might change along with the general development in their political and moral awareness.

The hierarchy is mapped out based on the systemic inclusiveness of each type of awareness. And it is a descriptive fact. Some people's awareness are more inclusive than others'. And people do act on thoughts that are implicitly based on that premise. I'm not a native English speaker so I don't know the exact phrases but you do hear parents saying to their children something like "You have to be more considerate of others.", right? Why do they say that? Because they think paying attention to others' interests are morally good, right? The more perspectives, the better. That's a common sense, even if you don't recognise its full developmental implication.

The Integral is a paradigm. That which actually addresses problems is the individual.

Why do I bother? If all you're doing is backing people in an undirected fashion then you cannot make claim to an outcome. If you are backing them in a directed fashion, then you have an agenda. Which is it?

A directivity emerges from within the consciousness through dialectic interactions between information. And the Integral paradigm is just a way to identify such processes in theoretical forms.

 

[mirandansa]

I do have a question about the philosophical roots of the Integral movement.

I could be wrong but I think these two figures were most instrumental in formulating its basic terminology and philosophical functions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Gebser

(Jean Gebser also provided many archaeological, anthropological, historical evidence and detailed analyses for the transition of mankind's consciousness.)

Its comprehensive-seeking dialectic nature may be traced back to Hegel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegel

Also Whitehead, the co-author of Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell, is a major influence to Integral thinkers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead

it appears that the Inegral may support some concept of absolute truth. Is this correct?

All Integral endeavours boil down to the individual's awareness, which is always primarily subjective. Wilber uses many times in his books the phrase "the Absolute", but it is absolute within the subjective, the interior, and it is absolute in the sense that the development cannot be relativised to the subjective itself.

On this thread I have been talking a lot about Wilber's scheme (partly because it's most clear-cut and controversial, easier to invite people to discuss it), and he is probably the most prominent user of the word 'truth' among other Integral thinkers. For him, a properly interpreted (i.e. not missing out anything from relevant objective facts) subjective experience counts as 'a truth'. Even collective cultural notions such as 'Rose means love' is a discrete form of truth, according to him. He says there are 4 types of truth.

William Irwin Thompson may have quite different an approach than Wilber's. Thompson's conception of an integral process is more open-ended and performance-based. He emphasises the creative role of 'the narrator'. I'm not yet too familiar with his works, so I can't exactly tell what his definition of 'truth' is, if he has one.

There are many other Integral thinkers and I haven't fully explored them yet.

Because though the word is bandied around from time to time for convenience, in any official capacity science does not claim "truth."

I detect some paradox in that reserve. If they have a well-tested theory that can predict many natural phenomena but don't call that body of knowledge "truth", that suggests they have some criteria by which to determine what counts as "truth". So they have an underlying assumption that there is "truth" but their theory doesn't count as one, that their theory is a conditioned "sub-truth" with only relative truthfulness. Then what their assumption points to is actually "absolute truth", the only truth that is more true than all alternative pragmatic relative truths i.e. what they (we) have as "a theory". So science does implicitly support "absolute truth" at least in its categorial function.

Then: Why couldn't they just call their theories as "truths" in contrast to "absolute truth" which they already implicitly assume exists but is unobtainable? I wonder.