even yoda needed shadow work from time to time

Yet, as we evolve, our knowledge too evolves; not without the natural bumps and requisite patches.

One cannot – whatever maybe the academic credentials – claim to be the omniscient authority. We need to be open to criticism for agreeing and disagreeing is not the ultimate issue but an exchange of ideas. Afterall, whether we talk of ‘samadhi’ or ‘strings’, both are only ideas as long as we debate them through our minds. Expressions of experiences are not experiences in themselves.

We do not have historical evidence that Buddha lived or Jesus lived. But still assuming the metaphysics purportedly uttered by them to be true, still we have been left with only one Buddha and one Jesus. We have not had another Buddha or Jesus. Or for that matter another ‘Gandhi’ though there are many who call themselves as ‘Gandhians.’ What can one infer from this?

You can only be you. Though we can be influenced by ideas of the past, if experience alone counts, then its one’s experience alone that matters which is bound to be different on account of a number of reasons. It is one thing to adopt philosophical ideas of a past icon and it is totally another thing to ‘know’ anything through subjective experience.

Can’t one person’s subjective experience possess a ‘shared identity’ with another person’s subjective experience? Of course, that possibility cannot be ruled out through any ‘objective’ criterion (or criteria).

Our heritage of accepted meanings for words is a function of giving predominance to the semantic precedence in history. More out of a cultural habit than out of experiential reasoning unlike in science wherein, experimental reasoning is the bulwark.

I would like to end this incomplete comment with the legendary design science explorer Richard Buckminster Fuller’s (my) favorite quote: “TRUTH alters TRUTH only by REFINING the DEFINITION.” All definitions are limited and will be refined as we evolve and our knowledge/wisdom evolves too. Bye!

Interesting thought about buddha and the collective, of course from the buddhist perspective of codepedant origination, there is no buddha that is not a collective.

Back to wilber… (sorry) Yes I understand that many would feel Wilber has misrepresented in attempting to build a working framework, and I suppose that is one of the tasks for the integral community to be involved in; testing out which links are in need of revision and how best to proceed in changing them.

I would like to point out though that Wilber’s ‘method’ has never been just orienting generalisations, for me, it seems more of an admission that there are bound to be controversies, inaccuracies and problems in creating the integration; more of a rough patchwork than a beautifully woven Persian carpet if you like.

His approach is better captured in his integral methodological pluralism. Whilst your right, there is rarely consensus in most if not all the fields he describes regarding the data produced, the point is that most researchers work from some shared disciplinary view of what a given phenomena or reality might be (ontology) how we might best come to know it (epistemology) and the best way to go about measuring it (methodology). If a discipline does begin to have discord over those fundamentals, it tends to break away creating a sub-field. As Kuhn (1962) noted, good incremental science has to be relatively at rest over these fundamentals otherwise it just wouldn’t be an effective field, discipline, or mode of enquiry.

From this perspective, there may not be a core consensus (although my experience is that there definitely are many consensus‘es’) but there are core assumptions and agreed working practices that create conclusions that are a product of those assumptions and working practices; accordingly, they can be grouped together. It is wrong to dismiss the framework, as, while perhaps saying less about the conclusions, is still useful in orienting the processes by which we arrive at them. However, as well as systemically, integral theory is in need of looking deeply at each tradition to see what consensuses emerge within each methodology.. who knows, perhaps the more we find out, we will see that there is more consensus than might be imagined. Then, we embark on the task of seeing how those truths may be interpreted by other quadrants and traditions, creating integrally informed dialogue in a way no one single methodology on its own ever could.

It seems though that there still exists a tendency to dismiss big pictures using largely a priori arguments. If we are to embark on truly post-post-modern enquiries, we need to be more subtle, more pragmatic than that.

Hi Alan, I appreciate your interest in Wilber, but mine has waned so I don’t have too much time to devote to it at present. I enjoyed reading SES yes, it came across as a great synthesis when I was reading it. But what’s wrong with it is more than its parts. If you read the very careful investigations in Bald Ambitions, you will see that Wilber’s method of orienting generalisations just does not work. The assumption that every field has a core consensus, from which conclusions can be extrapolated, is just wrong. So Wilber synthesizes a few views he finds in agreement with his preconceptions and builds a whole architecture around it … You can’t rely on it at all, and serious academics will laugh you in the face if you come with wilber’s conclusions about their field … Read for yourself, in the primary sources, around the engaged actions you want to undertake in the world, in an integral way, but without any solution that any individual can master a global synthesis … as I once wrote, ‘the next buddha will be a collective’,

Michel

what a fast reply that was! Well I’m not surprised that every bit of SES doesn’t convince you, although I’m aware of some of the debate about it, I would like to know the main areas you find at fault though as I’m sure your serious scientific scepticism (SSS 🙂 could provide some good ground for a little debate about the book.

I do think however, that despite inaccuracies, Wilber attempted something in this book that is rather considerable. I’m tempted to cut him some slack… so what if there are parts wrong with the book? If you were trying to write a synthesising account that bridged the worlds of pre/post modern philosophy, psychology, the hard sciences, anthropology, and spirituality, don’t you think there would be some mistakes?

Also, if by your SSS (sorry I couldn’t help acronymising it!), you mean steadfast empiricism, and you dont see the need enrich your viewpoint by being informed by different epistemologies (phenomenology, hermeneutics, systems, ethnomethodology, neostructurlism etc.) ie.. in wilber’s terms, the other 3 quadrants, then I venture you are bound to not get much out of the book either.

Being a researcher, (psychology) it is very uncommon to find people willing to advance big pictures, especially in the post-modern climate that I predominantly work in. However, this is changing. If you can get hold of the journal ‘theory & psychology’, there are some (eg. Greg Henriques, 2008) who are advancing these ‘meta-theories’ as this is the only way out of the extremely fragmented state of affairs in psychology. I must say that nothing that has really attempted what Wilber has advanced over the years. I have read some of Bhaskar and Morin’s work and whilst they are interesting for reconsidering the typical boundaries of epistemology (my undergraduate supervisor was a critical realist herself), they dont really offer the scope that wilber does and don’t address so much of the practical links to methodology that Wilber does. Laszlo unfortunately is a bit wacky for me. Essentially (in psychology at least) we still have many different epistemologies and no one talks to each other…. the neuro/cognitive folks play with their fMRI’s, the behavioural ecologists poke animals, the foucauldians analyse ideology and the cogs draw up a myriad of charts that look like plumbing diagrams that are supposed to represent thinking. I must reiterate… none of us talk to each other.

Isn’t it strange how we are all supposed to be studying the mind yet we carry on in ignorance of what everyone else is doing? Of course, if your a devout empiricist then you probably don’t care what the other quadrants are up to as you believe that the world is best seen as little pieces of stuff bouncing off each other (not to simplify the empiricist/physicalist agenda too much (!)).

However, if you are aware of the reasons for integration and the advancements, insights and most of all a sense of respect for different epistemologies this would bring (think modern evolutionary synthesis but bigger) then something like wilber’s integral methodological pluralism (integral spirituality, 2006) is a massive step in the right direction.

Come on, if were going to criticize wilber, lets at least be like Jorge Ferrer and advance a decent criticism. Mostly what I’ve heard on here is just about his personality, which isn’t really that interesting i’m afraid.
So he gets narked and shouts at people… his political allegiances are a little questionable… well, Heiddeger was a nazi! But I’m not about to through being and time out the window.

Regards,

Hi Alex, for the record, the Wilber critics have read Wilber, in my case, I own and have read the collected volumes. As you could see from reading Frank Visser’s website, the critique is much for civil than Wilber’s ranting himself. Once you familiarize yourself with serious scientific scepticism, you will discover that S.E.S. doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

http://www.integralworld.net/redd.html

of course this does not excuse this behaviour entirely but wow, it seems like a real hard pain in the ass to live with.

As to the criticism itself… I’m sure Wilber would probably want to respond to all the various voices that attack, having as they do sometimes a genuine spirit of philisophical argument, but also are sometimes cleary angry and embittered and plain nasty. Someone that has written the kind of meta-system that he has is of course subject to offensives that normal researchers, philosophers and academics are simply not used to. If one can only apprehend what he has spent his life trying to do, its not hard to understand how someone, who has also become so famous, would court the amount of criticism.

All I can say is, before you critise him, at least read Sex, ecology, spirituality. … what a book…