In My Integral Estimation

DGA On Wilberism

2010-02-24T10:02:00.004-05:00

Daniel Gustav Anderson has this to say about post-Wilberian integral theory in a recent blog post over at For The Turnstiles:

My position is that Wilber's doctrine is untenable as academic work. It is simply not reasonable; it cannot tolerate the scrutiny of reason. If integralism is predicated on what he calls "orienting generalizations," as they are described in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, then it must be said that integralism is not predicated on science or reason as such, but on blind faith in these abstractions. One may say that the orienting generalities are themselves a useful fiction; I respond by saying that Wilber does not mark them as such fictions, he accepts them as proven fact and moves on without examining them, and for that reason his work is sunk from the start if it is to be taken seriously as knowledge, as reason. But but but! It does not matter, because it is a doctrine that appears reasonable at first glance and claims to point toward means of verification beyond reason. It goes for transrationality without actually getting to the rationality part: it is a prerational cult of the transrational, unmediated by the rigor of reason, fact, or accountability to method. To use a Wilberism: Wilber is guilty of the Pre/Trans Fallacy, or rather, his writing insists on readers who are willing to absorb that fallacy. This explains the shrill freakings-out that go on and on and on when Wilber's basic premises are examined with care. It is assumed to be personal, because it is Wilber's person (the figure of the one who has achieved something beyond reason) that guarantees the validity of this "knowledge." It is a kind of self-fashioning, a rhetorical game.

The 3x3 Faces of God: The Holy Ideas of A.H Almaas

2010-02-02T06:09:00.014-05:00

The three faces of God each have facets.

The first person experiences of God include:
I am the non-dual unity of all that is.
I am the intrinsic positivity of presence.
I am the luminous perfection of now.

Almaas calls these experiences Holy Truth, Holy Love, and Holy Perfection.

[More below]
The second person experiences of God include:
I relate by surrendering to the unfolding flow of Being.
I relate by articulating the self-arising of Being.
I relate by harmonizing with the dynamic pattern of Being.

These are Holy Will, Holy Origin, and Holy Law.

The third person experiences of God include:
I recognize the interconnected multiplicity within unity.
I recognize the creative design of transformation.
I recognize the essential nature of all things.

These are Holy Omniscience, Holy Wisdom, and Holy Faith.

[From Facets of Unity]
Loss of contact with a Holy Idea results in a particular delusion about the Kosmos. The nine delusions are interconnected, and they are the basis of all egoic activity. In an individual, one particular delusion is usually strongest, resulting in a certain ego fixation which forms the core of the personality. Each fixation represents one way in which the ego tries to manufacture a substitute for the Holy Idea:

[From Enneagram Institute]
In regard to spiritual practice:

Spiritual traditions emphasize not only different faces of God, but also different facets thereof. Christianity, for example, emphasizes the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity -- the central triangle of the enneagram.
Certain spiritual practices will feel easier or harder depending on how central to your personality a particular point of the enneagram is. Enneatype 7 with an 8 wing, for example, will find practices concerning Holy Wisdom very difficult, and those concerning Holy Unity nearly so. Thus, we will feel more "at home" in certain spiritual traditions than others.
The Holy Ideas are interconnected, and each leads to the others. Thus, practices focused on one Holy Idea are "true, but partial." An integral spirituality would "transcend and include" each Holy Idea, emphasizing their interconnectedness.

The Morality of Growth To Goodness

2009-11-26T09:11:00.004-05:00

From Live and Evolve:

“In the contemporary ideological climate it has become imperative that we perceive all the terrible things that happen to us as ultimately something positive—say as a precious experience that will bear fruit in our future life. Negativity, lack, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, are perceived more and more as moral faults— worse, as a corruption at the level of our very being or bare life. There is a spectacular rise of what we might call a bio-morality (as well as morality of feelings and emotions), which promotes the following fundamental axiom: a person who feels good (and is happy) is a good person; a person who feels bad is a bad person. It is this short circuit between the immediate feelings/sensations and the moral value that gives its specific color to the contemporary ideological rhetoric of happiness. This is very efficient, for who dares to raise her voice and say that as a matter of fact, she is not happy, and that she can’t manage to—or, worse, doesn’t even care to—transform all the disappointments of her life into a positive experience to be invested in the future? There is an important difference between this and the classical entrepreneur formula according to which we are always broadly responsible for our failures and misfortunes. This classical formula still implies a certain interval between what we are and the symbolic value of our success. It implies that, at least in principle, we could have acted otherwise, but didn’t (and are hence responsible for our failures or lack of happiness). The bio-morality mentioned above is replacing the classical notion of responsibility with the notion of a damaged, corrupt being: the unhappy and the unsuccessful are somehow corrupt already on the level of their bare life, and all their erroneous actions or nonactions follow from there with an inexorable necessity.”

—Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy

Ah, how the metaphorical journey of growth from here to the place where I can be a good person rankles my spirits. I'll take "different metaphors" for $500, Alex.

What Constitutes A Perspective?

2009-07-20T10:31:00.003-04:00

At the very least, these all seem to be linked to the idea of individual perspectives:

Embodiment
Unconscious Junk, Shadow
Emotions
Language
Past History and Memories
Personality
Conscious Thoughts, Beliefs, Narratives, Conceptualizations, Theories

How much of that can we change? Some of it, I think.
How much of that are we stuck with? Some of it, I think.

Given that we are stuck with some of it, to what extent is it meaningful to think about generating, considering, or enacting other perspectives? It seems that any perspective we attempt to take on can only be taken on partially, and always within a context constrained by whichever parts of our perspective we can't willfully change.

Transparency Is The New Objectivity

2009-07-20T09:50:00.004-04:00

I found this blog piece quite interesting, since the argument it makes concerning the shift from "telling how things are" to "telling how they appear to me and why I see them that way" parallels the shift from metaphors about objects and their actual properties and relationships to metaphors about perspectives and the effects they have on what is perceived.

The Structures of Integral Theory

2009-07-08T11:50:00.004-04:00

When blue's polar, dichotomous, either/or thinking proves insufficient, there are two primary approaches to providing additional flexibility.

First, you can blur the boundaries between pairs of opposites, creating a gradual trade-off between the two. This results in a spectrum, usually conceptualized as a line between two points. From here, it's a short leap to spectra that extend infinitely away from a single end-point, or infinitely in both directions without any end-points.

Second, you can keep sharp boundaries, but extend the number choices beyond two. This results in clearly defined categories, usually conceptualized as containers that particular things go "in." From here, it's a short leap to categories of categories and so on, which are thought of as nested containers.

These two extensions of blue thinking are orange's primary conceptual tools.

Wilber's AQAL model makes heavy use of categories and spectra -- every major element of the theory is structured in one of these two ways. Quadrants, levels, states, and most types use the category structure, while masculine/feminine, transcendence/immanence, and lines of development use the spectrum structure.

This is somewhat surprising, when you consider the relatively scarce inclusion of green perspectival and contextual elements. The primary examples are the lower quadrants, which in a fashion consider the context of the individuals in the upper quadrants. Still, the perspectival and contextual observations are placed into quadrant categories, subordinating them to the orange conceptual structure of the quadrants.

Does integral theory really represent a step forward from green thought? I'm starting to question. While it is certainly non-materialist, and therefore solves some of the problems of "flatland" rationality, I don't see much that convinces me that it "transcends and includes" post-modern green. The more I recognize the same structures I see in materialist science popping up in integral theory, the more integral theory looks like a very comprehensive incarnation of the orange meme, stretching up to green for a few bits here and there.

Trans-rationality As Empiricism

2009-07-07T11:16:00.006-04:00

Trans-rationality is sometimes understood as a special kind of vision which allows one to see what is really there. This is the conception that underlies the idea of the Witness, for example.

This understanding supposes that there is a spiritual subject, capable of accurately seeing real spiritual objects and their actual spiritual properties, just the way they are in themselves.

In other words, this is orange empiricism dressed up with spirituality.

The Myth Of Perspectival Freedom

2009-07-07T10:04:00.006-04:00

While there are an infinite number of perspectives humans can take, we cannot take an infinite variety of perspectives.

By way of analogy, consider that there are infinitely many real numbers between 1 and 10, and yet this set of numbers still has edges, boundaries, limits.

Similarly, our physical embodiment constrains the potential variety of human perspectives. We are not observers separate from the world, who happen to have vehicles called bodies to walk around in. Our bodies and our thinking are not separate and autonomous. We can only think in certain ways, which bear the indelible stamp of immanence and physicality.

In that sense, the post-modern deconstruction of all meaning through endless re-contextualization is as much a fool's errand as the endless search for objective truth -- which is to say, half-way.

Sure, we can re-contextualize something as many times as we want, but we can only recontextualize it in certain ways.

Art of Hosting Murals

2009-06-26T08:10:00.012-04:00

Colleen Stephenson created a created a fantastic set of Art of Hosting murals from the work done at the "Hosting Artful Collaborations Across Communities and Agencies" module at ALIA West, hosted by Chris Corrigan and Jennifer Charlesworth.

[Images below]

(Click on the images to enlarge.)

Spirit, Essence, Kosmos

2009-06-17T15:35:00.003-04:00

Spirit is the essence of the Kosmos.

This common sense proposition is sometimes taken as a literal truth that describes the actual nature of reality. Is this simple statement really as straightforward as it seems? What else must one accept for this statement to make sense? Where does it lead?

On closer inspection, the idea that Spirit is the essence of the Kosmos is quite complex, highly metaphysical, and heavily reliant on metaphor. In Philosophy In The Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson point out that there are several assumptions that must be made to arrive at such a concept.

[Read the rest on IL]

More, Greater, Higher

2009-06-16T13:03:00.002-04:00

Meyerhoff beat me to it:

I've always been struck by the great valuation in Wilber's model of the concepts of more, greater and higher. More complexity, more emergent phenomena, greater transcendence and inclusion, greater embrace, more perspectives included, higher altitude. The whole model has an ever onward and upward quality. For a theory of everything there is so little said about the other half of existence: decay, deterioration, diminishment, death, extinction and loss. The sense you get from Wilber's writing is that we never lose anything essential, yet the amount of loss over the course of life on earth is so tremendous it's incomprehensible. I think it's The Tibetan Book of the Dead that says that the greatest mystery is how all around us there is death and dying, and yet no one really believes that it will happen to them.

Empathy

2009-06-12T09:40:00.003-04:00

Obama's list of criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee has brought "empathy" to the center of the political semantics battlefield -- a field also known as the "spin room." And this makes sense, when you consider that the American political landscape spans at least three memes.

A typical dictionary definition of empathy is "identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives." From a green point of view, this is a rare virtue, indicating a capability to assume the perspectives of a variety of people, particularly the oppressed or downtrodden. This ability allows the justice, and therefore the court, to function as an institution of liberation (paradoxical as that may be.) So, for green, empathy is the bees knees, and conservatives are silly for deriding it.

But from an orange point of view, the role of the court is to impartially decide what is best. Empathy is a potential hindrance to a justice's ability to act as orange's idealized rational observer. Since orange takes reason as disembodied and universal, it pictures people as rational decision makers who should all reach the same decision in a particular situation -- regardless of the context provided by our individual experiences. Empathy is the opposite of the detachment that orange associates with reason. It is therefore seen as a threat to many of orange's favorite universals, like fairness, impartiality, and justice.

And from a blue point of view, the role of the court is even more limited. The court exists solely to decide how to apply and resolve conflicts between the existing rules. (It is from this viewpoint that the phrases "judicial activism" and "legislate from the bench" originate.) For blue, it doesn't matter if you can identify with the parties in conflict, or even if your decision is the best or fairest, so long as our laws are applied consistently and with an appreciation for their hierarchy of importance. Empathy is therefore seen as a threat to consistency and uniform enforcement of the rules.

Like all words, empathy will always mean different things to different people, but I'm struck by the ways that particular meanings infect our political discourse. For one of the first times I remember, it seems that a liberal-leaning definition of a term is taking hold, despite conservative opposition.

The Difference Between Collective and Inter-

2009-06-10T21:21:00.002-04:00

collective = group, shared, common, aggregate, amalgam, combined
inter- = between, relating, connected, linked

If you look at Wilber's typical descriptions of the lower quadrants (such as SES or IOS), you may notice a difference in the way the lower left and the lower right look at multiple individuals. The difference is subtle, but it has a major impact on the way the lower quadrants are presented and understood.

Wilber often uses pronouns to quickly describe the quadrants. The lower right is concerned with "its", he says, while the lower left deals with "we." For the longest time, I saw these as parallel structures, but they are not. "Its" focuses on multiple individuals, while "we" focuses on a single compound identity. From this simple starting point, a pattern emerges in Wilber's discussions of the lower quadrants. He tends to describe the lower left using words like common, collective, mutual, shared, group, and worldspace, while describing the lower right with words like fit, mesh, interaction, and system. Although Wilber uses both words for both quadrants, I think it's fair to say, based on the full descriptions, that the LL focuses on "collective," while the LR focuses on "inter-".

There is a crucial difference between these descriptions. The LR is described as interaction that happens between individuals, while the lower left is described as sharing that happens within a group or relationship. The implication is that LR social systems can be formed through the interaction of people who are different, while LL cultural systems can only be formed through the interaction of people who are the same.

This understanding is problematic. It excludes from the LL the way that the subjective understandings and meanings of multiple people interact when they are not shared. I think that's a mistake, since so often culture is formed by a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

Take, for example, my relationship with my future wife. We are definitely different people, and while we often try to share meaning with each other, our own perspectives inevitably color how we interpret each other. So, while we have grown somewhat of a relationship culture between us, it has been formed not only by what we share, but by how our two views interact and see each other differently, forming a system of mutual -- and sometimes functional -- mis-understandings.

And this is the point in microcosm: Interaction is a broad enough concept to include what happens between two people on account of their sameness and their difference. Interaction transcends and includes sharing. Inter- is broader than collective; between is more comprehensive than shared.

In essence, focusing on inter- is a step past the postmodern green view of culture. From a green contextual point of view, meanings are irresolvable and not understandable outside the context within which they exist. Therefore, the only way to appreciate a particular meaning is to see it within the context it originated in. Since perspectives are a sort of context and each person has their own perspective, we can only understand each other to the extent that our perspectives and contexts overlap -- or so green would say.

Yet even when our perspectives don't overlap, they can still interact. The ways that we understand each other, especially when we are different, produce some very interesting and unarguably cultural results. Take, for example, the way liberals and conservatives see each other. This pair of viewpoints and their perception of each other have produced one of the defining features of American culture in the recent past -- the Culture War. Their interaction is primarily shaped by what they don't share and the way their perspectives are different.

Reinterpreting the LL in terms of inter- and between gives it a very different flavor. It no longer focuses on "we" but on "I's" -- your I and my I, interacting with each other. It becomes less dependent on a stable and static foundation of sharing, and therefore becomes more dynamic and fluid. Its interaction with and co-creation of the other quadrants becomes clearer, since an "inter-LL" parallels the structure of the LR, and relates to the UL in the same way UR relates to LR. As an analytical tool, the LL becomes a more useful, comprehensive, and precise when conceived of in terms of "inter-".

Both/And: An Orange Killer

2009-06-10T20:43:00.004-04:00

It's very hard for someone whose thinking is centered in orange to visually imagine or metaphorically structure the concept of both/and. This makes sense given orange's favorite metaphors: category as container and variation of quality as a spectrum with two ends. These metaphors are centrally characterized by an asymmetry that makes them logically inconsistent with their inverses.

Something can not logically be both inside of a container and outside of it, and can therefore not be metaphorically understood as being both a member of a category and not a member of the category. Nor can one travel both directions on a spectrum at the same time, and a thing can therefore not be metaphorically understood as fully possessing two opposite qualities at the same time. It can be understood as balancing the two qualities, or having some of each, but not having both fully.

Thus, both/and is very difficult for orange to handle. It simply doesn't have the metaphorical tools to provide a structure for the concept. As a result, both/and appears to be blending when (mis)translated into orange thinking, in a fashion analogous to its appearance as paradox to blue thinking.

Tiers

2009-06-10T10:59:00.002-04:00

It's total hearsay, but...

I'm told Chris Cowan once remarked that any shift above your own center of gravity may appear to be a tier shift.

I find the implications very interesting.

Don Beck on Spirituality and Second/Third Tier

2009-06-09T18:49:00.006-04:00

In a recent response to speculation concerning spirituality, non-duality, Turquoise, and third tier, Don Beck had some very choice words. Worth a read, particularly for its discussion of the appearance of "non-locality" in communal memes, but also for the general lambasting of those who associate spirituality with second tier.

Metaphor In American Politics

2009-06-05T10:58:00.003-04:00

The prevailing metaphorical description of the variety of political beliefs and stances is as a spectrum of distance between Left and Right -- a version of one of the orange meme's favorite metaphors.

This metaphor results in certain inferences about politics:

There can be no Left without Right, or vice versa. The two ends of the spectrum form an "internal dyad," defined by a constitutive relationship between the two that results in their inseparability.
The position of a particular belief on the spectrum is relative. Left and right, in physical directional terms, are relational and depend on comparison to both a location and a direction or facing. Similarly, in political terms, what constitutes the Left and the Right depends on what you compare to.
Left and Right are naturally defined in relation to the speaker's own beliefs. Just as physical left and right are naturally defined in relation to the location of our bodies, so too are political left and right naturally defined in relation to our own (metaphorical) position.
Left and Right are destinations which can be arrived at. By analogy with the spectrum of physical distance between "far left" and "far right," the political spectrum also consists of a range of physical locations which one can move to. So, for example, one can be "moving to the right," or there can be a collective "shift to the left."
Either the Left or the Right has value, but not both. If positions on the political spectrum are destinations that can be arrived at, then the metaphor entails that the path to a particular point is to go either left or right, but not both -- one direction will clearly get us "closer" and one will take us "farther away." If we want to get somewhere, that place must have some value to us, so getting closer is good and getting farther away is bad. Thus, only one of end of the political spectrum can have value.
Moderates are indecisive or apathetic. If political positions are destinations that have value, then people who stay in "the middle" can't decide which place they want to go, don't care where they end up, or are happy right where they are.

These particular inferences about politics are consequences of the particular metaphor chosen. Choosing a different metaphor -- such as the blue meme's presence/absence or the green meme's figure/ground -- results in a completely different picture of politics.

Green Social Structures

2009-05-29T14:39:00.002-04:00

What are the benefits and drawbacks of green social structures?

First, let's take a look at what green social structures are, by comparing them with the quintessential structures of other memes.

In a video from the Art of Hosting Integral gathering in 2007, Tim Merry discusses the various organizational structures favored by different memes. To briefly summarize, tribal purple prefers the camp fire circle, which is great for sharing stories. Power-focused red and hierarchical blue prefer a triangular structure: one person is at the top, and there are many people under them. Bureaucratic orange, coming at the problem of organizational forms with the idea of multiple categories, prefers a "square" structure involving lots of boxes (i.e. objects) which relate to each other.

Pluralist green returns to a circular organization, in which no one is "higher" than anyone else and the potential oppression of categorization is done away with. One key difference between green circles and purple circles is presumed sameness. In a purple circle, the participants are assumed to be the same, perhaps members of the same tribe. In a green circle, the participants are assumed to be different, with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

With that in mind, let's consider the advantages and disadvantages of green circles:

As with purple circles, green circles are great for sharing stories. In light of that, they're also good for comparing experiences. Similarly, they're great for examining and deconstructing perspectives, whether individual or cultural. They're also well suited to generating lots of different ideas. In short, they're great for discussing.

On the other hand, a green circle is a not very well suited for making decisions, since a decision in this format requires consensus, yet a diverse group of people is likely to have a hard time reaching one. Due to the need for consensus, a group structured as a circle will often have a very hard time taking coordinated collective action, and is also not well suited to activities that require shared thinking that builds on itself. These two factors make the green circle a very poor place to do either theory or practice.

Furthermore, the pluralist circle structure is anathema to the ideas of expertise and teaching, since it systematically denies any authority or extra weight to the perspective of someone with greater knowledge, experience, or aptitude. As a result, experts tend to shy away from circular groups that involve non-experts, preferring either non-circular groups or association with other experts. In the rare circumstances in which experts do involve themselves with mixed green discussion groups, they tend to participate in one of two ways. Either they use the group to create relationships that will continue outside the circle context (where they can resume functioning as experts and teachers), or they take an unofficial or unacknowledged expert role, in which they act and are treated as de facto authorities while ostensibly remaining "the same" as the other group members.

For some topics and some purposes, a green circle is a good choice. Some topics are interesting and worthwhile to discuss -- particularly those that primarily concern personal opinion and perception. Other topics lend themselves more readily to being taught or presented by experts, and in these cases, other group structures are more efficacious. A green circle is a great place to shoot the breeze, have a beer, and restore your sense of unity-in-diversity, but not particularly good for getting things done, building new theories and methods, or transmitting skills and knowledge.

Metaphorical Phase Changes

2009-05-28T11:47:00.006-04:00

In the past, I've noted that yellow thinking often examines the formation of stable, persistent forms in the midst of constant movement and change. Water is an exceptionally good metaphor to use in understanding this. We can metaphorically map the logic of the water and material world to the domain of abstract substances and forms, and then use this imported logic to make inferences.

In a glass of water, the water molecules move fairly freely, unconstrained by strong bonds to each other. Water still sticks together cohesively, but it will fill a container of any shape. If left alone, it will interact with its surroundings and eventually reach a mutually stable temperature.

[More below]

If you put it in the freezer, the colder atmosphere will cool the water down and eventually solidify and crystallize it into ice. The ice still interacts with its surroundings, air molecules continue to bounce off its surface, but these interactions don't change its state -- unless your freezer quits working.

If you take the ice out of the freezer and put it on the stove, it will first melt and then evaporate into steam. As sufficient heat energy is provided, the bonds between water molecules break, and eventually their cohesive attraction is overcome, freeing the water molecules to float off into the air. If you can catch the steam and cool it back down, eventually you'll end up with ice again.

In all phases, water molecules are in motion. In gas phase, they move freely. In liquid phase, they move and flow together, cohesively. In solid phase, they are rigidly constrained, yet they still vibrate. There is continual motion, and yet, some phases still display order. An ice cube has fairly clear and stable boundaries. Liquid water in a glass has clear boundaries, but they are fluid and only semi-stable.

We can metaphorically understand the creation of order, stability, and stasis out of disorder, instability, and change as phase changes of a substance. This metaphor maps the inferential logic of phase changes from the source domain of the material world into the abstract domain of forms. Using the source domain logic in this new domain, the metaphorical mapping has certain inferential entailments:

Creating order requires removing energy.
Destroying order requires adding energy.
Energy added or removed comes from the environment.
A stable form consists of elements in motion on a smaller scale.
Constraints on an element's motion take the form of links to other elements.
Stability is temporary and subject to change if environmental conditions change.
Applying energy to or removing energy from the whole form will affect all of the constituent elements.
Interactions involving the constituent elements can change or destroy the whole form, when taken en masse, but individually have little effect.

The metaphor works well for a variety of cases, but notably fails when applied to cases where energy can come from within a form. In such cases, a different metaphorical understanding is required.

Evolutionary Excerpts, Pt. 1

2009-05-28T11:43:00.004-04:00

Integral philosopher Steve McIntosh on truth, beauty, and goodness (italics mine):

The thesis of this presentation is that the primary values of beauty, truth, and goodness can be expansively understood as the actual directions of evolution. And understanding where evolution is headed is, of course, a central inquiry for a philosophy that defines itself in evolutionary terms. But questions about of the directions of evolution's unfolding are not just relevant to integral philosophers; properly understood, these questions relate to every situation in which the need for improvement can be recognized. And as it now becomes increasingly necessary for humanity to participate in guiding cultural evolution toward a more positive future, knowledge of evolution's essential methods, techniques, and directions is of critical importance.

Sound familiar?

Integral Orange

2009-05-28T09:29:00.004-04:00

In his Through AQAL Eyes series, Mark Edwards enumerates some problematic understandings of integral theory. Among them he lists thinking of the quadrants as representing a map of reality, holons as objective entities, holons as the categorical building blocks of reality, and the four quadrants as categories of holons.

This is precisely how orange would interpret these ideas: as describing one objective reality which can be mapped, populated by observable things with clear boundaries, which are naturally grouped into distinct and separable categories, while composing larger and larger things by combining in a mechanistic and non-synergistic fashion.

The question of the day for me is: How much of that is a mis-interpretation?

Evolutionary

2009-05-13T08:17:00.014-04:00

"Evolutionary" is a word that gets tossed around a lot in integral circles. What does it mean, and is it representative of second tier thought? Let's take a look at the source of the term, and then apply it to philosophy.

Biological evolution is commonly associated with two types of change: variation and complexification. The differences between Darwin's finches are an example of variation, while the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is an example of complexification. Both kinds of changes are thought of as adaptations to environmental conditions, which increase an organism's ability to survive and thrive in that environment.

Even when "evolution" is used in other non-biological contexts, it still generally means one of these two abstract types of change: either variation or complexification. Each carries some common-place metaphorical associations which shape its overall meaning...

[More below]

We tend to associate variation of a quality with horizontal or sideways movement, while we associate an increase in quality (such as complexity) with vertical and forward movement.

We often associate vertical and forward motion with progress "toward" a goal, by analogy with directed and intentional physical movement. (It's easy to go down due to gravity, and somewhat unnatural to go backwards, since you can't see behind you, and usually you want to see where you're going. Thus, when we expend effort moving something or moving toward it, we are usually moving either forward or up.)

We associate value with progress, since nearing a physical destination means we have reached whatever we set out for, which has sufficient value to motivate us to move toward it.

We associate movement over distance with making an effort, which we metaphorically link with making an expenditure. Thus, expending effort is reducing value.

We associate movement and travel between locations with entering and exiting bounded areas (e.g. exiting the kitchen and entering the living room.)

We associate categories with containers (i.e. bounded areas.) Thus, things are metaphorically in categories.

From these common associations, we can derive some specific metaphorical mappings:

Horizontal movement between bounded areas => Variation between categories

Vertical or forward movement toward a destination => Progress toward a goal

Reducing the distance to your destination => Reducing the amount of work left to do in order to achieve the goal

Reducing the effort required to arrive => Increasing the net value of arriving (by reducing the cost)

And so on. In a distilled form, we have:

Moving toward the destination => Increasing value **

Moving between areas => Becoming a member of a different category

These are some of the rational, goal-oriented orange meme's classic metaphors. Given that evolution is one of the triumphs of the modern orange worldview, it is not surprising that the two types of evolutionary change are predicated on orange's favorite conceptual structures: spectra and categories.

When you hear someone talking about "evolutionary" spirituality, or "progressive" values, or the "directionality" of the Kosmos, think twice before labeling it second tier. It's more likely that you're listening to orange. Same goes for hearing literal interpretations of any metaphors involving travel, containment, and composition.

** (In fact, once you associate movement in a particular direction with increasing value, having a destination or end point is no longer really necessary. Presumably, one could keep moving in a direction forever, gradually increasing the value of "being at" their present location the whole way. Although teleological and non-teleological theories of evolution differ on this particular point, they are still both undergirded by a common set of structures and metaphors.)

Physical Metaphor and Abstract Thought

2009-05-11T10:15:00.006-04:00

We use metaphors drawn from physical experience to structure our abstract thoughts. These are strongly correlated with the conceptual forms each meme likes to use.

The use of metaphors drawn from physical experiences lags well behind the onset of the experiences themselves. It seems that we must first develop a high degree of familiarity and expertise with the physical experiences, and we then apply the patterns learned there in our abstract mental processes.

Blue's favorite metaphor drawn from physical experience is presence/absence -- either a thing is here or it isn't, I perceive it or I don't. The same structure, when used to structure abstract thought, results in blue's dichotomous thinking: an action or idea is either right or it is not. Using this particular metaphor, black is the absence of white, wrongness is the absence of rightness, softness is the absence of loudness, liberalism is the absence of conservatism (or vice versa, in each case.)

Orange's favorite sort of physical metaphors are drawn from object relations, such as containment ('in'), support ('on'), and distance ('to'). When used abstractly, 'in' results in categorization (putting different items in different boxes), 'on' results in notions of dependence (one idea is built on another), and 'to' results in spectra, with change in a quality being conceptualized as distance or progress (any point between A and B is some of the way from A to B.)

Green's favorite physical metaphor is figure/ground -- where and how I perceive object boundaries determines what I see as the focus and what I see as the background. This same structure, abstracted, results in green's contextual thinking: the appearance or meaning of a thing depends on how its boundaries are defined and what context it appears in. The metaphorical mapping equates my abstract "perspective" (including experiences, abilities, beliefs, and so on) with my physical perspective (including location, ability to see, and so on.)

The sequence of these metaphors is not accidental. At any given stage of physical growth, our bodily capabilities restrict the sorts of experiences we can have, and our bodies do not skip stages of development. As a result, the physical experiences these metaphors are drawn from happen in a certain sequence, and always in that sequence. Since we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch well before we develop decent motor control, we have lots of experience with sensed presence/absence before we experiment with object manipulation and learn object relations such as in, on, and between. And only with experience in object relations do we encounter situations where perspective and the distinction between foreground and background makes a difference. The sequence of our conceptual forms seems to mirror the sequence of our physical development and our progressively more complex engagement with the world.

Informed Intuition

2009-05-07T10:12:00.006-04:00

Some intuitions are better than others.

Take, for example, the game of poker -- really, any situation which presents more information than can be consciously processed will do, but poker is a decent example.

Which would you trust more? The intuition of:

Someone who knows only the basics of the game, or someone who has studied it extensively?
Someone who is oblivious to other people, or someone who attunes to others easily?
Someone who just started playing poker, or someone who has played thousands of hours over the past 20 years?

In each of these cases, I'll take the latter. Why? Because, in each case, the second person is more informed, even though they may not process all of the information consciously. That's what happens as we practice something: we internalize it to a degree that we no longer consciously think about it. As a result, an expert's sense of "simply knowing" is likely to incorporate knowledge and experience that a novice doesn't have.

Some intuitions are better than others.

Embracing Paradox

2009-04-20T13:22:00.001-04:00

Interestingly, I disagree with very little of what is said about paradox in this article. How fascinating!