Greg,
This is a great set of insights and questions.
Let me just share in the orientation you are offering and then state that they area you are highlighting (the arts, especially music, and aesthetic theory and philosophy and the TOK) is significantly underdeveloped. I have deeply enjoyed learning about your scholarship on jazz and it has reminded me (once again) of this being a significant lacuna in the system. Maybe we can begin a discussion about it when we talk.
For clarity, as you note, I embrace the logic of the large division in the academy between the sciences and the humanities. Following Jones’ 1967, The Sciences and Humanities<https://www.amazon.com/Sciences-Humanities-Conflict-Reconcilliation/dp/B00GJ547EK>, and the basic distinction noted by Wilber, I associate the core task of the basic sciences with getting at descriptions of what “is” (i.e., True independent of subjective wishes and biases) and the core identity of the humanities is with creative expressions of the “ought” (i.e., Good and Beautiful). [It is worth noting that I think there are or should be other great branches of the academy, for example, the philosophy of design<https://www.amazon.com/Design-Way-Intentional-Change-Unpredictable/dp/0262018179>, which can be thought of as the effective construction of practical living).
Although there is a place for aesthetics, the bottom line point is that my focus on psychology and psychotherapy has been almost exclusively on the questions of what is scientifically true and what is the moral/ethical/adaptive path to the good life, with beauty and the arts having a placeholder, but not being well developed.
However, relevant to this discussion is the fact that, as I will share today in the Tour of the Garden at 5:30 pm, the Unified Theory took a strange turn in 2016 and I was “called” to turn it into a work of art. I have never considered myself an artist. I am sure this will not come as a surprise to folks. Many of my graphics have been, well, not exactly polished works of art to say the least. Indeed, even the Garden itself requires a particular “tilt of the head” to capture its “beauty”. To use a Wilber term, I get to art via “vision logic” and so it usually is the “symbolic geometry and identity functions” that are operative in my visuals rather than aesthetic appeal. But in 2016, I was called to create what I now can see to be a “sincere ironic” work of art in the form of the Garden, which I personally to see through the necessary tilt of the head and find it beautiful.
As for music, well, of all the human domains that are crucial that I am woefully underdeveloped in, music is perhaps the most obvious. Just ask my wife, Andee, who loved music and concerts and all that. She took me to one concert (Little Feat), and I thought it was loud and asked to leave halfway through. Given that we started dating in high school, it has been a bit painful for her that I could not share in that world. However, maybe it is something that I can grow into. I have deeply enjoyed what you have sent in terms of jazz and blues and all that. I have many thoughts about the essence of beauty and about the collective power of music. Maybe someone who really “gets it” can translate the logic into something that genuinely sparkles.
Peace,
Gregg
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Greg Thomas
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2020 12:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Four Contexts of Justification
In the first full para, it should be adversarial "dynamics."
On Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 12:01 PM Greg Thomas <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
I agree: cool.
I wonder how the dynamics would adjust if we viewed the courtroom as a place for not only adversarial and sanctioning (or not) but as much as a frame for adjudication and mediation?
Such a frame, perhaps, could be a path from the courtroom to the courtyard.
Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, was fond of saying that all art takes place in a frame, a context.
Art. I'm curious about the role and function of the arts in TOK. It's clear that the arts gravitate within the humanities side of the humanities/science categorization in TOK. And that aesthetics, via Schiller, is a focal point for Bildung, as a guest post on Gregg's Psychology Today blog a month ago makes clear.
If participants here could point me to some articles or papers that integrate the arts (especially music) and aesthetic theory and aesthetic philosophy with TOK, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
Greg
PS: In jazz and the hero's journey archetype, there's a principle called "antagonistic cooperation." Such an idea integrates and enacts a rapprochement between the courtroom-courtyard distinction. That's a small example of the possible utility of an aesthetic and mythos frame to, as the cultural philosopher Albert Murray would say, "extend, elaborate, and refine" the metaphorical modeling in the middle two Justification frames, whether left-right or right-left.
On Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 10:31 AM Leland Beaumont <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Gregg,
This is very cool.
How far toward the left in the continuum does “real good” extend?
Did you consider reversing the continuum diagram so that it proceeds left to right (as Westerners read) from true to false?
If you added a “good dimension” (e.g. vertically) would these contexts separate along the good dimension? (Good for whom?)
Thanks,
Lee Beaumont
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2020 9:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Four Contexts of Justification
Hi TOK List,
I put this blog up today on the contexts of justification. It was co-authored with John Vervaeke and Guy Sengstock:
From the Con Game to the Research Lab: Four Contexts of Justification on a Continuum.<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_theory-2Dknowledge_202008_the-2Dcon-2Dgame-2Dthe-2Dresearch-2Dlab&d=DwMFAg&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=ajQg9bqM062j-SdgBngBY7aijn7rHHnjaPYQtsEET3c&s=q6gJbmIyrIc1KeInT5AGrlZn5KgWxngyP755aXkwgvs&e=>
Thanks to Guy and John for the excellent conversation that was the spark of inspiration!
Best,
Gregg
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