Greetings Colleagues. Thanks, Cory, for your observations and assessments, which offer some important challenges to consider both for those committed to the ToK perspective and certainly beyond. Since I might be the only sociologist on the list - and one who was "socialized" in a radically anti-psychology environment as a PhD student all those years ago - I can offer a few insights from my own discipline and the problems Cory addresses and to which Gregg has responded in part. In the spirit of that Hegelian dialectic that emerges only slowly through this type of unilateral email exchange, I offer merely a few reflections of the problem of synthesis that has plagued my own discipline - and that sheds light on both Cory's and Gregg's comments. Using Cory's analysis as my "organizing" scheme, here are a few thoughts from sociology....
Paradigms & Moderating Syntheses
As in psychology, sociology has been inundated with paradigms and often incompatible in terms of mission, science, and just about everything else. If psychology has been a "problem child" from the lack of common perspectives and shared understanding of the subject matter, sociology should be considered not just a "problem child" but a veritable "juvenile delinquent"! I've attached one of my papers that merely assesses the diversity of sociological perspectives in Canadian sociology, but the analysis applies much more broadly. At the core are entirely different ways of framing and thinking about the "purpose" of sociology and social science, to say nothing of the multitude of dominant theoretical perspectives within the different overarching paradigms. In effect, sociology has dominant schools of thought associated with "the good, the true, and the beautiful" (critical, positive, & interpretive paradigms), as well as the post-modernist orientation. And this doesn't even begin to address the methodological & epistemological diversity that accompanies. So, almost no one even tries at any kind of meaningful "synthesis" any longer. There are a few "grand theorists" still trying to convince people of the profundity of their perspectives, but mostly a "live and let live" approach where sociologists just live and work in their separate worlds, publish in their own specialty journals, and there's VERY little coordinated understanding of the subject matter even within the same departments. About the only thing you'll get most sociologists to agree on has little to do with "science" in the classical sense: the commitment to "social justice." If you don't believe me, just ask the next sociologist you encounter what he/she/they define as the fundamental "social forces" that govern human social behavior. Do that 3 or 4 times with different sociologists, compare - and enjoy!
Unpredictable Outcomes
"It's not enough for just one person to have a multi perspective point of view, you need to have everybody who's participating have a multi perspective point of view. For all cases of all individuals who participate, they must all recognize the importance of everyone's point of view being equally essential." Further to my point above, you can rarely get even members of the same rather intimate department to agree on recognizing "everyone's point of view being equally essential." And I don't mean this is the naively relativistic way that "everyone's perspective is equally valid." That's simply "not true." But, in sociology, it's "not true" because there's literally neither common ontological ground nor common epistemological ground from which to consider one another's views. It's not just that sociologists are touching different parts of the proverbial elephant, they cannot even agree that one should "touch any part of the elephant" as a legitimate means of evaluating and describing - to say nothing of explaining - the creature in question. But this links to another problem with which Cory, Gregg, and presumably most people on this list would be aware: cognitive bias (and the many manifestations of that concept).
Lack of Cases
"So you have people entering in ideas and expecting them to be equally valid, that are not at principled or paradigmatic stage coordination. Of course their point of you is valid, but it's highly contextual to the circumstance of their cognitive deficiencies, which they ultimately do not have the cognitive abilities to fully grasp in the bigger picture." It's "worse" than that. Many in sociology view anyone NOT using their perspective to be morally suspect if not entirely deficient. There are deep-seated hostilities that divide the "community" of sociology that long ago led to many nasty divorces. I thought maybe the next generation of sociologists would have overcome or moved beyond the trappings of the old "paradigm wars," but this does not appear to be the case. There's little if ANY commitment to shared "meaning- making" or efforts aimed at any kind of modern synthesis. Hence the departments & their curricula reflect these divides, with some tilted heavily or even exclusively in one direction or another. My favorite example is "Brock University's Dept of Sociology", which is unapologetically and completely dedicated to "critical sociology" as THE only sociology paradigm worth pursuing. Cognitive bias on steroids, or the ultimate expression of authoritarian intellectualism. No other perspectives even need to be considered.
And, to keep this from turning into a full-blown dissertation, let me sum up the rest of the problem to which Cory alludes in his other sections in the following way. Yes, there's, a lack of scaffolding designed to help build up people's cognitive & intellectual - and I would argue their emotional - capacities to view the world and their subject matter as amenable to a more consilient, integrated viewpoint. I've asked Gregg on many occasions simply what other mainstream psychologists think about the ToK and the unified theory approach, etc. He has stated in various ways that most, as Cory implies, simply do not consider these issues. More broadly, w/ sociology and most disciplines, we're trained instead to "believe" in and to invest in specific theories and approaches (true of physics and the other sciences too) - and that's how we "build our careers." We are taught to commit to the tenets of our "religion", literally, just like we are taught our own "religion." I do not recall a priest EVER mentioning Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or anything else during the hundreds of masses I attended as a Catholic growing up. Some mentions of Protestantism and other aspects of Christianity, but not much else. And, of course, that's the whole point of "indoctrination" into a school of thinking. But it's even deeper. Ask me to think deeply like a person who grew up on mainland China who speaks only Mandarin. I cannot do that. I can perhaps learn Mandarin, but that will be difficult much later in life and I will only really have more of an "etic" perspective rather than an "emic" perspective. Apply that to what people have learned in their fields - and then add to that the fact that most built their careers "thinking" and "researching" and "proving" their perspectives, and you see the problem. Sure, give people scaffolding, encourage the open-mindedness, work toward genuine dialogue, etc. But where does that happen in everyday life or everyday graduate training or everyday leaning of one's language, religion, etc.? It can happen on this list-serve, for example, but this is the exception. There's a reason that you don't see many (any?) other sociologists participating here. It's not only "hard", but nearly impossible for most sociologists to look beyond their own cognitive biases, their own language, and their own social contexts to imagine things like the ToK.
To Cory's final point: "models like the tree of knowledge system should be common place in the world. They should be the standard. But they're not. And this is why." I've hopefully elaborated upon the "why" beyond Cory's observations with my reflections of the limits of sociology and my own analogies with respect to cognitive biases and the "languages" and "worlds" into which we are socialized. And I'm not even addressing the many other aspects of the human condition from authoritarian systems of control to the normal curve of the distribution of intelligence to the fact that billions of people on the planet still live in conditions of poverty & struggle to survive, to the tremendous cultural diversity that stems from the linguistic & historical diversity to which I've alluded. But, all that said, there are chances for progress along these fronts at critical junctures such as the present moment when things are disrupted so dramatically & people have time to reflect more on their perspective & their lives. The most optimism, though, comes from the younger folks - those who are not "fully formed" and who are still open to new ideas. People my age? Not so much. On the other hand, I'm far more optimistic when I engage in almost any discussion with any of our own five boys, aged 23-30. They're not "PhDs" or doctors or lawyers or "intellectuals." They're just university grads (literally, not post graduate training for any of them) who are genuinely "nice guys" who care, work hard, will talk to anyone, and who want to be a "part of the solution", whatever that might look like. They are curious and yet humble. And that's mainly what I see with the university students I teach too. And they're so open to new ideas and new ways of thinking about the 21st century. Okay, enough from this "old guy" (sorry, just had my birthday and realized I'm almost 60!). With kind regards, -Joe
Dr. Joseph H. Michalski
Professor, Department of Sociology
King’s University College at Western University
266 Epworth Avenue, DL-201
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 2M3
Tel: (519) 433-3491
Email: [log in to unmask]
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From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Cory David Barker <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 1:14 AM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Unification *Within* Major Schools of Thought?
I have spent a lot of time working on this problem. Everyone’s going to hate me for saying what I say below, but in the spirit of compensating for the lack of antithesis (without which there can be no higher order synthesis), what I have to say is as follows. This is a long read, but if you want to understand the problem, I lay it out.
Paradigms
The way that it goes is that different people have different paradigms in psychology. Each paradigm has its own set of principles which guide the way that it organizes across its systems. People build their identities and life on them. While it is true that a single individual can synthesize multiple paradigms within themselves and present this as a paradigm shift into larger scale thinking, in order to get people to do it on a social scale you have to have everybody participating capable of paradigmatic coordination.
Moderating syntheses
The caveat is that you can have a moderator who understands the developmental process of synthesizing the paradigms to mediate, and scaffold people up the transitions to the paradigmatic stage of social coordination. But each individual who participates needs to understand that the only way to go forward is by synthesizing the principles that the different paradigms have in common.
Unpredictable outcomes
Michael is correct, because you can't predict it. If you have people to determine ahead of time what they think that the outcome should be, then you end up having people strategizing individually and as groups to manipulate the outcome. This of course, results in undercutting of multiple perspectives integration. It's not enough for just one person to have a multi perspective point of view, you need to have everybody who's participating have a multi perspective point of view. For all cases of all individuals who participate, they must all recognize the importance of everyone's point of view being equally essential. This does not mean that every conclusion that every person draws is the right one. It just means that we have to look at what everybody has to say. And we have to take it seriously. And we have to be sincere about when one way is better than another way, and have strong evidence to back it up.
Lack of cases to learn from
We actually do not have a lot of cases of successful social paradigmatic coordination. This is an extremely rare occurrence. It does not happen in politics, it does not happen in religion, and it does not happen in economics. Also does not happen in meta-modernism. Although, Daniel Gortz advocates for it. The most common problem is that people sit at the table who are incapable of performing paradigmatic social coordination. So you have people entering in ideas and expecting them to be equally valid, that are not at principled or paradigmatic stage coordination. Of course their point of you is valid, but it's highly contextual to the circumstance of their cognitive deficiencies, which they ultimately do not have the cognitive abilities to fully grasp in the bigger picture. It’s like if you had a group of people trying to figure out how to do some sort of complicated math problem for designing a hadron collider, and you had kids sitting at the table demanding that their basic algebra be the foundation for building it.
Meta-modern error
This is why the Metamodern project is failing, because they're trying to integrate lower stage thinking (modernism) with higher stage thinking (post-modernism), and it just doesn't work. People at lower stages of cognitive, emotional, social, and ego development need to be scaffolded up to the higher cognitive performances or the whole thing is going to fall flat. You cannot skip stages. This is why the Iraq war failed. The US government tried to make feudalist society skip stages up to a democracy. Now ISIS is everywhere and its a big mess. The same principle applies to coverging psychology paradigms into a unified theory. The psychological community is often feudalist, with people fighting over which paradigms are better, and trying to force one way of coordinating them over others just doesn’t hold across the landscape of academia.
Why ToK can’t unify psychology on large social scales (in its current state)
Unfortunately the tree of knowledge system cannot fulfill this function of unifying psychology. The reason is because the tree of knowledge system select specific paradigms to represent its classes. But there are literally hundreds of psychology paradigms, and the larger psychology community is not being represented. ToK governs from the top down instructions on thought and behavior, instead of presenting a framework for people to come together to combine their shared meaning making into constructing some thing that everybody can participate in inventing. In a social paradigmatic coordination, the tree of knowledge system would be one representation of knowledge, that would sit at the table. He could not decide ahead of time the outcome anymore than anyone else.
There were several people who voiced that the problem with the model is that it left out paradigms early on. This is how I found the tree of knowledge system in the first place, because I was doing a huge research project for my masters degree about the disunity of psychology, and I was reading a bunch of papers about people talking about all the problems with trying to unify it. Until Gregg offers a framework for integrating paradigms through large scale participation, its impossible. In some cases people fundamentally disagree on which are good paradigms and which are not, and then who gets to decide which paradigms are included in which are not? And then we have to ask, why does one person get to decide on the framework for integrating them, and not someone else? Should not it be a larger scale decision on how to frame the integration? Are there not plenty of frameworks that all offer unique strengths that should be included and synthesized for such a task? This is what I coin “Arch-modernism”. We are not there yet.
It’s not just Gregg, there's been a lot of people historically who have tried similar things and they ran into the exact same problem. They get followings, but ultimately it doesn't takeoff in the large social scale. And if it does, they cast huge shadows because they leave out so much information. And then you have people on the other side, like me who don't really involve themselves in advocating much for paradigms as expressions of the universal classes, people who focus primarily on the universal classes themselves organizing them into taxonomic systems. And people coming from my point of view don't get huge followings either, because they never commit to any particular paradigm. Universal modeling therefore becomes a proxy that connects higher order thinking to individuals and groups for the given circumstance of their needs. It never elevates to paradigmatic coordination because the people who use the paradigms typically don't have the ability to create new paradigms or synthesize paradigms at all, they can only understand and use the paradigms.
We can all agree that there is profound insight with the tree of knowledge system, but for people who have already settled on paradigms that they use in psychology, if they see his paradigms as being competing and incongruent with her own, then they're not gonna accept the model as a whole. To them, matter, life, mind, and culture/society/whatever all seem pretty obvious knowledge, and they'll fill those classes of human experience with other paradigms instead.
Advocating social-wide skill development
This is why in other forums I've always pushed for development of skills. Because if you help people develop the skills needed in order to reach higher levels of cognitive capacity, then you don't really need to do anything because people will just do it automatically out of their own development. And as things stand, literally 60% of the entire adult population is completely incapable of doing anything remotely similar to what we're talking about here. 30% need strong support in order to do it. And then there's you know 9% that could do it with effort, and 1% this is old news. But we are ultimately held back because everyone else in society isn't capable of understanding it much less implementing it. Here you can plug in Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions. But we shouldn't lose hope, things are getting better in the speed at which things are getting better is speeding up it self.
It's a pretty stupid situation. Because models like the tree of knowledge system should be common place in the world. They should be the standard. But they're not. And this is why.
Cory
On May 17, 2020, at 11:20 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
It is a good article, one I read a long time ago.
Actually, it could be used to frame a number of issues for us to discuss. Great!
Thanks!
G
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Michael Mascolo
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2020 12:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Unification *Within* Major Schools of Thought?
Jason:
Thank you for this article. It is deeply relevant to my thinking. I will read it.
Mike
Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.
Academic Director, Compass Program
Professor, Department of Psychology
Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
978.837.3503 (office)
978.979.8745 (cell)
Political Conversations Study: www.CreatingCommonGround.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.creatingcommonground.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=IVmsd5OURyTBDe30CHSseUcZMNVfIwYZ85Mf0R_IwXM&s=S5IU6c5Zb6pVz9vq4AK_M7l23O6vBuPwQzTFxwfHqa8&e=>
Blog: Values Matter<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_us_blog_values-2Dmatter&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=IVmsd5OURyTBDe30CHSseUcZMNVfIwYZ85Mf0R_IwXM&s=ZN6w1LLJWevd7N7DTD1fMZJzsKP_l2JscGlEYfUgomU&e=>
Journal: Pedagogy and the Human Sciences<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__scholarworks.merrimack.edu_phs_&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=IVmsd5OURyTBDe30CHSseUcZMNVfIwYZ85Mf0R_IwXM&s=nnDuZyasNwqdjL9qPXZSr_eeWF-w9j00ieRFT-ttUYw&e=>
Coaching and Author Website: www.michaelmascolo.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.michaelmascolo.com_&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=IVmsd5OURyTBDe30CHSseUcZMNVfIwYZ85Mf0R_IwXM&s=t91wdcNYATSfCOQYEUb3Kh4OPZRcvC0xbmPzgjo0gEs&e=>
Academia Home Page: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__merrimack.academia.edu_MichaelMascolo&d=DwIF-w&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=dCgn-_zwdTfGr8CwQ-BoFsAaoZh2Irqgtf3xK9aA6CQ&s=Z6l4OMH-YQMf5XPqne3hJkRrVD3FMTa8Zk1eAGUkjs8&e= <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__merrimack.academia.edu_MichaelMascolo&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=IVmsd5OURyTBDe30CHSseUcZMNVfIwYZ85Mf0R_IwXM&s=TGlJUk8CPu4d-aiTC76nfVg3OxeqFJ4igQ9EPsqDXcU&e=>
"Things move, persons act." -- Kenneth Burke
"If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well." -- Donald Hebb
On May 17, 2020, at 12:10 PM, nysa71 <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Gregg & Mike,
Gregg, I was thinking more along the lines of the academic / theoretical side of things.
Mike, I think what you said makes total sense. My line of thinking was basically that if basic disagreements cannot be resolved *within* schools of thought, than it seems unlikely that even bigger disagreements *between* schools of thought will ever be resolved.
And since you brought up the concept of a dialectical process, I think you might find this 2003 paper interesting, "Fragmentation in contemporary psychology: A dialectical solution<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__pdfs.semanticscholar.org_013e_c3bca8ed4c1b8c5a9c25de167ffe8b89fc2a.pdf&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=yR-AkoXMAr1yml5jsfnklgXwiU0F84tDq33AzYd1IXc&s=X-QbWaC1lXXRrKh0wLsuJ32Bdfad2C4BhFORGH3g22c&e=>".
~ Jason
On Sunday, May 17, 2020, 10:10:19 AM EDT, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Jason,
Just to clarify, when you say “psychology” are you talking more about the science of psychology or are you talking about the professional practice side of doing therapy? I ask because the way I would answer your question would depend on your focus.
If the focus is more on the professional practice side, then my answer is yes, these are the “big four” of individual level approaches (there are family and social systems approaches). As you may be aware, the key paper on this is CAST, linked here<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.gregghenriques.com_uploads_2_4_3_6_24368778_cast.pdf&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=yR-AkoXMAr1yml5jsfnklgXwiU0F84tDq33AzYd1IXc&s=4JWbPY_p_wReytIX39UOQ6Bc3BkYjxxZAnsKdM7CaNI&e=>.
Best,
Gregg
From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of nysa71
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2020 9:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Unification *Within* Major Schools of Thought?
Hello ToK Society,
So what would you consider the major schools of thought within psychology? Psychodynamics, Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Humanism? A few more?
I ask because I wonder how prudent it would be to demonstrate how useful the ToK framework would be in regards to achieving unification *within* various schools of thought in psychology first before moving on to achieving unification *between* various schools of thought in psychology.
Just some food for thought.
~ Jason Bessey
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