Dear Gregg,
I just finished reading your paper “Intersubjective Mental Behaviorism: Using the Tree of Knowledge System to Develop a Holistic Philosophy,” and chapter 9 of your book, “The Fifth Joint Point.” Working through them was extremely helpful in many ways. First of all, it gave me a clearer appreciation and admiration for the scope and integration of your project as you have worked it out over the years. Second, it helped me situate the two projects, yours and mine, in relationship to one another more clearly: both multiple points of intersection, broadly shared assumptions and goals, as well as a passion for inclusiveness, consistency and integration. I am truly amazed and quite grateful to find someone with whom I share so much on multiple intellectual and academic levels (don’t worry; I am not going to suggest we move in together, but I do see a lot of exciting possibilities for collaboration.)
The purpose of what follows is very preliminary in my mind; pretty much just to get some observations and impressions down in print and run them by you both to check for accuracy in my understanding and to get your reactions.
First a confession: all of my training and tribal prejudices accumulated over decades have left me incapable of metaphysics in any way, shape or form; by metaphysics here I mean the more narrowly and historically defined project that commences with Plato and Aristotle and culminates in Hegel and which takes philosophy to be the pursuit of systematic, scientific knowledge of the basic structures and principles of Reality as a whole. My background in Existentialism, phenomenology and hermeneutics leads me to regard metaphysics in that historical tradition, or metaphysics as still practiced today in the general style of analytic philosophy, as a species that failed to adapt to widespread loss of habitat, specifically all of the body-blows dealt to the foundations of rationalism by sweeping cultural upheaval between 1850 and the present. Three main elements to those extinctionary forces: rise of historical consciousness – no trans-historical verities; insistence on human freedom as at least equally basic to humanity as reason; recognition of the universality of language as constitutive of cultural Reality as a whole. My doctoral work and early publications were focused on H.G. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, what he refers to as an “ontology of language” as the inheritor of all the surviving DNA of Metaphysics. Long story short, I feel the need to restrict the notion Knowledge to the sciences (in the inclusive, integrated, and differentiated way that you do) and to regard knowledge as a very specific and highly determined form of human understanding, but in no sense a privileged one. Hermeneutically stated, scientific knowledge is one of primary forms of human understanding, functioning together with the “humanities” the arts and other major forms of cultural expression (including good old “common sense”) to constitute the horizon of human existence as a whole. It is that horizon that I am interested in surveying in a unified categorical way, using Human Dignity as the defining center of any and all perspectival, historically situated and culturally localized forms of understanding, including all of the traditional academic disciplines on their way to becoming transdisciplinary.
I hope that makes some short hand sense, but having said that, it does not in any way alter my sense that the projects are not only complementary, but very robustly so, potentially in a sort of take over the world way. The framework you have put together is a stunning example of a hermeneutics of science at its absolute optimum. Can we combine it with a hermeneutics of Human Dignity that is fully compatible with the ToK and which connects to it specifically at a fifth nodal point (Freedom) which has its own information processing protocol (Responsibility)? Let me try to sketch out the first stages of a bridge building project toward that goal.
Let’s start with the Singularity as you do in your version of the Universe Story. You rightly observe that some people call this “God”(in my terminology, the “Saints” do so, specifically in a monotheistic and scriptural sense). These are the personalists, and their main point – if I may be so bold – is not ultimately about God, but about what counts as primary reality, the most basic and most important characteristic of the universe. Primal reality for them is “Personhood” or better, Personal Identity; what you refer to as the Ultimate Justification, spelled out as the respect accorded to every person both intrinsically and as merited. Note that the distinction between “divine” and “human” persons within this saintly version of the universe story, while by no means unimportant, nevertheless turns out in the end to be just that-a distinction within the foundational category of the dignity of personal identity. In the scriptural tradition, as opposed to monotheistic theology, the notion of God is inconceivable without the notion of Revelation through creation and, specifically, the creation of Adam and Eve. So my primary point is that for personalists the singularity has the name of “God” in the narrative but what that name identifies is the ultimacy and therefore the dignity of personal identity. In other words, the Singularity/God is the origin of universal Reality as it appears from the center of a circle which that reality comprises, and the center of that circle is personal identity. Personal identity emerges according to the story as its central character, the center through which all energy passes. Of course, the term “personal identity” is not restricted necessarily to human beings; it could be applied not only to “God” but also to other life forms in the universe that are mental, cultural and respectful of the intrinsic dignity of freedom.
For a variety of reasons which it would be useful to discuss, I find it helpful to refer to this same Singularity as “Mystery.” There is a strong and immediate connection between the two nominations. Meaning is relation. Singularity is not simply the absence of relation, but the impossibility of relation. Mystery is the experience of the impossibility, not simply the mere absence, of meaning. But the experience of the impossibility of meaning has the character of paradox. It is both the absence of meaning and the revelation of a need for meaning, a solicitation of meaning. This experience of mystery is a mental behavior, and as such it bears the character of all primary human experience: it is both a privation and simultaneously an erotic desire. This is important because it establishes from the beginning that the logic of primary human experience, which is always linguistic, has the structure of “both/and” as its basic logic, rather than the either/or logic of deterministic material causality. The structure of meaning, as relationship, requires both similarity and difference, connection and distinction. It is this “both/and” logical structure inherent in language that establishes the mysterious and paradoxical character of reality as a whole by locating these characteristics at the center of reality in the mystery of personal identity.
Although it might seem a long way from the cosmic Singularity to the experience of individual human beings, that distance is relativized when we remember that, like “God,” the Singularity is inconceivable (meaningless) except in relationship to human beings, because we are not talking about bear objective or factual existence, but rather about meaningful experience.
Second major point: the dignity of personal identity is based foundationally on freedom (while I can’t buy into any epistemic foundationalism, with regard to issues of respect for value or dignity, there is paradoxically no choice: freedom is the only possible source or criterion of values in any sense). Freedom is the logically necessary presumption required to talk about values in any sense other than at the purely quantitative, and a fortiori, values at the level of dignity. You are very correct to observe that freedom at the incremental or secondary level is measured not quantitatively but rather qualitatively in terms of its wholeness or integrity and follows the both/and logic of universality. Again, at the level of experience I identify the functioning of freedom as the specific form of information processing demanded by dialogical embeddedness in the fabric of Culture. This notion of responsibility is clearly directly connected to the notion of justification, but at the same time makes explicit the connection or trajectory of the justification process toward its ultimate goal, personal dignity. In this sense, freedom must be absolute if it is to serve as the basis for a level of personal dignity which is genuinely inviolable.
Third point: any talk of “absolute” freedom immediately raises the question of how such an unconditional freedom can exist amid the equally pervasive reality of human finitude. This concern requires that a clear distinction be made between freedom and liberty of choice by insisting that there is more to freedom than just liberty of choice. The importance of observing this distinction becomes clear when we recognize that one of the principle driving forces of the rhetoric of cultural warfare is the indiscriminate use of the words “freedom” and “liberty” as if they were simply synonymous and interchangeable. But this is not the case. When this substitution occurs in rhetoric about national and international political affairs a deep confusion inevitably follows. Liberty is the province of culture as such; political, economic, legal and societal norms and practices have the equitable distribution and expansion of liberty for all citizens as their primary rationale. As a consequence, liberty of choice is always situationally conditioned in virtue of innumerable limiting factors ranging from the physical (gravity, time/space) through the genetic, mental and socio-cultural. Freedom, on the other hand, refers to the inalienable and unconditioned presumption afforded every person of a capacity to take full responsibility for the meaning of his or her existence, finally and without partiality. Freedom in this sense is closely related to the traditional notion of conscience: what I do/who I am makes a difference with regard to reality as a whole and I am myself fully responsible for the identity I have as a person constituted by the complex meanings ascribed to my life by myself and by others. This total responsibility cannot be limited by circumstance or even by other freedoms. I remain responsible for my identity as a whole even though there are multiple components of that identity over which I have either no, or at most limited control. Since freedom is inevitably marked by the same paradoxical ambiguity that characterizes its origin in Singularity/Mystery, it comes as no surprise that this totality of meaning by which any person is identified will itself also be both mysterious and paradoxical both in the experience of oneself and in the experience of others.
Finally I very much appreciate and support the personal testimony you give at the end of chapter nine regarding dignity as a beacon of hope by which all human beings can struggle ahead in the attempt to live decent and meaningful lives and take authentic responsibility for who they are. I have found that to be true in my own life as well.
Well, if anyone is still with me, I will end with once again asking pardon for the abusive length of this post. My only excuse is genuine enthusiasm and personal hope.
All good wishes,
Frank
############################Hello List,
It is the opening day of Theory of Knowledge. Welcome! I anticipate many cool discussions will follow. I am happy to report that we have almost thirty participants, with a pretty wide range of disciplines represented. I welcome folks to introduce themselves. Although there are too many for me to name here, I would like to mention a few folks who are on the list and whose work I find to be especially inspiring.
Dr. Joe Michalski is a sociologist and Associate Dean at King’s college and has an excellent vision for extending some of these ideas to social structures and the social world. Joe was my first true mentor, as he was a professor here at JMU when I was an undergraduate back in the 1980s. Dr. Frank Ambrosio is a philosopher at Georgetown who, IMO, has a brilliant conception of our society’s crisis of meaning making, for which he offers up the concept of “mystery” as a possible resolution going forward. Dr. Steve Quackenbush is a social/personality psychologist who specializes in philosophical psychology, especial Sartre. He has been interested in the ToK System for quite some time and, I am thrilled to say, has been doing a “deep dive” into the iQuad formulation, which I hope we find time to discuss. Dr. Gary Brill is a psychologist at Rutgers who also specializes in theoretical and philosophical issues. He has a fascinating “View From Humanity” that I think has much to offer. Dr. Waldemar Schmidt is an emeritus professor of pathophysiology who has a deep understanding of--and is working on a new model of--human psychopathology. Dr. Steve Goldman is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Lehigh University. I have taken two of his “Great Courses” (Science Wars; Great Scientific Ideas that Changed the World) in my car, both of which deeply impacted my big picture/historical view of science and philosophy. Dr. Blaine Fowers is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, who specializes in Aristotle and how virtue ethics applies to psychology. (Check out my review of his excellent book, the evolution of ethics, here). Professor Corinne Diop is the director of the New Image Art Gallery and several years ago did some artwork with elements of the ToK. Dr. Darcia Narvaez is professor of developmental psychology at the University of Notre Dame. I invited her to give the key note at the most recent Division 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) conference because she has one of the most comprehensive, incisive, innovative, and powerful views on human moral development I have encountered. Dr. Craig Shealy is a professor in my home program at JMU, is President of Div 52 (International Psychology) and has a brilliant conception of human beliefs and values, human needs, and the nature of the self. And, the individual who I have been spending the most time exchanging ideas with over the past three weeks, Dr. John Torday, who is a professor of evolutionary medicine at UCLA. He has a potentially revolutionary idea about “first principles of physiology” that connects biology into physics and back into human consciousness and morality in a groundbreaking way.
These are just some of the folks who are engaged in this conversation. As this summary suggests, it is quite an interdisciplinary group, albeit with a focus on the intersection of philosophy and psychology. I would also like to note that there are a number of current and former students of mine on this list. Many of these folks are deeply interested in the practical application of these ideas; that is, what relevance do these ideas have for human suffering, current mental health, and the role and identity of health service psychologists going forward. I hope we remain attuned to these issues and “real world” implications.
Below is the introductory note I shared with most of you in the past two days. To post to the list, either reply to this note or send to [log in to unmask]
. If you would like to be removed at any time, you can send me a note at [log in to unmask].
At this point, I welcome additional introductions, comments, criticisms or questions. Let’s let the Theory of Knowledge conversation take us where it will!
Best,
Gregg
>>>
Dear List,
The overarching goal of this list is to spark a discussion about modern theories of knowledge in general and the Tree of Knowledge/UTUA Framework in particular. A key question that contextualizes this discussion is whether the time is right for a new way to approach developing a “Theory Of Knowledge”, and whether the ToK/UTUA system helps with this and explore other systems that may also work toward this goal. (Note: For communication purposes, I will be referring to Theory Of Knowledge as TOK; whereas the Tree of Knowledge System will be denoted ‘ToK’ System; thus the former is marked by a capital O and the latter a lowercase o. Also, Theory of Knowledge is the title of my blog on Psychology Today).
Let us start by getting clear about what is meant by a TOK. Folks may want to check out this blog, which offers a brief primer on knowledge. Traditionally, theories of knowledge emphasize one of two large components. The first and most common meaning of TOK is the “epistemological” meaning. This refers to the conception that “knowledge” should be conceptualized as “justified true beliefs” (JTB). That is, beliefs that were both true and justified were considered as knowledge. For many, many years, this was considered a very strong position. But, as philosophers know, an analysis by Gettier, showed why traditional JTB frames did not always hold. Although I agree that the work by Gettier and others was successful in weakening the JTB approach, it still remains the case that we do well to consider knowledge as having these three components, that is, knowledge is made up of (1) the truth (the actual state of affairs); (2) beliefs (which correspond or represent the state of affairs) and (3) justification, which refers to the legitimacy, depth, logic, coherence, sophistication of the beliefs and the relationship between them and the truth (i.e., was the individual justified in forming the beliefs about the true state of affairs).
The second meaning or component of a (big) TOK refers to the metaphysical and ontological meaning. This refers to one’s map or beliefs or claims about the “Beingness” of the universe. It is the question of what is the “Truth” of the universe and it also must deal with the question of how we humans (or any knower in general) comes to know about the truth of the universe. The field of Big History is a good example of a big picture view of the universe that offers an ontology of the universe as existing on the dimensions of time and complexity. It is worth noting that this effort was spear headed by a historian, and not a philosopher.
So, according to this breakdown, we are tackling issues of knowledge, which lines up the traditional emphases in epistemology (i.e., how we know), and the nature of “Truth” or “Beingness,” which lines up with metaphysics and ontology (what reality is made of and how it works). Given this frame, it follows that a complete and completely true TOK would be a system of belief that is completely justified in its map of all “Beingness” (i.e., the entire universe of existence). When we put it this way, we can see that this is just a fantasy. Given the vast vastness of the universe, no human will ever have complete knowledge of it. But this tells us what the ingredients are made up of; and I do believe we can move toward better and better TOKs. This fact is captured in a saying by my dear friend and colleague Craig Shealy, which is that “We are all full of shit, but just to different degrees and different degrees of awareness”. By working together we can be “less full of shit” and more aware of what is bullshit and what we cling to out of needs and our own limitations as humans.
The famous (and rebellious) physicist David Bohm developed a map of the universe that has much overlap with this framing in his 1980 book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, where he makes a distinction between the “explicate order,” which is everyday common sense, and the “implicate order,” which is the “true state of Beingness.” He discusses first that we (science and philosophy and the academy) are completely lacking an adequate worldview, but he argues that it is necessary if we ever are to try and approach an adequate picture of the implicate order (i.e., stripping ourselves of our biases and distortions and seeing the universe for what it is to the best of our human ability). I think it is worth noting here that Buddhism, too, makes a similar distinction, when it emphasizes the difference between “conventional reality” and “emptiness.” I hope that our list will have some discussions on the nature and relationship between the “implicate” and the “explicate.”
For the purposes of this introduction, I want to bring the discussion to a head by pointing out that, in the 20th Century, philosophers largely gave up the task of developing a full scale TOK. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps the single biggest is the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Knowing about Wittgenstein is a good starting point for us. He was not a fan of large-scale TOKs; it is one thing that is shared across his different positions on philosophy. As philosophers know, Wittgenstein had two main phases, early and late. His early work focused on the problem of truth in language. He argued that we should think language as corresponding to a “picture” of reality (what was called his “picture theory of meaning”). He thought the job of philosophy was to determine if people were making sense by examining the logical and corresponding relations between statements of fact. His book, Tractatus (1921), was hugely influential. And it set the stage the Vienna circle and their “logical empiricist” approach, in which the science is about statements that are logically consistent and empirically true.
Later in his life, Wittgenstein changed his mind regarding the nature of language and truth. Instead of thinking that language either conveyed sense or nonsense as his early work suggested, he came to see language as being much more practical, context dependent, and worked very much like a tool to get things done. His later work, Philosophical Investigations (1953), details his argument that we should think about knowledge systems as “language games.” This was not meant to be flippant, but rather emphasized that language emerged in an embedded social, historical, ecological context, and people generate language as tools to operate in the world toward goals. All of these factors were akin to shared rules of a game that the participants understood when they were “speaking each other’s language.” This philosophy of language shifted the nature of knowledge to being much more context dependent and framed by the intersubjective meanings of the actors.
I have briefly reviewed Wittgenstein’s thinking here for a couple of reasons. First, I want to point out to folks on this list that Wittgenstein’s thought has been hugely influential. His rejection of even possibly developing a large-scale, workable TOK is reflective of the zeitgeist in philosophy in the 20th Century. That is, very few philosophers have been advocating for a grand vision of philosophy that seeks a complete TOK. It is seen by many now as a fool’s errand.
It is also the case that Wittgenstein straddled and indeed directly contributed to the split in our approaches to epistemology and the nature of truth; that is the split between modernism and post-modernism. Early Wittgenstein represents a hyper-modernist view of truth and the Enlightenment dream (which gets realized in the Vienna Circle and logical positivism). Later Wittgenstein rejects this and his concept of language games, along with Kuhn’s later work with the concept of paradigms, plays a significant role in justifying the move toward a more post-modern conception of truth, one that gets away from objective accuracy, and more into pragmatic, contextual, intersubjective and non-absolutist claims.
The ToK/UTUA frame inverts Wittgenstein on all three accounts. First, it embraces the challenge of developing an authentic, Big, workable TOK, one that tackles epistemology, metaphysics and ontology, and scientific BIG “E” empirical knowledge and phenomenological small “e” knowledge, all in one fell swoop. This is something he thought would have been absurd on its face.
Second, as I wrote in A New Unified Theory of Psychology, the system represents a “post-postmodern” grand meta-narrative that includes “Foundationalist” truth claims. How does it accomplish this? I argue that in 1997, I made two separate “discoveries” that turn out to correspond directly to early and late Wittgenstein. It turns out I went the other direction, however, such that my first discovery was aligned with later W, and my second with early W.
I stumbled on the Justification Hypothesis in the spring of 1997. Crucial to the JH, is the notion of justification systems, sometimes referred to as “Justification Systems Theory” (JUST). JUST sees people as using language as a tool to coordinate and legitimize actions and linguistic knowledge systems are held together by shared processes of justification. In other words, JUST corresponds directly to Wittgenstein’s concept of “language games”.
Four months after playing around with JH, a new image of reality popped out of my head. I was, in some ways, “factoring out” human language games (justification systems) and seeing was left behind. What was left behind was the picture of the universe offered by the Tree of Knowledge System. It is a picture theory of reality that corresponds closely to the implications of early W’s work. This is seen in how the Vienna Circle tried to develop a “unified” view of science (see, e.g., Carnap’s work in 1934 on the possibility of a unified picture of science). More recently, a softer version of this vision was spelled out by E.O. Wilson (1998), in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.
So, I want to welcome you to a list that, if we can allow ourselves to dream, perhaps will spark conversations that historians will come to look back on as being the seeds that characterized how the 21st Century came to see human knowledge in a different, post-Wittgenstein light. That is, let’s do what we can to have the 21st Century be a place in which Big TOK’s flourish and provide worldviews that foster human thriving.
Welcome aboard! I look forward to embarking on this journey with all of you.
______________________________
______________________________ __________ Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
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Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:
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