HI List,
Below is a post I just made to “metamodern” list that I am on. I share it here as it provides an emerging way I am articulating the system as a whole. I am only sharing my post as I don’t have permission to share others. But I am responding
to Paul Marshall, an integrative thinker whose book I mention in my reply.
Best,
Gregg
>>>
Hi Paul,
Many thanks for sharing these reflections. Thanks also for sharing the link to you book,
A Complex Realist Integral perspective. I look forward to reading it over.
Let me offer this brief synopsis of my work. First, I would like to start by suggesting that there are three broad domains of “core concern” that cannot be effectively reduced to each other. That is, they play
by different rules of “justification” (or they require different “language games”). The first is the concern of science, the second is the concern of the soul/spirit, and the third is the concern of ethics and morality.
Science concerns itself with building testable, reliable/valid models of reality that are confirmed via external criteria (i.e., empirical data). It operates largely off the correspondence theory of truth (and
thus is an ‘external’ theory of knowledge). It is limited in dealing with both foundational ethical/moral concerns and the concerns of the unique, idiographic soul/spirit.
To use a Wilberian epistemological scheme, the soul/spirit refers to the interior individual perspective on the world. This is our unique phenomenological perspectives on the world which are, epistemologically,
not directly accessible to the methods and language of science. For example, with its exterior, generalizable third person perspective, science cannot say for certain that I am not a zombie. It can argue from inference that I am not, but it cannot confirm
it as there is an epistemological gap between exterior (publicly observable behavior) and interior (first person phenomenology). This is one of the key features of the hard problem of consciousness (here is
a blog I did on getting our language right on this concept). On the other hand, ala Descartes, I am more certain of not being a zombie than I am of anything else. My point here is that the unique idiographic subjective interior
experience of being is a foundationally different epistemological position and has foundationally different concerns than the language game of science (i.e., my unique lifeworld/lifequest).
Finally, there is ethics/morality, which is an intersubjective project whereby “we” decide what is collectively good, ethical, moral and the converse. I consider these three core concerns to be “justification
systems” that play different rules. The latter two are “humanistic” whereas the first is “scientific”. These three domains (the “it”, the “I” and the “we”) have long been identified by various thinkers and have different placeholders in our language, such
as objective, subjective and intersubjective.
What is unique about my position is that I offer a new way to conceive of science writ large and the science of psychology in particular. And this new way to think about science in general and psychology in particular
is a way that is commensurate with the humanistic language systems of spirit and morality.
The great tragedy of modernity is that it created a scientific language system that was simultaneously incomplete and overarching in a reductive, mechanistic, physicalist way. We saw in the 20th Century
the great academic war between the two cultures. To address the meaning crisis in the 21st Century, we must build bridges and create a more holistic, synthetic scientific humanistic philosophy (or a coherent metapsychology).
The primary advance in my approach is found in big picture model of science called the Tree of Knowledge System. The ToK System offers a new view of science as an onto-epistemology justification system that maps
behaviors in nature (i.e. the ontic reality) across different levels and dimensions of complexity. One of the key insights of the ToK is that behavioral complexity (and patterns of behavioral frequencies) operate on both levels and dimensions.
To see what I mean, see this ppt on the Periodic Table of Behavior. In addition, the ToK posits that science operates on an epistemological and methodological behaviorism (meaning that changes and patterns in objects are
observed and measured in the service of testing the models). This means that the ToK identifies behavior (rather than matter or physical) as the key concept in science. Since you are familiar with Wilber, this would be his “exterior” quadrants. The UR is
the individual entity level, whereas LR is a developmental behavioral systems view.
Anyway, the ToK offers a new view of science as an unfolding wave of behavior on the dimensions of time and complexity. Such a view is consistent with Big History, but,
as this paper shows, it is also the case that the ToK can be rightfully considered “a new map of Big History”. That is the outline of the large scale view. There is much more to be said, but I will end it here. I will say
that in my opinion as a practicing psychologist who does “soul work” (to use Zak’s frame), the ToK System offers a large scale science view that is fully commensurate with humanistic concerns of the spirit and morality.
Best,
Gregg
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Graduate Psychology
216 Johnston Hall
MSC 7401
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, VA 22807
(540) 568-7857 (phone)
(540) 568-4747 (fax)
Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge