Hi TOK List,

  I am forwarding you an exchange I have been having with Jonathan Rowson about the need to enhance our focus on concentration and the key aspects that define the emerging metamodern sensibility. I am also happy to say he just joined our list. He is a very impressive figure. A chess grandmaster, he now focuses on social and philosophical issues and is a major player in the metamodern movement. I was super impressed with Perspectiva, a research institute in London which is advancing a mission very similar to that of the TOK Society.

See here: https://www.systems-souls-society.com/.  He also recently authored an excellent book, The Moves that Matter: A Chess Grandmaster on the Game of Life (2019). Needless to say, I am thrilled he is joining us here.

Best,

Gregg

Thanks, Jonathan.

I think your last point is exactly on point and is one that we should concentrate on. That is, I believe cultivating a “meta” via should be one of the central features of a metamodern sensibility. Indeed, this is the central theme I see running through the whole movement.

Consider, for example, my own work. I did not know about metamodernism at all until last year. However, I instantly (a) grasped what it was getting at and (b) recognized my work to be part of this sensibility. Why? Precisely because it worked in the abstract space above the traditional paradigms. The approach and perspective I take is transcontextual and interdisciplinary.

Attached is a chapter I authored in 2018, prior to being aware of metamodernism. No need to read it, but for a sense of the basic logic of what I am proposing, flip through to page 214 and take a look at the two continuums offered. The first shows normal (i.e., mainstream American) scientific psychology, which is that it enters the field at the level of the paradigm and then is anchored to a modernist approach to knowledge which is grounded in empirical research. The field of psychology also has the “critical theorists” and postmodernists who highlight the many paradigms and critique the value of anchoring knowledge to traditional, modernist empirical epistemology and who point out the influence of power and context on what knowledge gets taken as true. The debate between the two does a nice job of capturing the current state of affairs (i.e., it is awkwardly stuck between modernist and postmodernist sensibilities).

The second continuum just beneath it depicts the focus of my work. The unified framework enters at the level of the paradigms (and modernist and postmodernist sensibilities) and it “zooms out” to the meta level to look beyond the paradigms and see their interrelation. The first chapter in my book, A New Unified Theory of Psychology is titled From Racing Horses to Seeing the Elephant. The “Elephant” was the metaphor by Saxe and referred to how the unified framework could serve as a metatheoretical integration for the major paradigms in the field. My current focus is on the descriptive metaphysical aspects, specifically, the unified field/framework for defining psychology and its key concepts, which are behavior, mind, and consciousness (both animal sentience and human self-conscious reflection).

The current title for my book in progress is A Metamodern Solution to the Problem of Psychology. It is a metamodern project precisely because it moves the perspective beyond the modernist paradigms and the postmodernist critique of them and into a meta ontological/epistemological perspective that can embrace both pluralism (the postmodern view) and the concept of scientific accuracy (the modernist view).

Bottom line is that I think you are exactly correct in your sense of the key expertise that grounds the metamodern sensibility—it is a transparadigmatic “integral-to-unified” view of the world.

Best,
Gregg

From: Jonathan Rowson <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2020 1:08 PM
To: Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: New Metamodernism List <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Concentration in Metamodernity.