Interesting terms “soul” and “spirit”.

 

How would “knowledge of our spirit” fit into this view?  For example, the consensus “Representational Qualia Theory” stresses the importance of distinguishing between reality and knowledge of reality.  There is a diorama of knowledge, in our brain, that represents the world “out there”, kept in sync via data from our senses.  At the center of this diorama is our knowledge of our body.  At the top of this body, is our knowledge of our head, with eyes.

 

Also, inside this head is knowledge of our spirit, right?  It is represented as if our spirit is looking out of our knowledge of our eyes.  When we have “out of body” experiences, this knowledge of our spirit, moves from behind the eyes, out of the skull, and can float around in this diorama, all in our heads.  Most of this knowledge represents something “out there” in the real world, or it has a referent in reality. But our knowledge of our spirit doesn’t have a referent in reality.  Despite this, that doesn’t mean that this knowledge of our spirit isn’t real.  Any such knowledge is likely physically real and objectively observable (whether inside knowledge of the head, or floating around), right?

 

This is how I like to define “spirit”, residing in this virtual reality diorama of knowledge (which could also be considered a phenomenal “spirit world”.)  I also define “ghost” to be different, in that it is something that would exist, independent of the brain.  For supporters of “Substance Dualism” the possibility of ghosts hasn’t yet been falsified.  But, given that if anything, including ghosts, knows something, there must be something that is representing that knowledge.  There must be some subset of that ghost, which is its knowledge of its spirit, residing inside its knowledge of… whatever a ghost is?

 

Paul was interested in going into how Panpsychism would fit in.  It is a competing sub camp to “Substance Dualism”.  These, and all the other sub camps support the general super camp “Representational Qualia Theory”.  In other words, we must all agree we have ‘qualia’ and that we have knowledge of a ‘spirit’ composed of qualia.  The only disagreement is about the nature of this qualia.  You can see all the diverse (falsifiable, but not yet falsified) predictions about the nature of qualia being made by each of the competing sub camps forming a dendrogram of camps under the consensus “Representational Qualia Theory”.  It’ll be nice when experimentalists stop being ‘qualia blind’ (using one word for all things red) so we can finally falsify all but the one theory that can’t be falsified.

 


On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 7:51 AM paul marshall <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Thanks for your reply Gregg. I still need a bit of time to download more fully your whole system in order to give you a more informed response, but it’s great to see how you are connecting it with integral theory (IT) and critical realism (CR). Your behavioural version of the upper right quadrant looks quite a bit more thorough and nuanced than IT’s. 

 

One thing I’d be interested in going into at some stage is how panpsychism would fit, if at all, into your system. IT and the philosophy of metareality (the last phase of critical realism for those who are not familiar with it) both espouse some form of panpsychism (and also an evolutionary panentheism), which assumes a nondual ground of being that underpins and sustains the whole of relative reality. 

 

I find much resonance, and a few differences in perspective which I’d also be interested in going into at some stage, with your notions of soul and spirit in the humanistic quadrants. And I fully concur that the ultimate spiritual good is universal flourishing, which requires the unfolding of our essential natures and a politics that encourages and enables that unfolding.


My best,

Paul


On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 4:29 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi List,

  Thought I would share this note I posted on the metamodern list, following a post from TOK list member Paul Marshall…It is on why and how we should embrace the “soul/spirit” language and how I see doing that from a Unified Framework vantage point.


Best,
Gregg

 

From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 7:26 AM
To: paul marshall <[log in to unmask]>; Brent Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Michael Wernstedt <[log in to unmask]>; New Metamodernism List <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: New economic system

 

Let me strongly echo Paul on this sentiment.

 

I am a psychological scientist and was raised in the “new atheist” mold of a Dawkins version of reality. The words soul and spirit were banished from my vocabulary because I thought they had to be used only in reference to some supernatural force or they were simply corrupted by such prominent usage. However, this was, in retrospect, naïve and foolish at multiple levels. One reason, as Paul correctly suggests, is that we humans need these terms. But more importantly, these terms can be placed clearly within a scientific humanistic emergent naturalistic framework (which is how I would characterize the worldview espoused by Hanzi and is how I describe the worldview of the Unified Framework I developed).

 

Here is how I now understand these terms. First, the original meaning of soul lines up with psyche defined as the “functional form” of one’s life. Spirit, for me refers to the trans-egoic, ethical/moral striving of the soul. Second, the terms reference something fundamentally “humanistic” that reside, in some ways, outside the language game of science. Let me elaborate, and since many metamodern folks are familiar with Wilber’s quadrants, let me draw that connection here.

 

Following Wilber, I consider science to be about a generalizable, inductive theoretical system for understanding “IT”. This translates into describing and explaining the unfolding energy-information wave of real-actual-empirical (to reference Bhaskar) cause-effect events at the level of both part-whole individual entity relations and at the holistic developmental process systems view. In Wilberian terms, these are the Upper Right and Lower Right quadrants. My Unified Framework argues for a somewhat different conception of the UR and LR from Wilber, but the lineup, IMO is clear. (See the attached for how I translate Wilber’s Quadrants into the language game of the Unified Framework. A key difference is that I embrace a behavioral rather than reductive physicalist view of the Upper Right, which, as this blog notes, is a very different conception of this quadrant. And the Tree of Knowledge System provides a more comprehensive developmental systems view of the Lower Right, but the correspondence is nevertheless strong and clear).

 

What that means is that the two left quadrants of UL and LL are different than the two scientific “it” quadrants of UR and LR. Soul/Spirit/Pathos and Ethics/Morality/Mythos line up with these humanistic quadrants. This sets the stage for identifying soul/spirit with the UL, in a way that connects with the LL.).

 

Consider that each of us has a unique, idiographic, interior, first person empirical portal that is the witnessing portion of our subjective phenomenological essence. Because of the fundamental epistemological gap between first person phenomenology and third person general, there is a fundamental gap between our subjective phenomenology and the language game of science. That is, we can scientifically frame and analyze subjective phenomenology in general terms, but we cannot do so at the unique particular. There is no science of Gregg or Paul’s ideographic subjective unique real witnessing essence. Moreover, following Wilber, I think that we can define the soul in terms of one’s egoic, every day concerns. Thus, my soul is the functional form of my life, especially viewed from my perspective. It is my first person lifeworld, lifequest and involves stuff like my relationship with my wife and work and dealing with emotional problems such as what comes up in psychotherapy. The spirit is the portion of the soul that seeks to link the “I” with the trans-egoic “We” to develop a moral-ethical view of eudaimonia. The ultimate end good of universal flourishing; that which all other things are the instrumental means to move toward. It is more theological and deep philosophical than the concerns of the soul.

 

The bottom line is that, IMO, we need a metamodern politics that is grounded in a scientific humanistic view that fully embraces the call to align our souls with the ultimate spiritual good.

 

In other words, AMEN to Paul’s comment!

 

Best,

Gregg

 

 

 

From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of paul marshall
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 6:25 AM
To: Brent Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Michael Wernstedt <[log in to unmask]>; New Metamodernism List <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: New economic system

 

Thanks for the link Michael. Eric Beinhocker gives a nice overview of the thought system that brought us where we are today and the new thought system that could lead us out of the mess and towards a eudaimonic economy and eudaemonic society. Both are rooted in a vision of human nature and behaviour, the former simplistic, utilitarian and evidence-free, the latter based on evidence and our complex reality. 

 

The notion we hold of human nature is fundamental as it dictates to a considerable extent our economics, our ethics and our relations with others, our politics and vision of the good society, our relations with ourselves and with nature, and so the construction of a new evidence-based conception or story about ourselves is crucial. Especially as every person necessarily holds some conception of human nature, be it implicit or explicit, unconscious or conscious. One element of human nature that I feel is essential and is often overlooked in academic analyses - I don't know if Eric Beinhocker includes it in his overall work - is our spiritual core. This does not have to be just some otherworldly, transcendent, rarefied experience but can also be something more everyday and based on both evidence and philosophical reflection. Recent psychotherapy provides the former and the philosophy of metaReality the latter. They both provide a vision of our essential nature that possesses qualities that are always already there. Quite radically, they both claim that these essential qualities - including love, compassion, creativity, connectedness, spontaneous right action - do not need to be cultivated but rather be provided space so that they can freely emerge and manifest. This is done by releasing or shedding constraints in all dimensions / planes / quadrants / fields of human being: psychological, emotional, economic, political, social, cultural etc. No easy task of course, and something that requires commitment to a life practice on the personal level and constant political and social action on the collective level.

 

I know a spiritual focus can put many people off given the past history of religion and the current state of much spirituality, which is why it is often ignored (or taboo) in academia - and is perhaps why it seems to be tactically played down somewhat in metamodernism (while it was/is perhaps overplayed - the transcendent, rarefied part - in integral theory). But a focus on a secular, immanent, everyday, non-rarefied spirituality as a core aspect of human nature can act a vital motivating force in progressive politics (and one's own inner work). It has in the past, e.g. with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and there are many progressive figures today, Cornel West for example, whose politics is rooted in a spiritual vision. And many on this list as well, I believe.

 

My best,

Paul

 

 

 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 1:15 AM Brent Cooper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Really good Michael, if not just for the simple framing; the 1970s bifurcation of neoclassical economics into progressive and conservative neoliberalism, both of which have screwed us. It just gets better and better too, showing the nested system which led us here, and what the alternative nested system looks like in basic terms. Seems very metamodern, and consistent with everything I think about it, not just Hanzi. 

 

Regards, 

 

Brent

 

 

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020 at 4:53 AM Michael Wernstedt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I see that I have for some reason misspelled his name. I of course mean: Eric Beinhocker. Here is another interesting, and slightly shorter talk with him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-RdnoxSZiM&feature=emb_logo

 

Den ons 4 mars 2020 kl 13:17 skrev Michael Wernstedt <[log in to unmask]>:

Hi everyone!

 

Since I co-founded and was party leader for the Swedish Metamodern political party the Initiative, I've spend a great deal of time think about how we get a new economic system in place and what it would look like. This best video I have seen on this so far is this video by Eric Beinhart at Oxford:

 

His ideas goes very much in line with what Daniel and Emil has said, that we need to start with a new philosophy before we can role out a new system. I am very excited about this and would like to contribute to building this new system. It seems that the new philosophy is already largely here. Hence it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what you think the next steps are to build this new system. Also, it would be very interesting to get in touch with Eric Beinhart. Does anybody know him?

 

Warmly

Michael

 

--

Michael Wernstedt

Mission - Help Humanity Thrive in Harmony with a Thriving Earth.

 


 

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Vision - Thriving Humanity in Harmony with a Thriving Earth.

 

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