Sounds great Brandon. Have you got all meetings recorded? I’d love to watch and see the parallels you make between Gregg’s Utok and Integral. Warmly, Adriana Sent from my iPhone > On 1 Oct 2021, at 11:09, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > Hi Brandon, > > Many thanks for sharing this. I happened to get a chance to listen to it while the family watched Jeopardy 😊. > > It was good to hear and a good lesson in understanding the need to frame what the Tree of Knowledge System is up front. The Tree of Knowledge is a system for representing scientific knowledge about the unfolding wave of behavior from the Big Beginning thru the present. Another way of framing it is to consider it a new map of Big History that solves the problem of psychology. It is crucial for folks who are being introduced to the ToK System to be aware that the terms on the diagram are defined by the vision logic of the diagram and are not necessarily equivalent to everyday usage. The most obvious term that is frequently misinterpreted is “Mind”. People think by mind I mean the person’s subjective experience of being. However, that is not what Mind means (that referent is held by the iQuad Coin). Rather as you rightfully noted, Mind can be better thought of as the “zoosphere,” or the animal-mental plane of existence that emerges at the Cambrian explosion. If people think of mind as referring to their personal subjective conscious experience, much confusion will ensue. People also are often confused by what is meant by Culture on the ToK diagram. It is crucial to help differentiate the notion that culture can mean different things. In the ToK language system, capital C culture refers to the systems of justification that are shared by a collective group of persons. There are other valid definitions, such as shared behavioral practices, but this is just little “c” culture, and can be seen in other animals like chimps. In addition, there is “high culture” in modern society, such as the arts. If people have different referent points for the words, they will not be able to follow the map, so it is key to keep that in mind. > > Another point of confusion I heard pertained to the notion that science is at the “omega point”. The standard ToK depiction frames Science as part of Culture. That is, science consists of a set of justification systems (i.e., propositional networks that legitimize claims of is and ought) that function to map patterns of behavior across various dimensions and levels of complexification. It could be moved to the side of the Culture plane if that would be helpful. Thus, it is not claiming science as the omega point, because it is not explicitly mapping the 5th joint point. However, if we shift the lens and think of the ToK as mapping reality and then ask what is going to emerge out of the fourth dimension to generate another dimension, then that is a different meaning of the circle in the center. The first and primary lens of the ToK System is mapping scientific ontology in a coherent way. Importantly, though, the ontology of the ToK does point to a key aspect of the emergence of a new plane of existence being digital because each new dimension is a function of novel information processing and communication networks. > > A third key point that must be made if the ToK is to be appreciated for what it is doing is to connect it to the problem of scientific psychology. Scientific psychology has failed to frame its ontology properly because we have been missing the proper joint points between Life and Mind and Mind and Culture. The Tree of Knowledge System argues strongly that many big picture systems lack this. This includes Wilber’s system. > > Another point when generating a comparison with Wilber’s system is to note that the ToK System and Integral do have different ontologies. The later is a spiritual ontology, and that is part of what grounds the idea that the quadrants go all the way down. The ToK System is a natural science ontology. That means it “plays the game” with concepts like the four fundamental forces of nature, and particles like electrons. The idea that electrons have an “interior” at the individual or collective level is justified by Wilber’s spiritual ontology. I would argue that is not a scientific claim, but a spiritual metaphysical claim. Here is a good argument from Andre Marquis that Wilber might be making a category error, moving from his interior phenomenological insights to objective claims in a problematic way. > > So, I enjoyed the discussion. The main point would be I would recommend the ToK System be framed as a system for organizing our objective behavioral natural science knowledge about the world. It depicts the whole of the system and as such, in its entirety it functions as a Lower Right epistemological system. In contrast, the Periodic Table of Behavior divides the world up into specific objects that behave at specific behavioral frequencies, and so it is a good map of the Upper Right. Here is a blend of the Quadrants and frames from UTOK: > > <image001.png> > > Note that the iQuad Coin represents the unique particular subject seeing the world through their epistemological portal. The other diagram in that quadrant is a map of subjective conscious experience from a scientific perspective, like the one that John and I talked about in Untangling the World Knot. This is because it is crucial to differentiate the science of consciousness from conscious experience its self as experienced by a unique particular sentient being. > > Thanks much for sharing. Was helpful for me to listen to. One of my major weaknesses is “marketing,” meaning I do not often consider how it will look or be experienced by others. Rather, I just focused on getting it right/coherent. As such, many very understandable commonsense readings of the depiction will be very understandably off key. > > Finally, I did notice it was a slightly older version of the Tree of Knowledge System, so attached are the newest most up to date versions. > > Best, > Gregg > > > > > > From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Brandon Norgaard > Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2021 7:27 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: TOK SES book club comparing Wilber's and Henriques' systems > > CAUTION: This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. > In our last Sex, Ecology, Spirituality book club, I presented on the relation between the Integral quadrants and Gregg’s TOK. Everyone had some thought-provoking comments through the entire meeting. My presentation starts at 42:40: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__youtu.be_S8GBbyF0ofA&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=X4qCZs3RZ1Pf_JasIFkXUlU_irxZNaTODORVmUO7yko&s=5jrY5PbwFpPzYO2oMfv0bGxoENhbgnupjEGrFj7MGwI&e= > > I’m interested to get feedback on this, if anyone has thoughts. > > Thanks, > Brandon Norgaard > Founder, The Enlightened Worldview Project > > ############################ > To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 > > ############################ > To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1 > <ToK Classic.pptx> ############################ To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1