Hi Nik,
Many thanks for this. Let’s schedule either a call or a UTOKing with Gregg at some point.
I will punt on your first paragraph, as we would need some dialogue there.
Re the second paragraph, one point may be helpful, is that when I am using “science” I am referring to “modern empirical natural science” which is clarified here. It emerged in a way that can perhaps most simply framed as via the insights
of some greats, say from Galileo to Newton to Darwin to Einstein. It has a couple of core features, one of which is third person objectivist epistemology, which is definitely grounded in an intersubjective socially constructed field of agreement. However,
that does not mean it is “inherently value-laden and as particular as any "subjective self." To me, that is deeply misleading and would need to be pulled apart and dissected. The Periodic Table of the Elements and the atomic theory of matter are not subjective,
value laden truth claims in the same way that some who loves the Kardashians proclaims they are the best people ever. Indeed, I would argue, ala Bhaskar, that science gives a transcendence realism. And I would further argue from a critical realist ontological
perspective, that would stretch from Bhaskar to the Big Historian Dave Christian to folks like Sean Carroll and E O Wilson, can ontologically see the ontic universe, via scientific epistemology, as being mapped by quantum mechanics, general relativity, big
bang, cell theory, genetics, and natural selection in such a way that enables us, for the first time in history with deep transcendent epistemological justification, a view of cosmic evolution on the dimensions of time and complexification.
Bottom line, the language of physics, which grounds modern empirical natural science, IS different than the language of subjectivity
One final comment. There is way that the language of subjectivity is more objective than the language of physics. I am experiencing the world now. Indeed, even deeper…Am Is. Am is pertains to an epistemic ontic relation that is the ground
of fact in itself. Unlike science, it is undeniable and indisputable. “Am is” is the better way to find the foundational truth claim than Descartes’ claim, I think therefore I am. So, we need to sort out what we are saying.
Again, happy to zoom at some point to see if we can sort this out.
Best,
Gregg
From: theory of knowledge society discussion <[log in to unmask]>
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Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2022 12:36 PM
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Subject: Re: TOK: Thoughts/References on the Psyche
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So I can understand (mostly, enough, I think) how you get there via UTOK, so outside of that I don't know of how much importance this is to you. There are really 2 main points that stand out for me here. The 1st one is that you put the
pleasure-pain mental behavior contingency (so to speak) at the base of Mind 2, which as a primitive Kohlbergian moral structure makes perfect sense on a level that Kohlberg and indeed Piaget missed (missing the animal-mental plane). However, I feel this misrepresents
Mind 2 as the seat of phenomenological experience (i.e., awareness), even pre-conceptual awareness, which for many of our ontologies has a direct connection and is often integral to the spiritual. I have some ideas on how this can be reconciled within the
UTOK framework (basically pre-trans development, "become again as a child to enter the kingdom of heaven," emergent feedback loops operating on lower orders of nature, that kind of thing) but I first want to make sure that my observation is correct according
to your thinking; that you place a spiritual foundation as being fundamentally more complex/evolved ontologically than (Pure) awareness.
Second, as you know I have always appreciated the iQuad coin even with limited understandings of/efforts to understand the mathematics involved in iQuadratics. Although in the graphic you displayed above it essentially shows subjectivity
versus objectivity as a distinction between 1st and 3rd person, (and honestly comes off a bit biased in that you don't say objective, you say "The language of science") but then you make other distinctions that don't seem to be nearly as exclusive (e.g., the
subjective self still has a public world that is not in the realm of naturalistic science and is separate from observation). I would argue that 1st-person has objective qualities to it even outside of phenomenology, and it could more easily be argued that
3rd person absolutely involves subjective qualities. For example, you titled the left side as being "The language of science," but that's not true, that's the language of your science, at least naturalistic science, and as you've said before all science and
even UTOK itself is JUST (pun intended) another justification system, which is inherently value-laden and as particular as any "subjective self." I guess I don't fully see where you're drawing the line. Personally I don't think a line need be drawn, as in
nonduality we don't have this problem to begin with unless as a developmental precursor to wisdom-attainment. The nondual coin is many on one side and none on the other, yet it is 1 unified coin, heads or tails its still the same exact coin, both sides are
always there, and they are never separate unless one hasn't learned to flip it over.
Hopefully this is helpful in seeing where some may get stuck or disagree with UTOK. I can't be the only one lol.
Regards,
Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.
On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 6:20 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi TOK Folks,
I welcome any thoughts or references people have regarding the framing of the “psyche.”
Let me share some recent developments in my thinking. Over the last year, I have been developing a language system that allows me to entangle and weave this concept into UTOK in a way that is really starting to “hum”. A few months ago, I did this blog, which is, I think the first blog I did that explicitly starts to frame the human psyche from the UTOK language game.
I will say that since this blog, I added some details not included here. So, currently in my working this out, there is the “Vital layer” which is the core animal-body connection. That is listed here as “the body,” and it corresponds, in our phylogenetic history, to the emergence of animals in the Cambrian explosion and the way the nervous system functions to move the body as a whole and is guided by the “base of sentience,” which is a sensory-motor loop that is organized by pleasure and pain. The experience of pleasure and pain are the base of Mind2 in the Map of Mind. More recently, I have been adding another layer, consistent with this blog on the evolution of consciousness, which can be corresponded to our vertebrate-into-mammalian lineage. This is the inner mind’s eye that connects to working memory and includes the basic witness function. To use John V’s framing, this inner minds eye has an adverbial framing function that affords the experience of adjectival qualia. If we decide to stay with this as one layer, we can still consider this the base of the psyche that has animal body / mammal perceptual experiential aspects.
Then we move to the primate heart. This is the self-other matrix, grounded in attachment, but emerges as an implicit intersubjective field, the process dimensions mapped by the Influence Matrix. As Tomasello shows, we are unique great apes in this way, forming shared intentional-attentional we spaces, and this is prior to language.
Then we get to the head, which I call “mind” in the colloquial sense in the blog above, but I prefer head, as this ontological domain is not the right referent for mind in the UTOK language system. Anyway, the head consists of two streams. First, there is the projected extension of perceptual reasoning across long periods of time. Second, there is the ego narrator that gets socialized on the Person-Culture plane of existence. Folks that do intelligence testing will recognize these two streams as Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Reasoning
Last, there is the trans-justificatory, trans-egoic, transcendent spiritual aspect.
Note, although it is a different map-legend of the terrain, this picture merged well with Zak Stein’s work on his metapsychology and the three major domains of the psyche (skill development, ensoulment, transcendence) as was seen in the series he did with John and me.
Finally, what has been clicking for me, is a bridging function between the iQuad Coin and what it does for/how it frames the psyche, and the Tree of Knowledge System, which is a natural science view of the world. And so, I am now starting to weave together the way the ToK System maps animal into human mental behavior from a third person scientific empirical view and the iQuad Coin frames the idiographic architecture of the first person empirical perspective of the unique individual situated in the real. So, via this depiction, we can see the ToK System mapping mental behavior from the scientific language game, and the iQuad coin mapping the specific individual situated in their particular epistemic reality. That is, mental behavior in general and the human psyche in particular can now be placed in proper relation.
Seems like another step on effectively solving the problem of psychology. Would love to know what others think and welcome references to the psyche that others think might be valuable.
Warm regards to all,Gregg
___________________________________________
Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (2022)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 the Unified Theory Of Knowledge homepage at:
https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/
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