How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

This morning I was following links to the current spat about the First Biennial Integral Theory Conference…

(The Opposition: “This conference is just going to be another apotheosis of Ken Wilber, the faux _______” [fill in the blank, this is a Loevenger Sentence Completion Test.]

Conference Organizers: “And so's your mother!”)

…when I ran across this essay, which questions just how post-metaphysical “Integral Post Metaphysical Spirituality” really is.

Back in March when this pod started up I had that same question and Balder put it to rest more or less with the answer that Post Metaphysical meant just a little bit metaphysical.  Who was I to question that? What do I know from metaphysics? My morning meditation starts with a mantra to forget everything I ever learned about them.  But…my instincts said there is no such thing as being a “little bit” metaphysical. I had put in my tithing envelope when they passed the plate at Mulitplex and I had read the book and it seemed to me that it was just as metaphysical as anything that Immanuel Kant or G.W.F. Hegel had written.  But what do I know? I don't speak that language very well.

Still,  I read this essay and it seems to confirm my hunch. So I link it here and wonder what y'all think. If you don't think anything at all it's ok.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Nickeson,

I think Riisager, the author of that essay, makes a number of important arguments.  I agree that there are a number of problematic or potentially problematic elements of Integral Postmetaphysics, as currently formulated by Wilber.  At the least, I think there are parts of Wilber's model that need to be clarified, as this author also suggests.

In my posts on this pod, while I have taken aspects of Wilber's proposal as a starting point, I have intentionally tried to take an open, exploratory approach, in part because of this reason.

I do not recall the thread on which we first discussed these issues, but I believe I said that while Wilber speaks of “minimalist metaphysics,” I thought it made more sense to think of post-metaphysical spirituality as an approach in which the use of metaphysical principles is self-conscious and provisional.

I recognize that you may regard this as a “weak God” approach – but I'm not sure if the alternative you've suggested (a nihilist metaphysics which attempts to deny metaphysics) is any better!

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi Balder, At the risk of asking a dumb question (I know, I know, “There are no such things as dumb questions,” but I think there are), I ask you to clarify how Wilber et al use the word “metaphysical” as in “post-metaphysical.” As you probably know, the philosophy departments of some universities (including MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and Notre Dame) offer (or have offered) courses in metaphysics, and what they mean by “metaphysics” is often explained via a quote from Wilfrid Sellars as the study of “how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term.” (As I'm sure you know, it is Sellars who coined the term “Myth of the Given.”)

For example, here is a bit of copy about a course in metaphysics taught by Barbara Montero at The City University of New York Graduate Center:

The aim of this course is to introduce you to some important questions in contemporary metaphysics, topics that are not only interesting in and of themselves but are also important for understanding a wide rage of philosophical issues.

The course will be structured around the following four topics. 1) Existence: What is it for something to exist? Are there things that do not exist? When does a theory imply the existence of something? 2) Identity and Persistence: How are we to understand the relation of identity? Does an object remain the same object despite gradual changes? What about a person? 3) Reduction: How are we to understand the relation between the buzzing atoms that make up a desk, for example, and the solid desk? Does physics in some way tell us what there really is? And 4) Realism: In what sense, if any, does the world exist independently of our beliefs about it?

Text: Kim and Sosa (eds), Metaphysics: An Anthology, Blackwell 2002

By “post-metaphysical” Wilber doesn't mean to suggest that he is somehow “beyond” such questions, does he?

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi, Jim,

There may be dumb questions, but I don't think that one is.  It might be a leading question, or a rhetorical one – I expect you actually know the answer already – but it ain't a dumb one!

As I think we've discussed elsewhere, Wilber's definition of “metaphysics” is somewhat unconventional.  Wilber describes metaphysics as a branch of philosophy dealing with two essential questions:  what is being or reality (ontology), and how do we know it (epistemology)?  More to the point, however, I think Wilber sees a metaphysical approach as one which subscribes in some sense to the myth of the given:  the belief that reality has an independent and inherent nature, and that we can come to know it as it is in itself.

Thus, a post-metaphysical approach, in Wilber's use of the term, refers to an approach which recognizes that we are dealing with emergent, enactive perspectives when we explore and inquire into our lifeworlds, rather than uncovering self-existent, independent ontological structures or realities.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi Balder,

Thanks, and I didn't and don't intend my questions about this to be rhetorical or leading. I'm really interested in understanding what Wilber does and does not mean by “metaphysical.”

It seems to me that what he is doing with the term is this: He's taking the word “metaphysical” and is using it in an idiosyncratic way that few if any contemporary philosophers would recognize, and he is using it to create a quasi-straw man whereby “a metaphysical approach” is one that is caught in the myth of the given. There are plenty of differences about metaphysical issues among contemporary philosophers who are not caught in the myth of the given. But it seems to me that Wilber is dumbing things down so that it seems as if one must either be “post-metaphysical” (like him) or so freaking stupid that one is caught in the myth of the given, in which case one is, as Wilber uses the term, “metaphysical.”

I have to think more on this so maybe I'll write more later.

All best,

Jim

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi Balder,

My understanding is that Sellars used the term “myth of the given” to refer to “the claim…that we can know things about our perceptual experiences independently of and in some important sense prior to the conceptual apparatus which we use to perceive objects” (from the Wikipedia entry fof Sellars). I am not aware of Sellars also using the term to refer to “the belief that reality has an independent and inherent nature,” and it is unclear to me what you mean by “independent” in this context. You and I have talked before about realism about a mind-independent world. I would say that one can be a realist about a mind-independent world without subscribing to the myth of the given, just as one can be an anti-realist about a mind-independent world (e.g., some kind of Idealist) without subscribing to the myth.

Based on your explanation of what Wilber means by a post-metaphysical approach, the approach to which he refers is no different than the approach that many contemporary philosophers simply refer to as metaphysical.

My concern is that Wilber might be trying to spin things so that anyone who doesn't subscribe to “integral panentheism” (which is a metaphysical position as the term “metaphysical” is used in contemporary philosophy) is somehow automatically wrong, not integral, merely “metaphysical” rather than “post-metaphysical,” and of course at a lower stage of consciousness. I am not commenting about you here, I'm commenting about Wilber and what I see as his tendency to place his views above other views without discussion or debate, by simply declaring that his views are “integral,” “second-tier,” “third-tier,” etc.

All best,

Jim

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Jim,

Yes, I said that a bit too strongly (and sloppily):  I do not mean to imply that one must be an idealist to be post-metaphysical.  I just meant to say that, from this perspective, you necessarily engage in “metaphysics” if you make assertions about “reality” as it is in itself, independent of all observers and perspectives.

Regarding where Wilber is coming from, I believe Wilber is following Habermas, to a degree at least, in his adoption of the term, post-metaphysical.

Here is how Ali Rizvi describes Habermas' notion of “post-metaphysics”:

The fundamental insight of a postmetaphysical approach is that we start from “within.” There is no way to circumvent our own way of life or form of life. We start from within our own position or situation. We are always already within our language and our own life form so there is no way to understand nature or reality from “without.” We can only understand them from within. The postmetaphysical approach starts with rejecting objectivism of the kind which purports to grasp objects from “nowhere” or “without.” In this sense “objectivism” is equal to metaphysics. This postmetaphysical stance is not just a methodological position but a certain conception of our situation in the world which is essentially based on a certain reading of the history of Western Philosophy. This postmetaphysical approach essentially rests on Kant's transcendentalism which differentiates between “transcendental” and “empirical” and proclaims that the conditions of the possibility of experience cannot be given in experience. The upshot of such a transcendental approach is the rejection of the kind of metaphysical objectivism referred to above. Thus, Habermas' commitment to a postmetaphysical approach implies his commitment to an essentially Kantian transcendentalism. However, Habermas takes his commitment to transcendentalism in a methodological sense since he wants to avoid Kantian idealism while adopting the postmetaphysical stance flowing from it. In this sense Habermas starts from the vantage point of Kantian transcendentalism sans his idealism in order to reconcile Kant and Darwin.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi Balder. Thank you for posting the passage from Rizvi on how Habermas uses the term “post-metaphysical,” and for clarifying a distinction between uses of the terms “metaphysics” and “post-metaphysics.”

I'm going to comment on Riisagen's essay and I'll share more of my thoughts there. - Jim

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Balder,

I did not post the above link to reopen an old discussion but to see what others on the pod thought about the specifics of Riisager’s analysis. I was running short of time and apologize for not contextualizing more of my perspective when I posted.  In relation to the discussion here of the W/C Lattice I was interested in what Riisager wrote of Wilber’s addressing system, plus I had recently read an interview with Dr. Stanley Fish in which he said:

“In the past few years I've been elaborating an argument that has been consistently misunderstood. Essentially it makes three points: (1) if by theory you mean the attaining of a perspective unattached to any local or partisan concerns, but providing a vantage point from which local and partisan concerns can be clarified and ordered, the theory quest will always fail because no such perspective is or could be available; (2) the unavailability of that supra-contextual is in no way disabling because in its absence you will not be adrift and groundless; rather you will be grounded in and by the same everyday practices—complete with authoritative exemplars, understood goals, canons of evidence, shared histories—that gave you a habitation before you began your fruitless quest for a theory; and (3) nothing follows from (1) and (2). Knowing that resources of everyday life are all you have and knowing too that such resources are historical and therefore revisable will neither help you to identify them nor teach you to rely on them with a certain skeptical reserve; the lesson of (1) and (2) goes nowhere; if grand theories provide no guidance (because they are so general as to be empty), the realization that grand theorists provide no guidance doesn't provide any guidance either. End of story, end of theory as an interesting topic.”

In the light of these two “everyday resources” it appears to me, (though it is quite possible I missed something) that there is an exceptionally grand myth of the given embedded in the W/C Lattice that has not been addressed either self-consciously or provisionally.

In addition, I have to take a little exception to how you characterize my position as a nihilist metaphysics that would deny metaphysics. As Dawkins said of God— “If God doesn’t exist what are all those churches doing out there?”—I would have to say much the same of metaphysics: “…what are all those text books doing out there?” If it were not for metaphysics all philosophers would have to be called either political strategists or art critics. My only problems is that I am not sure if metaphysics has anything to offer us that we really need to have  (outside of their entertainment value which in itself is a legitimate raison d’etre).

The other day I posted a little something elsewhere around this venue that mentioned redemption (in the manner defined by Richard Rorty) as the “life shaping” Truth that has been offered to date by philosophy and religion and scientism and now—possibly under the integrated ruberic of these previous three—might be being offered by Integral Postmetaphysics. Is Integral Post Metaphysical Spirituality being put to the service of redemption? Is this a given. And if so, is there a need for redemption that can be demonstrated without resorting to an equally unaddressable (post) metaphysic?

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi, Nickeson,

I'm also interested in others' reactions to Riisager's essay and hope we can continue to discuss it – particularly in relation to a number of the issues we've been exploring in this pod.

I accept your reframing of my characterization of your position.  To be honest, I also took exception to how you characterized my position with regard to the meaning of post-metaphysics – which seemed over-simplified and deliberately worded to make it appear absurd.

Concerning the quote from Dr. Stanley Fish, is his definition of “theory” legitimate?  Does theorization really require us to assume an impossible supra-contextual position?  What is he doing when he assumes a vantage point from which he can assess the nature of all theorizing? 

Concerning whether Integral Post-metaphysical Spirituality is in the business of redemption – as a particular spiritual orientation or vehicle, yes, I think it's fair to say that it is.  Though it might choose other “ends” than redemption, such as transformation or the cultivation and realization of particular desired qualities, such as compassion or freedom or well-being.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi Nickeson.

I like your summary of the spat. ;-)

I read Riisagen's piece back whenever it was posted and was glad to see my name among his references, and on a quick reading I found myself in general agreement with what he says. On a closer reading I think he may misread Wilber in some instances, but I know that I am far from alone in observing that, as one Wilber critic once noted, Wilber moves the goal posts around a lot.

My gut level response to just about anything I read by Wilber is: Please come down a few rungs on the abstraction ladder and get specific and give your reader some concrete examples to illustrate what you are talking about. (On a spoken audio set called Kosmic Consciousness on which Wilber is interviewed by the president of Sounds True Audio, Tami Simon asks Wilber how he could distinguish between a diviner – someone doing a tarot or astrological or I Ching reading – who is operating at a “prerational” level and one who is operating at a “transrational” level. It's a simple question that Simon came up with in direct response to something that Wilber was saying. But she had to repeat the question three times over about a twenty minute period before Wilber finally responded.)

Riisagen's comments on emptiness make me think that he would do well to read up on how emptiness is understood by Tibetan Buddhists in the Middle Way School. Riisagen refers to phenomenal reality arising from an empty ground, and he suggests that someone might “see” emptiness because they have been instructed to see emptiness, and I do not know whose notion of emptiness he has in mind. Nagarjuna's emptiness – the emptiness of the Middle Way School – is not something from which phenomenal reality may be said to arise, and the realization of emptiness is attained not through emptying the mind and sitting in a blissful state but through a process of analytical reasoning which is by definition open to challenge. But of course Riisagen is commenting on Wilber's terminology, and the way Wilber mixes up terms like “Spirit” and “Emptiness” (which for some inexplicable reason he capitalizes) is confusing.

Riisagen writes, “Wilber seems to have too great confidence in the cognitive value and pureness of mystical experiences.”

I have long felt the same way, but my guess is that if someone were to confront Wilber with this point blank he would deny that he has such confidence, or he might say, “You're talking about Wilber 4.5.” John Gotti was called the Teflon Don because it was difficult to make criminal charges stick to him, and I have long thought of Wilber as the Teflon Pandit (as you probably know, he has often said, “I'm a pandit not a guru”) because it is difficult to make anything he says stick to him that he doesn't want to own.

Riisagen says, “As I see it, Wilber's notion of Spirit is a very comprehensive metaphysical postulate.”

This may depend on how we use the term “metaphysical.” Leaving that aside, I think that Wilber could serve his audience by distinguishing between those sentences in his writing and speech that he intends to be propositional and those he intends otherwise.

My eyes glaze over when I read Riisagen quoting Wilber when Wilber says things such as, “All real objects are first and foremost perspectives. NOT 'are seen from perspectives,' but 'ARE perspectives.” The Gummi Bear I just put in my mouth is a “real object” and Wilber is saying it has a perspective?

Riisagen writes:

According to Immanuel Kant, for example, metaphysics consists in the unwarranted speculation in matters that lie outside the scope of experience (e.g. “Is the soul immortal or not?”) and therefore, metaphysics cannot be science; it is the work of untamed Reason. However, in Wilber's eyes it is possible to talk about and work with spiritual realities even though we are not justified in doing metaphysics: integral post-metaphysics is the answer.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Jim, I'm sure you'd agree with this (and it's a tangent in relation to this thread), but I just wanted to say that I don't think it is necessarily a shortcoming if an individual allows his or her views to undergo continual modification.  The convention of labeling phases of Wilber's work (Wilber 1, Wilber 2, etc) is a little silly, but the fact that there are distinct phases doesn't bother me at all.  It says to me that he is assimilating criticism and striving for a better, more comprehensive understanding.  What can be annoying, however, is the way the phases are sometimes used –  that they may get used defensively or in a slippery way, to apparently deflect all criticism in discussion or debate.  I expect that that's what you're objecting to, rather than to the fact that the theory itself has gone through a number of different phases or formulations.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Balder: What can be annoying, however, is the way the phases are sometimes used –  that they may get used defensively or in a slippery way, to apparently deflect all criticism in discussion or debate.  I expect that that's what you're objecting to, rather than to the fact that the theory itself has gone through a number of different phases or formulations.

That's exactly what I object to.

If I may also go off on a tangent, I think that Wilber has created a system that comes dangerously close to being a self-sealing system. I don't think his attraction (past and/or present) to  charismatic cult figures Franklin Jones (AKA Da, etc.) and Andrew Cohen is an anomaly. In Jones' community, dissent was typically dealt with by turning the tables on dissenters and suggesting that they must be “contracted” or are caught up in “resistance” to “the conscious process.” Jones and his disciples rationalized much of his behavior by characterizing it as “crazy wisdom.” (Circa 1974 Da made this classic “It's never me, it's you!” type statement: “What I do is not the way I am, but the way I teach. What I speak is not a reflection of me, but of you. People do well to be offended or even outraged by me. This is my purpose. But their reaction must turn on themselves, for I have not shown them myself by all of this. All that I do and speak only reveals men to themselves.”) Some of Cohen's disciples have suggested that former disciples turned critics (including former editors of What Is Enlightenment magazine) were caught up in resistance and failed to recognize that Cohen sometimes acted in a manner akin to Marpa. (Archived discussions where this is addressed can be found via a blog titled “What Enlightenment???” Several former WIE editors contributed to the discussions.)

Wilber has implied (at his blog and in Ken Wilber in Dialogue) that when he behaves in a manner that some might consider less than conducive to constructive dialogue, he is behaving in the manner of a sword-wielding bodhisattva. One I-I member once suggested that Wilber's sometimes harsh responses to critics were akin to “Zen slaps.”

Self-sealing ideological systems often deal with criticism by using the terms of the system to criticize critics of the system. Thus, critics of Marxism are caught in “false consciousness,” critics of Freud are caught in some form of Freudian-defined psychopathology, and critics of Wilber are “first-tier” or “green” or “MGM,” etc. (Regarding the criticisms directed at his ideas in the aforementioned book Ken Wilber in Dialogue, Wilber wrote on his Shambhala site that according to Don Beck, “This book is largely a series of typical green-meme attacks on second-tier.”)

Wilber once wrote (also at his Shambhala site):

Green hates anything second tier. (But all first-tier memes dislike all other memes, so this is nothing new with green). Yellow, for example, honors and embraces nested hierarchies, ranked values, universal flow systems, and strong individualism. Green looks at all of those terms–universals, ranking, hierarchies, individualism–and screams “oppression! domination! marginalization! elitism! arrogance!” and so on.

In fact, there is a simple rule about this: whenever green looks at yellow, it thinks it is seeing red. Green sees all yellow as being red, mean, and arrogant, and it reacts violently to that. Of course, green can't really help this; since it literally cannot see yellow, it can only interpret yellow's actions in the terms that it knows, and so yellow appears to be that horrible red meme, and green swings into action to try to destroy or deconstruct yellow wherever it finds it.

To me, this sounds like Wilber using abstract language to rationalize certain criticisms that have been directed at him. (In a 1995 issue of The Quest, Wilber mentions that he is sometimes called arrogant. If green sees all yellow as being red, mean, and arrogant, and it reacts violently to that, this would explain – or explain away – why some people might see Wilber as arrogant. As Dana Carvey's old Saturday Night Live character Church Lady might say, “How convenient!”)

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Jim,

Yes, I see that too.  I appreciate that you have used the words, “dangerously close,” since I don't think Integral has actually yet become a self-sealing cult-like system.  I believe Integral still has a lot of potential – I wouldn't have created this pod and I wouldn't still be a student of it if I didn't – but I recognize the various defensive, insulating moves you have described.  I'm quite critical of both Da's and Cohen's movements, and Wilber's attraction to and periodic endorsements of them have been continuing sources of puzzlement and concern for me.

Concerning the frequent use of the Green label to dismiss critics, I do believe that v-Memetic factors can certainly play a role in the types of criticism that are directed at Integral (or any other system or belief), but even though this is the case, that does not mean that an individual primarily identified with an alternate (possibly even developmentally lower) value system cannot offer a valid argument or recognize logical flaws or inconsistencies.  In other words, even if a critic is “Green,” s/he might actually have valid criticisms of Integral that need to be considered.  So, the tendency to dismiss criticisms based on v-Meme identification alone is problematic – and has the potential to serve a self-insulating function.  In fact, I think it's fairly clear that it has been used in this way.

Concerning the issue – the spat around the upcoming Integral Theory conference – that is the inspiration for this thread, I know (and work with) some of the organizers, and I am confident that they are interested in promoting and encouraging honest, critical debate and discussion, not just a self-congratulating, ideologically sealed event.  While some members of the Integral movement, including Wilber on occasion, have definitely responded to criticism in ways that smack of other self-insulating ideologies, I believe the “community” as a whole is dynamic and independent enough that it has (so far) been able to avoid succumbing to these tendencies.

Best wishes,

B.

P.S.  [Note: I have removed this postscript and will be posting it instead as its own separate thread.]

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Forgive me for tooting my own horn, but I think I deal with Wilber's Post Metaphysics in this essay.

http://www.integralworld.net/ishaq.html

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Balder,

First I would like to apologize for any misunderstanding here. The last thing I would want to do is make your position sound absurd. From what I recall of that March exchange, you were clarifying Wilber's “minimalist metaphysics” which I took to be the provisional base line from which this pod would develop. For me the idea of minimalist metaphysics translates into “a little bit metaphysical. I do not recall you being as explicit then as you were the other day when you described your position (at that time) as being “…an approach in which the use of metaphysical principles is self-conscious and provisional.” In other words I was not characterizing your position as “a little bit metaphysical” but what I took to be your paraphrase of Wilber's.

Next, this that you wrote above–“Concerning the issue – the spat around the upcoming Integral Theory conference – that is the inspiration for this thread…”–is in a word wrong. If the spat had been the inspiration for this thread, this thread would have been about the spat but I don't have a dog in that fight. I just find the developing tactics and strategies within it interesting to watch. Someone with authority might tell Visser  ” get over it already” and advise whoever it is that rises to his bait to disengage and ignore.  (Aside: Recent research has unearthed the trivia that Woodrow Wilson was the first of many observers to note that academic politics are so viscious because the stakes are so trivial.) For me, my mention of the spat comes under the general rhetorical heading of “the compelling lead,” that which grabs a bit of attention and gives a little treat to the reader. In fact I use those things as much as homage to the reader as a way to avoid writing in common, down-market forumeese. That aside, if you take a look you'll find the spat dialog is punctuated as parenthetical and the first full sentence says that the inspiration for the thread was Riisager's critique of minimalist metaphysics which I read in light of the Fish interview that I had just finished.

Your questions re: Fish are well taken. It is not the first time they have been asked of him. I posted the quote because his number (1) point was a parallel but off-set perspective of what Riisager had written of the addressing system. In reviewing your concerns, I think that when Fish qualifies the impossible kind of theorizing as “the attaining of a perspective unattached to any local or partisan concerns, but providing a vantage point from which local and partisan
concerns can be clarified and ordered…” he resolves your question: “Does theorization really require us to assume an impossible supra-contextual position?” The answer would be “no.” It appears that he is only concerned with criticizing structuralist, metaphysical or objectivist theorizing because any work that is attached to the local and partisan is almost by definition grounded and actionable. Additionally, the way he phrases the problem and adds the notion of “everyday resources” indicates to me that he sees his position not as theorizing about theorizing, but staying in the here and now and critiquing the behavior of only those theorists who don't.

This post has been written in fits and starts over the past two days and times have changed here and in other threads since it began. Several of the more recent posts on this thread demonstrate that there might be at least one definition of metaphysics and thereby post-metaphysics for every participant in this pod plus those theorists about whom they write their posts. There seems to be as many types of metaphysics around here as there were types of Marxism in the '60s…it could be infinite and insoluble. But that does not mean it is not indissoluble at least where Wilber's type of post-metaphysics is concerned. I am thinking here of his penchant for labels. It would probably serve us all better, and be more realistic if we conclude that Wilber's use of the word is more like a semi-proprietary label for a highly protean system of thought and rhetoric than it is an instructive adjective with sound delimitations on its categorical situation. I'm fine with that; I have no more issues regarding definitions and usages that might shade less toward the intellectual candor that Jim was questioning and more toward the imaginative marketing that we can all agree is essential to staying afloat these days in the commerce of popular philosophy.

To paraphrase Fish, end of story, end of Wilber as an interesting topic.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

“In essence…we do not perceive empirical objects in a completely realistic, pregiven fashion; but rather, structures of the knowing subject impart various characteristics to the known object that then appear to belong to the object - but really don't; they are, rather, co-creations of the knowing subject. Various a priori categories of the knowing subject help to fashion or construct reality as we know it. Reality is not a perception, but a conception; at least in part. Ontology per se just does not exist. Metaphysics is then a broad name for the type of thinking that can't figure this out.” (IS, p 231)



I am in the strange position of being sympathetic to Bruce ( :-) ) and apologetic for Wilber because his latest incantation #5 actually gets it right! That is, ”Ontology per se just does not exist.” There is no God, self, etc. that exists on it's own side separate from a perspective. Take a look at my current icon. I snapped this picture from a plane above the clouds. If you look closely, you will see a ghost image or reflection of the camera I took it with. Let the ghost image represent the “subject”. Most people when looking at this picture would say that this sort of scene (sans the ghost image) existed since God created the heavens and earth. They feel the scene depicts reality and that they can perceive that reality directly. What most don't re-cognize is how the camera or the constructed subject influences and co-creates what is seen. So a “gummy bear” and a “wrought iron fence” are perspectives. They are not seen with perspectives but perspectives themselves. Otherwise they would have to exist forever and ever waiting to be seen. We can say that everything is a perspective because nothing can be separated out from a perspective. Try and take the cloud out of the scene or the gum out of the gummy bear or the iron out of the fence. The perspective has to be enacted first for anything to be seen. Since there is nothing seen without enactment (the act of seeing), everything is first and foremost a perspective. So why are folks resistant and hung up on what Wilber is presenting? 1) Belief in ontology stemming from fear of non-existence. 2) Some perspectives are more persistent or enacted more often than others or as Wilber says, certain kosmic habits are older and more engrained in the constructed subject. 3) The speed at which perspectives arise gives the impression that there are no gaps in perspectives.

So a post-Metaphysical Spirituality will be a post-Ontological Spirituality. That is, the belief in an ultimately existent thing or being has got to be jettisoned. As a friend recently said, western science is a direct result of the belief in the western God. The God fearing folks posit an ultimately existent being while some physicists are hard at work looking for an ultimately irreducible particle. Both cosmologies with their corresponding epistemologies stem from belief in ontology (God and irreducible particles independently exist forever and ever) and both worldviews have utterly failed at producing their ultimately existent objects (ironic that their proponents argue about the validity of each others worldviews). Because ultimately existent objects (and subjects) just do not exist. Seeing them as temporally enacted perspectives leads to much less reification and the greed for ontology and hence suffering dissolves like the morning's clouds in the light of the midday sun (a much more pleasant perspective).

Now none of this will make much sense (what ultimately does) unless you have gotten to the bottom of and seen thru your own personal ontology (being). If you have not intuited the selflessness of yourself, there is little chance you will see the selflessness (lack of ontology) of it, it's and others. You will don a worldview where the constellation of objects persist and appear real around you. Your own reality (me, myself and I) will be predicated and supported by the ontology of those very same objects. You will be seeing the waking state inverted and 100% opposite to the way it is in fact. That is, all around you is not real (ultimately existent) but illusory. And yes I realize all this is just another perspective…poof!

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

I've gone through this argument at least 100 times by now, ie, what is meant by postmetaphysical. If we mean by metaphysics the study of the nature of what is ultimately real then of course Wilber's and every other philosophy is metaphysical. But if we mean by metaphyiscal the belief that there is an ultimate reality apart from our per- and conceptions of it then one can be “post”metaphysical if, as e notes, we don't latch onto such beliefs. And yes, the latter is still metaphysical in the first sense in that it's a statement about ultimate reality in that we cannot ever directly know it sans a perspective.

However Wilber's use of the two truths in IS and elsewhere notes that the above is only relative truth, whereas there most certainly is an ultimate truth that we can know directly and it is sans perspective. And W's so-called nondual union is adding those two up. So W is at least metaphysical in the second sense because he also champions such a directly knowable ultimate reality while trying to reconcile this with the postmetaphysical, perspectival stance in the relative realm.

And as I've argued many times before, this is a view of the two truths and nondualism that I disagree with. Hence I was active in Greg's thread about an emerging, postmetaphysical formulation of the two  truths and nondualism, which is the direction I find most fruitful, not going back to traditional Buddhism or W's mix-and-matching of the latter with pomo.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

e,

I don't think I've had the pleasure of your prior acquaintance. I'm kind of the sub-host here because I started this slightly troublesome thread. And I must say right off that I'm not the most rational member around so you'll have to help me out.

From your opening I was hoping to have a little fun here and that you'd enlighten me on aspects of Integral metaphysics, or just plain metaphysics, about which I am always little fuzzy. I've read your post over several times and still remain optimistic that we can yet have a little fun. Like I said, I need some help…

What most (people) don't re-cognize (that ' -' is a clever syntactical device) is how the camera or the constructed subject influences and co-creates what is seen. So a “gummy bear” and a “wrought iron fence” are perspectives.

I might be missing something here, but I just can't see how the second sentence follows from the first. Perhaps there were some subjective leaps of faith left out just before you got to  “So.” You bounced into this thread with such enthusiasm that maybe you got ahead of yourself.

We can say that everything is a perspective because nothing can be separated out from a perspective. Try and take the cloud out of the scene or the gum out of the gummy bear or the iron out of the fence.

Again, I'm a little slow to comprehend–the cloud is one of two visual components of the scene (minus the ghost), the gum is a physical referent to the qualia-like “gummy” descriptor of  Balder's candy bear, and iron is a physical element of the signifier ” fence.”  These are like apples and oranges and cucumbers, no?  And that leaves me just a little vague on exactly what is it that we need to leave in or leave out of your examples. (Please don't make it so we have to discuss qualia. That's something too far over my head and I feel like I'm there already.)

The perspective has to be enacted first for anything to be seen. Since there is nothing seen without enactment (the act of seeing), everything is first and foremost a perspective.

For some reason the word “tautological” comes to mind here, but then again I just didn't follow…

So why are folks resistant and hung up on what Wilber is presenting?

That's what I'd like to know too. And for exactly the same reasons you state below in your last paragraph: Now none of this will make much sense (what ultimately does) unless you have gotten to the bottom of and seen thru your own personal ontology (being).

I stumbled into that little insight maybe 35, 40 years ago and I drift back there now and again for a refresher when I have some spare time and need a standy-by anti-ego-ic medicine. (Maybe I'll conjure that up in tomorrow's meditation.) There was a time when on rising from the profound depth of that re-realization I would ask, “So, now what?” But I never got an answer and I finally assumed it was the wrong question.

And yes I realize all this is just another perspective…poof!

Now this is nice. After all that reading and writing, and from such a distance since you seem to be a Buddhist and I'm just an Ambiguity Bum, we can still can still finish on the same beat, same note. Whaddya think about that?

S

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hey Nickeson,


I don't think I've had the pleasure of your prior acquaintance.

I changed my icon, used to be a monkey on a pole. Greg and I chatted thoroughly on his Synergistic thread.

-

From your opening I was hoping to have a little fun here and that you'd enlighten me on aspects of Integral metaphysics, or just plain metaphysics, about which I am always little fuzzy. I've read your post over several times and still remain optimistic that we can yet have a little fun. Like I said, I need some help…


What most (people) don't re-cognize (that ' -' is a clever syntactical device) is how the camera or the constructed subject influences and co-creates what is seen. So a “gummy bear” and a “wrought iron fence” are perspectives.

I might be missing something here, but I just can't see how the second sentence follows from the first. Perhaps there were some subjective leaps of faith left out just before you got to  “So.” You bounced into this thread with such enthusiasm that maybe you got ahead of yourself.

Time is always the limiting factor. I am glad you asked though. Here, instead of going back and forth with words, maybe this will work. What do you think about this in relation to perspectives? (Focusing on the imagery and not the tune.)

-

We can say that everything is a perspective because nothing can be separated out from a perspective. Try and take the cloud out of the scene or the gum out of the gummy bear or the iron out of the fence.

…iron is a physical element of the signifier ” fence.” 

And so you are shifting perspective. Drilling into the wrought iron fence and what is there? Another perspective co-arrising with a different context. There was a beautiful piece of art on the web a few years back. It was in cartoon style but with more detail. In each scene there was something that exploded to fill the next scene. So there were people on a plane and there would be a postcard in someone's hand. That would explode to render a family in a beach scene. Then there would be a ship in the distance and that would explode. There were about 20 frames or perspectives that were nested one after the other.

For you to see any “object”, a perspective has to first be enacted. Then there are chains of signifiers that make sense within that perspective. But if we look at any one signifier within the perspective, it explodes into another perspective. See? And if the temporal shifts are recognized, where is the metaphysic? That is, where is the being or thing that remains constant thru each perspective? They are all tied and bound to a perspective. That is, they only exist within a particular perspective, like dream characters. How can you excise them out from the dream? We (subjects) live and die in a matrix of perspectives. We do not exist outside of that matrix.

-

The perspective has to be enacted first for anything to be seen. Since there is nothing seen without enactment (the act of seeing), everything is first and foremost a perspective.

For some reason the word “tautological” comes to mind here, but then again I just didn't follow…

:-) Of course, that is because we don't yet cognize what is post-perspectives. What do you see my friend?

-

And yes I realize all this is just another perspective…poof!

Now this is nice. After all that reading and writing, and from such a distance since you seem to be a Buddhist and I'm just an Ambiguity Bum, we can still can still finish on the same beat, same note. Whaddya think about that?

That seems to be the beauty of AQAL. That seemingly disparate folks can come together and chat and make sense of one another's perspectives and have a bit of fun with ease and smile in the commonality of life…all perspectives overlap.



love

e

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

e, my man,

I have a couple of additional questions and comments, but these two sentences caught my attention and curiosity.

We (subjects) live and die in a matrix of perspectives. We do not exist outside of that matrix.

This matrix is a holon right? Everything is a holon, no? And they all have interiors and exteriors as I understand it. If we're inside, what's outside? Do you know for sure there's an outside?

If it is a social holon, as I understand Wilber, then we are not its interior but the perspectives are which then means we aren't confined by out perspectives and they are exterior to us….?

I need a little help here.

S.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

I have a couple of additional questions and comments, but these two sentences caught my attention and curiosity.

We (subjects) live and die in a matrix of perspectives. We do not exist outside of that matrix.


This matrix is a holon right? Everything is a holon, no?

Everything within the relative matrix of perspectives, yes.

And they all have interiors and exteriors as I understand it.

Each quadrant has an interior and exterior view.

If we're inside, what's outside?

Our absence.

Do you know for sure there's an outside?

Yes

If it is a social holon, as I understand Wilber, then we are not its interior but the perspectives are which then means we aren't confined by out perspectives and they are exterior to us….?

Depends on which perspective you are indentifying with. I have loosely been saying the subject is the UL quadrant and the object the UR quadrant. Most people would say they (their identity) are inside their mind (UL). I guess some would say they are their bodies (UR). Either way it is all perspectives. It is the identification that shifts.

Are you here leaning towards a witnessing perspective? That is because I can see or objectify perspectives, I am not perspectives? In that sense you still would not know (objectively) what is post-perspective as you would be looking from that vantage point and as we know, the eye (subject) cannot see itself. This would be looking from the next higher “level” emergent post-perspectives.


love

e

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

e,

You asked:

Are you here leaning towards a witnessing perspective?

Confession #1: And I have to admit that I am not as naive as it might appear regarding perspectives. According to my journal it is now just a few months short of 20 years ago that I started working with my selfless-conception as an illusory, pure, open, perspectival node in the Whole of Consciousness; something like a sub-atomic wave/particle/hollow reed fragment of spirit, one of an infinite number on which Spirit could reflect in its infinite process of self-consciousness and self-realization–the Whole of Consciousness and Spirit were assumptions I was willing to embrace as contingent truths for the sake of the experience.

However the other day on reading your first post to Balder on this thread, I found myself feeling naive in trying to steer my mind through your syntax. So I was  playing at drawing you out into an explicit statement of the metaphysics and ontology that are implicitly lurking behind the post-metaphysical, anti-ontological statement “Everything* is a perspective,” so that the exchange could perhaps go in the direction of: If everything is a perspective (or even “if all quadrants are perspectives” to cover that hedge) then nothing can be distinguished from perspectives except from another perspective that either leads into the metaphysical land of infinite regressions or to the ontological elaboration on the idea that the perceived universe was created through the matrix of perspectives reflecting on itself, at which point I play the card that reads “Diogenes smells the swindle of idealistic abstractions.” (written or inspired by Peter Sloterdjik). And then we congratulate each other on a job well played and go on to other more worthwhile pursuits.

And then along came this in your last post:

“If we're inside, what's outside?

Our absence.

Do you know for sure there's an outside?

Yes.”

Confession #2:  I never anticipated this exchange taking such a sophist-icated turn. It leaves me at a loss for anything to say except–I can't be certain, but I think I got what I came for.

Congratulations. Thanks for the ride. This is where I get out.

S.

*”Everything (each thing) contains the quality of a perspective,” or “Everything (each thing) implies the potential of a perspective,” might be more easily defensible.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

…Thanks for the ride. This is where I get out.

My pleasure…anytime Nickeson!

Love e,

PS

*”Everything (each thing) contains the quality of a perspective,” or “Everything (each thing) implies the potential of a perspective,” might be more easily defensible.

Don't know if you are still holding to this view. If you are, here is a parting gift. You are still hung up on the ontology of things. You think things are real and existent (i.e. separate from you) and reflected in your mind via perspective. Try this on for size. Invert what you think (see the perspective as real and the thing as illusory) and then see how a thing is nothing but a intersect of a conglomeration of perspectives (you know, the blind men touching the elephant). Look at your ironwork. How many perspectives have to overlap and be enacted (from design thru process) before your works emerge and even then which perspective yields the “real” thing? (Maybe you should have chosen a different medium like gummy candy, iron seemingly too substantive. :-) ) The thing-in-itself is a myth (of the given), the main illusory thing being e or Nickeson or Spirit, etc. If you don't intuit that, how am I going to prove it to you with argumentation? I am sharing a perspective that needs no defense. When ontology dissolves (and it will dissolve…alive or dead), where is there to be and with what epistemology could you defend?

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hey,
I realized that I might have left my reputation as a nihilist back on the bus, and when I returned to pick it up I found out that I was still being taken for an objectivist…how odd. So to restore my preferred, but not entirely warranted status, I will leave a few random thoughts.

–These links to definitions and disquisitions lay out what the broad language community known as the English Speaking World says is metaphysics.  One can see here a fair amount of consensus and safely assume that a similar consensus could be formed around the proposition that “Everything is a Perspective,” is, yes, a metaphysical and ontological statement.  (This broad language community recognizes that the verb “is” connotes “being” in the present tense and “being,” it's definitions and other accouterments, is the subject of metaphysics when such words as “Everything” and “perspective” fall on either side of it. This is even more acute when one sees that each noun is in an absolute–i.e. non-qualified–presence. So following Wittgenstein and Leotard we can say that this four-word, overarching, universalist narrative is indefensible and subsequently wonder how a post-metaphysical, post ontological spirituality can be construed to follow from a metaphysical and ontological statement.

–But maybe e had something else entirely in mind. Maybe he was saying that “Everything is a perspective” is not a statement that means what it's composite word structure means to the broad language community, but that it is label for a mind-set that could possibly be distinguished by an  EEG, or similar exotica, from other mind-sets such as the objectivist one, or the profound non-dual one, or the English speaking one, or the Spanish speaking one, or the radically nihilist one in which short-term memory is thoroughly suppressed, the visual focus is softened and the perceptual field seems to be filled with incoherent, unconscious, random movement and the long-term memory function is reduced to a recording that says all illusions of past causal explanations were anachronistic aberrations. (This is the mind set to assume in the back seat of a taxi in downtown Washington, DC.) I am assuming that this mind-set can be distinguished empirically to give e the post-metaphysical benefit of the doubt by taking the subject out of the quasi-metaphysical philosophy of the mind and put it in the science of the mind. There might be some objection to this since it reduces at least part of the underpinnings for a post-metaphysical, etc. spirituality to a brain function, but one can't have it both ways.

–Now in a review of the previous posts I seem to discern a preference for this–call it the Perspectivist mind set–over the objectivist one that sees the thing-in-itself. We find this where e says Balder is wrong and “Wilber gets it right,” and where he says this mind-set helps cure greed and suffering, and where he says that it is his gift to me. So how does this assumption of preferability stack up as valid? It is, as they used to say about other kinds of mind states, all dependent on set and setting.

In an ashram or similar venue–no question–it is valid because it finds there a functional fit.

In my studio, to use a topic e has mentioned, the Perspetivist could be valid, could be not. Lets look at it as a comparison: If I am working alone and feel my environment take on an ashramic aura then I can operate out of a Perspectivist mind set. But even there I can only find neutrality to its overall value. The illusory steel has the illusion of being just as ductile, the illusory hammer has the illusion of being just as heavy and it reshapes that illusion of the piece of steel exactly the same as when I perceive the steel and hammer from an objectivist mind-set. I can have it one way or the other but I find no objective benefit either way.

There are times however when I have the help of a mono-lingual Spanish speaking young man. I do not have the bi-lingual facility to describe for him…and he does not have the educational sophistication to see…how any piece of steel can be seen as anything but a thing-in-itself, thus this situation prohibits conversing about the hammers and the steel in Perspectival-eese. Giving precise, technical instructions in my second language is difficult enough from our common thing-in-itself mind set that it invalidates the preferability of assuming the Perspectival one. But even if that were possible, if I had the vocabulary and he had the education to make that shift the result would be the same…the steel would still take the form of the drawings in the design tablet, the customer would still write the same amount into the check they no doubt would think of as a thing-in itself, the world would turn once more and the night would be followed by daybreak, the caravan would bark, the dogs would move on.

–From the times I have spent in a perspectivist mind set I can testify that it did nothing to alleviate suffering, for me at least. It has been maybe 30 years since I did any probing for an ontology and then I would hardly call it motivated by greed. It was more like curiosity.  And as a nihilistic nihilist I have to say that I don't deny the possible existence of some overarching ontology, I just lay my bets that, if one is every discovered or articulated, its value and hence its longevity as a media novelty will be microscopic.  Plus I prefer functioning in an environment where archways are absent whether or not they are an illusion or the bonified transcendental signified. Then too, I hardly ever suffer, I have a low tolerance for idealism and a high tolerance for discomfort. While shifting mind-sets can have an effect in short-term pain management, I still find the best cure for my suffering to be the correct treatment for and subsequent healing of an injury. If e finds this mind-set to be therapeutic and I assume that it has helped redeem him from greed and suffering, I say great, I'm all for whatever gets him through the night.

–I was a little amused when e's last post suggested I was hung up on the objectivist thing-in-itself mind-set after I had said twice that I was a user of the product that he was pitching. I had this image of when the evangelists come to the door and they always ask if I have been saved and I always tell them, yes, the lord is my savior, and then they just keep on talking as if my reply had been that I didn't know what they were talking about. Was I not being clear?

–When I wrote that I got what I came for, I was referring to my my first and second posts (regarding e's reply to Balder) in which I appeared to be needy for more clarity in order to draw out the kind of information that would more objectively demonstrate the metaphysics and ontology that lurk behind the sophisticated though tortured linguistic spin-enchantments that say the two are now lost to the past. I think it is clear that Integral Province can be classified as a highly localized and somewhat idiosyncratic language community, but e's post was a little over the top even for a place where Post-metaphysical doesn't really mean “after the end” of metaphysics in the same way that post-war means “after the end” of the war as it would in the larger, English-speaking community. So when e replied “Our absence,” to my “What's outside the matrix of perspectives?” I had to think that if he wasn't playing me in the way I had been playing him, then I had the evidence I wanted, now if there were only someone out there who would believe…

–Anyway, I want to thank e for the gift of his p.s. though I have to say I already have one just like it–made it myself years ago and so I know its incomparable value. It is the thought that counts, e, but if you still have the receipt for the gift maybe I can trade it for a Porsche.

S

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Just a late proofing–Lyotard not Leotard.  Sorry for the error.

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

-I was a little amused when e's last post suggested I was hung up on the objectivist thing-in-itself mind-set after I had said twice that I was a user of the product that he was pitching. … Was I not being clear?

I thought we saw eye to eye but then you wrote *”Everything (each thing) contains the quality of a perspective,” or “Everything (each thing) implies the potential of a perspective,” might be more easily defensible. ..and I thought you did not really get what I was trying to say. I still have doubts given your last post. Below clears up what you were up to though.


-…. So when e replied “Our absence,” to my “What's outside the matrix of perspectives?” I had to think that if he wasn't playing me in the way I had been playing him…

I was not playing you in anyway my friend. Are you originally from the east coast?

-But maybe e had something else entirely in mind. Maybe he was saying that “Everything is a perspective” is not a statement that means what it's composite word structure means to the broad language community..

Maybe this will help?

Think of the phrase like this, Everything => Perspective

Instead of, Everything = Perspective

There is a directionality involved that may assuage your tautological concerns. That is, everything is a perspective but perspectives are not things. Moving from seeing things-in-themselves to seeing perspectives enacted, the ontology starts to thin or become less opaque. The iron thing-in-itself melts. The particle becomes a wave. Nouns become verbs. Seeing the world comprised of things reifies self. Seeing things as perspectives enacted opens up the world and the main thing (e.g. me) begins to be held more loosely. Does this make more sense now?

I wrote tersely so you can unpack it in anyway that suits your contemplative fancy.

Everything (without ontology) is a perspective (in change).

Everything is a perspective (but perspectives are not things).

Everything (in relation) is (first) a perspective (in enactment).

Etc.

I like to boil thought down to seeming paradox, to the limit of logical understanding. Who knows, maybe then something new is clarified and bursts forth or something old and no longer useful gets left behind.


love

e

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Edward,

“…the direction I find most fruitful, not going back to traditional Buddhism or W's mix-and-matching of the latter with pomo.”

Yes.

Your brief post got to the point I wanted to reach when I started this thread, but failed to have the language that made sense to others. Thanks for your thoughtfulness.

S

Re: How Metaphysical is Post-Metaphysical?

Hi all

I have been following this thread with much interest. I am a member of Gaia for a few weeks now and it is amazing how much incredible interesting discussions are going on everywhere.

But this one especially caught my attention, mainly because of the word Post-metaphysical. I did not know how Wilber meant it exactly, but while reading this thread it became more clear.

I think this is very much the way to go, the labeling and the search for a language. But I think it has to become a language that covers the whole. And with the whole I mean every personal experience, not only mystical experiences but also individual emotional experiences.

Here is a quote I found when I just arrived at Gaia (you all probally know it already) and I totally see the problem.

“A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean”.