An
Integral Theory of Consciousness
by
K. W.
(check
the definition
of
consciousness
of The Order of Time)
For the
original figures and indivual names belonging
to this text one has to surf to the adress
below.
Journal
of Consciousness
Studies,
4 (1), February 1997, pp. 71-92 Copyright,
1997, Imprint Academic
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract:
An
extensive data search among various types of
developmental and evolutionary sequences
yielded a `four quadrant' model of
consciousness and its development (the four
quadrants being intentional, behavioural,
cultural, and social). Each of these
dimensions was found to unfold in a sequence
of at least a dozen major stages or levels.
Combining the four quadrants with the dozen
or so major levels in each quadrant yields an
integral theory of consciousness that is
quite comprehensive in its nature and scope.
This model is used to indicate how a general
synthesis and integration of twelve of the
most influential schools of consciousness
studies can be effected, and to highlight
some of the most significant areas of future
research. The conclusion is that an
`all-quadrant, all-level' approach is the
minimum degree of sophistication that we need
into order to secure anything resembling a
genuinely integral theory of consciousness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
There has
recently been something of an explosion of
interest in the development of a `science of
consciousness', and yet there are at present
approximately a dozen major but conflicting
schools of consciousness theory and research.
My own approach to consciousness studies is
based on the assumption that each of these
schools has something irreplaceably important
to offer, and thus what is required is a
general model sophisticated enough to
incorporate the essentials of each of them.
These schools include the following:
1.
Cognitive
science
tends to view consciousness as anchored in
functional schemas of the brain/mind, either
in a simple representational fashion (such as
J.'s `computational mind') or in the more
complex emergent/connectionist models, which
view consciousness as an emergent of
hierarchically integrated networks. The
emergent/connectionist is perhaps the
dominant model of cognitive science at this
point, and is nicely summarized in A. S.'s
Stairway to the Mind (1995), the `stairway'
being the hierarchy of emergents summating in
consciousness.
2.
Introspectionism
maintains that consciousness is best
understood in terms of intentionality,
anchored in first-person accounts -- the
inspection and interpretation of immediate
awareness and lived experience -- and not in
third-person or objectivist accounts, no
matter how `scientific' they might appear.
Without denying their significant
differences, this broad category includes
everything from philosophical intentionality
to introspective psychology, existentialism
and phenomenology.
3.
Neuropsychology
views consciousness as anchored in neural
systems, neurotransmitters, and organic brain
mechanisms. Unlike cognitive science, which
is often based on computer science and is
consequently vague about how consciousness is
actually related to organic brain structures,
neuropsychology is a more biologically based
approach. Anchored in neuroscience more than
computer science, it views consciousness as
intrinsically residing in organic neural
systems of sufficient complexity.
4.
Individual
psychotherapy
uses introspective and interpretive
psychology to treat distressing symptoms and
emotional problems; it thus tends to view
consciousness as primarily anchored in an
individual organism's adaptive capacities.
Most major schools of psychotherapy embody a
theory of consciousness precisely because
they must account for a human being's need to
create meaning and signification, the
disruption of which results in painful
symptoms of mental and emotional distress. In
its more avant-garde forms, such as the
Jungian, this approach postulates collective
structures of intentionality (and thus
consciousness), the fragmentation of which
contributes to psychopathology.
5.
Social
psychology
views consciousness as embedded in networks
of cultural meaning, or, alternatively, as
being largely a byproduct of the social
system itself. This includes approaches as
varied as ecological, Marxist,
constructivist, and cultural hermeneutics,
all of which maintain that the nexus of
consciousness is not located merely or even
principally in the individual.
6.
Clinical
psychiatry
focuses on the relation of psychopathology,
behavioural patterns, and psychopharmacology.
For the last half century, psychiatry was
largely anchored in a Freudian
metapsychology, but the field increasingly
tends to view consciousness in strictly
neurophysiological and biological terms,
verging on a clinical identity theory:
consciousness is the neuronal system, so that
a presenting problem in the former is
actually an imbalance in the latter,
correctable with medication.
7.
Developmental
psychology
views consciousness not as a single entity
but as a developmentally unfolding process
with a substantially different architecture
at each of its stages of growth, and thus an
understanding of consciousness demands an
investigation of the architecture at each of
its levels of unfolding. In its more
avant-garde forms, this approach includes
higher stages of exceptional development and
wellbeing, and the study of gifted,
extraordinary, and supranormal capacities,
viewed as higher developmental potentials
latent in all humans. This includes higher
stages of cognitive, affective, somatic,
moral, and spiritual development.
8.
Psychosomatic
medicine
views consciousness as strongly and
intrinsically inter-active with organic
bodily processes, evidenced in such fields as
psychoneuro- immunology and biofeedback. In
its more avant-garde forms, this approach
includes consciousness and miraculous
healing, the effects of prayer on remarkable
recoveries, light/sound and healing,
spontaneous remission, and so on. It also
includes any of the approaches that
investigate the effects of intentionality on
healing, from art therapy to visualization to
psychotherapy and meditation.
9.
Nonordinary states of
consciousness,
from dreams to psychedelics, constitute a
field of study that, its advocates believe,
is crucial to a grasp of consciousness in
general. Although some of the effects of
psychedelics -- to take a controversial
example -- are undoubtedly due to `toxic
side-effects', the consensus of opinion in
this area of research is that they also act
as a `nonspecific amplifier of experience',
and thus they can be instrumental in
disclosing and amplifying aspects of
consciousness that might otherwise go
unstudied.
10.
Eastern and contemplative
traditions
maintain that ordinary consciousness is but a
narrow and restricted version of deeper or
higher modes of awareness, and that specific
injunctions (yoga, meditation) are necessary
to evoke these higher and excep- tional
potentials. Moreover, they all maintain that
the essentials of consciousness itself can
only be grasped in these higher, postformal,
and nondual states of
consciousness.
11.
What might be called the quantum
consciousness
approaches view consciousness as being
intrinsically capable of interacting with,
and altering, the physical world, generally
through quantum interactions, both in the
human body at the intracellular level (e.g.
microtubules), and in the material world at
large (psi). This approach also includes the
many and various attempts to plug
consciousness into the physical world
according to various avant-garde physical
theories (bootstrapping, hyperspace,
strings).
12.
Subtle energies
research
has postulated that there exist subtler types
of bio- energies beyond the four recognized
forces of physics (strong and weak nuclear,
electromagnetic, gravitational), and that
these subtler energies play an intrinsic role
in consciousness and its activity. Known in
the traditions by such terms as prana, ki,
and chi -- and said to be responsible for the
effectiveness of acupuncture, to give only
one example -- these energies are often held
to be the `missing link' between intentional
mind and physical body. For the Great Chain
theorists, both East and West, this bioenergy
acts as a two-way conveyor belt, transferring
the impact of matter to the mind and imposing
the intentionality of the mind on matter.
My
own approach to consciousness involves a
model that explicitly draws on the strengths
of each of those approaches, and attempts to
incorporate and integrate their essential
features. But in order to understand this
model, a little background information is
required. What follows is a very brief
summary of an approach developed at length in
a dozen books, including Transformations of
Consciousness (W. et al., 1986), A Brief
History of Everything (1996d) and The Eye of
Spirit (1997), which the interested reader
can consult for detailed arguments and
extensive references. But I believe the
following summary is more than adequate for
our present purposes. The Four Corners of the
Kosmos Figure 1 (below) is a schematic
summary of what I call
`the
four quadrants' of existence: intentional,
behavioural, cultural and
social.
These four quadrants are a summary of a data
search across various developmental and
evolutionary fields. I examined over two
hundred developmental sequences recognized by
various branches of human knowledge --
ranging from stellar physics to molecular
biology, from anthropology to linguistics,
from developmental psychology to ethical
orientations, from cultural hermeneutics to
contemplative endeavours -- taken from both
Eastern and Western disciplines, and
including premodern, modern, and postmodern
sources (W. 1995b, 1996d). I noticed that
these various developmental sequences all
fell into one of four major classes -- the
four quadrants -- and further, that within
those four quadrants there was substantial
agreement as to the various stages or levels
in each. Figure 1 is a simple summary of this
data search; it thus represents an a
posteriori conclusion, not a priori
assumption.
Figure
1: The Four Quadrants Of course people can
differ about the details of such a diagram,
and Figure 1 is not intended to be cast in
stone. It is presented here as a reasonable
summary that helps carry the present
discussion. Likewise, each of the quadrants
might more accurately be constructed as a
branching tree, and not a simple straight
line, indicating the rich variation within
each grade and clade (each level and type).
Each quadrant includes both hierarchies (or
clear gradations) and heterarchies (or
pluralistic and equivalent unfoldings within
a given grade). Figure 1, again, is nothing
but a simple schematic summary to help
further the discussion.
The
Upper Right
quadrant
is perhaps the most familiar. It is the
standard hierarchy presented by
modern
evolutionary
science:
atoms to molecules to cells to organisms,
each of which `transcends but includes' its
predecessor in an irreversible fashion: cells
contain molecules, but not vice versa;
molecules contain atoms, but not vice versa,
and so on -- the `not vice versa' constitutes
the irreversible hierarchy of time's
evolutionary arrow. (SF1, SF2, and SF3 refer
to higher structure-functions of the human
brain, which I will explain in a moment.)
Each of these individual units, in other
words, is what Koestler called a `holon', a
whole that is simultaneously part of some
other whole (a whole atom is part of a whole
molecule, a whole molecule is part of a whole
cell, etc.). The Upper Right quadrant is
simply a summary of the scientific research
on the evolution of
individual
holons.
But individual holons always
exist
in communities
of similar holons. In fact, the very
existence of individual holons in many ways
depends upon communities of other holons
that, if nothing else, provide the background
fields in which individual holons can exist.
E. J., in his pioneering book The
Self-Organizing Universe (1980), pointed out
that every `micro' event (individual holon)
exists embedded in a corresponding `macro'
event (a community or collective of similarly
structured holons).
These
communities, collectives, or societies are
summarized in the Lower Right
quadrant,
and they, too, simply represent the results
of generally uncontested scientific research.
Thus, for example, J. points out that when
atoms were the most complex individual holons
in existence, galaxies were the most complex
collective structures; with molecules,
planets; with prokaryotes, the Gaia system;
with limbic systems, groups and families; and
so forth.[1]
J. made the fascinating observation that
while individual holons generally get bigger
(because they transcend and include their
predecessors: molecules are bigger than the
atoms they contain), the collective usually
gets smaller (planets are smaller than
galaxies; families are smaller than planets,
etc.) -- the reason being that as an
individual holon gets more complex (possesses
more depth), the number of holons that can
reach that depth become less and less, and
thus the collective becomes smaller and
smaller (e.g. there will always be fewer
molecules than atoms, and thus the collective
of molecules -- planets -- will always be
smaller than the collective of atoms --
galaxies). This
entire trend I have summarized as: evolution
produces greater depth, less span (W.,
1995b). Those are the two `Right Hand'
quadrants.
What both of those quadrants have in common
is that they represent holons that all
possess simple location -- they can all be
seen with the senses or their extensions;
they are all empirical phenomena; they exist
in the sensorimotor worldspace. They are, in
other words, objective and inter-objective
realities; they are what individual and
communal holons look like from the outside,
in an exterior and objectifying fashion. But
various types of evidence suggest that every
exterior has an interior. If we likewise do a
data search among the evolutionary trends of
interior apprehension, we also find
a
largely uncontested hierarchy of emergent
properties, which I have simply summarized in
the Upper Left
quadrant:
prehension to irritability to sensation to
perception to impulse to image to symbol to
concept to rule (concrete operations or
`conop') to formal operations (`formop') and
synthesizing reason (`vision-logic'; these
correspond with structure-functions in the
brain that I have simply labeled SF1, SF2,
and SF3 in the Upper Right). The existence of
most of those emergent properties are, as I
said, largely uncontested by specialists in
the field, and the holons I have
listed
in the Upper Left represent a simple summary
of some of the major evolutionary capacities
of interior
apprehension.
(There is still some heated discussion over
the nature of `emergence', but the existence
and evolutionary order of most of the various
capacities themselves, from sensation to
perception to image and concept, are
generally uncontested.) There is, however,
rather endless debate about just how `far
down' you can push prehension (or any form of
rudimentary consciousness). Wh. pushes it all
the way down, to the atoms of existence
(actual occasions), while most scientists
find this a bit much. My own sense is that,
since holons are `bottomless', how much
`consciousness' each of them possesses is an
entirely relative affair. I don't think we
need to draw a bold line in the existential
sand and say, on this side of the line,
consciousness; on that side, utter darkness.
Indeed, the whole point of the hierarchy of
evolutionary emergents of apprehension is
that consciousness is almost infinitely
graded, with each emergent holon possessing a
little more depth and thus a bit more
apprehension. However much `consciousness' or
`awareness' or `sensitivity' or
`responsiveness' a tree might have, a cow has
more; an ape has more than that, and so on.
How far down you actually push some form of
prehension is up to you (and won't
substantially alter my main points). As for
myself, I always found T. de C.'s (1964)
conclusion to be the most sensible:
`Refracted rearwards along the course of
evolution, consciousness displays itself
qualitatively as
a
spectrum of shifting shades whose lower terms
are lost in the night.' That is the Upper
Left quadrant,
and it represents the interior of individual
holons; but, as always, every individual
holon exists in a community (i.e. every
agency is actually agency-in-communion). If
we look at the collective forms of individual
consciousness, we find various worldspaces or
worldviews or communally-shared sensitivity
(from flocks of geese to human zeitgeist).
These various
cultural or communal interiors are summarized
in the Lower Left
quadrant.
Again, how far down you push a cultural
background (or collective prehension) depends
upon how far down you are willing to push
individual prehension. I believe it shades
all the way down, simply because exteriors
don't make sense without interiors, and
agency is always agency-in-communion.
Nonetheless, my main points concern human
consciousness, and we can all probably agree
that humans possess not only
a
subjective space (the Upper
Left)
but also certain
intersubjective
spaces (the Lower
Left).
Those who have carefully investigated the
historical evolution of cultural worldviews
include researchers from J. G. to M. F. to J.
H.; I have outlined this research in the book
Up from Eden (1996b) and summarized it in the
Lower Left quadrant in Figure 1. `Uroboros'
means reptilian (or brain-stem based);
`typhonic' means emotional-sexual
(limbic-system based); archaic, magic, mythic
and rational are fairly self-explanatory
(they are four of the most significant of the
human cultural worldviews to evolve thus
far); and `centauric' means a bodymind
integration and cognitive synthesizing
activity (which some researchers, including
Gebser and Habermas, see starting to emerge
at this time). Thus, the upper half of Figure
1 refers to individual holons, the lower
half, to their collective forms. The right
half refers to the exterior or objective
aspects of holons, and the left half, to
their interior or subjective forms. This
gives us a grid of exterior-individual (or
behavioural), interior-individual (or
intentional), exterior- collective (or
social), and interior-collective (or
cultural) -- a grid of subjective, objective,
intersubjective, and interobjective
realities. Exactly what these various grids
mean will continue to unfold with the
discussion. As I said, the holons in each of
those four quadrants were not postulated in
any sort of a priori or `metaphysical'
fashion; they were rather suggested by an a
posteriori data search across several hundred
disciplines. I noticed that the developmental
or dimensional analyses they described all
fell into one of these four broad types of
sequences, which, it soon became obvious,
simply referred to the interior and the
exterior of the singular and the collective.
This makes a certain amount of intuitive
sense; after all, some of the simplest
distinctions we can make are between singular
and plural, inside and outside, and it seems
that evolution makes those distinctions as
well, because it appears that development
occurs in all four of those dimensions, and
the four quadrants are a simple and very
general summary of those evolutionary
developments. The holons listed in each of
the quadrants represent a great deal of
empirical and phenomenological evidence, and,
within the various disciplines addressing
them, their existence is largely undisputed
by serious scholars. Unfortunately, as we
will see, because
many researchers specialize in one quadrant
only, they tend to ignore or even deny the
existence of the other
quadrants.
Materialist or Right-Hand theorists, for
example, tend to deny substantial existence
to interior, Left-Hand, and conscious
intentionality. We will see many examples of
this type of quadrant partiality, a
reductionism that we will henceforth
thoroughly bracket. When I say that the
holons presented in each quadrant are largely
uncontested, I mean specifically by those who
actually study that quadrant in its own
terms. Although the existence of each of the
quadrants themselves is largely uncontested
by experts in the various fields, once we put
these four quadrants together,
a
sur- prising set of further conclusions
rather startlingly announce themselves, and
these conclusions are crucial, I believe, to
grasping the overall nature of
consciousness.
The
Contours of Consciousness Begin with the fact
that each of the quadrants is described in a
different type
of language.
The Upper Left is described in
`I'
language;
the Lower Left is described in
`we'
language;
and the two Right Hand quadrants, since they
are both objective, are described in
`it'
language.
(compare to def.
and pict.
/ edit. ) These are essentially Sir K. P.'s
`three worlds' (subjective, cultural, and
objective); P.'s the Good (as the ground of
morals, the `we' of the Lower Left), the True
(objective truth or it-propositions, the
Right Hand), and the Beautiful (the aesthetic
beauty in the I of each beholder, the Upper
Left); H.'s three validity claims (subjective
truthfulness of I, cultural justness of we,
and objective truth of its). Historically of
great importance, these are also the three
major domains of K.'s three critiques:
science or its (Critique of Pure Reason),
morals or we (Critique of Practical Reason),
and art and self-expression of the I
(Critique of Judgment). Equally important,
each of the quadrants has a different `type
of truth' or validity claim -- different
types of knowledge with different types of
evidence and validation procedures. Thus,
propositions in the Upper Right are said to
be true if they match a specific fact or
objective state of affairs: a statement is
true if the map matches the territory --
so-called objective truth (representational
truth and the correspondence theory of
truth). In the Upper Left quadrant, on the
other hand, a statement is valid not if it
represents an objective state of affairs but
if it authentically expresses a subjective
reality. The
validity
criterion
here is not just truth but truthfulness or
sincerity -- not `Does the map match the
territory?' but `Can the mapmaker be
trusted?' I must trust you to report your
interior status truthfully, because there is
no other way for me to get to know your
interior, and thus no other way for me to
investigate your subjective
consciousness.
[2]
In the Lower Right quadrant of interobjective
realities, the validity claim is concerned
with how individual holons fit together into
interlocking systems; truth in this quadrant
concerns the elucidating of the networks of
mutually reciprocal systems within systems of
complex interaction. The validity claim, in
other words, is grounded in interobjective
fit, or simply functional fit. In the Lower
Left quadrant, on the other hand, we are
concerned not simply with how objects fit
together in physical space, but how subjects
fit together in cultural space. The validity
claim here concerns the way that my
subjective consciousness fits with your
subjective consciousness, and how we together
decide upon those cultural practices that
allow us to inhabit the same cultural space.
The validity claim, in other words, concerns
the appropriateness or justness of our
statements and actions (ethics in the
broadest sense). Not just, Is it true?, but
is it good, right, appropriate, just? And if
you and I are to inhabit the same cultural
space, we must implicitly or explicitly ask
and to some degree answer those
intersubjective questions. We must find ways,
not simply to access objective truth or
subjective truthfulness, but to reach mutual
understanding in a shared intersubjective
space. Not that we have to agree with each
other, but that we can recognize each other,
the opposite of which is, quite simply, war.
I have summarized these validity claims (and
their different languages) in Figure
2.
INDIVIDUAL
|
INTERIOR
Left
Hand Paths
SUBJECTIVE
truthfulness
sincerity
integrity
trustworthiness
I
|
EXTERIOR
Right
Hand Paths
OBJECTIVE
truth
correspondence
representation
propositional
it
|
COLLECTIVE
|
we
justness
cultural fit
mutual understanding
rightness
INTERSUBJECTIVE
|
it
functional
fit
systems theory web
structural-functionalism
social systems mesh
INTEROBJECTIVE
|
Figure
2. Validity Claims
If
we now look carefully at each of these four
validity
claims or `types of
truth'
and attempt to discern what all of them have
in common -- that is, what all authentic
knowledge claims have in common -- I believe
we find the following (W., 1996c; 1997):
Each
valid mode of knowing consists of an
injunction, an apprehension, and a
confirmation.
The injunction is always of the form, `If you
want to know this, do this.' This
injunction,
exemplar, or paradigm is, as K. pointed out,
an actual
practice,
not a mere concept. If you want to know if it
is raining outside, go to the window and
look. If you want to know if a cell has a
nucleus, then learn to take histological
sections, learn how to stain cells, put them
under a microscope, and look. If you want to
know the meaning of Hamlet, learn to read
English, get the play, read it, and see for
yourself. In other words, the injunction or
exemplar brings forth
a
particular data domain -- a particular
experience, apprehension, or
evidence
(the second strand of all valid knowledge).
This apprehension, data, or evidence is then
tested in the circle of those who have
completed the first two strands; bad data or
bad evidence is rebuffed, and this
potential
falsifiability is the crucial third component
of all genuine validity
claims;
it most certainly is not restricted to
empirical or sensory claims alone: there is
sensory experience, mental experience, and
spiritual experience, and any specific claim
in each of those domains can potentially be
falsified by further data in those domains.
For example, the meaning of Hamlet is not
about the joys of war: that is a bad
interpretation and can be falsified by
virtually any community of adequate
interpreters. Thus,
each
holon seems to have at least four facets
(intentional, behavioural, cultural, and
social), each of which is accessed by a
different type of truth or validity claim
(objective truth, subjective truthfulness,
intersubjective justness, and inter-
objective functional fit). And all of those
four validity claims follow the three strands
of valid knowledge acquisition: injunction,
apprehension, confirmation/rejection (or
exemplar, evidence,
falsifiability).
Most fascinating of all, perhaps, is that
each quadrant has correlates in all the
others. That is, since every holon apparently
has these four facets (intentional,
behavioural, cultural, and social), each of
these facets has a very specific correlation
with all the others. These can readily be
seen in Figure 1. For example, wherever we
find a holon with a limbic system, we find
that it has an interior capacity for impulse/
emotion, it lives in the collective of a
group, herd, or family, and it shares an
emotional-sexual worldview. Apparently each
quadrant causes, and is caused by, the
others, in a circular and nonreducible
fashion, which is precisely why all four
types of truth (and all four validity claims)
are necessary to access the various
dimensions of any holon. Notice that
accessing the Left Hand quadrants all depend
upon interpretation to some extent, whereas
the Right Hand quadrants are all, more or
less, empirical events. Objective exteriors
can be seen, but all depth requires
interpretation. My dog can see these physical
words written on this page, because the
signifiers exist in the sensorimotor
worldspace; but you and I are trying to
understand the signified meanings, which are
not merely empirical and cannot be seen
solely with the eye of flesh, but rather are
partly intentional and thus can be seen only
with the mind's interior apprehension: you
must interpret the meaning of this sentence.
What does he mean by that? You can see my
behaviour for yourself (with the monological
gaze); but you can access my intentionality
only by talking to me, and this dialogical
exchange requires constant interpretation
guided by mutual understanding in the
hermeneutic circle. Thus, it appears that the
two Right Hand validity claims (objective
truth and functional fit) are grounded in
empirical observation (and some sort of
correspondence theory of truth); whereas the
two Left Hand validity claims (subjective
truthfulness and intersubjective meaning)
require extensive interpretation or
hermeneutics (and some sort of coherence
theory of truth). And perhaps we can begin to
see why
the human knowledge quest has almost always
divided into these two broad camps, empirical
vs. hermeneutic, positivistic vs.
interpretive, scientific vs. intuitive,
analytic vs.
transcendental,
Anglo-Saxon and Continental, Right Hand and
Left Hand, the correct point being that both
are indispensable, and that
we
should not attempt to go one-handed into that
dark strange world known as
ourselves.
The Further Reaches of Human Nature We need
one last piece of background information.
Figure 1 summarizes the four main strands of
evolutionary unfolding to date. But who is to
say this extraordinary unfolding has to stop
with the formal or rational stage? Why not
higher stages? Who can believably say that
this amazing current of evolution simply came
to a crashing halt once it produced you and
me? Several of the theories of consciousness
that I summarized in the Introduction are
predicated on the fact that consciousness
evolution seems to show evidence of higher or
postformal (or `post-postconventional')
stages of growth. There appear to be, in
other words, several higher stages in the
Upper Left quadrant. The school of
transpersonal psychology, in particular, has
begun to investigate these higher stages.
Substantial crosscultural evidence already
suggests that
there are at least four broad stages of
postformal consciousness development -- that
is, development that goes beyond but includes
the formal operational level: the psychic,
the subtle, the causal, and the
nondual.
(Since each quadrant has correlates in the
others, we also see different brain states
associated with these postformal states, as
well as different microcommunities or
`sanghas', the details of which are outside
the scope of the present paper. See W.
[1995b; 1997] for further
discussion.) The precise definitions of those
four postformal stages need not concern us;
interested readers can consult the
appropriate authorities (e.g. W. and V.
1993). The point is simply that there now
exists a substantial amount of rather
compelling evidence that interior
consciousness can continue the evolutionary
process of transcend and include, so that
even rationality itself is transcended (but
included!) in postformal stages of awareness,
stages that increasingly take on
characteristics that might best be described
as spiritual or mystical. But this is a
`mysticism' thoroughly grounded in genuine
experience and verifiable by all those who
have successfully followed the requisite set
of conscious experiments, injunctions, and
exemplars. In
Zen, for example,
we have the injunction known as shikan-taza
(or sitting meditation). The mastery of this
exemplar or paradigm opens one to various
kensho or satori experiences (direct
apprehensions of the spiritual data brought
forth by the injunction), experiences which
are then thoroughly tested by the community
of those who have completed the first two
strands. Bad, partial, or inaccurate
apprehensions are thoroughly rebuffed and
rejected by the community of the adequate
(falsi- fiability). Zen, in other words,
aggressively follows the three strands of all
valid knowledge acquisition, which is
probably why it has gained such a solid and
`no-nonsense' reputation in spiritual
studies. [3]
From these types of experimental,
phenomenological, Left-Hand paths of
knowledge acquisition, transpersonal
researchers have concluded, as I said, that
there exist at least four higher stages of
postformal development available to men and
women as structural potentials of their own
bodymind. If, with reference to the Upper
Left quadrant, we add these four higher and
postformal stages to the standard stages
given in Figure 1, we arrive at the Great
Chain of Being, precisely as traditionally
outlined by philosopher-sages from P. to A.
to Asanga to Chih-I to Lady. T. Figure 3 is a
short summary of the Great Chain as given by
perhaps its two most gifted exponents, P. and
Sri A. showing the stunning similarity of the
Great Chain wherever it appeared, East or
West, North or South (a truly `multicultural'
map if ever there was one).
Absolute
One (Godhead)
Nous (Intuitive Mind)
[subtle]
Soul/World-Soul
[psychic]
Creative Reason
[vision-logic]
Logical Faculty [formop]
Concepts and Opinions
Images
Pleasure/pain (emotions)
Perception
Sensation
Vegetative life function
Matter
PLOTINUS
|
Satchitananda/Supermind
(Godhead)
Intuitive Mind/Overmind
Illumined World-Mind
Higher-mind/Network-mind
Logical mind
Concrete mind [conop]
Lower mind [preop]
Vital-emotional; impulse
Perception
Sensation
Vegetative
Matter (physical)
AUROBINDO
|
Figure
3. The Great Chain of Being and
Consciousness
The
Great Chain of Being and Consciousness Again,
the exact details need not detain us;
interested readers can consult other works
for a finer discussion (S., 1976; L., 1964;
W. et al., 1986). The point is simply that
the interior dimensions of the human being
seem to be composed of a spectrum of
consciousness, running from sensation to
perception to impulse to image to symbol to
concept to rule to formal to vision-logic to
psychic to subtle to causal to nondual
states. In simplified form, this spectrum
appears to range from subconscious to
self-conscious to superconscious; from
prepersonal to personal to transpersonal;
from instinctual to mental to spiritual; from
preformal to formal to postformal; from
instinct to ego to God. Now
that
is simply another way to say that each of the
quadrants consists of several different
levels or dimensions, as can be readily seen
in Figure 1.
Moreover, these levels or dimensions have,
for the most part, evolved or unfolded over
time, linked by an evolutionary logic
apparently pandemic in its operation (D.,
1995; H., 1979; W., 1995b). Thus, you can
perhaps start to see why I maintain that an
`all-quadrant, all-level' approach is the
minimum degree of sophistication that we need
into order to secure anything resembling a
genuinely integral theory of consciousness.
And remember, all of this is suggested, not
by metaphysical foundations and speculations,
but by a rigorous data search on evidence
already available and already largely
uncontested. That being so, let us continue
drawing conclusions from this `all-quadrant,
all-level' data base Consciousness
Distributed .
If
we now return to
the
dozen theories of
consciousness
that I outlined in the Introduction, we can
perhaps start to see
why
all of them have proven to be so
durable:
they are each accessing one or more of the
forty plus quadrant-levels of existence, and
thus each is telling us something very
important (but partial) about consciousness.
This is why I strongly maintain that
all
of those approaches are equally
important
for an integral view of consciousness. An
`all-level, all-quadrant' approach finds
important truths in each of them, and in very
specific ways, which I will explain in detail
in a moment. But it is not simply that we
have a given phenomenon called
`consciousness' and that these various
approaches are each giving us a different
view of the beast. Rather, it appears that
consciousness actually exists distributed
across all four quadrants with all of their
various levels and dimensions. There is no
one quadrant (and certainly no one level) to
which we can point and say, There is
consciousness. Consciousness
is in no way localized in that
fashion.
Thus, the first step toward a genuine theory
of consciousness is the realization that
consciousness is not located in the organism.
Rather, consciousness is a four-quadrant
affair, and it exists, if it exists at all,
distributed across all four quadrants,
anchored equally in each.
Neither
consciousness, personality, individual
agency, nor psychopathology can be located
simply or solely in the individual
organism.
The subjective domain (Upper Left) is always
already embedded in intersubjective (Lower
Left), objective (Upper Right), and
interobjective (Lower Right) realities, all
of which are partly constitutive of
subjective agency and its pathologies. It is
true that the Upper Left quadrant is the
locus of consciousness as it appears in an
individual, but that's the point: as it
appears in an individual. Yet consciousness
on the whole is
anchored in, and distributed across, all of
the quadrants
-- intentional, behavioural, cultural, and
social. If you `erase' any quadrant, they all
disappear, because each is intrinsically
necessary for the existence of the others.
Thus, it is quite true that consciousness is
anchored in the physical brain (as maintained
by theories 1, 3, 6, 8). But consciousness is
also and equally anchored in interior
intentionality (as maintained by theories 2,
4, 7, 10, 11), an intentionality that cannot
be explained in physicalist or empiricist
terms nor disclosed by their methods or their
validity claims. By the same token, neither
can consciousness be finally located in the
individual (whether of the Upper Left or
Upper Right or both together), because
consciousness is also fully anchored in
cultural meaning (the intersubjective chains
of cultural signifieds), without which there
is simply no individuated consciousness at
all. Without this background of cultural
practices and meanings (Lower Left), my
individual intentions do not and cannot even
develop, as the occasional cases of `wolf
boy' demonstrate. In precisely the same way
that
there is no private language, there is no
individual
consciousness.
You cannot generate meaning in a vacuum, nor
can you generate it with a physical brain
alone, but only in an intersubjective circle
of mutual recognition. Physical brains raised
in the wild (`wolf boy') generate neither
personal autonomy nor linguistic competence,
from which it plainly follows, the physical
brain per se is not the autonomous seat of
consciousness. Likewise, consciousness is
also embedded in, and distributed across, the
material social systems in which it finds
itself. Not just chains of cultural
signifieds, but chains of social signifiers,
determine the specific contours of any
particular manifestation of consciousness,
and without
the material conditions of the social system,
both individuated consciousness and personal
integrity fail to
emerge.
In short, consciousness is not located merely
in the physical brain, nor in the physical
organism, nor in the ecological system, nor
in the cultural context, nor does it emerge
from any of those domains. Rather,
it
is anchored in, and distributed across, all
of those domains with all of their available
levels.
The Upper Left quadrant is simply the
functional locus of a distributed phenomenon.
In particular, consciousness cannot be pinned
down with `simple location' (which means, any
type of location in the sensorimotor
worldspace, whether that location actually be
simple or dispersed or systems-oriented).
Consciousness is distributed, not just in
spaces of extension (Right Hand), but also in
spaces of intention (Left Hand), and attempts
to reduce one to the other have consistently
and spectacularly failed. Consciousness is
not located inside the brain, nor outside the
brain either, because both of these are
physical boundaries with simple location, and
yet a good part of consciousness exists not
merely in physical space but in emotional
spaces, mental spaces, and spiritual spaces,
none of which have simple location, and yet
all of which are as real (or more real) than
simple physical space (they are Left Hand,
not Right Hand, occasions). The Right Hand
reductionists (subtle reductionists) attempt
to reduce intentional spaces to extensional
spaces and then `locate' consciousness in a
hierarchical network of physically extended
emergents (atoms to molecules to cells to
nervous system to brain), and that will
never, never work. It gives us, more or less,
only half the story (the Right Hand half). D.
C. (1995) recently caused a sensation by
having his essay `The Puzzle of Conscious
Experience' published by Scientific American,
bastion of physicalist science. C.'s stunning
conclusion was that
subjective
consciousness continues to defy all
objectivist
explanations.
`Toward this end,
I
propose that conscious experience be
considered a fundamental
feature,
irreducible to anything more basic. The idea
may seem strange at first, but consistency
seems to demand it' (p. 83). It never ceases
to amaze how Anglo-Saxon philosophers greet
the reinvention of the wheel with such fuss.
But C. makes a series of excellent points.
The first is the
irreducibility of
consciousness,
which has to be
`added'
to the physical
world
in order to give a complete account of the
universe. `Thus, a complete theory will have
two
components:
physical laws, telling us about the behavior
of physical systems from the infinitesimal to
the cosmological, and what we might call
psychophysical laws, telling us how some of
those systems are associated with conscious
experience. These two components will
constitute a
true theory of
everything'
(p. 83). This simple attempt to reintroduce
both Left and Right Hand domains to the
Kosmos has been considered quite bold, a
testament to the power of reductionism
against which so obvious a statement seems
radical. C. moves toward a formulation:
`Perhaps
information has two basic aspects: a physical
one and an experiential one. . . . Wherever
we find conscious experience, it exists as
one aspect of an information state, the other
aspect of which is embedded in a physical
process in the
brain'
(p. 85). That is, each state has an
interior/intentional and exterior/physical
aspect. My view, of course, is that all
holons have not just those two, but rather
four, fundamental and irreducible aspects, so
that every `information state' actually and
simultaneously has an intentional,
behavioural, cultural, and social aspect; and
moreover, each of those aspects has at least
ten basic levels -- much closer to a theory
of everything, if such even makes any sense.
C. goes on to point out that all of the
physicalist and reductionist approaches to
consciousness (including D. D.'s and F..
C.'s) only solve what C. calls `the easy
problems' (such as objective integration in
brain processes) leaving the central mystery
of consciousness untouched. He is quite
right, of course. The funny thing is, all of
the physicalist scientists who are sitting
there and reading C,.s essay are already
fully in touch with the mystery: they are
already directly in touch with their lived
experience, immediate awareness, and basic
consciousness. But instead of directly
investigating that stream (with, say,
vipassana meditation [V. et al.,
1993]), they sit there, reading C's
essay, and attempt to understand their own
consciousness by objectifying it in terms of
digital bits in neuronal networks, or
connectionist pathways hierarchically
summating in the joy of seeing a sunrise --
and when none of those really seem to explain
anything, they scratch their heads and wonder
why the mystery of consciousness just refuses
to be solved. C. says that `the hard problem'
is `the question of how physical processes in
the brain give rise to subjective experience'
-- that is, how physical and mental interact.
This is still the Cartesian question, and it
is no closer to being solved today than it
was in D.' time -- precisely because the
brain (and every Right Hand event) has simple
location, whereas intentionality (and every
Left Hand event) does not. For example, in
the simple hierarchy: physical matter,
sensation, perception, impulse, image,
symbol, concept . . ., there is an
explanatory gap between matter and sensation
that has not yet been satisfactorily bridged
(...edit.)
-- not by neuroscience, nor cognitive
science, nor neuropsychology, nor
phenomenology, nor systems theory. As D. J.
(1982) put it in his review of R. G.'s Mind
in Science (1982), `Seeing is broken down
into component processes: light, which is
physical; excitation in the neural network of
eye and brain, which is also physical;
sensation, which is subjective and resists
analysis in strictly physical terms; and
perception, which involves cognitive
inference from sensation and is thus even
less susceptible to strictly physical
analysis.' G. himself poses the question,
`How is sensation related to neural
activity?' and then summarizes the precise
state-of-the-art knowledge in this area:
`Unfortunately, we do not know.' The reason,
he says, is that there is `an irreducible gap
between physics and sensation which
physiology cannot bridge' -- what he calls
`an impassible gulf between our two realms.'
Between, that is, the Left and Right halves
of the Kosmos. But, of course, it is not
actually an impassable gulf: you see the
physical world right now, so the gulf is
bridged. The question is, how? And the
answer, as I suggested in Eye to Eye, only
discloses itself to postformal awareness.
The
`impassable gulf' is simply another name for
the subject/object
dualism,
which is the hallmark, not of D.'s error, but
of all manifestation, which D. simply
happened to spot with unusual clarity. It is
still with us, this gap, and it remains the
mystery hidden in the heart of samsara, a
mystery that absolutely refuses to yield its
secrets to anything less than postformal and
nondual consciousness development (I will
return to this in a moment). In the meantime,
one thing seems certain: the attempt to solve
this dilemma by any sort of reductionism --
attempting to reduce Left to Right or Right
to Left, or any quadrant to any other, or any
level to any other -- is doomed to failure,
simply because the four quadrants are
apparently very real aspects of the human
holon, aspects that aggressively resist being
erased or reduced. Such reductionisms, to
borrow J.'s phrase, `create mysteries or
nonsense, or both together'. And that is
precisely why I
believe that an `all-quadrant, all-level'
approach to consciousness is very likely the
only viable approach
to
a
genuinely integral theory of
consciousness.
We can now look briefly at what might be
involved in the methodology of such an
approach. Methodology of an Integral Approach
The methodology
of an integral study of consciousness would
apparently need to include
two
broad wings:
the first
is the simultaneous
tracking
of the various levels and lines in each of
the quadrants, and then noting their
correlations, each to all the others, and in
no way trying to reduce any to the others.
The second is the
interior transformation of the
researchers
themselves. This is the real reason, I
suspect, that the Left Hand dimensions of
immediate consciousness have been so
intensely ignored and aggressively devalued
by most `scientific' researchers. Any Right
Hand path of knowledge can be engaged without
a demand for interior transformation (or
change in level of consciousness); one merely
learns a new translation (within the same
level of consciousness). More specifically,
most researchers have already, in the process
of growing up, transformed to rationality
(formop or vision-logic), and no higher
transformations are required for empiric-
analytic or systems theory investigations.
But the
Left Hand paths, at the point that they begin
to go postformal, demand a transformation of
consciousness in
the researchers themselves. You can master
100 per cent of quantum physics without
transforming consciousness; but you cannot in
any fashion master Zen without doing so. You
do not have to transform to understand D.'s
Consciousness Explained; you merely
translate. But you must transform to actually
understand P.' Enneads. You are already
adequate to D., because you both have already
transformed to rationality, and thus the
referents of D.'s sentences can be easily
seen by you (whether or not you agree, you
can at least see what he is referring to,
because his referents exist in the rational
worldspace, plain as day). But if you have
not transformed to (or at least strongly
glimpsed) the causal and nondual realms
(transpersonal and postformal), you will not
be able to see the referents of most of P's
sentences. They will make no sense to you.
You will think P. is `seeing things' -- and
he is, and so could you and I, if we both
transform to those postformal worldspaces,
whereupon the referents of P.' sentences,
referents that exist in the causal and
nondual worldspaces, become plain as day.
And
that transformation is an absolutely
unavoidable part of the
paradigm
(the injunction) of an integral approach to
consciousness. So those two wings -- the
nonreductionistic `simultracking' of all
quadrants and the transformation of
researchers themselves -- are both necessary
for an integral approach to consciousness, in
my opinion. Thus,
I
do not mean for an integral theory of
consciousness to be an eclecticism of the
dozen major
approaches
I summarized above, but rather a tightly
integrated approach that follows
intrinsically from the holonic nature of the
Kosmos. The methodology of an integral
approach to consciousness is obviously
complex, but it follows some of the simple
guidelines we have already outlined: three
strands, four validity claims, ten or more
levels of each.
To
briefly review:
*The three strands operative in all valid
knowledge are injunction, apprehension,
confirmation (or exemplar, evidence,
confirmation/rejection; or instrumental,
data, fallibilism). These three strands
operate in the generation of all valid
knowledge -- on any level, in any quadrant,
or so I maintain. *But each quadrant has a
different architecture and thus a different
type of validity claim through which the
three strands operate: propositional truth
(Upper Right), subjective truthfulness (Upper
Left), cultural meaning (Lower Left), and
functional fit (Lower Right). *Further, there
are at least ten major levels of development
in each of those quadrants (ranging from the
eye of flesh to the eye of mind to the eye of
contemplation), and thus the knowledge quest
takes on different forms as we move through
those various levels in each quadrant. The
three strands and four claims are still fully
operating in each case, but the specific
contours vary.
I'll
quickly run through the major schools of
consciousness
studies outlined in the Introduction and
indicate exactly what is involved in each
case. An All-Quadrant, All-Level Approach
The
emergent/connectionist cognitive science
models
(such as A.S.'s Stairway to the Mind) apply
the three strands of knowledge acquisition to
the Upper Right quadrant, the objective
aspects of individual holons. Statements are
thus guided by the validity claim of
propositional truth tied to empirically
observable events, which means that in this
approach the three strands will acknowledge
only those holons that register in the
sensorimotor worldspace (i.e. holons with
simple location, empirically observable by
the senses or their extensions).
Nonetheless,
all holons without exception are holarchic,
or composed of hierarchical holons within
holons
indefinitely, and so this
emergent/connectionist approach will apply
the three strands to objective, exterior,
hierarchical systems as they appear in the
individual, objective organism (the Upper
Right quadrant). All of this is fine, right
up to the point where these approaches
overstep their epistemic warrant and try to
account for the other quadrants solely in
terms of their own. In the case of the
emergent/connectionist theories, this means
that they will present a valid Upper Right
hierarchy (atoms to molecules to cells to
neural pathways to reptilian stem to limbic
system to neocortex), but then consciousness
is somehow supposed to miraculously jump out
at the top level (the Left Hand dimensions
are often treated as a monolithic and
monological single entity, and then this
`consciousness' is simply added on top of the
Right Hand hierarchy, instead of seeing that
there are levels of consciousness which exist
as the interior or Left Hand dimension of
every step in the Right Hand hierarchy).
Thus, Scott presents a standard Upper Right
hierarchy, which he gives as atoms,
molecules, biochemical structures, nerve
impulses, neurons, assemblies of neurons,
brain. Then, and only then, out pops
`consciousness and culture,' his two highest
levels. But, of course, consciousness and
culture are not levels in the Upper Right
quadrant, but important quadrants themselves,
each of which has a correlative hierarchy of
its own developmental unfolding (and each of
which is intimately interwoven with the Upper
Right, but can in no way be reduced to or
solely explained by the Upper Right). So in
an integral theory of consciousness, we would
certainly include the Upper Right hierarchy
and those aspects of the
emergent/connectionist models that
legitimately reflect that territory; but
where those theories overstep their epistemic
warrant (and are thus reduced to
reductionism), we should perhaps move on.
The
various schools of
introspectionism
take as their basic referent the interior
intentionality of consciousness, the
immediate lived experience and lifeworld of
the individual (the Upper Left quadrant).
This means that, in these approaches, the
three strands of valid knowledge will be
applied to the data of immediate
consciousness, under the auspices of the
validity claim of truthfulness (because
interior reporting requires sincere reports:
there is no other way to get at the
interiors). Introspectionism is intimately
related to interpretation (hermeneutics),
because most of the contents of consciousness
are referential and intentional, and thus
their meaning requires and demands
interpretation: What is the meaning of this
sentence? of last night's dream? of War and
Peace? As we have seen, all valid
interpretation follows the three strands
(injunction, apprehension, confirmation). In
this case, the three strands are being
applied to symbolic/referential occasions and
not merely to sensorimotor occasions (which
would yield only empiric-analytic knowledge).
As everybody knows, this interpretive and
dialogical knowledge is trickier, more
delicate, and more subtle than the
head-banging obviousness of the monological
gaze, but that doesn't mean it is less
important (in fact, it means it is more
significant). The
introspective/interpretative approaches thus
give us the interior contours of individual
consciousness: the three strands legitimately
applied to the interior of individual holons
under the auspices of truthfulness. This
exploration and elucidation of the Upper Left
quadrant is an important facet of an integral
approach to consciousness, and it is perhaps
best exemplified in the first-person,
phenomenological, and interpretive accounts
of consciousness that can be found from depth
psychology to phenomenology to meditation and
contemplation, all of which, at their most
authentic, are guided by injunction,
apprehension, and confirmation, thus
legitimately grounding their knowledge claims
in reproducible evidence.
Developmental
psychology goes
one step further and inspects the actual
stages of the unfolding of this individual
consciousness. Since it usually aspires to a
more scientific status, developmental
psychology often combines an examination of
the interior or Left Hand reports of
experience (the semantics of consciousness,
guided by interpretative truthfulness and
intersubjective understanding) with a Right
Hand or objective analysis of the structures
of consciousness (the syntax of
consciousness, guided by propositional truth
and functional fit). This developmental
structuralism traces most of its lineage to
the Piagetian revolution; it is an
indispensable tool in the elucidation of
consciousness and a crucial aspect of any
integral approach. (It is rare, however, that
any of these approaches clearly combine, via
pragmatics, both the semantics and the syntax
of the stages of consciousness development,
which is an integration I am especially
attempting to include.)
Eastern
and nonordinary state
models
point out that there are more things in the
Upper Left quadrant than are dreamt of in our
philosophy, not to mention our conventional
psychologies. The three strands of all valid
knowledge are here applied to states that are
largely nonverbal, postformal, and
post-postconventional. In Zen, as we saw, we
have a primary injunction or paradigm (zazen,
sitting meditation), which yields direct
experiential data (kensho, satori), which are
then thrown against the community of those
who have completed the first two strands and
tested for validity. Bad data are soundly
rejected, and all of this is open to ongoing
review and revision in light of subsequent
experience and further communally generated
data. Those approaches are quite right: no
theory of consciousness can hope to be
complete that ignores the data from the
higher or postformal dimensions of
consciousness itself, and this exploration of
the further reaches of the Upper Left
quadrant is surely a central aspect of an
integral theory of consciousness. Moreover,
this demands that, at some point, the
researchers themselves must transform their
own consciousness in order to be adequate to
the evidence. This is not a loss of
objectivity but rather the prerequisite for
data accumulation, just as we do not say that
learning to use a microscope is the loss of
one's objectivity -- it is simply the
learning of the injunctive strand, which is
actually the precondition of a truly
objective (or nonbiased) understanding of any
data. In this case, the data is postformal,
and so therefore is the injunction.
Advocates
of subtle energies (prana,
bioenergy)
bring an important piece of the puzzle to
this investigation, but they often seem to
believe that these subtle energies are the
central or even sole aspect of consciousness,
whereas they are merely one of the lower
dimensions in the overall spectrum itself.
For the Great Chain theorists, East and West,
prana is simply the link between the material
body and the mental domain, and in a sense I
believe that is true enough. But the whole
point of a four-quadrant analysis is that
what the great wisdom traditions tended to
represent as disembodied, transcendental, and
nonmaterial modes actually have correlates in
the material domain (every Left Hand occasion
has a Right Hand correlate), and thus it is
much more accurate to speak of the physical
bodymind, the emotional bodymind, the mental
bodymind, and so on. This simultaneously
allows transcendental occasions and firmly
grounds them. And in this conception, prana
is simply the emotional bodymind in general,
with correlates in all four quadrants
(subjective: protoemotions; objective: limbic
system; intersubjective: magical;
interobjective: tribal). What is not helpful,
however, is to claim that these energies
alone hold the key to consciousness. Likewise
with the
psi approaches,
which are clearly some of the more
controversial aspects of consciousness
studies (telepathy, precognition,
psychokinesis, clairvoyance). I believe that
the existence of some types of psychic
phenomena is quite likely, and various
meta-analyses of legitimate psychic research
have concluded that something real is afoot.
I have discussed this in the book Eye to Eye
and won't repeat my observations here. I
would simply like to emphasize that, once it
is realized that the sensorimotor worldspace
is merely one of at least ten worldspaces, we
are released from the insanity of trying to
account for all phenomena on the basis of
empirical occasions alone. At the same time,
precisely because the sensorimotor worldspace
is the anchor of the worldview of scientific
materialism, as soon as some sort of proof of
non-sensorimotor occasions (such as psi) is
found, it can be excitedly blown all out of
proportion. Psi events indeed cannot be
unequivocally located in the sensorimotor
worldspace, but then neither can logic,
mathematics, poetry, history, meaning, value,
or morals, and so what? None of the
intentional and Left Hand dimensions of
consciousness follow the physical rules of
simple location, and we don't need psi events
to tell us that. Thus, an integral theory of
consciousness would take seriously at least
the possibility of psi phenomena, without
blowing their possible existence all out of
proportion; they are, at best, a very small
slice of a very big pie. Of the dozen major
approaches to consciousness studies that I
listed in the Introduction,
the
quantum
approaches
are the only ones that I believe
lack
substantial evidence at this
time,
and when I say that they can be included in
an integral theory of consciousness, I am
generously holding open the possibility that
they may eventually prove worthwhile. In Eye
to Eye I review the various interpretations
of quantum mechanics and its possible role in
consciousness studies, and I will not repeat
that discussion, except to say that to date
the theoretical conclusions (such as that
intentionality collapses the
Schr<148>dinger wave function) are
based on extremely speculative notions that
most physicists themselves find quite
dubious. The central problem with these
quantum approaches, as I see it, is that they
are trying to solve the subject/object
dualism on a level at which it cannot be
solved; as I suggested above, that problem is
(dis)solved only in postformal development,
and no amount of formal propositions will
come anywhere near the solution. Nonetheless,
this is still a fruitful line of research, if
for no other reason than what it demonstrates
in its failures; and more positively, it
might help to elucidate some of the
interactions between biological
intentionality and matter. All of those
approaches centre on the individual. But the
cultural approaches to consciousness point
out that individual consciousness does not,
and cannot, arise on its own. All subjective
events are always already intersubjective
events. There is no private language; there
is no radically autonomous consciousness. The
very words we are both now sharing were not
invented by you or me, were not created by
you or me, do not come solely from my
consciousness or from yours. Rather, you and
I simply find ourselves in a vast
intersubjective worldspace in which we live
and move and have our being. This
cultural
worldspace
(the Lower Left quadrant) has a hand in the
very structure, shape, feel, and tone of your
consciousness and of mine, and no theory of
consciousness is complete that ignores this
crucial dimension. In these cultural
hermeneutic approaches, the three strands are
applied to the intersubjective circle itself,
the deep semantics of the worlds of meaning
in which you and I collectively exist. These
cultural worldspaces evolve and develop
(archaic to magic to mythic to mental, etc.),
and the three strands applied to those
worldspaces, under the auspices of mutual
understanding and appropriateness, reveal
those cultural contours of consciousness,
which is exactly the course these important
approaches take. This, too, is a crucial
component of an integral theory of
consciousness.
[4]
Such are some of the very important (if
partial) truths of cultural hermeneutics for
individual consciousness. Likewise for the
social
sciences,
which deal not so much with interior
worldviews and interpretations, but with the
exterior and objective and empirical aspects
of social systems. Cultural hermeneutics
(Lower Left) is a type of `interior holism'
that constantly asks, `What does it mean?',
whereas the social sciences (Lower Right) are
a type of `exterior holism' that are
constantly asking instead, `What does it do?'
-- in other words, mutual understanding
versus functional fit. But both of these
approaches tell us something very important
about the collectivities in which individual
consciousness is thoroughly embedded. As for
the social sciences: the materialities of
communication, the techno-economic base, and
the social system in the objective sense
reach deep into the contours of consciousness
to mould the final product. The three
strands, under the auspices of propositional
truth and functional fit, expose these social
determinants at each of their levels, which
is exactly the appropriate research agenda of
the empirical social sciences. A narrow
Marxist approach, of course, has long been
discredited (precisely because it oversteps
its warrant, reducing all quadrants to the
Lower Right); but the moment of truth in
historical materialism is that the modes of
material production (e.g. foraging,
horticultural, agrarian, industrial,
informational) have a profound and
constitutive influence on the actual contents
of individual consciousness, and thus
an
understanding of these social determinants is
absolutely crucial for an integral theory of
consciousness.
Such an understanding would take its rightful
place alongside the dozen or so other
significant approaches to the study of
consciousness.
Summary
and Conclusion
I hope that
this outline, abbreviated as it is, is
nonetheless enough to indicate the broad
contours of the methodology of an integral
theory of consciousness, and that it
sufficiently indicates the inadequacy of any
less comprehensive approaches. The integral
aspect enters in simultaneously tracking each
level and quadrant in its own terms and then
noting the correlations between them. This is
a methodology of phenomenologically and
contemporaneously tracking the various levels
and lines in each of the quadrants and then
correlating their overall relations, each to
all the others, and in no way trying to
reduce any to the others. This
`simultracking' requires a judicious and
balanced use of all four validity claims
(truth, truthfulness, cultural meaning,
functional fit), each of which is redeemed
under the warrant of the three strands of
valid knowledge acquisition (injunction,
apprehension, confirmation) carried out
across the dozen or more levels in each of
the quadrants -- which means, in shorthand
fashion, the investigation of sensory
experience, mental experience, and spiritual
experience: the eye of flesh, the eye of
mind, and the eye of contemplation:
all-level, all-quadrant. And this means that,
where appropriate, researchers will have to
engage various injunctions that transform
their own consciousness, if they are to be
adequate to the postformal data. You cannot
vote on the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem
if you do not learn geometry (the
injunction); likewise, you cannot vote on the
truth of Buddha Nature if you do not learn
meditation. All valid knowledge has
injunction, apprehension, and confirmation;
the injunctions are all of the form, `If you
want to know this, you must do this' -- and
thus, when it comes to consciousness studies
itself, the
utterly obvious but much-resisted conclusion
is that certain interior injunctions will
have to be followed by researchers
themselves.
If we do not do this, then we will not know
this. We will be the Churchmen refusing
Galileo's injunction: look through this
telescope and tell me what you see. Thus,
an
integral approach to consciousness might
include the following
agendas:
1.
Continue
research
on the various particular approaches. That
is, continue to refine our understanding of
the many pieces of the puzzle of
consciousness. The twelve approaches I
briefly outlined are twelve significant
pieces to this extraordinary enigma; each is
profoundly important; each deserves continued
and vigorous research and development. Why
should we include all twelve of these
approaches? Aren't some of them a little
`spooky' and `far out'? And perhaps shouldn't
we exclude some of those? At this early stage
in integral studies, I believe we need to err
on the side of generosity, if only because
reality itself is so consistently weird. No
human mind, I believe, is capable of
producing 100 per cent error. We might say,
nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the
time. And that means that each of the dozen
approaches almost certainly has some sort of
important (if limited) truth to contribute;
and, particularly at the beginning of our
integral quest, I believe we should throw our
net as wide as we possibly
can.
2. Confront the simple fact that, in some
cases, a change in consciousness on the part
of researchers themselves is mandatory for
the investigation of
consciousness
itself. As numerous approaches (e.g. 7, 9,
10) have pointed out, the higher or
postformal stages of consciousness
development can only be adequately accessed
by those who have themselves developed to a
postformal level. If we are investigating
postformal domains, postformal injunctions
are mandatory. Failure to do so does not
insure `objectivity' in postformal studies:
it insures failure to grasp the data at the
very start. 3.
Continue to grope our way toward a genuinely
integral theory of consciousness
itself.
Because the twelve approaches have tended to
remain separate (and sometimes antagonistic)
branches of human inquiry, it does indeed
appear that they are in some ways working
with different data domains, and these
differences are not to be casually denied or
dismissed. At the same time, I take it as
plainly obvious that the universe hangs
together, and thus an equally legitimate
endeavour is to investigate, both
theoretically and methodologically, the ways
that these various elements are intrinsically
hooked together as aspects of the unbroken
Kosmos. The fact that, for the most part,
each approach has stayed in its own cage does
not change the fact that reality itself leaps
those cages all the time. To grope our way
toward an integral approach means that we
should attempt to follow reality and make
those leaps as well. This includes the actual
methodology of `simultracking' the various
phenomena in each level-quadrant and noting
their actual interrelations and correlations
(the simultracking of events in
`all-quadrant, all-level' space). The
quadrants and levels are in some sense quite
different, but they are different aspects of
the Kosmos, which means that they also
intrinsically touch each other in profound
ways. Let us note the ways in which they
touch, and thus attempt theoretically to
elucidate this wonderfully rich and
interwoven tapestry. Thus, each of the dozen
approaches finds an important and
indispensable place, not as an eclecticism,
but as an intrinsic aspect of the holonic
Kosmos. The methodologies
that purport to give us a `theory of
consciousness,' but which investigate only
one quadrant (not to mention only one level
in one quadrant) are clearly not giving us an
adequate account of consciousness at
all.
Rather, an `all-quadrant, all-level' approach
holds the only chance of an authentic and
integral theory of consciousness, if such
indeed exists.
Footnotes
1.
See J. (1980) for an extended discussion of
this theme. J.correlates `microevolution' (of
individual holons) with `macroevolution'
(their collective/social forms), pointing out
the co- evolutionary interactions between
individual and social. Thus, in the
physiosphere, J. traces microevolution across
photons, leptons, baryons, light nuclei,
light atoms, heavy atoms and molecules; with
their corresponding macroevolution (or
collective/social forms) moving across
superclusters, clusters of galaxies,
galaxies, stellar clusters, stars, planets
and rock formations. Likewise, in the
biosphere, he traces microevolution across
dissipative structures, prokaryotes,
eukaryotes, multicellular organisms and
complex animals; with their corresponding
macroevolution across planetary
chemodynamics, Gaia system, heterotrophic
ecosystems, societies with division of
labour, and groups/families. All of these are
simply and crudely summarized and condensed
for Figure 1, which is meant to be nothing
more than a simple outline. I have discussed
these issues in greater detail in W.
1995b.[back]
2.
This becomes extremely important in
individual
psychotherapy
and depth psychology, because those
disciplines have fundamentally exposed the
ways in which I might be untruthful to myself
about my own interior status.
`Repression'
is basically a set of deceptions,
concealments, or lies about the contours of
my own interior space, and `therapy' is
essentially learning ways to be more honest
and truthful in interpreting my interior
texts. Therapy is the sustained application
of the validity criterion of truthfulness to
one's own estate. [back]
3.
Of course, not everybody who takes up Zen --
or any contemplative
endeavour
-- ends up fully mastering the discipline,
just as not everybody who takes up quantum
physics ends up fully comprehending it. But
those who do succeed -- in both contemplation
and physics, and indeed, in any legitimate
knowledge quest -- constitute the circle of
competence against which validity claims are
struck, and Zen is no exception in this
regard. [back]
4.
The fact that we all exist in
cultural
worldspaces
that are governed largely by interpretive and
not merely empirical realities, and the fact
that these cultural interpretations are
partially constructed and relative, has been
blown all out of proportion by the postmodern
poststructuralists, who in effect claim this
quadrant is the only quadrant in existence.
They thus attempt to reduce all truth and all
validity claims to nothing but arbitrary
cultural construction driven only by power or
prejudice or race or gender. This cultural
constructivist stance thus lands itself in a
welter of performative self-contradictions:
it claims that it is true that there is no
such thing as truth; it claims that it is
universally the case that only relativities
are real; it claims that it is the unbiased
truth that all truth is biased; and thus, in
all ways, it exempts its own truth claims
from the restrictions it places on everybody
else's: by any other name, hypocrisy. As I
have suggested elsewhere (W., 1995a, 1997),
whenever the other quadrants are denied
reality, they in effect sneak back into one's
system in the form of internal
self-contradictions -- the banished and
denied validity claims reassert themselves in
internal ruptures. Thus the extreme cultural
constructivists implicitly claim objective
and universal truth for their own stance, a
stance which explicitly denies the existence
of both universality and truth. Hence J. S.
(1995) had to beat this approach back in his
wonderful The Construction of Social Reality,
as opposed to `the social construction of
reality', the idea being that cultural
realities are constructed on a base of
correspondence truth which grounds the
construction itself, without which no
construction at all could get under way in
the first place. Once again, we can accept
the partial truths of a given quadrant --
many cultural meanings are indeed constructed
and relative -- without going overboard and
attempting to reduce all other quadrants and
all other truths to that partial glimpse.
[back]
References:
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original
article.
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