Thanks Ralph:

You know, in my most sober moments, I am convinced that what we are working with in the Integral community is in a sense the most significant thing ever done to advance comprehensive knowledge about the Kosmos. And I mean ever. I have to ask - am I deluded? What am I missing?

Wonderful and elaborate partial truths have been the history of thinking man for 5,000 years. But each theory has been unable to provide acceptable explanations for so many other things that are real and undeniable. It is staggering to simply rest in an awareness of just how large the Integral universe is. I am not aware of anything or anyone who can make credible critiques of the basic Integral maps. Are you?

I had a professor of philosophy back in the 70s who was trying really hard to create an Integral vision. He valued western philosophy and eastern spiritual traditions both. I remember his excitement when Spectrums of Consciousness came out. He told me that Ken Wilber was doing something unprecedented and that he expected incredible things.

What was sad was that this man was dying (he sustained serious liver damage in WWII). He knew we were on the cusp of some very important developments (the digital revolution, Integral, etc.) and he knew he would not live to see them bear fruit.

I feel enormously fortunate to be alive right now sharing with you and the others the Integral model.

schalk:

You know, in my most sober moments, I am convinced that what we are working with in the Integral community is in a sense the most significant thing ever done to advance comprehensive knowledge about the Kosmos. And I mean ever. I have to ask - am I deluded? What am I missing?

i pretty much agree with you. the paradox, i feel, is that we don't yet begin to know enough about the past to be able to accurately compare ourselves with our ancestors, but the integral approach is by far the best thing we've come up with to better understand ourselves and our past.

I feel enormously fortunate to be alive right now sharing with you and the others the Integral model.

fully agreed. i've been going out of my mind the past couple of days, looking at the presentations that are in store for us at the inaugural, biennial integral conference.

---

Schalk & Ralph

Since I've not found anybody in Cape Town who is really engaging with Ken's work  -- I’ve met a few who have read one or other of his works but it ends there -- the Integral Community is a bit of a lifeline for me; in particular, I really appreciate interacting with both of you.

A comment on theories.

All theories have one or more of the following  components: teleological, ontological, epistemological and methodological. Putting it simply (maybe oversimplifying) : what it the purpose; what is the nature of the world/being; what we can know about the world ; and,  how to (a) collect the evidence/information for what we can know and rules for putting together techniques and methods for achieving the prupose.

I believe that it is important to recognise these distinctions because in doing so it helps to clarify much of the confusion that arises when theories are compared. Many theories include all of these components and some focus exclusively on one or two of them.

Neo-liberal economic theories aim to make the market work more efficiently – there’s a very clear outline of this approach in (Nobel prize winner) Joe Stiglitz’s Making Globalization Work  (Teleology). They take the world to consist of individuals whose behaviour is dominated by self-interest (Ontology). What we can know about this world is that the behaviour of these individuals can be observed in aggregate (Epistemology).  And finally there are well defined rules and procedures (eg the use of statistics) for collecting evidence about this behaviour (Methodology). But all economic theories are located in the LR quadrant.  Incidentally Marx, who developed a comprehesive economic theory,  was very adamant about the teleological component. He said, “the purpose is not to understand the world but to change it”   

What is the relevance of all of this to our discussion about systems theories? It’s importance is to firstly identify what components are these theories addressing and then to understand how they are addressing them.

Hard systems theories (with a few exceptions such as Capra) don’t explicitly address the teleological, but they all have very explicit ontological components, ie, they assume that there are such things as complex systems (which have certain characteristics), which we can understand the effects of (epistemological), through the process of dynamic model building (methodology) and empirical verification. The famous “butterfly effect”  is a model which has been popularized into almost mythical status.   

On the other hand, soft systems theories focus explicitly on changing (small portions of) the world, especially the working of corporate and social entities, and on the methodologies for doing so. They can all be placed in the LL quadrant.

Ken’s Integral Theory is interesting and unique in that it is both a meta-theory since it provides a framework for locating other theories as well as a theory which explicitly combines all the components that I have mentioned  

On Scharmer’s understanding of systems and the Habermas/Luhman debate. (As promised in my posting: 05/04/2008).

 

Just to remind you: the reason for getting into this is Ken’s critique of systems in which he draws on Habermas’ critique of Luhman. It is therefore important to locate Luhman within the framework of systems theories and systems thinking.

 

Otto Scharmer’s (Theory U) provides a useful starting point into the Habermas/Luhman debate.

 

Scharmer  uses the notion of field structures of attention  (FSAs) as an organising principle. He has four levels of FSAs: L1 – Autistic systems; L2 – Adaptive systems; L3 – Self-reflective systems; and L4 – generative systems. Whereas L4 is the most interesting and for Scharmer the most important, ror the purposes of this note, I’ll focus only on L1, L2 and L3.

 

The defining characteristic of L1 systems is that the information that they receive from their environment (ie from outside their boundaries) is limited to the frames, concepts and structures of the system itself. It is essentially a closed system which responds to very limited information from outside, eg, the bureaucratic process in government can’t respond to anything beyond a well-defined norm (anything out of the ordinary). In his book Images of Organization , Gareth Morgan refers to this system as the machine model of organization.

 

L2 systems aren’t so constrained; they are able to adapt to adapt to their environment. Morgan refers to this type of system as an organic model of organization. What these systems have in common with L1 systems is that they have a given function or purpose. The systems dynamics of Senge and Luhman fall into this category.

 

L3 systems, on the other hand, have the ability to adapt their purposes and this is because they allow for fundamental shifts in worldview. In organisations, or any social systems, this is possible because members see themselves as part of the systems and need to make meaning of the systems and their role in them.

 

These are very brief summaries but I hope not too brief!

 

I now want to link these to the categories of systems approaches suggested by most British & European (as typified by Jackson and Midgley) scholars. Essentially they refer to the functionalist (hard), interpretive (soft) and critical/emancipatory systems approaches. Scharmer’s L1 & L2 are functionalist and L3 is interpretive. The following table links Scharmer, Jackson and Morgan and gives some of the most important examples.

 

Scharmer	Jackson	Morgan
Autistic	Functionalist ·         Cybernetics	Machine
Adaptive ·         System dynamics ·         Autopoetic social systems theory (Luhman)	Functionalist ·         System dynamics (Senge) ·         Living/general systems theory (von Bertelanffy)	Organism
	·         Organizational cybernetics (Beer)	Brain
Self-reflective ·         Systems thinking	Interpretive ·         Social systems design (Churchman) ·         Soft systems methodology (Checkland)	Culture

 

 

From this table and the few paragraphs that I wrote, Luhman’s position can be located. This is the systems position that Ken and Habermas critique; from the Ken’s Intergral theory perspective, because it is located within the LR quadrant yet claims universal validity. Habermas’ critique is interesting because as he says , systems theory (meaning Luhman’s version) because systems are colonising ‘lifeworld’

to be continued ....

Colonization of 'Lifeworld' by systems

Briefly summarizing this systems approach of Luhman,  Habermas, he says that systems (meaning organisational and institutional structures and processes) are oriented towards the attainment of particular goals and in order to achieve these prioritize rational, purposive action.  Management by objectives is a good example: goals are clearly defined, criteria (and indicators) are set in order to measure the progress towards these goals, and people’s performance is measured against KPAs. As Stephen Kemmis, an Australian educationist, neatly puts it, “since it is circumscribed by system structures and processes, and oriented towards achieving outcomes defined in terms of system goals, its central concerns are with systems functioning; hence it characteristically employs a form of reason which can be described as functional rationality.”   

 

Habermas then laments that in societies characterized by advanced economic and political-legal systems, individuals and groups increasingly define themselves and their aspirations in systems terms; their : “privatised hopes for self-actualisation and self-determination are primarily located … in the roles of consumer and client”. In Kemmis’ words, “this is colonization in the sense that imperatives of  the economic and political-legal systems dislodge the internal communicative action [a key Habermasian concept] which underpins the formation and reproduction of [internal] lifeworlds, providing in its place an external  framework of language, understandings, values and norms based on systems and their functions”

 

I entirely agree with this critique of the kind of systems approach that Luhman advocates !

 

However, I support and subscribe to variants of systems thinking that accommodate Habermas's concern for the preservation of 'lifeworlds', namely the interpretive and emancipatory approaches.  

Sidney:

For the systems debate to make sense, we have to first see if we can agree on the validity of the AQAL model and the lower left and lower right quadrants as both being legitimate perspectives (with the lower left looking at interiority while the lower right looks at exteriority ... of the same event!.)

I'll bet you can take the entirety of systems theory debate and it would largely comprise one big failure to even agree on the co-validity of the lower left and lower right perspectives.

It mirrors the unending and largely meaningless debate between spirituality and scientism (for the individual perspective).

Habermas is lamenting our emphasis on the LR perspective to the neglect of our LL perspective.

"Functional rationality" insists on employment of the lower right perspective. The problem is that we end up paying attention only to exteriors and measurable attainments.

I was talking to a close friend about this just last night. We were talking about the process used to award medals in the military. Years ago, a commander had the authority to make a LL assessment of the performance of his unit and to then decide whether it merited a particular award, within the context of the hierarchies agreed upon within military culture. Valor, courage above and beyond, etc. Collective interior measurement.

But now, exterior events are the primary tool of assessment. How many pallets were loaded. How many days deployed. Etc. Automatic award (like Amway!).

Habermas would lament this. But the reality is this. We know too much. We have access to such enormous volumes of information. Any attempt to use a LL perspective to assess the propriety of a medal will immediately be known and scrutizined by 9 other units or individuals who will all file grievances and bog us down in 3 months of "special investigations" to determine whether the award was merited.

But, if we rely on LR perspectives to assess an award, no one can complain. You cannot argue with math!

We end up preferring LR perspectives to make assessments because they are easier to measure. And fewer disputes arise.

And we suffer for it. The choices we make on what to do and how often to do it are dictated by LR concerns. And we forget that we are talking about the lives of people. Human people. Human people with an interior.

 

Oh by the way ...

we can probably thank lawyers for this state of affairs.

Any collective system that cannot trot out objectively measurable criteria to justify its choices is ripe for a lawsuit. Terms like "arbitrary and capricious" are used to chastise any enterprise that does not rely heavily on LR perspectives in its decisionmaking.

The trick is to make a LL assessment of how you want the system to develop, and to then try and find ways to make that choice "defendable" using LR terms. We do this all the time in governmental hiring. First, decide who you want to get the job using interior assessments. Then make sure that the choice can be defended based on exterior criteria.