In his book, Steve says he is a founding member of Integral Institute. (A site search on II turned one photograph of him and nothing else.) He is also listed as a presenter at the upcoming Integral Conference in California.

I can’t think of anyone else, other than Wilber, who writes books purely on Integral Theory (at least a second-tier treatment). Obviously there are lots of integral authors, but they are all presenting their specialty (business, psychology, politics, theology) in an integral frame work, but we seem to have only these two producing integral frameworks.

He differs from Wilber on a few things. One, what I think is a much better model of developmental lines. McIntosh says that lines come in three, overlapping clusters. Cognition (and he says that Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences is the best on those lines), Emotional (and he says Daniel Goleman is the expert on those), and Volition. He says has no one to point to on volition, saying it’s an area overlooked by the type of person who does studies. He says the best there is is some unnamed 19th century philosophers. Having thought about this for a few months, I’d say the volition experts are athletes, coaches managers, sales people, military personnel and equestrians (they talk about horses who “have heart”). He says there is overlap between any pair of clusters, and the overlap of all three is the Self line.

He doesn't like quadrants. He says a holon is something not made by people and that techo-economic bases are designed by people. He quotes Fred Hoffman here. I personally don’t think the leaders of the Enlightenment got together in the 1500’s and said “let’s move up to a rationalist world view, start capital markets, explore the planet, get rich and provide a variety of opportunities for serfs and slaves to better their situations.” Quadrants are also easy to teach, learn and utilize.

Everything else about the book is great and I’d love to hear him on Integral Naked.

Mark E.

"I’d love to hear him on Integral Naked. "

Hey, Mark, me too. That sounds interesting. Nice intro. Thanks, ambo

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Ambo Suno

Mark:

Thanks for the intro.

Three clusters?

Knowing, feeling, and willing?  

Hmm. It seems like there is no end to the number of ways one can juxtapose all of the different capacities we have to develop.

How about body, mind and spirit? Oh, that has already been used.

OK, parent, child, and adult. Etc.

I like how people say things like "no, there are not 12 eggs in the carton, there are actually 2 rows of six eggs." Then someone else points out how there are really "6 clusters of egg dyads."

Isn't it crucial to remember that "what there really is" depends on the tools and perspectives you want to use to validate "what there really is?"

I wish the great theorists would be explicit and stop bullshitting us. Just say, "let's use this as a model. Here is how it is useful. It allows us to ..." instead of "this is how things really are."

Wilber is as honest as anyone - he points out over and over "hey, I am simply making orienting generalizations." That single word "orientation" for me sums up the value of Integral.

Integral doesn't tell me what really is real or true or beautiful or good. It tells me that here is a really useful way to orient one's awareness toward phenomena that we all see and experience. This orientation allows us to make sense out of a lot of things that no other orientation seems capable of doing.

The jousting of the theoretical heavy-weights is a 20th century relic.

 

hi mark,

i just finished reading this book myself. i like your take on it (schalk's as well), although i suspect wilber will be coming up with a much better explanation for lines of development in his forthcoming books. did you happen to read the article about LAS, by zachary stein and katie heikkinen, in the latest issue of aqal journal?

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We'll see what happens re: Steve McIntosh on IN.

That said, i have not read his book yet, but a cursory look at the criticisms you summarized above prompts me to respond with a few off-the-cuff comments.

When it comes to grouping different lines of development, i agree with Schalk that it is largely  arbitrary.  But his groupings make intuitive sense to me, and i actually like how he surfaces volition as an explicit subset of developmental lines.  I do believe Ken has talked about will/volition before in the past, but i believe he sees it as a function of the overall self, the sum total of all developmental lines, the relative ego which makes decisions between this and that, based upon the contours of his/her consciousness that determine which choices are seen, thus which choices are made.  (The role of volition is also assumed when discussing things like Integral ethics, or even the "Basic Moral Intuition".)  At the same time, i am curious about the possibility of will/volition as it's own developmental line, which unfolds alongside the others, while also being a useful way to describe how the totalty of the self-system makes its decisions. But in an academic sense, i am not sure how useful grouping lines into cognitive, emotional, and volition actually is, and how much is just a result of theoretical aesthetics.

I would have to learn more about Steve's criticism of Ken's treatment of holons, but as it is described above, it seems that Steve erroneously believes that the LR quadrant is identical to "techno-economic bases," whereas it is pretty clear that techno-economic bases are just one example of how the LR quadrant manifests itself within the sphere of humanity.  For lower holons, it wouldn't make sense to call the LR "techno-economic," but they are all certainly embedded within their own sorts of systems, each with their own inter-objective patterns.

The other criticism i've heard from Steve can be quoted from Ken's wikipedia page: "[Ken's] AQAL system does not take into account the fact that beginning at the human level (complex neocortex) there has been no change in the biological structure of the brain, this role being taken instead by human-made artifacts."

This is very very interesting to me.  First off, i think he is wrong in suggesting that artifacts would be the more accurate correlate to UL stages of consciousness.  The complexity of the human brain is more than enough to cleanly correlate with all structures of consciousness, from "infrared" to "ultraviolet," without the need for new lobes to physically evolve alongside the structural deepening of consciousness.  But, how exactly the brain correlates to these structures is endlessly fascinating to me--i have the sense that, on a biological level, our neural sytems "rewire" themselves into different sorts of neural networks, each supporting different structures of consciousness.  This is my intuitive sense, though i have absolutely no idea whether any research has been done in this area (does anyone know if it has?) or if we even have a refined-enough understanding of the human nervous system to recognize different neural networks if we were to see them.  But that is my sense--and though i am happy to be convinced otherwise, i do belive that the grapefruit-sized grey matter that sits between our cochleae offers more than enough mysterious complexity to itself be the substrate for all these levels of consciousness.

That said, i do think there is a major link between artifacts and the perpetuation of structures of consciousness, in both individuals and cultures.  I think Steve's reasoning falls apart from the simple fact that you cannot reduce artifacts to UR, UL, LR, or LL dimensions of the human experience--the best you could do is to look AT an artifact THROUGH a quadrivium, rather than AS a tetra-emergent corrolate to consciousness.  But still, since artifacts are defined as objective matter imprinted with subjective consciousness, i do believe that artifacts largely act as the carriers of "mind viruses," which, in a sense, serve the function of codifying perspectives, experiences, and consciousness into the physical world, thus allowing these subjective dimensions to be reflected out into the world, where they continue to shape and influence the perspectives/experiences/consciousness of those who engage the artifact, even thousands of years after it was first created.

Thoughts?

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Corey W. deVos (dj rekluse)
Brand Manager, Integral Naked
Audio Manager, Integral Institute
Managing Editor, KenWilber.com
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corey,

i was waiting to see how others would respond to your message, which i thought was a conversation opener, and not like some of my closers. evidently i was wrong again.

first, it's not clear how you came up with the term, but i think 'theoretical aesthetics' is an apt characterization of this work. however, the beauty thus achieved has come at the expense, imo, of truth to some extent. the dismissal of the LR for human holons is a good example. it allows mcintosh to maintain the pattern of triads to be found throughout the work, which is very appealing, but at a loss of the comprehensiveness and openness of aqal.

one of the casualties, i believe, is simple logic. he recognizes that human collectives have interiors, but not that they have exteriors, at least of a holonic nature, even though all the holons up to humans have had such collective exteriors, and it's difficult to have an interior without an exterior.

i'm not sure he would disagree with you about the quadrivial nature of artifacts, although he might reduce it to the trivial

my memory is that he has biological evolution coming to a stop with humanity, and being supplanted by mental evolution. this is true in the sense that mind takes over as the driver of evolution, but with body following, as you imply, and not just remaining fixed.

marion diamond, then a science professor at UC Berkeley, requested some of einstein's brain tissue when it became available late in the last century, in order to test her hypothesis that he had more than the normal number of a certain type of brain cell. i forget the type, but it is one of four or five that support the central player in brain activity, namely the neuron. she was able to validate her hypothesis. i don't know if she researched this any further nor how she came up with her hypothesis, but doesn't it offer some interesting possibilities for research on correlations between UL and UR evolution?

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