NOTES ON WILBER  EXCERPT A 1

An Integral Age at the Leading Edge 2

 

Larry Victor  8/25/2005

 

            http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/part1.cfm

             

            INTRODUCTION: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge 3

             

            Wilber is quick to use his term, "Integral" to label the whole direction, the "INTEGRAL CULTURE".  Yet, "integral" to Wilber is far from comprehensive from my perspective and is missing many significant domains. Yet, with one sweep he incorporates everything within his model and vision. This is typical Wilber deception strategy.  This is NOT to say there isn't much of value in Wilber's ideas; but we should be clearly aware of the box he is building around us. 4

             

            What has the 2-3% of the new humans been doing? May they be lacking critical features?  Do we really need more of them, or more of something else? 5

             

            Do we desire SYNTHESIS - which challenges the Principle of Complementarity.  Wilber's model aspires towards a single logically consistent explanatory theory of everything - a state of reality Quantum Theory has shown to be a fiction. By diverting efforts back towards synthesis, Wilber can aspire to remain on top.  He presents a very attractive model, many details that could also be part of an alternative strategy towards a perspective that respects complementarity. We have no name for this as yet - but it is Beyond Integral and Beyond Synthesis, as Wilber defines those terms. 6

             

            In what follows I am quite brutal with Wilber in claims of his deception. I need to modify my words to more diplomatic as I really want serious dialog with Wilber and people in his system.  I use this terminology because I feel that his presentation does explicitly exclude consideration of the issues that concern me. 7

             

            PART 1 (page 1) Kosmic Karma: Why is the Present a Little Bit Like the Past? 8

             

            Wilber, as do ALL others, uses a one dimensional linear time, without question. Queries about prior higher orders, whether there can be only construction, not discovery, are mooted if temporality has texture and is not strictly linear.  The issues pointed to by Wilber are real and important, but their "resolution" may not exist in a temporally linear frame. 9

             

            The Four Quadrants model is a very useful tool, and it has its own history. And we should use it. But, it may not be the only tool or model.  My first concern is that it is a static structure, which implies an ontology. I will not feel comfortable with any analysis that is limited to The Four Quadrants for its foundation.  The Four Quadrants also has the possessive stamp of Wilber. 10

             

            As an example of an alternative framework, I speculate on what I call a 3M Reality - involving Mind, Matter and Marks, or the Mental, the Material and the Media.  I propose raising Semiotic Structures (sems) to a level of parity in reality with the mental and the material.  This brings language into central focus - whereas language is not an explicit aspect of the Four Quadrants.  Indeed, the issue of how we can think and talk about Reality and The Four Quadrants is itself absent from that model. 11

             

            I also sense that a linear logic is implied in how one is to be guided by The Four Quadrants model.  The model does not help us in confronting the "circular reality" that ALL of what is listed as EXTERIOR is interior, and even the concept of the interior/exterior distinction is "interior". 12

             

            If humankind is embryonic on one scale of evolution, and whatever "reality is" it has a sense of being recent and specific to modern humans.  I believe it takes extreme arrogance to make the ontological claims that Wilber makes. 13

             

            Whitehead's prehension between present moment and immediately past moment CANNOT be extended into a timeline. A path through a net would be a linear sequence, but may not represent anything significant.  Also, I question whether the prehension of a past moment is actually in my experiential field -- and there are alternative views of the phenomenology of change and time.  As much as I respect Whitehead, I am not about to set him as foundational. 14

             

Also, in my view of "holarchy" from Koestler and Miller, the nested moments, like Russian dolls is FAR, from my perspective, "the very definition of holarchy". 15

            Using the Four Quadrants as a "check list" does not insure that we have not omitted something - something that is "beyond" all four quadrants. 16

             

            There are some extreme leaps of faith in developing a causal holarchy of "feelings" -- and then blithely extending it to feeling connectivity with the entire cosmos.  I have been exploring this area and it is not all so clear to me what we actually "experience" and what is "experiential illusion" -- such as "experiencing a concept" instead of experiencing what I call a "pointer" to subconscious context. 17

             

            I do credit Wilber (or Whitehead) on their choice of the term "feeling". Very often I do distinctly feel a carryover of a feeling from a prior moment, even though there is no memory of any specifics of that prior moment. For example, an insight may suddenly evaporate, pooff, and all that remains is a feeling that I had a significant insight.   But, this may not point to anything existential - but only to the theory that feelings are our inner perception of chemical states - that happen to persist if they were strong, and that my "feeling" of the lost insight is not a remembrance, but a new experience of that continuing chemical state of my body. 18

             

            That "yesterday's feeling" effect "today's feelings" is a leap that I am not willing to accept.  If I am in deep depression because of the loss of a loved one, I can expect that a common feeling to be present on some successive days.  This is ordinary biological continuity, and has, as yet for me, nothing to do with "karma". 19

             

            At this point, with but a tiny item (to which I question) Wilber already begins to weave his own Spirituality with flowering language.  Does Wilber believe this is a legitimate tactic - to use emotion to cloud reason when reason is inadequate to do his job? 20

             

            Whitehead did not have access to absolute truth; his "discoveries" remain open to exploration. Yet, Wilber, typically, now brings closure re Whitehead as nailing down an ontological truth.  This is why I have such great difficulty reading Wilber at any length, the nested cover ups frustrate my sense of fairness. 21

             

            I haven't read but a few pages into the excerpts and Wilber is writing as is his model IS the reality, and that he is just fleshing out the details.  We have "tetra-mesh" and "tetra-interact" presented as possible features of REALITY, but they are only features of Wilber's model.  In his other writings, Wilber accepts the physicalist substrate for the emergence of life and mind; whereas that is only one of many models -- totally excluded by the deceptive techniques of Ken Wilber. 22

             

            What is TRAGIC is that the queries proposed by Wilber are of extreme importance for the survival/thrival of Humanity - such as the nature of "past" and its influence on "present" and "future" - which he immediately blocks honest inquiry to impose his own ideology.  To be fair with Wilber, I believe he truly believes he is open and integral, not dogmatic or deceptive. But, this is the very nature of humans that must be exposed and studied. 23

             

            Wilber goes into considerable depth about Sheldrake's ideas of morphogenetic fields and formative causation. These are important - but controversial - ideas that need be considered in any attempt to comprehend reality. However, Wilber deftly weaves the Sheldrakian metaphor into a substantiation of his own model. 24

             

            The more I read into Wilber, and when he goes into strings of detailed terminology (which have dubious relevance). I sense how he is trying to entrap my mind into his forms. Given his following, he is quite successful. 25

             

            Wilber's summary to part 1 is primarily establishing his Four Quadrant model as THE form of reality. The details he lists are all important, and might all be considered in context with alternatives to his Four Quadrant model. 26

             

            Wilber brings forth his IOS [Integral Operating System] with claims of universality. I don't buy it. His proposals are far from comprehensive and "integral" (as I would use the term). I fear a future of Humanity that adheres to Wilber's recommendations.  IOS is not a new app for your computer, it is a new foundation for your MIND. 27

             

            As much as we desperately need a new IOS for our minds, I am very cautious about what Wilber offers.  It is FAR from universal. There is MUCH that he ignores.  There are alternative models of Reality that he ignores or suppresses. 28

             

            Wilber's discourse is not designed to create agreement, but to induce belief. It is subtle indoctrination. 29

             

            What is strikingly absent from Wilber's discourse is any talk about action. He must explicitly aspire to avoid confrontation with establishments - and I agree with this objective.  But this appears to leave a vacuum of action. Download IOS. Believe. Take care of yourself and be close to others; leave the rest to Wilber. 30

             

            PART 2 (page 1)  Kosmic Habits As Probability Waves 31

             

            I like the model of the SD waves as morphogenetic grooves. But, it is only theory, and there may be ways to radically re-order even these deep habits; as well as the habits of the physical universe. That we cannot do that today doesn't mean it is impossible. 32

              33

            If what Yellow is doing is so critical, then it is important that what Yellow does and becomes is important - so important that it cannot be left up to the dogma of one person, such as Wilber to lay out the map for others to follow.  It is too soon to do so. 34

             

            NOTE:  IN THE TIME I STARTED, WILBER HAS ADDED MORE PARTS TO HIS ONLINE EXCERPTS,  35

            BUT I WILL CONTINUE NOW WITH WHAT WAS THERE YESTERDAY, AUGUST 21. 36

             

            Wilber, in his aside about Spiral Dynamics is deceptive. He fails to mention that the co-authors of the 1996 book have split into competing camps, and that camp led by co-author Chris Cowan is strongly in opposition to  Wilber, and some of the work of the other co-author, Don Beck, has some relationship with Wilber - Beck has at least incorporated the term "Integral" as SDi. Wilber references his summary of SD in his books, but his summaries of SD are highly distorted -- and turned me off from reading SD for years. 37

             

            Wilber uses words that imply he opposes "absolutism", that he cleverly uses to discredit claims by others (as he claims they are making absolutist claims), whereas Wilber is subtle in twisting his view into a pragmatic absolutism. 38

             

            In what forms are the older habits/waves manifested? In our brain structures at birth, and in our DNA?  Or in the social and cultural systems we adapt to as children?  Wilber, and almost everyone else assumes that future change will be transformation within this framework.  They neglect an alternative where humans begin to live a NU life as isolated as possible from the old system. In this case, the strength of red, purple and orange may not be as powerful. By locking into this model of transformation and accepting the permanent strength of the purple, red and orange vMemes, Wilber may be leading us down a path that is opposite to which he sincerely intends. 39

             

            AQAL framework ("all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types"--or AQAL for short, pronounced "Ah qual") -- needed to find the definition of this acronym used so frequently. 40

            I agree with his definition of "structure". 41

             

            It may be that this era is unique in that it provides an option to break from the millions of years collective history of humankind.  The process of biological metamorphosis (studied most in fruit flies, but glorified in the emergence of the butterfly from the caterpillar), where the emergent form does NOT result from a transformation of the prior form. We can imagine the long history of humankind as the gradual evolution of a global societal caterpillar that is now capable of societal metamorphosis.  Wilber's dominance excludes serious consideration of this option. 42

             

            The following quote from Wilber about the necessity of all new holons having to "mesh" with what exists precludes the potentials of metamorphosis -- where many of the older meshes of the caterpillar are simply ignored by the newly emergent butterfly.  The ecological network the new butterfly emerges into is a different ecological network within which the caterpillar grew and developed.  One difficulty, is that many who follow Wilber's model use metamorphosis as metaphor for a rapid transformation according to Wilber's scheme and thus blocks the consideration of the non-metaphoric, potentially real change that could occur as a true Planetary Metamorphosis of Humankind from the Caterpillar of Civilization - to a state of existence beyond and transcendent of Civilization and all the vMemes habitual to it. 43

             

            "As each new holon emerges, it emerges into an already-existing worldspace--that is, it emerges in an AQAL space that already has various sorts of waves, streams, states, systems, and so on, each with its own inheritance. (Again, yesterday's a posteriori have become today's a priori.) Each newly-emergent holon therefore must prove itself capable of existing or surviving in that already-existing worldspace--it must mesh with the already-existing AQAL matrix. It is therefore subjected to various selection pressures (or validity claims) representing the types of fit to which it must adapt in order to survive. Of course, it will not only or merely mesh: it will also bring its own moment of creative novelty that goes beyond all meshing altogether; but if it does not mesh to some degree, it will simply be wiped out by existing selection pressures and never get a chance to express or pass on its creativity." 44

             

            One way of looking at human societal metamorphosis is a breakup of the fixed Four Quadrants into new patterns of relationships between the quadrants - blocked now by the neat vertical and horizontal lines forming the quadrant matrix. 45

             

            Wilber's use of probability waves has some merit. But he continues his distortion of SD by neglecting the Spiral - that represents the interaction between the inner and the outer -- at any time - reinforcing each other. He hints at this by properly denying a "red structure"; but he ignores his Four Quadrants when he has the red wave interacting with a hypothetical morphogenetic GROOVE, rather than with the concrete reality of the person at that time.  Part of this is because his Four Quadrants is the kind of "structure" he has just argued against. 46

            I have an insight that Wilber is locked into what in evolution would be the gradualism perspective, as opposed to the catastrophic. There is a middle ground, sometimes called Punctuated Evolution, where quick and radical changes can occur within a slower gradual evolution. While Wilber may admit to a possible speeding up of the gradual process, he appears closed to a punctuation of a magnitude commensurate with the radical nature of humankind (with languaging) that we appear to be part of. 47

             

            Conventional evolutionists, if they accept the phenomenon of punctuated evolution, seek explanations in some special arrangement of the same variables involved in gradual evolution.  They are not open to seek other factors that may sometimes become relevant in evolution - such as the power of creativity (beyond an emergent epiphenomenon, as it is currently treated by all). 48

             

            The battle between neo-Darwinists and the Intelligent Design forces from religious institutions is ironic. There may well be forces at play in evolution that are not included in the strictly deterministic model of the neo-Darwinists without having to imagine some "intelligent designing" God external to the Kosmos.  The story of "reality" from the Big Bang to the emergence and evolution of life on Earth need not be the ONLY story - in the complementarity of explanatory systems. 49

             

            Sheldrake's speculations include a possible reverse effect, where -- in metaphor -- the present can literally effect the past, and paradoxically, the future (not yet existent) can literally effect the present.  I have played with these concepts and have proposed a process I call "feedpast bootstrapping" that is a variant of Sheldrake's "formative causation" but in reverse. 50

             

            In a sense, Humanity may be feedpast bootstrapping itself from its primate-mammalian substrate - and becoming better at it in a feed forward bootstrapping phenomenon -- where a new reality is emergent from the flatland of ALL prior human conceptions. 51

             

            I do not oppose that we attempt to create the best path into the future assuming a gradualist perspective, as metamorphosis is not guaranteed. But, likewise, we should also explore a parallel effort at facilitating a possible metamorphosis, in case the gradualist perspective leads us into a tragic dead end. 52

             

            PART 3 page 1 The Nature of Revolutionary Social Transformation 53

             

            Analysis of Marxism and socio-economic determinism is well written.  I have no significant objections to this section, as it is consistent with both my and Wilber's perspectives. 54

             

            During the reading, I had the insight that the different socio-economic-technic systems may literally replace the other (although pockets of old modes can exist for long periods), this may not be the case for worldviews. Elements of the magical may remain hidden in the mythic, and both may be hidden in the rational.  Thus, an exploration of the depth of science as presented by Steve Fuller demonstrates that science is not fully rational, but contains morphed forms of both mythic and magical. That science is a purely rational endeavor is a myth and many technological innovations are literally magical (even when you comprehend the basic physics).  For example, as far as we know there is nothing in physics that forecasts a world with DNA and proteins.  It often appears "magical" that technological efforts so frequently achieve their objectives - often with astonishing ease. Why should the DNA system be such that it is so easy to separate chromosomes into genes and have them rapidly replicate - so that we could advance our studies of DNA in years instead of centuries? 55

             

            In spite of the dominance of a socio-economic-technic system, most children are still raised among adults who are far from psychologically stable, which may account for a deep resilience among children to ignore much of what they observe going on about them.  The body-movement referenced metaphors pointed out by Lakoff remain valid for all. 56

             

            I believe that both holarchical and ecological organizations co-exist in human worldmaking (or worldweaving). Sometimes we can model earlier stages as embedded holarchically within later stages -- at other times we might view them as multiple-identities (with some more dominant than others), and possibly each continuing to evolve. 57

             

            On Paradigms. This is the best statement I have seen about my distinction between paradigm (exemplar) and perspective (worldview), while pointing out the gross misuse of the term "paradigm".  However, a deeper insight is given by Steve Fuller in his analysis of the socio-economic-political pressures that led Kuhn to his ideas and as to how the social phenomenon of science has reacted - as in the so called "Science Wars". 58

             

            Legitimation Crisis.  Also well written and I agree. 59

             

            Insight - what I propose in my NU Strategy is what Wilber correctly emphasizes as the starting point for significant societal "revolutions". Namely a change in third-person materialities. 60

              

            This is what I call for in NU orgs, networks of collaborating nuets, LORDD Expeditions, Colab Studios, nucoms.  And, as Wilber would agree, these material settings for new life/work styles and spaces dovetail with nu ideas and practices.  This raises for me the importance of "retreats" where we begin to live NU NOW. 61

             

            This is also congruent with David Braden's concepts of "Spherical Organization" and SelfHelp Corporations, with more emphasis on the cybernetics of prosumption than on markets. 62

            An explicit emphasis on Semiotic Structures and Worlds and a view of Cyberworlds as new worlds for colonization also creates a substantial Lower Right quadrant foundational change. 63

             

            In its measured withdrawal from contemporary reality, the NU Strategy can also be viewed as a catalyst and nurturing towards metamorphosis beyond metaphor. 64

             

            I also agree with Wilber on Societal Revolutions. I believe that my NU Strategy does fit his requirement for authentic revolutions - that it involves all aspects. 65

              66

            "The difficult fact for "revolutionaries" of all varieties--political to academic to cultural--to realize is that an authentic revolution is in every way an AQAL affair, demanding not just a "new paradigm," not just a new worldview, not just a new techno-economic base, not just a new social system, and not just a new set of ideas--but all of them and all together. Failing that, social revolutions are more often than not simply an occasion for more human carnage of one variety or another." 67

             

            PART 3 page 2  The Nature of Revolutionary Social Transformation 68

             

            The Fifth Factor. No major objections. 69

             

            But an insight: on Present Decay and Danger. 70

             

            Our current period represents a significant regression and danger. This may be attributed to the gaining of power over technologies developed and intended for higher levels of human development by those at lower levels of development.  Wilber cites how reds gain power using weapons developed by high orange, green, and even the innovations that led to the computer and Internet (maybe some green and yellow).  But, I refer to the technologies of deception and management of people, permitting the growth of large, mechanistic institutions such as transnational corporations and international banking systems, run by persons of much lower developmental level.  There is argument where one places the neocons of the Bush administration and the corporate CEOs of Enron style corporations, and the elite who populate the top position in boards of governors in nations and corporations as employing technologies they could not have created.  I expect that the possession of power enhancing technologies (media and information probably more important that weapons) bring out a mutant mix of stages -- a possibility probably considered impossible by some adherents to SD.  This must also be mixed with the special attractiveness of fundamentalisms of all stripes -- again SEAFed in their ability to indoctrinate and dictate to masses by the new technologies.  Here we have an instance where a new technologies to SEAF collaboration of bootstrapping and uplifting were captured by lower levels before they even had a chance of being supporting of a new vertical movement.  If this decline cannot be reversed, then metamorphosis may be the only viable route - and this becoming more and more problematic as we enter great stresses from the environment with a leadership totally incapable of handling it -- and all peaceful means to "authority" blocked by the new technology of electoral fraud and public perception management. 71

             

            Summary: Eros and Revolution.  Here I feel that Wilber misreads the evidence. Postmodernism may have slipped into a Mean Green Meme, but it did so in an oppressive environment of greater and greater deception and an unrecognizing of what was happening to the interfaces whereby individuals learned of the larger world. 72

             

            Deception has been a powerful force throughout history, and not one studied with the care it deserves as it weaves an insidious counter-resonance in the AQAL. 73

             

            Further, Wilber is no more advanced than the masses in recognizing the extraordinary limitations of education everywhere and in every form, not just academia.  This limitation is what scares me the most to have Wilber lead the nu learning that is needed to rise among the whole population - it cannot be a learning lead by "masters" such as Wilber.  My views on NUEDU and NES and LQE are beyond the scope of this commentary. 74

             

            Also, the concept of engineered Scaffolding to SEAF self-organization appears beyond Wilber's grasp -- although I would not be surprised to see him using this very language to support the very opposite approach. Wilber may be constructing a scaffolding in his Integral Multiplex that will not lead to a form of comprehensive knowing and respect for Ignorance that I envision in the NU Strategy.  The lack of synthesis that Wilber saw absent to follow the deconstruction of postmodernism may lead him to create an artificial top-down synthesis that will be as destructive as the Mean Green Meme. 75

             

            Wilber Quote: "A political revolution--perhaps violent (revolution), perhaps not (reform)--will therefore have to occur in order for new governance systems to take into account the new increases in depth of cognition and technology."  Where in his wildest dreams does Wilber believe that such a revolution can ever emerge from the second tier, let along be successful against a worldview willing to risk planetary and species suicide just to maintain its power.  Again, the model of metamorphosis or OER (Originate/Emerge/Replace) NU Strategy proposes to avoid confrontation and play an end run around the Rules of Civilization to leap beyond Civilization.  A virtual cultural Big Bang, a Supernovae in a metamorphosed AQAL. 76

             

            Is there a hint towards metamorphosis in this quote? 77

             

            "The advantage of any higher worldview is not in the "include" but the "transcend" side of the equation: there is an Eros to the sequence, such that the transcendental value of the new and higher worldview moves into a new probability space (or a new niche) where it can flourish outside of old Kosmic habits (while initiating, in that new niche, its own forms of new Kosmic habits)--just as, for example, mammals found a new space outside of reptilian probability waves ...  The new and deeper/higher worldview is therefore selected and carried forward in the new probability space, even though there are fewer holons there than in the previous space (whose Kosmic habits have now become subcomponents of the new holons)." 78

             

            A new niche outside of old Kosmic habits, a new niche with its own forms of new Kosmic habits -- sounds like NU Strategy to me. 79

             

            Wilber correctly states the complexity of our reality in the following quote: 80

              81

            "Each society is a spectrum of AQAL actualities: there are individuals at every level of the spectrum of consciousness, at least up to the average level of that culture (with a few moving beyond). And there are pockets of every mode of techno-production up to the leading edge: even in industrial societies, there are red street gangs foraging for their existence, and the farmers of Kansas are still out there planting seeds. So there is no single base and no single superstructure, such that an internal contradiction between them could propel the major transformations that have marked history. Marx's general idea--that of a mismatch between LL and LR causing internal communal contradictions and tensions--is still true, but the mismatch spans the spectrum of consciousness up to the highest average wave in that society, and in all four quadrants with their many waves and streams (all of which have to tetra-mesh in the AQAL configuration, or something has to give)." 82

             

            Metamorphosis, again, proposes to sidestep this entire mess-mesh. Individuals are personally recruited and welcomed to NU and provided with SEAFing adequate for the success of their adjustment. Is this possible? We can't know without at least giving it the same amount of attention as has been given the transformation of the mess-mesh. 83

             

            NU, as I envision it, would have great diversity - as the healthy human body has a great diversity of cell types. This would contrast sharply with the present diversity of the mess-mesh, where there is strong anti-synergy. There will be unity within the diversity, as there is a unity of our body as a single human organism, and not a giraffe or octopus. That diversity will emerge a NU emerges. Those who are the first nuets will chose the initial scaffolding, but will not be able to control the self-organizing that will emerge within that scaffolding.  If in choosing one scaffolding over another, we are making decisions to effect the future of Humanity and Planet Earth, so be it. 84

             

            The Idea of Progress.  How will NU handle the "fact" that all children must move through the SD stages.  This is NOT a proven fact. The Spiral of SD in NU may lead to a wholly different sequence of stages -- related to the beige, purple, red, blue, orange and green that Graves and others have mapped - but not necessarily THESE stages.  Indeed, it is not at all clear that all humans go through all these stages in today's world. There is much more to human diversity than the stages of SD and the lines and levels of Wilber. 85

             

            Summary:  Moment-to-Moment. Wilber uses this metaphor of a linear sequence of moments as the basis for his description of all four quadrants. This is the accepted paradigm for time and change; but it is not necessarily so. There are possible alternatives that may change the whole tenor of Wilber's Kosmology. 86

             

            Moments are a mathematical abstraction. In "reality" there is duration (NOT to be viewed as the interval between end moments - but primitive). Experiential moments or  "specious presents" may more overlap than be viewed as beads on a chain. There may be a reverse "causality" in this overlap (which in a simplified form I have called "feedpast bootstrapping"). 87

             

            Other models of time and change consider them specific to "entity" considered. Thus, there may be an overlap of humankind with its primate/ mammalian substrate, as well as an overlap of different cultural eras -- in a "real two directional causal sense", which can be viewed as a "temporal resonance".  Events may be mapped on "temporal texture" than on linear timelines.   Granted, all this is speculative, but at root is that our WORLDS are constructed and our present construction in terms of linear moment-to-moment time may be an illusion of the present. 88

             

            There is also the wild speculation of multiple realities - today played with by physicists. But the basic form of reality found useful in quantum physics may be applied to other domains without having to be directly tied to the quantum specifics of material reality. Social reality may be like a quantum probability wave, and multiple realities may interfere.  JFK may have been killed by Oswald as lone assassin in one reality, and but a patsy in an elaborate conspiracy in another reality; and as the physical evidence is destroyed, both pasts become "equally real". 89

             

            Wilber slips in probability wave terminology, but I have not yet discovered where it is not but used as poetic metaphor.  There is a sense that he is imagining holons navigating mathematical phase space in the manner described by Kauffman in The Origins of Order. 90

             

            As I frequently assert - I cannot be arrogant to assume that any human at this point in our story of evolution can be in a position to comprehend the "true nature of the Kosmos".  Wilber might discover that many of his ideas have greater potential if developed in a different model of change and time than "moment-to-moment". 91

             

            PART 4 Integral Methodological Pluralism 92

             

            I have never read an introduction that sounded so broad and all inclusive. So many types and variations cited. This must truly be as open an inquiry as possible. YET, as I have stated earlier, this is a smoke screen. Underlying all this liberal openness is a structure and methodology that is potentially very limiting.  Ken Wilber, like George Bush, can be a master of saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite - with a straight face. I apologize to Ken for lumping him with George, as there are obvious significant differences. 93

            Most of this part was a complex listing of different methodologies, first according to each of the four quadrants. 94

             

            IOS  as my NU Semiotic World 95

             

            I had a sense, in the brief exposition of Wilber's Integral Operating System, that he reports occurring in the third person; and that it might exist a sems (Semiotic Structures) in what I am about to call a SEMWORLD or SEMWEB 96

             

            "IOS, as we said, is itself merely a third-person system of signifiers (i.e., it is nothing but a system of abstract ideas, symbols, and concepts, all of which are merely third-person symbols, not first-person or second-person realities)." 97

             

            "Integral Operating System (IOS), which specifically combines the very best of the time-tested modes of inquiry (from empiricism to phenomenology to hermeneutics to systems theory) in order to produce the most balanced and comprehensive approach to the Kosmos." 98

             

            "However--to continue the computerese--if IOS is properly downloaded and installed, it essentially activates the first-, second-, and third-person dimensions themselves, simply because those are the active signifieds of the IOS signifiers. The result is that any brain hardware system operating on IOS automatically scans all phenomena--interior as well as exterior--for any quadrants, waves, streams, or states that are not being included in awareness. IOS then acts to redress this imbalance and help move the system toward a more integral and inclusive stance. IOS acts as an autopoietic holism, if you will." 99

             

            "To repeat: IOS itself does not deliver first- or second-person realities, nor is it meant to; rather, it simply alerts the system to the fact that those realities exist, and urges the system to directly take them up. But that means that the person then has to actually engage in those other modes of inquiry, whether contemplative phenomenology, body work, intersubjective group processing, interobjective institutional organization, meditation, collaborative inquiry, and so on." 100

             

            Yet, to Wilber IOS is more to be downloaded into brains, but to do so it will also exist in some form in computers, in cyberspace. 101

             

            The contribution of Wilber's IOS to my SEMWEB is that it should explicitly facilitate all modes of inquiry and work against one becoming trapped in any one mode. 102