Regarding the classification of Wilber's examples within IMP, I'm arguing that his examples are not consistent. If I observe my own thought as an object of awareness it meets Wilber's definition of a broad science and of phenomenology because the subject object and injunction are all interior individual aspects. If the thought is not made an object of awareness it is still a phenomenological event, but not a scientific one because that thought was not made an object. This is the benefit of dividing each zone by subject-action-object.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This paper seems to lean a bit heavily on Bowman's prior work, so my reading of it suffered for not being familiar with that.\u00a0 I will look up some of his earlier papers when I have a chance.<\/p>\n Bowman:<\/strong> The field construct transcends and includes the relatively static descriptor, holons, and one of their dynamic actions, perspective-taking. According to Smith and Smith (1996), a definition for a field that is applicable to all social and natural sciences was given by English and English (1958, p. 207): it \u201csubstitutes events for things having fixed properties, and sees events as totalities in which parts of the event are what they are, qualitatively and quantitatively, only in terms of the rest of the event.<\/em><\/p>\n To use my language from Sophia Speaks<\/em>, Bowman is proposing a new onto-choreography for IT, shifting to or privileging a verbal-relational metaphysics, to dynamically recontextualize holons\/perspectives within a processual-relational View (as Bonnitta Roy does as well).<\/p>\n Overall, given my focus on some related grammatical-philosophical concepts and issues in my ITC paper, including O'Connor's Triadic Quadratic Perspectives model, I appreciated Bowman's discussion of the grammatical\/philosophical conflation that he believes can be found in O'Connor's and others' writings on the topic.\u00a0 I think he makes some good points.\u00a0 (I may return to a few of them in a future post).<\/p>\n For now, a few sticking points:<\/p>\n I got a little lost with regard to Bowman's use of the interior-exterior and internal-external dualities.\u00a0 The latter appear to correspond, in Bowman's usage, to the inside\/outside intra-quadrant distinctions in Wilber's zone model.\u00a0 But when referring to the example of contrasting political orientations, where conservatives and liberals are said to focus respectively on things such as \"character\" and \"social institutions\" as causative agents, he agrees that the former is properly called an \"interior\" factor, but argues that the latter is an \"external\" rather than an \"exterior\" factor.\u00a0 But \"social institution\" seems properly defined as \"exterior\" within Wilber's model, not external (in Bowman's sense) or outside (in Wilber's).\u00a0 There must be a subtle point I am missing (I expect, knowing Bowman is a professor of economics).\u00a0 Any thoughts?<\/p>\n Bowman appears to regard Wilber's treatment of internal\/external and interior\/exterior as synonymous terms as an inconsistency or theoretical confusion on Wilber's part, but it seems this practice is only inconsistent if we identify internal\/external with inside\/outside, as Bowman has done.\u00a0 It's not clear to me that Wilber has done this.\u00a0 While it is true he also uses \"inside\" and \"outside\" loosely (sometimes substituting them for the basic quadrant distinctions, \"exterior\" and \"interior\"), he appears only to use use inside\/outside, not internal\/external, when he is actually discussing the zones.\u00a0 Whenever Wilber writes \"internal\" and \"external,\" he seems only to do so as synonyms for the basic quadrant distinctions of interior\/exterior.<\/p>\n Bowman:<\/strong> The inconsistencies with these integral lenses seem to affect Wilber\u2019s choices of examples when describing IMP. With his first published introduction of IMP and IM, Wilber (2006, p.36) writes, \u201cI can approach the \u2018I\u2019 from the outside, in a stance of an objective or \u2018scientific\u2019 observer.\u201d He then provides two examples of what he will call structuralism. \u201cI can do so in my own awareness when I try to be \u2018objective\u2019 about myself, or try to \u2018see myself\u2019 as others see me.\u201d Call this Case A. Wilber goes on, \u201cand I can also do this with other \u2018I\u2019s\u2019 as well, attempting to be scientific in my study of how people experience their \u2018I.\u2019\u201d Call this Case B. He then states, \u201cthe most famous of these scientific approaches to I-consciousness [cases A and B] have included systems theory and structuralism\u201d (boldface is his, bracketed items are mine). So both examples, Case A and Case B, are meant to describe structuralism... According to IMP as embedded in ISP, Case A would be categorized as phenomenology rather than structuralism.<\/em><\/p>\n In the sentences immediately prior to the ones Bowman quoted, Wilber discusses phenomenology already as a Zone 1 activity -- feeling the \"I\" from the inside, as an immediate felt experience.\u00a0 This is contrasted with attempting to objectively \"'see myself' as others see me,\" which he considers a Zone 2, \"structuralist\" approach.\u00a0 What seems key here is the phrase, \"as others see me\" -- pointing to a relational, mediated, rational-reconstructive, objectifying approach, as opposed to a bracketed, direct subjective attending to \"the phenomenon itself\" (phenomenology).\u00a0 It is true that we cannot directly watch ourselves from \"outside the me,\" but it seems with Wilber's first example of (an informal?) structuralism, the approach at least involves a reflective, rational-reconstructive \"as if\" exercise which is distinct from phenomenological bracketing.\u00a0 Perhaps these differentiations are still debatable, but they were not directly addressed in the paper, so I wanted to bring this up.<\/p>\n Neelesh, regarding your first two questions, the answers to either are not clear to me: I am not sure that figure really does convincingly portray holarchical fields as being fundamental units (esp. as opposed to holons or perspectives); nor am I clear whether Bowman's two terms give us anything more than is given in the 20 tenets (though I appreciate his highlighting and foregrounding of these elements, esp. since the 20 tenets often remain in the background of the quadrant map and aren't often explicitly connected to it).\u00a0 Like you, I wonder if a reading of Bowman's prior works would help with this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/div><\/div>\n <\/dd>\n