States, stages, the WC lattice and the fold

[Edward theurj Berge]

I decided to move this post over to its own thread to work on this. I'll also move other related past posts over from other threads to riff on later.

The last post reminded me of something I've been working on using Bergson via Bryant. It's not completely thought through yet, with gaps still, but I thought I'd get it down here and then work on it further.

Now where Bryant might be akin to something like the MHC is in his endo-relational organizational structure. Recall in TDOO his distinction between exo- and endo-relations, and its correlation with intensional and extensional relations in a set (212). Endo-relations reside in the structural organization of its elements, the elements themselves not being autonomous entities. Hence the elements of this set cannot be otherwise; they must be in a relatively fixed pattern to maintain an entity's autonomy (214).

Bryant uses Bergson's diagram on memory to show how endo-relations are maintained (232).

It is similar to hierarchical nests but not quite. ABCD shows the unfoldment of an entity over time. A'B'C'D' show the memory of the entity, which feeds back into its unfoldment and also allows for future anticipation. But what is unfolded and remembered-anticipated is how an entity selectively organizes its structural elements in relation to its environment. This can and does change in response to these relations, but even when it changes it maintains a relatively stable endo-relational structure to maintain autonomy.

Where Bryant didn't go with this, and I do, is in relating this to the Wilber-Combs lattice. As I've laid out in different posts and threads, we might loosely correlate A'B'C'D' with our early development using MHC's stages with Gebser's, from pre-operational/archaic (D') to primary/magic (C') to concrete/mythic (B') to abstract-rational (A'). Formal rationality begins at A, which can be then trained to retrieve through focus and memory to integrate the previous levels throuch meditative or contemplative methods.

But here is where it diverges with the MHC and uses a twist or fold in the W-C lattice. I've claimed that the MHC continues to get more complicated with it's postformal stages, not fully remembering and then integrating the previous stages by not taking into account how the meditative process works. When integrated via meditation there is a fold or twist in both the W-C lattice and in Bergson's diagram above. Hence we get something more akin to Levin's bodies as the integrative process unfolds in reverse order, the prior magic and mythic becoming the transpersonal and the prior archaic becoming the ontological.

This relates to the W-C lattice in that the higher stages are the meditative integration of earlier state-stages in reverse order: gross-abstract, subtle-magic/mythic, causal-archaic. These are the third tier in the lattice. But whereas the lattice continues to differentiate states from stages in postformal levels a la the MHC, the states and stages undergo a transformation in the fulcrum of formal operations with meditation. i.e., they are heretofore more fully integrated and that differentiation is now replaced a la Gebserian IA awaring and the prior analysis-synthesis (de-re) above.

Relating this back to Bryant's endo-relational structure, the endo-relational elements are structurally organized in a specific and nested way akin to transcend and include. Wilber senses that there is a difference between enduring and transitional structures akin to Bryant's endo- and exo-relations. Wilber even uses Luhmann in ways similar to Bryant but not in this way, since Wilber's enduring structures are cogntive like pre-formal to concrete to rational. These would be more akin to Luhmann's independent and autonomous exo-relations.

[Edward theurj Berge]

From this old post, quoting Women, Fire & Dangerous Things:

"The classical theory of categories provides a link between objectivist metaphysics and and set-theoretical models.... Objectivist metaphysics goes beyond the metaphysics of basic realism...[which] merely assumes that there is a reality of some sort.... It additionally assumes that reality is correctly and completely structured in a way that can be modeled by set-theoretic models" (159).

He argues that this arises from the correspondence-representation model.

[Edward theurj Berge]

This Scribd link appears to be a complete version of WFDT. On 160 they acknowledge that classical categories play a significant role in what we understand. And maybe some of them actually exist in nature. It's just the objectivist metaphysical interpretation that gets it wrong.

[Edward theurj Berge]

In this post DavidM58 referenced Dierkes' blog post here. Dierkes highlights some of the themes in this thread, like the following:

"But to my mind postmodernism is more than simply a cultural value system. Postmodernism also has its own social, technological, and political contexts--contexts that are missing in the US and therefore I think from much of the American integral theorists. For example, postmodernism is built around networks (particularly as seen in nature) rather than strictly vertical conceptions of the universe."

"In Pattern Dynamics, postmodernism isn't the Western counterculture of Boomers but rather organic realities like creativity, emergence, adaptation, and so on. The intrinsic value of humans in this model is one in which they have the conscious choice to incorporate these patterns, leading to a fully integrated sphere of mind (noosphere) and sphere of life (biosphere). That, to me, would be a more developed culture but that had developed by going deeper (not higher)."

"Jean Gebser is a major influence on Jeremy--Jeremy mentions Gebser in the video. Gebser did not see the worldviews he articulates as moving in a vertical developmental sequence (contrary how he is often depicted in integral theory)."

[Edward theurj Berge]

In this video Bonnie presents a sort of WC lattice with several similar ideas to this thread.

[andrew]

Most everyone goes to sleep at night yet most never develop past the us/them trajectory. I would posit that there are certain substances that help unlock the deeper recesses of the involutionary line which may lead certain individuals( ahem) to expand their consciousness into the wider arcs? I suspect that certain Apollonian conservative types prefer the meditation pillow, though, as far as generating avenues to the depth line.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Chapter 11 of WFDT (linked above) is on the objectivist paradigm. Both it and experientialism are forms of basic realism (158) but "the classical theory of categories provides a link objectivist metaphysics and set-theoretical models" (159), thereby exceeding basic realism through representationalism and essentialism (160). The classical theory has 2 and only 2 ways of organizing categories: hierarchical and cross (aka heterarchical) (166). See the real/false reason thread showing that all of this this is admitted by the MHC. And yet its objectivist paradigm with set theory is the very basis for a kind of complexity that frames 'higher' cognitive processing and worldviews?

Bryant and the OOO crowd, and pomo more generally, has soundly refuted this outdated and erroneous system of false reason. Lakoff just adds the empirical cogsci to further demolish it. And this thread compiles a lot of these alternative views that support another kind of complexity and another kind of 'higher' (real) reasoning not much like the MHC, the latter being the main support of kennlingus' cognitively higher levels. Bonnie too is using very similar ideas, with slightly different terms and emphasis, to come to the same conclusion.

[Edward theurj Berge]

It is also no coincidence that Ayn Rand's objectivism is cut from the same cloth. And that both her and kennlingus support laissez-faire capitalism. See the anti-capitalism thread for developing that relation.

[andrew]

Bonnie's methods are sophisticated yet intelligible ; non-manipulative; non-dogmatic,  unlike a certain unnamed teal super beyond integral woman that i recently posted a link to. But hey, when one walks among the angels………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...

[Edward theurj Berge]

A few posts up I quoted from Dierkes' blog post, which linked to one of Bonnie's blogs here. A few comments of the latter consistent with this thread.

She notes science took a naturalistic turn into evo-devo, with Thompson's developmental systems theory (DST) being one example. E.g., evolution is seen not so much as progress but as biological and social adaptation to the environment. In terms of kennilingus' transcend and include in nested holarchies, it's a linear dynamic that "is neither postmodern nor modern, but harkens back to the pre-modern notions of the perennial philosophies." I.e., as LP noted elsewhere, it's highjacking a higher level by the lower.

She then launches into how biological evo was depicted as divergent, discontinuous and discrete categories, whereas the noosphere for Teilhard was depicted as nested convergent categories. While he had the notion of combining the divergent and convergent correct, he lacked pomo epistemic tools to get it right, i.e., self-organizing systems:

"Only if instead of a bounded sphere that posits a single omega point 'directing' the tangential forces, we conceive of an unbounded whole, like the universe itself expanding and enfolding in a complex, self-organizing fashion, we can derive both the apparent radial and tangential forces that Teilhard conceived, and invite Teilhard into the post-postmodern synthesis."

And kennilingus as well.

[Edward theurj Berge]

As but one example of non-teleological dynamic systems:

From this post:

TDOO, 3.3:

“In Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, DeLanda remarks that ‘[s]ingularities [...] influence the behaviour [of objects] by acting as attractors for [their] trajectories.’ Here it is crucial to note that the concept of attractors is not a teleological concept. Attractors are not goals towards which a substance tends, but are rather the potentialities towards which a substance tends under a variety of different conditions in the actualization of its qualities…. In this respect, DeLanda's attractors are extremely close to Bhaskar's generative mechanisms developed in A Realist Theory of Science.”

4.3:

“The point here is that, if we don't attend to the regime of attraction in which the autopoietic system develops, we fall prey to a tendency to treat local manifestations as strictly resulting from innate factors in the system, rather than seeing them as results of an interaction between both system-specific properties of the system and perturbations from the environment that are translated into information which then selects system-states. Here the conclusion seems to be that development does not have any one particular attractor in the teleological sense.”

[Edward theurj Berge]

Given Caputo's neologism I'm inclined to call the ideas in this thread "models of hier(an)archical complexity," as they combine convergent and divergent in a different, and I dare say, better way.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Also see this post from another thread on recent themes here.