HFT offers a across-time, interactive rendering of various constitutive AQAL elements by linking Integral Scientific Pluralism (ISP) with the dynamic drives of four dualities in their healthy and pathological avatars: drives of interior –exterior duality, individual-collective duality, internal-external duality and higher-lower duality, with the purported aim of resolving some philosophical and grammatical inconsistencies in AQAL meta-theory. 

Three questions whose answers are not yet clear to me, and on which I invite thoughts from others are:

  1. While figure 1 on page 4 shows the 48 realms (8 zones across subject-action-object in healthy/pathological versions), how does this map intuitively convey or bring alive the notion of holarchical fields being fundamental units of reality (rather than holons or perspectives)?
  2. While Kosmic address has been defined as the combination of holarchical embeddedness and holarchical interaction, how does this framing improve upon than the twenty tenets and movement pathology enumerations of AQAL (fulcrums et al), especially w.r.t. Table 1 on page 8?
  3. Although great attention to detail has been brought to bear on highlighting some grammatical inconsistencies of the AQAL formulation, how do bullets (1) and (2) above raise the internalizability of Integral Mathematics?

I applaud the attempt to introduce the fluidic /dynamic aspect to an otherwise ‘static’ look and feel of AQAL, and may be a reading of the earlier papers on this subject may help answer the questions raised.

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Some may recall that Bowman made a brief appearance of 2 posts in our forum, starting here. I responded, he responded, I responded some more but he never answered after that.

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.  I will look up some of his earlier papers when I have a chance.

Bowman: 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 “substitutes 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.

To use my language from Sophia Speaks, 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).

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.  I think he makes some good points.  (I may return to a few of them in a future post).

For now, a few sticking points:

I got a little lost with regard to Bowman's use of the interior-exterior and internal-external dualities.  The latter appear to correspond, in Bowman's usage, to the inside/outside intra-quadrant distinctions in Wilber's zone model.  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.  But "social institution" seems properly defined as "exterior" within Wilber's model, not external (in Bowman's sense) or outside (in Wilber's).  There must be a subtle point I am missing (I expect, knowing Bowman is a professor of economics).  Any thoughts?

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.  It's not clear to me that Wilber has done this.  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.  Whenever Wilber writes "internal" and "external," he seems only to do so as synonyms for the basic quadrant distinctions of interior/exterior.

Bowman: The inconsistencies with these integral lenses seem to affect Wilber’s choices of examples when describing IMP. With his first published introduction of IMP and IM, Wilber (2006, p.36) writes, “I can approach the ‘I’ from the outside, in a stance of an objective or ‘scientific’ observer.” He then provides two examples of what he will call structuralism. “I can do so in my own awareness when I try to be ‘objective’ about myself, or try to ‘see myself’ as others see me.” Call this Case A. Wilber goes on, “and I can also do this with other ‘I’s’ as well, attempting to be scientific in my study of how people experience their ‘I.’” Call this Case B. He then states, “the most famous of these scientific approaches to I-consciousness [cases A and B] have included systems theory and structuralism” (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.

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.  This is contrasted with attempting to objectively "'see myself' as others see me," which he considers a Zone 2, "structuralist" approach.  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).  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.  Perhaps these differentiations are still debatable, but they were not directly addressed in the paper, so I wanted to bring this up.

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).  Like you, I wonder if a reading of Bowman's prior works would help with this.

I remember Core Integral Part 2 distinguishing the three i-e thingies quite rigorously - somewhat on the following lines:

1) Interior-exterior is used in the context of quadrants, as in subjective-objective, intangible-tangible, and so on

2) Inside-outside is used in the context of zones, as in feel-look

3) Internal-external is used in the sense of holonic control. So nexus agency is external to the individual holon, for example, but internal to the social holon

Anyone else remembers the above, or something different?

I have not taken the Core Integral course, so I'm not certain about that.  Maybe someone else here has?

(I edited in a final paragraph above, in case you didn't see it, addressing two of your questions -- or, sort of addressing them!  I don't really have an answer, other than "maybe but maybe not"...)

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. 


Balder said:

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.  I will look up some of his earlier papers when I have a chance.

Bowman: 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 “substitutes 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.

To use my language from Sophia Speaks, 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).

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.  I think he makes some good points.  (I may return to a few of them in a future post).

For now, a few sticking points:

I got a little lost with regard to Bowman's use of the interior-exterior and internal-external dualities.  The latter appear to correspond, in Bowman's usage, to the inside/outside intra-quadrant distinctions in Wilber's zone model.  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.  But "social institution" seems properly defined as "exterior" within Wilber's model, not external (in Bowman's sense) or outside (in Wilber's).  There must be a subtle point I am missing (I expect, knowing Bowman is a professor of economics).  Any thoughts?

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.  It's not clear to me that Wilber has done this.  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.  Whenever Wilber writes "internal" and "external," he seems only to do so as synonyms for the basic quadrant distinctions of interior/exterior.

Bowman: The inconsistencies with these integral lenses seem to affect Wilber’s choices of examples when describing IMP. With his first published introduction of IMP and IM, Wilber (2006, p.36) writes, “I can approach the ‘I’ from the outside, in a stance of an objective or ‘scientific’ observer.” He then provides two examples of what he will call structuralism. “I can do so in my own awareness when I try to be ‘objective’ about myself, or try to ‘see myself’ as others see me.” Call this Case A. Wilber goes on, “and I can also do this with other ‘I’s’ as well, attempting to be scientific in my study of how people experience their ‘I.’” Call this Case B. He then states, “the most famous of these scientific approaches to I-consciousness [cases A and B] have included systems theory and structuralism” (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.

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.  This is contrasted with attempting to objectively "'see myself' as others see me," which he considers a Zone 2, "structuralist" approach.  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).  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.  Perhaps these differentiations are still debatable, but they were not directly addressed in the paper, so I wanted to bring this up.

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).  Like you, I wonder if a reading of Bowman's prior works would help with this.

The field construct does not enter with Integral Scientific Pluralism and the 48 horizontal realms. It is only after synthesizing ISP with the dynamic drives does the model become a field theory. Reality is composed of multiple holons in relation to one another by holarchical embeddedness. This includes holons' capabilities and potentialities in a given situation. Needs, aspirations and expectations are drivers of interaction between holons. Holarchical field theory specifies classes of drives that interpenetrate the holons in dynamic situations. So neither holons nor perspectives are fundamental. Rather holarchical fields are and they transcend and include holons and their dynamic interactions, yes?

I define internal and external just as Wilber defines inside and outside. Internal is within the boundary of a holon and external is outside of it. Healthy and pathological elements can be internal or external. Wilber uses this duality to in IMP where the perspective on the 4 quadrants are inside or outside. I argue that the subject's perspective is not the only one to divide by what I'm calling internal-external. The object being viewed and the action engaged need also be divided by an internal-external boundary. This is required to really analyze action. Holonic boundaries need to be respected/understood. Regarding Wilber's integral politics - I merely point out his improper reduction of internal/external with interior/exterior. He tried to fit liberal and conservative differences to his standard quadrants but used two different dualities for the horizontal axis (interior - e.g. character; and external meaning forces outside the control of the poor).

Kevin J. Bowman said:

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. 


Balder said:

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.  I will look up some of his earlier papers when I have a chance.

Bowman: 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 “substitutes 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.

To use my language from Sophia Speaks, 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).

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.  I think he makes some good points.  (I may return to a few of them in a future post).

For now, a few sticking points:

I got a little lost with regard to Bowman's use of the interior-exterior and internal-external dualities.  The latter appear to correspond, in Bowman's usage, to the inside/outside intra-quadrant distinctions in Wilber's zone model.  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.  But "social institution" seems properly defined as "exterior" within Wilber's model, not external (in Bowman's sense) or outside (in Wilber's).  There must be a subtle point I am missing (I expect, knowing Bowman is a professor of economics).  Any thoughts?

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.  It's not clear to me that Wilber has done this.  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.  Whenever Wilber writes "internal" and "external," he seems only to do so as synonyms for the basic quadrant distinctions of interior/exterior.

Bowman: The inconsistencies with these integral lenses seem to affect Wilber’s choices of examples when describing IMP. With his first published introduction of IMP and IM, Wilber (2006, p.36) writes, “I can approach the ‘I’ from the outside, in a stance of an objective or ‘scientific’ observer.” He then provides two examples of what he will call structuralism. “I can do so in my own awareness when I try to be ‘objective’ about myself, or try to ‘see myself’ as others see me.” Call this Case A. Wilber goes on, “and I can also do this with other ‘I’s’ as well, attempting to be scientific in my study of how people experience their ‘I.’” Call this Case B. He then states, “the most famous of these scientific approaches to I-consciousness [cases A and B] have included systems theory and structuralism” (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.

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.  This is contrasted with attempting to objectively "'see myself' as others see me," which he considers a Zone 2, "structuralist" approach.  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).  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.  Perhaps these differentiations are still debatable, but they were not directly addressed in the paper, so I wanted to bring this up.

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).  Like you, I wonder if a reading of Bowman's prior works would help with this.

Regarding Integral Mathematics: Wilber's use of IM is very limited. His examples always are of a subject taking a perspective and enacting an object. This is not a field theoretic view. In Holarchical Field Theory (HFT), the subject is in relation with other objects which are their own subjects. Each holon transmits drives to its environment and receives drives from its environment. Wilber also assumes that behavior is a function of how long the meme has been in existence. This relegates some of the most interesting questions to unexamined surface expressions for Wilber. As in my Integral Political Economy work, I'm interested in how various stakeholders interact based on their drives and their relative positions to other stakeholder groups. The various levels and types of development within these groups and their relative health/pathology affect the way they interact and their outcomes. Integral change agents can work to improve the relative health of the stakeholder groups in relation to their needs and goals and mutual interactions. Holarchical Field Theory, I believe, helps us conceptualize this better than Integral Mathematics. IM can be updated with my arguments, however, having drives from object to subject and so on.

Kevin J. Bowman said:

The field construct does not enter with Integral Scientific Pluralism and the 48 horizontal realms. It is only after synthesizing ISP with the dynamic drives does the model become a field theory. Reality is composed of multiple holons in relation to one another by holarchical embeddedness. This includes holons' capabilities and potentialities in a given situation. Needs, aspirations and expectations are drivers of interaction between holons. Holarchical field theory specifies classes of drives that interpenetrate the holons in dynamic situations. So neither holons nor perspectives are fundamental. Rather holarchical fields are and they transcend and include holons and their dynamic interactions, yes?

I define internal and external just as Wilber defines inside and outside. Internal is within the boundary of a holon and external is outside of it. Healthy and pathological elements can be internal or external. Wilber uses this duality to in IMP where the perspective on the 4 quadrants are inside or outside. I argue that the subject's perspective is not the only one to divide by what I'm calling internal-external. The object being viewed and the action engaged need also be divided by an internal-external boundary. This is required to really analyze action. Holonic boundaries need to be respected/understood. Regarding Wilber's integral politics - I merely point out his improper reduction of internal/external with interior/exterior. He tried to fit liberal and conservative differences to his standard quadrants but used two different dualities for the horizontal axis (interior - e.g. character; and external meaning forces outside the control of the poor).

Kevin J. Bowman said:

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. 


Balder said:

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.  I will look up some of his earlier papers when I have a chance.

Bowman: 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 “substitutes 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.

To use my language from Sophia Speaks, 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).

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.  I think he makes some good points.  (I may return to a few of them in a future post).

For now, a few sticking points:

I got a little lost with regard to Bowman's use of the interior-exterior and internal-external dualities.  The latter appear to correspond, in Bowman's usage, to the inside/outside intra-quadrant distinctions in Wilber's zone model.  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.  But "social institution" seems properly defined as "exterior" within Wilber's model, not external (in Bowman's sense) or outside (in Wilber's).  There must be a subtle point I am missing (I expect, knowing Bowman is a professor of economics).  Any thoughts?

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.  It's not clear to me that Wilber has done this.  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.  Whenever Wilber writes "internal" and "external," he seems only to do so as synonyms for the basic quadrant distinctions of interior/exterior.

Bowman: The inconsistencies with these integral lenses seem to affect Wilber’s choices of examples when describing IMP. With his first published introduction of IMP and IM, Wilber (2006, p.36) writes, “I can approach the ‘I’ from the outside, in a stance of an objective or ‘scientific’ observer.” He then provides two examples of what he will call structuralism. “I can do so in my own awareness when I try to be ‘objective’ about myself, or try to ‘see myself’ as others see me.” Call this Case A. Wilber goes on, “and I can also do this with other ‘I’s’ as well, attempting to be scientific in my study of how people experience their ‘I.’” Call this Case B. He then states, “the most famous of these scientific approaches to I-consciousness [cases A and B] have included systems theory and structuralism” (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.

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.  This is contrasted with attempting to objectively "'see myself' as others see me," which he considers a Zone 2, "structuralist" approach.  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).  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.  Perhaps these differentiations are still debatable, but they were not directly addressed in the paper, so I wanted to bring this up.

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).  Like you, I wonder if a reading of Bowman's prior works would help with this.

Thank you all for reading and discussing my paper. I want to point out that my previous articles are posted at my website, http://www.kevinjamesbowman.com

Regarding point two above. Notice that there are only 4 dynamic drives in the Twenty Tenets. Those drives are mapped to the static dualities of AQAL in my Holarchical Development article. Then the other dualities predict other associated dynamic drives. 

Hi theurj,

At one point you asked for a paper of mine. I want you to know that I recently posted my articles to my website: http://www.kevinjamesbowman.com

theurj said:

Some may recall that Bowman made a brief appearance of 2 posts in our forum, starting here. I responded, he responded, I responded some more but he never answered after that.

Excellent, Kevin.  Thank you, also, for joining in this discussion.  I read your posts yesterday but didn't have time to respond; I will do so later today.

Bruce, 

I'm glad you found some of my thoughts on the conflation between the philosophical versus grammatical meanings of subjective-objective useful. I just want to say that your ITC paper is an excellent one that moves beyond the overly simplified and problematic use of pronouns in the integral literature without suffering from this conflation. 


Kevin J. Bowman said:

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. 


Balder said:

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.  I will look up some of his earlier papers when I have a chance.

Bowman: 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 “substitutes 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.

To use my language from Sophia Speaks, 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).

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.  I think he makes some good points.  (I may return to a few of them in a future post).

For now, a few sticking points:

I got a little lost with regard to Bowman's use of the interior-exterior and internal-external dualities.  The latter appear to correspond, in Bowman's usage, to the inside/outside intra-quadrant distinctions in Wilber's zone model.  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.  But "social institution" seems properly defined as "exterior" within Wilber's model, not external (in Bowman's sense) or outside (in Wilber's).  There must be a subtle point I am missing (I expect, knowing Bowman is a professor of economics).  Any thoughts?

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.  It's not clear to me that Wilber has done this.  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.  Whenever Wilber writes "internal" and "external," he seems only to do so as synonyms for the basic quadrant distinctions of interior/exterior.

Bowman: The inconsistencies with these integral lenses seem to affect Wilber’s choices of examples when describing IMP. With his first published introduction of IMP and IM, Wilber (2006, p.36) writes, “I can approach the ‘I’ from the outside, in a stance of an objective or ‘scientific’ observer.” He then provides two examples of what he will call structuralism. “I can do so in my own awareness when I try to be ‘objective’ about myself, or try to ‘see myself’ as others see me.” Call this Case A. Wilber goes on, “and I can also do this with other ‘I’s’ as well, attempting to be scientific in my study of how people experience their ‘I.’” Call this Case B. He then states, “the most famous of these scientific approaches to I-consciousness [cases A and B] have included systems theory and structuralism” (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.

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.  This is contrasted with attempting to objectively "'see myself' as others see me," which he considers a Zone 2, "structuralist" approach.  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).  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.  Perhaps these differentiations are still debatable, but they were not directly addressed in the paper, so I wanted to bring this up.

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).  Like you, I wonder if a reading of Bowman's prior works would help with this.

Kevin, thank you, again, for joining in to the discussion here.  I appreciate your inclusion, following Sean, of "action" (or method) in the subject-object pair, and agree that it can allow for more precision than Wilber's notation currently allows.  In leaving the action element out, Wilber's math arguably is not a math at all because it lacks any such dynamic operators.  (Relating your approach to the one I explored in my paper, you are introducing a verbal orientation into Wilber's more static pro/nounal model). 

So neither holons nor perspectives are fundamental. Rather holarchical fields are and they transcend and include holons and their dynamic interactions, yes?

If fields holarchically transcend and include holons, are they also holons?  I am thinking of a holon, such as the body, consisting of other micro-holons in dynamic interaction; the body-holon is a kind of field for the subholons.  In your understanding, are fields something different from holons, or are you offering a field conceptualization of holons?

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