GNOSIS VS EPISTEME

[Oleg Linetsky]

Dear friends,

I want to share with you my speech on the IEC2014 conference in Budapest.

It's about the absolute truth and wisdom in the Integral framework,

about the ontology, Ukrainian crisis and a potential of the AQAL 

to solve the world problems.

PDF file is attached to this post.

Would be glad an opportunity to discuss it with you.

[Balder]

Oleg, on my side, I am only responding so far to some of the comments in this thread, since I haven't had a chance to finish reading your paper yet.  So, I'm sorry if it seems I am ignoring your main points; the fact is, I haven't finished your paper so I don't know what your main points are yet!  I have a long weekend ahead, though, so I will finish reading your paper then.

[Layman Pascal]

I am afraid I must forgo my usual inclusive attitude to denounce Oleg.  His essay is quite simply the worst thing I have ever read in my entire life.  So heartless and narcissistic.  It appears that he does not understand morality or the heart at all!  It is so sad that he remains self-enclosed in his little intellectual bubble.

Oleg is so obsessed with the terminology and insignificant superficial details that that is all he hears or sees whenever anyone else speaks -- unless they go out of their way to calm him down "politically" with countless little verbal indications of support.  What a fragile and misguided soul!  It is truly unfortunate how little he understands of the experiential truth of Gnosis. 

He only gives lip service to Mystery and Tensions.  He is just a professional speculator who does not understand how important these issues are for real people in real life.  I feel sorry for him.  If only he was serious and sincere and willing to be fair in his dealings with other people.

It is really unfortunate for the integral community that such people persist in ignoring Wisdom in favor of their own private little "systems" and "proposals".  These are really important things for the future of humanity and for the life of Wisdom.

• Is there no uncertainty in his mind about whether or not his suggests are already included in the understanding of integral communities? 
• Does he not see there might be some Mystery which validates his own concerns in the language which he associates with its opposite? 
• Why does he refuse the uncertainty that lies beneath the most superficial terminology and tones? 
• Is he really so sure that Wilber and the many other types of integralites are "in their head"? 
• Does it not seem strange to see "trapped in head" appearing everywhere he looks? 
• Where is his embrace of the embrace of the tension? 
• Or does tension only count when it is him who expounded upon the failure and incompleteness and inauthenticity of other systems?

Those who are familiar with my usual tone will probably see what I have been doing in this thread.  But those who are not should understand: I am Oleg's sworn enemy and that my only goal is to reveal what a shamefully inadequate and merely intellectual approach he takes to this issues!

It is well known that many Frenchmen mistake the "idea" of their body for the idea that they are very sensual.  It is well known that no one is more pretentious than a person who avoids places because they are "pretentious".  And so we must say that Oleg is just playing a mental game.  He mistakes the idea of Absolute Truth, the Heart, intuition and morality for their realities. 

Very unfortunate. I pity him.

 

[Oleg Linetsky]

Bruce, I bring my condolences to you,

that you choose to deal with such insanes as layman.

[Layman Pascal]

Oleg Linestsky is the Enemy of God!  

What a vile, wretched & resentful creature full of false sympathies and pretended wisdoms.  How it pains me to recall his foul tone of poisonous snidery and fillipicious prognostications.  A disconnected dropout, utterly blind to the emotional narcissism that rots the foundation of all his intellectual jabberings. Isolated in faux-profundity of the most squishy and syrupy kind -- but not without a few jagged rocks!  A deviant and fiend who has turned his back on the soul of Today & Yesterday.  Probably a flagrant homosexual.  Definitely a malingering malcontent who...

Whew.  That's hard to keep up.

Also: "fillipicious"?  Really?

Let's put all that aside and take a look at the method of Gnosiology which I personally invented while falling out of a chair at a dinner party:

"This method," I said on that occasion, "involves tensions that exist between options and interpretations.  It involves being more present within the space of uncertainty that lives between self/other, individual/collective, left/right and east/west.  Of course one must be present simultaneously (and in roughly equal measure) as a sensing, feeling and thinking being.  That means the root capacity of uncontracted mind, heart and flesh is available to the energy which appears as a boundary condition between forms of reality. With such direct availability one may feed upon uncertainty and upgrade it into new certain without falling into the limiting thought patterns associated with either option."

And then I hit the floor. 

Now, despite my concussion, I am not so full of hubris as to assert that this is necessarily Absolute Truth or that it is the only real form of Gnosis.  It might not even guide me rightly -- even though it probably guides my better than when I do not do it!  For nihilism of many kinds besets me while my instincts are at war.  I must toggle between them, balance them, see how they justify each other, vibrate with the value-core of each until there is a new blending, a hybridization.  

All of this occurs in a space that sometimes is like tension and uncertainty and other times is like a jovial relationship or crazy and unnecessary contradiction.  There is challenge and pleasure at various times.  With my instincts more aligned, more integrated, I make a more intelligent existential choice.  I have "pondered" the situation that confronts me.  And to ponder is a matter of the whole being -- not opposed to or limited to the intellect.

I am available to the semblance of a higher intelligence.  Is it really there?  Does it need to be Absolute?  Such assertions already lead away from the perfection of this approach.  It is perfect in its resemblance to the simultaneous distinguishing-uniting power that is present in all choices, between all domains and omnipresently as all boundaries which fill the entirety of every worldspace. 

I should point out that this method of mine is not present on integrative maps of ontology and epistemology.  But that is appropriate -- since those maps present a consistent zoology of ways that we experience and know about reality.  They show what kinds of things appear.  They are not compendiums of methods for dealing with the reality that appears.

No spiritual, existential or developmental techniques of any kind are presented on philosophical maps -- even when those methods operate a comparable level to the map-making process.  What would a comparable level look like?  It would be a method which deals with the boundaries that structure all the elements on the method but phenomenologically -- as they arise in the experience of individuals.

I could say that this experience is the alternative to those types of map concepts.  But that would not be fair or accurate... since by referring to "experience" I am uttering the concept of experience.  Clumsy and disloyal.  Only a very disingenuous brute would try to SAY the difference between mere saying and "really being".  I may as well phone up my ex-girlfriend to tell her that I'm not going to talk to her anymore.  

That is sooooooooo 20th century.  

[Joseph Camosy]

Layman,

You write:

"This method," I said on that occasion, "involves tensions that exist between options and interpretations.  It involves being more present within the space of uncertainty ....

[...]

I should point out that this method of mine is not present on integrative maps of ontology and epistemology. 

[...]

No spiritual, existential or developmental techniques of any kind are presented on philosophical maps -- [...]   What would a comparable level look like?  It would be a method which deals with the boundaries that structure all the elements on the method but phenomenologically -- as they arise in the experience of individuals.

It doesn't show up on the usual maps from the usual suspects, I agree.  But it is very, very old.

To enter it, however, you have to be willing to be a fool.

Welcome, fellow Fool ....

Layman Pascal said:

Oleg Linestsky is the Enemy of God! 

[Layman Pascal]

15-0-6... an apt assemblage for this particular case.

[Balder]

Hi, Oleg, I read your paper over the weekend, as I had said I was going to do.  Since it seems you may have already withdrawn from this conversation, I'll only post an abbreviated response for now.

First, yes, I appreciate your emphasis on heart-knowledge as the feeling-navigation and intuitive-engagement of boundaries and tensions.  This is an indispensable human capacity that deserves highlighting -- and the integral quadrant map presents one useful way of visualizing the liminal zones between the various perspectives, dimensions, and concerns we must inhabit (and which we may try to balance or harmonize).  However, I am not quite sure I understand why you call the knowledge that results from this feeling-approach to tensions absolute.  From my perspective, I am comfortable with your suggestion that these tensions are ontological or real, not just 'epistemological,' but it is a leap (for me) to go from an acknowledgement of the ontological dimension of tensions to the assertion of "absolute knowledge."  For instance, in your feeling out and balancing of your own and your parents' expectations about your career path, why do you consider the harmonizing resolution you arrived at to be absolute knowledge?

Second, while such balancing of perspectives and concerns (across various boundaries and tensions) possibly can't be reduced to one quadrant or another (unless you fractally situate another four-quadrant map within the UL, to show this as a UL engagement with 5 tensions), it obviously can't be wholly separated from the quadrants, levels, types, etc, either.  While the heart is not reducible to cognition or calculation or stages or whatever, we don't feel in a vacuum: how you feel out, navigate, and harmonize tensions is likely to change according to your own level of maturation, for instance. So, I don't find it very useful to draw a sharp, absolute division between heart-knowledge and conceptual or 'evolutionary' knowledge.

Third, I'm not really compelled by the way(s) you are characterizing and dividing East and West.  I don't think these neat divisions exist and it doesn't seem really very clarifying for me.  For instance, your description of your own way of responding to your career dilemma and the various competing concerns strikes me as very 'ordinary' -- something most people are likely familiar with, regardless of what side of the planet they inhabit.  Your description of the supposedly strictly logical, calculative, non-feeling approach of Westerners, for instance, struck me (as a Westerner) as foreign and really mostly just a caricature.  

As I noted above, I find acknowledgement of heart-centered approaches to be important (and agree they could be emphasized more in Integral Theory), but I don't really fault IT for failing to be an adequate source of moral or spiritual wisdom and guidance (or practices), since I don't think it is meant to be such.  If Wilber has stated on some occasion(s) that it should serve those ends, I think he has over-spoken.  To ask it to serve those ends is to conflate meta-philosophy with philosophy.

I agree with your observation that Wilber appears unable to hear important aspects of Bhaskar's teachings on ontology. They've been talking past each other, at least in the published exchanges I've seen so far.  Even as a meta-approach, I think IT could do a better job at articulating and situating ontological understanding -- and I agree with you and Layman both that the 'boundaries' of the quadrants are a good place to start.

All the best,

Bruce

[Joseph Camosy]

Layman,

Just a final note on our discussion of paradox and it's placement within any model - today I found this in Wilber's "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality" (page 504)

In mathematics, the introduction of the IOU principle (in various ways, by Russell, Tarski, Godel), the introduction of "the paradoxes" in set theory, initially caused an uproar, almost panic, because it meant that set theory and arithmetic (and by implication, the whole of mathematics) were on very shaky ground-that is to say, on self-contradictory ground. And in a sense that is true, but mathematics "escaped" the paradoxes by postulating unendingly expanding sets ("transfinite").

We saw, in chapter 2, that this was just another example of "holons all the way up, all the way down." And we can see now that this also means that mathematics simply issued a transfinite IOU to the Kosmos. Put rather simplistically, the only way for mathematics to avoid profound self-contradiction is to postulate a yet higher level of inclusion, which avoids the paradoxes of one level-but then faces the same paradoxes on its own level. Another yet-higher level is thus postulated, and this contin­ues endlessly ("transfinitely").

Thus, the mathematical paradoxes and IOUs of one level can be super­seded at the next higher level (the next more-encompassing set), but that set then faces its own IOU (it is either incomplete or inconsistent), and that continues . . . forever. The sets must be postulated to expand forever, because the moment they stop, mathematics becomes self-contradictory. Nobody ever actually sees all of these transfinite sets: they are just a prom­issory note that allows mathematics both to keep going and to get going in the first place.

Thus the IOU: it says, I cannot pay you now, but I will gladly pay you tomorrow. It will even gladly pay with lots of interest, because the point is: it can never actually pay. The debt is never settled. Mathematics, like all holons, lurches forward forever in an attempt to get over its inherent limitations, its "self-contradictions." (Recall Hegel: "Only insofar as something has contradiction in itself does it move, have impulse, or ac­ tivity. " )

The point: all holons issue an IOU to the Kosmos, and the debt is never redeemed.

[...]

EMPTINESS

Now the real reason I mention all these examples of the IOU principle, and the real reason the mystically oriented philosopher-sages are always bringing it up (Hegel to Bradley to Nagarjuna to Shankara), IS very simple:

Addition 3: All IOUs are redeemed in Emptiness.

Emptiness is neither a Whole nor a Part nor a Whole/Part. Emptiness is the reality of which all wholes and all parts are simply manifestations. In Emptiness I do not become Whole, nor do I realize that I am merely a Part of some Great Big Whole. Rather, in Emptiness I become the opening or clearing in which all wholes and all parts arise eternally. I-I am the groundless Ground, the empty Abyss, that never enters the stream of end­ less IOUs; that never lives the transfinite nightmare of ceaseless self-con­tradiction, the perpetual agony of samsara's cascading wholes and parts; the empty Ground that never bows to the terrors o f time and the perpet­ual motion sickness known as space; that steps off the relentless torment of unending IOUs-only to embrace them all, to embrace the All, as a mirror one with its many reflections, and nothing comes to rest except the insane thought that I ever could have found liberation in endless IOUs, or that salvation had anything to do with the unending debts and promissory notes that samsara calls "reality," the sickness-inducing self-contradiction in the very heart of every finite thing.

And there is the message of the mystics, ever so simply put: Emptiness, and Emptiness alone, redeems all IOUs.4 In Emptiness alone, my debt is paid to the Kosmos, because in Emptiness, I-I am the Kosmos. Redemp­tion of debt, erasure of guilt, a balancing of the Kosmic books, a release from transfinite insanity.
Not in Emptiness, but as Emptiness, I am released from the fate of a never-ending addition of parts, and I stand free as the Source and Such­ness of the glorious display. I taste the sky and swallow whole the Kos­ mos, and nothing is added to me; r disappear in a million forms and nothing is subtracted; I rise as the sun to greet my own day, and nothing moves at all.  (pg 506)

Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality : The spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala.

Joseph Camosy said:

Layman,

I'm an advocate of cartographical pluralism.  Each model to its purpose.   As to the decision on how to model or depict paradox/nonduality - either in a centralizing position or decentralized and distributed, there is no need to choose one over the other if your model can simultaneously illustrate (transcend and include) BOTH of these.  :-)

Good to see that we're in agreement on the conflationary nature of the current Integral "levels" depiction.

Joe

P.S. The Integral way to win any argument:  "I transcend and include you!" :-))

Layman Pascal said:

Joseph,

It is commonly said that the transcendent condition depicted by any map of reality is signified by the "paper" upon which the map is inscribed.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Just another example of how the Lingam is caught in a metaphysical interpretation of paradox. See Balder's recent post linking to Priest's article on paraconsistent logic based on both modern math* and Nagarjuna. And the post following with a few links.

* Meaning the kind of math that goes beyond that used by the model of hierarchical complexity.

[Layman Pascal]

Heya Joey ('y' added only for alphabetic consistency with heYa),

Nice snag.  

Presumably Wilbs (or at least MY Wilbs) would agree that the IOU is issued not only forward toward the necessity of successor holons in an emerging universe but also "sideways" between quadrants and between ontologies (the four states/bodies considered as necessary ontologies as in my online essay "Does Anybody Hear?"). The thresholds perform a consistently generative and supplementary task no matter which direction they involved in.

Now, if I put aside my well-known distaste for the term "Emptiness", I can join my Wilbs in affirming that the ubiquitous & bizarrely-satisfying indiscernibility-commonality that exceeds both finite and indefinite syntactical boundaries of all kinds must be invoked in order to logically and experientially secure the omnipresent generative "creative slip" operating both forward and sideways at all thresholds on any Great Map.  

Whether we should mythologize that as an ultimate entity, a final arrival, which pays back the IOU is a matter of either colloquial playfulness or metaphysical malingering.  I am a pious man and offer the benefit of the doubt. (Except to Oleg Linetsky -- Eastern devil!  But of course the role of a unique fetish is to make sanity appear in the rest of the system...)

[Joseph Camosy]

Theurj,

Thank you for the link to Priest's article.  By coincidence his new book on this very subject just came out a few days ago!  (5/27/14 )

I'll delve into Priest's article in the next post...

[Joseph Camosy]

After digging a bit into Priest's "Dialetheism," "paraconsistent" logic and his concept of "gluons" which require it, I would say that although paraconsistent logic allows for contradiction at any given level, in this particular instance it is a less elegant solution than the levels IOU concept when coupled with the idea of additional dimensional space.

Allow me to try and explain:

To summarize Priest's position as simply as possible (maybe too simply):  he is trying to figure out how a whole can come about from it's parts.  (How a pile of bricks can become a house, for example.)  In other words, this is the same problem as trying to figure out how a heap becomes a holon (mereology).  He creates a thing called a "gluon" which serves the function of uniting parts into wholes, but in order for this gluon to not be a thing or part itself, it must be identical to the parts it's trying to unite.  This is the contradiction that his paraconsistent logic allows for.

From:  http://ephebe.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/contradiction-and-unity/  we have:

Well, what sort of object can unify a group of other objects without introducing a metaphysical gap?  Priest’s solution is a special kind of object called a “gluon,” which requires no saturation by the object it unifies.  The only way it can manage this is to introduce no difference, no non-identity, with any of the object’s parts.  The only way it can do this is to be identical to each of the object’s parts.  The only way it can do this is under a logic that permits contradiction, because each part of the object is taken to be non-identical to every other part.  The contradiction is that the gluon will be identical to a bunch of distinct items.

So the problem is, how can the gluon be identical to several other things?  I would assert that there are TWO possible solutions to this problem:

1.  Create a logic that allows for the contradiction such as Priest's paraconsistent logic.  This allows the gluon to be identical to more than one thing without it forcing these things to be identical to each other.

2. Create an additional dimension N that can be co-resident or co-arising with any number of objects in the N-1 dimensions.

The simplest way to describe this additional dimension "solution" is to use the classic flat-land illustration.  Let's say, in the flatland world you have two separate locations A and B.  In this world it is impossible (or would be a contradiction) for some object to be in two (or more) locations at once.  BUT what would happen if an irregularly shaped THREE dimensional object were to intersect the flat-lander's 2D plane of existence? In this case you could indeed have multiple simultaneous co-locations, as these would correspond to the intersections of the 3D object with the 2D plane.

The point is that with solution #2, this third thing which can unite the bricks and the form of a house into an actual house doesn't necessarily have to be Priest's "gluon."  Instead it can be something orthogonal to both "material" bricks and house "forms."  BTW:  When you guys hear me use the term "orthogonal" you can be certain in your knowledge of what I'm referring to. :-))

To quote again from the web article:

The problem, for Priest, arises from the fact that the extra principle contains a “metaphysical gap.”  The gap is the requirement that the principle lacks instantiation; forms must be instantiated by particular objects, generally comprising parts, and instantiation of an object of a certain kind is exactly the problem he is trying to solve:  What unifies an object?  The motivation he presents first is not physical.  Frege’s scheme for the unification of a proposition is just as prone to this metaphysical quandary.  For Frege, a term (“Socrates,” say) serves to complete an unsaturated formula (“is mortal,” e.g.), but the nature of this completion or saturation is never addressed.  The concept of mortality awaits instantiation in the subject of a proposition of which “is mortal” is the predicate.  Together they make a unity, a proposition, but how? 

Look carefully at the sentence used in the above example:

"Socrates is mortal."

If Socrates is the subject, noun or stuff, and "mortal" is the predicate or key quality or form describing Socrates, then what unites these two terms is the word "is."    What is is?   It is a VERB.  It is analogous to Aristotle's "Efficient Cause."    This verb or "efficient cause" or "activity" or "process" is the additional dimension, that if viewed orthogonally, replaces the need for Priest's gluon (and paraconsistent logic) at that level.

So what makes a heap into a holon? 

The TRINITY:  Three Orthogonal Factors (all co-arising)

• Material cause:  the heap parts.  The bricks.
• Formal cause:  the organization of the whole -the blueprint or form of the house.
• Efficient cause:  the activity of building the house or the active life-force which continually metabolizes the heap parts into the whole.  The metabolism of the dissipative structure.  Activity.  Process.

BUT there is still one more thing that is required.  The emptiness behind it all that redeems the IOU, the ultimate paradox, the nonduality which is the whole's reason, purpose, or Telos.  Its Final cause.