Comments on Wilber Watch: Ken Wilber's Mysterianism

I think there is a framework in which apparently o...

2009-09-15T17:25:47.180-07:00

I think there is a framework in which apparently opposing views can be reconciled, not precisely in the way that Wilbur describes, but in a tighter, more logical, mysticism-free, non-gnostic way based on interlocking gestalts (similar to the way Wilber discusses the Great Chain of Being). I think a lot if not all apparent differences are due to the inadequacies of language. And due to the (largely unrecognised) fact that all language statements are metaphors, not ultimate reality. And in fact, reality itself is the ultimate metaphor. I discuss this in more detail at:

my big TOE (theory of everything)

I hope you will stop by and have a read.

masterymistery at cosmic rapture

Hi, I found this conversation with Wilber and a ne...

2009-08-17T21:26:04.100-07:00

Hi, I found this conversation with Wilber and a new author, I thought it might be interesting for your readers. I bought the novel, I will let you know what I think once it arrives.

http://www.articlesbase.com/book-reviews-articles/dialogues-ken-wilber-and-robert-bonomo-1128779.html

Blessings

I can't help it, I'm coming back for more.I have a...

2009-03-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

I can't help it, I'm coming back for more.

I have argued elsewhere that integral theory would do well to think in a rigorously postmetaphysical way. Wilber has also made this claim but, for reasons that will be obvious in a moment, he does not actually do it. If you read Habermas and Rorty on the subject (the people who invented the concept of the postmetaphysical), you see that the imperative is not to produce some kind of Providential model from which Spirit can be articulated as an a priori to all tangibility. Instead it is a political gesture: a critical life predicated on *no* positive theological or metaphysical statements.

This means that Wilber's insistence that Nagarjunian emptiness is conflatable with, say, the nonduality of the Vedas or with Hegelian philosophy of right (it is not, but that is another set of problems Wilber has introduced) is hardly postmetaphysical. It is actually metaphysical. It is not scientific, to echo Visser's comment from before.

My position is that adherence to a doctrine or to the person of one who articulates a doctrine is a really poor measure of whether a theory is "integral" or not. The only thing this kind of "adherence measures is the degree to which one is a true believer. So you see critics dismissed a priori as "Wilber-bashers" (and some of them probably are); but authentic criticism in this case often involves pointing out the mistakes and contradictions that are in plain sight in Wilber's work.

I persist in pursuing this line of argument because I am committed to transformational practice. One might say that I, like Darko Suvin, see integral theory as a kind of "cognitive" science fiction that can help break things open. But also, like Stanislaw Lem, I see an untoward tendency *against* critical rigor and in favor of what sells.

In America, what sells is feel-good, emotive "values" and appeals to authority that are wrapped in theological language. A postmetaphysical society is impossible if one predicates it on these kinds of "value"-oriented gestures, but not impossible if one thinks of another way to do it. So, I persist in thinking of other ways, outside of the "right" and "left" political dichotomy that is a false dichotomy anyway. Ask Salvador Allende.

You can find disciplined defenses of these positions in my own recent stuff at the Integral Review, or you can just read Karel Kosik's _Dialectics of the Concrete_.

Anderson

Anonymous,Come to the United States and I'll show ...

2009-03-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

Anonymous,

Come to the United States and I'll show you how this kind of ideology can be harmful. Are you familiar with intelligent design theory?

Put another way: insisting on an ultimate answer for the arising of phenomena, a prime mover, and insisting that you have the means to make positive claims about it, is hardly a position of humility. It is a prophetic position. Presenting oneself as even an adequate spokesmodel for God is hardly a humble gesture, much less the Most Advanced Model.

Frank, it may or may not be lazy, but I don't thin...

2009-02-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

Frank, it may or may not be lazy, but I don't think it is meant to conform to science as explanatory and predictive. That's the point, we don't yet have any idea why, at root, novelty occurs. I don't find Ken's view harmful at all, I think for those who understand the limit problem posed by this issue actually can hold both the awesome role of science and the interesting mystery that all limit problems represent. This humility is both useful and awesome, to quote the student you mention. Or, thank God he's not obvious.