[MD] The Trouble With Wilber

[Krimel]

dmb replies:
I promised myself to respond to just one post on account of the holiday, but

I've seen your other objections too. This one seems very central and you've 
been less vague here than elsewhere. (The word "poppycock" is NOT an 
argument, for example.)

[Krimel]
No poppycock is not an argument. That is why is followed it with a fairly
detail account of why the Witness is a rational mental process. I indicated
how Wilber's presentation of the Witness adds weight to the idea that
rationality is the higher level of consciousness.

[dmb]
Wilber is using the idea of "flatland" in very much the same way that Abbot 
did. He too is asking the readers "to think both above and below their 
current level of conception". They have different ideas about what lies 
beyond flatland but they are both saying that the current conceptions are 
incomplete, that there are unseen dimensions that have been left out of the 
present worldview. In Wilber's case, "flatland" is the term he uses to 
characterize scientific materialism or what Pirsig calls SOM.

[Krimel]
Abbott was presenting a fable to explain ideas about dimensionality that
many find difficult to picture. He cast his tale much as Plato cast his tale
of the Cave. In doing so he does not invite his readers to accept
unverifiable gibberish. He does not ask them to take his word for it. He is
explaining mathematical ideas and showing how they lead to an expansion of
awareness and understanding.

I don't think this is what Wilber is doing at all.

[dmb]
Wilber's notion of holons is designed to unflatten flatland. A holon, he 
says, not only has both a individual and collective component, as even a 
materialist could concede, but both of those compotents also has an interior

dimension. Reasserting these interior dimensions is very similar to Pirsig's

reassertion of the "subjective". Wilber's assertion that even the most basic

"objects" like atoms and particles pushes the idea of subjectivity all the 
way down. 

[Krimel]
Wilber uses holons to suit his own purposes. Holons for Wilber are whatever
he says they are. They expand and contract in whichever direction he says
that do. The problem with the idea is that holons are whatever anyone wants
to say they are. As I tried to point out earlier once you identify the first
holon all other holons fall into place in virtue of their relationship to
the first holon. That is establishing the context of the first holon
establishes the context for the rest. As a result you can use the idea of
holons to say whatever you want. This is not a particularly profound way to
proceed.

As I also pointed out, Piaget's work clearly points to the development of
human thought process as being in the direction of increased rationality.
Some how in Wilber gets this reversed with his pre/trans fallacy.

[dmb]
And this is very much like Pirsig's assertion that the so-called 
laws of nature are better concieved of in terms of patterns of preference, 
extremely persistant patterns of preference. They are both doing battle with

the downside of the Enlightenment. They're both trying to save the baby (our

"spiritual" dimension) that it threw out with the bathwater (mythical 
thinking). Here the emphasis and parenthetical info is Wilber's...

[Krimel]
In his SOVD paper Pirsig seem on the verge of actually getting it. 

"The fifth evidence of similarity is that probability itself may be
expressed as value, so that "a static pattern of inorganic values," which is
a definition the Metaphysics of Quality gives to "substance," is the same as
"a pattern of probabilities," which is a definition quantum theory gives to
substance. If the atomic world is composed of probability waves and if
probability is equal to value then it follows logically that the atomic
world is composed of value."

Causality has always been regarded as a set of events with 100% probability.
Pirsig seems close to getting this; Wilber, not so much.

The Enlightenment or The Age of Reason elevated rational thinking about
spiritual think and for good reason. Appeals to emotion, appeals to faith,
appeals to the supernatural are all of a piece. Since they are unverifiable
they can mean whatever the teacher, the preacher or the prophet say they
mean. This track of "reasoning" that Wilber shares with Falwell, Robinson,
Johnson, Behe and the like.

[dmb quoting Wilber]
"In other words, the 'sciences of man' and the new 'dehumaninzing humanism' 
did not just study the objective aspects of human beings (which would be 
fine), the REDUCED human beings to their merely objective and empirical 
components (which was a crime). Human wer not 'subjects in communication' 
but merely 'objects of information'. And because that REDUCTION is not 
supported by the Kosmos, it must be driven by something other than truth; it

must be driven in large measure by self-aggranding POWER, according to both 
Foucault and Habermas.
And with this, the whole dark side of the Enlightenment come lurching to the

fore. The catastrophe was not the emergence of reason, but reason CONFINED 
to and initially CAPTURED by empiric-analytic modes - objectifying, 
monological, positivistic - modes which see ONLY the Right-Hand dimensiions 
and never the Left-Hand (even though its own operations depend on them). It 
was a reason that differentiated the Big Three only to let them fall into 
dissociation , with the resultant emphasis solely on the Right-Hand (the Big

Threee reduced to the Big One of it-language)." Wilber, SES 464

[Krimel]
This line of crap is especially ironic coming from a guy who says everything
reduces to Spirit. What flatter land could there be that all is one, all is
known?

[dmb]
The big three, by the way, are Art, Morals and Science. We can see how the 
first two are reduced to the third one in such things as behaviourism or 
neurological explanations. Whether it becomes a matter of observing the 
actions of an organism or the function of the brain, these are sciences 
which try to explain our interior dimensions via the examination of 
"objects" that can be located in space. So, as I understand it, the reason 
Wilber's assertions seem so objectionable to you is simple. He is directly 
attacking your worldview. The flatland he attacks is the one you live in.

[Krimel]
Thanks for the explanation I thought the Big Three were basketball teams or
car makers. But you know perhaps this is one of the reasons I like Pirsig,
He does not say stupid things like this. Rather he points out that
technology can be a form of art. A barbeque grill is a piece of sculpture.
Quantum mechanics is a work of art:

"But one of the reasons I have spent so much time in this paper describing
the personal relationship of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in the
development of quantum theory is that although the world views science as a
sort of plodding, logical methodical advancement of knowledge, what I saw
here were two artists in the throes of creative discovery. They were at the
cutting edge of knowledge plunging into the unknown trying to bring
something out of that unknown into a static form that would be of value to
everyone."
-Pirsig, SOVD

Is Wilber attacking my world view? Only to the extent that he is assaulting
the intelligence of each and every one of his readers. Throughout his work
and with his Integral Institute he validates crystal powers, dogs with
"great souls" telepathy, psychokinesis and every other crazy new age bit of
tripe that comes down the pike. 

[dmb]
It kinda funny, actually. To over-simplify a bit, your response to their 
attack on scientific materialism is simply to re-assert the very thing they 
attack. Thus my line about trying to sell the idea of the internal 
combustion engine to Ed Begeley Jr.. He's not only going to refuse that 
alternative, he's going to be amused that anyone would offer the problem as 
an answer to the solution. And he's be right to laugh. Its like offering 
Newtonian physics to Einstein or trying to sell a horse to Henry Ford. See 
what I mean?

[Krimel]
Actually what's funny is Wilber's attempts to bring everyone into his big
tent. Remember in Wilber's world everyone is right and everyone agrees with
him. If they don't he just distorts their position a bit and: Voila. His
arguments against "scientific materialism" (whatever that is supposed to
mean) really are in keeping with the arguments of the religious right.
Perhaps if this goes on much long I will pull up some side by side quotes
and we can look at the deep level of harmony among these religious
charlatans.