ILR - Roy Bhaskar Interviewed at the Integral Theory Conference

From the Integral Leadership Review, Giorgio Piacenza met with Roy Bhaskar (yellow shirt, above), ontological philosopher of Critical Realism and Keynote Speaker at the Integral Theory Conference (July 2013) to talk about the tenuous relationship between integral theory and critical realism.

Roy Bhaskar Interviewed at the Integral Theory Conference

At the July 2013 Integral Theory Conference in San Francisco, Giorgio Piacenza met with Roy Bhaskar, well known ontological philosopher of Critical Realism and Keynote Speaker at the Conference. Bhaskar was a founding member of the Centre for Critical Realism and the International Association of Critical Realism. He is currently employed at the Institute of Education in London where he is working on the application of CR to Peace Studies. Piacenza has published in Integral Leadership Review and has maintained a wide-ranging interest that impinges on various aspects of reality, aspects such as the mind-body problem, philosophy, cosmology and physics. 

Ken Wilber has responded to criticisms of integral theory from the lens of critical realism.

Jeremy Johnson - “Everything that Rises…” or Synthetic Thought, Florilegium and the Networked Age: ITC 2013

Jeremy Johnson, who blogs at Evolutionary Landscapes, is the official blogger for the 2013 Integral Theory Conference, which begins later this week in San Francisco. I can't imagine a better choice than Jeremy, a man who is thoroughly educated in integral theory and is also an outspoken critic on some of its shortcomings.

Below is the beginning of his first post for the conference - an excellent piece of writing in my opinion.

“EVERYTHING THAT RISES…” OR SYNTHETIC THOUGHT, FLORILEGIUM AND THE NETWORKED AGE: ITC 2013

July 13, 2013

by Jeremy Johnson

I’m fast approaching my 5 A.M. flight on July 17th. The night before will likely consist of a heavy 9 P.M. dose of melatonin and meditation-unto-sleep. I had come up with a few clever titles and openings to my pre-conference blog, but, I think I’ll stick to the honest basics. Let’s start where I am: enthralled heartbeat, sweaty palms, swooning contemplation about what happens when you put more than one integral meta-theory practitioner in a room. Yes, this year’s theme is certainly “meta” (see urban dictionary for a proper definition). First thing’s first: this conference is hosted by proponents of a theoretical and philosophical system of “orienting generalizations,” a veritable theory of everything—Integral Theory, originally developed by American philosopher Ken Wilber. Next, we have Edgar Morin, a French sociologist and “integral” thinker in his own right, author of Homeland Earth and the developer of what he calls “complex thought.” Lastly we have Roy Bhaskar, the founder of the school of Critical Realism. Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, author of Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World and conference organizer, will be speaking on behalf of Integral Theory. So let’s talk about context.

Each of these scholars claim to some degree that the human race is at the precipice of some major event—a global crisis at the edge (or some say, end) of history—where we need to bring our disparate modalities of thinking and being-in-the-world together. The notion of a “cosmopolitan,” according to Webster dictionary, means having a “worldwide rather than limited or provincial scope or bearing.” Now add the “K” to “Kosmopolitan,” and we’ve remixed it with the old Greek word, “Kosmos” which Wilber was so fond of in his seminal book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution.“Kosmos” originally meant “the universe” or “the starry firmament,” but went on to include our planet and all its denizens. While it’s certainly meant to be a play of meaning, I think it’s relevant to the meat and bones of this conference.

“Kosmopolitan” implies that the desire to look out at that starry abode is something we’ve inherited as a species. That no single theory really owns this impulse, any more than any religion truly holds captive the sense of the sacred. That East, West, Europe, America, and every nation and tribe has drawn constellations of synthesis into (perhaps, out from) the heavenly firmament. This is the “Integral Kosmopolitan.” A movement with no center, no periphery: articulated by all but owned by none. Integral thought—if there really is such a thing—is in fact a larger “epistemic impulse” as Trevor Malkinson articulates in his excellent essay, “The Rise of the Synthesizing Mind in the Planetary Age.” As we come into an awareness of planetary issues and human interdependence with the rest of the biosphere—so too do our “meta” theories gain the robustness of discovering they are co-initiators of planetary culture.

Jean Gebser—of whom I am a deep reader of his phenomenal text, The Ever-Present Origin—came to a similar realization after publishing the first installment of his tome, only to discover that in India, Sri Aurobindo had been writing and working on his own version of “integral consciousness” in The Life Divine.

Now, I am inclined to believe that a healthy embodiment of this integral impulse isn’t interested in assimilating another’s work, which I think degrades and diminishes the integrity of fellow authors and scholars, but instead, attempts to realize a form of “synthesis” that is more decentralized as its primary characteristic. As Trevor writes in his article, “what frustrates me… is that talk of integral or integrative thinking is often reduced—by adherents and critics alike—to simply being about the work of Ken Wilber.” Over the past few years, I think the Integral Theory community has gradually recognized this criticism, as Sean writes over at MetaIntegral: “Our approach recognizes that Integral Theory is not as integral as it could be, and so we continually strive to make Integral Theory more integral through respectful inquiry and debate with other streams of integrative thought.”

This is why I am eagerly anticipating the conversations in the conference halls as three autonomous theories—Critical Realism, Complexity Thinking, and Integral Theory—mesh and mate, exchange their memetic material and show up in a couple of months with a mutant baby or two. Yeah, something like that.

Read the whole article.

Sean Esbjörn-Hargens - Critical Realism 101 (And a Lot More)

Diagram/schematic of theory - Recreated from Mingers and Willcocks (2004)

Critical Realism is not a new philosophical theory, but it has been much more prominent over the last 20 years or so than it had ever been prior. Contemporary critical realism is most closely associated with Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar developed a philosophy of science that he named transcendental realism, and a philosophy of social sciences that he named critical naturalism. Critical realism represents the union of these two ideas.

Critical realism is attractive to advocates of social justice causes due to it's potential for human development. CR (Bhaskar uses the abbreviation, as do others) upholds the "critical and emancipatory potential of rational (scientific and philosophical) enquiry" against both positivist (there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge), and 'postmodern' challenges (relativism). CR stresses the importance of "distinguishing between epistemological and ontological questions and the significance of objectivity properly understood for a critical project." CR conceives of philosophy and social science as socially situated, but not socially determined, which "maintains the possibility for objective critique to motivate social change, with the ultimate end being a promotion of human freedom."

From the Wikipedia entry on Critical Realism:

Contemporary critical realism most commonly refers to a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar's thought combines a general philosophy of science (transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science (critical naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds. Critical realism can, however, refer to several other schools of thought, such as the work of the American critical realists (Roy Wood Sellars, George Santayana, and Arthur Lovejoy). The term has also been appropriated by theorists in the science-religion interface community. The Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan developed a comprehensive critical realist philosophy and this understanding of critical realism dominates North America's Catholic Universities.

From the Wikipedia entry on Roy Bhaskar:

Bhaskar's consideration of the philosophies of science and social science resulted in the development of Critical Realism, a philosophical approach that defends the critical and emancipatory potential of rational (scientific and philosophical) enquiry against both positivist, broadly defined, and 'postmodern' challenges. Its approach emphasises the importance of distinguishing between epistemological and ontological questions and the significance of objectivity properly understood for a critical project. Its conception of philosophy and social science is a socially situated, but not socially determined one, which maintains the possibility for objective critique to motivate social change, with the ultimate end being a promotion of human freedom.

The term Critical Realism was not initially used by Bhaskar. The philosophy began life as what Bhaskar called 'Transcendental Realism' in A Realist Theory of Science (1975), which he extended into the social sciences as 'Critical Naturalism' in The Possibility of Naturalism (1978). The term 'Critical Realism' is an elision of Transcendental Realism and Critical Naturalism, that has been subsequently accepted by Bhaskar after being proposed by others, partly because of its appropriate connotations; Critical Realism shares certain dimensions with German Critical Theory (see the Frankfurt School).

In contemporary Critical Realist texts 'Critical Realism' is often abbreviated to 'CR'. A later dialectical development of Critical Realism in Bhaskar's work in Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (1993) and Plato Etcetera (1994) led to a separate branch or second phase of CR known as 'Dialectical Critical Realism' (DCRBenton]]. He was a founding member of the Centre for Critical Realism and the International Association of Critical Realism. More recently he has held visiting positions in several Scandinavian Universities. Bhaskar is currently employed at the Institute of Education in London where he is working on the application of CR to Peace Studies.

The first 'phase' of Critical Realism accrued a large number of adherents and proponents in Britain, many of whom were involved with the Radical Philosophy Group and related movements, and it was in the Radical Philosophy Journal that much of the early CR scholarship first appeared. It argued for an objectivist, realist approach to science based on a Kant-style transcendental analysis of scientific experimental activity. Stressing the need to retain both the subjective, epistemological or 'transitive' side of knowledge and the objective, ontological or 'intransitive' side, Bhaskar developed a theory of science and social science which he thought would sustain the reality of the objects of science, and their knowability, but would also incorporate the insights of the 'sociology of knowledge' movement, which emphasised the theory-laden, historically contingent and socially situated nature of knowledge. What emerged was a marriage of ontological realism with epistemological relativism, forming an objectivist, yet fallibilist, theory of knowledge. Bhaskar's main strategy was to argue that reality has depth, and that knowledge can penetrate more or less deeply into reality, without ever reaching the 'bottom'. Bhaskar has said that he reintroduced 'ontology' into the philosophy of science at a time when this was almost heresy, arguing for an ontology of stratified emergence and differentiated structure, which supported the ontological reality of causal powers independent of their empirical effects; such a move opened up the possibility for a non-reductivist and non-positivistic account of causal explanation in the human and social domain.

This explanatory project was linked with a critical project the main idea of which is the doctrine of 'Explanatory Critique' which Bhaskar developed fully in Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation (1987). This developed the critical tradition of 'ideology critique' within a CR framework, arguing that certain kinds of explanatory accounts could lead directly to evaluations, and thus that science could function normatively, not just descriptively, as positivism has, since Hume's Law, assumed. Such a move, it was hoped, would provide the Holy Grail of critical theory, an objective normative foundation.

The 'second phase' of Critical Realism, the dialectic turn initiated in Dialectic: the Pulse of Freedom (1993) won some new adherents but drew criticism from some Critical Realists. It argued for the 'dialecticising' of CR, through an elaborate reading of Hegel and Marx. Arguing against Hegel and with Marx that dialectical connections, relations and contradictions are themselves ontological - objectively real - Bhaskar developed a concept of real absence which it was claimed could provide a more robust foundation for the reality and objectivity of values and criticism. He attempted to incorporate critical, rational human agency into the dialectic figure with his 'Fourth Dimension' of dialectic, thereby grounding a systematic model for rational emancipatory transformative practice.

In 2000, Bhaskar published From East to West: The Odyssey of a Soul, in which he first expressed ideas related to spiritual values that came to be seen as the beginning of his so-called 'spiritual' turn, which led to the final phase of CR dubbed 'Transcendental Dialectical Critical Realism'. This publication and the ones that followed it were highly controversial and led to something of a split among Bhaskar's proponents. Whilst some respected Critical Realists cautiously supported Bhaskar's 'spiritual turn', others took the view that the development had compromised the status of CR as a serious philosophical movement.

In his Reflections on Meta-Reality, he states:

This book articulates the difference between critical realism in its development and a new philosophical standpoint which I am in the process of developing, which I have called the philosophy of Meta-Reality.

The main departure, it seems, is an emphasis on the shift away from Western dualism to a non-dual model in which emancipation entails "a breakdown, an overcoming, of the duality and separateness between things." However, this move was seen by some to undermine some of early Critical Realisms strongest aspects.

There is also a bit of well-reasoned criticism of Bhaskar, especially his recent turn toward spirituality (also from the Wikipedia entry on Bhaskar):

Criticism

Whilst his early books were 'models of clarity and rigour', Bhaskar has been criticized for the "truly appalling style" (Alex Callinicos, 1994) in which his 'dialectical' works are written.

Other criticisms have been levelled at the substance of Bhaskar's arguments at various points. One objection to Bhaskar's early Critical Realism is that it begs the question, assuming, rather than proving, the existence of the intransitive domain. Another objection, raised by Callinicos and others, is that Bhaskar's so-called 'transcendental arguments' are not really that. They are certainly not typical transcendental arguments as philosophers such as Charles Taylor have defined them, the distinguishing feature of which is the identification of some putative condition on the possibility of experience. (However, his arguments function in an analogous way since they try to argue that scientific practice would be unintelligible and/or inexplicable in the absence of the ontological features he identifies.)

It has been alleged that the dialectical phase of his philosophy proves too much, since Critical Realism was already dialectical.

Bhaskar's concept of real absence has been questioned by, among others, Andrew Collier, who points out that it in fact fails to distinguish properly between real and nominal absences (in "On Real and Nominal Absences", in After Postmodernism, 2001).

Bhaskar's most recent 'spiritual' phase has been criticized by many (most?) adherents of early Critical Realism for departing from the fundamental positions which made it important and interesting, without providing philosophical support for his new ideas.

The Web Site for Critical Realism offers some excellent resources, including a glossary of major ideas and links to major papers. With that, here is the short piece from Sean Esbjörn-Hargens.

Critical Realism 101

By: Sean Esbjörn-Hargens

ITC 2008 Plants a Seed

I first learned of Critical Realism from Mark Edwards during his 2008 ITC presentation, where he said something to the effect that to not know Roy Bhaskar’s work was to risk not being integral. Well, that was all it took for me to order about 10 books from Amazon.com. Thank you Mark for introducing me to Critical Realism!

Mark’s comments led me to begin to study and draw on Critical Realism, which I found quite stimulating, and this led me to write the article “An Ontology of Climate Change." This was my first attempt to augment Integral Theory with the philosophical insights of Critical Realism.

I first met Roy Bhaskar at the International Symposium “Research Across Boundaries” at the University of Luxembourg in June 2010. This important four-day gathering was hosted by Markus Molz. Roy had recently read my ontology article, and upon seeing me at the registration line for the conference he congratulated me on a job well done and thus began a series of conversations. It wasn’t long before Roy and I were planning a Critical Realism and Integral Theory Symposium, which was hosted by the Integral Research Center and took place September 15-18, 2011 at JFK University. Thank you Markus for introducing me to Roy!

Since the JFKU symposium a number of exchanges have been occurring between critical realists and integral theorists. Some of these are documented in the materials below. I’m pleased that the Integral Research Center will be hosting an invitation only ITC 2013 pre-conference symposium on Wednesday July 17th entitled Metatheory in the 21st Century. This symposium will be the basis for a book we have contracted with Routledge to be published July 2014.

Your Critical Realism 101 Packet

For an audio clip of Roy introducing Critical Realism at the opening of the JFKU symposium, see below.

Below are two PDFs to support you getting acquainted with Critical Realism and the engagement between CR and IT. In a future blog post we will provide additional materials that have emerged in the context of a lively debate between Ken Wilber and Roy Bhaskar. But for now these materials should provide a good introduction to Roy and Critical Realism.

A Resource Paper from MetaIntegral Foundation:

• Critical Realism: A Synoptic Overview and Resource Guide for Integral Scholars – Nick Hedlund-de Witt

From the Journal of Critical Realism:

• The Meeting of Two Integrative Metatheories – Paul Marshall

From the MetaIntegral Critical Realism & Integral Theory Symposium:

• Roy Bhaskar "An Overview of Critical Realism"
• Sean Esbjörn-Hargens "An Overview of Integral Theory"

Ken Wilber - Response to Critical Theory in Defense of Integral Theory

Apparently the long drought of new writing from integral philosopher Ken Wilber has come to an end, which can only mean his health has improved considerably - that alone is great news. He says he has completed Sex, Karma, Creativity, which is volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, first volume being Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1996).

These pieces are two long endnotes, and one excerpt, written "in response to recent articles on Critical Theory and Integral Theory, and, while appreciating certain aspects of Critical Theory, come out strongly in favor of Integral Theory." As Bruce Alderman mentions in his post about these new excerpts, Wilber likely means "critical realism" in his title, which is a very different thing than critical theory.

For clarity, critical realism "highlights a mind-dependent aspect of the world, which reaches to understand (and comes to understanding of) the mind independent world." Wilber's main point here, with which I disagree, is that CR in hardly integral because he denies the role of consciousness in the evolution of the universe - he describes the CR position as "ripping consciousness out of the Kosmos and leaving “the real” to be merely a denuded “ontology”."

What fails to be mentioned here is that we can combine CR philosophy - the idea that there is an ontologically "real" universe out there, the mind independent world - with the fields of emergence and complex adaptive systems, thereby removing the anthropocentric necessity of consciousness being an organizing principle of the universe.

RESPONSE TO CRITICAL THEORY IN DEFENSE OF INTEGRAL THEORY

January 17th, 2013

The following are two long endnotes, and one excerpt, from my recently finished book, Sex, Karma, Creativity, which is volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, whose first volume is Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. They were written, in part, in response to recent articles on Critical Theory and Integral Theory, and, while appreciating certain aspects of Critical Theory, come out strongly in favor of Integral Theory. –Ken Wilber

Chapter “Individual and Social,” endnote 4:

[1] 4. Integral Theory (IT) and Critical Realism (CR) share many items in common, but there are some deep differences as well. To begin with, Critical Realism separates epistemology and ontology, and makes ontology the level of the “real”; whereas, for Integral Theory, epistemology and ontology cannot so be fragmented and fractured, but rather are two correlative dimensions of every Whole occasion (part of the tetra-dimension of every holon). Realism maintains that there are ontological realities that are not dependent upon humans or human theories—including much of the level of the “real”—including items such as atoms, molecules, cells, etc.—and IT agrees, with one important difference: IT is panpsychic (a term I’m not fond of, preferring “pan‑interiorist,” meaning all beings have interiors or proto-consciousness, a la Whitehead, Peirce, Leibnitz, etc.)—to wit, atoms do not depend upon being known by humans, but they do depend upon being known by each other. The “prehension” aspect of atoms (proto-knowing, proto-feeling, proto-consciousness) helps to co-enact the being or ontology aspect of the atoms for each other—their own epistemology and ontology are thus inseparable and co-creative. The atom’s prehension is part of its very ontology (and vice versa), and as each atom prehends its predecessor, it is instrumental in bringing it forth or enacting it, just as its own being will depend in part on being prehended/known/included by its own successor. If, for the moment, we leave Quantum Mechanics out of the picture (see below), none of this depends on humans for its existence or being, and yet the atom’s prehension-feeling-knowing is an intrinsic part of this level of the “real.” Consciousness is not something that can be sucked out of being to leave an awareness-free “ontology” lying around waiting to be known by some other sentient being; consciousness, rather, goes all the way down, and forms part of the intrinsic awareness and intrinsic creativity of each ontological being or holon. Whitehead’s “ultimate category”—namely, “the creative advance into novelty”—is part of the prehension of each and every being in existence, and the creative-part cannot be ripped from the being‑part without severe violence. To postulate the most fundamental level of reality as merely ontology—being without knowing or consciousness or creativity—is basically a 1st-tier move that shatters the Wholeness of this and every real occasion.

Likewise, spiritual transcendence (Eros) reaches all the way down as well. In IT’s neoWhiteheadian view, each new moment comes to be as a subject (with all 4 quadrants), and it prehends (tetra-prehends) its predecessor, which is now an object (in all 4 quadrants) for this new subject. The new subject “transcends and includes” the old subject (now as object), and thus they mutually co-create each other: the old subject that is now object and is included in the new subject helps shape the new subject itself, by the simple fact of being included in it, actually embraced by it, and thus to some degree determining it. Likewise, the new subject, in including the old subject, is instrumental in bringing it forth or enacting it, co-creating its very being as a new object as it does so—and the new subject then adds its own degree of creativity, consciousness, or novelty, and thus actually co-creates a new being in the very act of prehensive unification. This “transcend and include” goes all the way down to the smallest micro‑subatomic particles, and all way through the actual meso developmental levels (where, as Kegan puts it for human development, “the subject of one level becomes the object of the subject of the next”—which is the meso view of Whitehead’s prehension—namely, that “the subject of this moment becomes the object of the subject of the next”—but acting now on a larger, higher, more complex, more conscious level), and all the way to the macro practices of meditation, where transcendence is the overall goal and occurs through the objectification of state-stages from gross to subtle to causal to True Self to ultimate Spirit (with each state-stage transcending and including its predecessor—the subject of one becoming the object of the next). This Eros (which certainly can be viewed as spiritual) is a primary driver of evolution itself, starting all the way back with the Big Bang and all the way through to ultimate Enlightenment. As Erich Jantsch put it, evolution is “self-organization through self-transcendence,” and that “transcend and include” is the very form of the moment-to-moment unfolding of reality.

Further, what CR describes as “real”—or “the intransitive level”—is actually and mostly turquoise reality. This is not the same “real” that is found at the red level, the amber level, the orange level, the green level, or the indigo level. If CR described what it meant by “ontology” to someone at red, they would flatly disagree, with CR’s version of ontology being “over their heads.” In fact, what most sophisticated thinkers today call “ontology” is actually the turquoise level of being-consciousness—and not as a mere description, but a real ontic-epistemic structure of the universe. These levels of being-consciousness are not just levels of a human being, but levels of the Kosmos itself (and those different levels are different worlds!). So I am certainly not saying that this “turquoise reality” or ontology isn’t real, only that it is inseparable from the prehensive-knowing-consciousness of the turquoise level of being-consciousness itself. There is no way around this—precisely because of panpsychism (such as subscribed to by Leibnitz, Whitehead, or Peirce). The turquoise level looks at the atomic level, the molecular level, the cellular biological level, etc., and concludes they have a reality in and of themselves—an ontology—but not only is it describing those levels as what they look like from turquoise—even if we ignore that part—they are overlooking the prehensive-consciousness-knowing dimension of the atoms, molecules, and cells themselves, an epistemic dimension that co-creates the ontic dimension with the being aspect of those holons (and vice versa)—again, epistemology and ontology are two different dimensions of the same Wholeness of the real occasion, and cannot be fragmented without genuine violence to the Kosmos.

Thus, for example, take molecules during the magic era. “Molecules” did not “ex-ist” (meaning, “stand out”) anywhere in the magic world—there was nothing in the consciousness of individuals at magic that corresponded with “molecules.” But we moderns—we at turquoise—assume that the molecules existed nonetheless—if they didn’t ex-ist, they did what we might call subsist (I agree). This is similar to CR’s transitive (ex-ist) and intransitive (subsist)—with one major exception: as noted, IT is panpsychic—epistemology and ontology—consciousness and being—cannot be torn asunder. What we call “pre-human ontology” is actually a pre-human sentient holon’s epistemic-ontic Wholeness, and not merely a disembodied, floating, “view-from-nowhere” ontology. A molecule’s prehension-knowing-proto-feeling is an inseparable part of its being-ontological makeup at the molecular level, and both are necessary to co-create each other. Ignoring prehension (and consciousness) just leaves ontology-being for the molecule, and epistemology-consciousness is just given to humans (or higher mammals), not to all sentient beings—they only get being, not knowing. But if a human consciousness-knowing is not involved in co-creating the ontology of atoms, molecules, or cells, their own consciousness-prehension is involved, all the way down (a la Peirce and Whitehead).

Further, when we actually get down to explaining what this subsistence reality is—the “real”—it changes with each new structure (red, amber, orange, green, etc.). What we glibly call “atoms” ex-ist at orange; those become sub-subatomic particles at green (mesons, bosons, gluons, etc.); those become 8-fold-way quarks at teal; those become 11-dimensional strings at turquoise. We can’t say what the atomic level is except from some structure of being-consciousness, and each structure discloses a new ontology, a new world. (That ontology is there, is real, but is co-created by the prehensive holons at that level.) Again, this is not to reduce ontology to epistemology, but rather claim they are complementary aspects of the same Whole occasion. (In short, I disagree with both Kant and Bhaskar—or I agree with them both, depending on how you look at it.)

This reminds me of Varela and Maturana’s brilliant analysis of the world (the “reality”) of a frog. Prior to Varela and Maturana, most biologists followed some form of eco-systems theory and described the reality of the frog as existing in various systems of nature. But Varela and Maturana pointed out that that was actually what the frog’s reality looked like from the scientist’s point of view, but not from the frog’s. The frog’s “view from within” (zone #1) consisted only of various patches of color and motion, smells and sounds; it did not have the cognitive capacity to stand outside itself and picture the entire system of which it was a part—only the scientist did that (using zone #8). Reality, for the frog, was the immediate view from zone #1, and the best the scientist could do was attempt to capture that using zone #5—a 3p x 1-p x 3p—namely, the objective scientist, while studying an objective organism (3p), attempts to take the organism’s “view from within” or “biological phenomenology” (1-p)—two phrases Varela often used. Varela pointed out that this “view from within” was not the actual 1st-person view of the frog itself that the scientist is directly observing (that would be the frog’s zone #1), but the exterior version of the frog’s inner view (or zone #5; i.e., the view from the inside of the UR, not the inside of the UL). The point is that the frog enacts its own reality—its own epistemology or consciousness brings forth and co-creates its own ontology or world (the closest to which the scientist can get is zone #5)—and the scientist himself likewise enacts, or can enact, his own view of the frog’s reality, which many scientists believe is generally a systems view (#zone 8), but more truthfully is a zone #5 version. But in both cases, the being and knowing are two dimensions of the same actual occasion, whatever it is. But merely using a systems view is a deeply anthropocentric view of the frog’s real world, and claiming to know the frog’s actual world (zone #1) by using the scientist’s tools (zone #8) does grave violence to the frog’s actual interior.

Thus, according to IT, the level of the “real” described by CR doesn’t exist as CR describes it. Rather, in IT’s view, in actuality it is either the product of both the prehensive-feeling-knowing plus holonic-being-isness of each of the holons at the particular level of the real being described (e.g., quarks, atoms, molecules, genetics) and their relations—all of which are tetra-enacted and tetra-evolved; and/or it is the result of the way the world emerges and is tetra-enacted at and from a particular level of consciousness-being (e.g., turquoise) of the scientist. In the latter case, the real is not created by its mere description by the particular level of consciousness-being, but rather actually emerges as a level of the real with the emergence of the deep structures of the particular level of being-consciousness. (Again, these levels of being-consciousness are not just levels of human beings but levels of the real Kosmos.) These levels of being-consciousness (red, amber, orange, green, turquoise, et.) are not different interpretations of a one, single, pregiven reality or world, but are themselves actually different worlds in deep structure (an infrared world, a red world, an amber world, an orange world, a green world, a turquoise world, etc., each of which is composed of Nature’s or Kosmic habits tetra-created by the sentient holons at those levels, as are atomic, molecular, cellular, etc. worlds).

The deep structures of these worlds are the nondual epistemic-ontic Whole occasions, but this doesn’t prevent them from being fallible when it comes to humans’ attempts at disclosing and discovering and describing the real characteristics of the Whole; i.e., the surface epistemic-ontic approaches are fallible (which is one of the reasons that multiple methodologies—epistemologies that co-enact and co-create correlative ontologies—and vice versa)—are so important: the more methodologies used, the likelier the deeper Wholeness (the deeper unity of being-consciousness) will be accurately disclosed and enacted in more of its dimensions.

These deep features of the real are—a la Peirce—not eternal pregiven realities of a one world, but Nature’s habits that have been engraved in the universe through the interaction of semiotic-sentient beings (that go all the way down—including quarks and atoms—which is why there are proto-conscious-feeling-knowing beings present from the start to actually create habits—they are living and conscious beings capable of forming habits!—instead of prehension-free ontologies that have no living choices, and thus must blindly obey laws, something both Peirce and I, among others, find unintelligible. Further, according to Peirce, it is the fact that each semiotic being—all the way down—has in its tripartite makeup an interpretant that means the holon’s being is determined in part by interpretation, all the way down—and this, he says, is “inescapable”).

Which brings us to another point. Originally, CR was created as a way to explain and justify the results of scientific experiments (as Karl Popper asked, paraphrasing, “How is it that science actually works? It works because there is a real ontology that can rebuff it”). But it is not clear at all that the types of realities disclosed by science and scientific experiments are the same ones that work with morals, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and introspection, to name a few of the multiple methodologies that exist out there and address different object domains and zones. To claim that only scientific experiments give “real” results is perilously close to scientism, and simply adding other disciplines on top of science is actually to reduce those dimensions to merely scientific methodology itself. Reducing all dimensions to science certainly strikes me as being far from an integral move. I am much more satisfied with the (at least) 8 fundamental methodologies that disclose different object domains (and whose injunctions or paradigms enact or bring forth or co-create those various domains, which, again, are not just lying around out there waiting to be stumbled on by a scientific methodology—that belief is what Sellars calls “the myth of the given.”)

(More recently, Bhaskar has introduced spiritual realities and consciousness into his scheme. But dumping consciousness on top of an ontological scheme that was developed without it is, well, cheating. The whole scheme has to be done over, using consciousness as an intrinsic part of the scheme from the very beginning, and not simply importing it after the scheme has been developed without it. The chances that the scheme will have anything real to do with actual consciousness is slim indeed, as consciousness becomes a dues ex machina to the main frame.)

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least briefly mention the claims made on behalf of Quantum Mechanics (QM), which has, if nothing else, been taken as the most successfully precise scientific model ever invented (one estimate put it at a million times more precise than Newtonian physics). The central concern of QM centers around what is called the “collapse of the wave packet” (which means, simplistically, this: around 1925-6, both Heisenberg and Schroedinger came up with a set of mathematical equations describing the existence of a subatomic particle. Heisenberg’s was a complicated S‑matrix equation, and Schroedinger’s a simpler calculus wave. They were quickly shown to be interchangeable in results, and thus Schroedinger’s wave equation, being the simpler of the two, soon became the standard form of QM—“the collapse of the wave packet” refers to the collapse of Schroedinger’s wave equation version). Max Planck (who had introduced the quantum revolution in 1905 by suggesting that energy does not come in a continuum but rather exists in discrete packets or quanta) noticed that if you take the square of the results of the Schroedinger equation, you would get the probability of the specific location (and/or a set of other characteristics) of the particle in question (but you get only two characteristics at a time—and—the catch—the more you find of one, the less you can find of the other). The results of this inability to determine both variables was able to be put in a precise form as what became famously known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which basically brought an end to strict causality in the physical sciences (and presumably removed “causality” from the Realists level of the “real”). But the real kicker came from the fact that, prior to actually measuring the particle to gain some information about it, the particle existed only as a probability—you literally couldn’t say it existed or it didn’t exist. Moreover, the type of measurement that you performed on the particle determined the type of being that you actually evoked—different measuring methods gave you different beings with different qualities. This lead John Wheeler to say that we lived in a “participatory-observation” universe. QM has now been found applicable in scales from the very smallest to the very largest, as well as in brain interactions, biology, etc., and remains, for what it does, “the most successful physical theory of all time.”

What is remarkable about this theory is how firmly it unites epistemology and ontology—the two, in fact, co-evoke each other. A different epistemology brings forth a different ontology, and a different ontology will correlate with a specific and different epistemology—each of them, as it were, bringing forth the correlative dimension (or co-creating it).

I don’t want to over-emphasize the role of QM in Integral Theory. I do want to point out, however, that—starting with Karl Popper—the role of science in CR has been pervasive, but science has been changing in profound ways that CR seems not to have kept up with. If ever there was a case of “means of knowing” governing in many ways “modes of being,” QM is it, undeniably. And given that QM is the most successful physical theory in history, one’s “ontology” should probably line up with it.

I might mention that it’s not just the existence of the 4 quadrants that is important—many theorists include the 4 quadrants—but rather their being 4 different dimensions of the same occasion, moment to moment, that is distinctive with IT. The 4 quadrants, further, go all the way down, and this means that consciousness itself goes all the way down, as in intrinsic part of the very fabric of the Kosmos itself. This is what sets Integral Theory apart from so many other theories. Aspects of consciousness—which itself is primarily an opening or clearing in which subjective and objective phenomena can emerge—include:

—creativity (as part of the very opening in which newness and novelty can appear, and the means by which it can appear)

—an automatic epistemic-prehension of the preceding moment (which co-creates or helps bring forth the being or ontology of the present moment—its being “grasped” is what brings it forth, and its being prehended by an interpretant, a la Peirce, is what gives the unavoidable interpretive twist to its being)

—while, at the same time, the include part (of transcend and include) means the previous moment, once subject but now object of the new subject, is included or literally taken into the being of the new subject, thus altering the new subject’s very being or ontology in the specific act of inclusion—again, epistemology-consciousness and holonic-being are co-creative and co-determining as two aspects of the Whole real occasion. Sucking epistemic-consciousness-feeling out of the holon, leaving only its dead and denuded being or ontology is effectively to kill the being in question, and anthropocentrically to transfer all the epistemic-knowing-feeling-consciousness dimensions to humans alone, who then propose theories about this denuded level of being that they call “the real.” This is tragic.

—also, as regards the “include” part of “transcend and include”—while the transcend part is Eros, or Spirit-in-action (or Spirit-in-self-organization), and is injecting Spiritual creativity into every moment (thus making evolution “self-organization through self-transcendence,” as Erich Jantsch put it)—while that is happening, the include part is taking care of those aspects generally known as “causality” and induction. If the degree of creativity or novelty in a holon-being is extremely small (as with, say, a quark), then the previous moment’s including component will be by far the strongest determinant of the new subject, and the new subject will seem completely deterministic (having little creativity to counter the causality). But Whitehead points out that no being’s creativity is absolutely zero, only vanishingly small, and thus strict determinism or strict causality doesn’t exist (the same as maintained by QM). Further, the higher on the Great Nest that a holon appears, the more novelty and creativity it possesses—so a physicist can predict where Uranus will be, more or less, a 1000 years from now, but no biologist can tell you where my dog will be 1 minute from now. But for those holon-beings with little creativity, the “transcend and include” mechanics accounts for an answer to Hume’s critique of both causality and induction (i.e., accounts for their existence, even as both become less and less the higher the degree of development and evolution).

I do want to repeat that there is much in CR that I appreciate. I particularly appreciate having an ally against the relativism of extreme postmodernism (even if, alas, I still find problems in how CR goes about doing this, by ripping consciousness out of the Kosmos and leaving “the real” to be merely a denuded “ontology”). But its heart is in the right place, one might say, and Bhaskar himself is a truly extraordinary human being, and everything a philosopher should be, in my humble opinion (it reminds me, somewhat grandiosely, I guess, of what Habermas said about Foucault after their famous meeting—“He’s a real philosopher”—praise indeed from Habermas). The funny thing is, several theorists have pointed out how CR and IT can be brought into general (and even quite close) agreement, with a few fundamental changes: me, accept ontology as “the real”; and CR, accepting epistemic-ontic as correlative dimensions of the same actual Wholeness of sentient holons going all the way down. As I read CR, I keep seeing it subtly—very subtly—reducing everything to ultimate anchorage in the essentially prehension-free Right-Hand quadrants (and I’m sure CR sees IT as subtly reducing everything to the Left-Hand quadrants). But my position is, and remains, that all 4 quadrants are equally real, equally present, tetra-enacting, and tetra-evolving, and anything less than that (along with levels, lines, states, and types, fulcrums and switch-points, Integral Methodological Pluralism, and Integral Post-Metaphysics) can scarcely be called “integral.”

Read the other two excerpts, beginning here.