The Central Plot
One such suggested architecture of the Kosmos is called AQAL (pronounced "ah-qwil," short for "all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types...").
The pragmatic correlate of AQAL meta-theory is a set of practices (or meta-paradigms) referred to as Integral Methodological Pluralism, which attempts to honor and include the many important modes of human inquiry already arising in this spacious Kosmos.
Wilber particularly focused on the quadratic aspects of this methodological pluralism, where "quadratic" refers to four of the most basic dimensions of being-in-the-world, dimensions that are so fundamental they have become embedded in natural languages as variations on first-, second-, and third-person pronouns (which can be summarized as "I," "we," "it," and "its").
These represent the inside and outside of the singular and the plural: hence, the four quadrants ( subjective or "I," objective or "it," intersubjective or "we," and interobjective or "its").
The Sub-Plots
Human beings, over the decades and sometimes centuries, have developed time-honored methods of inquiry that enact, bring forth, and illumine these basic dimensions of being-in-the-world.
For example, phenomenology and introspection enact, bring forth, and illumine the first-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world ("I" or subjectivity, the UL quadrant);
hermeneutics and collaborative inquiry enact, bring forth, and illumine the first- and second-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world ("thou/we" or intersubjectivity, the LL quadrant);
empiricism and behaviorism enact, bring forth, and illumine the third-person singular dimensions of being-in-the-world ("it" or objectivity, the UR quadrant);
And ecology, functionalism, and systems theory enact, bring forth, and illumine the third-person plural dimensions of being-in-the-world ("its" or interobjectivity, the LR quadrant).
There are many other important modes of inquiry, but those are a few of the historically most significant, and certainly ones that any integral methodological pluralism would want to address.
The Plot Thickens
The collective or communal dimensions--the inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions--are not something that can be derived from the interactions of subjects and objects, but rather, the inter-subjective and inter-objective dimensions are there from the start, along with subjectivity and objectivity, and not something that "comes after" subjects and objects.
Inter-subjectivity is not more fundamental than subjects and objects, which don’t "come after" or "out of" inter-subjectivity (if so, any genuinely individual creativity would be nullified, which is not supported).
The four quadrants are not four different occasions but four different perspectives on (and hence dimensions of) every occasion. (That is, various perspectives--such as first-, second-, and third-person--are not merely perspectives on a pre-given single event, but rather bring forth and enact different aspects or dimensions of an event, and hence these perspective-dimensions are ontically not reducible to, nor interchangeable with, each other.)
The whole point of a quadratic approach is that all four dimensions arise simultaneously: they tetra-enact each other and tetra-evolve together: - ‘transcend and include’.
Losing the Plot
The pre-quadratic approaches that imagine one of these dimensions to be prior or fundamental--and the others to come after or out of the allegedly prior dimension--are caught in what we called quadrant absolutism, which takes a favorite dimension and absolutizes it, making it the ground out of which all other dimensions must issue.
Modernism tends to privilege objectivity; postmodernism tends to privilege intersubjectivity; ecology tends to privilege interobjectivity, etc.
Wilber sub-divides other examples into wave absolutism, stream absolutism, and type absolutism. Such absolutisms seem contrary to the spirit of an integral methodological pluralism, which is guided by the heuristic principles of nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment.
Such absolutisms would likely find little place in an integral metatheory, although their respective methodologies would.
It is the absolutism, not the inquiry, that is declined.
Nevertheless, each point on each axis is liable to distinctive pathologies requiring characteristic therapy.
Integral Psychology - The Plot of Plots
This is Wilber’s goal: to "reverse engineer" an explanatory framework that plausibly accounts for all of those major methodologies--from phenomenology to autopoiesis to systems theory to hermeneutics--by "transcendentally deducing" a structure of the Kosmos that would allow those methodologies to arise and exist in the first place, because already exist they do.
The suggested explanatory framework is called AQAL; its orientation is an integral overview of indigenous perspectives; its social practice is an Integral Methodological Pluralism; its philosophy is Integral Post-Metaphysics; its signalling network is IOS (Integral Operating System).
These are all third-person words for a view of the Kosmos in which first persons and second persons are irreducible agents, bearers of sentience and intentionality and feeling, not merely matter and energy and information and causality.
A grasp of Wilber’s sweeping model, to include and transcend all approaches, is clearly of value for maximising satisfaction and personal enrichment.
Some benefits of applying integral principles are:
- The model factors in the organic reality that people are not reducible to any one simple type, but are actually constellations of levels of development, different values, personalities, social strategies…
- It approaches individuals with multiple assessment tools to arrive at a fuller and more accurate understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, likes and dislikes…
- It offers a larger range of change technologies that can address the various dimensions of human existence: cognitive, emotional, physical, spiritual…
It all starts by listening to our own native perspectives. In other words, take it from the here and now which goes way beyond psychology into all aspects of living.
References
Integral Psychology by Ken Wilber
What is Enlightenment? Journal, Dec/Feb 05/06
http://twm.co.nz/kwilb_bio.html
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/psych_model/psych_model1.cfm/
- goinghome
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