Most of this I will have to address later, as it is filled with a great deal of information that I can't easily unpack (like trying to read a paper in a language one doesn't know well). But some of it is not only in a language I know, but one I speak.
It would. But this is not the first time I have come across integral methodological pluralism, Wilber, his quadrants, or integral theory. Nor am I unfamiliar with both those who have worked with AQAL as an epistemological tool and some who have criticized it. Habermas, Husserl, Kuhn, Quine, Feyerabend, Foucault, Beck, Ellis, and others upon which his work is based (namely, philosophers and historians of science, sociologists, particular psychologists, philosphers of langauge and semiotics, and especially the post-moderist deconstructionalist critiques) I know of and have read such that I can see where Wilber fits in. As a writer who is knowledgable and captivating, Wilber is pretty high up there. But, as is ever a problem, be it larger or smaller, when one tries to mix epistemological critiques with both alternative ways of knowing and empiricism, Queen Gertrude's injunction "more matter with less art" would be my reply to much of his work that addresses what I am familiar with.
Trying to uproot all epistemological methods and replace them with one that integrates (in the calculus sense) all possible ways without inherent contradictions or various other problems is bound to cause problems, at least insofar as Wilber uses AQAL for an epistemology that others can use. It isn't that they cannot, of course. It's just that when you build a structure for understanding which combines both the critiques of previous approaches and those approaches, you end up with something that would probably be more of value if you didn't attempt to form a systematic or organized epistemic approach. As one inside the fold put it :
"The irony here is that while Wilber attacks the post-modern, from a Latourian actor-network
theory (ANT) perspective, Wilber’s TOE is part of the post-modern phenomenon which Latour
critiques as leading to social theories ‘so cheap that we now have to increase the cost and the quality’.
Integral ends up being yet another grand discourse through which a world is framed, and every time
someone apologetically adds ‘it’s just a model’, it becomes ever more part of the post-modern
phenomenon of proliferating social theories.
The Wilberian discourse, which purports to see the world in its totality, unashamedly defines the world
on its own terms, through its specific language and conceptual frameworks (primarily through the
notion of ‘all quadrant all levels’— AQAL). The chief problem here is that in Wilber’s (and
Slaughter’s) terms, Integral does not seem to be a discourse, but rather amazingly ‘a-perspectival’,
meaning that it somehow sits above discourses and the flux of the perspectival world."
Movements toward holism in futures inquiry
But that's hardly here nor there. Whatever problems there might be with Wilber's approach are irrelevant, as you don't depend on them (from what I gather, you use what you find useful there). So I require more time to consider the important response which answered my question. And thank you for taking the time to do so.
To really talk about what he means by subtle reductionism in this context would take some explanation.
It would. But this is not the first time I have come across integral methodological pluralism, Wilber, his quadrants, or integral theory. Nor am I unfamiliar with both those who have worked with AQAL as an epistemological tool and some who have criticized it. Habermas, Husserl, Kuhn, Quine, Feyerabend, Foucault, Beck, Ellis, and others upon which his work is based (namely, philosophers and historians of science, sociologists, particular psychologists, philosphers of langauge and semiotics, and especially the post-moderist deconstructionalist critiques) I know of and have read such that I can see where Wilber fits in. As a writer who is knowledgable and captivating, Wilber is pretty high up there. But, as is ever a problem, be it larger or smaller, when one tries to mix epistemological critiques with both alternative ways of knowing and empiricism, Queen Gertrude's injunction "more matter with less art" would be my reply to much of his work that addresses what I am familiar with.
Trying to uproot all epistemological methods and replace them with one that integrates (in the calculus sense) all possible ways without inherent contradictions or various other problems is bound to cause problems, at least insofar as Wilber uses AQAL for an epistemology that others can use. It isn't that they cannot, of course. It's just that when you build a structure for understanding which combines both the critiques of previous approaches and those approaches, you end up with something that would probably be more of value if you didn't attempt to form a systematic or organized epistemic approach. As one inside the fold put it :
"The irony here is that while Wilber attacks the post-modern, from a Latourian actor-network
theory (ANT) perspective, Wilber’s TOE is part of the post-modern phenomenon which Latour
critiques as leading to social theories ‘so cheap that we now have to increase the cost and the quality’.
Integral ends up being yet another grand discourse through which a world is framed, and every time
someone apologetically adds ‘it’s just a model’, it becomes ever more part of the post-modern
phenomenon of proliferating social theories.
The Wilberian discourse, which purports to see the world in its totality, unashamedly defines the world
on its own terms, through its specific language and conceptual frameworks (primarily through the
notion of ‘all quadrant all levels’— AQAL). The chief problem here is that in Wilber’s (and
Slaughter’s) terms, Integral does not seem to be a discourse, but rather amazingly ‘a-perspectival’,
meaning that it somehow sits above discourses and the flux of the perspectival world."
Movements toward holism in futures inquiry
But that's hardly here nor there. Whatever problems there might be with Wilber's approach are irrelevant, as you don't depend on them (from what I gather, you use what you find useful there). So I require more time to consider the important response which answered my question. And thank you for taking the time to do so.
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