Wilber's Theory Of Consciousness
1998-07-01

In "An Integral Theory Of Consciousness"
(http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/Wilber.htm) Wilber offers an inclusive
list of twelve "schools" of consciousness ranging from cognitive
science to psychosomatic medicine and bioenergy.  He proposes to
synthesize all twelve schools by showing how each relates only to a
subset of "`the four quadrants' of existence:  intentional,
behavioural, cultural and social".  The quadrants lie along two axes of
individual vs. collective and interior vs.  exterior.  In each
quandrant he distills ten or more developmental levels, such as from
atoms to brains and from prehension to vision-logic.  The survey and
quadratic seem to be useful and insightful exercises in categorization,
but things start to go downhill at this point.

Wilber says he is pursuing a theory of consciousness and existence,
but stresses that his analysis is based on an a posteriori survey of
all developmental theories.  This method seems subject to the
garbage-in-garbage-out problem, arriving in fact only at a theory
of theories.  What if this method were applied in 500 BC instead of
1997?  How might the results change if we come into radio contact
with a network of extraterrestrial civilizations?  I suspect Wilbur
is really being a priori here, but wants to appear scientific and
empirical in a situation where a priori reasoning is actually
warranted.

Wilber's zeal to find correlations across quadrants leads to odd
results.  Example: "The collective of molecules -- planets -- will
always be smaller than the collective of atoms -- galaxies."  However:
  - Starting at atoms skips some important levels.
  - Stars are a more important level than either galaxies or planets.
  - Galaxies are collectives of stars more so than of atoms.
  - Collectives of atoms are stars and jovian planets.
  - Terrestrial planets are collectives more of heavy atoms than of
    of molecules.
Wilber acknowledges that people can differ about the details of his
scheme.  But he then goes on to make much of how "each of [a holon's]
facets has a very specific correlation with all the others", and that
"each quadrant causes, and is caused by, the others, in a circular and
nonreducible fashion".  Any causality between planets and molecules is
thoroughly reducible.  There is much poetry here, but little
nonreducible causality.

"[W]ho is to say [evolutionary unfolding] has to stop with the formal
or rational stage?"  Who? People like Einsten, Heisenburg, Godel, and
Turing, that's who.  Will this "evolutionary unfolding" allow anyone to
  - transmit information faster than the speed of light?
  - know completely both the position and momentum of a particle?
  - travel backwards in time?
  - usefully violate conservation of energy or momentum?
  - build a formal system that is both consistent and complete?
  - find an effectively computable solution to the decision problem
    for the predicate calculus?
  - solve the halting problem?
  - provide a convincing proof of the existence of God?

Wilber uses many terms that refer to nothing (no existing thing):
Overmind, Supermind, Soul, World-Soul, God, Godhead, Absolute One,
Nous.

"Physical brains raised in the wild (`wolf boy') generate neither
personal autonomy nor linguistic competence, from which it plainly
follows, the physical brain per se is not the autonomous seat of
consciousness".  This plainly does not follow.  The physical brain of
a hermit on a desert island is autonomously conscious, regardless of
how much the past development of that brain depended on food or water
or social interaction.  The conclusion that "there is no individual
consciousness" is either false or uninteresting.

Wilber says that "consciousness is almost infinitely graded".  This
contradicts his idea that the existence of consciousness and
subjectivity is prima facie evidence that materialism is inadequate.
On the contrary, this notion of consciousness is like the old physical
notion of the ether: existing everywhere, impossible to measure, and
explaining nothing.

Wilber simply asserts without any basis that "intentionality [..]
cannot be explained in physicalist or empiricist terms".  He says that
"how the physical and mental interact [is] a mystery that absolutely
refuses to yield its secrets to anything less than postformal and
nondual consciousness development".  He claims without any basis that
"any sort of reductionism [is] doomed to failure". He says that the
reductionist hierarchy of atoms, molecules, cells, and brains ends
with "consciousness miraculously jump[ing] out at the top level".
Anti-reductionists apparently no longer consider it a miracle that
cells can be organized from molecules, but are nonetheless
uninterested in the next problem of explaining consciousness.  Two
hundred years ago this sort of explanatory surrender was called
vitalism.  It was wrong then, and it's wrong now.

Wilber uses the tired tactic of saying that one cannot recognize
that Wilber is right until one "transforms [to] a higher level of
consciousness".  This is an extremely convenient way of justifying
to himself why people don't agree with him.

If there indeed are "subtler types of bio-energies beyond the four
recognized forces of physics", then it would seem possible to
demonstrate such "bioenergy" in a physics lab to physicists, even ones
who have not obeyed the epistemic injunction of the "subtle energies"
school.  No such demonstration has happened, because there are no 
forces beyond the four known to physics.

Wilber allows that "the existence of some types of psychic phenomena
is quite likely".  He frets that "as soon as some sort of proof of
non-sensorimotor occasions (such as psi) is found, it can be excitedly
blown all out of proportion" because it so directly confronts
"scientific materialism".  He cautions that "we don't need psi events
to" contront scientific materialism.  Wilber knows an untenable
position when he sees one, and he is ready to retreat to the next
trench.  In fact, he leaves "quantum consciousness" out in no man's
land as "lack[ing] substantial evidence".  Apparently the
"sensorimotor worldspace" is a brutal battlefield with no place for
the walking wounded.

Wilber identifies "three strands of valid knowledge acquisition:
injunction, apprehension, confirmation/rejection (or exemplar,
evidence, falsifiability)".  He says that each quadrant has "a
different type of truth or validity claim: objective truth, subjective
truthfulness, intersubjective justness, and inter-objective functional
fit".  It's a mistake (or a truism) to say that to acquire
or evaluate knowledge requires obeying whatever methodological injuntion
is made by the community offering that knowledge.

Wilber says that the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem and the Buddha
Nature both require certain training in order to know.  The
Pythagorean Theorem is both falsifiable and consequential in the
"sensorimotor worldspace" of rulers and square inches.  The "Buddha
Nature" may or may not be falsifiable in the company of meditation
enthusiasts, but it seems inconsequential outside that society.
Indeed, if it were consequential outside that society, it would be
falsifiable outside that society.  Yes, you have to care about Buddha
Nature in order to falsify it in the eyes of its enthusiasts (good
luck!), but without that enthusiasm it has little consequence.  The
same is not true of the Pythagorean Theorem.

Wilber compares non-meditating consciousness researchers with the
churchmen refusing to look through Galileo's telescope.  The
difference between meditative practices and Galileo's telescope is
that Galileo's telescope does not _create_ the phenomena in question.
A comet foretold using a telescope will appear to everyone, not just
telescope users.

Wilber says that because no mind can produce 100% error, every theory
contains irreplaceable truth.  This is a non sequitor.  Even if no
mind can always be wrong, a given theory or proposition can be 100%
wrong.

"Not everybody who takes up Zen ends up fully mastering the
discipline, just as not everybody who takes up quantum physics ends up
fully comprehending it.  But those who do succeed constitute the
circle of competence against which validity claims are struck, and Zen
is no exception in this regard."  Zen is indeed an exception, because
in physics you can't simply claim that anyone who disagrees with you
is doing it wrong.  (Well, some physicists can so claim, and that's
how you get cold fusion and anti-gravity.)