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Integral World: Exploring Theories of Everything
An independent forum for a critical discussion of the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber
SEE MORE ESSAYS WRITTEN BY ANDY SMITH
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A Response to Goddard
Andrew P. Smith
In a series of articles, the most recent of which is "Holonic Logic
and the Dialectics of Consciousness: Unpacking Ken Wilber's Four
Quadrant Model", Gerry Goddard has criticized Ken Wilber's view of
holarchy for ignoring, or conflating, several distinctions that
Goddard refers to as "categories of holonic logic". Goddard has
proposed a substantially revised model in which these categories are
clearly distinguished. The revised model, while retaining at least a
semblance of the four quadrant structure of Wilber's model, makes
further divisions within the left-hand or interior portion of the
Wilber model, as well as defines two different kinds of relationships
between the upper and lower, or individual and social, quadrants. The
result is a double "quadrant" model, each half of which contains six,
rathert han four, domains (Wilber's model and Goddard's revision of
this model are depicted in Figs. 1 and 5, respectively, of Goddard's
online paper).
Goddard's model, then, seems to be more complex than Wilber's, which
itself contains more than a dozen levels of holons, each of which is
to be considered in four different aspects or conceptual dimensions.
Having proposed a far simpler model, in which all levels of existence
are represented on a single scale (see my online book Worlds within
Worlds), I would seem to be
even further from Goddard's views than Wilber is. Ironically, however,
I agree with a good portion of Goddard's presentation, and believe
that it in some respects strengthens the case for a one-scale model.
The purpose of this article is to explain how.
Subject vs. Object
The first distinction that Goddard accuses Wilber of conflating is
that of subject vs. object, represented in the left vs. the right-hand
portion of Wilber's model. More specifically, Goddard says, "the
categories 'interiority' and 'exteriority' tend to become conflated
with the subjective and the objective and with mind and matter, and
need to be more carefully differentiated." In Wilber's model, as I
think most of us understand it, the right hand portion refers to
objects or structures, while the left hand portion represents
experiences of conscious entitites. Each holon is believed to have an
objective or structural form--what Wilber calls an exterior
aspect--but also a mode of consciousness, or interior aspect.
The conflation, according to Goddard, is between a holon's experience
of objects, which ought to be a left-hand aspect, and the objects
themselves, which do belong on the right. If one takes Wilber's
right-hand side to be the objects themselves, Goddard argues, then one
falls into the Cartesian trap of postulating a consciousness separate
from the material world, yet somehow able to experience it. If one
takes Wilber's right hand side to be the experience of objects, on the
other hand,then the objects themselves--which is to say, the entire
material world--disappears.
Goddard's solution to this dilemma is to bite the bullet and make a
distinction between the experience of objects and the objects
themselves. The former aspect, which Goddard also refers to as public
experience, is placed on the left hand side of the Wilber model--to
the right of, or "outer" to, experience of thoughts, or private
experience--while the latter becomes Wilber's right hand quadrants.
Moreover, to do this, Goddard argues, we must bring another holon into
the picture:
"since reality cannot be pictured without the observer, we must
introduce another holon which is conscious of the first holon, but to
which none of the contents of the four quadrants can be directly
revealed, at least through the senses!"
This additional holon (call it B) allows us to define holon A in a way
that clearly relates it to, yet distinguishes it from, holon B's
experience of it. Conversely, holon B is defined by the observation of
A. By this move, Goddard claims, we can avoid the Cartesian trap:
"the fundamental logical condition underlying all epistemology and
ontology is the relationship, not of a Cartesian subject to a
Cartesian object, but of a holonic subject/object to a holonic
subject/object where the objective form of the one is in some sense
equivalent to the subjective form of the other"
Otherwise, Goddard warns us, "as a picture of any holon, Wilber's
Four-Quadrant model is an abstraction, with consciousness disembodied
and transcendent. "
I believe that Goddard has made a useful distinction here, though he
of course has not solved, any more than Wilber or anyone else has, the
problem of just how conscious experience is related to objects in this
world. If Wilber's model has a Cartesian bias to it, as Goddard
suggests, than Goddards's model has a Kantian bias. Most of us, I
suppose, would regard Kant's views as definitely an improvement over
Descartes', but his word is certainly not the last on this matter. In
fact, not all modern philosophers accept the distinction between
impressions and ideas (which as Goddard notes, correspond, more or
less, to his public experiences of objects and private experiences of
thoughts). For example, there is a school of thought that contends
that all experiences, at least conscious ones, involve thoughts about
something (Seager 1999). Those of us participating in the holarchy
debate should have some sympathy with this position, because a central
principle of most meditative traditions is that in the ordinary state
of consciousness, we are prisoners of our thoughts. We don't actually
see the tree; we think we see it. For us, virtually everything is
thought. The purpose of meditation is to remove, or transcend, these
thoughts, allowing direct perception to occur. And in fact when we do
this, we find that the division between an external world and an
interior one dissolves (see my Illusions of Reality
for a further discussion of this point).
However, these considerations really don't affect the heart of
Goddard's argument. Whether we are ordinarily conscious of them or
not, there must be direct experiences or impressions of the world.
That is, if one accepts the scientific view of perception, in which
stimuli from the external world enter the brain, the initial effect of
these stimuli is to generate direct perceptions, before these are
further processed into thinking. Even if only through unconscious
processes, these direct perceptions or impressions surely affect our
subsequent thinking and other forms of behavior. This is shown most
clearly by the fact that we can use them to construct an external
world, the main features of which we all agree on.
Thus I accept Goddard's distinction between experience of objects and
experiences of thoughts, and agree with him that it's a valuable part
of a holarchical model. This distinction is in fact part of my own
one-scale model of holarchy, as described in Worlds, and provides, I
believe, a way of linking that model with Goddard's, and in the
process, revealing another strength of the one-scale model that
neither Goddard's nor Wilber's has. For in this one-scale model, these
two types of experience can be differentiated by the types of holons
that the perceiving holon is interacting with, rather than (as in
Goddard's model), postulating two different kinds of interactions
between thesame kinds of holons. The different kinds of holons that
form the basis of these two kindsof interactions , in turn, follow
directly from the structure of the one-scale model, as I will now
explain.
Looking Up and Looking Down
In my model, the distinction between the two kinds of experience, or
perception, results from the fact that any holon can look either down,
at holons below it, or up, at holons above it. When a holon looks
down, at lower holons, it experiences them as objects; this is
Goddard's public experience. Thus we see tables, chairs, rocks, trees,
other animals, and parts of our own bodies as objects. We may also see
other people in this manner, though we don't always do so, as I will
explain in a moment.
When we look up in the holarchy, in contrast, at holons above us, we
experience thoughts, Goddard's private experience. What are these
other holons, above us? They are the various forms of social structure
that we belong to, from families to multi-national organizations. I
realize that neither Goddard nor Wilber, nor, apparently, hardly
anyone else participating in this Great Holarchy Debate, accepts the
idea that human social organizations are above us in the holarchy. I
have addresssed their arguments in several places, most recently in
The Spectrum of Holons at this site, and will not go over all of this
again here. Instead, I will pass on to another claim, which should be
more acceptable, but which I believe will lead us in the same
direction.
This second claim is that when we think, we are participating in
social organizations or holons. Everyone, surely, accepts that there
is a very close correlation between the types of mental activities we
are capable of and the kind of society we live in . As Ken Wilber has
recounted in so much detail (1981, 1995), certain types of thinking
emerged in parallel with certain forms of human societies, precisely
because these kinds of mentation require complex interactions between
human beings. From this, it's a fairly short step to the conclusion
that thinking is in fact a social activity, which we all take part in.
To take an immediate example, the thinking I am experiencing now,
while writing this article, could only occur in me, or another person,
because of a very complex set of social relationships through which
language has been created, certain words have been given the ability
to represent certain objects or ideas, certain combinations of words
allowed to represent more complex ideas, and so forth. When I engage
in this kind of exercise, I am making a number of assumptions,
including: 1) there is a certain state of affairs of the world beyond
my immediate experience of it; 2) this state of affairs can be
represented in certain words and certain combinations of words; and 3)
when I write these words, other people will see this state of affairs
as I do (see Searle 1998). None of this could occur through
interactions occurring solely between myself and another person, nor
is any one person essential to this process. Therefore, I contend,
this activity of writing--like so much else of our behavior--is a
social phenomenon, a property of societies,which I am participating
in.
We can also see the same relationship at work in our interactions with
other people. I said earlier that when we look at other people, we can
see them as objects or exteriors. This is true sometimes, but not
always. If you walk down a busy street, you will see most of the
people there in this way, as exteriors. But if you interact with
someone you know, you are not perceiving her entirely as an object.
Your interaction is very much influenced by your prior experience with
that person, memories of being with her before, thoughts that perhaps
compare her to other people you know, and so on, and so on. To have
these kinds of thoughts presupposes that you have an image of that
person that extends beyond the present moment, that is, that you can
represent her in your mind. This image allows you to assume that she
existed before this immediate moment when you interact with her, that
she will continue to exist after it, that she thinks and feels and
does certain things, and so on. So your interaction with this person,
while it may involve direct experience to some extent, also involves
experience through thoughts. And again, your ability to experience
these thoughts is directly dependent on your existence in, and
participation in the properties of, a socialorganization that has
created the tools to view people inthis way.
Now if one accepts this claim--that by thinking, we are participating
in the properties of certain social holons--it seems to me to be very
difficult to maintain that these social holons are not higher than the
individual human being. The Wilber model is very explicit in claiming
that people of modern societies are situated higher in the holarchy of
life than people of earlier societies, and I accept this claim. If the
difference between moderns andearlier people is simply this
participation, it directly follows that social organizations are
higher than any individual human members of them. That is to say, the
only difference between Homo sapiens today and Homo sapiens of one
thousand, ten thousand or fifty to one hundred thousand years ago is
the benefits of participation in a more complex set of social
relationships.
This concept of participation, which I make much of in Worlds, cuts in
both directions. In one direction, as I have just discussed, it
implies that we are imbedded in higher-order holons. We, as
individuals, are not really the highest forms of existence on earth,
even without taking into account possibly transcendental forms of
existence. But in the other direction, by virtue of having access to
some of the properties of societies, we are no longer simply
individual holons. We exist to some extent on a higher stage of
existence within our (mental) level of existence. As I discuss in
Worlds, this is why we can view other people, in some situations, as
objects or exteriors. To the extent that we exist in higher social
stages on our level, we are above the level of any pure organism,
including the human organism. So when we look at strangers on the
street, and simply see other organisms, we are to some extent looking
down at holons below us, not at holons precisely on our plane of
existence.
In this limited sense, I can find some common ground with Wilber and
his supporters, who insist that society is simply another conceptual
dimension of existence of human beings. It is, to the extent that we
participate in its properties--but don't be fooled into believing that
our participation is total. Society, and its properties, vastly
exceeds the scope and depth of any single indvidual. Even a KenWilber,
for example, does not know everything that our society knows. Not even
close. And contrary to the implications of Wilber's model, this
knowledge is not decentralized or diffuse. It is, in principle,
completely accessible by any single individual--in fact, a few hundred
years ago, a few outstanding single individuals perhaps did access all
of it, or nearly all of it. That no one today can is a reflection
simply of the much greater scope and depth of this knowledge, not that
it can't take on a centralized location.
As I have discussed in Worlds and other places, the view of human
beings as participating to some extent in the properties of higher
stages addresses other limitations of the Wilber model. For example,
by considering everything in terms of undifferentiated levels, Wilber
is forced to the ludicrous implication that the relationship between
modern humans and people of an earlier society is much like that
between cells and molecules. Each represents a different level in his
model, and the relationship between any two adjacent levels should be
very much like that between any other pair. In my model, all human
beings exist on the same level; they differ, as I just pointed out,
according to what stage on that level they participate in. So the
relationship between modern people and people of earlier cultures is
not at all like the relationship between cells and molecules. It is
rather more like the relationship between cells participating in
different stages within an organism, e.g., between neurons in the
brain, and cells in some other organ or tissue. While all analogies
have their limitations, this is surely a much more accurate way to
compare members of different human societies than that implied by the
Wilber model.
On the other hand, the relationship of an individual who has realized
a higher state of consciousness, and has truly transcended the mental
level of exisence, is like that of the relationship of any lower level
to a level directly below it. This, again, contrasts with the
implication of the Wilber model, that this relationship is very much
like that of a modern human being to one of just a few centuries
ago--or of an adult to a child. Others, including Goddard (1997), have
also pointed out the problems with this view.
Agency vs. Communion
The second major distinction that Goddard draws is between individuals
and societies, on the one hand, and agency vs. communion, on the
other. In the Wilber model, individual holons are mapped in the upper
quadrants, while social holons are represented in the lower quadrants.
According to Goddard, this division glosses over the key insight that
any holon, individual or social, can express either agency or
communion. (Closely following Goddard, I hope, I define agency as the
extent to which an individual holon is independent or autonomous of
other holons, either individual or social, while communion is the
extent to which it interacts with these other holons):
"But the Upper and Lower quadrants of Wilber's Four-Quadrant model are
apparently mapping two different logical types of holon (individual
holons which include a locus of prehension and social holons which do
not) rather than the polarities of any holon... If the Upper is seen
as a holon in its own right (and Wilber [1995,2000] obviously means
this by calling it the 'individual holon'), it must include both
agency and communion. And likewise for the social holon mapped below."
Goddard considers the possibility that the two dyads could be
identical--that is, that the upper quadrant of individual holons could
also represent agency, while the lower quadrant of social holons could
represent communion --but rejects this. Noting that Wilber has defined
the agency/communion relationship with the phrase: "the more agency,
the less communion, and vice versa." he observes:
"This would mean then that the more developed the individual the less
developed the society, or vice versa. On the face of it, since
generally speaking highly developed individuals live in highly
developed societies, this is obviously absurd."
In making this point, Goddard illustrates yet another key distinction
he draws, between types of dyadic relationships. Some of these, like
agency/communion, he argues, have a polar relationship--the more of
one, the less of the other--while others, like individual/social, have
what he calls a "Janus-faced" relationship. This kind of dyad might be
characterized as "more-more", in that increasing the presence of one
member also increases the presence of the other. Indeed, in Goddard's
view, the two members of this kind of dyad are really just one
phenomenon, seen in different ways.
On the basis of this argument, then, Goddard concludes that a complete
holarchy model must make the agency/communion distinction in a way
that clearly delineates it from the individual/social distinction. He
does this by adding not simply another division within the original
four quadrant model, but an entire new set of quadrants. The result is
two sets of "quadrants" (actually, six domains), one of which
represents individual holons in agentic mode and the
correspondingsocial holons in communal mode, and the other, communal
individuals and agentic societies. This allows him, first, to preserve
the Janus-faced relationships between individuals and societies in
both quadrants, and second, to demonstrate that there is a direct
correlation between agency/communion and the two types of perceptual
relatonships between holons:
"Subject/object perceptual interactivity is the basis of the agentic
individual and communal social development: subject/subject connective
resonance is the basis of the communal individual and the agentic form
of society."
I believe that Goddard has made an important advance by connecting
agency/communion to perception, but again, I claim that a one scale
model cannot only handle the same distinction, but clarify it. I begin
by reminding the reader that in the previous section, I argued that we
perceive objects or exteriors when we look at holons below us, while
we perceive thoughts whenwe look at holons above us. So in my model,
holons can be said to act agentically when they look below themselves,
and communually when they look above themselves. The former is
subject/object perception, the latter subject/subject perception.
I think Goddard would agree with my definition of subject/object
perception. I'm pretty sure he would not agree with my definition of
subject/subject perception. Though I find his definition of it (like
some of his other definitions) rather vague--"a direct resonance
between subjectivities within a cohesive or agentic social form"--it's
clear from his subsequent discussion that he equates this with a form
of perception much more common in earlier cultures:
"In the course of development from the primal human up to the modern
the subject/subject way of knowing gives way to the subject/object
epistemology... So as we go up hierarchically (up to the modernist
period), the social holon decreases its agency and increases its
communion, while the individual increases its agency and decreases its
communion..."
Thus Goddard believes that individuals in our modern societies are
more agentic than those of earlier societies, and tend to perceive
objects (as opposed to thoughts) more than the latter individuals did.
At first glance, this seems like a reasonable view. We normally think
of ourselves as having more individuality and more freedom than people
of earlier societies, and though Goddard states that individual holons
manifest both agency and communion, there is a sense in which he
equates agency with individuality, and I think also freedom, as when
he says , "The agency of the 'social holon' is its cohesive structure
which puts a preventative counter pressure on the developing
individual". The predominance of subject/ojbect perception, on the
other hand, seems to fit with our science-basedsociety,which mistrusts
subjective views, and tries to base everything on empirical
observations.
On closer inspection, however, I believe this view (or perhaps more
accurately, this definition) of modern society does not represent the
actual case. In fact, my own view is precisely the opposite. My claim
is that modern individuals are less agentic than those of earlier
societies, and perceive more in the subject-subject mode.
Let me begin by trying to untangle the terms "agency" and "freedom"
(now), and "individual" (later), which as I just suggested, are
somewhat loosely conflated by Goddard (at least in my reading of him;
he never actually uses the word freedom, but I sense it lurking in the
background when he correlates high individual agency with modern
societies). Freedom, in my view of the holarchy, is the degree to
which a holon has escaped, or transcended, certain laws that regulate
its behavior. It's directly relatedto how high in the holarchy a holon
stands: the higher, the freer. Agency, in contrast, I define as the
degree to which a holon is independent of other holons, and has
nothing to do with how high in the holarchy a holon is. Holons can be
either highly agentic or highly communal at any level of existence,
and indeed, a holon is most independent of other holons when it is at
the bottom, not the top, of any particular level.
Let me explain this further. In my one-scale model of the holarchy,
every level of existence--physical, biological, mental, and higher
levels--is composed of several stages, which themselves stand in
holarchical relationship to each other, though not in quite the same
way as different levels do. For example, the physical level of
existence is composed of atoms, small molecules, macromolecules, and
still more complex molecular structures, all of which are found within
cells. The biological level is composed of cells, tissues of various
kinds, organs and organ systems, all found within organisms. The
mental level begins wih organisms, and works its way up to societies
of various complexity. In this scheme, individual holons--atoms,
cells, organisms--are at the bottom of each level, while social
holons--molecules, tissues, societies--form intermediate stages. While
one level transcends the level below it, a stage simply transforms the
stage below it. I have given precise definitions of transcendence and
transformation in Worlds and other places.
It follows from this scheme that holons at the bottom of each level
are (or can be) most independent of interactions with other holons.
That is, when atoms exist in a state outside of small molecules and
other forms of molecular structures, they are most agentic, and least
communal. Likewise, when cells exist independently of tissues and
other multicellular holons within organisms, they are maximally
agentic, and least communal. When organisms exist outside of
societies, they are maximally agentic and least communal. And
conversely, atoms within complex molecular structures , cells within
complex organ systems, and organisms within complex societies are
least agentic and maximally communal.
In this view, then, members of modern human societies are more, not
less, communal than members of earlier societies, because they are
imbedded in more complex social interactions. In order to function in
modern societies, people must deal with not only more relationships
with other people than did members of earlier societies, but with much
more complex relationships. That is, we not only have relationships
with other individuals, but with social holons themselves. It simply is
not true, as Goddard asserts, that
"it makes no sense to speak of the individual holon directly
interacting or relating to the social holon. We can say only that
individual holons interact with other individual holons, thus
constituting the group; or that an individual can relate to several
individuals at once through his/her 'idea' of the group."
The "idea" of the group is in fact a social holon. When I vote in an
election, pay my income taxes, or serve on a jury, I am not
interacting with (or only with) other individual holons. I am
interactingwith social holons. There is no single individual in any of
these situations with whom an interaction with would allow me to
perform the particular functions that I subserve at that time. I may
vote for a particular individual, but the whole concept of an election
is part of a social holon. The person I vote for represents this
holon, and my vote is for that representation, not for that person . I
may mail my tax payment to a particular person, but again, I'm
relating to that person as a representative of an organization
composed of a great many people.
This understanding, in turn, leads to a much clearer view of
subject/subject perception, as I define it. This is surely just
another way of saying inter-subjectivity, which we all understand has
reached its peak in modern society. All these interactions with other
people mean we must do a great deal more of Goddard's private thinking
than members of earlier societies had to do. Though our science may be
very rigorous in its object-oriented view of the world, the practice
of science itself, as Wilber and many other philosophers have pointed
out, demands a complex web of intersubjective arrangements. Science
begins with direct experience, and in one sense, perhaps, it ends
there. But in between, the name of the game is communion.
And though science might be considered unrepresentative of the
mentality of society at large, it does reflect the typical view.
Ordinary people--by which I simply mean those who are not professional
scientists or philosophers--are also much more oriented to
subject/subject perception (again, as I define it) than the
corresponding members of earlier societies were. Members of modern
societies, I submit, think much more than members of earliersocieties
did, and conversely, experience much less direct,
object-orientedperceptions of the world. Again, this is a fairly
uncontroversial claim, one so well-accepted that it prompted Wilber
(1989) to develop the"pre-trans fallacy" argument to distinguish the
earlier perception from the superficially similar form of perception
of a higher site of consciousness.
Notice that this view, in contrast with Goddard's, does equate agency
with individual holons, and communion with social holons. As we go up
the holarchy within any single level, from individual holons to
increasingly more complex social holons, there is a decrease in agency
and an increase in communion. So the one-scale model of holarchy does
not require a distinction between the individual vs. social pair, on
the one hand, and the agentic vs. communal, on the other. I want to
re-emphasize, however, that while members of modern socieies are
claimed to be both higher, and more communal, than members of earlier
societies, from a broader view of holarchy, there is no correlation
between either of these qualities and the degree of evolution. Within
any level, the higher, the more communal. But no level can be said to
be more or less communal or agentic than any other. If it seems to be
that way in Goddard's view, it's because, as I noted earlier, he
shares the common misunderstanding that members of earlier societies
were at a lower level than those of our own. To repeat, they were at a
lower stage on the same level.
The preceding discussion has been intended to apply only to individual
holons. What about social holons? I agree with Goddard that social
holons can also exhibit both agency and communion. However, I disagree
with him that the two properties are necessarily inversely correlated,
with communal social holons containing agentic individual holons, and
vice-versa. Since, in my view, individual holons become increasingly
communal as they associate into more complex social holons, there is
generally no particular correlation at all.
However, there could be a correlaion under one special set of
conditions, which may (partly) explain Goddard's position. When social
holons are in the process of being created--that is, when they exist
within a level that has not completed its evolution--they are likely
to be especially labile, forming,rearranging, breaking down, and
reforming. Under these conditions, there is less regulation of the
component individual holons, so they would become more agentic. Or to
put it another way, such nascent social holons contain weakly
interacting individual holons, which still have not surrendered much
of their agency. In fact,since Goddard's entire discussion is focussed
on humans and their societies, which, as I have argued before do
constitute a level still in the process of evolving,we might sometimes
expect to see such an inverse correlation. This observation
underscores the importance of not making generalizations about the
holarchy on the basis of an investigation of a single level, and
particularly not our level.
What is an Individual?
Of all the terms commonly used to describe aspects of holarchy, I find
"individual" one of the most resistant to a precise definition. It
seems to be one of those words which we all feel we know the meaning
of, and yet which meaning is very difficult to express. Individual
holons can be defined easily enough, but what happens when these
holons begin to exhibit communality, associating into social holons?
Do they become more individual or less? Neither? Either? Or to put it
another way (a way that depends on acceptance of the one-scale model),
how does the trait we call individuality change as we move up in the
holarchy? Goddard offers no firm answer to this question, and neither
will I. But I will suggest three possible ways of understanding
individuality.
The first is simply to equate it with agency. We say that the more
agency and less communion a holon exhibits, the more individual it is.
When applied to the one-scale model, this results in the view that the
higher in any level a holon is, the less individuality it has. Thus
members of modern societies have less individuality than members of
earlier societies. While I believe this is a philosophically
defensible position, it is counter-intuitive, defining individuality
in a way different from that in which I believe most people commonly
understand it.
A second way to define individuality is to equate it with freedom.
Thus the higher in the holarchy a holon is, the more individual it is.
This supports the more agreeable conclusion that members of modern
societies have a higher degree of individuality than members of
earlier societies, but it also implies that social holons have more
individuality than individual holons.
The third way of defining individuality strikes a balance, literally
and figuratively, between the first two positions. It says that
individuality emerges from the interplay of agency and communality. I
think Goddard takes this position,though he doesn't elaborate on it:
"What we normally mean by the term 'individual', is an entity which
does, alternately, assert and commune; an entity which can be
described as both autonomous and connected."
I will not elaborate on this idea, either, except to say that defining
individuality as some kind of balance between agency and communality
evokes a somewhat similar situation that arises when we try to define
the term complexity, as used by scientists who study the dynamics by
which living or sometimes non-livingsystems organize into new systems.
Just as individuality seems to have some kind of relationship to two
polar qualities, agency and communion, so complexity seems to have
some kind of relationship to the opposing qualities of order and
randomness. Most complexity theorists dismiss the possibility that
complexity can be equated with either order or randomness itself,
which has led to the proposal that it may be a (complex!) function of
both, a sort of balance between the two (see Norretranders 1998).
Though it would be a stretch to equate agency and communion with order
and randomness, respectively, the similarity of the two situations is
hardly likely to be coincidental. Complexity is a key idea for
holarchical theorists, as it underlies some theories of how
higher-order holons can be created from lower-order ones. At any rate,
by definingindividuality as a balance between agency and communion,we
might avoid the Scylla of higher-order individual holons (i.e., holons
that participate in the propetries of complex societies) that are less
individual, as well as the Charybdis of individual social holons.
Conclusions and Implications
Gerry Goddard, in what I regard as a very deep and intellectually
rigorous essay, has proposed a fairly significant revision of the
Wilber four quadrant model, one in which two key distinctions are
made. First, one holon's experience of another holon is distinguished
from the other holon itself. This results in a division in the left
hand or interior quadrants of Wilber's model, so that they can
represent both (public) experience of objects, and (private)
experience of thoughts. Second, agency and communion are treated as
properties of both individual and social holons, rather than agency
being considered the exclusive property of an individual holon, and
communion of a social holon. This leads Goddard to propose a doubling
of the quadrant structure, with one quadrant containing agentic
individual holons and communalsocial holons, and the other quadrant
containing communal individual holons and agentic social holons.
I'm in substantial agreement with Goddard on several points. I accept
the distinction between the two kinds of interior experience--of
objects andthoughts--and also the equivalence relationship
thatGoddarddraws betweenthem and agency and communion. That is,
perception of objects (subject/object perception) is held to be
characteristic of agentic holons, while perception of thoughts
(subject/subject perception) is typical of communalholons. I also like
very much (n principle if not always in application) the
distinctionGoddard draws between two kinds of pairings or dyads, which
he refers to as Janus-faced and polar.
However, I have several important differences with Goddard. While he
understands the subject/subject form of perception to be most
prominent among members of earlier societies, I take precisely the
opposite view, that it's most characteristic of modern humans. Second,
I don't regard the agency/communion dyad as a fundamentally different
kind of relationship from that of individualvs.social holons. On the
contrary, in my view, the degree to which individual holons possess
communion is directly relatedto the degree to which they are organized
into social holons.
My most important difference with Goddard, though, as with Wilber--a
difference which underlies the other differences I've just noted--is
that I don't see the need for more than a single scale or axis to
represent the holarchy. In my model, as presented in Worlds, the
distinction between perception of objects and perception of thoughts
is determined by the direction in the holarchy in which the observing
holon is looking. When it looks down, at holons below itself, it sees
objects. When it looks above, at holons beyond it, it experiences
thoughts. This understanding, of course, assumes that humans, as the
holon at issue in Goddard's discussion, do exist within higher-order
holons. Unlike Goddard, Wilber and apparently most other theorists
debating holarchy, I contend that they do--that these higher-order
holons are simply the various forms of social organization in which we
live.
I said at the outset of this paper that I believed some of Goddard's
ideas, as applied to my one-scale model, strengthened it, and also
that this model could further clarify these ideas. What I mean by
this, primarily, is that my model, by bringing all holons over to a
single scale, immediately implies the two kinds of perception, as well
as the agency/communion dyad, discussed by Goddard. With respect to
the two kinds of perception, rather than bringing a second holon into
the picture, with the additional divisions within the quadrants that
that entails, my model makes such holonic interactions intrinsic to
itself. They are implied by the fact that not only does every holon
have holons both above it and below it, but every individual holon has
social holons above it, in the properties of which it participates.
Thus the two kinds of perception fall out, so to speak, from my model.
They are already implicit in it, without the need to make additional
hypotheses or distinctions.
Likewise with agency and communion. Since my model holds that
individual holons are not only imbedded within social holons, but have
a lower vs. higher holarchical relationship to them, agency can simply
be defined as the degree to which an individual holon is independent
of these higher-order holons, while communion, of course, is just the
opposite. In fact, the degree of communion of any holon can be defined
very precisely in terms of the highest stage on its level in which it
participates, since the higher the stage, the more complex the
relationships it enters into with other holons. It is a very strong
implication of my model--and I believe an additional strength of it
that the Wilber andGoddard models lack--that properties like agency
and communion, as well as certain others not discussed here, can
actually be quantitated.
As Goddard points out, the Wilber model can't take this position on
agency vs. communion, because it does not view societies as higher
than their individual members. ? In the Wilber model, societies are
just a different aspect of individuals, relating to them in the
Janus-faced sense rather than in the polar sense of agency/communion.
Goddard, who accepts this feature of the Wilber model, is thus forced
to make still another distinction. This leads to a doubling of the
quadrants, each of which has already expanded to include six domains.
This is not to say that I don't find Gerry Goddard's model very
atractive. Much of its appeal, to me, lies in its symmetry, with the
different quadrants lining up so that both polar and Janus-faced dyads
are paired properly. Moreover, the model spells out certain
relationships which, though also present in my model, are not
advertised there so clearly, precisely because they are intrinsic to
its structure. Nevertheless, as I watched Goddard at work building his
model, I kept thinking of Ptolemy's epicycles. A cardinal rule of not
just science but all forms of knowledge acquisition is to keep schemes
as simple as they can be and still explain all the known facts or
issues.
Of course, the single-scale model does not explain, any more than
Wilber's, Goddard's, or anyone else's model does, the mystery of how
consciousness is related to the physical world. But the one-scale
model, unlike those others, I think simplifies the problem by taking
consciousness, in the sense of qualia or experience, out of the
picture. I don't claim that consciousness emerges from brain
structures, the way the latter emerge from cells, and those in turn
from atoms and molecules. In my model, consciousness is outside or
beyond the holarchy, yet interacts with it at every point. What I do
claim (in contrast to Goddard and Wilber) is that mental phenomena,
like thinking, learning, memory, and so forth, do emerge from lower
holons, a claim that is increasingly supported by advances in
neuroscience, computer science, cognitive and evolutionary psychology,
and other areas. This being the case, these phenomena can be
understood as also having an exterior form, and therefore belonging on
the same scale with these lower holons. In this way, we avoid
conflating them, as I believe Wilber and Goddard do, with experience.
This arrangement does not deny the concept of interiority, because as
I have explained above, this is accounted for by the ability of holons
to look above themselves to some extent as well as below. What the
model does not explain is how we come to experience interiority, or
any particular mental phenomena, in the way that we do. But no model
does that, and I believe it very unlikely any ever will.
While the debate over how best to represent holarchy will go on, I
believe this debate should move beyond discussions of purely theory,
and engage issues of practical importance. Several contributors to
this site of whom I'm aware, such as Don Beck, Mark Edwards and Fred
Kofman, are attempting to do this. While I have my differences with
all of them, and have expressed some of these differences in this
forum, I support their efforts to apply our understanding of holarchy
to the problems we as humans face in our everyday lives. All of the
work of this kind that I'm aware of, however, is concerned with
holarchy at the level of human beings and their societies. In
concluding this article, therefore, I would like to present two
examples of how concepts of holarchy may illuminate our understanding
of other levels as well, in ways that are of ultimate practical
concernto us.
The first example is in the area of evolutionary theory. I have
discussed this topic in other places, most recently in the article The
Spectrum of Holons posted at this site, so I will mention it only
briefly here. A strong implication of holarchy, at least in my view,
is that evolution occurs at every level of existence, and through
somewhat analogous processes. Working from this premise, I have argued
that both Darwinian evolution and what is usually called cultural
evolution can be understood as paradigmatic examples of two kinds of
processes that occur on all levels of existence. This understanding
not only unifies these two kinds of evolution in a broader theory; it
implies the existence of several other kinds of evolutionary
processes. One of these processes, which would occur at the level of
cells, might well shed light on how the earliest organisms evolved.
The other process, at our own level of existence, makes predictions
about how the human race may evolve in the future.
The other example, which I wish to discuss in greater detail, is in
the area of health and medicine. The agency/communion dyad, which
plays such a central role in Gerry Goddard's thinking, should be of
obvious relevance to an understanding of our body, and its disorders.
Cells, like other individual holons, can express both agency, when
they grow, reproduce and maintain themselves, as well as communion,
when they interact with other cells in tissues and organs of the body.
Normally, these two tendencies exist in some kind of balance, but this
balance can be upset, resulting in certain disorders. We could thus
classify these disorders into two groups, those resulting from too
much agency and too little communion, and those resulting from too
little agency and too much communion.
An example of the first kind of disorder is cancer. Cancer arises when
the normal checks on a cell's growth are lost, resulting in
abnormal growth and uncontrolled reproduction. Cancer cells are clearly
more agentic than other cells of their particular type, and less
communal. For example, while normal cells stop dividing when they
contact other cells, cancer cells at a certain stage are generally
insensitive to this kind of contact inhibition. They are likewise
insensitive, or differently sensitive, to chemical messengers that
also control cell growth.
An example of the second kind of disorder is provided by
neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease). Cells
that undergo degeneration may be said to be less agentic than normal,
for they are less able to resist processes that threaten their ability
to grow and maintain themselves. One such process is programmed cell
death, or apoptosis (Offen et al. 2000.). In the body, apoptosis
frequently functions as a culling process, removing cells that are
either unnecessary or unhealthy or aberrant. For example, cancer cells
may sometimes be eliminated in this way. But all normal cells have the
potential to be destroyed by this process, and we could say that they
are most likely to fall victim when their agency is relatively low.
Science knows quite a bit about cancer. We know, for example, that it
usually results from mutations in certain genes. Some of these genes
have been identified, and their functions determined, and from this
work, a picture is emerging of how cancer begins and progresses
through various stages of malignancy (Kinzler and Vogelstein 1996). In
contrast, very little is known about most degenerative diseases For
most of these disorders, we have a detailed description of the
sequence of pathological events that unfold, but the initial causes of
this pathology are not well understood. There are many theories, all
supported by some evidence, but no unifying paradigm has emerged, as
to some extent it has with cancer.
If cancer and neurodegenerative diseases both represent imbalances in
the agency/communion dyad, however, and cancer results from mutations
in certain genes, then an obvious hypothesis suggests itself: that
neurodegenerative diseases also result from genetic mutations. In some
cases, this is known to be true. Just as some forms of cancer are
hereditary, so are some forms of neurodegenerative diseases. For
example, some casesof ALS result from an inherited mutation in an
identified gene (Rosen et al. 1993). These cases, however, represent
only a very small percentage of all cases of this disorder. The much
more intriguing question is whether non-hereditary (sporadic) cases
might also result from genetic mutations. This is a much more radical
idea, but again, it's suggested by the cancer model. Many forms of
sporadic cancer have been shown to result from mutations that are not
inherited, but develop some time during the life of the person.
Sometimes these mutations are also necessary for inherited cancer to
manifest itself; that is, the inherited mutation predisposes the
personto cancer, by initiating certain events in the cell which may
progress if, and only if, a sporadic mutation (generally, several such
mutations) develops. In other cases, no inherited mutation may be
involved.
Only recently have some scientists begun to take seriously the idea
that neurodegenerative diseases might also result from sporadic
mutations . While these researchers don't use words like agency
andcommunion,the notion of a possible connection between cancer and
degeneration has come from an appreciation that a balance normally
exists between growth and reproduction, on the one hand, and cell
interactions, on the other--and that if disorders can arise from an
imbalance in one direction,they surely can also result from imbalances
in the other direction. In the future,we may see this concept applied
to other disorders, as well as to understanding the normal processes
of the body.
In conclusion,then, while the holarchical paradigm has emerged mainly
throughthe efforts of many of us to understand our relationship to a
higher level of consciousness, if it's the all-inclusive scheme that
Ken Wilber, Gerry Goddard, myself, and many others are attempting to
make it, it should be able to illuminate processes at other levels of
existence. Ken Wilber perhaps pioneered this approach in his analysis
of various stages of ordinary psychological development, and their
associated pathologies (Wilber 1980). While the holarchical paradigm
has a natural affinity with psychology and sociology, though, a
greater challenge may be to take it into the realms explored by
empirical science, and show that it can be an effective partner of the
latter.
References
Goddard, G. (1997) Airing our Transpersonal Differences (posted at this
site)
Kinzler, K.W. and Vogelstein, B. (1996) Lessons from Hereditary
Colorectal Cancer Cell 87, 159-170
Norretranders, T. (1998) The User Illusion (New York: Viking)
Offen, D., Elkon, H. and Melamed, E. (2000) Apoptosis as a General
Cell Death Pathway in Neurodegenerative Diseases. J. Neural Transm.
Suppl. 58, 153-166
Rosen, D.R., Siddique, T., Patternson, D., et al. (1993) Mutations in
Cu/Zn Superoxide Dismutase Gene are Associated with Familiar
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Nature 362, 59-62
Seager, W. (1999) Theories of Consciousness (NY: Routledge)
Searle, J.R. (1998) Mind, Language and Society (NY: Basic)
Wilber, K. (1980) The Atman Project (Wheaton, IL: Quest)
Wilber, K. (1981) Up From Eden (New York: Doubleday/Anchor)
Wilber, K. (1989) Eye to Eye (Boston: Shambhala)
Wilber, K. (1995) Sex, Ecology, Sprituality (Boston: Shambhala)
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Andrew P. Smith, who has a background in molecular biology, neuroscience and pharmacology, is author of e-books Worlds within Worlds and the novel Noosphere II, which are both available online. He has recently self-published "The Dimensions of Experience: A Natural History of Consciousness" (Xlibris, 2008).