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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Mathematical Mysticism?

A Response to Abramson's Defense of Wilber's Eros

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

In a welcome gesture of philosophical generosity, Abramson has attempted to salvage and reformulate Ken Wilber's notion of Eros — not as a literal cosmic force akin to gravity, but as a structure-preserving projection across ontological levels within a more expansive mathematical and philosophical ontology. While he concedes that Wilber's repeated framing of Eros as a fifth fundamental force is scientifically untenable, he believes the underlying integrative intuition retains “heuristic and conceptual value.” And to formalize this value, he draws on the lofty realms of Cantorian set theory, category theory, and Buddhist metaphysics.

It is, to be sure, a noble philosophical attempt to save what is worth saving in Wilber's spiritual vision. But it also raises a number of crucial questions. Most centrally: Does recasting Eros in the language of mathematical abstraction actually resolve the problems identified in Wilber's conflation of inner meaning with outer mechanism—or does it simply reframe metaphysical inflation in a more elegant vocabulary?

Let us examine the core elements of Abramson's argument in turn.

1. From Eros as Force to Eros as Formal Projection

Abramson begins by rightly distancing himself from Wilber's literalization of Eros. The notion that Eros is “as real as gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces,” as Wilber claimed in Finding Radical Wholeness (2024), is indefensible from any scientific standpoint. In response, Abramson offers a non-empirical reframing: Eros should be understood not as a causal force but as a lawful mapping between levels of ontological complexity, modeled via category theory and Cantorian transfinite hierarchies.

In this view, Wilber's evolutionary vision — a universe unfolding toward higher inclusion, depth, and integration — is not a mythic teleology but a formal ontological architecture, one that mirrors the hierarchical nesting of infinite sets and the relationships between them.

But this raises a pivotal issue: What kind of ontology is being proposed here, and what epistemic status does it hold? Is it metaphysics dressed in the language of mathematics, or is it a legitimate scientific alternative to physicalism?

2. Cantorian Set Theory and the Hierarchy of Infinities

Abramson invokes Cantorian set theory, particularly the Aleph hierarchy, to draw a parallel with Wilber's levels of increasing depth and inclusion. This is an inspired analogy. The Aleph numbers represent successively larger infinities (ℵ₀, ℵ₁, ℵ₂, …), each irreducible to the one below it, and collectively forming a transfinite structure of unending magnitude. In this sense, they offer a rigorous model of hierarchy, irreducibility, and transcendence — terms that resonate deeply with Wilber's AQAL framework.

But there is a crucial difference: set theory is a branch of abstract mathematics, not ontology. The entities it describes are not in the world but are ideal constructions with formal, internal consistency. While some mathematicians adopt a Platonist stance and believe these structures have real existence, this view is far from universally accepted, and it certainly doesn't imply that such mathematical levels exert any causal or “self-organizing” influence on physical systems — let alone on biological or spiritual development.

Wilber's Eros, by contrast, is not merely a formal hierarchy — it is described repeatedly as an energetic, immanent drive within the unfolding of the universe itself. Abramson's analogy may be elegant, but it transforms a descriptive schema into an explanatory principle without a clear bridge between mathematics and metaphysics. The danger here is one of category error: mistaking a formal model for an ontological mechanism.

3. Category Theory and the Functorial Sublime

The second mathematical pillar of Abramson's approach is category theory, particularly its use of functors — mappings that preserve structure between categories. In this context, he suggests that higher levels of reality (e.g., spiritual, transpersonal domains) project their patterns downward into lower levels through “lawful” correspondences, akin to how functors operate between abstract systems.

Again, this is a clever metaphor. But metaphors are not mechanisms. Functors do not cause transformations; they map relationships between already existing formal structures. To say that a Buddha's “blessings” are like functorial projections from higher ontological domains is evocative, even beautiful — but it remains poetic metaphysics, not scientific explanation.

This move does not, as claimed, escape the critique of metaphysical inflation. It merely relocates it to the realm of abstract formalism, replacing crude spiritual causality with a subtler ontological elegance. The question remains: what justifies the belief that such levels exist, and that they exert influence on lower levels of empirical reality?

4. The Misfire of “Implicit Physicalism”

Abramson argues that many critiques of Wilber — mine included — rest on an “implicit physicalism,” the belief that only the empirically measurable is ontologically real. But this is a mischaracterization. The critique is not that Wilber believes in more than matter — it's that he claims explanatory power for spiritual or metaphysical intuitions without empirical or epistemic warrant.

I have no objection to expanded ontologies, so long as they are clear about their epistemic limits. The problem with Wilber's Eros is not that it is spiritual or non-physical — it is that it is used to explain real-world phenomena (e.g., evolution, consciousness, development) without providing a mechanism, testability, or falsifiability. Abramson's Platonic alternative faces the same issue: it may be internally coherent, but unless it can be connected to experience or evidence in a non-circular way, it risks becoming another ornate cosmology suspended in conceptual air.

5. Toward a More Modest Integration

Where I do agree with Abramson is in his desire to rescue what is valuable in Wilber's vision: its call to integration, its recognition of development, and its spiritual insight into the self-transcending nature of consciousness. But if this is to be done responsibly, it must involve a clear separation of metaphor from mechanism, ontology from epistemology, and formalism from fact.

A more modest integral model would treat spiritual metaphors like Eros as interpretive frameworks, not explanatory engines. It would recognize the value of category theory or Platonic structures in modeling relationships, but not mistake them for real-time influences. It would maintain spiritual insight as a domain of human meaning and orientation, not as an alternative physics.

This, ironically, would bring Wilber closer to the “post-metaphysical” stance he once advocated — one that brackets ontological claims in favor of practical enactment, intersubjective coherence, and developmental insight.

Conclusion: Eros, Elegance, and the Epistemic Divide

Abramson offers a thoughtful and rigorous defense of Wilber's spiritual vision by situating it within a mathematical and ontological framework that avoids crude metaphysics. But in doing so, he risks replacing Eros as physical force with Eros as formal mysticism — a move that may impress philosophers, but leaves the scientific concerns unresolved.

The core problem remains: how do we know what we claim to know about the universe? Wilber's Achilles heel was not simply metaphysical excess, but epistemic confusion — the conflation of inner meaning with outer cause, of spiritual aspiration with scientific explanation.

Abramson's intervention softens the blow and raises the tone. But even dressed in Cantor's robes and carried on functorial wings, Eros still limps where it claims to fly.