The grandeur of Hegel's effort has no equal in the history of Western philosophy

Dialectic, Systems, and Organization: The Philosophical Implications of the New Science
By Anthony Mansueto

The grandeur of Hegel's effort has no equal in the history of Western philosophy. Like Aristotle before him, he had an "emergent" interpretation of causality, of how the implicit becomes explicit through the unfolding of its latent form and possibilities. On a vast scale over the course of two sizable volumes, he assembled nearly all the categories by which reason explains reality, and educed one from the other in an intelligible and meaningful continuum that is graded into a richly differentiated, increasingly comprehensive, or "adequate" whole, to use some of his terms.

We may reject what Hegel called his "absolute idealism," the transition from his logic to his philosophy of nature, his teleological culmination of the subjective and objective in a godlike "Absolute," and his idea of a cosmic Spirit (Geist). Hegel rarefied dialectical reason into a cosmological system that verged on the theological by trying to reconcile it with idealism, absolute knowledge, and a mystical unfolding logos that he often designated "God." Unfamiliar with ecology, Hegel rejected natural evolution as a viable theory in favor of a static hierarchy of Being. By the same token, Friedrich Engels intermingled dialectical reason with natural "laws" that more closely resemble the premises of nineteenth-century physics than a plastic metaphysics or an organismic outlook, producing a crude dialectical materialism. Indeed, so enamored was Engels of matter and motion as the irreducible "attributes" of Being that a kineticism based on mere motion invaded his dialectic of organic development.

To dismiss dialectical reason because of the failings of Hegel's idealism and Engels's materialism, however, would be to lose sight of the extraordinary coherence that dialectical reason can furnish and its extraordinary applicability to ecology--particularly to an ecology rooted in evolutionary development. Despite Hegel's own prejudices against organic evolution, what stands out amid the metaphysical and often theological archaisms in his work is his overall eduction of logical categories as the subjective anatomy of a developmental reality. What is needed is to free this form of reason from both the quasi-mystical and the narrowly scientistic worldviews that in the past have made it remote from the living world; to separate it from Hegel's empyrean, basically antinaturalistic dialectical idealism and the wooden, often scientistic dialectical materialism of orthodox Marxists. Shorn of both its idealism and its materialism, dialectical reason may be rendered naturalistic and ecological and conceived as a naturalistic form of thinking.

This dialectical naturalism offers an alternative to an ecology movement that rightly distrusts conventional reason. It can bring coherence to ecological thinking, and it can dispel arbitrary and anti-intellectual tendencies toward the sentimental, cloudy, and theistic at best and the dangerously antirational, mystical, and potentially reactionary at worst. As a way of reasoning about reality, dialectical naturalism is organic enough to give a more liberatory meaning to vague words like interconnectedness and holism without sacrificing intellectuality.

It can answer the questions I posed at the beginning of this essay: what nature is, humanity's place in nature, the thrust of natural evolution, and society's relationship with the natural world. Equally important, dialectical naturalism adds an evolutionary perspective to ecological thinking--despite Hegel's rejection of natural evolution and Engels's recourse to the mechanistic evolutionary theories of a century ago. Dialectical naturalism discerns evolutionary phenomena fluidly and plastically, yet it does not divest evolution of rational interpretation. Finally, a dialectic that has been "ecologized," or given a naturalistic core, and a truly developmental understanding of reality could provide the basis for a living ecological ethics. Labels: anthropology, cosmology, dialectical materialism, dialectics, Engels, Gould, Kropotkin, science, space posted by eugene plawiuk 4:08 AM

Yaska and Chomsky

Dynamical Models in Semiotics/Semantics, Instructor: Franson D Manjali
Lecture Three: The Karaka Theory of The Indian Grammarians

It is characteristic of contemporary formal paradigms in Linguistics to choose to ignore all that pertains to cognition and meaning in the grammatical theories that comprise the Indian linguistic tradition. There is near-total neglect of the essential semantic ingredient of the Sanskrit grammar since Panini (1). If at all the semantics in this tradition is paid any attention to it is only in a manner completely divorced from the central grammatical principles and categories. Thus, though Chomsky (1965) claimed the Paninian grammar to his 'generative enterprise' because of the recursive properties manifested by the latter, he paid no attention not only to the metaphysical and epistemological ideas that underlie Indian grammatical system, but also to an entire literature which would fall within the gamut of philosophy of grammar, especially those authored by Patanjali and Bhartrhari.

We shall present here one central concept in the Indian grammatical theory, namely the karakas, and explore the ontological and cognitive bases of its formulations. In the process we will also see how the semantic domain is essentially conceived in dynamic terms, and therefore, the primary end of language is to represent/reveal activity that is ultimately identified with the 'reality' of the world itself. In our view this particular facet of the Indian philosophical tradition represents some sort of 'monist dynamicism' which covers the physical as well as the metaphysical aspects of language, cognition and 'reality'. For the present, we shall mainly concentrate on the views presented in Vakyapadiyam of Bhartrhari (7th century A.D.) who to a great extent relies on the interpretation of the karaka theory given in Patanjali's Mahabhashya, the great commentary on Panini's Asthadhyayi.

It is important to state at the outset that the view that is made explicit in the philosophy of grammar of Bhartrhari is that there is no ontology other than that can be obtained from a study of language. But this is in contrast to a whole fund of metaphysical notions that he presents, which imply an ontology, on the basis of which the form and meaning of language is to be understood. This problem is further complicated by the fact that there is lack of agreement whether the IIIrd chapter (kanda) of Vakyapadiyam, belongs to this work, or it is a separate work authored by Bhartrhari himself. It is in this chapter that issues specific to the karaka theory are discussed (2)...

That verbs primarily convey 'action' is an idea that goes back to Yaska, famous for his etymological studies called the Niruktas. In his words: bhavapradhanam akhyatam, "an action or process is the main meaning of a verb." (See, Subramania Iyer, 1969: 202)
Bhartrhari discusses various possible definitions of 'action', but what he prefers is the following:
"Whenever something, finished or unfinished is presented as something to be accomplished (i.e., sadhya), then it is called 'action' because of its having acquired the form of sequence." ...

We shall give below a passage from Wilhelm Humboldt (died 1835), a prominent Kantian, a Sanskritist, and a philosopher of language of the modern era, which shows an astonishing affinity with the verb-centred linguistics of the Indian grammarians;

"The verb ... differs in a sharply determinate way from the noun, and from other parts of speech that might possibly occur in a simple sentence, in that to it alone is assigned the act of synthetic positing as a grammatical function. Like the declined noun, it arose through such an act, in the fusion of its elements with the stem, but has also received this form in order to have the office and capacity of itself again performing this act with regard to the sentence. Between it and other words of the simple sentence there is therefore a difference which forbids us to count it along with them in the same category. All other words of the sentence are like dead matter lying there for combination; the verb alone is the centre, containing and disseminating life (emphasis added). Through one and the same synthetic act, it conjoins, by being, the predicate with the subject, yet in such a way that being which passes, with an energetic predicate, into an action, becomes attributed to the subject itself, so that what is thought as merely capable of conjunction becomes, in reality a state or process...The thought,... departs, through the verb, from its abode and steps into reality." (Humboldt, 1988 edn.:185)

Sri Aurobindo's Synthesis of Yoga is the first major work that does describe an authentic Integral Spiritual Practice

Redefining Integral M. Alan Kazlev integralworld.net

I want to distinguish between "integral philosophy" and the "integral movement". Prior to around 2003/2004, there was no "integral movement", only a Wilberian-based movement that called itself "integral". But Integral cannot be based on person or philosophy alone. Only when there was a true synthesis, did the conceptual framework that presents a convergence of many philosophies and insights and practical approaches, can there be an "integral movement". I am however still not sure whether there even is an "integral movement" as something distinct from the larger new paradigm "rising culture"; I remain agnostic on this point for now.
In the twentieth century, word "Integral" was coined, totally independently, four times, in each case around a certain cluster of shared memes (ideas).
Sri Aurobindo - Integral Yoga (first published in serial form 1914 onwards)
Pitirim Sorokin – Integral Society (beginning in 1910s, main work published in the 1930s)
Jean Gebser – Integral Aperspective (1930s, first published in 1949)
Frithjof Schuon - Integral Metaphysics (date?)

Of these, I have not included Schuon in the following discussion, because as a member of the Traditionalist school (founded by Rene Guenon) he rejects modernity and evolution, two essential elements in the Integral movement. However his Integral metaphysics as transcendent insight or experience of the Intellect (in the sense of Intellectus = gnosis) is in keeping with Sri Aurobindo's teachings regarding the Divine.

The other three constitute the founders of the Integral movement, as a sort of geneology of the Integral. I have noticed that there are a number of distinct groups that "own" the word "Integral". I then discovered that Integral educationalist Gary Hampson has observed the same thing ("Integral Re-views Postmodernism: The Way Out Is Through" Integral Review 4, 2007 pp.13-4, integral-review.org) Hampson suggests that there are at least six intertwined genealogical branches here, those aligned with Sri Aurobindo, Gebser, Wilber, philosopher Ashok Gangadean, László and Austrian esotericist Rudolf Steiner (according to Jennifer Gidley; Paul McDermott of the California Institute of Integral Studies makes the connection between Steiner and Sri Aurobindo). Although his brief coverage is extremely informative and useful, and I would highly recommend it to historians of the Integral movement, his list leaves out Pitirim Sorokin (Harvard sociologist), Paul Ray (Cultural Creatives) and interdisciplinary scientist Sally Goerner, which are here tentatively grouped in a single catagory.

I have left out Steiner because he himself did not use the term. For the same reason, I have excluded here Henri Bergson, Samuel Alaxander, Alfred North Whitehad, Vladimir Vernadsky, Pierre Teilhard, Edward Haskell, Oliver Resier, Arthur M. Young, and many others (however, these individuals might be included in the following section). In other instances I have suggested new categories. All of which make eight altogether (not counting non-aligned individuals who have also adopted the term). The following diagram shows a geneology ofd the word, but not of all influences. For limitations of space, and to avoid teh whole diagram becoming much too complex, I have had to avoid including many important influences...

Fig. 2. Geneology of "Integralism"
As can be seen in the diagram, the Integral Yoga stream has yet to connect with the larger movement of Integralism. There is a reason for this. Integral Yoga is esoteric, and involves a radical transformation of consciousness, whereas the Integral mainstream is exotericx, andf involves very little if any transformation.
As mentioned earlier in this essay, there is no one definition of "integral". So mainstrewam integralism corresponds only to the integral stage of psychological and social development in teh West, whereas the Integral or Supramental Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother represents a stage many orders of magnituude in advance of anything in the Western exoteric tradition.
For this same reason, some of the less confronting the intellectual aspects of Sri Aurobindo's teaching have been influential (thanks no doubt to their popularisation by Integralists like Wilber, Combs, and Cohen), but not the practical teachings, and not the more radical implications of the divinisation of matter.
The following, very preliminary list, elaborates upon fig.2, and represents my own interpretation of various individuals and teachers who have referred to their philosophy and practice as "integral". Others may have completely different understandings. Note that someone can belong to a number of categories; they are not necessarily exclusive. But in general there seem to be a limited number of "attractors" around which the larger and more eclectic Integral majority gravitates.
Integral Yoga (Sri Aurobindo and The Mother)
Beginning in 1914, Sri Aurobindo and Mirra Alfassa's (the Mother of the Aurobindo Ashram) taught a profound spiritual-esoteric teaching of individual and collective divinisation, "Integral Yoga", which initiated the entire Integral Paradigm. This is the Integral Yoga community - This is the community of Integral Yoga practitioners; those who follow the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as an authentic spiritual path. Some are more religious and "heart-centered", others spiritual rather than religious. I would advise anyone who who wants to understand Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to dialogue with the actual community itself (which has a decent online presence), rather than rely on the misinterpretations of Wilber and other integralists. As well as the Larger Integral Movement (see below), this is the tradition I most closely resonate with. There seems to be a division here into various sub-streams, although for the most part relationships between them are good.
Some important representatives (to date) are:
Sri Aurobindo (founder)
Mirra Alfassa aka The Mother (co-founder)
M. P. Pandit (prolific commentator)
K.D. Sethna aka Amal Kiran (Indian poet, scholar, writer, philosopher, and cultural critic and author of more than forty books, including (of most relevance here) a compiliation of his letters and essays comparing Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard)..
Satprem (influential in the West; edited Agenda)
Georges van Vrekhem (first truly balanced (neither devotional nor sceptical) account)
Outside the Integral Yoga community, which includes people who have devoted their lives to the study and practice of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's teachings, the true meaning of Integral Yoga remains almost incomprehensible to the rest of the Integral movement, which is far more exoteric (surface consciousness) in approach.

Integral Society (Pitirim Sorokin, Paul Ray, Sally Goerner)
A more scientific, rather than spiritual or yogic, approach is provided by sociologists who point to the rise of a future, more holistic and spiritual, Integral Society. One of these was Pitirim Sorokin, a contemporary of Sri Aurobindo. Intriguingly, Sri Aurobindo in The Human Cycle (like his other major works dating from 1914) has a very similar series of stages to those suggested by Sorokin and Gebser, so these ideas seem to have been in the air at the time...

In this essay I have not discussed this subject, because the Integral Movement as a whole has not yet explored it, apart from the knowledge the Integral Yoga community have of these subjects thanks to the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. However, a truly integral comprehension has to embrace everything. It cannot deny hermeticism, occultism, or esotericism because these things don't fit with the modernist reality framework.
One could even suggest as a possible candidate as the dividing line between modernity (by which I mean modernism and some of "postmodernism") and a complete (post-post-)integral (complete in that it integrates the exoteric and the esoteric) is metaphysical insight, in other words gnosis. But, this being an integral synthesis, this is gnosis alongside the insights of science and academia. Which is why I don't agree with the Traditionalists (Guenon, Schuon, etc) rejection of modernity..

So if you can acknowledge esoteric realities beyond the secular and the material, and truly integrate both, you are no longer within modernity's conceptual framework. But from this perspective, very few Integral groups really are integral, in the sense of being able to embrace not just exoteric but esoteric (inner) realities. Esoteric definitions of post-post-post- (however) – Integral consciousness include a number of different dimensions or stages...

Sri Aurobindo's Synthesis of Yoga is the first major work that does describe an authentic (in the sense of all inclusive) Integral Spiritual Practice. And really, it has never been superseded. In contrast to the non-integral spirituality of Wilberian and related streams of the Integral movement, it can serve as the basis for the Esoteric/Enlightened perspective, and enable a much larger Integral perspective than the current exoteric Integralism.
The following passage, from chapter V of the introduction of Synthesis of Yoga, explains how even in its most preliminary methodology, the Integral spirituality of Sri Aurobindo goes far beyond anything in the Integral movement now, and probably beyond anything the Integral Movement will have to offer for decades to come (unless my own work has an influence; because by writing about something I am also changing it).

"...it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of Yoga each select their own point of departure or their own gate of escape. They specialise certain activities of the lower prakriti and turn them towards the Divine. But the normal action of Nature in us is an integral movement in which the full complexity of all our elements is affected by and affects all our environments. The whole of life is the Yoga of Nature. The Yoga that we seek must also be an integral action of Nature, and the whole difference between the Yogin and the natural man will be this, that the Yogin seeks to substitute in himself for the integral action of the lower Nature working in and by ego and division the integral action of the higher Nature working in and by God and unity. If indeed our aim be only an escape from the world to God, synthesis is unnecessary and a waste of time; for then our sole practical aim must be to find out one path out of the thousand that lead to God, one shortest possible of short cuts, and not to linger exploring different paths that end in the same goal. But if our aim be a transformation of our integral being into the terms of God-existence, it is then that a synthesis becomes necessary."

Ok, let's look at Sri Aurobindo is saying here.
Ordinary existence or nature itself is an integral movement, but one based in ignorance ("ego and division").
The various previous yogas were not interested in transforming this world, only in finding the quickest shortcut out, selecting only a single attribute of the lower nature (prakriti) and using taht to attain the transcendent (so it could be jnana or bhakti or whatever). Hence Buddha's parable of the arrow. Why waste time discussing metaphysics when you can be working on attaining Liberation?
Sri Aurobindo's unique synthesis, Integral Yoga, in contrast has to combine all the systems. This is because he isn't interested in fleeing the world. rather he wants to transform it. But to transform it he has to address all the aspects of the lower nature, and hence incorporate all the yogic techniques. rather than just one, he has to synthesise all of them.
This means Going beyond mental understanding to a higher state of all-inclusive and all-integrating Unity. Beyond mental forms altogether, and going beyond exoteric limitations, and living and practicing a life and praxis and activism that is infused with gnosis and enlightenment and spiritual transformation of self and world at every stage. In this, Insight or Consciousness or Being is able to include all other perspectives, philosophies, religions, and aspects of being without contradiction. Not as a hierrachy, with one's own favourite philsoophy or one's own theories on the top, and all the others as lesser or more partial or primitive stages of development to that. But acknowledging them integrally as each having their own valid and equal truth. This is the explanation given by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and to a lesser (but still intriguing) extent Jean Gebser. It is also found in the concept of the universal esoteric truth behind all religions, as advocated in the Perennialist Sufism of Frithjof Schuon.
But this cannot be discussed as theory. It can only be felt as living insight. That's why I suggest reading the original material, rather than my comments. And then come to your own experience from there.
And most important, this Insight has to be grounded in and transform the entire being, even the physical body itself.
Here is where certain elements in the integral development movement falls short. Because an integral enlightenment involves all spiritualities, not just, for example, a Westernised (or even only specifically Americanised) Buddhism. Now, I don't want to criticise it, because even a popularised and Americanised Buddhism can justly be seen as an authentic if exoteric adaptation of an ancient and valid spiritual tradition for secular Western sensibilities. And it can serve as an essential guide and invaluable aid for those who are at that level. It has its place in the universe and shouldn't be dismissed. But, for those of us who wish to go further, it has two big shortcomings.

First, it is not equal to the tradition in its complete original form. A culturally out of context and metaphysically sanitised Buddhism is not equivalent to the original power of the actual traditions themselves.
Second, even were the tradition to be presented complete, and followed with absolute intention, it still only confers individual liberation. That in itself is an amazing achievment, but it is not the entire truth. It is not yet – as Sri Aurobindo points out - a synthesis of all the systems of yoga.

So a new definition of Integral Spirituality is required, which can acknowledge not just the transcendent Enlightenment taught by the Buddha and other great sages, but also other forms of spirituality too.. And apply this not only to the self, but take it into the world as well.
What is necessary then, is to add to the already established aspects of theory, integral practice and social transformation the further dimensions of individual and collective spirtual transformation. Rather than diminish the current theory and current praxis, this will only enhance it, add a whole new dimension to things, which is non-contradictory and synergetic. In the past, spirituality was a reclusive practice that involved the rejection and denial of the world, and activism was all about changing the world but not changing the self (with the result that the revolution, began in the service of justice and freedom, always goes sour and becomes a totalitarian regime). The Integral movement presents the possibility of healing this rift in a higher synthesis; indeed, it is already beginning to do so.
An integral spirituality and integral yoga that transforms the world, and adds to the essential contributions of those working on an activist, social, media, etc level to improve the world, additional dimensions of insight, tranquility, wisdom, and centeredness.
It is not just the individual that integral spirituality has to address, it is the whole world as well.
Even the enlightenment of the physical body, and of all physical bodies, and of matter itself.
Which brings us to Divinisation.
20. Transcendent versus Evolutionary Enlightenment
The final, the greatest, the ultimate (post-post-post-whatever-) Integral consciousness, at least as far as our limited human consciousness can envisage (because there are always further and moere profound stages of evolution) is what Sri Aurobindo calls "Supramentalisation", and I refer to here as "Divinisation". This is a synthesis not just of the different yogas and spiritual teachings, but also of Evolution and Transcendence itself. This can be shown in the following table...

21. Integral as Divinisation
Defined as: going beyond transcendent enlightenment, reconciling and transcending liberation and samsara, divine transformation of the gross physical body (the body becomes an instrument of the Supreme), enlightenment of the cells, collective divinisation of the Earth, enlightenment of matter
Examples: Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, see especially Mother's Agenda and its condensed version Notebook on Evolution
Integral Divinisation means the total Divinisation of every aspect of the individual and also of the world as a whole. It comes about as the result of the Supreme with the phsyical evolution. Here we have the authentic Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, and its culmination in Supramentalisation, the Divinisation of the entire world The Lurianic Kabbalistic concept of tikkun olam ("repair of the world") is equivalent. Teilhard's "Omega Point" is similar, although Teilhard does not take into account the Divinisation of matter. More mythological and distorted refernces can also be found in Trito-Issiah ("a new heaven and a new Earth") and hence in the Judaic (whence Kabbalah) and Christian religions, and from there the New Age (also in some theologians and mystics of the Russian Orthodox tradition regarding Pantheosis; e.g. Sergei Bulgakov; and esoterically the sophiology of Bulgakov and Vladimir Solovyov is worth comparing with the concept of the Supreme Mother as found in Sri Aurobindo's teachings, as well as the transcendent Fatima described by French Iranologist and esotericist Henry Corbin) . I should emphasise however that all these earlier conceptions are really only presented through a veil of distorting religionism. It is important to get away from this extraneous theology and mental conceptions in order to preesent Divinisation in a clear manner (in this regard at least I agree with the Wilberians and their linear model of history).

Rather than trying to explain what all this means (I have presented a few comments towards the end of this essay www.integralworld.net/kazlev3.html), I will refer the reader to the only references in print of Divinisation. Only one supreme adept, Mirra Alfassa, The Mother of the Aurobindo Ashram, has described her experiences of divinisation of the body, and these serve as the most complete, and still really the only, account of the transformation to the new state of being. This is given in Mother's Agenda published by Instuitute of Evolutionary Research, and also available at several online sites. There is also an excellent condensed version Notebook on Evolution, an anonymous compilation by Luc Venet, which I cannot recommend too highly. This saves the reader the tedium of ploughing through 13 massive valumes. It is available at

www.aurobindo.ru/workings/compillations/evolution.pdf

See also Satprem's Mind of the Cells (which is a sort of summary of the Agenda) especially the Mother's quotes there; I find Satprem's comments on the evolution of a new species to be misleading in this context; it isn't a new species, it is a whole new Creation. Satpreme and Venet out of print Life Without Death is, I believe, clearer and more interesting (www.kheper.net/topics/Aurobindo/Life_Without_Death.html), although I would still advise reading Notebook on Evolution first and formeost.

The terminology here is confusing. Sri Aurobindo used the term "Supermind" and "Supramental", which is still standard. I feel uncomfortable with this word because it implies supra- mental, when this transformation is also supra-spiritual, supra-emotional, supra-physical, and for that matter intra-mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and everything else (words baulk at trying to grasp it). The Mother spoke not only of the Supermind and a transitional Overman consciousness (Surhomme – a word that was lost in the current translation of the Agenda; this has only recently been shown by Georges van Vrekhem in his book Overman but also of the consciousness of the body and of the cells. Her disciple Satprem popularised this latter as "the mind of the cells". Currently the French "Mind of the Cells" tradition of Integral Yoga (the works of The Mother, Satprem, his English translater Luc Venet, and the Institute of Evolutionary Research is foremost in promulgating this discovery. However it is likely that this will change; indeed is changing. On the internet, Russian devotees have been very prominant, posting the entire Agenda and works of Satprem online, and for a while (this was back in 2000) they and webmasters worldwide linking to them faced harrasment from the Institute of Evolutionary Research, which sad to say was more concerned with protecting its copyright.
But as The Mother's discovery of the physical divinisation of the body becomes better known, the collective consciousness of this possibility will spread. In this regard the books of Begian writer Georges van Vrekhem (Beyond Man and follow-up works) have been of great importance, both for revealing information previosuly hidden in obscure references, and in the fact that he presents the material from a more objective and scholarly, less devotional, approach, and hence is more appealing to the general reader.
Important note: despite some statements by Satprem to the contrary (which is why secondary material is never as good as the original!), Divinisation is not about physical immortality. That is where many people go wrong. It is about Physical Divinisation, which does not have to pander to human stereotypes of immortality etc. See "Osho, Sri Aurobindo, and Immortality" for the refutation of Rajneesh's ignorance in this regard.

22. Why is Divinisation incomprehensible to many advocates of the Integral Movement?
Divinisation is so far reaching as to be incomprehensible to many. In fact it goes radically against everything that both modernity and most of Traditionalism (with very few exceptions) stands for . I have also found a lot of resistance among Wilberians and Post-Wilberians to this insight. So this is something that even the mainstream Integral Movement, which prides itself at being at the leading edge of evolution, baulks at. It seems that in the current Integral Movement outside of Integral Yoga there is an almost total lack of receptivity to the possibility of collective Divinisation. Thus the possibility of the highest Integral definition, Individual and Collective Divinisation, is not a part of the consciousness of much of the Integral movement. There are a number of possible reasons for this
People have a knee-jerk reaction because of "new age" accesses (it's worth pointing out that one of the founders of the New Age, David Spangler, has since distanced himself from the whole thing). But for all its sloppy thinking and commercialism, the New Age itself is an authentic, if mostly superficial, syncretic religious movement with seeds of profound truths mixed among the mud. This includes imperfect and distorted insights even of divinisation. The New Age is really a protest against, and alternative to, physicalism and scientism on the one hand, and exoteric religion on the other. I also argue in this essay that the New Age and the Integral movement are not two different things.
that much of the Integral Movement is lacking in gnosis, and hence unable to comprehend authentic esoteric concepts, or insights provided by Integral Yoga. Wilber himself (I'm mentioning him here because he's still the single most influential person in the Integral Development stream; maybe in the future that will change) is limited to the old and from this perspective obsolete yogas of individual liberation, hence his interest in Advaita, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism. People attracted to Wilber will generally be inclined to be attracted to that sort of spiritual path as well. Therefore they will not be attracted to, indeed will tend to reject, any teaching concerning the metaphysical transformation of this world. This is not to deny of course that there are many people in the sphere of the Integral Movement sensu stricto who are inspired by other spiritual or religious systems, e.g. non-dogmatic Christian. Again, Wilber's popularity is precisely because what he says is so tame, so non-threatening to mainstream materialism and agnosticism, in many ways a form of crypto-materialism, as indicated by his "post-metaphysical" (actually anti-metaphysical) stance. This attracts those ofa more sceptical and quasi-physicalist worldview. To talk metaphysics is confronting to someone of a secular mindset, used to only surface realities.
The Integral Stage of Consciousness, as defined in the Integral Movement, may not yet be advanced enough to appreciate concepts like Supramentalisation, which only become comprehensible many stages further on. In short, Divinisation, like occultism, like metaphysics and ontology, is likely to be rejected by Integral mainstream for the same reason it is rejected by the secular (modernist stage) mainstream, and the exoteric religious (traditional stage) mainstream. Encountering something radically new and different can be very threatening, especially if it so dramatically contradicts everything that modernity tells us about how the world works. The bulk of the Integral movement has not yet reached the level in which it can deal with these concepts. So perhaps what I am talking about here is not just integral, bnot even just post-integral, but post-post-post-(etc)-integral. Integral to the nth degree.
Add to all this an entrenched misunderstanding of what Supramentalisation means. Although dialogue (such as AUM 2007) is leading to a broader Integral synthesis, and this has to be a good thing, the mainstream Integral Movement, while sincere, has absolutely no conception of Aurobindonian-Mirran concepts like Surrender to the Supreme and Supramentalisation.

In this regard, the well-meaning references to Sri Aurobindo (conveniently never or almost never to The Mother) by Wilber, Michael Murphy, Andrew Cohen, Allan Combs, Craig Hamilton, and others are not just useless, they are positively a force of delusion and falsehood, because of the misconceptions they popularise. So there simply is no foundation for Integral Yoga concepts anywhere at all in the Integral Movement sensu stricto. I see the fault here in the influence of the Intellectual Aurobindonian stream. It is the responsibility of Integral Yogis to provide an authentic account, rather than let Integral Yoga and the revelations of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother be hijacked by an uncomprehending modernity. And in this respect, despite all their other admirable and inspiring advances, much of the mainstream Integral Movement is still very much in the sphere of modernity (by which I would include modernism-postmodernism-integral), despite their claims to the contrary
I will add one more thing, which will be apparent to anyone who reads the Agenda, or Notebook on Evolution with sincerity and receptivity, but will be absurd to someone only coming at things from the surface consciousness.
Divinisation has not just been attempted but actually attained. This force is working in the world now, on the subtle level. All that remains is for it to be established in the gross physical. This is such a radical statement that it seems nonsensical if you haven't contacted the esoteric reality behind the words. But I see no reason why I should try to accomodate the metaphysically dwarfish perspectives of secular modernity. I'll leave my more conservative contemporaries to do all that compromising and kowtowing...

And if I do advocate Sri Aurobindo and The Mother (the latter as we have seen is rarely mentioned, no doubt because of her pragmatic and down to earth, no nonsense approach to spirituality, occultism, and the yoga of transformation) as the highest and most integral of all, it is not out of cultic naivity (which is the opposite of any authentic higher spirituality). Rather it is because in all the almost 30 years of studying esoteric and spiritual teachings, I have still yet to come across anyone more inclusive, or who taught a more awesome and universal message of transformation, perfection, enlightenment, divinisation, not just of one aspect of the individual being, but of every aspect of the individual being (including those qualities like the physical body and the base desires that are rejected by most other spiritualities); not just of every aspect of the individual being, but of every aspect of the collective as well. And ultimately, of the whole cosmos. And not just taught it as some fascinating but still abstract intellectual theory or visionary revelation. But actually lived it. Lived it.

M. Alan Kazlev is a self-taught esotericist and metaphysician, science fiction writer and fan, amateur biologist and palaeontologist, and student of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's teachings and yoga. His website is at www.kheper.net and he can be contacted at alankazlev (at) ihug (dot) com (dot) au (sorry – problems with spam!). For Integral World he has written two series of essays on integral philosophy: Towards a Larger View of Integral (4 Parts) and Integral Esotericism (8 Parts). In the following essay he gives on overview of the integral landscape. Selected Bibliography Gary Hampson “Integral Re-views Postmodernism: The Way Out Is Through” Integral Review 4, 2007

The highest integrative structure in the personal realm

Open Integral October 12th, 2007 (posted by Edward Berge)

Peripheral vision is itself like vision logic, in that PV doesn’t focus on specific objects but takes in the whole field of vision and observes it as a gestalt. It’s more like Ken’s description of VL in CW4, p.86:

“Vision-logic - Numerous psychologists (e.g. Bruner, Flavell, Arieti) have pointed out that there is much evidence for a cognitive structure beyond or higher than Piaget’s ‘formal operational.’ It has been called ‘dialectical,’ ‘integrative,’ ‘creative synthetic,’ ‘integral-aperspectival,’ and so forth. I prefer the term ‘vision-logic.’ In any case, it appears that whereas the formal mind establishes relationships, vision-logic establishes networks of those relationships (i.e. just as formop ‘operates on’ conop, so vision-logic ‘operates on’ formop). Such vision or panoramic logic apprehends a mass network of ideas, how they influence each other and interrelate. It is thus the beginning of truly higher-order synthesizing capacity, of making connections, relating truths, coordinating ideas, integrating concepts.

Interestingly, this is almost exactly what Aurobindo called ‘the higher mind,’ which ‘can freely express itself in single ideas, but its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view; the relations of idea with idea, of truth with truth, self-seen in the integral whole.’ This, obviously, is a highly integrative structure; indeed, in my opinion it is the highest integrative structure in the personal realm; beyond it lie transpersonal developments.” This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Integral Metatheory.

In the view of the old Indian physicists

Matter is the presentation of force which is most easily intelligible to our intelligence, moulded as it is by contacts in Matter to which a mind involved in material brain gives the response.

• The elementary state of material Force is, in the view of the old Indian physicists, a condition of pure material extension in Space of which the peculiar property is vibration typified to us by the phenomenon of sound.
• But vibration in this state of ether is not sufficient to create forms. There must first be some obstruction in the flow of the Force ocean, some contraction and expansion, some interplay of vibrations, some impinging of force upon force so as to create a beginning of fixed relations and mutual effects.
• Material Force modifying its first ethereal status assumes a second, called in the old language the aerial, of which the special property is contact between force and force, contact that is the basis of all material relations.
• Still we have not as yet real forms but only varying forces. A sustaining principle is needed. This is provided by a third self-modification of the primitive Force of which the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat is for us the characteristic manifestation.
• Even then, we can have forms of force preserving their own character and peculiar action, but not stable forms of Matter. A fourth state characterised by diffusion and a first medium of permanent attractions and repulsions, termed picturesquely water or the liquid state,
• and a fifth of cohesion, termed earth or the solid state, complete the necessary elements.

All forms of Matter of which we are aware, all physical things even to the most subtle, are built up by the combination of these five elements. Upon them also depends all our sensible experience; for

• by reception of vibration comes the sense of sound;
• by contact of things in a world of vibrations of Force the sense of touch;
• by the action of light in the forms hatched, outlined, sustained by the force of light and fire and heat the sense of sight;
• by the fourth element the sense of taste;
• by the fifth the sense of smell.

All is essentially response to vibratory contacts between force and force. In this way the ancient thinkers bridged the gulf between pure Force and its final modifications and satisfied the difficulty which prevents the ordinary human mind from understanding how all these forms which are to his senses so real, solid and durable can be in truth only temporary phenomena and a thing like pure energy, to the senses non-existent, intangible and almost incredible, can be the one permanent cosmic reality.

The problem of consciousness is not solved by this theory; for it does not explain how the contact of vibrations of Force should give rise to conscious sensations. The Sankhyas or analytic thinkers posited therefore behind these five elements two principles which they called Mahat and Ahankara, principles which are really non-material; for the first is nothing but the vast cosmic principle of Force and the other the divisional principle of Ego-formation. Nevertheless, these two principles, as also the principle of intelligence, become active in consciousness not by virtue of Force itself, but by virtue of an inactive Conscious-Soul or souls in which its activities are reflected and by that reflection assume the hue of consciousness.

Such is the explanation of things offered by the school of Indian philosophy which comes nearest to the modern materialistic ideas and which carried the idea of a mechanical or unconscious Force in Nature as far as was possible to a seriously reflective Indian mind. Whatever its defects, its main idea was so indisputable that it came to be generally accepted. However the phenomenon of consciousness may be explained, whether Nature be an inert impulse or a conscious principle, it is certainly Force; the principle of things is a formative movement of energies, all forms are born of meeting and mutual adaptation between unshaped forces, all sensation and action is a response of something in a form of Force to the contacts of other forms of Force. This is the world as we experience it and from this experience we must always start.

Physical analysis of Matter by modern Science has come to the same general conclusion, even if a few last doubts still linger. Intuition and experience confirm this concord of Science and Philosophy. Pure reason finds in it the satisfaction of its own essential conceptions. For even in the view of the world as essentially an act of consciousness, an act is implied and in the act movement of Force, play of Energy. This also, when we examine from within our own experience, proves to be the fundamental nature of the world. All our activities are the play of the triple force of the old philosophies, knowledge-force, desire-force, action-force, and all these prove to be really three streams of one original and identical Power, Adya Shakti. Even our states of rest are only equable state or equilibrium of the play of her movement. Page-81 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Life Divine Volume-18 > Conscious Force

IF WE consider what it is that most represents to us the materiality of Matter, we shall see that it is its aspects of solidity, tangibility, increasing resistance, firm response to the touch of Sense. Substance seems more truly material and real in proportion as it presents to us a solid resistance and by virtue of that resistance a durability of sensible form on which our consciousness can dwell; in proportion as it is more subtle, less densely resistant and enduringly seizable by the sense, it appears to us less material. This attitude of our ordinary consciousness towards Matter is a symbol of the essential object for which Matter has been created. Substance passes into the material status in order that it may present to the consciousness which has to deal with it durable, firmly seizable images on which the mind can rest and base its operations and which the Life can handle with at least a relative surety of permanence in the form upon which it works.

• Therefore in the ancient Vedic formula Earth, type of the more solid states of substance, was accepted as the symbolic name of the material principle.
• Therefore, too, touch or contact is for us the essential basis of Sense;
• all other physical senses, taste, smell, hearing, sight are based upon a series of more and more subtle and indirect contacts between the percipient and the perceived.

Equally, in the Sankhya classification of the five elemental states of Substance from ether to earth, we see that their characteristic is a constant progression from the more subtle to the less subtle so that at the summit we have the subtle vibrations of the ethereal and at the base the grosser density of the earthly or solid elemental condition. Matter therefore is the last stage known to us in the progress of pure substance towards a basis of cosmic relation in which the first word shall be not spirit but form, and form in its utmost possible development of concentration, resistance, durably gross image, mutual impenetrability,—the culminating point of distinction, separation and division. This is the intention and character of the material universe; it is the formula of accomplished divisibility.

And if there is, as there must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form, more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation, transmutation, unification.

Drawing away from durability of form, we draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit. Between gross substance and pure spirit substance this must be the fundamental antinomy. In Matter Chit or Conscious-Force masses itself more and more to resist and stand out against other masses of the same Conscious-Force; in substance of Spirit pure consciousness images itself freely in its sense of itself with an essential indivisibility and a constant unifying interchange as the basic formula even of the most diversifying play of its own Force. Between these two poles there is the possibility of an infinite gradation. Page-253 Location: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Life Divine Volume-18 > The Ascending Series Of Substance

Luce Irigaray deserves credit for treating plurality as an ontological problem

An Other Thought from Fido the Yak by Fido the Yak

I want to follow up on one of Nancy's ideas in a sober voice. He says that in the experience of freedom that is thinking as freedom, we know that in every thought there is an other thought, which is the burst of freedom (The Experience of Freedom, p. 59). This reminds me of Tengelyi's discussion of the wild sense, the spontaneously emerging shard of sense that appears as other than belonging to one's life history determined according to a retroactive fixation of sense. Dylan, who has begun reading Tengelyi's The Wild Sense, notes a difficulty in the distinction Tengelyi has drawn between singularity and self-identity.

Nancy, of course, has had a few words to say about singularity, but so far his thinking is a little opaque to me. It's fair to say that his thinking about singularity is existential. Ex-istence, he says, "signifies simply the freedom of being, that is, the infinite inessentiality of its being-finite, which delivers it to the singularity wherein it is 'itself'" (p. 14, Nancy's emphasis). If we put these two ideas together, the argument would seem to be that singularity is given by that which is other in thought, an other that is not thought but that thinks thought itself. (This strikes me as a thinkerly way of approaching existential singularity) Nancy speaks of a hither side of difference:

"a difference of being in itself, which would not simply convert being into difference and difference into being (since precisely this type of conversion between pure substances would become impossible), but which would be the difference of its existence, and in this existence, inasmuch as it is its own essence, the difference and division of its singularity" (ibidem).

Nancy's singularity is tied to essence, and even though essence is understood existentially, it appears to be a markedly different approach than Tengelyi's. And yet Nancy speaks of the division of the singularity of existence. So far in this work he has not thematized plurality, but the idea seems to be nascent, presaging a dominant theme of Being Singular Plural. This idea of a division or a difference in singularity does not seem far from what Tengelyi means by the positionality of singularity, despite the noticable differences between their two approaches.

In the last decade or so the problem of singularity has been noticed in many corners, but the thoughts around it still appear to be inchoate. The later Nancy (along with Adriana Cavarero) insightfully conjoin the problem of uniqueness with the problem of plurality, and I believe this conjuncture is an implication of Tengelyi's approach as well. Of course Luce Irigaray deserves credit for treating plurality as an ontological problem, though her works are not cited by these other authors. (I mean to take up To Be Two again before too long). The question of finitude seems to be a problem for plurality; can a world consist of as many nows as it takes to make a world? I'm sure I'll be rereading Being Singular Plural again too.

A returning of Geist to its original signification in German, i.e. ghost

Derrida: Trace and Specter from The Joyful Knowing by Mike

Derrida in his last interview before his death explicitly equates the logic of two of his greatest concepts, the trace and the specter, the first used in his early writings, the second in his robust later work. Reading the latter into the former, one can understand it as a continuation of the thought of Heidegger on Hegel and the latter's concept of Geist. That is, if Geist is composed of the certain, deliberate death (negation) of un-Conceptual existence to be certainly, deliberately reborn in the Concept, understanding the trace as the spectral means understanding it as a different relationship of existence to death, to negativity. The spectral is the un-dead, the concrete anticipation of a death that is never certain to come precisely because it may have already passed the point at which it could be present. But as trace, it is clear from Derrida's early writings that it is also what Heidegger termed the sheltering in the withdrawing of being, the operation of Ereignis or enowning. That is, the relationship of existence to death is reconceived because what relates itself to death for Derrida (and Heidegger) is not existence, but this enowning movement of being, the movement of truth.

In short, by combining these two concepts we are able to see that what Derrida was able to do was to exploit the French reworking of Hegelian negativity that was popular in the fifties (and earlier, in the work of Kojeve, Bataille, and Blanchot) with a concept that was not concerned with existence, and thus more concerned with being in the Heideggerian sense (the sense in which it was what was given by a movement of truth). In other words, he was able to bring French philosophy back to the sense of being that Heidegger was pursuing, out of its reified Sartreian form as existence. He was able to bring philosophy out of its concern with death and the present (existence) and towards a concern with death and the movement of presencing (which is chracteristic of enowning). The specter, then, is the figure that was concealed under the figure of the trace in Derrida's early writings.

As far as a critique of Hegel goes, and Heidegger's relationship to it as developed and exploited by Derrida, I can only outline that it would be a returning of Geist to its original signification in German, i.e. ghost. Derrida would show that the work of Heidegger is an exposure of the Hegelian tendency to suppress the spectral in its narration of the death that is constitutive of negativity as determinate--in other words, of the suppression of indeterminate negativity or abstract negativity. I'll outline all this in a clearer fashion sometime in the future--I just write now what is occuring to me. Here's the quote from Derrida that should show the links I've made here:

I have always been interested in this theme of survival, the meaning of which is not to be added on to living and dying. It is originary: life is living on, life is survival [la vie est survie]. To survive in the usual sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. When it comes to translating such a notion, Benjamin emphasizes the distinction between uberleben on the one hand, surviving death, like a book that survives the death of its author, or a child the death of his or her parents, and, on the other hand, fortleben, living on, continuing to live. All the concepts that have helped me in my work, and notably that of the trace or of the spectral, were related to this "surviving" as a structural and rigorously originary dimension. - Learning to Live Finally, 26.

Claude Levi-Strauss demonstrated the rationality behind various mythological structures

larvalsubjects Says: October 6th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

Why are you treating Davidson and Quine as authorities as to what belief are without actually providing their arguments and claims? Throughout this discussion you have evoked them on a number of occasions as if you assume that I am familiar with their positions, share the positions of these thinkers and that these thinkers ought to decide the issues being discussed. I have read a few of Quine’s articles and occasionally teach “Two Dogmas”, and haven’t read any Davidson or Mcdowell for nearly fifteen years. More oddly yet, you simply reference their names without explicitly laying out the arguments and concepts behind these claims as if your interlocutor (me) ought to already be familiar with them.
The distinction between shibboleth and belief is not one with which I am familiar, nor one I have ever come across. Absent a more thorough elaboration of this distinction similar to what I did above in response to CynicLibrarian concerning Lacanian diagnostic categories, I see no reason to admit this distinction as being at all relevant to this discussion (simply because I have no idea what distinction it is that I would be admitting, nor what it would be committing me to). You compare my concerns about this distinction with McDowell’s concerns about the principle of charity, yet the principle of charity is not a concept I work with, nor something I’ve adopted a position towards one way or another. Similarly, absent a clear and explicit development of the specific claims you’re attributing to Quine and Davidson, I see no reason to treat them as relevant to this discussion as, once again, I am not familiar with their claims and therefore am in no position to determine what I would be committing myself to.
Throughout this discussion I have straightforwardly treated belief as a judgment that something about the world is the case. Hence, “it is raining” (here outside of Dallas), “Hurricane Katrina is Gods wraith against the sinful behavior of those living in New Orleans”, and “The world is round” are all instances of belief. If you wish to add some bells and whistles that is fine, but you will have to do that by actually developing those bells and whistles rather than simply citing others.
I suspect that your experience at your Evangelical university can be explained very easily. When one is within a community where beliefs are shared and where it is generally assumed that ones interlocutors have the same beliefs (that you’re “one of us”), the intractability of belief becomes invisible and the difficulties that emerge with respect to persuasion do not appear. The absence of difference gives rise to a certain perspective on rational discourse. My different experience is not simply the result of encountering students at Quad-C that have fundamentalist beliefs (it’s exceedingly rare for such things to come up at the college), nor the result of lurking about conservative and fundamentalist forums, but is the result of having lived all over the country and witnessed a few small town religious revivals where books were burned, laws changed, and school policies on sexual education and evolution were transformed. Persuasion did not take place in these contexts. Change the context somewhat and imagine yourself exactly as you are now attempting to persuade Heinrich Himmler to give up his beliefs in the Nazi party. Or consider what would be involved in persuading Stephen Dawkins to endorse the intervention of supernatural causes in the order of nature. Why is it that one can have sound, well developed, arguments based on good reasons (in all three of these instances), yet persuasion fails to take place? This is the issue that I’m talking about. We can call these beliefs, shibboleths, doxas, quarks, whatever you like… But it is these incommensurable universes that I’m referring to.
You are free to correct me if I am mistaken, but I have understood you to be arguing that beliefs, shibboleths, quarks, doxas or whatever else you might like to call them have no impact both on how we act in the world and how we understand the world. I am not sure how you’re comparing me to the other person who discussed the Aztecs with. So far remarks you have made don’t exactly suggest that you’re the most credible authority on cultural anthropology. My position is that beliefs, shibboleths, quarks, doxas, leprechauns or whatever you want to call them do make a significant difference as to how we engage with the world. That aside, Aztec sacrifice was deeply intertwined with their cosmology (they believed or had the “shibboleth” that the universe was in a state of decline), and was a premised on a cause and effect relation (that sacrifice would sustain the universe and the continued existence of man). Given that the world is still here, we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Aztecs.
A couple of times you have expressed concern about rationality. Perhaps you understand me to be saying that these positions are irrational and are evoking the “principle of charity” (whatever that is) to save the rationality of these groups. I wouldn’t see these observations as claims that a group as irrational. Within the Aztec cosmology, for instance, this practice is perfectly rational. In the clinical setting, we inevitably discover that the apparent irrationality of the analysand’s actions are, in fact, rational once we take into account the unconscious material of which the symptom is an expression. Claude Levi-Strauss demonstrated the rationality behind various mythological structures brilliantly in his work. However, it seems to me that Davidson-Quine (again I have no real idea as you haven’t articulated their positions, just cited them), are taking rationality to be something far stronger that I would find suspect: a position is rational only insofar as it is also true.

Anthony Paul Smith Says: October 6th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Who is Stephen Dawkins? Did they splice the DNA of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins? Or maybe Stephen Hawking and Dawkins… they could be Stephard Dawking.
Adam Says: October 6th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Freudian slip! He thinks Richard Dawkins’ arguments against religion are the equivalent of Stephen Hawkings super-geniusness!
larvalsubjects Says: October 6th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I knew it!
Resemblances aside, Dawkins, fundamentalism, and Nazism, are all examples of strongly held belief systems where persuasion is unlikely to take place. It would be difficult to make my point without referring to passionately held belief systems. Then again, perhaps I’m just obsessed with some of these things (well not so much the Dawkins)… I’m certainly behaving obsessively in this thread.
It also occurs to me that who is doing the persuading makes a big difference as to the likely success of the persuasion. It’s unlikely that Bill O’Reilly could ever convince me of anything, though I might very well endorse the very same proposition were it to come from, hmmm, John Stewart, Badiou, or Zizek.

Cognitive science has been well linked to philosophy since the discipline was given its name

October 04, 2007 A rough guide to philosophy and neuroscience:

Philosophy is now an essential part of cognitive science but this wasn't always the case. A fantastic new article, available online as a pdf, describes how during the last 25 years philosophy has undergone a revolution in which it has contributed to, and been inspired by, neuroscience. The article is by two philosophers, Profs Andrew Brook and Pete Mandik, and it's a wonderful summary of how the revolution occurred and just how we've benefited from philosophers turning their attention to cognitive science. But it also notes how evidence from psychology and neuroscience is being used by philosophers to better understand concepts - such as perception, belief and consciousness - that have been the concern of thinkers from as far back as the Ancient Greeks.

It's an academic article, so it's fairly in-depth in places, but if you want a concise introduction to some of the key issues philosophy of mind is dealing with, and how this directly applies to current problems in the cognitive sciences, look no further. The scope is wonderfully broad and there's a huge amount of world-shaking information packed into it. It's particularly good if you're a psychologist or neuroscientist and want a guide to how philosophy is helping us make sense of the mind and brain. The article will shortly appear in the philosophy journal Analyse and Kritik but the proofs are available online right now. pdf of article 'The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement' (via BH). —Vaughan. Posted at October 4, 2007 10:00 PM

Comments David Scrimshaw says: I think you'll find that a close reading of the article reveals that it is neuroscience and philosophy that did not used to be linked. To my knowledge, cognitive science has been well linked to philosophy since the discipline was given its name. The bachelor's program in Cognitive Science at MIT that was created in the early 80s had a substantial number of philosophy classes in the required and elective lists. Comment posted at October 4, 2007 11:56 PM
John Wilkins says: Many thanks. This will be a useful wrap up paper to give my cognitive science class. Comment posted at October 5, 2007 02:43 AM

Don Lavoie understood that Mises's revolutionary idea was to establish economics as a philosophic science

Rush to Philosophic Judgment?
In recent debates on this blog several commentators have made reference to the dead-end of the hermeneutic turn in the Austrian school from the 1980s. But truth is not determined by raising hands. It is not a function of popularity.
Don Lavoie was a brilliant and deeply committed scholar. He didn't just randomly pick Gadamer as a philosophic figure to study. He understood Mises better than all but two other Austrian economists (Israel Kirzner and Richard Ebeling). Lavoie sought to explore the philosophical foundations of Mises's system and so he was led to the continential philosophy of Mises's youth. The neo-Kantians and early phenomenologists. He read Mises's student Alfred Schutz and followed up with Husserl. Trace out from Husserl and the development of phenomenology and you get to Gadamer. That takes care of Mises, but Lavoie was also deeply read in Hayek and he took that philosophical journey as well --- through Popper, through Polanyi, and into evolutionary rationalism.
All of this philosophic study, Lavoie wanted to marshall to offer a radical challenge to the dominant formalist and positivist paradigm in economics. Unfortunately, an untimely death prevented this brilliant and caring scholar/teacher from completing his philosophical journey.
But to claim that Don failed is in my opinion a "rush to judgment" that must be resisted at every step. His journey was not started out of ignorance of a tradition, but because he knew it better than his critics. It was not started out of laziness with respect to doing economics, but out of a profound sense that unless the philosophic battle was won Austrians couldn't get a fair hearing. And, he was not defeated by superior intellectual arguments, but instead by the realities of academic administration which consumed his time in the 1990s, and ultimately by cancer that kept him from finishing his philosophical journey. Lets not just assume because of the sad reality that Don is no longer with us, that those still standing defeated him on scholarly grounds. I am not saying that Don's philosophical program was perfect, nor that modification (perhaps fundamental modifications) to it would be required to make it be workable in the social sciences. But to call it a dead-end is wrong.
Don understood that Mises's revolutionary idea was to establish economics as a philosophic science --- a science of human action that respected meaning and intentionality. And in order to achieve that revolution the phenomenological philosophic turn must be made. But this philosophic turn doesn't treat the existing state of the doctrine as fixed and complete. It is an on-going enterprise --- Husserl to Schutz to Gadamer to Taylor to Ricouer, etc. And since the application happens to be in realm of economics (which is decidely an underdeveloped branch of interpretative social science due to the stronghold that formailism and positivism has had over the discipline), this philosophic conversation has to be joined with an economic one to forge a modern synthesis. In many ways, Alfred Schutz is the last statement which we have to work from before Lavoie's incomplete writings. So we have to build from the fragments that Don left us because he never did get to write the book he spent a decade contemplating after his brilliant contributions to economics, the Austrian school of economics, and classical liberal political economy Rivalry and Central Planning and National Economic Planning: What is Left? (both published in 1985). But that task is best left to philosophically sophisticated economists and social scientists, and philosophers of science who understand the task of the human sciences (as opposed to the philosophy of the natural sciences).
Lavoie, as Mises taught, took seriously methodological dualism --- as should we. But that has implications for the way we do our economics, and the way we defend what we do. Mises understood that, and Lavoie was simply trying advance the Misesian agenda as best as he saw fit given the philosohical developments that took place since Mises came to his methodological position in the 1920s and 1930s. Lavoie's was not a hermeneutical turn, but a Misesian turn that looked to developments in modern phenomenological hermeneutics to provide philosophical justification for methodological dualism, subjectivism, and process theory.
A very solid treatment of the philosophical issues can be found in a recent paper by Gabriel Zanotti in the Journal of Markets & Morality, published by the Acton Institute. Download zanotti1.pdf Posted by Peter Boettke on October 04, 2007 at 09:28 AM Permalink

Patoèka is an alchemist of thought

Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History

by Jan Patocka (Author), Paul Ricoeur (Preface), Erazim Kohak (Translator)

Customer Reviews: Influences are obvious, yet very independent,

By David J. Smith "loupgarou" (UK), 21 Jul 2005

Patoèka is an alchemist of thought. His contention is that, in contrast to the relativist pundits of popular PoMo, the problem of history must be kept open at all costs. Holding together dissimilar elements of being in an embrace that refuses to see them fused or indistinguishable is what makes Patoèka unique in wanting to prevent an "end to history" as such in a final and all-encompassing political resolution or a messianic attitude. He is postmodern in this sense, eschewing foundational and unifying metaphysical justifications for ethics.

Yet he is also astute: conversant enough with the early classical and pre-Socratic quivers in philosophy to read "the postmetaphysical" as being operative within history itself, rather than being "present" only at its conclusion, as if history were merely the means to or generator of that end. Philosophy and history have always been, from their inception, ambiguous and in interior tension, before Christianity, before even Aristotle or Platonism. The originary problematicity of life is a social history, and so philosophy and politics always emerge together: the act of problematising the very beginning of thought, of seeing thought as dealing intrinsically with problematicity, allows all that has proceeded from thought to be reconciled.

Sociology, philosophy, anthropology, politics, religion; these are only so many threads that in their varying metaphysical ways have failed to keep hold of that originary problematicity of life and have tried to ground themselves in foundational resolutions of history. Like Heidegger, Patoèka sees this problematicity as the concern of a historical being in the world - not a bare Cartesian/Husserlian subject - but unlike Heidegger, Patoèka sees that as political. For Patoèka politics and care for the soul are indissociable from the beginning - as a social being man is faced not just with the constant possibility of his own death but with the possibility of the abject decline of society itself. Likewise, man is not just faced with the functionalisation of his being, but with the functionalisation of social life, of the state, and of politics in a polity that loses the sense of the care for the soul and a life in truth. See all my reviews

This is the sole true supermanhood and the one real possibility of a step forward in evolutionary Nature

A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature. That might be described, since it surpasses the mental human level, as a life of spiritual and supramental supermanhood. But this must not be confused with past and present ideas of supermanhood; for supermanhood in the mental idea consists of an overtopping of the normal human level, not in kind but in degree of the same kind, by an enlarged personality, a magnified and exaggerated ego, an increased power of mind, an increased power of vital force, a refined or dense and massive exaggeration of the forces of the human Ignorance; it carries also, commonly implied in it, the idea of a forceful domination over humanity by the superman.

That would mean a supermanhood of the Nietzschean type; it might be at its worst the reign of the “blonde beast” or the dark beast or of any and every beast, a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength of self-fulfilment would be the type of a Rakshasic supermanhood: but the giant, the ogre or devourer of the world, the Rakshasa, though he still survives, belongs in spirit to the past; a larger emergence of that type would be also a retrograde evolution. A mighty exhibition of an overpowering force, a self-possessed, self-held, even, it may be, an ascetically self-restrained mind-capacity and life-power, strong, calm or cold or formidable in collected vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit.

But what has to emerge is something much more difficult and much more simple; it is a self-realised being, a building of the spiritual self, an intensity and urge of the soul and the deliverance and sovereignty of its light and power and beauty,—not an egoistic supermanhood seizing on a mental and vital domination over humanity, but the sovereignty of the Spirit over its own instruments, its possession of itself and its possession of life in the power of the spirit, a new consciousness in which humanity itself shall find its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment by the revelation of the divinity that is striving for birth within it. This is the sole true supermanhood and the one real possibility of a step forward in evolutionary Nature.

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Tolstoy looks back on his life and considers it to be senseless and reprehensible failure

Leo Tolstoy Talks About the Philosophy of Death
Posted by EditorsChoice Wednesday, 03 October 2007

The article is based on the work of John Kearney Introduction to Philosophy called Death. I have chosen to write on the work of Leo Tolstoy “My Confession”. Tolstoy looks back on his life and considers it to be senseless and reprehensible failure. His work lets us take a look inside his thinking as he starts changing his ideas, and his basic opinion concerning the Philosophy of Death.

Leo Tolstoy starts his story telling us about traveler who is out on the plain and he is caught up with a wild beast. The traveler has no way to save his life. If he falls to the bottom of a well where there is no water, the “dragon of death” will swallow him up. If he gets out of the well which has no water, the wild beast will rip him to pieces. Clinging to the branch of a wild bush which grows near the well will for some time save him from the dragon of death. But then he sees the mice, one of them is white and symbolizes the day, the other one is black and symbolizes the night, it is nibble at the “twig of life”.

This story about the traveler means that we can not run away from death, it will find us anywhere. It is also the same to those who have got to know that he or she is seriously ill and can die because of this illness. They feel how the time quickly goes by and how the clock is ticking more clearly than the others. However the loud ticking in our ears, should not divert us from understanding that the journey goes on; still winds itself along the road of our existence; however inconvenient at times, toward that point called death of everlasting life.

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Instead of there being two lines, one masculine and one feminine, there should be one single being

Ned Says: September 30th, 2007 at 4:16 pm

In the Guru-Pandit dialogue, Ken makes a big deal about men’s superior physical strength, but why does nobody talk about some of the biological strengths of women? Childbirth is not a small deal, and it’s known to trigger spiritual and kundalini awakenings. In fact I’ve often found it interesting that a lot of male violence seems to be against pregnant women — because childbirth is a realm of exclusively female power.
WIE and the Cohen community is generally kind of patronizing towards women, I’ve noticed. Not a good sign.

Ned Says: September 30th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Oh yeah, and to not talk about women’s self-defense in an issue on women is a crime. Actually there is a very rich body of literature on the philosophy behind women’s self-defense. The Mother of Auroville was emphatic about the physical training of women (of men too, of course, but I mean she braved all the sexist resistances from people who claimed that women were weak and shouldn’t have to go through the same physical training as men). WIE could have featured female kung fu artists (as a matter of fact some martial arts schools were founded by women), but God forbid we ever depict authentically strong female role models. No, women need men to show them the way to enlightenment.

Ned Says: October 1st, 2007 at 7:09 am Hi Ray,
Lucky you to have missed reading the Guru/Pandit dialogue — it was just obnoxious! Actually I thought Ken’s ideas on feminism were not half-bad in “Sex, Ecology and Spirituality”, because he does say that whatever biological differences necessitated strict gender roles at some point in human evolution are being transcended as humanity grows spiritually...

Traditionalism (in most religions and especially in Islam) and traditionalist metaphysics are generally juxtaposed against the secular feminist/leftist approach as far as gender goes. Feminists/leftists (and I’m probably exaggerating this here — I hate making blanket statements like this about any group, but just for the sake of practicality let me go with this) see sex as an objective biological fact and gender as an arbitrary and often superficial social construction.
Traditionalist metaphysics seems to go in the opposite direction: gender is a universal property of the creation as a whole, and is found in every created thing. Gender exists in the terrestrial world because it’s a materialisation of gender as it exists in the universe as a whole. And men and women are basically manifestations of two wholly different and separate archetypes in the traditionalist view. It’s usually on this basis that traditionalists build up this (in my view, hypocritical) picture of a “benevolent patriarchy”. At worst, this means that as creation submits to God, so woman submits to man. At best, you get a social situation where men and women are “different but equal” but in practice this usually means relegating women to all the boring tasks.
So how to reconcile these two diametrically opposed views? If one is agnostic or atheist, of course, it’s easy — you just dismiss all of traditionalist metaphysics as nonsense. If you do think that the play of ideas and archetypes in Consciousness is what causes things to come into physical manifestation, then traditional metaphysics has to be contended with.

The way Sri Aurobindo and the Mother deal with this is to bring in the great insight of modernity, i.e. evolution, which is missing from all the premodern cosmologies. In the evolution a great deal of intermixing takes place so that although there was an original raison d’etre or archetype responsible for the existence of each of the sexes (or each of the races for that matter), there is no longer any “pure” biological sex or “pure” biological race anymore. Each human being is a unique soul with a unique purpose to execute. So they would say that this intermixing is just a part of returning to the original nondual Oneness and evolving toward unity-in-diversity.
Actually I guess this is just a problem with traditionalism in general, it just can’t grapple with the modern concept of the individual, hence you see traditionalists who have no problems being sexist or aristocratic or even racist at times.
Sorry, Ray — you’ve awoken the beast! Argh, I have very little patience for sexism.

Ned Says: October 1st, 2007 at 7:17 am Hi Alan,
I hope some day I can write something to counter this sort of sexism! Just hoping to reach a certain level of maturity before I attempt such a thing, though.
I can’t help but remember the words of the Mother here:

“Instead of there being two lines, one masculine and one feminine, there should be one single being, and that’s what I conceive as the solution of all problems — all problems, not only this one — and as the prototype of the supramental creation.”