There is some great discussion going on over at Julian Walker's blog on the Zaadz...umm I mean Gaia community site. Jim made a comment that has me thinking a lot about Owen Flanagan and Wilber's work - I've made a few posts (Natural Method, Janus, Integral Naturalism) about their similar approaches to consciousness and consciousness studies in the past. I posted this over on Julian's blog...
I think we say things like “if consciousness requires form to exist” and ”every level of interior consciousness is accompanied by a level of exterior physical complexity,” as Wilber says, because of a natural intuition that conscious states and physical states (brain states) are distinct.When we say something like, “Victoria Beckham was accompanied by her husband David Beckham to the awards ceremony,” we know that we mean that Victoria and David are distinct individuals and that either could've shown up at the ceremony without the other. I wonder if Wilber chose his words carefully so that he could leave open the possibility that conscious states and brains states are distinct and can exist independently of one another?
It may be counterintuitive to think that conscious states are brain states, but it's possible that they are.
If conscious states are identical with brain states, then it makes no sense to say that conscious states “accompany” or “correlate” with brain states, nor does it make sense to say that brain states “give rise to” or “generate” conscious states.
Thanks for that Jim – this made me think much harder about Wilber’s stance on this. I have made a few posts on my blog about Owen Flanagan’s subjective realism and Natural Method and how they could relate to Wilber’s model. This area brings us a distinct difference in that Wilber doesn’t quite accept the token physicalist view that Flanagan describes. A few excerpts from each of them:
From Flanagan’s paper Subjective Realism and Phenomenal Consciousness:
A naturalistic theory of mind is not remotely adequate if it does provide an account of phenomenal consciousness. And it can. Token physicalism is the view that each and every mental event, each and every experience, is some physical event or other – presumably some central nervous system event. We can accept the truth of token physicalism, and thus reject the cartesian view that denies it, while resisting the conclusion that the essence of a mental event is revealed completely or captured completely by a description of its neural level realizer. The reason is this, and it applies uniquely to conscious mental events. Conscious mental events are essentially Janus-faced and uniquely so. They have first-person subjective feel and they are realized in objective states of affairs.
From Wilber’s Excerpt G:
By the way, there are no energy fields in the Left-Hand quadrants, of course, because those are aspects of holons that are first-person feelings, awareness, consciousness, and so on, whose exterior (or Right-Hand) correlates are mass and energy. All holons have four quadrants, which means all holons have interiors of consciousness and exteriors of form and energy (e.g., even subtle consciousness has a subtle body, and causal consciousness has a causal body, etc.), but consciousness is not itself energy, nor energy consciousness.
In fact with this next section from Wilber's Excerpt G, it seems to me Wilber rejects the token physicalist view with his view on reincarnation:
ReincarnationWe come now to the most controversial topic related to subtle energies, namely, reincarnation or transmigration. I am reluctant to even comment on it, because once you take sides in this issue, you alienate the other half of the audience.
My own belief is that reincarnation does occur; however, for the moment, I am more concerned with suggesting a proposed mechanism for such an occurrence, rather than arguing that it does or does not happen. Let us simply assume that it does, and then ask, how can that occurrence be squared with hypothesis #3, namely, that subtle energies are associated with complexifications of gross form? Upon death, clearly the gross form dissolves; what happens to the subtle energies if they are tied to those gross forms?
At this point, one simply chooses to decide whether reincarnation exists or not. If you believe that reincarnation does not exist, then the integral theory of subtle energies that I have presented thus far needs no further adjustments (not in relation to reincarnation, that is). If, on the other hand, you believe in reincarnation, then an integral theory needs to be able to incorporate that occurrence. It can do so if it adds one hypothesis, as follows:
#4. Complexity of gross form is necessary for the expression or manifestation of both higher consciousness and subtler energy.
Hypothesis #4 introduces the possibility that the higher forms of consciousness and energy (i.e., higher than the gross-family realm) are not tied to complexifications of gross form ontologically but rather as vehicles of the expression of subtler forms and energies in that gross realm itself. In other words, it is not that higher consciousness and energies are bound to the complexities of gross form out of ontological necessity, but that they need a correspondingly complex form of gross matter in order to express or manifest themselves in and through the material realm.
The question of whether or not that is true is one thing; but if it is true, something like hypothesis #4 must be entertained. To avoid that hypothesis is to avoid the entire issue. For example, Francisco Varela et al., in The Embodied Mind, attempt to derive a spiritually attuned theory of consciousness that anchors consciousness firmly in the sensorimotor body—so much so that reincarnation, by their theory, is impossible. They present their theory as consonant with an updated Buddhism, but clearly it avoids this difficult issue. There is no way around something like hypothesis #4 if one wants to entertain transmigration.
Wilber’s Hypothesis #4 is quite confusing to me now. It seems he is saying that complexity of gross form (e.g., the brain) is necessary for the expression but not the ontological existence of higher consciousness/subtle energy. Which would mean that consciousness (specifically Wilber’s higher consciousness UL) can exist without an UR correlate.
So a fundamental difference in views on consciousness…for Flanagan no brain, no consciousness…for Wilber no brain still subtle consciousness that can transmigrate. And yet Wilber argues for UL/UR correlates in his model.
I am just trying to flesh out Flanagan’s and Wilber’s views on consciousness as I thought they were quite similar in approach but there are major differences to be found as well…
Comments