Edward Berge Says: August 15th, 2006 at 12:44 pm Regarding Excerpt A and Whitehead’s prehensive unification, the following is a quote from the referenced link in Excerpt A on how Ken includes an aspect of Whitehead’s ideas but rejects other aspects. You can see from the quote how Ken weaves spirit or being into it. Whether it works or not is of course open to debate.
From “My Criticism of Whitehead as True But Partial” in “Do Critics Misrepresent My Position”
My suggestion, then, is that instead of taking “I prehend the rock” (or “I prehend the concept”) and pushing that down into the atoms of experience, we instead take the four quadrants and push those all the way down to the atoms of experience. In other words, the paradigm of prehension is not “I see the red patch,” but rather, “I and the red patch arise in the space created (in part) by intersubjectivity, and once I and the red patch have arisen, then I see the patch in an immediate prehension.”
And ultimately, that intersubjectivity itself can exist–that is, subjects can participate in each other’s immediate presence–because the agency of each subject opens directly onto nondual Spirit or pure Emptiness, so that, as I often put it, the agency of each holon acts as an opening or clearing in which other holons can manifest to each other, and that opening or clearing itself is (in part) a product of the four quadrants, so that a holon’s culture (LL quadrant) is always already an intrinsic part of the holon’s prehension of any objects. This is my attempt to include, all the way down, the enduring insights of the great postmodern writers, writers that, in Whitehead’s time, were really just becoming well-known and well-respected.
Thus, I maintain (as explained in SES and elsewhere) that this four-quadrant space “goes all the way down”–because interiors and exteriors go all the way down, and so do singular and plural. This does not particularly contradict anything Whitehead said, but it is a richer, fuller, and more integral expression of the very nature of real occasions, which is not “Left-Hand subject prehends Right-Hand objects,” but “All four quadrants arise mutually, the end result of which includes a subject prehending an object (physical, emotional, conceptual, etc.).”
Thus, even in Whitehead’s notions of concrescence and prehensive unification, I do not detect a vivid understanding of strong intersubjectivity. Rather, using a merely Whiteheadian process philosophy, one must construct intersubjectivity (and true dialogical experience) from a repeated application of prehensive unifications and concrescences, all of which are to some degree after the fact. I believe this hampers Whiteheadian process philosophy from becoming a truly integral philosophy. By adopting a quadratic, instead of limited dialogical, approach, I am not denying Whitehead but enriching him.
Marko Rinck Says: August 15th, 2006 at 12:52 pm Hi Edward, Thanks for your comment. I agree with everything you said. Both that the absolute cannot be caught in a finite statement and the (important) practice of deconstruction. Only I was not speaking about the absolute but about ontological layers that are manifesting out of the absolute.
Edward Berge Says: August 15th, 2006 at 1:02 pm I’m confused then Marko, for it there are ontologoical “layers” of being then how are they not relative to each other and hence not absolute being per se as you describe it?
Marko Rinck Says: August 15th, 2006 at 1:58 pm Hi Edward, some traditional teachings like Kabalah and Sufism have the view that Being manifests in various and delineated levels - which are similar to the dimensions of Being in neoplatonic philosophy - each real and objective on its own level.
Modern teachings like those of Aurobindo and Almaas have similar dimensions of Being and Hinduism speaks of Brahman, which can be seen as a level of Being. All of those teachings would differentiate this level from the Absolute or Parabrahman which is beyond Being. Some of these teachings would say that these levels of Being are merely degrees of subtlety, others say that each of these levels is distinct and objectively delineatable. Buddhism denies the existence of these levels stating that we are either aware of Buddha nature or not. I have also not found something similar in Wilber’s system. If I had to place these levels in his system I would place them between the subtle and the causal.
PS I was just reading the long and detailed endnote Ken Wilber wrote specifically about the involutionary givens, endnote 26 of Excerpt A: http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/notes-3.cfm
Tusar N. Mohapatra Says: August 16th, 2006 at 12:15 am But, it seems that Berge would not touch Sri Aurobindo even with a barge pole.
Tusar N. Mohapatra Says: August 16th, 2006 at 1:03 am THE LIFE DIVINE Sri Aurobindo 2.1.13: Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance
In this chapter, Sri Aurobindo attempts to resolve an age-old metaphysical question in absolute speculative fashion with remarkable success. It is interesting to note that this piece of philosophical wizardry has resonance in Heidegger’s Unconcealment. posted by Tusar N Mohapatra @ 5:07 AM
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