This is precisely how orange would interpret these ideas: as describing one objective reality which can be mapped, populated by observable things with clear boundaries, which are naturally grouped into distinct and separable categories, while composing larger and larger things by combining in a mechanistic and non-synergistic fashion.
The question of the day for me is: How much of that is a mis-interpretation?
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I'm finding the Johnson and Lakoff's stuff cuts through the intuitive uneasy I felt mucking around in first generation cognitive theories, namely the sharp distinction between the insides and outsides of things. I think I'm beginning to see what you mean by the gradation between them. Do you think there is gradation between the individual and the collective as well? It seems to me that there is some difference in the presentation of the AQAL model even in the text presentation of the model and the diagrams, as if diagramming these things takes another level of reification. Do you see any difference between the word and picture expressions of this model? I guess this harkens back to my question about animation and such. What say you?
ReplyDeleteI remembered while walking home after posting the above comment that you were not talking about gradients. You were talking about hierarchy and dependence, about webs of mutual dependence and such. Please amend the above to reflect this remembering.
ReplyDeleteI certainly agree that it's hard to draw a sharp line between insides and outsides. It's less difficult in the case of individual vs. collective, since there's a pretty clear line between one and "more than one." Of course, what counts as "one" is itself very fuzzy, so take that with a large grain of salt. ;)
ReplyDeleteIn regard to the written and visual presentation, it's amazing to me (having not spotted this for a long time) how thoroughly Wilber's model depends on image metaphors -- in both formats.
For example, he describes or illustrates:
* Holons as nesting containers and stackable objects (e.g. checkers in SES.)
* Transcendent spirituality as ascent, and immanent spirituality as descent
* The process of development of a certain aspect as a line
It makes me ponder metaphors involving the other senses. What if we think of the varieties of spirituality as different tastes or textures? How about connecting development with volume?
While there are some metaphorical inferences to be drawn from these senses, I suspect part of the reason we don't use these metaphors more often has to do with the distinct usefulness of drawing object boundaries and the difficulty of doing so using taste, touch, smell, or hearing.
So, alternately, what happens if we invert the visual metaphors -- keeping the boundaries the same, but reversing the relationships? Are there still meaningful inferences to be drawn? In some cases, I think there are.