DGA On Wilberism

Daniel Gustav Anderson has this to say about post-Wilberian integral theory in a recent blog post over at For The Turnstiles:

My position is that Wilber's doctrine is untenable as academic work. It is simply not reasonable; it cannot tolerate the scrutiny of reason. If integralism is predicated on what he calls "orienting generalizations," as they are described in Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality, then it must be said that integralism is not predicated on science or reason as such, but on blind faith in these abstractions. One may say that the orienting generalities are themselves a useful fiction; I respond by saying that Wilber does not mark them as such fictions, he accepts them as proven fact and moves on without examining them, and for that reason his work is sunk from the start if it is to be taken seriously as knowledge, as reason. But but but! It does not matter, because it is a doctrine that appears reasonable at first glance and claims to point toward means of verification beyond reason. It goes for transrationality without actually getting to the rationality part: it is a prerational cult of the transrational, unmediated by the rigor of reason, fact, or accountability to method. To use a Wilberism: Wilber is guilty of the Pre/Trans Fallacy, or rather, his writing insists on readers who are willing to absorb that fallacy. This explains the shrill freakings-out that go on and on and on when Wilber's basic premises are examined with care. It is assumed to be personal, because it is Wilber's person (the figure of the one who has achieved something beyond reason) that guarantees the validity of this "knowledge." It is a kind of self-fashioning, a rhetorical game.