|  Author | Topic: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wilber" (Read 1,367 times) |
interested reader
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|  | re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wilber"
« Thread Started on Mar 16, 2011, 10:04am » | ![[Quote]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/quote.png "[Quote]") |
There is a new essay today (3/16/11) at Frank Visser's Integral World website, by Sergey Badaev titled "Is God Real According To Ken Wilber." The essay is short and sweet and well worth reading.
In his essay, Sergey addresses a fundamental question about the "ontological status" of things. Sergey quotes Ken Wilber (from Integral Spirituality) saying, "...if I want to know if something is real, I must get in the same state or stage from which the assertion was issued, and then look," and Sergey points out that this "is not a way to solve an ontological question of a referent."
Sergey uses the example of dreaming that one can fly like a bird. If I have such a dream, "this is my genuine experience and as my experience it is real." But the reality of a dream experience of flying tells us nothing about whether we can fly "in the physical world."
I imagine that more than a few Wilber readers may balk at Sergey's use of the terms "physical world" and "physical reality," because they will assume that Sergey's use of these terms indicate that Sergey is a "physicalist," or worse, a "materialist," or worst of all, a "scientific materialist" (and thus a dreaded "reductionist," etc.). This is where the concept of "ontological status" can be helpful, for regardless of where one may stand on questions about "physicalism," etc., most people seem to be able to agree that there is a real difference between flying in a dream and flying "in the physical world," or, if we want to avoid the word "physical," we could simply make the distinction between flying in dreams and flying in the waking state.
Sergey also addresses the knotty question of "collective confirmation," and here too Sergey points out that collective confirmation is an inadequate way to determine the ontological status of a given "referent." (Mark Edwards addresses this problem in his essay at Integral World titled "The Integral Cycle of Knowledge," published in 2000, e.g., in the section of the essay titled, "The Interpretive Turn--The Missing Fourth Strand.")
Thanks to Sergey for writing this essay and to Frank Visser for publishing it at Integral World.
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jimo
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Karma: 0 |  | Communal Verification
« Reply #1 on Apr 25, 2011, 3:58am » | |
In my opinion, communal verification proves nothing about the reality of what is being verified.
As an example of why not, you could get a group of paranoid schizophrenics, put them in a room and they would all agree (communally verify) that they are being persecuted by the CIA. And according to Wilber, you cannot pass judgement on them until you get into the same state and look for yourself. So you get into the same state as a paranoid schizophrenic and Hey Presto, you find they were right, they really are being persecuted by the CIA.
Okay, a silly example, but it illustrates the point. Just because a whole lot of meditators all agree that God exists as they encounter him in their meditations, it doesn't mean they are not all hallucinating. And just because the hallucination is reliably inducible by certain repeatable meditation practices, it doesn't change the fact that it could all be an illusion (no matter how real it seems).
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jimo
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Karma: 0 | | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #2 on Apr 29, 2011, 8:12am » | |
And as another example, do DMT tripper's communal verification of "machine elves" mean that they are real beings, a real part of the universe?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_elf
Ken's argument must be that you can't say they're not unless you've entered the tripper's state and looked for yourself.
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jimo
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Karma: 0 | | Falsifiability
« Reply #3 on May 3, 2011, 3:36pm » | |
And I am not sure about this, but the more I think about it the more it seems to me that Wilber's proposal is not falsifiable, and falsifiability is supposed to be the cornerstone of his epistemology.
Wilber says that God exists because a state of consciousness exists in which you, let's say, see him. And he says that you cannot dispute this unless you have entered the same state and looked for yourself. But how is this state actually defined? It's defined as the state in which you see God. So by definition it's impossible to be in that state and *not* see God - if you are not seeing God, then you are not in the correct state and so, according to Wilber, you cannot dispute God's existence. So the whole argument is circular and not falsifiable.
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interested reader
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #4 on May 6, 2011, 12:27pm » | |
Wilber says that there are "three strands of valid knowledge acquisition: injunction, apprehension, confirmation/rejection (or exemplar, evidence, falsifiability)." He apparently equates "communal confirmation" or "communal verification" with falsifiability.
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jimo
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Karma: 0 | | Is God Real According to Ken Wilber
« Reply #5 on May 6, 2011, 2:15pm » | |
Hi IR,
Yes, you are right but I am not sure what your point is. Are you saying that I have got it wrong or missed something somewhere? If so then could you explain why in a bit more detail.
I am saying that Wilber's conception is not falsifiable because if you follow the injunction but don't have the expected apprehension then this doesn't count as proof of the non-existence of God or Satori or whatever. The "community of the adequate" will just say you didn't manage to get into the right state or stage, won't they? It's therefore not possible to falsify the conception.
I have been dilligently practicing meditation for nearly 20 years and have never had a Satori. Have I therefore falsified Wilber's theory?
Best,
Jim.
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interested reader
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #6 on May 6, 2011, 3:22pm » | |
Sorry I wasn't more clear, Jimo. I think you got it right and I am in 100% agreement with you when you point to the circularity of Wilber's argument about being in the correct state to apprehend God or "Spirit," or to realize satori, etc. That Wilber equates communal verification (of particular interpretations of particular inner states) with falsifiability is another example of how shot through with fallacious thinking his ideas around all this are. And when he argues that the community that does the verifying must be a "community of the adequate," he falls toward the fallacies appeal to authority and appeal to false authority.
Surely the members of the Scientology, Heaven's Gate, and Aum Shinrikiyo communities consider themselves "adequate" to correctly interpret their "interior" apprehensions and experiences. How can anyone argue with a Scientologist who insists that she has evolved or developed to what Scientologist's call the Operative Thetan level? How can one argue with the Heaven's Gate member who insists he has reached the "Evolutionary Level Above Human"? Just so, how can one argue with the Wilberian who asserts that he is "third-tier" and "turquoise" and in the case of characters like Cohen and Wilber himself, "enlightened"?
To me the problem isn't that any of these people are necessarily wrong. The problem is that there's no way to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they're right. And joining a given community that defines itself as spiritual (and consists of members who consider themselves more "evolved" and developed than most everyone else) and interpreting your "mystical" or "spiritual" experiences in ways that everyone in the community in question supports doesn't establish anything about the truth value of the interpretation.
Best,
interested reader
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jimo
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Karma: 0 | | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #7 on May 6, 2011, 4:24pm » | |
Thanks for clarifying, IR, and good points.
Best,
Jim.
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Dave
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #8 on May 8, 2011, 5:55pm » | |
Where does Wilber State that God exists? He writes poetically about the experience of God or the Divine..but as a Non~dualist I do not think he believes in "God" ..but he does believe in Higher states of awareness or consciousness ....where even the Anthropomorphic construction of God is meaningless....And the real Question really is~ Is Consciousness the Ground of everything or Emergent?..and frankly its all Metaphysical speculation on both sides of the argument..Weather it is the Ground or Emergent I do think there are higher Levels of awareness ....and Yes the communal verification can be problematic ...as it can be with all subjective states  ...but it is better then nothing.. 
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curried brains
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #9 on May 8, 2011, 7:22pm » | |
Dave, you ask where Wilber writes that God exists, and you say that he writes poetically about the experience of God. Does this sound poetic to you? "...transcendental methodology constitutes an experimental, verifiable, repeatable proof for the existence of Godhead, as a fact..." The italics are in the original and the quote is from his book Eye to Eye, republished in 2001, and this is just one example of Wilber speaking about "proof" of God, Spirit, Godhead, Emptiness, etc., in terms that don't strike me as poetic.
As for the question you say is "the real Question," it's not mere "metaphysical speculation" that leads some to argue that consciousness is an evolved property of brains (and emergent in that sense) rather than "the Ground of everything," but when someone interprets their inner, meditative, or mystical experience to be some sort of proof that consciousness (capitalized or not) is the "Ground of everything," that is indeed nothing but metaphysical speculation.
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Dave
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #10 on May 8, 2011, 11:27pm » | |
curried brains ~ All the arguments I have read for Consciousness being emergent are metaphysical speculation. If you have the Evidence otherwise please share.
Godhead means something quite different then "God" in the usual sense..It is a Non~ dual State ....Therefore quite different
then the mythical God ....and yes that example is not very poetic. but you know this already as you are more Familiar with Wilbers work then I am.....
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curried brains
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #11 on May 9, 2011, 12:10pm » | |
Dave, Wilber has admitted to being an atheist (listen to his Integral Naked discussion with Nathaniel Branden), and I doubt anyone who has read him thinks he uses the term "God" in what you call the "usual sense." Of course he uses such terms ("God," "Spirit," "the Self," "the Absolute," "Emptiness," "Buddha Nature," etc.) to refer to what you call "a Non~ dual State."
In the essay that inspired this thread ("Is God Real According To Ken Wilber?"), Sergey Badaev notes that Wilber "does not try to discuss the question of what God is." The issue Badaev focuses on has to do with "the ontological status of...referents" such as "God," "Godhead," "Emptiness," etc.
It's a real issue. As both the Dalai Lama and Stephen Batchelor explain, the term "emptiness" is often interpreted to refer to some kind of metaphysical substrate (for example, some use the term "Emptiness" as if it is synonymous with "Consciousness"), yet that is not what it means (see Essence of the Heart Sutra by the Dalai Lama and Buddhism Without Beliefs by Batchelor).
Asked by science writer John Horgan if he believes that "Spirit" would exist if the only life in the universe were on Earth and all life on Earth was wiped out, Wilber says yes, "the fundamental insight that mysticism gives us and that materialistic Flatlanders have such a hard time accepting: Mind is not just an ephemeral epiphenomenon of matter; it is eternal."
If all life in the universe is wiped out, Horgan asked Wilber, where is Spirit then?
Mystics are "pretty unanimous," Wilber replied, in believing that mind rather than matter is the basis of reality and hence cannot be extinguished. The material universe "is a manifestation of this pure awareness" perceived in deep meditation. (See Horgan's book Rational Mysticism.)
Dave, you say, "All the arguments I have read for Consciousness being emergent are metaphysical speculation." I associate the word "speculation" with guesswork, and when you say that "its all Metaphysical speculation on both sides of the argument..Weather [consciousness] is the Ground or Emergent," I get the impression that you are saying that there is nothing but quesswork or speculation on both sides and that the pro and con arguments balance each other out.
Is this something we can settle here? I think not and I won't attempt it. I will say, though, that there are many supporters of some form of consciousness-as-emergent who hardly seem to be indulging in nothing more than "metaphysical speculation." See, for example, the works of Thomas Metzinger (who happens to be a long-time meditator) and Jaegwon Kim (who debated this very issue with David Ray Griffin).
There are also those who argue for the non-emergence of consciousness, but who do so on the bases of things other than "metaphysical speculation," David Chalmers being one example. I said in a previous comment that it's nothing but metaphysical speculation when someone, such as a meditator, interprets her inner experience to mean that consciousness is in some non-poetic sense the eternal substrate of reality. If someone provides actual arguments, as Chalmers does, rather than merely asserting that "I and many other meditators are convinced beyond all doubt on the basis of our deepest meditative experiences that consciousness is the eternal substrate of reality and did not emerge in evolution the way digestion emerged," then I would not accuse them of indulging in mere metaphysical speculation. We can drive down a road and see what appears to be a puddle ahead. We can photograph it and the photos will look like photos of puddles. But our eyes and brains may be fooling us, for what we think is a puddle may be an illusion created by refracted light. The meditator who interprets a profound inner experience to be a source of reliable information on the ontological status of consciousness is like the person who insists that what appears to be a puddle is in fact a puddle, simply because it looks convincingly like a puddle.
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Dave
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #12 on May 10, 2011, 4:22am » | |
Curried Brains, I find your intellectual honesty refreshing..and it is clear that you are much more familiar with Wilbers work and the issues at hand then I am....
One issue which will clear things up is I do not consider speculation guesswork....perhaps working hypothesis would be better. Many people state counsiouness is emrgent..this is a fact and the case is closed ..and this is just not true..I have not read The ego tunnel but I am aware of Mr Metzinger's work..as well as Mr Chalmers..and both are perfect examples of the current debate. I will need to follow up on your other suggestions.
Thank you
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Don Salmon
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #13 on Oct 13, 2011, 7:26am » | |
Asserting that consciousness arises because of the brain is just as much a metaphysical speculation as asserting the opposite - see 9-23-11 article "Shaving Science" over at integral world.net
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Dave
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| | Re: re the essay "Is God Real According to Ken Wil
« Reply #14 on Nov 1, 2011, 9:17pm » | |
Don~ Thank you for you Essays and post on IW. I have referenced your work numerous times on other sites in discussions with others. And in a recent post on this forum you mentioned helping people on the edge....Well that's me. I'm always pleased to see that you have posted something new...and have benefited much from your dialogue with Mr Lane, and now others on this forum. Looking Forward to your future offerings.
Dave
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