Hi,

I'm also not completely finished with Chapter 1, but I think we can have parallel discussion on different chapters, since that's what different threads are for.

I think we're running into trouble here by talking about 1-p, 2-p etcetera as if they can exist on their own, which they don't. As KW points out, modes of perspectives always have to be situated relative to the holon that is 'making the assertions'. So if we would want to describe what's going on between atoms using integral math, 1p refers to an atom we'll call A, and all other perspectives in the equations will be relative to that atom A. So if we are to describe resonance between atoms and be precise about it, we'll have to write lines like:

1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 2p(1p) = 2p(1p) x 2p(2-p) x 1p(1p)

and all of this arises in the worldspace of our atom A that would be the 'speaker of the assertions'. Any other atom B, being a 1p in it's own right, can arise in A's worldspace as 2p or 3p but not as 1p, and any subjective view (1-p) of B arises as 2-p in A's worldspace. None of this implies that any of the atoms would be consciously taking perspectives, and I'm not using a quadrivium here. What I'm not sure of, is if it is useful or even correct to differentiate between 1-p and 3-p if it comes to atoms. Mutual resonance may have to be expressed without using modes:

1p(1p)x2p(1p) = 2p(1p)x1p(1p)

According to AQAL theory, an intersubjective resonance will always be accompanied by interobjective exchanges. For atoms, interobjectivity would be in the form of strong and weak nuclear forces and/or electromagnetic forces. That can be expresses in terms of integral math as well, maybe using 3-p modes.

My guess is that a full (integral) description of any interaction between atoms would contain multiple equations.


1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 2p*pl(1p*pl),
Peter

PS: I realize that having 1p in the last position of an assertion, such as 2px1p, implies that the speaker has a basic notion of itself. This looks like self-awareness, but I guess the speaker is simply not aware that it is observing itself...

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Hello all,

It's a bit late in the game, bit I'd like to jump into this conversation after having read silently for a while.

I really dug this last post, Peter. But I only managed to understand the wordy parts. Would you mind spelling out for me what "1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 2p(1p) = 2p(1p) x 2p(2-p) x 1p(1p)" means?

Regarding "According to AQAL theory, an intersubjective resonance will always be accompanied by interobjective exchanges. For atoms, interobjectivity would be in the form of strong and weak nuclear forces and/or electromagnetic forces." - On reading that I went to my cushion and meditated on the experience of an atom for a bit. On the theory that I transclude atoms, and thus have all capacities for consciousness they do, I tried to imagine stripping away all the more complex modes awareness I could, until I was just an object bouncing around, attracted and repelled by other objects of a similar sort. And, while this isn't exactly the most rigorous mode of research available (It's basically my 1p x 1p of an atom, I think), I found it very interesting.

I had been struggling with this idea that you need a certain amount of UL development to be able to participate in LL, and yet it seemed you needed a certain amount of LL to be able to develop to that level in UL, and then I realized that this is the nature of tetra-arising (except I was missing the other two). So even though, imagining myself as an atom, I didn't grant myself enough awareness to notice myself in a way that I could understand anything else as being like myself, there was still a certain resonance with the other atoms, a sense that I was exerting as I was exerted upon.

Anyway, I highly reccomend trying it.

But I want to throw something else in here and see what you think. (I'd reccomend reading the first few paragraphs of this first, to get an idea where I'm coming from, but it isn't necessary.) When you're dealing with a human being, you can't fully explain everything that goes on in UR and LR without reference to UL and LL. At the very least, reference to UL and LL can explain with far less computing power, so to speak, what goes on in R than reference  to R alone can do. This doesn't seem to be the case with atoms. Much as I enjoyed imagining the UL of an atom, and much as I learned from doing so, I still don't have to grant its interiors reality in order to explain its actions. This makes them a bit harder to believe in. Can anyone help me out?

Yotam

Hi, Peter (et al),

I agree that we shouldn't divorce perspectives from sentient beings.  In looking at the different perspectives, what I've been wrestling with is the question of whether the four perspectives of AQAL go all the way down, even for very simple holons.  It is clear that, from our perspective, we can perceive elemental holons quadratically: we can see them as individual units, as units involved in systemic relationships, as "points" of feeling or sentience, and as points which may have the potential for subjective resonance.  Where I have been seeking clarity is whether these holons can also "view" their worlds through these four perspectives, and if so, what that would involve.

In my last post, I pointed to the fundamental semantic space that holons likely inhabit -- albeit, not self-consciously.  If transformations and interactions of forms are simultaneously transactions of meaning, at some basic level, then this would qualify as a rudimentary "sociocultural" space.

But I admit I am still struggling a bit with some of this.  For instance, what differentiates UR and LR perspectives, at a very basic level, such that we can say that primitive holons have both available to them?  Phenomenologically putting myself in the place of an atom, I am struggling to grok the difference.  Plural/singular, individual/systemic perspectives seem to be distinctions that involve cognitive sophistication.  Without making those cognitive distinctions, it seems that just leaves you with a "field" of 3-p-type experiences.  At this level, what would differentiate a UR perspective from an LR one?  If holons emerge as plural "colonies" of form and meaning, the "singular" perspective seems to me to be an abstraction.  I'm not clear, at this point, what would merit singling it out as an available perspective at this level, without an appeal to cognitive capacity that is most certainly not available.

I may be going astray with these questions.  Can anyone see more clearly here?

Best wishes,

Balder

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Hi Yotam,

yschachter:

I really dug this last post, Peter. But I only managed to understand the wordy parts. Would you mind spelling out for me what "1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 2p(1p) = 2p(1p) x 2p(2-p) x 1p(1p)" means?

In this case, it would mean something like "My subjective view of you is the same as your subjective view of me.", or "I prehend your interiority the same way as you prehend my interiority, when we look at each other subjectively." As you can see, this looks likes I'm attributing some human qualities to atoms, but that's just because I explain the math to you in a human language. The elegance of the integral math is that it does not do that, so it can be used instead as a kind of 'atomic language'.

yschachter:

Much as I enjoyed imagining the UL of an atom, and much as I learned from doing so, I still don't have to grant its interiors reality in order to explain its actions. This makes them a bit harder to believe in. Can anyone help me out?

By 'explaining its actions', I assume you refer to the physics equations that describe the behavior of atoms? They do not explain why atoms behave like they do, they are just third-person descriptions of what's going on. On top of that, physicists talk of electromagnetic fields, but nobody has ever seen one. The concept of a physical field was introduced by Faraday in the 19th century, which proved a brilliant and fruitful move, and Maxwell adopted it for describing electromagnetism. Because the concept has worked so well for a long time, we may have come to assume that these fields are real, but all we ever measure are the effects that are supposed to be influenced by these fields, not the fields themselves.       

So if you would say that atoms behave the way they do because they obey the laws of physics, what exactly are you saying?

Maintaining that atoms don't have an interior means that you would either have to explain when and how entities suddenly got an interior in the course of evolution, or deny the reality of interiorities altogether. Both of these impose serious difficulties.


Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Hi Balder,

I'm not completely sure, but the problem may be that you are trying to get at it phenomenologically in the first place. You're awfully good at that, but I guess it will be extremely difficult to take the stance of an atom accurately. Personally, I succeed only partially when trying to figure out what's going on inside my cat!

An atom does not have to be aware of its perspectives in order to 'use' them; in fact it does not use them at all, it just has them. It does not assign perspectives to what it is prehending, but the prehension itself consists of perspectives. I don't even know how I use perspectives. I can shift perspectives when I want to, but I couldn't explain how I do that if my life depended on it. Nor do I have to know how my brain works, it just does. On occasions.

No holon can only have 3p perspectives; to what would everything in its worldspace be exterior?  The only candidate is its interior. Similarly, there can be no plural perspectives without singular perspectives within the same holon, for they are not separable.  Just because we have a hard time stepping into an atom's shoes, doesn't mean that it is not a holon. It just means that it has an entirely different shoe size.

 Peter

PS: there is a logical contradiction in assuming that you would have to be aware of interior/exterior in order to have first person perspectives, since being aware of anything already presumes having an interior.

---

"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Peter,

kessels:

An atom does not have to be aware of its perspectives in order to 'use' them; in fact it does not use them at all, it just has them. It does not assign perspectives to what it is prehending, but the prehension itself consists of perspectives.

I think this is well-stated and clear.  Yes, I agree with this.  Here's one way I think I'm stuck:  I appreciate the utility of making singular/plural objective distinctions when map-making in general.  I think the distinction is a crucial feature of AQAL that gives it a lot of explanatory power.  But I'm not sure about the "singular/plural" distinction at the level of fundamental, native perspectives.  I guess I'm digging for definitions which will make sense of them as native perspectives, rather than later-emergent cognitive distinctions.  In other words, in terms of the experience of basic holons such as atoms, is there any qualitative difference between 3p singular and plural perspectives that would justify treating them as distinct modes of perceiving or "prehending" the world?

Best wishes,

Balder

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Hi Balder,

I'm not completely sure if you're having trouble with 3p and 3p*pl perspectives, or with 3-p and 3-p*pl modes (all with respect to primitive holons like atoms). Or both?

As for the first, I can see a useful distinction between 1p(1p) x 3p(1p), which could mean that an atom prehends the matter/energy of another (single) atom, and 1p(1p) x 3p*pl(1p*pl), which could mean that an atom prehends the matter/energy of a cluster of atoms. This cluster of atoms could be part of a molecule, but since atoms can not prehend molecules, it may prehend them as a clusters of atoms.

I think that an atom prehending its own matter/energy would be described as 1p(1p) x 3p(1-p). Also, an atom may prehend it's subatomic particles as 1p(1p) x 3p*pl(1-p), reading as "I prehend my subatomic thingies" when filtered through a universal translator.

As for modes of perception: I fail to see any useful distinction between an atom prehending another atom subjectively: 1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p(1p) or objectively: 1p(1p) x 1p(3-p) x 3p(1p) and the same applies for intersubjectively (1-p*pl mode) and interobjectively (3-p*pl mode). Maybe these distinctions turn out to become useful at some point in a detailed analysis of atomic interactions, but that's not exactly my field of expertise.

Hope this helps,
Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Hi, Peter,

When Wilber talks about having a particular perspective of something, he represents it with the hyphenated term: 1-p, 2-p, 3-p.  Without the hyphen, he is speaking about the sentient holon (1p) and the particular object disclosed or enacted by the perspective taken (123p).

This is my understanding, at least.  But I may be mistaken, and then that would explain why I keep hanging up on small parts of this model.

If we were to break down the quadrant perspectives, would it be fair to represent it this way?

First-person perspective (UL): 1-p
Second-person/first-person plural perspective (LL): 2-p or 1-p*pl
Third-person perspective (UR): 3-p
Third-person plural perspective (LR): 3-3p*pl

In relation to the questions I've been raising, I'd really like to ask if you think it is fair to represent the LR quadrant with the 3-3p*pl perspective notation, as in the following:

1p(1p) x 1p(3-p*pl) x 3p(3p)

I read the above as "my first-person has a third-person plural view of a third-person object."

This is different from saying I have a first-, second-, or third-person perspective (123-p) of multiple objects (3p*pl).

What perspective-types are included properly in the LR quadrant, in your view?  If you wanted to mathematically construct the native perspectives available to very simple holons, how would you do it?

I'm at work right now, so I can't do the reading and thinking that I need to.  But I plan to look consider these things some more when I get home.

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Balder,

 

You are trying to find definitions that will make “sense of them as native perspectives, rather than later-emergent cognitive distinctions.” I like this question! (…and nice intuition about staying here and trying to get at this, btw. :>)  I won’t resist playing a bit…and trust that you will forgive me if I take a round-about approach.

 

As I think about how to proceed, I’m finding it hard to communicate about “it”. Naming “it” and even just referring to “it” (“a perspective”) is doing a violence of sorts, is in a way reinforcing my chronic forgetting of “it” as who I really am.

 

I could say that it (a perspective) is not another perception, object, concept, thing – it is the space (spaciousness) in which perceptions, objects, concepts, things arise.

 

What if who I am is this spaciousness in which perceptions arise? Not just another of the perceptions that are arising? What if I can know that you are (know you as) this same spaciousness? Are we, could we really be so fundamentally “connected” in this way?

 

My experience right now is of a sweet energy welling up inside of my chest, near tears of gratitude, of being so so thankful for this moment. Somehow, your question has gotten me *here*. No longer forgotten, no longer simply another of the objects, concepts, things that are arising. No longer at a great distance from you.

 

Thank you,

 

Mike

Hi, Mike,

Thanks for your reflections.  I understand your reticence about naming perspectives, I think, but while I believe they do form clearings in which particular perceptions can arise (rather than being things themselves), I also believe that what you are runs deeper even than perspectives.

May we all meet there!  Without banishing or denigrating the kaleidoscopic beauty that our multiple perspectives disclose -- in the world, and in one another.

And Peter,

I guess what I'm exploring here is how the quadrants translate into perspectives, particularly at very basic levels.  I am not sure that Wilber has been entirely clear about this.  For instance, when he describes the 8 native perspectives (the 8 hori-zones), he refers in some of them to particularly complex conceptual or notional perspectives (autopoieisis, social autopoieisis, systems theory) which are only recently available to human holons.  Also, sometimes he treats the lower (plural) quadrants as collections of individuals or social holons in themselves (see Excerpt G, Para. 37); at other times, he suggests that the quadrants are four interrelated aspects of any singular sentient holon, or else four perspectives available to any singular sentient holon.  I think these different readings of the AQAL map may all be useful, but they are not the same.  So, when we're speaking of quadrants-as-perspectives, I'd like to know what is meant, how these different readings of the map relate, etc.  (I can't afford the subscription fees to be able to talk personally to Wilber, but I hope some of these questions come up.)  How you conceptualize "native perspectives," according to AQAL, will obviously have a lot to do with how you interpret each quadrant and its relation to the others.

It seems to me that the way that you read the quadrants as perspectives is pretty straightforward: UL is a perspective which discloses my subjectivity; LL is a perspective which discloses our subjectivity; UR is a perspective which discloses a singular external object or form; and the LR is a perspective which discloses multiple external objects or forms.  Is this how you see it?  When I looked at the quadrants as conceptual categories rather than perspectives (which are "prior" to conceptions and perceptions), this is how I looked at them too.  But I am now questioning whether there is really enough of a qualitative difference between perceiving a singular object and a collection of objects to justify distinguishing them as different perspectives.  Perhaps taking in multiple objects involves a "widening" of our focal settings, so that we are not merely encountering the world through tunnel vision -- one percept at a time, in serial fashion.

What do you think?  Do you understand where I'm coming from, or do you think I'm getting hung up on nothing?

If we were to apply integral math to the LR, which do you (any of you reading this) think is more appropriate?

1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p*pl

or

1p*pl(3-p*pl) x 1p*pl

or something else?

There's obviously a difference between taking a first-person perspective on third-person plural objects, and taking a third-person plural perspective on singular or plural objects.  The latter seems technically more like a true third-person plural perspective, but I believe it requires a degree of cognitive sophistication not available to many holons.

Best wishes,

Balder

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Hi Balder,

As to the individual/collective distinction: maybe you are making it a one/multiple disctinction? In that case, 'one' would indeed be only quantitatively different from two or three. To me, the real distinction is that 1p*pl indicates membership of a group, which is why I think individual/collective is a better description than singular/plural. It's agency versus community. You could indeed describe seven marbles as seven times one marble, but there is a qualitative distinction between a family of four people, and just four people. Then, 1p*pl would indicate my family, 2p*pl is your family and 3p*pl another family that we're gossiping about.

In theory, an atom could prehend being part of a group of atoms, if that group makes up a molecule.  As such, it could also experience another collective of atoms. This way, it might be possible to make a distinction between being part of a molecule, or being in a cloud of gas, for instance, since an atom behaves differently in both cases. The molecule is a holon, while the cloud of gas is not. In a molecule, an atom has traded in much of its agency for community, while in a gas it has not.

Maybe there are better examples than the ones I gave, but I hope this offers some clarity. If not, keep asking.

balder:

I guess what I'm exploring here is how the quadrants translate into perspectives, particularly at very basic levels.  I am not sure that Wilber has been entirely clear about this.

This is indeed unclear to me as well. It helps for me to think of the indigenous perspectives 1p, 2p, 3p, etc to be different from the four basic perspectives that make up the four quadrants. I do not equate 1p with subjective perspectives, 3p with objective perspectives,1p*pl with intersubjective, and 3p*pl with interobjective perspectives. They may be related, but they are not the same. I think that the way the indigenous perspectives are related to the basic perspectives has been left in the open by Wilber, at least for now. For an understanding of integral math, it may help to reserve separate symbols to the basic perspectives (interior, exterior, individual, collective), such as e1, e2, e3 and e4 for instance, and to think the indigenous perspectives to be constructed from those. Without being able to specify what this would look like, I can see that it is possible that a definition of the simplest form of 1p requires all four of the basic perspectives.

What KW says about it, is that 1p denotes 'inner in general', and 3p denotes 'outer in general'. I read these as generalizations, not to be confused with the inner/outer basic perspectives. So 1p denotes the interiority of a speaker, 2p a person that is spoken to, 3p denotes a person or object that is spoken about.  This means that 3p, 3-p, 3p*pl and 3-p*pl can refer to persons (him/her/they) as well as to artifacts or heaps (it/its), which is why notations such as 3p(1p) are introduced to indicate that the 3p refers to a third person and not to an artifact. A construction like 3p(1-p) may refer to 'my body' or to 'my bycicle'.  From what I deduce from Appendix B of Excerpt C,  the same symbol can have different meanings dependent on context. I can't see if this is going to lead to inconsistencies, but KW has made clear that the math is far from finished.

To me,

1p(1p) x 1p(1-p) x 3p*pl

could mean "I like those chairs", while

1p*pl(3-p*pl) x 1p*pl

would mean something like "Our objective view of us".

I don't see either one as integral math being applied to the LR quadrant specifically.

Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Hi,

It may be that integral math and the four-quadrant model should be understood and used somewhat independently.  Not that I don't think the math can be used to explain the quadrants, but that there is an essential distinction that we need to draw between the basic perspectives (1p, 2p, and 3p) and perspectives as they are conceived and modeled at the level of AQAL. 

In a previous post, I broke down the "bare bones" way I understand the basic person perspectives. 

1-p = basic subjectivity or interiority, prehension, feeling

2-p = intersubjective resonance, "feeling together," sensing and responding to similar subjective spaces

3-p = prehending other events; registering sensations, vibrations, forms

I do not have difficulty attributing 123-p to atoms or other simple sentient holons, when defined in this way.

But Wilber does specifically argue that all sentient holons have all four quadrant-perspectives available to them -- that holons tetra-enact.  That's one reason why I'm trying to tie the quadrants in to integral math, to see what types of LR perspectives, for example, would be available (albeit automatically or pre-reflexively) to simple sentient holons (since obviously they do not have access to systems theory or whatever).

Clearly, more than one perspective-configuration can "fit" within each quadrant.  There are at least the inside and outside perspectives of interiors and exteriors, but even those distinctions probably allow for multiple variations.  However, I still think it would be fruitful to try to assign some integral mathematical formulas to each quadrant.  Wilber has given some examples of this -- say, for meditation or autopoieisis.  But he has not done so at levels "beneath" those available to human subjects, that I am aware of.

Anyone want to take a stab at mathematically formulating what the quadratic perspectives of a simple sentient holon would look like?

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S. Peter, I made the singular/plural distinction in reference to perspectives because it seemed to me that that was what you were doing: saying that the LR perspective consists of being able to perceive multiple objects, as opposed to just single objects.  I agree that seeing one object is quantitatively different than seeing several, but I'm not sure it is qualitatively different -- and it appears to be more of a qualitative difference that separates perspectives.

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

I just went back to Chapter 1 and started re-reading it.  I should have done this earlier!  In a footnote, Wilber writes: "Also, 'the inside and outside of the singular and collective' technically are not the same as 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person approaches or combinations thereof, and some severe theoretical problems result if this equation is made.  We sometimes use 1-p and 3-p to represent inside and outside views, but this is a concession to popular understanding and not the actual definitions.  The quadrants (inside/outside x singular/plural) are much more fundamental and prior differentiations in Kosmogenesis than are the 123p (and, in fact, generate them)."

I think this has been the cause of some of my difficulties -- trying to equate the quadrants with the person-perspectives.

A question that the above note raises is whether or not the quadrant differentiations are also perspectives, since they generate person perspectives.  I'm also not sure how this squares with his claim elsewhere (which you highlighted early on in this discussion) that the universe emerges, not when an inside is marked from an outside, but when sentient beings (with perspectives? as perspectives?) arise.

I'm going to just be patient and read what comes next, to see if he clears some of this up in coming chapters (or subsequent writings).

---

May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Hi Balder,

I refered to that footnote here   Kind of important to understanding the whole thing, indeed.

I assumed that you had looked at it, and that partly explains why I was having trouble understanding your question. I also see that I wrongly attributed the one/multiple confusion to you, while it was my own. Part of my shadow at play, here...

A question that the above note raises is whether or not the quadrant differentiations are also perspectives, since they generate person perspectives.  I'm also not sure how this squares with his claim elsewhere (which you highlighted early on in this discussion) that the universe emerges, not when an inside is marked from an outside, but when sentient beings (with perspectives? as perspectives?) arise.

Good point, I don't think I have a clear answer to that. I don't think this can be answered rationally, since any 'first' type of holon would consist of subholons (by definition) which does not make it the first type of holon. I guess the same applies to their person-perspectives. Any 'fundamental' perspective is build out of others, and there way go again...(can we get a turtle emoticon, please!?)

Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

Balder,

balder:

May we all meet there!  Without banishing or denigrating the kaleidoscopic beauty that our multiple perspectives disclose -- in the world, and in one another.

 

Beautifully said, and well taken. I want more understanding about this deeper place that you are pointing to. As well as where/who I am now; what is from here to there and back again, and the expanding to embrace more of it.

 

And thanks to you and Peter for the last half-dozen posts: testing out the integral math, remembering the problems that arise if we equate quadrants and 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd person, and noting a turtle phenomenon in ‘fundamental’ perspectives. Very useful and compelling to me (and I imagine others that are listening in) even when I don’t know quite how to jump into the middle of it with a useful comment.

 

A personal reflection on how I am engaged this morning with this material….

 

Saturday night my Air West connection out of Phoenix was delayed 2 hours and I picked up the Dean Koontz novel, Velocity. On the final page he quotes T. S. Eliot, “I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.” I was drawn to another quote as well, this one by Charles Dickens from his book Dombey and Son. “I want to know what it says, the sea. What is it, that it keeps on saying?”

 

I am very fortunate to be able to see the Pacific from my office; this morning there is on its top a delicious mix of fog and bright sunshine. When the wind is just right and I listen quietly, I can hear the waves rolling in over the sand. What else might it be saying? How else might I listen, and how else might I wait?

Mike