KEN WILBER-GIORGIO PIACENZA: AN (imaginary) ONTOLOGICAL DIALOGUE SOMEWHERE IN DENVER, COLORADO
Wilber: We can essentially say that there are no ontological realities apart from our altitude and method. We might as well say that what we can’t verify with shared injunction, shared disclosure and shared verification doesn’t exist. These are the demands of the modern and post modern eras. Pure speculation and unwarranted assertions –however inspired- don’t cut ‘the curd.’
Piacenza: I understand all this and partially agree with it but, you must qualify it with precision. Otherwise people might think that your are disdaining Metaphysics altogether or that your understanding of it is insufficient. As far as interpretation and interaction, it might be true but, simultaneously, “ontos” also exist in and of themselves. I think that there are rather stable exterior ontological patterns that arise along with their interior aspects. This includes the crucial but little understood and referred to ‘otherworldly’ realms. How could Kant cognize that there was “the thing in itself” unless we can in an a priori and radical way perceive some essential aspect of objects? Thus ‘way’ is the essence of any method. Ontological objects from the gross or any other realm may be structurally capable of revealing some of their characteristics to individuals whether they consciously follow an objectively shared injunction (a-la-modernity) or not and whether they are naïve about it or unaware about their interpretations or about the ‘Myth of the Given’. This is due to the fact that we share common ontological aspects with what is. Any form of participation can be considered a simple kind of method. Even ritual and chanting and perhaps even shared belief itself can be part of a method if the Good, the True and the Beautiful interplay with each other within our human experience across levels and cultures.
Wilber: I don’t know. That sounds like ‘poppycock’. The assumptions about those metaphysical realities have been unfounded across history, without a collectively verified experiential discovery based upon altitude and shared method and without awareness that reality doesn’t simply disclose itself in its original pristine state as we now know when we speak about the Myth of the Given. That’s nonsensical “Metaphysics.”
Piacenza: I accept that, without the elements of shared method and shared experience, the assumptions are unfounded under the modern requirement for evidence but there might have been genuine experiences anyhow, at least partial disclosures, sometimes also shared, as was probably the case with some Tibetan lamas, shared shamanic rituals and some yoguis and rishis in India. How much any experience is primordially subjective and primordially objective may vary. Also, according to my hypothesis, subtle worlds have less objective components and are more malleable and open to subjective interpretations. This is why the scientific method must not rely upon completely repeatable, fixed reality patterns when investigating other more subtle realms.
Wilber: After Kant we must consider subjective structures of interpretation in the understanding of ontological realities and after the post structuralist, post modern inter-subjectivists we must consider how we co-create realities. We must also consider that eternal pre-givens ‘out there’ do not fit well with the discovery of evolutionary processes.
Piacenza: Yes, yes, I do concur with all that but, since exterior quadrants represent aspects of reality also partially able to stand in and of themselves, we must remark that relatively exteriorly stable aspects of higher worlds might also exist and not just speak as if the subtle worlds were interior realities. As I see it, they can also be objects of exterior perception and systems of objects of exterior perception. Remember that there is subtle energy associated with subtle, visionary realms. It’s a matter of degree…err I mean, how much exteriority there is in relation to interiority in each of these realms. Now, in relation to eternal pre-givens ‘out there’ waiting sunder to fall down from the sky I think that you are right. I think that, structurally speaking, the ‘higher’, subtle ontological realities also evolve and devolve. Since they have exteriority, they must also be to various degrees contingent and relative. What Rational Metaphysics can do is help us explain how these levels interact with themselves and with our more easily recognized ‘Gross Reality.’ Metaphysics –however important and, in spite of Kant, Heidegger and Derrida- is an unfinished project and we must be bold enough to review, reconsider and attempt to correct the proposals of its various contributors, dating even before Parmenides.
Wilber: Wow, Giorgio that’s a mouthful! I don’t know; I’ll have to consider what you said. Let me sip on my organic juice here… Alright, nonetheless, Giorgio, I’m having a hard time just convincing some members of the academia that subjectivity is real and if I were to insist on ontological realms and their contents as objectively real, Integral Theory would be dismissed more offhandedly than it is being dismissed today. We must adapt what we say to the altitude, language, paradigms and codes that the listeners are ready to understand or else they won’t.
Piacenza: I understand but, in order to be truly ‘Integral’ in a theoretical way and capable of leading culturally far into the future as well, we must be bold in regards to the objective aspects of ontological realities. People also need to know that ‘other realms’ are not airy fairy speculations but concrete realities that may impinge on their lives not just in what is commonly thought of as ‘spiritual’ and as ‘parapsychological’ but also perhaps in a technical and scientific manner. This would ‘bring home’ AQAL down from its theoretical altitudes mostly applicable to Green-into Integral altitude self-transcendentalists. It might also assist scientists of the XXI Century to deal with phenomena that escape the confines of classical physics. Also, Ken, and please listen to this, as others have probably tried to tell you, Metaphysics is much more than unwarranted assertions about ‘other worlds,’ as you seem to emphasize. It also has to do with intelligible entities like in mathematics, with logical axioms, shared principles and with philosophical ideas that approximate rational explanations about the nature of reality. It has to do with deeper questions on the relation between intelligibility and ontology, questions that no partially successful preference for empiricism and pragmatism can completely eliminate. You see? American philosophy is so influenced by exteriority…
Wilber: What do you mean?
Piacenza: Deductive rationality complements inductive discoveries. Just as –back in the 90’s-you holistically saw, at a glance, at home, before piles of books and papers representing various forms of knowledge and, specifically, with a kind of ‘inductive glance’ the four patterns of the AQAL quadrants, others deduced them or were getting close to deducing them. In this respect I must mentioned professor emeritus Archie J. Bahm who -decades ahead of you – essentially deduced the Meta patterns through polar analysis using a dialectical kind of methodical thinking. He was engaging in an intellective-deductive process akin to the deductive Metaphysics of Aristotle and to the deductive aspects of the Metaphysics of some Medieval Christian and Islamic philosophers. I’d add to this that just as we can use professor Bahm’s “Organicism” to complement aspects left out within AQAL Theory, we can use some -still valid- classical Metaphysical concepts such as ‘potentia’ ‘act’ ‘accident’ ‘esse’ ‘entitas’ ‘suppositum’ etc. These concepts do not negate Kant’s findings and they may very well integrally complement our Meta Theory.
Wilber: Do you mean that you are not attacking AQAL? That you aren’t mostly pushing for the new agey, active exploration of ‘other worlds’ due to your Peruvian shamanic openness to these subjects?
Piacenza: Ken, I love AQAL, Ken. The key is our ‘buzzword’: ‘In-te-gral’ (with emphasis). Let’s increase and round up your beautiful Integral Theory with all of the best, still valid, plausible and coherent elements it can feed upon from all eras without discarding them as ‘pre-rational.’ Let’s even include the best rational aspects of Medieval philosophical discussions and –why not- the key disclosures of the shamanic period, the multi-stage Amber period, and the modern and post modern periods. Let’s even include the experientiable influence of the world of human and nature spirits existing with other kinds of exterior forms as J.J. Poortman with his ‘hylic pluralism’ attempted to explain. Let’s not only remain in the comfort of the intellectually palatable sense of a ‘Non Dual Spirit.’ All of it counts, if it is part of Reality and of Spirit and of who we are. Let’s not call ourselves ‘Integral’ and dismiss many important ontological findings as unsubstantiated myths or, rather, implicitly, as falsehoods. Otherwise, any supposedly forthcoming and inclusive post post-modern cosmology will still be seriously incomplete and biased.
Ken, I also just wanted to tell you that, to make progress, we need to distinguish between a Metaphysics of First Principles and a metaphysics of particular entities and evolving-devolving realms that are appearances contingent upon those Principles while both, those Principles and the appearances are the Non Dual. They are guises of the Non Dual we still need to distinguish from our contingent and relative Being-in-the World perspectives.
Wilber: You still sound quite passé in the sense of being quite ‘logoic’ and ‘essentialist’ but I welcome your comments. Nevertheless, I’m not certain if we are collectively ready for all of this detail, especially in the incipient stages of the Integral Movement. As a psychologist I want to emphasize the real needs of real people seeking a practical way to improve their lives in the real world.
Piacenza: My sense is that, If they apply methods like ILP while theoretically and practically leaving aside the key discoveries of the ancients, a collective shadow will secretly coalesce. It will be like a blindness in the AQAL system, a blindness unable to counteract the long term effects of fundamentalist reductionisms combined with a market society that artificially creates needs accompanied by post modern nihilism descending upon the click and download, shallow but decentralized, high tech, system-dependent, narcissistic and, who knows what else, upcoming generations.
Wilber: My head spins now, but let’s have a drink to consider…
Piacenza: Pisco Sour?
