dmb says: In Wilber's conception "Spirit" is detectable and natural.
[Krimel] Is this the deal where is we all sit and stare at the wall for 10 days we end up seeing the same kind of thing? [dmb] The kind of scientific materialism that would reduce human consciousness to brain states is a pretty fine example of the worldview that reduces "I" and "We" to "it". This is what Wilber calls flatland, the collaspe of the Komos. As Keith points out, this materialism gutts the interiors. [Krimel] What else "natural" is there to consciousness besides brain states, Dave? dmb says: If memory serves, for Piaget, rationality was more or less the end of the developmental road. He was working with children and interested in the formation of rationality. Wilber thinks its good stuff as far as it goes but he also thinks it doesn't go far enough. Wilber is interested in the more advanced forms of consciousness, ways of seeing that are a little more rare but which are more or a continution of increasingly complex cognitive structures outlined by Piaget. For anyone familiar with Piaget, this part of Wilber's view is easy to imagine. Just go further up the same road. [Krimel] There are all sorts of Piagetian studies. He sparked a lot of research. Most of which Wilber ignores in favor of Kohlberg and Gilligan who coincidentally seems to say what Wilber wants to hear. But here why not let Piaget speak for himself: "I recall an evening of profound revelation. The identification of God with life itself was an idea that stirred me almost to ecstacy because it now enabled me to see in biology the explanation of all things and of the mind itself." -Piaget quoted in Creative People at Work: 12 Cognitive Case Studies. "It is with children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth." - Piaget Piaget also did a bit of philosophizing in a series of lectures entitled Genetic Epistemology. By that he meant that human knowledge comes about though the interaction of the knower with the environment. Repeated interactions are recorded and organized inside the knower's nervous system. Trust me this does not mesh with Wilber and Wilber knows it. [dmb] But I was surprized to learn that Piaget's work shed so much light on the subject-object distinction. Against Freud, Piaget argued that infants did not repress memories because of their dark or shameful (Oedipal) nature but simply because they lacked the cognitive tools to form a memory. Lacan later picked up on this work and re-interpreted Freud's Oedipal phase in terms of Piaget's stages. [Krimel] All this indicates is that Wilber was not the first to abuse Piaget. Come on Dave you are a big boy now. Nobody but literary types have taken Freud seriously for the past 20 years. [dmb] Its interesting that the infant lives in that unified state of consciousness but of course babies are not mystics. One has to acquire an ego consciousness before it can be transcended. As Wilber would say, confusing pre-rational babies with trans-rational mystics is a pre/trans fallacy [Krimel] So if someone developed a discipline for sucking the thumb and this resulted in devotees with enormous red thumbs. We would call the infant version pre and the adult version trans? Or would we call the adults just suckers? moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
