Home » Games News » Interiority, Eros, and Gokumis
Is's realism thread veered into the interiority issue (whether interiors go all the way down to the smallest quarks and strings, those that emerged soonest after the Big Bang), and I was going to respond there, but then I got a few new angles on it and decided it was worth a thread of its own.
I said on that thread that I would post something from the long note on the issue in Integral Psychology, so I will start with that, just a couple of paragraphs:
On the other hand, says Nagel, "if one travels too far down the phylogenetic tree, people gradually shed their faith that there is experience there at all." Quite right, which is why I do not push experience (or feelings or souls or any specific type of interior) all the way down; I simply maintain that wherever there are exteriors, there are interiors, and when it comes to the interiors of the lower levels, I don't think we are really able to say what is "in" then with any sort of assurance. I cannot prove what is in them for the same reason a physicalist cannot disprove them.
Dennet, incidentally, sees a type of sentience emerging with amoebas. I am willing to settle for that, not because I am being wishy-washy about levels lower than that, but because when we get to the atomic and subatomic realm, the mathematical formalisms of quantum mechanics become much weirder than can be imagined, and most physicists disagree strongly on what it all means anyway. I myself believe atoms have interiors, but I'm not going to argue the point to death, simply because the universe gets too fuzzy at that level, and because the actual relation of interiors to exteriors is determined in the transrational, not prerational realms. Human beings can know the transrational realms directly and immediately, whereas the subatomic realms are understood, if at all, only be abstruse mathematical formalisms, which are still in the process of being formulated. [p.280-1]
So, I think taking an empirical, zone-#6 perspective on that would probably be a bit of a futile exercise for us. Even if we could all understand those mathematical formalisms, they are still being formulated. But we might consider a couple of other perspectives on it:
1- Wilber defines these "very lowest types of interiors" later in the Integral Psychology note as "propensities and patterns that endure across time-but in no case [are we talking about] 'feelings,' let alone a soul. (A rock [meaning an atom] is a manifestation of spirit, but does not itself contain a soul.)" [IP, p. 280]
So, if we accept it that an atom has certain tendencies or behavior, that it is "infused" with Eros, for example, are we not saying that the atom has an interior? Can a pure exterior have any sort of Eros or behavior?
2- Phenomenologically there may be compelling, though not decisive, evidence as well. If a person can remain aware throughout the sleep cycle, including deep sleep where phenomenologically there is nothing but the most rudimentary interior with no self-awareness, but then sees the body emerge as they return to the gross, have they perhaps at some point, in the most fleeting way, witnessed the very smallest gokumis [the smallest unit imaginable in Buddhism] from the inside?
I think that, at any rate, is the claim, and how could they if gokumis didn't already have interiors?
3- Finally (and this is related to number 2), they appear to have similar ideas about gokumis in Buddhism, that they have interiors. We might say they are out of their zone making truth claims about gokumis, and to some extent they may be, but maybe they are mostly basing their assertion on phenomenological evidence, which we then might incorporate into the meta-paradigmatic aspect (the weaving together of various methodologies) of integral methodological pluralism:
I do not know the proper terms, but according to my understanding of modern physics the smallest, final unit of being has no weight or size. It is just electrical energy.
Strangely enough, Buddhism has a similar idea. Although gokumi has the four elements-fire, wind, water, and earth-it is not something solid. When we reach this point, we see that its nature is just emptiness. The four elements are not just material. They are energy or potential or readiness. This is gokumi. To these four elements we add the quality of emptiness. So fire, wind, water, and earth are all empty. Even though they are empty, from this emptiness these four elements come into being. And as soon as these four come into being, right there is the final unit, gokumi. That is a Buddhist understanding of being. It looks as if we are talking about matter, but these elements are not just matter. They are both spirit and matter. Thinking mind is included. Accordingly, emptiness includes both matter and spirit, both mind and object, both the subjective world and the objective world. Emptiness is the final being, which our thinking mind cannot reach.