Ever since the publication of his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, written when he was twenty-three, Ken Wilber has been identified as the most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times. This introductory sampler, designed to acquaint newcomers with his work, contains brief passages from his most popular books, ranging over a variety of topics, including levels of consciousness, mystical experience, meditation practice, death, the perennial philosophy, and Wilber's integral approach to reality, integrating matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Here (...) is Wilber's writing at its most reader-friendly, discussing essential ideas of the world's great psychological, philosophical, and spiritual traditions in language that is lucid, engaging, and inspirational. (shrink)
The Argument from Personal Incredulity: Miller claims that the problem with anti-evolutionists like Michael Behe and me is a failure of imagination -- that we personally cannot "imagine how evolutionary mechanisms might have produced a certain species, organ, or structure." He then emphasizes that such claims are "personal," merely pointing up the limitations of those who make them. Let's get real. The problem is not that we in the intelligent design community, whom Miller incorrectly calls "anti-evolutionists," just can't imagine how (...) those systems arose. The problem is that Ken Miller and the entire biological community haven't figured out how those systems arose. It's not a question of personal incredulity but of.. (shrink)
Where’s Wilber at? That is, what is the present philosophical position of Ken Wilber, the pundit who many claim to be the world’s most intriguing and foremost philosopher? This is not an easy question to answer, for the breadth of Wilber’s encyclopedic vision is enormous and covers over a quarter century of prolific publication and continual evolution. In other words, Wilber’s work too has evolved over the years. Indeed, its progressive unfoldment in complexity and depth allows us to recognize at (...) least five consecutive and distinct phases or periods in his career to date (which we’ll discuss in depth below). Because of this, many people, reading from an array of sources, often find him hard to pin down, to really understand exactly “where he’s at.” But where he is at, stated quickly and summarily, is Phase-5 or Wilber-5 or Wilber/Phase-51 – the post-metaphysical AQAL approach (reviewed in detail in Part II and III of this essay). Therefore, by including in our understanding the important contributions and advancements of all four previous phases, we may better understand where the philosophy of Ken Wilber stands today and where it’s going during the opening years of the new millennium. From the perspective of an overview, Wilber/Phase-5 is a continuation of the AQAL (pronounced ah-quil) or the “all-quadrants, all-levels”– which is actually short for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types” – approach to integral studies pioneered by.. (shrink)
v. 1. The spectrum of consciousness ; No boundary ; Selected essays -- v. 2. The Atman Project ; Up from Eden -- v. 3. A sociable god ; Eye to eye -- v. 4. Integral psychology ; Transformations of consciousness ; Selected essays -- v. 5. Grace and grit : spirituality and healing in the life and death of Treya Killam Wilber. 2nd ed. -- v. 6. Sex, ecology, spirituality : the spirit of evolution. 2nd, rev. ed. -- v. (...) 7. A brief history of everything ; The eye of spirit -- v. 8. The marriage of sense and soul ; One taste. (shrink)
This article sets out and comments on the arguments of Binmore's Natural Justice , and specifically on the empirical hypotheses that underpin his social contract view of the foundations of justice. It argues that Binmore's dependence on the hypothesis that individuals have purely self-regarding preferences forces him to claim that mutual monitoring of free-riding behavior was sufficiently reliable to enforce cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies, and that this makes it hard to explain why intuitions about justice could have evolved, (...) since in such a society intuitions about justice would have had no adaptive advantage. I argue that it is empirically plausible that human beings display systematic other-regarding preferences (even if these are not always very strong). These could be incorporated into Binmore's general framework in a way that would enrich it and make it more useful for solving practical problems about justice. Key Words: natural justice • fairness • norms • evolution • self-regarding preferences • Rawls • social contract. (shrink)
In Insensitive Semantics (INS) and several earlier articles (see C&L 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004) we appeal to a range of procedures for testing whether an expression is semantically context sensitive. We argue that claims to the effect that an expression, e, is semantically context sensitivity should be made only after checking whether e passes these tests. We use these tests to criticize those we classify as Radical and Moderate Contextualist (Taylor is one of our targets in the latter category.).
In evaluating a metatheory, it is possible and desirable to use methods found in critical metatheory. In this post, I use such tools to rigorously analyze and quantify the internal logical structure of Wilber's metatheory. The results show that Wilber's metatheory is unlikely to be of much use in practical application and that it has much room for growth and improvement.
Ken Safir, Rutgers University Following a line of thought initiated by Kuno (1972), it has been suggested that the coconstrual of first person pronouns is a model for the coconstrual of a logophoric pronoun with its antecedent. This particular proposal has been extended to the forms of logophoricity that have been observed in some African languages (e.g., Ewe, as remarked in passing by Clements, 1975, and Amharic, as proposed by Schlenker, 2000).
According to a standard objection to the use of backward induction in extensive-form games with perfect information, backward induction (BI) can only work if the players are confident that each player is resiliently rational - disposed to act rationally at each possible node that the game can reach, even at the nodes that will certainly never be reached in actual play - and also confident that these beliefs in the players’ future resilient rationality are robust, i.e. that they would be (...) kept come what may, whatever evidence of irrationality would by then transpire concerning past performance of the players. Since both resiliency and robustness assumptions are extremely strong and their appropriateness as idealizations is quite problematic, it has been argued (by Binmore, Reny, Bicchieri, Pettit and Sugden, among others) that BI is an indefensible procedure. Therefore, we need not be worried that BI can be used to justify seemingly counter-intuitive game solutions. I show, however, that there is a restricted class of extensive-form games in which BI solutions can be defended without assuming resiliency or robustness. For these ”BI-terminating games” (= games in which BI moves always terminate the play, at each choice node), to defend BI solutions, it is enough to make confidence-in-rationality assumptions concerning actual play; stipulations about various counterfactual developments are unnecessary. For this class of games, then, the standard objection to BI is inapplicable. At the same time, however, it will transpire that the class in question contains some well-known games, such as the Centipede in its different versions, in which BI recommends a seemingly unreasonable behaviour. (shrink)
Ken Safir, Rutgers University ABSTRACT: It is argued that the indexicality of first person pronouns is arises from a restriction on the pronouns themselves, as opposed to any operator that binds them. The nature of this restriction is an asyntactic constant function that picks out individuals to the context of utterance (following Kaplan, 1989)). Constant function pronouns do not require an antecedent, neither an operator nor an argument, although this does not prevent them from participating in bound readings if an (...) appropriate antecedent is introduced. The notion that agents of contexts and agents of propositional attitudes are versions of the same operator-variable relation is thus rejected, along with certain less fine-grained versions of the nature of de se interpretation. Consequently, indexical pronouns such as first person ones contrast with logophoric pronouns, which are necessarily operator-bound by perspectival operators introduced by propositional attitude verbs. Scope-sensitive properties of operator-binding and the perspectival interpretations that are imposed on logophoricity distinguish the latter from constant function phenomena, which are sensitive neither to scope, as it is usually treated, nor perspectival shifts. Constant function phenomena are also detectable as restrictions on third person forms, and two such examples are lightly explored: the English generic pronoun one and the proximate/obviative distinction in languages like Fox. (shrink)
Shambhala: Why this intense interest in you as a person? We typed in "Ken Wilber" in the search engine Excite, and there were 363,000 entries. If you read 100 a day, it would take you ten years to read everything about you on the Net. Why this interest?
Barker, Ken One of the lasting fruits of the wide-spread experience of the renewal in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council has been the surprising emergence of new expressions of consecrated life. The Missionaries of God's Love (MGL) is an Australian example of this renaissance. Founded in Canberra in 1986 as a small fraternity of young men around a priest, the MGL brothers have now grown to more than twenty in final vows and more than thirty in formation. (...) The MGL sisters, founded in Canberra in 1987, possess the same charism, but with a separate identity and expression. They currently have six in final vows and fifteen members. To understand the new ecclesial energy that has generated this resurgence of desire for consecrated life, it is necessary to examine the ecclesial context in which the Missionaries of God's Love was born. Three main movements of the Spirit have provided this new ecclesial environment, which has proved conducive to the birth of a new way of consecrated life. (shrink)
Ken Wilber : Well.... I started keeping these journals as a type of experiment. They are definitely personal journals, like a diary--they contain personal incidences, meditation experiences, accounts of events in my daily life, and so on. But they also contain entries that are short essays--anywhere from one to ten pages--on topics that are of concern to me and my writing, and I hope are of concern to others.
Wright, Ken Review(s) of: A more perfect heaven: How copernicus revolutionised the cosmos, by Dava Sobel, Bloomsbury, London, 2011; 274 pp.; hardback $35.00.
Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Blind spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right And What to Do about It, by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel Princeton University Press 2011, x, 191pp.
Wright, Ken Review(s) of: Universe from nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing, by Lawrence M. Krauss, Free Press, New York 2012; xix + 202 pp.; hardback, $29.99.
Wright, Ken Review(s) of: What money can't buy: The moral limits of markets, by Michael J. Sandel, Allen Lane, London, 20012, 244 pp., hardback $24.90.
In a tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind. In each case evolution has a "direction," a tendency to produce more highly organized patterns. The "spirit of evolution" lies in its directionality: order out of chaos. After arriving at the emergence of mind, Wilber traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of development, pointing out that at each stage there is the "dialectic of progress"--every (...) increase in consciousness is bought at a price: new freedom also means new license to choose destruction. He particularly focuses on the rise of modernity and post-modernity--what they mean, how they relate to gender issues, to psychotherapy, to ecological concerns, and to various liberation movements. Most important, he asks: Can spiritual concerns be integrated with massive developments of the modern world? This edition is updated and includes a new introduction placing it in the context of the Collected Works. (shrink)
Andy Clark and David Chalmers claim that cognitive processes can and do extend outside the head.1 Call this the “hypothesis of extended cognition” (HEC). HEC has been strongly criticised by Fred Adams, Ken Aizawa and Robert Rupert.2 In this paper I argue for two claims. First, HEC is a harder target than Rupert, Adams and Aizawa have supposed. A widely-held view about the nature of the mind, functionalism—a view to which Rupert, Adams and Aizawa appear to subscribe— entails HEC. Either (...) HEC is true, or functionalism is false. The relationship between functionalism and HEC goes beyond support for the relatively uncontroversial claim that it is logically or nomologically possible for cognition to extend (the “can” part of HEC); functionalism entails that cognitive processes do extend in the actual world. Second, I argue that the version of HEC entailed by functionalism is more radical than the version that Clark and Chalmers suggest. I argue that it is so radical as to form a counterexample to functionalism. If functionalism is modified to prevent these consequences, then HEC falls victim to Rupert, Adams and Aizawa’s original criticism. An advocate of HEC has two choices: (1) accept functionalism and radical HEC; (2) give up HEC entirely. Clark and Chalmers’ intermediate position of a modest form of HEC is unsustainable. The argument of this paper, although initially appearing to support Clark and Chalmers, ultimately argues against their position. The price of HEC is rampant expansion of the mind into the world, and the implausibility of such expansion is indicative of deep-seated problems with functionalism. The argument of this paper consequently speaks to wider issues than just the status of HEC. The reasons for.. (shrink)
Philosophical interest in situated cognition has been focused most intensely on the claim that human cognitive processes extend from the brain into the tools humans use. As we see it, this radical hypothesis is sustained by two kinds of mistakes, confusing coupling relations with constitutive relations and an inattention to the mark of the cognitive. Here we wish to draw attention to these mistakes and show just how pervasive they are. That is, for all that the radical philosophers have said, (...) the mind is still in the head. (shrink)
Differences in ethical ideology are thought to influence individuals'' reasoning about moral issues (Forsyth and Nye, 1990; Forsyth, 1992). To date, relatively little research has addressed this proposition in terms of business-related ethical issues. In the present study, four groups, representing four distinct ethical ideologies, were created based on the two dimensions of the Ethical Position Questionnaire (idealism and relativism), as posited by Forsyth (1980). The ethical judgments of individuals regarding several business-related issues varied, depending upon their ethical ideology.
The problem of evil can be captured by the following four statements which taken together are inconsistent: 1) God made the world 2) God is a perfect being 3) A perfect being would not create a world containing evil 4) The world contains evil Traditional attempts to grapple with this problem typically center on rejecting (3). Thus Descartes, following Augustine, rejects (3), arguing that evil is the result of man’s exercise of his free will. However, given Descartes plausible claim that (...) God could have created man in such a way that through exercising his free will man comes to only virtuous actions, it is not clear how the problem is solved. Descartes also repeats the Augustinian orthodoxy that though the world contains evil it does not contain it as a positive existence; evil has no real being but is simply the reflection of the inherent lack of full-being in merely finite individuals. Again, that this is a solution is open to serious doubt. (shrink)
In recent years a number of authors sympathetic to Referentialistaccounts of proper names have argued that utterances containingempty names express `gappy,' or incomplete, propositions. In this paper I want to take issue with this suggestion.In particular, I argue versions of this approach developedby David Braun, Nathan Salmon, Ken Taylor, and by Fred Adams,Gary Fuller, and Robert Stecker.
Praise for Ethics in Psychotherapy and Counseling, Third Edition "This is absolutely the best text on professional ethics around. . . . This is a refreshingly open and inviting text that has become a classic in the field." —Derald Wing Sue, professor of psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University "I love this book! And so will therapists, supervisors, and trainees. In fact, it really should be required reading for every mental health professional and aspiring professional. . . . And it is (...) a fun read to boot!" —Stephen J. Ceci, H. L. Carr Professor of Psychology, Cornell University "Pope and Vasquez have done it again. . . . an indispensable resource for seasoned professionals and students alike." —Beverly Greene, professor of psychology, St. John's University "[The third edition] focuses on how to think about ethical dilemmas . . . with empathy for the decision-maker whose best option may have to be a compromise between different values. If there is only room on the shelf for one book in the genre, this is it." —Patrick O'Neill, former president, Canadian Psychological Association "This third edition of the classic ethics text provides invaluable resources and enables readers to engage in critical thinking in order to make their own decisions.?This superb reference belongs in every psychology training program's curriculum and on every psychologist's?bookshelf." —Lillian Comas-Diaz, 2006 president, APA Division of Psychologists in Independent Practice "Ken Pope and Melba Vasquez are right on target once again in the third edition, a book that every practicing mental health professional should read and have in their reference library." —Jeffrey N. Younggren, risk management consultant, American Psychological Association Insurance Trust "Without a doubt, this is the definitive book on ethics within psychology that can inform students, educators, clinical researchers, and practitioners." —Nadine J. Kaslow, professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Emory University School of Medicine "This stunningly good book . . . should be on every therapist's desk for quick reference." —David Barlow, professor of psychology and psychiatry, Boston University. (shrink)
Jerry Fodor ( Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong . New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 ) famously argued that lexical concepts are unstructured. After examining the advantages and disadvantages of both the classical approach to concepts and Fodor’s conceptual atomism, I argue that some lexical concepts are, in fact, structured. Roughly stated, I argue that structured lexical concepts bear a necessary biconditional entailment relation to their structural constituents. I develop this account of the structure of lexical concepts within the (...) framework of Pavel Tichý’s ( The foundations of Frege’s logic . Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1988 ) theory of constructions. I argue that concepts are constructions which can be combined by way of Tichý’s construction-forming operations of composition and closure and an additional operation, simplification , which I propose in section 6. The last of these construction-forming operations plays a central role in my account of lexical concept structure. Stated generally, structured lexical concepts are a result of simplifying their structural constituents. (shrink)
Causal theories of mental content attempt to explain how thoughts can be about things. They attempt to explain how one can think about, for example, dogs. These theories begin with the idea that there are mental representations and that thoughts are meaningful in virtue of a causal connection between a mental representation and some part of the world that is represented. In other words, the point of departure for these theories is that thoughts of dogs are about dogs because dogs (...) cause the mental representations of dogs. (shrink)
This is a plausible reading of what Clark and Chalmers had in mind at the time, but it is not the radical claim at stake in the extended cognition debate.[1] It is a familiar functionalist view of cognition and the mind that it can be realized in a wide range of distinct material bases. Thus, for many species of functionalism about cognition and the mind, it follows that they can be realized in extracranial substrates.[2] And, in truth, even some non-functionalist (...) views of cognition apparently allow for the possibility that cognition extends into the external world.[3] So, the (logical, conceptual, or nomological) possibility of extended cognition seems to us not the kind of radical view the advocates of this view have often implied. This is not, of course, to assess or pass judgment on the truth of these possibilities; it is only to note that they are not what most agitates people about the hypothesis of extended cognition. Framing the radical extended cognition hypothesis is a more delicate matter than framing the modal extended cognition hypothesis, but something like the following is in the ballpark. The radical extended cognition hypothesis maintains that, in many mundane cases of tool use, human cognitive processes extend into the tools. The principal reason this hypothesis is so delicate is that there remains much room for dispute about what constitutes a “mundane” case of tool use, such as keeping a notebook at hand at all times, versus an exotic case of tool use, such as having a computer memory chip implanted in one’s brain. Clark never in so many words defends the idea that there are actual cases of extended cognition. Rather, his tacit commitment must be inferred from such things as his proposal that the brain is made to use tools, so we should view tools as part of the mind (Cf., Clark, 2005, p. 8ff.). (shrink)
Humans have long been fascinated by the idea of visiting the past and of seeing what the future will bring. Time travel has been one of the most popular themes of science fiction. Most people have seen the TV series ‘Dr Who’ or ‘Quantum Leap’ or ‘Star Trek’. You’ve probably seen one of the ‘Back to the Future’ or ‘Terminator’ movies, or ‘Twelve Monkeys’. Time travel narratives provide fascinating plots, which exercise our imaginations in ever so many ways. But is (...) the idea of travelling forward and backward in time pure fantasy—or can it be done? To be sure, not all time travel scenarios are coherent. But we hope to persuade you that the most common objections to the very idea of time travel have no real force. (shrink)
There has recently been considerable interest in accounts of fiction which treat fictional characters as abstract objects. In this paper I argue against this view. More precisely I argue that such accounts are unable to accommodate our intuitions that fictional negative existentials such as “Raskolnikov doesn’t exist” are true. I offer a general argument to this effect and then consider, but reject, some of the accounts of fictional negative existentials offered by abstract object theorists. I then note that some of (...) the sort of data invoked by the abstract object theorist in fact cuts against her position. I concludle that we should not regard fictional characters as abstract objects but rather should adopt a make-believe theoretic account of fictional characters along the lines of those developed by Ken Walton and others. (shrink)
Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a non-zero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like our own, as well as infinitely many civilizations that differ from our own in any way permitted by physical laws. We explore the implications of this conclusion for ethical theory and for the doomsday argument. In the infinite universe, we find that the doomsday argument applies only to (...) effects which change the average lifetime of all civilizations, and not those which affect our civilization alone. (shrink)
One trend in recent work on topic of the multiple realization of psychological properties has been an emphasis on greater sensitivity to actual science and greater clarity regarding the metaphysics of realization and multiple realization. One contribution to this trend is Bechtel and Mundale’s examination of the implications of brain mapping for multiple realization. Where Bechtel and Mundale argue that studies of brain mapping undermine claims about the multiple realization, this paper challenges that argument.
Where should experimental economics go next? This paper uses the literature on inequity aversion as a case study in suggesting that we could profit from tightening up our act.
This article is extracted from a forthcoming book, ‘Natural Justice’. It is a nontechnical introduction to the part of game theory immediately relevant to social contract theory. The latter part of the article reviews how concepts such as trust, responsibility, and authority can be seen as emergent phenomena in models that take formal account only of equilibria in indefinitely repeated games. Key Words: game theory • equilibrium • evolutionary stability • reciprocity • folk theorem • trust • altruism • responsibility (...) • authority. (shrink)
It is widely agreed that the ‘Logical’ Argument from Evil (LAFE) is bankrupt. We aim to rehabilitate the LAFE, in the form of what we call the Normatively Relativised Logical Argument from Evil (NRLAFE). There are many different versions of a NRLAFE. We aim to show that one version, what we call the ‘right relationship’ NRLAFE, poses a significant threat to personal-omniGod-theism—understood as requiring the belief that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good person who has created our world—because it (...) appeals to value commitments theists themselves are likely to endorse. The ultimate success of this NRLAFE will rest on developing a theological ethics of right relationship that rejects as morally flawed the exercise of omnipotence first to sustain horrors and then to redeem them. Yet a vindicated NRLAFE of this sort need not require atheism, but only rejection of the standard conception of God as a personal omniGod. (shrink)
Our paper “Experimental Economics: Where Next?” contains a case study of Ernst Fehr and Klaus Schmidt’s work in which it is shown that the claims they make for the theory of inequity aversion are not supported by their data. The current issue of JEBO contains two replies, one from Fehr and Schmidt1 themselves, and the other from Catherine Eckel and Herb Gintis. Neither reply challenges any claims we make about matters of fact in our critique of Fehr and Schmidt on (...) inequity aversion, although it is clear that if they could have refuted any single factual sentence then they would have done so. Both replies therefore implicitly concede that the facts quoted in our case study are correct. All the other issues raised in the two replies are just so much dust kicked up to distract attention from the only question that matters: Is it scientific to proceed like Fehr and Schmidt or is it not? Fehr and Schmidt say yes. So do Eckel and Gintis. The implications are quite far-reaching for those like us who think it is obvious that the answer is no. What other claims asserted by the school of Gintis et al can we trust? (shrink)
Most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God take the following form: (1) If God exists, the world would not be like this (where 'this' picks out some feature of the world like the existence of evil, etc.) (2) But the world is like this . (3) Therefore, God does not exist. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise (1). According to skeptical theism, if there were a (...) God, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond our ken, and thus we are not justified in making all-things-considered judgments about what the world would be like if there were a God. In particular, the fact that we don't see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X. 1 Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God. What follows is an account of the nature of skeptical theism, an application of skeptical theism to both the argument from evil and the argument from divine hiddenness, and a review of the cases for and against skeptical theism. (shrink)
Can people be relied upon to be nice to each other? Thomas Hobbes famously did not think so, but his view that rational cooperation does not require that people be nice has never been popular. The debate has continued to simmer since Joseph Butler took up the Hobbist gauntlet in 1725. This article defends the modern version of Hobbism derived largely from game theory against a new school of Butlerians who call themselves behavioral economists. It is agreed that the experimental (...) evidence supports the claim that most people will often make small sacrifices on behalf of others and that a few will sometimes make big sacrifices, but that the larger claims made by contemporary Butlerians lack genuine support. Key Words: natural justice • fairness • social norms • game theory • behavioral economics. (shrink)
Gregory Kavka's 'Toxin Puzzle' suggests that I cannot intend to perform a counter-preferential action A even if I have a strong self-interested reason to form this intention. The 'Rationalist Solution,' however, suggests that I can form this intention. For even though it is counter-preferential, A-ing is actually rational given that the intention behind it is rational. Two arguments are offered for this proposition that the rationality of the intention to A transfers to A-ing itself: the 'Self-Promise Argument' and David Gauthier's (...) 'Rational Self-Interest Argument.' But both arguments – and therefore the Rationalist Solution – fail. The Self-Promise Argument fails because my intention to A does not constitute a promise to myself that I am obligated to honor. And Gauthier's Rational Self-Interest Argument fails to rule out the possibility of rational irrationality. (shrink)
