David Chapman's kinder, gentler view (?) of KW

The estimable DC has done it again--

http://meaningness.com/metablog/ken-wilber-boomeritis-artificial-intelligence

Thanks, Kate.

I must admit that I don't think I've ever been so confused by a piece of writing.

I was born in 1956.

brilliant. that chapman, i wish he taught at my school. i think he makes the point well (and gently) about wilber's hang ups around the whole orange-green-yellow thing. fascinating story about a.i. and heidegger too, but of course there i'm pretty biased

I have just got back from my scheduled event for today, and taken the time I SHOULD have taken before posting the link, to read the whole thing; I kinda went off half-cocked on the sidebar, which approved of some of KW's critique of 'Boomeritis Buddhism'. I have avoided reading the novel [Boomeritis] out of my KW aversion, so I was a little surprised to hear anything good being said about it.

Once I read the whole article, I could see that it may be way too academic/ 'inside philosophy' to appeal to most; also that my prejudice in favor of, and familiarity with the argument against 'the four root downfalls' [monism, dualism, eternalism, and nihilism] may not be widely shared. And perhaps my glee in seeing KW's betters teach him a thing or two is-- how do I say it-- more than a little mean-spirited.

So if I've irritated anyone unduly, please accept my apologies.

Well, I'm not irritated, just intrigued.

Chapman's a really deep, intelligent guy imo. He looks at these big picture things-- cultural upheaval, civilization change, and the high level philosophy that both provokes and comments on it-- and makes it relevant. But sure he's an "insider", in that he actually seems pretty knowledgeable in these domains. Lots of people read books about philosophy, but few people can read philosophical significance in concrete events. I think he does this. I think Wilber tries to do this but often fails for pushing a particular agenda as if it were the only way. It sometimes takes a Chapman to salvage what a thinker like Wilber has to offer.

What Jake said!

As someone who habitually identifies as a "philosopher" and who would like to reclaim that term from the sense of "heady idea person", I can't emphasize enough how unusual it is to find someone who actually seems to understand what philosophy is about.

Again, most people and many professors who teach it seem to regard it as about ideas or the history of ideas. Chapman gets it. Wilber gets it too, but Chapman's careful understanding of the "four extremes" teaching gives him an edge. Wilber has settled for a certain "picture" of reality-- the eternalist monist-- and this colors his whole presentation, particularly contributing to or rationalizing his aversion to pluralism, and probably IMO contributing to his spiritual authoritarianism as evidenced by his predilection for teachers like Andrew Cohen and Genpo Roshi.

I submit that a clear understanding of the limits of representation (and thus all ideas), a la the four extremes, protects against all manner of intellectual and social neurosis, and is crucial for us humans to learn if we're gonna make it through our current crises.

Understanding the four extremes means, to me personally, that insofar as that understanding becomes more solid, just to that degree all the things I might say about my practice experience and life in general become translucent.

If I truly understood that teaching completely, I think I would be free from drawing conclusions about practice at all, and would require no justification for practicing. Then practice and self would recede into the background to dissolve naturally, and life and the world (in the light of wordless view) come into the foreground. I would become capable of ordinariness for extended periods of time, perhaps being ordinary would even become natural. How extraordinary that would be!

Beautiful, Jake.

Clearly, I posted this for you!

I read through what Chapman wrote about Wilber. I am no fan of Wilber's, I've got to say. But when I got to this part of Chapman's writing, I stopped hard:



"There is no Absolute, you are not the entire universe, and there is no “true self.”



And, IMO, there is no value in the above statement.



In an attempt to be clever, Chapman has done Wilber one better at the game of intellectual overreaching and hyperbolic overstatement.



Chapman's statement is SO wrong -- both philosophically and as a guide to practice -- that I can't believe he even wrote it.



But that's just me being disdainful of stuff I find to be, not merely incorrect, but harmfully so.



-- Mike "Gozen"

Well, I have written elsewhere about how amazed I have been lately at how surprising and unprecedented things have appeared of late. Sometimes the surprise comes in the form of vehement disagreement, as here.

It hadn't occurred to me that the arguments about 'the 4 extremes' are part of Vajrayana specifically, and not of Buddhism generally. But hearing this reflected in your response, Mike, illuminates some of my own assumptions and preferences for me. It seems they run counter to yours, for instance-- and, for all I know, to those of most people on the forum. And that is interesting, and makes me think. So gassho to ya!

Ah, yeah, good point Kate. I hadn't explicitly noticed the yana connection either... and yet, of both lineages with which I'm familiar that emphasize this teaching, they are decidedly vajrayana-- one kagyu, the other nyingma. Although this teaching seems to be ubiquitous in Tibetan lineages, and thus I assume originates in Indian mahayana.

This raised my interest:
"But that's just me being disdainful of stuff I find to be, not merely incorrect, but harmfully so." --Mike Latorra

I sometimes believe strongly that views, "philosophically and as a guide to practice", are indeed harmful. I haven't considered the particular view Chapman's expressing in this light before, if anything it seems to jive with my experience that views which I deem harmful usually (if not always-- I don't know, have to look eand see) represent reifications of one of the four extremes, whereas I assumed Chapman was negating absolute views, rather than presenting a view...

But I would be happy to hear an articulation of what about the negation of an absolute version of monistic eternalism is harmful as a view, a guide to practice.

Also, to be clear, my understanding of the context in which Chapman is thinking led me to assume, on first reading, that he's not rejecting the utility of a monistic-eternalistic view (as a guide to practice) in certain contexts. Rather, I assume he's rejecting the proclamation that such a description is somehow "correct"-- as in, corresponds with reality, and in such a way as to eliminate the alternatives (other combinations of the four extremes) as valid descriptions of "reality" under different circumstances. Wilber seems to do this, rejecting nihilism and dualism and reifying eternalism and monism. This leads to funny shadow stuff IMO.

Further to be clear-er, I think the valid essence of Chapman's critique of Wilber's absolute eternalist monism is that descriptions tend to fall in these four categories composed of two sets of opposites-- eternalist (there is a solid overarching purpose to existence which is ensured by a transcendent and timeless order) and nihilist (there is no meaning or purpose at all, everything is too fleeting for meaning to congeal); and monist (oneness is more true than difference and uniqueness) and dualist (separateness is more true than connectivity and oneness).

It is the nature of descriptions (of life, the universe, enlightenment, household appliances and everything else) to fall into these extremes when and if it is also assumed that descriptions can be absolutely valid-- dogmatic. On the other hand, when we assume instead the thoroughly pragmatic and poetic nature of description and fully heed it, then the tendency to fall into these extremes is guarded against even while the capacity to employ descriptions utilizing all four views in any combination is fully retained both for pragmatic and poetic descriptive purposes.

Wilber IMO wants a language which can do more than poetry and pragmatism, which is too bad, since this indicates his failure to appreciate the profound and wild, untameable meaning-ness of poetic/pragmatic language, of actual language, but rather leads him to chase a fantasy language with the power to say Reality explicitly-- to freeze reality into a definite form. And to be the Author of that Form, no less.

Philosophy may require a rigorous and careful use of language, but it is not at all about ideas. In this sense, there is no such thing as "a philosophy". A set of beliefs is perhaps better termed a "worldview".

This is the mistake of the four extremes: to exceed pragmatic and poetic use of language into an attempt to lock down a dogmatic description of "reality". Philosophy in the sense I'm using it is actually a relationship to thinking, not a set of thoughts arranged in an order. That is why philosophy tries to use words rigorously, especially when it is being poetic. Philosophy is any way of relating to thoughts which dances beyond the four extremes-- and yet still manages to say something. To say something useful, to say something beautiful.

"This is the mistake of the four extremes: to exceed pragmatic and
poetic use of language into an attempt to lock down a dogmatic
description of "reality". Philosophy in the sense I'm using it is
actually a relationship to thinking, not a set of thoughts arranged in
an order. That is why philosophy tries to use words rigorously,
especially when it is being poetic. Philosophy is any way of relating to thoughts which dances beyond the four extremes-- and yet still manages to say something. To say something useful, to say something beautiful."

Well said; perhaps if I'd worked on my nascent understanding for a long time, I'd have come up with something approaching it. While I was mulling over my surprise, earlier, I stumbled upon a sense that this sort of thing is why Nagarjuna is not everyone's cup of tea. 'Philosophy' is not what most people do for fun; it's not even what most people who consider themselves intellectually adroit do for fun. The intellectually adroit, in our time, are overawed by 'science', not philosophy. And yet philosophy is the 'love of wisdom'; science is just 'knowledge.' So go my mental meanderings.

I was further speculating that perhaps David's statement-- with which I agree, as I understand it-- provoked such a reaction, because it was understood to be saying that no one can experience a sense of being one with the universe, in an eternal present. And I don't think that's what is meant by denying monism and eternalism; I'd always understood that it was that oceanic experience-- like any other experience-- isn't the whole story, negating the equally possible experience of being distinct from everything, in a kaleidoscopically mutating world. And that leaves aside the whole issue of which experiences I, or anyone else, might prefer. At any given time-- because that changes, too.

To me, the monist/eternalist declaration: "There is an Absolute, you are the entire universe, and there is a “true self.” can be equally harmfully misleading. I've seen people whose form of awakening didn't present them with those convictions, become discouraged with practice and consider themselves failures for lack of grandiosity; and I've seen some who are very glib with that sort of declaration be real jerks-- and worse-- with some of the universe with which they are 'one.'

Thanks Kate