• Intersubjectivity-2b (strong-experiential meaning): mutual co-arising and enngagement of interdependent subjects, or “intersubjects” that creates their respective experience. It is ontological intersubjectivity relying on co-creative nonphysical presence, and brings distinct subjects into being out of a prior matrix of relationships.

The basic difference to note here is between (1) intersubjective agreementwhere my language about the world conforms to yours through exchange of conceptual and linguistic tokens, and (2a) intersubjective participation or (2b) intersubjective co-creativitywhere my experience of myself shows up qualitatively differently when I engage with you as a reciprocating center of experience.

On this understanding, then, what I call “true intersubjectivity” is unmediated communication or co-creative sharing of presence—it is direct subject-to-subject or “I-to-I” communion. For shorthand, I sometimes refer to it as “I-I.”

Wilber’s “intersubjectivity” is not wrong; it’s just very weak. It’s what standard linguistic philosophy, social theory, and philosophy of science refer to as “intersubjectivity” (and is really objectivity or interobjectivity [Velmans, 1993]). Yes, two or more subjects come together or share information via language, and therefore come to know something about each other. And, in this sense, there is a subject-to-subject communication. But, as I point out and as Wilber emphasizes, such communication is mediated via exchanges of linguistic tokens, which are exteriors.In this kind of “intersubjectivity” alone there is no direct interior-to-interiorconnection or sharing. And unmediated interior-to-interior connection or sharing is inter-subjectivity of a different order.

Wilber does emphasize that a central function of the Lower Left “intersubjective” cultural quadrant is meaning —and he would unhesitatingly agree that meaning cannot be reduced to physical scratches on paper or digital blips on a screen (in fact, he sides with first-person subjectivists in criticizing philosophers such as Daniel Dennett and other cognitivists and eliminativists for reducing semantics to syntax). But the point is, according to Wilber’s model, for meaning to be communicated or shared, it can do so “only” by dialogue and interpretation, by “talk”—that is, by exchange of linguistic tokens, physical signals. No room here for silent engaged presence (de Quincey, 1998). No room for shared feeling. No room for telepathic communion. No room, in other words, for true intersubjectivity where one subject is actually shaped or changed by literally participating in, and incorporating, something of the being of another subject (weak intersubjectivity-2a), and certainly no room for one or more subjects dynamically, mutually creating each other’s “node” or nexus of subjectivity within the (universal) matrix of the ground of being of intersubjective relationships.

Wilber is clearly aware that LR exchanges by themselves cannot account for intersubjectivity (LL phenomena)—yet almost all his references to intersubjectivity are couched in terms of communities engaged in linguistic exchange. As anyone familiar with his work would suspect: Wilber knows better. He knows that LL signifiers cannot be reduced to exchanges of LR signifieds. But he doesn’t talk, or write, that way most of the time. My proposal for including actual intersubjectivity (that is, non-physically-mediated meaning) does not preclude physical correlates of such shared meaning (e.g., changes in brain states or marks on paper or dots on screen or spoken words). Like Wilber, I agree that every interior has (must have) a corresponding exterior. My concern, my objection, is that when he confines intersubjectivity to only dialogue or talk and interpretation he leaves no room for intersubjective interiority.I’m puzzled why Wilber doesn’t see this, and shift his emphasis from language to presence(or interiority ) when talking about intersubjectivity.

Wilber’s ambiguous position on intersubjectivity is well summarized in SES. In a long footnote, he says:

the linguistic signifiers(or the materialcomponents of a sign, the written symbol or the physical air vibrations of the spoken word) are all Right-Hand components, whereas the signifieds (the interior meanings that a person associates with a word) are all Left-Hand occasions . . .” (fn. #24, pp. 545-546).

In one linguistic swoop, he contradicts his earlier distinction by collapsing (Left) intersubjectivity to “linguistic generation,” which just a few sentences earlier he identified as “Right.”

Wilber is here citing Habermas, and he does so approvingly. Now, admittedly, he may mean by “linguistic” the combinationof both (exterior) signifiers and (internal) signifieds, and therefore that he does mean to include interiors when talking of “linguistically generated intersubjectivity.”

I don’t doubt that he does. However, my concern is that by almost always coupling intersubjectivity to linguistic exchanges, Wilber leaves readers with the impression that only via language can intersubjectivity occur. (As we’ve seen, this is actually what he does say—that what makes the difference in intersubjectivity is words.)

My point is that it is really the other way around: It is not the case that only via language can intersubjectivity occur, but that actually only via intersubjectivity can language carry and exchange meaning. In other words, intersubjectivity is not “linguistically generated,” it precedes language, and is its ground of being, its context of meaning.

To add to the ambiguity, Wilber later on does talk the language of presence —the foundational experience of intersubjectivity:

. . . consciousness is an inseparable mixture of experience and mental-cultural molding. . . . Every experience is a context; every experience, even simple sensory experience, is always already situated, is always already a context, is always already a holon. . . . As Whitehead would have it, every holon is already a prehensive unification of its entire actual universe: nothing is every simply present.

. . . but contexts touch immediately. It does not require “mystical pure consciousness” to be in immediate contact with the data of experience. When any point in the mediated chain is known (or experienced), that knowing or prehending is an immediate event in itself, an immediate “touching.” The touching is not a touching of something merely present but rather is itself pure Presence (or prehension) (SES, p.600).

But there’s another, more serious, problem: If the defense of Wilber’s position on intersubjectivity is based on the fact that as a whole his philosophy is “nondual” then, actually, the defense evaporates. For in that case, the notion that all beings are immediately co-present in Spirit—that intersubjectivity arises from direct and immediate contact of all interiors with Spirit—applies to all four quadrants (for, ultimately, in Wilber’s scheme, even all exteriors are Spirit). There would be nothing special about LL. In what way would LL intersubjectivity differ from intersubjectivity in any of the other quadrants?

Wilber’s answer: through cultural exchanges of meaning via linguistic tokens. And so we’re back to the original problem. Thus, it seems, by taking the “One Taste” perspective (where everythingis intersubjective), Wilber is forced to single out a particular type of “intersubjectivity,” i.e. exchange of linguistic tokens.

Bottom line: This is not an incidental or “nit-picking” critique. Basically, to spell it out: One quarter of Wilber’s four quadrants is left void or vacant. His LL is not what he claims it to be, i.e., the locus of intersubjectivity.

Given Wilber’s central project: to include interiority of the Kosmos at all levels (and not as modernity has done, attempt to reduce all aspects of reality to merely atomistic or functional-fitting systems exteriors), I have no doubt that he intends to have true intersubjectivity in the LL quadrant. And I’m sure he believes this is what he has done.

But by describing and explaining LL intersubjectivity in terms and ideas derived from sociolinguists, such as Herbert Mead and Jürgen Habermas, he has unwittingly inherited their covert (and not always so covert) materialism and linguistic behaviorism. Rather, had he drawn more on the work of Martin Buber (1970), and even A. N. Whitehead (1979) to characterize his LL version of intersubjectivity, he would have, or at least could have, avoided this unfortunate, limiting—and highly significant—instance of subtle reductionism. Wilber has been quick, and at times unmerciful, in pointing out this kind of reductionism practiced by many systems and eco-theorists.

It is precisely the lacuna of true intersubjectivity in consciousness studies and philosophy of mind that prompted me to present a paper at the Tucson III “Toward a Science of Consciousness” conference, in 1998, calling for comprehensive first-, second-, and third-person perspectives in investigating consciousness.

It seemed to me to be such a glaring oversight that I wondered if I was somehow blind or mistaken: Had no-one in philosophy of mind really seriously considered the second-person perspective?

So, as part of a reality check, I sent an early draft of my paper to a number of theorists in consciousness studies, and Wilber was among them. He wrote back affirming my perception, pointing out that except for his own work (meaning his LL quadrant), few contemporary consciousness theorists besides me were taking intersubjectivity seriously. I was pleased to see Wilber subsequently emphasize what I was calling for: a comprehensive 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person approach to consciousness studies (which he now calls the “1-2-3 of consciousness studies” [Wilber, 2000c].)

In the four quadrants model, Wilber is weakest in his treatment of LL intersubjectivity and second-person perspective, and—not incidentally, I think—he wants to downplay the ontological and epistemological significance of feeling, so central to a more comprehensive and deep understanding of intersubjectivity. As noted earlier, the root of the problem is his “categorical rejection” of the ontological significance of feeling.

In other words, it is the felt relational component of Wilber’s theoretical psycho-philosophical work that is most conspicuously missing. This criticism in one form or another, with varying degrees of emotionality, has been leveled at Wilber from many quarters (e.g., feminists, eco-systems theorists, spiritual practitioners) for whom relation is primary.

In the “I-We-It” stakes, Wilber is strongest on the I and It. His writings lack a sense of felt bodily meaning and relationship. And this has tended to alienate him from those for whom “We” is primary. Wilber has a tendency to reduce “We” to the terms of “I-It”—even while proclaiming the very opposite .

The Mind-Body Problem

Readers of JCS will probably be most interested in Wilber’s contribution to the mind-body issue, particularly because the “hard problem” has been a major theme in the journal since its inception. I will argue that Wilber’s model doesn’t even begin to offer a solution to this perennial “world knot” as Schopenhauer called it, and furthermore that this omission seriously undermines the rational integrity of his four quadrant system. Instead of explaining how the interior and exterior domains relate and interact, Wilber asks us to be content with promissory integralism.

What does he actually offer as a solution to the mind-body problem? He is quite explicit:

“[T]he ultimate mind/body problem—the relation of interior-subjective to exterior-objective—is solved only in nondual awakening, which transcends and includes the quadrants. My claim, then, is that an “all-level, all-quadrant” view substantially handles the mind/body problem in all its major forms” (SES/CW 6, pp. 453-454).

So, how does he “handle” it? In IP, following Vedanta, he identifies three bodies, each with its correlated mind:

“the gross body of the waking state (which supports the material mind); the subtle body of the dreaming state (which supports the emotional, mental, and higher mental levels); and the casual body of deep sleep (which supports the spiritual mind)” (IP, p. 13).

But we have to be careful here about terminology. Let’s look, first, at what he means by “mind.” On the one hand, he uses “mind” to mean a particular level of the Great Chain of Being (which, in one of its simpler expressions, evolves from matter, to body, to mind, to soul, to spirit). Here, mind is clearly distinguished from spirit. Yet, in IP he talks of mind in a broader, differentiated, ontological sense that includes “material mind” of the waking state (then, presumably, the redundant, tautological notion of “mental mind” of dreams), and, finally, the higher “spiritual mind” of deep sleep. But now his use of “mind” in this sense conflicts with how he uses it in the Great Chain. In the first case, “mind” is just one level of reality; in the second, it spans the spectrum from “material mind” to “mental mind” to “spiritual mind.” Presumably, what he calls “mind” in the Great Chain, is equivalent to “mental mind” in his states-of-consciousness spectrum?

But this is all very confusing. Whereas the notion of “mental mind” is tautological, “material mind” is oxymoronic. By “material mind” does he mean something like the kind of mind supported by, or associated with, the “gross material” body, and by “mental” the kind of mind supported by or associated with the “subtle” body, and by “spiritual mind” the kind of mind supported by or associated with the “causal” body? If so, we are back to the original problem: How are the various forms of mind “supported” by the various forms of body?

When we confront this question, we can ignore the issue of particular levels of mind and body, and focus on the issue of the how anyform of mind could interact with anyform of body: the old, familiar mind-body problem. Either way, Wilber’s discussion of the mind-body relation adds more tangles to the “world knot” (Griffin, 1998) rather than helping us unsnarl it. I will return to this problem in a moment when I examine Wilber’s preferred distinction between “interior” and “exterior” domains of reality.

Now let’s look at what he means by “body”: “body is the energetic support of the various states and levels of mind” (IP, p. 12), (i.e., support for the three levels of mind identified in the quote above). These distinctions seem to beg more questions than they answer: For instance, how is the distinction between the “body/energetic support” and the mind or consciousness not a form of dualism? What does it mean to say that the body is an “energetic support” for the mind? How is such support achieved—in other words, what is the nature of the mind-body interaction that would necessarily underlie such support? Wilber does not answer these questions. In fact, as we will see, he is quite explicit that he will not attempt to explain howmind (interior) and body (exterior) interact. He is content to leave that up to psychics and mystics.

Another difficulty: His interpretation of the “average person’s” common usage of “body” to mean “subjective feelings, emotions and sensations of the felt body” (IP, p. 178) does not match what I experience the “average person” to mean. In fact, I think this is exactly what they don’t mean. What Wilber says the “average person” means for “body” is, I think, what they mean by “mind.”

Wilber describes one aspect of the mind-body problem as an experienced conflict between “thoughts and beliefs” (cognition) and our feelings. To be sure, this conflict is often real—we do frequently feel this split. But it is more a conflict between different levels of mind (rational and emotional) than a split between mind and body.

The average person does not experience or report a problem in terms of causal efficacy between thoughts and emotions (or vice versa). In fact, the all too often obvious causal relation between these levels of or aspects of mind is what troubles people (Freud spoke of this psychological conflict as the battle between the ego and the id, or between the ego and the superego).

But the real mind-body problem, as Wilber knows, is precisely how the causal interaction between mind and body can be explained. It is a split between the UL quadrant (mind) and UR quadrant (body or brain)—not between two levels of the UL quadrant.

Wilber does seem to be confused about what the mind-body problem is (as identified by philosophers for centuries—e.g., Schopenhauer’s “world-knot” or, more recently, Levine’s “explanatory gap,” and Chalmers’ “hard problem.” In IP, he says that at least one aspect of the “world-knot” is to understand how different levels of consciousness or interiority relate to each other:

“the insuperable problem (the world-knot) has been how to relate this mind to both the body (or the lower interior levels of feeling and desire) and to the Body (or objective organism, brain and material environment)” (p. 182).

But this is false—at least the first part is. The “world-knot” is not about relating higher and lower interior levels, about how reason and feelings or emotions are related. The confusion arises because Wilber uses the word “body” in two very different senses, which he distinguishes by capitalizing the B in the second sense. But Wilber’s “body” is not at all the same as that in the “mind-body” world-knot. It is, as he says, really another word for lower interior levelssuch as feeling and desire. However, the real mind-body problem is not to account for how different interior levels relate, it is to explain how interiors and exteriors are related. In other words, to explain how mind (in the broadest sense of “interior”) relates to what Wilber calls “Body,” or exteriors.

Wilber says the “inherent paradox” of the world-knot is “the body is in the mind, but the brain is in the Body.” But this paradox arises only if we accept his four-quadrant model, and his subsequent recasting of the mind-body problem. For most contemporary mind-body theorists, the statement “the body is in the mind” would be either meaningless or patently false. Ask any “average” mind-body theorist to choose between “mind in body” or “body in mind” and they will choose the former.

So, to characterize the mind-body problem in terms of a paradox, one part of which states “the body is in the mind” is to set up a straw man. No mind-body theorists, besides idealists and Wilberesque “integralists” would accept that premise. And without that premise, Wilber’s version of the world-knot paradox dissolves.

Wilber says, “the felt body is in the mind” (IP, p. 179)—but only on his model. For the rest of us, the sentence would be more meaningfully cast as “the feelings of the body are in the mind.” Expressed that way, it is an unproblematic tautology. Of course, feelings are in the mind. That’s not a problem. The real mind-body problem is: How are feelings in the body? ” That’s the hard problem. That’s the world-knot that materialists and dualists have been unable to unsnarl, as Wilber, following Griffin, correctly points out.

There are not “four mind-body problems” as Wilber says (one for each quadrant). There remains the original one: How are interiors causally related to exteriors—how do mind and body interact? Wilber’s “solution” is a promise of a transrational “nondual awakening”:

“As for the traditional mind-body problem . . . The Left-Hand domains refer loosely to “mind, and the Right-Hand domains to “body.” These are ultimately nondual, but that nonduality can only be realized with causal-to-nondual development, at which point the mind-body problem is not solved, but dissolved: seen to be a product of nescience, ignorance, or nonawakening. Short of that, the mind-body problem cannot be satisfactorily solved” (IP, p. 233).

What’s Wilber’s solution, then? Well, you have to evolve to a higher stage of consciousness beyond the rational mind and its higher visionary-logic stage (the one that creates TOEs). That’sa solution? On the one hand, he’s telling us that his “all-level, all-quadrant” model “substantially handles the mind/body problem,” while on the other hand he’s telling us the solution will be seen only in “nondual awakening.” But then he says: “As for the mind/body problem itself . . . I refer to my position as ‘interactionist,’ not so much because I believe that position really solves anything, but as a way to disavow the other ‘solutions’” (SES/CW, p. 574). This is Wilber’s “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t” mind-body shuffle: There is no sub-mystical solution; but here’s a sub-mystical solution anyway. Except it isn’t.

Ironically, although Wilber has done a great service integrating psychology and philosophy, one of his weaknesses shows up in the very area of philosophy intimately related to his topic—philosophy of mind,and particularly the mind-body problem.

Wilber reveals a surprisingly loose grasp of the subtle and key issues in philosophy of mind. For example, in IP, he gives a long footnote listing influential writers on the mind-problem over the last ten years. Heading that list is Nicholas Humphrey, a self-proclaimed materialist (Humphrey, 1992; de Quincey 2000b). Yet in summarizing the current state of thinking on this problem from the perspective of scientific materialism, Wilber says, “there is no way objective systems could give rise to ‘mental’ properties, and therefore those properties are simply illusory byproducts of complex systems, with no causal reality of their own” (IP, p. 175).

But this is a misrepresentation of the mainstream physicalist (or materialist) approach. Standard materialists do not hold this position—in fact, they take the opposite view. Many materialists (Nicholas Humphrey, John Searle, and Gerald Edleman, for example) claim that physical-biological evolution can account for the emergence of mental properties—e.g., subjectivity, qualia—from wholly objective raw stuff, such as nervous systems and brains. Wilber says materialists recognize the impossibility of this, but in fact most of them very definitely do not. What Wilber describes as the materialist position (IP, p. 175), is actually the position of criticsof materialism (such as Griffin [1998]; de Quincey, [1999]), or of mysterians (such as McGinn [1999]) who claim that the brain does produce consciousness but that understanding how it produces the miracle remains utterly mysterious.

Materialistically inclined mysterians such as McGinn or Galen Strawson are a small minority in current philosophy of mind, and do not represent the dominant position held by philosophers such as Searle, Dennett, Edelman. It is not the materialists who fuss about the impossibility of subjectivity emerging from wholly objective matter, but panpsychists such as Griffin or myself.

Wilber may have in mind some eliminative materialists (such as Paul and Patricia Churchland) who claim that consciousness, qualia, subjectivity, experience, beliefs, desires, purposes—all interiority in fact —are nothing but “folk fictions,” and therefore should be excised from our vocabulary. The Churchlands believe that once the science of neurobiology advances sufficiently, we will understand exactly how the brain works, and will no longer have any need for such folk fictions. But, again, the Churchlands do not represent the mainstream materialist approach.

Wilber’s discussion of the mind-body problem in IP emphasizes the difficulties that materialists and dualists say they have with their own positions. This is a very persuasive move, and highlights the very real difficulties materialists and dualists have in unsnarling the world-knot. But in this discussion, Wilber does not explicitly acknowledge that this very strategy is what David Griffin uses in Unsnarling the World-Knot.

I’m not denying that Wilber may be correct to propose that at some transrational level of consciousness we may “see through” the kind of logical knots that befuddle reason, and that mystics and shamans may indeed be privy to how mind and body are related. But, unless you are in that higher state or stage of consciousness and can experience the “solution” for yourself, Wilber’s proffered mind-body “solution” amounts to nothing more than promissory idealism or integralism.

It is, in fact, an idealist counterpoint to the kind of promissory materialism we get from neurophilosophers and eliminativists like the Churchlands, or cognitivists such as Dennett, or evolutionary biophilosophers such as Edleman or Searle. It is, also, an idealist variation of McGinn’s “mysterianism.” But neither mystery nor promises fill the explanatory gap. No filler, no solution.

This is not to single out Wilber. Unless we make a radical departure in our modes of thought, from substance- to process-thinking, it seems highly unlikely anyone will ever “unsnarl the world knot” (Griffin, 1998). This radical turn is what Alfred North

Whitehead attempted, and by many accounts accomplished, in Process and Reality. Without something like Whitehead’s process approach, Wilber cannot be expected to solve the mind-body puzzle. But by proposing his promissory integralism as a solution, he leaves himself vulnerable to severe criticism from anyone versed in the nuances of the mind-body problem. His claim to have “resolved” the problem will be dismissed, at best, as naïve, or, worse, as a case of inflated hubris.

I agree with Wilber that a full understanding of the mind-body solution involves a development of consciousness. In de Quincey (1994), I explain why I agree with Colin McGinn that the mind-body problem may remain a mystery, opaque to a reason-only solution—but, I point out, not to an extrarational processsolution involving, for example, feeling and intuition.

However, I also argue that at the level of rational understanding, the most coherent solution to date, in my evaluation, is that offered by Whitehead. In Process and Reality,he reframes the mind-body problem away from discussion in terms of spatial relationships and interaction of substances, and proposes instead a solution in terms of temporal relations between subjects and objects. I think Whitehead has gone a long way, perhaps as far as reason can take us, toward providing a coherent rational solution to the mind-body problem. But precisely because the essence of his solution directs our attention to time,it is difficult for reason to fully grasp and hold the relevant abstractions. Reason is not a very effective tool for dealing with experienced time,with duration. Whitehead, recognizing this, invented a network of neologisms in an attempt to nudge us out of our habitual grooves of rational, substance-based modes of thought. Nevertheless, the deep meaning of his solution seems to elude a steady, clear, unambiguous rational understanding. Even with Whitehead’s brilliant exposition, we still need to help it along with a shift in our own consciousness, a shift that augments his rational arguments with extrarational feeling and insight. Speaking for myself, I understand Whitehead best when I allow myself to embody his concepts, to feel them, preverbally, to let them take root in my cells. So, there is an extrarational, somatic, component to the mind-body solution. You have to feel it in your body as well as think it in your mind—which is, perhaps, what we should have expected all along. After all, it is the mind-body problem.

• Integralism (cont'd)-2