Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber’s Quadrants
Ken Wilber’s first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, emphasized the layered stages of individual development, and the worldview of each (issues, problem-solving approaches, etc.). Through a series of subsequent books, Wilber pursued specific emphases of these worldviews and the relationship between them. Then, after intense study of over a hundred different hierarchies of human development—individual, social, anthropological, philosophical, spiritual, etc.—he realized that each of the sequences represented a part of the truth, and they somehow fit together into a larger pattern of “all that is.” He aligned them in a matrix with four parts, now known as quadrants. The process of articulating all these parts was very simple.
First, Wilber noticed that some of the sequences were about interiors (subjective emotions, thoughts, aspirations, etc.), while others were criteria of exteriors (sizes, shapes, quantities, structures, etc.). This process can be shown by drawing a vertical line down a blank sheet of paper, with one side representing interiors and the other exteriors.
Figure 1: Interiors and Exteriors
INTERIOR

EXTERIOR
Next he found that some of the sequences described individual things (personal development, emotions, individual constraints or expectations, etc.); others applied to shared or collective things (economic systems, social units, cultural expectations, etc.). So he divided the same page with a horizontal line (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Interiors and Exteriors X Individual and Collective
INTERIOR

INDIVIDUAL
EXTERIOR
-------------------------------------
INDIVIDUAL
INTERIOR

COLLECTIVE
EXTERIOR

COLLECTIVE
Wilber saw this configuration included all the sequences with which he had been wrestling. Each quadrant could be identified by its placement: Upper Left (UL), Upper Right (UR), Lower Right (LR), and Lower Left (LL). Each had logical themes that emerged from the labels. The UL quadrant (interior, individual) contained “I” interpretations and intentions; he called it the subjective area. The UR (exterior, individual) contained “it” things that could easily be measured—behavioral, empirical; he called it the objective area. The LR (exterior, collective) suggested interobjective, socioeconomic relationships—another type of “it.” The LL (interior, collective) showed the intersubjective “we;” he called it the cultural area.
The big picture on all this is that the two right quadrants (two types of “it”) align with a materialist-scientific perspective and sociological Truth. The UL quadrant (the “I”) corresponds with the Beautiful, with aesthetics. And the LL quadrant (the “we”) corresponds with morality or the Good. So, on a single page he was able to denote Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. The process was getting both interesting and promising.
Next Wilber recognized that to each quadrant could be assigned what Habermas had termed a “validity claim:” an inherent criterion to help identify whether the things associated most directly with that quadrant were indeed properly considered there. The validity claim for the UL subjective quadrant was truthfulness. Our understanding of subjective realities depends on self-reports; the only test of such information is whether the person is being truthful. The validity claim for the UR objective quadrant was truth, according to the empirical, scientific meaning of the term. The validity claim for the LR social quadrant was functional fit—for example, the extent to which socioeconomic organization fits with social experiences and professed aspirations. The validity claim of the LL cultural quadrant was justice, the extent to which group experiences were consistent with the group’s moral and legal parameters. (Note: In a Wilberian sense “social” indicates infrastructure [external—buildings, transportation and information systems, land use, and so forth]. “Culture” denotes value-oriented worldspace [internal—morés, shared expectations, perceived constraints, and so forth].) When all this is combined on one sheet of paper, the result corresponds with Figure 3.


Figure 3: Wilber’s Quadrants

Upper Left (UL)

INTERIOR

(Individual, Intentional)

INTERPRETATIVE/SUBJECTIVE/“I”

Validity Claim: Truthfulness

INDIVIDUAL

Upper Right (UR)

EXTERIOR

(Individual, Behavioral)

EMPIRICAL/OBJECTIVE/“It”

Validity Claim: Truth
INDIVIDUAL
COLLECTIVE

(Collective worldspace)

INTERSUBJECTIVE/CULTURAL/”We”

Validity Claim: Justice

INTERIOR

Lower Left (LL)
COLLECTIVE

(Collective, Empirical)

INTEROBJECTIVE/SOCIAL/”It”

Validity Claim: Functional Fit
EXTERIOR
Lower Right (LR)

With a few abiding rules, this system functions effectively to engage the intellect and the imagination; it is a wonderful tool for gaining clarity on issues. Consistent with the integral emphasis, the quadrants are all connected—the quadrant structure encourages us to be inclusive, to see interconnections. Another way of expressing this principle is to acknowledge that each of the exterior things has an interior, and each thing in the universe is part of some larger thing. As mentioned in the first essay, subatomic particles are parts of atoms, which are parts of molecules, which are parts of cells, which are parts of organs, which are parts of organisms, which are parts of social units… One way of recognizing these interconnections—to recognize that each thing exists by itself, and is also part of a larger thing—is to acknowledge that our placement of things in the respective quadrants is really just to facilitate consideration of it. There is a difference between the quadrant map and the actual territory; we want to use the quadrants to tease out relationships that otherwise might have gone unnoticed, but the system is not intended to replace reality. Having identified these caveats, a little time directed to illustrate the quadrants will demonstrate their usefulness to educators. For example, Figure 4 shows how the qauadrants apply to the work of teachers.
Figure 4: Domains of Education from a Teacher’s Point of View
Subjective

RATIONALE FOR THE WORK
Objective
CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION
Cultural

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY
Social
ADMINISTRATION
In Figure 4 the rationale for the work is portrayed as a subjective (UL) phenomenon. Why is the teacher engaged in this type of teaching? This question can only be answered personally, because they are about subjective interiors.
The objective (UR) quadrant is the domain of classroom instruction. This is the arena that should be the core of our daily work, where teacher expectations—goals and objectives—interact and help shape student learning. Under this heading we associate curriculum, classroom logistics, and activities and interactions.
The social (LR) quadrant is the reality of the socioeconomic system; its validity claim is “functional fit,” in part the correspondence between how we earn our living and how we think. It is about resources, both human and material, as reflected most concisely in the budget, the province of administration. Many educators focus mostly on funds assigned to equip and stock their classrooms—this is an accurate but partial view. Educators themselves are essential resources (denoted “personnel” in budgets), as are the physical plant in which they teach and the furniture that occupies those spaces (capital outlay), the procedures by which students come to and leave their classes, and the services of volunteer tutors.
The cultural (LL) quadrant is associated with professional identity. In this domain we consider professional networking, such as occurs through professional association conferences, contact with persons at other locations who provide similar services, and the reading and writing of professional journals.
Think about the quadrants as representing these four domains can facilitate thinking about education: rationale for the work (subjective or UL), instruction (objective or UR), administration (social or LR), and professional identity (cultural or LL). The next display is intended to use as a worksheet you can use sort out concepts associated with the quadrants for your school of thought (SOT). After that some potential errors of the Wilberian system are introduced from the relevant literature.
Some Themes of the _____________________________ School of Thought
Upper Left (UL)
INTERIOR
(Individual, Intentional)
INTERPRETATIVE/SUBJECTIVE/“I”
Validity Claim: Truthfulness
INDIVIDUAL

















Upper Right (UR)
EXTERIOR
(Individual, Behavioral)
EMPIRICAL/OBJECTIVE/“It”
Validity Claim: Truth
INDIVIDUAL














COLLECTIVE
(Collective worldspace)
INTERSUBJECTIVE/CULTURAL/”We”
Validity Claim: Justice
INTERIOR
















Lower Left (LL)
COLLECTIVE
(Collective, Empirical)
INTEROBJECTIVE/SOCIAL/”It”
Validity Claim: Functional Fit
EXTERIOR

















Lower Right (LR)


Eleven Common Errors Identified By and About Wilber

1. The pre-trans fallacy

“Is the entirely emotional, irrational state of mind the same as the superrational, transcendent mind which is aided by intuition? "To the untutored eye," "prerational and transrational states appear...nonrational." There are at least two results of this error. First, "Genuine mystical and contemplative states are seen as a regression...to infantile states....The superconscious- ness is reduced to the subconscious, the transpersonal is collapsed to the prepersonal...." Second, "if one...confuses pre and trans, then one will elevate all prerational states to some sort of transrational glory..." (SES, p. 206). "...interior evolution... [goes] from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal" (A Brief History…, p. 245). "...typical or conventional culture is not often imbued with a great deal of genuine spirituality. But the remedy is to go post-conventional, not pre-conventional. Spirit transcends and includes both culture and nature, and thus integrates and unifies both." (A Brief History…, p. 290).

2. Anti-elitism elitists—two examples follow:

class=Section2>
A. "...many feminists and many ecophilosophers claim...any sort of hierarchy or 'ranking' is oppressive, even fascist. They say that...value ranking is 'old paradigm' or 'patriarchal' or simply oppressive...ought to be replaced with a linking, not a ranking, worldview. They're...aggressive with this point... hurl...vicious accusations...This is a bit disingenuous...you can't avoid hierarchy. Even the antihierarchy theorists... have their own hierarchy, their own ranking...[T]hey think linking is better than ranking. Well, that's a hierarchy, a ranking...But...they don't own up to this...their hierarchy becomes unconscious, hidden, denied. Their hierarchy denies hierarchy. They have a ranking system that says ranking is bad." (A Brief History…, pp. 28-28; emphasis in original).

B. "In Thomas Kuhn's now-famous formulation, scientific facts are embedded in cultural practices or paradigms. This does not deny the objective component of the knowledge; it denies...the knowledge is merely objective or innocently empirical. In other words...to assert...all truth is 'strictly empirical,' empiricists have to stand in intersubjective structures that their own theories cannot even account for. The linguistic assertion that all valid knowledge is empirical is not itself empirical, and thus...they contradict themselves..." ("An Informal Overview...," p. 123; emphasis in original).

3. Gross reductionism

"Gross reductionists...do not believe...interiors exist...so ...meaning, value, consciousness, depth, culture...never come up for them....Gross reductionism first reduces all quadrants to the Upper Right, and second—this is the gross part—then reduces all the higher order structures of the Upper-Right quadrant to atomic or subatomic particles." (SES, p. 129-130; emphasis in original).

One dimension of this problem is that the attributes of the left and the right quadrants diverge. For example, "none of the Left Hand aspects have simple location. You can point to the brain, or to a rock, or to a town, but you cannot simply point to envy, or pride, or consciousness, or value, or intention, or desire." Further, "All Right Hand paths involve perception, but all Left Hand paths involve interpretation. And there is a simple reason for this: surfaces can be seen, but depth must be interpreted." (A Brief Hisotry…, p. 90; emphasis in original).

A second dimension of gross reductionism is that depth (quality) and span (quantity) become confused. See A Brief History…, p. 103 for a discussion of this problem in relation to "ecofascism." "...depth and span was ditched in favor of merely... span alone. Qualitative distinctions were replaced merely with quantitative distinctions and technical measurements. 'What does it mean?' was fundamentally replaced with 'What does it do?' Intrinsic value disappeared into empirical action terms. 'What worth?' was replaced with 'How much?' Greater was replaced with bigger. Cultural meaning drifted into functional fit and holistic interaction of surfaces. Morals melted into systems theories. Eros was converted to instrumental-functional efficacy, and Agape melted down into an affirmation of ordinary Descended life." (A Brief History…, p. 418; emphasis in original).

4. Subtle reductionism (flatland)

"Subtle reductionism simply reduces every event in the Left Hand to its corresponding aspect in the Right Hand. That is, subtle reductionism reduces all I's and all we's to their corresponding empirical correlates, reduces them to its. Mind is reduced to brain; praxis is reduced to techne; interiors are reduced to bits of digital its; depth is reduced to endless surfaces roaming a flat and faded system; levels of quality are reduced to levels of quantity; dialogical interpretation is reduced to monological gaze—in short, the multidimensional universe is rudely reduced to flatland." (Eye of Spirit, p. 21).

5. Narcissism

"Deconstruction maintained that all meaning is context-dependent, and contexts are boundless....Postmodern deconstruction ...leads precisely and inevitably to nihilism: there is no genuine meaning anywhere, only nested deceptions. And this leaves, in the place of art as sincere statement, art as anarchy, anchored only in egoic whim and narcisstic display. Into the vacuum created by the implosion that is so much of postmodernism, rushes the ego triumphant." (Eye of Spirit, p. 98). "....'the interpreter, not the artist, creates the work'....This view... claims that there is no universal truth at all—except for its own, which is universal and superior in a world where nothing is supposed to be universal or superior at all..." (pp. 129-131).
6. Dominator hierarchies

"...you can...see how holarchies can go pathological. If the higher levels can exert influence over the lower levels, they can also overdominate or even repress and alienate the lower levels. And that leads to a host of pathological difficulties, in both the individual and society at large....in psychoanalysis (shadow holons refuse integration), critical social theory (ideological holons distort open communication), democratic revolutions (monarchical or fascist holons oppress the body politic), medical science interventions (cancerous holons invade a benign system), radical feminist critiques (patriarchal holons dominate the public sphere), and so on." (SES, p. 22). "...the cure for this pathology, in all systems, is essentially the same: rooting out the pathological holons so that the holarchy itself can return to harmony....It is not getting rid of holarchy per se, but arresting (and integrating) the arrogant holons." (p. 22).

7. Retro-romanticism

"...there is a price to be paid for every evolutionary step forward. Old problems are solved or defused, only to introduce new and sometimes more complex difficulties. But the retrogressive Romantics—whether the ecomasculinists or the ecofeminists—simply take the problems of the subsequent level and compare them with the accomplishments of the previous level, and thus claim everything has gone downhill past their favorite epoch. This is pretty perverse." (A Brief Hisotry…, p. 50; emphasis in original). "The Eco-Romantic solution—back to nature!—is...no solution at all..." (p. 276). "...why not get serious about this retrogression and really carry it to its conclusion: everything past the Big Bang was a Big Mistake" (p. 295).

8. Mere ascension (Eros)

"Eros is the love of the lower reaching up to the higher (Ascent)....In individual development, one ascends via Eros (or expanding to a higher and wider identity)....unintegrated Eros does not just reach up to the higher levels and transcend the lower; it alienates the lower, represses the lower—and does so out of fear (Phobos), fear that the lower will 'drag it down'—always it is the fear that the lower will 'contaminate it,' 'dirty it,' 'pull it down.' Phobos is Eros in flight from the lower instead of embracing the lower. Phobos is Ascent divorced from Descent. And Phobos, we can see, is the ultimate force of all repression (a rancid transcendence)....They are dangerous people, these Ascenders..." SES, pp. 339-340; emphasis in original).

9. Mere descension (Agape)

"Agape is the love of the higher reaching down to the lower (Descent)...In individual development, one integrates via Agape (or reaching down to embrace with care all lower holons), so that balanced development transcends but includes—it is negation and preservation, ascent and descent, Eros and Agape....Thanatos, on the other hand, is Descent divorced from Ascent. It is the lower in flight from the higher, compassion gone mad: not just embracing the lower but regressing to the lower, not just caressing but remaining stuck in it (fixation, arrest)—cosmic reductionism run amok....They are dangerous people, these Descenders, for in the name of Agape and compassion, otherwise so appropriate, they mistakenly destroy all higher in a frantic attempt to embrace the lower." (SES, pp. 339-341; emphasis in original).

10. Scientism (a result of reductionism)

"The Big Three [art, morals, science] began to collapse into the Big One: empirical science, and science alone could pronounce on ultimate reality. Science...became scientism...it didn't just pursue its own truths, it aggressively denied...there were any other truths at all!" (A Brief History…, p. 265).

11. Wilberism (based on Lane's critique)

"...the tendency to 'inflate,' to 'exaggerate,' to 'hype'... things which are not yet knowable. It is...the inclination to indulge in spiritual hyperbole, gross exaggerations that do not (perhaps cannot) convey the precision necessary for the progression of transpersonal psychology as a science. Wilber...exaggerates way too much...on matters of ultimate importance. I don't think he does it intentionally...but...it fundamentally taints his work... most reductionistic scientists...cannot distinguish Wilberian gems from Wilberian rubbish. I write this...not so much to 'dis' Wilber ...but to...frame what I think limits the import of his research on the harder sciences..." (Lane, 1996, pp. 1-2).

References

Lane, D. (1996). Critique of Ken Wilber: Prologue. MSAC
Philosophy Group (on line at
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dlane.wil.html)
[a ten part series—the first is Ken Wilber's Achilles' heel].

Wilber, K. (1996). A brief history of everything. Boston:
Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (1995). An informal overview of transpersonal studies.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 27(2), 107-129.

Wilber, K. (1995). (SES) Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of
evolution. Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (1997). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a
world gone slightly mad. Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (1993/1977). The spectrum of consciousness. Wheaton,
Illinois: The Theosophical Publishing House.