Wilber on Post-Structuralism

From Excerpt A to Volume 2 Kosmos Trilogy:

Probability Space in the AQAL Matrix

Because "postmodernism" has often meant "post-structuralism," laypeople often misunderstand just what a "structure" is (and is not). Among experts, there is actually a broad and strong agreement as to the meaning of a "structure," which is generally defined--by Sheldrake, Piaget, Habermas, Francisco Varela, Carol Gilligan, Jane Loevinger, etc.--as a "dynamic system of self-organizing processes that maintain themselves as patterns through their dynamic reproduction."⁸ As dynamic self-maintaining patterns, structures are not fixed and unchanging, but rather are "unstably stable" (or a mixture of "circularity and openness"--i.e., oldness and newness--i.e., karma and creatively--i.e., include and transcend), and thus are capable of flexible adaptation to fluctuations: they evolve through "structural coupling" with enacted environments (we say, "tetra-evolve"). A structure is materially different moment to moment; its pattern or form, however, is unstably stable and endures as a Kosmic habit for as long as that class of holons exists in spacetime (i.e., for as long as it negotiates the selection pressures in the AQAL matrix).

It is common in postmodern forms of "new paradigms" to say that "structure" has been replaced by "process." Actually, of course, structure was always defined as dynamic processes that reproduce themselves. But there are indeed two aspects of structures that researchers keep emphasizing: their capacity for fluid change (e.g., accommodation and adaptation--or adjusting to their communions); and their capacity, if conditions are right, for remaining incredibly stable over long periods of time (e.g., autopoiesis and assimilation--or stable agency).

Deep structures are simply probability waves. Does not cover the great diversity of surface features, expression:

What is required, then, is a way to account for "structure" without falling, shall we say, into structuralism, or a reification of structures as some sort of ontologically existing molds (which is what both the perennial philosophers and the structuralists did, in their own ways, both of which need to be jettisoned in that regard).

We saw that deep features are inherited, not surface features. That is, even though the general patterns (or morphogenetic grooves) of these holons are handed to us by Kosmic karma, all of the actual contents, surface features, and expressions of these habitual patterns are determined by relative, culturally, and personally contingent factors in all four quadrants.

But this is where we start to move beyond any of the typical definitions of "deep structures," "deep features," or "deep patterns": for Integral Post-Metaphysics, a "deep pattern" is not an actually existing form or structure but simply a term that represents the probability of finding a particular type of holon in a particular mode of spacetime.

tags technorati : Ken Wilber

tags technorati : post-metaphysics