A Practical Guide to Building an Integral World

We stand at the start of a new millennium with a growing awareness of what is wrong with our civilization but little agreement as to what to do. From environmental crises to democratic systems dominated by moneyed interests, the list of dangers is long and growing. Each issue has a band of defenders who struggle to right that particular wrong but, because these bands are disjointed, the broad movement they serve remains incoherent and weak. The broad movement is usually described as toward "sustainable civilization," but its precise designation is "integral society." The challenge for the emerging "new science" is to provide a framework for understanding that unifies and gives direction to the disparate efforts that comprise the integral movement. This framework must address three needs. First, it must provide a sound understanding of why, despite our sophistication, things seem to be going badly in so many spheres. Secondly, it must present a believable vision of where our civilization should be headed. Finally, it must provide a sense that there are concrete steps we can take to achieve the deep dreams that most of us actually share. What we need, in short, is not more disparate insights, but rather a collective intellectual unity that integrates existing insights into a logically coherent and emotionally compelling whole. Such integration, however, cannot be constructed artificially, by committee or consensus. Rather, true integration can only come from a unified scientific understanding of why various ideas connect. Today, a scientific story capable of such unifying understanding is found in the expanded theory of evolution that is emerging from the union of a broad range of scientific efforts. This theory also serves as a unifying thread for an integrated new science. This article outlines the "dynamic" view of evolution and how it unites integral efforts.     

Holism Revisited: Its Principles 75 Years On

It was seventy five years ago that the book, Holism and Evolution by Jan Christiaan Smuts was published. Although the book was very popular at the time, it has not been accepted by either the scientific or the philosophical community. Its complex message was truncated to the truism "the whole is more than the sum of its parts," which became the definition of holism, but ensured its rejection by the skeptic as a too general statement to be of practical value. It is very unlikely that there was a sinister plot to sideline this important work. The simplest explanation is that Smuts' concepts, which suggest many of the later ideas of systems thinkers, were simply too far ahead of their time. Now however, at the dawn of the new millennium, the time is perfect to rediscover Smuts and to apply his ideas with a "holos consciousness" to the many burning issues that humanity faces. In this paper the main principles of Holism are explained.     

为我国心理科学走向21世纪作出新的贡献

该文系作者在中国心理学会第八届代表大会上的报告 ,总结了中国心理学会第七届理事会 1997— 2 0 0 1年的工作。全文包括四个部分 :(1)开展学术交流 ,促进学科发展 ;(2 )传播心理科学知识 ,办好二个刊物 ;(3)加强国际交流 ,积极为 2 0 0 4年北京国际心理学大会作准备 ;(4)加强学会自身的建设 ,提高学会的影响力     

What place does religion have in the ethical thinking of scientists and engineers?

Religion, defined as ‘the idea of a state that transcends ourselves and our world and the working out of the consequences of that idea’, may influence the ethical thinking of scientists and engineers in two ways. The first is at the level of the individual and how personal beliefs affect the choice of research, design or development projects, relationships with other researchers and the understandings of the consequences of research on other aspects of life. The second level is that of the social and cultural setting in which scientists and engineers work; how society decides which research to sponsor, how to apply the results of scientific discovery and which technology it chooses to develop and for what purposes. In neither of these areas is religious belief a necessary condition for scientists and engineers to pursue one course of action rather than another. The existence of religious belief within the individual and society is, though, part of the ethical framework in which scientist and engineers work and therefore something to which attention should be paid. Religion provides a particular perspective on what should be. Conversely science and technology provide information on the nature of the person and the universe in which we live, which must be taken into account when theologians and religious moralists apply their ethical norms and principles.     

工业现代化中的宏观工效学

工效学这个名词原义笼统模糊,创始者本想把它限于生物科学的研究范围。实践证证,要提高工作效率,不能不从过去的科学管理的个体研究扩大到社会组织的宏观考虑。我国今天提倡的“满负荷工作法”,其性质类似目标管理,但精神则应该说是整体论的。加上,现在又提出我国经济的出路在于参与国际大循环。所以“工效学”之前,有必要冠以“宏观”的字首。整体观才能够赋予组织功能以必要的弹性,通过从阶层管理到异阶管理,藉以保证经济生活的健康发展。     

Justice, Holism and Principles

Some moral theorists defend a holistic account of practical reasons and deny that the possibility of moral thought depends upon the existence of moral principles. This article explores the implications of this position for theorising about justice, which has often aspired to provide us with an ordered list of principles to govern our institutions and practices.

Culture of Science: Strange History of the Methodological Thinking in Psychology

In pre-World-War-II psychology, two directions in methodological thought—the German–Austrian and North American ways—could be differentiated. After the war, the German–Austrian methodological orientation has been largely abandoned. Compared to the pre-WWII German–Austrian psychology, modern mainstream psychology is more concerned with accumulation of facts than with general theory. Furthermore, the focus on qualitative data—in addition to quantitative data—is rarely visible. Only external–physical or statistical-rather than psychological controls are taken into account in empirical studies. Fragments—rather than wholes—and relationships are studied, and single cases that contradict group data are not analyzed. Instead of complex psychological types simple trait differences are studied, and prediction is not followed by thorough analysis of the whole situation. Last (but not least), data are not systematically related to complex theory. These limits have hindered the growth of knowledge in the behavioral sciences. A new return to an updated version of the German–Austrian methodological trajectory is suggested.

Intersubjectivity as Co-phenomenology: From the Holism of Meaning to the Being-in-the-world-with-others

I outline in this paper a pragmatical approach to meaning. Meaning is defined as a phenomenologically experienced construal. As such, it is a dynamic object whose first evidence comes from the first person rather than the third one. At the same time, the approach assumes that meaning is not an individual creation, but rather an intersubjective one. Origins of meaning are also to be founded not ‘in the head’ of a cognitive system or subject, but in the intersubjective space contingently formed between a subject (S), an other (O) and a common object (R), which they talk about. Approaching this minimal communicative situation therefore requires realizing that the phenomenological dimension is always implied in any intersubjective encounter. The observed synchronized co-feeling among subjects, upon which language comprehension takes place, I call ‘co-phenomenology’. When analyzed in this way, intersubjectivity shows at the same time its social, phenomenological and biological dimensions.

Finding a Locus for Dialogue between Genetics and Theology

Christoph Schönborn, Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, has dismissed Pope John Paul II's position on theology and science as “rather vague and unimportant.” I believe that the Cardinal's analysis of John Paul II's views on evolution and Christian faith deserves a careful and detailed response from all those concerned with the constructive dialogue between science and theology that John Paul II so strongly supported for decades. My ‘bottom line’ is twofold. First, Cardinal Schönborn's concern over evolution is unnecessary: What scientists view as chance in nature Christians can see as God's ongoing and purposeful action in the creation of life and humanity. Second, the Cardinal's concern is also misplaced. When evolutionary theory is co-opted by atheists to serve their agenda the Cardinal should challenge the atheists, not the science they falsely claim proves their views.     

荆其诚的国际心理学思想与实践

荆其诚先生是当代中国著名的心理学家, 是改革开放后中国心理学界在国际上的代言人。他视野开阔, 是颇具造诣的实验心理学家, 也是功底深厚的理论心理学家。文章没有涉及他在认知与发展心理学方面所做的贡献, 只从理论方面分析他的国际心理学思想及实践, 找寻他对心理学研究所持的基本态度与价值追求。文章认为荆其诚在宏观把握心理学的发展逻辑后, 以“两个阵营的心理学”来界定心理学的现状, 坚信心理学的未来是一种国际的心理学。为了达成这一学术理想, 荆其诚不仅撰文将国外心理学介绍到中国、将中国心理学推介到国外, 还积极投身于国际心理学组织与实践, 长期担任国际心联的领导职务, 组织并主持召开了2004年第28届国际心理学大会。荆其诚的一生为彰显心理学的国际维度、促进国际心理学交流、将中国心理学推上世界舞台作出了巨大贡献。     

Minimal Empiricism Without Dogmas

John McDowell has defended a position called minimal empiricism, that aims to avoid the oscillation between traditional empiricism’s commitment to a set of contents working as external justifiers for our system of beliefs and a coherentist position where our thought receives no constraint from the world. We share McDowell’s dissatisfaction with both options, but find his minimal empiricism committed to the idea of a tribunal of experience where isolated contents are infused into our network of inferences. This commitment is prone to sceptical attacks and waters down McDowell’s holism. We propose to retain McDowell’s partial re-enchantment of nature—without appealing to McDowell’s Kantian conception of experience—, and argue that it is sufficient to avoid the oscillation and to make sense of the objectivity of thought.

Individuals: an essay in revisionary metaphysics

We naturally think of the material world as being populated by a large number of individuals. These are things, such as my laptop and the particles that compose it, that we describe as being propertied and related in various ways when we describe the material world around us. In this paper I argue that, fundamentally speaking at least, there are no such things as material individuals. I then propose and defend an individual-less view of the material world I call “generalism”.

The Semantic Theory of Truth: Field’s Incompleteness Objection

According to Field’s influential incompleteness objection, Tarski’s semantic theory of truth is unsatisfactory since the definition that forms its basis is incomplete in two distinct senses: (1) it is physicalistically inadequate, and for this reason, (2) it is conceptually deficient. In this paper, I defend the semantic theory of truth against the incompleteness objection by conceding (1) but rejecting (2). After arguing that Davidson and McDowell’s reply to the incompleteness objection fails to pass muster, I argue that, within the constraints of a non-reductive physicalism and a holism concerning the concepts of truth, reference and meaning, conceding Field’s physicalistic inadequacy conclusion while rejecting his conceptual deficiency conclusion is a promising reply to the incompleteness objection.

Post-genomics, between reduction and emergence

It is frequently said that biology is emerging from a long phase of reductionism. It would be certainly more correct to say that biologists are abandoning a certain form of reductionism. We describe this past form, and the experiments which challenged the previous vision. To face the difficulties which were met, biologists use a series of concepts and metaphors - pleiotropy, tinkering, epigenetics - the ambiguity of which masks the difficulties, instead of solving them. In a similar way, the word “post-genomics” has different meanings, depending upon who uses it. Which of these meanings will become dominant in the future is an open question.     

Communication and Content: Circumstances and Consequences of the Habermas-Brandom Debate

The recent exchange between Robert Brandom and Jürgen Habermas provides an opportunity to compare and contrast some aspects of their systems. Both present broadly inferential accounts of meaning, according to which the content of an expression is determined by its role in an inferential network. Several problems confront such theories of meaning - one of which threatens the possibility of communication because content is relative to an individual's set of beliefs. Brandom acknowledges this problem and provides a solution to it. The point of this paper is to argue that it arises for Habermas's theory as well. I then present several solutions Habermas could adopt and evaluate their feasibility. The result is that Habermas must alter his theory of communicative action by contextualizing the standards for successful communication.     

Holistic Human Development

One of the tenets of holism is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Applying this theorem epistemologically, we could say that a holistic view is greater than the sum of the specialized views that contribute to it. Within the framework of three divergent worldviews (mechanistic, organismic and contextual) as originally proposed by Pepper (World hypotheses: A study in evidence, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1961), holism as both a philosophical position and a practical approach to research is applied to the study of adult human development. Because spiritual development has received less scholarly attention than biological, cognitive, or emotional functioning, topics such as meditation research, non-religious spirituality, and the concept of soul are covered to promote a balanced developmental perspective. Historical and philosophical factors leading to holism are described, a sampling of interdisciplinary dialogue between psychology and theology is presented, and conclusions regarding the need for holistic thinking and the relationship between religion and spirituality are offered.