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Integral Theory - Ken Wilber - Human Development

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CHAPTER

The Evolution of Panpsychism

I want everyone to get to the idea of something like a panpsychism that there is consciousness or something like consciousness, proto-quality at various levels. And I've never even been comfortable with Whitehead's presentation of prehension because it seems like he's putting just a little bit too complex subjective realities into an extremely simplified form. For some people, they just not going to leave atoms, have any sort of prehensION at all. So in those sort of worst cases, I'll say fine, you can see the evolutionary sequences in all the quadrants.

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Speaker 2
And if you don't mind, I just want to interject one thing so the listeners follow it and who are new to your work. I want everyone to get to the idea of something like a panpsychism that there is consciousness or something like consciousness, proto-quality at various levels. You notice that all of the levels that Ken described and he said, hold on, are self-organizing systems in universe. So he didn't say there's something that it's like to be your car or assault shaker, which is a complicated non-self-organizing system. When you look at the self-organization of atoms or molecules or cells, the idea that there is a self other than self-distinction from a self-organizing boundary that occurs with the internal and external forces that make that boundary is a radically clearer way of thinking of panpsychism than anything that you can identify at all, even if non-self-organizing has a proto-quality. So it's just an important thing to make sure you
Speaker 1
get. And I've never even been comfortable with Whitehead's presentation of prehension because it seems like he's putting just a little bit too complex subjective realities into an extremely simplified form. And so it's not quite enough. So I've always thought, particularly at the lower stages of overall development starting with quarks or even strings, quarks, atoms, molecules, is that they certainly have an exterior. I mean, every scientist in the world would maintain that they've got some sort of exterior. And I simply maintain, well, yeah, the exteriors don't make any sense without interiors. They have to go together. So whatever the exterior is, it's got an interior. And I'm not a panpsychic. I'm a pan interiorist. Anything's got an outside, it's got an inside. It just doesn't make sense. It just has no sense at all. And then you can put anything you want to in it. And for some people, they just not going to leave atoms, have any sort of prehension at all. And so in those sort of worst cases, I'll say fine, you can see the evolutionary sequences in all the quadrants. So wherever you're comfortable putting consciousness in, do it, presumably by shrimp or deer or apes, at some point it pops in there. And the only important thing is don't collapse the quadrants. That's the disaster of trying to reduce mind to brain or brain to mind. That doesn't work. And that's the whole point about the four quadrants is that they are irreducible. And that's just a very simple but extremely important rule of thumb that stops an enormous number of absolutely catastrophic confusions.

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