INTRODUCTION PART I PART II PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 PART V NOTES Notes 1-8 Notes 9-19 Notes 20-30

Interpretation in Both Senses

     Up to this point, we have been focusing on inquiry into past actuals (or items that can reasonably be said to already exist in the four quadrants); we are not yet talking about inquiry into future potentials, which includes inquiry into the frothy edge of today's evolutionary unfolding; inquiry into events that are just emerging; inquiry into the limitless number of different forms of translation that arise moment to moment; inquiry into the transcendental components of any prehension; inquiry into realities that are co-created by the mode of the inquiry itself; inquiry into higher states that are already present as general realms--such as waking, dreaming, sleeping--but have not yet emerged at large and taken on specific forms as Kosmic habits and specific stages; and inquiry into any items that might be what we call involutionary givens, or realities that seem to be present from the very start of evolution (such as mathematics, certain physical laws, any truly archetypal forms, the morphogenetic gradient of Eros, and so on. Whether any or none of those exist will be discussed later).

     Rather, at this point, we are talking about inquiry into those occasions that in some sense pre-exist our inquiry as actual occasions: that is, the previous moment's AQAL universe and any of its enduring Kosmic habits that repeat themselves in this moment. That is why we refer to all of these inquiries as reconstructive inquiries, whether reconstructive science (e.g., physics, evolutionary biology), reconstructive phenomenology and introspection (e.g., depth-psychology inquiry into past repressed feelings); reconstructive hermeneutics (an investigation of the history of meaning in a culture); reconstructive anthropology (inquiry into the historical and prehistorical material traces of human becoming), and so on.

     And the question is, what part of our knowledge is based on those pre-existing facts or givens (handed to this moment via Kosmic inheritance), and what part on present interpretations of those facts (which transcend any past givens and cannot be found in the world of facts)?

     In other words, the difficulty is how to determine just what part of our reconstructive inquiries are closer to the facts as best as we can construe them, and what parts are mostly our interpretations or misinterpretations added to those facts. This is a difficult subject, and one that I believe can be best illumined by an AQAL approach. (See Sidebar A: "Who Ate Captain Cook? Integral Historiography in a Postmodern Age," posted on this site).

     But let me make a few observations on this delicate issue based on our discussion of Kosmic karma. The general idea is actually simple, at least in theory: the more that past actuals are repeated, the more they become fixed and ingrained Kosmic habits--and therefore the more these past actuals continue to exist as givens, as facts, handed to the future; and the longer they exist, the more stubborn they become, resisting bad interpretations strenuously.

     For example, when atoms first emerged, their emergence was in part determined by their own past givens (the already-existing quarks, electrons, protons, etc.--that is, the previously existing AQAL matrix at that time), but their emergence was also in part a stunning leap of creative novelty (i.e., that creative emergence was a new interpretive moment that could not be reduced to any of the pre-existing givens). As more and more electrons, protons, and neutrons followed those morphogenetic grooves and gathered together into atoms, the more the very forms of atoms themselves became ingrained as Kosmic habits. At some point, the creatively interpretive aspects of atomic formation began to wane, and the formal dimensions of atoms settled into habits handed to all succeeding moments.

     Today there are over 100 of these atomic elements, stable subcomponents of all subsequent gross-realm holons. In other words, in today's world, atoms have become such a deeply ingrained Kosmic habit that no creative emergent of today's manifest realm can fail to include them. This means that atoms have become deep features of the Kosmos handed to all future occasions, which must transcend-and-include their forms (or fail to exist). And therefore, these deep or formal atomic features strenuously resist re-interpretation by today's AQAL space (in both senses: the atoms themselves have ceased adding new interpretive emergents to their basic forms--as Whitehead would say, in this regard their creative novelty now approaches zero--and we humans ourselves therefore have very limited wiggle room in our interpretations of the formal aspects of atoms).

      In both senses is an important point, because it highlights two fundamental types of interpretation present in the Kosmos. The first and most fundamental is that interpretation is an intrinsic aspect of the Left-Hand quadrants of all holons, top to bottom. That is, any given moment's prehension contains an element of creative novelty and interpretive freedom, which cannot be reduced to, or explained by, the a priori givens and facts of the previous moment (and "interpretive freedom" means that how a holon feels its past is not fully contained in its past). As we said, even electrons have to interpret their environment--not to mention bacteria, worms, and wolves.

      Thus, interpretation is inherent in the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of being-in-the-world (all the way up, all the way down). We often emphasize the importance of intersubjectivity in interpretation (and therefore, in shorthand, we often identify interpretation as quintessentially a LL occasion, and will continue to do so), but all interior dimensions have a moment of interpretive freedom (although never divorced from the other quadrants).

      This moment's quadratic prehension is therefore an amalgam, an inseparable meshwork, of intrinsic facts and intrinsic interpretations. That is, this moment's quadratic prehension includes this moment's factual givens plus this moment's interpretive take on this moment's givens. And the sum total or amalgam of these facts-and-interpretations (i.e., this moment's AQAL matrix) is then handed, as given FACT, to the next moment's quadratic prehension, which then adds its own facts and interpretations, which altogether as amalgam are then handed, as FACT, to the next moment, which will then INTERPRET that or any such FACTS in ways not contained in those FACTS (which is why this moment transcends and includes its predecessors).

     In short, the FACT(S) of the previous moment plus the facts-and-interpretations of this moment are then handed, as prehensive amalgam, to the next moment as the new FACT (i.e., as the new sum total of past actuals as givens), which is then open to new interpretations, which can become new facts.... As we said, the interpretations of today become part of the facts of tomorrow as Kosmic inheritance.

      The second type of interpretation intrinsic to the Kosmos follows from the first, namely, holons prehend each other, and therefore must interpret each other's interpretations. The first type of interpretation is simply part of the creative freedom inherent in every holon (i.e., every holon must interpret the present moment to some degree); the second type is what happens when one holon specifically attempts to interpret another holon. This is where, shall we say, the interpretive game gets dicey.

      This is a very long topic. Let me simply say that, precisely because interpretation of the first type is intrinsic to the Kosmos, so is interpretation of the second type. Any time one holon encounters another, it is a four-quadrant-to-four-quadrant affair: each holon encounters the other not just as a given fact or third-person object, but as a first- and second-person interpretative affair. The deer watching a hunter must interpret the hunter's actions, and not merely react to each of them like, say, a falling rock. Precisely because all holons (all the way up and down) contain a moment of sentience, they will always have to interpret their environments and therefore interpret each other's interpretations.

      Needless to say, adequate interpretation therefore demands same-depth translation. If one holon attempts to interpret a holon of greater depth, something will definitely get lost in the translation. This, too, is a very long topic, so, for the moment, let us simply note that item and move on.

      By the time we come to human holons, their linguistic capacities greatly extend and complicate interpretation (in both senses). Postmodernism, of course, became (understandably) obsessed with the outrageous mystery of interpretation of the Other: how on earth can we even begin such a task? Postmodernism generally answered, We can't--it is basically impossible to adequately interpret a cultural Other, so we are left with incommensurable cultures, incompatible linguistic practices, noncommunicating lifeworlds, and pluralistic shards in all directions. As it turns out, postmodernism simply overstated its case, and the by the time that Derrida admitted (in Positions) that "the transcendental signifier does exist," then the game of extreme postmodernism had already run its course, although it left academia in the midst of a colossal legitimation crisis it has yet to resolve.

      We needn't follow postmodernism to its extreme in order to agree with its incredibly important if very partial truths, first and foremost of which is: interpretation is intrinsic to the Kosmos (which is the real meaning of "there is nothing outside of the text"). Postmodernism, of course, meant only the second type of interpretation that we are discussing, and then specifically in its human forms--that is, human beings are linguistic creatures and therefore must interpret everything that enters their world, since the "limits of my language are the limits of my world." But that view, taken in and by itself, ultimately has no meaning (and is, in fact, self-contradictory) unless it is plugged directly into the first type of interpretation, namely, all holons, top to bottom, have an interpretive component internal to their own makeup or actual constitution. Once interpretation is adequately situated in an AQAL configuration, the partial truths of postmodernism take their rightful and important place in a more integral orientation.

     So we have two types of interpretation intrinsic to the Kosmos, which we might call primary interpretation (inherent in the Left-Hand quadrants of all holons) and cross-interpretation (where one holon attempts to interpret another).

     Let us now return to the point we were making, which is that the older any interpretative moment, the less wiggle room left in its makeup. As we were saying, when we humans today investigate atoms, for example, we bring our own interpretations to them; but our interpretations have relatively little impact on these deeply ingrained Kosmic habits, which is why bad cross-interpretations are soundly rebuffed by the actions of the atoms themselves (which is why falsifiability is often--but not always--one of the many yardsticks used by reconstructive sciences: falsifiability is the rebuff of a bad cross-interpretation by the Other of the interpretation).

     Part of what our reconstructive inquiries unearth or disclose are some of the basic patterns, deep features, or ingrained Kosmic habits (as they appear in any of the quadrants). These deep patterns are those past actuals so habitually repeated that the probability waves become very tightly localized, hence our reconstructive inquiries can add only a few interpretative twists to these now-settled facts (and the older the habit, the less wiggle room left in its probability wave: the more stubborn the fact becomes--and the less open to interpretation--even though its original formation included intrinsically interpretative moments of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in its own internal makeup: at no point are facts ever merely factual). But the more settled the holon, the less wiggle room in its essential features.

     This is why we say that only deep patterns or features are inherited by collectives: they are what all holons of that class had in common as they first emerged, and therefore those patterns set up a strong collective morphic field; whereas all surface features--or what only a few holons did--were not strong enough to be collectively passed forward (although they are carried forward by the individuals themselves in their own prehensions and individual morphic fields).

      Of course, there is a type of spectrum or holarchy of collectives--individual, family, group, culture, nation, planetary, etc.²¹ The point is that there is individual karma, family karma, cultural karma, national karma, etc.; and those deep features, but not surface features, are inherited by the members of those families, groups, nations, etc. Notice that most of these collectively inherited patterns are not universal but are rather confined to one small group, subculture, or culture. Only a few deep features are universal or planetary, but the discovery of those universal patterns can only be unearthed by a reconstructive inquiry conducted by yellow or higher, since they involve universal patterns invisible to first-tier memes. We will return to these important points momentarily.

A Simple Analogy: The Grand Canyon

     As we said, the older the past actual, the less room for today's interpretations, in both senses (the holon's and ours--that is, the less the interpretive moments internally added by the holon itself, and the less wiggle room in our cross-interpretations of their features). Conversely, the more recent the past actuals, the more room for interpretation (in both senses).

     In psychological development, for example, this means that the earlier waves of development--particularly beige, purple, red, blue, and to some extent orange--are now fairly set as deep givens handed to the present as morphogenetic fields and interpretive habits, whereas the more recent waves are still in their formative periods.

     Let me give a simple analogy here. A very old, deeply ingrained Kosmic habit--such as, say, the beige meme or structure--is like the Grand Canyon: it is a morphogenetic groove cut so deeply into the Kosmos that it is virtually impossible to escape. If you are traveling down the Grand Canyon, you can either float down the Colorado River at the bottom--a swift ride that takes a few hours--or you can walk all the way up to the top, then all the way down to the bottom, then all the way up to the top and all the way down again, and so on for miles: a huge expenditure of energy that would take you months of walking to cover the same ground. Thus, if a human holon wants to get down the river in the most efficient fashion, there is close to a 100% certainty that it will follow the river at the bottom, and not walk up and down the walls continuously. Thus, to say that a human holon is navigating the Colorado River in a developmentally efficient fashion, is to say that there is close to a 100% certainty that we will find that holon moving down the river at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in any given moment.

     The beige meme is just like that: there is a virtually 100% certainty that human holons attempting to traverse its spacetime warp will follow the grooves--and thus display the characteristics--associated with the beige wave of the AQAL matrix (which is why all humans universally have a need for food, shelter, water: the beige meme). Moreover, these beige characteristics can only be determined (or reflectively discovered and outlined) by a reconstructive inquiry that investigates the Grand Canyon after the fact of its emergence and habit-cutting grooves--i.e., as an a priori of past inheritance, not a predetermined archetypal structure.

     The older the holon, the more like the Grand Canyon it becomes. At the deepest point, the Canyon is almost a mile down (some 5000 feet)--in human holons, that would be like beige.²² Purple is less deeply cut (say, 4000 feet down), red less deeply cut than that (say 2000 feet), and blue less deeply still (1000 feet). Orange is a mere 300 years old--the equivalent of perhaps only 300 feet cut into the Kosmos. And green--on the scene for a mere three decades in any widespread fashion--is a morphogenetic groove that has been cut a paltry 30 feet into the surface of the Kosmos. And poor second tier is rather like a few people dragging sticks along the surface of the ground, slowly beginning to carve an integral morphogenetic groove into the Kosmic landscape.

     Thus, as we have been saying, the deep features that are inherited in any quadrant as Kosmic habits are simply probability waves for finding a type of occasion in a particular spacetime. The older the inherited feature, the more restricted the probability (so that very old morphic forms appear largely deterministic, even though originally laid down as creative freedom). All the other features of holons--their permutations, combinations, surface features, and actions--emerge as a novel play in this moment's AQAL space, transcending-and-including the past in a rush of creative fervor, with interpretations and facts sliding all over each other in a riot of indeterminacy. But the general features themselves slowly settle as Kosmic habits, and, as usual, the older the habit, the harder it is to break.

From Partial to Complete Dialogical Inheritance

      We will be pursuing many of these crucial topics--such as the relation of facts and interpretations--in later sections, where we will give specific examples of what is meant in each case. The simple point for now is that each actual occasion--each existing holon--has at least four dimensions of being-in-the-world, so that each moment exists as an AQAL display with a four-dimensional inheritance.²³

      Each four-dimensional moment therefore intrinsically has objective/factual aspects or dimensions (UR and LR) and interpretive/consciousness aspects or dimensions (UL and LL). We are not now talking about how humans interpret other holons (or cross-interpretation); we are talking about holons themselves, all the way up, all the way down (primary interpretation). As this moment comes into being (at any level), it possesses a spark of creative transcendence, interpretive freedom, and nondetermined play; but as it passes into the next moment it becomes "gone" or "past," a past actual no longer changing: it ceases to interpret itself and passes into the fossil record of the a priori. The entirety of this moment's facts-and-interpretations is thus handed to the next moment as a priori given dimensions, which will then meet those givens with its own facts-and-interpretations.

      To put this more accurately, by moving from Whitehead's partial dialogical to a quadratic formulation: the AQAL matrix of this moment is taken up and included in the AQAL matrix of the next. This is not merely a matter of prehension and prehensive unification, as Whitehead believed. Whitehead was actually giving an Upper-Left quadrant analysis of moment-to-moment existence, and thus he largely neglected the inheritances contributed by the other quadrants. For example, while the subjective dimension of this moment is prehending the subjective dimension of the previous moment (and thus being molded to some degree by the prehensive causality of past feelings), the objective dimension of this moment is exerting a formative causation on the objective dimension of the next, and thus exerting not just a feeling causality but a morphic causality. That type of objective or exterior inheritance is not directly prehended by the holon, unless it takes up a third-person stance to its own existence, and thus it cannot be accounted for by Whiteheadian prehension or concretion (but can be accounted for by Sheldrakian morphic fields and other UR and LR inheritances, including subtle energy resonances [see Excerpt D]).

     Thus, each moment is not just a subject that becomes object of the next subject; rather, each moment's objective forms also causally influence subsequent objective forms in a way that is not prehended or directly felt by the holon. That is, objective dimensions pass on their influence to subsequent objective dimensions, and subjective dimensions influence subsequent subjective dimensions--and likewise intersubjective and interobjective--and altogether they help mold the face of the present moment (only some of which enter the prehension or felt-awareness of the holon).

     Likewise, as the exchange with David Ray Griffin disclosed, various intersubjective fields influence the form of the subject in ways that are never prehended as object by the subject (i.e., that enter and mold the subject directly as the subject arises, and not as prehended as object by the subject).²⁴

     In short, various aspects of all the quadrants are inherited, not merely as a prehensive unification (a la Whitehead), and not merely as formative causation (a la Sheldrake), and not merely as cultural memory (a la Bourdieu), and not merely as social systems (a la von Bertalanffy), but via a total AQAL inheritance that includes the four quadrants all the way down (in a complete and not partial dialogical fashion).²⁵

     What we need is a word to indicate this "four-quadrant prehension." I sometimes call it "quadratic prehension," but that stretches the Whiteheadian meaning beyond recognition, and the whole point of the quadratic formulation is that it categorically rejects the adequacy of the Whiteheadian version in this regard. So I will usually call this "quadratic prehension" by the terms tetra-hension or com-prehension, with the clear understanding that it extends beyond merely feeling-prehension, formal-causality, intersubjective-contexts, and interobjective-systems to indicate a four-quadrant inheritance all the way up and down. (And by "four-quadrant inheritance" or "tetra-hension" we mean everything going on in any of the quadrants, including their waves, streams, states, and types--all of which are just words indicating actual realities passed on from one moment to the next in the creatively unfolding AQAL matrix.)

     The point is that all of the existing theories of inheritance--from prehension to causality to autopoiesis to systems memory--seem to tap into one or two of these dimensions of being-in-the-world, but none seem to cover all of the known bases. So from now on, when we speak of Kosmic karma, we mean an AQAL affair of tetra-hension, all the way up, all the way down.

      In short, moment-to-moment inheritance is an AQAL affair: subjective dimensions resonate with, and influence, subjective dimensions via prehension; objective (i.e., exterior) dimensions resonate with, and influence, objective dimensions via formative causation; and so on with intersubjective and interobjective habits. Quadrant-to-similar-quadrant resonance is the form of Kosmic memory. And many of the Right-Hand forms of this inheritance never enter the direct prehension of the holon inheriting them, nor do most of the deep patterns in the Left-Hand quadrants themselves, all of which, as we will see, are discovered only by second- and third-person inquiries (and not first-person prehensions). There are likewise Right-Hand subtle energy fields, in addition to morphic fields (see below), all of which elude prehension per se.

      The essential point for the present discussion is that the AQAL matrix of one moment is handed as a given, an a priori, to the AQAL matrix of the next. These givens are factual, not in the sense that they are all objects of prehension of the new subject (because some aspects of Kosmic inheritance are not directly felt by a holon). Rather, the AQAL matrix of the previous moment is now a factual given or an a priori in the sense that it has ceased its own creative novelty and has settled into the unchanging past, part of the fossil record of Kosmic evolution. Its creative freedom has ceased as the moment of transcendental creativity is taken over by the next moment, rendering this moment "dead," if you will, or passed into Kosmic memory. It is a now a past actual, which is fixed or a priori in the sense that it no longer can interpret itself and thus change the form of its own existence, as it did in its own moment of present creativity, but it can be interpreted by its successors. As a past actual, its overall probability waves have collapsed into a specific and unalterable form, a creative reality now passed into a nonliving, nonchanging fossil, but a past actual that can only be reflectively known by present interpretations.

      In short, the form of Kosmic memory is the AQAL matrix tetrahended moment-to-moment, and not merely prehensions, nor mindless formative causation, nor merely systems memory, nor solely cultural habitus, etc. Kosmic inheritance is moment-to-moment tetrahension, all the way up, all the way down.

Conclusion

      The forgoing sections suggest a theoretical framework--an AQAL matrix, or an Integral Operating System (IOS)--that allows us to do several things at once.

     First, we can account for existing stable structures (from bacteria to ecosystems to levels of consciousness) without resorting to pregiven archetypes, structures, or independently existing ontological levels--that is, we can begin to replace metaphysical speculation with reconstructive inquiry.

     Second, even existing structures are not viewed as independently existing concrete entities but as probability waves for finding particular occasions in a certain vicinity of the AQAL matrix at any given time.

     Third, the very nature of any actual occasion intrinsically contains at least three or four major dimensions (the four quadrants), each of which embodies an intrinsic mode of being-in-the-world (first, second, and third person modes).

     Fourth, an Integral Operating System (or a theoretical framework that explicitly honors and includes all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types) is very likely the only framework that can help to inaugurate an integral age at the leading edge. Although any IOS is merely a third-person, abstract, theoretical, it-language construction, any authentic IOS nonetheless explicitly draws attention, not just to third-person "its," but to the other important realities of first- and second-person modes, including personal feelings, experiences, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and collaborative inquiry. Therefore, any genuine IOS helps to continually remind individuals that they should be touching bases with all of those realities--with all of the quadrants, all of the levels, all the lines, all the states, all the types--even if the simple IOS map itself can never replace the actual territory of any of those (nor was it meant to). Moreover, unlike most other maps (from the Web of Life to the postmodern paradigm), which believe themselves to be the actual territory and the one correct way to view it, an IOS is acutely aware that it is merely a map, and thus it can point to higher territories and realities not directly contained in the map itself. Finally, an especially helpful aspect of any authentic IOS is that it explicitly draws attention to the many methodologies that can themselves directly enact and illumine the various realities and potentials of the creatively unfolding Kosmos. It is to a summary of this integral methodological pluralism--harbinger of An Integral Age at the Leading Edge--that we can now turn.