PART I PART II Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 NOTES Notes 1-28 Notes 29-40 Notes41-63 PRINTER FRIENDLY Download in pdf format (451 KB)

Introduction

     Start by recalling that zone #1, or the interior seen from within, is a first-person experience of a first-person reality, whether singular (I) or plural (we)—the inside of an "I" or "we." In figure 1, this means anything seen from inside or within the boundaries of a holon in the Upper-Left and Lower-Left quadrants. In figure 2, the major methodologies enacting these zones are given as interior phenomenology and hermeneutics, respectively.

      Zone #2 is simply those same holons seen from the outside (or seen from without)— hence, "the outsides of the interior." Of course, all of these Left-Hand holons are interior realities, so you cannot see their insides or outsides in the exterior, sensorimotor world. You cannot see an "I" or "we" out there, running around in the empirical world. And yet we do indeed know by acquaintance what an "I" is, what a "we" is, and we know well enough where their boundaries are—which is why there are so many significant paradigms that enact and access them (from phenomenology to meditation to hermeneutics).

      "Interior" classically means first-person, and "outside" classically means third-person. Thus, zone #2, or an "outside-view of the interior," means a third-person approach to first-person realities.

      Because third-person approaches are often a type of "looking" or "distancing" knowledge (e.g., "he sees the tree"), and because first-person approaches are often a type of "feeling" or "touching" knowledge (e.g., "I touch the tree"), then zone #2 involves what might also be called "the look of a feeling."

      This "outside" look at "interior" realities happens all the time; for example, whenever I try to take a more objective look at myself; or when I attempt to see myself as others see me; or perhaps evaluate our own friendship. We will see many examples of this outside look at interior realities in a moment. But notice the crucial point: the "outside" (or third-person) component and the "interior" (or first-person) component are both very important: these approaches are indeed "outside" or "objectifying" or "third-person" approaches, but they are approaches to an interior, and that clearly implies that, somewhere down the line, those interiors can be known by acquaintance—i.e., they can themselves be seen or accessed (with, for example, any of the methodologies in zone #1). In other words, I cannot really do a third-person study of first-person realities unless I myself have some sort of access to those first-person realities. I can look at a feeling in an objective fashion, but only if I can actually locate that feeling to begin with.

      That is the distinctive hallmark of all zone #2 paradigms: they are third-person approaches to realities that I have some sort of access to in first-person modes. As we will see, this is quite different from third-person approaches to holons only as third persons—which is typical of most forms of systems theory, for example, and which involves a type of third-person approach to third-person realities (" 3p x 3p").

      Zone #2, on the other hand, is " 3p x 1p": a third-person of first-person—an objective or descriptive approach to realities that I know (or can know) by acquaintance. Zone #2 is a wonderfully important event horizon because, in an AQAL matrix of indigenous perspectives, this zone highlights, enacts, and brings forth those occasions that help me to reconstruct the interiors of another sentient being so that yet further forms of mutual understanding and compassionate embrace can stand forth in a Kosmos of radiant regard.

The Look of a Feeling

     What is an example of a third-person approach to a first-person reality? What exactly is the look of a feeling?

     The simplest is: I can take a third-person stance to my own interiors—I can look at my own feelings. I can try to be more objective about myself, try to see myself as others see me, try to get a little distance from myself and see myself more clearly. As I begin to move away from my own immediate sensations, I can start to interpret, describe, or conceptualize that experience. I stay close to my own felt prehensions, but I begin to describe and conceptualize them in a type of "interior objectivity." In other words, I can take up a type of third-person or objective stance to my own interiors, apprehending them according to various concepts, theories, maps, or other schema—or even trying to see them as others might see them—thus taking an outside stance but still within my own interior horizon.³

     These interiorly perceived images, sensations, and phenomena are often called "inner objects," or more correctly "interior objects," though we will use both phrases. When I directly feel or perceive these inner objects, that is a type of phenomenology or first-person perspective; when I attempt to see them as others might see them, that is more on the third-person side of the street. That is one version of the outsides of the interiors, a type of third-person (or objective) approach to first-person (or subjective) realities. It is seeing an interior holon from without, or from the outside of its boundaries, which is what happens when I approach it as an object of my subject. (Notice, however, that they are not merely subjects and objects, but first persons and third persons.)⁴

      If that's an example of the outsides of my own interiors, what about the outsides of your interiors? And how do I access those?

      It happens all the time in communication. As you and I talk, we are exchanging words, symbols, signs, and tokens of our interiors in an attempt to understand each other. Those words are, in part, outside tokens of our interior states. That is, two subjects come together and, in addition to any harmonic empathy (and other forms of prior intersubjectivity or tele-prehension), they attempt to exchange tokens of their interiors in order to more accurately understand each other. (These tokens, symbols, or signs are not merely or even especially linguistic, and certainly not at pre- and trans-linguistic waves in sentient beings. But linguistic exchange is perhaps the best understood form of this mode, and thus the one I will focus on in the following.)

      As we saw in Excerpt C, communicative action of this sort involves the conversion of a third-person "him" or "her" or "it" (i.e., the one who is being spoken about) into a second-person "you" or "thou" (i.e., the one to whom I am speaking), and if I am now speaking with you, the implication is that we are speaking to each other and therefore we similarly-enough understand each other. That is, any actual "you" (or second person) implies a background of "we" (or first-person plural).

      Notice, then, the difference between a second person and a third person. A second person is implicitly somebody who shares at least some sort of culture with me. If you and I have no comprehension of each other, if we are totally alien to each other, then we are actually third persons to each other—there is no way we are talking, communicating, or resonating with each other: you are not a "you" but a "he" or even an "it." On the other hand, if you and I are adequately communicating or resonating at all, then your "I" and my "I" intersect in the nexus of a "we." You and I are inside a we, which means our exchanges are internal to the nexus-agency of that we, and thus you and I are members of an interior compound network or culture. In short, any actual "you" exists only inside a circle of some sort of "we" (and any actual exchanges with an actual you are internal to the nexus-agency of that we).

      (This, again, is why I often refer to second person not simply as "you," but as "you/we" or "thou/we." A you that is not part of a we is actually a him or an it. Therefore I often summarize first, second, and third persons as "I, we, and it," since that more accurately captures the types of solidarity present in each relationship. This is not in any way to ignore second person, only set it in a context.)

      If you and I are talking, one of things that we are doing is exchanging tokens, symbols, or signs (all of which are third-person "its" and artifacts) in order to help us understand each other. At first I might not understand what you are saying, but as we continue to dialogue, your meaning becomes clearer and clearer. You are presenting outside or objective tokens of your interior state in order that I can reconstruct your interior state in a similar-enough fashion that I will say, "I understand what you mean." In this specific instance, I am not using tele-prehension or harmonic resonance in order to know you; I am rather reconstructing what your interior seems to be like based on communicative exchange. The result, if successful, is that with regard to the particular item you are trying to convey, you and I have phenomenologically created or enacted a we-space of mutual understanding around that item—or a shared event horizon within which that item enactively arises. (This "we" or first-person plural space is, put simply, the miracle of all miracles.)

      Now, what if I wanted to study or investigate that we-space (or that cultural nexus)? How can I get at the realities of any "we"? Among other things, I can look at them from within their own immediate boundaries, or from without—I can approach them from the inside or from the outside of the we-boundary itself. The view from the inside of the "we" is, of course, hermeneutics. And, although there are many different approaches to looking at a "we" from the outside, one of the most classic and influential is simply structuralism.

      (In fig. 2, "structuralism" is listed for the outside of the individual interior, and "cultural anthropology" for the outside of collective interiors. Structuralism can be, and is, used in both, but the complexities of collective holons render structuralism simply one of the many useful tools in cultural anthropology, whereas for the outsides of individual interiors over time, it has no viable competitors and thus is listed as the exemplar of zone #2 in first-person singular. We will be exploring both.)

      Structuralism is the study of the behavior of an interior holon. (The interior holon can be singular or plural, individual or cultural, I or we). It is indeed the study of interior realities, but a study that watches their behavior as seen from some sort of an outside stance. We have already seen that, for example, I can take up a third-person stance to my own interiors, and that is the start of structuralism. It is an "objective" or third-person view of a first-person holon, but it then goes an extra step and attempts to offer a reconstructive account of the pattern or agency of that holon's interior.⁵ That is, it attempts to discover, describe, or elucidate what we have called the "internality codes" of a holon, or the rules and patterns that the subholons internal to that holon are following; in this case, the internality codes of an interior (I or we) holon. We used the example of a game of chess to show what some of these rules or patterns are like—you and I are in a chess game when our interactions are internal to the rules of the game (i.e., when our moves follow the game's rules, internality code, or structure).

      That interior pattern (manifested in outside-exterior behavior and reconstructed from the regularities of that behavior) is called the interior holon's structure, which means the regularities governing the elements that are internal to that interior structure (either internal to the individual agency of an "I" or internal to the nexus-agency of a "we"). Those regularities or structures represent the Kosmic habits that are the fundamental modes of that holon's enduring existence in AQAL spacetime. The game of chess was a simple example of the rules governing a "we" or a nexus-agency; structuralism is simply the attempt to discover those rules. Let's see exactly what that means.

Representative Methodology of Zone #2: Adequate Structuralism

      We can continue to use the game of chess to highlight some of the central issues. Let us start by noticing that a phenomenologist, a structuralist, a hermeneuticist, and a systems theorist will all approach this chess game in very different ways, each of them accessing some important dimensions of that social occasion.

     A phenomenologist will attempt to bracket all assumptions and simply describe the phenomena as carefully as possible. The players, the chess board, the 16 tokens, all will be phenomenologically highlighted and described in their immediateness. "To the things themselves!" is how it is often put, and there is much merit in that injunction. But there is a curious thing about chess: the rules that the 16 chess pieces or phenomena are following cannot be found anywhere on the things themselves, they cannot be found phenomenologically. The rules of chess are not written on any of the chess pieces, nor are they written on the chess board; nor can they be found by looking carefully and extensively at the faces of the players. In fact, the essence of chess is invisible to typical phenomenology.

     As Foucault so elaborately documented, this is why structuralism caused such an enormous sensation when it was first introduced, and why it quickly supplanted phenomenology (especially in its Husserlian forms) and hermeneutics (especially in its Heideggerian forms). Why? Because structuralism is designed precisely to get at the rules of chess, which cannot be easily discerned with any of those other methodologies. Structuralism, as a social practice or paradigm, highlights those dimensions and perspectives of holons that involve the patterns, rules, or regularities—the Kosmic habits—that they display. Done correctly, structuralism does not impose these rules but discloses them. People are already playing chess; structuralism looks for the rules and regularities of what people are already doing.

     These patterns and regularities cannot be spotted by phenomenology, hermeneutics, or systems theory, which becomes particularly obvious when we look at complex social interactions, such as those embodied in language, because part of their existence involves indigenous perspectives not activated by those other inquiries. This is why Foucault said, with reference to phenomenology, "So the problem of language appeared and it was clear that phenomenology was no match for structural analysis in accounting for the effects of meaning that could be produced by a structure of the linguistic type. And quite naturally, with the phenomenological spouse finding herself disqualified by her inability to address language, structuralism became the new bride." (And Foucault himself was one of the brilliant pioneers at that wedding.)

     How does structuralism do this? How does it disclose these otherwise hidden regularities? Basically, structuralism is phenomenology plus history. That is, it starts with phenomenology (and hermeneutics)—or any first-person interior realities—but then follows the phenomena over long periods of time and attempts to spot any regularities or patterns that the phenomena follow. Those patterns are, of course, the "structures" within which the phenomena move. In this case, all 16 chess phenomena follow specific rules that are written nowhere on the chess pieces themselves, but can be clearly discerned if you watch the chess moves over time.

     If the phenomenologist attempts to describe the present phenomena or tokens as clearly as possible (in an immediate prehension and descriptive laying bare), the hermeneuticist attempts to know the players themselves, up close and personal, through mutual dialogue and shared meaning horizons. The structuralist goes one step further and attempts to discern the hidden, invisible, regulatory patterns that the players and the tokens might be following over time. In this case, the rules of chess.

     When the inquiry known as structuralism is being adequately engaged according to the guidelines of its own paradigms—deciding which, we temporarily bracket critics who are not so engaged, for they violate the nonexclusion principle—then the structuralist will summarize the behavioral responses representing the exteriors of intentionality with a set of "structures," which represent the internality codes of the interior holons being engaged. Every holon or stable entity (whether an I, we, it, or its) has some sort of identity or agency—every whole has some sort of wholeness, some sort of coherence, and structuralists attempt to identify the nature of that wholeness in the interior domains.

     Here are a few of the types of holistic structures that have been suggested (and for which there is significant evidence): Carol Gilligan's three stages of selfish, care, and universal care in female moral development; Robert Kegan's five orders of consciousness; Spiral Dynamics' elucidation of the blue meme, orange meme, green meme, turquoise meme, etc.; Jean Gebser's famous archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and integral structures; Jane Loevinger's symbiotic, conformist, conscientious, individualistic, and integral self-identities (etc.); formal operational cognition, the relativistic-pluralistic value structure, the construct-aware self, fourth-order consciousness, moral-stage 2, the participatory stage, preconventional stage, the conscientious self, sensorimotor cognition, self-actualization needs, and so on.

     All of those are postulated structures that attempt to account for known Kosmic habits of interior domains. Those structures are themselves coherent wholes that help to enact and bring forth a world that is a co-creation of those structures doing the perceiving, knowing, and feeling. That structures co-create, present, and enact worlds, and do not merely perceive or represent them, is the revolution at the heart of the post-Kantian, postmodern understanding (and a feature therefore of any Integral Post-Metaphysics).

     Notice that, even if a particular structure—such as the red meme, moral-stage 1, or the pluralistic value structure—does not consciously have a holistic outlook, the structure itself is holistic. But this is true for all holons, all structures, all whole/parts—the wholeness aspect is holistic at its own level or it would cease to exist (or it exists in a pathological or fragmented form). Thus, if we look at the structure of, say, the red meme, that structure, like all structures, is marked by wholeness, transformation, and closure (see below); but that does not mean that a person at the red level is conscious of the world as a whole, or has a fully integral awareness, or a holistic philosophy of life, or anything like that. The structure itself is a holistic (or autopoietic) unity in order to function, but that does not mean that the wholeness of that particular structure includes an awareness of the wholeness of all other structures or the Kosmos at large. In fact, only at the higher levels of wholeness does wholeness itself become a conscious content.

     This is why researchers like Gebser and Loevinger give their highest levels the actual term "integral" or "integrated." All previous levels, in their healthy forms, are integrated and holistic (at that level); but only the higher levels start to consciously perceive this wholeness and begin to become transparent to themselves. So all healthy structures are holistic—whether in an atom, an ant, or an ape—but only at the highest structures (postconventional) does this wholeness start to become aware of itself: wholeness aware of wholeness begins to mark the actual contents of yellow waves and higher (which is also why adequate structuralism as a self-conscious paradigm emerges only at yellow and higher). But the point, in any case, is that healthy structures themselves are always holistic, representing the wholeness aspect of all whole/parts.

     (We will see how structuralism differs from systems theory in moment; the essential point is that the structuralist is following the wholeness of interior structures of consciousness and intentionality, not exterior structures of matter, processes, dynamic webs and systems. The interiors need phenomenology and hermeneutics to be finally accessed—this is the "first-person" component of structuralism's "third-person of first-person"; whereas systems theory never met an interior it cared about—it is "third-person of third-person"—and hence treats interiors only insofar as they can be objectified and known by description, not acquaintance. Thus, the systems theorist treats both the players and the tokens in third-person terms as exteriors in a dynamic holistic system connected via information: systems theory is a third-person of third-person realities [ 3p x 3p], unlike structuralism, which is a third-person of first-person [ 3p x 1p], and hermeneutics, which is a first-person of first-person [ 1p x 1p]. Needless to say, all of those methodologies are valuable ingredients in any integral methodological pluralism.⁶ But what we are doing in this section is looking more closely at the types of methodologies that best access zone #2—the 3p x 1p—or the outsides of the interiors, in both singular and plural forms, foremost among which is adequate structuralism.)

     As we were saying, structuralists attempt to elucidate the wholeness aspect of an interior whole/part or holon. This wholeness is called the "structure." Some of the truly brilliant structuralists have included Jean Gebser, James Mark Baldwin, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, Clare Graves, Robert Kegan, and Jane Loevinger, among many others (all of whose work we will return to shortly).

      Early, pioneering structuralists included Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, early Foucault, and Lacan, among others. Unfortunately, as often happens, their pioneering but less-than-adequate paradigms and theories came to define "structuralism" as a whole, so that when the "post-structuralists" came along, they interpreted poststructuralism as going beyond structuralism altogether, whereas it was simply trying to go beyond inadequate structuralism (and ended up beneath adequate structuralism). In the following, "structuralism" always means adequate structuralism, or competent structuralism as judged by the ongoing knowledge-community of those engaging the paradigm.

     Because "structures" have caused so much confusion—especially in light of postmodernism's self-definition of being "post" structuralist—let's look more closely at the types of structures that even postmodernism has not coherently denied or deconstructed.