Ken Wilber

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Appendix B: The Hard Problem
The "all-quadrant, all-level" (AQAL) model presented in this article, because it includes the transpersonal and nondual waves also has--or claims to have--an answer to the "hard problem" of consciousness (the problem of how we can get subjective experience out of an allegedly objective, material, nonexperiential world).

The wisdom traditions generally make a distinction between relative truth and absolute truth (the former referring to relative truths in the conventional, dualistic world, and the latter referring to the realization of the absolute or nondual world, a realization known as satori, moksha, metanoia, liberation, etc.) (Deutsch, 1969; Gyatso, 1986; Smith, 1993). An integral model would include both truths. It would suggest that, from the relative perspective, all existing entities have four quadrants, including an interior and an exterior, and thus "subjective experience" and "objective matter/energy" arise correlatively from the very start.^[28] From the absolute perspective, an integral model suggests that the final answer to this problem is actually discovered only with satori, or the personal awakening to the nondual itself. The reason that the hard problem remains hard is the same reason that absolute truth cannot be stated in relative words: the nondual can only be known by a change of consciousness, not a change of words or maps or theories.

The hard problem ultimately revolves around the actual relation of subject and object, and that relation is said to yield its final truth only with satori (as maintained by philosophers of the nondual traditions, from Plotinus to Lady Tsogyal to Meister Eckhart [Alexander, 1990; Forman, 1998b; Murphy, 1992; Rowan, 1993; Smith, 1993; Walsh, 1999; Wilber, 1996c, 1997a]). We could say that what is "seen" in satori is that subject and object are nondual, but those are only words, and when stated thus, the absolute or nondual generates only paradoxes, antinomies, contradictions. According to this view, the nondual "answer" to the hard problem can only be seen from the nondual state or level of consciousness itself, which generally takes years of contemplative discipline, and therefore is not an "answer" that can be found in a textbook or journal--and thus it will remain the hard problem for those who do not transform their own consciousness. In short, the ultimate, absolute, or nondual solution to the hard problem is found only with satori.

On the relative plane--which involves the types of truths that can be stated in words and checked with conventional logic and facts--the relative solution to the relation of subject and object is best captured, I believe, by a specific type of panpsychism, which can be found in various forms in Leibniz, Whitehead, Russell, Charles Hartshorne, David Ray Griffin, David Chalmers, etc., although I believe it must be clearly modified from a monological and dialogical to a quadratic formulation, as suggested in detail in Integral Psychology (especially note 15 for chap. 14).

With regard to such a (relatively true) panpsychism, David Chalmers, in a particularly illuminating discussion ("Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness," Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4, 1, 1997), reaches several important conclusions:

(1) "One is forced to the conclusion that no reductive explanation of consciousness can be given" (44). That is, consciousness (or experience or proto-experience--or as I technically prefer it, interiority) is an intrinsic, given component of the Kosmos, and it cannot be completely derived from, or reduced to, something else. In my view, this is because every holon has an interior and exterior (in both singular and plural). Thus, only an integral model that includes consciousness as fundamental will likely succeed.

(2) "Perhaps the best path to such an integrated view is offered by the Russellian picture on which (proto)experiential properties constitute the intrinsic nature of physical reality. Such a picture is most naturally associated with some form of panpsychism. The resulting integration may be panpsychism's greatest theoretical benefit" (42). As I would put it, the general idea is simply is that physics (and natural science) discloses only the objective, exterior, or extrinsic features of holons, whose interior or intrinsic features are subjective and experiential (or proto-experiential). In other words, all holons have a Left- and Right-Hand dimension.

(3) Once that interior/exterior problem is handled (with a modified panpsychism, which suggests that all holons have an interior and exterior), we face a second problem. "The second is the problem of how fundamental experiential or proto-experiential properties at the microscopic level somehow together constitute the sort of complex, unified experience that we possess. (This is a version of what Seager calls the 'combination problem'.) Such constitution is almost certainly required if our own experiences are not to be epiphenomenal, but it is not at all obvious how it should work: would not these tiny experiences instead add up to a jagged mess?... If [the combination problem] can be avoided, then I think [this modified panpsychism] is clearly the single most attractive way to make sense of the place of experience in the natural order" (29). Chalmers echoes Thomas Nagel in saying that the combination problem is central to the hard problem. As Chalmers says, "This leaves the combination problem, which is surely the hardest" (43).

But, as I try to show in Integral Psychology (especially note 15 for chap. 14), the combination problem is actually something that has been successfully handled (on the relative plane) for quite some time by developmental psychology and Whiteheadian process philosophy. In essence, with each wave of development, the subject of one stage becomes an object of the next (as Robert Kegan would put it), so that each stage is a prehensive unification of all of its predecessors. In Whitehead's famous dictum, "The many become one and are increased by one." This process, when viewed from the interior, gives us, in healthy development, a cohesive and unified self-sense (reaching from sensation to perception to impulse to image to symbol... and so on up the waves of the Great Nest, where each wave transcends and includes--or moves beyond but embraces--its predecessors, thus gathering together into one the many subunits that precede it; thus each healthy wave successfully solves the combination problem). This same process, when viewed from the exterior, appears as, for example: many atoms become one molecule, many molecules become one cell, many cells become one organism, and so on.

On both the interior and the exterior, the result is not a "jagged mess" because each unit in those series is actually a holon--a whole that is a part of other wholes. As I try to show in SES and BH, both the interiors and the exteriors of the Kosmos are composed of holons (that is, all holons have an interior and exterior, in singular and plural); and thus the "combination problem" is actually an inherent feature of holons in all domains. All four quadrants are composed of whole/parts or holons, all the way up, all the way down, and because each holon is already a whole/part, each holon is an existing solution to the combination problem. Far from being rare or anomalous, holons are the fundamental ingredients of reality in all domains, and thus the combination problem is not so much a problem as it is an essential feature of the universe.

Assuming that the combination problem can be thus solved, the way is open for a holonic model of the Kosmos ("all-quadrants, all-levels"), a subset of which is an integral theory of consciousness. Of course, what I have presented here and in other writings is only the briefest skeleton of such a model, but I believe that these preliminary speculations are encouraging enough to pursue the project more rigorously.

Finally, let me return to the original point. The hard problem can perhaps best be solved on the relative plane with a holonic or integral model. But that is still just a conceptual tool on the relative plane. You can completely learn or memorize the holonic model, and yet you still experience your consciousness as residing "in here," on this side of your face, and the world as existing "out there," dualistically. That dualism is ultimately overcome, not with any model, no matter how "nondualistic" it calls itself, but only with satori, which is a direct and radical realization (or change in level of consciousness), and that transformation cannot be delivered by any model, but only by prolonged spiritual practice. As the traditions say, you must have the actual experience to see exactly what is revealed, just as you must actually see a sunset to know what is involved (cf. Eye to Eye, Wilber, 1996c). But the mystics are rather unanimous: the hard problem is finally (dis)solved only with enlightenment, or the permanent realization of the nondual wave. For a discussion of this theme, see The Eye of Spirit, second revised edition (found in CW7), especially chaps. 3 and 11 (particularly note 13), and the revised "An Integral Theory of Consciousness," also found in CW7.