De Quincey's second and third criticisms deal with aspects of the mind-body problem, and here his treatment of my position is something of a replay of his treatment of intersubjectivity. He uses the same type of argument: when I offer several important but very different meanings of the topic, each of which I deeply feel should be honored, de Quincey will cut and splice the quotes and then suggest I am contradicting myself. De Quincey dismisses two of the three important meanings of the mind-body problem that I think we should honor; he focuses on one aspect--the subject-object relation--and aggressively tries to show that my model "doesn't even begin to offer a solution" to this problem--but he then once again subtly retracts his entire criticism, acknowledging that "Wilber's [view] can offer a solution for the subject-object relation"--after he has excoriated me for totally misunderstanding the mind-body problem, completely misrepresenting Whitehead, and also being a really nasty person to boot.

Once again I came away from reading this section with basically no idea what to make of it. So I might not convey this part of my response very well, and I hope I don't misrepresent what de Quincey is trying to say, because once again I feel he has some fine points. Also, although I tried as hard as I could to make chapter 14 in Integral Psychology (which discusses these three meanings) as clear as possible, I am now--given de Quincey's reading of that chapter--worried that I didn't succeed very well at all, so allow me to try to simplify and summarize. Here are the three different meanings of the mind-body problem that I believe are quite common and that I carefully outline in Integral Psychology:

(1) For the average person, "mind" often means my conceptual, willing, and intentional self, and "body" often means my emotions, sensations, felt somatic sense, and so on.

(2) For many cognitive scientists and various materialists, "mind" means "brain" and "body" means organism. In this usage, the brain is in the body or in the organism.

(3) For many philosophers, "mind" means "interiors" and body means "exteriors"--or, in general terms, mind means "subject" and body means "object," so that the mind-body problem ultimately means the relation between subject and object. Explicitly following the great nondual wisdom traditions (such as Vedanta and Vajrayana), I divide this meaning into two subdivisions: relative and absolute (as I will explain)--call them 3a and 3b.

Now, my major point is that all three (or four) of those aspects of the mind-body problem are very important, but each of them has a different "solution," so to speak. De Quincey cuts and splices my three meanings with my three proposed solutions in a way that makes me look like a complete idiot, whereas all my good friends know that I am only a partial idiot. So let me try to state what I believe are the three solutions to these three very different aspects of the mind-body problem. Notice that in each of the three aspects, both "mind" and "body" have very different meanings, and I am simply suggesting that we need to be aware of these different meanings.

(1) The first aspect of the mind-body problem is actually something that developmental psychologists have gone a long way toward solving, or at least explaining in a plausible fashion. Those aspects of the mind that we call "conceptual" or "rational"--such as formal operational cognition--and those aspects of the body that we refer to as "impulses" or "felt sensations" or some such, are related in a "transcend and include" fashion. In this particular regard, the mind-body problem is a conflict between two levels in the UL quadrant. (Please note: this meaning of "feeling" is NOT the only meaning of feeling that I give. De Quincey consistently mistakes my position that there are pre-rational feelings to mean that all feeling is merely pre-rational, which is exactly the opposite of my actual stance, as I will discuss later).

When referring only to this aspect of the mind-body problem, developmentalists have found that, for example, sensorimotor prehensions are transcended and included in concrete operational prehensions, which are transcended and included in formal operational prehensions. Thus, in this specific sense, the "body is in the mind," which means that the mind (e.g., formop) transcends and includes the body (e.g., sensorimotor feelings).

This relation of "transcend and include" actually goes a long way to helping us unravel the riddle of the "composition problem," as I try to suggest in my article appearing in the same issue of JCS as de Quincey's. I will return to this point momentarily.

De Quincey ridicules this meaning, calling it "either meaningless or patently false." But he does so because, once again, he claims that this is the ONLY meaning of the mind-body problem that I give, when it is actually only one of three meanings. De Quincey again seems to have trouble holding all of these perspectives in mind and honoring the importance of each. But I feel that this part of the mind-body problem is important to address. I also like the "flavor" of the fact that, in this specific sense, the "body is in the mind," because it gives a wonderful sense of enveloping and inclusion. De Quincey implies that no theorist would acknowledge this meaning. With obvious disdain, de Quincey states, "Ask any average mind-body theorist to choose between 'mind in body' or 'body in mind,' and they will choose the former." He might want to start with Mark Johnson's marvelous book, The Body in the Mind.

(2) For most materialists, of course, the body is not in the mind, the mind is in the body. That is, mind is equated with brain, and since the brain is in the organism (or in the body), then the duality is "solved" by a flatland exclusion of all interiors. Neither de Quincey nor I accept this "solution," of course. But my point is that, while this fails as a solution to the overall mind-body problem, it is an important aspect of an integral theory of consciousness, because it involves a systematic investigation of the Upper-Right quadrant, including neurophysiology, brain chemistry, neuroscience, and so on. The solution to this aspect is simply more empirical scientific research; I won't say any more about this aspect since it is fairly straightforward in its contours.

(3) Perhaps the most important aspect of the mind-body problem involves the relation of interiors and exteriors, or the relation of subject and object. As indicated, I subdivide this into relative and absolute approaches, based on the nondual traditions (as I will explain in a moment).

In my opinion--and I explicitly state this not only in Integral Psychology but in the article appearing in the same JCS volume as de Quincey's--the solution to #3a is best handled by a type of Whiteheadian process philosophy, and the solution to #3b is best handled by a type of Zen awakening or satori.

So those are the three (or rather four) aspects of the mind-body problem as I see them, and the four suggested solutions: a developmental transcend and include; further empirical research; Whiteheadian process philosophy; and Zen (or similar nondual contemplative practices). De Quincey severely misrepresents my position on every single one of those items.

Instead of giving several quotes in this case--it becomes boring very quickly--let me simply give one example of how I believe that de Quincey gets misled in his presentation of my work. The problem, again, is that although I explicitly state that all four of these meanings are important parts of the overall puzzle, de Quincey takes each one in turn, claims that it is the ONLY aspect of the mind-body that I acknowledge, and then lambastes and ridicules me for being confused, ill-informed, and befuddled. I must admit, I came away from reading this section reeling under the weight of my crushing stupidity. :-)

Here is the example--and notice that de Quincey wants me to chose only ONE of the four aspects of the problem as being "the" problem, instead of felicitously acknowledging the importance of each. He says, "But the real mind-body problem, as Wilber knows, is precisely how the causal interaction between the mind and body can be explained. It is a split between the UL quadrant (mind) and UR quadrant (body or brain)--not between two levels of the UL quadrant." I acknowledge that both of those aspects are important--they are in fact meanings #3 and #1--but de Quincey dismisses one of them and then claims that I clearly do not even understand what the mind-body problem is: "Wilber does seem to be confused about what the mind-body problem is (as identified by philosophers for centuries--e.g., Schopenhauer's 'world-knot' or, more recently, Levine's 'explanatory gap' and Chalmer's 'hard problem.' The 'world-knot' is not about relating higher and lower interior levels, about how reason and feelings or emotions are related [my meaning #1]. His confusion arises because Wilber uses the word 'body' in two very different senses"--actually, three different senses, all clearly identified in the text--notice that de Quincey wants me to pick just one aspect of the "body," and when I don't, he accuses me of confusion. He says I use the word "body" in several "contradictory" ways, when actually I am reporting that various theorists have used the word "body" in at least three different and often contradictory ways. When I report these three different usages, de Quincey accuses me of self-contradiction.

He goes on to say, "But Wilber's 'body' is not at all the same as that in the 'mind-body' world-knot." Here, by ignoring my other, equally important meanings of "the body," he claims that I am saying that meaning #1 is the ONLY meaning of body--and of course that body (#1) is not what most philosophers of the 'world-knot' mean: they mean body #3 (or interiors and exteriors), and I clearly give that meaning (of interior and exterior) is in the chapter that de Quincey is summarizing: after introducing the first two meanings of the mind-body problem, I give the third: "'mind' can mean the interior dimension in general--or the Left Hand--and 'body' the exterior dimension in general--or the Right Hand." That third general meaning, and its proposed solution, is explored at length in the book; I will return to it in a moment.

De Quincey pays no heed to that discussion; he then gives the "real" mind-body problem, which is nothing but a repeating of my third meaning: "However, the real mind-body problem is not how to account for how different interiors relate, it is to explain how interiors and exteriors are related." Correct; but that's meaning #3, the meaning that is, as I indicated, the most fundamental (but not sole) aspect of the mind-body problem. De Quincey ignores all of this, and proceeds as if meaning #1 is the only meaning I present. He then berates me for presenting a "straw man" argument. And his argument concludes, once again, by announcing that I miss this crucial part of the mind-body problem (the relation of interior and exterior) because I am out of touch with my own interior feelings. He then says that "no mind-body theorists, besides idealists and Wilberesque 'integralists' would accept that meaning...."

But, as usual, after chastising me for not even being able to recognize the central meaning of the mind-body problem--namely, meaning #3a--de Quincey then quietly retracts everything he said: "The real mind-body problem is how are feelings in the body? That's the world-knot, as Wilber...correctly points out." But as usual, this retraction comes after several pages of attack on my capacity to understand to the problem, alternating with personal attacks on me as a person because I am out of touch with my feelings. After all of that, there comes, usually in a footnote, the subtle retraction, which often begins "To be fair...." (One suspects that if, instead of putting the theoretical and ad hominen attacks first and the fairness second, de Quincey first presented the fairness, then the size of the article would have shrunk dramatically.)

When it comes to my four proposed solutions for the four interrelated aspects of the mind-body problem, de Quincey again mixes and matches my suggestions in a way that left me breathless with my dumbness. But unfortunately, the very article appearing alongside of de Quincey's in the same JCS issue directly contradicts every major assertion he makes about my proposed solutions (see below).

De Quincey particularly misrepresents my relation to Whitehead. As clearly stated in both Integral Psychology and in the JCS article, I believe something like a Whiteheadian process philosophy is the best solution to aspect #3a. As I put it in the JCS article appearing along with de Quincey's, "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." Some fifteen pages later, in the same journal, de Quincey is excoriating me for not only denying Whitehead's approach, but almost completely misunderstanding it. (Incidentally, I sent the manuscript of Integral Psychology to David Ray Griffin--arguably the greatest living Whitehead scholar--and asked him to read it for mistakes. As I will report in Appendix A, Griffin replied that, with one exception I will mention below, he had no problem with my entire presentation of Whitehead.)

I have often stated that I accept virtually all of Whitehead's process philosophy, as far as it goes. I have added two criticisms of Whitehead, and offered two correlative additions to correct what I feel are inadequacies in his model; but I clearly state, as in the quote given above, that, on the manifest plane, the crucial relation of interiors and exteriors (subject and object) can best be handled by a type of Whiteheadian process philosophy. I repeated this point strongly in the book de Quincey is reviewing, adding ways in which Whitehead's prehension could be extended even further: "At each of those levels [of the spectrum of consciousness], not only do interiors prehend their corresponding exteriors, they prehend their own past (Griffin would agree with that, I believe). This appears to account not only for Mind-Body (interior-exterior) interaction [i.e., meaning #3a], but for interior causation, interior inheritance, and mind-body interaction [meaning #1]." In other words, I am fully acknowledging that the Whitehead/Griffin stance covers important aspects of meanings #1 and #3a (and of course it can therefore handle #2). I explicitly identify myself with that tradition for those particular aspects of the mind-body problem (I will explain my criticisms of it in a moment).

De Quincey gives that same quote of mine and then says, "So here, Wilber is borrowing Whitehead's notion of 'prehension' and applies it to his quadrants." That is absolutely correct, as I announce myself (you can even find the word "prehension" on the standard four-quadrant diagram). De Quincey continues: "To the extent that Whitehead's process philosophy accounts for the relationship between subject (interior) and object (exterior), Wilber's prehension-enriched quadrants can offer a solution for the subject-object relation [and therefore a solution the 'world-knot' of the mind-body problem]. But, in that case, it is not Wilber's model that supplies the solution, it is Whitehead's (which Wilber has assimilated into this own)."

Correct. So let's unpack that statement. Since I have assimilated Whitehead's prehension into my model, and since that does solve the mind-body problem in de Quincey's view, then my model does solve the mind-body problem. In this regard, it does not matter that part of my model is explicitly adapted from Whitehead (with full acknowledgement). It matters only that my model, by de Quincey's yardstick, has solved the problem. At one stroke de Quincey once again erases his major criticism of my stance (an erasure that is, also again, buried in a footnote).

But notice also: when he says that it is "not Wilber's model but Whitehead's," he has badly overstated the case. Whitehead does not have the quadrants; he does not have a full holarchy of consciousness (as de Quincey fully concedes); therefore he cannot solve aspect #3b of the mind-body problem; he does not understand levels and lines; and--as even David Ray Griffin conceded--Whitehead's dialogical approach is, to use Griffin's words, "incomplete" compared to my "complete" model (see Appendix A); and hence the model that solves the mind-body problem is not merely Whitehead's. De Quincey robs me of any contributions to the mind-body problem, precisely because the only mind-body problem he recognizes is #3a. But I maintain that all four aspects are important; and most significantly, I claim that Whitehead has no solution whatsoever for aspect #3b (or satori), and his "solution" for #3a needs to be supplemented with a quadratic approach (see Appendix A). This leads to my criticism of Whitehead's view as very important but very partial, a criticism that focuses on (1) Whitehead's lack of a true or complete intersubjectivity, and (2) his failure to include higher, nondual waves of consciousness, whose disclosures are part of the solution to the fourth aspect of the mind-body problem (aspect #3b). As I said, I will summarize this critique in an appendix.

By switching back and forth between my four meanings of the mind-body problem, and ridiculing all of them except #3a, de Quincey tries very hard to give the impression that I simply have no idea what I am talking about. "Wilber reveals a surprisingly loose grasp of the subtle and key issues in philosophy of mind." As the prime example of this, he gives a lengthy attack on my summary of the materialist side of the debate. After ridiculing my presentation, comes the retraction: "Wilber may have in mind eliminative materialists." That's exactly what I have in mind, as the discussion itself points out.

De Quincey then returns to meaning #3a, and states again that "Without something like Whitehead's process approach, Wilber cannot be expected to solve the mind-body puzzle." As noted, this assertion occurs in the same issue of JCS where I clearly state that aspect #3a of the mind-body problem can best be solved by a type of Whitehead process approach. De Quincey then says that because I do not embrace Whitehead, this shows again that I am a reprehensible person: since I do not use Whitehead, my claims are open to "severe criticism from anyone versed in the nuances of the mind-body problem"--in other words, somebody other than me--and my presentation "will be dismissed, at best, as naïve, or, worse, as a case of hubris."

De Quincey finishes his condemnatory attack on my discussion of the mind-body problem by switching to meaning #3b--the transrational or transpersonal aspect of the mind-body problem--which, I suggest, can be solved only by a development of consciousness beyond the rational mind and into the transrational or supramental waves of development (i.e., the final relation of subject and object is fully grasped only in a nondual consciousness).

What does that actually mean? To begin with, notice that the "Cartesian dualism" that virtually everybody criticizes involves the notion of a mind-subject set apart from, or divorced from, all the body-objects "out there." The ultimate relation of the subject and object is the ultimate meaning of the mind-body problem (i.e., aspect #3b). On the relative or manifest plane, we can "think through" this mind-body problem and arrive at relative solution--namely, a type of Whiteheadian process philosophy. But we cannot "think through" the ultimate solution, because this involves a transformation of consciousness to the nondual state. There is thus a simple "test" for whether I have solved this aspect of the mind-body problem: if I feel that I am on "this side" of my face looking at the world "out there," then I am still held captive by the Cartesian dualism, even if I am thinking nice Whiteheadian thoughts. It is only when there is a profound realization (satori) that I am not merely "in" this particular bodymind looking out on the world, but rather, I am everything that is arising moment to moment--an immediate realization that has no inside and no outside, but only an ever-present awareness that is one with all manifestation--that there comes a deep and ultimate understanding of the relation of subject and object--or so claim the great nondual wisdom traditions. That is aspect #3b of the mind-body problem and its solution according to the nondual traditions; and I believe that that is the fourth aspect of the mind-body problem that very much needs to be included in any integral approach. I will reprint this part of my discussion of the mind-body problem in an endnote.^[3]

De Quincey ridicules my suggestion as being merely a "promissory integralism" because it promises to deliver the answer if we develop to higher waves. But, asserts de Quincey, "Wilber is clearly aware that his model cannot really deliver on that promise." It cannot deliver on that promise for two reasons, he says: because I am talking about higher, transpersonal, or spiritual development, and because I am not a spiritual or developed person, then I am not qualified to make these assertions. And two, the very notion of solving the problem only in higher stages of development is a vapid promise, a "promissory integralism," since it does not address the issue of how the interiors and exteriors relate.

But the interiors and the exteriors "relate" only on the manifest plane; on the nondual, they do not relate to each other, for they are "not-two" (nor is this an identity theory, since they are "not-one," either).^[4] And, on the relative plane where they do relate, I have already stated that a type of Whiteheadian process approach can do that (as de Quincey acknowledges); and thus, if we leave aside the ad hominen argument, it is very hard to see exactly what his objection amounts to. So, after raking me over the coals for my hubris and lack of interior feelings, de Quincey once again subtly retracts his criticism: "I agree with Wilber that a full understanding of the mind-body solution involves a development of consciousness." So de Quincey is offering his own promissory integralism, which is totally fine with me. Why he won't allow me to do so is never really explained.

What I am attempting to suggest is that, apart from what can be said about the relation of subject and object on the relative, phenomenal, manifest plane--which involves aspect #3a and which can be best handled by a type of Whiteheadian process approach--the ultimate relation of subject and object (#3b), at least according to the great saints and sages, can only be understood with a growth in consciousness that discloses the supramental, transrational states of nondual awareness. If you believe, with de Quincey, that I am a ghastly person who could not possibly have access to any sort of higher, spiritual states, then you can at least look at the numerous reports of renowned mystics who have made similar claims.

This solution to this part of the mind-body problem does not replace or supplant the other three meanings (and the other three partial solutions); it is simply the capstone of an integral approach that attempts to honor and include all four of these meanings and all four partial solutions. After de Quincey's portrayal of my discussion as feeble at best and deeply befuddled at worst, I feel compelled to say that many scholars in the field wrote me with praises on what a fine overview and summary I had given, and many felt that an AQAL approach to the problem, because of its inclusiveness and its charitable integration of all four aspects, was one of the best attempts to date to unravel the world-knot.

PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV | NOTES