an exemplar case and a defense of wilberâ€™s social quadrant

Correspondence: Mark Edwards, Business School, The University of Western Australia, 35 Sti rling Highway, Crawley, Perth, WA 6009, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]. Author Affi liati on: Business School, University of Western Australia.

… there is hardly any contribution that philosophers and historians of science could make to the working scientist that would be more valuable than how bet-ter to appraise theories. (Meehl, 2002, p. 345)

As the product of a community of inquiry, integral metatheory benefi ts from a critical exami-nation of its core tenets. Each time a critical voice raises issues that require serious consid-eration and discussion, we have a chance for an evaluative reappraisal of our metatheories,

theories, methods, practices, and the assumptions that support them. This evaluative process is crucial for the ongoing development of integral metatheorizing as a distinct form of scholarly activity. The recent publication of Steve McIntosh’s Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution (2007) provides just such an opportunity for this refl exive kind of evaluation.

McIntosh’s book presents a very positive overview of Wilber’s AQAL metatheory. He also proposes, however, that it has some serious fl aws. The critical points raised by McIntosh afford us with a chance

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 3(4), 2008, pp. 61–83

ABSTRACT Evaluati ng the quality of integral metatheories, such as Integral Theory, is an impor-tant task. But it is also one that is rarely undertaken in a rigorous way. In a recently published book, Steve McIntosh presents a detailed criti que of the “social quadrant” in Ken Wilber’s AQAL metatheory. This criti que aff ords us an opportunity to evaluate some fundamental aspects of AQAL metatheory. Based on the results of this evaluati on, this arti cle off ers a defense of Wilber’s social quadrant and his propositi on of an interobjecti ve domain of evolving social systems. In the spirit of fostering an engaged and constructi ve debate, I want to show that McIntosh’s criti que of Wilber is not supported by metatheoreti cal evidence. I claim that Wilber is justi fi ed in proposing a social domain of interobjecti vity that has self-organizing capaciti es, that is holonic in nature, that is consti -tuted by (at the very least) “behavioral intersecti ons” and social arti facts, and which can be applied to physical, biological, and human (eco)systems. The arti cle begins with some refl ecti ons on scien-ti fi c metatheorizing and its evaluati on. These ideas are intended to contextualize the evaluati ve test case that follows. I then present a summary of McIntosh’s criti que of Wilber’s social quadrant. Next, I consider each of these arguments and use some commonly accepted evaluati ve criteria as well as other evidence from the metatheoreti cal literature to evaluate the positi ons of McIntosh and Wilber regarding an interobjecti ve domain of evoluti on. The paper concludes with some general ob-servati ons about metatheories, like McIntosh’s, that promote subjecti ve and intersubjecti ve views of consciousness and neglect objecti ve and interobjecti ve ones.

Key words: AQAL; integral lenses; interobjecti vity; metatheory

EVALUATING INTEGRAL METATHEORY An Exemplar Case and a Defense of Wilber’s Social Quadrant

Mark Edwards

62 Journal of Integral Theory and Practice—Vol. 3, No. 4

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to evaluate some fundamental aspects of AQAL metatheory. In an extended appendix entitled “Con-sideration of Wilber’s Four Quadrants Model of Evolution,” McIntosh (2007) claims that:

[Wilber’s] quadrant model contains certain distortions and weaknesses that render it ill-suited to serve as a central foundation for the integral world-view’s reality frame.” (p. 324)

This is a signifi cant and serious proposition, especially given that McIntosh considers Wilber to be “contemporary culture’s leading integral theorist” and the quadrant model to be “the centrepiece of [Wilber’s] philosophy” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 324). In the spirit of fostering an engaged and construc-tive debate, I want to show that McIntosh’s claim is not supported by metatheoretical evidence or by several commonly accepted criteria for (meta)theory evaluation. In fact, the following considerations provide strong evidence that Wilber is standing on very solid metatheoretical ground when he pro-poses an evolving social domain of interobjectivity that has self-organizing capacities, that is holonic in nature, that is constituted by (at the very least) “behavioral intersections” and social artifacts, and which can be applied to physical, biological, and social (eco)systems.

I will argue that Wilber’s model is based on sound metatheoretical evidence in proposing a social domain of interobjectivity and that his quadrant framework would, in fact, be internally inconsistent without such a domain. To do this, I will introduce some general comments on metatheory and its evaluation, followed by a summary of McIntosh’s basic position that the social quadrant is redundant. Next, I consider in detail each of his arguments according to some commonly accepted criteria for theory-building and provide evidence from the metatheoretical literature in support of Wilber’s posi-tion. I conclude with some general observations about metatheories, like McIntosh’s, that promote subjective and intersubjective views of consciousness and neglect objective and interobjective ones.

Foundational IssuesMetatheoryTo begin this analysis, let me provide some background to my own orientation towards overarching metatheories and their evaluation. I regard all such big pictures as part of the core human activity of sense-making and world-building and, when done in a rigorous way, they are a fundamental part of the scientifi c tradition of pursuing understanding and creating knowledge. I also hold that metatheo-rizing is an everyday aspect of life, one that is grounded in the refl exive nature of human experience and refl ection. Refl ective acts can be tuned into the microlevel of mundane detail and then be trained onto the larger picture of making plans and developing strategies. Ordinary everyday activities such as planning, designing, facilitating, coordinating, and strategizing are essentially metatheoretical ac-tivities. They are metacognitive in that they help to organize our thinking, feeling, and behaving such that they are aligned with and support our “big plans.” Such meta-processes are the conceptual sys-tems that we use to make sense of and direct our daily experiences. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999) go so far as to say:

We are all metaphysicians—not in some ivory-tower sense but as part of our ev-eryday capacity to make sense of our experience. It is through conceptual systems that we are able to make sense of everyday life, and our everyday metaphysics is embodied in those conceptual systems. (p. 10)

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EVALUATING INTEGRAL METATHEORY

There are multiple layers of this meta-processing, and these meta-levels of understanding and shaping of ideas and actions appear and reappear at every level of focus, irrespective of the scale of the life domain in which they occur. In fact, the fractal or “self-similar” nature of this meta-processing seems to be independent of scale (Abbott, 2001). Even within the minute, there are layers of contexts—experiences, meta-experiences, meta-meta-experiences, and so on. As several writers have noted, there is a fractal quality to existence whereby recursive patterns of relationships can be repeatedly identifi ed and re-considered (Abbott, 2001; Abraham, 1993; Ross, 2008).

And so it is with our theories and models. Scientifi c metatheorizing is the formalization of a thor-oughly everyday activity. Empirical events are observed and experienced, concepts emerge from and shape these events, from these concepts theorists propose models and theories, and metatheorists analyze these theories to construct metatheories (Tsoukas & Knudsen, 2003). This is not a series of increasingly dissociated layers, nor is it a linear progression that becomes less and less involved with what is real. As Roy Bhaskar (2008) has argued, our theories and metatheories are intimately part of social reality and as causally effi cacious as any material object. Our thoughts and our actions shape the world we are immersed in. A metatheory is as real as the taste of a banana or the impact of work-ing conditions on an assembly-line worker.

Our theories of management and work shape the factories, offi ces, and technological environments we work in. Our theories about economy and ecology have immense infl uence on how we build industries, what we do with our rivers and forests and the plants and animals that they sustain. The changes that we make to these material, physical, and biological realities feed back into our ideas, at-titudes, values, beliefs, and assumptions about what we want from life, how we should work, how we should make money, and what sort of world we should inhabit. There is a cycle of mutual co-creation here between theory and practice, between the idea and the action. So, it cannot be said that (meta)theories are simply interpretive of what is real, for they have a powerful hand in shaping reality as well as being shaped by that reality.

Figure 1 shows a stylized model of the way theory and metatheory might be regarded as connected to empirical realities. Each round of refl ection and abstraction informs the reality of each of the oth-

Figure 1. The holarchy of sense-making.


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ers. Metatheory feeds into and shapes empirical events as much as the reverse. However, each one of these layers is also a meta-layer to the former. They have a consistent relationship to each other that is coherent over time and place. The empirical is content to the context of the conceptual, the conceptual is content to the context of the theoretical, and the theoretical is content to the context of the metatheoretical. This redoubling of content and context forms a holarchy of sense-making. The arrows in the diagram are meant to show the multidirectional fl ow of co-creation that exists between these layers. All these layers are real, all are causally effi cacious, and all are mutually co-creative.

Experiencing, symbolizing, conceptualizing, theorizing, and metatheorizing are all types of sense-making. In other words, to make sense of something we can touch it (the empirical layer), we can name or imitate it (the symbolic layer), we can try to understand its characteristics (the conceptual layer), we can model those characteristics and describe a system of relationships between them (the theoretical layer), and we can try to link and separate those models in a coherent overarching way (the metatheoretical layer). This holarchy can continue on to look at the points of convergence and divergence in overarching frameworks and so develop meta-metatheorizing and even further sense-making levels of evaluation.

Everyday life involves countless cycles of these types of refl exive strata of sense-making. All cultures have formalized these systems of inquiry into practices and traditions for creating and verifying the truths, sagas, mythologies, accounts, and practices that give those cultures their identity and their life. Science is one of those traditions and it is particularly powerful because it has formalized this sense-making holarchy into a system of open inquiry, one that is self-evaluative while, at the same time, retaining knowledge that has previously made sense at the empirical, symbolic, conceptual, and theoretical levels. One of the reasons formal scientifi c practice is so powerful is because it grounds itself in this holarchy of sense-making.

As with the formalization of any socio-cultural practices, science can become a seriously imbalanced activity when particular types of scientifi c practices become dominant and politically entrenched. This issue of dominant theoretical frameworks is a particularly important area of interest for metatheoreti-cal studies. Because it takes a multiparadigm perspective that can range across both dominant and marginalized views, metatheory can locate and give voice to underrepresented and newly emerging theories and perspectives. Deena Weinstein and Michael Weinstein (1991) make exactly this point in their defense of metatheory as a valuable scientifi c endeavor:

… metatheory, by taking up a refl exive position toward theory, tends to level the playing fi eld by treating less popular or less successful theoretical alter-natives as elements in the fi eld, granting them legitimacy by analysing their structure and presuppositions. (pp. 143-144)

Metatheory is inherently evaluative of theory. Because it can adjudicate on the overarching strengths and weakness of research programs, it can identify dominant, neglected, and emergent perspectives that are often hidden and marginalized. This is why Wilber continually draws attention to theories and traditions of spirituality, and interior experience and cultural meaning-making. In calling attention to the importance of neglected understandings, Wilber is restoring balance to the fi eld of ideas and mov-ing against predominant views by including ways of seeing that complement, that make whole, and that balance those fundamental distortions that are present in prevailing social theories and practices.



Again, this is not just an abstract exercise in playing with irrelevant ideas. Institutions and social poli-cies are often founded upon—and their actions are guided by—distorted varieties of metatheories. Indeed, wars are fought and people are enslaved because of the warped forms of metatheoretical sense-making that we can sometimes embed in our societies.

Following on from Karl Marx, Bhaskar (2002, p. 62) has drawn attention to “structures of oppression” that he calls “master-slave relationships.” Metatheoretical evaluation, as a valid activity of a general social science, has the capacity to uncover and scrutinize those irrealist distortions. Metatheorizing is fundamentally a consciousness-raising exercise. Bhaskar (2002) stresses this capacity of social sci-ence metatheory to adjudicate on the half-truths and false forms of knowing and acting that overlay the social world (the “demi-reality”). He says that:

The task of social science is to penetrate that demi-reality through to the un-derlying reality and situate the conditions of possibility of the removal of illu-sion, of systematically false being. [emphasis in the original] (p. 55)

This quote encapsulates the basic intent behind Wilber’s development of Integral Theory and the AQAL framework. Integral Theory is an attempt to build an emancipative metatheory that can help us navigate the dangers involved in journeying towards fullness of being and the freedom to become. How successful the AQAL framework might be in doing that is a matter of ongoing evaluation.

AQAL as a Particular Version of Integral MetatheoryTo understand AQAL, it is vital to recognize its essential metatheoretical nature. AQAL has been, in part, derived from the analysis of other theories, philosophies, and cultural traditions of knowl-edge. Wilber is a metatheorist and AQAL is a metatheory. Consequently, it is important to note that AQAL is not a theory. In the context of a holarchy of sense-making, the term theory refers to all those “middle-range theories,” “mini-theories,” or “unit-level theories,” models and explanatory frame-works that are developed and tested via some rigorous mode of cultural inquiry into empirical events (Meehl, 2002; Merton, 1957; Wagner & Berger, 1986). For unit-level theories, data is the relevant set of empirical, symbolic, and conceptual occurrences and experiences about which they make some validity claim.

The “data” of metatheory is not found within this empirical layer of sense-making but within the “unit theories” themselves (i.e., the individual theories that are the focus of study for metatheorists) (Wag-ner & Berger, 1985). All metatheories are essentially concerned with the analysis of other theory and not with empirical events (Ritzer, 2001, 2006; Zhao, 1991). Metatheory is grounded on the analysis of other theory in the same way that middle-range theory is grounded on empirical data. Metatheory attempts to identify, incorporate, and situate into its frameworks the truths and valid contributions of many other theories, cultural traditions, and social practices. Where theory takes empirical phenom-ena as its source of data, metatheory takes other theories as its “data” to be explored and analyzed.

AQAL is metatheoretical in that its elements are based on the analysis of other theories (including philosophical, scientifi c, traditional, and cultural frameworks of explanation). Hence, AQAL is not a theory because its subject matter is other theory and not the empirical world of immediate experi-ence and the concepts and symbols that mediate those experiences. When metatheories make truth


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claims related to the empirical layers, they are being speculative and those claims will require verifi -cation at the unit-level. Metatheories are best seen within the broader context of meta-studies, which incorporates meta-levels of theory, methodology, data analysis, and interpretive analysis (Edwards, 2008; Paterson et al., 2001; Zhao, 1991). Wilber’s AQAL model is a form of metatheory and Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) is its meta-methodology.

AQAL (in its various phases of development) can be used as preparatory metatheory to generate theory that can then be tested. We see this, for example, in the work of Thomas and colleagues (1993), who took Wilber’s theory of transcendence and empirically tested it against Washburn’s Dynamic Ego model. But this was an empirical testing of an operationalized theory that drew on a small aspect of the AQAL framework. Integral Theory can also be used to develop experiential programs for per-sonal development. But, once again these programmes are based on elements of AQAL metatheory that have been converted into instructional practices—AQAL itself is not a practice. In any event, the whole development of AQAL over the past 30 years has been a profoundly integrative endeavor that is fi rst and foremost a metatheoretical enterprise. More recently, Wilber has used the AQAL model to develop a meta-methodology (his eight indigenous zones of inquiry) and this also sits within a meta-studies level of activity and not a middle-range level of theory or method.1

In building AQAL, Wilber has employed the non-exclusion principle of IMP, which involves an ap-preciative recognition and incorporation of the valid perspectives and insights developed by other theorists and cultural traditions. Accordingly, AQAL can accommodate and situate many unit-level theories and other more focused metatheories. It therefore has the capacity to adjudicate on how theories, and the core second-order conceptual elements that constitute them, relate to each other, how they appear in balanced or in distorted forms, and how they are combined to develop systems of knowledge, categories of social policy, and forms of practice that can either emancipate or enslave us and our communities.2

Metatheoretical LensesIn scientifi c metatheory building, the researcher identifi es the fundamental architectonics (i.e., the array of core assumptions, second-order concepts and their conceptual relationships) that provide an explanatory account of a set of unit-level theories. These architectonics, which I call conceptual or integral lenses, together with their relationships, form the building blocks of the metatheory. The metaphor of lens is used here in a dual sense. These lenses should not be regarded as purely interpre-tive fi lters but also as tools that shape and create social realities (i.e., are enactive). Conceptual lenses can be regarded as voices or tools that enable/distort life-shaping patterns of meaning and activity.

AQAL metatheory is made up from several of these conceptual or integral lenses. The ones that are formally defi ned as part of the core group of AQAL elements include the interior-exterior lens, the in-dividual-collective lens (together these form the quadrant model), developmental levels, lines, states of consciousness, and types. There are several other integral lenses that are commonly used in AQAL analyses but which are not formally included within its fi ve defi nitive AQAL elements. These include the natural perspectives of fi rst-, second-, and third-persons and the transformation-translation lens.



Types of MetatheorizingMetatheorists George Ritzer and Paul Colomy (1991) have described four types of metatheorizing based on the aims of the research. Perhaps the most common aim of such research is metatheorizing for understanding (MU). MU is the review and analysis of theory to arrive at a deeper understanding of theories, paradigms, and their constituent elements. A second form is preparatory metatheoriz-ing (MP), which aims to develop new unit-level theory out of an initial review and analysis process. Thirdly, we have the construction of new metatheory. This is where there is an attempt to build large-scale, grand theories that Ritzer calls “overarching metatheorizing” (MO). Ritzer distinguishes MO from another, more speculative type of grand theorizing that he calls OM. OM is the creation of Big Pictures that are not based on the analysis of other theories but on their own inner logic and supposi-tions. It is a type of philosophical overarching metatheorizing that has little relationship with extant theories and paradigms. Ritzer sees MO, metatheorizing that is based on the analysis of the “data” of other theory, as a valid and important form of scientifi c research. In contrast, he sees OM as a highly problematic form of speculative scholarship that is not based on the insights of other traditions and research programs but rather on its own internal philosophical conjectures.

A fourth kind of valid metatheorizing has been proposed by Colomy (1991) and it focuses on a metatheory’s capacity to adjudicate on the adequacy of other theory and metatheory (MA). Although there may be several other means for conceiving of metatheory, these four purpose-related types (MU, MP, MO, and MA) form an initial basis for understanding the basic function of metatheoretical research. In general, MU provides a foundation for the development of MP and MO. MA is developed when the critical capacities of MO are used to adjudicate on the adequacy of other theory and metatheory.

Evaluating MetatheoryGiven that metatheories have immense potential to contribute to personal and social development, it behooves us to fi nd rigorous ways in which metatheory can be scientifi cally evaluated. Two such means are 1) the evaluation of the metatheory via commonly applied logical criteria and 2) evidence from the analysis of the unit-level theories on which the metatheory is based. Taking the logics ap-proach fi rst, as with the construction of unit-level theory, metatheory building can be assessed through the application of a number of formal criteria. There are many lists of these criteria (e.g, , Bacharach, 1989; Fawcett, 2005; Ritzer, 1992; Wacker, 1998, 2004; Whetten, 1989; Witkin & Gottschalk, 1988). These criteria can come from a modernist concern with rational logic and from a postmodern concern for communal justice (Guba & Lincoln, 1998; Jacques, 1992; Wacker, 1998). Naturally, it would also be possible to take a more integrative approach and combine both modern and postmodern criteria. While metatheories might aspire to be much more than just rational explications of some topic, they can all be assessed via rational arguments that act as a kind of procedural gatekeeper to their deeper secrets. This article applies some of these rationalist criteria. Because of their common usage in evaluating theory building and their importance for metatheorizing, the criteria that I focus on include parsimony (minimal theoretical concepts variant), conservatism, and internal consistency.

The second means for evaluating theory and metatheory involves the testing of propositions ac-cording to their capacity to explain the “data” within a particular domain. This is an evidence-based approach to evaluation. As we have seen, for metatheory this means assessing the correspondence between the metatheory and its unit theories (and their conceptual constituents). This naturally brings in issues of sampling, design, and analysis, but the main issue here is how well the metatheory ac-


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counts for the relevant data set. For example, a metatheory should either include the core lenses of all the major unit-levels theories in its particular domain or provide a clear reason why it should not. If important theories are not included, then the metatheory will be omitting some crucial conceptual element(s) that are needed for its construction.

Evidence-based evaluation also raises the issue of what is actually acceptable as evidence. Clearly there are many types of evidence depending on one’s evaluative criteria, and I agree with those re-searchers who argue that “There is no such thing as ‘the’ evidence: evidence is a contested domain and in a constant state of becoming.” (Nutley et al., 2003, p. 133). But this does not mean that there is no such thing as evidence. From a metatheoretical orientation, evidence comes from the theories, model, and cultural sources of knowledge that are analyzed to construct the metatheory. In this article, “evidence” will be regarded as the conceptual elements, propositions, and core assumptions that char-acterize or at least constitute a theory.

Figure 2 shows the two forms of metatheory evaluation that are discussed here. These evaluation ap-proaches are commonly used in scientifi c studies of theory building and I propose that they will also have relevance to the metatheoretical level (as they will also have at every level of the sense-making holarchy as depicted in Figure 1) (see Bacharach, 1989; Brookfi eld, 1992; Fawcett, 2005; Love, 2002; Meehl, 2002; Wacker, 1998; Whetten, 1989; Witkin & Gottschalk, 1988).

Metatheorizing is an iterative process of building and evaluating. However, these are not distinct pro-cedures but are entwined within each other at multiple scales of experience and activity. Metatheory that is not evaluated via these two means is not scientifi cally-based but falls under Ritzer’s OM form of speculative philosophical metatheorizing. AQAL’s development as a scientifi c metatheory depends on its application of at least these forms of verifi cation and validation. (There will, of course, be many other criteria for evaluating theory but evidence and logic are two important types that any metathe-ory should meet to be regarded as scientifi cally valid.)

These considerations lead to the following proposition: a scientifi c metatheory can demonstrate the validity of its truth claims through both logical and evidential arguments (i.e., through metatheory- building criteria as well as metatheory-testing evidence based on the results of its review and analysis of its sample of unit-level theories). Consequently, Integral Theory and its AQAL model can be evalu-

Figure 2. The evaluati on of metatheory.



ated by criteria such as parsimony, internal consistency, fecundity, and generalizability as well as by showing its evidential relationship with the unit-level theory that it draws on.

In the foregoing sections I have provided some background to metatheorizing research and argued that this form of scholarship can be evaluated on both rational and evidential grounds. These grounds constitute a minimal level of evaluation for the rigorous evaluation of metatheory. These ideas will provide a framework for assessing McIntosh’s critique of AQAL’s social quadrant.

McIntosh’s Proposition and Supporting ArgumentsMcIntosh argues that an integral metatheory has no need for Wilber’s social quadrant of interobjectiv-ity. He wants to reduce Wilber’s four quadrants permanently to the “Big Three” of subjective inten-tion, intersubjective culture, and objective nature. For McIntosh, the social quadrant is full of non-ho-lonic artifacts that are generated by the cultural and intersubjective worlds. He argues that “all these social structures are artifacts” and are not self-organizing holons. The social quadrant can therefore be explained by the natural world of behavior and objects in space. Even the complex social world of organizations with their multifarious collective relationships and activities can be regarded as:

… completely artifactual in themselves. In the example of the business corpo-ration … the actions and behaviors of the corporation’s employees, when on the job, are largely dictated by their job descriptions and the functional design of the company. (McIntosh, 2007, p. 332)

This leads McIntosh to conclude that all modern social interactions are derivative artifacts of interior cultural holons and that the social quadrant should not be seen as populated by self-organizing holons in their own right. It is really the intersubjective realm of cultural life that generates human relation-ships. Consequently, the external structures and their associated behaviors are the produced artifacts of those generative cultural relationships. He says that:

We can thus imagine many common situations in which intersubjective en-tities—human relationships—are connected to both external structures and behaviors that are all completely artifactual. [emphasis in the original] (McIn-tosh, 2007, p. 332)

So, the intersubjective is the site of human relationships and social structures, systems, artifacts and human behaviors are “completely artifactual.” McIntosh sees artifacts as purely material and in-strumental extensions of human senses and physical capacities. Artifacts “serve to supply the ad-ditional physical complexity that is required for consciousness to evolve beyond the animal level.” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 333). Hence, they support the evolution of consciousness via physical extension. McIntosh recognizes the “physical complexity of human society” and the artifacts and technologies that characterize them. But that complexity is derived from the interiors and not from the social realm of, as Wilber puts it, “behavioral intersections” or “social autopoeisis.” In contrast to Wilber’s views, McIntosh (2007) says:


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… evident and astounding material complexity of our evolving society is not found in the rather obscure and intangible notion of “behavioral intersections” engaging in “social autopoeisis.” (p. 334)

It is material complexity of the development of artifacts that has misled Wilber into proposing an evolutionary timeline in the social quadrant. McIntosh argues that at the “point of refl ection” (i.e., the point in human evolution where we become conscious of our consciousness), social organiza-tion becomes dominated by the artifacts of human design and not by the biological evolution of new cultural structures. McIntosh (2007) maintains that, “Science is clear that the biology of the human brain has not evolved any new structures in at least the last 10,000 years” (p. 327). While Wilber, McIntosh argues, is accurate in describing the continuation of evolution within the interior quadrants, he has made an error in grafting the evolution of artifacts, technologies, and material design onto the evolution of natural holons (which McIntosh sees as self-organizing and largely belonging to the interiors).

Where Wilber sees the social quadrant comprised of complex “behavioral intersections” that have the capacity for “social autopoeisis” and self-organizing holonic evolution, McIntosh sees only a realm of material complexifi cation. McIntosh’s (2007) position is made clear in his discussion of language. It is the interior world of culture that creates the sounds, words, and texts of language: “Language is a man-made construction” (p. 334). Intersubjective realities create the “artifactual” realities of utter-ances, words, and texts; the complexity of the social is derived from the evolution of interior, cultural depth. The upshot of all this for McIntosh is that societal artifacts break into the holonic evolution of consciousness and they set up a new track of technological complexifi cation that is derivative of the cultural evolution of consciousness. Therefore, we need to recognize social artifacts as being very “distinct from the holarchy of naturally rising holons” that emerge in the subjective and intersubjec-tive quadrants.

McIntosh believes that Wilber has made an error in regarding exterior interobjective social systems as truly evolving holons with self-organizing properties. He believes this error originates in Wilber’s attempt to include the work of system scientists like Niklas Luhmann. McIntosh sees Luhmann, as he does all systems theorists, as holding a “materialistic worldview” that prevents him (i.e., Luhmann) from recognizing the “internal and intersubjective component of all human systems” (McIntosh, 2007, pp. 335-336). Luhmann has a “blindness to the interiors” that forces him to locate the self-organization of human social systems in the external realm, “which for him was the only realm in existence.” In proposing an interobjective social quadrant, McIntosh sees Wilber as reproducing the systems theorist’s reductionist view of the social.

McIntosh (2007) recognizes that there are “external counterparts of internal evolution, both indi-vidual and social.” It is just that those external counterparts are “simply objective” and therefore:

…we don’t need to insist that all human culture must always be connected to a holonic system of “dynamic its”—we don’t need the erroneous concept of a social action system to justify the existence of an internal intersubjective system. (p. 339)

This is why McIntosh regards “language, art, or intentional action” as artifacts, as objects. Hence,



“we can effectively eliminate the interobjective quadrant” because all social behavior in both its in-dividual and collective forms can be reduced to artifacts and objects (i.e., they can be fully explained in the behavioral quadrant). In proposing an interobjective quadrant as a counterpart to the inter-subjective quadrant, McIntosh sees Wilber as having inadvertently committed the error of “subtle expansionism.” Figure 3 shows Wilber’s “expansionist” four-domain model and McIntosh’s reduced three-domain model.

Finally, McIntosh proposes that if we apply the criteria of parsimony to Wilber’s quadrants model we will end up with three fundamental domains of existence instead of four. Consequently, the four quadrants of consciousness, culture, behavior, and social systems can be reduced to self (conscious-ness), culture, and nature (an amalgam of behavior and social systems). These three domains, McIn-tosh claims, explain everything that Wilber’s current quadrants model does but with greater clarity and parsimony.

In summary, McIntosh argues that Wilber’s social quadrant is redundant and that the four quadrants are in fact three domains where the social can be regarded as a behavioral domain of individually constituted agents, artifacts and objects. He offers four basics grounds for this proposition:

Wilber has confl ated two kinds of development onto one continuous timeline—1. holonic and artifactual.As a consequence, Wilber confuses artifactual complexity with behavioral and 2. social complexity, thereby raising the development of artifacts to the status of evolving holons.In attempting to accommodate their contributions, Wilber has followed sys-3. tems theorists in their mistaken emphasis on material complexity in explaining human social development.The principle of parsimony requires that we use only those (meta)theoretical 4. elements that contribute to our explanation of the data.

Figure 3. Wilber’s quadrants and McIntosh’s Triparti te Model.


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Evaluating McIntosh’s ArgumentsThe Confl ated Developmental Timelines ArgumentMcIntosh argues that there is a disconnection in the developmental stages in Wilber’s Right-Hand quadrants. He asserts that the “science is clear” that there has been no biological evolution of the brain for the past 10,000 years. In fact, the science has never been “clear” about such things. There are many recent developments in evolutionary neuroscience, microneuroanatomy, comparative neu-rology, and other branches of neuroscience that propose a view of ongoing evolution in the human brain (see Holloway et al., 2004; Platek et al., 2007; Striedter, 2005). The theory that there has been no substantial difference in human brain structure over the past 10,000 years is no longer proposed. The theory was based on fi ndings from certain endocast (molds taken of skull interiors) studies done several decades ago. Endocasts are a very rough method for studying the most superfi cial of anatomi-cal structures, and as Anne Weaver and Erik Trinkaus (2005) state, endocasts have dubious value in estimating when brain changes have occurred.

It is generally diffi cult to draw functional inferences about the nature and tim-ing of brain reorganisation, given that superfi cial brain morphology recorded on fossil endocasts is functionally ambiguous. (p. 3576)

One of the world’s leading neuropalaeontologists, Ralph Holloway (1966), stated many decades ago that the most important higher functions of the brain cannot be studied using endocast methodol-ogy:

… categories such as memory, “foresight,” attention, and perception, “symbol-ism,” language, etc., which are of primary interest to the anthropologist, are not correlatable with the outside confi gurations. The various attempts which have been made in the past to obtain such correlations have been based on assumptions which current knowledge would relegate to the limbo of phrenol-ogy. (p. 104)

Endocasts are far too blunt an instrument for studying the relationship between anatomical evolution in the brain and changes in human behavior. In fact, new techniques are fi nding evidence that, at both micro- and macro-anatomical levels, the human brain is still evolving in terms of its neurological and biochemical structure.

At the microlevel there is the fl ourishing new fi eld of microneuroanatomy, where there have been several recent breakthroughs in understanding how the brain’s neurological and genetic structures have evolved. In a brief entry entitled, “Evolution Of Human Brain Hasn’t Ceased,” Jessica Ruvin-shy (2006) reports that “two genes active in the human brain have recently evolved” and that these genetic changes may have important implications for the ongoing evolution of the brain. Holloway, a renowned pioneer of the macrostudies approach to brain evolution, recently said, “If I were 42 years old instead of 72, I would throw all my brain endocasts away and get right into this new fi eld [of mi-croneuroanatomy]” (cited in Balter, 2007, p. 1211).

Finally, in a recent review of the evolution of brain size in humans, Schoenemann (2006) concludes that, “There is no compelling reason to assume anything other than a reasonably constant trend to-



wards increasing brain size over time” (p. 390). It seems that McIntosh’s views on the evolution of human neuroanatomy are not representative of the current state of the science. Wilber’s view that there continues to be evolving structures in the anatomy of the brain is a much more accurate as-sessment of the fi eld. The evidence from unit-level theories of human brain evolution substantially supports Wilber’s argument that there is a continuous evolutionary development in the UR quadrant. Consequently, the ongoing holonic development of neuroanatomy in the UR, and its co-relational expression in human behavioral complexity, suggests that the trajectory of social development in the LR might also be a process of continuous unfoldment.

The Artifacts and Social Holons ArgumentWhile McIntosh’s views about the UR quadrant are not substantiated, they are only indicative of his concerns about the LR quadrant. As he says, the issue of confl ating timelines is not “particularly prob-lematic” in terms of their implications for the LR quadrant. He places much more stress on the issue of the evolution of social artifacts. His view is that social evolution is essentially bio-cultural and the development of artifacts is epiphenomenal in terms of their capacity to self-organize. He sees Wilber as having confl ated the development of artifacts and the development of society into one timeline of evolving holonic systems in the LR.

Regarding artifacts as material extensions of human capacities is problematic to say the least. This view does not recognize the many contemporary theories as well as 19th and early 20th century theo-ries that see social artifacts and economic realities as fundamental to the development of conscious-ness and not just as instruments or material extensions of some internal capacity (see Bannon, 1989; Bannon & Bødker, 1991; Lemke, 2000; Marx & Engels, 1972; Miettinen, 2005; Nardi, 1996; Thomp-son, 1998; Vygotsky, 1981). For example, there is the artifact-in-use approach and the sociogenetic understanding of artifacts as active participants in human development (see Valsiner, 1998; Valsiner & van der Veer, 2000; Wertsch et al., 1995). Such theories see artifacts as enablers of consciousness. For example, one of the foremost fi gures in the sociogenetic approach, Lev Vygotsky (1981), sees ar-tifacts as the mediating means for the internalization of higher cognitive capacities. As he says, “Any higher mental function was external and social before it was internal” (p. 163).

To give a simple example of the sociogenetic view of artifacts, having an artifact such as a word actu-ally prepares the user of that word (the “artifact-in-use”) for consciously registering an awareness of the referent for that word. Having a language to discuss a game of Australian Rules Football enables the spectator to see the game and not merely observe a meaningless jumble of strange athletic acts. The artifact enables the reality of the exterior to be seen and it also mediates the internalization of the exterior to the interior. Like the white cane of the blind person, artifacts are not only physical exten-sions of the body, they are also cultural extensions of mind. As such they are intimate participants in the self-organizing capacity of social holons.

The artifact-in-use, sociogenetic, and cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) traditions all see ar-tifacts as intimately involved in the evolution of socio-cultural identity. While Wilber also neglects these approaches in his explication of the quadrants, at least his LR quadrant provides a space for the accommodation and exploration of these theories and paradigms from an integral metatheoreti-cal perspective. As yet, however, AQAL-informed theorists, including Wilber, have not explored this sociogenetic tradition of human development.3


M. EDWARDS

In proposing a social, interobjective LR quadrant, Wilber is acknowledging the contributions of nu-merous scholars and theories of human evolution, change, development, and transformation that see social behavior, technologies, organizations, political structures, economic systems, and material dia-lectics as fundamental and not reducible to interiorist or behavioral explanations. The social quadrant of interobjective behaviors, artifacts, social systems, and technologies offers unique insights into the evolution of self-regulating systems of human activity. These insights have been contributed by many individual thinkers, researchers, cultures, and through their different paradigms of thought and their constituent unit-level theories. When one actually performs a multiparadigm review of the literature in any fi eld, as we might see in organizational theory, sociology, research methods, or theories of power, then we fi nd that there are exteriorist, systems-based functionalist theories and interobjective paradigms in abundance (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Jasperson et al., 2002; Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000; Ritzer, 2001). Such frameworks clearly contribute signifi cant metatheoretical evidence for the validity of Wilber’s position to include the LR as an irreducible domain. The metatheoretical evi-dence is overwhelming that an integral metatheory must recognize and accommodate a domain that includes theories of exterior collective development.

If we develop integral metatheories that are not based on the evidence of extant theory, we fall into the old habits of proposing rationalist arguments to support our factual claims. In Ritzer’s terms, this is doing OM, or speculative metatheorizing, which is metatheorizing not on the evidential basis of extant theory, but on the basis of one’s own system of justifi cation, one’s own rhetoric. In proposing that, “objective acts merely clothe the underlying intersubjective cultural structures that are the real dynamic systems,” McIntosh (2007) is doing speculative OM and not evidence-based MO (p. 337). He is committed to his initial position of a triadic structure to his metatheoretical framework and does not see the overwhelming unit-level evidence that there exist interobjective explanations of transforma-tion that are holonic, self-regulating, and emergent.

McIntosh’s critique of Wilber’s social quadrant neglects one of the core principles of an integra-tive methodology—that of non-exclusion. To develop a more comprehensive metatheory of human development we must include and accommodate the many approaches that attribute causality and self-organizing capacities to the artifacts and “objects” that occupy the social quadrant—the socio-technical, political, ecological, educational, and economic systems; the behavior-artifact networks, the artifacts-in-use, the human-tool interfaces, the autopoietic organizations; and the communicative networks that can each be regarded, and have been regarded by many theorists, as evolving self-organizing entities.

The Systems ArgumentMcIntosh claims that, in raising the social world of the interobjective to the status of self-organizing holons, Wilber is buying into the fundamental errors of systems theorists. McIntosh sees system theo-rists as being mistaken when they portray human relations as exterior and interobjective when they are actually, as he puts it, “primarily non-physical.” McIntosh (2007) proposes that:

[Systems] theorists cannot see that the actual systems of the human relation-ships they are trying to describe are primarily non-physical. Yet as we have shown throughout this book, the essence of the human relationship is essen-tially internal and intersubjective. (pp. 336-337)



McIntosh’s view is that social behavior and interobjectivity are epiphenomenal to interior conscious-ness and intersubjectivity. He proposes that human social systems “reside primarily in the internal universe” (McIntosh, 2007, p. 337). He gives the example of a smiling face as being a “mirror” to the true reality of the emotional mood of a “person’s subjective consciousness.” Similarly, he sees the interobjective behaviors involved in personal relationships as surface features of “underlying intersubjective realities.” For McIntosh, the site and source of holarchical development is the inte-rior world of the subjective and intersubjective. From his perspective, any systems theorist that sees holarchical development in the objective exteriors must be in error. He offers by example the case of social systems theorist Niklas Luhmann.

McIntosh goes to considerable lengths to convince us that Luhmann holds a “materialistic world-view.” But Luhmann is not a materialist in any gross reductionist sense. To label him as such does not give an adequate account of his views. For example, Luhmann fully acknowledges the reality of consciousness, of intersubjectivity of thoughts, and of the world of private experience. He has, after all, written a very extensive book on the rise of romantic love, emotion, and intimacy (Luhmann, 1998). His explanations and theories for such things are, however, very different than those of McIn-tosh. For Luhmann, consciousness is part of the personal systems and social system’s environmental ecology. Far from denying consciousness, Luhmann sees individuality as being immersed in a sea of consciousness as expressed in social communication. This is not an objectivist worldview, let alone a classical materialistic one. It is a worldview that emphasizes social communication in the creation of individual and collective systems of awareness and meaning rather than subjective intention.

Luhmann does not deny the subject, the thought, or the feeling. Instead, he sees those realities in terms of eventful systems of communicative understanding rather than as fundamentally private oc-currences (Luhmann, 2006). This is not a merely behavioral ploy to evade the issue. Luhmann does not see action in itself as suffi cient for explaining anything; as he says, “somebody must be there” for communication to occur (Luhmann, 2006, p. 48). In a discussion of Husserl’s phenomenology, Luhmann argues that consciousness always moves beyond itself and assumes a difference between self-reference and external-reference. For him, consciousness is a not limited to an iterative process of self-affi rmation. Consciousness involves more than interiors. He says:

Consciousness would never be able to lose itself entirely in its environment to the point that it could not return to itself. Similarly, it could not constantly be concerned merely with the refl ection ‘I think what I think what I think’. At some point, the need for phenomena becomes manifest. (Luhmann, 2006, p.51)

As a result of this manifest difference, Luhmann (2006) claims that “consciousness operates in the centre of time, as it were, along an axis that traverses the distinction between external and self refer-ence” (p. 53). This understanding of consciousness has something additional to the experiencing and self-referential subject that occurs in McIntosh’s work. However, as should also be clear by now, this is not a materialistic or behavioral viewpoint. As Luhmann (2006) says, “Insofar as it is coupled with self-reference, consciousness is also internal, and it knows that it is” (p. 53). Finally, the fol-lowing quote from Luhmann’s book Essays on Self-Reference should be enough to convince us that his theory of consciousness and the subjective and intersubjective realms is a highly sophisticated approach that should not be dismissed as materialistic. In a discussion of the importance of the study


M. EDWARDS

of “meaning” in sociology, he says:

Meaning functions as the premise for experience processing in a way that makes possible a choice from among different possible states or contents of consciousness, and in this it does not totally eliminate what has not been cho-sen, but preserves it in the form of the world and so keeps it accessible. (Luh-mann 1990, p. 27)

Integral metatheorists need to understand and represent the subject matter of their study accurately. In exercising the principle of non-exclusion to the systems theorists of the LR quadrant, we need to allow the “data” of systems theories to contribute their own unique insight into explanations of social realities. We also need to accommodate the core conceptual lenses of systems approaches into our metatheories. Wilber has taken a fi rst step in doing this in recognizing the holonic capacity of interobjectivity and in providing a domain where further exploration of systems theories can oc-cur. Finally, we need to be careful not to translate the perspectives of theories and paradigms with which we are not familiar into the logics of those with which we have some knowledge and affi nity. Metatheorizing is, fi rst and foremost, an exercise in consciousness-raising and we need to be aware of the assumptions, constrictions, and mistranslation we make of unfamiliar theories, paradigms, and cultural viewpoints.

The Parsimony Argument: Three Domains Instead of FourWikipedia tells us that “Parsimony is a ‘less is better’ concept of frugality, economy, stinginess, or caution in arriving at a hypothesis or course of action.” But there are, as Paul Meehl (2002) suggests in the following, several types of parsimony in theory appraisal:

When scientists invoke parsimony in theory appraisal, it is not always clear whether they mean having fewer law-like statements … or having fewer theo-retical concepts that appear in those statements, or both. (p. 359)

McIntosh seems to be calling upon the understanding of parsimony as a frugality in the number of concepts in a theory. This type of parsimony requires that we only propose the minimum number of explanatory elements in our theorizing. This form of parsimony has ontological implications. For example, all things being equal, a parsimonious account of the transmission of light that does not rely on the existence of the ether is preferable to one that does. The ether is removed as a necessary part of reality. Parsimony removes ontological commitments. As Sober (1981) says, “The principle of parsimony….counsels removal of an ontological commitment when it is dispensable” (p. 147). Consequently, proposing that the social quadrant can be removed from the AQAL metatheory means that a parsimonious account of reality has no need for explanations based on interobjectivity. In other words, interobjective events have no causal power in their own right. What happens in the social world is derivative of, and can always be explained by, interior intentional or cultural factors.

Such a view is not supported by the metatheoretical evidence. Metatheorists from Hegel, Marx and Durkheim, to Giddens, Luhmann, Vygotsky, and Alexander have all provided explanations of social realities that require the recognition of their inherent causal power for self-organizing and creating. If we deny the capacity of social entities to self-organize in Wilber’s social quadrant, we deny the



contributions of theories from many generations of historians, ecologists, economists, sociologists, philosophers, and systems theorists who propose precisely that. If we apply the principle of parsi-mony to remove the social quadrant, we will also end up neglecting the ontologies described by these social theorists. Whole orders of social being and becoming are removed in doing so.

Parsimony must always to be balanced by other evaluative criteria. For example, comprehensiveness and parsimony complement each other. Comprehensiveness, in the context of metatheorizing, is the degree to which the core insights of the relevant range of extant theories have been accommodated within the metatheory (Whetten, 1989). If the application of parsimony overwhelms comprehensive-ness, then reductionisms of all kinds ensue. In such cases, parsimony can be applied to the point of extreme reductionism and the exclusion of essential explanatory factors. The most parsimonious explanations are ultimately the most reductive in that they rely on very few factors to explain a great many phenomena. Parsimony, when applied in isolation, is no test for the validity of a metatheoretical construction.

Another crucial criterion for assessing the contribution of a metatheory is that of internal consistency or internal logic. The virtue of internal consistency refers to the regularity of relationships between the constructs of a theory. Internal consistency means that “the concepts and relationships [that make up a theory] are logically compatible with each other” (Wacker, 1998, p. 365). In terms of metatheory building, we tend to forget that the quadrants are generated by the dimensions that defi ne them. We often see the quadrants as reifi ed domains that exist independently of the conceptual lenses that delineate them. In fact, it is the combination of the interior-exterior and the individual-collective di-mensions that generates the quadrant domains of intentionality, behavior, culture, and social systems. Because most integral lenses are, by defi nition, orthogonal to each other and therefore independent, they can be combined to form metatheoretical frameworks such as AQAL’s four-cell matrix. This means that the combination of the two bipolar lenses like interior-exterior and individual-collective will necessarily provide a four-cell matrix. If we propose that the combination of two dimensions only forms three cells, then our metatheory lacks internal consistency.

However, as McIntosh notes, Wilber himself sometimes reduces his quadrants model to, what he calls, “The Big Three.” However, this is often done in the context of referring to previous metatheo-ries and grand philosophies. In using the term “Big Three,” Wilber is highlighting the historical con-nections between previous three-domain metatheories of human experience and the quadrants. The quadrants are not dreamt up from nothing (Ritzer’s OM). They are evidentially based on metatheo-retical categories that have been identifi ed many times before in various combinations (e.g., Ritzer’s MO). In any case, Wilber has always argued that the quadrants cannot be simplifi ed to fewer domains without signifi cant reductionist implications. As Zimmerman (2005) points out, “Wilber argues that a constructive, integral postmodernity will restore legitimacy to all four quadrants.”

The frequent proposal of three domains of existence almost always comes from theorists who do not propose interacting dimensions of reality as does Wilber. They simply propose and describe their three domains without any underlying dimensional logic. But Wilber does work from the position of underlying lenses or dimensional categories and so it is incumbent upon him to retain the internal consistency of his approach and describe four cells in his AQAL meta-framework. If we are pro-posing that the lenses of interior-exterior and individual-collective are fundamental to the way we interpret and structure reality, then the domains formed by the combination of these lenses will also


M. EDWARDS

be fundamental. The criterion of internal consistency demands that each cell in that framework be regarded as a unique window into social reality. Each call, therefore, must be retained when present-ing a full picture of that reality.

If we reduce AQAL to a three-cell model, we are not acknowledging the crucial importance of the conceptual lenses that actually generate the domains of existence. In metatheory building, when two bipolar lenses are crossed the minimum number of domains that result from their interaction will be four. It is a reasonably common problem in metatheorizing that the combination of lenses produces a partial or reduced version of a metatheoretical framework.4 The criterion of internal consistency requires us to be more logically reliable in such instances.

Like all of the qualities of good (meta)theory, parsimony has to be balanced by other criteria and should not be applied in isolation from things like generalizability, comprehensiveness, fecundity, level of abstraction, conservation, and internal consistency. In using only parsimony as a criterion for judging whether three or four domains are needed, McIntosh is cherry picking and not applying a rigorous approach to his evaluation of the quadrants model.

The application of parsimony in itself provides no justifi cation at all for reducing the four domains of the AQAL model to three. Such a move ignores several other criteria that need to be discussed when evaluating the metatheory-building qualities of AQAL. These include 1) nesting, which refers to the relationship between a unit-level theory and other paradigms or research orientations in which it is “embedded”; 2) linkage, which is how those elements that connect one unit-level theory to another or distinguish one theory from another are used at a metatheoretical level; 3) scope, which refers to the coverage of a metatheory; and 4) generalizability, in that the metatheory must be applicable across situations (Ritzer, 1991; Whetten, 1989). All of these criteria suggest that the social quadrant is needed to honor the contributions of those theorists whose insights rest on interobjective explana-tions of social realities.

ConclusionsMcIntosh’s metatheory for an evolution of consciousness is an antidote to those reductionist theo-ries of evolution that have excluded consciousness from their theorizings and analyses. As such, his metatheorizing is valuable and it contributes greatly to understanding how the subjective and inter-subjective domains evolve and transform. However, in emphasizing the role of consciousness, McIn-tosh neglects to fully incorporate the contribution of exteriorist positions. In proposing the “three essential elements of evolution” as “unity, complexity, and consciousness,” he omits behavior and social autopoeisis as fundamental domains for self-organizing, holonic evolution. He sees the exte-rior world of nature as reducible to the confl uence of consciousness, complexity, and unity and not as something causal to evolutionary processes.

Objective and interobjective realities, for McIntosh, “merely clothe” what is the site of “real dynamism”—consciousness and culture. His adoption of the metaphor of the objective physical world as “clothing” for the subjective is one that I fi nd particularly ironic. For, of course, the physical body is what we actually clothe. The physical body does not wrap around consciousness like clothes cover a body. The physical is not the vehicle that transports the conscious self around like a rider in a chariot, like “the ghost in the machine” (Gilbert Ryle’s derogatory term for Descartes’ body-mind



dualism, which Koestler later took as the title for his book on holarchy). The philosophy of the body teaches us that consciousness is not clothed by the physical any more than a tree is clothed in wood (see Blaikie, 2004; Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Price & Shildrick, 1999; Proudfoot, 2003). Consciousness is embodied in the same way that behavior is conscious. The embodied philosophy movement has argued strongly that we need to see consciousness as inclusive of both objective and subjective do-mains (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Oliver & Ostrofsky, 2007). Subjective consciousness and objective consciousness, mind and body are co-creative and interconstitutive (Küpers, 2005). And so they fi nd expression in the social as much as in the behavioral.

The sociogenetic view of human development tells us that the physical exteriors are not fl atland sur-faces but have holonic depth that can mediate meaning and consciousness as much as any thought can. McIntosh’s proposition that “the essence of the human relationship is essentially internal and intersubjective” is partial because it does not seek to understand how human relationships can be understood as external and interobjective. It is the task of integral metatheorizing to see how these views can complement each other within a more integrated purview rather than the subjective con-sciousness as causal view that McIntosh argues for.

In any event, from an AQAL perspective, consciousness is better regarded as characteristic of all four quadrants. As Wilber (1997) puts it, “consciousness is a four-quadrant affair, and it exists, if it exists at all, distributed across all four quadrants, anchored equally in each” (p. 81). Metatheory that sees all aspects of evolutionary development as essentially caused or designed by the dynamic unfold-ing of the subjective and the cultural suffers from a form of psychological developmentalism (Carr, 2002; Kincheloe et al., 1999; Walkerdine, 1993). Developmentalism reduces change processes such as learning, cognitive growth, and moral development to the unfolding of interior structures. It does not recognize the contributions of the embodied, relational, and interobjective theories of change and development. And so, we have the polarized views of a behaviorism that sees consciousness as epiphenomenal to behavior and developmentalism that sees the physical and the interobjective as epiphenomenal to the intersubjective. The debate between the cognitive and the sociogenetic perspec-tives on development, as exemplifi ed in the contrasting of Piagetian and Vygotskian explanations of human development, is another variety of this polarization. In seeing interobjective explanations of evolution, such as systems theory, as epiphenomenal (i.e., as exterior “clothing” to an interior con-sciousness), McIntosh falls within this developmentalist tradition. A more integral approach would attempt to accommodate the valid aspects of both paradigms within a much more embodied and so-cial understanding of mind.

McIntosh’s work is complex, rich in ideas, and has important implications for the development of integrative understandings of big issues. This article has not discussed any of these contributions. In-stead, I have focused on McIntosh’s critical comments on the interobjective aspects of Wilber’s work to provide an example of how alternative readings of metatheories such as AQAL can be evaluated within a scientifi c context. Of course, the possibility exists that I have not done justice to McIntosh’s position nor to his critique of Wilber. If that is the case, then the shortcomings in my understandings need to be pointed out. It is a fundamental function of all scientifi c activities that the development and utilization of theories, models, and core concepts be not only carefully applied but also be rigorously evaluated. A scientifi c approach to the development and practical application of metatheories such as Wilber’s AQAL framework demands that rigorous critical appraisal be undertaken. McIntosh’s critique has, at the very least, given an opportunity for furthering that evaluative process.


M. EDWARDS

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1 For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Edwards (2008).2 A distinction is made here between fi rst- and second-order concepts. First-order concepts are derived from empirical events and experiences (e.g., anxiety), while second-order concepts emerge from the activity of doing science itself (e.g., developmental stage or cognitive structure).3 For example, although Vygotsky is one of the most infl uential theorists of human development, there have been no references to his work, or to any other CHAT theorist, in any of Wilber’s writings.4 We see this same problem, for example, in Wilber’s own work where his crossing of fi rst-, second-, and third-person perspectives with the individual-collective lens results in the arguably reductionist four-cell matrix of the “I-We-It-Its” model instead of a six-cell model (see Edwards, 2005).



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MARK EDWARDS, Ph.D., received his doctorate (with distinction) in organization theory from the Business School, University of Western Australia where he also teaches in the area of human resource management and strategic manage-ment. His thesis, which focused on the development of an integrative metatheory for organizational transformation and sustainability, will be published by Routledge. Mark is also a member of the European research network SUSTAIN, which looks at innovative approaches to sustaining work. His published writings focus on metatheorizing as a means for developing integrative and critical perspectives in such fi elds as management studies, futures studies, sustainability, and organizational transformation.

an exemplar case and a defense of wilberâ€™s social quadrant

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