Integral Praxiology: Justification Considerations

Daniel O'Connor  |  Integral Ventures, LLC

Continued from Integral Praxiology: Integral Practices

How exactly does one justify the thesis that a specific set of perspectives, practices, and propositions, however counterfactual it may appear in people’s worldly action, is nevertheless always already essential for their worldly action and, therefore, represents an integral knowledge possessed by all people, regardless of the extent to which they realize it? Appeals to authority or popularity simply will not suffice, for they are logical fallacies of the highest order and ironically supportive of the thesis they might seek to quickly dismiss. Beyond the demonstrative justification of integral reconstruction itself—that which I express in the course of my writing—there are at least two additional approaches to justification worth considering.

The first method of justification is that of performative contradiction, which involves systematically contemplating and demonstrating that if people were to act in a manner that expressly violated any or all of the perspectives, practices, and propositions, then they would be engaged in some form of performative contradiction. This is a method advanced by Apel (1990) in his approach to speech act theory and the unrestricted communication community and employed further by Habermas (1979; 1990) in his formal pragmatics and discourse ethics. Thus, one way to justify the mutual pursuit of Transparency, Choice, and Accountability with respect to Triadic Quadratic Perspectives is to consider the validity claims raised in various contemplated human actions in which these principles and perspectives are expressly denied. For example:

• People make adequately informed decisions by ignoring relevant information needed to make the decisions.
• We developed a mutual understanding by systematically deceiving ourselves and one another.
• People are free to act in their own best interests only when they’re being forced to do so.
• I don’t have any desire to express myself to you.
• His actions are of no interest to me.
• My problems are not mine.
• The best way to validate my interpretation of you is to avoid discussing it with you.
• People learn best when they ignore the consequences of their actions.
• The best way to understand someone’s perspective is to discuss it only with someone else.
• People build trust by refusing to honor their commitments to one another.
• I can interact with you without distinguishing between first-person and second-person perspectives.
• We can know the world without ever taking a third-person perspective.
• There really are no collectives, because we are all individuals.
• We can act as a unified collective by ourselves.
• I can act beyond the limits of all language.

While this list is by no means definitive, it does suggest that it is rather easy to contemplate actions inconsistent with TCA/TQP the performance of which appear to violate one or more of the three primary validity claims to truth, rightness, or truthfulness. The more compelling the list of performative contradictions, the more compelling are the claims to validity of the propositions being contemplated.

Turning this around, it is perhaps impossible to contemplate any human action that does not presuppose and that could not be described in terms of the mutual pursuit of Transparency, Choice, and Accountability with respect to Triadic Quadratic Perspectives. What would human action be without at least some prospect of it being seen and informed without deception or distortion from oneself or others? What would human action be without at least some capacity to choose for oneself, to express oneself, and to receive others’ expressions in the absence of coercion or a presumed pre-determination? What would human action be without at least some sense of responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, even if nothing more than the capacity to feel some satisfaction or regret? What would human action be without the most fundamental perspectives we all take in the course of ordinary conversations and decisions? It is difficult to conceive of human action that does not pre-suppose these ideal conditions because it seems likely that all real conditions of human action can be interpreted as being more or less congruent with these principles and perspectives.

The second method of justification is that of paradigmatic validation, which involves articulating the specific action one would have to take in order to discover for oneself the knowledge that is being proposed for consideration. This is an idea introduced by Kuhn (1970) and advanced by Wilber (2000a; 2000c; 2000d; 2000e; 2007) as an essential feature of what has gradually evolved into his Integral Methodological Pluralism. As Wilber (2000d, p. 379-80) articulates, “each valid mode of knowing consists of an injunction, an apprehension, and a confirmation. The injunction is generally of the form ‘if you want to know this, do this.’ This injunction, exemplar, or paradigm is, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out, an actual practice, not a mere concept… The injunction or exemplar brings forth a particular data domain—a particular experience, apprehension, or evidence… This apprehension, data, or evidence is then tested in the circle of those who have completed the first two strands; bad data or bad evidence is rebuffed, and this potential falsifiability is the third component of most genuine validity claims; it is not restricted to empirical or sensory claims alone: there is sensory experience, mental experience, and spiritual experience, and any specific claim in each of those domains can potentially be falsified by further data in those domains.” Recently, Wilber (2007, p. 258) builds on this durable insight with a more challenging one: “the meaning of a statement is the means of its enactment.” By this he means that any assertion of knowledge that does not include an injunction by which others can enact the evidence or experience to justify the assertion is open to the charge of being a mere metaphysics. Thus, the only potentially valid knowledge is paradigmatic knowledge. Translating Wilber’s axiom into the language of this article, I arrive at the following: the potential validity of a proposition is the act of its validation.

The potential validity of my proposed integral meta-praxis is therefore to be found in the act of its validation. Given that I have intentionally designed the mutual practice of Transparency, Choice, and Accountability with respect to Triadic Quadratic Perspectives in meta-paradigmatic form, the act of its validation is to mindfully engage mp TCA wrt TQP. Furthermore, given that I am essentially defining human action as mp TCA wrt TQP, the act of its validation is none other than mindful human action itself. Any such effort in mindful action can proceed with the aim of either validating or invalidating the proposed meta-praxis. Thus, one simply pays close attention to how one acts—pays close attention, that is, to the paradigms one acts out—and attempts to either validate or invalidate mp TCA wrt TQP as a transcendent, yet inclusive meta-paradigm. If nothing else, such mindful inquiry into the nature of integral meta-praxis should greatly enrich the Integral Discourse that is, in my own view, the ultimate expression of the mutual practice of Transparency, Choice, and Accountability with respect to Triadic Quadratic Perspectives.

© 2008 by Daniel J. O'Connor.  All Rights Reserved.

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