teasing apart the dimensions of ?"reality"?

Written:
March 11, 2001

Given the constructed/contested nature of reality, a number of heuristics, frameworks or approaches for sorting, distinguishing, or teasing apart various dimensions of that-which-exists can be found. I discuss scale and degree of abstraction elsewhere and here consider other heuristics, frameworks and approaches that may be useful for considering integration. While these may be seen as big theoretical/philosophical considerations, far from the pragmatics of practice, I believe they provide functional and important tools for researcher and practitioners and citizens alike. These are, at least to some degree, methodological considerations. In effect, the question is: What are the various ways of knowing and the various things that are known? - And how do we sort them out?

One of the most demanding challenges that arises when trying to cope with the complex interconnected issues and influences in socio-ecological systems is managing the range of relevant practical concerns. Such concerns include a diverse range from ensuring manifestation of the less-tangible features of a quality life, to cleaning up/preventing toxic spills, to working with/against bureaucratic decision-making. In coping with this range and diversity we each employ conceptual frameworks that enable integration, prioritization and forgetting of the different factors involved.

The intent of considering broad, integrative heuristics, frameworks and approaches for conceptualizing and/or sorting out that-which-exists is to enable reflection on the frameworks each of us employ.

Four Quadrants of "Reality" - Ken Wilber

One of the more comprehensive accounts I have found comes from Ken Wilber, in The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1999). He lays out a typology of hierarchies that emerged from research covering a range of disciplines, including those of both a scientific and religious sort from premodern to postmodern times. He decided that the hundreds of hierarchies he found could be summarized into four basic hierarchies. He expresses these in a schematic - not intended to be complete or exhaustive - that displays four quadrants representing both the internal and external aspects of both individuals and collectives.

Of particular importance, Wilber notes that these different dimensions of reality can be sensed through different methods - each leading to repeatable results that can be confirmed through application of standardized practises ranging from mediation to scientific experimentation. While the latter tends to provide access to the right-hand side - the "exterior" dimensions, other methods lead to experience of the left-hand side. As a brief introduction, he notes "a few aspects of these crucial dimensions:"

I (Upper left): Consciousness, subjectivity, self, and self-expression (including art and aesthetics); truthfulness, sincerity; irreducible and immediate lived awareness; first-person accounts.
We (Lower Left): Ethics and morals, worldviews, common context, culture; intersubjective meaning, mutual understanding, appropriateness, justness; second-person accounts.
It (Right Hand): Science and technology, objective nature, empirical forms, (including brain and social systems); propositional truth (singular and functional fit); objective exteriors of both individuals and systems; third-person accounts. (Wilber 1999: 74)

He continues, pointing out that these "three value spheres" are:

recognized by an influential number of scholars. They are Sir Karl Popper's three worlds: subjective (I), cultural (WE), and objective (IT). They are Habermas's three validity claims: subjective sincerity (I), intersubjective justness (WE), and objective truth (IT). They are Plato's Beautiful, Good, and True. They even show up in Buddhism as Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha (the I, the It, and the We of the Real)... [And they] showed up in Kant's immensely influential trilogy: Critique of Pure Reason (objective science), Critique of Practical Reason (morals), and Critique of Judgment (aesthetic judgment and art) (Wilber 1999: 75).

These similarities and those emerging from the initial research into organizational hierarchies from a diverse range of disciplines suggest that the four quadrants described may provide a valuable framework for thinking about the various aspects of "reality"

Model of trans-diciplinary self-organizations of different knowledge systems - Soren Brier

Another, comparable integrative/distinguishing framework can be found in a paper by Brier titled Trans-Scientific Frameworks of Knowing: Complementarity Views of the Different Types of Human Knowledge(2000). Brier discusses different ways of knowing, recognizing deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning; internalist vs. externalist perspectives; physical/chemical sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities. To bring all of the different aspects together, Brier develops a model (Figure 12: p 54) that wraps them all up together into a framework that distinguishes-yet-connects the different aspects across four integrated levels, each with four 'corners.' The core level covers the "basic metaphysical considerations": being/non-being and its manifestation/non-manifestation. The second level covers the "basic ontological realms of the world": objects, the hidden, the fictional and nothing. The third level displays the "manifestations of different kinds of knowledge production systems": science, art, religion and politics. And the outer level shows some forms of knowledge that are currently emerging: 3^rd culture, utopia, metaphysics, and spirituality.

I-Other Relations - Klaus Krippendorff

In quite a different vein, I also find the work of Krippendorff - in particular a paper titled A Second-order Cybernetics of Otherness also useful here. While not covering the broad scope of "reality" covered by the above frameworks, the specific focus on human relation/communication is crucially important for research into complex socio-ecological issues making these ideas well worth reading and thinking about...

In particular, I find his categorization of I-Other interactions provide a useful heuristic for thinking about interactions such as that between I(researcher) and Other(subject). Subsequently the final sections on methodological and political implications are also useful. In brief, his categorizations of I-Other relations follow:

• I-They - In this case Others include statistical aggregates, experimental subjects, survey respondents etc. - setting up relations in which Others are "described in terms they cannot contest." Such "accounts surrender the properties of individuals to that of conceptual groups."
• I- Trivial It - Here, Others are considered as trivial machines, with a focus on the predictability of behaviour. Deviations are considered as "noise" (in communication theory) or "unreliability" (in measurement theory). The subsequent conceptions of human behaviour are used as "yardsticks" that can "blind researchers [from] coming to grips with the human capabilities such conceptions do not permit."
• I- Non-Trivial It - In this case, Others are considered as non-trivial machines, incorporating internal feedbacks that make them virtually impossible to predict based on observation, leading to a different relation.
• I-You - This involves "persons in communication" - a relation that recognizes the complementary nature of interactions, while emphasizing that this does not mean either equality or sharing. "It simply suggests that roles somehow fit like hand in glove (not like hand in hand)." This relation also begins to recognize recursive complexity: "In I-You communication, every I is I's Others' Other...Thus, in communication, persons become recursively embedded in the enacted accounts of each Other."
• I-Thou - This relation involves "human beings in conversation" (or perhaps - as I initially mis-typed it this should be: humans being in conversation). Relation incorporates an openness to each-Other in which "the positions of I and Thou are freely interchangeable." Krippendorff sees this as a step beyond seeing oneself in the Others' position, or seeing oneself from their position, and beyond simply reconciling similarities/differences to enable conversation.

These five different I-Other relations can be recognized in different real-life situations/interactions as well as in different approaches to research and inquiry. As relates to the question of teasing apart reality, each can be seen as constructing a different sort of social reality for each of the five different Is and their related Others.