Why Metaphysics Matters - Finale

A lively discussion about why metaphysics matters in our current Metamodern era

Why metaphysics matters

A good case can be made that modernity slipped into post-modernity when theory lost ground to meta-theories which contextualized them. Religion and science were put on equal grounds by postmodern structuralism which saw them both as historically contingent language games that had garnered significant political clout on different points of a spectrum. What post-modern meta-theory is actually concerned about is underlying values. Underlying values that drive religious belief. Underlying values that drive the scientific enterprise. Underlying values of capitalism, consumerism, communism and fascism. The values around which groups garner their identities, including nation, class, age, ethnicity and race. All the friction in the world was traced back to the incommensurability of values. It was hoped that an adequate meta-theory of values, would be able to adjudicate between competing worldviews and settle the accounts once and for all. There were a hundred thousand perspectives. The search, much like the search for a grand unifying theory in science, was to derive a meta-theory that could merge them into a single higher-order view. The metaphor used was that of altitude. Individual worldviews existed at the bottom of the mountain on different sides, with different perspectives. The meta-theorist was looking from the top of the mountain, where they could see that all the perspectives were true but partial. Given a clever-enough mind, one could derive a higher-order perspective that transcended and included all the others. Unfortunately, people soon discovered there were a hundred thousand mountains upon which to establish different meta-theories. To make matters worse, meta-theories have two particular drawbacks that theories do not. One drawback is that meta-theories tend to exit the domain of inquiry. A good theory of labor, incites action; a good theory of ecosystem interdependencies, facilitates change. On the other hand, a meta-theory that contextualizes all political platforms is not doing politics; a book that contextualizes all possible perspectives on ecology is not doing ecology. In a very real sense, meta-theory parasitizes action, it leads to, as the poplar phrase has it “analysis paralysis.” The second drawback is even more pernicious and results in endless debate cycles. Scientists had long known that ordinary theories could be ranked by which theory could derive everything in the other theory and then provide even more explanatory power. Two different scientists could fight it out until one scientist’s body of knowledge exhausted the others, while still having more to say than the others. This proved not to be true of meta-theory. Competing meta-theories could “hold” each other’s entire body of knowledge, by contextualized it through its particular meta-theoretical lens. Not knowing this leads to ongoing and often vicious struggles between competing authors,[1] who, because they can see the other’s perspective from within their meta-view,  gain confidence in the validity of their own view. The problem is, that both debators are experiencing the exact same feedback loop. Ongoing debates merely build more confidence in each disparate camp. And the game plays on and on.  From a certain perspective, one can see that this inner game of the mind parallels the outer game of late stage finance capitalism, whose financial instruments complexify like the meta-theories now complexify into meta-meta-theories. Both are accumulating their own kind of debt. Ken Wilber called the kind of debt that the mind issues “an IOU to the universe,” which he saw to be an inevitable unintended consequence of the mind’s efforts to know. Everything today seems to be slipping towards Armageddon, moving like the arms race of yore, except at exponentially faster speeds. What I want to point out is that it is this—this peculiar feature of our Metamodern era, is not a consequence of mind, but a consequence of a certain kind of mind. This is of course the type of mind that is predicated by the synthetic-dialectic-- which now has entered its deficient stage as it shifts into hyper drive.

            The crucial distinction here that has to be made is the difference between epistemic complexity and ontological complexity. The deep ecologist Arne Naess said “Nature is elegantly complex.” The key features of elegant complexity are 1) rich, textured, diverse environments and 2) deep, satisfying coherence[2]. One might say that epistemic elegance is thought that simultaneously satisfies what is true, good and beautiful in reality. Epistemic complexity is like the noise we dial through to find a radio station. Ontologicaal complexity is the coherence that we attain when we tune to a signal with high fidelity—the sound becomes perfectly clear.[3] Because our thought systems are not 100% coherent with the real, (lack of fidelity) we add epistemic complexity to the situation. Consider for example a patient coming to a doctor for help (the scenario works equally well with a medical physician or a therapeutic psychologist). The patient’s body-mind is already a complex system. The doctor, who applies an epistemic lens to the system escalates the complexity the system entails. This is particularly true of western approaches to medicine and therapy. It is also the case when we as humans attempt to “manage” ecosystems and climate. Whenever our epistemic system does not have the requisite variety (rich, textured, diverse) or fidelity (coherent with the real) we add epistemic complexity to the system. Ontological complexity manifests itself as complex, coherence patterns. These patterns are generated from simple yet profound protocols. This is tricky. Protocols are not “laws” of nature.[4] “Laws of nature” are stable patterns that emerge through the self-organized complexity of multiple agents who are feeling (prehending) their way to their future selves. Protocols are the values and means of discernment that guide the agents from choice to choice, from anticipation to satisfaction in a field of creative possibility. The richer the environment, the more the environment affords novelty and coherence at a higher level of complexity. Epistemic complexity results when we try to work at the level of the emergent pattern, which is a category error. A paradigm shift in complexity science is to discover the key generative protocols at the core of the emergent pattern that we seek to understand.[5][6]

So why …

So, why does metaphysics matter? We need a new mind, and metaphysics can help us sample and create new architectures of thought. The new architecture would cut out the epistemic complexity and more perfectly cohere with the rich elegant complexity of the real. By adopting a process understanding of reality, metaphysics could become a suitable guide for a Metamodern praxis, one which integrated perception and participation with the free play of imagination and memory. The task at hand is radical. It would be like swiping a hard drive clean, and uploading completely new software, from scratch, mostly through trial and error, gesture and response, sensing and acting our way forward until the moment when the reality we are situated in, collectively satisfied our dreams of the future “our hearts know is possible.” It would not be a task we could formulate beforehand, or even know afterwards. It would be something that, like human speech, would realize itself through processes of creative becoming. It would never be something we could know, but it is something we could learn to do. Thus, it would take more than intelligence to pull it off. It would require a highly conscious species, to realize this learning journey. Such a consciousness certainly exists as a potential future state of our infinitely creative universe. Will this consciousness rise up in us?¹

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[1] For example, between Ken Wilber and Roy Bhaskar. Most of the debates we see on youtube have this problem, for example when Jordan Peterson debates Izra Klein, or Sam Harris debates just about anyone.

[2] Which is not the same as agreement or alignment. The wolf and the elk are coherent, and this makes the rivers and the forest coherent, too. see How Wolves Change Rivers at

[3] A new science means that we use our whole body-mind, to discover new points of fidelity – high coherence between the world, and our affective-perceptual-cognitive states. These respectively, account for the real (world) the good (affective) the beautiful (perceptual) and the true (cognitive).

[4] Consider the ways we have understood planetary movement. Ptolemy was working at the level of the pattern that could be seen from the vantage point of the earth. This resulted in an overly complex system of epicycles. The shift in view from a geo centric to a heliocentric solar system, greatly reduced the epistemic complexity. But the planets themselves didn’t all of a sudden jump into a simpler configuration. The ontological complexity remained the same. Newton worked at the level of “laws” that governed the planets. The planets were de-animated objects subject to certain laws and forces. Einstein shifted closer to the notion of protocols, where mass itself self-organizes planetary systems through its own essential protocols. Mass becomes self-animated agency in the universe.

[5] Important steps and key indicators of weaning ourselves from the high epistemic complexity of systems thinking are detailed in my article here http://integralleadershipreview.com/16031-releasing-complexity/

[6] For a taste of a new approach to facing complex issues, see my interviews with Daniel Thorson on source code analysis on the Emerge Podcast here:

1. Appendix

Here a meta, there a meta, everywhere a meta meta We can distinguish modes of “going meta.” 1. Meta-synthetic: Modes associated with the dialectic-synthetic “up-ward” path that characterizes the Mental structure of consciousness and the models of adult development that are based on hierarchical complexity and differentiation-integration models. 2. Deconstructive: Modes associated with the eastern, “downward path”, negative dialectics, and illogics. 3. Meta-cognitive: Creating an observational “gap” between knower and known by making an object out of prior subjective contents, i.e. the “Kegan move.” 4. Orthogonal: Modes that shift to different cognitive architectures, such as process philosophy, aesthetic judgement, or aeskesis/ practical judgement. 5. Simplexity: Modes that seek to identify source protocols or “deep code” inside the epistemic architecture, to release complexity of the problem situation. 6. Holistic (meta-complexity) orientation: Essentially a non-epistemic mode that engages embodied “back-ground” processes to carry experience forward: “critical reflexivity,” “meditation in action.”