The Now UTOKing Series:
Learning the UTOK Language
Our knowledge systems are broken, and we lack consensus on crucial concepts such as consciousness, mind, and behavior. This hinders communication and shared understanding of the world we live in.
UTOK, the Unified Theory of Knowledge, aims to repair this chaotic fragmented pluralism. It forms a comprehensive, big-picture system that unifies many different fields of study into a single definitional framework for understanding the world and our place in it.
Because of this, learning the system can be time consuming, much like learning a new language. However, the pay off is invaluable: a clearer and more meaningful map of the cosmic evolutionary line from the Big Bang, through quantum, and eventually to human societies and our individual existence as subjects with personal identities. UTOK posits by clarifying what is the case, we can then be better positioned to cultivate what ought to be.
The Now UTOKing series is designed to help you get started with learning the UTOK language. As such, it serves as an introductory guide to the core terms in the system. Each episode includes an essay and a 5–10 minute video helping you learn the key UTOK term. The result of the 15 videos is a network of definitions that helps you navigate the world and orient toward living wisely.
- Introduction — This first episode introduces and justifies the series while contextualizing it in the big-picture framework of cosmic evolution offered by UTOK.
2. Behavior — This episode lays out the most frequent referents for the term behavior and explains how UTOK reframes it as the most central concept in natural science.
3. Mind — How does mind relate to behavior, neurocognition, subjective conscious experience, and self-conscious reflection? In this episode, the current diverse definitions of mind are described and UTOK’s reorganization and reframing of the concept is given.
4. Cognition — Drawing from John Vervaeke`s 3P/4R metatheory of cognition and UTOK’s Behavioral Investment Theory, this episode offers a more comprehensive definition of cognition that is congruent with natural evolution.
5. Consciousness — In this episode, consciousness is analyzed from a layered vantage point, going from functional awareness and responsivity, through subjective conscious experience, and self-conscious reflection. A metatheory of human consciousness is offered.
6. Self — Here, different conceptions of self are contrasted, and a new integrative framework is offered, placing the formation of the self in relation to the environment at different levels of conscious evolution.
7. Ego & Persona — This episode emphasizes the exclusively human aspects of the self, explaining what constitutes and differentiates our ego and persona.
8. Culture — Here, UTOK’s formulation of human culture is presented in the context of the Tree of Knowledge System’s cosmic evolution framework.
9. Psychology — This episode explores the problem of psychology and how UTOK solves it by unifying the subject matter of the discipline and reorganizing its primary domains.
10. Psyche — A complete definitional system could not miss the place of the individual subject as part of our understanding of nature. This episode clarifies what UTOK means by psyche, why it is important, and the relevance of the iQuad Coin.
11. Energy, Matter, & Life — This episode summarizes how Energy, Matter, and Life are important concepts composing ontological layers in the UTOK system.
12. Metaphysics — Metaphysics is a complicated construct. Here, UTOK’s approach to metaphysics is explained, showing how it becomes central in the system’s approach to unifying knowledge.
13. Ontology & Epistemology — Here, ontology and epistemology are defined and contrasted, and their place in the UTOK descriptive metaphysics is laid out.
14. Metamodernism — This episode explores what is metamodernism and explains how UTOK can be framed as a metamodern knowledge system.
15. Metacrisis & The 5th Joint Point — The final episode in the series addresses the concept of the metacrisis and places it in relation to UTOK’s conception of the 5th Joint Point.
Viewing them all will take about two and a half hours. We believe it will be well worth the effort as it will provide you a way both define these terms and see how they are interrelated to ground you in a new way to “tok” about the world and our place in it.
This blog series was co-authored by Marcia Gralha, MA.
