The 10 Core Principles that Frame the Unified Theory of Knowledge
The Unified Theory Of Knowledge (UTOK) provides a way to organize human knowledge and serve as a transcendental beacon and guide toward the cultivation of wisdom energy in the 21st Century. Its fullest representation is in the form of a Garden that symbolizes it as a wisdom philosophy. This blog delineates UTOK as a set of 10 core principles.
Principle 1: A Wisdom Ethic
Embodying wisdom in the real world is complex and contextual. However, wisdom does have an identifiable conceptual structure. It involves metacognitive reflection grounded in foundational values and oriented toward valued states of being over time. There are many possible paths to develop one’s ultimate values and being such that one is oriented toward wisdom across time. UTOK adopts an integrative pluralistic view of ethical philosophy that can be characterized as a kind of moral universalism, as opposed to a fundamentalist moral absolutism or simplistic moral relativism.
UTOK has been represented as a Garden and for obvious reasons is sometimes called the Garden Philosophy. Having a wisdom ethic is represented in the Garden as being oriented toward the Elephant Sun God (see here). The elephant is taken from John Godfrey Saxes’ famous poem about men blindly grabbing partial truths, and the Sun God represents both a bridge from West to East and a focus on the ultimate source and energy. The Elephant Sun God serves as a symbol in the Garden for the Aristotle’s ultimate eudemonic endpoint or Tillich’s ultimate concern. It also stands for the concept of God (i.e., syntheos) as described by Bard and Söderqvist in Syntheism: Creating God in the Internet Age.
UTOK emphasizes three meta-values to serve as a moral compass that enable people to be oriented toward the ultimate good over time. They are dignity, well-being, and integrity, and they correspond to the promotion of the Beautiful, the Good, and the True, and the move away from Evil. These values are represented in the Garden as part of the Seed, are symbolized as a kind of mitochondrial value energy guidance and production structure.
The key point of the first principle is that a basic wisdom ethic is necessary to initiate and ground UTOK’s project of obtaining knowledge in the service of cultivating wisdom. It is also consistent with the position advocated by the philosopher Nicholas Maxwell, who argues that wisdom inquiry is the fundamental task of the academy. He argued it could be framed in the form of a question such as: “How can our human world, the world as it appears to us, the world we live in and see, touch, hear and smell, the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value — how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical Universe?”
Principle 2: UTOK is Grounded in a Consilient Naturalistic Scientific Ontology
UTOK is positioned as agnostic in relationship to the ultimate nature of reality. It is a naturalistic philosophy, energy and information are fundamental concepts, and natural science is seen as providing the most objective, metaphysically clear, empirically grounded generalizable description of the ontic reality. This represented in how the STEPPing stone grounds the Garden in the Standard Theory of Elementary Particle Physics.
Despite the remarkable success of the physical sciences, it is also the case that traditional “Modern Empirical Natural Science” is fractured because of the Enlightenment Gap. This refers to the failure of modernist scientific enterprise to obtain the proper relations between matter and mind and science and society. Because of the Enlightenment Gap, no coherent naturalistic scientific worldview has emerged, and this has greatly hindered the capacity of traditional “MENS Knowledge” to effectively educate people about scientific knowledge and show how it can be used as a guide toward wise living. Consequently, traditional MENS knowledge has been rightfully critiqued by many, including deconstructionist philosophers and the postmodern movement in society writ large.
UTOK bridges the Enlightenment Gap with a synthetic naturalistic scientific worldview called the Tree of Knowledge System, which is the first key idea in the system. The ToK System provides a consilient picture of both the ontic reality and how our scientific knowledge, from the physical sciences to the human social sciences, can be organized to model that reality. Because it solves the previously unsolvable “problem of psychology”, it is the first ever consilient naturalistic scientific worldview that successfully deals with the Enlightenment Gap.
UTOK can be framed as providing a Wisdom-Oriented view of MENS knowledge or affording us a metamodern path to obtain “WOMENS” knowledge in the 21st Century. With a holistic view of MENS Knowledge that affords the proper relations between matter and mind and science and society, the ToK System puts us in a much better place to both understand and use basic natural scientific knowledge toward the cultivation of wisdom.
Principle 3: UTOK Solves the Problem of Psychology and Affords Clear and Accurate Maps of Behavior, Mind, and the Institution of Psychology
The problem of psychology refers to the fact that there is no coherent way to define psychology via the language game of modern natural science. It is crucial to acknowledge that this problem has been known since at least the time of Vygotsky, who referred to it as “the crisis” in psychology in the 1920s and it has never been solved. The mainstream academic view is to either ignore it or pronounce it cannot be solved.
The most central aspect of the problem of psychology is the problem of its subject matter. Psychology is currently defined in the mainstream as “the science of behavior and mental processes”. Analyses grounded in the UTOK demonstrate that amalgamation of “behavior and mental processes” emerges as the historical function of the field’s attempt to approach the domain of the mental via the epistemology and language game of natural science. More specifically, the concept of behavior emerges as the aspect of the mental that is empirically accessible via the third person vantage point and affords quantification and experimental manipulation consistent with the natural science language game. However, because of the Enlightenment Gap, there was no clear ontology of the mental. The downstream consequence is the conceptual muddle that is the current mainstream approach to empirical psychology. The UTOK resolves this issue with precision and does so in a way that is qualitatively clearer than any other philosophical system.
The most difficult aspect of the problem of psychology pertains to obtaining the proper metaphysical relations between behavior and mental processes. The UTOK solves this conundrum by first identifying the concept of behavior as the central operating lens that frames scientific inquiry writ large. That is, the very grammar of science divides the ontic reality into objects and fields and changes across time that can be measured.
This gives rise to a novel prediction that all the basic, natural sciences should be able to be coherently mapped via the levels and dimensions of complexification identified by the ToK System. This prediction is realized in via the Periodic Table of Behavior, and its 12 floors of science.
UTOK further resolves the proper relations between matter and mind with the combination of defining “Mind” and the Map of Mind-1,2,3. Mind (with a capital “M”) is properly considered as the third plane of existence on the ToK System and mental is an adjective that refers such behaviors. Overt mental behaviors take place between the animal and the environment, whereas covert mental behaviors take place within the nervous system.
With behavior effectively framed in relationship to the mental, the UTOK further identifies three separate domains of mental processes that are differentiated by both ontological referents and epistemological points of view. Mind-1 refers to the neurocognitive processes that regulate overt mental behavior and is available via the third person vantage point. Mind-2 refers to the subjective conscious experience of being in the world and is available from the first person vantage point. Mind-3 refers to self-reflective justification narratives that are unique to human persons and is available via explicit intersubjective language-based communication. These domains are specified in the Map of Mind-1,2,3, which provides a new vocabulary that can untangle the world knot of consciousness that emerged as a function of the Enlightenment Gap.
Although our focus here is on behavior and mental processes, it is important to note that UTOK clearly frames how the modern institution of psychology is defined in relationship to: (a) philosophy; (b) natural science; (c) health service professions; and (d) folk psychology. Here a diagram that shows how the UTOK Maps the institution of psychology into the three great branches that consist of :1) basic psychology; 2) human psychology and 3) the profession:
Principle 4: A Metamodern View of Justification Systems
UTOK is properly considered to be grounded in a metamodern sensibility, and the Garden is an example of “sincere ironic” artwork. Unlike modernist philosophies that argue for a transcendental idealist view of reason and its products, the UTOK grounds human reason and reason giving as part of the unfolding wave of complexification mapped by the ToK System. This means that the UTOK affords a meta/trans view of paradigms, which can be considered as systems of justification that frame within group sense-making.
This meta/transparadigmatic position emerges in part because of the metacognitive perspective the UTOK affords regarding human justificatory processes. Via the Justification Hypothesis, Justification Systems Theory specifies how propositional language and cognition generated a complexity building feedback loop that shaped the human private self-consciousness system as the mental organ of justification. The Updated Tripartite Model of human consciousness specifies the proper metatheoretical relations between perspectival/experiential consciousness (Mind-2) and private self (Mind-3a) and public self (Mind-3b) justificatory narration. Moreover, the UTOK identifies justification systems as the “glue field” that coordinates the complex adaptive landscape of the Person-Culture plane of existence. This is represented as “the context of justification” in the slide below.
In part as a function of embracing a metamodern perspective on cultural consciousness in the 21st Century, the UTOK identifies four major cultural sensibilities to be included and transcended. First, there is the oral/indigenous sensibility of being in personal relation with self, others, and the natural world. Second, there is the traditionalist, civilized sensibility that emphasizes heritage, law, technologies, and a shared conception of the sacred, symbol and written word. Third, there is the modernist sensibility that emphasizes science, reason, capital-labor exchange, democracy, and the possibility of human progress. Fourth, there is the postmodern sensibility that offers a critique of modernity that emphasizes pluralism, the linkages between power and knowledge, care for earth and traditionally marginalized voices, and skepticism toward any grand metanarrative which its potentially totalizing capacities.
The metamodern sensibility is one that embraces each of these cultural sensibilities as having value. Additionally, it identifies the current state of our knowledge as being that of a fragmented postmodern pluralism and seeks to move toward a metamodern integrated pluralism. This move in cultural consciousness is seen as essential in the large-scale process of cultivating wisdom.
Principle 5: The iQuad Coin Represents the Unique Human Subject Placed in Proper Relation to the Language Game of Natural Science
UTOK identifies subjective perspectivalism, intersubjective social construction of justification systems, and natural science objectivity as three fundamentally different epistemological frames that need to be properly interrelated.
There is much confusion and debate about the proper relationship between the unique, particular, and real human subject and the objective, generalized scientific theories regarding the real. In particular, the language game of natural science is essentially antithetical in its grammar to the subjective perspective of the human as lived in the real. The reason was because the method of science split human subjectivity off from reliable measurement and data collection and coupled that to the process of experimentation. This gave rise to the general third person view that enabled the rise of a different kind of justification system, one that was much better at “factoring out” subjective opinion and claims made anchored to ethical values.
Of course, that science is relatively blind to the unique, unpredictable, specific, contingent, unreliable, and idiographic does not mean such events do not exist. A comprehensive knowledge system requires frames for both inductive scientific theory of real general mechanisms and the actual historical contingent events.
UTOK represents the unique, particular, subjective human person via a psychothechnology called “iQuad coin”. The iQuad side of the coin represents each human person as a unique knower with a specific perspective on the real.
It is precisely because the unified metapsychology provides a coherent frame for both the embodied real subjective perspective of the knower (via the iQuad coin) and the scientifically derived generalized knowledge of the known (via the ToK System) that enables UTOK to be an effective, comprehensive, and consilient “theory of knowledge” that obtains the proper relations between knower and known.
Each unique subjective human self is then invited to locate themselves on shared “cosmic coordinates” via the iQuad coin’s “quadrant quadratic” formulation. The ‘quadrant’ portion refers to Ken Wilber’s epistemological quadrants, and each person is encouraged to consider how their lived experiences look from the four frames, which are (1) first-person phenomenological; (2) third-person behavioral; (3) collective cultural emic; and (4) social systemic etic. The WKID WISM Bee represents the metaphysical knower and epistemology, and thus symbolizes how the Garden interrelates these epistemological frames. “Wholistic Intersubjective Mental Behaviorism” represents Wilber’s quadrants in the Garden.
Whereas the quadrants refer to epistemological frames, the ‘quadratic’ refers to a grounded naturalistic empirical ontology that corresponds to the ontic reality as mapped by the ToK System. Specifically, each human person is invited to reflect on themselves as: (i) material objects; (ii) living organisms; (iii) mental primates; and (iv) cultured persons. The argument is that they are an unfolding wave of Energy-Information that is organized across these four planes of existence. The quadrant quadratic thus represents a bridge between subjective perspectivalism, intersubjective construction of justification systems, and naturalistic scientific onto-epistemology and its claims to objectivity.
Of course, many individuals will have first-person experiences and worldviews that identify additional domains of existence, such as God, past lives, or a cosmic consciousness that is connecting the domains. Because UTOK is about correcting the errors that stem from the Enlightenment Gap and achieving consilience between the unique subjective phenomenological perspective of the individual, cultural justification systems, and the generalized scientifically objective behavioral frame of reality, the focus is on the consilient alignment of the natural world. Thus, these extra- or supernatural domains are bracketed from initial consideration. This is because UTOK is guided by a “metaphysical empirical” dialectic, as represented by the “MEme” flower at the center of the Tree of Life in the Garden. The focus is on metaphysical empirical consilience across the various epistemological frames (i.e., subjective experiencing, intersubjective narration, objective scientific naturalism).
Principle 6: Mindful Character Education, Adaptation, and Development
A central feature of the iQuad coin is how it represents the dialectic between unity and multiplicity. The iQuad equivalency of i4 = 1 (i.e., the imaginary number raised to the fourth equals one) symbolizes the dialectical tension and potential equivalency of oneness and multiplicity. This unity-division dialectic has many implications and applications. One applies to the concept of the human self, whereby the human self is simultaneously viewed via the singular and multiple dialectic. Another aspect of this idea is found in the notion that our human oneness is equivalent to four imaginary/hidden/complex dimensions as mapped by the ToK System.
The fifth and six key ideas of UTOK, Character Adaptation Systems Theory and the Wheel of Development, afford psychologically sophisticated ways to understand the human self and its multiple states, systems, contexts, domains, and stages.
UTOK emphasizes character education (i.e., Bildung), adaptation, and development. Character is the central concept that bridges (a) personality psychology and its temperament and trait views with (b) modes of learning, social situations, and development with (c) morality and the concept of virtue. The WIC-W Bee represents the cultivation of character oriented toward wisdom and well-being, keeping in mind needs and interests, healthy adaptation, and domains of lifespan development as framed by CAST and the Wheel. Consistent with Zak Stein’s metapsychology, UTOK embraces skill development, ensoulment, and transcendence as three major domains of human doing, being, and becoming.
Socio-emotional health is central to character development and well-being. UTOK advances CALM-MO as an integrative approach to psychological mindfulness that affords the key principles and processes for metabolizing negative emotions and relational conflicts in growth promoting ways.
Principle 7: Social Capital and the Cultivation of Relational Value as Central to Human Well-Being
A central critique of modernity made by UTOK is the failure to effectively nourish the human soul. Much of this failure is the consequence of applying a materialistic flatland view of reality that damages or invalidates the concept of the sacred and transcendent, and simultaneously excessively instrumentalizes human exchange via monetary incentives, mimicry, and pathological emphases on consumerism, hedonic tone (i.e., happiness and avoidance of negative emotion), and accumulation of shallow markers of status.
According to the Influence Matrix, the fundamental psychosocial need is to be known and valued by important others. This is related to, but also fundamentally different from instrumental social influence. The structure of capital labor relations is such that it creates a gross imbalance toward instrumentalization and results in an addicted consumerism that emerges to feed soul-hunger.
UTOK argues that, much as individual development needs to be focused on a deep and moral conception of character, human relations need to be oriented toward the cultivation of mutual relational value. We need to create a social commons that generates a network that maximizes mutual relational value. The Matrix identifies the key relational process variables in terms of power, love, and freedom. Given the nature of the human ego and the power/achievement vertical social drives, there is a great danger in social influence differentials that, if unchecked, will destabilize a social network.
The Matrix can serve as a kind of “recursive relational relevance realization” guide toward the optimization of relational value and social influence. It suggests we should draw synergistically from both socialist and capitalist inclinations in a healthy dialectic between cooperation and competition, and ultimately points toward a “social capital” orientation. The ultimate point being that UTOK agrees with what has long been known around the world: the coherent integration and fulfillment of the heart, the head, and the relational world is central to human well-being.
Finally, it is crucial to note that there is a profound connection between human individuals and the relational world. James Mark Baldwin properly noted that “ego and alter (other) are born together”. Whereas the Matrix places the intrapsychic and interpersonal in the same relational space, the iQuad coin connects individuals to humanity writ large.
Principle 8: The Digital Identity Problem and the Need for a New Way of Being in the Back Half of the 21st Century
The situation that humanity finds itself in during the first half of the 21st Century is appropriately considered a “meta-crisis”. A crisis is an event or period that can lead to an unstable and dangerous situation. And it also means that many individuals and groups may or will suffer, and potentially in huge numbers. From the vantage point of UTOK, there are four major meta-crises that make up what is called, “The Digital Identity Problem.”
It is important to note that this framing should not be confused with a local crisis that requires everyone inside the system to act as if their personal lives were facing an emergency. The prefix “meta-” refers to beyond or transcending and the meta-crisis operates at a higher level and timescale than local lives. A central Garden principle is to operate at the proper level of socio-ecological frequency, and not to mistake local for global or the reverse. Thus, although the system as a whole might experience a crisis, many individuals might live wonderful lives within it.
Regardless of whether one is pessimistic or optimistic about the future of humanity, it seems undeniable that the human potential of the 21st Century is not currently being realized. Given our control over the physical and biological domains, the situation is rife with confusion, chaos, unpredictability, vulnerability, and massive levels of mental illness and existential despair. Even if we are not on the verge of collapse or an apocalypse (which we arguably are), we surely have not developed a way of being in the 21st Century that allows us to realize our wisdom potential in a manner that is robust, clear, stable, and sustainable. As such, it is very reasonable to be exploring new systems of knowledge and wisdom that would enable different and better relations between humans, technology, and the planet, and it is good to see the visions and proposals that are emerging (e.g., dialogos, Perspectiva, Game B, syntheism, metamodernism, Bildung, etc.). These are seen as planting the seeds of a great “meta-cultural conscious” transition into new ways of being that hopefully will become solidified in the decades to come and result in a much more robust, healthier, and sustainable place for humanity for the back half of the 21st Century.
Principle 9: The Fifth Joint Point and the Knowledge-into-Wisdom Technology Singularity
UTOK frames the future vision in terms of the 5th Joint Point, the Knowledge-into-Wisdom Technology Singularity, and the Digital Identity Solution. The ToK System provides a clear and obvious sense-making framework for understanding the tumult humanity is experiencing in the first half of the 21st Century. Specifically, it notes that each dimension of complexity following Matter emerges as a function of novel information processing and communication systems.
This pattern allows us to see that the emergence of computers, the internet, and artificial intelligence in the 20th Century meant that the stage was set for an explosion of complexification to take place in the 21st Century. This explosion is akin to the Cambrian explosion that saw the transition from jellyfish with decentralized neural networks into animals with complex active bodies, and centralized nervous systems, all of which resulted in the emergence of Mind. Likewise, the ToK System shows that our modern cosmic coordinates are such that we are seeing the emergence of a new plane of existence, mediated by the Digital. This is called the “5th Joint Point” in the UTOK Garden Philosophy.
The 5th Joint Point demonstrates remarkable correspondence with “the singularity” as identified by Big Historians, especially A. Korotayev. In mathematics, a singularity is when y = 1/x, as x goes to zero. As this article documents, the rate of paradigmatic change is on a curve that is represented by a singularity. Specifically, it shows that the rate of paradigmatic change and the time between change is going to zero (or going vertical), and the pattern is happening with striking regularity.
The regression line is quite remarkable. It is a natural logarithmic algorithmic function of hyperbolic exponential change. It has been occurring naturally, as a function of complex adaptive behavior. It is, as far as we know, not being a consciously planned or recognized. As has been noted, it is an empirically verifiable line in. Here are two different data sets tracking the rate of macro-evolutionary phase shifts. There is an undeniable pattern.
Moreover, there is the remarkable fact that the upper limit on this kind of complex adaptive emerging change is fast approaching. Specifically, according to the graph on the left, the limit function will be crossed at 2027. According to the graph on the right, it will be 2029. It is nothing short of amazing that two different data sets plotting macro-level phase shifts or developments in complexity across time operate on a remarkably well-specified line.
Unsurprisingly, there is much debate about what the line means. As Ray Kurzweil notes here, he believes that it will be the point at which General Artificial Intelligence “wakes up” and surpasses human intelligence. In contrast, Max Borders, argues for a “social singularity”. He envisions a decentralized but globally connected social intelligence mediated by the internet. Finally, Graeme Snooks, one of the originators of the term, finds discussions about the singularity to be overblown and examples of what he rather derisively calls “metaphysical historicity”.
Consistent with an integrated pluralism, especially as it pertains to the future, all these perspectives have value from the vantage point of UTOK. UTOK embraces the idea that we can tie together artificial intelligence, social relations, our relations with the planet, and a metaphysical mythos regarding the future into a coherent frame of understanding. It achieves this by linking the iQuad coin and the ToK System with the larger UTOK wisdom philosophy, such that the metaphor of the singularity functions as a “transcendental beacon” that is sending out signals for the ultimate wisdom ethic. The ultimate wisdom ethic would combine objective science with the subjective soul and a general universal wisdom ethic of being into becoming. It is the valued future that can be.
This suggests that, just as John Vervaeke advocates for in this 2014 Tedx Talk, we need to merge knowledge with wisdom and technology to orient us toward future ways of being. Veraeke’s vision of being guided by wisdom technology directly aligns with the key ingredients that make up the 5th Joint Point as suggested by UTOK.
Principle 10: The Cultivation of Wisdom Energy
The ultimate end to which UTOK is oriented is toward the cultivation of wisdom energy across socio-ecological scales (note Principle 1). Energy is meant in the naturalistic sense of capacity of a system to do work. As represented in this diagram, UTOK represents a naturalistic humanistic vision that is oriented toward channeling physical energy and data into information into knowledge into wise ways of being.
It achieves the data into information into knowledge flow via the ToK System and the iQuad coin. It then invites the knower to “flip the coin” and learn the ways of the Garden, specifically ways of developing character virtues that enhance dignity and well-being with integrity across the appropriate socio-ecological scales of operation. It is offered as one of many possible ways for sense-making toward a wisdom ethic in the 21st Century.
