Paradigm as Injunction (What a New Paradigm Needs)
Paradigm as Injunction (What a New Paradigm Needs)
Wilber's View
Wilber's claim is that a "new paradigm" needs a new technique, not a new theory. Following Kuhn, he says a paradigm (or "exemplar") is first an injunction: a shared practice or method that discloses a domain of data. The first strand of knowledge is never just "Look"; it is "Do this, then look." On this reading, the "new paradigm" talk of the humanities and the New Age movement misses the point. It treats "paradigm" as an overall theory, so that a better theory lets you wave away the evidence as "old paradigm." Wilber says that is "talk-talk": no new techniques means no new data, and so no new paradigm.
What he says a real paradigm needs:
- An injunction, meaning a practice rather than a theory. Something you do, whose results can only be seen after doing it.
- New data disclosed by that practice. The test of a paradigm is that it opens a domain in which data appear. Without new techniques there is no new data.
- Community confirmation. The data are checked by those trained in the same practice, "whose cognitive eyes are adequate to the addressed domain." Bad data are rebuffed. This is his third strand, and he likens it to Popper's fallibilism.
- Progress, not just a different opinion. Kuhn insisted he was "a convinced believer in scientific progress." Successive paradigms cumulatively disclose more data.
- Practice that takes years to master. Contemplative injunctions (zazen, vipassana, and so on) take longer to master than the training of the average scientist. They are "not things to think, they are things to do."
Wilber says the contemplative traditions are where a real paradigm exists. They run all three strands: injunction (meditation), illumination (direct spiritual experience) and confirmation (the sangha). So he concludes that contemplative knowledge "is, or can be, genuine knowledge."
The same logic runs through the rest of the book. He faults the Idealists for never developing "injunctive practices," and says "all future metaphysics must be experiential."
The argument is strong against vague "paradigm shift" rhetoric, and it makes a demand that can be tested: what is the practice, and what does it disclose? What it leaves open is how to adjudicate between rival injunctions whose trained communities confirm different data. For that, see reconstruction-of-the-contemplative-path. This page is the "paradigm" half of the three-strand argument set out in validity-claims-of-mysticism.
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
Put simply, the first strand of knowledge accumulation is never simply "Look"; it is "Do this, then look."
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
Kuhn called such an agreed-upon injunction an "exemplar" or a "paradigm"—an exemplary practice or technique or methodology that all agreed was central to furthering the knowledge quest. And it was the paradigm, the exemplary injunction, that disclosed a type of data, so that the paradigm itself was a matter of consensus, not merely correspondence.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
In all of these, "paradigm" was mistaken as some sort of overall theory or concept or notion, the idea being that if you came up with a new and better theory, the factual evidence could be ignored because that was just "old paradigm."
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
But paradigms are first and foremost injunctions, actual practices (all of which have nondiscursive components that never are entered in the theories they support)—they are methods for disclosing new data in an addressed domain, and the paradigms work because they are true in any meaningful sense of the word. Science makes real progress, as Kuhn said, because successive paradigms cumulatively disclose more and more interesting data.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
Neither the New Agers nor the "new paradigmers" had anything resembling a new paradigm, because all they offered was more talk-talk. They had no new techniques, no new methodologies, no new exemplars, no new injunctions—and therefore no new data. All they possessed, through a misreading of Kuhn, was a pseudo-attempt to trump normal science and replace it with their ideologically favorite reading of the Kosmos.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
The contemplative traditions, on the other hand, have always come first and foremost with a set of injunctions in hand. They are, above all else, a set of practices, practices that require years to master (much longer than the training of the average scientist).
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
Bad data are rebuffed by the community (the sangha) of those whose cognitive eyes are adequate to the addressed domain.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
Accordingly, contemplative knowledge is, or can be, genuine knowledge, because it follows all three strands of valid knowledge accumulation.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 7, "The Farther Reaches of Human Nature"
