Unified Theory of Knowledge
URL = https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/
Description
1. Gregg Henriques:
"In 1998, the famed sociobiologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson published 'Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.' As suggested by the subtitle, 'consilience' refers to a unified picture of human knowledge. For Wilson, that meant a vision that allows for a coherent, comprehensive view of our place in the cosmos that stretches across time and complexity from physics to sociology in the sciences and does so in a way that is commensurate with the creative expressions of our potentials afforded by the arts and humanities.
The Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) offers a vision of consilience much as was hoped for by Wilson. However, it succeeds where Wilson failed because it solves the problem of psychology and affords a much more effective alignment with the humanities. It also is commensurate with many of the deep insights of the ancient wisdom traditions, and it embraces a nondual naturalistic-spiritual worldview.
The UTOK consists of eight key ideas that both solve the problem of psychology and set the stage for a unified approach to psychotherapy. It is a metamodern vision that seeks to include and transcend the Culture-Person sensibilities that have evolved over the eons. Specifically, it embraces the indigenous-folk sensibilities of relational-natural embeddedness, premodern formal mythic narratives that afford meaning-making on the scale of civilizations, modernist liberal democratic ideals that emphasize the power of science and reason, and postmodern deconstructive critiques that seek justice and caution against singular grand narratives. Both embracing and transcending these sensibilities, the UTOK is a constructive, integrative pluralistic metamodern vision of consilience that bridges the sciences and humanities and brings them together in a mutually inspiring dialectical dance that orients toward wisdom in the 21st century."
(fb, September 2023)
2. From the Wikipedia:
"Henriques' Unified Theory Of Knowledge contains eight ideas.
The first key idea and most central is called the Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, which provides a new map of cosmic evolution and the way science functions as a justification system that empirically maps behavioral complexity and change. Central to the argument for the ToK System is what Henriques calls, "the problem of psychology" which refers to the fact that the field of psychology has resided in a pre-paradigmatic state and lacked a clear definition and subject matter since it was founded in the later part of the 19th Century.
Henriques first published the outline of his work in 2003 in Review of General Psychology in the paper, The Tree of Knowledge System and the theoretical unification of psychology. Two special issues of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 2004 and 2005 were devoted to the elaboration and evaluation of the model, as was a special section in Theory and Psychology in 2008. In 2011, he published A New Unified Theory of Psychology and later that year he started his popular blog on Psychology Today called Theory of Knowledge: A Unified Approach to Psychology and Philosophy.
The second key idea is Justification Systems Theory, which provides a new theory of the evolution of language, self-consciousness and culture and the defining forces that transformed humans from primates into also being cultured persons. The third key idea is Behavioral Investment Theory, which is a metatheoretical framework that integrates the animal mind, brain, and behavior sciences. The fourth key idea is the Influence Matrix, which maps the intrapsychic and interpersonal elements of human social motivation, emotion and relational exchange. Together, these four ideas make up the Unified Theory of Psychology.
The fifth key idea is Character Adaptation Systems Theory, which provides a "new big five" model of character adaptation systems (i.e., habitual, experiential, relational, defensive and justification systems) that links personality theory with the major approaches to individual psychotherapy. The Wheel of Development is the sixth key idea and it identifies the primary domains of personality that emerge in the course of human development (i.e., traits, identity, values/virtues, abilities and talents, and challenges and pathologies). The Nested Model of Well-being is the seventh key idea and it maps the four domains that constitute human well-being. Finally, the eighth key idea is CALM-MO, which is an integrative approach to psychological mindfulness that ties together the key principles and processes for healthy, reflective models of socio-emotional functioning. These latter four ideas constitute what the Unified Approach to psychotherapy.
Henriques argues these ideas fill in key missing pieces of the puzzle that are apparent in the problem of psychology. By filling these puzzle pieces in, a new, much more coherent picture of knowledge emerges, thus the overall frame being referred to as the Unified Theory Of Knowledge. To advance this vision, Henriques has founded the Theory Of Knowledge Society, which brings academics, independent scholars, therapists and lay persons together to reflect on the large challenges modern society faces and what big picture systems like the UTOK offer."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Henriques)
Discussion
Brendan Graham Dempsey:
"Gregg Henriques, a professor of psychology at James Madison University, has formulated his own unified theory in an attempt to better understand the emergent and multi-tiered nature of consciousness. Proposed as a solution to the fragmented, theoretical confusion plaguing the field of academic psychology, the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) is a big history framework that places the evolution of the mind within the full context of the universe’s complexification process.
Like Azarian’s Unifying Theory of Reality, Henriques’s Unified Theory of Knowledge recognizes a “series of hierarchical emergences” distinguished by increasingly complex means of information processing. UTOK’s map of this series is poetically dubbed the “Tree of Knowledge” (ToK), since it depicts the different complexifying branches of the sciences growing up from the original simple seed that sprouted at the Big Bang:
- “The most novel aspect about the ToK System,” writes Henriques in his book A New Unified Theory of Knowledge, "is the ontological claim that there are four distinguishable dimensions of complexity. …[T]hese separate dimensions emerge because of the evolution of novel information processing systems. According to the ToK system, genetic information processing gives rise to the dimension of Life, neuronal information processing gives rise to the dimension of Mind, and symbolic information processing gives rise to the dimension of Culture".
Since these familiar words (Life, Mind, and Culture) are here terms with specific meanings—as levels of complexity tied to specific information processing mechanisms—it is worth a quick tour of the “Tree of Knowledge” to make sure we know just what we mean by them, since they provide us with a highly useful way to speak about the principal levels of emergence.
Writing in a 2019 article in the Journal of Big History, Henriques and his colleagues summarize the different levels this way:
The “Matter” cone at the bottom represents the emergence and behavior of inanimate material objects from the time of the Big Bang, and includes entities such as atoms, stars, and planets. Particles like electrons represent the base of the cone as they are the simplest entities, whereas entities like macromolecules found in organic chemistry correspond to the top of the material cone.
The “Life” cone represents the behavior of organisms, ranging from the simplest single-celled creatures (e.g., bacteria) up through large, complex multi-celled organisms (e.g., an oak tree).
The “Mind” cone represents the behavior of animals with a brain, ranging from nematodes at the base (i.e., worms with simple brains) through highly complex and sophisticated animals, like chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants.
Finally, the “Culture” cone represents the behavior of human persons embedded in linguistic traditions and sociocultural historical contexts. It ranges in scale and complexity from individual persons to the behavior of modern, complex nation states or other societal structures organized by large-scale systems of just-ification.
Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture. Such a sequence, Henriques himself observes, “directly overlaps” with Eric Chaisson’s chart shown earlier (p. 44), in which the complexification of cosmic evolution is measured according to free energy rate density. In this way, increasing energy flow can be shown to correlate with increasing information processing capacity."
(https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/emergentism-3-the-awakening-universe)