The Four Major Conceptual Problems Addressed by UTOK

the famous “mind-body problem” in modern science and philosophy. It gave rise to the dominant modern frames for understanding the relationship between matter and mind, which are: 1) materialism; 2) idealism, and 3) dualism.

None of these philosophical positions are up to the task, and what emerged was a profound gap in our understanding. UTOK calls this the Enlightenment Gap (EG). As framed by UTOK, the EG has an ontological element and an epistemological element. The ontological element refers to the fact that it became impossible to specify the nature of mind relative to matter and clarify how these two domains were effectively interrelated. The epistemological aspect of the EG refers to the fact that it was extremely difficult to integrate scientific ways of knowing with subjective and social ways of knowing.

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The EG can be thought of as the problem of natural philosophy and it relates to how we coherently connect and align the natural sciences to human history as framed by the social sciences, the humanities, and our qualitative experience of being in the world.

UTOK has its origin in two big picture problems that are down stream of the EG.

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To be a competent psychological doctor, he wanted a holistic conception of the human condition that was grounded in both science and human values. What he found as he entered the field was a complex amalgamation of different, competing schools of thought, and little cumulative knowledge. This is what UTOK calls the problem of psychotherapy.

he attempted to formulate a science of psychology based on a coherent conception of its subject matter, he realized that the history of the field was marked and marred by big picture confusion. Indeed, since its inception, psychology has struggled to define its proper subject matter. Historically, this was called the ‘crisis of psychology,’ and it dates all the way back to 1899!

UTOK renames this the problem of psychology. UTOK points out that the physical, chemical, and biological sciences are relatively consilient. However, that consilience breaks down fully when we transition into the science of psychology. UTOK highlights this problem and much of its architecture is devoted to solving it.

The final problem is the problem of the psyche. In UTOK, the psyche refers to the qualitative, idiographic experience of being a unique particular human subject in the world. The psyche is the way we each go about our lives, and yet, it does not mesh with the language of science.

UTOK calls these the “four P” problems: 1) the problem of (natural) philosophy (framed by UTOK as the EG); 2) the problem of psychology (formally called the crisis of psychology); 3) the problem of psychotherapy; and 4) the problem of the psyche.

The systems of understanding that emerged in the wake of the Enlightenment are completely overwhelmed by the complexity of these problems. Hence, we humans currently are far away from consilience, and we lack a shared, coherent understanding of the world and our place in it.

Western Humanity has been victim to The Enlightenment Gap for over 400yrs now. (imagine you operated in your life such that any one thing was the Truth, only to find out it is not. Now imagine the entire world operates like an entire body of knowledge is the Truth for 400yrs)

UTOK achieves consilience where other systems have failed because it affords us a new way to conceptualize natural science, the human psyche, and the processes by which humans socially construct knowledge.

the Tree of Knowledge System, the iQuad Coin, and the UTOK Garden. These are UTOK’s frameworks for understanding the world via objective science, the subjective psyche, and the intersubjective construction of knowledge.

3 Philosophical Pillars for marrying the complexities of Natural Science vs the Human Psyche.

In short, up until now, no system has been able to effectively interrelate these three vectors of knowing into a coherent picture. UTOK’s capacity to do so is what makes it a consilient theory of knowledge.

The objective vector

This process essentially removes the perspective of the unique, particular, qualitative subject and yields a generalizable, quantifiable description of the unfolding wave of behavioral change. UTOK’s ToK System, supported by the Periodic Table of Behavior, gives us a new way to map the picture of knowledge given to us by the natural sciences, including psychology.

We can characterize the subjective vector by first considering it as the perspective of each, unique, individual particular person.

The intersubjective vector can be generally characterized as the shared beliefs and values that coordinate groups of people.

The Garden represents UTOK’s “mythos” for wise living, and it resides under the concept of God, which represents the transcendent (for more on UTOK’s conception of God, see here).

As such, being in the Garden means being oriented toward loving truth, goodness, and beauty. And so when you marry the Coin to the Tree in the Garden under God, you are clarifying what is the case subjectively and objectively, and then placing yourself in an intersubjective collective and orienting toward the cultivation of wisdom across time.

Still trying to get THIS

1We Need to Move from Matter versus Mind to Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Culture Wave mapped by Science.

The philosopher Lawrence Cahoone correctly notes that modern philosophy has a “bipolar disorder” in the way it divides the world into the mental versus the physical, giving us the inadequate philosophies of materialism (i.e., it is all matter), idealism (i.e., it is all mental) or dualism (i.e., some combination of two substances).

2We are minded primates.

3Processes of Justification Transformed Us From Primates into Self-Conscious Persons.

4Neurotic Loops are at the Root of Much Human Suffering.

5We can reverse neurotic loops with CALM-MO.

6We live at a crucial time in Human Civilization called the “5th Joint Point”.

ConclusionCollectively, we are drowning in confusion and bullshit, and the potential global consequences are horrific.UTOK is a hopeful new vision that affords humanity a new operating system for the 21st Century. It solves the core philosophical problems that emerged in the wake of the European Enlightenment and affords us a consilient vision that coherently interrelates the natural sciences, the human psyche, and the cultural construction of knowledge.

The word “unified” in UTOK means consilience. Consilience was made famous by E.O. Wilson in his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. The term dates back to 1840, where William Whewell used it in his work, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. To quote Wilson, consilience means “a ‘jumping together’ of knowledge by linking facts and fact-based theory across the disciplines to create a common ground of explanation”