The above post is a summary and explanation of a forthcoming article on SpinbitZ.net titled "The Univocity Framework".  I have cross-posted it here because I'd like to generate some discussion and critical analysis of the general ideas before final publication. 

Also new to SpinbitZ is a similar summary for another soon to be published article on nondual expansions of Sorce Theory.  This article is titled "Sorce Theory: Unlocking the Basement"

Also new to SpinbitZ is an article written by an artist friend of mine, Robert Kernodle, titled "Fluidism: A Painting Technique and Kindred Cosmology"

And finally, I published a fairly recent poem of mine as well: Spell-Binding

“There has only ever been one ontological proposition: Being is univocal…..A single voice raises the clamour of being…"
       -- Gilles Deleuze

This article lays the foundation for the SpinbitZ project of integrating the shadow-element of post-modernity cast upon rationality. It places the Spinoza/Deleuze concept of Univocity, in the nondual context of the Taoist principle of polarity, or "the identity of opposites." The Univocity Framework (UF) demonstrates simply and visually that Univocity ("Being has one voice which can only express differences") is ultimately an explication of the principle of non-duality. Univocity becomes the concept of polarity (the essence of the relative scope) applied to itself in order to reach its identical opposite in the absolute. This core SpinbitZ article operationalizes the concept of Univocity into a rigorous and intuitive framework that provides a simple conceptual "space" for open and honest ontological speculation, maintaining the necessary nondual relativity of this ontological space and its resident or emergent concepts and relative truths. This operationalization of Univocity enacts, and softly enforces, the principle of nonduality by recognizing the fundamental polarity between the absolute and relative "scopes." Since all concepts are relative, it is a contradiction in terms to absolutize any concept (without its polar opposite), whether ontic or epistemic. Such an absolutized relativity simply does not make sense in the Univocity Framework and so these absolutist models and ideas---which arguably are the main cause of confusion, dualism and controversy in philosophy (and tacitly-philosophical science, etc)---cannot take root in any meta-paradigm with an explicit univocity framework.

The main value and purpose of the Univocity Framework is in facilitating a proper transcendence and inclusion of the truths and tools of modernity and post-modernity, such as the esoteric truths of rational/empirical ontology (modern eastern and western nondual and rational metaphysics, as opposed to the pre-rational Great Chain of Being) and the necessary relativity of knowledge and truth operationalized by the post-modernists. This is crucial for the emerging "Integral" models, such as Ken Wilber’s "Integral Methodological Pluralism" (IMP), because it demonstrates that the key rationalist Spinoza (and Leibniz to an extent), was already "AQAL-compliant" and indeed "post-metaphysical," according to the Deleuzean alternative and Wilber's own pre-rational and medieval notion of "metaphysics" as essentially the "Great Chain of Being." And further, true (unshadowed) rationalism, with its "positive [non-regressive] notion of infinity" and univocity, was not saddled with the absurd post-modernist rejection (shadow-element) of ontological claims of relative truth. Indeed, esoteric rationalism held intact the critical ontic-epistemic and relative/absolute polarities. Modern models that incorporate academic/orthodox accounts of philosophical history---based on the Leibnizian/Hegelian "false" or incoherent reading of Spinoza, and excluding the Deleuzean coherent alternative---are not fully integral. If they were, they would incorporate (differentiate and integrate) the truths on both sides of the controversy. As it stands, Ken Wilber hardly mentions Deleuze's name, and when he does so, he does not mention any of Deleuze’s concepts, even though Deleuze seems an important precursor (if in parallel discovery) to key ideas in Wilber's IMP. Indeed, Foucault himself, whom Ken Wilber idolizes amongst the post-modernists, said of Deleuze that “one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian.” Nowhere, it seems, does Wilber take into account the Deleuzean alternative to orthodox (and clearly biased) interpretations of the history of philosophy. As a result, these modern Integral models (namely IMP and its offshoots) tend to be subtle epistemic absolutisms, derived from the rejection and avoidance of the ontic level and its relative claims of truth. This is seen clearly in Ken Wilber's effective claim that "The Universe is made of (primordial) perspectives" If All is perspective, then what is it that has, gains or expands this perspective?

When it comes right down to it, however, although Wilber routinely denies the validity of ontological claims in general, as the essence of his "Integral Post-metaphysics," the only metaphysical claims that he actually denies seem to be those absolute, static and eternal (pre-given) forms of the "Great Chain of Being," which itself is an archaic and medieval model of metaphysics, placing "matter" below, or immanent to, transcendent "mind." None of the key rationalists (specifically Spinoza and Leibniz), except perhaps for the proto-rationalist (pre-rational/theological apologist and protector) Descartes, held anything remotely similar to the metaphysics of the Great Chain of Being. Spinoza himself, far from being the "dedicated Cartesian" that Wilber claims of him, radically rejected Descartes' dualism and pre-rational theology. Spinoza merely used Descartes "geometrical" methodology to turn it radically against him. In the end, and according to the Deleuzean heteroodox interpretation which I independently converged upon (see my article

Spinoza's Attribute Polarity and the Nucleation of Observability), Spinoza created an AQAL-compliant and nondual (univocal) polarity between the two attributes, "Thought" and "Extension," which are now clearly recognizable as Wilber's two quadrants, "I" and "IT," respectively. The "parallelism" of attribute expression in Deleuze’s Spinozism, mirrors exactly (excluding the inherited ontic-shadow and the plural quadrants) the parallelism, or "tetra-arising," found in the AQAL model.

As for the post-modern (“green”) shadow cast on the relative ontological truths of rationality, Deleuze makes a subtle, yet critical distinction; that between "the relativity of Truth" and "the truth of relativity." It is the tendency of extreme post-modernism (brought about by an intrinsic "transcendent bias") to absolutize the relative scope and claim the "relativity of Truth," (with a capital T denoting an absolute scope). At this deconstructive apex, all truths or interpretations are as good as any others, i.e. relatively worthless. This absolutism of relativity is precisely what Univocity denies. Instead of the "relativity of Truth," univocity affirms the "truth of relativity" in that, affirming the absolute/relative polarity, it allows the ontological space for REAL difference and relativity within every perspective to emerge beneath the "tyranny" of absolutized emergent or transcendent concepts (transcendent-bias) such as platonic forms and numerical identities.

The integral adherents always admonish the destruction and leveling of holarchies by extreme postmodernism (the "mean green meme"), but as it turns out, the core ontic-epistemic holarchy, the polarity of polarity that manifests, touches, enfolds and unfolds from the absolute scope, is ultimately bulldozed and razed to the ground by the denial of the validity of relative ontological truth claims. The denial of Univocity, and the ontic-epistemic hierarchy of esoteric rational ontology, is the last holarchy to be brought out from under the shadow of the heavy green rug of post-modernity, dusted off, restored and further expanded into key pieces of the Integral Operating System.

With this conceptual framework successfully installed in the mind, the project of the integration of all forms of knowledge and truth into an "integral meta-paradigm"---including those relative truths of rational/empirical ontology hitherto denied and abandoned into the “green” shadow cast by post-modernity---will be much simpler because we have made explicit the many implicit differentiations and distinctions that so often confuse these absolute-level discussions. With the Univocity framework, we can now cast aside the shells so often unwittingly employed in the shell-game of academic philosophy and, for perhaps the first time, move these symbols around our game-board in the light of reason, and indeed, "in the light of eternity".



...stay tuned for the publication of this article...