## Highlights - Motivation arises when we experience the phenomena in question through two additional perspectives—subjective (1st-person—I, me) and intersubjective (2nd-person—you, we). ([Location 770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=770)) - Hence, the worldspace that a child can hold open is clearly more complex than a frog’s, but less complex than a mature adult’s. During maturation, the human worldspace expands and deepens enormously in many different ways. Because a more expansive and inclusive interior allows a more comprehensive worldspace to emerge, some assertions made about a given phenomenon are more comprehensive, and thus have greater validity, than other claims. Hence, integral perspectivalism is not equivalent to relativism. We do not assert that all perspectives are equal. Some truths are more comprehensive than others. Integral perspectivalism maintains that partial worldviews and partial perspectives reveal partial truths. These partial truths are accurate and essential, yet they must be integrated into a larger, more comprehensive picture. Without an Integral framework, we currently have no framework capable of integrating and organizing these partial perspectives and partial worldviews. Clearly, such a framework is needed. ([Location 810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=810)) - Ecosystems are composed of and influenced by natural and social systems. Ecosystems involve the individual behaviors of organisms, at all scales (including microbes and humans). These organisms are understood as being members (not parts) of ecosystems. Members of ecosystems have various degrees of interiority (perception, experience, intentionality, and awareness). Members of ecosystems interact within and across species to create horizons of shared meaning and understanding. ([Location 820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=820)) - Leopold was aware that introducing aesthetics and ethics into land-use policy would not be taken seriously by his colleagues, who were influenced by reductionistic materialism and behaviorism. In fact, he postulated that nothing short of an evolutionary advance—an advance in which humans learned to take multiple perspectives and thus grew to recognize the interiority of other beings—would move society beyond modernity’s instrumentalist view that the land is merely raw material for human ends. ([Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=862)) - As a result, building on classical definitions, we define ecology as the mixed methods study of the subjective and objective aspects of organisms in relationship to their intersubjective and interobjective environments at all levels of depth and complexity. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=875)) - Integral Ecology may seem anthropocentric, because in one of three values (i.e., intrinsic value) we maintain that humans are special, in part because humans are endowed with an interior depth that allows us to appreciate the intrinsic value of nature! However, in extrinsic value humans are less significant, and within ground value humans are of equal value with all life forms. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=885)) - Although humans have richly developed interiors and an astonishing capacity for language, interiority is not restricted to humans, which was Leopold’s remarkable revelation. Indeed, Integral Ecology is radically non-anthropocentric insofar as it maintains that interiority goes “all the way down” ([Location 891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=891)) - Many environmentalists insist, however, that a moral ought also to apply here: we ought to limit our behavior, including our reproductive drive, so that other life forms can survive and prosper. This recommendation is confused because it cannot be reconciled with the naturalistic view that humans are merely one species among others, bound by the same laws that bind other species. We depict no other species as immoral when it seeks to maximize its own fitness. If we depict similar human behavior as immoral, we do so because we regard human beings as significantly different from all other known species. ([Location 911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=911)) - Many environmental problems are notoriously difficult to define, much less resolve. Natural processes are multifaceted, multileveled, complex adaptive systems, such that uncertainty surrounds efforts to characterize them, much less make reliable predictions about interventions. ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=984)) - For centuries, European civilization ignored the material world, what St. Augustine called the City of Man. Instead, Christians focused on the world to come, the higher world, the City of God. ([Location 1015](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1015)) - Modernity’s proponents accomplished the monumental and essential task of differentiating the various domains of truth, power, and authority. Yet it seems moderns took their faith in the material world a bit too far. Reacting to the call to ascend above this earthly domain, moderns descended. They descended so far that they came to believe only in this earthly plane, in what could be encountered with the senses—material objects. ([Location 1021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1021)) - In attempting to create a free space for science, economics, politics, philosophy, and art, moderns ended up throwing out the spiritual baby with the premodern bathwater, and with it went interior perspectives. ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1025)) - Following Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas, Wilber notes that modernity differentiated three domains (art, morals, and science), which he also calls the Big Three (I, We, It): (1) consciousness, subjectivity, self, self-expression (including art), whose mode of truth involves truthfulness and sincerity; (2) ethics, morality, worldview, culture, intersubjective meaning, whose mode of truth involves justice; (3) science, technology, objective nature, whose mode of truth involves correct propositions.7 Thus, Integral Ecology unites the art of ecology, the Beautiful (environmental aesthetics); the morals of ecology, the Good (environmental ethics); and the science of ecology, the True (environmental science) at multiple levels of complexity. ([Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1038)) - Unfortunately, modernity did not adequately integrate the Big Three that it had differentiated. Embracing Descent liberated humanity from religious despotism, and contributed to great scientific, technological, and economic development. ([Location 1046](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1046)) - Modern science represented nature as “a perfectly harmonious and interrelated system, a great it-system, and knowledge consisted in patiently and empirically mapping this it-system.” ([Location 1059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1059)) - nature is the interior and exterior aspects of the biosphere—e.g., bodily feelings as opposed to mental thoughts (UL), objects of sensory perception as opposed to rational conceptualization (UR), natural systems as opposed to social ones (LR), and somatic connections as opposed to cultural relationships (LL). Capital-N Nature is all the exterior levels of the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere. And NATURE is all the interior and exterior dimensions of all the levels. ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1122))  ## Highlights - Motivation arises when we experience the phenomena in question through two additional perspectives—subjective (1st-person—I, me) and intersubjective (2nd-person—you, we). ([Location 770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=770)) - Hence, the worldspace that a child can hold open is clearly more complex than a frog’s, but less complex than a mature adult’s. During maturation, the human worldspace expands and deepens enormously in many different ways. Because a more expansive and inclusive interior allows a more comprehensive worldspace to emerge, some assertions made about a given phenomenon are more comprehensive, and thus have greater validity, than other claims. Hence, integral perspectivalism is not equivalent to relativism. We do not assert that all perspectives are equal. Some truths are more comprehensive than others. Integral perspectivalism maintains that partial worldviews and partial perspectives reveal partial truths. These partial truths are accurate and essential, yet they must be integrated into a larger, more comprehensive picture. Without an Integral framework, we currently have no framework capable of integrating and organizing these partial perspectives and partial worldviews. Clearly, such a framework is needed. ([Location 810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=810)) - Ecosystems are composed of and influenced by natural and social systems. Ecosystems involve the individual behaviors of organisms, at all scales (including microbes and humans). These organisms are understood as being members (not parts) of ecosystems. Members of ecosystems have various degrees of interiority (perception, experience, intentionality, and awareness). Members of ecosystems interact within and across species to create horizons of shared meaning and understanding. ([Location 820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=820)) - Leopold was aware that introducing aesthetics and ethics into land-use policy would not be taken seriously by his colleagues, who were influenced by reductionistic materialism and behaviorism. In fact, he postulated that nothing short of an evolutionary advance—an advance in which humans learned to take multiple perspectives and thus grew to recognize the interiority of other beings—would move society beyond modernity’s instrumentalist view that the land is merely raw material for human ends. ([Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=862)) - As a result, building on classical definitions, we define ecology as the mixed methods study of the subjective and objective aspects of organisms in relationship to their intersubjective and interobjective environments at all levels of depth and complexity. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=875)) - Integral Ecology may seem anthropocentric, because in one of three values (i.e., intrinsic value) we maintain that humans are special, in part because humans are endowed with an interior depth that allows us to appreciate the intrinsic value of nature! However, in extrinsic value humans are less significant, and within ground value humans are of equal value with all life forms. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=885)) - Although humans have richly developed interiors and an astonishing capacity for language, interiority is not restricted to humans, which was Leopold’s remarkable revelation. Indeed, Integral Ecology is radically non-anthropocentric insofar as it maintains that interiority goes “all the way down” ([Location 891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=891)) - Many environmentalists insist, however, that a moral ought also to apply here: we ought to limit our behavior, including our reproductive drive, so that other life forms can survive and prosper. This recommendation is confused because it cannot be reconciled with the naturalistic view that humans are merely one species among others, bound by the same laws that bind other species. We depict no other species as immoral when it seeks to maximize its own fitness. If we depict similar human behavior as immoral, we do so because we regard human beings as significantly different from all other known species. ([Location 911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=911)) - Many environmental problems are notoriously difficult to define, much less resolve. Natural processes are multifaceted, multileveled, complex adaptive systems, such that uncertainty surrounds efforts to characterize them, much less make reliable predictions about interventions. ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=984)) - For centuries, European civilization ignored the material world, what St. Augustine called the City of Man. Instead, Christians focused on the world to come, the higher world, the City of God. ([Location 1015](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1015)) - Modernity’s proponents accomplished the monumental and essential task of differentiating the various domains of truth, power, and authority. Yet it seems moderns took their faith in the material world a bit too far. Reacting to the call to ascend above this earthly domain, moderns descended. They descended so far that they came to believe only in this earthly plane, in what could be encountered with the senses—material objects. ([Location 1021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1021)) - In attempting to create a free space for science, economics, politics, philosophy, and art, moderns ended up throwing out the spiritual baby with the premodern bathwater, and with it went interior perspectives. ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1025)) - Following Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas, Wilber notes that modernity differentiated three domains (art, morals, and science), which he also calls the Big Three (I, We, It): (1) consciousness, subjectivity, self, self-expression (including art), whose mode of truth involves truthfulness and sincerity; (2) ethics, morality, worldview, culture, intersubjective meaning, whose mode of truth involves justice; (3) science, technology, objective nature, whose mode of truth involves correct propositions.7 Thus, Integral Ecology unites the art of ecology, the Beautiful (environmental aesthetics); the morals of ecology, the Good (environmental ethics); and the science of ecology, the True (environmental science) at multiple levels of complexity. ([Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1038)) - Unfortunately, modernity did not adequately integrate the Big Three that it had differentiated. Embracing Descent liberated humanity from religious despotism, and contributed to great scientific, technological, and economic development. ([Location 1046](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1046)) - Modern science represented nature as “a perfectly harmonious and interrelated system, a great it-system, and knowledge consisted in patiently and empirically mapping this it-system.” ([Location 1059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1059)) - nature is the interior and exterior aspects of the biosphere—e.g., bodily feelings as opposed to mental thoughts (UL), objects of sensory perception as opposed to rational conceptualization (UR), natural systems as opposed to social ones (LR), and somatic connections as opposed to cultural relationships (LL). Capital-N Nature is all the exterior levels of the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere. And NATURE is all the interior and exterior dimensions of all the levels. ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1122))  ## Highlights - Motivation arises when we experience the phenomena in question through two additional perspectives—subjective (1st-person—I, me) and intersubjective (2nd-person—you, we). ([Location 770](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=770)) - Hence, the worldspace that a child can hold open is clearly more complex than a frog’s, but less complex than a mature adult’s. During maturation, the human worldspace expands and deepens enormously in many different ways. Because a more expansive and inclusive interior allows a more comprehensive worldspace to emerge, some assertions made about a given phenomenon are more comprehensive, and thus have greater validity, than other claims. Hence, integral perspectivalism is not equivalent to relativism. We do not assert that all perspectives are equal. Some truths are more comprehensive than others. Integral perspectivalism maintains that partial worldviews and partial perspectives reveal partial truths. These partial truths are accurate and essential, yet they must be integrated into a larger, more comprehensive picture. Without an Integral framework, we currently have no framework capable of integrating and organizing these partial perspectives and partial worldviews. Clearly, such a framework is needed. ([Location 810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=810)) - Ecosystems are composed of and influenced by natural and social systems. Ecosystems involve the individual behaviors of organisms, at all scales (including microbes and humans). These organisms are understood as being members (not parts) of ecosystems. Members of ecosystems have various degrees of interiority (perception, experience, intentionality, and awareness). Members of ecosystems interact within and across species to create horizons of shared meaning and understanding. ([Location 820](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=820)) - Leopold was aware that introducing aesthetics and ethics into land-use policy would not be taken seriously by his colleagues, who were influenced by reductionistic materialism and behaviorism. In fact, he postulated that nothing short of an evolutionary advance—an advance in which humans learned to take multiple perspectives and thus grew to recognize the interiority of other beings—would move society beyond modernity’s instrumentalist view that the land is merely raw material for human ends. ([Location 862](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=862)) - As a result, building on classical definitions, we define ecology as the mixed methods study of the subjective and objective aspects of organisms in relationship to their intersubjective and interobjective environments at all levels of depth and complexity. ([Location 875](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=875)) - Integral Ecology may seem anthropocentric, because in one of three values (i.e., intrinsic value) we maintain that humans are special, in part because humans are endowed with an interior depth that allows us to appreciate the intrinsic value of nature! However, in extrinsic value humans are less significant, and within ground value humans are of equal value with all life forms. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=885)) - Although humans have richly developed interiors and an astonishing capacity for language, interiority is not restricted to humans, which was Leopold’s remarkable revelation. Indeed, Integral Ecology is radically non-anthropocentric insofar as it maintains that interiority goes “all the way down” ([Location 891](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=891)) - Many environmentalists insist, however, that a moral ought also to apply here: we ought to limit our behavior, including our reproductive drive, so that other life forms can survive and prosper. This recommendation is confused because it cannot be reconciled with the naturalistic view that humans are merely one species among others, bound by the same laws that bind other species. We depict no other species as immoral when it seeks to maximize its own fitness. If we depict similar human behavior as immoral, we do so because we regard human beings as significantly different from all other known species. ([Location 911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=911)) - Many environmental problems are notoriously difficult to define, much less resolve. Natural processes are multifaceted, multileveled, complex adaptive systems, such that uncertainty surrounds efforts to characterize them, much less make reliable predictions about interventions. ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=984)) - For centuries, European civilization ignored the material world, what St. Augustine called the City of Man. Instead, Christians focused on the world to come, the higher world, the City of God. ([Location 1015](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1015)) - Modernity’s proponents accomplished the monumental and essential task of differentiating the various domains of truth, power, and authority. Yet it seems moderns took their faith in the material world a bit too far. Reacting to the call to ascend above this earthly domain, moderns descended. They descended so far that they came to believe only in this earthly plane, in what could be encountered with the senses—material objects. ([Location 1021](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1021)) - In attempting to create a free space for science, economics, politics, philosophy, and art, moderns ended up throwing out the spiritual baby with the premodern bathwater, and with it went interior perspectives. ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1025)) - Following Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas, Wilber notes that modernity differentiated three domains (art, morals, and science), which he also calls the Big Three (I, We, It): (1) consciousness, subjectivity, self, self-expression (including art), whose mode of truth involves truthfulness and sincerity; (2) ethics, morality, worldview, culture, intersubjective meaning, whose mode of truth involves justice; (3) science, technology, objective nature, whose mode of truth involves correct propositions.7 Thus, Integral Ecology unites the art of ecology, the Beautiful (environmental aesthetics); the morals of ecology, the Good (environmental ethics); and the science of ecology, the True (environmental science) at multiple levels of complexity. ([Location 1038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1038)) - Unfortunately, modernity did not adequately integrate the Big Three that it had differentiated. Embracing Descent liberated humanity from religious despotism, and contributed to great scientific, technological, and economic development. ([Location 1046](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1046)) - Modern science represented nature as “a perfectly harmonious and interrelated system, a great it-system, and knowledge consisted in patiently and empirically mapping this it-system.” ([Location 1059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1059)) - nature is the interior and exterior aspects of the biosphere—e.g., bodily feelings as opposed to mental thoughts (UL), objects of sensory perception as opposed to rational conceptualization (UR), natural systems as opposed to social ones (LR), and somatic connections as opposed to cultural relationships (LL). Capital-N Nature is all the exterior levels of the physiosphere, biosphere, and noosphere. And NATURE is all the interior and exterior dimensions of all the levels. ([Location 1122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ET9V6Q&location=1122))