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Evolutionary Theory The Evolution of Epistemology
Kegan began by noting that Piaget actually called himself not a "child psychologist" but a "genetic epistemologist," because his interest was in studying the origin, process, and development of how humans know the world. Building upon more than 80 years of accumulated research in the field of developmental psychology, Kegan summarized the incremental process of increasing complexity of the subject-object relationship, which he calls The Five Orders of Increasing Mental Complexity:
1st Level: Fantasy, impulse, single-point of view, immediate, atomistic When we are infants (1st level), we experience a lack of differentiation between subject and object. In short, we are one with the world. However, as we grow, our capacity to distinguish ourselves from the exterior world develops. Kegan calls this process one of increasing "object permanence." In the overall trajectory up the levels, Kegan has noticed a fascinating trend in human cognitive development: at one stage that which is subjective in our awareness later becomes objective in our awareness. In other words, something that we are not aware of at level 2 (because it is embedded in our subjective awareness), we later become aware of objectively. Kegan noted that something is subject to us when we are controlled by it, captive to it, and identified with aspects of its meaning. In contrast, something is object to us when we can take a perspective on it, hold it as external to our own experience, and take responsibility for it, because we are no longer captive to it. As humans grow and develop, we become increasingly objective in our perceptions of the world, eventually resulting in the ability to entertain multiple points of view beyond our own (levels 4 and 5). Using this scheme, Kegan suggested that psychologists can identify a person’s stage of mental development by distinguishing what is subject and what is object in that person’s awareness. Another point Kegan made about the process of increasing mental complexity is that the ability to imagine multiple possibilities is the hallmark of the more advanced levels (4 and 5). At these later stages, the ability to abstract from concrete situations increases. We become capable of imagining many scenarios and possibilities, and our own personal perspective takes on a certain degree of relativity in relationship to the multiple perspectives of the outside world. To illustrate an example of an "evolution" in epistemological structures, Kegan played a short video clip from the famous Norwegian play, A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen. In the clip, the central character, Nora, dramatically leaves her husband, Torvald. What Kegan pointed out about this scene is that the motivation behind Nora’s departure was not just a simple desire to leave her husband, but rather a deeper impulse resulting from the evolution of her epistemology. No longer willing to play the role of "wife" (levels 2 and 3), Nora’s desire to leave her husband was a sign of Nora’s fledgling 4th level capacities. At this level, Nora was starting to know herself as the maker of her own mind and meaning. Because Kegan’s presentation addressed the "evolutionary" nature of human knowing, it opened the conference up to a rich discussion addressing one of the goals and challenges of bringing together scholars from radically different disciplines. Central to the conversation was the lack of clarity about the following terms:
evolution As biologists, Christopher Wills and Dave Deamer pointed out that onto-genetic development during the course of a human lifetime is not necessarily "evolution" in the classic sense of that term as a process of genetic variation and selection. Furthermore, David Deamer added that it is important not to confuse the word evolution with "development." Humans may develop during the course of their lifetimes greater degrees of complexity in their subject-object relationships, but that does not mean that they are "evolving" unless we choose to ascribe the word "evolution" a new meaning. Making the subject even less clear, the cosmologist Eric Chaisson pointed out that according to his work there is a trend in the universe as a whole (from the big bang to the present) which reveals a rise of "complexity" in its structures. So, the term complexity can be used in a universal sense as well as a psychological sense. At the end of this discussion, it became obvious that some attention needs to be paid to the definition of these terms. Kegan concluded by noting that one trend that may run across the great domains of evolution in the cosmos, nature, and human development is the process of differentiation preceding the possibility of a fuller integration at a "higher" level of complexity. The group agreed to investigate this avenue of inquiry further.
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