Dear Integral Leader…You are invited to forge a true resolution for 2009 by attending the first-of-its-kind:

*Integral New Year’s Re/volution!

San Francisco Jan 2nd (Lecture/Demo) & 3rd-4th (Hands-on Workshop) @ OneTasteSF.com

The United States Premiere of DYLAN NEWCOMB’s “The 16-Ways: Integral Movement Patterns”

Researched and developed over an eight-year-period by choreographer and movement researcher Dylan Newcomb, The 16-Ways is a simple and comprehensive series of sixteen core physical movements - each based on a specific vowel sound - designed to support you in developing subtle-energy through a unqiue, vertically-integrated modality! Built on the ancient Chinese principles of Yin and Yang, The 16 Ways integrates learnings from cognitive psychology, personality typology, the Spiral Dynamics® model of psycho-socio development, the I-Ching, and key elements from Integral Theory. Most importantly, The 16 Ways offers a clear and intuitive way for people to understand different types of energy and learn how to work with them on the levels of body, emotion and thought.

Dylan Newcomb Presented at the First-Biennial Integral Theory Conference August 2008!
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The above is a book title by John Caputo, printed in 2006 by Indiana University Press. I was made aware of it by Cameron Freeman’s article below. Caputo is many things, including being one of Derrida’s most apt interpreters. In this book he posits a postmetaphysical way of looking at, and communicating with, God and his kingdom “on earth, as it is in heaven.” You can get a free sneak peek of the book from this Google Books link.

We’re discussing Caputo and this book at the Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality pod in this thread. Below are some excerpts:

Caputo, in the Introduction to his book The Weakness of God (IUP, 2006), defines God as an “event” rather than a thing with a name. Events, unlike names, are uncontainable and unconditional, open-ended. In that sense the open event is not “powerful” like a supreme being that forces specific things to happen for specific reasons. Rather it “is an irruption, an excess, an overflow…which tears open closed circles,” thereby “constituting an experience of the impossible” (4-5).

Hence the event can be rather fierce of fang in that it disrupts all of our expectations. It comes out of nowhere like a tornado and wreaks havoc in our lives. However it’s weak in the sense that it isn’t definitive, like God. It’s more like the whisper of a voice just out of earshot, or an indistinct blur on the horizon at twilight.

“It is more like a ghost, the specter of possibility….a thin thing…of a call rather than a causality, of a provocation rather than of a presence or a determinate entity”(8).

Also recall Panikkar’s comments on symbol and the “poetic word.” Here’s more from Caputo in the chapter “The Poetics of the Impossible”:

“…a poetics is an evocative discourse that articulates the event, while a logic is a normative discourse governing entities….A poetics addresses the rule of the promise or of the call, the grammar of the weak force of the call, while a logic regulates the strong force of the world….a poetics describes the symbolic space that obtains in the kingdom, while a logic describes the ideal or normative rules that govern real or possible worlds” (103-4).

Caputo does a fine job in this book of elucidating a pomo mythos, logos and symbol. As did Derrida before him and from whom Caputo draws heavily.

* * *

Caputo asks, as we have asked, if the name of God can be bypassed or surpassed, even within a theology of the event. He doesn’t think so because the name is the conditional side of the conditional/unconditional relationship, and without it the latter is meaningless. Granted he accepts that the name itself can and will change-it doesn’t have to be God-but the underlying concept naming this mysterious event gives the latter a “body,” so to speak (p. 3).

* * *

I have to share this funny story from Caputo’s book. He’s discussing what if there really was one true name of God. Each religion would argue about in what language it would be spoken or written. However the negative theologians “would present a long, verbose, and particularly perplexing discourse on behalf of silence” (11).

Caputo then goes on to note that although he’s using the term “weak” it does not mean that this is a theology without passion, without fire, without fang. He claims for it an “existential intensity” that “overtakes us and overturns us” (11), and entices us, as Star Trek has aptly put it, “to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

kela will be pleased to know that Caputo sees this as a “sacred anarchy” (13).

* * *

Caputo has a delightful word for his theology of the event: hier(an)archy. He explains:

“Suppose we dare to think about God otherwise than metaphysics and metaphysical theology allow?…What then?” (23).

”Différance, we might say to Alice [in wonderland], is not so much the ‘foundation’ as the agent provocateur for everything that follows in this wonderful upside-down land” (25).

“Damnable deconstructive trickery, sheer relativistic and nihilistic wordplay, thunders His (Right) Reverence [Wilber] from the pulpit!” (26).

“To be sure, by advocating différance Derrida does not advocate outright chaos. He does not favor a simple-minded street-corner anarchy (nothing is ever simple) that would let lawlessness sweep over the land, although that is just what his most simplistic and anxious critics take him to say. For that would amount to nothing more than a simple counter-kingdom, a reign of lawlessness….Just like a simple totalitarianism…the opposite way, a simple anarchy would break the tension between the arche and the an-arche, erasing the slash between power and powerlessness….in “Force of Law” Derrida made it plain that deconstruction is not a matter of leveling laws in order to produce a lawless society, but of deconstructing laws in order to produce a just society. To deconstruct the law means to ‘negotiate the difference’ between law and justice, where the law is thought to be something finite, and ‘justice’ calls up an uncontainable event, an infinite or unconditional or undeconstructable demand” (27).

* * *

Postmetasalsa: a mythologeme to the core-a.

From Peter Heltzel’s review of Caputo’s book, in JCRT 7.2 (Spring/Summer 2006):

In a delicate dance with Catherine Keller’s notion of creation ex profundis, Caputo imagines creation as a concert of fluid and free-floating forces that shape pre-existent elements into a new and good life. Like unto the Derridean khora, the pre-existent elements are “mythologemes” of uncertainty and undecidability (72). They bear prophetic testimony to the open-endedness and riskiness of material, human and divine life. Caputo is inspired by the “beautiful risk” of creation as the right way to think about the God-world relationship with the two partners functioning interdependently as the ebb and flow of two salsa dancers.

* * *

Here’s Caputo on what I’d call the two-truths doctrine, from TWOG:

…rather than speaking of God’s transcendence at all, it might be better to speak of God’s in-scendence…or “insistence” in the world (45).

I steadfastly oppose a two-worlds theory, in which the kingdom of God is one thing and the world is entirely separate….The kingdom is the salt of the earth, the leaven of the world’s bread…the outside that insists and insinuates itself inside the world and saves the world from itself (52).

The opening verses of Genesis make no use whatever of a metaphysical distinction between an eternal, infinite and supersensible being creating finite, temporal being, which is an un-Hebraic conception that is unconceivable outside of the two-worlds schema that Christianity inherited from Hellenistic metaphysics (62).

* * *

kela said in the Panikker thread:

“or how about her- archy?”

This is indeed part of the sacred anarchy in the word hier(an)archy. You’ve heard history, now it’s time for herstory.

Caputo, in his chapter of TWOG “The Beautiful Risk of Creation,” reflects on the Genesis myth. He uses Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep to show how her story is left out. She refutes creatio ex nihilio and instead posits creatio ex profundis. In the former’s beginning something was created from nothing. In the latter there was already something there, and that something, according to the Bible itself, was the barren earth, the darkness over the deep waters and the restless air. It is from these elements that Elohim molded, as with clay, into lifeforms. Subsequent Christian interpreters completely left out these primal elements in their narrative, instead reducing them to “nothing.” And Keller ascribes the feminine to these primal elements, hence, the elimination of herstory by the later, second half of the second-century, metaphysical creatio ex nihilios.

PS: these elementals had cool Hebrew names: earth was tohu wa-bohu, the deep water was tehom and the air was ruach.

Raimon Panikkar is a liberal Catholic priest who is also a Hindu and a Buddhist. He finds ways to see what is common to various religious traditions yet also honors, while not reducing, their differences. He does this by way of what he calls “homeomorphic equivalence.” He elucidates the homeomorphic equivalences in the 3 religions above in his cosmotheandric vision. And he also teaches us how to talk to each other about our different faiths. An interesting article discussing Panikkar can be found at this link.

by Cameron Freeman in “the global spiral,” an e-publicaton of Metanexus Institute.

Bravo! An integralite that understands Derrida and knows the “religious” significance of his work. Of couse Caputo, a scholoar of religion and one of the author’s sources, knew this all along. As did many, many other religious scholars, even those of Roman Catholic persuasion. Although the quest for Jesus’ “original” teaching or intent is anti-thetical to the deconstructive endeavor, nonetheless the author’s Derridaian interpretation of Jesus does indeed open us to a postmetaphysical “religious” experience. But it ain’t got nothin to do with a spirituality apart from the mundane. This could’ve been written by our friend Greg Desilet and sounds a lot like his proposed “synergist spirituality” in this Gaia IPS pod thread.

The Obama campaign used technology in unprecendented ways to achieve its goals. Such will continue in Obama’s Presidency. He’s launched a new website to interact with the POTUS again in unprecedented fashion. Finally, a President with a brain, a heart and who knows how to use contemporary media to communicate with us.

It is vogue to use AQAL to analyze all sorts of problems, from terrorism to enlightenment. It is also used to “integrate” all other methodologies, to “index” them within zones and speculate on how they might relate. But are these two uses consistent with each other? Along the lines of the questions Zachary Stein asked in the article referenced below, one being appropriate uses for our developmental metrics, Mark Edwards made some interesting comments about metatheory in Part 8 of the interview at Integral Leadership Review.

“The other point I would like to take up in your last response concerns a fundamental question about metatheory and its relationship to the particular. You ask, “Is this a way to see the forest and the trees?”. By this I take it that you mean can metatheory be applied to both the individual empirical event as well as the overarching view of a particular field of study. It seems to me that there are several murky lines being crossed here. First, it is important to recognise that metatheory is only ever directly about other theory. Metatheory cannot be developed from empirical phenomena but only from our theories of such. When we want to apply metatheory to a particular event I think we are crossing the line into standard theory. It is possible to do this but in such instances we are making theoretical speculations and hypotheses that need to be empirically tested and socially assessed using all very appropriate modern and post-modern criteria for theory testing.

“The territory of metatheory is always about what connects and differentiates other theory and it becomes standard theory when we use it to explain the particulars of social life. This is a key point—whenever we have our metatheory referring to or explaining some applied situation it has crossed a line and entered the world of speculative theory and hypothesis generation. When it enters this world metatheory becomes a source for the generation of theoretical hypotheses and nothing more. This line gets crossed in the application of AQAL and frequently without acknowledging that we have crossed from metatheory building to the world of theoretical speculation. For example, I sometimes see something like the following in AQAL-informed discussions: That between 50-70 percent of the world’s population is at the ethnocentric level of developmental identity, or that all terrorists have the same basic psychograph or that wars are caused by the clash of vMemes or that everyone experiences the transpersonal because they dream every night and so on. All these might be interesting but they are totally speculative in that they are completely untested hypothetical propositions. They usually haven’t even been evaluated at the metatheoretical level in terms of how they fit with the internal consistency of AQAL. Just because AQAL metatheory is based on theory, which is (often) based on empirical data, does not mean that AQAL-based speculations have any empirical base. They do not. They have a theoretical base. And, like every (meta)theory AQAL needs to be evaluated according to the standard criteria of parsimony, generalisability, fecundity, internal consistency, uniqueness, abstractness, trustworthiness, usefulness, social justice, etc. Once metatheory has been considered according to these criteria then it’s time to test its theoretical propositions. But more importantly once the evaluation of metatheory has taken place, we can then immediately set about evaluating other theory. This is the primal role of metatheory for me in the current crisis we find ourselves. This is where metatheory has a role right now in changing the path we are currently unconsciously plodding on. Our theories of how the world works are not up to the huge task of global transformation that faces us. Metatheory has something to say about that now by being able to critically and (at the least) rationally evaluate our theories, models, frameworks and cultural worldviews. This is why I have always found AQAL to be at its best when evaluating other theory and at its most dodgy when it tries to explain some empirical social event (like, for example, Islamic terrorism).”

Rove’s final electoral map has Obama getting 338 to McCain’s 200.

Part of what I was getting at, in my insidiously indirect way, with my question about voting is what Zachary Stein deals with directly in his article “Myth Busting & Metric Making” at Integral Life. He says:

Roughly speaking, we are not as developed as we should be in our thinking about development.

…there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that our metrics are limited and that we can’t touch the true complexity of human development. In this light, the idea that a holistic assessment could tell us about the essence of a person is absurd and flagrantly ideological. Developmental assessments, at their best, can only paint pictures of the differential distribution of capabilities within persons. We can’t assess people as a whole, we can only assess their performances in particular domains in particular contexts. The myth of the metals would bestow on some group of experts a unique kind knowledge and insight that vastly outstrips the kind of knowledge gained through the responsible use of a developmental assessment system.

From Jeremy Siegel, Ph.D. Wharton School @ UP, in Yahoo Finance 8/29/08, “Which Party is Better for Stocks?”:

I would venture to say that most investors, especially those with substantial portfolios, are Republicans. After all, the GOP is the party that champions free markets, capital accumulation, and low taxes, principles that appeal to wealthy investors.

And historically, the initial reaction of the market to a Republican presidential victory confirms this thesis. During the last 120 years, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.7% on the day following a Republican victory in the presidential elections while it has fallen 0.5% the day after a Democrat captured the White House

However, a closer look tells a far different story. Over that same 120 year period, the average annual stock market return has totaled only 8.25% under Republican rule, while it has returned 10.85% with Democrats in power.

Over the past 60 years, this trend has been more pronounced. The Democrats have held the presidency only 41% of that time, but under their rule the average annual return has been 15.26%, more than six percentage points higher than the 9.01% return under Republicans.

I’ve been involved in a discussion at the Yahoo Adult Development forum with the above title. Since one has to be a member to read it, and as most of you are probably not members, I’ve copied-and-pasted some of the responses from that discussion, following:

Sara Ross said:

Not to prolong this, but the problem with such general testing at all is the reality of domain specificity. Choosing a political representative at each scale - local, state, national levels - can be analyzed as involving different domains of a person’s interests and concerns. Deciding which levies, referenda, laws, and constitutional amendments to vote for/against can be analyzed as affecting different domains of persons’ lives. In summary, each vote is a different task. And people do indeed deploy different levels of complexity in voting for certain political reps, for instance. And I hypothesize that for some voters, it can be a lower level complexity, that is, lower than they might perform in another domain of life. I say this for myriad reasons beyond the scope of this already-long post. So I have a hard time imagining how a single test could be a
predictor of the stage of performance one would demonstrate in the actual task of each vote on each ballot in each election.

I said:

So Sara, it seems you’re saying that when it comes to specific tasks there is no “center of gravity,” no general level of cognitive development around which we might organize all task behaviors?

Herb Kaplowitz said:

I believe this is a difference between MHC and the Requisite Organization model. (Someone please tell me if I’m wrong.) MHC considers performance within a domain.
RO considers cognitive capacity (the centre of gravity you’re looking for) and skills and knowledge (which would be domain specific).

As I understand the models, this is not really an essential difference. It’s like the choice in analytic geometry to represent a point by a) X and Y axis coordinates or b) distance from a centre point and angle from a fixed line going through that point. A particular curve might be represented by a simpler equation in one system than in the other, but both geometries chart the whole field in two dimensions and what is true of a circle in one system will be true of it in another.

Sara Ross said:

I like your meta-comparison at the end, Herb. I think it adds perspective when disparate constructs are in play (e.g., tasks and “center of gravity”).

I would, though, like to correct the statement about hierarchical complexity (“MHC” or “HC”) “consider[ing] performance within a domain.” Rather, the use of HC considers only tasks, period. “Considering tasks” requires us to coordinate two separate systems: the HC of the task itself, and the HC stage of performance of the task by an entity. Performance of a task is all that hierarchical complexity can measure. “It” cannot consider domain because MHC is a content-free theory and method that applies irrespective of domains.

I think it is only us, as analyzers, who need to bring in the concept of domain. And I suppose the only reason we need the concept of domain at all is in such cases as this when there is more dynamic and complex variability than we notice at first examination. because we humans like to make broad classifications, categorizations, generalizations, and broad-brush assumptions. So we come up with various constructs to describe them. This helps us (think we) see forests, often missing trees.

Edward, in my view, “center of gravity” is one such construct. If used at all, I think it needs to be used with careful definition and such careful discriminations as Herb consistently makes whenever he writes about anything. However, I fear the term has been reified quite a bit into some sort of “real thing.” This masks humans’ dynamic complexity, methinks, and I wonder how useful it is…. Well, we know in certain circles it is useful for labeling people, but that’s not an endorsable practice in my book.

To begin to respond (more) directly to your Q: , it seems you’re saying that when it comes to specific tasks
there is no “center of gravity,” no general level of cognitive development around which we might organize all task behaviors?

To take a few general aspects of my life for a brief start. “All (my) task behaviors” do not have the same demands. Speaking in broad terms for brevity’s sake (which goes against my preference for precision): My outside labors around the place here demand a small range of complexity: from concrete 8 to formal 10, depending on which tasks I refer to. My problem-solving efforts to address repairs’ budgeting challenges sometimes typically systematic 11. Finally, one kind of broad comparison may be so for everyone on this list: that the tasks we do in our professions and in managing challenging interpersonal relationships typically demand higher orders of hierarchical complexity than perhaps the majority of those in our concrete home living. In MHC, such differences are referred to as “task demands.” In this vein, how is it possible to “organize all task behaviors” under one general level of cognitive development? I see them as apples and oranges. If “center of gravity” is not related to any domain but a blanket description, it seems like mush to me… I think some of this depends on how much specificity we bring to reflecting on our lived experience, too. Our 24/7 life-laboratories where we can discover how much variability we operate with.

Don’t know how much that helps, if at all. Overall, though, it seems we need to be crisp about two areas, first:: tasks, and domains. For starters, we could take the thread’s starting point: “voting.” An abstract stage 9 classification of an action. When we look at more of the possible factors around the actual task of casting a vote per item per ballot (e.g., my previous post), the complexity possible to associate with “voting” becomes more apparent. Unless we mean the concrete stage 8 task of writing an “X” on a paper ballot, or punching “Yes” on a touch screen: physical executions. This is meant to suggest we need to be more detailed in specifying the task we think we mean by saying “voting.” This applies to your question because there are two notions in it: “specific tasks” and “all task behaviors.” Radically different foci and scope.

For more in-depth discussion of tasks and domains, maybe Chet Wolfsont (1st author) and Mike Mascolo (sole author) would be willing to share here their respective World Futures preprints. (That special issue on postformal thought and hierarchical complexity should be off the printing presses now and also online any time now.) I believe discussions at those lengths, more than quickie list posts, would be most helpful with the Qs you raise.

Herb Kaplowitz said:

Thanks for your clarifications, Sarah. One small point of careful definition and discrimination

Edward, in my view, “center of gravity” is one such construct. … However, I fear the term has been reified quite a bit into some sort of “real thing.”

In the RO model, cognitive capacity is reified not as a thing but as a property of a thing, namely, of a person (or of another organism). It is not entified, just as we don’t make a thing of how tall a person is by referring to it as the noun “height”. Zero height, or zero cognitive capacity means there is no person. It’s not an organ or something that can be added onto or taken away from an otherwise complete package.

Michael Commons said:

Across all domains on all tasks, we might expect a r of about .5. In math, physics, logic, chemistry, etc. the r is about .94. In the social domain, it is about .85. But as Funk points out there is music, art, and as I point out there is sports, craft, etc.

Sara Ross said:

Herb.

I deeply appreciate the way things are formulated in RO. Maybe because you and Glenn are my main educators around that, and you bring such careful understanding to it J.

To clarify, though, I don’t equate RO’s careful meaning of “cognitive capacity” with the term “center of gravity.” This is because the only arena I can recall hearing the term “center of gravity” and having dismay at how it has been used is in the Wilber community. As I understand Edward’s efforts, he plays an advocacy role for more critical, grounded, and sophisticated understandings therein. And I support that. Unpacking labels like “center of gravity” is a task I think important.

I just don’t have a basis to assume its use has the same kind of the careful definition and foundations as RO’s use of the term cognitive capacity

Herb Kopowitz said:

Sara –

As always, thanks for the clarification. Yes. I may have jumped a few paradigms there. Centre of gravity is not an RO term and I can see its carrying more meaning that I would intend for cognitive capacity”. As you get further into it I realize I wouldn’t know what a person’s centre of gravity would be.

Judy Steven Long said:

Sara, I always love the level of precision you bring to the discussion. One of the things that makes me woozy in my job (as an Associate Dean) is the need to (what I would describe as) drop and skip levels at a moment’s notice. One minute, the events people are asking me how many tables I want for the retirement party and how much I want to spend on food and whether we’ll have an open bar, the next moment I’m trying to read Herb’s response to Michael or talk about how to increase revenue in the continuing ed enterprise without crashing the infrastructure—then they send me an excel sheet with the names of alumni and where the Universities they work at and ask me to summarize the data in a paragraph or two for WASC. Shee shee pfoof pfoof. We talk about the complexity of the task and the, as you put it, “performance of a task by an entity.” I assume that entity would be me in this case, but we don’t look at the set of task demands in a particular context and the cognitive and emotional work demanded by switching—especially if the “center of gravity” you prefer is higher than many of the task demands.

I said:

I’m thinking more along the lines of cognitive capacity as being a sort of “general intelligence” that crosses domains. Now granted one doesn’t have to use their full cognitive capacity to tie their shoes but rather the issue is what is the maximum cognitive capacity? And can this be used as a type of general measure of task performance in any domain? And what exactly is “G” (the general intelligence factor in MHC) in this regard?

From the paper “HCSS”:
“G, The General Intelligence Factor, is found from applying factor analysis to a set of performances….The higher the stage of performance of an organism, the more likely it is to be able to solve a variety of tasks…” (45).

Thomas Jordan said:

We return to the topic of task complexity and cognitive capacity again and again, and I believe this is useful for hammering out a clearer understanding and anchoring that understanding in a community of inquiry.

I take the liberty to repost something I sent to the list in August, when there was a similar conversation. I was quite pleased with myself for writing that post, but noone else seemed to notice, so maybe the comment was not as interesting as I thought.

6 aug 2008 kl. 17.25 Herb Koplowitz wrote:

1. Complexity is a property of a problem, not of an individual’s capability. I’m not sure if you are doing this, Paul, but some write of the complexity of the individual. What’s interesting about a person’s capability is its force, not how intertwined its parts are (whatever those parts might be). It is the number of parts to a problem and how intertwined they are that make a complex problem difficult. (The root meaning of “complex” is “braided”.) So if there are general stages of complexity, it is of the complexity of problem a person can solve.

2. I find it useful to understand an individual to have a level of cognitive capacity, a level of complexity of problem they potentially could solve.

I think there is a significant third aspect, beside the complexity of the task and the capability of the individual, and that is the individual’s preunderstanding. This seems at least significant in the fields I work with: political issues, workplace conflicts, organizational change. Different people have different expectations about complexity. Some people are not used to expect there to be significant complex causes (and consequences) of social phenomena, therefore they tend to stop looking for causes very quickly. Some people don’t even asks for reasons at all, they just judge: good/bad. But if you have the preunderstanding that social phenomena usually are embedded in a complex context of causes and conditions, it comes naturally to you to look for significant factors, ask questions about them, and take them into account when trying to resolving a task. Preunderstanding of complexity is certainly domain-specific to a large extent, but within domains, I think preunderstanding is relatively stable, and therefore describable, also in terms of levels of complexity. And not only describable, also very important as a key to durable patterns of behavior of individuals.

I think the notion of preunderstanding of complexity is a neat concept and quite distinct from the other two. How complex a task is perceived to be is highly influenced by the preunderstanding of causality in terms of complexity a person has. In fact, for many tasks it is probably impossible to objectively ascertain how complex the task is, since your own preunderstanding frames the task. And an individual may be expecting that the task is complex, but may lack the knowledge, information or skills to accurately perceive the relevant factors involved as well as mastering the task.

I said:

To answer my own question, here are some excerpts from MLC, “Measuring an approximate g in animals and people,” Integral Review 3, December 2006, 82-99:

There is controversy within the field of evolutionary psychology as to whether or not g is domain specific or domain general….Evidence is overwhelmingly against generality. Such evidence is usually expressed in terms of the concept of modularity (e.g., Bonner, 1988) (86).

Starting with the standard tasks within the standard domains, one can construct an analogue of g. There will be three types of measures: (a) the highest stage of performance attained in each domain (HS) including the highest stage in any domain (HHS); (b) a form of g that is somewhat akin to human g; (c) a derived measure of generality of performance, g breadth (gB).

Highest Stage of Performance Attained in Any Domain

An animal species may be characterized by the highest stage of performance observed with any amount of training on its best task series (HHS). Animals can perform up to the concrete stage, about what eight to ten year old children do. (Examples presented below show how the MHC can be used to compare how smart different animals are).

This first index requires some information as to what the domains are and what the tasks are within each domain. This is the most difficult part of the enterprise because we really do not know the domains well. We know what the tasks accomplish, but we do not have a systematic way to classify domains. Each task has a hierarchical complexity. The highest stage of performance (HS) is just the highest hierarchical complexity of the task that the organism in the species correctly addresses. Then one finds the domain and task in which the highest stage of performance (as determined by hierarchical complexity) occurs (HHS). Note that this falls on the stage scale that runs from 0 to 14. It is one such number.

The Index g

The second index, g, is the average of the highest stage numbers of performance in each domain (HS). This is somewhat akin to human g, but g would separate the highest stage from how broad g would be. The average has advantages of the total g, because the average is less sensitive to failing to include a domain or misidentifying a domain. Note that this average of highest stage falls on the stage scale that runs from 0 to 14.

The Index g-Breadth

The third index called g breadth (gB), measures how broad an organisms’ capability is by using a scheme that uses a renormed g that removes the effects of the highest stage. This renorming does not refer to a sample but to the process of dividing the average of highest stage in each domain (g) by the top stage of the animal (HHS). This renorming takes away the effect of highest stage. Then we have three numbers, the highest stage (HS); the average stage across domains (g); and g breadth (gB) (90-91).

Herb Koplowitz said:

Elliott Jaques considered cognitive capacity to be G. It determines the maximum complexity one can manage. Of course, you will only show your maximum performance in a field in which you have skills and knowledge (methods and facts you can use, without bringing them to consciousness, to solve a roblem).

Michael Commons said:

When assessing animals or individuals, we characterize them by both their highest stage of performance on the most favorable task for them and by G. My G paper is posted on the DareAssociation.org website. Sara is right as usual. As a behavioral developmental person, I do not look at mental states or abilities. But there is a differences between doing a task with support and without support. Explaining what one is doing is a more difficult task then just doing it. Preferring a vignette of a given order of complexity than explaining why that vignette is good.

Michael Commons said:

Our working theory as to why one needs to have knowledge in the domain as Herb points out, is that one cannot see the critical information as various kinds of “variables”. These variables might be instances, people, value of an exchange at the concrete stage; norms or regular variables at the abstract stage, relationships between variables including a linear chain of causation or logic at the formal stage, systems of variables or multivariate systems at the systematic stage, and system of systems at the metasystematic stage. It is these problems of encoding that makes performance in different domains different. Otherwise, as Pascual-Leone points out, m-space — a measure of executive function — would work for all.

I posed the following to the Yahoo Adult Development discussion group. I will follow up with their responses, if any, in the comments section, since the group is subscription and some of you might not be members.

The whole notion of democracy is based on the Enlightenment ideal of rationality and that a citizen will have gone through a public education to raise them to a level of rationality. There is also the voting age limitation, that one must be at least 18 and have undergone such prerequisite education and life experience to earn the privilege to vote. This right is not given to 8 year-olds. There is an implicit notion of development in this right.

However is this minimal requirement enough? Many never get passing grades in learning rationality, the necessary presupposed ingredient in a democratic, voting citizenry. So what’s the harm in requiring actual cognitive tests to ascertain one’s rational level to vote? They don’t have to agree with any particular political content, just have the requisite reasoning ability to make the system work.

We have legitimate testing of all kinds to allow one the privilege to do certain tasks, from driving to open-heart surgery. Since voting is a privilege and must be earned shouldn’t the minimim requisite ability be demonstrated? If one thinks mythically that Jesus, after his Return, should be King of the earth, then really, should they vote?

Now privileges like voting are not the same as the “rights” of all people, like the freedom of religion. One has the right to believe that Jesus should be King but should they be given the privilege to impose that belief on the rest of us? However, should the Enlightenment rationalist be allowed to impose ratiionality as a prerequsite on the rest of us? Is it not developmentally justified?

Since experience is an issue in the upcoming election, and as McCain (and conservatives generally) downplays Obama’s, the latter’s resume follows. It’s a very handy fact-based document that can be verified per the sources below. Especially note Obama’s history in the US Senate, as this is the item usually demeaned by McCain’s campaign. One thing not on the resume that I’ve been hearing and have yet to verify is that Obama graduated first in his law class at Harvard. Whether true or not, he did graduate magna cum laude. Do we want a very smart guy to head the most important job in the country? Or another dummy who we can “have a beer with?”

It can be forwaded to those that cry about Obama’s apparent lack in this department. That is, if one opposed to Obama on the issue of experience wants facts. I mean, why let facts get in the way of our most important choices?

Information following is from this wiki link:

Education

Undergraduate
Occidental College, Los Angeles , CA
Undergraduate, 1981-1983
Columbia University
B.A. Political Science with specialization in international relations
Thesis topic: Soviet nuclear disarmament

Graduate
Harvard Law School
J.D. magna cum laude 1988-1991
President, Harvard Law Review

Organizing and other work experience
• 1983-1984 Writer/Researcher for Business International Corporation. Helped companies understand overseas markets in the “Financing Foreign Operations” service and wrote for the “Business International Money Report”
• 1984-1985 Community Organizer for New York Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), promoting personal, community, and government reform at City College in Harlem .
• 1985-1988 Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland on Chicago ’s South Side. While director grew the DCP staff from 1 to 13 and their budget from $70,000 to $400,000.
• 1992 Led Chicago ’s Project Vote! push. This effort resulted in a record number of voter registrations, over 600,000 in Chicago . 1)

Teaching
• 1993-2004 Visiting Law and Government Fellow, then Senior Lecturer, in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Taught courses on the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law, on voting rights, and on racism and law. Helped develop a casebook on voting rights.
Law Practice
• 1993-2002 Worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Represented non-profits and private individuals in urban development projects, voting rights cases, and wrongful firings. Filed major suit that forced the state of Illinois to enforce the Motor Voter Law and successfully argued a wrongful firing case before the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Illinois Senate 1996-2004
• Chairman, Health and Human Services Committee
• Spearheaded a successful bipartisan effort in Illinois to pass the broadest ethics-reform legislation in 25 years, and gained bipartisan support for his successful bills reforming death penalty interrogations and ending racial profiling by police. Worked with the Republican-led effort to reform welfare.
• Also sponsored successful bills expanding tax credits and child-care subsidies for low-income working families, protecting overtime pay for workers, expanding health care for children, and providing job skills training for juveniles.
New York Times chart on Obama’s legislative record in the Illinois Senate

United States Senate 2004-present
• Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
• Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs
• Member, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
• Member, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
• Member, Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs
• Shares responsibility for the bipartisan Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, requiring full online disclosure of all entities receiving federal funds, and the bipartisan Lugar-Obama Cooperative Proliferation Detection, Interdiction Assistance, and Conventional Threat Reduction Act of 2006, deepening non-proliferation work with WMD and including surface-to-air missiles, land mines, and other weapons that may be used by terrorists. Also worked with Coburn to end the abuse of no-bid contracts in the wake of disasters.

Sponsored Bill Statistics
• Number of sponsored bills: 70
• Number of sponsored bills passed: 2
• Number of co-sponsored bills: 404
• Number of co-sponsored bills passed: 8

www.opencongress.org (9/3/2008—-dankster keeps taking this out for some reason) (because it makes no sense at all. If you go to the NYT link or the http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d109query.html and http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d110query.html searches, you’ll find that he’s sponsored and cosponsored many times more bills than those stats list. They’re ridiculously off.) http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/271/

Bills / Amendments Passed
• Barack Obama has introduced nearly 300 bills during his time in the U.S. Senate, and cosponsored close to 1,000 others. To see his legislative efforts, search the 109th Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d109query.html and 110th Congress at http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d110query.html
• S.AMDT.1041 to S.1082 To improve the safety and efficacy of genetic tests.
• S.AMDT.3073 to H.R.1585 To provide for transparency and accountability in military and security contracting.
• S.AMDT.3078 to H.R.1585 Relating to administrative separations of members of the Armed Forces for personality disorder.
• S.AMDT.41 to S.1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.
• S.AMDT.524 to S.CON.RES.21 To provide $100 million for the Summer Term Education Program supporting summer learning opportunities for low-income students in the early grades to lessen summer learning losses that contribute to the achievement gaps separating low-income students from their middle-class peers.
• S.AMDT.599 to S.CON.RES.21 To add $200 million for Function 270 (Energy) for the demonstration and monitoring of carbon capture and sequestration technology by the Department of Energy.
• S.AMDT.905 to S.761 To require the Director of Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Education to establish a program to recruit and provide mentors for women and underrepresented minorities who are interested in careers in mathematics, science, and engineering.
• S.AMDT.923 to S.761 To expand the pipeline of individuals entering the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields to support United States innovation and competitiveness.
• S.AMDT.924 to S.761 To establish summer term education programs.
• S.AMDT.2519 to H.R.2638 To provide that one of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5 million or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee owes no past due Federal tax liability.
• S.AMDT.2588 to H.R.976 To provide certain employment protections for family members who are caring for members of the Armed Forces recovering from illnesses and injuries incurred on active duty.
• S.AMDT.2658 to H.R.2642 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
• S.AMDT.2692 to H.R.2764 To require a comprehensive nuclear threat reduction and security plan.
• S.AMDT.2799 to H.R.3074 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
• S.AMDT.3137 to H.R.3222 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
• S.AMDT.3234 to H.R.3093 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
• S.AMDT.3331 to H.R.3043 To provide that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to enter into a contract in an amount greater than $5,000,000 or to award a grant in excess of such amount unless the prospective contractor or grantee makes certain certifications regarding Federal tax liability.
• Senate Resolutions Passed:
• S.RES.133 : A resolution celebrating the life of Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson.
• S.RES.268 : A resolution designating July 12, 2007, as “National Summer Learning Day”.

Other Bills Introduced
• S.J.RES.23: A joint resolution clarifying that the use of force against Iran is not authorized by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq, any resolution previously adopted, or any other provision of law.
• S. 453: Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007. The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act of 2007 (H.R.1281), (S.453), would establish criminal penalties for acts of voter deception. Those who knowingly disseminate false information with the intention of keeping others from voting would face up to five years in prison under the legislation. The Act was sponsored by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and 60 cosponsors in the House, and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and 15 cosponsors in the Senate. (20 Cosponsors)
• S. 2030: A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require reporting relating to bundled contributions made by persons other than registered lobbyists. (1 Cosponsor)
• S. 2111: Positive Behavior for Effective Schools Act. A bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to allow State educational agencies, local educational agencies, and schools to increase implementation of early intervention services, particularly school-wide positive behavior supports. (3 Cosponsors)
• S. 2066: Back to School: Improving Standards for Nutrition and Physical Education in Schools Act of 2007. A bill to establish nutrition and physical education standards for schools.
• S. Con. Res. 46: A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month
• S. 2044: Independent Contractor Proper Classification Act of 2007. A bill to provide procedures for the proper classification of employees and independent contractors, and for other purposes. (6 Cosponsors)
• S. 2519: Contracting and Tax Accountability Act of 2007. A bill to prohibit the awarding of a contract or grant in excess of the simplified acquisition threshold unless the prospective contractor or grantee certifies in writing to the agency awarding the contract or grant that the contractor or grantee has no seriously delinquent tax debts, and for other purposes.
• S. 2433: Global Poverty Act of 2007. A bill to require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day. (9 Cosponsors)
• S. 2330: Veterans Homelessness Prevention Act. A bill to authorize a pilot program within the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development with the goal of preventing at-risk veterans and veteran families from falling into homelessness, and for other purposes. (1 Cosponsor)

Barack Obama’s Senate Voting Record

Sources
• Milestones: Barack Obama — The New York Times
• Professor Obama was a listener, students say — Chicago Sun-Times
• An Obama Moment — Geoffrey R. Stone at The Huffington Post
• Detailed research into Obama and Clinton’s bills that they have authored
• Oxy Remembers “Barry” Obama ‘83
• Andrew Sullivan lists major legislative accomplishments, and links to several other articles discussing Obama’s record
• http://www.pickensdemocrats.org/info/TheAgitator_070319.htm
• http://www.opencongress.org/people/show/400629_barack_obama