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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

Functionalism’

4Q/8L

Updated: 16 May 2017 It was in 1996 that Ken Wilber, arguably America’s leading contemporary philosopher, first made public his notion of All Quadrants/All Levels (AQ/AL). It was a heroic attempt to create a grand overarching theory of human experience, motivation and interaction, based on the intersection of two key dimensions: Tangible-Intangible (or Objective-Subjective) and Individual vs Collective. This created quadrants of :- Upper Right – Exterior Individual: can be read as the individual’s own observed behaviour (considered objectively) but is used more often to describe the physical development of the individual’s brain and nervous systems Upper Left – Interior Individual: the individual’s subjective consciousness – which can go from pre-cognitive sensory awareness through the development of cognition and motivation and can include the transpersonal (spirit) Lower Right – Exterior Collective: considers the structures and systems in which people live and operate, from the family to the planet Lower Left – Interior Collective: represents the cultural values, meanings, worldviews and ethics shared by the members of any form of collective grouping. All ‘lines’ – eg: social, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, etc – and levels or stages of development in whatever domain can, in Wilber’s paradigm – be run through at least one… Read More

Have David Cameron and George Osborne ruined Britain?

Of course, the rot set in well before David Cameron and Nick Clegg formed the Coalition Government in May 2010. As the Public Sector Net Borrowing chart shows, it was during Gordon Brown’s ill-fated premiership that the deficit increased massively. (The Public Sector Deficit is the difference between what the Government spends and what it takes in via taxes to fund that spending – the difference being borrowed.) To give them some credit, as the chart shows, the Coalition did bring the deficit down quite markedly in their first couple of years primarily via swingeing cuts in the public sector. However, there are significant signs that the rate of decrease in borrowing may be slowing down. In December’s Autumn statement Chancellor George Osborne predicted that borrowing would be £108B this year, and £99B next year and just £31B in 2017-18. In his Budget last week, just 3 months later, Osborne revised those figures to £114B this year, £108B next year and £61B in 2017-18. Hand in hand with this, Osborne was forced to revise December’s estimate of growth this year from 1.2% to O.6%. While it looks like the UK may just about avoid a triple-dip recession, the outlook for growth in… Read More