You say, "...we reductionists understand that everyone, especially ourselves, will be healthier and more content in a moral, loving society, not an amoral, hateful war zone."

Materially speaking, where does this understanding lie? Show me on the brain scan where this moral understanding exists. This is exactly Wilber's point: at some point we have to acknowledge that a material explanation of everything breaks down.

Physicists understand this now. String Theory (or M theory) is the most viable quantum model at this point. No one has every seen a string; no one (that I've heard of) is even suggesting that it would be possible to observe one. We have investigated matter beyond it's existence, and the current, best model is strictly abstract mathematics.

Likely, no instrument will ever "see" 11 dimensions and just as likely, no instrument will ever "see" your moral understanding. Its very existence points to a metaphysical (that is simply "beyond matter") reality.

Okay, it's historical. "...no less material for that." Seriously? Demonstrate to me its physical location in space/time and you will have made your point. You can't because an understanding simply doesn't have one. Period. Matter has physical location.

You vouch for the understanding's existence, but you can't point to its location. In fact, to fall back on an historical explanation makes it even more slippery; now it exists amongst a collective of individuals not one of which share a single neuron with another--much less a common location in time. This suggests that there is a reality that cannot be reduced to empirical, material evidence.

Tell me how that's not the case.

One more example: these fonts on this page are physical in nature, yet their meaning does not lie in the letters themselves nor in the binary code used to reproduce them. That meaning only exists within your and my interior experience. We could do a brain scan and see that the language center is active while we read it and type it, but the brain scan cannot tell whether what we are discussing is right or wrong anymore than it could show that we were discussing baseball or tapioca pudding rather than philosophy. The reality of our understanding exists, somehow separate from matter.

Oh, and I don't know that any of this is somehow an argument FOR the existence of a divine entity. I don't think that atheism in and of itself is necessarily materially reductionist, although if Richard Dawkins is its only spokesperson than one might think that the case.

By and large I don't disagree. But I do think you are expressing an absolute faith in empiricism that is just that: faith. You BELIEVE there is every reason to expect that we'll find the Right neuron and the Wrong neuron. That is simply faith.

I would argue that as things stand the reductionist material theories have gone as far as they can. The HAVE broken down already. Obviously, for the time being. There are always higher, more encompassing models that arise as we evolve. I believe (yes, I have faith) that the universe, time/space, what-have-you is infinite. We humans are demonstrably finite. By their natures, the finite cannot fully take in the infinite.

Science, a finite venture (not an un-worthwhile one by any means!) repeatedly reaches its edge, creates an explanation for why we can't know it all and awaits the next, better theory which in turn reaches its edge, creates an explanation for why we can't know it all and awaits the next, better theory which in turn reaches its edge...

That is the historical record. To believe that some new model will "solve everything" is no more fool-hardy than believing that the Bible can solve everything. The unknown is inherently part of our existence, and will never be explained away--imho.

Wilber's model is not flawless, not ultimate, but a much better model at encompassing the whole of human evolution to the present day than any that have come before. As to the critics who say he's not written anything new, I doubt he would argue with this; he is a synthesist creating A MODEL in which the physical and the meta-physical are not at odds with one another as they have been for 600 years or so. That's all. But I think that's terribly valuable.

A major concern I have with this interview and the resulting, engaging letters thread is this:

To discuss Wilber's work with those new to it without any mention or background of Spiral Dynamics is just asking for confusion and misunderstanding (not that SD would entirely do away with that). When Wilber speaks of magic, mythic, rational consciouness he is speaking of empirically verified, relatively static, evolutionary STAGES that show up throughout the trajectory of human development. When he speaks of peak experiences arising from meditation he is speaking of a STATE of consciousness that may last for a time or may be fleeting. A stage can only be experienced while you are living at that stage; a state can be experienced as an instant recognition regardless of stage. BUT, the peak state will be interpreted based on the stage one is at.

So, if you are at the mythic stage and you have a peak experience, you may interpret it as the presence of Jesus Christ granting you the knowledge of Universal Oneness; if you are at rational you might interpret the same state as a sudden, quantum understanding of Universal Oneness--totally absent a requisite divine being. Both the mythic and the rational will think the other totally bonkers, but the core experience of Unity is ultimately the same.