Ken Wilber suggests that we can look at 4 aspects of any aspect of human experience or "holon."  By looking at our experiences through all 4 of these 4 perspectives, we both gain greater insight into their totality/nature, and avoid falling into the more common traps of believing that the perspective we are naturally drawn to is the "one right" perspective.

In brief summary, each and every experience we have as human beings can be understood through 4 perspectives, consisting of a matrix of two binary choices: interior/exterior vs. individual/group. As a matrix it might look as follows (figure 1.):


Figure 1.

	Interior	Exterior
Individual	Interior/Individual Upper Left (UL) Quadrant I Intentional - "I"	Exterior/Individual Upper Right (UR) Quadrant II Behavioral - "it"
Collective	Interior/Collective Lower Left (LL) Quadrant III Cultural - "We"	Exterior/Collective Lower Right (LR) Quadrant IV Social - "it"

As an example, let's look at a simple example of experience such as the thought "I need to go to the store and get some pesto for my tortellini" to see how this model applies.

First, let us look at the experience through the perspective of Quadrant I (UL), the interior/individual or intentional stance. This is what the thought looks like from the interior of the individual who is thinking it. It might include imagery, internal vocalization, a remembered taste/smell of previous "pesto" experiences, and/or a set of emotional interpretations about the meaning of the thought "pesto." This is the conscious experience of the individual person who is thinking the thought. It is internal to the person, and cannot be known unless the person chooses to share their internal experience through some means of communication. It is private, and cannot be measured without the honest participation of the individual.

Second, let us look at the experience through the perspective of Quadrant II (UR), the exterior/individual or behavioral stance. This is what the thought looks like from the exterior of the individual who is thinking it. It might include the specific measurement of a pattern of brain wave activity, a localized neural firing in certain parts of the cerebral cortex, and perhaps a subtle flaring of the nostrils and/or movement of the eyes as the person visualizes the pasta. This is the experience of the observer watching the individual who is having the thought with whatever apparatus they are using to observe with, be it their 5 senses or multi-million dollar machine-extensions of their 5 senses. This is the physical correlate of the interior experience of having the thought.

Let us stop here and consider a basic point about this. In Quadrant I, the intentional stance does not know the neural patterning or brainwave activity. It knows its own experience directly, without knowledge of the mechanical/organic transforms that correspond to the thought. On the other hand, in Quadrant II, the behavioral stance has zero information about the nature of the actual, human experience involved with the set of neural firings and brainwave activity it is observing. No matter how detailed and patterned the quantitative descriptions of the exterior activity of the individual claming to think about pesto, the behavioral stance can never know what it is like to experience the thought except by trying it on in their own consciousness (Quadrant I).

This is a crucial point, and bears repeating. Although we can gain ever finer appreciation of the interlocking patterns between the interior/intentional/conscious experiences of an individual and the exterior/behavioral/physiological correlates of that experience, we can never reduce one to the other. They are fundamentally different and distinct orders of experience. They are similar to flip sides of a coin. It doesn't matter how thoroughly we track the neural patterns in the brain or the chemical reactions on the tongue associated with the eating or remembering of pesto tortellini, we can NEVER actually experience the taste of pesto tortellini by studying the exterior elements. With this understanding, we can realize that reductive materialism and reductive idealism are fundamentally flawed as methods for understanding and explaining experience.

Quadrant I and Quadrant II are separate and distinct means of apprehending an experience. They are two openings through which we experience reality and both must be considered if we are to have what Wilber calls "integral" knowledge on any subject.

Notice also that for every Quadrant I experience, there will be a Quadrant II correlate, though not necessarily vice versa. (The Quadrant II shifts might either not register on our 5 senses, or might be so subtle as to escape our awareness of them). As our measuring devices for the physical/neural activity of the human body have gotten more complex and sensitive to more subtle electrical and bio-chemical changes, we have registered systematic patterns of response associated with both thoughts and emotions. For example, there are distinct brain wave shifts (Quadrant II, UR) observed in subjects in deep hypnosis or meditation that correspond to the depth of trance or meditative awareness they report (Quadrant I, UL). Such examples are numerous and the more sensitive and precise our instrumentation becomes, the more subtle the Quadrant I experiences we will be able to register and study. In the reverse, gross stimulation of brain neurons is sometimes associated with memories, thoughts, and emotional content, while changing our biochemistry though the use of certain drugs or alcohol has a marked and well-documented effect on the human organism's interior experience.

Quadrant I and Quadrant II are synchronous and omnipresent aspects of every experience of human life and likely all animal life. For example, although we might not be able to fully grasp the nature of a cat's interior experience (Quadrant I, UL) as we step on its tail and hear it screech (Quadrant II, UR), it seems reasonable to assert that it is experiencing something . As we move down the spectrum towards reptiles and insects, to plants and micro organisms, and finally to inanimate matter, the nature of the "interior experience" becomes less and less certain, and less and less imaginable. At some point on this spectrum, likely at the point where nervous systems disappear and certainly at the point where "life" disappears, it again seems reasonable to assert that the interior experience (Quadrant I) disappears altogether.

Third, let us look at the experience through the perspective of Quadrant III, the interior/collective or cultural stance. This is what we abstract out and conceptualize that thought looks like from the interior of a group of individuals who share a common set of interpretive and narrative frames of making meaning. It might include judgments about various cultures' style of food preparation, reveal a cultivated taste for exotic spices, including a specialized vocabulary to describe the quality of the meal to others, a set of standards as to the social standing of doing one's own shopping and preparing one's own meals, and/or a common peer group understanding as to the "cool factor" of using pesto as a sauce. This is the context in which the individual lives and from which they learn and interpret the meaning of experience. It is the set of understandings and judgments created by and referred to through the language of the participants. It is the sets of pre-packaged meanings of a collective group of individuals.

Fourth and last, let us look at the experience through the perspective of Quadrant IV, the exterior/collective or social stance. This is what the thought looks like from the exterior of a group of individuals who share a common infrastructure and set of social institutions. It might include a network of commercial relations between the store and thousands of companies which produce food and other items of utility, the existence of a shared unit of currency to be traded for the goods desired, the system of roads and vehicles by which one travels to and from the store, and the electricity and gas systems of the municipality in which I cook and eat my pasta.

Again, notice that one could study the transfer of currency and the patterns of traffic (Quadrant IV, LR) with incredible precision and yet be no closer to understanding the sets of meanings (Quadrant III, LL) associated with the systems being measured. Understanding all the etiquette and language of culture on wall street (Quadrant III, LL) would not give you insight to the patterns of currency exchange and investment (Quadrant IV, LR) happening on the floor. Further, despite how intricate and precise the modeling of traffic flow and average waiting time at various intersections (Quadrant IV, LR), we would not learn anything about the emotional experience of being stuck in traffic that would be common to members of a shared culture(Quadrant III, LL), or the jokes which surround it.

Each of these quadrants is distinct yet synchronous with the others, and each gives rise to qualitatively and quantitatively different experiences of reality. They are complimentary perspectives that together give us a deeper appreciation of reality. As Wilber poetically puts it, they are the four faces of the Kosmos.

If we are to legitimately claim true comprehension of any experience, we must have integrated information from all 4 quadrants. When all four perspectives are included and related to one another in our knowledge on any subject, Wilber calls that "integral science."

The effects of understanding the 4 Quadrants model are manifold. First, we can notice that most disciplines of arts and science specialize and/or categorize experience exclusively from one perspective of the 4 Quadrants. For example, Freudians and the psychodynamic psychologists (along with philosophers), work almost exclusively in the upper left (UL) Quadrant I of intention, while B.F. Skinner and the behaviorist psychologists (along with Physics, Biology, etc) work almost exclusively in the upper right (UR) Quadrant II of behavior. Continuing, theorists such as Thomas Kuhn, Max Weber, and Hans-George Gadamer deal most essentially with the lower left Quadrant III of cultural change, while systems theory, August Comte, and Levi-Strauss dealt with the lower right (LR) Quadrant IV of social systems.

As we come to understand the complimentary and selective nature of various theories, we can appreciate their specialty while recognizing their partiality. It is not always that one theory is wrong and another is right (although some theories might be both tremendously more accurate descriptions of what they purport to study as well as more powerful in their application) but that often any one theory is not right enough. Single quadrant perspectives do not explain the totality of data from all 4 quadrants, but only the data that is part of their quadrants' perspective. In this sense they are incomplete in explaining the 4-fold nature of any subject, existent, or process.

As we build a truly integral and rational understanding of the reality of our experience, it behooves us to organize the understandings of rationally consistent but seemingly disparate theoretical perspectives into a coordinated whole. By including the best insights of various models according to the quadrant in which each model specializes, we may be able to use these theories to compliment each other, rather than argue over differences which amount to "apples and oranges." The model of the 4 Quadrants offers a powerful though perhaps only initial means of doing just that.

Mark Michael Lewis