When the capacity for this kind of thinking first appears, says Cook-Greuter, "People now realize that things are not necessarily what they seemed at earlier stages because the interpretation of reality always depends on the position of the observer...One can never be as totally detached and "objective" as the rational/scientific outlook of the [previous] stage would have it...[they] abandon purely rational analysis in favor of a more holistic, organismic approach in which feelings and context are taken into account and the process becomes as intriguing as the product or outcome. [People at this stage] also favor more relativistic or psychological approaches over merely logical ones. The need to explain everything is gone..."
The weakness of early, immature vision-logic is that it tends to so strongly prefer its new more holistic mode of apprehending reality that it tends to be uninterested in rigorous, rational, detail-oriented, evidence-based thinking -- especially debates with those skeptically deconstructing the beautiful wholes it feelingly intuits. Thus it tends to become less capable of sustained, focused, rigorous, rational "formal operational" thinking, and the consequence is a tolerance for (and sometimes even a preference for) sloppy thinking, which is how it has given rise to what is sometimes decried as "new age woo woo."
Advanced vision-logic--often associated with more sophisticated trans-rational syntheses of science and spirituality
Advanced vision-logic directly apprehends deeper dimensions of wholeness, eventually awakening what ancient Greeks called gnosis -- direct intuitive knowledge of, or contact with, the essence of reality, so profoundly that it relieves suffering. Gnosis is direct experience of awakened consciousness, as distinct from merely intellectual or conceptual knowledge, belief or theory. However, advanced vision-logic is not attached to this direct intuitive mode; instead it is able to simultaneously appreciate the value of all modes of thought and knowledge (and the perspectives they disclose) and to go back and forth among them. Thus, it is able to think not only from the whole to the parts but also from the parts to the whole -- as well as from possible futures to the present.
Cook-Greuter traces several stages in the development of advanced vision-logic: "[The] relativism [of early vision-logic] changes into personal commitment and responsibility for creating one's own meaning...The shadow side of the self can be acknowledged to a greater degree and therefore a new integration and wholeness is possible...Although they experience role conflicts and dilemmas...[people begin to] recognize that these are inevitable and that ambivalent feelings are natural...Distressing emotions become more tolerable...[and] this allows them to be more tolerant [of others] and spontaneous...
"When people see through the filter of the symbolic construction and mapping of reality, their disposition towards the language habit can change profoundly. In general, [they] try to remain aware of the pseudo-reality created by words. They realize that the pursuit of objective self-identification and rational, objective explanations of the universe are futile--artifacts of our need to make permanent and substantive that which is in flux and immaterial...At the same time, [they] appreciate the vital function language plays in human affairs, in social interaction and development."
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