Steve quoted Sam Harris: "...for thousands of years, contemplatives have claimed to find extraordinary depths of psychological well-being while spending vast stretches of time in total isolation. It seems to me that, as rational people, whether we call ourselves “atheists” or not, we have a choice to make in how we view this whole enterprise. Either the contemplative literature is a mere catalogue of religious delusion, deliberate fraud, and psychopathology, or people have been having interesting and even normative experiences under the name of “spirituality” and “mysticism” for millennia."
dmb says: I mentioned this a while back after I saw it on YouTube. Thanks for posting it. This is what distinguishes Harris from most "atheists". I'd even make a case that he is a bit of a MOQer. Sam Harris said: "Now let me just assert, on the basis of my own study and experience, that there is no question in my mind that people have improved their emotional lives, and their self-understanding, and their ethical intuitions, and have even had important insights about the nature of subjectivity itself through a variety of traditional practices like meditation." dmb says: On top of the positive practical effects, which even a MOQer like Matt might applaud, there is Sam's recognition that "mystical" experience can provide "important insights about the nature of subjectivity itself". This could be taken as an attack on SOM, if only there were more... Sam Harris said: "...I am by no means denying the importance of thinking. There is no question that linguistic thought is indispensable for us. It is, in large part, what makes us human. It is the fabric of almost all culture and every social relationship. ...From the point of view of our contemplative traditions, however—to boil them all down to a cartoon version, that ignores the rather esoteric disputes among them—our habitual identification with discursive thought, our failure moment to moment to recognize thoughts as thoughts, is a primary source of human suffering. And when a person breaks this spell, an extraordinary kind of relief is available." dmb says: Here, he is talking about linguistic thought (static quality) and the breaking of it's spell (dynamic quality). Our failure to recognize thoughts AS thoughts, is what the philosophers call reification, which is to give concrete or existential reality to our abstractions. This is what Pirsig and James say happened to subjects and objects. And so that view is one of the things that's likely to break when the spell of linguistic thought in general is broken. Sam Harris said: "But the problem with a contemplative claim of this sort is that you can’t borrow someone else’s contemplative tools to test it. ...To judge the empirical claims of contemplatives, you have to build your own telescope. Judging their metaphysical claims is another matter: many of these can be dismissed as bad science or bad philosophy by merely thinking about them. But to judge whether certain experiences are possible—and if possible, desirable—we have to be able to use our attention in the requisite ways. We have to be able to break our identification with discursive thought, if only for a few moments. This can take a tremendous amount of work. And it is not work that our culture knows much about." dmb says: Here is see the idea that one has to go see it for one's self. Discursive thought can't convey the experience because its central importance consists in the non-discursive nature of the experience. There are certain techniques that can help, but ultimately there are no rules and there are as many paths as there are walkers. I also see him make reference to our culture's blind spot with respect to mysticism. Sam Harris said: "As someone who has made his own modest efforts in this area, let me assure you, that when a person goes into solitude and trains himself in meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing else—not talking, not reading, not writing—just making a sustained moment to moment effort to merely observe the contents of consciousness and to not get lost in thought, he experiences things that most scientists and artists are not likely to have experienced, unless they have made precisely the same efforts at introspection. And these experiences have a lot to say about the plasticity of the human mind and about the possibilities of human happiness..." dmb says: I'm glad to hear he's actually made some efforts in this area and it's what make him my fav of the wave of atheist authors, but the part really worth noticing comes at the very end. If I read him right, he's saying that the dynamic has a lot to teach us about the plasticity of the mind and the possibilities of human happiness. I think that's very, very MOQish. I think Sam rocks. _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
