dmb, I will not bother to address your last couple of responses point by point. Nothing but snot stew could come of that. But there are several areas that warrant comment. First, with regards to my alleged misunderstanding of the "problem". I will state it as I see it and you can correct as you see fit. You believe that there are certain kinds of knowledge that are inexpressibly unique to the individual and that are not bound up in materialism.
I have previously addressed the problem with this view of materialism and determinism. They are both carry-overs from the by gone days of Newton and LaPlace. Only the uniformed or willfully ignorant cling to this view of science any more. So tilt away at that windmill if you like, the miller left for an office job a century ago and no one has been doing even routine maintenance on the mill since. Pirsig's does seem to share this outdated view as well and expresses his frustration this way: "Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple, indeterminate, relative ones. The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thought and values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is none other than science itself. And what Phædrus saw in the isolation of his own laboratory work years ago is now seen everywhere in the technological world today. Scientifically produced antiscience...chaos." Here is another instance of Pirsig pointing straight at the moon but looking away. What he is missing is that he is correct science is about chaos and probability distributions. He describes it well when he discusses the scientific method at length in chapter 10 of ZMM. When he talks about hypothesis multiplying and increased scientific effort resulting in increasingly short lived "truths;" he is describing the fractal structure of knowledge. He is pointing straight at the fragmentation that occurs at the edges of science. This is where the twigs and new shoots of life grow and spread or die. When you step back from this you see the clear pattern of branches emerging from trunks. This is much like Pirsig's walking away from the idea that a Metaphysics of Quality would be a Metaphysics of Randomness. I agree with his analysis if not his conclusion that this is absurdity, in both cases. But he makes another point loud and clear that you have apparently missed. "That's the main reason why so much scientific and mechanical information sounds so dull and so cautious. If you get careless or go romanticizing scientific information, giving it a flourish here and there, Nature will soon make a complete fool out of you." But I don't see Pirsig calling for the abandonment of the scientific method or the wholesale adoption of whatever flits through ones mind at any given moment or even that deeply held convictions about the oneness of nature should not be put to the test. What I hear him say is, "The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know." I think he would find agreement with James' claim that within each of us "...floats the vast cloud of experiences that are wholly subjective, that are non-substitutional, that find not even an eventual ending for themselves in the perceptual world -- they're mere day-dreams and joys and sufferings and wishes of the individual minds. These exist _with_ one another, indeed, and with the objective nuclei, but out of them it is probable that to all eternity no interrelated system of any kind will ever be made." Beyond this I would ask you what did Pirsig do when he wanted to know if there is an inner sense of Quality? As I recall he performed a scientific pilot study. He had his students read samples of writing and rate their impressions of the Quality they contained. I would call this a pilot study. They are common among practitioners of science. I suggested that you have a misguided and shallow view of both science and empiricism radical or otherwise and you respond: "Wilber, Pirsig and I disagree." I think I have shown above that whether Pirsig and I see eye to eye he is not recommending that an individual's account of their interior state should be taken at face value. When Lila is in her catatonic state he makes no claim that her delusions should be taken seriously in an expanded form of empirical science. You and Wilber can have each other but when it comes to the study of consciousness Marsha has pointed us recently to the work of James Austin a Zen Buddhist neurologist. I know nothing whatsoever about Austin or his work but if I were given to snapping at snippets, I would say it does not look like he is having a problem operating in the mainstream. It would also appear that the Dali Lama disagrees with you as well: http://www.news.wisc.edu/packages/emotion/6205.html "The Dalai Lama says he has shunned the warnings of others who fear that science is the killer of religion. Going his own way, as the Buddha advised, His Holiness says he sees many benefits in science. "I have great respect for science," he says. "But scientists, on their own, cannot prove nirvana. Science shows us that there are practices that can make a difference between a happy life and a miserable life. A real understanding of the true nature of the mind can only be gained through meditation." Clearly he thinks that greater understanding can be achieved through traditional practice but he seems neither hostile to research or in need of special treatment in how it is conducted. In fact he appears to welcome rigorous testing. When you say, "These are the limits that prevent the scientific method from being used to examine what the subject himself experiences as an interior state, which cannot be located in space, does not have a surface or physical structure to measure and cannot be detected with the senses or the scientific instruments that extend the senses. This experience has to be observed with the eye of the mind or the eye of contemplation, not the eye of flesh, if you will. That's what I mean by expanding what counts as empirical evidence. Using things like a PET scan to investigate modes of consciousness is pretty much the essence of my complaint about the limits of sensory empiricism. That's what I mean in saying that your comments demonstrate that you don't see what the problem is... You seem to be claiming that one can have an experience that does not involve the senses at all. All experience involves the senses. If senses are not engaged there is neither experience nor memory of the experience. It is one thing to claim that the inner world can be altered to have experiences that are other than ordinary but they are occurring in a particular body in a particular place. Having an experience that "feels" disconnected from space and time is not the same as being disconnected. Having an experience that can only be observed by the observer may be entertaining; it may be profoundly spiritual but what meaning does it have beyond the individual? The isolated experience of this kind means nothing to anyone else. Furthermore assigning meaning even to oneself without reference to anyone or anything is at best a risky business and at worst a path to self delusion. It may reveal profound truth and it may just be self delusion. The Apostle Paul had such an experience. So do people who have epileptic seizures. You want to put the Dali Lama and the schizophrenic on equal footing. You are not calling for an expansion of evidence you are calling for abandonment of any standard of evidence. Frankly, Dave is sounds an awful lot like, despite your denials, you are convinced that there is a Spirit external to the material world and that there are forces outside of nature that act on and alter experience. What else can you mean when you say, "This experience has to be observed with the eye of the mind or the eye of contemplation, not the eye of flesh, if you will. That's what I mean by expanding what counts as empirical evidence." Empirical evidence is sensory evidence. You can propose a new sense if you like but you are going to have to account for its physiological effect just like all the other senses are accounted for. If you want to step outside of Nature that's cool but don't complain about not being taken seriously by science. After all: "The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know." 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/
