Krimel said to dmb: 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.
dmb says: I think lots of well-educated people still hold to scientific materialism and the metaphysical assumptions behind it. There was the Positivism of Comte and more recently we had the Vienna circle. Rorty was still working these issues, trying to convince the many hold overs, until just the other day. To suggest that my complaints are about a dead and buried problems seems even more strange since you are demonstrating the same problem even as we speak. This topic came up big time in the class I took last semester. The professor, who was trained in psychology, got into an interesting discussion with a retired physicist and they agreed that scientists are trained to think and work within the framework of realism. Philosophers of science are going to question this sort of thing if they're worth a damn, of course, but the people who do the actual lab work still function within that worldview. My late great father-in-law and his friends didn't question it either. Apparently I'm talking about something much broader than you imagine, a basic world view that included Einstein as well as Newton. Wilber discusses how even the most recent and wierd stuff in physics gets trapped in flatland. Krimel said: 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." dmb says: Nobody is saying we ought to abandon the scientific method or replace it with capricious whimsy. And Pirsig's line here is only comforting insofar as it prevents one from interpreting the MOQ as a form of subjective idealism or solipsism. The MOQ has an element of realism that keeps it from being crypto-religious or Hegelian and I love that. Again, the MOQ's expansion of empiricism is not a rejection of empiricism. The idea is to improve it, not trash it. Krimel said: 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. [The Dalai Lama said] "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. dmb says: An individual's account should be taken at face value? Hostile to research? In need of special treatment? Rigorous testing is unwelcome? I'm not saying any of those things. In fact, the Dali Lama has expressed one of my most central points: A real understanding of the true nature of the mind can only be achieved through meditation. EEGs provide such data only if you believe that the brain and the mind are the same thing. That's materialism. That's reductionism. That's SOM. That's you, dude... Krimel said: 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. dmb says: No, for the millionth time, I'm not saying sensory experience is false. The complaint is about the limits of what can be learned through the senses and that it ain't the only kind that counts... "The MOQ subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitmate human knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as unverifiabvle. The MOQ varies from this by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and that in the past they have been exclued for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the metaphysical assumptions that all the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that can't be classified as a subject or an object isn't real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is just an assumption." p99 Krimel said: 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... dmb says: Again, you are exhibiting the very problem you deny. "Everyone seems to be guided by an 'objective', 'scientific' view of life that told each person that his essential self is his evolved material body (a particular body in a particular place, as you put it). Ideas and societies are a component of brains, not the other way around. No two brains can merge physically, and therefore no two people can ever really communicate except in the mode of ship's radio operatiors sending messages back and forth in the night. A scientific intellectual culture had become a culture of millions of isolated people living and dying in little cells of psychic soltary confinement, unable to talk to one another, really, and unable to judge one another because scientifically speaking it is impossible to do so." p283 "By this (radical empiricism) he (James) meant that subjects and objects are not the starting points of reality. Subject and objects are secondary. They are concepts derived from something more fundamental which he described as 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories'. In this basic flux of experience, the distinctions of reflective thought, such as those between consciousness and content, subject and object, mind and matter, have not yet emerged in the forms wich we make them. Pure Experience cannot be called either physical or psychical; it logically precedes this distinction." p364-5 Krimel continued: ...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. dmb says: Without reference to anyone or anything? Huh? I've been going on and on about the scientific method, about the marriage of meditation and the scientific method. This would make plenty of references to plenty of things and people. It would involve publishing and peer review and all that. Its just that it wouldn't be limited to sensory data. In fact, the metaphysical premise behind that limitation has been replaced with one that sees subjects and objects as concepts, as interpretations of experience rather than the preconditions that allow experience. You've been criticizing this expanded empiricism in terms of the limited empiricism it was meant to replace. This is what I mean in saying that you repeatedly offer the problem as a response to the solution... Krimel said (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. dmb says: See, the premise of you criticism here is that nature and the material world are the same thing, that empirical evidence is sensory evidence. This is flatland, my friend. And what I mean in saying that mystical experience can't be observed with the eye of flesh (sensory empiricism) is exactly what the Dali Lama said, that a real understanding of the mind can only be gained through meditation, not through scientific observation of the brains of mystics. "Newburg was reiterating a position spelled out my William James a century earlier in THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. In a chapter titled 'Religion and Neurology', James concluded that neurology can neither prove nor disprove the validity of specific mystical visions. If a mystic suffers from mental illness or brain damage, that doesn't mean that her visions are worthless delusions, any more than the mental illness of poests, artists, or scientist invalidates their achievements. We must judge these visions by their philosophical moral cojsequesnces. 'By their fruit ye sahll know them' James added, 'not by their roots." Rational Mysticism, Chapter 4, "Can Neurology Save Us?", page 82. "Unlike Andrew Newburg, Michael Persinger, and Susan Blackmore, Austin has conducted little mysticism-related research on others; his primary research subject is himself. But his book represents one of the most thorough, not to say exhausitive, reviews of the neurophysiology of mysticism to date. Austin professes no interest in defending the prennial philosophy - or any other philosophy for that matter. He call his outlook 'perennial psychophysiology', to emphasixe its grounding not in philosophy or theology, which he views with suspicion, but in brain science." Rational Mysticism, Chapter 7, "Zen and James Austin's Brain." p 125 That'll have to do for now. dmb _________________________________________________________________ Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm 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/
