Interesting Conversation

 

Hi Julian. I'm not sure exactly what “taboos” these guys are breaking…care to explain?

As I see it, they are only breaking diehard religious taboos–those held by what Wilber would call “Amber thinkers.” But this is hardly revolutionary; sure, most people have hidden, subconscious, beliefs that they hold to. But the ones they are pointing to–at least in the first clip–are relatively obvious.

An interesting question might be this: What un-acknowledged belief structures inform their rationalistic perspective(s)? Or have they, in your opinion, fully “come into the light of rationality” and are thus impervious to belief?

 

“I'm not sure exactly what “taboos” these guys are breaking…care to explain?”

two taboos: 1) the special position of religion as being outside the realm of *critical* rational discussion (as compared to politics). 2) the spell of multicuturalism.

i'll leave it to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to make a very compelling case in point:
see: The Right to Offend

for those who are interested, i've posted a review of the four horsemen here:
http://coolmel.gaia.com/blog/2007/12/the_new_atheists_are_people_too

thanks to Julian for bringing this up.

~C

 

Thanks, ~C. My only comment is that taboos depend upon culture, or sub-culture. So what might be taboo in one (sub-) culture is not in another. For example, the idea of equating “critical rational discussion” about religion as taboo makes me wonder to whom is it taboo. The only image that I can conjure is that of a most fundamental kind of believer, which is about a quarter of the American population, if I'm not mistaken.

To put it more bluntly, the reason I don't find the Four Horsemen as breaking any (new) taboos is that they are only pointing out what has been obvious to a lot of folks for some time: that fundies are morons ;-) (and that religion is not exempt from rational discussion).

As for the “spell of multiculturism”, isn't this a horse that has been beaten to death in the integral community? And Julian seems at least partially responsible…ha ha.

 

Hi Julian, glad you posted this as I haven't seen any videos of these guys talking before. I watched the first one and the second one from the 5-minute point on. Regardless of who Christopher Hitchens is, where he's at, how high on the “spiral” he may be, or how one might feel about him, he says something near the beginning of the first video, right after Sam Harris speaks, that I think is important for people to consider. He said that it's important to distinguish between the numinous and the supernatural.

I think this is important because a lot of people seem to think that healthy skepticism about supernatural causation is evidence that the skeptic lacks a transformative sense of the numinous. It's simply not the case.

 

I think this is important because a lot of people seem to think that healthy skepticism about supernatural causation is evidence that the skeptic lacks a transformative sense of the numinous. It's simply not the case.

Hi Jim. I agree with you that skepticism doesn't necessarily equate with “a lack of a transformative sense of the numinous” (although it could be derived from such a lack). What I question is A) when skeptics interpret the numinous into language that is often inadequate, or limits the potentiality of the numinous by “rationalizing” it, and B) when skepticism turns into a kind of rigidified belief, such as atheism, rather than a more healthy and open-ended agnosticism, which I see as more adequate towards developing authentic spiritual vision.

Point A is done by any group or participants of a given paradigm or perspective towards the paradigm or perspective of other groups and individuals. I interpret and re-formulate into my own language and experience what you express, and thus often (always?) miss some of what you say or mean through reducing it to my own language. This may be unavoidable but it is also enormously problematic.

Now while the prevailing view in some circles is that we are heading towards some kind of integralized global spirituality, I am questioning this more and more. It may be that we are going towards further differentiation, that different “spiritual streams” are emerging and formalizing, with different resulting movements and even sub-cultural forms that don't result in the same outcome or worldview.

Thus it becomes enormously problematic when an advocate of one approach declares what is necessary for an authentic 21st century spirituality, whether we're talking about Julian, the Four Horsemen, Ken Wilber, or myself. What I see the Four Horsemen doing is taking the scientific-materialistic worldview as a given; the potential problem is what Wilber discusses as the second (less talked about) aspect of the pre/trans fallacy: interpreting anything transrational into the rational, and thereby reducing it. We do this unconsciously when we require that rational thinking, and its related worldview, is the basis through which everything is translated and experienced. When we take the current, consensus, worldview as a given and do not question it, do not realize that it will itself evolve over time, that the world is always “flat” in some way that we do not recognize.

 

Hi Jonny.

I agree with you that skepticism doesn't necessarily equate with “a lack of a transformative sense of the numinous” (although it could be derived from such a lack).

That's true, but we could just as easily say that belief in the supernatural could be derived from such a lack. I just don't think that focusing on where discussants are at in their relation to the numinous or their spiritual development is useful.

What I question is A) when skeptics interpret the numinous into language that is often inadequate, or limits the potentiality of the numinous by “rationalizing” it, and B) when skepticism turns into a kind of rigidified belief, such as atheism, rather than a more healthy and open-ended agnosticism, which I see as more adequate towards developing authentic spiritual vision.

I'm not sure what you mean by “A.” Maybe you could give an example or two. As for “B,” the reason I wrote “healthy skepticism” was to distinguish it from what you are describing as rigidified belief. However, atheism and atheists come in different forms, and I have yet to hear of any contemporary atheists who hold their atheism in rigidified way. For example, Richard Dawkins lists (in his book The God Delusion) a range of 7 positions on theism, from  #1 - “Strong theist. 100 percent probability of God.” to #7 - “Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God…'”

Dawkins makes it clear that he is not a “strong atheist” and he says “I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7.” He says that his own position is that he thinks there is a very low probability that the creator God of monotheism exists: “Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God [the God of monotheism] is improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'”

You seem to be using the word “atheism” as if it's synonymous with “rigidified belief,” which would be the most extreme position on Dawkin's list, position #7. Like Dawkins, I'd be suprised to meet many people who consider themselves atheistic about the personal creator God of montheism who go to the extreme of position 7.

Also, one can only be a-theistic about a specific conception of a theistic God. Most people, including Christians who are theists about the personal creator God of monotheism, are atheists about the existence of Zeus.

 

I had to look it up, but here is Dawkins' theism scale.

The problem I have with this is that he is using the word “God” in a very narrow way, as you said as “the God of monotheism.” Where I rank on his scale depends upon what we mean by “God.” If we're talking about a literal God as the Bible and other monotheistic religions describe, I'm a 6 as well. If we loosen it up a bit and say “some kind of non-physical and/or non-human being(s) that have influenced humanity,” I'm a 3-5, depending upon the day and context. If we mean some kind of energy, consciousness, or Beingness then I'm a 1, or a 2 if I'm feeling existentially cranky.

So it isn't as much that I disagree with Dawkins's atheism but that I feel he sets up a kind of fundamentalist strawman and (easily) demolishes it. For example, as I said, his scale seems oriented towards a literalist interpretation of God, which is a very narrow slice.

Actually, this isn't a bad example of what I meant by point A. Dawkins seems to need to interpret God in a literalist, material-based sort of way. An extreme version of this would be Zecharia Sitchin, who believes that the Sumerian gods are actually space aliens that harvest humans to mine gold (or some such). He interprets their head-dresses as space helmets; this is similar to Erich von Daniken's assertion that the Nazca lines are runways for space craft (an odd belief, as one critic said, because any sufficiently advanced space technology would probably not need runways to land, like a 1940s bi-plane!).

Those are certainly extreme versions of what I would call “gross materialism.” Wilber's post-metaphysics is a subtler version, as he reduces the thinking of metaphysicians such as Aurobindo and Steiner into a kind of speculative mystical philosophy. He says that the planes or levels that they describe don't actually pre-exist, but are “enacted” (or something like that); certainly there is truth to this, but why do we have to deny (or affirm) the existence of pre-existent planes or non-ordinary realms of reality?

Another variant of this is as we discussed awhile ago, the psychologizing of any psychic phenomena, reducing anything “other” into part of “my psyche.” That discussion was, if I remember correctly, inspired by my disagreement with Julian's (and del Toro's) interpretation of psychic phenomena as described in Pan's Labyrinth. Another example, one back to that of gross materialism, is the answer that a cognitive scientist might give to the question “Where do ideas come from?” The scientist might say “from synapses firing, which lead to buried memories and associations.” I find this to be inadequate, to say the least, and by temperate prefer the more poetic explanation that a Rudolf Steiner might have: that ideas are akin to the wings of angels entering our soul. At least Wilber would probably agree that neither of the two–brain synapses and angel wings–can be reduced to the other. The materialist, on the other hand, would say that the latter is a metaphorical description of the former, while the spiritualist would say that the former is a physicalization of the latter; the integralist (ala Wilber) would say they are two aspects of the same emergence (although then the question arises whether it is solely emergence or also emanation–which Wilber's post-metaphysics would disagree with).

In the first video the Four Horsemen discussed the numinous as something that is very human, that we don't need to explain as supernatural. This is similar to a cosmologist's view that the universe is amazing enough without needing to add anything spiritual or metaphysical. I am in partial agreement with this, but I also like to leave room for mystery. The supernatural is sort of like schizophrenia: it is for the most part superstition, crazy, and based on wishes and fears. But a small percent of the time it is (or may be) actually based on something real, something we don't understand, that by framing it in what we do understand (or think we understand), we end up reducing it and not really seeing it.

 

jonny bardo said: “To put it more bluntly, the reason I don't find the Four Horsemen as breaking any (new) taboos is that they are only pointing out what has been obvious to a lot of folks for some time: that fundies are morons ;-) (and that religion is not exempt from rational discussion).”

good point. i agree. there's really nothing new in their arguments. the Enlightenment had already beat the crap out of religion. but where the New Atheists are successful is their revival of the Enlightenment arguments and then blasting them into the mainstream media, even globally – Dawkins' book is now banned in some Muslim countries). not everyone is well-educated with the philosophical sophistication (and even theological sophistication) of thinkers (and mystics) in the past. from my perspective, the New Atheists are *healthy* expressions of rational approach. yes, there are philosophical limitations in some of their arguments. but still, i ride with them because they are doing the dirty job of the “conveyor belt” approach :)

my two cents.

~C

 

Maybe I'm missing something, C4 – and I really could be – but to the extent that folks like Harris fault moderate or progressive Christians for “excusing” fundamentalists (because they validate Christianity as a religion or spiritual tradition), and thereby imply that the only healthy future will be a Christian-free future (in which we will laugh at anyone who belongs to the Christian tradition in the same way we currently laugh at members of the KKK), then he most certainly is NOT doing the dirty work of the conveyor belt approach.  He is doing the dirty work of yet another form of religious exclusivism which is too myopic to recognize that rational development can extend up and through Christian tradition rather than only outside of it, in spite of it.

 

Balder said: “then he most certainly is NOT doing the dirty work of the conveyor belt approach”

good point. but what i meant when i say “doing the dirty work” is that they are the ones who are doing “battle” with religious fanatics (i.e. evangelicals) and going to courts to fight off intelligent design proponents, debating and conversing with Archbishops (in the case of Dawkins, check these videos) on mainstream media to name a few. in that sense, they are doing the dirty work of conveyor belt approach and protecting science from being overthrown and infiltrated by religious zealots. another example is that Sam Harris is taking responsibility for securing Ayaan Hirsi Ali who is one of the strongest voice against Islam and multiculturalism in European countries. they are doing the dirty fight of confrontation (the right to offend) which seems to be avoided by integral proponents. in short, they are fighting off *blue* the same way integral is fighting off  *green*.

btw, i think one original thing that the New Atheists is doing is via Dennett. he proposes to study religion as a natural phenomenon (i.e. study the evolution of religion like language and music). check out this video.

~C

 

Harris does seem to imply, as Balder suggests, that the only healthy future will be a Christian-free future, and Harris does seem to fail to acknowledge that “rational development can extend up and through Christian tradition rather than only outside of it, in spite of it.”

And yet Harris does say in his first book The End of Faith that he has no problem at all with faith as faith is defined by the Christian theologian Paul Tillich, and that leads me to infer that Harris at least in principle acknowledges that there can be healthy forms of Christianity. (Wilber says in Eye of Spirit that in defining the spiritual line of development, his preference is to “follow Paul Tillich in defining the spiritual line as that line of development in which the subject holds its ultimate concern.” And in The Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Volume Four, Wilber says that “God has to be reinterpreted, not as a big daddy or cosmic parent, but as the Ground of Being (Tillich)…”)

But it's my impression that Harris has little to zero understanding of basic transpersonal psychology, or of what some philosophers and theologians refer to as Wittgensteinian fideism, where faith is not a matter of blind belief, which is how Harris treats faith, but is an expression of a “form of life.”

Harris sees meditation as a very rational process, but the fact is that once someone opens “the doors of perception,” all kinds of nonrational things may come into play. Some Zen schools may say to ignore all of that, but there are other approaches to spiritual development and individuation that make use of nonrational experiences. Harris doesn't seem to get this. I wonder, for example, how he, as someone who has identified himself as a Buddhist, understands some Tibetan Buddhist practices such as those that involve visualizing deities.

But despite all that, I am glad that people like Harris are representing a particular position that has gotten very little representation outside of academia in the recent past. I think open discussion of controversial issues is good for its own sake, and so I usually am not too concerned about whether I agree or disagree with someone as long as they are willing to put themselves out there and engage in civil discourse with those with whom they disagree. (Sometimes Harris's tone comes across as less than civil, but then to me, so does Wilber's at times, and then there's Stuart Davis calling Harris and Dawkins “FLATLAND FUCK FACES” in his “open letter” to them. We're all on a learning curve.)

 

Jon, I don't agree that Dawkins has set up a fundamentalist straw man or that his focus on the personal creator God of monotheism is “narrow.” Polls show that the vast majority of adults in the US believe in that God, and that is the God that the majority of atheists in the history of Western philosophy have been a-theistic about. Dawkins isn't writing for a transpersonal or integral audience, he's writing for the general public, and to most members of the general public, the word “God” refers to the personal creator God of monotheism.

 

Jon, I don't agree that Dawkins has set up a fundamentalist straw man or that his focus on the personal creator God of monotheism is “narrow.” Polls show that the vast majority of adults in the US believe in that God, and that is the God that the majority of atheists in the history of Western philosophy have been a-theistic about. Dawkins isn't writing for a transpersonal or integral audience, he's writing for the general public, and to most members of the general public, the word “God” refers to the personal creator God of monotheism.

OK, fair enough Jim, although I'm not sure I believe that “the vast majority of adults in the US believe in that [personified creator] God”…I assume by “vast majority, you mean more than two-thirds? I would be willing to accept that two-thirds of the adult US population believe in “God” of some kind, but not in the same sense that, say, Christian fundamentalists do, which is about 25% of the population, if I'm not mistaken.

I find Wilber's altitudes useful for this conversation. Would you agree that, in Wilber's system, the Four Horsemen are arguing from a pretty straightforward Orange perspectives against the typical Amber (Blue) perspective? And that, as you seem to acknowledge in the comment above to Balder, they are not arguing against higher perspectives on God, from Green on up? I am not saying, mind you, that they are “only Orange” but that they are arguing from an Orange perspective on God against an Amber one. It may be that their “God perspective” is more akin to Teal, which is in some sense the heart of existential rationalism. To put it another way, we've got:

Amber Believers
Orange Atheists/Materialists
Green Relativists
Teal Existentialists/Agnostics
Turquoise Integralists

Or at least ideally.

While “the vast majority” of American adults might believe in God, my guess is not at an Amber Believer level. I mean, Barack Obama says he is a Christian, but is he an Amber Believer?

Another possibility is that, if we use Wilberian lines of development, someone at a higher center of gravity could still be fused to a lower level God-perspective. But my guess is that if you spoke in-depth with the vast majority of Americans, a good many of them wouldn't hold Amber beliefs about God, but have more Orange (“God is a metaphor”), or Green (“God is energetic”) or Teal (“God is Emptiness”) or Turquoise (“God is Being and Becoming”) perspectives.

 

C4Chaos said: where the New Atheists are successful is their revival of the Enlightenment arguments and then blasting them into the mainstream media, even globally – Dawkins' book is now banned in some Muslim countries).

OK, I hear you about the importance and validity of what they are doing. However, I'm not sure if the above tactic is “skillful means” in that the last thing a Muslim (or Christian) Amber Believer is going to want is to be publicly “blasted” and essentially made a fool of. I am continually amazed, well not really, at the human capacity for self-deception; if someone's enemy says the “sky is blue you fucking idiot”, chances are they may not even check to see if it is true. They'll just react and say “Infidel!!!” and whip out a scimitar…

 

OK, fair enough Jim, although I'm not sure I believe that “the vast majority of adults in the US believe in that [personified creator] God”…I assume by “vast majority, you mean more than two-thirds? I would be willing to accept that two-thirds of the adult US population believe in “God” of some kind, but not in the same sense that, say, Christian fundamentalists do, which is about 25% of the population, if I'm not mistaken.

I didn't say that the vast majority of adults believe in God in the same sense that Christian fundamentalists do. Belief in the personal creator God of monotheism or a supernatural God is not fundamentalism.

Here are some statistics from a 2003 Harris Poll (nothing to do with Sam Harris!):

90% of adults say they believe in God.
84% say they believe in the survival of the soul after death. (It's possible that some people who say they believe that don't believe it in a way that entails belief in the supernatural, but I have yet to hear anyone actually say that.)
68% say they believe in the devil.
69% say they believe in hell.
84% say they believe in miracles. (The word “miracle” can be used expressively, like, “Wow, it's a miracle that we won the lottery!” but I think that when people tell pollsters that they believe in miracles they mean that they believe that God supernaturally intervenes in the world, which is to say that they believe in miracles as Hume defined them, which is easy enough to google up.)
82% say they believe in heaven. (And again, I think it's safe to assume that they don't mean something like, “Sleeping in that new bed is heaven!” but mean a supernatural realm that immaterial souls go to after death.)

I think the above counts as “vast majority.”

As for Wilberian levels, I think you know from many conversations with me over past years that I simply don't use Wilberian jargon and I don't think in terms of levels, just as I don't think in terms of Scientology developmental levels.

If Obama believes in God in some sense that is other than a supernatural sense, then Dawkins is not talking about Obama's beliefs. Dawkins et al are talking about beliefs that entail belief in supernatural forces, entities, causes, and events (or occasions), such as immaterial souls that exist after death and go to heaven or hell, a devil that, while not necessarily a red man with a pitchfork, is some kind of entity that influences human behavior, etc. Dawkins et al are talking about the beliefs that, according to the poll I just cited (and there are many other polls that show similar results), the vast majority of adults in the US hold.

 

Julian, thanks, good discussion. A few points:

1) Hitchens comment about the mountainer throwing himself at Jesus' feet after his experience being a non sequitor–not if the mountainer needed to move into or more fully develop an Amber structure.

2) The arrogance and humility question–it's an interesting thing to look into, but I don't see any humility in these folks except for Sam Harris. It looks like a projection when they talk about the arrogance of fundamentalists while apparently denying any arrogance of their own.

3) Hitchens responds to the question of hasn't religion done some good in the world by citing the examples of Hamas, Louis Farrakahn, and Scientology. Really–quite an evasion. Religion has moved millions of people from Red to Amber and will continue to do so, at least if the New Athiests don't get their way. The New Atheists could be helpful in moving people from Amber to Orange but could be harmful if they discouraged Red from moving to Amber or Teal to Turquoise.

4) The point Johhny made about agnosticism is a good one–isn't agnosticism more scientific than atheism? Rupert Sheldrake recently spoke of Dennett in an article Hokai posted on his blog: “He assumes what he sets out to prove.” Isn't this what they are doing, with the exception of Harris perhaps? Harris seems put there to work these other three into a more second-tier position, though Hitchens is Teal politically, I believe. Would Teal be as hostile towards Amber as these guys are?
 

5) All of them, including Harris, don't know anything about third-tier structures. If they did, they would see the grain of truth of the mythic God. Basically what Amber understands but Orange doesn't is that the human ego is not the most important force in the world. If the human ego is the most important force, which is what the New Athiests leave us with, then what was the force that created the first 13.65785 billion years of evolution, including the emergence of the human ego?



The main trouble with these guys, with the exception of Harris again, is that they are not only critical of Amber they are hostile towards it. I don't see an appreciation of the spiral. I believe they may be doing some good, but they are generally playing the role of a warring first-tier structure rather than an integral one.

David

PS. How about some truth in adverstising!!!!!!!!!  :)  The second video is advertised as about 5 minutes–in fact it is 9:44 minutes. The third video is advertised as about 2 minutes–in fact it is 9:16!!!! I want an investigation.  :)

 

Again Jim, this scheme is too simplistic, imo. A statistic like “90% of adults believe in God” begs the question: what do we mean by God?  The same goes for “supernatural.” What do you mean by this word? And on it goes…hell, heaven, etc. These terms can have numerous possible meanings. To say that X% of people believe in heaven is basically meaningless without a specific definition (which you speculate on, but were the people being polled given a strict definition?). Certainly a large portion of people believe in them in a literal way (e.g. that we die and go to hell or heaven) but there are other interpretations that might fit into those poll numbers.

My point is simply, again, that we need to bring hermeneutics into the conversation. You say that these polls don't (only) refer to fundamentalist interpretations, but my point is that they blur the lines between multiple possible perspectives. It becomes an either/or choice, in other words: Science vs. Religion. This is a perfect example of where some scheme of levels–whether horizontal or vertical–is quite useful, even necessary, for greater understanding and synthesis.

 

Hi Julian. Kudos for you for always seeming to have some sort of interesting conversation brewing on your blog!

You bring up a lot of important points, which I’d like to reply to point by point as much as possible.

i posted these because i think as jim noted above that the exchange between hitchens and harris about differentiating the numinous form the supernatural is very astute and important and shows that these guys (who actually show it often - dawkins in his nature mysticism, harris in his fascination with consciousness, meditation, psychedelics, wilbers work etc, even crusty old hitchens in that statement) should not be STEREOTYPED by integralites as “merely rational” guys who have no spirituality or no room for anything that isnt purely empirical.

I very much agree. The contrary is that they should not stereotype those not adhering to an atheistic worldview as “mere believers.”

i think there is a tendency to want to demonize them and stereotype them as a way of minimizing the impact of their positions.

This is certainly possible, but I’m not sure if it is applicable to any of the posts in this thread. And of course what you say here could be an instant of your own complaint: you are saying some may demonize and stereotype to minimize what the Four Horsemen are saying, but are in effect minimizing any critiques of the Four Horsemen by calling them demonization and stereotyping! This is where we get dangerously close to ad hominems and reminds me of what we see in political debates, and what Barack Obama was getting pulled into (deliberately, imo) by Hillary Clinton, who basically took the approach of “I’ll attack you to make you attack me back so that everyone sees that your shit stinks too” (But I digress…I guess I’m still irked by Hillary’s dirty tactics!).

 But I can see how this would happen as I mentioned to C4Chaos:

they actually are breaking major taboos that i think they and myself wish were old news, wish had been integrated in the enlightenment of the late 1700's but still have not.

Taboos where? In the still-medieval Middle East? Agreed. In close-to-medieval rural America? Agreed. Anywhere else? In other words, I see them breaking major taboos in the Amber ideological world, but I’m not sure where else. Except perhaps in the more superstitious elements of the New Age, I don’t see it as “taboo” to question supernatural belief, or at least I wouldn’t use so strong a word.

we cannot diminish the importance of a true transition from prerational to rational that has yet to happen for the vast majority of the planet, and though these dudes may not be integral enough for our tastes, they are not bad guys - they are simply holding a valid rational position in criticism of very common prerational beliefs, pointing out the horrific consequences of this and even suggesting possible nascent transrational alternatives to supernatural explanations.

See, this perspective of “everything becomes explainable by science” is the basic Enlightenment paradigm where the world is a given, objective reality “out there” that merely awaits discovery. I question this basic presumption, or at least see it as somewhat out-dated, and more so the implication that openness to the “supernatural” is a kind of deficiency or antiquated belief, when it can be an aspect of “acceptance of chaos/the unknown.” To put it another way, there is a pre- and trans- to scientific empiricism. The pre- is what you are (rightly) pointing out as limited; the trans- includes an openness to that which is not rationally, or empirically, known or explainable.

why the lack of reverence for the psyche's extraordinary ability to create metaphor and archetype in this magnificent mytho-poetic language that as far as we know ( and i would wager will ever know) is almost certainly not literal at all - but nonetheless carries extraordinary meaning and value if held in the right place and intepreted in transrational ways that are always predicated on rational principles and have to preclude magic and myth to even qualify…

Where do you read “lack of reverence for the psyche’s” ability to create metaphor? I am merely pointing out that while the psyche creates metaphor, it doesn’t create what it is making a metaphor about, whether it is the external or internal world. Let’s take the artistic process, for example. If one has an idea we can talk about where that idea comes from. Does the psyche create it? Is it the random result of synapses firing or perhaps the detritus of some forgotten memory? Or is it possible that at least some ideas come from “elsewhere”? This is not to deny the validity of the psyche’s ability to create metaphor, but to affirm that there are greater depths to what the psyche can experience beyond metaphor-making.

Furthermore, I disagree with you that “transrational ways…are always predicated on rational principles.” The transrational is just that: trans-rational. It is beyond the rational. The transrational can never be accurately defined in rational principles, more more than it can be adequately expressed by magical or mythic thinking. What is required, as I see it, is an actual evolution of cognition beyond rationality, an opening of the mind and soul to that which is beyond its boundaries. A sacrifice, if you will, of the psyche’s pre-eminence and false sense of control so that it can truly open to that which is beyond it.

my “god” is revealed in that very creative activity of the human psyche - my “devil” in how that creative activity gets robbed of it's poetic power and turned into concrete superstitious beliefs that ironically end up devaluing the very human life they should be sanctifying…

And I will say that you quite beautifully express this psychological perspective. But it is not the same as “spiritual” or “transpersonal,” in my opinion. Just as the physical body and the psychic soul are two distinct “bodies”, so too is the spiritual domain another order of being that cannot be reduced to the psychic or the rational.

 

I guess I'm being dismissed ;-)

 

Julian said: “i posted these because i think as jim noted above that the exchange between hitchens and harris about differentiating the numinous form the supernatural is very astute and important and shows that these guys (who actually show it often - dawkins in his nature mysticism, harris in his fascination with consciousness, meditation, psychedelics, wilbers work etc, even crusty old hitchens in that statement) should not be STEREOTYPED by integralites as “merely rational” guys who have no spirituality or no room for anything that isnt purely empirical.”

exactly! my problem with integralists is that some of them are too quick on the draw when it comes to labeling. as if labeling could move the discussion forward.

my own approach in my riding with the New Atheists is that i want to be able to understand them better and integrate them based on my understanding of integral. remember the basics of integration? the first thing to do before integrating is to differentiate. therefore i do my best in differentiating the New Atheists (instead of treating them like a leviathan with the head of Dawkins) so that i could integrate their partial truths and brush aside the weakpoints in their arguments.

one thing i've noticed in integral circles is that they are very dismissive of the New Atheists without even reaching out for a common ground discussion. here are a couple of case in points i posted on my blog.

Why Sam Harris and B. Alan Wallace Should Talk

Rupert Sheldrake on Daniel Dennett

draw your own conclusions :)

~C

 

Jon, if you want to bring hermeneutics to the conversation so we can be on the same page when using terms like “God” and “the supernatural” as these terms are normally used by people who write about atheism vs. theism such as Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris, check out books on philosophy of religion to see how these terms are defined and are normally used.

There are many philosophers who are not fundamentalists and who do not live in the Bible Belt who believe in the God that Dawkins and Dennett et al do not believe in, and who believe in the supernatural that Dawkins and Dennett do not believe in; Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Antony Flew (a philosopher who went from atheism to theism), Peter van Inwagen, Charles Taliaferro, etc.

As for how the Harris Poll on religion is conducted, I don't know.

 

Julian

I loved this:

also - and i'll just put this out there - i am a little weary of the “materialist” label being thrown around as an epithet that invalidates science.

thoughts can be reduced to synaptic activity, neurotransmitters, hormones and brain states - there's nothing wrong with that and it is still magnificent, mysterious and mind-blowing - however the meaning or truthfulness of those thoughts cannot be reduced to empirically observable  UR activity - for that we need UL dialogical process or contemplation, or exigesis etc..

why the attempt to trump science and the right hand quadrants? - its just the same reductionism in reverse - render unto empiricism what is empiricism's and unto hermeneutics what is hermeneutic's.

the difficult part of that equation is that the right hand correlates of the left hand experiences keep becoming more apparent as empirical science progresses - but this only appears to de-sanctify human life and consciousness if you are overly attached to the supernatural place-holders that have been in place either of empirical knowledge or an acceptance of chaos/the unknown.

Brilliant and straight to the point.

P.S. (This is the issue I am most gripped by at the moment, so I'd like to hear if anyone disagrees with or can expand upon these points of Julian's, hopefully in a way not overly dense with abstract theory and integralspeak…. I know, I ask a lot :-)

 

Well Julian, since you ask :)…..here's a highly subjective take on how I currently look at it:

I experienced intense bouts of deep existential fear at an early age, 13 to14 years old.  I got into yoga breathing and meditation initially as a  kind of  existential emergency first aid. I sensed even at that age that I didn't have the “resource” to deal with that “trauma” by facing it down because the sense of meaninglessness was too overwhelming, and hey it's hard for  a 14 year old to look directly into the inevitablilty of his own death!

The sense of oneness, (witness consciousness?) and bliss-out  that I experienced through yoga was both a blessed physiological relief and also  gave me a sense of  “meaning” that was otherwise absent in those formative years. At the same time, I also picked up an interpretative framework that was an unfortunate mish-mash of the quasi- hindu / anti materialist variety.

In my future development - years of intense TM meditation and other  work on “higher states of consciousness”  - I still did not examine my interpretive framework, mainly because I didn't mix with people who might challenge it, and also because in the circles I moved noone regarded such examination as necessary. And when I first started to allow my belief system and world view to be challenged, I resisted on a gut level because,  to use your phrase, I was still too “attached to the supernatural place-holders that have been in place either of empirical knowledge or an acceptance of chaos/the unknown.” I still had too much invested in this dodgy framework because it had been such a big part of what had rescued me from earlier unbearable existential angst. If I let go of this framework wouldn't that old sense of meaninglessness come crashing back in again?

However, life experience came to my rescue. One of the particular catch phrases of TM is “Life is Bliss”, but even though I was diligently doing my daily meds, my life was far from just bliss. All kinds of shit was happening to me, and so my old interpretive framework was proving to be pretty useless. For me there was this healthy tension going on that  was a kind of cognitive dissonance between world views picked up in my early formative years and subsequent life experience.

So what a relief when I came across Scott Peck quoting Buddha that “Life is Suffering”. I remember thinking - “this is more like it, let's get real here”. Even after recognising the need to to do so (for the sake of greater “Truth”, “Depth”…?) it took years for me to really get round to looking in detail at  the way in which I was copping out by “fudging on truth out of an allegiance to the mystery” to paraphrase one of your quotes. And this fear is so deep rooted that I am still very much a work in progress. But I have jettisoned the nonsensical world views that were part of the baggage of the TM movement during my time in it.

My assessment of my own life experience so far in relation to my spiritual development is:
- The practices (TM) worked and still work. They have been proven over time for me.
- The right hand correlates work as an increasingly accurate confirmation - and deepen my understanding - of my interior experiences during the practice.
- The framework that went with the practice hasn't stood up to examination… it was a bunch of BS.
Therefore, I am more trusting of actual, “real world” activities and the empirical, than I am of abstract interpretations and world views….Right now I find the physical does have primacy, but I'm open to persuasion :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, given my own experiences, and while being acutely aware of my own narcissistic tendency to project my own life experiences onto everyone else(!)…..  I find myself wondering whether the near universality of the fear of death is such that  it is often an as-yet unloosened, still potent, fear of death & meaninglessness that  is very much in the mix in the thinking of those who write and interpret those theories which seem to give more significance to the interior over the exterior.  An unwillingness to face the possibility that, maybe the right hand correlates do have primacy, and that  maybe when the brain cells do  dissolve on death, awareness does also just vanish.  Apparently Wilber says all 4 quadrants go all the way down. (I'm not even totally sure what that means - still reading up on it - thanks Bruce!) But even if Wilber does not favour interior over exterior, from my experience on Gaia and other sites I think many cyber intgeralites do.

So I guess I'm seeing twists and blockages on the emotional line messing up cognitive line interpretations of experiences on the spiritual line …?!  (Shit, I've really got to get my integral terminology together. Which wilber book does anyone recommend for helping me to get a handle on lines and levels, states and stages?) You don't get enlightened by sitting on a therapists couch and you don't get past trauma just by meditating. (vertical and horizontal development are required?).  And like the rest of us,  all integral bloggers have more work to do in this area. And also, like the rest of us, we need a spiritual practice, and not all integral bloggers seem to do this either.
 
And being a bit more blunt about it, ….sometimes we give the impressions that we are so turquoise, that we have such a big handle on things, that we've got so much to offer the world,  but in our daily lives we don't do the practice, we're not so interested in the right hand correlates cos it smacks too much of  a denial of the consoling reality of the our interior experiences, and we still have work to do on recognising and feeling and transcending and including our own pain. And that work involves therapy / shadow work / body work.  And this kind of work is generally more helpful than theorising on a blog….!  So I'm off to the gym and then later on I'm going to do my daily med… free from unhealthy quasi-hindu & anti-materialist additives!

Thanks, James

P.S. Also, recently I have pondered that we would all be being kinder on ourselves if we could name this existential fear in a kinder, more understanding way and treat it, oh I don't know…., something like smallpox - it's there, it can make us psychologically sick, it can get in the way of our attempts to get closer to “truth”,  let's recognise that it can affect everyone and let's work together to reduce the suffering it causes.  I believe that if the inevitability of our deaths was faced earlier in life, with support and assistance from our culture, then we would all behave very differently and the world would be a better place.

 

Hi, James,

I'll be happy to respond to the points that Julian raised in the paragraph you highlighted, particularly since I think I am probably one of the people he was referring to - although I do not think I have ever “thrown around materialism as an epithet that invalidates science.”  Questioning the ultimate satisfactoriness and explanatory power of the materialist paradigm does not at all entail the invalidation of science as a whole.  Not even close.

I also will oblige you and will try to refrain from using too much Integralspeak!

Here's Julian's quote again:

also - and i'll just put this out there - i am a little weary of the “materialist” label being thrown around as an epithet that invalidates science.

thoughts can be reduced to synaptic activity, neurotransmitters, hormones and brain states - there's nothing wrong with that and it is still magnificent, mysterious and mind-blowing - however the meaning or truthfulness of those thoughts cannot be reduced to empirically observable  UR activity - for that we need UL dialogical process or contemplation, or exigesis etc..

why the attempt to trump science and the right hand quadrants? - its just the same reductionism in reverse - render unto empiricism what is empiricism's and unto hermeneutics what is hermeneutic's.

the difficult part of that equation is that the right hand correlates of the left hand experiences keep becoming more apparent as empirical science progresses - but this only appears to de-sanctify human life and consciousness if you are overly attached to the supernatural place-holders that have been in place either of empirical knowledge or an acceptance of chaos/the unknown.

Not speaking for anyone else here who may have questioned the validity of the materialist paradigm, I'll just offer my own thoughts on the matter, since I was one of the ones recently challenging it in my conversation with Julian.  (I actually explained my position to Julian on my blog, but instead of responding, he misrepresented my position here as a denigration of science and a form of (Left) quadrant-absolutism, neither of which is remotely accurate.)

What I said was that the materialist paradigm, by itself, based on its own principles and its own implicit metaphysics, has not been able to adequately account for the emergence of interiority or subjectivity.  This is what some philosophers and cognitive scientists have termed the “hard problem” of consciousness.  Although I'm simplifying a bit when I put it this way, I think a fair way to summarize the problem is simply this:  there is nothing “in” matter itself, as it is currently understood and defined, that should ever add up, at any level of complexity, to first-person experience.  The materialist paradigm can account for how physical systems carry out the advanced information processing functions required for complex behaviors - and it can account for this very well.  But there is no physical, material reason why these processes - this movement of pieces of wholly objective, insentient matter - should ever “produce” or lead to the emergence of non-physical subjective qualities or first-person experiences.  Physical emergence involves leaps to new levels of order and complexity, which exhibit new physical properties.  But this is not the same as a leap from physical to non-physical, which is what any theory which ontologically (or chronologically and causally) privileges the objective over the subjective requires.

Logically, cause and effect must have a common nature, if the cause is understood to be substantially responsible for the effect.  But if consciousness or interiority can be caused by something wholly non-conscious, something wholly objective and without any subjective depth or qualitative dimensions, that violates this principle of causality.  If something can causally generate something wholly unlike itself, then anything can give rise to anything, and causality breaks down.

This is one reason why I offered a criticism of both materialist and idealist models as inadequate in my letter to Julian: both require a kind of miracle.  Either the wholly objective (Right Quadrant) produces subjectivity (Left Quadrant), or the wholly subjective (Left Quadrant) produces physical objects and forms (Right Quadrant). 

Does this make sense?

This is why I suggested it makes more sense not to reduce the “ultimate basis” of reality to the terms of either one quadrant or another - neither to insist that consciousness “comes from” matter nor that matter “comes from” mind.  So, I was not attempting to “trump science and the right-hand quadrants.”  I was pointing out the problems that arise when scientific materialism attempts to trump the left-hand quadrants by arguing that right-hand quadrants are primary.  I think a better tack is to do something like Wilber does and say that interiority “goes all the way down,” just as matter does.  In other words, to treat both as irreducible aspects of our world - or, at least, as not reducible wholly to the terms of one or the other.  There are a number of ways that this can be approached: panpsychism (Whitehead, Hartshorne, de Quincey, Nagel), pansemiotics (Peirce, Wilber), soma-significance in implicate and explicate orders (Bohm), naturalistic dualism (Chalmers), or various sophisticated nondual models (Buddhist and otherwise).

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Thanks for this important distinction Bruce:
“Questioning the ultimate satisfactoriness and explanatory power of the materialist paradigm does not at all entail the invalidation of science as a whole.”

Your response is full of depth and empty of Integralspeak -thanks!

In your understanding the of “the hard problem”, is it generally accepted that if a scientific mechanism were to be found that fully explained the jump from a non-sentient collection of molecules to a self-organising (and therefore sentient??) set of molecules, would the “hard problem” then more or less disappear?

I remain unconvinced (or confused?) with explanations that “the subjective goes all the way down”, just as I remain unconvinced by hard science's stance of “well moleclues just sort of got together in the planet's primordial soup and just started, well self-organising….. …somehow….and now here we are”

I am also suspect of the viewing of the subjective and objective as so completely separete. I guess i currently view the subjective as embedded in the objective.

My only reading on this has been of recent papers at various conferences  discussing the nature of cosnciousness - I am still to delve into the works of the writers that you list in your repsonse here. The same names keep coming up… time for me to do some reading!

Thanks again for your insights,

James

 

You're welcome, James.  My letter wasn't entirely free of Integral terms, but I tried!

You asked:  In your understanding the of “the hard problem”, is it generally accepted that if a scientific mechanism were to be found that fully explained the jump from a non-sentient collection of molecules to a self-organising (and therefore sentient??) set of molecules, would the “hard problem” then more or less disappear?

No, because that would not explain why those molecules started experiencing; it would only explain the genesis of a new form (and order) of objective behavior. 

I think a possible point of confusion, for you, may be that you are thinking about the “problem of sentience” in third-person terms, as responsive and intelligent-seeming behavior, while the hard problem of consciousness is looking at the first-person “simple feeling of being.”  Theoretically, sufficiently “organized” material systems could produce interiorless (non-feeling, non-experiencing) robots or zombies.  These entities would interact “intelligently” with the environment, with objective signals and stimuli giving rise to different sorts of adaptive behaviors, without any logical need for subjective experience or feeling at all.  And in a materialist paradigm (one which privileges the objective over the subjective), this is really the world that you should expect.  (Which is why some materialists actually dismiss consciousness or mind as an illusion. Because it is hard to explain how wholly objective systems could ever generate subjective depth.)  

You wrote:  I am also suspect of the viewing of the subjective and objective as so completely separate. I guess i currently view the subjective as embedded in the objective.

Yes, that's somewhat the point of the perspective I'm arguing for here.  It appears more tenable to see the subjective as embedded in, or as inseparable from, the objective, at all levels, rather than reducing it to a secondary (inexplicable) “product” of wholly objective interactions. 

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Bruce

Thanks also for pointing out this distinction:
“I think a possible point of confusion, for you, may be that you are thinking about the “problem of sentience” in third-person terms, as responsive and intelligent-seeming behavior, while the hard problem of consciousness is looking at the first-person “simple feeling of being.”

Yes I think you are right - on re-reading the small number of papers I have previously come across, they are indeed looking at the “feeling of being”.

Thanks, James

 

I'll be happy to.  But I made more arguments than the one you singled out.  I made a number of arguments that I think are clear.  Would you respond to them as well and tell me why you reject them?

Also, can you tell me what you understand “interiors all the way down” to mean?  You may be reading more into the idea than is intended by those who make such arguments.

Lastly, at least some of the models I've been describing (de Quincey's panpsychism, Chalmer's naturalistic dualism, even Wilber's pan-semiotics) do not posit any form of consciousness existing wholly apart from matter.  They just say that matter inherently has a degree of interiority at all levels.  (There are more subtle ways this can be broken down or understood, but I'll stay away from those arguments for now.)

 

I just want to comment on some potentially confusing terminology.

In philosophy of mind, the term “epiphenomenalism” refers to the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events. In order to accept this, one must accept some type of mental-physical (or “mind-body”) dualism. One must accept that mental events and physical events are ontologically distinct.

I'll try to clarify the term “ontologically distinct.” It seems that wherever Tony Curtis is, Bernie Schwartz shows up. Someone who doesn't know that Tony Curtis is Bernie Schwartz might read the last sentence and think that Curtis and Schwartz are “ontologically distinct” individuals, i.e., that they are two different people. But “Tony Curtis” is the stage name that Bernie Schwartz adopted when he got into show business.

If mental events are brain events (a view known as the “identity theory”), then talking about whether or not mental events can or cannot cause brain events makes no sense.

The term “consciousness” has a number of meanings and uses.

In Consciousness and Experience (MIT Press, 1996), William Lycan offered 8 “importantly
different uses” of “conscious,” and as Austen Clark writes:

and then within one of them picked out a dozen distinct candidates for what one might consider to be “the” problem of consciousness. Notice that with twenty distinct concepts to play with, we have not just twenty “problems of consciousness”, but instead at least 210. After all, one must consider their inter-relations. Austen Clark, “Vicissitudes of Consciousness, Varieties of Correlates,” American Journal of Psychology, Spring 2003

A couple of years ago Deepak Chopra was a guest on a Larry King Live show devoted to the topic of intelligent design. At one point he said:

…there is evidence in science that there is creativity in the universe, that consciousness may not be an emergent property, that physical matter may be an emergent property, that consciousness conceives and governs and constructs and actually becomes what we call mind, and then body and the physical universe.

One of the guests who was a proponent of intelligent design said:

Intelligent design theory is just saying more or less what Deepak Chopra said, actually, that there's evidence of purpose and design in the universe, whether you look at the laws of physics or nanotechnology inside cells, design theorists say that's evidence for intelligent design.

But Chopra, who is of course not a philospher, didn't clarify how he was using the term “consciousness.” David Chalmers, who I talk about at my blog in a recent entry titled “An Integral Atheist?”, believes that consciousness goes all the way down, but his understanding of consciousness is such that it enables him to suggest that we can consider thermostats to have a form of consciousness. This does not seem to be how many religious and spiritually oriented people conceive of consciousness when they say things like, “The universe is the play of consciousness.”

Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem of consciousness” in 1994. Chalmers says that the “hard problem” is “the central mystery of consciousness.” The “easy problems” call for explanations to things like the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to stimuli; the integration of information by cognitive systems; the reportability of mental states; the focus of attention; deliberate control of behavior; and the difference between wakefulness and sleep. The hard problem calls for an explanation of why these functions are accompanied by experience.

Chalmers says:

A solution to the hard problem would involve an account of the relation between physical processes and consciousness, explaining on the basis of natural principles how and why it is that physical processes are associated with states of experience.

By “account,” Chalmers means something like a philosophical paper written in prose and published in a peer-reviewed journal. (In other words, poetic-mystical utterances cannot be said to solve the hard problem, nor can satori be said to be a solution to the hard problem.)

One criticism of Chalmers' notion of the hard problem of consciousness is that the very characterization of the problem of understanding the relationship between physical processes and consciousness as “the hard problem” in contrast to the “easy problems” may be counterproductive.

Chalmers' idea is that even if all of what he calls the “easy problems” were solved, consciousness (and in this instance we are talking about phenomenal consciousness) would still be a mystery. (Phenomenal consciousness is the “what it's like” quality of experience. There is “something it is like” to see the color red or to look at the monitor now. That “something it is like” is a qualitative phenomenal state, or “quale,” which is the singular of the more commonly used term, “qualia.”

Chalmers uses a particular “thought experiment” to drive the hypothesis that even if all the “easy problems” were solved, the “hard problem” would remain, and that is the thought experiment that Balder alludes to above when he talks about “interiorless” zombies (often referred to as philosophical zombies to distinguish them from the kinds of zombies seen in horror movies).

Chalmers invites his listeners to imagine someone who is physically identical to us in every detail and who from a third-person perspective may be observed behaving exactly as we can be observed behaving, but who lacks phenomenal consciousness (the “what it's like” quality of experience; thus we can say that there is nothing it is like to be a philosophical zombie).

This is certainly something we can imagine. Philosophical zombies are conceivable. But it does not follow that they are therefore possible. The mere fact that Chalmers can imagine creatures who are physically identical to us, down to each of the one million billion synapses in the brain, and who behave as we behave but who lack phenomenal consciousness, does not mean that such creatures are possible. (Speaking of the number of synapses in the human brain, if we started counting them right now at the rate of one per second, we would not finish counting them until 32 million years from now. The human brain is pretty complex and we do well, I think, to be amazed at what it, as a physical structure, is capable of.)

I've used the word “physical” and because my goal in this comment is to comment on terminology, I think I should say something about the term “physical.”

We use the term “physical abuse” to distinguish beatings, for example, from verbal abuse. But the “physical” in the term “physicalism,” which is gradually replacing the term “materialism” in philosophy, does not refer to objects and things that have what Whitehead called “simple location,” but to quantum and classical and future physics. Future physics simply refers to whatever physics will include in the future. If future physics includes certain phenomena that are today considered paranormal, those phenomena will then be considered normal. Thus, when we hear someone say that they accept physicalism (or when we hear Ken Wilber tell Michael Zimmerman that he, Wilber, is not anti-physicalist), we should tread carefully before leaping to the conclusion that they are committed to some antiquated type of materialism where “matter” is understood in the Cartesian sense as referring to things which have extension in space, or in the sense in which Berkeley defined the material, as “”an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist.”

Kelamuni's comment on something I posted that links to something Balder posted just popped up in my email and it looks good and I don't want to take up any more time or space now, so I'll end this comment here. (Here's a link to the post where Kelamuni commented.)

 

That's great.  As I said, I'm happy to answer your questions; I think this is fun too.  I just want to know that things I've already said have been read and dealt with, rather than just skipped over.

 

Jim

Thank you so much for the clarifications. I have struggled with the terminology of the  “what it's like” question since I first came across it.

You said that according to Chalmers:
“The “easy problems” call for explanations to things like the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to stimuli; the integration of information by cognitive systems; the reportability of mental states; the focus of attention; deliberate control of behavior; and the difference between wakefulness and sleep. The hard problem calls for an explanation of why these functions are accompanied by experience.”

Jim, in your understanding of this area, have there been any convincing explanations re. the so called easy problems, e.g through the progress of evolutionary biological / molecular science? And if so, is it ever argued that Chalmers' apparently important distinction between easy and hard problems might be an exaggeration? By that I mean if the easy problems can be satisfactorily explained, then perhaps the hard problem is not so hard, that the “feeling of being” is a not so mysterious result of the amazingly complex functioning of the human brain in all it's nano-second by nano-second handling of  all those “easy problem” events?

Bruce,
In the same vein as my question above to Jim, you pointed out the distinction between discussions looking at the question of  “the feeling of being” and those looking at “the probelem of sentience”. But do you see a substantial difference in what is being looked at in these 2 types of discussions? Aren't they trying to answer very similar questions? Doesn't the feeling if being arise out of a more developed form of sentience?

I know you addressed this issue to me once already here:
“I think a possible point of confusion, for you, may be that you are thinking about the “problem of sentience” in third-person terms, as responsive and intelligent-seeming behavior, while the hard problem of consciousness is looking at the first-person “simple feeling of being.”  Theoretically, sufficiently “organized” material systems could produce interiorless (non-feeling, non-experiencing) robots or zombies.  These entities would interact “intelligently” with the environment, with objective signals and stimuli giving rise to different sorts of adaptive behaviors, without any logical need for subjective experience or feeling at all.  And in a materialist paradigm (one which privileges the objective over the subjective), this is really the world that you should expect.  (Which is why some materialists actually dismiss consciousness or mind as an illusion. Because it is hard to explain how wholly objective systems could ever generate subjective depth.)”

I guess I'm currently leaning towards those materialists, because I'm failing to see how “subjective depth” is so different from amazingly complex human brain events. Re. the zombie thought experiment,  yes we can imagine a highly organised zombie interacting with superb efficiency with it's environment but still not having “any real need for subjective experience or feeling”. But given our current understanding through neurophysiology, is it not very likely that if a biological being has developed such ability to interact so well with its environment, then it is also inevitable that such a brain will result in just those subjective experiences and feelings?

On other words, our current understanding of biology predicates that you can't really have such developed faculties for interacting with the environment without the resultant subjective depth. Or to put it yet another way, “subjective depth” requires and naturally arises  from complex neurophysiology.  On what grounds are such viewpoints countered ?

Julian almost took the words out of my mouth when he said this:
“if consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter that emerges initially in easy to understand ways (sensitivity to light and certain toxic chemicals) and gradually evolves more interiority as we ascend the chain of being (which is i think part of the holonic theory being presented in ABOE) where is the problem?

1) as fun as it is to speculate, consciousness has never ever been shown to exist independent of matter. matter can exist without consciousness, but as far as we know, never the other way around.

2) consciousness is altered qualitatively by neurochemistry, drugs, electrode stimulation etc…

3) certain functions of consciousness are eradicated by the eradication of certain parts of the brain or certain connections between areas of the brain.

4) states of meditative absorption, emotional intensity, love and sleep can all be mapped onto brain activity.

i am having a hard time understanding what the question is here?”

Bruce, as you are more familiar with the type of discussion going on that look at these questions, what is it about what Julian's is pointing out here that other thinkers disagree with?

 

Hi James, and hi Balder. Before I answer the question you, James, ask me, I want to say this: Last night I was reading in the recently published book The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, and I happened upon this passage:

The mainstream view accepts emergence: mind or consciousness appeared out of non-conscious precursors and non-conscious components (note that there is both a synchronic and diachronic sense of emergence). Panspychism is the alternative view that emergence is impossible and mind must be already and always present, in some sense, throughout the universe… Of course, this divergence transcends the mind-body problem and reflects a fundamental difference in thinking about how the world is structured.

I'm famliar with the varieties of panpsychism, including all the versions Balder cites (de Quincey, et al), but until I read the above last evening I never heard it put so clearly that panpsychists – and we should probably qualify this to say some but not necessarily all panpsychists – believe that emergence of consciousness is impossible.

Balder, you may not go so far as to say that emergence of consciousness is impossible, but it seems obvious that you believe that it is extremely improbable, so improbable that you say that only a miracle could account for such emergence. So this is something we disagree on, and I have no problem with that.

What I do have a huge problem with is when someone – and unfortunately Ken Wilber has made statements that suggests he believes this – says, suggests, or implies that people who accept emergence are by definition at a lower level of development and a lower stage of consciousness than someone who believes that emergence of consciousness is impossible or at least extremely improbable and that consciousness must instead be in some sense always already present throughout the universe.

I have a huge problem with that because it violates the fallibility principle and makes it impossible for discussants to meet and inquire on a level playing field. It flies in the face of the ideas on moving beyond polarizing dynamics and distorted communication that we may glean from Panikkar and Habermas.

(In his conversation with Alan Wallace at Integral Naked, in reference to what is called the “causal closure principle,” which I won't take the time to explain right now, Wilber said that there are a lot of people who believe it, “and they're all at Jane Loevinger's stage five.” In other words, if someone disagrees with Ken Wilber on the causal closure question, this is evidence to Wilber that they are at a lower developmental level than him.)

So for me the bottom line is that if we reach an impasse where one of us believes that emergence is possible or even probable – I think it's probable – and the other believes it is impossible or so improbable that only a miracle could account for it, then we must agree to disagree, without either of us adopting the position that, “If he was at my stage of consciousness and my level of interior development, if he had the kinds of spiritual openings, awakenings, and insights that I have, he would see why his position is utterly without merit.”

I just wanted to get that out of the way and hope that you, Balder, will agree with me on that, even if we might have to agree to disagree on the question of emergence.

James, you ask if it has ever been argued that Chalmers' distinction between “easy” problems of consciousness and what he calls “the hard problem” is an exaggeration. There are many counterarguments to Chalmers' views on consciousness, and Chalmers, to his credit, links to many of them at websites he's created. I don't have a link handy but it should be easy enough to Google a site where Chalmers links to a number of his papers and counterarguments to them.

Before I provide a link to one paper that takes Chalmers to task on his easy/hard distinction, I want to refer back to what I wrote above regarding the subtle and sometimes overt injection of levels talk into discussions of this kind. I say this because the paper I'm about to link to is written by someone who I have heard called a “reductionist” by Wilberians, where “reductionist” was clearly used as a term of abuse. (In an article at the Integral World website titled “Whither Ken Wilber?” I have a section on the term “reductionism” wherein I quote several philosophers explaining why it is a term of abuse.) Calling someone a “reductionist” is not an argument against their views, any more than calling someone or their views “New Age” amounts to anything more than a dismissive comment. It's fine to bullshit and express ourselves, but if and when we want to do serious inquiry into difficult issues, we do well, I think, to avoid injecting terms of abuse into discourse. Calling someone or their views “flatland” doesn't even address their views, and is an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

Having said that, here's a link to a paper critical of some of Chalmers' views by the philosopher Patricia Churchland. I've encountered people who react to her name as if I've said Pol Pot or Hitler. Some people despise her, in large part because she and her husband, the philosopher Paul Churchland, have argued (as Richard Rorty has argued), for the position known as “eliminative materialism.” (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online is a good, free source of information on all this stuff, and it has an article on eliminative materialism.)

Here's a link to Pat Churchland's paper wherein she takes Chalmers' distinction between “easy problems” of consciousenss and “the hard problem” to task: “The Hornswoggle Problem.”

James, you also asked me if there have been any convincing explanations of the easy problems through the progress of evolutionary biology and molecular science. I don't know. There might even be some attempts in the book I mention above, The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness. One book that does not specifically address the emergence of consciousness but which gives what I consider to be a theory about emergence in general that could easily fit into an integral framework is Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd.

Ken Wilber says in his book A Brief History of Everything:

The big bang made idealists out of anybody who thinks. First there was absolutely nothing, then Bang! Something. This is beyond weird. Out of sheerest Emptiness, manifestation arises.

This is a nightmare for traditional science, because it puts a time limit on the chance mutations that were supposed to explain the universe. Remember the thousand monkeys and Shakespeare–an example of how chance could give rise to the ordered universe?

Q: Given enough time, the theory says, the randomly typing monkeys would manage to type out a Shakespearean play.

KW: Given enough time! One computation showed that the chance for a monkey to produce a single Shakespearean play was one in ten thousand million million million million million million. So maybe that would happen in a billion billion years. But the universe doesn’t have a billion billion years. It only has twelve billion years.

Well, this changes everything. Calculations done by scientists from Fred Hoyle to F. B. Salisbury consistently show that twelve billion years isn't even enough to produce a single enzyme by chance.

Wilber goes on to argue how this shows that “something other than chance is pushing the universe.”

The problem with the typing monkeys example is that people who cite it to refute views on the emergence and evolution of life and consciousness assume that the monkeys are typing on typewriters.

If we assume that the monkeys are typing on typewriters, then “It would take a billion billion monkeys,” writes Lloyd, “each typing ten characters per second, for each of the roughly billion billion seconds since the universe began, just to have one of them type out 'hamlet, act i, scene i.'”

What if the monkeys are quantum fluctuations and they aren't typing randomly on typewriters, but are typing on a quantum computer, which, according to Lloyd's hypothesis, is a good metaphor for the universe. He writes:

Quantum mechanics supplies the universe with 'monkeys' in the form of random quantum fluctuations, such as those that seeded the location of galaxies. The computer into which they type is the universe itself. From a simple initial state, obeying simple physical laws, the universe has systematically processed and amplified the bits of information embodied in those quantum fluctuations. The result of this information processing is the diverse, information-packed universe we see around us: programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet. You might say that the difference between a monkey at a typewriter and a monkey at a computer is all the difference in the world.
…
Believe it or not a monkey has a good shot at producing everything we see.

I agree with Lloyd. I think that quantum fluctuations and quantum processing throughout the universe has a good shot at producing everything we see today, including biological organisms and phenomenal consciousness or the “what it's like” quality of experience. And I also think that it is easy to understand how from a subjective perspective this can appear like “mind” existing everywhere always. We could even say, as Lloyd says, that the universe is in a certain sense a mind. But if we think of this as something more than a metaphor we may find ourselves on a slippery slope that leads to supernaturalism (which is of course not a problem for those who accept supernatural causation, but that's another big topic and I won't try to address it now).

 

Here's a link to Chalmers' essay, which Jim neglected to include as a counter balance to the refutation of Chalmers he posted.

And here's a link to a paper by Bohm (soma-significance) which addresses the mind-body / consciousness-matter problem without an appeal to the hard problem.  I think this latter view is worth considering, even if you do not find Nagel's and Chalmer's arguments about the hard problem compelling (I'll say more on this later).  I personally think Bohm's view is not incompatible with the view that Jim just expressed, while also being potentially attractive to folks in the panpsychism/pansemiotics camp.

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Hi Balder. In my post above I wrote:

There are many counterarguments to Chalmers' views on consciousness, and Chalmers, to his credit, links to many of them at websites he's created. I don't have a link handy but it should be easy enough to Google a site where Chalmers links to a number of his papers and counterarguments to them.

So while it's true that I didn't include a hyperlink to Chalmers' essays and replies to some criticisms of his views, I didn't neglect to suggest that the reader do a Google search for a site where there are a number of Chalmers' essays as well as replies to some criticisms of his views (including Pat Churchland's), including the paper you linked to. Here is a link to one such site: Papers on Consciousness by David Chalmers.

And here is a link to a page of links to online discussions of Chalmers' views, with links to his replies to some of them: “Online Discussions of My Work.”

 

Jim

Thank you so much for this deep and informative response. I will definitely take a good look at those links. And thanks Bruce for the counter-links :-)

All The Best, James

 

Sorry, Jim.  I could have put that in a more charitable way.  I think I'm feeling a bit defensive because this conversation feels like it's quickly turning into a three-against-one discussion, and any one of you is a worthy philosophical opponent on your own!

But this is speaking from a more immediate, “instinctive” reaction on my part.  From a more reflective one, I am interested in inquiring together into these questions, and I think Jim has brought some very helpful information and some strong arguments to the table. 

I would not actually label my personal perspective as “panpsychism.”  My background, besides Buddhist, is in TSK, and TSK has its own way of deconstructing different conventional perspectives (including panpsychism).  But I think perspectives such as panpsychism, pansemiotics, and some of the other related views I've mentioned, provide easier counterpoints to conventional approaches to the mind-body problem (whether materialist, dualist, or idealist) because they trade in some of the same terms and emerge from related philosophical and historical backgrounds.  That's why I am interested in arguing for them here.  And my aim is not to disprove “evil materialism,” for the record.  I don't think it's bad.  Just not complete.

Julian, I'll respond to some of your questions in my next post.

Best wishes, all,

Balder

 

Hi Bruce, I too have been feeling a bit defensive (more than a bit, to be honest), and it has nothing to do with you, and I apologize for piling on the philosophical arguments.

I participated in a series of I-I meetings at Ken’s Boulder home in 2000. I like Ken the person. But ever since SES was published in 1995, I have not been pleased with Ken’s occasional use of what I consider polarizing rhetoric. I feel that it sets things up in such a way that certain views have no chance to be heard or taken seriously within the integral movement, because they are pre-judged to be coming from a “lower altitude” or from a pathological space such as “flatland,” “boomeritis Buddhism,” or “MGM.” But that has nothing to do with you and I apologize for treating you as if you are in some sense a representative of what Julian calls “integral orthodoxy.” You’re not and it’s unfair to treat you that way.

Best wishes to you as well,

Jim

 

Hi, Julian,

Here's a (simple) start….

You wrote:  i don't quite agree with this reasoning - if consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter that emerges initially in easy to understand ways (sensitivity to light and certain toxic chemicals) and gradually evolves more interiority as we ascend the chain of being (which is i think part of the holonic theory being presented in ABOE) where is the problem?

As Jim pointed out, epiphenomenalism (in most formulations, at least) denies top-down causality to consciousness. I don't think this is exactly what you mean, is it?  As someone who subscribes to an integral (if not Integral TM) perspective, I would think you would find the reduction of consciousness to a negligible, causally inert epiphenomenon to be problematic.

1) as fun as it is to speculate, consciousness has never ever been shown to exist independent of matter. matter can exist without consciousness, but as far as we know, never the other way around.

Philosophers who support some version of panpsychism often agree with this: consciousness is always embodied.  The way de Quincey puts it, matter and energy at all levels ‘tingle with feeling' - e.g., there is some form of interiority, albeit very rudimentary in most instances.  There is no suggestion that mind exists separately in some disembodied state; only that matter and energy have a rudimentary quality of interiority that is amplified and transformed as the complexity of material forms increases. 

2) consciousness is altered qualitatively by neurochemistry, drugs, electrode stimulation etc…

Yes.  This poses no problem for panpsychism or pansemiotics.

3) certain functions of consciousness are eradicated by the eradication of certain parts of the brain or certain connections between areas of the brain.

True.  Again, no problem for panpsychism (et al).  (I'm just going to use panpsychism for short, if you don't mind.  I actually mean a broader range of philosophical ideas, however).

4) states of meditative absorption, emotional intensity, love and sleep can all be mapped onto brain activity.

Yes, this is true as well.  I would say the strongest thing we can say at the moment is that brain activity can be correlated with these states.  But again, this poses no problem for panpsychism, which sees matter and mind as inseparable - because all matter has ‘interiority.'

An important qualification, particularly for certain models of panpsychism (such as Hartshorne's, de Quincey's, Wilber's, and even Chalmer's [see Amplifying Phenomenal Information, by Liane Gabora]), is that only certain arrangements of matter actually lead to increased “depth” of interiority.  Interiority per se stands for the basic depth dimension (the possibility of subjective depth), with emergent physical complexity leading to actual increases in interior depth.  Here, it is important to distinguish holons from heaps or artifacts, because the latter are not believed to have the holistic order and self-organizing properties necessary (in Gabora's terms above) to amplify phenomenal information in a coherent way, and therefore cannot be considered conscious in and of themselves.  Certain things have “information amplifying architecture” while others do not.  So, for instance, neither a gas cloud nor a rock nor a chair would be likely or expected, in this version of panpsychism, to have their own forms of consciousness.  The constituent parts of these heaps and artifacts (say, atoms and molecules) would have rudimentary interiority, but the “architecture” of these larger objects is not capable of amplifying information in a way that would lead to greater forms of “collective” consciousness.

There are many more things to cover here, but it's my lunch time.  I'll post this for now and will return to some other arguments later.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  Jim, thanks.  I understand where you are coming from…

 

Julian,

You wrote:  for me the questions remain: why is it necessary to postulate something separate from the functions of consciousness to stand as consciousness itself, anymore than it is necessary to set apart something called heat from what it is that heat does? why is the thought experiment of philosophical zombies who behave in every way as if conscious but have no qualia- based experience a compelling one, given that in reality as we know it this is simply not possible?

What do you mean by 'functions of consciousness'?  I might also agree that it doesn't make sense to distinguish 'consciousness itself' from 'functions of consciousness' or something along those lines.  But that would depend on what you mean by the phrase, and whether it is really plausible that wholly objective systems composed of bits of insentient (interiorless) matter could actually carry them out.  If consciousness is defined in exclusively materialistic terms, as the activity of material systems in interaction with the environment, why should these interactions result in subjective experiences rather than just further non-conscious material patterns and behaviors?

De Quincey makes a distinction that is useful.  He differentiates between ontological or type emergence and evolutionary or token emergence.  The emergence of subjective experiences out of wholly objective processes is what he calls an ontological leap; it is the supposed emergence of one ontological type or kind of being out of a wholly different type or kind.  He argues that this kind of leap is quite different from evolutionary emergence, which is the emergence of new forms of the same type or kind (e.g., novel arrangements of the same kind of basic stuff [matter/energy]).  The 'hard problem' idea highlights the problematic nature of ontological emergence and takes another tack: positing basic subjectivity or interiority as an elemental feature of the natural world, rather than the problematic product of wholly material processes.

I read Pat Churchland's essay, but I think she sort of missed the point.  She focused on the logical fallacy of arguing from ignorance, pointing out that just because it is hard to imagine something doesn't mean that there has to be some “humdinger” of a supernatural solution.  But neither Chalmers nor many other thinkers in the general panpsychist school of thought are making any such argument.  They are saying that, rather than looking for the “mechanism” behind the problematic ontological emergence of consciousness, or engaging in the performative contradiction of dismissing the existence of consciousness altogether, a simple and graceful solution may actually be at hand: acknowledging subjectivity or interiority as elemental, as a primitive feature of the world.

Jim, you mentioned that some folks react to the mention of Churchland as one might react to the mention of Pol Pot.  I don't feel that way.  I do not think eliminative materialism is a tenable position, on the whole, but I do think that Pat and her husband are seeing into and through our constructs in a way that has the potential to significantly shift the way we conceptualize and talk about the world and our experience.  I read an article about them not long ago, which said that they had virtually done away with normal “folk terms” about consciousness (LQ) and had replaced them with the language of neurophysiological process (RQ).  Instead of talking to each other about their feeling states and the qualities of their emotions, for instance, they talk to each other about their quantities of serotonin or what have you throughout the course of a day.  Personally, I think this is going too far – reducing everything to the terms of a particular quadrant (Integrally speaking), and essentially invalidating other perspectives and their modes of inquiry and forms of knowledge.  It is not without value, however, to the extent that such an experiment – such an overt challenge to ways of thinking and talking that we may habitually have come to accept as given and inevitable – forces us to look at things afresh.

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Hi Balder. I didn't have you in mind when I said that some people react to the name “Churchlands” as someone might react to the name “Pol Pot.” I posted for years (around 6) at a Ken Wilber forum that no longer is active, and I felt that in order to just get certain ideas on the table, so they could be discussed on a level playing field (in a manner consistent with the ideas on discourse of Panikkar and Habermas, for example), it was an uphill struggle. I'd quote one of the Churchlands and instead of someone responding to the content of the quote, I'd get something like, “Well, the Churchlands are reductionsists and reductionists aren't integral.” Reading some exchanges at the older Integral Naked forum, I would sometimes notice a similar pattern.

This experience over that number of years has made me reluctant to raise certain issues and mention certain names on sites such as this one. So that's where I'm coming from when I made that comment about mentioning the name “Churchland.”

I agree with the Churchlands on some things and not on others, just as I agree with Wilber on some things and not on others. I'm guessing that you are referring to the article about them that was published in the New Yorker (the February 12, 2007 issue; I happen to have a copy of the article near the top of the pile of stuff behind where I'm sitting), titled “Two Heads: A Marriage Devoted to the Mind-Body Problem.” I agree with you that they go too far, but I still find something of value in some of their writings.

I love Chalmers' book The Consious Mind and it has been on my list of favorite books at this website ever since I signed up here when this site was Zaadz. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in delving deeper into this subject area. I love it and I recommend it, but I don't agree with some of Chalmers' arguments and I don't agree with his conclusion. But I don't need to agree in toto with someone such as the Churchlands or Chalmers in order to appreciate their contributions to a given field, and I would guess that you feel the same way.

Cheers,

Jim

 

Aside from panprotoexperientialism and other varieties of panpsychism, there is good old mind-body dualism or “substance dualism,” which is the kind of dualism that Descartes proposed.

It seems that many religious and spiritually oriented people accept some form of substance dualism.

For example, in a radio discussion that he participated in a little over a year ago, Andrew Cohen said, “There’s no reason why the nonmaterial dimension of reality could not also interact with the physical dimension.” On its face, that is a statement that only someone who accepts some form of what philosophers call interactionist substance dualism could make. Cohen tried to qualify this by saying that “ultimately” the “nonmaterial dimension” and the “physical dimension” are “nondual,” but now matter how you spin it, if you believe that there is a “nonmaterial dimension” and a “physical dimension” that interact, you accept some form of interactionist substance dualism, and that is an extremely difficult position to defend because it is shot through with many serious problems.

Descartes corresponded with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, and at one point she asked him how, if mind and matter are two distinct substances, do they interact? And he came up with something like, “Through the pineal gland.”

Philosophers James Cornman and Keith Lehrer write:

mind-body dualism seems to be essential to most religions. The body will disintegrate after death, but according to the doctrines of many religions, the soul, the immaterial part of us which is quite distinct and different from the body, will live on…

Alan Wallace, a former Buddhist monk and author of The Taboo of Subjectivity and Buddhism With An Attitude, believes that there exists a level of consciousness that is

not contingent upon the human organism. It is autonomous from the human brain. This is where Buddhism just differs from modern neuroscience's view that all mental processes are functions of the brain. In Buddhism, anger, joy, fear, and so forth are said to emerge not from the brain but from more and more subtle levels of consciousness.

Here Wallace, who was a monk in the same Tibetan Buddhist school that the Dalai Lama comes from (the Middle Way School), echoes the Dalai Lama, who says:

There is no reason to believe that the innate mind, the very essential luminous nature of awareness, has neural correlates, because it is not physical, not contingent upon the brain. So while I agree with neuroscience that gross mental events correlate with brain activity, I also feel that on a more subtle level of consciousness, brain and mind are two separate entities.

Wallace and the Dalai Lama are saying that they accept a form of substance dualism. (Owen Flanagan, a Buddhist and a philosopher who does not agree with Wallace and the Dalai Lama on this issue, discusses this subject in his recently published book The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World, which is based on his Templeton Foundation lectures. The book is endorsed by Stuart Kauffman, who is the only living person who Ken Wilber names when asked in the “Evolutionary Biology” video at Integral Naked if he can name some “integrally informed” evolutionary theorists, and it is also endorsed by Buddhist, psychologist, and meditation teacher Daniel Goleman. It's another book I highly recommend.)

Will my consciousness survive the disintegration of my physical body?

Many religious and spiritually oriented people would answer yes, indicating their commitment to some form of substance dualism.

Can “psychic mediums” such as John Edward and James Van Praagh literally communicate with people who have died and “passed to the other side”?

Many spiritually oriented people obviously believe that such communication literally occurs. (One can always believe that what Edward does is “good medicine” for some people who are grieving, and that questions about whether there is some literal communication with departed souls is beside the point. But Edward represents himself as literally communicating with the dead.)

Do we survive bodily deaths as souls or spirits while retaining most or all mental aspects of ourselves such as memory, the capacity for thought and volition, and traits of character and personality?

Many spiritually oriented people and many religious people would answer in the affirmative, indicating a commitment to some form of substance dualism.

If someone is in a persistent vegetative state or brain dead, is there still a person there? Can someone continue to exist as a thinking, perceiving person even though every part of their brain that is known to support cognitive activity has been destroyed? (The Terri Schiavo case is one example of how divided people are on questions of this nature.)

Do the minds of dead Tibetan lamas continue in nonphysical form in bardo realms until they eventually reincarnate? Do such realms actually exist, ontologically, “beyond the brain”?

Many spiritually oriented people would answer these questions in the affirmative.

 

Hi, Jim,

I appreciated both of your recent posts.  I agree with you that the Churchlands have important things to say, though I gather from our conversation so far that you probably are more sympathetic to their overall position than I am.  But I certainly agree that their arguments deserve consideration (within their particular domain of specialization).

The “dualistic” approach to the mind-body problem is obviously a long-standing one and a common one, so thanks for bringing it up.  As you know, if materialism suffers from the problem of emergence, substance dualism suffers from the problem of interaction.  Descartes' answer is decidedly unsatisfactory, since it doesn't really explain how the two “substances” interact; it just posits a “place” where this problematic interaction might occur.

It doesn't surprise me that Andrew Cohen might subscribe to a naive version of this perspective, but it does surprise me somewhat that Alan Wallace would.  In the context of the Buddhist worldview, with its emphasis on nonduality, its notion of emptiness, its challenge to substance and reification, and so on, it seems that comparisons to Descartes' substance dualism are tenuous at best.

Thinking about this, and thinking Alan Wallace's words, while they sound reminiscent of the Cartesian model, are probably resting on a wholly different set of presuppositions (a la Madhyamika), I searched around on the internet and found something that I think will clear up this misconception.  This is an Afterword by Alan Wallace in a book called Consciousness at the Crossroads…

~*~

Experiential dualism also includes what may be called causal dualism,

for the mind/body system, in Allan Hobson's words “is clearly

open to interventions of two distinctive kinds. One is a biological

intervention, the other is a conceptual intervention.” Lewis Judd

concurs when he comments that there “is evidence that there may

be a synergistic effect between psychopharmacology and specific

forms of psychotherapy.” For with the combination of the two, the

rate of relief for the clinically depressed is higher than if one administers

medications alone. Likewise, Buddhism maintains that the mind

is influenced by, and exerts its own influence upon, both mental and

physical phenomena.

What shall we make of such mind/body dualisms, which are commonly

accepted in Buddhism and in modern science? The Madhyamaka

view, which the Dalai Lama endorses and which in Tibet is

generally considered the pinnacle of Buddhist philosophy, maintains

that humans have an innate tendency to reify both the contents of

experience as well as ourselves as experiencing agents. According to

this view, while it is useful to recognize the apparent differences between

physical and mental events in the above ways, it is a profound

error to conclude that nature itself – independently of our conceptual

constructs – has created some absolute demarcation between

physical and mental phenomena. Thus, the Madhyamaka view explicitly

refutes Cartesian substance dualism, which has been so

roundly condemned by contemporary neuroscientists. Madhyamikas,

or proponents of the Madhyamaka view, declare that if the mind

and body did each exist inherently – independently of conceptual

designations – they could never interact. Thus, there is a deep incongruity

between appearances and reality: while mind and matter

seem to be inherently different types of independently existing ‘stuff,'

such appearances are misleading; this becomes apparent only by an

ontological analysis of the nature of both types of phenomena.

The difficulty of providing any explanation for the causal interaction

of the body and mind if the two are regarded as real, separate

‘things' has been clearly addressed in this conference, and it is a

chief reason why the great majority of neuroscientists have adopted

a physicalist view of the mind. From a Buddhist perspective, while

this step eliminates the need for any causal mechanism relating a

nonphysical mind with the brain, it has the disadvantage of shedding

no light on the actual nature of consciousness or its origins.

Indeed, though modern neuroscience has discovered many elements

of the brain and neural processes that are necessary for the production

of specific conscious processes, it has provided no cogent explanation

of the nature of consciousness, nor does this discipline have

any scientific means of detecting the presence or absence of consciousness

in any organism whatsoever. Over the years since this

meeting, I have heard no more illuminating materialist explanation

of consciousness than that offered here, namely that it is simply a

natural condition of the activated brain. Nor have I heard anything

more revealing concerning the origins of consciousness than the statement

that it is something that arises when there are enough neurons

with elaborate enough connections to support conscious activity.

Such accounts actually explain nothing, and they can hardly be

counted as scientific theories, for they do not lend themselves to

either empirical verification or refutation.

Not only do Madhyamikas reject the notion that the mind is an

inherently existent substance, or thing, they similarly deny that physical

phenomena as we experience and conceive of them are things in

themselves; rather, physical phenomena are said to exist in relation

to our perceptions and conceptions. What we perceive is inescapably

related to our perceptual modes of observation, and the ways in

which we conceive of phenomena are inescapably related to our concepts

and languages.

In denying the independent self-existence of all the phenomena

that make up the world of our experience, the Madhyamaka view

departs from both the substance dualism of Descartes and the substance

monism – namely, physicalism – that is characteristic of modern

science. The physicalism propounded by many contemporary

scientists seems to assert that the real world is composed of physical

things-in-themselves, while all mental phenomena are regarded as

mere appearances, devoid of any reality in and of themselves. Much

is made of this difference between appearances and reality.

The Madhyamaka view also emphasizes the disparity between

appearances and reality, but in a radically different way. All the mental and physical phenomena that we experience, it declares, appear

as if they existed in and of themselves, utterly independent of our

modes or perception and conception. They appear to be inherently

existing things, but in reality they exist as dependently related events.

Their dependence is threefold: (1) phenomena arise in dependence

upon preceding causal influences, (2) they exist in dependence upon

their own parts and/or attributes, and (3) the phenomena that make

up the world of our experience are dependent upon our verbal and

conceptual designations of them.

This threefold dependence is not intuitively obvious, for it is concealed

by the appearance of phenomena as being self-sufficient and

independent of conceptual designation. On the basis of these misleading

appearances it is quite natural to think of, or conceptually

apprehend, phenomena as self-defining things in themselves. This

tendency is known as reification, and according to the Madhyamaka

view, this is an inborn delusion that provides the basis for a host of

mental afflictions. Reification decontextualizes. It views phenomena

without regard to the causal nexus in which they arise, and without

regard to the specific means of observation and conceptualization

by which they are known. The Madhyamaka, or Centrist, view is so

called for it seeks to avoid the two extremes of reifying phenomena

on the one hand, and of denying their existence on the other.

In the Madhyamaka view, mental events are no more or less real

than physical events. In terms of our common-sense experience, differences

of kind do exist between physical and mental phenomena.

While the former commonly have mass, location, velocity, shape,

size, and numerous other physical attributes, these are not generally

characteristic of mental phenomena. For example, we do not commonly

conceive of the feeling of affection for another person as having

mass or location. These physical attributes are no more appropriate

to other mental events such as sadness, a recalled image from

one's childhood, the visual perception of a rose, or consciousness of

any sort. Mental phenomena are, therefore, not regarded as being

physical, for the simple reason that they lack many of the attributes

that are uniquely characteristic of physical phenomena. Thus, Buddhism

has never adopted the physicalist principle that regards only physical things as real. To return to the First Noble Truth, both physical and mental suffering are to be recognized, but according the Madhyamaka view, neither exists as a thing-in-itself, and therefore

the dualism between them is of a relative, not an absolute, nature.

~*~

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Hi, Julian,

You wrote:  consciousness is and it occurs in more complicated (and therefore both more magnificent and more pathological) forms the more complex the organism in the evolutionary spiral.

What do you mean when you say, “Consciousness is”?  How do you relate that statement to the views of folks like Dennett and Churchland?

Best wishes,

Balder

 

P.S.  In case it hasn't been clear, most of the panpsychist/pansemiotic models I've been discussing are also critical of dualist models.  As I mentioned to Jim, the problem with substance dualism is the problem of interaction, which is different from the problem of emergence but still significant.

 

No worries, Julian – I understand you're feeling your way into this subject, exploring the wealth of perspectives and opinions out there, and need time to digest it all.  I won't be grilling you.  In asking you about some of your comments and asking you to clarify yourself, I'm hoping that will be helpful for you in your exploration.

I have given you a number of links in several of my posts (to articles by Chalmers, Bohm, Gabora, Wallace, and maybe some others).  Have you looked at those already?  I can collect them all on a single post and maybe include some others, if that will be helpful.

Best wishes,

Bruce

 

Here are copies of papers I've referenced (and linked) in my conversations with you and Jim so far:

Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness

Soma-Significance: A New Notion of the Relationship Between the Physical and the Mental

Amplifying Phenomenal Information

Turning the Hard Problem Upside Down and Sideways

There are quite a few others that could be included.  I'll do that in later letters if you want.

Get well soon,

B.

 

Bruce

You are doing us all such a favour by researching and organising these links. Thank You.

I don't have a headcold (get well soon J) but when reading this material it sometimes feels like I do ;-)

I will probably take longer then Julian to get through all this, and to offer any meaningful repsonses,  simply because I'm still familiarising myself with the concepts and terminology.

Jim, thanks for all your links too.

All Best, James

 

Hi Bruce. Your point is well taken and I appreciate that you noted that my likening the Dalai Lama's and Alan Wallace's views on consciousness to “substance dualism” is, as you put it, tenuous. I spoke way too loosely when I wrote that, for of course Buddhists from the Middle Way School, such as the Dalai Lama and Wallace, do not subscribe to any views on “substances.” At most, I think I could've said that the Dalai Lama's and Wallace's views on consciousness are reminiscent of Cartesian substance dualism.

Owen Flanagan says, correctly, I think, that the Dalai Lama's statement that there is a “very subtle” level of consciousness that has no neural correlates expresses a form of ontological dualism. The term “ontological” in this context does not imply any reification or commitment to substantialism. (Flanagan, as I note above, is a Buddhist, and he has participated in Mind & Life Institute conferences with the Dalai Lama and Wallace et al. He is not some “flatland materialist” who doesn't understand Tibetan Buddhist teachings on emptiness. Surely there is room for disagreement among Buddhists, even on issues related to “mind” and “consciousness.”)

We can speak of the “ontological status” of phenomena without falling into reification. An oasis and a mirage that appears to observers to be an oasis may both be said to be empty of self-existence. We can neither reify these phenomena nor deny that they exist, nor can we deny that an oasis has a different ontological status than a mirage that appears to observers to be an oasis. (We can always quibble over terminology. My personal preference is to use “conventional truth” language and to avoid “ultimate truth” language, for the simple reason that it is so easy to flip from one mode to another and thereby fall into “nondual shuffling.” The receptionist at the dentist's office tells the nondualist that he is late for his appointment, and the nondualist says, “Time is an illusion and it is always now, therefore I'm not late.”)

I met and spoke with Wallace at a Consciousness East & West symposium at Northwestern University a few years ago, the main event of which was a debate between Wallace and John Searle, known for his contributions to the philosophies of mind and language.

I've read most of Wallace's scholarly books and many of his scholarly papers, and I've read a few of the books on Buddhism he's written for a general audience. I think that two people can have similar meditative experience and can agree with Madhyamika teachings on emptiness and dependent origination, and can nevertheless disagree on open questions about the JFK assassination, evolutionary biology, and the so-called mind-body problem and hard problem of consciousness.

Wallace apparently believes that there is a “very subtle continuum of energy/consciousness” that enters “into the union of the sperm and egg [and] that enables the zygote to grow into a fetus” (he writes about this in his book Choosing Reality: A Contemplative View of Physics and the Mind). He also apparently believes that there are lamas who can literally pass through walls (something I believe he suggests in his book The Bridge of Quiescence: Experiencing Tibetan Buddhist Meditation, though I don't have my copy handy to confirm that this is where I read him suggesting this). He apparently believes that there exists “an individual continuum of consciousness that carries on from one lifetime to the next, storing memories and other personal character traits over time” (and I believe this quote is from his book Genuine Happiness: Meditation as a Path to Fulfillment). That may not entail “substance” dualism, but it does entail ontological (though not substance ontological) dualism. In order for “an individual continuum of consciousness” to store memories and other personal character traits, the memories and personal character traits in question must be able to exist without neural correlates.

- Jim

 

Hi, Jim,

I feel as if I'm still talking to you through something of a veil – that you expect me to be whipping out charges of “flatland materialism” and dismissing what you're saying out of hand.  Of course Buddhists can disagree over fundamental issues, even– or particularly – the question of mind or consciousness.  Buddhist history is full of such disagreements.

I still think “dualism” (whether substance or ontological) is not the best way to describe the position of folks like Wallace or the Dalai lama, though I agree that the examples you've given would seem to support that label.  I do think that Wallace would likely agree that, conventionally, it is valid to make ontological distinctions between matter and consciousness (to the extent that he would, with non-Buddhist panpsychists of various strains, agree that it is problematic to see matter as ontologically primary and the cause of consciousness-as-such or sems-nyid).  But at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like rDzogs-chen, where for instance you have the inseparability of emptiness, energy/form, and clarity (to put it very simply), the conventional ontological distinctions between matter and mind do not hold…not as “absolute” ontological categories.

But if you prefer to avoid absolute language altogether, then I think you could make the “ontological dualist” label stick on a conventional level.  Because it is clear, yes, that neither he nor the Dalai Lama believe that consciousness/subjectivity can be ontologically reduced to the terms of, nor assigned wholly to the processes of, particular neurological structures. 

About the belief in rebirth and a continuum of consciousness that “continues” beyond birth – certainly, this is the traditional perspective within a number of Buddhist schools.  Whether it can be maintained is still an open question for me.  Certainly not in the older metaphysical forms.  I'm sure you've seen Wilber's attempt to provide a new basis for these general claims.  I'm not entirely satisfied with it; I don't think it would carry much weight at this point, really, outside of communities already predisposed to believe in these phenomena.  But I think it's important to point out that belief in these phenomena (or other ones like you mentioned, such as passing through walls, etc), or at least a willingness to entertain the possibility of at least some of them, is not always the result of, or evidence for, pre-rational, unscientific, mythic thinking.  

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Julian,

We have had this discussion before, and you were rather sarcastic with me, presenting me with absurd examples and mixing up any comments I've made about the possible validity of certain paranormal phenomena with all sorts of absurd beliefs that are clearly on a different level.  I understand that you would like me to differentiate what I would be willing to entertain as valid from what is not, but your way of approaching it actually is slanted from the start:  An immediate leap to the position, “Prove to me you're not supporting something really stupid and childish,” which is how the questions come across.  Another way to approach it which would actually “reach” me as respectful might be as follows:  “We both know that many ancient beliefs are fanciful, mythological, and without empirical support.  How would you differentiate claims about paranormal phenomena which you may acknowledge as valid, or at least possible, from those that you believe are not?”

I'm only halfway serious about asking you to change your style.  Your confrontational, somewhat mocking tone is, of course, part of what “fires” people up to keep participating in these conversations – even me!

I think there are a number of ways to approach the evaluation of these sorts of claims, and in my view, an appropriate approach would be to use a number of them together.  One, you would look at the interpretive contexts in which certain claims are being made – what sort of reasoning is involved, what sorts of appeals are being made, how are these beliefs defended within traditional contexts?  Two, you would consider the actual supports that believers in such phenomena appeal to – not just considering the “type” and level of explanation, but in the case of those which are falsifiable or amenable to empirical support, actually investigating them rather than dismissing them out of hand (as Dawkins does, unprofessionally, with Sheldrake's research.)  Third, if you currently lack evidence that you would regard as definitive empirical support, you might consider whether the explanatory power of the native model, in conjunction with a (to-be-decided) adequate degree of anecdotal support and in light of acknowledged limitations of our own current methods of verification, it makes sense to at least keep an open mind and hold off on coming to a premature conclusion.

“Just because you like Buddhism/New Age/fill-in-the-blank” would not be an adequate reason.

“Just because authorities say so” would not be an adequate reason.

“Just because I really want it to be true” would not be an adequate reason.

“Just because this belief inspires me and helps me live a more meaningful life” would not be an adequate reason (to accept it as empirically true).

If people are defending their beliefs for these reasons, then – at the least – you can say that they are not being scientific or rational in this area.

On the other hand, if you currently lack empirical support for a particular claim, that does not automatically render it irrational or “mythical.”  You have to consider a number of different factors…a number of things to weigh, from different perspectives, in order to be able to place any particular claim about the paranormal along a continuum of probability.

Best wishes,

B.

 

Jim: “For example, in a radio discussion that he participated in a little over a year ago, Andrew Cohen said, “There's no reason why the nonmaterial dimension of reality could not also interact with the physical dimension.” On its face, that is a statement that only someone who accepts some form of what philosophers call interactionist substance dualism could make. Cohen tried to qualify this by saying that “ultimately” the “nonmaterial dimension” and the “physical dimension” are “nondual,” but now matter how you spin it, if you believe that there is a “nonmaterial dimension” and a “physical dimension” that interact, you accept some form of interactionist substance dualism, and that is an extremely difficult position to defend because it is shot through with many serious problems.”





I don't see what the problem is with saying “there is no reason why the nonmaterial dimension of reality could not also interact with the physical dimension” as long as you say that ultimately it is nondual. I am sure that Andrew Cohen is not going to give us a version of this that is as sophisticated and philosophically sound as Ken Wilber, for example, but it seems like we are getting into the “nondual language = nondual” fallacy here. The same reasoning, it seems to me, would lead us to saying things like “there is not two,” and so anytime you speak of multiplicity you are getting into some kind of false dualism.

To say that the nonmaterial can interact with the material is just a perspective. That they are ultimately nondual is another. But if we just stick with the latter perspective we will not be able to discuss a lot of important phenomonen. What Andrew Cohen is aware of is that there are planes of being above the personal with an agenda and intelligence of their own. That is rare insight, far more rare than the nondual insight. Of course that kind of thinking can surely lead to trouble if one goes too far with it, but it's still a valid perspective.


David

 

James,

You're welcome.  I look forward to your thoughts.

I have other links I could post, as I'm sure Jim does as well, but I'm waiting till a bit later.  I understand about the headache factor!

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Julian, one place we might draw the line with that stuff is whether there is any evidence at all suggestive of its truth. For example, is there any evidence that Tokolosh (as a soul-stealing being that is kept away by stacked bricks) exists? If not, then so much for Tokolosh. Any evidence that Ramtha or similar beings exist and can speak through human beings? If not, then so much for Ramtha. But if there is any evidence that is suggestive that things like that could be “real,” then we should stay open to it and wait for more evidence one way or the other. So, it doesn't matter so much whether, say, consciousness-without-a -body “evidence” is conclusive; if it is reasonable, then we should stay open to the idea. So many well-established scientific findings began with an intuition, which was followed by scant, dubious evidence, and were only later proven to be true.

 

I came across an online essay that has a brief summary of the mind-body problem that I think will be helpful for this discussion:

“Consider the following five tenable theses:

1.  For any system, every fact about the whole is a necessary consequence of the nature and relations of the parts.

2.  People are made of atoms.

3.  Atoms are purely physical objects, with nothing but physical properties and physical relations to one another.

4.  People have mental states.

5.  No statement ascribing a mental predicate can be derived from any set of purely physical descriptions.

Now, I think that the mind/body problem can be viewed as a paradox resulting from the conflicting claims of these five statements, and the various theories of the mind/body relationship can be viewed as attempts each to deny one or more of the above theses. But first these theses must be clarified.

(1) should be read as saying that given a complete knowledge of every property of every part of some system, plus a knowledge of how these parts are arranged, every property of the whole follows logically. The nature of the whole can be predicted a priori from the nature and relations of the parts, which is to say that the whole is 100% explicable in terms of the parts. “Necessary” here means logically necessary.

(3), of course, is not talking about collections of atoms but about atoms considered as such, that is, individually.

(4) affirms that people experience pains, emotions, desires, and so on.

In (5), “derived” means “logically derived,” that is, derived in the sense in which the fundamental theorem of calculus can be derived from the axioms of arithmetic and some definitions. It does not mean “caused”. This means that it would not be possible to deduce the quality of someone's conscious experiences from a physical description of him or of anything else. If a physical description of the universe is given, it will always be an additional piece of information, e.g., to note that someone is in pain.”

 

Balder,

Pain is a great area in which to explore the body-mind relationship. It is certainly a common ground that the two share.

Currently, I work at a hospital doing nursing work, while also completing my training in Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Working with people experincing pain (physical/mental) is a part of my day-to-day goings-on right now. Additionally, hospital work allows me to work with scientists heavily influenced by empiricism.

At present, we take vitals signs at minimum every four hours on my unit (by hospital policy).

What are vital signs? Measurable empirical data. Not to be confused with symptoms (strictly patient reported info). Here are the vital signs:

Heart rate.
Blood pressure (systolic/dyastolic).
Temperature.
Respirations per minute.
Pain.
Oxygen saturation (relatively new).

So let's look at that 5th vital sign: Pain.

Pain is subjective. What?! A subjective sign?! Let the first-person subjectivity have a say in fact-based medicine?! Yes.

So how do we scientists measure it? We ask the patient to rate it from 0-10 with 0 being no pain whatsoever to a 10 being you're bloody screaming your head off shreiking with intolerable pain.

What if the patient can't speak? And many can't. Well, then we have the “FACES” scale where we literally look at their face to measure the kind of pain they might be in, and also include things like fever, rapid heart rate and other data that might indicate the sympathetic nervous system has kicked in in response to pain.

Now come on. In the age of electron microscopes and bloodless surgeries, we only have a 0-10 and “FACES” scale to measure one of the basic vital signs?!

Humbling. Yet, absolutely true. That's all we've got at present.

Pain is subjective. And recognized by empirical western medicine as absolutely 100% real.

Let's explore this a little bit more. (Thanks for your indulgence)

We have all experienced pain. Physical pain. Mental/Emotional pain. And even spiritual/existential pain for many of us.

What is pain?

Well, let's look at how we react to pain—physically.

We can't get out of bed. We can't breath very well. Or we have to have a few more pillows propping us up in order to breath well. Or we can't jog that day. Or we can't eat for a few days lest we vomit continuously. Or we can't focus, concentrate or read the daily bloggings, because doing so causes more pain. We can't stand the sound of noise. We long for quiet dark spaces and create them as quickly as we can.

Alright. I've just (very) briefly described some common responses to certain types of physical pain. Won't go too, too much into mental/emotional pain. I'll keep the list short:

We can't get out of bed. We can't take in what life has to offer very well. Or we have to have a few more beers or tubs of ice cream or cigarettes or tv shows propping us up in order to take in what life has to offer us. Or we can't feel free that day. Or we can't be around other people for a few days lest we fight and tangle ourselves up in them. Or we can't focus, concentrate or read the daily bloggings, because doing so causes more pain. We can't stand the sound of noise. We long for quiet dark spaces and create them as quickly as we can.

Some similarities…physical/mental pain.

And as I've read and considered the course of this blog's discussion into the realm of body/mind, I asked myself what commonalities do they have—the physical and the mental?

Well, certainly pain is one.

And what exactly is pain when we measure it?

It is limitation.

The inability to do something we once could or would like to. I woke up two weeks ago with a stiff neck. No accident or trauma. Just a stiff neck first thing in the morning. Could not get up without lifting my head literally with my hands. Could not engage my neck muscles at all without excrutiating pain. Without excrutiating limitation. Freedom impeded.

What then is suffering?

A teacher of mine recently said to me that suffering is the lack of acceptance of pain.

Of limitation.

He said that once we understand our pain, we take the time to be with our pain and to understand our pain, suffering vanishes.

I am certain that you are wondering what this discourse possibly has to do with your most recent post, Balder.

Materialism vs. Non-Materialism and Physical vs. Mental can be best understood when we examine their commonalities (few they may be as we begin the journey).

Additionally, I believe the power of atoms and their parts (protons, neutrons and electrons) is the magnetic force they create as they dance together.

And that force is energetic. Not physical.

Energy and matter are intrinsicly linked just as function and substance—body and mind.

I am very poorly read at present in the theorists you've presented. So I draw upon my own life's experiences to interpret the wonderful ideas and concepts you all are exploring. Great stuff!

Thanks for letting me share. It's been awhile. ;)

-d

 

I enjoyed reading that, Delia.

Juilan: “for me part of the achilles heel of integral is this unspoken assumption that hindu and buddhist holy men had accessed a stage of development that still represents the highest point that human beings today could reach - i think this is a kind of boomer idealizing of the east that is best left in the 70's.”

A lot of people do make this mistake, Julian, but Ken Wilber does not. He used to, when he was stacking states on top of stages, and many people still do, not understanding his distinctions between states and stages. Of course, if he had listened to Aurobindo from the beginning rather than the Buddhists, he would have had it straight earlier. Wasn't Aurobindo amazing?

So the higest stages in AQAL today are Para-mind (Indigo), Meta-mind (Violet), Overmind (Ultraviolet), and Supermind (Clear Light). There is a relationship between these stages and subtle, causal, and nondual states, but they are not the same thing. Very few of the ancient masters reached stages like this, but of course many people think they did.

A lot of people, past and present, have claimed enlightenment, and perhaps they have been meditation masters, but realizing those higher stages is something different. Probably most of the ancient masters were first tier by today's standards.

David

 

Julian, I never said I believed the “walking through walls” claim.  My reaction, when I hear it from someone I otherwise respect (and I HAVE heard it from teachers I respect), is, what do they base this claim on?  It seems very improbable to me.  It is much easier for me to entertain the possibility of phenomena such as ESP or distance viewing, since I have had experiences which appear to be examples of this and because at least some supportive evidence for it has been gathered in scientific studies.  But on a believability or a probability scale, I would place the “walking through walls” claim very low.  Because some teachers who are quite bright, rational, and scientifically knowledgeable appear to entertain this phenomenon as a possibility, my curiosity is aroused – but mostly about the reasons for their belief.

About your other examples – the tokolosh, Ramtha, and 2012 – I don't believe them at all.

You wrote:  “for me nothing that defies the laws of physics or science as we know it deserves the cover of being called spiritual in order to be exempt from rational analysis.”

I agree with this – I don't think these claims should be exempt from rational analysis, as long the claims involve empirically observable phenomena.

Delia, thank you for your post.  I will respond to you tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  Julian, let's don't sidetrack this discussion with a debate over the plausibility of certain paranormal phenomena.  This is your blog, of course, so you can talk about what you want, but at this point, I think these issues will only cloud up the main topic we've been exploring.

 

Whoops! Just logging back on to correct a mistake that I typed.

“And that force is energetic. Not physical.”

(*ahem*)

…was meant to read…

“And that force is energetic. Not material.”

(*ahem*)

…big difference…

I'm also going to include this very brief quote from a basic science text on the subject of energy and matter. I find it enlightening and amusing when looked at metaphorically…

Energy is defined simply by scientists as the capacity for doing work. Matter is the material (atoms and molecules) that constructs things on the Earth and in the Universe. Albert Einstein suggested early in this century that energy and matter are related to each other at the atomic level. Einstein theorized that it should be possible to convert matter into energy. From Einstein's theories, scientists were able to harness the energy of matter beginning in the 1940s through nuclear fission. The most spectacular example of this process is a nuclear explosion from an atomic bomb. A more peaceful example of our use of this fact of nature is the production of electricity from controlled fission reactions in nuclear reactors. Einstein also suggested that it should be possible to transform energy into matter.

Energy and matter are also associated to each other at much larger scales of nature. Later on in this chapter, we will examine how solar radiation provides the energy to create the matter that makes up organisms. Organisms then use some of this matter to power their metabolism.

umm…

The capacity for doing work.

Where is our God of Semantics and all things Lexicon-ish (*ahem, Adam!*) when we need him?!

What then is this ”work” that is spoken of?!

Holy Crickets, I've fallen down the rabbit hole again. ;)

-d

 

Julian:   “for me nothing that defies the laws of physics or science as we know it deserves the cover of being called spiritual in order to be exempt from rational analysis.”

Yes, but … and it's a fairly big but. It does sound like this has the potential of keeping someone from moving into transrational stages, from embracing the mystery.

 

Hi Balder.

I made the following parenthetical remark in a previous comment:

(Flanagan, as I note above, is a Buddhist, and he has participated in Mind & Life Institute conferences with the Dalai Lama and Wallace et al. He is not some “flatland materialist” who doesn't understand Tibetan Buddhist teachings on emptiness. Surely there is room for disagreement among Buddhists, even on issues related to “mind” and “consciousness.”)

I gather that you are responding to that remark when you write:

I feel as if I'm still talking to you through something of a veil – that you expect me to be whipping out charges of “flatland materialism” and dismissing what you're saying out of hand.  Of course Buddhists can disagree over fundamental issues, even– or particularly – the question of mind or consciousness.  Buddhist history is full of such disagreements.

I am sorry to hear that you feel as if you are talking to me through something of a veil. I do not expect you to whip out charges of “flatland materialism,” because I have not seen you use pejoratives such as “flatland.” But I do fear that you might dismiss some of my views out of hand on the basis that they are “materialist” as you have used the term, and I’ll explain why I say this.

You have associated what you have referred to as the “materialist/physicalist paradigm,” the “current materialist worldview,” and the “materialist model” with the idea that consciousness emerged as a product of increasing biological complexity from non-conscious precursors composed of non-conscious components. And you said that such emergence would require “something of a miracle” to occur. That’s not totally dismissive of emergence, but it’s pretty dismissive.

You have noted that conventional distinctions between mental and physical do not hold “at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like rDzogs-chen,” and I agree but do not see how this is relevant to the kinds of questions I posed (not to you but to the general reader) in a previous comment. Someone who is brain dead either continues to exist as a person with the capacity for memory, thinking, imagination, cognition, perception, volition, and so on, or they don’t. The fetus is either a reincarnated being carrying stored memories from previous lives, or it isn’t. If people who are brain dead are still persons with the capacity for memory, etc., then removing them from life support may be ethically unwarranted. If the fetus is a reincarnated being, abortion may be ethically unwarranted.

We could say that at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen, conventional distinctions between victimizers and victims dissolve. But in the everyday world most of us do not want certain kinds of victimizers on the streets or having access to our children.

Consciousness either emerged as a product of increasing biological complexity from non-conscious precursors composed of non-conscious components or it did not. I do not think that subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen can help us decide if consciousness did or did not emerge.

I am aware that there are people who disagree with me on that, and I do not know where you might stand on the issue. Alan Wallace, as one example, seems to believe that subtle levels of analysis – and here we are not referring to philosophical or conceptual analysis but to nonconceptual or what Wallace and Wilber might call contemplative analysis – can be used to establish that certain propositional statements about consciousness are true. This is a version of the belief that mystical experience can be a source of propositional knowledge. I do not think that mystical experience can be a source of propositional knowledge about anything other than that experiences that we can refer to as mystical can and do occur.

In one of his comments to you in a thread at my blog, Kelamuni says:

IMO, there is no relation between mystical states, kenshos, samadhis, etc. and metaphysics; these states, and I include so called OBE's here, “prove” or imply the existence of nothing – other than that such states exist.

Speaking as someone who is familiar with mystical and deep meditative states (as well as so-called paranormal phenomena such as OBEs), I agree with Kelamuni that such states and experiences “prove” or imply the existence of nothing – other than that such states exist, and I would add that such states cannot, in my opinion, be appealed to in attempts to establish the truth or falsity of propositional statements. I do not think that appeals to the realization of emptiness or rigpa or abiding in One Taste or subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen can be used to establish whether or not consciousness is an emergent property of the quantum and classical physical world, nor do I think that such states can give us insight into whether or not propositions affirmative of some kind of pan-consciousness or pan-interiority are true. But there is certainly room for disagreement on whether mystical states can be considered sources of propositional knowledge.

Much metta,

Jim

 

Julian,
 

You wrote:  …to conviction that paranormal phenomena are evidence of higher stages of spiritual development.

I said I didn't want to let this topic override or muddy the other discussion - and I mean that - but I wanted to respond to this comment.  It will depend what you mean by paranormal phenomena here, of course, but actually a very common indicator of progress on rigorous contemplative paths (not merely translative ones) is, indeed, the arising of capacities or experiences that might be labeled paranormal.  You find this in serious contemplative literature around the world.  However, in many of these traditions, the admonition is to ignore or set aside such experiences, since they are inconsequential to the spiritual aims of these paths.  They are not held onto as “prizes” for the ego, nor are they meant to assuage existential fears.  They are just carefully catalogued “landmarks” along the way that one might expect to “see,” but which one should (usually) pass by.

You may find acknowledging and even allowing for such things in the context of rigorous contemplative state training problematic or regressive.  I do not.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  Julian, it looks like we posted at almost the same time.  Thanks for the clarification!

 

Jim

You said: “I do not think that appeals to the realization of emptiness or rigpa or abiding in One Taste or subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen can be used to establish whether or not consciousness is an emergent property of the quantum and classical physical world,” and you als note that these mystical states simply prove that such states exist, but they prove nothing else.

I tend to agree. This kind of begs the question, if not in such mystical states, then where will we find the most reliable source of answers to this question - hard science? neurobiological eveidence? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Also, from your reading of Wilber, do you think he does appeal to these mystical states as reliable sources of propositional knowledge?

Fascinating insights you and Balder are providing here - thank you.

James

 

Hi Delia- great to see you around :)

 

Hi, Jim,

Yes, it is true that I do not think the materialist “metaphysic” is a satisfactory one.  My point was that I have no intention of dismissing your arguments out of hand if they happen to be grounded in a perspective that strikes me as materialistic.  I understand that you might expect me to do so, based on your experience with other Integral students, but as you and I both value the imparative method of dialogue, I hope we can proceed with this discussion along those lines.  I am not saying I am immune from being dismissive or biased altogether, but typically that is unconscious on my part and is not a feature of my intentional approach to these sorts of inquiries.

You wrote:  You have noted that conventional distinctions between mental and physical do not hold “at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like rDzogs-chen,” and I agree but do not see how this is relevant to the kinds of questions I posed (not to you but to the general reader) in a previous comment. Someone who is brain dead either continues to exist as a person with the capacity for memory, thinking, imagination, cognition, perception, volition, and so on, or they don't. The fetus is either a reincarnated being carrying stored memories from previous lives, or it isn't. If people who are brain dead are still persons with the capacity for memory, etc., then removing them from life support may be ethically unwarranted. If the fetus is a reincarnated being, abortion may be ethically unwarranted.

Yes, I agree.  Reincarnation is not a “cornerstone” of my own belief system, but I admit I consider that it is a possibility.  I attended several lectures by Dr. Ian Stephenson at the University of Virginia Medical Center on his research into this phenomenon, and I found some of it rather compelling.  I certainly do not see rebirth or reincarnation as scientifically validated, at this point, but Dr. Stephenson's work at least establishes it (in my opinion) as something that should not be dismissed out of hand, or as “mere folktale.”  “Rebirth” or “reincarnation” may both turn out to be unsatisfactory explanations of this phenomenon, but the confirmed continuation of specific memories over lifetimes (among genetically unrelated individuals) nevertheless poses a challenge to our current scientific models as well.

You wrote:  We could say that at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen, conventional distinctions between victimizers and victims dissolve. But in the everyday world most of us do not want certain kinds of victimizers on the streets or having access to our children.

Sure.  Conventionally, it remains useful to make certain distinctions, and it is important to retain them.  But this argument is something of a non-sequitur, since the challenge to distinctions between categories such as mental and physical (as fundamental features of reality) is directly relevant to consideration of the validity of various metaphysical models which trade in just these distinctions on a fundamental level (whether materialist, idealist, or whatever).  You can move from the “challenge” to these categories posed by certain traditions of thought to formulate new models which do not rely on them, or at least that do not treat one or the other of them as the ultimate reductive category.

You wrote:  Consciousness either emerged as a product of increasing biological complexity from non-conscious precursors composed of non-conscious components or it did not. I do not think that subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen can help us decide if consciousness did or did not emerge.

Can you explain your position here?  Are you saying that you think traditions such as Dzogchen are irrelevant and not even worth bringing into the picture when it comes to understanding anything “real” or true about the nature of our world?  Or just that they aren't helpful in exploring the question of “emergence”?  In the latter case, I would agree that a tradition such as Buddhism is not directly helpful - though I wouldn't go so far as to say it is wholly irrelevant when it comes to evaluating which “elements” and “categories” of thought in a modern comprehensive worldview are best treated as fundamental.

You wrote:  In one of his comments to you in a thread at my blog, Kelamuni says: IMO, there is no relation between mystical states, kenshos, samadhis, etc. and metaphysics; these states, and I include so called OBE's here, “prove” or imply the existence of nothing - other than that such states exist.

I agree with this, within certain limits.  But if you accept this claim, then I think that, to be balanced, you must also admit that there is “no relation between the empirical findings of physics or biology and metaphysics” - that they cannot be taken as conclusive proof of a particular metaphysical worldview, such as materialism or physicalism.  Now, if you start from materialistic presuppositions, such that mystical experience is considered, by definition, a “glaze” of ideation over purely physical processes (without reference to anything other than to preconditioned cultural beliefs, as Katz might argue), then of course the role of mystical experience for understanding anything about the nature of the world is severely bracketed. But I think it is important to recognize that the presupposition of a materialistic worldview is essentially the adoption of a metaphysical model which involves the bracketing out or exclusion of subjectivity from the outset, rather than a perspective that is simply “given” by the “facts at hand.”  What counts as “fact,” here, has already been determined in advance.

In my view, while neither mystical nor empirical data can be taken as “proof” of a given metaphysical model, they can and should be considered together in the formulation of a worldview that accounts for the fullest, most comprehensive account possible.  That's the position I've been trying to argue for here.

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Hi David, I hope you're doing well this weekend. You said in a comment to me:

I don't see what the problem is with saying “there is no reason why the nonmaterial dimension of reality could not also interact with the physical dimension” as long as you say that ultimately it is nondual.

All this hinges on what we mean by the terms “nonmaterial,” “physical,” “interact,” and “nondual.” If I were talking with someone who made the statement that Cohen made on the radio, for example if Cohen made that statement and I had the opportunity to ask him to define his terms, I would do so. But given that I haven't had that opportunity, I am inclined to assume that he uses the terms in question as they are used in contemporary philosophy.

If and only if that's the case, here is what we may infer from the statement on its face: That the speaker believes that some events in the spacetime universe that supervenes on quantum and classical physics have causes from outside the spacetime quantum and classical physical domain. In other words, the speaker believes that entities, forces, and energies from outside the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe can causally interact with entities, forces, energies, properties, events, and occasions within the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe.

If this is not what Cohen had in mind when he made the statement in question, then I think he should've been clear about that. He was having a discussion with a man named Tom Clark and they were discussing naturalism and some of the philosophical issues that come up when we consider certain kinds of spiritual teachings in light of naturalism, and I think Cohen had ample opportunity to clarify his remarks.

But let's say that even if Cohen did not mean to suggest something like what I write above, that someone else does believe that.

In order to believe that they would seem to have to accept that there may be numberless instances in the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe of “causal overdetermination.”

If a man is simultaneously shot in the heart and struck by lightning and he dies instantly, we might say that his death was causally overdetermined, because either the bullet or the lightning was sufficient to cause his death. Causal overdetermination does occur, but it is rare.

There is a principle in philosophy and physics called the causal closure principle, which can be briefly stated as follows:

If a physical event that occurs at a specific time has a cause, it has a sufficient physical cause at that time.

In this context, the term “physical cause” simply means a cause that can be linked to a causal chain within the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe. “Physical” in this sense is not limited to “things” or “objects” like rocks and chairs that have what Whitehead called “simple location” or that Descartes said had the property of extension in space. Neutrinos are elementary particles with no mass which are said to be able to pass through the earth as if it is empty space, and neutrinos are physical in the sense in which I am using the term. Those who believe that consciousness is physical are not suggesting that consciousness has “simple location” or is some kind of “object” or “thing.” They simply mean that consciousness supervenes upon a base of quantum and classical physics. Supervenience is a dependence relationship. We cannot reduce a Georgia O'Keefe painting of a hollyhock floating above a mountain to “nothing but paint on canvas,” but we also cannot deny that the painting itself (as opposed to reproductions of it, some of which are no doubt in digital form) supervenes on a base of paint and canvas. If we were to take the original painting and remove the paint and canvas, the original painting would be gone. There are many “nonreductive physicalists” about consciousness who in no way reduce consciousness to “nothing but” neural processes, but who are physicalists in the sense that they say that if we remove the neural processes, there is no consciousness.

In order for nonphysical or nonmaterial forces, entites, energies, events, and occasions to causally interact with forces, entities, energies, events, and occasions in the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe, the causal closure principle must be violated. If this in fact occurs and it occurs often, then we are faced with the problem of many instances of causal overdetermination.

Now let me bring the term “nondual” into the picture.

David Loy is a Zen teacher–dharma heir to a Japanese Zen master–as well as a scholar, college professor, and he is very active in the interfaith dialogue movement,  and he is the author of the book Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. The first chapter of his book is titled, “How Many Nondualities are There?” He lists and discusses the following “varieties” of nonduality:

Nonduality as the negation of dualistic thinking.

Nonduality as the nonplurality of the world.

Nonduality as the non-difference of subject and object.

Nonduality as the identity of phenomena and Absolute (i.e., the nonduality of samsara and nirvana).

Nonduality as the nonduality of duality and nonduality.

If Cohen meant something other than one or more of the above when he used the term “nonduality” as I quoted him above, it was not evident. But aside from what Cohen may have  meant or not meant, let's assume that someone were to use the term “nondual” in a sense related to one or more of the senses that Loy lists, and that they were to say that there is a nonphysical or nonmaterial dimension or reality in addition to a physical dimension and that there is no reason why these two dimension cannot interact, and that in any case, the nonphysical or nonmaterial and the physical are ultimately nondual.

Saying that the ultimate nature of a proposed nonphysical or nonmaterial dimension and the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe is nondual is like saying that Nazis murdered millions of Jews but ultimately Nazis and Jews are human beings. So what? It's a non sequitur. It has no relevance to the issue.

There is either a nonphysical or nonmaterial dimension in addition to the spacetime quantum and classical physical universe or there isn't, and the ultimate nature of reality has no bearing on this.

If there is a nonphysical or nonmaterial dimension in addition to a physical dimension (where, again, “physical” is shorthand for “spacetime quantum and classical physical universe” and does not limit us to “things that have simple location” or that which has the property of extension in space), the nonphysical or nonmaterial dimension either does or does not causally interact with the physical, and the ultimate nature of reality has no bearing on this.

I hope that somewhat explains why I found Cohen's statement problematic.

All best,

Jim

 

HI all,
Just thought I'd put my 2 bits in. As Jim reported, I don't think we can infer anything metaphysical from mystical experiences. Otherwise they could be used to mean anything we want them to, which is probably how they have been used, historically. I think such states are naturally occuring events, no different than states induced by psychedelics. It is perhaps useful for some to attribute them to some supernatural cause such as God, or to argue that they are evidence of some metaphysical point, but there need be no necessary relation. In this regard, I can't help but think of Neem Karoli Baba who when Richard Alpert gave him some 'cid claimed that nothing happened. Well nothing happened, as we found out later from his cook, because he palmed the acid, then later gave it to a pair of unsuspecting pilgrims. No doubt they later attributed its marvelous effects to the “wonderous powers of the Guru.” This is how all these kenshos and samadhis strike me as well – as wonderous states used willy nilly as “evidence” for some equally wonderous teaching.  As for teachings such as Dzogchen or Pratyabhijna, while these may offer sophisticated and profound interpretations of consciousness and cognitive events, I think we need to keep in mind that they are essentially soteriological teachings (upadesha) designed to help us interpret ourselves and the world. The “philosophy” offered by such teachings is of a different kind than that being done by Chalmers et al .Teachings are essentially closed systems with implicit metaphysics. The “analysis” offered in them is not really driven by an openended search for the truth; their “analysis” is essentially designed to bring the student to view the world in a certain way, in accordance with a samyag-darshana. This being the case, any attempt to draw upon their metaphysics as if it constitued some form of “result” would simply be a case of reasoning in a circle. If there is a point to be made from such introspective traditions it is one that has already been made by others like Nagel, that the phenomenological experience, or whatever you want to call it, is “irreducible.” But we don't need mystical states to make that point. The simple fact of awareness will suffice.

 

Julian,

A lot of the contemplative literature I'm referencing does come from a pre-scientific time period, but not a pre-rational one.  As Wilber has acknowledged, a number of the key contemplative texts of these traditions are what he would classify as third-tier, not first.  There are certainly many things (post)modernity can “add” to the knowledge of these traditions - not only supplementing them, but in some areas also correcting them - but I think it is a mistake to assume that the 100+ years' of Western psychological knowledge should be imagined as sitting squarely on top of these traditions, in a position of inherent superiority.  I believe some of these traditions have charted “territory” that modern Western psychological traditions have yet to penetrate.

You asked about our personal experiences in this area.  I'm sure most participants on this thread could give accounts of extensive experiences with meditation.  Here is mine:  Like you, I have engaged in many forms of contemplative practice, from meditation to yoga to martial arts to sweat lodges and vision quests to “transpersonal” therapy (with transpersonal and Diamond Approach therapists).  I have never used drugs or intoxicants of any kind, however.  Here is a brief resume of my experience in particular with meditation and inquiry:  I started meditating 22 years ago.  I lived for a year at a Buddhist ashram on the island of Java, where I practiced meditation and studied Buddhist texts daily.  I lived for an additional year at a Krishnamurti center in India, where I practiced meditation and group inquiry on a regular (and frequently quite intensive) basis.  I have attended a number of 10-day intensive vipassana retreats, where we practiced meditation for 16-18 hours a day.  I have attended Dzogchen retreats at monasteries on several occasions in Nepal.  I lived for three years at the Ligmincha Institute, studying and practicing regularly with the head teacher there, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.  I have attended a number of intensive three-week retreats in the summers, where we practiced a number of forms of meditation and yoga (from Tantric and Dzogchen traditions).  And I maintain a regular meditation practice, and have been actively engaged in TSK meditation and inquiry for a number of years now.

I am curious whether you have actually engaged in the actual intensive, programmatic forms of contemplative training which the texts indicate will actually lead to very particular indicators of attainment (including the “side effects” of various forms of paranormal experience).  In my case, I have - and I have experienced a number of the states and experiences that the traditional texts “map out.”

So, in this area, my experience differs from yours.  I have experienced things which I believe many people would consider “paranormal” - and in my travels, studies, and interactions with practitioners and teachers from around the world, I have also come across accounts which I consider credible (in addition to many other stories which I do not consider credible or reliable).

Best wishes,

Balder

 

Delia,

Thank you for the thoughts you've added to this conversation.  I agree that ‘pain' is a good doorway in to an embodied exploration of body and mind - the physical and mental ‘poles' of our being.  What isn't clear to me in what you wrote, however, is the relationship between energy and awareness or the phenomenal.  You described the ‘intrinsic link' between matter and energy, but I'm not sure if you were equating that to the link between matter and mind, or simply using it as an analogy of a similar link between matter and mind.

Can you expand a bit on what you were saying?

Best wishes,

Balder 

 

I'm sorry, Julian.  Can you tell me which questions I've yet to answer?  I'm trying to keep up with several conversations at once on this “thread.”

 

Thanks, Julian.
 

You wrote:  what make you of this and what do you say to the suggestion that there is a law of diminishing returns on the paranormal the further we get from the magic and mythic periods in history? why do most city dwelling westerners never experience anything - not one single thing that might lead them to believe in the supernatural, when villagers in india 200 years ago (perhaps even now) would most likely be 100% predisposed to believe and to explain their world in that way?

Well, I think you're mixing two things - mythological ways of thinking and explaining things, and paranormal experiences.  Most certainly, we have found rational, scientific ways to describe the world that render older, mythological models obsolete.  But 1000 years ago as well as now people may sometimes experience something like extra-sensory perception.  1000 years ago, a native of the American continent (say, a Dine' or Navajo) might have attributed the experience to the function of nilchi'i or holy winds.  Now, a modern native of the same continent might look for other ways to explain it that will pass muster in our modern, rational, scientific age (where “it” represents a clearly anomalous occurrence, not something that can be easily dispensed with by attributing it to wishful thinking, psychological projection, or chance).  I believe there still are such “its,” and many residents of modern Western cities experience them.

You wrote:  given what we now know about  a) the healthy psyche and its potential journey through the depths of the unconscious via deep experiential practice,

b) given what we now know about the varieties of the pathological psyche and the close relationships between  spiritual altered states and paranoid/psychotic states,

c) given that it seems that there is an interesting correlation between the advancement of science, psychological knowledge our understanding of the brain etc and the diminishing reports of the paranormal might we not perhaps infer a kind of relationship?

What we now know about the psyche and its potential journey through the depths of the unconscious does not in all respects surpass knowledge that has been preserved in at least a handful of profound, practice-oriented, rigorously structured contemplative vehicles.  We have genuine knowledge which can genuinely and powerfully supplement these disciplines, and which highlights core psychological processes which these traditions did not notice, but Western psychological knowledge is not clearly superior to these contemplative traditions in all respects.  As I said above, Eastern contemplative traditions have pushed into territory that modern Western psychological and psychiatric disciplines have not entered or understood. 

You said that the three questions you listed provided sufficient lenses for “explaining away” paranormal-seeming experiences.  In my experience, the events I'm referring to as genuinely paranormal cannot be accounted for by taking any of those angles on them - though I recognize the things you are highlighting as valid in their own right (e.g., that there is a relationship between some altered states typically described as “spiritual” and mental illness, and that modern scientific knowledge has rendered a number of ancient beliefs and causal explanations obsolete). 
 

You wrote:  in answer to your question - no i have not engaged in formal systematic training under traditional tutelage unless you count ten day retreats and 3 months in a very eclectic ashram. but i have done probably over 100 hours of holotropic breathwork under the guidance of someone trained by grof and as i am sure you know this is a process that is designed to engage and awaken the transpersonal.

I'm not that familiar with Grof's work, though I've read his Mind Beyond the Brain and several essays by him or his students.

If you have the interest, I certainly would recommend entering into a more rigorous form of contemplative training within an established tradition (not just in an “eclectic” - and probably New Age - ashram, or with such a new and still-experimental method as Grof's).  I can't say for sure that such experience would change your perspective in a fundamental way, but it might broaden your knowledge and increase your respect for the rich, sophisticated, systematic traditions which you currently dismiss as barely out of magic and mythic.

You wrote:  no psychedelics? have you looked at much of the literature that suggests the psychedelic basis for many spiritual traditions including the vedic culture?

You mean soma and the like?  Yes, I have.  I just haven't been particularly interested in that approach to mystical transformation - in bypassing the training involved and just plopping altered experiences in your lap, I think it is too shot through with potentials for misunderstanding and abuse to warrant serious consideration on my part.

~*~

P.S.  About Wilber's endorsements … something is wrong there!  I agree with your “god help us.”  I've never understood why he endorses some of the people he does. 

 

Hi Jim, Hope you're having a nice weekend too. My computer is down .  :(  I'm hanging in there, though.  :) At an internet cafe … .

In terms of the causal closure principal, I really don't find that very meaningful. It seems to say, if we can find one relevant perspective on an event (one “cause”), that's all we need, and any other perspective added to it would violate that one perspective, and that's wrong because we've made it a principal that one is sufficient. There can be more than one perspective, more than one “cause.” It may appear to us that this is the cause, but a person with deeper awareness may say, “No, that only appears to be the cause; there's a deeper cause if you can see this  …” It depends on what sort of awareness we have and how many perspectives we can take on something.


The nazi metaphor isn't making sense either. What Cohen was doing was trying to describe something he witnesses and experiences in his own life–something many others have seen as well–in language, which is very difficult to do. So he was saying that there are forces that most people don't see that impact spacetime events but that really the forces are not ultimately other than us–just a far more subtle part of us. So, not Julian or David or Jim doing it–but a subtler part of Us doing it, the nonmaterial part of us. He's just trying to describe something that's very difficult to describe, hitting it from two sides, so to speak. It's a bit of a paradox–not our gross self but not ultimately other; our nonmaterial self.

He's basically saying that our Self is multidimensional, with gross levels, subtle levels, causal levels, ultimately nondual, and even the non-gross levels can impact the manifest realm. So if he left out the nondual part, someone could mistake him to mean some ET or angel impacting the gross realm. He says it's ultimately nondual, and we know he means some subtle, nonmaterial, nonpersonal part of ourselves.

Best,

David

 

On the whole, It seems to me that whether or not something is a supernatural interpretation or a spritual experience all lies in the mind and experience of the beholder.  Attempts to verify authenticity either way will generally prove inconclusive because science is limited by its reliance upon the five senses as the gateway to all knowledge. 

 

Hi Balder,

“I agree that ‘pain' is a good doorway in to an embodied exploration of body and mind - the physical and mental ‘poles' of our being.  What isn't clear to me in what you wrote, however, is the relationship between energy and awareness or the phenomenal.  You described the ‘intrinsic link' between matter and energy, but I'm not sure if you were equating that to the link between matter and mind, or simply using it as an analogy of a similar link between matter and mind.”

You ask a great question: what is the relationship between energy and awareness (or the phenomenal)?

Scientifically energy has a physical basis. It is not just an ephemeral feeling achieved by those who are “spiritually attuned,” as in: “Could you feel the energy in that room, man? Amazing!”

We as physical beings are continuously creating, storing, using, managing and often wasting energy. One example of bioenergy: The magnetic charges between polarized molecules in our bodies necessary for numerous and basic physiological functions such as heart beats (via sodium, potassium, and calcium ions, etc.)—exemplifies the creation, use, and distribution of physical bioenergy to promote function.

Energy can be created from matter. And energy can promote function. Therefore, I suggest that the relationship between energy and awareness is this: Energy can promote the function of awareness giving awareness a physical basis.

What we cannot know until we have already lived our lives, however, is “How much capacity do I have to create and maintain sufficient bioenergy to sustain and nurture complex levels of awareness?”

Some biophysical energy we can manipulate during life with exercise and diet, etc. Some energy we cannot manipulate because it's inherent in the mitochondria we inherit from our moms and the DNA (and subsequent organs and limbs) we inherit from both parents. That's genetics—or in Chinese medicine terminology—Jing.

Some folks can smoke and drink and party their ass off, remaining highly alert, cognitive and aware. Others can exercise daily and still drown in depressive or bipolar moods that cloud their awareness, and therefore, require supplementary herbals, pharmaceuticals, or other forms of medicine to anchor their minds. Still others can eat the purest foods on well regulated diets with ample herbal and nutriceutical formulas, yet remain unable develop cognitive or psychological development beyond a 5th-6th grade level.

Therefore, bioenergy from material substance is intrinsically linked with awareness through its ability to support awareness and provide a foundation for awareness to develop. Yet it does not absolutely necessitate the growth or developmental quality of awareness.

The development of awareness often requires environmental stimulus: conditioning and socialization (of sorts).

To begin to explore this position, I would like to suggest that there are different levels and depths of awareness that can be developed/grown.

Example: Just a moment ago I was aware of my thoughts, yet not very aware of my typing those ideas on this computer I am typing on. Then as I became aware that I was typing these ideas, I also became aware that I am a person typing some thoughts on a computer. And then I became aware that I am a female person typing thoughts in my living room in California on this computer. This expansion of awareness went on and on and on for several minutes.

So here's a couple quick questions…

Was that an expansion of “awareness” or an expansion of “a story?” Was that an expansion of awareness or was that an expansion of reinforcement of conditioning? Was that actually awareness?

Again, I feel that awareness does have physical roots, and is not purely or separately mental. Most animals, fish and insects are skillful adepts in the area of awareness. For example, in a wooded glade, a deer becomes aware of us often much faster than we are of it. Where we may be different than the deer as humans is that we are much more aware of seperate-ness and names and other such things having to do with the development of language and symbolic concepts.

Another example of awareness rooted in the physical world, is our immune systems, which are continuously sorting what is “us (red blood cells, epithelial cells)” and what is “not us (antigens like viruses or protozoans)” with the use of various T cells, B cells, antibodies, macrophages, and other leukocytes. This requires a certain level of biophysical “awareness.” And it is similar to the thermostat analogy someone mentioned earlier in the discussion.

With that said, awareness can be empowering. Awareness can alert the deer to run or to be quiet and go unnoticed. Awareness can allow us to resist viruses and bacteria and other pathogens that would otherwise loot our bodies' resources mercilessly. Awareness can give us the opportunity to respond. Essentially, if our levels of awareness organization and systems are sophisticated enough, it provides us the option to choose.

And choice is the key to understanding and exploring our spirituality. Choice. Awareness is just the development of the ability to grasp that key, and turn it in the locks of phenomena.

This is why I initially was drawn to discuss pain. Pain as limitation. Pain as the inability to be free…including the freedom to choose preferential options.

Our bodies with which we are intertwined and are not separate from (while we are living at any rate), are without question complex and highly, highly organized. Therefore, it only makes sense that our ability to be aware of our environment, stimulation, input and (yes) even ourselves is very sophisticated.

In Chinese medicine there is no separation between body and mind, they are the same thing along a continuum of that which is more aggregate and solid and that which is more refined and insubstantial. The symbol for “Qi” includes a glyph for rice being cooked and heated producing steam. Qi is represented by a very material grain of rice, the process of heating that rice, and the nourishing steam that rises. Our bodies are like the material rice, living and conditioning is the process of cooking the rice, and our minds are the nourishing steam that develops.

Balder, I hope this gives a clearer idea of my intent. Thanks for your great question.

-d

 

Hi Julian and James! :)

Been so very busy with new work and returning to school. Hope to reconnect more regularly with my friends and the planet very soon!

LOL!

-d

 

In light of some of the recent conversation about physicalism, the supervenience of the mental on the physical, and the question of the irreducibility of qualia or phenomenal, I highly recommend reading this chapter from Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, by Jaegwon Kim. (Delia, he also deals with the question of pain.)

I had been looking for articles on or by Jaegwon Kim, since I knew he was a non-reductive physicalist who appealed to the concept of supervenience to explain the relationship between mind and matter.  But apparently he has recently moved away from physicalism, arguing that it is not sufficent, in itself, to crack the “world knot,” e.g. the hard problem of consciousness.  As the title of his book suggests, he still advocates a view which is largely “physicalist,” but he has come to believe that the phenomenal is irreducible and cannot be accounted for by purely physicalist principles. 

Interestingly, quite a few (formerly materialist) philosophers of mind have recently moved away from the physicalist and materialist paradigm, at least with regard to explaining the “problem of consciousness”: Terry Horgan, Stephen White, Joseph Almog, Torin Alter, George Bealer, Laurence BonJour, Paul Boghossian, Tyler Burge, Tim Crane, John Foster, Brie Gertler, George Graham, W.D. Hart, Ted Honderich, Steven Horst, Saul Kripke, Harold Langsam, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Trenton Merricks, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Adam Pautz, David Pitt, Alvin Plantinga, Howard Robinson, William Robinson, Gregg Rosenberg, A.D. Smith, and Richard Swinburne.

 

Hi James, Bruce, and David, next week I will try to respond to your comments to me above.

I just saw Bruce's comment where he mentions Jaegwon Kim and recommends a chapter from Kim's book Physicalism, Something Near Enough. I wrote a paper on Kim for a distance-learning-for-credit course in philosophy of mind offered by Oxford. I highly recommend the entire book Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough.

In the book, Kim makes it clear that he is not a nonphysicalist. He does not believe that persons have or are immaterial or nonphysical souls that can survive bodily death. He rejects an “ontology of immaterial minds.”

He accepts and argues in support of the causal closure principle. This is the principle that Alan Wallace and Ken Wilber seem to find very hard to accept. In his book The Taboo of Subjectivity, Alan Wallace complains about acceptance of the closure principle among scientists, and in conversation with Wallace at Integral Naked, Wilber says:

There are at least three different ways to approach the closure problem. The non-approach is “That’s just it, nothing to say.” That’s such a pigheaded response. First of all, it’s like why on earth, if you look at evolution itself, why does it keep winding itself up in these orders of complexity? The closure principle doesn't explain why dirt gets up and starts writing poetry. It’s incomprehensible to me that somebody can actually look at you with a straight face and say something like that. Nonetheless, there are a lot of them out there at Jane Loevinger’s stage five and they all seem to believe it.

I consider nothing Wilber says here worthy of a response, but I quote it to show that Wilber apparently is diametrically opposed to an important aspect of Kim's approach to philosophy of mind.

In Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, Kim writes:

As far as physical causal closure goes, there may well be entities and events outside the physical domain, and causal relations might hold between these nonphysical items. There could even be sciences that investigate these nonphysical things and events. Physical causal closure, therefore, does not rule out mind-body dualism–in fact, not even substance dualism; for all it cares, there might be immaterial souls outside the spacetime physical world. If there were such things, the only constraint that the closure principle lays down is that they not causally meddle with physical events–that is, there can be no causal influences injected into the physical domain from outside.

This is exactly the principle the acceptance of which Wilber says means that someone is at “Jane Loevinger's stage five.”

Kim says in Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough only that certain aspects of phenomenological states are irreducible, and those aspects are what he calls “intrinsic qualities of qualia,” for example, “the fact that yellow looks like this, that ammonia smells like that, and so on.” And he says that these irreducible aspects of phenomenological states are “causally impotent.”

Thus, Kim is not talking about any aspects or properties of consciousness or mind which can be said to reincarnate or communicate at a distance in some paranormal way or leave the body during OBEs or NDEs, because reincarnation and paranormal events and literal OBEs and NDEs would require mental or conscious properties with causal powers, and mental qualities that are causally impotent do not qualify.

Kim's ideas were critiqued by David Ray Griffin in an article published in an issue of Process Studies, and Kim responded, and his response may be found here. Here is a passage from Kim's response to Griffiin:

To me, it is a form of philosophical indulgence to purposely and consciously build into our foundational metaphysics exactly what we want to protect and save. Doing metaphysics is difficult and rewarding because we want to begin with an austere fund of basic resources and try to get, and explain, other things that we want out of it. To begin metaphysics with all that we want to preserve is a form of what Frank Jackson has called “big list” metaphysics: you would be doing this kind of metaphysics if your ontology consisted merely of making up a list of all that you believe to exist. “Serious metaphysics,” as Jackson calls it, enters the scene when you begin with an austere and sparse foundation and endeavor to show that it is enough to yield the things you want to save.

I am not suggesting that Griffin begins with all that he wants to save in the way of human consciousness, mental causation, and free agency. That would have been a “wish list” metaphysics, to go along with Jackson’s “big list” metaphysics. But Griffin’s metaphysical foundation – the foundation of his panexperientialism – does remind one of a metaphysical wish list.

I am inclined to agree with what Kim says here, that Griffin's metaphysysical foundation, the foundation of his panexperientialism, which is built on Whitehead's ideas, is reminiscent of a metaphysical wish list. I think this is true of any number of pan-consciousness or pan-interior approaches, though there are exceptions.

Balder says that quite a few formerly “materialist” philosophers of mind have recently moved away from “the physicalist and materialist paradigm.” Some of the philosohpers on the list were never physicalists. Plantigna and Swinburne have been defending supernaturalism for decades and have never been materialists or physicalists, and Kripke has never been a physicalist.

Balder has mentioned David Chalmers several times as someone who has an alternative to physicalism regarding the mind-body problem or hard problem of consciousness.

I want to note that Chalmers, in addition to describing himself as a complete atheist with no spiritual views whatsoever, says that his ideas on consciousness are “entirely compatible with a contemporary scientific worldview, and is entirely naturalistic.”

He says that, “there is nothing antiscientific or supernatural about this view.”

He says that he does not dispute that “the physical world is causally closed” (which I guess means that to Wilber, Chalmers must be at Jane Loevinger's stage five).

(Bruce, would you at some point give as brief an account as you can of what you mean by terms like “the physicalist and materialist paradigm”? As you define “materialism,” what does it exclude that you do not think should be excuded? Also, are you aware of the distinction between metaphysical materialism and methodological materialism? Every time you use the term “materialism” I don't know what you mean, and I suspect that you mean something that I would reject  – I am not a metaphysical materialist, for example – but that you might think I would accept. I think it would be helpful for us to get some clarity around that. Thanks, Jim)

 

Not here.

 

Hi, Jim,

I had been intending to write a post to clarify where I'm coming from on a few of these issues, so thanks for the prompting to go ahead and do so now.

I didn't say that Kim was a nonphysicalist, or even suggest that.  I just indicated that he believes that physicalism, by itself, is not sufficient - not that he rejected it altogether.  Here are the concluding words to the chapter I recommended:  “The arguments that have been presented here already suggest that physicalism will not be able to survive intact and in its entirety. We will try to determine how much of it can survive, and we will see, I hope, that what does survive is good enough for us” (italics mine).

I recommended the chapter, not because I agree with everything in it, but because it provided an example of a physicalist who has come to regard that perspective is incomplete to the extent that certain aspects of consciousness cannot be reduced to its terms.  The “ground” he cedes to consciousness (irreducible qualia) is admittedly rather slim, and, as you point out, this irreducible aspect of consciousness remains causally ineffective in his view.  (Melnyk disagrees with his conclusion that, for any mental property to be causally efficacious, it must be identical with instances of physical properties:  “I hold (and have argued elsewhere) that it suffices for the causal efficacy of the mental if mental property-instances are realized by physical property-instances, in a precise sense of ‘realized' that doesn't require identity between the mental and physical property-instances.”)

Earlier in this conversation, I believe I stressed that, when I appear to speak against physicalism or materialism, I am not rejecting them wholesale; I am just saying that I do not believe that either perspective (the narrower materialist view, or the broader physicalist view) is capable of solving the “problem of consciousness” (by which I mean, explaining consciousness, without remainder, in wholly physical terms).

To be clear, I am not trying to argue for the existence of disembodied souls or a vast disembodied Mind (God) “outside” of the physical cosmos.  When I criticize materialism, I am really just looking at two ways in which I believe it is misguided and inadequate (as a metaphysical perspective): by taking objective, insentient, non-phenomenal, quale-less physical systems as historically and ontologically primary, it 1) pulls the world-knot tight, because (in my opinion) no purely physical description can account for all aspects of consciousness without remainder; and 2) it typically leads to some form of reductionism, with the almost inevitable devaluation and demotion of subjective language and experience - a type of “it-ism” and “quadrant absolutism,” to use some Wilberian terms - with eliminative materialism standing as one of the more extreme examples of this.

I'm interested in discussing this with you further, but it seems to me that Wilber's perspectivism (while clearly not as tightly argued or technically sophisticated as other proposals in the field, at least that I have seen so far) is nevertheless compatible with a “physicalist account” at all levels of the cosmos.  In Integral Spirituality (and elsewhere), Wilber argues that matter should no longer be treated as the “bottom rung” of the Great Chain of Being, but as the “outside” of every event or perspective-occasion in the Kosmos.  What this entails, as I'm sure you know, is that there are no disembodied “minds” floating around - that you will not find any instance of “mind” or “consciousness” without physical correlates.

I understand that you may not find this account compelling - and if that is so, I'd like to hear why - but in my opinion, this view does have a certain elegance and explanatory power that is attractive to me, and it does not involve (certainly it doesn't require) the antiscientism or supernaturalism you mentioned in your last post.

Best wishes,

Bruce

 

does anyone else have big grey squares obscuring large portions of about the above three comments?

Hi Julian, in my brain maybe, but not on the monitor! I checked with both the Firefox 2.0.0.12 browser and the AOL 9.0 Security Edition browser and I get no gray squares.

I like your recent comment to Shanita. Very well put.

I do not consider myself any kind of “materialist” and I don't like the term, as it is a loaded term in spiritual, transpersonal, and integral circles.

I would say that I am a “methodological naturalist,” which simply means that if someone makes an empircal claim, we must test it using empirical methods. This says nothing about what does or doesn't exist. It doesn't rule out reincarnation, bardos that exist beyond the brain, and so on and so forth.

If someone claims that there are advanced lamas who can literally pass through solid walls – and they mean this in a literal way – it seems only reasonable that we should approach the claim with healthy skepticism and should not accept it as true until we are presented with emprical evidence that demonstrates it to be true – for it is an empirical claim. If someone were to say, “Well, the lama can only demonstrate this in front of people who aren't skeptical,” I would hope they wouldn't expect to be taken seriously.

Methodogical naturalism has nothing to say about non-empirical claims, meaning claims that cannot be tested or falsified through empirical means, so no one need worry that methodological naturalism is going to try to undermine beliefs in things which cannot be tested or falsified through empirical means.

But if something can only be tested through meditative or contemplative methods, then, as you point out and has many people have been pointing out for years, there is the little matter of interpretation.

in the book The Bodhgaya Interviews, the Dalai Lama says:

Liberation in which 'a mind that understands the sphere of reality annihilates all defilements in the sphere of reality' is a state that only Buddhists can accomplish. This kind of moksa or Nirvana is only explained in the Buddhist scriptures, and is achieved only through Buddhist practice.

Questioner: “So, if one is a follower of Vedanta, and one reaches the state of satcitananda, would this not be considered ultimate liberation?”

His Holiness: “Again, it depends upon how you interpret the words, 'ultimate liberation.' The moksa which is described in the Buddhist religion is achieved only through the practice of emptiness. And this kind of nirvana or liberation, as I have defined it above, cannot be achieved even by Svatantrika Madhyamikas, by Cittamatras, Sautrantikas, or Vaibhasikas. The follower of these schools, though Buddhists, do not understand the actual doctrine of emptiness. Because they cannot realize emptiness, or reality, they cannot accomplish the kind of liberation I defined previously.”

My only point in quoting this is to show that how one interprets meditative states matters, and here we see the Dalai Lama implicitly acknowledging this.

In his recent book The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama says:

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims,” he writes. No one who wants to understand the world “can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics.” (Cut and pasted from a NY Times review of the book.)

Does this make the Dalai Lama a “materialist,” meaning a metaphysical materialist? Of course not. All I've been trying to say is the exact same thing the Dalai Lama is saying here.

Let's not forget that Thomas Rich, AKA Osel Tendzin, who Chogyam Trungpa appointed to be his dharma heir, had unsafe sex with students and passed the AIDS virus to one of them, a young man who then passed it to his girlfriend. Rich (who died of AIDS) did not tell the students he had sex with that he had AIDS.

Here is Rich's explanation for his behavior:

Thinking I had some extraordinary means of protection, I went ahead with my business as if something would take care of it for me.

 

It seems to me, Jim, that you may have been defending yourself a bit against charges I was not leveling at you (or your position).  I agree with everything in your most recent post and have no problem with methodological naturalism. To the extent that Wilber advocates the use of the three strands of science in each of the major perspective dimensions, I think he might qualify as a methodological naturalist as well. 

Whenever I have described materialism as an inadequate perspective, it is materialism as metaphysics that I have been critiquing.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  You posted at just about the same time as I did, Jim, in case you missed my previous post …

 

Hi Bruce, I know that you did not say that Kim was not a nonphysicalist, and I also know that you have not argued for the existence in disembodied souls and that's why I didn't address that comment to you. I did think that someone reading your comment about Kim might think that because he has moved away from physicalism, as you noted, that he has moved toward super- or supra-naturalism, or toward a worldview akin to that of a Dean Radin or Rupert Sheldrake, and that's because I know from experience that a lot of people who read Wilber or who are just into “spiritual” stuff don't understand how terms such as “physicalism” are used in philosophy. This is why I think it may be useful to clarify what we mean by terms like “materialism” and “physicalism.”

I hope that it is now clear to you that I have not been arguing for any kind of metaphysical materialism, metaphysical naturalism, or metaphysical physicalism. I do find that I am very close to Kim in his thinking on the mind-body or hard problem, though I am not sure about his epiphenomenalism regarding what he refers to as a “residue” of consciousness, i.e., what he considers the irreducible aspects of qualia.

It's late (I'm in the central time zone) and I'm out of steam. More next week, be well,

Jim

 

I look forward to your thoughts, Jim.  And to yours, Julian, once you take care of those annoying grey qualia!

I want to acknowledge the mistake I made when I posted that list of thinkers several posts ago.  The first several were indeed physicalists who later called that paradigm into question, but others were clearly not (Plantinga is a Christian; I didn't notice his name in the list I copied and pasted) – they are folks who tackle the mind-body problem in nonphysicalist terms.  I pulled all of the names from a paragraph on one of Chalmer's blogs, not noticing that he was grouping two different sets of people together.  I apologize for the sloppiness.

Best wishes,

B.

 

What are you looking for in particular, Julian?  I was already familiar with both – with the Dalai Lama's quote because I've read the book from which it came (The Universe in a Single Atom), as well as most of the books on the Mind and Life conferences the Dalai Lama has attended.  I've long respected him for his openness to science and modern knowledge and his overall pragmatic, non-dogmatic perspective.  As for Osel Tendzin, I think he was behaving (and believing) foolishly.

 

Hi James, thanks for your kind words.

You wrote:

 Jim

You said: “I do not think that appeals to the realization of emptiness or rigpa or abiding in One Taste or subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen can be used to establish whether or not consciousness is an emergent property of the quantum and classical physical world,” and you also note that these mystical states simply prove that such states exist, but they prove nothing else.

I tend to agree. This kind of begs the question, if not in such mystical states, then where will we find the most reliable source of answers to this question - hard science? neurobiological eveidence? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Also, from your reading of Wilber, do you think he does appeal to these mystical states as reliable sources of propositional knowledge?

I think that consciousness studies research should include first-person accounts, first-person accounts mediated by second-persons, and third-person research. There is an article in the recently published book The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness titled Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness. (Clicking on the link will open a PDF file in a new window.) I think the approach discussed in the article is a good one.

To be sure, there are people who go too far in the direction of privileging third-person approaches to consciousness studies, but there are also people who go too far in the direction of privileging first-person approaches. Although Wilber calls for an integral approach that takes into account what he calls left and right hand quadrants, at times I think he tends to lean too far in the direction of privileging first-person approaches.

For example, in a chapter devoted to Ken Wilber in his 2003 book Rational Mysticism, science writer John Horgan writes:

This, Wilber said, is the fundamental insight that mysticism gives us that materialistic Flatlanders have such a hard time accepting: Mind is not just an ephemeral epiphenomenon of matter; it is eternal. What if we humans are the only conscious beings in the universe and an asteroid strikes the earth and wipes out us and all other life? I asked. Where will spirit be then? Won’t the universe be reduced to Flatland, to dead, consciousless matter? Mystics are “pretty unanimous,” Wilber replied, in believing that mind rather than matter is the basis of reality and hence can never be extinguished. The material universe “is a manifestation of this pure awareness” perceived in deep meditation.

In Eye to Eye, first published in 1983, Wilber says that “transcendental methodology constitutes an experimental, verifiable, repeatable proof for the existence of Godhead, as a fact…” (italics in orginal).

Thankfully he has moved away from speaking in such terms.

Here is a quote from the Stanford Encylcopedia of Philosophy entry on mysticism:

as Rowan Williams has commented concerning Teresa of Avila, she would never have imagined that her [mystical] experiences alone were sufficient evidence for any truth. The criterion of authenticity for her experiences was how they related to subsequent concrete behavior, as judged by and within her religious practice. Mystical experience as such was given no special authority.

This jibes with my own views on how much special authority we should give to mystical experience.

Have a good day,

Jim

 

Hello all - I am posting in regards to this topic over at the alternative post Julian indicated he wanted to use for further discussion…see you over there…

-Shawn

 

HI Balder, I just posted something you in the thread that Julian asks us to redirect the discussion to, here.

David, when I respond to your last comment to me above, I'll respond over there.

Hi Shawn, I look forward to your post!

May we all be well,

Jim

 

Hi Bruce, I will continue responding to the oldest comment to me from you above, which I began a response to at another thread (the one Julian redirects us to in a recent post by him above).

You begin by quoting me:

You wrote:  You have noted that conventional distinctions between mental and physical do not hold “at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like rDzogs-chen,” and I agree but do not see how this is relevant to the kinds of questions I posed (not to you but to the general reader) in a previous comment. Someone who is brain dead either continues to exist as a person with the capacity for memory, thinking, imagination, cognition, perception, volition, and so on, or they don't. The fetus is either a reincarnated being carrying stored memories from previous lives, or it isn't. If people who are brain dead are still persons with the capacity for memory, etc., then removing them from life support may be ethically unwarranted. If the fetus is a reincarnated being, abortion may be ethically unwarranted.

You then say:

Yes, I agree.  Reincarnation is not a “cornerstone” of my own belief system, but I admit I consider that it is a possibility.  I attended several lectures by Dr. Ian Stephenson at the University of Virginia Medical Center on his research into this phenomenon, and I found some of it rather compelling.  I certainly do not see rebirth or reincarnation as scientifically validated, at this point, but Dr. Stephenson's work at least establishes it (in my opinion) as something that should not be dismissed out of hand, or as “mere folktale.”  “Rebirth” or “reincarnation” may both turn out to be unsatisfactory explanations of this phenomenon, but the confirmed continuation of specific memories over lifetimes (among genetically unrelated individuals) nevertheless poses a challenge to our current scientific models as well.

It sounds like we agree. I don't think that reincarnation should be dismissed as a folktale, and I think continuing research into it is warranted.

You quote me:

You wrote:  We could say that at subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen, conventional distinctions between victimizers and victims dissolve. But in the everyday world most of us do not want certain kinds of victimizers on the streets or having access to our children.

And then you say:

Sure.  Conventionally, it remains useful to make certain distinctions, and it is important to retain them.  But this argument is something of a non-sequitur, since the challenge to distinctions between categories such as mental and physical (as fundamental features of reality) is directly relevant to consideration of the validity of various metaphysical models which trade in just these distinctions on a fundamental level (whether materialist, idealist, or whatever).  You can move from the “challenge” to these categories posed by certain traditions of thought to formulate new models which do not rely on them, or at least that do not treat one or the other of them as the ultimate reductive category.

There are many philosophers who may have never heard of Dzogchen and who may know next to nothing about Buddhism who “challenge the distinctions between categories such as mental and physical.” For example, to the late American philosopher Donald Davidson, the mental and the physical are two different ways of describing the same events. Someone who likes Whitehead may substitute “occasions” for “events” without altering the meaning.

You quote me:

You wrote:  Consciousness either emerged as a product of increasing biological complexity from non-conscious precursors composed of non-conscious components or it did not. I do not think that subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen can help us decide if consciousness did or did not emerge.

And you say:

Can you explain your position here?  Are you saying that you think traditions such as Dzogchen are irrelevant and not even worth bringing into the picture when it comes to understanding anything “real” or true about the nature of our world?

I’m not saying anything remotely like that.

Or just that they aren't helpful in exploring the question of “emergence”?

If what you mean by “subtle levels of analysis in traditions like Dzogchen” refers to nonconceptual meditative practices, then yes, I am saying that that would not help us decide whether or not consciousness emerged. (If that is not what you mean by that phrase, please clarify what you do mean.)

In the latter case, I would agree that a tradition such as Buddhism is not directly helpful - though I wouldn't go so far as to say it is wholly irrelevant when it comes to evaluating which “elements” and “categories” of thought in a modern comprehensive worldview are best treated as fundamental.

I agree.

You quote me:

You wrote:  In one of his comments to you in a thread at my blog, Kelamuni says: IMO, there is no relation between mystical states, kenshos, samadhis, etc. and metaphysics; these states, and I include so called OBE's here, “prove” or imply the existence of nothing - other than that such states exist.

And you say:

I agree with this, within certain limits.  But if you accept this claim, then I think that, to be balanced, you must also admit that there is “no relation between the empirical findings of physics or biology and metaphysics” - that they cannot be taken as conclusive proof of a particular metaphysical worldview, such as materialism or physicalism.

Of course.

Now, if you start from materialistic presuppositions, such that mystical experience is considered, by definition, a “glaze” of ideation over purely physical processes (without reference to anything other than to preconditioned cultural beliefs, as Katz might argue), then of course the role of mystical experience for understanding anything about the nature of the world is severely bracketed. But I think it is important to recognize that the presupposition of a materialistic worldview is essentially the adoption of a metaphysical model which involves the bracketing out or exclusion of subjectivity from the outset, rather than a perspective that is simply “given” by the “facts at hand.”  What counts as “fact,” here, has already been determined in advance.

We agree.

In my view, while neither mystical nor empirical data can be taken as “proof” of a given metaphysical model, they can and should be considered together in the formulation of a worldview that accounts for the fullest, most comprehensive account possible.  That's the position I've been trying to argue for here.

Again, we agree. As I wrote to James (in a post I wrote several days after what you wrote above):

I think that consciousness studies research should include first-person accounts, first-person accounts mediated by second-persons, and third-person research. There is an article in the recently published book The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness titled Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness. (Clicking on the link will open a PDF file in a new window.) I think the approach discussed in the article is a good one.

Peace,

Jim

 

Hi David, Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. I hoipe your computer is back up (if you want it back up, that is!).

In terms of the causal closure principal, I really don't find that very meaningful. It seems to say, if we can find one relevant perspective on an event (one “cause”), that's all we need, and any other perspective added to it would violate that one perspective, and that's wrong because we've made it a principal that one is sufficient. There can be more than one perspective, more than one “cause.” It may appear to us that this is the cause, but a person with deeper awareness may say, “No, that only appears to be the cause; there's a deeper cause if you can see this  …” It depends on what sort of awareness we have and how many perspectives we can take on something.

The closure principle doesn't say that one cause is sufficient. It says that if a sufficient physical cause is found or may be inferred or if sufficient physical causes are found or may be inferred for a given physical event, we don't need to look outside physics (quantum and classical physics) for additional causes.

A simple example is that a light bulb goes out in a room. The cause may be that someone flipped the light switch. Or maybe a fuse blew, or the bulb burned out, or the plug came loose from the outlet. Someone who wishes to find a cause or reason for the light going out would most likely begin by checking any of the things I just mentioned. If so, they would be applying what is sometimes called methodological naturalism, meaning that they would be seeking a natural, as opposed to a supernatural cause for the light going out.

The nazi metaphor isn't making sense either. What Cohen was doing was trying to describe something he witnesses and experiences in his own life–something many others have seen as well–in language, which is very difficult to do. So he was saying that there are forces that most people don't see that impact spacetime events but that really the forces are not ultimately other than us–just a far more subtle part of us. So, not Julian or David or Jim doing it–but a subtler part of Us doing it, the nonmaterial part of us. He's just trying to describe something that's very difficult to describe, hitting it from two sides, so to speak. It's a bit of a paradox–not our gross self but not ultimately other; our nonmaterial self.

Sure there are forces that most people don't see that impact spacetime events. Quantum forces, subatomic forces, neuronal forces, gravitational forces, and so on. Do you personally believe that there are supernatural forces that impace spacetime events? I don't, but regardless of what one believes, no one on this earth has or has ever had a knock down argument in support of the thesis that supernatural causation occurs, and I think the burden of proof should be on those who say that it occurs. (Of course many people who believe in supernatural causation say that the burden of proof should be on those who say it's unlikely, but if we play that way with the burden of proof, anyone can assert anything and insist that those who disagree have the burden of proof to disprove the assertion. “There are gnomes living inside the sun, and if you are skeptical about that, the burden of proof is on you to say why it isn't so!”)

He's basically saying that our Self is multidimensional, with gross levels, subtle levels, causal levels, ultimately nondual, and even the non-gross levels can impact the manifest realm. So if he left out the nondual part, someone could mistake him to mean some ET or angel impacting the gross realm. He says it's ultimately nondual, and we know he means some subtle, nonmaterial, nonpersonal part of ourselves.

I wish I could find a link to the radio show. Tom Clark, the guest on the show who was in dialogue with Cohen, said at one point:

“…the sense that I get from your work, and others in What Is Enlightenment? magazine, is that despite what you just said, you really do have a dualist notion of the unmanifest and the manifest, the physical versus nonphysical, and the spiritual versus the material.”

And Cohen couldn't answer this. He struck me as having zero ability to discuss philosophical concepts. He did fine discussing self-help ideas, even when they had nothing to do with the topics under consideration. But he couldn't answer any of the tough questions posed to him without repeating what I consider spiritual sounding platitudes. The strongest answer he gave was “But the difference in our perspectives is, I would feel…that your perspective would tend to be reductionistic.” Imagine if Clark had said to Cohen, “I would feel that your perspective would tend to be flaky”? A lot of people seem to think that saying “Your perspective is reductionistic” actually settles anything.

Maybe this is all a matter of taste, I don't know.

In any case, be well.

Jim

 

Hello all,

Here are the links to the Tom Clark and Andrew Cohen debate that Jim referenced above for those interested:

Part 1

Part 2

Well worth an hour or so listenting in my opinion…

Shawn

 

Hi Shawn, Thanks for posting links to the radio show where Tom Clark and Andrew Cohen talked. I looked for links, including at the blog you maintain where I originally learned of the show, but couldn't find them. - Jim

 

HI Bruce. I just read the Bohm piece. I completely agree with Bohm, and I have agreed since I was in my late teens and early twenties (a long time ago as I am now 56), that  there is no absolute distinction between mind and matter.

Bohm writes:

The notion of soma- significance implies that soma (or the physical) and its significance (which is mental) are not separate in the sense that soma and psyche are generally considered to be; rather they are two aspects of one overall indivisible reality. By such an aspect, we mean a kind of view or a way of looking. That is to say, it is a form in which the whole of reality appears (i.e., displays or unfolds), either in our perception or in our thinking. Clearly, each aspect reflects and implies the other (so that the other shows in it). Although we describe these aspects by using different words, we imply that they are both revealing the one unbroken whole of reality, as it were from different sides (rather as two different two- dimensional views of an object may reveal the single whole object as it is in three dimensions).

I completely agree with this. This is similar to Donald Davidson saying that “the mental and the physical are two irreducibly different ways of describing and explaining the same objects and events.”

I have no problem at all with saying that “interiors go all the way down,” as long as we put limits on what we mean by “interiors.” I have no problem with saying that consciousness is in some sense ubiquitous, as long as we distinguish between human phenomenal consciousness and consciousness in some ambiguously nebulous broad sense.

As I have noted before, David Chalmers suggests that a maximally simple information processing system such as a thermostat may in some sense be conscious and that there may be “something it is like to be a thermostat.” How many people who find Ken Wilber's books in the New Age section of a bookstore, which is where his books are typically found, are likely to hear that and think that if thermostats are conscious, maybe they can think, and maybe their dead uncle's ghost is in the thermostat, or maybe Abe Lincoln is reincarnated as the thermostat?!

When someone like Chalmers suggests that consciousness goes all the way down or is ubiquitous, they do not mean this in any way that would satisfy a lot of religious and spiritually oriented people. They do not mean that some super intelligent consciousness is floating around waiting for brains to tap into it, and that this super intelligent consciousness existed “before the Big Bang.”

Anyway, I enjoyed the Bohm piece and will link to it again should anyone else want to read it.

Be well,

Jim

 

Jim, thank you for both of your most recent responses, and for taking the time to read the Bohm essay.   (I have a funny feeling that now that you are recommending it, instead of me, maybe other people here will be more interested or willing to read it…  :-) … ).

It does seem like we generally agree on a number of these issues – and that we're making headway in understanding one another's positions.  By “interiors,” I have not meant human-like interiors all the way down.  In a discussion on these issues I had with folks on Integral Naked a few years ago, we distinguished among several meanings of “consciousness” to facilitate communication – differentiating interiority-as-such (as an irreducible perspective on the whole) from relative degrees of consciousness or meaning-making, which we labeled C1, C2, C3, etc. (where the numbers might cover a range of consciousness-capacity from prehension to sensation to emotion to human consciousness, or whatever other levels or “degrees” one might postulate).

When Wilber talks about the quadrants going all the way down (and therefore interiors going all the way down) I believe he means it in the way we've been describing, or at least he accepts this way of viewing things as valid. 

Best wishes,

Balder

 

I'm sorry to hear that, Julian.  Get well soon!

 

Hi Balder, you're welcome and thank you! I've known since we began talking that you were not suggesting that human-like interiors go all the way down.

Be well,

Jim