This time, ami has a point....

[Verdad]

You didn't only imply the insult, you were quite specific with the insult.

You should probably re-read it then.
it would be nice if myth were used for descriptive purposes."her venus transiting his mars" is very sweet. But that's not what an Astrologer actually says, and you know that quite well.

The myths get used for the wrong purpose far too often. His SIL isn't describing things, she's explaining things by means of a tool that is useless for explanation. Like cutting fabric with a pair of pliers.

I’m sure Stephen can answer for himself, and I’m sure he can notice I poked him about something because I was curious what he’d reply but did not insult him in the way you suggest.

What’s bothering you, though, Stella? Do you think I’m sneaking in some kind of obscurantism through the back door? I’m in full agreement with what you say about “cutting with a pair of pliers”—but that goes both ways, no? Respect for science means not allowing it to be treated as a new religion.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I’m sure Stephen can answer for himself, and I’m sure he can notice I poked him about something because I was curious what he’d reply but did not insult him in the way you suggest.

What’s bothering you, though, Stella? Do you think I’m sneaking in some kind of obscurantism through the back door?

yeah, that's actually what it looks like to me. Your question was glib and ignored his main points. That's pretty insulting.

I’m in full agreement with what you say about “cutting with a pair of pliers”—but that goes both ways, no? Respect for science means not allowing it to be treated as a new religion.

And respect for science also means not allowing religion to be treated as a science, which is what his SIL does. Along with the vast majority of the human race.

 

[Stella_Omega]

When I insist on empirical evidence, she just howls, "Of course you want empirical evidence! You're a Taurus! And that proves my point!"

I'm an Aries, my father is Aquarius, my sister is Leo, my husband is Cancer, my daughter is Sag, my son is Pisces.

All of us prefer empirical evidence when we want to look at the world and its workings.

By using your sign as an explanation for your scientific bent she's absolving herself of her own intellectual laziness. SHE doesn't need empirical evidence, because she's Virgo or whatever.

 

[Verdad]

yeah, that's actually what it looks like to me. Your question was glib and ignored his main points. That's pretty insulting. And respect for science also means not allowing religion to be treated as a science, which is what his SIL does. Along with the vast majority of the human race.

His SIL’s apparent proselytizing sounds like a bad sign, that’s true. On the other hand, I’ve been curious enough to poke my nose into astrology just enough to know it’s a system of symbols of vertiginous complexity, a language, if you will.

I didn’t and don’t ‘believe’ in it and don’t even feel any affinity for it, but the pedant in me gets squirmy when I feel the wrong question being asked. That question is typically “and just how are these planets supposed to affect me?” While it’s a good question if someone claims they are (in which case, he’s the one introducing confusion), it’s not at all a good question for understanding what the game is about.

The game is about viewing reality in terms of a certain model, and it’s no more relevant whether there’s really a ‘drive’ in you that corresponds to ‘Venus’ than it is relevant whether there’s really such a thing as ‘self-esteem’. Both have value within a certain discourse, and only in as much as they serve a purpose. It gets retarded when “being a Virgo” becomes a justification and an abdication of free will, but I’ve seen evo biology (for example) used to the same end. Nothing is safe from that.

I guess I’m fascinated with misunderstandings and with different discourses clashing. Alternatively, I need to report in the Aspie thread.

 

[Stella_Omega]

His SIL’s apparent proselytizing sounds like a bad sign, that’s true.

And that was what he was talking about. So when he's debunking someone's proselyting, you accuse him of... proselyting?

You don't think that's insulting?

I do-- and it's so incredibly common.

The game is about viewing reality in terms of a certain model, and it’s no more relevant whether there’s really a ‘drive’ in you that corresponds to ‘Venus’ than it is relevant whether there’s really such a thing as ‘self-esteem’. Both have value within a certain discourse, and only in as much as they serve a purpose. It gets retarded when “being a Virgo” becomes a justification and an abdication of free will, but I’ve seen evo biology (for example) used to the same end. Nothing is safe from that.

Indeed. Evo Bio is a perfect example of what happens when people who live by belief run across a portion of science that is still only in the data-gathering stage-- and invest belief in it. Use it for answers when in fact it;s still mostly questions.

Or the guy yesterday who told me that his two supernatural experiences were enough "empirical evidence" to prove the existence of deities. When I told him that's not what "empirical" means, he accused me of arguing semantics. So I told him that's not what "semantics" is either...

Meanwhile of course, he is secure in his belief and making a film that will bring him a nice cash flow because it panders to that majority viewpoint.

Of course there's an "arrogant atheist college professor" character who is confronted by all the demonic shenanigans and learns that there really is a god. Or maybe he dies before the credits roll, depending on which version of the script gets final approval.

I pointed out that he doesn't understand what "atheism" is either. And then he trotted out similar arguments to the ones you just used, accused me of "proselytizing atheism."

 

[stephen55]

I don’t think I’ll go into the content of your beliefs, Stephen, but this is what I wonder: Do you ever notice they’re 100% perfectly in consensus with the mainstream authoritative views of your time? Does that, and the zealotry with which you hold them, ever make you suspicious? Like, "wait a minute, if this were the middle ages, would I be a Galileo or a guy with a pitchfork?"

Just curious.

Okay, I'm back and I'm not offended. I was a little testy last night when I was on but that's because I was also over on the GB, defending those docs in London Ontario who didn't feel it was appropriate to prolong the life of baby Joseph Maraachli.

The flack I get from the eyers, the Amis and the JBJs of this forum tell me that my beliefs are far from 100% in consensus with mainstream authoritarian views. As for zealotry...I was a little testy. I was also on my third wee dram. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa...

Were I in the middle ages, I doubt I'd be a Gallileo. That guy was seriously bright. People think of him as an early astronomer but he was so much more. He was professor of mathematics at Padua and one of the first genuine scientists in that he insisted on truth about the world coming from observation and experiment, as opposed to reading it from Aristotle.

He also (horror and heresy) published in both Latin and Italian, thereby allowing the common riff-raff to understand and much worse...question. It took serious cajones to do that. He was hauled up before the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy and he was guilty as sin. The official records speak of his heretical view of heliocentrism, but he was really being punished for bypassing the Church and taking his ideas straight to the people.

That Galileo's book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, had a character named Simplicio (simpleton) whom Galileo said was named after the Aristotelian philosopher Simplicius, when in fact everybody knew that Simplico really represented Pope Urban VIII, with his rigidly fixed insistence the the sun orbited the earth...it didn't help his case very much. Urban was seriously pissed and Galileo was rather lucky to get away with his life. Earlier in Galileo's career, Urban had been quite friendly towards the guy and that is likely why (my opinion) Galileo wasn't torched.

It's easy for me to post my rants in comfort and safety. Were I to do so publicly back in Galileo's time, I would likely have ended up like Giordano Bruno, another outspoken proponent of heliocentrism. The guy also proclaimed that all the stars up there were actually suns and that they likely had planets going around them. He didn't have any friends in high places and ended his career in flames, on Feb. 17, 1600.

Would I have been one of the guys with a pitchfork? I doubt it. Farming is not my thing. Also, like Mark Twain, when I find myself on the side of the majority, I try to pause and reflect. It's a quality I lacked in my misspent youth, which cost me dearly on occasion.

I don't have a clue what I would have been doing had I been born four hundred years earlier. I'm fortunate in that I'm here and now, casting verbal stones at all manner of shamans, priests, astrologers and the Deepak Chopras of this world. As much as they might want me boiled in their snake oil, they're limited to saying, "Of course you want empirical evidence. You're a Taurus! And that proves my point!!" Except it doesn't...

(added)...One more thought...

Recently, the Vatican issued a formal apology over it's persecution of Galileo. As for Bruno, they think they got it right.

"On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode". Despite his regret, he defended Bruno's persecutors, maintaining that the Inquisitors were "motivated by the desire to serve the truth and promote the common good, also doing their utmost to save his life" by trying to make him recant and subsequently by appealing the capital punishment with the secular authorities of Rome."
(Seife, Charles, "Vatican Regrets Burning Cosmologist", in ScienceNOW, March 1st, 2000.)

I really don't have a lot of respect for priests of any description.

 

[Verdad]

I'm glad you didn't take umbrage. Were I not a poor diplomat, a condition I blame entirely on being an Aries D) I would have remembered to point out I like to ask myself the questions I asked you. They've not made me a Galileo either, but at least I get to exercise my contrary streak!

That said, what gave me the urge to give you a poke? Probably my annoyance with modern myths. A bit of them seemed to me reflected in your words and merely gave me a cause.

Take this movie I've seen the other day, Agora. The movie is about the life of Hypatia, the female philosopher. I don't actually know anything about her beyond what you could find in a wiki article, but it was still enough to make me cry “bullshit!” Hypatia, it is true, died at the hands of Christians. That’s nasty enough right there, but the way the story is embellished is propaganda. She’s portrayed as a primitive version of a modern scientist and even conducts experiments (!) while the real Hypatia was a mathematician, a neo-Platonist/Plotinist, and would have abhorred empiricism.

In other words, a modern person would consider her every bit as obscurantist and mystical as her nemeses. The correct way of describing the clash that took her life would be to call it a clash of two religions/philosophies, probably with the usual underlining of politics and interest. Yet the way it’s presented to us it serves only to assign to the past a supposedly eternal antagonism of science and religion.

Incidentally, Bruno’s case (if I recall correctly?) follows a similar mold. He was into esotericism and such like (as was Tycho Brahe), and probably got on the wrong side of the establishment for that more than for science. That doesn’t make his burning less of a crime or the church of the day less of an oppressive institution, but perhaps it serves to remind us to look at conflicts and oppressions as they occur, instead of recognizing only what fits the grand narrative of the battle between science and religion. That narrative is largely a product of the 19th century (check Draper-White thesis) and it’s been controversial ever since, despite the hold it’s got on popular imagination.

As a fellow atheist (albeit not as rancorous toward religion as many), I’ve really got no hidden horse in this race other than a bit of compulsion to question stuff.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I'd be pathetically grateful to have one movie at hand that revises Hypatia to make her an empiricist-- just to offset three movies that manipulate the token scientist character to Discover the Wonders Of Faith-- or three dozen movies, most likely.

Which is, of course, a tangent.

But if you want to talk about "modern myths... "

 

[stephen55]

Alas, poor Hypatia, I never knew you.

I've read about her. Somewhere in my library is a book with a chapter devoted partly to her and her demise. I read that she was a very beautiful woman, highly intelligent and a professor of mathematics in Alexandria. The gist of her demise, according to this book, was that she was murdered by a group of Christians who felt that she was...

1) Far too bright for a woman
2) Far to independent for a woman
3) A woman doing a man's job
4) Very likely guilty of having sex out of wedlock
5) Not a virtuous woman and a pagan to boot

...all of which made her in their eyes, deserving of a horrific and tortured death.

I wish I could find that book. I also recall a theory that a high ranking Christian bishop in Alexandria was behind it all, but the author had no real evidence.

As for whether she was an empiricist, experimenting to test the real world, I have no idea. But if she was, that might have been just one more of her perceived sins.

I did gloss over the list of Bruno's sins. He was guilty of all kinds of heresy, including interesting beliefs about Jesus (That He was not divine and His mom was not a virgin). If his only sin was thinking that the stars are suns, he very likely would have been ignored. Going around spreading doubts about standard doctrine was not something the boys in Rome could ignore.

The game is about viewing reality in terms of a certain model, and it’s no more relevant whether there’s really a ‘drive’ in you that corresponds to ‘Venus’ than it is relevant whether there’s really such a thing as ‘self-esteem’. Both have value within a certain discourse, and only in as much as they serve a purpose.

Another of my favorite scientists was Stephen J. Gould. I think I've got every book he wrote. For those who may not know the name, he was a professor of biology and paleontology at Harvard. He was also Professor of Geology and Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the institution's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

He was also an important popularizer of science, writing an essay every month for Natural History magazine. He did this for three decades. His essays covered a bewildering range of topics, from childhood experiences, to baseball and of course, his field of evolutionary biology.

Like Richard Feynman, Gould did not see the game as viewing reality in terms of a certain model. When viewing reality, the only permissible lens is reality itself. That is, if you want to understand the real world. That's why it's very relevant that other models (as in ways of thinking) are excluded from science. It's also why in Gould's eyes (and many other science types) there is no battle between science and religion. The two fields are not on opposite sides of a fence. There is no fence. There is no dividing line. It's simply that the two fields have zero in common. Religion is the field of religious faith. Science is the field of the study of reality.

Gould called it "Non overlapping magisteria". Just as there is no possible conflict between say, plate tectonic geology and the study of Picasso's paintings, as they don't overlap in any way, there is no conflict between science and religion because they don't overlap in any way. Any perceived conflict is due to a misunderstanding of one, the other or both. Let the religious leaders educate us about religion and let the scientists educate us about reality. Just don't get confused by the Deepak Chopras of the world who think they know all about both fields and believe that they are one and the same.

In Gould's view, trying to reconcile religion and science is a useless waste of time, as is any attempt for one to claim superiority over the other. It's not even apples and oranges (which are both types of fruit). It's apples and plate tectonics. Each has absolutely nothing to do with the other, so why fuss about it?

 

[lustatopia]

Like Richard Feynman, Gould did not see the game as viewing reality in terms of a certain model. When viewing reality, the only permissible lens is reality itself. That is, if you want to understand the real world. That's why it's very relevant that other models (as in ways of thinking) are excluded from science.

Stephen, that's confusing way of stating Gould's and Feynman's position and a dramatic oversimplification of the problem of "knowledge."

Both Gould and Feynman recognized that our hypotheses and models of reality are not reality in and of themselves. Yet there is no way to know anything about reality without models and hypothesis.

At least since Wittgenstein it's been widely understood that our minds never actually come into direct contact with physical, exterior reality because our minds are an emergent property of trillions of electric interactions between the nuerons in our brains locked inside our skulls. Mind and thoughts are therefore transient electrical states probably best imagined as tiny electrical fields but immensely nonlinear and complex beyond belief.

Our minds can only "know" anything second, third, fourth or fifth hand through electrical data collected by our biomechanical sensory systems. Eyes, touch, taste, etc often amplified by our machines or through linguistic constructions such as mathematics, logic, theories, poetry, novels, sculpture, painting, music, ideas, etc.

So the idea that the "only permissible lens is reality itself" is misleading. What you mean to say that all our hypotheses must be constantly tested against empirical data-sets of observations of "reality." Right? A system has been invented to keep this constant testing of hypothesis to evidence honest. It's called the scientific method.

Even then we must confess that "reality" still remains a sacred mystery that can never be remotely comprehended in its full multi-dimensional, nonlinear complex. I would bet there is not a single serious scientist or philosopher of science on the planet who would claim to holistically "know" what "reality" even is. The best that scientists can do is capture high enough resolution of a particular problem that they can navigate a tiny portion of "reality" in order to, say, build a cyclotron or design a new anti-viral drug.

Reality isn't a "lens" it's the "subject" of the research.

Both Gould and Feynman were painfully aware that our minds isolated from the exterior world are in constant danger of forming models of reality that are so inaccurate as to fail to be useful.

We would do well to remember that in science there is no such thing as being wrong or right, bad or good. Those are lay value judgments applied from outside the realm of pure research science usually by administrators dispensing grants.

A hypothesis or model can only be at best be "useful" because its implications when tested against measurements taken directly from "reality" are not falsified. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TRUE HYPOTHESIS. Sorry for the caps. But this is very important to understanding how science works. All hypotheses, even theories of gravity, remain always and utterly tentative pending the next round of testing.

The most useful of all hypotheses yield implications which could not have been imagined without the hypothesis in the first place, even when those implications are falsified by new data. Got that? The scientific method is a way of evolving and projecting the rational inquiry process forward more than it is about defining "reality."

Nevertheless, the greatest of all hypotheses are "strange attractors" which seem to be forces of nature in and of themselves, as if they exist independent of our forming them in the first place, forcing shitloads of former disparate observations to coalesce into holistic and highly order "clouds" or model of certain aspects of "reality" and we call these vast and powerfully useful models grand names like "The Synthetic Theory of Natural Evolution." Grand theories about reality can often survive the failure of some of their foundational hypotheses as long the replacements don't point in an entirely new direction. Thus punctuated equilibrium replace phyletic gradualism in the 1980's without much effect on the overall implications of theory of evolution.

In fact our grandest theories in science, such as evolution and modern cosmology (also a branch of evolution) are so all encompassing that they have become our modern version of the great mythological traditions they have largely displaced. So much for the separation of science and the numinous. At the highest level of conscious awareness the two merge seamlessly.

When I looked up at the Milky Way one dark night with my child and he asked, "Dad, how how did we get here? and Is there anybody out there." I found myself reflexively beginning with the mythology of MY modern science-based culture. It wasn't Biblical Genesis or an aboriginal creation story, but it might just as well have been...

I began, "Well, kiddo, in the beginning... 15-trillion years ago there was nothing. Absolutely nothing, no light, no stars, there wasn't even space for nothing to happen in and if you could have a clock -- which you couldn't since there was nothing -- its hands wouldn't move because there was no Time. And then all the sudden - for reasons unknown - from a piece of nothing smaller than the smallest piece of other nothings, but maybe slightly bigger as well, exploded the whole bloody universe...."

And that's the state of the art of our knowledge about reality!

So you see we are all wandering aimlessly through the galaxy. At least we have each other. Hey, enjoy the ride!

 

[Verdad]

Gould called it "Non overlapping magisteria". Just as there is no possible conflict between say, plate tectonic geology and the study of Picasso's paintings, as they don't overlap in any way, there is no conflict between science and religion because they don't overlap in any way. Any perceived conflict is due to a misunderstanding of one, the other or both. Let the religious leaders educate us about religion and let the scientists educate us about reality.

I think for most intents and purposes that’s exactly the right way of looking at it. Lots of time it ought to be as simple as not trying to bake a sandwich in a DVD drive or burn a DVD in a toaster, but the problematic part is the same part Lustatopia caught in his lovely posts.

If Gould’s statement were restated into something like “Empirical reality is the only permissible yardstick of scientific success,” it would be an okay statement of intention, although it would still run into troubles. (In recent times, for example, string theory, with its problems of testability, presents new fodder to the issue known as demarcation problem.) But to call ‘reality’ its own lens? That’s pretty much nonsense.

Probably everyone knows the old parable of blind men and the elephant, but it might be a propos to cite this poem version:

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind. (click to continue)

A macho scientists might want to say “cute, but I'm not blind” or accuse the poem of belittling human abilities in order to make people submit to some thing or other, but I rather think it illustrates Lustatopia’s points and encourages one to think of wonders of both ‘reality’ and the human mind. It also fosters a healthy suspicion toward anyone who claims to have it nailed down, regardless of the lingo in which he dresses it up.

 

[stephen55]

Verdad, I'm a retired backwoods country doc, not a philosopher, let alone a philosopher of science. The Wittgensteins, Poppers and Feyerabends of the world all have good and valuable things to say. Most (or all) of it, a guy like me skims over, muttering, "yeah...yeah...maybe...uh-uh", and then put my head back in the sand, which is to say, I go on with life using, for the most part, first principles.

I understand at some level, the idea that info goes into and then around and around my brain in circuitous fashion (did I say that?) and all manner of filtering, disorganizing and various mayhem goes on before it settles somewhere. I take some comfort in the excuse that it's not my fault...I was born that way. But then, so was Wittgenstein.

My "lens of reality", a wholly unacceptable term to the gentleman listed above, is just my way of saying that the real world is what it is. It's not what we might want it to be or what we hope it might be. It simply is. Science is the study of the real world. Okay, the natural sciences are the study of the real world.

In fact our grandest theories in science, such as evolution and modern cosmology (also a branch of evolution) are so all encompassing that they have become our modern version of the great mythological traditions they have largely displaced. So much for the separation of science and the numinous. At the highest level of conscious awareness the two merge seamlessly.[/I]

lustatopia, your statement makes (I think) terrific poetically inspired pictures and (I'm now out of my depth) metaphysics. What it doesn't make is anything that can be considered science, let alone a " Synthetic Theory of Natural Evolution." Phrases like that are welcome in New Age bookstores and are very profitable to the Deepak Chopras and Shirley MacLeanes of the world.

My problem (pet peeve) starts when science is misused to bolster ideas or arguments that belong somewhere other than science. Here goes...

Darwin and evolution...evolution simply states than current species are descendants of prior species. Even Darwin's grandfather accepted that, but no one had a clue how it happened. All Darwin did was propose a theory that explained how it could happen. (natural selection acting on random mutations, which may or may not have conferred an advantage to overall survival).

Darwin's explanation of the mechanism underlying evolution is one of two things; right or wrong. It is not all encompassing and it certainly isn't a great mythological tradition. There is no place in science for myth.

Cosmology certainly studies how the universe has changed over time. Using the word loosely, you can say the universe is evolving. I know there's nothing biological about how a galaxy originates and changes, but the Deepaks and Shirleys of the world are fond of implying that "The Universe Is Alive!", and by extension, as I am alive, "You are one with the universe...sit under this crystal and let your cosmic quantum consciousness fill you with the wisdom of a billion galaxies..."

It's that kind of twaddle that leads to

"So much for the separation of science and the numinous. At the highest level of conscious awareness the two merge seamlessly."

Isn't the numinous the presence of divinity, supernatural powers, deities, the world beyond the shimmering curtain and so on and so forth? Remember non-overlapping magisteria? It applies in spades to science and the numinous. At the highest levels of conscious awareness (whatever the hell that is), the numinous may merge seamlessly with something but that something most certainly isn't science.

Nevertheless, the greatest of all hypotheses are "strange attractors" which seem to be forces of nature in and of themselves, as if they exist independent of our forming them in the first place, forcing shitloads of former disparate observations to coalesce into holistic and highly order "clouds" or model of certain aspects of "reality" and we call these vast and powerfully useful models grand names like "The Synthetic Theory of Natural Evolution."

Okay...I get it...you're Deepak Chopra...

A macho scientists might want to say “cute, but I'm not blind” or accuse the poem of belittling human abilities in order to make people submit to some thing or other, but I rather think it illustrates Lustatopia’s points and encourages one to think of wonders of both ‘reality’ and the human mind. It also fosters a healthy suspicion toward anyone who claims to have it nailed down, regardless of the lingo in which he dresses it up.

What I like about science is that at it's heart is the only certainty it can claim. Nothing is nailed down. If something is nailed down, wrapped up and complete...it belongs somewhere else.

Back to Richard Feynman...

“If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.”

Those first principles I mentioned...again to Richard...

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

 

[Stella_Omega]

...encourages one to think of wonders of both ‘reality’ and the human mind.

Oddly enough, this link just came in to my email;

Brains of Buddhist Monks scanned in meditation study

It's perfectly possible to consider the human mind an intrinsic part of 'reality.'

It also fosters a healthy suspicion toward anyone who claims to have it nailed down, regardless of the lingo in which he dresses it up.

Don't you think that this very common instinct to claim that we've "nailed it down" is, in itself, a rather interesting topic of study? Why do we do that?

 

[SlickTony]

I am thoroughly enjoying the back-and-forth between you two. You are both obviously very bright boys who are enjoying it as much as I. I'm tempted to jump in myself, but I don't want to spoil the fun. It's like watching Errol Flynn in a swordfight (watch the candle sticks) or Abbot and Costello doing a "whose on first routine." Keep up the good work.

Can't we get a "Like" button for this site? Or does Facebook own the patent on it?

Speaking as an ASD woman, I find Ayn Rand admirable. There are so many ASD women who never left their parents' homes, were unemployable, who never had lovers, husbands or children--either because they didn't want them (like Temple Grandin, another admirable ASD woman, but she doesn't even like to be touched, except when she interacts with animals, and I don't understand that)--or because they couldn't achieve them. She (Rand) had a somewhat famous husband and an arguably famous lover; just as well she didn't have kids because she'd have probably been one of the most toxic moms that ever existed; she had a thriving career; she made millions; she has influenced generations, even if most of the time that influence is temporary. She made out pretty good.

(On the spectrum that I outlined above, I regard myself as being somewhere in the middle.)

 

[stephen55]

Oddly enough, this link just came in to my email;

Brains of Buddhist Monks scanned in meditation study

It's perfectly possible to consider the human mind an intrinsic part of 'reality.'

Don't you think that this very common instinct to claim that we've "nailed it down" is, in itself, a rather interesting topic of study? Why do we do that?

"The scanner tracks blood flow within the monks' heads as they meditate inside its clunky walls, which echoes a musical rhythm when the machine is operating."

Matt Danzico, who wrote the article has obviously never had an MRI scan. I've had my low back done a couple of times and I couldn't believe the racket. (Okay, I could believe but I didn't understand) It sounded like a bunch of large metal objects being tossed around inside a cement mixer. I imagined the scanner contained blocks of metal that were somehow crashing together.

Not so, nothing is moving...it's all due to gee whiz physics, rapidly changing, powerful electromagnetic fields created by solenoid gradient coils and other things best left to physicists. Along the way, it creates one hell of a lot of noise (up to 130 decibels, if not acoustically dampened). For most people, 125 decibels is painful. Good acoustic dampening gets the noise down to about 100 to 110 decibels. That's about like using a gas lawn mower or riding a snowmobile, if you aren't using hearing protection.

As for "echoing a musical rhythm", I wouldn't want to try to dance to it.

Those Buddhist monks must be crazy good at meditating if they can achieve a state of "nonduality" or "oneness" with the world, a unifying consciousness between a person and their environment with all that racket going on.

 

[Stella_Omega]

As for "echoing a musical rhythm", I wouldn't want to try to dance to it.

now that's a subjective statement.

I've had two MRI's and yeah-- loud and cacophonous. But cacophony is a part of some musical forms that I enjoy, so I heard the music. Thank goodness or else they would never have gotten me back into that thing!

In any case, it is a legitimate example of an attempt to study the things that the Deepak Chopras of our world consider unquantifiable and ineffable and the province of mythological thinking;

Dr Josipovic's research is part of a larger effort better to understand what scientists have dubbed the default network in the brain.

He says the brain appears to be organised into two networks: the extrinsic network and the intrinsic, or default, network.

Dr Josipovic has scanned the brains of more than 20 experienced meditators during the study

The extrinsic portion of the brain becomes active when individuals are focused on external tasks, like playing sports or pouring a cup of coffee.

The default network churns when people reflect on matters that involve themselves and their emotions.

But the networks are rarely fully active at the same time. And like a seesaw, when one rises, the other one dips down.

This neural set-up allows individuals to concentrate more easily on one task at any given time, without being consumed by distractions like daydreaming.

"What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic says.

Dr Josipovic has found that some Buddhist monks and other experienced meditators have the ability to keep both neural networks active at the same time during meditation - that is to say, they have found a way to lift both sides of the seesaw simultaneously.

And Dr Josipovic believes this ability to churn both the internal and external networks in the brain concurrently may lead the monks to experience a harmonious feeling of oneness with their environment.

 

[stephen55]

Deepak and Uri and Baba...oh my!!

In any case, it is a legitimate example of an attempt to study the things that the Deepak Chopras of our world consider unquantifiable and ineffable and the province of mythological thinking;

It most certainly is a legitimate example of a study, but I question if it has anything to do with the good Deepak's more flighty sayings such as...

“You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.”

"Quantum Healing is healing the bodymind from a quantum level. That means from a level which is not manifest at a sensory level. Our bodies ultimately are fields of information, intelligence and energy. Quantum healing involves a shift in the fields of energy information, so as to bring about a correction in an idea that has gone wrong."

"From the DNA to the molecules, cells, tissue, organs and even the position of bones –they all respond to the powerful vibration .......expressed through the life-force energy that comes through our hands."

Now there's a quack who knows how to spin a line about something that vaguely sounds scientific into a steady income.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University and a science commentator, had a column in Scientific American that he called Critical Mass. I think it was his last column where he handed out his awards for "Worst Abusers of Quantum Mechanics for Fun and Profit (but mostly profit)". Ta-daa!! The winner was Deepak Chopra.

The stuff he writes is wonderful fluff and given his net worth, a lot of people must feel good after reading the stuff. Smart man...but he knows little or nothing about quantum anything. What he does know is that by pretending to link the deepest levels of quantum physics to his field of all possibilities and if he goes on to tell people that quantum fields of energy vibrations and fields of quantum information, all expressed through the life-force energy that comes through our heads...oops...hands...brings about a quantum shift, even through the positions of bones, so as to bring about a correction in an idea that has gone wrong...(still with me?)...he'll get rich.

The only idea that has gone wrong here, is the one that quantum mechanics has anything to do with the whimsies of Deepak Chopra.

Dr. Zoran Josipovic, Ph.D., is a legitimate research scientist studying the effects of meditation on brain activity. My guess is he's more interested in meditation per se, which is fine, and his results may shed some light on autism and Alzheimer's as well, which is even better.

Deepak Chopra is (I think) a well meaning guru type, just like Sri Sathya Sai Baba, who I believe died today. Tens of millions adore these guys, maybe hundreds of millions. But, excuse me...just because Baba was great at "mystically" producing gold coins that "magically" materialized in his hands, doesn't makes the guy a member of the numinous. It makes him a competent stage magician.

The only difference between Sri Sathya Sai Baba and the Uri Geller's of the world, is that Uri was stupid enough to let other professional magicians like James Randi get too close and out Uri as a fraud. Baba never let anyone get close when he palmed gold coins.

Chopra doesn't flim-flam with stages tricks. He does it with quantum physics.

 

[SlickTony]

now that's a subjective statement.

I've had two MRI's and yeah-- loud and cacophonous. But cacophony is a part of some musical forms that I enjoy, so I heard the music. Thank goodness or else they would never have gotten me back into that thing!

I had my very first MRI a few months ago. I'd heard scary things about MRIs, but I thought that if not for all the John Cage music they kept playing while I was in it, I could've fallen asleep.

 

[Verdad]

Okay...I get it...you're Deepak Chopra...

I need to learn (or not) who this guy is. Ever since I’ve purged my life of TV, some folks have miraculously ceased to exist!

I think I know the general type, though, and why it irritates you. The problem is that you seem to be throwing out everything that even reminds you of the new age charlatans, and there’s lots to remind you of them because they steal their material from all over the place before mashing it all together into nonsense. The idea of oneness certainly doesn’t inspire confidence on the lips of your local schizo, but it has a much more illustrious tradition than that. Many ways of experiencing it may be well beyond your interests (mine as well, to be certain), but there are probably still a few that make sense. Like oneness of the eco system, at which you hinted when you mentioned fucking up the planet, or maybe oneness as equivalence and a reason to treat others as you’d like to be treated yourself.

I think it’s unfortunate and dangerous that fundie literalists treat statements like “God infused man with a soul” as if they were exactly like “Jake ate a sausage” but it’s not helping when Dawkins types reinforce it on their end.

On this flipside, it’s important to remember that just like there are Buddhas and Jesuses and then there are Shirley MacLaines, the world of science too has its heroes but also its snake oil salesmen and their followers. There’s rarely cause to warn against physicists, certainly not as long as they stay in their field (and not blow up anything ), but social sciences are a more fertile terrain for a new priestly class. Piggybacking on the general prestige of science and technology, methods that resemble theirs sell books and win arguments even when they have fuck all to do with science. In everyday parlance, “scientists say” sometimes adopts an eerie resemblance to “scripture says.”

 

[Verdad]

Oddly enough, this link just came in to my email;

Brains of Buddhist Monks scanned in meditation study

It's perfectly possible to consider the human mind an intrinsic part of 'reality.'

I never said it’s not an intrinsic part of reality. It is, however, a distinct part of reality in which you’re locked and through which you filter (and to an extent, create) all the rest.

Unless, of course, those monks are right, but we stuck in, um, maya, can’t help feeling that way.

 

[Verdad]

In any case, it is a legitimate example of an attempt to study the things that the Deepak Chopras of our world consider unquantifiable and ineffable and the province of mythological thinking;

As I said to Stephen, all I know of Chopra is that there’s a person of that name, so he might well be talking of ‘ineffability’ in the very way that makes you (and likely me) froth at the mouth. It still looks like we’re confusing levels and angles again, though.

Consider an alien who needs to have orgasms explained to him. Let’s suppose he has the requisite equipment, too, but it’s never occurred to him to use it. He reads poetic descriptions, to no avail. There’s nothing in his experience to relate them to, and he even suspects the entire thing is a hoax. He tries science, and now he’s onto something. Increased blood flow to genitalia, this and that, etc. Now he has to concede it’s indeed possible to induce a sort of seizure that humans call ‘orgasm’, but the only way to know what it’s like is to take his dick in his hand and rub vigorously for a while.

I think that’s a good way of looking at these monk’s experiences. We can hear about them in monk’s words but they’re outside enough of our normal experiences that we have difficulty relating, and we can look at them from the outside and get the physical correlates but not the essence of the subjective experience.

Note that I’m not even wondering whether the monks reach some kind of ‘ineffable reality’ or are merely adept at manipulating their minds/bodies. I’m not particularly curious about that, really. It’s only relevant to point out that you’ve measured an aspect of the monk’s experience but not its entirety and not an explanation of it.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I never said it’s not an intrinsic part of reality. It is, however, a distinct part of reality in which you’re locked and through which you filter (and to an extent, create) all the rest.

Unless, of course, those monks are right, but we stuck in, um, maya, can’t help feeling that way.

What is this 'locked' business? By what criteria do you assess this 'lock?' We do not yet have enough evidence to say that there is a 'lock' on our minds ability to comprehend the cosmos. We can only say that there seem to be difficulties for which we may or may not be able to find work-arounds.

As I said to Stephen, all I know of Chopra is that there’s a person of that name, so he might well be talking of ‘ineffability’ in the very way that makes you (and likely me) froth at the mouth. It still looks like we’re confusing levels and angles again, though.

Consider an alien who needs to have orgasms explained to him. Let’s suppose he has the requisite equipment, too, but it’s never occurred to him to use it. He reads poetic descriptions, to no avail. There’s nothing in his experience to relate them to, and he even suspects the entire thing is a hoax. He tries science, and now he’s onto something. Increased blood flow to genitalia, this and that, etc. Now he has to concede it’s indeed possible to induce a sort of seizure that humans call ‘orgasm’, but the only way to know what it’s like is to take his dick in his hand and rub vigorously for a while.

Isn't that a good argument for empirical research and practical demonstration-- not to mention attempting replicable results?

I think that’s a good way of looking at these monk’s experiences. We can hear about them in monk’s words but they’re outside enough of our normal experiences that we have difficulty relating, and we can look at them from the outside and get the physical correlates but not the essence of the subjective experience.

My example was in answer to your claim that there is so much difference between 'reality' and 'the human mind' that you could completely separate the two. And really, when we add the monk's words to the outside observations, we might just be getting somewhere.

Note that I’m not even wondering whether the monks reach some kind of ‘ineffable reality’ or are merely adept at manipulating their minds/bodies. I’m not particularly curious about that, really. It’s only relevant to point out that you’ve measured an aspect of the monk’s experience but not its entirety and not an explanation of it.

I am saddened to see you confuse an exploration of something with an explanation of it. or possibly, demand an instant explanation out of insufficient data, because that's the mechanism that empowers all those snake-oil salesmen.

That article talked about an inquiry that provided, perhaps, some data which corroborates some subjective statements. And the reason I posted it was to show that the mind, in the brain that houses it, can now be looked at objectively in certain ways, via some new technology (which has been made possible by the workings of curious minds).

 

[Verdad]

What is this 'locked' business? By what criteria do you assess this 'lock?' We do not yet have enough evidence to say that there is a 'lock' on our minds ability to comprehend the cosmos. We can only say that there seem to be difficulties for which we may or may not be able to find work-arounds.

I guess I've used an unfortunate figure of speech by using both 'locked' and 'you', which can imply there's a you that dwells in your mind/body but is not identical with it. I didn't mean any commitment of that kind. My point was that the reality you know is mediated by characteristics of your senses and your cognition. To use the image again—without any implications as to the status of your you-ness—you can't jump out of your skull and take a look at things as they are from some wholly objective point of view. You can bypass the characteristics of senses by using microscope, telescope, etc, but not the characteristics of human thought and perception. To make things more complicated, you also have to account for the fact that you're an actor in reality, not just an observer.

I'm not sure why you suspect this of somehow being mystical because it takes precisely a mystic to claim that you could shed your condition and peer 'beyond'. If you'd really like to attack this, you could say “if it's humanly unknowable, what the fuck do I care about it?” (which is not a bad criticism!) but I hope you see it in no way implies that we shouldn't use our minds to their utmost abilities or that whatever we reach by using them somehow isn't important enough.

I'm also not sure how we veered toward this because I wasn't talking so much about whether, say, time is a feature of mind or reality (either way, we can pretty safely assume we're all equally in its thrall) as I was about the lenses we have various degrees of liberty in using and various sections of reality they uncover.

I am saddened to see you confuse an exploration of something with an explanation of it.

I didn't doubt you understand the difference, but I said that because you seemed to say “the MRI results are in, so much for the monks' so-called experience of oneness!” It seemed prudent to point out that we've got physical correlates/components of that experience, but if we wanted to know how it feels, or whether the monks hallucinate or “commune with ultimate reality” (or whether there's a difference) the MRI would make us none the wiser.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I guess I've used an unfortunate figure of speech by using both 'locked' and 'you', which can imply there's a you that dwells in your mind/body but is not identical with it. I didn't mean any commitment of that kind. My point was that the reality you know is mediated by characteristics of your senses and your cognition. To use the image again—without any implications as to the status of your you-ness—you can't jump out of your skull and take a look at things as they are from some wholly objective point of view. You can bypass the characteristics of senses by using microscope, telescope, etc, but not the characteristics of human thought and perception. To make things more complicated, you also have to account for the fact that you're an actor in reality, not just an observer.

I'm not sure why you suspect this of somehow being mystical because it takes precisely a mystic to claim that you could shed your condition and peer 'beyond'.

Actually, I consider any pronouncement regarding the "shedding of condition and peering beyond" to be pretty mystical-- whether it's pro or con. I just don't see that there's much validity in the concept, when we are talking about scientific investigation. Sure, there's always physics... which is a field very much in the data gathering phase, a period of any science which produces a plethora of wacky hypotheses because we don't yet know what we are looking at.

If you'd really like to attack this, you could say “if it's humanly unknowable, what the fuck do I care about it?” (which is not a bad criticism!) but I hope you see it in no way implies that we shouldn't use our minds to their utmost abilities or that whatever we reach by using them somehow isn't important enough.

Oh, good then. Because that is, let's face it, the implication most people like to draw when they say things like that. Truly, if it's "humanly unknowable" it's also very possible that it's nothing but a figment of our big old imagination anyway. If it is somethignng that exists-- we might know about it someday.

I'm also not sure how we veered toward this because I wasn't talking so much about whether, say, time is a feature of mind or reality (either way, we can pretty safely assume we're all equally in its thrall) as I was about the lenses we have various degrees of liberty in using and various sections of reality they uncover.

Forgive me for reading in the extremely common motive for those types of comments, which tends to be pro-mysticism, anti-science. I don't know where you're living that you aren't overwhelmed with credulous superstitious, sheep... but i would love to move there!

I didn't doubt you understand the difference, but I said that because you seemed to say “the MRI results are in, so much for the monks' so-called experience of oneness!” It seemed prudent to point out that we've got physical correlates/components of that experience, but if we wanted to know how it feels, or whether the monks hallucinate or “commune with ultimate reality” (or whether there's a difference) the MRI would make us none the wiser.

yes, I understand the difference, and many of my posts in this thread talk about that difference. You know-- "science is a process." "Science gathers data first," I've said.

"It's okay, in science, to be wrong."

"we do not know-- yet." I've always been partial to that one.

 

[lustatopia]

My only real “faith” is in the scientific method of rational inquiry into the nature around and within us. I don’t “believe” in our scientific theories, but merely hold to them as long as they remain useful. It’s all about remaining monastically, even fanatically faithful to the method of science rather than the results.

My “faith” thus professed, as someone who has to try to make the scientific process work at work, I have become acutely aware of the limitations of science as a method of rational inquiry.

Much has been made here about Deepka Chokpra and other charlatans of mystical nonsense as evidence that all forms of knowing beyond science are deceptions. At least that’s what I think Stephen is on about.

In fact, almost all human knowledge is unscientific. For instance, this debate isn’t a way of knowing that conforms with the scientific method, yet one could argue that something is happening here that looks very much like the formation, gathering or exchange of knowledge.

I’ve tried to show that the definition of science is all about the method of science. Any human cognitive activity outside the narrow bounds of a scientific inquiry process is simply not hard science. Talking about “believing” in the outcomes of science is in fact, deeply unscientific, yet how else can lay people talk about science? Btw, everyone is a layperson outside their field of expertise.

Every thing that we know that was not directly derived from the application of the scientific method to an issue is un-scientifically acquired knowledge. And almost everything we know falls into this category of knowledge. Every day we gather and use knowledge in useful ways that are utterly unscientific, but are none the less more functionally efficient (and sometimes more accurate) than any scientific study could possibly be. A mother shopping for the week’s groceries with a kid in tow doing price comparisons and mental calculating the week’s meals while under time constraints is using a life time accumulation of knowledge, very little of which is scientifically derived.

Science can’t even begin to explain how the great masterpieces of human art, music and literature were created, much less how to reliable instruct machine or human to create new masterpieces of art. Yet who among us can claim that the great works of art, although ultimately subjective ways of knowing, aren’t among humanity’s greatest achievements in the realm of cognition?

And who among us has not had some kind of cognitive or dare I say it? - Spiritual experience - that informed and provide new insights to your life due to an interaction with a work of art, be it a film, a novel, an opera or a light show at a rave?

But back to our own modern culture’s mythology which is a mish-mash of quantum physics, evolution and cosmology.

Whenever we contemplate the big picture things in our life, be it about death and loss or love or simply struggling with the sheer wonder of why the heck are we here. We might start off in the direction science-based evidence seems to point, but we will always and forever end up in the world of great mythological narratives because we are at the end of the day, human beings living in a universe that is far more mysterious than many of us usually wish to acknowledge.