Science, Scientism & Dharma

The Watercooler
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Concur, in phenomenological terms there is only the phenomenal cycle of temporality, what Husserl called the ‘irreducible Heraclitean flux’, and this is also related to Heidegger’s ‘nullity of the they-self’. The notion that there’s a thing-like ego-centre somewhere is in fact the subject of a phenomenological critique of various forms of naive Cartesianism.

In analytic terms also the ‘I’ is simply the subject of the statement ‘I am’, which says nothing of the nature of that existence. It’s only when philosophy starts to define I-amness that we get bogged down in metaphysics as in for example the never-ending gift of fuzzy logic that is the cogito ergo sum

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In a forest retreat once there were two reflections written on a chalk board.

  1. Be still my heart for the trees are as prayers.

  2. ‘I think therefore I am’ - don’t put des-carte before the horse!

We are getting a bit off the thread?

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Possibly … no? Husserl’s life’s work was an attempt to outline a genuine philosophical basis for the western scientific project, and in this sense his notions of the ‘phenomenal world’, intentionality and a process oriented approach were all intended to provide such a ground for scientific thinking.

So instead of believing the sciences are capable of proving the worth of phenomenalist approaches to the question of being, such as Heidegger’s seinsfrage or the Buddha Dhamma, it is possible that analytic philosophical approaches (many of which are just apologias for science) have got everything back to front. And the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ is bringing this physicalist impasse into stark relief such that the brain sciences increasingly have no idea what, how or why phenomenal experience is what it so self-evidently gives itself to be.

It would be interesting if one day something like a ‘Buddhistic world view’ were to become the basis for understanding and explaining scientific phenomena don’t you think? And who knows, maybe such a scientific paradigm change is necessary to uncover a solution for quantum gravity?

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The problem is that Husserl made no contributions to science himself, and there is little reason to think he had much to contribute to the subject of science’s foundation. The crisis he identified was just a crisis in his own reactionary mind perhaps?

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Husserl seemed to see things a bit like ‘Anton Zeilinger’?

“For instrumentalism, theories are not a description of the world but an instrument for a systematic order and explanation of observations and predictions of facts. The instrumentalist approach is outlined by the physician Anton Zeilinger. Zeilinger states in an interview: “In classical physics we speak of a world of things that exists somewhere outside and we make a description of this nature. In quantum physics we have learned to be very careful. Ultimately physical sciences are not sciences of nature but sciences of statements about nature. Nature itself is always a construction of mind. Niels Bohr puts it like this: There is no world of quantum, there is only a quantum mechanical description.”” - C.Kohl

The Truths that the Buddha tried to share with us are not just information. They are not realised through thinking about the nature of reality. This is a valid and necessary process but Truth - with a capital T - is not like this! It is not revealed through reflecting on topics we feel are important or appraising different points of view - choosing that which resonates with our preset conclusions. It is not a product of discursive activity - related to discourse or modes of discourse. This includes religious, philosophical or, scientific theories and conjectures.

There is a difference between (Truth, actuality and, our personal reality). Much confusion arises as a consequence of not seeing and understanding the differences involved in these 3 areas of inquiry.

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Science does not tell us ‘this is the truth’ of how things are. Science provides us with ‘best case scenarios’ based on the interpretation of research findings. These findings and their interpretation are often compelling but science is not a dogma. We can have a high-degree of ‘confidence’ (faith) regarding scientific findings just as we can have faith that the sun will rise in the morning. The sun may not appear on the horizon in the morning for a number of good reasons. The Buddha explains why: all conditioned things are impermanent.

Therefore, ‘the sun will rise in the morning’ is not an established fact but an article of faith. We have confidence it will come to pass (nothing more). It is best to avoid making absolute statements about relative truths.

We could argue that having faith or confidence in Buddhism is not like having faith or confidence in scientific findings in a number of ways. We may insist that the suns arising and disappearing is fully-explained by science and the liberating insights of the Aryans have not been fully-explained - they are just articles of faith. This is all nonsense!

A fanatical belief in dogmas involves an unquestioned faith and acceptance. I am referring to dogmas like religious fundamentalism and secularist scientism. People who have succumbed to these dogmatic belief systems ‘claim’ to know the final truth about all manner of things and spend a lot of their time insisting as much! This is merely blind-faith - a ‘cognitive’ impairment or, an inability to maintain objectivity with regard to their views and opinions.

There is a difference between blind-faith and an understanding that is well-grounded. Even, well-grounded faith and confidence can be misplaced. This is why we should maintain a healthy scepticism. Any sane human being realises they could be wrong about everything. It is only the insane who lack the ability to doubt their own perceptions that insist, otherwise. In psychological terminology this is referred to as a lack of ‘insight’.

There are good reasons to maintain some degree of objectivity when it comes to our own perceptions and deeply held convictions? It is a well-known fast-track into the mental health system.

This is why keeping an open-mind is vitally important if we wish to realise the truth which liberates. How are we going to wake-up if we don’t understand ourselves? This is the purpose of Buddhism - the hearts sure release. There is no other reason - other than amusement - to express an interest in Buddhism. This is its function and purpose in the world - liberating sentient beings. It is important that ‘you’ see this clearly - it is important that we all see this clearly - this is not a dress-rehearsal.

All of the above could be wrong (not factual).

It is certainly (not-true).

The truth which liberates is not an explanation.

It has to be lived.

It’s not a signal - symbols - appearing on a screen.

It’s not a representation.

Our perception of reality - even when it’s enhanced - is always limited and it never arrives at the ‘thing in itself’. Perceptions are always a way of seeing and they are always limited by what we are capable of understanding. Our perceptions can never tell us how things are in any ‘absolute’ sense this is why we should never lose the capacity for self-doubt. When there is a complete openness to ‘what is’ there is a point where everything ceases. This is the ending of the known and the knowable - Nibbana.

“Just as a line drawn on water with a stick will quickly vanish and will not last long; even so is human life like a line drawn on water. It is short, [limited], and brief; it is full of suffering, full of tribulation. This one should wisely understand, one should do good and live a pure life; for none who is born can escape death.” - the Buddha

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Yes, I agree. We can also say that being liberated is not even a matter of having a view. Views are only supports for building the raft to cross over, and are not to be taken to the other shore once the raft has done its work.

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Awakening is the seeing and being of that which matters the most - true freedom and compassion for all beings. It also brings to light - clarifies - many confusions about the way ‘it is’ with regard to the ‘worlds’ in which we co-arise - not (separate from) in any meaningful sense. Subject/object dualism is fuzzy-logic - a rough approximation. Like a child’s drawing - it looks like a house but, wait-a-minute?

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Right-view is not just an idea it is an orientation to every aspect of life and living. The Buddha was an embodiment of right-view. He lived-it first and taught-it second. On the other shore the raft is abandoned - the literal teachings are not required. Thats the raft - its not the realisation of right-view.

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The raft is a metaphor for the teachings and practice - everything is teaching us. When you build a raft and try to row it it can be challenging. If we get caught in a favourable current we are carried by it. When the crossing begins there is still ‘personality belief’ (sakaya-ditthi). The conviction that somebody is going somewhere. When the right causes and supportive conditions come together there is nothing that can prevent arrival - just let go, be present and, kind. What could be more worthwhile? There are no footprints - no marks or signs - on the other shore. The so-called subject who undertakes the journey is nowhere to be found.

“Living in a state of discovery is … staying open to new knowledge, new insights, and new experiences. I call this “being curious”: being inquisitive about the world … and even about new notions of yourself.” - N. Merchant

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I think that’s a stretch with the raft metaphor?

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what part - in what way?

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Well it seems to me the Buddha does not use the raft metaphor to point out how difficult it is to row against the current, or to argue that one should just “go with the flow” in the sense of letting the floods or streams take you wherever they are going. He’s always focused on crossing over to the far shore.

The point of the metaphor is that views are merely a provisional tool for reaching nibbana, not an end in themselves. Ultimately, we are to live without acquisitions. And views are one kind of acquisition.

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https://www.dhammatalks.net/Books/Ajahn_Brahm_Deep_Insight.htm

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Hi DKervick,

firstly a reply to your (in my view) metaphysical position re the sciences and a belief in an ‘external world’. My actual interest is in discussing the nature of perception and its phenomenal world which will follow shortly as I find time.

Although as you say, your non-phenomenal hand is ‘external’ to the empirical experience of wielding it…. So it is ‘beyond’ the experience in that sense, whatever that may actually mean apart from being just the persistence of seeing it there again after blinking. This is what I would call the perdurance of the phenomenal hand, which is of course the hand itself phenomenologically speaking, before one theorises its apparent suprasensory and entirely conceptual ‘objective externality’.

This ‘non-conscious experience’ is a new one on me… how does one experience being non-conscious? I think you are driven to hyperbolic tangles by your attempts to explain your metaphysics.

‘It’s just that …’ is not an argument for your (interactive) dualist philosophical distinction between your actual phenomenal hand and your belief in an, in some un-explicated sense, ‘indirectly presented’ external physical hand. Are you now arguing for a sort of direct realism and retreating from your earlier representationalism?

This notion concerning our making judgments about sense perceptions is very Husserlian of you, and I would agree that it is precisely the investigation of the regularities of our sense perceptions that form the basis of any empirical science. One such regularity is the perdurance of phenomenal things, or objects in the everyday sense. Why this particular perceptual regularity requires a belief in the existence of an ‘external’ world is still yet to be explained, by you or anyone else in the history of philosophy!

An appeal to authority is no proof either, especially when it’s not even true! The belief in an ‘external world’ is a philosophical concern not scientific, and the philosophy remains debated and fractured with no real consensus anywhere for the last several centuries since Descartes and Locke. Unless, that is, DKervick is claiming to have finally proven its existence? Or is it that you hold Moore’s proof as a final ‘proof’? Either way this would still just be your own opinion which is not a proof but merely a belief that ‘it must be so!’

I’d like to just emphasise this error here for anyone reading your repeated and rather grandiose statements concerning the supposed universal belief in the sciences and philosophy in the existence of an ‘external world’ … this is quite simply absolutely untrue! I would have to say that your statements as to this ‘universality’ are a reflection of your own rather scientistic belief structure, a form of faith that is representative of a somewhat over-generalised and naive view of the philosophical basis for the empirical sciences.

And what is your basis for this belief? Apparently it’s peekaboo, for when we close our eyes and open them again, the phenomenal thing or ‘object’ reappears! This regularity in our sense perception has been amusing infants probably since the first human infants were born.

Question: Can you explain why this perdurance means for you that your reappearing phenomenal hand is not your ‘real physical hand’ which is somehow ‘external’ to that mere appearance?
(At the same time I understand this ‘externality’ does not mean you think the mere appearance of the hand is any sort of ‘internal’ sense percept that is individuated in your own experience… although I think this latter is just a cop out on your part and completely undermines your notion of perdurant ‘externality’.)

I must tell you however, that this is a trick question and if you can answer it then you’re probably up for a Nobel Prize (in Literature at least) as you will have solved the eternally dogmatic skeptical debate in favour of the realists.

Yes the phenomenal hand is an existent hand, it exists when I’m asleep on it, I know because it’s numb when I awake! This is not a proof of an ‘external world’, how do I know this? Because there is no way to prove an ‘external world’! And if this notion of ‘externality’ is merely a belief system then as I’ve said all along, it’s a philosophically contentious story you tell about the actual (real) phenomena themselves, a story about an observed regularity in your sense perception. Without this phenomenal world there would be no story to tell at all would there? And without your (real) phenomenal hand there would be no hand to speak of and tell stories about.

And your straw man critique of idealism is an aged red herring:

Agreed … more or less (apart from the last bit about no ‘essential relation’ which is rather vaguely generalised), but I’m still trying to unpack why you think this is an important point, or even what it means apart from that you perhaps appear to equate (erroneously again) phenomenology with some sort of solipsist idealism, an argument that would instead just be the reflected mirror image of your realist beliefs.

Scientific description of my hand would require an x-ray perhaps? Of my actual hand and not a theoretical one, that is. The medical scientist would also presumably be conscious and thus see my hand there… otherwise the procedure could not occur. And the x-ray would show the internal structure of my hand that we could both observe, preferably consciously rather than ‘non-consciously’. But why would this have anything to do with whether the scientist was an idealist or realist in their spare time? More specifically, what would either philosophical belief concerning the metaphysics of perception have to do with doing the actual science in the first place? Apart from absolutely nothing of course.

No it’s not, it really isn’t, and I don’t mean just for certain versions of the Copenhagen interpretation. Physics put aside philosophical notions about perception when it emerged as a separate discipline from natural philosophy during the Enlightenment. As for ‘mere appearances’ that’s for the psychologists to befuddle themselves with, or the other brain sciences that are generally much better at attracting research funding than the lowly ‘social sciences’.

Can you name me just one scientific theory that depends on the notion of a world ‘external’ to sense perception? Does the Large Hadron Collider for example, require this metaphysical belief in order to produce its scatter plots? Or is a metaphysical belief in the actuality of an ‘external world’ simply a creation story to make general sense of, after the fact, how one might understand the sciences ‘philosophically’?

Your earlier deflationary pragmatism remains for me your best logical defence:

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I just mean that we acquire some of our information about our bodies and other parts of the physical world through channels that do not register in consciousness.

Nope. I would never call my conscious experience of my hand my “actual phenomenal hand”. My hand is not a phenomenon in consciousness.

We clearly don’t experience the perdurance of things like hands during intervals of time when we are not perceiving them. Nevertheless we do believe in that perdurance. Our ordinary belief systems make use of a highly successful conceptual system and world model that treats hands and other such objects as existing independently of our own experiences, and as continuing to exist even when we don’t have any perceptual experiences of them.

Appeals to authority are warranted when the authorities in question have a demonstrated record of success in understanding, predicting and establishing some control over large parts of the natural world. When idealist philosophers achieve the same results, maybe they will then have something of substance to offer.

Consensus for belief in a world external to experience is widespread. That most scientists, and ordinary people for that matter, believe that hands continue to exist even when nobody is having any conscious experiences of them is so obviously a part of the belief systems of both sophisticated science and everyday common sense that it barely needs remarking. Clearly these belief systems treat the hand, on the one side, and experiences of the hand, on the other side, as two different things, and posit no ontological dependence of the former on the latter. Given how successful these belief systems are, the burden falls on the idealist who thinks they are mistaken.

I would prefer to say “scientifically informed”. The expression “scientistic” has become a quite popular dig these days. Sometimes it is part of apt criticism of intellectual prejudices that have a “sciencey” appearance, but which are not actually supported by successful scientific theories and models. But it is more frequently invoked these days when someone wishes to protect some evidentially unsupported nonsense they personally favor from the challenges to that nonsense generated by disciplined empirical investigation. (It’s very common to find the epithet “scientism” thrown around promiscuously in all the various New Age and other hokey spiritual communities, for example.)

I’m not sure this is the question you are asking. But the very fact that when I close my eyes, I cease having a visual experience of my hand, and then when I reopen my eyes, I have a new and slightly different visual experience of my hand is best accommodated by the usual physical models of my hand, and the hypothesis that visual experiences depend causally on the reflection or emission of light by the hand, and the collection and processing of those light signals by the eyes and neural system.

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There is a mind/body process but it has no owner - it belongs to nature. It persists for a period of time and breaks-up. The body returns to the ecosphere and the ‘mind’ - this remains an open-question? Therefore, you are an open-question - nothing more and nothing less?

The ideas may arise: I am the body or, this body - that I experience - is mine. The ideas may arise: I am the mind or, this mind - that I experience - is mine. An idea may arise, I am a combination - a synthesis - of the body and the mind etc. These ideas arise in the mind - this is where they occur.

So, thoughts may arise ‘I am the body’ or ‘I am the mind’ or, a combination of ‘both’ - correct? Thoughts may arise: I am (not) the body or, I am (not) the mind or, I am (not) a combination of both - correct?

Where is this ‘I’ located that identifies with the body/mind? The body and the mind may be ‘I - less’ and ‘mine-less’ - having no enduring existence or essential identity. I and mine may just be thoughts that arise and cease in an impermanent stream of consciousness?

“In analytic terms also the ‘I’ is simply the subject of the statement ‘I am’, which says nothing of the nature of that existence.” - Malcolm Riddoch

Why is there a need to ‘take it for granted’ that this body/mind has anything to do with a separate and discrete self? In an interdependent world nothing stands alone ‘in and of’ itself. Habits of speech seem to add to the ‘confusion’ and they may also be a product of it? Subject/object dualism collapses when the sense of self vanishes - repeatedly. New insights arise and many things are seen and understood in a new light.

Heraclitus:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

“There is nothing permanent except change.”

Ajahn Brahm:

"When thoughts come up in the mind it’s both useful and *fascinating … to consider, … Where did that thought come from?” … trace these thought patterns back [they arrived from elsewhere] … either in [spoken] words or in books [etc.] … Thoughts come according to their conditions, they are triggered in the mind because of causes. It’s fascinating to see that thought is anatta, not ‘me’, and not ‘mine’. "

*Fortunately, this insight is not merely ‘fascinating to consider’ it is also a revolutionary ‘seeing’ that is deeply transformative. When it is clearly seen in ‘real time’ that there is nobody thinking thoughts, that thoughts are a conditioned process that arise and cease out of traces of memory - when it is clearly seen what is ‘there/not there’ when thoughts begin to slow-down and become discontinuous - that which is/is not between thought-sequences - when it is clearly seen what is/is not when all thoughts cease - when it is clearly seen what happens next then, subjectivity is lost to the beauty - the beautiful - then everything is lost as there is nothing to be found. Then, formless- boundless Jhanas. Then, ?

This is not just a fascinating thing to consider - it is our birthright - freedom. It is not just Rahula’s inheritance - it is also _ _ _ _ _ ?

"After the meal, Rāhula followed the Buddha, saying “Give me my inheritance.” Nobody tried to stop him, nor did the Buddha prevent him from following him. He then looked at his father and said, “Lord, even your shadow is pleasing to me.”

Reaching the Park of Nigrodha, where the Buddha was staying, the Buddha thought to himself: “He desires his father’s inheritance, but it is wrought with troubles. I shall give him the benefit of my spiritual Enlightenment and make him an owner of a transcendental inheritance.” - Wikipedia

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I just want to say that I’m done with this discussion. I’m not sure why I got into it in the first place. Although, as a result of my years of training in, teaching and researching philosophy, it turns out I have many philosophical views, I also think that about 95% of that philosophy offers nothing of importance to the path. That includes almost all the views I have expressed in this thread.

The intellectual proliferations of philosophy are systems of concepts we employ to organize and control the confusing data, assertions and notions of our intellectual experience. Ultimately they amount to a specific kind of acquisition, one that we form as a result of thirst and constructing activity, and that we then cling to as an intellectual defense mechanism. It’s dukkha, and in the end we need to determine ourselves toward letting it all go.

The same goes for all of our hopes, fantasies and obsessions with future and past states of existence, whether in this life or any other life.

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100

sadhu sadhu sadhu :anjal:

https://www.dhammatalks.net/Books3/Ajahn_Brahm_ANATTA.htm

“Therefore, give thinking no value. Give it no interest. Instead, give that value and interest much more to the silence … Remember that, cherish that thought of no thought. Then it’s a thought that ends thought. All truth, all insight, all wisdom, arises in the silence.” - Ajahn Brahm

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