There are very basic philosophical reasons why consciousness cannot be directly investigated through neuroscience. Our experience of consciousness and its objects, and of the meaning of those objects for us, is unique. A person investigating a brain from without does not experience what it is like to have the mind associated with that brain. That does not mean that scientific investigation can't be very informative about things that relate to our experience (for example, the impact of left and right hemispheres, fascinatingly discussed by Iain McGilchrist), but you have to be very careful to avoid reductionism in the process.
You were dismissive of Rupert Sheldrake when I mentioned him in a previous comment, but his treatment of the limitations of mechanistic explanation in the recently-published 'Science Delusion' is superb. He gives loads of evidence that cannot be readily explained on a mechanistic model, such as inheritance, memory and telepathic phenomena. He pleads for an opening up of scientific assumptions. Much of the success of scientific method depends, in my view, on the ability of scientists to give adequate philosophical scrutiny to their assumptions, and not assume that the currently dominant models are going to be able to explain phenomena in future which they have yet to explain.
I disagree with your very basic philosophical reasons - they're just not true any more.
I'm not sure I believe in consciousness in the way that it is usually talked about in the West - as the container in which experience happens. There are basic Buddhist critiques of this idea, and there are basic neuroscience critiques as well. I'm not even sure I believe in subjectivity as usually defined - I'm going to write something about this.
The success of science over 400 years since Galileo speaks for itself. The failures too. But the successes are beyond any one person's ability to comprehend any more.
The real danger in the world at present is not reductionism, but it's opposite - what I call inflationism. The danger is that we invent things in order to explain the inexplicable, rather than leaving it unexplained. And unmeasurable forces and entities can never be tested, never be falsified. This is why they don't count as science. We can invent as many forces and entities as we like without ever really having to justify them - like an episode of Star Trek. Unseen forces are not better than no explanation, they are far worse. Far better that we have no explanation than something that cannot ever be tested or falsified. But of course almost no one is happy to accept that some things are avyākatatta. So made up explanations flourish.
There's not much point in continuing to cite Sheldrake at me. That you are impressed by him makes you seem a lot less credible.
I'd be interested to see your critique of consciousness and subjectivity. I'm not particularly tied to those concepts, and I definitely avoid 'subjective'. However, the basic philosophical problem just seems to be that experience has qualities that are not observable by third parties.
I agree with you about the need to avoid inventing theoretical constructions that explain the inexplicable, but that seems to be exactly what mechanistic explanations of the mind do. For example, we do not know what memories consist in, and nobody has discovered material traces that correspond to memories. Sheldrake's account of memory as morphic resonance is very far from proven, but is no more nor less speculative than claiming that it is some sort of 'stuff' that nobody has found yet.
Why put so much emphasis on measurement? If you restrict the objects of theoretical belief to what can be measured, you leave out huge areas of human experience. How tall is a dhyana? What is the mass of a desire? This is not a way to avoid dogmas but is a way of digging oneself into new ones. We don't have to avoid all theorisations of things we cannot measure, but just be adequately provisional about them. Measurement is no guarantee of such provisionality, given all the social pressures and cognitive biases than can apply to both the making and the interpretation of measurements.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Arden said...
Blake's critique of science does not begin or end with Newton, or his shock-tactic attacks on any Enlightenment figure. It's best represented by the figure of Urizen- Reason- whose role to play in Blake's grand visions is often villainous, but nonetheless essential. (And what's more, most of Blake's major figures are at times ambiguous, including Blake's avatar of the imagination, Los.) I think conflating him with the "god of the gaps" argument is missing the point: Blake is not talking in terms of a clean epistemological point. Blake would have laughed at the god of the gaps argument- as if that's the only place god (or what he meant by god, rather) could be found!
And "Blake isn't a role model"? Really? An ad hominem attack? He inspired some of the most sublime poetry humanity has ever produced, and you say he "blamed others for his failure to communicate"? I'm inclined to forgive him for being alienated and be grateful that, instead of trying to make himself understandable or palatable to his time, he gave humanity the lasting gift of his Prophetic Works.
I find Blake's life more civic, social & contented than Newton's. I'd consider both a role model.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Paul P said...
No queries or quibbles today - very much agree with you.
Buddhism and Neuroscience is an interesting area, and for a 2,500 year old tradition it seems uncannily accurate in the broad strokes.
Then again I love the Sciences and Blake just leaves me with a "So what?" kind of feeling.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Paul P said...
How tall is a dhyana seems a bit silly to me - one may as well ask what is the mass of an electric current? Or what is the wavelength of an elephant? To then claim that currents and elephants have no measurable features would be a bit mad.
That is not to say that everything can be measured - just that I don't know. Functional MRI seems to be providing interesting data on what goes on in the brain - how that maps to experience is debatable, but being able to distinguish activity in the brain related to gross drives and emotions indicates that the problem may be tractable.
Hi Paul, The whole point of the example is that it is silly: and that if you follow through the implications of the mechanistic model of science, then electric currents have to have mass and elephants have to have wavelengths just as dhyanas have to have height. Yes, these things are measurable in other ways, but some things are not measurable at all, opther things are not measurable in all the ways mechanical science theoretically requires, and in any case measurement in itself does not give us grounds to draw the line Jayarava seems to be trying to draw (unless I've misunderstood him) between measurable as investigable and unmeasurable as metaphysical. It's not the measurability but the provisionality of a theory that enables us to distinguish whether it is open to investigation through experience.
If any aspect of the mind can be shown to be non-algorithmic, then that aspect is by its very nature beyond the reach of science: http://rational-buddhism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/church-turing-deutsch-principle-and.html
Scientific explanations and predictions are reliant on the algorithmic compressibility of the phenomena being studied. If those phenomena are not algorithmically compressible, then science can have nothing useful to say about them: http://rational-buddhism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/algorithmic-compression-and-three-modes.html
Hi Jayarava, I do try to be respectful on your blog comments, but it would be very helpful if you could do likewise in responding to those who take an interest. Please explain why my comments are 'ludicrous'. Best wishes, Robert
Actually I thought it was you who was being disrespectful in this case.
There is nothing in a measurement based approach to knowledge which says that everything must be measurable by all and every unit of measurement or the whole thing is false. So when you say "electric currents have to have mass" it is ludicrous because you are logically saying something like this:
Humans breath oxygen. Oxygen is a gas. Chlorine is a gas. Therefore humans can breath chlorine.
I believe you guys with PhDs in philosophy call this a category error.
Do you even know what electric current is? Because I suspect that if you did the you'd already know why what you've said really is ludicrous.
Similarly with "Dhyāna must have height." This is not an reductio ad absurdum argument because it doesn't develop something a measurement approach suggests and take it to a absurd extent. What you've done here is invent something that is already absurd and has no relationship to any known approach to science, and falsely attributed it to science. I'm not sure what philosophers call this, but as a scientist I'd call it "a lie", and if I was being disrespectful "an idiotic fucking lie." (Note I'm *not* saying the latter, it is there for the purposes of comparison)
Why must an experience have physical dimension like height? That is also ludicrous. What you're saying is this:
All physical entities have measurable dimensions. Dhyāna is a physical entity. Therefore dhyāna has physical dimensions.
(spot deliferate mistale)
One doesn't need a PhD in Philosophy to see the massive holes in such arguments. And I experience an overwhelming desire to cut such exchanges short. I'm not in a hurry to argue the point because the errors are so fundamental that it seems like a hopeless case. I just want it to stop.
Hi Jayarava, Thankyou for explaining your objections. We can then have a discussion about it instead of being rude to each other.
"There is nothing in a measurement based approach to knowledge which says that everything must be measurable by all and every unit of measurement or the whole thing is false." You're right here that I was assuming this about the mechanistic model (or something like it, that it implies that every theorisable aspect of every object must also be measurable) and I'm glad to hear that you do not support that understanding of the mechanistic model. I certainly don't want to use straw men. However, you were using measurability as a criterion for judging what is or is not a useful or fruitful theory. If you agree with me that not all theorisable aspects of every object are measurable, surely this undermines the way you were appealing to measurability?
Horses for courses Robert, and no I don't always want to spend my time explaining elementary problems to people making outrageous or ignorant claims. Especially when the might be expected to know better! I honestly think most blogs peter out because the writers are slowly ground down and driven mad by the comments; or they continue because the authors take no part in the commenting. After 6+ years I'm certainly starting to feel the comments are a burden a lot of the time.
You have *not* said "not all theorisable aspects of every object are measurable" so I can neither agree nor disagree with you on that. What you have been saying is that every quantity must be measurable in every unit. And obviously I disagree with that!
That's as far as we have got. And I'm still not convinced that it's worth pursuing.
If you look back at what I said, my appeal is not even to measurability, but to un-measurability. What I said in my comment to you was this: "And unmeasurable forces and entities can never be tested, never be falsified. This is why they don't count as science."
If we invent metaphysical "entities" with no dimensions of any kind, and metaphysical "forces" with no regular or measurable effect, and still claim that they interact with the physical world, then we have a logical conundrum. How does an entity with no physical properties interact with the physical world? If it can do so then we ought to be able to observe, and therefore quantify, that interaction, even if only in second or third order phenomena (as in the case of quarks for instance!). If not then why are we even talking about it? What is there to talk about?
The thing about scientific observation is that because it is repeatable and quantifiable it is reliable - false readings are exposed eventually. Our theories may change, but usually in a positive way that brings more understanding not less. Knowledge accumulates. Knowledge is both power and freedom.
In Buddhism liberation is often described in terms of gaining a particular kind of knowledge (yathābhūtañāṇadassana, vimuttiñāṇa, abhiññā, āsavakkhayañāṇa etc). I characterise this most fundamentally as knowledge of the arising and passing away of experience. Since this is observable, it is quantifiable. And since it is regular anyone can experience it if they follow the experimental procedure set up. We may have to deconstruct the Iron Age and Medieval language and worldview the instructions are couched in, but in essence the experience is there to be had by anyone, at any time. Once one sees the nature of experience one can adjust one's expectations accordingly - and not experience disappointment (dukkha) any longer.
I see a real threat from anti-intellectuals at present. People who actually *prefer* to believe in fairies, aliens, energy fields and a whole raft of other invented entities and forces that can never be quantified - they are just magical explanations of phenomena that resist any other type of explanation. If one only read the output of the academy one might be fooled into thinking that the Enlightenment did away with superstition and magic, but my everyday experience suggests otherwise - I know people who openly admit to preferring magical thinking to any hint of science. Some people in my sphere openly reject science in toto, and embrace magical thinking. This is not a subject I chose at random or as interesting in theory, but is definitely a response to my environment. I'm deeply concerned about the prevalence of magical thinking, and the way that it hamstrings the people who seek liberation. Magic is not going to save us from suffering. Gandalf, Dumbledore and God Almighty are fictional characters. But not in the minds of some of my circle. The same people stopped believing in Santa Claus decades ago, but are reluctant to give up believing that magic is real, and that magic and bodhisattvas (as opposed to discipline, perseverance and careful observation) will solve all their problems. If fucking bodhisattvas were capable of solving our problems for us, we'd not have any. Uri Geller was successful for so long (and is again I believe though not as a sleight of hand spoon bender) because people want to believe in magic. Part of me wants to believe as well, part of me would like my problems magicked away. But it's just not going to happen.
It may well be that some aspects of consciousness remain beyond the reach of observation, even as second or third hand. I'd be reluctant to accept this as axiomatic, because it would be difficult to show in practice. But to believe that consciousness remains forever beyond the reach of science, forever mysterious, and forever magical seems to me to be a dangerous proposition.
This begs the question of what we mean by consciousness, and I think on the whole that the Western idea of consciousness unhelpfully places it outside our understanding because it is an invented entity. People like Antonio Damasio and Thomas Metzinger are starting to undermine this magical thinking, but we have some way to go before we even ask the right questions. Again I think Buddhists ask very different questions about consciousness, if "consciousness" is even a valid concept in Buddhism which I seriously doubt these days - consciousness is certainly a misleading translation of vijñāna/viññāṇa. Once we examine the assumptions, stop asking the wrong questions, and start asking the right questions, then we will probably find that so-called consciousness is a lot less mysterious than we now think. Until that time we'll probably have a lot of wasted time and effort. I suspect that we will conclude that consciousness is one of those invent entities, and that this obscured our understanding of what we are and what we do when we look out our eyes and see the world. It's interesting that Theravāda Buddhists talk not about looking out, but of the objects of the senses striking the sense organ: ārammaṇena pana pasāde ghaṭṭite "[When] however the sense object strikes the sense organ" Atthasālinī 272.
Your arguments are interesting, Jayarava, and I'd like to understand them properly. Also, whatever your policy with completely unknown contributors, I think you know me well enough to realise that I will have thought out what I'm saying, however much you disagree with it or however bizarre it seems to you. A lot of what seems outrageous may also be due to the lack of a context to the remarks that the contributor is assuming.
If "unmeasurable forces and entities...cannot be falsified" and thus "don't count as science", surely this implies that scientifically theorisable forces and entities have to be measurable? And even if you can't measure every aspect of a theorisable entity,as we seem to have agreed, doesn't your position imply that we should only theorise about qualities that can be measured?
My point is that the mechanistic or physicalist model theorises about many things that cannot be measured and thus does not meet its own criteria as you are presenting them. For example, if it is asserted that a dhyana is a physical event subject to physical laws, according to physicalism it must be measurable in some physical way, presumably the same ways in which it is being asserted to be a physical event. If dhyana does not have height, then what measurable physical attributes do you think it does have? Or would you not want to theorise about dhyana at all?
Later in your first post above (when talking about Buddhist observation of experience) you move from measurability to quantifiability. I would not assume these to be the same. Measurability has a precision which I think is often deceptive: it gives us the impression we have nailed down how things really are when we have only established precision in terms of our assumptions. Quantification, on the other hand, can be vague and provisional. I'd be inclined to agree with you that theorisable qualities need to be quantifiable - but not that they need to be measurable. Experiences in meditation can be quantified, but not precisely measured.
As regards magical thinking, I would want to distinguish the meaning of magical thinking from claims about beliefs that are magical. As it is applied to belief, I would agree with you that magical thinking is often unhelpful. But questioning the ways that I think scientists can make assumptions that go far beyond experience - what I would call scientism - does not make me guilty of magical thinking about beliefs. I think that metaphysical frameworks of both physical and non-physical need to be avoided, and questioning one does not take one automatically into the opposite. This is where I try to apply the Middle Way and the Buddha's even-handed critique of metaphysics.
Sure it is necessary to have a critique of science, but I know a few scientists and most of them (like me) are actively aware of those critiques and engaged with them - we've all read Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn (or read about about them at least) - I've posted a blog about this. Did you miss that one?
On the other hand I know lots of people with magical beliefs who have no critique at all of magic, and who actively resist thinking about their belief systems; who actively resist thinking at all!
As pragmatist I seek to address the problem that confronts me. The problem that confronts me is not unaware scientists, it's unaware Buddhists and philosophers.
Monday, April 09, 2012
[Image]THOSE WHO RAIL against science usually make the same point: viz that science has limitations which stem from the nature of the human psyche and senses, and that there are places where "science cannot go". Some things are simply "not measurable" and consciousness is always at the top of the list of things not amenable to measurable.
In theology this is known as the "God of the gaps" argument. Retreating in the face of the successes of science, some Christian theologians resorted to arguing that God was to be found where science ended: i.e. in the gaps between measurements. Some Buddhists (and others) argue that the "true nature" of consciousness (or reality, or whatever) is found only where scientific investigation ends. Consciousness is off the edge of the map: here be dragons (or nāgas in our case). However other theologians realised that the God of the gaps argument meant that as knowledge expanded, God shrank. Some of those who realised this preferred the even more irrational all-or-nothing argument: i.e. the whole universe was God's work. Buddhists who adopt a God of the gaps argument will find themselves increasingly marginalised as the scientific investigation of consciousness proceeds.
Perhaps the first person to complain about the obsession of scientists with measurement, and certainly one of the most vociferous, was the poet and engraver William Blake (1757-1827). Blake saw visions of God, Jesus, and/or angels most days of his life. He conversed with his visions and to him they were as much a part of life as his wife, his few friends, his house, or the city of London where he lived. Blake hated Isaac Newton with a blazing passion, and the depiction of him (above) with his dividers doing geometry while ignoring the texture of the world around him, was ironic and polemical, though not the everyone seems to get this. For Blake the empirical approach could not measure the higher truth he felt he met in his visions. In his own time Blake was considered a (mostly) harmless crank, but later he was championed by arch Romantic and co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Today (for good or ill) Blake would no doubt be treated as "mentally ill".
In the wake of Blake we sometimes find Buddhists at the forefront of the attack on science and materialism, along with Christian fundamentalists, social studies scholars and French philosophers. Sadly the understanding of science in these attacks seems not to have progressed much beyond Blake's time, and we see scientists accused of seeking or claiming Absolute Knowledge, or thinking they can solve all the worlds problems. In fact it is religions which claim absolute knowledge (which they don't have) and the ability to solve all the world's problems (which they have demonstrably not done). Most people are distinctly better off for having science in the world, and recently Harvard Professor Steven Pinker has suggested, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, that the values of the Enlightenment have contributed to a long term reduction in violence across the globe. His claim is hotly contested, but one feels that with the retreat of Christianity a vengeful spirit is being exorcised from Europe. That there is a substrate of violent behaviour remaining should not detract from the achievements of Enlightenment values. Secularism and trade have created a more stable, peaceful and unified Europe than Christianity ever did (current problems not withstanding).
But what of this claim that consciousness is inaccessible to science? I think this claim is now demonstrably false. The map is now a globe, we may not have every island and cove mapped, but we know the rough shape of the continents. Turns out there are no dragons.
However before looking more closely at this issue I want to briefly mention another anti-materialist claim: that the brain is simply not complex enough to sustain consciousness. I had wondered about this, but I now think this is one of many failures of imagination on the part of the anti-science lobby. Part of the problem is that it's difficult to get a handle on big numbers. So if I say that the human brain has about 100 billions neurons each with 1000 connections to other neurons, i.e. 100 trillion connections in total, this doesn't really mean anything to most people. To get a sense of it there is a very interesting TED talk by Henry Markram which shows a visualisation from a realistic computer model of a tiny part of the brain of a rat. Here we are visualising a model equivalent to perhaps 1 ten-millionth of the human brain, and yet the complexity is both staggering and beautiful. Does a brain possess the complexity required to produce and sustain consciousness? I would say undoubtedly, yes, it does.
And so to the idea that consciousness is not accessible to measurement. For many decades now neuroscientists have been studying the way that brain injuries affect consciousness, cognition, and personality. This has given us a rough overview of the way that mind depends on brain. More recently various types of brain scan have allowed us to begin to show in more detail the correlations between brain activity and mental activity, increasingly this is done in real time. We can be reasonably certain that mental activity is always associated with brain activity. Some studies in animals have gone to a much greater level of detail with brain mapping. One group have precisely mapped out each of the 300 or so neurons of a nematode worm and all of the synapses. They have produced the Worm Atlas to help visualise it. The effort to map out the 100 trillion connections in a human brain has been formalised in the Human Connectome Project. It seems likely that with persistence a complete map of a human brain and all its connections will eventually be realised. This will give us undreamed of insights into how the brain, and therefore the mind, functions.
I glossed over some of the aspects of consciousness that can and have been studied when I reviewed Thomas Metzinger talking about the first-person perspective. This is one of the ways of studying of how consciousness, particularly self consciousness, is affected by injury. But some neuroscientists have gone further and created non-invasive, and non-destructive ways to test and challenge our sense of self. I've already described Thomas Metzinger's article which links the idea of a soul with out-of-body experiences (OBE), but the OBE provides other insights into the flexibility and contingency of our sense of ownership over our body. A recent feature article in Nature News surveys the life and work of Henrik Ehrsson in this area. Ehrsson uses virtual reality equipment to alter how the body is incorporated into the Self-Model. The self --that is the thinking, ego centre--can be experienced as transferred to an inanimate object for instance. That is to say that the sense of "I" being behind the eyes can be disrupted so that it seems to be located outside the body, and even inside an inanimate artificial body. Similarly inanimate objects can be incorporated into the body image to the extent that seeing them touched can produce a 'felt' sensation. This tells us that the sense of self is not hard wired, but virtual. Metzinger talks about it as a "simulation".
As author and blogger Ed Yong says "Ehrsson's work also intrigues neuroscientists and philosophers because it turns a slippery, metaphysical construct — the self — into something that scientists can dissect." He also cites neuroscientist David Eagleman: "We can say if we wobble the signals this way, our conscious experience wobbles in this way. That's a lever we didn't have before". And Thomas Metzinger: "There are things like selfhood that people think cannot be touched by the hard sciences. They are now demonstrably tractable."
The field of neuroscience has made huge progress in the last 20 years. News of this progress leaks out in popular press coverage only to a limited extent, and often with distortions. More can be gleaned from popular books by authors such as Vilayanur Ramachandran, Oliver Sacks and Antonio Damasio (to name some of my favourites). But look at the bibliographies of such books, or do a Google scholar search and you'll get a better idea of the scope and scale of the enterprise. Lay people can scarcely imagine it, and even with my degree in chemistry I cannot follow the great bulk of it, and must rely on interpreters and popularisers to get a sense of what the scientists are discovering.
Of course for Buddhists some of the most interesting research in this area is the study of how meditation affects the brain in the short and long term. We are now getting information about which parts of the brain are activated by different styles of meditation, and how regular meditation practice creates long term changes in the brain. It is these kinds of studies, with objective evidence of benefit that relies on data and not metaphysical claims or mere subjectivity, which are helping to popularise mindfulness techniques (including meditation) beyond our usual audience.
It seems to me that the perceived limitations of science are often in fact the limitations of the perceptions of the critics of science. In the Romantic critique of science there, ironically, seems to be a massive failure of imagination, and inability to take in and think about what is actually happening in the world. Very few critics seem to have understood the impact of the two great figures of the philosophy of science in the 20th century: Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn; let along the progress of knowledge itself. Too many seem to ignore the various revolutions in thinking that have occurred in the years since Blake vented his spleen at the great figures of the Enlightenment. In my view Blake is not a good role model. He may have been a Romantic figure--a lonely visionary, enunciating a higher truth that lesser mortals could not comprehend --but he was unable to sustain relationships with his friends for instance, and was patently a very frustrated and angry man, who blamed his inability to communicate on others. Blake was no saint, and, in the end, not much of a prophet either.
Humans have limitations, but one of the stand-out characteristics of humans is not accepting those limitations and pushing beyond them. So, yes, science has limits, but they are not set by outdated views, and ideological criticism. We are usually limited only by the scope of our imagination. ~~oOo~~
Further listening, reading and viewing 'The Scientific Method.' In Our Time (with Melvin Bragg). BBC Radio 4. 26.1.12. Podcast mp3.' The Age of Doubt.' In Our Time (with Melvin Bragg). BBC Radio 4. 9.3.00. Podcast mp3. 'Henry Markram builds a brain in a supercomputer' TEDGlobal. Jul 2009. The Blue Brain Project 'Gero Miesenboeck reengineers a brain.' TEDGlobal 2010.Neil Burgess: 'How Your Brain Tells You Where You Are.' TEDSalon, London Spring 20011.Jayarava. First Person Perspective - precis of a lecture by Thomas Metzinger.Human Connectome Project.Yong, Ed. 'Out-of-body experience: Master of illusion.' Nature News Feature. 7 Dec 2011.
16 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formThere are very basic philosophical reasons why consciousness cannot be directly investigated through neuroscience. Our experience of consciousness and its objects, and of the meaning of those objects for us, is unique. A person investigating a brain from without does not experience what it is like to have the mind associated with that brain. That does not mean that scientific investigation can't be very informative about things that relate to our experience (for example, the impact of left and right hemispheres, fascinatingly discussed by Iain McGilchrist), but you have to be very careful to avoid reductionism in the process.
You were dismissive of Rupert Sheldrake when I mentioned him in a previous comment, but his treatment of the limitations of mechanistic explanation in the recently-published 'Science Delusion' is superb. He gives loads of evidence that cannot be readily explained on a mechanistic model, such as inheritance, memory and telepathic phenomena. He pleads for an opening up of scientific assumptions. Much of the success of scientific method depends, in my view, on the ability of scientists to give adequate philosophical scrutiny to their assumptions, and not assume that the currently dominant models are going to be able to explain phenomena in future which they have yet to explain.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Hi Robert
I disagree with your very basic philosophical reasons - they're just not true any more.
I'm not sure I believe in consciousness in the way that it is usually talked about in the West - as the container in which experience happens. There are basic Buddhist critiques of this idea, and there are basic neuroscience critiques as well. I'm not even sure I believe in subjectivity as usually defined - I'm going to write something about this.
The success of science over 400 years since Galileo speaks for itself. The failures too. But the successes are beyond any one person's ability to comprehend any more.
The real danger in the world at present is not reductionism, but it's opposite - what I call inflationism. The danger is that we invent things in order to explain the inexplicable, rather than leaving it unexplained. And unmeasurable forces and entities can never be tested, never be falsified. This is why they don't count as science. We can invent as many forces and entities as we like without ever really having to justify them - like an episode of Star Trek. Unseen forces are not better than no explanation, they are far worse. Far better that we have no explanation than something that cannot ever be tested or falsified. But of course almost no one is happy to accept that some things are avyākatatta. So made up explanations flourish.
There's not much point in continuing to cite Sheldrake at me. That you are impressed by him makes you seem a lot less credible.
Friday, March 16, 2012
I'd be interested to see your critique of consciousness and subjectivity. I'm not particularly tied to those concepts, and I definitely avoid 'subjective'. However, the basic philosophical problem just seems to be that experience has qualities that are not observable by third parties.
I agree with you about the need to avoid inventing theoretical constructions that explain the inexplicable, but that seems to be exactly what mechanistic explanations of the mind do. For example, we do not know what memories consist in, and nobody has discovered material traces that correspond to memories. Sheldrake's account of memory as morphic resonance is very far from proven, but is no more nor less speculative than claiming that it is some sort of 'stuff' that nobody has found yet.
Why put so much emphasis on measurement? If you restrict the objects of theoretical belief to what can be measured, you leave out huge areas of human experience. How tall is a dhyana? What is the mass of a desire? This is not a way to avoid dogmas but is a way of digging oneself into new ones. We don't have to avoid all theorisations of things we cannot measure, but just be adequately provisional about them. Measurement is no guarantee of such provisionality, given all the social pressures and cognitive biases than can apply to both the making and the interpretation of measurements.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Blake's critique of science does not begin or end with Newton, or his shock-tactic attacks on any Enlightenment figure. It's best represented by the figure of Urizen- Reason- whose role to play in Blake's grand visions is often villainous, but nonetheless essential. (And what's more, most of Blake's major figures are at times ambiguous, including Blake's avatar of the imagination, Los.) I think conflating him with the "god of the gaps" argument is missing the point: Blake is not talking in terms of a clean epistemological point. Blake would have laughed at the god of the gaps argument- as if that's the only place god (or what he meant by god, rather) could be found!
And "Blake isn't a role model"? Really? An ad hominem attack? He inspired some of the most sublime poetry humanity has ever produced, and you say he "blamed others for his failure to communicate"? I'm inclined to forgive him for being alienated and be grateful that, instead of trying to make himself understandable or palatable to his time, he gave humanity the lasting gift of his Prophetic Works.
I find Blake's life more civic, social & contented than Newton's. I'd consider both a role model.
Friday, March 16, 2012
No queries or quibbles today - very much agree with you.
Buddhism and Neuroscience is an interesting area, and for a 2,500 year old tradition it seems uncannily accurate in the broad strokes.
Then again I love the Sciences and Blake just leaves me with a "So what?" kind of feeling.
Friday, March 16, 2012
How tall is a dhyana seems a bit silly to me - one may as well ask what is the mass of an electric current? Or what is the wavelength of an elephant? To then claim that currents and elephants have no measurable features would be a bit mad.
That is not to say that everything can be measured - just that I don't know. Functional MRI seems to be providing interesting data on what goes on in the brain - how that maps to experience is debatable, but being able to distinguish activity in the brain related to gross drives and emotions indicates that the problem may be tractable.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Hi Paul,
The whole point of the example is that it is silly: and that if you follow through the implications of the mechanistic model of science, then electric currents have to have mass and elephants have to have wavelengths just as dhyanas have to have height. Yes, these things are measurable in other ways, but some things are not measurable at all, opther things are not measurable in all the ways mechanical science theoretically requires, and in any case measurement in itself does not give us grounds to draw the line Jayarava seems to be trying to draw (unless I've misunderstood him) between measurable as investigable and unmeasurable as metaphysical. It's not the measurability but the provisionality of a theory that enables us to distinguish whether it is open to investigation through experience.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Robert - you're embarrassing yourself with these ludicrous statements about science. Stick to what you know!
Saturday, March 17, 2012
If any aspect of the mind can be shown to be non-algorithmic, then that aspect is by its very nature beyond the reach of science: http://rational-buddhism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/church-turing-deutsch-principle-and.html
Scientific explanations and predictions are reliant on the algorithmic compressibility of the phenomena being studied. If those phenomena are not algorithmically compressible, then science can have nothing useful to say about them: http://rational-buddhism.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/algorithmic-compression-and-three-modes.html
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Hi Jayarava,
I do try to be respectful on your blog comments, but it would be very helpful if you could do likewise in responding to those who take an interest. Please explain why my comments are 'ludicrous'.
Best wishes,
Robert
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Hi Robert
Actually I thought it was you who was being disrespectful in this case.
There is nothing in a measurement based approach to knowledge which says that everything must be measurable by all and every unit of measurement or the whole thing is false. So when you say "electric currents have to have mass" it is ludicrous because you are logically saying something like this:
Humans breath oxygen.
Oxygen is a gas.
Chlorine is a gas.
Therefore humans can breath chlorine.
I believe you guys with PhDs in philosophy call this a category error.
Do you even know what electric current is? Because I suspect that if you did the you'd already know why what you've said really is ludicrous.
Similarly with "Dhyāna must have height." This is not an reductio ad absurdum argument because it doesn't develop something a measurement approach suggests and take it to a absurd extent. What you've done here is invent something that is already absurd and has no relationship to any known approach to science, and falsely attributed it to science. I'm not sure what philosophers call this, but as a scientist I'd call it "a lie", and if I was being disrespectful "an idiotic fucking lie." (Note I'm *not* saying the latter, it is there for the purposes of comparison)
Why must an experience have physical dimension like height? That is also ludicrous. What you're saying is this:
All physical entities have measurable dimensions.
Dhyāna is a physical entity.
Therefore dhyāna has physical dimensions.
(spot deliferate mistale)
One doesn't need a PhD in Philosophy to see the massive holes in such arguments. And I experience an overwhelming desire to cut such exchanges short. I'm not in a hurry to argue the point because the errors are so fundamental that it seems like a hopeless case. I just want it to stop.
Jayarava
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Hi Jayarava,
Thankyou for explaining your objections. We can then have a discussion about it instead of being rude to each other.
"There is nothing in a measurement based approach to knowledge which says that everything must be measurable by all and every unit of measurement or the whole thing is false." You're right here that I was assuming this about the mechanistic model (or something like it, that it implies that every theorisable aspect of every object must also be measurable) and I'm glad to hear that you do not support that understanding of the mechanistic model. I certainly don't want to use straw men. However, you were using measurability as a criterion for judging what is or is not a useful or fruitful theory. If you agree with me that not all theorisable aspects of every object are measurable, surely this undermines the way you were appealing to measurability?
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Horses for courses Robert, and no I don't always want to spend my time explaining elementary problems to people making outrageous or ignorant claims. Especially when the might be expected to know better! I honestly think most blogs peter out because the writers are slowly ground down and driven mad by the comments; or they continue because the authors take no part in the commenting. After 6+ years I'm certainly starting to feel the comments are a burden a lot of the time.
You have *not* said "not all theorisable aspects of every object are measurable" so I can neither agree nor disagree with you on that. What you have been saying is that every quantity must be measurable in every unit. And obviously I disagree with that!
That's as far as we have got. And I'm still not convinced that it's worth pursuing.
If you look back at what I said, my appeal is not even to measurability, but to un-measurability. What I said in my comment to you was this: "And unmeasurable forces and entities can never be tested, never be falsified. This is why they don't count as science."
If we invent metaphysical "entities" with no dimensions of any kind, and metaphysical "forces" with no regular or measurable effect, and still claim that they interact with the physical world, then we have a logical conundrum. How does an entity with no physical properties interact with the physical world? If it can do so then we ought to be able to observe, and therefore quantify, that interaction, even if only in second or third order phenomena (as in the case of quarks for instance!). If not then why are we even talking about it? What is there to talk about?
The thing about scientific observation is that because it is repeatable and quantifiable it is reliable - false readings are exposed eventually. Our theories may change, but usually in a positive way that brings more understanding not less. Knowledge accumulates. Knowledge is both power and freedom.
In Buddhism liberation is often described in terms of gaining a particular kind of knowledge (yathābhūtañāṇadassana, vimuttiñāṇa, abhiññā, āsavakkhayañāṇa etc). I characterise this most fundamentally as knowledge of the arising and passing away of experience. Since this is observable, it is quantifiable. And since it is regular anyone can experience it if they follow the experimental procedure set up. We may have to deconstruct the Iron Age and Medieval language and worldview the instructions are couched in, but in essence the experience is there to be had by anyone, at any time. Once one sees the nature of experience one can adjust one's expectations accordingly - and not experience disappointment (dukkha) any longer.
...
Monday, April 09, 2012
I see a real threat from anti-intellectuals at present. People who actually *prefer* to believe in fairies, aliens, energy fields and a whole raft of other invented entities and forces that can never be quantified - they are just magical explanations of phenomena that resist any other type of explanation. If one only read the output of the academy one might be fooled into thinking that the Enlightenment did away with superstition and magic, but my everyday experience suggests otherwise - I know people who openly admit to preferring magical thinking to any hint of science. Some people in my sphere openly reject science in toto, and embrace magical thinking. This is not a subject I chose at random or as interesting in theory, but is definitely a response to my environment. I'm deeply concerned about the prevalence of magical thinking, and the way that it hamstrings the people who seek liberation. Magic is not going to save us from suffering. Gandalf, Dumbledore and God Almighty are fictional characters. But not in the minds of some of my circle. The same people stopped believing in Santa Claus decades ago, but are reluctant to give up believing that magic is real, and that magic and bodhisattvas (as opposed to discipline, perseverance and careful observation) will solve all their problems. If fucking bodhisattvas were capable of solving our problems for us, we'd not have any. Uri Geller was successful for so long (and is again I believe though not as a sleight of hand spoon bender) because people want to believe in magic. Part of me wants to believe as well, part of me would like my problems magicked away. But it's just not going to happen.
It may well be that some aspects of consciousness remain beyond the reach of observation, even as second or third hand. I'd be reluctant to accept this as axiomatic, because it would be difficult to show in practice. But to believe that consciousness remains forever beyond the reach of science, forever mysterious, and forever magical seems to me to be a dangerous proposition.
This begs the question of what we mean by consciousness, and I think on the whole that the Western idea of consciousness unhelpfully places it outside our understanding because it is an invented entity. People like Antonio Damasio and Thomas Metzinger are starting to undermine this magical thinking, but we have some way to go before we even ask the right questions. Again I think Buddhists ask very different questions about consciousness, if "consciousness" is even a valid concept in Buddhism which I seriously doubt these days - consciousness is certainly a misleading translation of vijñāna/viññāṇa. Once we examine the assumptions, stop asking the wrong questions, and start asking the right questions, then we will probably find that so-called consciousness is a lot less mysterious than we now think. Until that time we'll probably have a lot of wasted time and effort. I suspect that we will conclude that consciousness is one of those invent entities, and that this obscured our understanding of what we are and what we do when we look out our eyes and see the world. It's interesting that Theravāda Buddhists talk not about looking out, but of the objects of the senses striking the sense organ: ārammaṇena pana pasāde ghaṭṭite "[When] however the sense object strikes the sense organ" Atthasālinī 272.
Monday, April 09, 2012
Your arguments are interesting, Jayarava, and I'd like to understand them properly. Also, whatever your policy with completely unknown contributors, I think you know me well enough to realise that I will have thought out what I'm saying, however much you disagree with it or however bizarre it seems to you. A lot of what seems outrageous may also be due to the lack of a context to the remarks that the contributor is assuming.
If "unmeasurable forces and entities...cannot be falsified" and thus "don't count as science", surely this implies that scientifically theorisable forces and entities have to be measurable? And even if you can't measure every aspect of a theorisable entity,as we seem to have agreed, doesn't your position imply that we should only theorise about qualities that can be measured?
My point is that the mechanistic or physicalist model theorises about many things that cannot be measured and thus does not meet its own criteria as you are presenting them. For example, if it is asserted that a dhyana is a physical event subject to physical laws, according to physicalism it must be measurable in some physical way, presumably the same ways in which it is being asserted to be a physical event. If dhyana does not have height, then what measurable physical attributes do you think it does have? Or would you not want to theorise about dhyana at all?
Later in your first post above (when talking about Buddhist observation of experience) you move from measurability to quantifiability. I would not assume these to be the same. Measurability has a precision which I think is often deceptive: it gives us the impression we have nailed down how things really are when we have only established precision in terms of our assumptions. Quantification, on the other hand, can be vague and provisional. I'd be inclined to agree with you that theorisable qualities need to be quantifiable - but not that they need to be measurable. Experiences in meditation can be quantified, but not precisely measured.
As regards magical thinking, I would want to distinguish the meaning of magical thinking from claims about beliefs that are magical. As it is applied to belief, I would agree with you that magical thinking is often unhelpful. But questioning the ways that I think scientists can make assumptions that go far beyond experience - what I would call scientism - does not make me guilty of magical thinking about beliefs. I think that metaphysical frameworks of both physical and non-physical need to be avoided, and questioning one does not take one automatically into the opposite. This is where I try to apply the Middle Way and the Buddha's even-handed critique of metaphysics.
Monday, April 09, 2012
Robert,
Sure it is necessary to have a critique of science, but I know a few scientists and most of them (like me) are actively aware of those critiques and engaged with them - we've all read Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn (or read about about them at least) - I've posted a blog about this. Did you miss that one?
On the other hand I know lots of people with magical beliefs who have no critique at all of magic, and who actively resist thinking about their belief systems; who actively resist thinking at all!
As pragmatist I seek to address the problem that confronts me. The problem that confronts me is not unaware scientists, it's unaware Buddhists and philosophers.
Monday, April 09, 2012