[MD] Mystics and Brains

[david buchanan]

Case and y'all:

This conversation came from the "Food for Thought" thread.

dmb said:
.., one of the two major themes in all those quotes from all those various 
thinkers is that the realization CANNOT be understood intellectually. And 
here you are saying it doesn't take much thought to realize it? I mean, the 
whole point is that this realization can't be "thought" at all. This is why 
its called names like pre-linguistic, pre-intellectual and non-rational. I 
mean, dude, you missed that point by a mile.

Case replied:
(James, brains Psychology quote), ...More nonsense induced mystery. Language 
transcends the inability to communicate. How one can possibly expect to 
achieve an understanding of experience without an understanding of brain 
physiology? Now that is indeed a great mystery. Language is a direct product 
of brain processes. If specific areas of the brain are disturbed, language 
ceases to be produced and or understood. Concentrating or meditation on the 
non-rational or nonlinguistic aspect of experience may indeed heighten 
aspects of perception that are not normally called upon.

dmb says:
See, I would not dispute the idea that thinkers need brains and language 
requires a brain, but at the same time you are simply reasserting scientific 
materialism here. As I keep saying, this is normal and rational, but not in 
this context. Since we are talking about a metaphysical system that wants to 
get past this sort of thing. The notion that language and intellect can be 
reduced to brain activity is, in my opinion, soul-murdering bullshit. The 
MOQ was built to replace that empty, meaningless, ugly worldview. See, I'm 
trying to explain an alternative to this and so it is just about the last 
thing in the world that would persuade me. As I see it, the worldview that 
would reduce mystical experience to a brain-state is the problem we're 
trying to solve. Or so I thought.

Case said:
When I say cognition, I refer to mental processes, brain activity. Some are 
verbal some are nonverbal. If you are asserting that mystical experience is 
not a function of brain states or if you see some subtlety to the term 
cognition that escapes me, fine. Insert brain state for cognition. 
Sensation, motor activity, perception, experience... do not occur in the 
absence of brain activity.

dmb says:
See, that is just classic positivism. Experience is defined here in terms of 
sensory experience and from that it follows that we can know something 
important about experience by studying the senses and the nervous system and 
especially the brain. I think this view is seriously flawed. I think thid 
kind of reductionism is typical and normal, but again, we are talking 
metaphysics here. I'm not saying we should throw neurology out the window. 
Its fascinating and it saves lives too, but its not JUST about tissues and 
chemicals. And all that fancy explantion means very little compared to the 
experience itself.

Case said:
Matthew Fox must be an oxymoron for you. Isn't he a Christian mystic? I 
thought you said they didn't exist. '

dmb says:
Did I say that? I doubt it. Actually, I consider myself a christian mystic, 
at least in some sense of the word. What I think is contradictory is a 
mystical theist, not least of all because a mystic is supposed to understand 
that all the gods and heavens are within them. Also, once upon a time the 
church would kill a guy for that sort of thing.

Case said:
But one could as easily assert that the West had made the advances in human 
understanding that it has precisely because it has transcend its own 
mystical tradition. Or it could be said that mystical traditions are at our 
roots precisely because they are of more primitive origin. Seeking a return 
to them is hardly an expansion of rationality.

dmb says:
Uma Thurman's (Robert) dad is a academic Buddhist type. As he explains it, 
the West has a powerful science that looks outward and it has carried men to 
the moon. But the East has an equally powerful "science" that looks inward 
and it has carred men to equally impressive heights in that dimension. Now 
imagine what could happen if the strengths of East and West were combined so 
that we could combine Zen with something like.. oh, let's say motorcycle 
maintenance.

dmb said:
...They say you gotta see for your self, that it CAN'T communicated and has 
to be experienced dierectly.

Case replied:
So what are we to make of these mystic revelations? For the scientist they 
are, after all, not uncommon. Many scientists have spoken of ideas that came 
from dreams, thoughts that coalesce like seed crystals into larger 
structures of thought. The point is not that scientists don't have them. It 
is what they do with them that counts.

dmb says:
Well, there is something kind of magical about those moments of inspiration 
and insight, but that is not a mystical experience as i understand it. 
Apples and oranges.

Case said:
Kekule did not say, "Aha, if you sit by a fire and meditate on snakes, you 
will achieve an enlightened understanding of chemistry." No, he translated 
his mystical understanding into something that could be shared with the 
scientific community.

dmb says:
There is a film called "Larenzo's Oil" in which the father literally dreams 
up a solution to his son's medical problem, a problem that stumped all the 
doctors. The father was not trained in medicine but was highly motivated and 
had been doing research on his own when he fell asleep in the library. The 
point is that this is certainly a way to introduce some profoundly creative 
thinking, but its not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an 
experience in which all differences and distinctions are dissolved, not a 
moment of insight about differences and distinctions, which is what you need 
to come up with an idea of any kind. Also, the mystical experience does not 
impart any kind of scientific knowledge. Its not like you automatically get 
a PhD in everything. Enlightenment and education are two different things, 
maybe even opposite things in some ways.

Case said:
So out of this mystical incommunicable experience you get what? No truth 
from it, no ability to share it, a warm fuzzy of no significance?

dmb says:
Well, I guess I don't know what you're asking. There is no particular 
benefit. There is no paycheck, diploma, certificate of authenticy or even a 
pat on the back waiting for you at the end of the road to enlightenment. It 
just seems that certain people have made this discovery and afterward 
thought it was something worth while. Religions and cultures have grown up 
around such people and so it seems to be at the heart of things.

Case said:
One could also conclude from this that they are of evolutionary 
significance. Religion serves biological and social functions that enhances 
survival and ask relevant questions about the nature of those functions.

dmb says:
Yes, I think that mystics have been among the most creative people on the 
planet and have always done far more than their fair share when it comes to 
social and intellectual evolution. The MOQ's contrarian theme is probably my 
favorite.

Case said:
..By externalizing and personalizing God, the Jews were framing their 
experience with God and nature in terms of personal and social 
relationships. They made very little effort to rationalize this. And yet by 
doing so they evolved a culture that could with stand conquest, captivity 
and Diaspora. By claiming a set of assumptions that ceased to question the 
minutia of metaphysics they got on with life and living.

dmb says:
Well, I'm not so sure that's true. But assuming it is, this would simply 
describe some of the details as to how and why this "religion" is just a 
bunch of social level moral codes and has very little to do with spiritual 
realizations or enlightenment. Personally, I don't think this would be 
anything to brag about. This is exactly why I'm opposed to theism. It 
confuses the divine with mere social decency, not unlike the Victorians. And 
when we look at those social codes today they look quite insane and 
depraved. Stone your children to death for being sassy? Don't eat lobster? 
That's just crazy talk.

Case said:
Again, it is much more fruitful to seek after the biological and social 
functions of religion and mysticism that to take them as meaningful in and 
of themselves.

dmb says:
Well, I think that's confused and that its important to sort out the various 
functions. I would say that mysticism isn't supposed to have any biological 
or social functions. The MOQ claims there has been lots of confused thinking 
and the key distinctions are designed to sort out these things.

Case said:
I maintained at that time that I accept the assumptions of science which I 
have since listed as:
>1. Nature is orderly.
>2. We can know nature.
>3. All phenomena have natural causes
>4. Nothing is self evident. Truth claims must be demonstrated objectively.
>5. Knowledge is derived from acquisition of experience.
>6. Knowledge is superior to ignorance.

dmb says:
These are the assumptions of science? Looks to me more like the conclusions 
of scientific materialism. When I think of science it is generally the 
scientific method and the process of peer review because the conclusions 
come and go. As Pirsig says in Lila, the MOQ does nothing to alter the data 
and has no quarrel with the method. But we are talking philosophy of 
science. I thought the topic here was about the metaphysical assumptions 
(SOM) behind all that. I mean, radical empiricism rejects those assumptions 
and expands the notion of what counts as valid empirical evidence so that we 
are no longer limited to sensory experience. This allows for the possibility 
that we can develop a science to study unusual states of consciousness and 
other experiences that have do not come to us through the senses per se. 
There are interesting correlations, but I think neurology and such can't 
teach us everything we might like to know about experiences of that type. I 
mean, isn't that approach kind of empty and meaningless even for something 
as common as falling in love. The chemistry and activity of the brain can be 
measured and we can see correlations between that and the experience, but 
what does that really tell us about love? Not a damn thing. It only tells us 
about brain activity and chemistry. It might be useful for medical science, 
but everybody knows that poets know a lot more about love than does any 
brain surgeon. And so it is with mystical experience. There is stuff going 
on in the brain and these things can be measured, but the gal having the 
experience is going to know a lot more about it than the technicians 
watching her brain waves slow down. They are just watching the monitors and 
collecting the data the same as any other scientists. They are still 
limiting themselves to sensory experience and trying to explain experience 
in terms of physical strutctures while the mystic is doing somthing 
completely different from all that. I think the idea of developing a broader 
notion of the scientific method would require the scientists in this area to 
have expertise in collecting both kinds of data so that mystics could file 
reports with other mystics the same way that physicists write papers for 
other physicist to scrutinize, etc. I'm not saying this very well, but the 
idea is simply that experimentation, the collection of data, the process of 
peer review and all that can remain the same in essence even if we want to 
study states of consciousness instead of brain states. We can't see states 
of consciousness with the eye or with the scientific instruments that extend 
our senses, but we ought not let that keep us from studying them.

All my teachers would be happy, if I only had a brain.

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