[MD] The Trouble With Wilber

[david buchanan]

Dearest darling Krimel:

If your goal here was to force and end to this conversation by making me 
lose all respect for your opinion, congratulations. You've won.

dmb


>From: "Krimel" <Krimel at Krimel.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
>Subject: Re: [MD] The Trouble With Wilber
>Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 01:45:01 -0400
>
>dmb says:
>I think lots of well-educated people still hold to scientific materialism
>and the metaphysical assumptions behind it. There was the Positivism of
>Comte and more recently we had the Vienna circle.
>
>[Krimel]
>Wasn't that like almost 100 years ago? Is that recent?
>
>[dmb]
>Rorty was still working these issues, trying to convince the many hold
>overs, until just the other day. To suggest that my complaints are about a
>dead and buried problems seems even more strange since you are 
>demonstrating
>the same problem even as we speak.
>
>[Krimel]
>It does not strike me as a problem for science. It seems more like a
>personal problem for you. You are the one who labels me a scientific
>materialist. I never make much of the label. But it's just another scary
>label at disappears when you turn the light on.
>
>[dmb]
>This topic came up big time in the class I took last semester. The
>professor, who was trained in psychology, got into an interesting 
>discussion
>with a retired physicist and they agreed that scientists are trained to
>think and work within the framework of realism. Philosophers of science are
>going to question this sort of thing if they're worth a damn, of course, 
>but
>the people who do the actual lab work still function within that worldview.
>
>[Krimel]
>I suppose that is nice as far as it goes. But it assumes that there is a
>hard and fast division between the two. But there have been many who were
>both; many of the best in my view. Plato made lasting contributions to
>mathematics. Until Bacon and Galileo, Aristole was science, all of it, 
>every
>last bit of it. Newton was a natural philosopher and Leibnitz too. Decartes
>was a mathematician who like Whitehead, Pascal and Poincare wrote
>philosophical works. Piaget was a philosopher who did science, as was
>Goethe, Russell, James, Freud, and Jung. Skinner, Einstein, Bohr, Wilson,
>Hawking, Dawkins, Schrodinger, were scientists who did philosophy. But 
>maybe
>I just prefer to listen to people who have experience with what they are
>talking about. Perhaps many scientists do practice in a framework of
>realism. But this is pure pragmatism. They do it because it works. That 
>does
>not mean they are ignorant or heedless of issues raised by philosophers on
>the sidelines.
>
>[dmb]
>  My late great father-in-law and his friends didn't question it either.
>Apparently I'm talking about something much broader than you imagine, a
>basic world view that included Einstein as well as Newton. Wilber discusses
>how even the most recent and wierd stuff in physics gets trapped in
>flatland.
>
>[Krimel]
>If you are imagining that I can't imagine what you are imagining means I
>can't imagine; then I imagine you are wrong.
>
>Krimel said:
>But I don't see Pirsig calling for the abandonment of the scientific method
>or the wholesale adoption of whatever flits through ones mind at any given
>moment or even that deeply held convictions about the oneness of nature
>should not be put to the test. What I hear him say is, "The real purpose of
>scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking 
>you
>
>know something you don't actually know."
>
>dmb says:
>Nobody is saying we ought to abandon the scientific method or replace it
>with capricious whimsy. And Pirsig's line here is only comforting insofar 
>as
>
>it prevents one from interpreting the MOQ as a form of subjective idealism
>or solipsism. The MOQ has an element of realism that keeps it from being
>crypto-religious or Hegelian and I love that. Again, the MOQ's expansion of
>empiricism is not a rejection of empiricism. The idea is to improve it, not
>trash it.
>
>[Krimel]
>"The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn't misled
>you into thinking you know something you don't actually know."
>
>I know you speak for him, so what you think he's saying must be so. Still,
>you ought to tape that one on the wall beside you. It might also ward
>against pseudo-taxonomic philosophology.
>
>dmb says:
>An individual's account should be taken at face value? Hostile to research?
>In need of special treatment? Rigorous testing is unwelcome? I'm not saying
>any of those things. In fact, the Dali Lama has expressed one of my most
>central points: A real understanding of the true nature of the mind can 
>only
>
>be achieved through meditation. EEGs provide such data only if you believe
>that the brain and the mind are the same thing. That's materialism. That's
>reductionism. That's SOM. That's you, dude...
>
>[Krimel]
>That's shrew dude, but only to the extent that you can not possibly imagine
>how far beyond where you are that I am with this. The real nature of the
>mind can only be understood through the mind, whether meditating or
>masturbating. The mind needs no explanation of itself. But if it desires 
>one
>it has to look both ways. It's called experience.
>
>Krimel said:
>You seem to be claiming that one can have an experience that does not
>involve the senses at all. All experience involves the senses. If senses 
>are
>
>not engaged there is neither experience nor memory of the experience. It is
>one thing to claim that the inner world can be altered to have experiences
>that are other than ordinary but they are occurring in a particular body in
>a particular place. Having an experience that "feels" disconnected from
>space and time is not the same as being disconnected.
>
>dmb says:
>No, for the millionth time, I'm not saying sensory experience is false. The
>complaint is about the limits of what can be learned through the senses and
>that it ain't the only kind that counts...
>
>[Krimel]
>If you keep repeating it maybe you will eventually see how misguided it is
>to be saying. I am not saying that you are saying the sensory experience is
>false. I am saying that what you are saying about there being any other
>kinds of experience is false.
>
>What Pirsig say in your quote and what James says about radical empiricism
>does not claim that there is evidence to be obtained beyond the senses. 
>They
>are saying that we should deal with all kinds of experience as they arise 
>in
>the senses. We sense art, morals, Quality all that stuff, "...knowledge
>arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses provide."
>
>As limits go the senses are it. Until you expand your limited horizon you
>will not be able to truly see.
>
>Krimel said:
>Having an experience that can only be observed by the observer may be
>entertaining; it may be profoundly spiritual but what meaning does it have
>beyond the individual? The isolated experience of this kind means nothing 
>to
>
>anyone else. Furthermore...
>
>dmb says:
>Again, you are exhibiting the very problem you deny.
>
>[Krimel]
>Again you are denying the very problem that you are.
>
>dmb says:
>Without reference to anyone or anything? Huh? I've been going on and on
>about the scientific method, about the marriage of meditation and the
>scientific method.
>
>Krimel: Sounds yummy.
>
>dmb: This would make plenty of references to plenty of things and people.
>
>Krimel: And inclusive...
>
>dmb: It would involve publishing and peer review and all that.
>
>Krimel: You've covered all the buzzwords...
>
>Dmb: Its just that it wouldn't be limited to sensory data.
>
>Krimel: oh...  ...but if we can't sense them datum, how're we gonna catch
>'em?
>
>[dmb]
>In fact, the metaphysical premise behind that limitation has been replaced
>with one that sees subjects and objects as concepts, as interpretations of
>experience rather than the preconditions that allow experience. You've been
>criticizing this expanded empiricism in terms of the limited empiricism it
>was meant to replace. This is what I mean in saying that you repeatedly
>offer the problem as a response to the solution...
>
>[Krimel]
>None of what you say above falls under radical empiricism. Seeing concepts
>is not outside the realm of the senses. There are no concepts that do not
>engage the senses. What you are describing is worse than TiTs. TiTs I can
>accept on the grounds that I have an experience OF them. They are
>metaphysically mysterious but they light up my life. The process of
>perception connects the dots of experience into memory and this is where we
>think "about what the senses provide."
>
>This thinking is a process that takes place in space and time whether these
>are simply categories of mind or accurate reflections of TiTs. What you 
>seem
>to be referring to, in a senseless way, was describe once by Case like 
>this:
>
>"It's the Sense of Senses that defines it;
>Processes and Refines it. We see, we feel, we think, we know
>Life does not require death, until it runs out of places to grow."
>
>I thought the last line was really dumb. I would have said something like:
>
>"Don't trust one who claims there's more, unless you want to stub your 
>toe."
>
>It is about that sense of pattern recognition that integrates the divided
>sensory systems into oneness. That's how I know what something looks like 
>by
>touching it and can judge distance using sound.
>
>"...knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses
>provide."
>
>You should paste that on your wall too, as fast acting relief from 
>delusions
>of certainty that can't be recalled or described.
>
>dmb says:
>See, the premise of you criticism here is that nature and the material 
>world
>
>are the same thing, that empirical evidence is sensory evidence. This is
>flatland, my friend.
>
>[Krimel]
>Another shot from the bogeyman!!! The way you through "flatland" around is
>slapstick, like lemon meringue pie without the meringue. I believe I have
>said many times that nature, reality is undefined. If you can't state my
>premises properly you will be escorted off of them.
>
>A mystical experience is experienced. During an experience memory of it is
>formed. Sensations are recorded, perhaps these are of such a nature that we
>will need a new way to understand their referents but we are perfectly
>capability of transforming the relationships among the sensations we have
>into new orders of relationship. I have never seen a married bachelor but I
>can juggle evidence derived from my senses to try to imagine how that could
>be. I have never experienced a "the" before but I sense its meaning through
>usage.
>
>[dmb]
>And what I mean in saying that mystical experience can't be observed with
>the eye of flesh (sensory empiricism) is exactly what the Dali Lama said,
>that a real understanding of the mind can only be gained through 
>meditation,
>not through scientific observation of the brains of mystics.
>
>[Krimel]
>Far be it from me to pick on his Holiness but, so what? If you or he or all
>of his monks come to some "real understanding of the mind through
>meditation" what's it to me or anyone else? Your understanding of your own
>experience has nothing to do with anyone else. My understanding of my own
>experience is mine. They are private.
>
>The history of people trying to interpret such experiences in others or
>interpreting experience for people is not good. Christians interpret
>ecstatic experiences as the movement of the Holy Spirit. Voodoo priestesses
>call it being ridden by a Loa. Sioux warriors describe them in terms of
>spirit animals. Descriptions of both the sensation and meaning of mystical
>experiences are plentiful. But the more fanciful and extrasensory they are
>the less seriously they deserve to be taken.
>
>Wilber for example draw distinctions and levels better nature, theistic and
>non-dual stages in his hierarchy. But there is nothing to base such
>distinctions on. He speaks of St. Teressa who had experiences she could not
>explain. She sought help in finding a framework to express them. Any such
>description is going to be couched in the mythos and logos of the one 
>having
>it. And such a description whether it be of Nirvana or near death will say
>as much about the mythos and logos of the individual than about the 
>validity
>of experiences without sensation.
>
>
>[snip pointless quotes]
>
>[dmb]
>That'll have to do for now.
>
>[Krimel]
>Aye, that'll do...
>That'll do.
>
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