The old DuPont slogan, “Better living through chemistry,” expressed the Twentieth Century’s faith in material progress. At one point, Prozac and other new antidepressant drugs seemed to be the crowning fulfillment of this dream. Why be depressed when you can take this little pill and feel better? I could tell that things were getting a little out of hand when I discovered that my sister was feeding chicken-flavored Prozac to her cats.
Faith that brain chemistry determines our mental experience is being challenged by new research that shows that antidepressants do not have more clinically significant effects than placebos. Both placebos and antidepressants have an effect on the mind. Antidepressants also effect the brain. These new studies show that only the mental effects are significant. Curiously, in both cases, the mental effects are produced by illusions—the illusion that the substance will cure your depression.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were some way to work directly with the mind…. How about, “Better living through view, meditation, and conduct.”
Showing posts with label Buddhism and Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Buddhism and Science. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Materialist Metaphysics
“Why Do Some People Resist Science?” illuminates the way we acquire many of our beliefs (see the previous post). It also puts forward one belief that needs to be challenged, which is that, “The strong intuitive pull of dualism makes it difficult for people to accept what Francis Crick called ‘the astonishing hypothesis.’ Dualism is mistaken — mental life emerges from physical processes.”
I have no problem with the first part of the statement about the intuitive pull of dualism. That makes sense. I also agree that, “Dualism is mistaken.” This has been a central tenet of Mahayana Buddhism for a couple of thousand years. It is the late Dr. Francis Crick’s hypothesis that “mental life emerges from physical processes” that needs to be debated.
This is not a scientific conclusion. It is a metaphysical assumption. Crick, who won the Noble Prize with Dr. James D. Watson for discovering the double helix structure of DNA, asserted this as though it were a fact. In his book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul he wrote, “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
Asserting the nonexistence of mind, because it cannot be detected by the material methods of science is a logical error. It is like looking for your lost car keys under the street light, even though you dropped them around the corner, “because the light is better there.” To deny the mind contradicts our experience of subjectivity. Just by looking inwards we can refute this extreme position. From a Buddhist perspective, there is nothing more obvious and essential than the knowing mind. How can we even speak of joys and sorrows without it?
Brain and mind are observed through different modalities. Scientific methods make quantitative observations of the material world. Though science is limited to studying the natural world, knowledge is not limited to the realm of science. Here is a simple example: we can learn everything there is to know about the physical and chemical properties of a Snickers bar, the structure and functioning of the human gustatory system, and the neurophysiology of taste, without learning anything about the experience of tasting a Snickers bar. This experience is not material and is beyond the intellect. No matter how we describe the experience of eating a Snickers bar to someone who has never tasted one, they will not be able to know what the experience is like. Yet, when we eat the Snickers bar we know exactly.
A really astonishing hypothesis is that whatever we conceive to be outside of mind, is just that, a conception. If things truly existed beyond the mind, how could they enter into our experience?
David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University who works on the philosophy of mind and related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. He wrote a nice introduction to the problems of consciousness from a Western scientific perspective in a Scientific American article called “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience.” Another paper, “Consciousness and its Place in Nature,” gives a more technical summary of the arguments against materialism, emphasizing the metaphysical issues (proceed with caution: this paper assumes a lot of philosophical background).
All this may sound academic and theoretical, but believing that matter is the only reality provides the philosophical basis for rejecting the reality of the experience of other beings. This provides a justification for all the harmful, self-centered actions people perform. It also closes the door to the path of liberation.
I have no problem with the first part of the statement about the intuitive pull of dualism. That makes sense. I also agree that, “Dualism is mistaken.” This has been a central tenet of Mahayana Buddhism for a couple of thousand years. It is the late Dr. Francis Crick’s hypothesis that “mental life emerges from physical processes” that needs to be debated.
This is not a scientific conclusion. It is a metaphysical assumption. Crick, who won the Noble Prize with Dr. James D. Watson for discovering the double helix structure of DNA, asserted this as though it were a fact. In his book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul he wrote, “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
Asserting the nonexistence of mind, because it cannot be detected by the material methods of science is a logical error. It is like looking for your lost car keys under the street light, even though you dropped them around the corner, “because the light is better there.” To deny the mind contradicts our experience of subjectivity. Just by looking inwards we can refute this extreme position. From a Buddhist perspective, there is nothing more obvious and essential than the knowing mind. How can we even speak of joys and sorrows without it?
Brain and mind are observed through different modalities. Scientific methods make quantitative observations of the material world. Though science is limited to studying the natural world, knowledge is not limited to the realm of science. Here is a simple example: we can learn everything there is to know about the physical and chemical properties of a Snickers bar, the structure and functioning of the human gustatory system, and the neurophysiology of taste, without learning anything about the experience of tasting a Snickers bar. This experience is not material and is beyond the intellect. No matter how we describe the experience of eating a Snickers bar to someone who has never tasted one, they will not be able to know what the experience is like. Yet, when we eat the Snickers bar we know exactly.
A really astonishing hypothesis is that whatever we conceive to be outside of mind, is just that, a conception. If things truly existed beyond the mind, how could they enter into our experience?
David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University who works on the philosophy of mind and related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. He wrote a nice introduction to the problems of consciousness from a Western scientific perspective in a Scientific American article called “The Puzzle of Conscious Experience.” Another paper, “Consciousness and its Place in Nature,” gives a more technical summary of the arguments against materialism, emphasizing the metaphysical issues (proceed with caution: this paper assumes a lot of philosophical background).
All this may sound academic and theoretical, but believing that matter is the only reality provides the philosophical basis for rejecting the reality of the experience of other beings. This provides a justification for all the harmful, self-centered actions people perform. It also closes the door to the path of liberation.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Why People Don’t Believe in Egolessness
Ask yourself, How do you know that the earth revolves around the sun? That George Washington was the first president of the United States? That objects persist over time?
Well, everyone knows these things! Well then, you need to ask, How do they know?
In Buddhism knowing is a big deal, because ignorance is the root of samsara: the cause of all our suffering. Ignorance includes both not knowing, which is mental darkness, and delusion, which is believing things that are false, such as believing that the ego, or the self, truly exists.
I recently came across an interesting article called “Why Do Some People Resist Science?” It could easily be read as “Why Do People Resist Egolessness?” Written by two Yale psychologists, Paul Bloom and Dena Skolnick Weisberg, it sheds light on why we believe the things we do.
The main thrust of their argument is that through experience in our first year of life, we develop basic concepts about the physical and social world. We learn that objects are solid, persistent, fall if they are unsupported, unmoving unless they are acted upon. We learn that people react to events, act according to motivation, react emotionally to situations. As we grow up, we add uncontroversial, culture-specific beliefs that are “common knowledge” to these “instinctive” concepts. These include the names of objects, that the earth is round, matter is made of particles, electricity makes things work, and so on.
When we are presented information that conflicts with our instinctive beliefs and common knowledge, we tend to evaluate the information by judging the authority of the teacher rather than the logic of the information. In other words, most of our beliefs are not based on direct experience or reason.
Buddhism presents a hierarchy of the sources of valid knowledge that we need to lead us from ignorance to enlightenment. The least reliable type is knowledge that comes from trusted authorities, like the Buddha and other noble beings. It is least reliable, not because the Buddha isn’t trustworthy, but because we haven’t figured it out or experienced it for ourselves. More trustworthy is knowledge gained through valid reasoning (and the teachings present detailed discussions of what constitutes a valid reason). The most trustworthy knowledge is gained through direct, non-conceptual experience. In fact, it is the direct experience of egolessness, or selflessness, that produces liberation.
Some Buddhist traditions accept all three sources of knowledge, others accept only the two higher ones. Other than understanding coming from these sources, the rest of our ideas are considered to be just opinions. As these two Western psychologists point out, most of what we think we know is just opinion. Perhaps our most prominent opinions are that we exist, and we are important!
Well, everyone knows these things! Well then, you need to ask, How do they know?
In Buddhism knowing is a big deal, because ignorance is the root of samsara: the cause of all our suffering. Ignorance includes both not knowing, which is mental darkness, and delusion, which is believing things that are false, such as believing that the ego, or the self, truly exists.
I recently came across an interesting article called “Why Do Some People Resist Science?” It could easily be read as “Why Do People Resist Egolessness?” Written by two Yale psychologists, Paul Bloom and Dena Skolnick Weisberg, it sheds light on why we believe the things we do.
The main thrust of their argument is that through experience in our first year of life, we develop basic concepts about the physical and social world. We learn that objects are solid, persistent, fall if they are unsupported, unmoving unless they are acted upon. We learn that people react to events, act according to motivation, react emotionally to situations. As we grow up, we add uncontroversial, culture-specific beliefs that are “common knowledge” to these “instinctive” concepts. These include the names of objects, that the earth is round, matter is made of particles, electricity makes things work, and so on.
When we are presented information that conflicts with our instinctive beliefs and common knowledge, we tend to evaluate the information by judging the authority of the teacher rather than the logic of the information. In other words, most of our beliefs are not based on direct experience or reason.
Buddhism presents a hierarchy of the sources of valid knowledge that we need to lead us from ignorance to enlightenment. The least reliable type is knowledge that comes from trusted authorities, like the Buddha and other noble beings. It is least reliable, not because the Buddha isn’t trustworthy, but because we haven’t figured it out or experienced it for ourselves. More trustworthy is knowledge gained through valid reasoning (and the teachings present detailed discussions of what constitutes a valid reason). The most trustworthy knowledge is gained through direct, non-conceptual experience. In fact, it is the direct experience of egolessness, or selflessness, that produces liberation.
Some Buddhist traditions accept all three sources of knowledge, others accept only the two higher ones. Other than understanding coming from these sources, the rest of our ideas are considered to be just opinions. As these two Western psychologists point out, most of what we think we know is just opinion. Perhaps our most prominent opinions are that we exist, and we are important!
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