The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread

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healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Oct 4, 2015 - 02:58am PT
Largo: Of course what we have been saying all along is that meditation is a group process and the experiences worth having are in essence the experiential process of what arises when you sit with a group under the leadership of a teacher.

Crikey, this isn't just [prejudicial] dogma, it's mindless and inescapable ignorance. And people now wonder how Japanese Zen Buddhists could so easily have been led to militarism and war.

"Teacher (Daiun Sogaku Harada): [If ordered to] march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom [of Enlightenment]. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war

This is definitely a case of having opted for the blue pill...
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Oct 4, 2015 - 06:48am PT
But for most on this thread, science (objectifying) has no limits.

Largo is not here to explain or discuss but rather to goad. Getting it right about what others have said is not important to him.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Oct 4, 2015 - 08:25am PT
Getting it right about what others have said is not important to him.

because getting it right is about "objective facts" and Largo is cluing us in on what he is "experiencing" (which is important to him).

The "lie that tells the truth"... it's art...
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Oct 4, 2015 - 08:57am PT
BB: When we hear of other people's experiences these become our "subjective" experience? It's not until we actually personally try/do the knowledge received does it become our "objective" experience?

I would say that all experiences are by-nature subjective. By definition (fiat) we create mental categories so that we can compare and contrast (and make our lives easier cognitively and socially). Hence, we turn what is subjective into what is objective. Were we not to collude with each other about meaning, language, images, and experiences, we’d never be able to move forward in knowledge and understanding. We’d all have to learn from our own direct experiences and build our own mental encyclopedias from scratch. We are socially constructing our worlds (in cahoots with others). As we do so, we objectify the world.

The process comes naturally and perhaps unavoidably. We listen and believe in experts, and we share our conceptions of the world with each other in so many ways. Yet, when we look really really closely, we see (I’d say) that nothing is quite the same or identical to other things. As Lollie might say here, we’re just not being very attentive.

Right now my wife and I are going through some marriage therapy / counseling. We’re not in trouble, but we’ve come to realize that we’ve slowly grown apart into a comfortable rut over 20 years for many reasons, and we’ve developed some awful habits with each other. As we’ve initiated intimate conversations with each other and the help of the counselor, we are surprising each other with our own little stories, interpretations, beliefs, and shifts in values that have occurred. I mean, if after 20 years, wouldn’t you think that you’d really know one another after living and sleeping side by side, climbing all over the Sierra and getting scared together, biking up and down the west coast and getting concussions and stitches, going through family deaths with one another, getting cancer, falling down stairs, etc.? Geez, it would seem that not only do we not know each other very well, but we are surprising ourselves about what’s coming out of our own mouths: hell, we hardly know ourselves!

(So much of “reality” is made-up in our minds.) So which is it? Are we compelled to share the same realities, or are we compelled to see that they are all quite different on the most individual level? (Like I said, it’s a seeming paradox that’s been argued one both sides for a while now.)
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Oct 4, 2015 - 11:22am PT
Ed, the difference between what you are doing in a scientific exploration and what you are not-doing in no-mind meditation is that in discursive adventures, you toggle in and out of narrow and wide focus, narrowing down on content during the really intense moments, opening it up when you are going idle and letting things stew. No-mind is avoiding narrow focusing on things and objects. Huge difference if you ever try.

You also said: Is all that truly matters your perceived experience?

I say: No, Ed. What you are driving at is content, the "what" or "it" or object of my experience. The experiential adventures shift emphasis from WHAT you are experiencing, to the fundamental nature of even having experience and what experiencing IS in real time, sans concepts.

And a curious thing about your other comments is that you act as though you have had objective experiences, outside of your subjective bubble. Where and when? Or the wonky idea that you have experiences that are NOT subjective processes. ALL of your experiences are subjective in one sense because they happen within your subjective bubble. Even your perception of what awareness tells you is "out there" is available only within your own subjectivity, within your own experience. No human process stands outside of and beyond the subject.

Sure, you can objectify things, but the content of that objectifying is just so much qualia floating past the light of awareness. We can easily see why.

And MH2, while you grumble and carp, put that aside for a moment and address the contention: What are the limits of science? Are there parts of reality that in and of themselves are not reductive to quantifications? If you believe there are no such limits, say so, simply and directly. You will not perish. But of course we know you will counter with another question/contention.

And Healje, I've told you to lay off the wine coolers on Sundays. I am neither Japanese nor Buddhist so quoting militarist Japanese and conflating them with Americans sitting in a meditation group is laughably daft.

JL
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Oct 4, 2015 - 11:47am PT
And a curious thing about your other comments is that you act as though you have had objective experiences, outside of your subjective bubble. Where and when?

a curious thing is that you expect an answer, whatever it is... which is by nature an objective statement. You can't escape it...

what would the nature of my question actually reveal?
you would compare it to your own experience, to the experience of your teachings,
that's an objective process.

Since you don't understand the nature of my questions along this direction (you get upset when I don't answer your questions)

I'd say, yes, I have had an "objective experience" both in science and in my "normal life." And along the same lines as my own question above.

I can read a story like The Only Blasphemy and parse those parts of the description that correspond to my own experiences, even though I did not have the experience described in the story. In fact, the author did not have the described experiences, though the writing seeks to provide a sense of the experience that was had.

This is an "objective" experience, the recognition of those aspects of an experience that are shared.

In science, it is a process of understanding, piece by piece, what observations, calculations, measurements are telling us about a particular physical phenomenon. For complex phenomena, this takes place by many people, and possibly over a long period of time. Many speculations are investigated and developed, but in the end a picture emerges that blends all the work into an explanation. This can often be surprising.

My "experience" working with people might be described as subjective alone, if it weren't for the fact that we can describe, to each other, what we are experiencing, however much an approximation to what you might term the "actual article."

The "actual article" is not describable, but perhaps that is an issue with our language, and not with the impossibility of describing it... after all, we are able to describe a great deal about the "actual article" in our current language. Language changes, it evolves, it adopts more sophisticated ways of description, it even transcends what is spoken...

It is the very issue with terming something "objective" and "subjective" as an approximation of this demarkation. Even with the difficulty in making the description, I have little doubt that you or MikeL or anyone else experience very much the same things as I do. Certainly with minor, individual differences (due to the statistical variation of our physical being).

If this is true, then it seems that your point about living in a "subjective bubble" is trivial... by definition we all live in it, and experience it, but the commonality of our experience is its over-ridingly important attribute.

How do we get there? for humans largely through communications (of one sort or another) and the presumption of our commonality.

It seems a very robust presumption.
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Oct 4, 2015 - 11:49am PT

I would say that all experiences are by-nature subjective.

So we can say a Lioness bathing her cub is having a subjective experience(?).

Then would a plant who recognizes it needs a flower, a certain color of flower, in order to attract a certain animal to carry along its procreation through pollination having a subjective experience?

I think it's a wonderful thing for every couple to have an unbiased third party to air their dirty laundry, and let their freak flag fly. Wish I had gotten one 💑
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Oct 4, 2015 - 12:03pm PT
I'd say, yes, I have had an "objective experience" both in science and in my "normal life."


All I am saying Ed, is that there is no such thing as an objective experience, because you are not an object.

There are objectifications WITHIN your subjective experiences, but these don't make your experience ITSELF objective, otherwise you are left with the untenable belief that objective and subjective are selfsame, that objects and experience are qualitatively the same.

What you are doing is conflating content with consciousness. To your POV, if the content (or particular qual) of your consciousness or experience is a quantification (an objective evaluation), and not merely a sensation or feeling or memory, then you are thinking that consciousness ITSELF is no longer a subjective phenomenon, but rather it is an objective phenomenon. Note that I am not talking about WHAT you are experiencing, rather the nature of experiencing itself, which can by definition only be a subjective phenomonon.

In fact what you are doing is subjectively maintaining an objectification. A subject can adopt an objective perspective, but a subject can never become an object in the process so experience itself can never BE an object, though again, awareness can contain objectifications within it's subjective bubble.

JL
jogill

climber
Colorado
Oct 4, 2015 - 12:12pm PT
MikeL, I wish you the best in your marital situation. I went through something similar eight years ago, and it didn't turn out at all as I had anticipated. However, what developed for both parties was in the final analysis a new and blessed outcome. As you have said frequently, most things that happen are beyond our control and we are merely along for the ride.

Reality far overshadows the trivial (and humorous) bantering on this thread. For example, the howler:

In fact what you are doing is subjectively maintaining an objectification (JL)

;>)
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Oct 4, 2015 - 12:14pm PT

If this is true, then it seems that your point about living in a "subjective bubble" is trivial...

Can we say that this subjective bubble is my minds awareness(consciousness) reeling, and dealing with your peoples awareness/consciousnesses(the environment) which is what caused the biological change to turn monkey to man 🐒 > 🚶
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Oct 4, 2015 - 12:24pm PT
you are getting twisted up in this... but you are a slave to language...

consciousness, mind, etc are "objects" in a generalization of the idea of what an "object" is... if, for instance, you can deal with the ideas of forces and fields and all that...

you could say that the "physical" ideas of field theory are not "objective" because the fields aren't "objects" at least not the "classical" fields...

you are unimpressed with the quantum description, which can be seen as a particle description (the quanta being the particles) but then you balk at the photon, which you would claim "is not a particle." But you have a rather naive view of what makes a particle.... driven by your desire to argue.

Fields are "objects" because we can manipulate them, create them, calculate them, make them do work for us, and provide a description of physical reality.

Temperature is "not an object" yet it is a very familiar physical quantity... the average of the kinetic energy of a large number of atoms. Is temperature "an object"?

Let's extend your argument and say it is not.

But it is something that is physical, can be described, calculations tell us how to predict its changes, and a fundamental theory connects the quantity to the "underlying physics" in a reductive exercise that demonstrates how it emerges, and how it is a part of a dynamics of large numbers of atoms... thermodynamics from statistical mechanics.

What is temperature?

How do we achieve any understanding of this thing that is not an object? We are doing subjective thermodynamics?

If so, your tortured language seems just that.
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Oct 4, 2015 - 12:55pm PT
Nice one Ed. So are you also saying ideas are objects?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Oct 4, 2015 - 02:11pm PT
I'm saying that treating ideas as if they are physical objects is possible.

For instance, Shannon did just that in developing "information theory," it isn't a large step from "information" to "ideas"

The paper I referenced for jammer above does something that would seem really radical, but actually is pretty pedestrian...


http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0702115v3.pdf

Abstract: We compute the expected value of the cosmological constant in our universe from the Causal Entropic Principle. Since observers must obey the laws of thermodynamics and causality, the principle asserts that physical parameters are most likely to be found in the range of values for which the total entropy production within a causally connected region is maximized. Despite the absence of more explicit anthropic criteria, the resulting probability distribution turns out to be in excellent agreement with observation. In particular, we find that dust heated by stars dominates the entropy production, demonstrating the remarkable power of this thermodynamic selection criterion. The alternative approach—weighting by the number of “observers per baryon”—is less well-defined, requires problematic assumptions about the nature of observers, and yet prefers values larger than present experimental bounds.


here, the seemingly intractable discussion on complexity occurring previously succumbs to very elementary physical assumptions... and seems to be predictive... without working through each of the steps in the process - per Largo's insistence on taking the plodding approach ("the hip bone's connected to the thigh bone..." etc)

Finally, what do you thing "big data" is all about?
Amazon now ships books to people without request, as their "big data" analytics detects the preferences of the buyers, "if you don't like this, ship it back to us."

Creepy and sort of fantastic all in one...

MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Oct 4, 2015 - 03:01pm PT
Thanks, Jogill. It’s actually an adventure. Little rocky now and then, but we settle. Again, I appreciate your sentiments. And best to you with yours, too.


Temperature is not an object. It is a convention relied upon people who make reference to it. Note scaling difference. People say it’s hot or cold, but what’s being referred to is not uniformly noted. Talk to any woman who has “hot flashes.”

No generalization is an object.

Fields are not objects.

Objects appear to be those things we think we agree about, but if you look closely, those agreements are facilitated, constructed, engineered. There are no consensus. Look at how engineering firms lobby in industry standards committees. They do so because determinations of standards can tilt the playing field among firms to those who have lobbied more adroitly.

If there are objects, then they would seem to need to be permanent, irrefutable, incontrovertible. If objects change, then what kind of objects could they be? What’s being referred to if it changes? I believe there is nothing in the universe that does not change.

Watch a TV for a while. The “stuff” that you “see” is the content. The TV—the medium—could be considered the essence of the subjective. The subjective is what presents the content. TVs present all kinds of content. So does consciousness.

It’s relatively easy to see how we fall prey to content. We think it’s real. All content is interpretation.

Eduction is the mutually causative process of perceiving and projecting. What you see is what you’ve projected. Back and forth it goes.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Oct 4, 2015 - 03:21pm PT
Fields are not objects.
then the arguments are trivial...

in that sense of the word, you can make the argument: "science is about objects, the mind is not an object, therefore science doesn't apply to the mind"

just replace "field" in that sentence for "mind"

the contradiction is field theory, both classical and quantum, and the tremendous success both have had in quantifying what we understand about reality...

WBraun

climber
Oct 4, 2015 - 04:21pm PT
Modern science has quantified 2 grains of sand.

Reality is more than all the grains of sand in the entire material creation.

Thus modern science is ultimately and will remain clueless because they said;

"There is no need for God" .......
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Oct 4, 2015 - 04:40pm PT

How do we achieve any understanding of this thing that is not an object? We are doing subjective thermodynamics?

So let us say temperature is an object. And you and I where standing in a freezer with a thermometer reading 32'. Everything that would be happening to our body's chemically, and all of our agreed upon truths, i.e. the temp, and it's dark, etc. With us both present and in total agreement of physicality of the environment, this should all be a shared objective experience? Or else which part isn't? Seems to me the only part we both can't be objective about is how the cold, dark room makes us feel. So shouldn't how we feel be the only thing subjective about the experience?
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Oct 4, 2015 - 04:42pm PT
you could use a thermometer...

that device measures the temperature... you might have a different experience of the temperature, but our agreement on the determination of the quantity wouldn't be different.

jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Oct 4, 2015 - 05:36pm PT
If objects change, then what kind of objects could they be? (MikeL)

Every physical object changes. The chair in which I sit is a number of years old and it has changed a tad during that spell, but it is still a "chair". Ideas can be construed as objects, and they change as well. As Jammer (and I) might say, no change = no time.
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Oct 4, 2015 - 05:42pm PT
Ed,

There is little doubt that instruments can indicate measurements. Science has yet to get a handle on “mind,” IMO; metrics are not yet forthcoming.

I agree with you. “Mind” is not an object. (Personally, I’m not sure it exists at all. I’m very sure about experience, though.)

I appreciate and agree that science has produced a dizzying array of successes. I applaud the people who are involved in them. What those people “understand” about reality and mind might be a bit limited, IMO.
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