Just finished watching the first quicktime of the Beyond Belief 2006 conference. The collective conversation that occurred there is very important, one of the most important on the planet. I am struck by the advantage in terms of accessibility and speed of transmission of knowledge over the internet, and I feel an attitude (so well by Daniel Dennett recently) of thank Goodness for the internet, and the society that produced it. In a similar way I would like to express gratitude for the work all the people who attended Beyond Belief 2006 are doing. It does not go unappreciated and it provides encouragement to my own actions and efforts.
The purpose of this blog is to attempt to establish communication with you (the reader) on two concerns of mine. I tend to be blunt in written communication, or at least that is the feedback I get from others. I think it is basically because I'm a serious person that uses nonverbal communication to counterbalance (‘soften’) the verbal content and style I naturally use. Of course email lacks this nonverbal component. So I'm trying something a little different in this email and start with a brief disclosure.
Okay, the relevant details about me: I'm 29yo male living in Sydney Australia, studying a double degree in arts (cognitive science) and psychology at the
I share all this in the hope that it provide a context for understanding my following inquiry, perhaps in something like the way information is defined in information theory. I’ll assume you have been exposed to western and eastern philosophy I’m sure you are at least familiar with most of what I’ll refer to, (such as eastern philosophical systems and the works of philosophers of science). I’m hoping that for the sake of brevity I can merely refer to what concerns me, and hopefully we will have enough shared knowledge for communication to occur, with clarification and expansion needing only to be ask for to be provided.
I believe I share a similar attitude toward the teachings of Krishnamurti that many do toward the body of knowledge that is called Buddhism. That is, that what ever its purpose and subject matter, it is completely based on a materialist conception of the universe, that the mind is amazing but not made of a special substance or immortal etc. If your like me, you probably belief that Buddhism (not the degraded form of being an ‘ism’) has something important to contribute to this secular world that currently is missing from western culture and the western tradition of science and rationality. No doubt that you are interested like myself in using science (one example: using fMRI with meditating monks) to learn from traditional bodies of knowledge in much the same what that scientific medicine absorbs the useful and reject the useless from ‘alternative medicine’. Implied in all this is the basic claim that reality is what is sacred, not thoughts, and that each one of us can transform our consciousness in an extraordinary way that is not demeaned by the fact that the whole process is entirely materialistic. This is the first reason I have attempt communication with you: I believe the notion of fundamentally transforming human consciousness is missing from our global culture (including the scientific community), perhaps in part due to the psychologically crippling effects of dogma.
The second concern I wish to discuss with you is the problem of a dominating philosophy of science that I believe is crippling the scientific community. Having just watched the first quicktime Beyond Belief 2006 clip and having just read ‘How We Believe’, I noticed that the mind of Michael Shermer has been influenced by this philosophy. Gould’s separate ‘Magisteria’, and Shermer’s ‘Separate Worlds’ Model are directly the result of this thinking. This philosophy has evolved out of the thinking of the Logical Empericists and the Popperians. This inadequate philosophy has been bothering me for years whenever I came across it, but only recently after reading an article by Larry Laudan did I realise the nature of the beast, so to speak. This combined with the memetic plagues such as social constructivism have I believed crippled the scientific mind, not in its ability to conduct the work of science, but in its ability to combat the irrational forces in this world. The stagnation in the philosophy of most scientists is obvious when you consider that decades how many scientists adopt either an outdated, simplistic Popperian philosophy or a purely pragmatic view of the truth (this William James like attitude to the truth is prevalent in psychology, .This is the second point of inquiry I wish to attempt to communicate with you, my reader.
I hope that these issues concern you and that further communication will be seen as beneficial and desirable.
