It seems like an easy one at first but I have been confused by a couple of particular examples.
Now science is about finding what we hope to be objective knowledge. I’m not interested here in whether objective knowledge is possible just that science is our best guess so far (if you doubt this turn off your computer immediately and promptly destroy it).
Now why does it have to be so that others must also validate one’s hypotheses to make it ‘more objective’?
For instance I know buddhists always say they don’t need anyone else to validate their thoughts on reincarnation and ‘clear light of consciousness’ being what holds the world together. They say that if you appeal to outside sources for validation it means you don’t really find the truth and the only real truth is that beyond which can be ‘proven’ empirically by any outside source and must instead come from within. Does this not equate to the same ‘faith’ as ALLAH OUR GREAT ONE or any of the other ‘faith heads’ that Dawkins rallies against? Buddhism is almost worse in that it is has a pseudoscientific air about it saying that their methods are about empirically verifying the states through meditation.
Thing is though, although these higher states they talk about may be good feelings and also have value in themselves I doubt the accuracy of their assertions that everything is consciousness or that it’s karma or reincarnation. So the brain states might be good in themselves, learning to be disinterested and such, but their explanations of what is going on I think are probably false. It’s like they found out a legitimately good trick and just made a sloppy explanation as to its cause. Is this what is known as pseudoscience? I’m guessing it is.
So how do these fail under the scientific method and indeed what makes the scientific method superior to this?
Trouble is, with subjective experience you can’t so easily prove it. But then again my point is why do you need to prove it? Do you need to prove it to someone else for it to be true for you? I think in a sense yes. Not in the sense that you need their validation in order to have that approval but more that having soemone else verify your findings shows it isn’t delusion on your part. Most of the eastern spiritual transcendence talk seems indiscernible from schizophrenia. The trouble is how does one go about ‘proving’ the ‘enlightened state’ the buddhists talk about? I think there are certain states they tap into but like I say their explanations of what caused these states I’d say are likely false.
It’s like when I studied tai chi for a bit. I certainly thought it was elegant and graceful and had many benefits for that reason- just in that it was like an art. What I thought was unnecessary baggage was how my teacher really believed that tai chi was better that rational empiricism saying things like- ‘they can’t explain it, they are only now doing tests and saying tai chi is better than anything they’ve come across’ (paraphrased but that was basically what he was saying; tai chi’s hidden ‘super powers’ were only now revealing themselves to the ‘paupers of reason’).
This is what I think discredits most of these ‘spiritual’ traditions. They seem to think their practice is above and beyond reason and that relying on reason is precisely why us ‘squares’ will never get it. Only by casting off the shackles of reason and diving into blind faith do you ‘get it’. The classical Kierkegaardian leap of faith.
See then again I also think, as Nietzsche pointed out, what makes science superior to any other belief system? Thing is though Nietzsche was a relativist and I bought this story for a while but don’t any more. I actually think he didn’t understand the scientific method properly if he was trying to say that it isn’t any more ‘true’ than anything else. I recall he would say the instruments are in error and science tries to assert abolsute truth just like relgiions but this isn’t the case at all. Science is always about incrimental improvements and revision of it’s belief systems in attempts for more acurate stabs at objectivity. Just in terms of practical function and the results it has yielded in the real world (again if you hadn’t already smashed your computer and read this far now go and smash it if you don’t agree) it is wildly superior to blind faith alone.
I agree that science as well doesn’t yield absolute objectivity but skeptical inquiry, central to the scientific method, is what yields our BEST GUESSES. It routes out the wives tales and superstition from these said spiritual practices. It is able to find the diamond in the dirt turning it from a spiritual doctrine into a part of the body of science. I think this is most spiritual discipline’s problem. They had one ace in the deck, a particular trick such as meditation or tai chi or medicine which works on perfectly rational grounds yet they base a whole supernatural belief system upon this one deservedly effective technique (agreed often there is not even one but often there is a bit). So rather than lose all the belief system and only keep a little bit they wanna keep all the fluff too which is ineffective other than a relgious opiate.
Dawkins notes that in shamanism there is nothing supernatural about what they did. He comments that with shamanic medicine the shamans would have tested through trial and error, ie standard scientific method, every substance in their environment, ie plants roots whatever in different combinations, and also suffering many many casualties through many ERRORS. The things that worked get written down as their lore, which only the shamans are savvy to, and the errors are not spoken of. So the ‘layman’ then attributes supernatural powers to the shaman as he is able to heal people. The layman doesn’t know how he did it so he makes up some super story for the shaman and that is then propagated around the tribe when the case is just that the shaman found out some good tricks through trial and error.
So what say you fellow philosophers/skeptics? I think that these appeals to caste off reason are mainly just a cover up for the gaps in their methods. I don’t deny there are good things to be had from these traditions such as meditation and the benefits of tai chi but my issue is that rather than accept that their system is limited like anything- effective to a point, they want to give it ABSOLUTE authority rather than reasonably saying it has it’s specific uses. Instead they make up fairy tales about why it is ‘supernaturally’ good and us ‘logic heads’ just don’t get it cos we aren’t hip to the ‘faith state’ yo.
what say you?
