The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

Lecture Text (©B. Alan Wallace )

In this paper I shall present a radical alternative to metaphysical realism, a view that underlies most literature on science and religion, and yet may also set science and religion in fundamental opposition to each other. Those who advocate metaphysical realism maintain that (1) the real world consists of mind-independent objects, (2) there is exactly one true and complete description of the way the world is, and (3) truth involves some sort of correspondence between an independently existent world and our descriptions of it (Putnam 1990:30). Various sorts of cultural relativism and constructivism have been advocated as alternatives to metaphysical realism, but while they have proven appealing to many philosophers, they are generally found to be inadequate by practicing scientists and theologians alike (Wilson 1998: 60-61). In this paper, I propose a third alternative that emphasizes the intersubjective nature of both scientific and religious truth-claims, one which rejects the leap of faith required for metaphysical realism and equally shuns the nihilism that is implicit in so many versions of relativism. The central theme of this intersubjective view is that science and religion express truths arrayed along a spectrum of “invariance” among diverse cognitive frameworks. All truth-claims are embedded in experience, and their validity is put to the test within the “lived world” of human experience. They are neither confirmed nor refuted in relation to some hypothetical “real, objective world” that exists independently of experience.

Read the full paper here.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

Even more than Wilber's stuff, this guy 's work makes me cringe.

And he is significantly less intelligent than Ken. Consider the following red herring, one of Wallace's favorite modes of argumentation (see e.g., my blog on quiessence and insight):

Steven Katz, a contemporary scholar of comparative mysticism, for example, insists that experienced contemplatives are in no better a position to evaluate their experiences than are non-contemplatives 1983: 5). This notion is just as implausible as the idea that a non-mathematician could evaluate the relation between Heisenberg's matrix equations and Schrödinger's wave equation describing quantum mechanical phenomena. But the misconception that one can evaluate contemplative truth-claims solely on the basis of reading books about mysticism is widespread both among scholars and the lay public.

Notice how Wallace turns the issue that Katz brings up completely around. Katz is saying that contemplatives are in no better position to evaluate their experience than anyone else. In other words, priveleged access is meaningless in the domain of public inquiry.  Wallace responds like a petulant child with charge that the “book learners” cannot asses truth claims of contemplatives. This does not at all address Katz's point! It is merely an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of his readers with a smelly fish. Does he think we're as dumb as he is, or something? As I say, this man's writing is annoyingly amateurish.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

Actually, B. Allan Wallace himself makes me cringe. hahaha.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

  I admit I posted this with a perverse little chuckle, expecting a cringe or two!

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

Ha ha, I cringed.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

“I admit I posted this with a perverse little chuckle, expecting a cringe or two!” hahaha. i thought you might have been playing a bit of the prankster with this one, balder.  it had me going for a bit. at the same time, the article may also serve as a starting point for some slightly more somber reflection on several issues. as trungpa used to say, we can use our vegetable peelings in our compost to nourish our garden. :-)

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

I just went ahead and projectile vomitted across the room…

On a less serious note, the CogSciPragos don't fall into any of the categories of Wallace's scientific materialism. To the contrary they refute a completely objective and knowable world. And while I am sympathetic to Wallace's panexperientialism in that there is no exteriors without an interior, I am not with Wallace's own panentheistic dogma tthat there is a completely knowable, subjective consciousness that can be apart from a body. And this is not just with talk of a soul that survives a physical body but with the usual purely phenomenological descriptions of meditative experience like the following:

A prime example of such an ineffable experience is that of pure, conceptually unstructured consciousness, which figures prominently in many contemplative traditions of the world (Forman 1990a; Wallace 1998: 243-248; Wallace 2000: 112-120).

But they have not predicted or explained the possibility of pure consciousness that transcends all conceptual constructs, including those of subject and object.

Indeed, many contemplatives, from the West and the East, have claimed knowledge of pure consciousness; and many have asserted that such insight yields knowledge the nature of reality as a whole (Butler 1967: 49; Wallace 1999: 176).

Now, while Wallace has a point similar to Wilber's that one must take up the injuction to comment on the results of a methodology,  Wallace forgets to apply the developmental hierarchy he earlier talks about–with reference to matieral, biology, psychology–with the intersubjecive interpretative matrix leading to our assumptions and dogma about how we desribe experienced phenomenon. This also applies to the developmentally challenged interpretations of said meditative experiences. Hence we still have metaphysical interpretations of a purely subjective consciousness that yields “insight into the nature of reality as a whole.” He needs to apply his own argument to these metaphyical claims.

Note: I say this having taken up the injunctions of 2 traditional, meditiative traditions–hermetic and taoist–and, having communal validation as to my apprehension. Combine this with taking up and enacting another injunction, that of the developmentally more complex pomo worldview, and again having received communal validation, so that my intersubjective interpretational matrix of previous said meditative experiences is more hierarchical complex, as it were, using an integral methodological pluralism.

There's a mouthful. Funny, that's what she said last night….

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

I read the paper. I've read most of Wallace's books and many of his papers as well as some of the articles he's had published in Buddhist magazines. I've seen him lecture twice, I've met him and talked with him face to face, and I saw him debate philosopher John Searle.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

“Why assume that if there were no such conscious entities in the world there would still be consciousness?”

Yes.

“…it is hard to face mortality if you have come up with a story about the way things are that implicitly denies mortality, and it is hard to come to terms with groundlessness and meaningless if you follow a story that implies that there is an ultimate ground that imbues all things with meaning. But I digress.”

Maybe you don't digress. I have recently been regurgitating some older posts of mine on the “blog” here at gaia, and one of the themes in a few posts has been the idea that soteriology is largely, at least in Advaita, concerned with attempting to deal things like mortality. And so I have again been asking myself recently, as I did in the past, “why must there be conscsiousness as an independent entity?” In other words, what is at stake in the so-called “hard problem of consciousness?” What is at stake in the question of “pure consciousness events”? To me, it seems obvious, particularly when I consider the question of where Indian soteriology came from. The answer that comes to me is that it is an attempt to deal with our mortality.  Why do we have so many people (Forman, Wilber, Wallace) getting so passionate about “pure consciousness events”? Why is the “eternal always already” idea so prevalent in non-dual teachings? Because such ideas imply that consciousness survives the death of the body. So, these teachings are a form of consolation. Not only that, of course. They are also connected with ways of being in the world that help us deal with this thing called life. In other words they are connected with ways of helping us let go. (I'm not sure if those two are congruous, which may be something that bothers me.)

Another thing that bothers me about when writers like Wallace write so “passionately” about their subject (a quality that some people seem to admire): I cannot help but think that their “passion” is clouding their better judgment. In other words, they are not at all open to the alternative; they remain completely closed to it. Yes, there is a great deal of rhetoric in how Wallace and Wilber write. But is it merely rhetoric? Are they merely trying to “win the argument”? I don't think so. They really are passionate, and I can't help but think that they actually believe what they are saying. It would be easy to say, and I myself am inclined to say, that “religious types” allow their beliefs to cloud their judgement. Of course, it is also the case that there are others, who are not religious, who do the same. But it seems that Wallace, for example, is hell-bent on insisting for his position, to the point of saying almost anything. To me, this signals that something else is at stake for him. Part of this, no doubt, has to do with his self-understanding as being some sort of “apologist” for tradition” (something that Ken has also often identified with). Or maybe Alan is simply afraid of death.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

You ask, “What is at stake in the so-called 'hard-problem…'?” Etc.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

Searle vs. Wallace and Dennet vs. Thurman.  hmmmm. Kind of like Marty McSorley vs. Theoren Fleury. 

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

“Maybe we should consider that what people are even more afraid of is immortality.”

This is actually the ancient impetus behind the quest for release: the fear, not of rebirth, but of redeath – ie an infinite number of deaths going on for all of eternity. This is the “problem” of samsara that the world renouncers were seeking “release” (moksha) from.

It's interesting how the classical view imbues the perspective of people like Thurman and Wallace, albeit with slight distortions.

I understand that what Thurman is saying is different.

I'm reminded me of the curse of the vampire: that he must continue to live for all of eternity. The implication is an eternity of boredom – of lassitude, ennui, languor, melancholia, etc.

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

“[I]t is established in our own direct experience that there existed a mind that was the earlier continuum of the present mind as an adult. In the same way, the beginning of consciousness in this life was also not produced causelessly, nor was it produced by something permanent, nor was it produced by mindless matter. If it were, matter would be a substantial cause of a different type. Hence, it definitely must have been produced from a substantial cause of similar type.”

That the effect must share the nature of the cause is a premise accepted by all Indian schools. The argument looks like a Yogachara-Sautrantika argument. The causal chain part, where each moment (kshana) has the previous moment as its cause, comes from the Sautrantikas, while the substitution of vijnana into the chain is Yogachara. The doctrine is called vijnana-kshanika. Dharmakirti is probably the source, or at least the one who perfected the argument, if this is a traditional argument. The appeal to direct experience may also be a part of the argument, but it is not immediately obvious (!) how we can appeal to direct experience, at least as the argument is given here. If it is Dharmakirti, I don't think he had “pure consciousness events” or “meditative states” in mind when we said we know it from “direct experiece.” He would have appealed to the reflexive nature of consciousness (svasamvedana) in some way, if this is indeed his argument.

This is a very classical way of thinking. (Note that it implies reincarnation.) It's use is kind of like evoking the arguments of Thomas Aquinas. Though, come to think of it, that's what “intelligent design” is!

Re: The Intersubjective Worlds of Science and Religion

“Is it so outlandish or unscientific to consider that states of consciousness originate essentially from prior states of consciousness?”

“Outlandish”? How about “cogent?” ;-) Actually, Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti demolish the Sauntrantika argument from causal chains.

From a old post to Greg:

What you've stumbled upon here, Greg, is what is known as the “diamond” splinters” a famous set of arguments used widely in the Tibetan tradition. I've written on the topic and studied it for some time. Here's a ten minute primer.

There are various ways of interpreting the diamond splinters. It is generally thought that the passage is polemical, that Nagarjuna had various groups in mind when he wrote this terse statement - “not from self, or other, or both, or neither” - but he may also have thought that it could be applied to certain basic metaphysical postions in general. It could be that be had the Sarvastivadins in mind when he talked about “self-causation,” and possibly the Sautrantikas in mind when he talked about “causation from an other.” To me, this seems likely, since it is generally thought that he set out to reform the Abhidharma Buddhism, to “cure” it of its growing tendency toward “essentialism.” Candrakirti, however, interprets “self causation” as referring to the Samkhya and “causation from an other” as referring to the theory espoused by the Nyaya. Around his time these two grousp had a series of debates concerning the nature of causation. The Samkhya position is called “sat-karya-vada.” They held that the effect already “pre-exists” (sat) in the cause. This is also, basically, the position of Vedanta, and the Sarvasitvadins held a position akin to this (as their name implies). The Nyaya held that the effect was a new creation. Their position is called a-sat-karya-vada, which means that the effect does not pre-exist (a-sat). This is also called “arambha-vada” and the Sautrantika position of “momentariness” (ksanika-vada) also falls into this camp. We can perhaps take the first postion as referring, generally, to an “idealist” conception of creation, creation as a kind of “emmanation,” and the second to a kind of “realism” of sorts. In the first case, the Samkhya is reduced to the absurd position that an effect that somehow already “exists” is then somehow created anew. This results in the absurdity that the cause would never stop creating since there is no restriction (niyata) on it. It would be like telling a potter to make a pot when the pot already exists. But once he makes the second pot, since it already exists, he may as well make another pot, and so on. In other words, no real causal nexis can be described when something is “related” to itself. In the second case, the Nyaya position is reduced to the absurdity that something that exists in T1 somehow “causes” something that exists at T2 but does not exist at T1. But at T2, the cause itself has ceased to exist. Again the result is that there is no restriction (niyata) on causation, since the two are unrelated, and then apples would come from peach seeds, since peaches don't exist at T2 either. Here, no real relation can be posited between absolutely discrete entities. What the “both” refers to is an open question. It may refer to another set of Abhidharma arguments concerning causation in which “self causation” refers to the chain of moments (ksana) and the “other” refers to what were termed “helping causes,” additional causes brought in to help the account that faltered previously. Here the response is basically that recourse to these helping causes does not help matters since the same problems apply to the “helping causes”; the result is a infinite regress of “helping causes.” Or the “both” may refer to the position of the Jains. But the Jain position is very close to the Madhyamika position; they too saw polarities as mutually determinative and so it may not be a fair charge. This makes me think that Nagarjuna's original comments were directed at the Abhidharmists. The “neither” position refers to yadrccha-vada where things happen for no reason at all. This is simply rejected as not being in accord with what we see, which is regularity.

Let's return to the Tibetan argument:

In the same way, the beginning of consciousness in this life was also not produced causelessly, nor was it produced by something permanent, nor was it produced by mindless matter.

Here, “causelessness” refers to the “neither” position given in the above outline.  “Permanence” refers to the position of the Samkhyas and Vedantins. “Mindless matter” refers to the position of the Indian materialists – and the argument there is that the effect is different from the cause. (I.e., one is sentient, while the other is not. Note that this implies that the Yogacharin does not admit panpsychism wherein rocks are sentient). The implication appears to be that the only alternative is the “other cause” of the Sautrantikas. This is a kind of argument from a “process of elimination.” Nagarjuna rejects this kind of move.