Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice

By B. Alan Wallace

A scholar of both spirituality and science proposes a radical approach to studying the mind with the goal of restoring human nature—and transcending it.
 
Renowned Buddhist philosopher B. Alan Wallace reasserts the power of shamatha and vipashyana, traditional Buddhist meditations, to clarify the mind's role in the natural world. Raising profound questions about human nature, free will, and experience versus dogma, Wallace challenges the claim that consciousness is nothing more than an emergent property of the brain with little relation to universal events. Rather, he maintains that the observer is essential to measuring quantum systems and that mental phenomena (however conceived) influence brain function and behavior.
 
Wallace embarks on a two-part mission: to restore human nature and to transcend it. He begins by explaining the value of skepticism in Buddhism and science and the difficulty of merging their experiential methods of inquiry. Yet Wallace also proves that Buddhist views on human nature and the possibility of free will liberate us from the metaphysical constraints of scientific materialism. He then explores the radical empiricism inspired by William James and applies it to Indian Buddhist philosophy's four schools and the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism.
 
Since Buddhism begins with the assertion that ignorance lies at the root of all suffering and that the path to freedom is reached through knowledge, Buddhist practice can be viewed as a progression from agnosticism (not knowing) to gnosticism (knowing), acquired through the maintenance of exceptional mental health, mindfulness, and introspection. Wallace discusses these topics in detail, identifying similarities and differences between scientific and Buddhist understanding, and he concludes with an explanation of shamatha and vipashyana and their potential for realizing the full nature, origins, and potential of consciousness.
 
“His range and depth of knowledge is astounding, and his linking of this knowledge to the practices and views of science is unique.” —Arthur Zajonc, author of Catching the Light

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9780231530323

B. Alan Wallace

B. Alan Wallace is president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. He trained for many years as a monk in Buddhist monasteries in India and Switzerland. He has taught Buddhist theory and practice in Europe and America since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including H. H. the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the philosophy of science, he earned his MA and PhD in religious studies at Stanford University. He has edited, translated, authored, and contributed to more than forty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion. Alan is also the founder of the Center for Contemplative Research (CCR), which has retreat center locations in Crestone, Colorado and Castellina Marittima, Italy and a center in New Zealand slated to open soon. The CCR is dedicated to researching the role and methods of the ancient contemplative practices of shamatha and vipashyana, and their involvement in mental health and wellbeing, as well as their role in fathoming the nature and origins of human consciousness.

Book preview

MEDITATIONS

OF A

BUDDHIST

SKEPTIC

B. ALAN WALLACE

MEDITATIONS

OF A

BUDDHIST

SKEPTIC

A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW YORK

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright © 2012 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN: 978-0-231-53032-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wallace, B. Alan.

Meditations of a Buddhist skeptic : a manifesto for the mind sciences and contemplative practice / B. Alan Wallace.

   p.   cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-15834-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53032-3 (electronic)

1. Neurosciences—Religious aspects—Buddhism. 2. Buddhism—Psychology. 3. Buddhism and science. I. Title.

BQ4570.N48W36   2012

294.3’365—dc22

2011009041

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [e-mail].

References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CONTENTS

Prologue: Skepticism in Buddhism and Science

PART I: RESTORING OUR HUMAN NATURE

ONE

Toward a Revolution in the Mind Sciences

TWO

Buddhism and Science: Confrontation and Collaboration

THREE

Buddhism and the Mind Sciences

FOUR

A Three-Dimensional Science of Mind

FIVE

Restoring Meaning to the Universe

SIX

What Makes Us Human? Scientific and Buddhist Views

SEVEN

Achieving Free Will

PART II: TRANSCENDING OUR HUMAN NATURE

EIGHT

Buddhist Radical Empiricism

NINE

From Agnosticism to Gnosticism

TEN

A Buddhist Model of Optimal Mental Health

ELEVEN

Mindfulness in the Mind Sciences and in Buddhism

TWELVE

Shamatha and Vipashyana in the Indian Buddhist Tradition

THIRTEEN

Shamatha and Vipashyana in the Dzogchen Tradition

Epilogue: The Many Worlds of Buddhism and Science

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

PROLOGUE

Skepticism in Buddhism and Science

I AM A BUDDHIST SKEPTIC. The Greek term skeptikoi means seekers or inquirers; the early Greek skeptics challenged the dogmatic positions of their contemporaries, advocating critical investigation instead. The Buddha (563–483 B.C.E.) himself embraced the value of skepticism, for he counseled others not to adopt beliefs on the basis of hearsay, legend, tradition, scriptural sources, logical conjecture, probability, or a teacher’s authority. He encouraged us to learn through our own experience which theories and practices are wholesome and which are unwholesome. Determining whether they lead to our own and others’ genuine happiness or to harm and suffering requires empirical investigation.¹ Even regarding his own teachings, the Buddha advised, Monks, just as the wise accept gold after testing it by heating, cutting, and rubbing [on a touchstone], so are my words to be accepted after examining them, but not out of respect [for me].²

A skeptical orientation came naturally to me as a youth. I was brought up in a Christian household, and even though I found great meaning in the teachings of Jesus, some of the church’s doctrines made no sense to me. I set my sights on a scientific career at an early age, but I became just as skeptical of the materialistic assumptions saturating scientific inquiry as I was of religious doctrine. Even though I found much truth in science, it didn’t answer the need for meaning in my life. Furthermore, the notion of segregating religion from science, as if their spheres of authority were nonoverlapping, was anathema to me. How could a meaningful life not be based on truth? How could something be true yet hold no meaning?

In my pursuit of truth and meaning, I explored the worldview, values, and meditative practices of Buddhism while retaining my sense of skepticism. In both traditional Buddhist monasteries and modern academia, it is common to spend years studying a discipline without actually practicing it. My education in science and mathematics showed me early on that you can never fully understand any discipline without practicing it. If you want to understand theoretical physics, you must learn to formulate physical theories that can be tested experimentally. If you want to understand experimental physics, you must develop precise experimental techniques to yield accurate observations. The study of Buddhism is the same. Not simply a set of beliefs to be accepted on faith or traditional ritual practices to be followed, this is a system of experiential and rational inquiry that demands skeptical inspection of one’s own deepest assumptions.

As I continued my study and practice of Buddhism, I became increasingly skeptical of some modern traditions that emphasize study over practical experience and of others that emphasize practice without study. I became equally skeptical of those who emphasize ritual practices while ignoring rigorous study as being too intellectual. As one result of uninformed practice, some Buddhists have taken the liberty of redefining key terms such as mindfulness (Pali sati), meditative stabilization (Skt. dhyana; Pali jhana), insight (Skt. vipashyana) meditation, nonself (Pali anatta), emptiness (Skt. shunyata), liberation (Skt. nirvana), and pristine awareness (Tib. rigpa) on the basis of their own ideas—often diverging widely from authoritative Buddhist sources. Decontextualized doctrines and practices lose their grounding in the teachings of the Buddha and fail to benefit from 2,500 years of contemplative experience and scholarship by those who followed the path he blazed. There is little justification in calling such practices Buddhist.

Many people in our fast-paced world, in both the East and the West, are in a hurry to achieve their goals, and this attitude undermines their practice of Buddhism. In the Modern Vipassana Movement (MVM), some people marginalize or skip the foundational practices of ethics and meditative concentration (Skt. samadhi) and proceed immediately to the pinnacle of Buddhist meditation as they perceive it: insight meditation. In Mahayana Buddhism, it is common to bypass rigorous study and mental training in the Buddha’s foundational teachings recorded in the Pali Canon and to focus instead on more advanced levels of meditation and philosophy. Followers of Vajrayana Buddhism often skip the foundational teachings in the sutras and immerse themselves in the most esoteric practices they can find. Such shortcuts are evidence of the commoditization and marketing of Buddhism in the modern world. Witnessing the dismal outcomes of these radically decontextualized, fast-track approaches, I became even more skeptical.

At the same time, I saw Buddhist teachers who promoted their traditions in the modern world without accounting for the many important differences between traditional Buddhist cultures and modernity. Over the past twenty-five centuries, Buddhism has adapted to diverse societies by evolving continuously as times have changed. This gradual process of assimilation and adaptation has led to Buddhism’s rich diversity in India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia—many lineages with distinct characteristics. Now, for the first time in history, Buddhism has become a global phenomenon, and the outlook depends on a delicate balance between adaptation to new contexts and preservation of core theories and practices. When it falls to the extreme of adaptation, Buddhism is sometimes reduced to yet another system of psychotherapy. When it falls to the extreme of conservatism, it is relegated to historical artifacts in scholarly studies and museums. Either way, its vitality and purpose are lost.

One indication of the poor outcomes from some contemporary flavors of Buddhism is the frequency of unsubstantiated claims people make about their own and others’ attainments of samadhi and higher spiritual realizations. A Buddhist monk violates an essential vow by exaggerating the degree of his spiritual maturation and realization. It is equally misleading to exaggerate or claim knowledge about the spiritual attainments of others. The parallel in science is to lie about one’s discoveries. It makes little difference whether one makes false claims about one’s own or others’ accomplishments. Protecting the credibility of the scientific tradition demands the utmost integrity and respect for honest evidence and rational argument. This is just as true in the Buddhist contemplative tradition. There is certainly a role for faith and confidence in both Buddhism and science, but they must not lead to making truth claims concerning mere conjectures, intuitions, or beliefs.

Certain claims made by cognitive neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists about the mind, consciousness, free will, the origins of religion, and various mental processes leave me equally skeptical. Some statements are little more than expressions of faith in the ersatz religion of scientific materialism. Metaphysical speculations are frequently presented as scientific truths, when in reality they are not even testable hypotheses. Such presumptions of knowledge are the bane of both scientific and contemplative investigations.

Although open-minded, intelligent skepticism is regarded as a virtue in Buddhism, it must be tempered with faith, which may seem to set it at odds with science. English mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford (1845–79) expressed the ideal of many scientists when he wrote, It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.³ In his recent polemic against religion, Sam Harris echoes this and calls for the end of religious faith in the modern world. He argues that a rational and scientific view—one that relies on the power of empirical evidence to support knowledge and understanding—should replace religious faith.⁴ But if it’s wrong for us to believe in religious doctrines without sufficient evidence, scientific doctrines should be held to the same standard. For example, since scientists have not explained what catalyzed the Big Bang, how life began, the origins of consciousness in the universe, or the source of awareness in a fetus, it is wrong for them to assume that purely physical causes underlie these phenomena. Nevertheless, many scientists routinely assume that there must be physical explanations for everything in nature; in doing so, they conflate metaphysical speculation with scientific knowledge.

In reality, if scientists and contemplatives could not rely upon their predecessors and contemporaries—with faith in others’ discoveries—all scientific and contemplative inquiry would grind to a halt. It would be impossible for each new generation of researchers to replicate for themselves all the empirical findings made by others. American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910) offered a nuanced view of the relation between faith and open-minded inquiry of all kinds. Where preferences are powerless to modify or produce things, faith is totally inappropriate, he wrote, but for the class of truths that depend on personal preference, trust, or loyalty for actualization, faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable. [Such] truths cannot become true till our faith has made them so.⁵

Witnessing the passion with which atheists such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett denounce religion and declare the supremacy of science (along with its metaphysical assumptions), one might agree with James’s observation that philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of logic, . . . logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards.⁶ Once people lock onto a vision of reality that appeals to them, they tend to hold their views as being uniquely true. According to the Buddha, this is a fundamental delusion. Such dogmatism lies at the root of humanity’s history of ideological warfare, zealously waged by self-righteous theists and atheists alike.

Avoiding the extremes of skepticism and dogmatism calls for a middle way approach that characterized the Buddha’s teachings from the very beginning. The meditations included in this book are expressions of that middle way. I have attempted to present the Buddha’s teachings in full accordance with ancient tradition, while articulating them for a contemporary audience. Many of the ideas and perspectives presented here occurred to me in the course of my own meditative practice. All the meditations described are designed to bring greater meaning to our lives, along with a deeper understanding of truth. I have offered my best and most meaningful guidance to inspire modern seekers on the path to awakening. Although I have tried to be true to Buddhist tradition, there are limits to my own understanding. Whatever value there may be in these efforts is due to the fathomless kindness and wisdom of many spiritual friends and my precious teachers.

PART I

RESTORING

OUR

HUMAN

NATURE

ONE

TOWARD A REVOLUTION IN THE MIND SCIENCES

DEFERRED DEVELOPMENT

For millennia before Galileo (1564–1642), people throughout the world gazed at the starry skies with unaided vision and sought to understand the correlations between celestial and terrestrial phenomena. Multiple systems of astrology were the fruits of their labors, but the modern science of astronomy remained beyond reach. For centuries, mathematicians sought to understand the movements of celestial bodies in accordance with the dominant worldviews of their times. But even the heliocentric system devised by Copernicus (1473–1543) was widely regarded as simply one more plausible mathematical model, for it was not experimentally better than Ptolemy’s (c. 90–168 C.E.) geocentric model. It was Galileo who introduced advanced technology for observing celestial phenomena, and his empiricism soon triumphed over the rationalism of his predecessors. The modern science of astronomy had begun.

Galileo’s astronomical use of the telescope was a pivotal point in the first revolution in the physical sciences, which began with the publication of Copernicus’s work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543 and culminated with the publication of Newton’s (1643–1727) masterpiece, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, in 1687. After decades of rigorous observations of biological phenomena, Charles Darwin (1809–82) initiated a revolution in the life sciences in 1859 with the publication of his first classic, On the Origin of Species. This revolution took on momentum in the 1930s when Darwin’s views were synthesized with Mendelian genetics, and it has culminated in the Human Genome Project and commercial applications of genetic engineering.

The start of scientific study of the mind is dated to 1875, the year that Wilhelm Wundt (1831–1920) and William James independently established the first experimental psychology laboratories in Germany and the United States. The natural sciences were at a crossroads. Over the preceding three centuries, scientists had made dramatic advances in quantitative observations of objective physical phenomena that are independent of the human mind. Now they were faced with the challenge of studying mental phenomena, which are subjective, immeasurable with technological instruments, and difficult for multiple researchers to verify. With no scientifically rigorous means of observing mental phenomena themselves, the safest approach was to focus on the physical correlates of mental phenomena, such as neural activity and behavioral expressions.

Wundt argued for the indispensability of extending the scientific method by perfecting our inner observation so that introspection could be rigorously applied to the scientific study of the mind.¹ James envisioned psychology as a science of mental phenomena, including thoughts, emotions, memories, desires, volitions, perceptions, and all other conscious and unconscious mental processes.² He proposed a threefold approach, including the indirect study of the mind by way of behavior and neural correlates, and the direct study of mental phenomena themselves. Within this strategy, he declared that one should rely first and foremost and always on introspection, which is the sole means by which mental phenomena—and not just their objective physical correlates—can be observed.³ James was aware of the many formidable problems in adopting introspection as a viable means of scientific inquiry,⁴ but he was convinced that this was necessary in order to expand the scientific worldview to fully incorporate both subjective and objective phenomena.

Shortly after James’s death, however, American behaviorist John B. Watson (1878–1958) set the new science of mind on what he perceived as a more conservative course by equating psychology with the study of objective, physical, quantitatively measurable human behavior. Watson argued that psychology must bury subjective subject matter [and] in trospective method.⁵ Throughout the history of science, new methods of observation have been devised for investigating a wide variety of natural phenomena. But over the past century, the cognitive sciences have devised no rigorous means of examining mental phenomena. The revolution in the mind sciences proposed by Wundt and James never took place, and scientific methods for directly observing mental phenomena have barely surpassed folk psychology. Although behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and the neurosciences have made many advances in understanding the mind, there has been no revolution in the 130-year history of the mind sciences comparable to the revolutions in the physical and life sciences.

THE NEW SCHOLASTICISM

For centuries preceding Galileo, natural philosophy was dominated by the ideological constraints of medieval scholasticism. As a result of Aquinas’s (1225–74) grand unification of biblical theology and Aristotelian philosophy, it was assumed that the general principles of nature were already well known. The ideology of scholasticism dictated which ways of thinking were reasonable, and the authority of the Bible and Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) determined what kinds of experience qualified as reliable empirical evidence.

Galileo challenged the prevailing ideology by insisting that empirical evidence, based on meticulous observation and experiment, should be rationally analyzed and evaluated without the constraints of medieval dogma. Revolutionary ways of understanding the world are threatening and painful to those who are rigidly committed to the ways of the past, and Galileo’s theories met with fierce resistance. Darwin faced similar opposition when he presented his empirically based theory of natural selection, which contradicted the biblical account of the creation of species. But physics and biology have prevailed over the dogmas of the past, radically shifting our understanding of the nature of matter and life in the universe.

In his insistence on the primacy of the direct observation of mental phenomena, James expressed the revolutionary spirit of empiricism in the tradition of Galileo and Darwin. But he challenged the methodological constraints and materialistic assumptions of the prevailing mechanistic view of the universe. By 1820, classical mechanics had developed to such an extent that Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) cogently argued for a deterministic universe governed entirely by physical forces.⁶ In 1847, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) presented his seminal paper on the mathematical principles governing the conservation of energy,⁷ whereby all nonphysical causation was excluded from the natural world. And in 1864, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–18) presented his famous equations describing the propagation of electromagnetic fields. This explanation was based on a physical medium, the luminiferous ether, as well as an absolute frame of reference. By 1875, when experimental psychology formally began, the mechanistic view of the universe was held by many scientists to be the ultimate explanation of the nature of reality.

But such confidence proved to be short-lived. In 1887, the existence of a mechanical medium for the propagation of energy fields in empty space was disproved by the renowned Michelson-Morley experiment. Since then, electromagnetic fields have been explained in terms of mathematical abstractions alone; they can no longer be conceptualized as material stuff oscillating in empty space. In 1905, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) published his special theory of relativity, overthrowing long-standing beliefs in the absolute nature of time and space as well as the existence of the luminiferous ether. Twentieth-century advances in quantum physics have supplanted Laplace’s physical determinism, and insights into nonlocality and quantum entanglement have refuted the assumption that causality is confined to local, mechanical interactions. The unresolved measurement problem in quantum physics challenges the very existence of elementary particles with mass and energy existing independently of a system of measurement. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle demonstrates that the conservation of energy is not nearly as airtight as was previously assumed. And current theories of quantum field theory, quantum cosmology, and string theory force us to question the notion of a universe constituted of absolutely objective matter.

As a result of advances in physics at the end of the nineteenth century, the incompatibility of theism and mechanistic materialism had become increasingly apparent not only to scientists but to other intellectuals as well. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) proclaimed God is dead, which was his provocative way of describing the popular rejection of ab solute values: people no longer believed in a cosmic order. Nietzsche felt this would lead to nihilism, a disaster that could be avoided only if human values were newly established on a natural basis that transcended a world of mindless matter. Similarly, as a result of advances in physics at the end of the twentieth century, the antiquated nature of nineteenth-century materialism is becoming increasingly apparent. Steven Weinberg, for example, has taken a position tantamount to declaring that matter is dead: In the physicist’s recipe for the world, the list of ingredients no longer include[s] particles.⁸ He asserts that matter thus loses its central role in physics.⁹

Although nineteenth-century physics appeared to corroborate the atomism of Democritus, the twentieth-century revolution in physics has reduced matter to mathematical abstractions, or ideas. Werner Heisenberg concluded, With regard to this question, modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans.¹⁰ Many of the beliefs of mechanistic materialism have now been rejected, and the absolute Cartesian separation of subject and object has been challenged scientifically and philosophically. The renowned experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger sums up this radical shift in his comment that one may be tempted to assume that whenever we ask questions of nature, . . . there is reality existing independently of what can be said about it. We will now claim that such a position is void of any meaning.¹¹

Remarkably, well into the eighteenth century—long after the groundbreaking discoveries of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton—Aristotelian physics was taught in the great universities of Europe as if the first revolution in physics had never occurred. Most of the innovators conducted research outside the universities, under the auspices of independent organizations such as the Royal Society.¹² Nowadays, it is equally odd that virtually all contemporary university undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology and neuroscience are based on the physics that was current in 1875, neglecting the second revolution in physics!

Some physicists argue that the startling discoveries of quantum physics have no relevance for the study of the mind and brain.¹³ If this is true, it certainly makes the work of the cognitive sciences easier. But a growing number of distinguished physicists are beginning to challenge this view, proposing that consciousness may play a far more fundamental role in the natural world than was previously assumed.¹⁴ Research is ongoing and the debate continues, but little news of this controversy penetrates departments of psychology and neuroscience.

With the rise of behaviorism in the early twentieth century, the cognitive sciences entrenched themselves in the mechanistic worldview of the preceding century while distancing themselves from the revolutionary empiricism of William James. John Watson, for example, declared in 1913 that psychology must never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like.¹⁵ The most influential proponent of behaviorism, B. F. Skinner (1904–90), continued to argue forty years later that since mental phenomena lack physical qualities, they have no existence whatsoever.¹⁶ Rarely in human history has allegiance to dogma so flagrantly violated experience.

Although few scientists and philosophers today are this brazen in their dismissal of mental phenomena, the specter of nineteenth-century materialism continues to haunt the classrooms and laboratories of the cognitive sciences. In various ways, subjective experiences have been granted provisional membership in nature, but only if it can be shown that—despite appearances—they are equivalent to objective physical phenomena that operate according to the laws of nineteenth-century physics. Philosopher John Searle, for example, proposes that conscious states are equivalent to higher order physical processes in the brain.¹⁷ But the neural correlates of consciousness have not yet been identified, so his declaration that states of consciousness are identical to hypothetical physical processes in the brain illuminates nothing except his materialistic assumptions. Owen Flanagan suggests that mental phenomena misleadingly appear to be nonphysical, but they are actually realized as neural events, which are their essential nature.¹⁸ There is overwhelming evidence that specific neural events cause specific mental events, but there is no compelling empirical evidence indicating that mental phenomena are themselves identical to their neural correlates, despite common claims to that effect.¹⁹ Cristof Koch is one of many neuroscientists who have expressed skepticism about the equivalence of brain states and mental phenomena: Are they really one and the same thing, viewed from different perspectives? The characters of brain states and of phenomenal states appear too different to be completely reducible to each other.²⁰ When we objectively observe brain states, they exhibit none of the characteristics of mental states, and when we subjectively observe mental states, they display none of the characteristics of brain activity. It makes little sense to say that an effect is realized as its cause. So Flanagan’s assertion reveals nothing apart from his belief that mental processes can’t be admitted into the natural world unless they qualify as physical processes.

DOUBLE DOUBLETHINK

In his landmark science fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell introduced two terms that illuminate the parallels between medieval scholasticism and contemporary materialism. He explains crimestop, the first of these terms, as follows:

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [English Socialism], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.²¹

The second term, doublethink, is defined in this passage:

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.²²

The notions of crimestop and doublethink are relevant to modern materialistic beliefs about the nature of human identity and volition. For example, in his book The Illusion of Conscious Will, psychologist Daniel M. Wegner writes, it seems to each of us that we have conscious will. It seems we have selves. It seems we have minds. It seems we are agents. It seems we cause what we do . . . it is sobering and ultimately accurate to call all this an illusion.²³ With all the authority of a highly respected Harvard professor, Wegner reduces human identity, the human mind, and all acts of volition to illusions with no basis in reality. This view is shared by radically materialistic philosophers of mind, such as Patricia Churchland, who comments, there is an appearance of a mind, or of a self, but there is no such thing. There is an appearance of a flat earth, but it is no such thing.²⁴

According to a common materialistic viewpoint, human beings are identical to our brains and all our activities are governed by the laws of physics, so the experience of choosing is an illusion. Given the limitations of the current scientific understanding of consciousness, these assertions are simply beliefs, determined in large part by inductive reasoning based on nineteenth-century materialism. Current empirical evidence and rational analysis do not compel anyone to accept these statements; those who have adopted them have chosen to do so, although they may feel they have no alternative.

In a meeting of a group of neuroscientists with the Dalai Lama in 1989, a group of distinguished cognitive scientists unanimously claimed that human beings are equivalent to human brains. The Dalai Lama then asked them collectively whether, as scientists conducting neuroscientific research in their laboratories, they ever experienced a spontaneous feeling of affection for the brain itself as they would for a loved one. The scientists immediately responded that they did love brains. But as the import of his question began to sink in, their ensuing responses were clear expressions of doublethink and crimestop, as the scientists sought to defend their materialist convictions while remaining true to their own personal experience.²⁵ This raises the underlying question: Are even the most committed materialists actually able to regard themselves and their loved ones as mindless biological robots who never make any decisions and whose every act is determined by impersonal biochemical processes operating according to the laws of physics?

Some contemporary philosophers of mind, such as Searle and Flanagan, have sought to reconcile a vestige of free will and human dignity with the depersonalizing and demoralizing implications of materialism.²⁶ Their deductive reasonings are displays of human ingenuity on a par with medieval theologians’ attempts to reconcile their beliefs in predestination with their unquestioning belief in a merciful and omnipotent God. If, as Antonio Damasio claims, human beings are nothing more than brains that have a body on their backs,²⁷ human volition can be scientifically understood in only one of two ways. Either the brain behaves deterministically in accordance with the laws of classical physics, or it functions with a mixture of strict causality and chaos in accordance with the laws of quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Neither alternative provides a viable basis for devising a materialistic justification for human volition, moral responsibility, or free will.

Physics evolved beyond the absolute determinism of Laplace not by deductive, philosophical reasoning, but by progress in the empirical study of physical phenomena. Likewise, if scientists wish to understand the nature of choice and volition, they must depend upon rigorous observation of the mental processes of choice and volition along with the study of their neural and behavioral correlates. Unless they refine the empirical examination of mental phenomena themselves, the scientific understanding of human volition and the possibility of freedom will remain as ideologically bound as medieval theology.

OBSTACLES TO A REVOLUTION IN THE MIND SCIENCES

In his remarkable book The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself, Daniel J. Boorstin declares that illusions of knowledge, not mere ignorance, have always acted as the greatest impediments to scientific discovery.²⁸ In the past, these illusions of knowledge were often traced to religious beliefs and philosophical speculations. But now the primary obstacles to discovering the origins, nature, and potentials of human consciousness lie in the illusions of knowledge of mechanistic materialism. If the mind is not physical, says the authority of nineteenth-century materialism, there is no way it can exert causal influences on the body or anything else in the natural world. But no instruments of technology, which are designed to measure physical phenomena, are capable of detecting consciousness. And when mental phenomena are directly observed by means of introspection, they display no physical attributes, such as physical location, spatial dimension, or mass. Nevertheless, cognitive scientists are almost unanimous in their insistence that the mind must be physical, even if they have only the fuzziest idea of what that term means in modern physics.²⁹

Antonio Damasio expresses an ideal held by many of his peers when he declares that neuroscientists are absolutely committed to the goal of devising a comprehensive account of subjective experience purely in terms of neural activity as described by the current tools of neurobiology.³⁰ In the view of such scientists, mental phenomena are unexplained until they have been thoroughly understood in the language of biology on the basis of physical observations. Subjective experience must be stuffed into the box of objective reality before it can be considered to be real. The taboo of subjectivity continues to exert a powerful, ubiquitous influence on the natural sciences to this day.³¹

The notion of devising a comprehensive account of mental phenomena purely in terms of neurobiology ignores the fact that biology alone does not define, predict, or explain the emergence of mental phenomena in living organisms, nor are such phenomena detected with any of the current tools of biological science. In the objective language of biology, such subjective terms as thought, emotion, and consciousness have no meaning. They acquire meaning only from the first-person experience of mental phenomena. Ever since the rise of behaviorism in the early twentieth century, such first-person experience has been marginalized or denied altogether. Despite more than a century of domination of

Reviews for Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic

[johnverdon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I highly recommend this book (and any other by this author). This is a great example of a secular approach to the teachings of Buddha and how to apprehend meditation practice and these teachings from a western secular perspective.