The Many Pathways to Bliss.

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

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somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

Mary is a scientist who was raised in a black and white room. She was educated with black and white books. She has access to a black and white television monitor. She knows everything about the visible light spectrum, measuring different wavelengths of light. She also knows everything about the effect these wavelengths have on the human eye, the optical nerves, and on the human brain. She’s a neuroscientist and knows the effect of colors on the human brain down to the very last synapse. But she has never seen color herself – until she is released from her black and white room. Then she sees a red rose, and green grass, and a blue sky.
Actually, if Mary has spent enough time in her b/w environment, it is very well possible that even after entering a colored world, she will not be able to see color, because her brain might have rerouted the nerve paths originally serving her cones and providing the physiological basis for color vision to her rods or other places. She might therefore have to permanently rely on physical measurement rather than physiological and psychological experience. As far as brains and early development go, it's often "use it or loose it." Of course it would be unethical to conduct this experiment on an actual Mary, but there have been some experiments in the 70s at Harvard with cats (again, seems that cats are our topic right now...) who were wearing weird glasses that allowed one group to see only horizontal and the other group only vertical lines. Both groups ended up seeing the world quite differently as a result of their early experiences.

http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/896

I thought a bit more about your "soft" science definition and noticed another aspect that you don't seem to give proper consideration: Large amounts of data and the art of statistics. Of course many lay people like to poo-poo statistics by stating, inspired by Twain (who himself quoted somebody else, historians argue about whom), "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Like any powerful tool, statistics can be used or abused.
If you collected endorphin levels and blood pressure that would indeed be hard science. If you used surveys as I understood was used in this study that would be soft science. There is no law that says you can’t use both. But there is a difference. [...] experiential knowledge is not the same as objective knowledge. [...] the hard sciences deal with objective knowledge – with things that can be measured physically – and with a belief in an objective truth. [...] But most psychology and sociology studies I’ve heard of have little to do with hard science.
To me that shows that psychology has a PR problem. Most of what is conducted right now is either hard science (research) or applied science (diagnostics or clinical psychology, which of course have to look at the individual rather than large samples). However, to distinguish effective treatments from quackery, research (the "hard" science kind) is needed. That doesn't always have mean invasive research. You can use surveys properly, but it takes training and experience.
For example, I could see a study trying to measure the effect of divorce on children of different ages. You just can’t take the subjective knowledge out of it. Emotional pain or well-being isn’t usually measured with MRIs or PET scans. So we use these soft science studies. But they just aren’t the same as hard science explanations. I can’t see them as being the same.
What you are saying is true when you look at one person only (a sample of the size n=1). If you look at larger amounts of people, control for confounding variables, and properly use statistical evaluation of the data you collect in just the right ways, then you get objective rather than subjective results, even for such ephemeral study objects as feelings or experience. Of course you have to be smart and creative in how you study those. For example, you might use what is called a Likert scale (several options that allow the person to select anything between "not at all," "a little," "somewhat," "often," and "all the time" as answers to something like "Do you feel xyz when such and such happens?"). You have to gather data that you can transform into mathematical structures, so essay questions won't work, other than for supplying additional context and depth. But when you do collect your self-reported statements in a form that you can mathematically evaluate, you can distinguish chance fluctuations from meaningful data distributions (with a certain probability, that depends on the calculations you use). As in any science, there are no absolute statements. That's why you find statements in psychological journal articles qualified with a "p"-value, the percentage with which I might be in error. There are two different errors, false positives and false negatives. If I do find an effect, I can calculate the effect size. And so on.

How much harder can science get than pure mathematics? But, of course, in popular media, none of this is even mentioned, which means when you read a claim there, you usually do not have the necessary information to say if the methods to make that claim were appropriate or flawed.
When I hear that there’s a correlation between ‘many choices’ and ‘unhappiness’ I sort of believe it. It’s useful information. But I don’t believe it as much as I believe the sun is approximately 93 million miles away. Not that I’ve measured either one myself. But I trust hard science more than soft.
In my experience "trust" is in both cases conditional. If you know that the methodologies of data collection and data interpretation used are sound, you can conditionally trust the information. But in both cases, a psychological correlation as well as a physical measurement that is extrapolating from optical phenomena to conclude a certain distance, we only have our state of the art knowledge. When more data become available, our calculations might be confirmed or they will have to be revised. The only area that you can trust is the intention of my above mentioned groups 1 A) and 2 A). However, even those might, with the best of intentions, cause mayhem and terror. Good intentions don't guarantee good outcomes. And we can't look into people's hearts. So it's always possible that you meet a 1 B) and confuse it for a 1 A), that you meet a 2 B) and confuse it for a 2 A), or that you meet a 3 B) that looks like a 3 A).

That seems a whole lot more scientific to me than for example history. I always disliked history in high school, for exactly that reason. No right or wrongs, just opinions. Still good to hear those stories, because we can learn from them and hopefully avoid the same mistakes, even though what we read has been filtered through interpretation, often that of the winners of some war. Psychological research, if conducted properly, is a whole lot less fuzzy than that. Cultural anthropology appears to be somewhere in the middle between the story telling of history and the scientific methodology of research psychology, but it's the newest discipline and still trying to find itself, it seems. I took one sociology class and was put off by the textbook's usage of a lot of assumptions without really examining those. But maybe it was just the book or the teacher... Don't know.

Any chance I could talk you into using the term "scholarly examination" rather than "soft science"? It seems more to the point. And I do have the highest respect for a skilled scholar (such as Campbell).
This is at the heart of the science wars, and why Alan Sokal made us laugh by suggesting we look at the Pi of Euclid and the G of Newton from a feminist point of view.
I actually don't find it that funny, because I met people who actually believe that kind of stuff and assume anything they hear to the contrary is part of one big conspiracy. On top of that, some of those people home school their children and perpetuate those ideas by isolating their kids from any other sources. When you look at different fanatics, the dogma changes, but the patterns remain. But I guess you are right, this has less to do with hard/soft science distinctions and more with a failure to educate people. Is that (fundamentalism versus enlightenment) what you call the "science wars"?
- Pandora’s cat is here to stay.
That's for sure. And cats are notoriously hard to tame...
:-) Julia

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

What a coincidence! :shock:

Just this morning I woke up with the ‘prime’ hitting my brain that all sorts of answers are inherently misleading to any sorts of questions. It is because there is a tangible difference between experience and knowledge. Frank Jackson must be right in his hypothetical scenario regarding Mary: that Mary will actually learn something! Experience is four dimensional (actual time being the fourth dimension) whereas any concept in the mind, even if manifest in four dimensions are not equivalent to their real (or what we term real but nothing other than the re-collectible quality [Hume]) . The realness of this quality in the mind (mind concept) and the re-collected realness in the mind will ALWAYS differ, ( since time moves to other locations) leaving a large enough gap for existence to take place.

How does this sound? I don’t know if one could say it is TIME that moves, or is it US that moves through Time or is it QUALITY that moves time. Still needs a lot of thinking what this dimensional inconsistency leads to. Would be nice to find those lost Stoic texts about ‘quality’. :roll: *sigh*

Just my two-cent's worth,
Cheers,
Evinnra
Last edited by Evinnra on Tue Jun 24, 2008 3:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

:D Wow. After posting the message I read through the previous page in its full content.

What would I do to have your eloquence Julia!? What would I do to have your sense of humor and thorough attitude NoMan?!

:P You two should write a book :idea: :?:
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

Ohhhh, and just one more thing if I'm not too boring ... it seems the greatest difficulty is not to be one with the One (or the ONE) but rather to differentiate what is my thought and what is NOT my thought (or concept/thingy/dharma) :idea:

:D
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

it seems the greatest difficulty is not to be one with the One (or the ONE) but rather to differentiate what is my thought and what is NOT my thought (or concept/thingy/dharma)
Exactly. That's the tough one. And I don't trust anybody who tells me they got it permanently figured out (back to trust here...), because whenever we think now we're done figuring stuff out, we tend to have moved onto another level of thinking and therefore delusion. Buddhism teaches the four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness of the body. Mindfulness of the feelings. Mindfulness of the mind. Mindfulness of the objects of mind (the thoughts that you mention). The idea is you keep practicing watching your self and your mind and, through that practice, you notice when you confuse experience and thought earlier and earlier, and, when you do, you learn being kind with yourself rather than disappointed, frustrated, or angry.

Science is the language of thought. Without experience to inspire the thought and to come forth from the thought, the thought isn't worth anything. That's the real problem with science (and thought), that some people think it can fill in for experience. Of course it can't.

Love.
:-) Julia

noman
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Post by noman »

You two should write a book

- Evinnra
Hello Evinnra,

If it’s a self-help book, I could only write a parody. I thought of another title, When Bad Things Happen to People Who Deserve It.

Why not? Bad people need as much advice and consolation as good people.

More about Mary – the philosophy of science – and cultural delusion – later.

g-nite (g-morning Evinnra)

- NoMan

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

noman wrote:
You two should write a book

- Evinnra
Hello Evinnra,

If it’s a self-help book, I could only write a parody. I thought of another title, When Bad Things Happen to People Who Deserve It.

Why not? Bad people need as much advice and consolation as good people.

More about Mary – the philosophy of science – and cultural delusion – later.

g-nite (g-morning Evinnra)

- NoMan
Hello NoMan,

That is true, bad people need advice even more than good people do. But I tend to think that 'bad' people are bad only because they don't want to hear advice. So, I don't see a huge promise of profit in that book proposition ... but we'll never know. :) The title is well chosen!

Yeah, there IS something about Mary. :lol:

Sleep well,
Evinnra
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

somehopesnoregrets wrote:
The idea is you keep practicing watching your self and your mind and, through that practice, you notice when you confuse experience and thought earlier and earlier, and, when you do, you learn being kind with yourself rather than disappointed, frustrated, or angry.
What would happen if during meditation one would reduce the mindset to perceive mere intuitions of preferences? I tried this, but intuition of preferences without dharma being present seems impossible. It seems dharma can't be further dissected, though it must be a composite quality.

Cheers,
Evinnra
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

What would happen if during meditation one would reduce the mindset to perceive mere intuitions of preferences?
Please keep in mind that none of what I write is absolute. It is merely my experience, which I interpret through the framework of my chosen practice tradition, Soto Zen Buddhism. There are many more different meditation styles, and a student or teacher of any of those might give very different answers. This is what works for me.

The way you are phrasing the above question makes me wonder if you aren't a tad goal oriented in what you are trying to do. There is nothing wrong with having goals in daily life with its dualistic challenges. In fact, it is a good thing. However, in the way I understand meditation, which has been tremendously helpful and effective in my life, it is a practice ground for non-goal-oriented experience. If you choose to approach it in the same way, you do not "reduce a mindset," because that would imply that "your mindset" is an object that is separate from the "you," which is reducing it, the subject. Even though this separation is a very practical way of looking at things in everyday life, according to Zen Buddhism (and according to my own experiences) it is essentially a misinterpretation of what truly happens.

We become functional in the world because we make up stories about ourselves (one of the most compelling of those being the story of our "ego"). Those stories affect the way we see the world and act in it. Some stories are a result of our experiences. Some stories we might have learned from a teacher or read about in an book. Why is it that you think you will find "intuitions of preferences" when you look at your direct experience? If you look to find something specific, you might miss other, more interesting things. Stories do just that. They guide our experience and our focus, emphasizing some of what we see and push other things below the threshold of consciousness.

Most psychotherapy tries to take dysfunctional stories and replace them with more functional stories. Zen Buddhism is more radical than that. Instead of trying to change your stories to fit your life better, Zen is trying to help you uproot the hold those stories have on you altogether, by teaching you awareness of how synthetic and ultimately not real and not permanent those stories are. You will still continue producing stories if you practice this regularly, but ideally you won't buy into them any more, they become less compelling, and you become free to act upon them or do something entirely different for a change on a case by case basis.

This can be a challenging and difficult process, because the stories are there for a reason. They protect us from strong fears, such as the fear of our own impermanence, our impending death, or of the impermanence of what we rely on, of the betrayal of those or that we trust. So, there is likely to be some kind of resistance at times, which can manifest in a number of ways. In my case, some of the ways my ego resists are daydreaming, arrogance or self-loathing (both of which are essentially forms of comparing myself with others), or making up more stories and thinking those are the "realer" reality and over-thinking things. Those are just a few examples. There are more, and most of them are intertwined in some ways.

Let's put aside those caveats for now, though, and get back to your question:
What would happen if during meditation one would reduce the mindset to perceive mere intuitions of preferences?
Instead of actively trying to reduce something (your mind, your feelings, your thoughts), try to have a curious and mindful look at what is happening at each moment. What you notice will be different at different times, but certain themes are bound to come around again and again. Don't judge anything of what you notice, just notice. It you notice yourself judging, notice that your judging is merely another thought. Notice that.

See if you can tell the difference between what is...

....a sensation in your body (for example the sensation of the floor under your legs, your thighs getting sore, the sensation of the cushion under your bottom, the sensation of tension in your back or shoulders, the sensation of wind on your cheeks and in your hair, if you happen to sit outside or on a balcony, sensations of itching on your face, sensations of warmth or coolness in different parts of your body, sensations of the clothing on your body... things like that)...

...a feeling (for example getting anxious, angry, sudden feelings of sadness, joy, boredom, fear, specifically how the energy of the feeling that you observe starts out small, gets more intense, peaks, and passes)...

...the mechanism of thinking (when you have a sensation in your legs, can you notice when you stop simply sensing the sensation and start evaluating or interpreting it, by, for example by thinking, oh, my legs feel numb, I hope that isn't permanent, or can you notice the difference between simply feeling a feeling and interpreting it, for example worrying about a certain threat or outcome versus the feeling of fear itself and....

...the contents of your thoughts (be careful with this one, since it's so overemphasized in Western culture, that you might get stuck there, but what exactly are those stories that you habitually tell yourself about your sensations and feelings? Again, don't judge, just notice).

For me personally feelings are hardest to notice. Most likely some early childhood blockages. I was raised by a raging father and an emotionally suppressed mom, so I learned to be afraid of my own feelings and to stuff them down as quickly as I could, especially my anger. Over the years (I've been doing martial arts for fourteen years and Zen meditation for eight) I've gotten better at noticing those feelings/emotion thoughts, and it's been very helpful. I broke through some of that denial, simply by practicing looking at it courageously and with clarity. In some of my meditation sessions, I can't find any peace and my thoughts run about like headless chickens. At other times, I feel deeply at rest and calm. Whatever happens, I simply notice. In the past, for a few months, I sat 30 minutes every morning and then some evenings, too. I also occasionally did one-day-sittings at my Zen Center (you sit all day long, periods of 30-45 mins, interrupted by stretching and slow walking, eating in Zazen posture, and using the toilet) and even did two 5-day-sittings there. Now, as mom of a toddler and a baby, I am lucky if I can squeeze the occasional 10 minutes out of my day, when both are sleeping or my husband watches them. If I don't, I take the occasional quiet moment, when I have to wait in line somewhere or when the older one is sleeping and I'm nursing the baby to just be completely present with my experience. I wouldn't be able to do that without the previous formal (cross-legged) sitting experience, because I first had to learn what it feels like "to be present." I didn't know, but over time I learned to tell the difference. So, I mostly don't sit cross-legged at this point, but I still "sit" in the Zazen sense, in that I take some time out of my day to just notice what's going on rather than trying to make my mind do something or manipulate myself into becoming a certain way.

Zen is more about really getting to know who you are and to be that as honestly and as kindly as you can than about trying to mold yourself by some external standard. The idea is that when we don't get lost in our stories, we tend to have pretty good instincts for what is right and wrong for us and others (not perfect, we still make mistakes), but when we try to control ourselves and our environment, including the people around us, we tend to ignore those instincts and often act hurtful or self-destructive as a result of that. It is a very optimistic idea of what people are like, and one that is somewhat at odds with the idea of many Christian dominations that assume we are condemned to wrestling with original sin, needing an external set of morals to keep us from acting in "evil" ways. But then, I have an idea of "original sin," too, just a different one. I feel our original sin is "dukha," the Buddhist idea of suffering, of, even when we have learned to simply be present with our experience for stretches of time, always slipping back into believing that our stories are true. But, through practice, we can learn to notice earlier and earlier when that happens and gently and kindly bring ourselves back into awareness of our practice and connection with everything.
I tried this, but intuition of preferences without dharma being present seems impossible. It seems dharma can't be further dissected, though it must be a composite quality.
I wouldn't worry too much about your preferences, since those are simply one of your emotion thoughts. Just for kicks, can you instead shift your attention more towards your sensations and feelings for the few minutes of each day that you are meditating (in a physically safe and protected location, of course)? Don't worry about having to be hyper-vigilant about maintaining your thoughts, they will still be there when your attention shifts back. But, just for the time that you are meditating, see if you can give yourself a break from worrying too much about what you want and don't want. Not because it would be "bad" or "wrong" to do so, but simply out of curiosity and in order to find out what happens when you do that.

I'm not sure why you think that Dharma must be a composite quality. Of course there are lots of models that dissect Dharma into different pieces and those pieces' interactions. However, in my humble opinion, those do not illustrate the nature of Dharma rather than the nature of our thinking about Dharma. I'm wondering if you and I are using the term "Dharma" in similar ways. Would you mind defining it for me and letting me know where you found that definition?

There is a text that you might enjoy, which was written by Ehei Dogen in medieval Japan and which deals with just that, how to meditate. He wrote it because he was annoyed by seeing what other teachers taught as meditation at that time in Japan, most of which he considered problematic misinterpretations. The text is called Fukanzazengi, and you can find an English translation here:

http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/Texts/ ... engi.shtml

Hope some of it may be helpful.
:-) Julia

noman
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Post by noman »

On Pandora’s Cat and Mixing Metaphors


I thought Pandora’s cat was a very clever mix of metaphors. Good writers will be clear and have good ideas once in a while. But great writers throw in something that forces me stop and think. Pandora’s cat made me stop and think: Pandora – box – cat – bag. Pandora sounds like a witch’s name. And witches usually have cats. Witches are evil. Pandora brought evils in her jar/box. Very clever.

Last time I remember being stopped in my tracks while reading like that was reading one of Bodhi’s Practical Campbell essays. I can’t remember which one it was. But he ended a paragraph, and then had a stand-alone line that read, “We are living a myth in deed.” (I think that was the line.) But I hesitated for a second wondering if there was a typo on the words ‘in deed’. Of course not. But then I had to stop and think about the word ‘indeed’, what it means, and how it relates to the words ‘in deed’ where deed is an action. When we say ‘indeed’ meaning ‘for certain’ we must say it because actions speak louder than words. Very clever indeed.

The only other mix metaphor I can recall is when ex-NFL quarterback and NFL announcer Joe Theisman said, ‘I hate to beat a dead horse into the ground’. It seems to me you either ‘drive it, or run it, into the ground’, or you ‘beat a dead horse’. But you do NOT, under any circumstances, ‘beat a dead horse into the ground’. There wasn’t anything profound to think about. But I do remember it after all these years.

On the Modernity of Science
Science is really very young. The word ‘scientist’ didn’t enter the language until the early part of the 19th century.
- NoMan

* * * * * * *

The term may be rather young. However, the basic ideas of the scientific method are much older than the term "science" and were described beautifully by Francis Bacon in his "Novum Organum," almost 400 years ago:

- SomeHopes
This is the same problem we had trying to decide when the discipline of ‘self-help’ began.

Our Paleolithic ancestors must have hypothesized and conducted experiments. Someone had to invent the atlatl. Edith Hamilton describes ancient myths as man’s first attempt at science. Some might say the ancient Greeks started it by taking a hard headed look at nature, divorced of mysticism.

Some will say science is part of secularism and started in the 13th century. Wiki calls Ibn Rushd the father of modern secularism. Wiki also says that Roger Bacon (1219 -1294) was one of the earliest European advocates for empiricism and the scientific method. I remember a professor saying that Thomas Aquinas opened the door to modern secularism.

Others might look to the Renaissance and Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, or Galileo. But for every well known name I could list there are hundreds of lesser names known to historians. And for every name known to historians there must have been thousands that are unknown, obscure friars whose work was never published. Many might prefer to begin modern science with Newton’s Principia (1687) and see science as the result of a Newtonian revolution. Few would argue that there is any single scientific paper that has had more influence on the development of science.

Newton worked out the inverse square law of gravity in 1665 to explain the elliptical orbit of planets and moons. But it wasn’t until 1684, when he was approached by Edmund Halley (of comet fame), who had the same idea but couldn’t work out the math, that Newton was encouraged to publish it. It had nothing to do with religious conflict as was the case with Galileo. It just wasn’t a priority. I once read that 80% of what Newton wrote wasn’t anything we would recognize as science. He was into astrology, and cracking the code of the Bible to determine just when the world would end. Newton once said that the thing he was most proud of in his life was his virginity. :shock: Can you imagine that? These people, even the most intelligent and learned, lived in a completely different world from the one we live in.

I don’t have an answer as to exactly when science officially began. But it doesn’t seem right to take one of the very few extraordinary events in the history of science and say it all started right there. Did Buddhism begin just after Siddartha Guatama lived? Did Christianity spring into existence just after Jesus was crucified? These things take time to foment.

William Whewell coined the words ‘science’ and ‘scientist’ in the 1830s. It would be some time before the average person recognized these words. People were interested in the new technology they saw around them; the telegraph, the steam engine, and railroad were changing the world. At the same time the printing press went through some major improvements and more and more publications were available to more and more people. In the 1940s Scientific American was first published.

A friend of mine collects antique books. He had a textbook from the late 19th century. I saw the chapter on natural philosophy and thought I was going to get to read about Descartes, Hume, and Kant. Instead I see pictures of weights and pulleys. Not only was it physics, but very practical physics, more akin to engineering. I don’t think the enchantment of scientific discovery really gripped our collective psyche until the 20th century.

Today, we are absolutely immersed in science. When we look through the newspaper or watch the news we are constantly confronted with science and the scientific method as our guide, whether it is a murder trial, or global warming, or genetic engineering, or sociological studies, or transportation safety, or diet and health, or energy options, or weapons design, or PTSD in soldiers, or ADS in children. It might be said that we are drowning in science.

Furthermore, most of what we know, upwards of 90% in any given area, such as astronomy, or neuroscience, we have learned in just the last fifty years or so. The techniques used in the late 19th century in archaeology, for example, would not be considered science today, but more like treasure hunting and grave robbing. I can’t help but think of science as a recent phenomenon – even though, some of the most spectacular breakthroughs were made many centuries ago.

Another way to think of the newness of science is to look at the proliferation of science fiction. In many ways sci-fi has taken the place of fairy tales. And it is a 20th century phenomenon.


Not only do I see science as being new, but I see it as part of the myth we are living, as science and scientists guide and characterize our culture. And yet, it is said that we are over 90% science illiterate. There is this disconnect between the wizards of this esoteric knowledge and the general public. This scientific illiteracy shows itself even in politicians. I remember Carl Sagan claiming the last president we had who was scientifically proficient was Thomas Jefferson. (In a foot note he said that arguments could be made for Wilson and Carter, but there is one modern politician for which there can be no debate; namely, Margret Thatcher. She majored in chemistry and natural sciences at Oxford)

Though we complain about science illiteracy, Bill Moyers told Joseph Campbell in POM that he was raised with fixed stars, but now science has made a house-cleaning of religious beliefs. It seems the negative aspects of science are manifest but we, as a society aren’t taking advantage of the positive aspects. Many people turn their nose up at science. I even saw a bumper sticker once that read: SCIENCE KILLS BABIES. We live in a strange land. Nothing is quite the way it seems.

Back to Mary

Actually, if Mary has spent enough time in her b/w environment, it is very well possible that even after entering a colored world, she will not be able to see color…

- SomeHopes
That objection to Frank Jackson’s thought experiment was raised by a scholar. Learning experience may be necessary to have the physical ability to see colors. I see two responses. The first is to rephrase the question. Mary, being the ultimate neuroscientist would be aware that she did not have the proper neural connections to see color. So the question would be, what knowledge does Mary lack rather than what knowledge has Mary gained after leaving her black and white room?

But there’s a more telling way to tweak the thought experiment.

Mary leaves her black and white room on a Monday and falls in love. She had already learned everything there was to know about love from books, including the physiological effects. But on Monday she experiences it herself. On Tuesday she experiences sex for the first time, though she knew everything there was to know about sex. On Wednesday she has a severe migraine headache. On Thursday she takes a triple hit of high grade LSD. On Friday she experiences a complete mental breakdown. And on Saturday she experiences the enlightenment of a bodhisattva. It’s been a long week for Mary and she’s anxious to get back to her black and white room and her scientific journal. But will she record that she has gained knew knowledge about such things she knew everything about through books, lectures, and documentaries? Will she?


Mary may decide to quit her scientific studies for a while, write poetry or take up a musical instrument. Better yet, she may decide to read Joseph Campbell and listen to some of his lectures.


More on Pandora’s Cat and the Hardness and Softness of Science


But to get back to Pandora’s cat, I don’t think it’s possible to mix the two ways, of science and mysticism discretely, or flip-flop like alternating current, any more than we can be reasonable without emotion or emotional without reason. Rather than think in terms of three categories, hard science, soft science, and humanities, as I proposed, it might be better to see a smooth transition from physics to Zen. A smooth transition would look something like this:


1.) Physics
2.) Chemistry
3.) Biology (including psychophysiology)
4.) Mathematics
5.) Economics
6.) Sociology
7.) Political science
8.) Cultural anthropology
9.) Psychology
10.) History
11.) Literature
12.) Fine Arts
13.) Philosophy
14.) Religion and spirituality.



I recall my college chemistry teacher telling the class that physics is more scientific than chemistry and chemistry more scientific than biology. Ernst Mayr is one of the half dozen or so icons of 20th century biology. Here is what he has to say about biology as a science:
The sharp break between the “sciences” and the “nonsciences” does not exist, once biology is admitted into the realm of science.

Evolutionary biology has more in common with history (one of the humanities) than with physics (one of the sciences)

- This is Biology: The Science of the Living World, Ernst Mayr, (1997)
As I understand Mayr, biology is rendered less scientific due to problems of interpretation and definitions. The root of the problem, it seems to me, is the human consciousness interfering with that which is being observed. It is especially a problem when human consciousness is part of what is being studied. I can only wonder how Francis Bacon would respond if we told him that we were studying the human psyche with the same methods as he proposed for studying the natural world.

I know it’s tempting to want to say that science is science and bad science is not science. But the universe that we live in and our experience of it does not lend itself to this simple distinction. Any science that includes the human psyche, such as economics, cultural anthropology, and psychology has to contend with the Mary Problem in one way or another. We can’t know what it feels like to see the colors of the rainbow if we have never seen colors. And we can’t know what it is like to be a Yamomami, or a Trobriand Islander - or what it was like to live in 16th century Europe. We can ask them, or read what they wrote. But they have and had different values based on unique ‘subjective’ experiences. And to project our values onto them is to see them through a contorted lens. Hence, we have the vague concept of value relativism.


But Einstein’s relativity is hard science. It has nothing to do with the problem of human consciousness interfering with the natural world. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is completely deterministic. One only has to consider the relative motions of the observers and what was being observed. The problem of human consciousness in the physics would come toward the end of the 1920s with quantum theory. It was at this point that physicists had to deal with the notion that the observer actually has an effect on the outcome of natural phenomenon. I’m not talking psycho- kinesis here. But only that scientists had to take into consideration the limits of our understanding of the physical world, and our explanatory abilities, by considering the limits of human consciousness.


One of the problems we have as a culture in terms of knowledge acquisition is that ideas born in the harder sciences migrate through the soft sciences toward the humanities with its human values. For example, Darwin publishes Origin of Species in 1859 and by the end of the century people are thinking in terms of ‘Social Darwinism’. It was a horrible concept, Einstein publishes his Theory of Relativity at the beginning of the century and now we are plagued by ‘Value Relativism’. In the late 1920s Heisenberg and others put forth the idea that human consciousness can have an effect on the outcome of a physics experiment. And if you saw that film ‘What the Bleep do we Know? you’ll see a claim that our decisions can determine the outcome of the physical world.


In all three of these cases there is some truth, some small precious quantity of truth. But problems persist because life will not fall neatly into categories of science and nonscience.


Of all the things you have written in these forums SomeHopes, the statement that stands out for me the most, (after Pandora’s Cat), is saying that Dr. John Gray is not being scientific. Most of us, I think, would agree that while ‘romantic love’ is not the only aspect of a successful marriage it certainly is a very important factor, perhaps the most important factor. But how the devil are you going to put a scientific frame around romantic love. It’s a testament to our immersion in science that you think there should be such a frame.


In the formative years of psychology Freud and others wanted to see their discipline accepted as science. I think of Carl Jung as being the most successful straddler of all, with one foot in science and one foot in the humanities and religion. The pop-psychology, that took-off in the 1970s, I believe, is less about science and more about mythology / religion. It is weighted toward the humanities. That is what people want and need when they turn to a self-help book. People who want science will read James Watson's DNA: The Secret of Life, Richard Dawkin's The Ancestor's Tale, or Carl Sagan's Cosmos.


But it just seems there is something wrong with people seeing psychology, and especially pop-psyche, as science, or believing that it should be as scientific as physics and chemistry. I think its important for even ordinary folks like myself to be able to make that distinction.

Cheers

- NoMan

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

Hi NoMan;

great hearing back from you.
:-)

I also like the connection between Schroedinger's and Pandora's respective boxes, neither of which is purely evil. Pandora's box still had hope in it, even though she closed the box before it came out. It’s still there, and those of us with a consistent practice still manage to dig that hope out of her box. Schroedinger's box has a cat that is in a sense both dead and alive; so there's hope, too (50% hope for the cat, 50% hope for the taxidermist?). I love cats with a passion. I would be the crazy cat lady, if both me and the hubby weren't allergic to cat dander. One of life's ironies, I guess. So I have to be the non-crazy non-cat lady instead. There are good witches, too, I believe, or are those merely a more modern, new-age feminist invention?

It delights me that you find my writing clever, even though I hope that the cleverness is merely a vehicle for something more. I’ve seen cleverness in many forms, show-offy, trying to make other people feel inferior, hunting for approval, things like that. I hope that my cleverness isn’t any of those things, but that it instead is merely preparing a path for true wisdom. I know that’s asking a lot.
Our Paleolithic ancestors must have hypothesized and conducted experiments. Someone had to invent the atlatl. Edith Hamilton describes ancient myths as man’s first attempt at science. Some might say the ancient Greeks started it by taking a hard headed look at nature, divorced of mysticism.
It always seems to me that people like Hamilton, who look at myths as merely some kind of primitive proto-science, don't have a good understanding of mythology. It seems to me as if they are missing they point of what mythology can be. I don't think its function (for wise people, of course there've always been confused literalists) is explaining anything. Mythology is about connection not analysis. Mythology allows us to crack the code of our own subconscious images, but not in order to explain the material world but in order to access our own psychological depths and grow. Of course such a narrow view on my part is going to tick off the occasional "I am ok, you are ok" exegetical relativist, but, hey, that's ok. Of course, from a certain point of view, you can also use "Hero with a Thousand Faces" to swat flies, but if that's all an owner of the book would ever do with it, he or she would miss out on so much.... Hamilton kind of got on my bad side, when she was quoted in a history of psychology class I took last semester as saying the following:
Hamilton as paraphrased by my history of psychology professor: Edith Hamilton, in her book, the Greek Way, argues that there is one prevailing characteristic of modern man, his faith in reason and his ability to create desirable personal and social changes. Hamilton contends that this modern role in man can be traced to beginnings in Greece. The Greeks, she argues, are really modern. For this reason, the first major period we will examine is that of the early Greeks.

But why was Greek culture more advanced than the earlier African development, mainly in Egypt, where culture existed some 1000 years prior to that of Greek civilization? Were not Egyptian and even Chinese cultural advancements prior to those in Greek culture? Hamilton maintains that Egyptian and Chinese cultures were more Eastern in origin, and Eastern thought is representative of more
primitive thinking than is Greek culture.

Some students have objected to the word "primitive," thinking that it has a negative connotation. While "primitive" has been used pejoratively, as in his primitive i instincts got the better of him," recall that the root stem is "prime" meaning "first," "origins," "beginnings," "original"first in in rank, degree, importance excellence, of highest quality, as in "prime rib" or "prime" wheat.

What characterizes modern thought? Hamilton maintains that modern man is not necessarily characterized as simply having a more recent chronology or identified by an arbitrary division of years or centuries. Rather, modern thought involves an awareness of oneself as an individual and one's role in society; it is the capacity to analyze situations and to act in accordance with principles derived from past experience. Mainly, modern thinking places faith in the rational side of man. Some third force psychologists, in rejecting this, advocate a more irrational approach. But the very decision that spiritual, mystical, or religious modes of existence are more desirable than materialistic or naturalistic approaches to life is arrived at by some intellectual or rational point of view.
Even though I disagree somewhat with much of both Hamilton’s view and my teacher’s interpretation of it, I can see that she has a few points. But this describes the birth of “rationalism” or “modernism,” if you so want, not the birth of “science.” One can use scientific methodology and still humbly feel to be a small part of a larger world order, completely mythologically in tune with oneself or Gaia or God or All That Is or whatever one chooses to call It. That’s where I feel most fundamentalists (as well as some of the radical, rabid take-no-prisoners Atheists such as Dawkins) take a wrong turn, that they think it’s an “either-or” proposition. It isn’t, in my opinion.

Science is more than simply rational thinking. Philosophy wouldn’t exist without rational thinking either, but science is using rational thinking and then is adding empiricism to it, connecting the thought with the material world, helping us determine if the thought is merely a pretty idea or has some practical, ontological, or epistemological (rather than simply aesthetic or idealistic) value. Without empiricism, we conduct philosophy rather than science. Nothing wrong with philosophy, but we have to be careful to not mislabel what we do, lest we might confuse ourselves and others. Empiricism is a relatively new invention. Yes, I’m sure whatever stone age dude or dudette came up with the wheel did so though trial, error, and observation. But he or she didn’t so explicitly. It was not yet an actual “method.” Francis Bacon was the first who explicitly formulized the ideas of empiricism as well as some of the logical fallacies that obscure our thinking and get in the way, therefore laying the foundation for all that I now call “science” (which has been so successful in coming up with results that it’s even imitated and parodied by pseudo-scientists—the most sincere form of compliment as some say).

The greeks started examining the natural world, but Bacon was the first who proposed and explained inductive thinking. That was the quantum leap in human consciousness that birthed the scientific method. Thomas Aquinas managed to balance theology and Aristotle’s writings, but Aristotle was using deductive logic not induction (collecting large amounts of data, finding patterns, coming up with general rules based on what we find, using experimentation to verify or falsify those rules) as Francis Bacon did. That was the great innovation. Everything before then was philosophy rather than science.
But for every well known name I could list there are hundreds of lesser names known to historians. And for every name known to historians there must have been thousands that are unknown, obscure friars whose work was never published.
Good point. That's one of my beefs with history... it seems so random, because our knowledge of it is based on bits and pieces that happened to be recorded and collected and preserved, leaving so much else out that fell prey to fires, fanatics, and simple decay, I'm sure. Also, what about cultures with only verbal transmission... Who knows how many more precious insights we are missing out on because some languages die out and with them the his and her-stories of those cultures?
He was into astrology.
Not according to these sources:
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~vgent/astrology/newton.htm
http://www.sakshitimes.com/index.php?op ... &Itemid=42

He certainly seemed to have been fascinated with theology (a fascination that I share), but all available evidence seems to point towards his supposed practice of astrology being a (convenient for believers in and sellers of astrology) misinterpretation of Newton's attitude and ideas.
I don’t have an answer as to exactly when science officially began. But it doesn’t seem right to take one of the very few extraordinary events in the history of science and say it all started right there. Did Buddhism begin just after Siddartha Guatama lived? Did Christianity spring into existence just after Jesus was crucified? These things take time to foment.
True. By pinpointing one particular spot, I’m oversimplifying. Besides, no matter how important one particular idea is, if one person doesn’t get a chance to have it, another, in a different time and place is likely to. Some ideas simply emerge because their time has come, and the person credited for them might be simply the one putting pen to paper at that time. Had he not, the idea would have still manifested itself in other ways. At least that’s how the progressive optimist in me sees it.
People were interested in the new technology they saw around them; the telegraph, the steam engine, and railroad were changing the world. […] Today, we are absolutely immersed in science. When we look through the newspaper or watch the news we are constantly confronted with science and the scientific method as our guide, whether it is a murder trial, or global warming, or genetic engineering, or sociological studies, or transportation safety, or diet and health, or energy options, or weapons design, or PTSD in soldiers, or ADS in children. It might be said that we are drowning in science.
Yes, but most people did (and many still do) look at it more as a form of magic. We press a button and something happens. "Wow" (if we are of the excited type) or "so what" (if we constitutionally tend to take things for granted). True scientific literacy is still rather rare, even in the industrialized world. But I feel in today's world, we can no longer afford that kind of attitude. There are so many different claims clamoring for our attention that basic science literacy is no longer something that should be left to a geeky elite, I feel, but is a survival skill. And our schools are woefully failing this responsibility, it seems. And most U.S. Americans have other things to worry about. Most polls to the topic that I come across seem to show science to be in most U.S. Americans' minds to be a luxury to be considered long after reading, 'riting, 'rithmetics, and trying to keep kids from stabbing and shooting one another.
The techniques used in the late 19th century in archaeology, for example, would not be considered science today, but more like treasure hunting and grave robbing.
I feel similarly about the beginnings of psychology (and even some more recent pseudo-scientific developments such as Freud-inspired “recovered memory” therapists who managed to get people accused and jailed for outrageous and years later conclusively disproven claims just by asking children leading questions and then not bothering looking for any additional physical evidence of the alleged abuse.): treasure hunting and grave robbing in the mythological sense. Disclaimer: I’m not saying all abuse memories are fabrications but that one has to be extremely cautious and skilled when interviewing potential victims, lest one risks planting distortions and false memories. See Elizabeth Loftus' work, if you are interested in finding out more.

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/A ... ytoday.htm
I can’t help but think of science as a recent phenomenon – even though, some of the most spectacular breakthroughs were made many centuries ago.
Ooops. There I am so bound to try and convince you that I almost missed that you and I are essentially saying exactly the same thing…
:-)
Another way to think of the newness of science is to look at the proliferation of science fiction. In many ways sci-fi has taken the place of fairy tales. And it is a 20th century phenomenon.
It is also interesting to see how most of sci-fi (and I’m speaking as a fan here, not trying to snub the genre) has a slant that either glorifies/idolizes or demonizes/blames science. There are few stories, it seems, that have a balanced view of science.
Not only do I see science as being new, but I see it as part of the myth we are living, as science and scientists guide and characterize our culture. And yet, it is said that we are over 90% science illiterate. There is this disconnect between the wizards of this esoteric knowledge and the general public. This scientific illiteracy shows itself even in politicians.
Yes, which is where I find it scariest. How is somebody supposed to make sound choices for a country and its inhabitants, who has to rely on predigested information of his advisors on such important topics as science, matter, and physical reality rather than using his own sound judgment, essentially jumping to conclusions without any solid foundation of which to jump off (other than his own unqualified opinions)? Scary indeed (and in deed)! Another problem I see is many people’s ignorance about their ignorance. Is that always a characteristic of ignorance that it doesn’t recognize itself or are there other people out there who go, hey, I know next to nothing about this, but one simply can’t know everything and at least I’m aware of the limits of my knowledge? Maybe that’s the difference between humility and ignorance, the former is self-aware and the latter isn’t.

I guess the whole leaving it up to some wizard to do their thing and hoping I get something out of it, too, is a basic human trait. Not just in the area of science but also in spirituality and pretty much anywhere else do I see people who try to get the goodies without the work needed to get there, hoping somebody else will do the work for them and then, in return, giving that person power (and, in good old hero-sacrifice tradition, trying to periodically shoot ‘em down for it).
It seems the negative aspects of science are manifest but we, as a society aren’t taking advantage of the positive aspects.
Is that true? In the industrialized world, we benefit greatly from science on so many fronts. We don’t hunger because of modern agricultural methods, we live longer, and many of the diseases that killed our ancestors are merely a side note of our lives today. Instead of not taking advantage of the positive aspects, what I see is taking advantage but not wanting to pay the price (alienation, pollution, etc.). Look at all the daily things we take for granted. Mass transportation. Seemingly unlimited access to information at the touch of a few buttons. And so on. Each of those comes with its own sacrifices and drawbacks. But without science literacy, it is hard to distinguish which of the problems around us are real and which are just puffed up fantasies of people in the business of stirring up panic. So, how can we make good and responsible choices under those conditions? One of my pet peeves are internet based discussions between mothers about pediatric issues such as vaccinations. There is a lot of fear and misinformation out there amongst those who consider themselves science critics, but at the same time there are other moms who simply trust that everything is ok. Neither demonizing nor romanticizing scientists helps. And to try and criticize something without true understanding isn’t helpful at all. It simply adds to the overall noise and makes things worse. It seems to me that we are a society of spoiled brats who simply want something for nothing. That’s not how the world works. Everything, even the most honorable things, comes at a price.
So the question would be, what knowledge does Mary lack rather than what knowledge has Mary gained after leaving her black and white room?
Or what is the difference between knowing about something and experiencing it. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the experiment, but to me that seems to be the core of it. Experience is not just a choice. There is a physiological component to it, and that component matures as a result of our interaction with appropriate stimuli. Experiencing is a learned skill, but the learning that takes place to prepare us for it is different from the type of learning that creates (book) knowledge. The awe I feel when seeing a rainbow is different from the fascination that graps me when learning about prisms and wavelengths of color, which itself again differs from the content of the information that fascinates me. Experience and fascination are highly individual. Your experience of a rainbow differs from my experience of a rainbow. My experience of today’s rainbow differs from my experience of another rainbow tomorrow or yesterday. But the wave lengths of light that comprise the rainbow are objectively measurable and the same every time. Neither experience nor knowledge trumps the other. To think so would be like arguing what makes a better breakfast, toast or jam. Each of us might have different preferences, but most of us might enjoy the combination of toast and jam more than the individual components.
But will she record that she has gained knew knowledge about such things she knew everything about through books, lectures, and documentaries? Will she?
If she tries to, she will notice that words and formulas fail her to describe the complete experience. That’s where mythology comes in handy. It’s the language of experience, just as math and logic are the language of science. To try and take those experiences and distill their scientific meaning out of them would in fact be pointlessly reductionist. To pick one of those experiences and examine one aspect of it might be scientific but wouldn’t at all be descriptive or reminiscent of that experience. That week would always be with her, because it would have transformed her way of looking at life, but to try and capture the essence of that transformation with one single person’s scientific methods would be pointless. If Mary is both smart and wise, she will know that. So, yes, my vote would be for her to put the scientific journal away for a moment or two and to allow herself time and room to digest this avalanche of experiences. Poetry wouldn’t be a bad idea.
A smooth transition would look something like this:

1.) Physics
2.) Chemistry
3.) Biology (including psychophysiology)
4.) Mathematics
5.) Economics
6.) Research Psychology
7.) Sociology
8.) Political science
9.) Cultural anthropology
10.) Applied/Clinical Psychology
11.) History
12.) Literature
13.) Fine Arts
14.) Philosophy
15.) Religion and spirituality.
O.K. (with the proposed amendments, in bold). Where would you place the discipline of medicine on this continuum?
I know it’s tempting to want to say that science is science and bad science is not science. […]Any science that includes the human psyche, such as economics, cultural anthropology, and psychology has to contend with the Mary Problem in one way or another. We can’t know what it feels like to see the colors of the rainbow if we have never seen colors.
Yes, that is correct. But to contend with the problem doesn’t mean to give up on sound methods. I believe it makes sound methodology even more important, first and foremost knowing of the limits of what a specific experiment can or can’t find out. Again, that’s why a good research psychologist uses large data sets, lots and lots of people. We can still make scientific statements about a forest, even though no two trees are ever the same. But if we look at enough trees, then we can distinguish the pattern of larger cause-effect relationships from the background noise of individual differences. The scientist and the poet ask different questions. Neither of the two perspectives is superior to the other. They are simply different. The scientist might look at the forest and is attempting to determine, through experiments and observation, if acidic rain in fact kills trees or not. She might work together with the economist who, in cooperation with engineers and politicians, looks at the feasibility of trying to save those trees or change the surrounding industries towards something more sustainable if the trees are in fact threatened by said acid rain. But the poet, who describes the beauty of the individual tree and whose heart aches for each tree that dies, or the Zen practitioner who simply sits under it, opening herself up for the possibility of saving all beings, take another approach. Neither of these approaches is entirely true or false. They all hold important puzzle pieces. But without the scientists’ harsh and reductionist look, the poet might not have much to write about in the future.
But the universe that we live in and our experience of it does not lend itself to this simple distinction.
No, this is not an intuitive distinction but a learned one, in itself dualistic rather than experiential.
And we can’t know what it is like to be a Yamomami, or a Trobriand Islander - or what it was like to live in 16th century Europe. We can ask them, or read what they wrote. But they have and had different values based on unique ‘subjective’ experiences. And to project our values onto them is to see them through a contorted lens. Hence, we have the vague concept of value relativism.
Yes. To me the biggest problem is not that of differences in experience but of intellectual colonialism (a term I just made up, in order to nail down what I’m trying to say). We’re not very good at listening to each other. I believe that philosophically, we do have a lot to learn from other culture’s member’s experiences, and our culture totally sucks at that, because we tend to be very arrogant about our own way of living and perceiving. But that has nothing to do with science. Science, when conducted properly, transcends individual differences. If conducted humbly and with awareness, it might even, on a case by case basis, transcend arrogance. If somebody who comes from a vastly different cultural background conducts the same experiment I do and achieves a different result, then I have found a good reason to suspect that my methodology is in this case vulnerable to bias. So I have to restructure my method and conduct a new and improved experiment. But I don’t throw out science altogether, as some humanists propose. At its purest, science values everything equally. Of course, it is important to limit what we examine and how we examine it by looking at the ethics of our goals and methods. Still, even here, religion doesn’t seem to work too well for us, because religions, when applied to more than one person, tend to contort our lens and tend to be culturally myopic. So, instead, I would encourage using philosophical ethics rather than religiously colored ones.

One example:

http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-09/scientific-ethics.html
One of the problems we have as a culture in terms of knowledge acquisition is that ideas born in the harder sciences migrate through the soft sciences toward the humanities with its human values. For example, Darwin publishes Origin of Species in 1859 and by the end of the century people are thinking in terms of ‘Social Darwinism’. It was a horrible concept.
Yes. And this migration tends to distort what the idea is actually about. I wonder how many passionate creationists are actually defending their religion against “Social Darwinism,” not realizing that they’re beating on a straw-man and misinterpretation rather than understanding the scientific perspective at evolution.
And if you saw that film ‘What the Bleep do we Know? you’ll see a claim that our decisions can determine the outcome of the physical world.
Yes, I saw and disliked that movie greatly. Mostly because it presented itself as scientific (with little graphs and animations) but, if you dig further, is actually a propaganda piece for a new age cult. It’s insincere. Also, I was annoyed at the message that we only need to think “right,” and then we won’t ever need psycho-active medications. I was co-monitoring and peer-counseling on a message board for people with uni- and bi-polar depression at the time. Many of the members there were already on shaky ground with their decisions to keep taking their meds, and for some of them the difference would be extreme (complete loss of control and of social, professional, and personal responsibility, as well as dramatic tendencies towards ruthless self-destruction when off meds versus a chance for humble yet "boring" happiness when on them). So, I found the scene, in which the main character throws her meds into the trash can (besides, what do you do throwing prescription meds into a trash can that can be accessed by children??) to live happily ever after, extremely offensive. What worries me is that several, otherwise caring and responsible people actually recommended the movie to me, because they liked it. It was a really good lithmus test for science literacy amongst the people I knew. Those who had some kind of background in science or engineering loathed the movie; those who didn’t were impressed by it.
In all three of these cases there is some truth, some small precious quantity of truth. But problems persist because life will not fall neatly into categories of science and nonscience.
Life doesn’t, but methods generally do.
But how the devil are you going to put a scientific frame around romantic love. It’s a testament to our immersion in science that you think there should be such a frame.
Actually, I don’t think that. My problem with Gray is that he pretends he comes from a scientific angle by proudly presenting his mail order PhD. Also, he claims that all men are “from Mars” and all women are “from Venus.” So, he’s making generalized claims, which are the essence of science. So, he’s the one claiming to be a scientist and therefore opening himself up to being measured with (and falling short by) science’s standards. I would have no problem at all with him, were he simply to write poetry or autobiographical essays about his own relationships, hoping that some of it will resonate with other people. But he doesn’t stick to that but is instead attempting to make statements about all of humanity that he presents as scientific, therefore making money of other people’s trust and ignorance.
I think of Carl Jung as being the most successful straddler of all, with one foot in science and one foot in the humanities and religion.
I don’t consider him a scientist at all but rather a philosopher. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy and find what he came up with incredibly inspiring. In my eyes, there can be a fruitful cooperation between philosophers and scientists, in that philosophers come up with the grand, innovative ideas, while it’s up to the scientists to, empirically and painstakingly, find out which of those ideas have some form of material/demographical representation and reproducibility, and which are simply crapshots or pretty forms of literary fiction.
The pop-psychology, that took-off in the 1970s, I believe, is less about science and more about mythology / religion. It is weighted toward the humanities.
Are you sure it’s about mythology and religion and not just about making money? I guess I’m a bit jaded by the fact that I did interact with a new age publisher in 1999. Even though they did see themselves as spiritually oriented, they had no intention of staying true to what I wanted to write about. Instead, they kept nudging me towards what they wanted me to write about that would "sell well." There was much interest in making money, and very little interest in finding truth (scientific, spiritual, personal, or otherwise). I compromised for a while, figuring, hey, the second book will be what I actually believe in, but as I told you before, the project (fortunately) never came to completion.

Always a pleasure,
:-) Julia

somehopesnoregrets
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Location: Northern California

Post by somehopesnoregrets »

But it just seems there is something wrong with people seeing psychology, and especially pop-psyche, as science, or believing that it should be as scientific as physics and chemistry. I think its important for even ordinary folks like myself to be able to make that distinction.
Actually, you strike me as far from "ordinary," but so do most other people, whenever I have a closer look at them. But that is the artist's and the philosopher's look, not the scientist's. The scientist seeks to sift out the "non-ordinary" and make statements about the remaining "ordinary". Humanists might not like that, but it's still valuable information, as long as it is conducted with awareness of its own limitations. If it assumes that this is all there is to people, and there is nothing besides that "ordinary," then it turns into ugly science fascism. But when we are indeed aware of those limitations, finding correlations or even potential cause-effect relations within this "ordinariness" can be deeply meaningful and helpful. If we, in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, find out that a specific substance reverses heart disease, that's a great thing, even though there might be the very occasional person who reacts badly to the drug or the occasional person who miraculously recovers without it. As long as there is a vast majority of people who are being helped by it (and, ideally, if bad reactions can be predicted, screened out early, and treated differently), the drug is doing a good job in alleviating suffering. Of course, due to the nature of capitalism, the company making the drug usually expects to make money of it, as well, but that is a question of economics, not of science.

Same thing with psychological factors, for example comparing different treatments in how effectively they treat depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, such as looking if (more cost-effective) group therapy is just as helpful to war veterans as individual therapy. The acts of "randomizing," "double-blinding," and "placebo-controlling" are means researchers came up with in order to counteract the individual factors such as different genetics, different upbringing, different suggestibility, different attitudes, different beliefs, etc. (all of which are part of your "Mary-factor," a person's individual experience). It of course depends on our examination subject, if placebo controls are even possible and if a "non-treatment" control group would be ethical (Is it right to withhold a potential life-saving treatment to simply find out if it works?). Those are difficult questions without easy answers.

Psychology does have to be conducted as scientifically as physics and chemistry. If it isn't, then it's either worthless (as most of pop-psychology will turn out in the long run) or it is simply philosophy. Again, nothing wrong with philosophy, but it tends to describe one person's approach to life rather than general principles (even though we are likely to find many philosophers who would passionately debate me on this). The ethnic and individual relativity of Humanist Philosophy actually does apply to Humanist Philosophy. But it doesn't apply to psychological science or any other science, as long as that science is conducted properly. It might be easier to conduct objective measurements in the areas of physics and chemistry (if considering the limitations and particular challenges of measurement proposed by "Einstein, Heisenberg, and the quantum dudes" -- now there's the name for a rock band!) than it is to do so on physiological and mental phenomena, but to say it's impossible is simply wrong. It merely requires more skill, more creativity, more methodological smarts, larger sample sizes, and a good working knowledge of statistics. Granted, most of those aren't too prevalent amongst "ordinary" folks.
But Einstein’s relativity is hard science. It has nothing to do with the problem of human consciousness interfering with the natural world. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is completely deterministic. One only has to consider the relative motions of the observers and what was being observed.
That is a big "only" though. The way we ask our questions as to how to measure what we are trying to measure and how to compute the resulting measurements into something meaningful changed with Einstein. Before Einstein nobody would have thought that the questions "What is the state of acceleration of my measurement instrument?" or "Is my measurement instrument currently subjected to extreme gravitational forces?" could make any difference. So, even though it's still deterministic (and so are quantum mechanics, if you ask a solid, well-trained physicist rather than one who likes rebelling or took one shroom too many, or if you ask a philosopher who thinks all those pesky science credentials are simply a conspiracy installed by "the man" for keeping people down...).

Back to Mary. What if she would decide to temporarily retire from science to write poems about her experience and would ask "International Science Supply Mail Order Store" to rush over one of their modern, fancy, AI-governed science conducting robots? Which parts of Mary's scientific work would the robot be able to perform? If sophisticated enough, it would be able to conduct measurements and possible even randomize and design double-blind studies, if given the necessary parameters. It could print surveys and evaluate them if filled in properly and fed into its scanner just right. It could compute normal curves, skewedness of curves, and analyses of variance of multiple factors, using the most sophisticated statistical methods using its onboard computer. It might calculate correlations and interactions between factors and spit out colorful graphs visualizing those.

What it most likely couldn't do:
--> Ask the right initial questions as to what to examine.
--> Come up with intelligent conclusions as to what to do with what we find out.

That's where Mary's uniqueness comes in. But everything else is, more or less, mechanical, even though those are very sophisticated mechanics. Take, as real life example, the aforementioned memory work of Dr. Loftus (this is a real doctorate, by the way, not a store bought one like John Gray's). Inconsistencies in the occasional witness testimony were known for a long time and ascribed to individual weakness or malice. Dr. Loftus came and asked the right questions, wondering if there was anything more systematic going on that could teach us more about the nature of memory. She conducted memory experiments. She had a closer look. She found out, in the process, using observation and statistical methods that memory fabrication is the rule rather than the exception. These findings have far-reaching implications for our judicial systemm even though, due to the current science-hostile climate amongst many conservative judges and politicians and due to the general human resistance to any kind of change, they are slowly to be considered and adapted into judicial policies and police interrogation techniques. Most institutions still assume that our memory works with the reliability of a camera, that produces a slowly fading picture, but anybody informed of the current state of art knowledge of the psychological science of memory knows that this metaphor is not a very good one. We could simply not care, but if you ever find yourself falsely accused by a witness who is passionately convinced he or she is right, you might feel differently.

The act of creativity (in itself not a scientific but rather an experiential quality) is found in Loftus' original stopping and asking questions and, maybe to a point, in how she designed and conducted her examinations. It is also found in how her findings are interpreted and what we, as a society do with them, and, last but not least, in how people who are critical of those findings come up with their own questions and methodologically sound experiments (the process of peer review) that confirm, falsify, or modify what Loftus found.

The experience that you say is part of any examination of human psychology is indeed there, as a factor, but it is more important when occurring on the side of the examiner, not the examined (because our current methods account for the latter but not for all of the former, due to the elusive nature of creativity). If I examine wisely enough, then I might actually pinpoint, who is delusional, who is lying to me, and what is the actual range of sincere and non-delusional responses. That is the gold standard, and not all studies are measuring up to it. And if my original questions lack insight and creativity, I'm simply wasting my time with all subsequent examinations and calculations (the programmer would say GIGO, garbage in garbage out).

But that doesn't mean at all that psychological science itself would be an oxymoron.

Hugs.
:-) Julia

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

One area that to me is different would be developmental psychology. Where the growth and nurturing of children is concerned, one size certainly does not fit all, and the potential complications of bad "ordinary" advice can be devastating and dramatic. When we try to find the lowest common denominator for child rearing, we often don't do individual children justice. Some of the historically scariest pieces of advice for how to treat our children came from trained and credentialed psychologists, especially behaviorists who happily extrapolated from their animal models. Yes, conditioning might work in making us comply and function, but it also treats us like rats or dogs and misses out on some of our most amazing potential. So, with my own children, I do listen to the research but then I do listen to my own heart more closely. Ideally, both, the research and my heart agree, but if there's a discrepancy, I tend to go with my heart.

I guess that makes me a bit of a walking contradiction...

Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

Hi Julia and NoMan,

Indeed, the biggest problem today is that despite our access to fast communication and information with a huge variety of professionals, we do tend to remain in our own ‘paradigm’ . We are doing intellectual colonialism when philosophers disregard the latest discoveries made by empirical science – experts at the British Museum upon their first encounter with a Platypus declared that what is right in front of them can only be a hoax – and when empirical science disregards the warnings of philosophers that scientific/empirical methods of analysing statistical data is far from being evidence – for despite the largeness of a sample involved in a psychological experiment, it simply can’t prove beyond all doubt that just one more experiment will produce the ‘typical’ outcome as observed before. (Hume (1711-1776) famously argued that since Nature is NOT uniform all probabilities worked out from statistics are merely tools for aiding or obscuring further observation.)

But, today most scientists and philosophers manage to make do with whatever they can successfully integrate into their own paradigm in order to learn more about the world. After all, it is human nature to make the best of whatever is available for our use, and I don’t think any scientist would disregard the points made by philosophers, nor would any philosopher neglect taking into consideration what is an empirically proven phenomenon. For example, no self-respecting philosopher would claim that mythology or religion has no practical use for human kind, nor would any self-respecting scientist claim that mythology/religion are non-human attributes of our current psychological make up.

Let’s return to Mary. You write:
Back to Mary. What if she would decide to temporarily retire from science to write poems about her experience and would ask "International Science Supply Mail Order Store" to rush over one of their modern, fancy, AI-governed science conducting robots? Which parts of Mary's scientific work would the robot be able to perform? If sophisticated enough, it would be able to conduct measurements and possible even randomize and design double-blind studies, if given the necessary parameters. It could print surveys and evaluate them if filled in properly and fed into its scanner just right. It could compute normal curves, skewedness of curves, and analyses of variance of multiple factors, using the most sophisticated statistical methods using its onboard computer. It might calculate correlations and interactions between factors and spit out colorful graphs visualizing those.

What it most likely couldn't do:
--> Ask the right initial questions as to what to examine.
--> Come up with intelligent conclusions as to what to do with what we find out.

That's where Mary's uniqueness comes in. But everything else is, more or less, mechanical, even though those are very sophisticated mechanics. Take, as real life example, the aforementioned memory work of Dr. Loftus (this is a real doctorate, by the way, not a store bought one like John Gray's). Inconsistencies in the occasional witness testimony were known for a long time and ascribed to individual weakness or malice. Dr. Loftus came and asked the right questions, wondering if there was anything more systematic going on that could teach us more about the nature of memory. She conducted memory experiments. She had a closer look. She found out, in the process, using observation and statistical methods that memory fabrication is the rule rather than the exception. These findings have far-reaching implications for our judicial systemm even though, due to the current science-hostile climate amongst many conservative judges and politicians and due to the general human resistance to any kind of change, they are slowly to be considered and adapted into judicial policies and police interrogation techniques. Most institutions still assume that our memory works with the reliability of a camera, that produces a slowly fading picture, but anybody informed of the current state of art knowledge of the psychological science of memory knows that this metaphor is not a very good one. We could simply not care, but if you ever find yourself falsely accused by a witness who is passionately convinced he or she is right, you might feel differently.


I would think that Mary could be left struggling with writing poetry, while the Fantastic Robot could do all that you’ve just described. Depending on the memory storage of this Robot, it could ask good questions and it could come up with intelligent conclusions as to what to do with the new information. Provided the Robot has complex enough information analysis system that not only recalls data but has innate sensors to ‘weigh’ the accuracy of data in comparison to ALL available data – where system complexity is rather the ability to arrange data on different levels and groupings by differentiating between levels of probability and deductive necessity – the Robot would be able to do what Mary did before entering the colourful world. The way I see it, Mary did know everything, except what it ‘feels like’ seeing colour. Having a vivid imagination, I can imagine what it feels like eating the best Russian caviar, I can compare to other tastes I experienced before and anticipate what it tastes like, but having never actually eaten it, I simply can’t claim I know what the experience feels like, no matter how good the quality of information I receive is, how good is my memory of other tastes etc.

Let’s use an even more common example. Bliss cannot be properly ‘learned’ until experienced. For when I think I am in Bliss I can’t be sure whether this Bliss is THE bliss I was anticipating to feel, or whether I will come across more blissful experiences. Philosophy to the rescue: it is perfectly good enough explanation for me that my current experience of bliss is what can be called bliss, since it resembles feeling that I learned from other sources. If I remain open for the possibility that there could be more blissful experiences, I am spot on with my knowledge of Bliss for the moment. But if I think that on the balance of probabilities I have actually experienced Bliss, so there is nothing more to know, I’d be sadly mistaken.

Upon understanding this point, the question arise: how can Dr Loftus claim that ‘fabricating memory’ is rather the norm than the exception? If having an experience of something feels uniquely different for me than the experience of learning about this very same thing, how could my memories of a ‘real’ thing be false? Perhaps what Dr Loftus meant to say was that the actually different recollection of the same thing by different people necessarily implies that we all add to what we perceive to be real, but not that we can fabricate seeing something when in fact we have not seen it? For example, I can have vivid memories of being a beauty queen and having the crown placed on my head. I have a vivid imagination and able to ‘feel into’ other REAL beauty queens’ mind experiences to recollect what it feels like being crowned on stage. But I’d be fooling my self if I though it was me being crowned and not them! For I would also have real memories of me gaining this information, which cannot be consistent with me being actually there and being crowned. Sure, our memory often disregards information that is not in use for a particular cause/effect explanation, but we cannot make up memories to fill the gap in our cause/effect explanations. Though people try to make up lies to fill these sort of gaps, our communication practices are the real proof that non of us are good enough liars to make all things consistent with what is not there. If we can’t do it in practice, what makes us think that we can fool our own mind in its most important role of aiding our survival? Would false memory help our survival in general or would false memory undermine our capacities to cope? The greatest problem for PTSD sufferers is that they cannot erase their memories of trauma, and if we had a drug that could erase our memory, the drug would probably do more harm than good. If I do not want to remember that I’ve been traumatised, my other cognitive faculties would suffer from the inconsistency of something real not being acknowledged. I could even go ‘berserk’ or at minimum, I’d lose my ability to reason well. Working with lies is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS for human minds.

So, I think if Mary went back to her black and white room to write poetry, she would likely to fumble in her attempts, simply because her mind was not ‘trained’ in that particular aspect of functioning. She didn’t come to the colourful world to experience poetry for the first time, but to experience colour for the first time. I would think she could start putting her new experience into practice by attempting to write poetry on colours, but unless she had experience in writing poetry before, she would be just as ‘green’ to compose poems as anyone else. Though, she could attempt to express her new knowledge of colour by saying ‘oohhh’ and ‘ahhhhh’, and ‘wooooooow’, she would still not be able to communicate WHAT she had experienced. But it is not because she did not gain something from entering the colourful world.

On the other hand, I am in perfect agreement with you that sometimes people don’t know whom to trust, and even though they know that they have a mental disease, they avoid taking the prescribed medication. In an ideal world, self-imposed hard work would be good enough tools to aid personal development for restoring the mind, but in the real world very few people are capable of overcoming serious mental disorders by sheer clarity of mind and self-knowledge. It is an evil circle: a diseased mind is not able to right it self just like a fixed paradigm unable to progress without considering the truths revealed by other paradigms. A mind that has chemical imbalances must get to the cause of the chemical imbalance first, fix it and then work real hard at not getting out of whack again.

Cheers,
Evinnra
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

Depending on the memory storage of this Robot, it could ask good questions and it could come up with intelligent conclusions as to what to do with the new information.
I doubt that. Since it is a thought experiment, you can of course simply insist that your thought robot is smarter than mine and has the Creativity 2.0 chip installed.

It seems to me that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence functions logically and rationally. However, smart questions are nothing rational. The aren't simply formed by rearranging data but are a result of our practical experience with the world and our own thought processes and feelings. Since even the most amazing robot would essentially be limited to symbol manipulation, it would not be capable of what I consider TRUE creativity. But neither are most people you meet, so the robot would certainly not be alone with its limitation. There are many philosophers, scientists, and other folks who don' t have truly innovative ideas but simply regurgitate ideas others had before them.

To me that is the most interesting aspect of mythology and what I consider TRUE (there is this concept again) spirituality, that it opens up the channel to the above described TRUE creativity. Some people may call this the divine spark. Would you assume that, given an appropriate size of memory banks, one could construct a God-robot? I don't think one could, because robots are symbol manipulation machines, while God by Its very definition transcends symbolism.
Provided the Robot has complex enough information analysis system that not only recalls data but has innate sensors to ‘weigh’ the accuracy of data in comparison to ALL available data
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that TRUE creativity is more than just data analysis, no matter how complex. But then, I might simply be romanticizing a rather simple process. The God I believe in is more than a complex machine.
The way I see it, Mary did know everything, except what it ‘feels like’ seeing colour.
Yes, but to me this "feeling like" what it is to actually, physically experience something opens up a whole new world with completely different rules. It seems to me that this experiencing has a poetic rather than a scientific quality. Asking wise questions is not just the result of randomly aligning linguistic symbols. It has something to do with feeling our own thoughts. Asking the right questions and wisely applying the results we find requires INSPIRATION in the truest sense, something I don't think a robot would possess.

What, though, if we would give our robot an intricate web os sensors to mimic a feeling body, if we would create a robot that is in fact capable of suffering? If that robot would practice, would it be able to experience Bliss? Or would it just be able to imitate what Bliss looks like from the outside, to simply go through the motions? I'm not sure. Who knows, maybe the spark of Life is simply a question of appropriate complexity after all.
Indeed, the biggest problem today is that despite our access to fast communication and information with a huge variety of professionals, we do tend to remain in our own ‘paradigm’
Actually, in my opinion this is only a problem in people who aren't aware of that limitation of their thinking. Paradigmatic thinking isn't a big deal, but paradigmatic thinking that assumes it is original thinking tends to cause problems. When we see the cage in which we are caught, we can playfully use it as a tool rather than an obstacle. However, when our own level of ignorance obscures the cage, we are in trouble.
– and when empirical science disregards the warnings of philosophers that scientific/empirical methods of analyzing statistical data is far from being evidence – for despite the largeness of a sample involved in a psychological experiment, it simply can’t prove beyond all doubt that just one more experiment will produce the ‘typical’ outcome as observed before.
Philosophers who state that don't know much about science. Scientific evidence does not require absolute proof "beyond all doubt." In my area of relative expertise, psychological science, all statements that are made are probabilities rather than certainties. Statistical examination for example might reveal that "There is 96% chance that a certain measurement is due to an actual effect rather than a chance fluctuation." People who expect that anything can be proven beyond all doubt have no business conducting science. That's what religious cults are for... As I said in my previous post, in psychological science, one exception doesn't render a general observation invalid. If I show through a controlled study that CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is just as effective as anti-depressant medication and much more effective than distance prayer healing in combating low to medium intensity depressive states, then this is an important finding, even though there might be the occasional person who isn't helped by CBT and the occasional person who feels distance prayer healing has hit the spot. Even though there is no proof beyond all doubt that this will work for me, if I am depressed, it might be worth giving it a shot, because the chance that it helps is greater than the chance that it doesn't help. Science doesn't look for absolute certainty, it simply looks for furthering understanding. Philosophers and religious fanatics who worry that scientists are in the business of trying to explain mystery away don't understand science's goals or methods. Let me say it with Campbell's words (from Myths To Live By:
[...] not only is the sun now well established at the center of our planetary system, but we know it to be but one of some two hundred billion suns in a galaxy of such blazing spheres: a galaxy shaped like a prodigious lens, many hundreds of quintillion miles in diameter. And not only that! but our telescopes now are disclosing to us, among those shining suns, certain other points of light that are themselves not suns but whole galaxies, each as large and great and inconceivable as our own--of which already many thousands upon thousands have been seen. So that, actually, the occasion for an experience of awe before the wonder of the universe that is being developed for us by our scientists surely is a far more marvelous, mind-blowing revelation than anything the prescientific world could have ever imagined. The little toy-room picture of the Bible is, in comparison, for children--or, in fact, not even for them any more[...]
Instead of trying to eradicate doubt, TRUE science celebrates it.
Upon understanding this point, the question arise: how can Dr Loftus claim that ‘fabricating memory’ is rather the norm than the exception?
Did you get a chance to read the article about her that I quoted in my last post? The above is my interpretation of her work, not what she herself says. The article, which is not a journal article but written for lay people, summarizes her work as follows:
Loftus has spent most of her life steadily amassing a clear and brilliant body of work showing that memory is amazingly fragile and inventive. Her studies on more than 20,000 subjects are classics that have toppled some of our most cherished beliefs. She has shown that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable, that false memories can be triggered in up to 25 percent of individuals merely by suggestion, and that memory can be interfered with and altered by simply giving incorrect post-event information.
If having an experience of something feels uniquely different for me than the experience of learning about this very same thing, how could my memories of a ‘real’ thing be false?
Because your memories are themselves an experience, which continues to recreate itself while you recall what you feel is what you did experience in the past. During this recall, your brain edits and adds what it originally processed, integrating bits and pieces of your hopes, fears, and beliefs.
Perhaps what Dr Loftus meant to say was that the actually different recollection of the same thing by different people necessarily implies that we all add to what we perceive to be real, but not that we can fabricate seeing something when in fact we have not seen it?
This is from the same article, which appeared in Psychology Today in 1996 (so this isn't new, it's more than an decade old information -- most of the studies it describes are even older than that; many were done in the 70s):
At the root of these claims is the belief that memory is always accurate, and that memories can be repressed--that one can bury traumatic experience in some crypt of the brain, forget it consciously, and then recover it in pristine form years or decades later. This two-pronged view of memory, imported (and distorted) from Freud into the popular culture, has been embraced by a whole sector of America, from therapists to police detectives to the tens of thousands of adult women who read The Courage To Heal, often dubbed the bible of the recovered memory movement.

[...]

To memory researchers like Loftus, who for years were quietly conducting their studies in academia, all this furor has been an incredible shock, as well as an unrivaled opportunity: "If I had known what my life would be like now--the frantic phone calls, the tearful confessions, the gruesome stories of sadistic sexual abuse, torture, even murder--would I have beaten a retreat back to the safety and security of my laboratory?" she asks in her recent book, The Myth of Repressed Memory (St. Martin's Press). "No. Never. For I am privileged to be at the center of an unfolding drama, a modern tale filled with such passion and anguish that it rivals an ancient Greek tragedy."

We are now entering Act IV of the tragedy, for this past year convictions in mass-abuse cases have been overturned with amazing rapidity and laws are changing once again. George Franklin, who was sent to jail in 1990 for first-degree murder in a 1969 incident that his daughter Eileen "remembered" 20 years later, was recently set free, as were the accused in three cases where convictions for mass child molestation were overturned last fall. And in May, a New Hampshire judge barred prosecution based on repressed memories. Maryland, Minnesota, and California have now followed suit with similar rulings.

[...]

Loftus obtained a grant to show people films of accidents and crimes and test their memory of such events. Thus the study of eyewitness testimony was born, a field she can literally claim as her own. At that time the world believed that eyewitness testimony was as reliable as a video camera. Loftus found that just the questions interviewers asked, and even the specific words they used, significantly influenced memory. "How fast were the two cars going when they hit each other?" will elicit slower estimates than "...when they smashed each other?"

Merely by careful questioning, Loftus could cause subjects to remember stop signs as yield signs, or place nonexistent barns in empty fields. Subsequent research has shown that violent events decrease the accuracy of memory: in fact, memory is weakest at both low (boredom, sleepiness) and high (stress, trauma) levels of arousal. The bottom line? Memory is fragile, suggestible, and can easily decay over time.

The implications for real life are obvious: witnesses of violent crimes questioned by police and detectives, who often have a bias, may not be reporting the truth. When Loftus published an article about her results in this magazine in 1974, she was suddenly hurtled from the safety of yellow fruits into the courtroom. She was called frequently to testify about the validity of eyewitness testimony for mass murderers like Bundy, Willie Mak, and Angelo Buono.

It was exciting and terrifying: "Eyewitnesses who point their finger at innocent defendants are not liars, for they genuinely believe in the truth of their testimony....That's the frightening part--the truly horrifying idea that what we think we know, what we believe with all our hearts, is not necessarily the truth '.

[...]

The science of memory is itself contradictory, offering up evidence to both sides of the war--and both sides discount the other's arguments. Loftus's classic study, Lost in the Shopping Mall, showed that children and teenagers could be induced to remember the experience of being lost in a mall when young--even though it didn't happen--simply by being questioned about it. As time passed, the memories were embellished and became more vivid, much like traumatic "repressed" memories unearthed in therapy.

Since then, Loftus and colleagues have shown that even imagining a "false" (as opposed to real) event increases subjective confidence that the event happened, that subjects can confuse dreaming and waking events when presented with a list of them; that after being told they have tested with "high perceptual" ability and must have been exposed to spiral colored disks in their kindergarten classrooms, 50 percent of subjects can be induced to recall these nonexistent kindergarten "memories"; 63 percent can "recover" nonexistent memories of being exposed to colored mobiles while in their hospital cribs--a literal impossibility since the nervous system is not developed enough to lay down explicit memories in the first few years of life.
If you want to read the complete article, you can do so at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/A ... ytoday.htm

Another, more recent article to the topic of relative unreliability of memory and eyewitness testimony:

http://www.steverubenzerphd.com/Eyewitn ... cation.asp
Sure, our memory often disregards information that is not in use for a particular cause/effect explanation, but we cannot make up memories to fill the gap in our cause/effect explanations.
As a matter of fact, we can and we do. Not maliciously or deliberately, but because our memories are not stored like the memory in a computer but are artifacts, which are recreated with each recollection, adding bits and pieces of error, self-deception, and confabulation in the process. Anybody who tells you otherwise doesn't know much about the science of memory formation or is falling prey to some form of wishful thinking, it seems. The intense, passionate hate some people have for memory researchers such as Elizabeth Loftus (see the above article) shows that we do seem to have quite a bit of emotional investment into our ideas of how memory works. Just as the people didn't want to believe that the Platypus was real, there are many people who cling to their idea that memory is a reliable form of recording the events of the world. It isn't. Again, that's not a big deal, as long as we are aware of it. When we aren't, it can cause horrible suffering (again, see the above article for examples).
non of us are good enough liars to make all things consistent with what is not there.
Unfortunately that doesn't deter people from still believing their own lies, when the stakes are high and to topic is of a very emotional nature (e.g. claims of satanic practices or systematic child abuse without any other evidence whatsoever).
Would false memory help our survival in general or would false memory undermine our capacities to cope?
Does a tail bone have a function? The inadequacies of our memory might serve some social function (for example if I falsely accuse somebody and lynch them, such scapegoating could serve the cohesion of my social group), or it might simply be a weakness of a complex but imperfect system of information storage. Emotion helps us prioritize but it also distorts what we perceive and recall. That's a fact.
The greatest problem for PTSD sufferers is that they cannot erase their memories of trauma, and if we had a drug that could erase our memory, the drug would probably do more harm than good.
Actually, some current research shows that it's not the lack of forgetting that is the problem in PTSD but the obsessive recreation of the memory. That's also why some forms of mindfulness practice and bodywork (meditation, yoga, relaxation exercises) are helpful to some sufferers of PTSD, because they help break the cycle of cognitively recreating the situation and continually retraumatizing oneself. I'm oversimplifying, of course, for the sake of brevity, but wanted to emphasize that the main task in coping with PTSD does not seem to be to forget but to move on. Forgetting and moving on are two very different things.

With loving respect,
:-) Julia

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