Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1986 Editor's Choice: 19
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Disturbing, not comfortable
[Read the article: Flying the boob-hating skies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Two very disturbing letters in this discussion are the ones that say that if you complain you are a security risk, and that Delta has the right to do anything it wants on its private property.
The first thought, about complaining being punished as a security risk, is frightening, even while it is somewhat true, especially in line at the security checkpoints. Heaven help this country if we ever get used to this idea.
The second thought, that Delta has the right to define your rights on its property, is currently used to guarantee a lower standard of civil rights all over the country in peoples' workplace, the place where they spend, in some cases, the majority of their working hours. It's a free country, except on corporate property? Heaven help this country if we ever get used to that idea, either.
As for Delta being concerned that I will be uncomfortable if I see a woman breasfeeding? What a hoot! They aren't concerned that I am uncomfortable with my knees pushed up against the seat in front of me, they aren't concerned that my head flops back when I try to sleep because the seat is too short, they aren't concerned that everybody on the plane is going to get 31D's cold because the humidity is 14% (I measured it on my last flight). They aren't concerned that I will go without eating for 5 hours because the only snacks they are serving are all beef.
The day Delta gives a s__t about me being uncomfortable the sun will probably rise in the west. Let the woman breastfeed as she sees fit, she isn't hurting anybody.
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I'm having a hard time with all this
[Read the article: Buddha on the brain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really am.
A brief list of the things I'm failing to understand: Scientific method is the method by which scientific hypotheses are tested. It does not create scientific theory, so it is not "all of science".
As someone did mention, MRI isn't nineteenth century, its older name is NMR -- nuclear magnetic resonance -- definitely 20th century quantum physics. The neuron theory is also pretty much 20th century.
Mental imagery is studied in neuroscience, Stephen Kosslyn's work indicates that when people create mental images of objects, the corresponding parts of their visual cortices activate as if they were seeing them.
Mathematics is navel gazing but science provokes the utmost of respect? Ever hear mathematics described as the "Queen of the Sciences"? It's because science and mathematics are wed to each other inseparably. Modern science seldom occurs without mathematics, and vice versa. Mathematics does require a fair amount of mental imagery, but damning it would then damn Buddhism as well now, wouldn't it?
The hard problem of what a person experiences when they look at, or image an apple? Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner do a very good job of showing this as a communications problem, if problem is the right word for the mutual exchange of information that builds compatible mental spaces.
Tibetan Buddhism is currently considered to be vajrayana, not really mahayana, and that strain has components that are older than either mahayana or theravada. This of course may not make it less of an offshoot, it has significant doses of Tantric Hinduism in it that have been there since very early. Catholicism pre-dates Protestantism, but Martin Luther believed he was getting back to the original when he broke with the Catholic church, and his followers probably agree (Full disclosure: I am a Zen student).
I think a very significant case for introspection as a tool in the science of the mind can be built, and has been built, together with the necessary rejection of dogmatic behaviorism for all experiments on the brain. Meditation may very well be a significant part of that, and Buddhists do know their meditation. That will not relieve those that use introspection, be they Buddhist or otherwise, of the two requirements for formulating scientific theory: the theory needs to be as simple as possible and necessary (Occam's razor and the law of parsimony), and it needs to predict at least one outcome that can be tested by an independently repeatable experiment (submitted to the scientific method).
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Just throwing this out
[Read the article: Who poisoned the KGB agent?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My encyclopedia may be a little out of date, we bought it in 1995 (it's hard copy). It goes through the litany about polonium being rare, polonium 210 rarer, but then lists its "industrial uses" among which is drying paper during production.
Are you sure you need to be a nuclear power to make it?
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Small correction Dr. Wallace
[Read the article: If you meet the Buddha in Salon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1) The person that said mathematics was "navel gazing" (and that I was therefore criticizing) was not you but a letter writer.
2) I'm still not sure what you mean when you say that
"But are mental phenomena themselves physical in nature? Those phenomena themselves (e.g., thoughts, mental images, dreams, etc.) cannot be detected by any of the instruments of technology, which are designed to measure all known types of physical entities."
Christof Koch's comment notwithstanding, what do you mean by detectable? As I had mentioned in my previous post (to the original interview), Stephen Kosslyn and colleagues have measured responses in PET scans during mental imagery that corresponds well with the same responses during actual sight. These tests measure neural activity in the brain by measuring increases in blood flow which accompany the regions in which the activity occurs. The responses during mental imagery (forming a mental picture of something) are seen in the visual cortex, as early in the vision path as V1. "Indeed, PET scanning has revealed that the primary visual cortex in humans is selectively activated during visual imagery, and this area is known to be spatially organized in humans. A spatial pattern in the visual buffer can be invoked from memory as well as from the eyes." (Kosslyn,Stephen, and Oliver Koenig. Wet Mind The New Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Free Press, 1995, p.133).
It's not so much that I don't understand what you are trying to say, but what would constitute detection?