Letters to the Editor
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Thanks, and well done
I'm a practicing Buddhist, so it's not unreasonable that I'd find this article worthwhile :-). From my own direct and personal experience I have come to the same kinds of conclusions as has Wallace, although I've not traveled as far into the investigation as he. I do know that it doesn't take an act of some deity or the intersession of a supernatural being to pursue the investigation, just effort on a regular basis.
I am pleased to have this material put into play in the same forum where the clash between 'science' and 'religion' has been dramatized recently. Wallace's explication of the Buddhist perspective is nicely balanced, discussing what Buddhist practice can be in the best sense as well as being open to the critiques that can be made against it. I hope it can expand the scope beyond Christianity vs Science into which the discussion has slipped.
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Marvelous
It's wonderful to see Salon peering into the non-reductive side of the debate over the nature of consciousness. There are so many mysteries surrounding the ephemeral nature of "I" that to reduce them to the purely mechanistic workings of neurotransmitters seems absurd. Truth has rarely suited our common sense notions of what "should" be true. Need I remind readers of the nature of relativity when Einstein uncovered it in the early 20th century (surely proof that his was perhaps the greatest visionary mind of its or any time)? Newtonian laws of motion governed everything and made sense to us, yet here came a patent clerk telling us that time was not absolute, that if you traveled fast enough it would slow down, just for you? Reality rarely conforms to what is supposed to be true.
Science is a method, not a belief system. And to keep an open mind and investigate the myriad possibilities for concsiousness, with an eye on evidence of psi phenomena and out of body experience, is not mysticism nor a backsliding into superstition, as so many scientists seem to fear. It is good science, and it is reason.
Reincarnation and non-physical consciousness may not be true. Or they may. Or some middle ground may be the truth that we cannot imagine. But an open inquiry into the topic, led by the wisdom of Buddhism which predates both Christianity and Islam, seems to be a marvelous path to follow, opening doors to wonders of mind and spirit. It is only when we close our minds and say "No, I know the answers. I need not ask further." that we lose as a people.
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Navel gazing
While this type of talk is riveting during your freshman year, if you don't have any evidence or solid conclusions, you are dealing in philosophy, not science. When you include ill-considered statements like;
"And virtually all of neuroscience and all of psychology is based on 19th century physics, which is about as up-to-date as the horse and buggy.",
you destroy any credibility you may have had. 19th century physics, like MRIs, PET scans, and such? Modern neurroscience is very sophisticated and has gone a bit beyond the horse and buggy.
If Mr. Wallace wants to call bullshit on science, he needs something more persuasive than personal assertions without any evidence to back them up. Without that, he is simply echoing essays for "Intro to eastern religion 101" while insulting those using real science to explore the mysteries of the mind.
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Give me a break......
While Wallace claims to admire science for its rigor, he doesn't seem to understand it. The purpose of science is to develop testable, naturalistic explanations of things. No explanation of the mind can assume that it is anything OTHER than an emergent property of the brain while still being a scientific explanation. Contrary to Wallace's assertions, there are scientific studies of mental imagery, recalling faces, autobiographical memory, and other "purely mental" processes. It takes all of 30 seconds on PubMed to discover this. These studies find different patterns of brain activation for different kinds of mental tasks, as one would expect. Brain scan studies are merely correlative, but the fact that drugs (physical objects with well-defined mechanisms of action) produce reliable changes in consciousness is strong evidence that consciousness has a physical component. I have yet to see any evidence that consciousness has a non-physical component.
When scientists talk about the brain, one can learn what they are talking about by doing some background reading. When Wallace says
"[t]he human psyche is in fact emerging from an individual continuum of consciousness that is conjoined with the brain during the development of the fetus."
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, and I doubt he does, either.
I like to meditate. I find that my mood improves for a while after meditating, and I feel that meditating is a good use of my time, when I find the discipline to do it. That doesn't mean it's necessary for me to make anti-scientific statements that we'd all laugh at if they came from the Christian Right. In fact, a 2005 paper in Neuroreport by Lazar and colleagues found that extensive meditation experience increases the thickness of at least two cortical regions. Why doesn't Salon interview one of the authors of this paper, since they actually contributed something to the intersection of science and Buddhism?
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Nice Title
Hmmmm....Wired magazine 14.02
Get an original title already!
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Evidence abounds
All you need to do is take the time and make the effort to collect it, much like collecting the evidence of scientific inquiry requires effort and takes time.
Those who have spent the time to develop a complete understanding of any single scientific discipline have my sincere admiration; as I approach 60 years of age I'm still working on my understanding of science, as well as Buddhism. Many who dismiss investigation such as Wallace's have as 'faith-based' a perspective as the average Pentecostal preacher. How many can actually do the science of which they are so certain?
Science is certain of what it says until someone comes along and presents a counter example, then there's a new certainty. The kind of proof some claim exists for 'scientific reality' exists only in mathematics, NOT in science. If there's a pursuit that deserves the epithet navel gazing it's mathematics far more than Buddhism!