Letters to the Editor
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Sorry Wallace
This was a typical appeal to ignorance, as well as an argument from ignorance.
First of all, it's not the job of scientists to prove that there's NOT an independent consciousness outside the physical brain. It's up to those who think there is to prove there IS one. Occam's razor says that the simplest explanation that fits the available facts is probably true. Therefore, that explanation is where we look first. Science knows a lot about the brain and consciousness, and we're learning more every day.
Secondly, to state that we don't know how to study what your brain does when you picture an apple or recite the Gettysburg address is simply false. There are numerous cognitive studies being done all the time, and memory/recall are hot topics in the field.
I'm not trying to be a party pooper. I'm a mystical kind of person myself. But I don't mischaracterize science to my own ends.
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Re: Buddha had a brain like most of us.
"We are, profoundly, a seamless part of the natural world, and Buddhism's contributions to human happiness and ability need not invoke magical pixies or floating ghosts to explain any of it."
Well said. This letter expressed everything I would want to say about the article. If this did not deserve to be an "editor's choice", I wonder about the criteria your editor is using. Another letter writer wrote:
"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".
The phrase "continuum of consciousness" is meaningless mumbo jumbo designed to reassure us that there is something of us that will survive death. Science may not have all the answers, but at least it knows how to look for them without falling into delusional traps.
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Mr. Wallace is a fool, a charlatan, or both
I found your interview with this individual so provocatively outrageous that I sat down and analyzed it sentence by sentence, refuting each point as I went. I was astonished and chagrined by how Mr. Wallace twisted or ignored the definitions of words he was using ("science" being the most egregious example), and then seemed to forget his own altered definitions from question to question.
At one point, your interviewer asked:
"But science is as much about method as anything. The scientific method posits hypotheses and theories that can be tested. Is that something Buddhism does as well?"
Mr. Wallace immediately answered, "Not in the same way."
At that point, the interview should have been discarded as pointless (except possibly from a forensic viewpoint, I suppose).
Granted, the interviewer was vague about scientific method. Science is nothing more or less than the practice of scientific method. And while there may be some high-level philosophical debate about the exact nature of scientific method, it basically involves observing and quantifying phenomena, recording these observations, and having others corroborate your recorded, quantified observations. (While an important technique, experimentation is not always possible.) If any piece of this fundamental process is missing, you do not have scientific method, and therefore you do not have science.
The idea that Buddhism does "science" in a different way is simply equivalent to saying that Buddhism does not do science. Please note that I am not making a value judgement; I am not suggesting that Buddhism is somehow wrong or unworthy because it is not science. Rather, I am making the vital distinction between science and religion that Mr. Wallace rejects through vague casuistry.
If Mr. Wallace had stayed in the realm of religious non-falsifiables, I would not have objected to this interview. But he has committed a crime: he has tried to muddy the waters of science, all the worse for having done so with a false promise of clarity.
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Tibetan Buddhism and Science
I have met the Dalai Lama and he is an amazingly charismatic and charming person. I greatly admire his ethics and compassion. However, some of his statements are problematic for me. Yes indeed, the Dalai Lama did say: "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims." I would give this statement more credence if he were willing to accept the findings of the American Psychiatric Association regarding human sexuality and retract his statements on homosexuality.
As for the experience of meditating Monks tapping into some "reality" heretofore unavailable to scientific method - how much is what they find determined by the tenets of their tradition? If you believe in reincarnation, you just might find it. Not a terribly scientific approach.
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selling a book to prove you didn't waste 14 years of your life, grasshopper?
He accuses prominent scientists like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins of practicing "a modern kind of nature religion."
Putting his own label on science does not make it a religion.
Anyway, why should we listen to this guy? I'll tell you why. Because he spent 14 years as a monk. He meditated up to 12 hours a day ... and he isolated himself for 5 months. These experiences give him credibility. He has been to the other side.
Will somebody please explain to me how spending months and years doing nothing but meditating (or clearing the mind or looking for oneself) is anything more than the ultimate exercise in self-centeredness? What wisdom does that impart? What good does that do for others? All it says is that he, and other buddhist monks, spend years and years consuming resources and giving nothing back. How many hungry people did he feed? How many bandages did he change? How did he help the world?
So he's serene. And the dalai lama is serene. So what? What has the dalai lama done for the world lately (or ever?)
I don't have as much trouble understanding monastic traditions where the practitioners run charitable works, feed the hungry, create art, take care of the sick and maimed, or make good brandy -- they contribute as a necessary part of their path to union with god or enlightenment or escape, whatever they are seeking.
But a buddhist sitting on his or her ass for years at a time doing nothing but looking inward or clearing the mind, emerging only to get food or beg for food (like the monks at www.abhayagiri.org in California)-- seems like a pretty parasitic existence. Overindulgence to the max.
So Wallace has a ph.d. in religion and was a monk for a few years. Why would anyone find that gives him cred in any area of study beyond religion or buddhism?