[Buddha-l] the advent of the meditation machine?

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 10 October 2007 14:05, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> The problem is that the question of whether or not the firing of neurons
> is the "unmoved mover" behind religious experiences is *not tested* by
> experiments that merely confirm that neurons are firing. Therefore it
> remains an unexamined article of faith.

Surely everyone would agree with you that if someone were to state boldly that 
the firing of neurons is "all there is" to religious (or any other kind of) 
experience, that person would be stating an untestable hypothesis. But who 
has ever made such a claim? Are you out with your blowtorch, scorching straw 
men again, or is there really someone who holds the views that you rightly 
show to be unscientific? Perhaps we could focus this discussion a bit by 
referring to particular sentences in particular pieces of writing. Without a 
concrete reference, your condemnations are close to meaningless.

It seems to me that most of the literature I have read on the subject 
concludes that there is a pretty tight correlation between the experiences 
that people report they are having and evidence of neural activity. That in 
itself is a correlation that invites confidence that the central nervous 
system has something to do with experience and that it is not merely there to 
prevent our heads from imploding into a vacuum. That the central nervous 
system plays a role in experience is not controverted by many people, so far 
as I know. Does anything else play a role? Well, of course. I am not aware of 
anyone who denies that either. Most people (except idiots like Dignaga) seem 
to think that such things as light, physical objects, heat and events 
external to the body play a role in generating experiences.

Where there seems not to be widespread agreement is on the issue of whether, 
for example, God plays a role in generating experiences that are putatively 
about God. Given the unlikelihood that everyone who claims to be guided by 
God really is being guided by something other than their own prejudices and 
delusions, people have come to be inclined to wonder whether putative 
experiences of God might be explained in some other way. But doubting that 
God has much to do with experiences that are supposedly about God is hardly 
acting on blind faith. On the contrary, it is acting on a healthy sense of 
investigative inquiry and openness to alternative explanations.

Most of the mischief in these discussions is caused by people who take the 
tentative hypotheses that careful scientists formulate to guide further 
testing and treat those hypotheses as if they were firm conclusions. When any 
hypothesis becomes conviction, of course the resultant dogma is a travesty of 
science and reason. 

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes