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Interestingly, one of the earlier stages of insight in meditation is often reported as seeing through the habitual separation of observer and observed, and I can attest to it myself.
yes but that is just a bias of the Hellenistic thought system of the Victorians. There are many scientists who are spiritual and already have that insight.
The issue is that is does not invaldate the scientific method.
Objective does not mean that you have to stand outside the box. It means that you hopefully don't let your personal bias draw your conclusions.
Stout, I hope I didn't shoot you down in flames. I don't remember doing so, and found your post a good contribution to the discussion. I think that to give up on the valuable information and technological improvements science can undoubtedly provide would be silly, and that this is not a necessary result of understanding that science is a belief system. As PM has clarified, science is based on certain 'metaphysical assumptions'. It seems reasonable to me to consider this a belief system, and that such axioms are arbitrary (decided, rather than discovered or given in nature itself) and that there are other belief systems based on other axiomatic assumptions.
Now here is where we can discuss things. the question then becomes what benefit to exchanging information in the other beliefs system can be found. There are benefits to non-rational cognition, but one has to still use the scientific method, other wise some very silly things can occur.
What data suggests that there is a 'soul' or any benefit to discussions that can not be translated into a materialist system?
The problem is that SOME scientists are so sure that having defined the world as matter, investigating it as though it were matter, and coming up with material results, this means that they have established the axioms as true,
As pointed out earlier, the ontology of the universe is a moot point. Idealism becomes the same as materialism. there is no difference. If the world is composed of thought it behaves the same as if it is made of dead matter.
or, as PM suggested, that they would change them if they proved untrue, which is like a man walking round a large box saying there's only an inside,
Not really, it is more like saying that the inside of the box is all you can interact with. At this point what evidence do you present for interactions outside the box?
but if he ever found an outside he'd change his mind, but still being so sold on the idea that he's inside an infinite box that he never notices the walls or tries to see over them.
This is incorrect, what can you present to say that the box is not as observed. Remember that just because you have the possibility of something it is speculation, a possibility, that is what it is.
Funny thing is that if you define the world as utterly spiritual, all the matter being explained as maya (illusion), it all makes about as much sense in its own internal logic too...which observation adds weight to the idea that we project our concepts outwards.
Now this is where you get very braod and are making huge sweeping generalizations.
I am a practiced mystic, i can translate freely between the two systems and have tried to come to term with them.
The world could be illusion. But what is so meaningful about that thought?
That is also not what the alleged historical buddha taught. The teaching is that the world is what it is , it is the concept of the self that is illusion.
Why would it make a difference if the world is illusion, there is no meaning in that conclusion.
Of couse we use our concepts and are bound by our personal history, society and culture. One should be wary of all thoughts and test them all for validity.
PM, I said I'd reply to the rest of your post:
I'm aware of the research, and here is one example of the way we keep reinterpreting data in terms of our current worldview: if one is a scientific materialist one sees this as indicating that the machinery is grinding away mindlessly taking action in our bodies, and popping the illusion of prior intention into our consciousness (that place where the biocybernetics do the reflecting...?...); if, on the other hand you happened to believe in an ever-present, all-powerful Being, you could conclude just as easily that His/Her intention acted prior to our humble conscious knowledge as mere mortals ("Thy Will not mine, O Lord"). The experiments could suggest something about our free will, but not necessarily the dead quantum cogs you seem to infer.
Finally, you say that no thoughts have ever been seen to affect physical reality. I remind you of what I said about working out the extent of various relationships like placebo and mind-affecting-matter.
You have said this before, what makes it any indication of anything that does not fit into the materialist perspective/ Just saying the word placebo does not make for an non-material explanation. I can give you an explanation in materialist terms of it all.
So what are you talking about , be specific please.
Consider then where almost anything in the cultural environment originated, from your house to those little reflectors left on the moon so we could fire lasers at it, the internet we're using to discuss this...it all came into being from people's ideas, their thoughts. Ok, we are probably in agreement that I can't move my mug by psychokinesis, but the possibility that we project our beliefs onto reality to some extent suggests that powers that science would consider 'supernatural' might exist for those who are not so bound by the same mental constructs as you and I are, which is basically what much of the mystical literature describes:
Evidence or more silly thinking. there are alos people who think that your skin color reflects your inate intelligence. they hold that believe firmly, but they lack the evidence.
the development of unusual psychic powers. I am developing more trust of the Eastern mystical tradition as I prove the lower (still bordering on supernatural) contentions in it for myself in my own subjective experience.
That is nice, what have you proved and how have you proved it.
Yes we are all connected and all unique, but what meaning does that have other than aa a platitude. If you get specific then it would be more menaingful.
Again I have been involved in the mystic my whole life.
I have to admit that this, though, for me, is one of the very weakest parts of such an alternative view, and I am very well acquainted with all the cold-reading, skewed perception, etc. that can leave vulnerable people believing they can jump off buildings and fly, or that they're psychic because someone 'always' phones when they've 'just' thought of them...
Weird that, though, isn't it, how those people shape their internal, subjective reality according to their belief systems. (Go on, say "No").
They may shape thier internal perceptions to some extent, but why would it matter. All human thoughts are equally true and false, what validity and application do they have?
