Judging by the comments, many readers found my diagnosis-prognosis post to be dark and pessimistic. Going back to the post, it’s not hard to see why. I endorse there the dark view of our existing human problems shared by Augustine, Marx and the Pali suttas; and yet I don’t think any of their solutions work. The essay effectively ends with a rejection of hope. The logical conclusion to draw from the essay might seem to be “life sucks.”
The understandable reactions to the essay’s pessimism nevertheless surprised me. For as I wrote it, I felt light, happy, life-affirming. Why? Well, the first part is easy. Rejecting Marx’s form of hope, political hope, is something I found essential to living a happy life. Right now I’m quite excited about tomorrow’s Canadian election – where the socialist NDP, which I’ve long supported, seems poised for an unprecedented breakthrough. But it is as a spectator sport, the excitement of a Boston fan seeing the Red Sox on the cusp of winning the World Series, where one shrugs and gets on with life if one’s favoured team turns out to lose as it has so many times in the past. If my happiness were tied to a real hope that politics in Canada or the US were going to get significantly better – as it was in my teens – I would be setting myself up for crushing disappointment. No, I continue to endorse at least some form of the anti-politics that I learned from Buddhism: we cannot let our well-being be tied too closely to the external goods of politics, things we cannot control. It is best to free ourselves from political hopes and focus on our own virtues, which we can control. I feel so much better ever since I’ve given up hope.
But there’s a problem here. This move from the external to the internal, from what we can’t control to what we can, is characteristic of the Hellenistic Greek philosophers, the Stoics and Epicureans. But Augustine’s perceptive critique is directed squarely at these Hellenistics: we cannot actually be as good as we think we can. The Stoics move us from hope about politics to hope about virtue. But in Augustine’s diagnosis, that hope too is bound to disappoint. Our bad habits persist; we enlist reason in the name of self-improvement, but too often it turns into rationalization. More than that, even virtue can be a matter more of luck than of effort. This is the main theme of John Rawls’s early Christian writings, which I have been finding more interesting and thought-provoking than the later political theory that made Rawls famous. Our patient endurance or our honesty themselves arise as a result of the biological and social circumstances that made them possible. The clearest example may be the case of Phineas Gage, whose former virtues of self-discipline and respectfulness nearly disappeared after he suffered brain damage. (Such a line of reasoning does suggest a denial of free will which sits uncomfortably with Rawls’s and Augustine’s other Christian convictions, but never mind: I am not concerned with whether the claim is Christian but with whether it is true.) We cannot put our hopes in our virtue, but only in God.
Now this kind of hope seems to propose a greater problem, require a greater pessimism, than does Marx’s. If politics is a problem with no solution, then fine, withdraw from politics and focus on ourselves. But what if our own virtue is a problem with no solution? If we can’t really be all that good, as Augustine says, but his God does not exist and would not deserve worship even if he did? How can such a conclusion lead us to anything but darkness and misery?
Looking back on it, I think that Buddhists provide a helpful answer, and that – as Jim Wilton argued – I may have counted the Buddhist critique of hope out too quickly. And the reason has to do with an important debate within Buddhist tradition, one that I don’t think I’ve explored enough yet: the debate between sudden and gradual liberation.
In traditional Indian Buddhism, my graduate area of study, liberation from suffering is a long, slow, painstaking, gradual process. It doesn’t just take years; it takes millennia, as you work to improve yourself across multiple rebirths to become a perfected person, an arhat or bodhisattva. But in East Asia, and above all in the Ch’an/Zen tradition – to which Jim’s comments about kōans refer – liberation comes suddenly, is experienced in a single moment. I had long been skeptical of the sudden-awakening school. It sounds too much like the worst hippie clichés of Yavanayāna Buddhism, where you don’t actually have to do anything, you can just be yourself as you are and you’ll be perfectly enlightened. It seemed to get you out of all the hard work of making yourself a better person.
And yet in contexts like the present one, I come to see the wisdom in the sudden-liberation approach. For one thing, it makes it a lot easier to take the unscientific concept of rebirth out of the picture. But more importantly, it reflects a psychological truth about the achievement of happiness: that as long as one’s attention is focused primarily on happiness, one will not have it. The same is true of several virtues: if one strives to be an exemplar of perfect humility, one will not be very humble. The sleep study noted by James Maas, demonstrating that it’s harder to fall asleep when you’re trying to do so, seems to me like it can be analogically extended to a lot of noble human goals. At some point along the path, you have to stop trying and just be.
All this, I think, is why Jim effectively defended my earlier characterization of Buddhism as a critique of hope, and rejected my later presentation of the Third Noble Truth as a form of hope, the hope of nirvana. At some point along the path, a good Buddhist stops hoping; as long as there’s hope, there’s attachment and not liberation.
And I think that Jim – with the East Asian Buddhist traditions – thereby puts his finger on the reason I felt so happy after that pessimistic post, better than I had myself. The last sentence of the post struck me as upbeat then and still does: “All we can do is keep stumbling through the evils of life – we can pursue the difficult, but worthy and surmountable, task of finding enough joy, truth and interest in life to make it well worth living.” What I was trying to get at is a transition from the future to the present – an ability to enjoy life and be good just as things are, even in the face of one’s own insurmountable imperfections.
To say that is to risk the very pitfall that made me so suspicious of sudden liberation in the first place: thinking that one is already great just as one is and doesn’t need any improving, leaving one’s weaknesses and problems to fester. But then it seems to me that finding this balance is its own kind of virtue – and like any other virtue, it is a mean between two vices. I don’t know what to call it, but it seems like a sort of meta-virtue: the ability to maintain the effort at cultivating one’s own virtue, while still remaining immersed in the moment of the virtues one already has.
Stephen C. Walker said:
This characterization by William James has always resonated with me: “Stoic insensibility and Epicurean resignation were the farthest advance which the Greek mind made in that [pessimistic] direction…Each of these philosophies is in its degree a philosophy of despair in nature’s boons.”
Thill said:
1. There is a distinction between pessimism and freedom from hope. Pessimism is just negative hope, i.e., hoping or expecting the worst. In other words, pessimism rests on and is driven by fear of the bad.
Perhaps, your momentary happiness or peace on completing that post was due to a momentary freedom from hope rather than pessimism. It seems plausible since the nature of the alleged cause, viz., pessimism, is inconsistent with effect you experienced.
2. I wonder if there is a false opposition between countenancing sudden or rapid processes of insight, or Jhana, and countenancing gradual and slow processes of insight, Jhana, etc. I could be mistaken, but there seems to be an analogy here with the process of evolution. The process of evolution is, on the whole, a gradual process, but the record of evidence for evolution also shows that this process has been sometimes punctuated with sudden or rapid changes and discontinuities. Could the process of contemplative development be analogous to the process of evolution in this respect? Sudden flashes of insight or lightnings of joy or ecstasy could well occur in the context of a process which is gradual on the whole. In fact, we also have plenty of examples of processes of creation in science and art in which there is both gradual progress and sudden insight. So, the opposition between “the school of sudden enlightenment” and “the school of gradual enlightenment” rests on a fallacy.
3. As a cautionary note, we also have many examples, which show that there is a risk of delusion associated with these sudden flashes of insight or Jhana, the delusion that one is “experiencing” enlightenment or has attained enlightenment.
4. Re: “the unscientific concept of rebirth”: I am not sure if you are familiar with the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker on reincarnation. Information on interesting ongoing research is available at
http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/home-page
One of Stevenson’s interesting arguments, which I have not rejected, is that the reincarnation hypothesis provides the best explanation for childhood prodigies whose interests and accomplishment cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of environment and for significant differences in preferences and behavior in early childhood between members of a pair of monozygotic twins.
Chidambaram Ramalingam (1823-1874) a radical theistic mystic from Tamilnadu, India, had already pointed this out in the 19th century in his great, unfinished essay on compassion. In the context of his discussion of the materialist objection to rebirth, Ramalingam argued that if we examine carefully the differences preferences and behavior between twins in early childhood, we will arrive at the conclusion that reincarnation provides the best explanation, i.e., that the differences are best explained in terms of Vasanas or dispositions carried over from a previous birth.
Ramalingam also offered a rebuttal of the standard objection to reincarnation or rebirth: the objection based on absence of memory of previous life. His response was that absence of memory does not imply absence of experience or behavior and that it is not reasonable to think that we would remember a previous life when we can’t even remember some things from a few weeks ago even in this life.
I think that the key to finding the truth, one way or the other, concerning rebirth, and the survival (of consciousness after death) hypothesis in general, lies in a deep and intense study of our own consciousness. If the self undergoes rebirth, then, obviously, the evidence of this must be in our own consciousness.
Neocarvaka said:
“If the self undergoes rebirth, then, obviously, the evidence of this must be in our own consciousness.”
What sort of evidence could that be other than memory or memories of a past life which “emerge” from, or are retrieved from, the “depths” of one’s consciousness? And how would one know that the memory or memories are true or false, real or delusional? (There are interesting issues here pertaining to the nature of memory, its verification, and reasons which justify raising doubts concerning one’s memory. It is interesting that we normally do not doubt our memories and take them to be prima facie reliable.)
If I have a sudden recollection of a past life in which Amod and I were both in attendance at one of the discourses given by the Buddha in Jetavana (LOL), how could I know that this is a true memory and not a delusive experience?
Grant that Amod also has the same recollection in a flash. Would this confirm the veracity of my recollection? Clearly this raises again the same question of how he could know that his recollection is veridical.
If our recollections agree on the details of the Buddha’s discourse, without benefit of prior consultation, would this show that our recollections are plausible? If those details are confirmed by some Pali record, and neither of us had prior knowledge of that record or text, would this confirm the veracity of the recollection?
Even if we answer affirmatively, it is clear that whatever “evidence” is uncovered by a “deep and intense study of our own consciousness” still requires external processes of verification. As Wittgenstein put it “An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.”
Thill said:
“If I have a sudden recollection of a past life in which Amod and I were both in attendance at one of the discourses given by the Buddha in Jetavana (LOL), how could I know that this is a true memory and not a delusive experience?”
Let us suppose that you have had this past life recollection or recall. There are more basic issues of coherence here to consider first.
What makes it a recollection of your presence at the Buddha’s discourse in Jetavana? You remember being present at that discourse? Is it a vision or a series of visual images in your “mind’s eye” in which you see yourself present at the Buddha’s discourse? What form do you take in this recollection? You can’t possibly see yourself in terms of your present body and appearance since in that past life you had a different body and appearance. And if your recollection pertains to, as it must, to an individual with a different body and appearance, in what sense is it the selfsame “you”?
In what sense is it you
Even if I grant that it is coherent (the truth of it is a different issue) to claim that you had a recollection of being present at a discourse of the Buddha in Jetavana, there is a puzzle concerning the part which refers to Amod.
Since Amod is an individual you know in this life based on his blog, etc., how could you possibly know that it was Amod who was present with you at that discourse of the Buddha? In your recollection, it can’t be Amod as you know him at present since he has a different body in this birth from the one he had in your company at the Buddha’s discourse. So, in what sense is it a recollection of being in Amod’s company? What is the criterion of Amod’s identity constitutive of your recollection?
Neocarvaka said:
Don’t you have memories or recollections of your childhood in which you see yourself in your “mind’s eye” running around and doing things? In these inner visual images, your body and appearance is surely different from your present body and appearance. How then do you know that you are recollecting your own childhood, that it is the selfsame you?
michael reidy said:
Re Phineas Gage:
Bergson in his Matter and Memory has an interesting examination of the supposed establishment of the memory is located in the brain position via the fascinating data of lesion injury. It’s a complicated and ingenious argument and too complex to be simply stated. At the time the book was written and of course now it is a doctrine of neuroscience that the brain ‘secretes’ consciousness. The gist of Bergson’s rebuttal is that memory in its pure state is delivered through duration but that when it acts on the physical elements of the brain i.e. the rote stimulus/response learning, the lesion injury causes the usual reaction to go awry and the patient acts in uncharacteristic ways.
At times his theory has touches of Buddhist ‘store-memory’ and Hindu ‘akashic record’ to it, however his argument is based on a close study of case histories which were extensive in his day and the general principle of his argument stands, counter intuitive though it may appear to the neuoroscientist. Worth a read anyway for a demonstration of how philosophical reverse engineering is wrought by a master.
JimWilton said:
This is an interesting post — and interesting comments.
My take on gradual v. sudden enlightenment is similar to Thill’s in that I don’t think there is an inconsistency between the two. But it seems to me that the two approaches come from different perspectives. The concept of gradual progress assumes the perspective of a person who exists in time so that progress can be measured from a remembered past and an imagined future. In other words, it is a point of view rooted in relative truth — comparing changes in relative qualities. I think that the gradual approach would encompass both very slow development and relatively rapid progress along the lines of Thill’s analogy to evolutionary discontinuities. The key distinction being that if there is progress or comparison with something in the past it is a perspective from the point of view of relative truth.
Sudden enlightenment, I think, is based on a perspective of absolute truth. Since it only happens in the present moment — it is not inconsistent with the gradual approach. But the gradual approach involves a stepping out of the present moment and comparing the present moment with both memories and imagined expectations. So, the gradual approach has sense of trying to witness one’s own enlightenment –and that, as Amod points out, has an element of hope (and fear) attached to it and while essential to the path — in an ironic way it creates an obstacle to realization.
Absolute truth is hard to talk about. In the Christian tradition, I think it is analogous to the concept of “grace” — acceptance that is unconditioned. Buddhists might use terms like “emptiness” or “suchness”. It is very slippery.
Jabali108 said:
Jim, I see that you are still clinging to the “absolute vs. relative” distinction as though it were itself an “absolute” distinction!
If this distinction is made only at the relative level, and all distinctions made at the relative level are illusory, then so is the distinction between the absolute and relative level. In other words, in truth, given these other assumptions, there is really no such distinction!
JimWilton said:
From the perspective of absolute truth, I think you are correct. Samsara and nirvana are one, there is no path, there is no Buddhism or enlightenment, talk of absolute truth is unnecessary, and the world is “vividly unreal in emptiness, yet there is still form”. At least that is what the texts say.
But, because we are dissatisfied, we have a goal. And, for all of us who still struggle, a gradual approach of cultivating virtue seems like the best approach. That is relative truth.
Jon said:
Would anyone like to amplify on the apparent conflict between Buddhist teachings and the ‘bon appetite’ we wish for ourselves and others? In a prior post (2009) on zest Amod said the Buddhist position on zest kept him from self-identifying as a Buddhist and that he preferred Aristotelian moderation. That’s provisionally OK but not wholly satisfying. Where should we set our intention? Is it a good thing to work up an appetite, the better to enjoy its satisfaction? Surely brisk excercise gets a pass because of the health benefits. But health aside is stimulating the appetite a good thing? Once an appetite is aroused it can very demanding and distracting, but most appetites are easily and pleasurably satisfied. But pleaure itself is suspect–pleasures leading to habits as they do. Anyhow, appetite and Bhuddist greed seem very near, both rooted in urges that we can choose to cultivate or suppress. Or maybe the best thing is to go with the context and not think about it overmuch. It seems to me that Europe (the continent) is noticeably more in the pleasure camp than we are. Does anyone else think about these things?
Thill said:
“One of Stevenson’s interesting arguments, which I have not rejected, is that the reincarnation hypothesis provides the best explanation for childhood prodigies whose interests and accomplishment cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of environment…”
And, I should add, genetics. Among many remarkable cases of extraordinary aptitude and talent in childhood, providing fertile material for the reincarnation hypothesis, that of Jean-François Champollion (1790 – 1832) is particularly noteworthy.
Champollion was the last of seven children born to a poor French family who couldn’t afford to give him an education, but he was taught to read by his brother and showed even in his childhood a genius for learning languages.
An entry in Wikipedia states that “By the age of 16 he had mastered a dozen languages and had read a paper before the Grenoble Academy concerning the Coptic language. By 20 he could also speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Persian and Ge’ez in addition to his native French.”
Neocarvaka said:
How does the reincarnation hypothesis or theory explain the case of Champollion, the man who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphs?
Thill said:
It can explain it in terms of accumulation of knowledge and growing love for a variety of languages over a few past lives. It is a misconception that the reincarnation hypothesis or theory has to refer to only one past life in the explanans or explanation.
Of course, whether or not the reincarnation hypothesis or theory provides the best explanation of Champollion’s extraordinary childhood aptitude and proficiency in languages depends on a comparative evaluation of that hypothesis or theory and relevant alternative explanations.
Jabali108 said:
How does reincarnation work? What is the mechanism or process of rebirth or reincarnation? Aren’t we dealing with a “gateway theory” or “gateway hypothesis” to the swamp of supernaturalism here?
Thill said:
Here is an interesting and relevant comment by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World (which Amod recently read and commented on)on the well-known manifesto against astrology entitled “Objections to Astrology”:
“The statement stressed that we can think of no mechanism by which astrology could work. This is certainly a relevant point but by itself it’s unconvincing. No mechanism was known for continental drift (now subsumed in plate tectonics) when it was proposed by Alfred Wegener in the first quarter of the twentieth century to explain a range of puzzling data in geology and paleontology….objections…on the grounds of unavailable mechanisms can be mistaken…” (pp. 302-303)
I agree with Sagan here. The absence of a satisfactory account, at present, of the “mechanism” or process of reincarnation does not by itself undermine the reincarnation hypothesis or theory. Certainly, the issue deserves serious inquiry.
I am not sure that reincarnation implies or necessarily leads to supernaturalism. It is certainly worth exploring whether reincarnation is necessarily inconsistent with naturalism. It all depends on the nature of consciousness.
What if consciousness is ultimately a particle? (“Chitanu” or “consciousness-particle” is a term employed by Chidambaram Ramalingam in one of his writings.) If so, there may be a quantum-naturalistic account of its embedding and interaction within a system of other particles constitutive of the embryo or the physical body.
Perhaps, this is nonsense. Or, perhaps, it makes sense. I don’t know.
Ramachandra1008 said:
Amod: “Right now I’m quite excited about tomorrow’s Canadian election – where the socialist NDP, which I’ve long supported, seems poised for an unprecedented breakthrough.”
Today’s News: “TORONTO (AP) — Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper won his coveted majority government in elections Monday that also marked a shattering defeat for the opposition Liberals, preliminary results showed.”
Amod, if you are disappointed, you have my empathy. There ain’t going to be no “Ramrajya” in North America. Socialists and liberals fondly and delusively imagine that the populace shares their concerns or values.
The day I shook off this delusion was the day I became a born-again believer in a Nietzschean enlightened aristocracy! LOL
michael reidy said:
There are some who deny that liberation is either sudden or gradual. You are what you are, nothing serves to establish that. Granted this is a paradoxical view but it is central to Advaita and may be discerned in sayings of the Buddha, ‘because I gained nothing etc’.
Jesse said:
“Would anyone like to amplify on the apparent conflict between Buddhist teachings and the ‘bon appetite’ we wish for ourselves and others? In a prior post (2009) on zest Amod said the Buddhist position on zest kept him from self-identifying as a Buddhist and that he preferred Aristotelian moderation. That’s provisionally OK but not wholly satisfying. Where should we set our intention?”
I wished to discuss this point more in regards to human appetite and direction.
In clinical studies of behavior and behavioral maladies, one can reasonably state that both animals and humans operate and make decisions via a wide array of COMPETING impulses.
That is to say, we may be hungry, lustful, sleepy, or have any number of other impulses, but at any given moment we may only reasonably act on a very limited set of these impulses.
Once a given impulse is satisfied to some degree, another will likely become dominant and shift our attention elsewhere.
This balancing act becomes one of critical note when we see someone who has either lost a given impulse, or in whom a particular impulse has become overriding. The latter case is often fundamentally crippling, while the former may be depending on what has been lost. Loss of pain or fear impulses for example, are extremely dangerous to the individual, while loss of an empathic impulse can render them extremely dangerous to everyone else, loss of hunger is, needless to say, usually deadly without continuous medical intervention.
Now, this entire system of competing internal interests is certainly an argument for moderation in most circumstances – but I’m curious how you think it interacts with philosophies that attempt to NEGATE desires? Maybe I’m over-reading that, and perhaps such philosophies are based around a fundamental understanding that desires cannot be eliminated, only limited?
Clearly the Christian church has run into some direct contradictions with their extended string of scandals centered around those exact behaviors that their faith is supposed to negate. I don’t know if Buddhism or other faiths have ever run into similar issues?
Are attempts to fully negate desires counter-productive or even potentially self-destructive as they tend to be in clinical cases where we see then completely disabled?
JimWilton said:
This is a very good question. We associate desire with pleasure and good things in life. So philosophies that view desires as problems seem like killjoys.
But the problem according to Buddhism isn’t with the sensory experience but the attachment to the sensory experience. It is easy to see the distinction when we consider addictions or very strong attachments. With addictions, the desire is so powerful that it is easy to see its destructive quality. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with alcohol (or food or sex) — but the desire can be a problem. And sometimes when the desire is very strong on the level of addiction it may be skillful to join AA and avoid the sensory experience. But this is certainly not required or even useful in all cases.
Weaker desires also have an effect of contracting our experience of the world into narrow confines that limit our experience and potential. But it is harder to see than with an addiction. An example might be if we buy a new BMW. Because of our desire for social status and comfort and a conditional sense of our self worth that is associated with the new car — do we really experience the car in a genuine way? If we are alternately proud of our car as a symbol of wealth and worried about scratching the paint, is our experience of the car really pleasure or pain? The Buddhist approach is to treat sensory experiences with a certain detachment –the way you might experience a new BMW if it was borrowed. And a Buddhist might say that that approach might allow a greater appreciation for the experience.
Jesse said:
As a side note, I’ve always looked somewhat askance at any philosophy that foments a form of procrastination of self-improvement.
Afterlife in general and reincarnation in particular have always bothered me in this regard.
On the one hand they may at least console the believer into taking some small steps on a path that seems monumentally unachievable (perfection, after all, is a bit of a stretch goal…), but on the other hand it provides a rather obvious allowance for the follower to simply put off their goals for next life. To accept that this current life is maybe just not going to be all that it could have been.
There is a LOT of this kind of acceptance in the world. Acceptance of suffering. Acceptance of abuse. Acceptance of tyrants. Acceptance of conditions that perhaps it would be better to rise against.
But why rise up when you can simply suffer through it for now, imagine yourself to be a better person through your suffering, and simply be REBORN into the upper class next time around? Isn’t that easier?
To me, from a secular standpoint, the entire premise looks dangerously like a mechanism designed to perpetuate a class-based society and suppress lower class discontent.
From a certain viewpoint I suppose that form of stability might be a good thing – but it’s also a terribly suffocating premise, and a particularly horrific one if you DON’T believe in reincarnation.
JimWilton said:
This is a valid criticism. This type of motivation can be a problem. Settling for motivation based on a higher rebirth is somewhat countered by the traditional sense that samara and rebirth is a horrific experience.
However, even in Eastern cultures, my sense is that accumulation of merit and the generation of good karma for material benefit in this life or the next is a significant motivation for many. This is not really negative since merit is accumulated by development of virtuous thought and action. But it is a lesser motivation.
The concern about religion being used for materialistic purposes or to maintain social hierarchies is also a valid concern. Buddhism, like any other religion, is subject to corruption.
But if you were to conclude that the entire philosophy is based on a desire to manipulate the working classes and maintain a particular social order, I would take issue with you on that.
Thill said:
The alleged adverse consequences of adopting a belief, hypothesis, or theory, are relevant only if we have good evidence against that belief, hypothesis, or theory. Otherwise, the appeal to adverse consequences is a fallacy. So, let’s stick to issues of coherence, explanatory power, and evidence.
One could also make the very reasonable objection, supported by overwhelming evidence, to Marxism and other forms of revolutionary socialism or communism that they incite class envy, hatred, and violence and make life miserable for all classes. These well-documented adverse consequences have a bearing on any proposals these theories may make, but they don’t undermine any descriptive claims constitutive of those theories. Descriptive claims must be evaluated only in terms of evidence.
In any case, it is also a misconception that the adoption of the theory of reincarnation must lead to procrastination. One could hold that there are no guarantees that you would have in the next life the same opportunities or capabilities which you have in this birth. So, make the most of what you have in this life.
Further, one could also hold that given the continuity of consciousness from one birth to the next, if one develops the habit of procrastination in this life, it will carry over to the next life! So, again, the adoption of the theory of reincarnation is consistent with the espousal and practice of the maxim “Make hay while the Sun shines!”.
Jesse said:
“One could also make the very reasonable objection, supported by overwhelming evidence, to Marxism and other forms of revolutionary socialism or communism that they incite class envy, hatred, and violence and make life miserable for all classes.”
And in exactly that same vein, one could argue that India has long suffered from the dominion of a highly inflexible caste system propagated and maintained in part by the relatively widespread belief in reincarnation.
It IS a system that lends itself quite logically to the concept of caste, philosophically speaking. Indeed the two appear to be directly synergistic? At least from the point of view of a relatively uninformed outsider.
Now in an interesting inversion of the formula, one can see rapidly developing in US society the concept of monetary standing as the sole virtue by which a man must be measured – all other failures of virtue are lightly excused for the man of wealth, and to question a man of wealth is to call into question one’s own virtue.
This is clearly the view of a great number of Americans already, and appears to derive directly from a powerful strain of capitalist dogma that was introduced after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The part of this that is relevant to our conversation is where this concept of wealth-as-virtue has even subsumed substantial portions of the Christian church in the US, completely subverting its normal value system, replacing the conception of afterlife reward for virtue with material reward for ‘virtue’ and belief. Parts of the Church are literally RE-WRITING their fundamental belief system to conform to the wider social dogma, and reinforce it in turn.
Interesting stuff indeed!
Thill said:
“And in exactly that same vein, one could argue that India has long suffered from the dominion of a highly inflexible caste system propagated and maintained in part by the relatively widespread belief in reincarnation.”
So what? That doesn’t show that the belief is irrational or false anymore than the fact that Marxism was used in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, to justify a system in which, as Orwell inimitably put it, “Some people are more equal than others.”, shows that Marxism is irrational or false or that it “lends itself quite logically” to totalitarianism.
The French Terror used the ideals of the Enlightenment to justify slaughter. Does this show that those ideals lend themselves “quite logically” to the Terror?
Thill said:
Jesse, perhaps you also think that there is a logical relationship between the theory of Karma, i.e., the doctrine that present adversity or suffering is due to evil actions committed in a previous birth, and the theory of reincarnation.
Although the theory of karma and the theory of reincarnation are interwoven in the discourses of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, one can consistently accept reincarnation and deny karma, i.e., one can hold coherently that reincarnation occurs but that there is no causal relationship between evil actions committed in a previous life and adversity or suffering in the present life. One could hold that any effect those evil actions have will pertain only to the dispositions or traits of character in this life.
So, if you disentangle reincarnation and karma, as I think they ought to be, then the theory of reincarnation cannot be used to justify any form of oppression.
Ramachandra1008 said:
Well, even if you accept the theory of poorva karma, it is important to note the distinction between non-determinist explanation and moral justification, between non-deterministically explaining why something occurs and morally justifying it.
Thus, male aggression may be explained non-deterministically in terms of the contributing factor of testosterone, but this does not morally justify acts of male aggression or any particular act of male aggression.
In just the same way, if adherent of the theory of poorva karma holds that the victims of 9/11 perished the way they did because of the contributing factor of poorva karma, this does not imply that 9/11 or the way they perished is morally justified.
The confusion between explanation and moral justification underlies a great deal of misunderstanding and irrational hostility toward not only the theory of poorva karma, but also Darwinian explanations of human nature and affairs.
Jesse said:
Valid points all, and I think the real response likely spans the entire spectrum from slothfully excusing one’s own procrastination, to encouraging one to strive and feel fulfillment over the course of a difficult life that allows for only small successes.
I obviously prefer the more immediate deadline of a unique existence punctuated by oblivion, both in that it forces a rather focused attention and appears to be the actual state of existence according by any objective measure.
Nevertheless that is clearly a very difficult existence for most people to contemplate. So I certainly understand the great efforts given over to exploring other possibilities, even if they lay purely within the human psyche.
Jesse said:
I would like to note as an aside however that when we speak of evidence, then afterlives, reincarnations, or indeed any form of overt spirituality suffers from a rather severe dearth of observational evidence that can be construed as anything beyond wishful thinking.
Each and every one of these phenomena is based on unprovable negative assertions – without exception so far as I am aware.
Thill said:
Whether or not there is “observational evidence” is not a matter of armchair affirmation or denial. Have you examined the work of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson and the ongoing work of Dr. Jim Tucker on the evidence for the reincarnation hypothesis carefully? What is the scientific explanation, if any, of child prodigies and well-documented significant differences in early childhood preferences and behaviors between the members of a pair of monozygotic twins?
In addition, as you probably know, there are many cases in science in which we propose hypotheses or theories concerning the existence of processes which cannot be directly observed, but whose observable effects we seek to explain in terms of hypotheses or theories concerning the nature of their causative processes. Thus, the fact that reincarnation is, by definition, a process which cannot be directly observed cannot possibly be a reason against considering the theory of reincarnation carefully.
This theory makes the claim that the best explanation of childhood prodigies and well-documented differences between members of a pair of monozygotic twins in early childhood is that the process of reincarnation of a pre-existing self with specific acquisitions, achievements, dispositions a history of behaviors, etc., has contributed to those differences. Is there a better and plausible explanation? Is there evidence against the reincarnation theory? Those are the questions we should be examining. Otherwise, we are merely paying lip-service to the scientific method.
Jabali108 said:
“Each and every one of these phenomena is based on unprovable negative assertions – without exception so far as I am aware.”
I’m sure you don’t really want to make an “unprovable negative assertion” on that. Pl. give examples. And what sort of “proof” are you looking for? Thanks.
Jesse said:
“I’m sure you don’t really want to make an “unprovable negative assertion” on that. Pl. give examples. And what sort of “proof” are you looking for? Thanks.”
What I mean (but didn’t state very well looking back on it), is that all the beliefs regarding an indivisible ‘self’ or ‘soul’ without exception rely on that soul being immaterial and undetectable.
If we COULD detect them, then they would instantly dispose of that statement and simply rely on the scientific proof of their existence instead, but we can’t, so all of these belief structures instead rely on the argument that because we can’t detect them we can’t disprove them. Same goes for most psychic phenomena.
That’s the negative assertion I’m talking about. ‘You can’t detect what I’m talking about, so the fact remains that it may be true.’
That’s a true statement – but also a ridiculous logical fallacy, because that argument can be made with equal force for absolutely anything that doesn’t exist. My statement that we are being watched by aliens in Alpha Centauri at this moment holds equal weight to the entire Christian world’s most centrally held tenet.
This differs from unproven theories for which there is some manner of logical deduction or support. We don’t know that there is a Higg’s Boson. But there is some mathematical evidence to suggest that such a particle MAY exist. It is, unproven, undetected, but yet considerably more than just a blank assertion.
In the case of the soul, the logical assertion appears to arise from the sense of self, which is certainly a dramatic phenomena – but we’ve never had the slightest lick of evidence to suggest that it persists beyond death – indeed, there is all the evidence in the world that it does NOT.
Nevertheless our instinct for self preservation appears to demand that we find some reason to believe otherwise, and we’ve created a wide array of beliefs and philosophies to that end. But we do so not only in the absence of evidence, but with a great weight of contradictory evidence to contend with.
This whole debate is going to become a great deal more uncomfortable when we prove a working theory of consciousness – which I suspect is going to be less than 100 years from now. THAT will be an interesting social shock to observe, if I’m still around to see it.
michael reidy said:
Thill:
One possible alternative to the reincarnation hypothesis is retrocognitive clairvoyance. Also be that one could be accessing the knowledge via the akashic record or something of the kind. Reincarnation is a complex doctrine. For instance the sage Ramana Maharshi accepted that one could be the reincarnation of someone who had not yet died. ‘Difficulties are there’.
Jabali108 said:
“one could be the reincarnation of someone who had not yet died.”
Michael, don’t you see the absurdity here? It means that there are two contemporaneous incarnations of one person. This violates the law of identity since you would then make statements such as “Barack Obama is an incarnation of George W. Bush.” and such which would imply that they are the same person.
And, further, what could possibly confine us, in terms of this illogic, to just two persons? Why can’t we also say that two or three or ten persons living now are “reincarnations” of “someone who had not yet died”???
JimWilton said:
Like Thill, I have also not heard of this type of rebirth.
In the Buddhist view of rebirth at least, the concept occurs in a philosophy that does not believe in the existence of a self. So, rebirth is not like a package being delivered by FedEx into a new mailbox. In the context of samsaric rebirth, what is reborn is a disposition or a momentum from previous actions (like a set of dominos falling — with the last domino not being the same as the first). In the context of the rebirth of a bodhisattva, the momentum of karma begins to be displaced by a choice or intention based on bodhicitta or compassion.
Thill said:
Michael, I read a great deal of Ramana in my youth and do not recall anything to that effect. I don’t think there is even a faint echo of that in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions
I don’t think it makes sense to say that “one could be the reincarnation of someone who had not yet died”. Re-incarnation, by definition, implies the end of one incarnation, and, hence, the death of the body associated with that previous incarnation or birth.
Thill said:
“One possible alternative to the reincarnation hypothesis is retrocognitive clairvoyance.”
What do you mean? I don’t see how it explains child prodigies and differences in early childhood between members of a pair of monozygotic twins raised in the same environment.
Do you mean that claimed and verified memories of a past life (of the sort investigated by Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker) can be explained in terms of “retrocognitive clairvoyance” of someone else’s past life? So, if I had a recall of attending a discourse by the Buddha in Jetavana, this could be a case of “retrocognitive clairvoyance” of your attendance at that discourse and not mine?
Stevenson has a good discussion of this alternative explanation in one of his books. I don’t think this alternative accounts for the clear sense the subjects he investigated had that they were recalling their own past lives and not someone else’s life. Any sort of consistently massive error on whether one is recalling one’s life or someone else’s life seems highly unlikely.
michael reidy said:
Thill:
From Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi 1st.Oct. 1936:
re retro-cognition:
Someone’s account of how they gained knowledge is important to them, it gives them a schema through which it becomes intelligible instead of bizarre and uncanny. However that may be like a Humorous theory i.e. the 4 humours, and not necessarily the case. A person might have knowledge of what another entirely unconnected person was undergoing in a remote period by clairvoyant retro-cognition. Is there any way we could decide between the two hypotheses definitively?
michael reidy said:
Jabali:
You’ve probably watched enough scifi movies to be aware of paradox. In what sense has the future already happened? That in essence is the paradox of clairvoyance yet reports of its actual occurrence abound. Are we going to maintain a simplistic stance and say it can’t happen or are we going to try to adapt our schema to accommodate this rare event? The status of Psi goes through cycles and at the moment it seems to be in the trough and slough of contumely. The world may be not just more mysterious than we imagine but more mysterious than we can imagine.
michael reidy said:
That quote is from J.B.S. Haldane
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane
Thill said:
1. Thanks for that reference to Ramana. It shows that if one cannot recall something, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! However, I don’t know what Ramana is talking about (assuming that he said what he is reported to have said.) It has also been reported that he said that “Hitler was also a Jnani.”!!! Perhaps, he actually said that Hitler would someday (in some birth) become a Jnani. These “Talks” have to be approached with circumspection, especially if the person in question did not review and give permission for publication.
2. I don’t know if you read my argument showing that the notion of a person being a “reincarnation” of someone who is alive is absurd.
3. Both Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker have discussed the alternative explanation of “retrocognitive clairvoyance”, in the context of the explanation of claimed and verified memories of former lives by children, and rejected it. I agree with them. Their main reasons for this rejection are:
A. ESP or “retrocognitive clairvoyance” fails to account for the fact that ALL of the claimants say that the memories pertain to themselves.
Further, as I pointed out, given the nature of memory, it is highly improbable that there could be massive and consistent error in thinking that one is recollecting one’s own past life and not someone else’s life. To deny this is also to deny that claims on one’s own feelings, sensations, etc., have veracity and to hold the implausible view that one is likely to mistake someone’s else’s feelings or sensations for one’s own!
The reincarnation hypothesis is a simpler one in this respect compared to the hypothesis of “retrocognitive clairvoyance”.
B. The hypothesis of “retrocognitive clairvoyance” fails to explain how the subjects who allegedly possesses it do not have access to any other remarkable knowledge about the past.
If a person or child possesses “retrocognitive clairvoyance”, how likely is it that this power would only be confined to knowing the life of one person in the past?
If the children who have memories of past lives are really only exercising “retrocognitive clairvoyance”, then we should expect that they would all sorts of other information about the past or history. But they never do. All that they seem to know is confined to the past life they claim to remember.
Jesse said:
Forgive my skepticism, but I have yet to hear any account of “retro-cognitive clairvoyance” or other phenomena along these lines that suggests that anyone is exercising anything more phenomenal than their imagination.
Which, btw, is pretty phenomenal. The fact that I can construct entire realities inside my own head and play in them is pretty cool – but not indicative of my having been around the block more than once.
Factually speaking, because our consciousness is perforce tied to the rather limited input of our senses, we are required to maintain a functional ‘artificial reality’ inside our own minds at all times in order to be able to paper over all the temporary perceptual gaps around us and function efficiently, being able to manipulate this perceptual reality into alternate states of our own design is a handy sub-option.
As for telepathy, precognition, and all the other purported psychic/spiritual phenomena, I’ll be a little less skeptical when businesses or military units start making effective functional use of these capabilities. Bring on the Ghost Busters.
Mostly I find these elements to be a pretty serious distraction from serious philosophical pursuit, given that our objective and subjective realities are quite complex enough as is without throwing on several arbitrary additional layers of superstition and supposition. Simple questions of moral understanding and the pursuit/purposes of life are, I think, enough to keep us busy for several lifetimes.
JimWilton said:
Try Googling “World War II” “pilot” and “reincarnation”.
I don’t have an opinion about this. But to my mind either the family is perpetrating an elaborate hoax or it is a very interesting story. It is not clear to me given the great detail cited that Occam’s Razor would lead us to conclude it is a hoax.
Jesse said:
Occam’s Razor simply states that given a competing set of hypotheses with otherwise similar (or non-extant) degrees of evidence, the simpler explanation is more likely to be true. It’s based on probability, nothing more – but that’s a fairly strong predictor.
Basically it means that if theory A requires only one factor to be true, while theory B requires 12 factors to be true – but you can’t otherwise determine the weight of the factors – then theory A is much more likely to be the right answer.
Thus if one can adequately describe many of the more unusual psychological phenomena as the result of the relatively simple (if unsettling) concept of fractured personalities, as opposed to a wide array of rather complex para-psychic causes (each of which often have elaborate world-constructs need to describe them, increasing their complexity exponentially), then one should prefer the simpler psychological answer.
Factually speaking there’s a great deal more evidence for the internalized causes of many of these odd episodes than there is evidence for demons, spirits, ESP, or reincarnation, so one certainly need not rely on Occam’s Razor alone.
But even if one were to dismiss all factual evidence for either case, then Occam’s Razor would remain sufficient in its own right to strongly favor causes internalized to faults and peculiarities in the nature of human consciousness which do NOT rely on immensely complex belief structures to support.
Jesse said:
Example:
I can describe someone suffering a severely self-destructive episode as either having some serious psychological fault internally – either a failing of their self-preservation instinct, or perhaps a ‘faction’ of their personality that is solely possessed of guilt gaining control over their actions. Perhaps they can simply no longer feel pain, or worse they interpret it as pleasure or satiation. That is weird and unsettling, but not really very complex.
We already have all those feelings, and we have trouble controlling them – the idea that one might get out of hand, or two of them might become confused and start to severely effect our behavior is not a stretch. Hell, we can induce a lot of this behavior in people with LSD on demand. There’s a reason that people using that drug very frequently believe they are having spiritual episodes or awakenings – they are screwing with their perceptual wiring.
On the other hand according to older beliefs in a number of cultures, I can say that the person with the bizarre behavior is possessed by a demon.
Unfortunately, this opens up a huge number of questions. What is a demon? Where did it come from? How did it get here? Why this person and not someone else?
As a result of trying to describe a relatively simple if unfortunate psychological condition, I have just created an entire new species (demons), another plane of existence (hell), a moral karmic system (possession for evil thoughts/deeds), and a host of other unseen, non-physical phenomena unknown to human experience or science. All to describe why this guy can’t stop banging his head on the wall.
The simple answer is that he’s just kind of broken. There’s lots of ways to break people, but no one blames a broken finger on karma (well, OK, maybe some do, but most don’t), but whenever we can’t see the problem we start coming up with some really crazy ideas.
Jesse said:
One should not that Occam’s Razor does NOT displace actual evidence!
If you have a simple answer, but the facts point to a more complex one, then you may want to question whether you’ve got your facts straight – but barring more accurate data you should presume that the more complex (but factually supported) premise is true.
Thill said:
Jesse, you have ignored the evidence and the careful exploration of alternative explanations, including the sorts of psychological ones you mention, in the work of Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker both of whom are professionally trained psychologists!
You have also dropped a number of red herrings on your discussion trail, but for now I want to make a couple of quick points.
1. It is a non-sequitur to argue from the fact that an explanation is simple or simpler to the conclusion that is actually correct. Simplicity is not necessarily an indicator of plausibility. Consider the theories in quantum physics if you doubt this!!!
2. What is simplicity of explanation or hypothesis anyway? You mention the number of factors or entities in the explanans. Well, any complex machine such an airplane will require explanations of its functioning or malfunctioning which appeal to a number of factors. What happens to Ockham’s razor in this context? The nature of the explanandum can require a number of factors in the explanans.
3. In the case of the reincarnation hypothesis, the explanation seems to rather simple: one self has recollections of its past incarnations. If the hypothesis is really a complicated or complex one, it would not have been widely understood and subscribed to.
What is the “simpler” explanation in the case of child prodigies? Do we even have any explanations of childhood prodigies whose achievements cannot be accounted for in terms of heredity, e.g., Handel, or immediate family environment, e.g., Jean-Francois Champollion?
And do we even have any explanation, not to mention a “simpler” one, in the case of well-documented differences between members of a pair of monozygotic twins raised in the same environment? You simply evade these crucial issues. Consider the most famous case of “Siamese twins”, Chang and Eng. How do you explain differences in their personalities even in early childhood?
It seems to me that the reincarnation explanation is intuitively clear and simple in these cases. Chang and Eng were different selves even in early childhood due to differences in their respective reincarnation histories.
I am not saying that this per se makes it plausible. Of course, a comparison of alternatives in light of explanatory power and relevant evidence for or against the reincarnation hypothesis or theory is necessary.
Ramachandra1008 said:
“Of course, a comparison of alternatives in light of explanatory power and relevant evidence for or against the reincarnation hypothesis or theory is necessary.”
The evidence for or against the explanations competing with the reincarnation hypothesis also need to examined. Psychologically or cognitively speaking, it is easy to ignore evidence against or objections to explanations couched in pseudo-scientific jargon, e.g., “fractured personalities”.
JimWilton said:
I know Occam’s Razor. It’s a useful concept.
You might run the Google search that I mentioned. The case cited has so much factual detail that has been independently verified as an historical matter that I don’t see an easy explanation based on mental trauma, multiple personalities or other cognitive defects.
I do think a view that the story is an elaborate hoax is a possibility. It would require a conspiracy by the husband and wife and their young son, elaborate historical research based on original source material to give the story versimilitude, and a coincidence that the facts uncovered that were not in the historical record and were later verified only by eyewitness acounts (i.e. eyewitness identification of the pilot and the plane being shot down and exploding in flames) supported rather than refuted the story.
That is why I say that it is not clear to me in this case that Occam’s Razor would support the theory of a hoax. The conspiracy theory to me seems a more complex explanation than that the boy recalled a past life.
Jesse said:
“Try Googling “World War II” “pilot” and “reincarnation”.”
I will do this, but let me be clear in my position here. I have read a great deal of material regarding purported religious and para-psychological phenomena in my life. Enough that I have grown tired of sorting through the specific accounts I’m afraid.
While certainly I have read of many cases where some interesting and perhaps even unlikely incident has occurred, not a single case have I encountered that has piqued my curiosity to the degree where I would truly suspect some meta-physical explanation for the account.
Personal accounts in particular, I grant little credence, even in the face of many witnesses. This is due to the rather large number of proven FALSE group accounts and small scale conspiracies to deceive.
In short, people care about their beliefs deeply, and in many cases have proven that they are willing to go to nearly heroic lengths to convince others of the truth of those beliefs, up to and including elaborate deception. As a result, I fear that it would take a rather widespread acknowledgment of physical evidence to steer me onto such a path of belief, or even suspicion at this point.
Jesse said:
This account is straightforward enough – if one puts aside both the possibilities of intentional deception and self-deception.
Note that the entire account is provided not by the boy, but by the parents – a pair of individuals more than capable of gathering the facts needed to fabricate a case.
More likely I suspect a more simple matter of self deception wherein the boy did in fact show an unusual fascination for planes at a young age – and believe me, at around that age a child watching so much as a single WWII documentary could absorb an astounding amount of detailed information on the subject if it captured their imagination, especially if his cognition and recall are unusually good for his age.
Parents often show a tendency to become quickly obsessed with any unusual behavior they observe in their child, and once they began studying the background of his behavior they too would start to study the subject of WWII piloting and worse, interpret any coincidental similarities of their son’s activities to the historical information they themselves had then studied.
Again we come back full circle to building frameworks of belief. Once someone invests themselves within a framework of belief, they will begin to view any partial coincidence or phenomena through the lens of that belief, and discount any minor inconsistencies or evidence to the contrary as irrelevant or even illusory to prevent any disruption of that belief.
Do I KNOW that is the case here? Of course not. The kid could be Genghis Khan for all I know.
But I *do* know that people’s capacity for self-deception borders on the verge of infinite, and this particular case holds ample opportunity for either self or intentional deception following a rather simple and innocent triggering episode that appears to have been nothing more than a common childhood obsession.
Thill said:
All this is in a different ballpark from the numerous cases of claimed memories of former lives recorded and verified by Stevenson in numerous locations.
Even if all of that scrupulously gathered data over several decades is rejected, the following facts cry out for a satisfactory explanation:
1. Child prodigies who show aptitudes unusual in their family environment and/or show amazing proficiency in something. I am personally intrigued by child prodigies in music, mathematics, and languages.
2. Twins raised in the same environment who show some significant differences in their personalities and behaviors in early childhood.
3. Early childhood phobias and obsessions which cannot be explained in terms of family environment.
4. Gender-identity confusion in some children in their early childhood, i.e., a marked preference for dressing and acting like a member of the opposite sex.
Ramachandra1008 said:
“In short, people care about their beliefs deeply, and in many cases have proven that they are willing to go to nearly heroic lengths to convince others of the truth of those beliefs, up to and including elaborate deception.”
I think this applies also to their “dis-beliefs”. The appeal to the psychology of belief or disbelief is a red herring in the context of testing the hypothesis of reincarnation.
“it would take a rather widespread acknowledgment of physical evidence to steer me onto such a path of belief, or even suspicion at this point.”
Child prodigies and some striking differences in preferences, dispositions, and behaviors between members of a pair of monozygotic twins raised in the same environment are assuredly well-known “physical evidence”. But the problem is to determine what is a satisfactory explanation of that evidence.
Speaking of “widespread acknowledgment of physical evidence”, how physical is the evidence for theories in quantum physics and how “widespread” is the acknowledgment of such evidence? Most people have no clue as to what the theories of quantum physics are, and hence, would have no clue as to what would even count as evidence for those theories. So, the criterion of “widespread acknowledgment” is problematic.
Jesse said:
“Speaking of “widespread acknowledgment of physical evidence”, how physical is the evidence for theories in quantum physics and how “widespread” is the acknowledgment of such evidence? Most people have no clue as to what the theories of quantum physics are, and hence, would have no clue as to what would even count as evidence for those theories. ”
And indeed, I’m rather skeptical about a number of the propositions within quantum physics. The field as a whole appears to be valid and operative, but there are still a number of decidedly ‘fudgy’ areas where elements remain so theoretical and unproven as to be little more than educated guesswork, and the number of practical applications for much of that knowledge is limited.
As a whole the field represents our best current shot at understanding the fundamental nature of the universe, but I suspect large sections are going to end up getting pretty seriously re-written before it becomes a stable field.
michael reidy said:
Thill:
The upadhis that are different that Ramana referred to in the overlap case of reincarnation are of course the forms of limitation or limiting adjuncts in the monistic system of Advaita. The different realities are viewed as limited aspects of pure consciousness. It is a staple of Hindu legend that a whole life could be lived while a pot was falling to the ground. The normal duration of felt time is altered. The upadhi that governed the felt time of one event i.e. the falling of the pot is different from the upadhi of the other. So in this case I assume the understanding of the Sage Ramana, who accepted reincarnation and moreover accepted that instance of it, was that the normal synchronisation of time with one’s contemporaries was different. The upadhis of time flow were different.
The Talks are published by the Ashram at Tiruvanamala.
Thill said:
Michael, that’s an interesting commentary but I’m afraid it does nothing to dispel the absurdity of the notion that A could be the “reincarnation” of a contemporary B. I seriously doubt whether Ramana subscribed to this absurd notion. It has no precedent in popular or philosophical Hindu beliefs on reincarnation. The relevant passage you quoted from the “Talks” also seems rather convoluted.
michael reidy said:
Thill:
As we are on the subject of memory and eastern theories of past lives you will be aware that memory is not regarded as a pramana (valid means of knowledge) purely on its own in Vedanta. Norman Malcolm in a monograph on Dreaming stated that the dream was a story we told upon waking and that it need not refer to anything or be based on anything. It is purely, so to speak, a quasi-memory. It is analytically true that if I have a memory, it can only be of something I experienced but by the same token it is not purely to be relied upon without back up.
Obviously then the memories of past lives must be backed up by research which would tend to show that the subject had knowledge which only he could be aware of through a past life. Difficult to do obviously.
I note from a quick scan of an article on Stevenson in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson that Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke and even the atheist warrior Sam Harris are intrigued by his findings and not outrightly dismissive.
Jesse said:
One point I would like to make regarding the sense of bifurcated self that is indicated in some of these ‘retroactive clairvoyance’ cases is that it holds fairly well with the existence of multiple personalities within the individual.
The fact that our consciousness appears to be capable of fragmenting – indeed, may BE fragmented to some degree in all of us, below the perceptual level – goes an enormous way to explaining a great deal of the more confusing and spectacular mental phenomena that people often report, such as possession, dramatic mood and behavior swings, sense of ‘other’, impulsive internal voices, memories that seem not to be our own – and so on.
All of these phenomena begin to make a great deal more sense if we allow that the internal consciousness is not necessarily unitary, and is a far simpler explanation that the diverse panoply of supernatural causes that have been relied on in the past. It is well supported by Occam’s Razor, at the very least.
Now, the idea that one’s consciousness can in fact be fragmented is rather disturbing to us – but I think we thereby avoid it and do ourselves a disservice by not studying this a great deal more than we do.
There are quite a few rather clearly and well recorded instances of this phenomena (and some evidence that lesser versions of it are quite common) and they offer some tantalizing hints as to the nature of consciousness itself.
Thill said:
Many of the children interviewed by Stevenson and Tucker do not show any of the other symptoms associated with the alleged “fragmentation of consciousness”. Even if they did, whether the claimed memories are accurate and whether they could have obtained all of the information in their claimed memories by normal means is what we should focus on.
How do you explain “fragmentation of consciousness”? What is your “simple” explanation of it?
Jesse said:
“How do you explain “fragmentation of consciousness”? What is your “simple” explanation of it?”
Beats me. We don’t have a functional theory of consciousness yet, so it’s hard to state how that sense of self might become separated.
That being said, there are some interesting concepts in computer science and study of the brain that suggest some possible reasons.
One is of course the concept of simple specialization – where a large, complex system is broken down into several simpler systems, each of which is responsible for a particular task or related set of tasks. The brain certainly seems to compartmentalize itself to some degree in this manner, which suggests that this technique is at least partially in use in cognition.
Given that concept, it is not so hard to imagine that one or more of these ‘sub-sections’ of the mind might reflect different aspects of personality, and in some more extreme cases, that the center of perceived self might actually move between them, or become split between them.
Given our (my) extremely limited understanding of consciousness, and the relative inapplicability of computer science concepts to the mind, which in other respects is completely alien, I cannot suggest anything more detailed at this time.
But that is or me, at least enough to suggest one possible mechanism for the phenomena that in no way relies upon supernatural explanation, and that roughly correlates with observed phenomena, so or me it shall have to suffice until more compelling evidence or theory presents itself.
Jesse said:
Hmm. I think my ‘f’ key is going. A couple of ‘for’s got truncated in there. Ah well. You get the idea.
Thill said:
Any pathological condition of “fragmentation of consciousness” must be distinguished from expansive levels or states of consciousness which allow for the cultivation and development of multiple perspectives culminating in an integrated or integral whole.
Shorn of the mystifying and reifying cobwebs Aurobindo spins around it, his concept of “Overmind” or “Overmental consciousness” provides an interesting window to these levels of consciousness.
I also recall a passage from his writings in which he avers that higher levels of development allow for more complexity in consciousness and that, as a consequence, there are greater challenges or threats of fragmentation and the correspondng possibility of a more effective form of integration to overcome those challneges or threats.
Thill said:
Jesse, this “fragmentation of consciousness” is itself supported by an underlying unity manifested in the awareness of the fragmentation and efforts to bring about self-integration.
Does it strike you that the fragmentation of consciousness can also be explained quite well by the reincarnation hypothesis? If the self has undergone several past incarnations or lives, we should expect that the disparate traces or vasanas resulting from the vicissitudes of those incarnations or lives to produce exactly this tendency toward Fission in our consciousness! However, the counter-tendency toward Fusion is also present since the self is in its core One, and, hence retains its identity, despite the diversity of and in, its peripheral layers.
Jesse said:
“Does it strike you that the fragmentation of consciousness can also be explained quite well by the reincarnation hypothesis?”
No, quite frankly, I doesn’t strike me that way at all.
If one views the consciousness as arising from primarily physical phenomena (albeit phenomena we do not properly grasp at this time, but for which we certainly see a number of functional physical mechanisms), then the idea that we would witness imperfect unity of sensation, flaws in cognition, and a host of other potential issues and artifacts within that consciousness is not only possible, but a highly probable outcome.
It takes only the slightest flaw for my computer to produce a BSOD, and while our minds are surely far more complex and robust, we must nevertheless expect to be vulnerable to some forms of cognitive failure and disorientation when things go awry.
Resorting to metaphysical means to describe those same problems does nothing but vastly compound the complexity of the situation, obscuring the most obvious and straightforward answer – that being that we are complex, fragile, primarily physical beings that are as prone to fault as any other material thing in this world.
From my perspective the entire field of meta-physical phenomena was originally a result of our incredibly incomplete understanding of the physical world – a substantial amount of which has since been illuminated and explained.
More recently these beliefs appear to persist mainly as artifact of our desire for forms of permanence, simplicity, stability, and karmic redress that often appear to be denied us in the reality we find ourselves presented with.
I of course adhere to a rather strictly secular realist framework, and so I hold the view that the universe is quite complex enough without adding a thousand hosts of metaphysical realities and beings to the mix. As noted recently, quantum physics is already more than enough to boggle the mind and make one question the fabric of reality in rather uncomfortable ways… :P
Now, to be fair, this discussion blog appears to be a discussion about a wide range of philosophies from multiple traditions, but it does compel me to wonder how many questions one can answer about philosophy, morality, and so on when the very firmament of the cosmos shifts with each step one takes. ;)
Neocarvaka said:
“it does compel me to wonder how many questions one can answer about philosophy, morality, and so on when the very firmament of the cosmos shifts with each step one takes.”
The firmament of the cosmos is completely untouched by these shifts in human perceptions or conceptions or emotions. The firmament of our minds may shift. Our understanding may change or grow. That’s all.
It is the fond imagination or delusion of philosophers, or perhaps, human beings in general, that the cosmos actually undergoes change with changes in human conceptions of it!
Eclipses are not altered by our changing conceptions of them. It matters not a whit to the structure or nature of eclipses whether we think eclipses are caused by a serpent (Rahu of Hindu lore) swallowing the Sun or Moon, or that they are caused by orbital movements of the earth and its moon relative to the Sun.
Jesse said:
“The firmament of the cosmos is completely untouched by these shifts in human perceptions or conceptions or emotions. The firmament of our minds may shift. Our understanding may change or grow. That’s all.”
Indeed. I certainly wasn’t being literal – however I *was* indicating that if some or all of these belief structures were real, then we WOULD have to make literal dramatic shifts in our philosophical calculus to account for them, and so when we discuss them as if they are real, we change the context of the conversation greatly each time we shift.
If one proves the existence of Hell, one had best start reading the Ten Commandments with rapt attention, and being gay goes from being almost socially acceptable, to being far worse than any death sentence.
If one discovers that reincarnation is indeed a fact, then we must consider what the legal code should says about the status of reborn criminals and debtors – whether they should remain culpable for past offenses left un-redressed.
Were we able to identify and measure karma, we would have to consider whether it would be acceptable for an employer to weight my upcoming raise based on my karmic progress over the last quarter.
These sound like bad jokes – and they are – up until the very moment any of these factors were to come true, at which point they would become rather dramatically real and then some.
We can see examples of this in the real world, generally amongst the most extreme followers of each religion, and the way they implement rules with the assumption that their beliefs ARE without a doubt factual. As a rule, the rest of the world has great difficulty understanding or co-existing with them.
I mean, seriously, just *imagine* a world where we could measure karma like a score in a video-game. That would be a very fundamentally different world from the one we live in. Its philosophies would not be a little different, they would be dramatically affected in countless ways. It would be an entirely different world.
Jesse said:
One unfortunate aspect of consciousness that fights strongly against concepts such as soul, reincarnation, and other concepts that suggest unity and permanence, is its unfortunate (and in some ways fortunate) malleability.
In short, while we don’t understand the mechanisms very well yet, we have nonetheless discovered a wide range of ways for physically folding, spindling and mutilating it.
To bring up an unpleasantly horrific scenario – what happens to the man who suffers brain damage (perhaps even intentionally inflicted by a torturer) that results in severe and negative changes to his moral outlook as a result of the damage?
The man survives his ordeal, but later in life goes on to horribly murder several people before he is finally caught and incarcerated. At his trial he professes no remorse, and even reflects upon the joy of his deeds before the bereaved family of his victims.
What of his karma? Where does the balance lie? What if the cause of his change had been injury instead of torture? What if there was a physical cause for his change but it was the result of a minor stroke that went forever undiscovered?
How would this man be reborn? Will it be as an insect, or as a man again? Might he be burdened with the memories of how he was before, or after his change, or will he remember it all?
Now, I do not know if there are any specific records of an incident quite this terrible – but there are many records of people who do undergo fundamental changes in personality after injury or sicknesses that affect the brain, and some of them have unquestionably turned good people into bad ones, or wise men into fools.
When questioned, these people often retain the memories of their entire lives – but sometimes claim that they feel like they belong to someone else, the person they were before the incident that changed them.
But any belief system must acknowledge and deal with these unfortunate cases in some fashion or other, because they are rather well documented and real.
We are who we are today. Tomorrow, we will be other people, likely quite similar to today – but possibly not.
Jabali108 said:
You seem to be selectively ignoring the evidence for continuity and attributes of the self which persist despite some drastic changes, including aging, sex change, brain damage, Alzheimer’s, and insanity.
JimWilton said:
Reincarnation does not necessarily imply permanence. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation, at least, is consistent with the concept of no self. What is reincarnated is the momentum of habit or karma. The bases on which we normally ground our sense of self — our body, intellect or personality are all ephemeral. This can be observed even within one lifetime (as you point out with your hypothetical).
Thill said:
“Reincarnation does not necessarily imply permanence. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation, at least, is consistent with the concept of no self.”
I agree with the first claim and disagree with the second.
Reincarnation, in its very nature, involves a great deal of change, and, hence, impermanence. However, as I pointed in previous post several months ago, change is not inconsistent with continuity and “relative permanence”, or the slow rate of change of one thing relative to another thing dependent on it, e.g., compare the “relative permanence” of the river bed to the river, of a mountain to the vegetation on it.
The facts of impermanence and dependent origination neither imply nor support the non-existence of the self or the “no self” dogma.
I think the Buddhist concept of reincarnation is incoherent. The deep trouble with this concept lies in its intractable difficulties in explaining why and how there is self-consciousness or self-awareness which underlies the distinction between my thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, etc., and yours.
If the Buddhist theory can’t even account for this the fact of self-consciousness in this birth, why add to its problems by supposing that these thoughts, memories, etc., can “reincarnate” and constitute a new self-consciousness in another birth?
JimWilton said:
We have discussed this before.
With respect for your view (which you express well), I take it that in acknowledging the fact of impermanence and dependent origination but insisting on the existence of self you are not insisting that an onion has a center. Rather, you define a self that is in constant flux.
Another way to say this would be to say that the self is an aggregate that is created and that deteriorates over time. This corresponds quite closely to the Buddhist view. Self can be said to exist in a relative sense (in relation to “other” or things that are “not self”) but self does not exist in an absolute sense.
Previously, you have come close to arguing that self awareness or cognizance might be the center of the onion — and your reference to continuity in this post might be making this point. But I don’t want to speak for you.
Jesse said:
“Child prodigies and some striking differences in preferences, dispositions, and behaviors between members of a pair of monozygotic twins raised in the same environment are assuredly well-known “physical evidence”.”
Remember – by the time we see a pair of twins, they have each separately undergone thousands of generations of cell division, involving billions of cells, every one of which has the potential for difference which will then be expressed for the rest of the child’s development.
Even if their genetics are 100% identical, a pair of identical twins can – and basically will – end up different from each other, both physically and mentally. The magnitude of these differences can vary considerably depending on their cause. A significant early developmental flaw could result in one twin expressing a serious congenital heart defect, while its companion remains healthy.
Meanwhile, mental development – no matter how similar the conditions – likely suffers from cascading developmental differences like any cyclic process, much like the so-called butterfly effect has on the weather.
No, what would be more remarkable would be for genetically identical twins to be consistently impossible to differentiate. We should expect some to be quite similar, while others may end up being quite different due to some particularly early form of developmental deviation.
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