For PixyMista – The Problem With Metaphysics

[tsig]

Mystics don't accrete mythological explanations onto prosaic experiences. They experience archetypes of the unconscious in symbolic, mythological forms. They interact with the archetypes, and the archetypes with each other.

So they're talking to invisible beings or constructs of their own minds?

 

[D'rok]

Do you always carry coal to Newcastle?

Psst. I was hoping he'd offer me the good stuff that he's obviously been taking.

 

[D'rok]

Meh, more neurophysiology. But in the end it's pretty much all physics.

Yeah. I was sacrificing accuracy for rhetoric there.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I understand where you are coming from, but the subjective experience incorporates the 'mythological accretions'. The mystic(s) is confronted by a living, interactive, autonomous myth. The mystic does not need to consciously add flowery elaboration to a mystical experience of a metaphysical entity, the way you might add flowery language when describing your first kiss, when it could be described in terms of pressure on the fleshy folds which surround the opening of the human mouth.

Are we discussing science, or eroticism?

I get the impression that you are trying to provoke me again. Or maybe it's just my imagination.

Well, that hot imagination of yours is the one describing osculation in terms of "fleshy folds". That's pretty provocative! This is a child - friendly forum you know.

 

[porch]

This is the nut of the problem. Since I do not have mystical experiences, I am not qualified to judge the validity. This is fine from my point of view... until someone tries to say that these experiences they have had should impact and inform my worldview.

This is where it fails for me. If I cannot be a mystic, I should at least be able to see the effects of these principles and properties which I cannot access directly.

If you touch me, I am touching you -- there is a ground where we meet. But I do not find this. I do not find this place where the effects ever cross over into my experience base. How could I be honest and not dismiss the whole enterprise?

If the whole world were blind save for one sighted person, that person, having an ability unknown to the rest of humanity, could still demonstrate it. They would be able to do things because of this ability that would, if not show the property directly, at least show that there are meaningful consequences. The experience of sight would still be beyond me. But the results, that common ground where I share the world with this person, would have me acknowledge there is 'something there'. I find this property missing in mysticism generally.

Thank you. This is what I have wanted to express to mystics on this board, but I don't think I could have put it as well.

I was once a mystic. I also was once a meandering liberal arts undergrad, who was shamelessly courted by the Religious Studies dept of my uni, but I don't know if that qualifies me as an expert.

When I was a mystic, I spent a lot of energy on cultivating my mystical experiences. I never had the experience of meeting a supernatural being through the normal sensory routes, but I was quite convinced that I was communing with God when I entered a certain "state". My belief structure gradually vanished. I sometimes still have very similar experiences, especially if I have a couple beer in me and I'm staring at the night sky in a wilderness setting. The awe of existence! It's just that I now attribute such experiences to my own brain activity, and not some communication with a metaphysical being.

Limbo, I'm curious as to how you assess my predicament. Was I in touch with God before, but now my heart has hardened, and I've lost the knack? And, more to the point for me, what do you possibly hope to gain by posting here? I wondered about Undercover Elephant, too, but he seems to no longer be around. If the mystical experience is by definition ineffable, why do you say anything on a skeptics forum? I know you are not dumb. You are an intelligent and educated person. So I know you know that skepticism demands "show me". Mysticism declares, "I can't." What is it that you hope to say here?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I am correct. I wouldn't be here otherwise. Mystics have systematically explored the human psyche for ages. Initiates of mystical traditions use their quasi-scientific techniques to achieve altered states of consciousness, and then they explore the psyche in a structured way. They return to ordinary consciousness and try to express the ineffable experiences through the use of imperfect things like words and numbers and art and action, and over time an imperfect metaphysic evolves.

The metaphysic will naturally have two aspects. An esoteric aspect, and an exoteric aspect. The esoteric, or inner, aspect is what the initiated mystics use among themselves in a mystical tradition. The exoteric aspect is a simplified version of that for the uninitiated laypersons of their culture - a mythology.

Mystics are like astronauts of the mind. They are 'psychonauts'. They dive into the vast waters of the unconscious mind and they perform actions. But they can only ever use symbols, and symbols are like a finger pointing to the moon. If one isn't careful one can end up focusing on the finger. A good symbol will be 'transparent to the transcendent', as Joseph Campbell put it. Not opaque.

I think that's an unnecessarily romantic characterisation.

They are doing exactly the same thing tea leaf readers do, except they knock their own brain for a loop and try to discern meaning in the results, rather than focusing their misguided attempts at pattern-recognitiion on tea leaves.

Unless tea leaves or hallucinations contain useful information, you can do this for a billion years without learning a single useful thing. As far as we can tell, tea leaves, yarrow stalks, hallucinations, the position of the zodiac and so forth all contain zero useful information.

Mystical experiences trick the brain into thinking that banal or ridiculous ideas are transcendentally important, but it's just a chemical trick.

Anyway I could ramble on, but the point is that initiates of the great mystical traditions used structure and cooperation and various physical and mental tools to explore the psyche, and a metaphysical schema evolves from that. So it turns out that metaphysical schemas are like primitive models of the human psyche itself, once the symbolism is deciphered.

It might turn out that tea leaf reading schemas are like primitive models of the human psyche itself, once the "symbolism" is "deciphered", seeing as it's the human psyche that's coming up with the nonsense in the first place.

However they're still just tea leaves, and you can't see the future by staring at them. There are no insights about the universe or how we should live to be found in tea leaves or hallucinations.

It's not a matter of some imaginative wishful thinker sitting down one day to cook up some crazy ideas or some such thing.

Yes it is. They are using the tea leaves for inspiration, but they're still just making stuff up based on random inputs which have no causal connection to the greater universe.

The people who cook up crazy ideas that sell are the ones you hear about, and their crazy ideas are the ones that in turn get used as tea leaves by other people, who think that maybe by synthesising the theories of enough tea-leaf-readers they will discern the True Secret Of The Tea Leaves.

Humans are amazing pattern-formers. Given a large enough sample of random noise people can and will find "meaningful" patterns in it, eventually, if only with the aid of confirmation bias.

However if all you are starting from are tea leaves, you'll never find out anything useful no matter how many people's ideas about tea leaves you canvas or how many cups of tea you personally examine.

 

[Limbo]

Limbo, I'm curious as to how you assess my predicament. Was I in touch with God before, but now my heart has hardened, and I've lost the knack?

I don't feel like I can assess your situation, except to say that there is a hidden alliance between progress and regress.

And, more to the point for me, what do you possibly hope to gain by posting here? I wondered about Undercover Elephant, too, but he seems to no longer be around. If the mystical experience is by definition ineffable, why do you say anything on a skeptics forum? I know you are not dumb. You are an intelligent and educated person. So I know you know that skepticism demands "show me". Mysticism declares, "I can't." What is it that you hope to say here?

Mysticism declares, "show yourself. Here are the tools."

 

[PDoug]

Hallucinations are not metaphysics. They can be triggered with electrical or chemical stimulation of the brain. Hallucinations are physics.

Can you prove your claim? This is the thing that irritates me about proponents of scientific disciplines: many don't even realize that all they are doing is championing belief systems. E.g. psychiatry is a complete mess. It would rule Jesus Christ as severely schizophrenic. But can it prove that e.g. when Jesus said he came from the Father of creation, that this was in fact not so? No. Psychiatry suggests that there is nothing beyond our direct perception: including God, angels, demons, ghosts. But can it prove its case? No. So then psychiatry makes a multitude of assertions it cannot prove, suggesting that e.g. visions, hallucinations are not produced by beings - when it can easily proven that they are. How can you say things are so, and things are not so, from a position of ignorance? It is like a pre-school child saying that the square root of 64 is not 8, when it knows almost nothing about math. It is one thing for psychiatry to assert that a guy who thinks he is a dog is delusional, but to say that people who believe in God and other beings are delusional as well, when it cannot prove its case, shows psychiatry to be largely a belief system, about how the world and the human brain works.

 

[Limbo]

Unless tea leaves or hallucinations contain useful information, you can do this for a billion years without learning a single useful thing. As far as we can tell, tea leaves, yarrow stalks, hallucinations, the position of the zodiac and so forth all contain zero useful information.

It's not the function of the divination tools to contain useful information, in-and-of-themselves. It is the function of the yarrow stalks, etc to receive the projections of the psyche. There is then a meaningful coincidence between the psychological state of the diviner and the seemingly random configuration of the yarrow stalks.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It's not the function of the divination tools to contain useful information, in-and-of-themselves. It is the function of the yarrow stalks, etc to receive the projections of the psyche. There is then a meaningful coincidence between the psychological state of the diviner and the seemingly random configuration of the yarrow stalks.

There's an underlying assumption here that by staring at "projections of the psyche" we can learn something useful, as opposed to seeing patterns where none exist. I'm aware of no evidence that anyone has ever learned anything useful by these means.

However perhaps more importantly, why not stick to yarrow stalks and tea leaves, if altered states are no better and no worse than yarrow stalks and tea leaves? Is it just an excuse to get off your face and pretend that you're doing so for "spiritual" reasons rather than more mundane drug-seeking reasons?

For that matter if tea leaves, yarrow stalks and peyote are all just archaic lateral thinking exercises, why not just pick up a copy of one of Edward de Bono's books on creativity and lateral thinking and skip the whole mystical rigmarole? It might even work better.

 

[jakesteele]

I have been into metaphysics for many years and I have always defined it similar to this. To me it's just philosophy with the god element thrown in.

Merriam dict.
# a metaphysical world of spirits
# <a work that deals with such metaphysical questions as the very nature of knowledge

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/metaphysical
relating to ideas about life, existence, and other things that are not part of the physical world


metaphysical speculation about God

 

[Limbo]

There's an underlying assumption here that by staring at "projections of the psyche" we can learn something useful, as opposed to seeing patterns where none exist.

Who is we?

However perhaps more importantly, why not stick to yarrow stalks and tea leaves, if altered states are no better and no worse than yarrow stalks and tea leaves?

Who said altered states are no better and no worse than yarrow stalks and tea leaves in the first place? You seemed to want to talk about divination with your tea leaves there. Well my friend tea leaves are tools of divination not mysticism. Altered states of consciousness are a defining characteristic of mysticism, but altered states are not required in order to use tools of divination, and the tools of divination are not required to achieve altered states.

 

[nescafe]

If you disagree that electrical and/or chemical stimulation of the brain can produce experiences, then I have some peyote to sell you.

The most powerful insight I ever had on LSD was that all of the alterations in my perception and mental function that I was experiencing was due entirely to a miniscule amount of a slightly exotic chemical doing odd things to my nervous system.


As far as mindblowing psychedelic experiences go, it is probably one of the more useful ones.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Who is we?

Who said altered states are no better and no worse than yarrow stalks and tea leaves in the first place? You seemed to want to talk about divination with your tea leaves there. Well my friend tea leaves are tools of divination not mysticism.

Perhaps I have not explained the point I am making clearly enough.

Whether the stated goal of these exercises is divination or mysticism, both are sterile exercises in seeing patterns where none exist. Attempting to see patterns in hallucinations is as pointless as attempting to see patterns in tea leaves.

 

[Nonpareil]

Can you prove your claim? This is the thing that irritates me about proponents of scientific disciplines: many don't even realize that all they are doing is championing belief systems.

You don't seem to understand. We know that hallucinations are physical. At the very least, we can prove that they have a physical component. When one is experiencing a hallucination, we can measure erratic brain activity and show conclusively that there is something physical happening. If you want to say that there's a mystical component as well, then you need to provide the evidence, not us.

 

[PDoug]

You don't seem to understand. We know that hallucinations are physical. At the very least, we can prove that they have a physical component. When one is experiencing a hallucination, we can measure erratic brain activity and show conclusively that there is something physical happening. If you want to say that there's a mystical component as well, then you need to provide the evidence, not us.

Based on your physical evidence, all you can say is that hallucinations have physical components. You cannot say that they are not derived from intelligences - or more specifically, that intelligences are not causing physical reactions. In fact you can prove that intelligences are behind them, from the fact that intelligences of one form are another behind everything. Also credible texts (e.g. the Bible) claim they are so. Therefore many who believe that there are intelligences behind hallucinations, have rational foundations for believing the way they do.

 

[Nonpareil]

Based on your physical evidence, all you can say is that hallucinations have physical components. You cannot say that they are not derived from intelligences - or more specifically, that intelligences are not causing physical reactions.

Apparently you didn't understand my last post, so here's another explanation: this is the burden of proof fallacy. It's also a violation of Occam's razor.

If you want to say that "intelligences" are behind hallucinations, you need evidence. Otherwise, we accept the null hypothesis - that hallucinations are simply physical.

In fact you can prove that intelligences are behind them, from the fact that intelligences of one form are another behind everything.

Your blog post is not evidence. It merely assumes its conclusion. You state that intelligence is required for anything to happen, then, as "proof", say that intelligence is required for anything. You're doing nothing but asserting. There's absolutely no reason to believe what you're saying here.

Also credible texts (e.g. the Bible)

Not credible.

Therefore many who believe that there are intelligences behind hallucinations, have rational foundations for believing the way they do.

No, sorry. They don't.

 

[PDoug]

Apparently you didn't understand my last post, so here's another explanation: this is the burden of proof fallacy. It's also a violation of Occam's razor.

If you want to say that "intelligences" are behind hallucinations, you need evidence. Otherwise, we accept the null hypothesis - that hallucinations are simply physical.

Fine, let's go with the (standard) burden of proof lying with the person making the affirmative claim.

Your blog post is not evidence. It merely assumes its conclusion. You state that intelligence is required for anything to happen, then, as "proof", say that intelligence is required for anything. You're doing nothing but asserting. There's absolutely no reason to believe what you're saying here.

In my blog post, I cited examples of situations where intelligence was required for things to be established. That was my proof. Can you cite me examples (or provide some other evidence) where you can definitively say that intelligence is not required for things to be established?

Not credible.

The Bible is regarded in many cultures (including in the U.S. and Europe) as a credible text - to the point where people swear to it in courts of law.

No, sorry. They don't.

Yes they do.

 

[PixyMisa]

Would you mind describing the extent of your mystical experiences?

There's no such thing.

 

[PixyMisa]

In my blog post, I cited examples of situations where intelligence was required for things to be established. That was my proof.

That's not a proof.

Can you cite me examples (or provide some other evidence) where you can definitively say that intelligence is not required for things to be established?

Shifting the burden of proof.

The Bible is regarded in many cultures (including in the U.S. and Europe) as a credible text

No.

Yes they do.

No, sorry, they don't.