Phenomenology can deconstruct religious dogma

While I said in my last post that I'd be moving on from the subject of predictive processing, I'm only going to go halfway there. Because I want to explore something that stood out for me in one of the slides I shared in that post from a talk by Shamil Chandaria about "The Bayesian Brain and Meditation."

This is how I described the blue box with various terms for Non-Dual Awareness and its associated orange'ish note in my previous blog post.

Emptiness, in the Buddhist sense, is one of the spiritual notions (in the blue box) that Chandaria says are similar phenomenology (meaning, as experienced) yet with different metaphysical narratives. That's for sure. Brahman, God in Hinduism, is very different from Buddhist emptiness -- which means the interdependence of all things, none of which possess inherent existence in their own right.

Now, I'm not sure how similar the phenomenological experiences of non-dual awareness actually are. But before talking about that, here's a definition of phenomenology.

The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view. This field of philosophy is then to be distinguished from, and related to, the other main fields of philosophy: ontology (the study of being or what is), epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of right and wrong action), etc.

So assuming non-dual awareness does exist, where basically there is just a unity of experience instead of (1) an experiencer and (2) something being experienced, Chandaria considers that those experiencing non-dual awareness who use terms in the blue box from various spiritual and philosophical traditions all are having pretty much the same subjective experience, even though the terms point to different metaphysical narratives or dogmas.

I like this idea.

It rings true to me, though given the inherently personal nature of subjective experience, it would be difficult to prove that a Christian who feels the presence of Jesus when she stands on top of a  mountain, totally absorbed in the majestic beauty of her surroundings, is having the same non-dual experience as a Buddhist atheist who feels the emptiness or interdependence of those same surroundings.

In other words, it is when we frame a non-dual experience of unity between subject and object within a theological, philosophical, or some other system of thought that differences appear, even though the phenomenological experiences themselves may be very similar, if not identical.

I can't resist relating this to the criminal indictment of Trump that the United States Justice Department released a few days ago. Sure, it's quite a jump from non-dual awareness to serious legal charges against an ex-president, but my mind, like all minds, works in mysterious ways.

Political junkie that I am, I've been avidly following the reactions of Republican and Democratic leaders to the news of the indictment. Let's assume that they all have read the indictment, which runs 49 pages, but doesn't take very long to read given copious white space in the pages.

The indictment is akin to low-level phenomenology. It lays out some basic evidence about the case against Trump. The details and photos in the indictment are damning. Anyone who cares about national security and keeping our nation's military secrets safe should feel alarmed at what the charges against Trump are, and the evidence backing up those charges.

(This isn't all the evidence the government has. More surely will be revealed at Trump's trial.)

However, many if not most Republican leaders, including Trump himself, have been focusing on higher-level dogmas. I call them that, because there's really no facts to back them up. They're just ways of looking at the indictment that distract from the evidence presented in it by the Justice Department.

So Trump calls it a witch hunt. Other Republicans decry the weaponization of the Justice Department to go after Trump in an unfair manner. There's false claims that Biden ordered the indictment, ignoring that a special counsel was appointed to oversee the investigation into Trump's handling of secret documents, and a grand jury authorized the indictment.

Thus while there is little debate about the facts in the indictment, which are virtually indisputable, there's lots of debate about what the indictment means. Is it a valid way of holding Trump accountable for his willful retention of sensitive documents (my view), or is it a nasty way for Democrats to punish Trump because they hate him? (the view of most Republicans)

My point here is that the closer we come to raw experience and raw facts, the more agreement there should be on those low-level aspects of life. When we enter the realm of higher-level abstractions and dogmas, there is more room for disagreement.

At any rate, I like the idea that underneath all of the differences between the world's religious theologies and philosophical ways of looking at the world, there's a fundamental human unity that manifests when experience enters a state that is variously described as flow, absorption, non-duality, and such.

More simply put, a mother who can't stop gazing at the newborn she holds in her arms, so absorbed in the infant that the two of them appear to her to be one, is having the same experience as other mothers, whether they be committed Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

"...So assuming non-dual awareness does exist, ..."

..........That's actually what I was getting at, in that last comment of mine. There's a big "if" right there.

I kind of suspect that the part about the perception-cognition model is established science. While the part about how it speaks to meditation, beyond merely the basics of mindfulness --- where, that is, it speaks to the more esoteric portions of Vajrayanic "technology" --- is probably just conjecture, and/or extrapolation from the former to the latter, and/or ongoing work-in-process investigation and research whether that might actually be so.

I'm kind of skeptical that any of this is actually a validation of Vajrayana. At least not at this point in time, although who knows, one day it might. (But it would be super cool if my skepticism is misplaced, and this is already proven fact and established science. Yep, both in general, and given my particular practice, that would be very cool indeed.)

And regardless, all of this is --- to repeat myself! --- completely fascinating, completely mind-blowing. It's good and right that all of this should be subjected to rigorous scientific research; which is apparently exactly what's being done here.

As for “non-dual awareness” specifically, I’m not sure that’s actually a thing; and I’m very doubtful that that is actually scientifically proven yet to be …real. Our “primaries” encompass everything around us, sure, and they can be made to encompass more, far more, than a naive and narrow POV might accommodate, sure; but to say the same of our awareness, that might be stretching things a bit.

Of course, that’s exactly what many traditions of meditation indicate. And that’s kind of what many of us, who practice meditation, hope to actualize within ourselves --- that, and the deconstruction-reconstruction thing. Provided it is a thing. But our aspiring to it does not make it true, it only makes us keep our eyes open for it. (Not suggesting for a minute that you’re doing that, to be clear! Just pointing out that Chandaria’s probably speaking of two classes of things here, on one hand things that are established science, and on the other hand things that aren’t that, at least not yet.)

And again, that’s only my tentative …feel, about this. I could be mistaken, I don’t actually know this.

And agreed, should this be true, then there’s far more of commonality within the (alleged) end-results of different traditions of meditation than the theology underpinning them might indicate.

[Ron E.]

@Brian: "It rings true to me, though given the inherently personal nature of subjective experience, it would be difficult to prove that a Christian who feels the presence of Jesus when she stands on top of a mountain, totally absorbed in the majestic beauty of her surroundings, is having the same non-dual experience as a Buddhist atheist who feels the emptiness or interdependence of those same surroundings.
In other words, it is when we frame a non-dual experience of unity between subject and object within a theological, philosophical, or some other system of thought that differences appear, even though the phenomenological experiences themselves may be very similar, if not identical."

------

Yes, I can appreciate the view that the Christian feels the presence of Jesus and the Buddhist perspective of feeling the emptiness – and that it depends on one’s ‘system of thought’. The appearance of the world is a construction but a restrained construction. Constrained by external data and internal beliefs, prior and assumptions. Deconstruction in my view is to consciously integrate new and perhaps unfamiliar experiences to enable an alternative, perhaps responsive prediction rather than reactive

One article I saw regarding phenomenology reads: “Phenomenology is subjective, not objective. It studies experiences from the subjective point of view. While it does attempt to be scientific, it does not study consciousness objectively, instead focusing on the subjective structure of experience through elements such as judgments, perceptions, and emotions.”

And, regarding phenomenology, in Psychology Today it stated: ‘When trying to understand, explain, or predict the experience or the behaviour of individuals, experimental science seems of little help.’

Well, there has been serious studies on the predictive brain and emotions – which include thoughts etc. I refer back again to the work of L. F-Barrett and her scientific research on emotions regarding the predictive brain theory. Barrett research points to: “Your brain is predictive, not reactive.” And; “. . . emotions are constructed predictively by the brain in the moment as needed.” Such is founded on repeatable research and science.

I would be somewhat suspicious of phenomenology with its subjective nature. Though many aspects of emptiness – no-self etc. – can be tested by science theory and verified, which to my mind incorporates the basis of non-dual awareness.

[SantMat64]

Historians ponder, and indeed I've often wondered, how the German people were so taken in by Mein Kampf. The book was a perennial best seller. Just why did the Germans believe this screed?
So strange! So very strange it's unthinkable that it could happen again. Must have been an historical anomaly. Or at least, that kind of thing might happen elsewhere, but never in the United States, today's United States.

And yet here are, with a Justice dept that over and over again has persecuted members of one political party while it turned a blind eye to the enormities of the other. Over and over and over again.

And here we are with citizens rejoicing in this beyond deplorable state of affairs. Go Gestapo go.
"There were nukulur secrets in them boxes!" Sure there were. And Bison horns man almost took over the country. "He game $ to a woman!" Oh dear.

These are the same people who get teary-eyed about "the threats to democracy" while they give a thumbs up to blatant banana republic election interference.

No surprise these are the same people who support sexuality and sexually mutilating our children.

But like the people of 30s Deutschland, they think they're quite in the right.

I confess I find their self satisfied scribbling entertaining to look at, much like a train wreck.

[Brian Hines]

SantMat64, your mental bias toward Trump is showing in your comment. The reason Trump is in so much legal trouble is that he's a criminal and a habitual liar. E. Jean Carroll won her defamation suit against Trump because the jury believed her story rather than Trump's.

The Justice Department wouldn't have indicted Trump if, unlike Biden and Pence, he simply returned government documents in his possession rather than obstructing justice and engaging in a conspiracy to keep them hidden from federal officials.

You do realize, don't you, that a special counsel was appointed to investigate the documents case to prevent the appearance of the Justice Department being tilted against Trump. Jack Smith, the investigator, convinced a grand jury to issue the indictment. Like most Trump supporters, you have a warped view of reality when it comes to your object of devotion.

I urge you to open your mental eyes and realize who Trump really is: again, a criminal and habitual liar who only cares about himself, not his country or those who work for him -- many of whom have been convicted of crimes.

[Spence Tepper]

No secular model of consciousness has yet been proven, including the predictive model...

The bet made twenty five years ago by Koch and Chalmers, that by 2023 the problem of consciousness would be solved, has been lost.

But not without compelling progress!

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2023/6/30/23778870/consciousness-brain-mind-hard-problem-neuroscience-koch-chalmers