Section 9: First Person Approaches

1. Section 9: First Person Approaches By: Benny Palma Dat Thai

2. Chapter 25: The View from Within • Battle between First Person and Third Person Data • A. Chalmers, Searle, Nagel, Levine, and Pinker are of the First-Person Data School of Thought. • B. Chalmers claims “consciousness has a first person or subjective ontology and so cannot be reduced to anything that has third-person or objective ontology. If you try to reduce or eliminate one in favor of the other you leave something out.”

3. Chapter 25: The View from Within • C. The Churchlands, Andy Clark, Quine, Hofstadter, and Dennet comprise the Third-Party School of Thought. • D. They claim that studying consciousness does not mean studying special inner, private ineffable qualia, but studying what people say or do, for there is no other way of getting at the phenomena.

4. Chapter 25: The View from Within • Phenomenology • i. Refers to any methods for the systematic investigation of phenomenal experience. • ii. Practical applications of phenomenology include exploring emotional states, or describing what it is like to undergo certain experiences, with the intention of discovering the essence of these experiences. • iii. The typical method involves several stages of analyzing interviews or written accounts.

5. Chapter 25: The View from Within • NeuroPhenomenology • A. Concept refers to the “quest to marry modern cognitive science and a disciplined approach to human experience.” • B. “Phenomenological accounts of the structure of experience and their counterparts in cognitive science relate to each other through reciprocal constraints.” Meaning that experience should be validated by various neurobiological proposals.

6. Chapter 25: The View from Within • HeteroPhenomenology • A. Essentially, defined as “the study of other people’s phenomena” • B. Studies everything and anything that people do and say, and accepts that they are genuinely trying to describe how things seem to them. • C. Three main steps use in this practice: • 1. Data is collected. • 2. Data is interpreted. • 3. Adopt the intentional stance (we treat the subject as a rational agent who has beliefs, desires, and intentionality). According to Dennet, this is the basic method that has always been used in the science of psychology.

7. Chapter 25: The View from Within • According to the philosophies of the two rivaling schools of thought, there has not been any meaningful reconciliation. Their claims still rival one another.

8. Chapter 26: Mediation and Mindfulness • A. Most methods of mediation have religious origins. Surprisingly, many of the transcendental experiences and mystical states of conscious that mediators experience have, despite the fact that their radically differing worldviews, similar elements and insights. • B. Common to all forms of mediation are two basic tasks: • 1. Paying attention • 2. Not thinking

9. Chapter 26: Mediation and Mindfulness • C. Mindfulness meditation in Buddhism is a form of open mediation, in particular the method of Shikantaza, which means “just sitting.” • i. This method employs the idea to be continuously mindful and attentive, and fully present in the moment, paying attention to anything and everything without discrimination. • ii. Once the desired state has been achieved nonduality occurs, which is the state where differences between self and other, and the mind and its contents disappear.

10. Chapter 26: Mediation and Mindfulness • D. Concentrative Mediation • i. Paying focused attention to one thing without distraction, rather than remaining open to the world. • ii. Different breathing patterns have powerful effects on awareness, and there is evidence that experienced meditators use these effects. • iii. Meditators may be told that they can learn to control special energy or even learn to acquire paranormal and healing abilities.

11. Chapter 26: Mediation and Mindfulness • E. Siddhis and Psychic Powers • i. Siddhis are supernatural or paranormal powers that develop as a result of some types of mediation that includes: • 1. Prophecy • 2. Levitation • 3. Astral Projection • 4. Control over others and forces of nature

12. Chapter 26: Mediation and Mindfulness • E. Siddhis and Psychic Powers • ii. Transcendental meditators have made huge claims regarding their ability to manifest specific paranormal abilities but not have subjected themselves to rigorous scientific observation. Their claims are suspected and have not been verified by any reliable sources. • iii. Research into religious mystical sects from various cultures have also witnesses similar types of phenomena.

13. Chapter 26: Mediation and Mindfulness • F. Insight and Awakening • i. Meditators achieve an altered state of consciousness in their state. • 1. Research has discovered that fluctuating brain wave states between Alpha and Theta recorded by EEG accounts for the altered state of consciousness. Although, some of the evidence is inconsistent. • 2. Peter Fenwick counters by stating that meditators fall asleep and do not achieve an altered state of consciousness. • 3. Kasamatsu’s and Hirai’s study found more theta wave activity in experienced meditators and the Zen masters correlated this shift to spiritual development. Novitiates did not have this increase in theta activity.

14. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Buddhism • A. Siddhartha Guatama was a spoiled child from a wealthy family in India. When he was 29, he left behind his wealth, wife, and a young son, and set off to become a wandering ascetic, depriving himself of every comfort and outdoing all the other ascetics of his time by the harsh rigors of his self-imposed discipline. He sat under a tree for seven days until he was enlightened on the seventh.

15. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Buddhism • B. Buddha urged people not to be satisfied with hearsay or tradition but to look within to see the truth, and it is said that his last words were “Work out your own salvation with diligence.” • C. So what is Enlightenment? • i. Those who speak of it at all say that it cannot be explained or described. • ii. The closest that we can get to saying anything positive about enlightenment is that it is losing something—dropping the illusions.

16. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Buddhism • D. Buddhism is about finding out the truth in order to transform oneself, to become free from suffering, and even to save all sentient beings from sufferings.

17. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Buddhism and Therapy • A. While psychotherapy aims to create a coherent self of self, Buddhist psychology aims to transcend the sense of self.

18. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Buddhism and Therapy • B. Jack Engler studied the effects of Buddhism on students and determined: • i. Those that are attracted to Buddhism because of failures in their development of self, or as a way of avoiding dealing with themselves, ran the risk of further fragmenting their already sense of self. • ii. “You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.” • iii. People who are frail, unhappy, neurotic, and deeply afraid may have catastrophic reactions to facing themselves. They want to feel better, and embarking on serious spiritual inquiry is likely to make them feel a great deal worse. • iv. Those who persevere with spiritual practice say that it naturally gives rise to many positive and therapeutic effects… they become more loving and compassionate, and find greater equanimity.

19. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Waking Up • A. Described as though it was the endpoint of a long journey along the spiritual path… • B. Douglas Harding insists that there are not two parallel worlds, an inner and an outer, because if you really look, you just see one world, which is always before you. • C. Awakening is not the culmination of a journey but the realization that you never left home and never could.

20. Chapter 27: Buddhism and Consciousness • Waking Up • E. One point that Buddhism and psychology both make is that our experience is in some sense, illusory. • F. Meditators and spiritual masters drop the illusion and see all arising experiences as interdependent, impermanent and not inherently divided into separate things. • G. Fenwick claims, “the characteristic of enlightenment is a permanent freeing of the individual from the illusion that he is ‘doing’”.