Section 9: First Person Approaches

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Section 9 First Person Approaches

• By Benny Palma
• Dat Thai

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Chapter 25 The View from Within

• HeteroPhenomenology
• A. Essentially, defined as the study of other
  peoples 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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. Kasamatsus and Hirais 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.

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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.

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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 somethingdropping the illusions.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.