Internal Empiricism: An Exploratory Argument

Internal Empiricism
An exploratory argument

Over thousands of years introspectives have disseminated their techniques and practices giving rise to thousands upon of thousands of replications of observations by disparate practitioners.

The peer review method of introspection! A community that works together introspectively and tests the results!
Mindfulness is simply a state of open, nonjudgmental, and nondiscursive attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to modulate pain, mitigate anxiety and depression, improve cognitive function, and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self awareness.

Harris, Sam, Neuroscience, Meditation, May 10, 2011
Meditation Instructions: Example

Sit comfortably, with your spine erect, either in chair or cross-legged on a cushion.
Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and feel the points of contact between your body and the chair or floor. Notice the sensations associated with sitting—feelings of pressure, warmth, tingling, vibration, etc.
Gradually become aware of the process of breathing. Pay attention to wherever you feel the breath most clearly—either at the nostrils, or in the rising and falling your abdomen.
Allow your attention to rest in the mere sensation of breathing. (There is no need to control your breath. Just let it come and go naturally.)
Every time your mind wanders in thought, gently return it to the sensation of breathing.
As you focus on the breath, you will notice that other perceptions and sensations continue to appear: sounds, feelings in the body, emotions, etc. Simply notice these phenomena as they emerge in the field of awareness, and then return to the sensation of breathing.
The moment you observe that you have been lost in thought, notice the present thought itself as an object of consciousness. Then return your attention to the breath—or to whatever sounds or sensations arise in the next moment.
Continue in this way until you can merely witness all objects of consciousness—sights, sounds, sensations, emotions, and even thoughts themselves—as they arise and pass away.
Don't fall. [Courtesy of Sam Harris]

A Contemplative Science?
Internet sites:

Sam Harris links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-contemplative-science_b_15024.html
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-meditate/

UCLA: Mindfulness Awareness Centre
http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22&oTopID=22

Buddhism?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/is-buddhism-the-most-science-friendly-religion/
http://online.sfsu.edu/rone/Buddhism/VerhoevenBuddhismScience.htm







The Inner Kids Foundation
http://innerkids.org/Inner_Kids_Foundation/Welcome.html

Mindfulness Training Helpful for the Military
http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/02/18/mindfulness-training-helpful-for-the-military/11562.html

Michael Polanyi and tacit knowledge
http://infed.org/mobi/michael-polanyi-and-tacit-knowledge/

Welcome to The Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/mindfulness/

The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society
http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/

Oxford Mindfulness Centre
http://www.oxfordmindfulness.org/






Journal Articles
Neuroscience. 2011 Apr 6;31(14):5540-8.
Brain mechanisms supporting the modulation of pain by mindfulness meditation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21471390?dopt=Citation
J Anxiety Disord. 2010 Aug;24(6):590-5. Epub 2010 Apr 3.
Effectiveness of a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy in patients with panic disorder.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20427148?dopt=CitationConscious Cogn. 2010 Jun;19(2):597-605. Epub 2010 Apr 3.
Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: evidence of brief mental training.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363650?dopt=CitationPsychiatry Res. 2011 Jan 30;191(1):36-43. Epub 2010 Nov 10.
Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21071182?dopt=Citation




Thinkers to read
Bhante Gunaratana
Raymond Tallis
Sam Harris
Galen Strawson
Thomas Nagel
Joseph Goldstein
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mark Williams
Owen Barfield

Rupert Sheldrake
Julian Jaynes
Carl Jung
Martin Heidegger
Immanuel Kant
George Berkeley
John R. Searle
David Bohm
Michael Polyani
Malcolm Guite
Jonathan Powell
What are the introspective characteristics that point us toward well being?
I submit to you (as many before me have) that such is the case with regard to consciousness itself. The capacity for reliable, rigorous introspection can be trained with astonishing results. What is seemingly astonishing is that the results of such training yield reliable, repeatable changes in the phenomenology of practitioners.

Powell, J. Consciousness Naturalised. 2011
Experiences reached by way of mysticism, meditation, psycho-active substance use etc. are a robust phenomenon. That is to say that they reliably and repetitively arise in human beings if they engage in certain practices.
These can be either idea focused, or nothingness focused.
Metaphysical claims can arise about these, but at the base the testable, repeatable processes are accessible.

Note: I am not making the claim that empiricism (either external or internal) can answer all questions of knowledge. Rather I am pointing towards a base, fundamental level of knowledge that can be agreed upon – in principle – by differing worldviews, philosophies. This can be both subject orientated (internally empirical) and object orientated (externally empirical: though object observation of course relies on subjects)

Introspection is taking the process of awareness itself as the object of one's attention.

This 1st Person mode is given credence as a means to obtain empirical knowledge (it is added to the 3rd Person mode of the scientific method).

Descartes, Cogito Ego Sum, from his work, Meditations: "Try thinking about things this way" he effectively said and you'll discover for yourself something true about your own nature. The key is in the word meditations… [Or Thomas Nagel "There is something it is like 'to be'."
Well-being?
Well-being refers to positive and sustainable characteristics which enable individuals and organisations to thrive and flourish.
The Well-being Institute, University of Cambridge


How then do we best test for some of these positive and sustainable characteristics and what is their underlying basis?

This is what I am interested in exploring…
Part of an overall goal
We should not be motivated to develop our introspective skills exclusively for the proven health benefits or to reach states of bliss (though these are of course highly desirable) but as entities in search of understanding we should approach our inner states as we approach our investigations of the external world, that is with objectivity (in the sense of neutrality), repetition of observation, replication of the observations of others and an on-going commitment to the unification of our understanding of the world.
Powell, J. Consciousness Naturalised, 2011.

Descartes and Cartesian Dualism?
With Descartes came the great cleaving of reality into the Minded and the Unminded, the Mental and the Physical, the subjective and the objective.
This claim – Cartesian Dualism - saw reality as composed of two substances primarily different in nature. Modern Science focuses on one side of this dualism – "the external objective world" or "the physical" (methodological naturalism).
If Descartes was wrong we have to have a different understanding of how best to understand the characteristics most conducive to well being. E.g. Values and science are not separate... (See Sam Harris)
Suggested reading regarding problems with Dualism and its child Empiricism: Raymond Tallis, Sam Harris, Galen Strawson, Anthony Kenny, Owen Barfield.
Might An Internal Empiricism be part of the Answer?
A suggested methodology of Internal Empiricism.
Put forward the claim that a holistic use of the human mind in all the properties we can perceive it to have is central not just to understanding human beings and by implication – human well being – but also to understanding the fundamental nature of reality itself. That is both subjectivity and objectivity are of equal importance to knowledge.
The methodology aims to complement mainstream external empiricism. It aims to be:
Introspective
Internally Empirical (testable, repeatable within the mind – the internalised experiences labelled subjective)
Repetition of observation
Replication of the observations of others
The dominant model?
The education and research system in Britain and much of the Western World emphasizes External Empiricism (i.e. mainstream science) as the most accurate model for obtaining and understanding knowledge.
This model conceptualises what is external to us as being what is fundamental to reality. By implication mind – fundamental to our identity as human beings – is then seen as a by-product of these external underlying physical forces. Do we therefore study the brain "in a scanner" to best understand the mind and to best understand well-being?
Implication (if true): By studying fundamental physical forces we might be able to fully understand the brain and therefore the mind and therefore well-being? One possibility I suggest.
If a tree falls in the forest…?
The power of observation
The implication of mind as primary to the basis of understanding human beings and most of our characteristics

Can we conceive of what the Universe would be without us as observers of it?
To seek to make an external objective world "more real", devalues the place that human minds have in the observation process of that perceived to be the external. It also often dismisses "the subjective", even as subjects are involved in obtaining "objective knowledge"
Psychology?
External Empiricism (i.e. the scientific method) explained: Measurable/observable stimulus goes in… something happens… and measurable/observable behaviour follows.
Like physical theory in general the conceptual inadequacy of such an approach lies not in its failure to refer to or investigate actual concrete phenomenological goings-on, but rather in its failure to recognise that a 1st-person perspective can be added to that theory yielding a more powerful model.

Another way of putting it! Consciousness is fundamental to any human understanding of reality and therefore imbues all that we learn, research or seek to understand as human beings. This includes what we perceive to be external to us and the research we do on that perception (external empiricism/the scientific method).

In this move…we see analytic thought (1st-person reflection) informing our interpretation of physical systems.
Powell, J. Consciousness Naturalised. 2011

To best understand our existence, our awareness and our well being we must understand our form of consciousness and use that to find the methods that best work for "positive and sustainable characteristics which enable individuals and organisations to thrive and flourish".

In the process we begin to understand more about ourselves.

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