MALE SPEAKER: Alan Wallace
is not a typical man.
He's a man who cannot sit
still in one place.
So, even while he was
a man, he went on to
get a degree in physics.
And then he went on to study
neurosciences, and
psychology, and stuff.
And eventually, he got one of
those PhD thingies that some
of you might have. And then he
pulled a PhD, so he went on to
become a professor in UCSB.
And then he decided he couldn't
sit still in UCSB, so
he went on to found
his own institute.
And he decided to take
everything as evidence in life
to try to advance the
mind sciences.
And, when I heard about his
work, I figured these things
ought to be interesting to
Google mind sciences and
everything, so I invited him to
come visit, come eat with
us, and share a talk.
And before I bring Alan up,
just a reminder to all
Googles, please do not ask him
any questions that contains
information that is Google
confidential.
Thank you, and with
that, Alan.
[APPLAUSE]
B. ALAN WALLACE: Thank you.
Well, it's quite a delight for
me to be with you today.
I've been knowing about Google,
like the rest of us,
for a long time.
Delighted to be in the matrix
here and to share some of my
passions pertaining to
understanding the nature of
the mind, its potentials, the
nature of consciousness.
And, as Meng mentioned, I've
had a rather diverse
background, but I have been
blessed with extraordinary
teachers in the Tibetan
tradition, other Buddhist
traditions, but also marvelous
instructors in physics,
philosophy of science at Amherst
College, and then
doing a very diverse PhD
program at Stanford
University, where it was
ostensibly in religious
studies, but taking courses in
philosophy of physics, and
cognitive psychology, philosophy
of mind and trying
to bring all of these together,
to integrate them.
My background, being raised in
the West but then living for
years in Europe and quite a few
years in Asia, trying to
integrate, to synthesize, so
that these various aspects of
my own life as a Buddhist monk
for 14 years, but also a
physics student and so forth,
could be all integrated, and
so that the various aspects of
my own last 56 years on the
planet would be all one
integrated unit.
So no part was isolated
from the others.
You know, it actually took a
long time because I've had--
again, been exposed to so many
diverse world views, ways of
life, and so on.
So what I'd like to share with
you this afternoon is a vision
of a possibility of a first
revolution in the mind sciences.
And this very notion is based
on an assumption that
certainly can be contested,
probably everything can be.
But the starting assumption
here is that, among the
natural sciences, we had the
first great revolution in the
natural sciences starting with
Copernicus, building up
momentum with Kepler, Galileo,
and coming to its fulfillment,
to its fruition, with Newton.
And so the first great
revolution we had in the
natural sciences was in
physics and astronomy.
And I would say, from my own
perspective, it started with
Copernicus, but, with Newton,
it came together.
He brought it all together.
And that's when that
revolution stopped.
And then we simply had a lot of
excellent science, a lot of
ethnophysics, after that.
And then we move over to
another discipline.
The life sciences are plugging
along, plugging along, and
then, 1859, Darwin comes out
with his masterpiece.
And so he started the first and
the only great revolution
we've had in the
life sciences.
I'd say it started
with Darwin.
It started building momentum
in the 1870's with Gregor
Mendel, a Christian monk, with
genetics, of course.
And then it was building
momentum, building momentum.
Key point, one century after
Darwin, 1959, Crick and
Watson, DNA, we finally found
out the mechanics.
How does this happen, the
natural selection?
How can species mutate?
Darwin didn't tell us.
Mendel gave us a hint.
Crick and Watson pointed;
there is machinery.
And so, following that, we've
had this extraordinary growth,
this spectacular growth, in
the study of genetics.
And I would say that great
revolution starting in 1959
has come to a culmination; it's
over, and it was with the
human genome project.
We've mapped it something
like 99% now.
Well done.
And now, of course, the
study of biology, of
genetics, will continue.
But it was 140 years, and,
interestingly enough, it's
probably just a coincidence, but
it was 140 years also from
Copernicus through Newton.
It took 140 years for the
revolution to start and then
go voila, there it is.
We've also had a second great
revolution in physics, and it
started with Max
Planck in 1900.
It picked up momentum in 1905
and 1915 with the special and
general relativity theories
from Einstein.
It was truly a revolution.
And by revolution I mean, to use
the familiar phrase, the
paradigm is shifted.
Your fundamental orientation
towards the subject matter has
shifted, and it will
never be the same.
From the geocentric to the
heliocentric, from pre-Darwin
to post-Darwin, nothing's
the same.
You cannot look at human
existence, you cannot look at
the planet, in the same way any
more, it's fundamentally
your axis has rotated.
That second great revolution
in physics, it's not over.
106 years, if we start in 1900,
was Max Planck came out
with the notion of quantum.
It's not over.
There are some core, crucial,
fundamental issues in quantum
mechanics, in particular, have
not been solved, the most
important of which I would say
is the measurement problem.
How is it that you move from a
mathematical abstraction of a
probability function which
is hardly physical?
It's a pure abstraction.
But prior to making a
measurement that's what you
have, you have a probability
function, a
Schrodinger wave equation.
And then you make a measurement,
and voila, now
suddenly you have an electron
that is here.
It still doesn't have
simultaneous exact momentum
and location, but at least it's
a real electron, photon,
what have you.
But what is it about the act of
measurement that moves you
from a realm of possibility
to a realm of actuality?
Somehow, the observer's
involved, but in what way?
What does it take for a
measurement to take place?
What's required?
Do you need consciousness?
Could a robot do it?
We don't know.
The measurement problem, I think
it was identified about
1930 or so, it's unsolved,
it's big.
We don't know.
What is the role of the observer
in the natural world
who takes this from potential
to actuality?
But, of course, another major
unresolved question in this
20th century physics is you
have two extraordinarily
elegant, profound, powerful
theories, and that is quantum
mechanics on the one
hand and general
relativity on the other.
And neither one's going away;
they're too good.
But they're not integrated.
They're not integrated.
That would be the grand unified
theory, and nobody's
come up with it.
So, that revolution is in
progress, the second great
revolution in physics.
But now we go to the
mind sciences.
And I'd like to get a little bit
of historical perspective
here to point out one element
that I think is absolutely an
indispensable catalyst to bring
about a revolution in
any field of science, and that
is the development of
extraordinarily sophisticated,
advanced methods of empirical
observation.
If you don't have that,
the revolution's not
going to take place.
That'll be my premise.
You've got to observe this
phenomena you're really
interested in, and you've got
to observe it beyond folk
astronomy, or folk psychology,
or folk biology.
Get professional.
And so, when I think of this
first great revolution in the
physical sciences, I don't
think of Copernicus.
He was a brilliant
mathematician.
He was not a brilliant
experimenter.
He was not a brilliant
observer.
He'd get up on the roof of his
monastery; he'd look at the
stars with the best of them.
He didn't do anything
innovative there.
His mathematical theory that was
innovative, so they called
it the Copernicus revolution.
Kepler himself was not
a great observer.
He got all his data from Tycho
Brahe who was a very powerful
observer, a very brilliant
Danish astronomer.
But Kepler, like Copernicus,
was a great mathematician.
It was Galileo that brought
in the full package.
Galileo was the observer.
He was the engineer.
He was the one that reinvented
the telescope, which it
actually had been invented
in Holland.
He tried to order one; somebody
snipped it on the way.
You know, he Googled and got one
on the way, and then they
snip it in the mail.
And so he was there, bummed
out, he didn't get his
telescope because somebody
snipped it, you know?
And he said to heck with it.
I'll make my own, so he did.
He made himself a twenty power
telescope, and he did
something unprecedented.
The telescope was already there,
but Galileo was the
innovator and he used it
in unprecedented ways.
Instead of just goggling,
looking at the girls across
the street in Holland, he
directed it upwards.
And everywhere he looked, can
you imagine how thrilling this
must have been?
But everything he looked at he
was discovering something
nobody'd ever seen before.
He took his telescope and
directed it at the moon, and
he saw craters for the first
time in humanity's history.
He turned it to Jupiter;
he saw the moons
for the first time.
He turned it to the sun;
he saw sun spots.
He turned it to Venus; he
saw the phases of Venus.
Wouldn't that be thrilling?
That's what was needed.
He too was a mathematician, but
he was an experimenter.
He was rolling balls down a ramp
to see whether they went
at constant velocity,
or they accelerated.
He did actually drop objects
off the tower of Pisa.
I've been there and asked
the people at the
University of Pisa.
He did it all, and he also
brought it out into the world.
He didn't write in Latin like so
many of his contemporaries,
he wrote in Italian.
He brought it home.
He was the full package.
He was the consummate first
great scientist that brought
it all together.
Among the things he did which
was seminal, which is
indispensable for this
triggering of the first great
revolution in the physical
sciences, was
his use of the telescope.
He was making observations
like nobody
had ever done before.
The mathematics was there.
The observation, that was
crucial, otherwise, what they
were doing with Copernicus'
heliocentric system was a very
cool mathematical system,
but we already have
one, thanks very much.
And ours covers the data, it
accounts for the appearances,
so does yours, so whatever.
It's a matter of choice.
But it is not a matter of choice
when you start seeing
the phases of Venus.
It's not a matter of which one
you like, like do you like ice
cream or do you like
fudge brownies?
By this rigorous observation of
material phenomena, he was
the one, I think more than
anybody else, that launched
the true revolution, the first
great revolution, and it was
in the physical sciences.
In a similar fashion, Darwin
spent about 25 years in very
meticulous, rigorous, careful
observation of biological
phenomena, of course,
in the Galapagos.
We all know about that.
But, no, it wasn't just
the Galapagos.
He was doing years of study
observing, observing,
observing, and then, in 1859,
came up with this great
monumental work, The Origins of
the Species, that would not
have happened had he not been
meticulously observing that
biological phenomena.
It wasn't just staying home at
his estate and thinking really
deeply about biology, it wasn't
by doing really good
physics, it was by observing
biological phenomena carefully
and then drawing from that and
developing his spectacular
theory of evolution.
Well, then we get to 1890.
We get to the closing years of
the 19th century, the first
decade of the 20th century, and
a person I believe is of
equal stature.
William James, I have to
admit he's one of my
heroes, so look out.
I really love this guy because
he was brilliant.
He was an MD, he was a
biologist, he was a
spectacular philosopher.
He wrote the greatest American
treatise on religious
experience ever, The Varieties
of Religious Experience.
He was a psychologist. He
started the first neuroscience
lab, experimental psychology
lab, in the
United States at Harvard.
He was a brilliant philosopher,
religious studies
scholar, scientist, MD,
biologist, psychologist. And
he was so dogma-free; that's
what I love about this guy.
He wasn't buying into any
dogma, but he was an
empiricist. In fact, he started
a school of philosophy
called Radical Empiricism.
William James came to the mind,
and this is something
that had been postponed for 300
years from the times of
Copernicus.
Can you imagine 300 years of the
development of science, of
physics, chemistry, biology,
astronomy, geology, et cetera,
et cetera, 300 years before
they actually started the
scientific study of the mind?
That should throw you back for
a moment, if you've not quite
thought of it in those terms.
This is bizarre.
The mind is that with
which you're
doing all of this science.
It would be like somebody giving
you an instrument and
saying use this instrument,
you'll discover a lot of
things, and then waiting 300
years before you actually look
at the instrument itself.
That is weird.
But there were very good reasons
for it, and today we
have too short a time to really
explore them in-depth.
But, of course, for those first
300 years, science, the
natural sciences, established
a reputation, a spectacular
reputation, a well-earned
reputation, for studying
objective, quantifiable,
physical, phenomena,
objective, quantifiable,
physical, phenomena, so you
can bring in the full weight
of mathematics, the
technology, which is there
starting from the telescope,
moving right through all the
extraordinary advances in
technology.
But mental phenomena, emotions,
thoughts, mental
images, desires, memories,
expectations, the whole array,
visual perception, auditory,
mental perception, dreams,
these are not objective;
they're subjective.
They're not quantifiable;
they're qualitative.
They're not clearly physical.
I mean, the last time you had a
dream, look at the contents
of the dream and ask what
physical attributes do the
contents of your dream have?
The answer's none.
Or, your emotions, your desires,
your hopes and fears,
your feelings, your thoughts and
mental images, they don't
have any physical attributes at
all; you observe them, and
they're not physical, at
least they certainly
don't appear physical.
If they are physical,
then they're
really concealing something.
And so William James was
presenting, perhaps, the
greatest challenge in the
history of science with its
300 years of spectacular
success.
We--
because he, himself, was
a biologist, an MD--
we have gotten extremely good
using scientific method to
explore the objective,
quantifiable, physical.
And, now, can we take this
same expertise, this same
methodological rigor, and apply
it to that which is, by
nature, subjective, qualitative
and, perhaps,
non-physical?
And he said let's do it in a
way, the old fashioned way,
and that is let psychology be,
above all, the study of mental
phenomena as we experience
them immediately.
And for that, like physics and
like biology, let us catalyze
a revolution in the
mind sciences.
Let us start and do it the
old-fashioned way, carefully,
meticulously, rigorously
observe the phenomena,
themselves.
He proposed this, and
they didn't do it.
They tried it, and they
namby-pambied around with it
for about 20, 30 years,
and then they stopped.
Now, William James wasn't
the only person.
William James started the first
experimental psychology
lab at Harvard in 1879.
And here was his mission
statement in terms of
methodology.
He said, "Introspective
observation is what we have to
rely on first, and foremost,
and always.
The word introspection--
actually, we should have no
quotation marks there.
You can take out that middle
quotation mark.
He continues, "The word
introspection
need hardly be defined.
It means, of course, the looking
into our own minds and
reporting what we there
discover." In other words,
just as Galileo was an
empiricist and Darwin was an
empiricist, when we finally get
around to the mind, let's
be equally empirical and study
the phenomena themselves.
Now, in presenting this, he did
not at all disparage or
try to marginalize studying the
mind by way of behavior.
So the whole behavioral
sciences, inferring states of
consciousness, mental processes,
and so forth by way
of behavior, extremely
valuable; he did
not disparage that.
And so we're looking at the
fruits, the effects of mental
processes, by studying
behavioral output; excellent.
And then, of course, they knew
back then that the brain is
crucially important in
generating mental states,
processes, and so forth, so
causally look at the mind
indirectly by looking at the
neural causes giving rise to
metal phenomenon.
Look at the mind indirectly by
looking at the behavioral
output, or effects, of
mental phenomena.
But first, and foremost, and
always, look at the mental
phenomena and let your science
be based upon the actual
careful observation of the
phenomena themselves.
Now, in the same year that
William James started this
first experimental psychology
lab at Harvard, Wilhelm Wundt,
a German psychologist in
Germany, in the same year, he
started his own experimental
psychology lab.
And he echoed a very
similar theme.
He said, "The service which it--
the experimental method,
or what we call the scientific
method--
the service which the scientific
method can yield
consists essentially in
perfecting our inner
observation, or rather, as I
believe, in making this really
possible, in any exact sense."
That is, anybody can introspect
a little bit.
Are you happy right
now or sad?
Interested, or bored?
Agitated, or calm?
You don't need to look
at your behavior.
You don't have to go to an EEG,
or to an fMRI, and ask
how am I doing?
Tell me what my brain
scan tells me.
To some level, to some
rudimentary level right now,
you even have some idea of
what's going on in your mind,
are there a lot of thoughts
arising, are you falling
asleep, and so forth, so
emotional states, cognitive
states, the focus of your
attention, the scattered-ness
of your attention.
But what both William James and
Wilhelm Wundt, these two
giants on the two sides of
the Atlantic Ocean, were
suggesting is take your folk
psychology, your folk
untrained introspection, and
start refining, honing it,
intensifying it, make this a
sophisticated method of inquiry.
This is the battle cry.
This is a great challenge
for the mind sciences.
It didn't happen.
It didn't happen, 1913,
especially in America, John
Watson at Johns Hopkins
University, William James was
just cooling off in the grave,
and another movement came in.
It was almost like
a palace coup.
And John Watson, in 1913,
said, "From now on the
scientific study of the mind
is going to avoid all
psychological subjective terms.
We will not use the
terms belief and emotion,
thought, perception.
We're not going to use any of
those subjective terms at all.
They have no place
in psychology."
This is bizarre.
We've got a science of the
mind, but, by the way, we
won't use any mental
terminology at all.
We're going to treat the mind
as if it's a black box
containing only dispositions,
proclivities for behavior, and
we're going to confine ourselves
to studying the
non-mind by way of behavior.
In other words, we're going to
flatten, like stamping on a
tin can, we're going to flatten
the study of mental
phenomena, treat them as if they
don't exist, and reduce
psychology to the study
of behavior.
It's back to the good
old-fashioned way of
objective, quantifiable, and
physical rather than picking
up the gauntlet that William
James had thrown out and said,
"It's time to start something
afresh; attend to the mental
phenomena." And John Watson
said, "No, thanks."
These were radical
behaviorists.
This was going on from 1913,
building a momentum, the
'20's, the '30's, the
'40's, '50's.
In 1953, 40 years later, BF
Skinner comes out and says,
"Mental phenomena do not exist.
There's no such thing
as emotion, mental
images, thoughts,
desires, hopes and fears.
They don't exist at all.
In fact, consciousness is a word
that refers to nothing at
all; it's a superstition.
Your jaws should be dropping
down to your knee
caps at this point.
What?
And he said, Well, after all,
they can't exist. They don't
have physical attributes."
What?
This is the absolute trumping
of dogma over experience
because they've decided now,
BF Skinner writing in 1953,
the only things that
exist are physical.
The only things that exist are
physical and the properties of
the physical.
Mental phenomena clearly don't
have any physical attributes,
therefore, they don't exist.
Appearances to the contrary?
Well, tough luck
on appearances.
And he kept on saying
that until 1974.
He never learned.
And he wasn't some yahoo at
Podunk State University.
He was a full professor at
Harvard University, and saying
these things look like
he's brain dead.
And it really should astound
us that such a highly
intelligent person--
I say with respect--
can say such a ridiculous
thing.
It compares to Descartes'
statement also
operating under the dogma.
Now, it's the dogma of the Roman
Catholic church, in the
17th century, when he equated
consciousness with the human
immortal soul; only human beings
have immortal souls,
animals don't.
If you equated consciousness
with an immortal soul, you
now, in one step, logically have
to come to the conclusion
that animals are
not conscious.
Because they don't have an
immortal soul, they don't go
to heaven or hell.
Therefore, your dog has
no consciousness,
which means no feelings.
Try to solo that one,
if you can.
Well, even back then, they
thought, "What, Descartes?
We thought you were a pretty
smart guy, but, what?" But
which is more--
pardon me, but-- idiotic, to say
your dog has no feelings,
or you have no feelings?
Again, when I was studying this
at Stanford, when I was
studying philosophy of mind,
we learned that, actually,
that whole school of behaviorism
that dominated
American academic psychology
for 50 or 60 years can be
refuted with a joke.
I mean, it's tough when a whole
system can be refuted
with a joke, but it can be.
A man and a woman make love.
The man rolls over, lights up a
cigarette, and he says, "It
was great for you, how
was it for me?" [LAUGHTER]
B. ALAN WALLACE: That should
pretty well do it for
behaviorism.
But we actually can ask, how
is it that brilliant minds,
psychologists at Harvard,
Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford,
Chicago, how could they settle,
over 50 or 60 years,
on something so bizarre and so
radically anti-empirical?
And I asked my professor
of Philosophy of
Mind at Stanford this.
"You know, the reputation of
this was a piece of cake; it
was a one-page reputation.
Any sophomore, even with
a hangover, could
have written it.
How come they didn't get it?
These were smart people.
Why didn't they get it?" And
the professor smiled at me
with a whimsical grin and said,
"Well, after all, it was
a matter of fashion." Well,
that's a nice way of saying
group think.
It's a nice way of thinking,
or saying, lemmings.
This introspection fell
by the wayside.
It was thrown out the
back window, and
they didn't look back.
And so this challenge of William
James and Wilhelm
Wundt, bring introspection and
make it scientific, has been
ignored, and has been
ignored to this day.
So I'm finding a
parallel here.
If we go back to Galileo, his
telescope, the kind of trouble
he got himself into, there was
a medieval theological
resistance to Galileo's
empiricism, to his using the
telescope and discovering
things that violated the
principles of a literal reading
of the Bible and the
metaphysical assertions
of Aristotle.
Because, until Galileo, for
the most part, people
interested in the stars were
astrologers, and they would do
folk astronomy.
They would look up at the stars,
but what they were
really interested in is the
terrestrial correlates of
celestial phenomena, that is,
"Should I get married
tomorrow, or next month?" "When
shall I sow my crops?"
"When was my birthday?"
You know.
And so, working out your
horoscope, that's what they
were really interested in.
And that's where the
professionals were, in drawing
up the horoscopes, and they
left astronomy at, pretty
much, a folk level.
And when Galileo said, "Look,
I've got a telescope.
I'm making some fantastic
discoveries here." The most
conservative of the clerics,
the churchmen of his time,
refused to look through
his telescope saying,
"We don't need to.
If you discover things through
your telescope that contradict
what we already know to be
true from the Bible and
Aristotle, what you're
seeing is false.
It must be an aberration, an
artifact of your lenses.
And, after all, it's
merely an illusion,
why should we bother?
We don't need to because
we already have
the Bible and Aristotle.
Who are you, Galileo?
Do you think you're
an Aristotle?
Do you think you're God?
Why should we listen to you?
We've got the Bible and
Aristotle, what do we need you
for, and your empirical
observations?"
So they refused to use it, and
they refused to accept the
discoveries.
They grounded him.
They put him under house arrest.
They said, "Go to your
room and stay there for the rest
of your life." You know,
like Mom and Dad getting really
irritated with their
teenage kid.
But now we have Galileo in the
modern times, we have William
James, saying, "We have a whole
new kettle of fish here.
We have a domain of the natural
world." In other
words, this is not a
supernatural infusion from
God, these are natural
phenomena,
these mental phenomena.
Let's follow Galileo's queue
and observe them carefully.
But what do we have in
response from the
behaviorists, from the cognitive
psychologists, and
the cognitive
neurophysiologists, which are
very prominent these days?
What do we have here?
We have a focus on the
behavioral and neural
correlates of mental phenomena,
but introspection,
as a sophisticated, refined
means of observation,
by-and-large, a refusal.
By-and-large, in psych
departments, neuroscience
departments, if you introduce,
"Hey, how about, really, some
refined introspection?"
They'll say,
"Sorry, we're busy.
We're busy.
We're studying the brain.
We're studying the
hippocampus.
We're studying aspects of
psychology, we don't need it."
And, if you claim to have
some discoveries from
introspection, "Well, whatever,
but we're busy.
And, after all, introspection
gives rise to only the
appearances of the mind; they're
illusory after all, so
why should we bother?
Let's get back and study the
hardware and let's start a new
neuroscience lab." But there
is a certain limitation in
this orientation of insisting
that everything that is real
must be physical; everything
boils down to physics.
And let us just do a waltz
through history here.
Think about Copernicus.
Think about the Ptolemaic
mathematicians, who are
crunching the numbers coming
up with one epicycle, one
eccentric after another.
Great mathematicians, really not
that great for observing
celestial phenomena.
And if you can imagine confining
your understanding
just to mathematics, you're
sitting in a room, and you're
a great mathematician, there's
nothing in pure mathematics
that defines mass or energy.
It's not there, not in
pure mathematics.
There's nothing that defines the
emergence of the physical
phenomena in the universe.
There's nothing in pure
mathematics that predicts that
there ever would
be a universe.
And, in pure mathematics,
there's nothing that explains
the emergence of matter
and energy.
When would it happen?
When was the Big Bang?
When did you start getting
particles and so
forth and so on?
You have to step outside of
mathematics, as Galileo did,
and combine the mathematics with
empirical observation.
But now we shift over into
the realm of physics.
And imagine for the time being
that you only know physics,
but you don't know anything
about biology or psychology.
Confine your understanding
just to physics, classic
mechanics, electromagnetism,
thermodynamics, the whole
range of physics.
I would suggest you're going
to see the parallel here.
There's nothing in physics,
per se, that defines life.
If you don't know anything about
biology, there's nothing
in physics that defines
life, or live and
dead, healthy and sick.
These words don't mean
anything in physics.
That's where my scientific
training was.
Those two words don't crop up.
Life and death, healthy and
sick, flourishing, and so
forth, they don't crop up.
There's nothing in physics
that defines life.
There's nothing in the laws of
classic mechanics and all the
way through, that predicts
that at some point in the
universe life would emerge.
There's nothing there.
It happened, but physics
didn't tell
you it would happen.
And, once it has happened,
physics, on its own, does not
explain life.
Let's shift to biology.
Now we've got mathematics,
physics, and biology.
But, if you confine your
understanding to biology
alone, with its physics and
mathematics behind it, there's
nothing in biology that
defines consciousness.
Consciousness is not defined in
biological terms. There's
nothing in biology that predicts
the emergence of
consciousness.
At what point in the evolution
of life in the universe, or on
our planet where we know it
takes place, at what point did
consciousness happen, and why?
There's nothing in biology that
predicts it, nothing in
biology that defines it.
And, once it's there, biology
does not explain consciousness
in living organisms.
And now, let's finally
move to psychology.
So, finally, one of the mind
sciences, and we're studying
attention, and volition,
and perception, and
memory, and so forth.
But, in psychology alone, there
are people throughout
the planet, in the United States
and everywhere else,
for millennia who have been
having religious experiences.
Call it spiritual, call it
religious, but a sense of the
transcendence, something
larger and so
forth, this is happening.
It's been happening
a long time.
It's happening to this day.
But there's nothing in
psychology, per se, that
predicts that this would ever
happen, that defines religious
experience in its own terms
rather than reducing it to
something very prosaic like
hysteria, a form of neurosis,
a form of psychosis,
and so forth.
In drawing it down to
psychology, you miss what was
there that was distinctively
spiritual or religious.
Psychology, by itself, does
not define, predict, or
explain the emergence of
religious experience, and yet,
there it is; it happens.
So this would be an argument,
not against math, physics, or
biology, or psychology, but,
saying it's arguing for
epistemic pluralism.
And that is, let's get out of
this rut of thinking that
everything can be explained in
terms of the more primitive
and recognize that we need
different modalities of
inquiry, that everything
does not boil down to
physics or to biology.
In this physicalist world view,
which, in many ways, has
so much going for it, we know
about what happened during the
nanoseconds after the Big Bang;
that is spectacular.
We know about the nucleus of an
atom, quarks with charm and
color, and so forth;
that's spectacular.
We know about the constitution
of galactic clusters 10
billion light years away;
that is amazing.
But what about consciousness,
that which makes all of
science possible?
It's the blind spot, I would
call it, metaphorically, the
retinal blind spot in the
scientific vision, where the
optic nerve touches the back
of the retina, and you know
what happens there.
What we should have is we're
walking around with two dark
spots in our visual field,
right, we shouldn't have that
because there's no information
coming in from those spots.
But what does our cunning
brain do?
It covers over the area, about
which you know nothing at all,
it covers it over with
the environment.
So, if you're looking
at a brown wall, it
covers it with brown.
If you're looking at a purple
wall, it covers
it over with purple.
It covers over that which you
don't know at all with that
which is familiar and gives you
an illusion of knowledge;
interesting.
Well, what is there in the
retinal blind spot of the
scientific vision of reality?
I would suggest it's
consciousness.
We have no scientific definition
of consciousness.
That's a bad start.
If consciousness is a natural
phenomena, for heavens sake,
let's have a definition.
How can you study it,
if you don't even
define what you're studying?
That's a problem.
But, for any empiricist, it's
a crucial point that we have
no objective means of detecting
consciousness.
There's a word for a type of
technology that doesn't exist.
It's called a psychometer.
It would be like a Geiger
counter that you could point
to a rock, and a plant, and to
an amoeba, and to a baby
during the first trimester, and
during the last trimester,
and to an old person who's got
Alzheimer's and become
vegetative, and so forth, and
you would bring out your
little psychometer and it would
go eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.
No, the computer's
not conscious.
And then, to the insect-eating
plant, and the rat, and the
cockroach, et cetera, and you
would get it on, like, a
Geiger counter, oh, it's 10
psychometer or something, it
would be psychological units,
that's how conscious it is.
It would be marvelous to have
such technology, the only
problem is we don't have it.
That's why there's such
an enormous debate,
still, about abortion.
No person wants to
kill babies.
These are not evil people on
either side of the fence, but
nobody's got a clue,
and that thing
in the womb is conscious.
So, is it 12 days?
Is it, as the Muslims
say, 120 days?
Is it, as the Roman Catholics
say, at conception?
Who's got a clue empirically?
We don't have any objective
means of detecting the
presence or absence of
consciousness in anything,
mineral, plant, animal,
humans, et cetera.
That makes it tough to have a
science of consciousness.
What are the neural correlates
of consciousness, that is,
whenever we have a
conscious being?
You're conscious.
I'll bet my life on it.
You are conscious.
And, yet, what are the
neural correlates?
What's invariably happening
when you are conscious?
We don't know.
They're called the NCC, the
neural correlates of
consciousness, haven't been
identified yet let alone
consciousness.
We don't even know what the
neural correlates of
consciousness are.
Here's a crucial one.
What are the necessary and
sufficient causes of
consciousness?
Well, we don't have to speak
about it in the abstract.
Let's say, visual perception,
we know a lot
about the visual cortex.
It's the area of the brain that
is really pretty well
mapped out.
We know, in a human being, the
visual cortex is necessary for
us to see color for visual
perceptive to take place.
So we know that visual cortex,
the optic nerve, the retina,
are necessary for the
generation of visual
perception in human beings.
But do you need a visual cortex
if you're developing
some artificial intelligence
and you
want it to be conscious?
But you're not going to give it
a brain, a gushy brain, you
wanted to work it out
with silicon chips.
So is a visual cortex necessary
in an instrument of
artificial intelligence?
We don't know.
We don't know what the
sufficient causes are, whether
it's sufficient just to have
a visual cortex and
photons coming in.
We don't know what the necessary
or sufficient causes
are for visual perception let
alone any other kind of
consciousness.
So any assumptions about what
happens to consciousness at
death are just assumptions.
Because, to know, to speak with
confidence and knowledge,
consciousness terminates at
death, you would have had to
identify the necessary and
sufficient causes and know, at
least, the sufficient
causes aren't there.
But we don't know what they
are, so, frankly, we don't
know what happens to
consciousness at death.
And we finally come to what,
David Chalmers, the
philosopher of mind, called the
hard problem, and that is
the chemicals, the electricity
inside the skull, they're
really ordinary.
They're just what chemists have
been studying for decades
and decades.
There are no mystical neurons.
There's no mystical chemicals
or electrons in there; it's
really ordinary stuff.
So how is it the neurons
generate subjective
experience?
What is it about those chemicals
and electricity that
enables them to generate
subjective experience, mental
states, or even influence
mental states?
And, although we know from the
placebo effect that when you
go to a doctor and you receive
a tablet and you believe it
will help, the placebo effect is
going to kick in big time,
just your belief or expectation,
your desire and
trust, will have enormous impact
on your body, your
brain, your immune system, the
pharmaceutical industry knows
this very well, how is that
possible that you go from an
idea, a faith, a belief, and
it actually influences
physical health?
We don't know.
So, when we add up all of that
ignorance, it becomes hard to
say that we actually have a
science of consciousness.
It falls in the retinal
blind spot.
But, nevertheless, we cover over
that retinal blind spot
with assumptions or,
what I would call,
an illusion of knowledge.
And John Searle, a very
distinguished philosopher of
mind, expresses this illusion
of knowledge, although he's
expressing it as knowledge, when
he writes, "There is a
simple solution to
the mind-body
problem." Isn't that relief?
It's a simple problem, and
the news gets better.
"This solution has been
available to any educated
person since serious work began
on the brain nearly a
century ago, and, in a sense, we
all know to be true." Well,
that should be a relief.
And, "Here it is, mental
phenomena are caused by
neurophysiological
processes in the
brain." Yeah, of course.
We know that.
You know, knock out your visual
cortex; you don't see
any longer.
Knock out your hippocampus.
Other things don't happen.
Frontal cortex, other things,
we know that.
But wait a minute,
there's a catch.
"Mental phenomena
are, themselves,
features of the brain.
Mental phenomena, themselves,
are physical.
Wait a minute.
When did we learn that?
Where is the empirical
evidence that showed
equivalents between mental
phenomena and neural events
rather than neural events taking
on the role of causal
agents generating resultant
mental phenomena?
Who demonstrated equivalence?
The answer is nobody.
But he's saying everybody
knows it.
How does everybody know
something that nobody knows
and for which there's no
empirical evidence at all of
equivalence?
Well, happily, one of the
foremost people on the front
lines of scientific research
into consciousness, Christof
Koch, outstanding cogno-neuro
scientist, he's the one
leading the charge of trying to
find the neural correlates
of consciousness.
He unmasks this illusion when
he states, "The character of
brain states and the phenomenal
states," by that,
he means mental phenomena,
desires, emotions, and so
forth, mental phenomena, "The
character of brain states and
mental states appear too
different to be completely
reducible to each other."
Look at brain states, they
don't have any mental
qualities at all.
Observe mental states, phenomena
processes, they
don't have any physical
properties at all.
Bring out all your instruments
of technology.
They do not detect a single
mental event.
So why on earth are we equating
these when they don't
even have any overlapping
qualities?
And, in fact, neural events,
being causal, take, generally,
about 100 milliseconds
to generate the
resultant mental state.
They don't even exist at
the same point in time.
So he's calling a spade a
spade here, you know?
They're so different it now
seems unlikely that they can
be reducible to each other,
namely, that mental phenomena
are nothing other than
brain states.
He said, "I suspect that the
relationship is more complex
than traditionally envisioned."
Traditionally
envisioned is mental phenomena
are just physical.
"For now, it is best to keep an
open mind on this matter."
I love it when scientists
say that.
Let's just acknowledge
that we're ignorant.
We don't know the nature
of mental events.
We don't know that
they're physical.
Let's keep an open mind.
But, practically speaking,
what should we do now?
And let's concentrate on
identifying the correlates of
consciousness in the brain.
So it's back to business
as usual.
It's not picking up the gauntlet
that William James
threw down, it's going back
to the safe, observing the
quantifiable, the physical, the
objective as if you were
going to really fathom the
nature of consciousness by
simply studying the neural
correlates that contribute to
the generation of
consciousness.
He's a really good
neuroscientist, so we can't
blame him for saying let's focus
on the brain, but that
doesn't mean all of us should.
William James said, please, when
are you going to start
listening to me?
Daniel Boorstin, a very
distinguished historian,
American historian, wrote an
excellent book called, The
Discoverers, the history of
mankind's discovery for the
last 5,000 years.
In the preface of this
book, he makes a
very important point.
He said, "Throughout human
history illusions of
knowledge," thinking we know
something that we don't really
know at all, but absolutely
being convinced of it,
"illusions of knowledge, and not
ignorance, have proven to
be the principal obstacles to
discovery." Ignorance is clean
and it's honest;
"I don't know.
Can we find out?" An illusion
of knowledge is, "I already
know, and we don't need
to ask." "Mental
phenomena are physical.
Any more questions?" That's an
illusion of knowledge as
Christof Koch makes
quite clear.
So what I'm proposing here is
I try to envision the first
revolution of the
mind sciences.
We haven't had one.
It started in 1879.
Where was the revolution?
At what point was nothing the
same because our understanding
of the mind is radically shifted
like it did with
Darwin with respect to life,
Galileo with respect to the
planet Earth and its place
in the universe?
And so, what I'm suggesting here
is, we need a renaissance
of empiricism.
That the empirical examination
of physical phenomena--
if we look back to the time
of Galileo, the empirical
examination physical phenomena
dispelled the illusions of
knowledge of medieval
scholasticism with respect to
or regarding physical
phenomena.
They thought, in the 16th
century, the 15th century,
that knowledge of the universe
was pretty well complete.
They had the Bible, which
is God's own word.
They had Aristotle,
the philosopher.
Thomas Aquinas fused these into
one complete, perfect
system, except for it
was riddled with
illusions of knowledge.
And Galileo started tipping over
that cart, and it's never
been up-righted since.
It was Galileo, and then it was
Newton, then it was one
after another.
And they kept on showing that
which you thought was complete
is not only not complete, but
it's radically flawed because
you're mistaking illusions of
knowledge for actual knowledge.
And I'm suggesting here the
empirical observation of
mental phenomenon, not just
the behavioral and neural
correlates, the phenomena
themselves.
Picking up the challenge of
William James may dispel the
illusions of knowledge of modern
physicalism regarding
mental phenomena.
Physicalism assumes, it insists
emphatically, there is
nothing in the universe apart
from physical phenomena and
their emergent properties.
Who said?
Why should the whole of reality
fit into a human
conceptual construct?
After all, we're the ones who
define physical; nature didn't
define it for us.
And the very notion of the
physical has shifted from the
time of Descartes, through
Galileo, through Newton,
through Maxwell, through Max
Planck, through Einstein,
through Stephen Hawking.
It's a moving target.
Everything is reducible
to physics?
Great.
Which physics?
The physics of yesterday, or
today, or 100 years from now?
Where's the moving
target stop?
At what point can you physicists
say, OK, we've got
it under wraps now.
We know what the physical are,
and mental phenomena have to
fit into that box.
The day you've stated that,
you've just stopped doing
physics and you've become
a medieval scholastic.
We now know what is physical and
nature, happily, fit into
our conceptual construct.
Nature, the whole of nature, fit
into our box and we called
it physical.
That's not scientific,
that's dogmatic.
And so perhaps the empirical
observation of mental
phenomenon may dispel this
illusion of knowledge, not
from medieval scholasticism, but
from modern scholasticism.
Now, happily, our Euro-American,
Australian, and
now our modern because it's in
Singapore, it's in Bangkok,
it's in Argentina, it's in
Brazil, it's not just the West
now, it's the vision
of modernity.
Happily, we are not the only
intelligent life in the
universe, our Euro-American
civilization.
Happily, there have actually
been other civilizations on
this planet that have had the
same, statistically the same,
scattering of geniuses as our
Euro-American civilization.
But they weren't us.
They weren't in the
Mediterranean basin.
They didn't come out of the
Abrahamic religions of
Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam.
They didn't come out
of the Greek
heritage, Plato and Aristotle.
Other civilizations, like that
of China for 5,000 years,
India for who knows how many
thousands of years, might be
able to come up with anything
that we haven't.
It's one of those questions you
don't often ask, at least,
not in academia.
I've been there.
It's not one of the questions
that comes up.
We're just assuming that
we trump everybody.
But India, classical India,
they, unlike Galileo, unlike
the founders of our scientific
revolution, they were not
seeking a God's-eye view
of objective reality.
They were not creating, or
assuming, an absolute
demarcation, a bifurcation
between subject and object and
trying to observe the purely
objective world from an
absolutely outside perspective,
God's own
perspective.
That just wasn't on the agenda
for the Indians, for these
classical Indian
truth-seekers.
They were seeking to understand
the world of
experience, not some objective
world independent of
experience.
In science, we call it loka.
Now, if that's your agenda,
to understand the world of
experience, not a God's-eye
view of something that
transcends experience, if that's
what your focus is--
in German philosophy, by the
way, it's called lebenswelt
from the phenomenological
tradition of Husserl and
Heidegger--
if what you're primarily wishing
to understand is the
world of experience, then the
study of the mind has to be
first, foremost, central, to
your inquiry into the natural
world because the world of
experience doesn't even exist
without consciousness.
There is no world of experience
without somebody
experiencing it.
And so, for the Indians, the
study of the mind was the
first thing they tackled.
In modern science, it
was kind of like the
last thing they studied.
Consciousness itself didn't even
come up in psychology for
almost 100 years.
Only in the last 10 or 15 years
has consciousness become
a legitimate object of inquiry
for a cogno-neuro scientist,
for a psychologist. When I
studied cognopsychology at
Stanford, consciousness
was not there.
It wasn't even in the index.
And introspection was mentioned
only in the preface
when they said, "We tried it.
It didn't work." And they
moved right on.
The Indians, happily,
are not part of our
Mediterranean basin box.
They had their own areas,
and this is one of them.
The Sanskrit term is Samadhi,
and I'm proposing here that
it's a type of telescope
of the mind.
These revolutionary
truth-seekers, and they were
revolutionary because they were
kicking away from an old,
tired, dusty religious system,
called the Brahmanic
tradition, heavily
institutionalized,
ritualistic, dogmatic,
close-minded.
And they said enough.
And these shramanas, or these
truth-seekers, roughly, maybe
3,000 years ago, they set out
to understand the world of
experience with a primary
emphasis on mind.
And the first thing they
discovered is, if you're going
to try to observe mental
phenomena, your observation of
it has to be introspective, but
your attention is wobbling
all over the place, right?
It was ADHD 3,000 years ago.
It's, you're either getting
dopey and falling asleep, you
know, falling asleep at the
wheel, or your mind's
scattered all over the place.
How can you make rigorous and
sane observation of mental
phenomena if your attention is
wobbling all over the place,
oscillating between dullness
and agitation?
So the first thing they did--
and they were very good at it
by the time that Buddha came
along 2,500 years ago--
is they developed
extraordinarily effective
techniques for refining and
focusing attention.
Rather like a telescope firmly
mounted on a tripod, polished
lenses, large aperture, so you
can make stable, vivid
observations, now, not at stars
because they weren't
that interested, but they were
fascinated to study the mind.
And they developed a telescope
of the mind the like of which
we have never developed.
And modern science, since
William James, has not made
any progress at all.
Now that was the groundwork
laid, like the Dutch lens
makers who started off
before Galileo.
And there was this historical
individual, Buddha, Gautama,
and I would say he was to India
what Galileo was for the
West. He took a pre-existing
technology, but it was a
contemplative technology of
refining attention, and he
applied it in unprecedented
ways.
Instead of simply going into a
state of samadhi, experiencing
bliss, and equanimity, and
euphoria, and so forth, he
stabilized the mind, and then
he used it to explore states
of consciousness, ordinary
states, extraordinary states,
but rigorous, careful, empirical
observation of
mental states of consciousness
and made extraordinary
discoveries.
At least, that is the claim.
Not for us to take as religion,
that would be
boring, but to take
his hypotheses.
They said they discovered this
just like any good scientist.
You hear of somebody over
there in Beijing made a
discovery in their lab?
Good.
Can we replicate it?
That's the first thing
that comes up.
Somebody in Korea said they've
cloned a dog, they've done
this and this?
Good.
Let's replicate it.
Oops, that was a phony,
so write him off.
Get back to work.
But this is what scientists
are doing all the time.
Somebody makes a claim;
replicate it.
And this is exactly what
the Buddha encouraged.
He said these are my
discoveries, but don't just
take my word for it.
See if you can replicate it.
And here is the experimental
procedure, refine your attention.
Well, here's the overall
framework.
First of all, cultivate a way
of life, your whole way of
behaving in the world, that
is conducive to social
flourishing, so that, here at
Google, you can all get along
together, happily,
harmoniously.
You know how that happens;
it's called ethics.
No ethics, you're going
to be all ripping each
other's hair out.
Without ethics, no harmony.
With ethics, you've
got a chance.
But also, in our relationship
with the environment at large,
with Mountain View with the
state of California, the
planet Earth, there is a way
that we can live in harmony
with our natural environment
without sucking it dry and
leaving the husks
to our children.
It's called ethics,
environmental ethics.
And so that was the
foundation.
Upon the basis of that,
developing mental balance,
refining the mind, refining
attention, developing
exceptional levels of mental
health and well being.
And, with that basis, then
becoming a true contemplative
scientist and using a refined
attention to explore states of
consciousness, giving rise
to a sense of spiritual
flourishing or, what some
would call, liberation.
So I'm suggesting something
dramatic, something
revolutionary, here, and
you notice I said
nothing original at all.
It was William James, it was
Wilhelm Wundt, it was Buddha,
so they're just saying this is
the way to go to understand
the nature of the mind.
Don't be satisfied by just
studying the physical
correlates.
You're always going to get
that which is around
consciousness, but not the
nature of consciousness.
Should we be skeptical
of that?
And the answer is, "Yes," said
Richard Feynman, the great
Nobel laureate in physics.
He said, "One of the ways of
stopping science would be only
to do experiments in the region
where you know the
law." Play it safe.
If you want to understand
consciousness,
stick to the brain.
You'll get tenure.
You'll publish in peer
review journals.
Go introspection route, and
oh, you are on thin ice.
"But," he said, "experimenters
search most diligently and
with the greatest effort, in
exactly those places where it
seems most likely that we can
prove our theories wrong."
There's a theory the mind
is just the brain.
The mind is just an
epi-phenomenon of the brain.
The mind, mental phenomena,
are physical.
Maybe it's true.
But the good skeptic, not the
one that's skeptical of other
people's views, the person who's
skeptical of his own
assumptions, says let's put that
one to the test. In other
words, he says, "In other words,
we are trying to prove
ourselves wrong as quickly as
possible, because only in that
way can we find progress."
Now, science is known for
skepticism, religion is known
for dogmatism, but what did
the Buddha say here?
This great Galileo of India, he
said in response to a bunch
of skeptics, he said, "You are
skeptical about what you
should be skeptical about."
He said, "Do not be led by
reports, or tradition,
or hearsay.
Do not be led by authority of
religious text or by mere
logic and inference all by
itself, nor by considering
appearances," just taking a
casual look, taking all
appearances at face value, "nor
by delight in speculative
opinions, nor by seeming
possibilities, nor by the idea
this is my teacher." What
he said must be right.
"But, when you know for
yourselves that certain things
are unwholesome, destructive,
and
detrimental, then reject them.
And, when you know for
yourselves that certain things
are wholesome and good, then
accept them and follow them."
In other words, be a skeptic.
He encouraged his own followers
to be skeptical.
So Occam's Razor was used to
great effect coming out of the
Medieval era into
the Renaissance.
As Occam said, the principle
is, "It is vain to do with
more assumptions what can be
done with fewer assumptions."
What I'm suggesting here is we
have too many assumptions in
the scientific study
of the mind.
Let us use Occam's Razor to
shave off the assumption that
mental phenomena are physical.
It's just an assumption.
Christof Koch pointed out they
don't look physical.
Why should they be?
And, if we shave off that
assumption, what have we lost?
What less do we know?
And I would suggest nothing.
We still know the correlates.
We know just about as much about
the brain and behavior
as we did before.
We've just shaved off an
assumption that's never been
corroborated.
Throw that one out, and now
apply a fresh method of
inquiry of introspection
to actually
observe mental phenomena.
And what might we gain?
And the answer is, we don't
know until we try it.
As we draw this to a close, we
come back to William James,
who suggested, in terms of
this interface, science,
religion, and empiricism, is
that, "Let empiricism once
become associated with religion,
as hitherto, through
some strange misunderstanding,
it has been associated with
irreligion, and I believe that
a new era of religion as well
as philosophy will be
ready to begin.
I fully believe that such an
empiricism is a more natural
ally than dialectics ever
were, or can be, of the
religious life." In other words,
introduce empiricism
into religion as much
as science.
Throw out dogma on both sides
of the fence, and let's see
what the fireworks display.
Final point here is I suggest
that, towards a first
revolution in the mind sciences,
I would suggest that
we haven't had one because
there's been too much dogma
suppressing the empirical study
of mental phenomena
themselves as opposed to the
physical correlates.
But now there's a possibility,
as we have access to Buddhism
and Hinduism, the Sufi
tradition, psychology,
neuroscience, we no longer
are isolated.
Here, at Google, you know
this, maybe better than
anybody else.
You are on the globe.
Your physical plant happens to
be in Mountain View, but it
could be in the Amazon, right?
We are now living in a globe
where we can integrate like
never before.
Integrate these rigorous
first-person and third-person
methodologies, from the
contemplative, the
psychological, the
neuroscientists, in
collaboration between cognitive
scientists, the
whole broad range, and who have
exceptional mental skills
and insights resulting from
rigorous, sustained mental
training, and observing and
experimenting with states of
consciousness.
So there would be a challenge,
to break down the barriers, to
throw out dogma and
uncorroborated assumptions,
and open up a new renaissance
of empiricism in the
scientific study of the mind
that would be profoundly
contemplative and experiential,
and yet
rigorously scientific, that
could revolutionize the
contemplative traditions.
It could revolutionize
science.
And it could bring this
unfortunate rift between
religion and science,
creationism in the school
district that makes most of us
gag, and so forth, start
breaking down those barriers,
and see about integrating East
and West, ancient and modern,
and cast a fresh light on the
nature of the mind and
on human identity.
It's a possibility.
That's my hope.
[APPLAUSE]
B. ALAN WALLACE: So if anybody
has questions or observations
or debates, anything
is welcome.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: So, first thing, you
kind of asked the core
question that
[UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]
and came back to the
[UNINTELLIGIBLE] that instead
of looking for so much proof
that the split within the
Greek thought as one of the
original places we ought to
look at resolving this.
And then there's also,
of course,
[UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]
in a particular place, look
at all of the traditions.
Can you comment on why Buddhism
particularly?
Or is it just one way?
B. ALAN WALLACE: It's
just one way.
I was using that in a
short presentation.
I was saying here is
a good sampling.
This was not promoting Buddhism
versus Hinduism, or
the Muslim tradition, or
the Taoist tradition.
Not at all.
I was saying this is a good
example from the very rich,
well-developed, intellectually
very sophisticated,
contemplative tradition.
But the Santa Barbara Institute,
which I founded, is
not a Buddhist institution.
It is an inter-contemplative
tradition drawing from the
wealth of East and West
contemplative traditions from
all over the world, interfacing
these with the
best of science.
So it's not plugging any one
tradition, and it's certainly
not trying to validate
Buddhism or
any particular school.
Very much the contrary.
These great contemplative
traditions have been after
universal truths, and
not just trying to
corroborate Buddhist ideas.
And I'm not interested
in that, at all.
So, I think, going back to Greek
thought, back to Plato,
back to Pythagoras themselves,
to the notion of Noitos, which
is a type of mental perception
by means of which we can
directly observe non-essential
mental phenomena.
That's a Greek notion, but
we've forgotten it.
So I don't want to leave
anybody out, that is
indigenous people, East and
West, bring it all together
because the stakes
are high now.
We're dealing with something
that is central to everybody's
existence, and that
is consciousness.
So let's throw out dogma of
all sorts, sectarianism,
biases of all sorts, and not
leave anybody out, not leave
out the contemplatives, not
leave out the neuroscientists,
for heaven sakes, not leave out
anybody, and really start
fusing and taking advantage of
the technology, including
transportation, that we have now
so that we can really draw
from this wealth of wisdom,
and insights, and multiple
methodologies.
This epistemic pluralism, I
think, is absolutely the key.
Yeah.
Two more questions.
Here's one.
AUDIENCE: If you want to
approach consciousness in a
scientific way, which
I assume you--
B. ALAN WALLACE: Absolutely.
AUDIENCE: are for, you need some
idea of what it means to
prove or disprove something.
B. ALAN WALLACE: Very true.
AUDIENCE: How do you do that
in the absence of physical
observation?
B. ALAN WALLACE: Very good.
So the question is if this is
going to be scientific--
and, of course, science gained
its laurels by studying
objective things that you look
at from a third-person
perspective, quantifiable, but
measurable out there, right?
So, if one lab does it, another
can corroborate it,
and it's pretty clear.
And mental phenomena
are subjective.
There we are.
As John Searle says,
"Irreducibly, ontologically,
first-person," right?
But I think a good analogy for
this-- the question deserves
not a two-minute answer.
It deserves conferences and
really detailed investigation
so we don't come up with
cheap answers.
Cheap answers are easy.
But if we take, as an example,
mathematics--
now, mathematics is not
scribbling things on a board.
That's the outer
display of it.
But anybody who doesn't know
mathematics can memorize the
equations and write with the
best of them with no
understanding at all.
Mathematics, when I studied
higher mathematics in my
training in physics, it's
really subjective.
It's working through a proof.
It's thinking.
And you may do something
out here on the
board, you may not.
But the real juice of
mathematics is something
that's taking place
internally.
And you say, "Well, how can
mathematicians ever speak with
each other?
How can they know who's great?
Well, they did a similar
training.
They go through an
undergraduate, they go through
the graduate, they go through
postdoc, and, after a while,
they know who gets
the Fields Medal.
It's not just that he wrote
things on the board, it's
through dialogue.
And you say, "Oh, we speak
a similar language here.
Everybody else, they can't
understand what
we're talking about.
But you and I have gone
through eight years of
training in mathematics, and
we know the elegant proofs.
We know shoddy mathematics.
We know the short stuff.
And so, even though it's largely
internal, they develop
a language of common training
so they can communicate
amongst themselves in ways that
outsiders cannot fathom.
Now let's imagine.
Now, this is hypothetical in a
way, but it's also historical
in another, and that is I
spent a lot of time with
Tibetans living in Tibetan
culture, and we have
contemplatives there that will
go for 10,000, 20,000 hours of
training with a common basis
of ideas and training in
contemplative technology
and so forth.
And they developed a refined--
how do you say it--
professional language that
they can speak amongst
themselves.
And they know what they're
talking about because, like
the mathematicians, a shared
training developing a shared
vocabulary.
And then amongst them-- and we
know this is true-- in the
Tibetan tradition, all the
great contemplatives, the
great scholars, they know
who the cream are.
It was Dingo Khyentse Rinpoche,
it was Ling
Rinpoche, it was
Kalu Rinpoche.
These people, the peers know.
To an outsider it looked like,
well, a really sweet monk, a
really nice guy,
good charisma.
But the professionals know
it's more than that.
This guy really has
the skivvy.
This man really knows
what's going on.
So I would not ask you to accept
that because I'm saying
it, but I am saying this issue
has been grappled with.
If we take a more prosaic
example, wine connoisseurs.
And that is, when I drink--
I got my palate ruined when I
was 18 because I got drunk on
Red Mountain wine, whiskey, and
beer at the same time, and
that totaled my tongue
for life, you know?
And so I can't tell any good
vintage from another.
But I've hung out with people
who've had that training.
It's three years formal
training, and then years of
getting experience.
So two wine connoisseurs will
come together and say, was it
a 1948, or '49?
And What part of France
was this raised in?
So the taste of wine
is very subjective.
You can't pick up the taste
of wine with some external
technology that will tell you
this is a five $500 bottle
versus a $5 bottle.
No technology will
tell you that.
But they train.
And then they use things like
bouquet and so forth, whereas,
I don't even know what they're
talking about.
But they have a specialized
vocabulary.
And they know who the brilliant
wine connoisseurs
are and who are just mediocre.
And it's a specialized
vocabulary that they know what
they're talking about.
And outsiders, like me,
I don't have a clue.
So wine tasting, that's
very empirical.
The mathematical is
very internal.
If we try to draw inspiration
from those only by analogy,
then perhaps we can
get some idea.
But, again, the danger, there's
all kinds of potholes
here, a minefield, and that is
they're all being brainwashed
in the same way.
And that was how introspection
fell to its knees and died is
that different labs were simply
corroborating their own
assumptions.
And the trainees, the observers,
their observations
were so laden with the theories
and assumptions of
their mentors, that they weren't
getting this intra-lab
corroboration, so
it fell apart.
But they gave up too soon.
And they didn't go through
a 10,000 or
20,000 hours training.
Not Wilhelm Wundt, not Tischner
at Cornell, not James
at Harvard.
This requires training, if it's
going to be professional.
Don't give them five
hours of training
or a week of training.
How about three years of
training, 10 years of
training, training the
mind 10 hours a day?
