In defense of science -- and my view of what it is

When Deepak Chopra first commented on the limits of "science" as a way to understand our consciousness, I am sorry to say that my first reaction was a quick knee-jerk reaction:

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The words "science" itself is just another word meaning different things to different people. My preferred definition

is based on certain versions of the concept of the "scientific method" which are quite different from simplified

and extremist versions used to galvanize the bases left and right. My preferred definition is reviewed in papers I cite at werbos.com/religions.htm and www.werbos.com/Erdos.pdf, drawing of course on folks like Occam and Bayes and Kant and Popper and Francis Bacon, with apologies about the idiots on both sides of extremist positions.

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But then he and I went a bit deeper:

On Fri, Mar 6, 2020 at 8:33 AM Deepak Chopra <nonlocal101@chopra.com> wrote:

Well then - does the scientific method - created in human consciousness - explain its source - human consciousness ? 

First let me apologize for the way I violated a wise guideline we have in our local Quaker Meeting... to leave time to meditate on what another person has said before saying ANYTHING oneself. As I think over your original message about "science", I realize that I should have referred to a DIFFERENT definition of "science," different from my concept of "scientific method," but equally clear and thoughtful and far more mainstream today than mine. I should have referred to Thomas Kuhn's definition in his very famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In fact this was the favorite book, close to a Bible, of the longest serving NSF director we ever had.  My concept of scientific method is closer to Francis Bacon's viewpoint and yours than Kuhn's is, but Kuhn did make many points which are very important and real, even if we would phrase them differently.

I actually do not use the words "science" or "God" in personal discussions with anyone but trusted friends, because of how badly those words both get misconstrued with conflicting definitions.  Kuhn has told us important things about THIRD PERSON science. When HE says "science", he means third person science, which does have serious limitations. He DEFINES the word "science" to mean what I would call "third person science."

Third person science has an important role to play in helping humanity understand itself better. The problem lies when people extrapolate further and try to exclude the greater capabilities of the scientific method as such. Perhaps as fewer people know about Francis Bacon etc and more about Kuhn, we do risk falling into a narrow hole culturally all across the entire world. Developments in China are becoming VERY important to the future of humanity, and it helps to understand that Jiang Zemin and his followers were also as narrow as Kuhn, and that there is an old stream of Confucianism taught by Zhu Xi (in the school which Mao Tse Tung attended but rebelled against) which moved in that direction (albeit not so far). Yes, there is a problem there.

In essence, Kuhn's science tries to build all of its conclusions based on AGREEABLE, REPLICABLE experimental evidence which can be universally shared and tested. I think of it as working out the conditional probability of what might be true, conditional upon that limited database. In a way, it is like forms of behaviorism which focused SOLELY on animal experiments viewing animals from the outside without empathy. (By contrast, I will never forget the faces of monkeys used in NIMH experiments, faces in a video shown by Barry Richmond when he discussed HIS interpretation of what those experiments showed.Tthey reminded me of the old question "Was Skinner training his frats or were his rats training him to give them more food?")

YES, my understanding of consciousness is limited by the limits of MY neural networks (brain plus soul working together), and therefore has limits. Those limits apply to ALL humans on earth, and to ALL life and minds we would consider to be organic/living. (The cosmos itself is different, but use of human words to describe it is usually misleading now because of the way we tend to extrapolate what does not fit.) 

BUT the full first person scientific method (as per my definition, building on earlier work by Von Neumann explained by Raiffa) DOES include the FULL database available to any one of us, including not only shared experience but also data which we have that others do not, which allows for inputs not only from the retina but from ears and nose and even PSI inputs, all subject to intelligent scrutiny as our nonverbal brains were evolved to perform, enhanced by symbolic intelligence fully in harmony with that nonverbal intelligence.

Kuhn's method IS useful, as ONE input to our personal understanding. Yes, it has serious limits.

But equally serious are the limits on those who exclude ANOTHER type of important input, the input we get from looking into the mirror and seeing a mammal there. (Whether we see the "angel" side as well to any degree depends on how well we have trained our inner eyes. To see better , we need to build on what we CAN see, by an honest kind of "bootstrap" procedure, like what I described in my single authored paper in the journal Neural networks.

2012. (I was also a junior author on another paper in the same issue.) The ability to FUSE the first person subjective view of ourselves WITH what we can see in the mirror, and with all the mathematical insight which accompanies BOTH, is my definition of first order sanity, as in the first of the three 2019 papers i link to at werbos.com/religions.pdf. 

I was rather surprised to learn, through unexpected first person experience, that an authentic full implementation of first order, mundane sanity LEADS TO psi and such, the path to second order sanity, simply because it entails a kind of openness to experience which opens up more. (But at times, I also think of the music I was open to and listened to often back in those years. Stuff like classic Russian composers and Bartok and whatnot, at that time. Long ago.) Rejection of the scientific method is rejection of a VERY powerful mirror, which reminds me a little of the mirror of Ameratsu, part of another link at werbos.com/religions.htm.

Once again, the path of life is BETWEEN the two extreme paths so popular in today's cultures. 

Best of luck,
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By the way... just FYI... Francis Bacon was one of the three authors whom Thomas Jefferson recommended as the MOST necessary reading in the curriculum for a sustainable republic. The others were Locke and Newton. I learned that on a visit to the Library of Congress, in their Jefferson special exhibit.