On Jan 16, 2009, at 9:52 AM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
I do think that good scientific methodology can transcend (dare I use the term?) a researcher's bias. You just need some oversight in structuring it from a more impartial party. It doesn't surprise me that the people with the biggest belief load are also the ones most interested in researching meditation. They just need some help containing their enthusiasm is skewing results.
I don't know that this is actually the case. While some leading age meditation researchers may have some unsubstantiated beliefs (we're contacting the unified field, I'm feeling actual presence of Jesus, etc.), most that I am aware of are either atheists, materialists or both and/or they adhere to the rules of a subjective science not necessarily understood (let alone approved of) by the believers of scientism. That is they may of a calibre of scientist who know and understand how to refine attention to the point of being able create a subjective inquiry which can be considered scientific. Just because scientific materialism has caused a belief in a taboo of subjectivity to become fashionable, doesn't render the taboo viable logically or factually nor does it invalidate the possibility of a subjective science. All it really tells us is that scientism is the fashionable belief in our time.
Also you should know that there is a school, largely inspired by the late great biologist and neuroscientist Francisco Varela, which looks to create a purely modern scientific model for understanding meditation experiences and their results based on Neurophenomenology. While a certain part of this is about 3rd person realities, i.e. the material exploration of phenomenon, but also includes 1st person methodologies, i.e. subjective science. In order to make 1st person methodologies reasonable and unbiased, it is required that such a subjective scientist refine attention, i.e. hone its instruments of subjectivity, appropriately. And of course the material aspects of these subjective states can also, simultaneously, be explored.
Work's like those of Varela, classics really, and the recent The Mindful Brain, by psychiatrist and Attachment expert Dan Siegel are excellent examples of this emerging paradigm.
