Why Scientists need to accept Eastern thought

[ecco]

Good luck with that.

How's it been working for you so far?

Really well.

 

[ecco]

Many scientists already did.

Got names?

 

[cladking]

Really well.

Then you've actually succeeded in pointing them to the light? NO!!! Well, I guess you've been intimidating the non-believers so they at least quit posting their nonsensical ideas, right? NO!!!

Go ahead and "poke them in the eye" and no doubt they'll see your reality in time.

Nobody cares about facts and logic and now days almost nobody believes in a fixed reality that isn't determined by a Creator. So everyone runs around poking eah others eyes like a bunch of stooges in hopes they'll see their own separate reality.

Good luck with that. I'm not sure it's really worth it any longer with everyone talking and poking and no one listening or looking.

I'll probably NEVER see your light (I once did and rejected it when I was very young) and you'll never listen to me. You can't intimidate me but I'm at my whit's end of frustration.

Good luck insulting people into submission. I've seen it work on many message boards and that's why they are getting less popular. It helps if you gang up with like minded people and tell them they are illogical or they'll go to hell.

 

[atanu]

I will try to keep my topic simple. There are multiple reasons why Western scientists need to adopt but I will only offer two:

1. Eastern thought provides an objective approach to acquire knowledge.
Eastern mystics discovered a practice and tool long ago to explore consciousness and reality, and that practice is 'meditation'. This method is objective because it removes the filters that tend to distort reality - the mind and senses. If you cease all mental and sensory input, then you are no longer subject to bias, feelings, limitations but rather you experience reality as it is.
...
Your thoughts. Do you agree that science needs to adopt Eastern thought?

The Nyaya darsana has been the chief contributor to the subject of knowledge -- epistemology and also ontology in Indian subcontinent.. Nyaya, like present day science, defends a robust realism, including universals, selves, and substances, largely in contrast to Buddhism's anti-realism and and flux-theories. Nyaya tradition held that epistemic success was central in the search for happiness, since the world ought to be understood properly.

Nyāya’s philosophical method is “investigation of a subject by means of knowledge-sources” (pramanAs), which are: perception, inference, analogical reasoning, and testimony.

We may note that the knowledge sources are not different from the knowledge sources of present day science. However, there is one major difference. According to Nyaya, "A perceptual cognition arises by means of the connection between sense faculty and object, is not dependent on words, is non-deviating, and is determinate". Thus we see that Nyaya's definition of perception is based on realism and objectivity. But Nyaya goes a step further and unlike science, in addition to common perceptual states Nyaya admits 'Extraordinary Perceptual states" as valid source of veridical knowledge.

Nyaya recognises three kinds of extraordinary perceptions: (i) yogic perception, (ii) perception of a universal through an individual which instantiates it, and (iii) perception of an object’s properties as mediated by memory.

In this thread, we are mainly concerned with the first, yogic perception, which includes experiential states reported by contemplatives in deep mediation. Their cognitive objects (usually the no ego Self or God) are taken to be experienced in a direct and unmediated way, but generally without the operation of the external senses. Given their experiential character and their agreement with other sources of knowledge like scripture and inference, yogic experiences are taken as veridical, produced by non-normal perception.

...

So, IMO, this alone is the source of difference. Science, if it binds itself in philosophical naturalism, cannot admit that our subjective experiences are more real than any external experience that a scientist can gather. I can cite several scientists who recognise this.
...

More can be read on Nyaya darsana

https://www.iep.utm.edu/nyaya/#SSH1fiii

 

[ecco]

Good luck insulting people into submission. I've seen it work on many message boards and that's why they are getting less popular. It helps if you gang up with like minded people and tell them they are illogical or they'll go to hell.

Go ahead and "poke them in the eye" and no doubt they'll see your reality in time.

I have no delusions about my ability to change the minds of people indoctrinated into religion or other forms of woo.

 

[ecco]

Thus we see that Nyaya's definition of perception is based on realism and objectivity. But Nyaya goes a step further and unlike science, in addition to common perceptual states Nyaya admits 'Extraordinary Perceptual states" as valid source of veridical knowledge.

I guess you don't see that the contents of your paragraph are self-contradictory.

Perception cannot be "based on realism and objectivity" if it admits "Extraordinary Perceptual states" as valid source of knowledge.

 

[Shad]

This method is objective because it removes the filters that tend to distort reality - the mind and senses. If you cease all mental and sensory input, then you are no longer subject to bias, feelings, limitations but rather you experience reality as it is.

It is not objective as it is completely mind and interpretation dependent. It is a text book example of the opposite you think. It is subjective.

Your thoughts. Do you agree that science needs to adopt Eastern thought?

Not the type you suggest of that from mystics. Obviously there are methods and philosophies which mirror that of modern science in part. The East would have never developed nor would it have dominated of the world until the Industrial Revolution if some methods didn't produce results such as architecture, metallurgy, etc. If a method produces real results not merely subjective view use it. If it does it goes on the trash bin like every other failed method.

 

[ajay0]

Don't eastern countries do the same kinds of things? How does eastern thought prevent this?

Eastern nations have adopted western philosophy and thought process at this point of time, and are in a process of being highly westernized themselves than even the west.

Eastern philosophies are looked down upon as ancient stuff irrevalent now, and egoic competitiveness and strife are perceived as being the name of the game. What is important is wmd,power, money and more money.

I

 

[Martin]

Can anyone describe the essential difference between "Eastern" and "Western" thought?
I'm not clear what we're actually discussing here.

 

[night912]

Can anyone describe the essential difference between "Eastern" and "Western" thought?
I'm not clear what we're actually discussing here.

Basically it's like this....

"Eastern" thought = one individual's own religious beliefs

"Western" thought = everyone who disagree with that individual's religious beliefs
*NOTE* "Western" thought consists of any religious beliefs, science, fantasy, philosophy, etc. It does not matter which part of the world it came from, as long as it's different from that individual's religious beliefs.

 

[Swami]

Can anyone describe the essential difference between "Eastern" and "Western" thought?
I'm not clear what we're actually discussing here.

There are many differences between Eastern and Western thought. The two subjects I often refer to are consciousness and epistemology.

Consciousness:
In the West, the nature of the Universe is material - everything (including consciousness) comes from matter.
In the East, the nature of the world is Consciousness. Everything (including matter) are manifestations of it.

Epistemology:
The West relies on the senses and reason to understand reality.
In the East, the senses and reason are very limiting. Seeing (experiencing) the world through a pure conscious state reveals the nature of reality. The pure conscious state is simply a state that is without any mental and sensory input.

 

[paarsurrey]

There are many differences between Eastern and Western thought. The two subjects I often refer to are consciousness and epistemology.

Consciousness:
In the West, the nature of the Universe is material - everything (including consciousness) comes from matter.
In the East, the nature of the world is Consciousness. Everything (including matter) are manifestations of it.

Epistemology:
The West relies on the senses and reason to understand reality.
In the East, the senses and reason are very limiting. Seeing (experiencing) the world through a pure conscious state reveals the nature of reality. The pure conscious state is simply a state that is without any mental and sensory input.

"In the East, the nature of the world is Consciousness. "

A little question:
What is the source of knowledge of "human consciousness", please?

Regards

 

[stvdv]

Got names?

Google got names. Heaps of names.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Other way around:get the calculations to fit what we observe about the universe.

True, but we have to do even more than this. In a number of ways, we are actually trying more to develop the mathematical tools necessary in order to enable us to "get the calculations to fit what we observe about the universe" on the theoretical side, and on the empirical side in a number of ways we are currently uncomfortably TOO reliant on observations for a vast array of calculations (in particular, I have in mind the manner in which divergent integrals in particle physics and QFT more generally are dealt with by wrapping up infinite theoretical quantities in a consistent manner so as to replace them with measured quantities in order to obtain finite values).
So in general it is not only that we make mathematics fit observations more than the reverse, but that in general the rigorous formulation of mathematics has tended to lag behind its use because we've needed calculations to fit observations before the mathematics could be fully, formally fleshed out.
I think that there is at least one million dollar prize awaiting anybody who can rigorously demonstrate the consistency of the mathematics underlying the standard model (in particular, Yang-Mills), so for those who disagree with you (and argue that we make the universe fit the math), there's a lot of money if they can show all of these problems are non-existent as we don't need the mathematical theory to fit observations, we can just reverse the progress. It won't work, but then I've never meditated on how to extort the Clay Institute by asserting that they should award me a million dollars for telling them they need not award such a prize at all...

 

[Martin]

There are many differences between Eastern and Western thought. The two subjects I often refer to are consciousness and epistemology.

Consciousness:
In the West, the nature of the Universe is material - everything (including consciousness) comes from matter.
In the East, the nature of the world is Consciousness. Everything (including matter) are manifestations of it.

Epistemology:
The West relies on the senses and reason to understand reality.
In the East, the senses and reason are very limiting. Seeing (experiencing) the world through a pure conscious state reveals the nature of reality. The pure conscious state is simply a state that is without any mental and sensory input.

Yes, these do seem to be quite different ways of looking at consciousness.

 

[ecco]

In the East, the nature of the world is Consciousness. Everything (including matter) are manifestations of it.

Yep. The rock upon which I sit is there because an Eastern Mystic manifested it with his Consciousness.

Seeing (experiencing) the world through a pure conscious state reveals the nature of reality. The pure conscious state is simply a state that is without any mental and sensory input.

How did the Eastern Mystic who manifested a rock with his Consciousness come into being? Did another Eastern Mystic manifest him with his Consciousness? How did the Eastern Mystic who manifested the Eastern Mystic who manifested the Eastern Mystic who manifested the rock come into being?

 

[ecco]

If a scientist is smart, he accepts it IMO
Many scientists already did.

Got names?

Google got names. Heaps of names.

Maybe Google "got" names and maybe Google does not "got" names. However, it was not Google that made the assertion that "Many scientists already did" accept Eastern Nonsense. You did. Can't you support your assertion?

 

[Swami]

"In the East, the nature of the world is Consciousness. "

A little question:
What is the source of knowledge of "human consciousness", please?

Regards

If I understand you correctly, you are asking how to use consciousness to acquire knowledge? One way is under the yogic practice of 'samadhi. This type of knowing involves becoming one with an object (person or thing). This allows you to have a "direct experience" of the object since you experience just as it experiences.

This discussion might help:
The Mystic way of knowing (for the skeptics)

 

[Swami]

Yep. The rock upon which I sit is there because an Eastern Mystic manifested it with his Consciousness.

How did the Eastern Mystic who manifested a rock with his Consciousness come into being? Did another Eastern Mystic manifest him with his Consciousness? How did the Eastern Mystic who manifested the Eastern Mystic who manifested the Eastern Mystic who manifested the rock come into being?

Please read the quote in my signature. It says you are pure awareness. If this is so, then you never "came into being". Only your "body" came into being.

 

[stvdv]

Maybe Google "got" names and maybe Google does not "got" names. However, it was not Google that made the assertion that "Many scientists already did" accept Eastern Nonsense. You did. Can't you support your assertion?

I did not
I can answer
I don't answer to you