Coles 1 Taylor Coles First Religion and Science Short Paper Empirical, Not Scientific: The Scientific Method

and Buddhist Theories of Mind In his article Buddhism and Science, Alan Wallace argues that the Buddhist tradition offers a valid method for investigating consciousness and mind that ought to be integrated into the scientific tradition. In this paper, I will contend that while Wallace is correct to argue for the viability of non-Western traditions, he overestimates the extent to which Buddhist methods capture the epistemic virtues attained by the scientific method. In particular, he is overly optimistic about meditations ability to make precise, reliable, introspective observations and insufficiently skeptical of Buddhist claims to achieve direct knowledge about the nature of the world (31). Further, I hold that disagreements between Buddhist practice and science largely stem from differences between the processes of scientific inference and Buddhist discovery. For these reasons, Buddhism fails to satisfy important criteria for justified scientific knowledge. Wallace is correct that while Buddhism has not developed historically along the lines of Western science, that fact should not delegitimize its conclusions (25). Many of the differences between Buddhist practice and Western cognitive science are arbitrary products of culture and I agree that the metaphysical assumption that consciousness is reducible to the brain cannot be used to discount Buddhism (Wallace 30). However, this concession does not grant Buddhism license to establish its own metaphysical presuppositions and Wallace will have to justify Buddhisms rigor on its own terms in order to propose it as a guide to scientific thinking. With this requirement in mind, I shall argue that Buddhist methods for reaching truth are not adequate for scientific purposes.

Coles 2 First and foremost, Wallaces optimistic reading of Buddhisms interaction with science obscures serious points of conflict which undermine his argument. While Wallace seems to be justified in emphasizing the fallibilist and empirical intentions of Buddhist practitioners, the metaphysical and non-falsifiable elements of Buddhist doctrine still shine through. For example, Wallace is mistaken when he asserts that the propositions set forth in the Four Noble Truths are fundamentally testable and confirmable by experience (25). On the contrary, it would be very difficult to design a course of testing that could falsify the idea that the fundamental nature of life is suffering. This is a philosophical argument about what the essence of experience is, not an empirically verifiable claim about what people can actually expect to observe in their mental activity. Claims about what is basic or fundamental to the universe seem to be necessarily unempirical, since there is no clear way to discern which experiences reveal basic truths and which experiences are illusory. If true, this line of reasoning would seriously damage the idea that Buddhism is justified by the test of immediate experience (Wallace 36). Buddhists could respond to the above argument by arguing that meditation enables practitioners to recognize the ultimate structure of reality. However, to justify that assertion, Buddhists would then have to explain the nature of the precise, reliable, introspective observations they make through meditation (Wallace 31). Wallaces best example of this sort of observation is his report that substrate consciousness can be recognized by the qualities of bliss, luminosity, and non-conceptuality, but these hazy mental qualities hardly seem rigorous (33). How do I know when what I am feeling is bliss? How can researchers be sure that they are using terminology that refers to distinct and coherent mental phenomena? As this example demonstrates, it is incredibly difficult to parse notions of experience into definite categories that can be studied objectively. Without a clear and precise way of gathering and categorizing mental

Coles 3 data, Buddhist insights will elude the sort of critical examination and testing that science demands. While Wallaces article is clearly not an exhaustive explication of Buddhist practices, this example at least illustrates why readers should be skeptical of Wallaces position that introspective observation is scientifically reliable. Nevertheless, doubts about the terminology of mental phenomena do not generally bother Buddhists. This may be, in part, because they believe that the Buddha gained direct knowledge of the tenets of the religion (Wallace 34). This is the aspect of Buddhist thought that is most clearly at odds with science. Scientists cannot test or criticize the evidence that goes into the construction of Buddhist truth because there is a direct connection between meditative experiment and the discovery of truth. As such, the process of meditation is a methodological black box. Research goals, cultural assumptions, and Buddhist training go in one end of the experiment and conviction of the truth comes out the other (Wallace 35). In order to be scientific, Buddhism would need to be able to describe the subjective experiences that justify its claims about the world. The Buddhist experimental method confuses the question of what the practitioner experiences with the question of whether or not an individual will come to hold a Buddhist belief. Even if scientists were to grant that introspection was a reliable way to observe mental phenomena, the results of a scientific introspection should be data that can be inductively generalized (e.g., I felt or experienced X, Y, and Z), rather than confirmed belief. Scientists need to separate their observations from their conclusions in order to justify the truth of any particular hypothesis. Buddhism precludes the possibility that any set of theories other than Buddhist teaching could, in principle, explain the experiences discovered in meditation. There may be some sense in which Buddhist practitioner experiences truth, but this would be a personal or philosophical truth, rather than a scientific one. The fact that meditation can be repeated by many

Coles 4 other practitioners only demonstrates that people will reliably come to certain conclusions given particular mental practices, not that those conclusions are true. Many religions have thousands of devotees who will testify to their having experienced the divine. Buddhist experiences that reveal the truth by means of introspection are no more scientifically valid. While I readily agree that Buddhism is a genuine attempt to understand the world through the experiences of its practitioners, its traditional practices lack some of the essential traits of good science. Clear, precise terminology and rigorous examination of the process of inference by which observational or experimental data confirms or disconfirms hypotheses are essential to justify scientific claims, make repeatable observations, and prevent confirmation bias from creeping into the method of scientific investigation. In these regards especially, Buddhism falls short. I am intrigued by Wallaces claim that Buddhism may inspire a revolution in the cognitive sciences, but it seems, at least from the perspective of someone who is interested in preserving the conventional view of what counts as scientific knowledge, that Buddhism will have to cheer on this transformation from the sidelines (37).

Coles 5 WORK CITED Wallace, B. Alan. "Buddhism and Science." Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. 24-40. Print.