The Creative Imagination -- by Michael Polanyi (PART 2)

In this second part of the essay Polanyi poses a question central to understanding the progression of scientific endeavor (see Part 1). On which grounds can we change the standards of coherence we use to judge our speculations/theorizing as real? “We are faced with the existentialist dilemma: how values of our own choosing can have authority over us who decreed them." The answer he suggests involves first a deliberate intent to go beyond what we know; this intent is part of what he calls imagination. This in turn may spark a spontaneous movement of intuition, which seeks a deeper coherence. The two work together to find and integrate clues leading to a more profound level of understanding. This occurs largely below awareness and encodes new standards of coherence that only become explicit afterwards. 

In the next post, we will present some of our personal reactions to Polanyi's exhilarating essay.

We begin to see how the scientist’s vision is formed. The imagination sallies forward, and intuition integrates what the imagination has lit upon. But a fundamental complication comes into sight here. I have acknowledged that the final sanction of discovery lies in the sight of a coherence which our intuition detects and accepts as real; but history suggests that there are no universal standards for assessing such coherence.

Copernicus criticized the Ptolemaic system for its incoherence in assuming other than steady circular planetary paths, and fought for the recognition of the heliocentric system as real because of its superior consistency. But his follower, Kepler, abandoned the postulate  of  circular  paths,  as causing  meaningless  complications  in the  Copernican  system,  and  boasted  that  by  doing  so  he  had cleansed  an Augean  stable  (Koestler,  1959, p. 334). Kepler based his first two laws on his vision  that geometrical  coherence  is the product  of  some mechanical interaction  (Koestler,  1959, p. 316), but this conception of reality underwent another radical transformation when Galileo, Descartes, and Newton  found ultimate reality in the smallest particles of matter obeying the mathematical laws of mechanics. (....)

It becomes necessary to ask, therefore, by what standards we can change the very standards of coherence on which our convictions rest. On what grounds can we change our grounds? We are faced with the existentialist dilemma: how values of our own choosing can have authority over us who decreed them.

We must look once more, then, at the mechanism by which imagination and intuition carry out their joint task.  We lift our arm and find that our imagination has issued a command which has evoked its implementation. But the moment feasibility is obstructed, a gap opens up between our faculties and the end at which we are aiming, and our imagination fixes on this gap and evokes attempts to reduce it. Such a quest can go on for years; it will be persistent, deliberative, and transitive; yet its whole purpose is directed at ourselves; it attempts to make us produce ideas. We say then that we are racking our brain or ransacking our brain; that we are cudgeling or cracking it, or beating our brain in trying to get it to work.

And the action induced in us by this ransacking is felt as something that is happening to us.  We say that we tumble to an idea; or that an idea crosses our mind; or that it comes into our head; or that it strikes us or dawns on us, or that it just presents itself to us. We are actually surprised and exclaim: Aha! when we suddenly do produce an idea. Ideas may indeed come to us unbidden, hours or even days after we have ceased to rack our brains.

Discovery is made therefore in two moves: one deliberate, the other spontaneous, the spontaneous move being evoked in ourselves by the action of our deliberate effort. The deliberate thrust is a focal act of the imagination, while the spontaneous response to it, which brings discovery, belongs to the same class as the spontaneous coordination of visual clues in response to our looking at something. This spontaneous act of discovery deserves to be recognized as creative intuition.

But where does this leave the creative imagination? It is there; it is not displaced by intuition but imbued with it. (....)

The imaginative effort can evoke its own implementation only because it follows intuitive intimations of its own feasibility (....)

The honors of creativity are due then in one part to the imagination, which imposes on intuition a feasible task, and, in the other part, to intuition, which rises to this task and reveals the discovery that the quest was due to bring forth. Intuition informs the imagination which, in its turn, releases the powers  of  intuition. (....)

When the quest has ended, imagination and intuition do not vanish from the scene. Our intuition recognizes our final result to be valid, and our imagination points to  the  inexhaustible  future manifestations of it. We return to the quiescent state of mind from which the inquiry started, but return to it with a new vision of coherence and reality. Herein lies the final acceptance of this vision; any new standards of coherence implied in it have become our own standards; we are committed to them. (....)

…[S]cientific discoveries are made in search of a reality--of a reality that is there, whether we know it or not. The search is of our own making, but the reality is not. We send out our imagination deliberately to ransack promising avenues, but the promise of these paths is already there to guide us; we sense it by our spontaneous intuitive powers. We induce the work of intuition but do not control its operations.

And since our intuition works on a subsidiary level, neither the clues which it uses nor the principles by which it integrates them are fully known. It is difficult to tell what were the clues which convinced Copernicus that his system was real. We have seen that his vision was fraught with implications so far beyond his own ken that, had they been shown to him, he would have rejected them. (....)

The solution of our problem is approaching here. (....) The deliberate aim of scientific inquiry is to solve a problem, but our intuition may respond to our efforts with a solution entailing new standards of coherence, new values. In affirming the solution we tacitly obey these new values and thus recognize their authority over ourselves, over us who tacitly conceived them.

This is indeed how new values are introduced, whether in science, or in the arts, or in human relations. They enter subsidiarily, embodied in creative action. Only after this can they be spelled out and professed in abstract terms, and this makes them appear to have been deliberately chosen, which is absurd. The actual grounds of a value, and its very meaning, will ever lie hidden in the commitment which originally bore witness to that value.

(….) The content of any empirical statement is three times indeterminate. It relies on clues which are largely unspecifiable, integrates them by principles which are undefinable, and speaks of a reality which is inexhaustible. Attempts to eliminate these indeterminancies of science merely replace science by a meaningless fiction. (....)

We should be glad to recognize that science has come into existence by mental endowments akin to those in which all hopes of excellence are rooted and that science rests ultimately on such intangible powers of our  mind.

The Creative Imagination -- by Michael Polanyi

"The Creative Imagination" by Michael Polanyi [PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES (1969) 6: 59-91] explores the role of intuition and imagination in the growth of scientific knowledge.  Due to the richness of the material, we have decided to devote two successive posts to the article.  Polanyi (1891-1976) had first hand knowledge of the scientific process: he was an esteemed physical Chemist turned philosopher of science.  He proposes here in the first part that scientific knowledge like ordinary perception depends on an internal integration of a variety of clues, many we may not be aware of. We focus on the object and only have subsidiary awareness of the clues that determine our perception; because the integration occurs internally, he calls this "personal knowledge".  In ordinary perception, this depends on the development of a coherence among our various senses.  In a similar vein in scientific endeavor, like a ball rolling down an incline, we are guided by the slope of greater coherence leading to an experience of deeper meaning.   The second part of the essay considers how the standards on which this coherence is based can change in the context of scientific work.

Polyani’s own statement in the article provides the best bridge between his view of the nature of scientific knowledge and spirituality. “ Science is based on clues that have a bearing on reality. These clues are not fully specifiable; nor is the process of integration which connects them fully definable; and the future manifestations of the reality indicated by this coherence are inexhaustible. These three indeterminacies defeat any attempt at a strict theory of scientific validity and offer space for the powers of the imagination and intuition.”  

An earlier version of the article was given as a lecture at Wesleyan University in 1965 and is available online. 

…[N]either imagination nor intuition are deemed rational ways of making discoveries. They are excluded from the logic of scientific discovery, which can deal then only with the verification or refutation of ideas after they have turned up as possible contributions to science. (....)

However…[n]o scientific discovery can be strictly verified, or even proved to be probable. (....)

There is in fact no sharp division between science in the making and science in the textbook. The vision which guided the scientist to success lives on in his discovery and is shared by those who recognize it. It is reflected in the confidence they place in the reality of that which has been discovered  and in the way in which they sense the depth and fruitfulness of a discovery.  (....)

...[T]eachers in philosophy are likely to raise their eyebrows at such a vague emotional description of scientific discovery. (....)

[Yet] Copernicus discovered the solar system by signs which convinced him. But these signs convinced  few  others.  For  the  Copernican  system  was  far  more complicated than that of Ptolemy: it was a veritable jungle of ad hoc assumptions. (....) He did not stop to consider how many assumptions he had to make in formulating his system, nor how many difficulties he ignored in doing so. Since his vision showed him an outline of reality, he ignored all its complications and unanswered  questions. 

(....) In spite of its vagueness and its extravagances, his vision was shared by great scientists like Kepler and Galileo. Admittedly, their discoveries bore out the reality of the Copernican system, but they could make these discoveries only because they already believed in the reality of that system.                         

We can see here what is meant by attributing reality to a scientific discovery. It is to believe that it refers to no chance configuration of things, but to a persistent connection of certain features, a connection which, being real, will yet manifest itself in numberless ways, inexhaustibly. It is to believe that it is there, existing independently of us, and that for that reason its consequences can never be fully predicted.

Our knowledge of reality has, then, an essentially indeterminate content: it deserves to be called a vision. (….)  

This vision, the vision of a hidden reality, which guides a scientist in his quest, is a dynamic force. At the end of the quest the vision is becalmed in the contemplation of the reality revealed by a discovery; but the vision is renewed and becomes dynamic again in other scientists and guides them to new discoveries. I shall now try to show how both the dynamic and the static phases of a scientific vision are due to the strength of the imagination guided by intuition. 

(....) I have pursued this problem for many years by considering science as an extension of ordinary perception. When I look at my hand and move it about, it would keep changing its shape, its size, and its color but for my power of seeing the joint meaning of a host of rapidly changing clues, and seeing that this joint meaning remains unchanged.  I recognize a real object before me from my joint awareness of the clues which bear upon it. (....)

We can recognize here two kinds of awareness. We are obviously aware of the object we are looking at, but are aware also--in a much less positive way--of a hundred different clues which we integrate to the sight of the object. When integrating these clues, we are attending fully to the object while we are aware of the clues themselves without attending to them. We are aware of these clues only as pointing to the object we are looking at. I shall say that we have a subsidiary awareness of the clues in their bearing on the object to which we are focally attending.

While an object on which we are focusing our attention is always identifiable, the clues through which we are attending to the object may often be unspecifiable. (....) 

But it is a mistake to identify subsidiary awareness with unconscious or preconscious awareness, or with the Jamesian fringe of awareness. …[I]t can have any degree of consciousness so long as it functions as a clue to the object of our focal attention. (....)

If science is a manner of perceiving things in nature, we might find the prototype of scientific discovery in the way we solve a difficult perceptual problem. Take for example the way we learn to find our way about while wearing inverting spectacles. …[Y]ou feel completely lost and remain helpless for days on end. But if you persist...eventually [you] can even drive a car or climb rocks with the spectacles on. (....)

The inverted image has been reconnected to other sensory clues, to touch and sound and weight. These all hang together with the image once more, and hence, though the image remains inverted, the subject can again find his way by it safely. A new way of seeing things rightly has been established. (….)

We see how the wearer of inverting spectacles reorganizes scrambled clues into a new coherence. He again sees objects, instead of meaningless impressions. (....) He has made sense out of chaos.

In science, I find the closest parallel to this perceptual achievement in the discovery of relativity. Einstein (Schilpp, 1949, p. 53) has told the story of how from the age of 16 he was obsessed by the following kind of speculations. Experiments with falling bodies were known to give the same results on board a ship in motion as on solid ground. But what would happen to the light which a lamp would emit on board a moving ship? Supposing the ship moved fast enough, would it overtake the beams of its own light, as a bullet overtakes its own sound by crossing the sonic barrier? Einstein thought that this was inconceivable, and, persisting in this assumption, he eventually succeeded in renewing the conceptions of space and time in a way which would make it inconceivable for the ship to overtake, however slightly, its own light rays. (....)

Relativity alone involves conceptual innovations as strange and paradoxical as those we make in righting an inverted vision. (....)

We generally see things as we do, because this establishes coherence within the context of our experience. So when Einstein extended his vision to the universe and included the case of a light source emitting a beam, he could make sense of what he then faced only by seeing it in such a way that the beam was never overtaken, however slightly, by its source. This is what he meant by saying that he knew intuitively that this was in fact the case. (....)

Science is based on clues that have a bearing on reality. These clues are not fully specifiable; nor is the process of integration which connects them fully definable; and the future manifestations of the reality indicated by this coherence are inexhaustible. These three indeterminacies defeat any attempt at a strict theory of scientific validity and offer space for the powers of the imagination and intuition.

This gives us a general idea of the way scientific knowledge is established at the end of an inquiry; it tells us how we judge that our result is coherent and real. But it does not show us where to start an inquiry, nor how we know, once we have started, which way to turn for a solution. (….) 

This·quest is guided throughout by feelings of a deepening coherence and these feelings have a fair chance of proving right. We may recognize here the powers of a dynamic intuition. (….)

Physics speaks of potential energy that is released when a weight slides down a slope. Our search for deeper coherence is likewise guided by a potentiality. We feel the slope toward deeper insight as we feel the direction in which a heavy weight is pulled along a steep incline. It is this dynamic intuition which guides the pursuit of discovery.(....)

But we must yet acknowledge further powers of intuition, without which inventors and scientists could neither rationally decide to choose a particular problem nor pursue any chosen problem successfully. …[T]hink of Einstein, when as a boy he came across the speculative dilemma of a light source pursuing its own ray. (....) His intuition told him that there must exist a principle which would assure the impossibility of observing absolute motion in any circumstances. Through years of sometimes despairing inquiry, he kept up his conviction that the discovery he was seeking was within his ultimate reach. (....)

The power by which such long-range assessments are made may be called a strategic intuition. (....) Without this kind of strategic intuition, he would waste his opportunities on wild goose chases and soon be out of a job. (....)  

It is a skill for guessing with a reasonable chance of guessing right…. The fact that this faculty often fails does not discredit it; a method for guessing 10% above average chance on roulette would be worth millions.

But to know what to look for does not lend us the power to find it. That power lies in the imagination.

I call all thoughts of things that are not present, or not yet present--or perhaps never to be present---acts of the imagination. (….) 

Take the example of learning to ride a bicycle. The imagination is fixed on this aim, but, our present capabilities being  insufficient,  its  execution  falls  behind.  By  straining  every nerve to close this gap, we gradually learn to keep our balance on a bicycle. (....)

This is the mechanism to which I ascribe the evocation of helpful clues by the scientist's imagination in the pursuit of an inquiry. But we have to remember here that scientific problems are not definite tasks. The scientist knows his aim only in broad terms and must rely on his sense of deepening coherence to guide him to discovery. He must keep his imagination fixed on these growing points and force his way to what lies hidden beyond them. We must see how this is done. (....)

No  quest  could  have  been  more indeterminate  in its aim than Einstein's inquiry which led to the discovery of relativity. Yet he has told how during all the years of his inquiry, "there was a feeling of direction, of going straight towards something definite. Of course," he said, "it is very hard to express that feeling in words; but it was definitely so, and  clearly to be distinguished from later thoughts about the rational form of the solution." We meet here the integration of still largely unspecifiable elements into a gradually narrowing context, the coherence of  which  has not yet become  explicit.(....)

"Lectures on Mysticism" from The Varieties of Religious Experience -- by William James

We are pleased to excerpt William James’ lectures on mysticism from his book THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE. The original lectures are a delight to read. We can capture but a fraction of their spirit here, however we hope this post will compel you to read the original. James (1842-1910) was well-known as a philosopher, psychologist, and physiologist. He was an astute observer of experience, as well as an incisive thinker. He is often thought of as the father of modern psychology. Certain passages below resonate intriguingly with Thomas Metzinger’s “Out-of-body experiences as the origin of the concept of a “Soul’” excerpted previously.  

William James

One may say truly, I think, that personal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness. ... How do we part off mystical states from other states? ... [I] propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical... .

1 Ineffability. ...The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression… . [I]ts quality must be directly experienced… . [M]ystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists.

2. Noetic quality. -- Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. ... [A]s a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.

3. Transiency. -- Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. ...Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity. -- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways…; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.  … Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence.

Our next step should be to gain acquaintance with some typical examples. … [P]henomena are best understood when placed within their series, studied in their germ and in their over-ripe decay... .

The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. ... Most of us can remember the strangely moving power of passages in certain poems read when we were young, irrational doorways as they were through which the mystery of fact, the wildness and the pang of life, stole into our hearts and thrilled them. ... We are alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as we have kept or lost this mystical susceptibility.

A more pronounced step forward on the mystical ladder is found in an extremely frequent phenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which sometimes sweeps over us, of having "been here before,"

As Tennyson writes:

Moreover, something is or seems
That touches me with mystic gleams,
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams --
"Of something felt, like something here;
Of something done, I know not where;
Such as no language may declare.

A much more extreme state of mystical consciousness is described by J. A. Symonds; and probably more persons than we suspect could give parallels to it from their own experience.

It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But Self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round about it.

The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as pathological, though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry seem still to bear witness to its ideality. I refer to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anaesthetic, especially by alcohol. The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole....

Certain aspects of nature seem to have a peculiar power of awakening…mystical moods. Most of the striking cases which I have collected have occurred out of doors. ... I take this from Starbuck's manuscript collection:

[T]he consciousness of God's nearness came to me sometimes. I say God, to describe what is indescribable. ... I felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in Nature. I exulted in the mere fact of existence, of being a part of it all -- the drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree-trunks, and so on. 

Here is a similar record from the memoirs of that interesting German idealist, Malwida von Meysenbug:

I was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling; and now again, as once before in distant days in the Alps of Dauphine, I was impelled to kneel down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable. 

[F]rom the Autobiography of J. Trev[a]or.

For nearly an hour I walked along the road to the 'Cat and Fiddle,' and then returned. On the way back, suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in Heaven -- an inward state of peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light, as though the external condition had brought about the internal effect -- a feeling of having passed beyond the body, though the scene around me stood out more clearly and as if nearer to me than before, by reason of the illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be placed. 

The writer adds...

The spiritual life...justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to those who do not understand? ... This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with the objective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this test. 

We have now seen enough of this cosmic or mystic consciousness, as it comes sporadically. We must next pass to its methodical cultivation as an element of the religious life. Hindus, Buddhists, Mohammedans, and Christians all have cultivated it methodically.

In India, training in mystical insight has been known from time immemorial under the name of yoga. Yoga means the experimental union of the individual with the divine. It is based on persevering exercise; and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration, and moral discipline vary slightly in the different systems which teach it.

[Quoting] from VIVEKANANDA, Raja Yoga, London, 1896.

All the different steps in yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state or Samadhi. ... Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which is above consciousness, and which, also, is not accompanied with the feeling of egoism. ... There is no feeling of I, and yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless. 

The Buddhists used the word "samâdhi" as well as the Hindus; but "dhyâna" is their special word for higher states of contemplation. There seem to be four stages recognized in dhyâna. The first stage comes through concentration of the mind upon one point. It excludes desire, but not discernment or judgment: it is still intellectual. In the second stage the intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity remains. In the third stage the satisfaction departs, and indifference begins, along with memory a self-consciousness.  [Refer to the text for the fourth stage!]

In the Christian church there have always been mystics. ... The basis of the system is "orison" or meditation, the methodical elevation of the soul towards God. ...The first thing to be aimed at in orison is the mind's detachment from outer sensations, for these interfere with its concentration upon ideal things.

[Saint Teresa writes]

In the orison of union the soul is fully awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world and in respect of herself. During the short time the union lasts, she is as it were deprived of every feeling.... God establishes himself in the interior of this soul in such a way, that when she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubt that she has been in God, and God in her. ...The deliciousness of some of these states seems to be beyond anything known in ordinary consciousness. I confess that it is all a mystery in which I am lost. 

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini, Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Do mystical states establish the truth of those theological affections in which the saintly life has its root? ... In spite of their repudiation of articulate self-description, mystical states in general assert a pretty distinct theoretic drift. ... We pass into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more, as from a smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. In them the unlimited absorbs the limit. ...  In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think... .

Our own more "rational" beliefs are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs. Our senses, namely, have assured us of certain states of fact; but mystical experiences are as direct perceptions of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever were for us. The records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if I may be pardoned the barbarous expression -- that is, they are face to face presentations of what seems immediately to exist.

But more remains to be told, for religious mysticism is only one half of mysticism. The other half has no accumulated traditions except those which the text-books on insanity supply. Open any one of these and you will find abundant cases in which "mystical ideas" are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind. In delusional insanity, paranoia, as they sometimes call it, we may have a diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. ... It is evident that from the point of view of their psychological mechanism, the classic mysticism and these lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level, from that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which science is beginning to admit the existence, but of which so little is really known. ... Its value must be ascertained by empirical methods, so long as we are not mystics ourselves.

The Middle Way - by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch

This passage is taken from THE EMBODIED MIND: COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND HUMAN EXPERIENCE (pp. 224-226), which juxtaposes insights from cognitive science and from Buddhism. The initial Abhidharma tradition emphasized the absence of a permanent self. The Mahayana tradition, which began 500 years after Buddha's death, in addition emphasized the absence of an independently existing world---or complete groundlessness. The passage summarizes and comments on the Mahayana philosophical argument for groundlessness. The previous post from Carl Sagon’s book helps point out from an objective prospective that our usual view of reality is very limited. Alisa's essay on her meditation experience, the second to last entry, reveals a moment of complete emptiness---which was accompanied by expanded awareness.Reprinted with permission of the authors and MIT Press.

1. ...By definition, something is independent, intrinsic, or absolute only if it does not depend on anything else; it must have an identity that transcends its relations.

2. Nothing in our experience can be found that satisfies this criterion of independence or ultimacy. The earlier Abhidharma tradition had expressed this insight as codependent arising: nothing can be found apart from its conditions of arising, formation and decay.... Nagarjuna took the understanding of codependence considerably further. Causes and their effects, things and their attributes, and the very mind of the inquiring subject and the objects of mind are each equally codependent on the other. Nagarjuna's logic addresses itself penetratingly to the mind of the inquiring subject...to the ways in which what are actually codependent factors are taken by that subject to be the ultimate founding blocks of a supposedly objective and a supposed subjective reality.

3. Therefore, nothing can be found that has an ultimate or independent existence. Or to use Buddhist language, everything is "empty" of an independent existence for it is codependently originated.

...Why should it make any difference at all to experience? One might say, So what if the world and the self change moment to moment -- whoever thought that they were permanent? And so what if they are mutually dependent on each other -- whoever thought they were isolated? The answer...is that as one becomes mindful of one's own experience, one realizes the power of the urge to grasp after foundations -- to grasp the sense of foundations of the real, separate self, the sense of the foundation of a real, separate world, and the sense of foundation of an actual relation between self and world.

It is said that emptiness is a natural discovery that one would make by oneself with sufficient mindful/awareness -- natural but shocking. Previously we have been talking about examining the mind with meditation. There may not have been a self, but there was still a mind to examine itself, even if a momentary one. But now we discovered that we have no mind; after all, a mind must be something that is separate from and knows the world. We also don't have a worlds. There is neither an objective nor subjective pole. Nor is there any knowing because there is nothing hidden. Knowing sonyata [emptiness]... is surely not an intentional act. Rather (to use traditional imagery), it is like a reflection in a mirror -- pure brilliant, but with no additional reality apart from itself. As mind/world keeps happening in its interdependent continuity, there is nothing extra on the side of mind or on the side of the world to know or be known further. Whatever experience happens is open (Buddhist teachers use the word exposed), perfectly revealed just as it is.

We can now see why Madhyamika is called the middle way. It avoids the extremes of either objectivism or subjectivism, of absolutism or nihilism. As is said by the Tibetan commentators, "through ascertaining the reason -- that all phenomena are dependent arisings--the extreme of annihilation (nihilism) is avoided, and the realization of dependent-arising of causes and effects is gained. Through ascertaining the thesis -- that all phenomena do not inherently exist -- the extreme of permanence (absolutism) is avoided, and realization of the emptiness of all phenomena is gained."

Spinoza's Ethics, Preface to Part IV

We have decided to follow up on the last piece, based on a book about Spinoza called BETRAYING SPINOZA, with some of Spinoza's own writing. He is often called a philosopher's philosopher, and his writing is correspondingly dense. THE ETHICS is no exception; however he also included reasonably accessible prefaces and/or appendices to its various parts, which help capture aspects of his thinking.

Summary: The world is not the top-down result of a divine purpose, but rather the bottom-up result of the interaction of natural things. The notion of good and bad, perfection and imperfection do not apply to natural things. Natural things are perfect, or what is the same thing, real, being, or essences. However distinctions such as good or bad are useful to compare the effective activity of a being relative to its potential.
(We welcome your own summary or any other thoughts as a comment.)


PREFACE: Part IV

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. Why this is so, and what is good or evil in the emotions, I propose to show in this part of my treatise. But, before I begin, it would be well to make a few prefatory observations on perfection and imperfection, good and evil.

When a man has purposed to make a given thing, and has brought it to perfection, his work will be pronounced perfect, not only by himself, but by everyone who rightly knows, or thinks that he knows, the intention and aim of its author. For instance, suppose anyone sees a work (which I assume to be not yet completed), and knows that the aim of the author of that work is to build a house, he will call the work imperfect; he will, on the other hand, call it perfect, as soon as he sees that it is carried through to the end, which its author had purposed for it. But if a man sees a work, the like whereof he has never seen before, and if he knows not the intention of the artificer, he plainly cannot know, whether that work be perfect or imperfect. Such seems to be the primary meaning of these terms.

But, after men began to form general ideas, to think out types of houses, buildings, towers, etc., and to prefer certain types to others, it came about, that each man called perfect that which he saw agree with the general idea he had formed of the thing in question, and called imperfect that which he saw agree less with his own preconceived type, even though it had evidently been completed in accordance with the idea of its artificer.

This seems to be the only reason for calling natural phenomena, which, indeed, are not made with human hands, perfect or imperfect: for men are wont to form general ideas of things natural, no less than of things artificial, and such ideas they hold as types, believing that Nature (who they think does nothing without an object) has them in view, and has set them as types before herself. Therefore, when they behold something in Nature, which does not wholly conform to the preconceived type which they have formed of the thing in question, they say that Nature has fallen short or has blundered, and has left her work incomplete.

Thus we see that men are wont to style natural phenomena perfect or imperfect rather from their own prejudices, than from true knowledge of what they pronounce upon. Now we showed in the Appendix to Part 1 that Nature does not work with an end in view. For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists. For we have shown, that by the same necessity of its nature, whereby it exists, it likewise works. The reason or cause why God or Nature exists, and the reason why he acts, are one and the same.

Therefore, as he does not exist for the sake of an end, so neither does he act for the sake of an end; of his existence and of his action there is neither origin nor end. Wherefore, a cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything.

For example, when we say that to be inhabited is the final cause of this or that house, we mean nothing more than that a man, conceiving the conveniences of household life, had a desire to build a house. Wherefore, the being inhabited, in so far as it is regarded as a final cause, is nothing else but this particular desire, which is really the efficient cause; it is regarded as the primary cause, because men are generally ignorant of the causes of their desires They are, as I have often said already, conscious of their own actions and appetites, but ignorant of the causes whereby they are determined to any particular desire.

Therefore, the common saying that Nature sometimes falls short, or blunders, and produces things which are imperfect, I set down among the glosses treated of in the Appendix to Part 1.

Perfection and imperfection, then, are in reality merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from a comparison among one another of individuals of the same species; hence I said above, that by reality and perfection I mean the same thing. For we are wont to refer all the individual things in nature to one genus, which is called the highest genus, namely, to the category of Being, whereto absolutely all individuals in nature belong. Thus, in so far as we refer the individuals in nature to this category, and comparing them one with another, find that some possess more of being or reality than others, we, to this extent, say that some are more perfect than others. Again, in so far as we attribute to them anything implying negation--as term, end, infirmity, etc.,--we, to this extent, call them imperfect, because they do not affect our mind so much as the things which we call perfect, not because they have any intrinsic deficiency, or because Nature has blundered. For nothing lies within the scope of a thing's nature, save that which follows from the necessity of the nature of its efficient cause, and whatsoever follows from the necessity of the nature of its efficient cause necessarily comes to pass.

As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that mourns; for him that is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.

Nevertheless, though this be so, the terms should still be retained. For, inasmuch as we desire to form an idea of man as a type of human nature which we may hold in view, it will be useful for us to retain the terms in question, in the sense I have indicated. In what follows, then, I shall mean by "good" that which we certainly know to be a means of approaching more nearly to the type of human nature, which we have set before ourselves; by " bad," that which we certainly know to be a hindrance to us in approaching the said type. Again, we shall say that men are more perfect, or more imperfect, in proportion as they approach more or less nearly to the said type.

For it must be specially remarked that, when I say that a man passes from a lesser to a greater perfection, or vice versa, I do not mean that he is changed from one essence or reality to another; for instance, a horse would be as completely destroyed by being changed into a man, as by being changed into an insect. What I mean is, that we conceive the thing's power of action, in so far as this is understood by its nature, to be increased or diminished.

Lastly, by perfection in general I shall, as I have said, mean reality in general --in other words, each thing's essence, in so far as it exists, and operates in a particular manner, and without paying any regard to its duration. For no given thing can be said to be more perfect, because it has passed a longer time in existence. The duration of things cannot be determined by their essence, for the essence of things involves no fixed and definite period of existence; but everything, whether it be more perfect or less perfect, will always be able to persist in existence with the same force wherewith it began to exist; wherefore, in this respect, all things are equal.

source http://home.earthlink.net/~tneff/e4a.htm

Betraying Spinoza - by Lois Isenman based on Rebecca Goldstein's Book

The 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza counseled that we strip ourselves of our attachment to our personal identity and instead use reason to take our place as citizens of the cosmos. Contemporary philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein betrays Spinoza in her book Betraying Spinoza by considering how the environment he grew up in influenced his philosophical views. She also betrays Spinoza by telling something about the unusual circumstances in which she first encountered him.

I will also betray Spinoza. To begin with, my knowledge of his work is secondhand. Yet it has affected me profoundly.

The loss of individual identity, of subjectivity, advocated by Spinoza leads to what Goldstein calls radical objectivity. This objectivity is different from what, rightly or wrongly, is today taken to be the objectivity of science. Spinoza’s worldview is framed by reason, yet there is a strong ecstatic, or blissful, impulse it. (In fact the word ecstasy originally meant to stand outside oneself.) Goldstein sometimes pegs his views as ecstatic rationalism.

Baruch Spinoza grew up in a community of Portuguese Jews who had escaped from the inquisition and moved to Amsterdam where they were free to practice Judaism. A brilliant yeshiva student, who also read widely, he came to reject the rigidity of traditional practice and doctrine, and especially the notion of the Jews as the chosen people. His ideas eventually led to his excommunication. Goldstein traces how the spiritualized rationalism of Talmudic debate (a way of “meshing with the Devine” by studying his laws) and the Kabbalistic, or Jewish mystical tradition (strongly influenced by the Greeks) joined together with the recent suffering of the Jews at the hand of the inquisition to influence his philosophy. She says:

I have long thought that the distinctly platonic tone of Spinoza's philosophy, which consist not so much in his actual picture of reality but in the ecstatic impulse that radiates it, and that sharply distinguishes his rationalism from both Descartes' and Leibniz’s came to him by way of the kabbalistic influences which were vividly alive in his Portuguese community. And Spinoza's system will offer us, as we shall see, its own solutions to the two mysteries that the most central to kabbalistic speculations; the ontological mystery of why the world exists at all, and the ethical mystery of suffering; why does suffering---and of such mind-numbing magnitude---exist in this world, if God is both all good and all-powerful? (p. 91)

Although Spinoza suggests the key to avoiding suffering is to enlarge one's frame of reference to include all of creation, his views are grounded in bodily experience and in subjectivity. He wrote, “The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question.” ( The Ethics , Part III. VII, quoted in Goldstein p. 161) We come into being in a body and are committed to the well-being of this body in a way we are committed to nothing else. We cannot help it.

This basic yet nonetheless curious fact is at the core of most experience. It is what Spinoza calls conatus. Our emotions, bestowed on us by evolution to assure that we survive, make it so. Antonio Damasio, an emotion researcher, in his book Looking for Spinoza, points out that Spinoza anticipated much of current thinking in cognitive science. Damasio, for example, has amassed a great deal of neuroanatomical and clinical evidence that places the body and its emotions at the very core of the experience of self. Goldstein writes:

One cares about oneself simply because one is one’s self. A person is committed, immediately and unthinkingly, to the survival and flourishing of a single thing in the universe that she is. There is no reason, external to one's own identity with that thing--- one self --- that one should be so single-mindedly, unswayingly committed to it. What explains this commitment is nothing over and above the bare fact that one is who one is. (p.160)

When we are happy, this body and the experience of self that come with it seems to expand. When we are unhappy it seems to contract into itself. Our biological mandate, which we cannot refuse, is to try to expand this self as much as possible. Yet our emotions are shaped, or conditioned, by our background and also triggered by external circumstances. They are thus doubly contingent on things we cannot control. Spinoza argues that the only way to assure success in our commitment to ourselves is to greatly enlarge our point of view. We suffer less to the extent that we can distance ourselves from our own emotions. Goldstein says:

That problematic and precious “I” is, for Spinoza a symptom of a passivity, the acceptance of the contingently given, that weakens our capacities, drains and us, impedes our driving force to persist in our own being, to flourish in the world. Paradoxically the only way to flourish in one’s being is to cease being only that being.(p. 69)

Our very essence, our conatus, will lead us, if only we will think it all through, to a vision of reality that, since it is the truth, is in our interest to attain, and will affect such a difference in our sense of ourselves that we will have trouble even returning to the pre-philosophical attachment to ourselves.(p.162)

I had an illuminating experience while reading Goldstein’s book. Just as I was getting ready to go to the airport for my flight home from a trip, I checked my email and received some unanticipated bad news. A deeply unpleasant incident occurred on the way to the airport as well, in part because I was completely occupied processing my thoughts and feelings.

I arrived at the airport in a state of psychic shock. After stewing in my feelings for a while more, I felt drawn to reading Goldstein’s book; I read straight through to Boston. When I arrived home, my emotional pain had not gone away: it was a deep ache in my chest. Yet I was now able to accept these unpleasant events and the internal discomfort they caused without judgment. This seemed to free my mind from its tendency to process seemingly endlessly deeply upsetting events.

Spinoza’s pragmatic if challenging solution to the question of human suffering meets another strand of his philosophy. His basic assumption is one of holism. He begins The Ethics with the following definition,“By that which is self-caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent." (The Ethics, Part I, I, in Goldstein p.71) The universe causes itself. It is therefore deterministic, even if we with limited minds can not understand it. The universe defines logic, or as Goldstein says, it is logic self-aware.

But this reality is not the material world generally perceived by the senses. Sense experience is the lowest step on Spinoza’s hieracrchy of cognition; he calls it imagination. Rather reality is the web of rational necessary connections that underlie the cosmos. By forsaking personal identity, and using our reason, we can partake of this web of necessary connections of which we are, at least in our essence, inherently a part. Though this logic is something we can only fully experience with intuition, our reason prepares us and guides us to this knowledge of God with Nature---deus sive natura.

I had another experience that helped illuminate the power of Spinoza’s work. One morning after spending about an hour with my notes from Goldstein's book in preparation for writing this article, I went outside to go to my car. The shimmering light and my hour with Spinoza seemingly came together to allow me a taste of something extraordinary, which might have some relationship to the ecstacy associated with nature for Spinoza. This feeling came neither from the sensory details themselves, nor how they fit together. Rather it came from something intangible behind all this. Whatever it was seemed dazzlingly intelligent (though whether it was was rational, and thus conceptual, or non-conceptual, I do not know). In any case, the world appeared both material and immaterial, and I found myself soaring to the rhythm of the pulse between the two.

For the next several hours, whenever I turned from my work I could reconnect to this ecstatic feeling. (Even now when I extend my field of vision to its limits, I can recapture a faint echo of the feeling.) But later in the afternoon I came down hard.

A friend’s manipulation about something unimportant and my acquiescence in order to minimize the situation and avoid a showdown left me internally fuming. My effort to talk myself down and to distract worked only to an extent. It did not really get inside to the source of my intense reaction, and I could not completely put this reaction aside. Alas, even though I had tried not to betray Spinoza and myself, I ended up betraying us both.

I plan to read Spinoza’s books, even though their sparseness and rigor makes them daunting. I would like to get a more of a feeling for this web of necessary connections Spinoza calls reason and also how reason and intuition come together for him. Even more importantly, I hope his methodology---his bare bones rationality---in conjunction with his message, will help me become more immune to the seductive and tenacious pull of negative emotions (even when it is round about).

Although I tend not to think this way, I am aware that there may be a bonus. Actually my preference is for super-grounded experiences of altered consciousness rather than ecstatic ones. But hey, if it ever gets to be a real issue, maybe I can work something out.

Rebecca Goldstein, Betryaing Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity (New York: Schocken Books, 2006).

Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (New York: Harcourt, 2003).