ABSTRACT:
This presentation aims to trace the roots of the modern scientific paradigm, and argues that the scientific revolution was not the product of a dispassionate search for truth, but rather, at least to some extent a reaction to witchcraft hysteria, superstitious thinking, and that it was a legitimization of the power of the church and state at the turn of the 17th century. The reason that science has so much bias against psychic phenomena, and also the study of consciousness per se, is due to metaphysical biases that have nothing to do with the scientific method or the current amassment of empirical data. All scientific investigations are necessarily about our experience of the world, and are thus internal on some level, as they reflect our view (or consciousness) of the world, and never arrive at anything purely objective or a “view from nowhere.” Given that all events have internal and external components, this points towards a uniformity in consciousness concomitant to the uniformity in nature. If there is uniformity in human consciousness as much as there is uniformity in nature, and consciousness is the basis from which we arrive at facts in nature, what would then preclude us from saying that the other more internal contents of consciousness as well as other states of consciousness are intersubjectively coherent and that they can be studied scientifically? The experience of a laboratory is based in the same overall framework of consciousness in which psychic and transcendental experiences occur, but these types of experiences are seen as taboo for scientific investigation, for arbitrary reasons based on outdated metaphysics. This lecture aims to shed light on the fact that we are actually already engaged in a science of consciousness, and examines why most of us don’t realize it, and why others are reluctant to.
Keywords: science, philosophy of science, Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm, phenomenology, experience, consciousness, intersubjectivity
Michael Graham Lydon
Writer, Independent
Consciousness Researcher
Science of Self at
Education
Undergraduate
in Philosophy and Psychology,
Awarded
Distinguished Honors in Philosophy at
Member,
PSI CHI, Psychology Honors Society at
Extracurricular
Volunteer
and teacher-in-training, International Academy of Consciousness, New York, NY
Founder
/ President, Science of Self Club, September 2004,
Officer,
Lecturer,
718.825.4433