snatchbalance

I've heard it said that philosophy can be, somewhat arbitrarily, divided into two broad catagories of inquiry:

1. How do we know things about the world around us?

2. How does one live the best live?

Can one engage in either of these pursuits without engaging in some sort of self inspection?

I mean, philosophers through out time have described all sorts of abstract concepts. There must be some sort individual experience for other people to relate them to. What sort of process do you use to examine such abstractins?

As far as "2" goes: "An unexamined life is not worth living"; or so they say.

I guess I'm mostly interested in self inspection techniques. Do you regularly examine your own beliefs, feelings, ideas, emotions, etc? How do you do it?

Personnally, I have borrowed some techniques from the Scientologists and Zen Buddists.

(Scientology is steeped in all sorts of strange dogma. I have rejected all of mystical/secretive/spiritual aspects, but have retained some of the techniques because I find them personnaly helpful.)

SB

jpbrooks

Hello again, Secular Web.

Interesting topic, snatchbalance. I'll make a few brief comments before I run.
I would say that both pursuits are possible without self inspection. Science, for example, engages in pursuit #1 quite well without requiring introspection on the part of the scientist. And pursuit #2 can also be engaged in (broadly), for example, by applying statistics to determine which general patterns of behavior, personal choices, etc., lead to desirable outcomes in the lives of the people studied. Whether #1 and #2 can be pursued more effectively with self inspection than without, is probably a matter of perspective.
But I'm curious about how you separated the spiritual aspect of Scientology from its "techniques". I can see how it might be possible to do that in the case of Zen. But the "techniques" of Scientology seem to be inextricably linked to the "Eight Dynamics", the seventh of which encompasses the spiritual aspect of life.

Sorry for being so brief, but I still have a lot of reading and research to do. I'll be back later.

[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

snatchbalance

jpbrooks,

One of the central practices of Scientology is auditing. Basically, this is the attempt to relive periods of physical and emotional trauma, and thereby relieve the effects of the past trauma on your present circumstances. Conventional psychology refers to similar practices as abreaction therapy. over time, I have learned to perform a rudimentary form of this therapy on myself.

also, there is a significant amount of "training" that goes on in Scientology; everything from how to study, to how to handle your finances. Some of this information has proved valuable, therefore I use it.

SB

snatchbalance

JP,

Yes, I guess that a scientist can simply forge ahead without examening his methodology. But, what about the philosopher of science?

Could Popper have talked about falsifiabilty as a standard for scientific knowledge without looking at his own experiences and methods in scientific research? Then, the person who evaluates Popper's comments must again base his evaluation on subjective experience, IMHO.

SB

Ierrellus

Hey, snatchbalance!

IMO, both 1 and 2 require a theory of Self. Both are the important, basic questions we all ask; and neither can be separated from Self. A knowledge of self is simply an internalized analysis of what one is capabable of thinking or doing. It is the fundemental point of all comparisons. And it seems that all we have to go on, mentally, is our own experiences and our personal clarifications of those.

Ierrellus

AdamWho

snatchbalance:
You might as well have asked "Could Popper have ... without being human?" The answer is no. However, Popper probably didn't meditate or examine his feelings (introspect) to find incite into philosophy. I think he would say that subjective experiences (and imagination) are useful in the creation of theories, but it must be discarded in the testing phase.
No, Popper's arguments and methods, if valid, are (and must be) independent of subjective experience. The same is the case with all scientific endeavors.

jpbrooks

Hi, SB.

Sorry for taking so long to respond.


Yes. It is possible that some benefit may be obtained by getting to the root of traumatic events in one's life that have influenced the development of one's personality, but, for one reason or another, are not immediately accessible in one's memory,

But (again) those techniques are part of a consistent system based on Scientology's view of the mind, life, business organizations, etc., which is, in turn (again) based on the "Eight Dynamics" of life.

Furthermore (and this point has been raised by members of the Church of Scientology), some of the introspective techniques used in auditing are very powerful, and can, in some people who may have preexistent emotional problems, trigger additional problems or make the preexistent condition worse. If this can happen even when closely adhering to Scientology's full training protocols, it becomes much more likely when one views the techniques as a "smorgasbord" picking and choosing them outside of the context of Scientology's established auditing and training protocols.

However, I won't dictate how you should use your techniques. If you have studied Scientology enough to have learned all or most of the theory upon which the training protocols are based, picking and choosing techniques may not be (psychologically) "dangerous" for you.
Personally, I currently understand only very little of the theory behind auditing, and since I am still a "pre-clear", "Self Analysis" auditing (according to its "established" guidelines) works great for me.


I'm not a scholar on Popper, but I don't recall him ever explicitly mentioning using introspective techniques as a methodology to come up with his theories and standards. Popper probably could not have arrived at the concept of falsifiability if he had not taken into account the data from his own subjective experiences. But it is one thing to simply think about things in the objective world and evaluate ideas about the world from the perspective of one's own subjective experience, and quite another to assume that everything about the world that can be known is contingent upon one's own subjective experience in such a way that nothing new about the world can be learned without using techniques for probing into one's own mind.

[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: jpbrooks ]</p>

snatchbalance

Adam who,

Well, by the Scientific method, all findings are subject to independent confirmation. But, investigative methodology, subject selection, how data is processed, are all very subjective. self reflection should play some part in thier selection.

SB

snatchbalance

jp,

Have you done any academy level courses?

sb

snatchbalance

Hi Ierrelus,

Yes, do you have a personnal theory? If you do, was there anything particular that you did to arrive at your theory?

Does Ierrellus have a particular meaning? I could be wrong, but I don't think it's your actuall name.

sb

[ June 12, 2002: Message edited by: snatchbalance ]</p>