Here is one way that enlightenment can change what one anticipates. Someone was talking with me recently about whether enlightenment and the end of delusions concerning ‘self’ is desirable or not. As I understood it, they believe that ‘self’ may well be a delusion (something produced by a cognitive process, having no ontological reality beyond that), but it ties experiences together in a useful way, and experience minus the structure produced by that cognitive process is likely to be confusing or inefficient.
On the contrary, I say that, were they enlightened, they would believe that ‘self’ is not a process that structures adult human experience in any way relevant to efficiently and effectively dealing with sense data and cognitive content, and further, the process which does structure experience in such a way is not the one responsible for the everyday impression of being or having a ‘self’ (or whatever it is that people think concerning ‘self’).
This is not yet a precise claim about the world. For a first stab at what ‘responsible’ means, I’d say something like “in the normal human brain, not sufficient for the impression of being or having a ‘self,’ and not necessarily inoperative when impressions concerning ‘self’ no longer arise.” A first stab at what ‘structures’ or ‘normal’ or ‘process’ (etc.) mean is beyond the scope of this response. And until neuroscience advances in the right ways and until an enlightened person learns about those advances, they will not be able to translate their belief into an assertion about the functioning of human brains.
Despite that, once the relevant work in neuroscience is done, I know what this person would be surprised to see or not see in light of their actual beliefs, I know what they would be surprised to see or not see in light of what I say they would believe if they were enlightened, and I know that these expectations are very different.
I don’t understand what neuroscience has to do with it. Nobody (enlightened or not) thinks there is a part of the brain that’s the “self” part. “Self”, useful or not, is in the mind. How is it that you can tell me that there are things that a neurologist would discover that would and wouldn’t surprise you, but you can’t tell me what those things are? Surely the neurologist would be able to explain their research to me. Wouldn’t I be better off going into neurology if I wanted to learn something?
If your experience includes something which you would call ‘self’ (whatever that means to you), some aspect of your brain’s functioning is responsible for that. In various altered states of consciousness, the experience of what you would call ‘self’ is typically altered in various ways, which can point you in the direction of whatever you would call ‘self’ in normal experience if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about.
So, what does it seem to you that ‘self’ in your experience is doing? Is it structuring your experience in some way? Is it not? Whatever you claim about its relationship and role in the operation of your mind can be translated into claims about the functioning of your brain. Enlightenment leads to different claims about the way that whatever you would call ‘self’ operates (or operated) in your mind, which can similarly be translated. A comparison of the translated claims will show that they are different. The different claims lead to different expectations about what tests will find.
There is no claim here that there is a “self” part of the brain.
I’m still trying to figure out what the neurologist is doing here. If all of our claims (both enlightened and non) about the self are on the mind level, then why are we worrying about what’s going on at the brain level?
And out of all this, I still don’t see any concrete predictions: what do you expect that a neurologist (or anyone else) would discover, that a “non-enlightened” person wouldn’t expect?
Talking about the mind level is another way of talking about the brain level, though figuring out the relationship requires scientific knowledge.
I don’t know enough neuroscience to translate the two contrasting assertions on the mind level into assertions on the brain level. I don’t know enough about neuroscience (and perhaps today, no one does). But they are obviously translatable in principle. They are bona fide, explicit predictions about what future research in neuroscience will find. This seems to me to be a really good example of an explicit testable claim about the world that would follow from enlightenment. Do you see something wrong with it?
What different experiences did you come to anticipate once you became enlightened?
This is a very good question.
Here is one way that enlightenment can change what one anticipates. Someone was talking with me recently about whether enlightenment and the end of delusions concerning ‘self’ is desirable or not. As I understood it, they believe that ‘self’ may well be a delusion (something produced by a cognitive process, having no ontological reality beyond that), but it ties experiences together in a useful way, and experience minus the structure produced by that cognitive process is likely to be confusing or inefficient.
On the contrary, I say that, were they enlightened, they would believe that ‘self’ is not a process that structures adult human experience in any way relevant to efficiently and effectively dealing with sense data and cognitive content, and further, the process which does structure experience in such a way is not the one responsible for the everyday impression of being or having a ‘self’ (or whatever it is that people think concerning ‘self’).
This is not yet a precise claim about the world. For a first stab at what ‘responsible’ means, I’d say something like “in the normal human brain, not sufficient for the impression of being or having a ‘self,’ and not necessarily inoperative when impressions concerning ‘self’ no longer arise.” A first stab at what ‘structures’ or ‘normal’ or ‘process’ (etc.) mean is beyond the scope of this response. And until neuroscience advances in the right ways and until an enlightened person learns about those advances, they will not be able to translate their belief into an assertion about the functioning of human brains.
Despite that, once the relevant work in neuroscience is done, I know what this person would be surprised to see or not see in light of their actual beliefs, I know what they would be surprised to see or not see in light of what I say they would believe if they were enlightened, and I know that these expectations are very different.
I don’t understand what neuroscience has to do with it. Nobody (enlightened or not) thinks there is a part of the brain that’s the “self” part. “Self”, useful or not, is in the mind. How is it that you can tell me that there are things that a neurologist would discover that would and wouldn’t surprise you, but you can’t tell me what those things are? Surely the neurologist would be able to explain their research to me. Wouldn’t I be better off going into neurology if I wanted to learn something?
Nobody is such a small number of people. It just begs a contradiction!
If your experience includes something which you would call ‘self’ (whatever that means to you), some aspect of your brain’s functioning is responsible for that. In various altered states of consciousness, the experience of what you would call ‘self’ is typically altered in various ways, which can point you in the direction of whatever you would call ‘self’ in normal experience if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about.
So, what does it seem to you that ‘self’ in your experience is doing? Is it structuring your experience in some way? Is it not? Whatever you claim about its relationship and role in the operation of your mind can be translated into claims about the functioning of your brain. Enlightenment leads to different claims about the way that whatever you would call ‘self’ operates (or operated) in your mind, which can similarly be translated. A comparison of the translated claims will show that they are different. The different claims lead to different expectations about what tests will find.
There is no claim here that there is a “self” part of the brain.
I’m still trying to figure out what the neurologist is doing here. If all of our claims (both enlightened and non) about the self are on the mind level, then why are we worrying about what’s going on at the brain level?
And out of all this, I still don’t see any concrete predictions: what do you expect that a neurologist (or anyone else) would discover, that a “non-enlightened” person wouldn’t expect?
Talking about the mind level is another way of talking about the brain level, though figuring out the relationship requires scientific knowledge.
I don’t know enough neuroscience to translate the two contrasting assertions on the mind level into assertions on the brain level. I don’t know enough about neuroscience (and perhaps today, no one does). But they are obviously translatable in principle. They are bona fide, explicit predictions about what future research in neuroscience will find. This seems to me to be a really good example of an explicit testable claim about the world that would follow from enlightenment. Do you see something wrong with it?
What happens if you taboo “self”—what is the disagreement really about?