Is Noetics Science?

[McCulloch]

http://www.noetic.org/about/what-are-noetic-sciences

The term noetic sciences was first coined in 1973 when the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) was founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who two years earlier became the sixth man to walk on the moon. Ironically, it was the trip back home that Mitchell recalls most, during which he felt a profound sense of universal connectedness—what he later described as a samadhi experience. In Mitchell’s own words, “The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. . . .The knowledge came to me directly.�

It led him to conclude that reality is more complex, subtle, and mysterious than conventional science had led him to believe. Perhaps a deeper understanding of consciousness (inner space) could lead to a new and expanded understanding of reality in which objective and subjective, outer and inner, are understood as co-equal aspects of the miracle of being. It was this intersection of knowledge systems that led Dr. Mitchell to launch the interdisciplinary field of noetic sciences.

Why Consciousness Matters
con•scious•ness: In our work, personal consciousness is awareness—how an individual perceives and interprets his or her environment, including beliefs, intentions, attitudes, emotions, and all aspects of his or her subjective experience. Collective consciousness is how a group (an institution, a society, a species) perceives and translates the world around them.

con•scious•ness trans•for•ma•tion: A fundamental shift in perspective or worldview that results in an expanded understanding of self and the nature of reality.

world•view: The beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and assumptions through which we filter our understanding of the world and our place in it.
The essential hypothesis underlying the noetic sciences is simply that consciousness matters. The question is when, how, and why does it matter?

There are several ways we can know the world around us. Science focuses on external observation and is grounded in objective evaluation, measurement, and experimentation. This is useful in increasing objectivity and reducing bias and inaccuracy as we interpret what we observe. But another way of knowing is subjective or internal, including gut feelings, intuition, and hunches—the way you know you love your children, for example, or experiences you have that cannot be explained or proven “rationally� but feel absolutely real. This way of knowing is what we call noetic.

From a purely materialist, mechanistic perspective, all subjective—noetic—experience arises from physical matter, and consciousness is simply a byproduct of brain and body processes. But there is another perspective, suggesting a far more complex relationship between the physical and the nonphysical. The noetic sciences apply a scientific lens to the study of subjective experience and to ways that consciousness may influence the physical world, and the data to date have raised plenty of provocative new questions.

IONS sees noetic science as a growing field of valid inquiry. Every new discovery leads to more questions as the mystery of human consciousness slowly unfolds. In the areas of consciousness and healing, extended human capacities, and worldview transformation, IONS keeps pushing the boundaries of what we know, advancing our shared understanding of consciousness and why it matters in the 21st century.

[Divine Insight]

Is Noetics Science?

The following definitions are from the site you linked to:

science: Systems of acquiring knowledge that use observation, experimentation, and replication to describe and explain natural phenomena.

noetic sciences: A multidisciplinary field that brings objective scientific tools and techniques together with subjective inner knowing to study the full range of human experiences.

My answer to the question of this thread is to simply pose another question:

Is Psychology a Science?

If you answer "yes" to the above question then I don't see how you could deny that noetics is also a "science" in almost precisely the same way that psychology is a science.

Just for the record, I DO NOT embrace the practice of calling "psychology" a "science". Psychologists may indeed attempt to employ as much of the scientific method as possible into their work, but does that make psychology as "science"? I personally do not support that conclusion. I feel that psychologists rely on a lot of questionable subjective opinions and assumptions mixed in with their "scientific methods". Thus violating the true essence of science, IMHO. Especially violating the "Physical Sciences" as psychologists are looking at a lot of things that cannot be pinned down in any physical sense.

And I'm not even sure that the term Non-physical Sciences even makes any sense. I think a lot of people in our modern times have accepted that statistical analysis of anything equals "the scientific method".

Getting back to noetics and psychology:

Consider the following "experiment" we use to collect "observable data".

We simply take a very large group of people and ask them if they "Feel Intuitively" that torturing innocent babies is morally wrong. That is the question in this experiment. We aren't interested in views that some moral authority supposedly says this is morally wrong. What we are after is whether or not people feel this way themselves on a purely "intuitive, gut, or emotional level"

When we perform this experiment we will find that a very profound statistical result will show that the vast overwhelming subjective feeling is that this is wrong. Obviously there will be some "outliers" of people who will reject the notion that they feel this way intuitively or on an emotional level. It's actually scary but true that there will be some people who will feel this way. We aren't likely to obtain 100% consensus in any very large survey for whatever reason. None the less the statistic will clearly show that the vast overwhelming majority will view this scenario as being "immoral".

Can we then conclude "scientifically" that it must then be objectively immoral to torture innocent babies simply because this is the overwhelming feelings of humans?

No, actually we can't conclude that at all. All we can conclude for certain is that the vast majority of humans happen to "feel" this way about this scenario. And that's really all we can do.

So while "statistical analysis" has shown us how humans overwhelmingly feel. We certainly can't claim to have found any "objective scientific truth about morality in general".

~~~~~

So in the end I'm not so sure that we can't say that we have applied the "Scientific Method" to the question of how humans "feel". However, if we now go off proclaiming that we have used the "scientific method" to reveal some sort of "objective morality" I think we would be making a grave mistake.

~~~~~

In a similar way, if we ask a very large group of people if they feel intuitively that there is some sort of God. We might find that most people do feel this way. But should we then conclude that because most people feel this way that means that a God must exist?

No of course not.

So I think it's very misguided to think that we can claim that something like a study of "Noetics" can lead us to any objective truths of reality, simply because we believe we are correctly applying "The Scientific Method" of inquiry to the "observation" of human opinions.

And this is basically what "Noetics" is all about. It says so right in its own definition:

noetic sciences: A multidisciplinary field that brings objective scientific tools and techniques together with subjective inner knowing to study the full range of human experiences

.

So this is a "statistical method" of studying people's opinions, not necessarily a "scientific method".

Moreover, even if we call this a "scientific method", it's still just a method of study humans subjective inner "opinions". To go from that to proclaiming that we are actually studying some objective "Inner Knowledge" is ultimate the misguided notion. And if people refuse to recognize that this is indeed a "misguided notion" then I would go further and label it as a purposeful deceitful scam.

Nothing more than an attempt to use the scientific method as an excuse to try to objectify human subjective feelings and opinions.

Sure, it may be true that a large number of humans may hold the same subjective feelings and opinions, but this doesn't automatically make them "objective truths of reality". At best it makes these subjective feelings and "objective truth that most humans feel the same way about many things". Period.

So even if the method has any scientific validity at all, the conclusions draw from using this method may not have any rational or scientific validity. Especially if this is being used to try to establish a concept of "Absolute Objective Morality". At best all we can say is that most humans subjectively agree on many things. But they will clearly not agree on many other things.

And clearly if we could ask the opinions of Chimpanzees the results may differ wildly. For example would a chimp agree that it's ok to kill a baby chimp but not a baby human? Probably not. Clearly there are going to be some "species bias" when it come to many moral questions and humans are no exception to this rule. So humans views on morality are going to tend to be human-centric.

[McCulloch]

Are there any peer reviewed journals of Noetics? Do any university science faculties have a department of Noetics? Are there recognized scientific methodologies in Noetics? Are the results of Noetics research cited in other scientific studies?

I submit that the answers to these questions indicates that other scientists do not regard Noetics as science.

[Divine Insight]

Are there any peer reviewed journals of Noetics? Do any university science faculties have a department of Noetics? Are there recognized scientific methodologies in Noetics? Are the results of Noetics research cited in other scientific studies?

I submit that the answers to these questions indicates that other scientists do not regard Noetics as science.

In that case, all that can be argued is that Noetics is a "new branch" of science that simply hasn't yet been fully recognized.

I mean seriously. As I have stated in my previous post, I for one, do not approve of psychology being called a "science". I'm not totally alone in this either. I've heard prominent famous scientist express similar views. Yet psychology is pretty much accepted as a "science" by mainstream academia.

From Wikipedia:

Psychology is the science of behavior and mind, embracing all aspects of conscious and unconscious experience as well as thought.

If they can call Psychology a "science" then I think it would be pretty hard to argue that proponents of Noetics couldn't do precisely the same thing using precisely the same types of arguments.

After all, what is the "Scientific Method" exactly?

Here's a chart from Wikipedia:


The scientific "method" alone does not restrict that observations must be only made of physical things. Therefore if you can observe that people hold opinions and have inner feelings, etc. You can treat those observations as your "data".

So how would something like Noetics that claims to be observing how people "feel", and then analyzing that data not qualify as being "The Scientific Method", and therefore qualifying as a "science"?

I'm not arguing in support of Noetics being a "science", and especially not a dependable or reliable system of inquiry. But having said this, it would be hard to argue that it doesn't at least use "The Scientific Method" of inquiry and analysis.

The problem is that in our reality nothing is carved in stone or perfectly defined. And this includes the concept of "Science".

Richard Feynman once said: “We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers... one saying to the other: you don't know what you are talking about! The second one says: what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?�

Unfortunately he's right and science is included in the things that we can't define "precisely". So there's always going to be room to argue over what actually qualifies as "science" and what doesn't.

Many mathematicians consider Mathematical Formalism to be a "Science". In fact, mathematics has been dubbed "The Queen of the Sciences".

I passionately disagree that our Mathematical Formalism is a "science". It's most certainly not a "Physical Science". But I argue that it's not even scientific at all. At least not our modern day mathematical formalism. I will argue that we could define a mathematical formalism that is not only based on science but could even be said to be a "physical science". But that's clearly another topic entirely.

Also, many atheists and secularists seem to think that science "supports" or is "evidence for" a materialistic worldview. But that's actually totally false. Science simply assumes a materialistic worldview, it doesn't deduce it.

So in essence scientific materialism and spiritual mysticism are on precisely equal footing in terms of being rational (or irrational) worldviews. In other words they are equally "irrational".

In science we end up with the ultimate question: "What gave rise to the Big Bang?"

Did the Big Band come from nothing? And was there no time before the Big Bang?

That's pretty weird of not "mystical" in and of itself.

And if there was something before the Big Bang, how did that something come to be? We're still no further ahead. So science is ultimately a guess that somehow material exists for no apparent reason.

Spiritual mysticism simply states that spirit somehow exists for not apparent reason and it is the spirit that creates the illusion of a material world.

I'll grant the latter is not "better" than the former, but if a person is honest and unbiased surely they can see that BOTH of these scenarios are equally absurd.

So in a sense they are on precisely the same footing in terms of being irrational.

So is noetics anymore irrational than psychology? I don't know? Our world isn't well-enough defined to know what has credibility and what doesn't.

Note: Of course, if we start dragging religious dogma into this analysis that changes the picture entirely and there are many very good and rational reasons to reject a lot of religious dogma as being obviously false. But that also is a whole other topic.

[marco]

Is Psychology a Science?

I have a sympathy with this approach. One might ask: Is psychology sensible in that it purports to deal with the psyche, which itself purports to exist? Psychology and theology are next-door neighbours. Noetics would seem to belong to the garden shed in one of their gardens. It is no surprise that someone noetically inclined will see the face of God.

All the same, what will surprise humanity in 5000 years time? Novel sciences must emerge from somewhere.

[truestory]

[Replying to post 1 by McCulloch]

By its own definition it is not science. It explains in a rather long winded way it's how you feel and intuition. Those are good traits to have on the leading edge of discovery but it shouldn't be a model.