"The subjects’ reports mirrored so closely the accounts of religious mystical experiences, Dr. Griffiths said, that it seems likely the human brain is wired to undergo these “unitive” experiences, perhaps because of some evolutionary advantage."
I think that's just another attempt to explain away every phenomenon as an aspect of brain chemistry, which neuroscience has unfortunately fallen prone to doing. Everything has to be explained as having a physical cause, so therefore everything has to have some "evolutionary advantage." What they really means is that neuroscience still can't explain mystical experience, NDEs, and so forth, but it tries to put them, like everything else, under the logical-positivist umbrella. Whether they really fit or not.
It seems to me that it's asking the wrong questions, based on some pretty invalid assumptions. But it's become normative to try to explain everything in biology this way.
"The subjects’ reports mirrored so closely the accounts of religious mystical experiences, Dr. Griffiths said, that it seems likely the human brain is wired to undergo these “unitive” experiences, perhaps because of some evolutionary advantage."
ReplyDeleteI think that's just another attempt to explain away every phenomenon as an aspect of brain chemistry, which neuroscience has unfortunately fallen prone to doing. Everything has to be explained as having a physical cause, so therefore everything has to have some "evolutionary advantage." What they really means is that neuroscience still can't explain mystical experience, NDEs, and so forth, but it tries to put them, like everything else, under the logical-positivist umbrella. Whether they really fit or not.
It seems to me that it's asking the wrong questions, based on some pretty invalid assumptions. But it's become normative to try to explain everything in biology this way.
Art, I totally agree -- and I say that as someone who has had some considerable experience with psychotropics, including psilocybin.
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