Krishnamurti - Defining being human, compassion, feeling special

BR74S3 - Defining being human, compassion, feeling special
Brockwood Park, UK - 14 October 1974
Seminar 3

0:01 This is J. Krishnamurti’s 3rd seminar with scientists at Brockwood Park, 1974.

0:11 Well, I’ll begin with a bit of autobiography because I think it’s relevant and, anyway, that’s the general trend of how things have been going so far.

0:21 I trained, however pretentious it may sound, as a philosopher in the so-called Anglo-American tradition – first at McGill and then at Harvard with Professor Coyne and then at Oxford, where I took my DPhil – and I mention this because it sort of blinkered me concerning how one looks at the world. I mean, there’s a very specific way of reasoning which is presupposed in doing the sort of training which I did. And I think, also, that it’s a more profound blinkering than those schooled in the harder sciences – so-called – because what’s at stake here is the very reasoning process which I, or anyone else like me, brings to bear when thinking about any subject, about the ones that we’re talking about or any other related one. 1:10 Anyway, I became interested in the behavioural sciences – or, in the jargon, in the philosophy of mind – and eventually in cybernetic theory because I thought that these were the areas which would help me provide an overview of man. An overview in the sense that I could then use the specific human behavioural sciences as material and, as it were, slot them and fit them all together.

1:34 Well, it quickly became apparent to me that there was a prima facie incompatibility in what science was doing in trying to understand man, and what we all – if we bothered to take a good look – thought man to be. There was this sort of basic incompatibility. I mean, on the one hand, I – along with everyone else who cared to do so – observed man in all his phenomenological richness as a being who has thoughts, feelings and other mental attributes, as one who is free to choose, as one who is capable of feeling deeply about all sorts of things, as one who could create, as one who can act rationally or irrationally, who gets depressed, who feels joy, who acts out of jealousy, etc., all those things. 2:15 And on the other hand, I observed that science uses a very different sort of language to describe man. I mean, you look up the books and what you see is talk about neural circuitry, genes, chromosomes, models, cells, plasma, etc., and I wondered what the one had to do with the other; that is, how can science, with its language, ever help us in understanding man in all his rich complexity. And I sort of took this as, not a problem to be solved, but rather as a dilemma to be resolved, because it was quite clear from the very outset that science was, or at least seemed to be, getting somewhere in understanding man, but where, if as it were our reference point was the sort of phenomenological descriptions that we all of us use when we describe man.

3:09 So there was a dilemma then to be resolved. And I took this, this dilemma, as a sort of a meta question, as something that had to be got clear, because in getting clear the relationship between the phenomenological way we talk of man, on the one hand, and the way science talks about man on the other hand, seems – and still seems to me – to be a necessary presupposition in thinking that science has something valuable to say, when the aim is to understand man and his environment. Well, I’ll stop doing this bit of autobiography now and, instead, boldly make a suggestion. Now, I want you all to take the suggestion as a hypothesis about the way scientific language is related to the ordinary language that we use to think and talk about man. That is, it’s a hypothesis, like any other hypothesis in science, that we accept as long as it works, as long as it as it were fits the sort of aims and activities that we do, but which is also the sort of thing that we can reject if it no longer works, or if we could think up a better one — that is, one with more explanatory power.

4:20 Now, the hypothesis involves making a distinction – and here terminology, incidentally, is not really that important – but the distinction could be termed one between concept questions, on the one hand, and – again, for want of a better word – property questions on the other. Now, I’ll try to explain what I mean by this distinction, that is, the concept sort of questions and the property sort of questions.

4:50 Concept questions are concerned with meaning. That is, they’re concerned with what sorts of things govern the applicability of any certain concept, be it man, be it depression, be it more natural, scientific things like water, like temperature. They’re concerned, that is, with when we’re confronted with whatever we’re talking about, on the basis of what kind of criteria we use to identify and re-identify whatever we’re talking about.

5:21 Now, property questions, on the other hand, are concerned with identity questions. That is, we see when we look... open up the science books, we see such statements as: ‘Water is H2O,’ ‘Temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy,’ ‘Lemon, the fruit, is blank chromosomal structure’ — I leave it blank because I forget what the actual chromosomal description is. What we have here, then, is a term denoting our interest: water, temperature, lemon, man, followed by an identity relation: ‘is’ – or more formally, using a logical ‘is’ – and then a blank, and we fill the blank in by a description that science gives us, which at any given time is the best suggestion about what the stuff is. 6:15 Now, what I want to emphasise is that this sort of activity that science does: giving us ‘is’ or identity questions, is different from the sort of thing that we do when we, as it were, articulate the sorts of things that governs the applicability of the concepts of whatever we’re talking about. For example: ‘Water is H2O,’ but also we could say, ‘Water’ – that is, the concept – ‘means...’ and then we give a whole slew of descriptions: it’s a liquid, it’s the stuff we use to drink... we drink it when we’re thirsty, we wash with it when 6:48 we’re dirty, we splash it on our friends when we want to play games, etc. Again, ‘temperature’ – putting that word in quotes and pretending for the moment, which is a bit of an untruth, pretending for the moment that heat is synonymous with temperature – we could say, ‘Well, temperature is... well, when we touch a fire we get burned, when we touch ice cubes it sticks to us and then we feel a certain sensation, etc. And again, ‘lemon,’ when we put that in quote, we say, ‘Lemon... well, it’s a fruit which is yellow in colour, elliptical in shape and sour-tasting.’ 7:20 Now, what I’m submitting is that this sort of activity gives us descriptions which governs the applicability of the concepts ‘water,’ ‘temperature,’ ‘lemon,’ and indeed whatever else we’re talking about. That is, we have here a cluster of phenomenological descriptions, which collectively govern the applicability of the concept of whatever we’re talking about. On the other hand – reiterating again – the identity statement, which science gives us, offers us a hypothesis which is the best science has to offer at any time about what the stuff is. 8:00 And these two, although related, are different sorts of activity. And just in passing, I think that the history of the philosophy of mind could be construed as the history of confusing and conflating this distinction. I mean, from Wittgenstein onward.

8:17 Now, my submission about this distinction is: when we ask ourselves what is science doing when it’s offering us statements like: ‘Water is H2O,’ far from denuding, say, water of all its phenomenological properties, the identity statement: ‘Water is H2O,’ explains why water has those properties. That is, we’re reducing here, not to eliminate the phenomenological properties but rather to explicate them. And science, I suppose, can be looked at, observed, as the never-ending activity to make this sort of reduction statement – one level to another level to another level to another level – until, I guess, eventually we get to the elementary particles of particle physics.

9:04 Now, you may ask, what does all this have to do with man? Well, what I’m suggesting is that the best hypothesis science has to offer at any time is in no way incompatible with the phenomenological way we all, using ordinary language, describe man. Again, the latter being construed as what, for most of us, governs the applicability of the concept ‘man’, the former being construed as a stab – perhaps no more or no less, to be rejected like any other hypothesis if it doesn’t work – at what man is. 9:42 Now, the problem is to get a hypothesis that is general enough to be capable of incorporating all the various sciences – with small esses – which are relevant. That is, we have to have a very, very general sort of theory which will be compatible and indeed capable of having reduced, as it were, into it the various harder sciences. Now, my concern today talking here is not to offer and explain any particular hypothesis about the ‘is’ question concerning man – although, that’s what my work has been for a few years – but rather, to stress that if we want to understand man, in the sense of explaining why he has the phenomenological properties he has, some hypothesis must be in the offing. 10:29 Now, that’s my claim; it’s falsifiable but that’s my claim. Some hypothesis, some reduction hypothesis must be in the offing as far as what man is, which will then explain, order, make intelligible why the various phenomenological properties we all of us have are the case. And again, as one could infer from what I’ve said previously, this hypothesis will take the form of an identity statement. Now, it’s a very bold thing to do because, of course, all one has to do after the identity statement has been offered is to give a counter example, one which could be... one which could 11:08 work both ways. Going back to the simpler one, if we take: ‘Water is H2O,’ all we have to do is present a chunk of water which isn’t H2O or present an agglomeration of H and O molecules in the H2O figuration which isn’t water.

11:27 Well, a few more words about the way the concept issue is related to the property issue. First of all – the property issue – the ‘is’ is not the ‘is’ of logic. That is, it’s empirical identity, it’s not logical identity. So in other words, it’s open to giving counter examples and, when a counter example is given, science will have to offer a better hypothesis. Now, concerning the other side of the distinction: again, it’s a submission that there is no necessary tie, or – again, in the jargon that I’m familiar with – there is no analytic connection, no necessary tie, between the concept and any member of the cluster which make up the way the concept is governed, nor indeed is there any necessary tie between each member of the cluster with any other. 12:24 So we have a dynamic fluidity that allows... I mean, immense scope for change and allows, as it were, some very interesting possibilities when we, as it were, are presented with prima facie counter examples. For example, just... Say someone comes in the room now and puts before us an object which is clearly a fruit, but instead of being yellow in colour, elliptical in shape and sour-tasting, say it’s blue, round and sweet. And we’re puzzled; we’ve never seen a blue, round and sweet fruit before. So we send it off to the relevant lab and they ‘phone back and they say, ‘It’s a lemon.’ 13:08 And we say, ‘What? It’s a lemon? But lemons are usually yellow, elliptical and sour. We can’t call this thing a lemon.’ And, at the other end of the phone, the answer comes back, ‘Yes, but it has blah, blah, chromosome structure,’ so what do we say? ‘So much the worse for the chromosome-structure identity statement concerning what a lemon is.’ Then the man at the other end of the phone says, ‘Well, wait. Not so fast. The relevant theory, the relevant chromosome theory, states that if an object which usually – phenomenologically – appears yellow, elliptical and sour, if that object is subjected to certain abnormal, atmospheric conditions, it will change into a blue, round and sweet fruit.’ 13:51 Now, that’s a thought experiment, but it shows you, I think, it illustrates the kind of dynamic fluidity that this model has.

13:57 That is, we don’t have to give up the identity statement just because a certain object doesn’t conform to the stereotypical way that concept, you know, usually appears. On the other hand, if there is no room for that kind of change in the theory which the identity statement is part of, then we might be forced to give up our hypothesis and try something else; perhaps on the same level as chromosome theory but perhaps on a deeper or perhaps even less deep level. 14:26 So there’s a fluidity here that I think leaves room for the sort of change that I think science uses all the time. Now, again, I can’t go on and talk about the particular hypothesis that I’m particularly interested; I’ll just throw it out and perhaps in discussion we could come back to it. I would say that man is a probability automaton. Now, everyone goes crazy: ‘What the hell is going on? ‘Man is a probability automaton,’ what’s a probability automaton?’ 14:56 Well, I say, a probability automaton is a generalised Turing machine. ‘Hm, what’s a Turing machine?’ Well, I say, a Turing machine is an abstract, computational device. ‘Well, what...? How could you relate abstract, computational devices to what man is? You look at man in all his rich complexity,’ etc. In other words, the statement, my statement as to what man is will sound very, very alien to most of us. But – and here’s my submission – so does the statement, ‘Mean molecular kinetic energy,’ sound alien to those of us who know nothing about chemistry and physics. 15:32 And yet, that is what temperature is. So my claim, then, is that using this sort of methodology and making the sort of claim that I just made, without arguing for it, will not eliminate the essentially human attributes of man but rather will help us in understanding these attributes, why they occur concurrently, etc.

15:55 Now, applying all this to – just summing up – the purpose of the conference – that is: what place has knowledge in the transformation of man in society? – knowledge on my view, in this view – it’s not mine; well, it’s partly mine, partly others – has a crucial rôle to play in understanding the transformation of man. That is, the sort of knowledge which leads to these identity reduction statements will help us to understand why man is as he is, and once, hopefully, we’ve understood what man is, we can go about or take some steps to change man for the better. That’s all I want to say.

16:36 Robin Munro: I think, perhaps, it would be good to have the discussion now, because mine doesn’t follow on exactly from this, if that’s all right.

16:39 DB: Oh, well, we going to change the plan, is that it?

16:40 RM: I think so.

16:41 Q: Divorce. (Laughter)

16:43 DB: Right, shall we...? Does somebody want to start the discussion?

16:45 Karl Pribram: I’ll start the discussion. I’d like to broaden your definition of science a little bit, which doesn’t really do damage to what you say, but in a paper called, ‘Proposal for a structural pragmatism,’ I came up with something very similar to what you’ve just suggested, except that I said that ordinary science, for the most part, is just exactly as you’ve talked about it: descriptive, looking for identity statements, but I put it in a cybernetic framework by saying it’s usually that we use our senses in making this kind of descriptive science and therefore we do make things articulate; we take them apart, we look at smaller and smaller units. 17:44 Now, there’re some forms of science that don’t do this – relativity theory is an example – where instead of looking downwards in the hierarchy of objects once they’re constructed, we look upward, and that what you’ve called ‘concept questions’ then come up — I call them normative rather than descriptive, but I’m not sure normative was quite the right word. It’s called normative science in social science. But it’s a... then you have to specify the context in which a particular observation 18:19 is made. The moment you get into this kind of thing, you’re... I don’t want to eliminate that from scientific endeavour, it’s just that you’re looking upward in a hierarchy and new ways of dealing with it have to come to bear.

18:35 JM: Could you give me a particular example of a...?

18:39 KP: Surely. Relativity theory is the easiest one, because I think we’re all... Whether we describe ourselves as sitting relatively still here or whether we say that we’re in a trajectory, going – you know? – this way and that way and Lord only knows what other ways, that would be the difference between descriptive science. If you take the context of this room, we’re sitting fairly still, so that’s descriptive, an identity statement. But the moment you say, ‘Yes, but are you really sitting still, in the universe?’ then, of course, a different kind of statement has to be made. 19:19 You have to say, ‘Well, if I look at it from this standpoint, you are doing this. But if I look at it from another standpoint...’ and it’s a very different kind... it gets into what you call property or... I mean, conceptual questions. And they’re related in a different way, they’re no longer hierarchical, the way they are in a descriptive, reductive framework. So I think that there are cases – now there’s one in social science, for instance, in which one takes rôle-playing, for instance, and say that people have different rôles. 19:52 Well, those rôles are very descriptive and specified, provided you give the context in which that rôle... – right now we’re scientists, so we’re sitting around... or thinkers or whatever you want to call us – but that’s very different from our rôle in a family, for instance, where we may be sons or brothers or fathers and so on. So social sciences has descriptive aspects to it, but it also has these normative aspects which deal with meaning and all that.

20:21 JM: Yes. I see. So taking, for example, that table over there, I mean, you could say what I said about them and say, ‘Well, it’s a table,’ and describe its phenomenological properties. You could also go deeper and give a molecular description, but then your point is, you’d be... do it... you could do something yet again, another thing, and that is, as it were, describe its relative state of motion, with regard to and then blank, depending what the reference frame is.

20:46 KP: Or its usefulness, or it’s...

20:48 JM: Yes.

20:49 KP: Right now, it’s great to lean on, after a nice lunch and all that. It’s also great to... you see, and so you begin to have a much richer...

20:56 JM: Yes.

20:57 KP: ...way of talking about table-ness, and I think that gets into your concept questions. I tend to agree with you, looking at the organism as a Turing machine, is a very valuable way, provided you also realise what goes on to the tape that makes the Turing machine.

21:15 JM: But then again, you see, I mean, the point I wanted to stress is that if someone says, ‘Well...’ If someone comes to you and asks, for example, ‘What can I read to give me an insight as to what man is? ’ and you pull out Martin Davis’s book... I mean, in other words, you’ve got to, as it were, build-up a theory that will in the end justify giving a book on Turing machine theory to someone who wants to understand man. That’s...

21:42 KP: But it will not really get you into the concept questions because, in a way, you’ve limited it to this context; that is, in a biological frame, which is... really says that the skin is the framework...

21:58 JM: Yes.

21:59 KP: ...upon which you build this, and so you’ve got this artificial boundary which we call the skin, which is sort of artificial and yet... artifactual, I guess, is the best way...

22:07 JM: Yes.

22:08 KP: And are your glasses part of you or...? You know, that shows the arbitrariness of it.

22:16 JM: Yes, I think...

22:18 KP: I understood you very well. I think it’s a good way of presenting the thing. But I don’t want to rule out science on this meaning aspect, I just think that that’s where we have to go in science now.

22:31 JM: Yes.

22:32 KP: And some strides have already been made; David has certainly made great ones in that direction. You see, when a physicist gets down to quantum theory and nuclear theory, he because of the fact that he is the observer – and that has been shown to be so crucial – you’re already around the loop. It’s a circle, it’s no longer... The reductiveness becomes psychological then. You have to reduce to psychology and so you’re round the circle.

22:59 JM: Yes.

23:00 KP: So being reductive at that level turns out to be psychological rather than physical reductionism.

23:08 George Sudarshan: No, I just wanted to ask a question. Do you see a difference between – when you defined man as a probability automaton – see a difference between a man whom you observe and yourself? First person singular, I mean, does it have any significant difference or do you consider it to be simply another one of those that you see around you?

23:32 JM: No, I mean... Again, I think it depends on context. I’m as – as far as this sort of description is concerned – I’m as any other man. I also have, as far as I’m concerned, a certain privileged access, so whatever state I’ll eventually, for example, use to... whatever description I’ll eventually use to describe my depression, which would be the same sort of state that... – I mean, our values might be different but the variables will be the same – all have a privileged access to my depression that I won’t have in the case of yours. 24:04 Although, even that isn’t a necessary truth because – who knows? – we could play thought experiments where I hook up, you know, the lower part of my brain stem to your cerebral hemispheres, etc., and I might one day be able to experience your depression. But it still is the same state whether you have it or I have it, in an important sense.

24:20 David Peat: These are great advances. (Laughs)

24:22 KP: Well...

24:23 GS: Even without the hook-up, occasionally people are able to...

24:26 Q: Yes.

24:27 GS: ...transfer their depressions. (Laughter)

24:30 JM: Yes. I mean, the point about this way of looking at man, I think, is that however extraordinary an attribute is that we eventually want to attribute to man, however... – and it may even be a dyadic property – what I’m saying here is that, in principle, nothing is left out or is capable... everything is capable of being subsumed under this sort of description.

24:59 Gordon Globus: Oh. There are some things which it’s hard for me to understand how you’re going to subsume them under that description. You know, the trees on the lawn, the sunset, there are... we’re talking about a very different kind of thing than your language terms; you’re giving us an analysis of language.

25:25 JM: No, I...

25:26 GG: It seems that your approach is in terms of language descriptions and what I don’t think you’re accounting for is awareness or call it psi if you want to use a symbol, whatever term we can use: consciousness, awareness, poignancy...

25:41 JM: Oh, well, I think in fact you chose two very good examples that can be incorporated into this model. I mean, Pribram might be better at doing this than I can. All I could say is that, without going into too many mathematical details, consciousness, for example... You see, basically what this Turing machine description is, it’s a functional description; it’s a description in terms of the functioning of the mechanism — in this case man. Now, one could then, as it were, deem consciousness as just when the organism that is under this description reaches a certain degree of complexity. Now, what degree of complexity has to be reached in order for us to attribute consciousness will be more or less an arbitrary decision. 26:24 In other words, I’ll see that all of us in this room are conscious, I’ll also independently determine that we all have a certain state of complexity in our functional-state description and therefore I’ll deem that – the description of that degree of complexity – as what consciousness is. So awareness of things beautiful, etc., etc., the state of being aware, or the state of being conscious, could actually be incorporated in this sort of description.

26:50 DB: Do you want to say something?

26:53 RM: Is it not the case then that you depend very heavily on, ‘In principle,’ arguments – which is what usually happens in this case – you say, ‘In principle, we can understand this.’ You don’t give a demonstration of how it’s to be understood, but you say that – as in the case of consciousness – ‘In principle, this is understandable in relation to a concept called complexity,’ which you haven’t actually evoked. It’s not a question of whether you’re logically wrong but whether you’re tactically... whether this is an appropriate or a good strategy you’re following in handling the sort of phenomenology that Gordon is pointing to. That’s... It seems to me that this, ‘In principle,’ problem comes in rather heavily.

27:38 JM: Well, I suppose at this state of our knowledge, I mean, you know, one can’t as it were make one-to-one correlations because we don’t know enough about... you know, we know far less about the physiology of consciousness than we do about, if you want, the mathematics of consciousness, given this model. But I see nothing wrong – and this is indeed the way science operates all this time – with making this sort of tentative hypothesis and, as it were, when we cash in all the mini-hypotheses, we see whether it fits. If not, then we chuck it.

28:13 KP: Gordon...

28:14 DB: Well, how will you see whether it fits, you see?

28:15 KP: Well, Gordon had a conference on consciousness. What... who was the fellow who... the philosopher who talked about computers and the computer revolution?

28:28 Q: Michael Scriven.

28:29 KP: Michael Scriven gave a beautiful talk on the fact that now slaves were liberated first and that then women were being liberated, now computers will be liberated next because, you see, we’re going to find that they are conscious and all of this. (Laughter) And I couldn’t quite see this – even though I go along with the Turing machine idea – until it occurred to me that there is one more criterion that I have, which I call the cuddliness criterion. And if you really make a computer cuddly – you know, hairy and soft and all that – I wonder if I wouldn’t feel that they were conscious the way a dog is and so on.

29:07 JM: Exactly. In other words... An example that someone else – not Scriven, someone else – used in an article was this: he imagined... he said, say you have a cat, a Siamese cat, and you’ve had it for five, six years and you’ve really grown to love this cat. And again, all the sorts of usual descriptions that are... that make up the applicability of the concept ‘cat’ applies to this animal. And you respond to it and it responds to you in every stereotypical way that cats respond. One day, it climbs up the curtains, falls down, and it smashes open and out pop cogwheels, a mini transistorised computer etc., etc., and then the sort of argument that you were 29:49 suggesting, this argument would simply say that all this example shows is that there is no necessary connection between the concept of ‘cat’ and the concept of ‘animal’; that this was still a cat even though it wasn’t an animal, that we could have cats that aren’t animals. So by the same token – although, I didn’t bring it up in the paper because I didn’t think it would be quite to the point – we could perhaps talk of persons who aren’t humans. I mean, because...

30:13 Fritjof Capra: But it’s not a very likely thing to happen, that: that the wheels come out and the cat breaks down.

30:16 JM: No, but look, the point...

30:17 FC: And this is the point that has been made, that your description might not be very appropriate. This is the point Robin was making.

30:25 JM: No, no. But you see, but this argument...

30:27 FC: It might not be an appropriate description.

30:28 JM: But this argument doesn’t rest on the fact that there’s going to be artificial cats or robots that are conscious, it... all... I mean, the only reason why these examples come up is because we see, as a matter of fact and by accident, the same theory that we’re using now as the best hypothesis to describe man, can also be used as the best hypothesis to describe robots and artificial cats. Indeed, I mean, the power of a probability automaton theory is that anything could be given a probability automaton description — even this microphone or a rock, even, because... So anything could be given that description.

31:02 DB: Well, that’s an assumption, isn’t it, because, you see, you’re assuming that man can be... you can state what man is, you see, but that may be just the point. I mean, how do we know that you can state what man is? We identify man with a certain concept.

31:15 JM: Well, sorry. I mean, stating what man is, is not identifying him with a certain concept. I mean, as it were, identifying man is what I call the concept question and the sorts of factors that you use in this... on this side of the distinction is...

31:33 KP: No, it’s a property question. You’re doing just what I did before.

31:38 JM: Yes. I mean, in other words...

31:40 KP: It’s a property question.

31:41 JM: Yes. That’s right.

31:43 KP: Right.

31:44 JM: Now, we’re not going to see the property description when we look at man. We’re not... Just as we don’t see an agglomeration of H2O molecules when I look at this. We see a glass of water and we identify it without having to know anything about H2O.

31:51 DB: Yes. But if you say man is a Turing machine, a set of... this is some statement about identifying man with whatever properties could be fitted into this machine. Now, it may be that there’s no way to state what man is or in fact ultimately to state what anything is. You see, you have here that you help us to understand what man is and... in terms of certain concepts – right? – such as the Turing machine.

32:27 JM: Well, no. Yes, but it’ll be essentially on a different level from the one we use to ordinarily describe man.

32:32 DB: Yes, but I mean, in the same way you could say this is atoms, which is on a different level from, you know, wood or the table. Now, even if you say this is made of atoms, that’s – you know? – it’s right up to a point but then it becomes rather unclear, ultimately, what atoms are and we find that we can have no very good concept of what they are either, because of quantum laws and so on. So all of these things are some sort of an approximation and they may leave out the essential... the essence, do you see? This... See, when we get to something as subtle as man is, such a mechanical description may leave out the essential features.

33:10 KP: I think we’re hung up on the word identity here and we might be in trouble because of it. Man isn’t an aggregation of molecules or this or that, and when you say identity, what man is, you’re getting much more over to the meaning part of your thing.

33:27 JM: I didn’t... (inaudible)

33:29 KP: And so the word property is fine, but identity might be...

33:31 JM: Well, I used the word... I mean, it would take hours to describe exactly the...

33:37 KP: It’s an identity theory of...

33:38 JM: Yes. That’s right.

33:40 KP: ...mind/matter, that’s the point.

33:41 JM: Yes.

33:42 GG: I have a different kind of objection to what you’re saying and it’s a very emotionally deep objection to what you’re saying. I’m very sympathetic to the notion of the Turing machine and its relevance for man, but what distresses me is the perspective which is assumed in your discussion. And it’s the perspective of the machine over there – it’s us looking at the machine over there – which is the typical perspective of science: the extrinsic perspective on some other system which is an object. And what is left out is the perspective of the machine on itself, the intrinsic perspective of a system on itself, its own account of itself, which you only alluded to when you talked about your privileged access to something. 34:38 And I think so long as we take this extrinsic perspective on other systems, we’re making other people into objects, into things over there and I think our paradigms have to include an intrinsic perspective at all times. And if you were willing to talk about the Turing machine’s account of itself, the experience, if you will, of the machine, then I would consider that a complete paradigm, but this paradigm, I think, predisposes us to think in ways which have poor consequences.

35:16 JM: I don’t think there’s any essential limitation, of the kind that you were just describing, in this theory. I mean, again, if the being whose functional state can be described this way, reaches a certain degree of complexity then he will be able to have all the inner feelings, etc., etc., that we have. So in other words, the perspective isn’t necessarily one of something out there that we’re looking at. I mean, when one describes anything, that is the perspective but what I’m... what one has to think is that one essentially builds into this theory the capacity to... for self-awareness, 35:56 for consciousness, etc., etc. And that is why, when Scriven writes the papers that he writes, he asks – rather glibly – the questions, ‘Well, should we grant robots civil rights,’ etc., because what he’s presupposing is that the sorts of robots that he’s talking about have reached the state of complexity that are as complex as us, so that any question we want to ask of us, of ourselves, we could also ask of... So in other words, I think the observer/observed dichotomy isn’t a necessary dichotomy in this theory because... or rather, if it is, then it’s not unique to the way we talk 36:32 about Turing machines. It’s going to be the same if we talk about Turing machines – whether or not they’re Turing machines of humans – or humans. In other words, if I talk about you or you talk about me, there may... you know, what you are objecting to, I think... Well, either it will be present in both cases or it won’t be present in both cases. I don’t think there’s an essential dichotomy between the way one must talk about man in this way and the way one usually talks about him.

36:59 DB: You want to...?

37:05 GS: Yes, I wanted to say, Dr Melzack’s point... Earlier, he made the point that you make this hypothesis so that it could be falsified. This is a bold step with regard to the thing and you’re perhaps attempting to falsify him. Was that the idea that you had? Or were you saying that you can’t stand it? (Laughter)

37:27 GG: No. No, what I’m saying is that it presents a view of the world which is biased towards an extrinsic perspective on something over there. It’s viewing man as a machine from the outside and if you’re willing to build in to your way of talking a representation or a perspective of that machine’s account of itself, then I’m very happy with that. But as long as you’re talking about a machine over there, you’re externalising other people. I don’t... It’s okay with me if you talk about me, but I’d also like you to try and be me, and I’m willing to do that with you too, in communication.

38:15 JM: Does that mean, sort of, empathise with the way you’re feeling and reacting to the world, etc?

38:19 GG: Well, we have to use empathy unless we can... I don’t want your depression, but – you know? – unless we can do that kind of thing. So we have to use empathy. Empathy is the modality that we ordinarily do that with.

38:31 JM: Yes.

38:32 GS: I didn’t complete my question. (Laughter) I was going to say, in a certain sense, the point that was made about having privileged access to oneself partly solves this problem because, in a certain sense, when I see myself as a person, I sort of compare that person whom I see with you, with everybody else, except that in this case I have, sort of, privileged access to things about myself, especially when I’m alone and away from all judgments and so on. But there is... seems to be another part of myself, which is not a part but sort of... 39:14 without which there would have been no parts. That entity which sees me as an object seems to be not subject to this criteria. That to the extent that I can see my mind, my action, my body, my emotions, my responses, my activities as that of an object, a machine, another person, when I undertake this observation that I, who want things or who can be limited in space, time, or causality, is an object, is a movable... is a thing subject to law, it seems to me that in terms of tradition as well as my own experience, a transformation takes place. 40:00 A transformation takes place when you become aware of what you considered was yourself as an object. Now, I don’t really know whether this is the proper way of discussing the question, but I ask Dr Melzack, do you have any experience of yourself as a person? And, in the process of having this experience, have a transformation, have an altered state of consciousness?’

40:27 JM: Sure. I think we all have to answer, ‘Yes,’ to that question. Sure, yes.

40:36 GS: Is that altered state of consciousness also described, subsumed under this description?

40:41 JM: Yes. It is. Not only that, there’s a... Elmer Green, who is a psychologist who I met last summer here, made a fascinating suggestion to me when I talked to him about this. He claimed that with proper training – his sort of training – we can actually become aware of the processes under the description that isn’t phenomenological. In other words, we can become aware of depression, under the description of, let’s say, a malfunctioning reticular formation. 41:13 That’s the example he gave me. He said he never experienced it, but it’s – you know – given the sort of visceral awareness, we could now... we’re now capable of getting, we can actually become aware of the sorts of processes that I think you’re talking about under the description that is not phenomenological: i. e. that isn’t, ‘Oh, I’m feeling miserable and’ – quote – ‘depressed’ – quote – we can actually feel, or not... in the very broad sense of be aware of the 41:38 malfunctioning neurophysiology of someone who is in that state. And that to me was... I mean, I only brought this up because I think, well, it’s one way of answering your question. I mean, of course we’re all aware and of course it could be made... it could be given that description, but then his further point – that we could actually be aware of it under that description – which to me was a very fascinating suggestion.

41:59 GS: So when he gets a headache, he doesn’t say that, ‘I have a headache,’ but he feels the blood vessels constricting and doing all kinds of things?

42:06 JM: Well, I mean, caricaturing, yes.

42:07 GS: But, no, I mean, that kind of thing?

42:08 JM: Sure, yes, yes.

42:09 DB: I think you were...

42:10 KP: I have a question that has bothered me ever since we corresponded, in that I have a model very similar to yours, which is a machine in a sense – I mean, I sort of live by it although I also want to transcend it – and this leaves me in a mechanistic mode and physicists have already gotten beyond this. And what are we missing – and I think this is what Gordon is after – when we talk this way? Aren’t we somehow getting ourselves locked in to the state that the physicist was in when he was still talking about everything is mechanism and hadn’t gotten beyond that yet. And I don’t know the answer to this, except glibly to say to you holography is going to do it, but what kind of a...? You see, we’re talking about a machine here.

43:10 JM: Yes. But a probability automaton not a Turing machine. You see, that’s why, I mean, the improvement is, I think... – now we’re getting a bit technical but it’s essential because the output of a Turing machine is either zero or one.

43:21 KP: Right.

43:22 JM: The output of a probability automaton is anywhere... anything in between as well, so that... In other words, you could give a description using your model and if it’s... I mean, if the output doesn’t happen, then that won’t necessarily falsify your model because the prediction of the behaviour will be given in terms of a probability statement.

43:39 KP: But it’s still a machine.

43:40 JM: Well...

43:41 DB: Yes, you see, there’s one point that if we consider quantum mechanics seriously, it seems likely that no machine – not even a probability machine – will actually explain the quantum mechanics. You see, in other words, that inanimate matter already transcends, I would think, any of these machines. Although we could discuss that, you see, it’s at least a possibility which would, in a way, be a falsification of your hypothesis.

44:05 JM: Well, how about this as a suggestion? Right? – not knowing too much about the indeterminism that’s meant to lurk in quantum mechanics that is supposed to be so dangerous to us – how about saying that, when one’s dealing at the sort of level that you deal in, in quantum theory, quantum mechanics, one’s dealing with particles whose configurations are so random, that they’re not even capable of being given any kind of description which would satisfy us as a minimal beginning.

44:37 KP: Well, I don’t think either David or I would buy that. We...

44:40 DB: No. We’re saying that the very notion of calling them particle is already... you see, any of the ordinary descriptions wouldn’t hold. You see, it may well be that inanimate matter already is incapable of being described by a machine, except in some approximation. In which case, you see, it would follow naturally that animate or living matter or anything would be... have the same properties. Now, that would be one approach. 45:05 You see, I was thinking also of another question which, you know, is we have to decide on what is the essential quality that makes a man a man. You see, you may have said having certain feelings or certain reactions is essential but, you see, we may not be able to do that, you see, the... If you say that a machine feels depression and certain other things, you would call it human, but perhaps that is not the main point.

45:34 JM: I don’t think I’m quite grasping your point.

45:39 DB: Well, I’m trying to say that I don’t see how you can define what is meant by being human.

45:43 JM: I see. No, well, the essential ingredient is not all those phenomenological descriptions, like being depressed etc., etc.

45:49 DB: Yes.

45:50 JM: They are what, as a matter of fact, we observe human beings to be capable of.

45:53 DB: What would you say it is, though? How...?

45:56 JM: What is man?

45:57 DB: Yes.

45:58 JM: Well, I’d give the probability automaton description... (laughs) (Laughter)

46:00 DB: Yes, but...

46:01 JM: ...which would be sufficiently compared...

46:02 DB: But then how would we decide whether this was good, you we were right – you see? – because it would depend on whether all the different criteria you set up were adequate. And, you see, we could get into... get lost in such questions, because you could finally say that none of these criteria is really essential to man, that there may be something else.

46:21 JM: That is essential?

46:23 DB: Yes. Which, you know, couldn’t be defined.

46:25 KP: Yes. I wouldn’t go that route so much as to leave it... to say that the automaton – whatever, you know, machine-like thing we have – gets us as far as classical mechanics did in physics, and that this is a good description in a certain, let’s say, a behaviouristic universe, where we’re looking at the behaviour of organisms and we’re trying to find out what is behind that behaviour, and a machine description, I think, fits that reasonably well. 46:56 And what Gordon was trying to tell us, I think, was that maybe that machine description, as we have it now, at least, will not fit the facts of perception – and feelings for that matter, either, if you can keep those apart. And so our question now sort of is: what extensions or changes in the theory are necessary that are still scientific, because I would like to keep the door of science – I like to consider science in the old-fashioned sense of the word as knowledge; I mean, anything that leads to some kind of communicable knowledge – leave those doors open. 47:39 What do we have to do in our field, that the quantum physicist seems to have already or is at least doing at the moment, to go from the classical mechanic machine-like thing which the computer is the embodiment of, and what do we have to add to that – which is still scientific, describable, in our so-called reductive language, without taking away its meaning – that will lead us into this. And there’re some very specific meanings of mechanism that David Bohm has pointed out in his books that, I think, we don’t... 48:20 We put under mechanism anything that works and that isn’t really what mechanism means to the physicist; it’s a very... more restricted definition and I think our definition of a computer fits that description of mechanism and not the lay description of ‘anything that works.’

48:36 JM: Well, I mean, what I’d like to... I mean, obviously, ideally what one would like to do is have a go at what physicists mean by an essential non-mechanism.

48:45 DB: Well, perhaps, we’ll be able to do that later, you see.

48:49 JM: Because, you see, what one would hope to do is be able to somehow – I don’t know – show that it, a: doesn’t really hit the mark in the way that certain physicists feel it does, or else is not relevant to this kind of description or whatever. I’m not saying one could succeed, but that would be the first...

49:04 KP: Well, this may be a limited description which fits as far as it goes, as I say, with describing behaviour and the behaviour of organisms but may not describe the perceptual realm. And that a non-mechanistic, which doesn’t mean what it seems to mean in a lay sense, it simply means that you go beyond the kind of cause-effect relationships that the mechanists were talking about, into a...

49:32 DB: Well, also, beyond the probabilistic distribution, you see.

49:33 KP: There’s something beyond probabilistic that... which, at least...

49:35 DB: But anyway...

49:36 JM: Beyond probabilistic?

49:37 DB: Yes.

49:38 KP: Yes.

49:39 DB: There’s features that go beyond both, but I think we should defer that. You know, possibly we’ll be able to discuss that later, in a better way. Now, did you have something you wanted to say?

49:52 GS: Yes. I just wanted to say there are a couple of things which are... which could immediately raise the level of your description and make it more acceptable to people who... You mentioned holography, I mean, holography or quantum mechanics in general contain the very important, novel ingredient of introducing not probabilities but probability amplitudes; of changing responses from numbers between zero and one to complex numbers. And these complex numbers are the property of, on the one hand, being able to add and subtract and interfere, on the other hand, exhibit diversity and loss of information where... – depending upon perspective – which is really not lost. 50:34 In the process of defraction, a light-beam undergoes changes but, in a certain sense, the information is lost/not lost. If a sphere of gas expands, with all kinds of... freely expands, it appears on the surface that information is lost but now that information is hidden under the Hubble Law, that the distance and the velocities are proportionate when it has expanded. In the same sense, with regard to a quantum mechanical propagation, you have probability amplitude and this may be only be a formal change with regard to the notion of machine that you have... that was introduced. 51:08 The other aspect of the thing is that, in statistical thermodynamics, one has rediscovered things which were known in art earlier and perhaps in Indian philosophy even before that, of surrealistic existence, that an entity being not wanting or the other or the other one, but in fact a whole variety, a whole lot of things put together, that you function as a many-faceted, many-structured entity or could develop. There is a very favourite deity, God had six faces, looks like – you know? 51:49 – five too many, but on the other hand, with six, I mean, he can exhibit a number of different aspects all at the same time. And this kind of thing, which reappears in statistical thermodynamics, when you say a system is not in one state or another state or another state but in all of these at the same time. Normally, it is converted into a very amorphous and unpleasant kind of probabilistic statement but in fact the more natural definition of the ensemble is one in which you say that the system has new kinds of states which are many states all put together: a lotus of states, rather than one single petal all by itself.

52:24 JM: Except that there... Well, I mean, putting it that way... First of all, I agree that if any... I mean, the more sophisticated we can make this description – as long as we have bridging statements – then that’s great. The last point... You see, the difficulty here is not the quantum mechanics, but in the way we interpret quantum mechanics. Now, I know a little bit about, you know, what happens when you want to get probabilistic statements about, let’s say, whether the particle went... the double-slit experiment or whatever, all you have to do is superimpose two states and you say it’s either... it’s A plus B over 2, etc. However, when one begins to interpret that there becomes all sorts of dilemmas, and I’m sure all physicists in this room know about the kinds of paradoxes that arise when one begins to describe this sort of thing. I mean, what happens when we use the ensemble point to describe macro objects in macro descriptions? I mean, the famous Schrödinger cat case: the cat sitting in a chair, strapped, you know, there’s a photon gun at the other end of the room, it slowly goes down to a half-silvered mirror. The probability is one half, that the photon will either pass through the mirror or be deflected. If it goes through, it triggers the mechanism to electrocute the cat; if it doesn’t, it deflects off and the cat stays alive. If we put the whole thing in a rocket ship, which is a closed system, all we could say before we open the ship is that the cat is either one half alive plus one half dead over two, which is absurd; it’s counter-intuitive, because an organism, a macro organism, can’t be in incompatible... you can’t... So in other words, there’s difficulties in...

54:00 DB: Well, I think, you see, there are very profound difficulties in... Perhaps, when I come to my talk we’ll be able to discuss some of the implications of that. I think they imply, you see, a very different order in which the notion of mechanism actually, you will see, it cannot apply; and, you know, some very different notions will apply. But I feel that, you know, if we try to discuss it now, we start to get involved in technicalities, which many of the people here cannot follow, so perhaps we could leave this aside for the time being. 54:36 Maybe... perhaps we could start on the next talk now. But we’ll pursue this matter further later. (Pause) Well, is there anybody who...? Is there anybody else who feels that he would like to say something before we start, or has something he would like to add?

55:10 FC: I think we all can agree that man is a quantum probabilistic automaton.

55:14 DB: Oh. (Laughs) (Laughter)

55:18 GS: That’s a working hypothesis.

55:20 DB: Yes.

55:22 RM: Well, I want to raise three issues, each of which might lead to further discussion. First of all, as I pointed out this morning and also, it follows from what Karl has said, biology hasn’t got beyond this mechanistic stage which physics seems to be trying to get beyond. Molecular biology is still highly mechanistic and most of the rest of biology is too. And, even though one may be trying to find ways out of this, that is its present state. Now, the hierarchical sort of view which Brian mentioned this morning, does help by showing... 56:10 by allowing one to have a much broader view of machines – and I think that Julian also is trying to show how this is possible – but the question remains whether the fundamental, mechanistic faces of biology is adequate. Well, I think this is perhaps an open question. There are some things which I think don’t fit with it, from an objective point of view, and these are things in the borderline field of parapsychology, telepathy and various precognition and other phenomena – which are coming more and more into the fore now – I think do clash in a radical way with this model. 57:07 But no-one has really come up with any very good way of incorporating this. They’re just two distinct fields: mechanistic biology and parapsychology, but I think they present a very radical challenge to the mechanistic view. And perhaps the other main challenge comes from physics itself.

57:31 Then, on a more intuitive basis, I think that the consciousness problem, again, is perhaps the most fundamental of all, the feeling that somehow a mechanistic view of people doesn’t adequately account for consciousness — what one feels and one’s states of consciousness. And, of course, in mystical experience, people do feel that consciousness is not just confined to themselves but is somehow throughout the universe, not only in living things but even in inanimate things. 58:17 So the question comes up whether there is something in the universe which relates to consciousness – which is quite different from what we think of as matter – and whether this is just as real as matter. Well, this is closely bound up with the problem of objectivity and subjectivity and modern science grew out of the mechanical revolution, in which nature was objectified. And this is strongly built into science: the view of not taking account of the observer but trying to describe everything and analyse it in objective terms. 58:59 Well, if this view is followed out to its logical conclusion, then it can lead to itself being disproven, as is happening in physics. Because, as we all know, in modern physics the objectivity has broken down in the uncertainty principle and in certain other areas. But that’s not enough. It may somehow be even more deeply... cost an even deeper revolution to get around this.

59:46 In social psychology, it’s well-known that the views one holds may affect the actual state of society. In a society which holds Marxist views, the economy, the social relations, tend to conform with a Marxist ideology. In a society which holds capitalist free enterprise views, the society is different. And so the views one holds can affect the actual, external state of the world we live in. This is well-known in social science. Now, it’s possible that this also is the case at a much deeper level, in physical sciences. Is it possible that our state of consciousness actually affects the state of the world around us? 1:00:31 If we hold a certain set of views, will the world behave in one way? If we hold another set, will it behave in another way? Now, it does appear that certain types of phenomena, like telepathy, do occur more frequently in certain cultures than others, so that the views one holds and one’s states of consciousness may actually affect the way things behave around us, and so that in a culture which is based on a mechanistic worldview, the actual state of the world may be different from that in another culture.

1:01:08 Well, now, to go to quite a different sort of problem, the normative problem which Julian brought up yesterday – of what values we have, what could be the basis of our values – well, I think in a worldview which is based... which is scientific, in accordance with modern science, there is simply no basis for values. We cannot say anything about values at all. Objective analysis will provide no solutions to our problems, because at some stage we always feed in presuppositions about values. One of them may be that we want ourselves to survive or society to survive – one society or another society – but, ultimately, this is arbitrary from a scientific point of view. 1:02:07 And so science, as it exists now, is not going to solve our problems from a more global point of view than from science itself, and the very attitude of looking at things objectively is not going to solve it. Somehow, we need something more to give us a sense of values which is going to fit with something deeper. And for this, I can only say that it seems that going into oneself, in being aware – as Krishnamurti is talking about – seems to me the only way that I can think of which will somehow give us an attitude which will have values which fit with what is needed.

1:03:06 Now, just one third point. I’ve talked about the metaphysical basis of the world and then about the normative problem of values. In both of these areas, I came to the view that maybe the exploration of consciousness is the way to proceed, so that both in science and maybe in other areas, perhaps we are going to be stuck until somehow the observer is taken into account much more than has been up till now. This morning, Fritjof pointed out the parallels between modern physics and mysticism. 1:03:53 I think one gap – one very big gap – between them, which I don’t think has come up yet, is the question of feeling. In mysticism, feeling and thinking, compassion and wisdom, go hand-in-hand, and compassion is of equal importance to wisdom. There’s no place for compassion in science, and why is this? What is it, somehow, that is different here? It seems, somehow, related to this objective nature of the scientific worldview. Well, I’ll throw it open to discussion now.

1:04:34 DB: Does anyone want to make a comment, or...? You want to...?

1:04:37 KP: Gee, I keep popping up, but I’m distressed when you say this shouldn’t be part of science or isn’t part of science. I think all behavioural scientists – in fact, I would say half of them – spend their time doing just the kind of job that you’re talking about: in normative aspects of things, what is... what feelings are all about, physiological people are working on it.

1:05:03 RM: But they are feeding in presuppositions all the time.

1:05:04 KP: So is everybody; I mean, you can’t help but do that.

1:05:08 RM: But where do these presuppositions come from? That is what I’m concerned with.

1:05:12 KP: Well, some of us take direct – and John Eccles, for instance, said this over and over again; he starts with his introspections. I start with my introspections. And then, in fact, in a whole series of volumes on behavioural science, my chapter says that’s what we do. Essentially, in our sciences we start with introspections, we externalise them into a behavioural paradigm, we then study that, then we reflect it back to our introspections. If the fit is perfect, we know something’s gone wrong, because, you know, we’re not the paradigm, but somehow try to fit this.

1:05:50 RM: Yes. But in teaching behavioural science, do you have the students go off and, you know, think about, introspect? Do they introspect? Do they learn to appreciate beauty? Do they learn anything about compassion, things like that?

1:06:07 KP: Well, I come from California and, if this were 1960, I would say, ‘No,’ but by 1970, by all means, ‘Yes.’

1:06:15 RM: Well, that’s just this coming in, isn’t it?

1:06:17 KP: Well, five, six years, yes.

1:06:18 GG: Well, Karl... (inaudible) ...it is a very special case.

1:06:21 KP: It is very special, that’s why I say... But I don’t want to say it’s non-scientific, is all I’m saying.

1:06:25 DB: Dr Melzack would like to say something.

1:06:26 JM: I mean, about this point, you said compassion isn’t compatible with science. Well...

1:06:28 KP: I didn’t say that.

1:06:30 JM: No, no. Sorry, Robin said that. No, no; I know.

1:06:35 RM: I’m not saying it’s incompatible, I’m just saying it’s not in science.

1:06:40 JM: Yes, well, I mean, it’s certainly not inconsistent with science.

1:06:43 RM: No. No, I agree.

1:06:45 JM: And therefore, from wherever it comes... I mean, the danger is from moving from your statement – taking that as a premise – to the conclusion that, somehow, science is compassionless or scientists are cold, unthinking machines, and I think that is an invalid argument. You know, the fact that we can’t, as it were, squeeze compassion out of certain axiomatic scientific systems, doesn’t imply that we can’t, as it were, add them on. I mean, they’re not inconsistent with science, although science may be complete without the, if you want, axioms of compassion, but we can...

1:07:19 KP: But there are people who actually study what compassion is all about.

1:07:22 JM: Yes.

1:07:23 RM: But what does that mean? I mean, in terms of neural phenomena or...?

1:07:27 KP: No, no. I mean, I was thinking of behavioural scientists, now; I mean psychiatrists, for instance, are certainly concerned...

1:07:32 RM: But does this promote compassion, I wonder?

1:07:33 KP: Does it promote compassion?

1:07:35 RM: Yes. Yes.

1:07:37 KP: Ah, that’s another question.

1:07:39 David Shainberg: Let me give you an...

1:07:41 KP: That’s different. Okay, that’s a different question.

1:07:43 DS: Let me give an example. I think this is a good example and I don’t know if it’s really... if it’ll be quite clear to everyone but the other day in a class, I was teaching a group of students who were all psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, and I was trying to teach them the nature of how to do psychotherapy and how to... – most of my teaching is done along the lines of what I’ve learnt from Krishnamurti a lot and others – and I said to the class, very intensely, I said, ‘How many of you can actually be there with your patients, without moving, without trying to get them anywhere, without trying to go anywhere with them?’ 1:08:24 And this was an effort to teach them compassion, in some sense; compassion in the sense of really being there without treating it as an object, without treating the patient as an object. And each of the students became intensely anxious, because, in a sense, to be there in that way was extremely hard for them. But I think that a lot of what we’re talking about here today, in the sense of the dualism, the me and the you, that’s where we... that’s where there is a dilemma there. 1:08:53 As long as we start from the objectification, we get into it, but the intensity of being there is difficult for scientists, for these kind of scientists, if you want to call them that.

1:09:07 RM: I think for a psychoanalyst, it’s not really quite within normal science. You know, you... it’s quite within the field of psychoanalysis to talk about all these things, but in behaviour... even when you go as far as behaviourism, it’s sort of got out of that. It’s no longer quite the thing to do, to...

1:09:21 KP: But cognitive psychology now is beginning to come back, isn’t it?

1:09:24 GG: Well, I think that Karl is grossly misrepresenting behavioural scientists, because I think it’s very rare that behavioural scientists will bring compassion into their classroom, except as compassionate behaviours, and that’s not what you’re talking about. I taught a course where I had an introspective laboratory. And these were graduate students who had never, in their training, had this kind of experience where, you know, you ask people to go and look at a tree for a while, this kind of thing. I think this is really very unusual in American academic life. There are some people doing it, but I think you’re quite right that this is not part of the experience that is generally given to students. I think it’s very important.

1:10:16 KP: I’m sorry. Let me... I still want to counter that because I think that, since the age of the computer, this is no longer true. All of the computer simulations that are made are done on the basis of introspections. People simply say, ‘Gee, what move would I have made in order to beat that computer?’ and if they didn’t make it, they ask the computer what... you know. And if they can think of it, then they program it into the next computer. All of simulation, all of... the whole field of...

1:10:45 GG: I guess we’re meaning something different by introspection here. I think we’re not talking about the same kind of thing.

1:10:51 KP: No, I think so.

1:10:52 GG: When I’m talking about introspection, I mean what Castaneda calls not doing, stopping the world, seeing, simply allowing the world to come in without imposing constructions, without adding meanings, simply trying to let it be the way it is, without actively interfering with it and instructing it in a certain way.

1:11:18 KP: I guess that’s why we’re the best Department of Psychology in the States; we do all that in there, but... (laughs). But it does occur.

1:11:23 Krishnamurti: Sir, I would like to ask...

1:11:25 DB: Just a moment, please.

1:11:28 K: I would like to ask if compassion can be taught.

1:11:33 DS: That’s right.

1:11:34 DB: Yes. Will somebody answer that?

1:11:38 K: Can love be taught? Mechanistically, non-mechanistically, any way you like — can it be taught?

1:11:47 JM: In a certain sense, yes; I venture to suggest. For example, if one... In fact, your question... or the inability to manifest love or compassion might be one of the reasons why people go to therapists. Now, I mean, I could see myself, if I felt myself incapable of manifesting these two moods, to say, go to someone and say, ‘Look, I can’t seem to... I can’t love.’

1:12:16 K: Ah, that...

1:12:17 JM: And the implication would be that I wanted him to help me to be able to, as it were, indulge in...

1:12:22 KP: I’d answer it in the negative: you can un-teach those things which stand in the way.

1:12:26 JM: Right. Right.

1:12:28 K: Ah, that’s quite a different matter.

1:12:29 JM: Yes.

1:12:30 K: Then, you’re approaching negatively.

1:12:32 KP: Yes.

1:12:34 K: Not positive... You can’t teach love. You can’t teach compassion.

1:12:38 KP: It’s there.

1:12:40 K: If you can teach me compassion, everything is solved. There’d be no wars, there’d be nothing; nothing of the horrors that are going on. But can it be...? Can you teach me to negate all the things that stand in the way?

1:13:02 KP: Now, that, I think, can be done.

1:13:06 K: I’m sure you can. But will I have the other?

1:13:12 KP: My faith is that we’re born that way, that we do in fact have the equipment, that we are so construed that we would ordinarily be compassionate if we didn’t also have the equipment that builds all these structures that get in the way. But that’s a faith.

1:13:33 K: You have given me a great deal of knowledge, which is not love.

1:13:40 KP: Right.

1:13:42 K: And will... And with that I operate.

1:13:46 KP: Right.

1:13:47 K: But is that love?

1:13:49 KP: No, that gets in the way of love very often; but one also has to operate in the other mode, of getting rid of all that and simply be.

1:13:58 K: Of course, this raises... Yes sir.

1:14:01 KP: Go ahead.

1:14:02 K: Sorry.

1:14:03 KP: I’ll try to explain this when I get to the...

1:14:05 K: Yes, yes. (Laughs)

1:14:07 KP: ...brain model, because without the model I think it’s difficult because it’s just words. Excuse me.

1:14:12 DB: Does somebody else want to...? Did you want to say something?

1:14:14 DS: No, I just wanted to say, I don’t think that I would teach anyone... I wouldn’t even give you the knowledge of the... of what’s wrong, so to speak. And the negative approach would be more to try to lead you out, so to speak, to experience what’s in your way. So rather, I would never... I wouldn’t... I don’t think I could teach you compassion even by teaching you what’s negative.

1:14:37 K: Yes sir. That’s what I’m... Quite.

1:14:40 KP: Yes. I understand.

1:14:42 DS: I could only help you to, in some way or other, abut against what you’re feeling so that you can feel then, in the transformation, the absence.

1:14:47 K: Quite, quite, quite.

1:14:49 DS: I could never teach you anything, really. I can lead you into the world, maybe, and the world will teach you, but I would never... just... I would never try to give you anything, even.

1:15:00 KP: But you’re part of the world.

1:15:02 DS: Yes, well, but in the sense that I would lead you, so to speak, to... if you were blind, let’s say, and I wanted you to see that you couldn’t see, I might lead you gently into running into a tree so that you would then know you couldn’t see. You would appreciate your inability to see, then.

1:15:21 K: I understand.

1:15:22 DS: But I wouldn’t give you... I mean, put anything into you.

1:15:25 GG: Karl, do you think compassion is a biological given? I mean, are you saying that? That it’s built into the brain?

1:15:29 KP: I think the capacities are there, yes; but the way our western society is developed...

1:15:38 K: Sir, surely it means passion for all?

1:15:41 DB: Yes.

1:15:42 KP: Yes. And I think that’s given, I think... could easily be. It could be nurtured, as we now nurture, for instance, the ability to do mathematics.

1:15:52 DS: Yes, but if I am you and you are me, in other words, in the sense that we’re all one...

1:16:01 K: Ah... Is that a theory or an actuality? (Laughs)

1:16:04 DS: No, an actuality. I mean, you’re actually, let’s say...

1:16:07 K: Me?

1:16:08 DS: ...you’re part of the same process that I am. Of being in the world.

1:16:13 K: Yes.

1:16:14 DS: So that the differentiations are really secondary to the communalities.

1:16:18 K: But how do I have that passion? How do I come by it?

1:16:27 DS: Well, I think that once you come into the world, so to speak, abut against the interface of living in the world, this whole thing where you discover your participation, then you’re passionate about your own life.

1:16:44 K: I might become a cynic, bitter, angry, hatred; but I may not have this marvellous thing that you talk about.

1:16:56 KP: I think it becomes... it comes in. I mean, now, I’m just... because of my cultural spectacles, like, I can’t really see this very clearly but something about interdependence. If I am interdependent with someone else, then the passion for the other person seems to grow.

1:17:17 K: After all, sir, that word passion comes out of sorrow. The meaning, root meaning of passion is sorrow.

1:17:25 KP: And passivity; there’s a certain...

1:17:28 K: And if I don’t know what sorrow is – not in the Christian sense, I’m not talking... just ordinary – and go beyond it, how can I know what passion is? You follow?

1:17:49 KP: I follow, very much.

1:17:50 K: You are giving me information but I don’t want information. I want the other!

1:17:56 DS: But you’ll find that.

1:17:58 K: How?

1:17:59 DS: Well, I... You’ll find it... I don’t think, in other words, if you’re truly participatory, I don’t think you would become cynical. Because in the sense that you would then... this sorrow would somehow or other be your mutual participation with me.

1:18:15 K: Now, how do you go beyond the sorrow? That’s the... Sir... Ah, well, I won’t go into it, now.

1:18:20 DB: Well, perhaps we’ll get talking about it afterwards.

1:18:21 DS: That’s the question, how do you go beyond the sorrow?

1:18:22 KP: That’s right.

1:18:23 DS: It’s at that moment of transformation that we’re talking about.

1:18:26 DB: Dr Melzack would like to speak.

1:18:27 JM: I would have liked to pursue that, but I’d just... another question concerning just your remarks about parapsychology.

1:18:34 RM: Yes.

1:18:35 JM: How it fits or rather it doesn’t fit with the... what you called the mechanistic biology view. The trouble with parapsychology is, I mean, for those of us who admit that certain phenomena are now indisputable but do not know why or how they occur, I mean, it’s precisely the inability to – using my jargon – as it were, subsume parapsychological phenomena into a wider scientific framework that, as it were, leaves the whole area sub judice at the moment. 1:19:09 I mean, where, you know, we’ve seen it happen or we believe that it’s happening but we’re not sure. Now, what will make it sure for a lot of us, in other words, is when it becomes understood, ordered and made intelligible. Now, what can that be? What sort of description will that be, except in terms of science, construed in some very broad sense.

1:19:34 RM: Well, could it be that maybe the whole... something basic about the structure of science is preventing us from understanding this? The very objectivity of science may be putting us into a frame of mind which cannot assimilate these phenomena.

1:19:48 JM: Science, though, isn’t a static...

1:19:49 RM: No, no.

1:19:50 JM: ...immovable body of propositions. I mean, hopefully it’s fluid and it’s always changing.

1:19:54 RM: Yes. Oh yes. Yes, of course.

1:19:57 JM: And I guess the problem is to widen the scope of science to include things like parapsychological phenomena. But it’s only when that happens, will it become as it were, quote, respectable, quote. It’s precisely because no-one has found a way to subsume it under the scientific umbrella that it’s so wishy-washy and mickey-mousy.

1:20:14 RM: Well, what I was trying to get at was that maybe some very deep revolution – even deeper than that of modern physics – in which the observer is brought in, is necessary for us to... for it to be subsumed in a... I mean, it’s very difficult to know what this means, would mean, but... I mean, just because you cannot fit it in, if it clashes, then surely something is wrong somewhere.

1:20:41 JM: Oh, sure. But one... But this is the sort of thing that happens every day to a scientist when he’s operating in his lab. I mean, he has, let’s say, a loosely articulated body of propositions which he calls his theory or his approach to his subject, he then starts a small group of experiments and he’s having trouble, he... And one of the things that he can do, one alternative, is to widen the scope of his theory, perhaps add a few more axioms, perhaps chuck a few out, so as to include... I mean...

1:21:11 RM: But I think this is something much deeper than the normal things that happen in science, because it’s challenging some of the very basic, most basic things in science: concepts of time and space and things like that.

1:21:20 JM: Well, look... Yes, but the sorts of things that, say, Thomas Kuhn in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, calls paradigm change are not... they’re not... I mean, it’s precisely the revolution in physics that he uses.

1:21:32 RM: Yes.

1:21:33 JM: He cites those examples as paradigm changes.

1:21:34 RM: Yes, yes, yes.

1:21:35 JM: Now, that wasn’t so revolutionary as to destroy science when it happened.

1:21:39 RM: Oh, I’m not suggesting this would destroy science.

1:21:41 FC: But it doesn’t happen every day in the lab, this. This happens...

1:21:47 JM: No, it doesn’t happen every day in the lab, but what I’m...

1:21:48 FC: Every now and then this happens.

1:21:49 JM: Yes, but when an anomaly occurs, an anomaly in the sense of when there’s a bit of data that the poor chap just can’t subsume. I mean, he might say, ‘To hell with the data, start a new experiment,’ which is what usually happens.

1:21:56 KP: Usually. That’s what he usually does. (Laughs)

1:21:59 JM: Yes. Or he might start, you know, fundamentally thinking about the kind of theory, and its assumptions, which he’s bringing to bear to that kind of experiment. And, if he’s an imaginative person, he’ll – what Kuhn calls – evoke a paradigm shift and...

1:22:13 RM: Well, what I’m suggesting, in Kuhnian terms, is that we’re... that science is entering a stage of revolution which is, you know, as great as that of the mechanical revolution of the 17th Century; you know, it’s as fundamental as that. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not just a sort of little thing, little change that will have to come about.

1:22:27 JM: Yes. It may be. Although we might find – you see, that’s an empirical question whether it’s going to be so monumental – we might find, just by tampering with a few things here and there in our theory, we’ll be able to suddenly subsume the Geller Effect and everything else. It might...

1:22:41 KP: No, I think it’s already occurring. I think it is that great.

1:22:43 DB: I think we have to call this to an end soon. There are two more people who would like to talk and if we could try to make it somewhat brief: Dr Globus and then Dr Ullmann.

1:22:51 GG: Well, I really wanted to ask a question. I found the discussion of compassion very important. I teach medical students. I’m inclined to say, I have to teach medical students. One of the problems is they’re so lacking in compassion and if there’s anything one would want to teach medical students... you know, somehow, help them to be more compassionate. So I would like to... it seems outside the format but I don’t think format should interfere entirely with spontaneity. Now, I would like to ask Krishnamurti, right now, could you help me in some way to deal with this problem of medical students and their enormous lack of compassion. They – you know? – they treat their patients like Turing machines. (Laughter) (Pause)

1:23:55 K: I think most of us know, sir, what sorrow is. Most of us know what suffering is, both physically and psychologically. And, if we don’t escape from suffering, through ideas, through various forms of comforts and beliefs and so on, but actually see the observer is the observed, then all movement away from suffering ceases. Am I making myself clear? I suffer – my son dies – I want comfort. I want assurance, I want a sense of my loneliness satisfied. Those are all wasting of energy, escaping from the real fact that I’m suffering. 1:25:14 Now, to remain with that suffering – not something out there and I am out here – but the observer is the observed. And so this division between the observer and the observed comes to an end. Then there is no movement at all from that central fact. And out of that comes compassion, passion. I don’t know if I’m sufficiently... My language is ordinary language, I may not be putting any scientific language or...

1:25:54 KP: It’s... Other people say very similar things: Fritz Perls says the same thing about centring, that if you have... if you get into a bind or a block of any kind, you have to stay... You don’t try to get around it, you don’t do this. You stay with it and sooner or later, it...

1:26:12 K: Ah! But sir, the other thing is the division that exists. I suffer.

1:26:17 KP: Right. No, it’s... all right.

1:26:19 K: I, being different from suffering. Therefore, I try to get over it. I try to dominate it. I try to escape from it. But when I see, when there is the... seeing that the observer is the observed, then this division comes to an end: conflict, escape and all the rest of it. Then out of that blossoms something else.

1:26:42 Montague Ullmann: Yes. Well, you quite make my point. I just want to register a note of happiness that Dr Globus is outraged at the lack of compassion that medical students have. (Laughter) I absolutely agree with you. I would like to come back to what I think is a very important message of Robin’s communication to us, because I think he... There are two things he points out that don’t fit into the scheme of science, the application of science, the experience of science, as we’ve come to know it, are these... set 1:27:24 of very queer facts – the paranormal, way out there someplace – and then very commonplace facts, like feelings. He cited compassion as perhaps the most striking. Now, when you look at both of these, the one thing they have in common is that they are both concerned with the fact of connection, of connectedness, of interaction among and between people, and the emphasis away from a concern with mastery over an objective world to a state of establishing meaning through our capacity for engagement with others at the level of a feeling response, at the level of what I would call almost an alternate mode of knowledge; a mode of knowledge based on our capacity for what I think is, in its essence, an aesthetic response to other people: a feeling of a fit, a harmony, a sense of relatedness.

1:28:55 DB: I think that... Just one more comment on this, please.

1:29:00 Elizabeth Ferris: Yes. I wanted to take up what Krishnamurti said about suffering and about the question of the lack of compassion in medical students. I don’t think it’s just confined to medical students; I think a lot of doctors are the same. And it’s to do with the question of if people – and people who happen to be patients in hospital – are encouraged to regard their diseases as something separate from themselves, in the way that you were talking about suffering – your suffering being something outside of yourself or not the same as yourself – then you’re not going to encourage the people who are supposed to be treating those people for the condition which they have to be compassionate, because they’re going to regard that disease as an objective thing separate from the patient. 1:29:59 So how can you encourage them to feel compassion for the state of a person, when they feel that it’s an objective state outside of that person, just as the patient themself does?

1:30:10 FC: Good point.

1:30:11 DB: Now, I think we’ll call the meeting to a close now. And I just wanted to make one suggestion, that perhaps tomorrow we should try to shorten the discussions a little, or otherwise we won’t really have time for everybody to say what he wants to say. Right? Let’s start tomorrow then. We start tomorrow at the usual time which is quarter to eleven. (Break in audio)

1:30:26 David Peat: Well, I do only intend to speak for a very few minutes because I have really very little to say, and I thought the only thing I could do is to make some autobiographical remarks.

1:30:29 I adopted science at a certain age for certain reasons and trained in... as a theoretical physicist. And I could say I adopted science as a metaphor for something else, for some sort of search. And at times as this metaphor has become confused and it’s really... the search has been ended, and I’ve just become merely concerned with technical things. Now, I went into science because I saw it as a way to create concepts and to explore things, and I thought that maybe by doing this I would be able to understand the world. 1:31:09 Now, when I say... – this is a rather hackneyed phrase – I meant understand in the sense of... if I understood a painting or a piece of music, to be somehow united with it; to remove the distinctions between myself and the thing I was studying. And this is why I originally went into science: I had this hope that somehow I could dissolve the differences.

1:31:40 The negative side of this, which is the reason I came to this meeting, was that... is really one of security. It becomes very easy to become preoccupied with familiar ways of thinking, with familiar theories, and with the sort of comfort one gets from talking to colleagues. And I think, when you reach this point, it becomes very painful to retreat from it. And at this point, then, you become preoccupied with justifying what you’re doing, with trying to justify science, with saying that science is useful to society or science can help improve the lot of man. 1:32:23 And at this point... I think once we begin on this sort of path of justifying what we’re doing, then it’s out of a feeling of emptiness inside, that really the quest or the reason we started has somehow been abandoned and we’ve tended to go to security. Now, I have that feeling of emptiness, although I’ve got certain insights from science and... yet I have an optimism that there is some form of transcendence at the end of it. And this transcendence obviously can’t involve any sort of system of thinking; it can’t involve any technique, it can’t involve any guru or anything like that. 1:33:03 It seems to be... to involve a decision, to make a decision at some point that involves I’m... deciding to make a transcendence, deciding to make a clear sort of perception. And the old metaphor is of climbing a mountain and reaching the top, sort of coming out of the mist, you’re at the top of the mountain: what do you do then? I mean, the only thing to do is to leap off and forget the fear that you’re going to fall. Maybe this is my position now.

1:33:33 And just the final point would be the position of knowledge in the transformation. What is the purpose of doing science? What is the purpose of accumulating the facts? It doesn’t seem to me that the facts in themselves can lead to any transformation: to present facts to people or information, I don’t see how that helps. But maybe the actual creation of the facts, the doing science in a creative way, somehow this creation... if this creation can be put across, if I could create a fact and somehow 1:34:07 transmit the creation to you and you were perceptive enough to see what I was saying, there would’ve had to be perception on both sides and the act of this transmission, then maybe the transformation could take place. That’s really all I can say. Not much was there. (Laughs)

1:34:26 DB: Well, does anybody want to say something? Yes.

1:34:33 EF: Would it be like saying the facts are a railway timetable, but the transformation would be – as you say, creating the facts – would be supplying the train, so that people could get on the train and see what was this beautiful journey that they could take?

1:34:44 DP: Well, I really don’t... I don’t know. That’s a metaphor and I don’t know. I was thinking in terms of contents. I mean, the content itself may be not that relevant; something lies beyond it, which I don’t pretend...

1:35:00 EF: Well, aren’t you talking about experience? And wouldn’t the experience be what you saw on the journey?

1:35:03 DP: Well, yes, if you could perceive, yes, if it was clear what you were seeing on the journey, yes, maybe.

1:35:11 DS: I had the feeling as you were talking it was not so much what you were seeing or not even so much as the experience, as that you would be communicating to me the possibility of making such forms and that you would, so to speak, draw me in to the enthusiasm of living and making forms and so that we would in some way be collaborating as makers and livers, who could make this form and then maybe you would come with me and I would make my form and then we would both let go of that one and make a new form but we would be joining in the making together, and that that would be what we shared, more than the...

1:35:50 DP: Some communion?

1:35:51 DS: Yes, rather than the content.

1:35:52 DP: Yes.

1:35:53 DS: We would be in communion of living rather than in any particularity. I mean, we would both be aware that we’re going to both die, so really we’re playing a game together and we would enjoy playing the game, so to speak. Letting go of it as we go.

1:36:08 DB: Well, I think that’s the spirit in which many... you know, the greater scientists – some of them – did work, you see, the... It was felt, say, by people like Einstein, that it was a way by which people could really work together on something beyond the petty concerns of the self. It was a suitable content but that they were not really, you know, not really all that attached to the particular content.

1:36:31 DS: Yes. I...

1:36:35 Q: (Inaudible)

1:36:37 FC: Well, I think if you are looking for spiritual values or spiritual knowledge or mystical knowledge or anything like that in science, you can’t get it because science does not deal with this kind of knowledge. But this morning, we also said – Dr Sudarshan made the point – that any teacher or any other means cannot teach you that. A teacher can only provide a climate in which you’re more likely to find these things yourself than if you stay alone. 1:37:15 And there are many ways of doing this with teachers, and there are many other ways, and I think that science is one way, which is, to borrow a phrase from Don Juan, ‘A path with a heart,’ and that it is a very valuable path, which can lead to spiritual knowledge. But not in the sense that it can teach it to you rationally, but provide a climate which can make you discover things yourself and stimulate you.

1:37:42 DP: Well, I hope I didn’t convey the impression that I was looking for mystical knowledge in science; that wasn’t the purpose of my metaphor of reductive science.

1:37:48 FC: But you conveyed the impression to me that you were somehow very frustrated.

1:37:54 DP: Well, yes.

1:37:55 FC: And if you take science as a way to self-realisation or spiritual knowledge or whatever you call it, then you’re not...

1:38:08 DP: Well, I’m saying I don’t know. I don’t think there is any way.

1:38:12 FC: Well, I think there are hundreds of ways and science is one of them.

1:38:16 Maurice Wilkins: Sorry, you said science is one of them?

1:38:18 FC: Yes, definitely.

1:38:19 MW: But I thought you just said science was not.

1:38:20 FC: No, it is. Not in the sense that it can teach you the knowledge, because nobody can, rationally; this knowledge is not knowledge which can be taught. There’s a saying by John Tzu, who said, ‘If it could be talked about, everybody would have told their brother.’ And so it can’t, and this is why mankind as a whole hasn’t got much wiser in three thousand years. But it can stimulate you, if taken in the right way, to make your own discoveries and find out yourself.

1:38:55 MW: Yes, but surely his condition is that of many people here, I think, that they feel that even if science, as it is now, does not lead... provide a pathway to something of spiritual value, they feel that in principle it ought to, and this is what they’re looking for. And there’s one... Science isn’t just one other of many different types of human activity; don’t we feel that there is something rather special about it, or that there ought to be?

1:39:34 FC: No, I don’t feel that.

1:39:35 DB: Well, I think there may be many scientists who do feel that.

1:39:39 KP: Yes. I do.

1:39:41 DS: Why do you think they feel that?

1:39:43 FC: From the point of view of attaining personal happiness – if you want to call it that – science is not any more special than anything else.

1:39:47 JM: But, I mean, in a more simple level, I mean, one could say two things, I think; one could say that doing science gives us pleasure...

1:39:59 DS: Why special pleasure?

1:40:02 JM: Well, special pleasure because we’re also... Perhaps this is a presupposition, but we feel that doing science and deriving pleasure from that is in some way – now I’m loading it with normative words – better, etc., etc., all those words...

1:40:17 DS: Why?

1:40:18 JM: Well, because we’re somehow contributing to that vast, pulsating, conceptual scheme which we call knowledge and that gives us extra pleasure as well as...

1:40:27 DS: Why?

1:40:28 JM: Well, perhaps, when you reach that level, you’re asking, ‘Why do I like Bach better than beer?’

1:40:35 DS: No. Why do you feel special because you’re doing it?

1:40:37 JM: No, I don’t feel... I say it gives me... I don’t feel special. I mean, I...

1:40:41 DS: Well, but Professor Wilkins says that people do feel special.

1:40:42 JM: No, I thought he said that we were doing something special; it doesn’t mean that we feel special in doing something special. I don’t think he’s elevating us...

1:40:49 MW: No, I think possibly scientists do slightly feel that they’re doing something special that... I think that is probably at the root of their fascination in doing it.

1:41:05 FC: I think it is a very special activity in many contexts, but if you talk about spiritual values, it’s special maybe only in the sense that it is a very difficult way; it’s maybe one of the most difficult ways to... but not in any other sense.

1:41:20 DB: Well, I think there are two questions: one is whether scientists feel they’re doing something special, and the other question is are they actually doing something special. You see, we shouldn’t mix these questions.

1:41:30 DS: Right.

1:41:31 DB: Now, I think many scientists have felt they’re doing something special and you could... I mean, nowadays, there may be some tendency to question whether in fact they are doing anything special, which is part of the reason for this sense of malaise that has just been discussed.

1:41:47 MW: I thought the basic question was: how do we find a way of doing something special, being scientists?

1:41:56 DS: Well, put it another way: what is special about doing science?

1:42:01 KP: No, what do we as scientists have to do to make science continue to be special?

1:42:08 DS: Well, you’re assuming special.

1:42:09 MW: To be more special than before. (Laughter)

1:42:12 JM: But special as compared to what? I mean, special implies at least two things. I mean, (a) is more...

1:42:15 KP: Yes, is more than (b).

1:42:17 JM: ...(b), yes. I mean, what are we comparing our activity to?

1:42:20 KP: Well, let’s take religion, for instance; I think that religion has failed modern man all over the world, and science isn’t...

1:42:25 DB: Well, perhaps it would be better to just compare it first with ordinary, everyday life. You see, that is... I mean, many scientists have felt that it was special compared with that, just as some artists, many artists have felt or people who are in a religion have felt. And the question which is being raised is, is it... does it have that nature?

1:42:47 GG: I think it had more of it and it’s lost it. If you read one of Plato’s dialogues – you know, thinking of philosophers, of course, as the forerunners of scientists – there’s an enormous sense of a group of men engaged in a very special kind of enterprise, a noble enterprise, and you can read those dialogues and there’s an enormous amount of feeling and excitement and nobleness of purpose there. That, I think, has really gotten lost in contemporary science; you know, it’s more: ‘How can we get the next grant?’ kind of thing.

1:43:28 DB: Yes. I want to say... back that up, that even, say, twenty or thirty years ago in seminars in physics there was a feeling, just as you describe, you know, that something really significant was being done by people together, and now it’s gone, you see. That...

1:43:42 KP: But monkeys have the same kind of reaction.

1:43:46 DB: Or...

1:43:47 KP: When they’re solving difficult problems, they’re – you know – they’re really in there.

1:43:51 DB: You’re quite right.

1:43:52 KP: When the problems are... come to some kind of a plateau and there’s not much movement along the scale of complexity – or whatever way you want to, you know? – it doesn’t seem as if there’s any problem-solving going on, or it’s being blocked or just there isn’t any, you’re at this plateau, then the monkeys sit there and they don’t want to get in their cages, and it’s a very...

1:44:14 K: Sir, if I may ask, why do we want to feel special?

1:44:19 KP: Why? Because we are. We all are.

1:44:22 K: (Laughs) You say science is special. A businessman will say that’s also special. The religious man, the politician, he is super at it. He says, ‘I am doing something very special!’

1:44:36 KP: They are.

1:44:37 K: Why this desire to be something special?

1:44:42 KP: To be unique, to be special, to be in an elite, I think this is terribly important in humanity, otherwise everything goes sort of... and gets to be...

1:44:52 K: Ah! No. Feeling special, does it bring about elitism?

1:44:55 KP: I think so, in part.

1:44:58 K: Or because you are elite, (laughs) not the feeling of it.

1:45:02 KP: Oh, I see. Oh, you’re making a distinction, right. Yes, that’s very good.

1:45:07 JM: The question raises... I mean, we’re really being very ambiguous as to how we’re using this word. I mean, I could understand one scientist saying that what he’s doing is more special than another scientist, just as one actor could say that his talent at acting is more special than another actor, but to say that doing science is more special than doing acting or whatever, seems to me... I don’t understand, because I don’t... I can’t see what common description we can give to both activities, in virtue of which we could then apply the same criterion and say that doing science is more special than acting, for example. 1:45:46 I don’t... I really... The only sense I could give of special is comparing one scientist with another or one businessman with another or... And there, special would simply mean doing his job better, i. e. achieving, you know, things that are of higher quantity or whatever.

1:46:01 Brian Goodwin: Historically, I mean, you pointed out yesterday that the scientist felt he had a rôle in transforming the world. And this is a rôle which the artist would not normally consider to be his job. I mean, some artists do, but as a collective, historical phenomenon it was true; the scientist did have his goal and that has been lost, that has failed us.

1:46:22 KP: Well, I don’t think it’s failed yet.

1:46:23 DB: Well, there’s a feeling of a failure.

1:46:24 BG: The feeling is there, of failure.

1:46:26 DB: It may or may not have failed, but there’s a feeling, a widespread feeling, that it’s failing and... You see, it’s not a question of being special – that’s just a word we happen to have chosen which is somewhat misleading – but rather, there was some very particular thing that scientists felt they were doing which was very significant. Maybe they were wrong to think so but, I mean, I’m just calling attention to the fact.

1:46:53 DP: My original remarks were that I’d taken it as a metaphor, I mean, maybe consciously or unconsciously when I was thirteen or fourteen. I could have taken anything else as a metaphor, I mean, painting or music. The fact that, at some point, the metaphor failed me, this is another thing. Maybe this is what I was saying, as well; now do we have to have metaphors?

1:47:15 DB: Well, perhaps not.

1:47:16 DP: Or could we begin without any metaphor? I don’t know. But obviously, I was searching for something, I still am or... Searching is a silly word, but there was some need or some drive. And could we have done without the metaphor to begin with? Could we do without the knowledge?

1:47:33 MW: Could I just touch on the rather morose point that there is no compassion in science? I mean, isn’t that the basic question, that we want to find a way of, so to speak, putting compassion into science? It’s not only a matter of education of medical students, it’s the whole of our lives as scientists.

1:48:06 KP: You have to... To teach young people... and young people in our protected society have not sorrowed, too often, and so if what you’re saying is correct, then there is no way for them to be compassionate because they have not felt sorrow.

1:48:25 GG: I think if you spoke with an adolescent he could tell you about lots of sorrows. I think adolescents are tremendously more in touch with their sorrows than...

1:48:36 KP: Okay.

1:48:37 GG: ...than people who are older.

1:48:38 KP: Even today, in this lovely, protected society?

1:48:39 GG: Oh, sure.

1:48:40 DB: Oh, yes.

1:48:41 KP: Okay.

1:48:42 GG: You might consider them trivial, but they’re not at all.

1:48:43 KP: No, no, no, no, no. I’m not... I don’t consider any sorrow trivial.

1:48:46 JM: If we take... I mean, the question: how can we introduce compassion in science – I mean, let’s for the moment leave aside that most scientists are also teachers. Let’s take a pure research scientist who has nothing to do with students, just a few... a group of people who are in his lab or whatever – I mean, what does it mean to say that we want those sort of people to have more compassion? In other words, yes, what would count as that man having more compassion?

1:49:19 MW: Well, I think that’s the important question.

1:49:24 DS: One thing, I think, in response to Professor Wilkins, that strikes me is that in a way I think we’re in... – I don’t know if I can say... all altogether – but the feeling... as long as we feel that we’re something special, then in some way or other we can’t have compassion. Because as long as we are special then, in some way or other, we are outside of the passion for our togetherness with everyone else. So in a way, we’re into a kind of dualism there...

1:49:55 K: Yes, quite.

1:49:56 DS: ...that we must be together... or, I mean, and we recognise our participation.

1:50:08 RM: I think one way in which it might show up is compassion to our fellow workers and, if we were to have such, it might reduce the cut-throat competition. It might go some way to reduce the cut-throat competition in scientific research.

1:50:20 GS: Yes. I want to comment on another aspect of this deep division and therefore lack of compassion. It seems to me that, at the present time, modern science is just – in terms of its social and ethical bearing and aesthetic bearing – just past the age of highway robbery and come to the stage of robber barons. (Laughter) Yesterday or this morning in some context, the question of why, in American politics, when there is really not that much outrage at dishonesty and skulduggery, in science, at the present time, there is really no – I know more about high-energy physics but, after reading about certain doings in biology, I’m pretty sure that this is true about much of science – there is really no shame attached, no guilt, no feeling of ugliness attached to dishonesty, lack of ethics, misrepresentation, playing the game so as to get there before somebody else – whatever be the game that you play – and the people who are looked up to are not the most ethical or the most elegant or the most compassionate or the most honest, but the ones who have had more scalps to their credit. 1:51:43 Those who have somehow or other destroyed as many people along the way with the least amount of effort. When I was in Boston, Harvard, for many years ago, I was told that in Harvard the aim of driving – this is not at the university but Harvard Square and so on – is that you must be able to go through Harvard Square, where there is a confused traffic pattern, not only you must be able to go but behind you there must be a four-car irreversible situation. 1:52:12 So it is not even enough to get ahead, but in the process you should be able to trample on a number of people, steal, misrepresent and so on. And this hero worship of this leadership, the acclaim that is given to the ones who have...

1:52:29 K: Absolutely.

1:52:30 GS: ...done most unethical things is in fact at the root of the thing. And when people talk about American politics, I’m certainly not upset by the thing because I had seen this in science long ago. And it’s very tempting to go into autobiography, I won’t go into things in detail, but let me just mention one item. 1:52:50 Several years ago, I had written a paper on a topic which was extremely fascinating – it was written more as a joke than a serious matter – it was sent to a journal and it was returned with the usual compliments of several referees’ comments of various kinds. Eventually, it was published. Seven years, six years later, another man wrote an article. Before it was published, the editors of the journal in which it was published did not have the courtesy to send it to me even though I had written about it earlier. Before it was published – it was published in the New York Times – and the gentleman who copied my work, amplified it and put in a proper setting, covered the legal grounds by giving a reference to me somewhere along the line. There are people in five continents, maybe four continents, who knew that I had done it before, not a single one of them – including a dozen students who are now occupying positions in various universities – felt any outrage about it to the point of doing something about it. And even my teacher – who was otherwise a very good man, a man to whom I have great respect – when I talked to him and I said, ‘I must... Will you please talk... call up this man’ – I was out of the country – ‘call up this man, Walter Sullivan, who wrote this article, and do something about it?’ He said, ‘When you come back, I will introduce you to him.’ Now, of course, I called him up long distance from India and I talked to him; nothing very much happened. But what I’m saying is that there was no sense of outrage anywhere, throughout the whole country. And this is a small matter because it’s not a very hot subject. There are science fiction writers who have taken up the theme and written about it; I have written to each one of them. Not one of them has apologised for the fact, they have basically simply avoided the question. Now, why does this happen? It happens because of the fact that there is no shame attached to being caught.

1:54:41 K: Quite.

1:54:42 GS: It is only when it becomes a legal case where you can sue in the court that there is any shame. Even in such cases it’s very difficult to prove, because nobody would come forwards to give evidence.

1:54:52 JM: I mean in some contexts, say in the movie industry, they’d be surprised and would be laughing at us for even – you know? – wasting our time – in quotes, from their point of view – discussing this because in that... from that context, I mean, it goes on all the time and, furthermore, it’s an accepted convention of the way that industry is run. Now, what we should be talking about then is – we should, I suppose, broaden the scope of this; it doesn’t only occur in science, that’s clear – and really, why is success so important? So important that we...

1:55:23 DB: Yes.

1:55:24 JM: ...ignore all the other values which, in another context or at another time, we’d hold very dear? It’s not a problem of science, it’s a problem of...

1:55:32 GS: No, what I meant to say was that it is unfair to ask the question: how can we... why... how can we teach our students compassion...

1:55:40 JM: When we haven’t...

1:55:41 GS: ...because if you had any compassion for them, you would not teach them compassion.

1:55:43 K: Ah, yes sir.

1:55:44 GS: Because they would... they will be bound to fail if they are compassionate.

1:55:46 DB: Well, I think we have to...

1:55:48 JM: Nice guys finish last.

1:55:49 DB: Can we have some order, please. We have to put these... because a lot of people want to talk now and I think... Who was the first one? Were you the first one?

1:55:58 Q: Perhaps.

1:55:59 DB: Yes.

1:56:00 Q: This idea of outrage – it was your word first; you used it, but... – I think if we look at it, we can see something about what’s happening here. When something happens, if you look at it and you discuss it and talk about doing something, that’s not a sense of outrage, I think. I think when you come to the state where you realise that you are the one that is going to do something about it, that creates a mobilisation on your part. You know, something happens to you when that decision is reached; when you see that you are the one that has to do something. 1:56:42 In the same way, we have been discussing certain questions and posing them as questions to be considered, but there’s a certain state that’s reached, I believe, when some realisation comes that this indeed is a question that something has to be done about, I mean, and that we are the people that must do it. I don’t know if I’m clear.

1:57:09 DB: It’s clear enough.

1:57:11 Q: I think I’m trying to convey some meaning beyond the word.

1:57:18 KP: I’d just like to say that, although I’ve experienced all the things that you’ve just said, and certainly made the arguments that you have, that I do want to defend science and American politics, and everything else. Nixon was impeached, there is an element in... even there are scientists whom I know who have never stepped on anyone and who are reasonably successful. It isn’t all that way. I think that the problem, I think, is compounded because the people who are successful, who have done it in the way that you’ve just described, cannot always be told apart from the ones who haven’t and who’ve gone ahead in a very ethical fashion, and there is a lack of discrimination between the two, which is a moral weakness in the culture. 1:58:17 In other words, someone who uses their graduates – and it’s in our field, just to give you an example – has never been in a lab. I know at least three people who are eminently successful, have never been in a laboratory, and the few people who’ve worked with them know that if they ever got into the laboratory, they mess it up so badly that the students just kick them out or at least do everything they can... but these people are known universally as laboratory scientists. Now, there’s no outrage, no sense of outrage, if they’ve used graduate students all along to do their work for them, in a regular and open fashion, but there are other people who’ve been in a laboratory all their lives and have mucked around and done their own thing and they’re known for what they themselves have done and have given adequate credit and so on and so forth. 1:59:08 And there seems to be little distinction... I don’t think we want to damn those that are ethical, at the same time that we realise there is a group of people, somehow, that our society doesn’t... I mean, there are good politicians: Stephenson as an example, Nixon as another example isn’t, and both were reasonably successful in American politics, and Stephenson certainly was, and he didn’t do any of the things that...

1:59:36 JM: But he never was President and he never could have been President.

1:59:37 KP: Well, yes, that’s one of the tragedies of our... (laughs)

1:59:38 JM: But that’s the point.

1:59:39 KP: I think that the most successful people, at some point...

1:59:42 DB: Well, could we say, I think we’ll one more comment and then we must close the meeting.

1:59:43 KP: But there is hope.

1:59:44 DB: Just a moment.

1:59:45 KP: There is a group of people...

1:59:47 K: Of course, sir.

1:59:48 KP: Okay. It doesn’t matter.

1:59:50 DB: Right. Brian wants to say...

1:59:52 BG: This is just a very brief comment – I just wanted to pick up the point made by Robin and by Monty in relation to the lack of compassion in science – and that is, I do believe that it’s very closely connected with the type of model we work with, in terms of models of man and especially his history; that is, I think, biological models of evolution are really terribly inadequate because of their extraordinary atomistic and mechanistic characteristics. And this comes, once again, back to my feeling that the Turing machine type of model must be kept very closely in its place, otherwise it invades the way we behave, with respect to other people. It carries implications with it and I think we have to be exceedingly careful.

2:00:38 JM: Could I have the...? Seeing that it was direct at me, could I just say what...? Please? (Laughter) The problem is that we’re blinkered, I think, as to the compassion of a Turing machine with the sort of complexity that we’re talking about. In other words – and I guess I failed to get this across when I gave my paper – the point about juxtaposing the model to the ordinary way we talk, is to show that we’re not denuding people by subsuming them under – maybe that’s the wrong way to say it, subsuming them under – by using this sort of model. 2:01:18 In other words, nothing will be detracted as to the sorts of attributes we’re going to give man and scientists, etc., all that’s going to mean is that, whatever attributes we want to give them, they will be capable of being explained in terms of this model, but the model itself doesn’t snip away at the sorts of things we want to and could justifiably say about man. That’s...

2:01:43 DB: Well, perhaps we could discuss that, you know, individually because... and we’ll continue tomorrow at the projected time.

🢁