In 1971, Carlos Casteneda published "A Separate Reality"; a follow on to his first work "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge". These, and more to follow, purportedly recounted his training in mesoamerican shamanism by the shaman he called Don Juan. His works were at first accepted by many as non-fiction, and there are still some who buy into them. For further revelations, and relevance, jump with me through spacetime to the diary below --

Before I address the link to our community here, I would like to expand a bit upon the fact that many bought into Casteneda's first books. Look at the date. Don Juan and Casteneda purportedly used psychotropic drugs, and much experimentation with a large variety of such drugs had been conducted by scientific researchers, curious dabblers, seekers of all sorts and sundry others. There was also a some serious research into Yoga and other physical and meditative regimes that indicated that mankind had the ability to achieve altered states of consciousness without drugs. Beyond a seeming resurgence in belief in mysticism, there was an edge of science peering into these same corners. And, what was "crazy" if not a coherent self-fulfilling alternate truth system?

There was, above and beyond all of that, the spreading inescapable awareness that there is a very real sense in which we, each of us, dwell in a purely private, unique and separate reality. Reality is, after all, a construct. The problem of perception versus reality, idea versus reality, model versus reality and all of the other forms of the "self versus other" duality had spit up volumes of approaches, analyses and answers; scientific, philosophical and inspirational, as well as an awareness of the existence and surprising prevalence of self-fulfilling truth systems.

Which finally brings us to The Daily Kos. Second only to "This is a Democratic Blog" is the admonition that this is a "Reality Based" blog, yet I often find myself asking "Whose reality?". Shortly after I first arrived somebody responded to a suggestion that candidate Obama might do/be doing something or other with "I have met Obama and he's a great guy and would never do anything like that". Huh? Recently, I mentioned Holder using the State Secrets Doctrine in a situation which would deny somebody their right to their day in court. I was attacked and a link was demanded, even though this event had been widely publicized and many diaries thereon had been published here. When I stated that I don't provide links for common knowledge, my comment was dismissed as essentially fictive. (Binyan Mohammed/Jeppson Dataplane for those of you who have been asleep) Argumentum ad hominem is used daily, as are almost all of the other classic informal fallacies (discussed here:http://www.dailykosbeta.com/story/2009/12/15/814540/-Logic-RefresherClas...(Informal)-Fallac ies).

We are, of course, fact based, and diaries must be well researched with links and citations, even if not logic. God help you if you show up here with a "conspiracy theory". Yet faith based positions and assertions abound. (For example, I just recently saw that lame "you cannot disprove god" argument raised, as if there could ever be an obligation to disprove anything for which there was no shred of evidence.) The mainstream formal organized religions come up, of course, but also myriad manifestations of the equally faith based "it is 11 dimensional chess at work" and claims of secret plans and schemes, maneuvers and strategems that can neither be proven nor disproven and for which no evidence can be presented. I won't even start on economics. We are incessantly told with respect to many subjects that if we do or don't do some thing x, then some other thing y will surely follow based on either absolutely nothing or else on convoluted applications of the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy that would leave David Hume in tears.

Yet, it is unavoidable that we all have unique backgrounds, life histories and experiences, educations and the like; leading unavoidably to unique frames of reference and, yes, the uniqueness of the resultant constructs or models we each call reality. However, there is a certain agreement in broad general terms between these separate realities, certain "objective" "facts" - water is wet, rocks are generally harder than brie, fire burns and the like. A lot of this is as much language as it is fact, but that's ok. For the most part, we base our models on their utility and the degree to which they map "reality", as determined by their agreement with the consensus model and their ability to successfully predict things. In short, at some level, we are all, to at least some degree, empiricists but in our own little self-constructed but very similar and parallel worlds.

What is my point? I don't want a "reality" based discussion. I want an empirical reality based discussion. We can skip the evidence and go to the facts, but only if we have evidence supporting those facts; not in the sense of links to Wikipedia or newspaper articles, but in the sense of things one can determine. Magik, sekrit plans, 11 dimensional chess moves and never demonstrated "laws" of political, social and economic cause and effect are not evidence and have no scientific evidence supporting them (not even if Milton Friedman swears that they are so). God "this that and the other" is horseshit because irrelevant. Regardless of the profundity of one's spectacular spiritual experience, it can't be documented to or exactly duplicated by another. Let us limit our interpretations, theories and arguments to those which can have an empirical basis, which can have some discernible and replicable evidence. "Spooky action at a distance" only works for quantum entanglement.

For example, assume that it is the late sixties and I am sitting in my pad doing some homebrew pranayama and meditating upon some of the seeming discrepancies between east and west and in particular the power of meditation. What, I wonder, if the autonomous nervous system were not truly so? What if it could be influenced or controlled by the mind with sufficient practice or focus? Heck, if you take a hit to the solar plexus, any of 16 or so different kinds of hell can break loose, so what if you could manipulate energy flows though it by focusing on it and on those flows and etc., visualize it like a multiposition switch or rheostat regulating metaboic and nervous processes or something. As I muse I find myself tucked up against the southwest corner of the ceiling looking down at me. Yeeps. Holy shit and all that and what am I doing and what if I screw up and can't get back or give myself anoxia damage or somesuch. Poof, stop fooling around and get back to normal.

So, I later do a ton of analysis, introspection and review enabling me to form a pretty solid idea of the probability that this really happened, that I had at least a perceived out of body experience, that my metabolic rate, heart rate and breath rate came scarily close to zero while I was doing it. OK, I can describe and discuss this, but I could never sell it to even the least skeptical person. There is no possible way I could ever have or provide evidence, so there is no point in my screaming at doubters, or maligning them or casting aspersions upon them. I should not expect belief, but disbelief. It simply isn't something that can be empirical fact because it cannot be duplicated or observed by another. Only if I am discussing meditative techniques or theories with somebody should it even come up. It would be pointless to run around proselytizing or pontificating based on something that is irrevocably non-fact to the non-participants, which is to say, everybody but me.

There are those who always rush to point out that if one cannot disprove something, then one doesn't know that it is non-existent. This is argumentum ad ignorantum, a classic fallacy, but there is no point in ever getting to that point. To Quote a slightly snarky statement from Bertrand Russell:

I wish to propose a doctrine ... which may, I fear, appear wholly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing that it is true.

I would go further and say that if we know that there is not any evidence, especially if we know that such evidence is not possible, then we shouldn't even bother discussing it. I am reminded that there was once concern over an underlying yet inaccessible reality, something with which, by definition we could not interact, something which could not be seen measured, heard felt or touched, which did not interact with matter, spirit or energy. Such things can have no impact on ourselves and our world and can have no effect on the near future or the far pasture and are therefore completely irrelevant to us. We can never know the truth or falsity of assertions about such things other than that they are totally irrelevant, so why bother discussing them. (Philosophy profs once frowned upon this line of argument, but seldom tried to refute it.)

So, Along with my extract from the book of Bert, I'll toss in something from the book of Isaac:

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and
reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything,
no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The
wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more
solid the evidence will have to be.

--Isaac Asimov

Why not stick to things that are believable by that standard? It would greatly increase the odds of finding areas of agreement. It would almost certainly be vastly more productive and more capable of engendering rational discussion than attributing things to 11 dimensional chess, invisible hands, or gods and deamons.

/Rant

This was originally published on January 25, 2011 at Daily Kos: link to original I have decided to republish this here for the independent value it has regarding empiricism, reality, communication, and such matters.