/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7500384 End
There's something about the question though of examining 'mystical' states of experience, or really experience of any kind using the scientific method. The mystics tend to describe their object of attention as being prior to categorization and often times as being or being contained in the phenomenal experience itself. Is experience measurable using physical tools? Correlates to states of mind can be measured no problem and continue to develop. But it seems the experience itself is left alone. Changes in experience can be produced using tools which can be measured, and the resulting shift in the brain can be measured. But it’s like a balloon where the brain is the balloon and experience is the air in the balloon. The balloon can be being altered from the outside, and so the air is changed from the outside and we can measure the amount and kind of change to the balloon, but we haven’t been able to measure the air directly.

Maybe there are tools which we can use in the modern age to measure the gases in the balloon or what have you, but I’ll leave that out of the metaphor.