Russel Hurlburt

Ratna Ling 2007

Pre-conference statement

As many, if not most, of you know, I’ve been exploring inner experience (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc.) for over 30 years, using a variety of techniques. Over the course of those explorations, I have arrived at some opinions about the necessary features of adequate methods for exploring inner experience. I wish here to state those opinions at the level of bluntness with which I hold them, in the hopes that this will facilitate a candid discussion of these important issues.

I accept that there may well be ways of studying consciousness that do not require the observation of inner experience. I explicitly acknowledge that I know nothing about that. However, if one intends to study consciousness by in some way observing thinking, feeling, etc., then I think the opinions that follow apply.

I fully accept the distinction between my opinions and the Truth. However, I don’t at all accept the notion that one opinion on these matters is as good as some other opinion. If the science of inner experience is to advance, its practitioners simply must, it seems to me, bash their opinions out, strengthen/refine those opinions that merit strengthening/refining and discard/delimit the others, regardless of the original source of those opinions.

So I advance these opinions in the spirit of the friendly collegiality, that we may jointly put shoulders to a common and vitally important wheel. [Some of the same ground was covered in Hurlburt & Akhter, 2006, as well as in Hurlburt & Schwitzgebel, in press (both are available on my web site www.nevada.edu/~russ).]

1. Observations of experience must be as immediate as possible. Retrospective reports are simply not adequate for science.
2. The observed experience must be concretely specific. General reports are simply not adequate for science. Generalizations can be made based on a series of explicitly specific reports.
3. The observational technique must disturb the phenomena as little as possible.
4. Methods must be iterative. People have not differentiated their language about inner experience. Abstract training is not adequate; training works only in its own context.
5. Presuppositions must be effectively bracketed. There is no formulaic way to bracket presuppositions, but these help: value bracketing, randomly select experiences, make observations as public as possible, accept the possibility of wide individual differences in inner experience.
6. All of the above are necessary requirements; 4 out of 5 is not good enough.

Those methodological considerations have the following ramifications:

1. Questionnaires as they are currently used are inadequate. They are general, not iterative, and not bracketed.
2. One-shot studies of all kinds are inadequate.
3. Armchair introspection is not adequate. It disturbs the phenomena substantially and does not bracket presuppositions adequately.

We are asked to imagine how the conference could be helpful in moving forward on these concerns. I would like to be disabused/narrowed/refined/talked out of as many of these opinions as warrant such action. I’d like that disabusing/narrowing/refining/talking-out-of to be as blunt/candid/straightforward as possible. I don’t think I am attached to any of those views. I think they are correct, but I have no personal stake in them. So if they are not correct, the stronger they get assailed, the better I’ll like it.