Talk:Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2020-21/Evidence in Meditation

Meeting 1

Discussed: Application: evidence for the personal development

Focussing on mindfulness in meditation because of its contemporary uses

Contention: belief in evidence only demonstrated when scientific disciplines created it/ contention in the way mindfulness is perceived now as separate from its origins and the evidence from the original discipline.

issue: evidence

Disciplines: Neuroscience Psychology Meditative disciplines/ philosophy Sunnday (discuss • contribs) 16:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Things we've found/ Meeting 2

Pyschology - main point is looking at the evidence in psychology and how mindfulness is perceived by the discipline. As something that is becoming more and more incorporated, more studies are done to assess what type of meditation is effectively producing mindfulness in the sense that psychologically it changes the behaviours of the subjects - such as relieving anxiety, and increasing hopefulness. These studies are conducted by using a scale, one such study also tried to determine the subjects' perception of mindfulness as something that determined its effectiveness, thus the study took undergraduate students from Thailand (a country that uses mindfulness and buddhism as integrated practices in their lifestyles) and students from western countries (who may have never come across the subject) and performed a test. The test concluded that the Thai students had a 'more conceptualised understanding' of mindfulness. the evidence produced in western psychology is generally quantitative, in order for western scientific practices to understand the causation between mindfulness and personal development. however, this study specifically demonstrates that the effects of mindfulness might be more effective if performed as a more integral or permanent part of a lifestyle or culture, instead of something that is done irregularly and in short increments. Sunnday (discuss • contribs) 16:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Points of interest/discussion

•Interesting studies by The Science of Wellbeing department at Yale, demonstrate that meditators show differences in brain activity even outside of meditation, during baseline (these differences in brain activity equate to less of what psychologists call 'mind-wandering' which is connected with more unhappiness) -- studies citied- Killingsworth and Gilbert 2010, and Brewer et al 2011.

•Our minds wander 46.9% of the time (Killingsworth & Gilbert)... this is where mindfulness meditation is used as a practice- to reduce mind-wandering.

•Connection between disciplines- fmri scans (neuroscience) exploring a psychological phenomena (mind wandering).

•What is philosophy? Oxford definition- "the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline." We could draw upon the works of philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris, alternatively, eastern philosophers like Thich Nhat Hanh (he doesn't claim to be a philosopher, but his life work as a monk, studying the nature of existence practically justifies his inclusion in this branch.) Remember- Buddhism is a philosophy. We can explore the evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness in Buddhism, also (Buddhist texts and teachings).

•Point on contention- the methodologies for exploring the evidence for the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in the east are primarily qualitative. They're based on practical application and personal experience. It's hard to measure whether someone has had an enlightening experience or not. In the west, the exploration is heavily geared towards mindfulness and how it relates to western contexts such as the stressful workplace. The disciplines, philosophy and neuroscience, are not in conversation with each other. Why???

•"When companies like Goldman Sachs start offering free meditation training to employees, and salesforce.com puts a meditation room on each floor of a San Francisco office building, it’s a safe bet that heightened appreciation of Buddhist metaphysics isn’t the goal. In fact, mindfulness meditation is often packaged in frankly therapeutic terms: “mindfulness-based stress reduction.” https://www.wired.com/2017/08/the-science-and-philosophy-of-mindfulness-meditation/ Zenzenya (discuss • contribs) 19:11, 27 November 2020 (UTC)