Morlock,
Your description of the meditation example didn’t seem to have a point apart from describing a poorly designed scientific experiment.
Empiricism and objective method cant prove or disprove my connection to
the universe any more than it can prove or disprove what any given person is thinking at a given time.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. You appear to be explaining no more than the limitations of current technology that cannot as yet show what people are thinking, or whether there is some unseen force connecting you to the universe. Dismissing objective methodologies leaves you with a vacuum in where you will never be able to determine if you have acquired knowledge or not.
Humans live inner lives of ideas not of empirical data.
What the heck is an inner life? This phrase has no meaning. Our very material brains feed on externally acquired data which in turn allow us to create and imagine new ideas.
The first datum of consciouncess is impressions not neurons firing.
Without neurons firing there would be no consciousness, no ideas, no impressions, and you would be dead. What is your point? You cannot disconnect the physical activity of the brain with what you imprecisely call consciousness.
The bio-electrical computer model of consciousness is itself an idea of consciousness and belongs to the set of shared cultural ideas.
The rapidly increasing knowledge we are acquiring of brain functions show this to be near to fact and not a model. This is born out by the thousands of clinical studies performed on those, most often who have experienced some form of brain damage. There is always a direct correlation between physical brain parts and thoughts, personality, memory, behavior, emotions, etc. The bio-electrical functioning of the brain and the connection with all those ‘human’ attributes is fact.
The attempt to reduce conciousness and the subjective to the merely empirical is as doltish as the creationists trying to reduce the scientific and empirical to faith and dogma.
Subjectivity is usually the result of ignorance and imprecision that in turn lead to the creation of superstitions and the fantasies of religions.
Cris