Actually, considering that something like 95% of people on earth are religious, I'd say believing in mysticism is the conventional view.
But that argument is flawed anyway; both the argumentum ad antiquitatem and argumentum ad novitatem are logical fallacies. Just because something is or is not a traditional belief has no bearing on its truthfulness.
What's important is whether or not something is supported by empirical evidence, which the mystical view(s) of consciousness mentioned in the article certainly are not.
I dunno what society you live in, but in mine the scientist is held divine and our holy scriptures are handed down by Newton and Einstein. That's the convention where I live. You hear this gospel preached from one end of the internet to the other.
The game of valid evidence and demonstrable models, tho effective for weeding out the bullshit, is, when you come down to it, damn stupid. Effective, but stupid. Like an insect is effective but stupid. Crude, myopic and simplistic even. And yes, darn good for building termite mounds of logically consistent explanations.
This game sheds a very small circle of very bright light in the midst of a vast shadow.
Let's not pretend that the shadow does not exist. And let's also not pretend that a society of thinkers governed by the scientific method is up to the task of modeling the shadow. The observer's perspective will always be infinitely subtler than any map that he can craft. The map will always be just a crude cartoon compared to the reality. Moreso with our geniuses.
So if there is an apparent contradiction between what the genius says and what our favorite maps (maps that the genius may have helped draw) assert, then blame the map. It is just a tiny limited thing after all. And when you put your faith in the map, or in our modern scientific mapmaking processes, you fail.
The views of smart people matter. Our games of epistemological accounting, less so.
Wow. No offense, but you read like a living strawman for the argumentum ad auctoritatem fallacy.
>So if there is an apparent contradiction between what the genius says and what our favorite maps (maps that the genius may have helped draw) assert, then blame the map.
Really? So every time two smart people reach contradictory conclusions, we should presume that science is incorrect and logic is inconsistent?
Authority exists. The views of the novice are not worth as much as those of the initiate.
No, that's just the insect talking. What you do is step back and reconsider your working assumptions. Respect the limits of your models and of the modeling process. Stuff like that
>The views of the novice are not worth as much as those of the initiate.
But the views of a single "initiate" (What do you mean by that? It seems a strange word to use in this context.) don't trump the entirety of science and logic.
>Respect the limits of your models and of the modeling process.
I do; the limits of our models are substantially more impressive than the limits of a single (fallible) person, no matter how impressive they may be.
A novice is one who has sampled the subject matter only shallowly, or only in the abstract. An initiate is one who has sampled the subject matter firsthand.
"Trump" is not the operative term here. More like "extend" or "augment". If science illuminates like a laser then the alternative, the squishy human approach, or whatever you want to call it, illuminates like a floodlight. Dimmer but wider.
If you respect the limits of your models and of the modeling process, then beyond those limits you put aside the science tool and pick up another. Maybe that which Feynman etc use. It certainly works for them.
I mean, maybe you just don't see what they see or understand what they understand. It happens.
Let me put it another way.
You are asserting the conventional view.
Being a genius generally means contradicting the conventional view in useful ways.