Abstract
A paper on ‘mindfulness-based therapies’ [1] suggests that these techniques may aid management of various mental and physical health problems. However, while the paper has the form of science, it lacks a scienti?c content because the authors fail to de?ne their central concept (‘mindfulness’). Instead, it relies on the reader having or forming an implicit notion which depends for its success on remaining unde?ned.
Thus, we are told what mindfulness involves, what it refers to, what it is not, where it arose and how widespread it is, etc., but at no stage are we told what it is. Instead, they acknowledge that the matter is simply too dif?cult (‘… understanding the psychological and biological mechanisms… is more conceptually challenging that reporting on empirical studies…’ [p.287]) but, by a series of intimations, associations and obfuscations, the reader is led to suppose that there is something of substance behind the notion.
The intimation is seen in suggestions such as: ‘The scienti?c community ?rst became seriously interested (in mindfulness therapies) in the 1970s…’ This is misleading. A few people became interested, but they were hardly central and their interest could not be separated from the patently fanciful. The matter fell into disrepute just because there is no demarcation criterion separating legitimate scienti?c content from the frankly religious. The authors tacitly acknowledge this in their brief comment on ‘philosophy’ (p.291).
Some suggested that ‘biological mechanisms’ (p.289) of mindfulness practice are mere associations of no predictive value. Because there is no de?nition of the core concept, associations have no heuristic utility. This is particularly the case with electroencephalogram correlations because nobody has ever shown that electroencephalogram is more than epiphenomenal.
As an example of obfuscation, the following will suf?ce: ‘… although mindfulness may bring about relaxation, it is not primarily a “relaxation exercise” in that bringing non-judgemental awareness to the state of body and mind is the practice without any expectation of results, no matter how desirable those results might be’ (p.286). Within the scienti?c context, this is devoid of meaning. There can be no practice of science without an expectation of results.
There are many other major faults with this paper, but the most damaging can be seen by a simple philosophical test. The reader replaces the central term (‘mindfulness’) with a nonsensical term (e.g. ‘Qfulness’) and then gives the paper to somebody who has not seen it. If it makes no sense, it shows the authors have not de?ned their term but have relied on the covert importation of implicit meaning to disguise their inability to de?ne their concept. They cannot de?ne mindfulness just because they have no valid de?nition of mind (‘… a comprehensive understanding of relevant mechanisms is yet to be achieved’ [p.288]), so they have to rely on readers agreeing not to question it too closely. In philosophy, the technical term for this manoeuvre is ‘smuggling’.
Biological psychiatry cannot account for the mentality of mind [2]. This paper attempts to bypass the crucial question of mind–body interaction [3] and is therefore not science.