As pointed out at the end, the real battle is between skepticism and
scientific fundamentalism which should be an oxymoron. The sad truth
is that far too many scientists are actually poorly attuned to
empiricism. We all have prejudices clouding our minds and too easily
dismiss evidence outside our specialty with them, yet still have an
opinion to throw our authority on. It takes maturity to stop, look
and listen to a fresh observer.
Sometimes a fresh observer is speaking in a different language. You
have to discipline yourself to get past that to collectible facts.
Thus the long struggle to bring the science of the mind into
mainstream research efforts. By various routes, I have recognized
the reality of what I call the ubermind. We may function well
without it but that is also not demonstrated.
Science vs.
Pseudoscience
Posted: 06/10/2013
3:16 pm
Dave Pruett
"Science does not
need mysticism and mysticism does not need science, but [humans need]
both." Fritjof Capra
A conflict between
"science" and "pseudoscience" is now playing out
on the national stage, including in the Huffington Post. The
conversation is long overdue. I speak of the recent flap surrounding
two TED lectures on the nature of consciousness -- by Rupert
Sheldrake and Graham Hancock -- that were initially removed from
YouTube because TED's scientific curators deemed them
"pseudoscience." The move generated strong reaction from
TED's normally doting followers.
Sheldrake's and
Graham's offense: proposing the unorthodox view that consciousness is
nonlocal.
[
this question needs to at least be asked. My own work provides a
strong theoretical basis for exactly this and I actually expect this
to hold up. The empirical evidence is also becoming stronger. -
arclein ]
*****
At issue is the
relationship between "brain" and "mind." Brains
are easy to locate. The human brain is the wet, convoluted organ of
about three pounds that resides in the cranial cavity of the skull.
It is a clearinghouse for sensory stimuli, the seat of the emotions,
the control center for complex movement, the processor of language,
and presumably, the originator of thought. Mind, on the other hand,
is the faculty of conscious, subjective experience: the "ghost
in the machine." If free will exists, mind is the seat of free
will. "Brains are automatic, but people are free," asserts at
least one neuroscientist. The chief attribute of the brain is its
extraordinary complexity. The chief attribute of mind is its
inexplicable unity. Mind and brain are related, but how remains
enigma.
The mind may be
localized to the brain. Then again, it may not. Many scientists view
mind as an epiphenomenon of neural activity. In particular, this
seems the stance of Eric Kandel, 2000 Nobel laureate in physiology,
as articulated in In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science
of Mind. Study the brain long enough it is presumed, and we will
eventually understand mind. But a lot of evidence -- anecdotal and
scientific -- suggests otherwise.
[ an
even better argument is that biology likes the minimum pathway. Why
not link memory to the point in time when the event took place? That
avoids storage. Arclein ]
Freud earned
scientific immortality by naming and probing the subconscious layer
of mind beneath conscious awareness. Carl Jung, Freud's protégé,
parted company with Freud over the nature of the subconscious. Freud
saw the subconscious -- a dark place of illicit desires -- as the
seat of mental ill health. Jung turned the tables to reveal that the
deepest longings of the subconscious, when brought into the light of
day, point in the direction of the subject's greatest authenticity.
As a therapist, Jung's job was to liberate the aspirations of the
subconscious.
Jung transcended Freud
in another fundamental aspect: mind has both subconscious and
supraconscious aspects. Individual consciousness taps into a shared
realm of symbolic archetypes. Dreams, Jung found, are particularly
susceptible to influences from the "collective unconscious,"
which he defined as "a second psychic system of a collective,
universal, and impersonal nature ... identical in all
individuals." Jung, a Swiss with deep affinity for Native
American culture and beliefs, spent considerable time in the American
Southwest studying aboriginal ways. The aboriginal "world soul"
and Jung's "collective unconscious" are perhaps different
cultural expressions for the same phenomenon: shared
consciousness.
[
this is strongly indicated ]
Experiments with group
dreaming -- for example, the Dream Helper Ceremony of
former Princeton University psychologist Henry Reed and University of
Virginia psychologist Robert Van de Castle -- strongly suggest that
Jung was right. If consciousness has a shared aspect, then brain and
mind are not synonymous. Brain is local; mind is not. Brain is
particle. Mind is wave.
Consider also the
relatively common phenomena of mystical and near-death experiences
(NDEs), each of which has nonlocal connotations. Two timeless
classics -- William James 'Varieties of Religious Experience and
Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy -- attest to the ubiquity
and power of mystical states of consciousness, which are nonlocal by
definition. Similarly, a substantial body of anecdotal and scientific
evidence regarding NDEs has been amassed by a number of reputable
researchers, among them Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the University of
Colorado, Kenneth Ring of the University of Connecticut, and Raymond
Moody of the University of Virginia. Despite differences in religion,
nationality, race, age, and era of those who have reported mystical
or near-death experiences, accounts are remarkably consistent.
Beyond the world of
everyday sensual experience lies a universe of the paranormal.
Paranormal or "psi" phenomena include telepathy,
precognition, clairvoyance, distant healing, and more exotic
phenomena including out-of-body experiences sometimes associated with
NDEs. Psi experiences are ubiquitous. Perhaps half the human race, if
honest, has had some memorable or moving experience that falls
outside normal sensory awareness.
Despite the prevalence
of extra-ordinary experience, mainstream science has not been kind to
the paranormal. Psi phenomena lie beyond known physical laws and
often violate temporal causality. Thus mainstream science has
dismissed psi with varying degrees of disdain: by ignoring the
phenomena altogether, by labeling psi investigations as
"pseudoscience" as in the case of the TED controversy, or
by declaring psi experiments the work of charlatans.
In a previous post I
lauded the pioneering work of experimental psychologist Lawrence
LeShan, who set out in the 1950s to debunk all paranormal "nonsense."
The overwhelming quantity, quality, and coherence of the research
data, however, soon converted LeShan from a skeptic to a believer who
has spent the remainder of his life studying the paranormal. A theory
began to take shape in the groundbreaking The Medium, the
Mystic, and the Physicist (1966), continued in his A New
Science of the Paranormal (2009) (published as he neared 90
years of age), and culminated in the recently releasedLandscapes of
the Mind (2012). LeShan opened to mystical insights because of
his scientific integrity, not in spite of it.
In The Conscious
Universe (1997), parapsychologist Dean Radin confronts head-on
mainstream prejudices against psi by using meticulous statistical
meta-analyses of more than a century of data obtained by the most
reputable psi researchers. These include J. B. Rhine at Duke
University and researchers of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies
Research (PEAR) Laboratory. Radin's statistics offer seemingly
ironclad evidence for the legitimacy of many types of psi phenomena:
ESP playing-card tests, telepathy experiments, and the highly refined
Ganzfeld remote viewing experiment, among others.
Psi challenges the
metaphysical assumptions of science: dualism, materialism,
determinism, causality, and reductionism. (See my series on Science's
Sacred Cows.) But then so does quantum mechanics. The response of the
scientific community to these two challenges, however, remains
markedly different. Mainstream science has reluctantly embraced
quantum theory. In contrast, on the whole it consistently considers
psi to be anathema.
The philosophers Henri
Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, and the Nobel laureate Ilya
Prigogine all argued for a more tolerant science, for reasons
unrelated to the paranormal. Prigogine wished to heal the
"schizophrenia" that plagues humankind. He pleaded:
"Whitehead's case as well as Bergson's convince us that only an
opening, a widening of science, can end the dichotomy between science
and philosophy." Suggesting a way through the impasse, LeShan
invokes the wisdom of the French philosopher Ernest Renan, who
asserted that there exist two legitimate scientific methodologies: la
science de la nature and la science de l'humanité. The former
studies what can be quantified; its methodologies involve general
laws and measurement. The latter studies what cannot be quantified;
its methodologies involve deep contemplation of the subject:
listening, empathy, and sympathy. The German language also affords
dual words for science: Naturwissenschaftand Geistewissenschaft, the
"science of nature" and "science of the spirit,"
respectively. "For the study of psi, we need both methods,"
argues LeShan.
Nonlocality is now
mainstream in physics. Psi phenomena strongly suggest that
consciousness is also both nonlocal and collective. Were mainstream
science able to relax its rigid orthodoxy, rigorous scientific
investigations could help to confirm or refute this hypothesis, to
shed light on the numinous qualities of the cosmos, and to probe the
full potential of the human being.
The real nexus of the
TED controversy therefore lies not between "science" and
"pseudoscience." It lies between skepticism and scientism;
i.e., scientific fundamentalism. Skepticism is necessary and healthy
for science. Fundamentalism is neither.
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