Beyond Physicalism

It is now eight years since the publication of Irreducible Mind (IM). In that seminal work, the authors, led, as here, by Ed Kelly, set out the evidence which, to their own satisfaction (and mine), demonstrated the falsity of the physicalist conception of brain/mind relations. The evidence was drawn from everyday phenomena (e.g. memory and intentionality), but especially from "rogue" phenomena: psi, extreme psychophysiological influence (e.g. stigmata), OBEs, NDEs, mediumship, mystical experience and others.

In the final section of IM, its authors wrote: "Nothing would do more to hasten their wider recognition and acceptance, we believe, than identification of an alternative theoretical outlook that is scientifically defensible and that would permit and perhaps ultimately even explain them." Beyond Physicalism (BP) is the companion volume to IM – it is a record of its authors' efforts to produce that alternative theoretical outlook.

The purpose of BP is not polemical but progressive: 'toward reconciliation of science and spirituality' – in the words of the book's subtitle. The authors assume and affirm the reality of rogue phenomena. They do not pander to those wilfully ignorant of past and present experimental data and experiential evidence, nor do they have any truck with pseudo-sceptics.

There is much talk of a new paradigm – now is the time to knuckle down and develop it!

A New Metaphysics (1-2)

In the first chapter, Ed Kelly neatly summarizes the findings of IM and lays out what a new metaphysics must be able to accommodate. In the second chapter, Paul Marshall sets out a wide-ranging account of the phenomenological features of mystical experience, emphasizing its strong linkage to psi. Psychic and/or mystical experience also feature in other rogue phenomena, and thus a theory that purports to explain any of them must explain them all.

'Physicalism is metaphysics, not science; an interpretation of matters of fact, not itself a matter of fact.'(p. 80) Physicalism is conspicuously incapable of accommodating, let alone explaining, rogue phenomena. The principal test of any new metaphysics must be its explanatory power. Explanatory power is not just explanatory scope, but also explanatory detail. A metaphysic must not merely permit rogue phenomena to be real; it must explain why those specific phenomena are the rogue phenomena. It is in terms of their promise to achieve explanatory power that I will approach the theoretical outlooks set out in chapters 3-13 (I omit chapter 6 on Jung-Pauli's dual-aspect monism as it explicitly states that it attempts no explanations).

Permission/Filter Theory (3-4)

Ed Kelly writes: '…these "rogue" data collectively support an alternative class of models which view the brain not as the generator of consciousness but as an organ of adaptation to the everyday environment, selecting, focusing, channelling, and constraining the operations of a mind and consciousness inherently far greater in capacities and scope. … The primary purpose of the present book is to develop this central concept in detail.' (p. xiv – my italics)

In chapter 3, Michael Grosso presents a brief history of the permission/filter model. Two key features of the model are that the mental factor "pre-exists" the brain it operates on and through, and that there is a mobile psychophysical threshold that, when lowered, allows rogue phenomena to occur. Grosso warns that terms like "permission" or "filter" are inevitably metaphorical, and they are bound to mislead if we take them too literally.

In Chapter 4, Ed Kelly and David Presti review the scant research on the neurobiological and psychophysiological correlates of rogue phenomena. They advocate a much fuller research programme, for rogue phenomena 'clearly must be tied, in ways we presently do not understand, to functional states of the brain.'(p. 121) However, in NDEs due to cardiac arrest, we have a non-functioning functional state of the brain with many rogue phenomena present (psi, OBE, mystical experience), so such research may not prove as illuminating as the authors hope (pace the human genome project).

William James, whose thinking on these matters is always careful and considered, agnostic yet open, does not commit himself, as do some of the authors, to 'an antecedently existing consciousness that is the source of all manifestation' (p. 514, my italics) but to "the more" which could either be 'this common reservoir of consciousness' or 'the larger psycho-physical world.' (p. 522) It seems clear that a "principle of limitation" (p. 408) is necessary, but whether this is best conceived in terms of permission/filter theory is less so.

Anchored in Physics (5 &7)

In chapter 5, Henry Stapp begins his framework from John von Neumann's "orthodox" formulation of Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, a formulation in which there is a "cut" between the classical observer and the quantum observed. Von Neumann makes a "high" cut at the mind-world interface: 'an "abstract ego" (something akin to Nagel's objective self or even a formal postulate) …ontologically distinct from the atomically constituted physical world.' (p. 166) The "abstract ego" is, for Stapp, the source of free choice as to what variable to measure in a quantum experiment and also the epistemological subject in a knowledge-based conception of physics.

Stapp writes: 'Yet each such ego retains, in the orthodox theory, a quantum dynamical linkage to its associated physical brain'. This is a natural assumption but is the physical brain a privileged part of 'the atomically constituted physical world'? Unfortunately, I see no promise in Stapp's expansion of the "abstract ego" to a fully-faceted, fully-faculted mind; a psychic self or a surviving soul, as this neglects, for example, the quasi-physical properties of, say, crisis apparitions, especially in collective and reciprocal cases. However, this is not to say that something akin to the "abstract ego" of quantum mechanics will not prove necessary for the metaphysical understanding of free will and knowledge and hence for agentive and noetic features of rogue phenomena.

A more promising approach via physics, and known to many members, is the hyperspatial model of SMN chairman Bernard Carr. The main appeal of Bernard's model lies in its parallels to metaphysical models from the great spiritual traditions: a hierarchy of subtle bodies, of realms, of consciousness, of spatial and temporal experience, and all within a structure that ascends to unity via unification (the raison d'etre of Kaluza-Klein and their descendent models in physics). Furthermore, Bernard is the only theorist singled out by Ed Kelly in Chapter 14 for real explanatory power, where the explanatory scope is matched by explanatory detail in respect of J-P Jourdan's research into reports of higher dimensional perception during NDEs. Although I doubt the ultimate success of a physics-based metaphysics of experience, this hyperspatial model of some rogue phenomena may prove seminal.

Mystical Philosophy (8-10)

In mystical philosophy, at least in the popular view, practice takes priority over theory, ritual over doctrine, vision over reason, experience over explanation. Theory, doctrine, reason and explanation subserve practice, ritual, vision and experience.

Nevertheless, there have been adepts who were also persons of high or even genius level philosophical ability. In chapters 8-10, we are expertly introduced to four of them: Neoplatonists Plotinus and Iamblichus by Gregory Shaw; Yoga philosopher Patanjali by Ed Kelly and Ian Whicher; and Tantric philosopher Abhinavagupta by Loriliai Biernacki.

Findings as well as insights of mystical philosophy may well need to be incorporated into the new metaphysics. First among the latter is that plurality emerges from unity. That which is individuated retains connection born of that unity. The purpose of individuation is to return via stages of unification (higher states of psychic and somatic being) back to unity. First among the former and 'represent[ing] a possible watershed in our theory-constructing efforts' (p. 507) is the notion of the subtle body. The idea of the subtle body is endemic to the world's spiritual traditions and plays an essential role in the explanation of psi, of astral journeys, of post-mortem survival and of encounters with the divine, i.e. in most rogue phenomena.

Western Metaphysics (11-13)

A new metaphysics needs to incorporate the best of our scientific knowledge and the best of mystical philosophy.

Chapters 11-13 are the most challenging in the book for they illustrate how radical and revolutionary the displacement of physicalism might need to be. The three authors base their own attempts to displace physicalism on the work of Leibniz, C.S. Peirce and A.N. Whitehead.

Paul Marshall has, over a period of twenty years, honed a neo-Leibnizian monadology: 'the world consists of numerous, indivisible, transforming units. These "monads" are not the atoms of the materialists but complete perceptions of the universe organized from centres.' 'To the question "Why are we conscious of so little?" Leibniz would reply that it is because most of our perceptions are indistinct' (p. 389). Marshall would reply (hence the neo-) that it is because most of our perceptions are filtered.

Allowing for its fantastic premises, Marshall skilfully applies the monadology to the mind-body problem: the problem of sense perception and the "combination/binding" problem; relativistic and quantum physics; psi, post-mortem survival and mysticism. The explanatory scope of the monadology is so impressive that I suspect that there is something (of real value) in it.

Adam Crabtree, a psychotherapist, gives us a clear and concise account of Peirce's thought (an idealist evolutionary panentheism) and his way of thinking (abduction – 'the play of musement in which ideas are associated in a new synthesis' (p. 425)).

Crabtree seems sympathetic to many features of Peirce's thought: mind is all that exists, it is continuous and all is connected (synechism); the individual self is constituted by its relations to others and is distinguishable but not separate from others; there must be a personal God and God's love is the driver of the evolutionary process. Peirce's emphasis on connection, unification, love (essentially unification) and unity may well prove central to a new metaphysics.

In chapter 13, Eric Weiss sets out his neo-Whiteheadian, transphysical process metaphysics: reality is constituted by "actual occasions" – drops of experience that come in three broad grades: physical/low-grade, vital/medium-grade and mental/higher-grade. There are ontologically separable worlds of each grade. This is important, for Weiss claims that non-metric transphysical worlds (e.g. the (vital) dream world) are as actual as the waking world ('the world of our everyday experience, and the physical world which is abstracted from it'). If you're reading this review in a dream then this is just as real as if you're reading it awake!

With regard to rogue phenomena, Crabtree writes more of Peirce's interest in them than of Peirce's metaphysics as fruitful in explaining them. Explanations of rogue phenomena seem tangential to Weiss' main purpose of expounding/promoting his own metaphysics. Crabtree and Weiss make claim for the explanatory scope of their metaphysics, but detail is lacking, so explanatory power is not evident.

Toward a Conceptual Framework (14-15)

In Chapter 14, Ed Kelly sets out to collate and combine the ideas and insights gleaned from the frameworks presented, in order to formulate a provisional view of the new emerging paradigm. His final characterisation is that of an 'idealistic evolutionary panentheism' (p. 537). 'The divine game is to return to one's point of origin, back to the bosom of the One, and complete the circular (or spiral?) journey.'(p. 101)

In panentheism, God is immanent and transcendent: the playing of the game and, at the end, its winning. We and our lives are within the game. Panentheism is the authors' way of reconciling science and religion. The form of this metaphysics seems very promising, but is panentheism an unnecessary sop to religion? God is not a neutral term and, alas, I cannot envisage it ever becoming one. Would it not have been better to plump for the One or Tao?

Panentheism is temporal and eternal: the playing of the game is evolutionary and hence temporal. This evolutionary-temporal feature is the main subject of the final chapter by Michael Murphy. However, many rogue phenomena involve a transformation or even transcendence of temporality, and thus may it not be more accurate to say that the meta-realization of the One is via temporality rather than being temporal in itself?

In Conclusion

I suspect that the Sursem project has been, in recent times, the longest lasting and most intellectually substantial enquiry into rogue phenomena. It has resulted in two mammoth works: Irreducible Mind, surely destined to become as much of a classic as James' Varieties of Religious Experience, and now Beyond Physicalism – a volume that not only provides much food for thought but is in itself a feast of thinking.

Our gratitude should go to, above all others, the tireless Ed Kelly who, with his editorship and outstanding contributions to IM and BP, has secured a place as one of the great pioneers in the field.

The publication of Beyond Physicalism is the culmination of a 16-year project to set the search for a new paradigm on a secure scientific and evidential basis – it remains now for the research community or, more likely, a lone thinker to complete the task.