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Dr. Ed Kelly の主張 : 意識が根源的実在であり、物理世界はその副産物だ ⇒ この説を批判し、新説を提唱する

· 約101分

前置き​

Dr. Ed Kelly の

  • 意識が根源的実在であり、物理世界はその副産物だ

という主張を取り上げ、AI に詳細まで整理させた。

その上で、彼の説を批判し、私の新説を述べる。

音声対話(by AI=NotebookLM plus)​

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/dbe8380d-fb1d-4795-863a-c001bce3ef24/audio

概要

意識、実在、そして主流科学の変容

提供された文章は、Ed Kelly 博士へのインタビューの書き起こしです。Kelly博士は超心理学と意識の科学の分野で長年研究しており、テレパシー、予知、生まれ変わりなどの現象に関する強力な証拠が、現在の物理主義的な科学的見解に大規模な見直しを迫ると主張しています。

彼は、意識は脳活動の副産物ではなく、むしろ物質に優先すると信じており、唯心論こそがこれらの現象を説明するためのより適切な枠組みであると考えています。インタビューでは、彼自身の研究の歴史、『Irreducible Mind』や『Beyond Physicalism』といった著作で取り上げられた異常現象や哲学システム、そして意識と科学の将来的な融合について語られています。

情報源 : 動画(1:37:27)​

Legendary Psi Researcher On Telepathy, Reincarnation & Precognition ｜ Dr. Ed Kelly

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KuIugPiHk0

要旨

Dr. Ed Kelly氏へのインタビューの要約

概要:​

バージニア大学知覚研究部門のリサーチプロフェッサーであるエド・ケリー博士へのインタビューに基づいたこのブリーフィングドキュメントは、超心理学研究、意識の科学、そして現在の支配的な物理主義的世界観への根本的な挑戦というテーマを中心に構成されています。ケリー博士は、数十年にわたる研究経験に基づき、テレパシー、予知、生まれ変わりといった超常現象には揺るぎない証拠が存在すると主張し、意識が物質の派生物であるという従来の科学的見解を否定し、ある種の最高の意識が根源的であるという観点を提唱しています。このインタビューは、彼の研究の歴史、物理主義への批判、代替的な哲学体系の探求、そしてこれらの研究が科学と社会全体に与えうる潜在的な影響について深く掘り下げています。

主要なテーマと重要なアイデア/事実:​

  1. 超常現象（Psi現象）の存在証拠:
  • ケリー博士は、生涯にわたる事例研究、フィールドワーク、そして数千件に及ぶ実験研究から、「十分にオープンマインドな人であれば誰でも、これらの現象が自然の事実として存在することを確信するに足る十分な証拠が集まっている」と断言しています。(0:07:52)
  • 特に、初期の実験で統計的に極めて有意な成功率を示した被験者との出会いは、彼の超常現象の実在性に対する疑念を払拭する決定的な経験であったと述べています。(0:04:27)
  • 彼は、超常現象の存在は、従来の、物質を究極的な構成要素とし、意識を脳活動の副産物とみなす「物理主義」の現実観に根本的な挑戦を突きつけるものであると考えています。(0:12:12, 0:20:20)
  1. 物理主義への批判と意識の根源性:
  • 物理主義は、現実が空間と時間の中に存在する微小な無意識の物質から構成され、意識を含む全てがそこから構築されると仮定します。(0:12:48) この観点では、意識は脳の神経生理学的プロセスの産物であり、機械が停止すれば意識も消滅します。
  • ケリー博士は、超常現象に加えて、物理主義では説明が困難な他の現象（催眠下の水疱やスティグマ、皮膚書字、胎児への母体印象、多重人格、臨死体験、天才、神秘体験など）の存在を強調し、これらをまとめた著書『Irreducible Mind』を紹介しています。(0:21:24) これらの現象は、精神から物質への因果関係（メンタルからフィジカルへの影響）を示唆しており、物理主義の「フィジカルがフィジカルを引き起こし、メンタルはただ付随しているだけ」という主張に反すると考えます。(0:19:23)
  • 彼は、特に深部全身麻酔や心停止といった極限の生理学的条件下での臨死体験の証拠が、神経科学者が意識に必要だと考える脳の状態が大きく損なわれている、あるいは消滅している状況下で強力かつ変容をもたらす経験が発生していることから、意識は脳活動の副産物ではないという見解を補強すると指摘しています。(0:27:23)
  • 現代の意識研究の進展、特に哲学者が物理主義では意識が説明できないという結論に至っていることは、超心理学のような分野に大きな追い風となっていると述べています。(0:25:27, 0:26:01)
  • これらの証拠に基づき、ケリー博士は自身が「観念論者（idealist）」の立場に立つようになったと明確に述べています。(0:12:12, 0:55:53) 彼は、「ある種の最高の意識が根源的である。それ以外の全ては、この微小な物理的なものからではなく、そこからどうにかして生まれる必要がある」という「現実主義的観念論（realist idealism）」の方向性を提唱しています。(0:40:47, 0:41:51) これは物理主義の形而上学的対極にあるものです。
  1. 代替的な哲学・科学的枠組みの探求:
  • 物理主義に代わる現実の記述を探求するため、ケリー博士らは超常現象の存在を真剣に受け止め、その説明を試みる古いものから新しいものまで様々な哲学・科学的体系を検討した結果を著書『Beyond Physicalism』にまとめています。(0:38:26)
  • これらの体系は、量子論、相対性理論、ストリング理論、神秘主義的宗教哲学（ヒンドゥー教、ネオプラトニズム）、西洋哲学（ライプニッツ、ヘーゲル、パース、ホワイトヘッド）など多岐にわたります。(0:39:44)
  • 多くの体系に共通する中心的な傾向として、「現実主義的観念論」が浮上したと述べています。(0:40:47)
  • 彼はまた、ジェームズ・マイヤーズやウィリアム・ジェームズの「潜在意識（subliminal consciousness）」という概念を重要視しており、日常意識はより大きく包括的な意識の中に埋め込まれており、脳の状態がこのより高次の能力の発現を可能にすると考えています。(0:32:41, 0:33:17, 0:33:59)
  • 記憶についても、脳に痕跡として保存されているのではなく、ホワイトヘッドのプロセス哲学のように、経験自体がどこかに存在し続けるという見解に傾いていると述べています。(1:27:22)
  1. 科学と形而上学の関係:
  • ケリー博士は、科学はしばしば自身を形而上学から自由であると考えがちだが、実際には認識されているかどうかにかかわらず、哲学的な前提を不可避的に伴うと主張しています。(0:49:01) これはマイヤーズとジェームズの間でも議論された点です。(0:50:11)
  • したがって、科学の役割は、経験的な側面と自然に整合する「良い形而上学」を見つけることであると述べています。(0:53:57)
  • 物理学の一部の少数派が、実際の現実だけでなく、潜在性の領域も現実の構成要素として存在する（Heisenbergのpotentiae）という見解を持っていることに言及し、この潜在性の領域に超常現象などの説明が見出される可能性を示唆しています。(0:52:05)
  1. 意識拡張の状態と脳機能:
  • 神秘体験や超常現象の発現に関わる脳機能の側面として、デフォルト・モード・ネットワーク（DMN）の非活性化とデカップリングを指摘しています。(1:25:00)
  • これは、サイケデリックス研究や瞑想研究、ミディアム的トランスの研究などから示唆されており、マイヤーズの「潜在自己は日常自己の休止に比例して表現される」という原則と一致すると述べています。(1:26:29, 1:26:43) 脳は、このより大きなメンタリティが部分的に表現されるためのフィルターあるいは「還元弁」として機能しているというジェームズやハクスリーの比喩にも言及しています。(1:21:02, 1:22:08)
  1. 死後の生存の可能性:
  • ケリー博士は、完全に確実な答えは出せないとしつつも、生まれ変わりやミディアムシップの証拠から、何らかの形で個人の生存、特にマイヤーズが提唱したような潜在自己の生存の可能性を真剣に考慮すべきだと考えています。(1:28:49, 1:30:34)
  • 彼がベルナルド・カストルップと唯一意見を異にする点として、死後の生存の証拠をより真剣に考慮すべきだと考えていることを挙げています。カストルップは、死後には究極の意識と融合すると考える傾向がありますが、ケリー博士は、より複雑なレベルの分化、あるいはマイヤーズ＝ジェームズ的な高次の自己が存在し、それが生存を支える可能性を示唆しています。(0:54:40, 1:32:01)
  1. 科学の変革と将来の方向性:
  • ケリー博士は、超常現象研究は最終的に意識科学というより大きな枠組みの中に再吸収されるだろうと予測しています。(1:10:10)
  • 彼は、神経科学や意識神経科学を専攻する若い研究者たちに、超心理学への関心を直接的に公言することには慎重になりつつも、この分野に参入することを強く推奨しています。(1:10:10)
  • また、進化論におけるネオダーウィニズムの限界が示唆されており、生物がその行動によって進化に貢献するというラマルク的な要素が組み込まれる必要性が生じていることにも言及し、これが意識研究や超常現象研究と並行して科学の世界観に大きな変化をもたらす可能性を指摘しています。(1:02:50)
  • これらの変化は、現在の科学が支配する物理主義的世界観がもたらした地球環境問題、人間関係の問題といった文明の抱える危険な状況に対して、人々が宇宙の根源的なものと繋がっていると感じられるような、より肯定的で精神的な側面を取り入れた現実像を提供することで、貢献できる可能性があると考えています。(0:47:42, 0:48:35)
  • 彼は、現在は科学にとって非常にエキサイティングな時代であり、物理主義の砦には大きな亀裂が入っており、意識研究、進化論、生物学理論、そして彼らの研究のような様々な領域が相互に関連し合い、より肯定的な哲学的な方向へと導かれていると述べています。(1:34:32)
  1. 神秘体験の重要性:
  • 神秘体験は、伝統的に宗教研究の領域とされてきたが、科学的なアプローチにも適しているとケリー博士は考えています。(1:16:38)
  • これらの経験は、物理主義には問題となる要素ですが、東洋の伝統では現実の隠された部分への窓と見なされてきました。(0:30:10)
  • 神秘体験は、経験者にエゴイズムの低下や利他性の向上といったポジティブな変化をもたらす傾向があり、文明全体にとって有益である可能性があると述べています。(0:35:02)
  • ジェームズは既に、神秘体験は不可避的にある種の観念論を示唆すると述べており、ケリー博士もこの見解を共有しています。(1:17:15, 1:17:23)

結論として:​

ケリー博士へのインタビューは、既存の科学的パラダイム、特に物理主義に対する力強く、証拠に基づいた挑戦を提示しています。彼の数十年にわたる超心理学研究は、従来の科学的説明では理解できない現象の実在性を示唆しており、意識は脳の産物ではないという代替的な現実観、すなわち現実主義的観念論へと彼を導きました。彼は、

科学が形而上学から自由であるという幻想を捨て、実証的なデータと整合性の高い、より包括的な現実の記述を積極的に探求すべきだと主張しています。臨死体験、意識拡張状態の脳機能、そして進化論における新たな知見といった様々な領域での進展は、彼の見解を支持し、科学と精神性のより大きな統合、そして私たちの文明が直面する課題へのよりポジティブなアプローチへの道を開くと期待を表明しています。

timeline と主要関係者

タイムライン​

  • 1882年: Society for Psychical Researchがイングランドで設立される。F.W.H. MyersやWilliam Jamesが創設者の中に名を連ねる。（ソースより）
  • 1890年: William Jamesが『心理学原理』（The Principles of Psychology）を出版。この時点では哲学的な主題を避け、心理学に焦点を当てる姿勢を示す。（ソースより）
  • 1892年頃: William Jamesが『心理学原理』の短縮版を出版。Myersからの指摘を受け、心理学における哲学的前提の存在を認めるようになる。（ソースより）
  • 1897年: William Jamesがハーバード大学でIngersoll lectureを行い、翌年出版される。脳が意識を「生成」するのではなく、「伝達」または「許容」する可能性について言及。（ソースより）
  • 1898年: Ed KellyがEmilyと結婚。同年、Esalen Instituteの共同設立者であるMike Murphyによって、死後生存の証拠に関する新たなフェローシップに招待される。EmilyはIan Stevensonと共に研究していた。（ソースより）
  • 1900年代初頭: 生物学において、生物そのものを現実の根源とする見解が有力であったが、分子生物学の台頭により一時的に衰退。（ソースより）
  • 1903年: William Jamesが『宗教的経験の諸相』（Varieties of Religious Experience）を出版。Myersの心理学モデルを用いて様々な宗教的現象を説明し、形而上学的な方向性を示唆。（ソースより）
  • 1909年: William Jamesが最後の著書『多元的宇宙』（A Pluralistic Universe）を出版。Myersのサブリミナル意識モデルをさらに発展させ、意識が身体的な死を生き残る可能性について論じる。（ソースより）
  • 1913年: John B. Watsonが「行動主義者のマニフェスト」（Behaviorist Manifesto）を発表。行動主義がアメリカ心理学を少なくとも半世紀にわたり支配することとなる。（ソースより）
  • 1960年代: Ed Kellyが大学院生だった頃。意識は科学的な文脈では「汚い言葉」とされ、行動主義の影響が続いていた。（ソースより）
  • 1972年1月: Ed KellyがJ.B. Rhineの研究施設で働き始める。（ソースより）
  • 1972年初頭: Ed KellyがRhineの研究施設に到着してから6週間以内に、過去最高の実験被験者の一人である人物と出会う。この被験者は電子テスト装置で非常に高い統計的成功を収め、Kellyの超常現象の実在に対する疑念を払拭。（ソースより）
  • 約14年間（Ed Kellyのキャリア中期）: Ed Kellyがノースカロライナ大学で神経画像研究（体性感覚、特に振動刺激に関するもの）に従事。（ソースより）
  • 1998年: （前述の1898年と同じ出来事の再言及）Ed KellyとEmilyが結婚し、Mike Murphyのフェローシップに参加。（ソースより）
  • 2003年: Ed Kellyがバージニア州に移住し、バージニア大学のDivision of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) に着任。これは、妻Emilyが創設者のIan Stevensonと共に働いていたため。（ソースより）
  • 2007年: Ed Kellyらの最初の書籍『Irreducible Mind』が出版される。この中で、従来の物理主義では説明困難な様々な現象（心霊現象、天才、神秘体験など）がカタログ化され、 MyersとJamesによる拡張された心理学モデルが提示される。（ソースより）
  • 2010年代: 意識研究が復活し、哲学、心理学、神経科学など様々な分野で注目されるようになる。物理主義では意識を説明できないという結論に至る哲学者が増える。（ソースより）
  • 2012年: イギリスの研究グループが、注射されたシロシビンと機能的MRIを用いた研究を発表。この研究で、幻覚体験の強度が脳のデフォルトモードネットワークの活動低下および脱共役と相関することが示される。（ソースより）
  • 数年前（Consciousness Unboundの執筆中）: Ed Kellyが、物理主義と観念論の説明上の課題は同等ではないことに気づく。意識の実在は確実である一方、物質の伝統的な概念は経験を説明するために「考え出された」ものであると認識。（ソースより）
  • 2015年: Thomas Nagelが『Mind and Cosmos』を出版。物理主義では心と意識の全ての特性を説明できないという前提から議論を展開。Ed Kellyらはこの本の執筆を個人的に奨励した可能性に言及。（ソースより）
  • 時期不明: Ed Kellyらが、物理主義に代わる現実像を探求するための次の書籍の計画に着手。『Beyond Physicalism』の基となる調査を開始。（ソースより）
  • 時期不明: 『Beyond Physicalism』が出版される。この中で、従来の物理主義では説明困難な現象を説明できる様々な哲学・科学システムが検討され、「実在論的観念論」という方向性が提示される。（ソースより）
  • 2021年: 『Consciousness Unbound』が出版される。この中で、臨死体験、予知、転生タイプの事例などの最新研究や、Bernardo Kastrup、Federico Fagginなどの理論的立場が紹介される。また、観念論的な現実観が社会に与えうる肯定的な影響についても議論される。（ソースより）
  • 現在: Ed Kellyらは、これまでの3冊の書籍のテーマを引き継ぐ4冊目の書籍の執筆を進めている。（ソースより）
  • 現在: 理論生物学において、生物を現実の基礎とみなし、微小な生物にも精神的特性を認める方向への大きな変化が進行中。ネオダーウィン進化論の合成説が崩壊しつつあり、 Lamarck的な要素の組み込みが必要とされている。（ソースより）
  • 現在: DOPSの研究は主に私的な資金によって支えられているが、Ed Kellyは超常現象が最終的にはより大きな意識科学に再吸収され、主流科学の一部になると考えている。科学における「戦いは終わった」が、多くの関係者はまだ気づいていないと述べる。（ソースより）

##登場人物リスト

  • Ed Kelly (Dr. Edward Kelly): 超常現象、変性意識状態、意識の性質を20年以上研究している研究教授。専門は実験心理学と神経科学。バージニア大学Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) に所属。超常現象の実在に確信を持っており、物理主義に代わる「実在論的観念論」の提唱者。主著に『Irreducible Mind』、『Beyond Physicalism』、『Consciousness Unbound』がある。
  • J.B. Rhine: ダラム、ノースカロライナに研究所を持っていた実験超心理学の先駆者。Duke Universityを離れた後も研究を続けた。Ed Kellyの初期の師の一人。
  • Helmut Schmidt: J.B. Rhineの研究施設の研究ディレクターを務めた物理学者。超常現象を測定するための電子テスト装置を開発。
  • Emily: Ed Kellyの妻。Ian Stevensonと共にバージニア大学Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) で研究していた。Ed Kellyとの共著『Irreducible Mind』では「極端な心理物理的影響」に関する章を執筆。また、『Irreducible Mind』と『Consciousness Unbound』では臨死体験や体外離脱体験に関する章も担当。
  • Ian Stevenson: バージニア大学Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) の創設者。生まれ変わりタイプの事例に関する新しい研究分野を確立し、死後生存の可能性を研究。2500件以上の事例を集めた。
  • Mike Murphy: Esalen Instituteの共同設立者。Society for Psychical Researchの創設者の系譜にある人物で、F.W.H. Myersの著作に造詣が深い。死後生存の証拠を検討するためのフェローシップを組織した。
  • F.W.H. Myers: Society for Psychical Researchの創設者の一人。主著『人間の人格とその身体的死の生存』（Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death）を執筆。サブリミナル意識という概念を提唱し、これが死後生存の基盤となる可能性を示唆した。
  • William James: アメリカの心理学者、哲学者。Society for Psychical Researchの同僚であり、Myersの友人であり同僚。Myersの仕事から影響を受け、意識と脳の関係における「伝達説」や「フィルター説」の初期の提唱者となった。
  • Alan Gould: 記憶研究者。『Irreducible Mind』で記憶に関する章を執筆。過去生記憶や霊媒交信との関連で記憶研究の既存の問題点をまとめた。
  • Bernardo Kastrup: Ed Kellyが言及する現代の哲学者。観念論的な現実観（分析的観念論）を提唱し、意識が現実の根源であると考える。Ed Kellyとは死後生存の解釈において意見の相違がある。
  • Adam Crabtree: 臨床心理学者、哲学者、歴史家。『Irreducible Mind』で多重人格（解離性同一性障害）と心理学的自動現象に関する章を執筆。
  • B.F. Skinner: 行動主義心理学の主要人物。Ed Kellyが大学院生だった頃、同じ建物で研究していた。
  • John B. Watson: 行動主義心理学の創始者の一人。1913年の「行動主義者のマニフェスト」を発表。
  • Carl Ewing: Harold Ottmann-Spacherを通じて言及される人物。Pauliとの対話で知られる。
  • Pauli: Harold Ottmann-Spacherを通じて言及される人物。Carl Ewingとの対話で知られる。
  • Leibniz: Ed Kellyらが『Beyond Physicalism』で検討した西洋哲学システムの一つ。
  • Hegel: Ed Kellyらが『Beyond Physicalism』で検討した西洋哲学システムの一つ。
  • Charles Sanders Peirce: Ed Kellyらが『Beyond Physicalism』で検討した西洋哲学システムの一つ。
  • Whitehead (Alfred North Whitehead): Ed Kellyらが『Beyond Physicalism』で検討した西洋哲学システムの一つ。プロセス形而上学を提唱し、経験の出来事が客観的に不滅であると考えた。Orobindoのヒンドゥー教と関連付けられる。
  • Michael Murphy: （Mike Murphyと同じ人物の再言及）
  • Orobindo: 近代インドの思想家。タントラ的なヒンドゥー教の一形態を提唱。Eric WeissによってWhiteheadのプロセス形而上学と関連付けられる。
  • Eric Weiss: 『Beyond Physicalism』でOrobindoに関する章を執筆した人物。
  • Gustav Fechner: William Jamesが意識と脳の関係における「伝達説」や「フィルター説」に関連して言及した人物。
  • Henri Bergson: William Jamesが意識と脳の関係における「伝達説」や「フィルター説」に関連して言及した人物。脳を感覚運動のインターフェースと考える点でもEd Kellyに影響を与えた。
  • F.C.S. Schiller: オックスフォード大学の形而上学者。William Jamesが言及した人物の一人。
  • Roderick Mayne: Jung研究者。『Consciousness Unbound』でJungの後期の変容に関する章を執筆。Jungが臨死体験後にパンエンテイズムの方向に傾倒したことを示した。
  • Federico Faggin: 『Consciousness Unbound』で章を執筆した人物。意識を遍在的、全能的、還元不可能なものと考える。Ed Kellyは彼の見解がMyers-Jamesの考えとよく一致すると感じる。
  • Thomas Nagel (Tom Nagel): 現代の哲学者。主著『Mind and Cosmos』で物理主義が心と意識の全てを説明できないと論じた。Ed Kellyらは彼の執筆を個人的に奨励した可能性がある。
  • Alvin Plantinga: Thomas Nagelが称賛する神学者。ノートルダム大学に所属。
  • Rupert Sheldrake: モルフィック共鳴仮説を提唱した人物。モルフィック共鳴は、Ed Kellyが心の拡張性のメカニズムの候補の一つとして言及。
  • Aldous Huxley: 脳を意識の「還元弁」と例えた人物。Ed Kellyがフィルター説に関連して言及。
  • David Presti: バークレーの神経生物学者。『Beyond Physicalism』で、超常現象、天才、神秘体験の発現に関連する生理学的状態に関する章をEd Kellyと共著で執筆。
  • Dennis Noble: 理論生物学者。ネオダーウィン進化論に対する批判の推進者の一人であり、生物の認知的能力や行動が進化に影響を与えるLamarck的な要素を認める見解を支持。
  • Jerry Coyne: 進化論の正統説を強く擁護する人物。Dennis Nobleによって批判的に言及される。
  • Richard Dawkins: 進化論の正統説を強く擁護する人物。Dennis Nobleによって批判的に言及される。
  • Henry Stapp: 量子理論家。Esalen CIRCEMグループのメンバー。「古典的に考えられている物質は存在しない」と述べた。
  • Brother David Stendhal-Rost: ベネディクト会修道士。Ed Kellyが会ったことがある人物。精神について語る3つの方法（どのようなものか、どのようなものでないか、直接経験）について言及し、パンエンテイズムを「精神がどのようなものか」を語るための最良の方法とした。
  • Eben Alexander: 脳神経外科医。主著『Proof of Heaven』の中で、Ed Kellyらの『Irreducible Mind』を関連主題の情報源として言及。この言及により『Irreducible Mind』の販売部数が大幅に増加した。
  • John Cleese: Ed Kellyらが『Irreducible Mind』を学術関係者に配布するために資金援助した人物。
  • G.P.: 死後、霊媒Mrs. Piperを通じてコミュニケーションをとったとされる若い男性の事例。死後生存の証拠としてEd Kellyが言及。
  • Mrs. Piper: G.P.の事例で言及される霊媒。William Jamesが熱心に研究した人物。
  • Max Planck: 科学の進歩は「一度の葬式」ごとに行われるという格言に関連して言及される人物（Ed Kellyがこの格言の出所として示唆）。
展開

（以下、Dr. Ed Kelly のインタビューの文字起こし）

（冒頭部分：視聴者を掴むために、全体からサワリ部分を編集したと思しき部分）

Professor Ed Kelly has spent a lifetime studying and collecting compelling evidence on phenomena such as telepathy, precognition and reincarnation. Enough evidence has accumulated from case and field studies plus a couple of thousand experimental studies to convince any reasonably open-minded person that these phenomena exist as facts of nature. Period. Is consciousness fundamental? Some kind of highest consciousness is primary. Everything else has to come from that somehow instead of this minute physical stuff. (0:00:37)

Matter as classically conceived does not exist. How does mainstream science deal with anomalous phenomena today? It's really an embarrassment. For the most part, ignored entirely. Even when people pay attention to them, it's usually to marginalize and pathologize them. Our egoism, our consumerism, our plundering of the planet, I think all has deep roots in the kind of worldview that has dominated until right about now. (0:01:11)

I don't see any reason why we cannot get deep into spiritual matters with the tools of science. What this will ultimately force is a massive overhaul in our science-based picture of reality. I think the battle is over and in fact has been over for a while. It's just that most of the combatants aren't aware of it yet.

（本編開始）

Welcome to Essentia Foundation channel. (0:01:38)

Thank you for watching. Today I will be speaking with Dr. Edward Kelly about his psychical research, his philosophical and scientific views. Hello Ed. Welcome and thank you very much for taking the time for this interview. Thanks for having me. You've been researching psychical phenomena and altered states of consciousness for over 20 years. Your background is in experimental psychology and neuroscience and you are a research professor in the division of perceptual studies at the University of Virginia. So I wanted to ask you what has your lifelong research shown? Is consciousness a byproduct of brain activity or the mind is primary to matter? And is there reliable evidence that led you to your conclusions? Wow, that's a whopper. (0:02:31)

Yeah, maybe I should kind of sketch the history of this a little bit. I started in psychical research right out of graduate school, basically. I did a postdoc and during that time, late in graduate school, I had become interested in experimental parapsychology. It turned out that my older sister, my only sibling, had developed mediumistic abilities and my mother had been nervous about that and inquired with me since I was a graduate student in psychology. So I went to the library. (0:03:09)

I knew nothing about the subject, discovered for the first time that there's this whole body of experimental research using the same kinds of methods that we were being taught to study garden variety things, using those methods to study things that seem to be impossible if the prevailing picture of reality, science-based picture of reality, were correct. So I was intrigued by that. (0:03:42)

I began corresponding with J.B. Ryan down in Durham, North Carolina. He had a little research institute. He had left Duke University at that point, but this was still kind of the, certainly the American center of experimental parapsychology. (0:03:55)

And so after moving down to North Carolina and writing a book based on my dissertation, I went to work for him in January of 1972. And at that time, I'd have to say I was pretty convinced already that these phenomena must be real. I'd read enough of the literature during my supposed postdoc to be pretty persuaded. It really looked as though the phenomena must be real. (0:04:27)

But then I had, within six weeks of arriving at Ryan's place, I met a guy who was certainly one of the best subjects ever to appear in a parapsychology laboratory. This guy could do pretty much anything we asked him to do, often to extreme levels of statistical success. And he essentially erased any residual doubts I had about the reality of the phenomena. I mean, the very first day he arrived at the lab, we had at the time, our director of research was Helmut Schmidt. He was a former, he's a physicist, former researcher at Boeing in Seattle, had recently taken over as director of research for Ryan. During the time he was at Boeing, he had constructed an electronic test device. (0:05:27)

This was a box that had four big colored buttons and four correspondingly colored lights. And the subject's task is, of course, to guess which one the machine will pick as the target. And the way it did that was extremely sophisticated. It had a four position switch that's going around and around at a very high rate. And after the subject pushed the button corresponding to his guess, the circuitry would change such that when a decay particle arrived from a piece of strontium inside the machine, it would interrupt the stepping of that switch and pick the target. (0:06:03)

And in the absence of a subject, this thing always exemplified the expected chance behavior. Now, Helmut had spent a couple of years looking for people who could do better than that, 25%. And he had found a couple of people who could reliably score either a little bit above or a little bit below chance, a couple of percent. Anyway, this fellow comes into our library. (0:06:31)

He sees the machine sitting there on the table and says, what's that? And Helmut explained it to him. Anyway, and so he then began to tell us his life story. And every so often, he'd reach out and push a button. And it quickly became apparent that he was doing way better than 25%. And I could see Helmut's eyes kind of getting bigger and bigger. (0:06:55)

And by the end of the hour, he had 180 hits in 508 trials, which is a bit over 35% where 25% is expected. And when you do the math on that, it turns out that something that good or better would happen by chance like one in a million times or something of that sort. So we might have sat there for a million such hours before seeing something like that happen by chance. (0:07:22)

And that was really just the beginning with this guy. I've seen him score at rates close to 50% for hundreds of trials. He also turned out to be able to guess playing cards at about three times chance expectation for thousands of trials. That sort of thing. Far beyond what you could expect to happen by chance. Very far beyond. Period. I mean, and in multiple experimental contexts. (0:07:52)

Yeah, let me just say in general, I mean, I have no idea who we're talking to here or what they might know about parapsychology. But I would say simply, to summarize that whole dimension of the subject, that in the past 150 or so years, enough evidence has accumulated from case and field studies, plus a couple of thousand experimental studies, to convince any reasonably open-minded person who takes the trouble to study it, that these phenomena exist as facts of nature, period, and that our science will have to expand in some way that permits it to accommodate them. And I think you can take that to the bank. (0:08:37)

It's a very big literature. It's not a simple thing to learn about it. But there are plenty of good summaries out there. Lots of popular and scientific books. Anyway, that was what started me on this path. And I think like most people coming to the subject from the scientific side, I really hoped at the beginning that some little adjustment somewhere in our scientific scheme of things would make all these problems go away and, you know, enable our system to be healed, so to speak. (0:09:27)

But as time has gone by, I've become more and more convinced that there really is no simple fix, and that what this will ultimately force is a massive overhaul in our science-based picture of reality. (0:09:45)

It's taken me a long time to get there. And by the way, I've been at this for over 50 years, not 20 years. I started in 1972 with Ryan. I had a long digression in the middle of my career. I had two children at the time, had to feed them, wasn't making any money in parapsychology, so I had to go back into mainstream-type research. (0:10:10)

And I did that at the University of North Carolina doing neuroimaging studies of somatosensation in humans. These are tactile stimuli, especially vibrations applied to fingers and things like that. We had a large neuroscience group there, and I worked at that for about 14 years in the middle of my career. Then came back to, well, moved to Virginia, where I am now, came here in 2003. And that was because I had remarried a woman who was working with Ian Stevenson, who was the founder of our division. (0:10:47)

Ian, you probably know, is best known for his development of a new line of research related to the possibility of postmortem survival. That is, cases involving small children who begin speaking or acting as though they're experiencing something from a previous life that happened recently enough that you can actually go check, see whether they really do know things they would have no normal way of knowing. (0:11:29)

And Ian eventually and his colleagues found something over 2,500 such cases, of which about 2,200 are now entered into a big database at our division, DOPS, Division of Perceptual Studies. I want to hear your conclusion from the whole experience that you've had. Are you, at some point, convinced that consciousness is not a byproduct of brain activity? Or are you still doubting that? Or are you saying, with 100% certainty, in my experience as a researcher, you know, for over 30 years, you say you're doing this research, mind is primary to matter. (0:12:12)

What is your conclusion? Well, I'm definitely in the idealist camp at this point. I became convinced. Let me go back just a step here. The picture of the world that is challenged by the existence of these paranormal or psi phenomena, that I was studying experimentally way back at the beginning, is what's generally known as physicalism. It's a kind of austere, modern descendant of the materialism of previous centuries. (0:12:48)

And it says it's the kind of stuff that we all learned growing up in school, that reality exists independent of us. Space and time have been there from the beginning as a kind of container in which things can happen. Reality consists at bottom of some kind of ultimate tiny stuff, self-existent, unconscious, no sentience of any kind, moving around in accordance with mathematical laws under the influence of fields of force. (0:13:26)

And everything else that exists, including our minds and consciousness, is built somehow from that ultimate stuff, whatever it is. And it's changed, of course, over the centuries. So everything in mind and consciousness is manufactured by neurophysiological processes in our brains. We're nothing but immensely complicated biological machines. When the machinery dies, consciousness, personality are necessarily extinguished. They can't be anything like post-mortem survival, period. (0:14:02)

That's the basic physicalist picture. Psi phenomena are one of the things that challenge it, but hardly the only things. And this is where I made my turn toward the theory side. This happened actually in 1998. By that time, I had married Emily, my wife, who was working with Ian Stevenson and moved to Charlottesville actually in 2003. But in 1998, the year that Emily and I were married, we were also invited by Mike Murphy, the co-founder of Esalen Institute, to participate in a new fellowship that Mike was creating specifically to look at the evidence for post-mortem survival. (0:14:58)

Now I should say a little bit about Mike Murphy. He's a really extraordinary character, a Renaissance man, right in the lineage of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882 in England. I mean, he had read the masterwork of F. W. H. Myers, one of the founders, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, a 1400-page, two-volume treatise in which Myers put together all the evidence that he and his colleagues had been able to assemble up to that point, and to advance a theory of human personality that is quite different from the kind of thing we have now. (0:15:48)

And among his colleagues was William James, the American psychologist and philosopher. (0:15:56)

They were friends and colleagues. James greatly admired Myers' work, wasn't entirely convinced by it early on, but ultimately advanced his own metaphysical picture that built upon Myers' work. Now, before I get to that, let me say a little bit more about this fellowship that we created at Esalen. As I mentioned, the original intent was simply to look at evidence for survival, and to that end, Mike had brought together about 20 people from across the planet that he knew were actually working in this area. (0:16:52)

Mike was perfectly well aware that if the prevailing picture is correct, there can't be any survival. And he also knew that here were these people here and there who apparently producing evidence supporting the idea. So he wanted to hear about all that in his typical way, and he organized this fellowship. So the setup was that we would go to Esalen for a week each year, as it turned out, and it went on much longer than originally expected. (0:17:18)

And Esalen is kind of perched on a cliff over the Pacific Ocean. It's a fantastically beautiful place, one of Mike's many accomplishments creating that place. Yeah, amazing guy. Anyway, so we did that for the first two years. We mainly presented and discussed various kinds of evidence for survival. And at the end of that second meeting, it had become clear that while we had some somewhat differing views about survival itself, some convinced, others not, we were all completely convinced that physicalism, the prevailing picture, I mean, this is the received wisdom of opinion elites all over the planet, including main central parts of the American, certainly scientific establishment, non-physicists mainly. (0:18:12)

So we were convinced that physicalism has to go, and we decided that we would assault it in a two-stage process. In the first stage, we wanted to put together a whole bunch of empirical evidence against or for things that physicalism could not explain. Well, let me go back one step further even. I mean, the philosophical context here, the mind-brain relation, everybody agrees that normally physical things and mental things go together pretty well. (0:18:58)

And furthermore, we can be absolutely sure that there is physical to mental causation. I mean, if you get hit in the head hard enough, or drink too much, or ingest a psychedelic, or grow an invasive brain tumor, or something of that sort, mental things will change. We know that for absolute certain. So there is physical to mental causation. (0:19:23)

But what about causation in the other direction? Let's say I'm listening to a lecture by a physicalist, and I'm getting irritated and want to ask a question. So I raise my hand. Isn't that mental to physical causation? It certainly seems so, naively. Well, no, says the physicalist. You see, you just misunderstood the causality here, because that idea and that urge to ask a question, those things are all just physical processes in your brain. Physical causes physical, no problem. (0:19:54)

The mental stuff is just kind of there along for the ride. Now, that kind of argument is extremely difficult to refute in normal, everyday kinds of contexts. And the trick is, and this is what Myers was trying to do so long ago, is to find things that unaided brains cannot accomplish, that resist or defy explanation in conventional physical terms. (0:20:20)

So top of any such list, of course, is all the side phenomena. That's what makes them so objectionable to lots of mainstream scientists, especially those for whom physicalism is a kind of secular religion. For people like that to even suggest anything different is to commit heresy and invite excommunication, if not crucifixion. It's really quite astonishing how emotional some people can get about these matters. (0:20:54)

Anyway, lots of psychologists and neuroscientists would like to think that, well, okay, this parapsychology stuff, yeah, it's a problem, but there are lots of questions about it. Maybe we can just kind of put it off in the corner somewhere, ignore it, and go on about our business. But in fact, there are lots of other things that are difficult to explain in conventional physical terms. (0:21:24)

And so we sought to revisit those, a number of which Myers had worked on 100 plus years ago, but to revisit them in light of the subsequent century plus of refereed biomedical research in the main. And so we did that. So we have chapters on things. We wrote a book eventually. First book was called Irreducible Mind, in which we collected a lot of this stuff. (0:21:51)

Emily's got a great chapter in that book on extreme psychophysical influence, starting in a very Myers-like way from easy stuff, where the physicalism still sounds pretty plausible, but moving progressively toward things that are less and less open to that kind of approach. Things like, for example, hypnotic blisters or stigmata, in which devout Christians with vivid imaginations can produce upon their own bodies imitations of the wounds that they believed Christ suffered during the crucifixion. (0:22:28)

There was another phenomenon studied by two eminent French physiologists called skin writing, in which answers to questions would appear in the person's skin, inside the skin, not on the skin. And sometimes the questions were only being asked in the next room, not directly to the subject. It was a woman who had this very unusual ability. There are things like maternal impressions, in which a woman early in pregnancy, in particular, first trimester, sees some ghastly physical injury, and the resulting infant bears a copy or resemblance in its organism to what the woman had witnessed. (0:23:24)

Here, it's actually an effect on another person's body, not your own body. So at that point, it connects with all the literature about psychokinesis or mind over matter in the world of experimental parapsychology. Let's see, then we had a chapter on memory by Alan Gould, a guy who spent a good part of his lifetime studying that subject in relation to the apparent memories of past lives and and mediumistic communications, things of that sort. (0:23:58)

And Alan summarized a variety of conceptual and empirical problems in existing memory research. The arguments he presents in that chapter overlap a good deal with arguments that have appeared more recently, including arguments by people like Bernardo Kostrup about the difficulties of explaining consciousness in physicalist terms. And in fact, let me say parenthetically here that one of the really important things that's happened in the last few decades is the reappearance of consciousness research. (0:24:38)

You know, when I was a graduate student in the 60s, consciousness was a dirty word, but we were still suffering the after effects of behaviorism. In fact, B.F. Skinner and company were on another floor of the same building that I worked in as a graduate student, William James Hall. Anyway, yeah, consciousness was not a word spoken in polite scientific company during that period of time. Are you serious, Ed? Was it really that bad? It was that bad. (0:25:08)

In fact, let me just mention here that if there's anybody out there who has never seen John B. Watson's Behaviorist Manifesto of 1913, it's really worth looking at. It is so bizarre that it's hard to believe that anybody took it seriously at the time. (0:25:27)

And yet, behaviorism ruled the roost in American psychology for at least half a century. It was just beginning to break down at the time I started graduate school. But that's all changed. And I mean, consciousness itself is one of the things that physicalism has great difficulty with. And a lot of philosophers have come to the conclusion at this point that we will never have a physicalist explanation of consciousness. (0:26:01)

And that's been a great boon. I mean, we used to be like, parapsychology people used to be like a little rowboat trying to steer the Titanic and not having very much success. But now at least there are other rowboats, some quite a bit bigger than ours in the same territory, pushing in the same, pulling in the same direction. So we're in better shape now. (0:26:28)

Anyway, let me get back to our developing book. One other, well, two heavily empirical chapters, one was on multiple personality and dissociative identity disorder, secondary centers of consciousness and psychological automatisms. That was by Adam Crabtree, who's a clinical psychologist and philosopher and historian, spent a lot of time in that world. (0:26:56)

And there you have the challenge of explaining how what appears to be multiple personalities can occupy the same organism, sometimes concurrently rather than successively, and sharing neural mechanisms somehow. And sharing consciousness in peculiar ways, where a secondary personality may be a lot more capable than the primary personality and know a lot about what goes on in the primary personality, but not vice versa. (0:27:23)

Then there was another chapter. Emily was again the lead about things like out-of-body and near-death experiences. And let me mention here that there's one class in particular of near-death experiences that I think is of particular importance, and that may, I think, is actually driving changes of opinion within the world of biomedical science. And these are near-death experiences occurring under extreme physiological conditions, such as deep general anesthesia and or cardiac arrest. (0:28:03)

The reason why that's important is that in these conditions, the brain conditions that most neuroscientists believe are necessary for conscious experience are severely degraded or abolished altogether. And yet people report not only experiences of any old kind, but the most powerful, impactful, transformative experiences of their entire lives. They're essentially mystical experiences occurring under suboptimal conditions where you almost have to die in order to have the experience. (0:28:49)

There's a long story to be told about those and the attempts made by physicalists to escape the force of those experiences. But that argument, I think, has held together since we first wrote it down in 2007. We also have chapters on things like extreme forms of genius and mystical experiences themselves. And these are both topics that have been fairly poorly handled by psychology and neuroscience. (0:29:22)

That's true even of creativity, which you might think would be kind of central to an interesting psychological science. But it's even more true of mystical experience. I think one of the main things I've learned in the course of working on these books, and there are more that I'll tell you about in a moment, is that it's really an embarrassment the way our academia and science has dealt with mystical experience so far. That is, they're, for the most part, ignored entirely. (0:30:01)

And even when people pay attention to them, it's usually to marginalize and pathologize them. (0:30:10)

Unlike, in particular, say, Eastern traditions, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, that have taken mystical experiences as windows into normally hidden parts of reality, I think we are going to have to do a lot better in terms of our philosophical and scientific dealings with mystical experience in order to get a correct picture of reality. So that was our first book, Irreducible Mind. There's also a chapter in which I attempt to evaluate Myers's psychological model, which I'll say a bit more about in a moment, and then also sketched out a range of possibilities for an expanded scientific picture that would allow us to explain the kinds of phenomena that we had cataloged in the book. (0:31:13)

Now, there are two aspects to what come out of Irreducible Mind, two things I think we accomplished. One is to add an empirical dimension to the ongoing critiques of physicalism. And it, as I indicated, kind of coheres nicely with the modern revolution in thinking about consciousness, driven mainly by philosophers originally, but now gradually penetrating neuroscience and psychology. (0:31:54)

Now, I think our work has also gone a long way toward supporting the kind of model that Myers and James had of the human psyche, which is very different from what's on offer now. It's related to models that include a dynamic unconscious, such as those of Freud and Jung and the various psychoanalysts, but with one huge difference. That is, all of these things recognize that there's a part of the psyche that's inaccessible, usually, to the everyday consciousness, and in that sense, unconscious. (0:32:41)

In Freud and Jung, it is literally unconscious, that other dimension of the psyche. For Myers and James, it's quite different. They picture the everyday consciousness as being wholly embedded within a larger, more comprehensive consciousness, having access to what Myers termed adits and operations, that is, capacities of one or another sort, exceeding those normally available to the everyday consciousness. (0:33:17)

You know, the standard psychology neuroscience picture is that everyday consciousness is all the consciousness there is, supported by unconscious neurophysiological stuff going on in the brain. But Myers and James both took very seriously this idea of a subliminal consciousness of greater capacity than the everyday. And, well, James was the one who really explicitly formulated the logic of the situation, saying that most people take these correlations between mind and brain as proof of the standard conception. (0:33:59)

But that correlation can be interpreted in a different way, namely that conditions in the brain permit the expression of these higher capacities that are normally inaccessible to us. That is, the higher consciousness can express itself through the brain under conditions that we certainly don't know much about right now, but we certainly have the means to learn a great deal more about, especially now that we're beginning to have experimental access to those conditions through things, for example, such as meditation and psychedelics. (0:34:42)

So I think that a big part of the future agenda of my field will be to begin seriously studying this issue of what conditions in the brain permit the expression of these capacities. And if we could do that, you know, among other things, we could hope to find ways of encouraging the production of these states in more people. (0:35:02)

I think it potentially is a tremendous step forward, both individually and collectively, to make these kinds of experiences more accessible to more people. For example, one of the things that's become clear about near-death experiences, and which has been clear for a long time about mystical experiences in general, is that those who have them, whether they have them through some kind of deliberate practice or just, you know, blunder into some condition that allows them to happen—near-death experiences being the sort of extreme case of that sort—is that they tend to become better people, less egoistic, less selfish, less preoccupied with, you know, money and status and all that, more communally oriented. (0:35:57)

And lots of people have argued that, wow, if more people could be like that, you know, our whole civilization would probably be a whole lot better off. So that's where it's headed, I think, in terms of future science. And if I were a young person just getting started, that is certainly where I would go, probably to psychedelic neuroimaging research, and meditation neuroimaging, and maybe other things that kind of push in the same direction. (0:36:20)

But now there's also, I mean, this kind of a psychological picture lends itself to alliance with very different philosophical metaphysical ideas than the classical physicalist picture. So the phenomena you mentioned, there is a huge range of it, right? So it's where you see that it appears that the mind influences the body. So the mind is actually primary to matter in this case. (0:37:02)

But have you explored a traditional explanation, traditional, yeah, root causes for such phenomena like skin writing, or multiple personality disorder, and so forth? Isn't there a sort of traditional mainstream explanation that is plausible in your view? There are attempted explanations for many of these things, but I think they fail. And actually, the chapters of our book, Irreducible Mind, explain why we think they fail. (0:37:36)

Those are big subjects, each one of them. But that's the general answer. I mean, the phenomena that we cataloged in our book were chosen specifically because they resist, or in some cases, defy explanation in conventional terms. (0:37:49)

So you're saying that you have a, well, proof maybe, I don't know if it's a good word, sufficient evidence you collected in your lifetime of research to at least say that the explanations, the mainstream science explanations, are not plausible, right? That's what you're saying. Correct, yeah. Now, let me say that that was really the easy part. I mean, that was a huge clerical job, putting Irreducible Mind together. (0:38:26)

But now comes the much harder problem, the conceptual one. Okay, if physicalism is not up to the job, what sort of alternative description of reality would make room for the phenomena that we cataloged in that book? How is reality actually constituted different from the conventional picture? What is it about that that permits these things to occur? So to approach that, we again kind of stumbled around for a couple of years trying to figure out what to do. (0:39:00)

And we then set upon a plan which was basically to look at a number of systems, old and new, that take the existence of the phenomena that we cataloged in Irreducible Mind seriously and attempt to provide some kind of explanation for at least some of them. And of course, we were dependent in pursuing this on the expertise that we happen to have in our group, which by the way, has consisted of something like 50 people over the last 20-odd years, people coming and going for various reasons. (0:39:44)

But we then created a second book, Beyond Physicalism, which mainly consisted of chapters presenting and discussing these other or general points of view. Some came from physics, some from quantum theory, some from one from relativity and string theory, and one via Harold Ottmann-Spacher from Carl Ewing and his dialogue with Pauli. We also looked at mystically inspired religious philosophies, in particular a couple of versions of Hinduism and Neoplatonism, and modern expression in Orobindo, a kind of tantric form of Hinduism, which connects, according to the author of that chapter, Eric Weiss, very nicely with Whitehead's process metaphysics. (0:40:47)

And we also looked at several Western philosophical systems, those of Leibniz and eventually Hegel, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Whitehead. And toward the end of that book, Beyond Physicalism, Michael Murphy and I, in our different ways, attempted to kind of see what is the central tendency of all these systems? What do they have in common? What kind of a picture do they tend toward, as opposed to the one that currently dominates expert opinion in most of science and society? And what we came to was essentially a realist idealism, that is essentially the metaphysical opposite of physicalism, in which some kind of highest consciousness is primary. (0:41:51)

Everything else has to come from that somehow, instead of this minute physical stuff. I'm certainly not going to claim that we have a finished theory of that sort, but I think we have a strong sense of direction that it's out there somewhere that the right answer, or a much closer to right answer, can be found. And we're continuing to pursue that. (0:42:21)

But from a kind of natural theology point of view, it goes under the heading of evolutionary panentheism. This panentheism tries to split the difference between traditional theisms, you know, with a kind of all-powerful being who creates everything and lets it run on, may or may not intervene in various ways, and pantheisms in which the ultimate reality is identified with everything that exists in actuality. (0:42:56)

Panentheism splits the difference in the sense that the highest consciousness, whatever it is, is present in everything, and yet there's something left over from what we find around us, here we find ourselves in this world as seemingly independent beings who generally experience the same stuff around us, we can agree about what's there. The trick will be to find a system that, in some detail, allows us to explain how both we and it can come out of this ultimate consciousness, whatever it is. (0:43:46)

William James, and I trace this in the last part of chapter 14 of Beyond Physicalism, William James built explicitly on the psychological theory of Myers, which he held to be empirically justified. But he was also in league with people like Gustav Fechner, and Henri Bergson, and F.C.S. Schiller, another metaphysician at Oxford at the time. James imagined—oh, and let me just say, too, that James kind of previewed where he was headed in Varieties of Religious Experience, which is probably still the best-selling book in the history of psychology. (0:44:37)

And he says multiple times in that book, explicitly, that he is building on the work of F.W.H. Myers, using Myers's psychological model to explain various kinds of religious phenomena. And at the end, he hints at the direction he is going to take this, which is more fully worked out in his last book, A Pluralistic Universe, published in 1909, the year before he died, in which he takes Myers's model with this subliminal consciousness—and by the way, that's the part of the psyche that Myers imagined surviving bodily death. (0:45:13)

He imagines it having a higher environment of its own, possibly several levels of higher integration, leading toward some highest consciousness, which is not quite, however, the absolute of the British idealists of the late 19th, early 20th century. And all this is kind of traced in some detail in that chapter in Beyond Physicalism. So it's in that direction that I've gone. (0:45:51)

We have another book I should mention, Consciousness Unbound, published in 2021, which continues the themes of the first two books. There are empirical chapters, for example, state-of-the-science summaries of things like near-death experiences, precognition, which is theoretically crucial, and cases of the reincarnation type, and then a bunch more theoretical positions that fall into the same general category. A chapter on the late transformation of Jung, for example, by Roderick Mayne, Jung's scholar, who shows clearly that Jung himself, following a near-death experience of his own connection with a heart attack, was moving very strongly in the panentheism direction. (0:46:37)

Then we had chapters by Bernardo Kastrup on his analytic idealism, one by Federico Faggin, which I personally find particularly congenial, mainly because it lines up very well with the Myers-James picture of things. (0:46:56)

And a couple others. And then for the first time, we began at least beginning to look at how ascendance of a picture of this general sort might have positive impacts on both academia and society as a whole. I mean, I think something that we share deeply with Bernardo and a lot of other people is the sense that the prevalence of physicalism and the kinds of behaviors that it encourages is the source of a lot of our gigantic and potentially lethal problems as a civilization. (0:47:42)

Our egoism, our consumerism, our plundering of the planet, our loading ourselves with potentially lethal weapons, all that kind of stuff, I think all has deep roots in the kind of worldview that has dominated until right about now. And that if we can find a scientifically compelling, improved picture of reality that helps people to feel connected with something fundamental in the universe, you know, have a spiritual life of some satisfying kind, that could be a very good, positive contribution to the very dangerous situation that we find ourselves in. (0:48:35)

Anyway, I'm sorry to kind of go off on that tangent, but it is an important part of the current situation. And I think the kinds of theoretical contributions that people like Bernardo and Federico and we are attempting to make could feed into that situation in a positive way. I think it's an important point. (0:49:01)

But I wanted to ask you, does metaphysics play a role in science in your view? And should it play a role in science? Because on one hand, you could say it's useful, metaphysics, because it's an underlying explanatory model of reality that drives essentially the research questions. Now, the opposite view is metaphysics or philosophy is redundant, and science as objective discipline should stay away from philosophy altogether. (0:49:27)

What is your view? Yeah, well, of course, there are lots of disagreements about these kinds of big subjects. But in my view, and I know it's shared by a number of members of our group, including a number of physicists, by the way, science has tended to imagine itself free of metaphysics, when in fact, it invariably comes together with either recognized or unrecognized presuppositions of a philosophical sort. (0:50:11)

This actually was a subject of conversation between Myers and James at an early date. The reason being that William James, in The Principles of Psychology, published in 1890, took the view that he was avoiding all philosophical subjects and talking only about psychological matters. Myers chastised him on that score, saying metaphysics is inescapable. And in fact, in the context of Principles of Psychology, there are built-in philosophical assumptions about what's real. (0:51:00)

James was convinced by Myers's arguments, and in the briefer course, which he published like two years later, he acknowledges that, said, you know, the pursuit—psychology has only the hope of a science at present. It's filled with philosophical presuppositions that leak in at every joint. So he was clear about that at that point, and of course, his own development then proceeded in a more philosophical direction after 1890. Similarly, I'm now working with a small group of physicists who are united in, number one, taking the phenomena that we study at DOPS seriously and wanting to make a place for them in their picture of reality. (0:52:05)

Two, share this view that the prevailing picture comes with a load of philosophical stuff built in, the philosophy of physicalism, basically, which includes a presupposition that the real is exhausted by what is actual, that is, what we find around us. Their view, and they're a minority in the foundations of physics community, but, you know, these are serious people. I'm talking about people like Tim Eastman, Ruth Kastner, Bernard Carr, who comes at it from the kind of cosmology side. (0:52:44)

Hold the view, shared view, that in addition to actuality, what we find around us, there is a level of potentiality normally hidden. A lot of this comes through Heisenberg and his view about potentiae. There's a realm of potentiae, potentiality, that they want to raise to ontological parity with the actual. The actual and the potential together constitute reality. (0:53:26)

And it's in that realm of potentiae that they think we will be able to find the processes that give rise to reality as we experience it, and to the manifestation of these various unusual psychological abilities, mystical experience, genius, psi phenomena, that we've been studying at DOPS, and that are, of course, being studied at lots of other places in the world. (0:53:57)

So, that was a kind of a long-winded answer, but I hope I got to your question eventually. I think you have a third option. I gave you two. You gave me the third one, which is metaphysics is part of science's underlying assumption already, whether you agree, like, or recognize it, right? That's what you're saying. Yes, we will have metaphysics, whether we know it or not. (0:54:25)

And our job is to find a good metaphysics that aligns itself naturally with our science, the empirical side of science. And that's what we're trying to do, and I think what Bernardo's trying to do also. Now, I should say, Bernardo and I do have one big disagreement. (0:54:40)

His view of survival is quite different from mine. He is not so interested in survival and the evidence for survival. He tends to think, I think for essentially aesthetic reasons, based upon his analytic idealism, that what happens when we die is we slip into the shining sea and all that, become reunited with the ultimate consciousness. But, and I fault Bernardo, I've complained to him about it when he was writing his chapter, that he needs to take the evidence for survival more seriously, and that it can be perfectly well accommodated within his own view. (0:55:24)

I mean, if the absolute consciousness can sort of differentiate itself into all of us, there can certainly be other levels of differentiation, including a Myers-James-like higher self, maybe several stages of higher selves associated with each of us, one of which, or one or more of which, might support some kind of a survival conception. So I think where we will ultimately end up is somewhere in between where we are and where Bernardo is on the subject of survival. (0:55:53)

I would like to say one more thing about idealism. Now, for me, at the beginning of my career, idealism was a joke, basically. It was, you know, a crazy idea that some people had had somewhere in the distant past, but no informed scientist could possibly take it seriously at this stage of civilization's development. Well, of course, I've changed radically on that front, and I am now a subscriber to some as yet ill-defined form of idealism. (0:56:32)

We aspire to make it into a full-fledged realist idealism, but haven't gotten there. But something you often encounter from other scientists in particular, and some philosophers as well, is what's sometimes called the inverse hard problem. That is, a physicalist might well say, okay, we're having a hard time explaining consciousness. It's true, but we will eventually, you can be sure. That's the promissory materialism business. (0:57:08)

But look, you idealists, you've got exactly the opposite problem. How do you explain matter from consciousness? And for a long time, I took that argument very seriously. But sometimes, just a few years ago, I was really in the course of working on consciousness unbound. It suddenly occurred to me that the explanatory challenges to physicalism and idealism are not exactly on par. (0:57:44)

And why is that? Well, we know that we are conscious. There is absolutely no doubt that consciousness exists. We all have it. So, the hard problem for physicalism is a real problem. Now, what's the problem for the idealist? It is not, I submit, to explain matter as matter has traditionally been conceived. Matter, as traditionally conceived, is something we dreamed up to help us explain certain regularities in our experience. (0:58:24)

And what the idealist has to explain is those realities in a different way, not matter as classically conceived. Is that intelligible? I've tried saying this in different ways and different times and still haven't got it quite right, but I think that argument is basically sound. Yeah, I could dive into what is matter. (0:58:45)

And then we have a different discussion, wouldn't we? Does matter really exist as we understand it, as materialists understand matter, as this table on the chair I'm sitting on? I was encouraged in this direction, by the way, by Henry Stapp, quantum theorist, who was a member of our ESSELEN CIRCEM group, and who said repeatedly at our meetings, matter as classically conceived does not exist, from his point of view as a major figure in quantum theory. (0:59:31)

Yeah, and Bernardo says it's just a dissociation, a form of dissociation, which we experience with our senses as matter, of course. I have to say that, you know, I mean, I'm just, I'm really just a poor empirical psychologist and neuroscientist accustomed to working down in the trenches. And this philosophy and physics stuff is remote from my natural habitat. I don't profess to be expert in either area. (0:59:58)

But the path you're on, you can't avoid them, I'm afraid. Yeah. Yeah. There is something I came across, a quote, which I wanted to share with you when I was preparing. It's about, it's about evolutionary panentheism. And the quote is by Brother David Stendhal-Rost, a practicing Benedictine monk. And that's what he says. I've met him. Really? Oh, that's interesting. (1:00:33)

Fascinating. Now, speak of synchronicities. Now the quote says, there are at least three ways of talking about spirit. You can say what spirit is like, you can say what spirit is not, or you can have a direct experience of spirit. And the best way to say what spirit is like in today's world is evolutionary panentheism. So I think there are more people who share your view that that's probably the closest model of the truth. Well, or objective reality. (1:01:07)

Like I said earlier, I have a, well, we collectively have a strong feeling that that's the right direction to be poking out in. We're not really quite there yet in terms of having a adequately detailed theory, but we're moving in that direction. And so far, at least, I don't see any insuperable obstacles. (1:01:33)

Let me just mention a couple of other things that have come up more recently. Yeah, I mentioned earlier about how the renaissance and work on consciousness, both in philosophy and psychology and neuroscience, has been one of the strong drivers of the kind of position that we're advocating. I've recently come to realize that there's a huge development taking place in theoretical biology, which really amounts to a reversion to a point of view that was prominent at the beginning of the 20th century, got eclipsed for a while by the rise of molecular biology and so on, but is now coming back very strongly. (1:02:27)

That basically takes the organism as the best model of what's at the bottom of reality, and talking specifically about mental properties of smaller organisms well below the level of those that have central nervous systems, and even down at least as far as single cells and their constituent organelles. (1:02:50)

Things of that sort. It's a big shift, and it's partly encouraged by the impending collapse of the neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis, which has been dogma for 80 plus years. There are elements of the standard Darwinian picture that are now known to be false, and it is clear that some kind of a Lamarckian-type element needs to be built into evolutionary theory, where organisms at many levels contribute to evolution by the decisions that they make in their existence, some of which can be carried over into the genome and transmitted to offspring. (1:03:48)

This is really a big deal. There's a guy named Dennis Noble, I really should get him on, get him for an interview, who's one of the drivers of this. There's a great paper, I don't have it right in front of me, but in which he summarizes all this. And it's particularly interesting to me because this discussion has striking parallels to the conversation about psi-phenomena within science. (1:04:13)

There's a small group of people who are determined defenders of the evolution orthodoxy, and who have kept conflicting facts out of textbooks, away from grant mechanisms, away from publication mechanisms, who are trying to suppress opposition. People like Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins, for example. Well-meaning, I'm sure, they think they're defending the truth. And yet, as this person and others have shown, there are facts, established experimental facts, about molecular biology and the genome and so on, that contradict the standard model of evolution at its core. Stuff induced in organisms by their behaviors in their particular environments can get back into the genome and be carried forward in evolution. That's a huge deal. (1:05:21)

How does mainstream science deal with anomalous, so-called anomalous phenomena today? Could it be that we still don't have the tools to measure what's happening in the brain or in the body, for example, during A&E? Nor can we do reproducibility or perform reproducibility, which is a required methodological tenet of science, right? So how can you reproduce A&E if somebody has cardiac arrest? It's just, to begin with, it's unethical, and to end with, it's dangerous. (1:06:02)

So what's the current state of affairs? Well, we're certainly on a steep learning curve still about all this neuroimaging stuff. And hardly a week goes by when some picture doesn't appear in a mainstream media location, a, you know, weekly news source or something of, you know, pictures of brains with colored spots in them supposedly explaining, you know, this or that cognitive capacity. (1:06:40)

A lot of that stuff will vanish with the progress of science. We've got to learn a lot about how to use these techniques responsibly and especially how to do a better job of taking into account what people are experiencing, finding good ways of having them report their experience, and connecting that to the things that we can measure. You know, your question is a very general one. (1:07:03)

It has different answers in different specific contexts, probably, but in general terms, I don't see any reason why we cannot get deep into spiritual matters with the tools of science. That doesn't necessarily mean that we can, I mean, we're never going to be able to visualize conscious experience with a neuroimaging device. These are two kind of separate worlds, distinct worlds, but they can be correlated. (1:07:38)

And I personally think that, as I said earlier, I think there's a big future in neurophysiological, psychophysiological study of conditions conducive to not only psi performance, but the induction and stabilization of unusual states of consciousness. And I do think we'll learn how to do that. There's a big practical dimensions to this science that will appear. (1:08:06)

So do you think this so-called anomalous phenomena will become part of the mainstream science at some point? Because DOPS, the division of perceptual studies where you work, is still probably 100%, correct me if I'm wrong, 100% privately funded. So it's not a mainstream science yet, right? So of course, we encourage people who want to support this research, please feel free to do so. But will it ever become part of mainstream science? (1:08:37)

Yeah, these are questions about the science process. And I've said before in several places, and we'll say again, I think that some future generation of sociologists and historians and philosophers of science will make an excellent living trying to figure out why it took the scientific community so long to take these phenomena on board as real. You know, I think the battle is over, in fact, has been over for a while. (1:09:11)

It's just that most of the combatants aren't aware of it yet. So it's a question of change of changing generation of scientists or something. Science makes progress one funeral at a time, I've heard somewhere. Yeah, Max Plonk, William James said a hundred and something years ago that we have to mark our progress in half centuries. Okay, interesting. (1:09:46)

What advice can we give to people who want to study anomalous phenomena and people who want to study consciousness? Why should we take this research and anomalous phenomena such seriously? Well, they should be taken seriously, in my opinion, because there's an abundance of good evidence for them. But it is true at present that that whole subject is still anathema in a lot of places. (1:10:10)

Now, I personally think what's going to happen is that psychical research will eventually get reabsorbed into a larger science of consciousness. And I would strongly recommend, particularly to young people heading in this direction, that they get a degree in something like either standard neuroscience or consciousness neuroscience, and there are programs now appearing at a lot of places. Get into the field in that way, be very careful who you talk to about interests in parapsychology with the idea that you'll eventually be able to pursue all dimensions of the subject as you wish. (1:10:56)

But it's just smart to be careful at the beginning, in particular. You have a hobby horse called mystical experiences, because you often talk about them and you often mention that the research on mystical experiences, even in non-mainstream science, is largely ignored as a topic. Am I correct? Is that what you're saying? So I wanted to ask you, why is that the case? What do we mean by mystical experience? Because I think it could be a range of phenomena. (1:11:40)

And do you have maybe a couple of interesting examples that could illustrate it? I think mystical experiences have been problematic for science so far, particularly because they clearly come out of this kind of spiritual dimension of human life associated with religion. A lot of scientists see the development of science as overcoming traditional religious pictures of the world. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. (1:12:15)

At the same time, my personal belief is that the rise of secular humanism in particular, which portrays this inevitable conflict between science and religion, has been unfortunate. (1:12:31)

In the sense that it's kind of caused us to throw out the baby with the bath water, as we've grown up scientifically. And I see what's going on now is our beginning to recover the baby and to integrate it with a larger picture of science itself. I mean, you know, there are lots of scientists now, even now, who have a spiritual life quietly, privately, usually kept strictly separate from their day jobs. (1:13:13)

I mean, William James, in his characteristic way, pointed this out 100 plus years ago. He talked about how modern laboratory scientists, good Christian husbands and fathers, as he put it, materialists in their day jobs, and, you know, good Christian fathers at night, holding together thus loosely the two ends of a chain, they are careless of the intermediate connection. Typical James, colorful, beautiful language. (1:13:55)

And I think there's a lot of that going on. I think the level of spiritual interest among scientists is really quite a bit higher than you might think from the scientific literature itself. And I think what we're and our colleagues are doing, basically, is trying to find ways of reconciling science and spirituality, not so much with particular traditional faiths. (1:14:23)

In fact, I mean, a lot of people are, there are a lot of people out there who recognize the evils of physicalism and its contribution to our, the problems of our civilization, and want to find some kind of a re-enchantment of the world. But for many of them, that amounts to going back to some earlier state of things, including perhaps one of the traditional faiths. (1:14:49)

I'm not interested in creating a new religion or anything like that, but I do think that the way forward is to find an expanded picture of reality, drawing upon science that makes room for spiritual experiences, and perhaps helps people to have such experiences. That's where I think we're really headed. The mystical experiences, what's behind it? Is it because people often say that there is this inner drive that sort of brought them to those experiences. Bernard, I call it diamond sometimes. (1:15:27)

Is it our inner nature to have those, at least for part of us? I think, you know, to have a mystical experience is to take a step in the direction of that higher reality that Bernardo and we both think is out there, really. What's behind it? Is there evolutionary advantage? Why do I keep on having it? You know, some of us, or most of us actually, people don't talk about it, about dreams and premonitions and synchronicities. We ignore it, but it's there. (1:16:07)

It's like part of our reality which we completely ignore. But then, what's behind it? Survival? Evolutionary advantage? What is it in your view? Well, one of the points that Dennis Noble makes is that this reconceptualization of biology in terms of cognitive capacities and even very small organisms that can get incorporated into evolutionary advance, that drastically changes things. (1:16:38)

It allows evolution to move in a direction that gradually provides higher access, greater degrees of access, to this underlying higher reality. And it's certainly true. I mean, mysticism is an enormous subject. Mainly, it's been the preserve of religious studies up to now, but I think it lends itself to various kinds of scientific approaches. And the general tendency in terms of impact on philosophy is to push in the direction of idealism. (1:17:15)

And William James, in The Varieties, has already said that in his philosophy chapters that mystical experiences point inescapably in the direction of some kind of idealism. (1:17:23)

Like us, he wasn't real clear about exactly what kind, and I think it's still up for grabs exactly where this will actually come out. But I think that is the clear tendency, philosophically, and what mystical experiences tend to do for people who are lucky enough to have them for whatever reason, is to put them in direct touch with that higher aspect of reality that's normally invisible to us. (1:18:07)

The relationship between the brain and the mind. Are our minds confined to our brains or do they extend far beyond our brains? Well, I think the latter, of course. And our three books explain how we got to that view of things, particularly the first. I think the first is a... I think that's a contribution that will last. (1:18:34)

It has real staying power. It's gotten way more circulation than most books of that sort. I should say that that's partly thanks to Eben Alexander, the author of Proof of Heaven, a neuroscientist who was put in a coma by a bacterial infection of his brain. He says in his book, his first book, Proof of Heaven... that title, by the way, was supplied by the publisher, not by Eben Alexander. Anyway, somewhere in that book he refers to our book as a sort of one-stop source of information about lots of the relevant subjects. (1:19:17)

And when he published that book, which has sold millions of copies, the sales of ours doubled instantly. So he's responsible for a good bit of our success, but it is getting around. And we also, by the way, we were enabled by John Cleese to buy a bunch of copies ourselves and distribute them individually to targeted persons in the academic mainstream, a few of whom responded, including Tom Nagel, who thanked us for a copy. (1:19:55)

And I don't really know this, but I suspected may have encouraged him to write his wonderful book, Mind and Cosmos, a short book. I mean, Tom Nagel doesn't want to embrace any kind of religious doctrine. He's not interested in theology at all, although he admires some theologists like Alvin Plantinga at Notre Dame. But he takes for granted that physicalism cannot account for all the properties of minds and consciousness. (1:20:28)

And his book really goes on from that. That's the starting point. So I think we may have privately encouraged him in that direction, or at least I hope so, because I think that's a wonderful book. And boy, did it cause tremors in the physicalist establishment. Do we have an idea by what mechanism are our minds extended beyond our brains? Would morphic resonance be one of the hypotheses? It's among the contenders, yeah. (1:21:02)

What is the role of the brain? How do you see the brain? Well, in my everyday role as a scientist, I immediately lapse into dualism, think of the brain as a conventional, I mean a complicated, but conventional physical object. And the way I think of it in relation to mind, as what goes on in the brain conditions the expression of a mentality that's much larger than we normally think of it, and is inherently beyond the brain, but expresses itself in conjunction with the ongoing activities of the brain. I tend to think like Henri Bergson, that one of the primary functions of the brain is to act as a sensory motor interface, collecting information about the environment and allowing us to act upon it. And that a lot of the deeper parts of the mind lie beyond the brain. (1:22:08)

The brain for you would be like a filter, or if you use analogy... That's a commonly used metaphor, the filter. James was the one who first explicitly formulated this. (1:22:20)

You know, he gave an Ingersoll lecture at Harvard in 1897, which was published the following year, in which he says explicitly, it was called something like two supposed objections to the doctrine of immortality. And one of those objections was, of course, that mind really is just brain, brain activity. Therefore, when the brain dies, it's gone. And in response to that, he said, well, the correlation between mental and physical stuff encourages a lot of people, particularly scientific people, to think that mind is generated, produced by brain activity. (1:23:02)

But it's possible to think of it in a different way, such that the brain simply transmits or permits activities that originate elsewhere, beyond it. And it was clear that he preferred that interpretation. He alludes to Fechner in that context, and Myers. Filter has come along more recently. I think it was actually Aldous Huxley who first talked about, you know, there's a mind at large, a big mind out there somewhere, which expresses it through our brain. (1:23:49)

And he thought of the brain as a kind of filter, or a valve, a reducing valve. That was what he thought. And that's not really, that's not quite satisfactory, because on that picture, you know, what comes out, the measly trickle that comes out of the reducing valve is of exactly the same sort as the big reservoir behind. But things are really much more complicated than that. (1:24:13)

There's this richer, more complicated kind of mentality behind the scenes that expresses itself only partially and fitfully, depending on conditions in the brain, which we presently don't know much about. But I'll say a little more about that in a moment, but which we have the capacity to learn a whole lot about, and will, I'm sure. Yeah, what I wanted to mention was that in Beyond Physicalism, there's one chapter in there by a neurobiologist, David Presti, from Berkeley, and myself, about physiological conditions related to expressions of psi, genius, and mystical experience. (1:25:00)

And in it, we, at the end of that chapter, we tentatively point it to one aspect of brain function that seems to be especially closely connected with this subject. And it's become clear in particular, not only, but in particularly through the initial neuroimaging studies of responses to psychedelics. In particular, there was a study published in 2012 by a British group using injected psilocybin together with functional magnetic resonance imagery, two kinds. (1:25:43)

And what it showed, which was totally amazing to everybody, was that contrary to expectation, no increases in activity were found anywhere in the brain. And in particular, the thing that correlated best with the intensity of experience was the deactivation and decoupling of major nodes of a brain system only recently recognized, called the default mode network, which can be understood as essentially embodying the everyday self or ego. And this is coherent with Myers's own doctrine. (1:26:29)

Myers had a principle to the effect that the subliminal self can express itself in proportion to the abeyance of the supraliminal or everyday self. (1:26:43)

And this is right in line, of course, with meditation traditions, which tell you that you got to shut down all the normal chatter that's going on inside. And if you can do that, then this higher stuff can begin to flood in. And that's what was seen in this first big psychedelic neuroimaging study. And it's been seen in additional psychedelic neuroimaging studies, and also in studies of things like meditation, some studies of meditation, mediumistic trance, and so on. (1:27:22)

So, that seems to be one component, certainly, of brain activity related to these higher phenomena. Where do you think memories are stored? Oh, boy. Well, I refer everybody to Alan Gould's excellent chapter in Irreducible Mind for the detailed answer to that. But I don't think they're in the brain at all. And I'm not the only person who thinks that way, certainly. (1:27:59)

If there is survival, then memories must be somewhere else. I don't think they're in the form of traces, or at least not traces as we customarily think of them. Like Myers and James, I'm inclined to think that experiences that we have continue to exist somewhere. This is a big part of Alfred North Whitehead's process metaphysics, the basic elements of which are what he calls occasions of experience, and they're objectively immortal. And the entirety of the history of experience is potentially available to the creation of any new experience in his system. I think something like that is the case. (1:28:49)

You do believe that our physical body or we survive death, right? And if so, who or what survives death? Certainly can't offer any definite answer to that question at the moment. In fact, let me say first that we can't even say for sure that everybody does survive for how long or in what circumstances. (1:29:21)

There's no reason to believe a priori that the same thing happens, everybody follows the same path. Maybe what happens to you depends on how you behave while you're in the flesh. But Meyers had a quite definite idea about this. He thought it was the subliminal self, capital S, capital S, that survived. This is the larger self in which the everyday ego is embedded. And that's potentially consistent with what we see in the cases of the reincarnation type. There is some carryover of not only specific memories, but specific personality characteristics, tendencies, and all that from one life to the next. (1:30:06)

Haven't seen any direct evidence of something like karma, you know, where your next life is a kind of moral response to how you behaved in your previous life, anything like that. It may be the case over a larger timescale, who knows. But I think something like that, not necessarily in quite the form that Meyers held, is probably the case. (1:30:34)

And this is the essence of my disagreement with Bernardo, by the way, that I think we have to pay attention to the evidence for survival of personality. I mean, there are some cases in which it looks for all the world as though the entire mind of a certain person is still operative following physical death. (1:31:06)

One of the best cases of that sort is the case of G.P., a young guy who had died in a fall, soon began communicating through the medium Mrs. Piper. William James was a keen student of that subject. Yeah, I mean, sometimes the evidence that comes through is not just a matter of, you know, facts that can be verified, but a kind of verisimilitude in the appearance or the character of the communications that show the same kind of vocabulary, diction, sense of humor, detailed knowledge of specific shared events, that sort of thing. (1:31:47)

It can be quite hair-raising in its best forms. And of course, there's a great deal of mediumistic communication that's just twaddle and rubbish, as many critics have noticed. (1:32:01)

But in this field, you need to be discriminating and be prepared to ignore twaddle in order to get to the good stuff, shall we say. So, you don't think that we are sort of points of view of a large universal consciousness going after death, going back to that field? Yeah, I do share Bernardo's sense that the ultimate aim of the whole process, whatever it is, is to allow us to merge fully with that higher consciousness which exists within us as in all things. But I imagine it as being a longer and harder road, I think, than he does. (1:32:51)

He thinks it happens automatically to everyone when we die. I rather doubt that. Not that we know. Nobody really knows, except those to whom it's happened, whatever it is. Is consciousness fundamental or there is something else underneath it? That's the main idea that people like Bernardo and I share. That the ultimate reality is a higher consciousness of some sort, about which we don't know very much. (1:33:26)

It's irreducible, like what Federico Fadgin is saying. The consciousness is omnipresent, omnipotent, irreducible and fundamental. So there is no reality beyond that, actually. I believe that is true. Okay, so you share that point of view. And that's also part of your theory of the realist idealism, right? Yes. Are you planning to develop that theory further? Are we expecting a new book coming? Well, we are partway into formulating a book four. (1:34:00)

You know, I'm almost 85 years old now and I'm not sure how much time I have left, but I hope to get that out sometime in the next year or two. Okay, that's very good. Do you have any final thoughts or quote or something for our audience that maybe something we should have discussed and we haven't touched upon? Well, not really. (1:34:32)

I mean, what I'd mainly like to emphasize to people is what an exciting time we live in. I think for the first time in my own long career, I really feel that the winds of change are now blowing. The physicalist bunker has big cracks in it and they're widening. The possibility of change is upon us in various interconnected areas, such as consciousness research, evolutionary theory, biological theory, and the kind of stuff that we've been involved in, that all is coherent and leading in a definitely more positive philosophical direction. (1:35:10)

So, it would be great to be a continuing part of that development as it occurs. And I certainly encourage young people looking at all this to take it seriously and look for a path forward in it. We need you. Any online resources or books you mentioned? Anything else that could be helpful? Where people can find more about your books, your work? Well, Irreducible Mind actually had an annotated bibliography of psychical research, pointing people to what we regard as some of the high points of that literature. (1:35:53)

It's really quite a vast subject. Very few mainstream kind of people have any idea how much is there. Hundreds of thousands of pages of serious work by serious people. (1:36:05)

Consciousness, you know, there are consciousness research societies, programs in consciousness research, both philosophical and neuroscientific, appearing in various universities. There's Parapsychological Association in the U.S., which is, it's actually the main scientific organization under the auspices of the AAAS in the United States. There's the Society for Psychical Research in England, has a website. (1:36:43)

They have an encyclopedia, which is a lot more reliable than Wikipedia as a source of information about the subject. So there is information to be found quite easily, really. Lots of it. In fact, that's the real trick. There's so much of it that one needs to be very judicious in trying to pick your way through it. Ed, thank you very much for this interview, for your thoughts, for your challenging, yeah, answers, because people, I think they are thought-provoking, really. (1:37:15)

Thank you for having me. I hope people enjoy it. I hope it serves the purpose. (1:37:21)

この説を批判し、新説を提唱する​

この説を批判する​

PSI 現象を本気で研究してきた 多くの超心理学者は、Dr. Ed Kelly の主張、もしくはそれに近い主張をしている。いわく、

  • 意識は時空間の制約を受けず、偏在し non-local だ、
  • 意識が時空間を生み出すのであり、意識は時空間の内部の存在ではない、
  • 意識が物理世界を生み出すのだ

…などなど。

彼らは皆、 PSI 現象の罠に陥っている。それは

  • 本質と些事
  • 日常的に眼の前で常に起きている現象と、人生でせいぜい数回遭遇する程度のごく稀だが奇妙な現象
  • 科学的に再現可能な現象と、再現不能の現象
  • 簡単に確認できる現象と、大量の統計データ処理によってのみ有意差が検出できる現象

の間にある巨大な乖離、本質的な差異を無視して同一視してしまうという罠。

PSI 現象に関する新説を提唱する​

以下、まだ未熟な素案だが新説を述べておく。

新説：PSI 現象は大規模情報系の擾乱（or 擾乱に類した未知の機序）が生み出したランダムな創発現象

主要な面を以下で簡単に解説する。

  1. 大規模情報系

人類の科学は、ごく最近になるまで、大規模情報系を扱えなかった。最近になって、LLM に見られるような、大規模情報系に特有の知性の創発現象が実用化されつつあるが、その知性創発の詳細はいまだ解明されていない。

  1. 擾乱とランダム性

大量の統計データでようやく有意差が検出できるのはこのランダム性と擾乱があるため。再現性に欠けるのもこのランダム性があるため。

  1. 創発現象

私は、

  • Synchronicity、「意味のある偶然」は潜在意識による表層意識への目配せだ

と判断しているが、仮にそうではなく、本物の現象だとしたら、それは

  • 大規模情報系の擾乱が生み出したランダムな創発現象

の変種だろう。

  1. 重要な点
  • 意識が PSI 現象を生み出しているのではない。
  • 大規模情報系が PSI 現象を生み出してるが、そのランダム性から PSI 現象の実用化は極めて困難。
  • 意識も大規模情報系の副産物。

(2025-06-05)