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64 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly Insightful and Destined to be an Instant Classic, January 9, 2007
I think that it was Carl Sagan who said, "You want to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out." This marvelous book shows that open-mindedness is entirely compatible with scientific rigor.
For the last century, the vast majority psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have believed that thoughts, emotions and consciousness are the product of physical processes in the brain. Just recently the editor of popular psychology magazine expressed the opinion that the whole of human behavior could be reduced to reflexes.
This book provides comprehensive and detailed empirical proof that this reductive, materialistic belief is not just incomplete but false. Sagan also said that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence and this book is full of it. But far from being a catalogue, each piece of evidence and every idea is examined critically.
The book is broken into nine sections followed by an introductory bibliography of psychical research and exactly one hundred pages of references.
Chapter 1: A View from the Mainstream: Contemporary Cognitive Neuroscience and the Consciousness Debates
Chapter 2: F. W. H. Myers and the Empirical Study of the Mind-Body Problem
Chapter 3: Psychophysiological Influence
Chapter 4: Memory
Chapter 5: Automatism and Secondary Centers of Consciousness: - Chapter 6: Unusual Experiences Near Death and Related Phenomena
Chapter 7: Genius
Chapter 8: Mystical Experience
Chapter 9: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century
It begins with a short history of 20th-century psychology from behaviorism to present-day cognitive neuroscience. This section emphasizes the inability of these theories to account for many important aspects of mind and consciousness.
We then move to an introduction to the work of Frederick Myers the 19th-century English psychologist whose work supported the view -echoed throughout this book - that the mind is not generated by the brain but is instead limited and constrained by it.
The next sections present critical reviews of a number of highly reproducible and familiar phenomena including the placebo response, stigmata and hypnotic suggestion. Though well known they demonstrate the influence of mental states on the body. We then move into some less familiar phenomena including some of those produced by yogis and distant influences on living systems. This step-by-step approach is very appealing and leads us to the inescapable conclusion that many of these phenomena are simply inexplicable using a reductionist, materialist approach to the mind and the brain.
The book presents a strong critique of the notion that memories are ONLY potentiated pathways in the brain. Later sections discuss such disparate topics as memories that survive physical death, near death experiences, automatic writing and out-of-body experiences, apparitions and deathbed visions. I have only a minor quibble about the inclusion of multiple personality disorder, which is controversial and the evidence for it not strong.
There are some very strong sections on super-normal states and a good critique of some recent attempts to reduce altered states of consciousness - including experiences induced by prayer and meditation - to brain processes. The authors rightly point out many of the limitations of the approach.
This is an astonishing book that I hope will be widely read despite weighing in at around 800 pages.
I put it in the same class as Michael Murphy's The Future of the Body, Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology and Spirituality and the less well-known Nature of Consciousness by Jerry Wheatley.
Very highly recommended.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended, April 30, 2007
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the "mind-body" or more precisely, "mind-brain" problem. It is quite an undertaking at close to 700 pages of writing but in my opinion it was well worth the effort. The authors did well in providing a contextual history and background for those not familiar with the field of psychology and its history.
The main premise is that mainstream psychology has not yet provided a satisfactory theory of mind. Particularly, the relation of mind to brain has been largely ignored because it has been dominated by a purely materialistic view of the brain which posits that consciousness is generated by processes occurring purely in the brain. The objective of the book is to "provide justification for revisiting the broader and deeper framework of psychology" and the authors use the contributions of F.W.H. Myers, in particular his book Human Personality (1903), as a guide. The first chapter of the book provides relevant background in modern cognitive science. The next chapter summarizes the contributions of Myers to empirical investigation of the mind-body relation which provides the framework for the rest of the book.
The authors state that much of the available empirical evidence (such as that of psi phenomena) is ignored because it is assumed a priori impossible and caution that scientists must look at all the relevant facts, not just those compatible with current mainstream theory. They argue that it is precisely the valid scientific evidence that seems to conflict with current theory that should "commend the most urgent attention." The authors state that, "...in order to get an adequate scientific account of the mind we must be prepared to take seriously all relevant data and to modify as necessary even our most fundamental theoretical ideas." A variety of specific empirical phenomena and aspects of mental life that have not been able to be understood in the current "physicalist conceptual framework" are identified and discussed in detail and make up the bulk of the book. These include: psychophysiological influences, memory, automatism, near death experiences and related phenomenon, genius, and mystical experiences. I must admit that I was one of those scientists who criticized the data supporting so called `anomalous experiences' (e.g., NDEs, OBEs, psi phenomenon, psychophysiological influences, etc.) a priori without actually researching the available scientific evidence. After reading the extensive summaries of empirical evidence provided in this book my viewpoint has certainly changed. It is obvious that there is a wide variety of evidence supporting these various phenomena and this is certainly an area of research that has been greatly neglected by modern day scientists.
In the final chapter, "Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century", the authors re-assess Myer's theory of human personality and provide a summary of implications of the evidence provided in this book for future research and psychological theory. They urge that psychology should return to the central problem of mind and utilize technological and methodological advances to further study in this field. They point out that most of Myer's theoretical ideas and the empirical phenomena used to support them are still valid today and have not been "disproven but simply displaced." The authors also point out some of the weaknesses in Myer's approach and provide discussions regarding opportunities for further investigation. It is pointed out that the relevance of quantum-theoretic considerations to brain research has not been recognized and research in this area should be pursued and a short discussion on how contemporary quantum physics and neuroscience could support a new theory of the mind is provided. They also briefly describe the theoretical directions in which they believe psychology should go in order to develop a more comprehensive theory of mind-brain interaction that incorporates all the relevant aspect of present-day science.
For those intrigued by the empirical evidence presented in the book and eager to read more, the authors includes a great Appendix listing serious literature sources with respect to psychical research. A perusal of the "Reference" section also leads to many great sources of information that are available for further reading.
This is a serious science book and hopefully it will inform young scientists that there is much yet to be learned about the mind and that there are vast areas of research, that have largely been ignored, that should be pursued if we are ever going to be able to develop a proper theory of the mind. As the authors state, scientists should not a priori ignore such empirical evidence because it does not fit within their current theoretical model. Hopefully, this book will encourage scientists to look more closely at the available evidence and promote future research into these much neglected areas.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Consciousness & Will = Nil, December 30, 2008
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First of all, I give only four stars out of ten to this book. This is because I really think there are lots of problems in it. I must say, however, that the authors are worthy of great scientific respect (and, similarly, this book is worthy of deep respect and attention by the scientific community), that they are among the best in the field, and that, IMO, they are among the top-quality members of the world scientific community. Also, I must stress that I myself believe in the afterlife. But... getting to the problems:
The title of this book is "Irreducible" "Mind." For a book with such a title, I would like to have seen a deeper analysis of (reflection on) the concept of reducibility vs irreducibility. And also a deeper discussion of the possible concepts of mind. There are some tricky issues related to both terms that deserve deep analyses, and I do not know how much the authors are aware of these, or even if they consider these relevant or not. For instance, how come one thing is reducible to another in the first place? (e.g. ice to water through heat). And in what sense is a brain a mind, and is a cell not a mind (or a piece of rock)? If the brain is not a mind, what is the definition of mind? We must bear in mind (in mind...) that mind is an objective thing; what is subjective is consciousness (qualia, etc). Similarly, on page xvii in the Introduction, we see this opening statement by Edward Kelly: "The central subject of this book is the problem of relations between the inherently private, subjective, 'first-person' world of human mental life and the publicly observable, objective, 'third-person' world of physiological events and processes in the body and brain." So, the central subject of this book seems not to be the Irreducible Mind, but the Irreducible Consciousness instead... (David Chalmers' "Hard Problem").
Nevertheless, we do see, all along the book, a deep treatment of the "irreducible mind" issue. It is perhaps best summarized/introduced on page 28: "There exist certain kinds of empirically verifiable mental properties, states, and effects that appear to outstrip in principle the explanatory potential of physical processes occurring in brains." These, presumably, would include memory, binding, prodigies, secondary or alternate centers of personality, mystical experiences, stigmata (and similar influences of the mind on the body), plus, on the more controversial side of this front, psi (paranormality), DMILS (direct mental interaction with living systems), and afterlife survival. The authors are aware of the different evidential status of each one of these phenomena, and they do report it faithfully. They continue, on page 28: "Facts of this sort, moreover, can often be accommodated more naturally within an alternative interpretation of the mind-brain correlation, one already developed in abstract form by William James (1898/1900)." So they present, in this book, a set of mind-related irreducible (or seemingly irreducible) phenomena plus an introductory theory for them.
The theory is the filter/transmission theory, "developed in its fullest version thus far by" Friedrich Myers towards the end of the nineteenth century. It was also supported, to a great extent, by highly renowned psychologist William James (contemporary with Myers). A good way to put this theory is the "visible light vs prism" metaphor (one may include the infrared and the ultraviolet in this metaphor too). Just as the red light is not created by a prism out of white light, but only filtered ("transmitted") by it, consciousness, in all its forms (and all modes and intensities of human consciousness), is not created by the brain/body but merely filtered by it instead. Now, this is pretty bizarre. And I must add that this is, also, my own theory for consciousness (in a maybe-not-slightly different shape)...
But how did this theory come to be? (And there are versions of it tracing back to ancient Greece!). What is being filtered, and how, and by what exactly? What happens when the filter... dies? And what is the dynamics of this filtering?
On page 83/84, we meet Myers's notion of the "Permeable Boundary," according to which "evolution of consciousness involves the shifting of the supraliminal segment up the spectrum into the ultraviolet region, as more and more psychological processes are mastered and then relegated to the infrared region, while, simultaneously, latent psychological capacities or processes are drawn out of the ultraviolet region and into the supraliminal range." I got the impression that according to Myers's view (and according to the authors' view) we have a, say, "spectrum of psychological processes" and, in parallel, an accompanying "spectrum of modes of consciousness." So, I conclude, we might have the following spectrum of "psychological" processes (brain processes?): 1- Heart-beating commands. 2- T.V. watching. 3- Telepathy communication. So, frogs, humans, and E.T.s., all have these three psychological processes (brain processes) above. But in frogs, the filter (brain/body) enables consciousness (awareness) of number 1 (heart beating); in humans, the filter allows awareness of number 2 (T.V. watching); and in E.T.s, the filter permits awareness of number 3 (telepathy). But E.T.s wouldn't be conscious when watching T.V., I guess (what a regrettable loss... :-) ).
And "Myers" adds: "this evolutionary model of a larger Self whose latent capacities gradually emerge and whose emergent manifestation grows increasingly complex in response to the demands of the environment," (page 80). The modes of consciousness, thus, become "higher" through the demands of the environment... Also, page 79, "Myers suggested, there had been a 'primitive simple irritability', or 'undifferentiated sensory capacity of the supposed primal germ', which he called panaesthesia." William James held similar views (he is quoted as having said: "If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must have been present at the very origin of things.").
The bottom line is this: there is, throughout the evolution of the universe, a shifting of the waking consciousness (i.e. supraliminal consciousness, consciousness, etc) into the "ultraviolet region" of the full spectrum of consciousness-modes available in the universe, and this shifting is brought about by the demands of the environment, that is, by natural selection. Note also that Myers's theory "requires that there be some global creative tendency in the universe, however slight, that results over time in increasing richness and complexity of biological forms" (page 601/602). Add to it that things at the beginning of times where kind of "primal germ / undifferentiated sensory capacity." So here is my list of perplexities with Myers's model (as it was presented, and as I could understand it):
1- If what we have at the beginning is a primal germ of consciousness, a primitive irritability, still undifferentiated, then this thing should, IMHO, better be described not as a panaesthesia stuff/state, but rather as an "anaesthesia" stuff/state.
2- If "bodies" end up (through natural selection) bringing about this differentiation of the primal consciousness germ, then, actually, bodies can be said to create consciousness (just as fairly as an electron jump to a lower energy level in an atom can be said to create a photon, which, thus far, had been "undifferentiated" together with the higher-energy electron).
3- We know that bodies change (evolution) by the demands of the environment (natural selection), and we know the mechanics of it. But we do not know the mechanics of the shifting of consciousness to the so called "higher levels." So, we may as well just say that bodies change through the demands of the environment, and consciousness merely comes along with the bandwagon...
4- The "global creative tendency in the universe" seems to be in something of a mismatch with all the rest of Myers's theory. (But not necessarily with his data! Also, lots of phenomena do point in this direction, like the spontaneous symmetry breaking, though we must be very cautious when pondering over these matters...). We might expect this creative tendency from a true panaesthesia primitive plenum (Hyperconscious/Omniconscious), but much less so from a primitive "anaesthesia" (as I see it).
Conclusion - In my humble opinion, Myers's theory, as presented by the authors and as understood by me, is just as insightful as all the other theories attempting to explain consciousness and to put it into a scientific framework, that is: it explains absolutely nothing whatsoever...
Similarly, the authors just put together the problems of consciousness, volition, teleology, and free will. I think this is very wrong, and I see consciousness and volition as belonging to the same sort of phenomena (qualia/Chalmers' Hard Problem, basically), free will as non-existent, and teleology (depending on how we see it) as easily explainable. The authors, on the other hand, believe the theories they have presented (and favored) - F. Myers's and, more recently, physicist Henry Stapp's - "ratify, rather than reject, our everyday experience of ourselves as purposeful, causally effective, conscious agents" (page 640). But at the same time they acknowledge that (on page 629) "We still have no real understanding of the ultimate nature of the relationship between brain processes and mental activity, and certainly no solution of Chalmers' 'hard problem' - why conscious experiences with their specific qualitative characteristics should arise at all in connection with the associated patterns of brain activity," which renders the central subject of the book (as depicted by Edward Kelly, quoted in the second paragraph of this review) as virtually untouched...
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