Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, With CD containing F. W. H. Myers's hard-to-find classic 2-volume Human Personality (1903) and selected contemporary reviews |  | Authors: Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, Bruce Greyson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $79.95
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 652754
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 832
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 2.2
ISBN: 0742547922
Dewey Decimal Number: 150
EAN: 9780742547926
ASIN: 0742547922
Publication Date: December 7, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
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Product Description
Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates--empirically--that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Pseudoscience October 26, 2009
Justice M. Morath
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
There are great works in Neuroscience, Philosophy of Science, etc. that explore the mind-brain problem from many sides. This is not one of them. This book is pseudoscience. I would put it at the level of a history channel's exploration into the chupacabra
 New emerging paradigm in neuroscience March 30, 2009
Deya S.
The book is intented to offer evidence and discussion of it that challenge conventional theories and common philosophical assumptions on neuroscience and psychology.
Probably, a non-psychologist or non-neuroscientists would have a hard time studying it (even though this book is not particularly hard to understand); but students and professionals in the fields of the mind will get much food to the thought, and their perspective about the mind and consciousness will be greatly expanded.
I highly recommended book for the serious students and experts in the study and research of the mind and consciousness.
A must read for all scientists (and debunkers!) January 12, 2009
Barbara H. Whitfield (Atlanta, Georgia)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Finally, a sensible book about consciousness and how it works. Since the beginning of science arguments about the mind and its existence have clouded
our thinking because of the prejudice of some that don't really understand the many variables and levels of the non-material world-- which exist but can't be proven in the traditional way. These authors have transcended the prejudice and traditional ways of thinking to combine their many years of study to create a book that finally breaks new ground in consciousness research. A must read for anyone in this field or anyone interested in this field.
 Consciousness & Will = Nil December 31, 2008
Julio C. S. Barros (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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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...
The authors point out, about Henry Stapp's theories for quantum mechanics and consciousness, that "As Stapp (2004a) remarks, his model 'makes consciousness causally effective' " (page 614), and that "Stapp and his quantum-theoretic allies have already successfully undermined the basic-science foundations of presentday materialist-monist psychology and neuroscience" (page 616). It may be so. But although I am highly sympathetic to Stapp's views, I doubt it... The place for consciousness in quantum mechanics is still a highly debated and far from settled issue, and the ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics is even more so. We, non-physicists, had better be attentive and respectful to all informed points of view, I think.
The authors finish this book with a paragraph quote from Myers, which ends like this: "Never was there a harvest so plenteous with labourers so few." As a matter of fact, I think we are still at a much previous "biblical quote" phase:
"It is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff"...
Julio Siqueira
site: Criticizing Skepticism
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At last September 6, 2008
Byron E. Butchart (Charlottesville, VA, United States)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
At last we have a serious minded attempt to get past the extremely limited notions of consciousness that have prevailed for the last century. The book is clearly written to refute all of the other paradigms currently washing around in psychology, so it comes across at times as academic. The authors do attempt to make the going a bit less dry for the non-specialist, but they are staking out ground that is significantly outside the normal theories and they seem to feel a responsibility to stake out that ground in painstaking detail. The occasional rehash of old academic disputes is worth wading through to get to the very serious defense of their ideas.
They make the case that mind is not equal to brain, and that no amount of progress in fMRI studies or in ever more detailed investigations of neuroanatomy will ever be able to equate consciousness to merely physical causes. And they make the case convincingly.
This is an important work and deserves to be engaged with thoughtfully.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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