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Full 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.
Contents
Introduction
Preface and Acknowledgments
1. A View from the Mainstream: Contemporary Cognitive Neuroscience and the Consciousness Debates
2. F. W. H. Myers and the Empirical Study of the Mind-Body Problem
3. Psychophysiological Influence
4. Memory
5. Automatism and Secondary Centers of Consciousness
6. Unusual Experiences Near Death and Related Phenomena
7. Genius
8. Mystical Experience
9. Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century
About the Authors
References
Appendix: An Annotated Introductory Bibliography of Psychical Research
