B E R K E L E Y ' S M E T A P H Y S I C S
Two books by PETER B. LLOYD
Published by Ursa, these books are guides to the metaphysics of philosopher George Berkeley, giving new insights into the nature of paranormal phenomena.Over several recent decades, telepathy, telecognition, and telekinesis have been proven to exist in university laboratories. And remote viewing - a form of telecognition - was developed in a massive 20-year programme of research started by the CIA. Until now, however, there was no clear understanding of the nature of these phenomena. Drawing on Berkeley's system of mental monism, the author gives a clear view of the fundamental principles at work in these processes.
These are the first two titles in the Psi Informatics Series. "Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics" is a closely argued defence of Berkeley's radical philosophy. It examines the theories of consciousness that have been put forward in recent years, and shows that only Berkeley's system leads to the correct solution of the mind-body problem. "Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics" applies this system to the mysterious phenomena of psi that cannot be explained away as physical processes. It describes the characteristics of paranormal phenomena, and the concepts that are needed to understand them.
You can learn more about the background to these books at the author's Philosophy Home Page. There is a review by David Lorimer, published in Network, the journal of the Scientific and Medical Network. An article by Julian Baggini in The Philosophers' Magazine, on the subject of self-published philosophy, also touches upon these books.
A recent essay by Peter B. Lloyd, on the technical and philosophical interpretation of the film, The Matrix has been published in an anthology, "Taking the Red Pill", by BenBella Books, Texas, (www.benbellabooks.com), in March 2003. Copies of the book can be purchased online.
ORDERING
Consciousness
Book details:
- Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics
269 pp, paperback, £15.00, ISBN 1-902987-00-4. - Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics
341 pp, paperback, £15.00, ISBN 1-902987-01-2.
You can order the books online from Amazon UK, or by mail order from the publisher:
Ursa Software Ltd,
Publishing Section,
155 Sumatra Road,
London NW6 1PN.
UK
email: ursaUNSPAMeasynet.co.uk (replace "UNSPAM" with "@").
ABOUT THE BOOKS
Paranormal phenomena have been recognised as a mysterious and invisible part of the universe, throughout the world, and throughout recorded history. In recent decades, hard work in many university research laboratories has proven beyond reasonable doubt that telepathy, telecognition, and telekinesis are real. The question that we must now face is: What are these phenomena, really? What are the underlying mechanisms and processes?
Berkeley was a contemporary of the great scientist Sir Isaac Newton. While Newton laid the foundations for the materialistic science of the next three centuries, Berkeley traced the outlines of a radically different world-view. Centuries ahead of his time, Berkeley provided the philosophical framework that can now be used to understand paranormal phenomena.
Berkeley's system of mental monism shows that consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe. What we think of solid matter is ultimately a construct generated by the interaction of our minds and the metamind. Berkeley called this metamind 'God', but in the scientific era a more detached terminology is needed.
Most of the time, the metamind runs our virtual reality on a smooth basis, following rules that scientists have codified into the laws of physics. But there are loopholes. The fabric of the metamental virtual reality necessarily has special channels, through which consciousness can operate independently of the central metamental engine. Through these channels, conscious minds can commune directly in telepathy, they can communicate with distant objects, and can modify the probabilities of chance events telekinetically.
Outside the controlled conditions of the laboratory, paranormal phenomena can take on an astonishing force of their own. For generations, people have met with visions and apparitions of beings who seemingly come from another world. In the past fifty years, they have come forward in thousands of encounters of ufos. Increasingly, these encounters have taken on characteristics of dream-like strangeness, involving alien abductions. At the same time, different groups of people encounter angels. Using Berkeley's philosophy as his basis, the author shows that we can understand these strange manifestors as metamental daemons that project imagery directly into the percipients' minds, as controlled hallucinations.
The existence of these phenomena has been firmlly established by many researchers for several years. The author now takes you to the next stage: understanding in principle how they work.
For more information, click on the following links:
| Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synopsis | Contents | Excerpts | ||
| Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics | ||||
| Synopsis | Contents | Excerpts | ||
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOKS
Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics
The mind-body problem
Description of what the mind-body problem is about, and how Berkeley's philosophy provides the only solution to it. Modern consciousness studies are leading inexorably to the conclusions that Berkeley reached three centuries ago. (Section 1.1)
Where is your mind?
If the conscious mind were just something going on in 'meat-space', if it were no more than electrical signals interacting inside physical brain tissue, then the mind would have a precise position in space. In fact, consciousness cannot be located in space. (Section 2.1)
Creeping androidisation
If all the nerve cells in your brain were to be gradually replaced by silicon chips which perform identical functions, would you notice any difference? If not, then consciousness is no more than a mere epiphenomenon of the information processing that your brain performs. If there is a difference, however, then we must confront the non-physical mind. (Section 2.7.1)
Summary of Berkeleianism
A short and succinct statement of the main points of Berkeley's metaphysical philosophy: mental monism. (Section 3.5.1)
Corollary: consciousness is not physical
After working through the central argument for mental monism - Berkeley's semantic argument - we look at the independent application of the same line of thinking to the problem of consciousness. Even if you feel that you cannot yet accept full-blown mental monism, a restricted form of the argument nonetheless tells you that consciousness is not reducible to the physical brain. (Section 4.10)
Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics
Need for a new scientific paradigm
Established science has failed to address the nature of paranormal phenomena. A new paradigm is needed if we are to understand the paranormal in a cogent manner.(Section 1.2)
Berkeley versus Eastern philosophies
There are many interesting points of contact between Berkeley's metaphysical philosophy and the esoteric doctrines of Eastern systems such as the Hindu Vedanta and Buddhism. Paradoxically, the Eastern philosophies are often more widely known in the West than Berkeley's. (Section 2.13)
Traditions, anecdotes, and data
Paranormal phenomena are undoubtedly stranger than anything science has had to deal with in the past. Their dependence on the beliefs and mental states of the experimenter create entirely new problems and challenges to accepted norms of objectivity. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, our understanding of the paranormal realm must be scientific, because that is the only kind of real understanding there is. (Section 3.2.1)
FURTHER DISCUSSION
The Matrix
The Wachowski brothers' film, "The Matrix", provides a dramatic exploration of the idea of this world as a virtual reality. With this distinctly Berkeleian concept, they touch upon several of the ideas that I discuss in my book. See also my essay on the virtual reality of The Matrix in the anthology "Taking the Red Pill", published by BenBella Books (www.benbellabooks.com).
Remote viewing
Remote viewing is the psychic power of 'seeing' things beyond the range of normal, physical sight. This capacity is reported to have been in use as a traditional skill in many cultures, and old names for it are 'second sight' and 'clairvoyance'. Besides sight, the same capacity exists with other senses.Most researchers are content just to use remote viewing, without bothering about a theoretical explanation for it. Attempts that have been made to explain it have focused on some sort of energy transmission beaming out of the brain, perhaps using the 40 Hz (cycles per second) electrical acitivity in the brain.
Such models, however, are at odds with remote viewing's capability to pass throughh material obstacles. More fundamentally, they completely fail to account for the informatic characteristics of remote viewing. How, for instance, does the remote viewer locate the target when the monitor gives her no overt information? How does a remote viewer pick out an illustration printed on a specified page of a magazine in a sealed envelope? How can a viewer 'see' an optical image of a remote site when there is no lens to form the optical image? How can a viewer 'see' radioactivity, or 'see' not only the appearance of a building but also its purpose? Even if the energy model had any evidence for it, it could not explain the informatics of psi. See the above link for further discussion of the Berkeleian model.
Ufos
Since Kenneth Arnold's celebrated reference to ufos' moving like flying saucers in 1947, ufos have played a large role in the public contact with the paranormal. In recent years, the ufo media industry has gone into overdrive, fuelled by a plague of alien abduction reports. The early belief that ufos were secret Soviet aircraft gave way to the common assumption that they were spacecraft from another planet. This is referred to as the 'extra-terrestrial hypothesis' (ETH).The ETH has, however, been steadily losing credibility, as it is increasingly recognised that the image of the ufo as a spacecraft has been artificially created by a tunnel vision that excludes the bigger picture. In the bigger picture, we find that ufo encounters are embedded in a matrix of psychological and paranormal phenomena - such as dreams, poltergeists, and spiritual healing. These phenomena have been occurring throughout recorded history, being given an interpretation and significance in each culture that accords with the prevailing beliefs and expectations.
As a rival to the ETH, the 'psycho-social hypothesis' (PSH) has a lot of plausibility. But it fails to account for multiple-witness sightings of ufos. If ufos were hallucinations produced purely by individuals' psychopathology (or by environmental factors such as magnetic fields), then independent witnesses would not see the same thing. Nor does the PSH account for the penumbra of paranormal phenomena associated with ufo encounters.
The 'paranormal hypothesis' (PNH) is the only approach to understanding ufos that has any chance of accommodating the full spectrum of characteristics. See the above link for further discussion of how ufos are accounted for in the Berkeleian system.