Paranormal Phenomena and Berkeley's Metaphysics

	B E R K E L E Y ' S M E T A P H Y S I C S
Order the book!	PARANORMAL PHENOMENA AND BERKELEY'S METAPHYSICS New book by Peter B. Lloyd. Published by Ursa Software Ltd in July 1999. 341 pp, paperback, £15.00, ISBN 1-902987-01-2. For ordering details, see main page.
	SYNOPSIS
	This book works toward an understanding of psi phenomena according to the ontological position of mental monism, from the perspective of the eighteenth-century philosopher George Berkeley. About this book I was originally writing a book on the mind-body problem - the branch of philosophy that tries to understand consciousness and its relation to the world. My angle on this was that George Berkeley was right: reality is fundamentally mental, not physical. Increasingly, however, I became aware that the Berkeleian ontology makes it possible to make sense of the bizarre phenomena that parapsychologists had been reporting. I had previously considered myself to be an 'open-minded sceptic'. I recognised that the universe might hold phenomena completely different from any that had been accepted in mainstream science, but I did not believe any of the reports. Even when I began to realise that the Berkeleian theory provides a framework for them, I still did not want to believe that this stuff was for real. Through meetings at conferences, and reading up on the research literature, however, I began to realise that there genuinely was something strange going on. I have never been involved in experimental psychic work, so at the back of my mind there is always a nagging doubt that maybe all of the experiments are flawed. Nevertheless, I have no rational basis for disregarding the experimental data. As far as I can ascertain, at least some of the experiments have been carried out by sane and competent scientists, following proper and rigorous procedures and have yielded positive results. There do appear to be strange phenomena going on. They need to be explained, and the Berkeleian theory offers a scheme for doing so. The other book, on the mind-body problem, ended up being written in parallel with this one. I am self-publishing it at the same time: "Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics". About paranormal phenomena Paranormal phenomena, or 'psi' phenomena, have been part of human life throughout recorded history and, no doubt, prehistory too. They have often been accepted as part of the normal, orthodox picture of the world. Over the past three centuries, however, a new orthodoxy has arisen - in the form of scientific practice and scientific doctrines - which systematically excludes psi phenomena from any serious consideration. To a large degree, this exclusion can be traced to science's roots being firmly embedded in materialism. From that perspective, psi phenomena are impossible, and so science sees no point in investigating them; conversely, anyone who does investigate them is presumed to be an incompetent scientist. In this vicious circle, anyone who genuinely wants to investigate psi phenomena - if for no other reason than that their reports are part of the world we inhabit - will find tremendous peer pressure, and risk of damage to her reputation and career prospects, serving as effective deterrents. One of the ways in which this impasse can be broken is to go back to the origins of the scientific world-view in the seventeenth century, and see that there is another route that can be taken, which leads to a metaphysic radically opposed to materialism, but which does not in any way devalue or discredit the validity that scientific knowledge has in its own domain, the realm of the physical. George Berkeley was an innovative philosopher living at the time when the scientific ball was first set rolling. He had the perspicacity to see that the direction it was taking would lead away from all things spiritual. But he also had the vision and intelligence to formulate an alternative philosophy, one rich enough to encompass both science's growing understanding of the material realm, and the humanly important realm of spirit. In this book, I shall first give a short account of Berkeley's metaphysics; second, to describe the range and characteristics of psi phenomena, referring in particular to recent scientific research by the relatively few people who have been actively working in this field; and finally to develop some models of how Berkeley can help us to make sense of those phenomena. I shall also consider how this theory may help us to understand some of the more esoteric phenomena such as ufos. I shall not be presenting masses of laboratory data, or ancedotes, of alleged psi phenomena in order to try to persuade you that they are real. My business here is not to argue the case for the existence of the phenomena. That is done very well by those who are actively involved in parapsychological research, such as Dean Radin in his excellent book, The Conscious Universe; and by journalists, such as Jim Schnabel and John Keel, who have carried out first-hand investigations of people who have experienced the paranormal; and by scientists such as Jacques Vallee who have studied the weirder forms of the paranormal. Here, my starting point is the assumption that the investigators have done their job well, and that their reports can be trusted. My aim is then to consider, if these phenomena are real, how can they be explained? What model of the universe do we need to have for us to be able to make sense of psi phenomena? Obviously, this approach is open to the criticism that some of the reported phenomena may not really exist, that maybe the investigators were blinded by their own beliefs and accidentally, or otherwise, mis-reported the data. Well, that is a risk that one inevitably has to take. It is a sterile exercise to limit ourselves to just accumulating data: we need to understand it. I do not imagine that the theoretical approach that I propose in this book is the final answer. But we have to start somewhere, and Berkeley's metaphysics seem to me to be a good starting point. There is, moreover, a reciprocal relationship between theory and experimentation. Theories, if they have any value, predict properties of the phenomena. Those predictons suggest further experiments or observations that should be made, which in turn yield new data that either confirm the theory or entail revisions to the theory. Thus theorising is not something that we do after all the data are in: it complements the gathering of data. Synopsis Chapter 1: What are Paranormal Phenomena? General introduction to psi phenomena, the mind-body problem, and George Berkeley's mental monism. The need to move towards a general working theory. Chapter 2: Berkeley's Metaphysics Detailed exposition of Berkeley's philosophy, aiming to give an exegesis of it rather than a defence of it. (Rigorous arguments for mental monism have been developed in the accompanying volume, Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics.) A comparison is also made between Berkeley's philosophy and those found in Eastern religious traditions, with particular reference to Hindu mystic Shankara's commentaries on the Upanishads. Chapter 3: Psi Phenomena In this chapter, I briefly give an overview of the scientific data supporting the existence of psi phenomena. As I mentioned above, it is not appropriate to go into the question of the existence of psi in great depth, as this has been covered adequately in other works. My concern here is rather to characterise psi phenomena: to describe what the key features of these phenomena are. This covers both laboratory data from parapsychological centres around the world, and the 'remote viewing' data that has come out of the CIA-initiated research programme. Chapter 4: A Berkeleian Account of Psi Berkeley's mental monism enables us to formulate a natural, coherent, and comprehensive account of a wide range of psi phenomena. This builds on the set-theoretic model of consciousness lying outside physical space. Chapter 5: Strange Manifestors One of the implications of a Berkeleian account of psi phenomena is that there may exist disembodied entities that can manifest imagery directly into human minds, by-passing the normal manifestation protocols that are observed in physical phenomena. This enables us to flesh out Carl Jung's theory of the exteriorised projections from the collective unconscious, which manifest in such strange forms as angels and flying saucers. By adopting this approach, we can also make sense of the collective properties of strange phenomena, not just ufos, that Jacques Vallee has studied. Chapter 6: Psi Technology This final chapter examines the prospects for humans to harness the principles of psi phenomena to develop novel forms of technology. It also looks at ethical issues that arise in developing this new technology. © Peter B. Lloyd, 1999, 2000. Last modified 23rd June 2000. [ Ursa Software Home Page \| Peter Lloyd Home Page \| Ursa Publishing \| Mind Detox ]