The Roots of Disbelief in Human Mind Powers

by Sylvia Engdahl

Originally, I planned to write two essays--one about scientists' misguided attempt to create conscious artificial intelligence, and the other about why most deny the overwhelming evidence for the existence of psi powers. But then I realized that these are really the same issue: the unwillingness to admit that human minds, and even animal minds, are more than brains.

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Both scientists' conviction that AI can be made conscious and their denial of the evidence for psi arise from their unshakable belief in materialism, defined by the dictionary as "a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter." And the primary root of refusal to question this belief is fear.

Why would scientists fear to question anything? Isn't an inquiring mind one of the main prerequisites for becoming a scientist? After all, discoveries in science are made by questioning past assumptions. Copernicus questioned the belief that the sun revolves around Earth. Darwin questioned the belief that species have separate origins, and Einstein questioned the belief that Newton's laws cover all circumstances. These, however, were exceptional men. Although lesser discoveries are also made by questioning, a lot depends on how widely applicable a belief is and how firmly established it has become. And the belief in materialism is so deeply entrenched in science that to question it shakes the very foundation of a scientist's professional life. That the universe may not work the way one believes it does is a frightening idea to entertain; few people are willing to let it into their thoughts.

Because of this, and because mavericks in any group are generally looked down upon, a scientist who does question a widely-accepted theory is likely to suffer the loss of professional reputation. This is another risk few are willing to take. It can mean ridicule, the disregard of otherwise-important work, and even being fired from a job. Professors, for example, are expected to teach the theories prevalent in their fields. Although in principle they have academic freedom, that doesn't mean much if they don't have tenure, and even if they do have it some excuse can often be found for dismissing a nonconformist. Students must go along with what they are taught if they except to get their degrees. Employees of research institutions must retain the respect of their colleagues. Thus the cards are stacked against anyone who attempts to challenge conventional ideas. As Voltaire wrote, "It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."

But scientists' faith in materialism goes much deeper than this. They have a compelling desire to understand the world--that is why they chose to become scientists. Yet if they believe in science to the exclusion of other faiths, as many do, there is no current alternative to the materialist worldview. To reject it means to be cast adrift. We do not know anything about reality other than its material aspects unless we have had personal experience with another side of it or accept the word of those who have; it is beyond our understanding at this stage of our evolution. This does not mean there is anything supernatural about it. After all, two hundred years ago quantum physics was beyond comprehension; the human mind evolves. In time we will understand more. But in the meantime, to be confronted with something impossible to know is unendurable for many people, even terrifying, if they are left with no firm ground to stand on.

In our society science is viewed as the ultimate authority on truth about humans and about the universe.

This is true not just of scientists, but of everyone. In our society science is widely viewed as the final arbiter of truth, so the majority of people share its prevailing idea of the nature of reality. In the past, that wasn't the case; most--even many scientists--considered religion the authority, as some still do today. Then gradually, people turned away from religion, at least with respect to its support of the concept of nonphysical reality. It is now common to consider religion authoritative on moral issues alone. Some sects do reject science, taking an equally dogmatic position in opposition to it. On the other hand, some individuals find meaning in alternative forms of spirituality that offer closer contact with nonmaterial reality than do most traditional religions. But comparatively few people are comfortable without any source of intellectual authority at all. Psychologists call the ability to accept not feeling sure about what's true "tolerance of uncertainty." Though it is unhealthy to lack it in dealing with daily affairs, uncertainty in regard to the basic attributes of the universe is another matter, and being able tolerate it is the exception rather than the rule.

Before the twentieth century, materialism was not the only philosophy accepted by scientists. While some did view bodies as machines, others--known as vitalists--held that living organisms are fundamentally different from inanimate things because they contain some sort of "vital force" that cannot be reduced to physicochemical processes. When little was known of biology this seemed rather obvious; how could mere physical components produce thought and feeling? The nature of the vital force was a mystery, but so much else about living things was mysterious that ignorance of this aspect of them was considered problematic only by philosophers,. But once biology was further advanced, it appeared that physical factors could indeed explain everything about organisms, and there was no longer any need to tolerate the uncertainty inherent in vitalism. It was vehemently rejected by science and any suggestion that there might have been some truth in the concept was scorned, as it still is today.

Yet In fact, physical factors cannot explain everything about organisms, although many scientists claim they can; and neither vitalism nor similar concepts, such as the Chinese idea of "chi" or the New Age theory of "energy flow," can explain it either. Now, however, the question of what makes living things conscious is receiving more and more attention. and scientists who believe that they are well on the way to creating robots with human (or superior) intelligence frankly acknowledge this as the elephant in the room. Most are convinced that sooner or later they will figure it out without recourse to inexplicable forces. No wonder they are desperately trying to produce such a robot--subconsciously they must know that if they can't, that may mean that there is a fatal flaw in the materialist premises on which modern science is based.

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Love cannot not be derived from mere intelligence, as it is not a matter of logic.

What is this nonphysical aspect of mind that science ignores and a great many humans believe in, yet cannot understand? We don't have a word for it. Some call it soul, but that term is too closely associated with religion, and with belief in an afterlife, to be meaningful to people who aren't religious. In any case mind distinct from brain is a broader concept than is generally associated with soul, although the dictionary definition, "the immaterial essence, animating principle or actuating cause of an individual life" is not far off. The concept of mind encompasses capabilities as well as essence--intuition and creativity through which ideas not based on reasoning are formed, plus the capacity for spontaneous emotions such as love.

Mere "intelligence" can provide none of these capabilities, since it functions by proceeding logically from premises even when the logic is flawed. Robots, however far they advance from what was originally programmed into them, are limited by the process of logic because that is how machine intelligence works. They might someday express emotions derived from the logical implications of circumstances, such as fear, pleasure, or even grief. But love is not founded on logic; it simply exists. And it is closely tied to the nonmaterial connection between all beings believed by many to be a fundamental aspect of the universe.

Although we cannot define or explain its nature, there is plenty of evidence that the mind is more than just the brain. Apart from its obvious attributes mentioned above, it possesses psi capabilities such as ESP that have no physical basis. Proof of the existence of psi phenomena, from laboratory studies and military use as well as from centuries of human experience, is extensive and indisputable; I have discussed this in my essay "The Role of Psi in Human Affairs." Needless to say, the machine theory of human nature is incompatible with these phenomena. That's the fundamental reason why the reality of psi is so vehemently denied.

If adherents of materialism are disturbed by any suspicion of an inherent difference between human minds and robot minds, they are absolutely aghast at the concept of psi. A noted reviewer of a well-designed research study on ESP that had been submitted to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology told colleagues, "Reading it made me physically unwell." Hypothetical distinctions between human and artificial intelligence can be easily set aside as long as AGI doesn't exist, but psi phenomena can be ignored only by subconsciously suppressing any awareness of their existence that circumstances stir up.

Most scientists make every effort to avoid such circumstances. They don't read papers or books by the responsible researchers in the field. They dismiss the huge amount of nonsense posted on the Internet by New Age enthusiasts, crackpots, and fraudulent psychics, reassured by the thought that anything connected with psi abilities must fall in the same category. Thus unless confronted with a case of personal experience, they can tell themselves that it is nothing but pseudoscience and not have to face the possibility that both their careers and their personal worldviews have been built on sand.

If precognition is possible then time doesn't flow the way we think it does. The past, present and future may exist simultaneously.

That's not the only reason skeptics find the thought of psi troubling. The average person in our society, especially a scientifically-oriented person, has a deep-seated, innate fear not merely of acknowledging psi powers but of possessing them. Questions such as What if someone could read my thoughts? What might I do with such powers without meaning to? lie below the surface even if not consciously asked. This is especially true of people who sense that they have buried psi ability. It is latent in everyone, but obviously some people have greater extrasensory receptivity than others. We do not know whether there is a genetic component in this--it may be merely the degree of access to one's unconscious mind rather than a special talent. In any case a person who is psi-gifted is no more abnormal than a gifted musician; but some feel it would be more of a curse than a gift.

Even people utterly convinced of the reality of psi, myself among them, rarely think through all the implications of what is known about it. For example, the scientific evidence for precognition is as strong as that for telepathy--in fact some parapsychologists believe that most, if not all, ESP is a form of precognition. In addition to lab studies and the well-documented personal experiences of thousands of people, there were instances of precognition during the military Star Gate program in which remote viewers saw significant events before they occurred. Yet if this can happen, then the universe doesn't merely work differently from the way materialists believe, it works differently from the way any of us have believed. We are forced to realize that time doesn't flow in just one direction and the principle of cause and effect is false. Some quantum physicists (and many mystics) believe the past, present and future exist simultaneously. It's easy to imagine a world where people can communicate telepathically, but harder to picture one in which time as we know it is an illusion. Philosophers have done so, but it raises so many unanswerable questions about ourselves and our society that as a practical matter we have to ignore it except on the rare occasions when a premonition is experienced.

The more scientific knowledge a person has of the universe, the more upsetting it is to see evidence that reality doesn't follow the rules that have been thought to describe it. It might seem that physicists would be receptive to ideas that are counterintuitive, since they accept the theory of relativity despite its conflict with common sense. And they're aware that the underlying nature of things is, at the quantum level, based on probability rather than certainty--which is also true of psi. But in the case of physics, scientists have a defense against the disturbing nature of this realization. Most of them think about it only in terms of mathematics, and the more complex the math, the more effective it is as a distraction.

Physicists think about the universe in terms of mathematics because advanced theories can't be fully described in words. They tend to ignore things that cannot be understood through math.

Although the study of particle physics depends on statistics, physicists tend to overlook that fact and claim that statistical studies of psi show effects too small to be significant, despite statements to the contrary by respected statisticians. Otherwise they would be forced to confront the fact that they can't understand what's going on. And that's something scientists aren't eager to do.

Anecdotal evidence--reports of individual human experiences with psi, regardless of their prevalence--is scorned by most critics as meaningless. Yet all scientific investigation begins with personal observation. In the "hard" sciences it is then possible to set up experiments with reproducible results. In other sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and even evolutionary theory, it often is not; scientists must judge theories in the basis of what they observe in the real world. The same should be true in parapsychology, since laboratory experiments, though statistically valid, cannot produce truly revelatory forms of psi that occur only when emotion is involved.

The reality of psi is not a matter of what can be proven. Either there is something in humans (and animals) that physics cannot ever explain, or there isn't. If there is, denying it won't make it go away, any more than believing in it will create it. Reductionism, which means reducing everything to the principles science has established and ignoring everything that doesn't fit, is at best a cop-out. We tend to forget that most of what we now know would never have been discovered under that philosophy. Most scientists of Newton's time resisted his ideas because they considered gravity an "occult" concept; nothing could work at a distance, they said. If gravity weren't impossible to ignore, they might have continued to think so.

Thus parapsychological research is not going to convince society that psi is real--the proof is already there insofar as statistics can provide it. And in fact, as soon as research starts to zero on psi powers, the opposition may increase. When it begins to look even to mainstream psychologists as if psi might be real, people's unconscious fear of losing their basic orientation to the world may take over, so that more of them actively suppress any mention of it--not through censorship but through denial and ridicule. Researchers may stop going public, saying that such experimentation as had seemed successful had not panned out. Psi may be dismissed as an immature notion no longer taken seriously.

Will there be a period during which people with psi powers are persecuted, as in my Captain of Estel trilogy? I'm afraid there may be. What humans fear, they often try to destroy; furthermore, minorities are most apt to be targeted when they seem likely to become a majority. A change as profound as widespread use of psi is bound to result in upheaval. But that will pass, as stages in evolution always do, and once most people are able to sense each others' feelings, there will be less misunderstanding among them.

In the long run, as human evolution progresses more and more people will become open to psi experiences and science will develop a theory to account for their reality.

I believe that it's a good thing that our planetary culture has so far focused on technology to the exclusion of psi. Advanced technology is essential for attaining interstellar travel, without which our species can't survive; and to devote too much of our minds to psi would be distracting. But over the long term, human progress requires development of both technology and mind powers--neither is sufficient without the other. Creating a technological civilization that incorporates psi will be the next step in our evolution. In my fiction I have said it's the criterion for contact with extraterrestrial civilizations, and I think that may be true.

Albert Einstein is widely quoted* as having said, "I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science." This, then, is the answer to the pervasive materialism that now hinders scientific advance. It cannot be overcome by persuasion, but as more and more people have such experiences, it will eventually be outgrown.

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* There is some doubt about the accuracy of this quote, as no source for it has been cited and the word "transpersonal" was not in common use during Einstein's lifetime.