Scholar Calls on Academia to Research Consciousness

[NJCher]

Jeffrey Kripal of Rice University has written a two-part article on why academia needs to get over its preoccupation with the materialistic, reductionist point-of-view.

Kripal calls for the humanities to be the discipline that investigates consciousness. He argues that it's proven there's something there, but science pretty much ignores it.

In Kripal's own words, published in the second part:

The week began with The Chronicle’s publication of my essay on why the “impossible” experiences of precognition, clairvoyance, and mystical experience may well be keys to unlocking the nature of consciousness and the mind-brain relationship and why the sciences and the humanities need one another to address those questions.

His article, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, is very well-written. As a teacher and writer of academic material myself, I shudder when I think of the time he must have put in on this carefully crafted article. It is a total pleasure to read. It is so reasonable.

But you know what it's like around here when we post anything about anomalies in any place but ASAH. The reductionists come out. People like Sid Dithers, to name just one. I don't get them at all. They exalt in reducing humanity to nothing more than some tissue that's temporarily alive and then which fades to dust, leaving nothing.

The first part of the article has over 300 comments. There is one particularly annoying reductionist who goes by parabola_din. I can't help but feel sorry for him. He sounds like a very sad person and devoid of the joy of living.

Anyway, here's the first part of the article:

http://chronicle.com/article/Embrace-the-Unexplained/145557/

and here is the second:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/04/08/embracing-the-unexplained-part-2/

The second part more or less deals with the messed up interpretation of his article as seen by the materialists.

It's a lot of reading, but it will give you something to think about for some time to come.


Cher

[Ilsa]

1. The scholar needs to google "Global Consciousness Project"

I think Princeton has run this project for 15 years. I'm not sure I understand the project or the results, though. I don't know how they are tracking whatever it is they are tracking.

[Big Blue Marble]

2. Thank you for directing us to this brilliant and courageous essay.

It is my impression that the defenders of materialism are becoming more
shrill by day. Whether here or else where, they just repeat the old tired defenses
in the face of more and more evidence that consciousness is beyond brain.

Do you follow the podcast "Skeptiko"? It is a fairly deep discussion of the
current research into consciousness and does not hesitate to include skeptics
in the discussion.

http://www.skeptiko.com

[PADemD]

4. Thank you for the interesting article.

Another organization doing research in this area is the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

http://noetic.org/about/overview/

http://noetic.org/about/vision/

http://noetic.org/about/what-are-noetic-sciences/