A Paranormal Plug in the Deseret News

Oh, for heaven's sake. Daniel Peterson's latest column in the Deseret News, Defending the Faith: Rethinking materialism in science, advertises a new home for cranks and loons. As a casual observer (and an overall fan) of Peterson, this isn't terribly surprising. He has expressed affinity for Intelligent Design on several occasions, and he seems to relish taking on 'the establishment' as he perceives it. Simply by the title of the column you know it's going to take an aggrieved stance toward mainstream science, but he does one better by telling everyone about a group of open-minded scientists who are calling for revolution, and spreading their questionable (at best) assertions.

When I looked around the Open Sciences site, it didn't take long to find that it's a collection of people pushing all kinds of fringe ideas (parapsychology and psychic phenomena, mysteries of water, etc.) At least a few of them have a long history of, shall we say, original thinking. After this group of revolutionaries met a year ago, they issued a manifesto which serves as the foundation of Peterson's column. It's written in the classic style of minority scientists who think they don't get enough respect [1]. It notes that they are "internationally known [2]," vents their grievance at all the dogmatism, and collects names of people with PhD's in order to appear important.

Before presenting their unorthodox ideas, the manifesto prepares the way with this statement.

Science is first and foremost a non-dogmatic, open-minded method of acquiring knowledge about nature through the observation, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Its methodology is not synonymous with materialism and should not be committed to any particular beliefs, dogmas, or ideologies.

Ah, classic. We all know that scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads, and that dogmatism runs against the spirit of science. This kind of statement serves two purposes. First, to disarm critical scientists by appealing to their scientific values, and second, to help cultivate the appearance of unfair treatment by critics in the eyes of the public. It's not that the statement is wrong, per se, it's just incomplete. It's missing notions of skepticism, reproducibility, criticism, and so on.

Moving on, there are a variety of claims: we've got quantum mechanics (QM) and consciousness, near-death experiences, mediums who contact the dead, telekinesis, etc. Let me pause here to give you my rule of thumb on QM: you can dismiss out of hand anyone that uses QM to support new-age-type claims. I know that sounds dogmatic, but QM is strange stuff and is difficult to understand because it is heavily mathematical and contradicts our intuitions. Given the fact that new-age claims are not part of standard physics courses, it is much more likely that someone connecting QM to consciousness either doesn't understand QM, or has hijacked it in a way that is difficult to discern for non-physicists (of which I am one).

The manifesto continues:

Moreover, materialist theories fail to elucidate how brain could generate the mind, and they are unable to account for the empirical evidence alluded to in this manifesto. This failure tells us that it is now time to free ourselves from the shackles and blinders of the old materialist ideology, to enlarge our concept of the natural world, and to embrace a post-materialist paradigm.

Now it is certainly the case that we don't fully understand how consciousness works under currently understood physical principles (which is different than to say it CANNOT be understood eventually), but here is what our revolutionaries assert as a better view:

15. According to the post-materialist paradigm:

a) Mind represents an aspect of reality as primordial as the physical world. Mind is fundamental in the universe, i.e. it cannot be derived from matter and reduced to anything more basic.

b) There is a deep interconnectedness between mind and the physical world.

c) Mind (will/intention) can influence the state of the physical world, and operate in a nonlocal (or extended) fashion, i.e. it is not confined to specific points in space, such as brains and bodies, nor to specific points in time, such as the present. Since the mind may nonlocally influence the physical world, the intentions, emotions, and desires of an experimenter may not be completely isolated from experimental outcomes, even in controlled and blinded experimental designs.

d) Minds are apparently unbounded, and may unite in ways suggesting a unitary, One Mind that includes all individual, single minds.

There you go, folks! Materialism has failed to give a good explanation, so we can now say that mind is basically magic unmoored from the known laws of the universe.

I know there are still a lot of questions remaining within science, but I fail to see how positing that "mind is fundamental to the universe"--whatever that means--helps anything. I know that some of these statements bear a superficial resemblance to certain scriptures, but that doesn't guarantee that they really correspond to one another. And I know that to be a Mormon entails a certain amount of belief in things not borne out by science (yet?), but that doesn't mean we should run into the arms of the scientific fringe.


Notes:
1. Compare the manifesto with Dissent from Darwinism and the Global Warming Petition Project.
2. So am I, and I'm a nobody.

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