Human Values and the Mind of Man

Proceedings etc...

Ervin Laszlo,James B. Wilbur *NFA*

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000436716
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy

First Published in 1971, Human Values and the Mind of Man examines how value questions have been treated in traditional theories of human nature. It discusses the following topics: theory of mind as seen through the rules of the generation of languages; the implications for human value of automata theory; the nervous system, higher mental processes and human values; value consequences of various positions on the mind-body problem; the implications of self-actualization theory for human value; and specific value problems in the philosophy of mind. The book presents an interdisciplinary dialogue centred around thoughts about man and their implications for human action, decision, and nature of what we call the 'human mind'. This book is an essential read for philosophers, psychologists, scientists, and humanists.

PART I

Parapsychology and Man

J. B. RHINE

Institute of Parapsychology, Duke University

An attempt is here made to introduce the new branch of investigation, parapsychology, and to consider what it may contribute to our understanding of the nature of man. After a short sketch of this field, an outline of its relation to the main divisions of natural science will follow. As a third step the bearing of the new field upon the larger human disciplines will be illustrated. Finally attention will be focused on the role of parapsychology in a unified study centering on man’s nature, a Science of Man.

Parapsychology

In 1927 a research program was begun in the Department of Psychology of Duke University under the sponsorship of Professor William McDougall, with the general aim of examining certain claims that man has powers that transcend his physical nature. Belief in the existence of such capacities was of course a very old one. They had, for example, been more or less implicitly assumed by most of the religions and magical systems. Rational support for this doctrine of a nonphysical element in man’s nature had also been claimed in certain philosophical systems. The conventional sciences, on the other hand, confined as they are to sensory observations of physical phenomena, had not contributed anything definite to the support of this conception of the nature of man.

But even though the new program was committed to forthright search for possible nonphysical factors, it was nevertheless unreservedly restricted to the methodological principles of natural science; these of course would have to be adapted to the types of problem concerned, but it was assumed that the standards and canons of evidence already in use in the established sciences would be applied. Accordingly, it was a first requirement that the claims of exceptional powers to be investigated would have to be such as would lend themselves to controlled experimental procedures.

It was the claim of clairvoyant ability that proved to be the most suitable as a point of attack. This type of extrasensory perception (ESP) is an experience of knowledge of an object or objective event without sensory contact. An adequate test of this capacity would require that some reliable knowledge of the environment be obtained with all sensory mediation completely barred.

This type of test was comparatively simple and was easily conducted. As early as the 1880’s the attempt had been made to adapt devices for acceptable testing procedures from current practices in the casinos; for example, ordinary playing cards could, when adequately concealed, serve as suitable targets for guessing tests of ESP of the clairvoyant type. Even the mathematics that had been developed for use in gambling proved suitable for estimating the extrachance significance of success in the card-guessing tests. Thus it was that this ancient belief in extrasensory powers of communication turned out to be ideally suited to the experimental laboratory. Not only could the ability to identify hidden cards be evaluated against the theory of chance coincidence, but any such performance could be carried out under conditions that completely excluded the entire range of the sense organs. Such was the testing for ESP which by this time has been under fairly continuous study for over 40 years.

The research program at Duke was not, however, strictly limited to the investigation of clairvoyance. On the basis of the test model used for that type of ESP a broader program of research developed, which became identified as experimental parapsychology—one that in due course spread to other centers here and abroad. Special test procedures were developed on generally similar lines, mostly for use with other types of ESP such as precognition and telepathy. Later they were developed, too, for the related ability involving extramotor response, which came to be called psychokinesis or PK, the direct action of mind on an external physical process or object. In due course all these types of parapsychical or psi ability, as they came to be called, were confirmed, first at the Duke Laboratory and later in other centers as well. Not only was the fact of their occurrence established but their common properties were explored and lawful relations discovered that established certain general principles applicable to all known psi phenomena.

However, the primary aim of the research program was focused steadfastly on the clairvoyance tests. By 1934 these had produced results under controlled test conditions repeatedly that could not be attributed to any known sense. Extrasensory perception at that stage was stated in this limited way, implying only that the known senses had been excluded. But as the program advanced into still more discriminating experimental conditions it became clear that there was no possibility of a sensory explanation of any type. On the basis of the results even the idea that a stimulus might be involved, as is always the case with sensory experience, had to be abandoned. As it became clear that ESP did not depend on any kind of sense or stimulus the more basic question of whether an essential physical process was involved could be brought to a decision. The conclusion was reached that no type of physical intermediation known to science could have produced the significant results obtained.

It seemed therefore safe to say that the original question of the research program had been answered. This did not mean that it was answered beyond all argument or that there was any alternative explanation to take the place of the physical and sensory mediation that had been excluded. Rather, this was simply the first step in a scientific inquiry, a step which eliminated the more familiar types of principle associated with the exchange between a person and his environment. The extrasensory and extraphysical type of exchange that remained had been established as experimentally real.

Naturally this conclusion was not reached in a single bound; nor was it based upon a single type of evidence. Rather, it was the culmination of years of investigation and the combination of a variety of types of evidence. The findings of the Duke Laboratory were confirmed at many other centers, but for that matter the work in parapsychology over the 35 years that have followed has yielded incidental confirmation too since of necessity it has all depended on the same basic psi operations that were established in the 1930’s.

The conclusion that a nonphysical mode of exchange had been demonstrated was based on all of the types of ESP (and supported by other psi experimentation as well), but the one research line in which it was most obvious and most easily understood was that of precognition. This type of ESP ability had been demonstrated by tests in which the subject attempted to identify the order of targets as it would be at a future time. Then targets were carefully randomized and results independently checked, so that the precognition test was an ideally controlled one. In fact it has now been extensively used in parapsychology partly on this account and has been adapted to a variety of techniques involving in some cases electronic test machines, computerized analysis of results, and other modernizations.

But the point of importance here is that obviously no physical principle can furnish a reasonable explanation of the significant results obtained in the many years of precognition experiments; it appears therefore that this mental operation that transcends space-time requires a nonphysical type of agency to account for the effects produced. This fact as a scientific inference can stand alone even while the investigations continue in search for an understanding of the process.

What can we make of it?

At this point some cautious minds want to keep right on building larger and firmer structures of evidence for so radical a research finding that has so slowly been accepted. But fortunately others, not incautiously either, want to investigate the connections this psi occurrence may have with other ‘departments’ of nature. This too would have its reinforcement value since these interlocking discoveries would contribute to the rational structure of the science. In other words, while psi is partly established and defined by the discovery of what it is not—nonphysical, nonsensorimotor, nonconscious—it is not fully identified until its positive relations come into scientific view.

But there is still another reason to go on into these interrelations. Psi is difficult to capture; it is elusive and fugitive. It will likely become more controllable through studies of the psychology and biology of its operation. Such advances might pay off well in making it more successfully demonstrable and more rationally comprehensible.

Equally urgent however is the need to have the research adequately supported. This requires that some larger discipline appreciate the psi research field for its promise of usefulness and meaning; but increased knowledge and control of psi are necessary for that promise.

All this makes an almost perfect circle: (1) The basic psi research must be kept going. (2) This must however be broadened into related areas of science to improve control over the ability and to firm up its rationale; but (3) this ‘interdepartmental’ linkage requires strong financing for the more elaborate training and apparatus it needs. (4) This calls for a stage of assured application to justify the necessary support. (1) This step needs increased basic research (2) to improve control over the ability, and so on around again.

However this circularity disappears at once if we take the point of view, not of parapsychology itself, but the study of man as the larger unit to which psi belongs. This orientation leads as a logical next step to the question of how psi relates to the knowledge of nature man already knows through his sciences of physics, biology, and psychology—to take only broad divisions. In the section to follow a general answer to this question will be reviewed in the tentative way of a ‘progress report.’

Relation to the main divisions of science

The relation of parapsychology to the main divisions of natural science is important because these connections are themselves part of the meaning of parapsychology for man and are even essential to the conception of parapsychology itself. In fact most of what we know about this field is in terms of its relations to other sciences. The investigator of psi must know something of its relation to physics in order to know psi itself; how much it belongs to psychology, and how it differs, are part of its very nature as a field; where it stands in the biological system is indeed fundamental parapsychology. All this is only to say we do not know any branch of science until we know its boundaries, and boundaries are themselves lines of interrelationships.

Fortunately there is no problem over the distinctiveness of the field of parapsychology. It has in fact a more clearly definable boundary line than many of the more established sciences. It deals only with psi phenomena and these are neatly identifiable as extrasensorimotor exchanges between persons and environment. But because of the non-physical nature of these extrasensory and ‘extramotor’ interactions, they afford what is at present one of the most definite natural lines of division in the known natural order. This difference has been so impressive as to have led in the past to the categories of ‘miraculous’ and ‘supernatural’ in describing them (although not of course in parapsychology).

Physics

Parapsychology’s first confrontation is logically with physics. As I have said, if psi phenomena had lent themselves to physical explanation they would not be psi phenomena—they would have been one of the many branches of the physical sciences. Even if they were conceivably to be accounted for by some dimly understood physical principle, some members of the vast professional population of the physical sciences today would have been vigorously pursuing such marginal prospects of extending present boundary lines of that field. But, as I have indicated, it has been possible to bring the matter to definitive experimental solution and it can therefore be regarded as decided, at least for the present stage of science.

But to find that psi is nonphysical does not entirely remove the process from relevance and interest to physics. The very act of demonstrating that an unknown type of influence is represented in psi exchange is dependent upon the physical system involved in the test and in the operation of the subject himself who takes it. This means of course that whatever psi is, it interoperates with the natural physical order. This necessarily implies the existence of a more general common principle as a basis of interoperation. Within the physical world itself, through which our scientific information is all intermediated, we know what is going on through the observation of physical events and through an inferential system built on that. Then too the instrumentation that has extended the range of the senses, of reasoning, and of memory has all been assumed to derive its causality from energetic systems. So long as only physical energetics was known there was thus no need to conceive of energetics as not necessarily always physical.

Now however we need to infer another kind of influence or energy that produces effects that are observable either directly or indirectly. The logic of natural science leads to the inference that a nonphysical influence is present that produces energetic effects. It becomes necessary therefore to infer from the results on record that an unknown energy is operating in the psi process. Since we do not know much yet about this hypothetical psi energy it is not a very big step to assume it. The concept will naturally become more realistic as we learn more about what the psi function is and can do, learn to control it better, and relate it to the rest of the natural order.¹

Even now however physics cannot be regarded as the logically inclusive term it so long has been assumed to be. It is no longer the basis of all natural science and of the entire system of reality in the universe. In other words, we can now say the universe is more than physical—and that this is an experimental, not a merely speculative conclusion. It is therefore not just a matter of viewpoint, although it will require a fundamental shift in some categories. For example, energetics has been considered a branch of physics; now it will have to be the other way around, with physics subordinate to energetics, since a nonphysical mode of causality is required in psi communication.

A few physicists at least are already interested in this energetic interconversion between psi and physical energy. Like some of the familiar energies, psi can only be detected through conversion to directly registrable readings of another energetic form. For example, it is only as some observable physical process can be influenced by PK that this type of psi function can be manifested and measured. But this transfer, like the types of ESP too, is now experimentally manageable, and it opens a new frontier for the research physicist. He can for instance do something that has hitherto been considered impossible: He can react experimentally to a future event and he can interact directly as from one mind to another (no matter as yet what a mind is!). He can exert intelligent influence on bodies without contact, and with no known physical field to intermediate. But in all this the researcher in physics would not necessarily be going entirely out of his own field to investigate parapsychological interaction. Physics is not just the study of inanimate bodies as an older academic viewpoint may have had it. In a modified way it is biophysics, psychophysics, and of course psi-physics too.

One can look back through the history of physics and see that such changes have always come hard, but they eventually occur. This ‘expanding’ universe we know about today is not the same one Einstein was thinking about, any more than his was like Newton’s. ‘If it (E...