The Creative Imagination -- by Michael Polanyi (PART 2)

In this second part of the essay Polanyi poses a question central to understanding the progression of scientific endeavor (see Part 1). On which grounds can we change the standards of coherence we use to judge our speculations/theorizing as real? “We are faced with the existentialist dilemma: how values of our own choosing can have authority over us who decreed them." The answer he suggests involves first a deliberate intent to go beyond what we know; this intent is part of what he calls imagination. This in turn may spark a spontaneous movement of intuition, which seeks a deeper coherence. The two work together to find and integrate clues leading to a more profound level of understanding. This occurs largely below awareness and encodes new standards of coherence that only become explicit afterwards. 

In the next post, we will present some of our personal reactions to Polanyi's exhilarating essay.

We begin to see how the scientist’s vision is formed. The imagination sallies forward, and intuition integrates what the imagination has lit upon. But a fundamental complication comes into sight here. I have acknowledged that the final sanction of discovery lies in the sight of a coherence which our intuition detects and accepts as real; but history suggests that there are no universal standards for assessing such coherence.

Copernicus criticized the Ptolemaic system for its incoherence in assuming other than steady circular planetary paths, and fought for the recognition of the heliocentric system as real because of its superior consistency. But his follower, Kepler, abandoned the postulate  of  circular  paths,  as causing  meaningless  complications  in the  Copernican  system,  and  boasted  that  by  doing  so  he  had cleansed  an Augean  stable  (Koestler,  1959, p. 334). Kepler based his first two laws on his vision  that geometrical  coherence  is the product  of  some mechanical interaction  (Koestler,  1959, p. 316), but this conception of reality underwent another radical transformation when Galileo, Descartes, and Newton  found ultimate reality in the smallest particles of matter obeying the mathematical laws of mechanics. (....)

It becomes necessary to ask, therefore, by what standards we can change the very standards of coherence on which our convictions rest. On what grounds can we change our grounds? We are faced with the existentialist dilemma: how values of our own choosing can have authority over us who decreed them.

We must look once more, then, at the mechanism by which imagination and intuition carry out their joint task.  We lift our arm and find that our imagination has issued a command which has evoked its implementation. But the moment feasibility is obstructed, a gap opens up between our faculties and the end at which we are aiming, and our imagination fixes on this gap and evokes attempts to reduce it. Such a quest can go on for years; it will be persistent, deliberative, and transitive; yet its whole purpose is directed at ourselves; it attempts to make us produce ideas. We say then that we are racking our brain or ransacking our brain; that we are cudgeling or cracking it, or beating our brain in trying to get it to work.

And the action induced in us by this ransacking is felt as something that is happening to us.  We say that we tumble to an idea; or that an idea crosses our mind; or that it comes into our head; or that it strikes us or dawns on us, or that it just presents itself to us. We are actually surprised and exclaim: Aha! when we suddenly do produce an idea. Ideas may indeed come to us unbidden, hours or even days after we have ceased to rack our brains.

Discovery is made therefore in two moves: one deliberate, the other spontaneous, the spontaneous move being evoked in ourselves by the action of our deliberate effort. The deliberate thrust is a focal act of the imagination, while the spontaneous response to it, which brings discovery, belongs to the same class as the spontaneous coordination of visual clues in response to our looking at something. This spontaneous act of discovery deserves to be recognized as creative intuition.

But where does this leave the creative imagination? It is there; it is not displaced by intuition but imbued with it. (....)

The imaginative effort can evoke its own implementation only because it follows intuitive intimations of its own feasibility (....)

The honors of creativity are due then in one part to the imagination, which imposes on intuition a feasible task, and, in the other part, to intuition, which rises to this task and reveals the discovery that the quest was due to bring forth. Intuition informs the imagination which, in its turn, releases the powers  of  intuition. (....)

When the quest has ended, imagination and intuition do not vanish from the scene. Our intuition recognizes our final result to be valid, and our imagination points to  the  inexhaustible  future manifestations of it. We return to the quiescent state of mind from which the inquiry started, but return to it with a new vision of coherence and reality. Herein lies the final acceptance of this vision; any new standards of coherence implied in it have become our own standards; we are committed to them. (....)

…[S]cientific discoveries are made in search of a reality--of a reality that is there, whether we know it or not. The search is of our own making, but the reality is not. We send out our imagination deliberately to ransack promising avenues, but the promise of these paths is already there to guide us; we sense it by our spontaneous intuitive powers. We induce the work of intuition but do not control its operations.

And since our intuition works on a subsidiary level, neither the clues which it uses nor the principles by which it integrates them are fully known. It is difficult to tell what were the clues which convinced Copernicus that his system was real. We have seen that his vision was fraught with implications so far beyond his own ken that, had they been shown to him, he would have rejected them. (....)

The solution of our problem is approaching here. (....) The deliberate aim of scientific inquiry is to solve a problem, but our intuition may respond to our efforts with a solution entailing new standards of coherence, new values. In affirming the solution we tacitly obey these new values and thus recognize their authority over ourselves, over us who tacitly conceived them.

This is indeed how new values are introduced, whether in science, or in the arts, or in human relations. They enter subsidiarily, embodied in creative action. Only after this can they be spelled out and professed in abstract terms, and this makes them appear to have been deliberately chosen, which is absurd. The actual grounds of a value, and its very meaning, will ever lie hidden in the commitment which originally bore witness to that value.

(….) The content of any empirical statement is three times indeterminate. It relies on clues which are largely unspecifiable, integrates them by principles which are undefinable, and speaks of a reality which is inexhaustible. Attempts to eliminate these indeterminancies of science merely replace science by a meaningless fiction. (....)

We should be glad to recognize that science has come into existence by mental endowments akin to those in which all hopes of excellence are rooted and that science rests ultimately on such intangible powers of our  mind.

The Creative Imagination -- by Michael Polanyi

"The Creative Imagination" by Michael Polanyi [PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES (1969) 6: 59-91] explores the role of intuition and imagination in the growth of scientific knowledge.  Due to the richness of the material, we have decided to devote two successive posts to the article.  Polanyi (1891-1976) had first hand knowledge of the scientific process: he was an esteemed physical Chemist turned philosopher of science.  He proposes here in the first part that scientific knowledge like ordinary perception depends on an internal integration of a variety of clues, many we may not be aware of. We focus on the object and only have subsidiary awareness of the clues that determine our perception; because the integration occurs internally, he calls this "personal knowledge".  In ordinary perception, this depends on the development of a coherence among our various senses.  In a similar vein in scientific endeavor, like a ball rolling down an incline, we are guided by the slope of greater coherence leading to an experience of deeper meaning.   The second part of the essay considers how the standards on which this coherence is based can change in the context of scientific work.

Polyani’s own statement in the article provides the best bridge between his view of the nature of scientific knowledge and spirituality. “ Science is based on clues that have a bearing on reality. These clues are not fully specifiable; nor is the process of integration which connects them fully definable; and the future manifestations of the reality indicated by this coherence are inexhaustible. These three indeterminacies defeat any attempt at a strict theory of scientific validity and offer space for the powers of the imagination and intuition.”  

An earlier version of the article was given as a lecture at Wesleyan University in 1965 and is available online. 

…[N]either imagination nor intuition are deemed rational ways of making discoveries. They are excluded from the logic of scientific discovery, which can deal then only with the verification or refutation of ideas after they have turned up as possible contributions to science. (....)

However…[n]o scientific discovery can be strictly verified, or even proved to be probable. (....)

There is in fact no sharp division between science in the making and science in the textbook. The vision which guided the scientist to success lives on in his discovery and is shared by those who recognize it. It is reflected in the confidence they place in the reality of that which has been discovered  and in the way in which they sense the depth and fruitfulness of a discovery.  (....)

...[T]eachers in philosophy are likely to raise their eyebrows at such a vague emotional description of scientific discovery. (....)

[Yet] Copernicus discovered the solar system by signs which convinced him. But these signs convinced  few  others.  For  the  Copernican  system  was  far  more complicated than that of Ptolemy: it was a veritable jungle of ad hoc assumptions. (....) He did not stop to consider how many assumptions he had to make in formulating his system, nor how many difficulties he ignored in doing so. Since his vision showed him an outline of reality, he ignored all its complications and unanswered  questions. 

(....) In spite of its vagueness and its extravagances, his vision was shared by great scientists like Kepler and Galileo. Admittedly, their discoveries bore out the reality of the Copernican system, but they could make these discoveries only because they already believed in the reality of that system.                         

We can see here what is meant by attributing reality to a scientific discovery. It is to believe that it refers to no chance configuration of things, but to a persistent connection of certain features, a connection which, being real, will yet manifest itself in numberless ways, inexhaustibly. It is to believe that it is there, existing independently of us, and that for that reason its consequences can never be fully predicted.

Our knowledge of reality has, then, an essentially indeterminate content: it deserves to be called a vision. (….)  

This vision, the vision of a hidden reality, which guides a scientist in his quest, is a dynamic force. At the end of the quest the vision is becalmed in the contemplation of the reality revealed by a discovery; but the vision is renewed and becomes dynamic again in other scientists and guides them to new discoveries. I shall now try to show how both the dynamic and the static phases of a scientific vision are due to the strength of the imagination guided by intuition. 

(....) I have pursued this problem for many years by considering science as an extension of ordinary perception. When I look at my hand and move it about, it would keep changing its shape, its size, and its color but for my power of seeing the joint meaning of a host of rapidly changing clues, and seeing that this joint meaning remains unchanged.  I recognize a real object before me from my joint awareness of the clues which bear upon it. (....)

We can recognize here two kinds of awareness. We are obviously aware of the object we are looking at, but are aware also--in a much less positive way--of a hundred different clues which we integrate to the sight of the object. When integrating these clues, we are attending fully to the object while we are aware of the clues themselves without attending to them. We are aware of these clues only as pointing to the object we are looking at. I shall say that we have a subsidiary awareness of the clues in their bearing on the object to which we are focally attending.

While an object on which we are focusing our attention is always identifiable, the clues through which we are attending to the object may often be unspecifiable. (....) 

But it is a mistake to identify subsidiary awareness with unconscious or preconscious awareness, or with the Jamesian fringe of awareness. …[I]t can have any degree of consciousness so long as it functions as a clue to the object of our focal attention. (....)

If science is a manner of perceiving things in nature, we might find the prototype of scientific discovery in the way we solve a difficult perceptual problem. Take for example the way we learn to find our way about while wearing inverting spectacles. …[Y]ou feel completely lost and remain helpless for days on end. But if you persist...eventually [you] can even drive a car or climb rocks with the spectacles on. (....)

The inverted image has been reconnected to other sensory clues, to touch and sound and weight. These all hang together with the image once more, and hence, though the image remains inverted, the subject can again find his way by it safely. A new way of seeing things rightly has been established. (….)

We see how the wearer of inverting spectacles reorganizes scrambled clues into a new coherence. He again sees objects, instead of meaningless impressions. (....) He has made sense out of chaos.

In science, I find the closest parallel to this perceptual achievement in the discovery of relativity. Einstein (Schilpp, 1949, p. 53) has told the story of how from the age of 16 he was obsessed by the following kind of speculations. Experiments with falling bodies were known to give the same results on board a ship in motion as on solid ground. But what would happen to the light which a lamp would emit on board a moving ship? Supposing the ship moved fast enough, would it overtake the beams of its own light, as a bullet overtakes its own sound by crossing the sonic barrier? Einstein thought that this was inconceivable, and, persisting in this assumption, he eventually succeeded in renewing the conceptions of space and time in a way which would make it inconceivable for the ship to overtake, however slightly, its own light rays. (....)

Relativity alone involves conceptual innovations as strange and paradoxical as those we make in righting an inverted vision. (....)

We generally see things as we do, because this establishes coherence within the context of our experience. So when Einstein extended his vision to the universe and included the case of a light source emitting a beam, he could make sense of what he then faced only by seeing it in such a way that the beam was never overtaken, however slightly, by its source. This is what he meant by saying that he knew intuitively that this was in fact the case. (....)

Science is based on clues that have a bearing on reality. These clues are not fully specifiable; nor is the process of integration which connects them fully definable; and the future manifestations of the reality indicated by this coherence are inexhaustible. These three indeterminacies defeat any attempt at a strict theory of scientific validity and offer space for the powers of the imagination and intuition.

This gives us a general idea of the way scientific knowledge is established at the end of an inquiry; it tells us how we judge that our result is coherent and real. But it does not show us where to start an inquiry, nor how we know, once we have started, which way to turn for a solution. (….) 

This·quest is guided throughout by feelings of a deepening coherence and these feelings have a fair chance of proving right. We may recognize here the powers of a dynamic intuition. (….)

Physics speaks of potential energy that is released when a weight slides down a slope. Our search for deeper coherence is likewise guided by a potentiality. We feel the slope toward deeper insight as we feel the direction in which a heavy weight is pulled along a steep incline. It is this dynamic intuition which guides the pursuit of discovery.(....)

But we must yet acknowledge further powers of intuition, without which inventors and scientists could neither rationally decide to choose a particular problem nor pursue any chosen problem successfully. …[T]hink of Einstein, when as a boy he came across the speculative dilemma of a light source pursuing its own ray. (....) His intuition told him that there must exist a principle which would assure the impossibility of observing absolute motion in any circumstances. Through years of sometimes despairing inquiry, he kept up his conviction that the discovery he was seeking was within his ultimate reach. (....)

The power by which such long-range assessments are made may be called a strategic intuition. (....) Without this kind of strategic intuition, he would waste his opportunities on wild goose chases and soon be out of a job. (....)  

It is a skill for guessing with a reasonable chance of guessing right…. The fact that this faculty often fails does not discredit it; a method for guessing 10% above average chance on roulette would be worth millions.

But to know what to look for does not lend us the power to find it. That power lies in the imagination.

I call all thoughts of things that are not present, or not yet present--or perhaps never to be present---acts of the imagination. (….) 

Take the example of learning to ride a bicycle. The imagination is fixed on this aim, but, our present capabilities being  insufficient,  its  execution  falls  behind.  By  straining  every nerve to close this gap, we gradually learn to keep our balance on a bicycle. (....)

This is the mechanism to which I ascribe the evocation of helpful clues by the scientist's imagination in the pursuit of an inquiry. But we have to remember here that scientific problems are not definite tasks. The scientist knows his aim only in broad terms and must rely on his sense of deepening coherence to guide him to discovery. He must keep his imagination fixed on these growing points and force his way to what lies hidden beyond them. We must see how this is done. (....)

No  quest  could  have  been  more indeterminate  in its aim than Einstein's inquiry which led to the discovery of relativity. Yet he has told how during all the years of his inquiry, "there was a feeling of direction, of going straight towards something definite. Of course," he said, "it is very hard to express that feeling in words; but it was definitely so, and  clearly to be distinguished from later thoughts about the rational form of the solution." We meet here the integration of still largely unspecifiable elements into a gradually narrowing context, the coherence of  which  has not yet become  explicit.(....)

Did Meditating Make Us Human? -- by Matt J. Rossano

Matt Rossano’s article provides an interesting contrast to our previous two posts extracting Thomas Metzinger’s article on out of body experiences. Altered states here are seen as a prelude to the evolutionary development via Baldwinian selection of working memory and eventually the ability to symbolize, which characterizes modern humans. Rossano is a professor of Psychology at University of Southeastern Louisiana University. He is a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post (Link). His recent book is SUPERNATURAL SELECTION : HOW RELIGION EVOLVED, and a list of his recent publications can be found here. The original article contains more extensive citations.

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The thesis of this article is that this commonplace activity, which I will call campfire rituals of focused attention, created an important selective pressure in the evolution of the modern human mind. Ritualized gatherings before an open fire — repeated night after night, generation after generation for thousands of years — contributed significantly, though not necessarily exclusively, to the evolution of the enhanced working memory capacity required for symbolic thinking.

The scenario is grounded in the following five propositions.

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1. Convincing evidence of symbolism in the form of ceremonial tools, artwork and grave goods appears late in the archaeological record (largely after 50,000 bp) and post-dates the emergence of anatomically modern humans.

Late emergence of symbolism

In this article, ‘symbolism’ is Peirce’s definition, arbitrary referents based on cultural convention. Peircian symbolism is what appears to have arrived late in the archaeological record and it is this that required enhanced working memory. Genetic and fossil evidence points to the emergence of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) somewhere between 200,000 and 150,000 years bp in Africa . Some have argued that the relatively sudden appearance of sophisticated tools, burial with grave goods, and image-making in the European Upper Palaeolithic signifies a ‘revolution’ in human thought and behaviour . Peircian symbolism most likely did not occur until the Upper Palaeolithic, when grave goods, sophisticated tools, image making and what appear to be purely ceremonial artifacts arrive on the archaeological scene. For the purposes of the current model, what is pivotal is that the evidence for this‘higher-level’ symbolism emerges late and post-dates the arrival of anatomically modern humans.

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2. Recent work combining cognitive science and archaeology has built a compelling case for explaining the late emergence of symbolism as the result of a fortuitous genetic mutation (or combination of mutations) that enhanced human working memory capacity.

Fortuitous Mutation (s)

The ultimate mechanism [responsible for symbolism] must come down to a fortuitous genetic mutation that reorganized brain structure and function, thus giving Homo sapiens a cognitive advantage over other archaic hominin forms . While Klein typically talks in terms of a single genetic mutation (terminology, which for simplicity’s sake, I will retain), this change could have involved a series of mutations that affected the interaction of genes and, or, their manner of expression. Coolidge & Wynn (2001...) have elaborated on Klein’s proposal, arguing that the most likely target of this mutation would have been an enhancement of working memory capacity. In this context, working memory capacity refers to the ability to hold information in mind, especially information about behavioural procedures and intended goals, in spite of interfering stimuli or response competition .

Enhanced working memory capacity, however functionally envisioned, is a prerequisite to the emergence of symbolism. Our ancestors had an enhanced capacity to recall, consciously retain and manipulate information. This enhanced working memory capacity was essential to crossing the threshold to purely arbitrary or convention-based symbolism . To understand this level of purely arbitrary reference, one must be able to hold in mind both what the signifying image is perceptually and what it means conceptually, while at the same time understanding that these two are not the same.

The exact time of emergence is less important than when this change became widespread, which, I would argue, was not until around 50,000 bp, immediately prior to the emergence of symbolism.

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3.Evolutionary developmental biology indicates that genetic adaptation can sometimes follow somatic adaptation (the Baldwin effect). Put another way, environmental conditions that require bodily adaptation (such as high-altitude conditions which require the production of more red blood cells) simultaneously create selection pressure for genetic mutations that more permanently establish the adaptive phenotypic state.

The Baldwin effect updated

Environmentally induced somatic modifications (resulting from either learning or physiological adaptation) ... become heritable changes. According to this principle, acquired traits do not directly affect genes but these traits could create or importantly contribute to selective conditions that would, in time, genetically establish them in the population.... In other words, an initially environmentally induced trait eventually became encoded and transmitted genetically. .

This could provide a model for how hominins acquired increasingly complex cognitive skills. These skills may first have appeared as novel acquired traits induced by atypical environmental demands. Then, as those demands persisted, a Baldwinian process could have led to the traits becoming genetically heritable and stabilized. Over the course of hominin evolution, the atypical environmental demands were increasingly products of hominins themselves.

Wright (2004) has recently reviewed a range of studies providing support for the process of ‘stress-directed mutagensis’, where feedback mechanisms within the organism allow environmental stressors to target specific genes that must mutate in order to surmount the stress. Though a great deal is still to be learned about how mutations arise, it is becoming increasingly clear that dismissing them as simply random is too simple.

Modifications are more likely to arise in those systems that are under selection pressure — where the adaptive range of a physiological system is under stress. Any mutation or genetic reassortment that resets the range of a physiological system to a more adaptive level would then be positively selected by environmental conditions. Thus, a population of humans relocated to higher altitudes is biased toward the expression of any mutation that permanently resets their baseline levels of red blood cell production.

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4. Neuroscience studies indicate that meditation produces short-term and long-term effects on both the structure and function of those areas of the brain closely associated with working memory and focused attention such as the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex.

Meditation and the brain

Recent brain-imaging and EEG studies have shown that areas in the frontal lobe of the brain associated with working memory and focused attention, especially the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate, are activated during meditation . [For example,] Newberg et al. (2001) found increased activation in the dorsolateral and orbital prefrontal cortices, anterior cingulate cortex, and the sensorimotor cortices of the brains of eight meditating subjects. [Moreover,] Carter et al. (2005) found that Tibetan monks experienced at one-point meditation (a type that involves focused attention on a single object) were able to exert conscious control over a typically automatic phenomenon of attention, binocular rivalry.

This accumulating body of research indicates that meditation produces long-term changes in those areas of the brain involved in attention and working memory. These areas are critical for the enhancement of working memory capacity. This enhancement may have given Homo sapiens a competitive edge over other hominins and produced the emergence of symbolism about 50,000 bp. However, it can rightly be pointed out that it seems quite unlikely that our ancestors of 100,000 years ago or more were engaging in one-point or compassionate meditation. While true, numerous other studies have shown that far more mundane memory and attention tasks also activate the same brain areas.

Numerous other studies with similarly simple cognitive demands have indicated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to be an important high-level filter of attention, sustaining cognitive energy on relevant information while suppressing the processing of and responding to irrelevant signals.

Campfire rituals practiced by our hominin ancestors need not have been as disciplined as those of Tibetan monks to have activated the brain regions important for attention and memory. However, they were probably more intensive than the tests used in typical neuroscience studies. Those most susceptible to the rituals’ physical and psychological healing effects reaped the greatest survival and reproductive advantage — a Baldwinian process. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that these conditions were unique to Homo sapiens and not a regular part of the social worlds of Neanderthals and other archaic hominins.

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5. Hypnotizability, or the ability to achieve a ritually-induced, health-enhancing, suggestibility-prone conscious state, is individually variable and heritable; and would have been fitness-enhancing in our ancestral past.

Shamanistic healing rituals

Strictly speaking, shamanism is a practice confined to cultures of the higher latitudes of Eurasia where the term originated. More broadly, however, the shaman is anyone who uses consciousness-altering ritual as a means of connecting with the spiritual world for the purpose of individual or community healing.

There is considerable evidence that shamanism (broadly defined) is humanity’s oldest form of religion. It is found in nearly all traditional societies. An increasing number of scholars agree that some of the Upper Palaeolithic cave art and artifacts reflect shamanistic rituals and, or, experiences . If so, they also suggest that shamanism pre-dates the Upper Palaeolithic, since the depiction reflects an already present system.

McClenon (1997; 2002) has marshalled considerable evidence indicating that those of our ancestors who were most susceptible to the beneficial physical and psychological effects of shamanistic rituals had a selective advantage over others in surviving illness or injury, overcoming debilitating emotional states and enduring the rigours of childbirth. Ritual healing is often highly effective for a range of maladies where psychological factors are involved, such as chronic pain, burns, bleeding, headaches, skin disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, and the discomforts and complications of childbirth .

Furthermore, only minimal verbal expression is required (if any at all) to add to the persuasive impact of the ritual (‘relax’, ‘heal’ etc.). Indeed, part of the power of spiritual healing is that it is something beyond words and logic. What is required for spiritual healing appears to be well within the behavioural and cognitive repertoire of our hominin ancestors: a belief in a healing spiritual power accessible through conscious-ness-altering ritual.

More than likely, it was the immediate positive psychological (ecstatic emotions/social bonding) and physical (placebo benefits, ‘miracles’) effects of these rituals that provided the motivation for enactment. What is critical is that these rituals required focused attention which activated those areas of the brain associated with attention and working memory.

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What made humans different?

These rituals may have been one of the few activities that consistently differentiated Homo sapiens from other contemporary hominins.

When Homo sapiens moved into Europe around 40,000 bp, it was for good. Neither Neanderthals nor cold conditions stopped them from laying claim to the entire continent. Whatever it was that changed them did not similarly affect Neanderthals. So what was the difference?

The evidence suggests that a capacity for symbolism was present in some nascent or measured form in Neanderthals and, under certain environmental conditions (such as close contact with Cro-Magnons), this capacity flowered; but apparently those conditions were not a regular aspect of the Neanderthal world prior to the Upper Palaeolithic. This again emphasizes the fact that something was different about the Homo sapiens world, something generally not present in that of other hominins.

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Why Neanderthals did not meditate

If the critical difference between Homo sapiens and other hominins was campfire rituals of focused attention, then why did Neanderthals not engage in this activity? Were they and other archaic hominins not just as likely to have been singing, chanting and encountering healing spirits around their campfires? Odd as it may seem, the answer to this seems to be no. Evidence suggests that Neanderthals had neither the time nor the energy to engage in such activities. They lived hard lives— harder, apparently, than Cro-Magnons’.

They did not invest as much as Cro-Magnons in home bases and the activities associated with them, including (and especially) communal ones involving a central fire.

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Notes

Intensified or altered states are characterized by increasingly non-rational processing and internally-directed focus ranging from fantasy to hypnagogic imagery to sensory hallucinations.

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Medical Evidence for Near Death Experiences: A Reply to Shermer - by Pim van Lommel

Dr. Pim van Lommel, one of the presenters at the Conference on Neuroscience, Consciousness, and Spirituality that was the subject of our last post, is a clinician who studies near death experiences. He and his colleagues published a landmark study in The Lancet in 2001 entitled “Near-death experiences in survivors of cardiac arrest; a prospective study in the Netherlands.” Michael Shermer, in his article "The Demon-Haunted Brain" in Scientific American, wrote that the Lancet study ‘delivered a blow’ to the view that consciousness and the brain are separable. The following post is an abridged version of Dr. van Lommel’s response to Shermer. Dr. van Lommel’s book, ENDLESS CONSCIOUSNESS will be published in English in 2010. (The references refer to the original article. Reprinted with permission of the author.)

...

We performed our prospective study in 344 survivors of cardiac arrest to study the frequency, the cause and the content of near-death experience (NDE). A near-death experience is the reported memory of all impressions during a special state of consciousness, including specific elements such as out-of-body experience, pleasant feelings, and seeing a tunnel, a light, deceased relatives, or a life review. In our study 282 patients (82%) did not have any memory of the period of unconsciousness, 62 patients (18%) however reported a NDE with all the “classical” elements. Between the two groups there was no difference in the duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, intubation, medication, fear of death before cardiac arrest, gender, religion, education or foreknowledge about NDE. More frequent NDE was reported at age younger than 60 years, more than one cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during hospital stay, and previous NDE. Patients with memory defects after lengthy and complicated CPR reported less frequent NDE.

There are several theories that should explain the cause and content of NDE. The physiologic explanation: the NDE is experienced as a result of anoxia in the brain, possibly also caused by release of endomorphines, or NMDA receptor blockade.

In our study all patients had a cardiac arrest, they were clinically dead, unconscious, caused by insufficient blood supply to the brain because of inadequate blood circulation, breathing, or both. If in this situation CPR is not started within 5-10 minutes, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die. According to this theory, all patients in our study should have had an NDE, they all were clinical dead due to anoxia of the brain caused by inadequate blood circulation to the brain, but only 18% reported NDE.

The psychological explanation: NDE is caused by fear of death. But in our study only a very small percentage of patients said they had been afraid the seconds preceding the cardiac arrest, it happened too suddenly to realize what occurred to them. However, 18 % of the patients reported NDE. And also the given medication made no difference.

We know that patients with cardiac arrest are unconscious within seconds, but how do we know that the electro-encephalogram (EEG) is flat-lined in those patients, and how can we study this?

Complete cessation of cerebral circulation is found in cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation (VF) during threshold testing at implantation of internal defibrillators. This complete cerebral ischaemic model can be used to study the result of anoxia of the brain.

...

In cardiac arrest global anoxia of the brain occurs within seconds. Timely and adequate CPR reverses this functional loss of the brain because definitive damage of the brain cells, resulting in cell death, has been prevented. Long lasting anoxia, caused by cessation of blood flow to the brain for more than 5-10 minutes, results in irreversable damage and extensive cell death in the brain. This is called brain death, and most patients will ultimately die.

In acute myocardial infarction the duration of cardiac arrest (VF) on the CCU is usually 60-120 seconds, on the cardiac ward 2-5 minutes, and in out-of-hospital arrest it usually exceeds 5-10 minutes. Only during threshold testing of internal defibrillators or during electro physiologic stimulation studies will the duration of cardiac arrest hardly exceed 30-60 seconds.

From these studies we know that in our prospective study of patients that have been clinically dead (VF on the ECG) no electric activity of the cortex of the brain (flat EEG) must have been possible, but also the abolition of brain stem activity like the loss of the corneareflex, fixed dilated pupils and the loss of the gag reflex is a clinical finding in those patients. However, patients with an NDE can report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, and memory from early childhood was possible, as well as perception from a position out and above their “dead” body. Because of the sometimes reported and verifiable out-of -body experiences, like the case of the dentures reported in our study, we know that the NDE must happen during the period of unconsciousness, and not in the first or last second of this period.

So we have to conclude that NDE in our study was experienced during a transient functional loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem. It is important to mention that there is a well documented report of a patient with constant registration of the EEG during cerebral surgery for an gigantic cerebral aneurysm at the base of the brain, operated with a body temperature between 10 and 15 degrees, she was put on the heart-lung machine, with VF, with all blood drained from her head, with a flat line EEG, with clicking devices in both ears, with eyes taped shut, and this patient experienced an NDE with an out-of-body experience, and all details she perceived and heard could later be verified. (8)

Credit: NASA, ESA, T. Megeath (University of Toledo) and M. Robberto (STScI)
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/nebula/pr2006001q/

There is also a theory that consciousness can be experienced independently from the normal body-linked waking consciousness. The current concept in medical science states that consciousness is the product of the brain. This concept, however, has never been scientifically proven. Research on NDE pushes us at the limits of our medical concepts of the range of human consciousness and the relationship between consciousness and memories with the brain.

…

Interrupting the electrical fields of local neuronal networks in parts of the cortex also disturbs the normal function of the brain, because by localized electrical stimulation of the temporal and parietal lobe during surgery for epilepsy the neurosurgeon and Nobel prize winner W. Penfield could sometimes induce flashes of recollection of the past (never a complete life review), experiences of light, sound or music, and rarely a kind of out-of-body experience. These experiences did not produce any transformation.(15-16) After many years of research he finally reached the conclusion that it is not possible to localize memories inside the brain. Olaf Blanke also recently described in Nature a patient with induced OBE by inhibition of cortical activity caused by more intense external electrical stimulation of the gyrus angularis in a patient with epilepsy (17).

The effect of the external magnetic or electrical stimulation is dependent of the amount of energy given. There may be no clinical effect or sometimes stimulation is seen when only a small amount of energy is given, for instance during stimulation of the motoric cortex. But during “stimulation” with higher energy inhibition of local cortical functions occurs by extinction of the electrical and magnetic fields resulting in inhibition of local neuronal networks (personal communication Blanke). Also in the patient described by Blanke in Nature stimulation with higher electric energy was given, resulting in inhibition of the function of the local neuronal networks in the gyrus angularis.

And when for instance the occipital visual cortex is stimulated by TMS, this results not in a better sight, but instead it causes temporary blindness by inhibition of this part of the cortex. We have to conclude that localized artificial stimulation with real photons (electrical or magnetic energy) disturb and also inhibit the constant changing electrical and magnetic fields of our neuronal networks, and so influence and inhibit the normal function of our brain.

In trying to understand this concept of mutual interaction between the “invisible and not measurable” consciousness, with its enormous amount of information, and our visible, material body it seems wise to compare it with modern worldwide communication.

There is a continuous exchange of objective information by means of electromagnetic fields (real photons) for radio, TV, mobile telephone, or laptop computer. We are unaware of the innumerable amounts of electromagnetic fields that constantly, day and night, exist around us and through us as well as through structures like walls and buildings. We only become aware of these electromagnetic informational fields the moment we use our mobile telephone or by switching on our radio, TV or laptop. What we receive is not inside the instrument, nor in the components, but thanks to the receiver the information from the electromagnetic fields becomes observable to our senses and hence perception occurs in our consciousness. The voice we hear in our telephone is not inside the telephone. The concert we hear in our radio is transmitted to our radio. The images and music we hear and see on TV is transmitted to our TV set. The internet is not located inside our laptop. We can receive at about the same time what is transmitted with the speed of light from a distance of some hundreds or thousands of miles. And if we switch off the TV set, the reception disappears, but the transmission continues. The information transmitted remains present within the electromagnetic fields. The connection has been interrupted, but it has not vanished and can still be received elsewhere by using another TV set. Again, we do not realize us the thousands of telephone calls, the hundreds of radio and TV transmissions, as well as the internet, coded as electromagnetic fields, that exist around us and through us.

Could our brain be compared with the TV set that electromagnetic waves (photons) receives and transforms into image and sound, as well as with the TV camera that image and sound transforms into electromagnetic waves (photons)? This electromagnetic radiation holds the essence of all information, but is only conceivable to our senses by suited instruments like camera and TV set.

The informational fields of our consciousness and of our memories, both evaluating by our experiences and by the informational imput from our sense organs during our lifetime, are present around us as electrical and/or magnetic fields [possible virtual photons? (18)], and these fields only become available to our waking consciousness through our functioning brain and other cells of our body.

So we need a functioning brain to receive our consciousness into our waking consciousness. And as soon as the function of brain has been lost, like in clinical death or in brain death, with iso-electricity on the EEG, memories and consciousness do still exist, but the reception ability is lost. People can experience their consciousness outside their body, with the possibility of perception out and above their body, with identity, and with heightened awareness, attention, well-structured thought processes, memories and emotions. And they also can experience their consciousness in a dimension where past, present and future exist at the same moment, without time and space, and can be experienced as soon as attention has been directed to it (life review and preview), and even sometimes they come in contact with the “fields of consciousness” of deceased relatives. And later they can experience their conscious return into their body.

Michael Shermer states that, in reality, all experience is mediated and produced by the brain, and that so-called paranormal phenomena like out-of body experiences are nothing more than neuronal events. The study of patients with NDE, however, clearly shows us that consciousness with memories, cognition, with emotion, self-identity, and perception out and above a life-less body is experienced during a period of a non-functioning brain (transient pancerebral anoxia).

...

A Watershed Event: Neuroscience, Consciousness, and Spirituality - by Robert K. Forman

Conference, July 2-4, 2008, Freiburg, Germany

This article by Robert K. Forman, of The Forge Institute, summarizes a recent and important conference on neuroscience, consciousness, and spirituality. Its purpose was "to explore methodologies of inner experience, and explore consciousness, not only from the neuroscientific point of view but from all points of view, including the transpersonal and the nondogmatic." Many presenters addressed questions that resonate with those raised by the excerpt from His Holiness the Dalai Lama's book in our prior post. For example--- in the context of quantum physics---the previous post asks if the 'apparatus' or what it detects is more real! In the future, we hope to post about some of the work described in the summary of the conference. The article was originally published by the JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, 15, No. 8, 2008, pp. 110–15. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Frieburg (Germany) was far away from my home near New York City, and I was dreading going. I had heard by way of the grapevine that there would be a number of materialistic reductionists there; as the token religionist, I wasn’t looking forward to being bludgeoned or even worse, ignored. But there we were, happily ensconced in our pleasantly courtyarded Freiburg hotel, 30 of us, mostly men, mostly scientists, and mostly non-reductionists. And all open minded about the connections between spirituality, neurophysiology and consciousness.

I was to speak last to this ‘Meeting of Experts’. I was glad, for my planned remarks were aimed primarily at the ‘materialists’ who were not there; I would have been preaching to the choir. So going last encouraged me to listen well throughout and speak to what I was hearing. And I was glad because what I was hearing was as profound, as new, and as inspiring as it was coherent. I was indeed inspired enough to offer an summary of the surprising, exciting consensus I heard over the two days.

We humanists don’t often offer hypotheses, certainly not to august bodies of scientists. But I felt emboldened. After all, the purpose of the conference was to address the questions, ‘Can a modern day neuroscientific, functionalist or emergentist model of consciousness accommodate spiritual experiences? … What would a model of consciousness have to look like that is both true to our modern scientific knowledge and phenomena reported by spiritual traditions?’ As Harold Walach, our kindly and well organized chairman, put it, we were there to explore methodologies of inner experience, and explore consciousness, not only from the neuroscientific point of view but from all points of view, including the transpersonal and the nondogmatic. Or as youthful Antoine Lutz put it, we were there to ‘take subjectivity seriously.’ So that made me, someone who studies spiritual experiences, in as good a position to hypothesize as the next fellow.

So, being welcomed and being last, I offered the following as the emerging consensus I was hearing in the group. Since it was quite well received, I offer it here as a summary of what went on. We make no claims about universality. All positions about consciousness were not represented in the room. We were all folks who are interested in and open minded about spirituality; and God knows not everyone is. So I offer it here more modestly, as an hypothesis perhaps. Or, as clear eyed Jonathan Schooler put it, as a ‘bold thesis for us to consider’.

"Absolution of the Wind", © E. Corbato, 2009 www.ecorbato.com

1. Consciousness is fundamental element of reality, like an additional dimension.

_ Jonathan Schooler, Harold Walach and many folks in private conversations suggested that consciousness may exist in itself.

_ It is outside of time, pre-linguistic, yet somehow witness to time. Pim van Lommel, the belle of the ball, studies Near Death Experiences. He described his meticulous research which found that near death experiences (NDEs) are experienced as outside of time. Ernst Pöppel suggested that consciousness forms impressions that build towards language within a 3 second window; I offered that mystical experiences are experienced as outside of time.

_ As a fundamental element of reality, consciousness is non local or spread out. It is experienced by mystics as just that, non local or spread out. NDEs are experienced as interdeterminately beyond our human body; one experiences oneself as rising beyond the body. Brian Lancaster, in a fetching discussion of the connections between neurophysiology and Kabbalah, suggested that we can move from the personal to the divine indexing system.

_ The field of consciousness is parallel in some way to the quantum vacuum field. The theory of consciousness we were developing as an independent field out of time may connects with the quantum field in some way. Perhaps the connection is on the level of ions flowing in and out of the membranes in the brain, suggested Henry Stapp in a demanding talk on the role of physics in Quantum Collapse. There was no agreement in the room on how consciousness may connect with or parallel the quantum vacuum field.

_ Jonathan Schooler, in what was probably the most creative offering of the conference, showed a video of consciousness as like wave moving through time, and suggested that mystical experiences are like ‘riding a tidal wave of consciousness.’ From what I know of mystical experiences, however, consciousness is experienced by such people as more like a field than a wave. Both Schooler and myself suggest that consciousness is whole and undivided; that for which there is movement.

2. Consciousness is mediated by the brain, not excreted by it.

_ Throughout the conference we heard phrases suggesting that consciousness is a ‘transducer’ or like a ‘radio receiver’ or a ‘relay station’.

_ Pim suggested that the brain is a ‘conveyor not producer’. Jeffrey Schwartz, with his typically vivacious energy, exhorted ‘It ain’t in the brain, it ain’t in the brain!’

_ Matthais Braeunig, a youthful member of our hosting team, said ‘consciousness takes place with the help of the brain, but is not within it. Brains’, he added, ‘are transducing consciousness’.

_ Hartmann Romer was ill; in his presentation, his alter ego suggested that there is a ‘non local correlation between consciousness and the brain’.

_ Mario Beauregard suggested that there is no one sub organ like the thalamus that is active in the spiritual process, but rather there is a complex multi dimensional process. That’s why, suggested Antoine Lutz, that in meditation we see greater coherence across large brain areas, and high ‘amplitude gamma synchronicity’. This implies that the whole brain may be involved in some way in the transducing process.

3. Consciousness is independent of brain processes. (This stems from principle 1 & 2)

_ ‘As the field of consciousness is experienced through consciousness- transducing brains,’ said Matthais Braeunig. ‘Consciousness appears to exist independently of the brain, though it remains unobservable unless transduced by brains.’

_ Most so called anomalous experiences, often ignored or ridiculed by the scientific community, point to the possibility that consciousness is independent of the brain. Distant viewing and predictive (future) viewing, were mentioned.

_ Pim’s research on Near Death Experiences, which are sometimes veridical, clearly suggests that people can have experiences even when there is effectively no brain activity.

_ Thomas Metzinger described his creative studies on Out of Body Experiences (OBEs); they suggest that human beings can have experiences beyond the body.

_ Mystical experiences sometimes carry the sense of being non local or spread out beyond the body. There is brain activity during them, as Mario Beauregard effectively described, but this sense may reinforce the claim that awareness is not limited to our bodies. As Walach suggested, mystics can be aware of themselves and of the infinite, even simultaneously, which reinforces the hypothesis that consciousness is not limited to brain or egoic processes.

4. Our ability to connect with that which is larger may be a normal state of human beings.

_ In one of the most stimulating talks of the gathering, Matt Rossano took us back to the earliest days of hominid life, when Shamans brought people to health by having them focus their attention around the fire. In effect, he said, our ability to connect with that which is larger may have been one of the distinguishing capacities of human beings, as on of the original capacities that gave early human beings an advantage over other species.

_ Over time this ability to focus on that which is beyond led to our ability to hyper-focus.

_ In this hyper focus, we lost sense of the whole as we developed more and more automatized and culturally trained cognitive patterns. Thus enculturation may have overwhelmed our early ability to open to what is larger.

_ Thus as Arthur Deikman points out elsewhere, meditation may serve as a de automatization process, making it a way to recover that which is more fundamentally ours. Metzinger said effectively the same thing when saying that the ‘first step is to let go of all worldviews,’ helping us recover our lost sense of a connection to something larger. Or, as Kabbalah says, according to Brian Lancaster, we should ‘untie the knots from the self, step out of the structure we’ve created.’

Astonishingly enough, I found myself thinking, even surrounded by those hard headed scientists, in religious terms. Brahman, the non dual, panentheistic principle that is one core notion of Hinduism, is said to exist independently of the cosmos and of the person. Like our theory of consciousness, it is its own kind of stuff, a kind of dimension all its own. But, like consciousness, it forms itself into form, and comes to be ‘formed Brahman,’ much as consciousness comes to be formed as an individual. Thus formless Brahman, like the consciousness in this hypothesis, exists simultaneously and hidden within its formed aspect. The ‘formless within form.’ Finally our consciousness, which Hinduism calls Atman, can come to experience its true nature as Brahman; much as one might experience the independent domain of consciousness in certain anomalous experiences.

As I said, our emerging hypothesis was well received. We knew, and spoke of, the many, many questions that it opens up. Some that we named were:

- How might the body transduce consciousness?

- Can consciousness exist verifiably outside of brain/person? If so in what sense?

- Might there be any way to measure consciousness outside the brain? We jokingly asked if there might be a ‘consciousness o- meter?’

- Where does the domain of consciousness come from?

There are countless more.

Yet the feeling in the final go round was, I felt, one of sincere satisfaction. We had found a community, many said, always a gratifying sense. We had heard a cascade of excellent talks. One said ‘I did not have a single moment of boredom.’ But even more important, several mentioned that we seemed to be part of a larger movement that may lead to a paradigm shift, one which may lead to a new and fascinating approach to science and our larger worldview. We were encountering the possibility of a science that might take seriously the full range of experiences and in a non-dualistic way.

Jeffrey Schwartz captured the moment’s seriousness and importance that I think we all felt. ‘The implications here are enormous; they are political as well as scientific. And they are important. So as Franklin said when the founding fathers signed the declaration of independence on this day 232 years ago, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.”’

Whether or not that group turns out to be that important, the gathering was for many of us the first in which a group articulated a fascinating, bold and possibly true new approach that could tie together East and West, spirituality and science, brain and inner experience and could begin to account for anomalous experiences. I was honoured to be part of it.