Irreducible Mind fills a much needed gap

My review of Irreducible Mind is out with the latest issue of Skeptic.
I will post the review somewhere in due time, but for the moment I just want to make a few comments about this book, from a slightly different angle than what I say in the review. It's a negative review, of course, but there are good reasons to be even more scathing and angry at such a book (which is exactly what I plan to do here). This is all the more so that Irreducible Mind (henceforth IM), as far as I know, only had positive reviews until now, and only in pro-paranormal venues. (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). There is actually one review of this book I think would be worth reading, but I have no access to the journal in which it was published. This is the following:
Cardeña, E. (2007). The truly astonishing hypothesis. [Review of the book Irreducible Mind]. Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 52 (No. 49), Article 5. Retrieved December 7, 2007, from the PsycCRITIQUES database.

Well, if anyone has access to PsycCRITIQUES, feel free to send me one copy. Otherwise I'll just ask Etzel Cardena myself one of these days.

So yeah, this book was increasingly being presented, in woo woo land, as a sort of upcoming revolution in the humdrum universe of sheepishly mainstream psychologists and neuroscientists (who are mainly materialists by default, obviously not realizing the inconsistencies of such an obsolete position, stupid as they are). You see, mainstream scientists (i.e. not crackpots) have failed to provide evidence that the brain is at all involved in the production of consciousness and mental states. What IM shows however, through more than 800 pages of marshalling irrefutable evidence, is that the brain merely transmits consciousness. Or filters it (whatever that means). So there is a conflict, you see, a controversy between the productive theory, and the transmissive theory of mind-brain relationships. Isn't that great? Every side of the debate has something to bring to the table, and boy, do scientists looove a cool controversy to resolve!

This is of course ridiculous, there is no debate at all. But the "transmissive" "theory" is actually taken absolutely seriously by a number of people nowadays. Mostly crackpots, which we'll meet again and again on this blog. Nonetheless, this idiotic "theory" is totally legitimate,we are told, because William James himself held such a view. William James! That's an impressive endorsement, of course, but it doesn't really tell us what the "transmissive" approach is actually supposed to be, does it? Surely the explanation is somewhere in the book. Well, unfortunately, it isn't, and it is clear that the authors don't care at all about what exactly this "transmissive" theory really entails. And this is the crucial thing to realize about IM and the agenda behind it. It's just like the Intelligent Design creationist movement feels no need to explain what "intelligent design" actually is and how it works: the authors behind IM don't need to explain what they think is being "transmitted" through the brain, how it is being "transmitted", and from where (note also the coincidental use of the word "irreducible" in the book's title, maybe that rings a bell). Well, theory and mechanisms are just not the point of Irreducible Mind anyway. The real point is to somehow acknowledge the discoveries and fabulous progress allowed by the neurosciences and related disciplines (only an idiot or a liar could do otherwise), while at the same time saying that this is "not the whole story". In other words, the materialistic-reductionistic model is not as wrong as it is incomplete. By doing so, you can still allow your healthy dosis of woo, soul-stuff and Jeezus into the equation that was built by serious and hard working people, and someday, hopefully, maybe get students to learn about the controversy between psychical research, religion and actual science. This "not the whole story" thing is an extremely effective (and boring) ploy that I encounter again and again. There is not a single argument in the world that cannot be complemented, if not refuted, by the very cheap statement "you might be right, but this is not the whole story". Hey, you can actually write more than 800 pages with such a brilliant strategy. The deluded love it, as it's not really important that they don't have the whole story either. They simply like it when they don't understand something, which is why psi believers make so great scientists nowadays.

Well, that's the message, folks, there's nothing else in there. The authors of IM are simply deep into the explanatory gap, up to their neck, and they have no idea of how to get out. Nor do they really want to, of course, for it really feels good down there, it's all cozy and warm, bathing in your own tedious imaginary world, full of ignorance and smugness, without actually accomplishing anything of value in the real world. Mental causation, yeah, that's the problem we're told, that's the real issue. You cannot explain it without woo, and, well, you cannot explain woo without more woo. That's all there is in the book, and it can be formalized as follows:

Explanatory Gap + Psychic Phenomena + Tribute to Frederic Myers = Quantum Babble + Whitehead

Don't ask for more theoretical details, there aren't any in the book. Overall, it really reminds me of the title Richard Dawkins gave to the final chapter of The God Delusion: "a much needed gap". Apparently, as Dawkins found out, it is not uncommon for book reviews to state things such as "this book fills a much needed gap". While this is of course funny, it actually does apply perfectly to IM. Indeed, its authors need the gap they have made up, as their main business is to pretend there is a need to fill it.

There is much more to say about IM and its authors, but for the moment try to grab a copy of the current issue of Skeptic and read my nasty review. If you don't have access to that excellent magazine, ask me for a reprint.

One last comment, something else about the "transmissive" theory. I've noticed that my fellow infidel and NDE-realist Keith Augustine has been caught in a discussion of this very idea. You can read it there in the comments, although I wouldn't really recommend you spend too much time there. The point is that Keith tries to defend the "productive" theory against a horde of believers, and in doing so provides an analogy he thinks might be effective in conveying the fallacy behind the "transmissive" theory. It all started with another analogy involving the Mars Rover, and here's what Keith wrote:

"Perhaps an analogy is appropriate here. Let's say we have two separate, interacting things: A Predator drone and the remote pilot controlling it from a distance. The drone is captured and its captors start fiddling with its transmitter/receiver. What's the worst the captors can do to the remote pilot, miles away? They can destroy the drone's camera, making it blind. The person controlling the drone will no longer be able to see the environment around the drone. They can destroy the microphone, making it deaf, and again, the radio controller will no longer be able to hear what is going on. Ditto if the wires connecting the camera and microphone to the transmitter are severed. Information from the senses has been cut off. Next, suppose that the wires connecting the receiver to the drone's engines are severed. Now the pilot cannot even blindly control the drone. It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism."

Well ok, sure. But this is a convoluted way to address a simple problem. Indeed, the "transmissive" theory is unwarranted simply because it is useless to account for the facts. It is an inacceptable violation of Occam's razor, and the only way to address it is with similarly idiotic explanations. What causes crop-circles? Well, there is evidence that some of them are human made, but this does not mean that aliens, from their spaceship, have not taken control of those humans in order to produce their oeuvres. I call this the "middleman" theory of crop-circles. Show me the evidence against it. (it's fun, you can apply the unnecessary logic of the "transmissive" theory of mind-brain relationships to just about any theory or event or fact observed in the real world, try it for yourself! Quine would have loved it!).