Dear Friends of Developmental Philosophy,
At the August meeting of our monthly Zoom group, psychologist and consciousness researcher Ed Kelly presented “Empirical Support for Evolutionary Panentheism.”
Ed Kelly is a research professor in the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, where he studies phenomena that resist explanation by the standard neuroscientific account of mind. He is the lead author of Irreducible Mind, Beyond Physicalism, and Consciousness Unbound, all produced under the auspices of the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research, and in 2020 he received the Society for Psychical Research’s Myers Memorial Medal.
Ed and Steve arrived at closely related philosophical positions from very different starting points—Steve through philosophy and theories of social change, Ed through fifty years of scientific research into phenomena that physicalism says cannot happen. His talk makes the case that the evidence against physicalism is now strong enough to require a larger picture of mind and cosmos, and that after decades at the margins, the tide is finally turning.
Jump to any section:
- 0:30 How Ed Kelly found Steve McIntosh’s work
- 2:22 The civilizational crisis behind both projects
- 6:03 What physicalism is, and where it came from
- 11:02 Ed’s path: Harvard, J.B. Rhine, and Duke
- 14:46 Inside the Division of Perceptual Studies at UVA
- 16:32 The Esalen seminar and the plan to replace physicalism
- 28:29 Irreducible Mind: what an unaided brain cannot explain
- 36:08 Beyond Physicalism, and the turn to evolutionary panentheism
- 41:10 The fourth book: actuality, potentiality, and “quantum land”
- 45:26 Social acupuncture, outreach, and the turning tide
- 51:18 Q&A with Steve McIntosh: the tactics of changing minds
- 1:00:20 Audience Q&A: telepathy research, the placebo effect, and the next generation
Watch the full talk and Q&A here: https://youtu.be/yxMoK3O9JYg
Click here to join Steve McIntosh’s monthly Zoom group and to receive Zoom instructions:
https://www.developmentalphilosophy.org/join-steve-mcintoshs-monthly-zoom-group/
