The uselessness of non-materialist theories of reality

Last weekend I took part in the Beyond the Brain conference, run by the Scientific and Medical Network, a venerable organisation to which I’m proud to belong. Their annual conference gathers together leading scientists, philosophers and paranormal investigators who are committed to venturing beyond materialist theories of consciousness into a new post-materialist paradigm.

Somehow, the hope is, everything will be better in this new paradigm. Materialism has led humanity into an atomized cul-de-sac, but after ‘the shift’ we will be re-born and re-connected to each other and to the cosmos.

Last year, the SMN launched the ‘Galileo Commission’ — a report by its members calling for a shift to a post-materialist worldview that could take account of phenomena like ESP, near-death experiences, mystical experiences, and so on.

The forward by Iain McGilchrist reads:

Nowadays science is an industry, practised factory-fashion, with huge empires, awards and egos at stake, and dependent on vastly expensive machinery. No young scientist now dares step out of line if he or she wants a career, and the more established ones have everything to lose by doing so. As a result, true science is practised less and less. It takes huge moral commitment and courage to think less narrowly; yet without thinking differently no great discoveries are made. Most of the great discoveries of science of the past were made by independent individuals working with only basic equipment and often alone.

People have been heralding the end of materialism and the dawn of a new paradigm for quite a while. The ancestor of the Scientific and Medical Network is an organization called the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded in 1882 and included some of the greatest thinkers of the late Victorian era, like William James and Marie Curie. The SPR sought to prove that consciousness was not confined to the physical brain, that it could connect minds through telepathy, and survive death, then communicate with earthlings from beyond the grave.

It had a similar millenarian faith — soon, very soon, humanity will shift out of the materialist cul-de-sac into a luminous new age of mass telepathy and communication with the dead. We will evolve into ‘superhumanity’ — becoming immortal beings capable of transcending time, space and death. A similar belief was very strong in the 1960s — here comes the Age of Aquarius! Then in the 1980s — the Age of Aquarius is definitely coming! Then in 2012 — here comes the Harmonic Convergence! It’s now 2022, and as I put it before, dude, where’s my paradigm shift?

I am basically on Team Post-Materialism. Materialism doesn’t really explain consciousness at all — it simply ignores it, or calls it an epiphenomenon. Seeing as the only thing we know for sure is that we’re conscious, and we experience everything through our consciousness, it’s amazing that a theory that ignores consciousness and has no explanation for it has lasted this long.

I also get the emotional and spiritual appeal of non-materialist theories of consciousness. They fit better with older religious or spiritual ideas — that we have an immortal soul, that we are connected in spirit to one another and to the universe, that what we think and do matters, somehow, to God or the cosmos.

On the other hand, it strikes me that the main reason for the stubborn survival of the materialist thesis and the failure of post-materialist theories to gain dominance is not the craven fear of the scientific establishment, but the fact that non-materialist theories are useless.

I mean that literally. Materialism may be wrong in important respects, but it nonetheless proved incredibly useful in the inventions and medical breakthroughs it inspired. The materialist theory of the body led to huge advances in medicine. The materialist theory of physics led to the steam engine and the computer, the jet -plane and the space shuttle. We owe the entire technological revolution of the last 300 years to the materialist theory. Without it we’d still believe in Galenic humours and sympathetic magic, and life expectancy would still be 40.

What useful predictions or inventions does a post-materialist worldview lead to? ‘Telepathy is real’. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But we haven’t managed to prove it and make it generally available. Telepathy has not proven of much use to the human race, compared to, say, e-mail. ‘We have an immortal soul’. I hope so — this belief has been deeply consoling and meaningful to me. But it’s what humans have always believed. It doesn’t lead to significant new inventions or predictions.

I suspect Iain McGilchrist might say I am being ‘too left-brained’ in my insistence on the usefulness of a theory. I would retort, what actual use is his theory of ‘left-brained’ and ‘right-brained’? Has it led to any significant predictions or inventions?

There is also an assumption that if we ‘flip’ into a post-materialist worldview, we will become kinder, wiser, happier, calmer, less addicted to materialist desires, less exploitative of our environment, more in harmony with the universe.

God that would be nice!

And maybe there’s some truth in it. I guess I had a ‘flip’ experience and it did make me happier, calmer, less obsessed with status, more trusting in the universe.

But there are already billions of people in the world who hold non-materialist theories of the universe — 200 million American Christians, 1.4 billion Hindu and Muslim Indians. Are they treating the environment better? Are they consuming less? Anyone who thinks a spiritual view of nature will automatically lead to us treating it better should visit the Ganges, a holy river so polluted it’s dangerous to bathe in.

I used to think that was the whole game: get my culture to wake up and move beyond a materialist worldview. Now I’m not so sure. Studying the history of New Age spirituality has helped me see that holding a post-materialist metaphysics is no guarantee at all of a person’s wisdom or basic ethical behaviour.

So what does come next?

The two most exciting areas of technological innovation at the moment are genetic editing and artificial intelligence. Together, they’re leading to a new era of digital biology, where humans and computers shape life into new forms. Is this the triumph of a reductionist, materialist worldview?

I’m not so sure. If it’s materialism, it’s a long way from the clunky physicalist materialism of the industrial era. Everything is now information. We are information, and we control information. We are streams of information connecting to each other and to the universe.

Is this a materialist or an idealist worldview? Democritus or Plato? It seems to me something in between — something new and unexpected. A theory we are just beginning to discover.

Check out the SMN’s excellent YouTube channel here. Meanwhile, my friend and co-researcher Oliver Robinson, who has worked at the SMN, puts it to me that relativity theory is non-materialist and non-materialist theories of psychology and therapy (mindfulness, CBT) have proved very useful indeed. Latter is certainly true, former is above my pay-grade!