So, I bought the book (Irreducible Mind) and read the first chapter. I’m happy to take part in a discussion on this, but I warn you in advance, I don’t “buy” the argument. Perhaps it is my turn to play the “curmudgeon”! I get that some of you are exploring this kind of “transmissive” model for human consciousness - @johnnydavis54, you mentioned it in our discussion on the Human Potential the other day. I am a pretty open guy overall, as you all know, but my own theoretical tendencies are closer to Searle (towards whom Kelly is rather dismissive insofar as his ideas about consciousness as emergent are concerned) than Kelly. I agree that Searle’s stance is incomplete - nobody has a complete theory of consciousness right now - but I do not reject the “productive” argument in favour of a different model.
That does not mean, however, that I reject the numinous, out of body experiences, telepathy or other so-called psi phenomena. I don’t have an explanation for these, but I don’t think that they are inconsistent, as Kelly claims, with what I would call the productive-emergent model. For me, the “transmission” model takes us right back into the heart of cartesian mind-body duality, that I personally believe is one of the root causes of much that is wrong with the world today, at least in its popular manifestation (as embedded in western religious thinking, but not so much in what we tend to call eastern religious practices - Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, in particular., but also embedded in much of contemporary ideas about the world). I am open to the idea that I have misread Kelly, but I am not particularly inclined to adopt a cartesian framework any time soon… I find the discussion of the Integral interesting because I believe it might offer an alternative to cartesian approaches, although there are elements of the discussion around the Integral that do worry me (the insistence on the Absolute, for example). But that is maybe a discussion for another time.
I suppose I am worried that our theoretical stances might get in the way of the open discussions we have been having. And maybe I am simply projecting my own fears in saying that. I have so much respect for everyone here. It certainly isn’t necessary that I be involved in every discussion either - I am rather too busy to do so anyway.