The Biology and Psychology of Belief

Just as some leading theoretical physicists are challenging current scientific paradigms regarding the 'hard problem' of consciousness - i.e., whether, in fact, 'mind' arises from 'matter' - so, too, some leading biologists are challenging scientific paradigms regarding how living matter interacts at the molecular, cellular and organic level with the environment. "We don't know how consciousness works, or what it does," says controversial biologist, Rupert Sheldrake. "(It) is called 'the hard problem,' because there is no known reason why we should be conscious at all, or exactly how the mind works."

In the attached video, The Biology of Perception, developmental biologist and epigeneticist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, convincingly explains how at a cellular level an organism is 'conscious' of its environment and shapes its behaviour. In doing so, he debunks the widely-accepted Darwinian principle that "random mutations" are preferentially selected over generations to fill environmental niches. Rather, he makes a succinct argument that "adaptive mutations" are triggered at a cellular level in response to the environment inhabited by a particular organism. It is these "adaptive" rather than "random" mutations winnowed out by "the survival of the fittest" which are, according to Lipton, presumably, the drivers behind the diversity of organisms we encounter.

In a clear and readily understandable (if lengthy) analysis, Dr. Lipton emphasizes recent breakthroughs in molecular biology that demonstrate how it is environmental signals, cellular membranes and proteins, rather than DNA, which dictate how an organism behaves. In this new biological paradigm - analogous, in its way, to the new paradigms created by a deeper understanding of quantum physics - it is a cell's membranes, rather than its genetic material, which are seen as "the brains" of the organism.

Further, at a macro level, Lipton convincingly demonstrates that we can consciously select the environmental 'field' in which we live, thereby affecting our health, growth and well-being at both our cellular and organic levels. (The alternative being that we 'unconsciously' select a sub-optimal environment that is biologically, cognitively and spiritually stressful and injurious.)

In short, Dr. Lipton makes the scientific case for the primacy of evolving perceptions which shape our being, both mentally and materially. According to his model, "perception" not only "controls" behaviour, but, additionally, "perception" both "controls" and "rewrites" our genes.

In the accompanying video, Dr. Lipton's colleague, Rob Williams, closes the ontological circle, by demonstrating how our "beliefs" control our "perceptions".  "Your beliefs," he observes, "determine your biological and behavioural reality."

Alan Wallace: Physics, Consciousness, Buddhism and Science

Alan Wallace, Ph.D

Alan Wallace is a strong voice in scientifically and spiritually progressive circles, urging Western science to broaden its perspective to include the study of consciousness itself, as well as the psychological insights of Eastern wisdom traditions.

A trained physicist and Buddhist practitioner, Wallace holds a doctorate in religious studies, and urges 'mind scientists' - cognitive psychologists, neurologists and neuroanatomists, etc. - to look beyond their current scientific paradigm which has almost completely avoided the subject of consciousness itself, labeling it as 'subjective' and, therefore, beyond the pale of objective, empirical scientific inquiry.

"What people often fail to recognize, however," says Wallace, "is that the very category of the physical, of the mental, is a category that we humans have constructed . . .  and reconstructed over the last four hundred . . . years of science."

"We have created (and) devised, based upon our modes of observations, of measurement (and) of experimentation, exactly what the parameters of the 'physical' are. What is matter? What is not matter? These are human definitions," he points out, "and these definitions have evolved as science has evolved."

"The 'physical' (or) matter, is precisely what the physical sciences are good at measuring," Wallace observes. "But the category, once again, is a physical construct. So the notion that everything in the universe must fit into a construct that we human beings have devised, and then insisting, moreover, that everything in the entire universe must fit into a construct as we have devised it now . . . strikes me as idolatry."



"Thus far," says Wallace, "mainstream science overwhelmingly has assumed that consciousness simply emerges in some as yet inexplicable way from complex configurations of chemical compounds engaging or intereacting with electricity. But no one has proposed exactly how this occurs. "

"No one has proposed with any degree of confidence, or any empirical confirmation," he notes, "when in the evolution of life on this planet consciousness first arose and what the conditions were for its arising. Nor do we know in the developoment of the human fetus inside the mother's womb . . . when consciousness first emerges, or what the necessary and sufficent conditions for it doing so (are)."

"The whole of science over the last four hundred years," he observes, "has never devised any sophisticated means for directly observing states of consciousness, the mind, mental processes. Especially over the last century, the overwhelming majority of scientific inquiry into the nature of the mind has been indirect, focusing on what scientists are good at looking at, the physical, the objective the quantifiable."

"Certainly scientists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists will interrogate others about their subjective experiences," he concedes." But, as one cognitive psychologist recently commented, we do not take other people's reports of their subjective experiences as facts, we simply take them as reports, as data. The same cognitive psychologist claimed that all of our subjective experiences consists of 'hallucinations.'"

So," he notes, "we are to rely then more on the metaphysical principles of materialism, than we are upon our own immediate experience. As if our own immediate experiences doesn't count and we should rely rather on the scientists' observations, as if they have some special access; and upon their metaphysical assumptions that everything must boil down to matter and the emergent properties of matter.

"Th(is) appeal to the authority of a certain community is exactly the mindset of medieval scholasticism," Wallace points out. "It is exactly the mindset that the pioneers of the scientific revolution revolted against."

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 As a polymath scientific advocate who endeavors to bridge the gap between Western scientific paradigms and the trove of psychological insights arising from Eastern wisdom traditions, Wallace tries to build a bridge between two of the most prolific knowledge systems that humanity has developed. He points out that Eastern traditions have always been focused first and foremost on the mind and consciousness, while Western Science has concentrated almost exclusively on the physical - matter, energy, time and space.

On the other hand, "Buddhist contemplatives and others," he notes, "have found multiple dimensions, have found a dimension of consciousness that lies beneath our ordinary psyche - the conscious and subconscious minds - called the substrate consciousness. (A consciousness) which is blissful, luminous, non-conceptual and does not arise from matter, does not arise from neuronal activity in the brain, does not arise from matter of any kind. It is not material, it does not arise from the material. It is conditioned by matter, but does not arise form matter. A deeper dimension of consciousness.

"All that we know of the universe," Wallace notes, "is what the universe reveals to us in response to our questions and our systems of measurement."

Part Two of Wallace's interview, in which Wallace expands upon the fascinating intersection of cutting edge physics, metaphysics and Buddhist thought, continues below.

'Mindsight' and the Science of Mental Well-Being

"Mindsight is the ability of the human mind to see itself. It is a powerful lens through which we can understand our inner lives with more clarity, tranform the brain, and enhance our relationships with other."

-- Dr. Dan Siegel --

In one of the more insightful videos in an already insightful series of Google  TechTalks (below), Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., Co-Director of the UCLA Medical Center's Mindful Awareness Research Center and Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, goes where many other mind scientists refuse to go and defines what the 'mind' is. He then takes his audience through a fascinating and informative tour of the brain, highlighting how 'mindfulness' enhances brain function and increases mental and physical health.

Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.

"You'd be amazed," says Dr. Siegel, "but a lot of people live there lives just having thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes, having hopes and dreams, and memories and perceptions - all the stuff we can use to describe the mind - but they haven't developed the capacity to actually observe those mental activities as the flow of energy and information, as the mind itself."

"That process of being able to see mental activity with more clarity and then modify it with more efficacy is something you can name with the word 'mindsight,' he says, defining 'mindsight' as "the ability to actually see your mind, not just have one."

"When you look at different areas of research what you find is that when 'mindsight' is present, various ways of understanding mental health are also present. There is something about being able to see and influence your internal world that creates more health."

 Dr. Siegel, a developmental psychiatrist by training, then takes his audience through the paradigm-shifting case of the family of a woman whose middle pre-frontal cortex was permanently damaged in a tragic car accident; a woman who, in essence, said that she had "lost her soul."

Pre-Frontal Cortex

Siegel describes how the middle pre-frontal cortex of the brain regulates the body, attunes communication, optimizes the flow of emotional balance, inhibits fear, gives an individual the ability to pause before acting (response flexibility), and gives the individual insight (auto-noetic consciousness), self-knowing awareness, the capacity for empathy, the capacity for morality, as well as compassion and intuition, or introception (the ability to 'be in touch with the feelings of the body' that controls the individual's ability to have empathy).

"A healthy mind emerges from integrated systems. Integration, (being) very clearly defined as the linkage of differentiated parts," says Siegel. "So that when you have a nervous system that is integrated you get these nine functions," both in the individual and the family, as well as in larger groups.

In the practice of mindful meditation, notes Siegel, there is a 2,500 year tradition of specific mental training to develop mindfulness traits, and a tradition which is designed to develop all nine systems, centered in the middle pre-frontal cortex. "We have every reason to believe that what you are doing in (practicing meditation), says Siegel, "is strengthening the integrative fibers of the brain, in particular the middle pre-frontal areas."

Thus, he concludes, practicing meditation affects both the ability to approach problem areas in life that the meditator once withdrew from, as well as  improving his or her the immune system. "But," he cautions, "(t)he mind uses the brain to create itself, and if the pathways aren't there, the mind can't do it."

Rupert Sheldrake on 'The Extended Mind'

"We don't know how consciousness works, or what it does," says controversial biologist, Rupert Sheldrake. "This is one of the things which in science is called 'the hard problem,' because there is no known reason why we should be conscious at all, or exactly how the mind works."

"What I'm going to suggest," says Sheldrake, in a fascinating Google TechTalk, "is that our minds are field-like, that they are not confined to the inside of the head, that they spread out into the environment around us. And because our minds are extended beyond our brains, they can have effects at a distance."

"I'm suggesting, he says "that minds are field-like and spread out beyond brains in a similar way to the way that magnetic fields spread out beyond magnets, cell phone fields spread out beyond cell phones, and the Earth's gravitational field stretches out far beyond the Earth. These fields are within and around the systems that they organize, and I think the same is true of our brains."

Taking vision as an example, Sheldrake suggests that the mind is more than just the bio-chemical processes within the brain, that what we 'see' is not just an internal re-creation of an externality within the brain, but rather that the mind projects what we 'see' out to where it 'exists' in space-time.

Rupert Sheldrake

"I'm suggesting," says Sheldrake, "our whole visual experience of the world is projected out to where it seems to be. Our minds are projecting out all that we see.  So vision is a two-way process, light coming in and the outward projection of images. This, I suggest happens through . . . a perceptual field. . . . It is a field phenomenon, and in a sense your mind reaches out to 'touch' what you are looking at. The image of what you are seeing is superimposed on what is really there."

Because of this 'superimposition,' Sheldrake, who has developed a much larger theory of consciousness and what he calls 'morphic fields,' suggests that by looking at an object we can affect that object. In recounting a series of innovative experiments involving, amongst other phenomena, 'the sense of being stared at,' Sheldrake makes a convincing argument that the mind is, indeed, larger and more encompassing than the mere physical brain.

Einstein called the quantum phenomenon of 'non-locality' - or the entanglement of particles at a distance - "spooky." One wonders what he would have made of Sheldrake's findings. Would the preeminent scientist of the 'New Physics' have found Sheldrake's results 'spookier' still, or would it perhaps have spurred the great theorist on to bridge the continuing divides between quantum theory and relativity?

The 'Hard Problem' of Consciousness

Due to radical advances in brain imaging technologies - improved electroencephelogram (EEG),  positive-emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computer tomography (SPECT) - it is now relatively easy to find out 'what' is going on in the brain at any point in time. What remains elusive is 'why' what is going on is, in fact, going on.

"Most neurophysiologists," says philosopher John Hick, Ph.D., "work on some highly specialized area of brain research and are not particularly interested in the philosophical issue, as they see it of the relationship between brain and consciousness." The 'easy problem,' according to Hicks, "is to trace precisely what is going on in the brain when someone is consciously perceiving, thinking, willing, experiencing some emotion, creating a work of art, etc." The 'hard problem', he notes, "is to find out what consciousness actually is and how it is caused."

The 'orthodox' position of most mind science researchers and theorists is that the brain generates consciousness bio-chemically, even though no specific neural correlate (a related area of the brain, or a 'nerve center') has been found for the phenomenon of conscious itself. This 'materialist' view of the origination of consciousness "is encouraged by the fact that it is possible to trace, with increasing precision, the neural correlates of conscious episodes," Hick observes.

Yet, despite a plethora of data detailing what areas of the brain are associated with which conscious (and/or unconscious) experiences, Hick notes that it is a mistake in logic to assume that the vast body of correlations speaks at all to the question of causation. Moreover, he points to a growing number of neuroscientists and contemporary philosophers of the mind who hold to a contrarian view, even if they reject the admissibility of introspective and subjective evidence into the question of just 'what' consciousness is on scientific grounds.

Hick, himself, is critical of both camps; but he is particularly so in respect of those dogmatic scientists and philosophers that insist that the almost 1:1 correlation of brain activity and conscious experience is proof that the former causes the latter.

"The question, Hick observes, "is how a conscious experience can be identical with a physical event in the brain, as distinguished from being precisely correlated with it; and to assume that the correlation constitutes identity simply begs that question. The belief that they are identical is not an experimentally established fact or the conclusion of a logically cogent argument but an affirmation of naturalistic faith. . . ."

"(W)ithin the parameters of normal science," he notes, "there is no possible observation or experiment that could ever decisively contradict mind- brain identity if it is false, and accordingly it is not a scientific hypothesis. In moving from examples of two apparently different physical objects or events being the same object or event differently described to the idea that brain and consciousness are related in the same way, we have moved from a scientific hypothesis to a theory that is in principle unfalsifiable."

There is no way short of introducing the scientifically dubious claims of parapsychology to prove that the materialist/rationalist school is wrong, Hick notes. (The ability to demonstrate that a theory is wrong, being one of the tests that all truly "scientific" theories must meet in order for them to be considered as being truly "scientific.") And, since "there is no way in which the idea that an electro-chemical event and a moment of consciousness are identical is falsifiable if false," Hick cannot help but conclude that "(t)he identity thesis is a theory stemming from a presupposed naturalistic philosophy, (and is) not (therefore) a scientific hypothesis."

Not that this resolves the chicken-egg question of whether consciousness or bio-chemistry is the first factor in the causal chain that forms, and informs, our conscious experience. It is equally impossible, again short of reliance on subjective parapsychology, Hick notes, to demonstrate the separate existence of consciousness, in and of itself.

Therefore, he concludes, "there is, surely, more than just a gap that a more complete knowledge of the brain may one day bridge, because no knowledge of the workings of the neural networks, however complete, can convert correlation into identity." Rather, "in spite of being so widely assumed within our culture, that mind-brain identity is a scientifically established fact, Hick states, "its status is that of an article of naturalistic faith." And it is, thus, exceedingly difficult, he points out, for philosophy "to avoid the conclusion at which so many neuroscientists have arrived, namely, that the nature of consciousness is a mystery."