General Discussion: Science, Psi, and the Integral Map

Written by Colin Bigelow

Dean and Stuart waste no time in jumping into the heart of this extraordinary conversation. As Stuart shares from Dean’s book The Conscious Universe, psychic phenomena (or “psi”) are so well-documented that the majority of researchers are no longer engaged with proving that they exist—the data clearly show that they do, so researchers are now focusing more on the details of how psi functions. This statement quickly leads to a series of very interesting questions, including: Just what is “psi” anyway? And, if psi has been scientifically demonstrated to be “real,” why on earth haven’t I heard about it?

Dean and Stu define psi as an umbrella term that includes telekinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, psychic healing, remote viewing, and precognition (among other things). As they discuss, the reason why research supporting the existence of psi isn’t more widely acknowledged is a classic “all quadrant” problem, with intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social forces all playing a part in the overall situation. For example: funding for psi research is often hard to come by (social), popular opinion in both scientific and lay populations is that psi is either not real or “the work of the devil” (cultural), and both of these collective forces will in turn affect individuals’ personal beliefs about psi (intentional) and how they act on those beliefs in day-to-day life (behavioral). As Dean and Stu explain, the research supporting psi and parapsychology is out there, but for most people it remains largely unknown due to the difficulty of getting knowledge to “stick” in all four quadrants.

As Dean readily admits, there are difficulties in performing scientific experiments with psi that other disciplines don’t have to face—such as the fact that the beliefs of the people involved in administering and performing a given experiment appear to affect its outcome. But, he continues, the fact that we don’t yet understand the details of how psi works doesn’t change that fact that something appears to be happening—and whatever that something is, it can be repeated to a statistically significant degree.

An Integral Approach to knowledge acquisition would support the use of an Integral Methodological Pluralism, which seeks to honor and acknowledge the methods of inquiry in as many domains of human investigation as possible. Each of the four quadrants has different methods of gathering data, and the question is not which quadrant produces the “really real” data, but how can we honor the fact that reality discloses different truths depending on how you look at it? Particularly with the investigation of psi, where cause and effect appear to travel across quadrants in a ways we don’t yet understand—possibly involving subtle energy (UR)—an Integral Methodological Pluralism could be of unique importance.

Whether or not you believe in psychic phenomena, this is a deeply engaging dialogue exploring the further reaches of the scientific method and the many forces at play in the determination of “truth”....