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The Sandy Island Syndromes: On Seeing What Is Not There and Not Seeing What Is There Larry Dossey MD
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Cite this article as: Larry Dossey MD, The Sandy Island Syndromes: On Seeing What Is Not There and Not Seeing What Is There, Explore, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. explore.2015.04.008 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting galley proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
SECTION HEAD: EXPLORATIONS
The Sandy Island Syndromes: On Seeing What Is Not There and Not Seeing What Is There
Larry Dossey, MD
When our maps do not fit the territory, when we act as if our inferences are factual knowledge, we prepare ourselves for a world that isn’t there.1 — Harry L. Weinberg, Levels of Knowing and Existence
In 1876, the whaling ship Velocity sighted some “Sandy Islets” and a series of “heavy breakers” seven hundred miles east of Queensland, Australia, in the Coral Sea northwest of New Caledonia. Subsequent maps designated this discovery as Sandy Island, a Manhattan‐sized oval fifteen miles long and about three miles wide. In 1908 it was officially legitimized by being included on a British Admiralty map. No one paid much attention to Sandy Island. But in 2012, a group of Australian oceanographers set out to study plate tectonics and map the ocean’s floor in the Coral Sea in their ship R/V Southern Surveyor. They decided to detour and pay Sandy Island a visit on 22 November. Surprise! It was nowhere in sight; only open water could be seen. Could it have recently become submerged? Perplexed, the researchers recorded ocean depths where Sandy Island was supposed to be, and found them around 1,300 meters.2 Maria Seton, an oceanographer at the University of Sydney, one of the scientists who “undiscovered” Sandy Island, said, “It’s on Google Earth and other maps so we went to check and there was no island. We’re really puzzled. It’s quite bizarre. How did it find its way on to the maps? We just don’t know, but we plan to follow up and find out.”3 When the researchers published an obituary for the island in Eos, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, in April 2013, the story went viral. 4 Within days Sandy became the most famous non‐island in the world. A blizzard of articles appeared on the Internet and in leading newspapers around the globe about the “undiscovery.” Sandy Island was soon referred to as “the island in the mind,” “the nowhere island,” “the land not ahoy,” “the fake island,” and “the ghost island.” Even the name of the captain who first reported Sandy in 1876 could no longer be
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ascertained with certainty. Lloyd’s Register of Shipping for 1874‐75 records five different ships named Velocity.5 The world’s leading cartographers were properly embarrassed, and there was a scramble to remove the phantom island from maps and datasets, including those produced by the prestigious National Geographic Society and Google Earth.6 Scientists immediately began to explore what went wrong. It was found that bathymetric data from the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans had indeed reported an elevation of one meter above the sea’s surface at the location of Sandy, indicating that something was there. Furthermore, other datasets derived from satellite imagery showed that sea surface temperatures were absent in the location, suggesting the presence of land. It was later discovered that this information was spurious, owing to errors during the conversion of hard‐copy charts to digital formats. Sandy had even crept into the digital databases of the widely used World Vector Shoreline Database developed by the US military. Sandy Island was also on datasets used in universities and scientific research facilities worldwide.7 Not everyone was equally misled. After the French Hydrographic Service could not identify Sandy from flyovers, the French, who have territories in the region, removed it from their charts in 1979. The US military followed suit and removed Sandy from defense maps in 1982. Some hydrographic charts had begun placing the internationally recognized abbreviation “ED,” Existence Doubtful, next to Sandy Island. But Sandy would not die. Only when the Australian researchers published Sandy’s obituary was the non‐island finally laid to rest. This was not the first time the best mapmakers were wrong. The Auckland Museum’s 1650 map of the Pacific is spectacularly erroneous. It shows a string of islands extending from the tip of South America to a point in New Zealand near where Aukland ought to be. But ancient cartographers are easily forgiven because of their lack of precision instrumentation. You can view Sandy Island, “the island that doesn’t exist,” on a 1908 map of the Pacific Ocean on the Flickr page of the Aukland War Memorial Museum at https://www.flickr.com/photos/aucklandmuseum/sets/72157632073191563/. A view of Sandy Island as it was represented on Google Earth is available at http://www.livescience.com/28828‐10‐strangest‐sights‐google‐earth.html. A CAUTIONARY TALE A variety of hypotheses surfaced that might explain the failures of the sailors and mapmakers. The crew of the Velocity may have observed pumice sea rafts, some say. These are floating masses of pumice, which is formed when lava ejected from an underwater volcano cools quickly. The gas that is trapped inside creates frothy rocks that are so light they can float. Pumice rafts can float for thousands of miles, and can be large enough to be mistaken for a small island. In the summer of 2012, just before Sandy was undiscovered, an undersea volcano erupted off the coast of New Zealand, sending pumice floating over an area of 8,500 square miles. Oceanographer Seton reported also that an eruption near Tonga in 2001‐02 produced a pumice raft that drifted about 2,000 miles toward Australia, passing within 13 miles of the purported location of Sandy Island. Seton observed that Sandy Island sits along a “pumice superhighway,” which “lends weight to the idea 2
that the Velocity may have captured a moment when some sea‐rafted pumice was traversing the area.”8 Others point out that a riptide can be mistaken for breakers, or the back of a whale can be mistaken for an islet. Another hypothesis is that the original notes and maps of the Velocity’s crew were misinterpreted; they were referring not to an island but to a dangerous, turbulent area with high waves cresting over a shallow sea bed, rather than to an island. A related hypothesis is that the crew saw an actual island, but indicated it in the wrong place. 9 Psychological factors can also play a role in mistaken observations at sea. In his fascinating 2014 book Unruly Places, geographer Alastair Bonnett, of Newcastle University, says, Because land is looked and hoped for by sailors, the faintest signs have been seized upon. Far from being doubted, Sandy Island’s credentials became ever more watertight. Having been inked in on an authoritative chart it acquired the status of known fact and its myth was transmitted deep into the twentieth century. It was included in maps produced by the National Geographic Society and The Times of London, and no one complained or even noticed. It was also, apparently, captured by satellites that many imagine are the sole feeders for Google Earth.10 Rear Admiral David W. Titley, who served for 32 years in the US Navy and was the first commanding officer of the Naval Oceanography Operations Command, agreed that appearances at sea can be deceiving.11 He observed that just because a nautical map looks professional, and just because a digital map may have impressive bells and whistles, this doesn’t mean that the underlying data has been scrubbed of errors. “When we look at these computer displays, with the three‐dimension imagery and colorized, it can give you a sense that we know more than we do,” he said.12 Science journalist Joel Achenbach, writing in the Washington Post about the Sandy episode, observes, The more information we assemble about the world, the more opportunity we create for making a mistake…. The bizarre and complicated story of ghostly Sandy Island is a cautionary tale about what we know and don’t know in the 21st century — and how, even with satellite technology and modern surveying instruments, the ocean can still spring a surprise.13 Modern navies have learned to be skeptical of nautical charts and oceanic maps. On 8 January 2005, the USS San Francisco, a nuclear attack submarine, 3
cruising at full speed at more than 500 feet below the surface of the sea near Guam, collided with a seamount, an underwater mountain. Several sailors were injured and one died. The submarine almost sank. Repairs ran to millions. Rear Admiral Titley said that the seamount was marked on one map with nothing more than discolored water. He added, “[These seamounts] either were simply not on a chart or were misplaced by several nautical miles. Or were a significantly different depth than what had been charted. It’s really a big ocean, and we certainly don’t know everything.” As Achenbach reported, the US Navy realized it had a mapping problem and set out to correct the errors. “It’s because of lingering uncertainties and misapprehensions that the US Navy still has seven vessels that survey the oceans.” BRAIN AND CONSCIOUSNESS I bumped into the intriguing story of Sandy Island in Bonnett’s book Unruly Places, as mentioned. Not only does he provide a brief history of Sandy, but he also describes how pumice islands may have given rise to the 1876 sighting of what came to be acknowledged as a real South Pacific island. What captured my attention, however, was the striking similarity between the way Sandy Island came to be viewed as real, and the way certain ideas in modern science have generated runaway enthusiasm in spite of flimsy or nonexistent evidence. Consider the analogy between Sandy Island and consciousness. Like the Velocity’s mariners who believed they had discovered an island but were looking at something else, modern neuroscientists think they have discovered consciousness, when instead they are focused on something else: the physical brain. Let’s look closer. According to modern neurological science, the brain is said to cause or produce consciousness. At a certain stage of biological complexity, consciousness is said to have “emerged” from the brain as an “epiphenomenon,” never mind how. According to this view, the brain is considered to be mind or consciousness in disguise. As astronomer Carl Sagan stated, “[The brain’s] workings — what we sometimes call mind — are a consequence of its anatomy and physiology, and nothing more.”14 Or as psychiatrist and sleep researcher Allan Hobson put it, “Consciousness, like sleep, is of the Brain, by the Brain, and for the Brain.”15 These confident statements exist alongside the inconvenient fact that no one in the history of science has ever observed consciousness being produced by a physical brain or anything else, nor are there any convincing theories how this could happen. In spite of these gaps, nearly all current maps of brain function consider consciousness as a byproduct. This view is served up not as a modest hypothesis or humble conjecture, but as an incontrovertible fact — just as the nautical maps confirmed Sandy Island for over a century. At least the old maps had an occasional “ED” for Existence Doubtful, but there is no doubt about brain‐as‐consciousness in most academic circles. Of course, several kinds of indirect evidence are cited for brain‐produced consciousness, just like the bathymetric and other observational data “proved” that land existed where Sandy Island was said to be. But the evidence that the brain produces consciousness is so indirect that the entire premise has begun to resemble a faith‐based ideology. 4
PROMISSORY MATERIALISM Philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper called this narrative “promissory materialism” — the notion that one day, not so very long from now, we’ll be able to give a completely physical account of consciousness. Popper predicted that, lured by periodic advances in brain science, “[W]e shall be talking less and less about experiences, perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, purposes and aims; and more and more about brain processes….”16 His prediction has come to pass. Nobel laureate and neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles agreed with Popper. He excoriated the materialist narrative, saying: [P]romissory materialism [is] a superstition without a rational foundation. The more we discover about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do both the brain events and the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists...who confuse their religion with their science. It has all the features of a messianic prophecy….17 Henry P. Stapp, of the University of California, Berkeley, currently considered by many as the dean of quantum theorists, castigates promissory materialism and the physicalistic creed on which it is based: Such a promise is irrational! It is irrational to accept as the basis for the connection between the conscious and physical aspects of nature a theory [classical physics] that is known to be fundamentally false, that makes no mention of consciousness, and that provides, in principle, no way of generating from its consciousness‐ free premises our known‐to‐exist conscious experiences. That classical‐physics‐based approach is particularly unreasonable when its hugely successful and scientifically accepted replacement [quantum mechanics] is a theory of unprecedented accuracy that is concordant with all established empirical findings, that is fundamentally about the connection of our conscious experiences to the atom‐based properties of the physical world, and that, in direct conflict with a central premise of classical physics, elevates our conscious intentions from causally inert bystanders to critical elements of the basic dynamical process.18 Neuroscientists are justifiably fascinated by fMRI scans and other powerful techniques used to probe brain function. Using these tools, an avalanche of data has 5
accumulated showing correlations, more or less, between physiological changes in brain function and mental activity. It’s not just neuroscientists who are enthralled by such exotic techniques. As Rear Admiral Titley noted, this fervor can also grip modern sailors, leading them to believe that their surface and subsurface maps are more reliable than they actually are, as the US Navy learned from the USS San Francisco disaster. It is difficult to think of any modern professional enclave that has not become enchanted by modern technology. Laypersons are especially prone to be misled, falling prey, for instance, to the felt certainty that the Internet is a kind of digital Rosetta Stone that can unlock all knowledge, and that if “it’s on the Internet” it must be true.19 Our modern brain maps are overrated because they disregard contrary evidence. It is clear to an increasing number of observers that consciousness can do things brains cannot do, such as operating nonlocally in the world, distant from the brain in space and time. This means that our brain‐equals‐consciousness maps are inadequate and incomplete. By denying this evidence, a false picture of consciousness has been constructed that is as misleading as Sandy Island ever was. As a consequence, when neuroscientists see the brain, they think they are seeing consciousness, because for them the brain is consciousness. Like the mariners on the Velocity who saw something — turbulence, breakers, floating pumice, or something else, and turned it into land in their imagination, neuroscientists see brain and turn it into consciousness. But breakers and floating pumice do not an island make, nor do brains consciousness make. Both the mariners and neuroscientists attest to something that isn’t there: the Sandy Island syndrome in action. SUBSTITUTIONS The fondness of mariners for land at sea is mirrored by the psychological preference of neuroscientists for a physical, brain‐based explanation for consciousness. Lacking solid evidence for a physical island on the ocean’s surface, the mind of a mariner, as we’ve seen, can substitute breakers, riptides, a whale’s back, or a pumice raft for land. Analogously, neuroscientists need to believe in a physical explanation that can substitute all sorts of physical, concrete things for consciousness — neurotransmitters, neurons, microtubules, a frontal cortex, an amygdala, and so on. The substitutions can be persuasive. Let’s look closer at pumice rafts, the current favorite substitution for land in the case of Sandy Island. Bonnett describes in detail the giant pumice raft discovered in 2012, already mentioned. The New Zealand Air Force spotted it 620 miles off the eastern coast of New Zealand, spread over an area “nearly the size of Belgium.” Some pumice rafts are so thick they can bear the weight of a human. “To call it a raft does not do it justice,” says Bonnett. Like a real island, pumice rafts harbor life. Clinging to the pumice fragments is a variety of shellfish and barnacles. Bonnett notes that humans have long had an emotional attachment to floating islands. We want to see them, he says. “Everyone loves them…. For earthbound creatures like ourselves, buoyant or untethered land is intrinsically enchanting.… Floating places have been on our minds since Aeolia,
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the floating island visited by Odysseus whose king was in charge of the four winds.”20 Neuroscientists experience a similar frisson when a brain image glows with surreal colors on a screen in a darkened room as a subject in a scanner experiences an emotion or thought. The cautious word “correlation” between brain and mind is easily disregarded at these moments, as the brain appears to become mind on a screen. When the scientist feels she is seeing consciousness, the Sandy Island syndrome has kicked in. This leads to triumphant expressions from the playbook of promissory materialism. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, of the University of Southern California, confidently predicted in 1999, “In an effort that continues to gain momentum, virtually all the functions studied in traditional psychology — perception, learning, and memory — are being understood in terms of their brain underpinnings. The mystery behind many of these functions are being solved, one by one, and it is now apparent that even consciousness, the towering problem in the field, is likely to be elucidated before too long.”21 And as philosopher Stan V. McDaniel, of Sonoma State University, said, the conclusion drawn is that “the mind, self, and consciousness are now entirely within the purview of neuroscience. It follows that all other theories of the mind…are consigned to the trash heap.”22 Sandy Island has become real. SEEING WHAT WE WANT TO SEE It is difficult to change a bad map. Maps may be flawed, but at least they are familiar, and because they are familiar they make us confident. So it is with any ingrained way of thinking. A tragic example occurred following the demonstration by naval surgeon James Lind in 1747 aboard HMS Salisbury that citrus fruit cured scurvy, the horrific scourge of sailors on long voyages. Lind’s monumental investigation was one of the first clinical experiments in the history of medicine. It was not powerful enough, however, to overcome the inertia of habit. Lind’s great discovery was ignored for several decades, leading to the senseless death of thousands of British sailors before England’s naval bureaucrats adopted it as official policy.23 To reiterate semanticist Henry L. Weinberg’s observation in the epigraph: “When our maps do not fit the territory, when we act as if our inferences are factual knowledge, we prepare ourselves for a world that isn’t there.” Here is the rest of Weinberg’s comment: “If this happens often enough, the inevitable result is frustration and an ever‐increasing tendency to warp the territory to fit our maps. We see what we want to see, and the more we see it, the more likely we are to reinforce this distorted perception, in the familiar circular and spiral feedback pattern.”24 The current materialistic maps of consciousness have fallen so thoroughly into this “familiar circular and spiral feedback pattern” that it has become heretical in some quarters to question them. Thus we hear overheated generalizations from scholars, as mentioned, “that all other theories of the mind…are consigned to the trash heap.” Actually, the trash heap can be a mild sentence; burning is sometimes recommended. When Cambridge biologist Rupert Sheldrake hypothesized that the 7
form and function of living and nonliving entities are influenced by nonmaterial fields, and provided extensive evidence for such in his 1981 book A New Science of Life, he was denounced for his apostasy by Sir John Maddox, the esteemed editor of Nature. Maddox condemned Sheldrake’s tome as “a book for burning.”25, 26 It was a punishment Galileo Galilei, who feared burning, and Giordano Bruno, who experienced it, would have understood. EXISTENCE DOUBTFUL We know that we have minds, and we know that we have brains and central nervous systems; what is problematic is how the two relate to each other…. The question is whether mind or matter is basic in nature, the other derivative, illusory, a shadow of the more basic reality.27 — Michael Grosso, Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality All along, however, there were periodic doubters of the existence of Sandy Island, as we saw, such as the French government and the US military. Just so, many prominent individuals have erected “ED” or Existence Doubtful warnings in neuroscience regarding the equating of brain and consciousness. Their following comments are a corrective to the Sandy Island syndrome, seeing what is not there. I include several examples to show that these are not rogue, isolated opinions. Donald D. Hoffman, cognitive scientist at University of California, Irvine: “The scientific study of consciousness is in the embarrassing position of having no scientific theory of consciousness.”28 Steven A. Pinker, experimental psychologist at Harvard University, on how consciousness might arise from something physical, such as the brain: “Beats the heck out of me. I have some prejudices, but no idea of how to begin to look for a defensible answer. And neither does anyone else.”29 Stuart A. Kauffman, theoretical biologist and complex‐systems researcher: “Nobody has the faintest idea what consciousness is…. I don’t have any idea. Nor does anybody else, including the philosophers of mind.”30 Roger W. Sperry, Nobel Prize‐winning neurophysiologist: “Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature.”31 Eugene P. Wigner, Nobelist in physics: “We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio‐chemical processes with the state of mind.”32 Physicist Nick Herbert, an expert in nonlocality: “Science’s biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot.”33 Physicist Freeman J. Dyson: “The origin of life is a total mystery, and so is the existence of human consciousness. We have no 8
clear idea how the electrical discharges occurring in nerve cells in our brains are connected with our feelings and desires and actions.”34 Philosopher Jerry A. Fodor, of Rutgers University: “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness.”35 Philosopher John R. Searle, of the University of California, Berkeley: “At the present state of the investigation of consciousness we don’t know how it works and we need to try all kinds of different ideas.”36
SKIMMING OFF THE TOP Just as the belief in Sandy Island was vaporized by improved methods of observation, the assertions equating brain and consciousness should be subjected to open‐minded, sensitive, comprehensive methods of evaluation. This requires, first and foremost, that neuroscientists stop skimming off the top, so to speak, embracing evidence that supports their hypotheses and rejecting evidence that defies it. Although too extensive to be reviewed in detail, there are six areas in consciousness research that demonstrate the nonlocal, beyond-the-brain actions of consciousness. These have been replicated repeatedly in labs around the world, each area giving odds against chance of around a billion to one, or combined odds against chance of 1054 to one, a truly astronomical number. These areas of research are remote viewing, random number generator influence, Ganzfeld, the Global Consciousness Project, presentiment, and precognition.37, 38, 39, 40 Reviews of these areas are readily available in thousands of technical papers and books that have appeared in recent years, variably suitable either for scientists or laypersons. Entry points into this vast literature are too numerous to cover here, but books and bibliographies by three Explore contributors will serve — columnist Stephan A. Schwartz’s Opening to the Infinite,41 Coeditor‐in‐Chief Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe42 and Entangled Minds,43 and Executive Editor Larry Dossey’s One Mind44 — as well as two monumental works by a team of scholars headed by consciousness researcher Edward F. Kelly, of the University of Virginia: Irreducible Mind45 and Beyond Physicalism.46 THE OTHER SANDY ISLAND Imagine that there is a Sandy Island that really exists. In fact, there is a Sandy Island that is quite real, located not in the South Pacific but in the North Atlantic. It is called Sable Island from the French word for “sand” — Île de Sable or Sandy Island in English. Sable Island is well named; it is an island made entirely of sand. This Sable/Sandy Island is an outcropping of the continental shelf 109 miles southeast of the closest point on Canada’s eastern province of Nova Scotia. The year‐ round population of Sable is only five people, although tourists and scientists visit the island during the summer season. In order to visit, however, permission must be granted because the island is fragile environmentally and is a protected National Park Reserve. Sable Island is a 26 mile‐long, exquisitely beautiful crescent sandbar, less than a mile across at its widest point, with dunes up to 90 feet high. In a violent 9
storm, the sand dunes and shoals have been known to move up to five miles, swept by the brutal winds and tides. For this reason, Sable Island has been called the fastest moving island in the world. The island is the home of 400 free‐roaming, feral Sable Island horses, which have become the iconic face of the island. They graze the sparse grass and low‐ growing vegetation on the dunes and drink from freshwater ponds scattered over the island. How did horses come to exist on an isolated island in the North Atlantic? Reverend Andrew Le Mercier, a French Huguenot priest from Boston, sent the first horses to graze on the island in 1737. Privateers and fishermen probably stole or ate most of them. The current animals are believed to be descended from horses left on the island around 1760 by Thomas Hancock, an entrepreneurial Boston merchant and uncle of John Hancock, the fiery Bostonian leader in the American Revolution. Other resident wildlife includes Harbour and Grey seals, which attract Great White and Greenland sharks to the surrounding waters. Migratory bird life is abundant with up to 98 species, including Arctic terns. Tree lovers should go elsewhere. In 1901, the Canadian government planted 80,000 trees to stabilize the soil. All of them died. More tree seedlings were planted in the 1960s. Only one lonely specimen remains, a Scots Pine, only a few feet tall. The failure of tree planting is emblematic of other human mistakes to improve the island. At one point rabbits were introduced. They caused an ecological disaster, and in order to save the ecosystem they were hunted to extinction in the 1970s. Sable Island is hard on trees, but it is harder on ships. It is shaped like a razor‐thin scythe or scimitar, symbolic of the hazard it poses. The island appears to have been designed to cause maritime disasters, the creation of some malevolent, ship‐hating fiend. Sable Island occupies the most hurricane‐prone and foggiest part of Canada and is the locus of treacherous currents and violent ocean storms. The dense fogs — 125 foggy days a year — are caused by the collision of the cold Labrador Current with the warm Gulf Stream. The island sits across the great circle route between North America and Europe, a curved trap positioned squarely in the way of shipping. Because it is often hidden by waves, storms, and fog, more than 350 ships have wrecked on its shores, killing an estimated 10,000 people — thus its reputation as the Graveyard of the North Atlantic. Sable Island was discovered in 1521 by the Portuguese explorer João Alvares Fagundes. Later in the 16th century the French unsuccessfully attempted to settle the island using convicts. Shipwrecked survivors were some of the earliest inhabitants. In order to survive, they had to construct shelters from the wreckage of their ships because there were no trees. Salvagers called “wreckers” soon came to the island to scavenge the frequent shipwrecks. In 1801 the government of Nova Scotia established a life‐saving station, and in 1873 a lighthouse was built on each end of the island. Today it is an important site for the collection of atmospheric and meteorological data. The first recorded wreck was the optimistically named English ship Delight in 1583. The last major shipwreck was the steamship Manhasset in 1947, whose 10
crew was all saved. Improvements in navigation by the mid‐20th century led to a dramatic decrease in shipwrecks. The sloop Merrimac was the last vessel to run aground on Sable Island, in 1999. Almost no shipwrecks remain for tourists to see; they have been swallowed by sand. However, fascinating archival photos of ships wrecked on the island since the age of photography began can be viewed on the outstanding website of Halifax’s Maritime Museum of the Atlantic at http://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/research/sable-island. Sable Island is one of the most expensive, difficult, and frustrating places in North America to get to. Even tourism companies discourage visits to the island. Referring to the island’s delicate ecology, as if to turn visitors away, one company sternly says, “In effect, we are all parasites.”47 The same tourism company states, “To get to Sable Island, all the necessary conditions must be in alignment, like the tumblers in a combination lock.” The major limiting factor for visitors, aside from a required government permit, is the island’s chaotic weather. Getting to the island is one thing; getting off it is another. Aircraft flights from the mainland use the beach as a runway, and beach conditions can change hourly. Tourists are warned that they could be stranded, turning a visit to Sable Island into the trip from hell, as transportation delays between flights have been over 40 days due to fog, storms, or beach flooding.48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 SABLE ISLAND SYNDROME Sandy Island syndrome — seeing what is not there — is contrasted with Sable Island syndrome — not seeing what is there. Most of the mariners who shipwrecked on Sable Island knew it was out there somewhere, but they did not see it because of fog, storm, nighttime, or navigational errors. The most important current example of Sable Island syndrome is the failure to see global climate change. Although flooded with data and field observations, deniers do not, cannot, or will not see it. This minority position conflicts with the great majority of climate scientists around the world, who are convinced that the evidence for human‐caused planetary global warming is overwhelming.55 In May 2013, a study published in Environmental Research Letters analyzed the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature, examining 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics “global climate change” or “global warming.” Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. The authors of the study concluded, “Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.”56 A 97 percent consensus on any subject in science is generally considered reason for acceptance and definitive action. Deniers of global climate change dismiss it through accusations of incompetence, fraud, or a worldwide conspiracy involving a conniving cabal of thousands of climate experts. Senator James Inhofe (R‐Okla), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is one of the most vocal deniers of climate change. He says that God, not Homo sapiens, controls the climate, and he quotes the Bible to prove it. Inhofe believes global climate change is a scam 11
perpetrated by “Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists.” When pressed about who should specifically be blamed, Inhofe named singer‐actor Barbra Streisand as the devious force behind the phony global campaign.57 Many deniers conflate local weather with global climate. This elemental mistake prompts them, for example, to interpret the brutal winter of 2014‐15 in the northeastern United States as evidence that global warming is a hoax. If the world is warming, how could it snow so much in Boston and Buffalo? This lapse in logic ignores the fact that 2014 was the Earth’s warmest year on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.58 THE GREAT COSTS The two Sandy Islands provide metaphors for failed ways of knowing — seeing what isn’t real (Sandy) and failing to see what is real (Sable). Both errors come at great cost. The cost of the Sable Island syndrome of blindness toward human‐caused global climate change involves ignoring a looming planetary crisis. The Sandy Island syndrome of equating the brain and consciousness is also disastrous. Ignoring the fundamental nature of consciousness and accepting the brain as its source requires the corollary that consciousness is annihilated with the death of the brain and body. This assumption fosters bottomless fear and dread, and has probably caused more suffering throughout human history than all the physical diseases combined. The abundant evidence that consciousness manifests nonlocally beyond brains is a path for overcoming this fear, because it shows that consciousness is not hostage to the brain and body, and can act independently of them. Substituting brain for consciousness involves the materialistic assumption that “reality is a meaningless, incidental, mechanistic collocation of improbable events,” says Imants Barušs, professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Barušs believes this issue goes beyond philosophical haggling and is contributing to mental health problems among Western youth. Reflecting on the increase in suicidal teenagers, he states that many depressed teens who hurt themselves don’t possess the “hallmarks of a psychiatric disorder. Instead they seem to be suffering an existential crisis that is sort of ‘I’m empty, I don’t know who I am, I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t have any grounding and I don’t know how to manage my negative feelings.’”59 It is difficult to see how the disempowering substitution of brain for consciousness could empower directionless teens to find their way. Quantum theorist Stapp agrees. In his paper, titled “Attention, Intention, and Will in Quantum Physics,” he stated, “It has become now widely appreciated that assimilation by the general public of this ‘scientific’ view, according to which each human is basically a mechanical robot, is likely to have a significant and corrosive impact on the moral fabric of society.” He warned of the “growing tendency of people to exonerate themselves by arguing that it is not ‘I’ who is at fault, but some mechanical process within: ‘my genes made me do it’; or ‘my high blood‐sugar content made me do it.’ Recall the infamous ‘Twinkie Defense’ that got Dan White
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off with five years for murdering San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.”60, 61 The wisest option, I believe, is to restore consciousness to its primary, fundamental place in the world — not because of a wistful, atavistic longing for mythic beliefs of past eras, but because of vectors in science suggesting this is the truest way to proceed. This movement is not new; it has been well underway in certain areas of physics for some time. As Erwin Schrödinger, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 asserted, “Consciousness is that by which this world first becomes manifest, by which indeed, we can quite calmly say, it first becomes present; that the world consists of the elements of consciousness.”62 And as physicist Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918, observed, “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”63 As philosopher Michael Grosso reminds us, almost forgotten is the legacy of a small group of outstanding Western philosophers and psychologists — William James, F. W. H. Myers, Henri Bergson, F. C. S. Schiller — that is congruent with the views of these physicists. These scholars articulated a picture of consciousness, says Grosso, that is “deeply embedded in the historical psyche, of an intuition of mind as primordial and transcendent, mind interactively interwoven with and essentially pervading physical nature. It is an intuition at odds with currently prevailing outlooks that lean en masse toward physicalism.”64 Their contributions were prophetic and continue to resonate. For example, neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles, mentioned above, wrote: Contrary to the physicalist creed, I believe that the prime reality of my experiencing self cannot with propriety be identified with…brains and neurons and nerve impulses and even complex spatio‐temporal patterns of impulses…. I cannot believe that this wonderful divine gift of conscious existence has no further future, no possibility of another existence under some other unimaginable conditions. At least I would maintain that this possibility of a future existence cannot be denied on scientific grounds.65 A firmer renunciation of the Sandy Island syndrome of mistaking brain for consciousness would be difficult to find. NEW EYES The failed ways of knowing we’ve examined are mainly unconscious in origin. I do not believe the mariners who claimed to see Sandy Island were consciously lying. Neither do I think those who did not see Sable Island and shipwrecked on it made conscious errors of judgment. I also do not believe that
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neuroscientists who promote the ideology that brains make consciousness, and are its equivalent, are dishonest. There is, however, the strong possibility that many (though not all) individuals who fall prey to the Sable Island syndrome by claiming they cannot see global climate change are less than truthful, especially when their activities are financed by the fossil fuel industry. One US senator has called for an investigation into what he calls a “denial‐for‐hire” scheme in which, he alleges, fossil fuel corporations essentially purchase the opinion they prefer from ethics‐challenged scientists.66, 67 This situation is beginning to resemble the tobacco controversies of the 1990s, in which “tobacco scientists” aligned themselves with the corporate interests of their masters who wrote their paychecks. Willful blindness toward climate change is most obvious when governments prohibit even a discussion of the issue. An egregious example is Florida, where officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) have banned the use of the terms “climate change,” “global warming,” “sea‐level rise,” and “sustainability” in official communications, emails, and reports. This prohibition was reported by former employees, consultants, and volunteers at the FDEP to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. Outlawing this terminology in Florida is particularly ironic because climate scientists regard this state as the US region most susceptible to the effects of global warming because of rising sea levels. 68 The seriousness of rising sea levels is already recognized by NASA, which is being forced to retreat from its seaside operations in the Sunshine State. From Cape Canaveral in Florida to mission control in Houston, Texas, the US space agency is building seawalls where possible and is moving some buildings further inland. Five of seven major NASA centers are located along the coast; several have already faced costly damage from encroaching water, coastal erosion and hurricanes, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report states, “According to NASA’s planning and development office, rising sea levels are the single largest threat to the Kennedy Space Center’s continued operations.”69 Meanwhile, employees at the FDEP are muzzled in even talking about climate change. Most errors in knowing, however, are not blatantly willful, but are unconscious. If they are unconscious, what, then, should be our approach in helping people to see truly? Metaphorically speaking, we must send out better research vessels to investigate Sandy Island, and we must erect more lighthouses on Sable Island and develop better navigational aids for ships. This translates into the eternal quest for more and better data in the areas we’ve examined, and it also requires that we make the data better known. There is reason for optimism. For the first time in human history we have an empirical science — the modern quantum‐relativistic worldview championed by the scientists quoted above and by thousands more — that honors consciousness as a key component in the construction of what we call reality. This new understanding has provided us with a more powerful way of seeing, as if we’ve been given new eyes. We have lived into the truth of Marcel Proust’s observation: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”70 Ascribing a role to consciousness in the construction of reality is heady stuff. Hard‐core materialism is much less demanding, because it lets us off the hook by 14
assuming that the world unfolds on its own according to the so‐called blind, meaningless laws of nature. We are not active participants in such a process, but are passive observers at best and victims at worst. Materialism often spirals into a paralytic cynicism that encourages one “to keep quiet, to be a moderate defender of orthodoxy, or to maintain that all is doubtful, sit on the fence, and wait in statesmanlike ambiguity for more data,” as Sir Edward Bullard said. 71 Bullard, an eminent geoscientist, was urging his stubborn colleagues to open up to the new science of plate tectonics and continental drift, after this ferocious debate erupted in the early decades of the twentieth century. The essence of his admonitions still applies. The Sandy and Sable Island syndromes remind us that we can be misled by the physical senses and that appearances can be deceiving. Our own logical, analytical mind can also lead us astray: intractable materialists pride themselves in being rational. There are deeper ways of knowing, which appear sourced from outside the discursive, analytical layers of the mind. These ways do not deny the senses and reason, but they include and transcend them. We can get glimpses of this process from exemplars who have employed them. An example is Thomas Edison, America’s great inventor. "People say I have created things,” he said. “I have never created anything. I get impressions from the Universe at large and work them out, but I am only a plate on a record or a receiving apparatus — what you will. Thoughts are really impressions that we get from outside."72 Logic, reason, and intellectual analysis take a back seat in this unfolding. As Eugene Wigner, Nobel laureate in physics, put it, “The discovery of the laws of nature requires first and foremost intuition, conceiving of a picture and a great many subconscious processes. The...confirmation of these laws is another matter.... [L]ogic comes after intuition.”73 Psychologists and neuroscientists who consider consciousness to be solely derived from brain processes tend to be dubious, if not hostile, toward these mysterious ways of knowing that appear temporarily to bypass the rational mind. An exception is neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Edward F. Kelly, mentioned above, who has written wisely about the origins of genius‐level creativity. In the landmark book Beyond Physicalism, Professor Kelly writes: [T]he speed, precision, complexity, novelty, and truth‐ bearing character of these “subliminal uprushes” reveal the presence within human beings of something that radically transcends ordinary cognitive capabilities and forms, and something moreover that is rooted more deeply than ordinary experience in the world in which we find ourselves embedded.74 Psychologist C. G. Jung conceived of a timeless reservoir of information not unlike Edison’s image of “impressions” from the “outside”: As a matter of fact we have actually known everything all along; for all these things are always there, only we are not there for them. The possibility of the deepest insight 15
existed at all times, but we were always too far away from it.... Originally we were all born out of a world of wholeness and in the first years of life are still completely contained in it. There we have all knowledge without knowing it. Later we lose it, and call it progress when we remember it again.75 R. H. Blyth, the great Buddhist scholar, agreed, saying, “In order to be enlightened, we must first be enlightened. To understand anything at all, we must know it already. All knowledge, as Plato and Wordsworth said, is recollection.”76 The infinite sufficiency of consciousness suggested by these views is an idea that has percolated through many great wisdom traditions. That is why “enlightenment” is a term that is used so frequently for this kind of knowing — turning on a light, seeing the knowledge that was there all along. THE NEXT GENERATIONS When you change the way you look at things, the things you are looking at change.77 — Max Planck, founder of quantum physics Key developments within contemporary science remind us of the omnipresent, ineradicable role of consciousness in our world, as we’ve seen. Consciousness should no longer be considered a derivative of the physical brain, or as an incidental evolutionary add‐on. “Consciousness doesn’t dangle outside the physical world as some kind of extra, it’s there right at its heart,” says David Chalmers, cognitive scientist and philosopher at the Australian National University and at New York University.78 The sizzling dialogue that has arisen in physics about the role of consciousness reminds us of the extraordinary specialness of being conscious. Human life presumably could get on without consciousness, if we were all automatons — but here we are, blessed with awareness and self‐reflection. You would think this would be a cause for continual gratitude and glowing amazement, but no. For most people most of the time, consciousness is so ordinary it largely escapes notice. We are no longer astonished by the fact of our consciousness; we are barely surprised. Visionaries try to awaken us to the splendor inherent not just in consciousness itself, but in the most ordinary events of our lives, because they, too, can appear supercharged with something akin to consciousness if we examine them closely enough. As George Eliot said in Middlemarch, “If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.”79 One scientist whose work involves an appreciation of the specialness of consciousness is quantum physicist and cosmologist Menas C. Kafatos, of Chapman University, and co‐author of The Conscious Universe: Parts and Wholes in Physical Reality.80 Professor Kafatos is concerned with the role of consciousness in daily life, 16
what our future will look like, and whether we shall have a future that will support life as we know it. He writes: Are these issues yet another set of intellectual arguments that scientists, philosophers and academics make? They are very relevant to your life and your healthy living: We seem to be bound by our minds, often giving us no peace. Yet, if what we view as reality is really the product of the mind, then we can approach our mind as a tool, as a friendly tool, get it on “our side,” so to speak...[for] healthy living…what we should pass on to the next generations.81 Can consciousness change our world? It does so at every moment. Can it save our world? It is not the world we need to save, but ourselves, and we save ourselves by waking up, by becoming conscious of our own consciousness. We need the most profound ways of knowing if we are to meet the challenges we face at this moment in history. Otherwise we will never realize that Sandy Island was not there to begin with, and that Sable Island looms dead ahead. Editorial‐Sandy Island‐REV‐2
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