moving beyond the "moving beyond materialism" of Josh Cutchin

Every so often, I will throw a (precious) book across the room in abject frustration. Late last night, as I was struggling to finally throw off my procrastination (which I am told might not even exist, at least not in the way we think of it), I read an essay by a writer an email group I’m part of had started to sing the praises of: Joshua Cutchin, a seeming American prodigy who writes voluminously on matters paranormal and uncanny. It was perhaps an uncanny email chain to have received at the time I received it, since I was in the process of collecting my thoughts for what I was going to dub a “heretical” ufological post—one that will doubtless strike many as anathema, worthy of my disbarment. It was going to suggest a line of thinking that is the very last thing on anyone’s mind, ufologically speaking: I was going to write a post on positivism. More specifically, the curiously open-minded form of positivism espoused (somewhat problematically—but positivism is almost always problematic) by Ernst Mach, a philosopher-physicist who was an immediate inspiration for Einstein, and many of the developments of modern theoretical physics that broke onto the scene in fin de siècle Europe (that is, at the turn of the last century). I believe it to be a fruitful line of inquiry, the road not (yet) taken in ufology, and something it ought to try given the tendency it sometimes has of letting all the paranormality go to its head. And I was inspired to take this line by reading the brilliant and breezy (but substantial) book on quantum theory by Carlo Rovelli, called Helgoland (after the island to which Heisenberg escaped to work out his version of the quantum mechanics).

I cannot and will not speak in general about the thinking of Cutchin, but what I read in this essay—putatively about “moving beyond materialism” (by now a rather worn and quite frankly to me, tiresome topic)—wasn’t really thinking, so much as a kind of intuitive lurching about certain concepts with no grasp of their (deeper) meaning beyond a lexicon’s. We might call this “lexicographical” thought: a thinking that proceeds by surface definitions (not to bemoan surfaces—that celebrated topic within the reaches of Nietzsche’s philosophy, for example). I will try to get right to the point.

After setting up his main problematic—that the “Nuts and Bolts” ufologists, who are sanguine about the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” as it accords with the implicit “materialism” of this standpoint, find themselves in a bind when it comes to the “high strangeness” and paranormality a certain set of UFO encounters manifest—Cutchin several pages in finally says something (on the ninth page) about the thing he wants to reject or “move beyond”. “Materialism,” he informs us “holds that only the tangible is real” (Cutchin 2017, 57). So, materialism—a doctrine whose history is about twenty-five centuries in the West (and even arguably older in ancient India)—is the position that whatever is “tangible” is what is real. Right. And what is that troublesome bit of paranormality that forces the “N&B” ufologists, with their predilection for the ETH, into a troublesome materialist bind? Telepathy, which is “a phenomenon whose existence is roundly accepted by N&B/ETH advocates [which] accompanies,” he writes, “nearly all such examples” of UFO encounters—presumably referring to a “UFO literature [that] is rife with witnesses who experience such activity” like telepathy and a host of other psychic/paranormal phenomena (ibid., 53). Earlier he had primed us for this declaration, writing that

While plenty of cases superficially support the N&B/ETH view, its materialist foundations are shaken when confronted with the high strangeness characteristic of a majority of UFO close encounters (ibid., 51).

A “majority”? That’s quite a claim, especially since no rigorous statistical study (which may well have to suffice with a meta-study of all vetted close encounter reports) has yet been done to establish that as a fact (although many, like Cutchin, suspect this to be the case). It remains a hunch, supported, it is true, by many anecdotal reports. But more importantly: when does the feeling of adventitious thoughts and images (such as were reported by some of the children in the Ariel School case) during a UFO encounter rise to the level of confirmed paranormality—telepathy, for example? It is a very subtle and challenging problem, one that cuts to the core—not of “materialism” (as I’ll explain in a moment)—but of the methodology (and epistemological presuppositions) of our sciences. For very deep reasons is it so, having to do with what is implied by the existence of the kind of matter-mind (or in this case, mind-mind) relations that a world with various kinds of psychokinesis in it would suggest. Cutchin has some awareness of this, as is hinted at by his quotation from a (rather dated) text by “philosopher-physicist” Mario Bunge (Bunge points out some epistemological incompatibilities between PK and key principles of conventional scientific cognition); but we get no analysis, and no substantial arguments as to why or how this might be the case—other than the mere assertion that it is so. Which leaves one wondering, well: is it, or must it be so? Why, and what are the arguments in support of the purported incompatibility? Are there any good reasons for this incompatibility—or is it just unfounded scientistic dogma? Indeed, we might at this point ask: just what the hell is materialism, anyway, and how defensible of a position is it? We don’t (and won’t) know, because there’s no analysis. (Here is where in a student’s paper I would become very cranky.)

In a paper whose express purpose is to “move beyond materialism” (and moreover to try and reframe the UFO debate), then that paper must engage in some more sophisticated analysis of the deeper epistemological, methodological and ontological issues at the foundations of a scientific mindset that would adhere to materialism in order to disclaim (and discount) paranormality—precisely the issue Cutchin is, presumably, trying to force the “N&B” crowd to face. Let’s circle back around to materialism, and try to tease out some of the deeper issues Cutchin leaves dangling in a woo-woo soup of suggestions.

To begin with, Cutchin perhaps unwittingly reproduces the very thing he wishes to undermine, by opposing “consciousness”—or in his terms, a “consciousness paradigm”—to materialism. For example, he writes how “extended consciousness effects” (although we have no idea what that is, since he doesn’t say anything about it, we have to assume it’s a stand-in for telepathy and other mind-centered paranormality) “have no place in a materialist paradigm, period”. Well, really? It surely depends on what you mean by “materialism”, or rather, what it is opposed to. He seems to imply that consciousness is non-material (since elsewhere he wants to make sure we don’t equate “nonmaterial” to “nonscientific” when we’re going about discussing PK, etc.—which are surely nonmaterial influences, right?), and so Cutchin is basically some form of a metaphysical dualist (assuming he doesn’t also discount the reality of the “material”; consistent dualists have to grant equal ontological status to mind and matter). If that is the case, then he faces immediately a classic problem Descartes (the classical European originator of substance dualism—though this is somewhat in dispute) had to face, while the materialist he opposes has to face the (perhaps more challenging) “hard problem” of consciousness well known to philosophers of mind and cognition for many decades now. It is a problem that must be faced by materialists because they accept that, generally, only matter—in the sense of physics—is real. Dualists face an another problem, that of interaction between nonmaterial mind and matter. Curiously, we see no mention of the issues that arise here, issues which have to be kept distinct.

How could nonmaterial things (like minds) have influence upon or be the causes of/for material things? (The materialist does not have this problem, because there is nothing that is nonmaterial—thus one early cause for going materialist.) Let’s call this the “interaction” problem. The other issue, which is the “hard problem” proper, is: how could there even be something called “consciousness” in a world of only matter in motion, for surely whatever else consciousness is, there’s “something it’s like to be” conscious in a way which isn’t true of purely material things (rocks, chairs, planets). This is a problem that arises especially for a would-be materialist (and most especially for one who would try to take the more extreme materialist standpoint known as reductive materialism, where mind is simply reduced to—identified with—the matter known to physics). The problem here seems to be that my experience of color in itself has no objective color; the experience of anything in itself would not seem to be a part of the “objective” material world in any straightforward way. Certainly not in a way that is isomorphic or identical to that experience: a musical tune I recall in my mind makes no sound, like the chirping bird I am hearing right now does not chirp when it becomes my experience.

The interaction and the “hard” problems are different but related problems. When I go to raise up my hand to take the glass of (sugar-free!) soda that’s sitting by my computer monitor, or when I plan to do something and then execute that plan, something curious happens: I think something, and then I act on that. Consciousness is implicated here in terms of my thoughts and feelings, and they seem to have some influence upon the actions that occur later on: the drinking of my soda, the getting up out of my chair to refill my pipe to smoke it, and so on, happen as a result of my (conscious) intentions. Therefore consciousness in this sense may be said to have a causal role in the world. In fact, it’s worse, since if we oppose my “mind” to the matter that makes up my body and the rest of the world around me, then my “mind” causes the stuff in my body to do its thing, which in turn brings about certain results (certain definite actions) in the material world: mind acts on matter. Something is wrong with this view…

If we spend a few moments thinking about this curious situation, we can see a couple of important conceptual implications here. The first is that if we radically segregate consciousness/mind and material/matter along the metaphysical lines the dualist accepts, then it makes the causal connections between the two utterly mysterious, since matter is understood to be acted upon only by some kind of equally material force, and forces are created either by some kind of direct contact between two material things, or the result of some kind of material interaction between things that come into some kind of contact (and yes, quantum mechanics complicates this picture—but the interactions are still plausibly material even though they don’t behave exactly according to what physicists call “classical” intuitions about how the world works, mechanically). How can something (consciousness, according to the dualist) that is nonmaterial have an influence upon something that is? By what mechanism of action does this influence happen? What mediates the interaction? It cannot, ex hypothesi, be anything material; but if it’s not material, then how can there be a nonmaterial influence? But if we accept that the two can’t interact, then how can we explain the strict correlation between my conscious intentions and the things I am able to accomplish on their basis? (Although there are curious results that show something of a disconnect between intention and action.) Dualism seems to be something of a philosophical mess, a quagmire even. Surely that’s not what Cutchin would go for, so what, we ask, is a “consciousness-based paradigm”? It’s a “magical paradigm”! This, finally, is to where we move on after materialism. It’s the post-materialist paradigm that embraces all manner of paranormality in a way that conventional materialist science (presumably) cannot. Unfortunately, we’re not quite done with “materialism”…

The problem with Cutchin’s whole approach (or non-approach, since there’s not much substantial analytical thought going on here) is that it is lopsided. Or rather, to slip into the jargon of the Hegelian-Marxist tradition, it is one-sided. It is too much interested in toppling “materialism” that it does not also see that the gesture of radicality (Cutchin’s somewhat sublimated pretention) is completed when one also topples “spiritualism”, or “mentalism” … the woo-woo alternatives to “materialism”. The final gesture is the one arguing neither in favor of a materialism, nor in favor of a non-materialist “magicalism” (whatever that is supposed to be; he quotes the “chaos magician” Gordon White: “Magic is a culture-specific response to naturally occurring consciousness effects”—Cutchin’s favored placeholder—“like telepathy, and precognition, and all these normal things that as humans, with a normal-functioning mind, we experience…”). Or should we say: “consciousness-ism” since that to which the materialist paradigm he wishes to critique and overcome (by opposing it to “consciousness”) is opposed is never explicated. In other words, Cutchin is concerned to diss matter in favor of mind, leaving us with a half-ass dualism.

Let’s play a little game of Hegelian hopscotch for a moment. One of Hegel’s enduring contributions to the history of thought (and the history of philosophy) was the patient if tedious critique of all conceptual oppositions, walking up a dizzying hierarchy from the more particular and specific, to the more general and universal. It is a truly multidimensional, fractal-like thought-system on which many a thinker has foundered (a word to the wise). In any case, what Hegel really tries to show (and this actually follows from his engagement with Kant on this problem, but that’s a way longer story) is that those distinctions we try to draw between things we encounter in our experience—here we are talking about our own “mind” and the “matter” that is all around us which appears to be somehow of a different sort of thing—are really very poor (but in a certain sense necessary) approximations to reality as such. (“Reality as such” is something that really troubled Hegel, and has troubled many since: it was something we couldn’t really get a handle on completely as human beings, except in the fullness of time as humanity underwent a series of historical-existential/ontological alterations, leading to our becoming, Hegel thought, the very thing we sought to know (reality as such) in the first place—yes, a bit “mystical”, and convoluted, but yet another long story we don’t have time to really fully explain.) Hegel’s method of critique has been called the “dialectic”, and a dialectical critique aims to show that between any two oppositions, the one is already (secretly or tacitly) implied by the other, so that they are actually intimately related—a relation that, when explicated, leads to a new concept that moves beyond the previous two, and closer towards the more realistic unity of a reality we only see as if through a glass, darkly. The problem is that their deeper relationship is obscured by ideologies or dogmas or conventional beliefs that act to suppress or destroy the underlying unity, leaving us with a tedious surface-level dispute between hardened believers clinging to one-sided notions.

Precisely such occurs when it comes to the whole “consciousness” quagmire into which Cutchin willingly (if unthinkingly) steps (and to be fair, he’s by far not alone: there is so much woo-woo silliness around the UFO and paranormal literature, that Cutchin is a rather conservative voice here—the oppositional stance he takes to the “N&B” ufological crowd being yet another instance of a tediously superficial opposition obscuring a deeper unity). With a bit of playful Hegeliana, we might begin the dialectical critique by asking what is “consciousness” if it is not something already physically (which is to say, materially) experienced? And, at the point where the consciousness-ist wants to pound their anti-Cartesian fist on the table and insist on the uniqueness and non-physicalist/non-materialist “nature” of consciousness—its opposition to things material—is precisely the point at which we flip our perspective, and ask: what is “matter” if not already suffused with mind? How could a material world be experienced if that material world did not already partake of mind itself (panpsychists of the world unite)? In other words, if matter is not spiritual or mental (or “minded”), then matter is not material either. If consciousness or “mind” is not material, then mind is not mental or spiritual either. Which is to say that both “mind” and “matter” must exist on the very same plane of reality—they are democratic ontological partners. They are equal, not separate but the same. Which is to say that their opposition dissolves. We deconstruct “consciousness” or “mind” at the same time we deconstruct “matter” or the “material world”. We end up with something as rich as all we have ever experienced (and much more), something that is neither mental or spiritual, nor material or physical. In the language of the Madhamaka Buddhists: mind is empty; matter is empty; neither matter nor mind are existents, nowhere are they to be found (so that we arrive at mind and matter just as they are: conventionally real, but metaphysically empty of their own substantial existence, something over which we nonetheless endlessly wrangle in a fruitless metaphysical register).

The problem is that “materialism” (just like its opponents) is just a stupid doctrine that puts the criteria of differentiation in the wrong place, or rather: saddles the epistemologically necessary act of conceptual differentiation (between “mind” and “matter”) with unjustifiably restrictive a set of criteria, such that so-called psychokinesis (and in general paranormal influence) is ruled out a priori (and here Cutchin is quite right to complain, being right for the wrong—or inadequately expressed—reasons). The mind-matter relation (and now we can freely invoke these terms, since we have abandoned any stupid metaphysics, like dualism) indicates a perfectly general set of relations that describe perfectly “natural” and perfectly “physical” or “material” (or whatever you want to call it) relationships of law-like fact. Does it really matter (!) if we want to call it material or not?

If you allow that the “mind” acts on the “matter” of the body (without also stupidly metaphysically segregating these two aspects of the world we encounter), as is happening right now as I type these words, then you have already admitted “psychokinesis”—albeit of a very restrictive form. In other words, PK has a very specific form (local to our own individual persons: my body and my mind), and a very general form (a “nonlocal” one: a mind affecting another body or mind, or part of the physical world not strictly associated with it in space and time). It’s that very general form that is so troubling, of course, but which one must accept at least the existence of in principle if one also accepts the restrictive PK that persists between one’s own mind and body. If the general form of PK is, however, a law-like fact of the universe at large, well, then, it’s not that materialism comes crashing down (for that was never really the problem); it’s the scientific method itself (irrespective of whether one wants to attend that with a materialism) that is potentially quite out to sea: if PK influences are generally in operation, then no experiment could be truly controlled in the way required to demonstrate conclusively the existence or statistical significance of anything (independently of mind)—unless such influences can be themselves controlled or shielded. (We cannot further explore this very deeply troubling implication here, but it is something we all must keep in the back of our mind as we wrestle with the phenomena of “high strangeness” in the context of our major question in this blog: is a science of UFOs possible? What we are dealing with here would be a very pernicious and pervasive nonlinearity that has major epistemological implications, and which any future science which would hope to encompass the high strangeness of the UFO phenomenon, or paranormality more generally, must systematically address. It is something that Thomas Raberyon addressed in a recent fundamental paper on psi phenomena: a must-read for the serious deep-diver.)

By casting off the one-sidedness of a materialist or a “consciousness-based” (“magical”) paradigm, we end up simply with relations between phenomena in a fundamentally undivided (but distinctive and differentiable) world as the starting point in any scientific study of that world. This, in fact, is the true starting point for Ernst Mach’s “positivism”. It is the starting point I have determined by a bit of a passage through a playful Hegelian dialectic, where we arrive at a philosophical outlook that, besides giving Mach’s positivism a useful philosophical foundation, helps to disabuse us simultaneously of materialism and magical spiritualism. If God is dead, then so is matter.

In the next post I want to take up the post I had intended to write, before getting (usefully I might add) sidetracked with the one-sided detractor of “materialism” we find in the frustratingly stridently confident prose of one neo-gnostic (yet another), Joshua Cutchin.

Next time, we go really rogue. We go positivist.