As an initiatory demonstration of the power of Dialogue for Science, the Center is applying a Dialogical process to the Science of Consciousness, engaging physics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy in a rigorous conversation. Outputs from this project include Papers , Videos, and Books. The ongoing Process includes Working Groups (below) and Workshops. To get involved or to support this work, please get in touch.

For the past fifty years or so, transformational activity directed towards mainstream science has primarily relied on appeals to spiritual and/or paranormal experience, or metaphysical critiques of allegedly-’materialist’ scientific foundations. But this half-century of effort has led to little, if any, change. The Center is currently hosting two related Working Groups, aimed at exploring and bridging the gaps between science, metaphyiscs, and the data of unconventional experience

… to create a complete and coherent transformational spectrum.

Completing a Coherent Spectrum (I): the Computational Neurophysics of Matter and Conscious Experience

A modern renaissance of consciousness science began in the 1990s. However, basic methodological issues were never resolved, leaving the current effort provably self-contradictory and unscientific. The issue is not, as some transformational activists claim, a limitation of classical materialist theories, only resolvable e.g by quantum approaches: it’s actually far more radical, having to do with the actual dynamical character of our inhabited reality:

This Group will appraise the real problems for consciousness science, and possibilities for solving them, specifically in the context of moving mainstream science closer to the kinds of transformational critique considered by Group-II (below).

Timeline: Q2 2024 to Q1 2025.

Completing a Coherent Spectrum (II): Science, Metaphysics and Spirituality

Is ‘materialism’ really the foundation of modern science? If it is, does materialism really render a science of consciousness impossible, as many transformational advocates claim? An alternative frame suggests the pivotal point is not ‘what reality is made of’ (matter, mind, mathematics …), in part because ‘substance’ issues of this kind seem intractable. Instead, the crucial issue seems to be ‘what reality can do’, or how it can move. (For example, if there is a spiritual realm, can it ‘move’ the brain. grounding reports of spiritual experience in actuality, rather than fantasy …)

This Group will explore these questions, specifically in the context of bringing existing transformational activism closer to the kind of hard science pursued by Group-I (above).

Timeline: Q2 2025 to Q1 2026