The author argues that mainstream cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for the full range of human mental phenomena, particularly those involving agency, selfhood, and subjective experience. Drawing on examples from psychical research, automatism, and mysticism, the text contends that the mind cannot be reduced to brain processes and that a broader, more inclusive framework is needed to understand consciousness. The review critically examines the assumptions of physicalism and reductionism, suggesting that empirical evidence from anomalous experiences supports a non-reductive view of mind.
The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) appears promising because it explains neuroscientific facts, makes testable predictions, and offers a technique for detecting consciousness in non-verbal organisms. However, the theory is fundamentally flawed. Key unresolved conceptual issues concern IIT's concept of "information" and its approach to the "hard problem" of consciousness. Empirical phenomena IIT cannot handle include: dissociative identity disorder with overlapping centers of consciousness in one organism; psychedelic states whose intense phenomenology is not reflected in neuroelectric activity; and near-death experiences during cardiac arrest, where IIT predicts no consciousness is possible. These arguments suggest IIT and its physicalist competitors are untenable, but scientifically and philosophically respectable alternatives exist.