Ectoplasmic Mind Stuff

September 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

In addition to the three metaphors for mind identified elsewhere which depend upon spatial extension and location; central point, focal point, and totality of space; there is one additional key metaphor which is frequently used. This fourth concept imagines mind as a gaseous/liquid extrusion, a kind of ectoplasm that extends into space from the body (usually the head) and may even leave the body entirely. This is the most literal and visualisable of the metaphors even though (because) it is also the least rationally valid. Whilst it has been cogently argued that mind and space may be connected (McGill 1995), the strength of that argument relies, ironically, on the deeply unscientific nature of its claim. McGill’s proposal that mind (consciousness) and space are linked via some pre-big-bang form of dimensionless spatial ordering is unverifiability defined. McGill’s hypothesis is non-viable because it is untestable. Any hypothesis which proposes the existence of an ‘ectoplasmic’ mind on the other hand, (and traces of this are found in Sheldrake, etc), are easily testable and inevitably found to be scientifically and objectively invalid. This does not prevent such models of the mind existing within folk science and as a pattern on the fabric of language.

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