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Edward Francis Kelly is a professor at the Division of Perceptual Studies, a research unit in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia Medical School.[1] He earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Yale University and in 1971 a Ph.D. in psycholinguistics and cognitive science from Harvard.[2] Kelly's research interests include mind-brain issues and cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on phenomena (for example, from parapsychology and the paranormal) that challenge the current neuroscientific view of mind.[3] Among his interests are intensive neuroimaging studies of persons in various kinds of altered states of consciousness.[1]
Kelly has published peer-reviewed works in which he argues for a break from the dominant physicalist view of human mind and nature for a strong dualistic account of mind-brain problem which accepts the post mortem survival of human consciousness, drawing upon empirical evidence from psychical research such as near-death experience, stigmata and mystical experience. He served as the lead author for the two books Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism.[4]
Career
editAfter completing his doctoral degree, Kelly spent more than fifteen years working in parapsychology nearly full time, first at J. B. Rhine’s Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, North Carolina, then (for ten years) through the Department of Electrical Engineering at Duke University, and finally through the Spring Creek Institute, a nonprofit research institute in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.[5] During this time he published various papers on experimental, methodological, and theoretical topics in parapsychology, as well as a book, Computer Recognition of English Word Senses (with P. J. Stone).[5] From 1988 to 2002 he worked with a large neuroscience group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducting EEG and fMRI studies of human somatosensory cortical adaptation to natural tactile stimuli.[5] In 2002 he once again took up full-time psychical research.[5] By 2018 he had returned to his central long-term research interest—the application of modern functional neuroimaging methods to detailed psychophysiological studies of altered states of consciousness and psi in exceptional subjects.[5] He serves as the co-director of the Westphal Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of Virginia.[5][6]
Publications
editIn 2007, Kelly, along with his wife, Emily Williams Kelly, and Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson published a book titled Irreducible Mind, in which they attempt to bridge contemporary cognitive psychology and mainstream neuroscience with "rogue phenomena", which the authors argue exist in near-death experiences, psychophysiological influence, automatism, memory, genius, and mystical states. They argue for a dualist interpretation of the mind-brain relation in which the brain only acts as a "filter" or "transmitter" of consciousness, which survives death of the body.
In 2015, Kelly, Adam Crabtree, and Paul Marshall published a more theoretical sequel to Irreducible Mind, titled Beyond Physicalism, in which they seek to understand how the world must be constituted so that the empirical phenomena catalogued in Irreducible Mind would be possible.
Kelly and Marshall and colleagues have also published a third book, Consciousness Unbound, building on earlier works.[7]
External links
editReferences
edit- ^ a b "Stories by Edward F. Kelly". Scientific American. Retrieved 2024-05-17.
- ^ Presti, David E., ed. (2018). Mind beyond Brain: Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-18956-9., pp. 97‒98
- ^ "Ed Kelly's Bio". Division of Perceptual Studies. Retrieved 2020-05-11.
- ^ "Stories by Edward F. Kelly". Scientific American. Retrieved 2024-05-17.
- ^ a b c d e f Presti, David E., ed. (2018). Mind beyond Brain: Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-18956-9., pp. 97‒98
- ^ "Neuroimaging studies of psi". University of Virginia School of Medicine. Retrieved June 22, 2024.
- ^ "Consciousness Unbound: Liberating Mind from the Tyranny of Materialism". Division of Perceptual Studies. Retrieved 2023-11-23.