David Rousseau

In this paper I support the view that NDEs provide empirical support for mind-body substance dualism, and argue that a systems-theoretical analysis of the evidence is required to obtain valid insights into the nature of the mind as a substantive existent aside from the body. Without such an approach, systems phenomena such as property emergence and property masking could lead to mischaracterisation of both the nature of the mind as it is in itself, and the ways in which the mind and body work together holistically. Applying a systems theoretical perspective, I show that some psychic abilities are emergent capacities of the mind-body system, that ordinary faculties such as emotional perceptiveness can be understood within the same framework as extra-ordinary faculties such as telepathy, and that the NDE evidence favours a naturalistic form of Substance Dualism.

Within the scientific study of spirituality there are substantial ambiguities and uncertainties about relevant concepts, terms, evidences, methods, and relationships. Different disciplinary approaches reveal or emphasize different aspects of spirituality, such as outcomes, behaviors, skills, ambitions, and beliefs. I argue that these aspects interdepend in a way that constitutes a “systems model of spirituality.” This model enables a more holistic understanding of the nature of spirituality, and suggests a new definition that disambiguates spirituality from related concepts such as religion, cultural sophistication, and prosocial behavior in animals. It also exposes important open questions about the nature of spirituality. To support the emerging scientific approach to the study of spirituality, I propose the development of a “philosophy of spirituality” that can clarify the conceptual terrain, identify important research directions, and facilitate a comprehensive and interdisciplinary investigation into the nature, validity, and implications of spirituality's conceptual and practical entailments

Contemporary lived spirituality appears to be grounded in intuitions that life has meaning, value and purpose in an axiologically uplifting sense, that it matters how things are, and that people can make a difference to how things turn out. Such a life-view is in tension with the currently dominant scientific world-views, which consider such opinions to be social constructions or delusions. In this paper, I argue, using the example of moral intuitions, that is possible to investigate the validity of such ‘spiritual notions’ in a scientific manner, and that, in the case of moral intuitions at least, the validity of spiritual intuitions is likely to be scientifically confirmed. This is only a step towards reconciling spiritual and scientific views in a mutually supportive manner, but on the basis of this example it can be tentatively proposed that the other spiritual intuitions are amenable to similar investigation and validation.

The search for a General Systems Theory (GST) formally became a scientific enterprise with the founding of the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory (living on today as the International Society for the Systems Sciences) in 1954. Many scientific advances have been made towards a GST, but GST is still incomplete and there is a rich ongoing debate about the nature, structure and value of GST. In this paper we argue that the general theory of a discipline has a generic structure, which can be inferred by attending to the process by which disciplines build up their knowledge base. We develop a model of this generic structure and then use it to envision the structure and scope of GST. This provides a principled baseline for assessing the developmental status of GST, planning work towards its completion, and defending the potential value of GST.