MindApps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D.
Part Street Press, Rochester, VT.
“accessible in style and format” — retired librarian
PROLOGUE: This book is about mental vastness. — page ix
MAIN IDEA:
Just as we can install digital apps in our electronic devices to add new functions and powers, we can install mindapps in our brain-mind complex to add new functions and powers
To request a gratis copy for class adoption or a book review, contact:
https://www.innertraditions.com/mindapps.html
* * *
Endorsement for Mindapps by Tom Roberts
by Ben Sessa, MD
author of The Psychedelic Renaissance
Tom Roberts is a lot of things: a writer, an inspiration for people entering the world of psychedelic research, a trickster and a wizard. But above all, he is an educator. He has been in the game a long time, and his ideas and hypotheses are always worth listening to. In MindApps, Tom takes us once again into a world of creative hypotheses and unique narratives that force the reader to sit up and take notice. The concept of the mindapp as a new paradigm – something to replace the outdated concept of consciousness itself – is exactly the kind of approach that our contemporary techno-savvy society is in need of. I highly recommend this book. Read it. Then, years from now – when this is the stuff of mainstream scientific and cultural knowledge – you can say you were alongside the early pioneers of a new way of thinking about brain states, mind states and psychedelics.
Mindapps introduces these words and phrases:
single-state fallacy
ideagen
mindbody state
mindapp
multistate theory
central multistate research question
mindbodyAI
mind design
Contents
1. A Scent of Portent
My Journey into Mind Design
Stanford, Iceland, Kansas, and the DEA
2. Augmenting Human Intellect with Mindapps
Mindapps and metaintlligence
Mindapps produce Multistate Theory
Re-framing “consciousness”
How does/do _____ vary from mindbody state to mindbody state?
3. Mind Design
Mindapp recipes invent new mindbody states
Brain-based Artificial Intelligence
Inventing new mindbody states and new cognitive processes
4. Mindapps for the Sciences
Emergence
Consilience
The “hard question” and the “impossible question”
Standard for judging empirical claims
Increasing our brains connectomes
Upgrading scientists’ minds
5. Layers of Meaning
Riding Grof ’s Bathyscaphe into Our Minds
Grof, has seen “a vaster panoply of human experience than anyone else in history.”
Remembering birth
Psychocriticism of A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Pink Floyd: The Wall, Snow White
Rhetoric of war
6. Save the Humanities!
“In June 2013, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) issued a report that bemoaned the sorry state of the humanities.” — page 71
Psychedelics to the Rescue!
Psychedelic aesthetic theory
Creativity, altruism, well-being etc
Which word when? — psychedelic, entheogen, empathegen
Banker and Poet (Wasson and Graves)
Ancient Rome and Athens
7. What Is Philosophy’s Greatest Opportunity?
Single-state fallacy
Sartre, Foucault, James, etc.
Achieving the Philosopher’s Mind
Philosophy also with — not just about — psychedelics (and other mindapps)
Studying reality, truth, beauty, goodness, sacredness, etc experimentally
8. The Entheogen Reformation
We are transitioning from an era of word-based religion to an era of experience-based religion
the nones, spiritual-but-not-religiious
CONCLUSION
Multistate Theory as a Vital Paradigm for the Future
APPENDIX A
Syllabus for a Psychedelic Class
taught 1981-2012 as Educational Psychology and
Honors Program Seminar
APPENDIX B
Psychedelics Without Borders, Inc.
Proposal for a Business Prospectus
APPENDIX C
Bicycle Day’s Beginning
Notes
Bibliography
Index
