Who are everyday mystics? People who try to use their minds to influence wellbeing.

Practical Time Travel for Everyday Mystics: A Serial Essay (installment 2)

(read installment 1)

Causal closure

There’s another big difference between things that are physical and things that are mental, and it’s the source of an active argument in philosophy. It should also be the source of an active argument in science, but it’s not yet been allowed to enter into most musty scientific halls (there are often no windows, and when there are, they rarely open). The idea is called “causal closure.” This is the idea that physical events are only caused by other physical events, not (for instance) mental ones. A ball rebounding from a tree is caused by the physical impact of the ball with the tree, not your thoughts or feelings about the impact. Based on this logic, if we assume mental events are real, which we must admit they are, and if we buy into causal closure, we then believe that mental events can’t cause physical events. A ball bumps into a tree and after rebounding, the ball comes to rest. Even if we really want it not to bounce off, it still does. This matches our everyday experience, at least in the ball-and-tree system.

But it’s interesting — there’s no proof of causal closure. It’s an assumption most of us make without knowing it. The idea that mental objects can cause physical changes doesn’t jibe with what most scientists…