davidsmith73
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2001
- Messages
- 1,697
We know that "psi" primarily comes in the form of reported experiences that seem to indicate something bizzare and unexpected about the nature of the mind or consciousness. However, there are many normal explanations that can be offered for these experiences and the experiences are either easily explained by normal means or they are more difficult, depending on the particular case. Either way, for us to obtain usefull information about the plausibility of these normal explanations, they have to be put to the test. For example it's certainly plausible that when we experience "gut feelings" that seem to predict real events, the basis of this is unconscious information processing - a known and normal mechanism. Indeed, its already been shown in many experiments that unconscious information processing occurs and is the basis of extraordinary behaviural events. A prime example would be blindsight, whereby visual information enables a patient to locate the precise position of an X on a blank piece of paper even though they insist that they cannot see anything.
The way I see it, there are two ways to investigate psi. One is to assume that all reported psi experiences are due to information entering cognition via normal channels of sensory processing. I feel this is Richard Wiseman main approach, which is fine. There's no doubt that a percentage of psi experiences are due to that. So you would go into the lab in order to demonstrate that normal psychological processes can produce effects that are similar in nature to reported psi experiences.
But if you assume that psi is only due to normal mechanisms all the time you may be missing something more interesting and important for our understanding of consciousness.
As an analogy consider if someone assumed that a certain aspect of animal development was entirely due to its DNA. They might conduct a series of experiments that manipulate the particular DNA sequence under study. This might result in a significant change in the animals developmental phenotype. When the manipulations were corrected, the animal returned to its orignal developmental state. Would the researcher be astute in his approach to fully investigating the development of the organism by assuming that only certain mechanisms are all that are responsible for the development of the animal? In assuming that a certain set of known mechanisms is all that accounts for the particular observations under study, he would be limiting his knowledge-base. He would never consider investigating other possible influences on the animals phenotype. So, a further approach might be to observe a large set of genetically identical animals and see if he observes any variation specific to his phenotype, which would indicate influences other than DNA. If so, he might then continue to investigate the source of this variation. My point is that he would never have contemplated such an experiment if he continually assumed that his phenotype was entirely due to the DNA.
And so is the case with psi. Those who continually perform experiments that test normal psychological mechanisms to explain psi experiences are limiting their investigative scope. Even if such experiments do indeed produce effects that look like psi, this says very little about the possibility of other more interesting mechanisms in just the same way that genetic manipulations say very little about non-genetic environmental influences on development. In this way, I suppose it is up to the faith of the individual psi researcher that experiments specifically designed to eliminate these normal mechanisms will still produce "psi" effects. Such experiments might not lead to any new knowledge, but lets not knock them for trying.
The way I see it, there are two ways to investigate psi. One is to assume that all reported psi experiences are due to information entering cognition via normal channels of sensory processing. I feel this is Richard Wiseman main approach, which is fine. There's no doubt that a percentage of psi experiences are due to that. So you would go into the lab in order to demonstrate that normal psychological processes can produce effects that are similar in nature to reported psi experiences.
But if you assume that psi is only due to normal mechanisms all the time you may be missing something more interesting and important for our understanding of consciousness.
As an analogy consider if someone assumed that a certain aspect of animal development was entirely due to its DNA. They might conduct a series of experiments that manipulate the particular DNA sequence under study. This might result in a significant change in the animals developmental phenotype. When the manipulations were corrected, the animal returned to its orignal developmental state. Would the researcher be astute in his approach to fully investigating the development of the organism by assuming that only certain mechanisms are all that are responsible for the development of the animal? In assuming that a certain set of known mechanisms is all that accounts for the particular observations under study, he would be limiting his knowledge-base. He would never consider investigating other possible influences on the animals phenotype. So, a further approach might be to observe a large set of genetically identical animals and see if he observes any variation specific to his phenotype, which would indicate influences other than DNA. If so, he might then continue to investigate the source of this variation. My point is that he would never have contemplated such an experiment if he continually assumed that his phenotype was entirely due to the DNA.
And so is the case with psi. Those who continually perform experiments that test normal psychological mechanisms to explain psi experiences are limiting their investigative scope. Even if such experiments do indeed produce effects that look like psi, this says very little about the possibility of other more interesting mechanisms in just the same way that genetic manipulations say very little about non-genetic environmental influences on development. In this way, I suppose it is up to the faith of the individual psi researcher that experiments specifically designed to eliminate these normal mechanisms will still produce "psi" effects. Such experiments might not lead to any new knowledge, but lets not knock them for trying.