Consciousness and the Physical World
by
Douglas M. Stokes
May, 2006
©2007 Douglas M. Stokes
To Iris and Rachel, my closest companions in this strangest of journeys.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all those who have pushed, prodded and led me to construct the Person I am (even though I will be shortly arguing that this very construction is ultimately an illusion).
These people include the faculty members of Tabor Academy (including my parents), Harvard University and the University of Michigan. They provided me with the tools I needed to embark on this journey. Ultimately, however, I refused to enter the dark and narrow tunnel into which these last two institutions guided me.
I am especially indebted to the editors of parapsychological journals who have guided my writing and given me a voice in parapsychology over the years, including K. Ramakrishna Rao, Dorothy Pope, Laura Dale, Betty Shapin, Rhea White, Stanley Krippner, John Palmer, Suzanne Brown and Nicola Holt.
I would also like to thank those who have helped me formulate my views, including J. B. and Louisa Rhine, Karlis Osis, John Beloff, Susan Blackmore and too many more to mention here. At least one will be surprised to find herself on this list. Sometimes you learn the most from those you ideas you initially find foreign and wrong-headed. These ideas have a way of chipping an entrance into one’s thick skull, slowly but surely. It may take decades, but one’s inner sanctum is eventually penetrated.
I would especially like to thank Robert Franklin and the rest of the staff at McFarland books, who have provided the main avenue through which serious books on parapsychology and radical investigations of the mind-body problem could be published. Without their efforts, these fields would be much the poorer, if they would even exist at all.
Table of Contents
3. The Evidence for Psi: Spontaneous Phenomena
4. The Evidence for Psi: Experimental Studies.
Introduction
This is a book about the self, the soul as it were (to use two terms with all the wrong connotations). It argues for the view of the self as a field of pure consciousness or “Cartesian theater” (to use the dismissive terminology of Daniel Dennett). It draws conclusions about the self and its relations to the physical body and the physical world that the reader may find unorthodox and surprising.
This book will explore many familiar areas in a hopefully unfamiliar way. These areas include the perennial mind-body problem, the role of consciousness in quantum mechanics, the anthropic principle, the evidence for Intelligent Design, and parapsychology (the investigation of ostensible paranormal abilities such as ESP and psychokinesis).
This book retraces many of the themes of my earlier book The Nature of Mind (Stokes, 1997) and in places may be regarded as an updating of that book. It also contains a comprehensive updating of my chapter on theoretical parapsychology in Stanley Krippner’s Advances in Parapsychological Research series (Stokes, 1987). However, the central focus in the present book is much different from that in these two earlier works, as are the ultimate conclusions drawn.
The central themes are introduced in Chapter 0, which may be regarded as the real introduction to the book; these themes then are expanded in more detail in the remaining chapters.
The reader may find the ultimate conclusions drawn to be unsettling and disconcerting, as did I in arriving at them. Once they begin to hack their way into your brain, however, they may provide you with a sense of peace greater than that offered by the dogmas hawked by religions that are still mired in the concept of the Person.
Postscript added on August 6, 2007
A condensed and abridged version of this manuscript was published by McFarland in 2007 as The Conscious Mind and the Material World: On Psi, the Soul, and the Self. This original manuscript contains a complete updating of my previous book The Nature of Mind as well as of my chapters on theoretical parapsychology and spontaneous psi experiences in Volumes 5 and 8 (respectively) of Stanley Krippner’s Advances in Parapsychological Research series (all three of these books were also published by McFarland). I would encourage readers of this work to also read the aforementioned book The Conscious Mind and the Material World, as it presents a more streamlined (and updated) development of the central themes in this manuscript.
The Dream of Matter
You are born into the world as a blob of protoplasm, the astronomically improbable result of a random recombination of genes and the confluence of a (literal) uncountable infinity of random events. Had just one or two of these billions of random events had a different outcome, you would in all likelihood never have been born. Your very existence could not be more improbable.
You are nothing but your body and brain. Your inner self, your aspirations and strivings, your deepest emotions, and innermost thoughts are nothing more electrical discharges and chemical secretions in the wetware of your brain. When that brain and body are gone, decomposed once more into their constituent elements, dispersed back into the Mother Earth, and finding new homes in her countless new creatures, plants and minerals, you will be no more. Aside from your works, influences on others, and the continuation of the all the myriad other causal chains in which you once participated, it will be as though you never existed.
Such is the dream of modern science and indeed of many modern enlightened religions that, perhaps prematurely, have rushed to embrace the materialist worldview of modern science, not wanting to be left behind in the dark ages from which they sprang.
Awakening From the Dream of Matter
According to the physicalistic philosophies underlying modern science, one’s self is nothing more than one’s physical body and the physical world is all that exists. We are identical to our physical bodies, our selves nothing more than the electrochemical activity of billions of neurons housed in calcium skulls. In the Weltanschauung of modern science, the world/universe is comprised of a collection of blindly careening elementary and not-so-elementary particles, a spacetime stage for them to perform their antics in, and little else. The behavior of these material particles is governed by the mathematical laws of physics and nothing else.
But, if each of us does have a self that endures from moment to moment, from day to day, and year to year (however much it may be extinguished at death), then that self cannot be identical with any specified collection of material particles. The material particles that make up our bodies are constantly changing. Atoms and molecules are continually entering into and exiting from your body, so that the collection of material particles that comprises your body of today is a completely different assemblage of material particles from that which comprised your body of several years ago. Yet you perceive that you are the same self you were then. If this perception is correct, then you cannot be identical to any particular collection of material particles, including your present physical body.
If each of us is identical with his or her physical body, it is most surprising that we would find ourselves conscious at the present moment of time. A human lifespan is only several decades long. On the other hand, the universe has existed for approximately 13.5 billion years and will likely exist for billions more to come (to say nothing of the age of any “multiverse,” of which the universe may be only a part). Thus, the probability that the moment in time that has somehow been mysteriously selected to be the “present” (something that physics, by the way, has no explanation whatsoever for) would correspond to a moment in one’s lifetime would seem to be vanishingly small. Also, if one is to be identified with a particular physical body, the probability that the set of genes that formed the blueprint for that body would ever have come into combination is virtually zero (and still smaller is the probability that the particular configuration of material particles that comprises one’s present physical body would ever have formed, much less exist at the present moment). Yet here you find yourself (a field of consciousness that is unique and special to you at any rate) existing at the present time. This is most surprising (indeed virtually impossible) based on the view that you are identical with, or dependent on, the presence of a particular collection of material particles at a particular moment in time. Hence, by a quick pseudoapplication of Bayes’ theorem in statistics, the probability that the standard view (that you are your physical body) obtains is also virtually zero.
There is much merit in the worldview of modern physical science and its current avatar is supported by a wide array of scientific evidence. However, scientists seem always to wish that their work is complete and that leisurely island life is only just around the corner. Sometimes they are quite adamant in their defense of this position.
This attitude is exemplified in a statement by the Nobel prize-winning physicist Albert Abraham Michelson, which he made twenty years after his paradigm-shaking experiment on the velocity of the Earth relative to the luminiferous ether. Michelson’s experiment (conducted in collaboration with Edward W. Morley) established the speed of light as a fundamental constant of nature and eventually led to the downfall of Newtonian mechanics and its replacement with Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Michelson’s remarks are as follows:
The more important fundamental laws and facts of the physical universe have all been discovered and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote [quotation taken from Feuer, 1974, p.253].
Michelson added that, although there were apparent exceptions to most of these laws, these were due to the increasing accuracy of measurement made possible by modern apparatus and that the system of known physical laws would be adequate to deal with the “apparent exceptions.” He went on to assert that “Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals” (Feuer, 1974, p. 254.) What is most amazing about these statements is that they preceded rather than followed the publication of Einstein’s paper on special relativity, a paper that caused a revolution in science and that received its main immediate empirical support from the results of Michelson’s own experiment. The development of quantum mechanics was another major revolution Michelson did not anticipate.
In fact, the discoveries and revolutions just keep on a-coming. For instance, Science’s “Breakthrough of the Year” for 2003 was the discovery that 96% of the energy in the universe is comprised of dark matter and dark energy, the existence of which was not even suspected a few decades ago, rather than the matter-energy that is visible to us, which comprises a mere 4% of the energy in the universe. A full 73% of the universe is comprised of dark energy, the existence of which was not even suspected until 1998 (Seife, 2003). Many more surprises may be in store for us.
There is no real place for mind or consciousness in the great World Machine of modern physicalistic science (leaving aside for the moment certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 2 and elsewhere in the book). Indeed, physicalistic science is at a loss to explain how the human brain, composed like everything else of supposedly insensate matter, can give rise to conscious experience (as contrasted with mere information-processing). To be sure, modern cognitive neuroscience has achieved remarkable insights into the nature of the brain activities that are associated with various forms of cognitive experience. What it has not thus far achieved is any explanation of how a three-pound hunk of meat can give rise to conscious experience in the first place.
Finally, there is a smattering of (hotly contested) evidence that conscious minds have powers such as precognition, telepathy and psychokinesis (collectively referred to as psi) that cannot be accounted for in terms of the known principles of physics. This evidence will be discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 4. As modern science clings to the delusion that its grasp of the nature of reality is complete, it has steadfastly resisted the work of parapsychologists.
Such an attitude is evident in the following comments of two eminent scientists, the psychologist Donald Hebb and the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, regarding the early experimental work on psi phenomena conducted by J. B. Rhine at Duke University. Rhine is generally regarded as the “father” of experimental parapsychology (the study of psi phenomena) and was the person who coined the term “extrasensory perception” (or ESP for short).
Both quotations are taken from Collins & Pinch (1979, p. 244). First Hebb:
Why do we not accept E.S.P. as a psychological fact? Rhine has offered us enough evidence to have convinced us on any other issue … I cannot see what other basis my colleagues have for rejecting it … My own rejection of [Rhine’s] views is in a literal sense prejudice.
Now Helmholtz:
I cannot believe it. Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, not even the evidence of my own senses would lead me to believe in the transmission of thought from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sensation. It is clearly impossible.
If psi phenomena are real, they have major implications for our understanding of the place of mind in the cosmos. Psi phenomena appear to transcend spacetime separations and to violate the normal temporal ordering of causation (such as in the case precognition, or the ability to foresee the future, and retroactive psychokinesis, or the ability to influence events that have already occurred). Because of their importance, a large portion of this book will be devoted to a discussion of psi phenomena and their implications for our understanding of the mind and the cosmos. As they appear to represent phenomena that cannot be accounted for in terms of current theories of physics, psi phenomena have often been taken as pointing to the existence of an “immaterial” mind. Many parapsychologists believe that psi phenomena may eventually be given an account in terms of an extension of current physical theories. If so, psi phenomena may point to the existence of new physical entities and principles rather to an immaterial realm.
As we shall see, the existence of psi phenomena has not been conclusively established. If the critics are correct and psi phenomena do not exist, the principal conclusions in this book regarding the nature of the conscious self will not be invalidated. For instance, our recent awakening from the Dream of Matter was achieved without the “alarm clock” of psi. Whether psi phenomena exist or not, our conscious selves cannot be identified with our physical bodies or brains.
The Dream of the Person
You are your mind, not your body, not even your brain. You are your thoughts, your personality, your memories, your emotions. In short, you are a person, not a blob of pulsating neurons. While your body and brain might decay into dust, you may survive by being:
Brought to Heaven (or Hell, Valhalla, Hades or the Dreamtime) in an angelic (or demonic) ethereal body,
Reincarnated with some of your memories, emotions, thoughts and much of your personality intact, at least at a subconscious level,
Transformed into an astral ghost capable of monitoring the events in this work and, occasionally, manifesting yourself to living,
Resurrected in your present body or a replica thereof at the time of the Day of Judgment, or
Transferred to a cybernetic “brain” by having your memories, thoughts and personality traits downloaded into a supercomputer or robot, or perhaps etched into the neuronal connections of willing or non-so-willing volunteers (or possibly even a mass of stem cells growing in a beaker in some remote laboratory).
At any rate, there is hope for eternal life, at least if the Cosmos’s neuro-copying equipment and file retrieval systems are up to the task and do not go on the blink and if some Agent is sufficiently enamored of one’s personality to want to keep a copy of it on hand for eternity (or barring that at least until the heat death of the universe).
The first and fourth alternatives above are subscribed to by certain adherents to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition, as well as the great mythological traditions of the pre-Christianized world, who look forward to reunion with the deity (or deities) and loved ones in some type of post-mortem realm such as the Christian Heaven. In the fourth alternative above, the resurrection is thought to take place right here or Earth or in some Resurrection World in a parallel universe. Besides having one’s personality recreated, we will all be generously provided with idealized resurrection bodies as well (see Edwards, 1997, pp. 53-62 for an entertaining discussion of beliefs regarding the resurrection of the body within the Christian tradition). Many resurrectionists believe that these will be the same physical bodies we occupied in life (although as noted above, each of us has already occupied several different physical bodies). If this is the case, I hope will not have to fight with the likes of Socrates and Jack the Ripper over who owns a particular set of atoms that we shared during our respective physical lives. (It is estimated that every minute, each of us inhales an atom once expelled in Julius Caesar’s dying breath.) Thus, this process of sharing recycled atoms might well result in a heated game of “musical atoms,” much like musical chairs, at the time of the resurrection. Thus, the resurrectionists are not only lost in the Dream of the Person, they are still lost in the Dream of Matter.
The third alternative, reincarnation, is subscribed to by many shamanistic traditions, by Eastern religious traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism (although as well shall see later, many of the more sophisticated adherents to the Eastern religious tradition have awakened from the Dream of the Person), and by as much as one-quarter of the people in the highly-Christianized United States. There is even empirical evidence for reincarnation in the form of children who report seemingly accurate memories of past lives (Stevenson, 1987).
Additional empirical evidence for the survival of the person has been provided by psychical researchers studying apparitions and hauntings, purported massages from the dead communicated by mediums or in dreams, as well as near-death experiences and the related phenomenon of out-of-the-body experiences. A few other lines of investigation are highly amusing if not outright silly, such as attempts to detect messages from the dead in radio static or on one’s phone answering machine and to weigh and/or photograph the soul upon its departure at death. We will duly consider this evidence empirical evidence for the survival of the personality in Chapter 6, presenting both the proponents’ and skeptics’ evidence and arguments.
As for the fifth alternative, some writers, including Hans Moravec (1988), Grant Fjermedal (1987), and Frank Tipler (1994) among others, have suggested that one’s thoughts, memories and personality could be “downloaded“ into a computer or robot, allowing one’s essential self to survive after death in a cybernetic world or as a cybernetic simulacrum operating in the physical world. This survival could be for eternity, or at least until the heat death of the universe (after which the universe may not be that much fun to play in anyway).
Awakening from the Dream of the Person
Just as the collection of atoms and elementary particles making up your physical body undergoes continual change and replacement, so do your thoughts, emotions, memories and personality traits. Your essential self persists, despite these continual changes in the contents of your consciousness (and, we might add, subconscious and unconscious minds as well). Thus, you cannot be your personality or its “contents,” such as your thoughts, emotions, and memories.
During the past three decades neuroscientists have amply demonstrated that one’s sensations, feelings, thoughts, emotions, memories, ideas, and even personality can be radically altered through electromagnetic, surgical, chemical, and accidental interventions in the brain. Thus, we live in a different world of knowledge than did the psychical researchers of a century ago, who searched for some trace of the continuing existence of the dearly departed in the garbled words of mediums uttered during séances.
If relatively minor modifications of brain states can substantially alter the nature of one’s experience and personality, as has by now been amply demonstrated, how could your personality and experiences manage to continue on in a more or less an uninterrupted fashion after the far more drastic event of the destruction of your entire brain? Also, many of the concerns that drive the structure of your personality have to do with the preservation of your own physical body and those of people who are closely related to you (or perhaps to the propagation of your “selfish genes”). What would be the point of the continuance of these concerns once your physical body has been returned to dust and your ability to intervene in the physical world perhaps radically curtailed?
Of course, there is the possibility, as suggested by Tipler (1994), that your personality may be resurrected by a benevolent and almost omnipotent Programmer that is so enamored of you that She creates a simulacrum of your personality in a semi-eternal cyberspace. However, there is nothing in principle stopping a sufficiently ardent Fan of your personality from constructing a computer or robot to simulate your personality while you are still alive. Surely it would be absurd to think that your self would then reside both in the computer and in your physical body. The computer or robot is just a replica of you. It is not you. You are not your personality traits and behavior patterns.
Along similar lines, it could be argued that, if you are not the particular collection of physical particles that make up your present physical body, perhaps you are the particular pattern of molecules that make up your present body (including your brain configuration and thus personality). You would then remain the same person even if the physical particles that make up your body changed, so long as the general pattern remained the same. This is the basis of the famous beaming technique in the Star Trek television and movie series. In Star Trek, one can “beam” to a new location by undergoing a process in which one’s physical body is atomized, information about the pattern of the physical particles that make up one’s body is sent to a distant location, and a new body is reassembled (presumably out of new atoms) at the second location. Peter Oppenheimer (1986) and Derek Parfit (1987) have independently concluded that this beaming process would result in the death of everyone who used it as a form of transportation, followed by the construction of a replica of the person at the destination site. This replica may not be the original person any more than identical twins are the same person as one another. To make this example more compelling, assume that more than one copy of the person is assembled at the destination site. Surely it would be difficult to believe that one’s self could simultaneously inhabit all the replicas of one’s physical body that are constructed at the destination site, insofar as a conscious self cannot have several separate and independent streams of consciousness occurring at the same time.
Thus, you cannot be the pattern of your neural activity, your emotions, your memories, your personality traits, or your present hopes and dreams. We have now awakened from both the Dream of Matter and the Dream of the Person. If we are not our physical bodies and not our personalities, then what can we be? What further dreams await us?
The Dream of Atman and Brahman
The self that (seems to) persist over long time periods (from birth to death in the popular, common view) would appear to correspond to what Hornell Hart (1958) called the “I-thinker,” that entity that thinks one’s thoughts (although it may not have a primary role in generating them), feels one’s feelings, remembers one’s memories and senses one’s sensations, rather than being the conglomeration of the thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations themselves. After all, these contents of consciousness are fleeting and do not persist from one moment to the next. One outlives one’s current emotional state, and one’s self may survive the demise of myriad personalities. After all, how could we be the contents of our streams of consciousness when these contents change from moment to moment while we ourselves seem to persist unchanged from moment to moment, day to day and even from year to year?
What seems to persist, at least from an introspectionist point of view, is the (contentless) field of consciousness itself. Perhaps, as suggested above, our real selves are fields of pure consciousness, the “contentless consciousness” of Indian philosophy, as described by Rao (2002), among others. In other words, we are the vessel of consciousness rather than the contents of that vessel.
After all, how could we be the contents of our consciousness when such contents change constantly while we seem to persist unchanged from moment to moment, day to day, and even from year to year? It is one of the goals of Buddhist meditative practice to realize that one’s emotions, one’s cravings, and one’s personality are not oneself, to realize oneself as a center of pure consciousness and to extinguish the cravings and clingings that cause discontent and suffering. Similarly, in the Vedantic tradition of Hinduism, one of the ultimate goals in spiritual development is to realize the identity between Atman (one’s individual consciousness) and Brahman (the World Consciousness, or, to use a potentially misleading term from the Western tradition, God). Under the Vedantic worldview, there is only one pure consciousness, and we are all the Universe looking at itself from different perspectives.
Of course there are those, such as Daniel Dennett (1991), Susan Blackmore (1991a, 1993, 2002) and Thomas Metzinger (2003), who deny the very existence of a continuing self, or “Cartesian theater,” as Dennett calls it. The self, they maintain, is a convenient “story” we tell ourselves in an attempt to render our experiences coherent and consistent. As such, the self is an entirely fictional concept, and “we” are nothing more than the scattered contents (fleeting sensations, thoughts, and emotions) of “our” minds. To most people the existence of a continuing self is immediately given and obviously true. It is an integral part of our essential existence. However, if thinkers such as Blackmore and Dennett are correct, there is no need to worry about whether the self will survive death. Indeed, the “self” does not even survive moment to moment and in fact does not even exist at all.
The Zen doctrine of “No Mind” also denies the existence of a continuing self. However, the Buddhist doctrine seems more directed at the concept of the self as one’s personality, comprising one’s aspirations, motivations, cravings for material possessions, lusts, pride, and so forth, rather than at the existence of a field of pure consciousness. A goal of Buddhist practice is to distance oneself from these transitory elements. In order to achieve a state of peace and tranquility, the Buddhists teach that one must suppress and eliminate one’s cravings and greed, which, unfulfilled, are the root of all human misery and suffering.
As we have seen above, most branches of Buddhism and Hinduism teach that the true self is pure consciousness, not the contents or objects of consciousness. Thus, rather than clinging to the hope that one’s personality will survive relatively intact in some sort of afterlife, the Eastern philosophies teach that our personalities are transitory and not our true selves. One’s true self in this view is the pure consciousness that in Hindu philosophy is taken to be identical with all consciousness, including that of the World Soul or Brahman. Under the Vedantic worldview, there is only one pure consciousness, and we are all the Universe looking at itself from different perspectives. Thus, according to this view, when persons temporarily abandon their individual identities and perceive themselves as merging with the Cosmos or as being in perfect union with God, as in the mystical experiences described by William James (1902) and others, they are seeing directly into their true selves. All consciousness is the one Consciousness that underlies this and all other worlds. We are fragmented splinters of the World Soul, our selves at once separate from, and yet identical to, one another.
It should be conceded that survival in the form of pure consciousness with little continuity of memories, emotions, and predispositions from one’s previous biological life may not be what most persons would consider survival in the true sense (i.e., survival with one’s memories and personality completely intact). It would, however, be survival of one’s essential self, the central core of one’s existence.
If our true self is Atman, pure consciousness, is there any Brahman, any larger Consciousness for it to merge in, or be identical with? In recent times, most scientists have turned their backs to the concept of Deity and a Creator, with the possible exception of such doddering old “fools” as Erwin Schrödinger and Isaac Newton. Arguments for a Designer have largely been abandoned as regressive. After all, if there was a Designer, who designed Him? If there was a “preuniverse,” then what preceded that?
The noted mathematician and physicist Sir James Jeans, pondering the subtleties of the mathematics of laws of physics and the seeming dependence of material events upon observation by conscious minds, observed, that the “universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine” (Jeans, 1937, p. 122). Another great physicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, remarked, “the stuff of the world is mind-stuff” (Eddington, 1920/1959, p. 200).
Indeed, the base reality of the world appears to be one of quantum probability waves inhabiting an abstract, multidimensional mathematical space rather than the solid, marble-like electron and protons zipping around in a four-dimensional spacetime continuum that we imagine to be the firm underpinnings of our material existence. The mathematical complexity and beauty of the laws of the quantum mechanics are remarkable. It does indeed seem as though the Creator is, as both Jeans and Einstein thought, a great mathematician. As Henry Stapp says, under quantum mechanics, the world has “an essentially ‘idea-like’ structure” (Stapp, 2005a, p. 73). Stapp’s remarks are echoed in a recent editorial in Nature, the flagship journal of orthodox science, in which Richard Conn Henry points out that modern physics has demonstrated that the universe is “entirely mental” in nature and that “nothing exists but observations” (Henry, 2005, p.29).
But if the universe is a thought, whose thought is it anyway? In recent years, a seemingly endless succession of physicists have observed that the laws of the universe and the initial conditions set at the time of its creation seem extraordinarily finally tuned to support the evolution of complex life forms and hence conscious observers (see Barrow & Tipler, 1986, or Livio and Rees, 2005). This seeming evidence of intelligent design is often referred to as the anthropic principle. Was the universe created as a vast cosmic amusement park? And why go to trouble of designing such an elaborate “roadside attraction” unless One intended to enjoy it Oneself, if only vicariously? Are our individual consciousnesses just aspects of the Creator’s (or Creators’) consciousness, lost in an unimaginable form of contemplation of the myriad creatures It has managed to generate from Its mathematical inventions, much as we may become lost in the adventures of a goldfish in the bowl in our living room or in the adventures of the cybernetic “life” forms we may create when we implement the mathematician John Conway’s “Game of Life” on our computer?
The anthropic principle is based on the observation that the laws and initial conditions of the universe must be extremely fine-tuned to support life as we know it (i.e. carbon-based life forms). But there may be other forms of life (e.g., nucleon-based) that may arise under different conditions. Also, there may be multiple universes created, so that we necessarily find ourselves in a universe capable of supporting conscious observers, with initial conditions and laws that would seem improbable had only one universe been created with a random assortment of physical laws and initial conditions. Guth and Kaiser (2005), for instance, note that cosmic inflation (the currently favored model of cosmogenesis) may produce “pocket universes” in each of which the fundamental laws of physics might be different. Again, we of necessity inhabit a pocket universe that is capable of supporting the existence of conscious observers. Still, one must explain the laws and initial conditions that gave rise to cosmic inflation in the first place.
One might imagine that a consciousness so complex and vast as to be able to create (perhaps literally dream up) such a startlingly wonderful (and frightening) world as this one might well become bored with its omniscience and may wish to lose itself in its creation, if only temporarily. It may need to fragment itself and temporarily shed much of its omniscience to accomplish this. We too might well begin to stagnate and become bored if we were to somehow become immortal and become trapped in our present bodies and mired in our present personalities and situation for all eternity. Death may be the rope thrown to free us from the quicksand of our current identities.
Beyond the Veil of Maya
We awake from the Dream of Atman and Brahman to find ourselves in still yet another, but this time possibly the final, dream. We are, exactly as in the dream from we have just awakened, each of us specks of consciousness adrift in a universe whose vastness defies our understanding (if we can even be said to have an “understanding” in any real sense of the word). There are as yet no planets, no stars, only a rapidly expanding rush of matter and light. The universe is but only seconds old. We may have come from a place before the universe, but being disembodied with no notepad or brain on which to record and preserve the events of this prelife, our memories of such a place are lost. For all we know, and we don’t know much at his point, we may have just been fused together in some great computer of our own construction, of unimaginable computational and physical power, in a “Manhattan project” designed to produce a very Big Bang indeed (at least from our perspectives). We are adrift in a rapidly expanding spacetime designed to captivate us in a way that is even more amusing and terrifying than Hollywood concoction our current primitive technologies can produce. However, that all lies in the distant future. Now, with our memories lost along with our cosmogenic computer, we drift among the beautiful clouds of quantum waves, admiring their beauty, touching them, drawing them this way and that as the potential universe is actualized. Our consciousness is like that of a quark lost in a swarming buzz of photons and gluons
As Tim Hill points out in a recent letter to the Editor of the Skeptical Inquirer (Hill, 2005), the vast emptiness of space is totally hostile to human observers with its lack of air, pockets of intense radiation and unimaginably high temperatures, not to mention the total absence of fast-food establishments. If the anthropic principle is valid, Hill suggests, the overwhelming evidence surely suggests that the universe was created for beings that exist in the vacuum of space, not for the amusement for a handful of abnormally smart “geek” apes confined to one tiny speck in a cold dark corner of a comparatively uninterested and desolate cosmos.
Perhaps then, we are more akin to antiprotons than to angels, small islands of consciousness born to force the amorphous clouds of quantum possibilities into the crystalled raindrops of actualized events. In the view of many interpreters of quantum mechanics, observation by consciousness is what causes such quantum collapse (i.e., collapse of the state vector containing an array of possiblities into one definite outcome). Walker (2000) has even proposed the existence of “mini-consciousnesses” or “proto-consciousnesses” that govern the collapse of quantum vectors that are remote from human observers.
Indeed, some physicists (e.g., Wheeler, 1983) have suggested that the universe itself, conceived as a quantum process, could not have come into existence without some conscious observer to force the collapse of state vectors and thus to give rise to a definite history of the universe. Wheeler terms this view the “participatory universe.” Wheeler notes that this view may explain the fact that the initial state and physical laws of the universe seem finely tuned to support the existence of conscious observers. Potential universes that do not support the presence of conscious observers could not become actualized in Wheeler’s view, as there would be no conscious observers to collapse their state vectors in the proper “direction” to create such a history.
But perhaps those observers are more akin to Walker’s “proto-consciousnesses" than to human beings. If physics suggests anything, it is that the fundament constituents of the universe are more likely to very small in comparison to the human observers that formed the center of the medieval view of the cosmos. Our essential selves are more likely to resemble an electron than a human body.
After our dispersal at the time of the Big Bang, we have surfed the quantum waves, finding our selves in neutron stars, methane oceans on moons of gas giants, exploding in supernovae (the matter comprising our physical bodies was formed in such explosions), shooting out of volcanoes, condensing into rocks, sheparding the bodies of amobea, gazing out of worried eye of a stegosaur, stretching with the leaves of a sequoia. Through much of this, our consciousness would be dim, as we float in a universe largely separated from our fellow monads, deprived of any physical template to hold our memories or any hormones to drive our wishes and aspirations. But time is on our side.
As the debris of supernovae cooled and their ashes condensed once again into stars and planetary systems, on one remote outpost (and probably on a virtual infinity of outposts), the physical templates (and the complex assemblages of our essential selves) grew more complex. With the first protozoa, we began to gather, and after eons we were collected in assemblages in whales and crows and octopodes and in at least one malcontented bipedal ape.
Our common conception, and one that forms part of the Dream of Atman and Brahman is that we are each a single conscious self (field of consciousness) which in some mysterious manner became attached to our brains shortly after our conceptions and will persist in those brains until we die. But our brains are powerful and unimaginably large in comparison to our single-celled ancestors, who, we might suppose, had the glimmerings of consciousness. Our brains and bodies are in essence a colony of billions of amoebas. Many of us may ride in a single brain. Indeed (as discussed in more detail in Chapter 7), when a human brain is split into its two hemispheres by severing the corpus callosum (the primary bundle of neural fibers connecting the two hemispheres), two fields of consciousness seem to exist, sometimes with such differences in motivation that the right hand (controlled by the left hemisphere) may forced to grab the left hand (controlled by the right) in order to prevent the latter from carrying out an assault on one’s spouse.
In fact, the findings of split-brain research are precisely the evidence Patricia Churchland uses to refute the existence of a nonphysical self or soul in human beings (Churchland, 2002, pp. 46-47).
Churchland is likely correct so far as the “single soul” theory goes; but the evidence suggests that multiple centers of consciousness or “souls” may exist within a single brain, with each of them falling under the delusion that they are the single center that is “in charge of” the body. Jonathan C. W. Edwards (2005) and Willard Miranker (2005) have even proposed that that each single neuron in the brain is associated with its own center of consciousness. Due to the complexity of the input to each neuron, each such center of consciousness would likely identify with the body as a whole and fall under the delusion that it is the single center conscious self “in charge” of the whole body.
We directly experience ourselves as a single unified fields of consciousness that persist through changes in our brain states and bodily composition over periods of at least hours. We think we persist as the same selves over the lifetimes of our bodies. In this we may be wrong. If memories are, as an overwhelming body of scientific evidence indicates, stored as patterns of synaptic connections among neurons in our brain, how do you know that you are the same field of consciousness that inhabited your body when you fell asleep? If you can become attached to your brain shortly after conception (or in the view of some people at birth) and become detached from it at the moment of death, it stands to reason that you can also become attached to it long after birth and leave it well before death. Our association with our bodies may be only temporary. We may be breathed out and breathed in like so many oxygen atoms. Indeed, while many philosophers (such as Descartes) have thought that minds or souls are not extended in space and time and hence immaterial, the fact that we find ourselves stuck in physical bodies occupying in particular locations in space and (even more mysteriously) located at a particular moments in time, suggests that we too must (at least partially) be residents of spacetime ourselves, if only temporarily.
Elementary particles such as electrons and quarks may become embedded in physical brains; these particles persist and remain stuck over “long” time intervals such as minutes and hours. These particles appear, like our individual consciousnesses, to be indivisible (leaving aside the possibility of subquarks for the moment). If an electron can “incarnate” in a body for a period of time, then be expelled, and then be “reincarnated” in another body or physical system, then so might we. We may ourselves be material or quasi-material entities that can become stuck in individual brains on a temporary basis. We may be a particle or field already known to physical science, although it is more likely we are an entity yet to be discovered and explained. In the latter case we could be called “nonphysical” or “immaterial” in the sense that we are not identical to any particle or field already known to modern physics; however, if the theory of physical science were to expand to accommodate us, perhaps the label of “physical” could then be applied to us. As Noam Chomsky once remarked, as soon as we understand anything, we call it physical; thus, “anything in the world is either physical or unintelligible” (Lipkin, 2005, p. 55).
The evidence for psi phenomena, to be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, suggests that the mind may have abilities that transcend those of entities located at single spacetime location. Such spacetime transcendence, if proven, may make the label “physical” more difficult to apply to minds (but not impossible, in view of the nonlocal behavior of material particles under the theory of quantum mechanics, to be discussed more fully in Chapter 2).
If we are continually being recycled, then when we wake in the morning, we may not be in the same bodies (or objects or plasma fields) that we were in the day before. If, as the overwhelming body of modern research in neuroscience indicates, our memories, thoughts and emotions are largely a function of our brain states, we would not remember our existence as, say, a crow the day before. Our previous “memory pad,” namely the crow’s brain, is lost to us. We cannot find those memories in the same way that we cannot access a telephone number written on a misplaced piece of paper. The telephone number and the pad it was written on are not parts of our essential selves. Neither are we the memories stored in the stored in the brain of the crow that now perches outside our window or the memories and personality traits stored in the new human brain in which we have just awakened. What we will remember are the memories stored in that new human brain (sometimes after a period momentary of confusion upon awakening). We will feel the emotions caused by the intense firing of our midbrain neurons and the hormones and neurotransmitters rampaging through our cerebral cortex. Accessing the brain’s memories of our sixth birthday party, we will immediately come to the conclusion that we have inhabited this brain and body for decades. The brain has evolved to serve the body and we now made to serve that purpose as well, overwhelmed by the delusion that we are the Person, that is to say, the body and the memories, thoughts and emotions that result from the neural activity of that body’s brain. We think we are in sole command of the body, whereas in fact our nerves, the neurochemical soup in which they bathe, as well as numerous other centers of pure consciousness also mired in the same brain, may have as much or more to say about the fate of the body than we do. In short, we fall under the illusion that we are the Person, the physical body that continues from birth to death, and the stream of memories, thoughts and emotions that courses through it, rather than the centers of pure consciousness that we are. Blackmore and Dennett are correct in their analysis that the “person” is just a story that we tell ourselves (although it would be more accurate to portray it as a story that is screamed at us by a billion pulsating neurons). Where Blackmore and Dennett err is in denying that there is any self or center of conscious that persists from moment to moment (i.e., a “Cartesian theater”). The existence of a conscious self is given to each of us in our direct experience (or at least to me - I can’t speak for Blackmore and Dennett). If I am to doubt that I am a center of consciousness persisting through macroscopic time intervals, then I must doubt everything and enter a state of total solipsism and nihilism. However, I do agree that it is likely that spheres of consciousness are, just like electrons and quarks, continually being recycled, joining first one aggregate body and then another. We are somehow stuck to our brains like an oxygen atom stuck to two hydrogen atoms, a view I once called the “chewing gum” theory of personal identity (Stokes, 1988). But it is likely that such centers enter and leave the brain at times other than birth and death. The idea that the conscious self enters into the body at some time shortly after conception and then persists in that body until death is just an aspect of the illusion produced by identifying ourselves as the Person. We are not the Person, we are not even Atman (in the sense of a sphere of pure consciousness inhabiting the body from birth until death), and are likely no longer Brahman (although it is possible that we were once conjoined in an aggregate of consciousnesses that may have somehow “designed” the world, implemented that design, and are now walking through our “art gallery”).
As we have seen, through replacement of atoms, the body we inhabit today is a totally different body from that of a decade age and the spheres of consciousness that inhabit it (including ourselves) are likely themselves different as well. There is no Person in the sense of a continuing aggregation of matter or a continuing self. The Person is likely to be, as Blackmore and Dennett insist, a story we tell ourselves. However, it is a useful story, just like the story of my car or my kitchen table. It helps credit card companies to obtain payments for purchases we made the preceding month and guides our interactions with former classmates at a high school reunion. But in an absolute sense, the Person is only a cognitive construct, a very vivid hallucination. We may be eternal (or least outlast the Energizer Bunny), but “we” (the People) have only a momentary time in the sun and may only be cognitive constructs, much like the ever-changing body of water that is now called the Mississippi River.
We cling to our present form of existence thinking that there is no other, but when you stop to think about the matter, human bodies, with their ills, needs and subjugation into mindless repetitive jobs, may not be the best places in the universe to inhabit. In fact, they may be “mini-Hells,” aberrations in Great Cosmic Scheme. But we may not inhabit such Hells (or such Heavens as there might be) for as long as we think. The best thing for us to do is likely to take the poet Robert Frost’s advice and momentarily stop the “horses” we are currently riding to enjoy the beauty of the falling snow. As Frost suggests, there may be miles to go (although perhaps not so many as one might think) before we sleep (and enter yet another dream).
The Game Plan
The remainder of this book further develops the themes outlined above (and defends the foregoing thesis regarding the relationship between conscious selves and the physical world). In Chapter 1, we well will explore the nature of the relationship between mind (consciousness) and matter. Chapter 2 continues this exploration with a consideration of the implications of quantum mechanics regarding the role of mind in the cosmos. In Chapters 3 and 4, we will consider the evidence for psi phenomena, such as ESP and psychokinesis, in some detail. The defense of the primary thesis regarding the role of conscious observers presented above will in no way rest on the existence of psi phenomena. However, such phenomena, if they exist, have profound implications regarding the role of mind in the physical world (and they are entertaining and instructive to explore in their own right). Chapter 5 is devoted to an exploration of the implications of psi phenomena, if they exist, for our views of reality in general and the nature of mind-matter interaction in particular. Chapter 6 presents the existing evidence for the survival of the Person (including memories, emotions, and even physical appearance) of the death of the human body. In Chapter 7, we will explore in further detail the nature of the self and the nature of mind-brain interaction. In Chapter 8, we will turn again to a consideration to the role of mind in the physical universe, this time on the grandest of scales, by considering the anthropic principle and arguments that the universe may to designed to support the existence of (and possibly to entertain) conscious observers. Chapter 9 contains a final summing-up of the evidence and conclusions presented in the main body of the book.
It is time to get started.
We begin with our journey with an examination of the relationship between conscious minds and physical matter (traditionally called the “mind-body problem”).
Historical Roots
Before launching into a discussion of modern views on the mind-body problem, it is helpful to consider the historical processes that gave rise to those views. In particular, an historical perspective will enable us to understand the almost religious vehemence with which some positions are held.
In the history of human thought up until surprisingly recent times, it was much more common to attribute mental or psychological properties to seemingly inanimate matter than it is today. Jonathan Shear, the founder and editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, notes that the problem of accounting for the existence of conscious experience that confronts modern science was not a problem for the ancient Greeks, as they viewed the material world as being imbued with mind, which served as a force governing the behavior of matter (Shear, 1995). For instance, Thales of Miletus (died c. 546 B.C.E.) claimed that inanimate objects possessed a psyche allowing them the possibility of self-motion. A century later Empedocles asserted that all elemental bodies were endowed with thought and sensation (Nash, 1995a). Epicurus (341-271 B.C.E.) held that atoms have free will and could initiate collisions by swerving from their path, which was believed to be predetermined by such atomists as Democritus and Leucippus (Skrbina, 2005). This idea has been revitalized many times over the course of development of Western thought. Even as late as the turn of the last century, Ernst Haeckel (1899/1929) argued that in order for molecules to be attracted to one another, each must somehow “feel” each other’s presence.
Aristotle taught that the natural state of any body was one of rest. He asserted that the crystalline spheres which carried the planets and stars on their celestial voyages in his cosmology were associated with incorporeal “movers” that provided the force needed to maintain their motion. He viewed these movers as being spiritual in nature and conceived of the relation of a mover to its sphere as “akin to that of a soul to its body” (Mason, 1962, p. 42).
Aristotle’s view was given a Christian interpretation by Christian philosophers such as Dionysius in the fifth century and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, with Aristotle’s “movers” being equated with the angels described in the Scriptures. Aristotle also attributed psychological properties to baser matter, ascribing the tendency for a terrestrial object to fall to the Earth to its “aspiration” to reach its natural place.
Even as late as 1600, William Gilbert, an English physician and the founder of the scientific study of magnetic phenomena, proclaimed that the Earth has a magnetic soul analogous to the “magnetic soul” that Gilbert believed governed the behavior of lodestones. According to Gilbert, the rotation of the Earth and the inclination of its axis of rotation with respect to the sun were both caused by a desire on the part of the Earth’s soul to avoid extreme temperatures and to cause seasonal variations. Almost two centuries later, in 1777, the English chemist Joseph Priestley asserted that physical matter was akin to “spiritual and immaterial beings” because of its properties of attraction and repulsion.
These animistic views of matter gradually crumbled under the onslaught of scientific advances. The law of the conservation of angular momentum (earlier called the doctrine of “impetus”) led John Philoponos in the sixth century and William of Ockham in the fourteenth to deny the need to assume the existence of angels to keep the planetary spheres in motion. After all, if you spin a top, it keeps spinning by itself. (Philoponos was rewarded for this observation by being denounced as a heretic by the Church.)
In rejecting Aquinas’ angels, William of Ockham was led to formulate his famous injunction “not to multiply entities beyond necessity,” which has since become known as “Ockham’s Razor.” In fact, Ockham’s Razor, which was originally formulated to justify the exclusion of a class of spiritual beings (Aristotle’s angelic movers) is still one of the primary justifications used by modern scientists and philosophers to deny the existence of a realm of mental experience that is independent of physical events in the brain. With regard to Ockham’s original application of his principle, the historian of science Herbert Butterfield (1957) viewed the impetus doctrine (in the form of the modern laws of conservation of momentum) as the primary factor underlying the banishment of a spiritual realm from scientific accounts of the world and the establishment in seventeenth century of the view of the universe as material clockwork-like mechanism. The Calvinist John Preston proclaimed in 1628 that “God alters no law of Nature” (Mason, 1962, p. 181). Divine intervention by deities or angels was no longer permitted; events were seen to be predictable from, and governed by, the laws of nature alone.
Vestiges of divine intervention persisted at least into the 18th century. Issac Newton asserted that divine intervention was necessary to reestablish the regular order of the planets’ orbits, which were constantly being deranged due to gravitational forces among the planets and comets and to a supposed gradual reduction in orbital velocity due to “ether drag” (Christianson, 1978). However, in general the picture of the universe that emerged from the seventeenth century (at least in Western philosophy) was one of a huge impersonal machine governed by strictly mechanical principles.
Once the picture of the physical universe as a soulless machine gained ascendancy, not only did matter get stripped of its mental and spiritual aspects, so did living organisms. For instance, while Ernest Haeckel used an analogy between the growth of salt crystals and that of living cells to proclaim that all matter had a spiritual aspect, his contemporary Carl Nageli used precisely the same analogy to deny that biological cells were associated with a spiritual force, instead arguing that their growth was due to simple mechanical forces. The chemical synthesis of organic compounds in the laboratory, exemplified by Friederich Wöhler’s synthesis of urea in 1828, further undermined the vitalistic philosophies that insisted that a spiritual force governed biological processes.
Antoine Lavoisier had earlier demonstrated that the ratio of emitted heat to carbon dioxide was the same for candle flames as it was for animals, suggesting that respiration was a purely mechanical process.
While vitalism is not dead, its few modern advocates, including Arthur Koestler (1972, 1978) have been regarded as fringe thinkers by the scientific establishment.
One of the contributors to this mechanistic cosmology was, paradoxically enough, the seventeenth century philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes, who is widely regarded as being the prototype of the modern dualist (a dualist being one who regards the realms of mind and matter as having independent reality). Among the phenomena that had most strongly indicated a mental aspect to matter were those suggestive of the operation of action-at-a-distance, such as gravitation and magnetism. Descartes was able to eliminate this stumbling block on the road to a totally mechanistic outlook by proposing theories of magnetism (the vortex theory) and gravitation (the plenum theory) that avoided the problem of action-at-a-distance by assuming that these two types of force were transmitted through a physical medium.
Descartes extended his mechanistic philosophy to encompass living creatures as well as inanimate matter. He viewed animals as mere machines. He did not, however, question the existence of minds in humans; indeed, he thought one’s primary and most direct knowledge was of one’s own mind. He viewed mind as a totally different kind of entity from matter. In Descartes’ view, one’s mind (or ego) was indivisible and hence lacked a basic character of matter—that of extension in space. Thus, the mind inhabited a different plane of existence from the physical world and could not be said to have a spatial location.
Despite their different natures, Descartes proposed that the mind interacted with the physical body by deflecting the motion of the “animal spirits” flowing through the brain. He thought the pineal gland was the area of the brain in which this mind-matter interaction took place (as the pineal gland was the one structure that was not duplicated in the cerebral hemispheres and thus seemed appropriate to house a unitary and indivisible mind). Because Descartes’ law of inertia held merely that the total quantity of motion in a system remains constant (but not necessarily its direction), he proposed that the soul acted upon the body by altering the direction of motion of the animal spirits, while not changing the intensity of that motion.
The mathematician G. W. Leibniz, however, demonstrated that Descartes was in error and that directionality was conserved in the law of momentum. Thus, Leibniz demonstrated that the physical body (as modeled by Descartes) was a deterministic system. There was therefore no room left for an influence of the mind on the body, and the mind was totally excluded from influence on the physical world. (It should be noted that mind retained a place in Leibniz’ own “monad” cosmology, although that cosmology never gained ascendancy in Western thought.)
As a deterministic clockwork physical universe allows no room for mind-action, it is not surprising that Cartesian dualism soon yielded to the materialism of Hobbes and La Mettrie (and more recently of Watson, Skinner, Dennett and the Churchlands).
Once again, an application of the law of inertia led to the exclusion of the spiritual realm from scientific models of the world, only this time it was not angels being banished from the heavens, but the human soul itself being banished from its body. Indeed the historian of science Richard Westfall (1977) viewed the rigid exclusion of the psychic from physical nature as the “permanent legacy” of the seventeenth century.
However, since the emergence of the theory of quantum mechanics early in the last century, the brain is no longer viewed as a deterministic system. Thus, the argument from determinism no longer works, and there is now the possibility that an immaterial mind could interact with a physical brain by selecting which quantum state the brain enters out of the many states that are possible at any given time.
The philosopher Michael Lockwood (1989) has noted that the prejudice in favor of matter was grounded in the apparent solidity of the former in the Newtonian worldview. Lockwood points out that the solidity of matter has disappeared in the theory of quantum mechanics (material particles exist as probability waves in an abstract mathematical space until they are observed) and that mind and matter are now both equally mysterious.
The tenacity with which some scientists resist the idea of an autonomous realm of mind is perhaps understandable in light of history. The emerging mechanistic picture of the world was fiercely resisted by the religious establishment, notable examples being the condemnation of Galileo for the crime of propounding the heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the solar system and the resistance to the theory of biological evolution that is still being mounted by Christian fundamentalists. Thus, any mention of an immaterial soul may raise fears of a descent back into religious irrationalism (and a consequent lack of funding) on the part of many scientists.
Edge (2002a) in fact attributes Descartes’ proposal of his theory of mind-matter interaction in part to his desire to remove the authority of the Church over the scientific investigation of matter. Edge notes that science could only investigate matter with the tools available in the seventeenth century and that it was (and still is) “not equipped” to deal with mentalistic phenomena. Edge (2002b) also attributes science’s embrace of the ancient Greek philosophy of atomism (in which the universe is conceived as being composed of microscopic, discrete elementary particles) as another move to reject, or circumvent, the authority of the Church.
Let us now turn to an examination of modern views on, and “solutions” of, the mind-brain problem.
Monistic Philosophies
Monistic solutions to the mind-brain problem are those that postulate that the universe is composed of only one type of “stuff.” That “stuff” is usually taken to be mind, matter, or some sort of “tertium quid” having both mental and physical properties. Monism stands in contrast to dualism and pluralism, which comprise those philosophical positions that postulate the existence of two or more distinctly different types of “stuff,” with one of them typically being mind and another being matter.
Idealism. The monistic position that contends that the world is composed solely of minds and mental events goes by the name of idealism. According to idealists, all that exists is mental experience. People consciously or unconsciously construct the hypothesis of a physical world in order to account for certain regularities in their sensory experience, but this is only a convenient fiction. The contention that the physical world may be an illusion is logically irrefutable. For instance, you may think you are a human being holding a book on the mind-brain problem in your hand, whereas in fact you may be a nucleon-based life form on the surface of a neutron star who has gone into the analogue of a movie theater where strong pion fields have been applied to your brain both to induce amnesia for your real existence and to create in you the illusion that you are some two-legged elongated oxygen-breathing carbon-based being on a remote planetary body for the sole purposes of entertainment. More simply, you could be merely dreaming or hallucinating. Following the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu, the reader might legitimately wonder whether she or he might be a butterfly temporarily dreaming about being a human being reading a sentence about butterfly dreams. I can remember arguing with someone against this position. I maintained that I could not be dreaming because of the clarity and consistency of my sensory experience. Imagine my surprise when I woke up. (This actually happened to me.)
All you can be certain of is your own existence. Seeking certain knowledge, Descartes found that he could not doubt his own existence as a thinking being. In perhaps his most famous quote, he was led to exclaim, “I think, therefore I am.” All you can be absolutely certain of is your own existence and that you are now thinking certain thoughts, remembering certain memories, feeling certain feelings and sensing certain sensations. The inferences you make about your external environment based on these mental events may not be valid, as you may be hallucinating, remembering falsely, having groundless feelings and thinking delusional thoughts. The doctrine that only one’s self exists or can be proven to exist is a special case of idealism that goes by the name of solipsism.
The various agencies presumed by idealists to be responsible for producing the illusion of the physical world have included God (in the view of the prototypical idealist, the eighteenth century philosopher Bishop George Berkeley, for whom Berkeley University was named), a collective mind or collective unconscious, and the illusion-producing state of craving and ignorance (according to certain schools of Buddhism).
The reply of most modern scientists and philosophers of science to idealism is that scientific theories that postulate the existence of an objective physical world have produced more exact predictions about possible human observations than have idealistic theories and therefore should be preferred over the latter for that reason. (Such theories are even covertly preferred by most solipsists, who seem strangely reluctant to step in front of illusory oncoming trains. Dr. Samuel Johnson said of idealism, “I refute it thus,” and then he proceeded to kick a rock with his foot. Johnson’s “refutation,” while actually proving nothing, did show his dedication to the anti-idealist cause.)
Idealism is not merely an historical curiosity, but even has its advocates today. Within parapsychology, for instance, Edgar Mitchell (1979), a former Apollo astronaut who once walked on the moon, suggested that an idealistic philosophy may have to be adopted in order to account for the evidence for psychokinesis (the alleged ability of mind to directly influence material objects and systems that are remote from the body.) The physicist Amit Goswami (1993) has contended that an idealist conception of the world is required in order to render modern theories of physics, in particular quantum mechanics, coherent.
Radical Materialism. Radical materialism is the polar opposite of idealism. Radical materialists deny the existence of mental events, insisting that the world of physical matter is the only reality. Incredibly enough, this philosophy held sway in the discipline of psychology itself in the early part of this century (at least in the United States). Behaviorism emerged as the dominant force in psychology in this country as a reaction against the fallibility of the method of introspection that predominated in the earliest days of psychological investigation. Behavior was publicly observable and scientifically measurable, whereas the vague mental images that form, say, a particular individual’s idea of the number seven are not. Some of the leaders of the behaviorist movement, such as John Watson (1924/1970) and the earlier versions of B. F. Skinner (e.g., Skinner, 1953), went so far as to deny the existence of mental events altogether. This denial of course flies in the face of the fact that the reader and I (if I am not a figment of the reader’s imagination) have directly experienced such mental events as sensations, thoughts, feelings and memories. Skinner’s position essentially contains its own refutation. Skinner could not consistently claim that he believed that mental events do not exist, as that belief would itself constitute a mental event. Therefore by his own theory (and reportedly by his own contention), Skinner’s expressions of belief in the doctrine of radical materialism were merely forms of physical behavior than he had been rewarded for displaying in the past (through royalties, academic honoraria, etc.). If the books produced by Skinner are in fact merely the product of conditioned typewriter-pecking responses and the sentences within them do not express ideas, there is no need to take these books seriously. It should be noted that Skinner did eventually retreat from this early radical version of his theory.
Materialism is not dead as a philosophy in modern cognitive neuroscience, however. The philosopher Paul Churchland has recently proposed doing away with “folk psychology” (talk of mental events such as beliefs and desires) in all human discourse (Churchland, 1989, 1995). He would replace “folk psychology” with a strictly neural account of behavior. Thus, instead of a wife telling her husband that she is really angry at him, she would say instead, “The neurons in my amygdala seem to be firing at an unacceptably high rate.”
Churchland has in fact gone so far as to assert that truth might cease to be an aim of science! This assertion is implicitly based on the assumption that the concept of truth presupposes the existence of propositions capable of being true or false, which in turn presupposes the existence of mental events such as thoughts, ideas and beliefs that are expressed in such propositions. Churchland proposes that scientific theories should no longer be expressed in terms of sentences but rather in terms of patterns of connections among neurons (or among the pseudoneurons in a computerized “neural net,” as discussed below). But now we are right back where we started. Unless human knowledge is to be given up entirely, Churchland must at least be able to entertain propositions such as “neural net A diagnoses diseases more accurately than does neural net B.” Such propositions, however express beliefs. If Churchland seriously wishes to give up the “folk psychological” concept of belief, then his philosophy self-destructs in the same way that Skinner’s did.
Skinner, incidentally, was by no means the last modern thinker to deny the very existence of private conscious experience, or “qualia” in the terminology of philosophers. The prominent materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett has asserted that “contrary to what seems obvious at first blush, there simply are no qualia at all” (Dennett, 1988, p. 74). This statement may go a long way toward explaining Dennett’s reasoning. However, I imagine that reader (like me) has personally experienced a great number of qualia, such as brilliant patches of red and pangs of hunger. Qualia may be both beautiful and horrifying. Dennett doesn’t know what he is missing.
Quasi-dualistic materialism. More sensible versions of materialism concede the existence of mental events, but contend that mental events arise solely from physical events and that a complete scientific description of the world can be given in terms of physical processes alone. In one version of this theory, mental events are thought to be brain events experienced from the “inside.” This view goes by the names “central state materialism” and “neural identity” theory, among others. A related doctrine is double-aspect theory. Double-aspect theorists contend that mental and physical events are merely two aspects of a single underlying reality. As the vast majority of double-aspect theorists implicitly or explicitly assume that this single underlying reality is essentially physical matter, this theory is basically equivalent to the previous two.
Panpsychism. A similar doctrine is panpsychism, which asserts that all matter, not just living organisms, has a mental aspect. This view has been advocated by the prominent Western philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1929/1978), among others.
Panpsychism, with its contention that rocks and toothbrushes enjoy some form of consciousness, strikes one as absurd at first brush (or even more clearly upon a secondary cursory inspection of one’s toothbrush). However, when you carefully consider it, the doctrine begins to grow on you.
A prominent recent proponent of this position is the philosopher David Ray Griffin (1988a, 1988b, 1994, 1997), although he prefers to call his doctrine “panexperientialism” rather than “panpsychism,” as he does not contend that rocks and other inanimate collections of material particles possess a highly unified and structured consciousness, but rather ascribes only vague “feeling-responses” to them. More highly complex and structured forms of consciousness, in Griffin’s view are restricted to “compound individuals.” Such compound individuals are composed of, or arise from, a hierarchical collection of more primitive selves or “individuals.” For instance, a neuron would be a compound individual in relation to its individual constituents such as molecules, and a “suborgan” such as the hippocampus of the brain that is composed of neurons would be a compound individual somewhat further up the hierarchy. All such “individuals” would have both mental and physical aspects under the panexperientialist view, although only hierarchically-ordered structures would be assumed to have a highly organized and structured consciousness. Less well-organized structures, such as rocks, would be ascribed only vague “feeling responses” according to Griffin’s panexperientialist theory.
David Skrbina (2003, 2005) has recently provided a comprehensive and brilliant defense of the doctrine of “panpsychism.” Skrbina argues for instance that an electron must somehow sense the presence of a proton in order to respond to its attractive force. (An electron may even enjoy a certain degree of freedom of action due to quantum indeterminacy and may be able to sense a quantum field that is highly complex and global in nature.)
As does Griffin, Skrbina associates more complex forms of consciousness with aggregates of matter, such as single neurons, or large assemblies of neurons such as hippocampi and cerebral hemispheres. (However, it should be noted that, as discussed in the previous chapter, such aggregates of matter, much like one’s personality and physical body, do not persist over time and thus cannot form the basis of a continuing self. Also, fields of consciousness appear to be unitary and indivisible, much more like a quark than like a molecule or a neuron.)
As Skrbina points out, the panpsychist position solves the problem of “emergence” or the need to account for how organisms acquired consciousness in the course of evolution (i.e., how insensate matter gave rise to consciousness). As he notes, there is no definitive line of demarcation that can be drawn between conscious and nonconscious organisms, in either the present world or in the course of evolution. If all matter is imbued with consciousness or if fields of consciousness are fundamental constituents of the universe that have existed throughout its history, then the problem of evolution of consciousness (and of how a three-pound “hunk of meat” like the human brain could generate conscious experiences in the first place) does not arise.
It should, however, be noted that panpsychism still faces the difficulty of accounting for the emergence of a unified mind and global consciousness out of a myriad of psychic elements, as was pointed out long ago by William James and, more recently, by William Seager (1995).
Epiphenomenalism. Epiphenomenalism is technically a form of dualism, insofar as it grants separate reality to the realms of mind and matter; however, I will classify epiphenomenalism as a form of quasi-dualistic materialism, as it denies that mental events have any influence whatsoever on the physical world. Mental events are considered to be mere “epiphenomena” of physical events in the sense that, while mental events are caused by physical events, they are themselves incapable of causing or influencing physical events. A prominent advocate of epiphenomenalism was the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1874, 1877), the grandfather of the noted writer Aldous Huxley, who was perhaps most noted for his tireless defenses of Darwin’s theory of evolution (so much so that he earned the nickname “Darwin’s Bulldog”).
Several writers, including the noted mathematician Roger Penrose (1987b) and Karl Popper and John Eccles (1977) have noted that epiphenomenalism in fact goes counter to Darwinism. Why should a conscious mind have evolved, they ask, if it did not play an active role in benefiting the organism?
Also, and perhaps most amusingly, the mere existence of epiphenomenalist theories is in itself sufficient to refute the doctrine of epiphenomenalism. After all, epiphenomenalism was developed as an attempt to explicate the role of mental events; therefore, the theory has been created in response to (i.e., has been caused by) mental events; otherwise, epiphenomenalism could not claim to be a theory of mental experience. Thus, the theory of epiphenomenalism is refuted by the fact of its own existence.
The physicist Heinz Pagels (1988) raised the question of whether the universe could be a giant computer, much as a personal computer screen can become transformed into a mini-universe with quasi-organisms evolving on it when a program realizing mathematician John Conway’s “game of life” is run on it. This idea had previously been suggested by Ed Fredkin of M.I.T. and explicitly endorsed by Tomasso Toffoli (1982). This view has been most recently revived by the noted mathematician Stephen Wolfram (2002), who suggests that universe is best understood as a giant cellular automaton (computerized grid of cells following prescribed rules of behavior). If this suggestion that the universe is in fact the product of a giant computer has any validity, we cannot equate ourselves with the godlike programmers who created the universe and assume that we have simply each become entranced in the life of one of our three-dimensional creations (which we have come to regard as our physical body). Because of the arguments against epiphenomenalism, we cannot be mere spectators in the world. Our consciousnesses have a more active role in the universe than that.
Physicalism. The philosophical positions that I have grouped together under the heading of quasi-dualistic materialism would seem to be equivalent to one another as scientific theories, insofar as they all apparently make the same scientific predictions (mainly that no violations of the known laws of physics will occur in the brain and that no successful predictions regarding the behavior of the brain can be generated from theories involving nonphysical entities such as souls or minds that could not in principle at least be derived from theories referring solely to physical entities and processes).
The empirical findings that most directly challenge the doctrine of physicalism derive from the parapsychologists’ investigations of ostensible psi phenomena such as the clairvoyant reading of ESP cards and psychokinetic influence of the fall of rolling dice. Because of their importance in this debate and because of the controversies surrounding parapsychological research, these findings and their implications will be discussed in some detail in Chapters 3 through 5. However, as we have seen in Chapter 0, this evidence is not needed in order to build a strong case that one’s individual self or consciousness is something other than one’s physical body and may be capable of surviving the death of that body, or (perhaps more likely) of departing the body and becoming associated with a new physical system well prior to the death of the body.
It is commonly held, both by parapsychologists and skeptics, that psi phenomena are inexplicable on the basis of current physical theories and are thus evidence against the doctrine of physicalism, if the latter is construed as the contention that all phenomena can be ultimately accounted for in terms of present theories of physics or relatively minor extensions thereof.
Joseph Banks Rhine (the researcher who is largely regarded as the progenitor of modern parapsychology and who established the first major research program in experimental parapsychology at Duke University in the 1930s) in particular was highly skeptical that psi phenomena could be explained on the basis of any physicalistic theory. In fact, Rhine suggested that psi was nonphysical in nature, due to the lack of dependence of experimental psi-scoring rates on spatial or temporal separations and the lack of attenuation of the psi signal by physical barriers between the percipient and the target object (e.g., ESP card or die) that would block most known forms of physical signals (such as electromagnetic radiation). Rhine also cited the fact psi success appears to be independent of the physical nature of the target object, as well as the apparent backward causation in time involved in precognition (and, we might now add, retroactive psychokinesis), as further evidence against any physicalistic explanation of psi phenomena. At one point, Rhine (1972) postulated the existence of “nonphysical energy” in order to explain psi, a concept that the noted dualist philosopher John Beloff considered to be oxymoronic (Beloff, 1981).
Michael Levin (2000) has made the argument that if psi abilities are based on physical processes grounded in the biomechanical properties of the body, then surely these abilities would be selected for in the process of evolution and would by now be readily apparent in animals’ behavior. The fact psi is an elusive and rarely observed ability, Levin asserts, constitutes further evidence that it is not derived from the biomechanical workings of animals’ bodies.
Because it appears to be difficult to account for psi phenomena on the basis of known physical theories or principles, it is often believed that the existence of psi phenomena would falsify physicalism (where “physicalism” denotes the class of theories encompassing radical materialism and quasi-dualistic materialism). As the vast majority of working scientists subscribe to some form of physicalistic solution to the mind-body problem, it should not be surprising that they would choose to reject the claims of parapsychology, insofar as those claims tend to threaten their worldview.
Some of the resistance of establishment science toward accepting the existence of psi may stem back to the fact that Western science has relatively recently (in the vast scheme of things) emerged from a battle with the Church over who would hold the authority regarding determining the nature of reality, the trial of Galileo being only one prominent example. There are those who believe that some sort of truce should be declared between science and religion, such as Stephen J. Gould, who asserted that science and religion should be considered as “separate magisteria,” with science holding reign over matters of empirical fact and religion holding reign over ethics and matters of the spirit (Gould, 1999). However, despite Gould’s contentions, science and religion are in many cases still in conflict over empirical questions, as is evident in the ongoing battle of religious creationists in the United States to have Dawrwin’s theory of evolution either removed or downplayed in high school biology curricula.
This conflict continues to underlie much of the scientific establishment’s resistance toward accepting the findings of parapsychological investigations. For instance, in a scathing attack on parapsychology, Nicholas Humphrey (1996) asserts that the questions of the existence of souls and of the existence of paranormal powers are not independent issues and that the possession of a soul would imply the existence of such powers. On the other side of the fence, as psi phenomena suggest the existence of a nonphysical aspect to the mind, many people who would prefer to believe in the existence of an immortal soul may tend to adopt a belief in psi phenomena in support of their position. Indeed, John Beloff (1983) even asserted, in a Presidential Address to the Parapsychological Association, that the existence of an afterlife is contingent on the existence of psi, in seeming agreement with Humphrey’s position. This is undoubtedly too strong an assertion, however, as it is quite conceivable that a mind or soul (or more likely a field of pure consciousness) could survive death even if the living person (or surviving trace) did not possess the powers of ESP and PK.
Even if it is assumed that the explanation of psi phenomena will require the postulation of entities and principles beyond those currently known to physicalistic science, it may be a mere issue of terminology whether such entities are to be considered material or nonmaterial. If the former, the physicalist can claim victory; if the latter, the dualist can claim the same. Obviously, if mind and matter interact, they form one united system. Whether one chooses to call that system the physical universe may be a matter of semantics rather than substance. (Some of the theoretical concepts already employed by physicists, such as the quantum-mechanical wave function discussed in the next chapter, already seem more mind-like than material in any event.)
Strangely enough, J. B. Rhine himself disavowed any position of dualism. John Beloff (1981) traces Rhine’s eschewal of dualism to his difficulty in seeing how such dissimilar things as mind and matter could interact, although Beloff himself sees no reason why a cause must necessarily be of the same nature as its effect. Beloff suggests that Rhine’s position may have been motivated by a desire to avoid charges of supernaturalism as well as a desire to leave the door open for an ultimate cosmology that would embrace both mind and matter. Beloff notes that Rhine recognized that psi might potentially be given an explanation in terms of quantum mechanics and that Rhine only wished to state the incompatibility of psi with “conventional” physics. Interestingly enough, Frederick Dommeyer (1982) has classified Rhine as a double-aspect theorist, presumably referring to a version of double-aspect theory in which the common substance underlying mental and physical events is something other than matter as currently understood.
Several other parapsychological theorists have proposed versions of the double-aspect theory. Edmund Gurney, one of the early pioneers of psychical research, proposed that some third form of existence or “tertium quid,” in addition to mind and matter, would be required in order to explain mental phenomena and to bridge the gap between mind and brain (Gurney, 1887). In more recent times, Carroll Nash (1976, 1995b) has proposed a double-aspect theory to explain psi phenomena. Nash proposes that mind and matter are each aspects of some tertium quid, or neutral substance, that is not governed by space, time or causality, thus allowing psi to occur (as well as providing the basis for mystical experiences). Nash’s theory does not, however, appear to be sufficiently developed to enable testable predictions to be derived from it.
Susan Blackmore (2001) has noted that psi phenomena are frequently invoked in support of the contention that consciousness plays some fundamental role in the universe. She argues that, in view of the fact that psi is often considered to operate primarily at a subconscious or unconscious level, the assertion that psi phenomena are evidence for a fundamental role for consciousness is unwarranted.
Machine Consciousness. Most people would grant consciousness to seemingly intelligent animals such as chimpanzees, elephants, whales and dogs, although there are still those who follow Descartes’ lead in denying consciousness to all animals other than human. (Descartes thought that “lower” animals were mere machines, from whence springs the opinion expressed by some people today that animals can not suffer or feel pain, thus rationalizing the mistreatment of such animals.) Most people, aside from the panpsychists, would draw the line between conscious and nonconscious beings somewhere “down” the “hierarchy” of living and nonliving things, perhaps before one gets to ameobae, petunias, or slabs of granite.
What about humanly-manufactured machines that exhibit more complexity and activity than does, say, a slab of granite? Do thermostats feel a twinge of pain when the thermometer passes the set point and the furnace is not yet turned on? The famous neurophysiologist W. Grey Walter constructed mechanical “tortoises,” which ambulated about his house randomly until they ran low on power, at which point they would proceed to the nearest electrical socket to recharge themselves. Were Walter’s tortoises conscious? Did they feel “hunger” for electricity? What about modern computers that can defeat any human at chess?
Many people argue that, if a machine or computer were able to duplicate human thought processes, there is no need to postulate the existence of an immaterial mind or soul to explain human thought, as human-manufactured computers are presumably not endowed with such ethereal entities as souls or minds.
Roger Penrose (1987b), David Layzer (1990) and John Searle (1990), have argued that, even if computers were to prove capable of simulating human behavior, this would not imply that computers possess awareness or have conscious experiences. Rather, they see the biochemical “wetware” of the human brain as having specific properties necessary for the production of consciousness that the hardware of a typical digital computer lacks. On the other hand, their assertions that the particular properties of biological wetware are necessary for the generation of conscious experience are not in general supported by any convincing argument. It would be desirable, therefore, to have a more or less objective test to determine whether a computer or robot is conscious.
Just such a test was proposed by the mathematician Alan Turing (1950, 1964) in the form of an imitation game (which has since become known as the Turing test). If a human being communicating with a computer and with another human being through a teletype machine (or, these days, a computer monitor) cannot tell which is the computer and which is the human being, then the computer should be deemed conscious (in other words, if you are willing to ascribe consciousness to the human being on the basis of her behavior, you should extend the same courtesy to the computer).
Could a computer successfully pass the Turing test? Computers operate by following mathematical algorithms (fixed, mechanical procedures for solving a problem or producing output). Roger Penrose (1987b, 1989, 1994) has argued that human thought does not rely exclusively on such algorithms. Penrose bases his contention that human thought must have a nonalgorithmic component in part on mathematician Kurt Gödel’s famous incompleteness theorem. In 1931, Gödel shocked the mathematical world by demonstrating that there exist statements within any reasonably powerful mathematical axiom system that are true but which can never be proved to be true within the axiom system itself. To oversimplify slightly, such a statement might read as follows: “This theorem is not provable.” Let us call this statement Theorem X. If Theorem X were provable, a contradiction would result, as Theorem X asserts its own unprovability. Therefore, if the mathematical axiom system is consistent, Theorem X could never be proven. Consequently, Theorem X is true, as it simply asserts its own unprovability. Computers, being driven by algorithms, are equivalent to mathematical axiom systems. Hence, a computer would be unable to perceive the truth of its own Theorem X, as it would only regard as true those statements that it could prove. Humans, on the other hand, are readily able to perceive the truth of such statements as Theorem X. Hence, Penrose argues, human thought is not algorithmic and therefore could not be simulated by an algorithmic computer. The chief difference between the computer and the human in this regard might be that the human can understand the meaning of the statements involved, whereas computers just blindly manipulate symbols according to prescribed rules without any idea of what those symbols might mean.
Penrose has further argued that, as human awareness must be noncomputational in nature and as current laws of physics are essentially computational systems, new principles of physics may be required to explain humans’ capacity to achieve direct insight into mathematical problems and to understand the meaning of language.
Penrose (1994) observes that Kurt Gödel himself maintained that the mind was not identical to the physical brain, as Gödel felt that the physical brain would necessarily be a computationally-based system. Gödel was thus a dualist. As we shall see, Penrose has come to view consciousness as intimately connected to nonlocal quantum processes in the brain. He sees such noncomputable quantum processes as being a prerequisite for consciousness. Any system based entirely on simple computation must be nonconscious in Penrose’s view.
Paul Churchland (1995), perhaps the foremost defender of radical materialism in the modern era, has expressed agreement with Penrose’s position that human reasoning is nonalgorithmic. Churchland does not, however, see such nonalgorithmic reasoning as emerging from arcane quantum mechanical processes, but rather from the continuous, analog nature of the human brain (as compared to Turing machines, which operate by entering one discrete state after another).
Philosopher John Searle (1987, 1990) has argued that even if a computer were to successfully simulate human behavior, this would not imply consciousness on the part of the computer. As an analogy, he considers the case of a person who does not speak Chinese who sits alone in a room with a book of rules instructing him how to respond to strings of Chinese characters. While a speaker of Chinese may think he is engaging in a dialogue with this person by swapping notes back and forth under the door to the room, the person inside the room does not in fact understand what the Chinese speaker is saying or what he himself is saying, as he does not know what the symbols mean. Similarly, Searle argues, computers are engaged in a purely syntactic manipulation of symbols and have no idea of what those symbols mean.
Christian Kaernbach (2005) recently tested Searle’s Chinese room argument by having human subjects simulate addition and multiplication modulo 5 (i.e., “clock” arithmetic on a five-hour clock in which 3 + 4 = 2, for instance) by following a “look up” table similar to that provided to the subject in Searle’s Chinese room. Kaernbach found that his subjects gained no insight into the meaning of their symbolic operation unless they were specifically informed of the connection to mathematical operations. Kaernbach’s results would appear to substantiate Searle’s intuition.
In his later publications, Searle does concede that a robot might be said to have semantic and not just merely syntactical understanding of linguistic symbols if the robot were provided with sensing devices (such as TV cameras) and motor apparatus (such as robot arms). In such a case, the robot could develop a sensory “awareness” of the outside world and could gain an inkling of “insight” into the fact that words refer to objects and events in an outside world.
It may be argued that, even if a computer could simulate human thought, humans quite possibly possess psi abilities that may be indicative of a spiritual or immaterial aspect to human beings. Computers, being mere machines, would presumably be incapable of demonstrating such psi powers. Actually, Turing himself considered this objection in his original proposal of the imitation game. He suggested that computers might be able to manifest, or least simulate, psi powers if a random event generator (REG) were included in the computer’s design. Such REGs, which are a common tool of the parapsychologist’s trade, are essentially electronic “coin flipping” devices, often based on quantum mechanical uncertainty. For instance, “heads” might be defined to occur if a Geiger counter recorded the first decay of a strontium 90 atom in as occurring during an odd microsecond, and “tails” might be defined to occur if the first decay occurred during an even microsecond. Such quantum mechanical decay is based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and is (according to standard theories of physics) truly random. Even a physicist with complete knowledge of the REG system (which must be less than complete in any event due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) could not predict when such a decay will occur.
Once the REG system is implanted in the computer, the computer might appear to have psi powers (at least if humans themselves have such powers). For instance, in a telepathy experiment, the “sender” (e.g., person looking at an ESP card and attempting to transmit its identity to the computer) could subconsciously use his psychokinetic (PK) powers to influence the REG in such a way as to make it appear that the computer has ESP. Various PK tasks posed to the computer might be performed inadvertently through the experimenter’s use of her own PK abilities (especially if the experimenter was rooting for the computer). Thus, to all appearances, the computer would have psi powers.
To pursue this line of thought even further, it would be interesting to speculate what would happen if a large number of quantum-mechanically based REGs were installed in the computer. If minds are to be equated with the “hidden variables” that govern the outcome of quantum decisions, perhaps such a largely nondeterministic computer would be able to acquire a mind. Of course, it would no longer be the sort of deterministic, algorithm-following sort of computer that is known as a Turing machine. Instead, it might be something approaching a silicon-based life form.
In the end, the real test of consciousness in automata such as robots and computers may be to wait to see if such machines spontaneously express curiosity and wonderment about their own inner experience, much as human philosophers of mind do. Presumably, a nonconscious computer would not develop a preoccupation with the machine equivalent of the mind-body problem.
Dualistic Philosophies
We are thus led to consider dualist positions, which grant independent reality to both mental and physical events. We will begin with parallelism.
Parallelism. Parallelism is a peculiar form of dualism in that it insists that the realms of mind and matter are totally separate and do not interact at all. One of the foremost advocates of this doctrine was the seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Willhelm Leibniz (1714/1965), who asserted that God had placed the physical and mental realms in “preestablished harmony” so that they are forever in correspondence with one another, much as two synchronized clocks continue to display the same time as one another. Parallelism seems to have one more realm than it needs. After all, the reason that we postulate the existence of a physical world in the first place is to explain certain regularities in our sensory experience. If the physical world is not the cause of our sensations, there is really no reason to postulate its existence at all. Which brings up…
Interactionism. Interactionists, as their name implies, assume that the mental and physical realms do in fact interact with one another. Unlike epiphenomenalism, in interactionism the causal highway is a two-way street. Not only do events in the physical realm cause mental events, but mental events are capable of influencing physical events as well. As we have mentioned, since the advent of the theory of quantum mechanics, the brain is no longer considered to be a completely deterministic system and therefore could be open to influence from a mental realm. (In this context, however, it should be noted that some die-hard materialists such as philosopher Daniel Dennett (1991) continue to reject dualism on the basis of arguments involving the outmoded concept of a deterministic brain system.) In fact, the brain seems almost designed in such a way as to maximize its receptivity to such influence from a nonmaterial mind. Neurophysiologist John Eccles has called the brain just “the sort of a machine a ‘ghost’ could operate,” as its functioning is dependent on minute electrical potentials and the motions of neurotransmitter molecules and calcium ions (Eccles 1953, p. 285). Several prominent physicists, including Niels Bohr (1958), Arthur Eddington (1935), Henry Margenau (1984), Euan Squires (1990) and Henry Stapp (1992), have explicitly proposed that the mind interacts with the brain by influencing the outcome of quantum processes within the brain.
Roger Penrose (1987a) has suggested that the “oneness” or “global” quality of consciousness may be related to nonlocal quantum connections between neural processes in the brain, and he further notes that neurons, unlike the elements of deterministic computers, are subject to quantum mechanical influences. In the more recent versions of Penrose’s theory, he proposes that water molecules in the microtubules composing the cytoskeletons of widely separated neurons could exist in a quantum-mechanically coherent state. As the configuration of such cytoskeletons could influence the synaptic connections between neurons, this would provide a nonlocal means of unifying neural activity over wide regions of the brain. In fact, Penrose equates the operation of free will with quantum mechanical decisions influencing the configuration of such microtubules. It should, however, be noted that Penrose objects to the dualistic view that an immaterial mind external to the physical brain system can influence the outcomes of quantum mechanical processes in the brain. Rather than being caused by conscious awareness, Penrose proposes that quantum mechanical state vector reduction occurs when the energy difference between the alternative physical outcomes becomes sufficiently great (Penrose, 1994). Penrose’s theory is based in part on Stuart Hameroff’s proposal that the cytoskeletal microtubules within neurons may be centrally involved in the computational activity of the brain. Hameroff, incidentally, concurs with Penrose’s view that conscious experience may involve nonlocal quantum connections between microtubules in widely separated neurons. Hameroff thinks that such connections may help to bind diverse neural activity into unified perceptions and experiences and to provide a unified sense of the self. He also sees such connections as providing the indeterminism necessary for the operation of “free will” (Hameroff, 1994).
In particular, Penrose has contended that water molecules in widely separated microtubules could exist in a quantum-mechanically coherent state and that nonlocally correlated changes in cytoskeleton configurations could alter synaptic connections between neurons. He sees such conformational changes as being intimately associated with the experience of “free will” (Penrose, 1994). However, Rick Grush and Patricia Churchland (1995) have argued that microtubules are not in close enough proximity to the synaptic complex to influence synaptic transmission. They also note that the gout drug colchicine depolymerizes microtubules, disrupting any quantum mechanical coherence that might be present, but is not associated with any loss of consciousness. In reply to Grush and Churchland, Penrose and Hameroff (1995) counter that very little colchicine enters the brain and that most brain microtubules are hardened and do not undergo cycles of polymerization and depolymerization. They also note that the drug does in fact cause impairments in learning and memory.
David Hodgson (1991) has seconded Penrose’s assertion that consciousness is intimately dependent on nonlocal connections between spatially separated brain events. In his view, such connections help forge a united perception of an object from its separate features. He conjectures that nature had to provide such nonlocal connections in order for consciousness to exist. He further contends that only indeterministic systems are associated with consciousness, as conscious minds would be of no use to a mechanistic system. Physicist A. J. Leggett (1987a) has even suggested that new quantum principles may be needed to describe the behavior of complex systems such as brains. Penrose (1994) agrees with this position of Leggett and proposes that new laws of physics will be required to explain noncomputational brain activity.
There has even been an attempt to subject the theory that nonlocal quantum processes undergird conscious thought to an experimental test. Nunn, Clarke, and Blott (1994) found that when a record was made of the electrical activity of one of the brain’s hemispheres, performance on psychological tasks involving that hemisphere was enhanced. More specifically, they found that subjects’ performance in a button-pushing task was more accurate if EEG recordings were made of the motor areas of the brain involved in the task than if recordings of other areas of the brain were made. Presumably, the making of an EEG recording assisted in collapsing quantum mechanical state vectors, resulting in more efficient cognitive performance.
There have been many who have had difficulty conceptualizing how such different entities as mind (which Descartes and many subsequent philosophers regarded as immaterial and lacking any spatial extension) could interact with matter. For instance, in regard to Descartes’ notion that the mind interacted with the human brain through the deflection of the animal spirits as they passed through the pineal gland, the philosopher Thomas Metzinger says:
Something without any spatial properties cannot causally interact with something possessing spatial properties at a specific location. If Descartes had taken his own premises seriously, he could never have come up with this solution, which is so obviously false. If the mind truly is an entity not present in physical space, it would be absurd to look for a locus of interaction in the human brain. (Metzinger, 2003, p. 381. Emphasis in original.)
As each of us seems to be somehow “stuck” in a human brain, however temporarily, it would in fact seem that the self, construed as a field of consciousness, does have some spatial properties, if only the property that it is, at least temporarily, somehow stuck to (or under the panpsychistic hypothesis, part of) a human brain occupying a particular region in space.
From this it does not follow that the self in its entirety is confined to a spatial location in the human brain or circumscribed region of space. As we shall see in the next chapter, even the elementary particles of matter such as electrons and protons typically do not have any particular spacetime location until they are forced to adopt one through an act of observation. Even physical matter lacks the material properties ascribed to it by Metzinger.
The British psychologist and philosopher John Beloff (1998) notes that under the general theory of relativity, matter influences and is influenced by spacetime, despite the fact that material particles and spacetime continua are radically different types of entities. If their different natures do not prevent matter and spacetime from mutually influencing each other, argues Beloff, then there is not reason why mind and matter could not also interact despite their seemingly different natures. Similarity in properties may not be a necessary condition for causal interaction.
Another conceptual objection to interactionism is that mind-brain interaction would involve violations of the laws of physics. Many writers, including Mohrhoff (1999), Wilson (1999), Levin (2000), Jaswal (2005) and Clark (2005a), have argued that any action of a nonphysical mind on the brain would entail the violation of physical laws, such as the conservation of energy and momentum and the requirement that the outcomes of quantum processes be randomly determined.
Levin (2000) argues that dualist interaction would involve a violation of the law of the conservation of energy. However, the noted philosopher Karl Popper has suggested that the mind may have its own source of (presumably physical) energy. Under this view, the mind would be a sort of quasiphysical object that might be capable of greater influence on the brain than that allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. Popper even went so far as to assert that the law of energy is only “statistically valid” (Popper & Eccles, 1977, p.541). Without going to this extreme, it could be argued that mind is capable of exerting some force on some of the material particles in the brain. Also, we are a long way from having measured with precision every minute energy transaction in human brains. In the process of doing so, it is conceivable that some unexpected energy transaction may be observed. If science should progress to the point where the action of spheres of consciousness on energy transactions within the brain can somehow be mathematically (or otherwise) described, this might be a victory for the contention that immaterial minds can exert physical force. If such spheres of consciousness are identified with known material particles and system, the physicalists could claim victory. If not, the dualists could so declare.
If spheres of consciousness could exert some sort of physical force, it is likely that they would be declared as a new form of physical matter or energy, resulting in a victory for the physicalists. If the present day physicalists opine that all physical particles have already been discovered, this may only be evidence for the psychological tendency toward premature closure, in that they fervently wish to believe that they already possess virtually complete understanding of the universe. But such a declaration could only be the worst form of arrogance in view of the fact, already noted, that physicists have only recently discovered the existence of dark energy, which is now believed to comprise three-quarters of the matter-energy in the universe.
Many writers (e.g., Beck, 1994; Bohr, 1958; Eddington, 1935; Hameroff, 1994; Hodgson, 1991, 2005a; Leggett, 1987a, 1987b; Margenau, 1984; Penrose, 1994; Squires, 1990; Stapp, 1992, 1996; Walker, 2000) have noted that the classical deterministic theory of Newtonian physics has been replaced with the indeterminism of quantum mechanics, in which many possible futures may arise from a given present state of the universe, and have suggested that the conscious mind or “free will” may act on the brain by selecting a particular quantum state (i.e. forcing the quantum mechanical state vector to “collapse” to a desired outcome). In fact, Eccles (1953, p. 285) noted that the brain is just “the sort of machine a ‘ghost’ could operate,” as its functioning is dependent on minute electrical potentials and the motions of neurotransmitters and calcium ions. Thus, in Eccles’ view, at least as expressed in his later writings (e.g., Eccles, 1989), changes in macroscopic brain activity may be brought about without violating the limits of indeterminacy allowed under the theory of quantum mechanics.
A similar view has been expressed more recently by physicist Henry Stapp (2005b), who asserts that quantum mechanical laws must be used to describe the process of exocytosis (the emission of neurotransmitters into the synaptic cleft), citing empirical research in support of this assertion (Schwartz, Stapp & Beauregard, 2005). In particular, Stapp notes that the “quantum Zeno effect” (maintaining a quantum state through repeated observation) provides a means whereby conscious minds could act on the physical brain, namely by holding the brain in a particular state. He cites William James’ observation that the role of conscious attention is to preserve brain states in support of this view. He also notes that Pashler (1998) has observed that consciousness may act as an information-processing bottleneck in this regard.
Contrary views have been expressed by Jaswal (2005) and Clark (2005a), among others, who argue that any such influence on quantum mechanical processes would lead to a violation of the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics and the principle that the outcome of quantum mechanical processes are randomly determined. Such influence would therefore constitute a violation of the laws of physics.
First of all, it should be noted, as many observers have argued, that description of the universe afforded by the laws of quantum mechanics is incomplete. Also, no one has provided, or likely ever will provide, a complete description of the quantum state of any brain at any time. We may discover new entities or processes that may be identified with the so-called “hidden variables” that determine the outcomes of quantum processes. Also, quantum mechanical outcomes may indeed be random in simple physical systems, but may be less random in certain complex systems, such as human brains, in which the observing consciousnesses may have a more vested interest. It may also be that such consciousnesses enjoy a closer physical proximity to physical brains, on the view that quasi-physical spheres of consciousness may be, at least, temporarily, somehow “stuck” in physical brains.
Thus, it might turn out that the outcomes of quantum processes inside complex systems such as brains are not randomly determined but are governed by fields of consciousness, whereas those in simpler systems are not so governed. Also, many parapsychological researchers, going back to Schmidt (1969, 1970), have produced evidence that conscious minds may be capable of determining, or at least biasing, the outcomes of quantum processes, as will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters.
Having discussed the general framework, we will now consider specific versions of dualistic interaction that have been proposed in recent times. Thus discussion will be an introductory one, and a more detailed discussion of some of the philosophical and scientific issues raised by modern models of dualistic interaction will be postponed until Chapters 2, 5 and 7.
Eccles’ theory of mind-brain interaction. There are few adherents to the doctrine of dualistic interaction among working scientists today. John Eccles was perhaps the most prominent example of such a scientist in the second half of the twentieth century. Eccles was a renowned neurophysiologist, who in 1963 shared the Nobel prize in medicine and physiology with his coworkers A. L. Hodgkin and A. F. Huxley. The prize was awarded for their studies of the axons of the giant squid, establishing the membrane theory of nerve conduction and demonstrating the exchange of sodium and potassium ions across the membrane (which has come to be recognized as the basic mechanism of nerve impulses).
Eccles progressively elaborated his dualistic model in a series of publications spanning several decades (e.g., Eccles, 1953, 1970, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1983, 1987, 1989; Eccles & Robinson, 1984; Popper & Eccles, 1977). Eccles felt that it is necessary to postulate the existence of a mind separate from the brain in order to explain the integration of mental activity. In particular, Eccles felt that the integrated perception of objects and visually presented scenes cannot be explained in terms of known neurological processes, in view of the fact that the nervous impulses related to visual experiences appear to be fragmented and sent to divergent areas of the brain. For instance, Christof Koch and Francis Crick count from 30 to 40 different cortical areas specializing in different aspects of visual processing (Koch & Crick, 1991). Similarly, Wilson, Scalaidhe and Goldman-Rakic (1993) have described the separation of the neurons dealing with the spatial location and identity (color and shape) of an object in the prefrontal cortex of the brain of a monkey. Hodgson (2005b) notes that red circles are experienced as a whole (or “gestalt”) despite the fact that the neurons “reporting” “red” and “circle” are located in different areas of the brain.
In view of the fact that the perception of any single object involves the firing of neurons in widely dispersed areas of the brain, it is difficult to understand how this neural activity can possibly result in a unified perception of an object. This conundrum is generally termed the “binding problem” (Koch & Crick, 1991). In Hodgson’s view, the experience of gestalts such as his example of the red circle indicates that consciousness may be nonlocal in the quantum mechanical sense (Hodgson, 2005b). The relationship between quantum nonlocality and consciousness will be revisited several times in the chapters to follow.
Stacia Friedman-Hill, Lynn Robertson and Anne Triesman (1995) report an instance in which a breakdown of this perceptual unity was apparent in a patient who miscombined colors and shapes from different objects and who was unable to judge the locations of objects. This patient had bilateral lesions in the parietal-occipital areas of the brain, suggesting that these brain regions may be centrally involved in generating unified perceptions of experience.
Francis Crick (1994) ascribed the unity of perception to rhythmic oscillations in the brain resulting in the synchronous firing of large populations of neurons.
Two other neurophysiologists, Gerald Edelman and Giulio Jononi (1995), have contended that the binding of perceptions and the unity of experience is achieved thorough reentrant signaling pathways in the brain.
Eccles, on the other hand, saw the integration of neural activity as the raison d’être of an immaterial mind, and he suggested that the evolution of consciousness may have paralleled the emergence of the visual processing mechanism. He endorsed William James’ conjecture that brains may have had to acquire conscious minds because they had grown too complex to control themselves.
Eccles proposed that another role of consciousness is to assist in the solving of nonroutine problems (as opposed to the execution of overlearned and routine skills such as tying one’s shoes). Eccles’ view of the role of consciousness is similar to that of many cognitive psychologists in this regard.
Eccles contended that the mind interacts with only certain groups (or “modules”) of neurons, which he called “open neurons.” He used the term “liaison brain” to refer to the regions of the brain containing these open modules, and he asserted that this liaison brain lies in the cerebral cortex rather than in the deeper areas of the middle brain. In support of this site, he cited a study by Bard (1968) indicating that cats who have had their cerebral cortex removed behave as if they were mindless automata.
In his earlier writings, Eccles maintained that the liaison brain was generally located in the left cerebral hemisphere, due to the fact that language ability is usually located in that hemisphere and the fact that split-brain patients typically report (from the left hemisphere where their language skills are located) that they have experienced no discontinuity in their sense of self following their commisurotomy (an operation that involves severing the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain and provide the primary means for communication between them).
Some evidence in favor of Eccles’ theory that the left brain is the site of consciousness was provided by a study by Efron (1963b) indicating that flashes presented to the left and right visual fields were judged to be simultaneous only when the flash on the left occurred several thousandths of a second before the one on the right, suggesting that the judgment of simultaneity was made on the basis of the simultaneous arrival of the neural messages at a site in the left hemisphere. (Strangely enough, information about the right visual field is sent directly to the left hemisphere and information about the left visual field to the right.)
Another piece of evidence in favor of locating the liaison brain in the left hemisphere is the fact that migraine attacks and brain injuries are more often associated with a loss of consciousness when they occur in the left hemisphere than when they occur in the right (Miller, 1990).
In his earlier writings, Eccles tended to see linguistic ability as a prerequisite for self-consciousness, and he consequently denied self-consciousness to most nonhuman animals and even to the right hemisphere of the human brain following commisurotomy. He later recanted this position, citing Gallup’s (1977) research demonstrating self-recognition by chimpanzees when confronted by their images in a mirror (they cleaned spots off their faces) and research by Sperry, Zaidel and Zaidel (1979) demonstrating the ability of the right hemisphere in split-brain patients to recognize pictures of themselves (the patients, not the hemispheres!). Eccles maintained that consciousness is restricted to birds and mammals, the brains of lower animals such as bees and frogs being too small to support consciousness in his view. (Interestingly, Eccles has assigned consciousness to precisely those animals that sleep. Could there be some significance to this?)
In Eccles’ earlier writings, he expressed doubt that influences at the quantum level would be sufficient to explain the influence of the mind on the brain, as he felt that quantum events would be too random to account for the “precisely causal” events in the mind-brain interaction. In his later writings, he changed his mind, observing in particular that the exocytosis of synaptic vesicles (a primary mechanism in the transmission of nervous impulses from one neuron to another) involves energies within the range of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics (and thus would allow the mind to influence the brain by determining the outcomes of quantum decisions). Although Eccles cagily avoided referring to parapsychology in most of his writings, as least on one occasion (Eccles, 1977), he used the word “psychokinesis” to describe the mind’s action on the brain.
The prominent philosopher of science Karl Popper, with whom Eccles wrote his most encyclopedic volume, The Mind and Its Brain, also endorsed a quantum-mechanically based theory of mind-brain interaction; however, at one point in the book Popper suggested that the mind may have its own source of (presumably physical) energy (Popper & Eccles, 1977). Under this view, the mind would be a sort of quasi-physical object that might be capable of greater influence on the brain than that allowed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. Thus, the conscious mind proposed by Popper is a powerful one indeed.
Penfield’s theory of mind-brain interaction. Another prominent neurophysiologist to propose a dualistic model of mind-brain interaction in the second half of the twentieth century was Wilder Penfield. The most complete exposition of his model was given in his posthumously published book The Mystery of the Mind (Penfield, 1975). Unlike Eccles, Penfield did not locate the site of mind-brain interaction in the cerebral cortex, but rather in the evolutionarily older region of the higher brain stem (diencephalon). (Such a site would make evolutionary sense if immaterial minds are to be attributed to more “primitive” organisms that lack a neocortex.) As one piece of evidence in favor of this localization, Penfield cited the fact that injury to this site typically removes consciousness and results in a coma. Interestingly, Penfield did not believe that the site of mind-brain interaction lies in the reticular activating system of the brain stem, despite the fact that injury to this area also produces unconsciousness. This was due in large part to the fact that Penfield assigned a central role to the diencephalon in the integration of brain activity. In particular, he cited the vast number of two-way connections between the diencephalon and the cerebral cortex as evidence for such a central role.
The neurophysiologist Robert Thompson agreed with Penfield that the higher brain stem may be centrally involved in integrating behavior. In support of this assertion, Thompson cited research indicating that injuries to this region produce deficits in a wide range of learning and problem-solving tasks as well as evidence indicating that memories may be stored in this region (Thompson, 1993).
The physicist Nick Herbert (1993) locates the site of consciousness a bit further down, in the reticular formation of the brain stem. Herbert sees this area as having a central role in the integration of sensory information and the regulation of behavior. He sees the cortex as a peripheral device that is not associated with consciousness.
John Eccles (in Popper & Eccles, 1977) explicitly took issue with Penfield’s proposed site of mind-brain interaction, arguing that injury to the brain stem merely removes the background excitation of the cerebral cortex that is necessary for consciousness to occur. As evidence against Eccles’ localization of the site of mind-brain interaction in the cerebral cortex, Penfield cited the fact that large portions of the cerebral cortex can be removed without loss of consciousness.
As further evidence in support of his proposed site of interaction, Penfield cited the fact that epileptic seizures in the higher brain stem cause a person to behave as a mindless automaton, carrying out preprogrammed motor acts without a later memory of them. Penfield saw conscious attention as a prerequisite to the storing of memories. In this, he agreed with Eccles, who cited an experiment by Held and Hein demonstrating that active exploration of the environment is associated with learning in kittens, whereas passive exploration (being carried around a room) is not (Eccles, 1979, discussing the experiment reported by Held & Hein, 1963). However, in cases of multiple personality, secondary personalities seem to be capable of storing memories when the primary personality is distracted or unconscious (although such memories are not generally accessible to the primary personality).
As evidence that the conscious mind lies outside of the brain mechanism, Penfield cites the fact that movements or other activity produced by electrical stimulation of the brain are experienced as ego-alien and involuntary. For example, if Penfield applied an electrical stimulus to a patient’s brain causing her to raise her arm, she typically experienced the raising of the arm to occur independently of her will. Electrical stimulation of the brain never resulted in a sense of volition. (Of course, a materialist could object that this merely proves that the brain can discriminate arm movements initiated by it in an unmolested state from those caused by the application of an outside electrical impulse.) Penfield specifically declined to use the word “immaterial” to describe the mind, perhaps because he viewed such a term as implying a total separation between mind and matter.
Other views on mind-brain interaction. Many other theorists have forwarded their own hypotheses regarding the nature and location of mind-brain interaction. The number of sites proposed is legion, and at times it seems that no area of the brain will prove to be exempt from being designated as the site of the soul.
V. S. Ramachandran (1980) sees the frontal lobes as the likeliest candidate for the site of mind-brain interaction, partially due to the fact that persons with frontal lobe lesions frequently report a loss of coherence and continuity in their sense of self.
Joseph LeDoux (1985) equates consciousness with language use and thus associates it with the linguistic apparatus of the brain. He therefore denies consciousness to the right hemisphere in split-brain patients unless it possesses a linguistic capacity, in which case LeDoux would ascribe a dual consciousness to the patient.
John O’Keefe (1985) sees consciousness as primarily concerned with the construction of mental representations of the world. He would therefore locate consciousness in the septohippocampal region of the brain, insofar as the neurophysiological evidence suggests that “cognitive maps” may be located in this area (certain neurons in a rat’s hippocampus may fire when the rat is in a particular location). O’Keefe also notes that conscious attention is necessary for the storage of episodes and narratives in memory, and certainly the hippocampus must be intact in order that such memories be stored. Patients with damage to the hippocampal region are generally unable to form new episodic memories. Such a patient may for instance believe he is still a soldier in Korea, having formed no memories of events occurring in the years since he received his head injury.
O’Keefe further notes that consciousness is especially involved in dealing with novel events. The conscious mind, he asserts, selects actions to be carried out, but is not involved in the details of these action programs (such as the specific steps involved in tying a shoe). These action programs instead tend to be automatic and occur outside of awareness. He does note that consciousness is involved in the initial learning of such programs. Conscious attention is also activated when the result of a motor action is unexpected and deviates from the fixed action plan. He observes that certain neurons in the hippocampal area tend to fire when an organism is confronted with a novel situation, which he takes as further support for the hippocampus as the site of consciousness.
Like O’Keefe, David Oakley (1985a, 1985b). asserts that the conscious mind is intimately involved with the creation of cognitive representations of the world. He notes that the hippocampus and neocortex must be intact for such representations to emerge, as opposed to simple conditioned responses. In an article written with Lesley Eames, Oakley suggests that two or more domains of consciousness may coexist within a single person (Oakely & Eames, 1985). Oakley and Eames note, for instance, that associative learning occurred separately for each of the alternate personalities in the “Jonah” case of multiple personality (Ludwig, Brandsma, Wilbur, Bendfeldt & Jameson,1972), whereas Pavlovian conditioning, which they view as noncortical and automatic, was shared among the different personalities. Oakely and Eames also attribute a dual consciousness to split brain patients, although they see “self-awareness” as usually being restricted to the left hemisphere.
Benjamin Libet (1989, 1991a) views the supplementary motor area (SMA) of the cerebral cortex as being one of the primary areas that is involved in voluntary acts. In this he agrees with Eccles, who at one point went so far as to say that “there is strong support for hypothesis that the SMA is the sole recipient area of the brain for mental intentions that lead to voluntary movements” (Eccles, 1983, p. 45). Libet notes that patients with damaged supplementary motor areas are often incapable of spontaneous voluntary movement; while they may listlessly respond to suggestions from others, they seldom initiate movements on their own. In this sense their will is curtailed. Libet’s view is underscored by Goldberg’s observation that lesions of the supplementary motor area lead to repetitive hand movements, such as buttoning and unbuttoning a shirt, that are experienced as ego-alien and occurring independently of the subject’s will (Goldberg, 1985). Libet further observes that blood flows into the supplementary motor area when movements are merely being contemplated.
Libet’s own experiments indicate that subjects’ decisions to initiate motor movements (flexing the hand) typically do not occur until 350 milliseconds after a readiness potential has begun to build in the brain, indicating that the brain itself has already been preparing for movement at the time of the subject’s experienced decision. Libet notes, however, that mind-brain interaction must be a two-way street, and he found that subjects could change their mind about flexing their hands during the final 150 milliseconds preceding the actual physical act. He also found that this veto decision seemed to coincide in time with a drop in the voltage of the readiness potential. Libet infers from this that the conscious mind has the ability to block an already initiated movement or to let it occur. In this view, the brain is seen as generating courses of action, while the mind or a “free will” decides on the options. He sees the inhibition of action as one of the central roles of a conscious mind.
Levy (2005) has interpreted Libet’s results in a somewhat different manner. Levy notes that Libet’s subjects may have delegated the task of deciding when to flex their hand to processes occurring in the “unconscious” regions of their minds. Levy also notes that it is reasonable to doubt whether Libet is correct in identifying the unconscious brain activity with the intention to or decision to act rather than with the generation of an urge or desire to act.
To explicate the process of mind-brain interaction, Libet (1994) postulates the existence of a “conscious mind field” (CMF), which he sees as being produced by brain activity. The CMF is not capable of being detected by physical measuring devices, nor is it reducible to neural processes; nevertheless, Libet proposes that the CMF is capable of exerting a causal influence on brain processes and that it provides the means whereby diverse neural activity can give rise to unified perceptions and experiences. Libet contends that his view of the CMF is compatible with a variety of different philosophical positions on the mind-body problem. Libet’s views are discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.
The staunch defender of materialism Paul Churchland (1995) has proposed the intralaminar nucleus of the thalamus as the brain site responsible for producing a “unified consciousness.” (Yes, even that ardent proponent of reductionist materialism Paul Churchland has been forced on occasion to use the word “consciousness” in a nonpejorative sense.) Churchland bases his claim on the fact that this brain site possesses two-way projections to diverse areas of the brain as well as the fact that the various senses are represented polymodally in this area. He notes that his colleague Antonio Damasio (1994) has nominated the right parietal lobe of the brain for a similar role, as this area must be intact in order for a continuous sense of the self to exist.
Jean Burns (1993) has suggested that the synchronous firing of large assemblies of neurons underlies conscious experience and forms the interface for mind-brain interaction. Burns’ theory is based on brain wave records and recordings from single neurons showing that such synchronous firings are involved in acts of conscious perception. Burns’ view in this regard is very similar to that of Koch and Crick, discussed above.
Indeed, it would almost seem that no region of the brain has been omitted from the list of brain regions that form the primary center of consciousness according to one researcher or another. In addition to the candidates listed above we have the thalamus (Cotterill, 1995), nonrandom, coherent deviations of the brain’s electromagnetic field from its resting state (John, 2003), and, last but not least, quantum-mechanically entangled water in the microtubules composing the cytoskeletons of neurons (Penrose, 1994; Hameroff, 1994). Each of these authors presents a cogent argument in favor of their candidate for the area of the brain (or brain process) that is the center of consciousness (or of the interaction between consciousness and mind).
With this many candidates for the primary center of consciousness (or of interaction between the conscious mind and brain), it may begin to seem that no center is primary, that many different brain centers and processes may be associated with their own conscious activity, and that these centers of consciousness may not be mutually accessible to one another, at least in a direct sense. This possibility will be discussed in much further detail in Chapters 5 and 7.
Mysterianism
Last, but by far not least, there is strangely appealing doctrine of “mysterianism,” whose most notable proponent is Colin McGinn (1999). McGinn contends that the biological wetware of our brains has evolved to enable us to reason about and understand the physical world rather than to solve such esoteric problems as the nature of consciousness and the fate of the soul. Our globs of 1011 pulsating amoeba-like neurons are more likely designed to discover how to better secure a stone axe head to a stick to beat upon our neighbor’s brain than to enable us to understand the realms to which our neighbor’s consciousness has fled after we have completed our handiwork.
In McGinn’s view, the role of consciousness and the nature of the soul will forever remain beyond our cognitive grasp as our primate brains have evolved to seek fruit and elude tigers and deal with other concrete concerns in the physical world. McGinn opines that the nature of consciousness and its relation to the physical world must remain outside of the grasp of consciousness, at least of those consciousnesses inhabiting our primitive primate brains, which are unequal to the task of understanding their true nature. Perhaps McGinn is right. Perhaps that is why consciousness is often referred to as the “hard problem” of philosophy. But, unlike our ape brethren, we have been to the moon and plumbed the creation of the universe down to the first femtosecond. It is premature to give up trying to understand the nature of our conscious mind. As we shall see, such understanding may require us to relinquish core beliefs about the nature of our selves and the quasi-permanence of our association with any particular body.
Once we have shed our present body and the “self-cocoons” we have wrapped around us to keep us firmly fixed to our present personalities, who knows what wonders may await us?
Under the theories of physics developed by Isaac Newton that dominated Western thought about the physical world from the late seventeenth to very early twentieth century, the physical world was seen as a great impersonal clockwork mechanism. Under this classical, Newtonian view, the physical world was deterministic in the sense that, given the present state of the world, including the position and velocity of every single particle of physical matter, the future states of the universe were completely determined by the laws of physics. Thus, given the (completely described) state of the universe on July 15, 2012, the events of, say, November 23, 2013, are completely determined. As the mathematician and cosmologist Pierre Simon Laplace put it, a Divine Calculator who knew the position and velocity of every material and particle in the universe could deduce the entire history and future of the universe down to the smallest detail.
Obviously in such a clockwork universe, there is no room for intervention by a nonphysical mind. The soul, or atman, had no place in the theory of physics developed by Newton, despite the fact that Newton himself was a devout believer in the Christian God (unless of course the soul were conceived to be a material particle under some type of double-aspect theory).
All this changed with the development of quantum mechanics around the beginning of the twentieth century. Under the quantum mechanical view, the world is no longer completely deterministic, even (especially) at the subatomic level. Given the present state of the universe, under the laws of quantum mechanics, many different futures are possible. This view of reality opens a crack in the cosmic egg (to borrow a phrase from Joseph Chilton Pearce, 1973) for the influence of a nonmaterial mind or soul to creep into the picture.
Quantum Nonlocality
Also, the classical determinism of Newtonian physics saw the world as composed of whirling buzz of mindless submicroscopic particles, careening blindly about in space, sometimes joining and sometime repelling each other, their behavior governed by the impersonal laws of physics. In this universe there seems only room for the parts and little room for the whole as exemplified in conscious minds that are somehow aware of activity of vast (on the elementary particle scale of things) regions of the brain. In the classical view of the universe, each particle of matter responds only to its local surroundings. It does not respond to its compatriot particles until it quite literally “bumps into them.” This notion that the behavior of physical particles is governed completely by events in their local spacetime regions is called “local realism.” Despite the deluge of popular books that have been written about quantum mechanics in the second half of the twentieth century (not to mention those published in the infancy of the new millennium), “local realism” is still the view that undergirds our intuitive understanding of the universe, both laymen and scientists alike (although perhaps both groups should know better by now).
As noted above, under the theory of quantum mechanics, indeterminism reigns. Given the present state of the universe, many different futures are possible. Take, for instance, the case of Schrodinger’s hapless cat, imprisoned in a box together with a radioactive source that will kill it (through some sort of Rube Goldberg device) if a Geiger counter detects a radioactive decay. After a fixed period of time there is a 50-50 chance that when we open the box we will find a cat that has been sent to that Great Alley in the sky. According to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, the variables that determine the instant of the first decay, if indeed there are any, are “hidden” to us. The best we can do is compute the probability that the cat is still alive. If there are “hidden variables” that determine the cat’s fate, we cannot know them.
The most startling and remarkable thing about such hidden variables is that, if they exist, they must be nonlocal in nature. To understand what “nonlocality” means in this context, consider the case of two protons that are initially united in a state of zero spin (what physicists call the “singlet state”). Suppose that the protons have become separated from one another and are moving in opposite directions through space. If the spin of one of these protons is measured along a spatial axis and the proton is found to be spinning “upward” along that axis, the other proton must be spinning “downward” along that axis (as their total spin along any axis must sum to zero). Thus, it seems that when you measure the spin of one proton and find it to be “up”, the second proton is somehow instantly informed that it should adopt the “down” state on that axis.
It might be assumed that the Newtonian framework in which the protons are viewed as separate, isolated particles could accommodate this phenomenon through postulating that, when the protons separated, one of them possessed some property that made it spin “down” on the axis and the other one possessed some property that made it spin “up.” In other words, there is no need to assume any mysterious interconnection between the protons. This is view under the doctrine known as “local realism.”
It can be shown that if protons really do posses such local properties, the numbers of proton pairs exhibiting various combinations of spins on certain predefined axes must satisfy a class of inequalities called Bell inequalities after the physicist John Bell, who derived them. The theory of quantum mechanics, on the other hand, predicts that Bell inequalities will be violated if certain combinations of spatial axes are chosen.
Against my better judgment, I am not going to force the reader to take my word for it this time, but I am going to walk those readers that able to recall their high school trigonometry through the actual mathematics used to establish that the “hidden variables” of quantum mechanics must be nonlocal in nature. (They say that each equation a book contains halves its sales. If so, here go 99.95% of my royalties.) The math phobic reader may however ignore the equations and inequalities that follow and quite literally “read between the lines” to follow the gist of my argument. However, for those readers who can follow the actual mathematics, the demonstration of quantum nonlocality is all the more compelling, startling and, to use a hackneyed phrase, awe-inspiring when you appreciate and understand the beauty and simplicity of the mathematics behind it. The mathematical exposition to follow is roughly along the lines set forth by Bernard d’Espagnat (1979) in his highly lucid explanation of quantum nonlocality.
We begin our story with two protons blissfully united in the “singlet” state, a state in which their collective spin is zero. (A proton’s spin may be oversimplistically imagined as the spin of a top; its units are expressed in term of angular momentum. Unlike a top, however, the proton is only able to manifest distinct units of spin, unlike a skater who can go smoothly from a slowly spinning state with her arms extended to a fast-spinning state with her arms pulled in or slowly turn a clockwise rotation into a counterclockwise rotation. In quantum mechanics, these states are discrete; there is no intermediate spin in which the spinner’s arms are half pulled in so that she is spilling at an intermediate rate. A proton goes directly from one spin state to another in what is often termed a quantum leap. The proton, like all free quantum spirits but unlike skaters, also may be found in a mixture of states in which it is spinning “clockwise” (also known as “downward”) with probability, say, 0.6 and spinning counterclockwise with a probability of 0.4.
Thus, in quantum theory, the properties of material particles are not specified deterministically, but only probabilistically. For instance, one may measure the spin of a proton along any spatial axis A of one’s choosing, and its spin will be found either to be in the upward direction with regard to that axis (A+) or in the downward direction along that axis (A-). The quantum mechanical description of the particle’s state does not determine the spin direction along any axis, but only gives the probabilities that the spin will be found to be either “up” or “down” with regard to the given axis.
If the quantum mechanical description is complete, then the proton does not have any definite, well-defined spin with regard to any axis until a measurement is made, after which the proton’s spin will either be up upward along the axis or downward along the axis. If the spin of a proton along any particular axis A has been measured, its spin along any other axis B is indeterminate according to quantum theory. The proton is said to be in a “superposition” of the “spinning upward on B” and “spinning downward on B” states. The proton is not definitely in one state or the other, and quantum theory can only yield the probability that it will be found to be spinning upward on B rather than being able to predict in advance which way the proton will be found to be spinning when measured along axis B.
At the point of measurement or observation, the proton acquires a definite spin on axis B, through a process known as “the collapse of the state vector.” The nature of this process is not adequately specified by quantum theory, and state vector collapse seems to be due to factors not adequately defined in present day quantum theory.
The lack of any provision for the state vector collapse in the formalism of quantum mechanics formed the inspiration for Hugh Everett’s Many-World, interpretation of quantum mechanics in which all possible outcomes of quantum mechanical processes are postulated to occur in some alternate future (Everett, 1957). Thus, there may alternate universes alongside of ours in which you are no longer a quadriplegic because President Al Gore’s Secretary of Transportation enacted policies leading to schedule changes in your local bus service so that the bus did not locate itself in the same spacetime region as your body when you stopped to tie your shoe on April 1, 2003. Under Everett’s Many World hypothesis, all events that are possible under the laws of quantum mechanics actually occur in some alternative future.
Many theorists (e.g., Wheeler, 1983; Walker, 2000) have proposed that observation by a conscious mind, an entity outside of physical science altogether (barring the truth of reductive physicalism), may be necessary to force state vector collapse and to ensure that only one of the many futures allowable under quantum mechanics actually occurs.
If a proton’s spin is determined (through measurement) along one axis, its spin along any other axis is undetermined according to quantum theory and does not take on any definite value until an act of observation occurs. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (1935) argued that quantum theory is simply incomplete in this regard. For instance, it may be possible in some sense to measure the spin of a proton along two directions at once. If two protons are initially united in a state of zero spin (e.g., the “singlet” state) and then allowed to separate, their spins as subsequently measured on any chosen axis must have opposite values. Thus, if the spin of the first proton is measured to be upward along an axis A (A+) and its partner’s spin measured to be upward along a second axis B (B+), it can be argued that the first proton must have been an A+B− proton (i.e., having properties causing it to spin upward on the A axis and downward on the B axis) prior to the act of observation.
Thus, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen argued, particles do have definite properties prior to any act of measurement and the probabilistic description provided by quantum theory is simply an incomplete description of reality.
John Bell (1964), on the other hand, was able to use a simple mathematical argument to show that the empirical predictions of quantum theory are in conflict with any theory assuming that the outcome of quantum measurements are determined by the local properties of particles and do not depend on what occurs in distant regions of space.
A simplified version of Bell’s argument is as follows. Assume that protons have localized properties that determine the outcomes of spin measurements (i.e., the proton has “really” been spinning upward on the A axis all along, although we didn’t know it until we observed it). An A+B− proton would then be a proton that has a property that ensures that it will be found to be spinning upward when measured along axis A and downward if measured along axis B. Such A+B− protons must come in two varieties: those that will be found to be spinning upward when measures along any third axis C (the A+B−C+ protons), and those that will be found to be spinning downward when measured along axis C (the A+B−C− protons). Thus, the probability p(A+B−) that a proton will have spins A+ and B− must therefore satisfy the following equation:
p(A+B−) = p(A+B−C+) + p(A+B−C−) (2.1)
By a similar reasoning process, we have:
p(A+C−) = p(A+B+C-) + p(A+B−C−) (2.2)
But as p(A+B−C−) is greater than or equal to 0, Equation (2.2) implies:
p(A+C−) ≥ p(A+B−C−) (2.3)
Similarly,
p(B−C+) ≥ p(A+B−C+) (2.4)
Adding inequalities (2.3) and (2.4), we obtain:
p(A+C−) + p(B−C+) ≥ p(A+B−C−) + p(A+B−C+) (2.5)
Substituting from equation (2.1), we have:
p(A+C−) + p(B−C+) ≥ p(A+B−) (2.6)
Inequality (2.6) is known as a Bell inequality, and it must be obeyed if the proton’s spins are determined by local properties of the protons themselves and do not depend on events happening in remote regions of space and time. Inequality (2.6) is, however, in conflict with the predictions of quantum theory. According to quantum theory, if the positive directions of two axes A and B are separated by an angle φAB, the probability that a proton will display opposite spin orientations on the two axes is given by sin2(φAB /2). As either the A+B− or the A-B+ orientations are equally likely given the singlet state, we have:
p(A+B−) = 1/2 X sin2(φAB /2) (2.7)
Suppose we orient detector A so that the positive pole points in the “north” direction (in a plane). Suppose also that we point detector B in the “southeast” direction and detector C in the “northeast” direction (in the same plane). Then we have φAB = 135o, φAC = 45o, φBC = 90o. (Now is the time to reach back into your memory for whatever tidbits of high school trigonometry may be remaining there or, better yet, to dust off that scientific calculator you have been keeping in the attic.)
Using the probabilistic laws of quantum mechanics as described above, we have:
p(A+C−) = 1/2 X sin2(45o /2) = 1/2 X sin2(22.5o) = .073 (2.8)
p(B−C+) = 1/2 X sin2(90o /2) = 1/2 X sin2(45o) = .250 (2.9)
p(A+B−) = 1/2 X sin2(135o /2) = 1/2 X sin2(67.5o) = .427 (2.10)
These probabilities are in violation of the Bell inequality (2.6), as can be seen by substituting the values given in equations (2.8) through (2.10) into inequality (2.6) to obtain:
.073 + .250 ≥ .427 (2.11)
Inequality (2.11) is obviously false, thus revealing that the laws of quantum mechanics are in conflict with the philosophy of “local realism” from which inequality (2.6) was derived (i.e., the view that the outcomes of quantum measurements are determined by properties of the particles and the local spacetime regions in which they reside).
Experimental evidence by Alain Aspect and his coworkers (e.g., Aspect, Dalibard, & Roger, 1982) has shown that in a test of quantum mechanics against local realism, the Bell inequalities are violated, and the evidence is strongly against the doctrine of local realism. It should be noted that Aspect’s experiments were conducted using photons rather than protons, and the mathematics underlying the Bell inequalities is somewhat different and a little more complex than that for protons. A very readable exposition of the mathematics underlying Bell inequalities for photons is given in McAdam (2003).
Aspect et. al’s results imply that two quantum particles such as protons may not be the isolated objects separated from each other in space that they appear to be. Instead, they may form one united system even though they may be separated by light years of space. The protons do not have defined spins on a spatial axis until a measurement of one of their spins along that axis is made, at which point the measured proton’s partner suddenly adopts the opposite spin. After the first proton “chooses” a spin (up or down) along the measured axis, the second proton is somehow mysteriously informed that it should adopt the opposite spin if measured along that same axis. It cannot be the case that the first proton manages to send a message to the second proton telling it which spin to adopt, as the protons may be sufficiently far apart that no such signal could be sent between them unless it exceeded the speed of light, which is regarded as impossible in standard theories of physics. Thus, the protons, two seemingly separated and isolated little billiard balls, turn out not to be separated from one another after all.
Even single physical particles are not the localized, isolated entities that they appear to be. Consider the case of the classic “double-slit” experiment, in which electrons must pass though one of two slits in order to reach a detecting mechanism. Electrons are always detected as point-like entities; thus, it is reasonable to assume that the distribution of the locations of electrons detected when both slits are open will simply be the sum of the distributions obtained when the slits are opened one at a time. However, as streams of electrons possess wavelike properties, an interference pattern (bands of darkness and light) will be manifested at the detecting device when both slits are open, and this interference pattern will differ markedly from the distribution expected by summing the distributions obtained when the slits are opened one at a time. The most amazing thing is that the interference effect manifests itself even under conditions in which only one electron can pass through the diffraction grating at a time. Thus, it appears that a single electron somehow manages to go through both slits at once! Any attempt to determine which slit is actually traversed by the electron reveals, on the other hand, that the electron passes through only one slit. Furthermore, this determination destroys the interference pattern and results in a distribution equal to the sum of the distributions from each slit.
Thus, although an electron is always detected as a point-like entity, it appears to manifest itself as a nonlocalized wave function under circumstances in which we do not attempt to determine its location. The modern interpretation of this wave is that it is a “probability wave” existing in an abstract mathematical space called Hilbert space rather than in physical space. The electron, an apparently solid point-like entity when we observe it, is apparently a ghostly vibration in an abstract, almost mind-like, space when we are not looking!
Chris Clarke (2004) notes that the phenomenon of quantum nonlocality as demonstrated in Aspect’s experiments strikes the death knell for the philosophy of atomism (the notion that one must look to the scale of the universe’s smallest particles in order to find ultimate reality). He notes that atomistic and mechanistic metaphors lead to dualistic approaches to the “mind-body” problem such as those derivative from Descartes’ model, rather than to an approach that would truly integrate the mental and physical worlds. Clark concludes that contemporary physics cannot provide any sort of ultimate reality at all, although it points the way to a more complete understanding of reality.
Quantum Holism.
Science has generally proceeded by the analysis and dissection of complex systems into their parts, the ultimate parts being of course elementary particles such as electrons and quarks. Higher order phenomena, such as the activities of the mind, are to be explained in terms of lower order entities such as molecules and electrons, at least according to the “orthodox” (that is, outmoded Newtonian) view of the world. This type of explanation is known as “upward causation.” The philosophy upon which it is based is called “reductionism,” as it assumes that the properties of complex systems, such as people, can be reduced to the properties of their components (such as atoms).
Indeed, as we have seen, even the behavior of our two entwined protons, seemingly the simplest of physical systems, is not governed by their local properties but rather by the more encompassing system that includes them both.
The physicist David Bohm (Bohm, 1980; Bohm & Peat, 1987) has referred to the universe as a “holomovement,” invoking an analogy to a hologram (a three dimensional photograph in which the entire picture may be reconstituted from each part). Bohm has termed the world of manifest phenomena or appearances the “explicate order” and the hidden (nonlocal) reality underlying it the “implicate order.” Bohm laments the tendency of modern science to fragment and dissect the universe and to focus on parts rather than wholes. He proposes a new mode of speaking in which “thing” expressions would be replaced by “event” expressions.
The philosopher Hoyt Edge (1980a, 1985) has called for the abandonment of the localized “entity” metaphysics and the adoption of an “activity meta-physics,” in which reality would not be seen as separated into physical or mental atoms and the dichotomy between the observer and what is observed would be abandoned.
K. Ramakrishna Rao (1978) has noted the similarity of both Bohm’s concept of an implicate order (in which all events are interconnected) underlying the manifest world as well as Karl Pribram’s view of the world as a hologram, in which the whole universe is seen as somehow contained in or related to each of its parts (Pribram, 1971, 1978), to the Vedantic doctrine of the identity between atman (or a person’s individual consciousness) and Brahman (the Supreme Self or World Mind). Transcendental and mystical states of consciousness may involve the direct experience of Brahman in Rao’s view.
Based in part on quantum mechanical considerations, astrophysicist David Darling (1995) proposes that our individual, encapsulated egos are illusions and that, when a person dies, this illusory self is dissolved and the person’s consciousness merges with the world consciousness (or Brahman, in Rao’s terminology).
Victor Mansfield (1995), echoing Rao, sees the concept of emptiness in Middle Way Buddhism as being akin to the concept of nonlocality in quantum mechanics. Mansfield notes that according to the doctrines of this school of Buddhism, objects do not exist independently of the mind.
Like Bohm, Herms Romijn (1997), a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam, proposes that there exists a submanifest deterministic order underlying all observed phenomena in the universe. He proposes a version of the “double-aspect theory” in which all matter in the universe is seen as being imbued with consciousness.
In a similar vein, the physicist Evan Harris Walker (2000) has proposed that all observers are in fact one and that this single observer is responsible for the collapse of all quantum mechanical state vectors. Walker, like Eccles, Stapp and many other mind-brain theorists, proposes that the mind acts on the body through determining the outcome of quantum processes in the brain.
Consciousness and Quantum Collapse.
There is no provision within the theory of quantum mechanics itself for the collapse of the quantum probability vector into a definite outcome. According to the theory of quantum mechanics, the quantum probability wave will be happy to go on deterministically evolving, never settling in to a definite outcome. But we do not experience the world as a fuzzy blob of half-dead / half-alive Schrödinger’s cats. When we open the box, we observe either a live cat or a dead cat.
Many observers ascribe the collapse of the state vector to the act of observation itself. To some, this means that it is observation by a conscious mind that forces the quantum vector to collapse and take on a definite outcome. In a “speciesist” version of this theory, the cat will be suspended in a mix of the alive and dead states until a human observer opens the box, at which point the quantum vector will collapse and the cat will assume either the alive state or the dead state and will remain in the state, to misquote Poe’s raven, “evermore” (so long as we either keep bringing food and water and providing it the most advanced feline geriatric care or, in the nonfavorable scenario, make no attempts at a Frankensteinesque revival). To a nonspeciesist observer, however, observation by the cat’s conscious mind would be sufficient to collapse the state vector. To exalt the human mind as the only conscious agent capable of collapsing state vectors in to commit the same act of hubris as our ancestors who place the earth at the center of the universe and proclaimed man to be the divine ruler over all beasts. Human beings, despite their industrious natures, cannot be all places at all times. In fact, we have only been around for a lousy few million years, which is but a blink of an eye in comparison to the 13.5 billion years our universe (or local portion of a much vaster “multiverse’) has been around. In that time, we have been confined to a nondescript (but thankfully wet) piece of rock in the boondocks of a galaxy that is not particularly distinguished from the myriad other galaxies that float through our cosmos.
Try though we might, human beings (and animals for that matter) cannot be everywhere at all times. A quantum-collapsing consciousness’s work is never done. This is why some theorists, such as Walker (2000), have postulated that the universe comes complete with “proto-consciousnesses” that collapse quantum vectors in regions of space and time that are remote from human presence. (And, if such conscious observers are out there in the “void,” they are likely to be here among us as well.) These are the considerations that led Hill (2005) to propose that, from the looks of things, the universe is devised for creatures or consciousnesses that inhabit the vast, inhabitable regions of outer space. Could Hill’s beings and Walker’s proto-consciousnesses be one and the same?
The view that quantum collapse is brought about through observation by consciousness has led Henry Stapp (2005a) to proclaim that quantum mechanics replaces the material world with a world of experience. Indeed, if conscious minds are what force quantum processes to assume a definite outcome, it may be that mind plays a fundamental role in the process of “becoming,” the process whereby an undetermined future becomes the experienced present and then the determined past. Perhaps consciousness is responsible for the flow of time, the process by which the future becomes the “now” and then recedes ever more distantly into the past. Theories of physics are at a loss to explain the phenomenon of the “moving present” that treks its way into the future at a paradoxical speed of “one second per second.” Physicists dismiss the concept (and experience) of “time flow” as subjective, and hence (perhaps like consciousness itself) not worthy of serious consideration. And yet still, Time’s finger, having writ, moves on. If conscious minds are the major players in generating the flow of time and determining the location of the “present” (a concept denied in relativistic physics) along the axis of time, then role of consciousness in the cosmos may be truly fundamental.
While the view that acts of observation by conscious observers are what cause quantum probability vectors to collapse to a definite outcome is a common one, not all quantum physicists subscribe to that view. Some scientists assert that a recording of the outcome on a macroscopic recording device (e.g., computer printout) is sufficient to cause collapse. However, technically speaking, the deterministically evolving quantum probability function applies to such macroscopic systems and there is no provision for collapse within quantum theory itself. Such macroscopic recording devices could exist in a state of undecided superposition until Hell freezes over (i.e., about 10100 years from now, but not to worry) as far as the laws of quantum mechanics are concerned.
Other quantum theorists assert that at reasonably warm temperatures (say, -200 Co), the quantum waves of macroscopic outcomes (such as the breaking or non-breaking of the glass vial of cyanide and the last few pages of the autobiography of Schrödinger’s unfortunate cat) cannot remain in a state of superposition due to interactions with external systems. Penrose (1994), for instance, hypothesizes that when a physical system reaches a certain mass, it can no longer remain in a state of quantum indecision (superposition), as the effects of gravity come into play.
Other physicists (e.g., Hugh Everett, 1957) take the “easy” way out and deny that quantum collapse occurs. Under Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, all possible outcomes of a quantum process occur, which fractures the universe into multiple worlds at each moment of a quantum decision. If Lee Harvey Oswald had flipped a quantum mechanical coin to decide whether to enter the Marines to receive rifle training or become a scuba diver instead, there might now be a parallel universe existing alongside of ours (in an abstract mathematical space called Hilbert space) in which Oswald receives his demise, not at the hands of a crazed Jack Ruby seeking to avenge the death of President Kennedy, but rather in the mouth of famished great white shark. Of course there are countless quantum decisions taking place at each instant of time, so every second the universe we reside in splits into a (literally and mathematically) uncountable infinity of universes existing alongside each other in Hilbert space. Unfortunately, however, there is no way for us (at least at present) to leave our mundane universe and travel through Hilbert space to catch up with the fascinating adventures of our other selves in these parallel worlds. Most physicists think that the countless multiplying of universes in Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics is simply too uneconomical (in terms of the number of unobservable universes that must exist) and too fantastic to be taken seriously. However, Everett’s model does have the beauty of not having to account for what causes the collapse of quantum mechanical state vectors. They simply don’t collapse.
The Mind’s Influence on Quantum Outcomes
As well as causing the collapse of quantum mechanical state vectors, there is a smattering of evidence that the mind can influence the outcomes of such collapse. This evidence is controversial and has not as yet been accepted by the majority of the scientific community, but rather falls under the rubric of parapsychology.
A series of experiments directed at detecting the psychokinetic (“mind over matter”) influence of such quantum events as radioactive decay, begun by Helmut Schmidt in the 1960s and since continued by many other investigators, has been quite successful by parapsychological standards (e.g., Schmidt, 1970, 1976, 1981,1984 1985, 1986, 1993). In a typical such experiment, a subject might be given the task of increasing the number of radioactive decays in a sample of strontium-90 that occur during odd microseconds rather than even microseconds. Schmidt’s typical finding is that subjects are able to slightly to increase the number of events that are in line with their goal (e.g., decays detected during odd microseconds rather than even microseconds). The typical effect is a slight bias in the target direction (e.g., 50.3% of decays detected during an odd microsecond vs. the 50% that would be expected by chance according to the laws of quantum mechanics). However, owing to the large number of trials, the odds against even such a small deviation happening by chance are generally quite large (on the order of a million to one). This line of evidence directly suggests that the mind may indeed be the source of the some of the hidden variables that govern the outcomes of quantum processes. A more detailed discussion of the nature and strength of the experimental evidence for such parapsychological phenomena as psychokinesis, precognition and telepathy will be postponed until Chapter 4.
One of Schmidt’s more intriguing findings is his evidence for retroactive psychokinesis (e.g., Schmidt, 1976, 1981, 1985, 1993). In such an experiment, a series of quantum events is recorded in a computer’s memory bank, but not observed by anyone. At some time in the future, a human (or animal) subject is asked to influence these events, which would normally be regarded as falling into the fixed past. Schmidt and his coworkers have found such observers to be successful in their attempts to manipulate the past. Thus, if acts of conscious observation are indeed the cause of “time flow,” it seems that events of last week, already stored on a computer, may still be part of the “future” until they are consciously observed and the quantum mechanical state vector collapsed to a specific outcome. Incidentally, the same effect is obtained in more orthodox areas in physics. For instance, light emitted from a quasar billions of years ago may be “gravitationally lensed” by a galaxy sitting between the Earth and quasar, producing a double-image of the quasar. Much like the quantum mechanical “two slit” experiment with electrons described above, a decision to observe whether the light took the “left” or “right” path around the galaxy, will show no interference pattern, only the bimodal “two humped” distribution one would expect from photons following one path or another. A decision not to monitor the path, will result in the typical interference pattern suggesting that the photon (or its quantum state vector) somehow took both paths. Thus, a decision as to the type of measurement to be made in the present may seemingly influence events happening billions of years ago, suggesting that these events in the infancy of the universe may be part of the as yet to be determined “future” until they are observed by a conscious entity.
Quanta and the Mind
Many scientists have proposed that the mind acts on the brain through the influence of quantum processes. The views of Hameroff, Penrose, and Eccles have been discussed in the previous chapter. Another prominent theorist to propose such a view is the physicist Evan Harris Walker (Walker, 1975, 1984, 2000, 2003), who, like Schmidt, has also developed mathematical theories regarding psychokinetic effects on quantum processes.
Walker asserts that the quantum probability wave (i.e., state vector) constitutes a complete description of the physical system of the brain, but does not specify the outcomes of quantum processes. He asserts that the conscious mind, or “will” in Walker’s terminology, corresponds to the “hidden variables” that determine the outcomes of quantum events. As the will falls outside of the physical description of the brain, it is nonphysical in Walker’s view. He further asserts that the will is nonlocal and atemporal (not located at a particular instant of time). He hypothesizes that the will has a channel capacity (ability to influence events) of 6 X 104 bits per second. However, in Walker’s view, the will is far from being all-powerful as it is embedded in a physical system processing 5 X 107 bits per second.
Bierman and Walker (2003) report some empirical evidence in support of Walker’s theory. Specifically, they report a difference in brain waves between human subjects who were the first to observe a quantum event and those who observed outcomes of quantum mechanical events that had already been observed by another human observer. They note that their results go counter to an earlier finding by Hall, Kim, McElroy and Shimoni (1977) that subjects could not guess which quantum events had been observed previously. Bierman and Walker argue that the inter-observational interval was too short in Hall et. al.’s experiment for the first observer to consciously perceive the outcome, citing Libet’s finding that 300-500 milliseconds of brain activity is required before a stimulus is consciously perceived (Libet, 1991b). Bierman and Walker found a difference in brain waves between subjects who observed “new” and “preobserved” quantum outcomes in the first 100 milliseconds of brain activity, but no differences in the late brain potentials (after 1000 milliseconds). Bierman and Walker note that their failure to find an effect of preobservation in the late evoked brain potentials of their subjects is consistent with Hall et al.’s finding of no conscious differences in the perceptions of “new” and preobserved quantum processes.
A somewhat more passive view of the mind’s role in influencing the outcomes of quantum mechanical processes in the brain, at least in terms of its timing, is proposed by the theoretical physicist Henry Stapp (2004, 2005b). As discussed in the previous chapter, Stapp postulates that the conscious mind waits for the quantum probability wave to favor a desired outcome and then stabilizes it. This would involve an ability on the part of fields of consciousness to sense the mathematically abstract quantum wave function and then to stabilize that function through continued observation. This is a somewhat more esoteric level of influence than the more or less direct influence on the physical processes themselves proposed by Walker and others.
It should be noted that many of the theories and empirical findings regarding the mind’s influence on quantum mechanics discussed in the preceding passages fall outside of mainstream science. In particular, the findings of Schmidt and others that conscious minds may influence the outcomes of quantum processes occurring outside of the subject’s physical body are controversial, have not been universally (or easily) replicated, and have been relegated to the outcast field of parapsychology, a field whose status in regard to the mainstream scientific community is marginal at best. The mainstream scientific/philosophical community has been somewhat more receptive to notion that the conscious minds may influence quantum processes within the brains in which they are (however temporarily) imprisoned. Thus, despite Bell’s and Aspect’s demonstrations of quantum nonlocality, most scientists/philosophers operating at the fringes (but within the borders) of mainstream science are more comfortable with the idea that the mind’s action is confined to the physical brain than with the notion that its influence may extend beyond the borders of the physical body. Of course, those physicalists who are deeply embedded within the orthodox core of mainstream science would deny the mind any influence on quantum mechanical processes at all, even those within the physical brain it inhabits.
It should be noted that the hypotheses as to the nature and eventual fate of one’s essential self set forth in Chapter 0 are in no way dependent on the existence of the paranormal phenomena studied by parapsychologists. Neither are they dependent on the hypothesis that the conscious mind directly influences the outcomes of quantum processes in a way that would be incompatible with the laws of physical science. (There also may be physical or quasiphysical processes yet to be discovered that may have a considerable bearing on this debate. The vast majority of scientists and philosophers have, in all historical eras, basked in their supreme confidence that their knowledge of the world was essentially complete. It has never been so in the past, and there is no good reason to believe it is now.)
It is, however, to the study of alleged paranormal such as precognition and psychokinesis that we turn in the next two chapters, because of their importance in the contemporary debate of the nature of the mind and the self. In Chapter 5, we will consider the implications of psi phenomena, if they exist, for our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality. In Chapter 6, we will consider the evidence that, not just the self, but some aspects of the personality, survive the death of the physical brain.
This chapter and the next will examine the evidence for psi phenomena such as telepathy (direct mind-to-mind, or at least brain-to-brain, communication), precognition (the ability to “see” the future), clairvoyance (the ability to gain direct knowledge of a physical object by means other than the recognized physical senses) and psychokinesis (the ability of mind to directly influence matter remote from the physical body). Collectively, these ostensible phenomena are called “psi phenomena,” a term introduced by the parapsychologists Robert Thouless and B. P. Wiesner (Thouless & Wiesner, 1948; Wiesner & Thouless, 1942).
As the reader is no doubt aware, there is a vast (or, by orthodox science standards, moderately large) literature regarding attempts to demonstrate the existence of paranormal phenomena such as extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK) in experimental studies. As will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, there is a great deal of controversy surrounding this literature. Many observers within the field of parapsychology contend that the existence of psi phenomena has been conclusively established and that the task of experimental parapsychology should now be to explore the nature of psi and the conditions that facilitate or inhibit the expression of psi rather than to amass further evidence that such phenomena exist. Skeptics, who comprise the vast majority of the orthodox scientific community, assert that that the existence of psi phenomena has not been conclusively established and that the existing body of experimental evidence for psi can be explained away by a combination of procedural and statistical flaws or outright fraud.
We will discuss this controversy in considerable depth in the next chapter. To do so now would be getting ahead of our story and putting the cart in front of the horse. The true story begins with a discussion of apparent instances of psi that occur in everyday life outside of the laboratory. Such cases of “spontaneous psi” have occurred throughout recorded history. Studies of such cases preceded experimental investigations of psi and formed the rationale and motivation for experimental investigations.
Spontaneous Psi
Classification into Subtypes
One of the foremost investigators of spontaneous psi phenomena was Dr. Louisa Rhine, the wife and colleague of Dr. J. B. Rhine, the man who is widely regarded as the founder of the field of experimental parapsychology. Over a period of several decades, she amassed a vast collection of over 10,000 cases of apparently paranormal events, which were mailed to her, often in response to articles in the popular press, over a period of several decades. Her anecdotal, theoretical and statistical studies of such cases led to a long list of publications, spanning several decades (e.g., Rhine, 1951, 1955, 1961, 1962a, 1962b, 1963, 1970, 1977, 1978, 1981). She partitioned the experiences suggesting the operation of an ESP capacity into four main groups: hallucinatory experiences, intuitive experiences, realistic dreams and unrealistic dreams. She established a fifth, “wastebasket” category of “indeterminate type” for experiences that were difficult to assign unambiguously to one of the four previously mentioned categories. Cases involving hallucinations while falling asleep (hypnagogic imagery) or while waking up (hypnopompic imagery) might fall into this indeterminate category, along with cases involving mixed features.
Hallucinatory cases sometimes involve auditory, tactile, or olfactory hallucinations. However, visual hallucinations are by far the most predominant mode in such cases (unlike in schizophrenia, where auditory hallucinations predominate). One famous subcategory of visual hallucinations comprises “crisis apparitions,” in which someone has a vision of another person at the time that the appearing person is undergoing a crisis (often death). Such crisis apparitions were a predominant interest of the earliest psychical researchers (e.g., Gurney, Myers and Podmore, 1886a, 1886b), who viewed such hallucinations as possible instances of ghosts or “astral bodies” come to bid their friends farewell (although many observers, such as Edmund Gurney, proposed that such visions were in fact hallucinations induced by paranormal awareness of the crisis being experienced by the appearing person, rather than an actual appearance of the departing spirit of the appearing person).
Intuitive cases involve a sense of foreboding or “hunch” that something has occurred. For instance, a woman may be driving to work and be overcome with a sense of foreboding that something is wrong at home. She turns her car around and drives back to her house, only to find it on fire, her toddler and babysitter huddled on the front lawn.
Lousia Rhine’s third category of spontaneous ESP experience was that of realistic dreams. Such dreams involve a more or less literal and accurate portrayal of the confirming event. Unlike intuitive experiences, which primarily involve contemporaneous events, dreams are more often precognitive, that is to say involve events that have yet to happen at the time of the dream. For instance, a mother may dream that her son is a fiery car crash on the night before the actual crash occurs.
Rhine’s fourth category is that of “unrealistic” dreams, which appear to represent events symbolically rather than literally. For instance, rather than dreaming of the car crash in more or less realistic detail, the woman in the last example might dream that her son hands her a single rose and then begins walking into a dark cave.
Louisa Rhine employed a fifth “wastebasket category” of cases involving mixed features.
Several types of spontaneous ESP experiences appear to be left out of Rhine’s categorization scheme. The most prominent of these is the “psi-mediated instrumental response” (PMIR) discussed by Rex Stanford (1974, 1990a). A case of PMIR might involve a man’s sudden impulse to enter the art museum he normally walks past on his way home from work. Once inside, he runs into an old flame who lives in another country but who is now on vacation and touring the gallery. This case could be an instance of psi powers operating at a wholly subconscious level, in which the man became clairvoyantly aware of his old girlfriend’s presence in the art galley, with this subconscious awareness giving rise to the impulse to enter the art gallery. This category of spontaneous psi would seem to fall outside of Louisa Rhine’s categories of ESP experiences, all of which involve a more or less conscious awareness of the psi message.
Another category of receptive psi seemingly missed by Louisa Rhine’s classification scheme is the phenomenon of psi-trailing, in which a animal pet animal is lost at distant location yet is able to find its way home (in some instances, even if the pet’s owner has moved to a new location previously unknown to the pet). Instances of psi-trailing were studied by the Rhines’ daughter, Sally Feather (Rhine & Feather, 1962).
Another phenomenon suggestive of operation of psi is the common experience of déjà vu, in which a person has the sense that the events she is currently experiencing are strangely familiar and that she has already experienced them at least once before. One possible explanation of the déjà vu experience is that the person has precognized the events in question, possibly in a dream that has since been forgotten. Alternative explanations for the phenomenon of déjà vu that do not involve psi powers abound and will be discussed below.
Some spontaneous cases involve puzzling physical effects such as clocks that stop or portraits that fall off the wall at the time of a persons’ death. There are also cases that involve anomalous physical phenomena that occur repeatedly over a longer time period. These are known as poltergeist cases or, in the parapsychologists’ parlance, recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (or RSPK for short). Poltergeist cases may involve anomalously moving objects such as cups that fly off the kitchen counter or rocks that pummel the house from outside as well as strange behavior of electrical apparatus, such as radios that seem to turn themselves on or phones that malfunction in odd ways. Even stranger phenomena have been reported, including bite marks appearing on a victim’s skin. While the term “poltergeist” literally translates as “noisy ghost,” most modern observers attribute poltergeist phenomena to living agents. In a typical poltergeist case, there is a “focal person” or “poltergeist agent” involved. Anomalous physical phenomena generally occur in close proximity to the focal person and few, if any, phenomena are observed in the focal person’s absence. For this reason, the RSPK effects are generally thought to be caused either through the focal person’s psychokinetic powers or through fraudulent behavior on the part of the focal person.
Examples of Spontaneous Psi
Having outlined the major categories of spontaneous psi, I will now present examples of each of the major subtypes listed above.
Hallucinatory Experiences.
Hallucinatory experiences are perhaps the most dramatic category of spontaneous experiences that are suggestive of the operation of ESP. They may involve visions of persons at the time of death (crisis apparitions), auditory hallucinations (often of a voice calling one’s name), and even olfactory and tactile hallucinations.
McKenzie (1995) reports a case involving a seemingly precognitive vision of a fatal fire. On October 27, 1971, a six-year-old boy reported seeing a fire out of the front window of his aunt’s house. According to his aunt, the boy shouted, “Look at that fire over there - get some water quick!” The aunt went to the window and saw nothing and took the boy home because she thought that he must be tired.
The boy’s sister, then nine, corroborated this story, saying that she had gone to her uncle’s house after school on that day and her brother was looking out of this window at the house across the street at about 3:30 PM on October 27. She stated that her brother had a vision of the house being on fire, including fire engines and stretchers being brought out of the house with the bodies covered by blankets. She noted that it seemed to be nighttime in the boy’s vision, as he stated that it was dark outside. She stated that her brother ran out into the street and urged his uncle to get some water. She stated that her brother then ran home and later got smacked for making up stories. (Note that this account is at variance with the aunt’s on this point. This indicates that not all the witnesses’ memories have remained perfectly intact and undistorted between 1971 and McKenzie’s interviews in 1995.).
The boy himself (by then of course a man) reported to MacKenzie that he was looking through the window of his uncle’s house and saw the house across the street on fire. He said that he could see a pram under the window, with glass and wood falling into it. He could hear people screaming and could see smoke. He states that, though it was daylight in reality, the events seemed to be taking place at night. He said that he called his uncle, but by the time he had looked out, the scene had reverted back to normal. He said that he was smacked for telling lies and that the actual fire happened the next evening. (A report in the October 28, 1971 number of the Bolton Evening News, the local evening newspaper, confirms that a fire in the house in question did take place. The blaze was described as an inferno, and two brothers, aged two and three, perished in the conflagration. MacKenzie notes that it is odd that the fire is described as having occurred “today” in the account in the evening newspaper. He speculates that the paper was a very late edition or that the fire had in fact occurred the previous evening.
That the fire occurred at night was corroborated by the boy’s father, who stated that his son had in fact run into his shop on the afternoon of the day in question, talking about the fire and telling him to come quickly. He also confirmed that the boy said that the fire was occurring at night despite the fact that it was late afternoon. He also stated that the actual fire occurred the next day while his son was fast asleep in bed.
This case is of interest in view of the large number of corroborating witnesses. As noted above, however, the memories of at least some of these witnesses appear to have become somewhat distorted over time.
The boy’s father stated that he had heard that the fire had been investigated as a possible arson. Thus, there is the possibility that the boy had subconsciously picked up cues from the arsonists’ activities, which were then manifested as a vision. Such possibilities aside, this case is suggestive of a precognitive hallucination. This is somewhat unusual in that most ostensible psi experiences taking place in the waking state involve contemporaneous events, whereas dreams are much more likely to be precognitive.
The following is an apparent case of hallucinatory ESP taken from the early investigations of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), an organization of prominent scientists and scholars founded in England in 1882 to study such anomalous events and which is still in existence today:
On Thursday evening, 14th November, 1867, I was sitting in the Birmingham Town Hall with my husband at a concert, when there came over me the icy chill which usually accompanies these occurrences. Almost immediately, I saw with perfect distinctness, between myself and the orchestra, my uncle, Mr. W., lying in bed with an appealing look on his face, like one dying. I had not heard of him for several months, and had no reason to think he was ill. The appearance was not transparent or filmy, but perfectly solid-looking; and yet I could somehow see the orchestra, not through, but behind it. I did not try turning my eyes to see whether the figure moved with them, but looked at it with a fascinated expression that made my husband ask if I was ill. I asked him not to speak with me for a minute or two; the vision gradually disappeared, and I told my husband, after the concert was over, what I had seen. A letter came shortly after telling of my uncle’s death. He died at exactly the time when I saw the vision (Gurney, Myers & Podmore, 1886a, p. 194).
Another case involving a visual hallucination was provided to the Society by a Mrs. Bettany:
I was walking along in a country lane at A, the place where my parents then resided. I was reading geometry as I walked along … when in a moment I saw a bedroom known as the White Room in my home, and upon the floor lay my mother, to all appearance dead. The vision must have remained some minutes, during which time my real surroundings appeared to pale and die out; but as the vision faded, actual surroundings came back, at first dimly, and then clearly. I could not doubt that what I had seen was real, so instead of going home, I went at once to the house of our medical man and found him at home. He at once set out with me for my home, on the way putting questions I could not answer, as my mother was to all appearance well when I left home. I led the doctor straight to the White Room, where we found my mother actually lying as in my vision. This was true even to minute details. She had been seized suddenly by an attack of the heart, and would soon have breathed her last but for the doctor’s timely advent. I shall get my mother and father to read and sign this. (Gurney, Myers & Podmore, 1886a, p. 194.)
In response to questioning, Mrs. Bettany stated that she was not feeling anxious about her mother at the time of her death. She also noted that she had found a handkerchief with a lace border beside her mother on the floor, a detail which corresponded to her vision. Her father, upon being interviewed, corroborated his daughter’s statement and added that, so far as he was able to tell, his wife was taken ill after his daughter had left the house. Of course, in this case a determined skeptic could argue that the daughter might have subconsciously noticed subtle signs of cardiopulmonary distress before the full-blown heart attack occurred. Such a phenomenon is known as “sensory cueing” and will be discussed in more detail below.
As noted above, hallucinatory experiences frequently involve senses other than vision. However, vision is the most frequent modality among seemingly psi-induced hallucinations, whereas the hallucinations of psychotics most frequently involve the auditory modality. A typical auditory hallucination suggestive of the operation of psi might consist of hearing your mother’s voice calling you at the exact time that she is experiencing some sort of physical crisis at a distant location. Smell, kinesthesia (muscle sense), pain and other sensory modalities may also be involved. The Finnish folklorist Leea Virtanen (1990) notes that cases involving the parallel experiencing of physical symptoms of disease and injury are quite common and most often occur between parent and child. The following is such a case taken from the early investigations of the SPR:
I woke up with a start, feeling I had had a hard blow on my mouth, and with a distinct sense that I had been cut and was bleeding under my upper lip, and seized my pocket-handkerchief and held it (in a little pushed lump) to the part, as I sat up in bed, and after a few seconds, when I removed it, I was astonished to not to see any blood, and only realized it was impossible anything could have struck me there, as I lay fast asleep in my bed, and so I thought it was only a dream! - but I looked at my watch, and saw it was seven, and finding Arthur (my husband) was not in the room, I concluded (rightly) that he must have gone out on the lake for any early sail, as it was so fine.
I then fell asleep. At breakfast (half-past nine) Arthur came in rather late, and I noticed he rather purposely sat further away from me than usual, and every now and then put his pocket handkerchief furtively up to his lip, in the very way I had done. I said “Arthur, why are you doing that?” and added a little anxiously “I know you have hurt yourself! But I will tell you why afterwards.” He said, “Well, when I was sailing, a sudden squall came, throwing the tiller suddenly around, and it struck me a bad blow in the mouth, under the upper lip, and it has been bleeding a good deal and won’t stop.” I then said, “Have you any idea what o’clock it was when it happened?” and he answered, “It must have been about seven.”
I then told what happened to me, much to his surprise, and all who were here at breakfast.
I happened here about three years ago at Brantwood to me. (Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886a, pp. 187-189.)
This woman’s story was corroborated in a statement made by her husband.
A very similar case was provided to me by one of my students. According to the student, his father was suddenly knocked off the bench he was sitting on by an invisible blow to the jaw. A few minutes later, he received a call from the health club where his wife was working out informing him that his wife had just broken her jaw on a piece of gymnastic equipment. One skeptical explanation of psi experiences is that they are the product of coincidence. For instance, women may frequently dream of their husbands’ deaths, so one would expect that some of these dreams may occur at or shortly before the husband’s death. In the case of my student’s father, such an explanation is much less plausible, as the baseline probability of the event is virtually zero. It would be absurd to argue that men are frequently knocked off benches by invisible blows and that some of these blows are likely to coincidence with an injury to a family member by chance.
Intuitive Experiences
The second major category of experiences that are suggestive of the operation of ESP is that of intuitive experiences. Intuitive experiences typically occur in the waking state and most often involve a feeling that something is wrong at a distant location that is later corroborated. The following intuitive experience is taken from Stevenson (1970b).
Around the middle of June, 1964, Linda and I decided to visit the Travis’ [sic] to congratulate them on their new child. After supper we put the children to bed and we asked Linda’s grandmother to babysit for a while.
We arrived there and Paul Travis fixed our drinks. As he was showing me the blueprints of his new house I stopped and had a feeling as if something bad had happened at home, the nature of which I was not aware.
I asked Linda to call home. She said: “I will in a few minutes.” I said: “You’d better call now. Something is wrong.”
Linda went into the bedroom where the phone was and I followed and my feelings were then of distress. Our…neighbor answered the phone. Both children were screaming in the background. She informed us that Linda’s grandmother had hurt her back just a few minutes earlier and [that] the children were so frightened…
We arrived home and the neighbor met us at the door, saying that Linda’s grandmother had called upon her after she hurt her back.
Scott, my son, was frantic and refused to go to Linda and clutched me for comfort.
What is surprising about this incident is the sudden feeling of distress and my insistence on Linda to call home and my premonition that something bad [had] happened. (Stevenson, 1970b, pp. 49-50.)
This statement was corroborated by the informant’s wife, who added that the informant had never previously displayed strong anxiety about something being wrong at home and had never previously asked her to telephone a babysitter while they were away.
Dreams
The third major mode of psi experience is that of dreams. In her classification system, Louisa Rhine divided such cases into those involving realistic dreams, which correspond closely in detail to the confirming event, and unrealistic dreams, which she defined as containing “a bit of imagination, fantasy and even symbolism” (Rhine, 1977, p.71). As an example of symbolism, she offered the case of a woman who dreamed of heavy black smoke prior to tragic events. Virtanen (1990) in her study of spontaneous psi experiences used a category that she called “symbolic dreams,” which is analogous to Louisa Rhine’s unrealistic dream category. As examples of symbolic dreams depicting death, Virtanen cites dreams of a person going on a journey, ascending to heaven, departing toward black trees, swimming in black ice, and well as the snuffing out of a candle and a black butterfly flying by. About one-third of Virtanen’s dream experiences fell into this category.
The following account, taken from Louisa Rhine’s collection, is an example of a realistic dream. It was provided to Rhine by the district manager of a sheet and tin plate company. The experience occurred shortly before he and several business associates were to return home from a two-week vacation in the wilderness, where they had been cut off from all news sources.
The night before they were to return home, the district manager had a dream, so clear, so vivid, he could not sleep afterward. In it, he writes, “one of our locomotive cranes that was unloading a car of scrap iron, together with the car, was on the track near the bank of a river alongside the water tower which served the locomotives. For some unaccountable reason, as the huge magnet swung around with a heavy load of scrap, it suddenly toppled over the river bank. The operator, whom I called by name, jumped clear of the crane and landed below it as it came bounding, tumbling and bouncing down the river bank, and he finally disappeared from view as the crane came to rest twenty feet below at the water’s edge. I particularly noted the number of the crane and the number and positions of the railroad cars, and was able to tell how the crane operator was dressed. Furthermore, I noticed the approximate damage done to the crane. I did not know, however, what had finally happened to the operator. He had disappeared under or behind the crane after it had come to rest. In other words, I was observing the accident from somewhere in or across the river.
“Upon my return to the mill the following day, the first man I met was the master mechanic. He told me to come with him to inspect the crane of my dream, to talk with the operator who had emerged from the accident without a scratch. The operator explained his lack of injury by the fact that the crane had fallen over in front of him as he made his last jump and as it made its last bounce. The record showed the smallest detail to be as I had dreamed it, with one exception. The exception was that the accident had happened two hours after the dream” (Rhine, 1961, pp. 43-44).
Among Rhine’s examples of symbolic dreams is a case in which a woman had a series of dreams in each of which the symbol of an avenue of trees seemed to be used to dramatize an impending death (Rhine, 1961, pp. 49-50). The first such dream occurred when the woman was a 12-year-old girl. She had fallen asleep in a swing in the yard of her house and dreamed that she had seen her mother walking down a beautiful avenue of trees. She ran after her, realized that she was not going to be able to catch up to her and then called out to her. She turned, put up her hand and said, “Go back my daughter, your father needs you.”
When she woke up, she immediately went into the house. Her father greeted her, embraced her and informed her that her mother had just died.
About 12 years after the first dream, the second dream occurred. Her brother was ill in a hospital in another state. She was herself ill and could not be with him. The night he died, she dreamed that he too was walking down the same avenue of trees. She tried to catch up to him but he told her to go back. (As we will see later, these dreams bear some resemblance to near-death experiences, in which the experiencing parties are told that it is not yet time for them to die and that they must return to life.) As it turned out, her brother died at the approximate time of the dream.
In the third dream, she saw her husband quickly walking down the same avenue of trees. He too put up his hand and said, “Our precious children need you—go back.” The dream frightened her and she put her arms around her husband awakening him. He announced that he was feeling very sick, and he died a few minutes later.
Of course, the astute skeptic might note that in each of the above dreams, the woman might have had some reason to expect that the person’s death was imminent. In the last case, she may have subliminally heard sounds of her husband’s physical distress as she slept. Such objections would be more difficult to raise in the case of the fourth dream, in which the woman dreamed that her daughter and her girlfriend, who had gone to a dance, were involved in a fatal accident in front of her home. The same avenue of trees came into play in the dream. Needless to say, the woman was quite relieved when the girls returned safely home from the dance around 1:00 A.M. The very next night, her daughters had a dance in their house. The girlfriend of her daughter that had appeared in the dream was in fact killed within a block of her house as she was on her way home. The woman noted that the accident was “just as I had dreamed it.”
It is of course possible that the woman had observed that the girlfriend was a reckless driver; Rhine’s account provides us with no information on this point.
The psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz provides the following case, which incorporates both realistic and symbolic elements.
Bartholomew A. Ruggieri, M.D., my friend and hardworking neighbor pediatrician, wrote this memo: “On the afternoon of Sunday, June 2, 1968, I went up to my room to nap. I slept fitfully, from about 2:30 P.M. to 5–5:30 P.M. During this time I dreamed that I was at an upper story window facing Avenue B and Sixth Street in New York City, and saw a ‘parade’ of mourners approaching as pictured [diagram drawn by Dr. R]. It was more a mass of mourners than a parade. They carried a banner with a religious connotation and ending with the words: ‘…KENNEDY ASSASSINATION.’ I know the area very well, having lived my youth there, but to my knowledge I have never lived on Avenue B. I awoke, vividly recalling all the words on the banner, felt I should get up and write them down, but did not do so. I lay in bed and, after a period of drowsiness, again fell asleep. Somehow in my mind I associated this to the imminent assassination of Robert Kennedy (Bobby). The Avenue B would support this. The same evening (6/2/68) sitting at my desk at 9:30 P.M., I phoned Dr. B. E. Schwarz, described the dream, and said I felt Bobby Kennedy would be assassinated on the 6th of June. Note ‘Sixth’ Street: June is the sixth month” (Schwarz, 1980, pp. 247-248).
While it is true that Robert Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968, he died on the sixth. Dr. Schwarz told his wife of Dr. Ruggieri’s dream on the evening of June 2, 1968.
Virtanen (1990) provides a few examples of a novel form of dream telepathy, in which the confirming event is the dream of a second person. She calls such cases “shared dreams.” As one example of a shared dream, she cites a case in which a man was awakened by a dream in which he hit his son on the head with a stick. The son woke up crying and said, “Father hit me on the head with a stick” (p. 99).
Van de Castle (1994) has also related several examples of shared dreams. A few involved some of his own dreams during a night when he was serving as the “sender” in one of the experiments on telepathic dreaming conducted at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn New York. One of Van de Castle’s dreams involved a barking dog. The “receiver” in the experiment also had a dream with a dog in it. In another of Van de Castle’s dreams, his wife took a car trip and encountered a man with whom she talked about music. The “receiver” in the experiment dreamed that she was on a car trip with other people and was later talking with one of the same people involved in the car trip of Van de Castle’s dream. Van de Castle cites work by Rechtschaffen (1970) indicating an unusual degree of correspondence between the dreams of subjects sleeping at the same time in a sleep laboratory. In one case, a subject dreamed about singing in Russian, while another subject dreamed about students doing some kind of interpretive singing. In a second instance, the first subject dreamed about taking a violin lesson while the second was dreaming about learning a guitar melody. In a third instance, both subjects dreamed about watching gangster movies. A skeptic might conjecture that, if the subjects in the sleep lab were friends, it is possible that similar interests (e.g., in music or violent movies) and experiences may result in similar themes appearing in the dreams.
One case cited by Van de Castle, taken from Green (1968), involved lucid dreams (dreams in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming). In this case, both a mother and her son experienced lucid dreams on the same night. The mother felt that she had contacted her son and had spoken a sentence to him in her dream, which the son repeated back to her when they met for lunch the following day.
Psi-mediated Instrumental Response
Stanford (1974, 1990a) has pointed to one possible type of psi experience that may be missed in Louisa Rhine’s classification scheme. This category encompasses cases in which a person takes an action that is appropriate to a situation when the person has no normally acquired knowledge (or any conscious paranormally-acquired knowledge) that the situation even exists. Presumably, in such cases the person is acting on the basis of information provided by ESP at an unconscious level. Stanford uses the term “psi-mediated instrumental response,” or PMIR, to describe such events. As an example, he cites the case of a retired New York attorney who was traveling to Greenwich Village to drop in on two artist friends. He had to change subway trains, and upon leaving the first train, he claimed that he “absent-mindedly” walked out through the gate and was halfway up the stairs to the street before he realized that he had intended to switch trains. Not wishing to pay another fare, he decided to walk the additional six blocks south. He then ran into his friends, who had left their home and were walking north along the same route on their way to an appointment.
One reason why examples of PMIR may be relatively rare in collections of spontaneous cases may be that the people involved in such cases do not typically have any awareness of possessing paranormally-acquired knowledge and are consequently likely to attribute their experiences to luck or coincidence rather than to the operation of ESP or PK (psychokinesis). Stanford suggests that cases of PMIR may be occurring frequently without the people involved being aware that anything unusual is going on.
Physical Effects
Louisa Rhine’s second major category of paranormal experiences involves puzzling physical effects, such as the stopping of a clock at the time of the owner’s death or a person’s portrait falling off a wall at or near the time of the person’s death. One of her cases involved a man in Wisconsin who died in an easy chair in his living room. The watch in his vest pocket and the large clock in the living were both found to have stopped, each at the approximate time of the man’s death (Rhine, 1961, p. 243).
Sometimes the timepieces involved are at a considerable distance from the dying person, as in the following case:
A woman in New Hampshire reported that when she was a girl of about 12 she came home from school one day and her mother told her about a queer occurrence.
Her mother said she was sitting knitting in the kitchen about 2 o’clock that afternoon when the clock stopped for no apparent reason. It was not run down for it soon started running again and kept going until evening, the time that it usually was wound.
Three days later a cable came from overseas saying that her mother’s sister had died. It was the day and hour the clock stopped. (Rhine, 1981, p. 196).
Not all of Rhine’s clock cases involved the stopping of timepieces. Occasionally, timepieces were reported to have behaved aberrantly at the time of a death. One woman gave an account of a case in which a clock that normally chimed only on the hour chimed once at 7:20 P.M., surprising the woman and her parents. Five minutes later, they received a phone call informing them that their mother’s sister had died of a heart attack at 7:20. This was the only occasion on which the clock chimed at a time other than on the hour (Rhine,1961, p. 244).
Ian Wilson describes a similar case involving the late Pope Paul VI. At the time of the Pope’s death (9:40 P.M. on August 6, 1978), his bedroom alarm clock, which had always been set to 6:30 A.M., inexplicably rang (Wilson, 1987, p. 183). However, Mary Roach (2005), in a detailed investigation of several famous cases suggestive of survival after death, interviewed several witnesses in connection with this case. In the course of those interviews, Archbishop Pasquale Macchi, one the pope’s associates, stated that on the morning of the Pope’s death, he had rewound the pope’s clock, as it was stopped, and likely inadvertently set the alarm time to correspond with the pope’s death. Of course, even if this explains the anomalous ringing of the alarm, the fact that it was accidentally set to the moment of the pope’s death could be another instance of Stanford’s PMIR.
Objects are occasionally reported to fall or break at the time of a significant crisis to a person associated with the object, as in the following case from Louisa Rhine’s collection:
A woman in Nevada tells of an experience which centered on her elder brother Frank. He was an especially thoughtful boy who did many things to please his mother, to whom he was very close. She says: “One day he came home with a beautiful cut-glass dish. Mom thought it was just about the most wonderful thing that ever happened to her and put it on our sideboard.
“When the rest of us had chicken pox, my brother Frank was sent down to my grandmother’s in Grand Haven, Michigan, which was about forty miles from where we lived, although Mother was reluctant to have him go. Two days after Frank left, Mom and our neighbor were having their morning coffee and talking, and we children were told to be quiet. All of a sudden, this cut-glass dish that Frank had given Mother popped and broke right in two. It was just sitting on the sideboard. Mother screamed and said, ‘My God! Frank has just been killed.’ Everyone tried to quiet Mother, but she said she just knew.
“About an hour after, or a little more, we received a telegram from Grandpa which said to come right away, something had happened to Frank. Mom said, ‘I know.’ She cried all the way going to Grand Haven, and Grandpa met us at the train. Before Grandpa could tell us what happened, Mom cried, ‘At what funeral parlor is he?’ Grandpa just stood there with his mouth open and Mom ran right up the street and went to the place Frank was without being told. They wouldn’t let her see him because a terrible thing had happened.
“The boy next door to Grandfather was home from school and his parents were not at home, so he started playing with his father’s shotgun, and came outside, showing it to Frank. The boy, not knowing it was loaded, pulled the trigger and killed my brother. The strange thing—Frank was shot at the same time the dish broke.” (Rhine, 1961, pp. 245-246).
Cases involving physical effects are relatively rare. Rhine (1963) noted that her case collection at that point contained only 178 physical effect cases, in comparison to over 10,000 ESP cases. Of those 178 cases, 65 involved falling objects, 49 involved the stopping or erratic movement of timepieces, 21 involved breaking or exploding objects, 17 involved lights turning on and off by themselves, 14 involved the sudden opening or closing of doors and 12 involved rocking and moving objects (half of which were rocking chairs). In 37 of the 49 clock cases, the clocks stopped at the time of death of a person associated with the clock. In 18 of the 65 cases involving falling objects, the object in question was a picture or portrait of a person undergoing a crisis, such as a serious accident or death, at the time of the object’s movement. Thirteen other such objects bore a special relationship to a person undergoing a crisis at the time of the event.
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether a physical effect or an hallucination is involved. For instance, perceived raps or voices could simply be auditory hallucinations. On the other hand, they might be caused by real physical sound waves. One way to decide which is the case would be to see if such sounds can be collectively perceived (that is, can be heard by more than one person). In an attempt to resolve this issue, Louisa Rhine (1981) examined instances in which more than one person was present when the sound was heard. In 68 such cases involving vocal sounds, the sounds were heard by a second person only 28 percent of the time, whereas mechanical sounds, such as raps, were collectively perceived in 93 percent of the 63 cases involved. In her study of Finnish cases, Virtanen (1990) also found voice sounds to be collectively perceived less frequently than “noisy” sounds such as bumps, thuds and rattles, as did Rinaldi and Piccinni (1982) in their door-to-door survey of cases in the South Tyrol section of Italy. Taken together, these data suggest that cases involving mechanical or “noisy” sounds involve real physical effects more often than do cases involving vocal sounds (which are more likely to be hallucinations).
A similar controversy surrounds cases in which someone experiences the apparition of a person near the time that the person was dying or experiencing a serious crisis at a location distant from the observer. In a case unearthed by the early investigators of the Society for Psychical Research, a man who was staying in Paris, and was consequently separated from his five-year-old son in London, was awakened by the sound of his son’s voice at 7:30 A.M. He then saw a bright, opaque white mass before his eyes, and in the center of the light he saw the smiling face of his son. He later learned that his son had died at the exact time of the apparition (Gurney, Myers & Podmore, 1886a, p. 144).
In this case the child’s apparition could be interpreted as a telepathically induced hallucination or some sort of ghost existing in physical space. If several observers are present when an apparition appears and only one of them sees it, it would seem reasonable to assume that the apparition was an hallucination. On the other hand, if several of the witnesses simultaneously see the apparition, it would seem more reasonable to assume that some sort of physical ghost had put in an appearance. To see which was the case, G. N. M. Tyrrell (1953), a prominent authority on ghosts and apparitions, looked at 1,087 apparitional cases collected by the researchers of the Society for Psychical Research (Sidgwick et al.,1894). He found that in 283 of those cases more than one person was present at the time the apparition was seen. In 95 of these 283 cases, more than one person saw the apparition. In a later study, Hornell Hart (1956) found 46 cases in the literature satisfying the more restrictive criterion that the secondary witnesses present were clearly situated in such a manner that they would have been able to see the apparition had it been a physical object. In 26 of those cases, the apparition was seen by at least two observers. In a more recent survey of apparitional experiences conducted through the mail, the Icelandic parapsychologist Erlendur Haraldsson (1991) found that a second potential observer was present in about half of the apparitional encounters reported. In about one-fourth of these cases, the respondent stated that the apparitional experience was shared by such secondary observers. Thus, it is difficult to tell on the basis of collective perception whether such experiences involve mere hallucinations or physical ghosts.
The physical ghost theory was favored by the early psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers (1903), who called his ghosts “metetherial presences.” Myers’ contemporary Edmund Gurney believed that cases in which apparitions were sighted by more than one person could be explained by assuming that hallucinations could spread telepathically from one mind to another (Gurney, Myers & Podmore, 1886a, 1886b). Myers argued against Gurney’s theory that hallucinations can spread telepathically on the basis of the fact that the hallucinations of the insane are not in general particularly contagious. Other theorists, including Tyrrell and the philosopher H. H. Price (Tyrrell, 1953; Price 1939, 1940, 1948, 1953, 1959, 1961), speculated that witnesses to apparitional cases share a deep region of the unconscious mind that may be termed the “collective unconscious” and that it is in this deep region of the mind that the apparitional image is constructed (which then emerges from the collective unconscious into the individual consciousness of the witnesses). Finally, the American parapsychologist Karlis Osis (1981) suggested that we call it a draw and assume that some apparitions are ghosts and others are hallucinations.
Research Findings Relating to Spontaneous Cases
Incidence Rates
A large number of surveys have been conducted in an attempt to determine how many people have had experiences suggestive of ESP or PK. The results of these surveys, taken together, suggest that somewhere between one-third and one-half of the population claims to have had some sort of psi experience, and that this proportion seems to be fairly independent of culture and nationality.
Dreams appear to be the most common type of ESP experience, with intuitive experiences being the next most common and hallucinatory experiences the least common form. For instance, in one statistical analysis of her own collection reported by Louisa Rhine (1962a), 65 percent of the experiences were dreams, roughly a quarter were intuitive experiences and the remaining 10 percent were of the hallucinatory variety. One finding that is fairly consistent across case studies is that dreams tend to be precognitive (that is to involve the apparent paranormal perception of future events), whereas waking experiences (including intuitive and hallucinatory cases) seem more often to refer to contemporaneous events (Rhine, 1981; Schouten ,1982).
In terms of incidence rates in the general population, in a survey involving interviews with 1100 German citizens, Schmeid-Knittel and Schetsche (2005) found that 49.5% of the survey participants reported having experienced the sensation of déjà vu (discussed in more detail later in the chapter), 36.7% reported having dreams involving ESP, 18.7% reported experiencing crisis-related ESP, 15.8% reported apparitional experiences, 15.3% reported experiences involving ostensible psi on the part of animals, and 12.1% reported having experienced phenomena suggestive of hauntings.
Dream experiences usually contain more detail and more complete information about the event than do intuitive experiences, whereas intuitive experiences tend to produce a greater sense of conviction that the experience refers to a real event and is more likely to lead the percipient to take some sort of action related to the event (see Schouten, 1979, 1981, 1982; and Rhine, 1978, 1981).
A great many more women report having ESP experiences than do men. Whether this is due to enhanced sensitivity or psychic powers on the part of women or is due to a lesser reluctance on the part of women to report such experiences is not clear. As might be expected, spontaneous cases typically involve the anomalous knowledge of events happening to members of the percipient’s immediate family rather than events happening to strangers or casual acquaintances. In general, the events that are perceived through ESP are negative ones involving death or serious injury to a close family member. Hardly ever does the experience relate to damage to material objects rather than to people (see Schouten, 1979, 1981, 1982).
Link to Geomagnetic Activity
Several researchers have reported links between the activity of the Earth’s magnetic field and the incidence rate of spontaneous psi cases. Foremost among these investigators is the Canadian psychologist Michael Persinger, who has authored a series of papers on the subject (Persinger, 1985, 1986, 1987; 1988; Persinger & Krippner 1987, 1989; Persinger & Schaut, 1987). In analyzing several case collections, Persinger has found global geomagnetic activity typically to be lower on the days of reported ESP experiences than on the days surrounding the day of the experience. This finding applies chiefly to cases in which the alleged psychic experience was nearly simultaneous with the confirming event. It does not hold in cases of apparent precognition nor does it hold for apparitional experiences that occur some days after the perceived person’s death.
Persinger proposes two theories to account for apparent cases of spontaneous ESP (Persinger, 1988; and Persinger & Krippner, 1989). The first theory involves a direct signal transmitting information between the two parties involved in an apparent case of telepathy. In the second theory, it is assumed that some external factor causes the two people to have similar experiences. For instance, it might be possible that low barometric pressure could cause the “percipient” in an apparent case of spontaneous telepathy to be in a gloomy mood and also to cause one of the percipient’s closest friends, who is a chronic depressive, to commit suicide by driving her car off a cliff. The percipient might then interpret his apparent gloom as being due to a paranormal awareness of his friend’s death. Persinger’s second theory is thus a theory of pseudo–ESP phenomena rather than of true ESP in that it denies the existence of an anomalous channel of information transmission. It is obviously conceivable that geomagnetic activity may have similar effects on the mood or behavior of two related persons and thus may generate a case of pseudotelepathy as suggested by Persinger’s second theory.
With regard to the first theory, Persinger conjectures that geomagnetic activity may enhance the receptivity of the brain to extrasensory signals, noting in particular that sudden decreases in geomagnetic activity may decrease the likelihood of certain types of electrical seizures in the brain. Persinger contends that increases in geomagnetic activity tend to lower seizure thresholds and may even precipitate convulsions in epileptics. Some scientists (e.g., Radin, McAlpine & Cunningham, 1994; and Adair, 1991) have, however, expressed skepticism that changes in the geomagnetic field would have sufficient strength to produce any physiological effects on the human body at all.
As a second possibility, Persinger suggests that lowered geomagnetic activity might enhance the signal carrying the ESP message, which he has speculated may consist in part of extremely low frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Psychological Processes
Many parapsychologists have proposed that extrasensory perception is a two-stage process from a psychological point of view. Both G. N. M. Tyrrell (1946) and Louisa Rhine (1978, 1981) proposed that the information obtained through ESP is first received at an unconscious level of the mind and then emerges into consciousness in the form of an hallucination, dream or intuitive feeling that something is wrong. Rhine suggested that emotional reactions, impulses toward action, and feelings of conviction about the reality of the sensed situation may emerge into consciousness independently of the factual information relating to the sensed event, especially in intuitive cases. K. Ramakrishna Rao, J. B. Rhine’s successor as Director of the Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, North Carolina, observed that minor details may have more difficulty penetrating the barrier between the unconscious and conscious regions of the mind than more emotionally important elements might have. He indicates that this may be a reason for the failure of many experiments in the laboratory that require subjects to guess the identity of emotionally trivial targets such as ESP cards (Rao, 1986). His views in this regard are similar to those of the psychoanalyst Jan Ehrenwald (1977, 1978), who postulated that the weakness of ESP effects in the laboratory may be due to the fact that the ESP message is typically much less relevant to the needs of the subject in laboratory experiments than it is in spontaneously occurring cases of extrasensory perception. Thus, Ehrenwald suggested, laboratory cases of extrasensory perception depend for their success on flaws in the “filter” that the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1914) proposed existed to screen out noncrucial information so that the conscious mind could focus on immediate problems relevant to the biological survival of the body.
Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, proposed a model of telepathy similar to Tyrrell’s and Rhine’s. Freud had a lifelong interest in parapsychology, or psychical research as it was called at the time. He was a member of both the American and British Societies for Psychical Research, and in 1921 he went so far as to write the American psychical researcher Hereward Carrington that, if he were at the stage of embarking on a career rather than ending one, he would perhaps choose psychical research! The psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey (1992) reports that Freud even claimed to have had telepathic contact with his fiancée Martha Bernays. Many of his thoughts on telepathy were, however, suppressed from publication during his lifetime under the influence of his disciple Ernest Jones for fear of undermining the credibility of the psychoanalytic movement.
Freud assumed that, if telepathy existed, the same dynamic processes would govern the emergence of psi information into consciousness as governed the emergence of other unconscious material. As an example, Freud (1963) reported the case of a man who dreamed that his wife gave birth to twins at the same time that his daughter gave birth to twins in real life. Predictably enough, Freud attributed the distortion of the telepathic message to the man’s unconscious wish that his daughter be his wife.
The Australian psychologist Harvey J. Irwin likewise feels that repression may prevent ESP messages from emerging into consciousness. As a possible example of such suppression, he cites a case of Louisa Rhine’s in which a woman began to sob uncontrollably for 20 minutes before a huge decorative vase fell off its shelf. Later she learned that her father had died about that time. Presumably, as her conscious mind blocked out the ESP signal, her unconscious mind was forced to move the vase psychokinetically in order to dramatize the message and get it through to consciousness (Irwin, 1989).
Skeptical Explanations of Spontaneous Cases
Critics of spontaneous case investigations are quick to point out that there are many explanations besides ESP and psychokinesis that might account for apparent cases of paranormal phenomena. First, the cases may be due to coincidence. For instance, consider a case in which a man is overcome by a sense of impending doom, breaks out in a cold sweat and refuses to board an airplane, and then later learns that the plane crashed upon landing at its destination. It might be quite plausible to assume that many people back out of imminent airplane flights because of sudden feelings of nervousness and anxiety. Occasionally, the planes involved in some of these flights may crash, thus producing what looks like a spontaneous case of intuitive ESP when really all that is involved is simple coincidence. Similarly, people may frequently dream of the death of one of their parents. When such a dream happens by chance to fall on the night preceding the parent’s actual death, another spurious precognition case is generated.
Richard Broughton (1991), a former Director of the Rhine Research Center in Durham, has noted that explanations in terms of coincidence are not particularly plausible when applied to experiences involving hallucinations or psychosomatic pain. For instance, recall the case of my student’s father who was knocked off a bench by an “invisible blow to the jaw” at the time that his wife broke her jaw on a piece of gymnastic equipment. Surely, it would be absurd to argue with regard to such a case that men are constantly being knocked off benches by invisible blows to the jaw and that sooner or later one of these events is bound to occur simultaneously with the breaking of the jaw of a member of the man’s immediate family.
Despite the implausibility of coincidence explanations in hallucination cases, the early investigators of the Society for Psychical Research attempted to perform a statistical analysis to rule out the coincidence hypothesis in the case of crisis apparitions. They conducted what they called a “Census of Hallucinations” in order to find out how often people experienced apparitions of human figures. (Sidgwick et al., 1894). They found that, of the apparitions reported to them, one in 63 occurred within 12 hours of the death of the person whose apparition was experienced. Based on existing death rates, the investigating committee concluded that only 1 in 19,000 such hallucinations would occur so close to the death of the appearing figure by chance. One could certainly quibble with this analysis. For instance, it could readily be imagined that cases in which a person’s apparition was experienced in close proximity to the time of his death would make a deep impression on a person and might therefore be more easily remembered than other hallucinations of human figures, thus artificially inflating the proportion in the sample.
A second, more informal statistical argument is provided by the Italian investigators Rinaldi and Piccinini (1982), who conducted a door-to-door survey related to psychic experiences in the South Tyrol region of Italy. By interviewing informants about deaths in the family, they found that one in twelve deaths were accompanied by a paranormal experience related to the death. When only sudden deaths were considered, one in six deaths were the target event in a reported psi experience. It strains one’s credulity, they argue, to assume that such a high proportion can be accounted for by chance coincidence.
A special form of the coincidence explanation is what the Dutch parapsychologist Sybo Schouten calls the “worry” hypothesis. Schouten (1979, 1984) observes that the large number of psychic experiences that involve death or injury to members of the percipient’s immediate family might be due to a combination of coincidence and the tendency of persons to think and worry about close family members. In a survey aimed at examining this hypothesis, Schouten found people’s predominant worries to be about daily matters, material things, their present psychological situation and events happening to themselves rather than the traumatic events to others that are frequently the subject matter in spontaneous cases of ESP.
In general, any attempt to assess the actual probability that the evidence from spontaneous cases is due to chance coincidence, whether performed by the proponent of psi phenomena or the skeptic, is fraught with pitfalls. Such calculations rely on too many debatable and hidden assumptions, and the data are subject to too many distorting factors to allow any definitive assessment to be made. This is one of the reasons why parapsychologists have largely turned from the study of spontaneous cases to the study of psi processes in experimental situations, in which the probability that the results are due to chance can be more or less precisely calculated.
A second problem pointed out by critics of spontaneous case investigations is that what appears to be anomalously acquired knowledge may in fact represent information that has been consciously or unconsciously acquired through the normal sensory channels or may be based on unconscious inference from such information. For instance, a woman’s husband may be exhibiting a depressed mood, increasingly reckless driving, and a decidedly morbid interest in automobile accidents on the evening news while polishing off his final two six packs of beer. She may then unconsciously infer that he is becoming suicidal or at least dangerously alcoholic, and her unconscious mind may present this conclusion to her in the form of a dream in which her husband is involved in a fatal car accident. If her inference is accurate and her husband is subsequently killed when his car collides with a pickup truck, an apparent case of spontaneous psi, which is really due to unconscious inference, is generated. Similarly, a trapeze artist may subliminally perceive a frayed wire and consequently have an apparently premonitory dream of her partner’s fall to his death. I myself once had a dream that my wife had run out of gas in her car. About two hours after the dream, she called me up to tell me that she had run out of gas on her way to work. The gas gauge on her car was broken at the time, so it is quite possible that I had unconsciously inferred that she was about to run out of gas due to the fact that the gas tank had not been filled in quite some time.
Sometimes no direct signal may be involved in an apparent case of ESP, but rather a third factor may cause both the percipient’s mood and the target event. For instance, the parapsychologist Ed Cox, famous for his invention of innumerable Rube Goldberg–like devices for testing for psychokinesis, found that trains involved in accidents tend to carry significantly fewer passengers than comparable trains not involved in accidents (Cox, 1956). Cox interpreted this finding as evidence that people use their precognitive powers (consciously or unconsciously) to avoid being involved in accidents. Physicist John Taylor (1980) on the other hand points out that a third factor, such as bad weather, may contribute to both the passengers’ decisions not to travel and to the increased probability of an accident.
A third line of criticism of spontaneous case evidence centers around the possibility that the testimony provided by the informant may not be an accurate portrayal of the events as they occurred, due to distortions of memory, delusions, conscious or unconscious embellishment of a case to make it seem more impressive, and possibly even outright fabrication of a case in a conscious effort to perpetrate a hoax. For instance, in the fictional case considered above, the woman may merely have dreamed of a car accident, but reported that she dreamed of her husband being killed in a collision with a pickup truck because she viewed her dream as a premonition of that event and wished to communicate that fact. Alternatively, she may have consciously added the details regarding the truck to make the dream more impressive to the researcher, a form of falsification which she may take to be benign. A third possibility is that her memory of the dream and the actual event may have been confused, so that she came to believe that she saw a pickup truck in the dream when in fact she had not. This process is known as confabulation as (or, more often these days, as “false memory”).
In some instances, the testimony of independent witnesses can help bolster one’s confidence that the experience occurred as the informant described it. For instance, a percipient may have related a precognitive dream to her family before news of the confirming event was received. In such a case, the family members may be interviewed to obtain independent confirmation that the dream in fact occurred. Such independent testimony would then constitute evidence against the hypothesis that the percipient simply made up the precognitive dream after hearing of the confirming event or that she came to believe falsely that she had had such a dream through a memory distortion process. It was the practice of the early psychical researchers, who sought to prove the existence of ESP through the analysis of spontaneous cases, to obtain such independent testimony when available, and that is still the practice of a large proportion of case investigators today. As a result, there are many cases on record in which such independent testimony corroborates the existence of the ostensible psi experience.
Memory distortion can also be minimized if written descriptions of the experience are made as soon as possible. This criterion is met by dream diary studies in which the dreams were immediately recorded, such as those reported by Schriever (1987), Sondow (1988) and de Pablos (1998). The subject in Schriever’s study sent all her dream reports to a research institute, and Schriever eliminated all reports that did not reach the institute before the confirming event occurred. This method carries the advantages both of allowing corroboration by witnesses and of immediate recording of the experience.
Schouten (1981) found that the number of details in case reports and the length of such reports fell off as the time interval before reporting the case increased. He attributes this effect to the percipients’ forgetting of details over the course of time. This finding could be cited as evidence against the hypothesis that spontaneous case informants tend to “improve” their testimony or embellish their reports over time.
Recent research by Elizabeth Loftus and her colleagues has amply demonstrated that false memories may easily be implanted in people’s minds through the use of leading questions and the provision of misleading information (e.g., Loftus, 1995; Lynn, Loftus, Llienfeld & Locke, 2003). Loftus and her associates have obtained evidence in support of this view from several studies they have conducted (e.g., Hall, McFeaters & Loftus, 1987; Loftus, 1981; Loftus & Greene, 1980; and Loftus, Miller & Burns, 1978). In one such experiment, subjects were lead to believe that they had once been lost in a shopping mall as a child. In a second study, they found that subjects’ memories could be biased by questions about a stop sign when in fact a yield sign had been presented to them. In another study, subjects were misled by questions about a nonexistent mustache. Clearly, psychical researchers must be wary about altering their informants’ testimony and possibly even their memories through the use of leading questions.
A less innocent possibility is that the informant may fabricate the case. Harris (1986) notes for instance that one story, in which British troops were said to have been helped in battle by an apparition of St. George and some accompanying angels, was shown to be a falsification concocted by persons not present at the battle. In a study of reported premonitions, Hearne (1984) found that his respondents had elevated scores on the Lie-scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory, which is designed to detect dissembling subjects. Furthermore, the Lie scores correlated with the alleged accuracy of the reported premonition. Such findings provide fuel to skeptics wishing to ascribe much of the spontaneous case evidence to fabrication.
Of course some cases of reported psi phenomena are the product of delusion or even outright insanity, as in the case of a schizophrenic man who believes that his garbageman is the reincarnation of Noah and is telepathically commanding him to build a second Ark. Such cases rarely, if ever, find their way into the serious parapsychological literature.
Conclusions Regarding Spontaneous Cases
Most parapsychologists today do not feel that the existence of ESP and psychokinesis can be proven on the basis of spontaneous cases, as skeptics can always explain away such cases by ascribing them to coincidence, sensory cues, delusion, memory distortion, and outright falsification. While the construction of such skeptical explanations for any given case is frequently possible, often such constructions involve so many mental gymnastics that the brusque dismissal of spontaneous case material seems far too cavalier an approach to take. It is sometimes argued that, while each individual spontaneous case is like a twig that may be broken by counterexplanations in terms of normal processes, when taken as a whole the spontaneous case evidence constitutes an unbreakable bundle of sticks. Tyrrell (1953) termed this the “faggot” theory, using the word “faggot” in the British sense as denoting a bundle of sticks. It is true that spontaneous cases follow certain patterns (the events foreseen in precognition cases are predominantly serious health crises to close relatives, for instance) and that they do not resemble the consciously invented ghost stories that appear in the fictional literature. It could still be maintained, however, that the similarities are simply due to common patterns of human thought and behavior rather than reflecting the characteristics of an anomalous channel of information transmission.
Louisa Rhine herself initially rejected the position that the existence of psi powers (ESP and psychokinesis) could be established on the basis of spontaneous case evidence. She maintained that the existence of psi abilities had already been established through the program of experimental research led by her husband, J. B. Rhine. She saw spontaneous cases as being valuable primarily for the insights they might provide into the psi process and particularly for any suggestions they might yield for experimental work. However, Haight (1979) notes that case investigations and experimental work have become essentially separate approaches to the study of psi, with very little interaction between them. Rhine herself became less confident in her later years that spontaneous cases would have much of an impact on experimental approaches. She came to see the study of spontaneous cases, not as an enterprise subordinate to experimentation or as justified primarily in terms of its suggestions for experimental work, but as an independent means of investigating paranormal abilities that had value in its own right. In her words:
Instead of isolated and concrete suggestions for experiments, the continued study of the [spontaneous] material permitted a more fundamental concept of the psi process than I could have anticipated. (Rhine, 1970, p. 150.)
The brusque dismissal of spontaneous case material by many parapsychologists does a grave disservice to the field. Surely naturalistic observation is of inestimable value in any science. Much remains to be learned from the observation and study of psi phenomena as they occur in their natural setting.
Déjà vu and Psi-trailing
I have held off until now discussing two types of phenomena that do not fall unambiguously into the category of human ESP experiences. These are déjà vu experiences and “psi-trailing” in animals.
Déjà vu.
Déjà vu is the fairly familiar experience of having lived through a current situation before. For instance, a woman may be engaged in a conversation with two friends when a diminutive girl scout cookie salesperson appears at her door. She then gets the eerie sense that this exact sequence of events has happened to her before. Surveys (e.g., Palmer, 1979; McClenon, 1990) show that the vast majority of people have had such a déjà vu experience. In a recent review of 50 such surveys, Brown (2004) concludes that approximately two-thirds of the population have had déjà vu experiences. In their interview survey of the German population, Schmeid-Knittel and Schetsche (2005) found that 49.5% reported déjà vu experiences. Most individuals report multiple déjà vu experiences.
One explanation of the déjà vu experience would be that one has experienced a very similar situation in the past and that the resultant feeling of familiarity gives one the misleading impression that one has experienced the exact sequence of events before (as opposed to merely a similar sequence).
Efron (1963a, 1963b) proposed a neurological explanation for the sense of déjà vu. He hypothesized that one hemisphere of the brain may receive information about an event slightly before the other hemisphere does. The second hemisphere will consequently find information regarding the event stored in memory by the time it becomes aware of the event, leading to the conclusion that the event has occurred previously. However, it takes considerable time for a long-term memory trace to consolidate. For instance, if you elect to have electrical shock applied to your brain in order to treat a recalcitrant case of severe depression, you may wake up from the treatment to find that your memories for events that occurred in the hours preceding your treatment may be gone. You may even have spotty amnesia for significant events occurring days, weeks or even years before the treatment. A similar memory loss may occur following a traumatic head injury. Neuropsychologists attribute such retrograde amnesia to the disruption of the process by which long-term memories are consolidated in the brain. Thus, full consolidation of a long-term memory trace may take years; it certainly involves more than the few milliseconds proposed by Efron. At best Efron can assert that the memory trace is merely the sort of short term trace normally ascribed either to short term memory or the very short term sensory “buffers” proposed by cognitive psychologists. It would seem likely, however, that such a short-term memory trace would be recognized as referring to an immediately recent event, and would not evoke the sense of déjà vu that a long-term memory trace would.
A similar hypothesis has recently been proposed by Brown (2004), who proposes that a neurochemical event may alter the speed of neural impulses in one pathway to the higher sensory centers of the brain, leading to a false sense of recognition when the second bundle of impulses arrive. Brown notes that a similar theory had been long ago proposed by E. B. Titchener (1928), who thought that déjà vu was caused by a person getting a brief glimpse of an object or situation prior to full conscious perception, resulting in a false sense of familiarity. Brown also suggests that such experiences may be due to a match between a present situation and an old perception or fantasy.
A second type of explanation of the experience of déjà vu is that one has in fact experienced the exact situation before, mainly through a precognitive experience such as a dream that has subsequently been forgotten but is still available at a subconscious level. Louisa Rhine (1961) in fact proposed an explanation of this type.
Some writers, such as Stevenson (1987) and Fisher (1984) have even proposed that some cases of déjà vu might be explained on the basis of reincarnation. For instance, a feeling of familiarity on entering a strange city might be due to having lived in that city in a previous life. Stevenson sees most cases of déjà vu as being susceptible to other kinds of explanations, although he notes that the few instances of déjà vu on record in which a person displays knowledge of a location he has not visited before suggest an explanation in terms of some anomalous process such as precognition or reincarnation.
It is also possible that such cases might be explained in terms of cryptomnesia, or forgotten knowledge (for instance, a person may have seen a travelogue about the place in question but does not remember having seen it). In any event, instances in which a person displays detailed anomalous knowledge of a strange or unique site or situation, such as by describing what is around the next corner, go beyond the mere sense of familiarity that constitutes the experience of déjà vu and perhaps should be classed as a probable case of ESP. The experience of déjà vu itself, which involves only a strange sense of familiarity and not the anomalous possession of knowledge, is probably best not classified as a paranormal phenomenon at all (although it remains possible that such cases may involve forgotten precognitive dreams, as we have seen).
Psi-trailing
In psi-trailing cases, it is animals rather than humans who display the apparent extrasensory ability. A typical case of psi-trailing involves a pet getting lost and then apparently making its way to its owner at a distant and unfamiliar location. J. B. Rhine and his daughter, Sara Feather, compiled a collection of 48 cases of psi-trailing (Rhine & Feather, 1962). Of these cases, 22 involved dogs, 22 involved cats, and 4 involved birds.
In one case, a business executive and his family were moving from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to a new home in Memphis, when their pet cat, Smoky, jumped out of the car 18 miles into the journey. Neighbors reported seeing Smoky two weeks later in the vicinity of the old Tulsa home. A year later, Smoky reportedly arrived on the front porch of the Memphis home. The cat was identified on the basis of its physical appearance, including a distinctive tuft of dark red hair under its chin as well as unusual behavioral characteristics, such as the cat’s jumping on the daughter’s right side and putting his paws on the keyboard when she was playing the piano. In a similar case, a cat was identified on the basis of a deformity in the hip joint.
In yet another case, a dog apparently found its way from Aurora, Illinois, to its owner’s new home in East Lansing, Michigan. In this instance, the dog was identified on the basis of its physical appearance as well as its distinctive collar. Rhine and Feather point out that in many cases the identification of the pet cannot be considered definitive. Also, the majority of their cases (18 of the 22 dog cases, 10 of the 22 cat cases, and 1 of the 4 bird cases) involved fairly short distances (less than 30 miles), raising the possibility that the animal might have been guided by its sense of smell or may have used some other sensory cue to find its owner.
Poltergeists
Poltergeist phenomena will be considered separately from the spontaneous cases described above in that poltergeist outbreaks are more rarely reported than the types of spontaneous cases considered above and in that poltergeist outbreaks last over a longer period of time, typically weeks or months, but sometimes several years. A poltergeist disturbance typically involves strange physical events that occur repeatedly in a specific location or in the vicinity of a specific person or group of people.
These physical phenomena generally include inexplicable movements of objects, such as a glass spontaneously flying off a kitchen table and hitting the kitchen floor at a considerable lateral distance from the table. Sometimes quite large objects such as heavy cabinets are involved in such movements. Frequently the motion of the object is described as being unusual in terms of curved trajectories or abnormal slowness of flight. Levitation effects have also been reported. In such cases, the beginning of the object’s motion is hardly ever observed. This is sometimes called the “shyness effect,” and it has been interpreted by some observers as evidence for an inhibiting effect of observation, while for others it suggests the possibility that the motions may have been fraudulently produced. William Roll (1977a), perhaps the world’s foremost investigator of poltergeists, attributes the failure to observe the beginnings of movements to the fact that people do not typically attend to an object until after it is already moving.
Apparent materialization and teleportation effects are also reported. Occasionally, rocks are reported to materialize inside a room and drop to the floor. An apparent teleportation event might involve the sudden disappearance of an object at one physical location and its reappearance at another. Objects in poltergeist cases are usually inferred to have been teleported when they are found at an unexpected location. Again, the actual moments of disappearance and rematerialization are almost never witnessed.
Another frequently occurring poltergeist effect is the aberrant behavior of electrical apparatus. In some instances, machines such as radios, lights, and dishwashers are inexplicably turned on or off. Strange sounds, most prominently including rapping, are sometimes heard in poltergeist cases. Less frequently, apparitions or disembodied voices are perceived, although these are more commonly a feature of hauntings, as will be discussed below. Truly strange phenomena such as showers of rocks or even frogs on or toward a house, as well as the spontaneous ignition of fires, have been reported.
The term “poltergeist” literally means “noisy ghost,” and poltergeist phenomena were sometimes suspected to be caused by such entities. (Some writers still assert that spirits of the dead may be involved in some poltergeist cases, as will be discussed below.) It has been discovered that poltergeist phenomena generally tend to center around a single person or group of persons in that the phenomena only occur in their presence and in their immediate spatial vicinity. Such a person is called a focal person or, less commonly nowadays, a “poltergeist agent.” The prevailing view among those parapsychologists who believe that some poltergeist effects are truly paranormal is that the focal person or persons cause the poltergeist phenomena through the (largely unconscious) use of their psychokinetic powers. For this reason, many parapsychologists use the term “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis” or “RSPK” to describe such outbreaks. Skeptics, on the other hand, maintain that the focal person produces such effects through fraud and trickery. They also believe that some residual effects may be due to the witnesses’ misinterpretation of normal physical events.
Three Case Studies
We will now consider three poltergeists cases in some detail.
The Rosenheim Poltergeist. One famous case that centered on electrical apparatus was the Rosenheim poltergeist, investigated by the German parapsychologist Hans Bender (1968). The events in this case occurred in a lawyer’s office in the town of Rosenheim, Bavaria, in 1967. Neon lights were frequently found to be nonfunctioning and occasionally to have been unscrewed from their sockets. Electrical light bulbs exploded, bangs were heard, and electrical fuses blew for no apparent reason. The developing fluid in the copying machine was repeatedly found to have been spilled. The office telephones became disturbed, calls were cut off, and occasionally all four phones would ring simultaneously, with no one on the line. The telephone bills were inordinately high and reflected large numbers of calls to the number announcing the time of day. Large deflections in the power supply were found to coincide with some of the phenomena, and these continued even after a special power supply was installed to circumvent the problem.
The phenomena seemed to center around a 19-year-old girl named Annemarie Schneider. The power supply surges often occurred when she arrived for work. When she walked down the corridor, the electrical lights would start swinging behind her as she passed, a phenomenon that was successfully videotaped. When light bulbs exploded, the fragments tended to fly toward her. In general the phenomena tended to occur only in close proximity to her.
Two physicists from the Max Planck Institute were called in to monitor the power supply. They observed electrical surges accompanied by loud cracks, such as those produced by electrical sparks. They were able to rule out several normal causes, but were unable to explain the surges.
Paintings began to swing and rotate. These motions were also captured on videotape. Drawers came out by themselves, documents were found to have been displaced, and at one point a 175 kilogram cabinet moved 30 centimeters from the wall.
Toward the end of the manifestations, Annemarie was getting more and more nervous and began to display hysterical contractions in her arms and legs. When she was on leave from the office nothing happened, and when she departed for another job, the phenomena ceased altogether (although they started up at her new place of work!).
The Rio Tercero Poltergeist. A more recent, rock-throwing poltergeist is reported by Parra (2004). The phenomena occurred in the city of Rio Tercero in the province of Cordoba, Argentina and began on February 15, 2004 and continued through May 18, 2004 (the date when Parra’s article was written). The phenomena consisted entirely of the anomalous appearance and movement of stones. The size of the stones involved were typical of those found in the Cordobese hills as well as on the road to the family’s house. The stones increased in weight as the phenomena progressed, eventually reaching a weight of 1.3 kilograms. The stones broke several windows and blinds, including the windscreen of the family’s car.
The family initially thought that someone was throwing the stones and had the house surrounded by 16 policemen. No stone thrower was detected and several policemen observed that the stones sometimes followed “impossible trajectories.” All the family members, the sheriff and many of the neighbors attributed the events to the psychic powers of Andres, an 18-year-old boy living in the house. The stones only entered the house when Andres was present and awake. Also, no phenomena were reported during a 17-day period during which Andres was hospitalized.
At one time, Andres’ 44-year-old mother Monica was reading to her son Ezequial when a stone passed between them without hitting either of them and then came to a sudden stop on the table. In Monica’s view, the momentum of the stone should have caused it to continue to slide on the table rather than coming to a sudden stop.
At one point, the family heard a loud noise and then found a stone embedded in the television set. All windows and doors were shut at the time of this incident, and Andres was standing in the living room. Shortly later, another stone broke a large window and curtain. Another impact on the television screen occurred when Andres and the family dog were playing in the kitchen. Andres’ sister Denise felt a strange sensation, which she described as somewhat like a breeze, just prior to hearing the impact of the stone on the television set. An older sister, Veronica, reported that a stone came from behind her (Andres was visible at the time) and left a small scratch on the television set and cabinet before hitting the window violently. She described the trajectory of the stone as highly anomalous.
Andres was taken to a psychiatrist, who found that Andres frequently manifested aggression toward family members, but seldom were these aggressive impulses directed toward strangers. Parra’s own psychological testing indicated that Andres manifested emotional instability, irritability, impulsivity and feelings of inadequacy. Andres has also been diagnosed as hyperactive as well as suffering from neurological disorders involving the frontal lobes. Parra also notes that Andres suffers from photosensitive epilepsy and has been subject to convulsions since age 12 and “blank spells” since age 9. At the time of the disturbances, he was taking anticonvulsive and antiepileptic drugs and receiving neuropsychological treatments.
The Oakland Poltergeist. A poltergeist case involving a variety of phenomena was reported by Hastings (1978). The phenomena occurred in a business office in Oakland, California, and seemed to center around John, a 19-year-old typist. The reported phenomena included the malfunctioning of telephones and typewriters, the breakage of coffee cups and glasses, and the movement of heavy objects.
Many of the anomalous movements involved falling objects. Phones and a glass ashtray fell off desks, usually with no witness present to observe the motion. One 15-year-old witness claimed to have seen (out of the corner of his eye) a stapler move off the left side of a table and fall to the floor, landing about three and a half feet from the table. A fluorescent tube from a light fell, although the only one present at the time of this event was the focal person, John. A second tube fell when another witness was in the room but was distracted by a phone call. John was present on this occasion also. A large number of other objects were discovered to have fallen. In some instances, the objects were heard to fall by someone outside of the room involved. When these witnesses entered the room, no one was present. A floor plan of the office, however, reveals that most rooms had multiple exits.
Exploding coffee cups also figured prominently among the events. In one case, a witness saw a cup explode without John touching it (he was adjusting a clip-on bow tie at the time). No trace of explosives was found.
Cabinets were seen to undergo strange movements on two occasions. In one instance, a cabinet was observed to rotate 90 degrees and then to fall over. Witnesses claimed that John was six feet outside of the room at the time of the incident. In all of the above incidents, John was either present or in an adjoining room at the time of the event.
At one point a water cooler fell over. John claimed to have been in the adjoining room at the time; however, his trouser cuffs were wet, and he was later observed to be picking glass fragments from them. The police took John to the station for questioning, whereupon the phenomena ceased except for a brief resurgence on one occasion. John confessed to the police that he had used tricks to produce the effects, such as pushing over the water cooler and throwing light bulbs behind his back.
Psychological testing showed John to be under a great deal of tension. Personality testing, including the California Personality Inventory and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), revealed prankster tendencies, with the TAT indicating a large amount of projected aggression. John was also under a great deal of stress. He was a slow worker and was constantly being reprimanded by his bosses. In addition, he was newly married and making double payments on his car.
Arthur Hastings, the case’s investigator, felt that some events were unlikely to be explained by fraud and may therefore represent true psi phenomena. These events include the above-mentioned movements of the stapler and the cabinet. Furthermore, Hastings observed that the smallness of the fragments of the “exploding” coffee cups make it seem unlikely that they were broken by impact.
Actuarial Investigations
As already mentioned, one of the most prominent investigators of poltergeist cases has been William G. Roll. In a series of publications (Roll, (1977a, 1977b, 1978a, 1978b, 1982b), he has reported the results of a statistical analysis of a sample of 116 published poltergeist cases. Roll estimates that parapsychologists in the United States learn of approximately five promising poltergeist cases per year, of which two or three are investigated and about one per year reaches the professional literature in the United States. On the other hand, in Palmer’s mail survey of the greater Charlottesville, Virginia area, six percent of the student respondents and eight percent of the townspeople claimed to have experienced poltergeist phenomena, suggesting that many more cases may exist than reach the attention of professional parapsychological investigators (Palmer, 1979).
Among Roll’s findings was that in the vast majority of cases (92 percent) the phenomena appeared to focus on the same object or area, inasmuch as the same object or area of the house was repeatedly involved in the effects. The average duration of a case was about five months, although half of the cases lasted for less than two months. In 41 percent of the 105 cases that involved moving objects, the objects displayed unusual trajectories of movements, such as wavering, zigzagging and hovering. In 17 percent of the cases, the apparent teleportation of objects was reported. Such teleportation might involve an object previously inside a house suddenly appearing outside the house or the apparent passing of objects through ceilings or walls.
Some of the poltergeist cases displayed features that are more commonly associated with hauntings. Twenty-three percent of the Roll’s 116 cases involved apparitions or “hallucinations.” These visual hallucinations included human figures, animals, demons and amorphous shapes. In eleven percent of the cases, intelligible voices were heard; often these were associated with apparitions. In five cases, one or more persons were wounded or slapped by an unknown agency or displayed stigmata (spontaneously appearing wounds). In five cases people were pulled or lifted by an unseen force. In most instances the victim was the poltergeist agent (or focal person).
One recent such case with mixed features has been reported by Kokubo and Yamanoto (2003). This case occurred in an apartment complex in Tomika-cho, Gifu Prefecture, Japan in 2000. Among the phenomena reported were noisy footsteps (heard in more than half the apartments), sounds similar to the sonar signals of a submarine, the rapid death of flowers, two sightings of “ghosts,” anomalous movements of curtains and cans, a fan and a hair dryer that worked despite the absence of a power supply, the turning of a doorknob, the spontaneous opening of doors to two cupboards, the movement of a rice bowl from a cupboard, resulting in its being chipped, a television set that switched channels, a gas cooking stove that spontaneously turned on, the breakdown on several machines, the rotations of magnetic compass needles, and the malfunctioning of cameras. The phenomena were reported by a variety of tenants occupying at least twelve apartments. Notably, this case investigation did not identify a focal person.
The British researchers Alan Gauld and Tony Cornell (1979) used a statistical technique called cluster analysis to examine reported cases of recurrent anomalous events, such as those in poltergeist cases and hauntings. Their computer analysis indicated that the cases tended to fall within two primary “clusters,” meaning that the cases tended to group into two types with distinctive characteristics. Furthermore, these clusters seemed to correspond to the traditional categories of hauntings and poltergeist cases. Haunting cases were longer lasting than poltergeist cases and tended to center on a house or location rather than a person. Haunting phenomena were primarily nocturnal, as opposed to poltergeist phenomena, which are more likely to occur during the day, when the focal person is awake. (No RSPK phenomena occurred with the focal person asleep in Roll’s 116 case sample.) Hauntings are more likely to involve raps, imitative noises, voices, phantasms, luminous effects, and movements of doors and door handles. Poltergeist cases were found to be shorter in duration, especially if the focal person is quite young. Finally, poltergeist cases were more likely to involve thrown objects, displaced objects, and objects carried through the air.
Still, there are a few cases that display mixed features. George Zorab and Andrew MacKenzie (1980) report a haunting case in which the phenomena seemed to center around two focal persons. Zorab speculates that some hauntings may, like poltergeist outbreaks, center around a focal agent and suggests that haunting apparitions may represent actual physical objects that are materialized by the focal person’s psychokinetic powers. A similar theory was proposed by D. Scott Rogo (1977).
H. W. Pierce (1973) also reported a case that seemed to display features of both poltergeist and haunting cases. This case involved a split-level house. The upstairs apartment was occupied by Ellsworth Cramer, an industrial engineer, his wife Naomi, a psychiatric nurse, and their child. The downstairs flat was occupied by Peter Henry, a nuclear training engineer, and his wife Claire. All four were in their mid-twenties, and the men described themselves as cynical or skeptical about the existence of psychic phenomena.
Most of the events were witnessed by Naomi Cramer. She found her lights on repeatedly when they should have been off. At one point she heard a switch click as the living room lamp turned on. She found that the radio station had been changed when no one was in the apartment, and at one point she heard the radio come on spontaneously (it was tuned to a 24-hour broadcasting station at the time). She then saw an “oblong white cloud” for five or six nights in a row sitting in a chair in the dining room table. The cloud was about four feet tall. She was not initially disturbed by it, thinking that it was an illusion caused by light passing through the drapes, but after the third or fourth night, it “began to bother her.” She also reported hearing the cupboard doors in the downstairs apartment opening and closing when no one was supposed to be there. At one point, she went to answer the phone after disassembling a salt shaker, leaving the pieces of the shaker on the table. The pieces came flying at her, hitting the floor just behind her, traveling about nine feet laterally in the process. This scared her because she thought the manifestations were becoming hostile.
Later, she heard a thump and saw a “shadow” dart into the baby’s room. Once, when she was downstairs, she heard a lot of noise in her apartment. When she went up to her apartment, the furniture had all been moved around. She thought it unlikely that an intruder had entered, as a ladder would be required to enter the apartment without going through the front entrance.
Once, when she was rocking in her chair, it started to rock more violently, causing her to jump up so that her baby would not be harmed. Three days later, she heard “childlike laughter” while changing her baby. It seemed to come from her baby, although the baby was definitely not laughing. The sound was loud enough to wake her husband.
At one point, Naomi was in bed when she heard the dog barking. She ran into the living room, where the dog continued to bark. There was a dancing cloud in the middle of the room, from which emanated a laugh “more eerie than childlike.”
Her husband, Ellsworth Cramer, confirmed that he had heard the childlike laughter, which woke him. He also testified that he too found lights turned on and off unexpectedly and said that he saw a light in the lower hall seemingly turn itself off on one occasion. He also reported seeing a mist, which was somewhere between three and four feet high, standing at the foot of his bed and that he saw it pass right through the door.
Claire Henry testified to finding lights on in both her apartment and Naomi’s when they should have been off. She also saw a chair rocking by itself on two occasions.
Peter Henry stated that he saw a three-dimensional shadow. He believes he was the first to see such a form, but says he did not mention it to the others. He confirmed that he and his wife Claire both saw a rocking chair moving “several inches” up and down with no deceleration. He lit a match and circled the chair to test for air currents and found none. Later, he saw a rocking horse moving up and down in the closet. He deemed it too dangerous to light a match on this occasion. He also heard a child’s giggle, which he described as “musical,” and had no doubt that it was the voice of a little boy. No one focal person existed in this case, as no particular person’s presence seemed to be required in order for the phenomena to occur. Pierce speculated that the agent could be the ghost of the son of the building’s former owner. The son had manifested symptoms of childhood schizophrenia and hyperactivity. He also was reported to have displayed strong hostility and frustration in expressing his needs and was subject to nocturnal roaming. These are all features that one might associate with a living poltergeist agent, as will be discussed below.
Stevenson (1972a) has also argued that some poltergeist phenomena may be caused by deceased agents, and Irwin (1994) feels that it may be premature to adopt the theory that poltergeist cases are necessarily characterized by one living focal agent. Irwin argues that sometimes several agents may be involved and that the rejection of the discarnate (dead) agent theory is just a special case of modern parapsychologists’ antipathy toward the idea of the existence of ghosts.
The Poltergeist Agent
Focal persons were involved in 92 of the 116 poltergeist cases examined by Roll. Most of the agents (61 percent) were female, although Roll notes that this proportion has declined over time and that the sexes are nearly equally represented in recent cases. Poltergeist agents are also typically young. Half the focal persons in Roll’s sample were under thirteen years of age, and Irwin (2004) reports that 70% of poltergeist agents are under twenty years of age.
Roll found that slightly more than half of the agents suffered from some form of “debilitating ailment.” These ailments were often psychological or neurological in nature. About a quarter of the agents had disorders involving seizures or dissociative states, including muscular contractions, convulsive disorders, fits, trances and so forth. In 41 percent of the cases with focal persons, a change or problem in the home preceded the onset of the RSPK phenomena. (Such changes might include a move, illness or death.)
Roll conjectures that RSPK incidents may substitute for medical symptoms in some cases. He and his co-investigator Steven Tringale report a case with features of both typical haunting and poltergeist phenomena in which there was an inverse relation between the RSPK phenomena and migraine attacks in the focal person (Roll & Tringale, 1983). The witnesses in this case involved a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Berini, and their two children. This family experienced some rather bizarre phenomena in their house, which lasted from the time they moved in (May of 1979) until late August of 1981. The phenomena began when Mr. and Mrs. Berini heard a voice at night that seemed to belong to a young girl, who gave her name as Serena and who was crying for her mother. Mr. Berini’s father later informed him that his sister Serena had died in the house at the age of five. Three of these voice incidents occurred on the night preceding a death or an illness (respectively, the daughter’s tonsillectomy, a stroke suffered by Mrs. Berini’s grandmother and her later death).
In March of 1981, Mrs. Berini awoke and saw the figure of an eight- to nine-year-old boy, dressed in white. Mr. Berini thought it might be Giorgi, his father’s brother, who had died at eight and was buried in a white communion suit. Four days later, Mr. Berini saw a similar apparition, which seemed to be trying to pick up the rug in the hallway. They later removed the rug and the floor boards and found a medallion of the Virgin Mary underneath the floor. The apparition continued to appear sporadically, two or three times a week. It occasionally made short statements, sometimes in response to questions. On some of these occasions only one of the Berinis saw the figure. The apparition seemed to cause physical movements, including the repeated opening and closing of the closet door. After two attempts by Catholic priests to exorcise this ghost, it seemed to depart.
Unfortunately, it was soon replaced by another less savory figure, a dark, caped and humpbacked entity. This figure was first seen by Mr. Berini, with Mrs. Berini seeing it a few nights after its initial appearance. On one occasion when Mr. Berini and his mother were in the bedroom, he saw it twice, but she saw nothing. This bestial figure was not particularly well-behaved during its week’s tenure in the Berini household, and it had the temerity to say “really disgusting things” in a gruff male voice, usually when Mrs. Berini was attempting to pray. When they inquired as to its identity, it replied “I am a minister of God.” Lest we conclude on this basis of this last remark that the exorcisms had been successful, it should be noted that the RSPK phenomena started up soon after this ethereal “minister” appeared. In fact, the night after his arrival, the bedside phone kept flying across the room and the bedside lamp fell on Mrs. Berini’s head several times.
Further incidents involved the breaking of dishes, crosses and religious statues. The furniture then seemed to get restless. A china cupboard turned over four times, and a bookcase on the top landing moved downstairs twice. The daughter’s desk meandered out of her room and down the stairs. The retractable staircase to the attic opened and slammed shut repeatedly, causing the ceiling in the hall to crack. The incidents continued until the daughter’s birthday in August, when a carving knife was found stuck in the kitchen table. The family then moved out, and a priest performed a third exorcism. This final exorcism attempt was apparently successful, as the phenomena finally ceased.
Some of the events were witnessed by outside observers, including a friend of the son’s, a neighbor, and Mr. Berini’s sister. These include the flight of a candle, the movement and toppling over of a table lamp, the levitation of a comb, and one of the bookcase’s frequent sojourns down the stairs.
This was a particularly nasty poltergeist that frequently attacked people. Mr. and Mrs. Berini and their son were all hit by moving objects. On four separate occasions when they were in bed, Mr. Berini saw his sleeping wife lifted from the bed and moved out into the room, where she was dropped to the floor. In fact, the poltergeist seemed to have a particular aversion to Mrs. Berini. Once she experienced a burning sensation, and three bleeding scratches were found on her chest and an upside down cross was found to be scratched on her back. She was scratched twice more. On one of these occasions, her sister was present and was on the phone to the police. Her sister experienced a burning sensation on her face and found a scratch on her own cheek.
The phenomena seemed to center around Mrs. Berini. Virtually all the incidents took place when she was in the house, and she tended to be the person closest to any strangely behaving object. She was also the one who experienced the first two apparitions. She had suffered from migraine headaches and vomiting since she was a child. The phenomena tended to occur during periods when she was free of migraine attacks. Roll and Tringale speculate that the RSPK manifestations could have served as a substitute for the migraine symptoms. They compare the apparitions in this case to the visual “auras” that frequently precede epileptic attacks and speculate that such apparitions may be an externalized form of such auras. In fact, Roll (1978a) had earlier postulated that both apparitions and voices in such cases may represent externalized hallucinations.
In an article written with Elson de A. Montagno, Roll draws further parallels between RSPK phenomena and the symptoms of epilepsy. Both types of phenomena are most frequently exhibited by people in their teens. Knocking and rapping sounds in poltergeist cases may be analogous to the rhythmic tonic-clonic movements of epilepsy. Sudden movements and the existence of visions and apparitions constitute other similarities. Finally, Montagno and Roll note that the onset of RSPK phenomena frequently coincides with the abatement of hysterical or epileptic symptoms in the agent (Roll & Montagno, 1983). These facts, combined with the high incidence of convulsive-dissociative disorders in poltergeist agents, lead Roll to suspect that some forms of brain dysfunction may play a role in causing RSPK phenomena. Irwin (1994) has, however, argued that Roll’s epilepsy theory of RSPK phenomena may be premature. He notes that only four percent of Roll’s agents manifested clear-cut symptoms of epilepsy per se, and that this may not represent much of an elevation above baseline rates in the general population.
Many other investigators have postulated that psychopathology or aggression in the agents may be responsible for the generation of the psychokinetic phenomena. Indeed, for years the stereotypical picture of the poltergeist agent was that of the disturbed adolescent girl, which formed the basis of Carrie, Stephen King’s first best-selling novel. The psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor (1964) saw RSPK phenomena as being analogous to hysterical conversion symptoms resulting from emotional tension. D. Scott Rogo (1974) postulated that RSPK phenomena are due to projected hostility and constitute a psychokinetic form of the “acting out” of displaced aggression. In support of this contention, he cited a case in which RSPK phenomena (raps) occurred during a psychotherapeutic session with a 32-year-old man who claimed to be persecuted by a poltergeist. Owen (1978) cites a number of poltergeist cases in which the focal person displayed signs of hysteria.
Alfonso Martinez-Taboas and Carlos Alvarado (Taboas, 1980, 1984; Taboas & Alvarado, 1981) have criticized the body of research indicating psychopathology in poltergeist agents. They argue that much of this evidence has been produced through clinical interviews in which the interviewer knew that the subject was a suspected poltergeist agent. The interviewer may thus have been biased by this knowledge and his or her own stereotypical ideas about poltergeist agents. They also fault the researchers for their use of unreliable projective psychological tests, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, which are open to multiple interpretations, as well as the fact that the researchers may be seriously underestimating the prevalence of psychological disorders in the general population.
The Problem of Fraud
Skeptics contend that most, if not all, poltergeist effects are produced by trickery on the part of the apparent poltergeist agent, often in an attempt to gain attention. In some cases direct evidence of such fraud on the part of the focal person has been obtained. Roll (1969, 1972) used a one-way mirror to observe a 12-year-old focal person in another room together with his grandmother. His coinvestigator (J. G. Pratt) saw the agent hide two measuring tapes behind his shirt and then later throw them after his grandmother. The grandmother then reported this as another poltergeist incident, evidencing no suspicion of any fraudulent activity. The boy was later administered a polygraph test. That test indicated that he was telling the truth when he was in fact lying in denying that he had thrown the tapes (which shows you why the results of polygraph tests are not admissible as evidence in most courts). Roll (1977a) reports another case in which the poltergeist agent was found to be producing “knocks” by stamping his foot.
James “the Amazing” Randi (1985), a skeptical magician who has written several books debunking parapsychology, has presented photographic evidence suggesting that one of Roll’s subjects, Tina Resch, the focal person in a poltergeist case in Columbus, Ohio, threw a phone when no one was looking and produced an apparently anomalous movement of a couch by hooking it with her right foot. A videotape also suggested that she pulled a lamp toward her in order to make it fall. Roll (1993) has, however, continued to argue for the genuineness of the RSPK phenomena in this case, noting that Tina was not in the area when many of the events occurred. He also documents an apparent attempt by the prominent skeptic Paul Kurtz to doctor the evidence in this case by implying that two photographs that were actually taken an hour apart were taken within seconds of each other. On the other hand, the fact that Resch was recently sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her daughter does nothing to enhance her credibility as a poltergeist agent (see Frazier, 1995, and Roll & Storey, 2004, for the details of the circumstances surrounding this murder). Roll and Storey (2004) also note that Resch’s phenomena displayed the “shyness effect” that is characteristic of many poltergeist cases in that no ostensible psychokinetic phenomena were observed if Tina knew she was being filmed. More generally, the term “shyness effect” is used to denote the fact that the beginnings of object movements are rarely observed in poltergeist cases. The “shyness effect” is consistent with what would be expected if the poltergeist phenomena were being produced through fraudulent means. The shyness effect is thus evidence in favor of the fraud hypothesis.
Roll (1977a, 1977b) notes that the focal person was detected in fraud in 19 of the 92 poltergeist cases in his sample in which a focal agent could be identified. Gauld and Cornell (1979) report a somewhat lower incidence rate of detected fraud. Fraud was detected in 41 of the 500 poltergeist cases in their sample, yielding an incidence rate of eight percent. Gauld and Cornell note that the initial stages of object movements in poltergeist cases are rarely observed, which would be consistent with the fraud hypothesis, as noted above. Roll (1977b) notes that, in 105 cases involving anomalous object movements, visual fixation of objects by witnesses seemed to have an inhibiting effect in 47 cases and no effect in 43 cases. (In the remaining 15 cases, the effect of visual fixation could not be determined.) Several writers, while admitting the existence of fraud in some cases, suggest that the fraudulent activity is merely the agent’s way of maintaining the attention he received when genuine phenomena were occurring. In particular, Munson (1987) attributes fraud in poltergeist cases to the agent’s “owning” of impulses (such as aggressive impulses) that were previously projected into the environment via PK.
Theories About Poltergeists
Several writers have offered theories about how poltergeist effects are produced, assuming they are not the result of deliberate fraud. G. W. Lambert (1955) proposed that reported poltergeist phenomena may be due to motion of underground water and the resulting stress on houses. While it is easy to imagine that poltergeist raps and creaks might be due to such motion of underground water, it is hard to believe that such motion could produce the large horizontal movements of objects frequently reported in RSPK outbreaks. In order to test Lambert’s theory, Gauld and Cornell (1979) conducted an extraordinary experiment in which houses were mechanically shaken. They concluded that serious structural damage to, and even collapse of, such houses would in all likelihood occur well before any substantial lateral movements of objects were induced. They also feel that such jolting and vibrations would be immediately apparent to anyone inside the house. With regard to Lambert’s observation that poltergeist cases tend to cluster around bodies of water, Gauld and Cornell note that this may simply be due to the fact that the population in general tends to congregate in such locations.
William Roll, Donald Burdick, and William Joines (1973) have postulated that RSPK agents produce a type of force field in the area surrounding their bodies. Based on an analysis of the locations, directions and magnitudes of movements of objects relative to an ostensible poltergeist agent, they suggest that these movements could have been produced by three rotating “beams” of force emanating from portions of the agent’s body. They do not hazard a guess as to the type of force involved or as to how the field is generated. As arbitrary models can rather easily be constructed to “retrodict” observed patterns of movements, their model must await confirmation with new poltergeist agents.
More recently, Roll (2003) has postulated that poltergeist effects may be produced through the focal person’s influence on the “zero point energy” field pervading the universe, thus temporarily freeing the object from the force of gravity. He also cites measurements indicating weight changes in two poltergeist agents, possibly indicating a transfer of mass-energy between the agent and the affected object.
Michael Persinger and Robert Cameron (1986) have proposed that some poltergeist episodes may be a product of electromagnetic fields produced by geological stresses. They postulate that extremely low frequency (ELF) components of such fields may directly stimulate the brains of persons involved in such cases and induce apparitional experiences or hallucinations of an olfactory or auditory nature. They further suggest that electromagnetic transients may be responsible for such phenomena as current surges, anomalous telephone rings and light bulb failures. They report on a case in Sudbury, Ontario, which they feel might support such an interpretation.
Summary
Poltergeist cases constitute a dramatic and striking category of possible spontaneous psi phenomena. The number of agents who have been detected in fraud together with the “shyness effect,” wherein the beginnings of motions are rarely observed, suggest that RSPK phenomena will have to be approached cautiously and investigated thoroughly from a skeptical viewpoint before they can be accepted as genuinely anomalous phenomena. Investigations of the personalities and other characteristics of poltergeist agents will have to be conducted more rigorously and with more appropriate experimental blinds before they can be considered definitive. Finally, theories to account for poltergeists will have to be constructed that are fully capable of predicting new phenomena rather than merely “retrodicting” phenomena that have already occurred. Theories failing to meet this criterion may well have to be considered as no more scientific than one of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories.
Miscellaneous Phenomena
There are a variety of phenomena suggestive of the operation of psi that fall outside of the category of spontaneous psi experiences in that the phenomena are deliberately induced but also occur to a large extent outside of the laboratory and thus may involve a number of uncontrolled factors. These phenomena include dowsing, psychic prognostication, psychic healing, and the work of psychic detectives. We will also examine in this section a few instances of truly strange phenomena, including the alleged ability of certain Christian saints, to levitate, an instance of possible weather control by a Tibetan shaman, and spontaneous human combustion.
Psychic Predictions.
Every year, several tabloids, including the National Enquirer and the always thought-provoking Weekly World News, publish the predictions of “leading psychics” for the upcoming year. It is not easy to perform a statistical analysis on such predictions to see whether or not they come true more often than one would expect by chance. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that such predictions are not in general very accurate.
Recently, Farha (2005) reviewed the predictions made for 2004 by psychic Sylvia Browne on The Montel Williams Show (an American television talk show) on December 31, 2003. Unlike many psychics, Browne’s predictions were relatively mundane and reasonable extrapolations from current events. Nonetheless, most of Browne’s predictions were not fulfilled, including her predictions that American troops would be out of Iraq by June or July 2004, that Osama bin Laden was already dead, that the fashion mogul Martha Stewart would not go to jail (she entered prison on October 8, 2004), and that Pope John Paul II would die in 2004. This last prediction was a reasonable extrapolation from the Pope’s failing state of health. Nonetheless, the Pope did not die until April of 2005.
Sometimes psychics go out on a limb and make predictions that are far less likely than those made by Brown. Emery (1996) for instance observes that Hugh Hefner did not give up his Playboy empire to become a cultivator of sunflowers, as predicted by psychic Shawn Robbins, no child genius constructed a working time machine from parts of a microwave oven as an entry in a seventh grade science fair, as predicted in the National Enquirer, and disgraced skater Tonya Harding did not attempt to open the nation’s first all-nude ice skating rink, as forecast in the same publication. Predictions such as these seem to be offered in an attempt to entertain the audience and are not to be taken seriously.
Radford (2005b) has reviewed the predictions of several psychics for 2001 and found no mention of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Similarly, Posner (2005) notes that the prediction of three psychics in the newspaper Florida Today that Hurricane Jeanne would miss Florida failed to be fulfilled.
In some cases, an apparently successful prediction may be fabricated. Quite a splash was made in the early 1980s by a videotape of an apparently accurate prediction of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley that was allegedly made by psychic Tamara Rand on a talk show. President Reagan was shot in the chest on March 30, 1981, by John Hinckley, a blond-haired former member of the American Nazi party. Hinckley claimed that he made the assassination attempt in order to impress actress Jodie Foster, who had played the subteenage flame of a psychotic assassin in the movie Taxi Driver. The tape of the alleged prediction was broadcast on NBC’s Today show and ABC’s Good Morning America as well as on Ted Turner’s Cable News Network, on April 2, 1981. The tape showed Rand, a Los Angeles area psychic who catered to Hollywood celebrities, making the prediction that Reagan would be shot in the chest by a sandy-haired young radical having the initials “J. H.” and that the assassin’s name would be something like “Jack Humbley.” Rand further predicted that the assassination attempt would take place during the last week in March or the first week in April. The tape had supposedly been aired on March 28, 1981, two days before the actual assassination attempt took place. It turned out that no such tape had been aired and that the tape was in fact made the day after the assassination attempt but was fraudulently dated to make it appear to have been made before the attempt. Dick Maurice, the host of the talk show in question, confessed to involvement in the hoax. (See Frazier & Randi, 1986; Lyons & Truzzi, 1991; and Nickell,1994, for an account of the Tamara Rand hoax.)
Sometimes predictions may be worded so vaguely that many events may be interpreted as fulfilling them. This is particularly true of the poetic quatrains of the sixteenth century prophet Nostradamus, as has been pointed out by Christopher (1970). One of Nostradamus’ most prophetic quatrains begins, “The King-King will be no more, of the Gentle One destroyed” (Christopher, 1970, p. 106). This was taken (after the fact) to be a prediction of the slaying of Henry III, King of both Poland and France, by a man named Clement (a synonym of “gentle”). Nostradamus’ quatrains are, however, like Rorschach inkblots, onto which the reader may project any message she wants. For instance, Paul Kurtz cites the following quatrain (Kurtz, 1986, p. 262).
An emperor shall be born near Italy
Who shall be sold to the Empire at a high price.
They shall say, from the people he disputed with,
That he is less a prince than a butcher.
As Kurtz points out, this particular quatrain is so vaguely worded that it could be taken as a prediction of the reign of Napoleon, Hitler or even Ferdinand II, the king of Bohemia and Holy Roman emperor. Such vague predictions as are contained in Nostradamus’ quatrains are effectively no predictions at all; as no dates or specifics are given, they can be interpreted to fit any suitable event in the last four centuries.
Occasionally, formal divination systems such as the I Ching or tarot cards are employed to make predictions, read a person’s character, or offer advice. As the message of the cards, yarrow stalks or stars may be interpreted in several ways, there is an opportunity for the reader or diviner to select the appropriate interpretation by means of intuition or even ESP. There is also the “Barnum” effect, the tendency for people to believe that a vaguely worded statement holds a deep message meant specifically for them. Most studies that have been conducted to test the efficacy of such divination systems have yielded null results. For instance, in a test of divination with tarot cards, Blackmore (1983b) found people unable to distinguish between tarot card readings meant for them and readings meant for other people. Roney-Dougal (1991) repeated Blackmore’s experiments and obtained essentially the same results. Two similar experiments with the I Ching divination system also produced null results (Rubin & Honorton, 1971; Thalbourne, Delin, Barlow & Steen, 1992-1993).
Psychic Detectives
There are frequently accounts in the popular press of cases in which psychics have been able to use their powers to help the police solve crimes. Unfortunately, newspaper accounts are not always noted for their accuracy. Studies of psychic detectives from a skeptical vantage point have been published by Melvin Harris (1986) and Piet Hein Hoebens (1982, 1986a, 1986b). Hoebens focused his investigations on the Dutch psychic Gerard Croiset and his primary investigator from a parapsychological point of view, Wilhelm Tenhaeff. According to popular accounts, Croiset has displayed an astonishing success in helping the police find bodies and solve crimes. Yet when Hoebens interviewed the Utrecht police, they denied that any of Croiset’s attempts to locate missing persons or to solve crimes had been successful. Hoebens also notes certain inconsistencies in Tenhaeff’s accounts of Croiset’s successes. In addition, Tenhaeff distorted many of Croiset’s statements in his summaries of them. Initially vague statements were made to seem much more detailed and accurate than they really were. Errors made by Croiset were deleted. Tenhaeff also distorted his descriptions of confirming events to make them better conform to Croiset’s predictions. Hoebens also reviews one instance of an apparent gross falsification by Tenhaeff. Thus, what you read in the popular press may not necessarily correspond to the facts when it comes to the area of psychic detection.
Similarly, Radford (2005a) notes that the Oxford Press reported “uncanny similarities” between the location where the body of Charles Capel, a wandering victim of Alzheimer’s disease, was found and the description provided by psychic detective Noreen Renier. However, Radford notes that the police, acting on this description could not locate Capel’s body. After several months, Capel’s body was found less than a mile from his home. Radford points out that missing Alzheimer’s patients are generally found less than a mile from home and that Renier’s description of a wooded area would match most locations in the area of Capel’s house.
Lyons and Truzzi (1991) report on the fairly impressive case of psychic Greta Alexander, who was called in by police to find the missing body of Mary Cousett, a woman who had disappeared in April of 1983. Alexander correctly predicted that the body would be found near the intersection of several roads, that it would be missing a leg or foot, that the head would not be found with the body, and that it would be found by a man with a crippled hand. In fact, the body was found in such a location by an officer who had had several fingers on his left hand damaged in a drill press accident. It should be noted, however, that these statements were embedded in a fairly large number of other statements that were either too vague to be called predictions or were in fact incorrect. Further, the body was found outside the area on the map circled by Alexander.
In a recent investigation of four prominent psychic detectives, Nickell (2005a) found that the police officers involved generally deny that they have worked with such detectives or that the psychic detectives provided any useful information. Nickell notes that the predictions offered by such psychics are often vague and can be “retrofitted” to fit the facts (such as when an abandoned railroad track is interpreted as a “bridge”).
What is clearly needed are more rigorous and skeptical field investigations of psychic detectives. It would also be possible to conduct laboratory studies in a forensic format with such persons. To date, only a handful of studies have been conducted (see Wiseman, West & Stemman, 1996b, for a review of such studies). The preliminary results indicate that “readings” provided by psychic detectives are no more accurate than those provided by normal persons claiming no psychic ability. For instance, Wiseman, West and Stemman (1996a) report a controlled laboratory experiment in which the ability of three self-proclaimed psychic detectives to provide accurate descriptions of (previously solved) crimes was put to the test. When provided with materials related to the crimes, the psychic detectives were no more successful than a control group of three students claiming no psychic abilities in providing accurate details relating to the crimes.
Thus, the evidence for psychic abilities on the part self-proclaimed psychic detectives is less than compelling.
Dowsing
Dowsing is a technique in which the practitioner (called a “dowser”) employs a device such as a forked stick or dowsing rod to locate some object (usually a body of underground water, although other sorts of objects such as buried mines have served as target objects). When the dowser is located over the target object, the dowsing rod signals that fact by making a movement. Most scientists believe that the movement of the rod is caused by unconscious muscular movements on the part of the dowser, although Kaufman (1979) has reported strain gauge measurements on dowsing rods that he claims reveal a force unexplainable by gravity, muscular jerking or thumb pressure. As the dowser is in physical proximity to the target object, it is possible that some physical signal serves as a sensory cue to guide him to the object. Thus, dowsing may not involve the operation of ESP at all. Kaufman, for instance, notes that many geological features are associated with magnetic anomalies and that human beings have been shown to be capable of detecting such magnetic fields. Such sensory cueing may be less prominent in cases of “map dowsing,” in which the practitioner holds his apparatus over a map of the area rather than walking over the area itself. Even maps, however, provide clues as to the geophysical makeup of an area.
Hansen (1982), in a detailed review of the literature relating to dowsing, concluded that many of the studies of dowsing that have been conducted have used quite sloppy experimental procedures and in many cases the reporting of the methodology that was used is unclear. Despite these shortcomings, many of the studies showed dowsing techniques to be ineffective. Since Hansen’s review, Hans-Dieter Betz has reported a massive field study of dowsing in several countries (Betz, 1995a, 1995b). Betz’ results indicate that the use of dowsing can enhance the efficacy of searches for underground water sources. As with virtually any field study, Betz’ methodology is not adequate to rule out the hypothesis that the dowser may be responding to physical cues. Because of the poor reliability of the dowsing procedure and the methodological inadequacies of field studies, it is not clear that dowsing offers a more effective means of demonstrating the existence of ESP than do more traditional ESP experiments.
Psychic Healing
“Psychic healing” is a generic term employed to describe a variety of techniques whereby diseases and other ailments are healed or alleviated by an apparently paranormal process. Stanley Krippner (1980) has proposed a typology of practitioners of such healing techniques, which he calls “folk healing.” Krippner’s first category of folk healers is that of shamanic healers. Shamans are persons, usually in “primitive” cultures, who are ostensibly able to enter a trance and visit the world of spirits, a vocation typically entered as the result of a “calling” in youth. Their healing rites may consist of literally retrieving lost souls or departed animal spirit guardians that have deserted the ailing patient.
McClenon (2004) has hypothesized that humans have developed a genetic tendency to enter dissociative states, possibly due to shamans’ successful use of their psi abilities while in such states (although McClenon remains neutral regarding the question of whether psi actually exists). He notes that shamanism is universal among hunter-gatherer societies and that cave art suggests than shamanism has been practiced for more than 30,000 years. He notes that humans’ dissociative/hypnotic capacities could not increase infinitely, because these traits had negative consequences, including psychosomatic and dissociative disorders. It should added that a complete dissociation from the physical body would be maladaptive in terms of survival, thus the development of some sort of “filter” restricting the mind’s attention largely to the needs of the physical organism, as suggested by Bergson (1914), may be necessary.
Spiritist healers comprise Krippner’s second category of psychic healers. Spiritist healers are distinguished from shamanic healers by the fact that the former undergo possession by a spirit in the course of performing their healing rituals. The Condomble and Umbanda sects of Brazil are examples of this tradition. Krippner’s next two categories are esoteric healers, who follow an occult tradition such as alchemy, astrology, tarot-reading, or tantric Buddhism, and religious ritual healers, whose healing takes place in the context of a religious ritual, such as a Mexican sacred mushroom ceremony. Krippner would classify faith healers, such as Kathryn Kuhlman, who operate in the context of a Christian religious service, as religious ritual healers.
Krippner’s final category is that of intuitive healers, who (unlike shamans) undergo no special training or initiation but who chose their vocation based on an inner sense of a calling (sometimes described as a “call from God”). Such practitioners frequently employ the technique of laying-on-of-hands, which has been the subject of much parapsychological investigation (to be discussed below) and often describe themselves as tuning in to a “universal energy field.” As examples of this type of healer, Krippner offers Olga Worrall and Oscar Estabany, both of whom have been extensively studied by experimental parapsychologists.
For the purposes of the present analysis, we will subdivide psychic healing by the type of technique employed rather than by the type of practitioner, as there is considerable overlap in the techniques employed by practitioners of different Krippnerian types.
Faith healing. The term “faith healing” will be used primarily to refer to healing carried out in the context of a (usually Christian) religious meeting in which ailments are ostensibly cured by the power of God or the patient’s own religious faith rather than the cure being ascribed to any “energy” emanating from, or physical manipulation performed by, the healer. Faith healing may be accomplished with or without any physical contact between the patient and the healer. Extensive physical contact between the healer and the patient would probably result in the classification of the technique as either psychic surgery or the laying-on-of-hands (to be discussed below). Examples of modern day faith healers would be Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, Peter Popoff, Ernest Angley, the noted Christian broadcaster and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson, and the more infamous Jim Jones.
Some cures that occur in the context of faith healing may be due to the fact that the original ailment was psychogenic in origin. Some apparently serious conditions, such as paralysis and blindness, may have no organic basis but may merely be hysterical symptoms that reflect the patient’s psychological distress. Even apparently genuine physical conditions such as visible rashes, ulcers and asthma attacks may be aggravated or even caused by psychological factors. Such illnesses are typically referred to as psychosomatic illnesses to distinguish them from hysterical ailments. Obviously, as both types of conditions are at least partially caused by psychological factors, it would not be surprising if a religious ritual, which may have a considerable emotional impact on the patient, had the effect of alleviating these symptoms.
Sometimes people with a genuine physical illness may experience a surge of excitement, possibly involving the release of endorphins (the brain’s “natural opiates”), during a religious ritual and may overcome their symptoms for a brief time. (The alleviation of pain through the administration of placebos or hypnosis is a well-known effect and is thought to be governed by the release of endorphins in many cases.) The symptoms may, however, return once the fervor of the ritual has waned. For instance, Hines (2003) cites a case in which the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman “healed” a woman who had cancer and who could only walk with a back brace. The woman threw off the back brace and ran across the stage. However, two months later the woman died from the cancer that Kuhlman had supposedly cured.
Cases in which documented serious physical illnesses, such as cancer and lupus, were cured through faith healing do exist, although they are extremely rare; however, cancer and other serious illnesses do sometimes improve without medical intervention, in a process known as spontaneous regression. What is needed in order to document the efficacy of faith healing are controlled studies showing that such spontaneous regression occurs more frequently among patients undergoing religious rituals than for control patients not undergoing such rituals. Such studies have not been done.
The activity of the immune system and the course of diseases are known to be affected by psychological conditions such as stress. It is well established that physical diseases occur more frequently following traumatic life events such as the loss of a job or the death of a spouse. There are cases on record of voodoo death, in which a victim who learns that he has been cursed by a witchdoctor suddenly dies. It is commonly thought that this is an example of what is known as parasympathetic death or “death by helplessness,” as described by Martin Seligman (1975). In such a death, a person facing what he perceives to be a hopeless situation essentially relaxes himself to death, stopping the heart. The central nervous system is also known to interact directly with the immune system through the hypothalamus, and immune responses in animals have been conditioned to occur in response to certain tastes or even in response to the presence of particular persons (Ader, 1981). Thus, it might not be too surprising if participating in a faith healing ritual served to bolster a patient’s immune system. This would not be a paranormal phenomenon, however, as the bolstering of the immune system could be due to the brain’s normal channels of influence over the immune system operating in response to suggestion. Some evidence against the hypothesis that all forms of psychic healing are placebo effects or due to suggestion is provided by a survey conducted by Haraldsson and Olafsson (1980), in which they found that prior belief in the efficacy of psychic healing did not correlate with the perceived benefit the patient received from the healing session. Their study was not specific to faith healing, but encompassed healing in general.
Several faith healers have been exposed in using fraud to aid their practices. James Randi’s book The Faith Healers (Randi, 1987) contains an extensive documentation of such fraudulent activity. Perhaps the most common ploy used by faith healers is to “heal” a stooge sitting in the audience who is only faking an illness. Morris (in Edge, Morris, Palmer & Rush, 1986) describes how the Reverend Jim Jones used such stooges and other forms of deception to dupe his followers into believing he had magical powers. Some of these people later followed Jones into death in the infamous Jonestown massacre in Guyana, in which hundreds of Jones’ followers drank cyanide-laced Kool Aid at his command.
In general, there is no compelling evidence that any paranormal process is involved in faith healing. The more spectacular miracles are chiefly the result of fraud, and other cures may be due to the effects of suggestion and normal psychosomatic and psychoimmunological processes.
Psychic diagnosis. Some healers claim the ability to diagnose illness by psychic means. One such person was Edgar Cayce. Given the name and address of a patient, Cayce would enter a trance, diagnose the patient’s ailment and prescribe a (typically unorthodox) method of treatment. Cayce’s recommended cures have been the subject of study by physicians at the Association for Research and Enlightenment, an organization dedicated to the study of Cayce’s readings based in Virginia Beach, Virginia. James Randi (1979) has provided a skeptical analysis of Cayce’s diagnoses, pointing out that Cayce was often inaccurate and even provided diagnoses of people who were in fact already dead. However, this negative evidence may not prove much, as Cayce’s proponents concede that he was accurate in only about one-third of the cases he attempted to diagnose. A well-controlled statistical study might have settled the issue of whether Cayce displayed any paranormal ability in his diagnoses, but unfortunately Cayce died before any such study was conducted.
Randi (1987) has cast more definitive doubt on the paranormal diagnostic capability of the faith healer Peter Popoff. In his services, Popoff claimed the ability to obtain the names and medical conditions of people in his audience through paranormal means (described as a revelation from God). Randi and his associates were able to intercept a radio signal transmitted from Popoff’s wife to an earpiece worn by Popoff giving him names and medical data for various audience members. In this instance at least, the psychic diagnosis was achieved through fraud.
Ray Hyman, a well-known skeptic regarding psi phenomena, and his associates Richard Wiseman and Andrew Skolnick conducted a controlled experiment in which the claimed psychic diagnostic capabilities of a seventeen-year-old Russian girl, Natasha Demkina, were put to the test (Hyman, 2005). However, despite the fact that at least two of the investigators (Hyman and Wiseman) are known for their criticisms of flawed procedures in parapsychological experiments, their own experimental procedure allowed Natasha to see the subjects she was attempting to diagnose at short range. Thus, she could have picked up sensory cues (e.g. breathing and movement patterns) that could have her helped to match medical diagnoses to subjects. Interestingly, Hyman declared the experiment a “failure” despite the fact that Natasha successfully matched four of the seven diagnoses to the correct subject. Such success would happen less than two times out of one hundred experiments by chance. As one could not reasonably expect lower probabilities in any experiment with only seven trials, the results would actually seem to support the claim that Ms. Demkina can provide more accurate diagnoses than would be expected by chance. While this experiment is inconclusive regarding Ms. Demkina’s psychic diagnostic abilities due to the investigators’ failure to screen our sensory cues, it serves as a cautionary example regarding the interactions between parapsychologists and their critics.
Psychic surgery. In the technique of psychic surgery, the healer purportedly enters the patient’s physical body, sometimes using only his bare hands, as in the case of the Philippine healer Tony Agpaoa, and in other cases using an unorthodox implement, such as the rusty knife wielded by the Brazilian healer Arigo (see Fuller, 1974, for a comprehensive discussion of the phenomena produced by Arigo). In a typical psychic surgery session, the healer might massage the patient’s stomach muscles, seemingly penetrate the abdominal cavity with his bare hands, and apparently remove a “tumor” (which is frequently immediately destroyed because of its “evil” nature). Although bleeding may be profuse during the surgery, the alleged incision usually heals immediately, without a trace of a scar.
Psychic surgery is now widely regarded by scientists both within and outside the parapsychological research community as a fraudulent activity. The illusion of an incision is thought to be produced by kneading the patient’s skin. The illusion of bleeding is achieved by the psychic surgeon’s releasing blood or some other red liquid from a source he has palmed as if performing a cheap magic trick. The tumors removed by the surgeons are thought to be samples of animal tissue that have also been palmed by the surgeon. An early investigation of psychic surgery by the American physician William Nolen (1975) failed to uncover even one case in which a physical illness that had been documented to exist before a psychic surgery session was found to be absent following the session. Nolen also detected many instances of fraudulent activity on the part of the psychic surgeons he observed. In one case, a “kidney stone” was found to be composed of sugar. In an earlier investigation, Granone (1972) had found such “kidney stones” to consist of table salt and pumice stone. David Hoy (1981) also describes sleight-of-hand techniques he witnessed during psychic surgery sessions, including the palming of objects. Lincoln and Wood (1979) identified “blood” produced from a patient during psychic surgery as pig blood rather than human blood. Finally, Azuma and Stevenson (1987) analyzed two more kidney stones removed from patients during psychic surgery and found them to be pebbles. By now it should be apparent that the rampant fraudulent activity on the part of psychic surgeons casts extreme doubt on the hypothesis that any paranormal effect has been demonstrated in this procedure.
Laying-on-of-hands and remote healing. In both the technique known as the “laying-on-of-hands” and in the technique I will call “remote healing,” the healer is conceptualized as being the source or channel of a healing effect or healing “energy.” The chief difference between the two techniques is that the laying-on-of-hands involves more or less direct physical contact between the patient and the healer, whereas the healer is isolated from the patient in remote healing. In practice, the distinction between the two techniques becomes blurred by the fact that many experimental studies of healers who would normally use the laying-on-of-hands in their daily practice have of necessity used experimental protocols that remove the healer from direct physical contact with the patient to be healed or from the biological system to be influenced. Unlike other forms of healing, a great many experimental tests of the efficacy of these two techniques have been performed. A surprisingly high proportion of these experiments have yielded evidence of some sort of healing effect. Healers have been found to be able to retard the growth of goiters in mice and to accelerate the recovery of such goiters (Grad, 1977), to speed the healing of experimentally induced wounds in mice (Grad, Cadoret & Paul, 1961), to accelerate the recovery of mice from anesthesia without physical contact (Watkins & Watkins, 1971; Watkins, Watkins, & Wells, 1973; Wells & Klein, 1972; Wells & Watkins, 1975), to speed the regeneration of salamander forelimbs (Wirth, Johnson, Harvath & MacGregor, 1992), to heal malaria in rats, remotely and retroactively (Snel & Van der Sijde, 1990-1991), and to facilitate the healing of surgically induced wounds in humans. (Wirth 1989, 1990, but see also the nonsignificant study of the effect of healing and prayer on diabetes mellitus by Wirth & Mitchell, 1994).
Radin, Taft and Yount (2003) report a study on the influence of practitioners of Johrei, a Japanese spiritual healing practice, on the proliferation of cultured human brain cells (astrocytes). Radin et al. report a significant increase in treated cells relative to control cells, although this difference was only significant on the third day of treatment. They also found that the Johrei healers could influence the output of a quantum-based random event generator (REG). The psychokinetic effect on the REG declined with distance, which the authors interpret as supporting the hypothesis that the healing effect involves some sort of radiation.
Bengston and Krinsley (2000) report a significant difference between healers and skeptics as they attempted to inhibit the growth of transplanted breast cancer cells in mice. However, this study was flawed in that the healers were allowed to place their hands just outside of the mice’s cages, which would allow the transmission of sensory cues (e.g., the movements of the hands of the healers might be gentler and less threatening that those of the skeptics). Another flaw in this experiment is that the control group of mice were housed in a different city than the treated group; thus, the differences between the treated and control mice might have been due to differences in weather, pollution levels, or other factors.
A large number of studies have shown that the growth of plants may be accelerated when they are irrigated with water previously held by healers or when they are grown from seeds held by healers (Grad, 1963, 1964; MacDonald, Hickman & Dakin, 1977; Solfvin, 1982; Saklani, 1988a, 1988b, 1989, 1990, 1991,1992; Scofield & Hodges, 1991; and Roney-Dougal & Solfvin, 2004). There have also been claims of changes in the light absorption properties of samples of water held by healers, (Grad 1964, 1965; Dean 1983a, 1983b; Dean & Brame 1975; Grad & Dean, 1984; Schwartz, De Mattei, Brame & Spottiswoode, 1987; Saklani, 1988a, 1988b; Rein & McCraty, 1994: but see also Fenwick & Hopkins, 1986). Healers have also been found to produce effects on the activity levels of enzymes (Smith, 1968, 1972; Edge, 1980b; Bunnel, 1999).
Experiments have shown that even ordinary citizens may be able to influence biological systems at a distance. Ordinary subjects in such bio-PK experiments have been found to be capable of affecting the growth rates of fungal and bacterial cultures (Barry, 1968a, 1968b; Tedder & Monty, 1981), the mutation rates of bacterial genes (Nash, 1984b), the electrical activity of plants (Dolin, Davydov, Morozova & Shumov, 1993), the electrodermal and brainwave patterns of human subjects (Braud & Schlitz, 1983, 1989; Braud, Schlitz, Collins & Klitch, 1985; Dolin, Dymov & Khatchenkov, 1993; Radin, Taylor & Braud, 1993), the firing rate of individual neurons of the sea snail Aplysia (Baumann, Stewart & Roll, 1986), and the rate of hemolysis of red blood cells (Braud,1988, 1990; Braud, Davis & Wood, 1979), to name only a few of the effects that have been reported.
To be sure, not all investigators who have looked for such effects have found them, but the success rate is rather substantial. In a “meta-analysis” of 149 psychokinesis experiments using living organisms as targets, Braud, Schlitz and Schmidt (1990) found that 53 percent of them produced significant evidence of a psi effect. As in any other area of research, the methodological quality of the studies is uneven. While the procedures in many of the studies are quite sound, others suffer from various defects. One common defect is that the person caring for or measuring the target organisms may not be blind as to which experimental group the organisms are in. If the person watering a plant or placing a fungal colony in an incubator knows whether the plant or fungus is in the “healed group” or the control group, this may affect his treatment of the organism. This was in fact a problem in some of the plant and fungus experiments (e.g., Nash, 1984b; Saklani, 1988a, 1988b). Another defect occurs when the target and control organisms are not housed in the same areas or under comparable conditions, as was the case in some of the wound-healing experiments with mice (e.g., Grad, Cadoret & Paul, 1961), or when the healing and control procedures are carried out at different times or locations, as was the case in some of the mouse anesthesia experiments, some of the enzyme studies, and some of the human wound experiments (e.g., Watkins & Watkins, 1971; Rein, 1986; Wirth, 1989, 1990). In such cases the target organisms or systems may simply be responding differently to different locations or times of day rather than to the treatments. A third defect occurs when the healer is allowed to be in close physical proximity to the patient or target organism, as the possibility then arises that any effects may be due to suggestion or to the comforting of an animal.
One criticism that has been leveled against parapsychological experiments in general is that the results may be due to experimenter dishonesty. Flamm (2004, 2005) raises such questions regarding the investigator Daniel Wirth. Flamm notes that Wirth and his coworkers conducted a study in which infertile women who were prayed for in Christian prayer groups became pregnant at twice the rate of women in a control group (Cha, Wirth, & Lobo, 2001). It should also be noted that Wirth’s work has been widely cited above in connection with other areas of psychic healing. Flamm notes that Wirth has received a five-year prison sentence on thirty counts of fraud and that he often assumed false identities in connection with his embezzlement schemes. Joseph Horvath, who collaborated with Wirth on some of his psychic healing studies (e.g., Wirth, Johnson, Horvath & MacGregor, 1992), has also gone to prison for embezzlement and the use of false identities. Among their crimes, Wirth and Horvath were convicted of bilking the Aldelphia Communications Corporation out of $2.1 million by infiltrating the company and then having it pay for unauthorized consulting work. Flamm also notes that Horvath posed as a medical doctor when performing biopsies on human subjects and that Dr. Rogerio Lobo, who was listed as a coauthor on the study regarding the effect of prayers on infertility in fact had no involvement in the study.
Nonetheless, when the work of Wirth and his collaborators is removed from consideration, there remains a large number of seemingly methodologically sound studies that appear to show that humans are capable of affecting biological systems at a distance, and that therefore there may well be reason to believe that there could be some validity to the claims of laying-on-of-hands or remote healing. The reason this evidence is largely ignored by the medical and scientific community is probably related to scientific community’s general rejection of psi research; the data just do not fit into established theories. On the other hand, while there may be prejudice against this research, any person seeking treatment should understand that the magnitude of the healing effects found in these studies tends to be far less than the effects produced by orthodox medical treatment, and they are also much less reliable.
Summary of healing studies. In conclusion, there is not much solid evidence for the existence of paranormal effects in the areas of faith healing, psychic diagnosis, or psychic surgery. With regard to the techniques of laying-on-of-hands and remote healing, there are hints from the existing experimental evidence that some sort of paranormal effect could be involved in these techniques.
Psi Phenomena in Nonwestern Cultures
Several anthropologically-oriented investigators have explored beliefs about and practices relating to psi phenomena in cultures markedly different from our modern Western civilization. These studies may be broken into roughly two types: (a) those that merely seek to describe such practices and beliefs, and (b) those that seek to evaluate the hypothesis that psi phenomena are actually involved in such practices.
With regard to studies of the first type, Shiels (1978) reported the results of a survey indicating a widespread belief in out-of-body experiences (OBEs), in which the subject’s conscious mind seems to travel to locations outside of the physical body, among nonwestern or “primitive” cultures. Haynes (1984) notes that witches’ brews and ointments frequently contain hallucinogenic chemicals that could produce sensations of flying and hence precipitate OBEs. Magical or psi-like powers are frequently attributed to shamans or medicine men in “primitive” cultures. The belief of the Australian aborigines that their “clever men” may project themselves at will has already been discussed.
Reichbart (1976) describes how Navajo hand tremblers are thought to be able to find lost objects and to diagnose the causes of illnesses. In a general essay on shamanic practices, Reichbart (1978) notes that the following powers have been attributed to shamans: (a) the ability to direct the movements of game animals, (b) healing abilities, (c) the ability to find lost objects, and (d) the ability to predict and control the weather. He notes that shamans frequently do rely on sleight-of-hand techniques and use normally acquired information in their practices. He suggests that the use of such fraudulent practices may facilitate the occurrence of actual psi phenomena, and he compares it to the technique developed by Kenneth Bacheldor and employed by Brookes-Smith (1973) of using fraudulently-produced table movements to create an atmosphere in which paranormally produced table movements may be more likely to occur in a seance situation. (Unfortunately, there is little in the way of hard evidence that any of the table movements produced using Brookes-Smith’s technique were in fact genuinely paranormal.)
Winkelman (1983) has traced several similarities between techniques used in experimental parapsychology to elicit psi and shamanic practices. Like parapsychologists, shamans may use altered states of consciousness and visualization techniques to facilitate psi. Shamans and other nonwestern diviners may use random processes, such as tossing coins when using the I Ching, as a part of their divination practices. It is possible that such random devices could be susceptible to psychokinetic influence by the shaman, allowing the production of meaningful messages. (On the other hand, we have of course already seen the lack of effectiveness of such techniques when subjected to experimental test.)
Studies of the second type go beyond mere description and attempt to evaluate the paranormality of the purported effects. Some investigations are essentially anecdotal in nature. McKee (1982) describes a case involving voodoo-like effects on the wife of the manager of a Ford agency in Swaziland. This woman had been experiencing migraine headaches for a period of time before a clay effigy was discovered hidden in an unused cupboard. The woman had told her maid that she could work for her if she were sick. Her headaches went away after a ritual in which the effigy was destroyed and prayers were said. This cure could of course, like the cases of voodoo death discussed previously, be purely psychosomatic in nature and no more paranormal than the usual placebo effect.
Some experimental investigations of the psi powers of nonwestern shamans and healers have been reported. In an investigation of the psychokinetic powers of the practitioners of an Afro-Brazilian healing cult, Giesler (1985) found that such practitioners were more successful in an experimental test of their PK abilities than were control subjects. Their scoring was facilitated when a cult-relevant form of feedback (the display of a deity figure) was used to signal success in the PK task. The significance of Giesler’s results may, however, be questioned due to the large number of statistical tests he performed on his data. Saklani (1988a, 1988b) found Himalayan shamans to be successful in using PK or “healing energies” to accelerate the growth of plants. In this context, it would be good to keep in mind the previously discussed negative verdict on psychic surgery.
Firewalking is a technique practiced by people in diverse cultures, ranging from fakirs in India to (in fairly recent times) account executives in California. The ability to walk on fire is often taken as an indication of the firewalker’s mental discipline, spiritual development or faith. In back-to-back articles in The Skeptical Inquirer, Dennett (1985) and Leikind and William McCarthy (1985) observe that many of the materials used in such firewalking escapades, such as wood, coal and volcanic pumice, are noted for their low heat capacity or poor thermal conductivity. Leikind and McCarthy also suggest that the “leidenfrost effect” may protect the feet of firewalkers. Water vapor is a poor conductor of heat, and sweat from the feet of the firewalker may form an insulating layer, or leidenfrost, protecting the feet from burning. Therefore, there may be nothing paranormal about a person’s ability to walk on fire for reasonably short distances at a fast enough pace. Thus, a high degree of spiritual development may not be a prerequisite for successful firewalking, and so Hollywood celebrities and other “New Age” types need not balk at treading the coals.
Probably the most outlandish anecdotal case in the professional literature is David Read Barker’s claim to have witnessed a possible instance of weather control by a Tibetan shaman (Barker, 1979). This shaman was commissioned by the Dalai Lama to perform a rite designed to stop a huge storm long enough for a mourning ceremony to take place. The storm was reduced to an area of cold fog within a radius of 150 meters of the site of the ceremony, although the rain continued to pour elsewhere. Of course, this is an isolated observation, so a coincidence explanation cannot be ruled out.
While anthropological investigations have yielded tantalizing hints of dramatic phenomena such as Barker’s anecdotal report of weather-engineering, such studies have been sparse indeed. A more systematic effort may be needed to sort the wheat from the chaff in this area. Such an effort would of course cost money, and, given the present state of funding in parapsychology, it is not likely to happen soon.
Forteana
There are a wide variety of truly strange phenomena that are sometimes linked, albeit tangentially, with phenomena that form the subject matter of more “orthodox” parapsychology. These bizarre occurrences are sometimes designated “Forteana,” in honor of the early twentieth century paradoxer Charles Hoy Fort, who amassed a large catalogue of anomalies that seem to fly in the face of modern science. Forteana include such diverse subjects as UFOs, sightings of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, weeping statues, the Bermuda triangle, and spontaneous human combustion. While none of these topics have been given extensive consideration by mainstream parapsychologists, relationships between these phenomena and more typical psi phenomena have been drawn by several “fringe” writers. Therefore, for the sake of completeness (as well as the reader’s entertainment), a very brief discussion of Forteana is given in the paragraphs to follow, with an emphasis on the connections that have been alleged to exist between Forteana and the psi phenomena more typically studied by parapsychologists.
In cases of spontaneous human combustion, people are alleged to burst into flames for no apparent reason, with their bodies being more or less completely incinerated. While this might seem to be intimately related to the spontaneous ignition of fires that occur in some poltergeist cases, parapsychologists have shown remarkably little interest in spontaneous human combustion. A skeptical explanation of this phenomenon has been provided by Nickell and Fischer (1987), writing in the pages of The Skeptical Inquirer. In their view, many cases of ostensible spontaneous combustion death may be explained in terms of careless cigarette smoking by intoxicated persons of high body fat content. The body fat and the alcohol provide the fuel for the fire, with the body fat liquefying in what the authors colorfully term “the human candle effect.”
Paranormal phenomena are frequently linked with Christian saints and holy men (and women) of other religions; indeed, such phenomena often constitute the miracles prerequisite to the canonization of such saints. Among the psi phenomena that have been ascribed to Christian saints are the materialization of food, the ability to prophesy, bilocation, levitation (as in the famous cases of St. Joseph of Copertino and St. Teresa of Avila, both of whom were reported to frequently ascend into the air in fits of religious ecstasy), and immunity from the damaging effects of fire (see Rogo, 1981 and White, 1982, for a review of such phenomena). Schwarz (1980) has described cases of fire immunity, fire handling and apparent immunity from snakebites among Pentacostal worshippers, and Alvarado (1987) notes that luminous auras have often been reported around both saints and mediums.
Alvarado (1983) has also reported on a case in which faces kept appearing on a kitchen floor as well as on a mirror and on the hearth of a house. When the offending spot on the kitchen floor was cut out, bones were discovered under the site of the face. Not to be forgotten in this context is image of the Virgin Mary that recently manifested in a grilled cheese sandwich that fetched a price of $28,000 in an eBay auction. However, the human brain is hard-wired to detect human faces, and it seems that, whenever anything remotely resembling a human face appears, Marian enthusiasts interpret it as an image of the Blessed Virgin. In recounting the tale of the grilled cheese sandwich icon, Nickell (2005b) notes that the Virgin’s likeness has also appeared on a cinnamon bun in a coffee chop and that Jesus has appeared in a tortilla as well as in a giant forkful of spaghetti. Lest it be thought that divine appearances are restricted to food items, it should be noted that the Blessed Virgin has also recently manifested Herself in a salt stain on a highway overpass in Chicago (Associated Press, April 20, 2005).
The list goes on and on, and encompasses bleeding statues, sightings of the Virgin Mary, UFOs, Sasquatch, crop circles and cattle mutilations. It would take us too far afield to give a comprehensive review of such fields as ufology and cryptozoology here. Readers interested in such phenomena are invited to consult such specialty journals as the Journal of Scientific Exploration and The Skeptical Inquirer.
D. Scott Rogo (1977) hypothesized that many strange, seeming external and physically objective phenomena such as flying saucers and Bigfoot are really materialization phenomena or psychic projections that are produced by the minds of the observers themselves. As such, these would be analogous to the “thought forms” that are alleged to be projected by Tibetan shamans, as described by Alexandra David-Neel (1971). Because there is little in the way of scientifically rigorous evidence for the existence of materialization phenomena and because many of the cases that Rogo cited in support of his theory are of dubious credibility, the parapsychological community has been slow to embrace his theory.
General Summary of Field Investigations
The evidence discussed in this chapter has been largely of an anecdotal nature. A determined skeptic might be inclined to dismiss all of it on the basis of coincidence, unconscious inference, memory distortion, delusions, hallucinations and outright fraud. It is largely because of these counterexplanations that parapsychologists have turned to experimental investigations as the primary means of establishing the existence of psi phenomena and investigating their modus operandi. These investigations form the subject of the next chapter. It should be noted, however, that these experimental studies have themselves been subject to repeated attacks by skeptics on the basis of methodological errors, lack of repeatability, and possible experimenter fraud. Sometimes spontaneous case material may be more convincing than an array of experiments. I have talked to several skeptics who, while dismissing experimental investigations, were left with a nagging feeling that psi might be real after all due to their own personal psi experiences or those of their acquaintances.
A summary dismissal of the evidence from spontaneous cases as nonrigorous and hence unworthy of serious consideration is not appropriate. Not only may spontaneous cases provide unique insights into the operation of psi in naturalistic settings, which may not be obtainable from contrived and artificial experimental situations, but they may provide important clues as to possible productive lines of experimental investigation. Also, many skeptical counterexplanations of spontaneous cases are quite implausible. Thus, spontaneous cases form an important body of evidence for psi in their own right, and supplement the evidence obtained by experimental parapsychologists. A past president of the Parapsychological Association, Rhea White, has even gone so far as to urge the abandonment of the experimental approach in psi research in favor of the study of spontaneous cases (White, 1985, 1990). She has contended that reliance on statistical and laboratory methods may lead to a suppression of awareness of clues to the nature of psi arising from spontaneous experiences and informal practices, and she suggests adopting a “depth psychology” approach to the investigation of parapsychological phenomena. She has further contended that sounder data have arisen from surveys of spontaneous experiences than from unreliable laboratory effects. In all probability, however, it will take evidence of both types to convince a skeptical scientific community of the existence of psi. A total abandonment of the experimental approach would probably disqualify parapsychology from any claim to be a real science in the eyes of the scientific establishment. Experimental approaches must be an integral part of any science of parapsychology. It is to an examination of such laboratory studies that we now turn.
As noted in the last chapter, most parapsychologists have adopted the view that spontaneous cases cannot provide a “clean proof” of the existence of psi due to the various possible skeptical explanations of these cases, such as those invoking coincidence, delusion, unconscious inference and fraud. Therefore, they have turned to experimental approaches to establish the reality of psi effects. In the early days of parapsychology, such experiments typically involved attempts by human subjects to use their powers of extrasensory perception to discern the identity of a playing card hidden from their view or to use their psychokinetic abilities to influence the fall of mechanically thrown dice. When a subject is guessing a randomly selected card held in a separate room, the problems of sensory cues and unconscious inference are presumably removed. If contemporaneous records of the experiments are made, one need not rely on the fallible memory (or deceiving testimony) of the people involved, save of course for the experimenters themselves. Thus, the problems of memory distortion or fraudulent testimony on the part of informants in spontaneous cases are likewise eliminated when the experimental approach is adopted.
Perhaps the chief benefit of the experimental approach is its ability to deal with the objection that apparent cases of psi are simply due to coincidence. For instance, suppose an experiment is run in which a subject tries to guess in advance the outcomes of a series of tosses of an unbiased coin. If the subject guesses the outcomes of four tosses, his probability of getting them all right by chance may be easily computed. If a coin is tossed four times, one of the following events must occur:
|
HHHH |
HHHT |
HHTH |
HTHH |
THHH |
HHTT |
HTHT |
THHT |
|
HTTH |
THTH |
TTHH |
HTTT |
THTT |
TTHT |
TTTH |
TTTT |
(Here HHTH, for instance, denotes the event in which the coin comes up heads on the first, second and fourth tosses, while the third toss comes up tails.) As these events are all equally likely, the probability that the toss outcomes correspond exactly to the subject’s sequence of guesses is 1 in 16. In other words, the subject would be expected to obtain perfect success through sheer luck in about one out of every sixteen experiments. Similarly, if a subject guesses twenty-five flips of a coin and gets twenty of them right, standard statistical formulas may be applied to determine that the probability of guessing twenty or more flips correctly by chance is approximately .002. In other words, one would expect this level of success to occur in only two out of every thousand experiments by chance. As it would be unlikely that this level of success could be achieved through sheer luck (that is, in the absence of ESP), one would take the step of rejecting the “null hypothesis” (that the results can be ascribed to chance) and state that the results are significant at the .002 level, meaning that the probability of attaining such an extreme score by chance would be less than .002 in the absence of ESP. Similarly, if a person attempts to guess the order of the cards in a well-shuffled and hidden deck of ESP cards and guesses 13 of the cards correctly (as opposed to the five she would be expected to get right on the average by chance), the mathematical theory of probability can be invoked to show that this would happen in fewer than 1 in 10,000 such experiments by chance. We would conclude that it is very unlikely that we would have obtained such a result by chance unless we were to run thousands of such experiments.
The philosopher Francis Bacon was perhaps the first on record to suggest that psi phenomena could be investigated through the statistical analysis of card-guessing and dice-throwing experiments (Bell, 1956). Charles Richet of France (1884, 1888) was the first to initiate anything approaching an actual research program in this area, using card-guessing as a technique for investigating ESP. In the early part of the twentieth century, experimental studies of ESP involving the guessing of cards were performed by Leonard Troland and George Estabrooks at Harvard University and J. E. Coover at Stanford University (Troland, 1917; Coover, 1917; Estabrooks, 1927). Estabrooks’ very successful experiment was conducted while completing his doctorate under William McDougall, a prominent psychologist who had an interest in psychical research.
In 1927, McDougall moved to Duke University to assume the chairmanship of the psychology department. He was followed soon thereafter by an enthusiastic young psychical researcher, J. B. Rhine, and his wife, Louisa. During the academic year 1929-1930, Rhine began his program of experimental research on psi phenomena. This program eventually evolved into the sustained and continuous research tradition that has become known as experimental parapsychology. For this reason, Rhine is usually regarded as the founder of the field of parapsychology (in the sense of the experimental study of psi phenomena). Rhine in fact was responsible for the adoption of the name “parapsychology” to describe his field of inquiry, although it should be noted that Max Dessoir (1889) in Germany was the first to use the term “parapsychologie” to describe the investigation of the “border” region between normal and abnormal psychological states. Rhine can, however, lay sole claim to coining the term “extrasensory perception,” or ESP, to describe the receptive form of psi (as opposed to psychokinesis, the alleged ability of mind to influence matter directly and without involvement of the motor apparatus of the body).
Rhine’s initial methods for investigating ESP relied heavily on the standard “ESP cards,” which were designed for Rhine by the Duke perceptual psychologist Karl Zener. (This deck was known for a long time as the “Zener deck,” somewhat to the consternation of Zener, who later abandoned parapsychological research for work in more mainstream and less controversial areas of psychology.) The ESP deck consists of 25 cards, with five cards representing each of the following five symbols: circle, star, cross, square and wavy lines. When a subject guesses the order of the cards in a well-shuffled ESP deck, he has a one-fifth chance of guessing any particular card correctly, and it can be shown mathematically that the average score he would expect to achieve by chance is five correct guesses.
In 1934, at the suggestion of a young gambler, Rhine began to investigate psychokinesis (PK), using dice as target objects. Initially, Rhine investigated the ability of human subjects to influence dice to roll in such a way that a given “target” face would come up. Later, other investigators had subjects attempt to influence the direction or speed of mechanically thrown dice so that they come to rest at specific target locations. Such tests became known as “placement tests.” Because of the controversy surrounding his ESP results, Rhine withheld publication of his PK research until 1943.
In the modern era, the targets of psychokinetic influence have expanded to include living organisms, red blood cells, thermistors, and quantum-mechanically based random event generators (REGs). REGs have also been used to generate ESP targets. In ESP research, there has been a move in the direction away from forced-choice experiments (in which the subject’s response on each trial is restricted to a finite set of specified alternatives, as in guessing a deck of ESP cards) and toward free-response experiments, in which a subject is free to describe his impression of the target in any manner he chooses.
A free-response methodology is employed in modern ganzfeld experiments, in which a subject is typically seated in a comfortable chair with ping-pong balls placed over his eyes to produce a uniform visual field. Frequently, white or “pink” noise played in the subject’s ears to produce a homogeneous form of auditory stimulation as well.
The subject may then try to describe a target picture that is being viewed by a human sender or agent, this target having been randomly selected from a target pool consisting of, say, four potential target pictures. The subject or an outside judge then ranks the pictures in the target pool against the subject’s descriptions. Obviously, given the random nature of the target selection, the probability that the subject’s description will be matched against the correct target by chance is one-fourth.
Other examples of free-response experiments include remote viewing studies, in which a subject attempts to describe the location to which a human sender has been sent, and dream studies, in which a subject’s dream reports are matched against, say, art prints viewed by a human sender attempting to influence the subject’s dream.
Forced-choice Experiments
Perhaps the foremost forced-choice ESP experiment performed in the heyday of the card-guessing era of Rhine’s early research group at Duke University was the Pearce-Pratt series conducted on the Duke campus during the 1933-1934 academic year (Rhine & Pratt, 1954). In this experiment, the subject, a divinity student named Hubert Pearce, attempted to guess the identity of cards held in a separate building by J. G. Pratt, a graduate student in psychology. In each session, the men would synchronize their watches, and then Pearce would leave for a cubicle in the stacks of the library. Pratt then shuffled a deck of ESP cards and placed one card face down each minute on a book on a table in his building, which was either the Physics Building (100 yards distant from the library) or the Medical Building (250 yards distant). Pearce attempted to guess the identity of the card located on the book at the specified time. Two decks were guessed per session. In all, 1850 cards were guessed, and Pearce averaged 7.54 cards guessed correctly per deck, where 5 would be expected by chance. These results were significant at the p < 10-22 level, meaning that this level of success would occur by chance fewer than once in 10 sextillion such experiments. Clearly chance coincidence cannot account for these results, and they have been taken as strong evidence of ESP.
A more modern form of forced-choice experiment was pioneered by physicist Helmut Schmidt (1969) in his study of the precognition of radioactive decay, a quantum process that is in principle unpredictable under modern theories of physics. Schmidt’s study relied on a type of quantum-mechanically based REG that has since become known as a “Schmidt machine” and is now a widely-used and basic tool in parapsychological research. With Schmidt’s original machine, the subject was confronted with an array of four differently colored light bulbs. The subject’s task was to guess which bulb on the display was going to be the next to light up. The subject signaled his or her guess by pushing a button in front of the chosen bulb. During this process, an electronic counter was constantly cycling through the values 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4… at the rate of a million steps a second. After the subject pressed a button indicating his or her guess, the counter stopped when a Geiger counter detected a decay electron emitted from a sample of strontium 90 and the corresponding lamp was lit. The subject’s task could thus be construed as one of predicting the time of future radioactive decay of a strontium 90 atom to within an accuracy of a millionth of a second. (However, more plausibly from a psychological and sensory-motor point of view, the subjects were simply foreseeing which lamp would be lit.) The subjects’ guesses and the lamps actually lit were automatically recorded on counters and punch tape, eliminating the possibility of directional errors by human recorders. Extensive randomness tests were run on the REG to ensure that its output was indeed random. In Schmidt’s first experiment, three subjects made a total of 63,066 guesses and scored 691.5 more hits than they would have been expected to by chance. This level of success could be achieved through sheer luck in only two out of every billion such experiments. In a confirmation study, Schmidt had the subjects attempt to achieve high scores in some prespecified trials and low scores in others. 20,000 trials were run, and the subjects obtained 401 more hits (in the prespecified direction) than they would have been expected to by chance. Results this good would occur by chance only once in 10 billion such experiments.
Free-Response Experiments
In free-response experiments, the target is generally not chosen from a small pool of targets known to the subject, but instead may be drawn from a small pool of targets that is unknown to the subject at the time of the trial. Much more rarely, the target may be created uniquely for each trial. The subject in turn does not simply select a guess corresponding to one of a fixed number of alternatives, but rather describes her impressions of the target, which may be in the form of dreams, visual imagery, or a free-association monologue. The subject typically uses verbal descriptions or drawings to communicate these impressions.
Some of the earliest free-response experiments involved the telepathic transmission of drawings (e.g., Sinclair, 1930/1962; Warcollier, 1948/1963). In these studies, the sender, or agent, generally constructed a drawing and the percipient attempted to draw a picture corresponding to the sketch made by the agent. In these early studies, some very striking correspondences were obtained, even when the sender and the percipient were located on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. However, as the targets were not selected randomly from a fixed set of alternatives, statistical evaluation of these correspondences proved difficult and a quantitative estimate of the probability that these similarities between the agent’s drawings and the percipient’s impressions would arise by chance could not be obtained, despite the subjectively striking nature of these correspondences.
The most commonly used techniques in modern free-response experiments are the ganzfeld and remote-viewing procedures. A highly successful series of remote-viewing trials was conducted in the late 1970s by the team of Targ and Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute (Puthoff & Targ, 1979; Targ & Puthoff, 1977; Targ, Puthoff & May, 1979). To give the reader the flavor of the remote-viewing procedure, a single trial from a five-trial long-distance series will be described. Unlike most of Targ and Puthoff’s trials, the target was not chosen randomly but rather was selected by a skeptical scientist. The scientist then took the remote-viewing team to the target site, which was a series of underground chambers in Ohio Caverns in Springfield, Ohio, which were filled with stalagmites and stalactites. The subject remained behind in New York City and was told only that the remote-viewing team was located somewhere between New York City and California. After the remote-viewing team had spent 45 minutes touring the caverns, the skeptical scientist then called the subject in New York, whereupon a transcript of the subject’s impression of the target area was read to him. The opening passage of the transcript was as follows:
1:50 PM before starting—Flat semiindustrial countryside with mountain range in background and something to do with underground caves or mines or deep shafts—half manmade, half natural—some electric humming going on—throbbing, inner throbbing. Nuclear or some very far out and possibly secret installation—corridor—mazes of them—whole underground city almost—Don’t like it at all—long for outdoors and nature. 2:00 PM—[Experimenters] R and H walking along sunny road—entering into arborlike shaft—again looks like man helped nature—vines (wisteria) growing in arch at entrance like to a wine cellar—leading into underground world. Darker earth-smelling cool moist passage with something grey and of interest on the left of them—musty—sudden change to bank of elevators—a very manmade [sic] steel wall—and shaft-like inserted silo going below earth—brightly lit (Targ, Puthoff & May, 1979, p. 88).
The above correspondence is of course quite impressive. But it is important that targets in free-response experiments be chosen randomly (as they were in most of Targ and Puthoff’s research). For instance, a depressing global event (or increasing sunspot activity, etc.) may have caused both the skeptical scientist and the percipient in this experiment to be in a gloomy mood, and that may account for both the scientist’s selection of a dark underground cave as a target area and for the percipient’s descriptions.
In the early 1970s, Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner conducted an experimental study of “dream telepathy” at the New York Maimonides Medical Center (Ullman, Krippner & Vaughn, 1973). This research employed a fully-equipped sleep laboratory and was designed to investigate the possibility that a subject’s dreams could incorporate elements of an art print chosen as an ESP target. The subject went to sleep in the laboratory, with the usual EEG electrodes affixed to his head. He was then awakened toward the end of each rapid eye movement (REM) period, which is known to be associated with dreaming, and asked to give a dream report. Several such reports would be elicited from a given subject in a typical night. The art print to serve as the ESP target was randomly chosen from a set of possible targets. A person who served as sender or “agent” then attempted to “send” the picture to the sleeping subject, so that the latter might incorporate the target material into his or her dream. Usually, one art print served as the target for an entire night. After the subject’s sleep period was concluded, the subject’s dream reports were compared to the target as well as to a set of control art prints, which served as foils. The pictures were then ranked as to degree of correspondence with the dream reports, both by the subject and by outside judges. In several series, the foil pictures consisted of the remaining targets in a small target pool from which the actual target was chosen. Some subjects obtained highly successful results. For instance, a woman named Felicia Parise obtained 34 “direct hits” (meaning that the target picture was rated first among the pictures in an eight-target pool in terms of correspondence with the subject’s dream) out of 66 trials, as determined by her own ratings of the targets. Only 8.25 direct hits would be expected by chance, so this is a clearly significant result. Strangely enough, the independent judges gave Ms. Parise only nine direct hits (about what would be expected by chance). Another subject, Dr. Robert van de Castle, himself a dream researcher, spent eight nights in the laboratory as a subject and scored a “hit” (target print ranked in the top half of the eight-target pool) on each night by his own evaluations. The independent judges gave him only six hits, but five of these were direct hits, where only one direct hit would be expected by chance. Many other subjects were less successful.
Sometimes rather striking correspondences between the target print and the subject’s dream were obtained. For instance, on one night the art print chosen as target was Goya’s “The Duelers,” which portrays two Spaniards engaged in a duel with swords. One of the participants has succeeded in making a thrust into the other’s abdomen. The first dream report of the subject, Dr. Robyn Posin, a psychologist, was as follows:
[I was] in the office of a man who is sort of waiting for this woman to arrive. He’s actually … talking about her in the sense that the venom and anger that I experience in him is reserved for her … And he has this thing that’s like a bullwhip … and he hits the wall with the whip and makes a crack … and then thinks of a woman. There was something very impotent about this man’s rage … It wasn’t a bullwhip that he had, it was really a cat-o’-nine tails … It had its origins … in Spain … It was a very frightening experience (Ullman, Krippner & Vaughn, 1973, p. 131).
The researchers go on to report that
In her seventh dream, she was at a Black Muslim rally. “They were really raging, and all of a sudden some doors from an auditorium opened and out came Elijah Mohammed and a bunch of his followers … He had on this huge flaming torch with which to set some more stuff on fire, and I got very scared.” Her associations to this were “It was like a real chaos scene … the terrorism, that same kind of lack of control, I guess, that seemed to me to be anger and hostility and acting out in it … It’s some sort of conflagration, either symbolically or realistically … something rather violent” (Ullman, Krippner & Vaughn, 1973, p. 131).
Subconscious Psi
The above experimental procedures are aimed at detecting the conscious use of psi. In the past few years, there have been an increasing number of experimental investigations of the unconscious or subconscious detection of psi signals. For instance, McDonough, Don and Warren (2002) ran an experiment in which the subject attempted to guess which of four playing cards sequentially presented on a video monitor had been selected as the ESP target. They found a greater amplitude of slow wave brain potential 150-500 milliseconds after the target card was presented compared to that following the control cards.
Similarly, Satori, Massaccesi, Martinelli, and Tressoldi (2004) found subjects’ heart rates were accelerated when the ESP target picture was presented compared to the heart rates when the nontarget pictures were presented. This effect occurred even though the subjects’ scores on the conscious ESP guessing task did not differ significantly from chance.
Radin (1997b, 2003, 2004) has carried out a series of studies in which he found that subject’s heart rates and electrodermal activity (a measure of stress, anxiety or excitement) increased prior to the presentation of emotional pictures when compared to the same time periods prior to the presentation of control pictures. Across all four or Radin’s studies, this effect was statistically significant at the .001 level. Radin terms this effect “presentiment.” It would appear to be a case of subconscious precognition, manifested in physiological activity rather than in the subjects’ consciousnesses. Radin (1997a) attributes Libet’s finding that a widespread buildup in brain potential precedes the conscious experience of a voluntary decision to initiate a finger movement (Libet, 1991a) as a presentiment “presponse” (as opposed to “response”) of the brain’s own decision-making.
In a similar vein, May and Spottiswoode have found an increased startle response (as measured by skin conductance) in three-second epochs (time periods) prior to a startling stimulus (a blast of white noise) relative to control trials in which no startling stimulus was presented (May & Spottiswoode, 2003; Spottiswoode & May, 2003).
Darryl Bem, a prominent social psychologist, has devoted much of the past ten years of his career to parapsychological research. Bem (2003) has recently conducted an experiment in which he presented pairs of positively-valenced (i.e., pleasant) pictures and pairs of negatively-valenced (unpleasant) pictures to human subjects. He asked the subjects which picture of the pair they preferred. Then one picture from each pair was chosen as the target and these targets were then subliminally presented to the subject. Bem found that subjects presented with a pair of positively-valenced pictures preferred the picture that would not be chosen as the target and that subjects presented with pairs of negatively-valenced pictures preferred the picture that would be chosen as the target. Bem attributes his results to “precognitive habituation,” postulating that the repeated subliminal exposure in the future diminished the subject’s affective responses to the targets in the present (i.e., both the positive and negative targets became more neutral in comparison to the nontarget pictures). In short, repeated subliminal exposures of the picture in the future diminished the subject’s emotional/aesthetic responses in the present. Bem also found a precognitive habituation effect for targets that were supraliminally presented to the subject (i.e., the subjects could perceive the pictures consciously), but only for negatively-valenced pictures.
As with most lines of parapsychological research, these results have not been universally replicable. For instance, Broughton (2004) failed to replicate Radin’s “presentiment studies.” Broughton also reported a very poor test-retest reliability score, indicating that his subjects failed to manifest a consistent psi effect. Similarly, Sarra, Child and Smith (2004) failed to replicate Bem’s “precognitive habituation” effect using pictures of spiders as the negatively valenced targets.
PK Tests - “Micro-PK”
PK tests may be divided into roughly two types: “micro-PK” tests, in which the evidence for PK is primarily based on deviations from statistical distributions expected by chance (such as those governing the fall of dice) and “macro-PK” tests, in which the subject attempts to create a macrophysical change in the target object (such as by bending a spoon).
In the early days of parapsychology, dice typically served as the target objects in micro-PK experiments. In the modern era, quantum-mechanically based random event generators (REGs) and living systems have been the most frequently used target objects.
In one typical experiment involving animals as subjects, Schmidt (1970) enclosed his pet cat in a cold shack. In the shack was a 200-watt lamp, which served as a source of heat for the cat. Once each second, a quantum-mechanically based REG of the type described previously sent either an “on” or “off” signal to the lamp. The REG was designed in such a way that the probability of an “on” signal was 50 percent. Thus, the cat could obtain more heat by using its psychokinetic abilities to influence the REG to output more “on” signals than would be expected by chance. In fact, in 9000 trials, 4,615 “on” signals were generated, indicating that the cat may have used its PK to increase the probability of an “on” signal from 50 percent to 51.2 percent, admittedly a very slight increase, but one which would occur by chance in only eight of a thousand such experiments. To check the randomness of the generator, Schmidt ran the REG over a period of 24 nights without the cat in the shack and found no departures from chance levels in a total of 691,200 signals generated.
In a similar experiment Peoc’h (1995) placed a robot mother whose ambulations were determined by the output of an REG in the vicinity of a group of young chicks. The chicks were able to influence the output of the REG in such a way that the robot mother spent more time in close proximity to the chicks than would be expected by chance.
Some micro-PK experiments are designed to detect a psychokinetic influence on living organisms. For instance, Braud (1979) conducted a study in which human subjects attempted to influence the spatial orientation of a knife fish (Gymnotus carapo). The fish generates its own electrical field, which Braud monitored through two parallel copper plates placed in the fish’s tank. When the fish swam parallel to the plates, a weak signal was recorded; the signal became stronger as the fish rotated its position to become perpendicular to the plates. The human subject’s task was to increase the strength of these signals during certain time periods designated as conformance epochs. The strength of this signal was then compared with that generated in other time periods that served as controls. The signal was found to be stronger during the conformance epochs than during the control epochs, indicating that the subjects were successful in influencing the fish to adopt an orientation perpendicular to the plates.
In recent years, there has been a flurry of research reports relating to the effects of global consciousness on the output of REGs. Specifically, it is asserted that events that produce a state of widespread excitement through the world (or smaller region), resulting in a coherent state of consciousness involving many individuals, are associated with the anomalous behavior of REGs. One research initiative to study this phenomenon is called the Global Consciousness Project (GCP) and involves the continuous monitoring several REGs paced at different locations around the world.
Radin (2002) reported that the GCP REGs showed a high degree of correlation in their behavior on September 11, 2001 (the day of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center) as well as on other days involving major news events over a 250 day-period. Similarly, Nelson (2002) reports that the behavior REGs at 40 host sites became more correlated with one another at the time of the September 11 attack, with this effect being statistically significant at the 10-7 level. He notes that some global events are accompanied by the anomalous behavior of REGs, while others are not (e.g., widespread flooding in Nicaragua resulting from the collapse of the Casaitas volcano). It should, however, be noted that Scargle (2002) has criticized both Radin and Nelson for reporting exploratory analyses as if they were preplanned and for “lying with statistics” by presenting misleading graphs.
Hirukawa and Ishikawa (2002) report evidence of anomalous deviations in the output of an REG toward the end of the Aomori-Nebuta summer festival in Japan.
Experiments on the effects of global consciousness on the behavior of REGs in fact predate the September 11, 2001 tragedy. Radin, Rebman and Mackwe (1996) report evidence for increased variance in the output of an REG during times of high group coherence in a Breathwork workshop, but no increased variance during times of low group coherence. Radin et al. also report a correlation in the outputs of two REGs separated by 12 miles during the first half of the broadcast of the 67th annual Academy Awards. This correlation declined in the second half of the broadcast, as did the television audience, and the strength of the correlation was significantly related to the decline in the size of the television audience.
Bierman (1996) found an increased variance in the output of an REG during time periods in which disturbances occurred in a poltergeist case in the Netherlands. He also reports deviations in the output of an REG during the time of a soccer match between the Dutch and Italian teams. The REG’s behavior returned to normal after the winning score by the Dutch team with two minutes left in the game.
Nelson, Bradish, Dobyns, Dunne and Jahn (1996) report significant deviations in the output of an REG during periods of high attention, intellectual cohesiveness, and shared emotions of a discussion group. In a review of 61 field REG experiments, Nelson, Jahn, Dunne, Dobyns and Bradish (1998) report highly significant deviations from chance expectation in REG output during intense emotional events during small group interactions, but no such deviations during times of less emotional events. In a recent summary of this line of research, Jahn and Dunne (2005) state that in general, they have found high deviations from the distribution of REG outputs expected by chance at times of highly cohesive events producing “resonance,” but low deviations from chance during time of more “mundane” events.
Of course, it is difficult to see why a coherent state of group consciousness should have an effect on the behavior of an REG that is otherwise not connected to the group. As Palmer (1997) points out, the success of these “field REG” experiments is more likely due to psi influence by the experimenter, who has a vested interest in the experiment’s outcome than to psi influence by the group members, who are generally not focusing on, and in many instances are unaware of, the REG.
PK Tests - “Macro-PK”
The subject of macro-PK is much more problematic. Macro-PK, which may involve the bending of metal specimens, the ostensibly paranormal production of images on photographic film, or the movement of small objects across the surface of a table, usually involves special subjects having the status of semiprofessional psychics. Because the psychic himself to a large extent determines the nature of the phenomena he may produce and the conditions under which he feels comfortable in producing them, the investigator does not have the same control over the experimental procedure that she would have in a micro-PK experiment instigated and designed by herself. In fact, in macro-PK research, experimental procedures and conditions often must be negotiated with the psychic if he is to perform at all. Consequently, proper procedures are much less well-defined in macro-PK research than they are in micro-PK research. As most special macro-PK subjects are suspected of, and accused of, fraud by skeptical scientists and writers, the suspicion arises that these psychics will not perform unless they have succeeded in negotiating conditions and procedures that will allow them to produce the alleged macro-PK phenomena fraudulently. Thus, there is considerable debate, both within and outside the parapsychological community, over the adequacy of the methods and safeguards taken in macro-PK research. In fact, several macro-PK subjects have indeed been detected in fraud, as will be discussed in greater detail in the section on subject fraud below.
Separation of Psi Modalities
In the beginnings of experimental parapsychology, it was thought possible to separate psi abilities into several component subtypes: telepathy (the ability to read the mind of another person or being, usually assumed to involve direct contact between minds at the mental, rather than physical, level), clairvoyance (the paranormal ability to acquire information directly from objects, such as when a subject is able to identify a card which has been hidden in a container and whose identity is known to no one at the time), precognition (the ability to foretell events that are yet to happen), retrocognition (the direct paranormal knowledge of past events), and psychokinesis (the ability of mind to influence matter directly). To this list could be added retroactive psychokinesis, the rather outlandish ability to influence events that have already occurred in the past. This seemingly implausible psi power was first proposed to exist by Helmut Schmidt (1975a, 1975b, 1984), who has since gone on to amass a considerable amount of experimental data in its support (see Schmidt , 1976, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1993; Terry & Schmidt, 1978; Gruber, 1980; Schmidt, Morris & Rudolph, 1986; and Schmidt & Schlitz, 1988). In a typical retroactive-PK experiment, a subject may be asked to use his mental abilities to increase the rate at which one of two lights comes on. Unknown to the subject, the behavior of the lights is governed by the output of a random event generator (REG) of the “Schmidt machine” type that was generated two weeks previously. Thus, the subject’s covert task is to extend his PK influence backward in time to influence the behavior of the REG two weeks in the past. Schmidt has actually provided a fairly plausible account of why such retroactive PK effects might be expected to occur, based on his reading of quantum mechanics. Schmidt, along with many other theorists, believes that the outcome of a quantum process does not take on a definite value until it is observed by a conscious being (even if a considerable period of time elapses before the observation takes place).
Separation of Types
Precognition. Early on in parapsychology, it became apparent that it was difficult to establish the existence of any of these pure forms of psi in a definitive manner. For instance, in Schmidt’s four-button precognition experiment, instead of using precognition to guess the identity of the correct lamp, the subject may rather be pushing a button and then using her psychokinesis to cause the correct lamp to light up.
Recently, Steinkamp (2003, submitted) has attempted to test PK counterexplanations of the evidence for precognition by conducting an experiment in which an ESP target was determined through a complex calculation involving future closing prices of stocks. Her experiment failed to produce statistically signification evidence of precognition, which she took as evidence that precognition does not exist; however, the results of her nonprecognitive ESP control trials also failed to be statistically significant. Thus, her experiment failed to produce any evidence of psi scoring at all. As critics of parapsychology are fond of pointing out, it is impossible to “prove” a negative hypothesis such as the nonexistence of precognition. To use William James’ favorite example, no number of black crows can falsify the hypothesis that white crows exist, and one white crow would establish the truth of that hypothesis. (Even an exhaustive search of the terrestrial avian population may not suffice for a determined believer who may respond by postulating the existence of extragalactic white crows.) Thus, Steinkamp’s negative evidence does not disprove the existence of precognition (or of ESP in general for that matter).
Steinkamp’s experiment is based on the argument that stock market data would be impervious to psychokinetic manipulation due to the large number of persons with a vested interest in the behavior of stock prices, whose own PK efforts would be expected to overwhelm those of Steinkamp’s subjects.
While this argument might have much validity regarding the rise and fall of the prices of individual stocks, it is not clear that the general public has a vested interest in the outcome of a complex mathematical manipulation of the closing prices of several stocks to select a target from a target pool. Also, parapsychologists have generally found the strength of psi effects to be unrelated to the complexity of the target systems (see Stanford, 1978; Schmidt, 1984; and Foster, 1940). What would be needed to settle this issue is an experiment to see if subjects can subtly manipulate the collective behavior of stocks through PK to produce a desired outcome in regard to target selection.
In designing her experiment, Steinkamp followed the thought of her mentor Robert Morris, who held the Koestler Chair in parapsychology at Edinburgh University up until the time of his recent death and was responsible in large part for the growth in European parapsychology over the past two decades. Morris (1982) argued that experiments that have used complex procedures to determine an entry point into a random number table to generate the targets for a precognition experiment, such as the complex procedure using 10-sided dice used by Mangan (1955) or Nash’s use of stock market data (Nash, 1960) provide a strong suggestion that “true precognition” exists. However, as noted above, in view of the task-complexity independence and goal-orientation of ostensible PK phenomena, it may be premature to assert that such systems are not susceptible to PK influence on the basis of their complexity.
Perhaps, at this stage of the game, the best evidence for pure precognition comes from cases of spontaneous psi. Even in this regard, Tanagras (1967) has argued that all cases suggestive of precognition can be explained away on the basis of psychokinetic induction of the precognized event. Thus, a woman harboring an unconscious death wish against her husband may dream of her husband’s dying in a car crash and then use her psychokinetic powers to cause the accident itself. Similarly, Eisenbud (1982a) proposed that all instances of ostensible precognition may be explained in terms of forward causal chains (in which causes precede their effects in time). Such explanations might involve unconscious inferences, psychokinetic influences and “real time” telepathic interactions between the parties involves. Mundle (1964) has also expressed a preference for explanations of precognitive experiences that employ only forward causal chains, primarily on the basis of what he perceives as insurmountable difficulties with multidimensional models of time (about which more will be said in the next chapter).
Many parapsychologists reject PK-based counterexplanations of cases of ostensible precognition on the basis that some cases on record involve mine collapses, plane crashes, tornados, and other events that make Carrie’s high school prom look like an idyllic class picnic in comparison. They argue that, aside from these precognition cases there is little evidence that events of such a magnitude can be produced through psychokinesis. However, in making his case against precognition, Eisenbud asserted that no limitations on PK influence should be assumed. With respect to the experimental evidence for precognition, Targ and Harary (1984) cite the fact that scoring rates are typically not as high in successful PK experiments as they are in successful precognition experiments as evidence against the hypothesis that the experimental evidence for precognition can be explained on the basis of psychokinesis.
Telepathy. There is a similar difficulty in separating telepathy (direct mind to mind interaction) from clairvoyance (direct knowledge of a target object). For instance, in a telepathy experiment in which a percipient attempts to guess what card a sender is looking at, it is quite possible that the percipient may use her clairvoyant powers to read the card directly rather than reading the mind of the sender. Alternatively, if the sender is merely thinking of a card, the identity of which he will announce later, the percipient might use precognitive clairvoyance to access whatever physical record of the target is later made. Also, even if a seemingly pure test of telepathy could be devised, any alleged telepathy on the part of the percipient could be interpreted as clairvoyant perception of the brain state of the agent. Such considerations led J. B. Rhine (1974) to call the existence of telepathy an “untestable hypothesis” and to recommend that the problem of proving the existence of pure telepathy be “shelved.” Also, the experimental evidence for ESP is confronted by counterexplanations in terms of PK in the same way that the experimental evidence for precognition is.
PK. It is also possible that much of the evidence for PK, especially that arising from micro-PK experiments with REGs as targets, might be explained in terms of precognition. Specifically, consider Schmidt’s experiment with his cat and its heater lamp, as described above (Schmidt, 1970). Rather than assuming that the excess of “on” signals is due to the cat’s PK abilities, it might be argued that Schmidt used his precognitive ability to initiate the experiment (e.g., by pushing a button) at the precise time that a series containing an excess of “on” signals was about to be generated. As evidence that the experimental evidence for PK can be explained on the basis of such psi-mediated “decision augmentation,” May, Utts and Spottiswoode (1995) cite the fact that the statistical significance levels in reported PK experiments with REGs as targets do not increase with the number of trials in the experiment. (Normally, one would expect that, if the subject’s PK scoring rate is constant, this would result in an increased level of statistical significance. For instance, while there is a 3% chance that 53% of more of 1000 flips of a fair coin will come up “heads,” there is only one chance in a billion that 53% or more of 10,000 coin flips will come up “heads.” This is known as “the law of large numbers” in statistics: the greater the number of trials, the less likely it is that one could achieve a given above-chance scoring rate by “sheer luck.”) Thus, May et al. construe the fact that the statistical significance of PK experiments does not increase with the number of trials as evidence against a PK influence on the part of the subjects.
The lack of dependence of the statistical significance level on the number of trials is certainly evidence against the hypothesis that subjects’ PK scoring rates per trial will be the same no matter what the number of trials. However, it is not inconceivable that subjects may tire with increasing numbers of trials or may not be able to devote full attention to each trial if the number of trials per unit of time is increased (as is often the case with large sample PK experiments).
It should be noted that Dobyns and Nelson (1998) have examined the database of PK trials compiled at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratories and have found the results to be compatible with the constant PK scoring rate hypothesis in that statistical significance does increase with increasing numbers of trials. Similarly, Ibsen (1998) found that PK scoring rates did not differ significantly between 200 binary trials and 2 million binary trials, contradicting May et. al’s “decision augmentation theory.”
However, Pallikari (2004), in a largely graphical analysis of the results of PK tests with random event generators, found that the size of the obtaining hitting rate declined with the square root of the number of trials, as would be predicted by May et al.’s “decision augmentation theory.” Pallikari further found that that the reported odds against the effects being due to chance were generally less than 1 in 100 million, whereas if the effects were due to a constant PK-hitting rate, the odds would be expected to increase without bounds as the number of trials increases. Pallikari proposes this as a type of “ceiling” on the level of significance that can be obtained in a single PK-REG experiment. Pallikari also contends that the existing evidence indicates that human subjects can create a “broadening” in the hit rates produced in single experiments but cannot impose a specific hit rate over multiple trials. Pallikari notes that human PK influences act to increase the numbers of runs of hits or misses within an experimental series, which will tend to balance out to chance expectation over a long series of runs.
The debate over May et. al’s “decision augmentation theory” is by no means resolved and is an active area of investigation at the present time.
Means of Resolution. Because of the difficulty of obtaining an experimental separation of the various types of psi phenomena, the parapsychologists Robert Thouless and B. P. Wiesner suggested adopting the neutral term “psi” to designate parapsychological phenomena of unspecified type (Wiesner & Thouless, 1942; Thouless & Wiesner, 1948). They further suggested that psi might be broken into psi-gamma, the receptive type of psi seen in clairvoyance, telepathy and precognition experiments, and psi-kappa, the active type of psi generally seen in PK experiments (although as we have just seen, it may be difficult to distinguish between these two types of ability in practice). The British psychologist John Beloff (1979b) has argued for the retention of the traditional categories of psi in general and of telepathy in particular. Beloff feels that interpretations of phenomena suggestive of telepathy in terms of clairvoyance of brain states is questionable, as it is doubtful that a person could interpret the idiosyncratic “neural code” employed by another person’s brain.
Parapsychologists continue to use terms such as precognition, clairvoyance and psychokinesis in describing their own experimental procedures, but these typically refer to the experimental task as described to the subject rather than implying that a particular set of experimental results is definitely due to, say, precognition rather than PK.
Criticisms of Parapsychological Research
We will now turn to an examination of the controversies surrounding experimental work in parapsychology, the lessons that may be learned from them regarding proper methodology and the reasons for the continuing resistance of the scientific establishment to experimental psi research.
Irrational motives. Before plunging into a discussion of the various “rational” criticisms that have been made of experimental methodology such as charges of statistical and methodological errors in psi research and allegations of fraud by subjects or experimenters, it may be instructive to consider first the possible irrational thought processes that may account for the fact that some people seem to rush to embrace a belief in psi phenomena while other people summarily dismiss the possibility that psi phenomena may exist, often before examining the evidence for such phenomena. The irrational bases for both belief and disbelief in psi may include emotional and religious motives, metaphysical prejudices and the various types of illogical reasoning that often underlie the formation of attitudes in general.
To begin with, at least some skeptics have indeed manifested a fairly closed-minded and prejudiced attitude against psi research. The reader will recall from Chapter 0 the quotations from the eminent psychologist Donald Hebb and the equally eminent physicist Hermann von Helmholtz that no amount of evidence would suffice to convince them of the existence of psi phenomena.
In part, this rejection is based on the perception that the existence of psi phenomena would be incompatible with known scientific principles. Certainly it is true that it would be hard to explain ESP and PK on the basis of currently understood physical processes. This does not, however, imply that psi phenomena are necessarily in conflict with any known laws of physics (except perhaps for certain types of psychokinetic phenomena). In fact, not only are many of the theories proposed by parapsychologists to account for psi compatible with known scientific principles, a large number of them are even based on such principles (these theories will be discussed more completely in the next chapter). It is probably true that the ultimate explanation of psi phenomena will require the postulation of new entities or processes that are not part of current scientific theories, but this does not mean that psi phenomena need violate any established law of science, as will be made clear in the succeeding chapter. In this light, the (a priori) resistance of orthodox scientists may be based more on a desire for closure or a tendency to see the work of science as being completed than on any real logical contradiction between psi phenomena and established theories.
With such a desire on the part of some scientists to see the picture of the world constructed by science as finished and final, it is not surprising that there is antagonism toward psi phenomena, with their implication that current scientific pictures of the world are incomplete. This “principle of closure” was recognized by the Gestalt psychologists as a common psychological tendency arising from the pressure to achieve a solution to a problem-solving task. One way a person may reduce such psychological pressure is to enter a state of premature closure, in which the problem is viewed as having been solved when in fact it has not been. This tendency toward closure is illustrated in comments by the biologist Sidney Fox, who argues that, if new laws are required to explain the emergence of life, then they lie “outside the realm of science” (Fox, 1988, p. 45). Fox thus equates science with established scientific theories rather than with the process of scientific discovery.
Religious motives. There is no doubt that the same psychological needs that promote belief in various religions (including desires for control over the elements, knowledge of the future, protection from natural forces and the vagaries of chance, power over disease, and a life after death) are also responsible for the widespread belief in parapsychological phenomena. Modern science has discredited naive and literal interpretations of many religions, and for many people parapsychology fills the void thus created. Parapsychology not only has all the accouterments of science itself but also promises to satisfy most of the psychological needs underlying religious belief through its alleged demonstration of such paranormal phenomena as psychokinesis, precognition, psychic healing, and the survival of death.
Religious motivations and a desire to overthrow what they regarded as the depressing mechanistic cosmology proposed by nineteenth-century science formed an explicit and openly acknowledged part of the motivations of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R.) in late nineteenth century Britain. Prominent among these concerns was unquestionably the fact of death with its promise of total annihilation of the human personality. This great concern of the early psychical researchers with the problem of the survival of death was undoubtedly in part attributable to the biological instinct for survival as well as a desire to be reunited with lost loved ones. As noted in Chapter 0, this fear of death arises in part from the identification of oneself with the Person (the physical body conjoined with the collection of memories, motives and emotions that comprise one’s personality) rather than a potentially recyclable field of pure consciousness.
It is well known, for example, that the public’s interest in mediums and seances, with their offer of a chance to communicate with deceased loved ones, tends to increase markedly during and after times of great tragedy, such as world wars. As psi phenomena seemed to contradict the exclusively materialistic outlook of nineteenth century physics and to point to a mental realm over and above the physical world, they were readily embraced by persons seeking scientific support for the concept of a spiritual realm. Indeed, as recently as 1982, upon the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the S.P.R., the prominent British parapsychologist John Beloff (1983) asserted in his presidential address to the Parapsychological Association that the survival of death was contingent upon the existence of psi. This is probably a questionable assertion, as it is quite conceivable that the mind could survive death even if it did not possess the powers of ESP and PK, but it does show how closely related the issues of the existence of paranormal powers and the survival of death are in the minds of many parapsychologists.
The scientific community may in turn have feared (and may still fear) a trend toward irrationalism and a possible reemergence of religious persecution with an accompanying attempt to suppress scientific doctrines. Certainly the memory of the Christian resistance to the heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the solar system has never been far from the consciousness of the scientific community. In more recent times, the scientific community has been concerned with attempts to suppress the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the public schools in America and to insert various creationist theories into the biology and physics curricula. Certainly, the credulous attitude of many elements of the public and even some self-proclaimed parapsychologists toward various purported paranormal phenomena has done little to lessen the skeptics’ fears. The skeptics, however, do a disservice to the enterprise of rational inquiry when they misleadingly classify parapsychologists who adhere to the principles of science in their investigations of purported paranormal phenomena together with wide-eyed believers in the Loch Ness monster and Bible-thumping creationists.
Psychodynamic factors. Paranoid mechanisms undoubtedly account for some portion of the belief in psychic powers, especially one’s own psychic powers. Paranoid delusions of persecution, for instance, commonly include the belief that one’s enemies are paranormally monitoring and manipulating one’s thoughts. James Alcock (1981) is among several skeptics who contend that such “magical thinking” also underlies parapsychologists’ belief in psi.
On the other hand, ardent disbelief in psi phenomena could be construed as a form of defense against paranoid thoughts (and the causal efficacy of unconscious wishes) or as fear of the uncanny and unknown. Charles Tart, a psychologist well known for his studies of altered states of consciousness, has attributed skepticism toward psi phenomena to a “primal repression” of threatening telepathic interactions between mother and child (Tart, 1982). In an attempt to document such a widespread fear of psi, Tart asked subjects to imagine that they possessed extraordinarily strong psi powers that were effective within a 100-yard radius. He found that the reactions of the subjects in this “belief experiment” were predominantly negative (Tart & Lebore, 1986). The Australian researcher Harvey Irwin (1985) found fear of psi to correlate negatively with sympathy for psi research, lending support to Tart’s contention that such fear forms a motivational basis for skepticism. Such fears of psi are sometimes explicitly stated by skeptics. For instance, the prominent skeptic Robert Baker (1990) expresses his horror at the thought that psi powers might exist, as that would imply that physical disasters might result from the slightest angry thoughts, privacy would be at an end, and the world would be populated by human monsters.
Social and attitudinal processes. Obviously, the subfield of social psychology known as “attitude theory” may have much to tell us about how attitudes toward parapsychology are formed. According to Hovland, Janis and Kelly’s (1953) reinforcement theory of attitude formation, one tends to hold beliefs that one has been rewarded for expressing and to extinguish beliefs for which one has been punished for expressing. To express a belief in psi phenomena or to pursue psi research may result in a loss of tenure and funding and a general ostracism from the orthodox academic community. Thus, as the reward structures within the academic community tend to favor anti-psi beliefs, one would expect them to engender skepticism. Of course, the propensity of some members of the lay public to provide monetary support and sometimes even adulation to investigators expressing belief in psi powers might be a factor serving to increase belief in psi among such investigators.
According to Festinger’s “cognitive dissonance” theory, one method of avoiding the stress arising from an inconsistent belief system is to avoid exposure to high-quality communications and arguments that run counter to one’s own position on a given issue (Festinger, 1957). This might explain the tendency of some parapsychologists to ignore or repress legitimate and constructive criticisms of their methodology. Sometimes this can result in disaster, as illustrated by the case of Project Alpha, in which researchers at Washington University in St. Louis were deceived by stooges of critic James “the Amazing” Randi posing as metal-bending psychics, primarily because the researchers failed to employ safeguards suggested by Randi (Randi, 1983a, 1983b, 1986). Project Alpha will be discussed in more detail in the section on subject fraud below.
On the other side, critics often fail to heed (or at least discuss) the better-conducted studies in the field of parapsychology. Occasionally, critics write books and articles debunking the weakest claims in the field, such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s alleged pictures of fairies (Randi, 1980) and the psychic entertainer Kreskin’s stage performances (Marks & Kammann, 1980), while at the same time claiming to have debunked the entire field of parapsychology. This may be understandable in light of the fact that the scientific community’s main concern may be directed toward a possible trend toward irrationalism (and the concern of magicians such as Randi may be directed at possible dishonest and attention-stealing uses of conjuring techniques). The primary concern of such critics may thus not be so much with “legitimate” parapsychology, but with clearly quack science and charlatanism. To the extent that this is the case, parapsychologists should applaud their efforts (but not their claim to have debunked the entire field of parapsychology).
Another technique for avoiding a sense of cognitive dissonance is to reduce the psychological importance of an issue about which there is conflict. I recall the remarks of one prominent cognitive psychologist who told me that, although he did not know whether parapsychological phenomena existed or not, he did not see why they were of any importance (perhaps reflecting his concern as a psychological rather than a physical theorist). A related strategy for reducing the stress of cognitive inconsistency is to “stop thinking” (Abelson & Rosenberg, 1958). To some extent, this has been the traditional response of academic psychology to the claims of parapsychology, which are almost never discussed in any detail in the academic curricula of psychology departments. Because of this “heads in the sand” approach, departments of psychology have in many instances failed in what should be their responsibility to provide a responsible (even if skeptical) discussion of alleged parapsychological phenomena, a topic that is of great interest to students and to the public in general.
Lack of social support for one’s beliefs is another source of cognitive dissonance, according to Festinger. Certainly, the tendency of people to conform to group opinion, the pressure put upon people to conform to majority opinions by groups, and the tendency of people to obey authority figures have been amply demonstrated in classic psychological experiments by Asch (1958), Schachter (1951), and Milgrim (1963, 1968). Within the academic community, one would expect such pressures to favor skepticism with regard to psi phenomena. One way to decrease the cognitive dissonance arising from lack of social support is, according to Festinger, to decrease the perceived attractiveness of the disagreeing parties (which might result in a skeptic classifying all parapsychologists as fairy-worshipping lunatics or a parapsychologist classifying all skeptics as unimaginative, narrow-minded bigots).
In closing, it should be noted that the denial of funds and professional opportunities is not confined to parapsychologists but is a problem faced by non-mainstream scientists in general. Eliot Marshall (1990), for instance, describes the denial of telescope time to heterodox plasma theorist Halton Arp, depriving him of the opportunity to make even basic observations. By restricting telescope time to supporters of orthodox views, Marshall notes, the process of science is thereby distorted and the potential for dialogue between opposing views closed off. (Indeed, the possibility of observationally-supported heterodox views even arising is virtually eliminated). As a resolution to this problem, Marshall recommends that some funds be allocated to non-mainstream scientists, without requiring the process of “peer review” by advocates of orthodox positions.
Rational Bases
We will now consider more rational grounds for the rejection of psi phenomena that are based on legitimate concerns regarding proper methodology, the issue of the replicability of the effects and the possibility of fraud.
Sensory cues. When one is attempting to establish the existence of an ability to identify target material that lies outside of the normally recognized channels of the physical senses, it is obviously important to exclude the possibility that the subject’s knowledge of a target is based on “sensory cues” (that is, information acquired through the usual physical senses). The early days of experimental parapsychology were not characterized by the stringent safeguards against sensory cues that are (usually) employed today. For instance, an “agent” might sit at one end of a table, pick up an ESP card and attempt to project its identity into the mind of a percipient seated at the other end of the table. Under these circumstances, the percipient might learn the card’s identity by seeing the card reflected in the agent’s eyes or by picking up on cues unconsciously provided by the agent (such as tilting the head when viewing a “star,” etc.). The behaviorist B. F. Skinner pointed out that the cards in the Zener ESP deck used by Rhine in his early experiments could be read from the back under certain lighting conditions, invalidating any experiment in which the percipient could see the backs of the cards. Parapsychologists were quick to respond to such critiques by totally isolating the subject from the targets (such as by having them in a separate building, as was done in the Pearce-Pratt series discussed previously, for instance). Most forced-choice experiments in parapsychology today are characterized by adequate shielding of the target from the percipient. Exceptions do of course still occur, as no field is immune from methodological errors committed by its practitioners. For instance, Don, Warren, McDonough and Collura (1988) report an experiment in which the ESP cards used as targets were placed directly on the hand of the special subject (Olof Jonsson), allowing him access to possible sensory cues arising from the back of the cards, as well as possible glimpses of the fronts of the cards. The random number table used to generate the targets was also in the room with the subject and could have been a source of additional cues.
Rupert Sheldrake (1998b) reports an experimental investigation of the hypothesis that people know when someone is looking at them and that this knowledge is mediated by ESP. However, in Sheldrake’s experiment, the “starer” was sitting directly behind the “staree.” This allows for the possibility of sensory cues, in that the starer’s breathing and body movements may be different during staring trials from those during non-staring trials. The subject might be able to use to such cues to differentiate between staring and non-staring trials.
In an attempt to placate his critics, Sheldrake (2001) repeated his experiment with the subjects blindfolded and trial-by-trial feedback eliminated (i.e., the subject was not told immediately after the trial whether the trial had been a staring or non-staring trial). However, this halfhearted attempt at sensory shielding still leaves open the possibility that the subject could be responding to differences in the starer’s breathing patterns and bodily movements between staring and non-staring trials.
Lobach and Bierman (2004a) repeated Sheldrake’s experiment with improved sensory shielding. Also, to eliminate artifacts due to response bias (e.g., a subject who calls “staring” on 80% of the trials would be expected to have a hit rate of 80% on staring trials, not the 50% rate that would be expected to obtain across all trials by chance), Lobach and Bierman did not analyze staring and non-staring trials separately, as did Sheldrake. In three attempts to replicate Sheldrake’s findings, Lobach and Bierman found no evidence that subjects could distinguish between staring and non-staring trials at a rate significantly greater that what would be expected by chance. They conclude that Sheldrake’s staring detection effect is not as easily replicated as claimed by Sheldrake.
Sheldrake (2005), however, points to the success of experiments in which the “starer” watches the “staree” over a closed television circuit in a separate room as evidence against the hypothesis that the remote detection of staring is due to sensory cues. In this regard, he cites meta-analysis of 15 such experiments by Schmidt, Schneider, Utts and Walach (2004) indicating that there was overall statistically significant evidence of psi under such conditions.
Sensory cues may result from more subtle flaws in an experiment. For instance, the noted critic Martin Gardner (1981) has pointed out that a light system that was used by the “sender” to signal the beginning of the next trial to the percipient in Charles Tart’s well-known experiments on training ESP ability (Tart, 1976) might allow the sender to provide cues as to the identity of the next target through the conscious or unconscious use of a time delay code (e.g., the sender might delay the signal longer for some targets than others). As the percipient was provided with trial-by-trial feedback, he or she might consciously or subconsciously become aware of this tendency. As a rule of thumb, in a parapsychological experiment no person with knowledge of a target’s identity should be allowed to communicate with the subject attempting to guess that target until after the subject has made his guess.
Sheldrake and Smart (2003) investigated the hypothesis that people sometimes know who is calling on the telephone before even picking up the phone. Of course, as a spontaneous phenomenon, this sort of guessing may be mediated by knowledge who is likely to call at which time of day, ongoing crises and other daily events that may involve some friends (possible callers) more than others, and the amount of time that has elapsed since the person last called. In Sheldrake and Smart’s experiment, subjects had to guess which one of four target persons was calling on the phone during a preassigned time interval. Sheldrake’s subjects were able to identify the caller before picking up the phone with a frequency that would occur by chance less than four times in a million.
A similar experiment was run by Lobach and Bierman (2004b). In their experiment, one of four target persons was randomly assigned to call the subject during a preassigned five-minute time interval. The subjects were able to identify the caller on 29.4% of the trials compared to the 25% rate that would be expected by chance (and this difference was statistically significant at the .05 level). Lobach and Bierman note that almost all of their above chance scoring occurred around 13:30 local sidereal time (i.e., time relative to the “fixed stars” rather than the sun).
Both the study conducted by Sheldrake and Smart and that conducted by Lobach and Bierman are susceptible to explanation in terms of a time-delay code. For instance some callers may call early in the five-minute trial interval and others may call late. The subject may learn to use such differences in calling times to identify the caller. The possibility may also exist that different phones produce different rings on the receiving phone.
It should also be noted that Schmidt, Muller and Walach (2004) attempted to replicate Sheldrake and Smart’s phone-calling experiment, but they obtained nonsignificant results.
In the same vein, Sheldrake and Smart (2000) report an experiment in which Pam Smart’s dog Jaytee seemed to know when its owner was coming home and would go to the window or the porch to await her arrival. However, Wiseman, Smith and Milton (2000) failed to confirm Sheldrake and Smart’s results when strict quantitative criteria were used to define the event “Jaytee goes to the porch.” They attribute Sheldrake and Smart’s results to Jaytee’s becoming more anxious regarding Pam Smart’s absence as time went on, resulting in more frequent trips to the porch and window.
Trial-by-Trial Feedback The mathematician Persi Diaconis (1978) pointed out the danger of giving trial-by-trial feedback to a subject guessing a target pool that is being sampled without replacement, such as might occur if the subject is guessing a deck of ESP cards and being shown each card after every guess. Such feedback would enable the subject to improve his chances by avoiding guesses corresponding to already sampled targets (e.g., if the subject guessing an ESP deck has already seen all five circle cards, he can improve his chances by not guessing “circle” again). This is of course correct, but Diaconis’ implication that this was a typical testing procedure in parapsychology at that time is misleading. In fact a search conducted by Charles Tart two years prior to the publication of Diaconis’ article revealed only four studies using such a procedure, three of them appearing in an unpublished master’s thesis. Tart had labeled all four studies as methodologically defective in his review of the literature pertaining to studies employing trial-by-trial feedback (Tart, 1976).
While it is rare for forced-choice experiments to employ trial-by-trial feedback with such a “closed deck” procedure, this does occur more often in free-response experiments, in which subjects give their subjective impression of a target rather than guessing it directly. In one type of procedure, these subjective impressions are ranked or matched against all the targets used in the experiment. For instance, Puthoff, Targ and Tart (1980) conducted an experiment in which a subject attempted to use her ESP to describe ten different target objects. Because the subject was shown the target object after each trial, she could, on subsequent trials, avoid giving descriptions corresponding to previously seen targets, thus artifactually inflating the probability that her descriptions would be correctly matched to the targets by the judges. Diaconis’ criticism is clearly applicable to this sort of free-response experiment. In a similar vein, Marks and Kammann (1978, 1980) have argued that in Targ and Puthoff’s main remote viewing research (e.g., as reported in Targ & Puthoff, 1977) the subjects’ remarks contained clues as to trial order (by referring to “two previous targets,” for example) and target identity (by explicitly referring to previously seen targets, which the judges would then know not to match with the present transcript). Tart, Puthoff and Targ (1980) attempted to respond to Marks and Kammann’s critique by conducting an analysis showing that the results were still statistically significant even after these cues had been edited out of the transcripts. One can of course quibble about the efficacy of the editing process, and Marks and Scott (1986) have argued that statements left in the transcripts after the editing that referred to the subject’s location could constitute residual order cues that might be used by judges. For instance, in one trial Targ asked the subject if he noticed “any difference being in a shielded room rather than in the park.” This was the first trial done in a shielded room. In any event, the basic problem (namely, the avoidance by the subject of responses descriptive of previously seen targets) that arises from use of trial-by-trial feedback under conditions of sampling without replacement remains, no matter how effective one assumes the editing process was.
Cuing of Judges. A related problem in free-response experiments involves the nonverbal sensory cuing of judges. For instance, in remote viewing experiments conducted by Bisaha and Dunne (1979), judges were provided with pictures of the target location taken on the day of the remote-viewing trial. Thus, cues as to weather conditions, seasonal variations (e.g., foliage conditions), time of day, and so forth, could have been present in both the subject’s transcripts and the pictures, and the judges could then use these cues, consciously or unconsciously, to match the transcripts to the targets. Bisaha and Dunne deny that such cues exist, but in the only two picture sets they reproduce from their first experiment, the leaves are still on the trees in one, whereas the trees are bare in the other. Also, Marks (1986) has pointed out that, in Bisaha and Dunne’s experiments, the decision as to whether the subject’s drawings of his or her impressions of the target site would be presented to the judges was made on an ex post facto basis (that is, after examination of the drawings), which may have biased the information presented to the judges in favor of correct transcript-target matchings. Marks goes on to note that the choice of which photographs of the target site to present to the judges may have been a further biasing factor.
As another example of how sensory cues may be inadvertently provided to judges in free-response experiments, one can cite the transoceanic remote-viewing experiment reported by Schlitz and Gruber (1980). In the first judging of the experiment, the agent’s impressions of the target site were included among the material provided to the judges. This may have resulted in cues as to target order being given to the judges (e.g., the agent and the percipient might both refer to a news event occurring on a given day). Schlitz and Gruber themselves pointed out this problem and reported a rejudging of the experiment with the cues deleted; the results were still significant (Schlitz & Gruber, 1981). The skeptic Ray Hyman (1986) later detected a further possible source of sensory cues to judges arising from the fact that Gruber, who served as agent and hence knew the identity of the target for each trial, was responsible for translating the remarks of Schlitz, the percipient, into Italian for presentation to the judges. His translation might have been biased by his knowledge of the target site.
A very similar problem exists in two dream telepathy experiments reported by Child, Kanthamani and Sweeney (1977). In each experiment, an agent attempted to send a different target picture into the dreams of a percipient on each of eight different nights. The eight sets of dreams and impressions were then ranked by the agent against the eight targets. However, as the agent knew which target was used on which night and as the percipient’s dreams might be expected to incorporate certain “day residues” reflecting the events of the prior day, the agent could have used this knowledge to match the dreams against the targets.
Most of the feedback-related problems discussed above arise from the fact that the experiments in question used a procedure involving sampling without replacement from a finite target pool, often combined with a procedure involving judging the entire set of transcripts for a series against the actual targets used in that series. In most free-response experiments, such as the well-known research line of ganzfeld experiments, the responses are judged against a different target pool for each trial and do not suffer from the problem of sensory cuing of judges to the extent that the above-discussed studies do. That is not to say that these experiments have been immune from such problems. For instance, in the early ganzfeld experiments, the subject often judged his own transcripts against the same physical target pool used by the agent. Thus, it is possible that the subject could obtain cues as to which target was actually sent by the agent by examining the target pictures for fingerprints, crumpling effects and so on. In an initial attempt to test this “greasy fingers” hypothesis, John Palmer (1983, 1984) found no evidence that subjects in fact used such cues to identify the picture held by the agent, although the results of this study were to some extent contradicted by a later study by Palmer and Kramer (1986) indicating that subjects could indeed use such cues to identify the target picture when they were specifically instructed to do so. This problem has been eliminated in the recent ganzfeld experiments through either the use of duplicate sets of pictures, one to be used by the agent and the other by the judge, or the use of electronically stored and presented targets.
It is obvious that the problem of sensory-cuing can be a subtle one. While the problem of eliminating sensory cues to subjects has long ago been resolved, procedures for the elimination of sensory cues to judges are still evolving. How prevalent is the problem of sensory cuing in parapsychological research? In order to find out, Akers (1984) conducted an analysis of a sample of 54 parapsychological experiments. Among his criteria for inclusion were that each experiment should have produced significant evidence of psi and that the experiment be from a relatively repeatable line of research. Consequently, Akers’ sample included a large number of ganzfeld experiments, as this is one of the lines of parapsychological research that have come the closest to producing a repeatable parapsychological experiment. Of the 54 experiments, Akers cites 22 studies as possibly providing sensory cues regarding the target’s identity to subjects or judges. One would suspect, however, that, had Akers’ sample included a greater proportion of (less repeatable) forced-choice studies, the proportion of studies with methodological flaws involving sensory cues would be reduced.
Now we turn from the problem of sensory cues in ESP experiments to the related problems of motor artifacts in PK experiments.
Motor artifacts. In certain types of psychokinesis experiments, it is very important to ensure that the subject cannot use his or her motor skills to influence the target apparatus. For instance, in a “placement PK” experiment in which a subject is attempting to use psychokinesis to influence a series of balls rolling down a chute to go into the left or right side of a collection bin, it is important to ensure that the subject cannot influence the balls by breathing on them, rocking the table, altering the air currents by changing his or her body position, and so forth. Also, it is important to ensure that the balls be placed in the apparatus in the same way at the beginning of each trial, otherwise the experimenter may subconsciously learn how to place the balls in such a way that the desired result occurs.
As an example of such artifacts, consider an experiment reported by Egely (1986) in which a subject attempted to influence the motion of objects floating in liquid in a Petri dish. The subject was allowed to put his hand into the shielded box and next to the Petri dish. Thus, it is quite possible that the obtained motions of the target object might have been due to air currents set in motion through the moving of the subject’s hand. As another example, Taylor (1980) has contended that the movement of small objects by the Russian psychic Alla Vinogradova was due to an electrostatic effect. Specifically, he contends that a repulsive force may have been induced by electrical charges on her hands as well as on the object to be moved. Indeed, motion pictures taken of this type of “psychokinetic” motion (which was much in “vogue” in the 1970s) do suggest this possibility, as the objects are typically a short distance from the psychic’s fingertip and moving away from it, much like a peanut one centimeter in front of the nose of a contestant in a peanut race. Taylor also cites the fact that Vinogradova typically rubbed her hands together prior to her performances as further evidence that an electrostatic effect was responsible for the motion of the objects.
Experiments that involve an attempted psychokinetic influence of living targets should also include precautions against normal sensory-motor influence. For instance, in an experiment conducted by Barry (1968a, 1968b), subjects sat for fifteen minutes at a distance of one and a half meters from a set of ten Petri dishes, attempting to inhibit the growth of the fungus in five experimental dishes while “ignoring” the control dishes. Under these conditions, it might be possible for a subject to influence the growth by, for instance, breathing on the dishes. In the early 1950s, Richmond (1952) reported an experiment in which he was successful in influencing paramecia to swim to a specified target quadrant as he viewed them through a microscope. As Richmond was obviously close to the microscope, he could have influenced the paramecia through his breath or by jiggling the slide. Another problem in this experiment is that, while the target quadrant was randomly selected, Richmond did not use a random process to select the paramecium to be influenced; thus he may have selected paramecia already predisposed to move to the desired quadrant, as has been pointed out by Johnson (1982).
Pleass and Dey (1987) report an experiment in which subjects attempted to use their PK abilities to influence the motion of specimens of the marine alga Dunaliella. A problem with this experiment is that the subjects were allowed to select which time periods would be the PK influence periods rather than having these periods specified in advance. Thus, it is possible that the subjects may have been able to choose favorable periods based on sensory cues derived from observations of the algae or of environmental factors that were associated with the motion of the algae.
Fortunately, most PK experiments reported in the modern literature are relatively free from such artifacts. Indeed, the bulk of the literature uses quantum-mechanically based Schmidt REGs as target objects, and radioactive decay is hardly subject to sensory-motor influence!
Violations of blindness. It is important in parapsychology, as in other disciplines, that measurement of certain variables be done by a person who is blind as to the values of other variables. For instance, if an experimenter who is rating a person’s extraversion based on clinical observations during an interview already knows that person’s score on an ESP test, the experimenter may consciously o