2019-03-04, 08:53 PM
Parapsychology and Philosophy: A Whiteheadian Postmodern Perspective
David Ray Griffin
David Ray Griffin
Quote:ABSTRACT: The main reasons for the marginality of parapsychology are its challenge to the modern worldview and its association with the occult. These are two sides of the same coin, because the modern worldview, with its mechanistic doctrine of nature and its sensationist doctrine of perception, was adopted in large part to rule out influence at a distance, especially to and from minds, which should be regarded as essential to the definition of psi relations. Parapsychology, which studies ostensible psi relations, is inevitably, therefore, a potentially revolutionary science. It need not pose an ultra-revolutionary threat, however, because it need not affirm true precognition; and the modern principles it challenges can still be regarded as expressing important, if limited, truths.
Philosophers of parapsychology should not concede that the modern worldview works quite well for everything except psi. It cannot handle various “hard-core commonsense notions,” which we all presuppose in practice, such as freedom, efficient causation, a real world, time, and the reality of values.The bulk of the essay explicates the postmodern philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, which affirms panexperientialism, the priority of nonsensory perception, and influence at a distance. The same revisions of the modern worldview to account for the hard-core commonsense notions turn out also to allow for the various types of psi.