Psience Quest

(2020-07-30, 11:48 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]As the cases themselves can be quite winding, I want to reiterate the reasoning for them that Chris Carter points out clearly:


I'd mentioned that is was likely the control Feda came up with the book tests, and while that fact may be in dispute it is clear that at the very least the mediums recorded the planning of the Cross-Correspondences as coming from the other side.

Carter also reproduces the thoughts of Alice Johnson, secretary of the SPR at the time:


It's important to note that the examples given are only a portion of the cross-correspondences. I might one day make a thread getting deeper into the subject, as it would be interesting way to learn about the classics as much as it would about the depth of the SPR investigations into mediumship.

As another interesting point, here is Myers communicating through the medium Geraldine Cummings on how challenging making the cross-correspodences were:


One might wonder, as Braude does, why the cross-correspondences were necessary rather than just channeling one's self clearly by overshadowing a medium and speaking through her? But it seems Meyers was not capable of that from wherever he was and whatever state he was in. Perhaps that is a convenient excuse, but even if Meyers had come through directly would that really have invalidated the Super-Psi Hypothesis? Without the delivery of the cross-correspondences, there really wouldn't have been anything to challenge the Super-Psi Hypothesis as there would be no proof of an active intellect at work.

So a clear channeling of Meyer's personality by possession could add to the feel of the case, but would not add substance. After all there are other records of sitters being convinced by personality, xenoglossy, display of skills that have not put Super-Psi to rest. Even the cross-correspondences can be challenged though it suggests - as Gauld notes - some kind of telepathic committee and/or power of one medium's brain to impersonate Meyers via telepathic suggestion sent into other mediums' trance states. This would be not just his knowledge but also his particular interests in the classics. As the philosopher Curt Ducasse remarked:


That's it for mediumship for now. Next up is reincarnation and possession, as the line between the two is not clear in all cases...

I'm curious. Considering the contorted and contrived "explanations" that super-psi advocates have to resort to to account for the best mediumship cases especially the cross-correspondences and drop-in cases, it would seem that the degree of contortedness and contrivedness necessary to account for the best veridical reincarnation cases and especially NDEs will have to exceed any conceivable reasonable limits of credibility. Do you agree, or do you actually think super-psi has any chance at all when confronted with these types of empirical evidence for the real existence of a spiritual realm, souls and an afterlife? 

Other than, that is, the ultimate last resort of the materialist pseudo-skeptics, the position that these things are a priori impossible and that therefore following Sherlock Holmes' dictum, anything at all that remains no matter how unlikely must be the answer, no detailed analysis and study of the evidence required. That response was actually resorted to by Reber and Alcock responding to Cardena's paper in the American Psychologist.

(2020-08-01, 03:48 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Do you agree, or do you actually think super-psi has any chance at all when confronted with these types of empirical evidence for the real existence of a spiritual realm, souls and an afterlife?

Oh I've never been a fan of Super-Psi, I just want to try and give it something of a fair hearing. I also never knew some of these fascinating details - like the George Chapman case and the Correspondences - so I figure I'd finish the rest: Apparitions, possessions, reincarnation, NDEs, and possibly circling back to cases like Patience Worth & Seth though they don't have any evidential basis [in the sense of some information we can verify as attached to a pre-existing person].

But yeah, I'd say the weaker mediumship - and perhaps a few possession and apparition cases - are the best cases for something like Super-Psi...the really good cases stretch the idea of Psi manifesting via subpersonalities pulling clever tricks to the breaking point.

(2020-07-10, 09:18 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]3. As we don't know have a mechanism for Psi, or even a set of natural laws to describe its limitations, we cannot even rule out the "Super" part.

I acknowledge a model for phenomena called Psi and have a firm position about communication outcomes occurring without a manifest signal.  Because this model is a positive assertion, negative assertions, based on the rejection of the current paradigm are not very interesting to me.

That said - my humble opinion is that super-psi is not worth very much study, compared to anomalous information transfer.

(2020-08-01, 03:48 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Do you agree, or do you actually think super-psi has any chance at all when confronted with these types of empirical evidence for the real existence of a spiritual realm, souls and an afterlife? 

While truly enjoying your posts, I am confused with the above claim.

Quote: What is the empirical method?

An empirical method involves the use of objective, quantitative observation in a systematically controlled, replicable situation, in order to test or refine a theory.

Information sciences - both linguistic and formal (bits and bytes) - do contribute to understanding the patterns of reality.

Quote: Quasi-empirical methods are methods applied in science and mathematics to achieve epistemology similar to that of empiricism (thus quasi- + empirical) when experience cannot falsify the ideas involved. Empirical research relies on empirical evidence, and its empirical methods involve experimentation and disclosure of apparatus for reproducibility, by which scientific findings are validated by other scientists. Empirical methods are studied extensively in the philosophy of science, but they cannot be used directly in fields whose hypotheses cannot be falsified by real experiment (for example, mathematics, philosophy, theology, and ideology). Because of such empirical limits in science, the scientific method must rely not only on empirical methods but sometimes also on quasi-empirical ones. The prefix quasi- came to denote methods that are "almost" or "socially approximate" an ideal of truly empirical methods.

It is unnecessary to find all counterexamples to a theory; all that is required to disprove a theory logically is one counterexample. The converse does not prove a theory; Bayesian inference simply makes a theory more likely, by weight of evidence.

What evidence specifically do you think is empirical for Psi?

(2020-08-02, 02:52 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]While truly enjoying your posts, I am confused with the above claim.

Empirical evidence is information that verifies the truth (which accurately corresponds to reality) or falsity (inaccuracy) of a claim. In the empiricist view, one can claim to have knowledge only when based on empirical evidence (although some empiricists believe that there are other ways of gaining knowledge).  (Wiki)

There is ample veridical empirical evidence for the reality of reincarnation and of NDEs as experiences that are evidently what they seem, experiences of a self that can among other things transition from being a previous human person to being a current living human person along with accurately remembering details of the previous person and life and their manner of death, separate from the physical brain, observe physical surroundings and distant locations while the physical brain is dysfunctional, occasionally meet deceased family members or friends that were not known to be deceased, and be transformed in personality for life by the experience. 

Veridical refers to independently investigated verified details in accounts of the experiences, such as for reincarnation cases, childrens' memories of their last life and traumatic death where there had been no contact between the families separated by great distance and time, and in NDEs accounts of the experiences including for example remembered details of emergency room doctors, treatments, etc. observed from an elevated position in the room, accounts of distant observations of family members, accounts of meeting loved ones not known to be deceased, and long term profound personality changes, all but the last experienced while the brain was dysfunctional due to cardiac arrest or other trauma.

If reincarnation memories and NDEs are what they seem (which is what the above veridical empirical evidence indicates), there does exist some sort of a spiritual realm, something equivalent to spirits or souls, and an afterlife of at least some sort. 

And the super-psi hypothesis if extended over all afterlife-related phenomena (as it has been intended to be) is invalidated, since to extend super-psi by subconscious sub-personalities to attempt to explain away all this would have to be ridiculously contrived, complicated and implausible to account for the reported personal experiences. 

Quote:What evidence specifically do you think is empirical for Psi?

All the innumerable "hits" and other positive results of the innumerable telepathy, telekinesis, and other test studies in parapsychology that have been conducted since the 1920s. A very formidable body of evidence for human psi functioning, albeit at a low level of effectiveness. In addition to this, all of the tests and investigations of powerful psychic and physical mediums conducted by investigators in psychical research mainly in the period of the 1880s to the 1930s.

(2020-08-02, 04:08 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Empirical evidence is information that verifies the truth (which accurately corresponds to reality) or falsity (inaccuracy) of a claim. In the empiricist view, one can claim to have knowledge only when based on empirical evidence (although some empiricists believe that there are other ways of gaining knowledge).  (Wiki)

All the innumerable "hits" and other positive results of the innumerable telepathy, telekinesis, and other test studies in parapsychology that have been conducted since the 1920s. A very formidable body of evidence for human psi functioning, albeit at a low level of effectiveness. In addition to this, all of the tests and investigations of powerful psychic and physical mediums conducted by investigators in psychical research mainly in the period of the 1880s to the 1930s.

I do not think that the data points gathered by the years of research rise to an empirical standard.  Assertions of effectiveness and capability - are not a semantic narrative, but can be measured in terms of the data. 

Quasi-empirical pattern analysis gives a chance to use inference modality, which is not appropriate for a strict empirical study.

I do think the Psi data is BIG.  

http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/BDSA.html

(2020-08-02, 04:48 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]I do not think that the data points gathered by the years of research rise to an empirical standard.  Assertions of effectiveness and capability - are not a semantic narrative, but can be measured in terms of the data. 

Quasi-empirical pattern analysis gives a chance to use inference modality, which is not appropriate for a strict empirical study.

I do think the Psi data is BIG.  

http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/BDSA.html

I think this goes in another thread, possibly another forum?

I don't want to lose focus on the question of Super-Psi in this thread...

Psi Encyclopedia Entry on Reincarnation

There's a bunch of stuff in the entry, which includes questions about cases and methodology, but I want to focus on the main points relevant to this thread:

Quote:Most children who recall previous lives do so in the waking state, with no apparent alteration of consciousness. Sometimes memories come in dreams or nightmares, but there are usually waking memories as well. With older subjects, dreams and other altered states become more important in connection to past-life memories.134

Quote:Birthmarks are not the only physical features involved in reincarnation. Many cases have birth defects that correspond to injuries to the previous person’s body. These defects may be internal as well as external. An American boy who recalled being a policeman who died after being shot in the chest was born with severe heart disease.147 Other physical signs relate to what may be regarded as the previous person’s core identity. Girls who remember being boys or men may be of relatively large stature and their menarche may be delayed.148 Asian children who claim to have been British or American are often physically larger than other children in their families, have eyes of the European shape, and in their complexion are virtual if not actual albinos.149 Equally striking are physical differences between monozygotic twins. Gillian and Jennifer Pollock closely resembled each other when young, but only Jennifer had birthmarks. One matched a scar the sister whose life she recalled had had had, the result of an accident when she was three (two years before her death) and another was a mole on her waist where she had had a mole.150

Birthmarks and birth defects may be planned and deliberately induced. A Tlingit man said before his death that he would be recognized by certain marks on his next body and these appeared on Corliss Chotkin, Jr., who recalled events from his life.151

Quote:Psi and Super-Psi
The veridicality of many children’s past-life memories presents a problem for sociopsychological explanations such as social construction and parental guidance. Recognizing this, Stevenson considered the possibility that the children might be using extra-sensory perception (ESP) to learn about deceased persons. He could not see how ESP alone could account for the behavioural correspondences in many cases and so considered ESP plus personation, the internalization and mobilization of ESP impressions necessary to impersonate the previous person. Even this was not enough to explain the psychological continuity children felt with the previous persons or their use of the first person in narrating their memories. In many cases, the information the children produced did not reside in the mind of any single living person and so would have had to have been assembled from multiple sources. There was also the question of motivation—why did the child zero in psychically on this particular deceased person rather than another?248

Another problem with the ESP (or psi) explanation is that when and how children express their memories more closely resembles memory than psi. Children’s memories are often triggered by things they encounter, as occurs often with memory of the present life. Many children have an easier time recognizing people in old photographs than they do people and places that have changed substantially since the previous person’s death. Moreover, the children’s mistakes suggest memory more than they do psi: It is hard to understand why children should make more errors when deaths are violent if they were employing psi, nor would one expect to find unsolved cases, if psi were at play.249

These difficulties have not kept some parapsychologically-oriented critics from favoring a psi explanation of the cases. Chari thought that psi might become involved in paramnesia as well as less distorted memories.250 Roll, similarly, believed that he could discern psychic conduits for information in some reincarnation cases.251 However, in order to account for the behavioural and physical features of the cases, psi would have to be not only unusually extensive, but unusually complex. Unusually extensive or complex psi is called super-psi, because it is beyond anything that has been reported in spontaneous cases or demonstrated in laboratory experiments.252 

Stephen Braude, especially, has been keen on arguing for the possibility of a complex super-psi as a way of explaining reincarnation case phenomena. Braude believes that super-psi deployed in altered states of consciousness could explain not only how children are accessing information about deceased persons but also how they are acquiring language and other skills.253 He explains physical features in the following way: After they see the birthmarks on a newborn, members of its family reach out through psi to find a deceased person with bodily features matching those marks, acquire information about that life, and pass it on psychically to the child, shaping his behaviours in the process. Alternatively, a member of the previous person’s family psychically locates a child with the appropriate birthmarks, then psychically transfers information about the previous person to him or her.254 These conjectures go well beyond anything that psi is known to achieve and are purely hypothetical.

For me this is really hard to fathom, as the idea of birthmarks matching wounds from a previous life is something I'd never heard about in Indian culture and only from this research by Stevenson.

It also has the feel of conspiracy, in the sense that no matter the evidence there is always some way to make it fit a Super-Psi explanation. But before we saw some credibility with regard to Super-Psi manifesting only in a trance state, but what is the reasoning here for why Super-Psi is not occurring on a more daily basis?

For example if Psi can copy over not just factual knowledge but skills, why doesn't the poorer family's parents copy over some great mathematical ability or at least the ability to be an accountant? Surely this is better than scanning for a rich dead person and sticking their memory and personality into their newborn child?

But again we also come to the evolutionary argument - if Super-Psi is possible in a non-trance state within the parents of the newborns or within the [loved ones of the] deceased why wasn't it selected for by evolution? It's again hard to see this as plausible without some recourse to intelligent design which then just gives us the kind of spirit realm which tilts the evidence back to Survival.

While the above post focuses largely on reincarnation where children have past-life memories, there are also cases where adults have a sense of a past life or remember an entire past-life personality.

These cases can at times seem more like possession, and are then more in alignment with the possibility of a sub-personality. One such case is the Sharada case, whose strength hinges on xenoglossy.

Quote:Braude accepts that there may be a paranormal element in the exhibition by Uttara of xenoglossy, but contends that this should be seen in terms of the unconscious operation of psychic functions on her part. He argues that this would facilitate a task that would be impossible by normal means, such as learning a language without practice, especially if, as in this case, the person already had some basic knowledge of it. He suggests that we lack true measures for language proficiency or even skill itself: every child has natural abilities that are suppressed by cultural forces such as ‘the mind-numbing ordinariness and stupidity of teachers’.

Philosopher David Ray Griffin follows Braude in hypothesizing the presence of super-psi and in seeking psychological motivations on the part of Uttara. Griffin interprets this as a case of ‘retroprehensive inclusion’, the psychic act of reaching back retrocognitively to find a genuine personality from the past, and adopt it as part of one’s own, along with all its skills and abilities, in order to satisfy some psychological need.

For Griffin, Uttara was motivated by unrequited love and a desperate desire to fulfill her womanhood. As to why she chose the personality of Sharada, he cites such elements as her fascination with the Bengali language and people, her admiration of Bengali women, her desire to marry a doctor (since Sharada had married a doctor) and her snake phobia, which would have been
psychically ingrained from her mother’s dream when she was in the womb.

Reincarnation researcher James Matlock points out that Braude offers no independent evidence to support his speculations concerning Uttara’s psychological motivations, also that, like Thomason, he fails to address Sharada’s ability to speak an archaic dialect of Bengali.

With regard to Griffin, Matlock notes that he interprets as psychosomatic symptoms what the investigators see as behavioural signs of reincarnation in child reincarnation cases: phobias, dreams and interests on the part of the child, and sometimes dreams experienced by the mother while pregnant that relate to the child’s past life.

Note Griffin supports a Psi + sub-personality explanation in this case but generally favors Survival more strongly than Braude.

I do think there are cases of adult's claiming past-lives that could be subpersonalities + Psi. However, part of the challenge IMO goes back the subpersonalities seeming like spirits themselves - even to the point they sometimes respond to exorcisms. Braude mentions subpersonalities can sometimes be seen [by the root personality] in a mirror or around the room - something that occurred in the Sharada case. But why can these not be spirits or even a subpersonality formed from a memory of a past-life?

I think the issue here again is what, then, will ever be the straw that breaks Super-Psi's back? Neither language skill, memories, birthmarks suffice...Braude says if someone in the Amazon took on the personality of an American football coach, with private knowledge along with skilled knowledge of playing the game, that would be the ideal case. But it's hard to believe even this would suffice for the advocates of Super-Psi.

All that said, Braude does concede childhood reincarnation cases are strengthen the Survival Hypothesis. Additionally, I think the varied explanations that involved pseudo-survival ("thought-bundles" that get absorbed by a child) don't really work because they presume some kind of structure or material that intrinsically represents memories and personality traits. Yet Braude himself rejects this very idea, as does the neuroscientist Raymond Tallis. In general there's a distinct way in which the intellect is different from [substances including ether & ectoplasm], and as such it seems to me you'd be better positing that intellect is clothed in a body (subtle or otherwise) but not dependent on any particular form.

Some more from the Psi-Encyclopedia on "Replacement Reincarnation", which are cases of past-life personalities seemingly taking over the modern personality.

Quote:Stevenson’s definition of possession as ‘displacement of the primary personality’ led him to include reincarnation cases with intermissions (intervals between death and rebirth) of under nine months in length as instances of possession, on the assumption that the ‘primary personality’ connected with its body at conception. However, this assumption may not be warranted. In some animistic tribal cultures, stillbirths are said to occur when no spirit has attached itself to the body, and it may be that a spirit can join a body at any point during gestation without necessarily displacing one that was there before it

Quote:An Indian boy, Sudhakar Misra, was less than a year old when he became seriously ill. At one point, he was taken for dead, but recovered. His memories of an earlier life began to emerge when he we has not quite three. He asked for shoes, which boys his age did not wear, and when told he could not have them, said that he would go to his previous house to get them. He insisted that his name was Vimal, not Sudhakar, and that he had a wife and daughter. His wife had covered him with a sheet when he was dying, and he had kissed her hand.

Sudhakar’s parents did nothing to confirm what he was saying. Like many Indian mothers, his was afraid of losing him to the previous family, and tried to suppress his memories by turning him counter-clockwise on a potter’s wheel. This ritual had no effect, however, and his father took him to one of his (the father’s) cousin’s clinics, which was on the way to the town in which Vimal had lived. The cousin had known Vimal and notified his family, who came to meet Sudhkara. Sudhkara recognized Vimal’s widow, daughter, and other relatives. It turned out that Vimal had died of a heart attack six months after Sudhkakar was born. Vimal’s daughter asked if Sudhakar could come live with them, but his mother declined to let him go. Visits between the families were soon discontinued.[/url]

Quote:There are many reincarnation cases with intermissions of under nine months in length, more from some cultures than others (see Patterns in Reincarnation Cases). We cannot know how often a replacement of spirit has occurred in these cases, or even if it has happened in them at all. However, when there are discrepancies between marks on the bodies of the case subjects and police or autopsy reports of the people whose lives they remember, as in the case of Toran (Titu) Singh, we may wonder if a prenatal replacement is involved.

Toran (Titu) Singh (India)

At less than two years of age, Titu began speaking about the life and death of Suresh Verme, a vendor of transistor radios and player in the regional black market of Agra, India, who had been killed by a shot to the head. He wanted to go to Suresh’s shop in Agra. An elder brother and his friend went there without taking him, and made contact Suresh’s widow. She notified his birth family, several of whom went with her to meet Titu, who responded to the party with great excitement. When taken to the shop and other places known to Suresh, he recognized them, even as attempts were made to mislead him. Titu identified with Suresh intensely and was as active, intrepid, and hot-tempered as he had been. He changed as he grew older, however. He studied yoga and became a university professor. Titu’s case is featured in [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sxA2xHHStg]a video available on YouTube.

Titu has a birthmark on his forehead and a bony protrusion by his left ear, commemorating the fatal bullet’s entry and exit points. He also has three smaller birthmarks on the back of his head, unrelated to Suresh. Although the date of Suresh’s death is documented in police and medical reports, there is a question about Titu’s birth date, so the length of the intermission between the lives is not known for sure. Titu’s father thought that Titu was born three months after Suresh died, and if that is so, the three birthmarks on the back of his head may be associated with an earlier tenant of his mother’s womb, evicted by Suresh in an impulsive desire to get back to avenge himself for his murder. Interestingly, Titu’s mother had a normal pregnancy until her last trimester, but suddenly became sick and remained ill throughout that period.

These are interesting cases, as you wonder what to think about these gaps between death and birth that are less than nine-months. They definitely aren't our usual kind of reincarnation, especially in cases where someone seems to die th[e]n recovers with a new personality.

The motivation seems to be on the part of spirits seeking vengeance or continuance of life, and while this doesn't explicitly rule out Super-Psi it does at least give the same sense of causal purpose as drop-ins. It is easier to explain the phenomenon under Survival than to try and concoct deeper motivation for others to seemingly resurrect someone to become the supposed identity of someone who was deceased.

There's also the time frame, especially when it happens to a child. It is difficult to imagine the child scanning around for a potential mind to pretend to become after healing the ailment that comes close to killing them. Similarly, when months have passed it is also hard to imagine the deceased person's loved ones scanning around for such a dying child to heal and then implant with memories + personality.