The A Priori Case for the Paranormal? [Resources]

Next post will look at the nature of Time & Space.

Tallis on how physics fails to capture significant aspects of time.

He also has some writings on this subject:

Time, Tense & Physics

Tallis

Readers of this column may recall an earlier piece, ‘A Smile at Waterloo Station: The True Mystery of Memory’ in Issue 78, in which I challenged the claim that there is, or ever could be, a purely neurological, that is to say a materialist, explanation of human memory. I focused on those memories in which we explicitly locate things in the past, in particular our own past. Such memories are tensed: indeed, they are crucial to our sense of tensed time. Now, according to Einstein and many other physicists, tensed time is unreal, and tenses are illusions, although rather ‘stubborn’ ones, as Einstein admitted. Since matter does not entertain illusions, there cannot be a materialist account of memory.

You may be relieved that I am not planning to take yet another pop at physicalist accounts of consciousness. My target this time is somewhat bigger: it is physics itself. Or to be more precise – since I am not so ungrateful as to criticise a science responsible for most of the technology that has made my life longer, healthier, more comfortable and more fun than that of pre-scientific man – I want to take issue with those who believe physics has the last word on the nature of time, or indeed ourselves. I think physics captures very little of what matters to us about time. Consequently, its much vaunted aspiration to develop a ‘Theory of Everything’ – which ‘everything’ presumably includes time-torn beings like you and me – is absurd...

Regarding Space:

Firstly I think we should consider the Materialist belief that consciousness is conjured by your brain. This means there is a world out there, the physical world, but your brain is creating a whole reality with qualia for you to interact with said world.

This is illustrated by Lehar:



As Sheldrake and Kastrup noted, this means the entire experienced reality - including the stars in the distant night sky - are inside your skull.

Yet, as Donald Hoffman notes, that skull and the brain inside it are also in your conscious experience:

If it’s true that your brain creates all your conscious  experiences, then it must be your relational brain, not your phenomenal brain, which is the creator.

But what is your relational brain? Does it resemble your phenomenal brain? There’s no reason to suppose it does. In fact, as we saw with the volleyball, there’s no reason to suppose that the nature of the phenomenal brain in any way constrains the nature of the relational brain. Your phenomenal brain is simply a graphical interface that allows you to interact with your relational brain, whatever that relational brain might be. And all that’s required of a graphical interface is that it be systematically related to what it represents. The relation can be as arbitrary as you wish, as long as it’s systematic.

The neuroscientist Smythies also notes this issue when he asks How Can the Brain be in the Head when the Head is in the Brain?

But if we do take Space as something that has to exist, we can ask the question, "Are there more dimensions to space than just the three I experience?"

This then offers the possibility of added spatial dimensions, which then offers another avenue for the paranormal:

'If the very dimensionality of space is open to question, then what beliefs remain sacred?

What else should we question?

For example: Is there really a sharp division between animate and inanimate matter?'
– Alan Lightman, Intro to Flatland
 
There's also a larger discussion that looks at Psi data and Hyperspace in this thread, but that's not really "a priori" so I'll leave off here by just nothing that Space has enough mysteries about it that the Physicalist notion of "Space-Time" does not rule out the paranormal.

Especially when we consider the Simulation Hypothesis that has gained popularity, as we'll do in the next post.