Why mediums have so much trouble with names

Assuming the medium is genuine, I  wonder whether some of the problem might be to do with the method of mediumship. I’d have thought that clairaudiance would have made a name easier to communicate via a medium, perhaps it is more difficult when the communication is visual or more sensed?

There's at least one case where the control, a young girl, is having trouble getting the name across while speaking through a medium and instead the spirit talking to her just says the [n]ame so it can be heard by the attendees of the seance.

I know I mentioned it in the Survival vs Super Psi thread but don't recall details...

What bothers me is that one aspect is seized upon to the exclusion of all else. The medium can't get the name right - looks like he/she is fishing by asking "does the letter K mean anything?". But quite often other, more impressive information comes through. If hot/cold reading can be ruled out (and I know that is difficult) then I think it is reasonable to say that the difficulty with the name is a quirk - a quite common quirk - when it comes to ADCs. 

I'm not saying this because I'm a big fan of mediums - actually I am not at all. I have only seen or read about a few instances which really impress me. I think that the tests done by the early investigators into the likes of Leonora Piper are far more impressive than anything I have witnessed in my own occasional exposures to mediums. The recent Netflix series based on Leslie Kean's investigations did little to enhance my appreciation of mediumship either.

Coming back to the sceptical tendency to throw out the baby with the bath water, I read a few of the comments on Goodreads about the recently released Book by Bruce Greyson. Here's part of a sceptical review:

Greyson seems to ignore the fact that only a small percentage of people have, or at least report, these experiences. (I believe in one study referenced the number is 14%). While he does, to his credit, have a brief discussion on other factors that could be at play in NDEs (mental illness, drug use, religious background etc), he never really addresses the elephant in the room; why only 14%?

The elephant in the room? There could be any number of reasons for that percentage but, in any case, it is probably a far higher percentage than one might expect from other proposed causes such as hallucinations. Sciborg recently posted a thread about people responding with answers to questions put to them while dreaming. A scientific study with a similar percentage quoted.

Out of the 158 trials among 36 participants, about 18% of the time, they were able to give correct answers. In another 18%, it wasn't clear whether participants were responding or not. They were wrong 3% of the time. Most often, 61%, participants didn't respond at all.

So I wonder - is there another elephant in that room?

I think the idea is:

1. We know there's Psi.
2. To pos[i]t an immaterial world is to add an entity.
3. Everything about post-death cases can be explained via Psi.
4. Thus Living Agent Psi aka Superpsi.

Where this goes wrong, IMO, is supposing that the immaterial world is necessarily extra for our full picture of reality. We might need some area outside of conventional spacetime to make sense of the QM, for example.

And if Idealism is true the idea of "space-time" is something illusory in some sense, as all places are just in Mind.

Even if Idealism isn't the case, the "immaterial world" may be no more extra than the space where dream telepathy takes place. In a videogame, after all, "space" is just a combination of code and the conscious participation of the viewer.

That's ignoring the plausibility of the super-psi "explanations", which is generally dismally low, except to the quasi-materialist parapsychologists who want to have their cake and eat it too (i.e. recognize psi but dismiss afterlife evidence).

That's ignoring the plausibility of the super-psi "explanations", which is generally dismally low, except to the quasi-materialist parapsychologists who want to have their cake and eat it too (i.e. recognize psi but dismiss afterlife evidence).

Sure, that speaks to question of whether entities are multiplied unnecessarily. If Superpsi doesn't work then it makes sense to posit a "place" where the Survival occurs.

Of course, Superpsi is heavily dependent on the idea of multiple personalities, so it might be worth looking deeper into the question of whether there is a shared "place" where these multiples can interact. I know one member of Kastrup's forum claimed to be a multiple who had this shared realm within their consciousness but of course that isn't a good enough case for research purposes.

Also it seems that Superpsi has to have some way of working, and if it just works like a genie granting wishes then it isn't clear why conscious minds with that kind of power - able to peer across space & time, rewrite children's memories and possible mark them with the death blows of someone in the past, and so on - should be dependent on the brain.

Personally though the idea of "Magic Wand Psi", where it can do anything without any process relating to the rest of nature, seems far fetched unless Idealism is true...in which case Heavens, Hells, and everything in between are just ponderings in the Ur-Mind or Collective Mindshare.

Personally though the idea of "Magic Wand Psi", where it can do anything without any process relating to the rest of nature, seems far fetched unless Idealism is true...in which case Heavens, Hells, and everything in between are just ponderings in the Ur-Mind or Collective Mindshare.

Indeed, it seems almost laughable to me that Super-Psi is the straw that a materialist might cling to because, as Lewontin insisted, they cannot allow a divine foot in the door. 

I very much doubt whether idealism would appeal to these people any more than that divine presence they must exclude by any and all means. So, for them, promissory materialism is the ticket. Super-Psi, if it turns out to exist, will be explained and take its place among the natural sciences.

I can’t see super-psi as at all credible when the full extent of psi is considered. Unless one conveniently ignores materialisations.

I can’t see super-psi as at all credible when the full extent of psi is considered. Unless one conveniently ignores materialisations.

The argument is even those are PK manifestations, even a case Braude accepts as having happened where a guru has an OBE "astral form" that drinks and eats miles away from the physical body...

I presume the PK disintegrates the tea and biscuit in time with the PK of floating these items around...

The argument is even those are PK manifestations, even a case Braude accepts as having happened where a guru has an OBE "astral form" that drinks and eats miles away from the physical body...

I presume the PK disintegrates the tea and biscuit in time with the PK of floating these items around...

I didn't read his book but I wonder how he explains the Gold Leaf lady?

I didn't read his book but I wonder how he explains the Gold Leaf lady?

I had to double check, but yeah he says it's PK -> the section about this is freely available here.

I had to double check, but yeah he says it's PK -> the section about this is freely available here.

I don't know but I suspect that materialisations, whether from the spirit world or spontaneously by some form of PK are probably impossible to explain by accepted laws of physics. Therefore, by extension, both Super-Psi and spiritual phenomena seem more likely to be indicators of something beyond the physical and, therefore, not the get-out-of-jail card the physicalists are grasping for.

If they are prepared to extend the so-called natural into the realms of the supernatural and accept that Psi effects are real according to this expanded definition of reality, then they seem to me to be taking that step over to our side of the fence - or merely demolishing the fence. Isn't that what we have all been arguing all along - that there is a continuum.