Psience News - 9-15 February 2020
This is a listing, in progress, of news items about parapsychology, psi, the paranormal and related subjects, posted to the Psience Quest Forums. We hope that news about parapsychology is adequately covered here, but news about other topics will represent only a selection.
For news during other periods, see the Psience News Index.
Extended consciousness phenomena
Books and book reviews
- A new book by Herb Mertz entitled "The Selection Effect: How Consciousness Shapes Reality" has been published (Discuss)
Periodicals, published papers and preprints
- Issue 91 and issue 92 (2019, but only now distributed) of the Society for Psychical Research's magazine "Paranormal Review" have appeared (Discuss)
- The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, volume 84, number 1 (January 2020) has appeared (Discuss)
Psi Encyclopedia
New entries in the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia
Articles and blog posts
- An article by Philip Corlett about the COPE (Influence/Control Over Perceptual Experiences) research project, entitled "Varieties Of Voice Hearing", has appeared on the website of Spirit of Change magazine (Discuss)
Videos
- The Society for Scientific Exploration has uploaded videos of presentations from its 2019 Convention (Discuss)
- Dean Radin, "Expanding the Scope of Mind-Matter Interaction Experiments"
- Mark Boccuzzi, "Task Optimization in Psi Research"
- The Parapsychological Association has uploaded videos of presentations from its 2019 Convention
- Paul H. Smith, "What’s in a Name? A Lot, Actually" (Discuss)
- David T. Saunders, "Mediumship Research in the 21st Century" (Discuss)
Upcoming events
From this and previous pages of Psience News.
- 15 January - 31 March 2020: Online
- Nancy Zingrone's and Carlos Alvarado's free course, "Parapsychology Research & Education: Psychology and Parapsychology" (ParaMOOC2020) (Discuss)
- 3 February - 23 March 2020: Online
- An eight-week course entitled "Field Investigations: Apparitions, Hauntings, & Poltergeists," by Loyd Auerbach for the Rhine Education Center (Discuss)
- 13 February 2020: London
- John Fraser will give a lecture entitled "Are Poltergeists Rare? Or are all cases 'Intermediate' with a strange mix of phenomena?" at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)
- 22 February 2020: Edinburgh
- The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre will hold a one-day meeting entitled "Psi Saturday" (Discuss)
- 23 February 2020: London
- Birkbeck, London, is holding an event called "A Day on Consciousness" with presentations by Iain McGilchrist (by video link), Anil Seth and Rupert Sheldrake (Discuss)
- 3 - 24 March 2020: Online
- A four-week course entitled "How to Choose a Psychic," by Loyd Auerbach for the Rhine Education Center (Discuss)
- 4 - 25 March 2020: Online
- A four-week course entitled "Presentiment: Exploring the Nature and Theories of Time," by John G. Kruth for the Rhine Education Center (Discuss)
- 5 March 2020: London
- Matthew Colborn will give a lecture entitled "Sticky Bundles, Leaky Buckets and Rabbit Holes: Understanding the Survival Experience" (Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture) at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)
- 1 - 4 April 2020: Porto, Portugal
- The 13th Symposium in a series organised by the Bial Foundation on the theme "Behind and Beyond the Brain", entitled "The mystery of time," (Discuss)
- 2 April 2020: London
- Simon Duan will give a lecture entitled "Parallel Universe: Space for Psi" at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)
- 25 April 2020: London
- The Society for Psychical Research will hold a study day on the theme of "Psi and post-materialist science: the search for a new paradigm" (Discuss)
- 25 April 2020: London (NEW)
- The Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society is organising a symposium entitled "End-of-Life: Inner experience and unusual awareness in the dying" at the Society's headquarters (Discuss)
- 16 - 19 June 2020: Durham, North Carolina
- The Parapsychological Association and the Society for Scientific Exploration are jointly organising a four-day Convention entitled "2020 Vision" (Discuss)
- 2 July 2020: London (NEW)
- Paul Gaunt will give a lecture entitled "Helen Duncan: Genuine or fraudulent?" (Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture) at the Society for Psychical Research (Discuss)
Philosophy of mind; consciousness science
Periodicals, published papers and preprints
- A report by Michelle J. Redinbaugh et al. entitled "Thalamus Modulates Consciousness via Layer-Specific Control of Cortex" has been published at ScienceDirect. It is discussed in an article by Ali Pattillo entitled "A tiny area of the brain may enable consciousness, says 'exhilarating' study" at Inverse (Discuss)
Debates and dialogues
- On metaphysics & science, the eighth and final letter, by Massimo Pigliucci, in the dialogue between himself and Philip Goff- On The Problem of Consciousness, Panpsychism & more - has been uploaded to Letter (Discuss)
Articles and blog posts
- The post Could Consciousness Have Evolved? has been published on The Verbose Stoic blog, commenting on Jerry Coyne's response to Bernardo Kastrup's article Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved (Discuss)
- An article by Jun Wu entitled "Our Reality And Why Consciousness Is Important" has appeared at Forbes (Discuss)
- A blog article by Bernardo Kastrup entitled "Yes, Free Will Exists" has appeared at Scientific American (Discuss)
Alternative Views on Science
Articles and blog posts
- An article by Ed Regis entitled "No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air" has been published by Scientific American (Discuss)
Spirituality
Interviews
- An interview of James Tunney by Jeffrey Mishlove about "Mysticism" has appeared at New Thinking Allowed (Discuss)