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Originally Posted by Topher Cooper  Not quite right. Its true that the measurements are of the (neural correlates) to the psychological (emotional) effects that the targets have on the subject through the perceptual system. That it happens to be through the sensory system is incidental.
I would expect pretty much the same response when, for example, someone suddenly figures out that something dire may have happened that they were blissfully unaware of. The presentiment experiments are studying emotional responses, not perception. |
Well that's true. In the most fundamental sense, presentiment relies on a change in nervous system activity in the future, according to my understanding. It just so happens that external stimuli have been used to cause a change in future activity. Internal sources of change such as memory may cause presentiment, but it hasn't been tested. I would bet on the possibility though.
I think the main point is that presentiment, so far, seems to mirror normal nervous system responses to external stimuli in every way, so I'm still not sure how you can say that the targets are irrelevant. Surely, the targets are a source of patterned information. If the targets are different, this will cause different patterns of future nervous system activity and therefore different presentiment responses. Or am I missing your point?