Response to Skeptics' Guide Host, Dr. Steven Novella (Podcast)

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

I don't think that's the right way to do it. How do you know who is "doing better," unless you have some preconceived notion of what is real mediumship and what is showmanship?

Preconceived notions in the preliminary stages are fine. The real science is done later. I think the goal would be to look for mediums supplying more detailed information accepted as correct.

Wiseman simply went to the authority on the matter, asked for the best, and used those folks. He probably thought he would get the least argument that way, especially since he is a skeptic, but of course that was not to be.

I do accept that point, assuming Wiseman asked for the best. (I doubt very much he would have got the best mediums around from such an enquiry).

If we compare that with Schwartz. What Schwartz did was try to track down popular or well known mediums, let the mediums work under lesser controls close to their natural environment, see how they do and increase the controls gradually. The goal here is to understand what is going on, which is legtimate methodology for trying to understand any phenomenon. Wiseman on the otherhand isn't really looking in any depth at all.

Schwartz can perhaps be crticized for not jumping stright to a 'triple blind' protocol but what is the point if he hasn't even tested what occurs under lesser, simpler controls? Schwartz commented '..... statements made by Wiseman and O'Keeffe that do not acknowledge the fact that the same issues were previously discussed in Schwartz et al. as possible questions for future research....

Perhaps Wiseman did not realize this. To which organization should he have gone for references?

Your point is valid. I know of no research organization that would make recommendations. The SPR (Society for Psychical Research) probably wouldn't recommend mediums because the organization has no corporate opinion even if individuals do. Wiseman as a (former) member could have asked off the record for suggestions for trial. But as you rightly point out .......

Surely you agree that if Wiseman had chosen the mediums himself, he would have gotten no end of reaming?

Yes unless he had chosen some well known ones, I think you are indeed correct Wiseman was always going to get criticized by someone, somewhere If the trials had been somewhat successful, the debunkers would have turned on him instead

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

That is an absolutely devastating example of skeptics just trashing an experiment and then saying "There - I told you there was no effect!". What makes me very angry, is that skeptics regularly demand almost unobtainable rigour from the paranormal investigators, but seem content to knock together totally rubbishy experiments as a refutation! Furthermore, they get away with it, and usually go on to take the high ground in discussions in the media.

David

From Gary Schwartz:
After-death communications: A misleading critique - Follow-Up - response to Wiseman and O'Keeffe, Skeptical Inquirer, November/December 2001 - Brief Article | Skeptical Inquirer | Find Articles at BNET.com

Wiseman and O'Keefe correctly point out that the greater the number of deceased relatives for the mediums to identify, the greater the likelihood of a chance explanation; but that applies equally to the simple-guessing control group. In any case this hypothetical concern can't explain that in Study 1, for example, all five mediums reported a deceased son; three reported the initial M; one the name Michael; three that the death was quick, and two reported or implied suicide by gunshot. Not only were all these answers both correct and ignored by W/O; they equally ignored the converse, i.e., that no medium reported a deceased daughter, or gave an incorrect initial for the son, or a name other than Michael, or suggested a different cause of death.

That is not only seriously misleading, it transgresses the rules of fair criticism that Ray Hyman and others have repeated. An example of selective quotation relates to the "once, twice, thrice" statement concerning the loss of children. Here W/O failed to mention that this medium then referred to a miscarriage which the sitter had kept secret from her husband, as well as the experimenters.

It is not responsible science for W/O to ignore data inconsistent with their criticisms. Skeptics have a duty to practice what they preach: even-handed skepticism.

[Venom]

Originally Posted by alextsakiris

From Gary Schwartz:
After-death communications: A misleading critique - Follow-Up - response to Wiseman and O'Keeffe, Skeptical Inquirer, November/December 2001 - Brief Article | Skeptical Inquirer | Find Articles at BNET.com

I just want to point out that this follow-up was published in "Skeptical Inquirer", wich shows one more time that Skeptics do read te litterature.

I remember reading this follow-up a few years ago myself.

[Open Mind]

'....Berger did an meta-analysis of Blackmore's parapsychological work actually shows a weak effect, so Blackmore then dismissed her own work as inconclusive.'

Ersby, you are correct to point out that Blackmore had been critical of her own experiments before Berger. So my wording is perhaps unfair. However the tone of confidence in her experiments does seem to vary or be much lower in response to Berger than say in her statements when speaking to skeptics such as in Blackmore's CSICOP paper called ....

'The Elusive Open Mind: 'Ten Years of Negative Research in Parapsychology'

She didn't call it 'Ten Years of Inconclusive Research in Parapsychology'.

In her response to Berger, Blackmore concludes 'Nevertheless, I am glad to be able to agree with his final conclusion—"that drawing any conclusions, positive or negative, about the reality of psi that are based on the Blackmore psi experiments must be considered unwarranted"

This does not match the confidence placed in her own experiments in the CSICOP paper such as ...

'One should rely only on the statistics, and they were telling me that there was nothing there.'

Or was she was looking for too strong effects in too small samples sizes? Blackmore (apparently) went from a firm believer to disbeliever. Believers and disbelievers tend to share something in common. Most believers think psi is often a strong effect and debunkers tend to believe psi should be a fairly stronger, more consistent effect if real. This is where I very much disagree with the New Agers and die-hard skeptics, I think the brain evolved to filter out psi.

We need to look for weak effects and shouldn't be necessarily viewing psi as a talent to be easily developed or an inherent ability but we also need to consider psi as a potential interference, a breakdown in brain filtering that models our physical reality .....i.e. psi as an evolutionary disadvantage for various reasons.

Blackmore has perhaps missed the connection (due to her past belief in seeking to find strong, stable psi) when she writes 'But human beings are not built to have open minds. If they try to have open minds they experience cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger (1957) first used this term. He argued that people strive to make their beliefs and actions consistent and when there is inconsistency they experience this unpleasant state of "cognitive dissonance," and they then use lots of ploys to reduce it....'

Perhaps this is exactly what uncontrolled psi becomes, a 'cognitive dissonance', if so is it surprising that the brain may have evolved to largely filter psi out?

[Open Mind]

Oops double post when trying to edit

[skidoo]

Dr. Steven Novella on materialism versus dualism:

If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain then:

- There will be no mental phenomena without brain function.
- As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered.
- If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.
- Brain development will correlate with mental development.
- We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

All of these predictions have been resolved in favor of materialism. Every single one!

Dualism makes predictions too – that some mental function will be documented to exist separate from brain function. The evidence for this? None.

Does that clear things up a little? I think that's a succinct slam-dunk of dualism. Perhaps this has already been posted and rebutted? If so, please refer me to the relevant thread.

And please spare me the, "Yeah, but we MIGHT find evidence for dualism one day!" Yeah, and rainbows MIGHT start flying out of ponies' asses.

Oh, but wait! What about Sheldrake's research?! Let's see...ignoring prior probability, cherry-picking positive results that STILL amount to no more than noise, statistically speaking. Is that your only "evidence" for the possibility of dualism?

Which is more likely: telepathic dog-owner relationships, or mistakes on Sheldrake's part? Seriously.

Keep believing all you want, but there's no intellectual dishonesty on the part of Novella or most other scientific skeptics. Most of us would like nothing more than to see legitimate evidence for the paranormal. But we follow the evidence, not romantic idealism.

[Open Mind]

Originally posted by Skidoo
Does that clear things up a little? I think that's a succinct slam-dunk of dualism. Perhaps this has already been posted and rebutted? If so, please refer me to the relevant thread.

It has indeed, you are late on the scene and it is in various other topics .........but briefly

Dr. Steven Novella on materialism versus dualism:

If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain then:

- There will be no mental phenomena without brain function.

'......after a cardiac arrest you lose consciousness within eight seconds; within 11 seconds the brain’s rhythms become flat, and within 18 seconds there is no possibility of the brain creating a model of the world - so the brain is down .......Yet whenever we asked people when their near-death experiences occurred, they said it was during unconsciousness. .........It could be argued that their experiences occurred in the few seconds between brain functions being restored and the return of consciousness. But recent research on a patient in the United States, where traces of electrical activity in the brain were closely monitored, suggested this was not the case. ....' - Dr Peter Fenwick (Brain neuro-psychiatrist)

As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered.

This does not contradict interactive dualism. If the brain is a filter of consciousness, not the source of consciousness, the brain interface and physical senses can limit the mind and perception.

- If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged.

Again no contradiction, if the brain interface is damaged, the ability of an external mind to function through it would be impaired. If a TV set is damaged it doesn't mean the radio broadcasts have stopped too.

- Brain development will correlate with mental development.

Doesn't contradict the brain as filter or interface of consciousness.

- We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it.

'Believers in physicalism are confident that completely adequate correlations will eventually be discovered, but that remains a theoretical belief. There is some evidence that a full correlation may not occur;
i.e. there may be conscious mental events that appear to occur not tied or based upon neural events (Libet, 1994; 1996; 1999)' - Benjamin Libet

For example, in 'readiness potential' experiments that physicalists have used to try and argue unconscious brain activity proceeds conscious awareness. (This effect still doesn't contradict the brain as filter of consciousness). Libet's experiments found that although the unconscious brain prepares before the actual conscious awareness and physical movement, no electrical activity or correlation was detected before a veto to cancel the planned movement.

All of these predictions have been resolved in favor of materialism. Every single one!

Simply not true. Novella is playing numberless dot to dot - how exactly the brain works is not known. He expects to see a materialist paradigm and perhaps like people see faces in wallpaper that aren't there, perhaps what he sees in the data, isn't the correct, whole picture?

Just some problems with physicalists' model of brain creating consciousness..

- No location found for consciousness, nothing like a central processing unit either
- No location of long term memory (although memory is stored/filtered via hippocampus, it is not stored there)
- No location of tacit memory
- No location of freewill choice decisions
- No mechanism known to solve the 'binding problem'
- No reason for unconscious processes to evolve consciousness as a user illusion
- Long term memory survives brain damage and disease better than short term memory

In other words, there is nothing to contradict the concept of an external mind filtered by the brain.

[skidoo]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

'......after a cardiac arrest you lose consciousness within eight seconds; within 11 seconds the brain’s rhythms become flat, and within 18 seconds there is no possibility of the brain creating a model of the world - so the brain is down .......Yet whenever we asked people when their near-death experiences occurred, they said it was during unconsciousness. .........It could be argued that their experiences occurred in the few seconds between brain functions being restored and the return of consciousness. But recent research on a patient in the United States, where traces of electrical activity in the brain were closely monitored, suggested this was not the case. ....' - Dr Peter Fenwick (Brain neuro-psychiatrist)

Have you never experienced a time-compressed dream? Apparently not.

This does not contradict interactive dualism.

No one said it does.

If the brain is a filter of consciousness, not the source of consciousness, the brain interface and physical senses can limit the mind and perception.

But there is no evidence that the brain is a "filter of consciousness." All of the evidence points to consciousness being an emergent property of the brain. Occam's Razor, ya know?

Again no contradiction, if the brain interface is damaged, the ability of an external mind to function through it would be impaired. If a TV set is damaged it doesn't mean the radio broadcasts have stopped too.

No one is proposing a contradiction. The key point is, where does the evidence lead? To rainbow-farting ponies? To dualism? No. All of the evidence points to mind as a property of the brain. No "radio broadcasts" have ever been detected.

Doesn't contradict the brain as filter or interface of consciousness.

Again, no one said it does. It doesn't contradict the existence of rainbow-farting ponies either.

'Believers in physicalism are confident that completely adequate correlations will eventually be discovered, but that remains a theoretical belief.

No. This is a falsifiable belief, that has never been falsified, even in the face of advancing technology, such as fMRI.

There is some evidence that a full correlation may not occur;
i.e. there may be conscious mental events that appear to occur not tied or based upon neural events (Libet, 1994; 1996; 1999)' - Benjamin Libet

"There is evidence...?" What evidence? More typical vague assertions.

For example, in 'readiness potential' experiments that physicalists have used to try and argue unconscious brain activity proceeds conscious awareness. (This effect still doesn't contradict the brain as filter of consciousness). Libet's experiments found that although the unconscious brain prepares before the actual conscious awareness and physical movement, no electrical activity or correlation was detected before a veto to cancel the planned movement.

Citation please. I'm pretty sure fMRI studies show the exact opposite, but I'll admit I'm not certain.

Simply not true. Novella is playing numberless dot to dot - how exactly the brain works is not known.

Argument from ignorance.

He expects to see a materialist paradigm and perhaps like people see faces in wallpaper that aren't there, perhaps what he sees in the data, isn't the correct, whole picture?

He (and the rest of us) see what the evidence shows, plain and simple. If anyone is seeing "faces in the wallpaper that aren't there," it's those of you who presuppose.

Just some problems with physicalists' model of brain creating consciousness..

- No location found for consciousness, nothing like a central processing unit either

So? The brain is a complex organ. Again, argument from ignorance.

- No location of long term memory (although memory is stored/filtered via hippocampus, it is not stored there)
- No location of tacit memory
- No location of freewill choice decisions
- No mechanism known to solve the 'binding problem'
- No reason for unconscious processes to evolve consciousness as a user illusion
- Long term memory survives brain damage and disease better than short term memory

All one big argument from ignorance. The truth is, the more we learn about the brain (advances are occurring exponentially), the more dualism shrinks as a possibility. The opposite HAS NEVER HAPPENED. With advances in fMRI and whatnot, we have yet to come across an issue that we're technologically capable of exploring where we said, "Wow, that supports dualism!"

In other words, there is nothing to contradict the concept of an external mind filtered by the brain.

There's nothing to contradict rainbow farting ponies either. There's NOTHING to support a dualist view of the mind. On the other hand, as Dr. Novella stated, all of the falsifiable predictions made by a materialist view have been supported.

[David Bailey]

Skidoo,

If a theory is wrong, a lot of the arguments against it will seem like arguments from ignorance. Let me take one interesting example:

In the 1980's and early 1990's the idea that Artificial Intelligence (AI) was not just feasible, but inevitable became popular. This idea was, of course, based directly on the physicalist notion that the brain is doing nothing but a computation, which could be done more efficiently inside a computer.

Unlike Ψ-research, vast sums of money were pumped into AI research over a period of about a decade, and incredibly little has emerged from all that effort. Real AI seems as far away as ever, and most people have just got bored with the idea and moved on.

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos, who takes a physicalist point of view, now estimates that real AI may take 200 years - which gets him nicely off the hook of discussing its failure so far, and the contradictions it seems to generate!

Yes, you can claim that we are simply ignorant of how to write a truly conscious AI program, but how much effort has to go into one approach before you start looking for alternatives?

fMRI techniques are very interesting, but I think it is very important to be clear exactly what they DO and DON'T tell us. While they do indicate areas of the brain that work hardest to process various situations, they actually tell us nothing about how they do that processing. Imagine you could measure the electrical activity in the various parts of a computer while it was performing word processing. Perhaps you could detect the burst of activity associated with each keystroke. Great - but if you knew nothing about computer hardware or software, you could amass that kind of information till the cows came home, and be none the wiser! Whether you are a physicalist, dualist, or (better) an agnostic, it is surely important to recognise that we understand very little about what thought is, or how it is processed - so to argue, as you do, that all the evidence is stacking up on the physicalist side is a bit premature.

It is also wrong, in that there is quite a lot of evidence pointing in another direction, but that evidence - such as Dean Radin's presentiment work - is just ritually dismissed by the more dogmatic materialists. Clearly, one way to 'win' an argument is to simply refuse to look at any evidence that points in another direction, as Lewis Walpert famously did when he turned his back on Rupert Sheldrake's slides of data while debating with him!

David

[skidoo]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Yes, you can claim that we are simply ignorant of how to write a truly conscious AI program, but how much effort has to go into one approach before you start looking for alternatives?

The ability to artificially create consciousness has no bearing on the testable hypotheses of materialism versus dualism. Again, none of the hypotheses proceeding from a materialistic view of the mind have ever been falsified. In fact, they have been supported, and as we learn more about the brain, the positive evidence for a materialistic view mounts, while support for the dualist view diminishes.

fMRI techniques are very interesting, but I think it is very important to be clear exactly what they DO and DON'T tell us. While they do indicate areas of the brain that work hardest to process various situations, they actually tell us nothing about how they do that processing.

So what? At present, they tell us how different subsystems of the brain interact to produce various phenomena. Do they show us precisely which individual neuron signaled which other at a given moment? Not yet. But this is irrelevant to the correlations observed between brain activity and mental phenomena. Again, this is an argument from ignorance.

Imagine you could measure the electrical activity in the various parts of a computer while it was performing word processing. Perhaps you could detect the burst of activity associated with each keystroke. Great - but if you knew nothing about computer hardware or software, you could amass that kind of information till the cows came home, and be none the wiser!

This makes no sense. I could test many important hypotheses about the computer's functioning, even if I could only monitor electrical activity, and didn't know all of the details of its internal functions. To use your example, I could observe that new words never appear in the WP program unless the keyboard is activated. Further experiments would demonstrate that destroying the keyboard will prevent future words from ever showing up in the WP program's window.

In fact, I could make the previous observations without even having any knowledge of the electrical activity! This would be tantamount to observations made after invasive brain surgery or traumatic brain injury. Which is almost certainly what prompted Hippocrates to write the following in the third century B.C.:

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations.

Whether you are a physicalist, dualist, or (better) an agnostic, it is surely important to recognise that we understand very little about what thought is, or how it is processed - so to argue, as you do, that all the evidence is stacking up on the physicalist side is a bit premature.

"A bit premature?" The materialist view begets many testable hypotheses, all of which have repeatedly been supported, none of which have been falsified. The ever-mounting body of evidence supporting a materialist view of the mind is huge. There is no evidence supporting dualism.

It is also wrong, in that there is quite a lot of evidence pointing in another direction, but that evidence - such as Dean Radin's presentiment work - is just ritually dismissed by the more dogmatic materialists.

"Quite a lot of evidence?" Please cite sources. And go on and cite some of Radin's presentiment work. This'll be fun.

For some amusing reading, I suggest instead this paper by Radin: Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood.

Originally Posted by Radin

Conclusion: The mood-elevating properties of chocolate can be enhanced with intention.

Clearly, one way to 'win' an argument is to simply refuse to look at any evidence that points in another direction,

Clearly, one way to "win" a debate is to claim a voluminous body of evidence, yet fail to point to a single legitimate example.