James Randi Challenges Skeptiko’s Telepathic Dog

[David Bailey]

Topher,

On the whole, science has not progressed by moderate changes to existing laws - at least not in physics, and at the level of formalism. That may not necessarily be the way the next time, but it is suggestive.

I think characterising explanations as 'extraphysical' may be missing the point. As I have debated with Paul, accepted physical theories have not all been about explanations, to some extent they have been about formalising non-explanations! Newton's law of gravity gave a formula for the force between two bodies due to gravity, but by saying that this force was mediated by a field, it essentially gave no explanation for the force at all. Likewise, QM declares that the outcome of an experiment involving small numbers of particles will typically be unpredictable.

I guess I envisage a new theory of Ψ/consciousness in which certain aspects of the supposed predictability of the behaviour of physical matter would be transferred to conscious entities. This would be a theory, as you say, where consciousness has a special place in the structure of the universe. Paul objects that such a theory would provide no explanation of consciousness, but that need not necessarily be totally true. Electromagnetism does not explain the existence of charge, but it does formalise that way that it behaves. An explicit theory of consciousness might look rather similar.

I suspect that any explanation of Ψ by a small modification of existing laws could only take into account a small subset of Ψ phenomena as they seem to manifest themselves. Such a theory would inevitably have to fall back on the usual skeptical arguments - fraud, self delusion, statistical fluke, etc. to discard those phenomena that it could not explain.

David

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

On the whole, science has not progressed by moderate changes to existing laws - at least not in physics, and at the level of formalism. That may not necessarily be the way the next time, but it is suggestive.

You're right. For the most part it has advanced by small changes to existing laws -- e.g., modifying the gas laws to take into account the different number of degrees of freedom of movement for diatomic gases.

There have certainly been exceptions. SR was a moderate tweak to existing theory (though conceptually a big change, formally it is just a matter of distinguishing some concepts that were not previously distinguished and throwing in some gammas and the like to adjust the existing equations). GR however, though basically a small extension to SR resulted in some large changes to gravitational theory. QM, is, of course a radical change to the existing formalism. But that is quite rare. Most changes are small -- I think this will take more. The conceptual changes will be huge -- are huge even without a theoretical understanding -- but we may be able to get there without rewriting most of physics.

I think characterising explanations as 'extraphysical' may be missing the point. As I have debated with Paul, accepted physical theories have not all been about explanations, to some extent they have been about formalising non-explanations! Newton's law of gravity gave a formula for the force between two bodies due to gravity, but by saying that this force was mediated by a field, it essentially gave no explanation for the force at all. Likewise, QM declares that the outcome of an experiment involving small numbers of particles will typically be unpredictable.

I think I made the same point a bit before you, using the distinction between a descriptive theory and an explanatory one. Paul was claiming that science is allowed to reject evidence for a phenomenon until there is an explanation for the phenomenon. This clearly has nothing much to do with the way that science has always been conducted.

I guess I envisage a new theory of Ψ/consciousness in which certain aspects of the supposed predictability of the behaviour of physical matter would be transferred to conscious entities. This would be a theory, as you say, where consciousness has a special place in the structure of the universe. Paul objects that such a theory would provide no explanation of consciousness, but that need not necessarily be totally true. Electromagnetism does not explain the existence of charge, but it does formalise that way that it behaves. An explicit theory of consciousness might look rather similar.

That is certainly a possibility, and if one starts with a belief that consciousness has a fundamental causative role then you might give it a high likelihood. But even so, its just speculation. I don't think that it has been established that our sense of free will comes from an irreducible causative agent called "consciousness". So I'm looking elsewhere -- but I wouldn't say that I am by any means certain that with some more evidence I might change my mind (so to speak).

I suspect that any explanation of Ψ by a small modification of existing laws could only take into account a small subset of Ψ phenomena as they seem to manifest themselves. Such a theory would inevitably have to fall back on the usual skeptical arguments - fraud, self delusion, statistical fluke, etc. to discard those phenomena that it could not explain.

Well, lets get our terms straight. NDEs and other OBEs, even if in some sense real and paranormal are not psi, though when they are veridical they include psi phenomena. I do believe that a moderate (not small) change in existing theories may well be enough to explain or at least describe psi. From that standpoint, once we have some idea of whether or not psi is sufficient to explain the veridical aspect in those very rare cases where it has been established, or whether it implies a range of phenomena that encompasses NDEs, homing instinct, self sacrifice of weak herd members, memory, love, creativity or any of the many other phenomena that have been proposed over the years to be explained by psi.

Keep in mind that the number of NDE cases that are not fully explained conventionally are quite small, and those that are not plausibly explainable by psi (not "superpsi", which is a term coined to dismiss the possibility) is even smaller. I am not saying that those cases are not an indication of something beyond the physical (that is a Skeptics game, not a scientists), but I am saying that errors, misunderstandings, etc. do occur so that the very few cases in hand provide only weak evidence for it.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

Keep in mind that the number of NDE cases that are not fully explained conventionally are quite small, and those that are not plausibly explainable by psi (not "superpsi", which is a term coined to dismiss the possibility) is even smaller. I am not saying that those cases are not an indication of something beyond the physical (that is a Skeptics game, not a scientists), but I am saying that errors, misunderstandings, etc. do occur so that the very few cases in hand provide only weak evidence for it.

OK - I should have said Ψ and related phenomena! I guess I don't think the 'conventional' explanation of NDE's (dying neurones generating a last gasp hallucination as they are poisoned by glutamate) is adequate without a lot of evidence, so I think all NDE's are evidence of a non-standard theory of consciousness. At least one very impressive NDE' occurred under conditions in which the brain was drained and cooled for surgery. BTW, for the conventional explanation to work, the 'dying' brain has not only to generate the NDE, but also remember it!

David

[davidsmith73]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

The observational theories are based on these and essentially say that it is the specifically the act of feedback, and the psychological/emotional response to it, that is the "true" target (they differ in exactly this comes about)...

...The error comes from considering ESP as being "sensory" rather than as a different means of perception. The term "sensory" carries implications that are just plain, demonstrably, inappropriate. To refer to "extra-sensory perception" as being a different kind of "sensory perception" is a poor way to think about it.

I'm not convinced that it's sensible to make a distinction between calling ESP a form of 'sensory' or a 'different means of' perception. ESP and normal sensory perception both involve an interaction between the brain and its environment, surely. Both involve the formation of neural representations that preserve the relational structure of some aspect of the environment. There are differences between sight and hearing in terms of the chain of physical processes between the environment and the neural representation but we lump them together under the 'senses', so why not ESP? And it's not like the external stimulus during normal sensory perception is directly relevant to the process of perception per se. Current theories of perception can make reference to explicit representations without necessarily making reference to external stimuli.

Are you saying that ESP does not necessarily involve an interaction between the brain and its environment? The only other alternative I can see is an interaction between the brain and itself at another point in time (precognition?). In that case it depends on whether you view the future brain as an aspect of the environment or not. Quite confusing, I must say...

[Topher Cooper]

There is a system that is used both experimentally and for certain types of neural diagnosis and treatment. Basically, a coil is placed against a chosen spot on the head and a large spike of current goes through it. The result is a large magnetic pulse that induces a current in the underlying brain tissue that, essentially, temporarily puts that part of the brain to sleep for a while. Depending on the part of the brain affected, the subject can be definitely aware of the magnetic pulse by the internal effect it has had. Should we therefore say that there is a "sense" that is used for detecting large magnetic spikes applied to the head?

Words are created things that exist for a purpose. They do not have an intrinsic meaning that exists outside of their utility. When we consider stretching an existing term to cover a new category we should consider the utility of doing this. For example, is one a prime number? Mathematicians could have made either choice. It is certainly natural enough to refer to it as a prime. After all, it has "no factors other than itself or one". But looking at the utility of calling it a prime, mathematicians decided that this was a bad idea. Almost everything you have to say about primes would have to have the phrase "except for one" added to it. The prime number factorization theorem, one of the foundations of number theory, for example, would be more complex. It is more useful to say that one is neither prime nor composite.

The senses, major and minor, have certain shared properties, and the term, whether we intend it to or not carries with it those implications and that influences how we think about the thing in question. If Extra-Sensory Perception is revamped as Extraordinary-Sensory Perception then practically everything we say about the senses would need to be qualified by "except for ESP". And we would need to constantly remind ourselves that when we are thinking about the ESP sense -- which appears to be intimately connected somehow with PK which is not a sense at all -- that it is unlike the thirty or so (depending on how you count them) conventional senses and our tendencies to think of it in analogous ways (e.g., passing through a short-term "buffer" containing 7+/-2 pieces of information, or, more relevant to this discussion, necessitating cognitive steps to interpret the raw sensory data). It has been pointed out many times that ESP acts more like memory than like, for example, vision. Of course, we might prove some day that some of those properties are shared by ESP, but generally they are clearly not.

If you chose you can treat "sensory perception" as meaning the same thing as "perception" if you wish. But there is no necessity to do so, and a great deal of reason to avoid that particular expansion of the term "sense".

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Topher

Nope, not true. You are still thinking sensorially. All that is necessary is that enough information enters your brain to bias your responses (both external, such as what card you call out, and internal such as what fragment of a memory ends up being associated with the next word you happen to hear) towards the desired outcome.

Yes, fine, it can bias my responses instead of presenting a complete image. In the case of remote viewing experiments, though, it's clearly more than a biasing, because I don't have a few specific targets from which I merely need to select. I'm supposed to describe my sensations of the remote target from scratch, in detail. In any event, something had to interpret the target and present the information to my brain. And the part of my brain that receives the information is a sense, unless you want to claim that my entire brain state is simply wham! reset to the answer.

The observational theories say, essentially that among the repertoire of responses that you might naturally have, the probability of certain ones that are positively reinforced at the time of feedback are increased and the probabilities of certain ones that are negatively reinforced at the time of feedback are decreased.

But for some remote viewing experiments, and for psychic readings, and for telepathy in general, the repertoire of responses is huge. Furthermore, it's not as if I have a repertoire of fully-formed scenes, say, which merely need to be biased. The repertoire consists of low-level components: ground, trees, buildings, fences, boats, clouds, etc., etc. To say that the information biases my selection toward the correct complex combination of all these low-level items is tantamount to saying that a fully-formed image is presented to my brain. (By "image" I did not mean visual image.)

I would say, rather, that in any case, we have a lot of rather counterintuitive mechanisms to understand -- as we did (and still do) with SR, QM and GR.

We have to discover the mechanisms before we can understand them. But I agree that it all comes down to science.

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

I rather side with Paul on this - natural ESP - as opposed to what is studied in the laboratory is about Mary picking up details of her husband Fred as he suffers a car crash. The card picking experiments were a (not very productive) abstraction of this phenomenon.

David

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Yes, fine, it can bias my responses instead of presenting a complete image. In the case of remote viewing experiments, though, it's clearly more than a biasing, because I don't have a few specific targets from which I merely need to select. I'm supposed to describe my sensations of the remote target from scratch, in detail.

In sufficient detail. In a remote viewing session the percipient works over an extended period of time. They produce a variety of call material -- mentation of one form or another. They let images drift to the surface of their minds, and get other impressions. They sketch them, or describe them, or otherwise indicate these impressions. Over the extended time period some of these impressions form consistent patterns and others don't and are probably ignored.

Our mind is a constant flux of associations, images plucked from our memories and modified or put together with others in novel ways. Remote viewing seems to be a matter of these associations -- the stream of consciousness -- being biased in a way that correlates (ideally strongly) with the target. A large part of the skill, both in the participant and the facilitator, of being good at remote viewing, seems to be in the ability to recognize patterns in the mentation that is different from the percipients normal biases.

The remote viewer does not sit down, say Om a few times and then get a full fledged, complete image in their heads, which they then spend however much time (generally hours) communicating. The "message" is in the form of a long series of responses that are biased towards a correlation with the target.

Of course, it is one of the standard arguments of Skeptics that since remote viewing material is not a photo-realistic rendition of the target material but is simply correlated with it that it doesn't represent anything worth paying attention to. This is just the usual Skeptical solipsism where they claim that something is supposed to be something particular (even though nobody who actually knows the facts claims it to be) and since it isn't, it doesn't exist at all.

In any event, something had to interpret the target and present the information to my brain.

So, when we look at a particle in free fall, something has to examine every other particle in the universe, measure its mass and distance from the particle in question and compute their summed gravitational effect on it? I suppose there is a sense in which that is true, but it is not a very useful way of looking at it, and it implies a process that just is not necessarily taking place (there has, of course, been speculation -- and I mean serious speculation, not The Matrix -- that the Universe is the working of a computer that makes just such a calculation, but it is a bad idea -- a classic "level error" -- to treat it as that for most purposes).

There needs to be a mechanism that creates a correlation between external state and biases in your brain -- that is all we need to say. Anything beyond that is speculation.

And the part of my brain that receives the information is a sense, unless you want to claim that my entire brain state is simply wham! reset to the answer.

The choices are not inclusive. One could choose to apply the term "sense" here, just as one could apply the term "sense" to the cognitive process of figuring out a theory about the universe (which would, in the common sense of the term information, result in increasing the amount of information you have about the universe). But this isn't necessary, and is furthermore demonstrably less than useful -- it leads to confusions such as the ones you've been announcing with such great confidence.

Just as the experts in the field of mathematics have decided that it is not useful to consider "one" to be a prime number, just as the experts in relativistic physics have decided that it is not useful to consider the "mass" of an object to be its relativistic mass (though in both cases it might seem more "natural" to choose otherwise), the experts in this field realized way back when the term ESP was coined that it is something other than what occurs in "sensory perception". Skeptics love to deride people for their misuse of technical terms (even when, as is frequently the case, the technical term is being used in a popular sense that predates its technical use), but they frequently feel no particular need to use technical terms correctly when it doesn't suit their purposes.

We have to discover the mechanisms before we can understand them. But I agree that it all comes down to science.

We need to understand what the mechanisms are and how they can account for at least the broad picture of the observed phenomena before we can say that we have discovered the mechanisms. What do you expect, that there will be a revelation that says "The mechanism is ectoplasm!" and then everyone will say "Oh! So that's the answer. Let's go off now and figure out what that means."?

[Topher Cooper]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I rather side with Paul on this - natural ESP - as opposed to what is studied in the laboratory is about Mary picking up details of her husband Fred as he suffers a car crash. The card picking experiments were a (not very productive) abstraction of this phenomenon.

David

Well, that is what appears to happen in a tiny subset of "natural" occurrences which fit our view of what ESP ought to be so we repeat those events (subtly -- or not so subtly -- modifying it to better fit our view) to each other and talk about them. More systematic surveys are much closer to "steering our thoughts" than "reading someones mind" or "seeing it as if I was there". Many details are wrong, or, like in dreams, include remembered images to stand in for the real details. In "natural ESP" (not that there is any other kind that I know of, but we know what you mean -- ESP under natural conditions) it still seems to be the case that the message is the response to the message not a photographic image (or its equivalent in other modalities).

The card experiments were, in my opinion, a limited but very productive abstraction of the more general phenomenon. That is frequently how science is done. One studies a phenomenon under limited conditions (e.g., choosing among a few, fixed choices) and learns what one can and then expands the boundaries (e.g., free choice experiments -- eventually including targets with emotional content) to see what was specific to those conditions. If you weren't aware of it, Louise Rhine collected and studied a large database (as we would now refer to it) of spontaneous "field" reports while her husband did the card experiments. Their work was always a back and forth between with each approach informing the other.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

So, when we look at a particle in free fall, something has to examine every other particle in the universe, measure its mass and distance from the particle in question and compute their summed gravitational effect on it? I suppose there is a sense in which that is true, but it is not a very useful way of looking at it, and it implies a process that just is not necessarily taking place (there has, of course, been speculation -- and I mean serious speculation, not The Matrix -- that the Universe is the working of a computer that makes just such a calculation, but it is a bad idea -- a classic "level error" -- to treat it as that for most purposes).

There needs to be a mechanism that creates a correlation between external state and biases in your brain -- that is all we need to say. Anything beyond that is speculation.

Well of course it is speculation - everything being discussed here is speculation!

The above quote does not seem to be a reasonable answer to Paul's point that a remote viewer has to be able to interpret the target - presumably in some way analogous to the way we interpret normal imagery.

Topher, I think there is a more general point here. While people are discussing the very existence of Ψ phenomena, it is perfectly reasonable to try to interpret phenomena in ways that don't invoke Ψ at all. However, once you have made the step to considering a world with Ψ, I don't think it is necessary to take the narrowest possible interpretation of Ψ phenomena, and demand proof at each point before you expand your interpretation.

To use the example of GR again, Einstein certainly didn't look for the smallest change he could make to NG to fix the orbit of Mercury and the bending of light round a star - at least I presume he didn't work that way! Once you are looking for a new theory, it makes sense to look in the first instance for something that fits the whole swathe of facts relating to Ψ and consciousness as efficiently as possible.

David