Psi and Psychology: The Recent Debate

Lecture by Stephen E. Braude on the Photographs of Ted Serios

Why Parapsychology And Psychical Research Are Real Science

Commonly Parapsychology and Psychical Research are called pseudoscience because of the phenomena they deal with. For example Parapsychology deals mainly with psi phenomena, sometimes life after death phenomena too. Where Psychical Research main focus is the survival question do we survive?. The claim made by many skeptics is that the evidence for survival and psi are not. Psi phenomena for example is verifiable and repeatable and has been shown to exist for over a century now. Even Richard Wiseman admits this but says that even though the scientific method shows it exists, that we should have a higher standard of evidence for it. This obviously is a cop out based on the fact that the scientific method is the best method we have of testing things.


Read this forum post for a good example of what closed mindeness means.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=273617

Dean Radin Psi Research

Parapsychology Research Methods

Mind Over Matter

Parapsychology The World Of The Paranormal

When Science Meets Psi

Watch these interesting youtube videos on science meeting psi.

The End Of Materialism Book Written By Parapsychologist Charles Tart

On Michael Prescott's blog he also talks about Charles Tart's new book called the " the end of materialism". Here i like to discuss why i agree on his view that materialism is indeed a dead end when it comes to consciousness. By the way before i tell you why i agree with his viewpoint. I like to show you where you can purchase his new book at.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN/1572246456?tag=psychologicalpro


Now that is out of the way, here is why i agree with his opinion on this matter. One reason is based on the strong supportable replicated data for psi phenomena, this here conflicts heavily with materialism, because in a materialistic worldview these phenomena are impossible. Second reason is the evidence for survival of bodily death, this evidence comes from many sources as i have outlined many times on this blog. But for the first time lookers on this blog, the evidence would be the cross correspondences, drop in communicators, the scole experiment, the pye record experiment, cases of patients in cardiac arrest and clinical death seeing things while being flatlined. That later are verified by health professionals. Other evidence would be particular cases of apparitions, xenoglossy and some poltergeist phenomena.


Also the work done by Dr. Jim Tucker and Dr. Ian Stevenson on past life experiences, birthmarks that match the deceased person. Other evidence would proxy sittings, afterdeath communications and induced after death communications, instrumental transcommunication, electronic voice phenomena, direct voice communication, automatic writing, book tests and newspaper tests. A third reason is the failure of materialism to reduce subjective experience down to the brain.

Also by the way Charles Tart has his own blog now up and running.

http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/

Hopefully sometime in the future i will be able to pick up this book at my local library, because i look forward to reading it.

Here is Michael Prescott's post on this topic as well.

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2009/07/a-new-book-from-charles-tart-a-blog-and-more.html

The Next Scientific Revolution With Marilyn Schlitz

Dean Radin Presentations On Youtube

New Parapsychology Discussion Forum

Go here to check out this new forum

http://psicology-forum.proboards.com/index.cgi

Random Number Generators

Some skeptics claim that an simplistic experiment should be done in parapsychology to demonstrate psi instead of an complicated one. The problem is that was already done with ESP cards they produced persuasive evidence for ESP, but the results were ignored.


Random number generators have many advantages over earlier research such as using tossed coins or dice. In the RNG experiment, great flexibility is combined with careful scientific control and a high rate of data acquisition.

Here is an good link refuted common criticism thrown at parapsychological experiments. It also discusses the hundreds of experiments that support psi, and also gives detail information on the experiments being repeated.

http://www.deanradin.com/para2.html

Professor Ray Hyman Skeptical Inquiror Article

Professor Ray Hyman believes that if mainstream science accepted psi was real that it would change science forever. But isn't science about breakthroughs?. Of course it is.

Here's where Hyman makes that clear

The first request is that the scientific community accept the claim that psi is real. The second is that they do so by exempting parapsychologists from the requirement that they provide evidence according to acceptable scientific standards. Both requests amount to changing science as we know it. Obviously, the scientific community will not, and should not, acquiesce to these requests.

Hyman also claims in the article in the skeptical inquiror that some parapsychologists say such as Dick Bierman, Walter Lucadou, J.E. Kennedy, and Robert Jahn, that the evidence for psi is inconsistent, irreproducible, and fails to meet acceptable scientific standards.

Now this is contrary to Bierman's success in replicating the presentiment experiments of Dr Dean Radin (where human reactions seem to occur marginally before an event occurs.

Nevertheless, Hyman's essay is disingenuous at best, if you do a little investigation and pay attention to his choice of ideas. First of all, I've read the papers by Bierman and Kennedy as well as a letter by Kennedy in response to Bierman's paper. In no case do they deny the REALITY of psi, only the ability of the evidence to be replicated based on consistent decline effects. This is due in great part, Kennedy poses, that we're not dealing with chemicals or continents but with thinking, complex human beings with a dizzying range of motivations, beliefs and fears. The concept that emerges should be that we still do not know how to study psi with consistency...YET. But of course Hyman jumps right to his preferred conclusion, which is that psi is nonexistent because of this supposed shortcoming.

Second, we have the cherry picking of experts. What makes Bierman and Kennedy more reliable than Radin and Utts, a professional statistician? Why, they reach the conclusion that support's Hyman's pre-existing bias, of course--that psi is non-replicable and therefore must be bunk. This is to say nothing of the other work out there, such as the experiments by Rupert Sheldrake, that show consistent replication. Those are ignored.

Finally, note how cleverly Hyman jumps to an uncalled for conclusion in order to discredit parapsychology in general. He says that what is implied by the conference is that psi advocates are asking the scientific community to give them a free pass--to set aside experimental rigor for psi as a special case. I have NEVER seen nor heard a parapsychologist express such a thing, just that their work be judged according to the same criteria as other research.

One can only conclude that this is another Hyman hit piece using selective data and questionable conclusions to preach to the CSICOP (excuse me, CSI) choir.

Belief Vs Evidence

A belief is something everything has however if it is not validated by scientific evidence it because a blind belief with no substance. Has Evidence can be falsify but that's what makes science interesting the thing is if there is enough scientific evidence for something then is because probable that it exists.

I have been researching a lot on life after death the evidence that i have read very carefully and looked with a critical eye i am now 90 percent convinced that life after death does exist that there is a nonphysical soul and that are consciousness does survive death.

Here's a few good websites on survival of the soul and consciousness after death.

www.victorzammit.com
www.survivalafterdeath.org
www.iands.org

There is also a lot of evidence for Psi Phenomena for example Dr.Dean Radin says things about the closed-minded skeptics who don't bother to research and investigate the evidence

Most of the commonly repeated skeptical reactions to psi research are extreme views, driven by the belief that psi is impossible. The effect of repeatedly seeing skeptical dismissals of the research, in college textbooks and in prominent scientific journals, has diminished mainstream academic interest in this topic. However, informed opinions, even among skeptics, shows that virtually all of the past skeptical arguments against psi have dissolved in the face of overwhelming positive evidence, or they are based on incredibly distorted versions of the actual research.

Here's another good article on The problem with James Randi

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/New/Examskeptics/Randi_problem.html