In the major journal American Psychologist there was published in 2018 a paper entitled "The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review." The author is psychologist Etzel Cardena, whose main work seems to be in regular psychology, although he did co-edit a handbook of parapsychology. The paper (which has been cited 192 times) discusses some powerful evidence for things such as ESP (extrasensory perception or telepathy). Before Cardena presents such evidence, he tries to kind of "pave the way" for his evidence presentation, to "soften the beaches" by "warming up" his audience. He must have been aware that very many or most of the people reading his paper may have been materialists who claim that telepathy is impossible. So we can see why Cardena would have taken an approach of trying to explain why telepathy is not impossible, and then present the evidence for telepathy.
Why do materialists claim that things such as telepathy are impossible? The reason is mainly that their belief about the brain and the mind leads them to thinking that telepathy cannot occur. A materialist thinks that your mind is purely the product of your brain (or perhaps that the mind is merely something the same as your current set of brain states). Now consider two people in different houses who are communicating telepathically. According to the belief that your mind is merely a product of your brain (or the same as your brain states), such a thing should be impossible. Under such an idea, the only way that telepathy could occur is by signal transmission from one brain to another. But a human doesn't have any kind of antenna that would allow him to transmit signals from his brain to another brain. And a human doesn't have any dish-like receiver that would allow him to receive signals transmitted by another human.
Such at least was the argument that materialists would give against telepathy prior to the development of modern computer technology, back in the days before there were so many tiny devices that were communicating electronically without any visible receiver dishes or antenna. Now that we use so many tiny devices that communicate wirelessly without any visible antennae or receiver dishes, such as smartphones that use wi-fi, such an argument may seem less compelling even to the person who believes that the mind is merely the product of the brain.
In his paper Cardena attempts to dispose of any such a priori rationale for refusing to even look at evidence for ESP and similar phenomena (broadly referred to as psi). There is a very good way of doing such a thing, but Cardena fails to use such a way. He gives us instead a clumsy attempt to warmup his audience for his presentation of ESP evidence.
Cardena starts out in a fumbling way by disparaging the term ESP, saying "ESP is a misleading term because it suggests perception as the mediating mechanism, although few if any psi researchers nowadays assume this to be the case." This claim makes no sense. The Cambridge English Dictionary gives us two definitions of perception:
- "the quality of being aware of things through the physical senses, especially sight"
- "someone's ability to notice and understand things that are not obvious to other people"
The term "extrasensory perception" is a perfectly good and honest term to be using, and the "extrasensory" part makes clear that the second definition of perception is being used. It makes no sense to complain that the term ESP suggests sensory perception, because the "E" in that "ESP" clearly indicates that extrasensory perception (not involving the senses) is being referred to.
Cardena then attempts to warmup his audience for a presentation of evidence for psychical abilities such as ESP by referring to physics. He states this:
"Quantum mechanics (QM) and Einstein’s theory of relativity have depicted a reality that differs substantially from commonsensical assumptions. Nobel laureate and pioneer of molecular biology Max Delbrück (1986) expressed it so: 'Modern science . . . has forced us to abandon absolute space and time, determinism, and the absolute object.' "
This is a poor strategy of attempting to warmup his audience for a presentation of evidence for psychical abilities such as ESP. The nature of time and space is a question that is not closely related to the possibility of abilities such as ESP and clairvoyance. There is no need at all for people to change their beliefs about time and space in order to accept evidence of paranormal human abilities. If makes no sense to ask someone to "abandon absolute space and time" as a prerequisite to accepting ESP evidence. No such abandonment is required.
Cardena then dives into a murky discussion of quantum mechanics, telling us this:
"In his interpretation of QM (and experts differ on how to interpret it, e.g., Schlosshauer, Kofler, & Zeilinger, 2013), the eminent physicist Bernard d=Espagnat (1979, 2006) discussed the implications of experiments showing that measuring/observing the property of a particle, such as its spin, instantaneously determines that of another particle entangled with it, no matter how distant. Entanglement means that the quantum states of such particles are not independent but part of a system, which can be produced in different ways. D’Espagnat concluded that such experiments falsify the local realist theory that effects cannot propagate faster than light and that objects far apart in space are relatively independent. For him, the world is not made of separate 'material' objects embedded in space-time, but of a nonseparable, indivisible field, a 'veiled reality,' with which consciousness interacts. He concluded that the implications of QM and 'transcendentalism-inclined thinkers' (d’Espagnat, 2006, p. 429) have points in common, as did renowned physicist David Bohm (1986) in his theory of the implicate order or guiding field, which he applied to psi phenomena."
Cardena is here again following a fumbling approach at attempting to warmup his audience for a presentation of evidence for psychical abilities such as ESP. He has mentioned the very murky topic of quantum mechanics, and a particularly puzzling feature of quantum mechanics, a very baffling physical phenomenon called quantum entanglement. Neither quantum mechanics nor quantum entanglement has any clear and obvious relevance to the possibility of paranormal human abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance. It is not at all necessary for you to have any particular interpretation or idea of quantum mechanics before having a credible belief in telepathy, and it is not necessary for you to believe that anything can travel faster than the speed of light.
Cardena then gives us several more paragraphs discussing controversial interpretations of physics, including retrocausality, the idea that future events may affect past events. The possibility of retrocausality may have some relevance to whether it is possible to have an anomalous knowledge of future events, called precognition. But no controversial interpretation of physics (such as a belief in retrocausality) is needed for anyone to believe in telepathy or clairvoyance. Whether retrocausality ever occurs is irrelevant to whether telepathy is possible. Cardena mentions a physicist who has postulated "additional dimensions beyond the temporal and three-spatial ones." The possibility of additional dimensions has some relevance to consideration of evidence for near-death experiences and life after death. But the possibility of additional dimensions has no direct relevance to whether telepathy or clairvoyance is possible. You do not need to believe in extra dimensions to accept evidence for telepathy and clairvoyance.
After so clumsy an attempt to foster receptivity to evidence for paranormal psi abilities, Cardena does a fairly good job at presenting such evidence. But he fails to present the evidence in a way that will cause the layman reader to realize how strong the evidence is. We have in Table 1 an indication that there is evidence for "ganzfeld" which has a "P" of "< 10-16." What does that mean? Someone who has long-studied such topics will know that the word "ganzfeld" refers to a type of ESP or telepathy test, that the letter "P" refers to a p-value that can very roughly be considered the probability of getting a result through chance, and that < 10-16 refers to "less than 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000." But the average layman will not know all of these things, and may glance at Table 1 without having any understanding that very strong evidence has been presented for paranomal human abilities.
Similarly, we have in Table 1 an indication that with something called "forced choice" there have been results of "P" of "< 6.3 X 10-25." But what does that mean? Neither the average layman nor a typical psychologist will know upon coming to Table 1, because Cardena hasn't yet explained the term. A few pages later he gets around to explaining the term (without explaining it very well):
"In forced-choice studies, the guessing possibilities are finite and the possibilities are known by the person, for instance cards in a randomized deck. The protocol measures whether the participant can guess correctly more often than would be expected by chance. This was a common design in the middle of the 20th century."
What he's talking about by "forced choice studies" are things such as (1) telepathy tests in which one person tries to guess a randomly selected card that some unseen person has selected and observed; (2) clairvoyance tests such as card tests in which a random card is dealt face down, and someone has to guess what the card is, before anyone has seen it. An average person making a causal reading of Table 1 will have no idea of what is meant by "forced choice," so Cardena has not very effectively presented the compelling evidence for ESP in a way that will cause most readers to understand how compelling it is. So it goes again and again with parapsychologists. They have all kinds of incredibly compelling evidence they can present, but they are often very clumsy about presenting such evidence in ways that the average reader can easily understand. Roughly speaking, the "forced choice" evidence listed in Cardena's Table 1 is evidence that in certain types of telepathy or clairvoyance tests, there have been results with a chance likelihood of less than about 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is roughly the same as p of "< 6.3 X 10-25."
What would be an effective way of fostering receptivity for evidence for paranormal human abilities? It would be a strategy completely different from the approach Cardena took. An effective way of warming up an audience for a presentation of evidence for paranormal human abilities is to start out by discussing at considerable length the evidence of brain physical shortfalls, and the very strong evidence that nothing in the brain is capable of explaining any of the main mental capabilities that humans have. If you take this way of "paving the way" for evidence for paranormal human abilities, you will discuss things such as this:
As shown in the many examples given here, here, here, here and here, contrary to the predictions of materialism, human minds can operate very well despite tremendous damage to the brain, caused by injury, disease or surgery. For example, removing half of a person's brain in the operation known as hemispherectomy often produces little change in memory or cognitive abilities, as I discuss here. There have been quite a few cases of people (such as Lorber's patients) who were able to think and speak very well despite having lost more than 60% of their brain due to disease. Such cases argue powerfully that the human mind is not actually a product of the brain or an aspect of the brain.
Although it is claimed that memories are stored in the brain (specifically in synapses), there is no place in the brain that is a plausible storage site for human memories that can last for 50 years or longer. The proteins that make up both synapses and dendritic spines are quite short-lived, being subject to very high molecular turnover which gives them an average lifetime of only a few weeks. Both synapses and dendritic spines are a “shifting sands” substrate absolutely unsuitable for storing memories that last reliably for decades.
It is claimed that memories are stored in brains, but humans are able to instantly recall accurately very obscure items of knowledge and memories learned or experienced decades ago; and the brain seems to have none of the characteristics that would allow such a thing. The recall of an obscure memory from a brain would require some ability to access the exact location in the brain where such a memory was stored (such as the neurons near neuron# 8,124,412,242). But given the lack of any neuron coordinate system or any neuron position notation system or anything like an indexing system or addressing system in the brain, it should be impossible for a brain to perform anything like such an instantaneous lookup of stored information from some exact spot in the brain.
If humans were storing their memories in brains, there would have to be a fantastically complex translation system (almost infinitely more complicated than the ASCII code or the genetic code) by which mental concepts, words and images are translated into neural states. But no trace of any such system has ever been found, no one has given a credible detailed theory of how it could work, and if it existed it would be a “miracle of design” that would be naturally inexplicable.
Contrary to claims that minds are merely an aspect of brains or a product of brains, we know from near-death experiences that human minds can continue to operate even after hearts have stopped and brains have shut down. As discussed here, such experiences often include observations of hospital details or medical details that should have been impossible if a mere hallucination was the cause of the experience.
If human brains actually stored conceptual and experiential memories, the human brain would have to have both a write mechanism by which exact information can be precisely written, and a read mechanism by which exact information can be precisely read. The brain seems to have neither of these things. There is nothing in the brain similar to the “read-write” heads found in computers.
We understand how physical things can produce physical effects (such as an asteroid producing a crater), and how mental things can produce mental effects (such as how a belief can give rise to another belief or an emotion). But no one has the slightest idea how a physical thing could ever produce a purely mental effect such as an abstract idea. As discussed here, no one has any understanding of how a brain or neurons in a brain could produce anything like a thought or an idea.
We know from our experience with computers the type of things that an information storage and retrieval system uses and requires. The human brain seems to have nothing like any of these things.
As discussed here, humans can form new memories instantly, at a speed much faster than would be possible if we were using our brains to store such memories. It is typically claimed that memories are stored by “synapse strengthening” and protein synthesis, but such things do not work fast enough to explain the formation of memories that can occur instantly.
As discussed here, human brains do not show signs of working harder during thinking or memory recall, contrary to what we would expect if such effects were being produced by brains.
Contrary to the idea that human memories are stored in synapses, the density of synapses sharply decreases between childhood and early adulthood. We see no neural effect matching the growth of learned memories in human.
There are many humans with either exceptional memory abilities (such as those with hyperthymesia who can recall every day of their adulthood) or exceptional thinking abilities (such as savants with incredibly fast calculation abilities). But such cases do not involve larger brains, very often involve completely ordinary brains, and quite often involve damaged brains, quite to the contrary of what we would expect from the “brains make minds” assumption.
Results from the animal kingdom are inconsistent with claim that minds are made from brains and memories stored in brains. For example, animals such as crows with very small brains (and no cerebral cortex) perform astonishingly well on mental tests; elephants with brains four times larger than ours are not nearly as smart as us; and flatworms that have been taught things and then decapitated can still remember what they learned, after regrowing a head.
Well-documented evidence for apparitions provides evidence that the human mind is not merely the result of brain activity. Such evidence includes (1) more than 100 cases of people who saw an apparition of someone they did not know had died, only to very soon learn that the corresponding person had died (as discussed here, here, here and here); (2) many additional cases of apparitions seen by multiple observers, contrary to the explanation of hallucination (discussed here and here); (3) many other cases of death-bed apparitions as discussed here and documented by researchers such as Haraldsson and Osis.
Contrary to claims that the brain is the source of human thinking and memory recall, a full analysis of the signal delaying factors in the human brain (such as synaptic delays and synaptic fatigue) shows that signals in the brain cannot be traveling fast enough to explain human thinking and human memory recall which can occur instantaneously.
The human brain experiences extremely severe levels of signal noise, so much signal noise that we should not believe that it is the brain that is producing human memory recall that can occur massively and flawlessly for people such as Hamlet actors and Wagnerian tenors.
These things all indicate that our minds and memory must be the result of some spiritual or immaterial aspect of man or some soul aspect of man, in direct contradiction to the position of materialism that such a thing does not exist. Why do such things help "pave the way" for the evidence of paranormal human abilities? Such things help to establish the likelihood that the human mind is some mysterious reality that cannot be explained by any known physical causes. Once we have reached such a conclusion, all talk of an impossibility of telepathy or clairvoyance collapses like a house of cards blown apart by a shotgun. All of the talk of an impossibility of telepathy or clairvoyance was based upon the dogma that the mind is merely the product of the brain or the same as the brain. Once such dogmas are exposed as tenets inconsistent with what we know about the brain and its many severe physical shortfalls, "it's a whole new ballgame" and "all bets are off," to use two American colloquial expressions. If we don't understand how we got our minds, and cannot credibly explain the main common phenomena of minds by referring to brains, then we don't understand the limits of our minds, and have no business claiming that some mental phenomenon is impossible because it cannot be neurally explained. When we properly realize that we do not understand how our minds arise, then we are in a "whole new world" in which things such as telepathy, clairvoyance and life after death are very "live" possibilities rather than impossibilities.
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