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JSE 34:3 Fall Whole Issue PDF
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JSE 34:3 Fall Whole Issue PDF
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A long-standing concern (or at least a belief) about ESP, held by both skeptics and believers in the paranormal, is that if telepathy really occurs, then it might pose a threat to mental privacy. And it’s easy enough to see what motivates that view. Presumably we like to think that we enjoy privileged access to our own mental states. But if others could come to know telepathically what we’re thinking or feeling, then (among other disquieting prospects) that would mean that our sins of the heart and most embarrassing or repulsive fleeting thoughts would potentially be available for public inspection. But how well-founded is that belief or concern? To get a grip on the issues, we should begin by considering the valuable distinction (perhaps first mentioned by C.D. Broad--Broad, 1953, 1962) between telepathic (or clairvoyant) cognition and telepathic (or clairvoyant) interaction. As you would expect, every instance of the former would be an instance of the latter, but the converse doesn’t hold—that is, ESP interaction may occur without ESP cognition. To see why this matters, we must take a closer look. If telepathic cognition occurs at all, it would presumably be a form of non-sensorial knowledge about another individual’s state of mind. More specifically, it would be a state of affairs in which so-called “percipient” A comes to know something about a telepathic interaction A has with another individual B. And what kind of things might A telepathically come to know? Well, presumably, in its most robust (and most intrusively intimidating) form, A would learn what’s going on in B’s mind—that is, that B is having certain thoughts, perceptions, or emotions. But it would still be an instance of telepathic cognition—admittedly, less intimidating or threatening to one’s mental privacy—if A learned merely that B was the telepathic cause of A’s current thought or experience—that is, that B was directly influencing or interfering with A’s stream of consciousness, whether or not A’s resulting thoughts or experiences were those of B or known by A to be those of B.
The psychical research literature has many examples of séance room materialization phenomena. This article consists of a reprint of, and commentary about, Eric J. Dingwall’s paper “The Plasma Theory”, published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1921. Dingwall discussed some of the previously published ideas on the topic, and emphasized those related to mediums Eva C. and Kathleen Goligher. The purpose of the current article is not to provide evidence for the phenomena, but to present relevant contextual information relevant to the article, additional bibliography, and theoretical concepts, some of which are forgotten today.
We seek to strengthen the hypothesis of time reversal of cause and effect, or the bipolar causal nature of advanced and retarded waves. The hypothesis is not directly testable, at least with existing technology, so the argument is based on a priori reasoning. It provides a basis for rationalizing entanglement and for the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory. Alternative hypotheses are given and compared to show justification.
KeyWords: advance wave; retrocausation; causal time reversal; Occam’s razor; entanglement; Wheeler-Feynman absorber
Excerpts from an article by Hereward Carrington, entitled " Vital Energy and Psychical Phenomena", and published in 1921 in the Psychic Research Quarterly, are reprinted. The article is discussed in the context of previous and later publications on 'vital forces'. Carrington argued that metabolic processes, and life itself, were produced by a vital force that did not depend on the body for its production: this force could be projected from the body and cause physical phenomena, such as movement of objects and materializations. Carrington continued to speculate along similar lines in later years. While his views are in some ways inconsistent with the non-physical ideas developed by later parapsychologists such as J. B. Rhine, they remain a valuable window to past aspects of parapsychological theory.
