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Toward a “Parapsychological Synthesis”: Proposals for integrating theories of psi

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... In a previous paper in which I assessed a number of theories of psi that imply NLC, I argued that several aspects of different theories share the potential to be integrated into what I called the -parapsychological synthesis‖ (Nahm, 2022b). In the present treatise, I expand on this approach and elaborate on it, providing more detail. ...
... Despite this problem, some facets of these theories have been elaborated in increasing detail. As I showed in my publication on the parapsychological synthesis, it is possible to create a synthetic and even broader theory that overcomes some apparent differences, since this has been accomplished before with, for instance, the formulation of the -evolutionary‖ or -modern synthesis‖ in biology (Nahm, 2022b). The diagram on the next page illustrates how different kinds of theories of NLC are related and could be integrated into such an overarching approach. ...
... Theories of NLC need to follow their own pathway (Nahm, 2022b). ...
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Award-winning essay for the Essay Contest of the Institute of Noetic Sciences on theories of non-local consciousness.
... As I argued in previous publications, such an expansion of physics and our world model is already called for by increasing doubts that we will ever be able to develop a physicalist theory of consciousness. It is especially called for by the spectrum of psi phenomena, which a) seem to be crucially dependent on some kind of (sub-) consciousness, and b) defy purely physicalist theories (Nahm, 2019b(Nahm, , 2021(Nahm, , 2022b. The parallels between psi phenomena and UAP support the need for such a revision of our world model further, notwithstanding that there appears to be a technological component to at least some UAP. ...
... Such philosophical positions are compatible with higher dimensional models in physics that assign these higher dimensions mind-like qualities (Nahm, 2022b). In fact, Heim can be regarded as a Platonist as well. ...
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In recent years, the public and academic acceptance of studies concerning UFOs (un-identified flying objects), or UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena), has drastically increased. Only 20 years ago, it was virtually impossible to discuss UAP in a scientific context. Today, top-tier media report about UAP in respectable terminology and scientific research projects with the aim to study UAP have been installed even at universities. In the first part of this paper, I recapitulate major events that indicate this attitude change. In the second part, I highlight similarities that UAP share with phenomena traditionally studied in parapsychology. Numerous authors have already stressed that these aspects of UAP need to be taken into account in attempts to understand what UAP are and how they operate. In the third part, I discuss how parapsychology could profit from the recent attitude change concerning UAP and factors that advanced its progress. In the fourth part, I finally speculate about theoretical models that could serve as a starting point for developing a deeper understanding of UAP and parapsychological phenomena alike.
... Previously, no anomalous cognition or perception theory had successfully merged these two critical paradigms of determinism and indeterminism. NPT presents a viable evolutionary solution, resonating with biologist Nahm's (2022) assertion that an all-encompassing, science-compatible theoretical revolution is necessary. ...
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Background: Imagine if our brains could unconsciously predict future events. This study explores this concept, presenting evidence for an inherent 'foreseeing' ability, termed anomalous cognition (AC). We introduce a new experimentally verifiable approach to explain anomalous information anticipation (AIA), a type of AC, based on an innovative, quantum-like model of implicit learning, grounded in Nonlocal Plasticity Theory (NPT). Methods: Our research involved 203 participants using methods such as continuous flash suppression, random dot motion, and advanced 3D EEG neuroimaging, along with IBM quantum random event generators for precise measurements across 144 trials. These trials tested contingencies between undetectable sensory stimuli and dot movements, focusing on participants' prediction abilities. The design conditions were strictly experimental, violating fundamental classical learning principles, particularly reflex conditioning. If these principles were immutable, their violation would prevent any systematic behavioral changes, resulting in random responses. This violation was implemented through two quantum physics concepts: the mathematical principle of nonlocality and entanglement. Results: Despite the sensory stimulus being inaccessible, our results showed a significant prediction between the contingencies and an increase in AIA accuracy, with explained variances between 25 % and 48 %. EEG findings supported this, showing a positive link between brain activity in specific regions and AIA success. Electrochemical activations were detected in the posterior occipital cortex, the intraparietal sulcus, and the medial temporal gyri. AIA hits exceeded the threshold value corresponding to one standard deviation above the expected mean, showing moderate effect sizes in the experimental group (Cohen’s d = 0.461). Analyzing the learning curve using the derivation technique, we identified the acceleration point of the wave function, indicating systematic implicit learning. This result showed that from repetition 63 onwards, AIA hits increased significantly. Conclusions: The results suggest that, despite violating fundamental classical learning principles, cognitive processes produced changes in participants' responses susceptible to neuromodulation, considering quantum physics principles of nonlocality and entanglement (both present in NPT). We discuss (a) why the priming effect does not explain the significant results; (b) the potential discovery of a new form of quantum-like implicit learning, which could scientifically resolve phenomena associated with anomalous cognitions (e.g., AIA); and (c) future research directions, including potential applications and clinical impact.
... This discordance echoes the broader diversity of scientific theories addressing anomalies in consciousness. Nahm (2022) underscores the imperative for synthetic and evolutionary theories that integrate the multiplicity of perspectives within consciousness studies. Similarly, we advocate for a unified theory in possession research, embracing various disciplinary approaches to better elucidate the nature, occurrence, and origins of possessions. ...
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Episodes of demonic or spirit possession, where individuals perceive their bodies and minds as being controlled by supernatural entities, have been the subject of extensive research across various disciplines. Despite this, the extent to which existing scientific explanations can account for these phenomena is still uncertain, especially in terms of the aspects that remain unexplained. This official review aims to clarify the current scientific understanding of the origins, mechanisms, and causes of these seemingly extraordinary experiences. Our analysis includes 52 documented cases of possession, reviewed from literature published between 1890 and 2023 and incorporating insights from psychology, medicine, anthropology, and theology. We examine common symptom patterns, delve into the research conducted, and evaluate how many cases are still unexplained within the existing behavioral science framework. Quantitative models indicate a 0.01923 probability of a possession case being scientifically unexplained. The likelihood of discovering new, truly unexplained cases of demonic possession in the future is estimated at 0.0031, with a 0.0023 probability of encountering five such cases in a single year. Moreover, we assess the medical and psychological interventions employed in these cases and propose practical guidelines for the safe use of exorcisms and specific pharmacological treatments. This study advocates for the integration of therapeutic interventions, combined with the expertise of anthropologists for culturally sensitive actions and Catholic Church priests for spiritual guidance, including exorcisms where appropriate as determined by ecclesiastical authorities. Our conclusion suggests that integrative approaches provide the most comprehensive clinical support in such cases and underscore how possession episodes challenge our scientific understanding of consciousness and its boundaries.
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The Integrated Information Theory of consciousness (IIT) has generated much excitement inside and outside the scientific community, and seems to many the leading contender for a satisfactory theory grounded in systems neuroscience. It is a bold theory, one that provides plausible explanations for various recognized neuroscientific facts, makes surprising predictions that go beyond current scientific orthodoxy but are potentially testable, and has inspired development of what appears to be an effective technique for detecting the presence of consciousness in organisms incapable of verbal report, such as non-human animals, neonates, and severely brain-damaged adults. Despite these virtues, IIT appears fundamentally flawed: This paper first revisits some key conceptual and technical issues that have been raised previously but remain unresolved—in particular, issues concerning IIT’s concept of “information” and its approach to the “hard problem”—and then focuses on several empirical phenomena that IIT seems unable to handle satisfactorily. These include: 1. cases of multiple personality or dissociative identity disorder in which complex and overlapping centers of consciousness co-occur in single human organisms; 2. the failure of the intense phenomenology of psychedelic states to be straightforwardly reflected in accompanying neuroelectric activity; and, most critically; 3. the occurrence of profound and personally transformative near-death experiences (NDEs) under extreme physiological conditions such as cardiac arrest, in which IIT predicts that no conscious experience whatsoever should be possible. These empirical arguments show that IIT itself is untenable, and they apply also to its physicalist competitors. Scientifically and philosophically respectable alternatives, however, are available.
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Objective . In the research presented here, quantum measurement is conceptualized as pragmatic information transfer when an intentional observer perceives motive-relevant quantum-based outcomes. Owing to the nature of pragmatic information as described in Lucadou’s Model of Pragmatic Information, this information transfer causes an observer-dependent intentional co-formation of reality and can only be scientifically documented under reduced objectivity conditions. The effects thus reflect a “sobjective” reality that occupies the space between subjectivity and objectivity. The present study was designed to find evidence for the existence of this sobjective reality. Method. A pre-registered micro-psychokinesis task involving a quantum random number generator assessed the impact of intentional observation on quantum-based stochastic outcomes under experimental variations of the applied measures’ objectivity. Results. As predicted, an intentionally congruent bias in quantum-based outcomes was observed using subjective memory data from the observations when additional objective computer-stored data were not inspected and finally erased (i.e., objectivity was reduced). Quantum randomness was confirmed in a maximum objective data collection context for both stored and memory data. Conclusion. The results indicate that pragmatic information was transferred during trial observation when scientific objectivity was reduced. The evidence for intentionally based reality formation or quantum-based random reality emergence was thus shown to be a function of the measurements’ objectivity levels. The data suggest the existence of a sobjective reality and that a physicalist/materialist or an intentional creation worldview depends on the presence of an intentional agent and the definition of the measurement process.
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We have reported previously on positive effects found in the matrix experiment. This is a setup where a random event generator (REG) drives a display, which participants are instructed to “influence” at will, i.e., in a psychokinesis (PK) setup. The difference of this matrix experiment from standard micro-PK REG experiments was that the deviation from randomness was not measured, but a large array of 2025 correlations between the behavior of the participant and the behavior of the REG was tested. This previous experiment was significant, and we devised a consensus protocol, which was deposited before commencement, according to which we conducted two independent replications with the same experimental setup and equipment. In the first experiment 64 participants conducted the experiment in one location under the experimental guidance of KK, in the second experiment 40 participants conducted the experiment in another location under the experimental guidance of HV. The analysis used a non-parametric randomization test with 10,000 iterations. None of the two experiments was significant. While in the first experiment a very small, but non-significant effect was found, in the second experiment no effect whatsoever was detectable. Sensitivity analyses did not suggest that the effect was in fact there but overlooked by our analysis. We discuss the findings in the context of the larger debate around replicability of parapsychological (PSI) research results and our theoretical model. This starts from the assumptions that such PSI effects are likely effects of a generalized form of entanglement correlations, and a consequence of this model is that such effects must not be used for the transfer of signals. Classical experiments, however, are detectors or extractors of signals in or from systems. This seems to be prohibited. Thus, the replication problem and this failed replication is likely part of the systematic nature of these effects. This makes it unlikely that experimental research alone will be successful in the long run demonstrating PSI effects. Our conclusion is that the matrix experiment is not a replicable paradigm in PSI research.
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"This paper addresses the central idea of nonlocal consciousness: that all life is interconnected and interdependent, that we are part of a matrix of life, but even more fundamentally than spacetime itself arises from consciousness, not consciousness from spacetime. It is not a new idea. The excavation of burials dating to the Neolithic (≈ 10,200-2,000 BCE) has revealed that early humans had a sense of spirituality and some concept about the nature of human consciousness. It discusses the bargain made between the Roman Church, and the emerging discipline of science in the 16th century, one taking consciousness (packaged as “spirit”), the other spacetime, and how this led to physicalism taking root as a world view and becoming the prevailing materialist paradigm. It describes the emergence of a new paradigm that incorporates consciousness and lays out the four relevant descriptors helping to define what this new paradigm will look like. They are: • Only certain aspects of the mind are the result of physiologic processes. • Consciousness is causal, and physical reality is its manifestation. • All consciousnesses, regardless of their physical manifestations, are part of a network of life which they both inform and influence and are informed and influenced by; there is a passage back and forth between the individual and the collective. • Some aspects of consciousness are not limited by the time/space continuum and do not originate entirely within an organism’s neuroanatomy. "
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The debate about the nature of consciousness revolves around two opposing theories: a) consciousness is a byproduct of the brain; b) consciousness is primary and manifests some, but not all its characteristics, by using the brain that functions as a filter. Although ostensibly odd from the materialist standpoint, the idea of the primacy of consciousness is a thousand years old and runs through the whole history of cultural, religious and philosophical traditions of both the East and the West (e.g., see Indich, 1995; Kastrup, 2018; Walach, 2020), a fact suggesting the need to reappraise it through a metaphilosophical approach (Facco et al. 2021). The aim of this opinion paper is to outline some scientific evidence supporting the idea of the primacy of consciousness.
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The physiological and psychological underpinnings of near-death experiences (NDEs) are not yet understood. In this article, we show that for "critical" NDEs reported after cardiac arrest, two different neurophysiological models have been proposed that, in the literature so far, have not been adequately distinguished from each other. In the real-time model, it is postulated that during critical NDEs, residual activities in the cerebrum were sufficient to generate NDEs in real time. In the reconstruction model, it is assumed that due to severe oxygen deficiency, critical NDEs could not have occurred at the time in question but were reconstructed later during the regeneration phase of the brain. To assess the plausibility of these two models, we analyzed the phenom-enology of the view of one's own body from above (autoscopy) that frequently occurs in the beginning of NDEs. In addition to the available literature, we used original descriptions of autoscopies obtained in an online survey conducted in 2015. We found that the reconstruction model is not supported by empirical findings and that some findings even speak against it. We therefore conclude that future discussions of explanatory models of NDEs should focus primarily on the neurophysiological real-time model and a third alternative according to which autoscopies and NDEs occur in relative independence from the prevailing neuro-physiological processes in the brain.
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Recently, American Psychologist published a review of the evidence for parapsychology that supported the general claims of psi (the umbrella term often used for anomalous or paranormal phenomena). We present an opposing perspective and a broad-based critique of the entire parapsychology enterprise. Our position is straightforward. Claims made by parapsychologists cannot be true. The effects reported can have no ontological status; the data have no existential value. We examine a variety of reasons for this conclusion based on well-understood scientific principles. In the classic English adynaton, "pigs cannot fly." Hence, data that suggest that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology or improper data analyses or are Type I errors. So it must be with psi effects. What we find particularly intriguing is that, despite the existential impossibility of psi phenomena and the nearly 150 years of efforts during which there has been, literally, no progress, there are still scientists who continue to embrace the pursuit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Preface, 1998 Preface to the Original Edition Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary Synthesis Ernst Mayr Part One: Different Biological Disciplines and the Synthesis Genetics Introduction William B. Provine Theoretical Population Genetics in the Evolutionary Synthesis Richard C. Lewontin Cytology Introduction William B. Provine The Evolution of Genetic Systems: Contributions of Cytology to Evolutionary Theory C.D. Darlington Cytology in the T.H. Morgan School Alexander Weinstein Cytogenetics and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis Hampton L. Carson Embryology Introduction William B. Provine Embryology and the Modern Synthesis in Evolutionary Theory Viktor Hamburger The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and the Biogenetic Law Frederick B. Churchill Systematics The Role of Systematics in the Evolutionary Synthesis Ernst Mayr Botany Introduction Ernst Mayr Botany and the Synthetic Theory of Evolution G. Ledyard Stebbins Paleontology Introduction Ernst Mayr G.G. Simpson, Paleontology, and the Modern Synthesis Stephen Jay Gould Morphology Introduction Ernst Mayr Morphology in the Evolutionary Synthesis William Coleman The Failure of Morphology to Assimilate Darwinism Michael T. Ghiselin Severtsov and Schmalhausen: Russian Morphology and the Evolutionary Synthesis Mark B. Adams Part Two: The Synthesis in Different Countries Soviet Union The Birth of the Genetic Theory of Evolution in the Soviet Union in the 1920s Theodosius Dobzhansky Sergei Chetverikov, the Kol'tsov Institute, and the Evolutionary Synthesis Mark B. Adams Germany Introduction Ernst Mayr Historical Development of the Present Synthetic Neo-Darwinism in Germany Bernhard Rensch Evolutionary Theory in Germany: A Comment Viktor Hamburger France Introduction Ernst Mayr Evolutionary Biology in France at the Time of the Evolutionary Synthesis Ernest Boesiger The Arrival of Neo-Darwinism in France Ernst Mayr A Second Glance at Evolutionary Biology in France Camille Limoges England Introduction William B. Provine Some Recollections Pertaining to the Evolutionary Synthesis E.B. Ford Lamarckism in Britain and the United States Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr. A Note on W.L. Tower's Leptinotarsa Work Alexander Weinstein United States Introduction William B. Provine The Evolutionary Synthesis: Morgan and Natural Selection Revisited Garland E. Allen Hypotheses That Blur and Grow Hampton L. Carson Part Three: Final Considerations Interpretive Issues in the Evolutionary Synthesis Introduction William B. Provine The Meaning of the Evolutionary Synthesis Dudley Shapere Epilogue William B. Provine Biographical Essays How I Became a Darwinian Ernst Mayr Curt Stem Ernst Mayr J.B.S. Haldane, R.A. Fisher, and William Bateson C.D. Darlington Morgan and the Theory of Natural Selection Alexander Weinstein Morgan and His School in the 1930s Theodosius Dobzhansky G.G. Simpson Ernst Mayr Contributors Conference Participants Index
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Jung was intrigued from early in his career with coincidences, especially those surprising juxtapositions that scientific rationality could not adequately explain. He discussed these ideas with Albert Einstein before World War I, but first used the term "synchronicity" in a 1930 lecture, in reference to the unusual psychological insights generated from consulting theI Ching. A long correspondence and friendship with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli stimulated a final, mature statement of Jung's thinking on synchronicity, originally published in 1952 and reproduced here. Together with a wealth of historical and contemporary material, this essay describes an astrological experiment Jung conducted to test his theory.Synchronicityreveals the full extent of Jung's research into a wide range of psychic phenomena.This paperback edition of Jung's classic work includes a new foreword by Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London.
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Mechanisms, whether man-made or morphological, are boundary conditions harnessing the laws of inanimate nature, being themselves irreducible to those laws. The pattern of organic bases in DNA which functions as a genetic code is a boundary condition irreducible to physics and chemistry. Further controlling principles of life may be represented as a hierarchy of boundary conditions extending, in the case of man, to consciousness and responsibility.
Current status of psi theory: Report from a recent workshop. 62nd Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association -Abstracts of Presented Papers
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