What is Consciousness?

[Kyuuketsuki]

I can't answer this so I have asked a question at a site that puts the questions to relevant scientists.

I know Edward has vaporised but I got my answer back.

I asked the following question:

Is there any documented (by which I mean in a reputable scientific journal) evidence for precognition or any other ESP style abilities? I am debating someone who claims there is and I'm the skeptic, I've searched on-line but haven't found much (it's hard to see past the forest of claims). James

I got the following answer:

Hi James,

While I'm not an expert in the field of precognition, ESP, or as it currently known, 'psi', a quick glance through the literature suggests that we have no conclusive evidence that ESP exists. In fact, in properly controlled (i.e. truly scientific) studies, very little evidence supports the existence of psi.

The wikipedia article on clairvoyance sums up current thought: "Parapsychological research is regarded by critics as a pseudoscience." I found the article by Moulton and Kossyln entitled "Using Neuroimaging to Resolve the Psi Debate" (Journal of Cognitive science, 2008, 20:1, pp 182) to be most useful; I found it with google scholar. The introduction sums up the problem as the following:

Past experimental research... has not empirically resolved the psi debate for three fundamental reasons. First, psi phenomena are notoriously and inexplicably unreliable. No effects consistently replicate on an experiment-by- experiment basis, and meta-analytic effects suffer from similar instability (e.g., Milton & Wiseman, 1999; Bem & Honorton, 1994). Second, the positive evidence that has been reported is merely " anomalous." As many have noted previously (e.g., Mumford & Rose, 1995), the absence of a normal explanation does not justify the presence of a paranormal explanation. Third, experiments with negative (i.e., null) results have always been vulnerable to the reasonable criticism that they assessed the wrong behavior. With no clear consensus on how psi might manifest itself behaviorally and a near-infinite set of possible behaviors to test, behavioral psi research is unusually susceptible to the argument that "absence of proof is not proof of absence."

Another paper (Bem, (2003) "Precognitive habituation: Replicable evidence for a process of anomalous cognition") discusses how "The holy grail for many psi researchers has long been a straightforward, transparent laboratory demonstration of psi that could be replicated by any competent experimenter -including a skeptical one - using participants drawn from the general population." This statement further suggests that the studies haven't stood up to scientific scrutiny.

So, to briefly summarize, the problem isn't merely a meager amount of evidence, but that most studies that have been performed are critically flawed. That would mean that any 'positive' result would have to considered tentative, at best, and more likely, uninterpretable.

I'd recommend using google scholar to find scientific articles on the web. There's just too much 'noise' if you search the entire web. If you can't get to the links via your internet connection, I recommend going to your local university library. The links may connect you to the papers there, and the stacks may even carry some of the journals of interest.

Hope that helps shed some light.

Alex G

Kyu