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Psi Phenomenon: Its Importance to the Development of Religion (The Ritual…

- - - - "While experimenting on the healing effect of magnets and their influences on physiological functions (e.g. blood flow rates), Mesmer believed he had identified a new type of energy that flowed throughout the universe, and that the distribution of this energy within the body had a direct result on an individual’s health." - Historical Development
        
        "Treatment would involve addressing this imbalance by using the energy (termed ‘animal magnetism’) of a healthy magnetiser, and transferring this to the patient. Initially Mesmer utilised magnets in the healing process, but after a brief period he discovered that they were unnecessary and that by passing his own hands or lightly touching the patient the same effect could be obtained."
        
        Patient (1773): female - suffered from convulsions brought on by hysterical disorder
        
        Treatment works and Mesmer is able to control her convulsions = treatment and his name spread/increase in patients/technique becomes highly fashionable
        
        At first: "At first the fits/seizures associated with the disorders that Mesmer treated were a common occurrence"
        
        Mesmer Students: "After viewing the method conducted by one of his students (Marquis de Puysegur) where his patients would fall into a sleep-like state instead, this affect became more general and the convulsive aspect less common."
        
        Change in symptom theorized to be culturally transmitted = individuals have idea of certain behaviour they are expected to show (convulsions to sleep-like)
        
        Mesmer technique become foundation for hypnosis
        
        "but for parapsychology, his name is associated with a behaviour displayed by some of his patients while in this sleep-like state, termed ‘higher phenomena’. Patients would report being able to have the ability to gain access to information/events that were sensorial inaccessible to them (i.e. describing the actions of an individual in another room) and this led to studies being carried out, into using this state to evoke different types of experience e.g. telepathy/clairvoyance."
        
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    - - 1850s - three sisters (Fox sisters) claim they have to ability to communicate with the deceased through seances.
        
        "the spiritualist movement rapidly gained momentum in both the US and Europe, so by the mid 1850’s a new highly fashionable phenomena had begun with self-acclaimed mediums of every social branch willing to help anyone get in contact with the departed."
        
        Begin to claim more physical evidence (physical mediumship)
        
        "the materialisation of spirit faces or forms within a darkly lit séance room. With this increase in popularity, the financial benefits involved in offering a more amazing and unbelievable séance also increased, which in turn increased the temptation of fraudsters."
        
        Meeting between Sir William Fletcher Barrett (1844-1925; physicist) and Dawson Rogers (1823-1910; spiritualist) in 1882 = SPR
        
        "This group took it upon themselves to investigate these claims and a number of different debatable phenomenons, in a scientific manner, using the same standards and methods carried out by sciences of the day, (e.g. observation and experimentation) (Gauld, 1968). In February of 1882 the Society of Psychic Research (SPR) was established."
        
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    - - Believed: psychical research taken out of hands of societies and placed into hands of university laboratories. "With this in mind and a chance meeting with William McDougall, a British psychologist, in 1926, Rhine changed his academic focus, from botany to psychology, and in 1929 worked under McDougall at Duke University as an assistant professor (Irwin & Watt, 2007)."
        
        Re-creates Card Guessing Experiment invented by SPR member Ina Jephson and invites Duke Psychologist Karl Zener (1903-1964) turns it simpler and less complex.
        
        "From this invitation, the Zener cards were constructed, using five of five symbols; circle/star/plus/square/wavy lines. Using these
        cards Rhine set up various experimental techniques (BT – Basic Technique, DT – Down Through Technique) for testing clairvoyance and/or telepathy, depending on whether the researcher knew the symbol of the card (telepathy) or not."
        
        Hubert Pierce = Gifted student who scored between 8/9 hits per run (mean = 3/4 hits per run); "Rhine requested his research assistant Gaither Pratt, to conduct a long-distance experiment with Pearce on the Duke University campus, ranging from 100 to 250 yards. Both the tester (Pratt) and the participant (Pearce) were situated in different buildings. Using a Basic Technique, one card every minute would be removed from the top deck and place faced down without being examined, while the participant would mark his guess on a call-sheet. The results showed a significant difference over the MCE (1,850 trials, 558 hits over MCE 370) and provided experimental evidence for what Rhine coined in 1934 ESP (Extrasensory perception) (Beloff, 1993)."
        
        Although parapsychology is still a relatively new discipline, its development and recognition has increased rapidly since the 1930’s. The Parapsychology Association, established in 1957, promotes the advancement and integration of parapsychology in science, becoming an affiliated organisation of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1969. The Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University, formed in 1984, researching various psi phenomena, followed closely by the research departments at Liverpool Hope University, Coventry University, Goldsmiths University and Northampton University.
- - - - "In parapsychology, psi is the unknown factor in extrasensory perception and psychokinesis experiences that is not explained by known physical or biological mechanisms. The term is derived from the Greek ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and the initial letter of the Greek ψυχή psyche, "mind, soul"." - Wiki
      - "any of several types of events that cannot be accounted for by natural law or knowledge apparently acquired by other than usual sensory abilities." Brittanica
        
        "Scientific interest in the subject is of relatively recent origin, but belief in the reality of such phenomena has been widespread since the earliest recorded times. Before the rise of modern science the causation of all complex physical phenomena was very poorly understood, and hence appeals to nonmaterial agencies (ghosts, sorcerers, demons, mythological beings) took the place of a causal, scientific explanation. Even so, there were widespread debates about the reality of phenomena that obviously transcended the bounds of everyday happenings, such as veridical prophecies, as by the oracle of Delphi, or the revival of the dead." - Brittanica
  - - - "They convinced a few folks that they were getting messages from spirits. Soon they hit the road, managed by big sister Leah, who was in her mid-30s. They went on tour performing séances, which became the rage in both the U.S. and Europe."
        
        "One of the reasons for interest in psychical research in the last half of the 19th century was the rise of the spiritualist movement that grew out of the acceptance of spirit communication as real and the use of this as the basis of a new religion" - Brittanica
  - - - More problematical than ESP; requires information to be transferred back in time.
- - - - 33 precognition studies carried out 1987-2010. "A comparison of these meta-analysis shows no decrease in effect size over the entire survey period, during which the research quality improved considerably. It suggests that the early results could not have been artefacts of poor design" - Nature of Precognition
        
        "Because the targets used in the experiments were not selected until after the participants had made their guesses, the results give outstanding evidence for contact with something in the future" - Nature of Precognition
        
        Do not know with what contact is made; inanimate target itself, or someone else' mental impression of the target?
  - - - Source unknown: "adopts the materialist view in which conscious awareness is considered to occur only as an epiphenomenon of the neural processes involved" - Nature of Precognition
        
        Based off block universe model and David Bohm's theory of implicate order
        
        "If similar structures are created at different places and different times, the structure may be said to "resonate", with a tendency to become more closely simlar to one another."
        
        Principles applied to neuronal spatiotemporal (belonging to space-time) patterns activated in the brain. Shows how information tranfer can be produec.
        
        "Precognition would occur if the pattern activated at the time of the future experience of an event resonates with any similar pattern that is (spontaneously) activated in the present."
        
        The same pattern occurs so many times that the person becomes aware of an event similar to the event that will be experienced in the future.
  - - - Christianity
        
        Hindu
- - - - "those who have had a vivid dream of some sort and experience, read or see on the news an event that only vaguely reflects their dream, they may then sort of dissect their dream and start to recall only parts that relate to the event. In some cases they may even alter these ‘important’ parts of the dream subconsciously to match the event even more specifically." - What Psychologists Have to Say
      - Confirmation Bias
        
        to selectively note incidents that match your already existing beliefs, or in science, your hypothesis and ignore any contradictions there may be
        
        People want to come across as extraordinary and will search for meaning in unmeaningful dreams.
  - - - 1974 - Walter J. Levy Jr. (medical school graduate)
        
        Recently appointed Direction of J. B. Rhine's Institute for Parapsychology; considered Rhine's heir-apparent
        
        "When I joined Rhine's research staff in 1974 [...], one of the primary things that lured me to the lab was Levy's active and hugely successful program in investigating the psi powers of animals, including the precognitive abilities of [gerbils] and psychokinetic powers of rats and chicken embryos."
        
        Chick embryos use PK to get REG to turn on light to warm them up in absence of hen
        
        Embryos continue to get good results even though they had long since died
        
        Gerbils use ESP to avoid being shocked by moving to side of cage/exercise wheel that would not be shocked.
        
        Rats used PK to make REG send them jolt in pleasure center of brain
        
        "Three researchers on Levy's team (Jim Kennedy, Jim Davis, and Jerry Levin) noticed him frequently puttering around the equipment when experiments were in progress and there would normally be no reason to interact with the equiptment apparatus."
        
        Team secretly produces duplicate recording of the data = REG to be perfectly random
        
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    - - Witticism = ESP "error some place"
        
        Studies with outstandingly bad methodological flaws continue to be reported
        
        "Most remote-viewing studies are based on a procedure that provide-sensory cues as to the correct target to supposedly masked judges as well as the nonrandom selection and construction of targets. Papers even now being published on ESP tests in which the participant pulls numbered balls out of a bag, sometimes at home and without supervision." - Case Against Psi
        
        Many meta-analysis find no evidence for positive relation between methodological flaws and the size of reported psi effects.
    - - "Many skeptics reject psi based on the fact that psi phenomena are inconcisten withe the findings of modern science." - Case Against Psi
        
        "Some sceptics who reject psi phenomena out of hand are seemingly mired in the classical, deterministic Newtonian billiard ball physics they learned in high school."
        
        "No satisfactory, well-tested theory of psi has been developed."
- - - - Early hominids practiced repetitive, therapeutic ritual based on dissociative process
        
        Rituals practised over many millenniums - provided survival advantages to those with genes allowing openness to ritual suggestion
        
        "Dissociative processes associated with rituals facilitated biologically based forms of unusual experience: trance, apparitions, paranormal dreams, ESP, and out-of-body experieces (OBE)"
        
        Create reoccurring patterns within folk religion, bringing about beliefs in spirits, souls, life after death, and magical abilities = foundation for shamanism, humankind's first religious form
        
        Dissociation: "experiences and behaviours that exist apart from, or have been disconnected from, the mainstream of one's conscious awareness, behavioural repertoire, and/or self-concept" (Krippner, 1994, p. 357)
        
        Dissociation: "the splitting off of certain mental processes from the main body of consciousness with various degrees of autonomy" (Hilgard, 1992, p. 69)
      - Dissociation: the disconnection or separation of something from something else or the state of being disconnected.
  - - - actives contributed to the development of vocal control, symbolization, and eventually language.
        
        values of rituals = genes allowing dissociative experiences increase
        
        Over time Homo erectus and Homo sapirus linked these rituals with language, coupling verbal suggestions with altered states of consciousness.
        
        "Evolutionary Psychologists hypothesize that the brain developed in modular fashion = components evolved as each proved useful for the survival of the entire organism"
        
        genes contributing to survival become more prevalent; argues "dissociation and hypnotizability proved valuable during humankind's era of evolutionary adaptation--the many rituals in small groups."
        
        "Dissociation genes facilitate trance, waking ESP, paranormal dreams, PK, OBE, and near-death experiences, apparitions, and other anomalous experiences sustaining Shamanism."
        
        perceptions = by-products of the "cognitive flexabilities" related to dissociation and hypnotic suggestion.
        
        Shaped: human hypnotizability (apparitions, paranormal dreams, waking E.S.P., O.B.E., and psychokinesis (PK))
        
        Experiences generate beliefs in spirits, souls, life after death, and magical abilities = similarities between folk religious traditions of all societies (McClenon, 1997a, 2002).
        
        hypnotizability: a genetically based trait correlated with the incidence of certain forms of unusual experience(s).
  - - - Dissiative Experiences: occur as result of brain activity = "dissocative people experience more frequent anaomalous experiences because their mental processes deviate from "normal consciousness"."
        
        People focus attention on world outside their head = maintain genotypes
        
        People highly hypnotizable = damaged by negative suggestions (costs with negative suggestion are less than benefits from positive suggestions"