Who tube? YouTube!

George Hansen, author of the classic study The Trickster and the Paranormal, has posted two lectures on YouTube. George writes:

The first lecture, "History of Parapsychology," discusses the rise of psychical research from 1882 to the laboratory research of the 1980s.  Some examples of ganzfeld telepathy results are shown.

 

The second lecture, "The Decline of Parapsychology," focuses on 1989 to the present day.  The decline is discussed in the context of history, sociology of religion, and secularization theory.  Briefly, two thousand years ago cultural elites displayed strong antagonism to the paranormal, and they continue to do so today.  The implications for the scientific acceptance of the field are considered.  Although parapsychology is doing poorly, I discussed some promising areas for growth.

 

Comments

[N/A]

Michael, pardon my sidetrack, but did you watch the movie Red Lights (about paranormal researchers and debunkers)? If so, what are your thoughts on it? I found it to be ridiculous and a waste of potential.

[Matt Rouge]

Thanks! I am reading "The Trickster and the Paranormal" right now. It's interesting. One could never say the man skimps on references. :)

[Michael Prescott]

Haven't heard of "Red Lights." Sorry.

[Pococurante]

The videos spend all their time telling us, without any context, all the Very Smart People In History who attended seances or belonged to societies.

Not much substance. :(

[Allen]

Wonderful :D

[Alexander Zlotnik]

Hi Michael and others,
Sorry for off-top,but that may be important question.We talked about "split brain".On Kevin Williams Near-Death I found one book on NDEs/Hallucinations by few authors,including Rhawn Joseph ,neuroscientist .He argues that his research confirmed "split-brain", kind of "2 minds" ,or 2 "spheres of consciousness",he has the site brainminds.com

Here is the article that I find puzzling:

http://journalofcosmology.com/QuantumConsciousness102.html

[I]Quantum physics and Einstein's theory of relativity make assumptions about the nature of the mind which is assumed to be a singularity. In the Copenhagen model of physics, the process of observing is believed to effect reality by the act of perception and knowing which creates abstractions and a collapse function thereby inducing discontinuity into the continuum of the quantum state. This gives rise to the uncertainty principle. Yet neither the mind or the brain is a singularity, but a multiplicity which include two dominant streams of consciousness and awareness associated with the left and right hemisphere, as demonstrated by patients whose brains have been split, and which are superimposed on yet other mental realms maintained by the brainstem, thalamus, limbic system, and the occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes. Like the quantum state, each of these minds may also become discontinuous from each other and each mental realm may perceive their own reality. Illustrative examples are detailed, including denial of blindness, blind sight, fragmentation of the body image, phantom limbs, the splitting of the mind following split-brain surgery, and dissociative states where the mind leaves the body and achieves a state of quantum consciousness and singularity such that the universe and mind become one.[/I]

Could someone comment on this?

[Anthony McCarthy]

I listened to some of the second one, it's nice to see George Hansen looking so well.

I wonder how much of his decline narrative matches the decline in traditional journal publication since a lot of university libraries have cut back on the number of journals they carry. And a lot of it is due to the spread of the taboo. Talking about the past thirty years as if it were continuous with the previous c. 2000 isn't very useful, I'd think. You have to consider the past 30 years and how entirely different it has been from most of that period. You could probably find 30 year stretches all through those two millennia and make all kinds of cases from them.

How many branches of academic psychology with far more funding, far more acceptance and far larger numbers of people being paid have also gone through a decline or fundamental change in the history of psychology? I have enormous respect for George Hansen but I'm not entirely sold on his analysis of this.

[Stephen]

@Alexander Zlotnik

I believe a split-brain patient has either 2 consciousnesses or has 1 consciousness for one half of the brain and 1 consciousness for the other half. In multiple personality disorder, I think multiple consciousnesses inhabit the same brain at different times. The issue here, I think, is "binding", that is, what connects a particular conscious self to a particular brain or part of a brain and what binds disparate parts of the brain into the unified conscious experience we observe. I think the glue is based on similarity, for example, the same gamma wave oscillations throughout a brain region in EEG probably play a major role. Now if a split-brain patient has different oscillations in the two hemispheres, we must assume they have two consciousnesses.

What has not been studied (and probably never will be as split-brain surgery is never done anymore) is the strength of telepathic (psionic) cross-talk between the two halves (in some sort of Ganzfeld-like experiment). If both sides are consciousness, maybe we would see this cross-talk in split brain patients. Otherwise, if only one half is conscious, then no. An interesting experiment which will sadly probably never happen.

[Stephen]

The first sentence of my previous comment got muddled. It should read:

"I believe a split-brain patient has either 2 consciousnesses or has 1 consciousness for one half of the brain and with other half being unconscious."