Processes Underlying the Phenomena of Mysterious Minds: Laboratory Evidence for ESP

Abstract

Mysterious experiences and physical events associated with psychic claimants, spiritualist mediums, shamans, and other extraordinary people have long intrigued the general public. At a more academic level, extensive documentation of these putative phenomena by anthropologists and sociologists has helped to contextualize them and thence to illuminate their cultural and subcultural significance. Although such research can be particularly instructive for an understanding of the impact of phenomena on the lives of the experiments (i.e., people who encounter them), a neurobiological appreciation of the phenomena requires scientists to explore more specifically their possible oncological reality. That is, could any of the mysterious phenomena actually be what they seem to be or, on the other hand, are they inevitably misperceptions, misinterpretations, deceptions, and phenomena otherwise attributable to far less mysterious psychological processes? A preliminary step in addressing ontological issues here is to nominate fundamental explanatory processes that may underlie the phenomena. A psychic claimant, for example, may appear to give inexplicably accurate information about distant events; a medium or a shaman ostensibly may elicit information from a deceased spirit for the benefit of relatives and other sitters present at the performance; and other "psychically gifted" people or "sensitives" may have a vision about some remote circumstance and subsequently ascertain that the vision seemed unaccountably accurate. Scientific investigation of the ontological reality of each of these specific occurrences would nevertheless be an impractical and possibly futile research strategy, even if adequate control could be exercised during the observation of the incidents.