Jonathan Schooler - Does ESP Make Sense?

Parapsychologists are sure ESP is real. Skeptics are sure it is not. But if ESP is real, must explaining ESP go beyond physical laws, into unknown non-physical realms? Nothing repels scientists more than forays into the non-physical. But human concepts of reality keep expanding. We do not know any limits and, due to ESP, it may be foolish to impose them.

Jonathan Schooler’s research takes a “big picture” perspective in attempting to understand the nature of mental life, and in particular consciousness. Combining empirical, philosophical, and contemplative traditions, Jonathan Schooler addresses broad questions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[woodywu]

Physicist Michio Kaku said “ Some scientists sneer at the mention of higher dimensions because they cannot be conveniently measured in the laboratory.”
So as for ESP it is possible that scientific methods may be difficult but that does not necessarily mean that ESP should be ruled out .

[TheDeepening]

"Telepathy exists, it's just that the carrier wave is small mouth noises."

-Terrence Mckenna

[TheTroofSayer]

Beginning at 3:20 Robert introduces what I've also observed. Comes under the term *confirmation bias* where you choose the results that suit your agenda and throw out all the rest. Seems to be particularly strong in ESP research. I've seen Rupert Sheldrake, for example, promoting a particularly compelling subset of results for three sisters and their ability to anticipate phone calls from each other - but at the end of the day, how replicable was this, from amid the myriad of other results that he chose to reject? Which brings us to 5:56 "Could ESP be something [...] not subject to replicability?" Great reply from Jonathan Schooler, and a wonderful example of how conversations in science should proceed.
My own bias is in favor of entanglement. But ESP, while perhaps related, is not the same thing. ESP, as popularly understood, relates to the transmission of tangible information in localized contexts (like between specific people and places), whereas entangled selves relates to something quite different, nonlocal. So yes, you can be swayed in favor of nonlocal entanglement, while remaining cautiously skeptical about ESP. In the spirit of Schooler's approach, I can keep an open mind.

[patrickboudreau]

Many of us have experiences that seem to give some validity to ESP. No one has control over them.

[rich]

It is a tantalising question: are there natural phenomena that are objectively true that cannot be determined by the scientific method?
I'll need to think about that one.

[owennovenski]

When I was very young my father, always fascinated by Native America culture, told me the following was a well known Native American saying (I’ve since heard it attributed to several different ethnic groups) ‘One white crow proves all crows aren’t black’
In my scientific meanderings over the years, that concept plagued many of my thoughts.
It would serve to become a useful explanation for the following experience.
I was 11 years old being raised in a traditional loving and supportive family. Both my parents were more often than not working past the time I was to get home from school. It was an ordinary day from school. The school bus let me off three doors away from home. I said an enthusiastic goodby to my friends as I walked towards my house, remembering my instructions that if my mother wasn’t there (my father never got home early) I was to wait inside the house for about 15 minutes and if she didn’t make it, go to the next door neighbours to wait. I walked up to the screen door, opened it to the inner proper door, and while grabbing the handle was immediately frozen and filled with anticipation of something to prepare for. Before I was able to push the door open, a tiny bright blue light, similar to a electric welding arc spark about the size of a B.B. came through the door, through my belly and out through my back. Now I anticipated something very negative. I slowly, cautiously opened the door to find my father sitting in his lounge chair deceased. There was no car in the driveway, my mother had drove him home because he felt slightly ill, the used the car to return to work. There was nothing to give me a hint he would be there. Let alone deceased. He was 47 years old, never ill. A heart attack.
Now. I don’t believe that it necessarily means there’s a forever continuation of life after death, or any possibility of clear detailed communication imperative from my father. But something inexplicable happened.
Nothing like that happened ever again. But I was 11 years old, non-religious household, never any discussions regarding topics in this category. Nor was I given any expectation something like this would ever happen, to me or anyone. But it did. My first pure, untainted experiment. Never to be repeated. But it happened. My White crow.

[johnrobinson]

Quoted from our lovely internet: "The scientific study of love is still ongoing, as there hasn't been any hard evidence to determine whether or not love is, in fact, real–or that it's just made up and merely exists in our minds."
Don't let science be the arbiter of what is real in the short-term. Science is the guys who thought all of space was filled with some aether that transmitted gravity like air transmits sound. I mean, really? How thick was that aether and how did the planets move through it? Why didn't we feel it on the surface of the Earth?
Science is brilliant long-term but in the short-term it is often stunningly stupid.
The aether theory dominated scientific thinking for HUNDREDS OF YEARS.

[craigpage]

I think using subjective experience as an example of something that is true but which science can not 'prove' surely can't be applied to anything else and can't really get us anywhere, because it's completely self evident and is the foundation of our very existence. Other unproveable things are not so self evident.

[NeverTalkToCops]

ESP and other psychic stuff does not make sense for many reasons. Here's one: The existence of casinos.

[MitchSnider]

I had one experience with it so I know it is real. Nothing like it ever happened again to me and this was impossible. I would not believe anyone who told me this happened to them so that is fair. But real is real. Short version is I was 14 playing a baseball game that my dad said he would make it to. Halfway through the game we were at bat sitting in the dugout and he was not in the stands. I kept running though my mind where he could be and what he could possibly be doing right now that was making him late. Suddenly my entire upper lip felt a sensation that I had never felt before. It was very strongly itching but not itching. The sensation was confined to my upper lip and lasted about a minute or two. I thought maybe poison ivy but yet it did not feel like it. He never made the game but I told my mom about the weird feeling on my lip and that maybe I had poison ivy. When we got home we found my dad had gotten home from work late and had just decided out of the blue, without saying anything to anyone beforehand, to shave off his mustache that he had worn for many years. I was more than a bit freaked out. It was such a powerful sensation and years later when I started shaving myself, the sensation finally made sense and matched the action.

[curtisw]

I don't believe in spiritual experiences or ESP--I know. I am not interested in studies nor am I interested in proving it to anyone; I can't. I have had dreams which accurately show me what is going to happen and when it happens it is with perfect detail. I do not study ESP nor entertain thoughts about it; it just happens. Now I can't prove this to anyone and what I am saying means nothing to anyone. But my personal subjective experience is enough for me to know it is incredibly real.

[piehound]

Nice . . . intellectual honesty . . . if not actual scientific rigor. And i must accept his position that so called scientific rigor may never be able to apprehend some aspects of existence.

[TorgerVedeler-jv]

When I think about these sorts of things, I think about the methodology of science. Science works by trying to understand phenomena by understanding the simplest solutions to questions, and it works quite well at this. But what happens when a question is increasingly complex? Science fails to describe the questions addressed by the humanities for precisely this reason. Understanding how a neuron works does not explain why a person feels the way they do, for example. And the more complex a question, the more difficult it is to understand it scientifically. Eventually science reaches a limit. So if parascientific phenomena are too complex to be replicated, this does not mean they are not real. It merely means we can’t use scientific tools to understand them.

So what do we use? That’s the big question, and one to which I’m afraid I don’t have an answer.

[bozo]

If it was real, Vegas wouldn't be like it is.

[ollyk]

Come on folks, science is weird enough. We don't live in a world with wizards and warlocks!

[wildhumans]

An elder sasquatch showed me psychic phenomenon is real. Those sasquatch can affect your dreams, give you psychic visions (project images), remote view, astral project, and cloak. Clairaudence and telekinesis seems to be real too.

[AstroAri]

It's difficult to understand and even more difficult to spot. When you're found to have a 6th sense, a crew of professionals get flown out to assault your senses, poison you, and make you have a mental breakdown. They make sure you can't work of course. If you had money you would simply move. Basically you're seen as a freak and a genius at the same time. The funny part is they always know when to stop the sensory assault. Then they resume like a well-oiled machine.

[B.S...]

“All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.” [S. Wright]

[bentationfunkiloglio]

Claims that some event can be attributed to ESP is equivalent to claiming that the event in question is attributable to unknown physics. Therefore, threshold for significance should be that which is used in physics experiments, (approx 1 in 3.5 million). .05 is absurdly low, IMHO.

[yonatan]

At least some forms of ESP are perfectly consistent with known physics. My "Questioning the mechanistic-universe paradigm using chaotic systems" argues the case for this counterintuitive claim. In the appendix of my "Remembering the Future" I describe a very simple field experiment which anyone can repeat. It worked frighteningly well for me. Twice.