The Limits of Influence is a detailed examination and defense of the evidence for largescale-psychokinesis . It examines the reasons why experimental evidence has not, and perhaps cannot, convince most skeptics that PK is genuine, and it considers why traditional experimental procedures are important to reveal interesting facts about the phenomena.

This work was the first sustained philosophical study of psychic phenomena to follow C.D. Broad's LECTURES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, written nearly twenty years ...

For over thirty years, Stephen Braude has studied the paranormal in everyday life, from extrasensory perception and psychokinesis to mediumship and materialization. _The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations_ is a highly readable and often amusing account of his most memorable encounters with such phenomena. Here Braude recounts in fascinating detail five particular cases—some that challenge our most fundamental scientific beliefs and others that expose our own credulousness. Braude begins with a south Florida woman who (...) can make thin gold-colored foil appear spontaneously on her skin. He then travels to New York and California to test psychokinetic superstars—and frauds—like Joe Nuzum, who claim to move objects using only their minds. Along the way, Braude also investigates the startling allegations of K.R., a policeman in Annapolis who believes he can transfer images from photographs onto other objects—including his own body—and Ted Serios, a deceased Chicago elevator operator who could make a variety of different images appear on Polaroid film. Ultimately, Braude considers his wife’s surprisingly fruitful experiments with astrology, which she has used to guide professional soccer teams to the top of their leagues, as well as his own personal experiences with synchronicity—a phenomenon, he argues, that may need to be explained in terms of a refined, extensive, and dramatic form of psychokinesis. Heady, provocative, and brimming with eye-opening details and suggestions, _The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations_ will intrigue both adherents and detractors of its controversial subject matter alike. (shrink)

The Limits of Influence is a detailed examination and defense of the evidence for largescale-psychokinesis. It examines the reasons why experimental evidence has not, and perhaps cannot, convince most skeptics that PK is genuine, and it considers why traditional experimental procedures are important to reveal interesting facts about the phenomena.

Crimes of Reason brings together expanded and updated versions of some of Braude’s best previously published essays, along with new essays written specifically for this book.

INTRODUCTION Back in the good old days of philosophy — say, around 400 BC, philosophers played a rather prominent role in the community at large. ...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Multiple Personality and Moral ResponsibilityStephen E. Braude (bio)AbstractThe philosophical literature on multiple personality has focused primarily on problems about personal identity and psychological explanation. But multiple personality and other dissociative phenomena raise equally important and even more urgent questions about moral responsibility, in particular: In what respect(s) and to what extent should a multiple be held responsible for the actions of his/her alternate personalities? Cases of dreaming help (...) illustrate why attributions of responsibility in cases of dissociation do not turn on putative changes in identity, as some have supposed. Instead, it is argued that traditional criteria of rationality and behavioral control apply also to cases of dissociation. It is noted, however, that one can distinguish different kinds of responsibility in cases of dissociation, and that one is responsible for one’s dreams in a different sense from that in which one is responsible for actions one can control and evaluate. It is also argued that in cases of multiple personality it is important to distinguish control over switching of personalities from an alter’s control over its own behavior. Moreover, the author considers reasons for thinking that amnesia is less relevant to attributions of responsibility than many have supposed.Keywordsdissociation, dreaming, rationality, amnesiaIntroductionThe philosophical literature on MPD/DID 1 has focused primarily on problems about personhood, personal identity, and the nature of psychological explanation. Presumably, that is because multiples appear to be (or to harbor) more than one person or more than one distinct moral or prudential agent. But philosophers have had almost nothing to say about problems of responsibility in these cases—in particular, the question: In what respect(s) and to what extent should a multiple be held responsible for the actions of his/her alternate personalities (or alters)?Unlike questions about personhood and identity, this question is not simply an abstract matter that we may ponder at our leisure. Clinicians treating multiples must decide whether it is appropriate—or even just therapeutically beneficial—to hold their patients (or specific alters) responsible for behaviors which they seem unable to control or remember. Similarly, and with increasing frequency, our courts must decide whether a defendant claiming to be a multiple may be held guilty for the actions of one or more alters. In fact, the legal issues can be quite dramatic, and even bizarre. Consider: What sort of individual is standing trial? An alter or the multiple as a whole? Should courts accept the claim that the subject being questioned on the stand is not the same as the subject who committed the crime? If so, other questions come immediately to mind. For example, would it be appropriate for each alter of a criminal defendant to have separate legal council?Undoubtedly, some will have trouble taking that last question seriously. But no matter how [End Page 37] clear its solution may appear to one’s moral or legal intuitions, those intuitions are seldom as straightforward as they seem. Indeed, one cannot explain or defend them without taking a stand, at least provisionally, on a wide range of thorny philosophical problems. Moreover, the aforementioned questions are merely the tip of the iceberg, and our answers to them have implications extending beyond the courtroom. For example, with regard to forensic contexts Slovenko (1991) asks,Should a search or arrest warrant be issued for each personality? Must a Miranda warning be given to each personality of a suspect with MPD? May the other personalities exclude evidence on the ground that they were not properly read their rights at the time of the arrest? Would each one of the personalities have to waive his or her rights, or would one waiver be sufficient? Does the doctrine of double jeopardy bar the trial of a personality when another has been put to trial? Must each personality testifying at trial be sworn in and administered the oath?(22, 25)These questions have obvious analogues in clinical situations, and also in personal contexts, say, between friends or members of a family, one of whom is a multiple. For example, to what extent should a DID patient be held responsible for the sociopathic (or simply counter-therapeutic) behavior of... (shrink)

The philosophical literature on multiple personality has focused primarily on problems about personal identity and psychological explanation. But multiple personality and other dissociative phenomena raise equally important and even more urgent questions about moral responsibility, in particular: In what respect(s) and to what extent should a multiple be held responsible for the actions of his/her alternate personalities? Cases of dreaming help illustrate why attributions of responsibility in cases of dissociation do not turn on putative changes in identity, as some have (...) supposed. Instead, it is argued that traditional criteria of rationality and behavioral control apply also to cases of dissociation. It is noted, however, that one can distinguish different kinds of responsibility in cases of dissociation, and that one is responsible for one's dreams in a different sense from that in which one is responsible for actions one can control and evaluate. It is also argued that in cases of multiple personality it is important to distinguish control over switching of personalities from an alter's control over its own behavior. Moreover, the author considers reasons for thinking that amnesia is less relevant to attributions of responsibility than many have supposed. (shrink)

The so-called “problem of personal identity” can be viewed as either a metaphysical or an epistemological issue. Metaphysicians want to know what it is for one individual to be the same person as another. Epistemologists want to know how to decide if an individual is the same person as someone else. These two problems converge around evidence from mediumship and apparent reincarnation cases, suggesting personal survival of bodily death and dissolution. These cases make us wonder how it might be possible (...) for a person to survive death and either temporarily or permanently animate another body. And they make us wonder how we could decide if such postmortem survival has actually occurred. In this essay I argue, first, that metaphysical worries about postmortem survival are less important than many have supposed. Next, I'll consider briefly why cases suggesting postmortem survival can be so intriguing and compelling, and I'll survey our principal explanatory options and challenges. Then, I'll consider why we need to be circumspect in our appraisal of evidence for mind-body correlations. And finally, I'll try to draw a few tentative and provocative conclusions. (shrink)

mainstream academicians. Perhaps the major common area of interest was that of dissociation — in particular, the study of hypnosis and multiple personality, The founders of the S.P.R. believed, along with many others, that dissociative phenomena promised insights into the nature of the mind generally, including..

KEYWORDS: dissociation; multiple personality, person, responsibility.

We have seen that we cannot de-tense a sentence like (15) simply by changing its verb, since the tense of such a sentence is determined by a temporal adverb. More importantly, we have seen that de-tensing is a process of removing certain temporal restrictions from the truth-conditions of tensed sentences, and that tensed and tenseless forms of a verb do not differ in sense. Once we understand this, and once we realize that it is an historical accident that the tense (...) of sentences in English if often indicated by means of the grammatical device of inflecting verbs, tensed verbs no longer seem to be the sort of item that needs to be purged from ordinary language in constructing its tenseless analogue. Indeed, although the distinction between tensed and tenseless verbs may still be of philosophic interest, this distinction hardly seems to deserve the pivotal role assigned to it in the literature. (shrink)

This paper examines the ways in which familiar views about the world and our place in it must change in the face of the reality of psi phenomena. It is argued that most commentators are confused on this topic. Contrary to the received opinion, the existence of psi should make almost no difference to our currently accepted body of scientific theories. Nor, as some argue, can it be of much help to a defense of dualism. But the existence of psi (...) has profound implications regarding the pervasiveness of intentions in the world, even in connection with everyday sorts of events. The view is defended that we have no grounds for imposing antecedent restrictions on the range, magnitude, or refinement of psi. Finally, the paper discusses how the evidence for precognition forces serious consideration of a world?view generally associated only with so?called ?primitive? cultures. (shrink)

Lately I've been giving a great deal of thought to the nature of human (and other organic) abilities. In part, this is connected to my recent research into multiple personality and the need to explain, not only the partitioning of abilities and skills among alternate personalities, but also the enhanced levels of functioning that some of them exhibit (and for that matter, the exceptional performances of "nonmultiples" in hypnotic and other sorts of dissociative states). My interest in this topic is (...) also connected to my ongoing study of savants and prodigies, who apparently have much to teach us about the limits (and perhaps also the latency) of human abilities. At bottom, I suppose, it connects with my general and longstanding concern with problems of psychological explanation, particularly in light of the gross inadequacies of trendy computational theories of the mind. (shrink)

A mixed review of Stephen E. Braude, The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science.

In my writings on the evidence for postmortem survival. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I consider much of the literature on the subject to be very shabby, usually because the authors are empirically myopic or inferentially-challenged. That is, writers on survival notoriously ignore or treat very superficially relevant areas of research having their own extensive literatures (e.g., on dissociation, savantism, prodigies, gifted under-achievers, and language mastery), and too often they seem unable to formulate valid arguments. In (...) class='Hi'>Braude, 2003 I explored these deficiencies in great detail. Here, I’d like simply to comment on a particular class of confusions and a recent eruption of nonsequiturs. (shrink)

In my book Immortal Remains (Braude, 2003), I considered an intriguing argument William James offered against the suggestion that mediumistic evidence for postmortem survival could be explained away in normal, or at least non-survivalist, terms—that is, either by appealing to what I’ve called The Usual Suspects (e.g., misperception, hidden memories, fraud) or The Unusual Suspects (e.g., dissociation + latent abilities, exceptional memory, or living-agent psi). More specifically, James was concerned with a fascinating, but frustrating, feature of the material gathered (...) from mental mediumship—namely, that even the best cases present a maddening mixture of (a) material suggesting survival, (b) material suggesting psi among the living, and (c) apparent rubbish. At their best, of course, mediums furnish detailed information for which no normal explanation will suffice. In the cases most strongly suggesting survival, that information concerns the past lives of the deceased. But sometimes mediums also provide information on the present actions, thoughts, and feelings of the living, and that’s one reason why some cases suggest psi among the living, and why a living-agent–psi interpretation of mediumship is difficult to rule out. After all, information about present states of affairs is not something to which the deceased would enjoy privileged access. Moreover, to complicate matters further,... gems of correct, detailed, and relevant information are nearly always imbedded in an immense matrix of twaddle, vagueness, irrelevance, ignorance, pretension, positive error, and occasional prevarication. (Broad, 1962, p. 259). (shrink)

Lately I’ve been reviewing the issues concerned with what’s usually called the “super-psi hypothesis.” Very roughly, that hypothesis is the claim that psychic functioning is considerably more extensive and controllable than its seemingly modest experimental manifestations suggest, so much so that it might even play a pervasive role in everyday affairs and operate on a large scale. I’ve already tackled this topic at some length, in order both to clarify the hypothesis and to evaluate the arguments pro and con (see, (...) e.g., Braude 1997, 2003). Here, I want simply to reconsider a suggestion I made in 1997, and which I now think may be more interesting than I appreciated at the time. Some like to protest that the super-psi hypothesis is unfalsifiable, because it seems that we can never prove or demonstrate that psychic functioning did not occur, no matter what the evidence turns out to be. If (as proponents of the super-psi hypothesis suggest) our psychic functioning can be sneaky or naughty—that is, if it can be inconspicuous and pervasive and be triggered by unconscious needs and desires, and if we can’t specify clear or useful limits to its degree of magnitude or refinement, then we can’t, strictly speaking, falsify hypotheses positing its operation. So for example, we can never know for certain whether a particular car crash was caused normally or by virtue of somebody’s PK. In the absence of something like a PK meter, the only difference between those two scenarios would be in their unobservable causal histories. (And even if we had a PK meter, we encounter the nagging problem of a regress of confirmation: Whatever we observe happening to the meter could also be the result of operator or onlooker PK—or seemingly random PK from some other source. So how do we determine for certain what caused the meter fluctuations?). (shrink)

I’ve recently found myself discussing apparitions with some SSE members and various other correspondents. And to my dismay I’ve discovered that many suppose, all too readily, that when apparitional cases require paranormal explanations, they should be viewed as instances of telepathic interaction. I addressed this topic quite some time ago (in Braude, 1997), arguing that the telepathic interpretation of apparitions is problematical—at least as an approach to apparitions generally. And back then I expected (admittedly, rather foolishly) that my trenchant (...) and extended analysis would settle the matter decisively. So now that I’ve been humbled once again by this latest indication of my lack of influence, I’d like to revisit the topic briefly and review its essentials, in the hope that some might then adopt a more sophisticated and nuanced approach. Apparitional phenomena have intrigued me for a long time. One reason is that they reach into all corners of the human population. Even hard-nosed, otherwise outwardly skeptical academics have confided their apparitional experiences to me and acknowledged they were baffled and impressed by them. That august group even includes an ex father-in-law (an anatomist at Ohio State) and my dissertation advisor (a distinguished and suitably hard-nosed philosopher). From the earliest days of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), the dominant view, at least within parapsychology, has been that if apparitions aren’t simply internally-generated (e.g., exhaustion- or drug- or illness-induced) hallucinations, they can then be explained by appealing to various sorts of telepathic interaction. And I suspect that’s still the prevailing view. So for example, according to this view we’d understand apparitions of the dead to result from telepathic interactions between a postmortem and an ante-mortem individual, and we’d explain apparitions of the living entirely in terms of ante-mortem telepathic interactions. Thus, a so-called “crisis apparition” would be understood as a kind of moment-of-death (or peril) telepathic reaching out from the agent to the percipient. (shrink)

I’ve often noted how discussions of the evidence suggesting postmortem survival fail to consider adequately alternative interpretations in terms of dissociative processes, and in particular the apparent ease with which dissociation either facilitates the operation of living-agent psi or unleashes otherwise latent creative capacities that might suggest survival to the unwary (see, e.g., Braude 2003). I suppose it should come as no surprise that a related phenomenon sometimes occurs as well—namely, that evidence suggesting dissociative processes might in fact be (...) evidence for the operation of psi. An interesting recent paper by Hong Wang Fung in the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation illustrates the point (Fung 2018). Hung’s paper is titled “The Phenomenon of Pathological Dissociation in the Ancient Chinese Medicine Literature.” And I commend Hung for unearthing some interesting material. He summarizes six obscure, old cases described originally in terms antedating the development of present-day psychological concepts. One case in particular stood out for me. Hung reports it as follows. (shrink)

I had the opportunity recently to referee a submission to a clinical psychology journal that examined the apparent manifestation of ESP in the psychiatric setting. I’d been solicited for this chore, not simply because of my background in parapsychology, but also because of my earlier research into dissociative identity (multiple personality) disorder (e.g., Braude, 1995, 1996, 1998). The submitted paper was not awful, and commendably the author had apparently done a considerable amount of reading of relevant works in parapsychology. (...) Nevertheless, the paper had one glaring flaw, and that flaw reminded me of one of my long-standing concerns about the current state of parapsychological research. Moreover, it wouldn’t surprise me if similar concerns can be raised in other areas of frontier science. Although this paper had a reasonably extensive (and perhaps superficially impressive) bibliography, there was not a single mention of important work on the topic done in the mid twentieth-century—most notably, the work of Jule Eisenbud (e.g., Eisenbud, 1946, 1970, 1992) and Jan Ehenwald (e.g., Ehrenwald, 1948, 1978). I found it astonishing that the author would presume to summarize the conceptual and empirical antecedents to the research described in the paper without reference to this material. (shrink)

Scholarly studies of physical mediumship typically list D. D. Home and Eusapia Palladino as the most convincingly documented mediums of all time, and most also rate Home’s case as among the most spectacular. Although many consider other cases of physical mediumship to be as dramatic as that of Home (e.g., that of Carlos Mirabelli, and Indridi Indridason), and while other less dramatic cases are often ranked as highly significant (e.g., Kathleen Goligher, Rudi Schneider, Eva C.), the prevailing view is that, (...) despite their different virtues, these cases lie within the shadows of Home and Palladino. My own survey of physical mediumship (Braude 1997) represents this received opinion, an opinion which the book currently under review has forced me to reconsider. (shrink)

James Matlock’s book, Signs of Reincarnation, is a recent addition to a seemingly endless stream of confused or superficial works on the topic of survival. Admittedly (and as one would expect), the case material is often of genuine interest. But when Matlock tries to make sense of that material, he demonstrates little grasp of the current state of the debate. Even worse, he seems unaware of the intellectually responsible strategies for challenging and criticizing positions opposed to his own. Since Matlock (...) criticizes what he says are my views throughout his book, and because this issue of the JSE features two comprehensive reviews of that book, I’ll focus only on the principal respects in which Matlock misdescribes my position and ignores the extended discussions I’ve provided, not only in Immortal Remains (Braude, 2003), but elsewhere (e.g., Braude, 2005a, 2005b, 2014a, 2014b, 2020), explaining the problems with the tired and flawed lines of reasoning he endorses. (shrink)

Several of my recent Editorials have dealt with terminological/conceptual errors and confusions that have been all too prevalent among psi researchers. In this Editorial, I want to consider a related issue often raised about parapsychological concepts and explanation. Probably we’ve all heard the complaint that parapsychology’s core concepts have only been defined negatively, with respect to our present level of ignorance—for example, taking “telepathy” to be “the causal influence of one mind on another independently of the known senses.” Perhaps some (...) of you have even expressed that complaint yourselves. Of course, the assumption underlying those complaints is that this definitional strategy is a problem. However, it seems like a perfectly reasonable procedure to me, and I can easily accept the possibility that we might eventually learn enough about phenomena so defined that we can later construct better, detailed, and more informative analytical definitions. But at least as far as psi research is concerned, I consider it presumptuous—at our present (and considerable) level of ignorance—to proceed any other way. We hardly have the barest hint, based on all the available data, as to what psi is doing in the world (i.e., both inside and outside the lab). In fact, formal, experimental evidence has been particularly unilluminating. It has barely succeeded, if it’s succeeded at all, in convincing parapsychological fence-sitters that there are any genuine paranormal phenomena to study (I’ve explored some reasons for this in Braude, 1997). And it certainly hasn’t shed light on how pervasive, extensive, and refined psi effects might be, or whether effects of radically different magnitudes would be the result of substantially different processes. At best, typical quantitative research examines only straitjacketed expressions of phenomena that non-laboratory evidence suggests occur more impressively (if not flamboyantly) “in the wild.” So it strikes me as appropriately modest and circumspect to define “PK” (for example) as “the effect of an organism on a region r of the physical world without any known sort of physical interaction between the organism's body and r.” (For additional specific parapsychological definitions, see Braude, 2002). (shrink)

The 2014 SSE Conference near San Francisco is now behind us, and I’d rate it as quite successful. Apart from the predictable good times shared with friends whom we see only at these get-togethers, several things in particular stood out for me. First, Gerald Pollack’s Dinsdale lecture on the fourth phase of water was unusually interesting, and in fact all the invited talks were both stimulating and entertainingly presented. (Kudos again to Adam Curry for putting together a really first-rate program, (...) and to Jerry Gin for doing such a wonderful job as local host.) Although I wasn’t monitoring the behavior of attendees generally or invited speakers in particular, I happened to sit near or next to Gerald Pollack for much of the meeting. And I have to say that I was also struck and impressed by his attentiveness and openness to the rest of the program. If he missed a presentation, I didn’t see it, and I believe he took careful notes of most (if not all) of the talks as well. I doubt this was a mere courtesy. I believe Pollack exemplifies the kind of inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, and intellectual courage I at least take to be a prerequisite for membership in the SSE, but which one sees all too infrequently in the Academy, or in the real world generally. Moreover, the conference was quite well-attended, and I was pleased (and somewhat surprised) that many of those present don’t yet qualify for membership in the AARP.1 The shortage of “young blood” has been a concern, not just for the SSE, but also for other similarly minded organizations to which I belong (e.g., the Parapsychological Association and the Society for Psychical Research)2. Indeed, the SSE Council routinely considers ways to encourage the recruitment and participation of new and young members. Brenda Dunne has certainly helped with this by organizing and hosting the New Members and Young Investigators meetings at the annual conferences, and my spies informed me that this year’s meeting was again a success (and not just because the pizza was very good). (shrink)

Parapsychologists have never been entirely satisfied with their technical vo- cabulary, and occasionally their discontent leads to attempts at terminological reform.1 Recently, a number of prominent parapsychologists, led by Ed May, have regularly abandoned some of parapsychology’s traditional and central categories in favor of some novel alternatives (see, e.g., May, Utts, and Spot- tiswoode, 1995a, 1995b; May, Spottiswood, Utts, and James, 1995). They rec- ommend replacing the term ª ESPº with ª anomalous cognitionº (or AC) and ª psychokinesis (PK)º with (...) ª anomalous perturbationº (or AP). Advocates of these new terms also propose replacing the term ª psiº or ª psi phenomenaº with ª anomalous mental phenomena.º Superf icially at least, these proposals seem merely to be modest extensions of parapsychology’s increasingly fre- quent use of the term ª anomalousº as a substitute for ª paranormal,º a practice which (although controversial) is not without merit, and which Palmer has vigorously defended (1986, 1987, 1992). But in my view, the proposed new terminology creates more problems than it solves. (shrink)

This issue of the Journal contains the material on physical mediumship originally scheduled for the Spring JSE. The plan for that issue had been to focus on the Felix Experimental Group (FEG) and its medium Kai Mügge, and Michael Nahm and I had each written very long papers describing and evaluating our detailed and extensive investigations of the group. But as I mentioned in my Editorial in the last issue, JSE 28:1 (Spring 2014), as we were preparing to send the (...) Spring issue to the printers, convincing evidence of fraud surfaced in the case, and the current issue now contains substantial revisions of those two long papers, reflecting what Nahm and I have learned and concluded in the interim. But first, since some (maybe many) JSE readers lack the background to put these contemporary investigations of physical mediumship into context, a few words on the subject are perhaps in order. As regular readers of our Historical Perspectives papers will know, physical mediumship flourished during a roughly 80-year period beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. The widespread emergence of physical mediums corresponded to the beginning, and then the heyday, of the Spiritualist movement, which began in the United States in the 1850s, and spread quickly to Europe. Spiritualism in the West fostered a more secular spiritism-the view that personal consciousness persists after bodily death, and that although some people are especially gifted mediumistically the rest of humanity can also experience a direct connection to "the other side." While mental mediums claimed to deliver messages from the deceased, say through automatic writing or trance impersonations, physical mediums purported to provide evidence of survival in various physical forms. The most common of these were "raps" or knocking sounds, either in the séance table or elsewhere in the room, typically answering "yes" or "no" questions by the number of sounds (e.g., two for "yes" and three for "no"). Sometimes, instead of raps, the séance table would tilt up and down several times, and in more dramatic cases the table would levitate fully. And in the most dramatic of those cases, sitters would report that the table carried people up and around the room with them, and many reported that they were unable to move the levitated table back to the floor once it was aloft. More dramatically still, many mediums purported to materialize objects resembling the deceased-for example, a disembodied hand and wrist (perhaps with characteristic deformations), or an image of the deceased's face, or a full-figure materialized human form. Although most spiritists insisted throughout that these physical phenomena were manifestations of the deceased mediated by the living, many investigators entertained and then gradually accepted the view that the carefully controlled (and presumably non-fraudulent) phenomena were actually psychokinetic productions of the living. Undoubtedly, many factors contributed to the decline of the Spiritualist movement and the apparent retreat of physical mediums to relatively inconspicuous enclaves or sitter groups. Not surprisingly, one of those is the richly documented history of mediumistic fraud perpetrated by soundrels only too willing to take advantage of grieving and gullible sitters. Nevertheless, and contrary to what many like to claim, it would be a mistake to think either that all physical mediums were frauds or that nobody managed to weed out the charlatans among them. First of all, investigators exposed many hundreds of fraudulent mediums during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of those investigators were self-styled skeptical debunkers-scientists or laypersons who made reputations for themselves by exposing mediumistic duplicity, and most of whom believed that spiritualistic phenomena simply couldn't be genuine. But others combined careful and critical research with a sympathetic or at least open-minded attitude toward the paranormal. One of the reasons this period is so important is that some physical mediums clearly stood out from the crowd. No matter how carefully they were controlled, and no matter how alert, competent, and familiar with conjuring were their investigators, these mediums produced effects that couldn't plausibly be dismissed as fraudulent or attributed to malobservation. In fact, one of the strongest bodies of evidence comes from the 1908 Naples sittings with Eusapia Palladino. Eusapia's three investigators were England's most experienced debunkers of fraudulent mediums. They knew the tricks of the trade (indeed, two of them were skilled conjurors); they knew what Eusapia's sometimes suspicious methods (and occasionally outright but simplistic tricks) were; they knew how to control for them; and the phenomena occurred in decent electric light and often at a distance from the medium. The investigators traveled to Naples believing they would establish once and for all that Eusapia was nothing but a trickster, and they left Naples grudgingly convinced that the nearly 500 phenomena they documented over eleven séances were not fraudulent. (shrink)

During a recent review of some issues concerning the reliability of eyewitness testimony in parapsychology, I was reminded of some fascinating episodes that I believe will interest many JSE readers. These episodes concern a familiar criticism of non-laboratory parapsychological data held, not only by parapsychological skeptics and those only casually familiar with the field, but also by many veteran psi researchers. Challenges to the reliability of eyewitness accounts typically focus on cases of physical mediumship, poltergeists, and apparitions, in which (we’re (...) told) observers ordinarily base their reports on phenomena from darkened séance rooms, or under other poor psychological and physical conditions of observation (e.g., periods of distress or distraction, or objects moving too quickly to be observed and described reliably). Moreover, these are conditions in which observers are particularly liable to misperceive in accordance with their own biases or predispositions in favor of the paranormal. So (we’re told), eyewitness accounts in these cases should be treated with great caution at the very least, because they’re too liable to be contaminated by observer-bias in favor of the paranormal. (shrink)

In this issue we present commentaries on a remarkably simplistic critique of psi research published recently by Arthur Reber and James Alcock—hereafter, R&A (Reber & Alcock, 2019a, 2019b). I believe the rebuttals that follow, from Cardeña and others, effectively demolish R&A’s critique. But I also believe a few additional points are worth making. These highlight not only R&A’s ignorance of—indeed, refusal to consider—relevant data, but also their general conceptual naivete. And I’ll focus primarily on R&A’s assertion that alleged psi phenomena (...) are impossible. Note, R&A aren’t merely making the likewise inadequate but at least superficially more sophisticated claim that psi phenomena are initially improbable relative to some well-supported background theory. But even if we were to concede that the phenomena (including small-scale ESP and PK) are initially improbable relative to an accepted background theory, we’re still not compelled to deny their reality. We need only show that the direct evidence in their favor overrides their initial and conditional improbability. That, I believe, is easy to do, but of course, R&A are fortified by their refusal to consider the data. Moreover (as some of the commentaries note), R&A greatly overestimate the level of support for what they take to be the background physical theory. In any case, the more relevant points for now are these. First, there are serious reasons for thinking that no well-supported broad scientific theory (e.g., quantum physics, or the general or special theories of relativity) precludes the existence of any specific mental phenomenon, normal or paranormal. Arguably (I think persuasively), those phenomena are simply outside the domain of physics. I’ll return to this point shortly. For that matter, the existence of ESP is compatible even with theories of perception in psychology. Of course, those theories are much more limited in scope than the grand theories of physics or (say) evolutionary theory. So even if theories of perception did prohibit the existence of ESP, the failure of that prediction would matter little to science as a whole. But in fact, those theories merely describe the operation of the familiar or known sense modalities. It’s simply not their business to legislate the full range of possible forms of information acquisition or organic interaction. So if evidence leads us to accept the existence of previously unacknowledged perceptual modalities, psychology would simply find its domain expanded. (shrink)

How do-or how should-we parse the world into kinds of things? Going back at least to Plato, most philosophers have done so with respect to some notion or other of natural kinds. And many analyses of natural kinds have been essentialistic-that is defining those kinds with respect to universals, or some set of intrinsic properties, or necessary and sufficient conditions. And there's a long-standing dispute between thinkers who regard scientific categories as natural kinds with essential properties fixed by nature-those that (...) "cut nature at its joints"-and thinkers who maintain that our classifications and categories have no essence and instead merely reflect human interests and values. A typical example of the former would be "having a mass of 1.7 × 10-27," and examples of the latter would be the categories of "ADHD," "race," or "child abuse." Khalidi aims for an epistemic, naturalistic, non-essentialist, account of natural kinds, one which comfortably embraces not only the usual candidates favored by essentialists (e.g., elementary particles, chemical elements, biological species), but also categories in the social and behavioral sciences. Drawing on cases from many scientific fields, from fluid mechanics and polymer science to virology and psychiatry, Khalidi argues that "natural kinds are investigative or epistemic kinds, in the sense that they are the categories revealed by our systematic attempts to gain knowledge of nature" (p. 43). Moreover, he claims that natural kinds can be "fuzzy" (i.e. have indefinite boundaries), satisfy epistemic virtues to varying degrees, and be mind-dependent in a way that doesn't detract from their reality or objectivity. Although the book is pitched for a sophisticated and philosophically informed audience (and, needless to say, too complex to be adequately summarized in a brief notice such as this), it's clearly written, nuanced, compellingly argued, and worth the effort for JSE readers curious about the unavoidable metaphysical dimensions of doing science of any kind. (shrink)

This self-published volume is a valuable and natural successor to Grosso’s earlier The Man Who Could Fly: St. Joseph of Copertino and the Mystery of Levitation, which I reviewed very favorably in JSE 30-2 (2016): 275-278. In the earlier work, Grosso presented the amazing essentials of the career of the Flying Friar, including some detailed descriptions from eyewitnesses extracted from contemporary sources (including Bernini). In this book, Grosso performs the additional valuable service of providing an abridged translation of the most (...) important contemporary biography of Joseph, a book brimming with compelling detailed eyewitness accounts, many taken verbatim during Joseph’s protracted inquisition. Details always matter, but perhaps more so in a case so remote from the present day and so extraordinary with respect to the magnitude of the reported phenomena. I remind the reader that the case of St. Joseph provides the earliest outstanding evidence for human levitation and quite possibly the best from any era. The levitations were observed by thousands of people, often near at hand, in flight (not simply at his destination) and in daylight. Moreover, the reports often converge on fascinating and unexpected striking details—e.g., that Joseph’s clothes would not move during his flights, or that he would not extinguish candles as he flew among them. Moreover, Joseph reportedly caused many dramatic healings (again, richly detailed in Bernini’s Vita), and his apparent feats of ESP and bilocation are likewise astounding and difficult to dismiss. So this volume takes us more deeply into the life and character of Joseph and regales us with a great deal more material about the phenomena themselves. In my view, this book is indispensable for students of macro-PK and spontaneous psi generally, and (needless to say) especially so for those who can’t read Bernini in Italian. (shrink)