dsi@unccvax.UUCP (Dataspan Inc) (06/18/85)
/* Begin excerpt
From: David Alpern <ALPERN%SJRLVM4.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA>
Bill Tanenbaum (ihnp4!ihu1e!tan),
Whether Uri can or can't bend spoons psychically is one thing, but
sudden bursts of knowledge, apparently unexplainable (i.e. the person
involved can't figure out where he would have learned it, etc.) are
common - but as far as I've heard, mostly uncontrolled. It's possible
much of this has to do with someone remembering a fact but not where
or that he was told it. But stories have been around for centuries of
women who knew that that day was the one there husband would return from
sea - or that he had just died. And too many of the people I know,
*/
Two fundamental problems here: 1) This kind of research explains
away, rather than explains; 2) a reasonably decent model that will
weather academic criticism well already exists.
The tools to grapple with the class of problems you just mentioned
already exist in behavioural psychology. Spoon bending behaviour is one
thing (which I doubt exists) but all the other stuff (precognition,
deja vu, etc) can be effectively explained.
The fundamental flaw with paranormal psychology research is that
it is often procedurally contaminated. In the above mentioned cases,
each one can be explained by an "attenuated behaviour" model, where
person A, based on some reinforcers in common (or, for that matter,
disjoint) with person B, have the same behaviour. The first one goes
out and wraps his Corvette 'round a pine tree. The second, behaving
in an attenuated fashion, has a 'precognition' while in an elevator
2000 miles away that A has done so.
But what about the cases where a 'psychic' is hired to find the
dead body of some pour soul that has the cops baffled? Again, these
psychics have the (albeit very limited) knack of finding some relevant
reinforcer in the situation and extrapolating behaviourally to the
behavioural end. This is certainly more reasonable an explaination
than 'tapping in' to some undiscovered pheonomena in the Ether.
Ditto for extraordinary knowledge from people with no training,
etc. If you are willing to chuck out "knowledge as being representational"
and all that cognitive crap, and assume that humans are behavioural
systems rather than Von Neumann architectures (both of which will
stand up much longer to severe enquiry than will ESP research), most,
if not all, this paranormal crap is reduced to ordinary experience.
If we were concentrating in behavioural psychology much more than
just a topic for liberal arts majors, these "paranormal" pheonomena
could be much better understood, and lead to far many more people
getting the knack for extrapolated, attenuated behaviours.
I submit that any experiment which purports to show "thought waves"
or other traditionally profound dreck is a total farce unless and
until all forms of traditional communication and reinforcement are
removed from the subjects. When we see examples of telepathy or
mind reading in those psychology films showed in 9th grade, they
invariably do not exclude communication by olfactory or musical
understanding, etc.
Now, radical behaviourism as a science is not perfect, but at
least it is scholarly, and makes a damned good attempt to explain
rather than explain away.
David Anthony
DataSpan, Inc