Abstract. This article argues that a primary, contemporary product of four moments in the history of faith-based social services has been a highly selective and inconsistent use of the notion of human rights by churches and church leaders. Churches still occasionally reference a communitarian sense of human rights and public good but now more commonly use the rhetoric of individual rights to contest specific political positions and social policies in the arena of the social service agencies these churches sponsor. Changing (...) church views of human nature are not sweeping changes, but small changes of degree that still have the power to powerfully reorient social relations. In this sense, churches that sponsor social services increasingly espouse a privatized, economic, and individualistic “Civil Society” in sharp contrast to communitarian notions of social citizenship that formerly better reflected churches’ operating ontology. (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.

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 ...

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

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.

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)

I’ve been both fascinated and distressed by the arguments raging over how best to respond to the covid-19 pandemic. In particular, I’ve been struck by the way people claim scientific authority for their confident assurances of what needs to be done. And I’m especially intrigued by the scorn they often lavish on those who hold differing views on what science is telling us. The heat generated by the resulting debates is strikingly similar to the heat generated by debates over the (...) science connected with human-caused climate change. And in both cases, the disputants too often presuppose indefensibly naïve views about scientific authority and certitude, apparently unaware that even the allegedly most obvious logical truths lack the certainty attributed to scientific authority in these debates. As a rule, I dislike re-circulating my Editorials, but I think it’s time to resurrect one (modestly tweaked) from a few years ago, addressing precisely this issue (Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 379–386, 2017). …………………………………… “Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.” --Oscar Wilde I’ve often noticed how debates within the SSE community sometimes parallel debates in the political arena, perhaps especially with respect to the passion they elicit and the intolerance and condescension sometimes lavished on members of the “opposition.” Occasionally, of course, the debates in the SSE are nearly indistinguishable from those in the political arena—say, over the evidence for human-caused climate change. But what I find most striking is how the passion, intolerance, etc.—perhaps most often displayed by those defending whatever the “received” view happens to be—betrays either a surprising ignorance or else a seemingly convenient lapse of memory, one that probably wouldn’t appear in less emotionally-charged contexts. What impassioned partisans tend to ignore or forget concerns (a) the tentative nature of both scientific pronouncements and knowledge claims generally (including matters ostensibly much more secure than those under debate), as well as (b) the extensive network of assumptions on which every knowledge claim rests. So I’d like to offer what I hope will be a perspective-enhancer, concerning how even our allegedly most secure and fundamental pieces of a priori knowledge are themselves open to reasonable debate. A widespread, but naïve, view of logic is that no rational person could doubt its elementary laws. But that bit of popular “wisdom” is demonstrably false. And if that’s the case, then so much the worse for the degree of certitude we can expect in more controversial arenas. Let me illustrate with a few examples.[1] [1] I’m indebted to Aune, 1970 for much of what follows. (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..

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)

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)

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)

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)

Keith Augustine’s critical evaluation of the essay contest sponsored by the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies (BICS) is an interesting but problematic review. It mixes reasonable and detailed criticisms of the contest and many of the winning essays with a disappointing reliance on some of the most trite and superficial criticisms of parapsychological research. Ironically, Augustine criticizes the winning essays for using straw-man arguments and cherry-picked evidence even though many of his own arguments commit these same errors.

This paper chronicles my introduction to and subsequent investigation of the Felix Experimental Group (FEG) and its exhibitions of classical physical mediumship. It’s been nearly a century since investigators have had the opportunity to carefully study standard spiritistic phenomena, including the extruding of ectoplasm, and the FEG is the only current physical mediumistic circle permitting any serious controls. The paper details a progressively stringent, personally supervised series of séances, culminating in some well-controlled experiments with video documentation in a secure and (...) private location belonging to one of the investigators. Regrettably, recent indications of fraud (explored also by Michael Nahm in this issue) have tarnished the case as a whole. However, it remains unclear how extensive the fraud has been. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the arguments both for and against the paranormality of the phenomena displayed under the author’s supervision. (shrink)

The Journal of Scientific Exploration is devoted to the open-minded examination of scientific anomalies and other topics on the scientific frontier. Its articles and reviews, written by authorities in their respective fields, cover both data and theory in areas of science that are too often ignored or treated superficially by other scientific publications. This issue of the Journal features papers on a variety of subjects. The lead article discusses anomalous magnetic field activity during hands‑on healing and distant healing of mice (...) with experimentally induced tumors. The next paper is a contribution to the growing body of research providing evidence of "presentiment," or an unconscious awareness of a future event. The article focuses specifically on the relationship between presentiment and psychological absorption. The third paper discusses striking similarities between two historical cases of remote viewing. In 1905, the Icelandic medium Indridi Indridason described in Reykjavik through a drop‑in‑communicator, a fire that was burning in Copenhagen. Similarly, in 1759, Emanuel Swedenborg described in Gothenburg a fire that raged near his home in Stockholm. The next article critically and meticulously examines, and challenges, the arguments in favor of concluding that the parapsychologist S. G. Soal falsified data in his well-known (and previously highly regarded) experiments in precognitive telepathy. The next paper considers which types of belief are beliefs in the paranormal. The authors identify various measures of paranormal belief and propose a nine-factor structure analysis of common paranormal belief dimensions. The final article is a fascinating account of some 1907 psychokinetic experiments with the medium Eusapia Palladino, conducted in Naples by Filippo Bottazzi. These experiments are particularly notable for having made instrumental recordings of the observed, ostensible PK movements. This issue of the JSE is then filled out, as usual, with correspondence and substantive book reviews. (shrink)

Michael Nahm’s report in this issue of the JSE deftly presents many of the scholarly offenses perpetrated by Alejandro Parra. Some of those not mentioned had to do with Parra’s submissions to the JSE, and I feel it’s important to add those to the record. JSE published a retraction notice earlier this year (Volume 35, Issue 1) and provided examples of Parra’s plagiarism. Moreover, the Journal rejected another paper in which we found substantial plagiarism. But Parra’s boldest effort was his (...) submission, under his own name, of a paper by an Argentinian author, Anna Conforte—in fact, a paper Parra published in his own newsletter. But Parra never indicated that the paper was written by someone else. Several people independently and carefully compared the English submission to the original Spanish. All agreed that Parra apparently simply auto-translated the paper to clumsy English and presented it as his own work. (shrink)

Critics of survival research often claim that the survival hypothesis is conceptually problematic at best, and literally incoherent at worst. The guiding intuition behind their skepticism is that there’s an essential link between the concept of a person (or personality or experience) and physical embodiment. Thus (they argue), since by hypothesis postmortem individuals such as ostensible mediumistic communicators have no physical body, there’s something wrong with the very idea of a postmortem person, personality or experience. However, critics can’t simply beg (...) the question and assert that physical embodiment is essential to personhood, personality, or experience, because the evidence suggesting survival is a prima facie challenge to the contrary. On the other hand, defenders of ostensible mediumistic communication need to explain how postmortem awareness and knowledge of the current physical world can occur without a physical body that experiences the world and represents it accurately enough to ground veridical postmortem reports. This paper will fi rst consider why survivalists face potentially serious problems in trying to make sense of apparent postmortem perception. Then it will consider a plausible—and arguably the only—way to deal with the issues. However, that solution turns out to be a double-edged sword. Ironically, the best way to deal with the problem of perspectival postmortem awareness may render the survival hypothesis gratuitous. (shrink)

The Journal of Scientific Exploration is devoted to the open-minded examination of scientific anomalies and other topics on the scientific frontier. Its articles and reviews, written by authorities in their respective fields, cover both data and theory in areas of science that are too often ignored or treated superficially by other scientific publications. This issue of the Journal is devoted to a single multifaceted topic: mediumship, and mental mediumship in particular. The authors of the lead paper describe several varieties of (...) mediumship, and propose that the psychosocial and cultural aspects of mediumship are as important as its psychophysiological features. They consider the differences between spiritism and spiritualism, the relevance of the trance state to mediumship, and the extent to which processes properly considered mediumistic infiltrate many everyday human activities. The next paper surveys some of the major nonparapsychological issues that have fascinated researchers into mediumship. These include the nature and prevalence of the mediumistic trance, the varieties of mediumistic mentation, the evolution of mediumship over time, the dramatic capabilities of the subconscious, and the relationship between mediumship and psychopathology. The third paper focuses on positive aspects of mediumship, and in particular its connection with various forms of artistic and practical creativity, as well as its potential for personal development or transformation. The fourth paper considers whether mediumship ever indicates that human personality survives bodily death, or whether even the best cases instead indicate psychic functioning among the living. The author surveys types of mediumship that have been especially relevant to this question, and advocates the revival of so-called proxy sittings with mediums. The final paper recounts a period in France's recent history during which a group of researchers lobbied to have parapsychology broadened into a multidisciplinary field embracing (in additional to strictly experimental and proof-oriented investigations) wide-ranging enquiries that could be applied to mediumship and other apparent instances of psychic functioning in real-life settings. This issue of the JSE is then filled out, as usual, with correspondence and substantive book reviews. (shrink)

In October 2015 I supervised a series of séances in Hanau, Germany with Felix Circle physical medium Kai Mügge. The purpose was to try to obtain better documentation of Kai’s table levitations than my team was able to achieve in Austria in 2013 (Braude, 2014). Although that goal was not met over the course of four séances, we nevertheless witnessed some interesting phenomena that are difficult to explain away normally given the control conditions imposed at the time. These include (...) object movements beyond the reach of the sitters, a very strange “exploding” sound from the séance table, and some extended levitations in which the table seemed to sway or swim in mid-air. But what may be most interesting about this series of séances is the way the phenomena reflect the complex, and tortured, underlying psychodynamics of the occasion. Indeed, what readers need to know about the FEG phenomena has as much to do with personalities involved as with the phenomena themselves. As a result, this report focuses as much on the background to the investigation as on the investigation itself. (shrink)

This paper examines the complex and creative strategies employed in keeping beliefs, memories, and various other mental and bodily states effectively dissociated from normal waking consciousness. First, it examines cases of hypnotic anesthesia and hypnotically induced hallucination, which illustrate: (1) our capacity for generating novel mental contents, (2) our capacity for choosing a plan of action from a wider set of options, and (3) our capacity for monitoring and responding to environmental influences threatening to undermine a dissociative state. These observations (...) are then extended to cases involving dissoci- ated memories of trauma. The strategies needed to maintain a dissociated belief or memory are strikingly similar to those involved in preventing our lies from being exposed. Moreover, these strategies are complex, and they potentially affect seemingly remote aspects of a person’s psychol- ogy. That point is illustrated by examining the dispositional nature of both memory and belief, the complex web of relations between our men- tal states and other elements of our psychology, and the interrelatedness of personality states and human capacities. [Article copies available for a.. (shrink)

This slender and interesting volume by three Dutch philosophers examines the manner in which eight prominent philosophers dealt with ostensibly paranormal experiences arising both spontaneously and also as the result of hypnosis. Hans Gerding covers both Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer; Rico Sneller discusses Friedrich Joseph Schelling, Hans Driesch, and Gabriel Marcel; and Hein van Dongen considers William James, Henri Bergson, and Jacques Derrida. My guess is that JSE readers might already know about Kant’s apparent ambivalence (or perhaps just change (...) of heart) about Swedenborg’s vision of a Stockholm fire (and his other reported experiences), as well as William James’s investigations of mental mediumship (Mrs. Piper in particular) and his experiments with altered states. Nevertheless, I expect they will find much that they didn’t already know in those chapters, as well as in the others of course. (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)

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)

I’ve been looking back on what’s happened with the JSE since we parted ways with our former publisher, Allen Press, and switched to a more cost-effective and flexible online publishing system that allowed us to offer both print and electronic versions of the Journal. We were quite sure, when this happened, that the transition would reduce our production costs, and we figured that the savings could partially be passed along to readers by allowing us to increase the size of our (...) journal issues—provided (of course) that we had enough acceptable submissions to sustain the increase. I predicted at the time that we’d probably be able to add about 100 pages annually to the JSE. And I’m pleased to report that the prediction has so far panned out, by a comfortable margin. So I submit the following for your consideration. (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)

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)

This issue of the JSE includes a retraction of a paper by Alejandro Parra that we published in 2017. As far as I can determine, it’s the journal’s first official retraction of a published paper. The reason for this action is the author’s extensive plagiarism, both in that paper and in other published work (including a recent book whose publisher has since recalled all copies). It’s a sad state of affairs, of course—and perhaps the first of its kind in this (...) particular and admittedly minor scientific domain. But it reminds me that six years ago, in Volume 29(2), we published a paper on retractions in science, and in that issue I seized the opportunity to editorialize further on the subject. I recycle that Editorial below. But before that, I must note that careful examination has found no additional evidence of plagiarism in the one other research article (in 2018) and the one book review we’ve published by Parra. I must also mention that, henceforth, the JSE will run routine plagiarism tests on papers accepted for publication. I thought this was a chore I’d left behind when I retired from teaching. However, I don’t want the JSE to emulate the person who said “I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I’m certain I can repeat them exactly.” EDITORIAL FROM JSE VOLUME 29(2), 189–192. (shrink)

The case of the Brazilian medium, Carlos Mirabelli, is one of the most tantalizing and frustrating in psychical research. If his phenomena—especially his psychokinetic manifestations—occurred as reported, he was probably the greatest physical medium of all time. Mirabelli reportedly moved objects (including very large objects) at a distance, levitated himself while bound to a chair, and dematerialized and transported to another location objects of all kinds (including himself). Mirabelli also reportedly produced full-figure materializations in bright daylight. Sitters would watch them (...) form; attending physicians would carefully examine them for up to 30 minutes and report ordinary bodily functions; photographs of the figures would be taken; and then they would slowly dissolve or fade before everyone’s eyes. However, Mirabelli was also clearly guilty of fraud on occasion, including his notorious doctoring of a photo ostensibly showing him to be levitating. His case therefore presents an all too familiar challenge to psi research—namely, how to assess cases of so-called “mixed” mediumship. (shrink)

The Journal of Scientific Exploration is devoted to the open-minded examination of scientific anomalies and other topics on the scientific frontier. Its articles and reviews, written by authorities in their respective fields, cover both data and theory in areas of science that are too often ignored or treated superficially by other scientific publications. This issue of the Journal features papers on a variety of subjects. The lead article describes an intriguing study of a currently popular method of using technology to (...) attempt communication with the deceased. This research compared the results of experimental and control sessions of responses to randomly produced short speech elements. The second paper addresses the issue of what proper controls are for anomalies research, and, accordingly, what the criteria are for declaring some observed phenomenon to be an anomaly. The third paper concerns Hessdalen lights, unexplained earthquake lights usually seen in the Hessdalen Valley in Norway. The authors challenge a currently widely-held proposal that the lights result from piezoelectricity generated under a rock strain. The next paper addresses the concept of objective reality from the point of view of quantum physics and an ontological model in which correlations of events in the configuration space of the wave function are considered invariant with respect to changes of observer. The next paper comments critically on a previouslypublished JSE article arguing that cases of the reincarnation type (CORTs) could best be explained by appealing not to reincarnation but to a form of psychic functioning among the living. Following this commentary, the author of the original article offers his reply. The final paper is an essay concerning the long-standing human fascination with flight. The author surveys ancient manuscripts, oral traditions, and artifacts, looking for evidence that previous civilizations attempted to develop flying machines. This issue of the JSE is then filled out, as usual, with a large selection of substantive book reviews. (shrink)

In the Summer 2014 JSE issue (Volume 28:2), we published two long reports, by Michael Nahm and myself, on the investigation of physical medium Kai Mügge and the Felix Circle. Those papers were revised versions of papers, ready to be published earlier, but scuttled when evidence of fraud was uncovered in the case. Nahm and I reached different conclusions about Kai’s mediumship as a whole. He felt that the majority of Kai’s phenomena were probably fraudulent. I was not ready to (...) go that far. In any case, whatever our intuitions might have been about the extent of Kai’s cheating, we both agreed that some of his phenomena were still very difficult to explain away—and indeed had not been adequately explained away. I believe it’s fair to say that however large or small that residue of legitimacy may be, Nahm and I agree that it at least includes table levitations. Since that JSE issue was published, there have been further developments in the case. Some of these, from an investigation I supervised in October of this year, I hope to present at length in a future issue of the JSE. The rest concern some incidents that occurred relatively soon after the appearance of our original reports, and which should be mentioned now without further ado. The item of greatest interest, no doubt, will be the testimony—quoted below—describing how at least one instance of Kai’s cheating was uncovered. (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)

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)

Periodicals of various sorts have long recognized the need to address certain topics on a regular basis. That’s why computer magazines routinely offer articles such as “Windows Tips and Tricks,” and “How to Protect Your Data.” Similarly, photography magazines return again and again to articles explaining how to get the most out of wide-angle lenses, how to shoot portraits in natural light, or how to photograph dramatic landscapes. It seems to me that JSE editorials might also need to recycle certain (...) topics from time to time, in part because readership changes, and in part because researchers in areas of frontier science can have conveniently short memories (like everyone else), perhaps especially when it comes to matters that are intellectually or professionally challenging or uncomfortable. The continuing debate over Daryl Bem’s recent precognition experiments (see Bem 2011, and the Editorial in JSE 25:1) and the similar controversy still dogging work on LENR or “cold fusion” suggests that perhaps it’s time to review certain salient facts about the nature of experimental replication in science. What follows is not new. Harry Collins has done outstanding work on this topic (Collins 1992), and I also addressed the issue at length (Braude 2002). For more recent commentary, see also Stefan Schmidt (2009). Apparently, however, what’s both obvious and commonsensical is very easy to overlook. (shrink)

Winner of the 1999 Best Book in Ecological and Transformational Politics presented by the American Political Science Association's Section on Ecological and Transformational Politics The discipline of political science has reached a crossroads. The frequency with which terms such as "post-liberal," "post-modern," "post-patriarchical," "post-materialist," and "post-structural" are used in contemporary political discourse testifies to the pervasive conviction that an era has ended. Similarly, phrases such as "new world order," "new paradigm," "new age," and "third wave" convey the widely-shared expectation that (...) what lies ahead politically will be qualitatively unlike what has gone before. Transformational Politics argues that traditional political science is failing to identify and address fundamental political phenomena of our time and proposes an alternative value-based political science that not only studies phenomena, but also uses knowledge to promote democracy, sustainability, and social conscience. Part I of the book defines transformational political theory as an emerging paradigm and draws on a wide array of theories—empowerment, feminist, democratic, communitarian, chaos, quantum, conflict resolution, self-actualization. Part II examines how a transformational perspective guides the study of politics in both research and teaching. Part III offers guidance about how to practice the theory and apply the study with a concern for creating a better world. (shrink)

One of the most valuable features of the early years of both the Proceedings and Journal of the Society for Psychical Research was the frequent publication of intriguing (and often scrupulously investigated) anecdotal reports. Indeed, the enterprising early SPR researchers produced some mammoth reports based on such material, including its 400-page “Report on the Census of Hallucinations” (Society for Psychical Research 1894) and the monumental Phantasms of the Living (Gurney, Myers, & Podmore 1886). The pioneers of psychical research were shrewd (...) enough to realize that apparent spontaneous occurrences of ESP and PK, and phenomena suggestive of postmortem survival, could provide valuable clues as to the nature of psychic functioning, and that the collection and careful study of this material was an essential precursor to doing serious theoretical work in the area. Sadly, that lesson seems not to have entirely survived the gnawing tooth of time, as more and more would-be psi researchers, in a misguided attempt to appear conventionally scientific and curry favor with mainstream science, confined their activities and attention strictly to the laboratory, having little familiarity with or comprehension of the day-to-day apparent eruptions of phenomena that drove earlier researchers into the lab in the first place. I mention this now because this issue of the JSE features a contribution by Russell Targ to the material suggestive of postmortem survival—two incidents pointing to the survival of his daughter Elisabeth. The two incidents are considerably more intriguing than most, and they highlight what is probably the most recalcitrant issue in the debate over survival—namely, the apparent standoff between the survivalist and living-agent psi (LAP) interpretations of the evidence. (shrink)

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