ESP Debate: Is Belief in ESP Irrational?
First of all, as of yet, I haven't read Brian D. Josephson's response. Nor indeed, have I ever read anything that Brian D. Josephson has said on this topic or indeed any other topic. So my own thoughts will not have been influenced by what he said.
My own position is that belief in ESP or psi is not irrational. If people like Pinker maintain that it is, then they need to address my reasoning that I lay out in a post in my main blog. In there I endeavour to rebut the contention that psi could not possibly exist that was made in a Skeptical Inquirer article. Here are a couple of questions I would like to ask Pinker. What do I say in my post that could be deemed to be irrational? Where do I go astray in my reasoning?
Although Pinker's arguments are already largely addressed in that blog post of mine (these arguments by skeptics all tend to be extremely similar), let's briefly look at a couple of things he says.
Pinker says:
In the case of ESP, the empirical case would have to be stupendous to outweigh the overwhelming prior odds against ESP existing. All of our experience, and all of our understanding of the physical universe, speak against both the possibility of the future affecting the past, and against an ability to sense the state of the world without the transmission of information by physical energy.
Clearly, not all of our experiences since that would amount to no one ever reporting experiences of ESP. However, in fact, it’s been reported across virtually all cultures and throughout recorded history.
If ESP really existed, not only would the laws of physics have to be overturned.I address in detail in my aforementioned blog post both the contention that physical energy is needed for ESP, and that the laws of physics would need to be overturned if it existed. But briefly, our understanding of the physical Universe as revealed by physics wholly leaves out consciousness in its description of reality. Hence, the laws of physics as we currently understand them cannot possibly be entirely correct. Further, if we have no mechanism or explanation for the very existence of consciousness, then, of course, a fortiori, we could not expect to be able to discern any mechanism for any possible abilities of consciousness. Such abilities not only include ESP, but also the ability to move our own bodies in accordance with our intentions.
The knowledge afforded by telepathy or precognition could easily be exploited to bankrupt casinosI also address this is my aforementioned blog post. But, to repeat, I doubt it. Even if we grant psi is continually operating (something I would reject), why can't the effects be very slight? Or why can't various psychokinetic effects from differing people cancel each other out? If I'm in a casino, mightn't any very marginal psychokinetic effect from me wanting a certain outcome be cancelled by other people wanting other outcomes?
But, in any case, it’s not clear to me that psi can just be turned on at will. It seems likely that one has to be in a certain emotional psychological state, which a casino is unlikely to elicit.
If our prior belief [in psi] is very low, say, 00000000000000000001
My prior belief in psi isn’t low at all. A prior belief that psi has a very low probability of existing is a consequence of the modern western world-view, especially the notion that the mechanistic philosophy is largely correct and that some flavour of materialism is highly likely to be the correct depiction of reality. But I think reductive materialism is incompatible with the very existence of consciousness. And any looser definition of materialism, aka some type of non-reductive materialism, is contradicted by the direct experience of our own causal agency.
Though many phenomena at extreme scales of space and energy—near the Big Bang or a black hole, at the size of a photon or of a galaxy—are incompletely understood, this cannot be said about the physics of everyday life. As Sean Carroll shows in The Big Picture, on these scales, from nanotech to moon rockets, the laws of physics are completely understood. We aren’t in need of strange new forces or fields to explain how a bicycle works, or why eclipses happen.
I've addressed this argument of Sean Carroll's in my Sean Carroll and the philosophy of mind and science, although that focusses on the causal efficacy of consciousness rather than ESP. But the exact same rebuttal applies. In brief, of course we don't need new physics to explain how bicycles work and ellipses happen (and I just said that in an exasperated voice). But we do need new physics to accommodate the casual efficacy of consciousness, and indeed psi or ESP too. Again, since physical laws leave out consciousness, and a fortiori abilities of consciousness such as its causal efficacy and ESP, then current laws do not describe reality in their entirety. They need to be modified to allow for the existence of consciousness. One can describe these laws as being “overturned” if one chooses, but the history of science teaches us that laws are continually “overturned” e.g. quantum mechanics overturned classical mechanics. And Einstein’s general theory of relativity “overturned” Newton’s theory of gravitation.
To begin with, we’re talking about a phenomenon that, if it existed, would be tiny in magnitude, on the order of one tenth of a standard deviation.I have no idea what a “standard deviation” means (I wish my A level maths had included probability!) But dreaming of the future that actually transpires, or perceiving an apparition of someone who has just died etc, wouldn't appropriately be described as tiny in magnitude. Of course, doubtless he’s referring to parapsychological research. But it’s not due to such research that people believe in psi. Rather, it’s due to their own direct experiences, the experience of people they know, and the collective experience of humankind.
They are a miscellaneous collection of oddities and anomalies rather than a systematic phenomenon whose conditions and outcomes are identified a priori.
That’s not true. We’re talking about characteristic phenomena of a very similar nature that is universal across space and time e.g. telepathy, remote viewing, crisis apparitions etc.
Also, the classic claims for ESP in controlled experiments cited by Horowitz, such as those of J. B. Rhine and his intellectual descendants, have been exposed as artifacts of investigator bias, leakage of information, selective reporting, overinterpretation of coincidence, questionable research practices (such as post hoc data exclusion), and outright fraud.
Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant that the research is fatally flawed, this could not overturn people's direct experiences of ESP. So flawed research couldn't make people's belief in ESP irrational since most people's belief in ESP is independent of such research. My belief in ESP certainly is.
But we also need to bear in mind that those whose prior expectation is that ESP is overwhelmingly unlikely, are scarcely likely to be impartial in any assessment of any research that suggests its existence. We would need to look at their arguments, but then, before making up our minds, also look at the responses of those who disagree with such an assessment.
