First Sight. Jim Carpenter, PhD, ABPP.

Transcription

1 First Sight Jim Carpenter, PhD, ABPP

2 A MODEL OF THE MIND AND A THEORY OF PSI HOW MIGHT ESP WORK? WHAT MIGHT IT BE FOR?

3 Things We Think about Psi Unpredictable Anomalous Limited to a few special people or circumstances Unreliable Rare

4 Where is Psi Hiding?

5 A Pair of Guiding Questions What if ESP is like subliminal perception? What if PK is like unconsciously expressive behavior?

6 Subliminal Perception Not just a weird way to manipulate people Subliminal information primes experience and behavior Part of the history of every perception Guides the construction of each thing we come to perceive Functions unconsciously Automatic but not impersonal Guided implicitly by our intentions and unconscious assessments

7 Subliminal perception primes Physiological response Perception Judgment Emotion Behavior

8 PSI IS THE INITIAL STEP IN THE FORMATION OF EXPERIENCE Every bit of experience and behavior has a very rapid, unconscious history. For example, the mind makes an unformulated reference to subliminal perceptions even though they can not be consciously seen and construed. This rapid pre-history of experience begins with psi, beyond the ordinary boundaries of the organism. This is why psi is not second sight, it is first sight.

9 We are concerned with PUPPs

10 PUPPs stands for Personal Unconscious Psychological Processes

11 Where is Psi Hiding?

12 In every thought

13 SOME CHANGES IN PERSPECTIVE Psi is not rare or unusual It is continuously active Psi is not anomalous It is utterly normal (but unconscious) Psi does not belong only to a few gifted people It is universal and used by everyone all the time Psi is not unpredictable It is utterly reliable in its implicit use Psi is not disturbing and dangerous It is ordinary and exquisitely useful

14 TWO BIG CHANGES IN RESEARCH ORIENTATION Studies will not try to capture psi, they will attempt to reveal it Studies will relate psi to other Personal Unconscious Psychological Processes

15 First Sight Model of Psi and the Mind First Premise: Organisms are psychologically unbounded. They transact with reality in an unconscious way beyond their physical boundaries. We interact unconsciously with virtually everything all the time.

16 Second Premise: All experience and all behavior are constituted out of unconscious psychological processes carried out purposefully on multiple sources of information including psi information, as mediated by unconscious intention and contextual appraisal. Personal intentions are unconscious as well as conscious, and it is unconscious intention that orients PUPPs

17 First Sight Theory: Twelve Corollaries These elaborate the basic premises and add many testable hypotheses about how the mind unconsciously processes psi information and utilizes it (or not) in constructing experience and behavior.

18 Hypothesis of Functional Similarity The unconscious patterns in different PUPPs (e.g. memory, psi, subliminal perception) are assumed to be similar Psi is not a renegade and is not psychologically anomalous It fits in with the rest of what we know about psychological functioning

19 Psi is intrinsically unconscious Its action is always implicit It is expressed implicitly by experiences and behaviors that have only inadvertent meaning (dreams, images, impulses, anomalous movements of objects) Remember, psi is not conscious it is part of the processes that lead to consciousness The activation of pre-conscious tendencies (psi and otherwise) can be seen in inadvertencies

20 Inadvertencies Inadvertencies can be interpreted as referential by oneself or others People who are good at interpreting their own psi based inadvertencies are called psychic People whose unconscious intentions are expressed by the physical world around them are poltergeist agents. Such physical events can be interpreted as coming from the agent.

21 Psi is Bidirectional (Other PUPPs are too)

22 Assimilation

23 Exclusion

24 We want know two main things 1. When will we unconsciously assimilate information and when will we exclude it? When will scoring be positive and when negative? We call this DIRECTION 2. How strong and clear will the expression of psi be? Will scores be weak or will they be extremely different from chance? Will a spontaneous experience be vivid enough to notice?

25 Direction is determined by Unconscious Intention Extremity of expression is determined by the Consistency of Unconscious Intention

26 Qualities of the information can be pertinent for the DIRECTION of expression How useful is it? How familiar is it? How desirable is it? Is it coming from source seen as reliable? How congruent is it with dominant appraisal? (Principle of Exclusion)

27 What states of mind affect how likely we are to make reference to implicit context and generate psi inadvertencies? How good a mood are we in? How much cognitive work are we doing? How anxious are we? How motivated are we? How focused vs. open are we?

28 What matters do we consult unconsciously to determine the extremity of expression? How important? How imminent? How dangerous? How congruent with dominant intentions? How stable and consistent are our intentions?

29 Applying a Theory Reconstrue previous findings Guide new research

30 Questions First Sight tends to ask What most arrests our attention? What do different people find most interesting and important? How do we access implicit meanings differently depending upon different situations or states of mind? What needs do different people find most salient, and in what situations? What factors influence PUPPs other than psi? What kind of influence?

31 Is ESP related to memory?

32 Are extraverts better at ESP than introverts?

33 Does fear facilitate a psi response, or inhibit it?

34 Are more creative people more psychic?

35 New RRC Research Guided by First Sight Studies combining subliminal perception and extrasensory perception Study on implicit expression of ESP in spontaneous social behavior

36 Rare Return to Some Common Unpredictable Anomalous Beliefs Limited to a few special people or circumstances Unreliable

37 Psi makes sense!