Getting to the Inside First Person Perspectives on Mediumship (original) (raw)
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Constructivist Foundations, 2011
> Context • There is a growing recognition in consciousness science of the need for rigorous methods for obtaining accurate and detailed phenomenological reports of lived experience, i.e., descriptions of experience provided by the subject living them in the “first-person.” > Problem • At the moment although introspection and debriefing interviews are sometimes used to guide the design of scientific studies of the mind, explicit description and evaluation of these methods and their results rarely appear in formal scientific discourse. > Method • The recent publication of an edited book of papers dedicated to the exploration of first-and second-person methods, Ten Years of Viewing from Within: The Legacy of Francisco Varela, serves as a starting point for a discussion of how these methods could be integrated into the growing discipline of consciousness science. We complement a brief review of the book with a critical analysis of the major pilot studies in Varela’s neurophenomenology, a research program that was explicitly devised to integrate disciplined experiential methods with the latest advances in neuroscience. > Results • The book is a valuable resource for those who are interested in impressive recent advances in first- and second person methods, as applied to the phenomenology of lived experience. However, our review of the neurophenomenology literature concludes that there is as yet no convincing example of these specialized techniques being used in combination with standard behavioral and neuroscientific approaches in consciousness science to produce results that could not have also been achieved by simpler methods of introspective reporting. > Implications • The end of behaviorism and the acceptance of verbal reports of conscious experience have already enabled the beginning of a science of consciousness. It can only be of benefit if new first- and second-person methods become well-known across disciplines. > Constructivist content • Constructivism has long been interested in the role of the observer in the constitution of our sense of reality, so these developments in the science of consciousness may open new avenues of constructivist research. More specifically, one of the ways in which the insights from first- and second person methods are being validated is by recursively applying the methods to themselves; a practical application of an epistemological move that will be familiar to constructivists from the second-order cybernetics tradition.
Personhood and First-Personal Experience
Abstract There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant.
First-Person Investigations of Consciousness
2016
This dissertation defends the reliability of first-person methods for studying consciousness, and applies first-person experiments to two philosophical problems: the experience of size and of the self. In chapter 1, I discuss the motivations for taking a first-person approach to consciousness, the background assumptions of the dissertation and some methodological preliminaries. In chapter 2, I address the claim that phenomenal judgements are far less reliable than perceptual judgements (Schwitzgebel, 2011). I argue that the main errors and limitations in making phenomenal judgements are due to domain-general factors, which are shared in the formation of perceptual judgements. Phenomenal judgements may still be statistically less reliable than perceptual judgements, though I provide reasons for thinking that Schwitzgebel (2011) overstates the case for statistical unreliability. I also provide criteria for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable phenomenal judgements, hence defending phenomenal judgements against general introspective scepticism. Having identified the main errors in making phenomenal judgements, in chapter 3, I discuss how first-person experiments can be used to control for these errors. I provide examples, and discuss how they overcome attentional and conceptual errors, minimise biases, and exhibit high intersubjective reliability. In chapter 4, I investigate size experience. I use first-person experiments and empirical findings to argue that distant things looking smaller cannot be explained as an awareness of instantiated objective properties (visual angle or retinal image size). I also discuss how an awareness of uninstantiated objective properties cannot adequately account for the phenomenal character of size experience. This provides support for a subjectivist account of variance in size experience. In chapter 5, I investigate the sense of self. I distinguish between a weak sense of self (for-me-ness) and a strong sense of self in which there is a polarity between subject and object. I use first-person experiments from Douglas Harding to demonstrate an explicit strong sense of self, specifically when I point at where others see my face. I also argue that this sense of self is not explained by inference, thoughts, feelings, imagination nor the viewpoint. Rather, it is part of the structure of experience that I seem to be looking from here. Even if there is a sense of self, there may be no self. The question of chapter 6 is whether there can be a direct experience of the self. I argue that to function as a bearer of experience the subject must be single and lack sensory qualities in itself. I use Harding’s first-person experiments to investigate the visual gap where I cannot see my head. I argue that it conforms to the above criteria, and hence is a candidate for being the subject. This finding, in conjunction with the fact that I seem to be looking from the same location, provides prima facie evidence for the reality of the subject. I hold then that contrary to Hume and most philosophers since, that there can be a direct self-experience, if one knows which direction to attend.
Super-psi and the survivalist interpretation of mediumship
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2009
According to the survivalist interpretation of mediumship, the existence of discarnate persons provides the best explanation for the data associated with physical and mental mediumship. Others-advocates of what is often called the "super-psi hypothesis"-maintain that the data of mediumship may be at least equally explained in terms of living agent psi (ESP and psychokinesis). Many defenders of the survivalist interpretation of mediumship attempt to defl ate the alleged explanatory virtues of the super-psi hypothesis by arguing that the hypothesis is unfalsifi able and lacks independent evidential support. My central contention in this paper is that these frequently encountered survivalist criticisms of the super-psi hypothesis are ultimately self-defeating to the case for survival from mediumship. To show this I fi rst argue in some detail that the survivalist interpretation of mediumship is committed to a kind or degree of psi that is indistinguishable from what is required by the super-psi hypothesis. From this vantage point it can be shown that any attempt to impugn the explanatory virtues of the super-psi hypothesis on account of the kind or degree of psi it requires undercuts the argument for survival itself.
Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, 2021
with the study of religious experience. However, my research did not focus on experience itself but as part of rituals and performances as is usually the case in anthropology. While trance, shamanism, and mediumship are indeed anthropological topics, the focus is on the activities, their functions for the participants and their place in society. But having moved to Oxford and changed discipline from anthropology to the study of religions, I decided to use the time at the University to start new research on spirit possession and trance which would focus on understanding the experience. Therefore I followed Peggy's recommendation and looked into the work of the RERC. Several years later, after having moved to Wales, where the RERC had moved, I even became director of the RERC, a position that Peggy herself had held for many years. I can even say that Peggy, who had guided me during my years at Oxford, put me on the path to stepping into her shoes so many years later. My connection to the RERC derives from my research into mediumship religions. From an anthropological perspective, spirit possession and trance are the core practices of many, if not all, African derived religions, my main research area. In my PhD I avoided
Phenomenal Consciousness and the First-Person
2008
Siewert's book revolves around three theses: that there is a distinctive style of epistemic warrant associated with the first-person point of view, that if we pay close attention to the deliverances of this first-person point of view, we will see that phenomenal consciousness is both real and yet neglected by many current theories that purport to explain consciousness, and that phenomenal consciousness is inherently intentional; one cannot divorce what phenomenal character presents to us from what it's like to have it. Among several points made on the relations among these three theses, it is argued that Siewert's argument for the distinctive status of first-person warrant does not provide him with the support necessary to employ that thesis in his defense of the significance of phenomenal consciousness. Siewert's book aims to establish, as the title announces, the "significance" of consciousness. He does this by arguing in great detail for three principal ...