I have written numerous posts advocating that because humans are animals they should be recognized as such (for example, see here , here, here , and here). For zoologists and others who study animals, it is obviously true that we are animals. We do hundreds of things that the other mammals do, plus a few extra. You can see it every day when you eat, breathe, emote, poop, become fatigued and fall asleep. Yet millions of Americans are horrified by the thought that human beings are animals.
Consider that we aren’t simply animals. Our species is a carefully defined type of animal. We are apes. Frans de Waal explains:
Darwin wasn’t just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes—he didn’t go far enough . . . We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.
If you want even more detail on what type of animal humans are (we are in the ape sub-division of primates), watch this brisk video by Aron-ra.
Again, this sort of information is really disturbing to many people, especially religious conservatives.
So why don’t I simply leave religious conservatives alone? Why do I persist on standing on rooftops and proclaiming this message that humans are animals? Why don’t I just whisper this sort of information only to my closest of friends: “Pssst. Human beings are animals.” Why don’t I just let it be, and keep it all to myself? What could possibly be at stake that I feel compelled to spread the word that human beings are animals? I was in the process of assembling my own list when I just happened to read Chapter 12 of Mark Johnson’s new book, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding.
Johnson is well known for his work with metaphors and embodied cognition with George Lakoff. Chapter 12 of his new book contains a section that leaped out at me: “The Philosophical Implications of the Embodied Mind.” In that short section, Johnson sets forth nine reasons why it really and truly matters for people to acknowledge that they are animals and to fully accept that their minds are embodied, not free-floating entities independent of physical laws.
Johnson’s biggest target is the “objectivist theory of meaning,” the idea that meaning “gets defined without any connection to the experience of the creature (i.e., the human) for whom the words are meaningful. Johnson points out that those who follow the objectivist theory of meaning believe that words and sentences somehow “carry” meaning without even trying to explain how words and sentences ever come to acquire meaning. It should send up immediate red flags that the predominate theory of meaning relies on floating thoughts, a theory of meaning that is not biologically anchored. Reacting to (and rejecting) this objectivist approach, Mark Johnson premises his analysis “with a mind that is not separate from or out-of-ongoing-contact with its body and its world.” His worldview includes a specific definition of body and his impressive list of why it matters for human beings to take seriously “the embodiment of mind and meaning.” Here are those reasons (I will be borrowing liberally from Johnson’s book with these descriptions, beginning at page 279):
1. Mind and body are not two things. Johnson points out that the mind “is not a mysterious metaphysical guest that just happens to drop in for a temporary visit at the home of the body.” A human being is not a body plus a mind. Rather, it is a “body-mind.”
2. Human meaning is embodied. It is possible to understand meaning only because we learn meanings “at the most primordial bodily level. Things are meaningful by virtue of their relations to other actual or possible qualities, feelings, emotions, images, image schemas and concepts.” We never cease accessing meaning through feeling, even while we communicate using abstract concepts.
3. Understanding and reasoning are embodied. Ideas don’t float over our heads. Our meaning-making capacities are entirely embodied. See here. “Our resources for making sense of our world are based primarily on our sensory motor capacities, which have neural connections to other parts of the brain responsible for planning, deliberating and reasoning.
4. Human beings are metaphorical creatures. Johnson, a co-author of Metaphors We Live By (1980), reminds us that “conceptual metaphor is a nearly omnipresent part of the human capacity for abstract conceptualization and reasoning. As Johnson and George Lakoff have clearly shown, “metaphor shows up in virtually all our abstract thinking.” The fact that we depend on conceptual metaphor must be contrasted with “literalism” causes people to reject the importance of conceptual metaphor. Literalism claims that all our concepts can be spelled out clearly, which is false, misleading and very dangerous [because] literalism lies at the heart of fundamentalism.”
5. There is no absolute truth but there are plenty of human truths. Johnson makes a strong case in this book, and elsewhere, that “human life does not require absolute truths.”
Neither science, nor morality, nor philosophy, nor politics, nor spirituality really need absolute truths, even though most of our traditional theories in these areas assume that they are founded on absolute (disembodied, universal, eternal) truths. Human truth, by contrast, arises in the context of human inquiry, relies on embodied meaning, and is relative to our values and interests.
6. Human freedom. Johnson challenges the idea of the Kantian notion of “radical freedom.” This is Kant’s view that “we are, or possess, a transcendent ego that is the locus of our capacity to negate any bodily, social, or cultural influence, habit or tendency.” Many people believe in this radical freedom because it supports their notion of moral responsibility and religious aspirations. Johnson argues for a “naturalistic idea of the body-mind as [giving us] a modest freedom to contribute to transformations of our situation, and therefore to self-transformations.”
7. The person you are cannot survive the death of your body. Johnson recognizes that this is a “controversial and distressing” idea for many people. To the extent that anything survives your death, Johnson argues that “it could not be the you that we know and love,” because that you is possible only due to the workings of your human brain engaged with its human-related environment. Johnson points out that a brainless soul “would lack your memories, your experience, your emotions and your grasp of the meaning of things.”
8. Embodied spirituality. Johnson rejects “vertical transcendence,” which he describes as the “alleged capacity to rise above and shed our finite human form and to ”plug into the infinite.” Johnson would allow for “horizontal transcendence,” the ability to sometimes “go beyond our present situation in transformative acts that change both our world and ourselves.” Horizontal transcendence relates to our ability to see ourselves
as part of a broader human and more-than-human ongoing process in which change, creativity, and growth of meaning are possible. Faith thus becomes faith in the possibility of genuine, positive transformation that increases richness of meanings, harmony among species, and foraging, not just at the human level, but in the world as an ongoing creative development . . . none of this is grounded in the infinite, but rather in the creative possibilities of finite human experience. It gives each of us more good work to do than we can possibly realize within our lifetime.
In short, we can leave our imprint in this world after we die, but it’s only because of the work we’ve done on earth before our brains die. No hovering. No ghostly meddling post-death.
9. Philosophy as a search for meaning. Johnson recognizes that we are seriously limited as embodied creatures. We delude ourselves to the extent that we search for “absolute truth.” Embodied meaning and mind limit us to reflecting on “the fullest, richest, deepest meaning of experience, as a way of helping us deal with the real problems of human existence that define our existential condition. This is the hallmark of genuine pragmatist philosophy, which is about “discerning the full meaning of experience and transforming experience for the better.”
Johnson concludes that human beings are forced to live in a human-related world and we would be much better off if we could only recognize this. The alternative world that many of us attempt to live in, “the more-than-human world “can only be understood and engaged by us via the structures and processes of human understanding and action. We should be spending our energy to make our world a better place rather than trying to “escape our bodily habitation.”
Where does Johnson’s worldview make a difference? In the heat of almost every major moral dispute. What if all of us fully accepted the idea that there weren’t any unembodied thoughts? In other words, what if people didn’t believe in supernatural (the term I prefer is sub-natural) souls? This foundation would substantially reframe abortion, stem cell and birth control arguments, since the lack of the equipment for thinking in a one-day old embryo would mean there is not yet any thought process. The lack of the brain means (to those of use who understand even the slightest bit of biology and neuroscience) that there is no thought process. The more I study neuroscience, the more a dark thought creeps into my mind. The thought is that those who, after being exposed to the clear findings of the science, nonetheless believe in souls, need some sort of therapy. Consider that many courts define “insanity” as follows:
If a person persistently believes supposed facts, which have no real existence except in his perverted imagination, and against all evidence and probability, and conducts himself, however logically, upon the assumption of their existence, he is, so far as they are concerned, under a morbid delusion; and delusion in that sense is insanity. Such a person is essentially mad or insane on those subjects, though on other subjects he may reason, act, and speak like a sensible man.
Under this definition, how could it be that believing in brainless thoughts is not insane. Nor does it take any elaborate scientific demonstration. If some sort of “soul” does our thinking, then why do person black out when struck hard on their heads? Why do people with brain tumors suffer thought disturbances? Is it because their souls simultaneously suffer parallel ethereal brain tumors? Come on . . .
Johnson’s discussion should also re-frame end of life issues. If Terry Schaivo had no functioning brain, she could not possibly have had any conscious thoughts. To believe that people without brains can nonetheless think is as silly as concluding that a destroyed computer can run software programs in computer heaven.
Philosophy would also be reframed pursuant to Johnson’s analysis. For instance, there is not any such thing as pure thought or pure rationality, contrary to the views of many philosophers. It is thus impossible to set the body aside in order to “think clearly.”
These are merely some of the many ways in which our culture would revamp the way it considered major moral issues, if only we could accept the clear evidence that without functioning brains there are no such things as thoughts.
Another great post, Erich.
I agree with (and have thought about) many of the elements here. Like you I abhor the word supernatural. The prefix implies a state that is transcendent, better or superior to the mundane world of the natural that we inhabit. As you later discuss, many of the perspectives that support the 'supernatural' are also cognates of delusion or insanity.
In light of that, I tend to think of such things as a-natural. That encompasses all fantasy and delusion (alternate worlds where the Roman Empire still exists; fairies and elves and unicorns and dragons and dwarves who mine gold and silver and fashion fabulous coats of mail; and the vast majority of religious thought and practice)
More on topic – the fact that humans are animals provides a rationale and opportunity to observe and investigate our close and distant cousins, with the aim of discovering insight into ourselves.
I've always found anthropology fascinating, and many of our best insights are gleaned from observation and study of apes and other social animals. Desmond Morris has always been one of my heroes in this field, and I remember reading "the Naked Ape" when I was approaching my teens. Other works, culminating in <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2 Fwww.amazon.com%2FManwatching-Field-Guide-Human-Behavior%2Fdp%2F0810921847&ei=Iyz_SbHiLYaEtwel4MySDA&usg=AFQjCNHvg3P08yXFl5JpFb_Z_7oO3a8cRg” target=”_blank”>manwatching built on his background in zoology and crafted an incredibly influential body of work in anthropology.
I am ever grateful that I grew up in the UK, where Desmond Morris, David Attenborough, and James Burke (among many others) were available on prime-time TV. Their words (and pictures) inspired an early and continuing interest in observation and questioning – not simply an interest in 'Science' but in participation!
Antonio Damasio addresses the very same issues from the perspective of neuroscience and arrives at the same conclusion.
His first (of three) books was "Descartes' Error". Descartes asserted that "I think, therefore I am". To which Damasio responds that in fact "I feel, therefore I am". It is the body, feeling the world in all its senses, that informs the mind. Without the feeling, the mind would be lost.
Nice post. I will have to read Johnson. Lakoff I know.
Dave: Thanks for your comments. One of my links in this post is to an earlier post where I discuss (and find valuable) many of the points that Damasio makes in Descartes Error. I find Johnson/Lakoff a terrific complement to Damasio. Sounds like we're both on the same wavelength.
Sounds as though Johnson, Lakoff and Damasio have finally caught up with the Jesuits; " Men sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body)!"
The Jesuits have always been scary-smart. That's why they've always been the problem child of Catholicism and a challenge for the more 'fundamentalist' popes.
Science has found that humans have many bits of different animals in our DNA. This does not make us animals but it does seem like we may be classified as a carefully defined type of animal. However, no animal has the consciousness of humans and for that reason, I would not classify humans as animals at all.
Psychic Melbourne – WTF?
Go read up on cetacea, and on our cousins – the apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orang utans, gorillas, and others). Even look at our domestic pets (horses, cats, dogs, parrots even).
You think that none of these exhibit consciousness? you obviously live is a daze.
You argument is spurious.
Humans are conscious. Animals are not conscious. therefore humans are not animals?
That, as Spock might say, is illogical. (or simply, special pleading)
Regarding your assertions about DNA, you need to study some more. Human DNA is closer to chimp & bonobo DNA than any of us are to gorilla DNA (but that is still closer than non-apes). We are also further removed from C. elegans, despite sharing many of the same regulatory and developmental genes (SOD, HOX and others).
There are clear examples of where those changes have occurred (see Chromosome 2, our human chromosome is in fact two ape chromosomes joined end to end. This is such an accepted part of biology that the related ape chromosomes are now labeled 2p and 2q — you need to go far back in publication history to find them labeled differently)
Neuroscience tutorial from Washington University. This is what's under the hood. Not a trace of a soul. http://thalamus.wustl.edu/course/
This is such a thought provoking article. I wonder how much non animal parts a human is, if you know what I mean? It makes me wonder.
Erich, There is some research (surely controversial to the dogma of most fundamental scientists) by biologist Rupert Sheldrake which may challenge your belief that all functions of mind require an accompanying brain.
"The resonance of a brain with its own past states also helps to explain the memories of individual animals and humans. There is no need for all memories to be “stored” inside the brain.
The morphic fields of mental activity are not confined to the insides of our heads. They extend far beyond our brain though intention and attention. We are already familiar with the idea of fields extending beyond the material objects in which they are rooted: for example magnetic fields extend beyond the surfaces of magnets; the earth’s gravitational field extends far beyond the surface of the earth, keeping the moon in its orbit; and the fields of a cell phone stretch out far beyond the phone itself. Likewise the fields of our minds extend far beyond our brains."
Full article here: http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/pape…
Mike M.: Sheldrake sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me. If you remove the brain and spinal cord, you have no possibility of sentience. That's based on everything I've ever understood. As I understand cognitive science, no "field" can make up for the lack of a nervous system.
But I would agree that our "self" is not limited by skin and skull. See here: http://dangerousintersection.org/2006/05/07/no-se…
OMFSM, I cannot stand it when educated scientists turn away from real science. Telepathy? (He cites something about a telepathic parrot) "Noetic sciences"?? Morphic resonance?
He's a "Visiting Professor and Academic Director of the Holistic Thinking Program at the Graduate Institute" – which offers Masters of Arts in: Conscious Evolution; Experiential Health and Healing; Learning and Thinking; Oral Traditions; Conflict Transformation; Organizational Leadership". The last two appear to have some social value, but the first four, as described on the web site…fringe. Okay, to me they sound like fringe.
One can't fault him for his wife, but he links her website on his homepage. Her site has a picture of her beating a drum, stuff on chanting, constellations, "families and ancestors are resonant fields".
He says morphic resonance is "the basis of memory in nature….the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species". The Skeptic's Dictionary says a bit on these morphic fields. Dawkins was right…design a language to conceal absence of honest thought.
Erich, you were too kind when you called it mumbo-jumbo. It sounds like some of the best mumbo jumbo to me. Perhaps Dr. Sheldrake can claim James Randi's prize? "Unexplained powers of animals"? Come on!
Oh, Jim. I cite an article by Rupert Sheldrake, who studied at Harvard University and has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cambridge, and you cite "The Amazing Randi" – a fundamentalist freelance skeptic with no scientific credentials whatsoever. Sheldrake has done thousands of trials, and published the results of these experiments in peer reviewed journals. What has "The Amazing Randi" done? Besides conducting skeptic revival meetings and acting as a showman, or ringmaster at skeptical circuses?
Here's what Sheldrake has to say about Randi:
"In Randi’s “Amazing” meeting in Las Vegas in 2005, delegates at the media workshop given by Randi and Michael Shermer were handed a manual called Communicating Skepticism to the Public which told them how to become a media sceptic: “Becoming an expert is a pretty simple procedure; tell people you’re an expert. After you do that, all you have to do is maintain appearances and not give them a reason to believe you’re not.”
In real science, becoming an expert requires qualifications and hard work, but as Randi and Shermer pointed out, the rules are different for sceptics. All you need is to form a club with like-minded people: “As head of your local skeptic club, you’re entitled to call yourself an authority. If your other two members agree to it, you can be the spokesperson too.”
Randi fuels the widespread public perception of sceptics as negative and dogmatic. Even worse, he makes organized scepticism seem like a fundamentalist crusade, with his meetings as revivalist rallies. For sceptics who are genuinely interested in promoting science and reason, he is not an asset but a liability.
If sceptics want to be taken seriously, then organized scepticism should be subject to the same kinds of quality control as genuine science."
Mike M—what has Randi done? Held many a charlatan's feet to the fire and shown them to be frauds. Taking potshots at someone for their lack of academic credentials while extolling the wonders of someone who teaches (?) noetics is a bit farcical. Basically, Sheldrake's trying to assert there is science to "feelings"—not in the sensate meaning of the term but in the same vein as harmonic convergence. This is nonsense. Or therapy. But in any case it's not science. It may well have some psychological value, but it ain't science.
Noetics is being linked to new age astrology and other fraudulent practices. Not a good source for solid, confirmational arguments.
Jim and Erich, another thought- isn't the exploration of the unknown and the improbable the whole point of real science? Shouldn't scientists be encouraged to test unconventional theories, and to experiment and publish the results of their work? How else are we to discover anything "new"? What is the fundamentalist scientific community afraid of discovering? This reminds me of the Vatican inquisitors who steadfastly refused to look at the heavens through Galileo's telescope, and instead preferred to have this "fringe scientist" silenced and imprisoned in solitary confinement rather than allowing his ideas to publicly deconstruct their entrenched dogmatic worldview.
And why do these inquiries so profoundly disturb this community that they're not willing to even look at the empirical results? I suspect one superficial reason is because a quick dismissal, a knee-jerk ridicule, and a snappy label ("mumbo jumbo", "fringe") is just easier.
I think it's important to avoid being closed minded and rigidly anchored to our current mental constructs. And to also be wary of reflexively defending the rapidly antiquating Newtonian mechanistic paradigm. Look into the boundary dissolving results of cutting edge quantum physics, which is starting to resemble "mysticism" more each day (to the great dismay and reluctance of the physicists themselves). Today's magic is tomorrow's science – as evidenced throughout history.
Mike M.
I am well aware that crazy-sounding theories sometimes prove true. Here are three examples:
1. Alfred Wegener, the scientist who developed tectonic plate theory in 1915. Despite the existence of evidence supporting his theory, it was rejected by most of his contemporaries.
2. The same thing happened in 1984 to Australian Doctor Barry Marshall, who argued (to a chorus of ridicule) that many ulcers are caused by bacteria called helicobacter pylori, not stress. It opponents claimed that it was medical fact that stress caused ulcers. Desperate to prove his theory. Marshall drank a beaker of the bacteria to cause an ulcer in his own liver. This began a revolution in our understanding and treatment of peptic ulcer disease).
3. Kilmer McCully, M.D. paid dearly for disparaging the reigning theory of his day, that heart attacks were caused by excessive cholesterol. McCully published papers contending that high cholesterol was not the main cause of heart disease. His 1969 theory linked homocysteine—an amino acid that accumulates in the blood—and heart disease. For this work he was banished from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. For the next 27 months he was unable to find a position in North America that would allow him to continue this work.
These were cases where the scientific establishment was blinded by path dependence or perhaps loyalties (this ties into the work of Kuhn). On the other hand, there are theories that, it would appear to me, have been carefully and fairly vetted and have been found lacking. The "fields" substituting for neural cognitive substrate reminds me of the underlying theories for homeopathy (where some sort of "memory" supposedly functions in the absence of an active ingredient). See http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/02/13/randi…
I'm prepared to say "I was wrong" if and when the scientific establishment hoists Sheldrake on its shoulders and parades him through town as a genius. I severely doubt that that is going to happen, however.
Mark, It seems farcical to me that you reject Noetics as "nonsense" – yet a Nobel Prize winning physicist named Brian Josephson states the following, "There is a lot of evidence to support the existence of telepathy, for example, but papers on the subject are being rejected – quite unfairly".
And from a Josephson biography- 'In 2005, Josephson said that "parapsychology should now have become a conventional field of research, and yet parapsychology's claims are still not generally accepted". He compared this situation to that of Alfred Wegener's hypothesis of continental drift, where there was initially great resistance to acceptance despite the strength of the evidence. Only after Wegener's death did further evidence lead to a gradual change of opinion and ultimate acceptance of his ideas. Josephson said that many scientists are not yet swayed by the evidence for parapsychology and the paranormal. Josephson contends that some scientists feel uncomfortable about ideas such as telepathy and that their emotions sometimes get in the way.'
Josephson also says, "Radin shows the evidence in favor of paranormal existence is overwhelming."
– Brian Josephson, Nobel Laureate in physics
Who's Radin?
Dean Radin is senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and founder of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has held appointments at Princeton University, the University of Edinburgh, and several Silicon Valley think tanks, and has produced cutting-edge parapsychological research for AT&T, Contel, SRI International, and the U S government.
So Mark, are you smarter than a Cambridge educated Nobel Prize winning physicist? It's possible, but seems unlikely.
Erich, Thanks for those three examples of "rejected pseudoscience" that later transmuted into….well, Accepted Science. Voila! Presto! What was once nonsense becomes science. Happens all the time; there are thousands of examples throughout history. Why should we expect this phenomenon to suddenly cease in 2011? Because we know it all now? Unlikely. I used that Wegener example of yours in my last post regarding Physicist Brian Josephson. Good example.
Mike: Sometimes what looks wobbly pans out, but it is always based on skeptical testing. I'm not convinced that there is anything like this going on regarding Sheldrake's theories.
Erich, Fair enough- we both await further developments (or not) re. Sheldrake. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again on this subject in 10-15(?) yrs and being able to say, "I told you so."
Maybe you will get the last laugh on this one, but I suspect not. We'll see.
Mike: Note that it sounds as if you are advocating further out than the evidence will take you. That is my problem with the position of Richard Dawkins on whether religion is an evolutionary byproduct (though I agree with the substance of Dawkins' attacks on anti-scientific claims uttered in the name of religion.
Mike M., you confuse expertise in a scientific field with intelligence. Mark may very well be "smarter" than a Cambridge educated Nobel Prize winner. And may know more on that subject outside said laureate's field. Not the first time scientists go whacky. Newton spent most of his life destroying his brain with chemicals in search of transmutation, and also destroying his brain trying to prove the existence of God (the obsession quite probably linked to those chemicals). Watson got himself a Nobel and went fringe too.
Randi's challenge stands uncollected. Paranormal claims will not take up the gauntlet because they are frauds. Just because Josephson has a Nobel (for superconductivity) supports telepathy and paranormal does not mean either have any truth. Argument from authority fails. Josephson also claims to know people who have reproduced the cold fusion experiment. Where's that at?
I am with Erich. If time produces a legitimate scientific theory, which explains this non-normal paranormal activity Sheldrake claims, is consistently reproducible (good luck with that) and falsifiable, and the scientific community determines its howling error, then I will admit my howling error.
Oh dear. It seems that at least in 1997 Josephson believed in the merits of homeopathy. That speaks volumes.
Jim, you wrote: "you confuse expertise in a scientific field with intelligence. Mark may very well be “smarter” than a Cambridge educated Nobel Prize winner. And may know more on that subject outside said laureate’s field."
Thank you-you are right on this one…I was writing in a flurry and was rash. Sorry Mark. What I should have wrote, and what I meant, was more along the lines of "Mark, are you sure you know more than Josephson and Radin on the subject of Noetics? In other words, are you certain you're up to speed in this arena?- enough to reject the conclusions of a Nobel Prize winning Physicist and published Noetics author and scientist?"
At least concede that I cited strong, legitimate, published sources on this subject. Didn't I?
Jim, Your question: "Josephson also claims to know people who have reproduced the cold fusion experiment. Where’s that at?"
The answer:
"Dreaming of fusion". PhysicsWorld. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/30976. Retrieved 2009-10-14. ""Broader approach", yes: let's not forget the version of fusion reported by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons in 1989. You thought that that had been discredited perhaps? Wrong! It is true that a number of teams failed to replicate the experiment, but that does happen sometimes when the experimental conditions are critical. Other people persisted, and got results eventually. Why does one not hear about this? In a word, censorship: it is the practice of many editors to return such papers without sending them out to be refereed (I am surprised to learn that it is the opinion of the President of the Royal Society that that is the privilege of editors to do this if it fits their sincerely held prejudices, but it seems to me that this is a perfect recipe for slowing the advance of science).
Unlike the sceptics who prefer to criticise from their armchairs, I have gone ahead and visited no fewer than three laboratories where such research is going on, in order to get at the facts. My latest was a visit to the experiment of Thomas Claytor of LANL, who is measuring tritium production in a glow discharge with a view to finding out which electrode materials give the highest yield. (The sceptics will I suppose claim that he is adding the tritium somehow, in which case why don't they go along to the lab and see if that is what is in fact happening?)
Who will be the first editor of a major journal to bring this lunatic situation to an end, by being brave enough to publish such results as these? Then, maybe, there can be a concentrated effort to realise whatever potential there may be from this new energy source."
Mike M.—maybe not, but we all have to exercise discretion on how to best allocate our time in pursuit of understanding. Back in the early Seventies, when Noetics was a hot new thing, I read the papers, attended some seminars, then talked to some people with a bit more grasp than me, and dismissed it finally as handwaving bullshit.
Consider one thing: if telepathy had ever existed as, say, a genetic trait (and what else would it be?) then you have to ask if it had sufficient usefulness to be selected for. So since we do not have large groups of blatantly demonstrable telepaths, either it had no real utility from an evolutionary standpoint and was selected against, meaning it no long exists in any meaningful way, or it never existed in the first place.
In any event, hoisting credentials is a poor way to make a point.
Mike, you cited published sources. They are probably strong and legitimate in the world of noetics.
Velikovsky published a strong and legitimate text. To him.
Hubbard's Dianetics follows the same vein.
Mike, I couldn't check the article…and didn't check to see if it had free access. Can I assume from the context of the quote that it is Josephson claiming a conspiracy of editorial exclusion? It sounds like it would be him.
The short of it is that after millions have been spent trying to confirm the Fleischmann/Pons experiment or follow the research to some sort of achievable results, the research has been abandoned as untenable. After 22 years and so much effort to replicate, surely some experimental results confirming the original would succeed? Reminds me of the claims of human cloning in the 1970s. Nothing to back it up…faded into obscurity until Dr. Hwang made his claims in 2004/5.