Psychic Feelings

[vernonk]

Do you believe that - maybe even have examples of - some people can somehow sense what you're thinking or feeling even if they're a long distance away and haven't seen in you in a long while?

[naomi24]

Ratter, thank you. :o)

[naomi24]

No scientists about this morning?

[naomi24]

TheFamousCash, will you please stop posting that. As has been said, this thread is not about so-called mediums or psychics out to fleece the vulnerable. It's about the inexplicable instincts that people say they experience - and that is something quite different.

[arwyn]

As this was'nt in CB I thought I would be reading some good personnel stories, not a science lesson.

[RATTER15]

TheFamousCash, Stop being ridiculous and read the question properly!

You are starting to sound a little foolish!

[society]

"Naomi24
Science seems to have concluded that millions of people are either potty, or that they suffer delusions, but here’s a thought.

What is a ‘thought’? I don’t mean how is a thought generated? – I mean what does it actually, physically, consist of? We can’t see it, we can’t grasp it, other than from an intellectual perspective, we can’t examine it, and therefore we have no idea of its properties or of how it is capable of behaving. So what is it? Until we can answer that, we cannot claim to ‘know’ that people’s experiences of telepathy, déjà vu, etc., are bogus. "

Naomi, not even the most articulate person in the world could have explained this in a better and more understanding manner.

[naomi24]

Society, thank you. That's appreciated. x

[jim360]

While there is much to be understood about the brain I don't think we have "No idea" of what a thought is. You might dismiss this as speculation but it's fairly reasonable: a thought is an electrochemical process occurring between and inside neurons. Why not? Brains are, ultimately, made of normal matter. Of molecules, and then atoms, and so electrons and protons and photons between them, and that process is fairly well understood.

That would put thoughts within the realm of current physics, although of course the systems are too complicated to be properly analysed. Perhaps forever -- but turning a sufficiently powerful computer to the problem would likely give some insight into what goes on.

Even supposing psychic thoughts to be a totally new phenomenon I think we might be able to describe it in a very loose model that we have the tools to write down even today. So while perhaps the idea cannot be dismissed entirely, nor should criticisms be so lightly dismissed.

[naomi24]

Jim, I made it clear that I’m not talking about the processes that produce thoughts. I asked what a thought actually physically consists of, and how it is capable of behaving. If you don’t know, just say you don’t know.

[jim360]

Well I don't see that you can separate the two. What a thought consists of, and how it is capable of behaving, is based on the processes that describe it.

[naomi24]

How so? We can describe the processes that produce it, but we cannot describe that which is produced.

[jim360]

I don't really know what answer you are looking for, I suppose. For me it's good enough to describe thoughts how I did: that is, as electrochemical interactions between neurons. That is a physical description of a thought. I cannot make any predictions about what any particular thought is of just by looking at a picture, if that's what you mean. But I can't really do the same when someone takes a picture of any electrical circuit. Doesn't mean that two separate circuits are capable of communicating with one another.

[jomifl]

First of all to deal with instinct which appears to have nothing to do with psychic ability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct
As for thoughts, the internal processes of the brain are not fully understood but I think it can be said with a degree of certainty that some of the mechanisms are. Thoughts do not seem to be some disembodied notion that wafts around in the skull, sometimes going for an excursion to someone elses skull. Different kinds of thinking have been found to go on in different parts of the brain, not all of it at a concious level. It appears to be a mechanical/chemical process at the cellular level whereby connexions between cells that carry weak electrical signals are made and unmade according to need. There was a wonderful demontration on the christmas lectures a while back where a powerful magnet could disrupt different kinds of mental processes when placed near the appropriate part of the skull. If anyone really wants to know more about this there is plenty of info. available on the web. The reason I am sceptical about the existence of psychic ability, telepathy etc. is that assuming that the electrical activity of the brain could be transmitted the power available is so small that any signal would be swamped by all the background noise. For it to work there would have to be an alternative universe of physics that has otherwise escaped detection. With the only suggestion that it exists coming from people who are either in it for the money or stressed by grief or some other strong emotionally denial of reality I don't think many scientists are going to abandon lines of research that yield results.

[naomi24]

Jim, That doesn’t provide an answer to the question. You didn’t describe thoughts. You described the process that produces them, and whilst that might be good enough for you, I’m somewhat more curious.

//I don't really know what answer you are looking for,//

No, I don’t think you do.

Jom, //assuming that the electrical activity of the brain…..//

Whilst electrical activity within the brain creates the thought, the actual physical properties of that thought cannot be examined, so apart from being the result of physical activity within the brain, what is it? Or to put it another way, what precisely are we left with?

[DTCwordfan]

And therein lies the crux of the argument, naomi - understand how this chemical whacking around as to process actually manifests itself and you may have the answer to the mechanism, process and output of what is considered ESP and other sensory communication.

I'm also interested to hear Jim's views as to the possibilities of being other energy forms that we have not yet 'captured'....

[jomifl]

Naomi, Jim's explanation of a thought is perfectly reasonable, you just have to step back a bit to see it from the outside. The eye is the only example that I can think of at the moment, I know I have said this before on AB, but when we see, we have this notion of an image but in reality this image is a construct. Firstly we have the blind spot in the eye which the brain conveniently ignores, then we have the fact that we only see detail at the center of the field of view, so the brain tells itself that it knows what the detail is, thus you think you see it. Also the eye really only sees images of things that move on the retina. If the eye is motionless it will only see things that move. Most of what you think you are seeing you are in fact not seeing at all. The mind is just an illusion created by the brain, it is a process of joining bits of information together and ignoring areas where there is no information or filling them in with assuptions. It is a larger version of the eye. That is why people can be so convinced that impossible things have happened and why they think they have seen things that they haven't.

[jomifl]

Naomi, the thought is the connection between the brain cells, just as an electrical circuit has differing outputs depending on how it is wired so the brain arrives at different outputs or thoughts. Your 'thought' is the expression of a bit of cellular 'rewiring'.

[jomifl]

DTC, ignoring of course that ESP has never been 'demonstrated' other than on the stage before a paying audience.

[jim360]

Well I think the physical properties of the thought are determined by the process in which it is created. If you do not, there's little I can add to what I've already said. I don't think of the brain as anything more than a "Biological computer". A very sophisticated one, but a computer nonetheless. Thoughts are then the output of internal processes. I don't think there are any other "physical properties" -- what do you think those might be?

DTC -- I considered that possibility and reckon that it might be possible even now to model this process using current techniques. I don't have the time to do this just yet so if you wanted a more detailed answer you would have to wait. I'll just explain the method I have in mind though:

We don't need to know the full details of how a "new form of energy" would work in order to make a first-order analysis of it. After all, that's precisely what Newton did with his first theory of Gravity, or Einstein with his, or more recently Yukawa's model of how protons and neutrons interact. So in the same way I propose that it may be possible to write down an "effective theory" of psychic interactions that buries all of the unknown details in a model that we can use to do calculations even now. That model would:

1. Assume that psychic thought is a connection between brains as a whole.
2. Assume that the connection can be modelled as an interaction.
3. Assume that there will in the future be a quantum theory of that interaction.

I hope these are not unreasonable -- as you said earlier the process seems to be that the world is becoming increasingly demystified. If psychic abilities did exist, then, we can expect there to be a physical theory describing them.

If I ever get around to doing this properly, in fairness to you and to the idea I'll only feed in to the model parameters based on your estimates rather than mine. I'll explain what those are later, once I've done the preliminary work, and if you feel it's worth pursuing.