Note: I wrote the following to post in the Scorpion's Spiritualism thread which had drifted to a discussion of this thread's topic. Before I could post it, a mod warning was posted in that that that such discussion is off topic there. So I'm starting a thread for it.
Warp12, let me try to explain the problem with psi investigation, using a specific example. I know dozens of people who claim to perceive people's auras. They're a substantial fraction (about a third) of an online community I participate in (some of whom I've also met in person) that's interested in a mix of esoterica including polytheistic religion, nature spirituality, and operative magic. Claiming to see auras is not, in that company, an extraordinary or particularly dramatic claim; the most frequent reactions to someone claiming "I see auras!" are "cool, me too," and "I'd sure like to learn to do that, can you recommend a how-to book?"
Most of these people aren't aura "readers;" they don't go around diagnosing illnesses or predicting fates or really doing much of anything at all with the auras they see. But often they report on seeing unusual auras: a neighbor whose aura took on an unusual color and later turned out to have had an undiagnosed illness; or meeting a respected spiritual leader or an unusually devoted practitioner and noting how bright or vividly colored their aura is.
Now, one more key background fact before I start talking about interpretations of what this all means: these people aren't dummies. They're not even average folks. While as with any group they're a mix, overall, compared to most other online communities, they're smart, articulate, and interesting. (You'll have to take my word on that, even though others here probably won't, and under the circumstances probably shouldn't.)
What do they think they're seeing, when they see an aura? Basically, some form of psychic energy (which they usually call etheric energy, but might also call chi, ki, prana, life force, Nephesch, orgone, Esma, pneuma, mana, ruah, The Force, or a host of other names associated with different traditions). It emanates from the living body, and its brightness, color, steadiness, and other characteristics change with (and therefore indicate) the person's physical, mental, and spiritual condition. It's a lot like light, which is why it looks like light and has color etc. like light does, but it can't quite be light because it doesn't show up in photographs and has never been detected by any mere instrument. It's seen by a person's inner sight which is a lot like vision and is kind of superimposed on ones eyesight. It's not known to science because scientists are too dogmatic about their theories to bother to learn to detect it, if they're not actively conspiring to suppress knowledge of it (e.g. at the behest of the medical/pharmaceutical industry, which would lose out on big bucks if the public learned to heal with psychic energy instead of toxic drugs).
Now, what do I think is really going on here? Are the aura-see-ers lying? I've suggested one possible motivation, after all: fitting in with the aforementioned community. There probably is some pretending going on, but in most cases, I don't doubt that they actually do perceive auras. That is to say, perceiving auras is an actual experience that they have. We know phenomena like synesthesia exist, we know something about the effects of expectations and imagination on perception, and we know people can perceive surprisingly subtle and complex signals without necessarily being consciously aware of doing so. In general, there is no point in questioning what people experience, whether it's seeing auras, floating out of their body, or knowing who's on the phone before they pick up the call. Those are experiences. What's open to question is what they mean. In the case of seeing auras, I think they're internal imagined visualizations being perceived (in a manner analogous to synesthesia) as coming from the external visual system. This happens routinely in dream states, so it's not such a far-fetched idea.
What about correctly detecting when a neighbor is ill from the color of their aura? There's probably a lot of confirmation bias involved there, but it's also true that people can often tell when someone is ill from looking at them. My wife does it all the time with film stars and celebrities, not by seeing an aura color but from a general impression of their faces and demeanors, despite their usually being seen in makeup and careful lighting. Such details as the tone of numerous small muscles in a person's face can be revealing, especially when their previous appearance is very familiar. My wife isn't always right, of course, but she does better than random guessing. She doesn't need to visualize a color-coded excuse for why she perceives what she does or for those perceptions to reach her conscious awareness, but maybe others do.
Oh, and those how-to books for perceiving auras? I regret to say I haven't read them, so I don't know exactly what they say, but I can make a good guess based on other books on similar topics that I have read. That is: they're systems of mental exercises that encourage and teach imaginative visualizing. (This is true of a lot of the content of "real magic" training systems. Some acknowledge it openly, and others do so only slightly indirectly, such as talking of learning "lower astral sight" and, separately, describing the "lower astral plane" as the "plane of imagination.") Many of these exercises aren't trivial, and can cause dramatic changes in ones perception of the world, even though I don't think there's anything supernatural about them. (After all, drugs can do that too, and they're just chemicals.)
Now, suppose I'm wrong, and instead, people actually do emit psychic energy that many other people can plainly see in ordinary daily conditions. That should be easy to test, right? For example, aura see-ers should be able to see people in the dark, from the etheric light of their auras. If anything, auras should be easier to see in the dark, without regular light to drown them out. So aura see-ers should be able to tell whether a person is in the room with them in darkness. And they'll agree. They can see people's auras just fine in the dark. Now, if you were going to test this, you'd want to make sure that it's total darkness, obviously. And also make sure that the person they're trying to see is totally silent (or the test subject is wearing white noise headphones, or something like that). But they don't test themselves that way. How often do people even encounter total darkness nowadays, with silent people who they don't know whether or not they're present sneaking around? They just know, "of course I can see an aura when someone's there in the dark," without ever thinking about all they ways they already know when another person is there without needing to see an aura.
So, you test them in total darkness and silence, and what happens? So far, in every such test, they can't tell whether a person is present across the room or not, any better than guessing. You can conclude what you want from that, but (here's the less often considered question) what will they conclude? That the auras they experience seeing every day aren't real after all? Of course not. They conclude your test messed up their inner sight by putting them into weird scary distracting conditions with pressure on them to perform. In their perception of the world, and the mental models of how the world works that they've created based on that perception, that's the simpler explanation. At the same time, you the researcher can't show with any absolute certainty that that's not the actual explanation for the negative results, so you should try to think of a different test... yet again.
In the end, scientific investigation of the paranormal is arguing mental models of how the world works, with people who have a different mental model of how the world works, and the actual results of any actual testing cannot change that. There aren't any paranormal phenomena that can be measured by a device. Subjective experience is always involved. That's probably because they're entirely phenomena of subjective experience. But it's also possible that they're real phenomena in the world that for some reason only interact with subjective experience; though most here would reject that model as less parsimonious, it's no skin off my nose if that's what you, like many of my esoteric friends, decide to believe. But in either of those cases, testing to objective standards, which is necessary to find scientific evidence of psychic phenomena, won't work. Ever.
If you want to learn about science, study science. If you want to learn about magic, study magic. (If you want to learn both, or add religion and make it a trifecta... I wish more present-day people would try, but I'd have some fair warnings to give you first.)
Warp12, let me try to explain the problem with psi investigation, using a specific example. I know dozens of people who claim to perceive people's auras. They're a substantial fraction (about a third) of an online community I participate in (some of whom I've also met in person) that's interested in a mix of esoterica including polytheistic religion, nature spirituality, and operative magic. Claiming to see auras is not, in that company, an extraordinary or particularly dramatic claim; the most frequent reactions to someone claiming "I see auras!" are "cool, me too," and "I'd sure like to learn to do that, can you recommend a how-to book?"
Most of these people aren't aura "readers;" they don't go around diagnosing illnesses or predicting fates or really doing much of anything at all with the auras they see. But often they report on seeing unusual auras: a neighbor whose aura took on an unusual color and later turned out to have had an undiagnosed illness; or meeting a respected spiritual leader or an unusually devoted practitioner and noting how bright or vividly colored their aura is.
Now, one more key background fact before I start talking about interpretations of what this all means: these people aren't dummies. They're not even average folks. While as with any group they're a mix, overall, compared to most other online communities, they're smart, articulate, and interesting. (You'll have to take my word on that, even though others here probably won't, and under the circumstances probably shouldn't.)
What do they think they're seeing, when they see an aura? Basically, some form of psychic energy (which they usually call etheric energy, but might also call chi, ki, prana, life force, Nephesch, orgone, Esma, pneuma, mana, ruah, The Force, or a host of other names associated with different traditions). It emanates from the living body, and its brightness, color, steadiness, and other characteristics change with (and therefore indicate) the person's physical, mental, and spiritual condition. It's a lot like light, which is why it looks like light and has color etc. like light does, but it can't quite be light because it doesn't show up in photographs and has never been detected by any mere instrument. It's seen by a person's inner sight which is a lot like vision and is kind of superimposed on ones eyesight. It's not known to science because scientists are too dogmatic about their theories to bother to learn to detect it, if they're not actively conspiring to suppress knowledge of it (e.g. at the behest of the medical/pharmaceutical industry, which would lose out on big bucks if the public learned to heal with psychic energy instead of toxic drugs).
Now, what do I think is really going on here? Are the aura-see-ers lying? I've suggested one possible motivation, after all: fitting in with the aforementioned community. There probably is some pretending going on, but in most cases, I don't doubt that they actually do perceive auras. That is to say, perceiving auras is an actual experience that they have. We know phenomena like synesthesia exist, we know something about the effects of expectations and imagination on perception, and we know people can perceive surprisingly subtle and complex signals without necessarily being consciously aware of doing so. In general, there is no point in questioning what people experience, whether it's seeing auras, floating out of their body, or knowing who's on the phone before they pick up the call. Those are experiences. What's open to question is what they mean. In the case of seeing auras, I think they're internal imagined visualizations being perceived (in a manner analogous to synesthesia) as coming from the external visual system. This happens routinely in dream states, so it's not such a far-fetched idea.
What about correctly detecting when a neighbor is ill from the color of their aura? There's probably a lot of confirmation bias involved there, but it's also true that people can often tell when someone is ill from looking at them. My wife does it all the time with film stars and celebrities, not by seeing an aura color but from a general impression of their faces and demeanors, despite their usually being seen in makeup and careful lighting. Such details as the tone of numerous small muscles in a person's face can be revealing, especially when their previous appearance is very familiar. My wife isn't always right, of course, but she does better than random guessing. She doesn't need to visualize a color-coded excuse for why she perceives what she does or for those perceptions to reach her conscious awareness, but maybe others do.
Oh, and those how-to books for perceiving auras? I regret to say I haven't read them, so I don't know exactly what they say, but I can make a good guess based on other books on similar topics that I have read. That is: they're systems of mental exercises that encourage and teach imaginative visualizing. (This is true of a lot of the content of "real magic" training systems. Some acknowledge it openly, and others do so only slightly indirectly, such as talking of learning "lower astral sight" and, separately, describing the "lower astral plane" as the "plane of imagination.") Many of these exercises aren't trivial, and can cause dramatic changes in ones perception of the world, even though I don't think there's anything supernatural about them. (After all, drugs can do that too, and they're just chemicals.)
Now, suppose I'm wrong, and instead, people actually do emit psychic energy that many other people can plainly see in ordinary daily conditions. That should be easy to test, right? For example, aura see-ers should be able to see people in the dark, from the etheric light of their auras. If anything, auras should be easier to see in the dark, without regular light to drown them out. So aura see-ers should be able to tell whether a person is in the room with them in darkness. And they'll agree. They can see people's auras just fine in the dark. Now, if you were going to test this, you'd want to make sure that it's total darkness, obviously. And also make sure that the person they're trying to see is totally silent (or the test subject is wearing white noise headphones, or something like that). But they don't test themselves that way. How often do people even encounter total darkness nowadays, with silent people who they don't know whether or not they're present sneaking around? They just know, "of course I can see an aura when someone's there in the dark," without ever thinking about all they ways they already know when another person is there without needing to see an aura.
So, you test them in total darkness and silence, and what happens? So far, in every such test, they can't tell whether a person is present across the room or not, any better than guessing. You can conclude what you want from that, but (here's the less often considered question) what will they conclude? That the auras they experience seeing every day aren't real after all? Of course not. They conclude your test messed up their inner sight by putting them into weird scary distracting conditions with pressure on them to perform. In their perception of the world, and the mental models of how the world works that they've created based on that perception, that's the simpler explanation. At the same time, you the researcher can't show with any absolute certainty that that's not the actual explanation for the negative results, so you should try to think of a different test... yet again.
In the end, scientific investigation of the paranormal is arguing mental models of how the world works, with people who have a different mental model of how the world works, and the actual results of any actual testing cannot change that. There aren't any paranormal phenomena that can be measured by a device. Subjective experience is always involved. That's probably because they're entirely phenomena of subjective experience. But it's also possible that they're real phenomena in the world that for some reason only interact with subjective experience; though most here would reject that model as less parsimonious, it's no skin off my nose if that's what you, like many of my esoteric friends, decide to believe. But in either of those cases, testing to objective standards, which is necessary to find scientific evidence of psychic phenomena, won't work. Ever.
If you want to learn about science, study science. If you want to learn about magic, study magic. (If you want to learn both, or add religion and make it a trifecta... I wish more present-day people would try, but I'd have some fair warnings to give you first.)
