Does Sam Harris have "faith" in psychics?

Questioninggeller

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In Sam Harris' The End of Faith (paperback edition) he wrote:

(This is the full paragraph to show this isn't out of context.)

...
There also seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena, much of which has been ignored by mainstream science.[18] The dictum that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" remains a reasonable guide in these areas, but this does not mean that the universe isn't fare stranger than many of us suppose. It is important to realize that a healthy, scientific skepticism is compatible with a fundamental openess of mind.
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[page 41]
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Footnote 18 refers to:

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[18] See, e.g., D. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), R. Sheldrake, The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (New York: Crown, 2003), and R.S. Bobrow, "Paranormal Phenomena in the Medical Literature Sufficient Smoke to Warrant a Search for Fire," Medical Hypotheses 60 (2003): 864-68. There may even be some credible evidence for reincarnation. See I. Stevenson, Twenty Case Suggestive of Reincarnation (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1974), Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1984), and Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997).
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[page 242]
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Read it online, search: google books version.

ETA: It seems Randi commented on it here.

Thoughts about this?
 
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I certainly find it a bit disappointing. I read the End of Faith and I did detect a note of woo. I liked what Randi had to say, and I certainly hope Harris realizes he's being a bit blind....if not outright hypocritical.
 
Just worth noting one commentary piece about Rupert Sheldrake (from Harris' footnote) by Randi:

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Rupert Sheldrake is at it again! After informing me that the owners of a gifted telepathic dog in the UK had forbidden me access to test the canine for the JREF million-dollar prize, he has now revealed yet another "staggering" animal to the world. Aimee Morgana of New York city claims to have a psychic parrot that "knows exactly what visitors are thinking." This avian marvel, N'Kisi, passes telepathy tests using her 555-word vocabulary to comment on peoples thoughts, says her owner. Note the careful wording; "comment on," rather than "read." Ms. Morgana sits in one room looking at images while N'Kisi is in another. When a photo of a bouquet is viewed by her owner, the bird screams, we're told, "That's a picture of flowers!" A picture of a telephone earns the response, "What'cha doin' on the phone." Former Cambridge scientist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has carried out a test of this paragon of avian savvy using 70 images, and he says that the parrot got it right 32 times. "You'd only expect 5.2 hits like this to occur by chance. This was staggering," said Sheldrake. Yes, if the report is true, I agree. Hey, Rupert, we'll test N'Kisi. Any time. Can't wait. I guess we'll probably get a personal letter from N'Kisi, seeing how smart the bird is. At about the same time we hear from Alifani....

The claims of Ms. Morgana, we're told, have been tested by a Mail on Sunday (UK) journalist who was shocked to see that the parrot "knew" she had earlier been talking about a friend's dead pet! The proof is that the parrot commented "Remember the cat?" Perhaps along with "Here's the bus!" and "Is it lunch time?"

Sorry. We need something better. But we're ready to be shown. Show us.
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http://www.randi.org/jr/12-08-2000.html

and he won a JREF Pigasus this year:

The 11th Annual Pigasus Awards
Awarded April 1, 2007
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Category #1, to the scientist who said or did the silliest thing related to the supernatural, paranormal or occult: For 2006, it goes to UK biologist Rupert Sheldrake, for his "telephone telepathy" claims related to "morphic resonance." This man’s delusions increase as time goes by, and he comes up with sillier ideas every year. See www.randi.org/jr/2006-09/09806guess.html#i6
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http://www.randi.org/pigasus/index.html
 
From Harris's website (http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2):

My views on the paranormal—ESP, reincarnation, etc.:
My position on the paranormal is this: While there have been many frauds in the history of parapsychology, I believe that this field of study has been unfairly stigmatized. If some experimental psychologists want to spend their days studying telepathy, or the effects of prayer, I will be interested to know what they find out. And if it is true that toddlers occasionally start speaking in ancient languages (as Ian Stevenson alleges), I would like to know about it. However, I have not spent any time attempting to authenticate the data put forward in books like Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe or Ian Stevenson’s 20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. The fact that I have not spent any time on this should suggest how worthy of my time I think such a project would be. Still, I found these books interesting, and I cannot categorically dismiss their contents in the way that I can dismiss the claims of religious dogmatists.
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Questioninggeller said:
Thoughts about this?
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Honestly? I'm not sure what to think. It doesn't appear to me that Harris is in bed with woo practitioners, but as Randi notes it would at the very least behoove him to be much more familiar with this subject matter. In all fairness, though, and much as I otherwise enjoy Harris' writing -- being an atheist doesn't guarantee that one is impervious to woo.

More: Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter 74
 
Wolverine said:
Honestly? I'm not sure what to think. It doesn't appear to me that Harris is in bed with woo practitioners, but as Randi notes it would at the very least behoove him to be much more familiar with this subject matter. In all fairness, though, and much as I otherwise enjoy Harris' writing -- being an atheist doesn't guarantee that one is impervious to woo.

More: Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter 74
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Seems a little weird to write a book criticizing religion then footnote a book such as Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997) as a source to back up a claim.
 
Wolverine said:
being an atheist doesn't guarantee that one is impervious to woo.
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Of course not. My ex-girlfriend is adamantly an atheist but

believes in faires.

Harris is just being open about a subject he hasn't given his full investigation to yet. I'm sure that when he does, he'll come down as hard on it as he as the God superstition.
 
Questioninggeller said:
Seems a little weird to write a book criticizing religion then footnote a book such as Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997) as a source to back up a claim.
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Agreed.

Does that mean he "has faith" though? I don't think so.

Does it mean he could have been (or could still be) misinformed? I think that's more likely.
 
Questioninggeller said:
If he lacks evidence then what is he basing his belief on? Faith?
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But does he believe in the stuff or does he just find it interesting (and possibly because he's misinformed or hasn't spent adequate time investigating the material)?

Harris said:
I certainly don't say that I'm confident that psychic phenomena exist. I'm open-minded. I would just like to see the data.
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Wolverine said:
But does he believe in the stuff or does he just find it interesting (and possibly because he's misinformed or hasn't spent adequate time investigating the material)?
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It sounds like he's trying to have it both ways. Change that quote to: "I certainly don't say that I'm confident that Thor exists. I'm open-minded. I would just like to see the data." The data is in: no proof for Thor and the JREF million sits in a bank account.
 
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Questioninggeller said:
It sounds like he's trying to have it both ways. Change that quote to: "I certainly don't say that I'm confident that Thor exists. I'm open-minded. I would just like to see the data." The data is in: no proof for Thor and the JREF million sits in a bank account.
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I don't think he's trying to have it both ways, and psychic power is not quite analagous to a Norse storm deity. Just because no one has met the JREF challenge does not mean no one can - or more importantly could or might in the future. My personal position on psychic powers is similar to that of UFOs. There ain't any... but I'm willing to change my position based on new data. Harris just seems a bit more open-minded on this issue.
 
I didn't read the book, only read part of the first chapter with the wife aloud. I'll have to ask her about it.

It sounds very disappointing.

There are certain mind over body phenomena that could be studied if only to discover the biological mechanisms responsible, without giving credit to psychic powers. If someone's cancer disappears after they meditated, then find out why the cancer went into remission. Just because something is correlated with meditation or some spiritual act doesn't mean we can dismiss the entire event.

Mental stress or the lack thereof may affect the autonomic nervous system to a degree it can be picked up by a Galvanic Skin Response test, but I seriously doubt there is data to show the degree of control the mind has over the body that parapsychologists claim.
 
I enjoyed The End of Faith, and I think Harris is right on with a lot of his claims (in the book and whenever I see him speaking on TV), but the one thing that I could do without in The End of Faith is the "spirituality" stuff. It's almost as if he's shoehorning it in as a substitute for "religion".
 
What is it about what he said that indicates faith or belief in psychics? What is wrong with the statement that "It is important to realize that a healthy, scientific skepticism is compatible with a fundamental openess of mind."?
 
I enjoyed The End of Faith, although there were a couple of parts that left me feeling a bit woozy.

He seems to abuse the concept of empiricism. I was especially daunted by the stuff about meditation where he quotes from some tract, and then goes on to say that "these are empirical claims". They were nothing of the sort, unless you consider one's subjective experience empirical.

All in all a good read, many good points, but take it, as with all things, with a healthy dose of skepticism.
 
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