Precognition, the
alleged ability to see the future, perhaps spontaneously and
uncontrollably, is a form of anomalous perception and anomalous
cognition (AC). Perception of the present is clairvoyance, perception
of the past includes psychometry, time slips and hypnotic regression
and Perception of the future is known as precognition (PC).
Precognition may be
conscious or unconscious, spontaneous or induced in a number of ways.
Spontaneous conscious PC cases may be explained in terms of selection
bias – people remember only dreams that came true,
misinterpretation, unconscious adjustment of memories or a form of
cryptomnesia where the witness had information that could have been
used to predict the future event but had forgotten it and then
created a dream or vision that was interpreted as a premonition. Some
PC skeptics will try to explain PC in terms of clairvoyance or
telepathy – explaining one anomaly in terms of another possibly
less mysterious.
Spontaneous
unconscious PC may manifest itself in impulse behaviour that avoids a
bad outcome or results in a good outcome. Or it may result in
presentiment, a feeling that prompts a change in behaviour. It may
also result in short term changes in, for example, heart beats or the
electrical conductivity of the skin. Laboratory experiments have come
to rely more on physiological changes and less on reports the
participants make when testing for PC ability. Typically these
experiments involve monitoring body changes in response to a random
stimulus at a future time and seeing whether there is a response to
the stimulus before the stimulus is administered. These experiments
are similar to experiments in normal cognition but need extra care in
design, for example ensuring that the random number generators used
are truly unpredictable – typically they involve detecting
radioactive decay products which are taken as truly random, an
assumption that depends on Bell’s Theorem which rules out hidden
variables at the quantum level that might be accessible to the
subject’s unconscious mind.
The evidence from
experiment suggests a real but weak effect which cannot, at this
time, be improved by training but the evidence is not sufficiently
compelling to convince skeptics who may also reject Precognition
because it raises questions about the nature of time, free will and
causality – it is normally considered that an effect cannot precede
its cause – and because no mechanism for it is proposed.
Physicists and
others have been developing theories of how PC might work, the main
focus being on quantum mechanics where the description of nature is
symmetric with respect to time at least on the smallest time scales.
The
Multiphase Model Of Precognition (MMPC) [1]
Researchers at the
Laboratory for Fundamental Research in Palo Alto have developed an
interesting model of PC that separates Physics, Neurobiology and
Cognition and identify and try to address the problems in each
domain. The laboratory president and founder was previously a
scientist working with the CIA Star Gate program. Despite a cloud
over his role in the project which led to suspicions about the data
gathered (2,3) the review that recommended termination of the project
admitted a statistically significant effect had been found but noted
that the information received, which was to do with remote viewing
rather than PC was vague and ambiguous and not good enough for
intelligence purposes.
The MMPC is, despite
the concerns in the paragraph above, plausibly constructed and
references other investigators who appeared to have no conflict of
interest and seem to be reliable. The pleasing feature of the theory
is its decoupling of the various domains and hence disciplines
involved, while the concerns above should prompt a more critical
reading of their suggestions.
The authors of the
model theorise that entropy gradients, for example those associated
with an explosion, are related to how well PC gifted individuals
perform on laboratory tests, that there is a “transducer” that
maps signals carried from a future time to the time of the experiment
into signals within the central nervous system, that cortical
processing of the received signal within the central nervous system
requires, or at least involves cross modal sensory processing of the
sort seen for example in synaesthesia where sounds may be perceived
as colours or vice versa and that the cognitive processing of the
signals in the cortex uses the same processes as for normal
perception. This last assumption means that it will not be possible
to distinguish between PC cognitive processing and normal cognitive
processing by looking at the behaviour of the brain.
In this model the
low incidence of PC ability in the general population is explained by
variations in individual sensitivity and efficiency of the presumed
transducer and the low incidence of individuals with massive cross
modal processing, for example synaesthetes. The last factor is used
to explain why PC seems to resist training for excellence.
The MMPC model does
not supply a candidate for the signal carrying the information from
the future to the past, though they cite other researchers as ruling
out electromagnetic waves, or any suggestions concerning the
transducer mapping from the Physics domain to the Neural domain. If
information is transmitted backwards in time it is impossible to tell
when it was received: it could have been received years before the
participant entered the laboratory.
The model is
rudimentary with few concrete predictions but asserts that PC gifted
people may be good at visualisation that those who are good at
converting implicit information into awareness may be PC gifted and
that PC gifted people may exhibit synaesthesia and vice versa. The
search for the transducer is like looking for the proverbial needle
in a haystack and the other predictions may be hard to test because
of the low incidence of synaesthetes, PC capable people and good
visualisers in the population. If validated the authors claim it
would unite all ESP processes under one model.
Consciousness
Induced Restoration Of Time Symmetry [5]
Bierman has produced
a model which he claims will unite all ESP processes under one
framework.
The problem
precognition raises is that while almost all formalisms in physics
(excpet possibly thermodynamics) are time symmetric in that any
solution of the equations as a function of time holds for negative
times as well as positive times. This implies paranormal phenomena
are natural and to be expected. But our experience says otherwise. We
seem to live in a world where time flows in one direction, the past
is inaccessible and the future is not yet created. The cause of this
asymmetry is unknown. Simply assuming that the advanced solutions are
forbidden is a counsel of despair.
Bierman assumes that
when sustaining consciousness the brain partly restores symmetry
allowing the advanced solutions, which correspond to negative time
with respect to the observer, occur. He does not propose a mechanism
for this. By assuming that if a stimulus is presented to a subject at
a time t then their physical response, say skin conductance, will
show only the standard solution S(t) say but if the stimulus is
consciously observed then the physical response will have a
contribution from the future (forward wave) solution S(-t).
S =
S(t) + A*S(-t)
Where A is defined
in terms of coherence as measured from EEG studies and the fraction
of the brain involved as measured by fMRI [6]. By assuming A is
roughly constant he is able to predict the expected response and
generate a simple if cryptic rule: What
happens after happens before which
can be taken to mean that the past and future mirror each other. He
then argues that the advanced part mimics the retarded part, thus if
the signal peaks four seconds after the stimulus then the retarded
art should peak about four seconds before the stimulus. He
cites an unpublished study that showed no presentiment of the
stimulus when the subject could not report the content of the
stimulus, suggesting that consciousness is crucial for presentiment
to occur. He
then postulates that the peak is symmetric about the moment of
conscious experience, which is about 400Ms after the stimulus with
the part of the stimulus that is not consciously experienced not
being reflected back in time.
His
theory does not allow the past to be changed but allows the
future to
influence the present. Thus
a dream of a house catching fire because of a lighted candle that
causes all candles to be removed prevents the fire and so there will
be no signal from the future. This
in itself seems a paradox and seems to clash with the findings by Cox
[7,8]
who showed
that trains which crashed were less populated than usual and the
carriages worst affected were even less populated than
usual and
attributed that to an unconscious premonition.
Bierman’s
model puts consciousness in a primary role in PC, which is in line
with increasing popularity of the view that consciousness is
intrinsic to reality in Philosophy, Neuroscience and even Physics
(see references cited in [7]) It
is also sympathetic to a dualist conception of consciousness which is
in turn more compatible with the notion of a timeless block universe
than with Temporal Realism.
Comparison
Of MMPC And CIRTS
MMPC
is an aesthetically pleasing model that separates the concerns of
Physics, Neurobiology and Cognition. In essence it asserts that
information is carried from the future to the past by an unknown
carrier. A transducer converts this signal into regular central
nervous system signal which are then processed by the cortex and
enter consciousness and are then processed in the normal way.
Consciousness plays no role in the PC process. The low incidence of
PC gifted people in the general population results from differences
between subjects in transducer efficiencies and in cortical
processing. The
authors
do not mention the possibility that the
transducer, if it exists, is a distributed function of the whole
brain rather than a discrete organ, which might align it to the
hypothesis that the brain is merely a receiver and filter for a
universal consciousness.
CIRTS
puts consciousness at the centre of the PC process by
restoring symmetry which allows the brain to receive advanced waves.
These are then registered by the brain with an efficiency that
depends on measurable brain properties.
Both
models assert time is real and that it is possible for the future to
affect the present but not for the present to affect the past. These
results appear to contradict those found by Cox [7,8] and a
replication of Cox’s work, or alternatively a demonstration that
disasters in urban areas tend to be accompanied by fewer than normal
people entering the area of the disaster.
While
MMPC is neatly
formulated it has two big unknowns: The nature of the transducer and
the carrier
of the information from the future. As Bierman points out what we see
is correlations and, I
suggest,
unless we can detect the carrier, its existence is merely inferred.
CIRTS
appears more sympathetic to a dualist or panpsychic interpretation of
the mind body problem which
is my instinctive preference.
Notes
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Rethinking Extrasensory Perception: Toward a Multiphasic Model of Precognition: Sonali Bhatt Marwaha and Edwin C. May http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2158244015576056
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project#Edwin_May Stargate: Edwin May
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project Stargate Project
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project#Closure_.281995.29 Closure of the Stargate Project
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Consciousness induced restoration of time symmetry (CIRTS): a psychophysical theoretical perspective, Bierman, D.J, The journal of parapsychology Volume 74 Issue 2 Pages 273-299
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) is a functional neuroimaging procedure using MRI technology that measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled.
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https://www.academia.edu/23186572/A_Modern_Critical_Review_of_W.E_Coxs_Subliminal_Precognition SUBLIMINAL PRECOGNITION” A MODERN CRITICAL REVIEW OF “PRECOGNITION – AN ANALYSIS” BY W.E COX (1956). ADRIAN DAVID NELSON (2013) A review of The original work by Cox since the original was unavailable.
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Cox, W.E. (1956). Precognition: An Analysis, II. The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 50(3), 99-109. The original paper by Cox
About
The Author
Trained as a
mathematician and physicist the author was a contract software
developer for many years working in a number of countries. He is now
writing a book on Time which will cover a number of aspects of Time.
As a result he is constantly short of time.
When not writing the
Author plays Capoeira, takes photographs and administers the family
run Bed and Breakfast in Edinburgh, Scotland