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THE SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Pre-Conference Workshop Monday, April 25, 9 am to 1 pm
What can psi interactions teach us about consciousness? Psi is a name for interactions that are beyond our normal ways of exchanging information with the world. Psi interactions include clairvoyance, mediumship, and precognition. Given that there are statistically replicable results in all three of these areas of psi interactions, what insights about the nature of consciousness can these results offer us? Julie Beischel, Arno Delorme, and Julia Mossbridge will discuss their experimental work related to psi, outline the current evidence, and speculate as to how this evidence might inform our understanding of consciousness.
“The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. The term is purely descriptive; it neither implies that such phenomena are paranormal nor connotes anything about their underlying mechanisms. Alleged psi phenomena include telepathy, the apparent transfer of information from one person to another without the mediation of any known channel of sensory communication; clairvoyance (sometimes called remote viewing), the apparent perception of objects or events that do not provide a stimulus to the known senses; psychokinesis, the apparent influence of thoughts or intentions on physical or biological processes; and precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) or premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process” (Bem, 2011, p. 407).
Given that there are statistically replicable results in these areas of psi interactions, what insights about the nature of consciousness can these results offer us?
Arnaud Delorme, PhD, is a university professor with several affiliations (Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France; University of California San Diego; Institute of Noetic Sciences). In 2001, A. Delorme has developed the free EEGLAB software for advanced analysis of electroencephalography signals, software which is now the most used software in electroencephalography research worldwide. Dr. Delorme was awarded a Brettencourt-Schueller young investigator award and a 10-year anniversary ANT young investigator award for his contributions to the field of electroencephalography research. Dr. Delorme also has a keen interest in the scientific study of consciousness and spirituality. In becoming one of the world's foremost researchers utilizing electro-encephalogrphic (EEG) signal recording, Arnaud Delorme has traversed a path of diverse and amazing accomplishments and professional experiences. His driving interest in pursuing the study of consciousness and spirituality has him currently running an experiment in which he is looking at the brain activity of mediums who claim they can connect with spirit realms, and he has obtained EEG readings that indicate something is definitely going on in their brains when they do this! Listen to Arnaud explain his research and how it informs our understanding of consciousness and its applications.
Julia Mossbridge, MA, PhD, is the Director of the Innovation Lab at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University. In 2014, she was awarded the Charles Honorton Integrative Contributions award for her work on presentiment. Dr. Mossbridge has received post-doctoral funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Bial Foundation, and the Monroe Institute. Her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders is from Northwestern University, her M.A. in Neuroscience is from University of California at San Francisco, and she received her B.A. with highest honors in neuroscience from Oberlin College. In addition to continuing to pursue her research interests and inventing apps (www.choicecompass.com), she is currently working with Imants Baruss on a book taking a post-materialist approach to consciousness, Transcendent Mind: Re-thinking the Science of Consciousness. The book will be published by the American Psychological Association in 2016. Mossbridge uses computational, behavioral, and physiological techniques to examine how humans integrate what we experience over time into a so-called “stream” of consciousness. Her interest in this topic has led her to examine aspects of both cognitive and perceptual timing (e.g., order effects on reading comprehension, perceptual integration across senses) as well as the more controversial reverse-temporal effects she analyzed in her recent meta-analysis (covered in ABC News 20/20, Wall Street Journal Ideas Market, Fox News, and other mainstream media outlets). In this workshop she will discuss her work in presentiment – generally non-conscious physiological changes that reliably predict upcoming events that are normally thought to be unpredictable. She will also discuss the implications of this work for understanding conscious awareness and non-conscious processing.
Julie Beischel, PhD, co-founder and Director of Research at the Windbridge Institute, received her doctorate in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona in 2003. She is the author of Among Mediums, Meaningful Messages, From the Mouths of Mediums, and Investigating Mediums. Julie Beischel’s current research interests include examinations of the accuracy and specificity of the information reported by secular, American mediums (individuals who experience regular communication with the deceased) as well as their experiences, psychology, and physiology and the potential social applications of mediumship readings. During this workshop, she will discuss laboratory evidence for the reporting of accurate and specific information about the deceased by credentialed mediums under conditions in which mediums, experimenters, and raters are blinded (i.e., without the medium receiving any prior knowledge or feedback and without using deceptive or fraudulent means like ‘cold reading’ and in which rater bias and experimenter cueing are addressed). She will also discuss how mediums’ experiences during the acquisition of this information about the deceased (“survival psi”) begin to differentiate it from clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy with the living (“somatic psi”).
Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous
Optional - Pre-Conference Workshops Workshops are held: Monday/Tuesday, April 25 - 26 Monday Morning 9-1: Monday Afternoon 2-6 Monday Evening 7-10 and Tuesday Morning 9-1 half day and evening Workshops Early Workshop Fees: TSC Student Registrants $40 half day TSC General Registrants $60 half day General Public - Student - Workshop only $75 half day General Public - Workshop only $125 half day
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