Discuss General Topics.
by Alexander1304 » 19 Dec 2012, 05:21
I'm attaching the book of Frederick C.Dommeyer "Body ,Mind ,Death"(1965), physolopher and parapsychologist.The book was written with clear aim to critisize survival hypothesis, and to demonstrate,that ESP hypothesis is more probable. I don't know if the author succeds in his point, but he appears to be knowledgable on the subject.Though book doesn't seem to become as popular,a s of Almeder,Broad and Gauld. dommeyer states that neither OBE nore appaaritions(even collective ones) constitue evidence for survival, and especially critisize the evidence from mental/trance mediumship.Finally, he mostly focues on critisizing cross-correspondence. He mentions that such cases as "sudden intrusion" of communicators also cited as support for spirit hypothesis("drop-in") ,but later doesn't comment such cases.Anyway, the book is attached here,it is short(76 pages),and I'd particulary like to hear opinions about his critisizm of mediumship. http://www.2shared.com/document/FscO0tG ... Death.htmlAny thougts?
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Alexander1304
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by Alexander1304 » 19 Dec 2012, 05:44
Hmmm...I'm not so new and the book is of 76 pages, but I'll try:
Other difficulties connected with the spiritist or survival hypothesis can now be noted more briefly. They will serve to counterbalance the previously listed evidences in favor of the survival hypothesis. (1) Mediumistic personifications have considerable likeness to the artificial personalities created in the hypnotic state.
(2) Despite the great numbers of purported messages that have come through mediums, these communications have been generally of the most trivial sort; exceptions to this statement are rare.
Though mediums have been bringing their messages to the living for over a century, nothing significant has been conveyed about "the next world." The references to the next life made by the "communicators" reflect a spiritualistic matrix or other body of beliefs characteristic of "this side."
(4) Though one might not be justified in making a universal statement about seance messages, it does seem fair to say that many of them have clearly been products of the medium's subconscious mind, and ESP if the paranormal enters them. (5) Great numbers of messages have been fraudulent— so many, in fact, that the Seybert Commission described all of them in that manner.
(6) Mediums themselves will on occasion admit that they do not know the origin of their "communications." A very gifted medium, Eileen Garrett, writes: Speaking as one who has had close contact with all mental phenomena for a great many years, and who regards the field of psychic research as a vaster territory than is even suspected, I feel the right to question the meaning of the messages, appearances of the alleged dead, and all the symbolism relating to this particular field. Although I have seen apparitions of thousands of alleged dead, and have received what appeared to be communications from them, I do not yet truly know whence these communications come. (7) Dr. J. B. Rhine, an undisputed leader in the parapsychological field, writes: ".. . the more careful and informed students of the problem seem to agree that no really scientific evidence of incorporeal personal agency has yet been reported."
(8) Professor Broad points out that if one considers "the apparently haphazard way in which men are born and die," so many being conceived by mistake, accidentally and in ignorance, then it seems that "the claim to permanence for creatures whose earthly lives begin and end in these trivial ways is somewhat ridiculous."54 (9) Evidence against survival comes also through a consideration of a cultural relativism that Professor E. R. Dodds notes.55 He points out that, prior to the origin of the spiritualist movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the "spirits" did not have a monopoly in controlling mediums. Just as often, the declared source of communication was a daemon; whereas, in other cases, no sources other than the seer or "wise woman" were alleged as the agency.
(10) Professor Dodds also indicates that it is a wellknown fact that the subconscious mind is "addicted to dramatisation,"56 and that its dramas are most often in terms of wish-fulfillments. The hunger for contact with the dead, along with the spiritualist environment in the last and early part of this century, can account for the so-called spirit messages. (11) The spirits, even though they bring veridical information on occasion, "seem to be cast in the same general mold; they are often too much alike, and think and talk too much like the medium, to convince the general observer of their autonomy."
(12) The "communicators" often display, as Gardner Murphy says, a "moral flabbiness," a willingness to have it both ways. The Hodgson personality well illustrated this, as James pointed out after studying 69 sittings in which Hodgson ostensibly appeared. Such vacillation and irre- sponsibility as Gardner Murphy notes are characteristic of the dissociated mind, i.e., the subconscious mind out of which these mediumistic automatisms arise.58 I would submit, at the conclusion of this Chapter, that none of the evidences for survival come up to the standards set by Mr. Roll. He writes:
We can now say what type of finding will indicate an incorporeal personal agent. It would consist in records which have motivational and personality factors foreign to the subject but typical of the deceased personality in question, as well as intellectual or cognitive characteristics that are not part of the furnishings of the subject's mind but were possessed by the supposed communicator. This type of material should be obtained in experiments in which there is no close linkage with living persons who have the personality traits or the technical knowledge shown in the record.
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Alexander1304
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by NinjaPuppy » 19 Dec 2012, 05:55
That's pro-ESP? It sounds like a description of a person who is in it for the money and may or may not have any 'talents'.
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by Alexander1304 » 19 Dec 2012, 06:08
It's pretty impossible to download the whole book...now you know me you can go the link, but I'll copy the next part: T IS clear from the foregoing that there exists a mass of parapsychological data for which there are competing explanations. We are concerned here only with those data for which the survival hypothesis is a possible explanation. With respect to such data, the question must be: is the survival (spiritist) hypothesis more or less probable than its strongest competitor, the ESP hypothesis. The ESP hypothesis holds that prima facie mediumistic communications, out-of-the-body experiences, apparitions, etc., can be explained entirely by reference to living human beings, their subconscious minds and the parapsychological capacities grounded in man's subliminal nature— i.e., no discarnate spirits need be supposed to exist. What kinds of evidence support the ESP hypothesis? We have already noted some evidences along the way. More generally, however, the evidences for ESP are found in two areas of research. (1) Laboratory studies, usually statistical, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, of precognition, of psychokinesis, etc. Such researches have been carried on at Duke University, Harvard, Stanford, City College (N. Y.), University of Utrecht, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. (2) Case studies of such spontaneous manifestations of psi as those associated with Mrs. Leonora Piper, Edgar Cayce, Peter Hurkos, Eileen Garrett, etc. With regard to both (1) and (2), it is not possible to do more here than barely suggest what has been done in these areas.
Dr. Rhine views ESP phenomena as "nonphysical." Neither distance nor time is a factor in psi occurrences. The basic process productive of psi occurrences is unconscious. 60 But especially interesting in relation to the ESP hypothesis is a subject's tendency on occasion to miss a specific symbol in a consistent way, i.e., substitute another for it. Also interesting for the same reason is a tendency occasionally for a subject to displace, i.e., to call consistently the target adjacent to the intended one. Such occurrences in the laboratory are the analogues of the symbolical and allegorical tendencies found as manifestations of the subconscious mind in many cases of spontaneous mediumship.
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Alexander1304
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by NinjaPuppy » 19 Dec 2012, 06:15
But I don't want to download that thing on my computer.
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NinjaPuppy
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by Alexander1304 » 19 Dec 2012, 07:23
It seems that the only 2 books mentioned this one: Robert Almeder states that Dommeyer's ESP explanations of Butler's apparition is "ad hoc". Michael Grosso seems to concur. I think this "ad hocness" can be extended itno his treatment of mediumship
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Alexander1304
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by NinjaPuppy » 19 Dec 2012, 07:37
I looked for this book on Amazon and B&N but both are out of stock. It sounds like a good NOOK read for me.
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NinjaPuppy
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by Alexander1304 » 19 Dec 2012, 07:50
First - fon't try to download - it asks to dowload some .exe, not just pdf. What is the best portal to share file? Moreover, somebody already pointed out ,that since this book was writted in 1965 - and to popular,by the way, and sicne then other good POPULAR books we writter,such as of A.Gauld, R.Almeder, S.Braude - this tells a lot
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Alexander1304
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by NinjaPuppy » 20 Dec 2012, 00:11
Most excellent! Thanks! Give me a day or two to get into this one. It's a busy week, with only two days left 'till the end of the world and all. I've crammed in as much as I can before Friday.
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NinjaPuppy
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by NinjaPuppy » 20 Dec 2012, 00:35
OK, I'm hooked. I'm up to Chapter III.
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