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The power of the mind to influence the physical world has long been debated, debunked, studied for military applications, and used in science fiction. This historical and theoretical study of mind-matter interaction, or MMI, explores the phenomena of levitation, stigmata, inedia, paranormal activity, bilocation, fire immunity, luminosity, and the teleportation of matter. The results of more than a century of formal experimental research are discussed, as are resultant training techniques, theories, and controlled experiments used to test or bolster psychokinetic abilities.
There are those, such as scientists, who see only the outside of reality, its appearance, its surface, its phenomenal aspect. They are blind to the inside, the substance, the foundation, the noumenal aspect. They dismiss it as non-existent, or illusion, or epiphenomenon. Scientists are those that believe that phenomena have no underlying noumena. What you see is what you get. Seeing is believing. Everything is appearance. Nothing is concealed. There are no hidden variables, and no unobservables. The scientific method says, "Observe". That works only if everything is observable. If there are foundational unobservables, science is catastrophically wrong and has cut itself off from the truth. The only "truth" it can furnish is that of surfaces and appearances with no substance. Those who truly want to understand reality must become masters of both perspectives – inside and outside, noumenon and phenomenon – and see how they relate, communicate and interact.
Quantum theory predicts experimental results brilliantly but simultaneously raises difficult conceptual issues. Paradoxes such as Schrödinger’s cat, the EPR paradox, or the nonlocality demanded by Bell’s inequalities have hampered philosophers in their attempts to include quantum theory when discussing the relation between mind and matter. Pylkkänen proposes that Bohm’s alternative interpretation of quantum theory resolves these paradoxes and thus enables one to base new philosophical theories upon quantum physics. He uses Bohm’s concepts of "implicate order", "active information" and "soma-significance" as tools to tackle several well-known problems in the philosophy of mind. These include mental causation, the hard problem of consciousness, time consciousness, and virtual reality. Pylkkänen’s eclectic approach combines new physics-based insights with those of analytical philosophy, phenomenology, cognitive science and neuroscience and he proposes a view in which the mechanistic framework of classical physics and neuroscience is complemented by a more holistic underlying framework in which conscious experience finds its place more naturally.
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This book both introduces the philosophy of science through examination of the occult and examines the occult rigorously enough to raise central issues in the philosophy of science. Placed in the context of the occult, philosophy of science issues become immediately understandable and forcefully compelling. Divergent views on astrology, parapsychology, and quantum mechanics mysticism emphasize topics standard to the philosophy of science. Such issues as confirmation and selection for testing, causality and time, explanation and the nature of scientific laws, the status of theoretical entities, the problem of demarcation, theory and observation, and science and values are discussed. Significantly revised, this second edition presents an entirely new section of quantum mechanics and mysticism including instructions from N. David Mermin for constructing a device which dramatically illustrates the genuinely puzzling phenomena of quantum mechanics. A more complete and current review of research on astrology has been included in this new edition, and the section on the problem of demarcation has been broadened.
Reports for 1892/94-1896/98 include Proceedings of the South Dakota Educational Association.
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