Epiphenomenalism is a position on the mind–body problem which holds that subjective mental events are completely dependent for their existence on corresponding physical and biochemical events within the human body, yet themselves have no influence over physical events. The appearance that subjective mental states influence physical events is merely an illusion, consciousness being a by-product of physical states of the world. For instance, fear seems to make the heart beat faster, but according to epiphenomenalism the biochemical secretions of the brain and nervous system —not the experience of fear—is what raises the heartbeat. Because mental events are a kind of overflow that cannot cause anything physical, yet have non-physical properties, epiphenomenalism is viewed as a form of property dualism.
Parapsychology is a field of research that studies a number of ostensible paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, and apparitional experiences.
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to conduct organised scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models." It does not, however, since its inception in 1882, hold any corporate opinions: SPR members assert a variety of beliefs with regard to the nature of the phenomena studied.
Frederic William Henry Myers was a British poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" were influential in his time, but have not been accepted by the scientific community. However, in 2007 a team of cognitive scientists at University of Virginia School of Medicine, led by Edward F. Kelly published a major empirical-theoretical work, Irreducible Mind, citing various empirical evidence that they think broadly corroborates Myer's conception of human self and its survival of bodily death.
An out-of-body experience is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy, although this term is more commonly used to refer to the pathological condition of seeing a second self, or doppelgänger.
Susan Jane Blackmore is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth. Her fields of research include memetics, parapsychology, consciousness, and she is best known for her book The Meme Machine. She has written or contributed to over 40 books and 60 scholarly articles and is a contributor to The Guardian newspaper.
Consciousness Explained is a 1991 book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett, in which the author offers an account of how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. Dennett describes consciousness as an account of the various calculations occurring in the brain at close to the same time. He compares consciousness to an academic paper that is being developed or edited in the hands of multiple people at one time, the "multiple drafts" theory of consciousness. In this analogy, "the paper" exists even though there is no single, unified paper. When people report on their inner experiences, Dennett considers their reports to be more like theorizing than like describing. These reports may be informative, he says, but a psychologist is not to take them at face value. Dennett describes several phenomena that show that perception is more limited and less reliable than we perceive it to be.
Near-death studies is a field of psychology and psychiatry that studies the physiology, phenomenology and after-effects of the near-death experience (NDE). The field was originally associated with a distinct group of North American researchers that followed up on the initial work of Raymond Moody, and who later established the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Since then the field has expanded, and now includes contributions from a wide range of researchers and commentators worldwide. Research on near-death experiences is mainly limited to the disciplines of medicine, psychology and psychiatry.
A psychedelic experience is a temporary altered state of consciousness induced by the consumption of a psychedelic substance. For example, an acid trip is a psychedelic experience brought on by the use of LSD, while a mushroom trip is a psychedelic experience brought on by the use of psilocybin. Psychedelic experiences feature alterations in normal perception such as visual distortions and a subjective loss of self-identity, sometimes interpreted as mystical experiences. Psychedelic experiences lack predictability, as they can range from being highly pleasurable to frightening. The outcome of a psychedelic experience is heavily influenced by the person's mood, personality, expectations, and environment.
Bicameral mentality is a hypothesis introduced by Julian Jaynes who argued human ancestors as late as the ancient Greeks did not consider emotions and desires as stemming from their own minds but as the consequences of actions of gods external to themselves. The theory posits that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a bicameral mind, and that the breakdown of this division gave rise to consciousness in humans. The term was coined by Jaynes who presented the idea in his 1976 book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, near the end of the Mediterranean bronze age.
Thomson Jay Hudson, was an American author, journalist, a chief examiner of the US Patent Office, and a psychical researcher, known for his three laws of psychic phenomena, which were first published in 1893.
Energy is a concept in some psychological theories or models of a postulated unconscious mental functioning on a level between biology and consciousness.
Théodore Flournoy was a Swiss professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and author of books on parapsychology and spiritism. He studied a wide variety of subjects before he devoted his life to psychology. Flournoy had an interest in a very skeptical area of psychology. He did extensive observations on a participant to investigate psychical phenomena. He was the President of the Sixth International Congress of Psychology, the Chair of Experimental Psychology at the University of Geneva in 1891 and was the first professor of psychology in Europe to become a member of the Faculty of Sciences instead of the Faculty of Philosophy.
Philosophy of mind relates human senses with the experience of our being here.
Charles Bruce Greyson is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is author of After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond (2021), co-author of Irreducible Mind (2007) and co-editor of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences (2009). Greyson has written many journal articles and has given media interviews on the subject of near death experiences.
Walter Terence Stace was a British civil servant, educator, public philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, mysticism, and moral relativism. He worked with the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910 to 1932, and from 1932 to 1955 he was employed by Princeton University in the Department of Philosophy. He is most renowned for his work in the philosophy of mysticism, and for books like Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) and Teachings of the Mystics (1960). These works have been influential in the study of mysticism, but they have also been severely criticised for their lack of methodological rigor and their perennialist pre-assumptions.
Pam Reynolds Lowery, from Atlanta, Georgia, was an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, at the age of 35, she stated that she had a near-death experience (NDE) during a brain operation performed by Robert F. Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Reynolds was under close medical monitoring during the entire operation. During part of the operation she had no brain-wave activity and no blood flowing in her brain, which rendered her clinically dead. She claimed to have made several observations during the procedure which medical personnel reported to be accurate.
Michael Anthony Thalbourne was an Australian psychologist who worked in the field of parapsychology. He was educated at the University of Adelaide and the University of Edinburgh. His books include: A glossary of terms used in parapsychology (2003), The common thread between ESP and PK (2004), and Parapsychology in the Twenty-First Century: Essays on the future of Psychical Research (2005).
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers describe as having similar characteristics. When positive, which the great majority are, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, joy, the experience of absolute dissolution, review of major life events, the presence of a light, and seeing dead relatives. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of anguish, distress, a void, devastation, vast emptiness, seeing hellish places and "the devil".
Edward Francis Kelly is a research professor at Division of Perceptual Studies at Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at University of Virginia. A Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences, Kelly's research interests include mind-brain issues and cognitive neuroscience with a focus on phenomena that challenge the current neuroscientific view of mind.
