Philosophy For Humans: III

Not Just For Sports Fans, Anymore

Today's Track: Psychic--The Crash Test Dummies

It was a conversation that actually began sometime early last summer, I suppose. It was, as were so many of our discourses at that time, an absurd and quite possibly illegal hour of the morning. I had just signed online to conduct a few pieces of general web-based business--checking e-mail, reading weblogs, getting into pointless electronic arguments with other Trekkies, etc.--when Sarah, in a blatant disregard for the fact that I had the volume on my (admittedly overpowered) PC speakers set somewhere in the "liquify-granite-at-thirty-paces" volume range, sent me an instant message. The resulting alert tone can only be described as sounding like a dinosaur being put through an industrial belt sander at the, er...apex of its mating ritual. After a little of the standard "how was your day?" sort of small talk, I disclosed that I had only moments ago been thinking of her, in fact only an instant before her abrupt 'appearance'. After a few moments of silence, she responded by asking me one of the more bizarre questions, at least in context, that I recall ever being posed: "Do you have ESPN?™" The sheer, staggering lack of any logical connection with the rest of the conversation, combined with lack of sleep and the fact that my brain had recently been pulverized by the aural equivalent of a sudden kick in the groin, left me utterly at a loss. In the end, I reacted much the same as George Washington probably would have if asked whether he was interested in saving money on long distance telephone calls. That is to say, "Huh?"
After a bit of thought, I added that, no, I didn't; that I in fact didn't have cable at all. Yes, that's right, friends. The Masked Logician is one of approximately seventeen people in the United States who still haven't succumbed--er, I mean subscribed, to any sort of other-than-on-air television programming.
After a bit of further discussion, I finally established that she had actually been referring to ESP, which is a shorthand way of saying "To Hell with the Psychic Friends Network." The whole ESPN thing was actually a very funny joke that I had enthusiastically fumbled. How silly of me.

Now, flash forward to Thursday night.

Sarah and I were, for one reason and another, lying quietly about, feeling very contented and relaxed and ever so slightly sleepy. Just the sort of conditions which seem invariably to inspire deep, meditative, philosophical thinking. So I wasn't terribly surprised when the discussion, after a great deal of aimless verbal meandering, turned again to the subject of ESP and other 'psychic' phenomenon. I'm not entirely certain, but I seem to recall that the whole affair began when one of us remarked on our apparently uncanny habit of awakening almost precisely at the same instant on a significant percentage--being well above half--of the mornings on which we had compared notes. Not precisely bulletproof scientific evidence in favor of telepathy, I know, but certainly food for thought. From there, we traipsed over the still-craggier intellectual terrain of precognition, encompassing along the way dreams (purportedly) precognitive in nature. Progressively more wary despite my innate love of intellectual exploration, I somehow fought back the urge to hum the theme from The Twilight Zone as I recounted some of that peculiar species of subconscious activity pulled from my own personal dreaming experience. While I remind the reader--insist, in fact--that none of them particularly represents and sort of verifiable, objective proof of anything more mystical than my own suggestibility, they are, again, substantial if rather rich and fattening intellectual sustenance. And, before I finally succumbed to sleep--a bit warily, it must be understood, given my state of mind at the time--we even made cautious ventures into the realms of other 'psionic activity', such as psychokinesis (the correct and more logically accurate designation for that phenomenon popularly known as telekinesis).
There was a good deal of talk on this and further topics, but, sleep encroaching as it was, much of it was becoming, at least to me, less than entirely intelligible. Suffice it to say that I’ve had plenty to ponder the last couple of days. Let me express right now, just for sake of initial clarification, where I stand, as of now, on such matters. Specifically, I stand queasily near the center, pallid, eyes clenched, mentally reciting the emergency procedures and fingering the Dramamine in my pocket. No, wait a moment. That is where I stand on boats, for which, obviously, I have no great love. My stance on mental activity which seems to lie outside the realm of convenient scientific explanation (for which I prefer the comfortingly vague and meaningless term supernormal) is somewhat less confident. Being a staunch--if not totally rabid--rationalist, such things, I am not ashamed to admit, make me about as nervous as Pat Buchanan in a hedonist commune. However, I believe very firmly in the principles of empiricism, at least in the broad strokes. Pure science, begotten of pure reason, borne of pure, unbiased thought and observation. In other words, let the facts speak for your conceptions, not the other way around. So I see an inquisition into the existence of supernormal psychic abilities as a reasonable, if somewhat uncomfortable line of inquiry.
But the issue is a bit large to tackle all in one shot. So take a smaller element; precognition, say. In and of itself, still a grand matter. Can we see the future? Should we do so, if we can? What, precisely, is it that we see, since the future is said not to exist yet? What metaphysical implications, if any, present themselves as a result of this ability--or lack thereof? Can we, philosophically speaking, truly hope to get all our long distance calls for one low rate, even on weekends? I cannot pretend to know the answers to these questions. But what I can do is help to inspire needless and totally baseless fear by saying that:

if in fact humans are naturally precognitive, then it is at least possible that everything we do is based on our subconscious reactions to the future, and that free will is, if not specifically an illusion, at least a moot point.

There now, don’t you feel better? Goodnight, friends, and think on...

Seriously, though, I know you were expecting me to hold forth on the subject at greater length, but for once I’m going to beg off. The conversations I’ve had with others (everyone seems to have an opinion about this sort of thing) and with myself are only blue-skying in the purest and truest sense. Not that this is a bad thing. The exact opposite, as a matter of fact. Open, free thought is the only way puzzles ever get solved. What I’ve basically intended tonight is to say to you “What do you think?” I know it seems as though I’ve gone miles out of the way in order to do this, and perhaps I have. And if so, I hope it’s worked. It is my fervent hope that, each time you read something here in the unsettling parallel universe of Cognitive Dissidence, you go away with something. An answer, maybe, or better yet, a question. Or perhaps simply, in the words of Douglas Adams, “a profound sense of something or other”.

...and at least I didn’t tell another Nixon joke...

For those of you trully interested in pursuing an investigation of so-called ’supernormal’ phenomena, there exist literally thousands of sources, some more legitimate than others. I suppose the Rhine Research Center is as good a starting place as any. Good luck.