PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY: A SURVEY Bob Brier C. W. Post College James Giles Iona College

Parapsychology is the branch of science that deals with phenomena that cannot be explained within the current framework of physics. Almost by definition, it raises philosophical issues. This paper surveys the various issues discussed in the literature and outlines the contribution made by various philosophers.

Prior to the 1930’s when a rigorous, experimental approach to psychical phenomena became predominant, the field was called “psychical research.” This change in terminology also marked a change in the interests of those who investigated psychical phenomena. The motives of those philosophers interested in psychical research were quite different from the motives of recent philosophers interested in parapsychology.

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Psychical research began to be taken seriously by thinkers interested in its philosophical implications in the last half of the 19th Century. In 1882 this interest was given an institutional focus by the formation in England of the Society for Psychical Research. In order to understand the philosophical aspects of the Society’s work, it is best to concentrate on the so-called Sidgwick group, formed around Henry Sidgwick, the English philosopher who is most remembered today for his work in ethics. This group supplied most of the serious and intelligent investigation into psychical phenomena. In addition to Sidgwick and his wife, the group consisted of Edmund Gurney, F.W.H. Myers and Richard Hodgson. Unfortunately, Gurney’s investigations were cut short by his untimely death in 1888 at the age of 41. He accumulated much factual data but never worked out any systematic interpretation and ‘evaluation of it. Hodgson, whose name was most closely associated

Bob Brier received his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is Associate Professor of Philosophy at C. W. Post College, Greenvale, New York. Most of his publications deal with philosophical implications of parapsychology. His most recent book is Precognition and the Philosophy of Science.

James Giles received his Ph. D. from Fordham University and is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Iona College, New Rochelle, New York. He has writtenpapers in the area of American Philosophy, especially the philosophy of William James, and in the Philosophy of Religion.

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with the investigation of Mrs. Piper, perhaps the most famous medium of the day, did not concern himself to any significant degree with the philosophical implications of his investigations. Mrs. Sidgwick also concerned herself with the collection of data and not its interpretation or evaluation. Therefore, in order to ascertain the philosophical themes present in the early investigation of psychical phenomena, we will concentrate on Sidgwick and Myers.

Perhaps the basic reason that men like Sidgwick and Myers saw psychical research as something more than the investigation of ghost stories and table-rappings was its usefulness in counteracting the breakdown of traditional Christianity as an intellectually viable outlook. Sidgwick, for example, had thought of entering the church, but was dissuaded by his inability to answer the objections brought against the scriptures of Christianity by “higher criticism.” Emanating from Germany, higher criticism tried to show that the scriptural texts could be explained by socio-cultural investigations rather than by reference to a transcendental source. Sidgwick expended a great deal of energy attempting to answer the objections of the higher critics, especially their attack on the credibility of miraculous occurrences described in the New Testament. He even spent three years studying Hebrew and Arabic in order to get the historical and linguistic background which he felt was demanded of someone who entered the debate.

An even more serious challenge to the Christian outlook was posed by the relentless advance of the explanatory power of science. In responding to this challenge, Sidgwick acknowledged the great accomplishments of science and its even greater promise, but felt that science as an explanatory tool has its limitations. The failure to recognize these limitations had led to pretensions on the part of science. Sidgwick felt that there are facts about the world which point to a view of reality that goes beyond what science is willing to admit on the basis of its assumptions.

Sidgwick- among others- argued that science rests on assumptions which can not be proven and that, therefore, the scientific viewpoint has no right to rule out areas of human thought, like religion and ethics, which do not share those assumptions. More specifically, Sidgwick was convinced that there is an intimate connection between religion and ethics: God and immortality seemed to him to be necessary conditions of the moral order. But he also saw that while they are necessary assumptions, God and immortality cannot be based on the kind of evidence demanded by science. Psychical research was looked upon by Sidgwick as a possible source of an empirical grounding of immortality. (The existence of God, he felt, is simply an intractable problem whose solution psychical research cannot directly aid.) In general, Sidgwick felt that if the facts of psychical research were genuine, they would at once cast serious suspicion on the assumptions of the scientific materialism which dominated the age and give positive impetus to belief

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in immortality and, therefore, to religion in general. This interest in immortality was reflected by the decision of the

Society for Psychical Research, after the death of Gurney, to give up merely collecting stories of apparitions and to make its primary task the structuring and organizing of evidence to support belief in survival after bodily death. Stress was placed on what are called “mental mediums,” rather than on “physical mediums.” The latter are individuals who go into trance states and who then become conduits through which various startling physical effects are transmitted, e.g. table-raising, slate writing, etc. Mental mediums, on the other hand, convey purported messages from the dead while in their trance states. Most of these messages are from deceased individuals who are quite well known to those “sitting” with the medium. The other member of the Sidgwick group whom we are considering, F.W.H. Myers, devoted himself most assiduously to a thorough investigation and evaluation of such messages.

Like Sidgwick, Myers felt the lack of religious grounding for a belief in immortality. He turned to psychical research for evidence for belief in immortality. In his posthumously published Human Personality andits Survival of Bodily Death, Myers singled out the immortality problem as the most momentous one for mankind. Psychical research suggested to him the existence of a “subliminal self’ which complements the conscious self and which accounts for man’s ability to detect psychical phenomena. The subliminal self can acquire supernormal knowledge by such means as telepathic impressions of other minds, embodied or disembodied, and clairvoyant perceptions. But although the notion of a subliminal self raises psychological and philosophical issues about the nature of selfhood and consciousness, Myers saw its ultimate value as giving a basis for belief in the persistence of personality after death.

In general, Myers felt that the evidence overwhelmingly pointed not only to survival of the human personality, but to the fact that messages can be received from these disembodied selves. These departed souls, Myers argued, can give those on earth revelations of the wider world which religions have always said exists. In this way, belief in the wider world can be given the kind of verification demanded by science. And if this were done, Myers concluded, science could not rule out or ignore the religious interpretation of reality.

Unfortunately, however, Myers did not further develop this contention. In general, neither Myers nor Sidgwick explained in detail the new relationship between science and religion to which psychical research points. For a serious discussion of this issue and other ones with philosophical implications, we must turn to the most important philosophical figure in the psychical research movement during this period- William James.

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Before discussing the reasons for James’s interest in psychical

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research, let us briefly sketch his involvement in the psychical research movement. He was closely acquainted with all the major figures in the movement. He was one of the founders of the American Society for Psychical Research and an active leader in it: its Vice-president from 1890 to 1910, with the exception of the years 1894-1895 when he was its president. Besides contributing many papers to the Society’s publications, he also wrote expositions of the Society’s aims for popular magazines which helped to enhance the prestige of the Society among the general public. In addition, James helped psychical research by his discovery of Mrs. Piper, the famous medium, and by his involvement in the investigation of her powers. Finally, it is interesting to note that James’s first publication (in 1869) was a review of a book about psychical research, Planchette.

James’s interest in psychical research, as his biographer R.B. Perry confirms, “was not one of his vagaries, but was central and typical.”’ James was raised in an atmosphere which was tolerant of what Perry called “the scientific underworld.”’ He was exposed to spiritualism, phrenology, homeopathy, and “from his youth James contemplated such ‘phenomena’ without repulsion and with an open mind.”3 While James’s upbringing therefore prepared him to engage in psychical research, he also justified his interest in it on more reflective grounds: his rejection of the mounting constraints which the positivistically oriented science of the 19th Century imposed on philosophical speculation and his hope that psychical research might supply evidential grounding for religious belief.

James’s attitude towards science was ambivalent. On the one hand, he accepted the view which held that “in its essence science only stands for a m e t h ~ d . ” ~ On the other hand, James rejected the view which identifies science “with a certain fixed belief-the belief that the hidden order of nature is mechanical exclusively, and that non-mechanical categories are irrational ways of viewing and explaining even such things as human life .’”

Accepting this view, critics of psychical research would argue that reports of psychical phenomena must be wrong a priori. But although James acknowledged that the possibility of fraud and deception dogs the investigator of psychical phenomena, he protested in a letter to Carl Stumpf that “there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.”6 Scientific materialism dismissed psychical research out of hand. James felt that this was high-handed and wrong. Psychical research, he felt, uncovered evidence which cannot be rejected simply because it does not conform to the fixed beliefs of scientific materialism. James argued that the new facts discovered by psychical researchers represent a serious challenge to the assumptions of scientific materialism.

Of course, James did not totally reject science. As noted above, he

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accepted it as a “dispassionate method.”’ In fact, James saw the proper aim of the Society for Psychical Research as the accumulation of evidence according to the canons of the scientific method. This evidence could then be used to decide on the proper interpretation of reality; that is, to decide whether reality is in accord with the anti-spiritualistic bias of scientific materialism or with the spiritualistic bias of religion. In a letter to his friend Thomas Davidson, James stressed this point. The goal of the Society, he wrote Davidson, should be to ascertain in a manner so thorough as to constitute evidence that will be accepted by outsiders, just what the phenomenal conditions of certain concrete phenomenal occurrences are. Not till that is done can spiritualistic or anti-spiritualistic theories be even mooted.8

Furthermore, James emphasized the scientific credentials of the chief officers of the Society and the rigid standards of evidence which governs its Proceedings. He felt that the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research was a “scientific journal where hardboiled and never-sleeping suspicion of sources of error might be seen in their full bl00m.”~ In fact, other scientific journals, according to James, suffered by comparison: “The common run of papers, say on physiological subjects, which one finds in other professional organs, are apt to show a far lower level of critical consciousness.”l0

After stressing the need to collect evidence according to the safeguards of the scientific method, James was still left with the crucial problem of advancing an evaluation of the evidence. First, it was clearly James’s position that “it is obvious that no mystical explanation ought to be invoked so long as any natural one remains plausible.”” James was here following his general position on evidence:

The common sense rule of presumption in scientific logic is never to assume an unknown agent where there is a known one, and never to choose a rarer cause for a phenomenon when a commoner one will account for it.’2

Second, James felt that because there is no conclusive evidence for or against the belief that the self survives bodily death, we should “play a waiting game.”I3 That is, James pleaded for “more and more ~bservation”’~ because “quantity may have to supplement quality in the mate ria^."'^

The “quantity of evidence,” according to James, is not going to lead to any incontrovertible proofs, however. The only decisive reason for preferring one interpretation to another can come from what James calls “one’s general sense of dramatic probability.”I6 In other words, if pressed to decide on a spiritualistic or anti-spiritualistic interpretation, one must rely upon probabilities, not proofs:

Now in every human who in cases like this makes a decision instead of suspending judgment, the sense of probability depends on the form of dramatic imagination of which his mind is capable.”

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Again James emphasized that “one cannot get demonstrative proof here. One has to follow one’s personal sense . . . of the dramatic probabilities of nature. Our critics here obey their sense of dramatic probability as much as we do.’’’s

For this reason, James felt that the transcript of a sitting is not a replacement for the actual sitting. Only the actual sitting can have sufficient impact on the imagination to create a sense of dramatic probability. As James said:

Active relations with a thing are required to bring the reality of it home to us, and in a trance talk the sitter actively cooperates . . . . These consequently loom more in our memory, and give the key to a dramatic interpretation of the phenomena.”

In the end, then, while James’s public position was that he remained “a psychical researcher waiting for more facts before concluding,”20 his private and personal attitude was one of acceptance. That is, his sense of dramatic probability would, if forced to decide here and now, lead him to a spiritualistic position on the facts uncovered by psychical research. This conclusion is reinforced by noting that for James the findings of psychical research were consistent with other aspects of his thought. These findings were absorbed into what James called the “mystical.” James used the cover term “mystical” to include the mass of data which orthodox psychology and philosophy tend to reject. These mystical phenomena, James contended, are found throughout history, recorded under a variety of titles: “divinations, inspirations, demonaical possessions, apparitions, trances, ecstasies, miraculous healings and productions of disease, and occult power.’’21 James saw psychical research as investigating only some aspects of the mystical data which are present in man’s history. What lent special significance to psychical research was that it was primarily concerned with the crucial problem of survival of bodily death and, therefore, with the problem of the reality of the spiritual. Moreover, since its inquiries could be conducted in more rigorous and objective ways, its results carried more weight than anecdotal accounts of the mystical which had been prevalent in the past.

The fact that psychical research concerns phenomena which are part of a larger mass of mystical data gives more plausibility to James’s criticism of the pretensions of scientific materialism. James felt that scientific materialism not only puts psychical research outside the purview of rational investigation, but also eliminates any consideration of other basic aspects of human life and thought. James contended that

religious thinking, ethical thinking, teleological, emotional, sentimental thinking, what one might call the personal view of life to distinguish it from the impersonal and mechanical, and the romantic view of life to distinguish it from the rationalistic view, have been, and even still are, outside of welldrilled scientific circles, the dominant forms of thought.Z2

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James argued that what scientific materialism rules out is fed by facts of human experience and hence should not be ignored by science. Moreover, the denial of the personal factor and the bias towards the impersonal on the part of science may “prove to be the very defect that our descendants will be most surprised at in our boasted science, the omission that to their eyes will most tend to make it look perspectiveless and sh01-t.”~~ In sum, James’s willingness to take psychical research seriously was part of his larger willingness to take seriously the non- intellectual, the non-scientific, the non-normal. Psychical phenomena were not simply scientific outcasts. In terms of James’s wide view of human experience, these phenomena fit into an acceptable context; if anything, it was the scientific outlook, which stressed the impersonal, that was anomalous in terms of human experience:

The final human opinion may . . . revert to the more personal style . . . .If this were so, the vigorously impersonal view of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity rather than the definitively trium hant position which the sectarian science at present so confidently announces it to be.

In general, what stood behind the interest of philosophers in psychical research in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries was the desire to escape from the confines of a scientific-materialisticview of the world and to re- establish religious beliefs on the basis of evidence attained by means of psychical research. Psychical research itself did not confront these thinkers with philosophical issues which they were interested in investigating, but rather was used by them to help solve philosophical problems raised by considerations which fell outside of psychical research. Some recent philosophers-like Curt Ducasse and H.H. Price-treat psychical phenomena in a manner somewhat similar to the earlier thinkers we have considered. But basically, philosophical issues raised by the phenomena themselves have been the predominant source of the interest for recent philosophers. This interest has been encouraged by the more precise classification of these phenomena by parap-

Parapsychologists divide the phenomena into two categories: PK, or psychokinesis, which is movement of objects by the mind alone; and ESP, or extrasensory perception. There are three different kinds of ESP: Telepathy is mind to mind communication; clairvoyance is ESP of present events; and precognition is ESP of future events. Logically there should be an additional category within ESP-retrocognition, or ESP of the past. It is, however, so rare that it is not included in the traditional breakdown.

Of the categories, it is precognition that seems to raise the most serious philosophical questions. The fact that we can have knowledge (in a noninferential sense) of events that do not yet exist brings into question such notions as freedom of the will and causality and has caused several philosophers to question the logical possibility of precognition.

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In an article entitled “Does the Concept of Precognition Make SenseYZ5 C.W.K. Mundle comes to the conclusion that it does not and that alternative explanations must be found. One virtue of Mundle’s treatment is that he attempts to analyze what is entailed by the term “precognition” as it is normally used.

Mundle says that “precognition” and “ E S P are loaded with theory.

They have been chosen on the assumption that the facts in question are to be assimilated to sense-perception, and that just as sense-perception involved knowledge by acquaintance, so the psychic subject must possess knowledge by acquaintance, knowledge of objects or events not accessible to his senses.’6

He goes on to assert that if -“precognition” is defined in terms of noninferential knowledge of a future event “one will have to say that the knowledge in question is usually unconscious and that it s asmodically influences the subject’s conscious experience of actions.” ’

Mundle seems to believe that there is something wrong with this, but never states precisely what. It may be that he rejects a fair description of the situation. In any event, Mundle prefers causal terminology. The psychic subject can be described as responding appropriately to events he has not observed or inferred. Eventually, Mundle rejects this description also because it involves a “a cause-factor influencing what happened earlier.” This, he says, is self-contradictory because part of the meaning of “cause” is that a cause must precede its effect. He supports this by saying that causal explanations involve mechanisms in which causes modify structures of substances, initiate chains of events which span the spatio-temporal gaps between causes and effects, etc. Mundle then asserts that it seems inconceivable that what occurs now could be acted upon by things not yet in existence. This is why Mundle rejects the possibility that precognition involves a cause coming after its effect.

Mundle argues that the notion of precognition does not make sense for two reasons: (1) It involves the concept of knowledge by acquaintance which would be unconscious and spasmodic, and there seems to be something wrong with this. (2) It involves the concept of a cause succeeding its effect, and there is something self-chtradictory about this.

One sees nothing objectionable in the first “objection.” Concerning the second, Bob Brier has argued elsewherez8 that there is no reason to believe that it is logically impossible for a cause to come after its effect. Mundle’s second reason for rejecting precognition can have merely linguistic import, if it is indeed part of the meaning of “cause” that the cause precedes its effect. One might not reject precognition, but merely come up with a revised definition of “cause” or a new word to use in place of the old.

Since he has rejected precognition, Mundle is still faced with the task of explaining the facts in nonprecognitive terms. One alternative he

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offers is unconscious experience. That is, all ostensible precognitive experiences are the result of acquiring knowledge by nonprecognitive means and then inferring the future event in question. Mundle’s second alternative involves the “precognitive experience” causing the precognized event to come true. It is not necessary to discuss either of these attempts to discredit the concept of precognition, for Mundle is correct in saying that they do not involve precognition.

A treatment of the problem somewhat similar to Mundle’s is offered by Broad in a recent article, “The Notion of Precogniti~n.”~~ Broad, who has probably done more work on the concept of precognition than any other philosopher, gives what is perhaps the most thoroughanalysis of “precognition,” or “ostensible precognition,” as he calls it. Rather than define the word “precognition,” Broad chooses to define the statement “X was a precognition of Y.” This definition contains five clauses. A summary of the essence of each follows:

(1) X was either a single or sequence of human actions, and Y a

(2) X happened at t , and Y at a later moment, tz.

(3) Y corresponds in detail to X in such a way that one should say

(4) It is not a mere coincidence that X was followed by Y.

( 5 ) Y‘s being related to X cannot be accounted for by either (a) X being a cause-factor or causal ancestor of Y or (b) X and Y having a common cause-factor ancestor, W.

single event or sequence of events.

that Y was a fulfillment of X.

The above is a fair representation of Broad’s definition. There are three points which should be made concerning Broad’s

analysis, two of which can be made relatively quickly. The first point is merely that for some reason Broad seems to believe that precognition is an ability of humans only. This is clear from the first clause of his definition. There is no reason for this restriction, and indeed there are many cases reported of apparent precognition in animals. Should Broad’s remaining four conditions be satisfied, there is no reason that he should not accept the case as an example of precognition. This is a minor point, however.

The second point is similar to one discussed in relation to Mundle’s article and involves Broad‘s fifth condition. Here, Broad also rules out the possibility that both the precognition and the precognized event have a common cause prior to the precognition. Once again, it must be pointed out that this is merely a linguistic point and not a logical one. Broad, like Mundle, has merely legislated what he wishes to consider as a precognitive experience. In terms of the evidence available, there seems no reason for ruling out such a possibility. Consequently,

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although this consideration might eventually be shown to be one of a set which suggests that it is impossible to obtain evidence for precognition as Broad defines it, it in no way suggests that the overt evidence which parapsychologists claim to have collected involves contradictions, and thus there must be some error.

The third point involves the issue which has been central in this section: Can a cause come after its effect? Broad clearly denies the possibility and asserts:

. . . . the alternative suggestion, viz., that the fulfilling event or state of affairs contributes to set up a chain of effects and causes which contributes to cause the pre-referential experience, is plainly nonsensical. For until the event which will answer to the present experience in such a way as to be a fulfillment of it, shall have happened, nothing can be caused by it. And when it shall have happened, anything that it may contribute to cause must be later than it.”

Broad does not offer a demonstration for his claim, merely presents it as self-evident truth. He does point out that, in the case of a cause coming before its effect (as in a case of past-perception, or seeing an event which is in the past, such as viewing sun-spots), the past event is connected with the present perception by a causal chain. In this chain each event is an effect of the immediate successor in the chain. According to Broad, nothing analogous is possible in the case of precognition. This is so because, until an event happens, nothing can be caused by it. The point here is not merely a linguistic one, arising from the way “cause” and “effect” are used. Rather, it is a factual point. A future event is nothing but an unrealized possibility and cannot influence anything. Broad goes on to claim that it is probably this fact which has caused “cause” and “effect” to be used in the way they are.

Although Broad is begging the question by asserting what is at issue, his treatment has instructive value: he explicates how the impossibility of a cause succeeding its effect mitigates the notion of precognition. There is no condition in the definition which asserts that the precognized event must be the cause of the precognition of it. The problem arises when the fifth condition is examined for X being a precognition of Y. Here, he has ruled out X causing Y, and X and Y having a common cause prior to each. To this Broad adds the self-evident fact that Y cannot have caused X. It seems as if X and Y can in no way be causally related, and coincidence is left as the explanation for the cor- respondence between X and Y. This, however, is ruled out by the fourth condition in the definition which says that the relation between Xand Y must not be mere chance coincidence. From what has just been stated, Broad’s conclusion is not surprising: As he defines it, nothing can satisfy his definition of precognition. From what was stated earlier when considering the questions of backward causality, opposition to Broad’s position is evident. His first error lies in admitting the possibility of Y causing X, this is something which he has prematurely rejected. Second, there is also the possibility of the common prior cause.

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Throughout the analysis of causality, one works within the framework of the constant conjunction conception of causation. That is, A and B are said to be causally related if they are constantly conjoined. This thesis, of which Hume is the foremost proponent, has many problem areas. For example, night and day always follow each other, but is one the cause of the other? It will be noted that this statement of the thesis allows for backward causation. This is not actually the case as Hume puts it. One of his rules by which one is to judge causes and effects is that the cause must be prior to the effect.

It should be clear that the causal question is central to the discussion of precognition. In his article on precognition in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Antony Flew offers a causal analysis and comes up with a rather surprising conclusion.

The possible causal relations between two events, A and B(where A is a series of correct guesses in a precognition experiment and Bis the later series of target cards randomly selected) are as follows: (1) A results from B; (2) B results from A; (3) A and B result from a third cause; and (4) A and B result from independent causes. The first possibility is immediately ruled out by Flew because it is a necessary truth that a cause must either precede or be simultaneous with its effect. The second and third possibilities are ruled out by the definition of “precognition.” The fourth is precisely what we mean by coincidence.

Flew tries to defend his position by pointing out that to establish a statistical correlation is not to establish a causal connection. Although this is true, one wonders if many readers will be satisfied with this conclusion. Flew is forced to this by his hasty rejection of the first possibility which involves backward causation. Although this is not the place to discuss it, we might point out that the topic is one that is being given considerable attention in the literat~re.~’

Another problem that is specifically related to precognition is determinism. It has often been argued that if one can know the future now, the future is already determined. Indeed, there are cases in the parapsychological literature3* that seem to support this assertion. In “intervention” cases, the person having the premonition attempts to intervene, so that what seems to be a precognition of a future event is wrong, and the precognized event does not occur. However, in many of these cases, although it seems an easy matter to intervene, something unexpected happens that does not enable the agent to avoid the precognized fate. It seems as if no matter what the agent does, the event is determined to occur.

There are obvious rejoinders to the deterministic argument, and Broad in an article on the “Philosophical Implications of F~reknowledge”~~ correctly points out that an event being predeter- minate (can be known about in advance) is not the same as its being predetermined.To put it another way, I might use my precognition to know the result of your free choice.

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This question of precognition and free will is one of those rare cases in philosophy where discussion eventually leads to general agreement, with most philosophers agreeing that precognition and free will are consistent. An interesting discussion of this uestion appears in The Philosophy of C.D. Broad by Curt Ducasse.

In concluding our survey, we would like to point out that philosophical interest in psychical phenomena is on the increase. There have been more publications on the subject in the past decade than in all prior years. This trend is illustrated by such books as Science and ESP, edited by J.R. Smythies, published in 1967, and by Philosophers in Wonderland Philosophy and Psychical Research, edited by Peter French, and Philosophical Essays in ESP, edited by Raymond Van Over, both in press.

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NOTES

‘Ralph B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (2 Vols.; Boston: Little,

Ibid. ’Ibid. William James on Psychical Research, edited by Gardner Murphy and Robert 0.

Brown and Co., 1935), Vol. 11, p . 155.

Ballou (New York: The Viking Press, 1960), p . 44. ’Ibid., p p . 44-45. ‘Ibid., p . 65. 71bid., p . 41. ‘Ibid., p . 64. ‘Ibid., p . 29. “Ibid. “Ibid., p p . 117-1 18. I2Ibid., p . 145. I3Ibid., p . 141. “Ibid. ”Ibid., p . 144 “Ibid., p . 145. “Ibid., p . 147. “Ibid., p . 320. ”Ibid., p p . 143-144. ”Ibid., p . 323. 21 Ibid., p . 27.

Ibid., p . 45. Ibid., p . 47. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New American

C.W.K. Mundle, “Does the Concept of Precognition Make Sense?,” International

Ibid., p . 181. Ibid., p . 182. Bob Brier, “Is Precognition Logically Possible?,” in Philosophical Essays in ESP,

C.D. Broad, “The Notion of Precognition,” International Journal of Parapsychology,

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2 3

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Library, Inc., 1958), p p . 378-37911.

Journal of Parapsychology, 6 (1964), p p . 179-198.

2s

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27

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edited by Raymond Van Over (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). [forthcoming]

10 1958 p p 165-196. ”/bid.!’pp.’ 191-192.

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CJ especially Sarah Waterlow, “Backward Causation and Continuing,” Mind, 83 (1974), pp. 372-387, and Bob Brier, he-Cognition and rhe Philosophy of Science: An essay in Backward Causation (New York Humanities Press, 1974).

Louisa Rhine, “Precognition and Intervention,” Journal of Parapsychology, 19

C.D. Broad, “The Philosophical Implications of Foreknowledge,” Aristorelian Society Supplement, 16 (1937), pp. 177-209.

Curt Ducasse, “Broad on the Relevance of Psychical Research to Philosophy,” in 7he Philosophy of C. D. Broad, edited by Paul Schlipp (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1959).

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(1!3:5), pp. 1-34.

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