fMRI scan "suggests" existence of telepathy

[mohankarthik]

http://www.deanradin.com/papers/IntJYoga...203406.pdf

Paper published in the International yoga journal.

Hmm. How is one subject enough to prove? I dont know what to make of this. But I want to put across a question.

Is telepathy as an idea possible? Since we have not completely mapped the human brain out (yet, to my knowledge), can we discard the possibility of the brain able to transmit information other than thru the body.

[Ajita Kamal]

Quote:Is telepathy as an idea possible?

Depends on what you mean by the term!

Quote:Since we have not completely mapped the human brain out (yet, to my knowledge), can we discard the possibility of the brain able to transmit information other than thru the body.

That's a non-sequitur, isn't it? Maybe, I guess, depending on what you mean by "mapped".

In any case, its quite easy to discard unproven AND unnecessary hypotheses.

Edit: My main contention is semantic, but it's an important point to make. Everything in this discussion depends on what one means by 'telepathy'. Quite often what is really meant by the term is 'I don't know wtf is going on, so its magic'.

[natselrox]

The 5 mins I spent reading the 'International Journal of Yoga' will possibly never come back to me. DAMN! But then the damage has already been done.

So they take a man and asks him to draw pic. The fraudster is separated from him by a screen (with some links for visual cues and other random nonsense). Dude sketches. Fraudster reproduces (even for a dishonest journal, that replication is not anything like the original). They scan the brain of the fraudster as he paints. Then they bring in a random dude (at least they have heard of the term 'control'). Random dude tries the same trick. Fails. Has his brain scanned. Shows activation of a different region than that of the fraudster.

Thank fuck, real science does not work this way.

[arvindiyer]

(10-Dec-2010, 01:39 PM)mohankarthik Wrote: Since we have not completely mapped the human brain out (yet, to my knowledge), can we discard the possibility of the brain able to transmit information other than thru the body.

If we operate from an 'eliminative materialist' epistemology and reject 'Cartesian dualism', then there is no reason to seek explanations for brain function involving any other physical phenomena other than those that apply to any other object at the scale of the brain. Our brains evolved to function in orders of magnitude which Prof. Dawkins describes as 'Middle World'. To suggest that the brain somehow demands a 'new physics' of sorts to explain, different from the physics of any other object in Middle World, would actually amount to a suggestion of biocentrism. This cartoon succinctly illustrates what ludicrous and plain wrong interpretations result, when quantum mechanical effects that do not apply in Middle Word sizes and speeds, are ascribed to a Middle World object like the brain. A comprehensive survey and dissection of biocentrism and the pseudoscience it spawns has been presented in this most useful article.