EMERGENCE & THE PARANORMAL

One major problem with the paranormal is that it can never be quite explained. Why is this? Is it because, as skeptics maintain, it isn’t there? Or could it be that its very nature disallows a total appreciation of what is going on?
To the skeptic, this may seem like a cop-out, but in reality, some branches of science hold these same properties. Typical is particle theory, which includes its own uncertainty principle, giving a limit to what can be known.

I’ve previously argued for ‘psychic syndrome’.

Here, a paranormal event is made up of multiple causes, citing such known phenomena as cryptomnesia, multiple personality, hallucination, hysteria, split brain phenomena, etc.
The process would work through ‘emergence’ – the way complex patterns can arise out of multiple simple causes. Placing a ‘holistic’ tag on such a process, the outcome is usually more than the sum of its parts.

Cryptomnesia is vital to the process.

When we use our senses we only ‘remember’ what we place our attention on. But the reality is, everything that can be sensed IS sensed. Arguably, this information goes straight to the unconscious.
Hypnosis has shown a remarkable ability to remember these facts. Indeed, it could be argued that we have, in the unconscious, a vast memory store which can be accessed when required.

But is this more than a memory store?

If everything we have ever sensed is in there, perhaps we can better see this as a form of ‘cryptomnesic inner map’ of the reality outside. An actual reflection, in the mind, of the world we experience.
Elsewhere I have argued that a higher universal consciousness could be explained in terms of a computer data base, where a key word brings up information relating to the word. Could a similar process occur here, with the ‘cryptomnesic inner map’ aping emergent behaviour to assist in how the world you experience actually works?

Recently I introduced Cosmic Synchronicity.

There is a ‘law of large numbers’ that argues the probability of an event occurring increases the more the numbers involved. In effect, the law is about creating order, and when allied to the above data base, almost guarantees coincidences will occur.
Can this process be attached to all paranormal activity? If so, then we could have a process whereby we have a vast inner mind capable of accessing unimaginable amounts of information about the outside world.
Bearing in mind that such a mind-set would be universal to everyone, massed interlinking would exist. Bringing into the process emergent behaviour, could a point arise, through processes similar to hysteria, where a systematic process exists?
This would be a predisposition to creating coincidence in the outside world – and a plate flies off a shelf seemingly through a thought; or an understanding of something suggestive of telepathy is coincidentally realized.
Of course, this is only a speculative philosophical model. But I think it is systematic enough to require further thought. Basically, it argues that, by its very nature, there are always alternative answers to paranormal activity.
This could, of course, mean it does not exist. But it could also mean that it is so repeatable, and so fundamental, that it has its own uncertainty principle. Once upon a time, uncertainty was a reason enough to study.

© Anthony North, July 2008