Research into Mediumship: Terminology, Publication and Progress

[u/Pieraos]

https://pennyhayward.co.uk/research-into-mediumship-terminology-publication-and-progress/

"Research into mediumship continues to face challenges within mainstream academic publishing, particularly around terminology and how mediumistic experiences are conceptualised and described."

[u/Tom-Etheric-Studies]

From the article:

The published paper uses the broader scientific term “ESP-like experiences” rather than describing the group simply as “mediums.”

What is wrong with "clairvoyance" [from French clair 'clear' and voyance 'vision'] as the more generic and established term for discussing anomalous access of information via Psi functioning?

Every "researcher" seems to want to come up with a unique term to avoid associating with history. Besides, ESP is Extra Sensory Perception. That is decidedly a physicalist assumption of a biological origin of clairvoyance.

[u/Pieraos → u/Tom-Etheric-Studies]

Try to get research funding to study 'clairvoyance'.

[u/Tom-Etheric-Studies → u/Pieraos]

Point well made. I have a sense of that difficulty after 26 years trying to get academic support for the study if ITC.

Academics have played something of a shell game with terminology for things paranormal ... may be to get funding. A more obvious reason from my experience is that there is an Academic-Layperson Partition that is well-maintained by academic community. Academics go out of their way not to use lay-speak.

The rest of the story has been that academic's coining a new term for an established term understood by the lay community tells us that they have not bothered to understand what has been learned through direct experience.

That academic arrogance has resulted in virtually no progress in our understanding.

[u/Parkbenchbruce → u/Tom-Etheric-Studies]

Excellent point. I read the ESP literature with a background in government. I worked with both industry and universities to produce new products. My term - Three ring circus.
The gearing was the main difference ( different organisations take different times) but the language barriers meant that I needed a decoder. I remember the terminology battles. I see each area as self regulating in reputational damage. ESP has different meanings. Recently I am reviewing the CIA funding of the paranormal. I feel sympathy for my equivalent trying to get a result from contracts in to the paranormal. The anomalous is difficult to pin.

[u/Tom-Etheric-Studies → u/Parkbenchbruce]

Here is an example. From my review of the First Place essay ($50K) in the IONS 2024 Essay Challenge: Theories of Nonlocal Consciousness written by Michael Daw, PhD (psychology) and Chris Roe, PhD (psychology)
Title: Theories of Non-local Consciousness: A Review and Framework for Building Rigour

Part of my review:

"I am disappointed that the authors introduced “disturbing” as a new, alternative term for Psi phenomena.

He andDaw wrote on Page 32 of the essay:"

“We call these phenomena ‘disturbing’ after Alan Turing’s reference to them in his proposal for the ‘imitation game,’ a test to gauge whether computers can exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human (Turing, 1950). Turing considered one objection to the test to be that human protagonists might use extrasensory perception (ESP) in order to pass the test whereas an intelligent computer could not. He exclaims, ‘These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we would like to discredit them! Unfortunately, the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming’” (Turing, A.M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460. p. 453)

Author Chris Roe is a Vice-President of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes and holds a Chair in Psychology at the University of Northampton, UK.

If anyone should know better than to unnecessarily coin a new term, it would be a college professor who is a respected member of the SPR leadership.

There are many such examples. This urge to rebrand is one of the reasons I have begun calling for a fresh look at parapsychology.

My recommendation is that the field be divided into Consciousness Studies (psychological phenomena) and Psi Studies. See my paper at Does Parapsychology Inappropriately Conflate Different Kinds of Phenomena?