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THE COMMON THREAD BETWEEN ESP AND PK by Michael A. Thalbourne. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 2004. Pp. xiii + 112. $20 (paperback). ISBN 0-912328-58-4
Maintaining a tradition going back 50 years, this slim book is the 19th in a series of parapsychology monographs published by the Parapsychology Foundation. The Common Thread represents Michael Thalbourne's attempt to consolidate the separate notions of extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK) into a unitary concept, which the author terms psychopraxia, meaning something like "the soul bringing about accomplishments" (p. 61). This unification has been proposed in order to surmount a number of longstanding problems concerning the nomenclature of psi phenomena, such as the theoretical complexities in separating ESP from PK and the seemingly assumed dualistic ontology of mind associated with this dichotomous concept of psi. Furthermore, by proposing a supposedly ontologically neutral theory of psi the author hopes to help unify both normal and paranormal psychology, for which he should be applauded. Nevertheless, the success of this aim remains to be seen.
For the time being, The Common Thread represents a crusade to replace some of the fundamental language of parapsychology, and, although I find much of the reasoning for doing so compelling, I remain wary of those touting "new lamps for old" and so here merely offer a critical account of its main thesis. Thalbourne indicates that the current language of the field is riddled with theoretical problems that can be revised by completely abandoning the semantic concepts of ESP and PK. One of the issues arising with psi is what he calls the Target Uncertainty Problem: the difficulty in correctly identifying which type of psi process relates to a particular target system. Such a problem is evident from the creation many years ago of the term general ESP, or GESP, to overcome the practical difficulty inherent in differentiating between telepathy and clairvoyance. Furthermore, the author argues that all GESP experiments are open to a PK interpretation because, in agent-percipient ESP experiments, the psychokinetic influence of the agent upon the percipient can never be ruled out.
Somewhat similarly to the target problem, Thalbourne suggests we also have a Process Uncertainty Problem, as it is often difficult to discern the process of psi, i.e., whether it is a cognitive...