First Sight: Part Two, Elaboration of a Model of Psi and the Mind

This is the second of two articles introducing a model of psi and the mind, called First Sight. Basic aspects of the model are spelled out in the prior paper (Carpenter, 2004). The current paper further develops some features of the model primarily in terms of its implications for preconscious psychological processes in general. It also examines the ability of the model to account for past research findings and guide future research, and then focuses on the utility of the model for communicating parapsychological issues to others who do not immediately share an interest in them. First, some major elements of the model as given in the first paper are summarized here to provide a context for the material to follow. OVERVIEW OF A MODEL OF PSI AND THE MIND The model holds that psi processes are an ordinary and continuous part of the psychological functioning of all organisms. In fact, they are the leading edge of the formation of all experience and all volition. Preconscious psychological processes that are intrinsically unconscious precede and condition the development of all experience. Cognitive psychologists speak of these as providing the context of consciousness (Baars, 1997, pp. 115-129). These processes typically function rapidly and transiently. Studies of perception without awareness demonstrate that unattended stimuli serve to arouse nexi of meaning and feeling that channel the development of perceptual experience. The model assumes that the development of all other forms of experience in addition to perceptual, as well as all volitional action, are similarly preceded by preconscious orienting processes. Psi processes initiate these series of activity. Prior to the action of a subliminal stimulus, an extrasensory apprehension of its significance serves to orient the mind toward the development of the meaning to come. (1) Prior to the commencement of any deliberate action, psychokinetic influence acts to begin the physical processes in the body that will enact the decision and may begin to exert some influence on the object of intention beyond the body as well. For this conception to be sensible, we need to assume that each organism exists, by its nature, beyond its own physical boundaries, in some sort of commerce with the larger surround of space and time. A phenomenological/existential model of the nature of conscious being is employed. One implication of this is that even preconscious processes are best understood in terms of personal meaning and choice rather than impersonal biological mechanism. The intrinsic ambiguity of psi information is a function of the fact that with it alone there is no sensory information available, and sensory information is required to clarify a psi impression into a perception that can be construed. The initial psi stage of the formation of experience involves an access to potential knowledge that is indefinite in extent. We cannot know its boundaries or anything else about it directly because it is thoroughly unconscious. Psi in its normal, everyday functioning is presumed to be continuous and extremely efficient. Like the effects of subliminal stimulations, extrasensory apprehensions can be inferred by examining nondeliberate expressions of the orienting nexi of meaning and feeling that they arouse. Psi processes are neither knowing nor acting, as we ordinarily use the terms, because these phenomena belong to the province of consciousness. Rather, in their normal functioning, psi processes serve as bridges toward the efficient development of these phenomena. Psi functioning is presumed to be bimodal. In terms of extrasensory perception, the mind elects to orient either toward the object of potential awareness or away from it. This capacity of the mind to preconsciously orient toward or away-from as befits the needs of the organism is referred to in the prior paper as the Hypothesis of Directional Intention, as it is proposed that the primary determinant of the direction of orientation is conscious and unconscious intention. …