Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality | Dean Radin

Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality | Dean Radin | Inquiring minds want to know

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Entangled Minds: E...

	Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality Dean Radin Paraview Pocket Books, 2006 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not to be missed

Like Radin's earlier book The Conscious Universe, Entangled Minds sets the standard for a review of psi research demonstrating that the phenomena is real and can be measured in the laboratory.

Radin covers a lot of ground in the book, from the history of parapsychology research to comprehensive meta-analyses of most of the major classes of psi experiment (all of which demonstrate very significant to astronomically significant odds against the null hypothesis). He addresses some of the critiques of his previous book by adding a statistical analysis for "missing studies" and covers some intriguing new research on non-local fMRI correlations, as well as adding a meta-analysis of the "sense of being stared at" research.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in psi phenomena who wants a good, thorough and up-to-date introduction to the scientific evidence for psi. It will also likely convince anyone whose mind is not already prejudiced against the possibility of these effects.

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Inquiring minds want to know

Entangled Minds opens your thinking. How can this be - this intimate interconnectedness of all things and each other? A great many physicists would disagree with Dr. Radin's premise that Erwin Schrödinger's quantum entanglement should be applied in principle to psychic functioning. However, all things being equal the simplest answer is usually the correct one and Entangled Minds offers a rather simple explanation as to how consciousness can interact with any place and any when.

Like in his first book, The Conscious Universe, Dr. Radin provides the layman and scientist alike an easily understandable grand tour of what would otherwise be a difficult subject matter. With practical examples and down-to-earth explanations he provides the reader with a vista, a perspective of extrasensory experiences and the psi realm heretofore undocumented so comprehensively. You will come away from reading this book with a new outlook on life and your very self.

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A mind-blowing concept from a leader in parapsychological research

Written by the author of the excellent and entertaining book 'The Conscious Universe,' which focused on ESP, 'Entangled Minds' tries to serve two purposes. First, it briefly mentions some of the parapsychological research not covered in his earlier work. Second, it discusses the concept of quantum entanglement, and what it means for psychic phenomena. I had to re-read some sections of this book to understand some of the full implications what he was saying, but once you get it, it's a truly mind-blowing concept. Anyone at all interested in parapsychology has to read this, as it details a whole new theory of how psychic phenomena occur based on quantum entanglement. If true, it has fascinating implications.

As a side comment to 'Glass Hand,' I have bent spoons myself and have plenty around the house. If he bothered to read the research, he'd learn that metal bent by psychokinesis (mind over matter) has a distinctive feature that differentiates it from that which was bent by brute strength or a magician - under an electron microscope you can see that the layers were melted, not fractured by force. Now if you wanted to see something that's really neat, I could show you an ordinary wood pencil that was tied into a knot...

Dean has sometimes been called the 'Einstein of Parapsychology' and there is no doubt that he is one of the leading lights in the field. I always look forward to his talks at meetings and everything he writes. If you are at all interested in parapsychological research, then I cannot recommend "Entangled Minds" and "The Conscious Universe" enough. Each offers something the other does not have, and both are of real value.

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Not Flawless. But Still a Must !

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I have known a little of Dean Radin's work (through the internet) for four years now, and I greatly admire his competence and the excellence of many of his papers. He is definitely doing true science, like many other psi researchers that I have come to know of, people like Jessica Utts, Adrian Parker, John Palmer, Stanley Krippner, Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker, and many others. I remember marvelling at one of Radin's papers, "Time-reversed human experience: Experimental evidence and implications", especially the section "Detecting the Arrow of Time" (search with Google to find it...).

His previous book, "The Conscious Universe" (1997), aroused rather hostile controversy, which included a flawed book review on prestigious scientific journal Nature, that Nature, suspiciously enough, refused to correct for months long (despite criticism from many highly respected academics - search with Google for "Unfounded criticism of a parapsychology book in Nature"). This kind of extremely high quality parapsychological research that has been done by Radin and fellow psi researchers has raised some forms of psi to the status of truly scientifically proved phenomena, IMHO. Skepticism against this kind of research has, sometimes, been very misleading and even dishonest, especially by "Organized Avowed Skeptics", including some (but not all!) CSICOP members and related people. In this "Psi Wars", even I myself ended up getting an internet site started debunking pseudoskepticism, a site named "Criticizing Skepticism".

So, "Entangled Minds" presents a comprehensive (and compelling) overview of the experimental evidence for psi, a good historical outline of the psi research, an informative description of several theories of psi (arguably the weakest area of psi research), and some good hints for the psi research's sociological and pragmatic relevance. In a word: a Must!

Still, problems remain...

I do not agree with a previous reviewer in that Radin fell in the trap of "explaining one mystery (psi) with another (quantum theory - entanglement phenomenon)". Radin seems fully aware of the limitations of his approach, as he clearly states on page 235 ("Quantum entanglement as presently understood...is insufficient to explain psi."). However, I do think Radin was rather "weak" in other points.

I did not like the way "consciousness" was discussed. Concepts and terminology regarding "consciousness" and "mind" seemed ill defined and sometimes confused with one another. This is very bad, because Radin's central thesis is that psi is our "experience" (Subjective perception? If not, what else?) of the entanglement of our minds with the universe and with other minds. So, what is a mind? What is consciousness, in his view? Is it a necessary component of his psi-entangled mind? Authors like Chalmers, Penrose-Hameroff, Crick, and Libet seem to make a better distinction between "mind" (an organized and functioning entity-agent) and "consciousness" (subjective experience, qualia, Chalmer's "Hard Problem", etc). Radin doesn't. See, for example, page 240, and we get the impression that "mind" and "consciousness" are different concepts (first paragraph). Then, last paragraph on page 241, "mind" and "consciousness" seem to be the same thing. Then, on page 243, I just cannot tell whether "mind" and "consciousness" are being considered the same thing or not... And worse, Radin ends up getting a little bogged down in this definition confusion to the point that he states, twice (!), on page 243, that "Mind...(is)...an interplay between brain and mind." So, Mind = Brain interplaying with Mind? Put another way: Mind = Brain + Mind (i.e. 2 = 1 + 2 ...). Definitely, there seems to be something slightly strange in here...

Further, we get to know that "...clockworks are not conscious..." (page 257). Well, I never thought they were. But how did Radin conclude that they are not? Stan Franklin has a splendid book on "Artificial Minds" (1995), and a more recent paper on possible consciousness in a software (IDA - Journal of Consciousness Studies/Machine Consciousness - 2003). Would Radin also declare that IDA is not conscious? (Franklin himself does not take sides on this issue). And, on page 265, talking about how psi processing may work, we read "...your unconscious mind pays attention...". So we have conscious minds, unconscious minds, unconscious matter, conscious matter (page 235). Too much talk about it all for too little philosophical insights into it.

Then, page 219, Radin says "Few of us believe that...we have absolutely no free will." Well, I happen to be one of these "few ones", and I do not think we have any theory (or logical reasoning) for accounting for free will or for choice. What we do have are theories for determinism and for randomness (the latter, with or without bias). Not for choice. Not yet. Linked to it, on page 257, we get the feeling that classical physics cannot account for consciuousness and that quantum mechanics (Stapp) accounts for it. Again IMHO, quantum mechanics is just as feeble as classical physics in trying to account for this mystery (qualia).

I disagree, too, with the concept that psi may not involve information transfer. Page 264: "Maybe psi is purely relational and manifests only as correlations." With this, Radin sidestepped a needed in-depth discussion about what is correlation, what is causation, and how can two things be correlated via psi without transfering information.

Anyway, none of these flaws belittle the importance and the strength of Radin's book. And I present them just as constructive criticism to a work that is already excellent.

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Not Preaching to the Choir

If you already believe in Psi, you will have to wade through much boring material till you get to the interesting parts. If you don't believe already, this may convince you.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9

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