Defending Physicalism with Edwin C. May

Edwin C. May, PhD, was involved in the military intelligence psychic spying program, popularly referred to as Stargate, for over twenty years. During the last decade, he was the director of research for that program. In this context, he produced over a hundred scientific publications. His academic training was in experimental nuclear physics. He is coauthor of ESP Wars: East and West and also Anomalous Cognition: Remote Viewing Research and Theory. He is the coeditor of a two volume anthology titled Extrasensory Perception: Support, Skepticism, and Science.

Here he maintains that the materialist or physicalist position regarding the mind-body problem could, in principle, be falsified – if evidence for post-mortem survival or reincarnation can be produced that significantly overcomes the alternative explanation of living agent psi. He points out that the dualist position suffers from the problem of explaining how anything non-material can interact with the brain. Even physical particles such as neutrinos do not interact with the brain at all. As something of a digression, he explains how research on Decision Augmentation Theory has shown that purported experiments on micro-PK actually offer evidence of precognition.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980).

(Recorded on June 17, 2016)