Frank Goad
Well-Known Member
Does parapsychology study tulpas?If you don't konw what a tulpa is.You shouls look at this website: Home • Tulpa.info
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Does parapsychology study tulpas?
- Thread starter Frank Goad
- Start date
I don't think there is anything supernatural about Tulpas. Psychology might study it under a different name like personality disorder.
Tulpas and Mental Health: A Study of Non-Traumagenic Plural Experiences
Daring to Hear Voices
Definition of Tulpa: Object created by spiritual or mental processes.
Yes, parapsychology studies this.
Psychics can astral-project (mentally being in a different location), even through a steel vault or across vast distances.
Some psychics can physically manifest themselves in another location.
Some psychics can move objects.
Some of the Psychics of God (sent by God to warn us not to attack Iraq, because they were ignoring God's commandment not to attack Iraq in Revelation in the bible) were afraid of spirits or other psychics. They didn't seem to realize that they were also "things that went bump in the night" and were a lot more powerful due to the backing of God. I was personal friends with some of them.
Of course, most people ignored them and defied God and supported killing (war in Iraq).
I've known people who were faking having DID and one was into the tulpa crap. (Dear Lord, why do I seem to have known every category of mental case there is?) They seemed like very bizarre, lonely people desperate for attention. Nothing paranormal about it. They're just screwed up in the head.
Sedim Haba
Outa here... bye-bye!
takes one to know one
syo
Well-Known Member
No, never.
Sedim Haba
Outa here... bye-bye!
Browsing thru my bookmarks (way WAY too many of them) I stumbled upon this article I saved to Pocket way back in 2019
The Mystical, Mind-Sharing Lives of Tulpamancers
The Mystical, Mind-Sharing Lives of Tulpamancers
Veyl
Member
I have never seen research or articles on the topic of tulpas in the literature of parapsychology (i.e., the science of psi phenomena). I think the closest would be surveys of "imaginary friends," amongst the population (though this was from the perspective of possible apparitional experiences and entities).
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
Parapsychology is an abstract concept, it can't do anything. People can study claims, events and experiences and can do so from different aspects or viewpoints. People who talk about "parapsychology" and "the paranormal" tend to approach things on the basis of assumptions about the cause and nature of the things being studied (which appears to be the case for the site you linked). That is fundamentally flawed and counterproductive if your intent is to properly understand anything.
Veyl
Member
Parapsychology isn't really an abstract concept, at least anymore than psychology or any other field is. Further parapsychology and "the paranormal" are not synonymous terms. In regards to assumptions, parapsychology doesn't really have any metaphysical commitments about the objects being studied, apart from the basic assumption of rationalism that any form of study takes for granted. The site that the OP posted appears to be a more general paranormal site as opposed to a parapsychological one.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
Yes, psychology is an abstract concept and doesn't do anything either. Nobody was asking "Does psychology study tulpas" though. My issue with the question was the implied assumption that the phenomena has a specific type of cause that implicitly falls within the scope of parapsychology. People study things and, when they're doing it correctly they operate within whichever fields of science the evidence takes them.
Parapsychology and "the paranormal" are indeed different things, which is why I mentioned both. They're undeniably related though.
What does parapsychology have? Why is it a concept at all? Scientific fields are defined on the kind of things being studied, not the proposed or presumed underlying causes of them. Why wouldn't study of tulpas just fall under the fields of psychology and biology, at least while their underlying cause remains unknown?
Veyl
Member
Alright, those are fair points. Might have misunderstood the causation element in regards to tulpas falling under the category of parapsychology, actually. You are right in that that the object of study is the basis for any given field rather than models of mechanism. I can see tulpas largely falling under psychology outside of some interdisciplinary factors, such as biology in the case of the mind-brain relationship. I can only really see parapsychology coming into play if telepathy is a means of communication between humans and tulpas, if the latter are objectively-existent beings.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
That depends on telepathy actually existing of course, but even if it does in some manner, I'm not sure how it wouldn't be covered between biology and physics. I still don't see the concept of "parapsychology" being anything other than an attempt to distance claims about the causes of certain phenomena from actual scientific method.
Veyl
Member
The first part would really be reliant on being able to differentiate between all the forms of extrasensory perception experimentally; outside of presentiment experiments for precognition, you'd be hard pressed adequately differentiate between the categories (experientially it's not like you "know" that you're using telepathy or whatever). As for it "not" being covered by biology and physics, parapsychology mostly exists as a separate category because the means of provoking and studying such phenomena fall more under psychology. In a way it's similar to how biology is its own discipline when it is "really" just physics. Levels of fine-grained detail. Even then there's always been biologists and physicists in the field, it's just that precious little progress has been made in regards to mechanisms. Physical models of psi are notoriously difficult to formulate and bring into coherence with the experimental data. Also I'm not quite sure what you mean by parapsychology being an attempt to distance claims about the causation of some paranormal phenomena from the scientific method. In fact it's quite the opposite, being the application of the scientific method to the phenomena under study. In that sense it follows in the naturalistic philosophy of the other sciences.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
It being difficult doesn't alter the need to demonstrate it's existence before you start considering whether it is a factor in another phenomena. Regardless, there is no reason for it to be any more difficult to study than any other phenomena around human perception. It can be made more difficult if people don't follow standard scientific process in an attempt to avoid any conclusion they don't like of course.
You could argue everything is essentially physics and there are certainly different overlaps and sub-groups within all these labels. Your use of the word "category" for parapsychology is a key point though. It isn't a scientific discipline, it is just an amorphous collection of phenomena and ideas on the basis of their presumed causes.
There could be one very obvious reason for that of course.
As I said, it isn't a discipline, it's just a general grouping of unconnected phenomena, claims and ideas. Many people who promote the category generally want to assume some form of "paranormal" explanation for all of these things, apparently unwilling to even consider any kind of mundane or material explanations. After all, if there wasn't a "paranormal" cause for something, it wouldn't fall under parapsychology.
Mainstream scientists do study this kind of phenomena via conventional means, often establishing conventional explanations, or at least establishing them as possible or likely. Many things that would have historically fallen under the scope of parapsychology have since been explained, such as things like epilepsy and some mental illnesses being attributed to demonic possession, or some sightings of "ghosts" being accounted for by pareidolia.
FredVB
Member
I am a writer, and I write fiction. With this I have characters develop, they are in my mind and are in my writing, they apparently take on a life of their own. I don't view it as those being separate sentience with their own thoughts in their minds. I can think of those as AI, which I made, or very much like that.
Veyl
Member
It being difficult doesn't alter the need to demonstrate it's existence before you start considering whether it is a factor in another phenomena. Regardless, there is no reason for it to be any more difficult to study than any other phenomena around human perception. It can be made more difficult if people don't follow standard scientific process in an attempt to avoid any conclusion they don't like of course.
You could argue everything is essentially physics and there are certainly different overlaps and sub-groups within all these labels. Your use of the word "category" for parapsychology is a key point though. It isn't a scientific discipline, it is just an amorphous collection of phenomena and ideas on the basis of their presumed causes.
There could be one very obvious reason for that of course.
As I said, it isn't a discipline, it's just a general grouping of unconnected phenomena, claims and ideas. Many people who promote the category generally want to assume some form of "paranormal" explanation for all of these things, apparently unwilling to even consider any kind of mundane or material explanations. After all, if there wasn't a "paranormal" cause for something, it wouldn't fall under parapsychology.
Mainstream scientists do study this kind of phenomena via conventional means, often establishing conventional explanations, or at least establishing them as possible or likely. Many things that would have historically fallen under the scope of parapsychology have since been explained, such as things like epilepsy and some mental illnesses being attributed to demonic possession, or some sightings of "ghosts" being accounted for by pareidolia.
The existence is demonstrable; it is simply the explanations that are lacking. The discipline isn't predicated on the proposed causes for such phenomena, just the observations of them. Not quite sure why you're claiming that it's not a scientific discipline, given that.
As for the quotation regarding the "obvious" reason, you seemed to have missed the fact that such physical models are difficult to formulate due to the experimental observations; i.e., existent phenomena. And mainstream scientists do study this area, as you mentioned. The existence of degrees for parapsychological work at accredited universities and the affiliation of the Parapsychological Association with the American Association for the Advancement of Science are just some testaments to that fact off of the top of the head. The area that you seem to be describing, however, would fall under the banner of anomalistic psychology or general psychology rather than parapsychology.
HonestJoe
Well-Known Member
The existence of what exactly is demonstrable though? You're talking about a diverse range of claimed experiences and events with limited consistency or repeatability. It isn't clear what effects we're talking about, let alone any causes. That's why lumping them together in to a single category is fairly meaningless and certainly isn't a definition for a scientific discipline.
No, the "obvious" term was precisely because of this. The obvious reason would be that you're looking at them in the wrong way because you're (if only subconsciously) presuming specific types of cause and connections. Plenty of phenomena which is (or has historically been) placed under this category can be better observed, repeated and theorised on if you cut through those presumptions.
Even if "parapsychology" was a established as a scientific discipline, it would fall within the scope of general psychology anyway. You don't need the sub-category, you could just study these individual phenomena as psychology. There are plenty of unusual psychological conditions that are as yet not full understood but aren't lumped under "parapsychology". There is no good reason for that division.
Veyl
Member
Apologies, neglected to check this site for a while.
As for your claims, they're not exactly substantiated. The closest I can see is the diversity of the range of phenomena (i.e, these may not be mechanistically related, and only grouped together for going against typically understood causality). In regards to effects, it is clear what is being spoken of. Something like extransensory perception, for example, clearly refers to a perceptual process that occurs in the absence of sense organ stimulation. This is naturalistic descriptor of an event. There isn't a lack of clarity here. It is far more sensible to lump these phenomena together than to lump something like UFOs and cryptids, for example (hence why "paranormal" is more of the contemporary umbrella term, even if it was meant more like "supernormal" as a sanitized version of supernatural in its original coining).
You make a claim in the final paragraph that also lacks support. What exactly do you mean by, "established as a scientific discipline"? As of now, the field can make and test falsifiable hypotheses about its objects of study. You can't really follow the method much better than that (outside of non-experimental sciences like astronomy). If you're talking about academic establishment, then you have such examples as the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, degrees awarded for parapsychological work, the PA's AAAS affiliation as mentioned prior, etc. I normally wouldn't feel the need to bring this up, but it's fairly clear from an empirical perspective alone that parapsychology is a scientific discipline, so I'm curious as to why you picked that characterization (i.e, "if"). As for the final point, you're actually pretty correct. Parapsychology was generally characterized as a field within psychology back in the day, and parapsychological papers continue to be submitted to psychological journals. Strictly speaking, you also see split-ups in regards to physics and biology and the field. The distinction is essentially arbitrary, but like the formation of other fields (ex. chemistry from physics), it is a useful one.