Waking Cosmos is an interesting YouTube channel I sometimes link to. It deals with the hard problem of consciousness from a mostly panpsychist viewpoint.
In this clip, WC argues that telepathy is real and that relatively solid scientific evidence for it exists. So-called Ganzfeld experiments have a consistently higher percentage of "hits" (around one third) than they should have by chance alone (around one quarter). WC implies that the skeptics´ refusal to be convinced is merely a form of rather hopeless dogmatism.
If panpsychism is right, consciousness is a basic property of reality and (in some sense) exists everywhere, which would make it possible to explain telepathy without appeals to the religious or the occult. PSI phenomena aren´t a threat to science, but would rather expand its frontiers.
Maybe, but the knee-jerk negative reactions of the skeptics show that some kind of "paradigm panic" is involved, a fear that once you accept telepathy, all kinds of other unplausible events will have to be accepted too, and before you know it, we´re back in the Dark Ages with reliquaries, bestiaries and grimoires (or just plain ol´ witch-burnin´). Or, differently put, that panpsychism will open the door to religion (which it may indeed do).
That being said, this clip is nevertheless very informative. Recommended.
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