In higher physics supersymmetry is a proposed
extension, of symmetry in Relativity, to relate two fundamental kinds of
particle – fermions (which carry mass) and bosons (which carry energy). There’s of course nothing remotely similar in
psychology at its present elementary stage of development.
Still
it seems both apt and productive to apply the title of “Psychological
Supersymmetry” to the following idea I once proposed in an address to the
Parascience Conference – London, Sept 1973.
Because it later led on directly to far less theoretical - and far more
pragmatic - developments in learned pre-call or anti-memory...
A RELATIVISTIC APPROACH TO SUBJECTIVE TIME
(Parascience Conference – London – 1973)
By SEAN O’DONNELL
It is presently uncertain whether the normal
comprehension of subjective time is an irreducibly obvious aspect of the
external world.1 Observation
however suggests that ordinary temporal notions may owe much to unrealised
cultural initiation from infant days.
For whereas the newborn seem to arrrive with comparactively timeless or
even relativistic attitudes, prevalent adult expressions of Newtonian time are
then increasingly assimilated over the first 7 years.2
The
derived formal status of time in current psychology is thus seen to assume
fundamental principles long found inadequate elsewhere. For whereas a relativistic basis is now
unfailingly adopted throughout physical theory, psychological paradigms still
implicitly encompass outdated notions of absolute time.3
Considering then the overall relation between consciousness and the
apparent external reality of four-dimensional space-time, one new
generalisation is immediately suggested.
For it is seen that – with the striking exception of time-future, the
presently available information content, of increasingly remote space-time
regions, decreases by a similar symmetrical process in all four dimensions.
That
such is so along any of the six reference directions of the three spatial axes,
follows as a necessary consequence of the physical inverse square law. That a broadly similar process of exponential
decrease obtains along the fourth axis of time is an everyday experience
quantified in the re-call curves of the Ebbinghaus memory experiments.4
Diagrammatically the earlier synthesis is
then expressed by the general interchangeability, of the purely temporal label
Now-t‘, with any of the six spatial labels such as Here-x’. The relation may
equally be summarised in the observation that consciousness exhibits a 7/8
element of qualitative symmetry, in the overall four-fold perspective of
external space-time.
When
expressed lke this however, the missing eighth element of future consciousness
is immediately seen to attain outstanding aesthetic and theoretical
importance. For were consciousness
observed to exhibit some form of symmetrical mirror-memory, which could
contemplate both past and future with equal facility, a new and currently
missing harmony of psycho-physical isomorphism, between present comprehensions
of subjective and objective time, would thereby be attained.5
Such
new harmony would result from the general interchangeability, of the axes
depicting subjective spatial and temporal impressions, somewhat as in the
objective and non-Euclidean transformations of the Minkowski approach.6 Equally the similar knowability of past and
future would indicate their treatment on a less differential treatment than
before.
Is memory
necessarily asymmetric?
Considering then the primal problem of apparently
asymmetric memory, careful examination suggests that ordinary notions are
perhaps not wholly accurate. This is
because occasional time-anomalous experiences – ranging from deja-vu and serendipity to paranormal
anecdotes and premonitory dreams – seem to suggest that a sort of future-memory
does sometimes occur.7 In all such anomalies the essential
common pattern is then seen to be that consciousness seems to contemplate an
external event before it is observed, instead of afterward as in the more
normal experience.
It is
similarly clear that common parapsychological notions of trans-spatial
processes, such as telepathy or ESP, are scientifically superfluous to
first-order explanation. Economy of
hypothesis demands that the real-life anecdotes, from which such notions were
originally derived, be more simply construed as anomalies of subjective time
alone. For it is a necessary common condition in
nearly all such tales, that the narrator observe the later external complement
to his earlier external thought. And were this not so, he could hardly have any
paranormal tale to tell.
Their
single essential anomaly, of time inversion alone, then suggests that most such experiences are
most simply described by the new and self-explanatory term ‘pre-call’. In contrast to a typical three acts of
re-call for every lived second, the average individual may be allowed at least
one such experience at some point in life.
The pre-call/re-call abundance ration is thus seen to assume a maximum
lower limit around 10-10.
Given
then that the past-asymmetry of memory might not necessarily be total,
examination of the comparatively great
imbalance between its two apparent modes is next required. For – common and ill-informed temporal
notions apart – no such imbalance seems inherent in the relativistic
equivalences between space and time, or past and future in the Minkowski
approach.
With
attention thus directed towards the innate capacities of consciousness and the
normal re-call process, it is immediately seen that the everyday notion of
memory as necessarily past-asymmetric, is no more than an unchecked assumption
at best. For if the growing
comprehension of subjective time by the learning infant, can be correlated with
increasingg facility in normal re-call, the generally suspect comprehension of
the former is most simply traced to accidental bias in the latter.
It
may thus be deduced that consciousness might possess an inherent but latent
capacity for direct non-inferential future awareness. If so, the sporadic and infrequent modes of
its apparent manifestations suggest strong subconscious censorship, most simply
ascribed to basic disharmony with the rest of the learned world-picture. Man’s apparent capacity for occasional future
awareness thus seems most closley described, in terms of an undeveloped faculty
of repressed pre-call.
It
may equally be seen that current psychology is unable to accommodate many
parapsychological findings, only because both approaches are ultimately based
on the outdated paradigm of Newtonian absolute time. The new relativistic viewpoint is however
capable of containing both disciplines, while simultaneously harmonising
currently disjunctive interpretations of subjective and objective time.
It is
similarly relevant that no assumption is scientifically acceptable, without
some measure of investigative validity.
Nevertheless nobody ever seems to have checked on the universal and
wholly primal assumption, that memory is necessarily past-asymmetric. In common with everyday notions of subjective
time, all derived psychological, philosophcal and logical systems are then seen
to be based on a notably unchecked and possibly invalid premise.
(There
followed 12 brief numerate reports, describing initial success with learned
pre-call in various modes.....)
1 – JG Whitrow – Natural Philosohy of Time – 1961 – p 55.
2 – JE Orme – Time, Experience, Behaviour – 1969 – p.44
3 - ibid – p. 181
4
- H Ebbinghaus – About Memory – 1882
5
- JT Fraser – The Voices if Time – 1968 – p.217
6 - H
Minkowski et al – The Principle of
Relativity – 1923 – p.76
7
- WJ Goody – Individual Psychology – 1959 – p.83
