THEORY AND APORY IN HEALING RESEARCH: ''Influence'' ~rsus "Correlational" Models

Abstract

Healing Energy Research, like any research area, has to make presuppositions, which are normally not discussed. Among them are assumptions about how the mind-matter problem should be solved, and whether the events observed in healings are causal or not. The mind-matter problem is briefly discussed. It is pointed out that a dualist stance in healing research, positing a mind independent from matter, creates specific problems on top of the unsolved duality problem of normal science, especially when combined with a local and causalist view of healing. Problems with a localist view are pointed out and an alternative model for understanding healing effects is proposed. This model operates along the lines of generalizing conditions for entanglement or EPR-like correlations. It is shown that macroscopic entanglement in analogy to the classical EPR correlations of quantum mechanics is, in principle, a possibility under certain conditions. I hold that understanding healing along the lines of a correlational model, with healing being an instance of macroscopic entanglement is more likely to be a correct reconstruction of healing than a causalist one. Nevertheless it could be important for practitioners to adopt a causalist and localist view in order to be able to perform those operations, which in a correlational view are the preconditions for healing to oCCut.