THE CONCEPT OF THE TARGET (ROBERT L. MORRIS)

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THE CONCEPT OF THE TARGET
Robert L Morris
Psychology Department
University of Edinburgh
7 George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9JZ
ABSTRACT
The concept of the target in parapsychology has become
increasingly flexible and perhaps vague as well. This may be
due in part to early research suggesting, for ESP at least,
that psi is unconstrained by space, time, complexity or
physical characteristics of the target. Targets became
viewed as less important in our understanding and less
attention was paid to them. We may need to review and
rethink the ways we conceptualise targets, perhaps by
regarding them as involving three interlocking systems: the
target system itself, the target determinant system and the
target descriptive system. By refocusing our attention on
targets, with fuller awareness of the many complexities
involved, we may develop a clearer picture of whether their
specific characteristics are really irrelevant for our
research, suggestive of a very general, unitary kind of psi
functioning, or whether we may be dealing with multiple new
communication systems, each specific to particular kinds of
target systems.
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One of the most basic concepts in experimental parapsychology
is that of "the target". In most of our studies, following
the metaphor, we designate someone as the psychic, select out
a chunk of the environment as a target, set it up and ask our
psychics to aim at it and hit it. For ESP procedures, we
know we hit the target because the ball we threw bounces back
to us bringing useful information. For PK procedures, we
know we hit the target because we then observe that the
target has fallen over. The target in short is the part of
the environment with which the subject is supposed to
interact "psychically".
The target has been defined formally as well. The first
issue of the Journal of Parapsychology to have a glossary was
Volume One, Issue Three. It defined a target card as "The
card which the percipient is attempting to perceive
(i.e. to
call, or otherwise indicate a knowledge of)". A target deck
is "The deck of cards the order of which the subject is
calling". There is no separate definition for target per se.
In the most recent Journal of Parapsychology, a target is
defined as: "In a test of ESP, the object or event that the
percipient attempts to identify through information
paranormally acquired; in a test of PK, the physical system,
or a prescribed outcome thereof, that the subject attempts to
influence or bring about". Other recent definitions such as
those in the Handbook of Parapsychology and in Foundations of
Parapsychology resemble the latter they are fairly flexible
as to the nature of the target but emphasize that it is the
focus of an effort of some sort, a "trying" or "attempting".
In what probably is the most thorough and thoughtful attempt
to define the terms of parapsychology, Michael Thalbourne's A
Glossary of Terms used in Parapsychology (1982), target is
defined as "In a test of extrasensory perception, the object
or event, physical or mental, constituting the information to
be paranormally acquired by a percipient; in a test of
psychokinesis, the physical system, or a prescribed outcome
thereof, which the subject is attempting to influence or
bring about". For PK, the concept is the same. For ESP, the
flexibility is retained, with the target being any designated
source of information and the acquisition of information
being the process by which the subject accomplishes a goal or
task. The task element is still there ("to be acquired") but
it is no longer necessarily linked to an active or deliberate
effort by a percipient or receiver. ESP studies with covert
targets have been acknowledged thereby. Somebody (e.g. the
experimenter) is still setting aside a target and defining a
task, but the percipient need not be aware of it or
consciously oriented toward it. PK studies can also have
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covert targets, as in animal studies where an RNG (obviously
unknown to the animal) is linked to an environmental stimulus
germane to the needs of the organism. Yet the recent
definitions of PK have still retained the idea of a target
being the focus of an attempt of some sort. It's still
something the psychic is trying to hit.
Probably the most thorough attempt to deal with this set of
issues theoretically is that of Stanford (e.g. 1978), who
reconstrues the interaction between designated psychic and
designated target as a "conformance" between two systems, a
disposed system, generally an organism with a need or other
disposition such as a conditioned fear or attraction, and a
random event generator (REG), a labile system of some sort
capable of producing events that are relevant to the
disposition of the first system. There is thus still a
motivational aspect, but no need for specific effort or
"attempting" on the part of the disposed system or organism.
For PK, the REG is an external event, the target in the sense
used above. For ESP, both conforming systems are located
within the organism. The organism is the disposed system,
disposed to access relevant information. A portion of the
brain state of the organism serves as the REG. Conformance
takes place and the disposition is addressed whenever that
REG settles in a state that reflects the presence of
information relevant to that disposition. Disposed systems
can include experimenters and anyone else "disposed" to see
the experiment have a specific outcome. In his discussion of
ESP, Stanford is not specific about the role of the target,
except to note that in experimentation there is an aspect of
the environment that serves to define successful conformance,
He is noncommittal about any causative role of that aspect,
but continues to use the term "target" to designate this
aspect in his later writings. For Stanford and for others
such as Braud (1981) using the conformance model, targets are
regarded as systems rather than as just one discrete chunk of
the environment. The ESP target for Stanford is defined by
the dispositions of those involved, and may in principle be
whatever environmental aspects contribute to the final
conformance.
The concept of the target has seemed to change gradually,
taking on an increasingly general and flexible character,
especially for ESP, less tied down to specific physical
events and more tied to systems and information.
TARGET RESEARCH
Much of the reason for the increasing flexibility (some might
say "vagueness") of the target concept is the result of the
findings from a sizable number of studies from the 1930s,
including Rhine's seminal work, to the present. The picture
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that emerged was that the physical properties of targets
seemed not to matter, but their psychological salience for
the organism (generally a person) did. This, plus the
stronger findings relating psi success to state and trait
organism variables, turned the focus of attention toward the
organism and away from the physical environment. It also fed
quite nicely into the Rhinean notion that psi was a mental
property, of a nonphysical mind, and that psychic functioning
was not explainable through physical principles.
.A concise presentation of this argument can be found in
Chapter Four of Rhine and Pratt (1962). At the start, they
state, "For the last two decades it has been possible to
define the field of parapsychology in a clear-cut fashion as
one that deals with phenomena not explainable by physical
principles. There is a great part of mental life that may or
may not be nonphysical, but parapsychology at the present
stage is not concerned with effects for which the
interpretation is ambiguous. In order to be considered as
parapsychological the phenomena must be demonstrably
nonphysical". They then go on to build their case on the
basis of a consideration of the "facts" about targets and
their relationship with the subject. According to them,
distance between percipient and target does not seem to
matter, at least for ESP. Successful series have been
carried out over sizable distances, hundreds and even
thousands of miles, with no apparent decline. Precognition
procedures have also seemed to work quite well, in that the
target can apparently be an event or object in the future.
Thus the spatial and temporal relationship between subject
and target does not appear to constrain success.
Additionally, target complexity does not appear to matter.
For instance, they argue, ESP would seem to be necessary for
success in most, if not all PK experiments in that the
subject must know where and when to apply whatever force is
being used to accomplish the task. You've got to know what
to do and then do it. That's complex. (Although they do not
cite it specifically, by this time Foster's (1940) work
indicating that blind matching results were very similar to
those of open matching, despite the increased complexity of
the former, was quite well known.) Rhine and Pratt add,
"Perhaps the most rationally reassuring of all the types of
evidence of the nonphysical nature of psi is the range of
target material on which it is capable of functioning; that
is, the range of stimuli or starting points with which it can
deal (and for which some physical theory of intermediation
would have to be provided) ". They note that successes have
been had with targets of a great variety of materials,
sizes, shapes, and so on.
In short, the physical characteristics of the targets,
including the physical characteristics of whatever barriers
appeared to separate organism and target were labelled
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irrelevant. During the preceding years, target features had
been increasingly regarded as such by many of the researchers
in the field, "reassur.ingly" so for those inclined to
identify parapsychology as studying "phenomena not
explainable by physical principles". Some researchers were
unconvinced that psi was nonphysical but regarded the
experimental work to date as valid nevertheless valid. Most
still generally found themselves acknowledging that so far
there was no solid evidence that the physical
characteristics of the target do matter. There were
exceptions, of course, such as Asis (1956) who provided
evidence that ESP scores may in fact decline with distance
(but see Morris, 1980, for a critique).
The upshot of this was that, for both philosophical and
empirical reasons, researchers shifted their attention
increasingly to psychological rather than physical variables.
That was where the action seemed to be, where the functional
relationship and correlations seemed to be emerging when they
emerged at all. An important consequence was that, in
planning research, in conducting it and in describing the
procedures used, researchers paid less attention to the
physical characteristics 'of the target, especialy for ESP
studies. In research reports, these characteristics for the
most part were and are underdescribed. Psychologically
salient target properties are often described in detail, in
keeping with the fact that many studies have found evidence
that such psychological properties can affect results (see
Palmer, 1978, for a summary). Various aspects of target
preparation and the barriers between target and subject are
also usually described, since they relate to the adequacy of
the design of the study. It should also be noted that,
especially in recent years, there have been more people from
physics and engineering in parapsychology. They tend to be
more open to physics-based theories, are more knowledgeable
about physical variables and how to describe them, and thus
tend to be more thorough in-their descriptions of the
physical characteristics of targets, especially for PK
studies, where much of their efforts are concentrated.
Social scientists describe people well, physical scientists
describe targets well. A few are good at both.
SOME CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS REGARDING ESP TARGETS
As noted above, ESP targets have been underemphasized in
recent years, in part because research has failed to define
limiting characteristics. Attention has been redirected away
from targets, in terms of their properties and in the thought
given to them conceptually. Yet, just as the analogous
concept of the stimulus in psychology has recently come into
question, likewise it may be time to reconsider exactly what
we mean by a target and what role it plays, in controlled
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research as well as in anecdotal material. The remainder of
this paper will explore the concept of the target and suggest
some modifications that may help us re-evaluate our past
research and design our future studies more effectively.
For present purposes, a target will be defined as an aspect
of the environment with which an organism appears to interact
through some additional, not presently understood means of
communication, hereafter known- as psi. In experimental
studies, an investigator selects and designates an aspect or
aspects of the environment to serve as target. The
investigator may or may not be the actual experimenter who
works with the agent or percipient. In a broader sense, in
any given experiment there are one or more observers,
(including experimenters), aware of the proceedings, who
arrive at some understanding of what has been designated as
target. If communication among them is good, they will all
agree. A skilled pseudopsychic may attempt to interrupt the
agreed-upon protocol, however, and force a reinterpretation
of what the target actually was. This may occur during the
test, if the pseudopsychic finds his ploy, for the intended
target blocked but access to another potential target system
open; or it may occur after an unfavourable outcome is known,
in an effort to turn failure into success.
In anecdotal cases, especially spontaneous cases, target
designation becomes much more complex, with more room for
error and deception. In informal tests, targets may be only
loosely defined until the outcome is known. In purely
spontaneous anecdotes, no target has been designated in
advance at all. Some observer at some time notices a
correspondence or matchup between organism and environment
events and declares that aspect of the environment after the
fact to have been a target. The designation of target is
thus quite arbitrary and does not allow mathematical analysis
of "the odds against chance" of such a matchup occurring. It
is important for us to appreciate the factors that affect
such after-the-fact designations as they are vital to our
understanding of the contribution of anecdotal material to
our understanding of psi processes.
Another issue concerns the distinction between target and
task. In an experiment, an investigator designates a target
and assigns a task declaring a particular kind of interaction
to be accomplished by the percipient' with respect to the
target-. In ESP tasks, the percipient is expected to respond
to some but not necessarily all characteristics of the
target. Any barriers designed to prevent ordinary exchange
between percipient and target must be tailored to the
specifics of the task. If I am asked to guess the identities
of symbols on a deck of ESP cards, that and that only is my
task. Whether the cards are made of plastic or cardboard is
not relevant to my task and knowing which will not help me.
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This raises the question of how to handle target anomalies
that are not directly relevant to the formally 'designated
task. Roll (1976).,brought Julio Vasquez, the RSPK agent of
the Miami poltergeist case,-back to North Carolina to undergo
various tests. He was presented with dice in a rotating cage
and asked to influence their behaviour as the cage rotated
and they tumbled from end to end. Although he was
unsuccessful, one end of the dice cage fell off twice during
the experiment. The dice cage and dice, as a target system,
showed evidence of being influenced but not in a task-related
way. Since the cage itself was not directly part of the
task, it was not extensively inspected, checked or described
in advance and the investigators felt unable to regard what
happened as solid evidence for PK. A followup session was
conducted, but with no further anomalies. Was the target
system influenced, and if so was it related to some sort of
secondary, non-explicit task? We must be careful here, and
avoid declaring after the fact that any system producing an
anomaly must have been a target even though we didn't realise
it at the time. On the other hand, we would be foolish to
ignore a target-related anomaly completely just because it
was not part of the formally designated task.
Although the target is a portion of the environment
specifically designated by an investigator as part of an
exploration of psychic functioning, the research protocol
itself involves an eventual comparison of two descriptions.
One is a description of a set of events in an organism, the
other a description of a set of environmental events, of
those aspects of the target relevant to the task. As we have
seen, the latter has become a somewhat flexible but vague
area conceptually. It may be useful to view it as composed
of three interlocking systems. One is the target system,-
which is the system of all representations of task-relevant
information. It can extend considerably beyond the system
envisaged by the investigator, including additional
representations of the target, coding sheets, experiences of
various observers, and so on. A second system is the target
determinant system, composed of the various events, both
formal and informal, serving as factors determining any
elements in the target system itself. Sometimes components
of the target determinant system contain enough information
to be regarded as part of the target system itself. A third
system is the target description system, the system of events
generated by various elements of the other two systems to
produce the information that will finally be used by
observers to compare with organism events and define success
or failure. Such systems can be made fairly simple in well-
controlled studies, particularly restricted choice studies.
When applied to free response procedures, such as remote
viewing, they can become more complex.
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If the concepts of these systems are applied to informal
evaluations of psychic functioning, and especially to
spontaneous cases, they can become extremely complex and
allow multiple interpretations of what the true target is, or
whether there are multiple potential targets, or whether
there are multiple potential tasks as well. In a free
response study, is the task to describe the actual remote
location as I see it; to describe it as the agent sees it; to
describe it as a blind judge will see it; to produce
descriptors that will help a blind judge differentiate
selectively between target and controls; or is it to produce
descriptors that can be encoded in a classification system
that will generate more correspondence with the coding of the
target than (a) would be expected by chance or (b) the coding
of the nontargets? Perhaps instead of any of these, the task
is merely to produce a sufficiently interesting and complex
set of descriptors that other participants in the protocol
such as target selectors, blind judges and other observers,
can act upon in various ways so as to bring about a target
that will match it adequately? The last option serves to
remind us that there may be many paths of psi-medited
information transfer in a given experimental procedure or a
spontaneous occurrence, as the author has described
elsewhere, especially for precognition procedures (Morris,
1980).
Any time that we are comparin,g two descriptions as we do
inevitably in any psi study, we are dealing with two sets of
systems - for the target, the three systems described above,
and for the organism the three analogous systems. Within
those two sets of systems, any experience or decision by
anyone sufficiently involved may be psi-mediated and may
increase the likelihood of a final correspondence, if we take
ESP seriously. If we take PK seriously, any physical event
in either system may conceivably be influenced by volitional
activities of other interested parties. If we allow such
free rein of psychic functioning, then the idea of taking
seriously the designating of one subject and one target
becomes totally inappropriate and oversimplified.
CONCLUSION
Given the complexities raised above, the concept of the
target may be so general, so flexible, so vague as to be
useless. On one hand, it may be that this is an accurate
analysis, and that the designation of specific targets by an
investigator is arbitrary and misleading. Psi may function
in such a way that the nature of the target really is
irrelevant and that what counts most in any psi testing or
spontaneous situation is the whole range of informational
exchange between participating organisms and those aspects of
their environments capable of providing meaning.
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On the other hand, perhaps the target was consigned
prematurely to its..,secondary position, a position maintained
by the dearth of attention paid to it in anecdotal
descriptions and experimental writeups. Perhaps if we
returned to focussing attention on the target more pattern
would emerge:-We may even come to develop evidence for more
than one new communication system, each specific to targets
having certain characteristics. Psi may not be as
independent of space, time, complexity or other constraints
as may presently seem to be the case. One way or the other,
it is important for u.s_ to clarify the concept of the target
and make better use of it in our research.
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REFERENCES
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Foster, A. (1940). Is ESP diametric? Journal of
Parapsychology, 4, 325-328. ------- Morris, R.L. (1980). Psi functioning within a simple
communication model. In B. Shapin and L. Coly (Eds.)
Communication and Parapsychology, (1979), Parapsychology
Foundation: New York.
Osis, K. (1956). ESP tests at long and short distances.
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Palmer, J. (1978) Extrasensory perception: Research
findings. In S. Krippner (Ed.) . Advances in
Parapsychological Research 2: Extrasensory Perception.
Plenum: New York . ------ - `-"-------
Rhine, J.B. and Pratt, J.G. (1962) Parapsychology: Frontier
Science of the Mind. Charles C. Thomas: Springfield,
Illinois ----
Roll, W.G. (1976). The Poltergeist. Scarecrow Press:
Metuchen, N. Jersey. ---`-"-`
Stanford, R.G. (1978). Toward reinterpreting psi events.
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 72.
197 - 214. -- -
Thalbourne, M. (1982). A Glossary of Terms used in
----
-_ p Y gy. Heinemann: London.
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