The Ontological Question of What's Real

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You know my brain is wired pretty much the same as yours if I experience sadness or anger red or whatever you probably do to and probably the same way. You know family resemblance I think we can apply that there for most people most of the time. In terms of the ontological question what's real. Is there really a paranormal is this supernatural? Did even Alexander actually go someplace. The thing that can link some of those experiences to we go back to the influence of culture and expectation.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.