Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Philosopher Chris Carter: Super-psi is Pseudo-science.


I have updated my web page on Eminent Researchers to include the following entry on philosopher Chris Carter:

Oxford educated philosopher Chris Carter is author of several books on the afterlife, including Science and the Near-Death Experience, and Science and the Afterlife Experience. Carter believes that consciousness is not produced by the brain. In his essay, Does Consciousness depend on the Brain?, he justifies this belief by stating that the brain is more likely to transmit consciousness than it is to produce consciousness because the transmission hypothesis explains more facts than the production hypothesis. The transmission hypothesis explains how the brain can influence consciousness without causing consciousness by comparing the brain to a radio. When you listen to music on a radio, the radio seems to produce music, and if you damage the radio it will affect the music, but the music is actually originating from a radio station transmitting the broadcast. This analogy is similar to the filter model of the brain.

In an interview on Subversivethinking.blogspot.com Carter sums up his work on the afterlife:

In my work I present the evidence that provides a prima facie case for survival; demonstrate that alternative explanations, to the extent that they are testable, have been proven false; and then argue that to the extent these alternative explanations are not testable (such as elaborate fraud scenarios, or super-ESP) they are pseudo-scientific excuses for refusing to accept an otherwise straightforward inference from the evidence.

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