Para-Pseudo-Skeptics

I have previously written about the harm done to individuals and to society by pseudo-skeptics who don't believe in the evidence for psi and the afterlife. But there is a special kind of pseudo-skeptic who does believe in psi but who thinks that the evidence for the afterlife is caused by unconscious psi from living people. In essence, these para-pseudo-skeptics, as I call them, who are often parapsychologists (scientists who study paranormal phenomena), believe that people who have experienced afterlife phenomena are self-deluded fools who can't tell reality from fantasy. This prejudice against experiencers is an example of the arrogance of scientists who hold ordinary people in contempt because the scientists believe that scientists are the only people capable of discerning the truth. Some people may try to defend the para-pseudo-skeptics by saying that they don't have as much information about afterlife phenomena as the experiencers. However, ignorance is not an excuse for prejudice, it is a cause of prejudice. No persecuted minority has ever won the respect and rights they deserve without demanding them. Therefore, when para-pseudo-skeptics advance these disgraceful hypotheses about afterlife experiencers, they should be confronted with the truth. As I shall explain below, psi cannot explain the evidence for the afterlife and there are good reasons to believe it is the para-pseudo-skeptics themselves who have problems telling fantasy from reality because they would rather believe any number of absurdities than believe the evidence for the afterlife. And while the para-pseudo-skeptics assert that the experiencers have unconscious motivations to fabricate evidence for the afterlife, the para-pseudo-skeptics unconscious motives are, in fact, highly suspect and may lead them to biased interpretations of the evidence.

In fact, there are many, many reasons to doubt the para-pseudo-skeptics ability to tell fantasy from reality, and to question their unconscious motivations for denying the evidence for the afterlife. These reasons are the many, many independent lines of evidence which show that the afterlife is real, that it cannot be explained by psi, and that the para-pseudo-skeptics are wrong:

• ESP cannot explain the evidence for the afterlife. Spirits have initiative, they act for their own purposes independently of any living purpose, they retain specialized knowledge they had while embodied, and they have problem solving capabilities.
  
• Mrs Piper's mediumship shows that psi is not a good explanation for mediumship because the characteristics of the spirit communications she brought through varied with the spirit not the medium or the sitters.
  
• The best explanation for veridical NDEs is out-of-the-body consciousness. Veridical NDEs demonstrate consciousness is not produced by the brain and that memory can be stored outside the brain. The abnormal brain states before, during, and after, cardiac arrest that cause veridical NDEs are not capable of supporting memories or coherent lucid experiences that NDErs remember.
  
• Consciousness is not produced by the brain.
  
• ESP is not produced by the brain. The very existence of ESP is evidence that consciousness is not physical. No physical process, not even quantum entanglement, is capable of producing ESP.
  
• Philosopher Chris Carter's work shows that super-psi is pseudo-science.
  
• Joe McMoneagle and Eben Alexander both conclude NDEs represent proof of life after death. Joe McMoneagle is highly respected by parapsychologists, he helped develop the US military remote viewing program, he was a remote viewer for that program, and he had an NDE. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who had an NDE. He says that because of the way the brain is wired, his NDE could not be produced by the brain.
  
• Guy Lyon Playfair, William Roll, and Ian Stevenson all concluded some poltergeist phenomena are caused by spirits. They knew about unconscious PK but they believed cases that were not dependent on the presence of any one individual were better explained as the action of spirits.
  

Afterlife experiencers know the evidence better than any para-pseudo-skeptic. Mediums live with afterlife phenomena every day and know all the fine details of it that don't get published in books and parapsychology papers. They often also experience psi and can tell the difference between psi and spirit communication. Mediums know the phenomena infinitely better than para-pseudo-skeptics who often know the phenomenon only from reading the reports of other people. Also, near-death experiencers say their experiencers are real. To the experiencer, a near-death experience seems realer-than-real, and their memories of the experience are more detailed than normal memories. The the para-pseudo-skeptics disregard the opinion of non-scientists experts, the experiencers, who know more about the phenomena than they do. This attitude of the para-pseudo-skeptics is caused by their absurdly arrogant false belief that they are the only people who have the ability to discern the truth.

Since para-pseudo-skeptics believe that people who have experienced afterlife phenomena are self-deluded fools who can't tell reality from fantasy, the para-pseudo-skeptics should understand that it is only fair for their own rationality to be disputed. For example, it is very likely that para-pseudo-skeptics themselves suffer from perceptual bias (which they are not shy about accusing mainstream scientists of suffering from). Because these para-pseudo-skeptics spend so much time studying psi, they see psi everywhere, even where it is not present. Because of this, para-pseudo-skeptics do not have the ability to make an objective assessment of the facts, this causes them to suspend logic in order to allow them to maintain their mistaken belief that the brain produces consciousness and ESP. The result is that they believe absurd things. For example, para-pseudo-skeptics may believe that quantum entanglement can be established between two human brains separated by miles in order to produce telepathy, and that the neuronal patterns in a human brain, the result of a lifetime of varied and unique experiences, and constantly changing due to neuroplasticity, can have meaning to the consciousness of another person. Or that consciousness which consists entirely of subjective experiences, which can never be measured objectively, can be the product of fundamentally different measurable objective phenomenon such as neuronal activity through some unexplainable means. Or that NDEs, where dead people have lucid conscious experiences that seem realer than real and which produce memories that are more detailed than normal memories, are produced by the brain when electrical activity in the brain is entirely absent or barely measurable which by all theories of brain function should not permit the brain to sustain consciousness or produce memories. Or that poltergeist phenomenon that does not depend on the presence of any one individual is caused by some unknown PK master who could be located anywhere and anytime in the universe. Or that multiple mediums unconsciously cooperate to produce characteristics of communication that depend on the spirit not the medium or sitter, and they unconsciously conspired to produce the cross correspondences. Or when poltergeist phenomena that cause multiple successive tenants to flee a home is stopped by the intercession of a psychic medium, that the medium used her PK abilities to produce the phenomenon even before she consciously knew the house was haunted. Or that fetuses are capable of unconscious PK that enables them to be born with birthmarks at the sites of injuries sustained by some random person they will later impersonate the reincarnation of. Etc, etc,

The para-pseudo-skeptics have no respect for the intelligence of many, many people who have experienced afterlife phenomena, such as near-death experiencers, people who have had contact with spirits including many evidential mediums, and people who remember past lives. However, the para-pseudo-skeptics should be willing to receive the same type of psychological analysis that they perform on afterlife experiencers. For example, one of the excuses the para-pseudo-skeptics give for their biased beliefs is that experiencers have unconscious motivations to simulate afterlife phenomenon and use psi unconsciously to fulfill that motive. If the para-pseudo-skeptics are going to bring up the subject of unconscious motives, the para-pseudo-skeptics should also consider the possibility that they have unconscious motives themselves that influence their beliefs. For example, It is possible that they have some type of unconscious motivation to discredit the evidence for the afterlife. There are probably as many motivations as there are para-pseudo-skeptics. In some cases the motive might be the desire to appear to be a serious philosopher so they can write books and papers. In some cases it might be to inflate the powers of psi so they can magnify the importance of studying it. In some cases it might be fear of punishment in the afterlife. In depressed individuals it might be the desire for the end of suffering that will come with extinction at death. In some parapsychologists it might be fear of attacks by pseudo-skeptics. Or, some para-pseudo-skeptics may be misanthropes who hate the fact that knowledge of the afterlife eases grief and reduces the incidence of suicide so they try to discredit the phenomenon of mediumship because they want people to suffer mental anguish over the loss of their loved ones. Or, para-pseudo-skeptics might feel so much envy for the power of pseudo-skeptics who publish nonsense about psi that the parapsychologists have to refute over and over, that the para-pseudo-skeptics want to exert a similar power over afterlife researchers.

The para-pseudo-skeptics rarely consider that those who experience afterlife phenomena are real people, and that the experiencers know the phenomena infinitely better than the para-pseudo-skeptics. By spreading their metaphysical faith disguised and scientific possibility, the para-pseudo-skeptics risk harming real people and making it harder for them to get accurate information that can help them make sense out of their experiences. For the para-pseudo-skeptics it is an academic question but there are real people going through real experiences and having real problems. People take immense comfort from mediumship when it eases their grief. People who experience spirit contact can go through real trauma, they may be ostracized at school or their family may think they are demonic or crazy and send them to a psychiatric facility. NDErs may keep their experiences to themselves if they are told the experiences are not real and it is much healthier for them if they feel they can talk about their experiences with others. The para-pseudo-skeptics should stop spreading their misinformation. They should recognize that they are prejudiced by their perceptual bias and unconscious motivations which causes them to believe all sorts of absurd things. Para-pseudo-skeptics think afterlife experiencers are self deluded fools who can't tell fantasy from reality but it is that para-pseudo-skeptics who are fooling themselves. Some people may try to defend the para-pseudo-skeptics by saying they don't have the same information as experiencers. But ignorance is not an excuse for prejudice, it is a cause of prejudice. No persecuted minority ever obtained the rights and respect they deserved without demanding it, and afterlife experiencers should speak out against the prejudiced, and deluded, misinformation being spread by para-pseudo-skeptics.

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Copyright © 2014 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Near-death Experiences and Afterlife Phenomena

Recently I have learned of some beliefs about near-death experiences and afterlife phenomena which I disagree with. In this post, I provide information to support my own beliefs on these issues.

Contents

• ESP or veridical perceptions that occur during an NDE are best explained by out-of-the-body consciousness.
  

• ESP is not produced by the brain.
  

• None of the materialist explanations can explain any of the many anomalous characterisitcs of NDEs such as how people are conscious when their brain is not functioning.
  

• There are multiple independent forms of evidence which show that mind does not require matter for its existence.
  

• There is ample evidence that memory can be stored outside the brain.
  

• Consciousness, mind, or spirit is required for matter to exist.
  

• Scientists are fallible. Alternative sources of truth exist.
  

• Experiencers may be harmed by misinformation about afterlife phenomena especially if it comes from medical personnel.
  

• References
  

ESP or veridical perceptions that occur during an NDE are best explained by out-of-the-body consciousness.

During a near-death experience, sometimes people with no brain activity perceive something happening around them or they may perceive something they could not perceive with their normal senses even if they were conscious such as a vision of the operating room looking down from the ceiling, or a vision of a distant location. When the events in these perceptions can be verified as true, they are called veridical perceptions. These veridical perceptions are best explained by out-of-the-body consciousness. Some people may call these perceptions ESP, but they are still best explained as out-of-the-body consciousness.

Many NDEs occur during cardiac arrest. Residual brain activity is not sufficient to explain memories or conscious experiences that occur during cardiac arrest. And cardiac arrest causes amnesia and confusion shortly before and after the event.

Some people may suggest an abnormal brain state during the onset or recovery from cardiac arrest may produce clairvoyant visions of events that occur during cardiac arrest. If this is true, the clairvoyance must still be due to out-of-the-body consciousness. The same argument by which NDE researchers conclude that the lucid conscious experience of the NDE cannot be explained by it occuring before or after cardiac arrest can be used to conclude that clairvoyance occurring at the onset or recovery from cardiac arrest must be due to out-of-the-body consciousness. That argument is that the brain activity that occurs at the onset to, or recovery from, cardiac arrest is not capable of supporting lucid consciousness or memories. Any lucid conscious memories, such as those characteristic of NDEs, that occur anytime from the onset to cardiac arrest through the recovery from cardiac arrest, whether psychic or mundane, must be due to out-of-the-body consciousness.

In other words, if anyone is going to suggest that an abnormal brain state induced by cardiac arrest is responsible for producing ESP, that ESP must be due to consciousness existing out-of-the-body because the abnormal brain states that occur at the onset, duration, and ending of cardiac arrest are not capable of producing memories or supporting the lucid consciousness that is experienced during an NDE. At other times than the onset, duration, or ending of cardiac arrest, the brain is functioning normally and there is no abnormal brain state that might be attributed to the production of ESP. If ESP can produce conscious experiences that do not require the brain, then ESP must be due to out-of-the-body consciousness. In fact, in a subsequent section it will be shown that the best explanation for all forms of ESP is that ESP is not produced by the brain but is a capability of non-physical consciousness. In consideration of this and of all the evidence (below) that the mind can exist separate from the brain, the best explanation for veridical perceptions during NDEs is the spirit leaving the body and retaining memory of the event.

No physiological explanation can fully explain NDEs. Nothing that produces an abnormal brain state that can produce ESP, such as natural brain chemicals, or states of relaxation can produce experiences like NDEs. So it is not credible that veridical perceptions in NDEs could be caused by abnormal brain states that are known to cause ESP.

In most abnormal states the experiencer knows he is hallucinating or experiencing clairvoyance, but NDErs consistently say their experience is real. Those states in which hallucinations are mistaken for reality do not share significant characteristics with NDEs. Those states in which ESP is mistaken for out-of-body experiences involve hypnosis, self-hypnosis, or some type of induction technique. However NDEs are not induced, they are spontaneous, and they are not caused by anything remotely like hypnotic induction such as religious expectations, or cultural expectations.

Joe McMoneagle is a highly regarded parapsychologist, a remote viewer, and a near-death experiencer, and his statements on the subject indicate he believes that NDEs show that the afterlife is real. NDEs demonstrate, he says, "..that consciousness continues, and you don't really cease to exist as an individual..."

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ESP is not produced by the brain.

There is ample proof that ESP is real. However it is not possible for ESP to be caused by the brain because none of the laws of physics, including quantum entanglement, can explain how the brain might produce ESP. And in the case of telepathy, the unique structures in one brain will be meaningless to another brain. The existence of ESP is consistent with and mutually reinforcing to many other lines of reasoning that lead to the conclusions that consciousness is not produced by the brain and that consciousness can exist separate from the body.

No physical mechanism in the brain has been demonstrated to cause ESP. ESP has been shown not to be limited by time and distance. ESP can reach into the past and future and is just as strong over short distances as it is for long distances. None of the known laws of physics can explain this. It has been hypothesized that quantum entanglement could explain ESP, because when two particles are entangled, determining a property of one particle will also determine a property of the other instantly, independent of distance between the two particles. However, quantum entanglement can not be the mechanism by which ESP occurs because for entanglement to occur, there has to be some mechanism by which entanglement is established. In lab experiments on entanglement, the entangled particles are created deliberately at the same time in the same location and then separated to demonstrate entanglement effects. While entanglement can occur in biological systems, as is seen in photosynthesis, in a biological system like photosynthesis, a mechanism for establishing entanglement is easy to explain because it occurs in a very small region at a specific time. However in the case of ESP, there is no mechanism by which entanglement between objects at separate locations could be established to produce forms of ESP such as telepathy and clairvoyance. Microtubules in brain cells have been proposed, by Stuart Hammeroff, as a mechanism for producing consciousness. It has also been proposed that quantum entanglement in that system could explain ESP, but again there is no way entanglement could be established between separate individuals.

Furthermore, even if there were some way to entangle a physical structure in one brain with, for example in the case of telepathy, a structure in another brain, there would be no correspondence between the meaning of those two structures to the consciousness of the individuals. The patterns in one person's brain will not make sense to any another person's brain. The pattens of neurons in the brain develop differently in each person according to their genetics and environment, and those patterns change over time due to neuroplasticity. The meaning of a physical structure or pattern in the brain of one person will be unintelligible to another person. Entangling two structures in different brains would not be able to convey any meaning to either person. Therefore, telepathy cannot be produced by the brain by means of quantum entanglement or any other physical means. The very existence of telepathy, therefore, is evidence that ESP is not produced by the brain, and also that consciousness is not produced by the brain i.e. that conscious is non-physical.

There are also several other independent lines of reasoning that lead to the conclusion that consciousness is non-physical and not-produced by the brain. One of these lines of reasoning, for example, is based on the fact that that consciousness is a subjective phenomena that cannot be measured objectively and therefore cannot be produced by physical processes since all physical processes are, in principle, measurable. The only way to know what is in the mind of another person is through ESP, such as telepathy, or telempathy, both of which are themselves subjective and unmeasurable by any objective physical means. Since consciousness is subjective and non-physical and cannot be measured by any physical process, ESP which can perceive aspects of another consciousness, must also be non-physical, and cannot be the result of any physical process in the brain.

People who believe that ESP is produced by the brain believe that some quantum effect must cause ESP because ESP is independent of time and distance. But there is a much better explanation for ESP that also explains why ESP is independent of time and distance. That explanation is the filter model of the brain. According to the filter model, consciousness is not physical and the brain does not produce consciousness but only filters it. The filter model explains all the facts that are explained by the production model such as the correlation between mental states and brain states, and the loss of functions due to brain injury. But the filter model also explains ESP and why it is not dependent on time and distance. According to the filter model, ESP is the means by which non-physical consciousness naturally interacts with its environment and because consciousness is non-physical it is not subject to the laws of physics or limited by physical parameters such as time and distance. The filter model also explains acquired savant syndrome where brain injury causes new talents to be uncovered and why brain injury sometimes result in development of ESP. These two effects are caused by brain injury that is like a hole in the filter that allows new aspects of consciousness to pass through it. The filter model explains loss of function injuries, such as amnesia, as being like a clog in the filter. The filter model also explains the unfiltered consciousness experienced by NDErs that includes veridical perceptions, 360 degree vision and colors not seen while in the body.

Philosopher Chris Carter believes consciousness is not produced by the brain and that the brain transmits consciousness. Parapsychologists who do not believe in survival have to explain afterlife phenomena as the result of ESP produced in the brain of a living person. Chris Carter's work demonstrates that those theories are pseudo-science.

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None of the materialist explanations can explain any of the many anomalous characterisitcs of NDEs such as how people are conscious when their brain is not functioning.

All of the materialist attempts to explain NDEs fail to explain any of the many anomalous characteristics of NDEs. NDEs cannot be explained by a lack of oxygen, a dying brain, hallucinations, religious expectations, cultural expectations, hearing about medical procedures after the fact, brain dysfunction, retinal dysfunction causing an image of a tunnel, brain chemicals such as ketamine, endogenous opioids, neurotransmitter imbalances, or hallucinogens including DMT, REM intrusions, epilepsy or seizures, psychopathology, unique personality traits, residual brain activity during unconsciousness, the experience occurring before or after brain activity stopped, evolutionary adaptation, depersonalization, memory of birth, medication, defense against dying, or partial anesthesia.

Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who experienced an NDE and he believes NDEs are are genuine afterlife experiences and that because of the way the brain is wired NDEs cannot be produced by the brain. He said, "...consciousness outside of the brain is a fact. It’s an established fact."

NDErs report their experiences seem more real than real, and memories of near-death experiences are more detailed than normal memories. This is the complete opposite of what you would expect from the fact of severely reduced or zero brain function during the NDE. NDEs due to cardiac arrest cannot be explained by residual brain activity during cardiac arrest or by having occurred before or after cardiac arrest. This demonstrates that NDEs involve a state of consciousness that is independent of the brain.

"The most important objection to the adequacy of all ... reductionistic hypotheses is that mental clarity, vivid sensory imagery, a clear memory of the experience, and a conviction that the experience seemed more real than ordinary consciousness are the norm for NDEs. They occur even in conditions of drastically altered cerebral physiology under which the production theory would deem consciousness impossible.

- Bruce Greyson

A listener to a radio interview with NDE researcher Dr. Sam Parnia paraphrased his statements, "We now routinely overcome death, and the people he’s studying are 'like astronauts – we send them out to explore this other dimension' – they are going to the other side, and they’re able to tell us what they’ve experienced on the other side of death"

Interview of NDE Researcher Dr. Pim van Lommel

Interview with NDE researcher Dr. Melvin Morse.

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There are multiple independent forms of evidence which show that mind does not require matter for its existence.

Evidence for the Afterlife.

• Mediumship
  
  • Proxy sittings
    
  • Drop-in communicators
    
  • Cross-correspondences
    
• Near-death experiences, veridical near-death experiences, and shared near-death experiences.
  
• Death-bed visions and shared death-bed visions.
  
• Apparitions and multiple witness apparitions.
  
• Children who remember past lives including those with an unusual type of birth mark on their body where an injury was sustained in the previous live.
  

Neither ESP nor Super-psi can explain the evidence for the afterlife.

• The evidence for the afterlife cannot be explained as super-psi.
  
  • Guy Lyon Playfair, William Roll, and Ian Stevenson all thought some poltergeist phenomenon were caused by spirits. They knew about unconscious PK but thougth survival was a better explanation when the phenomenon did not depend on the presence of a single individual.
    
  • Drop-in communicators demonstrate spirits have initiative and problem solving ability.
    
  • Cross-correspondences demonstrate spirits have initiative and are able to plan complex projects.
    
  • Others (see above link).
    
• The Mediumship of Mrs. Piper
  
  • Certain characteristics of spirit communication vary with the spirit independently of the medium or the sitter. This is evidence that mediumship is due to communication with spirits and not a form of unconscious ESP. Some of these characteristics were: the speed at which the spirit learned to communicate, the spirit's skill at communicating once they learned to communicate, ability to communicate names. Many more of these characteristics are explained at the link.
    
• Philosopher Chris Carter's work demonstrates that super-psi is pseudo-science. In an interview on SubversiveThinking.blogspot.com he says:
  

  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.
  

• Mediums live with afterlife phenomena every day. They know all the fine details that do not get published in books and parapsychological studies. Many also experience other forms of ESP and they can tell the difference between spirit communication and ESP. Mediums say they perceive and communicate with spirits. They are the foremost experts in spirit communication and there are no better qualified experts on ESP and survival.
  

The Cosmological Argument for a transcendent designer of the universe or multiverse shows that the universe or multiverse was designed by a mind that existed before there was any matter or even space itself. Our universe is so finely tuned to support life that it seems to have been designed. This was accepted by astronomers and cosmologists and caused them to invent multiverse theories. However in those theories the multiverse would have to be fine tuned so it doesn't really solve the problem. The conclusion is that a mind capable of design existed before any matter existed. This argument is so convincing to astronomers it converted many materialists to believers including astronomer Fred Hoyle. Albert Einstein also believed the universe was designed, as did Charles Darwin.

Materialism Cannot Explain Consciousness

Max Planck (Nobel Prize for Physics)

Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize for Physics)

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There is ample evidence that memory can be stored outside the brain.

The facts of this have been covered above. Veridical perceptions that occur during NDEs, the evidence that NDErs are conscious when their brain is not functioning, all the evidence that mind does not require matter for its existence, and all the evidence for the afterlife all demonstrate that memory can be stored outside brain.

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Consciousness, mind, or spirit is required for matter to exist.

Those who believe that mind requires a brain to exist, such as parapsychologists who mistakenly believe that ESP is produced by the brain are confounded by the results of quantum mechanics that show consciousness is required for matter to exist. You can't have any matter or any brain without consciousness first. In order to avoid this problem they may postulate an undeveloped awareness existed to bring matter into being. However if the facts are understood correctly, that, as shown above, that mind does not require matter for its existence, then there is no reason to postulate anything as unparsimonious as undeveloped awareness. In fact the founders of quantum mechanics , Max Planck (Nobel Prize for Physics) and Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize for Physics), did not believe in undeveloped awareness, they understood that consciousness, mind, spirit was what caused matter to come into being.

Another reason that undeveloped awareness is an unnecessary complication is that the cosmological argument demonstrates that the universe was designed by a mind. So there already exists a mind that could cause the matter of the universe to come into existence.

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Scientists are fallible. Alternative sources of truth exist.

Scientists are fallible.

Science is not a licensed profession. And scientist are not the only people who have the ability to discern truth. In fact, perceptual bias is a chronic problem that may cause Dr. Scientist to misjudge things that Joe Sixpack can assess objectively.

I have long suspected that within the parapsychological community there is some prejudice against afterlife phenomena. Parapsycholoigst Dr. Carlos Alvarado confirmed my suspicion in an interview published at aspsi.org. The interview does not seem to be on the internet currently, but the link was: http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/tymn/a076mt-a-Dr_Carlos_S_Alvarado_interview.php

Dr. Alvarado said:

For many workers in the field, survival research is not a main interest. To some extent this is academics as usual. People specialize in some areas and develop interests due to personality traits, life experiences, training, and employment opportunities, and parapsychology is no exception. Then there are concerns such as getting tenure and the belief that the area has many methodological difficulties. However, I believe that in some cases there is more than this. In some circles it is more “respectable” to conduct ESP experiments than working with survival-related phenomena such as apparitions or mediumship. I still remember how the director of a parapsychology unit within an university, wanting to keep a conservative image, discouraged students from pursuing topics such as apparitions for dissertation research.

Because of this prejudice, one may be justifiably suspicious of the views of those parapsychologists who may deny the genuineness of afterlife phenomena and claim they may be caused by ESP.

Some people may try to excuse this prejudice as being due to ignorance. However ignorance is not an excuse for prejudice, it is a cause of prejudice. And I am less concerned with the feelings of parapsychologists and other pseudo-skeptics than I am concerned for the well being of experiencers that may be harmed by this prejudice. No persecuted minority ever won the rights and respect they deserve without fighting for them. And in our society, experiencers of afterlife phenomena are a persecuted minority. And this is one reason I am writing this post. To explain the seriousness of misinformation about afterlife phenomena, and the harm caused by claims that afterlife phenomena are due to ESP.

It is unfortunate that in addition to the pseudo-skeptics who refuse to recognize the validity of any paranormal phenomena and who are preventing some sectors of society from accepting the evidence for the afterlife, there are also some parapsychologists who are muddying the waters with claims that ESP is the cause of afterlife phenomena. These parapsychologists ought to know from their own experience when someone from outside their field who is dreadfully ignorant about ESP publishes some pseudo-skeptical nonsense, how it creates unnecessary distractions for them because they have to constantly refute the same old canards. Yet the same parapsychologists are creating confusion and spreading misinformation and causing distractions for genuine afterlife researchers, such as those studying NDEs, and they are hindering the progress of the spread of the truth of the afterlife throughout society. Whether some parapsychologists do this intentionally to create greater appreciation for the capabilities of ESP and magnify the importance of their chosen field of study at the price of discrediting survival research, or because they are blinded by perceptual bias, it is harmful to individuals and society as will explained in a subsequent section.

Alternative sources of truth exist.

When deciding the best explanation for a phenomenon, the beliefs of experiencers must be considered. They are there on the spot. There is no one more qualified to asses their experiences than they are. NDErs consistently say their experiences are real and that is a strong argument in favor of the reality of their experiences. As shown above, none of the known causes of hallucinations or ESP can explain NDEs.

The opinions of non-scientist experts should also be given due weight. The expertise of mediums is shown above in the links to different forms of mediumship. Mediums live with afterlife phenomena every day. They know all the fine details that do not get published in books and parapsychological studies. Many mediums also experience other forms of ESP and they can tell the difference between spirit communication and ESP. Mediums say they perceive and communicate with spirits. They are the foremost experts in spirit communication and there are no better qualified experts on ESP and survival of consciousness.

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Experiencers may be harmed by misinformation about afterlife phenomena especially if it comes from medical personnel.

Misinformation about afterlife phenomena is harmful to experiencers like NDErs, people who experience spirit contact, and those suffering from grief. Misinformation published in medical journals can be particularly harmful. An NDEr who wakes up and starts to tell about her experience and is told, "it wasn't real it was just clairvoyance" will be harmed by that misinformation. Research shows that if the first person a near-death experiencer tells about her experience does not accept it as real, then it affects how she copes with it. She may keep it inside and not share it with other people. Feeling the need to keep secret something as awesome and life changing as a visit to heaven and meeting God can be painful. Sharing her experience with others is healthy for her and it also helps other people to learn about the afterlife.

Mediums, like George Anderson, who during childhood are taken for psychiatric evaluation because they see spirits, are harmed if they are told their veridical perceptions are just ESP.

It is very important for medical personnel to understand these experiences are real.

I've seen many times the good mediumship can do. Even some parapsychologists acknowledge it may be therapeutic for those suffering from grief. I have been there at many Spiritualist church services where a grieving mother is given relief from the unimaginable distress caused by the loss of her child, when a medium brings through a communication from her child that shows her the child has not really died but is with Grandma in another realm.

I've been involved in helping people experiencing spirit contact, children and adults, understand and cope with their experiences. I know the harm and confusion that misinformation about life after death causes. It is psychologically damaging for a person who is having these experiences, who may be ostracized at school, or who may have family members who thinks she is either crazy or satanic to be told her experiences are not real. When a person is having contact with spirits and she is getting veridical information and she exhibits no dysfunctions associated with mental illness, she needs accurate information about afterlife phenomena. Parapsychologists who should know better but won't admit the reality of spirits are part of the problem not part of the solution.

Lastly, what could be more important to humanity than to know the universe was created and designed by an intelligence and that each human consciousness survives death?

The Harm Caused by Pseudoskepticism

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References:

• Materialism Cannot Explain Consciousness
  
• Eminent Researchers
  
• Evidence for the Afterlife.
  
• Materialist Explanations of NDEs fail to explain the phenomena.
  
• Perceptual Bias in Parapsychology
  
• Notable Near-death Experiencers Believe the Afterlife is Real.
  
• Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander: Heaven is real and consciousness is not produced by the brain.
  
• The Harm Caused by Pseudoskepticism
  
• Near-death Experiences are Real
  
• Memories of Near-death experiences are more real than real.
  
• Interview with Near-death Researcher Sam Parnia
  
• Interview of NDE Researcher Dr. Pim van Lommel
  
• Interview with Dr. Melvin Morse.
  
• Survival and Super-psi
  
• The Mediumship of Mrs. Piper
  
• Philosopher Chris Carter: Super-psi is Pseudo-science.
  
• Interview with Chris Carter On Subversive Thinking
  
• The Cosmological Argument for a Transcendent Designer of the Universe.
  
• Max Planck (Nobel Prize for Physics)
  
• Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize for Physics)
  
• Joe McMoneagle
  

Back To Contents

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Copyright © 2014 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Interview with Chris Carter by Jime of Subversive Thinking

There is an excellent interview with Chris Carter, author of Science and the Afterlife at Subversive Thinking by the blogger Jime. The interview was on the subject of Carter's book, which is about survival of consciousness after death. In the interview, Jime, who believes in the survival, brought up one bogus criticism of survival after another and Chris Carter thoroughly rebutted each of them in turn. Carter has an advanced degree in philosophy and it showed in his explanations which were knowledgeable, well reasoned, and cut through to the core of the issues.

The interview covered three subjects that I have blogged about here and discussed on my web site:

• There are several independent forms of very strong evidence that prove the survival of consciousness after death is a fact.
  

• Criticisms of survival after death based on arguments that it is unscientific are flawed.
  

• Survival of consciousness after death is a much better explanation for the evidence than is super-ESP.
  

The key points made in the interview are:

• The strongest evidence for survival comes from mediumship because, in the best cases, the evidence is from the spirit's perspective, and it demonstrates more than just knowledge of the spirit but also characteristics like purpose, personality, and skills. Statements made by a medium and recorded are an objective form of evidence and not susceptible to "mistaken eye-witnesses testimony". However, there are additional very strong forms of evidence for survival including "near-death experiences, death-bed visions, children who claim to remember previous lives", and "reports of apparitions". Carter points out that these are independent forms of evidence. This is an important point since multiple independent forms of evidence provide a much stronger argument than a single form of evidence.
  

• Survival after death is a question of fact, it is not a theory. Therefore criticisms of theories such as unfalsifiability, inability to make predictions, or lack of explanatory power are not applicable to survival. However the survival hypothesis has been proved true by the evidence, it makes the prediction that consciousness survives death, and it is a very "simple", "straightforward" explanation for various paranormal phenomena.
  

• Occam's razor, which says, in Carter's words, "do not add unnecessary causal factors to explanations", should be understood as saying that factors added to protect the theory from contradictory evidence should not be added. Because of this, survival is a superior hypothesis to super-ESP. While survival requires the inclusion of spirits as causal factors, these are a direct inference from the data. However, super-ESP has been extended again and again as telepathy, and then ESP, were shown to be unable to explain the evidence for survival. It is these greater and greater capabilities attributed to super-ESP that are added as a causal factors to protect the theory from falsification. These capabilities are unnecessary because the survival hypothesis provides a simpler more straightforward explanation without them. Therefore survival is a superior explanation of the evidence than is super-ESP.
  

• Survival is a self-evident explanation for afterlife phenomena. Alternatives, when testable, (such as telepathy or ESP), have been shown to be false, and when not testable, (such as super-ESP or fraud), are "pseudo-scientific excuses for refusing to accept an otherwise straightforward inference from the evidence."
  

For ease of reference, I have included below a list of objections to survival that were discussed in the interview with links to the section of this post that explains how they were rebutted by Carter. It is not a complete table of contents so if you want to read the whole post you must scroll through it rather than jump ahead with just these links.

Flawed Criticisms of Survival as a Scientific Theory:

• The hypothesis that consciousness survives death is not falsifiable.
  

• The survival hypothesis does not make predictions or have explanatory force.
  

• The evidence for survival is only anomalous data.
  

  Flawed Criticisms of Survival in Comparison to Super-ESP:
  

• The Super-ESP hypothesis is equal in predictive power to Survival.
  

• Survival is equivalent to super-ESP in other ways.
  

• The evidence of survival is really evidence of super-ESP.
  

• Apparitions can be explained by collective hallucinations.
  

• There is no independent reason for believing in survival.
  

• Occam's Razor favors super-ESP over survival.
  

• If ESP cannot explain the evidence for survival, then it may mean the capabilities of ESP are greater than expected and super-ESP is a possible explanation for that evidence.
  

Below, I try to summarize what was said in the interview. However, I suggest you also read the full interview since it is probable that my summary and paraphrasing will be imperfect and I may inadvertently misrepresent some of what was said.

Evidence for the Afterlife

In the interview, Carter explains that the best evidence for the afterlife comes from mediumship and "near-death experiences, death-bed visions, children who claim to remember previous lives, and from reports of apparitions". He points out that these are independent forms of evidence. This is an important point since multiple independent forms of evidence provide a much stronger argument than a single form of evidence.

Carter also explains that mediumship is the strongest form of evidence for survival because in the best cases, such as trance mediumship, the evidence is direct evidence of the spirit, and it demonstrates the perspective, purposes, personality, and skills of the spirit. Statements made by a medium can be recorded so the evidence is also objective and not susceptible to "mistaken eye-witness testimony" as other form of evidence are.

Is Survival a Good Explanation of the Evidence?

Falsifiability

In the interview, Carter also discusses whether the afterlife is a falsifiable theory. Falsifiability of a theory was identified by Karl Popper as necessary for a theory to be scientific.

Carter explained that the question of the afterlife is not a theory, it is a question of fact. A theory is an expression of the relationship between facts or how facts "fit together". For example, gravity is a fact. If you drop a stone, it falls. However the theory of gravity is a mathematical formula that describes how the force of gravity depends on mass and distance.

You can prove a theory is false by finding evidence that contradicts the theory. But you can never prove a theory is true because there is always the possibility that some day you will find an exception to it. For example, Newton's theory of gravity was believed true, until observations showed that Einstein's theory of gravity could explain a phenomenon that was not consistent with Newton's theory.

However a hypothesis about a fact, such as the fact that consciousness can survive death, can be proved true with evidence. The evidence that proves consciousness survives death includes mediumship, near-death experiences, death-bed visions, children who remember past lives, and reports of apparitions. Therefore, whether or not survival is falsifiable is irrelevant.

Predictions and Explanatory Force

Carter also discussed the question of whether a theory must make predictions that give it explanatory force in order for the theory to be scientific. One criticism of survival is that it lacks predictive power so has little explanatory utility and is therefore not scientific. Critics claim survival invokes "spirits" to explain phenomena whenever there is no other known natural explanation. The criticism is that survival is an ad hoc assertion rather than a theory that makes predictions.

Carter pointed out that survival does make predictions, it predicts that consciousness survives death. He again pointed out that survival is a question of fact not theory. Carter also rejected the premise of the question, that scientific theories have to have "predictive power in order to have explanatory force". He explained that theories only have to be testable and that progress in science is made by testing hypotheses. What the hypothesis explains is a different issue he said. However, Carter asserted that survival does have explanatory force because it is a "simple and concise" explanation for mediumship, near-death experiences, death-bed visions, children who remember past lives, and reports of apparitions.

Anomalous Data

Carter rejected the assertion that survival only relies on anomalous data, he asserted that the evidence is much more than anomalous data. I believe he was alluding the several independent forms of very strong evidence for survival that he previously mentioned in the interview: mediumship, near-death experiences, death-bed visions, children who remember past lives, and reports of apparitions.

Survival After Death is a Much Better Explanation of the Evidence than is Super-ESP

Super-ESP is the hypothesis that the psychic powers of living persons are responsible for the evidence that is said to prove survival after death. For example, a medium might unconsciously use ESP to obtain information about a deceased individual and then simulate communications with the individual's spirit.

Predictive Power

Carter was asked if survival makes testable predictions that make it a better explanation of the evidence than super-ESP.

Carter rejected the premise, that survival is a theory that should make predictions. He pointed out that survival is a "straightforward inference from the data". It is an issue of fact not an issue of theory and the necessity of predictive power is not applicable to facts, only to theories.

Carter explained that survival has been consistently inferred from the evidence for thousands of years while super-ESP was proposed only in the late 19th century by those opposed to survival on ideological grounds. When proxy sittings proved mediumship could not be explained by telepathy, extra-sensory perception (ESP) was proposed as an alternative to telepathy as the explanation. When mediums demonstrated skills and personality of the spirit, which could not be explained by ESP, super-ESP was proposed as the explanation. This shows the lack of predictive power leading to the super-ESP hypothesis. Carter states that ESP or super-ESP cannot explain several features of evidence for survival. Carter then discusses experiments by Gary Schwartz which obtained results contrary to what super-ESP would predict.

Equivalence of Theories

The question of how to compare theories based on various characteristics was also discussed in relation to whether survival is a superior explanation of the evidence than super-ESP. Carter explained that when two theories make the same predictions, historically they have been equivalent theories. He stated that scientific theories must be testable so you should be able to distinguish a correct theory from an incorrect theory by falsifying the incorrect theory.

However, the question of survival is not a scientific theory. In order to evaluate an explanation of the evidence for survival, Carter said, you need to consider "1) Does it solve a problem", 2) "Does it do so" in a simple manner, and 3) "Is it consistent with other beliefs" for which there are "good reasons to consider true". Carter explained that for survival you can answer yes to all three, but for super-ESP you can only answer yes to the first item.

Survival solves the problem of how to explain mediumship and near-death experiences etc. Survival is a simple inference from the data. And there are several independent forms of evidence for survival so it is consistent with other beliefs for which there are good reasons to consider true. However super-ESP is a contrived explanation, it is not simple, and there is no independent evidence for it (see the next section below), so there is no good reason to believe it. Therefore, survival is a better explanation of the evidence than super-ESP.

Is The Evidence for Survival is really Evidence for Super-ESP?

Carter argued there is no independent evidence for super-ESP except where it is asserted to occur as evidence for the afterlife. If super-ESP was correct, there should be evidence of super-ESP doing more important things, like protecting people from actual harm, rather than just simulating evidence for the afterlife. Therefore there is no good reason to believe in super-ESP.

Collective Hallucination

Carter discussed the claim that collective hallucination could explain multiple witness apparitions. He pointed out there is no actual evidence of collective hallucination occurring among healthy people except for the cases of multiple witness apparitions.

Independent Evidence

Another criticism discussed was that the survival hypothesis does not rely on any independent reasons for believing in survival beyond the evidence for survival itself, just as super-ESP does not have any independent means of support beyond afterlife phenomenon. Carter pointed out that the different forms of evidence for survival, mediumship, near-death experiences, death-bed visions, children who remember past lives, and reports of apparitions, are independent reasons for believing in it.

Carter then explained that the best evidence for survival is different in kind not in degree of ESP and therefore something different from ESP must be required to explain it. I believe he was alluding to the cases of mediumship, where the evidence demonstrates the spirits perspective, purposes, personality, and skills.

Occam's Razor

Next, Carter dealt with Occam's Razor as applied to survival and super-ESP. Occam's razor, which says, in Carter's words, "do not add unnecessary causal factors to explanations", should be understood as saying that factors added to protect the theory from contradictory evidence should not be added. If both survival and super-ESP involve ESP, then is super-ESP superior because it does not invoke spirits and so involves fewer causative factors? While survival requires the inclusion of spirits as causal factors, these are a direct inference from the data. However, super-ESP has been extended again and again as telepathy, and then ESP, were shown to be unable to explain the evidence for survival. It is these greater and greater capabilities leading to super-ESP that are added as a causal factors to protect the theory from falsification. These capabilities are unnecessary because the survival hypothesis provides a simpler more straightforward explanation without them. Therefore survival is a superior explanation of the evidence than super-ESP.

Super-ESP

Another criticism Carter dealt with is that if ESP cannot explain the evidence for survival it might mean that the capabilities of super-ESP are greater than currently understood and not that survival is true.

I'll end my post with how Carter responded to this criticism:

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.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview.

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Book Review: Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life after Death by Stephen E. Braude

In his book "Immortal Remains", Stephen E. Braude examines the evidence for life after death. Braude is a philosopher and this book is heavily laden with philosophical arguments and analysis. In that way it is different from other books that just report the evidence for the afterlife. The book discusses how well the survival hypothesis and the super-psi hypothesis fit the empirical data. It isn't written for the reader who is new to the subject so I would recommend such readers do some background reading first. Any of the following would be helpful to read before tackling "Immortal Remains":

• A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife by Victor J. Zammit:
• 21 Days into the Afterlife by Piero Calvi-Parisetti, MD
• "Is There an Afterlife?" by David Fontana.

There is also a page about the Evidence for the Afterlife on my web site.

You can get the flavor of Braude's thinking from the following on-line articles from SurvivalAfterDeath.org.uk:

• Out-of-Body Experiences and Survival After Death
• Drop-in Communicators
• Survival or Super-psi by Prof. Stephen Braude
• Super-psi or Survival A Response to Prof. Stephen Braude by Montague Keen
• Super-psi or Survival A Response to Prof. Stephen Braude Prof. by Peter Wadhams
• Survival or Super-psi A Response to Montague Keen and Peter Wadhams by Prof. Stephen Braude
• Further Response to Prof. Stephen Braude by Montague Keen
• A Further Response to Montague Keen by Prof. Stephen Braude

In "Immortal Remains", Braude raises a lot of ideas for discussion and tries to consider all sides of the issues. It is worthwhile reading the book to be exposed to those ideas. However another philosopher might not agree with every point Braude makes, so a reader who is not trained in philosophy should not accept everything in the book simply because of Braude's academic credentials.

Braude covers some of the best evidence (but not all of the best evidence) and gives many references.

The book covers the following types of evidence in detail:

• Drop-In Communicators
• Trance Mediumship
• Reincarnation and Possession
• Haunting
• Transplant Cases
• Out-of Body Experiences

It includes an analysis of the following cases:

• Cagliostro
• Runki's Leg
• Mrs. Piper
• Mrs. Leonard
• Sharada
• Patience Worth
• Bishen Chand
• Antonia
• Sumitra/Shiva
• Thompson-Gifford Case

Braude's reasoning is philosophical and somewhat complicated. Actually, I have to admit that I didn't follow how he came to some of his conclusions. Braude's main conclusion is that the evidence justifies the belief that some individuals survive for a time after death. He bases his conclusion on the argument that survival is slightly favored by the empirical evidence over super-psi but what really tips the scales in favor of survival is something which he calls "crippling complexity".

Crippling complexity is based on the assumption that there are certain factors that that interfere with psi, such as psychics getting in each other's way psychically, or adverse geomagnetic conditions. The more ways psi needs to be used to produce a result, the greater the susceptibility of that result is to this interference. Explaining the evidence for the afterlife using the super-psi hypothesis would often require that a psychic access information from multiple sources. The survival hypothesis explains the same phenomena with only one source of psychic information. Therefore super-psi is more susceptible to crippling complexity than the survival hypothesis. Braude likens it to the fact that obtaining information from several radio stations is more problematic than obtaining information from just one station. The more veridical information in a case, the stronger the effect would be. Therefore, cases with a lot of veridical information are better explained by the survival hypothesis than by super-psi.

Braude emphasizes that when analyzing the evidence for the afterlife, one must examine the empirical evidence both for and against. However, I didn't completely follow Braude's explanation about what empirical evidence there is that supports his theory of crippling complexity. Braude also didn't specify any means to quantify the effects of crippling complexity which I think would be helpful in justifying the claim that it actually pertains in cases of survival evidence.

However, it is interesting that his own theory, as he says, tips the scales in favor of survival. When analyzing of the evidence for survival, Braude advocates a psychological analysis of the people involved to assess whether or not super-psi is a reasonable interpretation of the case. If there are reasons to suspect that living people might benefit psychologically from a phenomenon, there is reason to suspect they might be using psi unconsciously to produce the phenomenon. I think it would be helpful in assessing Braude's analysis of the evidence for life after death if Braude was psychoanalyzed to determine if he benefited psychologically from his finding that his theory of crippling complexity tips the balance in favor of survival.

Another area where I had trouble following Braude's reasoning was when he concluded that super-psi is a better explanation than survival for the Patience Worth case. Patience Worth was a spirit who communicated literary works of the highest quality through a medium.

The samples of Patience Worth's work reprinted in "Immortal Remains" included this one:

Mrs. P.: The world is crying for proofs of immortality.

P.W.: To prove a fact, needst thou a book of words, when e'en the sparrow's chirp telleth thee more?

A tale unfolded by the Bishops' drudge may hold the meat for thousands, while dust and web are strong on his Eminence. The road to higher plains leadeth not along the steeple.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Super-psi does not Explain the Evidence for the Afterlife

Contents:

Summary
Introduction
Evidence for Super-psi
Evidence for Survival After Death

Summary:

Super-psi is the theory that the evidence for the afterlife is really caused by the unconscious psychic abilities of living persons. However, there is overwhelming evidence for the afterlife which cannot be explained by super-psi. Parapsychologists who believe in super-psi are probably suffering from perceptual bias.

Evidence For Survival that cannot be Explained by Super Psi:

• Spirits have to learn to communicate through certain forms of mediumship and some spirits are better learners than others. Super-psi is not a good explanation for this phenomenon.
  

• Other characteristics of spirit communication vary with the spirit not the medium or the sitters.
  

• Some haunting phenomena are not dependent on the presence of any single person, some of which are ended through spirit communication. Guy Lyon Playfair, William Roll, and Ian Stevenson all thought some poltergeist phenomenon were caused by spirits.
  

• Birthmarks: When a child remembers a past life, and has a birthmark at a location of an injury in the past life, it suggests the spirit body may carry information from one life to the next. It would be absurd to believe the fetus was psychic and was fulfilling a psychological need by unconsciously creating the birth mark.
  

• Shared Death Bed Visions, Shared Near-Death Experiences, and Multiple Witness Crisis Apparitions are not well explained by super-psi. You'd have to be a super-duper-psychic not just a super-psychic to induce hallucinations in other people.
  

• Near Death Experiences: Cases of NDEs where the experiencer has vivid realer-than-real experiences when there is no brain activity and no veridical information, cannot be explained as psi from a living person because there is no evidence of psi and no live person during the experience. These experiences cannot be explained as ESP during an abnormal brain state shortly before or after the experience. Near-death experiencers neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung, and military remote viewer Joe McMoneagle, who have special qualifications to judge the phenomenon, all believed their near-death experiences represented evidence for survival after death.
  

• Drop-in Communicators: A medium might be said to be fulfilling an unconscious psychological need when using super-psi to obtain information about deceased relatives of the sitters. However when the medium brings through spirits who are unrelated to the sitters and who communicate for purposes of their own, there is no psychological motivation. Super-psi cannot explain these cases.
  

• Cross Correspondences: When more than one medium spontaneously, without being prodded by an investigator, brings through parts of a message, and the message only makes sense when the parts are put together, this indicates that spirits are independent of any medium. This also shows that spirits have initiative and the ability to organize complex tasks. Super-psi cannot explain this.
  

• ESP is not Produced by the Brain: ESP is not limited by time or distance. It cannot be explained by the known laws of physics including quantum entanglement. Since human consciousness is capable of ESP, consciousness cannot be the result of any physical process in the brain. Anyone who acknowledges the reality of ESP has already admitted that consciousness is non-physical so they have no grounds upon which to deny survival of consciousness.
  

• More
  

The illogical argument for Super-psi

• Inaccurate and Unverifiable Control Spirits: When a trance medium brings through communications from a control spirit who gives inaccurate information, or who fishes for information, and who claims to be a person for whom there is no evidence of ever having lived, it is often said to be evidence of super-psi. This is not logical, super-psi is supposed to explain how a medium can provide accurate information about the deceased but in these cases the hypothetical super-psi is providing inaccurate information about the deceased.
  

Back to Contents

Introduction

When a psychic obtains information without the use of the bodily senses, it is called extra sensory perception (ESP). Some researchers incorrectly believe that all phenomena which seem to be evidence of spirits and the afterlife are really due to the psychic functioning of living persons. This type of psychic functioning is called super-ESP or super-psi. In the case of trance mediumship, the medium is presumed to obtain information using super-psi and then unconsciously impersonates or dramatizes the spirit. However, there is much evidence for survival after death that cannot be explained by super-psi.

Super-ESP is defined differently by different authors.

Hornell Hart in Survival Versus Super-psi defines super-ESP as

• The use of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and retrocognition to obtain information from anywhere in the world and from any time.
  

Hornell Hart's definition was proposed to explain how a medium might get information about a dead person needed to dramatize their personality when the information is not available through telepathy from the minds of the sitters. According to Hart's definition, the medium has access to any information in the conscious or unconscious mind of any person anywhere in the world or from any other source (such as events or documents) from any time in the past or future.

Neal Grossman in Further Thoughts on Super-psi: A conversation. defines superESP as:

• Non-propositional knowledge obtained through ESP.
  

  In the article, Grossman explains that knowledge about facts, "knowledge-that", is propositional knowledge. Other types of knowledge, "knowledge-how", such as skills, are non-propositional knowledge.
  

Grossman's definition of superESP explains how a psychic might use ESP to get the skills needed to dramatize the spirit of a deceased person. The ability to obtain facts through ESP doesn't explain how a psychic might obtain skills. To play a piece of music on the piano, you have to practice. No amount of reading about playing the piano can replace practice. One way skills are transmitted psychically is through mediumship. A medium in a trance may be able to speak in a language they never studied. In this case a spirit is controlling the medium's body and the skills come from the the spirit. Super-ESP, or super-psi, refers to the ability to obtain skills through psychic means from sources other than spirit influence. Some researchers who don't believe in the afterlife, believe super-psi allows a psychic to obtain skills and the psychic may demonstrate those skills while dramatizing the spirit.

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The Evidence for Super-Psi

There is empirical evidence that supports the super-psi hypothesis. Some of this evidence comes from psychology where it is known that multiple personality disorders or hypnosis may cause people to exhibit alternate personalities that behave like some of the spirit controls of trance mediums. Other evidence for super-psi comes from parapsychology where experiments have demonstrated that ESP is not limited by time, distance, or the complexity of a task.

However, much of the evidence said to show that super-psi is the explanation for evidence of the afterlife comes from trance and other forms of mediumship. Much of this evidence is based on spirit controls of mediums who act like an alternate personality of the medium and whose identity cannot be verified and/or who give incorrect information when asked questions about the spirits they claim to be communicating for or otherwise act inconsistently with the character they purport themselves to be.

There seems to be a flaw in this reasoning. Super-psi proponents point out the possibility of super-psi based on evidence from psychology and parapsychology. But, then they identify examples of flawed mediumship that don't live up to the capabilities of what they say super-psi can achieve. Yet super-psi proponents assert these cases of flawed mediumship are instances of super-psi in action and conclude that mediumship that does yield verifiable evidence of identity of the spirit is a result of super-psi.

It is hard to understand how this flawed mediumship could be due to super-psi. According to the believers in super-psi, super-psi should give verifiable and correct information. If these mediums were using super-psi, their mediumship should be verifiable and accurate. Since it is not, then it is either not super-psi or super-psi is not capable of accurately portraying a deceased individual. In either case this is not evidence that super-psi is the explanation for accurate mediumship.

In fact there is another explanation for some flawed mediumship and it is based on empirical evidence not convoluted logic.

One of the observations that helped convince Richard Hodgson that spirits exist and can communicate through mediums was made when he began to understand the source of errors in Mrs. Piper's mediumship. This happened when spirits began to communicate through writing rather than by using the control Phinuit as an intermediary. Hodgson learned that there are many conditions that caused confusion in the communicating spirits. Confusion was caused by unfamiliarity with the conditions that occur when communicating through a medium, and by the transition from physical life to spirit life, or by a long period of illness or mental turmoil preceding death. When spirits communicated by writing and controlled the medium themselves, their confusion was apparent. When spirits communicated indirectly through the spirit control Phinuit who spoke for them, confusion on the part of the communicating spirit was obscured because Phinuit was acting as an intermediary. This explains some of the failures of spirits to correctly answer questions aimed at proving their identity, and it explains some instances when Phinuit was inaccurate. These same phenomena are likely to explain other cases where flawed mediumship is purported to be evidence for super-psi. More information on Hodgson's research on the mediumship of Mrs. Piper can be found in the post Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Hodgson's observations weaken the case for super-psi because they provide an alternative to the super-psi hypothesis to explain flawed mediumship and they are based on empirical observations not supposition.

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The Evidence For Survival After Death

There are several phenomena that seem to demonstrate the existence of spirits and the afterlife which are not easily explained by super-psi and for which the survival hypothesis seems much more likely. This type of evidence often involves phenomena that are independent of any living person and often produce highly accurate information about a deceased individual. Furthermore, if someone is going to assert a phenomenon is due to super-psi, where a living person unconsciously imitates a spirit or simulates some type of afterlife phenomenon, he must consider what is known about how the unconscious acts. There must be some identifiable unconscious motivation or psychological need being fulfilled, otherwise the super-psi hypothesis becomes fatuous because it would be unfalsifiable and any phenomenon could be explained by it. For example, a medium giving a reading has a need to bring through information about the customer's deceased relatives and acquaintances. When the medium brings through spirits unrelated to the sitters it does not fulfill any psychological need. In many of the phenomena which are better explained by survival than super-psi, there is no identifiable unconscious motivation or psychological need being fulfilled. These phenomena include:

• Drop-in Communicators
  
• Cross Correspondences
  
• Spirits have to learn to communicate through certain forms of mediumship.
  
• Other characteristics of spirit communication vary with the spirit not the medium or the sitters.
  
• Haunting phenomena that are not dependent on the presence of any single person, some of which are ended through spirit communication.
  
• Birthmarks in children who remember past lives suggest the spirit body carries characteristics from one life to the next.
  
• Shared death bed visions, multiple witness crisis apparitions, and shared near death experiences.
  

Sometimes drop-in communicators who are unrelated to the sitters or the medium communicate through a medium. They do this for reasons of their own which have nothing to do with the sitters or the medium. This shows they are independent of any living person. Because of this, there is no identifiable unconscious motive or psychological need being fulfilled upon which to base belief in unconscious impersonation by the medium. Furthermore, the identity of the spirit is verifiable and they give accurate information about their life that is not known by the medium or sitters.

Back to Summary

The cross-correspondences were a form of message spontaneously received in parts by several mediums working independently. The parts of the message often consisted of obscure literary allusions unknown to the mediums and made no sense to any living person until put together after all the pieces had been received. This demonstrates that the communicator retained the specialized knowledge of literature he had when living, that he was still creative, intelligent, had initiative, had organizing and coordinating abilities and was independent of any living person. As with the drop-ins, there is no identifiable unconscious motive or psychological need being fulfilled upon which to base belief in unconscious impersonation by the mediums.

Back to Summary

Spirits have to learn to communicate through mediums. In certain forms of mediumship, such as direct voice, trance, or materializations, spirits demonstrate a learning process. They may have difficulty communicating on the first attempt and they usually communicate more clearly and more naturally after several attempts. This indicates the spirit exists and is learning to communicate through the techniques of mediumship.

Back to Summary

Richard Hodgson, who studied the medium Mrs. Piper, observed that characteristics of the communication varied with the communicators and did not depend on the sitters. The communicators seemed to be independent of any living person. Some spirits were never good at communicating. Some spirits were better than others at communicating names. All spirits had trouble communicating at first but improved with practice. This difficulty in communicating could be overcome with the assistance of other spirits. Spirits seemed to be confused for a few days just after death. Stray thoughts from the spirits (not the medium or sitter) seemed to leak through into the communications as if the spirit was having difficulty controlling the means of communication and private thoughts were being transmitted unintentionally. These thoughts reflected subjects that would be of particular concern to the spirit such as situations involving living relatives but which were unknown to the sitters. The spirits of young children recently deceased had clearer memories of early childhood than spirits who had died many years before. Spirits of young children recently deceased tended to communicate more clearly than adults recently deceased. Spirits responded to questions intended to prove their identity correctly but not always in ways the sitters expected. Sometimes the communicating spirit was unable to give information that was in the conscious mind of the sitter. On occasion, a spirit would not know the name of a sitter they were thought to know. Difficulty in communicating names was a common characteristic of the communication. If the investigator ran the sitting like a telepathy experiment, less evidential information was given through the medium. If he treated the spirit in a sensitive and soothing manner like an actual person communicating under adverse conditions, the communication was improved.

This is explained in more detail in Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Back to Summary

Communicating with spirits has eliminated haunting phenomena that had occurred with several successive residents of the same house who were unrelated and unknown to each other. The super-psi hypothesis can't explain this because it assumes there is a living person who is responsible for the phenomena. If the people in the house change, then according to the super-psi hypothesis, the phenomena should stop. It is stated in Chapter 23. Poltergeists of A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife by Victor Zammit, that the well regarded investigators, Guy Lyon Playfair, William Roll, and Ian Stevenson all believed some poltergeist phenomena was due to spirits.

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Children who remember past lives sometimes have birthmarks on parts of their bodies where they sustained an injury in the remembered past life. This is evidence for survival because it suggests spirit body carries characteristics from one life to the next. Invoking super-psi to explain this doesn't make sense. It is absurd to assume a fetus could be psychic and be fulfilling a psychological need by creating such birth marks.

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During shared death-bed visions (and other situations) multiple people who are not mediums see the same spirits. There are various ways this is demonstrated to be an objective phenomena and not a hallucination. Sometimes a person attending the dying sees the same spirits the dying person sees. There is also a case where the spirit who helped a dying person make the transition, described how they did that through a medium. When the investigators contacted a relative of the dying person they were able to get confirmation that the dying person saw the spirit and the spirit used an unusual phrase also reported by the medium. The medium and the dying person were unknown to each other but both reported the same phrase used by the spirit. This is evidence that the phenomena was independent of any living person. Several examples of confirmed death bed visions were discussed in the previous post: Death-Bed Visions Confirmed. Similar evidence comes from Shared Near Death Experiences and Multiple Witness Apparitions. When more than one person experiences the same phenomena, it becomes unlikely that the phenomena is dependent on one person because you would have to accept that the psychic abilities of one person could influence the perceptions of other people to cause these shared experiences.

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Near Death Experiences are among the best evidence for survival. They cannot be explained by super-psi or by any normal phenomena. All the purported "scientific" explanations for NDEs fall far short of explaining the full extent of NDEs. In many NDEs, shortly before, during, and after the experience, the brain is in a state incapable of supporting lucid consciousness so ESP from an abnormal brain state cannot explain NDEs. Super-psi is defined as some type of unconscious psychic functioning by a living person that simulates an afterlife phenomena. But, during many NDEs, the person has no brain function and is effectively dead, not living, so whatever happens during an NDE cannot be said to be due to super-psi. In some NDEs, there is no veridical content and those cases also cannot be said to be due to super-psi because there is no evidence of any psychic functioning. The lack of veridical information doesn't effect the validity of the experience as evidence for the afterlife because if a person with no brain function can have any type of conscious experience, even if it is a hallucination, that conscious experience by a person effectively dead is evidence for survival. Furthermore, even if a person without brain function can be shown to have "super-psi", a dead person being psychic ought to be considered evidence for survival. Additionally, near-death experiencers, neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung, and military remote viewer Joe McMoneagle, who have special qualifications to judge whether the phenomenon could be due to ESP caused by an abnormal brain state all believe their near-death experiences represented evidence for survival after death.

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ESP is not Produced by the Brain ESP is not limited by time or distance. It cannot be explained by the known laws of physics including quantum entanglement. Since human consciousness is capable of ESP, consciousness cannot be the result of any physical process in the brain. Anyone who acknowledges the reality of ESP has already admitted that consciousness is non-physical so they have no grounds upon which to deny survival of consciousness. The section ESP is not Produced by the Brain in Near-death Experiences and Afterlife Phenomena explains how the existence of ESP demonstrates that consciousness is non-physical and is not produced by the brain.

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These examples of phenomena which appear to be due to survival and cannot be easily explained by super-psi are very strong evidence for survival after death. Furthermore, once you obtain evidence for survival from one form of evidence, survival becomes the more parsimonious explanation for many other afterlife phenomena and super-psi becomes a poorer explanation for those phenomena as well.

More information on these forms of evidence for the afterlife can be found here.

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