The rallying cry of many parapsychologists is that they have discovered indisputable evidence for paranormal, or "psi", phenomena inexplicable by modern science which has either been ignored or denied by the scientific community at large on the purely dogmatic grounds that psi does not fit into the preconceived notions and prejudices of modern scientists. These parapsychologists often speak of a forthcoming scientific revolution comparable to Copernicus' discovery that the sun is the center of the solar system. Antony Flew argues that the charges of a priori dogmatism are unjustified:
It is simply grotesque to complain, in the absence of any such decisive falsifying evidence, that these appeals to... the named laws of established physics are exercises in apriori dogmatism. For what "apriori" means is: prior to and independent of experience. But in... these kinds of cases we have an enormous mass of experience supporting our present beliefs and our present incredulities (Flew 138-9).
There is no basis for the conclusion that parapsychology is going to lead some kind of scientific revolution. Historical figures like Copernicus and Darwin painstakingly amassed several different types of solid evidence to support their theories; Einstein's predictions from relativity were based on a scientific theory and subsequently verified by experiment. Yet, when we analyze parapsychology, we find no such hints of a forthcoming revolution. First, to quote Flew, "the long sought repeatable demonstration of any psi phenomena seems to be as far away as ever" (140). A study by the National Research Council in 1988, published as Enhancing Human Performance, surveyed many areas of research to determine how to improve individual and group performance (Frazier 150). The NRC report's section on "Paranormal Phenomena" concluded: "The committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena" (Frazier 151). Second, unlike Einstein's theories, "no one has been able to think up any halfway plausible theory accounting for the occurrence of any psi phenomena" (Flew 140). Finally, parapsychologists offer no positive criteria for what kind of event should be categorized as an instance of paranormal phenomena. As Flew puts it, "all psi terms refer rather to the absence of any means or mechanism, or at any rate to the absence of any normal and understood means" (140).
Clearly parapsychological evidence in general is wanting. However, we must evaluate parapsychological evidence directly cited to be most consistent with survival. Reports of apparitions can be explained in terms of hoaxes or hallucinations. Photographic evidence for apparitions is dubious because ghosts tend to look remarkably like double exposures ("Ghost" 293). Furthermore, apparitions can be explained in terms of hallucinations because:
There is a tendency to 'see' faces and human forms even in quite random shapes... it is possible that perceptual creations of this kind are occasionally elicited in states of fear, and there do seem to be social factors determining to some degree the forms that ghosts take... [the] lack of consistent evidence prevents general acceptance of ghosts (293-4).
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are also cited as parapsychological evidence for survival. The former parapsychologist Susan Blackmore sums up the results of investigations into OBEs: "There is no real evidence for psi in OBEs, there is no evidence of anything leaving the body, and there is no evidence of effects caused by out-of-body persons" (Blackmore, "Elusive" 132). Experiments designed to detect a double during OBEs have yielded negative results:
The size of any effect detected has decreased with increasing experimental sophistication. Most recent studies have used magnetometers, thermistors, ultraviolet and infra-red detectors, and so on... but no reliable detector has yet been found (Blackmore, "Oxford" 572).
Another type of experiment was designed to determine if OBE subjects can retrieve information from a remote location. Blackmore concludes that
The experimental evidence is weak. Subjects have been asked to view target letters, numbers or pictures, placed in distant rooms... [and] other studies have tried to discover whether subjects seem to be looking from a specific location during OBEs; however, the results have been inconclusive. Generally these studies provide very mixed results and it is not clear that any paranormal process is involved (Blackmore, "Oxford" 572).
It seems that the evidence is more consistent with a psychological model of OBEs:
According to this model, "if the OBE occurs when the normal model of reality is replaced by a bird's-eye view constructed from memory, then people who have OBEs should be better able to use such views in memory and in imagery" (Blackmore, "Elusive" 133). Blackmore conducted some experiments and found that "OBEers were better at switching viewpoints, were especially good at imagining scenes from a position above their heads, and were more likely to recall dreams in a bird's-eye perspective" (133).
Peter Geach argues that evidence for a "double" is weak because
There are supposed to be a lot of "subtle bodies" around, and physicists have a lot of delicate apparatus; yet physicists not engaged in psychical research are never bothered by the interference of "subtle bodies"... The discoverers of X-rays and electrons did not appeal to the lay public, but to physicists, to study the evidence; and so long as physicists... refuse to take "subtle bodies" seriously, a study of evidence for them by a layman like myself would be a waste of time (Geach 226).Other phenomena often cited as evidence for survival are near-death experiences or NDEs. Survival proponents argue that because the core features of NDEs are almost invariably reported by experients, NDEs constitute evidence for an objective afterlife reality. However, these core features can be explained by physiological models because the same brain processes occur at the onset of dying (e.g., oxygen deprivation, endorphin release, and random neural firing) in those who undergo NDEs, thus their subjective experiences should be similar (Blackmore, "Dying" 261).
Another argument is that NDEs are real because they feel real, but this does not constitute evidence that NDEs reflect an external reality anymore than the fact that hallucinations feel real constitutes evidence that they are real. Some researchers claim that information has been obtained in NDEs by means other than sensory perception. The accuracy of descriptions of the environment in NDEs may be based on semiconscious perceptions of the environment prior to the breakdown of perception which are incorporated into hallucinatory imagery during NDEs. There is no corroboration for claims of perception outside of the immediate environment of the patient or accurate perception in NDEs in the blind, thus the paranormal argument does not constitute evidence for survival (125-133). Finally, the fact that people undergo positive personality transformations after NDEs does not indicate a mystical experience of an afterlife. A study conducted by Kenneth Ring found that personality transformations occurred in people who come medically close to death regardless of whether or not they experienced an NDE, suggesting that the transformation resulted from facing death rather than an NDE (248-9).
Some findings of NDE research are more consistent with physiological and psychological models. None of the patients who report NDEs are brain dead because brain death is irreversible (Beyerstein 46). First, NDEs only occur in one-third of all cases where there is a near-death crisis (Ring 194). Second, the details of NDEs depend on the individual's personal and cultural background (Ring 195). Third, physiological and psychological factors affect the content of the NDE. Noises, tunnels, bright lights, and other beings are more common in physiological conditions directly affecting the brain state, such as cardiac arrest and anesthesia, whereas euphoria, mystical feelings, life review, and positive transformation can occur when people simply believe they are going to die (Blackmore, "Dying" 44-45). Fourth, the core features of NDEs are found in drug-induced and naturally occurring hallucinations (Siegel 174). The OBE can be induced by the anesthetic ketamine (Blackmore, "Dying" 170). A tunnel experience is a common form of psychedelic hallucination (Siegel 175-6). All NDE stages have occurred in sequence under the influence of hashish (Blackmore, "Dying" 42-3). Fifth, a build-up of carbon dioxide in the brain will induce NDEs (Blackmore, "Dying" 53-4). Sixth, the panoramic life review closely resembles a form of temporal lobe epilepsy (206). There are even cases where epileptics have had OBEs or even seen apparitions of dead friends and relatives during their seizures (206). Seventh, computer simulations of random neural firing based on eye-brain mapping of the visual cortex have produced the tunnel and light characteristic of NDEs (84). Finally, NDEs can be induced by direct electrical stimulation of brain areas surrounding the Sylvian fissure in the right temporal lobe (Morse 104).
Other findings are flatly inconsistent with survival. The tunnels described in NDEs vary considerably in precise form. If NDEs reflected an external reality, one would expect consistency in the form of tunnel experiences reported (Blackmore, "Dying" 77). Furthermore, NDE cases have been reported where the patient has identified the "beings of light" as the medical staff making resuscitation attempts (227). Finally, the fact that "children are more likely to see living friends than those who have died" in NDEs strongly suggests that NDEs are not experiences of an external afterlife reality (Blackmore, "Near-Death" 36).
Past-life memories are also considered evidence for survival, particularly reincarnation. There has been evidence accumulated by parapsychologists where people provide accurate historical details when they describe "memories" of "past lives" while under hypnosis. This evidence, however, is more consistent with an alternative explanation: cryptomnesia. Melvin Harris describes this phenomena:
To understand cryptomnesia we must think of the subconscious mind as a vast, muddled storehouse of information. This information comes from books, newspapers, and magazines; from lectures, television, and radio; from direct observation and even from overheard scraps of conversation. Under normal circumstances most of this knowledge is not subject to recall, but sometimes these deeply buried memories are spontaneously revived. They may reemerge in a baffling form, since their origins are completely forgotten (Harris 19).There are numerous cases where information from past-life regressions has been traced back to such mundane causes upon further investigation (Edwards, "Introduction" 9).
Another form of past-life memories does not involve hypnotic regression. "Memories" of previous lives spontaneously occur during waking life in cases investigated in India by Ian Stevenson. Stevenson collected cases where children generally between two and four year old began talking about their "previous lives" and even their previous death (Edwards, "Introduction" 11). Usually the memories are gone by age eight. In several cases, the persons the children claimed to be in a previous life did in fact exist and many descriptions given were accurate (11).
Stevenson dismissed the possibility of fraud because he saw no motive for it. Ian Wilson points out that many children claimed to have belonged to a higher caste, thus a motivation for better living conditions is obvious (Edwards, "Introduction" 12). In one case a boy wanted a third of his "past-life father's" land (12). Stevenson hired David Barker, who was doing research for an anthropology dissertation in India, to help analyze some of his cases and Barker found that there was not a single case of convincing evidence of any paranormal factor (12). Stevenson also hired the lawyer Champe Ransom to analyze some cases. Ransom concluded:
Stevenson's cases then do not amount to even half-way decent evidence. In only 11 of the approximately 1,111 rebirth cases had there been no contact between the two families before an investigation was begun. Of those 11, seven were seriously flawed in some respect. What this means is that in the great majority of cases, the two families had met years before a scientific investigation began, and that the likelihood of independent testimony was quite small. The rebirth cases are anecdotal evidence of the weakest sort (Edwards, "Introduction" 14).Mediums are often cited as evidence for survival; however, most material of this sort is dubious. To quote Peter Geach, "There are cases, as well-authenticated as any, in which the medium convincingly enacted the part of X and told things that 'Only X could have known' when X was in fact alive and normally conscious" (Geach 231).
In all these cases, it is important to realize that alternative explanations do not have to be proven. Rather, if certain phenomena are to be considered indicative of survival, survival must be the only consistent hypothesis capable of explaining the evidence. Otherwise the survival arguments have no force: "If any explicable reason can be supposed, then the claim vanishes, however bizarre the event, for the onus is always to show that the event is paranormal" (Gregory 577).
While the parapsychological evidence for survival is insufficent, the physiological evidence for extinction is more than sufficient. The complexity of the mind is proportional to the complexity of the brain (Beyerstein 45). Irrevocable brain damage can cause mental abilities to be permanently lost (45). If I stimulate your brain with an electric probe, I can cause you to experience a wide variety of mental states. If you ingest or inject any of several different types of drugs, you can predictably alter your own mental states (45). If a patient's corpus callosum is severed, separating the two hemispheres of his brain and allowing them to function virtually independently, two mental systems emerge (45). A variety of psychological tests corroborate the existence of two streams of consciousness demonstrably unaware of the contents of the other (Parfit 248). To give a humorous example, "one of the patients complained that sometimes, when he embraced his wife, his left hand pushed her away" (Parfit 249). These are just a few examples from neuroscience of the dependence of consciousness on the brain. We know that altering the brain's chemistry can cause drastic personality changes. Schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease are dramatic examples of mind-brain dependence. If you are thinking of suicide, don't go to a psychiatrist, go to a pharmacologist: A combination of an antidepressant and tryptophan should banish all thoughts of ending your life (Hooper 171).
Memory, which is necessary for a sense of self-identity, "apparently depends on a combination of neurotransmitter synthesis and new nerve-fiber growth" in the brain (Baddeley). Thus, "it is difficult beyond measure to understand how [memories] could survive after the destruction of the living brain... their original locus" (Lamont 76).
Survival proponents who think that the brain is an instrument of the soul use arguments like the following in an attempt to reconcile physiology and the soul:
A colored glass... [has] only a transmissive function in respect to the light that shines through [it], since [it does not itself] create the rays. The same may be said of an organ, which transforms already existing air into music. In a similar fashion the human body may act as a transmission apparatus for the supernatural soul (Lamont 98).
Corliss Lamont makes it apparent that this rejoinder has no force:
A severe injury to the head, for instance, may change an ordinarily cheerful man into a sullen and morose one subject to sudden fits of homicidal mania. If the brain and body are simply the instruments of the soul, we have to say in such a case that this personality is really still brimming over with joy and benevolence, but that unfortunately these sentiments can only express themselves in dark glances, in peevish complaints and in violent attacks (Lamont 100).
Lamont continues:
Suppose... [he] becomes definitely insane... [and] is convinced he is Napoleon... Are we to say that his real personality is still normal, that his soul is still thinking clearly and healthily, and that as soon as he gets rid of his body by dying he will come to his senses? (100).
The consequences of the instrument theory are absurd. Throughout aging, specific mental abilities may be irrevocably lost one-by-one,
Yet if instead of the senses being destroyed separately and gradually by disease or accident, they are all simultaneously destroyed by death, the dualistic immortalist asks us to believe that they will go on in some other state with unimpaired, if not greatly improved, capabilities! (Lamont 102).Paul Edwards asks: "How does the complete destruction of the brain bring about a cure that has so far totally eluded medical science?" (Edwards, "Dependence" 296).
One last point to make about the implausbility of survival given our knowledge of our evolutionary heritage is that
It is patently absurd to expect that all the myriad specimens of all the myriad species of life from the beginning of evolution are to go on existing forever in another world. Yet we are led into just such absurdities when we once start relying on the dualistic theory that man has an immortal soul... that can exist independently of the body (Lamont 117).Neuroscientists agree that the facts cited above are indeed facts. Furthermore, scientists (and laymen) outside of neuroscience do not dispute that cases demonstrating the dependence of consciousness on the brain are valid. On the other hand, "most scientists outside of the parapsychological field do not accept the existence of psychic phenomena ("Parapsychology"). Even within parapsychology we find few parapsychologists who believe that psi is indicative of survival of bodily death. John Beloff states that
It should not be thought... that all parapsychologists are necessarily committed to a dualist interpretation of the mind-body relationship. At the present time especially, many exponents prefer to think of psi as essentially a function of the brain, or of some special brain mechanism or process (Beloff 586).In other words, even most parapsychologists accept the dependence of consciousness of the brain! This leaves the survival hypothesis in an awkward position, since paranormal phenomena are the best source of evidence that survival proponents have to offer. Even if one is inclined to believe that paranormal phenomena are best explained in terms of survival, the existence of such phenomena is doubtful because "a century after the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, there is still a total lack of consensus regarding the actuality of any parapsychological phenomena" (Beloff 586). This lack of consensus is due to the lack of evidence for psi:
With the single exception of hypnosis, not even the existence of one of the phenomena originally classed as supernatural, or later as paranormal, has achieved general acceptance among the scientific community; not one demonstrable, or repeatable, paranormal effect has been discovered; not one characteristic or law has been found which turns up in all those experiments that claim a positive result (Scott 579).
I think I have presented a fairly accurate representation of the evidence on both sides of this issue, and in weighing that evidence the scales are clearly tipped in favor of extinction. Given this conclusion, it is irrational to take Unamuno's position and "fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory" (Lamont 211). We should not allow our emotions to cloud our judgment. As Corliss Lamont says,
We do not ask to be born; and we do not ask to die. But born we are and die we must. We come into existence and we pass out of existence. And in neither case does high-handed fate await our ratification of its decree (Lamont 278).
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(C) Copyright 1995 by Keith Augustine
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