Credible testimonies? Ruickbie excerpt #24

In observational research it is always going to be the problem that our powers of observation are imperfect. We know that, yet we must work with it. As Albert Einstein observed, “All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.”

However, it is not just a question of evidence, but also of theory. That the evidence appears to contradict mainstream physics is often the greatest reason for its rejection, sometimes without even considering the evidence at all. But as physicist Henry Stapp contends, when considering the question of postmortem survival: 

 Physicist Henry P. Stapp         

Rational science-based opinion on this question must be based on the content and quality of the empirical data, not on a presumed incompatibility of such phenomena with our contemporary understanding of the workings of nature.  

Stapp is right, of course, but if Scrooge does not even trust his own senses, then he is unlikely to trust the good sense of others. At root, his disbelief in Marley’s ghost is because ghosts should not exist, therefore some other explanation must be sought, such as indigestion. This means that we must also look at what the evidence implies for the dominant models of consciousness in mind–brain dependency and reality in physical materialism, the theory that everything has a causal dependence on, or can be reduced to, physical processes – a mechanical universe in which our sense of ‘I’ is just an incidental puff of smoke.

The Scrooge Paradox – “seeing is not believing” – is why we have to use more than one witness, and more than one case. Even the best single case demonstrating the survival of consciousness after death may only be some wild exception, but when there are a hundred such cases, or a thousand, then the evidential balance shifts in favor of the fact.

For example, since Heim’s foray into the subject in the nineteenth century, NDEs have now been extensively studied. Forty-two studies involving more than 2,500 NDE cases were published from 1975 to 2005, and, despite differences in methodology, were consistent in their descriptions of the content of NDEs.196 Extensive research over time is now able to present similar findings on ADCs, OBEs, deathbed visions, reincarnation (Stevenson amassed 3,000 cases alone), etc., showing patterns in large numbers of cases.

Using large numbers of cases also means that flawed witness testimony (lying, fraud and deception) is averaged out in the same way as the wildly exceptional, and what we are left with are probabilities. The balance of probabilities is usually the lower form of evidence required in civil cases, but where probability is high then it must also push into the “beyond reasonable doubt” category, since doubt is only a question concerning the probability of something.

This is the golden test: can a case demonstrate that the experiencer received information that would otherwise have been impossible to know or guess?

We have had credible witnesses present reliable testimony. In many cases this has been corroborated by other witnesses, who have either experienced the phenomenon at other times or at the same time. In addition, we have strong supporting evidence from incidents in which information was relayed that could not, under the circumstances, have been known to the percipient. Beyond that we have statistical analyses and meta-analyses that show patterns in human experience that are indicative of a real effect. Not only is this convincing evidence, but it rules out the alternative explanations, such as deliberate fraud, misperception, psychopathological hallucination, telepathy between the living, and environmental recording as being able to account for all of the cases.

Even Scrooge was finally convinced by the evidence of his eyes – made easier by a religious context that required ghosts and an afterlife to put them in. According to some, materialistic science has no room for such immaterial and autonomous intelligences, forcing Scrooge to re-consider the matter of indigestion yet again; but according to others, science has already moved beyond materialism. 

 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.