Logically, if we are going to become ghosts after death, then we must have this ghost potential now; and, if ghosts after death, then why not also before life? Therefore, ‘ghosts,’ as an immaterial identity format, or IIF (that will be our working definition), must also be implicated in things such as mediumship, near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences and even reincarnation, expanding our evidential base and scope for theoretical modelling.
When Scrooge sees the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley, he finds that Marley in death is just like Marley in life. Scrooge might not believe in him, but he does recognize him. For the survival of consciousness after the death of the physical body to be recognizable as such, then it, too, must involve the experiences, personality traits, and self-awareness that characterized the person in the living body, that strange sense of ‘I’ that we have floating inside our heads.
However, if Scrooge did not believe in Marley, will one piece of evidence be enough? Although William James famously asserted in connection with the supernatural that one ‘white crow’ is sufficient to prove that not all crows are black, which is entirely correct, the existence of one white crow did not change Scrooge’s mind, and has not changed our materialist paradigm. What we must do is gather a flock of white crows.
The ‘best’ evidence, then, is not one single piece of evidence – we have plenty of that, and herein also lies a problem. The sheer amount of evidence has become too much for the average person to sift through, too diverse in its content to grasp, too contested to judge easily; simply, all too much to take in. This cognitive challenge defaults to denial. We need to find structure in the evidence, if we are going to be able to make sense of it.
The way in which apparitions present themselves to us tells us something about them and in doing so will raise questions about the nature of reality. Dickens again provided us with an interesting structure in A Christmas Carol. The ghost of Marley opens a supernatural journey involving “The Ghost of Christmas Past,” “The Ghost of Christmas Present,” and “The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.” We tend to think of ghosts as things of the past, yet, if anything of ourselves should survive physical death, then it must also be capable of spanning temporality. This creates a new way of approaching the question of survival that will lead us to a new conclusion.
All of what we will look at will seem outrageous, individually, but taken together will form something more than the sum of its parts. The best evidence must also include a theory. It is a frequent counter-argument against parapsychology in general that it has no theory. Importantly, the theory should not, like the carthorse, come before the facts; however, simply arranging the facts has led me to my theory, and it is important to show them in that order to demonstrate how I have arrived at my conclusions.
As often claimed, does the evidence need to be ‘extraordinary?’ We cannot even define what that should mean. Is the evidence for anything in science actually ‘extraordinary?’ And what if we only had ‘ordinary’ evidence, would that be ruled out? A common standard for deciding cases where the stakes are high – life after death would seem to qualify – is found in the legal system: it must be “beyond reasonable doubt.” The problem is, that like ‘extraordinary evidence,’ ‘reasonable doubt’ is a circular definition and law courts have conspicuously refused to define it.
In a rare attempt to make ‘reasonable doubt’ understandable to jurors, the Federal Judicial Center made the following instruction:
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you firmly convinced of the defendant’s guilt. There are very few things in this world that we know with absolute certainty, and in criminal cases the law does not require proof that overcomes every possible doubt.
It could be argued that “firmly convinced” is just as circular as “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but the crucial clarification is that proof does not need to answer “every possible doubt.”
Are Scrooge’s doubts reasonable? He does not believe in Marley’s being a ghost because he believes that “a slight disorder of the stomach” may cause hallucinations. It should be easy to establish that slight disorders do not cause much, apart from wind perhaps, and certainly not realistic, interactive hallucinations, therefore, Scrooge’s doubts are not reasonable, but still he persists in them. We cannot define exactly what a reasonable doubt is, but we can show when a specific doubt is groundless.
What sort of witnesses will we be dealing with? What type of evidence is being presented? Is it direct, circumstantial, primary or secondary, or hearsay? In most cases we will be dealing with eyewitnesses giving direct evidence, that is, “personal experience through their senses.” In the same way that witnesses giving direct evidence are not dismissed by the court as repeating anecdotes, so our witnesses should not be accused of the same: what we are dealing with is testimony. Witness testimony has its own drawbacks, which is why we will also seek corroboration and supporting evidence. We will also hear from expert witnesses with specialized knowledge in the matter.
At the outset of this project, I believe that the mind is simply a product of the brain and that nothing of the person can continue after death. But I have some niggling doubts because I am not unaware of the evidence. As I said, I am like Scrooge, too, but I am going to see if I can prove myself wrong. This, in itself, is a good scientific principle, what Sir Karl Popper called ‘falsification.’
Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” 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.
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