After death contacts: Nahm excerpt #3

Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: "Typical cases of after-death contacts (ADCs) comprise the unexpected perception of an apparition of a deceased individual who appears briefly and then vanishes again. It may be perceived collectively by several percipients, including animals, thus displaying a degree of objectivity or at least of intersubjectivity. Frequently, the apparition may convey a message to the percipients, for instance providing comfort. Other examples concern crisis apparitions, in which people perceive apparitions of people who indicate that they have just died or are on the verge of dying—but without the experiencer knowing this through any normal means. Here is an impressive example:

A dog, two adults, and five children were together in a room at 6 pm in May. Suddenly the dog began to bark loudly and jumped towards the corner with the stove. The seven people followed the dog’s movements with their eyes. In the corner, they saw an apparition of a child in a shirt that looked like a boy who was a friend of the family and often came to play. The apparition started to float above them, leaving the room through an open window. The dog followed the moving apparition through the room, continuously barking fervently. The episode lasted for about 15 seconds. Later in the evening, the family learned that this boy had died at about the time they saw his apparition.

"There is a huge body of literature on ADCs, but the best documented cases can still be found in monumental treatises published by founding members of the Society of Psychical Research. They comprise different subcategories of ADCs including collectively perceived apparitions. A later classical analysis of the phenomenology of apparitions has established that there are virtually no detectable differences between apparitions of the living and apparitions of the dead, which leads to the logical inference that the dead might be living as well. Many ADCs also occur in dreams, and in modern times, even malfunctions of electronic devices that appear meaningful are sometimes interpreted as ADCs. A recent study has confirmed that ADCs are widespread and cannot easily be regarded as hallucinations.

"An intriguing subcategory of ADCs consists of near-death visions (NDVs). These ADCs are reported by the dying. Just as with ADCs perceived by healthy individuals, the dying may perceive a bright light that appears somehow related to a deceased spirit, hear inexplicably beautiful music of unearthly quality, and most importantly, see apparitions of deceased loved ones. But the dying typically perceive apparitions who come to prepare them for their death, often with the apparent purpose of guiding them into the afterlife realm. The experiencers are usually still conscious and may tell the bystanders of their visions in real time or later. Sometimes, the dying even report having met individuals in NDVs whose death was unknown to them at the time.

"From the perspective of studying survival, NDVs are of specific significance because they don’t only comprise apparitions of the deceased, but also concern the dying themselves. NDVs even occur in patients who have been nonresponsive for months or years because of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease that appeared to have destroyed their brains. Still, such patients can sometimes display a sudden and unexpected reemergence of lucid mental clarity, recognize family members again, talk with them, report an NDV, and then die. These drastic experiences indicate that NDVs, which occur in an identical manner in patients dying with healthy brains, might be occurring in relative independence of the precise status of the prevailing brain chemistry.

"This assumption is supported by large-scale studies performed on NDVs. In these investigations, Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson in At the Hour of Death (1977) assessed the hypothesis that NDVs are hallucinations caused by disturbed brain functions and psychological needs shortly before dying. In three surveys, they mailed a total of 15,000 questionnaires to physicians and nurses in the USA and addressed hundreds of Indian medical staff members in person. Hundreds of reports about NDVs were returned. Among visions concerning apparitional figures alone (excluding visions of otherworldly landscapes, etc.), Osis and Haraldsson followed up more than 600 cases with additional questionnaires and telephone interviews. They tested the following postulates:

·    Patients taking medication prone to inducing hallucinations and/or suffering from high fever shortly before dying should report more NDVs than others.

·    Patients dying in a state of stress and anxiety should report more NDVs than those dying calmly.

·    Patients dying rather unexpectedly and in the expectation of recovery should report more visions related to this world whereas patients dying in the expectation of death should report more otherworldly elements including deceased individuals.

·    NDVs should vary greatly from individual to individual, being shaped by personal memories, hopes, religious afterworld beliefs, etc.

"Interestingly, none of these postulates was confirmed. Osis and Haraldsson concluded that the hallucination model is therefore not as likely as it might appear at first sight. Rather, NDVs display an autonomy of their own that seems largely independent from the mental dispositions of dying individuals and their brain chemistry. From the survival perspective, this is exactly what one would expect. This is also confirmed by the many collective and reciprocal NDVs on record in which concordant observations were reported by two or more witnesses.

"Now to the survival score of ADCs including NDVs: The investigability of a single case of a typical ADC is “relatively low”, thus giving a score of (2). This is because most ADCs occur spontaneously and privately, and only occur for a very short time, perhaps for a few seconds, and all this perhaps only once in a lifetime for some people. Hence, it is extremely difficult to study and document ADCs in real time. They can usually be assessed only in retrospect. But as the above-mentioned classical treatises on ADCs and studies of NDVs demonstrate, retrospective assessments still allow substantial evidence for survival to be gathered, and therefore, one cannot consider the possibility of investigating a given ADC entirely “low”. It is “relatively low”.

The repeatability of ADCs including NDVs in the sense of their multiple occurrences over time and space that allow their investigation is, however, “relatively high” (3). These experiences occur on a regular basis all over the globe, and because many people live and die on it, they occur frequently. However, because of their unpredictability and ephemeral nature, the repeatability of ADCs cannot be considered “very high”.

The quantitative strength, or complexity and detailedness, of ADCs including NDVs is “relatively low” (2). The observed details often suffice to identify a deceased individual and to understand the conveyed message; but on the whole, this is obviously not much.

The qualitative strength of ADCs including NDVs is likewise “relatively low” (2). Obviously, the conditions of observation as well as the witness testimonies of ADCs are often not satisfactory. ADCs frequently come as a complete surprise, even on the sickbed. Also, most are only reported by a sole witness, or at best by a few individuals. And even in these collective cases, the witnesses may report divergent observations: Tom may report having seen a bright light, but Jerry may in addition report having seen a human shape in this light. Hence, ADCs imply a degree of subjectivity even in collectively perceived cases, which impedes the formation of an objective judgment about the witness testimonies. These aspects of ADCs are also relevant for their interpretation in terms of survival. On theoretical grounds, it is often not easy to determine whether an apparition perceived only fleetingly was created by the deceased individual him- or herself or was a hallucination of the living percipient. All this contributes to rendering the qualitative strength of ADCs “relatively low”.

Nevertheless, the overall relevance of ADCs including NDVs for survival after permanent bodily death is obviously “high” (4). 

 

Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.

Best evidence criteria: Nahm excerpt #2

Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: "In order to determine the best available evidence for human survival from a contemporary perspective, I have considered 10 survival phenomena. These are listed below, roughly following the occurrence of significant cases over the course of history.

1.    After-death contacts including near-death visions

     2.    Hauntings

3.    Poltergeist phenomena

4.    Physical mediumship

5.    Mental mediumship

6.    Near-death experiences

7.    Hypnotic past-life regression

8.    Cases of the reincarnation type

9.    Instrumental transcommunication

10. Terminal lucidity

"I used five criteria to determine the evidential strength of these survival phenomena.

1.  Investigability: Possibilities for investigating a single case; duration of the phenomena; accessibility for researchers; potential numbers of independent eyewitnesses.

2.  Repeatability: Multiple occurrences of similar cases at different times and locations; possibilities for involving different researchers.

3.  Quantitative strength: Complexity or richness in details of the provided survival evidence in single cases and case collections.

4.  Qualitative strength: Clarity of observational conditions and reliability of eyewitness testimonies; degree of objectivity vs. subjectivity; (un-)ambiguity of the phenomena with regard to being interpreted in terms of survival but not by alternative models.

5.  Relevance: Degree of the phenomena’s relatedness in meaning to human survival after permanent bodily death.

"For all survival phenomena, I assigned each criterion a score of appropriateness on a simple scale running from 'low' (1), 'relatively low' (2), relatively high' (3), to high' (4). The best evidence for survival from today’s perspective was determined by comparing the sums of these scores for every survival phenomenon, their 'survival scores'.

The survival phenomena that attained the highest scores were cases of the reincarnation type, mental mediumship, after-death contacts including near-death visions, and near-death experiences. This is hardly surprising because these are precisely the survival phenomena that have been most frequently discussed in the more recent literature on survival. Hence, I will only consider these four survival phenomena in more detail below. In the following sections, I describe how the survival scores of the most promising survival phenomena were determined.

 

Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.

Studying survival phenomena: Nahm excerpt #1

Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: "The question of whether human consciousness can survive permanent bodily death is one of the most tantalizing enigmas of our existence. Unfortunately, most scientists shy away from addressing this enigma. Many seem to think that there is not much to investigate because it has already been shown that consciousness is produced by brain chemistry and will dissolve as soon as neuronal activity ceases. However, I am convinced that this notion is inappropriate for two reasons.

"First, from a theoretical perspective, nothing in physics and chemistry predicts that protons, electrons, atoms, or molecules will produce something like consciousness. Therefore, trying to explain consciousness in physicochemical terms amounts to backward reasoning from the start. In fact, William James, the founder of American psychology, argued more than 100 years ago that it is principally impossible to prove that brain chemistry produces consciousness—all we can observe are 'concomitant variations' of brain states and states of consciousness. Accordingly, many modern neuroscientists speak of 'neuronal correlates' to states of consciousness in order to avoid fostering the unwarranted notion that consciousness is produced by neuronal activity. Indeed, there is not even a strict parallelism between brain states and states of consciousness.

"Second, from a practical perspective, many scientists have already investigated phenomena at the frontiers of knowledge that question the physicochemical “production hypothesis” of consciousness. These phenomena have chiefly been studied in research disciplines known as psychical research or parapsychology. The phenomena themselves are usually referred to as telepathy (conveying knowledge or feelings from one individual to another without using the usual sensory channels), clairvoyance (perceiving information or events without using the usual sensory channels), precognition and retrocognition (perceiving future or past events), and psychokinesis (psychically affecting matter). These psi phenomena occur comparably rarely, but they do occur and they are perfectly natural. Millions of people have experienced them in everyday life.

"Likewise, phenomena suggestive of survival have been reported since time immemorial. Hence, these experiences can be studied using standard methods of science. More than that: Given that survival is one of the most fundamental questions facing mankind, it is the duty of scientists to study survival-related phenomena, and to do so with an impartial spirit. Among those who have often insisted that studying such psi phenomena including survival should constitute the most important function of science was the renowned biologist, philosopher and parapsychologist Hans Driesch (1867–1941). He furthermore advocated for:

the joy in tracing specifically those prospects the facticity of which has hardly yet been explored, perhaps only foreboded. Only new discoveries take us further, and the ‘newer’ they are, the more do they take us further. Hence my interest in parapsychology.

"In many of his writings, Driesch emphasized that, in natural science, empirical data and arguments are of foremost significance. He stressed that when we discover evidence for phenomena that don’t fit into the currently prevailing world model, we must stay open to revising this model rather than disregarding inconvenient data. Driesch proposed three guiding principles for the study of psi phenomena that are as topical today as they were almost 100 years ago: 

• Do not regard any fact “impossible” in an aprioristic way.
• Do not believe that new facts must necessarily be explained by means of explanations already established.
• Try to construct bridges to established scientific disciplines.

"However, it seems that only a few scientists shared such a rationale. One of them was psychiatrist Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, who considered the study of spontaneous psychical phenomena occurring in everyday life exceptionally important. He counted survival phenomena among these. In a Presidential Address at a convention of the Parapsychological Association in 1968, Stevenson presented three arguments for his desire to develop improved methods for the study of spontaneous cases in parapsychology in addition to performing quantitative laboratory experiments: 

• Spontaneous cases provide some of the best evidence we have for psi phenomena.
• They often provide much richer information than the outcomes of laboratory experiments.
• They pertain to everyday life and have a profound influence on the beliefs and actions of the people who come into contact with them.

"Stevenson was convinced that the withdrawal of many parapsychologists from the study of spontaneous cases had resulted in a loss of public support and interest in parapsychology. Although he admitted that studying such cases could have methodological weaknesses, he insisted that the appropriate answer would involve improving investigation methods rather than abandoning their study.

"I fully agree with Stevenson’s appraisal, while adding that the possibilities for studying and documenting spontaneous cases, including survival phenomena, have improved considerably since 1968. Of course, they will continue to improve. Therefore, the aims of the present BICS contest to identify the best available evidence for human survival, to raise awareness among the public and within the scientific community, and to encourage future research, are of supreme topicality.

"In my contribution, I argue that there is substantial evidence that establishes the survival of human consciousness. By 'survival of human consciousness' or 'human survival, I mean a broad notion covering 'any aspect of a personality that displays a seemingly self-aware identification and verifiable knowledge continuity with a deceased personality'.

"My essay is structured as follows: In the succeeding Chapter 2, I identify the best available evidence for survival among the different kinds of survival phenomena. I demonstrate that this best evidence is constituted by cases of the reincarnation type (CORT). While doing so, I largely treat the discussed survival phenomena as reported and touch only lightly on their reliability and authenticity, or on how they might best be explained. In order to be truly convincing, the power of explanatory models for a range of given phenomena must be tested by applying them to the most compelling data or evidence. Hence, the best survival evidence among all considered phenomena should first be identified, and only then must the nature of this best evidence be questioned in more depth. Therefore, I only perform an in-depth discussion of different explanatory models for survival phenomena with regard to CORT.

"But before that, Chapter 3 introduces several facets of CORT in more detail. Providing a more comprehensive picture of the phenomenology of CORT is important for determining the most appropriate explanatory model for them. This determination is crucial because it is not enough to merely identify the best available evidence for survival—one must also check whether this evidence is good evidence. As philosopher Michael Sudduth pointed out, the best available evidence for something can still be weak overall and lack persuasive power.

"The in-depth analysis of the strength of the evidence for survival provided by CORT is performed in Chapter 4, relating it to two alternative explanatory models:

1. The physicalist model. This model is based on the assumption that consciousness can be explained by physics and its derivate, chemistry; it is the above-mentioned physicochemical 'production hypothesis' of consciousness. Here, psi phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance cannot occur. Likewise, the extra-corporeal existence of consciousness and memory, including survival, cannot occur. All witness testimonies in CORT that favor survival are therefore regarded as flawed in one way or another.

2. The living-agent psi model. This model is based on the assumptions that eyewitness testimonies about survival phenomena are largely authentic and that psi phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance can occur. However, it is argued that survival phenomena are not generated by the deceased, but by those still alive. Driven by specific individual motives, living people activate hidden psi faculties and psychically obtain the information required to simulate survival phenomena including CORT. Thereby, usually without even consciously knowing it, they fulfill their own hopes and needs—for example, by creating an apparition or, in CORT, a 'reincarnated' loved one. This model might sound unreasonable for those not familiar with parapsychology, but many parapsychologists acquainted with the huge variety of psi phenomena take it very seriously and it is prominently discussed in the literature concerning the survival question.

In Chapter 5, I put the outcome of the discussions about CORT back into the larger perspective of other survival phenomena and human life, and frame it in the context of 'proof beyond a reasonable doubt' as requested in this contest.

In Chapter 6, I provide an outlook concerning future perspectives. 

 

Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.

Consciousness after death: Ruickbie excerpt #31

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: Take a shaft of light and pass it through a prism and it reveals that rich rainbow of colors that make up what we see. That is my approach here. I have taken the beam of paranormal experience and passed it through a prism to reveal its different frequencies, but where some researchers specialize, perhaps only studying the red or the blue, I have wanted to study this whole spectrum, because it is the whole spectrum that tells us what light is.

As defined at the beginning, ‘ghost’ means an immaterial identity format (IIF), the conscious ‘I’, and we looked for it specifically in the three categories of experiential time. What we have found is evidence for ghosts of the past in Martindale’s Roman soldiers, and others, and also in the life review that is often a part of the NDE, as well as in the huge amount of evidence for reincarnation. We found ghosts of the present in the form of crisis apparitions and after-death communications, as well as evidence for the ability for consciousness to leave the body as a result of accident, illness or intention in various conditions termed OBEs, NDEs (and actual-death experiences), travelling clairvoyance, etc. Ghosts of the future were apparent in premonitions, memorably when Irene Kuhn saw her own ‘ghost’ in the future, but we also saw disembodied consciousness show itself to be conscious at a point beyond physical death in the past, and how consciousness beyond the body could witness the life preview of what was yet to come.

The argument put forward does not rely on one piece of evidence, or one case, so if one case is found in error it does not derail the overall argument. In fact, for each area of evidence considered, many other cases could be brought forward if needed. As said at the beginning, the amount of evidence is not the problem – the problem is why we do not believe it.

The witness was always the weakest link in the chain of evidence. As far as possible we sought to establish the credibility and reliability of the witness, and to consider possible motives. When a witness is credible, reliable and motiveless, then we must take them at their word. They could still be mistaken, ill, drugged, or another explanation, such as telepathy might be produced. This is where multiple witnesses to the same event are of paramount value. Where otherwise credible, reliable and motiveless witnesses agree, it would be unreasonable to insist on their being wrong.

Even if right in having witnessed something, the explanation of what that something is could still be different. Shared hallucination or group telepathy have been forwarded, but such explanations become more difficult to uphold when information is acquired from the experience that the witnesses would not otherwise have had.

This higher level of evidentiality was also matched by using statistics to achieve a greater degree of representativeness. Even the best witness could still be an exception proving nothing. This is why we also used statistical analyses of sometimes thousands of cases to resolve the quirks, leaving a higher level of probability – a level of evidence beyond reasonable doubt.

It has already been noted that the evidence for life after death would be sufficient to prove the case in a court of law. One of the earliest to do so was author John Vyvyan (1908–1975). Writing in 1966, he said “a jury might well be convinced of a life after death on the basis of these arguments.” Since then, researchers have amassed almost sixty years’ worth of additional evidence in every area concerned with life after death. If it were enough to convince a jury then, how much more so now?

Have I convinced myself? Having now laid out the ‘best’ evidence and connected the dots, as it were, the Scrooge in me may still be thinking of my stomach, but the scientist must acknowledge the evidence even when it contradicts cherished theories. This evidence leads necessarily to the conclusion that our ‘ghost,’ consciousness, can exist independently of space and time, the fundamental co-ordinates of the body. Such a bold claim has been made before, but this time we have also seen that modern physics has revealed a universe in which just such a state could exist where consciousness itself is a quantum process and time is an emergent property of quantum entanglement, timetanglement.

The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle coined the term “ghost in the machine” to sum up the mind–body dualism espoused by René Descartes, and others since, that the mind and body are separate. Ryle thought that Descartes had made a category mistake, but whether philosophically in error or not, we have seen that there are copious examples of the mind acting independently of the body, even existing independently of the body in cases of actual death. And that in those states, consciousness is described as operating not only outside of the body (space), but outside of time as well. We realize that it is the physical body that creates time for the mind, that the ghost is not just in a machine, but in a time machine. 

 

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.

Information survival: Ruickbie excerpt #30

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:   

     Stuart Hamaroff MD and Sir Roger Penrose      

If brain is the receiver of consciousness, then it needs some means of receiving. Descartes proposed the pineal gland, and whilst this idea still crops up, modern medical research has thoroughly scotched it. Instead, quantum physics provides some possibility of a mechanism to bridge mind and matter. There is evidence for quantum effects in a range of biological processes, naturally researchers have wondered whether brain function could find answers there, too. Several theories of mind as a quantum process have already emerged. The most well-known is Oxford physicist Sir Roger Penrose and Prof. Stuart Hameroff's explanation using quantum gravity and vibrations in fractal protein structures (microtubules) in neurons to argue that the microtubules function as quantum computing devices. This is especially convincing in light of recent experimental findings in its favor.

In quantum computing, bits of information (qubits) exist simultaneously in an ‘on’ and ‘off’ state called superposition (this is what Schrödinger’s Cat is all about: being dead and alive until observed (measured)) before being unified into a single ‘calculation’ or ‘decision.’ Penrose and Hameroff argue that this takes place in the neuronal microtubules as an ‘orchestrated’ spacetime modification or ‘objective reduction’ of superposition. Hence the theory is known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR). Hameroff described it as being like an orchestra, by which he meant that coherent meaning (the sound of the music) is created by vibrating structures (the playing of the instruments), with the musicians’ decision to play/not play being the objective reduction.

The quantum state represents an information process: both one thing and the other, in the way light can be both a particle and a wave, until measurement causes a collapse of the wave function and it becomes one or the other. By modulating electromagnetic waves (light, infrared, radio, etc.) we can encode information; Mother Nature seems to do this with quantum states. This is the ‘bridge’ between cloud consciousness and the physical body.

Penrose and Hameroff both saw the metaphysical implications of this. Hameroff made it clear that: “The connection to space–time geometry also raises the intriguing possibility that Orch-OR allows consciousness apart from the brain and body, distributed and entangled in space–time geometry,” and that “quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.” Mathematical physicist Henry Stapp has also been working on quantum theories of consciousness and similarly concluded that “aspects of a personality might be able to survive bodily death.”

Support comes from another area. Grappling with the problem of how to define information in physics, Oxford physicist Prof. David Deutsch, a pioneer in quantum computing, proposed Constructor Theory. This describes a deeper level of physics more fundamental than particles and waves, and spacetime. Deutsch had been working on the premise that “the quantum theory of computation is the whole of physics,” i.e., it is the underlying level, but realized that, although quantum computation can simulate any other object, including its characteristic programs, it cannot relate which program connects with which object, which requires another level of explanation. Constructor Theory answers this by being more fundamental as it concerns the laws governing what is possible and what is not – it is a law about physical laws.

Information seems abstract but only a physical object can compute information and that for the theory of information to work within physics, then it must have a physical quantity; yet physical information is independent of the physical object that contains it. As an example, take the writing of this essay: the words are formed in my mind, transferred through nerves to my fingers where they are expressed as kinetic energy hitting the keyboard and stored as digital information on my hard drive, this is then transferred across the internet to be reconfigured as the text you are now reading, a light signal received by your eyes and interpreted by your brain to produce the sensation of hearing these words in your mind.

The information has crossed biological and man-made systems, it has been electrical, electromagnetic and kinetic energy at different times. At every point in the process the information has been something and resided in something, but the two were not dependent – the only constant in this process was the information, so we must think of the information as more fundamental. If information is independent of the system, and that information is consciousness (as quantum states of qubits) and the system the body, then the death of the body does not mean the end of consciousness. 

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.

 

Timetanglement: Ruickbie excerpt #29

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:   

In 1983, Don Page and William Wootters showed how the quantum phenomenon of entanglement – where two particles can remain in apparent contact even though separated (non-locality), Einstein’s famous “spooky action at a distance” – can be used to measure time. They argued that the way in which entangled particles evolve can be seen as a kind of clock, allowing the measurement of change. An observer within the system could compare this evolution against the rest of the system – the system being the physical universe. In doing so, the observer would be able to measure the passage of time as a relative difference of change between two things. 

However, an observer outside the system using an external clock to measure change would see no change in the entangled particles, meaning that time does not exist. This leads to the conclusion that time is an emergent property of quantum entanglement. 

Ingenious though it was, because it was impossible to have an observer outside the universe, the theory could never be tested. That is, until a team of researchers led by Ekaterina Moreva at the Instituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) in Turin, Italy, built their own universe to test it out.

Using two entangled photons in a deceptively simple setup, the experimenters were able to position internal and external “observers” to their mini-universe. In the first condition, the internal observer becomes entangled with the system by measuring it. In the second condition, the external observer remains outside the system and uses an independent measure of time. They discovered that within the universe they could measure change, whilst outside the universe there was no change. Page and Wootters had been right: time is an emergent property of entanglement.

To make this clearer let us try a metaphor. A river appears to be there in all its entirety to an external observer at a sufficient altitude. He can see its source, its in-between points and its mouth; but push him into the river and his observation changes dramatically, suddenly there is flow (passage of time) and the experience of the river is reduced to the point (the present) at which the observer is bobbing about in it. It is only a metaphor, but it gives us a more tangible idea of time as an emergent property of entanglement within a system, “timetanglement.” 

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.