These are experiences I've read about in multiple sources and, in one instance, talked with someone who has experienced what I've related. Rejecting them as imaginary seems a bit simplistic. Offer a hypothesis that explains why imaginary things can happen simultaneously in such detail. If you would prefer to reject these things out of hand because they don't square with how you perceive the natural order, that's OK. Just don't cloak the rejection as having anything to do with scientific inquiry.
Monroe Institute
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tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Let's not.
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Why? There is never the slightest bit of evidence to support these claims; often, they in fact contradict what evidence is available.
The simplest coherent explanation is that the claims aren't true, that the events are some combination of misinterpretation, confabulation, hallucination, and lies.
Imaginary things can happen any way you want them to.
The rejection is precisely scientific.
What's the evidence that these things happen? There's no evidence, just stories.
Okay, these things are just stories. Problem solved.
The question is not whether stories are evidence or not (they are), but whether they are reliable or not (they often aren't). I don't think its true that there is no evidence of psi - there's lots of it. The question is how reliable that evidence is.
dlorde
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That's my hypothesis, a simplistic explanation for a simplistic anecdote - you asked, I gave. If you have a better one, let's hear it - it's more your claim than mine - burden of proof and all that.
I did. Now you offer one - it's your claim.
I rejected it after considering the 'evidence' you provided - which, you have to admit, is about as minimal as second-hand, hearsay, anecdotal evidence gets - not to mention being presented as hypothetical...
Better evidence will get more consideration. For an extraordinary claim, I'd expect high quality evidence. YMMV.
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PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Stories are information, not evidence. They can lead to evidence, but are not evidence in themselves. (Unless you are studying something like anthropology or psychology - that is, studying the stories themselves.)
Stories of psi are not evidence for psi - they do not change the likelihood that psi is real one way or the other. There is, as I said, no evidence whatsoever for psi.
Stories are evidence - they can be weak or strong depending on how well supported they are by other corroborating evidence, how reliable the source is, etc.
For example: your friend tells comes in from outside and mentions that its raining outside. You're facing away and didn't get a chance to see him before he leaves the room. You have no other information about the weather. Would you say that you had evidence of whether it was raining? Of course not, you have eye witness testimony. That is evidence. You can then evaluate how reliable his testimony is. You can choose to go look for corroborating evidence to back it up.
But its evidence. This is just semantics, and not terribly important, because the effect is the same (we're looking for reliable evidence not just any evidence), but still...
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
If you tell me a story about four-sided triangles, that does not constitute evidence that triangles have four sides. They simply don't.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
And I'll agree that the two cases are not exactly the same, but they are sufficiently sameish that stories of psi just aren't evidence. At this point, we know that they don't even lead to evidence - not of psi, that is, though frequently of incompetence or fraud.
How would you know that triangles have three sides except that you were told about it? Stories are evidence. Some of them are completely unreliable, some of them are quite reliable. In general, if all we have are stories, without objective independent evidence, we would say the evidence is pretty weak for a proposition. I really think you're better served by talking about evidence in terms of degrees of reliability, rather than labeling some stories evidence and others not.
So its better to say that the evidence in favour of psi is unreliable, rather than say there is no evidence whatsoever.
This whole thread is very interesting reading and reminds me of a hundred conversations I have had over the years.
JFish has repeated multiple times here that "there is evidence" or "there are many cases" etc., and his critics keep repeating "no there isn't (aren't)" .
Jfish, all they want is to be shown the cases where the "dead" person sees something they couldn't possibly have seen or known about otherwise. Like the case you mentioned about the woman who saw the saw. That sounds like an interesting example.
A skeptic will have many questions about this of course. Did she see the exact saw the surgeon was using? How do we know? Did the saw have some identifying marking which she was able to verify? I doubt it, one cranium saw looks much like another. Could she tell what brand it was? Something, anything which identifies the saw she saw as the exact one the surgeon used. Otherwise, a patient coming for brain surgery is described how the procedure is done, she may read about it, watch the learning channel, or have many other possible ways to know (before her operation) that the neurosurgeon will saw a hole in her skull. Once such a thought or image is present in the mind before the event, then you must admit that the mind is perfectly capable of constructing a "dream" containing those elements, without her consciousness leaving her body.
Likewise, the experience of the congenitally blind is intriguing. However, surely such a person has been wondering their whole life what it would be like to see? I would think a some point in their life it might be a constant preoccupation. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that blind people do sometimes dream of seeing, (although the one you mentioned specifically denied it) The fact that under the stress of hypoxia/hypercarbia/acidosis the brain has dredged up these thoughts surely is not surprising?
Given that a blind person reports a NDE in which she "sees", in what way is this related to vision through an eye? How can we we confirm that what she "sees" has any similarity to our vision using lens, retina, optic nerve, cerebral cortex, etc...? Why should it? The physical apparatus of the visual system limits what we experience as vision. Why should our unattached consciousness be similarly limited? Does the soul see infrared, hear ultrahigh frequency, smell as acutely as a dog? Why not?
All these described cases of NDE have similar problems. The conditions are not controlled. Every person's mind is filled, before the event, with sensory impressions of doctors, hospitals, surgery, etc. The fact that, under stress, the brain will manufacture "dreams" very similar to NDE is demonstrated fact. Why believe an NDE is more than that?
In any case, I hope I have clarified for you why what others are calling "stories" or "anecdotes" are not taken as serious evidence of consciousness existing separate from the Brain.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Why, through evidence.
Pixy, this isn't a controversial point. There are different kinds of evidence. Testimonial evidence is a kind of evidence. Different kinds of evidence are often presented together to try and demonstrate a certain proposition. The mere fact that a proposition is supported by one piece of evidence or another does not make it true. We determine how likely something is to be true based on the strength and reliability of the evidence presented.
ITT, jfish simply saying he's witnessed a certain phenomena is evidence of that phenomena. It's just very very very weak evidence and shouldn't be used to consider the proposition likely to be true. Members of the forum have asked for other forms of evidence to be presented. Sometimes a single piece of evidence can be used to support multiple - even contradictory - propositions. It's still evidence though.
The wiki definition is:
. Witness accounts are without question used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion.
In law, such evidence is used all the time, and can even be determinative. Is this really so controvercial? I know its just semantics, but I think this is pretty well established.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
If I say I saw a four-sided triangle, that might mean I'm joking, confused, or delusional. It is not evidence that I saw a four-sided triangle, because that is already established to be impossible.
Psi isn't the same as a four-sided triangle, but it's damn close. Stories of psi don't constitute evidence for psi; they constitute evidence for confusion, delusion, incompetence and lies.
Do we use stories of psi to determine the truth of psi? No. We discard them, because they're long since established to be entirely worthless. By the definition you provided, they're not evidence.
The problem isn't just about the weight of anecdotal evidence, but the meaning of it. For instance, why is it an OBE and not a case of near-death mind reading? Surely they could have "seen" at least some of the stuff through the eyes of the other people there? Or an insect? Perhaps it is a case of clairvoyance, and the NDE is just a psychic vision like a medium would get.
The real failure of these claims, to me at least, is that there isn't any serious claim here, just a kind of awe and mysterious "something." They just don't seem to take their own subject all that seriously. Investigate it, clarify it, make some progress already. Then come back and tell us what you found out.
In the thirty or so years I've read about NDEs, I haven't seen a whit of progress and the argument is stalled at "do they exist or not." Please. Nail down the phenomenon and then for goodness sake, come up with some theory that has legs.
The real failure of these claims, to me at least, is that there isn't any serious claim here, just a kind of awe and mysterious "something." They just don't seem to take their own subject all that seriously. Investigate it, clarify it, make some progress already. Then come back and tell us what you found out.
In the thirty or so years I've read about NDEs, I haven't seen a whit of progress and the argument is stalled at "do they exist or not." Please. Nail down the phenomenon and then for goodness sake, come up with some theory that has legs.
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
Absolutely right. We have a story. Sure, the person probably did have an experience of some sort.
And then waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here, we have a claim, which requires about a dozen different physical impossibilities, and probably doesn't actually explain the experience anyway.
And it's been that way since forever. We've only noticed it in the past century, when scientists actually took a look at claims of the paranormal and discovered that the can of worms was empty.
And then waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over here, we have a claim, which requires about a dozen different physical impossibilities, and probably doesn't actually explain the experience anyway.
And it's been that way since forever. We've only noticed it in the past century, when scientists actually took a look at claims of the paranormal and discovered that the can of worms was empty.
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Yes, exactly. But look at the term marplots used "annecdotal evidence" I'm not arguing with you on the weight of this evidence. But there's nothing wrong with calling it evidence and I don't understand your reluctance to it. Such evidence is provided in court in waves. It's still evidence and the court has the duty to evaluate it. You can say that a piece of evidence does not support a certain proposition - its still evidence. The threshold for what is considered evidence is pretty low. The threshold for what is considered reliable evidence is much higher.
You are simply re-defining the word evidence here.
(you're triangle example is poor by the way, since triangles are defined at three sided. not a great analogy. If someone said they saw a four sided triangle we could just tell them they are wrong, because it is a logical impossibility that they are right.)
Near death experience is a phenomenon. It cannot be denied that it occurs. The question is why does it occur. Competing hypotheses have been advanced:
1. NDE is an OBE indicating the existence of consciousness (or the soul in the case of D.Chopra) separate from the brain, and
2. NDE is a dream state fully explained by the operation of the brain in a stressed situation.
The evidence presented for "1" is that
A: different people have similar experiences, and
B: the experiences purportedly contain actual elements of the environment around the "dead" person.
Unless the reported NDE contains very specific verifiable elements (my doctor was wearing a red plaid shirt and diagonally striped tie, etc.) then both A and B are ambiguous evidence. They are both easily explained by the alternative, simpler hypothesis #2. So far, as already noted numerous times in this thread, no one has reported such specific verifiable features of anyone's NDE. Hence the AWARE study seeking exactly that evidence.
In contrast there is a mountain of reliable verifiable evidence supporting the notion that consciousness IS brain activity.