Empirical Proofs of reincarnation.

[The Norseman]

Makes me want to read his Master's thesis. Nyet! Not.

I fix for you, tovarish!

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I am going to reply to several posts at once. Several opponents criticized my usage of the phrase “open mind”. Well, anyone who has an open mind could use the past lives recall procedure to see that, most likely, he/she had a past life, although this may not necessarily be the case –according to Buddha, some people do not have past lives.

What you promised was empirical proof. I think you'll find that many of us here have the kind of open minds that mean that we will accept what empirical proof shows to be true, regardless of whether or not it matches what we would like to believe or our prior assumptions.

If you provide the empirical proof you promised, you'd be able to change at least some people's minds. As it is what you've presented is some unverifiable anecdotes in which you demonstrate that you weren't even doing the most basic research (such as checking whether the transcribed newspaper paragraph matches an actual published newspaper paragraph) - meaning that even if we could verify the anecdotes, they still wouldn't be empirical proof of anything.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The original procedure worked for me, I was able to recall my past life along with two Sanskrit phrases.

This might be a fruitful avenue. Can you post as many details as you can about your past life, please?

 

[Pixel42]

The problem with trying to verify details of remembered past lives is that either

a) there is no documented information available to confirm them

or

b) there is documented information to confirm them, in which case the person remembering the past life could have - deliberately or inadvertantly - got the details from that same source of information.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The problem with trying to verify details of remembered past lives is that either

a) there is no documented information available to confirm them

or

b) there is documented information to confirm them, in which case the person remembering the past life could have - deliberately or inadvertantly - got the details from that same source of information.

This is true but, presumably, if Buddha is sincere he won't do b), which means that there's the potential for his story to be falsifiable. Failing to falsify it won't mean that it's true, of course, but that's how empiricism works - you don't prove anything, you just fail to disprove it enough times that it works as a model.

Basically, if Buddha does provide us with details and they can't be verified or contradicted, then we're in the same place that we started. If Buddha does provide us with details and they can be verified then b) becomes a possibility, and we're in the same place that we started. However, if Buddha does provide us with details and they can be contradicted, then we can start looking at what that might mean - either that he is not remembering a past life, or that the technique he has used doesn't provide perfect memories - depending on what the details actually are.

If Buddha is truly open minded and intellectually honest he should be interested in ruling out the latter possibilities. I'm interested in whether or not he is.

 

[aleCcowaN]

There's a weird counterbalance here between Jabba's argument for immortality and Buddha's statements about reincarnation. Jabba went out of his way to put his "proof" into mathematical notation. I assume he thought it was a more convincing way to make his argument. Buddha, despite promises of empiricism, goes out of his way to avoid any such scientific-sounding stuff. He writes as though unverifiable stories should be accepted here as though they were fact. Jabba would only resort to anecdotes when all other avenues had been cut off.

I'm not sure what to make of any of it. The lesson appears to be that neither the appearance of sincerity or of scientific rigor are actually substitutes for repeatable and falsifiable evidence.

In all what "Buddha" writes here one can guess an education dominated by dialectical materialism (during the Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov eras) and the concomitant shapeless spiritual rebellion it provoked in the population.

He's just an intellectual dissident whose clock is 30 years behind, one who thinks that saying "I don't believe in ghosts so I eliminated that possibility" is cromulent thinking just because it went against what the establishment prescribed.

 

[Buddha]

I do not have a choice but to reply to several posts at once. I’m going to go over the most common objections.

1) I didn’t consider all possible explanations of the empirical data that I observed.
These possible explanations include souls of the dead humans (a psychic would come up with this explanation), souls of the dead aliens (L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology), demons, evil spirits, benevolent spirits, goblins, banshes, Leprechauns, etc. It appears that I would have to prove on a separate basis that none of these entities exists. Luckily, I do not have to do that, all I have to do is to say the magic words, “Maxwell demons” and all these cooties disappear.

There is a reason why Maxwell demons do not exist, it also applies to all these non-existent critters.

There is a famous doctrine developed by Buddha, it is called non-atman doctrine (the word “atman” means “soul” in Sanskrit). Buddha put forward this doctrine to show that the Hinduism concept of the soul (self) is false. He provided several proofs showing that the souls and astral bodies do not exist.

2). I didn’t provide empirical proof of the reincarnation.

Empirical proofs in general are facts and explanations of them. Let’s take a look at the facts that I provided: a. Natasha gave correct answers to all my questions that I delivered in Russian; b. Joe and Henrik recalled phrases and written words delivered in the languages that they didn’t learn in their current lives; c. A past life recall procedure is presented in the book Buddhist Scriptures written by Conze, at least this is his interpretation of the procedure, although not everyone agrees with him. Conze also named the original Sanskrit text describing the procedure. What are possible interpretations of these facts?

I. These facts is a lie, I made up these stories to promote my book about reincarnation.

I am not promoting my book because it doesn’t exist. Some of my opponents know my name, they could check if there is a reincarnation book under my name on the market.

II. These facts is a lie, I made up these stories because I am a pathological liar.

Pathological lying is a symptom of mental illness. I cannot prove that I am sane; in fact no one can prove that he/she is sane. But if someone thinks that I am mentally ill they should not waste their time arguing with a crazy person.

III. My subjects somehow fooled me, they actually learned their “past life language” in this life.

There is a small chance of that. But, realistically speaking, how small it is? Unless they all conspired to fool me, it seems that this chance is almost zero.

IV. There are other explanations of these facts that do not involve the reincarnation.

That brings us back to the Maxwell demons

3. I didn’t observe the reincarnation process.

The opponents who raised this objection are unfamiliar with current scientific requirements of a proof, in particular in quantum mechanics.

In a nutshell, you do not have to propose a mechanism of a process, but you have to predict its outcome. Take, for example, quantum tunneling. According to the rules of classic mechanics, a particle cannot enter a region surrounded by a potential field large than its kinetic energy. But quantum mechanics predicts that there is a possibility that a particle can enter such region, which happened to be the case. However, quantum mechanics doesn’t say anything about the events that take place when a particle penetrates the potential barrier, so you might say that the mechanics of this process are unknown.

The same is true for the reincarnation – the mechanics of it are either unknown or there is none (I prefer the latter).

 

[JayUtah]

I didn’t consider all possible explanations of the empirical data that I observed.

And now you consider only straw-man alternatives that you don't understand.

2). I didn’t provide empirical proof of the reincarnation.

Empirical proofs in general are facts and explanations of them. Let’s take a look at the facts that I provided:...

You didn't establish them as facts. You didn't establish that your explanation of them was the correct one by further deduction and further development of observation. You observed an outcome, speculated what might have caused that outcome, did nothing to test your speculation, and declared it the right answer. That's the opposite of empiricism.

I. These facts is a lie, I made up these stories to promote my book about reincarnation.

Straw man. Few if any are claiming that you are promoting a book. More people are claiming that you simply want favorable attention and are making up stories to get it.

II. These facts is a lie, I made up these stories because I am a pathological liar.

Straw man. Not all who lie to get attention are "pathological liars" or in any other way mentally ill. Nevertheless you refuse to address the obvious falsehoods in your stories. Your critics are giving you plausible reasons not to believe your stories. All you can do is propose reasons why they should not engage you over them. That only deepens the hole you're in, because it's evasive behavior. It suggests you know you're lying.

III. My subjects somehow fooled me, they actually learned their “past life language” in this life.

There is a small chance of that. But, realistically speaking, how small it is?

Irrelevant. You did not apply empirical controls to eliminate the possibility, so your proof is not empirical.

IV. There are other explanations of these facts that do not involve the reincarnation.

That brings us back to the Maxwell demons

No, that's still a straw man.

3. I didn’t observe the reincarnation process.

The opponents who raised this objection are unfamiliar with current scientific requirements of a proof...

Yes, they are. And they have amply demonstrated that familiarity, whereas you have not. You need an argument better than repeatedly asserting how much smarter you are than your critics. You're not fooling anyone.

...in particular in quantum mechanics.

No, quantum mechanics has nothing to do with this. I explained how the hypothetico-deductive method of proof works. You don't have to directly observe reincarnation, but you do have to deduce other observable outcomes that are directly connected to the mechanism you propose for reincarnation. Those outcomes confirm or falsify that your proposed causation is the one at work. Since you refuse to do that, your proof fails. Additionally, it also confirms that you have no idea what empiricism is.

The same is true for the reincarnation – the mechanics of it are either unknown or there is none (I prefer the latter).

No. Claiming the mechanics are "unknown" or don't exist is tantamount to admitting there can be no empirical proof that it's what caused the phenomena you observed. You're just refusing to identify the goalposts because if you did then it would be clear you've missed them.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Buddha, can you post as many details as you can about your past life, please?

 

[Dave Rogers]

II. These facts is a lie, I made up these stories because I am a pathological liar.

Pathological lying is a symptom of mental illness. I cannot prove that I am sane; in fact no one can prove that he/she is sane. But if someone thinks that I am mentally ill they should not waste their time arguing with a crazy person.

I'm just going to address this as typical of your approach. You start by taking a plausible explanation, then limit this to a specific case of that explanation, then try to handwave away that specific case. In fact, though, it is entirely and obviously incorrect to narrow down the options of why you might be lying to "I am a pathological liar". This is equivalent to the claim that all people who tell lies are insane, which is clearly not true; in fact, everybody chooses whether or not to lie depending on the situation they find themselves in. So we can reject everything following the word "because" in this section; you may simply have chosen to lie because it makes you feel better about yourself, or it appears to prove a point that you desperately want to prove but realise that you cannot.

And, of course, even the suppositon that you've lied is itself a subset of "These statements are untrue." it's quite possible that they are not in fact true, but your recollection of them has altered to the point that you honestly believe them to be true. For example, Natasha may have answered some of your questions with saomething close to the correct answer, but you remember onlythe successes and not the failures, and recall them as being more accurately related to the question than they actually were. I've already given an example of a false memory of my own, which I sioncerely believed to be true and was quite surprised to find, on doing some research, to be completely unfounded; yet I am neither insane nor particularly given to lying. Recollection is imperfect, and we edit our memories to suit our preferences.

And, finally, it's a classic technique of those whose proof is lacking in rigour to say, "Here are the only circumstances in which what I say could be false; I have addressed them all, so only my preferred explanation can be true." It can be done honestly, but even so it's simply the fallacy of argument from ignorance; I do not know how I could be wrong, therefore I cannot be. But in this instance, it's clearly not being done honestly, because there have been instances suggested that you have chosen to ignore. Given that we have evidence of your dishonesty in the techniques of argument you use, why should we therefore accept an argument that relies entirely on the presumption that your word must be taken as accurate?

Oh, and one other thing:

These possible explanations include souls of the dead humans (a psychic would come up with this explanation), souls of the dead aliens (L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology), demons, evil spirits, benevolent spirits, goblins, banshes, Leprechauns, etc. It appears that I would have to prove on a separate basis that none of these entities exists. Luckily, I do not have to do that, all I have to do is to say the magic words, “Maxwell demons” and all these cooties disappear.

There is a reason why Maxwell demons do not exist, it also applies to all these non-existent critters.

Apart from the rather obvious point that you have no idea what the concept of Maxwell's Demon is suppose to illustrate (hint: it has nothing to do with the supernatural whatsoever,) if your argument weren't rooted in such an ignorant misapprehension then it would be refuted, not supported, by the nonexistence of these "cooties"; because the entity presumed to be preserved in reincarnation is one of them no less than any of the others you list.

When your own arguments refute each other, it's time to start looking at what's wrong with them, rather than trying to defend the self-contradictory.

Dave

 

[SOdhner]

It appears that I would have to prove on a separate basis that none of these entities exists.

Close. You'd have to show why your specific explanation is better than those others. You'd have to explain some way that we could differentiate them. If you could prove none of that other stuff exists that WOULD do the trick, but it's not the only way.

Luckily, I do not have to do that, all I have to do is to say the magic words, “Maxwell demons” and all these cooties disappear.

Wait, isn't that from a thought experiment about entropy? Or am I getting it confused? To the Googlemobile!

Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867 in which he suggested how the second law of thermodynamics might hypothetically be violated.

Okay so I'm thinking of the right one. It has literally nothing to do with any of this, at all.

There is a famous doctrine developed by Buddha, it is called non-atman doctrine (the word “atman” means “soul” in Sanskrit). Buddha put forward this doctrine to show that the Hinduism concept of the soul (self) is false. He provided several proofs showing that the souls and astral bodies do not exist.

Okay? So you're saying that you have proof that you're wrong, or are you doing that thing you pulled in the other thread where you try to tell other people how to argue against you because you have some prepared comeback you want to use?

Or are you saying that reincarnation doesn't involve souls?

Natasha gave correct answers to all my questions that I delivered in Russian

There's too much room for bias, do you have a recording we could view?

Also, you haven't proven she didn't know the language through mundane means. You've asserted it, but not provided evidence other than "her mom said so".

Joe and Henrik recalled phrases and written words delivered in the languages that they didn’t learn in their current lives

A questionable anecdote with no supporting evidence we could possibly verify.

What are possible interpretations of these facts?

Your analysis of these alternate explanations is both weak and biased.

The opponents who raised this objection are unfamiliar with current scientific requirements of a proof, in particular in quantum mechanics.

BINGO!

 

[JoeMorgue]

I do not have a choice but to reply to several posts at once.

Of course you have a choice. You just choose not to because responding to each individual fatal flaw that others have pointed out in your argument makes it harder for you Gish Gallop.

 

[jrhowell]

There is a reason why Maxwell demons do not exist, it also applies to all these non-existent critters.

It must be reincarnation because other explanations would violate the laws of thermodynamics?

Perhaps you could expand on that concept.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

These possible explanations include souls of the dead humans (a psychic would come up with this explanation), souls of the dead aliens (L. Ron Hubbard/Scientology), demons, evil spirits, benevolent spirits, goblins, banshes, Leprechauns, etc. It appears that I would have to prove on a separate basis that none of these entities exists. Luckily, I do not have to do that, all I have to do is to say the magic words, “Maxwell demons” and all these cooties disappear.

Can you explain, in your own words and without looking anything up, what you believe "Maxwell demons" to be, and how they show that the other explanations you mention must be false?

 

[JayUtah]

Or are you saying that reincarnation doesn't involve souls?

Buddhism is not an animist religion. It does not claim that individual souls are repeatedly reincarnated. Clearly there has to be something that persists outside the physical organism, but it is not particularized in Buddhism. In this case it's a straw man argument. Buddha (the poster) is trying to falsify animism as a distraction.

 

[SOdhner]

Buddhism is not an animist religion. It does not claim that individual souls are repeatedly reincarnated. Clearly there has to be something that persists outside the physical organism, but it is not particularized in Buddhism.

I guess it all depends on how we define 'soul'. Since Buddha is unlikely to give any coherent definition there's no point in me spending time on it, but my personal definition of soul is pretty broad and I don't think you could be reincarnated without one.

In this case it's a straw man argument. Buddha (the poster) is trying to falsify animism as a distraction.

Agreed, as with almost everything he's said he's not really addressing the criticisms in any useful way and insists on tossing out counters to arguments nobody is making or side notes nobody but he finds relevant.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I guess it all depends on how we define 'soul'. Since Buddha is unlikely to give any coherent definition there's no point in me spending time on it, but my personal definition of soul is pretty broad and I don't think you could be reincarnated without one.

Yes, I'd be interested to see how Buddhism manages without one [1]. I would have thought that a very good definition of "soul" is "a hypothetical entity that exists independently of the physical body and is preserved between lives in the hypothetical process of reincarnation."

Dave

[1] Actually, no, I wouldn't. I'd have to ask a Buddhist to explain it, and the ones I know, much though I love them, aren't always the most interesting people in the world when they're explaining things.

 

[JayUtah]

I guess it all depends on how we define 'soul'. Since Buddha is unlikely to give any coherent definition...

I'm working under the assumption that he's attempting to prove the Buddhist formulation of reincarnation. Yes there's a kind of supernatural goo that facilitates reincarnation there, but it's not discrete animism as you'd expect in, say, a Christian formulation of resurrection. Buddha the Claimant is trying to avoid the empirical entanglements of having to prove the existence of this goo -- which, naturally, is a hidden premise to his claim -- by denying any sort of mechanism and pointing out that Buddhism rejects individualized animism. Yes, we know Buddhism rejects animism, and none of our criticism is based on animism. So it's a straw man.

And his other tap dance today (to sidestep the problem of mechanism) is insisting that reincarnation must be like quantum mechanics, in that we prove only the predictions and not the underlying mechanism. He claims we shouldn't have to prove any underlying mechanism for reincarnation either. The main reason that's wrong is the conversion problem; he wrongly assumes quantum mechanics and his proof for reincarnation are categorically equivalent. They aren't. But it's fine with me if he wants to point to all the problems of empiricism with quantum mechanics and imply that his proof for reincarnation is similar. It just means that his proof for reincarnation has the same problems with empiricism.

This is what's really silly. He promises an empirical proof. Then when his critics point out that it's not empirically valid, he says he doesn't believe in empiricism, or that the nature of what he's studying defies empirical expostulation. I just laugh when he says his critics don't understand proof. Buddha can't seem to see all the times he shoots himself in the foot with his own rejoinders.

Quantum mechanics is a set of deductive models that follow from earlier work. The models are probabilistic because probability is how we model things whose mechanisms we don't understand or which are too complicated to model practically in all their gory detail. The model does not propose a mechanism, which is not the same thing as asserting there isn't one. Having deduced what must follow from earlier work, we can certainly make observations that test what should then follow further. Entanglement, for example, is something that would follow from QM, and we follow the deductive path from entanglement until we arrive at some deduction we can observe. We don't know what mechanism makes entanglement work, but we can confirm that it happens. This is what makes the inquiry empirical instead of inductive.

But reincarnation doesn't follow deductively from anything. It's not something that must be true as a consequent of something we can observe. In contrast, It's something hypothesized to explain an observation. Hence Buddha the Claimant's reasoning is the converse of the reasoning in quantum mechanics. But given enough detail in the hypothesis, we can deduce what must follow from any of those details. That would be "mechanism." And we follow the line of deduction until we get to something that can be observed. The observation of the consequents of the proposed mechanism confirm the mechanism. Ideally we formulate the observation so that the absence of it falsifies the mechanism, and with it the hypothesis.

For example, you rightly assert that if reincarnation occurs, and that it involves the persistence of memory from one physical incarnation to another, then there must exist an entity that has the property of retaining memory and which doesn't depend on a functioning human organism. That follows deductively from the hypothesis. What then might follow deductively from that? Keep going until you find something that is susceptible to observation and you have your empiricism according to the hypothetico-deductive method.

Agreed, as with almost everything he's said he's not really addressing the criticisms in any useful way and insists on tossing out counters to arguments nobody is making or side notes nobody but he finds relevant.

Correct. He's trying to convey the illusion of participating in a meaningful review of his claim without having to address its flaws. I feel that claimants do this because it has worked for them in the past, either because they insulated themselves from any criticism or because they presented their claims only to sympathetic audiences. The denouement of this is frequently restating the purpose as simply collecting feedback. The proof fails, but he is vindicated because he acquitted himself well in the debate. This is an ego reinforcement exercise.

 

[JayUtah]

Yes, I'd be interested to see how Buddhism manages without one.

It does, or doesn't, depending on which Buddhist tradition you talk about. But the question is not yet about what Buddhism teaches, but what Buddha the Claimant is prepared to defend empirically. That may or may not be one of the various Buddhist formulations of rebirth. And it doesn't seem as if our claimant is prepared to specify it. As with other such claimants, he seems to want it to remain undefined so that the goalposts accommodate any argument and facilitate no rebuttal.

I would have thought that a very good definition of "soul" is "a hypothetical entity that exists independently of the physical body and is preserved between lives in the hypothetical process of reincarnation."

That's a good enough working definition. But let's not lose sight of what's probably happening here. As his critics are closing in on the need for an empirical proof to provide empirically-verifiable detail, Buddha the Claimant is trying to distract his critics by baiting them into a quibble over what other people have proposed and defended as animism. Just like he wanted his critics in the other thread to ignore his failed proof for God and engage him only in comparative philosophy, the battle of "-isms." While such a discussion would be academically interesting, it doesn't redeem his failed proof or address the criticism.

 

[Loss Leader]

Let’s take a look at the facts that I provided:

You didn't provide any facts. You provided stories. A good step towards making your statements factual would be to give out the contact information for the people involved. Then, at least, somebody could check that these people: a) exist; b) remember events the way you present them; and c) have no other more mundane explanation for the events.

You can PM me the information. I will keep it confidential while I research your claims.