Another lengthy and informative interview with Chris Carter on the Subversive Thinking blog:

http://subversivethinking.blogspot.com/2013/03/interview-with-chris-carter-on-his-book.html

Comments

[chs4o8pt]

That was an awesome interview. I wish Jime had asked about crisis apparitions when the crisis is not death just danger. Does anyone know Carter's views on that?

Thanks

[Kathleen]

I'm really surprised that Chris thinks mediums are the best evidence of survival of consciousness and not NDEs. To me at least, NDEs are far more powerful evidence.

[Michael McWay]

Michael, have you been keeping up with Sam Parnia's interviews lately? Guess he's a believer now. Didn't see that coming.

[chs4o8pt]

Carter says the reason Mediums provide the best evidence is that the evidence is direct evidence of the spirit from the spirit's perspective. In trance mediumship the evidence is the evidence the spirits themselves give of their continued existence. And the evidence is objective. You can make a transcript of the reading. NDEs are only available as reports by the experiencers and are susceptible to "mistaken testimony".

"First of all, the level of detailed information in the best communications is astonishing. Not just facts unknown to anyone present which are later verified, but also, in the best cases, the communication is unmistakably from the perspective of the deceased, or serves purposes which are clearly those of the deceased, but which are contrary to those of the sitters. Furthermore, I document several cases in which the communicating entity displays aspects of the deceased persons’ personality, which are easily recognized by surviving friends and relatives, and are vivid enough to convince surviving friends and relatives that they are indeed communicating with the deceased. Finally, in some of the most remarkable cases, high level skills are demonstrated – skills which the medium does not possess, but which required the deceased person communicating years of practice to acquire.

And second, in the best cases of mental mediumship, everything the medium says or writes is recorded. In other words, the records are permanent and objective, and can be studied and analyzed by anyone at any time. Unlike some of the other lines of evidence, the question of mistaken eye-witness testimony simply does not arise."

[Lean]

Michael McWay - can you give a link to an interview where he states that? I've listened to his NPR interview, which is the most recent I can find, and he still seems content on fence sitting.

(Which I'm not bothered by, but some people seem to be.)

[Michael McWay]

He talked about his views on Coast to Coast a few nights ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CC_2yzqUVs

Also, here's a link to a comprehensive summary of the interview:

http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/4839-sam-parnia-tells-about-aware-initial-results-new-interview-13.html#post141598

[Michael Prescott]

"Michael, have you been keeping up with Sam Parnia's interviews lately? Guess he's a believer now."

I finally got to listen to Parnia's "Coast to Coast" interview. I agree that he no longer seems to be hedging his bets re survival. I jotted down a few quotes: "I think that we don't become annihilated ... We have clear evidence that their consciousness continues [i.e., the consciousness of clinically daed patients] ... We're reunited with loved ones who come to greet us."

He also uses the term "actual death experience," rather than "near-death experience," because he believes that in many cases the person is actually dead. He relates cases in which a patient has been revived several hours after death.

He says that if a patient's mind continues to function even when the brain has been shut down for several hours, there is no reason to think it does not continue to function indefinitely in an afterlife environment.

It's a very interesting interview, at least until the call-in questions start. (I hate call-ins.) There's a lot of info on the progress being made with resuscitation techniques also. The Parnia interview starts about 1:20 into the show.

[Michael Prescott]

I just read the linked summary in Michael McWay's comment (March 1, 11:52 PM). It does a much better job than I did of recapping Parnia's views. It also includes some info on the AWARE study, stating that at least one strongly veridical case turned up. (If this was in the Coast to Coast interview, I missed it.)

Interesting stuff.

[david r]

On the skeptiko forum i wrote that survivalist interpretations could co-exist with super-psi, assuming that the latter does really exist. According to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, siddhis or powers include psychic phenomena but also some powers that would be regarded as large scale abilities which would therefore correspond to super-psi. If we take this into consideration, it isn't true that we can sweep Super-psi under the rug as a possible explanation of some of the phenomena in question.

Having said that, do note that i am not against survival explanations. I certainly do believe in an afterlife and the data that Carter has amassed is very convincing on this point.

I think it is also a shame that he doesn't focus more on physical mediumship, even though he devotes a considerable portion of his argument to bolster automatic writing, which i suppose is physical mediumship. The PK phenomena of seances and the ectoplasm phenomena must strike us all as stupendously interesting if they were true. But these types of things have come in for a lot of criticism.

[Alexander Zlotnik]

In interview Sam Parnia now sounds like more pro-survivalist now. If so, poor him. Now expect furious attack on him from such folks, as Woerlee,Augustine, Nelson, Mobbs, Watt, Blackmore and the like...I don't think
they will leave him alone...

[Alexander Zlotnik]

Kathleen,I think NDE has a number of issues.Here and there appear psychological/psychological theories,as of R.Strassman(DMT), K.Nelson(REM intrusion), D.Mobbs and C.Watt...but Greyson,Long,Holden and Rivas usually find some indequacy in their theories to explaiin all data. Neslon even told that from various sources he finds that in NDE brain behaves as in lucid dreaming,but I haven't found anything about it in other sources/peer reviewed journals.
Fenwick and Van Lommel,on the other hand, argue that brain is "dead". And now Parnia makes a similar point, I think.
BTW Michael,just in case, I came across Your article of 2006 where You argued against K.Augustine's take on P.Reynolds.But there was one person who argued that "if we suppose Super-Psi then why veridical NDE/OBE are NOT halliucinations". You replied I think.And I don't remember finding some similar argument in the NDE literature(so far). I am puzzled. I always considered veridical element as most evidential. Do You have any good take on this now?

[david r]

Nobody goes to sleep every night of their lives and meets God. As far as i can tell, this is a solid refutation of the "dream theory" of NDE.

[Alexander Zlotnik]

David R,
I worry now more about the point(not sure even I can call it "argument") that some person did on this blog 7 years ago that "if there is Super Psi then why veridical NDEs/OBEs ar not hallucinations" .It wouold be interesting to see if such proposition appears in some near-death literature/periodicals.I used to take veridicality as strongest point of NDE argument, and it (Super Psi means veridical NDE hallucination) came as surprise

[david r]

Doesn't make much sense to me. Veridical means truthful/genuine, so in that sense you mean to say that an hallucination is real and yet not real?

[Alexander Zlotnik]

David R,
for not to play "broken phone" here is where this proposition was made,by poster Malveaux,there are few exchanges with Michael:

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2006/08/ndes_and_their_.html

[david r]

Ok. I still don't get what he is saying. An hallucination is supposed to be unreal. If he means to say that hallucinations are veridical for ESP and doesn't cite super-psi as a component for it, it still isn't much of an argument against survival which comes from many different areas of research.

Take poltergeists, for example. Or reincarnation. These things can hardly be explained by ESP.

[Alexander Zlotnik]

David R,
I'm currently readin brilliant article about NDE submitted for SSE on Sep 2012,by philosopher David Rousseau,he argues how NDE helps to break ESP/Survival impasse in favour of survival,and there is part where he touches exactly the issue of hallucinations/ESP. I am in the middle, the article is here:
http://www.systemsphilosophy.org/publications/Rousseau_Journal_of_Scientific_Exploration_2012_26_43-80.pdf

And I think this guy from 2006 cites Super-PSI as part of hallucination, but...I don't know.Sounds like a real stretch.I have David Rousseau's email, it would be interesting to email him and ask his opinion:) Or maybe good response lies in the article,I still haven't finished.

[Alexander Zlotnik]

David R,
I forgot to add. Many poltergeist cases were debunkled by William Roll and Tony Cornell,in his book "Investigating the Paranormal". Reincarnation is the different topic altogether.Especially cases with birthmarks

[david r]

I found two different books on Amazon by the authors you mentioned. It looks to me like William Roll considers poltergeists to be human PK.

It's too simplistic as an explanation for me. Especially considering my personal experience in this matter.

It seems to me that ghosts could have PK too. This explains partially why some of the disincarnate (sic) entities that come through mediums give information that is not ESP and others give information that is.

I feel people are trying to be parsimonious with the data and in effect come to inadequate conclusions, more often than not.

[Ray]

Yes Roll was definitely the pioneer for the living agent theory with PK. I was just listening to a radio interview with Parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach who has actually gone out and conducted field investigations and he does acknowledge that most cases of PK are caused by living agents but states that in rare cases there are "ghosts" (I hate that term) that have influenced matter so to say that "all" cases of PK are caused by living agents seems a bit presumptuous and it is definitely not an opinion shared by the professionals.

Full interview is here:
http://tinyurl.com/bd47wl3

[david r]

I just sat down with a cigarette to listen to this interview and my cigarette is almost gone - on porno music as the introduction!

[Juan]

On the skeptiko forum i wrote that survivalist interpretations could co-exist with super-psi, assuming that the latter does really exist. According to Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, siddhis or powers include psychic phenomena but also some powers that would be regarded as large scale abilities which would therefore correspond to super-psi. If we take this into consideration, it isn't true that we can sweep Super-psi under the rug as a possible explanation of some of the phenomena in question.

You're right. What happens is that the proponents of the super-psi hypothesis usually defend their hypothesis in all cases which seem to show a form of afterlife, so that in this situation the hypothesis that these cases are examples of the afterlife and the super-psi hypothesis are incompatible.

But there was one person who argued that "if we suppose Super-Psi then why veridical NDE/OBE are NOT halliucinations". You replied I think.And I don't remember finding some similar argument in the NDE literature(so far). I am puzzled. I always considered veridical element as most evidential. Do You have any good take on this now?

I'm not sure I understand you well, but I think you mean someone contrary to the afterlife hypothesis can interpret the near death experiences with veridical content as mere instances of ESP, without accepting that they are cases where the mind may continue to exist after death.

To begin to answer this reasoning, we forget psi or super-psi. The important matter is that we have many cases where patients had NDE with veridical information who could not get through the known senses, inference or luck, so that these cases are instances of ESP. The question then is given this context, what is more plausible, that the mind develops ESP in near death and then disappears with death or the mind develops ESP in near death and then continue its existence after death? It is much more plausible the latter, because examples of ESP in near death are a prediction of the filter theory, which makes possible an afterlife, while the production hypothesis that denies the afterlife is falsified by these cases of ESP besides that NDEs are other elements to suggest that the mind continues to exist after death, such as increased lucidity.

[Ray]

David R,

I never said the interview had high production values :) Don't be thrown off by the porn music the content of the interview is very good.

[Alexander Zlotnik]

Hi Juan,
"I'm not sure I understand you well, but I think you mean someone contrary to the afterlife hypothesis can interpret the near death experiences with veridical content as mere instances of ESP"

I might not express myself too well, so maybe the best thing is just to look at the above link at Michael's post of 2006 and to read what Malveaux posted,starting in his post.His point was "If we grant existence of Super-Psi,then why veridical NDEs/OBEs are NOT hallucinations?". I myself didn't get his point initially,but he later exchanged some post with Michael

[Alexander Zlotnik]

Ray,
Your post expressed much how I view survival evidence for now. Initally I was focused solely on mental mediumship,and reincarnation,completely un-interested in Apparitions,NDE,Death Bed Visions,Poltergeists...
Now I view differently.As You stated: most poltergeist cases ARE human PK, but some NOT.Same goes for mental mediumship - a lot of fraud,guessing,cold reading,maybe telepathy ,but there ARE also at least SOME compelling cases.Same goes for the rest,may even for physical mediumship,which I always took wuth extreme skepticism

[david r]

Regarding cold reading, remember that this is the skeptical explanation for what mediums or psychics do, and not the correct interpretation of it. What came first - the psychic reading or the cold reading? Surely the former, no? Then we have to be a little bit more pronounced on this fact in future i feel.

[Joel]

Sam Parnia said:
“We have millions and millions of people now who have essentially gone to the other side, beyond the threshold of death, they’ve entered what would have been considered the afterlife period, and they’re coming back and telling us what they experienced.”
He also said the percentage who had the OBE component – able to perceive their physical surroundings out-of-body – was about 1% according to his NPR interview.

How to square millions and millions with 1%?

[david r]

Joel, the audacity of your position comes to light in the other evidences of the phenomena in question, ie survival, that people like me wonder how you can stick to only one part of the question compared to the overall picture.

I find it, quite frankly, insulting to my intelligence.

[Ray]

Not sure what your point is Joel. Even if it were 1 person out of millions and millions according to materialist science this shouldn't happen to anyone.

[Michael Prescott]

"He also said the percentage who had the OBE component – able to perceive their physical surroundings out-of-body – was about 1% according to his NPR interview."

Not all NDEs include an OBE component. In many cases the patient remember visiting the "other side" but cannot recall any veridical details of the hospital room (or wherever he was). The term OBE in this context only refers to an experience of one's earthy environment.

I haven't heard the NPR interview yet, but 1% seems too low to me, unless he means 1% of all resuscitated patients (whether or not they had an NDE). Only a minority of resuscitated patients report any kind of NDE; why this is so remains a mystery.

[Bruce Siegel]

Wow. Reading Wendybird's Skeptiko summary of Parnia's Coast to Coast interview gives me a radically different impression of where he now stands. When I looked at the Amazon description of Parnia's latest book, it had seemed disappointingly cautious to me, taking us backwards rather than forwards (or at best, focusing on tangential issues.)

But I love this:

"Parnia refers to his cases in the AWARE study as “actual death experiences” (ADEs), because “they have objectively died for minutes if not hours”. He explains that these people “really were dead”, they were corpses, i.e., they had no heart beat, no brain function – they were actually dead, “not clinically dead, not nearly dead”, no playing around with the meaning of the words, as Parnia put it."

I think this is a significant step for Parnia to take because he's putting the seal of approval on what NDErs so often say--that they were well and truly dead, not just nearly dead. He's saying in this regard we can trust what experiencers are telling us.

When you add this to other aspects of their stories that are confirmed as being accurate (such as veridical OBE observations), it gets harder and harder for the skeptic to say "Well, maybe they're just giving their *interpretation* of events."

[Lean]

Thank you for those links Michael McWay. :) Very interesting stuff.

Parnia makes an interesting point about why so very few patients recall NDE's in the NPR interview - the inflammation of the brain after resuscitation could affect patient's ability to recall any experiences during that time. They observed that patients' who received medical care *immediately* (and thus prevent more inflammation and damage to the brain) were more likely to report an NDE. Swelling and damage to the brain doesn't just occur during cardiac arrest, it occurs afterward too. Its one of the major hurdles when reviving someone. Parnia also states that there were patients who had recollections immediately after waking up, only to forget them after a few days, perhaps due to continued brain damage that can last upwards of three days afterward.

Perhaps this is part of the reason why so very few people report NDE's. Its difficult for patients to be interviewed immediately after, and perhaps by the time they are healthy enough to be interviewed, the memories are already gone.

[Art]

"Perhaps this is part of the reason why so very few people report NDE's." - Lean
--------

I suspicion that everyone who "dies" has an NDE but;

Some anesthetic drugs people are given are designed to cause amnesia. That is how they work. It's similar to an alcoholic blackout. So they don't remember anything that happened to them during that time period.

Some people are reluctant to share what happened to them because it's too personal - it belongs to them alone.

Some people don't want to have to go through the hassle of having to defend what happened to them. They "know" that someone will call it a hallucination so they keep it to themselves. They are "conflict avoiders." It's like sharing pretty much anything on a message board. Inevitably someone is lurking in the shadows ready to jump out and debate or argue with you about almost anything you say.

It doesn't fit their world view. They were atheists or skeptics and they don't want to have to explain to everyone why they now feel differently.

The same holds true for people like fundamentalist Christians who have an NDE and it doesn't fit what they have spent their lives believing and teaching or preaching. They come back and tuck it away because it is antithetical to everything they have spent their lives believing.

There might be any number of physical traumas that could cause amnesia in the brain, like a good whack in the head. It is quite common for people to be in serious car accidents and they don't remember anything since before the accident. They wake up and they might have lost hours or even days before the accident.

I've read quite a few books about Death Bed Visions and it's interesting that it's the people who are NOT on drugs that have the most deep and profound death bed visions. The people who are heavily sedated to the point of grogginess are the ones who don't have DBVs.

So the rule of thumb is "lots of drugs = no NDE and/or DBVs". Drugs can cause amnesia. Just like alcohol can.

[doubter]

There have been few comments on the interview. I like Carter's answers in general, especially to the super-psi objections. I especially like Carter's following testy remarks in one of his responses; they could be considered sort of generic to many of the questions. He gives them and their originators short shrift:

(Answer to interview question 12) If this is the “main argument,” it is testimony to the desperation of their case that they must resort to such sophistry dressed up in fancy sounding language.

....I do not rely on any “epistemic weight of fit with background knowledge for determinations of epistemic probability.” What I do is ask if a given explanation is consistent with the facts, and also with other things we have good reasons to think are true. I do not use incoherent expressions such as “epistemic weight of fit” or “epistemic probability,” and frankly, I do not have much respect for philosophers who write like this. Philosophers who write clearly are not afraid of being understood.

Philosopher Michael Sudduth has a new blog at http://michaelsudduth.com/blog/ . In it he tries to clearly state his position that though he himself is a survivalist, conventional inference to best explanation (IBE) arguments for survival are invalid. He concludes with:

I suspect that some readers have drawn the anti-survival inference because I’ve expressed skepticism about whether we will ever be able to effectively argue that (i) is true. Even this, however, is not a reason to give up on arguments for survival. There are other strategies of arguing for survival in addition to “best explanation” strategies. These are certainly worth exploring. However, let’s take the worst-case scenario. What if all arguments fail? Is belief in survival any worse off epistemically? I’m afraid that the tacit assumption of many survivalists is old-fashioned evidentialism, roughly, the view that a belief is rational only if it is backed by evidence. Of course many survivalists, like most garden-variety evidentialists, want their beliefs to conform to evidential standards of a particular sort, standards that will make their beliefs appear scientifically respectable. But this is another one of those “wrong turns.” And this one leads to a dead end.

He is essentially labelling Chris Carter's and many others' (including professional philosophers') arguments as wrong turns to a dead end. Of course Sudduth argues for super-psi over survival. But then he follows this up with the argument that even starting with the assumption that survival is the better explanation than super-psi, that does not mean that these two alternatives are in themselves very probable, or any more probable than some other unknown or unspeculated upon hypothesis. Like the idea (it occurs to me) that advanced aliens are meddling with our minds for their own unfathomable reasons.

Sudduth indicates that he may soon be posting better arguments for survival than the "IBE" ones. That will be interesting.

[Michael Prescott]

"I’m afraid that the tacit assumption of many survivalists is old-fashioned evidentialism, roughly, the view that a belief is rational only if it is backed by evidence."

This is certainly my view. I can't see how a belief can be considered rational unless it is backed by at least some evidence.

Note that I'm not saying the evidence must be conclusive. All of us accept many beliefs that are based on incomplete evidence; we could hardly do otherwise, since we are not omniscient.

But if there is no evidence at all for a belief, then that belief can't be called rational. It still might turn out to be true, but this would be a matter of sheer luck, similar to a stopped clock being right twice a day.

[Douglas]

parnia's hypothesis that many more people probably experience ndes but just dont remember them sounds right to me. We all dream but many people dont remember, leading some people to suggest that they 'don't dream', an assertion which is almost certainly false.

Btw I'm not equating ndes with dreams, but i do think the issues with memory recall of non-waking states may be connected.

Parnia is suggesting that nde recall may be improved by better techniques in future, leading to more nde reports, in the same way that dream recall can be improved through various methods.

[Matt Rouge]

Bruce,

||I think this is a significant step for Parnia to take because he's putting the seal of approval on what NDErs so often say--that they were well and truly dead, not just nearly dead.||

As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead.--Munchkin Coroner

[Bruce Siegel]

As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead.--Munchkin Coroner

LOL, Matt. I knew I was channeling someone--just couldn't remember who.

[Matt Rouge]

Bruce,

Yep, just wanted to help you out. :)

[Matt Rouge]

I just read the interview. Very impressive arguing by Chris against the super-psi hypothesis. I have bookmarked this page for use in the future as reading for those who suggest super-psi is workable.

[Douglas]

This is very interesting news regarding Parnia. Who would have thought he would have come off the fence so conclusively? It smacks of a scientist actually following where the evidence is pointing, shock, horror!

Skeptics, of course, who were looking forward to Parnia's report, won't be happy with these conclusions.

Be prepared for personal attacks on Parnia's integrity, concerns that he has 'gone native', or is just doing ‘bad science’.

In addition to the above, skeptics will naturally try to find any way they can do avoid the conclusions that the evidence is pointing towards.

We have already seen a rather lame attempt at this via Joel's post above.

In line with what Joel was implying, the skeptics will no doubt highlight the fact that there were a low number of experiences reported. They will then suggest that we can't draw conclusions from so few cases, and in any event, you can be sure that the skeptics will hone in on the veridical cases and try to invalidate them in some way, using the 'logical possibility' routine highlighted by Chris Carter (this ploy was discussed by Michael Prescott in a previous blog entry re Carter’s latest book).

They will also pretend to ignore the glaring fact that any veridical case in the study is a 'White Crow' case. We don't need hundreds of cases in the report; only one is needed in order to show that the standard reductionist argument is incorrect.

Bear in mind that if this study was in isolation, then you could understand (just about) the objections of skeptics. However, the Aware Study already comes in the wake of *decades of NDE reports including many veridical cases*.

While it is too early to presume upon the findings of the Aware Study, I think it is becoming increasingly obvious that the evidence is pointing in one direction.

And the skeptics are looking the other way.

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