More on super-psi

I've thought a little more about Michael Sudduth's objections to the survivalist argument. What follows is basically an expansion on my comments in a previous thread.

Michael Sudduth argues that survivalists are wrong to claim certain kinds of evidence as indicative of postmortem survival, because the instances they cite require untested "auxiliary assumptions" that are just as problematic as any assumptions that underlie the super-psi hypothesis. (By the way, I'm using the term super-psi because it's familiar to most people who follow this kind of thing, though Michael Sudduth prefers the term "living agent psi," or LAP.)

Here are some specific examples. At least as far back as Richard Hodgson's investigations of Leonora Piper, it has been noted that newly deceased communicators speaking through mediums often exhibit feebleness and confusion; their messages are brief and muddled. But with the passage of time (usually just a few days) the communicators improve noticeably; the confusion is largely dispelled, and the messages become clearer and more lengthy. Moreover, with continued practice, some communicators seem to hone their skills, and some just seem better at it than others; certain individuals come through a variety of mediums with consistently good results, while others never seem to get the hang of it.

Hodgson and other survivalists argue that these developments are just what we would expect if the communications are genuinely coming from discarnate individuals. The trauma of the dying process leaves these persons fatigued and befuddled for a short time, but with the opportunity to rest and orient themselves to their new environment, they grow stronger and shake off their lethargy. Furthermore, practice improves their abilities in some cases; and just as some incarnate individuals have a gift for mediumship and others don't, some discarnates are better able to communicate through mediums than others.

None of this, Hodgson et al. w0uld say, is what we would expect from super-psi, or any kind of psi among the living. We would expect psi to generate all messages with approximately equal clarity, since all are originating from the same source. Even if mediums and sitters differ in their native psychic abilities, we would at least expect the same medium in conference with the same sitter to produce roughly the same quality of results from one week to the next, rather than a dramatic improvement consistent with the discarnate's period of R&R and orientation.

The argument made by Michael Sudduth, as I understand it, is that this line of reasoning is flawed, because it assumes too much. We are merely assuming that the dying process is traumatic in some cases, and that it leaves the discarnate person weak or confused. We are also assuming, without proof, that a period of rest and recovery follows the trauma of passing over, and that this recovery period will allow the discarnate to think more clearly and communicate more effectively. Further, we are assuming that practice will improve some communicators' skills, and that some people are better communicators than others. All of these "auxiliary assumptions," being untested, are arbitrary and ad hoc, and thus of little value in supporting the survivalist case. Until and unless these assumptions can be properly tested and verified, the survivalist case is at least as open to criticism as the case for super-psi. 

It's an interesting viewpoint, but I don't go along with it. I think the main difference between Michael Sudduth and me is my approach to this kind of evidence. I don't think that a rigorously logical proof, along the lines of proving a mathematical theorem, is possible when dealing with empirical evidence, especially when the evidence involves something as in inherently ambiguous and subjective as states of consciousness (incarnate or discarnate). Instead, I think what is needed is something more like the reasoning we hope to find in a jury's deliberations.

A jury looks over all the evidence presented at trial and tries to construct the most plausible narrative – a narrative that is both internally consistent and consistent with the facts. It is understood that there may be some loose ends, since, outside of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, no case can be tied up with perfect neatness. It is also understood that there will always be room for doubt, but the goal is to eliminate reasonable doubt – "reasonable" being a somewhat elastic and subjective term, but (we hope) agreed upon broadly enough to make consensus possible.

The scenario that the jury constructs will be grounded in the jurors' own experiences and common sense. Certain assumptions about human behavior and motivation are taken for granted.

Now, in the context of the survivalist argument, it seems to me that the survivalists are thinking the way jurors are supposed to. They are looking at the facts (such as those I listed above) and trying to integrate them into a reasonably consistent storyline, using their own common sense and personal experience as a guide.

So they say, for instance, that some people undergo trauma during the dying process, and that this leaves them weak and confused. This is, as Michael Sudduth observes, an auxiliary assumption, and it has not been independently tested (nor can it be, as far as I can see), but it is consistent with the experiences and observations that most of us take for granted in the world of the living. That is, most of us have found that if we go through a traumatic event, we are shaken up for some time afterward, and may find it hard to focus or function. Moreover, most of us are aware of cases where people seem to have experienced significant trauma while dying.

Survivalists also say that discarnates will improve after a period of recuperation. Again, this is consistent with our own experience and common sense. We all know that some time off, some rest and quiet meditation, can work wonders in restoring our vitality and clarity of mind.

Survivalists say that even discarnates who were not unduly traumatized by their passing may need time to adjust to their new condition. This again matches up with everyday common sense. Even if we were in perfect health, if we were suddenly and unexpectedly transported to China, we would surely need some time to learn our way around and figure out how to send a message home.

Survivalists say that practice can improve the skills of certain discarnate communicators. Again, as Michael Sudduth says, this is an untested auxiliary assumption; but again, it is consistent with everything we know about our own behavior. Practicing a skill usually does produce improvement. We are usually better at serving a tennis ball after a few weeks of practice than we were when we tried it for the first time.

Finally, survivalists say that some communicators seem to have an innate gift for communicating through mediums, while others never quite get the hang of it – and that these individual differences are consistently observable across a range of mediums. This matches what we know about ourselves and the people we've observed. Some of us are just naturally better at certain things. We've all known someone who was a natural athlete or who had an ear for music (as well as those who were hopelessly unathletic or unmusical). It also seems clear that some people have an innate talent at mediumship, which manifests at an early age, while others have no such talent and must learn the skill through tedious trial and error, if they can learn it at all.

The untested auxiliary assumptions, then, are grounded in real-world experience and common sense. While they can't be decisively proven, they do make sense of phenomena that would be otherwise hard to explain.

In response to this, it could be argued that our subconscious minds, having absorbed these experiences and being aware of common-sense assumptions, simply generate messages in line with our expectations. But then we seem to get back to the issue I raised in a post titled "The Two Options" – namely, that something akin to a global conspiracy of our subconscious minds would have to be at work in order to fool us into thinking that these communications are real. And a while a universal conspiracy unknown to our conscious selves can never be logically ruled out, it also does not seem like a proposition susceptible either to proof or to falsification. It can't be proved, because by definition we are unaware of it; and it can't be definitively falsified, because any evidence that might count against it can be explained as part of the conspiracy itself.

Finally, it should be noted that the explanations proffered by survivalists are often seconded (or even originated) by the communicators themselves, who justify variations in their own communication skills in terms of fatigue, recovery, and practice, and who tell us of recuperation centers and the need for orientation upon arrival. Either our subconscious minds are telling elaborate lies (a possibility that can never be ruled out) or these communications can be taken at face value. In either case, there appears to be no obvious way of testing or verifying such claims, beyond the methods that are already in use.

Comments

[Juan]

I agree. I expressed this in another way: Sudduth make the mistake of treating the survival hypothesis as a deductive hypothesis when it is an abductive hypothesis, because the question is to find out which is the simplest hypothesis that connects a whole group of phenomena apparently unrelated: OBEs, NDEs, apparitions, mediumship and people seem to remember their past lives, and that is the survival hypothesis.

An example: we know that many mediums as Eileen Garrett stated that they could perceive auras around living beings and they perceived such auras came off the body at the time of death and still made an independent life. The survival hypothesis relates the ability to perceive auras with an afterlife: the auras are the surface of the embodied spirits while and it is natural that people capable of being possessed by spirits of the deceased can perceive embodied and disembodied spirits. But for non survivalists hypothesis is incomprehensible that the ability to mimic the personality of a deceased sole accompanied by the ability to perceive auras.

That is, the survival hypothesis is more homogeneous. The non survivalists hypothesis are more heterogeneous because they have to explain the apparitions of a form, mediumship otherwise, apparent memories of previous lives differently, etc. The survival hypothesis is more probable but not in the sense of beyond a reasonable doubt, but more likely to be true.

[Art]

"the simplest hypothesis that connects a whole group of phenomena apparently unrelated: OBEs, NDEs, apparitions, mediumship and people seem to remember their past lives, and that is the survival hypothesis." juan
--------------------------

Please don't leave out death bed visions! They are wonderful! I love them. David Kessler's book "Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms" is a great book. It is so uplifting and comforting.

I have quite a few death bed vision books in my little life after death collection, Death Bed Visions by Sir William Barrett, At the Hour of Death by Karlis Osis, One Last Hug Before I Go by Carla Wills-Brandon, Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan, The Art of Dying by Peter Fenwick, Glimpses of Eternity by Raymond Moody, etc.

[Matt Rouge]

What Michael and Juan said. :)

What I don't get is the *ostensible* motivation for the super-psi hypothesis. (I get the *real* motivation: they are atheists or fellow travelers who want to discourage people from believing in survival.)

But let's grant for the moment that super-psi proponents are saying what they mean. In that case, they *do* believe in the same set of phenomena that we survival proponents believe. What I don't get, then, is why they think super-psi is a better explanation. Michael pointed out a bunch of phenomena that seem to point toward actual survival instead of super-psi. Are there any phenomena that super-psi proponents adduce that point toward super-psi itself?

I have yet to hear *anything.* "When after-death communicators do XYZ, that really doesn't seem like survival, does it?" Things like that.

Further, the whole thing about "auxiliary assumptions" is epistemologically ridiculous. After-death communications are all about the *content*, right? It's not the fact that a medium is talking is amazing; it's only the *content* of his/her words that can impress or not (assuming we're talking about mental mediums here). Insofar as super-psi proponents take that content seriously (i.e., they credit it as at least proving psi is real), why don't they actually *believe* the content? As Michael says, these aren't really "assumptions": they are elements of the content that are being told to us.

That doesn't mean one should believe everything any medium, NDEr, etc., has ever said. Yet has a good reason been provided to *doubt* everything they've ever said? I think not.

[Metgat]

Michael, well stated. I was going to say the same thing that Juan ended with. That is, even if a person can't accept it "beyond a reasonable doubt," that one can drop down significantly to the "preponderance of evidence" standard of the law, which simply means the evidence for outweighs the evidence against, or as Juan stated, more likely to be true than not true. That is the standard in civil courts. If we can put it on a percentage basis, the preponderance standard is 51% for and 49% against, while the BARD standard is more like 98.8% for and 1.2% against. I'm sure many would argue with the latter percentage. That's just my take on it.

[D]

Michael,

Meant to add that I am at (degree of certainty):

98.8% on survival
90% on reincarnation in its broadest sense
80% on crop circles
70% on reincarnation as generally accepted
60% on alien abductions
15% on Big Foot
12% on the Loch Ness Monster

[no one]

Juan, "Sudduth make the mistake of treating the survival hypothesis as a deductive hypothesis when it is an abductive hypothesis...."

I agree. I think we can also that the argument is arising from the two approaches taken; scholarship (us) versus Baconian science (Sudduth).

Scholarship allows us to arrive at a reasonable conclusion based on what we have learned whereas the Baconian approach leaves us mired in a tangle of untestable hypothesis.

[Juan]

Please don't leave out death bed visions!

The deathbed visions are a type of apparitions.

[GregL]

I always thought that the super psi theory, as an alternative to the afterlife hypothesis, was self defeating. After all isn't a being who can traverse time, operate non locally outside the brain, cause psychokinetic effects, read minds etc etc, the very type of being one would fully expect to transcend death? Maybe the answer isn't "either or", but possibly, both.

GregL

[Juan]

What I don't get, then, is why they think super-psi is a better explanation.

One of the reasons given is that both the survival hypothesis as the super psi hypothesis must accept psi among the living, but the survival hypothesis has to accept also spirits of the deceased, so it is ontologically more complicated than the super psi hypothesis, and therefore the super psi hypothesis entities is preferable for imply less entities. But then considering that all psychic phenomena are only psi between living, super psi proponents fulminate all traits that distinguish psi only between living and psi between living and deceased.

Are there any phenomena that super-psi proponents adduce that point toward super-psi itself?

Yes there are cases as the cases of a medium that comes in contact with a person who claims to have died and then is check that the person was fictitious or existed but was alive:

http://www.dailygrail.com/blogs/Greg/2008/1/Not-So-Imaginary-Bessie-Beals

But this only indicates some cases of apparent mediumship can be psi only between living, but does not prove that all cases of mediumship are only psi between living. (Even this example is not proof of only psi between living, because a
not contradictory possibility is the medium in contact with the future person once deceased, although this person is still alive in the present, but this few people even think it because it defied our conceptions of time, but even this could have some support from the evidence that the time may not be as linear as we tend to believe).

The key is whether it is probable that all cases of apparent mediumship are only psi between living, and the answer is no, because there are certain traits that point to some cases are samples of postmortem survival, as Michael wrote, besides that if this we add OBEs, NDEs, apparitions and people seem to remember their past lives, then the odds towards the survival hypothesis increase.

[Faisal]

I have to say that the discussions on this blog about Super PSI are of high quality.
I would like to contribute to this discussion by sharing some things in my mind:

1) Super PSI would be better described as Super Deceptive PSI. This is not to ridicule the idea of Super PSI but to highlight the nature of what is being claimed; an immensely elaborate psychic deception.

2) Explanations are meant to be statements providing clarification and better understanding.
Super PSI/ Super Deceptive PSI however seems to do the opposite. If we accept that we are susceptible to such vast deception in this case why should we be considered immune to elaborate deception in other cases?
If we consistently follow through the implications of Super PSI/ Super Deceptive PSI then what we get is not clarification or understanding but colossal confusion.
This undermines the validity of Super PSI/ Super Deceptive PSI as an explanation.

3) I have not yet seen any plausible reason of why the existence of PSI points to the existence of Super Deceptive PSI, or how people’s fear of death can unleash such powers.
Unless this can be plausibly shown, accepting Super PSI/ Super Deceptive PSI means accepting a non-sequitur logical fallacy; acceptance Super PSI/ Super Deceptive PSI does not seem to follow the acceptance of PSI and the fear of death.

[Luciano]

I don't even take super-psi that seriously... If it can't be proven (or disproven) why even try? I'm cool with people believing in super-psi, i't doesn't change how I think the real thing is...

Besides, I haven't read more than a couple of articles in this blog about super-psi... but if our own subconscious is so good at tricking us, wouldn't be extrange that someone could have come up with the idea of super-psi in the first place...? I mean, if the conspiration is that good, how do you explain that someone could have figured it out and create a theory of it called "super-psi"?

[Art]

Don't look at me! I didn't do it! {grin!} - Art

[Art's referring to a problem with the italics, which is now fixed. Folks, it is always best to avoid italics. - MP]

[Matt Rouge]

Luciano wrote,

||I mean, if the conspiration is that good, how do you explain that someone could have figured it out and create a theory of it called "super-psi"?||

That's a great point!

And Faisal wrote,

||If we accept that we are susceptible to such vast deception in this case why should we be considered immune to elaborate deception in other cases?||

Another great point.

We would need an explanation of why super-psi is only good enough to fool us to the degree it does, and no more.

It would amount to a humanity-wide system of control or deception that nevertheless chooses only to bring us all together on this one hoax but nothing else. If it had such a Trickster nature, then wouldn't it choose to fool us in multiple areas?

[Leo MacDonald]

Has anyone seen this paper yet I found it very interesting on the mind brain relationship

Brain works like a radio receiver

http://www.ru.nl/english/@930644/pagina/

[doubter]

Luciano:
|| I mean, if the conspiration is that good, how do you explain that someone could have figured it out and create a theory of it called "super-psi"? ||

Matt Rouge:
|| We would need an explanation of why super-psi is only good enough to fool us to the degree it does, and no more.

It would amount to a humanity-wide system of control or deception that nevertheless chooses only to bring us all together on this one hoax but nothing else. If it had such a Trickster nature, then wouldn't it choose to fool us in multiple areas? ||

Since everything human has its limitations, this would include the powers of the supposed collective unconscious mind. Maybe it does the best it can to pull the wool over our eyes, but runs into a lot of constraints. The main limitation would be in actual physical manifestation.

There actually are a number of other anomalous phenomena that seem candidates for deception by a collective unconscious mind. Ever heard of UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles, Bigfoot and other cryptids, angel appearances and Marian apparitions? They share some odd characteristics with psi and afterlife-suggestive psychical phenomena, namely an even more elusive, unverifiable nature, and a focus on the mass fears and desires of the time.

Super-psi still seems very implausible as an explanation for psychical phenomena, but it seems to me there is room for suspicion.

[Anthony McCarthy]

My question about super-psi is why that mediums don't continually experience that level of success in telepathic perception in other contexts? You would think that they were the best experts on the nature of what they experience, since they're the ones experiencing it and if they had that level of telepathic ability they would be aware of it in contexts other than attempts to communicate with the dead.

[Kathleen]

If super-PSI really was in effect, wouldn't it manifest upon very tragic deaths - such as death of a child - when it's needed most? Wouldn't the collective family, the aunts, uncles, and cousins, manifest the appearance that the deceased child survives to give the grieving parents solace? But this never occurs. I'm fine with people believing in this, I just don't see it myself.