Michael Prescott's Blog

Sudduth on survival

Dr. Michael Sudduth is the rare academic who takes evidence for postmortem survival seriously – seriously enough, in fact, that he's written a book about it for a scholarly audience: A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Evidence for Postmortem Survival. 

I have to admit I haven't read the book. I did start it, but I'm afraid my philosophical education (limited to a couple of introductory courses in college) is too meager to properly read and digest its contents. That's why I was happy to discover an online interview with Dr. Sudduth in which he summarizes his arguments in terms that even a layman like me can (I hope) understand.

I should add that Dr. Sudduth is a good friend of mine on Facebook, and I hope that my critical remarks will be taken as constructive criticism and not merely as bashing his point of view. I also acknowledge that a brief interview can't possibly present the full scope and nuance of his arguments.

With that said, let's take a look at some of what he says in the Q&A.

His basic point, as I take it, is that the philosophical arguments that survivalists make are flawed, and that while the evidence may (at least for the sake of argument) be taken as valid, the conclusions drawn from it are unwarranted. He says that survivalists "haven't provided a good enough reason to believe either of [their] two main claims":

... [first, that] survival is at least more probable than not, if not highly probable relative to the total evidence [and second, that] survival provides the best explanation of the relevant facts. ... [Survivalists] argue that survival is probable or very probable because it provides the best explanation of the data.

He goes on to say that survivalists make unwarranted and self-defeating assumptions.

First, there are general assumptions about what the evidence for survival should look like. In the absence of such assumptions, there's no plausible inference from features of the world to the claim that persons survive death. In much the same way, if I don't know (or reasonably believe) what the evidence that Mr. X committed the crime should look like, I can't plausibly regard any crime-scene fact as evidence that Mr. X committed the crime.

Let's start with this analogy. As I see it, the problem with it is that it has no counterpart in the real world. There is never a case in which you don't know or reasonably believe what the evidence that Mr. X committed the crime should look like. No one is ever quite that much in the dark.

Here are some ways you could know if Mr. X is at least a plausible suspect:

1. Mr. X left a signed confession at the scene
2. Mr. X left his fingerprints on the murder weapon
3. Mr. X's monogrammed handkerchief was found stuffed in the victim's mouth
4. Eyewitnesses observed Mr. X leaving the scene.

You can multiply examples indefinitely. The point is, it is impossible to imagine a situation in which an investigator would have no idea whatsoever of what might constitute evidence of Mr. X's involvement in a crime. That degree of ignorance is impossible in the real world.  

Let's take a more realistic example. Suppose we're looking for life on Mars, but we don't know what Martian life might consist of. In that case, it might be argued that we can't know what evidence for Martian life should look like, so we can't plausibly regard any discovery as evidence of Martian life.

It's the same situation as the crime scene. But notice that, in the real world, we have made efforts to look for Martian life via robot probes. How is this possible? Well, even though we don't know what Martian life might consist of, we can make certain foundational assumptions, taking care that these assumptions are as conservative as possible. For instance, we might assume that any form of life will exhibit the property of metabolism. Then we would search for signs of metabolic processes. If we find a possible metabolic process, we proceed to make further tests in an attempt to distinguish it from some other type of chemical reaction. None of this requires claiming to know anything in detail about the nature of Martian life, or even being certain that Martian life does or can exist.

Is this assumption ad hoc, arbitrary, and unwarranted? I would say no. It is perhaps the most bare-bones assumption possible. And in any investigation, we have to start somewhere.

How would this apply to postmortem survival? Dr. Sudduth mentions mediumship, NDEs and OBEs, and reincarnation cases as the topics addressed in his book, but for simplicity let's limit this blog entry to the study of mediumship. We need to make just two foundational assumptions in order to begin this study: first, that if consciousness survives death, it can sometimes communicate through a medium; and second, that if such communications take place, some of them can include verifiable information.

Note that we are not insisting that consciousness does survive, or that it can communicate, or that it can retain and convey specific facts. This is an if-then proposition. And the assumptions are not arbitrary. As with Martian metabolism, they are the most conservative assumptions we can make if we intend to make a scientific study. Mediumship can have no scientific value if the medium produces no communications, or if the medium produces communications that can never be verified. Only if there are communications and some of them can be verified is there any point in studying mediumship at all. Our beginning assumptions are the only possible basis on which we can proceed. And in fact, this is the basis on which the earliest serious investigations, sponsored by the (British) Society for Psychical Research, were conducted.

It's true, of course, that as investigations into mediumship continued over the decades, and as thousands of pages of case studies were written up, more characteristics were attributed to postmortem consciousness than simply its existence, ability to communicate, and ability to supply verifiable facts. But those later attributions were the result of the empirical evidence that was being collected. It's similar to finding evidence of a metabolic process on Mars, conducting intensive research on the sample, and learning a host of new things about it. The new things were not part of the original assumption. They were the result of the investigation, not the beginning.

It's necessary to make this point because, later in the interview, Dr. Sudduth says: 

... we really can't say with any reasonable degree of assurance what we should expect survival evidence to look like in any particular case. We only get there by making further assumptions. So simple survival does not logically entail (nor make probable) a surviving self that retains all the right stuff: the stock of memories, desires, intentions, and perceptual abilities and causal powers required for ongoing lifelike interactions with our world and that would justify identifying a person as the same as (or the continuation of) some previous personality. We need auxiliary assumptions to bulk up a generic or simple survival hypothesis (or theory) into a more conceptually robust hypothesis or theory) that can plausibly account for the data.

In my opinion, this gets the actual situation backward. It's not the case that investigators  have added assumption upon assumption as research has proceeded. What's happened is that they've added empirical fact upon empirical fact. The countless pages of transcripts, with independent verification of many details, have pointed investigators to certain conclusions about the nature of postmortem consciousness. Those conclusions are no more arbitrary than the conclusions reached in any other field of inquiry that depends on facts. It's only natural that, as we learn more about a subject, we'll be able to say more about it. That doesn't mean we're making a host of arbitrary assumptions. We're stating what we know, or at least what we think we know based on the evidence.

The early investigators were looking for any sign of verifiable communications. When they obtained such communications, they proceeded to test them in various ways – by proxy sittings, the use of anonymous or pseudonymous sitters, book and newspaper tests, the so-called cross correspondences (information provided in fragmentary form by different mediums that made sense only when put together by the researchers), etc. The intention was to determine the limitations of this purported postmortem communication and to see if it could be distinguished from "ordinary" ESP. All of this seems perfectly rational to me. In what other way could such studies proceed?

Distinguishing mediumistic communications from ESP has, of course, been an ongoing issue in parapsychology. Because the kind of ESP that would be required to produce the more compelling evidence in medium studies is unusually robust, it has been called super-ESP or, more recently, super-psi. Dr. Sudduth prefers the term living-agent psi. He argues that survivalists are guilty of

a (perhaps unconscious) logical sleight-of-hand … Survivalists routinely contrast a simple survival hypothesis and a robust living-agent psi hypothesis to show that living-agent psi – unlike survival – is overly complex and relies on assumptions that are ad hoc or lack independent support. But when survivalists wish to focus on the explanatory advantages of the survival hypothesis, they contrast a simple living-agent psi hypothesis (which explains very little) and a robust interpretation of survival.

Up to a point, this is a valid criticism. There's a tendency for survivalists, myself included, to minimize the capabilities of psi and to maximize the purported capabilities of postmortem communicators. Exaggeration does come into play.

Moreover, I think it's likely that some – perhaps most – mediumistic communications do, in fact, result from living-agent psi. This same conclusion is reached by Arthur Ellison in his valuable book Science and the Paranormal.

But to argue that living-agent psi is a satisfactory explanation for all mediumship strikes me as implausible. There are cases that fall well outside the range of any known living-agent psi, and which have been examined in scrupulous detail in some of the better-known books in the field. See in particular Mediumship and Survival, by Alan Gauld, and Immortal Remains by Stephen E. Braude.

I can't cover all such cases here, but let's pick one of the more famous ones – the famous case of Runki and his missing leg. Because I wrote up a fairly detailed summary of this case last year, I'll present only a shorter recap here. For details, you can always refer to my earlier post, or even better, to the original report by Ehrlunder Haraldsson and Ian Stevenson. In brief: 

Beginning in 1937, an Icelandic medium found his séances repeatedly interrupted by a (purported) spirit who at first refused to give his name, but who eventually identified himself as Runki. Runki said he'd drowned in 1879 (58 years earlier); his body, swept out to sea, was only partially recovered. He was very upset that one of his leg bones had not been properly buried. Sometime later, a new sitter joined the circle. Runki was excited by this new arrival, stating that this man had his missing leg! Eventually it transpired that Runki believed the leg bone had been interred in a wall of the man's house shortly before he bought the place. Inquiries were made, and some locals dimly recalled finding a leg bone during a beach excavation circa 1920, passing it around, and eventually opting to place it inside the wall in 1921, when the house was remodeled. In 1940, in response to Runki's insistence, the wall was opened, and a leg bone was found. It was given a proper burial, after which Runki pronounced himself satisfied, and no longer disrupted the séances, though he did go on to function as the medium's "control."

This case was carefully investigated by Ehrlendur and Stevenson, and appears to be genuine. The various facts about Runki were scattered among different, extremely obscure, archived but unpublished documents; no one document contained all the information. Since Runki died almost 60 years before he announced himself, there were virtually no people left alive who'd known him. (A grandson did remember him as being unusually tall, which was something the communicator had said about himself. The human femur found in the old house belonged to a tall man, though it was never proved to be Runki's.) He apparently was not that well known locally even in his lifetime. Moreover, the Runki communicator had a distinctive personality and clearly defined likes and dislikes, and he was aggressive about insisting on recovery of his leg. 

How would living-agent psi account for all this? Initially, the man who owned the house wasn't even part of the circle. Nor did he know about the leg bone hidden in a wall. But let's say he unconsciously became aware of the leg bone via clairvoyance. He would then have to somehow connect the leg with Runki, who'd died six decades earlier. He would need to clairvoyantly access multiple archived documents containing scattered references to Runki's death and burial. Then he would have to influence the medium (whom he had not yet met) to bring out all this information at a séance, even though no one in the circle had any interest in or connection to Runki, and to construct a vivid persona of a low-level earthbound spirit with an obsessive interest in his missing leg bone. Presumably his own decision to join the circle sometime later would have been directed by a subconscious need to resolve the situation.

Dr. Sudduth says:

[Survivalists) miss how the kind of survival hypothesis that adequately accommodates the data requires assumptions that are at least as complex, ad hoc, and lacking in the way of independent support as those adopted by the defender of the living-agent psi hypothesis in the interest of accommodating the data.

Is this true in the Runki case? It seems to me that the living-agent psi assumptions listed above are far more "complex, ad hoc, and lacking in the way of independent support" than the survival hypothesis. Moreover, the "assumptions" made by survivalists are mostly not assumptions at all, but – as we previously considered – the result of an ever-increasing body of empirical evidence.

I concede that the survival hypothesis fails to explain how Runki knew that his leg bone (or any leg bone, whether or not it was actually his) was hidden inside a certain wall. His ability to pinpoint the concealed bone may well qualify as a kind of "super-psi" in itself. It remains mysterious under any interpretation of the case. But in other respects, Runki's knowledge and behavior are consistent with an un-evolved spirit (Runki himself said he had no wish to evolve: "It is fine to be as I am”) who naturally was familiar with the details of his life and death, and who retained his coarse personality and cravings for snuff and rum.  

On the other hand, as far as I know, there's no body of empirical evidence to suggest that a living person can perform all the complex psychic gymnastics required in the Runki case. Evidence for living-agent psi is strong and convincing, but nearly all researchers agree that psi is generally a weak, marginal ability that comes and goes, and which is typically detected only by large-scale statistical studies.

There are, of course, standout cases of more dramatic psi abilities, but does any known case incorporate all the abilities hypothesized above? 

I concede that it's logically possible that psi could be this robust in a few people. But a logical possibility does not constitute reasonable doubt. (See Chris Carter's  Science and the Afterlife Experience for discussion of this point.) If we had to give equal weight to every logical possibility, no matter how far-fetched, we could never get anywhere in our reasoning. A defense attorney might argue that Mr. X's signed confession was forged, that his fingerprints were planted, that the monogrammed handkerchief was stolen, and that the eyewitnesses were bribed by the real killer. All of these are logical possibilities, but unless the attorney can show that they're realistic possibilities, they aren't worth considering. 

Let's conclude with a fanciful analogy. Suppose that somebody tells you to find a billaquoot. You ask what a billaquoot is. You're told, "Never mind about that – just find one!"  It should be obvious that you'll be at a loss. You literally don't know what you're looking for. You won't know what the evidence of a billaquoot should even look like. If you're determined to do something anyway, you'll have to make assumptions about how a billaquoot might look or what behavior it might exhibit. These assumptions can't help but be groundless and wrong because the term "billaquoot" is meaningless.

Now we have to ask: Is the term "postmortem consciousness" equally meaningless? This seems to be the position taken by Dr. Sudduth, unless I've misunderstood him (which is always possible — again, I'm no philosopher). He seems to be saying that nobody can know anything about postmortem consciousness, and therefore there's no way to find evidence for it without making a host of unwarranted, groundless assumptions that are just as arbitrary as assumptions made about the billaquoot.

I don't doubt that postmortem consciousness is a tricky thing to define or describe, but I disagree that it's as empty of meaning as a nonsense word. Some meaning can be attached to it, and investigations into survival have historically begun with the barest possible definition or description, which has been expanded and refined only as more information comes to light.

Moreover, this is how things work in any area of investigation. How did we ever study gravity or electricity or microorganisms when we knew nothing about them? We started with vague notions and progressively refined them. How is the study of survival any different? 

The 4D man

This will be a rather dense post, because I'm adapting it from some notes I wrote last night when I was noodling on the question of how to make sense of paranormal and postmortem phenomena. The idea requires more elaboration than I can give it here. But at least this is a start.

The basic idea is that our four-dimensional reality (three dimensions of space and one dimension of time) exists on a continuum, with higher dimensional realities above our own. For simplicity, I'll refer collectively to these higher-dimensional planes as five-dimensional or 5D reality, although there could be more dimensions than that.

The famous book Flatland by Edwin Abbott imagines a two-dimensional world existing on the surface of a sheet of paper. The narrator, a Flatlander, has an epiphany in which he experiences a higher, three-dimensional world from which he can look down on the paper from above. This episode of "cosmic consciousness" alters his worldview irrevocably.

Note that the two-dimensional world of Flatland is grounded in the three-dimensional world (known as Spaceland in the book). The ground of being, in other words, has more dimensions than the ordinary world. This observation points up a defect in the model of a holographic reality. A hologram is a three-dimensional image projected out of a two-dimensional plate. In that case, the ground of being is lower-dimensional than the observed reality. But in the Flatland model, the ground of being is higher-dimensional than our ordinary reality. I believe this is probably more correct.

In this case, to speak of going higher in terms of dimensions is also to speak of going deeper in terms of structure. This is not as paradoxical as it may seem. We already use the terms high and deep interchangeably to refer to advanced thinking: a high-minded deep thinker, or elevated, profound thought. So there's no necessary contradiction in saying that as we go higher, we also go deeper. It's a matter of perspective.

Now we have to ask in what way five-dimensional entities or realities or inputs would be experienced in our four-dimensional world. Again, an analogy with the world of Flatland is helpful. Imagine a pencil, a three-dimensional object. If it were to intrude into a purely two-dimensional world (Flatland), it would be perceived only as a slice. It might be a small dot (a slice of the graphite tip), or a somewhat larger circle (a slice of the wooden point), or a still larger circle (a slice of the widest part of the pencil). Or, if the slice were made at an angle, then it might be an oval. If the pencil were sliced lengthwise down the middle, it would be a silhouette of the pencil. But the matter how it is sliced, the slice itself will always be a two-dimensional object, and someone unfamiliar with the three-dimensional world will be unable to visualize the complete three-dimensional pencil, much less imagine its origins or its purpose.

There's one more point to make. Each higher level of reality corresponds to a higher level of consciousness. A four-dimensional reality is perceived by a four-dimensional mind – a mind limited by the architecture of a four-dimensional brain and nervous system. A five-dimensional reality is perceived by a five-dimensional consciousness, which has no such limitations.  Five-dimensional entities intruding into four-dimensional space are perceived in a distorted or altered form not only because of the restrictions of the 4D environment but also because of the limitations of the 4D mind. Indeed, we could say that there is no distinction between environment and mind. The 5D object exists as a 4D perception in our reality because 1) that is the only way it can exist here and because 2) that is the only way it can be perceived by us. And in fact, #1 and #2 are two ways of saying the same thing. To be is to be perceived.

The 4D mind is essentially what we think of as the ego, while the 5D mind is what we think of as the higher self or the subliminal self. The ego, in other words, is a slice of a much larger and different 5D reality.

Poster for the 1959 sci-fi film The 4D Man

Even in our 4D incarnation, we are not utterly cut off from 5D reality (in terms of either higher consciousness or a higher plane of existence – which, again, amount to the same thing). We have intimations of it, leakage from it, hints and nudges and signs. We can improve our access to 5D reality by minimizing the activity of our 4D brain through hypnosis, the hypnopompic or hypnagogic stages of sleep, sensory deprivation, meditation, or even brain-impairing injury or illness. The basic function of the brain is to funnel or filter the overwhelming awareness of 5D consciousness into a manageable slice of 4D consciousness; because of this, impairment of brain functions can result in greater access to 5D consciousness. 

Children, whose egos are not yet fully developed, are more likely to be in tune with 5D consciousness and to experience phenomena such as past-life memories, imaginary friends, ghosts, and ESP. Savants, whose brains are incomplete or defective in some way, are able to tune in to the higher levels of awareness of 5D consciousness. Their abilities can seem supernatural because 5D consciousness is supernatural in the literal sense – it is superior to (above and beyond) the 4D physical world.

Dreams, or at least some dreams, are 5D experiences altered and distorted into bizarre, incomprehensible slices of 4D memory. The 4D memory may bear as little resemblance to the original 5D experience as a circle bears to a pencil.

The quantum world is a 5D reality when it is unobserved. But when our 4D consciousness observes it, it must be rendered in 4D terms. Thus, in the double-slit experiments, a subatomic entity like a photon exists as a cloud of potentialities transcending time and space in its 5D form. But when observed, the 5D cloud of potentia must "collapse" into a 4D slice – a particular point in space and time. 

Because 5D reality transcends space, entangled quantum entities can continue to affect each other across any distance of space. And because 5D reality transcends time, delayed-choice experiments will show effects that are seemingly retroactive.

What we know as time is a 4D slice of 5D reality. The Planck time, the shortest interval of time that can exist in our reality, is such a slice. What we know as space is also a 4D slice of 5D reality. The Planck length, the shortest interval of space that can exist in our reality is, again, such a slice.

How about various paranormal phenomena?

Telepathy. The five-dimensional realm is essentially unbound by time and space. Separation between minds is a separation of time and space. Without time and space, there is no separation. Therefore the 5D mind, when it is accessed, can pick up other people’s thoughts, because it is not cut off from them.

Remote viewing and out-of-body experiences. Since the 5D realm is not limited by physical space or time, access to the 5D mind potentially allows access to any point in space or time.

Retrocognition and precognition. Unrestricted by time, the 5D mind can observe past and future events, or at least probabilities (bearing in mind that the 5D quantum world consists of clouds of probabilities, not specific physical objects at specific points). 

Near-death experiences. The dying brain allows greatly expanded access to the 5D realm, though still necessarily interpreted in 4D terms by the recovered patient. These 4D interpretations may be unintentionally misleading and inaccurate, as we see in conflicting claims that reflect cultural differences, or in prophesies that fail. 

Mediumship. A medium can connect extra-physically with discarnate (5D) minds; but these minds must adjust to 4-D conditions, in order to interface with the medium’s brain. This is why discarnate communicators typically say they must "lower their vibrations" and restrict their consciousness to an earthly level in order to communicate through a medium. It also accounts for errors in communication, as the (temporarily) 4D mind of the communicator and/or the (necessarily) 4D brain of the medium alters and distorts the material coming through  – in effect, misinterpreting the 4D slices of 5D reality.

Physical mediumship and psychokinesis. 5D consciousness, transcending space and time, allows manipulation of matter and energy. But when expressed in our 4D reality and perceived by our 4D consciousness, this ability is inevitably inhibited and curtailed. Physical mediums insist that they cannot perform in the light, not even infrared light. Although this requirement has often been merely a cover for fraud, it may also have a legitimate basis, in that any illumination that allows the 4D brain to perceive the phenomena will also inevitably distort, alter, restrict, and inhibit the phenomena by converting it into 4D terms.

Ghosts, apparitions, hauntings, poltergeists. These seem to exist at the borderland between 5D and 4D realities, and as such they are ephemeral, elusive, and sometimes perceived by certain observers but not others. Attempts to capture the phenomena on film or video often fail, presumably because, as with physical mediumship, any physical (4D) perception will inevitably distort or inhibit the 5D source.

UFOs and related phenomena. Again, these seem to exist at the borderland between 5D and 4D realities, with many of the the same characteristics as ghosts and apparitions (or sightings of the Virgin Mary etc.). If UFOs, whatever they are, originate in 5D reality, then their intrusion into our 4D reality will inevitably alter and distort them. What we are seeing is a 4D slice, not the 5D whole. Since perception is reality, and since we can only perceive things that are familiar to us in some way, we will perceive these 4D slices as something roughly known to us. Technologically primitive peoples may perceive them as gods. A seafaring people may perceive them as schooners in the sky. A culture just developing airships may see them as immense dirigibles. A culture on the verge of space travel may perceive them as spaceships. These perceptions have little to do with the actual 5D reality, which our 4D minds cannot apprehend. Our senses cannot be trusted when dealing with slices of 5D phenomena that we're not equipped to perceive.

Synchronicities. These are possibly an example of the 5D higher self impinging on the 4D ego and its environment. Again, the distinction between observer and observed may not hold at higher levels of reality, so that changes in our environment and changes in our perception may only be two different aspects of the same thing.

The basic point is that the ground of being is a five- (or more-) dimensional reality, while our ordinary experience is a four-dimensional reality. Attempts to apprehend intrusions of 5D phenomena into our 4D realm will inevitably distort the true nature of those phenomena. We can see only a slice of this higher dimension. In fact, we ourselves – as we currently exist in this incarnation – are only a slice of our true higher-dimensional selves. Where we make an error is in mistaking the slice for the whole.