Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 4: No scientific verifiable mechanisms or empirical evidence

Two Alleged Challenges to the Reincarnation Hypothesis

 

The following blog post is someone's* summary of the research into reincarnation, which on the whole seems fair and balanced. There are two alleged challenges to the reincarnation hypothesis in there that I'd like to address. These challenges are not confined to this specific writer as I occasionally see them expressed elsewhere too. Regarding the first challenge, the author says:

One of the most significant challenges for the theory of reincarnation is the lack of any scientifically verifiable mechanism by which it could occur.

I do not consider this a challenge, least of all a significant one. We simply need to bear in mind that there is also no scientifically verifiable mechanism by which even our present bodies come to be associated with consciousness. Indeed, this is why the issue of how consciousness relates to one's body has been labelled the hard problem (also see this Guardian article). If we have no idea how our everyday embodied consciousness is related to our present bodies, indeed that no such scientific theory even seems possible, then a fortiori we could scarcely be expected to conjure up a mechanism for how reincarnation occurs.

 

Immediately after mentioning the first challenge the author presents a second challenge. He (or she, or it) says:

Moreover, there is no empirical evidence that consciousness or the soul could survive physical death, as required by the theory of reincarnation.

Obviously, there is a great deal of evidence. There are near-death experiences and the closely related phenomenon deathbed visions and other peculiar occurrences near death. There are past life memories, crisis apparitions, mediumship and other more indirect evidence. Of course, how persuasive we should consider each strand of evidence is up for debate. One might indeed argue that none of this evidence is particularly compelling (and there certainly are weaknesses, although I regard all the evidence as a collective whole to be very compelling). Nevertheless, evidence it is.

But I’m guessing that by empirical evidence the author and skeptics mean scientific evidence. More specifically that we have never been able to detect consciousness when it isn't in a body (i.e. we have never detected disembodied consciousness). That is, leaving aside apparitions, no one ever sees disembodied consciousness nor indeed have our scientific instruments ever detected any disembodied consciousness. I think the argument would then be that this strongly suggests that disembodied consciousness does not exist.

There's an immediate problem here that occurs to me. If our scientific instruments could detect disembodied consciousness, then by definition, consciousness would then be material or physical or at least have material aspects. However, this is not something that sophisticated believers in an afterlife would subscribe to. Consciousness, or the self, cannot be seen, touched or detected in any manner even when embodied. Indeed, this is why it is concluded by many that it is immaterial. And if we cannot see or detect consciousness associated with bodies, why on earth would we have any expectation that we will be able to observe disembodied consciousness?

 

But what if Reductive Materialism is correct?

 

Typically, when I give such arguments as I have above, people will claim there is a scientifically verifiable mechanism by which bodies come to be associated with consciousness and that we can in fact detect embodied consciousness. This will be the case should consciousness quite literally be what the brain does. Or, alternatively, if consciousness doesn't really exist, and it is merely an illusion created by our brains. In other words, if some variety of reductive materialism is correct.

However, assuming some variety of reductive materialism is a clear case of question-begging since those who believe in reincarnation will reject this position on the mind-body problem; or at least they will if they have in mind some type of self or soul that reincarnates. What the skeptic needs to do, therefore, is to advance arguments for reductive materialism.  However, it seems to me that this is an insurmountable challenge. 

Other posts in this Reincarnation series:

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 1: The Increasing Population

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 2: Reincarnation isn't Falsifiable

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 3: Patterns in Reincarnation Cases are determined by Culture

*I say someone, but the article seems very ChatGPT..ish to me. It's reproducing the standard arguments for and objections to reincarnation, but it all seems rather derived and soulless. It is balanced but boring, and nothing novel in the text. Exactly like ChatGPT's responses to me.  

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 3: Patterns in Reincarnation Cases are determined by Culture

In the psi encyclopaedia entry Patterns in Reincarnation Cases it says:

Sceptics of a reincarnation interpretation of the cases point to the association between beliefs about the reincarnation process and case features such as the presence or absence of sex change and argue that this is proof that people are imagining or constructing the cases in accordance with their culturally-mandated ideas.  This proposition has been called the sociopsychological or psychosocial theory of past-life memory claims.

For example, David Lester in The Myth of an Afterlife in his chapter Is there life after death?  says:

Stevenson noted that in his best cases the previous person lived in the same region as the current person. But there should be more cases where the previous personality is from a different nation, for there is no reason why deceased spirits should be constrained by space.

And he adds:

There are large cultural variations in the reports, and there is no reason why the characteristics of Stevenson’s cases should vary significantly from culture to culture. Such cultural variation suggests that the belief system of the culture determines the content of the reports. If a culture believes that sex change does not occur from one life to another, then it is not found in the reports.

So, should the reports be fabricated or mistaken, we would expect the characteristics of the cases to align with cultural expectations and desires.  And that is precisely what we find.  Should we conclude that the evidence therefore cannot be what it seems, that it does not point to reincarnation?

We cannot address this question until we have some inkling of what our expectations ought to be on this issue if, in fact, reincarnation does occur.  Let's suppose we were not acquainted with any of the evidence suggesting reincarnation.  What should be our prior expectations regarding what determines or influences the details of the reincarnational process?  In other words, what is it that governs the sex we will be reborn as, where one is reborn, and what period of time elapses before one is reborn? 

There seems to me to be three broad possibilities (or any combination thereof).

1. Some impersonal natural "mechanism" largely, if not exclusively, characterises the reincarnational process.  Such a "mechanism" determines what sex we are born, where we are born, and how long we stay in the otherworldly realm before we are reborn.  Neither our thoughts, desires, underlying beliefs, nor any external agent, will have any significant influence in this process.  Such a natural "mechanism" or process might be construed as being akin to the natural laws that describe our familiar material realm.  For example, if we were to find ourselves in the unfortunate position of falling from a high height, our beliefs, desires, underlying beliefs and general psychological state will not be able to prevent us from stopping or slowing down our acceleration towards the Earth.  
   
   
2. Our desires, underlying beliefs, general psychological states, and hence our implicit expectations, do play at least some effective role if not exclusively determines the details of the reincarnational process.
   
   
3. Some external agent(s) of some nature, wholly or partially, dictates the details of the reincarnational process.

If it can be shown that prior to looking at the research into reincarnation that it is more reasonable to subscribe to "1", or at least mainly "1", then this vindicates the skeptic's conclusion that the evidence for reincarnation can be dismissed.  So we now need to look at their reasons for subscribing to "1".

Unfortunately, they don't give any reasons, or at least not so far as I am aware.  Certainly, David Lester doesn't give any in his chapter in The Myth of an Afterlife where he argues against reincarnation.  My suspicion is that skeptics expectations here are heavily influenced by their background suppositions about the world.  Specifically, that consciousness, whether in the form of explicitly directed intentions or more vaguely in the form of psychological dispositions, plays no effective causal role in the world over and above material processes.  The world, instead, is ultimately entirely governed by impersonal physical laws that are not directed towards any ends.  So why should any supposed realm in-between lives be any different? 

This idea that consciousness plays no effective causal role in the world over and above material processes implies that, broadly construed, some type of materialism is correct.  Which then rules out the possibility of souls reincarnating.  Thus skeptics, by imagining that it is entirely some impersonal process that determines the specifics of the reincarnational process, are to a certain extent, begging the question.  

A world in which reincarnation happens entails that our essential nature is a soul.  This, in turn, implies a world very different to the world in which the materialist imagines we live.  In particular, it seems likely to me that in the afterlife realm our underlying beliefs, expectations, and desires will very much have an influence in what we experience and the environment we find ourselves in.  And, should we reincarnate, influence when, where and what sex we will be when reborn.

This, of course, is just my belief, which could be incorrect.  But we need reasons to suppose the alternative -- an impersonal "mechanism" -- would be mainly responsible.  That neither a soul's beliefs and desires nor any external agent will play anything other than, at most, a minor role in this process.

Unless they are able to advance some cogent reasons, I therefore have to conclude that the cultural variations in the reports only constitute weak evidence against reincarnation.

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 1: The Increasing Population
Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 2: Reincarnation isn't Falsifiable

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 2: Reincarnation isn't Falsifiable

The falsifiability criterion was advanced by Karl Popper to demarcate scientific from non-scientific theories. The idea is that if one has a scientific theory explaining some aspect of reality, but all conceivable observations of the world are compatible with the theory being either true or false, then, at least from a scientific perspective, your theory is devoid of any content. You're not actually saying anything about the world since all possible physical states of affairs are compatible with the theory. So Popper held that scientific theories must be falsifiable, that is we must be able to point to possible observations that would falsify or disconfirm our theory. This then invites the question, is reincarnation falsifiable? 

The philosopher Michael Sudduth has said in his blog:

A couple of years ago I asked reincarnation researcher Jim Tucker what fact, if it should turn up, would disconfirm reincarnation. He couldn’t tell me. We need look no further for evidence that the present state of reincarnation research hasn’t advanced beyond the conceptual infancy of Ian Stevenson’s brain child. You can’t tell me how the world should not look if your conjecture is true? I’d suggest that it’s equally impossible to say what would non-trivially confirm your conjecture. If your conjecture fits anything you could possibly observe, you’ve transcended the empirical world. You’re doing metaphysics, writing fiction, or peddling snake oil. None of these should be confused with the empirical stance.

In this context "disconfirm" has the same meaning as falsify in the Popperian sense of this word. Sudduth holds the position that there should be some potential discovery in reincarnation research that one could make that would show reincarnation to be the incorrect explanation.

In order to appreciate how silly this is let's consider the following analogy. Let’s say I claim to have an apparent memory of going to a party a week ago. Other people remember me being there and more or less corroborate what I said and did that night. I also remember accidentally knocking into a table and having a bruise on my leg in that specific location the next day. Now what fact(s) would disconfirm that I was actually there?

Of course, such a question is ridiculous. The evidence that I was there at that particular location or locations already exists, and any facts that would disconfirm I was there would need to explain away all this evidence. I would have to be either lying or suffering from false memory. Other people would have to be deliberately lying when they confirmed I was there, and so on.  

It is as silly to castigate Jim Tucker for his alleged inability to mention any potential disconfirming facts against the reincarnation hypothesis, as it would be to castigate me for being unable to mention any remotely plausible potential facts that would disconfirm that I went to the party in question.

The problem here is that the falsifiability criteria ought not to be applied in the scenarios where either something exists/occurs or not. If, hypothetically, we suppose it actually is the case that reincarnation occurs, then clearly it cannot be falsified just like one cannot, for example, falsify the Sun will rise the next morning or falsify ice will melt if the temperature were to go above 0℃. One cannot show that which is true is actually false! 

Popper's falsification criteria is actually meant to apply to scientific theories that attempt to explain some aspect of reality.  If, at some point, the theory doesn't match up to what we observe, then the theory is falsified (although, in reality, the theory is often rescued by auxiliary hypotheses, especially if there is no alternative theory to take its place).  So it's inappropriate, for example, for someone to ask how we can potentially falsify the idea that a stone held in the hand will fall when released. But we should be able to potentially falsify any theory regarding why the stone falls.  Likewise, we cannot potentially falsify that reincarnation occurs, but we can potentially falsify any scientific theory about how or why reincarnation occurs. But, as it happens, we do not have any such scientific theory.  Indeed, we don't even have any scientific theory about how our everyday embodied consciousness relates to the world, hence the hard problem of consciousness (any type of materialism, dualism, or idealism are metaphysical hypotheses, not scientific theories).  

What fact would disconfirm that reincarnation occurs?  We can imagine Jim Tucker's perplexity in being asked this question, much like someone would be perplexed if asked what fact would disconfirm I attended the aforementioned party.  It's not a question of discovering further facts.  Rather, we need an alternative hypothesis that explains all the extant evidence in a more convincing or elegant manner than the reincarnation hypothesis does.  Ideally, such an alternative hypothesis will also accommodate any evidence that might not seem congruent with reincarnation.

The problem here is that none of the competing hypotheses appear to explain all the evidence (but I will be taking a look at such hypotheses in another post in this reincarnation series). Jim Tucker, of course, is aware that none of the competing hypotheses pass muster, so how was he supposed to respond?  It was a loaded question that implicitly reflects Sudduth's erroneous understanding of falsificationism.

Unfortunately, this misuse of Popper's falsificationism, including by academics, is prevalent.  Moreover, it isn't merely a weapon wielded against reincarnation but also more generally any type of afterlife and psi too. 

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 1: The Increasing Population

    

 

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 1: The Increasing Population

Introduction

 

This is the first part of an intended series of posts addressing alleged problems with the concept of reincarnation. Perhaps I should state my own position at the outset.  It is that I think it is very likely that reincarnation occurs. Why do I think this?  First of all, and most importantly, because of the evidence and the fact that it is very difficult to dream up alternative hypotheses to explain this evidence.  And, secondly, because I do not find the objections to reincarnation, and more generally an afterlife, convincing.  In regards to the latter, see this post of mine.

I shall refer to the environment we find ourselves in-between lives as the otherworldly realm.  But it shouldn't be imagined that this necessarily refers to, or consists of, simply one place or one type of environment.  Indeed, it may consist of many different realms or realities, possibly of radically differing natures. Regardless, when I employ the phrase otherworldly realm, I simply mean any environment that we happen to inhabit before or after our present lives on Earth.

So, what is this evidence? I recommend people read this excellent summary in the form of young children recollecting previous lives.  It is written by a certain Jesse Bering, an associate professor in science communication at the University of Otago who is himself sceptical that reincarnation occurs and indeed sceptical that there is any type of afterlife at all. 

Incidentally, it is only the critiques of the spontaneous memories of apparent previous lives that I will be considering in this series of posts.  I will not be addressing the critiques of reincarnation based on alleged memories of past lives elicited from hypnotic regression.  Memories elicited from hypnotic regression are far less reliable, and indeed, there has been far less success in corroborating such alleged memories.  

The Population Problem

Currently, the world's population is around 7.9 billion*. In the year 2000, it was 6.1 billion.  In 1900 it was 1.6 billion.  In 1500 it was 450 million (0.45 billion).  In 5,000 BCE (7 thousand years ago) it was 5 million (0.005 billion)*. Many people claim that such dramatic population growth is incompatible with the idea of reincarnation.  

Unfortunately, people generally tend to be unforthcoming as to why they think there is an incompatibility here, but I think there's a number of assumptions they're making.  Let's list them:

1. All the souls that exist are currently alive on Earth.  This suggests no souls are currently dwelling in any otherworldly realm.
2. Everyone reincarnates. 
3. No souls are ever created nor destroyed.  Hence, the total number of souls is fixed at a specific number throughout time.  
4. There is no inter-species reincarnation.  
5. There are no other planets or parallel Earths or anywhere else where we can reincarnate.
6. We can only reincarnate sequentially in time.  Hence when I die -- say in 2051 or whenever -- my next life will commence at or after this time.  I cannot have my next life, say, commencing from 470 BCE.
7. Souls can't merge into each other so that hitherto different souls now occupy the same body.  Nor can the same soul occupy more than one body.

The late philosopher, Paul Edwards, in his book Reincarnation: A Critical Examination held that should reincarnation occur all these assumptions are reasonable.  Indeed, he held that to deny any of them would themselves be assumptions and "noxious ad-hoc assumptions" at that.  Thus, to deny that people reincarnate straight away, and instead hold that they dwell in some otherworldly realm in-between lives, constitutes a noxious ad-hoc assumption. So he thinks the basic default reincarnation position would be to accept all of the seven above.  Contrariwise, the failure to do so is simply a desperate attempt from those who subscribe to reincarnation to try and circumvent the growing population problem.

All the souls that exist are currently alive on Earth?

I do actually find 3 through to 7 plausible.  Moreover, as I hope to make clear, accepting 3 through to 7 doesn't pose any difficulty for reincarnation in any case. So I won't be contesting them (I might or might not explain why I find 3 through to 7 plausible in subsequent blog posts in this series).  However, accepting 3 through to 7 does mean we need to reject 1, but I shall shortly argue we have excellent reasons for doing so. I shall also argue we can accept 2 without it constituting a problem for reincarnation.  But if we were to reject 2, this then allows no upper limit to the total number of souls that might exist. 

Those familiar with the evidence for reincarnation will know that the evidence doesn't bear out "1".  That is, most of us do not immediately reincarnate.  There can be months, years, decades and even centuries between lives*.  Moreover, around 20% of those that can recollect a previous life also recollect the time between lives*.  Of course, sceptics do not find such evidence compelling, but it's not as if people are simply making an assumption here, noxious or otherwise.  They are letting the evidence guide their beliefs. 

 
There are other aspects to this we should bear in mind, though.  For the sake of argument, what if prior to any research we all agreed that reincarnation, should it happen, should occur immediately after death?  Given that the evidence contradicts this expectation, this would then give us some reason to doubt the evidence.  Contrariwise, if our prior expectations are that we would spend time in some otherworldly realm in-between lives, and since the evidence implies that we do, then clearly this gives us greater confidence in the evidence than we would otherwise have.

However, Paul Edwards failed to advance any reasons why, from an a priori perspective, we should think reincarnation would work the way he thinks it should. My suspicion is that he is simply averse to the existence of an otherworldly realm.  But, regardless of whether we feel such aversion or not, it is my position that we should indeed expect to dwell in some otherworldly realm in-between lives.

To understand why I think this we need to bear in mind none of us can simply reincarnate forevermore, at least not on this planet.  Human beings, at least in their present form, have only been around 200,000 years or so and they will become extinct sometime in the future.  So if reincarnation occurs there will, for all of us, be a first life and a last life. Might our souls be created with the onset of our first lives, and destroyed at the end of our last life?  That would contravene "3" above that no souls are ever created nor destroyed.  But if we, for the sake of argument, accept that souls can be created, then why can't they be created on a continual basis? This would then mean that an ever-increasing population might then be a result of the continuous creation of souls. 

So, in order to subscribe to "1" and for it to create a problem for reincarnation, sceptics would need to suppose souls are not created at the onset of their first life.  Rather, souls would need to originate from some otherworldly realm at the onset of their first life and return there after their last life but never enter this realm in between lives.  I certainly concur with the notion that souls inhabit an otherworldly realm both before their first life and after their last life.  But I don't see how the belief that we would never enter such an otherworldly realm in-between lives could be justified.  If such a realm exists, why wouldn't we be able to enter into it in-between lives?   

Hence, even from a philosophical perspective, it seems to me that the idea that we all simply reincarnate straight away is implausible.  Moreover, the evidence vindicates this conclusion.  And it's not just all the research into reincarnation that tells us most people do not reincarnate straight away.  There is other evidence too.  For example, near-death experiences and mediumship communications that intimate an otherworldly realm that people enter into after death. 

I conclude that both from a philosophical perspective, and in terms of the evidence, "1" is untenable.

So is an increasing population a problem for reincarnation?

Does the population argument still have force?  Let's take a look.

Let T = the total number of souls that exist.  We're assuming this is a constant and of course cannot be less than 7.9 billion, the current population of the Earth.

Let E = the souls currently on Earth

Let A = the souls currently inhabiting the otherworldly realm.

So T = E + A.

Hence the population living on Earth can increase so as long as it's matched by a corresponding decrease in the population in the otherworldly realm.  Is this problematic?  It's very difficult to say since we have no idea of the value of T!
 

One possibility is that T -- the total number of souls -- is hugely large, perhaps a trillion.or more.  However, since it has been estimated that only roughly 117 billion people have ever lived*, this not only means that most souls have not been reincarnated (contravening "2"), it also means that most souls have never lived any lives on Earth whatsoever!  But why would this necessarily be problematic?  Why can't there exist trillions of souls with only a very small subset of these ever living on Earth who regularly reincarnate?   The rest perhaps subsist in differing areas in the otherworldly realm who may not even have any knowledge of Earth. 

Another possibility is that the total number of souls (T) might be much smaller, but as the population of the Earth increases, they spend less and less time in-between lives.  Such a possibility is argued for in the following paper Can Population Growth Rule Out Reincarnation? A Model of Circular Migration.  

As the author concludes, a reincarnation model where T is relatively low and adheres to 2 through to 7 above, can be reconciled to the historical facts of human population growth if we suppose the average time in between lives continually decreases as the population rises.  But is it plausible that thousands of years ago the time between lives was, on average, vastly longer?  Perhaps this might not seem so implausible if we bear in mind that, prior to human beings evolving, none of us ever had any lives at all on Earth.  Presumably, we simply subsisted in the otherworldly realm, then with the appearance of human beings, we initially on rare occasions get born on the Earth.  As time progresses, and the population increases, we become incarnated more and more frequently.  Again, is this plausible?

One factor that will surely strongly influence how rapidly we will be able to reincarnate is the availability of fetuses that souls can "inhabit". With a rapidly increasing population, there will be more readily available fetuses.  Hence, given that at least some people desire to be reincarnated and their desire has some causal influence, then one might expect, on average, that with an increasing population, people will more rapidly reincarnate.  It is interesting to note in this context that research reveals that the median time between lives varies between differing cultures.  Indeed, while the median average across all cases investigated worldwide is just 15 months in-between lives, in the West the median time is something in the order of 35 years!*  This is an astonishing difference and I imagine many factors account for this.  But might one of those factors be the fact the West isn't undergoing rapid population growth?

Conclusion

I think we can conclude that the growth in population doesn't pose any difficulty for the notion that we reincarnate, at least not in any obvious way.  Indeed, we can even accept reincarnation occurs and, at the same time, accept 2 through to 7 above.  However, accepting 2 through to 7 imposes a constraint on the total number of souls that can exist. 

But it is also conceivable that the total number of souls is extremely large, most of whom have never had any lives on Earth (hence rejecting 2).  This, in turn, might suggest that reality -- and I'm not just thinking of our material reality here, but rather the whole of reality -- is vastly greater in scope than we can possibly imagine.  I have no idea whether this might be the case or not, one can only speculate.

Reincarnation and its Critics, Part 2: Reincarnation isn't Falsifiable

What do people mean when they say there's no evidence?

It's interesting that people on the web constantly say "there's no evidence for an afterlife", or "there's no evidence for psi". For this seems to be straightforwardly false. Take reincarnation. There's research into alleged past lives of young children that appears to show that they are getting accurate information about a person that had previously lived. Or take psi. Parapsychologists have provided plenty of evidence for it. 

Obviously, most of these people are presumably just repeating each other. But what justification could be given for the origin of this claim that there's no evidence for such things?

Consider the case where someone declares that we have evidence that beds are dangerous as people disproportionately die in them compared to elsewhere. Would this be evidence that beds are dangerous, even if only very weak evidence?

It depends on what people mean by "evidence". I would say yes, but I think most science educated people would say no. One reason why they would say no is because we already have a good explanation for why people die in beds -- namely because they go to bed when they are ill. But, another more compelling reason, is that it seems there's no conceivable mechanism whereby beds in and of themselves could somehow play a causal role in precipitating death.

Let's, for the sake of argument, accept for the moment these peoples' conception of "evidence" as requiring a possible mechanism.  Now, consider reincarnation. Even though young children appear to recollect previous lives, people assert there's no conceivable causal mechanism whereby consciousness can depart from a person who has died, to then appear in a fetus or new born baby. Hence, until someone proposes a possible mechanism, there can be no scientific evidence for reincarnation. Same applies more generally to an afterlife, or to psi.

There's a deep problem here though. There appears to be an implicit assumption that our everyday embodied consciousness being produced by brains is entirely unproblematic and hence that there will be a mechanism whereby this is achieved even though we have yet to discover it. Or, even if it's not entirely unproblematic, we can be confident that brains do somehow produce consciousness because of all the ways that brains affect our mind-states -- especially when we consider such debilitating conditions as dementia.

I would maintain, though, that the mind-brain correlations that supposedly prove that brains produce minds, appears to be no more persuasive than eyeglasses- acuity of vision correlations prove that eyeglasses produce vision. In the case of the eyeglasses, there clearly is no conceivable mechanism. And we know that vision already exists, it is merely changed by the eyeglasses. However, it seems to me, brains are in the same boat. There is nothing about the ultimate particles that brains are made of that could possibly produce our phenomenological experiences. So, similar to eyeglasses-vision, perhaps consciousness already exists with brains merely changing it.

But, regardless of whether I am right or wrong about the brain somehow producing consciousness, it seems to me we don’t have any conceivable mechanism for how the brain does this. Hence, if despite the correlations we have no evidence that beds precipitate death, then likewise, despite the mind-brain correlations, and since we lack a conceivable mechanism, we also have no evidence that brains produce consciousness. So even if – contrary to my position – the thesis that brains produce consciousness is at least conceivable (unlike eyeglasses producing vision), we have no evidence that brains actually do so (least of all do we have proof).

Indeed, we have a more plausible scenario; namely consciousness exists all along with brains merely changing it i.e. consciousness is fundamental. And if that should be the case, then consciousness can exist independently of brains just as vision exists independently of eyeglasses.  If this is so then the demand for a mechanism is misplaced.  Indeed, demanding a possible mechanism appears to presuppose that consciousness is material and hence is question-begging.

Now let’s consider psi. Even if the notion of the brain producing consciousness is unproblematic, the fact still remains we have no causal mechanism for how it is produced. But psi, if it exists, will be an ability or property of consciousness. If we lack a causal mechanism for the very existence of consciousness, how on earth can we expect anyone to produce a causal mechanism for psi? Further, if I am correct and consciousness is not produced by the brain, how can we a priori declare what properties consciousness must have?

When people say psi is impossible due to no possible causal mechanism, they have in mind that physics pretty much describes the entirety of reality and it doesn’t allow for psi. But physics leaves out consciousness in its description of reality; indeed it suggests consciousness shouldn’t exist. If it suggests this, it is scarcely likely to suggest a property of consciousness like psi should exist, or even free will or a causal role for consciousness.

Life before birth

Often when I tell people that I gravitate towards a belief in a "life after death" they say something along the lines that they didn't exist before they were born, so it is reasonable to suppose that likewise they will cease to exist when they die.

I'm in entire agreement with them.  The question which interests me is why they are implicitly supposing that I believe we all spring into being sometime between conception and birth, but then exist forevermore after that.  After all I always take great pains to stress that I have come to my beliefs from thinking through the issues and looking at the evidence, and emphatically not because I subscribe to any specific organised religion.  

There are a number of reasons why I find this hypothesis that we come into being sometime between conception and birth, and then exist forevermore, somewhat implausible.

To believe in a "life after death" -- at least in the sense of existing in some afterlife realm for some time -- entails that it cannot be our physical bodies which produces the self or consciousness.  But if my body -- specifically the brain -- doesn't produce consciousness, then there doesn't seem to be any reason why the self should come into being at the same time as the brain first forms.

Perhaps people might say that it is reasonable to suppose the self springs into being at this time since we do not have any memories prior to this.  Now there have been reports of people recalling memories before this time i.e apparent previous lives, but let's put these aside for the time being.    Although we don't typically remember any events before conception, we don't remember anything before about 5 years of age either.  In fact we only remember a very medium percentage of everything that has happened to us since then too.  Hence it seems the lack of memories cannot constitute a good reason to suppose we didn't exist.

In addition if the self can be created, then this seems to make it much more reasonable that it can cease to exist too.  In other words if we come into being at some point, then it is reasonable to suppose that at some point we pass away.  The other natural alternative is to suppose we have always existed, and always will exist.  But to imagine we pop into being at some specific point, but then never cease to be, constitutes an asymmetry which I just personally find awkward and implausible.  For one thing what caused us to come into being?  Why couldn't a similar cause or power make us cease to exist? 

Another reason to doubt the hypothesis is that if now I am born I will never cease to exist, it seems somewhat implausible that I should find myself in existence a mere few years after springing into being (. . well . . OK . . maybe more than a few, but you get my drift).   Why don't I find myself, for example, a quadrillion years after coming into being?

Furthermore there's very compelling evidence for reincarnation from Ian Stevenson and other researchers. Not just children who seem to remember previous lives, but birthmarks corresponding to the injury which killed the previous personality.  There are even children who report apparent memories from their time in the afterlife in between their incarnations on Earth.  If we spring into being sometime between conception and birth, then all this evidence needs to be explained away.

Finally I feel that I existed before I was conceived.  This final reason triggered some amusement amongst 2 skeptics on 2 differing independent occasions.  I'm not sure why.  Presumably they hold the position that what I feel in this matter cannot possible have any implications about what is actually the case.   But it could be the case there are deep memories percolating in my subconscious which are finding a vague expression in my conscious mind.  And besides, this was my last and least important reason to reject the hypothesis.