Thoughts on the Winning BICS Essay

All 29 essays from the 2021 BICS essay contest that have been awarded a prize are now available to download and can be read for free from here. Thus far I have only read the winning essay, which was written by Jeffrey Mishlove. I had previously heard of Mishlove, but had not hitherto read anything by him nor had I watched any of his interviews. So I was not previously aware of his specific beliefs on the afterlife and hence am reading this without any preconceived ideas. Here are my thoughts on his winning essay.

Ideally, how should we judge whether there’s an afterlife? I suggest, firstly, that we need to take a look at the totality of the evidence. Not only that which might seem to support the possibility of an afterlife but also that which might seem to contradict it too. But, secondly, we also need to examine and possibly amend our philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of reality, since such assumptions are the lens whereby we view the evidence. Most pertinently, these assumptions will dictate whether we regard an afterlife as being an extraordinary claim or not. At the end, we hopefully will have obtained a well-rounded appraisal of all the evidence and reasons to allow us to make an informed judgement on this issue.

Unfortunately, in reality, regardless of whether we are discussing the possibility of an afterlife or indeed any other topic, there seems to be this pretty much universal pattern whereby people concentrate on the evidence and reasons supporting the particular position that they happen to favour, but they pay scant regard to any awkward evidence or opposing arguments. This is certainly the case when it comes to debating whether there is an afterlife or not, regardless of a person’s specific belief on this issue. Regretfully, this essay by Mishlove doesn’t break that mould.

Mishlove’s essay predominantly consists in outlining people’s experiences – accounts of NDEs, apparitions, and so on. Doing so is, of course, indispensable. We need to be acquainted with the evidence, get a feel for it. But this is the easy part that can, after all, be obtained by a quick Google search. We also need to do lots of digging. It does not seem to me that Mishlove’s essay adequately fulfils this criterion. Let me justify what I say above by considering a few examples from his essay. 

Near-Death Experiences

Similar to the other avenues of evidence, Mishlove mainly concentrates on the personal experiences of NDErs. Of course, these do sound persuasive, and I do not dispute that a great deal of weight should be attached to them. This is especially so when we consider that, regardless of their prior beliefs, the vast majority of people who have undergone an NDE become convinced there is an afterlife. There are difficulties though for the afterlife interpretation, difficulties that Mishlove neglects to address.

What about, for example, the fact that only something like 10 to 20 percent of people coming close to death recollect an NDE? Is it that only 10-20 percent of us will actually go on to an afterlife with the rest of us simply ceasing to exist? I have actually heard a couple of people independently suggest this, but for reasons I won’t go into here, I find this deeply implausible. Instead, I suggest that only 10 to 20 percent recollect an NDE will either be because:

1. They forget the experience.
2. Their souls never became detached from their bodies in the first place (an appropriately dysfunctional body will prohibit any experiences until they detach from it).

But I don’t want to get into details regarding my own thoughts. The point being is that Mishlove should have explored this issue himself. It’s not as if this is unimportant. Indeed, I frequently hear people ask why so few people have near-death experiences. Addressing this, and suggesting answers such as I have hinted at, would surely have been far better.

Peak in Darien experiences and encountering apparitions still alive

Mishlove talks about “Peak in Darien” experiences. These are NDEs where the experiencer encounters a deceased person during their NDE that they did not realise were dead. Should these experiences actually occur – and so far as I am aware the evidence seems to be compelling that they do – then this presents very powerful evidence indeed that the people and entities encountered during NDEs are real, or at least have a real element. They are not, that is, total fabrications of the mind.

So far so good. But what Mishlove doesn’t mention is that sometimes people during their NDEs encounter apparitions of people who are still alive! As Keith Augustine states: “NDE’rs have reported seeing friends out of body with them who are, in reality, still alive and normally conscious”. Augustine goes on to say that seeing such living people “make[s] perfect sense if NDEs are brain-generated hallucinations. The fact that living persons are occasionally encountered in NDEs severely undermines survivalist interpretations of NDEs". (From the chapter "Near-Death Experiences are Hallucinations" in the book The Myth of an Afterlife).

So Peak in Darien experiences and NDE’rs encountering people who are still alive during their experiences, are polar opposites. They are inconsistent with each other since the former suggest these encounters are of a genuine external reality, the latter that they are brain-generated hallucinations. Augustine tries to resolve this by suggesting that some (emphasis as in original) Peak in Darien experiences could arise by chance. Though he then insinuates they might all do so. But he also adds that these visions are rarely documented “prior to learning that the recently deceased persons in question have died leaving plenty of room for inaccurate recall or embellishment about what transpired”. (From the chapter "Near-Death Experiences are Hallucinations" in the book The Myth of an Afterlife).

Is Augustine correct in his conclusion? Not necessarily. As I said in my review of The Myth of an Afterlife:

A crucial question here is whether these NDEs are phenomenologically identical to the standard NDEs where apparitions of dead people are encountered. If they are, then this might suggest that the people and entities seen during all NDEs are likely to be all hallucinations. But, if they are not, and especially if the experience of seeing living people seems less authentic, then this objection loses much of its force.

So we need to know how real the experience of seeing those who are still alive is compared to seeing the deceased. If indeed both experiences are phenomenologically identical, as Augustine simply assumes, then this considerably weakens the evidence for an afterlife provided by NDEs. 

However, I relatively recently discovered that NDE research challenges this assumption. Bruce Greyson in his recent book on near-death experiences called After, says:

It turns out that there are a few NDEs in which experiencers report meeting people who are still alive. In our collection that now includes more than a thousand NDEs, 7 percent involved seeing someone in the realm of the NDE who was still living. But in every one of those rare cases, the experiencer described that person as still living, in most of those cases pleading with the experiencer to come back. None of the NDEs in our collection involved an experiencer mistakenly thinking a person still alive had died.

So this then suggests that those apparitions of people still alive that are encountered during NDEs are phenomenologically dissimilar to those apparitions of people who are deceased.

The point here is that I think it would have made Mishlove’s essay vastly better if he had addressed this difficulty and other difficulties in the evidence. Failing to do so leaves his essay vulnerable to attack and easily dismissed. A $500,000 prize-winning essay arguing for an afterlife needs to be well-rounded and capable of heading off the obvious objections.

Reincarnation process influenced by cultural beliefs

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.

Mishlove on this topic in his essay says:

If the afterlife operated independently, according to its own laws and principles, one would expect the intermission length reported by children with past-life memories – as well as gender change between lives – to be unaffected by cultural expectations. This is clearly not so. However, since we are referring to solved reincarnation cases, neither can the results be purely a fantasy based, cultural artifact. Such findings show us we the living can influence the afterlife. People who enter the immediate afterlife will see what they need to see or what they’re prepared or conditioned to see.

Skeptics are saying that our background cultural beliefs should not influence which sex we are born, how long we spend in between our lives before we are reincarnated, and so on. The fact that the research shows they do implies that the evidence cannot be what it seems. And at first blush I’m sure that many, if not most people, would agree with skeptics here. Or at least believe that this constitutes a difficulty for the evidence for reincarnation.

Contrariwise, Mishlove seems to me to be saying that a person’s beliefs on the details of the reincarnation process will carry on into the afterlife and that such beliefs are able to influence the reincarnation process so that it aligns with the implicit expectations of that individual. Why is this explanation superior to the skeptic’s belief that these experiences are simply fabricated? Mishlove thinks his interpretation is required due to solved reincarnation cases -- that is those cases where a previously living person was located and seemed to match up to the previous life memories of a child.

But, of course, this doesn't really resolve the disagreement. What Mishlove and the skeptics both needed to do was dig a bit into the issues. Skeptics implicitly assume that if reincarnation occurs, then the process will be governed by an impersonal natural "mechanism", or in other words a process that is not influenced by a person’s beliefs or desires (what Mishlove describes as the afterlife operating “independently, according to its own laws and principles”). If skeptics could argue that this is indeed a reasonable prior supposition, that is what one ought to expect before looking at the research, then they would have been in a much stronger position to argue that the evidence pointing to reincarnation is unlikely to be what it appears to be. But they don’t. Ideally, Mishlove should have talked about this failure on the part of skeptics and argued -- as I did in this essay -- that skeptics have no good reason to assume it would be such an impersonal natural "mechanism".

Kübler-Ross, Mrs. Schwartz, and the Note

Mishlove outlines an anomalous experience that Kübler-Ross alleged that she had. The story goes that she was approached by a woman, a certain Mrs. Schwartz, who had been dead for the past 10 months. This Mrs. Schwartz insisted that Kübler-Ross must not abandon her work on death and dying. Most significantly, Kübler-Ross asked Mrs. Schwartz to write a note, which she duly did! So the deceased Mrs. Schwartz was aware that Kübler-Ross was about to quit her job, implying she could read Kubler's mind or was aware of her emotional state, and could intentionally appear to her and even write a note using a pen. Mishlove considers this case to be “significant because it combines evidence of identity, spirit materialization, and evidence of intentionality with a life transforming event”.

What are we to make of this episode?  As an aside, I do not consider the prospect of an afterlife to be an extraordinary one. Indeed, the supposition that the prospect is extraordinary seems to presuppose some broadly materialist conception of reality, hence is essentially question-begging. However, this is not to deny that some of the alleged evidence might be extraordinary, and this episode related by Kübler-Ross seems to be a good candidate. We might ask ourselves that if the deceased are able to do this, why do they not do so far more often? Of course, this might be a rare talent amongst the deceased. Nevertheless, we have to be leery about accepting this evidence as being significant as Mishlove does. There is surely a good possibility that Kübler-Ross was mistaken, or indeed that she simply fabricated the entire alleged incident.

Evaluating the Evidence

I’ve mentioned a couple of areas where Mishlove needed to go into somewhat more detail. This advice extends to much of the other evidence too. More specifically, he needed to address the obvious objections that skeptics are liable to mention. Doing so would have made the essay more impartial, objective, and generally well-rounded. Of course, this would have used up more of the allotted word limit. But I think he might well have been advised to skip some of the evidence altogether, particularly rarely encountered anomalous episodes such as the one recounted by Kübler-Ross. 

Let’s now turn to the philosophical issues.

 

Philosophical Considerations

 

The Mind-Body Correlations

Bertrand Russell once said:

"The mind grows like the body; like the body it inherits characteristics from both parents; it is affected by disease of the body and by drugs; it is intimately connected with the brain. There is no scientific reason to suppose that after death the mind or soul acquires an independence of the brain which it never had in life". (Quotation from here).

Many people seem to take it for granted that the brain produces consciousness and they surmise this because when the brain is damaged the person’s mind is also damaged. Such damage not only can result in the diminishing of one’s mental capacities, it often seemingly changes the actual personality. The obvious conclusion is that the brain produces consciousness, otherwise why should the mind be affected?

Indeed, it often seems that this is the sole argument against an afterlife. For example, in The Myth of an Afterlife where each chapter was written by a differing author, the majority of the authors contented themselves with harping on about all the ways our mental life is affected by the brain, going into great detail and frequently repeating each other. In that great huge thick book, it scarcely got beyond that.

So it is imperative that this alleged problem is comprehensively addressed. What does Mishlove say about it? He says:

Gardner built upon William James’ 1897 filtration theory of brain function. This hypothesis likens the brain to a filter or reducing valve, not the source of consciousness. The brain accesses mind-at-large, or universal consciousness, in all its magnificent potency. Then the brain places into the spotlight of awareness a reduced level most useful for biological survival. James presented this theory as a way of accounting for life after death. 

Would all those impressed by the fact a damaged brain leads to a damaged mind and therefore surmise that the former produces the latter, have a sudden change of heart on reading this? I doubt it. Yes, Mishlove makes the very important point that the brain could merely alter consciousness rather than create it, but it surely needs to be elaborated on and fleshed out a great deal more than this. 

For example, there’s the very important issue of personal identity. Will I meaningfully be the very same person after death as I was before? Mishlove links to several short video clips of him interviewing Bernardo Kastrup. In one of them here (in his essay the link is dead for me, but it has the address in footnote 221), Kastrup says: 

[Death is] a dramatic change, you have a physical body and then you don't have one any more. It's naive to expect that it will be just your good old self. What age would you have then, will you be your child self, will you be the self the moment that you died. I mean all kinds of issues open.

As it happens, I don’t agree with Kastrup here. I think we might very well be our good old selves. That is, immediately after death there will be no discontinuity in my sense of self, it will feel that I am simply transitioning out of my body. That is not to deny that my mental faculties might not improve and that my mood, my emotional state, and so on might not change. But it will still be me. I'll leave it at that since I have already comprehensively argued for this in several places already in this blog. See here, here (where I also comprehensively address objections to the filter hypothesis), here, here, here, here, and here. 

But it is of little avail for me to comprehensively address this damaged brains cause damaged minds argument. I am an unknown who virtually no one will read. For such a crucially important, if not really, the only objection to an afterlife, a comprehensive rebuttal needed to come from someone with a high profile and who will therefore be widely read.  The winning essay of the BICS contest would have been the ideal place. The failure to do so is a tragically lost opportunity. 

The alleged impossibility of dualism

Mishlove says:

Dualism, a major metaphysical school of thought, has the unresolvable problem of how two metaphysically unique substances – mind and matter – can interact.

This is something that those who subscribe to materialism constantly allege.They rarely justify this assertion, and I regard it as nonsense. Indeed, I do not regard this as being a problem at all, least of all an unresolvable one. Essentially, it seems to me that the objection presupposes the mechanistic view of reality, a view that is closely aligned with materialism. I explain more fully my thoughts on this in the following blog post, A Causal Consciousness, Free Will, and Dualism. Go to “Various Objections, 2. How can the immaterial impact on the material?” 

Why do I regard Mishlove’s claim here to be such an important issue? It’s important because dualism is the commonsensical position that we all instinctively believe. If we are told that it has an unsolvable problem, and we are naïve enough to simply accept this, then the other choices available to us are either some flavour of materialism, or some flavour of idealism. Some might well feel that if this is the choice, then materialism is the sensible option. But materialism, at least the main view, is untenable as I explain here. Moreover, all flavours of materialism are incompatible with an afterlife, at least in the form of an essence or soul surviving death. So we really need some excellent reasons for rejecting dualism. I agree dualism has some problems, though not this particular alleged problem. Idealism has problems too. But the problems with dualism and idealism do not approach the seeming irreconcilable problems that confront all versions of materialism.

The mysterious undefined Hyperspace

Near the beginning of his essay, Mishlove has a subheading, “Hyperspace and consciousness”. Immediately underneath this, he says, “Gardner’s instinct about hyperspace was correct”. However, hitherto, the word “hyperspace” had not been used. Moreover, Mishlove never explicitly defines what he means by this term. Apparently, Gardner subscribed to the notion of a “higher-dimension self”. But if this has anything to do with “hyperspace” as the essay alludes, it is entirely unilluminating since I have no idea what could be meant by such a self. Regardless, I assume not defining the word “hyperspace” was an oversight on Mishlove’s part. But surely he or others must have proofread his essay? 

The way that Mishlove uses the word hyperspace appears to refer to any location that isn’t within our usual 3D space. He further indicates that he is sympathetic to the notion that our normal 3D space is within a much greater hyperspace, a hyperspace that will include any afterlife realm. But, within idealism (which Mishlove subscribes to), space is not some thing or reality existing independently of any conscious entity, rather space is an artefact of minds (see an essay of mine on Berkeley’s idealism). It might be useful to compare it to the virtual reality when we put on a VR headset. Any afterlife realm we find ourselves in we could label “hyperspace” if we so choose. But it would then just be a word signifying nothing. The idea that normal 3D space is within a much greater hyperspace makes as much sense as saying virtual reality is within normal 3D space. In short, I’m not sure that in introducing the word “hyperspace” that anything substantive is being said at all. It just sounds impressive!

Conclusion

I think this essay gives a good overview of all the evidence, but that is where the praise ends. The essay never delves into the evidence and never considers any difficulties for the afterlife interpretation. The philosophical considerations suffer from the fact that, quite frankly, there aren’t any. The only attempt is when “hyperspace” is mentioned. But this is never explicitly defined and I found its meaning to be elusive. 

This essay seems rather reminiscent of the countless popular books extolling the reality of an afterlife. Books that concentrate on the evidence for an afterlife but accept it uncritically. Typically, difficulties with the evidence are rarely, if ever, addressed. Alternative hypotheses are seldom considered. The philosophical thought, if any, tends to be superficial. Those books are all about persuasion. Persuading people it is utterly foolish to reject an afterlife. I would place this essay into the same category as those books.

Hostile reactions to the evidence for an afterlife

I read this Mail article concerning ghosts.

In the comments someone says:

Why we pay the BBC to promulgate such nonsense at further expense to the vulnerable sadly bereaved I have no idea.

I often hear this sentiment that such anomalous experiences shouldn't even be mentioned. So, there are certain characteristic anomalous experiences that have been experienced across human history and across all cultures, but they shouldn't even be mentioned? Shouldn't even be discussed? Why? Because it's obvious that people are simply making up these stories? And this explanation is so obvious that no one should even be allowed to discuss them? Do these "sceptics" ever worry that their conviction is an artefact of the culture they find themselves born in? That had they had lived in a different time or place they would view these experiences very differently? How can they be certain that these experiences are made up or are mere hallucinations? Are we allowed to ask that, or is not even that permitted?

Bigelow competition for the best essay on the evidence for an afterlife

The results of this competition have recently been announced.  Go here.  Apparently all 29 essays that won a prize will shortly be freely available to read.  I'd just like to make a few comments.

By far the main obstacle to an acceptance of an afterlife is the notion held by the intelligentsia that an afterlife is an "extraordinary claim". Any evidence, no matter how persuasive, is typically simply written off as not being extraordinary enough. This being so, simply outlining the evidence in its various forms will be insufficient if we hope to convince skeptics, particularly so for those of an academic persuasion. The question of why an afterlife is considered to be an extraordinary claim needs to be addressed and rebutted. This involves underlying philosophical issues (e.g. does the fact damaged brains lead to damaged minds entail the former produces the latter as many skeptics allege?).  Unfortunately, since the competition explicitly asked for the best evidence, I fear none of these essays will devote much space to such issues (the explicit emphasis on evidence is the reason why I didn't submit an essay to the competition myself).

It would have been far better if the competition were open to any essays that persuasively argue that the survival (afterlife) hypothesis is a reasonable one and, furthermore, more reasonable than the annihilation hypothesis. The essays could then have had the option of either simply addressing the evidence, addressing the underlying philosophical issues, or ideally, addressing both. Then the essays, as a collective whole, would be more likely to present a more rounded and robust appraisal of the various reasons to regard the belief in an afterlife as being a reasonable one.

The problem with all the pro-afterlife material that currently exists is that the vast majority of it doesn't touch the philosophical issues and this competition simply perpetuates this imbalance.  My suspicion is that most of these essays will largely regurgitate the evidence that is already out there and will do little to persuade skeptics.  But we shall see.

A comment on a skeptical article on Near-Death Experiences

I read the following article two days ago:

Can We Explain Near-Death Experiences?

The author concludes that, "NDEs are probably caused by changes in brain activity rather than direct contact with a supernatural dimension".

Why does he think this?

Briefly because:

1. Strokes, seizures, and brain injuries can lead to experiences reminiscent of NDEs.
   
   
2. Brainwave oscillations have been observed in rats having heart attacks.
   
   
3. Psychoactive drugs -- ketamine, DMT -- resemble NDEs.

First of all, the author assumes the idea that the brain produces consciousness is entirely unproblematic. That's false, it's extremely problematic. There is, what has been labelled, the hard problem of consciousness.  This is a problem engendered by the notion that it is the brain that somehow produces consciousness.  I explore this problem in a few places in this blog.  For example, in part 2 in this blog post and also this blog post, especially from part 3 onwards. Incidentally, I should add that if consciousness is not generated by the body, this doesn't mean there aren't any problems.  Nevertheless, they don't appear to be the apparent intractable problems associated with "the hard problem".     

Secondly, it ignores the fact that there is no detectable brain activity at the threshold of death, which is when NDEs appear to take place.

Thirdly, it ignores all the anomalously acquired information that NDErs give when they come back from the brink.

Clearly, NDE type experiences are facilitated by an appropriately dysfunctional brain. One possibility is that's because the brain produces NDE's, and indeed all other conscious experiences.  But that possibility encounters the difficulties I mention above. Arguably, difficulties that are insurmountable.  

There is another possibility. Let's assume there is an afterlife.  Consider that we do not normally have contact with this afterlife realm whilst in our embodied state. Why would this be the case?  I suggest it would have to be because the brain inhibits access. Sometimes this is referred to as the filter theory of the mind-body relationship.

What, though, if the brain is not functioning correctly?  Could it always perform this inhibiting function regardless of how the brain is altered?  Surely not.  And, if it doesn't, this might occasionally allow our consciousness to have a glimpse of other realities that we may enter into after death (and note the word realities, the afterlife might not simply be one place but might consist of possibly innumerable realms).  Such a hypothesis is supported by not only what we label NDE's, but also mystical experiences, psychedelic trips, and the occasional reports of people recovering their mental faculties near death.  I should also note that recent research into psychedelic induced experiences suggest they are initiated by reduced activity of the brain.  All of which gives weight to the notion that the brain serves to inhibit consciousness rather than produce it.  I address objections to this inhibiting or filter hypothesis here and here (latter half).  

Incidentally, the skeptical article originally included a video that now seems to have disappeared in the two days since I last looked (nor can I locate the video in the link he now provides).   I actually linked to and discussed this video around 5 years ago in my other blog here.  Unfortunately, the link to the video on there is now dead too.  This video is elusive!  Fortunately, it can be watched on facebook here (at least at the time of typing this).

Also see:
NDE’s, burden of proof, and Ockham’s razor
Guardian Article on Near Death Experiences (NDE's)
Reasons not to scoff at ghosts, visions and near-death experiences

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

    

 

The Anguish of Being

 

Ha Ha!  I love this.

Let's imagine that we conclude life and the Universe are devoid of all meaning, that we will soon cease to exist forevermore, that the human race will eventually cease to exist and that might not take too long, that the Universe itself will, at some far distant time, be wholly devoid of any life and nothing will ever happen again, that our existence is pure happenstance and our lives and the Universe are ultimately absurd.   

We can believe all this.  But we nevertheless find ourselves miraculously alive, having experiences now.  Exploring the world, having experiences, wondering what it all means, enjoying this very brief flicker of existence.  So life is still very much worth living.

But, I nevertheless still think that people don't really grok how radical this is.  They prefer not to think about it, to lose themselves in the trivialities of existence.  And, perhaps, that's just as well if they truly do believe their lives and the Universe are ultimately absurd.  That it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I just took a pause here and reread my previous paragraph.  It sounds like I emphasise with the guy on the left. Not at all!  If, contrary to my beliefs, I were an atheist and naturalist, I would very much agree with the guy in the tree. But, regardless of our beliefs here. Regardless of our ultimate fate. Regardless of what we ultimately are. Regardless if the Universe came into being by happenstance or is a result of something more mysterious. It still remains life is an adventure to be experienced and cherished.

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

Can we be certain that other people are conscious?

How does an individual know anyone else is conscious at all? How does an individual rule out the possibility that every other person is merely a sophisticated biological robot wholly lacking any experiences?  After all, we never actually see anyone else's consciousness. So, is it at least conceivable that everyone -- apart from you, the reader -- are simply unconscious automatons, or what philosophers refer to as p-zombies? That no-one else, apart from you, has an inner conscious life? 

The answer, of course, is that an individual cannot be absolutely certain that others are conscious. But that it is highly likely since other people act like us. They scream in pain when hurt, display appropriate emotions on their faces under the relevant circumstances, and so on. So one can confidently infer that everyone else is conscious, just like oneself. That's the commonsensical view and certainly the view that I hold.

There is an apparent intractable difficulty here though.  One of the mainstream suppositions of scientists is that the world is causally closed, meaning that every event that ever happens has a full explanation in terms of antecedent material causes. This includes us human beings too, and so includes all the material processes occurring within our brains. But if everything people ever do and say are purely due to material causes occurring in their brains rather than being an expression of their consciousness, then it seems we cannot infer that other people are conscious! 

Let me try to convey this very important point again. Suppose a robot declares it is conscious; that it feels fear, hope and so on. We could check that out by disassembling it.  We will find out that the robot says all these things, not because it is conscious and actually experiencing such emotions, but because it is programmed in such a manner to say these things. That being so, we surely have zero reasons to ascribe consciousness to it. Similarly, given the important proviso of causal closure, the exact same applies to us human beings. We can examine the inside of someone's brain and by noting the material chains of causes and effects, we can, at least in principle, figure out exactly why that person behaves and says what he does. It's all just material causes and effects playing out, and we have no more reason to ascribe consciousness to that human being than we did the robot.

How do those who advocate causal closure escape this absurdity?  How can anyone who subscribes to causal closure believe that anyone else is conscious at all given that everyone's behaviour is just the result of material causes playing out?  It seems we have no more reason to ascribe consciousness to anyone else than we have reason to ascribe consciousness to the Earth as it orbits the Sun, or a boulder as it rolls down a hill.

They allegedly escape this apparent intractable difficulty by espousing materialism.  Materialists advocate something of highly questionable intelligibility.  They maintain that consciousness is quite literally the very same thing as certain material processes.  Examples are behaviourists who hold that consciousness is literally identical to behaviour.  Or identity theorists who hold that consciousness is literally identical to brain processes.  Or functionalists who hold that consciousness is literally identical to the causal role of such brain processes (there are many flavours of materialism). 

In which case, given the behaviour of a person or the material processes occurring in their brains, their consciousness is logically entailed in much the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 is entailed. That we can look or examine the physical processes occurring in the brain and somehow, derive, have complete certitude, that that person is experiencing consciousness.

Incidentally, this is why materialists hold that p-zombies are conceptually incoherent or metaphysically impossible.  Since consciousness is the very same thing as the relevant material processes, then a being who looks like us, and has a working brain like us, metaphysically necessarily must be conscious, just like the area of a perfect circle must necessarily be πr². 

However, the materialist position here just seems to me to be straightforwardly incorrect.  Regardless of whether we are looking at a person's behaviour or the processes occurring in their brains, we could never be absolutely certain that they are having conscious experiences.  How could we?  How does observing any material process allow me to be acquainted and have full knowledge of another person's consciousness?  It just doesn't.  Yes, the material processes might cause consciousness, might somehow elicit consciousness, but it's literally nonsensical to assert that such material processes are the very same thing as consciousness.  And this shouldn't be of any surprise since material processes are cashed out exclusively by their physical properties -- mass, momentum, charge and so on.  Conscious experiences, on the other hand, apparently wholly lack any such physical properties.  Hence, by definition, consciousness cannot be the same as the correlated physical process and therefore there is no identity, nor any necessarily entailed connection, from one to the other.

The obvious alternative is to deny both causal closure and materialism. Instead, and as commonsense dictates, consciousness in and of itself really does play a causal role in the world.  So, for example, the words and sentences you are reading now are the result of my consciousness.  The material processes alone are insufficient.  It is true that, unlike the materialist, we cannot have absolute certainty that others are conscious. But, via the notion that similar causes have similar effects, we can have a very high confidence.

Neither we nor the Earth are special?

Annaka Harris, the wife of Sam Harris, says in a recent article:

Each transformative shift in our understanding of the universe has delivered the ego-shattering message that we’re not special—Earth is not the center of the universe, and life, including the human brain, is made up of the same particles as the stars.

This is a widespread view, particularly amongst academics. But, I don't regard it as being accurate. 

We need to bear in mind that the notion that we are not special is, to a large measure, a result of the birth of the mechanistic philosophy in the 17th Century and the materialism it engendered (see my Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia).  At least amongst educated people, this resulted in the widespread conviction that we are merely sophisticated biological machines and that our apparent free will is illusory.  This, in turn, seemed to imply that there is no God, no soul, that we are mere puppets of external forces, and, to cap it all, this is the only life we have.

However, as I have extensively argued in this blog, we have no reason to believe any of this. On the contrary, we are obliged to conclude the following:

1. Consciousness is fundamentally different from any material thing or process (see my Why the existence of consciousness rules modern materialism out).
2. That it's very much an open question whether brains somehow produce consciousness (see my Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife).
3. That our consciousness is necessarily causally efficacious (see my A Causal Consciousness, Free Will, and Dualism).

   

What about the Earth?  Is it true that it is not special?

It might be true that Earth isn't at the centre of the Universe.  Indeed, current understanding tells us there is no centre.  But, nevertheless, Earth might be special, indeed extremely special should the rare Earth hypothesis be correct.   The argument here is life arose on Earth due to a long series of extremely improbable events, all of which had to take place before the Earth had any chance of developing complex life. 

Then there is the fact that the constants of nature appear to be eerily fine-tuned so as to allow life to appear in the Universe (even if the Earth is the sole planet in the Universe to actually harbour complex life).

Then there is the nature of the material world and the laws that govern it. Our  investigations of the microscopic realm have revealed the existence of a bewildering plethora of subatomic particles whose behaviour is described by quantum mechanics rather than the classical mechanics of commonsense.  If the world were as it seemed prior to just 200 years ago -- that is governed by Newtonian mechanics and lacking such an intricate structure -- then virtually none of our modern technology would have been possible.  Is this just fortuitous, or is something else going on?

On this note it is curious that the world, on the one hand, is of sufficient complexity to allow the existence of our modern-day technology, but, on the other, is not so abstruse that we human beings are unable to grasp it and profit from its complexity in the creation of our technology. A complexity that human beings are capable of fathoming, but apparently no other animal on this planet. So, arguably, it is almost as if the world were contrived, somehow, to be like this?

I think we live in a very curious and perplexing Universe.  Not only stranger than we imagine, but, perhaps, stranger than we can imagine. Indeed, arguably, it seems contrived by something -- whoever or whatever that something might be -- to allow for the existence of complex life, even if it only exists on this one planet. In summary, in my opinion, we lack compelling reasons to justify the assertion that neither we nor the Earth are special.

The recklessness and foolishness of "Freedom" Day

Here in the UK we're heading towards deep trouble in just 11 days time when the UK relaxes most covid rules; the so-called "freedom" day. 😟

The delta variant is around 55% more transmissible than the alpha variant. The Alpha variant, in turn, is about 50% more transmissible than the original Wuhan virus.

The R figure for the original Wuhan virus was around 3. That is to say, given we freely intermingle and no one is immune to the virus, then each infected person will, on average, infect 3 others.

Assuming that figure of 3 was roughly correct, then the alpha variant R figure is 50% higher than this figure of 3, or 1.5 times 3 = 4.5. The delta variant is 55% more transmissible than the alpha variant. That's 4.5 + (0.55 times 4.5) = 6.975. Let's just call it 7. The R rate for flu is only 1.3.  7 compared to 1.3!

So, in a world where just one person has the delta variant and no-one is yet immune, the number of infected will very rapidly increase:

1

7

49

343

2,401

16,807

117,679

823,543

5,764,801 etc

In order to avoid exponential growth of the number of infected the R figure has to drop below 1. R is 7 given no-one is immune. In order for that to dip below 1 then over 6 out of 7 people, or 86% of the population, will have to be immune. Note that this is the entire population, not just adults.

In the UK about 85% of adults have been vaccinated. But that's adults only. Around 21% of the population are below 18 years of age, and hence 79% are adults. So that's 85% of 79%, in other words 67% of the entire population. 

So 67% of the population have been vaccinated and 86% of the population have to be immune for R to dip below 1. Moreover, vaccines are far from perfect. So we can conclude that the virus will continue to spread despite so many people having been vaccinated. To prevent this, not only should freedom day be cancelled, but since the current R rate is estimated to be about 1.3 to 1.4, the current rules need to be tightened.

Relaxing most covid rules, and especially relaxing the rules about face masks is, quite frankly, reckless and foolish. Not just for the UK, but for the whole world. It's going to allow the virus to spread even more rapidly than it already is. And it's not just deaths we should be concerned about. There's also long covid. But, most concerning and of crucial importance, is the possibility of new variants being created that our vaccines are less effective against.

Update 24/07/2021 Just read the following Guardian article. It says:

The threshold for herd immunity with the Delta variant is unclear, but scientists estimate that transmission would need to be blocked in about 85% of the population.

That's the same as my calculation above.  I concluded roughly 86% of the entire population need to be immune.  

Asking Boris Johnson about God.

In the following article the author Robert Peston says:

"I followed up by asking whether he believed in God, mentioning that the Labour leader Keir Starmer said he did not. In response Johnson paraphrased the bible, saying "the foolish man has said in his heart there is no God". 

What "God" is or means is highly ambiguous. It would be more useful asking him whether he believes there is an underlying reason and meaning behind all things. Whether the Universe and our lives exist due to blind happenstance, or whether there is an intelligence underlying and coextensive with reality as a whole.

More on George Berkeley and his Immaterialism

As a preliminary people might like to read my brief introduction to Berkeley's metaphysic:

A very brief introduction to Immaterialism

Incidentally, what I haven't mentioned before is that I did part of a Ph.D thesis on Berkeley's metaphysic; specifically on immaterialism's implications for the ontological status of the microscopic realm i.e in what sense do objects/processes exist that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. I never completed it, but I think I have an excellent grasp of his ideas. 

 

Alleged Difficulties for Immaterialism 

I have just read the following recent article:

Mind over matter: the contradictions of George Berkeley

The author says:

"Some asked how hallucinations fit into his picture, alleging that they sever the link between ideas and reality in some distinct way his system cannot account for. Another classic objection has it that the corollary of believing that things do not exist unless they are being perceived is that objects must be continually popping in and out of existence depending on whether they are being looked at or not, which is metaphysically untidy to say the least."

First of all, it's worth pointing out that the way of establishing whether something is a hallucination or not is precisely the same regardless of whether one subscribes to Berkeley's metaphysic or not. A hallucination would be a creation of one's own mind rather than part of God's conception of the world. So it would lack certain characteristics of real things. Typically, one might appear to see something, but on approaching it and reaching out one's hand, fail to experience the associated appropriate tactile sensation.

This notion that whenever we look away, or close our eyes, objects spontaneously disappear under his metaphysic, is question begging. They appear to be assuming there is a material reality independent of our perceptions, but that also, paradoxically, its reality is dependent on whether we are looking at it or not. But, Berkeley thought the external world is entirely cashed out by our perceptions.  So, it is incorrect to suppose that objects are constantly appearing and disappearing out of existence.  That erroneously ascribes a position to him that he did not hold.

Incidentally, unlike the author, I wouldn't appeal to the limerick by Ronald Knox to resolve this alleged problem.   Here's the limerick:

There was a young man who said “God

Must find it exceedingly odd

To think that the tree

Should continue to be

When there’s no one about in the quad” 

Reply:

“Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;

I am always about in the quad.

And that’s why the tree

Will continue to be

Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”

First of all, as I have just said, there isn't any problem in the first place.  Apart from that, I think it's simply not correct to say that Berkeley held that the external world exists by being observed by God.  That, again, seems to imply that the external world has some type of prior existence, and it is God's perceptions of it that keeps it in existence.  No, the external world is simply a conception within God's mind that he conveys to us.

To elucidate, our relationship to the external world might be compared to playing an online multiplayer computer game.  The numerous players seem to see and interact within the same environment.  The reality of objects in that environment -- such as a tree -- are represented by appropriately lit pixels. But, the pixels representing the tree, change depending on the perspective and distance the character controlled by the player is in relationship to that tree.  And, of course, there won't be any pixels representing the tree should the character be turned so that he is facing away from it.  As I said in my first blog post on Berkeley, this is explained by the fact that the computer game environment is governed by rules implemented by a computer programmer.  Likewise, our external world exhibits uniformity due to physical laws with such physical laws simply being directly caused by God.

Extending the computer game analogy further, although the character we control is within the computer game environment, we ourselves certainly are not.  We are sitting in our bedrooms or wherever we are when we play such games.  Indeed, we could not be part of that game environment as our existence is not captured by lit pixels!  In a similar manner, immaterialism holds we are not literally within the "material" world.  What we label the "material" world is nothing but our perceptions, and it is therefore nonsensical to suppose we are part of it.  Of course, our bodies are part of the "material" world  i.e the those perceptions we identify with our bodies, but our selves and their conscious states are not part of that reality.

Support from Quantum Mechanics  

I think Berkeley's metaphysic gets some support when we consider the implications of quantum mechanics. Or, at least it gets support in as much as it presents arguably insurmountable difficulties for those who suppose that reality is of a certain definite character considered entirely independent of one's perceptions or measurements.   

The main difficulty is that subatomic particles, such as electrons, can either be particles or waves, but cannot simultaneously be both (just like an object cannot simultaneously be both a sphere and a cube).  Yet, depending on the particular experiment, electrons behave either exactly like particles, or they behave exactly like waves.  So what are they?  Does their nature, their essence, change depending on how we measure/observe them? But that makes no sense since a thing's nature shouldn't change depending on how we observe it.

There is no problem under Berkeley's immaterialism though. Berkeley would have thought that a subatomic particle's reality (be it a photon, an electron or whatever) is purely a question of whether it plays a fruitful role in our scientific theories or not. It doesn't matter if, say, electrons exhibit particle like behaviour within one experimental context and wavelike behaviour under another since the reality of an electron cannot be abstracted from our perceptions/measurements of them.  All that matters is that nature exhibits regularities that we can mathematically describe. In this regard, quantum mechanics is a runaway success.

It's important to note that this doesn't amount to the denial of the existence of electrons and other subatomic particles any more than it is a denial of everyday macroscopic objects (see near the end of my first blog post on Berkeley).

Why are only the extreme positions permissible?

Why are only the extreme positions permissible? Hence, if I complain about the top 10% in the USA having 77% of total wealth, people always assume the only alternative is that everyone must be absolutely equal in wealth. Why? Clearly in between such extremes is possible e.g. the top 10% only have around 46% of the wealth in the UK (which is a vast difference to the USA). 

Or, if I complain about people owning vast tracks of land so that one cannot walk anywhere in non-urban areas without walking over private land, then I must also believe that people shouldn't have their own gardens. Why?

Or, if one decides modern life is unfulfilling, and hence decides to and live a simpler lifestyle somewhere remote, one must make no use of any technology whatsoever (not even a manufactured knife) otherwise one is being a hypocrite. How so?

Or, if one rejects the idea that we human beings are not just biological machines who will soon cease to exist forevermore, then I must believe in orthodox Christianity and believe that we spend an eternal afterlife in Heaven or Hell. Why? Why can't I believe that there is no punishment in an afterlife, that there is a beforelife as well as an afterlife, that reincarnation exists etc? Why are the choices restricted to the extremes of either materialism or fundamental Christianity?