Does the discovery of fake psychics provide good evidence that there are no genuine psychics?

Imagine 2 possible worlds:

a) No psychics exist due to the fact that anomalous information acquisition is simply not possible i.e the physical laws of nature prohibit what we refer to as ESP.

b) Psychics do exist, but they are comparatively rare.

It is clear to me that in world "b" there will be more fake psychics than in world "a". Why? Here's an analogy. If we lived in a world where £20 notes didn't exist, then it is likely there would also be no counterfeit £20 notes either. There would be no purpose in counterfeit £20 notes since no one would be fooled by them. However, in our world where £20 notes exist and they are in demand, then inevitably there will be many counterfeit £20 notes.

Similar reasoning applies to psychics, albeit to a much lesser degree. That is to say in world "a" there will be fake psychics, but it seems clear to be that they will not be as numerous as fake psychics in world "b".

Skeptics of the paranormal often allege that the discovery of fake psychics provides compelling evidence that genuine psychics do not exist. But since there are many more of them in world "b" this is not only false, but arguably (and admittedly counterintuitively) makes the existence of genuine psychics more likely.

In addition, they sometimes use the argument that since every psychic they have heard about turns out to be a charlatan, then it is reasonably, via induction, to infer there are no genuine psychics. But this is rather like a person flicking through a wad of £20 notes, carefully removing those counterfeit notes which are fairly easy to discern with the naked eye, and then declaring that since every note they've examined so far is counterfeit, it's reasonable to infer they all are! 

In other words skeptics focus on the easy targets and insinuate that similar debunking can be applied to all alleged psychics. And this is the strategy that skeptics of the paranormal seem to me to apply across the board to all paranormal phenomena (to be fair though such underhand tactics are pretty well universal no matter what the subject matter happens to be i.e. people have the propensity to attack the weakest articulation of a position or resort to attacking straw men, and to avoid addressing the strongest or most compelling articulation of a person's position on any subject).

 

Predictions for 2024

A few months ago, as a result of making disparaging comments about Isaac Asimov's predictions in 1964 for 2014, someone asked me to make predictions for 2024. 

I think making predictions is extraordinarily difficult. And I don't have the knowledge to attempt such a thing. However I decided not to be boring and gave it a crack anyway. This is what I said: 

2024? Well I'll predict everything will be more or less the same.

OK google glasses will have limited success when they are first launched. But later models will become more and more popular as all the issues are ironed out. It'll be like the history of mobile phones (cell phones). At first very few people will have them, but eventually they became all pervasive.

People will not make a one way trip to Mars in April 2023 to live the rest of their lives there! I just can't see that happening, at least not by that time.

Smart watches will find a market, but they will never become that popular. They're too small and people will prefer their smartphones.

Much less stress will be placed on the notion that saturated fats are a great evil. It will be increasingly recognised by 2024 that it is sugar and refined carbs, rather than dietary fat and lack of exercise, which is largely responsible for rising obesity rates and ill-health.

Yeah not very startling exciting predictions.  But I'm trying to be realistic.  I think I may have been proven to be correct with the Mars trip already since the last time I heard a year mentioned it was 2025!  But, regardless, I cannot imagine it happening before 2040, and I doubt that a one way trip will ever happen -- or at least not until Mars is terraformed!

A Purposeful Life?

We find ourselves in this world not knowing what we are, who we are, or why we are here.  Are we  mere meat robots with no free will living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe?  Or are we souls with an ultimate purpose to our existence -- a purpose which we cannot as of yet know, or possibly even comprehend. Worst of all we don't know what our ultimate destiny might be, whether it will be oblivion or whether it will be to ascend into some mysterious new reality.

In our day to day lives let's just be happy for the day and have a few pints of beer. Problem is I made a new years resolution not to drink from the 1st January 2014 to the 31st March 2014.  I am mortified  🙁

The proposed changes to the UK National Lottery

Camelot, the operators of the UK National Lottery, have announced that the price of a national lottery ticket in the UK is set to double from £1 to £2 in the autumn (2013). The prizes are also changing. Currently the prizes for the Saturday draw are approximately as follows:

 

Match 3 balls = £10 (could be less but only under truly exceptional circumstances).
Match 4 balls = £60 (average)
Match 5 balls = £1,500 (average)
Match 5 balls + bonus = £100,000 (average)
Match all 6 balls = £4,100,000 (estimated)

Come the autumn these prizes will be:

Match 3 balls = £25 (could be less but only under truly exceptional circumstances).
Match 4 balls = £100 (average)
Match 5 balls = £1,000 (average)
Match 5 balls + bonus = £50,000 (average)
Match all 6 balls = £5,000,000 (estimated)

However a meaningful comparison of these figures has to take into account the fact that the stake has doubled. It is more useful therefore to compare the prizes as a ratio of the stake. So we have:

Match 3 balls current ratio = 10 new ratio = 12.5
Match 4 balls current ratio = 60 new ratio = 50
Match 5 balls current ratio = 1500 new ratio = 500
Match 5 balls + bonus current ratio = 100,000 new ratio = 25,000
Match all 6 balls current ratio = 4,100,000 new ratio = 2,500,000
 
Let's make it clear what this means by looking at matching 3 balls. Currently the stake is £1, the winnings are £10, hence the winnings are 10 * the stake, or a ratio of 10. In the autumn the stake will be £2, the winnings will be £25, hence the winnings are 12.5 * the stake, or a ratio of 12.5.

The important thing here which should concern people is how these ratios are going to change. We get the figures by dividing the new ratio by the old ratio. So we get the following figures:

Match 3 balls = 12.5/10 = 1.25
Match 4 balls = 50/60 = 0.83
Match 5 balls = 500/1500 = 0.33
Match 5 balls + bonus 25,000/1000,000 = 0.25
Match all 6 balls = 2,500,000/4,100,000 = 0.61
 
What this means is that for the number of balls matched other than 3, the prize money proportionate to the stake is going to go significantly down. Proportionate to the stake the jackpot prize will only be 61% of what it is now . The match 5 balls + bonus will only be a quarter (25%) proportionate to the stake of what it is now!

I assume that the 1.25 proportionate increase in the prize money for 3 balls will precisely offset the relative decrease in the prizes for 4 balls or more (since 3 ball prizes vastly exceed all other prizes combined). That is to say that I suspect that as a percentage the amount devoted to prizes will remain the same.

It seems to me that people predominantly play the lottery, not at the prospect of matching 3 balls and winning £10 (strictly £9 once the £1 stake is taking into account), but rather for that very small possibility of winning the jackpot, or at least matching 5 balls + bonus and winning a life changing ~£100,000. And given that lottery players tend to disproportionately come from those with lower incomes, one imagines that they want this small possibility for as small a stake as possible. If I am correct in this supposition then Camelot's proposals seem, if anything, largely diametrically opposed to these wishes.

I have therefore taken the liberty of emailing Camelot in order to express my dissatisfaction with their proposals. Within their response they state:

We know that players still love Lotto, but through extensive consumer research, they have told us that they want more ways to win more money. This is exactly what we will be introducing with the following changes to Lotto later in the year:

• More than doubling the bottom prize tier which is what players have said they want, from £10 to £25. This creates by far the most winners on Lotto on each draw.
• Increasing jackpots. £2.5 million on a Wednesday (£2.2m) and £5 million on Saturday (£4.1m).

I have no doubt that people have expressed the wish that the prize for 3 balls should be significantly increased. I also find it likely they expressed the wish to be able to win more money. Although peoples' motivation for playing is to win a life changing sum of money, in reality they realise that they most probably will only ever match 3 balls. So clearly they will express a desire for the £10 prize money to be increased. But I also strongly suspect that if it had been made clear by Camelot that such an increase in the smallest prize will be accompanied by a doubling of the price of a ticket, in addition to a relative decrease in the value of the Jackpot, and an absolute decrease in the value of the 5 balls + bonus and 5 balls prizes, then I'm sure peoples' reactions would have been somewhat less favourable.

But we shall see. Perhaps most people will welcome these changes with cries of delight. However I doubt it. Once it has sunk in that not only is the price of a ticket doubling, but that the relative amounts won relative to the stake for matching 4 or more balls is undergoing a substantial decrease, then I cannot imagine most people being happy.

Is a "life after death" possible if we are wholly physical creatures?

Keith Augustine has written extensively on the net regarding what he considers the unreasonably notion that we somehow survive the death of our bodies.  In a forthcoming volume edited by Keith entitled "The Myth of the Afterlife: Essays on the Case Against Life After Death" is a paper written by the philosopher Gualtiero Piccinini.  The abstract for this paper can be found here.  Unfortunately the actual paper itself is not available on the net.  However Gualtiero Piccinini was good enough to email me a copy.  Predominantly this paper focuses upon the contribution the neuroscientific data brings to the debate.  It argues that this data strongly suggests that brains produce consciousness, hence there can be no "life after death".

As an aside one can of course concede that the neuroscientific data does indeed constitute strong evidence that brains produce consciousness.  However this fact is blunted somewhat when we consider various alternative evidence. For example, near-death experiences and the closely related phenomenon deathbed visions, crisis apparitions, and so on.  Moreover it can be argued that ESP at least indirectly suggests that we survive the death of our bodies.  In contradistinction to the brain produces consciousness hypothesis, this alternative evidence with its implication of a "life after death" has the not inconsiderable bonus of being consistent with our intuitive conviction that we are persisting selves.  I have previously written about this here (in contrast naturalism/materialism is simply incompatible with the notion of a persisting self. This will be attempted to be made clear below in the context of the replication/teleportation thought experiment).  What for the sake of simplicity I didn't mention in my paper is that I also consider the notion that brains produce consciousness to be deeply philosophically problematic (each of the various positions eg reductive materialism, non-reductive materialism, strong emergence, seem to be untenable for differing reasons). However I don't want to address these deep philosophical problems here -- that can be deferred to when Keith's book is published and I write my review of it.

What I intend to do in this blog entry is to put aside my own beliefs and accept for the sake of argument that brains do indeed produce consciousness.  At first blush, even if this were a fact, it cannot rule out a "life after death".  I'm primarily thinking here of resurrection, or uploading our consciousness into a robot or some other artificial body.  Even the prospect of reincarnation does not seem to be ruled out so long as we understand it need not be a "soul" that survives in order to conclude that reincarnation might be meaningfully be said to have occurred.

However Gualtiero Piccinini disputes this, and he does so by a thought experiment involving the teleportation and replication of individuals.  In his paper he argues:

" imagine that teleportation is invented. A teleporter disintegrates your current body, extracts precise information about the location of each particle that constitutes you, and makes an exact particle-by-particle replica of you in another location. To go from New York to Paris, says the advertisement, you can take a plane, which takes seven hours and costs $1,000, or take the teleporter, which takes only a minute and costs $100. Which one would you take? If you are in doubt, consider a more advanced teleporter. It makes a copy of your body by scanning your present body without destroying it. Now it should be pretty clear that after you enter and exit the teleporter in New York, you are the person who is still in New York, while the new body in Paris is a mere replica distinct from you. Regardless of how many replicas are made and whether making replicas requires the destruction of your current body, your replica is not you. No one can make your replica numerically identical with you—not even god (contra Baker 2011)".

 

Unfortunately this is simply inconsistent with naturalism/physicalism/materialism, or indeed any position which holds that mental states are produced by brain states and are tightly correlated with them. Under naturalism there is no distinction between numerical and qualitative identity.  At that instant when the replica is created the replica necessarily must be you if it is physically identical. To deny this is to affirm that what "you" are is something over and above the totality of your physicality.

But let's press this further. The replica will look the same, share the exact same character traits and in general be absolutely psychologically indistinguishable from the original. Moreover this ostensibly teleported person will have memories of her life before being teleported -- she will remember standing in the teleportation booth, experiencing a sudden shift in perspective, and finding herself in the destination booth. In every way this newly created person will feel herself as being simply a continuation of the original and that she has merely instantaneously transported from one place to another. 

So to deny that the replica is the very same person is not only to deny that ones total physicality fixes identity, but also that the totality of ones psychological states, including memories, fails to fix identity too!   Of course under any materialist based metaphysic the former will entail the latter, but it is pertinent to stress this point.

So how does the materialist escape the seeming paradox the author alludes to? Imagine the following scenario. Imagine that every infinitesimal fraction of a second you are getting teleported from place to place. Obviously if you keep your eyes open you'll just see a confusing blur. But you could close your eyes, and everything would seem to be normal. You could be thinking of a problem, daydreaming, or whatever. Nothing would seem different as compared to when you have your eyes closed normally, except in the teleportation scenario you are continuously being killed and spontaneously coming into being every infinitesimal fraction of a second!

Now if we suppose that precisely this is happening in our second by second everyday existence then there is no paradox.

What this means then is that the materialist has to reject the notion of a persisting self. That's all an illusion. There is only the sense of a self, but that sense corresponds to no real self.

Let me try to be more clear about this.  If the original body is killed at the precise moment of replication then, from the perspective of the person being teleported, she will seem to “jump” to the remote destination.  But of course there’s no reason at all why the original should be killed at that particular instant.  Perhaps we might delay the termination of the original; by an hour say.  But then this creates the interesting scenario whereby it seems to the person that at the precise moment of replication she will have a 50/50 chance of either suddenly “jumping” to the remote location, or simply remaining where she is with the unpleasant prospect of being killed in an hour's time!

If you think this represents a paradox then you haven’t understood what I’m saying.  Should naturalism/materialism be true then, even in our apparent day to day existence, we do not even survive from one second to the next.  The overwhelming feeling we are persisting selves is all a horrible illusion.  The original person will die in an hour's time.  But intellectually, and as a good naturalist/materialist, this ought not to perturb her in the slightest since she is effectively “dying” every infinitesimal fraction of a second anyway.  Of course psychologically she is likely to be very frightened indeed!  This reflects the fact that we are all instinctively strong dualists, or at least that we are persisting selves i.e substantial selves.  It is overwhelmingly counter-intuitive to suppose otherwise.

Gualtiero Piccinini's thought experiment reveals that he too is instinctively a strong dualist.   In his paper he derides substance dualism, yet affirms that the self is substantial in his teleportation thought experiment.

Incidentally the philosopher Gualtiero Piccinini whose arguments I address here has actually seen this blog entry and has commented in a blog entry here. Unfortunately he doesn't understand my argument, although the people commentating underneath do appear to understand it.  It will be interesting to see if he has modified his contribution to the volume. 

UPDATE:  It's almost 3 years since I wrote the above. Myth of an Afterlife: The Case Against Life After Death has now finally been published and I shall be reviewing it in due course.

Further Update 8/5/22  Almost 10 years after my original post.  Here is my ~13,000 word review of this book. 

A Response to The Myth of an Afterlife

Changing the definitions of words does not prove anything

I read with interest this statement by Lawrence M. Krauss:

I spend a great deal of time in the book detailing precisely how physics has changed our notions of “nothing,” for example.  The old idea that nothing might involve empty space, devoid of mass or energy, or anything material, for example, has now been replaced by a boiling bubbling brew of virtual particles, popping in and out of existence in a time so short that we cannot detect them directly.  I then go on to explain how other versions of “nothing”—beyond merely empty space—including the absence of space itself, and even the absence of physical laws, can morph into “something.”

 Many modern physicists believe they have provided an answer to an age old philosophical question:

 “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

 But there's a big problem with their claim.  Physicists originally thought that a vacuum has no activity whatsoever, and hence is "nothing". Subsequently they discovered that a vacuum is a hive of activity with particles spontaneously popping in and out of existence.

Now what they should have done at this stage is acknowledge that what they thought of as nothing, was completely utterly incorrect.  That is to say that a vacuum is not nothing -- indeed far from it.

But they persisted in using the label nothing to describe a vacuum, which means that their definition of "nothing" is totally at odds with standard usage. Indeed their definition of nothing has nothing to do with the standard definition of nothing!

So they use an incorrect definition to then argue that physics has solved the age old philosophical problem of whether something can come from nothing. They even write books about it!

In short what they do is this:

They define nothingness as a vacuum.  However lots of activity is occurring in that vacuum with particles popping in and out of existence.  It is then presumably not too problematic to show that something can come from such nothingness. They then blur their definition of nothingness to imply that their demonstration equally applies to the standard definition of nothingness.  Hence they maintain they've provided an answer to the ancient question of whether something can come from nothing!

I have no idea whether:

a) They know what they're doing and are aware of the transparent dishonesty of their arguments.

b) They genuinely are unable to understand the error they are making.

Krauss does mention that in his book he shows that something can come from nothing even in the standard absolute sense  i.e. no space-time, no physical laws -- indeed absolutely nothing whatsoever.  Now Krauss is a professor of physics.  However he cannot use physics, or more generally science, to show that something can morph from absolute nothingness into something.  This is because physics can only be applied where there exist physical laws.  Hence a philosophical argument is required.  But in my experience physicists, even though they do not seem to realise this,  are in general notoriously very poor at philosophy.   Hence I am sceptical  of the notion that he has produced any worthwhile argument in this regard.  I do however have a certain curiosity as to what his argument might be.  If anyone knows what his argument is then I'd be much obliged if you could email me or add a comment outlining his argument.

What are my own opinion regarding the question of whether something can come from nothing?  Well first of all I do not find it incoherent to suppose an object can spontaneously acausally appear in front of me out of thin air. I don't mean through the equations of quantum mechanics, or by any other causal mechanism or scientific explanation, but truly acausally.

However something appearing out of absolute nothingness is quite a different kettle of fish.

The thing is nothingness is something we simply cannot grasp. If the Universe didn't exist there would be nothing at all. No space! No time! Just nothingness. And my mind simply can't quite grasp it. 

Can something come out of such absolute nothingness? I have no idea. Personally I suspect it's way beyond the intellectual capacity of human beings to answer such a question.

Is Reality real?

For the past couple of years I've increasingly been thinking how strange the world is.  For example, the fact we live on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an infinite sea of nothingness.  It seems vastly more reasonable to me if we had, instead, found ourselves living on a plane; perhaps one infinite in extent in all directions.

Indeed I’ve even begun to wonder if we might not live in a virtual simulated world created by aliens living wholly "outside" our Universe.  This can be compared to the bots (computer controlled players) in a computer game at some point in the future becoming conscious and wondering if their world (game environment) has a creator.  We know that their creator – the computer programmer – is not some entity existing within their world; that is, unlike the bots themselves, the programmer does not equate to some pixels in their game environment. Rather the programmer exists “outside” of their reality altogether.

Similarly, might it not be the case that our world -- our Universe -- is likewise a creation of aliens living wholly “outside” of our reality?  Perhaps their Universe is utterly different; after all they live in the "real" world.  Perhaps the creation of our Universe is just a huge experiment on their part. Perhaps they monitor everything we do and say. Perhaps it might even be the case that they are conducting a kind of psychological experiment to see how long it will take before we twig on that our reality is artificial.

Or perhaps the creator is not some being or beings living in another Universe “outside” of reality, but rather what we traditional conceive of as “God”.   A Mind, perhaps infinite in scope, being responsible for the creation of our world, and even perhaps responsible for its second by second existence. 

I am not the only person who has had the notion that our entire reality might simply be a creation of conscious entities living wholly “outside” of our reality.  This is typically advanced in terms of the hypothesis that our entire reality is simply a computer simulation.

See this programme for example from about ~39 minutes onwards.

And this extract from a TV programme

Are Perceptual illusions always necessarily illusions?

I'm sure that all of us are astounded that the squares A and B are actually the same colour. It is the shadow cast over B by the cylinder which makes us think otherwise. What this suggests is a quite incredible illusion.

However I think there is a pervasive naivety about the nature of perception. Most of us doubtless feel that we see the external world directly. But we emphatically do not.

Consider a red rose. We think of a red rose as being the same colour throughout the day. However the light from the Sun reaching the Earth varies throughout the day. When the Sun is low in the sky, lots of blue light gets scattered away since the sunlight has to travel through a greater quantity of air. So if we were to passively see colours "as they really are", then the colour of our red rose would change throughout the day. Indeed the colour of all objects would change throughout the day. But in fact our rose seems to stay pretty much the same colour throughout the daylight hours. Why is this?

The answer lies in the fact that we do not in fact simply passively see what is out there. Rather the brain performs certain operations on the data coming through our senses and presents it to our consciousness in a form that we can make sense of. Everything we ever see is in fact a hypothesis about how the world is. Thus we have an implicit theory about the external world that it contains objects which have specific intrinsic colours. Hence the brain will perform those operations which ensure that objects do indeed appear to be the same colour throughout daylight hours.

This applies not just to colours, but everything we perceive through our 5 senses. In a way then everything we ever perceive is an illusion. But I think this is misleading.

Let's consider the "illusion" above again. If this were a real 3D object and we were to approach it and view it from various angles, then we would see that squares A and B are very different colours. Indeed their intrinsic colours would be precisely as we perceive them in the illusion above.

But in that case what justifies us in labelling it as an illusion? If this were a real object that we are seeing, then squares A and B are very different colours. Our senses are not deceiving us. Indeed if someone claimed to see the squares as being precisely the same colour, then it is doubtful that he could proficiently visually apprehend his environment.

This is not to say we never perceive illusions. Sometimes we seem to see something, but which on closer inspection turns out to be something else entirely. Or sometimes what we seem to visually see is not consistent with our other senses.

Edited to add:  I have a follow up to this post written many years later:  The Checker-Shadow "illusion" Part 2.

Is a life after death conceivable?

1. Proof that the brain produces consciousness?

It is presumed amongst many highly educated people in the West, and in particular scientists, that it has essentially been proven that the brain produces consciousness. They hold that there is overwhelming evidence to support this thesis and that it is no longer a live issue. This evidence comes in the form of the apparent complete dependency of our states of our minds on our brains. Just to mention a few examples; our capacity to understand written and spoken words, or the capacity to speak, are impaired or even eliminated with injuries to certain regions of the brain. Damage to the hippocampal and thalamic areas of the brain can destroy one's ability to store new long-term memories. In addition radical personality change may be brought about by injury to the brain. The most famous example here is undoubtedly Phineas Gage. We can also point to the effects of drugs that have a propensity to affect our emotions, attitudes and dispositions. Indeed even alcohol and caffeine do this.

On the face of it these facts of modern neuroscience strongly indicate that there can be little realistic prospect of our consciousness surviving the deaths of our bodies [1]. However, my intention in this paper is to argue that the issue is not as clear-cut as the above would seem to suggest. Indeed I will argue that not only are we not compelled to conclude that consciousness is wholly a product of the brain, but that in many ways, assuming otherwise, has the benefit of being compatible with a great deal of alternative evidence. In addition I will argue that it also has the not inconsiderable bonus of being consistent with our commonsensical notion of ourselves.


2. A useful Simile?

Consider the following scenario. Imagine if you will 2 very intelligent people from the early 18th century – let’s call them Daniel and Ian – who, by some means or other, are miraculously transported to our present day. Imagine further they encounter a television set showing a film. After being suitably astounded, and after tinkering around with its internal components and finding that tinkering with particular components affects the picture quality in particular characteristic ways, Daniel declares that not just the picture but the storyline of the film must be wholly generated by these internal components. He argues that this must be the inevitable conclusion since tinkering with them affects the picture. Ian, however, will rightly point out that although he grants that the picture itself is generated by these internal components, there is difficulty in supposing that the contents of the film being shown is also wholly a product of these internal components. Ian argues that should the film be wholly a product of the internal components, then tinkering with them in a certain appropriate way should alter the sequence of pictures being shown so that a different film were being shown; or perhaps more plausibly a completely random sequence of pictures were shown.

On hearing this argument Daniel becomes quite angry. He starts to go into greater detail regarding the specific ways the quality of the picture displayed is effected, including ghosting, the picture changing from a colour to a black and white one, and a whole host of various other effects. Finally he mentions his killer argument. Namely that taking a hammer to the television set will permanently destroy its ability to display a picture. All this, he will assert, makes it pretty much of a forgone conclusion that both the picture and the storyline is entirely a product of the television set itself.

Whilst acknowledging the compelling nature of this last argument made by Daniel, Ian nevertheless doesn’t feel happy because he has not addressed the issue of why the storyline being shown remains resistant to tinkering with the internal components. Nevertheless, because neither Daniel or Ian know anything about electromagnetic waves, and indeed would find the concept of invisible waves travelling through the air to be completely alien and inimical to how they viewed reality and what is possible, then Ian has no ready reply to Daniel. Yet he remains uneasy and puzzled.

Later on in this paper I will suggest that the above might serve as a useful simile to the relationship of the self to ones brain. But before directly addressing this question it will be necessary to say a few words about the self and what we should consider is meant by it. I will then suggest that should consciousness continue after death, it will be this self that survives.


3. What is the self?

How do we define the self? An obvious answer would be to simply equate it with ones various personality characteristics such as ones interests, intelligence, memories, general demeanour and so on. However there is an obvious problem here. Compared to ourselves now, as children we had very different personality characteristics. If we are to embrace the position that we are merely the sum of our entire psychological state, and that there is very little in common between our entire psychological state as a child and now, then the inescapable conclusion is that the child has now quite literally ceased to exist. But it’s much worse than this. Simply having a few alcoholic drinks can change our personality characteristics quite radically. Indeed, even in the normal course of events, we can be in radically different moods from one day to the next, or even from one moment to the next. Are we to suppose we can be literally differing selves from one moment to the next?

It seems to me that we have this concept of the self which in one sense changes, but yet without changing what we essentially are. To elucidate; although our apparent personality and intelligence and interests may change radically throughout our lives, nevertheless we feel very strongly that there is a real sense in which we are still one and the very same person. Thus despite, for example, our 5 year old self, our sober adult self, or our drunk adult self exhibiting quite radically different personality traits, and having differing intelligence and differing interests, we are still generally very firmly convinced that we are literally the same self throughout our lives and therefore throughout these various differing mind states. Thus *I* (that is the self) might, for example, be in a good mood or a bad mood. But my self is not to be equated by such given mind states. Rather *I* experience being in a good mood, or a bad mood, or indeed any other mental state. The I, or the self, is that which endures, but which can experience various mental states such as differing moods.

So what we’re doing here is drawing a distinction between particular psychological or mind states on the one hand, and the self on the other. On this understanding the self is not the sum of our various psychological states. Rather the self is that which has particular conscious experiences, or undergoes particular psychological states. Another way of putting this is to say that our various psychological states, or mind states, are properties of the self rather than constituting the self. That is to say that neither ones typically longer term enduring psychological states such as ones interests, intelligence, memories, general demeanour, nor ones more transient psychological states such as the mood one happens to be in, is actually constitutive of the self. Therefore they can vary without changing the self. This is not to say though that ones self might not heavily influence some of our psychological states. However it does not rigidly determine them.

I would again stress that this seems to be consistent with our intuitive and commonsense notion of the self. Most of us are entirely happy to suppose we are literally the very same self as when we were children, despite having different intelligence, preoccupations and so on as compared to then. In other words we feel there is an enduring essence to us which remains unchanged and which I feel is appropriate to label the self.

However we encounter irreconcilable difficulties with this notion of the self if we assume that the brain produces both the self and its conscious experiences. To put the problem briefly; the physical is in a constant state of change, therefore brains and all the parts composing a brain, are also in a constant state of change. Hence if the brain, or a part of it, produces such a self, then it seems that this self must also be in a constant state of change. Such is the case under philosophical materialism which holds that only the material or physical exists, and thus consciousness and any "self" must be physical too. Thus under materialism, since the physical is in a constant state of change, then so too must the self.

But this commonsense notion of a self we have articulated does not change. What we might call the properties of the self change – namely ones moods, interests and so on. But the self itself does not change. Otherwise we would in effect be saying that from one second to the next the self is ceasing to exist only to be replaced by a different albeit virtually identical self. We would be constantly effectively dying, only to be constantly created anew, so to speak. The feeling that we are a continuing self would be merely an illusion. If the reader is perplexed by this I highly recommend they read my essay “Teleportation and the implications for an enduring self” where I spell out in some detail why this is entailed.

The physical is in a constant state of change. But this commonsensical of the self that I have articulated does not change. Thus in order to rescue our commonsensical notion of the self, it seems as if we will have to propose the self is non-physical. Such a supposition is arguably not unreasonable. After all, it seems that neither the self nor its conscious experiences are visible. It seems that we infer the presence of someone’s consciousness through their voluntary bodily movements. But consciousness is not identical to our voluntary bodily movements -- rather it causes such movements. In a similar way it seems that consciousness is also not identical to any particular physical processes within the brain – rather it causes those physical processes [2]. Thus it appears there are two radically different types of things in the world. On the one hand there are non-physical selves and their various conscious experiences. On the other hand there are physical objects and physical processes. It certainly appears to me that these are not one and the same thing. Such a position is known as dualism [3]. This is in contrast to the aforementioned materialism which is obliged to hold that this commonsensical notion of the self is illusionary.


4. Is the simile appropriate?

I started off this essay listing examples of the way the mind is clearly affected by the brain. To most people this essentially shows that our minds, and hence everything that we are, is simply a product of the brain. I then mentioned the example of a television set where although the internal components of the set clearly affect the picture quality, nevertheless what those pictures actually depict through each consecutive frame constituting the storyline of the programme, is not likewise affected by tinkering with the set’s internal components.

I want to suggest a simile here between the television set and television signals on the one hand, and the brain and the self on the other. Briefly, the picture quality on the television set that can alter without affecting the storyline being shown, can be compared to our various psychological states. Contrariwise the storyline of the programme being shown can be compared to ones essential self. So, in a comparable manner to the way that the quality of the picture displayed on a television set can change, but without changing the storyline of the programme being shown, our psychological states are free to change without in any way altering or changing the self.

But what about Daniel's "killer argument"? To remind ourselves, this was Daniel's observation that taking a hammer to the television set permanently destroys its ability to display a picture. Of course, unlike Ian and Daniel, we know that we are continually bathed in electromagnetic radiation which carries the information constituting the film. The destruction of the television set emphatically did not demonstrate that the film had its origin in the television set. Unlike Daniel, and indeed even Ian, we have no problem understanding that. Destroying the television set only affects our ability to view the film. A similar response can be given to those who assert that the fact there is no sign of consciousness once a person's brain stops functioning, proves that consciousness has been extinguished. If we are to subscribe to the notion of the self that I have articulated, then, as pointed out, both the self and its conscious states are in themselves invisible. We only are able to infer the existence of other selves through peoples' bodily behaviour. Hence when our brains are no longer functioning, we no longer have the ability to make our presence known in the physical world. Thus it is scarcely surprising that there is no sign of any consciousness with the death of the brain. It certainly need not entail that a person's consciousness has ceased to exist anymore than it is entailed the film has ceased to exist once the television set is destroyed.

The comparison to a television set is a variant of what is known as the transmission theory or filter theory of the mind-body relationship. So we are here thinking of the brain as an organ which alters our conscious states, but yet does not create them. One might say the brain acts as a kind of “filter” which somehow limits or restricts and regulates consciousness in certain characteristic ways. In a similar manner to which tinkering with the internal components of a television set can alter the picture quality, but not the programmes being broadcast, so the brain can influence our psychological states or mind states, but without altering the self. In this manner, the concept of a persisting non-physical self that I have articulated, can be made consistent with much, if not all, the neurophysiological evidence.


5. Is such a self consistent with the evidence?


Let’s consider the appropriateness of this notion of an enduring unchanging self. I suggest that after consuming alcohol, despite our mood and behaviour being changed quite radically compared to our sober self, we are completely certain that we are still one and the very same self. This does not of course mean our feeling here is not a illusion. But it certainly seems that the comparison to a Television set and TV signals is appropriate in this instance.

So far so good. But what about permanent radical personality change such as suffered by the aforementioned Phineas Gage?

Once a polite and caring person, Gage became prone to selfish behavior and bursts of profanity. Dr. Harlow said it was if Gage lost the balance between "his intellectual faculty and animal propensities." He had no respect for social graces and often lied about his accomplishments. Previously energetic and focused, he was now erratic and unreliable. He had trouble forming and executing plans. There was no evidence of forethought in his actions, and he often made choices against his best interests.

Indeed Gage changed to such an extent that his friends declared that Gage was no longer Gage. Now I believe the crucial question here is whether Gage himself agreed with his friends. In other words did he concede that his former self prior to the accident had literally ceased to exist, and that his present self had sprung into being after the accident? Although I don’t know the answer to this question, I very strongly suspect that he had not agreed with them and that he definitely felt like the same person despite the fact that his moods and ability to concentrate were now radically different. Indeed it is not clear to me why his case is qualitatively different from a person getting drunk, remaining drunk for the rest of his or her life, and thereby experiencing a permanent personality change. If such a thing were to happen to myself, then other people might declare that “Ian is no longer Ian”. However I myself would be completely convinced that I am still me 100%. It would just be that I might feel more gregarious, might find it more difficult to concentrate on various mental tasks, might be more prone to getting bad-tempered and so on and so forth.


6. Looking at all the evidence in the round

I have argued that even if there is a systematic correlation between brain events and mental events, this does not in itself actually prove that mental events are brought into being by their correlated brain events. One could of course still argue that the evidence makes it overwhelming probable. Indeed, considering this evidence in isolation, I find it extremely compelling myself. However there are considerations which weigh in against this conclusion.

First of all, and as I have already pointed out, it is profoundly counter-intuitive. If we are to embrace the brain produces consciousness thesis, then, as I have argued both in this essay and the “teleportation and the implications for an enduring self” essay, the commonsense notion of the self that we all tend to implicitly hold must be dispensed with. Instead we are obliged to hold that the notion of a continuing enduring self through time is an illusion. To repeat what I said earlier; in this scenario, from one second to the next, the self is effectively ceasing to exist only to be replaced by a different albeit virtually identical self. We are constantly dying, only to be constantly created anew, so to speak. I would suggest that this is extraordinarily difficult to actually psychologically believe.

However, against this point, it could be argued that the fact we find it extraordinarily difficult to psychologically believe something does not provide any evidence that it is false. Some people might argue that the fact of the matter is that conscious states are altered by physical processes within the brain. The most simple and parsimonious explanation for this is that brain processes produce consciousness [4]. If this entails that there is no substantial enduring self, then we should just bite the bullet and accept that our feeling otherwise in this regard is just simply that – namely a feeling. However, I’m not so convinced that our deepest, most intuitive feelings, regarding what we feel we essentially are should be dismissed in so cavalier a manner. But I don’t wish to pursue this here as there is a more important point which should be raised, and this leads us to my second point.

Secondly the brain produces consciousness thesis is directly incompatible with all the evidence [5] suggesting that our consciousness survives death. Such evidence includes near-death experiences (NDEs) and the closely related phenomenon deathbed visions, evidence for reincarnation in the form of children’s recollections of previous lives (although not alleged memories retrieved through hypnosis which is much poorer quality evidence), apparitions of a certain type [6], and mediumship. Interested readers might like to visit this page for a list of appropriate references, many of which are available to read online (update July 2014.  The link I had is now dead).

There is also much indirect evidence which tends to suggest the continuation of consciousness after death. The most notable indirect evidence is psi phenomena. Without wishing to argue for it here, it seems to me that the totality of all the evidence suggests that it exists even if the more remarkable demonstrations of such phenomena turn out to have involved trickery. Contradicting our current western understanding of the mind-brain relationship, the existence of such phenomena suggests there is far more to the mind than is implied by regarding consciousness as merely being either a function of the brain or a causally inefficacious by-product of the brain.

Then there is physical phenomena such as, for example, clocks stopping and photographs falling off walls occurring near the time of death. More interestingly these phenomena do not normally occur in the vicinity of the dying person, but rather in the vicinity of someone, located at some distant place, who is emotionally close to the dying person [7].

Much more interestingly there have been reports of a restoration of mental functioning in people immediately prior to death. Indeed there have been scattered reports of people apparently recovering from dementia shortly before death [8].

The point here is that if we consider the totality of the evidence as a whole, rather than merely noting that mind states change as a result of physical changes in the brain, then it is far from obvious that the brain produces consciousness. However this begs an important question. If in fact the brain doesn't produce consciousness, but merely alters consciousness, then why are selves associated with brains at all?

I would suggest that it could be the case, as hinted at by mystical experiences, that disembodied consciousness is vastly greater in scope than our everyday consciousness. But in the embodied state the brain acts as a reducing valve or “filter” which severely curtails the range of consciousness. Arguably this would serve the useful purpose of filtering out the perception of other realities and other conscious states which are not necessary, or which hinder our ability to function in this physical reality. This hypothesis would broadly be consistent with phenomena such as the occasional reports of people recovering their mental faculties near death, near-death experiences and other mystical experiences, and also accounts such as those found in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead.

For those readers who wish to read more about transmission or filter theory I recommend Chris Carter’s article:

Does Consciousness depend on the Brain?  (Edit 23/10/25 Link now dead)

There is a critique of the above article by Keith Augustine. (Edit 23/10/25 Link now dead)

There is a response by Chris Carter to this critique. (Edit 23/10/25 Link now dead)

The transmission theory is also mentioned in the following paper by William Braud:

Brains, Science, and Nonordinary and Transcendent Experiences: Can Conventional Concepts and Theories Adequately Address Mystical and Paranormal Experiences?


Update:  This blog entry by myself is also relevant:

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia


Ian Wardell


[1] Perhaps I should point out that even if brains produce consciousness this need not rule out the prospect of the continuation of our consciousness at some future date after our deaths. I'm primarily thinking here of resurrection, or uploading our consciousness into a robot or some other artificial body. However, if brains produce consciousness, this rules out any prospect of a "life after death" as most of us tend to envisage it.

[2] Of course philosophical materialists will deny this, but I’m interested here in articulating a commonsensical notion of the self and to assess whether such a notion is consistent with reason and evidence.

[3] From the Latin word duo meaning two. The other main position, materialism, holds that there is no such distinction – there is only one type of thing in the world. Hence materialism is sometimes referred to as a monist position (from the Latin word mono meaning one).

[4] This is a particular instance of employing Ockham’s razor. According to the Britannica online encyclopaedia this principle gives precedence to simplicity; of two competing theories, the simplest explanation of an entity is to be preferred.

[5] When I use the word “evidence” I most emphatically do not mean proof, or anything like it. Nor am I necessarily referring to scientific evidence. I simply mean that we have phenomena that on the whole adds support for the “life after death” hypothesis. It is nevertheless arguably possible that all the evidence can be given orthodox explanations.

[6] I am thinking of something like “crisis apparitions” here which seem to me to give some suggestion of continued consciousness after death. In contrast the ghosts associated with hauntings do not seem to me to provide much -- if indeed any -- evidential value. They seem more akin to some type of “recording” of a past event, somehow imprinted onto the local surroundings, which is “played back” at certain times.

[7] Such phenomena has been recorded for example by Rhine, L.E. Hidden Channels of the Mind. New York: Sloane, 1961.

[8] See for example Osis, K., (1961). Deathbed observations by Physicians and Nurses. New York: Parapsychology Foundation (p24); Osis, K., & Haraldsson, E. (1997). At the Hour of Death (3rd ed.). Norwalk, CT: Hastings House (p133). (Original work published 1977); Grosso, M. (2004). Experiencing the Next World Now. New York: Paraview (p42-43).