(2023-12-23, 06:22 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]We've discussed a lot of philosophy, but I do think the other part of this is Survival cases and paranormal cases in general.
I've mentioned ectoplasm and shamanic healing a lot because I think these challenge both Dualism and Idealism. Here are some other cases of potential interest (special thanks to Jack Hunter and others who put the effort to finding these in the literature as part of their work in Paranthrpology ->
Of course one could explain these cases under Idealism, but one can also take Arvan's Dualist position regarding higher and lower frames in the Peer to Peer Simulation Hypothesis. Both would have to say that there is a kind of deliberate rule set up that makes it seem like the spirit and physical have some continuity while also manifesting with certain distinctions.
Personally I dislike that type of explanation, at least to some degree, because you can explain any and every case with this kind of reasoning. As such it seems to me what we call "mental", "spirit", and "physical" are either ultimately the same substance or there is a bizarre Pluralism, an intersecting of varied realities that results in these oddities.
While I'm not against Pluralism [as per my prior posts], [ultimately] it seems difficult to explain how conscious entities could move between or even experience these realities that only have limited causal relations without some kind of fundamental underlying reality. And if we accept the Interaction Problem it would seem that some kind of Monist explanation would be better even if Idealism isn't satisfactory.
Fascinating and incredibly weird phenomena.
My point of view would have to be based on those paranormal phenomena for which there is a lot of empirical evidence verified by independent investigators. I think that when the evidence to be considered is so restricted it would primarily consist of the large body of veridical NDE OOBE data, especially as documented in The Self Does Not Die. This data it seems to me is conclusively in favor of an interactional dualist filter/receiver/transmitter type of model.
The extraordinary occurrences you quote still don't change the fact that the many veridical NDE OOBEs also occurred. Assuming, in the absence of verification, that the weird paranormal events you described actually occurred, then reality would have to be assumed to be much more complicated than just a straight interactional dualist model.
Whatever is really going on, the veridical NDE data clearly shows that a major part of the picture is the existence of a spiritual mobile center of consciousness or soul which can separate from the body and travel elsewhere in the physical and other spiritual realms. As a practical matter, most human experience seems to fit the filter/receiver/transmitter model. It seems to me that regardless of the incredible experiences such as the ones you quoted, an important part of reality is that we almost certainly experience death as a release from the physical body very much as if an immaterial soul exists and during physical life intricately inhabits the body and manifests in the physical through special interactions with the brain's neurological structures.
However, the data you cited (if it all can be assumed to be valid) indicates the existence of a much deeper level of reality that only occasionally under extraordinary circumstances becomes visible. An analogy might be the fact that the vast majority of human experiences in the world can be explained using Newtonian mechanics, but the existence of a vastly different ground reality is revealed by quantum mechanics and relativity.
(2023-12-23, 09:24 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Fascinating and incredibly weird phenomena.
My point of view would have to be based on those paranormal phenomena for which there is a lot of empirical evidence verified by independent investigators. I think that when the evidence to be considered is so restricted it would primarily consist of the large body of veridical NDE OOBE data, especially as documented in The Self Does Not Die. This data it seems to me is conclusively in favor of an interactional dualist filter/receiver/transmitter type of model.
The extraordinary occurrences you quote still don't change the fact that the many veridical NDE OOBEs also occurred. Assuming, in the absence of verification, that the weird paranormal events you described actually occurred, then reality would have to be assumed to be much more complicated than just a straight interactional dualist model.
Whatever is really going on, the veridical NDE data clearly shows that a major part of the picture is the existence of a spiritual mobile center of consciousness or soul which can separate from the body and travel elsewhere in the physical and other spiritual realms. As a practical matter, most human experience seems to fit the filter/receiver/transmitter model. It seems to me that regardless of the incredible experiences such as the ones you quoted, an important part of reality is that we almost certainly experience death as a release from the physical body very much as if an immaterial soul exists and during physical life intricately inhabits the body and manifests in the physical through special interactions with the brain's neurological structures.
However, the data you cited (if it all can be assumed to be valid) indicates the existence of a much deeper level of reality that only occasionally under extraordinary circumstances becomes visible. An analogy might be the fact that the vast majority of human experiences in the world can be explained using Newtonian mechanics, but the existence of a vastly different ground reality is revealed by quantum mechanics and relativity.
I don't really see what you mean by "verified". Is there something more to verification than interviewing people?
Because the people quoted are all anthropologists who either directly witnessed the phenomena or talked to witnesses - in the case of the self-moving coffin it was witnessed by hundreds of people...probably way more people than have ever corroborated any single NDE...
Beyond that, it seems to me we are agreeing on a functional level that some substance that contains the individual consciousness but is distinct from the brain is the state of affairs describing the relation [of] the body and the conscious self.
Where we disagree seems to be the degree to which there is a separation between that consciousness/soul and the supposed physical world. To me it seems there is at best some kind of state of affairs where the distinction is maintained, akin to the climate of some locale being described as "rainy" or "dry". Not a hard rule, but how things seem to be for the most part and inline with your last paragraph.
OTOH I am not sure even that applies. Maybe the way things work really is some kind of Animism and there are always spirits around influencing the world which is what the varied cases cited above suggest.
I would also add that NDErs who see the physical world or whose soul-forms are witnessed actually is an argument for causal continuity, so even those cases are not really an argument against the idea that there is a singular Monist metaphysics even if Idealism is inadequate to the task of explaining the breadth of paranormal phenomena.
(2023-12-24, 12:35 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I don't really see what you mean by "verified". Is there something more to verification than interviewing people?
Because the people quoted are all anthropologists who either directly witnessed the phenomena or talked to witnesses - in the case of the self-moving coffin it was witnessed by hundreds of people...probably way more people than have ever corroborated any single NDE...
Beyond that, it seems to me we are agreeing on a functional level that some substance that contains the individual consciousness but is distinct from the brain is the state of affairs describing the relation [of] the body and the conscious self.
Where we disagree seems to be the degree to which there is a separation between that consciousness/soul and the supposed physical world. To me it seems there is at best some kind of state of affairs where the distinction is maintained, akin to the climate of some locale being described as "rainy" or "dry". Not a hard rule, but how things seem to be for the most part and inline with your last paragraph.
OTOH I am not sure even that applies. Maybe the way things work really is some kind of Animism and there are always spirits around influencing the world which is what the varied cases cited above suggest.
I would also add that NDErs who see the physical world or whose soul-forms are witnessed actually is an argument for causal continuity, so even those cases are not really an argument against the idea that there is a singular Monist metaphysics even if Idealism is inadequate to the task of explaining the breadth of paranormal phenomena.
You would think that if Animism were actually the case then the great majority of psychic channelers and mediums would sense the constant presence and interventions and meddlings of various spirits in human affairs and describe this as the prevailing situation. But this isn't generally reported by psychics.
I don't think the veridical NDE OOBE accounts of being a disembodied spirit and apparently visually "seeing" the physical world and people necessarily have to be examples of "causal continuity" between the spiritual and the physical, where the disembodied spirit somehow is able to literally intercept and perceive the physical light waves reflected from physical world objects. This would seemingly even require a complex apparatus incorporating something like an eyeball, optic nerve, and visual processing brain structures. These experiences would much more likely be examples of a sort of synesthesia where the now temporarily disembodied spirit senses the physical world psychically, but this information is unconsciously translated into visual sight perceptions, because this is what the embodied person has been accustomed to over a lifetime. The same type of explanation may apply to apparent visual observations by witnesses, of NDE OOBErs' souls in the form of images of the persons themselves.
(2023-12-24, 01:44 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]You would think that if Animism were actually the case then the great majority of psychic channelers and mediums would sense the constant presence and interventions and meddlings of various spirits in human affairs and describe this as the prevailing situation. But this isn't generally reported by psychics.
Mediums seem to have enough trouble with human communication, where the dead can't always be reached or if contacted don't always give 100% accurate information even when there are really good data "hits".
And there do seem to be meddling and interventions reported across the world, though many of the communities that could have told us more have been wiped out. I do think that these sorts of interactions with the elemental spirits could be "reverse extrapolated" to be a large part of humanity's history by taking the cases we do have, noting the tribal/indigenous communities where they occur today or at least were the origin of such practices, and considering the degree to which all humans lived like that in the past.
Quote:I don't think the veridical NDE OOBE accounts of being a disembodied spirit and apparently visually "seeing" the physical world and people necessarily have to be examples of "causal continuity" between the spiritual and the physical, where the disembodied spirit somehow is able to literally intercept and perceive the physical light waves reflected from physical world objects. This would seemingly even require a complex apparatus incorporating something like an eyeball, optic nerve, and visual processing brain structures. These experiences would much more likely be examples of a sort of synesthesia where the now temporarily disembodied spirit senses the physical world psychically, but this information is unconsciously translated into visual sight perceptions, because this is what the embodied person has been accustomed to over a lifetime. The same type of explanation may apply to apparent visual observations by witnesses, of NDE OOBErs' souls in the form of images of the persons themselves.
I don't think you need an optic nerve, the substance of your subtle body / soul / whatever-we-call-it just needs to have some way of being receptive to the physical world. Even in an OOBE case with 360-degree vision information about the world is being transferred, via some causal path, to the consciousness unmoored from its body.
As for the other way around, where embodied humans see an NDEr's subtle body / soul I think it just feels convoluted to say they aren't really seeing with their eyes. This would also mean that in cases with apparitions the same thing happens with the senses, including those instances where their presence brings a sense of coldness. In one case an OOBE of a living woman kissed her husband who was away at sea - do we say this also is not actually a feeling on the skin?
These ideas IMO veer too close to the Super Psi claim, that the apparition or OOBEr is merely a telepathic hallucination and/or a genuine ectoplasm sculpture created by PK. And while I find that ridiculous excuse making for the most part, I will note PK itself does also show the continuity between consciousness and whatever matter is supposed to be.
I'd also point to the cases where the dead are not even apparition-like but have conversations or even a drink with someone as if they are, for a brief period, full participants in the world of the living.
It does remain possible that some Designer(s) have designated a boundary between our world and what we might call the Spirit World. But it seems porous and perhaps one that applies to the dead but not those elemental spirits we seem to continually encounter in Paranthropology.
(2023-12-24, 04:36 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Mediums seem to have enough trouble with human communication, where the dead can't always be reached or if contacted don't always give 100% accurate information even when there are really good data "hits".
And there do seem to be meddling and interventions reported across the world, though many of the communities that could have told us more have been wiped out. I do think that these sorts of interactions with the elemental spirits could be "reverse extrapolated" to be a large part of humanity's history by taking the cases we do have, noting the tribal/indigenous communities where they occur today or at least were the origin of such practices, and considering the degree to which all humans lived like that in the past.
I don't think you need an optic nerve, the substance of your subtle body / soul / whatever-we-call-it just needs to have some way of being receptive to the physical world. Even in an OOBE case with 360-degree vision information about the world is being transferred, via some causal path, to the consciousness unmoored from its body.
As for the other way around, where embodied humans see an NDEr's subtle body / soul I think it just feels convoluted to say they aren't really seeing with their eyes. This would also mean that in cases with apparitions the same thing happens with the senses, including those instances where their presence brings a sense of coldness. In one case an OOBE of a living woman kissed her husband who was away at sea - do we say this also is not actually a feeling on the skin?
These ideas IMO veer too close to the Super Psi claim, that the apparition or OOBEr is merely a telepathic hallucination and/or a genuine ectoplasm sculpture created by PK. And while I find that ridiculous excuse making for the most part, I will note PK itself does also show the continuity between consciousness and whatever matter is supposed to be.
I'd also point to the cases where the dead are not even apparition-like but have conversations or even a drink with someone as if they are, for a brief period, full participants in the world of the living.
It does remain possible that some Designer(s) have designated a boundary between our world and what we might call the Spirit World. But it seems porous and perhaps one that applies to the dead but not those elemental spirits we seem to continually encounter in Paranthropology.
I have for some time thought that there is some validity to the suggestion that for many reasons the putative Designer or designers may have instituted the observed incomplete separation of the physical and the mental. Embodiment is obviously the most important of these exceptions of allowed interaction.
I think Animism (involving there being a multitude of elemental spirits interfering with and greatly influencing humanity) is not the only explanation for the anthropological data partially cited. What seems to me to be more likely to be going on is the self-selection effect, where these phenomena are being subconsciously generated by the very humans that form the Animist communities. That sort of explanation would explain the fact that Animism and its esoteric practices are not universal, but are characteristic of very limited separate aboriginal cultures, and that also would explain why psychic mediums and channelers in our culture have generally not reported sensing multitudes of intruding and interfering elemental spirits. Animism just isn't part of the prevailing culture, so the phenomena just aren't being created by our population. There have been exceptions of course, especially with physical mediumship during the heyday of Spiritualism and mediumistic seances. Anyway, in other words, Animism could be a cultural phenomenon coupled to the subconscious mind having the capability of wielding powerful psychic powers amplified by there being a large population of believers.
(2023-12-24, 05:30 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]Anyway, in other words, Animism could be a cultural phenomenon coupled to the subconscious mind having the capability of wielding powerful psychic powers.
So....Super-Psi explains Animism but not Survival?
(2023-12-24, 05:36 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]So....Super-Psi explains Animism but not Survival?
I think those questions are in different categories, not comparable.
To me, survival is of the same category as the very existence of consciousness. It would be absurd to attempt to explain our own consciousness by super-psi.
(2023-12-24, 09:24 PM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]I think those questions are in different categories, not comparable.
To me, survival is of the same category as the very existence of consciousness. It would be absurd to attempt to explain our own consciousness by super-psi.
Could you elaborate? Because it seems to me if the human subconscious mind can generate ectoplasm, mist wolves, and varied other seeming spirit entities + their acts that would need PK but also utilize telepathy, remote viewing, and so on to explain the information gleaned from spirit divinations....
...it would see[m] that almost all Survival evidence could just as easily be explained away?
IMO there are objections to Super-Psi that would also apply here regarding the bizarre inability to perform all kinds of beneficial Psi acts consciously while our subconscious has access to X-men type abilities...but even then apparently most visibly when one claims/believes to be interacting with spirits.
(2023-12-25, 02:55 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Could you elaborate?
It's very simple.
You are attempting to use logical argument based on certain initial parameters in order to generate an outcome.
I don't share your faith in either the method or especially in the initial assumptions. Essentially I have a different starting point, one which doesn't seem possible to convey. But I also have understandings based on direct personal experience - my experience doesn't override yours of course, but it does mean we travel different paths.
(2023-12-25, 02:55 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Could you elaborate? Because it seems to me if the human subconscious mind can generate ectoplasm, mist wolves, and varied other seeming spirit entities + their acts that would need PK but also utilize telepathy, remote viewing, and so on to explain the information gleaned from spirit divinations....
...it would see[m] that almost all Survival evidence could just as easily be explained away?
IMO there are objections to Super-Psi that would also apply here regarding the bizarre inability to perform all kinds of beneficial Psi acts consciously while our subconscious has access to X-men type abilities...but even then apparently most visibly when one claims/believes to be interacting with spirits.
My interpretation of this would be as follows:
The example of the existence of a large body of veridical NDE OOBEs is some of the best evidence strongly pointing to survival of physical death.
If despite this there is really no survival of physical death, and super-psi is really responsible, as Typoz points out, this supposed massive illusionary phenomenon is self-contradictory and absurd. That is, it is absurd to propose that super-psi powers of the living could somehow create what actually happens - a perfect illusion of survival
including veridical elements experienced in some NDE OOBEs. For phenomena such as experiences of separation from the body and brain and the experience of being a mobile immaterial center of consciousness able to observe the world and other realms (
all experienced while the NDEr's brain was dysfunctional), super-psi would be required to essentially create real survival experiences, not the unreal hallucinatory illusions which are what it is attempting to create. As mentioned, this would be self-contradictory.
So, I think it's conceivable and even plausible that super-psi could possibly manifest extraordinary objective paranormal phenomena observed by witnesses such as the extraordinary events described in the quotes from para-anthropological sources, but super-psi could not plausibly generate actual veridical NDE OOBE self-experiences including verified observations of the world, where the NDEr is experiencing the super-psi hallucination from the inside. This problem is the extreme implausibility of the notion that super-psi could somehow overcome a person's own sense of self and self-identity (breaking the barrier between the objective and the subjective) with a totally convincing super-psychically generated hallucination of a powerful spiritual and veridical OOBE. An experience that totally convinces the NDEr it is ultra-real and that he is experiencing super-conscious subjective states including being in a supernal spiritual environment suffused by incredible light and love.
As mentioned, the self-contradictory part is that for the many veridical NDE OOBEs super-psi would have to also somehow create a hallucinatory illusion that contained veridical elements such as the NDEr actually for real experiencing ultra-clear transcendental consciousness while his/her brain was in fact dysfunctional (displaying for real the ultimate independence of human consciousness from the brain and body, not the hallucinatory experience attempting to be generated by living agent psi), and other veridical elements such as making actual for real objectively verified veridical observations of the resuscitation team working on his/her body, also while the brain was dysfunctional. Even if super-psi has nearly magical all-powerful capabilities, I would say it would be stretched too far to produce this.