Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

The examples of sources that I have furnished collectively make a very strong abductive reasoning from the preponderance of evidence case for the high probability of some form of at least temporary survival of death. Not for the existence of some sort of Christian-visualized immortal soul (your straw man assumption). 

And a controlled experiment is supposed to be a scientific test done under controlled conditions, meaning that just one (or a few) factors are changed at a time, while all others are kept constant.

For instance, in a controlled experiment in medicine, all extraneous variables are held constant so that they can't influence the results. Controlled experiments require: A control group that receives a standard treatment, a fake treatment, or no treatment. Random assignment of participants to ensure the groups are equivalent. And of course there is the double blind requirement.

My question for you is: how are "controlled studies" supposed to be carried out when the phenomenon being studied is by its very nature rare and is uncontrollable and unpredictable as to when and where and to whom it occurs, such as NDEs and past life memory occurrences in small children?

Before trashing all this evidence I think you had better supply plausible explanations for the multitudes of well documented veridical NDEs, the thousands of well investigated and documented reincarnation memory cases that resulted from lifetimes of work by Ian Stevenson and his colleagues and later successor investigators, and the highly evidential mediumship studies such as Julie Beischel's.  

If all this evidence is invalid and worthless because of being "anecdotal", then surely you can easily furnish plausible "normal" materialistic explanations.

The last link you posted included this statement by a 2-year-old:

At bedtime, he said: “I’ve come to mom’s belly from a faraway place. I’ve come,
hurry, hurry! (I’ve come in a hurry.)” His mother was 41 years old when Kanon was
born, and she interpreted his words to mean that he had cared about her age and
had come to her as quickly as possible. [Source]

It seems to me that it is quite a stretch to say this 2-year-old remembered being in an intermediate state trying to anxiously get into mom's belly in a hurry before her biological clock ticks out. Rather, it is more likely that the mom, believing in reincarnation, had told the child this many times. One time he repeated it back, or something close to this. The mom remembered this as evidence of the child being aware of reincarnation. Many of us our skeptical.

Children can repeat back what they heard. Years ago I was driving and said something like, "I want to go home." Suddenly, out of nowhere, my young son who had spoken few words before this blurted out, "Daddy wants to go home." He was able to put that sentence together, even though he was at the earliest stages of learning spoken language. Likewise, the child in the story above could simply have been saying what he heard.

I had suggested a study that I would find impressive: You could all agree here on a time and place where the first person here to die would meet with you to reveal the card held in a dealers hand to the other members who would be sitting in designated rooms. If that's not plausible, revise the experiment such as having trained mediums. Then see if you guys can do better than others who have no access to the deceased and are simply guessing.

Here is a link to another suggestion.

But when there are clear controlled studies that indicate otherwise, that carries more weight than these anecdotes.

But there aren't.  How can there be?  How can you prove such a thing?  Where are your sources?  Links please.

Interesting link.

My information comes from How Not to Do Survival Research: Reflections on the Bigelow Institute Essay Competition p368.  He references his source as (Holden, 2009, p210). 

Your link comes from Explore, which is a journal that has been highly criticized for not meeting scientific standards. Your link says it includes more studies than the only previous meta-analysis, which probably is a reference to the Holden study. I suspect that the Explore meta-analysis includes a number of controversial studies that the other study excluded. There is a lot of published literature on mediums that is not reputable.

How about looking at the other side of this argument by a notorious closed-minded skeptic:

Not So Fast: A Response to Augustine’s Critique of the BICS Contest

Stephen Braude, Imants Barušs, Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin & Helané Wahbeh

Journal of Scientific Exploration 36 (2):399-411 (2022)  Copy  BIBTEX    (https://philpapers.org/rec/BRANSF-2)

Abstract
Keith Augustine’s critical evaluation of the essay contest sponsored by the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies (BICS) is an interesting but problematic review. It mixes reasonable and detailed criticisms of the contest and many of the winning essays with a disappointing reliance on some of the most trite and superficial criticisms of parapsychological research. Ironically, Augustine criticizes the winning essays for using straw-man arguments and cherry-picked evidence even though many of his own arguments commit these same errors.

................................................

And you had better back up your generalized claim that the Explore meta-analysis includes a number of "controversial" studies (maybe trashed by notorious closed-minded skeptics?) that you accordingly automatically presume worthless as evidence, with some plausible detailed arguments that the dismissed and referred to studies are really worthless as evidence. 

Or the claim is just closed-minded materialist speculation.

My information comes from How Not to Do Survival Research: Reflections on the Bigelow Institute Essay Competition p368. 

Keith Augustine is controversial to say the least.  I wouldn't trust anything written by him.

What Does It Mean to Call Consciousness an Illusion?

My link can beat up your link.

He says Consciousness is like Colors which only exist due to brain processing...

So Consciousness is like a Color Qualia...which means Consciousness is like one of its own aspects...

This seems obviously wrong to me?

Meanwhile, I'm back on post #46. I'm never going to catch up to you guys. 

Also here's the Atheists' Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg telling us Cogito Ergo Sum is false if everything is physical ->

You have quoted this many times, and I have not had time to address it. Let's discuss it now.

Rosenberg's comments puzzled me. I didn't have access to the book, so I didn't really understand what he is getting at. However, I recently found this review at Amazon that really seems to explain it. In that review Norman Bearrentine states:

Having made the point, at least to his own satisfaction, that thoughts cannot be about things, he [Rosenberg] goes on to state that, nonetheless, "...no one denies that the brain receives, stores, and transmits information." (Location 2819) "The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts." (Location 2922) "...we think accurately and act intelligently in the world." (Location 2708)

Rosenberg has no problem granting that our brains have these abilities and yet these very abilities contradict his denial that thoughts can be "about" things. [source]

So much for your quotes about Rosenberg showing brains cannot have thoughts about things. For Rosenberg does indeed think that brains store information, and that the neurons in our brains act on this information to drive our motions. And ultimately that information stored in the brain is about something.

Why does Rosenberg then say thoughts cannot be about things? I haven't read the book, but according to this review, these chapters in this book are one long argument against free will. Bearrentine reads this all as an elaborate way for Rosenberg to say we aren't actually deciding of our own free will to buy a ticket to Paris, for instance. Instead masses of neurons that are processing signals from neurons that are processing other signals all the way down to those neurons which were getting input about Paris worked in such a way that they directed the body to go through the actions of buying the ticket to Paris. As Rosenberg puts it, "The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can't have thoughts about stuff either." In other words, the brain is doing all this, but it is not actually conscious thoughts about stuff that drive our decisions. It is patterns of neuron firings.  The brain portrays this set of neuron activity as the conscious mind thinking thoughts about Paris and consciously buying a ticket to Paris. But instead, Rosenberg says, what is really happening is that a mass of neuron activity is directing the actions.

So anyway, it appears that Rosenberg is not arguing that neurons can't have thoughts. Rather, he is actually arguing that they do have non-conscious thoughts, that they drive all our decision-making, and that the "aboutness" we experience is a construct of the brain.

So this whole repeated argument from Rosenberg was a needless diversion. Rosenberg was actually saying that neurons do think (non-consciously), make our decisions, and drive our actions. It appears you quoted him out of context to make it look like he said the opposite.

But even if Rosenberg was saying neurons cannot have firings that direct actions that are about things, what does that matter? You have given us no reason to think this is right, other than constantly telling us that he says this. That is an argument from authority. It is a bogus argument.

Keith Augustine is controversial to say the least.  I wouldn't trust anything written by him.

Augustine's source for his claim--"The actual outcome of several decades of such experiments (over a century’s worth for mental mediumship) 'continues to frustrate researchers' (Holden, 2009, p. 210) and ought to have spurred soul-searching questions for survival researchers by now"-- is Holden, J. M. (2009). Veridical perception in near-death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences (pp. 185–211) Praeger/ABC-CLIO." Somebody here might have that book and could check it out for us.

Meanwhile, I'm back on post #46. I'm never going to catch up to you guys. 


You have quoted this many times, and I have not had time to address it. Let's discuss it now.

Rosenberg's comments puzzled me. I didn't have access to the book, so I didn't really understand what he is getting at. However, I recently found this review at Amazon that really seems to explain it. In that review Norman Bearrentine states:


So much for your quotes about Rosenberg showing brains cannot have thoughts about things. For Rosenberg does indeed think that brains store information, and that the neurons in our brains act on this information to drive our motions. And ultimately that information stored in the brain is about something.

Why does Rosenberg then say thoughts cannot be about things? I haven't read the book, but according to this review, these chapters in this book are one long argument against free will. Bearrentine reads this all as an elaborate way for Rosenberg to say we aren't actually deciding of our own free will to buy a ticket to Paris, for instance. Instead masses of neurons that are processing signals from neurons that are processing other signals all the way down to those neurons which were getting input about Paris worked in such a way that they directed the body to go through the actions of buying the ticket to Paris. As Rosenberg puts it, "The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can't have thoughts about stuff either." In other words, the brain is doing all this, but it is not actually conscious thoughts about stuff that drive our decisions. It is patterns of neuron firings.  The brain portrays this set of neuron activity as the conscious mind thinking thoughts about Paris and consciously buying a ticket to Paris. But instead, Rosenberg says, what is really happening is that a mass of neuron activity is directing the actions.

So anyway, it appears that Rosenberg is not arguing that neurons can't have thoughts. Rather, he is actually arguing that they do have non-conscious thoughts, that they drive all our decision-making, and that the "aboutness" we experience is a construct of the brain.

So this whole repeated argument from Rosenberg was a needless diversion. Rosenberg was actually saying that neurons do think (non-consciously), make our decisions, and drive our actions. It appears you quoted him out of context to make it look like he said the opposite.

But even if Rosenberg was saying neurons cannot have firings that direct actions that are about things, what does that matter? You have given us no reason to think this is right, other than constantly telling us that he says this. That is an argument from authority. It is a bogus argument.

Information in the sense Rosenberg uses it is Computational Information. He doesn't think this is about anything until it is interpreted...or, in his view, seemingly interpreted.

I posted the his argument multiple times - You realize when you can read an argument it's not an assertion?

As for quoting him out of context - No. Multiple people - atheists, theists, others - have noted he is saying exactly what I meant. You are trying to pretend someone is not saying what they are saying, just like you tried to deny Harris is saying Materialism is logically impossible.

How does one misinterpret this ->

What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort. There are just fermions and bosons and combinations of them. None of that stuff is just, all by itself, about any other stuff. There is nothing in the whole universe—including, of course, all the neurons in your brain—that just by its nature or composition can do this job of being about some other clump of matter. So, when consciousness assures us that we have thoughts about stuff, it has to be wrong. The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can’t have thoughts about stuff either.

Rosenberg, Alex. The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (p. 179). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

To mean the opposite of what he is saying?

You can disagree with your fellow Materialist, but his argument for why Materialism means we can't have thoughts about anything is clear and doesn't have any odd evasions about animal souls.

How about looking at the other side of this argument by a notorious closed-minded skeptic:

Not So Fast: A Response to Augustine’s Critique of the BICS Contest

Stephen Braude, Imants Barušs, Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin & Helané Wahbeh

Journal of Scientific Exploration 36 (2):399-411 (2022)  Copy  BIBTEX    (https://philpapers.org/rec/BRANSF-2)

Been there. Done that. And I also read Augustine's response to Braude, et. al. I have copies of all three papers on my computer and have partially read them. I would like to read them all (as well as all the other things suggested on this thread.)

Augustine's paper:  How not to Do Survival Research and

Braude et al response: Not So Fast: A Response to Augustine’s Critique of the BICS Contest

Augustine's response to Braude et al.:  When Will Survival Researchers Move Past Defending the Indefensible?

Augustine's source for his claim--"The actual outcome of several decades of such experiments (over a century’s worth for mental mediumship) 'continues to frustrate researchers' (Holden, 2009, p. 210) and ought to have spurred soul-searching questions for survival researchers by now"-- is Holden, J. M. (2009). Veridical perception in near-death experiences. In J. M. Holden, B Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences (pp. 185–211) Praeger/ABC-CLIO." Somebody here might have that book and could check it out for us.

Continues to frustrate researchers? Which ones? Take for instance the following successful research study of mediums, conducted by Julie Beischel and colleagues:

Explore (NY); 2015 Mar-Apr;11(2):136-42. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2015.01.001. Epub 2015 Jan 7.
Anomalous information reception by research mediums under blinded conditions II: replication and extension
by Julie Beischel, Mark Boccuzzi, Michael Biuso, Adam J Rock    (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25666383/)

These mediums she tested first in her lab to make sure they were genuine.

From the Abstract:

"...(the studies were able to) successfully replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating the phenomenon of anomalous information reception (AIR), the reporting of accurate and specific information without prior knowledge, in the absence of sensory feedback, and without using deceptive means. Because the experimental conditions of this study eliminated normal, sensory sources for the information mediums report, a non-local source (however controversial) remains the most likely explanation for the accuracy and specificity of their statements."