@Durward, here's the post that I promised above. First, I list the alternative hypotheses considered in
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, then I list those which you independently proposed, and then I share my view on it all.
- Alternative hypotheses (to reincarnation) considered by the author (Doctor Ian Stevenson):
- Fraud (pages 331-333). [Neither reread nor summarised because nobody in this discussion seems to consider this to be a valid hypothesis anyway.]
- Cryptomnesia (pages 333-342). [As above.]
- Genetic memory (pages 342-343).
- The hypothesis: Memories are inherited from ancestors.
- The author's response: Doesn't account for the majority of cases, in which the putatively prior-life person is not an ancestor of the person living the current life.
- Extrasensory perception (ESP) (pages 343-373)
- The hypothesis: There is an extrasensory linkage between the two personalities which explains the facts of the cases. This might include retrocognition.
- The author's response:
- Doesn't account for all features of the cases, in particular, the behavioural features and elements of personation, which are of a magnitude hard to imagine for those who haven't seen them for themselves. [The author elaborates on these in a list from (a) to (f) on page 360.]
- Doesn’t account so well for the claim of these children to be remembering a past life. This does not definitively falsify the hypothesis though, and would itself be falsified if a child who seems to be a case of the reincarnation type (especially with apparently confirmatory birthmarks) claims that (s)he is not remembering and that (s)he instead obtained the past life information via, for example, spirit communication.
- The children in these cases do not generally exhibit ESP in other areas of their lives.
- There seems to be no good motivation in the cases in the book for a child with ESP to have sought out a deceased person to model as their past life. The children were mostly happy and in happy families, and had no need to seek external role models. Conversely, other children from unhappy families who become alienated from those families don’t generally seem to associate themselves with a deceased person, which we might expect if the “motivation to seek out a role model via ESP” hypothesis was true.
- Although parents sometimes subconsciously impose their identity wishes on their children (who might then via ESP take on that – deceased – identity), the extent to which this is a viable explanation of the book’s cases is very limited. This is in part because, without intervention, such parental impositions continue unabated, whereas, in the book’s cases, the children’s identification with a past life gradually fades away with time.
- Doesn’t account for congenital birthmarks and deformities consistent with the past life.
- Subsidiary ESP hypotheses:
- Telepathy
- The hypothesis: There are one or more living persons who know both families or the areas in which they live, and thus constitute a telepathic bridge between the current and past lives.
- The author's response:
- Does not explain the selection of the target past life: why one deceased person and not another?
- In some cases, this would require multiple living persons, since no single living person knew everything that the person living the current life knew about the past life.
- Especially in those cases, we lack an explanation as to why the telepathically-obtained information pertained only to the past life, and not to other facts known to its (multiple) living sources.
- Mediumship
- The hypothesis: [Implicit] Past life information in these cases was obtained in a similar way in which mediums obtain information about deceased persons.
- The author’s response:
- The information obtained by mediums is not often limited to one particular historical life (across a medium’s full career), whereas it is in these cases.
- Mediums typically enter a trance-like state when obtaining information. The children in these cases typically do not – they seem to remain in an ordinary state of consciousness even when discussing the past life.
- Even though some mediums sometimes self-identify as the deceased person with whom they claim to be in contact, this self-identification is brief, whereas, for the cases in question, it is extended – typically into years.
- Generally, when mediums personate as the deceased individual with whom they claim to be in contact, they do not identify with this individual as themselves in a continuity with their present life, whereas in the cases in question, the children do.
- Psychometry
- The hypothesis: [Implicit] Past life information in these cases was obtained via contact with objects which conveyed it.
- The author’s response: Cannot be excluded as a possibility, but we don’t even need this specific an hypothesis given that many mediums can already achieve the same outcome without needing an object.
- Possession (pages 373-382)
- The hypothesis: The identification of a child with a past life person is best explained by the spirit of that person possessing the child.
- The author’s explanatory comments:
- “The difference between reincarnation and possession lies in the extent of the displacement of the primary personality achieved by the influence of the “entering” personality. Possession implies either a partial influence with the primary personality continuing to retain some control of the physical body, or a temporary (if apparently complete) control of the physical organism with later return of the original personality.”
- “In short, if the previous personality seems to associate itself with the physical organism at the time of conception or during embryonic development, we speak of reincarnation; if the association between previous personality and physical organism only comes later, we speak of possession.”
- The author’s response:
- Does not explain the common increased revival of memories when a child returns to the location of the previous personality.
- Does not account well for situations in which an external stimulus prompts, e.g., a song from the previous personality: we would not expect a possessing spirit to hang around waiting for such a prompt, and to afterwards simply retire again.
- Does not seem to account for the typically patchy memories of the past life: we would expect a possessing spirit to have full memories of the past life, but these children don’t. However, it might be that a possessing spirit itself has only patchy memories, so this isn’t such a strong objection to the hypothesis.
- Does not seem to adequately explain the children’s knowledge of how buildings were arranged or people looked during the life of the previous personality. We would expect a possessing spirit to keep up to date with changes. However, it might be that a possessing spirit simply doesn’t keep up to date with changes, so, again, this isn’t such a strong objection to the hypothesis.
- There does not seem to be a motive in these cases for a spirit to possess any of the children, as there typically is in cases of possession.
- None of the above allows us to adequately distinguish between cases of possession and those of reincarnation, however, cases of birthmarks or deformities matching injuries in the past life do allow us to so distinguish, because possession is understood to occur after birth – with attempts to displace the native personality – when the birthmarks are already present.
I structure the following in the same way as in the above list derived from the book, just for ease of comparison:
- Alternative hypotheses (to reincarnation) suggested (implicitly or explicitly) by you (Durward):
- Genetic memory (post #91).
- Extrasensory perception (ESP)
- Subsidiary ESP hypotheses:
- Telepathy (post #87).
- Mediumship (post #87).
- Psychometry (posts #91 and #92).
- Psychic ability (post #87).
- Akashic record retrieval (post #87).
- Steering by psychic or medium parents (post #89).
- Psychic force by another living person (post #87).
- The hypothesis: Another living person uses psi to force the child to see or dream things that are then interpreted as memories of a past life.
- Leftovers of the once-living (posts #99 and #133).
- The hypothesis: "Leftovers" of once-living people, like tulpas, wander around and leave their impressions on the living, leading the living to believe that they are reincarnations of the "leftover" people.
- Demonic interference (post #87).
- Herd intoxication (post #108).
- The hypothesis: I'm not really clear as to what exactly you are proposing here.
My general thoughts on Ian Stevenson's General Discussion section
First: I see it differently than you do. You think Ian Stevenson should have shut up and just shared his results, without trying to interpret them. I don't think that that's realistic. He had done a
lot of research, and the
obvious question for the reader of his book is: based on all of your studies, what do
you think; what are
your conclusions? Given that he's in "the box seat", and that this is a book for popular consumption, this is only to be expected. The General Discussion section then is, in my view, perfectly reasonable. It might not be correct in all respects, but it has a lot of value anyway, coming from the author and researcher as it does.
As that implies: his points and arguments vary in strength. Some - or at least one - I would say, are compelling and even definitive. As an example, his argument against genetic memory as a viable hypothesis - that, in many cases, the past life isn't even an ancestor of the current life -
is, in my view, definitive. Others are - even by his own admission - too weak to even help distinguish between reincarnation and the hypothesis in question. Some examples are the first five of his responses to the possession hypothesis: as indicated in the sixth in that list of responses, he openly acknowledges their weakness.
The rest are to varying degrees in between.
He also, as you acknowledge, does not claim that these cases "prove" (or even "demonstrate") reincarnation, but rather are "suggestive" of it. We shouldn't, then, expect that his responses to the various alternative hypotheses are anyway even
intended to be definitive.
However, it is fair for you to poke holes in them, or to otherwise critique them. So, I'll consider that poking/critiquing in the next section, before going on to consider those of your hypotheses which are unique and not already raised by Ian Stevenson in his General Discussion section.
First, though, I want to briefly acknowledge one of your complaints:
(2022-09-04, 04:14 PM)Durward Wrote: Most often, he redirects to another study or interesting case, and the entire thought process follows that one and only situation as his go-to knowledge, example, or as the basis for comparison.
Fair enough. I noticed that too.
I also want to try to understand another of your criticisms better:
(2022-09-04, 04:14 PM)Durward Wrote: I do wish he would just supply the information in a format that would help determine the differences in cases, the differences between knowing things Harribance style, and knowing things because you were there, etc. In other words, columns and rows in [Ian Stevenson's] table of data are much different that what I would pick, because I look for different things that can take us down a different path than just assumption and speculation.
No need to go to this extent if you prefer not to, of course, but can you provide an example of a table supplied by Ian Stevenson that you think was poorly structured, and how you prefer he would have structured it (and which information you'd prefer him to have included)?
Your counter-argument to Ian Stevenson's general observation that the children did not otherwise exhibit ESP
Ian Stevenson makes the - compelling, to me - point that the children in these cases do not generally exhibit ESP in other areas of their lives.
You want more rigour though: you want brain scans and other tests to be undertaken to
prove that the children do not exhibit any patterns characteristic of ESP (or mental illness), as per these affirmations of yours:
(2022-09-02, 12:27 AM)Durward Wrote: I would be scanning for [mental illness] and for the known configurations and neural networks of psi phenomena, EEG and fMRI data that also show up as a common factors.
I have not followed nor researched the extent to which this is possible, so I can't really comment on how viable an idea this is. If I
were to research it, I'd be looking primarily to determine just how reliable any of these sort of tests are. Are there 100% (or close enough) positive correlations between certain (tested) brain states and psychic functioning (and that, as that implies, are negatively correlated with non-psychics)? Are those brain states well known and documented, and thus readily testable?
In any case, I think that the following suggestion of yours is pretty reasonable, especially if the answers to the above questions are "Yes":
(2022-09-05, 03:32 PM)Durward Wrote: Today, we have brain scanning and other measuring equipment, lab tests, and other means of figuring out deception, tracking, information flow, etc. We can see the brain configuratin that would designate telepathy or medium, as an example.
These would help to define a possible "reincarnation" configuration as different from psychometric, telepathic, or other possible sources. We could monitor forms of known hypnosis memory recall and compare those scans to dream / sleep studies that can record data during reincarnation memory recall, to determine if there are particular configurations and frequencies that are specific to reincarnation memory as opposed to hypnosis types, or if they are the same.
The only problem I see with this (assuming the reliability of testing) is in convincing subjects and their families to submit to this sort of testing. That's not necessarily straightforward to achieve.
Finding brain patterns unique to cases of reincarnation would be very intriguing, but I'm not sure that it would be especially evidential. By that I mean that we already know that there is something different about these individuals, and, via the other tests that you suggest, we would already have ruled out ESP as an explanation for that difference.
In any case, while I think that your suggestion is perfectly reasonable, I don't consider such testing to be necessary for me to personally accept Ian Stevenson's argument in this respect: his observation that the children generally did not exhibit ESP is enough for me to accept it - unless/until any of the tests you suggest show that they generally
are capable of ESP.
Your counter-argument to Ian Stevenson's "behaviour and personation" defence of the reincarnation hypothesis (against the ESP hypothesis)
Ian Stevenson argues against the general ESP hypothesis by asserting, as I paraphrase him above, that ESP cannot be the source of the behavioural features and elements of personation of the cases, which, he claims, are of a magnitude hard to imagine for those who haven't seen them for themselves.
You counter-argue that acquired behaviour and personation can occur via:
- Brain damage, including the acquisition of "piano playing skill or math skill" (post #91).
- Synchronised brain frequencies, as discovered by Persinger, who found that with "video game players, novice players were suddenly capable of expert player skills when brains were submerged in the same oscillating frequency. Thus a direct transfer of skills and knowledge without any learning or memory." (post #123).
You seem to suggest then that we can't rule out the alternative ESP hypothesis on this basis, since acquired behaviour/personation
can occur via ESP.
Do these two examples apply to cases of the reincarnation type though? If not, can the general idea of acquired behaviour/personation via ESP hold for these cases?
Brain damage, it seems to me, does not explicitly involve ESP, although it very probably involves mind/consciousness. It does not, then, seem applicable to these cases of the reincarnation type, none of which, to my awareness, involved brain damage.
Synchronised brain frequencies seem of little relevance to these cases too: there does not seem to be a "brain" with which the brain of the current life remembering the past life could synchronise - the only potential brain being already deceased.
OK, but what about the general idea: that it
is possible in general for one person to acquire the behavioural traits of another person via ESP or other anomalous means?
Sure, there could be possibilities here. For example, maybe the behaviour/personality is downloaded from the putative Akashic records which you also bring up separately.
One question here though is:
why would a child - subconsciously, presumably - download a whole "person", including memories, behaviour, and personality, from the Akashic records, and then identify this "person" as their past life, when that person, presumably,
wasn't their past life? It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, whereas reincarnation as an explanation
does make a lot of (and a lot more) sense.
Another point worth making (again) is that Ian Stevenson has affirmed that, mostly, these children showed no evidence of ESP abilities aside from any putative ESP associated with their recall/personation of the past life - which lessens the likelihood that they
are accessing Akashic records via ESP.
Of course, you could vehemently object: "Whatever, whatever - it can't be
ruled out though."
Sure, but that doesn't stop us from forming provisional conclusions: that, so far, reincarnation is the best explanation of the data.
A diversion: the endless posing of alternatives, and the provisional nature of the current best conclusion
Regarding the "we can't rule out all sorts of alternatives" approach, and along the lines of what I suspect the anti-"hyper-skepticism" argument raised by @
nbtruthman was getting at (although I didn't read much of the long page at the link he supplied): at some point, this approach becomes a little farcical.
For example, you could say to me, "I had lunch with my friend yesterday", and I could then respond: "Oh, we can't be sure of that. You could have hallucinated it. It could also be a false memory inserted by another living person via psi. Another possibility is that somebody else impersonated your friend.
None of these possibilities can be ruled out."
So, you say to me: "OK, let me prove it to you. Here, I'm ringing my friend on speakerphone so that he can confirm to me in your presence that we had lunch together yesterday."
You do that, and your friend confirms it, but then I respond: "Oh, but that doesn't
definitively confirm it. It's possible that our memories of that just-gone phone call were inserted into each of our minds by psi by the same living person who inserted the original false memories of your lunch with your friend. It's also possible that the person on the other end of the line is the same impersonator whom you mistakenly believed to be your friend at lunch, and who, via hacking skills or social engineering, has taken over, or at least gained unconditional access to, your friend's phone."
And on and on it goes, with the most plausible conclusion being consistently doubted via ever-more-ingenious elaborations of hypothetical alternative scenarios.
Granted, given that reincarnation is
already an anomalous phenomenon, it's a lot more reasonable to posit
other anomalous phenomena as alternative possibilities than in the case of "an everyday lunch". At some point, though, it seems to me, a person would have to accept that the alternative possibilities have been excluded to a
reasonable extent.
A further diversion on your evidential requirements
So, at what point
would you accept that reincarnation
has been adequately tested, and can confidently be claimed to be true, albeit that, as in all empirical science, absolute proof is unattainable - that even an adequately tested hypothesis might later be falsified by new data? What
more do you need? We have a clue in this:
(2022-08-31, 05:10 PM)Durward Wrote: I feel that in order to test this, we need a method that bridges the gap between death and rebirth. The death scars are impressive and come close to this. The markings of certain cultures on the deceased that show up in the next life are impressive. But we can't rule out intent and other forms of creating these in a child, yet. And we don't have this as a certain condition, it doesn't always show up, all the time, in everyone equally.
OK, this is interesting. It's fine if you don't have an answer to this, but: how
do you propose that we test this? Which method or experiment do you suggest?
A third diversion: on mediums contacting dead spirits who supposedly are currently reincarnated
(2022-09-01, 07:08 PM)Durward Wrote: Then, we get mediums claiming they are talking with a dead person, a spirit, someone known to the person they are speaking to, and at the same time some child is repeating the same memory and claiming it as a past life.
Can you give us an example of this?
Your unique alternative hypotheses
Moving on:
Comparing the two lists above, the hypotheses you've raised that Ian Stevenson didn't seem to address explicitly are:
Psychic ability (
post #87), Akashic record retrieval (
post #87), steering by psychic or medium parents (
post #89), psychic force by another living person (
post #87), leftovers of the once-living (posts
#99 and
#133), demonic interference (
post #87), and herd intoxication (
post #108).
Considering the first two
Let's consider the first two - psychic ability and retrieval from the Akashic records - together, since they both amount to the same idea: some sort of clairvoyance allowing
direct access to information, whether from Akashic records or elsewhere. My own response to this is: OK, this is possible, but it doesn't explain the birthmarks*, it doesn't explain how this could occur when, in Dr Stevenson's observation, the children generally
weren't psychically talented, and it doesn't explain, as I wrote above, what would
motivate a child to (subconsciously, presumably), access this information, and treat it as a past life when it isn't.
* Maybe, though, you'd suggest that the child began accessing the information at conception, and incorporated it into its body plan? That would seem to me to be a bit of a stretch, but, OK, it's possible.
Now, you will probably want to emphasise my acknowledgement that this is a
possible alternative hypothesis, and can't be definitively ruled out, and I in turn emphasise that reincarnation nevertheless remains the far better and more plausible explanation,
especially for cases with birthmarks.
Considering the next two
Let's again consider the next two - steering by psychic or medium parents and psychic force by another living person - together, since both are based on the same core mechanism of one or more living humans, whether parents or otherwise, psychically forcing ("installing") memories and behaviour/personation of the past life individual into the child.
Presumably, birthmarks would be explained on this hypothesis by the forcing agent similarly installing them at conception or during gestation using psychic or even psychokinetic talents.
The first question that occurs to me, as for the prior two alternative hypotheses, is: why? What would motivate a person to do such a thing? And would it be deliberate or unintentional? In either case, it seems like a strange thing to want to do to a child.
Do we have any evidence that such a thing is even
possible to the extent required: for one person to psychically install a whole bunch of memories, behaviours, and personality matching a deceased individual into another living being, and, at the same time, psychically install into that other living being the belief that all of that belongs to a life (s)he formerly lived? Even if so, does it really occur as often as would be required for it to explain all cases of the reincarnation type?
Also: why do the past-life memories tend to fade around the same time in these cases? Would you perhaps suggest that the psychic installers might install the past life data once only, early on in the child's life, and not ever reinforce them, such that they naturally fade over time? Why would they all (uniformly) take this approach?
Also: why only in children, or at least predominantly in children? Is the psychic installation process too difficult to perform on adults?
Considering the fifth
Re your "leftovers of the once living" hypothesis: as you acknowledge, this is kind of like possession. I defer, then, to Ian Stevenson's points above re possession.
Considering the sixth
Re your demonic interference hypothesis: this is similar to the two hypotheses above where the mechanism is a forced installation via psi, with the only difference being the nature of the conscious agent performing the installation. Obviously, the question of motivation no longer applies, since demons have an interest in generally messing with us, either for the sake of it, or to deceive us. This would probably be the most likely alternative hypothesis for a Christian to chose, with the additional hypothesis being that the aim of the demons is to deceive us into believing in reincarnation so as to lead us away from the Gospels.**
The remaining questions of that earlier section seem applicable though.
** I'm not sure though whether there even
is an explicit rejection of reincarnation by Christ in the Gospels. @
Brian, as the board's resident Christian, do you know of any such thing, or in general of good reasons to believe that reincarnation
is incompatible with Christianity, and in particular with the Gospels?
Considering the seventh
I don't understand this herd intoxication hypothesis, so I can't analyse it.
Summarising
Some of these hypotheses are stronger than others, but, in my view, they are all less plausible than the reincarnation hypothesis. I understand that you seek a higher standard of evidence before
definitively concluding that reincarnation is the best hypothesis. I asked you above to clarify a little as to what that evidence might be. I'm curious to know this though: let's say that for some reason you were
required to pick which hypothesis you currently think best fits the data. Would you pick reincarnation?
A few postscripts
(2022-09-02, 12:27 AM)Durward Wrote: Sick bunch, and many of these scientists are not any better, believe me. They are so negative, about everything, while not comprehending that the negative approach already kills the results of many tests. They literally block things on purpose with strong disbelief in advance of testing. Yet that isn't psi phenomena at all to them. Deny, deny, deny.
To which scientists do you refer here? Can you share a few examples? Maybe name some names if you feel comfortable. Are you talking about "skeptic" scientists (whose aim is purely to debunk) posing as parapsychologists, or parapsychologists proper (who generally are open-minded yet critical), or non-parapsychological scientists (who typically know nothing about the field), or...?...
I assume you mean the first type, but it would be helpful to get your clarification, and some names would be even more helpful, just to get a clearer idea of what you're talking about.
Penultimately, a cheeky little quip (emphasis in the quote added by me):
(2022-09-04, 05:45 PM)Durward Wrote: I have to assume you disagree with everything you just mentioned and that you blindly accept Stevenson's conclusions, ideas, theories at face value. I assume this because you have not asserted your own pro or con here.
Huh. I'd gathered from your criticism of Ian Stevenson that ASSUMPTIONS were a very bad thing.
Finally: thanks for your contributions so far to an interesting discussion.
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