A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival

Michael Sudduth

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137440945
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Sudduth provides a critical exploration of classical empirical arguments for survival arguments that purport to show that data collected from ostensibly paranormal phenomena constitute good evidence for the survival of the self after death. Utilizing the conceptual tools of formal epistemology, he argues that classical arguments are unsuccessful.

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Introduction: The Classical Empirical Survival Debate

This book is a philosophical exploration of postmortem survival. In the broad sense, “postmortem survival” refers to the continued existence of the self or some significant aspect of our mental life or psychology after biological death. More precisely stated, this book is a philosophical examination of certain arguments that have been proposed in favor of postmortem survival during the past century, what the twentieth-century Cambridge philosopher C.D. Broad called “empirical arguments for survival” (1960: 514–51). These arguments aim to infer survival from various ostensible features of the empirical world, the publicly observable world known through sense experience.

Historically, different grounds have been proposed for accepting postmortem survival. Within the Western and Eastern religious traditions of the world, afterlife beliefs are typically based on the teachings of a tradition’s sacred texts, which also situate belief in survival within a broader theological narrative or landscape of spiritual practice that confers on survival beliefs their more ultimate significance or value. By contrast, Western philosophers have proposed various philosophical arguments both for and against survival, and of personal survival in particular – that is, the survival of one’s self and hence whatever it is that constitutes one’s identity as an individual person. One frequently encountered philosophical argument for survival aims to show that survival follows from the conceptual analysis of various introspectively accessible facts about the nature of consciousness or our mental life; for example, that facts of consciousness entail that the self is (or has) a soul, an immaterial substance with the capacity to persist after the death of our bodies.

However, in addition to religious and philosophical grounds for belief in survival, some philosophers, religious thinkers, and scientists have appealed to distinctly empirical considerations as evidence for or against survival. Here survival is treated as an empirically testable hypothesis, a hypothesis that, like all broadly scientific hypotheses, may be tested against the facts of experience, which can in principle confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis. This distinctly “empirical approach” to survival has led many to conclude that our empirical knowledge of the world either definitively rules out or at least renders highly improbable the postmortem survival of the self or consciousness. By contrast, empirical survivalists have argued that there are observational data, which may be uncovered and analyzed through empirical methods, that provide evidence, perhaps very good evidence, in favor of postmortem survival. Empirical arguments for survival aim to show this and, if the evidence is strong enough, to rationally justify belief in survival of death.

In the present book, I develop a philosophical critique of the empirical case for survival, specifically “personal survival” – that is, the survival of the self or our individual consciousness.¹ More specifically, I wish to offer a critique of a particular set of closely related empirical arguments for survival which extend back at least as far as the nineteenth century with the rise of the Spiritualist movement in America and the founding of the British and American societies of psychical research, though some of the phenomena on which these arguments are based have a considerably older pedigree. The arguments in question draw on data from ostensibly paranormal phenomena, which have been the focus of a distinguished tradition of empirical inquiry into postmortem survival represented by a number of prominent Anglo-American philosophers, including William James, Henry Sidgwick, C.D. Broad, H.H. Price, C.J. Ducasse, Antony Flew, H.D. Lewis, and John Hick. I argue that these “classical” empirical arguments for survival are inadequate in a number of crucial respects. Consequently, I will argue that the classical arguments are unsuccessful at showing that there is good evidence for survival and thereby providing a robust justification for belief in survival.

The present chapter provides an introductory survey of the classical empirical survival debate and the core methodological and conceptual features of my contribution to this debate, together with the specific critique I will propose in subsequent chapters. §1.1 offers a brief and general account of the kinds of data on which the classical arguments as based, whereas in §1.2 I discuss the structural features of the classical arguments. In §1.3 I explain how deficiencies in the existing literature motivate my “analytic” approach and methodology. In §1.4 I state the plan, central thesis, and argument of the book, with a concise overview of the content of the subsequent chapters.

1.1 Psychical phenomena as ostensible evidence for survival

Classical empirical arguments for survival are based on a range of experiential reports that involve phenomena of an unusual, anomalous, or ostensibly paranormal nature, as well as a range of independently verifiable empirical facts concerning the content of these reports. Among the relevant data are the following kinds of general facts:

(f1)		There are some living persons who exhibit skills, personality traits, and/or physical traits similar or identical to those exhibited by some particular and identifiable formerly living person.
(f2)		There are some living persons who claim to remember having lived a past life and are able to provide detailed descriptions of their ostensible former life (e.g. their identity, names of friends and family, and specific events that took place in their life), where such detailed descriptions correspond to those of the life of an actual formerly living person.
(f3)		There are some living persons who exhibit intimate and detailed knowledge about the life of a particular and identifiable deceased person, and the information is such that the deceased person would be ideally situated to possess this information in the form of autobiographical memories.
(f4)		There are some living persons who claim to receive (verifiable) information from some particular and sometimes identifiable deceased person, where the information concerns the antemortem life of the deceased or postmortem facts about events in the life of the deceased person’s family or friends.
(f5)		There are some living persons who claim to have experienced the world from outside their body, and they provide accurate descriptions of events in or features of the world ostensibly experienced while outside the body and from which they were sensorily isolated.

The above facts are associated with three kinds of broader phenomena: the closely related out-of-body and near-death experiences, mediumistic communications, and cases of the reincarnation type. In out-of-body experiences (OBEs), (f5) is the central datum. Some OBEs occur in the context of a perceived or actual medical crisis, such as cardiac arrest, in which case they are a special case of what are called near-death experiences (NDEs). Additional features of the latter are sometimes (f3) and (f4), when for example the NDEr claims to have experienced deceased family members or friends who allegedly have conveyed information (about themselves or others) not previously known by the NDEr. In some forms of mediumistic communications – trance mediumship, as it is called – we find both (f1) and (f3) and also sometimes (f4). In other cases of mediumship, we find just (f3) and (f4). In what are commonly called cases of the reincarnation type, we find (f2) and (f3), but in many cases also (f1). Following the long-standing tradition associated with the societies of psychical research, I will refer to these three kinds of phenomena as “psychical” phenomena.²

The literature from psychical research (or “parapsychology” as it is also called) provides an impressive amount of data collected by scientists and researchers in their investigation of these phenomena since the latter part of the nineteenth century, as well as important theorizing about their nature and potential relevance to the question of postmortem survival. Some of the significant overviews of the data, collectedly considered, are worth noting. In the earlier literature, E.R. Dodds (1934) and Gardner Murphy (1945a, 1945b) critically explored the salient features of some of the above phenomena, but they did not reach a verdict favorable to the survival hypothesis, even when the cumulative force of the data is considered. By contrast, G.N.M. Tyrrell (1961) and Hornell Hart (1959) each came to a favorable verdict on survival in their overviews of psychical phenomena. Alan Gauld (1982) presented a theoretically rich treatment of the data, especially the data from mediumistic communications, concluding that some strands of data are better explained by survival than by alternative hypotheses, though he regarded the case for survival as being far from compelling. Building on the seminal work of early psychical researcher Frederic Myers, Edward and Emily Kelly, et al. (2007) provide the most recent, thorough, and nuanced analysis of the data of psychical research and its favorable implications for survival.

Most pertinent to the present study, though, are the philosophical evaluations of the data and their implications for survival. William James and James Hylsop were prominent among the early philosophers to write on the subject. James was not convinced that the data favored survival, but he did think that the stronger data from mediumship at least suggested the medium’s possession of “supernormal” powers, namely psychic functioning in living persons in the form of telepathy and clairvoyance (James 1890, 1909b).³ By contrast, Hyslop concluded that the evidence for survival was “conclusive,” with the evidence from mediumship being the strongest (Hyslop 1919: 57–66). H.H. Price at the University of Oxford, C.D. Broad at Cambridge University, and C.J. Ducasse at Brown University were the most distinguished philosophers to write on psychical data and survival from roughly 1930 to 1970. Although Ducasse (1961) reached a highly favorable conclusion about the collective force of the data, Price (1995a) reached a more modest conclusion that the data provided some evidence for personal survival. Broad (1962) concluded that some data from mediumship and claims to past-life memories were strongly suggestive of the survival of some aspect of the human personality, but not necessarily the self or full-blown personality. Among contemporary philosophers, Stephen Braude (2003) provides the most conceptually sophisticated and empirically informed evaluation of the data, concluding that at least some of the data slightly favors personal survival over the most formidable explanatory competitors.

Philosophers of religion during the second-half of the twentieth century have been more sympathetic toward the data of psychical research than mainstream philosophy, though their evaluations of the data as evidence for survival have greatly varied. Philosophers of religion favorable toward the case for survival from psychical data have tended to favor the data of mediumistic communications and data suggestive of reincarnation, though during the past 20 years, there has been an increased tendency to favor data collected from NDEs as proving a justification for belief in survival (Cherry 1986, Habermas and Moreland 2004, Potts 2002). H.D. Lewis (1978) thought that the data of psychical research was evidentially provocative and worthy of further exploration by philosophers of religion. John Hick (1990, 1994), who was strongly influenced by Broad’s reflections, thought that some of the data at least favored the persistence of some aspect of the human personality. While Peter Geach (1969) and Richard Swinburne (1986) have argued against the data as evidence for survival, Paul and Linda Badham (1982) concluded that psychical phenomena significantly weaken materialist objections to survival, and NDEs provide some evidence for survival. More strongly, David Ray Griffin (1997) has argued that the data from various psychical phenomena present a very strong cumulative case for personal survival.

1.2 The classical empirical arguments for survival

Psychical phenomena provide empirical data, but the collection and statement of the data comprise only the first stage of the larger inquiry. If the data are to be regarded as evidence, perhaps strong evidence, for survival, this requires that the data, severally or jointly, provide us with a reason to suppose that the survival hypothesis is true. To show this latter point requires an argument for or inference to survival from the relevant data. I designate these arguments in their traditional formulation(s) “classical empirical arguments” for survival.

There are two preliminary points that should be made about the general character of the classical arguments. First, empirical survivalists do not maintain that the relevant data logically entail the survival hypothesis. Hence, the classical arguments are not regarded as conclusively establishing survival in the form of logical proofs or demonstrations. They are regarded rather as probabilistic or broadly inductive arguments. They aim to confer some probability on the survival hypothesis, though empirical survivalists disagree about the degree of probability so conferred. “Probability” here refers to evidential or epistemic probability: the probability one proposition has given some other proposition(s).⁴ The former is often called a hypothesis; the latter evidence. For example, we can speak of the probability of the hypothesis that Jack committed the robbery given the evidence that his fingerprints were found on the safe, given that he had a particular motive, and given that he was seen at the location about the time of the robbery. Since there are different theories of epistemic probability, I will in subsequent chapters say more about probabilistic reasoning and inductive criteria.

Second, the classical arguments are explanatory arguments. The arguments aim to infer survival or show that the relevant data evidentially support the survival hypothesis, on the grounds that the survival hypothesis explains these facts, or more specifically, provides the best explanation of the data. This means that a widely shared assumption by advocates and many critics of the classical arguments is that explanatory power has evidential cash value. So if some hypothesis explains some observational datum or range of data, this explanatory power is evidence for the truth of the hypothesis. This has been the dominant way in which the arguments have been construed among prominent parapsychologists (Hart 1959; Gauld 1982; Stevenson 1977; Tyrrell 1961) and philosophers (Almeder 1992; Braude 2003; Broad 1960, 1962; Ducasse 1961; Griffin 1997; Lund 2009). The explanatory survival argument may be schematically represented as follows:

(1)There is some body of empirical facts F.

(2)The hypothesis of personal survival S explains F.

(3)No other hypothesis C explains F as well as S does.

Therefore:

(4)S is the best explanation of F

Therefore:

(5)F is evidence for S.

With respect to premise (1), F might = {f1, f2, f3, f4, f5}, or perhaps just some subset, for example {f1, f2, f3}.⁵ In the first case, the explanatory argument would be a cumulative case argument. In the second case, it would be a limited scope argument for survival based solely on the salient data of a particular kind of psychical phenomenon. Whatever the relevant domain of data, according to premise (2) the survival hypothesis explains these data. In “modest” versions of the explanatory argument (MEA), the “explaining relation” means only that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: The Classical Empirical Survival Debate
• 2  Exploring the Hypothesis of Personal Survival
• 3  Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences
• 4  Mediumistic Communications
• 5  Cases of the Reincarnation Type
• 6  Classical Explanatory Arguments for Survival
• 7  Bayesian Explanatory Arguments
• 8  Bayesian Defenses of the Survival Hypothesis
• 9  The Problem of Auxiliary Assumptions
• 10  Exotic Counter-Explanations
• 11  Conclusion: The Classical Arguments Defeated
• Bibliography
• Index