New Skeptiko forum

Jacob of mind-energy.net has created an official forum for the Skeptiko podcast. He also has other forums for discussion of psi-related topics.

Thanks Jacob for providing this service!

UPDATE: Jacob brought to my attention that the second link was incorrect. Fixed now.

"As skeptical as Pat Robertson or Billy Graham". . .

I really enjoyed listening to this Skeptiko podcast with B. Alan Wallace. Here's a brief quotation from Alan (emphasis added by me):

The author of "The Discovers" wrote: "The greatest impediment in the whole history of science to progress is not ignorance, but the illusions of knowledge". Thinking that we know something that we've actually assumed. Susan Blackmore's words there, I think in many respects. . . have expressed illusions of knowledge rather than actual knowledge. . . In this regard her statements are enormous impediments to knowledge rather than knowledge. She said we must start with what we know of reality, and then she goes on to this whole sequence of things she says we know [but don't]. . .

What do we know about what happens to consciousness at death?. . . Do we have any means of measuring the presence of consciousness? The answer is no. . . Is there any scientific definition . . .of consciousness? The answer is no. We don't know whether insect-eating plants are conscious. We don't know whether coral are conscious. What are the causes of consciousness? We don't know. . . This is a massive amount of ignorance. . . If we take that as a starting point. . . how on earth with confidence can we say we know anything about what happens to consciousness at death with all that ignorance? And so to start off and say any spiritual practice has to take place in terms of what we know, very good. But why don't we be a bit skeptical about what people think they know as opposed to what has actually been demonstrated in a rigorous scientific fashion? So this is what bothers me about many of the so-called skeptics. What they're doing is defending the status quo, which doesn't take a whole lot of guts, frankly. The status quo, where so much money, power and status is, of materialism. And so no skepticism is required there at all, and so standing up in front with a whole team of scientists behind one all agreeing on the same metaphysical worldview, and then saying "we're skeptics", they're about as skeptical as Pat Robertson or Billy Graham. . . I just don't see much difference in the skepticism of a religious fundamentalist and the skepticism of a hard-core committed scientific materialist. . .

This looks good. . .

Edward and Emily Williams Kelly, two of the authors of Irreducible Mind on Skeptiko. . .

Gotta go listen to it now. . .

Don't set an impossible bar. . .

Here is the second minor quibble with Alex I mentioned in my last post.


Stephen Novella stated the following:

In the end we have the same goals, design research that is carried out in such a way that it doesn’t matter what you believe, that the results will be valid despite the belief of the researcher...

Alex cheered this comment multiple times in the podcast. However I am not sure how realistic this is. Even clinical research trials in medicine show strong lab and experimenter effects, and standard psychology experiments do as well. I don't see how anyone can expect and hope that parapsychology experiments will ever be conducted without experimenter effects, since no other human subject science is able to do so. Sheep / goat performance differences for experimenters are the rule in parapsychology as in other fields of human-subject experimental science. Additionally, if the psi hypothesis is correct, then psi influence can work both for believers and disbelievers in psi phenomena to reveal or obscure psi effects.

This does not mean that every experiment by a sheep will demonstrate results, nor that every experiment by a goat will point at the null hypothesis. But there is a definite tendency for this in psi research, as well as clinical trials, standard psychology experiments, animal experiments, and other experiments with probabalistic results.

I'd also suggest additionally that if one's goal is primarily to "prove" psi or spiritual reality and "defeat" materialism once and for all one might well find oneself walking down the path tread by Susan Blackmore and Louie Savva, and ending up in the same place as they did. Because that kind of motivation does not seem to be correlated with fostering psi phenomena.

Science is a method, not a white coat. . .

I was listening to Alex Tsakiris today and uncharacteristically found myself disagreeing a bit with him. He was talking to Stephen Novella and kept saying to Stephen "You're a scientist" and "I'm not a scientist" and "I'm just a layman".

The problem with that is that science is a verb, not a noun. A method, not a position. So anyone can be practicing science, or failing to practice science, at any particular time. A white coat and the honorific "doctor" in front of our name and many years spent in a medieval-style apprenticeship resulting in a fancy certificate doesn't mean that we are approaching a phenomenon scientifically, and lacking those qualifications doesn't mean we are failing to use the scientific method.

Indeed it seems clear to me that often those educated in science and paid to do it approach the topic of psi phenomena in the least scientific way imaginable. Confirmation bias is ubiquitous, and all of us are susceptible to it. Never forget that!

I have another small quibble with Alex's comments today and I will post on it soon. . .

Open-source science

Alex Tsakiris of the Skeptiko podcast and Annalisa Ventola of the Public Parapsychology blog have just publically launched a project that I believe has an enormous potential to change the way science is done.

Go check it out.

AMNAP wishes this endeavour the best of success!

New podcast and a great article about fundamentalist materialism

I haven't listened to the latest Skeptiko interview with Neal Grossman yet, but I did notice that Alex linked to a remarkably worthy article by Grossman over at the IONS website.

Here are a few cogent paragraphs:

When researchers ask the question, "How can the near-death experience be explained?" they tend to make the usual assumption that an acceptable explanation will be in terms of concepts—biological, neurological, psychological—with which they are already familiar. The near-death experience (NDE) would then be explained, for example, if it could be shown what brain state, which drugs, or what beliefs on the part of the experiencer correlate with the NDE. Those who have concluded that the NDE cannot be explained mean that it cannot be, or has not yet been, correlated with any physical or psychological condition of the experiencer.
I wish to suggest that this approach to explaining the NDE is fundamentally misguided. To my knowledge, no one who has had an NDE feels any need for an explanation in the reductionist sense that researchers are seeking. For the experiencer, the NDE does not need to be explained because it is exactly what it purports to be, which is, at a minimum, the direct experience of consciousness—or minds, or selves, or personal identity—existing independently of the physical body. It is only with respect to our deeply entrenched materialist paradigm that the NDE needs to be explained, or more accurately, explained away. . .

Perhaps the "smoking gun" case is the one described by Michael Sabom in his book Light and Death. In this case, the patient had her NDE while her body temperature was lowered to 60 degrees, and all the blood was drained from her body. "Her electroencephalogram was silent, her brain-stem response was absent, and no blood flowed through her brain." A brain in this state cannot create any kind of experience. Yet the patient reported a profound NDE. Those materialists who believe that consciousness is secreted by the brain, or that the brain is necessary for conscious experience to exist, cannot possibly explain, in their own terms, cases such as this. An impartial observer would have to conclude that not all experience is produced by the brain, and that therefore the falsity of materialism has been empirically demonstrated. Thus, what needs to be explained is the abysmal failure of the academic establishment to examine this evidence and to embrace the conclusion: Materialism is false, and consciousness can and does exist independently of the body. . .

Our collective irrationality with respect to the wealth of evidence against materialism manifests in two ways: (i) by ignoring the evidence, and (ii) by insisting on overly stringent standards of evidence, that, if adopted, would render any empirical science impossible.

One of my earliest encounters with this kind of academic irrationality occurred more than twenty years ago. I was devouring everything on the near-death experience I could get my hands on, and eager to share what I was discovering with colleagues. It was unbelievable to me how dismissive they were of the evidence. "Drug-induced hallucinations," "last gasp of a dying brain," and "people see what they want to see" were some of the more commonly used phrases. One conversation in particular caused me to see more clearly the fundamental irrationality of academics with respect to evidence against materialism. I asked, "What about people who accurately report the details of their operation?"

"Oh," came the reply, "they probably just subconsciously heard the conversation in the operating room, and their brain subconsciously transposed the audio information into a visual format."

"Well," I responded, "what about cases where people report veridical perception of events remote from their body?"

"Oh, that's just a coincidence or a lucky guess."

Exasperated, I asked, "What will it take, short of having a near-death experience yourself, to convince you that it's real?"

Very nonchalantly, without batting an eye, the response was "Even if I were to have a near-death experience myself, I would conclude that I was hallucinating, rather than believe that my mind can exist independently of my brain." He went on to add that dualism (the philosophical thesis that asserts mind and matter are independent substances, neither of which can be reduced to the other) is a false theory, and that there cannot be evidence for something that's false.

This was a momentous experience for me, because here was an educated, intelligent man telling me that he will not give up materialism, no matter what. Even the evidence of his own experience would not cause him to give up materialism. I realized two things in that moment. First, this experience cured me of any impulse to argue these things with recalcitrant colleagues; it is pointless to argue with someone who tells me that his mind is already made up, and nothing I can say will change it. Second, this experience taught me that it is important to distinguish between (a) materialism as an empirical hypothesis about the nature of the world, which is amenable to evidence one way or the other (this is the hallmark of a scientific hypothesis—that evidence is relevant for its truth or falsity) and (b) materialism as an ideology, or paradigm, about how things "must" be, which is impervious to evidence (this is the hallmark of an unscientific hypothesis—that evidence is not relevant for its truth).

My colleague believed in materialism not as a scientific hypothesis that, qua scientific hypothesis, might be false, but rather as dogma and ideology that "must" be true, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. For him, materialism is the fundamental paradigm in terms of which everything else is explained, but which is not itself open to doubt. I shall coin the term "fundamaterialist" to refer to those who believe that materialism is a necessary truth, not amenable to empirical evidence. I call it fundamaterialism to make explicit comparison with fundamentalism in religion. Fundamentalism connotes an attitude of certainty towards one's core belief. Just as the fundamentalist Christian is absolutely certain that the world was created in the manner described by The Bible (fossil evidence notwithstanding), so also the fundamaterialist is absolutely certain that there exists nothing that is not made up of matter or physical energy (NDE and other evidence notwithstanding). In fact, and this is the crucial point, their respective beliefs have nothing to do with evidence. As my fundamaterialist colleague put it, "There can't be evidence for something that's false."

With respect to (a), materialism held as an empirical hypothesis about the world, the evidence against it is overwhelming. With respect to (b), materialism held as an ideology, evidence against it is logically impossible. A complicating factor is that the fundamaterialist typically holds the metabelief that his belief in materialism is not ideological, but empirical. That is, he misclassifies himself under (a), while his behavior clearly falls under (b). The debunker and skeptic believe they are being "scientific" in ignoring and rejecting the evidence against materialism. But when asked what kind of evidence it would take to convince them that materialism is empirically false, they are, like my colleague, usually at a loss for what to say. If they're not familiar with the data, they'll come up with a criterion of evidence that in fact has already been met. When it is pointed out that there exist many well-documented cases that satisfy the proposed criterion, they will simply make the criterion more stringent, and at some point they cross the line between the reasonable demand for scientific evidence and the unreasonable (and unscientific) demand for logical proof. . .