In order to evaluate the cases taken as evidence of
postmortem survival, we must first be clear about what, exactly, we’re
considering or hoping to establish. Strictly speaking, we have no
proof of survival. Nor can we. We know quite well what proof amounts
to in formal systems such as logic and mathematics. But empirical
claims never enjoy that degree of certitude, and yet we can still
have good reasons for believing many things that nevertheless remain
vulnerable to possible revision or subsequent rejection. So what participants
in the survival debate need to consider is something more modest than
a slam-dunk proof - namely, whether there’s sufficient evidence
for, and a rational basis for belief in, the survival of bodily death.
And that investigation immediately confronts an interesting
challenge. On the surface, the inquiry into survival may seem to be
straightforwardly empirical. But no study of ostensible survival cases
can be entirely empirical. Every branch of science rests on numerous,
typically unrecognized, abstract presuppositions, both metaphysical
and methodological - for example, concerning the nature of observation,
explanation, causality, or properties, or the appropriate investigative
procedures for a given domain. It’s all too easy for scientists
to lose sight of these basic presuppositions, especially as a science
becomes more developed. But if those assumptions are indefensible
or otherwise questionable, that particular scientific enterprise has
nothing firm to stand on, no matter how attractive or promising it
might be initially, or on the surface. In fact, this is widely recognized
in certain prominent areas of science - for example, in memory trace
theory and (for that matter) in many areas of so-called cognitive
science - not to mention the perennial slugfest between competing
grand theories in physics. And to complicate matters further, whereas
mainstream scientists can do much of their normal business while keeping
their basic assumptions safely in the background, in the case of survival
research conceptual problems dominate the foreground. In more mainstream
areas of science, scrutiny of underlying assumptions is likely to
occur only during major challenges to the scientific consensus (or
in Kuhnian terms, a challenge to the prevailing paradigm).
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Essay submitted to the BICS competition:
What is the best available evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness
after Permanent Bodily Death?
Stephen E. Braude
