Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / November 2007

This can be done but I would have to quote very often from the book
because this is a very complicated topic.

Anyway, my point of view is the following: We cannot prove that all
data and the survival interpretation are correct, and that is the
reason why I prefer to construct a theory at first which entails
survival (for example on the basis of my processor interpretation of
Aristotle`s entelechy) and then to check whether this theory can make
new predictions which can be tested experimentally. If such a theory
could be found and if new data could be gathered on the basis of this
theory then this would be a hint that also the present data were
valide. Without any theory all data are questionable.

As I wrote in my previous post: Without any underlying (and
experimentally tested) theory all data are questionable: This includes
your interpretation that children who speak in a foreign language
always picked it up somewhere and sometime (and maybe subconsciously),
and your other interpretation that all other phenomena related to the
survival hypothesis were hallucinations made by the brain physiology.
I doubt that all these data can be explained away in this way, but my
point of view is like your one a subjective feeling, and therefore it
would be better to have experimentally tested theories about
consciousness (e.g., consciousness as a pure brain property or as
something else) and about the nature of life (biodynamics) as it is
investigated within the research project "Artificial Life".

On 29 Sep., 22:58, rem6...@yahoo.com (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t)
wrote:

No matter how much I would write about these investigations you can
always find something to criticize. All data can be criticized when
they do not have an underlying theory. But I wrote a short essay about
the possibility of life after bodily death:

The URL of it is: http://freenet-homepage.de/LotharArendes/survival.htm

Here is my essay:

"Empirical phenomena

There are several kinds of empirical phenomena which parapsychologists
who believe that our bodily death would not be the complete end of our
existence adduce as arguments in favour of the survival hypothesis.
While having an out-of-body experience (see, e.g., Green 1968; Sabom
1982) you have the feeling to be outside of your body, to fly about,
and to see your own body and your environment from other perspectives
than the eyes of your body have. Some people believe that this
phenomenon would indicate that our consciousness could exist without
our physical body, and in a similar way the spirits of the deceaseds
would exist and would be able to give us messages, for example, with
the help of trance media. During the sitting of trance mediumship
(e.g., James 1910; Lodge 1917; Broad 1962, 1980; Gauld 1983), someone
(mostly a woman) is in trance and seems to be in contact with a spirit
(pretendedly by telepathy) who is called the control. Sometimes this
control would even take possession of the medium`s body and would use
her speech organs to convey messages. The control pretends to be in
contact with a deceased (the so-called communicator) who usually is a
relative or a friend of somebody sitting together with them (the so-
called sitter). The messages which are conveyed by the control and
with the medium`s help are mostly information about the deceased`s
terrestrial life and about his behavioural characteristics which in
some cases seem to match the deceased`s memory structure at the end of
his life quite well and which also seem to correspond to his
characteristic and idiomatic expressions, his humour, gesturing etc.
In other situations deceaseds are to be able to show themselves as so-
called apparitions within our physical world (see, e.g., Green,
McCreery 1975; Hart et al. 1956). An apparition seems to be physically
existant just like normal material objects and completely or partly
has a body which the deceased had in the lifetime. Another type of
phenomena are the death-bed visions (see Barrett 1926; Osis,
Haraldsson 1977). In these visions the dying (or very sick) person
sees deceased relatives, friends, or any other and seemingly divine
beings (angels, Krishna, Maria etc.) who want to take him to the other
world. Such spirits (light beings) are also seen within the near-death
experiences (NDE). An NDE (see Moody 1976; Ring 1982, 1984) occur to
people who are very close to their bodily death - people who are
clinically dead, are in coma etc. During such an experience they
initially have an out-of-body experience, they can see their own body,
then fly into the other world, talk to divine beings or deceaseds
there but are sent back to our material world because they would not
yet be ready to die. Finally, in hypnotic age regressions of the
reincarnation cases people pretend to remember to have already lived
in the past (see Bernstein 1965; Stevenson 1984; Stevenson, Pasricha
1980) but more interesting are spontaneous cases of children who
identify themselves with someone who had lived earlier. These children
can give a lot of information about their pretended former lifes
(where the deceased lived, about his or her environment, the friends,
relatives etc.) what the children should normally not know (see
Stevenson 1974).

Theoretical considerations

Those people who do not believe that all these phenomena of
apparitions, death-bed visions, near-death experience, mediumship,
reincarnation memories, and out-of-body experiences would be
indications of a possible survival of bodily death mainly pretend that
these experiences would be hallucinations (see Carr 1982; Hilgard
1986; Hövelmann 1985; Noyes 1972; Noyes et al. 1977; Rodin 1980, 1989;
Roll 1982; Siegel 1977, 1983). But since we do nowadays not have a
generally accepted scientific worldview because of the problems of
interpretation of quantum mechanics, and since we do not have
experimentally tested theories of consciousness and of the nature of
life (no biodynamics which explains the seemingly teleonomic, goal-
directed, behaviour of physiological processes - although Haken`s
theory of synergetics is already quite interesting) one should be very
careful with claiming that all these parapsychological phenomena would
be only hallucinations. The survival hypothesis is not yet a fully
elaborated and experimentally tested theory but this is true for the
alternative explanations (everything would just be a hallucination,
fraud, cryptoamnesia etc.), too. If there were only one type of
phenomena, for example, only trance mediumship then it would be near
at hand to assume that the medium`s reports were a fabricating, an
invention of stories, maybe with the help of telepathy to get the
necessary true information about persons and events in the past.
Alternatively, if there were just the one type of apparition phenomena
then also the hallucination interpretation would be acceptable. And if
there were just the reincarnation cases then it would make sense to
assume that these children would suffer from the psychopathological
disease of multiple personality (Hilgard 1986) and that they wrongly
interpret their knowledge (maybe gained by telepathy) as a remembering
of an earlier life. But all these different kinds of phenomena taken
together indicate that there could be some truth in the survival
hypothesis - at least, all these phenomena should give enough
motivation for a scientific research project to investigate the
phenomena and the conceivable explanations more closely.

Of course, you can argue that all these phenomena would be created by
our death fear; our death fear would again and again produce any
effects to console us with the belief in a future life. But on the
other hand, which convincing arguments do we really have in favour of
the point of view that the bodily death would be the complete end? We
observe that every higher organism disintigrates sometime but in
science we must also consider that there are unobservable things and
that such an unobservable entity may survive the decay of the body. A
further argument in favour of the complete end is our missing memory
of previous lifes (apart from the pretended memories of the
reincarnation cases) but hardly have we memories even of our present
early childhood so that memories of a previous life should be
improbable anyway. Finally, a scientist may object to the survival
hypothesis that neuroscience has demonstrated that our cognitive
abilities and our memory depend on our brain which decays at the end
of our biological life. But so far neuroscience has not been able to
find statisfactory physiological theories of consciousness, memory,
and biodynamics. All empirical results of neuroscience (for example,
memory deficits after destruction of specific brain areas, or an
enhancement of cognitive abilities by injection of specific
pharmacological substances) would also be possible if the surviving
factor of bodily death (a soul, entelechy, or a vital force) and the
brain together formed one system so that the manipulation of one part
of the system would influence the whole system (s. Broad 1962, 1980).
As long as there is no scientifically tested consciousness theory and
no theory of life it cannot convincingly be stated that all arguments
for the survival hypothesis would not have any value. Couldn`t it be
in reverse that the belief in arguments for absolute death is a
wishful thinking of people who got used to a materialistic worldview
and who are now unable to change their mind?

Because of the empirical data and on the basis of my theoretical
research on consciousness and biodynamics (see Arendes b, c, 1996) I
tend to accept the survival hypothesis what I now want to describe
more exactly. In several books and essays (Arendes a, f, 1992) I
compared the world with a computer. According to this analogy, our
four-dimensional spacetime with its material objects correspond to the
computer display with its graphical objects and the natural laws
correspond to the software, and within this point of view one can take
a soul or the aristotelian entelechy (a concept which I prefer) as a
processor which controls an organism. The world would be a multi-
processor system, and every processor would control one specific
organism just like a multi-processor computer can generate several
graphical objects, and different processors could be responsible for
different objects. A processor is the heart of a computer, it controls
the data processing, accomplishes computations, stores results, and
arranges the input and output of the data. It is also possible, for
example, that whenever a new graphical object is created after another
graphical object has been destroyed the processor of the old one could
start to control the new one which would correspond to a reincarnation
within the real world.

This worldview can also be described without using the analogical
computer metaphor, and in my theory of biodynamics parameters of the
quantum vacuum are responsible for the teleonomy of the physiological
processes (see Arendes d, f). Additionally, I proposed a physical
theory of consciousness (s. Arendes b, c, f, 1996) which allows the
possibility that consciousness could exist without the existence of a
brain. Within this theory I compare consciousness with spacetime of
gravitation theory by using the field equations of general relativity
theory. These field equations state that the structure of spacetime is
a function of matter or energy, and in an analogous way we need field
equations stating that our consciousness is a function of brain
matter. But interestingly, the field equations of relativity theory
allow the existence of spacetime without the existence of matter, and
analogously consciousness equations are consceivable allowing the
existence of consciousness without a brain. In this case, parameters
within quantum vacuum (which also play a role within my general theory
of biodynamics) could be part of the personality and could partly
survive bodily death. Finally, in this context the theories of the
theoretical physicist Burkhard Heim (1983, 1989, 1994) are worth to
mention. Heim proposed a theory which is a unification of general
relativity theory and elementary particle physics, and within this
theory our spacetime is embedded into a higher dimensional world
(having six or even twelve dimensions), and within the higher
dimensions structures of our personality could exist also after our
bodily death (Heim 1994).

Proposals for a research project

My processor hypothesis can be investigated within the research area
of Artificial Life (AL) (see Adami 1998; Langton 1995). Within AL
scientists try to find the basic principles of life, either by using
computer simulations of biological organisms and artificial beings, or
by constructing apparently life-similar machines (robots). Since a
processor is necessary for a simulation anyway one can add to these
simulation programs several simulated processors, and each processor
should control a specific simulated organism. In this way the
functions of processors in relation to a population of organisms can
be investigated more closely. For example, after the death of an
organism its processor could take over the control of a new-born
organism whereby this new one could show a behaviour which was a
characteristic of the deceased one. Maybe such kinds of simulations
will some day give us ideas for experimental tests of the survival
hypothesis with real organisms."

Bye, Lothar

My pdf-files are on the following homepage:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/LotharArendes