I think the significant philosophical question is, why the controversy? — Wayfarer

And your explanation is to look at what you take to be the motivations of the skeptics in your story.

Is that the discussion you want to have? Everyone chooses up sides and then questions the other side's motives while defending themselves as wholesome, open-minded truth-seekers? That's the philosophical approach, in your mind?

As for the postscript argument: "I've got a whole bunch of rocks here; surely a few of them contain mithril."

I have wondered why a topic like this would be cause frustration, say for people like Richard Dawkins. It just comes down to what you're inclined to believe, which is probably related to your worldview. That's as far as you can go: you reflect the times you live in and that's it.

Is that the discussion you want to have? — Srap Tasmaner

The reason why one might be open to the possibility of a ‘life beyond’, or not, or why one might think it ridiculous, is the philosophical question at issue.

Both the conscious and subconscious minds can create a new idea. — MoK

So, since the subconscious mind is not conscious (by definition) consciousness is not required for the creation of ideas?

I'm going to bow out of this discussion now, and leave you to consider the consistency of the way you are thinking about this.

The reason why one might be open to the possibility of a ‘life beyond’, or not, or why one might think it ridiculous, is the philosophical question at issue. — Wayfarer

I think probabilities (epistemic), not just "possibilities" (speculative), are existential modalities which matter more for flourishing.

It's the possibilities that near-death experiences suggest that are of philosophical interest. It raises the question, in what sense is our being more than or other than physical?

I think probabilities (epistemic), not just "possibilities" (speculative), are existential modalities which matter more for flourishing — 180 Proof

I think flourishing comes from being your authentic self, as opposed to what das Man tells you to be. If being authentic means admitting that you believe in life after death, that's the direction you should take, damn the torpedoes.

Population Note — Why the Big Numbers Matter (and How I Use Them)

This page explains how I treat the scale of NDEs. I do not argue from one striking story. I argue from a pattern that shows up again and again across hospitals, decades, and cultures after public checks are applied.

Two levels of checking

I work at two levels:

Local (case by case): I grade individual cases and only let the Level-3/4 set carry real weight—tight timing windows, early independent notes, later-verified details, explicit defeater screening (what would undercut or rebut this?).

Global (pattern across cases): I then ask whether independent Level-3/4 cases keep appearing across settings. If they do, that recurrence is itself public evidence.

Both levels run with the same guardrails: No-False-Grounds, practice-safety, and a standing search for defeaters.

No-False-Grounds (NFG):
A guardrail requiring that justification not essentially rely on a false step. Example: Correct a wrong timestamp before judging a case.

Practice-Safety:
Within a given practice, the same method in sufficiently similar cases should not easily yield false beliefs. Example: If small variations routinely flip verdicts, the method lacks practice-safety.

What I count (and what I don’t)

I count cases with time-locked details, independence between sources, and verification after the fact.

I down-weight or set aside late recollections, weak timing, and contaminated sources.

I record near-misses and nulls so the picture isn’t cherry-picked.

Why scale matters

There are very many first-person reports worldwide. Let N be that big number (we don’t need to fix it exactly). Let r be a conservative fraction that would pass Level-3/4 checks if we had early notes, synchronized timing, and independent verification for all reports. My claim does not depend on knowing N or r precisely. It depends on two public facts:

Thousands already clear Level-3/4 thresholds in the curated set.

Even if r is tiny, a tiny fraction of a huge base is still many genuine cases.

That is a lower-bound inference: we don’t estimate the whole iceberg; we show that what is already above water is substantial and then note that the ocean is large.

(Illustration, not a proof): If only one in ten thousand reports met Level-3/4 standards, a population measured in the hundreds of millions would still yield many thousands of high-grade cases. The exact figures aren’t the point; the direction of the inference is.

Why “selected cases” don’t neutralize the pattern

Yes, selection bias explains why weak stories are over-told. It does not explain why independent Level-3/4 cases recur after defeater screening across different teams and institutions. Selection can pick from confounds; it cannot turn every independent, high-grade case into a confound every time across decades. At some point, recurrence under controls becomes the thing to explain.

What the pattern favors

Under global materialism (persons are nothing over and above contemporaneous brain activity; no survival when brain support ceases), accurate, time-locked details without ordinary access should be rare noise after we tighten timing, independence, and verification. Under survival, we should expect some such cases—especially in strong setups. When thousands of Level-3/4 cases accumulate across independent settings, the balance of probability moves: survival fits the total pattern better than materialism.

How I keep this disciplined

I keep claims local (per case) and global (across cases) but public at both levels.

I run the same routes (testimony, records, sensory/logic, linguistic use, form) for each case.

I log defeaters openly and let them bite.

I say probable, not certain. Probability moves with independent, verified, time-locked matches.

What would change my mind

Three things would move me off this population inference:

A credible re-audit showing that the Level-3/4 set collapses into timing errors, leakage, reconstruction, or chance when checked by independent teams.

Prospective, blinded studies that repeatedly fail to exceed chance despite strong adherence to the method.

A single, well-specified materialist mechanism that predicts the whole Level-3/4 pattern without ad hoc patches.

Bottom line

Given the recurring, independently verified, time-locked cases under strong controls, it is very likely that we survive death, and global materialism is very probably false, and I'm probably understating this conclusion.

Since my book relies heavily on epistemology, I'm giving a summary.

My epistemology in one page: classical JTB + understanding in use, further strengthened by grounding it, guarded by NFG and practice-safety, disciplined by defeater work, and executed through a public pipeline inside the practices where knowledge claims are made.

My Epistemology (JTB+U, further strengthened by grounding it)

What counts as knowledge (JTB+U).
I keep the classical spine and make it work in practice. A person knows something when four things come together: the claim matches reality (Truth), the person actually takes it to be so (Belief), there are reasons anyone can check (Public Justification), and the ideas involved are used rightly in the case at hand (Understanding-in-use). I abbreviate this as JTB+U—and I further strengthen it by grounding it.

How Wittgenstein strengthens the classical picture (PI & OC).
My enhancement of JTB draws on several reminders from Wittgenstein:

Meaning as use (PI §43). Words get their grip in use within a practice. This underwrites Understanding-in-use: not reciting a definition, but getting the application right when cases are messy.

Language-games (PI). Giving and asking for reasons is a public game with shared moves and criteria. This backs Public Justification: reasons must be checkable by anyone trained in the practice.

Hinges / what stands fast (OC, incl. §253). Some background certainties are the river-bed that lets checking and doubt even start (e.g., stable meanings, ordinary perception, records as records). Making this background explicit grounds the procedure and stops regress without turning hinges into dogmas; they can shift from within practice, typically slowly and in bulk.

Grammar of “know.” I distinguish the epistemic use (answerable to public criteria) from the convictional use (assurance without that claim). Keeping these apart avoids muddles in testimony.

Guardrails that keep the standard honest.
Two constraints run everywhere. No-False-Grounds (NFG): a load-bearing false step breaks the case. Practice-safety: by the same route, in sufficiently similar cases within the same practice, you shouldn’t easily land on a false belief. Neither demands perfection; they mark ordinary discipline. I also run defeater screening by default: undercutters attack the link from reasons to claim; rebutters supply contrary evidence.

The method (pipeline) I use.
My procedure is public and teachable:

Fix the claim. Say exactly what is alleged to be known.

Choose the justificatory route (always in the same order): (1) Testimony, (2) Logic—inductive & deductive, (3) Sensory experience, (4) Linguistic training (concept use), (5) Pure logic (form only). The first four do evidential work; the fifth sets limits on form.

Apply route-specific checks (e.g., Who said it? How could they know? What could make them wrong? Does the conclusion follow? Are the terms used as the practice teaches?).

Run the guardrails (NFG, practice-safety).

Screen defeaters (name and test undercutters/rebutters; log what would overturn the case).

Record the result (what stands, what is downgraded, what remains open).

What “practice” means for me.
A practice is a trained, public activity with standards—medicine, law, aviation, and so on. Indexing checks to practice stabilizes criteria (they don’t drift with conversational “stakes”) and keeps everything auditable.

Why this is neither relativism nor dogmatism.

Because routes and checks are public, claims aren’t “true for me”; anyone who runs the method should get the same verdict. And because hinges can shift within the practice with better tools and training, nothing is beyond revision in principle.

Gettier, deflated (why the puzzles don’t move me).

Classic Gettier cases are short puzzles where someone has a true belief for respectable-looking reasons, but the truth arrives by luck (e.g., the “job and ten coins” story). In real practices, the very features that make these puzzles “work” are exactly what my method refuses. No-False-Grounds (NFG) disqualifies load-bearing false steps; defeater screening (undercutters/rebutters) hunts the hidden gap between the reasons and the claim; practice-safety asks whether the same route, in similar cases within the same practice, would avoid easy error; and understanding-in-use requires applying the concepts correctly in messy cases (e.g., source independence, timing, provenance). Once those guardrails and route-specific checks are enforced, Gettier setups don’t pass. They are grading artifacts of toy scenarios, not counterexamples to knowledge.

Gettier tends to conflate thinking one is justified with actual justification.

So, since the subconscious mind is not conscious (by definition) consciousness is not required for the creation of ideas? — wonderer1

Thinking is about working with ideas to create new ideas. Thinking, therefore, is a conscious activity. Therefore, the subconscious mind is conscious as well if it can create a new idea since it has to think.

A section of my book follows:

From Testimony to Knowledge: Evaluating Near-Death Experiences

Misconceptions About Testimonial Evidence

A first misconception treats testimony as “mere anecdote,” as if personal reports stood outside ordinary evidential practices. In fact, most of what we know comes from others—pilots, physicians, historians—and we trust such reports when there is provenance, opportunity to verify particulars, and independence among sources. The same standards apply here: when details are time-locked to clinical windows, constrained by occlusion or anesthesia, and later confirmed by records or staff, the testimony is not “just a story”; it is data with public handles.

A second misconception assumes that testimonial error rates void a whole domain. All large testimonial fields contain noise—misremembering, embellishment, secondhand hearsay—yet we do not discard eyewitness law, clinical history-taking, or historical narrative because some reports fail. The question is whether there exists a subset of well-anchored cases that withstands ordinary scrutiny. If so, error elsewhere does not dissolve the signal; it clarifies the standard to which cases must answer.

A third misconception claims “there are no controls,” implying that without randomized trials, testimony cannot carry weight. Prospective hospital protocols supply a different kind of control: fixed clinical clocks, environmental constraints (taped eyes, sealed rooms), hidden-target or procedure-bound particulars, and independent confirmation. These features limit post-hoc embroidery and allow specific claims to be checked. They do not turn testimony into lab instrumentation, but they do make some reports probative under ordinary public standards.

A fourth misconception treats family corroboration as inherently biased. Families can be mistaken, but bias is addressed by triangulation: timing of the report, specificity of details, and independent confirmation by medical staff or records. When an experiencer names a distinctive gesture, device sound, equipment placement, or concurrent procedure that staff later verify, the corroboration does not rest on familial belief; it rests on public particulars.

A fifth misconception appeals to cultural imprinting: people report what their culture primes them to expect. Yet pediatric and congenitally blind cases strain that explanation, as do cross-cultural reports that preserve a shared core while varying surface imagery. Cultural background may shape interpretation and language, but the evidential weight lies in time-locked, checkable details under constraint—features not easily manufactured by prior narrative exposure.

A sixth misconception insists that retrospective contamination explains veridical elements (“they learned it afterward”). Close-in documentation and prospective designs answer this: what was said, when it was said, who heard it, and what the record shows. Where timing is fixed and details are specific, later exposure cannot be the source of those particulars.

A seventh misconception treats negative cases as field-defeaters (“if some reports are wrong, the thesis fails”). The thesis of this chapter is proportionate: it does not depend on unanimity or on universal accuracy. It claims that some anchored cases survive ordinary scrutiny and that these anchors stabilize the larger testimonial field. One counterexample to a weak report does not touch a different case whose particulars were independently confirmed.

An eighth misconception treats the claim of this chapter as “extraordinary” and so attempts to ratchet up the evidential bar. The claim here is modest and common: that some people accurately report specific, time-locked particulars under conditions that make ordinary perception implausible, and that these particulars can be publicly checked. Given their prevalence across cultures and clinical contexts, such reports are not rare; what matters is their anchoring. For a claim of this sort, ordinary standards—provenance, timing, constraint, and independent confirmation—are exactly the right standards. Applied consistently, they show that a subset of cases survives scrutiny; that is what the flagship anchors supply.

Finally, a methodological misconception imagines that testimonial evidence and physiological explanation are competitors at the same level. They are not. Testimony supplies the target phenomena—the what—that any physiological account must explain without relaxing the constraints that made the testimony probative (occlusion, anesthesia, sealed environments, fixed clocks, independent confirmation). A physiological proposal that cannot meet those particulars is not a rival explanation; it is a change of subject.

These clarifications do not settle every dispute, but they set the terms on which objections should proceed. The next section addresses the most common challenges in that spirit: by asking whether alternative accounts can reproduce the anchored particulars under the same constraints.

A seventh misconception treats negative cases as field-defeaters (“if some reports are wrong, the thesis fails”). The thesis of this chapter is proportionate: it does not depend on unanimity or on universal accuracy. It claims that some anchored cases survive ordinary scrutiny and that these anchors stabilize the larger testimonial field. One counterexample to a weak report does not touch a different case whose particulars were independently confirmed. — Sam26

But you haven't presented any cases that can be expected to survive an ordinary degree of scientific scrutiny.

A third misconception claims “there are no controls,” implying that without randomized trials, testimony cannot carry weight. Prospective hospital protocols supply a different kind of control: fixed clinical clocks, environmental constraints (taped eyes, sealed rooms), hidden-target or procedure-bound particulars, and independent confirmation. These features limit post-hoc embroidery and allow specific claims to be checked. They do not turn testimony into lab instrumentation, but they do make some reports probative under ordinary public standards. — Sam26

Randomized trials aren't a requirement, but a controlled enviornment is necessary so as to eliminate the possibility that supposedly unconscious subjects are actually conscious and physically sensing and cognitively reconstructing their immediate environments by normal sensory means during EEG flat-lining. One such an experiment is The Human Consciousness Project that investigated awareness during resuscitation of cardiac arrest patients in collaborration with 25 medical centers across the US and Europe. That investigation among other things, controlled the environmment so as to assess the possibility that NDE subjects were sensing information that they couldn't posssibly deduce by normal bodily means (remote viewing).

"The study was to introduce a multi-disciplinary perspective, cerebral monitoring techniques, and innovative tests.[7]. Among the innovative research designs was the placement of images in resuscitation areas. The images were placed on shelves below the ceiling and could only be seen from above. The design was constructed in order to verify the possibility of out-of-body experiences"

The results were negative, with none of the patients recalling seeing the test information that was situated above their heads:

" The authors reported that 101 out of 140 patients completed stage 2 interviews. They found that 9 out of 101 cardiac arrest survivors had experiences that could be classified as near-death experiences. 46% could retrieve memories from their cardiac arrest, and the memories could be subdivided into the following categories: fear; animals/plants; bright light; violence/persecution; deja-vu; family; recalling events post-CA. Of these, 2% fulfilled the criteria of the Greyson NDE scale and reported an out-of-body experience with awareness of the resuscitation situation. Of these, 1 person described details related to technical resuscitation equipment. None of the patients reported seeing the test design with upward facing images."

.

Sime, you’re critiquing a version of my view I’m not advancing. Here’s the actual standard in one place so readers can see it without the rest of the book.

The thread's (and my books claim Chapter 3) claim is modest: some near-death reports meet ordinary public standards for evidence. “Ordinary public standards” here means that three constraint axes are satisfied together:

Timing: the reported particulars are time-locked to the clinical window.

Environmental constraint: ordinary routes are blocked by the clinical setup, taped eyes, occluded hearing, sterile-field limits, sealed rooms, and procedure-bound speech.

Independent confirmation: records or multiple witnesses later match the specific particulars outside the witness’s control.

That is the test. Prospective protocols help (fixed clocks, immediate capture), but the argument never depends on ceiling targets or on unanimity across all reports. A null on a narrow sub-task (e.g., no one saw a hidden image) tells you nothing about other public-facing matches in other cases.

Your objection repeatedly retreats to general possibilities (“maybe they were conscious,” “maybe they sensed normally”). That’s not enough. The standard is case-specific: this room, this window, these constraints. If you think an anchored case fails, then show your work:

• Name the ordinary route (leading prompts, overheard information, open sightlines, or post-event memory shaping).

• Show it was actually available under the documented constraints.

• Show how it yields the reported, time-locked particulars that were later confirmed.

When independent reports line up on the same publicly checkable details, the burden shifts: either accept the match, or identify—and support—a specific ordinary route (leading prompts, overheard information, open sightlines, or post-event memory shaping) that would plausibly produce it.

If you can do that for a specific anchored case, I’m happy to revise. If not, you’re attacking a strawman—“no controls,” “must be randomized,” “nothing passed”—instead of the public-standards claim I’m making.

Flagship Veridical Cases

Flagship cases matter not because they are dramatic, but because their particulars are publicly checkable under constraints that make ordinary perception implausible. In each instance, I note the anchors I rely on: provenance close to the event; clear timing; environmental or clinical constraints (anesthesia, occlusion, sealed rooms); specific details that can be checked; and independent confirmation from records, staff, or witnesses. The point is not that every report is flawless; it is that some are anchored well enough to shift the evidential weight.

French operating-suite amputation (Toulouse)—During surgery under general anesthesia, a patient described rising above the theater and then “looking” into an adjacent operating room where a leg amputation was underway, including the placement of the limb into a yellow plastic bag. After recovery, she reported the scene to the attending physician, who immediately checked and confirmed that an amputation had been performed next door at that time with standard yellow bagging. The doors were sealed for sterility, and there was no ordinary line of sight or sound. Anchors: contemporaneous report to a named physician, tight time-locking, surgical sterility constraints, and independent confirmation of procedure and bagging protocol.

Cardiac bypass with surgeon’s “elbows-in” gesture (Al Sullivan)—During emergency quadruple bypass surgery, the patient later reported an out-of-body vantage from which he observed the lead surgeon directing staff with a distinctive, elbows-tucked, arms-flapping motion to avoid contaminating scrubbed hands. The description was given after recovery; the surgeon and staff acknowledged the idiosyncratic gesture as occurring then. Eyes had been taped shut under deep anesthesia; the observation concerns a specific, signature behavior not generally known. Anchors: occlusion and anesthesia, a unique action tied to a particular clinician, and staff confirmation of timing and behavior.

Prospective-study exemplar (resuscitation window)—In a monitored cardiac-arrest setting using standardized procedures, a patient reported discrete, checkable particulars—staff exchanges and instrument use—time-locked to the resuscitation window and later concordant with charted events and team recollection. The value here is methodological: the report is anchored by a protocol that fixes the clinical clock and narrows opportunities for post-hoc embroidery. Anchors: prospective design, fixed timing from device logs and notes, specific external details later corroborated by personnel.

Pediatric surgical case (operating-room particulars)—A school-age child undergoing cardiac surgery later described elements of the theater that were both specific and confirmable (mask color, distinctive monitor tones, positioning of equipment), together with a brief encounter narrative consistent with standard NDE features. Staff subsequently verified the concrete particulars the child named. Pediatric cases carry special weight against cultural-imprinting objections, given limited conceptual resources and minimal exposure to adult narratives. Anchors: close-in parental/staff documentation, simple checkable details, developmental constraints that reduce suggestion as an explanation.

Taken together, these exemplars display the features that matter for this chapter’s conclusion: time-locked description under sensory or environmental constraint, specific content available to independent checking, and confirmations that do not depend on the subject’s interpretation. They are not outliers in kind, only in the clarity of their anchors. The cumulative argument advances to the extent that such cases exist at all; rivals must match the particulars without relaxing the constraints that make them probative.

Just seems to me like you're gerrymandering standards of evidence in a way that no one would reasonably accept outside of the vicnity of yourself and other likeminded bastions of woo-ism like Bernardo Kastrup and Wayfarer. "Yes, these are extremely rigorous standards of evidence if you are not allowed to entertain alternative hypotheses that the methods do not explicitlh account for or we don't generallyhave a great deal of knowledge about currently." Sounds good to me.

Oh, please. If dismissing rigorous scrutiny as "gerrymandering" is your idea of a gotcha, then you're just admitting you can't handle the heat when someone demands actual evidence over hand-wavy assumptions. Lumping me in with Kastrup or any other Idealist is cute, but it says more about your lazy tribalism than my arguments. You've got access to the bulk of what I've laid out—go ahead, poke holes in it with something substantive instead of snarky vibes. And yeah, those standards are rigorous precisely because they shut down the door on untested "alternative hypotheses" that conveniently dodge empirical accountability. If that threatens your worldview, maybe reflect on why you're so quick to cry "woo-ism" instead of engaging like an adult. Sounds like projection to me, but it's typical of most of the responses in this thread.

A word for those who read these threads without responding:

One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of people posting in places like The Philosophy Forum have never studied philosophy in any serious way. Most have not worked through even the elementary basics of logic, so when they claim to be “doing philosophy,” they are really just trading personal opinions. Out of the crowd in this forum, only a handful (and they're not always people whom I agree with) consistently show the tools of serious philosophy: clarity about terms, the ability to follow an argument to its implications, and the discipline to separate evidence from assertion.

That matters because it explains a lot of the noise you see in threads like this. Many of the objections raised against my argument don’t even engage what is actually being said; they are evasions, shifts of definition, or vague possibilities dressed up as if they were explanations. “Maybe X happened” is repeated as if that alone answers the case—but in philosophy, “maybe” is not an argument. If someone can’t identify the specific premises in play or show where the reasoning misfires, they are not engaging philosophically, no matter how confident they sound.

So, for those following along and actually trying to learn something: don’t mistake volume for rigor. Serious philosophy is rare, and it shows itself in very specific ways—clarity about standards, consistency in applying them, proportion in claims, and the willingness to revise when faced with counterexamples. Most posters here never reach that bar. That is why you will see the same evasions recycled over and over, instead of a genuine confrontation with the argument.

If you want to sharpen your own thinking, notice these differences. Distinguish the handful of posters who can keep an argument on the rails from the many who can’t. And remember: philosophy is not the trading of hunches; it is the discipline of reasoning in public, with evidence and logic, under standards that don’t move just because the conclusion makes us uncomfortable.

because they shut down the door on untested "alternative hypotheses" that conveniently dodge empirical accountability. — Sam26

They don't though, and seemingly a majority of posters don't agree with you on this thread.

You have this bizarre attitude that the fact that actual experiments or studies to verify alternative hypotheses haven't been done or are difficult to do means that they shouldn't be entertained. No other rational person takes that attitude; instead they will say: "lets go out and study this more, lets not jump to conclusions when other possibilities exist that haven't been fully explored". When other people suggest that more rigorous studies need to be done, you then suggest that those kinds of methods aren't the right kind.

Just mind-boggling your inability to entertain alternative possibilities that could feasibly be the case.

they are evasions, shifts of definition, or vague possibilities dressed up as if they were explanations. — Sam26

And from their perspective what you do looks like evasions, faulty definitions and an inability to entertain plausible alternatives.

Are you suggesting that people shouldjust accept what you are saying and there is no need to explore alternative options and that all other naturalistic explanations have been shutdown?

but in philosophy — Sam26

This isn't philosophy though. This discussion is clearly in the realms of science. It is an empirical question. Seems to me like you are trying to turn this into a philosophical discussion to try to downplay the idea that people don't think your evidence is empirically sufficient.

don’t mistake volume for rigor — Sam26

Good lesson for reading your book!

You’ve tossed out a lot of heat, very little light. Let’s pin down the issues so readers can see where the work actually is.

1) “You shut the door on alternative hypotheses.”

No. I shut the door on untested alternatives that never touch the specific constraints of specific cases. An alternative is admissible if—and only if—it does three things in a named case:

Route: states a specific ordinary route (leading prompts, overheard information, open sightlines, post-event memory shaping).

Access: shows the route was actually available in that room during that window under the documented constraints (taped eyes, sterile-field limits, sealed doors, noise levels, timestamps).

Yield: shows how that route produces the reported particulars (the words said, the instrument used, the sequence and timing)—not “maybe,” but a step-by-step causal story that fits the evidence.

If you can do that, great—let’s see it. If you can’t, then “let’s entertain possibilities” is just a way of never reaching a conclusion.

2) “Most posters disagree with you.”

That’s an appeal to popularity (a fallacy in basic logic). Truth isn’t a vote. The standard I’m using is ordinary public standards (timing • environmental constraint • independent confirmation). Either a case meets them or it doesn’t. Either an alternative meets the three tests above or it doesn’t. Crowd size is irrelevant.

3) “You’re anti-science; you don’t want more studies.”

Also false. I’ve argued for prospective designs (fixed clocks, immediate capture, independent attestations). Saying “do more studies” does not rebut existing anchored matches any more than “take more photos” makes today’s photo disappear. If you want to lower the evidential weight of a particular anchor, you still have to run the case-specific route/access/yield test.

4) “But AWARE’s hidden images were negative.”

Hidden-image tasks test one narrow hypothesis (“read this elevated image”). A null there doesn’t touch other time-locked, public particulars (verbatim speech, staff actions, instrument use, timestamps) that were later confirmed. You can’t generalize a null on one sub-task into a universal defeater for different kinds of matches.

5) “This isn’t philosophy, it’s science.”

It’s both: the data are empirical; the standards for weighing testimony, defeaters, and proportionate conclusions are epistemology—i.e., philosophy of evidence. Courts, historians, and clinicians use the same epistemic tools. Saying “this is science” doesn’t relieve you of arguing how your alternative hypothesis meets the three tests in a named case.

6) “You won’t entertain alternatives.”

I’ll entertain any alternative that earns a seat by passing the route/access/yield test. What I won’t do is treat generic “maybes” as if they were explanations. “Maybe they heard something” isn’t a case analysis; it’s an evasion.

Bottom line for readers: When independent reports line up on the same publicly checkable details, the burden shifts. Either (a) accept the match, or (b) identify and support a specific ordinary route that was actually available under the constraints and that reproduces the particulars. Anything short of that is volume, not rigor.

Epistemology Is Bigger Than Science

Science is one powerful way of knowing, but it isn’t the whole of epistemology. Epistemology is the study of knowledge itself: how we justify what we believe, what counts as reliable evidence, and what it means to say we “know” something. Science is just one application of those deeper principles.

Think of five main routes by which we come to know things:

Testimony – Most of what you know comes from other people. You know your birthdate, that Antarctica exists, or that DNA carries information, not because you verified these directly, but because trustworthy testimony passed it on. Courtrooms, history books, and classrooms all rely on testimony.

Logic (inductive and deductive) – We reason our way from what we already know to new conclusions. Induction weighs patterns and probabilities (like inferring the sun will rise tomorrow). Deduction secures conclusions from premises (if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal).

Sensory experience – You know orange juice is sweet because you’ve tasted it. Observation, sight, hearing, touch—all anchor us to the world.

Linguistic training – To know something, we need to use words and concepts correctly. A child learns “red” by being corrected until they can pick red things out reliably. Clear use of language is part of clear knowing.

Pure logic – Some truths are fixed by form alone. “Either Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, or he was not” is true regardless of the world. These tautologies set formal boundaries for thought.

Science operates by combining these same routes—testimony (journal articles, lab notes), logic (statistical inference, reasoning), sensory experience (measurements, experiments), and linguistic clarity (definitions of terms like “atom” or “control”). What makes science distinct is its systematic method: it controls conditions, checks repeatability, and builds consensus. But it does not step outside epistemology; it is one way of applying epistemological tools.

Why This Matters

If you think science alone defines knowledge, you fall into what philosophers call scientism, the idea that only scientific results count as real knowledge. But this is itself not a scientific claim; it’s a philosophical stance. Outside the lab, we rely on testimony to trust history, on logic to follow arguments, on sensory experience to navigate the world, and on language to communicate clearly. Epistemology is the larger field that makes sense of all these routes and sets the standards for when they give us knowledge.

So science is a vital part of our pursuit of truth, but it is not the whole story. Epistemology reminds us that knowing is wider, older, and richer than the scientific method alone.

No. I shut the door on untested alternatives that never touch the specific constraints of specific cases. — Sam26

This is very obviously, fallaciously presuming that these specific case studies have some kind of priority here when in reality the problem people might take with your work is that the case studies you have are all themselves methodologically limited, and we should be creating new studies to test alternatives rigorously and systematically. Trying to explain specific case studies does not allow you to assess things statistically with factors like luck or confounds that you cannot have accounted for. With specific case studies like these, you cannot even really be sure of what happened.

That’s an appeal to popularity (a fallacy in basic logic). Truth isn’t a vote. The standard I’m using is ordinary public standards — Sam26

:snicker: :chin:

does not rebut existing anchored matches any more than “take more photos” makes today’s photo disappear. — Sam26

Sure, but this is only if you can definitively validate those photos and what they show, which is difficult to do retroactively for case studies as opposed to more rigorous testing.

A null there doesn’t touch other time-locked, public particulars (verbatim speech, staff actions, instrument use, timestamps) — Sam26

Which themselves should be validated in more rigorous testing.

Courts, historians, and clinicians use the same epistemic tools. — Sam26

Absolutely no one in these categories of people would agree that your evidence is sufficient to justify the claim there is life after death. I think you don't seem to understand that whatever self-imposed standards you seem to apply to these case studies, the issue here is that the evidence is too sparse for most people to take it seriously as a falsification of the most successful paradigms of knowledge in human history.

What I won’t do is treat generic “maybes” as if they were explanations. — Sam26

Bottom line for readers: When independent reports line up on the same publicly checkable details, the burden shifts — Sam26

I think what you have got to understand is that our scientific, naturalistic paradigms are so successful that the burden of proof is much higher for a relatively small number of methodologically limited case studies that make claims contradicting them without even presenting alternative models for what is happening.

Clearly, the issue is that you treat naturalism with disdain, so your standard of evidence for the supernatural is much lower than most other people who think that the success of naturalism demands extraordinary evidence for extraordinary contradicting claims.

If you think science alone defines knowledge, you fall into what philosophers call scientism, the idea that only scientific results count as real knowledge. — Sam26

I don't think science is inherently different from other kinds of knowledge. Its just obviously the case that this topic is in the realms of evaluation using the same methods of science you would find in sociology, cognitive science, biomedical science.

Clearly, the issue is that you [@Sam26] treat naturalism with disdain, so your standard of evidence for the supernatural is much lower than most other people who think that the success of naturalism demands extraordinary evidence for extraordinary contradicting claims. — Apustimelogist

:up: :up:

Oh, come on, this is just more hand-wringing disguised as sophistication. Let's dismantle this mess point by point, shall we? Because if you're going to keep throwing shade at my case studies while ignoring the actual details I've shared, it's time to call it what it is: intellectual laziness wrapped in a bow of "scientific superiority."

First off, claiming my specific case studies are "methodologically limited" and we need shiny new ones to "test alternatives rigorously"? That's rich coming from someone who hasn't even engaged with the ones I've laid out. These aren't cherry-picked anecdotes; they're time-locked, multi-witnessed events with verifiable particulars—like verbatim conversations, staff actions, instrument readings, and timestamps—that align independently. You're acting like I'm basing everything on fuzzy recollections when the arguments you've seen spell out the constraints that shut down confounds like luck or fraud. But sure, wave away the evidence we have because it doesn't fit your prefab naturalistic box. Demanding "statistical assessment" for every edge case is just a dodge; history and forensics don't wait for lab recreations to draw conclusions. If you want new studies, great, fund 'em yourself, but that doesn't erase the explanatory power of what's already on the table.

And the snicker at my "appeal to popularity" rebuttal? Spare me the emojis; they're not arguments. I never said truth is a vote—I said ordinary public standards (you know, the ones courts and historians use daily) apply here, not some hyper-skeptical goalpost-moving reserved for anything that smells "supernatural" to you. That's not a fallacy; that's consistency. Your crowd's the one gerrymandering epistemology to protect pet paradigms.

On the photo analogy: Yeah, those "photos" (read: corroborated details) stand until you prove they're fakes, not just speculate retroactively. "Difficult to validate"? I've shared the mechanisms—independent reports matching on checkable facts. If you can't rebut those specifics, that's on you, not the evidence.
Nulls needing "more rigorous testing"? Again, you're begging the question by assuming only future lab coats can validate what's already publicly verifiable. The particulars I've outlined don't vanish because you chant "rigor" like a mantra.

Now, the audacity to claim "absolutely no one" in courts, historians, or clinicians would buy this? Speak for yourself, buddy. Clinicians deal with anomalous data all the time without tossing out naturalism wholesale. Historians reconstruct events from fragmentary evidence without demanding Petri dishes. Courts convict on circumstantial alignments that mirror what I've described. You're projecting your own dismissal onto entire fields—classic overreach.

Burden shifting? Damn right it does when independent lines converge on the same details. Your "successful naturalistic paradigms" line is the real appeal to authority here. Naturalism's track record is impressive, sure, but it's not infallible—quantum weirdness, consciousness gaps, and yes, these cases poke holes in it. Accusing me of "disdain" for naturalism? Nah, I respect it; I just don't worship it like a religion. My standards aren't "lower" for the supernatural; they're the same evidentiary bars applied evenly. If that makes your worldview uncomfortable, maybe question why "extraordinary evidence."

Finally, on scientism: You say science isn't different from other knowledge, but then pivot to demanding everything fit sociology, cog sci, or biomed methods? That's scientism in drag, reducing all inquiry to lab-friendly boxes. This topic spans epistemology, metaphysics, and yes, empirical data, but pretending it's all "scientific" turf ignores how science itself rests on philosophical foundations. If you think these cases contradict "the most successful paradigms," try actually addressing the arguments instead of hiding behind vague "methodological limits."

Bottom line: You've got access to the meat of my case; engage it substantively or step aside. This isn't disdain; it's demanding better than dismissive vibes and circular appeals to naturalism's throne. If that's too forceful for you, well, tough. Truth doesn't care about comfort zones.

As usual, @180 Proof arguments amount to an emoji or two. He's the real philosopher.

If you're going to respond with silly arguments as though they have meat, I'm going to hit hard. It's not about disdain; it's about having good arguments, period. Someone from the materialist side who responds with a good argument earns my respect.

Those of you lurking in the shadows, popcorn in hand, let's cut through the noise for a second. You've been watching this back-and-forth, and if you're anything like me, you're probably wondering why some folks cling so desperately to their "naturalistic paradigms" like they're the holy grail, dismissing solid, verifiable evidence just because it doesn't come pre-packaged in a lab coat.

Here's the deal: I've laid out case after case of time-locked, multi-witnessed events—verbatim speech, instrument readings, staff actions, all aligning independently in ways that defy the usual suspects like fraud, luck, or confabulation. These aren't woo-woo fairy tales; they're grounded in the same epistemic tools we use every day in courts, history books, and medicine. But oh no, because they challenge the sacred cow of strict naturalism, suddenly we need "extraordinary evidence" that's code for "evidence I'll never accept."

My opponents who have posted in this thread are all vibes and no substance. Endless calls for "more rigorous testing" while ignoring the rigor already in play. Accusations of "gerrymandering standards" when it's their side moving the goalposts to protect a worldview that's impressive but not omnipotent. Naturalism's got gaps, big ones, like consciousness and other anomalies, and pretending otherwise is just dogmatic scientism dressed up as skepticism.

So, audience, don't buy the snark or the snickers. Demand real engagement with the arguments. If these cases intrigue you, dig in; I've shared the thrust of it right here in the thread. Truth isn't about popularity or paradigms, it's about what holds up under scrutiny. And mine does. If you're open-minded, let's chat. If not, well, keep scrolling, but know you're missing out on a paradigm shift. Your call.

The following is a summary of the argument in my book.

Inductive Argument for the Survival of Consciousness

This argument proceeds inductively, drawing on testimonial evidence from NDEs to establish, with reasonable confidence, that consciousness survives the death of the body in some form. The conclusion is proportionate: not absolute certainty or a detailed metaphysics of the afterlife, but a probable persistence of awareness capable of veridical representation under conditions that preclude ordinary sensory perception. The argument evaluates the evidence using five classical criteria for strong inductive inferences based on testimony, ensuring the premises are grounded in ordinary epistemic standards (provenance, timing, environmental constraints, specificity, and independent confirmation). Let H₁ be the hypothesis that consciousness can, on occasion, persist and represent the world independently of ordinary sensory channels. Let H₀ be the null hypothesis that all such reports are fully explicable by ordinary processes (e.g., hallucination, confabulation, or undetected information flow).

Premise 1: Numerical Sufficiency. The testimonial field for NDEs is exceptionally large, comprising millions of reports worldwide, with thousands documented in medical and research contexts. This volume exceeds the testimonial bases for well-established historical events (e.g., the Battle of Waterloo rests on approximately 5,000 accounts) and legal convictions, where far fewer witnesses suffice for confident conclusions. High numbers alone do not guarantee truth, but when combined with the other criteria, they elevate the evidential weight beyond what is required in comparable inductive domains, making systematic dismissal implausible without specific counter-evidence.

Premise 2: Source Diversity. NDE reports exhibit remarkable variety across demographic and contextual variables, spanning ages (from toddlers to the elderly), cultures (Western, Asian, African, Indigenous), prior beliefs (atheists, religious adherents, materialists), and circumstances (cardiac arrest, surgery, trauma, non-crisis episodes). This universality includes cases resistant to reductionist explanations, such as congenitally blind individuals reporting accurate "visual" details and young children identifying deceased relatives unknown to them. Such diversity undermines appeals to cultural conditioning, selection bias, or single physiological triggers, as the core phenomenological profile recurs independently of these factors.

Premise 3: Truth of the Premises. The evidential core rests on a subset of anchored cases where reports are (a) corroborated by independent sources (e.g., medical records, staff confirmations of specific details like surgical gestures or equipment layouts), (b) firsthand and proximate in time to the event (minimizing memory distortion or hearsay), and (c) consistent at the appropriate grain (core features like out-of-body veridical perception, encounters with deceased persons, and life reviews converge, while peripheral cultural interpretations vary as expected in large datasets). These anchors—time-locked particulars under sensory constraints (e.g., occluded senses, deep anesthesia)—withstand ordinary scrutiny, transforming subjective testimony into probative evidence akin to that in historiography or jurisprudence.

Premise 4: Narrow Scope. The conclusion is deliberately limited to the persistence of consciousness capable of veridical representation beyond bodily death, without broader commitments to eternal survival, specific afterlife realms, or metaphysical doctrines. This restraint aligns with inductive principles like Occam's razor, focusing the inference on what the anchored evidence most directly supports, thereby lowering the evidential threshold while maximizing defensibility.

Premise 5: Cogency. The argument's premises are accessible and verifiable by non-specialists using public epistemic standards, without requiring prior philosophical commitments. Familiarity with NDE concepts is widespread, and the logical structure parallels inductive reasoning in other domains (e.g., historical convergence of sources or legal evaluation of witness reliability). This ensures the argument's force derives from rational evaluation of the evidence, not from specialized jargon or assumptions.

Intermediate Inference A: The existence of an anchored subset—where veridical particulars are time-locked, constrained, and independently confirmed—is more likely under H₁ than H₀, as H₀ requires improbable convergences (e.g., lucky guesses or undetected leaks) under the same constraints, while H₁ expects such occurrences occasionally in a large, diverse field.

Intermediate Inference B: Noise in the broader testimonial domain (e.g., errors, embellishments) does not defeat the signal, as the argument relies on the anchored subset, not unanimity. Methodological constraints demand that rival explanations reproduce the specifics without diluting the anchors (e.g., sealed environments, fixed timings); failures to do so render them non-explanatory.

Conclusion: Given the numerical sufficiency, source diversity, truth of the premises (via corroboration, firsthand reporting, and consistency), narrow scope, and cogency, the balance of inductive reasons favors H₁ over H₀. Therefore, it is probable that consciousness survives bodily death in some form, preserving enough continuity for veridical representation. This warrants acceptance by ordinary epistemic standards, subject to potential defeat by stronger counter-evidence (e.g., systematic dissolution of anchors under rigorous audit).

luck — Sam26

This can only be done statistically.

history and forensics don't wait for lab recreations to draw conclusions — Sam26

Because forensics is based on established science which is used to assess whats going on. History makes much weaker inferences than the ones you are trying to make.

but that doesn't erase the explanatory power of what's already on the table. — Sam26

No explanatory power at all. You don't have any model, just a vague claim that life exists after death based on circumstantial evidence rather than any explicit refutation.

for every edge case — Sam26

You shouldn't be using underexplored edge cases to make leaping claims that overturn entire paradigms.

you know, the ones courts and historians use daily) — Sam26

Good lord, try brining this to a court or historian and lets see how that goes.

That's not a fallacy; that's consistency. Your crowd's the one gerrymandering epistemology to protect pet paradigms. — Sam26

Just ridiculous to think you can overturn the whole body of knowledge regarding physical science from a few case studies that completely lacking in methodological rigor. And yes, its the entire body, because if there was any other weird stuff going on that was anything like the claims you are making, we probably would have found it scientifically by now.

"more rigorous testing" while ignoring the rigor already in play. — Sam26

Its very basic. Take a class in methods in sociology and see what they tell you about the pros and cos between things like case studies and qualitative research as opposed to quantitative ones.

Clinicians deal with anomalous data all the time without tossing out naturalism wholesale. Historians reconstruct events from fragmentary evidence without demanding Petri dishes. — Sam26

Yes, they make inferences as reasonable based on evidence and the methodological principles they have been taught. Do you really think any of these people would come to the same conclusions as you regarding this topic? If not, there is no point bringing them up.

independent reports matching on checkable facts. — Sam26

Yeah, and you don't know if those effects would replicate in systematic study with lots of these cases as opposed to the case studies where you cant control what people say, how things are reported or checked, cant control how or why these case studies came to prominence (i.e. some kind of selection effect in sampling). You can't control lucky statements, you can't control actual genuine naturalustic ways people may have come to that knowledge. Unless these things are systematically tested then we are forever speculating on these case studies without a definitive conclusion about what happened.

quantum weirdness, consciousness gaps, — Sam26

Quantum weirdness is naturalistic and consciousness is naturalistically studied.

You say science isn't different from other knowledge, but then pivot to demanding everything fit sociology, cog sci, or biomed methods? — Sam26

Because its clearly the subject matter. How is it not? Those are the natural methods you would use to answer exactly this topic.

it's about what holds up under scrutiny. And mine does — Sam26

The whole issue is the dearth of scrutiny, ironically.

but know you're missing out on a paradigm shift. Your call. — Sam26

:lol: :rofl:

Therefore, it is probable that consciousness survives bodily death in some form, preserving enough continuity for veridical representation. — Sam26

I think this is the same as saying it may or may not be true.

If the probability is, say, 50/50, I would agree, but the probability is high based on the evidence. Most of our knowledge is probabilistic, but we don't say "It may or may not be true." Moreover, we don't claim "to know" if the probability is relatively low. I'm claiming to know that the conclusion follows, not, obviously, with absolute certainty.

My book will probably be released in about six to eight weeks. It's much more detailed, and it's unique in that I look at the evidence from an epistemological point of view. The last two chapters (Part 2 of the book) are a detailed analysis of the epistemology behind the thinking of the argument.

:up: :up:

As usual, 180 Proof arguments amount to an emoji or two. — Sam26

:rofl:

My book ... — Sam26

:smirk:

He's the real philosopher.

:up:

At least you can be funny. That gave me a laugh.