[Cross-posted at Scientific American Blogs. Thanks to Bora Z. for the invitation.]
The topic of “Life after death” raises disreputable connotations of past-life regression and haunted houses, but there are a large number of people in the world who believe in some form of persistence of the individual soul after life ends. Clearly this is an important question, one of the most important ones we can possibly think of in terms of relevance to human life. If science has something to say about, we should all be interested in hearing.
Adam Frank thinks that science has nothing to say about it. He advocates being “firmly agnostic” on the question. (His coblogger Alva Noë resolutely disagrees.) I have an enormous respect for Adam; he’s a smart guy and a careful thinker. When we disagree it’s with the kind of respectful dialogue that should be a model for disagreeing with non-crazy people. But here he couldn’t be more wrong.
Adam claims that “simply is no controlled, experimental[ly] verifiable information” regarding life after death. By these standards, there is no controlled, experimentally verifiable information regarding whether the Moon is made of green cheese. Sure, we can take spectra of light reflecting from the Moon, and even send astronauts up there and bring samples back for analysis. But that’s only scratching the surface, as it were. What if the Moon is almost all green cheese, but is covered with a layer of dust a few meters thick? Can you really say that you know this isn’t true? Until you have actually examined every single cubic centimeter of the Moon’s interior, you don’t really have experimentally verifiable information, do you? So maybe agnosticism on the green-cheese issue is warranted. (Come up with all the information we actually do have about the Moon; I promise you I can fit it into the green-cheese hypothesis.)
Obviously this is completely crazy. Our conviction that green cheese makes up a negligible fraction of the Moon’s interior comes not from direct observation, but from the gross incompatibility of that idea with other things we think we know. Given what we do understand about rocks and planets and dairy products and the Solar System, it’s absurd to imagine that the Moon is made of green cheese. We know better.
We also know better for life after death, although people are much more reluctant to admit it. Admittedly, “direct” evidence one way or the other is hard to come by — all we have are a few legends and sketchy claims from unreliable witnesses with near-death experiences, plus a bucketload of wishful thinking. But surely it’s okay to take account of indirect evidence — namely, compatibility of the idea that some form of our individual soul survives death with other things we know about how the world works.
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?
Everything we know about quantum field theory (QFT) says that there aren’t any sensible answers to these questions. Of course, everything we know about quantum field theory could be wrong. Also, the Moon could be made of green cheese.
Among advocates for life after death, nobody even tries to sit down and do the hard work of explaining how the basic physics of atoms and electrons would have to be altered in order for this to be true. If we tried, the fundamental absurdity of the task would quickly become evident.
Even if you don’t believe that human beings are “simply” collections of atoms evolving and interacting according to rules laid down in the Standard Model of particle physics, most people would grudgingly admit that atoms are part of who we are. If it’s really nothing but atoms and the known forces, there is clearly no way for the soul to survive death. Believing in life after death, to put it mildly, requires physics beyond the Standard Model. Most importantly, we need some way for that “new physics” to interact with the atoms that we do have.
Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there can’t be a new collection of “spirit particles” and “spirit forces” that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments. Ockham’s razor is not on your side here, since you have to posit a completely new realm of reality obeying very different rules than the ones we know.
But let’s say you do that. How is the spirit energy supposed to interact with us? Here is the equation that tells us how electrons behave in the everyday world:
Dont’ worry about the details; it’s the fact that the equation exists that matters, not its particular form. It’s the Dirac equation — the two terms on the left are roughly the velocity of the electron and its inertia — coupled to electromagnetism and gravity, the two terms on the right.
As far as every experiment ever done is concerned, this equation is the correct description of how electrons behave at everyday energies. It’s not a complete description; we haven’t included the weak nuclear force, or couplings to hypothetical particles like the Higgs boson. But that’s okay, since those are only important at high energies and/or short distances, very far from the regime of relevance to the human brain.
If you believe in an immaterial soul that interacts with our bodies, you need to believe that this equation is not right, even at everyday energies. There needs to be a new term (at minimum) on the right, representing how the soul interacts with electrons. (If that term doesn’t exist, electrons will just go on their way as if there weren’t any soul at all, and then what’s the point?) So any respectable scientist who took this idea seriously would be asking — what form does that interaction take? Is it local in spacetime? Does the soul respect gauge invariance and Lorentz invariance? Does the soul have a Hamiltonian? Do the interactions preserve unitarity and conservation of information?
Nobody ever asks these questions out loud, possibly because of how silly they sound. Once you start asking them, the choice you are faced with becomes clear: either overthrow everything we think we have learned about modern physics, or distrust the stew of religious accounts/unreliable testimony/wishful thinking that makes people believe in the possibility of life after death. It’s not a difficult decision, as scientific theory-choice goes.
We don’t choose theories in a vacuum. We are allowed — indeed, required — to ask how claims about how the world works fit in with other things we know about how the world works. I’ve been talking here like a particle physicist, but there’s an analogous line of reasoning that would come from evolutionary biology. Presumably amino acids and proteins don’t have souls that persist after death. What about viruses or bacteria? Where upon the chain of evolution from our monocellular ancestors to today did organisms stop being described purely as atoms interacting through gravity and electromagnetism, and develop an immaterial immortal soul?
There’s no reason to be agnostic about ideas that are dramatically incompatible with everything we know about modern science. Once we get over any reluctance to face reality on this issue, we can get down to the much more interesting questions of how human beings and consciousness really work.
Sean, you don’t convince me because if science could demonstrate direct or indirect evidence for the soul (or god) then my belief would be overturned, that is, the divine is eternal and beyond the natural/material. Conversely if a religionist could physically demonstrate the supernatural that also would contradict my view of the universe as a perfect manifestation of the divine, that is, perfectly natural and consistent, which point you argue so well.
You might ask, “What’s the point? Sounds irrelevant.” We can’t afford to wait for a purely rationalist foundation of moral principles to be established. The suffering and destruction wrought by those who believe that “rational philosophy” permits them to define for themselves what is right and what is wrong (or that it is irrelevant) is immediate (and thanks to science might even be total), while the destruction and suffering brought about by our ignorance of nature is something we have been able to survive for 200,000 years.
This simple theological postulate -god is eternal and benevolent- ultimately leads to the necessity to be humble (and very, very careful) in all we do in this world. It leads us to always exercise benevolence towards all our fellow humans, and even animals -don’t you know? They’re angels! And a truly mighty host they are. 😉
The quantum theories do not explain or describe any physically real mechanism for spin
Who says there is a “physically real mechanism” for spin? As you mean it, anyway.
That is, by “physically real mechanism” you mean a classical analogue.
I don’t know why you think electromagnetic waves aren’t real.
The laws of physics are the laws of nature, as we understand them. Of course they are human laws, but so what? They describe reality as we understand it. What do you think they describe?
There is a physically real effect, “intrinsic angular momentum”, but there is no physical model for this effect. The mechanism by which the effect occurs is not known. If it were, there would not be such confusion over the interpretation of quantum mechanics — nonlocality vs. local realism, wave-particle duality, etc. But there is such a mechanism. It requires a spatially extended model of an electron. There is such a model. It is possible someone may illustrate what happens in a proton-electron system. But what happens will be found to be quite different from what is supposed.
Did I imply I don’t think electromagnetic waves are real? The description I recall is that of a disturbance in the electromagnetic field. There are probably others. The photon is the imaginary entity. But what is the character of the field that transmits the disturbance? In the modern theory, it is a mathematical field, not a physical field. It’s a probability field! It explains nothing about the physically real world of our sense experience.
Human laws do not necessarily describe reality; nor do they necessarily reveal understanding of reality.
@David George
Human laws do not necessarily describe reality
Only in the sense that reality is also a human construct. As is the soul. Or anything we talk about. The only reality we can meaningfully talk about is the reality we can understand. If you wish to pontificate on the ontological status of fields and quantum spin that is up to you. None of it makes a convincing argument that there may be things immune to our everyday laws of physics. There may be green cheese in the moon.
By “things immune to our everyday laws of physics” I mean things that are supposed to interact with everyday stuff, eg things like souls that are supposed to interact with our bodies.
“Adam claims that there ‘simply is no controlled, experimental[ly] verifiable information’ regarding life after death. By these standards, there is no controlled, experimentally verifiable information regarding whether the Moon is made of green cheese.”
This is lousy logic. Mr. Frank is saying there is no information—which is true. We have plenty of information about the moon; we know its size, its mass, its fundamental composition, its reflective qualities—and we know it is not made of green cheese. One would have to be an idiot to be an agnostic on the question of the cheesiness of the moon….
Any room for experimental facts in this discussion or are we limited to mere philosophizing?
A recent book “Irreducible Mind” by Kelly & Kelly et al has gathered evidence from many sources that strongly suggest that the mind is not entirely dependent on the brain. That book is 800 pages long.
One line of evidence studied, especially by Ian Stevenson, are the hundreds of children who remember a past life: “You’re not my parents; my mom and dad live in XYZ. And I have two sisters there, etc.” A lot of the claims of these kids check out.
That the mind is totally dependent on the brain is a reasonable hypothesis but as good scientists we have a duty to check out ALL THE EVIDENCE before we jump to conclusions about a phenomenon
(consciousness) about which we are so abysmally ignorant.
Wow, nick herbert,
good to see you’re still out and about 🙂
It’s amazing how all of this stuff, from ‘the afterlife’ to ‘reincarnation’ to ‘Psi’ is mainstream now, while the armchair debunking is the fringe 🙂
Have you checked out Richard Tarnas’ book Cosmos & Psyche? Another good example of someone following the evidence where it leads…
Can one call “spirituality a substance” that has no weight, or a definition of the lightest matter states?? Could soul operate independently of the matter states, or , is the soul destine to live experience according too, those bound by the relation of those same matter descriptions?
A long time ago I remember a reference on the “ole cosmic Variance” pointing toward meditative individuals who thought they could float?:)
I was also thinking of Macdougall experiment with regard to 21 Grams
Just wondering if there are any experimental methods done since then?
@ David George – I dig your humble, poetic brilliance.
I would like to suggest to all you very well educated conservative people in the sciences – to find or grow some psychedelic mushrooms and ingest some – about an 8th of an ounce. It will open your mind and change your perspective – in a good way, no a great way. It only lasts around 4 hours and is natural/organic – leaves no hang over or toxic side effects physiologically but it will alter your brain – the way you see the world. After a few years the rat race will erase it from your memory but there are those rare moments when things crystallize and a sublime feeling overcomes you – and it comes right back – and you can hold on to it again for a bit of time until the 9-5 robot life that is only recent history for our species will erase it again – meditation now brings it back for me as I have not taken them in many moons but when I am back in nature someday in a safe environment with some loved ones I will do them again. A. Huxley wrote extensively about his experiences with psychedelics and mushrooms in particular were part of a rite of passage in one of his last great prophetic books – “Island” in which he espouses Eastern philosophy of being in the moment – “Right here, right now”. You could probably get the same effect from meditating and doing heavy duty yoga every day for 7 years but most of us do not have the time, discipline or may not like doing yoga so mushrooms are a easy quick way. God grew them here on earth for us to experience the awe and wonder we once had as children in the great sandbox that is life. Please avoid man-made in the laboratory acid and ecstasy – they both are too strong, last too long and have toxic side effects that make you feel lousy like a bad hang over. But mushrooms will let you really experience our physical as well as spiritual, emotional and inspirational aspects of our peaceful potential – inner/outer awareness that is in us/around us but has been suppressed by our uptight violent culture. It will also give you amazing insights into your different fields of science. Eventually it would lead and speed up humanity toward a higher consciousness level. We could use a kick in this positive vibration direction at this troubling cross roads of history that we find ourselves on earth in 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_theorem
citizen314: I had the best trip on shrooms (I talked with G_d, G_d turned out to be me, I forgave myself…) One thing I really enjoyed about them (asides from the no coming down badness) is the ‘revolving door effect’ where I would experience whatever drug I was on separately, so I would feel the caffeine high, then change to sugar high, then to nicotine, etc etc etc. Other than that, it always was a very…well, I tried to guide the trips, but it was always like “Ok, this is what I want you to experience” kind of deal 🙂
Good for Nick Herbert – very good reference.
This is fascinating also, Professor David Fontana’s book: Is There an Afterlife: A Comprehensive Overview of The Evidence (2005).
http://www.amazon.com/There-Afterlife-Comprehensive-Overview-Evidence/dp/1903816904
David Fontana was one of the authors of the Scole Report (which I don’t mind repeating again!). They concluded:
“This report is the outcome of a three-year investigation of a Group claiming to receive both messages and materialised or physical objects from a number of collaborative spirit communicators. It has been conducted principally by three senior members of the Society for Psychical Research. In the course of over 20 sittings the investigators were unable to detect any direct indication of fraud or deception, and encountered evidence favouring the hypothesis of intelligent forces, whether originating in the human psyche or from discarnate sources, able to influence material objeccts and to convey associated maningful messages, both visual and aural.”
I will give one extract from the report:
“The (normally single) light point would appear to: Leave at the base of the Pyrex bowl a three-dimensional image of a glowing crystal which is found to be insubstantial when seized by the investigators, then converting the glowing essence of this crystal into a solid form which could be picked up and replaced – and repeat the procedure twice, to the satisfaction of three close observers, one of whom [AE] (Arthur Ellison – electrical engineering professor) placed his head immediately above and close enough to the bowl to preclude the entry of a normal hand, his face being clearly visible to MK [Montague Keen] (classics scholar) and DF (David Fontana – psychology professor]) in the light from the crystal.”
I studies physics at uni. to postgrad. level and all this really baffles me but these are real observations that cannot be denied. Physicists should try and find models for this, clearly.
But you have to read all the Scole Report to get an idea of why they came to their (cautious and tentative) conclusions in their abstract above. The Scole Group (four people) also flew to Europe and the US and these phenomena were seen by scientists in California including some from NASA. This is all in the Scole Report, available from the SPR, I believe,
http://www.spr.ac.uk/main/
STFU people, your words are like turds piling higher and higher. You are going to die and be forgotten, get over it. The human condition is one of perpetual delusion, our eyes we look out from tell each us that we are the center of the universe when of course we are not. Face your actual insignificance, get over it. Wander too far from the shadow of experimentalism and our speculations descend into the quagmire of barroom philosophy, get over it.
It is a grand time to be alive. Science is growing like a well fed amoeba into the fog of the unknown. We don’t need no stinkin beliefs that sooth our fears. Get humble, we are just extra smart monkeys, stop settling for deep meaning concentrated, a child like sense of wonder that never grows old is plenty good enough for me.
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I hope the rudeness of my opening sentence is forgiven, delete it out if you find it too rude, I have little patience for people hiding behind theology and pretending they are wise or insightful. I give no quarter and no respect to people who fool themselves with convenient ignorance.
I disagree with one thing.
The soul may not be able to affect anything in this world. But it may be the immaterial thing that gives rise to our subjective experience. What do I mean?
You have a “gut brain” and digestion, yet you do not experience it in first person. You don’t experience anyone else’s thought process in first person. Why not?
If you go beyond “qualia” (seeing the redness of an Apple, etc.) you can have a perfectly consistent (or so it seems to me) dualistic world where the soul perceives things from a first-person point of view. Basically “you” are the soul. Not in the sense of self-pointing, for a machine can also point to itself and say “this is me”. But the sense of first-person point of view. Where does this point of view come from?
In Eastern religions, it is held that this point of view is an illusion. But that seems to be begging the question, because illusions need a point of view to begin with. Without a conscious observer, “existence” itself is meaningless. I could ask in what sense a universe exists which we can neither perceive or ever hope to discover. Maybe it exists! If I told you that there are white goblins in there, and 40 of them die every time you wash your hands through some mechanism. Would you care? Similarly, without a conscious observer, THE WORLD WE LIVE IN would be like that world. Existence seems to only matter when there are conscious observers.
Quantum mechanics seems to suggest something similar, that conscious observers are somehow special. The waveform function collapses only when a conscious observer observes it. What is so special about conscious observers?
Anyway, back to my point. The soul could interact with the world in a “read-only” way. How could you disprove this? In this case, life after death could happen when the soul interacts with another world in a “read-only” way. This world could be heaven. Or it could be one where the soul finally gets to interact more directly with the world!
So how can we answer the eerie questions raised by Quantum mechanics, and the fact that if we build a machine we can never be sure it is “conscious” in the same way we are? And how can we rule out the existence of the soul in the way I described?
Thanks for your time,
Greg
@Charon
“You clearly did not read Sean’s post, to which he links above, about the laws of physics, as they relate to our everyday life, being completely understood.”
You’re absolutely right. I hadn’t read it. They’re very good points, and well-stated. I was going to reply in my own blog, but I don’t think I’m going to pursue it. I realized that Sean had brought it to the point that my only reply would be, “But paranormal things ARE real! (raspberry)” and that’s not a discussion I’ve ever enjoyed.
Sorry for not following the link. I honestly hadn’t noticed it.
dave chamberlin: How many books about theology, spirituality, near death experience research, children past lives research etc did you read to acquaint yourself with the subject? Did you try to practice meditation to find some answers for yourself? My guess is that all this is just a mumbo jumbo for you and you did not try to study these topics at all. But who is then ignorant? I think that many contributions in this discussion can be summarized as : I do not understand why soul should exist =>therefore it does not exist.
The case that there might be something appropriately described as a soul within people who are alive consistent with science isn’t implausible, despite the fact that it doesn’t obviously follow from quantum electrodynamics. Indeed, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that we can identify parts of the brain that are clearly implicated in the folk experience of a soul, and others that are clearly not implicated in it. Routine body temperature and heart beat regulation is not the stuff of souls; consciousness is. The distinction even has legal relevance. We are comfortable calling people “dead” for legal purposes like decisions to terminate life support or commence organ donation even if they have some brain activity, so long as that brain activity does not involve activity associated with the folk definition of a soul.
It is not beyond scientific possibility that we could someday develop a way to put that part of us that folk wisdom calls a “soul” into a bottle or machine and sustain it beyond the death of the body.
The case that the element of a person that is appropriate described as a soul leaving an impact on the world a person leaves behind in death through interactions with others be they writings or paintings or conservations or what have you is likewise not implausible or inconsistent with science. When you’ve lived somewhere long enough, you can be consciously aware that this or that part of the world you experience is attributable to this or that person even if that person is long gone. Science wouldn’t name theories after their discoverers if these kinds of associations weren’t deeply a part of what it means to be human.
The case for coherent, post-corporal souls with continuity from the corporal soul, i.e. ghosts or an afterlife or karma, however, is a proposition that is supported by no credible evidence and lacks any scientifically plausible mechanism by which it could happen. These are plausible things to suppose if you have a pre-scientific world view, but the proto-scientific thinking that made these ideas seem to be plausible possibilities has been discredited.
I am reminded the ancient Chinese anatomists believed that there was an organ in the body responsible for Qi. At that time it was a logical and plausible hypothesis. But, we know now, having looked carefully and systematically at countless bodies, that this organ isn’t there, and that adds to the argument that the theoretical basis for acupuncture, etc. is deeply flawed even in cases where its practice does have empirically measureable effects.
While it might be possible to preserve what could fairly be called the soul of living person after the body is gone much as we can save the software and data that once resided on a dead laptop, the case that this actually happens now through a natural process is not supported by the scientific evidence.
@121 It is all mumbo jumbo to me all right, but not because I haven’t studied “children’s past life research” but because it is mumbo jumbo, Jumbo. I choose to read books where the author can distinguish between beliefs and verifiable facts, if that makes me ignorant in your eyes then I think further discussion is fruitless.
I am not a bible thumper and I was never overly religious or anything like that. I am however a person of strong faith, only my faith is based on an actual series of events that happened many years ago, over a two week period leading up to the one year anniversary of a friends death. These events were physically real, not coincidence, not wishful thinking, and changed my entire outlook on life. I don’t know exactly how it all works, I would like to think someday quantum science and what is currently known as religion find a way to support each other. Whose to say some of the protons, neutrons, and electrons actually make up consciousness itself? And those particles continue on after others that make up the human body die? I don’t know how it works, and I’m not going to argue, again all I will say is as a result of a real series of events in my life, I view “natural” science that paints everything with a broad brush, and claims to have all the answers as primitive, simple minded, and wrong, sort of like the “experts” centuries ago who said the world was flat.
Thank you, Citizen314.
Something struck me on this topic, it is the future-past conundrum (see #62). It may be the case that in physical reality all signals are transmitted into the future and also all signals are received from the future. I think that accords with GR. However, in the case of a ‘powered universe’ the power signal will be transmitted into the past (and received from the future). It will not be possible to identify this signal since its source is in the future.
This must be reconciled with the notion (or law?) that an effect lies in the future relative to its cause. Here the effect lies in the past relative to its cause. So which is it? I think the answer is in the light travel time, or “light moment” whose duration cannot be defined.