But certainly we agree that we cannot derive secure conclusions from subjective considerations. The subjective aspect of NDEs is just a matter of interpretation. We need objective evidence that people can in fact leave their bodies and even stronger objective evidence that they are seeing an afterlife realm. Otherwise what stops us from simply deciding that something special is going on?
As far as reincarnation memories are concerned, I think it's all wishful thinking and the inability to calculate probabilities.
Of course, I could be wrong.
~~ Paul
One of the problems is that genuine possibilities don't often or really present themselves (even in thinking) until we are prepared to think of a situation in a different way. It seems to you that reincarnation memories are about "calculating probabilities" because this is a way you are used to thinking about complex physical problems, where the physical abstraction is (broadly speaking) workable. Again, I don't intend this as a criticism, but I recognize in you a tendency I have seen in myself over the years of my life (thus far) and can spot its colors when I see it.
You say that "we cannot derive secure conclusions from subjective considerations" which is true of course up to a point, but not a point the experiencer might be too troubled with, and in some cases at least I can see the issue. To take a simple case, if I knew I was in pain, I *couldn't care less* what some physician telling me that it is "physically impossible" for me to be in pain, because the nerves were severed in the accident (or whatever) has to say about the matter. It's the idea that truth is only truth if it is "objectifiable" that somehow lurks near the core of the problem.
I'll give a practical example, and I'd be interested in hearing how you think "science" as currently practiced can progress this particular situation any further. There are far too many honest human tales of time-slip like "ghostly phenomena" in certain locations. Assuming these to be a real signal of a phenomenon that we do not understand (i.e. not reducible to one or another 'Shermerism') how do you propose that we use the present model of objective science...i.e. 'quantity and measurement'...to elucidate that phenomenon? It has already been tried. Indeed, parapsychologists following an "ologist" model in the hope that it would bear fruit for them...have already, for decades, been drifting in and out of haunted houses with infrasound monitoring equipment, static electricity guages, geiger counters, thermistors. Even given an IDEAL circumstance...what, in your opinion, do you imagine that these people would stumble upon?
Now I *do* think, for the reason given above, that there is indeed a sense in which the "environment" is capable of retaining and holding, and in some cases of expressing forth again (or as people are fond of phrasing it "playing back") an incident that at one time occurred at that location, hundreds, and in a few cases, thousands of years ago, especially emotionally laden or trauma laden events. Yes...I think there is enough prima facie evidence to suggest, strongly, that there is a feature of "the environment" here that we do not understand yet. When it does this, it (and possibly we ourselves in the mix) are "doing something" that we do not yet understand to call forth these phenomena. I also believe it is a great shame that they are "Shermerized" as the default reponse, because I suspect that lurking within them somewhere are real clues to major things we do not understand...the nature of consciousness, the nature of time, for instance, just to take two of the most pressing. Also, the nature of memory, the nature of agency, the nature of story...I could go on.
Now my problem is that I view coming into this situation with a set of thermistors and a Geiger counter to be roughly equivalent to opening up Shakespeare's Hamlet and trying to decode its meaning with a general practitioner's reflex hammer. How is that going to work?
In short, I don't think that our present conception of "environment" is large enough, subtle enough, or ontically appropriate to the task of finding out what this is, and that the solution is not "more sensitive thermistors" shipped to the site. Indeed, that's actually just likely to make our ignorance worse rather than alleviating it. How can it be elucidated "objectively" if such things as belief and agency and narrativity are part of the actual phenomenon itself? These things are freighted with what scientific method considers to be "subjectivity" which it has always assumed to be ontically derivative and which it has no tools for. How can this same "method" investigate a subjectivity that has authentic agency in some sense, when the "method" itself would need to entirely change the leopard of its spots for that to *even* be a doable task?