Mental Mediumship

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Mental Mediumship
Explanatory Options
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The Explanandum
A good explanation of mediumship must explain. .
. .
Significant Veridical Data The mediums
possession of large amounts of detailed veridical
information about the deceased and the sitters
Significant Impersonation Data The mediums
ability to accurately impersonate deceased
persons, replicating the deceaseds physical
gestures and distinctive manner of speech (e.g.,
phraseology, inflection, vocal timbre)
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Option One Survival Hypothesis
Some deceased persons survive death and possess
the desire, intention, and requisite abilities to
communicate with the living.
Elements of the Survival Hypothesis
Some aspect of the individual self persist after
death and interacts with or is accessed by living
persons.
Since these deceased persons are ostensibly
discarnate persons, they must utilize telepathy
to communicate with the living, clairvoyance to
acquire knowledge about the physical world, and
psychokinesis to exercise causal influence on the
physical world.
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Option Two The Usual Suspects
1. Chance Coincidence Hypothesis Mediums acquire
correct information about the deceased by lucky
hits, chance guesses, or simple coincidence.
This seems initially plausible because we know
that veridical information, especially if very
general in nature, may be fortuitously acquired.
In the course of a mediums life, given enough
sittings, correct hits are bound to happen as a
pure chance event, especially if the medium
provides very general kinds of information.
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Difficulties with the Coincidence Hypothesis
1. Veridical information in the best cases of
mediumship (e.g., Piper, Leonard) is systematic,
detailed, and in large quantity, not just as an
assessment of the mediums career as a whole but
also with respect to individual sittings. This
is not what we would expect given the chance
coincidence hypothesis.
2. In the case of trance mediumship, the data in
need of explanation also include a highly
accurate and persuasive impersonation of deceased
persons. Due to its highly specific and dramatic
character, this is highly improbable as a chance
event.
(1) and (2) have led some skeptics to propose a
different kind of usual suspects hypothesis. . . .
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2. Hoax/Fraud Hypothesis The medium acquires
correct information about the deceased by
entirely natural means (e.g., employing
cohorts/agents, social networking, publicly
accessible documents) and deceptively presents
this information as if it originates from
communications with the deceased. The mediums
trance personalities are nothing more than
intentional impersonations to add dramatic effect.
Initial Plausibility Many mediums have been
caught engaging in fraud, so the hypothesis
arguably has some significant degree of prior
probability.
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Difficulties with the Fraud Hypothesis
The prior probability of the fraud hypothesis
(based on our knowledge of past incidents of
mediumistic fraud) must be balanced by other
relevant facts when assessing particular cases.
Consider the mediumship of Mrs. Piper and Mrs.
Leonard
Piper and Leonard were women of outstanding
character.
Piper and Leonard were thoroughly investigated by
professional researchers for over 20 years. Some
of these researchers (e.g., Richard Hodgson)
specialized in detecting spiritualist fraud, so
they regularly employed techniques to rule out
fraud.
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Other Difficulties with the Fraud Hypothesis
The fraud hypothesis assumes that the medium
knows the identity of sitters on some particular
occasion, otherwise the medium would not be able
to identify the sitter, nor would she be able to
select from her stock of knowledge highly
specific information that is relevant to the
sitter.
XX XXXXX XXXXX XXXX XX
Mediums Prior Knowledge
Medium
Sitter
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But in the stronger cases of mediumship
investigated by members of the societies of
psychical research, it is highly unlikely that
the medium would have known the identity of the
sitter.
1. Sitters were often introduced anonymously or
under pseudonyms, thereby precluding the
possibility of identifying the sitter by name.
2. In some cases (e.g., Piper), the medium is
physically removed from her familiar geographical
locality and taken to remote places where it is
unlikely she has any prior acquaintance with or
knowledge of the sitters.
3. In so-called proxy sittings researchers
carefully selected individuals to sit on behalf
of a would-be sitter (the principal), about
whom the sitter typically knew little if anything
at all.
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Given the results of mediumship in cases where
thorough measures were taken by professional
researchers to obviate fraud, the fraud
hypothesis is difficult to sustain.
Should we therefore conclude that mediumship in
these cases provides good evidence for survival?
1. Either mediumship is best explained by the
usual suspects hypotheses or it is best explained
by the survival hypothesis.
2. Mediumship is not best explained by the usual
suspects hypotheses.
So, 3. Mediumship is best explained by the
survival hypothesis.
While the conclusion is a necessary inference
from the premises, the first premise does not
exhaust the explanatory options. Incomplete
disjunction.
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Option Three Unusual Suspects
Telepathic Hypothesis The medium acquires
veridical information about the deceased by way
of telepathic interactions with the mind of the
sitters (or other living persons).
Initial Plausibility The sitter can confirm the
accuracy of the mediums information about the
deceased only because the sitter knows the
relevant facts about the deceased. These facts
would be telepathically accessible.
The antecedent probability of the hypothesis is
not exceedingly low if we accept the experimental
evidence for telepathy.
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The Challenge of the Telepathic Hypothesis to the
Survival Hypothesis
On the survival hypothesis, the medium acquires
her information about the deceased from
communications with the deceased. But the
deceased are discarnate persons, so their only
mode of communication would be telepathy. The
deceased would have to send the information
telepathically, the medium would have to receive
it telepathically, and then transmit back to the
deceased.
Discarnate Person
Medium
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So the survival hypothesis must suppose that the
medium has psychic abilities of some sort,
arguably of a fairly refined and powerful sort.
However, in this case, it is arguably at least as
plausible to suppose that the medium acquires her
information through a telepathic link with the
sitter.
Sitter Knowledge of The Deceased
Discarnate Person
Medium
Sitter
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Significant False Beliefs about the Deceased?
There are numerous cases in the literature (e.g.,
Piper and Leonard) in which the mediums
communicated false beliefs about the deceased.
The more interesting cases are those in which
the sitter herself had the same false beliefs
about the deceased.
If the mediums beliefs about the deceased are
the product of telepathy with the sitter, then we
would expect the medium on occasion to have false
beliefs about the deceased that correspond to
false beliefs about the deceased entertained by
the sitter.
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Predictive Power?
Would we expect the coincidence of medium/sitter
false beliefs about the deceased if the medium
were receiving her information directly from the
deceased?
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Problem?
According to the survival hypothesis, the medium
must have telepathic abilities to communicate
with the deceased.
But in that case, perhaps it would not be
surprising if the medium occasionally picked up
on the sitters beliefs about the deceased and
thought they were originating from the deceased.
false beliefs about the deceased
Discarnate Person
Medium
Sitter
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Problem for the Telepathic Hypothesis?
While telepathic functioning among living persons
would explain the significant veridical data
involved in mediumship, it would seem not to
explain the significant impersonation data. It
would explain what is communicated but not how it
is communicated.
The telepathic hypothesis must be modified. . . .
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Mediumship and Dissociative Psychology
1. In clinical settings, hypnotized subjects
exhibit both secondary personalities and
automatic writing, essential features of
mediumship.
2. The phenomenon of multiple personality
disorder (MPD), more recently designated
dissociative identity disorder (DID), provides
evidence that consciousness may become divided,
resulting in distinct centers of awareness and
self-perception, multiple personalities or
alters.
Could ostensible deceased persons speaking
through the medium be alternate personalities of
the medium?
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Characteristics of Alters
1. Alters exhibit different facial expressions,
voice quality, speech patterns, posture, and
bodily movements.
2. Alters exhibit different values, interests,
self appraisals, and body-image (including
apparent visual hallucinations).
3. Alters have phenomenologically distinct steams
of experience. They experience the world
differently.
4. Alters have their own stock of memories and
knowledge (not possessed by other alters).
5. Alters experience their mental states as
uniquely their own and believe that these states
belong to them.
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Mediumship and Alternate Personalities
1. Mediumistic communicators and controls exhibit
the same kind and degree of autonomy exhibited by
alters in DID cases. They are distinct centers
of self-consciousness.
2. In some cases, mediums are taken over by
ostensible discarnate personalities in a way that
resembles switching between alters, namely a
gradual change of persona accompanied by various
physical features (e.g., eye rolling, swaying,
blank stare).
3. Mediumistic communicators and controls
sometimes appear to be (conscious or unconscious)
creative psychological constructions of the
medium, very much like alters.
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The similarities here, of course, are apparently
not substantial. So it isnt clear from these
considerations that mediumistic personalities are
simply dissociative states of the medium, alters
of the sort of encountered in DID.
If mediumistic personalities are merely
dissociative states of the medium, then we should
expect psychological motivations, needs, or
interests on the part of the medium and sitters
to be partly responsible for the appearance of
ostensible discarnate personalities.
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Also, dissociative states would have to be
combined with psi functioning (e.g., telepathy)
to explain the other crucial feature of
mediumship, namely the mediums possession of
veridical information.
We would need a hypothesis that combines
dissociation with psi functioning.
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Motivated Psi Hypothesis
Psi
Dissociative State
Impersonation of deceased personality is the
product of a dissociative state.
Veridical information is the product of psi
functioning.
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Is a motivated psi hypothesis less simple than
the survival hypothesis?
Survivalist and motivated psi hypotheses both
require psi functioning, and apparently each will
require an equally refined and powerful form of
psi functioning.
Each hypothesis must also postulate the presence
of certain needs and interests as playing a role
in producing the observational phenomena, either
the interests and needs of the deceased (to
communicate with the living) or the living (to
communicate with the deceased).
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Potential Problem for Motivated Psi?
The simplicity of the motivated psi hypothesis
may be challenged by cases of mediumship that
produce (a) information about the deceased that
would require that the medium tap into multiple
living minds (including some not present) and (b)
impersonations that are convincing to different
persons who were acquainted with the deceased.
The survival hypothesis accounts for all the
veridical and impersonation data by supposing
that it originates from a single source , the
deceased personality.
The survivalist might argue that in this respect
the survivalist explanation is simpler than
motivated psi.