Mental Mediumship

Mental Mediumship Explanatory Options

The Explanandum A good explanation of mediumship must explain. . . . Significant Veridical Data: The medium’s possession of large amounts of detailed veridical information about the deceased and the sitters Significant Impersonation Data: The medium’s ability to accurately impersonate deceased persons, replicating the deceased’s physical gestures and distinctive manner of speech (e.g., phraseology, inflection, vocal timbre)

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.

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 medium’s 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.

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 medium’s 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. . . .

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 medium’s “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.

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.

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 Medium’s Prior Knowledge Medium Sitter

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.

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.

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 medium’s 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.

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

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

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 medium’s 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.

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?

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 sitter’s beliefs about the deceased and thought they were originating from the deceased. false beliefs about the deceased Discarnate Person Medium Sitter

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. . . .

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?

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.

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.

The similarities here, of course, are apparently not substantial. So it isn’t 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.

Also, dissociative states would have to be combined with psi functioning (e.g., telepathy) to explain the other crucial feature of mediumship, namely the medium’s possession of veridical information. We would need a hypothesis that combines dissociation with psi functioning.

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.

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).

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.

Mental Mediumship