Search

We used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.'s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and their relation to transpersonal psychology. The commentators' input identified only a few measurable variables or empirical tactics that conceivably challenge or refine our latest Drake-S Equation for survival. However, a review of these suggestions using logical and statistical criteria revealed that none immediately upend our previous conclusion that the published effect sizes for various Known Confounds (including hypothetical "living agent psi") do not fully account for the published prevalence rates of Anomalous Experiences traditionally interpretated as survival. However, the commentators proposed several good recommendations for new studies that could eventually alter this calculus. Accordingly, we outline the architecture of a proposed cross-disciplinary research program that extends the present MTS approach and its collected insights and focuses strictly on empiricism over rhetoric in this domain. The results of this coordinated effort should likewise help to clarify a range of psychological and biomedical phenomena that speak to the nature and limits of human consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran's (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the "Drake equation" to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., "anomalous effects") or refutes (i.e., "known confounds") the survival hypothesis. But unlike the earlier application, this research included a study-specific estimate of the hypothesized variable of "living agent psi" via a new meta-analysis of empirical studies (N = 17) with exceptional subjects vs participants from the general population. Our updated analysis found that putative psi was a meaningful variable, although it along with other known confounds still did not account for 30.3% of survival-related phenomena that appear to attest directly to human consciousness continuing after physical (biological) death. Thus, the popular conventional variables that we measured here are seemingly insufficient to account for a sizable portion of the purported empirical data that has been interpreted as evidence of survival. Our conclusion is nonetheless tempered by several assumptions and limitations of our speculative exercise, which ultimately does not affirm the existence of an 'afterlife' but rather highlights the need for measurements with greater precision and/or a more comprehensive set of quantifiable variables. Therefore, we discuss how our probabilistic approach provides important heuristics to guide future research in this highly controversial domain that touches both parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]