BICS Essay Contest

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Tom Butler
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Joined: February 23rd, 2017, 10:24 pm

BICS Essay Contest

Post by Tom Butler »

I dropped by this forum to ask if any of you are aware of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) essay contest. https://bigelowinstitute.org/index.php

The essay question was "What is the best available evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?" As I understand, there were 1300 applications, of which 204 were selected to submit an essay. Of those, 29 were selected as "winners." Prizes amounted to 1st. = $500K, Second = $300K and third =$150K. There were also eleven $50K winners and fifteen $20K.

Bigelow noted in an SPR interview that "When I formed the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies last June, we looked into the number of organizations and the number of researchers in this field and it seemed as though the field needed some energizing."

and

"Proving whether the other side exists or not is actually just the first step. The research community going back to the 1800s has been dominated by the effort to prove the existence in one way or another, or another, or another… so it has been dominated by the necessity of trying to prove the other side exists and that has gone on for almost two centuries, so at some point here, I want to move on and go to the next level up, which is probably much more profound than simply whether or not some aspect of your consciousness is going to survive your bodily death."

The website will soon have all 29 winning essay for your free reading. Even though some of the winners I have seen are just compilations of old information and most seems to be explainable with the Super-Psi Hypothesis, I think this represents an important opportunity for all of us to see what some of the parapsychologists and survival researchers are thinking.

Academically trained philosophers tend to be physicalists. Perhaps the essays will help change that a little. I am interested in your thoughts once (if) the essays have been reviewed.
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LuckyR
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Re: BICS Essay Contest

Post by LuckyR »

I was not aware. Please post a link to the essays when they become available.
"As usual... it depends."
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Tom Butler
Posts: 107
Joined: February 23rd, 2017, 10:24 pm

Re: BICS Essay Contest

Post by Tom Butler »

User avatar
Tom Butler
Posts: 107
Joined: February 23rd, 2017, 10:24 pm

Re: BICS Essay Contest

Post by Tom Butler »

Concerning the BICS essay contest, I have begun reviewing the winning essays. In preparation for the reviews, I put together a short "Rules of Evidence – Survival" at https://ethericstudies.org/rules-of-evidence-survival/

The first essay review is Review of Jeffrey Mishlove’s BICS Essay at https://ethericstudies.org/review-jeffr ... ics-essay/

I will stop posting anything about this here, as it becomes a little too "inside baseball" for philosophical discussion.

==============================================

I will make an observation, though. If you consider the diagram below, there are three dominant points of view amongst people speaking with authority about survival. Given the same set of examples and research, they tend to arrive at very different perspectives on survival. These are usually very smart. well-educated people. They are not prone to speaking without discernment. Yet, close examination of the evidence and science seems to indicate that they are translating academically sound logic with untenable beliefs.

I think the key is in how the relationship between mind, consciousness and habitat is understood. For instance, the Survival Hypothesis and the Super-Psi Hypothesis are usually discussed as alternative explanations for apparent survival evidence. In practice, Super-Psi is a characteristic and survival is a change in state. That is the way they are modeled, but too often, that is not the way they are discussed.

This goes back to the question of what makes evidence evidential. A person claims that mind is a quantum-microtubular effect of brain cells to explain the same effect I might explain with the expression of intended order. It is necessary to explain how either explanation is true and how it takes us from effect to principle.

It begins to look as if we need to first agree on the nature of Duality before we can even begin to discuss survival.

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