[Buddha-l] Reïncarnation is a memoryproblem

[curt]

S.A. Feite wrote:
>
> On Jun 12, 2007, at 11:24 AM, curt wrote:
>
>> This is obviously a highly flawed study, but the article does not 
>> provide enough detail to tell just how badly flawed it is.
>>
>> As has already been pointed out, "lost memories" that are "retrieved" 
>> under hypnosis have been  known to be suspect for quite some time. In 
>> fact, there's no particular reason why such "memories" should have 
>> ever been seen as reliable in the first place.
>>
>> To conflate the well known phenomenon of "false memories" with 
>> "belief in reincarnation" is bad science.
>
> Not if you understand the practice of "past life regression". Most 
> forms of past-life regression are forms of hypnosis where the upfront 
> suggestion is that it will retrieve past life memories. Therefore 
> there is an upfront bias which could be capable of implanting a false 
> memory of past lives. The same thing happens in hypnosis when the 
> hypnotist uses suggestive questions rather than unbiased questioning.
>
"Past life regression" is a few decades old. The idea of rebirth is 
thousands of years old (see, for example, Socrates' "Myth of Er" at the 
end of Plato's "Republic"). That "past life regression" can result in 
"false memories" is trivially obvious and has no bearing on the general 
issue of the idea of rebirth. As a general rule people "believe in" 
rebirth/reincarnation due to the fact that they have adopted (or were 
born into) a philosophical/religious system in which rebirth plays a 
role. Very few people believe in rebirth because they have vivid 
detailed "memories" of past lives - whether those "memories" were 
hypnotically suggested or not.

It seems to me that there are two reasonable questions that can be asked:
(1) Why is there a widespread belief in rebirth/reincarnation?
(2) Why do some people claim to have detailed knowledge of "past-lives"?

These two questions are not unrelated, but they are not interchangeable, 
either. ALL of the subjects in the study in question were selected 
precisely because they had come to believe that they had past lives 
AFTER undergoing hypnotherapy. That such people would be likely to 
display source-monitoring memory errors is, well, totally freaking 
obvious. These people were pre-selected solely on the basis of the fact 
that they believed that hypnotically placed suggestions were real 
memories. Duh.

- Curt