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the scientific search for spirit

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this is a sociology of science project

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i am interested in how knowledge about

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consciousness and survival is

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i've been doing this work for about a

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year now including last fall when i was

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on sabbatical

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and uh this wasn't partly supported by a

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grant from gettysburg college

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so far i've interviewed 21 people

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mostly scientists or academics

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who are interested in survival i've also

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done participant observation

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at research organizations and

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professional conferences

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like this one and there's a lot of

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literature to review

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the complete idiot's guide to near-death

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now the kinds of things that we could

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group under consciousness and survival

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i have on this slide although of course

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many parapsychologists will talk about

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overlap between the two categories so

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for example

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ndes might provide evidence for survival

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and spirit mediumship

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might just be psy among the living or

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clairvoyance here are some handy

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concepts for looking

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at this in terms of sociology of science

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so that thomas kuhn talking about

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paradigms and irving goffman

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frames those are nice ways of of seeing

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these things as people processing data

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through a certain

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perspective and i have the tinkertoy

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house on the left

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to illustrate social construction

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whereas

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my amino acid molecule glycine on the

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right

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that's real that's objectively real

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now of course i tell my students all the

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time that

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the map is not to territory there's no

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such thing as a model or a concept which

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has

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an absolute one-to-one correspondence

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with reality

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language games jean-francois leotard

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one of the language games played in

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science is to talk about

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anecdotal in the sense of merely

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anecdotal evidence so that if you set up

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a linguistic frame in which elite

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science

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is replicable controlled laboratory

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experiments

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and everything else is just anecdotal

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then

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of course that marginalizes humanities

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as a way of knowing anything it also

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marginalizes

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social science in which laboratory

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methodology

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is rarely appropriate

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also stanley aranowitz in sciences power

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talks about how science uses an ideology

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to protect itself

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protect its interests now one of the

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the main cultural splits here that's

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relevant for talking about

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spirituality survival and consciousness

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is the split between religion and

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science which most people don't realize

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actually got

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a whole lot wider after darwin than it

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was before darwin

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and by the end of the 1800s the

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professionalization of science

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made it very difficult for spiritualists

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to claim that their seances i mean they

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didn't have university degrees so how

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could they claim

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that they were providing in their

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seances evidence

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for survival or consciousness

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consciousness after so-called death

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also serious scientists even ones with

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nobel prizes

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in london who wanted to test spirit

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mediums were ignored

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because their research was in a taboo

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area it was too close to science

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i mean that's a slip i guess too close

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to

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religion now what's my role in all of

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this

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i think i'm doing a kind of applied

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sociology it actually just dawned on me

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while i was preparing this talk

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this is applied sociology now as you can

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see i tend to lean a little toward the

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social constructionist perspective

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however i'm not a radical postmodernist

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i don't claim that science is impossible

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i don't say that truth is only what we

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all say it is

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i i'm kind of a moderate and i actually

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think

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that i can look i'm probably kidding

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myself right probably i think that i can

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look

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at all these frames and use a kind of

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sociological filter

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take a holistic look of all these things

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and

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together we'll see in a few years

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i'm sure you're all aware that the

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biggest stumbling block

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in this kind of research is the normal

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science decision

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that certain topics are okay to study

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and others are not

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robert k merton a sociologist talked

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about

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how the scientific ideal the ethos in

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science

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and objectivity he was really dreaming i

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think but that was

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a nice try in reality see i go with

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stanley toronto what's being a radical

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leftist myself

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stanley aranowitz talks about science as

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power

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in which in actually establishment

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establishment science has an ideology

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that claims objectivity when it's really

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not and

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i like when aranowitz says that the

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ideology

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of science is that science has no

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ideology

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we're the experts it's only a method you

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don't where's your degree

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where's your nsf grant to study

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mediumship you don't count

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end of story

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so it shouldn't be that certain subjects

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are just

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not allowed just completely deviant to

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even ask questions about

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but that's what happens and as jl and

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heineck the astronomer

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and ufo research researcher said science

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is not always what scientists do he also

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said that ridicule is not part of the

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scientific method

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but ridicule is a strong aspect of

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social control

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in normal science i use the word normal

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science to talk about the control system

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of science so what i hope to do is to

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transcend any one frame

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unconsciousness and survival and attempt

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to see what it all means i like to do a

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sympathetic reading of all these things

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the kind of reading you don't get when

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you submit your article to a journal

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you know what i mean i would like to get

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a sympathetic reading

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actually try to understand from all

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these perspectives

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in the true spirit of science and uh by

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the way

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if you let it leak out as a sociologist

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that you're not just interested in how

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scientists

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look at survival but admit that you

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actually care if there is such a thing

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as survival

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you're in the sociological dog house and

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that's me in the dog house

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losing my religion i'm used to being in

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the dog house

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because of other things that i've done

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other studies i've done

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such as my study of ufo researchers in

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which i

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i interviewed 91 ufo researchers and i

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read the literature

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to try to figure out how and why this

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subject

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was labeled as deviant science and also

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to find out the subcultures of

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of different frames that various

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ufologists used

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so that you could say that there is a

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subculture of nuts and bolts ufologists

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and a new age wing of ufology

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and this is hemmed in on two sides by

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normal science debunkers

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and ufl ufo cults on the other and

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there's a similar

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parallel in red down here with

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subcultures that have something to do

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with consciousness

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let me give you some examples of what i

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found so far in my

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interviews and observations

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this one institute that i observed

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is strongly applied now they do do

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research

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and they are science based and they want

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to avoid any particular

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religious tag but

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they assume the existence of

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consciousness

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and survival and do applied workshops so

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people are having out-of-body

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experiences and

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doing spirit rescues and so on and the

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one former

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director of research that i talked to

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said yes i've spent many years

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researching what i already know to be

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true in other words

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experience is primary i'm just looking

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at the clock i guess you look at my

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watch

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experience is primary and he had

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experiences as a child that

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gave him no doubt that there was

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consciousness apart from the body

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i interviewed one philosophy professor

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who is

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truly exquisite in the way he discusses

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the various perspectives on survival

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it's the best stuff that i've read

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actually

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and then he threw me for a loop when i

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asked him about quantum physics

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and how it might apply and he said it's

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just irrelevant

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and i i'm still processing this and

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trying to understand his perspective but

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basically what's going on here

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is that he thinks that that issues of

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mediumship

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or whatever is apparent survival it's a

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behavioral science question

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basically although i'm oversimplifying

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his point of view and that to

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reduce that down to a physics problem is

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reductionism

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so you could say that this is an example

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of disciplinary differences

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one lab scientist i interviewed said

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that there is a tendency

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for people in interested in remote

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viewing when you ask them about survival

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possible survival cases like in spirit

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mediumship to apply

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a psy explanation not to mention any

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names here

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but that people who