James and Whitehead on Life after Death

David Ray Griffin made his name in process philosophy and parapsychology before unexpectedly becoming engaged in writing a series of forensic studies about 9/11, which I have reviewed in these pages, and which led him to consider the ethics of American foreign policy more widely in a Christian perspective; indeed, his final book discusses the background to Ukraine, and I will review it in the next issue. Given his own last illness, it is not surprising that David’s thoughts turned to life after death. The unusual feature of this book is the incorporation of the philosophy of Whitehead in the overall approach. Unlike William James, Whitehead never studied directly the evidence for life after death, but David shows that he was open to the possibility. Moreover, his contact with other Fellows at Trinity College, Cambridge, seems to have had some effect, notably through his membership of the Apostles and his friendships with Henry Sidgwick, John McTaggart and the C.D. Broad.

The book is a wide-ranging treatment of the subject, beginning with arguments for its importance and the case against it. David points out that ‘the dominant view among science-based modern intellectuals is that the idea of life after death is not an idea to take seriously.’ (p. 160) He adds that this conclusion is virtually implicit in their presuppositions, given that they deny non-sensory perception and see the world as basically mechanistic, consisting of nothing but physical bodies and forces. This means that causality is a physically closed loop. Having undertaken his own research, David does not share this view and gives a clear account with case histories of various lines of evidence, including mediumship, near-death OBEs, apparitions and reincarnation.

David coined the term ‘panexperientialism’ in 1977 as a step beyond panpsychism and panentheism. Whitehead’s process philosophy was based on experience, and Appendix II discusses this position compared with dualism and materialism. He does this on the basis of three hard-core common-sense beliefs as presuppositions: 1) that we have conscious experience; 2) that this conscious experience… is not wholly determined but involves an element of self-determining freedom; and 3) that this partially free experience is causally effective in terms of our behaviour and gives us a degree of responsibility for our actions. Importantly, these beliefs are presupposed in our moral life, but materialism, as illustrated by John Searle, concludes that science rules out freedom of the will due to bottom-up causation. Hilary Putnam remarked ironically that such philosophies ‘leave no room for the rational activity of philosophy’ – Mary Midgley also made this point. David is equally critical of dualism, especially on the issue of interaction, hence his own position allowing for interactionism without dualism and taking into account emergence – which he also uses to argue that only human souls survive death.

With respect to action at a distance, Renaissance Philosophy allowed this through sympathetic magic, while mechanistic philosophers outlawed this possibility by formulating ‘sensate empiricism’, of which both James and Whitehead were critical. James’s approach was radical empiricism, requiring that we take account of every kind of experience, which leaves the door open to psychical research. Whitehead affirmed the reality of non-sensory perception as fundamental, especially in terms of what he called ‘perception in the mode of causal efficacy’ which he allied to perception of ‘presentational immediacy’ and ‘symbolic reference’. He also wrote specifically in support of the existence of telepathy – literally, feeling at a distance.

David makes another philosophical contribution with his chapter on our fine-tuned universe and panentheism. He presents the anthropic principle as a new teleological argument, and discusses in some critical detail the multiverse as an alternative to divine creation. I agree that this is more of a philosophical than a scientific theory, and he argues that it does not eliminate fine-tuning. He then goes on to explain how panentheism differs from pantheism and traditional theism and deism. He sees this view as a version of naturalistic theism and the universe as biocentric. Interestingly, C.S. Peirce and William James along with Whitehead regarded the laws of nature as habits, an idea more recently revived by Rupert Sheldrake. In some deeper sense, we belong to the cosmos, and, ‘far from being cosmic accidents, are high exemplifications of what the universe is all about.’ (p. 140)

Overall, the book provides a well-informed and level-headed analysis of evidence for life after death in the light of the philosophies of William James and Alfred North Whitehead. I would have been intrigued to know what David thought of what I consider to be a remarkable text, namely The Afterdeath Journal of a Philosopher, channelled by Jane Roberts and purporting to come from William James. There is enough psychological continuity and acute powers of observation and reasoning to make this plausible.