The unsolvable chain of evidence. For a past life memory to be verified, you'd need a documented fact from a deceased person's life that the current person could not possibly know through
normal means, and you'd have to rule out
fraud, cryptomnesia (hidden memory), and genetic or collective unconscious transmission. For the afterlife, you'd need a verifiable, two-way communication with a specific, identifiable deceased consciousness. The hard problem is that any piece of evidence (
e.g., a child knowing a dead person's
secret) can be explained by lesser hypotheses (telepathy between living minds,
chance, subconscious inference). The signal can never be isolated from the noise of unknown psychic phenomena or pure coincidence.
*Example: A child recalls being a pilot named
James who died in a WWII
crash, giving specific coordinates. Investigators find wreckage there of a plane piloted by a
James. The hard problem: This is astonishing, but is it proof of reincarnation? Alternative explanations include:
1) The child psychically
tapped into the collective memory/historical record of the event (clairvoyance, not past life). 2) Extreme coincidence plus confabulation. To prove a past life, you must first disprove all forms of present-life psychic ability, which is itself unproven. The conclusion is always one unproven assumption stacked on another.* Hard Problem of Past Lives & Afterlife.
