93. University of Kentucky Researcher, Dr. Kevin Nelson Skeptical of Near-Death Exper

[Interesting Ian]

The assertion that survival is an extraordinary claim is only remotely plausible if we assume some sort of materialist metaphysic. But as I have argued extensively in many places, reductive materialism necessarily has to leave out the existence of consciousness. Non-reductive materialism has to deny that we have free will. And all materialist positions have to deny that consciousness is a mental substance i.e it has to deny the commonsensical notion that we are selves enduring through time.

So, in short, in order to claim that surviving the death of our bodies is an extraordinary claim he has to provide formidable arguments which entail that some sort of materialist metaphysic accurately characterises reality. But I would suggest that this is as impossible task -- least of all for a non-philosopher to be able to provide them.

Unless there are some knock down arguments demonstrating that NDEs are not of some external reality, then surely the best people to judge this question are the people who actually undergo these experiences. And I think that at least for those who have undergone deep NDEs they are unanimous in their conclusion that they did actually perceive an afterlife realm -- in other words that the experience was real. So the question here is why does Dr Nelson think he knows better than they do? This is not to say they cannot be mistaken, but skeptics bear the burden of proof (in contrast to what Dr Nelson claims).

Dr Nelson asserts we know how the brain brings about consciousness. If this is so then he knows the impossible. The physical world is exclusively characterised in terms of structure and dynamics. Consciousness is characterised in terms of qualia (used in the broadest possible sense). One cannot derive qualia from structure and dynamics. But I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here (yet again!). He needs to read someone like David Chalmers.

Of course this by no means entails that consciousness is not a creation of the brain. But if it is it has to be taken as a brute fact. Consciousness simply resides outside the scope of science. Indeed from a scientific perspective it doesn't exist at all! The best we can do is correlate third person observations of the processes occurring in the brain with first person reports.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Ersby

I think that's the best skeptical take on NDEs that I've heard.

You have to be kidding surely?? The best arguments against NDEs being a glimpse of an afterlife is that only around 12% of people near death recollect such an experience and the existence of hell-like experiences.

Incidentally he mentioned it was fascinating that half of NDEs occur where there is no true medical crisis. And I have heard other skeptics mention this as if it provides evidence against the hypothesis that NDEs are a glimpse of an afterlife. There seems to be this implicit assumption that we would be unable to experience the afterlife unless we're near death (or are actually dead). But I have no idea why they should think this. So they need to provide an argument here.

Of course if one were perfectly healthy and had a deep NDE where you were offered the choice of crossing the boundary or going back, then presumably that couldn't be a real choice and hence would create a little difficulty for the survival hypothesis. But I think the deep NDEs are reserved for those who are dead or very close to death. I confess I'm not entirely sure though.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

You appear to think that the term extraordinary relates to someone's personal belief about the claim. It does not. It relates to the amount of established science that would have to be discarded if the claim were true.

~~ Paul

What established science would have to be chucked if "life after death" was shown to occur?

[Ersby]

Originally Posted by paqart

There is an old cliche that ten thousand monkeys at ten thousand typewriters for ten thousand years will randomly produce every book ever written.

AP

Hmm, when you say "old cliche", do you mean "something I just made up"? It's an infinite number of monkeys, and it's the work of Shakespeare, and it's meant as an attempt to illustrate just how big infinity is.

As for the interview, and speaking as someone with a only a passing interest in NDEs, I was interested in the idea that someone being resuscitated not being clinincally dead and I'd also like to know more about the Owen study mentioned. Anyone got a citation?

[larry4444]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
You appear to think that the term extraordinary relates to someone's personal belief about the claim. It does not. It relates to the amount of established science that would have to be discarded if the claim were true.

~~ Paul

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

What established science would have to be chucked if "life after death" was shown to occur?

I think Pauls statement explains a lot! - about why skeptics fight so hard to discredit any paranormal research. If ones "world view" is being attacked and may have to be "discarded if the claim were true" then ones ego identity might be threatened.
Maybe subsumed would be a better word than discarded.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Ersby

As for the interview, and speaking as someone with a only a passing interest in NDEs, I was interested in the idea that someone being resuscitated not being clinincally dead and I'd also like to know more about the Owen study mentioned. Anyone got a citation?

Features of "near-death experience" in relation to whether or not patients were near death

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

Incidentally he mentioned it was fascinating that half of NDEs occur where there is no true medical crisis. And I have heard other skeptics mention this as if it provides evidence against the hypothesis that NDEs are a glimpse of an afterlife. There seems to be this implicit assumption that we would be unable to experience the afterlife unless we're near death

About twenty years ago I had a classic NDE, except I wasn't in any kind of physical distress at all. Regardless, it had many of the same elements normally described as an NDE. With me, I was sleeping when I became immediately aware of my surroundings to a degree I couldn't have imagined previously, was totally aware of my physical body and its exact position in physical space, as well as the fact that my consciousness was separate from it, did not exist in physical space, and was only associated with my body primarily during periods of consciousness.

I was also aware of a history prior to being associated with my present body, and that "I" would continue afterward. Then (skipping a lot of details here) I was shown every single event in my entire life, including events that facilitated my parents coming together, reasons for me to be born as their child, anything that was pertinent, was there. For my own life, it was everything, pertinent or not, big, small, medium, it was all there, from birth to death. Not only that, but I was shown every ripple effect of every action I took, every word I uttered, every thought that passed through my mind. If I did anything that affected someone else, I saw the effect from that person's point of view, and then the next person affected, and on and on until the effects terminated.

It was an incredible amount of information, more than I thought possible, especially because I wasn't asleep for very long. At the end of being shown all these things, I was asked if I wanted to accept the life. I thought about it, and decided that it was a good idea, despite there being a number of distressing events. Like a book, I could take it all, or pick a different life. By picking this one, I accepted everything it contained all at once. The reason I did it is that I saw that I would learn things that were important to me, so they were worth the cost in distress and effort.

Yogis have had similar experiences during meditation, and they weren't near death either. What is nice about restricting the definition to true near death moments is that according to a materialist worldview, consciousness without a brain or functioning body is impossible. Ironically, ESP studies could be used as some support to suggest that this is already an incorrect assumption, because if a person (or a dog, or cat, or my cat Porgy after he died) transmits a thought to another person, then there is at least some non-physical component to the communication.

I just remembered another non-NDE NDE, this one belonged to a friend of mine, a college professor, who must have brought it up to me on a dozen occasions. He was riding a horse when he was tossed into the air. There was something about his position and the horse's position that put him in imminent danger of death, and he then had a full life review. When it was done, he said that it seemed that time had slowed down to a crawl, giving him the ability to carefully figure out what he had to do to escape being crushed by the horse, then did it without injury.

Personally, I think that studying NDE's is very interesting, but not as an indication of the survival of consciousness. For that I prefer medium research, or of death announcement dreams, like the four or five I've had like that. The reason is that, while I disagree with Nelson's conclusions, and consider the ideas he brings up, that the entire NDE takes place in the couple of split seconds on either side of a flat EEG, to be laughably ludicrous, it cannot be easily defended against that point, as silly as it is. There are other ways to suggest survival of consciousness, that do not have this fault.

To me, NDE's will always be susceptible to criticism from people like Nelson. Not because the criticism is correct, but that if you insist on looking hard enough, you can blur the image so much that your subject just evaporates. Nelson can't say that an NDE occurs within the millisecond before flat EEG, but no one else can say with scientific certainty that it occurs during the flat EEG either. Personally, I don't think it matters either way because the heart of the issue is whether we occupy space in a purely material universe or if our physical bodies are somehow driven by a non-physical consciousness.

If you try hard enough, you can "disprove" anything. Buy a crystal ball, a sphere of crystal, and then prove it isn't a "sphere" or "crystal". With enough effort, it can be done. This is what the arguments of skeptics make me think of, but even more, that they can only be so "skeptical" because they believe so fervently, with so much blind faith, in something else. They think it is based on "evidence", but this is a decision based on what constitutes evidence and what does not, a subjective judgment.

AP

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Ersby

Hmm, when you say "old cliche", do you mean "something I just made up"? It's an infinite number of monkeys, and it's the work of Shakespeare, and it's meant as an attempt to illustrate just how big infinity is.

This is cute, but irrelevant. Apparently there are variations on the cliche, but they mean the same thing. I have never heard or read this particular cliche in the context of illustrating the size of infinity. In my experience, it is always brought up in the context of probability and infinity. It is used to illustrate that all possible outcomes, including exceedingly improbable ones, are covered by probability because they exist within an infinity of possibilities.

What I mean to convey with the example is that even infinity, when it comes to probability, has structure. This structure is not truly random. For instance, if monkeys could be trained to do this, they likely would not see any reason to modify their behavior at a typewriter to vary the results. That is structure. This means that in an infinity of time, they may produce a wide variety of results that do not ever approach so much as the English text for the first page of a travel brochure. "Win a trip to the Caribbean!" may not occur once in the entire infinity the test takes place within, nor even that other gem, ";oreui.erhuerhruh". The reason is that the monkeys do not have a search pattern that creates new variations on what has been written without duplicating what has been written. To do that, they would need a designed structure. Once you have that, it is no longer random.

AP

[paqart]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Here you go mixing apples and oranges again. You rag on skeptics for not being willing to accept the supernatural, then mix this up with psi, and then draw a conclusion that is not warranted.

As far as I am concerned, what you call "psi" is the result of what can just as easily be called an interaction between the physical and the supernatural. I intend to continue using these words interchangeably, because I think that is the correct way to use them, your objections notwithstanding. If I adopted your usage to satisfy you, I wouldn't have any valid reason to do so. I'll take this objection as implicit in any response you should make in the future, to save you the trouble of typing it out too often.

Only when a theory of psi is developed and then shown to require the supernatural will I agree that the two are related.

What you do in your own mind is your domain. I have no intention of interfering with this, but I will not adopt your policies for myself, because in my case they are unworkable.

You appear to think that the term extraordinary relates to someone's personal belief about the claim. It does not. It relates to the amount of established science that would have to be discarded if the claim were true.

You are exactly right here. I do believe this is true, so telling me it isn't doesn't do much for me here. "Established science" can be defined in many ways. First, there are quite a few "established scientists" like Sheldrake, Stevenson, Tart, etc, who are "established" despite heavy criticism, but their research is critical of the scientists who criticism them, so these cancel each other out.

Another way to look at it is to look at the spiritual "sciences" (and this is how they are described, in their respective languages) of Buddhism, Yoga, Taoism, etc. If a materialistic worldview is correct, keeping in mind that it is a relatively recent idea, then millennia of these other sciences, or "established science" is tossed. In that equation far less is lost by dumping the materialist view.

AP

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by P_Synthesis

Made this point on the page itself, but should ask here because you are all more familiar with the research than I. Is there in fact any evidence that NDE patients are undergoing greater fight-or-flight stimulation than non-NDEs?

Alex is saying that greater accuracy of resuscitation recall from NDE = better factual awareness, but the interviewee pointed out greater bloodflow to the brain -- and other physiology, which interestingly would be measurable, eg. adrenaline or cortisol levels. Is there any info, or what does the literature suggest more generally about stress level in NDE patients? Is there a correlation there? Just curious...

I don't really understood what the significance of the flight or fight response was but adrenaline is commonly given during cardiac arrest. So assume it to be quite high usually.
There was a study or 2 where blood samples were taken but IIRC only analyzed for oxygenation.

BTW, you'll like this, it isn't NDEers who had better recall but only OBEers.
Don't take the result too seriously, though. It is based on a comparison of only 2 OBEers with 37 non-OBEers (NDEers and non-recallers combined). 2 is a rather small sample.
Also the methodology may have been lacking but I don't have access to the actual paper. This summary makes it seem to have been a subjective impression by Sartori.
When contrasted with the control group, who had undergone resuscitation but did not report an OBE, many discrepancies were discovered. Having been asked to re-enact their resuscitation, the control group’s reports were very inaccurate and demonstrated misconceptions and errors between the actual procedures performed, as well as equipment used. Many of these patients either had no idea as to how they had been resuscitated or made guesses, based on what they had previously seen on television.
iands.org - Penny Sartori, PhD: Prospective Study