A comment on a skeptical article on Near-Death Experiences

I read the following article two days ago:

Can We Explain Near-Death Experiences?

The author concludes that, "NDEs are probably caused by changes in brain activity rather than direct contact with a supernatural dimension".


Why does he think this?

Briefly because:

1. Strokes, seizures, and brain injuries can lead to experiences reminiscent of NDEs.
   
   
2. Brainwave oscillations have been observed in rats having heart attacks.
   
   
3. Psychoactive drugs -- ketamine, DMT -- resemble NDEs.

First of all, the author assumes the idea that the brain produces consciousness is entirely unproblematic. That's false, it's extremely problematic. There is, what has been labelled, the hard problem of consciousness.  This is a problem engendered by the notion that it is the brain that somehow produces consciousness.  I explore this problem in a few places in this blog.  For example, in part 2 in this blog post and also this blog post, especially from part 3 onwards. Incidentally, I should add that if consciousness is not generated by the body, this doesn't mean there aren't any problems.  Nevertheless, they don't appear to be the apparent intractable problems associated with "the hard problem".     

Secondly, it ignores the fact that there is no detectable brain activity at the threshold of death, which is when NDEs appear to take place.

Thirdly, it ignores all the anomalously acquired information that NDErs give when they come back from the brink.

Clearly, NDE type experiences are facilitated by an appropriately dysfunctional brain. One possibility is that's because the brain produces NDE's, and indeed all other conscious experiences.  But that possibility encounters the difficulties I mention above. Arguably, difficulties that are insurmountable.  

There is another possibility. Let's assume there is an afterlife.  Consider that we do not normally have contact with this afterlife realm whilst in our embodied state. Why would this be the case?  I suggest it would have to be because the brain inhibits access. Sometimes this is referred to as the filter theory of the mind-body relationship.

What, though, if the brain is not functioning correctly?  Could it always perform this inhibiting function regardless of how the brain is altered?  Surely not.  And, if it doesn't, this might occasionally allow our consciousness to have a glimpse of other realities that we may enter into after death (and note the word realities, the afterlife might not simply be one place but might consist of possibly innumerable realms).  Such a hypothesis is supported by not only what we label NDE's, but also mystical experiences, psychedelic trips, and the occasional reports of people recovering their mental faculties near death.  I should also note that recent research into psychedelic induced experiences suggest they are initiated by reduced activity of the brain.  All of which gives weight to the notion that the brain serves to inhibit consciousness rather than produce it.  I address objections to this inhibiting or filter hypothesis here and here (latter half).  

Incidentally, the skeptical article originally included a video that now seems to have disappeared in the two days since I last looked (nor can I locate the video in the link he now provides).   I actually linked to and discussed this video around 5 years ago in my other blog here.  Unfortunately, the link to the video on there is now dead too.  This video is elusive!  Fortunately, it can be watched on facebook here (at least at the time of typing this).

Also see:
NDE’s, burden of proof, and Ockham’s razor
Guardian Article on Near Death Experiences (NDE's)
Reasons not to scoff at ghosts, visions and near-death experiences

Guardian Article on Near Death Experiences (NDE's)

I read the following Guardian article:

What do near-death experiences mean, and why do they fascinate us?

Of the afterlife, [Kevin] Nelson [a neurologist] told me: “This claim is the most extraordinary in science, and there is no ordinary, let alone extraordinary, scientific evidence to support it.” (He added: “These are matters of faith.”)

A few comments:

What constitutes an extraordinary claim? A claim is deemed to be extraordinary if it is not consonant with our background beliefs about the nature of the world.  Those background beliefs are the assumption that materialism is correct, more precisely that the discoveries of science exhausts reality.  However, if we assume materialism, then there cannot be an afterlife, at least not in the form of a soul dwelling in some afterlife realm.  That doesn't just make an afterlife extraordinary, it makes it impossible.

So, since a proponent of an afterlife would scarcely embrace modern materialism, Kevin Nelson is transparently begging the question.  He would need to justify that modern materialism is very likely to be correct.  But I have argued that modern materialism is simply not compatible with the existence of consciousness, and here we're simply talking about our everyday embodied consciousness.  See my: Why the existence of consciousness rules modern materialism out.  In short, it seems to me that this assertion that an afterlife is an "extraordinary claim" cannot be substantiated.


Also, Nelson appears to be construing "scientific evidence" in the sense that we cannot derive a continued consciousness after death from everything we know about the material world and its structure.  That's true, but it conveniently leaves out the fact that we cannot derive normal everyday embodied consciousness from the  material world and its structure either!  Consciousness needs to be causally efficacious before we have evidence of it, and the causal efficacy of consciousness is denied by most scholars (we're talking here about consciousness per se rather than its neural correlates). 

Again, this can be circumvented by saying consciousness is identical (not merely caused, elicited etc) to neural activity. So yes, we can then have embodied consciousness, but not any unembodied consciousness.  But that again is to transparently assume modern materialism (NB I am specifically talking about materialism here, not just any position that holds the brain produces consciousness).  

And what is meant by saying an afterlife is a "faith"? Why is the hypothesis that our consciousness continues after the death of our bodies labelled a faith, but not the extinction (annihilation) hypothesis? By labelling the survival hypothesis a "faith" he appears to be implying that the "no afterlife" thesis should be the default, more reasonable, one. But why is it? I deny that it is. See my Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife.

The article also says:

Daniel Kondziella, a neurologist affiliated with the department of neurology at Copenhagen University Hospital, told me that if “people are able to describe and report their experiences, even many years later”, then surely “they have been processed by the brain and stored in its memory centres.”

To say that memories are stored appears to me to deny that memories are a property of a [non-material] self.  I discuss such a self here.   So arguments are required as to why my conception of the self is unsatisfactory.  Apart from that, it seems that Kondziella is also begging the question since if the brain stores memories, then surely the brain produces the rest of our consciousness?  Besides, which, it seems this whole notion that memories can be stored is fatally problematic as I explain here.  Memories just exist and the fact that brains can impede access to them has no more significance then the fact eyeglasses can impede vision if the lenses are cracked. 

 

The claim that people who have had a "near death experience" are not dead.

People keep saying that NDE's necessarily cannot provide any evidence for an afterlife, since those who underwent the experience didn't really die. Presumably, the idea here is that if they didn't actually die, then whatever they experienced, cannot be of any afterlife realm.

There are two issues here. The first issue is, how do they know these people never actually died? When asked this question, they say it's true by definition! They returned to life, and anyone who returns to life, by definition, never actually died.

But I submit, this then makes their original assertion vacuous. The issue here is whether it is possible that what NDErs experience is a glimpse of some afterlife realm. Such a possibility can only be ruled out if we are in a position to surmise their brains are perfectly capable of having wholly produced these experiences. But, if during an NDE, there is no detectable brain activity, or there is insufficient brain activity, then it matters not one whit whether one labels this as still being "alive" or dead. From a metaphysical neutral standpoint, the most straightforward hypothesis under this scenario is that those undergoing an NDE are perceiving some type of external reality, even though the details seen might be shaped and moulded by one's implicit and cultural expectations. Of course, it might be contested whether the NDE really occurred during this time period, or it can be argued that there might have been undetectable brain activity that produced the experience. But it remains the case that this experience does provide evidence for an afterlife realm -- non-scientific evidence, perhaps, but evidence nevertheless. And this evidence could be very powerful if we have good reasons to surmise the NDE indeed occurred when there was no detectable brain activity.

The second issue is that, in any case, it's not entirely clear to me why a person couldn't experience the afterlife realm whilst still alive. And I mean alive in the proper sense, as in some detectable brain activity. If we are destined to travel to some afterlife realm(s) at death, then whilst still alive it presumably must be the brain that prevents the perception of this realm or realms. Perhaps it is some particular region of the brain that does this. If this region is compromised in its functionality, or is simply not as active as it normally is, then perhaps one could still be alive and yet have some perception of this other reality or realities. If the skeptic wants to maintain that this is impossible, the onus is upon him to explain why.