Discussion

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

I011010011: Things that are worthy of discussion ( such as one in this posting ) rarely get any attention.

BoardsOfCanada: Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one.Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality.Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge.- Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few- Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping DMT, preconceived notions from Hollywood, the general culture and so on)- Assess whether these make any sense under the conditions that NDEs occur, and scratch the ones that don't. Then watch a few more and you'll have to reject more still.In particular, what was convincing to me, is how very very similar the cases are and that they happen to tribes living at a stone age technological level with no contact to Hollywood, and that there is a described case from Plato from over 2000 years ago that is identical to modern cases.In the end, my conclusion is that objective reality has to be partially rejected, and all experience is the combination of some "nature of reality" as interpreted by each individual. This leads to clear contradictions if one assumes that there is one objective reality. Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of these, most often only some. One is traveling from the location of death to a heavenly realm. For westerners this often is flying through a star trek like hyperspace tunnel, while for stone age people they might be in a canoe that travels by itself to a distant island. So the nature of it is something like being pulled silently without effort towards a point in a manner that isn't part of the experiencer's notion of what's possible, and it is then realized and interpreted by each individual in the closest way that they can relate to.

throwanem: I don't remember anything like that, but I strongly doubt I was ever in asystole. (I went looking for occurrence rates of spontaneous recovery from that 'flatlined' state, and found only case reports - all nicknaming their subjects "Lazarus...") On the other hand, it sounds like he was a lot better perfused when he lost consciousness than I was by the time I did, so who knows, really?

throwanem: A materialist would argue that nothing you describe rules out malfunction in a brain failing rapidly due to oxygen starvation, and that the commonality of experiences is explicable in terms of common failure modes in effectively identical brain architecture. (Just about everyone's visual cortex works about the same, etc.)I think it's cute how hardcore materialists believe it is even in theory possible to distinguish their position from ideological simulationism. Maybe in a thousand years. Not now. But phenomenology is the name of the philosophical discipline that you are now struggling to recapitulate.

BoardsOfCanada: So we agree but one point: There are tens of thousands of NDEs happening under monitored conditions (operating tables) when we know for a fact that the brain is out of oxygen and energy according to any know physical (not to mention evolutionary) mechanism, and that has to be explained.

Swizec: > NDEs happening under monitored conditions (operating tables)I had general anesthesia 10 days ago. There was no NDE, felt like they flicked an off switch then turned me back on a few hours later.They wheeled me from the prep room towards the OR, opened the big door, and then I was in a different room waking up from anesthesia. That’s it.

adammarples: Incredibly easy to explain this without trying hard. The subject has some sense of movement forwards, and the brain rationalises it, like we do in dreams, imagining a tunnel or a canoe or whatever familiar thing is associated with that feeling of drifting or flying. So we can conclude that maybe near death experiences cause a feeling of falling or drifting, and is a bit like dreaming - not that objective reality should be rejected.

BoardsOfCanada: We're talking past each other. The problem isn't coming up with a hypothesis of why experiences differ according to experiences. Start by explaining how there can be any experience at all after an hour without oxygen to the brain. But after that we come to a stage where experiences differ so much that they aren't reconcilable in one objective reality and that's what I tried to address.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF: Is it worthy of discussion because there is something actionable in it?

I011010011: Yes.Actionable: To Consider the significance of kindness, compassion, love to and for each other, which world, at large, is missing owing to many factors.And to consider one's own superficiality and have profound thoughts for others.

tsimionescu: Why is that tied to some notion of an afterlife? If anything, it seems to me that the reality that this one life is all any of us have should make one care way more for their fragile peers, and for making it the one life they have count. As The Doors once put it, "no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn".

throwanem: You also need to study cellular biology, of which you are radically uninformed in a way that renders your line of argument specious beyond recovery into meaningful discussion. Please don't reply to me further on this topic.

LocalH: Objective reality exists, but nobody can ever perceive it, at least not while they're perceiving things through the filter of their body

though I continue to hope that it will be

md224: The most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death.> My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. (italics mine)I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas Nagel wrote something along those lines.) I sort of get it but regardless I think it's very interesting.

birdsongs: I'm just 40, and while I won't go into it, I've lived a very long life so far. An incredible amount of joy, but also grief and pain. Memory for me, when I'm drinking my coffee in the morning, is warm and cozy in a numbing sort of way, but I have to be careful where I walk in it.I certainly don't wish for death, I still find so much beauty and joy in life, and I still find and experience love. But I don't wish for an afterlife, or prolonged life. If I'm fortunate to live until my natural death, I will welcome it.Humanity will go on, there are billions of threads of consciousness right now, and I feel so much gratitude that I was and am one of those. I have a lot of comfort in being wrapped and surrounded by those threads, and that they will continue around me when mine frays and ends.My cannon view is that we're just the universe experiencing itself, and that while my consciousness will end, that universe will go on, my atoms part of it.

pino999: It is the safest and easiest solution. You die, nothing happens.When there is an afterlife or perhaps even eternity, the problems begin.