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Do Realistic Interpretations of NDEs Imply Violation of the Laws of Physics?

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Owing to a discussion with a friend, I recently had occasion to reread the van Lommel et al. paper published in 2001 in Lancet detailing their prospective study of cardiac patients who had suffered cardiac arrest and were successfully resuscitated from clinical death. I had read that paper probably 10-12 years ago, and it seems to have been about the last thing I had read on the topic of NDEs. There have been several noteworthy studies and books published on NDEs in the interim, and I recently perused some of these.

In the process I came across a video of the 2014 Intelligence Squared debate on the topic. Team 1, arguing for the motion “Death is not final,” consisted of neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, whose academic appointments include Duke University Medical Center, UMass Medical School, Harvard Medical School and University of Virginia Medical School, and who had an extensive NDE in 2008 during a 7-day coma due to a severe case of case of bacterial meningitis, and Dr. Raymond Moody who coined the term “near-death experience” in 1975 in Life After Life, which included the earliest qualitative study of this phenomenon. Arguing against the motion were CIT physics professor Sean Carroll and Yale neurology professor Steven Novella, apparently neither of whom seem to have any professional or personal connection to NDEs.

Although oozing civility, I found the debate disappointing. I thought both teams advanced certain poor or otherwise dubious arguments, oftentimes premised on assertions about metaphysics--despite the chairman Robert Rosenkranz and moderator John Donvan assuring us at the beginning that it would not be a “religious debate” but would rise to the level of science.

Dr. Alexander was first up, mostly using his opening statement to tell about his own NDE and the subsequent change in his beliefs. He got around to noting a few general facts about NDEs just before his time ran out.

So, before getting to my questions, I wish to review some of the easily discoverable information on NDEs.

An NDE is an event consisting of awareness or perception of various unusual phenomena, occurring most often (but not always) in the context of clinical death or life-threatening circumstances or injury, and for research purposes the elements of which are often identified and measured by the Greyson NDE Scale. Of course, this fact itself raises the question as to why the basic elements of NDEs are so similar from person to person, regardless of culture. In contrast, people have an endless variety of dreams and hallucinations.

In the van Lommel et al. study of 344 consecutive patients who were resuscitated from clinical death, 62 (18%) subsequently reported some memory during the episode, with 41 of these describing elements commonly associated with NDEs, such as awareness of being dead, positive emotions, moving through a tunnel, meeting with deceased relatives, involvement in a life review, interacting with a bright light. The authors found that whether or not a patient had an NDE was not associated with the duration of cardiac arrest (presumably a proxy measure of degree of hypoxia) or unconsciousness, medications, fear of death before cardiac arrest, religious beliefs (or lack thereof) or education.

NDEs were transformative for those who had them. In follow-up questionnaires at 2 and 8 years, these people were more likely to report positive changes in beliefs and outlook such as an increased acceptance of others, being more empathetic and loving, having a sense of inner meaning of life, appreciation of ordinary things. As van Lommel and many others have pointed out, it's basically unheard-of for people to undergo a radical transformation in their outlook and beliefs about reality in response to a single hallucination or dream lasting a few minutes at most.

Dr. van Lommel et al. comment on the well-known fact that experiences that are superficially similar to NDEs can sometimes be induced by methods such as electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe, high blood levels of CO2 (hypercapnia or hypercarbia), cerebral hypoxia such as fighter pilots sometimes experience resulting in G-LOC, and certain hallucinogenic substances. Yet the authors also point out some of the ways that these experiences are distinct from NDEs:

These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past. These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Lancet artikel Pim van Lommel.pdf

In her study Sartori found that patients who had hallucinations (which were clearly distinguishable from NDEs in various ways) due to large doses of sedatives or painkillers eventually acknowledged that their experience was an hallucination, whereas those who had NDEs remained adamant that their experience was real.

Likewise, the induced experiences, in the absence of life-threatening circumstances, do not consistently entail the awareness of being dead, which, except for “positive emotions,” was the most prevalent NDE element described by those in the van Lommel study. In NDE accounts, people often indicate that their awareness of being dead was arrived at by an inference based on factors such as the perception of leaving their bodies, or seeing, from an elevated position, a lifeless body below them that they subsequently recognized as their own.

Even disregarding other aspects of NDEs, such logical thought processes and the having and retention in memory of complex, coherent experiences during the severely compromised neurological states in which NDEs commonly occur confound explanation of these experiences as a mere physiological artifact. In a 2006 article, Dr. van Lommel, after explaining that “[m]onitoring of the electrical activity of the cortex (EEG) has shown that the first ischemic changes in the EEG are detected an average of 6.5 seconds from the onset of circulatory arrest, and with prolongation of the cerebral ischemia always progression to isoelectricity occurs within 10 to 20 (mean 15) seconds,” elaborates this issue:

The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain. Parnia et al. (2001) and Parnia and Fenwick (2002) write that the data from several NDE studies suggest that the NDE arises during unconsciousness, and this is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose, the cerebral structures, which underpin subjective experience and memory, must be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience, as was the case in the vast majority of patients who survive cardiac arrest, or at best a confusional state if some brain function is retained. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view. An alternative explanation would be that the observed experiences arise during the loss of, or on regaining consciousness. The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness is rapid, and appearing immediate to the subject. Experiences that occur during the recovery of consciousness are confusional, which these were not. In fact, memory is a very sensitive indicator of brain injury and the length of amnesia before and after unconsciousness is an indicator of the severity of the injury. Therefore, one should not expect that events that occur just prior to or just after loss of consciousness should be clearly recalled.​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Near-Death Experience_Consciousness and the Brain.pdf

The 2001 Parnia et al. prospective study that van Lommel cites yielded too few people reporting NDEs for statistical comparison, but the authors note that there was little difference between the NDErs and control group in partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and that arterial partial pressure of oxygen was double in the NDE group than in the control. The fact that NDEs cannot be attributed to hypoxia, anoxia or hypercarbia is further demonstrated by the fact that NDEs occasionally occur in the context of non-life-threatening illnesses and near-accidents.
 
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Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
In his opening statement Dr. Alexander remarks that his memories of his confused, delusional state as he was coming out of his coma quickly faded, whereas memory of his hyper-real NDE remained vivid. At 2- and 8-year follow-up in the van Lommel et al. study, “all patients were able to retell their experience almost exactly.” This is just another way that NDEs are unlike delusions and hallucinations. In a 2007 study, Greyson found that people did not forget their NDEs or embellish their accounts over a period of almost two decades.

The authors of a more recent study explain that peoples' memories of real events involve more phenomenological characteristics than do memories of imagined events. Given this, they compared the characteristics of memories among 3 groups of coma survivors (patients reporting an NDE; patients reporting memory of their coma but no NDE; and those with no memory) and a group of age-matched healthy volunteers, assessing 5 types of memories. They found that peoples' NDE memories exhibit more phenomenological characteristics than memories of imagined events and real events, and that NDE memories entail better clarity and more self-referential and emotional information than do peoples' coma memories who did not have an NDE. The authors conclude that “this suggests that [NDE memories] cannot be considered as imagined event memories.”

Perhaps most importantly (at least for purposes of assessment), NDEs have presented numerous cases of apparent veridical perception from an out-of-body perspective, the details of which were corroborated by at least one other person. Dr. Greyson summarizes the findings of a study by professor J. M. Holden:

In a recent review of 93 reports of potentially verifiable out-of-body perceptions during NDEs, Holden (2009) found that 43% had been corroborated to the investigator by an independent informant, an additional 43% had been reported by the experiencer to have been corroborated by an independent informant who was no longer available to be interviewed by the investigator, and only 14% relied solely on the experiencer’s report. Of these out-of-body perceptions, 92% were completely accurate, 6% contained some error, and only 1% was completely erroneous. Even among those cases corroborated to the investigator by an independent informant, 88% were completely accurate, 10% contained some error, and 3% were completely erroneous. The cumulative weight of these cases is inconsistent with the conception that purported out-of-body perceptions are nothing more than hallucinations.​

http://www.newdualism.org/nde-paper...of Religion and Spirituality_2010-2-37-45.pdf

Of course, in the case of uncorroborated reports, one way to dismiss these accounts is to assume that people reporting these perceptions are merely bald-faced liars, and, in the case of corroborated reports, that numerous corroborators, including medical personnel, are engaged in flagrant long-term conspiracies--often with people they didn't known beforehand. However, such assumptions are not deduced from the evidence, and oftentimes do not account for the facts anyway.

For instance, the case of Pam Reynolds' veridical perception (at ~18:00) during an operation to remove a brain aneurysm, in which she was subjected to hypothermic cardiac arrest, is one of the most familiar and best documented, first presented in Dr. Michael Sabom's Light and Death. Her reports of what was said and done in the operating room while she was anesthetized were confirmed by the doctors and surgical team soon after the surgery. She recounted watching the operation (for a while) from a position above the surgeon's shoulder. She accurately described the saw used to slice her skull, including the tray of interchangeable blades, which the surgeon said she could not have observed beforehand as these instruments were packaged and covered. Eventually she saw a light, was pulled toward it, and was soon engaged in enlightening conversations with her deceased grandmother and a favorite uncle who had died young, and saw other people she had known and didn't know. Yet, retired anesthesiologist Gerald Woerlee makes the ridiculous claim that this was merely a case of anesthetic awareness. That doesn't account for her experience or perceptions. People who experience intraoperative consciousness definitely do not report heavenly adventures--94% describe severe panic or anxiety; it leads to long-term psychological problems in 70%. One hundred percent of people who undergo this trauma understood it was a real event; none express confusion about what happened. The Practice Advisory of the American Society of Anesthesiologists sets forth that when an episode of intraoperative awareness has been reported, the patient should be interviewed immediately to determine the nature of the episode; the patient should be offered counseling and psychological support; the episode should be documented, investigated (the equipment checked), the cause determined, and an occurrence report completed so that this horror isn't visited upon the next unsuspecting patient. In his zeal to deny the undeniable facts of NDEs, Dr. Woerlee has shamefully made a joke of this extremely traumatic experience of anesthetic awareness. Additionally, his explanation entails that Pam Reynolds and the surgeons and other medical staff at Barrow Neurological Institute are blatant liars engaged in a massive decades-long conspiracy. Woerlee's scenario is the worst kind of anti-scientific nonsense.

Woerlee's claim that Reynolds “was conscious because the concentrations of drugs used to keep her unconscious were quite evidently insufficient to do so” is not concluded from any fact relating to her surgery. He refers to information provided by her doctor in a 1988 J. Neurosurg. article regarding the rate and average total amount of thiopental given during such operations to maintain EEG burst suppression, and on this basis Woerlee calculates that burst suppression would have lasted only 105 minutes for Reynolds. He then claims that because burst suppression was not maintained during the entire procedure, “The implication of this is evident. It means that Pam Reynolds could have undergone periods of anesthetic awareness . . .” But the fact that one has not been administered doses of thiopental adequate to achieve EEG burst suppression emphatically does not imply that one is inadequately anesthetized to suppress consciousness. Earlier in the 1988 article, Dr. Spetzler describes the anesthetic procedure in language simple enough that even a senile anesthesiologist should be able to understand:

Induction of anesthesia is started with connection of the cardiovascular monitor and the pulse oximeter. A sleep dose of either barbiturate (thiobarbiturate at 3 mg/kg body weight) or midazolam HCl (0.1 mg/kg) is administered slowly with oxygenation. Narcotics such as sufentanil and nondepolarizing muscle relaxants such as vecuronium bromide effectively reduce any sympathetic response to anesthesia induction and prevent undesirable cardiovascular changes. After the patient is intubated, a central venous or pulmonary catheter is placed by the internal jugular route. Core temperature is recorded by a thermistor on an esophageal stethoscope. A second arterial line and a peripheral intravenous line are placed. During this time the patient is being positioned and secured by skeletal fixation for the anticipated surgical exposure.

Anesthesia is maintained with incremental doses of narcotics and is supplemented by a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen or isoflurane with nitrous oxide and oxygen to maintain stable cardiovascular parameters and an adequate level of anesthesia. Baseline evoked potential recordings are made during this preparatory phase prior to the incision. (My bolding)​

http://ether.stanford.edu/library/n...r_Aneurysms of the basilar artery treated.pdf

If it were true that (based on the information provided by Dr. Spetzler) “the concentrations of drugs used to keep [Pam Reynolds] unconscious were quite evidently insufficient to do so,” then the same would be true for all Dr. Spetzler's patients undergoing this operation--there is certainly no evidence or reason to believe that Reynolds received lesser amounts of anesthetic drugs. Indeed, it would be true for the great majority of all surgical patients, who are not subjected to barbiturate-induced EEG burst suppression at any point.

And, again, if it were true that being conscious due to inadequate anesthesia accounts for Reynolds' ability to hear and recall comments in the operating room, then what accounts for the fact that she then proceeded to the beautiful otherworldly realm where she talked with her deceased relatives? No one claims that she normally had sudden fits of hallucinations so early in the morning. And what she describes happening isn't even close to the kind of experiences reported by people who actually have endured anesthetic awareness. Woerlee's attempt to explain her experience, besides failing to account for the facts, doesn't even make sense.

People who have been blind since birth and whose dreams are void of visual imagery report being able to see during their NDEs. One can hardly claim that NDEs can be explained as something “like a dream or hallucination” when they are radically different from the dreams or hallucinations of the congenitally blind. The experiences of both Brad and Vicki recounted in the article involved perception from a perspective outside of their bodies in which they reported seeing (inter alia) their own unconscious bodies from above. (That those were their bodies was something each of them deduced from other details they perceived.) As both their experiences occurred prior to the publication of the first mass-market books on NDEs, it can't be the case that their claims of such out-of-body perceptions were a matter of merely mimicking popular NDE accounts.

Can one (a) deny the reality of veridical perception during NDEs and (b) account for the facts of the story related by famed cardiac surgeon Dr. Rudy, except by claiming that Dr. Rudy blatantly lied about this incident? One would then be confronted by the fact that the assistant surgeon Dr. Amado-Cattaneo confirmed Dr. Rudy's story.

Having to believe that multitudes of credible, independent corroborators are simply lying about objective facts or about the reports of veridical perceptions during an NDE is what eventually becomes unbelievable, incredible. Why on earth would Drs. Rudy and Amado-Cattaneo fabricate such a story?
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Interestingly, the issue of veridical perception during NDEs is not mentioned (as far as I recall) in the nearly 2-hour Intelligence Squared debate. As already noted, the arguments in the debate by and large seem to hinge on assumptions about metaphysics. To this end, professor Carroll begins by asserting a number of claims that are shocking to my eyeballs: “The existence of souls persisting in the afterlife should be perfectly obvious. It should be just as clear that heaven exists as it is that Canada exists.”

What does this even mean? Scientists and most other people acknowledge the existence of lots of phenomena that do not exist like a land mass exists. No one has ever seen or touched energy--it is an abstract quantity. Dark matter, if it exists, is far from “perfectly obvious”. Time and gravity are not even vaguely like a parcel of real estate. There is no logical reason to impose such requirements on “the existence of souls persisting in the afterlife” or “heaven” that all this ordinary stuff of modern science doesn't abide by.

Professor Carroll refers to the famous correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes, in which she poses a question about causation and volitional acts: “Given that the soul of a human being is only a thinking substance, how can it affect the bodily spirits [espirit, mind], in order to bring about voluntary actions?” Carroll says that Descartes was never able to answer her question. But it seems to me that Descartes' answer is somewhat sophisticated--at least for that pre-Newtonian, even pre-scientific, era. He affirms that “soul” is “united” with the body and can therefore act upon and be acted upon by the body. Then he proceeds to disavow the conundrum created by substance metaphysics for his thesis, namely that soul and body are distinct substances. He analogizes the relationship of the soul and the body to that of the weight of a rock and the rock, noting that the weight of the rock moves the rock downward, even though this does not involve “a real contact of one surface against another, as though the weight was a hand pushing the rock downwards!” He compares the ability of the rock's weight to move the rock with the ability of the soul to move the body. (It's interesting that Descartes' analogy is vaguely similar to the concept of downward causation, which many people today argue is at least an essential component of volition or free will--i.e., that mental causation is a form of downward causation, which is a prerequisite for a volitional act.)

Carroll rephrases Princess Elisabeth's question as: “How can something immaterial like the soul affect something material like the brain or body?” Of course, modern physics provides a number of examples of phenomena that are not objects having mass and volume (i.e., matter) and which cause effects. The conserved quantity known as momentum produces effects on objects: the momentum of a rolling billiard ball causes an observable effect upon another billiard ball that it hits. Collapse of the wave function of a single particle is nonlocal, therefore is not an effect caused by a material object impacting another material object. Virtual particles can cause real effects. Any physicist should be quite familiar with such facts, and one might suspect Carroll's comment as being disingenuous under the circumstances, made to an audience who might be not well acquainted with especially the incomprehensible strangeness that modern physics reveals about empirical reality. If the only way one can deny realist interpretations of NDEs is to resort to the schemata of 19th (or 17th) century materialism, then there is no rational obstacle to realist interpretations. I would not hesitate to assert that, given the findings and theories of physics and other scientific disciplines, a person today is much more justified in concluding that consciousness is a fundamental feature of the world, not an inexplicable epiphenomenal by-product of electricity among brain cells, than was a person a hundred years ago.

Yet Carroll repeatedly proposes the false dilemma that NDEs are either hallucinations of stressed-out persons or the whole of science is wrong. He doesn't cite a single occasion where any such hypothesis has been tested. He repeatedly claims that realistic interpretations of NDEs (or to use his cartoonish term, “blobs of spirit energy”) somehow violate “the laws of physics”. What laws of physics are violated by realistic interpretations of NDEs?

Carroll ponders the question of how “the memories get from the brain to the soul,” indicating that this is a necessary occurrence for a realistic interpretation of NDEs but is somehow impossible. However, especially as it relates to memory, there is a great deal of evidence contrary to the “mind-brain identity” concept that Carroll advocates. Carroll doesn't substantiate his claim of being able to “literally see memories being formed” in neurons, but one can easily discover information affirming Karl Lashley's “famously unsuccessful search for the 'engram' -- the localized trace of the memory for a maze in a trained rat’s brain,” and, further, that “the principle that memories are not localized to a single spot in the brain is now well accepted.” Karl Pribram formulated a holonomic brain theory in an attempt to account for such findings. Moreover, as Carroll would have known were he familiar with van Lommel's papers on his study:

. . . Simon Berkovitch, a professor in Computer Science of the George Washington University, has calculated that the brain has an absolutely inadequate capacity to produce and store all the informational processes of all our memories with associative thoughts. We would need 10^24 operations per second, which is absolutely impossible for our neurons.[37] Herms Romijn, a Dutch neurobiologist, comes to the same conclusion.[30] “One should conclude that the brain has not enough computing capacity to store all the memories with associative thoughts from one’s life, has not enough retrieval abilities, and seems not to be able to elicit consciousness.”​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Near-Death Experience_Consciousness and the Brain.pdf

In a series of more recent articles (2009, 2014 and 2015), professor Donald Forsdyke has expounded upon the corresponding fact that “the size of a human brain scales neither with its information content -- specifically, with what the experts call 'long-term memory' -- nor with intelligence.” Professor Forsdyke's conclusion is derived from various different findings than Berkovitch's, namely (a) that recovered hydrocephalics often have only a minuscule portion of the average person's brain matter while exhibiting no intellectual deficits (in Dr. John Lorber's studies, half of the 60 hydrocephalics whose cranial capacity was 95% ventricular fluid had above-average scores on standard IQ tests); (b) that savants who have extraordinary memory have normal-size heads; (c) that microcephalics are sometimes not intellectually impaired; and (d) that women on average have smaller brains than men (by 8-13%, and fewer neurons by the same proportion) yet show no intellectual inferiority and even consistently outperform men in some areas (during the past century, women's IQ scores have risen faster than men's, and in recent years women have averaged higher scores than men).

Forsdyke delineates 3 possible hypotheses to account for these data: (1) the “standard model” in which “information relating to long-term memory is held within the brain in some chemical or physical form consistent with current knowledge of brain chemistry and physiology”; (2) information relating to long-term memory is held within the brain in some subatomic form; and (3) such information is held outside of the brain--which, with non-neural tissue evidently not performing this task, implies extra-corporeal information storage. Forsdyke notes that hypothesis (1) doesn't “really confront the dilemma posed by the brain scans of hydrocephalics.” In more than one way it is implausible that the human brain--the most metabolically expensive tissue in the body--evolved so that 95% of it is redundant. He asks: “How much brain must be absent before we abandon these explanations and admit that the standard model, however incarnated, will not work?”

Given the facts of quantum mechanics, hypotheses (2) and (3) can be seen as shading into each other in some sense. Forsdyke summarizes the proposals for hypothesis (2): “The brain is seen as a receptor/transmitter of some form of electromagnetic wave/particle for which no obvious external structure (e.g., an eye) would be needed. Considering the universe as a holographic information storage device, and invoking the spooky physical principle of non-locality (Rudolph 2008), a possible hardware implementation has been described (Berkovich 1993)” (internal quotation marks omitted). In conclusion, Forsdyke advises that “the scope of possible explanations [for the fact that 'human brain size does not scale to its information content'] should not exclude extracorporeal information storage.”

Thus, what Carroll ridicules as impossible in regard to consciousness and memory is taken seriously by a number of well-informed scientists on grounds unrelated to NDEs.

To the extent that Carroll and Novella attempt to argue that there is an a priori reason or some fact that demands the rejection of realistic interpretations of NDEs, it seems their premises are dubious at best, or outright contradicted by well-established scientific facts. But if anyone is able to substantiate and defend their claims or otherwise argue that NDEs cannot be realistically interpreted, please do.
 

Neo Deist

Th.D. & D.Div. h.c.
Nothing worth mentioning with regard to NDEs. If someone undergoes a legal death, complete with rigor mortis and decomp and then comes back, we can talk.
 

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
To the extent that Carroll and Novella attempt to argue that there is an a priori reason or some fact that demands the rejection of realistic interpretations of NDEs, it seems their premises are dubious at best, or outright contradicted by well-established scientific facts. But if anyone is able to substantiate and defend their claims or otherwise argue that NDEs cannot be realistically interpreted, please do.
As someone who has enjoyed hundreds of OOB's I don't see how the states encountered can be defended from an external perspective beyond being absolutely fascinating and for the most part, highly enjoyable. The experiences can be so transformational that they will literally turn your thinking upside down in regards to what is and what is not possible. The downside to this is that unless one actually has said experiences they are unlikely to find first hand subjective "evidence" terribly compelling. It's also not something that lends itself to verification and duplication if you do A, B and C you will get D type thing.

My own assertion is that consciousness itself does not necessarily operate under the laws of physics.
 

Eliab ben Benjamin

Active Member
Premium Member
as one who has my death certificate hanging on my wall .. i certainly experienced what they
call a near Death Experience .. (nothing near about it )
 

paarsurrey

Veteran Member
"My own assertion is that consciousness itself does not necessarily operate under the laws of physics"

I agree with one.
Regards
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Nothing worth mentioning with regard to NDEs.
I provided numerous facts about NDEs in the 4500 words of the OP. You haven't addressed any of them, or answered any of the questions. Why don't you try doing so?

If someone undergoes a legal death
[1] There is no known physiological difference between (a) persons who are clinically dead one minute after cessation of circulatory/respiratory functioning, and (b) persons who have been declared dead in accordance with the definitions of the Uniform Declaration of Death Act. Indeed, the majority of (a) will soon be (b)--and they will be (b) because they have not exhibited any physiological change from (a). The only difference between those persons who are (a) and those who are (b) is not any known physiological difference, but is merely the fact that the law attaches the assumption of irreversibilty to those persons who are (b).

In fact, there are people who were pronounced dead in accordance with the definitions of the UDDA, yet who were revived, and, moreover, subsequently told about their experiences. Although it occurred before passage of the UDDA, Dr. George Ritchie was a (b), declared dead twice after having been found unconscious without a pulse, respiration or blood pressure.

The patient described by Dr. Rudy, confirmed by Dr. Amado-Cattaneo is another who had been declared dead, with the monitors recording no heartbeat or blood pressure for 20-25 minutes. Did you watch this video and read the report by Titus Rivas? You didn't account for their experiences.

[2] It has only been recently that I have become aware that the claim, “But they weren't dead!” is a common straw man argument used to try to deny realistic interpretations of NDEs. This seems to be Dr. Woerlee's favorite fallacy. It's a straw man because whether or not a person has been pronounced dead is irrelevant to the issue of realistic interpretations of NDEs, given that, as noted in the OP, logical thought processes and having and retaining in memory coherent, complex experiences during states of clinical death defy explanation of NDEs as a physiological artifact. I went to the trouble to quote Dr. van Lommel's elaborating this point:
The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain. Parnia et al. (2001) and Parnia and Fenwick (2002) write that the data from several NDE studies suggest that the NDE arises during unconsciousness, and this is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose, the cerebral structures, which underpin subjective experience and memory, must be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience, as was the case in the vast majority of patients who survive cardiac arrest, or at best a confusional state if some brain function is retained. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view. An alternative explanation would be that the observed experiences arise during the loss of, or on regaining consciousness. The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness is rapid, and appearing immediate to the subject. Experiences that occur during the recovery of consciousness are confusional, which these were not. In fact, memory is a very sensitive indicator of brain injury and the length of amnesia before and after unconsciousness is an indicator of the severity of the injury. Therefore, one should not expect that events that occur just prior to or just after loss of consciousness should be clearly recalled.​

http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/files/publicaties/Near-Death Experience_Consciousness and the Brain.pdf
complete with rigor mortis and decomp and then comes back, we can talk.
The topic here is not about creating living bodies out of dust.[/QUOTE]
 
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Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
As someone who has enjoyed hundreds of OOB's I don't see how the states encountered can be defended from an external perspective beyond being absolutely fascinating and for the most part, highly enjoyable.
So you are drawing a general conclusion about NDEs based on your particular personal experiences of OBEs? I bet you can tell us what is the name of that sort of fallacy.

Would you tell us about your OBEs? I don't think I've ever heard of someone having hundreds of OBEs. Have you ever had a veridical perception? Are your OBEs ever like the induced one described in a 2002 article in Nature, which clearly involved hallucination or gross distortion, and which Holden et al. critiqued in an article at the IANDS website?

My own assertion is that consciousness itself does not necessarily operate under the laws of physics.
It's definitely true that there is no scientific theory explaining how consciousness might arise from the electrical activity among neurons, or how people are able to engage in volitional acts.
 

Eliab ben Benjamin

Active Member
Premium Member
What was it you found too complex? Perhaps I can simplify it.

I would be delighted if you told about your experience here. You were actually issued a death certificate?

No need to simplify, but thanks for the offer ...

Yes i have my Certificate of death on my wall, next to my Masters and PhD and Tech institute certificates.
I was refused payment of my Endowment life Insurance policy because they read it in the local newspaper.
and i was standing there asking for it ...

My NDE is on the IANDs site, Near-Death.com and several others i.e. My Death Experience
and reference to it at ComaWaiting.com where there is discussion of the slow and difficult process of recovery.
all under my english name "René H Turner"
 

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
So you are drawing a general conclusion about NDEs based on your particular personal experiences of OBEs? I bet you can tell us what is the name of that sort of fallacy.
I can only speak from my experience @Nous From what I have been through and what I have read on the topic NDE's often have an OBE component. It is a pretty arcane topic that is very difficult to actually study. I remain intrigued by the research in the areas involved but don't thing they have made much progress as of yet.

Would you tell us about your OBEs? I don't think I've ever heard of someone having hundreds of OBEs. Have you ever had a veridical perception? Are your OBEs ever like the induced one described in a 2002 article in Nature, which clearly involved hallucination or gross distortion, and which Holden et al. critiqued in an article at the IANDS website?
Hehe. I've been a meditator for almost 40 years now and have simply decided that OBE's are just something my peculiar psyche excels at. Many of my early experiences were induced and clearly involved hallucinations of an other worldly nature. The RF rule book precludes me from being more specific. Likewise, recounting my often hilarious adventures in consciousness would also be prohibited as it may sound like I am glorifying something I merely used as a stepping stone or a tool.

I don't quite know how to respond to the question about veridical perception as I'm not familiar with the term. Could you dumb it down for me? (I Googled the term but the definitions were as clear as mud.)
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Yes i have my Certificate of death on my wall, next to my Masters and PhD and Tech institute certificates.
I was refused payment of my Endowment life Insurance policy because they read it in the local newspaper.
and i was standing there asking for it ...

My NDE is on the IANDs site, Near-Death.com and several others i.e. My Death Experience
and reference to it at ComaWaiting.com where there is discussion of the slow and difficult process of recovery.
all under my english name "René H Turner"
Thank you so very much. How fascinating! Your report about your grandmother reminds me that professor Carroll claimed in the debate that NDErs never bring back any significant or important information. That isn't true, and I'm not sure if he says that because he is simply unfamiliar with the literature or because he discounts every report that can't be substantiated beyond every possible doubt (which is almost impossible to do, especially when one assumes that corroborators are lying and involved in a conspiracy with the NDEr).

Your account also elicits my sympathy for your difficulties (physical pain, uncertainty of your purpose) after the experience. In trying to assess NDEs and what they mean, it's easy for us third-parties to overlook such issues.
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I don't quite know how to respond to the question about veridical perception as I'm not familiar with the term. Could you dumb it down for me? (I Googled the term but the definitions were as clear as mud.)
Veridical perception from an out-of-body perspective is the correct perception of something in the world that the person could not have seen at the time with his/her eyes. Examples below.
I can only speak from my experience @Nous From what I have been through and what I have read on the topic NDE's often have an OBE component. It is a pretty arcane topic that is very difficult to actually study. I remain intrigued by the research in the areas involved but don't thing they have made much progress as of yet.
The research to date has established that NDEs are not attributable to the effects of anoxia, hypoxia, hypercarbia, drugs, length of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, religion or other personal characteristics. The research has established that NDEs are unlike dreams and hallucinations in a variety of ways, especially in generally consisting of a few particular common elements that are experienced regardless of culture, and especially in their long-term effects on outlook and beliefs. The research has established that NDEs of the congenitally blind, who do not dream in visual imagery, involve seeing for the first time in their lives, and, further, sometimes include veridical perception (in the Ring and Cooper article, Vicki recognized her body due to a deduction based on the appearance of her wedding ring and her hair; Brad saw the boy in the bed next to him get up out of bed to alert the person on duty, which the boy subsequently confirmed). Similarly, the research has established that sighted people have veridical perceptions--Pam Reynolds saw and accurately described the saw used on her skull and the tray of interchangeable blades while she was under anesthesia and her eyes were taped closed. The patient that Dr. Rudy spoke of saw the string of Post-It notes on the computer monitor, and saw Drs. Rudy and Amado-Cattaneo standing and talking in the doorway, and apparently other details of the room and his resuscitation, while he was in every sense dead and had been declared dead, without a heartbeat or blood pressure for at least 20 minutes. The Parnia 2014 study reports a patient who “described the perception of observing events from the top corner of the room and continued to experience a sensation of looking down from above. He accurately described people, sounds, and activities from his resuscitation (Table 2 provides quotes from this interview). His medical records corroborated his accounts and specifically supported his descriptions and the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED). Based on current AED algorithms, this likely corresponded with up to 3 min of conscious awareness during [cardiac arrest] and CPR.[2]” Dr. Fenwick provides a clearer description of this incident, with a graphic showing that the patient was obviously in VF for some period of time when he heard the automated voice of AED:

While the evidence could certainly be more comprehensive and extensive than it is currently, and undoubtedly will be in the future as research continues, I do not hesitate to argue that it demonstrates that NDEs are not and cannot be accounted for as a physiological artifact (e.g., hallucinations due to anoxia, hypercarbia, drug effects) and have been shown to involve (even among the congenitally blind) veridical perception from an out-of-body perspective.

Hehe. I've been a meditator for almost 40 years now and have simply decided that OBE's are just something my peculiar psyche excels at. Many of my early experiences were induced and clearly involved hallucinations of an other worldly nature. The RF rule book precludes me from being more specific. Likewise, recounting my often hilarious adventures in consciousness would also be prohibited as it may sound like I am glorifying something I merely used as a stepping stone or a tool.
I gotcha. More power to you. (Stupid rules.)
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
"van Lommel et al. study"

The Lancet: Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest

van Lommel et al. study

We included consecutive patients who were successfully resuscitated in coronary care units in ten Dutch hospitals during a research period varying between hospitals from 4 months to nearly 4 years (1988-92).



van Lommel et al. study

Statistical analysis

We assessed causal factors for NDE with the Pearson2 test for categorical and t test for ratio-scaled factors. Factors affecting depth of NDE were analysed with the Mann-Whitney test for categorical factors, and with Spearman's coefficient of rank correlation for ratio-scaled factors. Links between NDE and altered scores for questions from the life-change inventory were assessed with the Mann-Whitney test. The sums of the individual scores were used to compare the responses to the life-change inventory in the second and third interview. Because few causes or relations exist for NDE, the null hypotheses are the absence of factors. Hence, all tests were two-tailed with significance shown by p values less than 0·05.

-----

Statistical inferences of cause-and-effect relationships can be drawn from randomized experiments, but not from observational studies. [...] Inferences to the populations can be drawn from random sampling studies, but not otherwise.

Ramsey, F. L., & Schafer, D. W. (2002). The statistical sleuth: a course in methods of data analysis. Australia: Duxbury/Thomson Learning.



If you look hard enough you'll see what you want to see, but because there is no random assignment or random sampling in this study we cannot make inferences to the population or causal inferences.


Maybe I'll look at another one later.
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
If you look hard enough you'll see what you want to see, but because there is no random assignment or random sampling in this study we cannot make inferences to the population or causal inferences.
Exactly what “causal inference” are you claiming van Lommel et al. erroneously made? Quote where the authors made an invalid “causal inference”.
 

Jeremiahcp

Well-Known Jerk
Exactly what “causal inference” are you claiming van Lommel et al. erroneously made? Quote where the authors made an invalid “causal inference”.

"Quote where the authors made an invalid “causal inference”"

I did.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Although oozing civility, I found the debate disappointing. I thought both teams advanced certain poor or otherwise dubious arguments, oftentimes premised on assertions about metaphysics--despite the chairman Robert Rosenkranz and moderator John Donvan assuring us at the beginning that it would not be a “religious debate” but would rise to the level of science.

To me NDEs necessarily involve both.

The role of science is clear: what was the state of the body during the NDE, how long did it last etc? Can the person's report of what he or she saw and heard be verified?

The metaphysics/religion comes in because an NDE brings up a fundamental point that consciousness and awareness are not necessarily tied to the physical body which leads to questions of what is called "soul" or "atman".
 

Nous

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
"Quote where the authors made an invalid “causal inference”"

I did.
No, you didn't. You quoted the paragraph where the authors describe their statistical methods. You haven't noted or quoted any invalid causal inference about anything that the authors made.
 
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