Near Death Experience: theoretical implications contingent upon validity of claim?

PeterJ

I didn't mean to start a row, Ryan, and sorry if I made one likely. I just felt that Evo's approach was infused with temperament and preconception, while Nesp's was scientific, impartial and not carefully enough read. This was my impression as a bystander. If you read the exchange I think you'll see why someone might have gained this impression.

As to NDE's, it seems to me that if NDEs are regularly reported this is a scientific fact and it needs a scientific explanation, regardless of the content of those reports. If lots of people report that they feel sick after taking some medicine or other then we do not dismiss these reports on the grounds that the sciences deal only with intra-subjective data. A stack of reports can be measured with a ruler.

The status of the contents of such reports is a different matter, obviously, but if we say that the contents of reports of NDEs are inadmissable in science this would put an end to any idea of 'scientific consciousness studies', and we might also start wondering if our written records of our meter readings are not also first-person reports.

By one way of looking at it nobody has ever observed anything other than a first-person report, which is why solipsism is unfalsifiable. It would therefore be impossible to defend the idea that first-person reports are not scientific data.

Of course some reports are scientifically useless for various reasons, usually lack of repeatability, and perhaps this would include those about NDEs. This would be a decision for scientists. They can set their own standards for evidence. But this would be about defining the limits of science. If NDE reports lie outside of science then it would make no difference to anybody what the sciences think about them. Or this is how it seems to me.

ZapperZ

This analogy does not work. People getting sick produce a physiological effect that can be measured! It is no longer just in people's head. What physical evidence is there for NDE that allows for it to be objectively measured independent of "lost of people" reporting it?

If you are saying that I cannot falsify a first person's report, then this is false. I can indeed QUESTION the validity of a first person report simply based on what he/she claims to have perceived. Why? Because I can show you examples on where the mind and what people "believe" they saw can be highly unreliable.

1. One often cited NDE is the so-called out-of-body experience. However, it has been shown, in not one, but at least TWO papers published in Science[1,2], on how the brain can be tricked into producing such out-of-body experience. In other words, there's no evidence of any such phenomenon, but yet, the participants still claim on having such an experience.

2. The mind can play quite a trick on us and can be highly unreliable. This has already been shown in many cases where participants claim something had happened, when it hasn't! See, for example, Ref. [3].

3. So if the mind can be be tricked, and also unreliable under the BEST of conditions, consider how even less reliable it is when it is under physical duress, such as when the body is near death!

And yet, even after all this, we still accept such anecdotal description as evidence, and a reliable one at that? How low of a standard do we need to set here?

Zz.

[1] H. Henrik Ehrsson Science v.317, p.104824 (2007).
[2] Bigna Lenggenhager et al. Science v.317, p. 1096 (2007).
[3] Dario L. M. Sacchi et al., Applied Cognitive Psychology v.21, p.1005 (2007).

Bipolarity

Classic example where anecdotes alone proved to be the worst kind of source for science:
Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis

1 experiment, carried out properly > 1000000 anecdotes

BiP

zoobyshoe

Both you and Evo have for some reason jumped to the conclusion that the posters you're addressing are only interested in studying the NDE scientifically to prove it is what it seems to be. My reading of both of them is that they are quite open to simply finding out what it is.

To the extent the OBE can be studied in the lab we can learn huge amounts about how the brain informs you where you are located. The first amazing thing we learn is that the "self" does not automatically associate itself with the body where it's located and needs special integrative functions in the temporo-parietal junction to create the impression you are where you are: in your body. That's a mind boggling thing to learn. Still, it's poorly understood and needs a great deal of further study.

The NDE should be studied to find out what it can tell us about how the brain works.

ZapperZ

I don't get it. Finding out "what it is" is not the same as "studying the NDE scientifically"? There are other ways to find out what something is unambiguously that everyone can agree on? Really?

I'm all for studying it. Check the fact that I've cited extensive scientific studies of various aspects of NDE! The more we study it, the more we will realize that (i) the brain isn't always reliable (ii) we are easily fooled and (iii) that these NDE observations do need any "supernatural" explanations.

Zz.

zoobyshoe

Strawman.
Neurology is already way beyond these trivial points. The fact a given phenomenon is not supernatural appears incidentally from studying what it is. Undertaking a study with the agenda of proving something is not supernatural is not something neurological researchers do. Anything generated by strong confirmation bias like that would naturally be suspect. Their agenda, rather, is simply to find out what it is, what neurological mechanism underlies the experience.

Evo

I don't see the point in discussing this since this entire forum will disappear after tomorrow.

surajt88

Sorry for being off-topic, but ongoing discussions in S&D will be continued in GD right? Or will they be locked away?

ZapperZ

Ambiguous.

I don't see how that differs from what I was saying. *I* was the one who suggested that, TO ME, the more one studies it, the more that I find the claim of anything supernatural to be even less convincing. That has been the pattern we have seen so far! I certainly hate to put my thought into what neuro-scientists were thinking.

Zz.

Evo

ALL S&D threads will be locked. The new forum is due to open tomorrow.

dlgoff

Ivan Seeking

Evo

Bye S&D!!