Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical?

Presentation

The Project

• My project is a philosophical investigation into near-death experiences.

➢ Although scientific studies into NDEs are important and interesting, I am not focusing on psychological, medical or sociological studies or influences.

➢ The project focuses on the nature and structure of reality (metaphysics) and on theories of knowledge about reality (epistemology) as they relate to NDEs.

➢ The project answers one central question: “Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical?”

Definitions

• Definition for near-death experience:

➢ The term NDE does not have an agreed upon definition in the literature.

➢ Bruce Greyson comes closest to providing a definition by talking about the context of the experience and the content of the experience.

The context of the experience means that a person shows symptoms or signs of death, or has a serious injury, illness or, physiological crisis or accident of some kind or, the person senses an imminent death or has an expectation of dying.

The content of the experience refers to certain stages or elements that the person experiences, such a autoscopy (seeing one's body from an outside viewpoint), moving through darkness and/or seeing light, having a life review, meeting with others, entering another world etc...

➢ This means that it is possible to talk about an NDE episode (context) and an NDE experience (content). But, there is no fixed definition for NDE.

➢ The context is usually a third person description and the content is a first person description.

Definitions (continued)

• Definition for Veridicality:

➢ Veridicality comes for the Latin words “verus” and “dicere” and it literarily means truth-telling.

➢ The question of my project is: Are Near-Death Experiences truth telling? Are they telling the truth?

➢ This is an epistemological question (the question about knowledge). The question is focused on what we can say about NDEs, and what can we say about human experiences and reality in general.

The Traditional Approach

• At the beginning of my thesis, I focus on the traditional assessment of NDEs. How do people normally assess NDEs in the literature?

➢ The traditional approach focuses on the question, “Are Near-Death Experiences Real?”. This is a metaphysical question. (It is a question about the nature and the structure of reality.)

➢ The question is the following: Do people have a soul/mind and a body where the soul/mind survives death? Or, do people have a body only and when the body shuts down the person stops existing?

➢ Those who defend the mind/soul and the body scenario believe that people are made of two distinct substances. Hence, they are substance dualists. In the NDE community, they are known to be the defender of the Afterlife Hypothesis.

➢ Those who defend the body only scenario believe that people are made of one substance. Hence, they are the materialists/physicalists. In the NDE community, they are known to be the defender of the Dying Brain Hypothesis.

➢ The disagreement is between these two groups.

The Traditional Approach (continued)

• How do these group try to prove they are right?

➢ The defenders of the Dying Brain Hypothesis try to prove that physiological and psychological explanations can account for NDEs.

➢ The defenders of the Afterlife Hypothesis try to prove that a soul/mind exists apart from the brain. How do they do it? They try to make the case that the experience in part or whole happens when the brain can no longer support any mental activity.

➢ The two important points are the timing of NDEs and the mental activity.

1) When do NDEs happen? Do they happen before or after the brain shuts down? The focus is on the presence of consciousness and memory.

2) Can mental activities take place outside and/or apart from the brain?

Traditional Approach (continued)

• How do the defenders of the Afterlife Hypothesis make their case?

➢ Ingenious researchers tried to prove that it is possible to have the conscious mind separate from the body. In controlled experiments, they placed objects near the ceiling, invisible and unknown to the hospital staff working in operating rooms (Holden and Joesten 1990; Parnia et al. 2001; Sartori 2004; Lawrence 1996; Greyson, Holden, and Mounsey 2006).

➢ The theory is that if the person is truly out-of-body during a NDE, especially at a time when a brain is compromised and cannot support consciousness or memory, he or she will be able to observe the object near the ceiling and remember it later on, which is confirmation of consciousness/mind/soul existing beyond the boundary of the brain and the body.

➢ If the doctors can monitor the brain during surgery, this monitoring can also provide a timeline for the events.

Traditional Approach (continued)

• The problem is that it is tough to get a case that is full proof, beyond doubt. The ideal case has to fulfill a lot of conditions.

➢ The NDEer has to be fully monitored.

➢ This person has to be proven to be in a condition where there is no consciousness and/or memory possible.

➢ The observed event should not be known to anyone prior to the observation.

➢ The observed event has to be verifiable and verified.

➢ The person verifying the event should not have prior contact with the NDEer.

• Yet, even if a case satisfies all the conditions, it is still not necessarily a proof of an independent consciousness/mind/soul existing apart from the brain. Why? Precognitive or post-cognitive clairvoyance--the acquisition of information about an object outside the use of five senses before or after the event takes place--cannot be ruled out.

Traditional Approach (continued)

• Should the Afterlife Hypothesis given up?

➢ No. The problem is not with the Afterlife Hypothesis, but with the entire metaphysical approach itself.

1) Firstly, it assumes that there is a material world.

2) Secondly, we have knowledge about this material world and we can rely on this knowledge.

3) Thirdly, since there is a material world and we can rely on our knowledge about it, it is up to the people who believe in anything in addition to the material world to prove that this additional "stuff" exists.

4) Fourthly, the proof has to satisfy the sceptics fully who are currently doubting this additional "stuff" such as a soul or an afterlife, for example.

5) Finally, these sceptics are allowed to demand nothing but absolute proof for this extra "stuff".

➢ The conclusion is that if the Afterlife Hypothesis cannot fulfill these demands then the Dying Brain Hypothesis is automatically deemed to be the correct view.• Is this a justifiable attitude?

Materialism and the Nature of Reality

• For the defenders of the Dying Brain Hypothesis to have their demands is justifiable if the theory about the material world is correct. Is it correct? No. It is not correct for two reasons.

1) Materialism is a historical phenomenon; it is not an ahistorical fact.

➢ Philosophically, materialism has developed from the frustration with Cartesian type of substance dualism. Descartes’ problem with interaction of mind and body could not be solved.

➢ Because substance dualism did not work, it was decided that it is better to have monism. Monism is a one-substance theory. There is only one “stuff” in the universe.

➢ Early scientists were interested in studying the physical world around them, so it was decided that reducing to or expressing everything in terms of physical stuff or matter is the simpler solution.

➢ There is a tendency to reduce mind to matter.

➢ This is a historical development, not a fact that stands outside of history.

Materialism and the Nature of Reality (continued)

2) Materialists have never proved that reality is (strictly) made of matter.

➢ Materialists honestly admit that they do not know what matter is.

"Now, of course, sciences are far from complete. To that extent, we do not yet know exactly what the physical properties, entities and relations are according to our definition" (Braddon-Mitchell & Jackson, 1997: 14).

➢ Materialist still hold on to the idea that all stuff is material/physical in nature by simple faith. Yet, their confidence does not weaken.

"The incompleteness of current physical theory does not imply incompleteness of the kinds of ingredients that will be needed to complete the job” (Braddon-Mitchell & Jackson, 1997: 14).

➢ They hold onto their confidence by the fact that "Materialism is orthodoxy nowadays" (Braddon-Mitchell & Jackson, 1997: 4).

Materialism and the Nature of Reality (continued)

• What gives materialists the right to be so confident? Their answer is “science”. They believe that science supports materialism. This is not true.

➢ Science is a method of investigation. It is driven by the desire to discover something and, it uses the methods of observation and reasoning to accumulate facts and find out some laws about the world in order to make current and future predictions.

➢ Science is a method and not a metaphysical statement about the world. A scientific result can and, many times, does support more than one metaphysical theory about reality.

➢ For example, Nick Herbert, in his book, has created at least eight different interpretations of quantum reality that are compatible with quantum results of which, arguably, only about two or three, at the most, can be shown to be in line with materialism (Herbert, 1985).

➢ This means that science does not clearly support materialism.

➢ What if we become objective, does science not support materialism then?

Materialism and the Nature of Reality (continued)

• How does any evaluation happen? I created a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate this problem. In this example, a wife is potentially cheating on her husband. Here are ten pieces of evidence to decide whether the woman is cheating:

1. Male perfume can be smelled on the woman’s clothes.

2. A man’s phone number is found in her purse.

3. She is seen having lunch with the man.

4. She is seen kissing the man on the cheeks.

5. She is seen walking with the man arm-in-arm.

6. She is seen kissing the man on the lips.

7. She is seen walking into a hotel room with the man.

8. She is found sitting on a couch in the hotel room with the man both partially undressed.

9. She is found with the man naked on the hotel room bed.

10. She is found naked in the hotel room bed in the act of having sex with the man.

• The question is, “At what point can the husband become convinced that his wife is cheating? The jealous husband will be convinced at point #1. The naïve husband will be hesitant to believe that she is cheating at point #9.

Materialism and the Nature of Reality (continued)

• Since the subject is the one doing the evaluation, the evidence is subject dependent. It depends on the subject how the evidence is evaluated.

➢ What creates an evaluator's bias? A human being is the result of an accumulation of education, religiosity, moral standards, psychological attitude and cultural upbringing and, also, the result of a unique experience of ethnicity, age, race, gender, every day experiences and experiences in altered states; all of which, may influence the person's belief system and, possibly, all decision-making.

➢ A materialist will always be biased toward an interpretation of scientific evidence in terms of materialism. The desire for the type of objectivity the materialists are asking for is the desire to tilt the scientific evidence in their favour.

➢ Basically, they are trying to fit the scientific evidence into their theory.

➢ Remember: 1) Materialism is a historical phenomenon; 2) Science does not support materialism; 3) The materialist desire for objectivity exists for the purpose of fitting scientific evidence into their theory.

➢ Therefore, materialism is not proven to be true.

Materialism and the Nature of Reality (continued)

• Materialism does not take a default position against which everybody has to argue and that everybody has to defeat first in order to create a legitimate, alternative theory of reality.

• Near-death researchers do not have to counter argue and defeat any physiological explanations to build an argument for an alternative theory of near-death experiences. The Brain Hypothesis does not automatically take precedent over the Afterlife Hypothesis.

• It is not the case that if the Brain Hypothesis is decisively proven to be incorrect, then, and only then, the Afterlife Hypothesis has a chance to succeed.

• Researchers have to stop giving power to the materialists by constantly trying to defeat their theory of reality. Nobody is obligated to defeat a theory that has not been proven to be decisively correct.

• Philosophically speaking, both the Afterlife Hypothesis and the Dying Brain Hypothesis are equally good explanations for near-death experiences.

Working Without A Metaphysical Theory

• Since both the Afterlife Hypothesis and the Dying Brain Hypothesis are equally good theories, the metaphysical approach does not help. Basically, we can take any evidence and fit it into either theory to answer the question, “Are near-death experiences real?”

• I don’t want to fit evidence into a theory. Instead, I want to know more about the nature of reality and find out what theory is worth supporting.

• I want to ask an epistemological question instead of a metaphysical question. So, the question is, “Are near-death experiences veridical?” Are they telling the truth, whatever that truth may be?

• The next step is to try to work without the assumption of a metaphysical theory.

• Here, I start with a very realistic approach; I start with the conscious mind. The conscious mind is aware of and is about something. Philosophers call this intentionality.

• There is a subject in the form of a conscious mind who is oriented toward objects.

Working Without A Metaphysical Theory (continued)

• What do we know about this awareness of objects?

➢ Philosophically, accessibility of objects has always been an issue. The question is whether the object is directly accessible to the conscious mind.

➢ Direct realism says “yes” to this question. The object is directly accessible.

conscious mind object

➢ It maintains that the object of perception is immediately available to the conscious self and it exists independently of the conscious self's awareness of it in the outside world.

➢ The problem for this theory is to explain mistakes such a illusions and hallucinations.

Working Without A Metaphysical Theory (continued)

➢ Indirect realism says “no” to the question. The object is not directly accessible.

conscious mind sense data object

➢ It holds that the object of perception is a sense datum or sense impression available as a content of the mind. Here, the philosophical opinion split.

➢ For representationalists, the object independently exists of the conscious self's perception of it as a content and, the sense impression is caused by this independently existing object.

causation

conscious mind sense data object

Working Without A Metaphysical Theory (continued)

➢ The phenomenalists believe that the object is a construction from sense impressions and nothing else exists independently of these impressions.

no causation

conscious mind sense data no object

➢ Indirect realism explains mistakes such as illusions and hallucinations.

➢ Ultimately, in the case of indirect realism, the question is whether there is anything beyond the sense impressions that makes up the content of the mind. If there is something, we do not know what it is and how it is in reality because we have no direct access to it. The problem is that we cannot prove that there is anything behind the veil of perception.

➢ Most scientists believe in representationalism.

Working Without A Metaphysical Theory (continued)

• Most definitions and tests of veridicality in the study of near-death experiences carry specific assumptions about the reality of objects.

➢ For example, Janice M. Holden's definition of veridicality. Her definition of veridicality of near-death experiences is strongly tied to material consensus of reality in near-death research.

She defines veridical NDE perception as "any perception--visual auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and so on-- that a person reports having experienced during one's NDE and that is later corroborated as having correspondence to material consensus reality" (Holden, 2005: 186).

➢ The main problem is that this defintion assumes a correspondence truth. The correspondence truth says that “"A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality" (Aquinas, 1989: 1. Q16, A2, arg. 2). The question is what external reality?

➢ Her theory assumes either a direct realism or an indirect representative realism. Either way, it is built on an assumption of a materially existing reality.

Working Without A Metaphysical Theory (continued)

• The second problem with Holden’s definition is her idea of a “consensus”.

➢ Her definition suggests that reality is a matter of agreement. It makes it look like that reality is a based on a democratically created voting system.

➢ A hypothetical example can demonstrate the issue. Let's assume that one lives in a world where all women see a colour they call red and all men fail to see this colour; otherwise, they agree on all the other colours. Every time a woman points to an object that she identifies as red, a man who is present in the room sees the object as grey.

The problem is that consensus does not work here. How many people see the colour red depends on the ratio of men and women.

➢ The question is what percentage of people have to be in consensus for something to count as veridical? 50% or 51% or 66%?

➢ Also, who decides on the percentage needed for consensus?

➢ Basically, reality is not a matter of human consensus.

Philosophical Idealism• The problem is that it is difficult to decide what to believe about reality without

any theory. It is hard to see what is true and what is not true. Veridicality as a truth-telling exercise becomes very tricky without any metaphysical theory.

• We need a theory. But, which one? Both materialism and dualism have serious weaknesses. Neither seems to be sufficient.

• I went back and restarted the examination with the conscious mind present. without being conscious, there is nothing to be conscious of. The human mind has to be there in order to even consider its own mental activities. Something is definitely there to doubt, think, cognize and have a relationship with the world.

Philosophical Idealism (continued)

• What is this mind? Human beings build their visual phenomenological experiences based on the electromagnetic spectrum of between 380 to 760 nanometres in wavelength. Colours about and beyond are unseen. Auditory phenomenological experiences are based on the frequency range of 20 to 20,000 Hertz. Sounds above and beyond are unheard. Of course, some animals are not just capable of seeing colours and hearing sounds that humans cannot, but also smell and taste things people are unable to.

• In addition to the observation on sense limitations, it can be also argued that human beings are also limited to the spatial appearance of the world in the three dimensions of length, width and depth and the mysterious time limitation of chronological motion from past to future through present.

Philosophical Idealism (continued)

• The assessment of reality in terms of wavelengths is not strange until we consider the brain as an object.

• The brain is an object of certain wavelengths in the world that is perceived. But, the question is: perceived by what? If one imagines a hypothetical, fictional scenario of opening up the skull and looking at one's own brain in the mirror, what does one see? One simply sees an object in the mirror that is a compilation of electromagnetic wavelengths one perceives. But, if all objects, including the brain is just compilations of wavelengths, what is doing the perceiving? Are compilations of wavelengths just capturing other compilations of wavelengths?

• The only possible answer is that consciousness is that something that supports all configurations in this phenomenological experience.

• Ultimately, the bare minimum requirement for reality is consciousness itself.

• This means that consciousness must be basic; it has to be a basic building block of reality.

• So, we live in a consciousness created and/or dependent universe.

Philosophical Idealism (continued)• Reality can be imagined as a kaleidoscope. As the pattern of pictures change, the

conscious observer can see new images.

• The pattern of pictures change with each state of consciousness. We can have the pattern of the waking state, sleep state, mystical state, hypnotic state, near-death state.

• In near-death experiences, a person starts switching over to another state, but then switches back to the waking state.

• In death, the person permanently switches over to another state. We live in a mental reality where we switch into this waking state we call life, or physical reality, and switch out of it when we are done.

Philosophical Idealism (continued)

• How is reality put together? We subconsciously uphold the rules of waking state of reality by intersubjectivity. We are psychically connected.

• Why do we make mistakes? We can override this psychically connected reality and superimpose personally created images on it. If it is created by fear, it can cause psychotic breakdown and the inability to function in the waking state.

• Can we have exceptional wellbeing? Yes. We can learn how psychic powers work and use it to alter the rules of reality while still being able to harmoniously function in it.

Philosophical Idealism (continued)

• Since reality is mental in nature, it is flexible. Rules can be altered.

• In this reality the word “veridicality” is not meaningful. The truth about near-death experiences can be told only in a reality where reality is fixed. If reality is flexible, the truth changes with the changed reality.

• The subconsciously upheld universe is stable but not fixed. It is stable enough for us to roughly see the same world in the waking state, but not fixed in any way.

• The truth changes with each individual.

• Near-death state is another state where even more flexibility is available for the person to shape reality.

• Near-death state is only veridical in the sense that it consists of a switch to another state where people experience flexibly existing or created images.