Near-Death Experiences: A New Interpretation

I want to make sure there's plenty of time for questions because the topics are obviously very controversial and very interesting I think and I'm sure there'll be lots of questions lots of disagreement so I want to make sure there's plenty of time so someone Joe will give me the timeout if I go too long and I really want to give you time to ask questions and I'll hang out here as well I'll stay afterwards and you can you can ask me questions all right so I will be reading at least parts of this paper or the problem is if I don't read then I'm not that disciplined and I will digress too much and there there is a handout so I hope that will be helpful I start by referring to a book that I wrote with Ben Mitchell Yellin near-death experiences understanding visions of the afterlife and that's more detailed in terms of some of the arguments that I'll just skip over in this talk but I'll I'll tell you when I get to a place where you might want to look at that book then I have a new book coming out in June of this year that you might be interested in and then there is a YouTube video of a lecture I gave on near-death experiences at UC Riverside but it's a different lecture you might have fun with it okay near-death experience as well maybe I can near-death experiences in DES take place in near-death contexts situations in which an individual's life is in jeopardy i-i've always thought maybe it should be situations in which the individual reasonably believes that her life is in jeopardy but in any case it's usually put this way that the individual's life is in jeopardy the Dutch cardiologist and researcher on India's PIM van Lommel describes NDEs as involving quote a range of impressions during a special state of consciousness including a number of special elements such as an out-of-body experience pleasant feelings seeing a tunnel alight deceased relatives or a life review or a conscious return to the body so these are features characteristic of near-death experiences I will stipulate that an NDE takes place in a near-death context and has a sufficient number of the characteristics identified by Van LOM all others including Bruce Grayson who's an MD at the University of Virginia have studied and identified these features of NDEs he has produced what he is called an NDE scale which measures the degree to which an NDE possesses these elements 3 sorry 4 salient aspects are an out-of-body experience OBE ie an experience of floating above one's body and seeing it and its surroundings from above so that's the way it appears to you a life review where your life kind of comes before you it's sometimes presented narratively or sequentially and sometimes kind of all at once and an experience of travelling toward a light in a dark tunnel or perhaps crossing a river or otherwise proceeding toward a different realm typically one is guided in this voyage toward a different round by deceased loved ones or loving parental or religious figures various theorists have identified a range of signature features of NDEs and they have pointed out that it is not necessary for a genuine NDE to have them all ok and EDS are better thought of as a syndrome or what philosophers following ludwig wittgenstein call a family resemblance notion that is an NDE must contain some subset of the relevant features but it's impossible to specify the required number of features in advance just as members of an extended family have physical features in common but no individual has all of them presumably or might not have all of them it's a family resemblance notion most NDEs are described as very positive experiences and those who have had NDEs have changed their behavior significantly pim van lhamo has studied people who have had any ease in the context of car arrest and he has observed that the NDEs have had notable transformational effects these individuals have less death anxiety and are more spiritual by March not everyone they are more pro-social appreciating relationships more and spending more time with family friends and relatives they are also more compassionate and attuned to morality and justice the transformations are often profound and so in his work PIM van Lommel the cardiologist from the Netherlands goes through in detail the data on these transformations NDEs are amazing and not just because of their capacity to transform some near-death experience reports can be corroborated independently and some cannot many of the latter sort the ones that can't be independently corroborated describe communication with deceased relatives and confrontation with a heavenly or otherworldly realm an environment hospitable to immortality consider for example the neurosurgeon Abe and Alexander's NDE have has anyone read his book okay good in which he found himself in a quote beautiful incredible dream world except it wasn't a dream and quote he describes himself flying along with quote a beautiful girl with high cheekbones and deep blue eyes and unquote sometime after his NDE when shown a photo of her this was well Alexander recognized this girl as his deceased sister whom he had never met he writes quote we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface alive with indescribable and vivid colors the wing of a butterfly in fact millions of butterflies were all around us vast fluttering waves of them dipping down into the greenery and coming back up around us again without using any words she spoke to me the message had three parts you are loved and cherished dearly forever you have nothing to fear nothing you can do wrong Alexander holds that this rich set of experiences occurred while he was in a coma and his brain was not capable of having experiences he was a neurosurgeon there he is a neurosurgeon so but while a quote but while I was in a coma my brain hadn't been working improperly it hadn't been working at all the part of my brain that years of medical school had taught me was responsible for creating the world I lived and moved around in and for taking the raw data that came in through my senses and fashioning it into a meaningful universe that part of my brain was down and out and yet despite all of this I had been alive and aware truly aware in a universe characterized above all by love consciousness and reality there was for me simply no arguing this fact I know it's so completely that I ached I'm sorry I knew it so completely that I ate what I had experienced was more real than the house I sat in more real than the logs burning in the fireplace he calls it ultra real his experience so a banal examine a neurosurgeons journey into the afterlife in which he discusses his NDE has sold millions of copies and it has influenced many people around the world he also has a sequel called map of heaven Alexander himself reports many transformative effects although he had grown up in a religious family prior to his NDE he had been skeptical about religion but after his NDE he became a believer in religion and the afterlife although of course the content of his NDE was not exactly theologically Orthodox you know flying on a wing of a butterfly he repeatedly describes his NDE as real and there is even a chapter of proof of heaven called the ultra real now I'll talk about another book in the popular culture Colton Burpo and the e is described in the book co-written by his father Todd Burpo heaviness for real this book has sold also sold millions of copies and it was made into a motion picture that was widely distributed and viewed by millions okay Colton became ill a few months shy of his fourth birthday he was diagnosed with a burst appendix and underwent two surgeries after he recovered apparently miraculously Colton began recollecting and reporting experiences he had while undergoing the first surgery and under anesthesia yet visited heaven and personally met Jesus God and the Holy Spirit he had met various deceased relatives one of whom was a sister who had never been born due to a miscarriage he saw angels and John the Baptist and he even saw his parents in the hospital at the time of his surgery his father and mother in different rooms praying okay so these are extraordinary reports it's amazing experiences and there are many many more of course I do want to and I for one take these very seriously I respect them as sincere by marts very sincere and interesting and there are patterns throughout history and across cultures and within the same culture patterns of similarities in these experiences that have to be taken seriously I do they'll want to read a footnote in which I talk about one that's not sincere so I say I believe it's important to respect the sincerity of the majority of NDE reports that's important for me but I also think we have to call out the dishonest ones for a particularly sad account of such a report and then I give the website but here I'm reading from this article on a website Alex malarkey the American boy who disavowed his best-selling account of meeting Jesus after an accident has launched a lawsuit against the books Christian specialised publisher specialist publisher while the publisher has quote made millions of dollars and quote the suit alleges it has paid Alex a paralysed young man noting the car accident that almost killed malarkey happened in 2004 in Ohio when he was six years old two months later he woke up from a coma to find himself paralyzed from the neck down he and his father Kevin a Christian therapist wrote the boy who came back from heaven together according to Chicago's Tyndale house the firm that brought the book out in 2010 Mularkey wrote off quote the angels that took him through the gates of heaven itself of the unearthly music that sounded just terrible to a six-year-old and most amazing of all of meeting and talking to Jesus but when he was 16 malarkey revealed on his blog that he had made it all up quote I did not die I did not go to heaven he said when I made the claims I I had never read the Bible people have profited from lies and continued to they should read the Bible which is enough Tyndale house pulled the BOK book which had already sold a reported 1 million copies saying in a statement that it was quote saddened to learn alex is now saying that he made up the story of dying and going to heaven malarkey who is now 20 filed a lawsuit against the publisher earlier this week this was a while ago claiming his father quote can't uh concocted a story that during the time Alex was in a coma he had gone to heaven communicated with God the Father Jesus angels and the devil and then return and alleging that while tyndale house has made millions of dollars they paid the paralyzed young man nothing the article goes on to point out that Alex and his mother who supports him are on the verge of homelessness so I refer if you are interested I have some other references so that's a sad story and well in any human phenomenon there they're going to be exaggerations it's going to be insincerity but I assume the vast majority of the reports are sincere so extraordinary and awe-inspiring experiences there are many in DES whose contents can independently be checked such as those reporting conversations among surgeons and nurses consider for example the famous story of Pam Reynolds she underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm she was under anesthesia blood was drained from her brain and her body temperature was reduced to 60 degrees the EEG electroencephalography registered no brain activity for sufficient for consciousness okay not enough to support consciousness and yet Pam reported specific conversations of the medical team as she was being prepped for surgery for example she reported that the medical team discussed the problems posed by her small arteries this conversation actually did take place she also reported having an incredible experience after witnessing with medical personnel sorry after witnessing the medical personnel prepping her body she left the operating room for someplace else bathed in bright light and encountered deceased relatives who communicated to her without words there's also the remarkable story of the man with the missing dentures nobody for some reason they talk about the case but don't mention his name but the man with the missing dentist he watched his body from a location above it while undergoing CPR for a cardiac arrest when the hospital staff couldn't find his dentures the next day he reminded the nurse that they were placed in a drawer the man was able to locate the dent dentures because he recalls seeing the procedures during his cardiac arrest from a position outside his body and an out-of-body experience or an OBE many have contended that NDEs can only be interpreted and explained by an invocation of supernaturalism supernaturalism about NDEs has two components the claim that our minds are not just our brains and can exist after our brains and bodies stop functioning and the claim that we come into contact with non-physical typically heavenly realms in NDEs the supernaturalists thus claims that our non-material minds or souls perceive our grasp features of a round that is separate from our physical world the first claim is dualism about the relationship between the mind and the body so they're duelists it is plausible that the second claim that we are in contact with heavenly realm in NDEs requires the first that our minds are non-physical the two views typically come as a package in evaluating and E's though you could in general you could be a duelist about the mind ie you could believe the mind isn't the brain or isn't just the brain and not believe that there's a heaven I think David Chalmers the contemporary philosopher of mind is as he describes himself a duelist about the mind but he doesn't believe in an afterlife the dominant view in the popular literature is supernaturalism NDEs provide quote a proof of heaven and they show that quote heaven is for real this is also a very influential view in the more academic discussions of NDEs which tend to attract those antecedently inclined toward super naturalism or maybe antecedently predisposed predisposed to take them at least seriously in fact most academics kind of dismiss that and I've talked to people in medical schools who do research and they say it's been very hard for their colleagues to get their car at colleagues to take them seriously so here are just a few examples in the popular and academic literature's first we have already seen that the two most widely read and influential popular discussions of NDEs in recent years are entitled proof of heaven and heaviness for real the sequel to Alexander's proof of heaven is called map of heaven the titles indicate clearly the supernaturalism of these books geoffrey long md all these people are MDS for some reason and but often they also have an advanced degree in neuroscience geoffrey long md who's an oncologist and with paul parry entitled their book about NDEs evidence of the afterlife the science of near-death experiences tim van mammals book is called the significance of near-death experiences consciousness beyond life the very active contemporary website run by the famous researcher who coined the term near-death experiences dr. Raymond moody is called the University of heaven so he's got a Raymond moody coined the term in 1975 he wrote a book called life after life and he coined the term near-death expand and he has a blog called the University of heaven okay now Matt so in other words what I'm trying to indicate is almost all the books are super now I give supernatural interpretations of near-death experiences the magic the wisdom the lessons of NDEs are almost universally taken to require supernaturalism I hold that NDEs are authentic they certainly take place and they can be presumed to have the experience all features reported by nd ears this is important and E's are real in that they really occur but whereas NDEs really occur there is a separate question as to whether their reported contents represent reality accurately when they are interpreted literally NDEs may not be real in this sense the sense of accuracy in representing the external world MDEs are real in the in sense a they really happened but not necessarily in sense B they represent the outside world actors I say not necessarily we haven't shown that they're not accurate we can employ the analogy of dreams here dreams really occur they are indisputably authentic in this sense but there is a separate question as to whether their contents typically or in a particular case represent external reality accurately they don't when their contents are interpreted literally as with dreams so within the ease all I wish to do here is to emphasize that the two questions authenticity and accuracy are separate sliding from an answer to one to an answer to the other is a dangerous slide moving from sense a reality to sense be reality is a spurious transition elsewhere my co-author Ben Mitchell yone and I have contended that evidence of various kinds does not support does not provide good reason to accept supernaturalism that's in that book I refer to on the handout we have rejected arguments for supernaturalism from the timing of the experiences when people say the brain was offline when they had the experiences therefore it can't be the brain that's supporting consciousness it has to be some soul that's not identical to the brain the vivid nature of the experience is the facts that the blind and also children have NDEs the blind have NDEs with visual content and deaf people have and E's with auditory phenomenal content children have nd ease the University of the universality over time and across cultures of the central features of and E's the putative or apparent simplicity of supernatural explanations the awesome beautiful and transformative characteristics of Indies and so forth all of these considerations some people take to establish that heaven is real or that supernaturalism is true in our book near-death experiences understanding the visions visions of the afterlife we go through these one by one we argue that they don't really provide strong reason to accept supernaturalism but so I'm not going to really go into that here here I'm going to propose a novel interpretation of near-death experiences on this view super naturalism is not required to interpret and understand them and yet we can preserve their awesome characteristics on this new interpretation they are not just authentic but in an important sense accurate so they're real in both senses this is because properly understood near-death experiences are not primarily or only about the afterlife okay so before I get to the new interpretation I want to talk a little bit about why all of these people who write and who developed super naturalist analyses of Indies why do so many of these reject physicalism and accept that the brain I mean that the mind and consciousness doesn't stem from the brain or solely from the brain okay some interpretations us interpret eight interpreters of Indies employ the following pattern of reasoning and I see it almost in every one of their treatments of NDEs they go through many of the proposed physical explanations of NDEs one at a time and they point out that none of these individually explains all of the phenomena if they explain any even Alexander employs this pattern of argument in Appendix B of his book proof of heaven writing and I quote I entertained or have entertained several neuro scientific hypotheses that might explain my memories cutting right to the chase they all fail to explain the rich robust intricate interactivity of the Gateway and core experiences the ultra-reality Alexander goes on to consider such hypothesis hypotheses that put forward an individual putative explanatory factor an individual physical explanatory factor and he dismisses them as inadequate fully to explain his and EE and and E's in in general PIM van Lommel treatment of these issues is more comprehensive detailed and nuanced not surprisingly because Alexander's book is for a general audience he considers various candidate explanations of NDEs the physiological theories so oxygen deficiency carbon dioxide overload chemical reactions in the brain so higher levels of ketamine so ketamine is much in the news now because it's now they've tweaked the molecule and they're now trying to use it for depression and Johnson & Johnson's subsidiary company Janssen pharmaceuticals has this product of nasal spray that's a tweaked version of ketamine which is for intractable serious depression intractable in the sense that the individuals try that leads to antidepressants in the Hammett wort soak enemy and so it's a naturally occurring psychedelic it naturally occurs but in near-death experiences it's found in greater in higher levels so some people have suggested that I just read today that the boys in Thailand who are trapped in that cave or given ketamine as part of the whole recovery process that calmed them down they may have had a few hallucinations but it did come down and that's the so-called the club drug Special K ketamine though in its tweaked version I call it not so special kit okay endorphins DMT DMT is a hallucinogenic it's the substance that's in I think it's in psilocybin butts in one of our it could be the ayahuasca ayahuasca it's in ayahuasca okay it's just this psychedelic substance so people are looking into all of this or different electrical activity of the brain and certain psychological theories fear of death dissociation various kinds of fantasies and so forth Van lombo argues that none of them individually explains all the phenomena associated with NDEs some don't explain any of them very well he does think that more research should be done on DMT and actually I don't know if you're familiar with Michael Pollan's book how to change her my heat takes a trip or a number of spiritual voyages using psychedelic ways of producing the experiences and he tries I what is it ayahuasca which is the DMT in the end van'll almost skeptical about the possibility of any adequate full explanation of NDEs within the standard scientific paradigm Sam pornea another MD offers a sophisticated discussion of the purported explanation of NDEs within the scientific paradigm he considers oxygen deficiency carbon dioxide overload and various chemical changes in the brain among other hypotheses including activation of the NMDA receptors I think that's a dope dopamine receptors which by the way now the new generation under development of antidepressants focus on the NMDA receptors so you know they have looked at you know various other neurotransmitters like serotonin norepinephrine and so forth but now they're looking at dopamine and the NMDA receptors as with Alexander and Van LOM oh he concludes that current scientific explanations are inadequate Parr Nia does not turn away from science but suggests as with Van LOM oh that our current scientific framework may be inadequate to explain the very real phenomena of NDEs soap our Nina says if the mind consciousness or soul can continue to exist and function when the brain does not function after death then it raises the possibility that it may be a separate undiscovered scientific entity that is not produced through the brain's usual electrical or chemical processes as we understand them based on today's understanding of neuroscience if further confirmed this calls for a new paradigm in neuroscience to address this issue so par Nia is just saying we can't explain at least it looks like we can't explain all the phenomena Vandy's within the usual scientific paradigm identifying the brain as the seat of consciousness but he's not going so far as to accept dualism but he's saying we need a new paradigm so another more recent discussion of these issues follows a similar pattern although she does believe in dualism it's pegged Sartori she considers a broad range of proposed explanations again too little oxygen too much co2 certain drugs endorphins and so forth she writes it is apparent that the materialist theories cannot account for the full range of complexities associated with the NDE after over 30 years of research into the phenomenon of NDEs not one of these proposed theories provides an adequate explanations okay so all of these NDE theorists canvass what they take to be the full panoply of possible physical explanations of NDP's and conclude that they aren't inadequate they tend to interpret physical explanations as involving too much or too little of certain chemicals though not all of them as I've read not all of them are of that sort they find these explanations unsatisfying either because they don't explain any features of NDEs or they don't explain all of these features of course even if one such factor does not explain any or all aspects of NDEs it might be that a combination of them acting additively or synergistically may provide the requisite explanations and the fact that we don't yet have an adequate physical explanation in terms of biochemistry of course does not entail that there are no prospects for such an explanation in the future neuroscience is still in its infancy maybe now it's in its toddler stage but it's still young and science marches on not too concerned with incompleteness in the theories of the present moment an analogy we do not have a cure for pancreatic cancer unfortunately and sadly a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is essentially a death sentence currently there is a small percentage have a certain version of pancreatic cancer that can be treated and perhaps cured at least put in remission Steve Jobs actually had that form unpacked at camps but he didn't realize it and so he went to Europe and sought alternative therapies and he did die of pancreatic cancer though he probably could have been cured that's in his in the book Steve Jobs his biography we have studied cancer in this particular kind of cancer for decades and we don't yet have a cure does it follow that we will never have a cure that we are going in the wrong direction by proceeding within the framework of science and medicine should we have banned in physicalism in light of our current inability to cure the dominant form of pancreatic cancer obviously not similarly we don't have yet have a theory of everything in physics unifying our best theories of the behavior of macroscopic am I Costa Copic phenomena also we don't have a fully adequate and undisputed account of the fundamental constituents of reality do these facts about the current state of physics imply or even suggest that we should give up on science it would be a glaring non-secular to make this leap ok a non sequitur of numbing gross Ness as someone said about a different non sex though it's one of my favorite phrases unfortunately many NDE theorists make precisely this leap into murky waters consider this passage from sartorius book neurological processes have been suggested to be the cause of the MDE and there are several theories describing these processes in detail most of these theories have been proposed from the premise that the brain creates consciousness however it remains unclear how conscious experiences can arise from neurological structures and accompany the neurological processing so our Tory goes on to reject the popular quote popular materialists belief end quote that the neurological processes caused consciousness rather see suggests that it is more plausible to suppose that the brain mediates consciousness exactly what that is not clear some of these people think the brain is like a receiver that receives the waves or the stuff that's out there that is the consciousness and that's a view that goes back to the philosopher honoré their song though they don't know that better they don't say that it's certainly not obvious how if at all consciousness emerge from urges from the material constituents and processes of the brain it can seem mysterious how this is even possible on the other hand it seems at least equally if not more mysterious how consciousness could emerge from a non-physical entity such as a soul how could something non-physical non-material feel like something or underwrite subjective awareness you know Thomas Nagel the philosopher contemporary philosopher talked about this in his paper what does it like to be a bad and he he said there are these problems with the what it's like properties of a qualitative subjective states of our minds how can they be physical but equally mysterious is how the soul could have what it's like property something totally non-physical doesn't seem to help to invoke dualism okay so naturalism and supernaturalism have their challenges but at least the project of explaining the mind in terms of neurological structures and processes is situated within the framework of science with well understood and widely accepted assumptions and methods there are big gaps in our scientific knowledge but history shows that science makes progress sometimes dramatic progress the assumptions and methods of dualism which posits a non-physical mind are obscure to seek to explain the mind by invoking a soul or non-physical entities and processes is to offer an explanation obscure impaired obscure iasts all right so basically what I want to do I'm going a little longer than what so I want to make sure I don't go too long but I want to suggest a different direction for a physical explanation that we don't use just let's say the idea of too much carbon dioxide not enough oxygen more DMT there's usually more ketamine so in other words we're not going to look so much for an excess or deficiency of a certain substance or chemical but we're going to look at certain functional processes and I'm not the first one to offer it I'm Michael Pollan suggest this in passing in his book how to change your mind an ende is a spiritual experience that is similar to various other such experiences in that is caused by certain by a certain system or module of the brain being taken offline or not functioning in the normal way as Michael Pollan puts it the mystical experience may just be what it feels like when you deactivate the Marines default mode network this can be achieved any number of ways through psychedelics and meditation but perhaps also by means of certain breathing exercises like holotropic breathwork sensory deprivation fasting prayer overwhelming experiences of all extreme sports near-death experiences and so on what would scans of brains in the midst of these spiritual activities or spiritual experiences reveal we can only speculate but quite possibly we would see the same quieting of the default network of the default mode network it's a network in the brain this quieting might be accomplished by restricting blood flow to the network or various other ways but however it happens taking this particular network offline may give us access to extraordinary states of consciousness moments of oneness or ecstasy that are no less wondrous for having a physical cause what is ok now that's the end of the quote from Pollan what is the default mode network the dmn it's the network in the brain that exhibits heightened activity when we seem to be doing nothing when our minds do not have a specific task to perform our brains are what our minds are wandering you might say again Michael Pollan writes the default mode network is the place where our minds go to wander to daydream ruminate travel and time reflect on ourselves and worry so there's an interesting book I've been reading by Robert Wright a journalist basically it's called why Buddhism is true and that's the book and so here's a quote I was beginning to observe the workings of what psychologists called the default mode network this is a network in the brain that according to brain scan studies is active when we're doing nothing in particular not talking to people not focusing on our work or any tasks not playing a sport or reading a book or watching a movie it is the network along which our mind wanders when it sorry how long yeah when it's when our brains are wandering this is the network that underwrites that Robin right points out that in meditation we seek to quiet the mind so Buddhist meditation we seek to quiet the mind and reduce if not eliminate the wanderings and I know if you've tried meditation but the problem is to stop your brain from wandering you know the wild animal keeps escaping we must take the default mode Network offline in meditation and there's Hindu in the Bhagavad Gita there's a discussion of the three qualities or states of consciousness dark inertia which I love passion and lucidity so we dark inertia or heedlessness is that state when our minds are wandering we're not doing anything in particular and through yoga I mean in Buddhism it's through meditation in Hinduism roughly I'm over exaggerating and simplify it's through yoga which is a kind of meditation as well that you go from dark inertia and heedlessness to illumination that's kind of like what's going on with all of these experiences they are going from a kind of dull heedlessness a dark inertia to some more enlightened state I'm skipping a little one of the most salient features of a spiritual or mystical experience including meditation prayer and NDEs is the loss of a sense of self as separate and apart from the rest of a reality it is plausible does this comes from the reduced functioning of the default mode Network and E's share some of the most important characteristics of other spiritual experiences according to Pollan these the and these shared traits include a vision of unity in which all things including the self are subsumed expressed in the phrase all is one a sense of certainty about one what one has perceived feelings of joy blessedness and satisfaction a transcendence of the categories we rely on to organize the world such as time and space or self and other okay don't tell Conte about this that we can transcend those a sense that whatever has been apprehended is somehow sacred last is the conviction that the experience is ineffable even as thousands of words are expended in the attempt to communicate its power okay the view I am okay that's the end of the quote the view I am suggesting for further consideration is that NDEs are also like other spiritual experiences and that they are a product of lessened activity in the default mode Network this is a physicalist a neurophysiological explanation a naturalist one but not one that has been discussed or explored in any detail that was mentioned by : this literature the standard and the illiterate reports to various other kinds of explanations but they typically involve deficits or excessive amounts of certain chemicals but that's unduly restrictive so we can have a physical explanation that's not so narrow okay so now it's the end of the final part a new interpretation that I promised you okay so the standard interpretation is supernatural and these are taken to provide strong evidence for and usually the point is put more strongly in terms of proof proof of the afterlife as I noted above this is the second component of supernaturalism and we need to look no further than the titles of the most visible books contemporary books to see this interpret like I already I read you the titles they're all about the afterlife or heaven and I could read you some more but sweet on day so above I distinguished two notions of real in the claim that NDEs are real one idea here of reality is that people really do have nd ease with the content they describe this is indisputably true for the great majority of NDE reports leaving Alex malarkey aside I love that name it's perfect people really have nd ease just as people really dream but there's another notion of reality according which NDEs are accurate represented representations of an external reality that NDEs are real in the first sense does not entail that they are real in a second even though in the literature there's often kind of a slide between the one and the others and E's are real therefore heaven is for real but that's a slide a logical slide alright so I think it would be desirable to give a charitable interpretation of the contents of NDEs and the reports of nd ears so on my approach we could understand NDEs as real in both senses of reality people really have the experiences and on my interpretation they would be true or accurate in representing the external world here's my idea we interpret NDEs as being primarily about the last phase of our lives dying rather than about the afterlife so when we use the term death that usually I mean sometimes we mean dying our deaths that process that last part of the life sometimes we mean the status of being dead but sometimes we mean dying so that's what I'm suggesting although in some Indies the explicit content includes contact with the heavenly realm or hellish realms there are 10 about 10% of the reports are negative okay and we can talk about those those are in some ways more interesting but most don't actually talk about the content with the heavenly realms rather they are stories of journeys toward a gated or demarcated place or domain or status like heaven as a gated community a travel toward this gated community guided by deceased loved ones our beloved religious figures the most important feature of these stories in my view is that they are journeys guided by loving mentors or trusted companions so at the risk of being trite the content of nd E's is best understood as a guided journey without any articulation of a specific destination okay I said it in a fancy way the point is it's the journey not the destination that counts that's the trait after all nd ears often report that as they approach a river or gate or a bright light at the end of a tunnel they awaken or regain waking consciousness this abrupt truncation of the nd is typically disappointing it's only a minority certainly not all and E's which describe a destination of an otherworldly realm which is reached of course people make movies out of those but most of them don't actually talk about going through the gate or crossing the river so we can then interpret and E's us being about the last page of our life's journey dying positive and E's contend or point to the fact that dying can indeed be good or even sublime negative and E's point to the fact that dying can be terrible on the positive side we can die we can die surrounded by loving relatives and friends and a humane and supportive environment we can die peacefully perhaps with hopes of a continued journey on the other side on the negative side we can die alone suffering terribly or treated with some are treated with so much pain medication that we are not able to be clear and lucid or at peace we die as listless zombies we can die and increasingly in the modern world of advancing medical technology in sterile institutional environments there's a lot of interesting discussion now maybe you've read Atul Gawande book on being more at all or sherwin Newlands book how we die other and these were taking a look at our practices of keeping people alive in hospitals for extended period of time in sterile context and they're wondering whether this is really what we should want ok so interpreted and E's are real in the sense that they are accurate portrayal of the possibilities both attractive and repellent of dying possibilities that are really present in our world in some nd ease there is indeed a portrayal of an afterlife in an otherworldly domain frequently containing divine or satanic beings but these are minorities and in any case they also contain detailed descriptions of benevolently guided journeys toward these realms in many cases the nder does not cross the barriers in some cases they do we but we can interpret them as fundamentally or primarily about the journey and not the destination we can understand them as primarily about the last phase of life so interpreted they are real in a banal exam does memorable term ultra real and so interpreted we can see that there are no logical gaps or mistakes in construing their contents as accurate ok I think there are logical mistakes and gaps going from the evidence the reported experiences to the claim that supernaturalism it obtains there are gaps there significant cuts but there aren't I don't think in arguing that the the experience is point to or indicate a reveal possibilities for dive good or bad the negative ones the 10% of the negative ones or the bad one so on this interpretation NDEs can be part of a two-pronged naturalist strategy for reducing but not eliminating death anxiety so it's a kind of terror management strategy there's a famous theory propounded originally by Ernst Becker Ernest Becker in his book the denial of death to the effect that just about everything we do is based on managing our terror of death and so it's something that would be good to have some kind of naturalistic terror management strategy the first step is to recognize that dying need not be sterile or painful and it can't even be beautiful there's a whole movement of kind of more green burials and alternative funeral practices where sometimes the body is at home it's kind of like home births or natural births and birth and death being bookends there's this whole movement now for a more natural funerary or memorial practices death doesn't have to be sterile in an institution or painful and it can't even be ecstatic and beautiful matter of fact many people report right at the end kind of ecstasy so we not fear dying we need not fear dying now of course it can't involve pain but we do have good pain management techniques so we shouldn't at least fear it too much let me put it that way and the second prong is to keep in mind what Epicurus emphasized we will not be there to suffer after we have died so dying itself need not be something we fear and then the status of being dead need not be something we fear is we're not going to be there at all we will not be there to suffer ok these points give us some reason not to dread death maybe if you get anything from this lecture you could think about hey maybe I could incorporate this into my own attitudes about death I mean dying doesn't have to be bad and the status of being dead won't involve any suffering but still we won't be there when we are dead and this is self can be frightening so in other words yeah it offers some consolation or some comfort but it can be scary to think that you won't be there at all and I don't know what I think but I mean I'm not sure whether it should be frightening should it be frightening that we won't be there because we won't be suffering at all I took a walk with a couple of students Nathan and Daniel and Nathan said yeah lights out so that's the idea lights out when you're when you're dead you're not there lights are out how could it really be something you should fear now maybe it's a bad thing ok maybe it's a bad thing that you died prematurely but being bad is different from something that's rational the fear and it's really not I can't really decide one way or the other but it doesn't seem right to say you fear a situation in which the lights are out and you're not there at all so anyway that offers a little bit of progress and even if we can't totally eliminate death anxiety maybe we can reduce it a little and maybe the correct attitude is a kind of ambivalence or holding in your mind two thoughts that aren't really compatible but seem equally kind of real that death is something that shouldn't be feared but then it might be scary as well so okay so really I promise you just three more paragraphs almost everyone interprets and E's as being about the afterlife giving me nd ears a glimpse of an otherworldly realm and showing that heaven is for real so understood there are glowing logical difficult ed glaring sorry logical difficulties the NDE evidence together with plausible ancillary print principles don't even come close to establishing either of supernaturalism two central components dualism about the mind and the real existence of a domain outside our physical space at least that's my view respectfully they don't establish super naturalism but it would be unfortunate if so many sincere thoughtful people were hopelessly wrong this is not a charitable interpretation better or at least nicer to find an interpretation according to which they are largely right I have given such an interpretation a naturalistic interpretation on which NDEs are real and E's really have experiences and their contents are true I might end by suggesting that we can add an element to this naturalistic interpretation we can stick with the interpretation I have sketched according to which the primary content the primary content is about possibilities for dying but we can add in that they often offer at least the hope of a desirable afterlife again this would not undermine their veracity it's not unreasonable to hope especially as our world is or at least can be a veil of Tears many human beings throughout history have yearned for an afterlife in which eternal peace is attained and justice is victorious near-death experiences offer this hope and before I and I wanted to read you just a short passage from Joe from the book of Job and it's the speech that God gives from the world wind you know Jobe is complaining have all these afflictions and plagues what did I do to deserve that as God you know what's up and God replies from the world or an unnamed individual replies from the world when there's a beautiful beautiful beautiful passage have you ever commanded mourning he's talking to Joe and saying basically who you to question this have you ever commanded mourning or guided debt dawn to its place to hold the corners of the sky and shake off the last few stars all things are touched with color the whole world has changed have you walked through the depths of the ocean or dived to the floor of the sea have you stood at the gates of doom or look through the gates of death have you seen to the edge of the universe speak up if you have such knowledge the idea being you know a near-death experience is like being at the edge of the universe it's like peering through the gates of death and maybe one of the reasons they're so awesome is that it's like we're given this godlike power maybe we can't go through the gate but we can peer through and then return okay maybe I'll stop there okay okay thank you I'm sure I can get oh you want to answer or do you want I mean do you answer do you want it do you want to take I can do it I think I can do all right so anybody all right in the back yes yes the young woman yes I'm sorry I didn't hear that okay there are how to put this out I'm not sure I fully heard the quote but a lot of people who have the near-death experiences are religious but not all of them are and a lot of people who have them and make some sort of supernatural conclusion they are either antecedently religious or they might be skeptical but maybe they are open to religion so Aben Alexandra the neurosurgeon said that he grew up in a religious family but it never kind of took for him there's always skeptical but what's interesting is in his book he talks about yearning he wishes that he could accept about Christian religion in which he grew up so that would be it's interesting because then he has his experience and his wish comes through comes true there are of course atheists who have near-death experiences and I think some of them do convert to some sort of religion and others don't and there's a famous atheist philosopher AJ Eyre who did have a near-death experience and it presented an afterlife and I guess afterwards he said he still doesn't believe in the afterlife but he's not so sure okay oh yeah I think well what I have noted there are some people who so one reason why Eamonn Alexander's book has been influential people are interested in is he presents himself as a skeptic and a scientist as rigorous and so even he had this experience but there are many books written by people who are Christian let's say antecedently and so it's I don't know if you want to take those quite as seriously but maybe you do but they are there's a woman named Mary Neil who has had a number of near-death experiences she is a Christian she believed even before that she could communicate with Jesus and so forth and so the fact that she believed she went to heaven and back and learned lessons from heaven I don't know how much credence you want to give it but she was a neuroscientist as well okay okay lots of questions let me try and get students first though okay yes okay hey wait before we go on let's see were you asking could someone have a number of states of consciousness but they're not necessarily aware of you tap into something that's we might call subconscious see I don't know what I call that consciousness or a it's a consciousness or conscious states usually means states that you are aware of and then subconscious or unconscious States or maybe real but you're not aware of that you don't have experiential access to them so I definitely think that you can have states of your mind that you're not aware of or their subconscious or they're unconscious I believe that's right and maybe near-death experiences kind of tap into those and bring them out I I agree that's possible now of course we haven't gotten to supernatural but yeah okay a toy a unified what yes well I from what I understand and Michael Pollan in his book how to change your mind has an extended discussion of the the research that seems to show that trees communication in a certain way they communicate in this way and you call it a kind of consciousness it's a little different I don't know if it's experiential if there's something it's like I don't I doubt it there's something it's like to be a tree there's something that's like to be you and something like to be me something that's like to be a dog so according to Thomas Nagel there's something it's like to be a bat we don't have access to that I we don't have access to the trees interstates but I doubt that they have interstates but they do in some way communicate and it could be a kind of awareness if you think of awareness there's a kind of awareness that's a sensing of a cue or some perturbation in our environment and that perturbation registers on us even if we're not aware of that so that I mean even if we're not conscious be aware so I agree that can be all that and maybe near-death experiences tap into the subconscious or unconscious States and maybe these other like prayer and meditation and the use of psychedelic substances maybe there are different ways of tapping in yeah that's possible but it doesn't get you to supernaturalism but it's just a more nuanced way of describing us good thank you and by the way LSD there Oliver Sacks in his book hallucinations talks about a report a young man reported in an experience on an LSD trip and it's just like a near-death experience just like it's a fascinating I commend this report to you and by the way I just want to say we call these experiences trips right so they're voyages it might be okay yes is it Brandon no the question will be can I have some more morphine no I know no I haven't thought of that I do remember I'm the director of the immortality project that's so I want to be immortal know what I have begun to do because believe it or not I probably not young anymore I've begun to think about and some of my friends have died you know I've begun to think about it I guess I was kind of somewhat neurotically preoccupied in anyway for all my luck but I used to think this is gonna be terrible I'm gonna be in horrible pain and maybe I could be given pain medication but then I won't be really clear and lucid but now I'm becoming to I'm coming to realize that there are ways of controlling pain compatibly with still being lucid at least much of time and you can die surrounded by loved ones and companions and you can have a chance to reflect on your life as a whole and bring it together and achieve a kind of peace and there are these interesting projects by the way has anyone seen a recent documentary called end game end game oh I highly recommend it it's maybe it's HBO or Netflix or one of those and it talks about the zen hospice project associated with UC San Francisco Medical School their end-of-life and palliative care department they have this house that is called the Zen hospice and people go and they die there but it's a house and it's they have all sorts of meditation and prayer and they have people come and give massages that they're very loving and it's a very humane way of dying so I don't think we have to die in some hospital room on a respirator where our family visits us for a while but after the months they don't anymore and so I'm having a different view about dying and then I also you know I think well is it really right to fear a state when I don't exist at all I agree that premature death can be a bad thing that's I believe that it can block our projects it could for you know it can prevent us from pursuing things we care about and it can deprive us of experiences that we otherwise would so it's a bad thing but should I fear it I don't think so so I'm changing my attitude I hope that I'll be more at peace I don't know that I've thought about questions to ask what I i'd like to somehow work up to the last minutes by being at peace and figuring things out are figuring out my life not or making sense of it not necessarily thinking that it all fits together in a cohesive way anyway I've changed my attitude and my way of picturing that period in my life and I want to continue to do that anyway thank you for the question oh okay yes in the back yeah well thank you I'll have to think about that more I hadn't made that can actually it's definitely in a near-death experience the individual is seeing or having the experience as if she or he is seeing deceased loved ones communicating with religious figures and they present themselves as real as lucid and so in that way it's similar to a psychotic it was seeing things as it were but it would be interesting now of course I don't want to leave it there and I appreciate their suggestion it's not as though everyone who's had a near-death experience is having a psychotic episode it's a a certain episode that's similar to psychosis but very different as well so anyway thank you I'll think about it more yes well they're very closely related I'd say non materialism just yeah is it denial that the world as we know it is just physical what they'll say is the world as we know it includes our mind and our mental states and a materialist would say those are just states of the brain and all there is is physical stuff a non materialist I'd say no the mind is at least partly immaterial it's a soul or there are non physical properties of the brain but that falls short of supernaturalism in the sense that you might still not believe in an afterlife it's just the denial of material so that view doesn't necessarily imply that there isn't after all right very very meticulously eliminating most possible explanations yeah direct front and so that they pratik a purely materialist view of Christ without necessarily being spiritualist right do you accept their I accept their work as serious and thoughtful they are it was interesting they were at the University of Virginia at the same place that Bruce Grayson is who's now still writing about Andes and they have a whole interest in paranormal phenomena there and Stevenson and Tucker there yeah rigorous thoughtful work but I myself don't accept their conclusions I mean III agree that you should look at these cases carefully but in our book you can get at the library or you could buy it you so I'm not trying to sell my book but in the book that I wrote about nd ease with my postdoc then we talked at length about that the James Leininger case that they talked about the past life case one of the most famous where this young boy was he was five when he started talking about his past life as a he believed he held that he was a fighter pilot in the past life and the amazing thing was he could reel off all these details of you know fight fire fights and battles and war and details that seemed only to be possible to know if you were there but then people looked at it more carefully and turns out that when he was three his parents took him to an air museum and there was display and they read about they read to him the display out out loud with many of these details then when they went home presumably they talked about it and he was a very smart three-year-old and a smart three old can pick up stuff and then maybe later though he couldn't articulate that later he was able to kind of articulate some of the stuff but it turns out when you look at the case carefully this the prior life sigh pollicis is not the only one and my view and this is just a prejudice or at least a predisposition let's say an inclination that whenever you have a story that purports to be a story of prior lives there you there should be some non prior life naturalistic explanation that you can find and but I admit that I don't have them in all the cases and I admit that Stevenson and Tucker were meticulous and thoughtful but I mean I think they had hundreds of cases but I mean how many thousands and maybe millions of cases of very sincere people could you find who think they they're if they've been healed by faith healers I mean how many doesn't matter it doesn't make it true it might be okay all right so yes how would it work they definitely my view they definitely had these experiences like a dream people definitely have dreams with content I think they had these experiences while they were not wake fully conscious you could say that we're conscious but not wake fully conscious and so they have memories are quasi memories well I mean memories as of having done these things it's just that the memories are the apparent memories sometimes in philosophy we call them quasi memories where it seems like it was it happened and and that's the way presents itself to you in the past but they they're not true so I mean I were you saying that it could be a kind of contagion or I wasn't sure yeah good I don't think it's contagion I think it would be hard to to establish that but what you said about suggestibility is really important because people invoke the idea that children all over the world and children have in de's where they report content that's similar you know but the problem is that kids the young kids are not telling the stories that parents are telling the stories or adults are telling the stories and sometimes they'll bring in psychologists they did in the line injur case they'll bring in child psychologists but the way they ask the questions is crucial you know it's like any poll you know how you ask the question and kids are very suggestible and so they they pick up that their questioner wants them to believe this a Colton Burpo father Todd was a minister and of course a young kid wants to please their parent and so I agree there's a kind of suggestibility that may well play a role in some of these reports and it might well be you might be right that if a number of people with whom you're familiar report this it may be not contagion but it may make it more likely that you will report it I agree I can't though I mean I think there's something even more rooted in biology than just contagion I think it has to do you know the default mode Network kind of governs and constrains us in a lot of ways and when that's taken offline it kind of frees us up and I think something like that is happening and spiritual experiences in general again I'm not a scientist but it's it's a plausible this is and maybe this is going on and near-death experiences but let me also say the way we conceptualize these raw experiences is to some extent dependent on our culture and our compatriots so here's an example it comes from Bruce Grayson from Virginia in Western cultures just about every Western culture you know we have this trope there's always light at the end of the tunnel no matter how bad it is no matter how scary the situation's there's always light at the end of them so we tend to report in a near-death experience a light at the Indian and at the end of a town or in a black area and we travel toward the light but in Japan they don't have that trope but they have the idea that it would be comforting in old age as you approached to purchase a plot of land and till attend a rock garden with loved ones you know and in Japan in their near-death experiences they often report that so the idea is there are certain similarities but also specifics are different depending on culture and suggestibility so also the religious figures are different in India they they're Hindu religious figures and Western cultures it's often Christian religious figures so there are important differences but at some level they are the similar there's usually an out-of-body experience there's often a life review there's this guidance by a mentor or a trusted loved one maybe a family figure or a religious figure now the specifics are different but there are these similarities which is interesting and I think those I think they're rooted in something anyway good yes okay so I'm not sure I heard but is this the question that there would be a big incentive for a serious believer in a certain religion let's say Chris some version of Christianity serious incentive for that person not to report something incompatible with Church's teachings is that what it was yeah yeah well I think of someone who's a sincere person let's say comes back and I and he said in my experience I saw Jesus and Satan and they were playing poker yet or whatever you know it's something really horrible if he saw that you know I don't know I don't know what to say it shouldn't report it probably but I think I don't know I think the truth behind your question is what we go I mean we have antecedent beliefs and cult acculturation and they're going to shape the way we describe our experiences they're not all there is to the experience so for instance you see a there's a flash of light and in maybe in Japan nobody notices that it's a flash of light but maybe in our culture we say oh it's a light at the end of the tunnel and that's because of a difference in the culture so there's a I don't know how to put it a pressure now a negative n DS I should just mention I there about 10% of the reports are negative but we think maybe they're under reporting because if you come back and say oh I had this experience of descending I was being guided by Satan down and I saw suffering and I kept going down toward darkness and away from the light you know someone's going to think hey maybe you're not a very nice guy or baby you know you've done something to deserve this and so there's an incentive not to report that maybe it's like if you're I don't know I don't know you know how it is with pollsters they'll ask some questions that people are uncomfortable admitting their real view you know like well I won't give any examples but you know that's the kind of thing so anyway I'll just leave it that there's a famous I would recommend or comenting you could look Google this there's a famous a Buddhist monk reported let's see he reported a near-death experience in which the Buddha wasn't helped and it was because he didn't accept Christian teachings and Jesus so though the mall the monk the Buddhist monk who reported this then converted to Christianity but it was later debunked the whole thing and there's a book on this by Nancy Evans Bush she tends to focus specialize in negative near-death experiences and her book is called the Buddha in hell and it's very interesting but it's one of these things like Alex malarkey where people report these things that aren't sincere so there is some of that but there's also the negative okay I'm sorry I might be too much information yeah yeah good very good question and I haven't I have my own view on this I don't know whether it's right but I think near-death experiences are the the basic content is a a journey that's guided by a trusted mentor someone more experienced and who has your interests in mind put someone reductionistic aliy it's a fiduciary it's someone who cares about you and your interests and you defer to might be a religious figure it might be a parent that's the kind of core story and it often leads to significant transformations and I think negative and positive ones are the same are similar at a certain abstract level because the negative ones tend to be journeys this time it's downward rather than up it's away from the light but it's a journey that's guided by some kind of Mentor why is it a mentor and why is it benevolent the individual is not is trying to show you what could happen to you if you don't change of ways but basically it's giving you lessons you know this suffering could happen to you so in a sense the individual has been heaven it's tough love you could say but benevolent and the transformation does sometimes occur right because the person when he or she regains wakeful consciousness might well change as a result of this and one of the scientists who we supported in the immortality project an Israeli psychiatrist and neuro scientist named Shahar RZ he studied the life review that was his thing like how can this occur I mean it's kind of fascinating where is it stored in the brain I mean how does it occur and one thing he did he interviewed a number of patients and one that stuck out in his mind said when I had my life with you I saw that I had really badly mistreated serve people in particulars of former woman France with history and he said it really changed him maybe he was in light so I think that's a model for how it could be transformative in a positive way but I agree that the ultimate serenity that might come would be mediated by deep anxiety because you say unless I change something really this bad is going to happen it's a little but good good question I think the negative ones are understudied but again it might be because they're underreported who wants to admit you know I had this negative so I should emphasize again not only am i not a scientist but I am NOT a real expert at all of the research on near-death experiences I started studying them when I got the grant which was in 2012 so I've done a lot of reading but not everything so I honestly don't know if there's been a study of people who've done like been when they after they've had their near-death experiences they've done beautiful art or you know and that's what I do know is they do I don't know if I would use the word sublime but I don't have any with that but they reported us beautiful the realm is beautiful it's peaceful it's accepting you are loved and it's a beautiful peaceful realm and then the transformations are often being more pro-social being less worried about death but I don't know if people become more creative it's a good question you should get a grant and study that I also think someone should study because I don't know that they have weather like you can identify factors that predispose you toward having a negative one like are people who are chronically depressed or anxious are they more likely to have a negative one are people who are in a fire-and-brimstone kind of religious church are they more likely to have a negative one or you know what I don't think we know the answer to that yes they all have what of this spiritual space Yeah right [Music] mmm-hmm good good questions or not you know that it raises so many issues one thing is I need to say these people claim and a banal exaggerated example and others they claim because their neuro scientists and neurosurgeons they've been trained at well enough to know that the brain their brain was offline their brain of course still minimally functioning to support the housekeeping chores of the body but not enough to support consciousness they're saying the experience had to happen during that time but I one point that others have made and I want to emphasize this we really don't know when the end ee occurs and we don't know that it occurs when the brain is offline so for instance with a dream we know from studying the brain that it often occurs just as you're waking up as your brain is ramping up to be conscious and it might seem you know the content presents a longer period of time it might seem to you that you're dreaming about events that took place a while ago but the experience itself is taking place as you're about to wake up that might be happening in an NDE it might be that yeah the brain is offline for a while but now it's ramping up and as its ramping up you're at you have this experience and it seems like you had it for a long time but you didn't that's a possibility and these people can't rule it out some of the arguments are well they say proof of heaven heavens forbid you have to accept supernaturalism based on these phenomena now one at least interesting but minimal tasks that you could have is show no you don't have to there's an alternative another more robust task would be to say well not only is there an alternative but the alternative explanation is the best explanation that's a more robust conclusion okay but I just want to say we don't really know I guess we would have one of the problems is let's say you could find an area of the brain that lights up when someone's having a dream and having experiences in a dream and then you found a similar part lighting up when someone wait after someone wakes up and says I had a near-death experience and we could look and see that there was something but one of the problems is most people who have near-death experiences aren't already hooked up to a machine or you know we can't run to the accident site and hook up an fMRI or something you know so that's one of the problems but I just want to say you're right I'm sorry go ahead I know you wanted to follow right right right well let me okay you're raising a bunch of interesting questions I try put my mind around some of them yes when people talk about OBEs or out-of-body experience they talk about floating or seeing their body on the operating table from above they have an experience as of floating above the body but now is it really true that they're floating above their body that's a separate question so they have this experience many people again don't make that distinction they point out lots of people have out-of-body experiences so they must be real and that must show that our mind is not our brain but doesn't show that at all it seems as if I'm floating above my body but I might not be I mean now there's a study that also we supported where this physician is putting computers monitors in rooms in a cardiac intensive care ward so people come in having had a heart attack or off cardiac event that and they're unconscious and the screen is not visible physically from the bed and then a number is flashed or a number of numbers randomly and then when the individual gets up recovers not all do but we hope that they do they're asked did you see a number or they you know did they volunteer oh I saw the number 70 that would be at least some evidence that you could float above your body because you can't physically see it it wouldn't be decisive evidence because someone like me I'm always going to be skeptical didn't a nurse tell tell him and Sam Varney of a guy who is doing this research told me that they have to be super careful to double triple blind these because when they first did this in Southampton in the UK the nurses were so desperate to have this come out true that they told the patient's it by the way that upper might have been 78 I so you have to be really careful but yeah but you're right so one problem was supernaturalism and one problem with the view that we're literally floating above our consciousness and our perspective is not that of our body and brain is that when you go back somehow your soul that flew around has to communicate with your brain how does that happen you know that's a real mystery it's the traditional mystery in philosophy of mind about mind-body interaction how can something physical interact causally with something non-physical it seems to be a mystery is it a total is it a mystery that should cause you to totally not take seriously the hypothesis no I don't think so because I'm willing I mean I think we should take seriously the hypothesis that there is a God that's non-physical and that can interact with the physical world can perform miracles and so forth it's a mystery if God is non-physical it's not in space and time how can such an entity causally interact but I don't think it's I would just say it's a big mystery and it's a big challenge okay yes yes yes yeah well I think so the way I understand it and Chalmers is a very sophisticated contemporary philosopher and mind and he defends something he calls dualism it's kind but it's not a soul that's separate from the by that's not it it's just this somewhat complicated settled view that the brain has non-physical elements or aspects that emerged in some way from the physical one and he doesn't believe in an afterlife so it doesn't follow from non-physical ISM or from dualism that you believe in an afterlife and this is a mistake that almost all of these people like Sam carnea and even Alexander at pym but they all trundle out David chumps David Chalmers is a sophisticated contemporary philosopher of mind and he believes in dualism therefore we've got to take this seriously well yes but maybe not the afterlife though I you know I don't think we can rule it out but so having said all that the hard problem is the problem of explaining how the subjective qualitative mental states can be physical or can arise from something purely tha's so when you put your hand on a hot stove it feels like something you know pleasures pains there are a lot of mental states that have qualitative content the hard problem is two so the easier problem is to explain how certain mental states could be physical but those are not mental states that have this what it's like character so I think that's a really interesting and difficult problem and I think I don't know if it is scientific or what maybe like I say maybe if you studied in the future you know because our scans are getting better and stuff that you study people who put their hands on all right you don't want it I guess it wouldn't pass the human subjects epic committee but if somehow we could correlate activity in the brain with feelings somehow you know maybe you could make progress scientifically but even then it would just be a correlation and of course a duelist might say well those physical processes open the door to the soul or something you know I think the answer from me is that's a really hard problem that's deeply troubling for many physicalists it's motivated some people to give up there's a clause on but I do agree with Thomas Nagel that well how does dualism help exactly well how it could it feel like something to be a soul all right you know how could the soul have aspects that feel like something okay so we we might have time let's say one more question yes or is that right one more and then I'll be here in case I'm sure there are examples of things that wouldn't be expected I don't know is the honest answer the simple answer I'm not aware I mean there's not been a discussion because I mean I think if there were a discussion of that I would have come across it maybe not though about I'm sure there are anomalies you know like it's it's like I say it's a family resemblance notion or syndrome so everyone's gonna have some of those elements but some might have few and they might have other things whether you call it then a near-death experience or not unclear but see the way I look at it think of other mental phenomena like depression or anxiety there's a physical component to it I think almost certainly your brains functioning in a different way there's - there's not enough serotonin is available or dopamine or whatever it is that people don't understand it exactly there's something physical I'm sure but then that's not all there is that there's maybe issues in relationships or an attachment disorder that comes from early childhood experiences or there's stress there's a loss there's a disappointment that interacts you could say the psychological interacts with the biological to produce these phenomena like depression and anxiety and others well the near-death experiences are like that there's something culture shapes it but also biology and it's some combination of that now whether there are some cases where you get a you know an Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem who has a near-death experience and he sees Mohammed in a good way yeah I don't know if that happens I'm sure anomalies happen and things but yeah how we would explain that again I'm not sure I mean maybe he visited Palestine I have a call Howard wetstein who's a very interesting guy who Jewish and writes about the significance of religious experiences and he has a very close relationship with a university in Palestine and he visits regularly so maybe he would have a dear death experience of which some of these experiences come up you know I don't know you know some of this is I have to say I kind of tread the line and it's delicate between ruminating and speculating on these issues in a way that's empirically informed which i think is okay and just rank speculation from my armchair and that's I agree that's not a good thing okay maybe I should stop there the Hey [Applause]

Channel: Univ. of California, Riverside

Views: 1,305,292

Rating: 3.9364383 out of 5

Keywords: UC Riverside, University of California, UCR, near death, near, death, experience, experiences, near-death, dying, is there a god, heaven, hell, die, dead, what happens when you die, nde

Id: y_cdfE3i7qw

Length: 108min 41sec (6521 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019