David Bailey
Member
A discussion about the nature of NDE's got started in another thread, so I would like to move it here.
Do I take from the above that you think the category of experience known as an NDE, is nothing but an arbitrarily chosen subset of the mental events that take place in medical emergencies?
Why not widen the subject then, and discuss the other mental events from which you think NDE reports are cherry picked.
Surely most (maybe not all) NDE events take place when the heart is not beating, so that at least provides a non-arbitrary basis for the definition.
David
I'm not sure why you're talking to me about "explain them all" and "ad hoc". The claim is that these experiences mean something in terms of a consciousness separate from the brain. It makes sense to me to investigate what kinds of experiences are had under these circumstances and whether these are unique in some way - some way that informs us about the process of consciousness. Also, it should be noted that the appearance of "common elements" is an artifact of selecting out a small subset of all the auditory-visual experiences people report around the time of physical/medical crises on the basis of these "common elements" (I've said before that we should be interested in all the auditory-visual experiences which people report, not just this small subset). I have no interest in explaining them in terms of a materialist viewpoint - what a waste of time. I'm not interested in "ad hoc" explanations, either.
I think you're still talking to your strawman instead of talking to me.
Linda
Do I take from the above that you think the category of experience known as an NDE, is nothing but an arbitrarily chosen subset of the mental events that take place in medical emergencies?
Why not widen the subject then, and discuss the other mental events from which you think NDE reports are cherry picked.
Surely most (maybe not all) NDE events take place when the heart is not beating, so that at least provides a non-arbitrary basis for the definition.
David