Dr. Michael Shermer on Near-Death Experience Science |379|

One thing I'm not sure about is if when a person is heading into the deep anesthesia or coming out of the deep anesthesia, couldn't an NDE be kind of like a dream that tricks the experiencer into thinking it happened in the deepest anesthesia?

This would be a good argument except that people often report the experience being more real than our current reality and the experiences often change them for life. Most drug induced states wouldn't render the same experiences. Specifically anesthesia. I'm missing something else here but I can't think of it off the top of my head. Will follow up if I remember.
 
I think it’s Penny Sartori. Not sure if it’s a journal study or presented in her book. Anyone?

That's correct, malf. It is Penny Sartori, in a journal article reproduced on this IANDS page:

https://iands.org/research/nde-rese...-sartori-phd-prospective-study.html?showall=1
When contrasted with the control group, who had undergone resuscitation but did not report an OBE, many discrepancies were discovered. Having been asked to re-enact their resuscitation, the control group’s reports were very inaccurate and demonstrated misconceptions and errors between the actual procedures performed, as well as equipment used. Many of these patients either had no idea as to how they had been resuscitated or made guesses, based on what they had previously seen on television.
 
This would be a good argument except that people often report the experience being more real than our current reality and the experiences often change them for life. Most drug induced states wouldn't render the same experiences. Specifically anesthesia. I'm missing something else here but I can't think of it off the top of my head. Will follow up if I remember.

Thanks for the comment, jerbear. I've heard about the life-changing aspects on the podcasts and things, but have never thought much about it. One response I'd have to a piece of your comment is that I think there are times when people have a legit night-time dream that can be life changing. I've seen that referred to as "big dreams."

https://www.asdreams.org/dreams-that-change-our-lives/?

Supposedly this was popular in some indigenous tribes, where important decisions such as when to break camp or where to set up the next camp could come in dreams. (I don't have a good source for this, who knows if it's even true.) And I think there have been tribes that do fasting and other activities to try to get visions at different times.

I guess the Aborigines in Australia had (have?) a really different relationship with their dreams. They have their dream-time and whatnot. I don't know about dream-time, but I think it may be possible that the power or "realness" of a person's dreams may have a lot to do with the person's home culture.

I suppose you could talk about the discovery of the benzene ring in a dream to be a life-changing dream, even a world changing dream.

That's not to say that I think NDEs are dreams, because I don't think they are. But it seems possible that they are something LIKE a dream. I wonder if it's possible that some research subjects who report not having an NDE actually had an NDE but completely forgot it upon coming awake, like people tend to do with dreams a lot.

Edit: Jerbear, it occurs to me that I misread your post and so my reply is missing the point you made about the drugs, specifically. I have to think about it some more.
 
Last edited:
That's correct, malf. It is Penny Sartori, in a journal article reproduced on this IANDS page:

https://iands.org/research/nde-rese...-sartori-phd-prospective-study.html?showall=1

If anyone's interested, here's an in-depth single case from the same study:

Sartori, P., Badham, P. and Fenwick, P. (2006) A Prospectively Studied Near-Death Experience with Corroborated Out-of-Body Perceptions and Unexplained Healing. The Journal of Near-Death Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 69–84, Winter 2006. (Also translated into Dutch for the Journal Terugkeer.)

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdo...FA04E961?doi=10.1.1.631.792&rep=rep1&type=pdf
 
Last edited:
[Edited for brevity and clarity]

This is hard to write, because I'm totally on Alex's side and want to be able to cheer him on. I don't want to be negative, even though most of my responses to podcasts do focus on the negatives - somehow it's easier for me to highlight (perceived) deficiencies over (perceived) strengths. I mean no offence by it, it's just my default mode, and, generally, despite any criticism, I love Alex's interviews and the manner in which he pursues them - after all, I keep on listening to them!

I'm on Alex's side because I agree that the most reasonable, level-headed understanding of near-death experience testimony/evidence/research does support the view that conciousness is not dependent on the brain. That is, this phenomenon refutes materialism.

But here's the kicker: in this interview, I don't think Alex "led with the right". The most evidential aspect of the NDE phenomenon is veridical OBEs. So, strike out first with that powerful right fist, Alex! I don't understand why you didn't, and didn't even mention this aspect. I don't understand why instead you led with a weaker evidential aspect of NDEs, their occurrence during anaesthesia, nor why you didn't seem prepared for the (predictable) skeptical answer, which Michael Shermer duly supplied: this is just anaesthesia awareness, of course.

In general, you seemed a little under-prepared for this interview, Alex, especially the (predicable) skeptical replies to the points you raised.

Here's another thing though: I'm not even sure that Michael Shermer deserves a place at (y)our table. As Charlie pointed out in the preview thread, Michael has been plausibly accused of rape. It might be understandable (if wrong) that those in his own community overlook this given his contributions, but should you/we, his "frenemies"?

And I get it, the legal standard is "innocent until proven guilty". But the social standard is not and ought not to be that stringent, at least until/if he is tried legally. Definitely he has the right to present his side of the story via his own media, but should a man with a plausible allegation of rape against him be granted a voice on Skeptiko, especially without even being challenged on it?
 
Last edited:
I thought this was a great interview and progress was actually made.

His best argument is that the hard problem of consciousness may be "insoluble" (or unsolvable) because of the way it is framed and the limitations of language... I agree 100%.

His next best argument is that conscious experience is invariably tied to a body. I don't believe consciousness has any meaning without a body from which to perceive and a "material" world with which to perceive and interact. (the definition of "material" can be stretched broadly) People with "out of body" experiences still experience themselves as being in some kind of body... it has been called various names.. the light body, the etheric body, the astral body, the resurrection body. The perceptions of remote-viewers are symbols which are grounded in physical interaction with the material world through the viewer's body (for example: "I'm getting the impression of something sharp" ... the concept of "sharp" is grounded in the human physical bodily experience of hard things that cut soft things). Remote viewers don't perceive from the perspective of a different physical body like that of a bat or a slug or a star... they get impressions that would only make sense in a human body. If consciousness leaves the body at bodily death and inhabits a new body then this could be the reason why so many NDEers say that they cannot adequately use words to express their experience... being in a different body means symbols are grounded differently.

Michael doesn't accept any evidence for "extended consciousness" as being evidence of extended consciousness because he is stuck on the need to fully explain how the "extended body" works... so maybe we should try a new tactic with him and say all of this evidence is really evidence of an "extended body" and we are trying to figure out how the "extended body" that is dreaming up our current reality actually works. Or maybe the VR analogy provides a better metaphor: maybe Shermer's real body is sitting in a bean bag chair with a higher-tech X-box and plugged into this game of life. Maybe its a dream within a dream... a simulation within a simulation.. maybe its bodies all the way down. I'm not a fan of saying "it's all consciousness" and neither is it "all material" because nothing in reality is unipolar. Consciousness is the point where subject and object merge and that isn't possible to adequately express in our language which is why the "hard problem" we have framed is impossible to solve.

We know that veridical non-local and asynchronous perceptions and interactions are real... plenty of evidence for that. Shermer dismisses it all because he doesn't understand how it could work so he prefers to cling to implausible mundane explanations. He cherry picks data that supports his beliefs. In this regard he is no better than the priest or young-earth-creationist with whom he prefers to contend. And that's a shame because there is a genuine mystery here and I believe it is possible to progress towards a better understanding of it. None of us understands how it works. That is how knowledge progresses: we admit we don't understand how it works before we can try to figure it out. Shermer thinks it is already all figured out.

And Alex did a great job of pointing that out... that first we have to acknowledge a gap in our understanding before we can make progress towards understanding it. If we had to fully explain how something works before we admit it is happening... we would never progress at all.

Conscious experience may be tied to a body, but that body does not have to be physical. But in Shermer's case the only body he admits to is physical. So if he says that conscious experience requires a physical body he is dead wrong. He escapes that wrongness by simply invalidating all other evidence as being not 'scientific' - as if the only basis for validation of an experience is only 'science'. I get that this is a game some people play with ardour. I just think it is a crazy thing to do - link your acquisition of knowledge and understanding of human reality to a game.

In terms of Shermer saying "the hard problem of consciousness may be "insoluble" (or unsolvable) because of the way it is framed and the limitations of language: I also agree 100%. But I don't credit him with this at all, because all, he is doing is repeating what others have said. But I'd like to take that matter a little further. Today I listened to a BBC discussion of protons, and one of the speakers, a quantum physicist, observed that quantum theory was the best and the worst scientific theory ever developed. It was the best in terms of prediction and the worst in terms of description. I think his point was the quantum theory does not describe physical reality very well at all. But it does describe metaphysical reality far better.

I think 'consciousness' as an idea makes better sense from the metaphysical angle. Writers like Stewart E White, Frank DeMarco and Jane Roberts do a far better job in bending our minds to that other dimension than any of the formal thinkers precisely because they do not begin from the premise of affirming physical reality as the only or primary POV. So its not just the language but the thinking that informs it. We can't reinvent language for ideas we haven't had. White and DeMarco constantly struggle with translating from the metaphysical to the physical. We need to be able to think effectively in metaphysical terms before we can even start to comprehend some of these deeper ideas.

In this context Shermer is anchored in the physical. He can't and won't permit metaphysical thought to validate human reality. That's a choice. I am half way through Dean Radin's book, and this gives a far better sense of direction. Dean understands he needs a different version of the science game to move forward, so he is developing it. In Star Trek terms Shermer is stuck playing 2D chess while others have moved onto the 3D game. Pity.
 
Sure. Which case is that?

All cardiac arrest induced NDEs in which oxygen restriction to the brain quickly stops synapse, thus neuronal, function and destroys brain coherence to an extent that should prohibit conscious experience.

Even if you assume the timing of the NDE as being during the brain's brief shut-down window, it's still rather remarkable that coherent (maybe heightened) perception, logical thought and deeply transformative experiences occur as your brain circles the plughole. Why would they? It's all rather baroque for an evolutionary adaptation, imo.

Anyway, I'm convinced of the timing match-up by the reported recall of treatment (like the Sartori stuff).

Peace.
 
Last edited:
Anyway, I'm convinced of the timing match-up by the reported recall of treatment (like the Sartori stuff).

Peace.

That’s why I brought it up. I thought I understood the point Malf was trying to make (it’s a fair and valid contention). It’s extraordinarily difficult to know exactly when these experiences take place, generally. But I think cases like this help a great deal in our understanding. It may be as good as it ever gets, from an evidence standpoint.
 
If we can trust the accounts of those who have “SHARED death experiences”, as we believers and critics alike believe the accounts of NDE experiencers, then I think we can discredit every single critical explanation with ease and render every argument meaningless. Take this guys account for example.

Around 1 year ago, this particular video was the clincher for me. What’s interesting, and he doesn’t touch upon it in this particular video, but years later he found out that he was not the only one in the room who had this experience. Two other family members did as well.

 
Last edited:
This would be a good argument except that people often report the experience being more real than our current reality and the experiences often change them for life. Most drug induced states wouldn't render the same experiences. Specifically anesthesia. I'm missing something else here but I can't think of it off the top of my head. Will follow up if I remember.
Also, not everybody who has an NDE is under anesthesia
 
If we can trust the accounts of those who have “SHARED death experiences”, as we believers and critics alike believe the accounts of NDE experiencers, then I think we can discredit every single critical explanation with ease and render every argument meaningless. Take this guys account for example.

Maybe retrocausality style super-psi is the only one left standing? But I reckon this is also unlikely when all the evidence is taken into account.

Look forward to watching that video, btw.
 
Last edited:
Although I understand that for everyday practical purposes it is useful to refer to our waking state as the “real” state.

It's probably also useful for avoiding nervous breakdowns. :)

C.S. Lewis:
And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

We need to be able to think effectively in metaphysical terms before we can even start to comprehend some of these deeper ideas.

Could you please expand on this? If you've got the inclination and or time, that is. :)
...constantly struggle with translating from the metaphysical to the physical.

I like Eric Wiess's mashup of panpsychism and transphysical worlds in which all matter has an experiential/consciousness dimension as a counterpart (and vice versa).

Under this scheme, our counterparts exist in an archetypal/astral realm and our experience flips between the two via the mechanism of attention. When our attention is focused on the embodied physical, we experience the material, when our attention shifts to the imaginal, we experience the transphysical.

I've probably murdered the concept, so, from the horse's mouth:

Here's a brief outline:
http://www.ericweiss.com/papers/pdf/AN_ESALEN_LECTURE_ON_PERSONALITY_SURVIVAL_AND_SUBTLE_WORLDS.pdf

And a much more intense one:
http://www.ericweiss.com/papers/pdf/EMBODIMENT.pdf

I was put onto this by Sciborg_S_Patel on that other forum.
 
Last edited:
Also, not everybody who has an NDE is under anesthesia

I think in my earlier post that jerbear responded too, I was trying to play around with the idea that what if an NDE occurs 1 second before the person wakes up from the state of unconsciousness, and in that 1 second, has the powerful NDE that seems to have lasted much longer (or seemed to be out of time all together) and seemed to have occurred earlier.

I'm not convinced that that's the case, but the thing about even routine night-time dreams is that they can be awfully tricky regarding time and just tricky in general. I've had dreams within dreams where I wake up in my bed, and something scary happens, and then I wake up again for real. It's confusing as hell when that happens.

All cardiac arrest induced NDEs in which oxygen restriction to the brain quickly stops synapse, thus neuronal, function and destroys brain coherence to an extent that should prohibit conscious experience.

Even if you assume the timing of the NDE as being during the brain's brief shut-down window, it's still rather remarkable that coherent (maybe heightened) perception, logical thought and deeply transformative experiences occur as your brain circles the plughole. Why would they? It's all rather baroque for an evolutionary adaptation, imo.

Anyway, I'm convinced of the timing match-up by the reported recall of treatment (like the Sartori stuff).

Peace.
That’s why I brought it up. I thought I understood the point Malf was trying to make (it’s a fair and valid contention). It’s extraordinarily difficult to know exactly when these experiences take place, generally. But I think cases like this help a great deal in our understanding. It may be as good as it ever gets, from an evidence standpoint.

Building on the 1 second before waking idea, if a person recalled specific procedural details from when they were unconscious, it may be worth considering that if they weren't having the NDE at that time, could they somehow still have been perceiving sensory details and storing them in memory to be rolled up into the NDE that happens at a different time?

Full disclosure, I haven't read the Sartori research, and I want to do that soon. I appreciate the opportunity to bounce ideas around with you folks on the forum. I was pretty content with my private thoughts on the matter for years now, but even this brief conversation is showing me that I need to dig into the research more and bring my personal ideas up to speed. So thank you for that.

Can someone explain how a dream state is less real then our waking reality? Or is it?
Good question. I think dreams are as puzzling as any other aspect of the hard problem.
 
I just finished the interview. Those of you that backed out shouldn't have, although I admit you won't learn anything new. It's still good to see denial in action and understand how it may exist within yourself.

It made me crazy how he would demand you stand inside of HIS materialist model (which precludes floating thought forms) and ask how floating thought forms could exist in that model? At the end he concedes maybe we need a new way of looking at this issue and that is EXACTLY what other people have been doing yet he dismisses every other model thrown at him. Frustrating, but completely within expectation.
 
Conscious experience may be tied to a body, but that body does not have to be physical. But in Shermer's case the only body he admits to is physical.

Hmm... We'll set to one side the apparent appearance of awareness in biological systems and it's apparent 'evolution' in more complex systems.

Let's just talk about "human consciousness", or "what is it like to be a great ape?" how can that not me "tied to a {human} body"?
 
31890794_769884013213684_4264339506255101952_n.jpg

;)
 
I think one thing that is missing from our discussion here is a consideration of OBEs, also called Astral Travelling. The problem with NDEs is that they are physical body crisis generated, and this precipitates an argument that there may be a connection between the physical crisis and the experience.

OBEs are a very different class of experience, but also essentially akin to NDEs. I have had only one lucid OBE, so my first hand experience is limited. Nevertheless it left me in no doubt soever that I and my body are two distinct entities.

I have read objections that stimulating the brain in certain ways can lead to a sensation like an OBE, and this is asserted to be grounds for dismissing OBEs as brain based. But there is a link between the self in the OBE state and the body, so it is reasonable to allow that the brain continues to behave during an OBE, aware that the I is off elsewhere, and registers that excursion.

While OBEs may not be amenable to the standard scientific examination they have been studies seriously for ages, and there's a load of material on the subject, as well as organisations devoted to the subject. Maybe Alex might add the subject to a future Skeptiko conversation.

OBEs bring a vital additional dimension to the subject. While it is possible to quibble about NDEs - like when they occur relative to the experiencers brain state (dead to not), OBEs operate in a different space, and the objections have to be very different.

Many years ago I was sharing a bed with a girlfriend who had a spontaneous OBE. She freaked out when she found herself floating up close to the ceiling and when she got back she woke me up to report what had happened. She told me that I had a conversation with her and calmly encouraged her to return to her body on the bed. She insisted that our interaction was as clear and lucid as if we had both been awake.

That was very interesting. She had roused me from a dream in which I was standing in a desert like landscape. Before me was a structure that looked like a multi-storey scaffolding. On top was a crane. I was guiding crane to lower a body on a stretcher. The body was in a fragile state. I was guiding the crane to lower the body on the back of 2 trucks that were parked very closely side by side. Even in the dream I paused to note that the trucks had ludicrously soft suspension. When the body was down the scene shifted suddenly, and then I was woken up.

Several things were immediately evident to both of us. My dream's content in a thematic sense exactly matched my girlfriend's report of our interaction. At the time the bed we were sharing was made up of two single bed bases with rubber mattresses that were pushed closely together.

So the experience of an OBE, the lucid conversation and the dream all worked together. My explanation is that whatever level of awareness we have independent of the body is filtered by the brain. In this case brain generated dreaming created metaphors from familiar things to convey (an obscured) rendition of what was happening in beyond-brain consciousness.

Maybe we have done the NDE thing and its time to move on to explore what OBEs can bring to our considerations and discussions? Alex?
 
Back
Top