Alex Tsakiris and Tom Jump Debate Near Death Experience Sceicne |408|

Is there a source or reference giving details of this new research, please?

The brain never stopped functioning during NDE's... it take 20 min for brain cells to run out of ATP (energy) and die so they continue to function 20 min after cardiac arrest with no blood flow. If being given CPR all the cells continue to be given energy and function up to 45 min after cardiac arrest. Even if there is no measure EEG (electrical activity) in the brain, there is still measurable fMRI activity so it is simply false to say the brain is "dead".... its not dead at all all the cells are doing just fine you simply are not conscious.

If you want academic references you can see the work by Dr. Adrian M Owen The University of Western Ontario from the The Brain and Mind Institute. There are many many papers on fMRI readings from coma patients: Measuring consciousness in coma and related states Carol Di Perri

The science is not on the side of non-physical consciousness. All the NDE research says is "We cant measure brain activity with these tools".... thats it, which does not indicate at all there is no brain activity, only no conscious brain activity. My explanation provided in the video covers this... they are not conscious they just remember the sense datum collected by the subconscious as an explicit memory giving the illusion its was a conscious experience.
 
Hi TJump. There is no doubt in my mind that consciousness is carried out by the brain. The real question here is whether or not there is an inner consciousness that goes beyond the physical. Stated differently, the brain may initiate and sustain consciousness during life, but does consciousness ever really end, or does it go on after it’s physical beginning has ended?
 
New NDE research shows that the brain keeps functioning after death. Personally, I’ve always realized that OBEs have physiological causes. However, this fact does not mean that they can’t have a spiritual component. In order for OBEs to provide evidence for the soul, people would need to acquire information that they either did not know about (like meeting a dead relative they they never knew about), or encountering things that their physiological senses could not detect (like seeing things from physically impossible vantage points). Some people report seeing Heaven and/or Hell, but these experiences cannot be verified scientifically. However, seeing an object in the operating room that’s out of view is a different story.
The brain never stopped functioning during NDE's...

thanks for posting this. it adds a little meat to TJumps argument... but just a little :)

You incorrectly identify this as near death experience research. it is not. the authors don't claim that it is. the abstract, conclusion and keywords make no reference of near-death experience (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28231862). this is not just semantics but an important distinction. near death experience science is the study of a set of human experiences that happened after clinical death (see Greyson scale). they have been recorded throughout time and across cultures around the world.

of course, it's completely valid to ask whether or not the phenomenon observed in this study of 4 patients might shed light on some of the mysteries surrounding near death experience, but there are some huge challenges to doing so.

1. we don't know if any of these four patients had a near-death experience. so, we're trying to correlate these brain states with this phenomenon but we don't know whether the phenomenon is present.
2. our current understanding of human neurology suggest that the brain states described in this study are not associated with highly organized peak experiences. so this is a rehash of the debate with TJump... if everything we know about measuring of consciousness with EEG suggests that there is this particular correlation between what is measured by EEG and what people are experiencing then we can't just ignore all that in order to back into the answer we want. none of the researchers in this study (and no reputable neurologist) would say that what was observed in this study sounds like what we would expect to find with the peak experiences of near death experience... in fact, they would say that we would expect to find is the opposite of what was observed. we would expect to find a highly organized and very active EEG during the kind of peak experiences that NDers report.

Here's what the study says:
: Electrocerebral inactivity preceded the cessation of the cardiac rhythm and ABP in three patients. In one patient, single delta wave bursts persisted following the cessation of both the cardiac rhythm and ABP. There was a significant difference in EEG amplitude between the 30-minute period before and the 5-minute period following ABP cessation for the group, but we did not observe any well-defined EEG states following the early cardiac arrest period.

There are a bunch of other problems in trying to pin this study to the nde experience. there is the continuity of the experience. i.e. NDEe report a continuity of their experience before, during and after clinical death. if this was a brain-based thing we would expect to see changes in the experience as these massive changes to the brain took place. also, ndes have been reported under many different medical conditions and therefore many different brain states. the similarity of these experiences across these different brain states is also a big problem for nde debunkers . there are a bunch of other problems as other posters have noted, but I'm trying to stick to the brain stuff.
 
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thanks for posting this. it adds a little meat to TJumps argument... but just a little :)

You incorrectly identify this as near death experience research. it is not. the authors don't claim that it is. the abstract, conclusion and keywords make no reference of near-death experience (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28231862). this is not just semantics but an important distinction. near death experience science is the study of a set of human experiences that happened after clinical death (see Greyson scale). they have been recorded throughout time and across cultures around the world.

of course, it's completely valid to ask whether or not the phenomenon observed in this study of 4 patients might shed light on some of the mysteries surrounding near death experience, but there are some huge challenges to doing so.

1. we don't know if any of these four patients had a near-death experience. so, we're trying to correlate these brain states with this phenomenon but we don't know whether the phenomenon is present.
2. our current understanding of human neurology suggest that the brain states described in this study are not associated with highly organized peak experiences. so this is a rehash of the debate with TJump... if everything we know about measuring of consciousness with EEG suggests that there is this particular correlation between what is measured by EEG and what people are experiencing then we can't just ignore all that in order to back into the answer we want. none of the researchers in this study (and no reputable neurologist) would say that what was observed in this study sounds like what we would expect to find with the peak experiences of near death experience... in fact, they would say that we would expect to find is the opposite of what was observed. we would expect to find a highly organized and very active EEG during the kind of peak experiences that NDers report.

Here's what the study says:


There are a bunch of other problems in trying to pin this study to the nde experience. there is the continuity of the experience. i.e. NDEe report a continuity of their experience before, during and after clinical death. if this was a brain-based thing we would expect to see changes in the experience as these massive changes to the brain took place. also, ndes have been reported under many different medical conditions and therefore many different brain states. the similarity of these experiences across these different brain states is also a big problem for nde debunkers . there are a bunch of other problems as other posters have noted, but I'm trying to stick to the brain stuff.

I'm getting ready for a business trip and I haven't had enough coffee yet, but I don't get how the study supports TJump's position.

What I read is that the EEG activity stopped before the cardiac activity (i.e. "preceded the cessation of the cardiac rhythm"). And there was no real EEG activity after pronouncement of death. This is what Parnia, et al are saying.

I am no doubt missing something important. I mean that sincerely. Someone explain please?
 
Here's another article on the study:

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/201298/20170312/your-brain-may-still-work-after-you-die.htm

"
As part of the research, the scientists analyzed four clinically ill subjects, who were just taken off life support in an ICU in Ontario. The level of brain activity differed for each of the subjects, both moments before dying and immediately after. Some of the subjects' brain activity had even stopped before they were actually dead.


"At the same time, there was one subject who experienced a surge of brain activity, both before and immediately after dying. According to the doctors, the brain activity continued for another mysterious 10 minutes and 38 seconds after the patient was declared dead.
"In a case series of four patients, EEG inactivity preceded electrocardiogram and ABP inactivity during the dying process in three patients. Further study of the electroencephalogram during the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies will add clarity to medical, ethical, and legal concerns for donation after circulatory determined death," noted the paper.
The team of researchers is inclined to believe that the occurrence they observed was a rare phenomenon rather than a scientific reality. Also, before getting to the conclusion that the patient's brain activity continued for more than 10 minutes after having been clinically dead, the scientists were tempted to believe another hypothesis.
As the delta waves of brain activity were only present in one of the four patients, the scientists thought that the EEG machine could have been faulty. However, upon checking the machine, they concluded that it was perfectly functional. This left them with the only conclusion that the brain activity did, indeed, happen as noted."

The EEG picked up the one patient's brain activity. Parnia says that he has had patient's when there is no EEG activity.

Again, I don't get how this study puts a dent in what Parnia is saying.

What am I missing?
 
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New NDE research shows that the brain keeps functioning after death. Personally, I’ve always realized that OBEs have physiological causes. However, this fact does not mean that they can’t have a spiritual component. In order for OBEs to provide evidence for the soul, people would need to acquire information that they either did not know about (like meeting a dead relative they they never knew about), or encountering things that their physiological senses could not detect (like seeing things from physically impossible vantage points). Some people report seeing Heaven and/or Hell, but these experiences cannot be verified scientifically. However, seeing an object in the operating room that’s out of view is a different story.

...And there are 100+ such veridical perception cases:

https://iands.org/research/publications/book-publications/the-self-does-not-die.html
 
Here's another article on the study:

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/201298/20170312/your-brain-may-still-work-after-you-die.htm

"
As part of the research, the scientists analyzed four clinically ill subjects, who were just taken off life support in an ICU in Ontario. The level of brain activity differed for each of the subjects, both moments before dying and immediately after. Some of the subjects' brain activity had even stopped before they were actually dead.


"At the same time, there was one subject who experienced a surge of brain activity, both before and immediately after dying. According to the doctors, the brain activity continued for another mysterious 10 minutes and 38 seconds after the patient was declared dead.
"In a case series of four patients, EEG inactivity preceded electrocardiogram and ABP inactivity during the dying process in three patients. Further study of the electroencephalogram during the withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies will add clarity to medical, ethical, and legal concerns for donation after circulatory determined death," noted the paper.
The team of researchers is inclined to believe that the occurrence they observed was a rare phenomenon rather than a scientific reality. Also, before getting to the conclusion that the patient's brain activity continued for more than 10 minutes after having been clinically dead, the scientists were tempted to believe another hypothesis.
As the delta waves of brain activity were only present in one of the four patients, the scientists thought that the EEG machine could have been faulty. However, upon checking the machine, they concluded that it was perfectly functional. This left them with the only conclusion that the brain activity did, indeed, happen as noted."

The EEG picked up the one patient's brain activity. Parnia says that he has had patient's when there is no EEG activity.

Again, I don't get how this study puts a dent in what Parnia is saying.

What am I missing?
thanks for adding this detail. this is another case where the level 2 discussion is more interesting than the level 1 discussion. the level 2 discussion asks the question "why would such a study receive so much attention associated with near-death experience when the study doesn't mention anything about near-death experience."
 
Hi TJump. There is no doubt in my mind that consciousness is carried out by the brain. The real question here is whether or not there is an inner consciousness that goes beyond the physical. Stated differently, the brain may initiate and sustain consciousness during life, but does consciousness ever really end, or does it go on after it’s physical beginning has ended?

That is possible, but i see no evidence or reason to believe in such a thing. You need to have the added assumption that if consciousness survives bodily death there is no way for consciousness to interact with the world anymore and there does not seem to be any reason that would be the case... if your consciousness could survive death and then interact like inhabit another body or interact with things in the world this would be an easily provable phenomenon but we dont see that.
 
That is possible, but i see no evidence or reason to believe in such a thing. You need to have the added assumption that if consciousness survives bodily death there is no way for consciousness to interact with the world anymore and there does not seem to be any reason that would be the case... if your consciousness could survive death and then interact like inhabit another body or interact with things in the world this would be an easily provable phenomenon but we dont see that.

Your last 4 words ... Plenty of people see that, which would lead to the whole discussion on ghosts. Plus, it sounds to me like there may have been plenty of OBE cases where people have seen things from physically impossible vantage points. Again, I’m not sure if some OBEs point to the existence of the soul or not. It’s possible, though.
 
TJUmp I have not followed the whole thread here, but could you please explain, or support the notion, that the subconscious mind can be proven to operate at a lower level of electrical activity than the conscious mind, and by what proven means it is able to transcribe it's separate experience into the conscious template?

I heard you mention this idea once on the show, but you never returned to it From what I heard. it seems like a very different argument than your argument of natural law as an axiom of science reference a. Are they indeed two separate ideas?
 
Oh my Gosh!
Was that a complete and total waste of time or what? And it seemed to start so well.

This Tjump fellow simply couldn't wrap his noodle around the logical assertion hat Alex was putting forward. Simply put, "if A" then "not B".

His clinging to the tiniest sliver of the notion that we may be able to neurologically explain the NDE when we can zoom in to the Planck length of each neuron belied his own implicit "faith" based worship at the temple of nihilistic materialism.

He performed as well as any fundamentalist from any faith based background would - which is like a car crash.

What's funny is that so called materialist atheists actually think "logic" and clear thinking plays a greater role informing their assumptions and best guesses than everyone else - and yet when their position is threatened by data - They employ the most remarkable examples I have ever seen of sloppy, dull, illogical thinking.

I mean this was up there even with the best performances of biblical literalists.

Its a true shame you weren't able to get into a few of the more remarkable cases like Pam Reynolds. How did she see and hear what was going on in the operating theatre for example with her eyes taped and loud clickers in her ears?

Perhaps Tjump might posit one day science may discover we can see and hear clearly with our toes as no one was measuring the electrical impulses in her toes.

I can hear him now: "Alex, You can't prove toes can't see and hear because Thomas Edison said we don't know bubkiss about toejam so therefore there is no God or Fairies and I'm right and I've proven you wrong with logic see? I'm so smart".

I never get the deal with these guys. What do they get out of this faith based materialism and ultimate nihilism? Do they think they are doing the world a service or something? I guess this must go hand in hand with their inability to calmly and carefully employ clean logic as a tool to get nearer to truths.

What a shame.

I was sad Alex didn't take the opportunity to fight back at Tjump's accusation he didn't understand science, and explain the difference between science and scientism. He could have and should have floored him with that one. I think Alex was trying to keep his cool.

Thanks for the show Alex. It showed promise at the beginning, but ultimately I think we need to conclude that materialist atheism is a faith as fervent, emotional and irrational as any fundamentalist religion.

Perhaps after all these years we must honestly admit to ourselves that it is futile to talk with these folks. Just like I can't talk with a fundamentalist Christian about the deeply rewarding philosophies and attributes of the Hindu pantheon.

Nice try Alex. Better luck next time. You won the debate obviously, it's just that Tjump doesn't know that yet, and he probably never will.
 
Oh my Gosh!
Was that a complete and total waste of time or what? And it seemed to start so well.

This Tjump fellow simply couldn't wrap his noodle around the logical assertion hat Alex was putting forward. Simply put, "if A" then "not B".

His clinging to the tiniest sliver of the notion that we may be able to neurologically explain the NDE when we can zoom in to the Planck length of each neuron belied his own implicit "faith" based worship at the temple of nihilistic materialism.

He performed as well as any fundamentalist from any faith based background would - which is like a car crash.

What's funny is that so called materialist atheists actually think "logic" and clear thinking plays a greater role informing their assumptions and best guesses than everyone else - and yet when their position is threatened by data - They employ the most remarkable examples I have ever seen of sloppy, dull, illogical thinking.

I mean this was up there even with the best performances of biblical literalists.

Its a true shame you weren't able to get into a few of the more remarkable cases like Pam Reynolds. How did she see and hear what was going on in the operating theatre for example with her eyes taped and loud clickers in her ears?

Perhaps Tjump might posit one day science may discover we can see and hear clearly with our toes as no one was measuring the electrical impulses in her toes.

I can hear him now: "Alex, You can't prove toes can't see and hear because Thomas Edison said we don't know bubkiss about toejam so therefore there is no God or Fairies and I'm right and I've proven you wrong with logic see? I'm so smart".

I never get the deal with these guys. What do they get out of this faith based materialism and ultimate nihilism? Do they think they are doing the world a service or something? I guess this must go hand in hand with their inability to calmly and carefully employ clean logic as a tool to get nearer to truths.

What a shame.

I was sad Alex didn't take the opportunity to fight back at Tjump's accusation he didn't understand science, and explain the difference between science and scientism. He could have and should have floored him with that one. I think Alex was trying to keep his cool.

Thanks for the show Alex. It showed promise at the beginning, but ultimately I think we need to conclude that materialist atheism is a faith as fervent, emotional and irrational as any fundamentalist religion.

Perhaps after all these years we must honestly admit to ourselves that it is futile to talk with these folks. Just like I can't talk with a fundamentalist Christian about the deeply rewarding philosophies and attributes of the Hindu pantheon.

Nice try Alex. Better luck next time. You won the debate obviously, it's just that Tjump doesn't know that yet, and he probably never will.
thx... but allow me to leapfrog us to level 2 -- do you think TJump did worse than:
Dr. Michael Shermer on Near-Death Experience Science |379 - Skeptiko
Latest Near-Death Experience Research Hit Job |326| - Skeptiko ...
246. Dr. Michael Graziano Likens Near Death Experience Research to Astrology...
I could add 5 more but you get the point... why does this dogma persist? who pushing this meme?
 
thx... but allow me to leapfrog us to level 2 -- do you think TJump did worse than:
Dr. Michael Shermer on Near-Death Experience Science |379 - Skeptiko
Latest Near-Death Experience Research Hit Job |326| - Skeptiko ...
246. Dr. Michael Graziano Likens Near Death Experience Research to Astrology...
I could add 5 more but you get the point... why does this dogma persist? who pushing this meme?

Yes and no.
Michael Shermer is the worst as he knowingly and will fully misrepresents and contorts things disingenuously.

In that regard Tjump did better.

However he did worse in the sense that he seemed to display a genuine inability to employ clean logic.

He simply had a malfunction when it came to following the logical thrust of your point, and arrived at irrelevant and confused conclusions of his own.

It really was a train wreck in the field of logical deduction.

I guess that's why Shermer is a high priest, and Tjump will only ever be at best an acolyte. Honest in his own way, but intellectually dishonest through lack of clear impartial reasoning ability.

Or perhaps not intellectually dishonest, only intellectually limited - as are all people whose faith precedes and filters the data they recieve.
 
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thx... but allow me to leapfrog us to level 2 -- do you think TJump did worse than:
Dr. Michael Shermer on Near-Death Experience Science |379 - Skeptiko
Latest Near-Death Experience Research Hit Job |326| - Skeptiko ...
246. Dr. Michael Graziano Likens Near Death Experience Research to Astrology...
I could add 5 more but you get the point... why does this dogma persist? who pushing this meme?

On the question why this dogma persists, all I can speculate is that it serves the people who both push and subscribe to it in some way.

I cannot for the life of me work out how? Do they derive a sense of superiority?

I have heard it suggested that in the minds of those who subscribe to these types of dogma, they see themselves as realists accepting a cold hard and uncomfortable truth that weaker more defective minds cannot handle. Their version is that anyone who doesn't accept their hard truth is merely a fantasist and weakling - a somehow lesser being - and so by definition, they are superior in this regard. But this can only be one part of the whole picture.

At the higher end, with the real movers and shakers,, there may indeed be some form of conspiracy to keep people from knowing their true nature and the nature of reality, which bestows a kind of power all of its own, but I am hesitant to speculate on this as it is merely a more paranoid and pessimistic speculation. I cannot see clearly the agenda nor benefits from this, but it sure can seem conspiratorial when we see so much deception and misinformation coming from the high priests as it were.

Politically a materialist paradigm may be as powerful a tool of social manipulation as the older heaven and hell church doctrine for keeping people in check.

It is a fear inducing paradigm which keeps one afraid and looking for help, protection and approval from the societal authority figures.
And this equates to power.

On the other hand, and to a very large degree, I believe the reason this dogma persists may be a psychological artefact.

The amount of apologetics, the inability or reluctance to use clean logic to move honest inquiry forward, the constant and sloppy misrepresentation of data that challenges a particular world view points to one thing - Fundamentalism.

I used to think it was necessary to have a religious dogma to fuel true fundamentalism, but I'm seeing that you don't.

All you need it seems is a strong emotional ego attachment to a particular story about how the world is and your place in it.

Once ones ego is merged with and sustained through this story in some way, then a fundamentalist is born. A challenge to their story is a threat of ego death, and as terrifying at a subconscious level as a threat of bodily death.

Then we see the wriggling and shenanigans we see. They are fighting for ego survival. It's pitiful really.

That's my take.
 
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thanks for adding this detail. this is another case where the level 2 discussion is more interesting than the level 1 discussion. the level 2 discussion asks the question "why would such a study receive so much attention associated with near-death experience when the study doesn't mention anything about near-death experience."

Alex,
It seems like the level 2 discussion is just a matter of people who can't read what's in front of them and won't read what they don't like.

The study showed a rare instance of a person's heart stopping, yet eeg radings of brain activity continuing for more than ten minutes afterwards.

Dr.s Pin Von Lommel and Parnia and Long would say that the person in the study with the eeg activity continuing after the heart stopped was still alive. Those Dr.s have actually had cases where people have had NDEs and there is no EEG activity.

The doctors aren't assuming no EEG activity. In many cases the person having the NDE is hooked up to an EEG machine and is showing no EEG activity.

So the study has no bearing on their research and the NDE phenomenon at all.

Nor does it lend any support to TJump's assertion that there actually is brain activity that is below the measurable threshold of an EEG machine or of some other undiscovered to date type.

The study that showed brain activity after cardiac arrest used an EEG. Parnia, et al used EEG. There is no disagreement here; except for someone who can't read and doesn't know the facts.
 
Dr.s Pin Von Lommel and Parnia and Long would say that the person in the study with the eeg activity continuing after the heart stopped was still alive. Those Dr.s have actually had cases where people have had NDEs and there is no EEG activity.
I think if one is going to put words into the mouths of other people, and to presume what they would say, that is a risky and shaky ground on which to stand.

What Dr Parnia has repeatedly said, over many years, is that death is a process, not a moment. Hence if asked whether a person in such a situation was dead or alive - of course it would be better to ask him to find out for sure. I suspect he would not give a one-word answer, but instead a lengthy explanation.
 
New NDE research shows that the brain keeps functioning after death. Personally, I’ve always realized that OBEs have physiological causes. However, this fact does not mean that they can’t have a spiritual component.

NDEs are precipitated by a physical crisis - so there are always physiological causes. I know the fond belief has been that NDEs are supposed to happen in the absence of brain activity - but that is naive. OOBEs occur while the brain is functioning normally. If anything a NDE is a crisis induced OOBE and not much more. But because it is crisis induced there is a theme to do with death and passing over and what is on the other side.

The notion that a NDE is something that is a class apart is mistaken. It belongs to the general class of OOBEs. The trouble is that we do not understand the mechanics of induced OOBE experience, so we tend to imagine that what constitutes a NDE is very concrete, when in fact it is very fluid. That is to say that the scenario experienced during a NDE is better seen as a set up. The crisis event is known in advance on the other side, so, while experience is unanticipated to the NDE experiencer, it is not to those who set up and manage the experience.

The argument that the brain has to be inactive during a NDE supposes this is a condition that counters the argument that what was experienced could be an hallucination. But this is, and always has been, a completely silly argument - as endless accounts of OOBEs show. But then, if you know NDEs but not OOBEs it is easy to fall victim to this error.

The whole hallucination business spouted by materialists is complete bullshit. I have yet to come across a serious study of the nature of hallucinations -and yet, in the utter absence of any evidence as to what an hallucination is (beyond the fevered mythology of materialism), this explanation is trotted out as the 'saviour' of the situation. The best definition of an hallucination in my Oxford Dictionary says it is "the apparent perception of something not present". Note that it does not say the 'perception of something apparently not present'. The emphasis is upon the potential error of the experiencer - an error of perception. So the governing measure of what is real is whether a witness can see something, and, if they can't, the error lies with the (mis)perceiver. This what we call 'consensual reality' - nothing is real unless it is shared. So the duller the company the more dense the reality is agreed to be.

I entirely agree that some 'perceptions' are misconstructions that are brain based. The brain responds to stimuli and fills in the details quickly. Sometimes something that merely looks like a thing is seen to be the thing if we take the 'filled in' image to be real. But usually that is a reflexive and short lived experience. Guthrie's Faces in the Clouds is a detailed account of this phenomenon, which arrives at a completely erroneous conclusion because he assumes that spirits not exist - so this explains how gods are 'invented'. Completely idiotic.

The human ability to invent perceptions from stimuli is unrelated to the ability to perceive what others cannot see. But if your base line is materialistic, like Guthrie, you are forced to conclude that anything you can't see is not real, so anybody who sees what you can't is misperceiving or misconstruing. The basis for such an argument is pure hubris, nothing more.

The proposition that the brain has to be inert for a real NDE plays into this nonsense. It is not a necessary pre-condition. Consequently all the arguments about whether the brain is or is not active during a NDE count for squat.

NDE is what it is - a crisis induced projection of self in a conscious state into the metaphysical reality that embraces us. It is not infrequently predicted and employed as a life lesson for the individual. These experiences are rarely 'accidental', even though the event that precipitates them may be.
 
I wonder if human corruption can ever be removed from the work. Actually, I doubt it. But we have to try.:)

It can't and we do. I am just about to formulate a blog on the theme of 'How we know, and how we behave' - an old Greek philosopher's problem. If how we know is 'corrupted' (the trauma of abuse - for example), how we behave is likewise distorted. Any culture that polices moral conduct is constantly challenged to change the behaviour of individuals and groups. How it manages that is a measure of its intellectual and spiritual maturity.

My old Social Ecology professor, Stuart Hill (http://www.stuartbhill.com/) helped me see the self as an ideal perfect circle that is 'bashed in' by experience and circumstance - so who we are is an injured representation of what is a deep and ideal memory. We are not intentionally 'bad' in our behaviour, but we are intentional, nevertheless, because being intentional is in our nature.

I see redemption as a psychological process, as much as a spiritual one. We strive to recover our non-bashed in form in so far as culture permits us. And when redemption is blocked or denied or refused how do we feel and act?

So it is a proper thing to remove corruption from work, but another as to how we do it. So far we have failed to do so because our understanding of the problem and how to address it is flawed - and that informs our conduct.

For me, analysis and response are so often determined by the limits those who are charged with finding the solution impose. Certainty and hubris are the enemies of workable solutions and just remedies.
 
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/goto/post?id=129047

The many controversies in the history of science show that the best explanation for data is ultimately an opinion. And you can't prove a scientific theory you can only disprove one.​
Here is my opinion:​
I don't believe any physical process can explain consciousness.​
The evidence from quantum mechanics can be interpreted as showing consciousness is fundamental, you need consciousness first before you can have matter therefore consciousness cannot be produced by matter.​
...​
No physical process can explain subjective phenomena such as what happy feels like or what blue looks like, and claiming that complicated neuronal structures can do it is like saying if you get enough bricks you can make a ham sandwich from bricks. No amount of bricks will produce a ham sandwich, and no amount of neurons can cause the color blue to look like blue.​
...​
The theory that the brain is a filter of consciousness explains more evidence than the theory that the brain produces consciousness therefore the filter model is a better explanation of the brain than the production model.​
...​
And also the fact that ESP cannot be explained by any physical process also indicates that consciousness cannot be produced by the brain, ESP is not dependent on time or distance. The neurological patterns in one brain will not match the patterns in another brain so telepathy cannot be explained by any physical process in the brain. And quantum entanglement cannot have any role in ESP because for particles to become entangled they have to be physically near each other.​
All the evidence for the afterlife is evidence that the brain does not produce consciousness.​
I think the brain can influence consciousness, it can filter, aggregate, and present sensory information to consciousness. This includes obvious sensations like touch, sound, sight, but also emotions and possibly the capabilities of thought and memory might be duplicated with physical analogues in the brain.​
 
NDEs are precipitated by a physical crisis - so there are always physiological causes.
This is an incomplete and essentially mistaken statement.

NDEs do occur in the absence of any physical or physiological cause. This is one of the vital facts to recognise, as it means all explanations based upon oxygen deprivation or other malfunction of the physical brain are of necessity either incomplete or completely wrong. Since an NDE can occur in a healthy brain which is functioning normally, as well as a brain which is not functioning at all, we can rule out physical causes entirely.
 
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