Latest Near-Death Experience Research Hit Job |326|

Kamarling said:
So what that says to me is that you will go with the assumption of deceit and delusion for all experiencers unless they can provide veridical evidence. Every single account that does not contain veridical evidence must be a lie/delusion. Then, when a veridical case comes along, you can go to town on discrediting the the people involved, doubting the timing, the medical records and the lack of proper experimental controls and procedures, as if we were talking about a lab experiment.
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Not at all. All I'm saying is TMT might be a useful theory in some cases. Because it doesn't fit for others doesn't mean you can throw it out completely. Mitchell-Yellin was trying to make this point several times in the interview.
 
malf said:
This troubles me straight off the bat as it's somewhat in my sweet spot. Retinopathy of Prematurity is not a pathology of the optic nerve. The retina is affected and to varying degrees depending on severity, I'm not sure if that impacts on the case overall but the details are obviously really important when discussing this stuff.

Remember, 'blind' does not mean 'no light perception'.

https://nei.nih.gov/health/rop/rop
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You do realize that particular piece was written by Kevin Williams, right? Unless doc Ring used(s) the same parlance, this discussion is about the choice of words made by a (third party) person not involved in the research... In other words, pointless.
 
Near as I can tell, TMT is a physicalist explanation for why people adopt religion. They're in denial about their mortality and want to identify with a world in which there's an afterlife. I'm sure it's true in some, perhaps many cases (in the case of many Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, for example).

This wouldn't apply to NDE experiences, I don't think, because at least some experiencers were die-hard atheists prior to their experiences. Moreover, they don't tend to turn to religion afterwards, or become afraid of death. For them, there is no terror, and hence no need to manage it.
 
E.Flowers said:
You do realize that particular piece was written by Kevin Williams, right? Unless doc Ring used(s) the same parlance, this discussion is about the choice of words made by a (third party) person not involved in the research... In other words, pointless.
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Fascinating how the details of a story can change on the retelling...

Anyone got an "accurate" version?
 
Michael Larkin said:
Near as I can tell, TMT is a physicalist explanation for why people adopt religion. They're in denial about their mortality and want to identify with a world in which there's an afterlife. I'm sure it's true in some, perhaps many cases (in the case of many Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, for example).

This wouldn't apply to NDE experiences, I don't think, because at least some experiencers were die-hard atheists prior to their experiences. Moreover, they don't tend to turn to religion afterwards, or become afraid of death. For them, there is no terror, and hence no need to manage it.
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Again, I don't think it's a theory to fit all experiences.
 
Michael Larkin said:
There's a surprising point right there: that during NDEs, when brain activity is very low or absent, patients report having felt more awake than they ever have.
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This has always been a tipping point between sitting on the fence and acceptance for me. Physicalists explain this away as the last spectacular firework show of a dying brain, but offer no evolutionary reason why a few neurons in the hippocampus or wherever - if those cranial damp squibs even exist - provide an experience spoken of in unprecedented superlatives of awareness, and leave the recovered patient hoping to return to their "brain dead" state. It's hard to think of any medical reason why that should be the case. The complaint falls back on timings, and the suggestion that the experience was the result of pre-amnesia or an impaired brain re-booting. This line of enquiry reverts back to the competence, memory or metaphysical beliefs of the consultant, ad absurdum. I'm not buying - non-locality of consciousness is by far the likeliest scenario from the available evidence.
 
Michael Larkin said:
The well-known case of Vicki Umipeg comes to mind:

Vicki was born blind, her optic nerve having been completely destroyed at birth because of an excess of oxygen she received in the incubator.​

Nonetheless, during her NDE:

"I think I was wearing the plain gold band on my right ring finger and my father's wedding ring next to it. But my wedding ring I definitely saw ... That was the one I noticed the most because it's most unusual. It has orange blossoms on the corners of it."

There is something extremely remarkable and provocative about Vicki's recollection of these visual impressions, as a subsequent comment of hers implied.

"This was," she said, "the only time I could ever relate to seeing and to what light was, because I experienced it."​

There are other cases, including that of Brad, here. There's also a video of him from about 1:22:


In both cases, the people were blind from birth, with their visual apparatus destroyed. It's not as if they had potentially functional eyes that somehow weren't registering what was there prior to the NDE. I'd be interested to hear how the authors get round these cases, bearing in mind that they're both classic examples of process blindness.

An afterthought: I'm wondering if they get round such cases by simply ignoring them. They say they're not aware of any process blindness cases, then go on to say that they're relatively rare. So which is it? Are there none, or are they relatively rare? And are they rare only because congenitally blind people are a small proportion of the population? Have the authors bothered to read Ring and Cooper's study of NDEs in blind people? 14 of 31 subjects were congenitally blind from birth, and included Vicki and Brad.
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Those are both input cases as I understand it.
 
gabriel said:
This has always been a tipping point between sitting on the fence and acceptance for me. Physicalists explain this away as the last spectacular firework show of a dying brain, but offer no evolutionary reason why a few neurons in the hippocampus or wherever - if those cranial damp squibs even exist - provide an experience spoken of in unprecedented superlatives of awareness, and leave the recovered patient hoping to return to their "brain dead" state. It's hard to think of any medical reason why that should be the case. The complaint falls back on timings, and the suggestion that the experience was the result of pre-amnesia or an impaired brain re-booting. This line of enquiry reverts back to the competence, memory or metaphysical beliefs of the consultant, ad absurdum. I'm not buying - non-locality of consciousness is by far the likeliest scenario from the available evidence.
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Agreed! Good post.

I have listened to the entire podcast and although I found that Ben guy quite pleasant to have a discussion with, it is obvious his views are pretty much one-sided.
Besides, his account of the dentures man case was wrong. For example, the dentures were not hidden away in a drawer but put onto a wooden shelf. Whether these dentures were found afterwards is not mentioned in the report given by the male nurse who had resuscitated the patient. I am entirely at liberty to tell this because Rivas and I have investigated this case and interviewed at length the nurse who was involved. It is all in our book The Self Does Not Die.

I don't have the Fisher & Mitchell's book and thus have not read it. I wonder: do they discuss verified veridical cases such as we (Rivas and I) did in The Self Does Not Die? If not, then all their philosophical musings have little value.

Sorry, no more postings from me for the time being - I am very busy
 
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Smithy said:
Agreed! Good post.

I have listened to the entire podcast and although I found that Ben guy quite pleasant to have a discussion with, it is obvious his views are pretty much one-sided.
Besides, his account of the dentures man case was wrong. For example, the dentures were not hidden away in a drawer but put onto a wooden shelf. Whether these dentures were found afterwards is not mentioned in the report given by the male nurse who had resuscitated the patient. I am entirely at liberty to tell this because Rivas and I have investigated this case and interviewed at length the nurse who was involved. It is all in our book The Self Does Not Die.

I don't have the Fisher & Mitchell's book and thus have not read it. I wonder: do they discuss verified veridical cases such as we (Rivas and I) did in The Self Does Not Die? If not, then all their philosophical musings have little value.

Sorry, no more postings from me for the time being - I am very busy
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You should probably get hold of a copy since they address you and your article on Woerlee.
 
Those are both input cases as I understand it.
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I'd like you to provide an explanation of the difference between process and input blindness, because this doesn't make sense to me: Umipeg's visual system was missing a vital part. No amount of variation or difference in input would have allowed her to see.
 
Michael Larkin said:
I'd like you to provide an explanation of the difference between process and input blindness, because this doesn't make sense to me: Umipeg's visual system was missing a vital part. No amount of variation or difference in input would have allowed her to see.
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Sure, I'll post the excerpt from the book:

Input:


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Processing (sorry, I'd called it process blindness, but it's processing):

upload_2016-9-9_11-33-33.png
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Kamarling said:
. It reminds me of the many times I have tried to find, on the internet, a neutral voice on the subject of Intelligent Design.
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The philosophy professor I mentioned was mainly interested in the philosophy of science and he taught a class in this. In it he recommended reading the book "The Neck of the Giraffe". It is an interesting book and gives some evidence for the Lamarkian view of evolution. Of course this is now being verified by studies in the field of epigenetics.
 
Sure, I'll post the excerpt from the book...
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Good grief. So what they're saying is that if, say, the optic nerve is destroyed, then during an NDE (for some inexplicable reason), the signal might be able to get through from the eyes to the brain. On the other hand, if all the visual apparatus is intact but the visual cortex is damaged, they'd be more convinced by blind people experiencing sight during NDEs.

I'd want to see evidence that people with input blindness can be trained to see, and an explanation of why, without any training, people like Umipeg would be able to see during an NDE. Looks to me like they're making stuff up on the hoof. It's the usual crap, I'm afraid: invent an untested hypothesis, however unlikely, and try to use it to maintain a physicalist position.
 
Michael Larkin said:
Good grief. So what they're saying is that if, say, the optic nerve is destroyed, then during an NDE (for some inexplicable reason), the signal might be able to get through from the eyes to the brain. On the other hand, if all the visual apparatus is intact but the visual cortex is damaged, they'd be more convinced by blind people experiencing sight during NDEs.
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They don't quite say that. They focus on the argument that one cannot conclude merely from the fact that a blind person with no-input blindness had a visual experience, that it must not be physically based. They discuss cases where blind and deaf patients have had visual or auditory hallucinations.

Now, to be clear, they are not saying that what happens in those cases are what must be happening in blind NDE cases, but they say that "our understanding of what is happening in the one case is likely to illuminate what is happening in the other" and that "the fact that there are plausible physical explanations of visual experiences in patients with Charles Bonnet syndrome suggest that explaining visual representations in near-death experiences reported by blind people is not as daunting a task as it may at first seem".

In the case of processing blindness, the brain isn't capable of producing a visual experience at all, so they would be more convinced by that kind of case. They don't specifically mention they visual cortex, they are more general.

I'd want to see evidence that people with input blindness can be trained to see, and an explanation of why, without any training, people like Umipeg would be able to see during an NDE. Looks to me like they're making stuff up on the hoof. It's the usual crap, I'm afraid: invent an untested hypothesis, however unlikely, and try to use it to maintain a physicalist position.
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You raise some good points.

With regard to the Umipeg case I have similar questions, but I flip them. I wonder at the level of detail of her description and I wonder if she incorporated details into her memory that may not have been in her original visual experience. For example, she knew she had a ring with floral blossoms on it, but was that what she saw or did she interpret it later as what she saw. I'm talking unconsciously here, not deliberately. For someone who had not seen before the first time they saw would they be able to make sense of it to that degree of detail. In other words, her visual experience may not have been as detailed as she remembers it being. She may have interpreted what she saw to fit what she knew, based on her concepts of these things. Again, I'm not questioning her honesty - but her accuracy. I'm not sure how we resolve this kind of issue.

Now, I agree with you about the untested hypothesis. But I think you need to keep in mind the author's goals here. In the book, the authors' main goal is to rebut the argument that the evidence from NDEs must lead to a conclusion that they are not brain based. They strongly make the case that abandoning a brain-based approach at this time would be hasty. I think they do a very good job of demonstrating that a brain-based cause is in the running.

Now, while they do argue that the physicalist explanation is more likely they are not ruling out the supernatural:
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While I think its closer to a tie than they put it, those who are trying to paint this book as a debunking have a tough case to make.
 
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