Some NDE situations contradict both physiological and transcendental explanations

Many NDEs have veridical OBEs that occur during surgery while in a non life threatening situation (but then turn into a life threatening situation), e.g. pam reynolds & al sullivan. Also some physically healthy people under emotional stress have NDEs. This strongly contradicts the syncope and dying brain hypothesis, but it also contradicts transcendental hypothesis because why would the soul leave the body when it's not damaged at all?This has always bothered me because it undermines ALL explanations for NDEs, whether materialist or dualist. Do professional NDE researchers have an opinion on this?



P.S. I have another sleep paralysis where I saw a white light covering about 70% of my field of vision, and there were rotating geometric patterns in the white light (reminded me of dmt hallucinations). The light was nothing like described in NDEs, I have a dell u2711 monitor and it's around as bright as 90 brightness with white background, definitely far from the 1000 suns brightness. Made me think, maybe some of the NDEs "reproduced" via magnetic stimulations/god helmet just see similar white lights and the experimenters then conclude they've reproduced NDEs. If you stimulate the visual cortex in a dark room while the person is lying back relaxed, I'm not surprised people see a white light and darkness around it and feel peaceful, the sense presence I can't explain as easily but then again I feel presence a lot of times during shower/toilet mirror (watch the ring/the grudge).
 
Many NDEs have veridical OBEs that occur during surgery while in a non life threatening situation (but then turn into a life threatening situation), e.g. pam reynolds & al sullivan. Also some physically healthy people under emotional stress have NDEs. This strongly contradicts the syncope and dying brain hypothesis, but it also contradicts transcendental hypothesis because why would the soul leave the body when it's not damaged at all?This has always bothered me because it undermines ALL explanations for NDEs, whether materialist or dualist. Do professional NDE researchers have an opinion on this?



P.S. I have another sleep paralysis where I saw a white light covering about 70% of my field of vision, and there were rotating geometric patterns in the white light (reminded me of dmt hallucinations). The light was nothing like described in NDEs, I have a dell u2711 monitor and it's around as bright as 90 brightness with white background, definitely far from the 1000 suns brightness. Made me think, maybe some of the NDEs "reproduced" via magnetic stimulations/god helmet just see similar white lights and the experimenters then conclude they've reproduced NDEs. If you stimulate the visual cortex in a dark room while the person is lying back relaxed, I'm not surprised people see a white light and darkness around it and feel peaceful, the sense presence I can't explain as easily but then again I feel presence a lot of times during shower/toilet mirror (watch the ring/the grudge).

The only thing I've found that localised NDE/OBE and OBE-type experiences with apparently veridical content correlate with, is a fall in power of the ElectroMagnetic (EM) field produced by the brain. Either globally throughout the brain, or just in specific areas.

We have plenty of evidence for 'intelligent' type behaviour in simple single and multicellular organisms that don't possess neurons, and so cannot form EM fields from neuron firing. But if they move around and function in spacetime, they all seem to contain repeating tubular protein type structures such as centrioles and cilia

In more complex or larger organisms, neurons seem to have evolved to relay information to, and from the brain. The brain is partly composed from a dense mass of these repeating tubular protein type structures - microtubules. These form long network structures that change according to ones experience.

Firing neurons don't seem to be an absolute requirement for apparently intelligent behaviour. These earlier repeating protein type structures (centrioles, cilia, microtubules) seem to be the likely candidate for where the heavy processing is done.

When we remove the centriole from the organelles of a cell... the cells muscles, which move it around in space-time, become uncoordinated and start pulling in different directions. If we shield layers of cells, (which normally form up at right angles to each other), with gold leaf (block EM field at certain wavelengths) they form up in random orientation.

We can measure the behavioural effects of hyper-weak magnetic fields on more complex organisms like birds and turtles (magnetoreception). These behavioural effects have been measured using fields as low as 40,000 times weaker than the earth's magnetic field.

PTSD-like behavioural effects have been shown in rodents, when they are isolated from environmental magnetic fields, in magnetically shielded chambers, inbetween sessions of pain causing experiments.

Memory in rodents has been shown to be restorable by robust reformation of these tubular protein networks within the brain... this, after these networks were first severely damaged.

All the research seems to be pointing at fudimental particles/fields which are somehow interacting within the cavities of these regular repearing protein structures.

Luca Turin suggests an olifactory model (sense of smell) that -very roughly- involves the tunnelling of particles out of these protein cavities. He suggests the action of general anaesthetics is the same, people lose conscious because these particles can tunnel out of the protein cavities due to the presence of the anaesthetic gas.

There are loads more studies which support similar ideas.

This isn't the end of the story by any means... but it does suggest that the brain is a damn sight more sensitive than is currently believed. And that when the EM power from its own firing neurons falls, it can become more sensitive to localised EM fields within the environment in which it is embedded.
 
This has always bothered me because it undermines ALL explanations for NDEs, whether materialist or dualist.

I've always considered these varied manifestations of the NDE under a whole range of physical circumstances, varying from a completely healthy and normally functioning body, to one which is effectively dead, to be a good thing. It means that sceptical attempts at explaining the NDE in terms of lack of oxygen or drug-induced hallucination and so on are bound to fail. This is a positive thing, since it means the NDE is not in any way related to the physical body.

To me there is no great problem here, during an NDE a person often receives insights into the way they are living their life, in this sense it relates directly to our ordinary day-to-day life, but it is our thoughts and actions which are important, not the condition of our body.
 
It means that sceptical attempts at explaining the NDE in terms of lack of oxygen or drug-induced hallucination and so on are bound to fail. This is a positive thing, since it means the NDE is not in any way related to the physical body.

I can't see how the latter follows from the former...

In any case the former explanations all lead to EM field changes.
 
This assumption might be erroneous. A brute fact built on nothing but incredulity.

Not incredulity, just the realization, as New Atheist Sam Harris puts it, that you can't get something from nothing:

...the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so.

Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work, an analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness...
 
Yep. That sounds like incredulity.

Only to the extent that one can be incredulous that 1+1 always equals 2 or that any of the conclusions of the syllogisms are true. But there's Gregg Rosenberg's argument if you want a proof laid out.

In any case consciousness magically arising from matter isn't the only arbitrary magical act the materialist/physicalist religion needs. As Feser notes in Magic vs Metaphysics:

Putnam surely captures one important sense of the term “magical” here (though there are other senses, as we will note below). More to the point, he surely captures the sense of “magical” in which the notion of magic is thought by the atheist to be objectionable. And rightly so, for it is objectionable. “Magical” powers, as Putnam here describes them, are powers which are intrinsically unintelligible. It’s not just that we don’t know how magic operates; it’s that there is, objectively, no rhyme or reason whatsoever to how it operates.

That it is intrinsically unintelligible has to be what is objectionable about it.

Notice that Putnam rightly distinguishes the “magical” from the “supernatural.”As I have noted before, “supernatural” does not have, in traditional theology, the connotations that movies, television, and the like have given it in the popular mind.In particular, it does not have any necessary connection with belief in ghosts or other paranormal phenomena.The “supernatural” is just that which transcends the natural order.And if it is not governed by the laws that govern the natural order, that is not because it is lessintelligible than the natural order, but because it is more intelligible, and indeed the source of the intelligibility of the natural order.The natural order is contingent; its divine, supernatural ground isnecessary.The causal processes in terms of which we explain everyday happenings within the natural order are secondary, having only a derived efficacy; the divine, supernatural first cause is that which has its causal power inherently, in an absolutely underived way.(See again the post on essentially ordered or instrumental causes linked to above.)And so forth.

Indeed, if any view is plausibly accused of being “magical” in the sense in question, it is atheism itself. The reason is that it is very likely that an atheist has to hold that the operation of at least thefundamental laws that govern the universe is an “unintelligible brute fact”; as I have noted before, that was precisely the view taken by J. L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell. The reason an atheist (arguably) has to hold this is that to allow that the world is not ultimately a brute fact -- that it is intelligible through and through -- seems to entail that there is some level of reality which is radically non-contingent or necessary in an absolute sense. And that would in turn be to allow (so the traditional metaphysician will argue) that there is something which, as the Thomist would put it, is pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens or “subsistent being itself” -- and thus something which has the divine attributes which inexorably flow from being pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens. Hence it would be to give up atheism.

But to operate in a way that is ultimately unintelligible in principle -- as the atheist arguably has to say the fundamental laws of nature do, insofar as he has to say that they are “just there” as a brute fact, something that could have been otherwise but happens to exist anyway, with no explanation -- just is to be “magical” in the objectionable sense. In fact it is only on a theistic view of the world that the laws of nature are not “magical”; and the Mackie/Russell position is (as I argue in the post linked to above) ultimately incoherent for the same sorts of reason that magical thinking in general is incoherent. As is so often the case, the loudmouth New Atheist turns out to be exactly what he claims to despise -- in this case, a believer in “magical powers.”
 
This assumption might be erroneous. A brute fact built on nothing but incredulity.

I think a lot of the optimism for materialism is because it has done away so many explanations requiring god/supernatural, the best one being vitalism (Steve Novella loves using vitalism as an analogy of how consciousness will finally be explained). But remember, after almost a century by the best minds in world, still no one knows the first sentence of how consciousness emerges from material, so many neural correlates with absolute 0 progress in understanding consciousness. I've seen a number of high profile materialists jump to panpsychism. Personally I don't know any other commonly observed everyday problem that had the smartest people make 0 progress after such a long time.
 
I think a lot of the optimism for materialism is because it has done away so many explanations requiring god/supernatural, the best one being vitalism (Steve Novella loves using vitalism as an analogy of how consciousness will finally be explained). But remember, after almost a century by the best minds in world, still no one knows the first sentence of how consciousness emerges from material, so many neural correlates with absolute 0 progress in understanding consciousness. I've seen a number of high profile materialists jump to panpsychism. Personally I don't know any other commonly observed everyday problem that had the smartest people make 0 progress after such a long time.

Also keep in mind people jumped ship from materialism during the time it had the highest academic cache and strong anti-religious sentiment in academia and in the public.

As Searle admits:

"I believe one of the unstated assumptions behind the current batch of views is that they represent the only scientifically acceptable alternatives to the antiscientism that went with traditional dualism, the belief in the immortality of the soul, spiritualism, and so on. Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives."
-John Searle, "What's wrong with the philosophy of mind?"

If it's happening now, when materialism was ripe for triumph, what happens to materialism a few generations from the present day?
 
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