In view of Michael's video, I have one or two questions for Sean Webb.
In that interview he mentioned Eban Alexander's experience, and claimed that he could not be remembering his extended NDE because his cerebellum was out of action. This, he claimed, would prevent him from laying down new memories in the brain. My point would be that this would also invalidate many other NDE's - such as Pam Reynold's NDE, which involved deliberate chilling of the brain (and body) for the main operation, the NDE's experienced by people who fell into ice cold water and were resuscitated after rather long periods because their brain was preserved by the cold, but rendered non-functional over that period.
Furthermore, as I understand it, no clear location for memory stores has been discovered in the brain, the cerebellum operates to retrieve/lay down memories.
I think you should try to discuss the alternative theory of the brain - that it acts to communicate with consciousness, rather than generating it. This is often referred to as the TV set analogy, but I think 'Mars rover analogy' better describes this 2-way interaction more accurately. I think it would be worth raising the point that attributing consciousness to QFT doesn't really solve anything, because QFT consists of a set (infinite, I believe) of differential equations - so does it make any sense to even assert that whatever this represents is conscious? I feel science can just go down a rabbit hole chasing consciousness. And the deeper it goes, the further it gets removed from ordinary life, and the less likely it is that the explanation is true.
I am a bit wary of his invocation of the quantum field - I mean this is an extension of standard QM to allow for the creation and annihilation of particles. I suppose I am a bit wary of this, because as I understand it, this is the point at which 'renormalisation' first becomes necessary (the theory predicts infinite energies, but these are tolerated because the difference between the energy levels is finite).
Also, at some point you need a link between purely physical phenomena and consciousness. It seems to me that this might as well be the traditional quantum observation process.
It should be an interesting discussion!
Note added later: Sean may have said hippocampus rather than cerebellum, I'm not sure , but the strange thing is that if you look up either in the context of memory, they are both supposed to 'help'. This is something I have noticed about brain science - it does seem rather vague!
Take another example, suppose you are angry because (say) someone laughs at you for taking ψ seriously. Well, the amydala are supposed to be responsible for anger, but what can this really mean, other than, perhaps turning on the tap for the production of various hormones? I mean, if the amygdala knew enough to know when to exhibit anger, it would need to know huge amounts of information about you - it would effectively have to be your entire conscious part of your brain!
This isn't really a criticism of Sean, because he clearly realises that science can't explain consciousness, but I suspect science may just peter out into a set of obscurities when it looks at consciousness - not reach any sort of clear endpoint.
BTW Alex, I might expand this comment even further as I think about it!
David