What's it like to be dead?

"....at least some tail ends of living metabolism."

"Do you grasp this?"

Kai, believe it or not :) the tail ends of living metabolism are not what makes us human or alive or vital. If that was the case we would be happy to sit dear old dead Grandpa back in his favourite chair until he had fully biologically decomposed.

Do you grasp this ?

Well, you're just not engaging with the biological facts of the situation. People in comas or PVS are still biologically alive, otherwise there would not be ethical debates concerning "unplugging them." They can't be sat back up in their favorite chair either. Again, normally functional is not the same thing as biologically recoverable.
 
She was not in a state of inactivity (stasis) ..she was dead. If Spetzler had decided to walk away from the operation after the blood had been drained from her head (or even before of course) he would very likely have been charged with murder or whatever the medical equivalent is for gross medical negligence of duty etc etc

Yes,he would have been, just as if he had anesthetized her and then not monitored the anesthetic till she died. The fact remains,though, that people under anesthetics are not metabolically unrecoverable and hence biologically dead.
 
Well, you're just not engaging with the biological facts of the situation. People in comas or PVS are still biologically alive, otherwise there would not be ethical debates concerning "unplugging them." They can't be sat back up in their favorite chair either. Again, normally functional is not the same thing as biologically recoverable.

People in comas is a red herring ...and yes they are unplugged because they are judged to be dead, often.
 
Yes,he would have been, just as if he had anesthetized her and then not monitored the anesthetic till she died. The fact remains,though, that people under anesthetics are not metabolically unrecoverable and hence biologically dead.

I never said they were, did I ? Look, Kai, just admit you're wrong and we can save our fingers
 
People in comas is a red herring ...and yes they are unplugged because they are judged to be dead, often.

No, it's not a red herring. They are in exactly the same kind of situation, generally speaking,as Pam Reynolds. In each case, those people would die without constant external intervention.
 
No, but you said that Pam Reynolds was dead, which may be true "clinically" but not biologically.

And I've already pointed out and explained... it's not necessary to be biologically dead to be dead.
 
No, it's not a red herring. They are in exactly the same kind of situation, generally speaking,as Pam Reynolds. In each case, those people would die without constant external intervention.

No, they're not. Reynolds wasn't in an irreversible coma or a vegetative state, she was made dead by cooling, heart stoppage and the removal of her blood.
 
And I've already pointed out and explained... it's not necessary to be biologically dead to be dead.

Well....the point is this....if you are not biologically dead, then it is not a secure judgment to claim that experiences could not have been sponsored (at least in part, and perhaps in whole) by said biology. You can juggle words to suit yourself as you like,but that fact doesn't alter.
 
No, they're not. Reynolds wasn't in an irreversible coma or a vegetative state, she was made dead by cooling, heart stoppage and the removal of her blood.

Yes I know, of course, that she is deliberately placed in that state. That makes no difference to the fact that she's in a temporary stasis until such time as the surgeon reverses the procedure (and likely with limits, because if he left it too long she'd die).
 
Well....the point is this....if you are not biologically dead, then it is not a secure judgment to claim that experiences could not have been sponsored (at least in part, and perhaps in whole) by said biology. You can juggle words to suit yourself as you like,but that fact doesn't alter.

So a brain that has no electrical activity ANYWHERE within it, with eyes cocked and dilated can somehow produce an ultra -lucid experience with reasoning and memory formation ? >:)
 
Yes I know, of course, that she is deliberately placed in that state. That makes no difference to the fact that she's in a temporary stasis until such time as the surgeon reverses the procedure (and likely with limits, because if he left it too long she'd die).

She's not in temporary stasis. Stasis is not a big enough noun. She was dead and would have stayed dead if not for the skills of Spetzler and his team. Some of these ops do result in the patient not being brought back from death.
 
So a brain that has no electrical activity ANYWHERE within it, with eyes cocked and dilated can somehow produce an ultra -lucid experience with reasoning and memory formation ? >:)

Well, yeah duh. Don't you know, the only thing mammals need for "consciousness" are a hippocampus and an amygdala. The rest of the brain is mere window dressing.;)
 
So a brain that has no electrical activity ANYWHERE within it, with eyes cocked and dilated can somehow produce an ultra -lucid experience with reasoning and memory formation ? >:)

(sigh) No evidence that Reynolds experience happened at that time. Her real world perceptions were not from the desanguination phase.
 
She's not in temporary stasis. Stasis is not a big enough noun. She was dead and would have stayed dead if not for the skills of Spetzler and his team. Some of these ops do result in the patient not being brought back from death.

She was not biologically dead. Not sure how it's possible to clarify this further for you.
 
(sigh) No evidence that Reynolds experience happened at that time. Her real world perceptions were not from the desanguination phase.

We weren't discussing when Pam's experience occurred (although it did occur when she had no brainwaves) ...we were discussing what it takes to be dead.
Kai, I'm afraid you've lost the argument (IMO) , but as Bertha would say .....My Best. Now I'm going for a drink. Goodnight
 
We weren't discussing when Pam's experience occurred (although it did occur when she had no brainwaves) ...we were discussing what it takes to be dead.
Kai, I'm afraid you've lost the argument (IMO) , but as Bertha would say .....My Best. Now I'm going for a drink. Goodnight

But you said "a brain that has no electrical activity anywhere in it." If you weren't referring to the Reynolds case, then which case were you referring to?

"(although it did occur when she had no brainwaves)"

Based on what?
Kai, I'm afraid you've lost the argument (IMO)

Tim, you haven't *even* presented "an argument." You misconceive what biological death is and keep repeating the error as if what it is will change somehow the more you say it...
 
Nevermind : when one really does cross the "boundary " between life and death , one does not come back .
Death does not play games : it is deadly serious . lol

When your time comes to die , you don't get a sec more or less to live .

Typoz is right here - this is a red herring that Skeptics often use, and even Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted a few months ago that NDE's were not actual death since everyone "returns".

What is being done here is a sleight of hand with defining "death". For example, suppose there is a fence with a gate, and two of us were walking toward that fence, and both of us went through the gate. One of us decided to keep going, and the other one decided to return back through the gate. Skeptics claim the person who returned, did not go through the gate because that person returned while the other did not.

For all we know, someone who has an NDE may actually have died. Just because they came back does not scientifically establish that they didn't actually die. For all we know right now scientifically, those who do come back, and those who don't - may have identical experiences which are indeed death or the process of dying without having taken the final step. That is to say, Skeptics currently have no scientific basis to assume that someone who doesn't come back, does not have the same experience as an NDE'r who does come back, so they cannot make the erroneous claim that death (or the process of death) is not involved in one case and not the other. It is an illogical red herring.

But besides the logical fallacy Skeptics make, there is actually some empirical evidence that does indicate to some degree that identical experiences do occur with NDE'rs and those who die and do not return. Moody recently wrote a book where he reported upon Shared Death Experiences where there are now some corroborated accounts where people present while a person is dying, have reported sharing well-known NDE like experiences with the person dying at the death-bed - and the person dies and does not come back. Which appears to preliminarily indicate that death experiences of those who do come back are identical with those who don't come back.

SDE's though have not been scientifically investigated as thoroughly as NDE's - so the evidence is still small, and will need more empirical work. But my guess is, additional studies will also confirm Moody's recent publication. There is also some older publications by the SPR regarding Death-Bed Visions (Barrett?) and Osis & Haraldsson's work "At the Hour of Death", which also provide some indications that those who actually die, have similar transpersonal experiences -witnessed by bedside friends, family or medical professionals.

Skeptics because of their a priori bias, do not really take any of the accounts seriously. They spend most of their time and intelligence attempting to come up with materialistic explanations for NDEs, or arguing methodologies used were wrong, none of which has proven to possess any reasonable scientific credibility to date.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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Some are prisoners of semantics: if "death" is defined as irreversible death (biologic death), then it is clear that humans who have been reanimated are not dead, but if "death" is defined as cardiac arrest and EEG plane (clinic death), then some humans have died and been resurrected.

Anyway, Bertha has been right: NDEs and SDEs allow us to extrapolate that biologically dead have similar experiences to clinically dead.
 
The endless debate about biological vs clinical death is all fine and dandy, unfortunately it's not going to take us anywhere.

Speculating that a stopped heart and a damaged brain with no blood flow and no detectable activity is fully responsible for peak experiences such as NDEs is admitting that all we know about neurology/neuroscience is profoundly inadequate, if not entirely flawed.

Poking and prodding the jelly in our heads has a certainly given us insight for medical purposes but it hasn't provided any reliable model of how consciousness works. The infamous "necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness".

Another problem is the complexity and anomaly of most NDE narratives which is baffling on so many levels. The "life review" that comes with a 360° perspective which includes the experiences of the other people involved is not just fascinating but opens so many questions. Where does the brain got that from? What the hell kind of "biological reason" would there be for a dying brain to setup such a profound experience while badly damaged and shutting down? Why generating an experience in the first place, thus wasting precious energy that should be diverted to critical vital functions?

Dying machines, of any type, simply descend into a chaotic/uncontrolled behavior before shutting down entirely. Try reducing the power supply of your computer to 5% while it is running, watch it crash, and see if when you turn it on again it has generated beautiful images and poetry files on your desktop...

@Kai Pam Reynolds did report veridical details of her surgeon opening her scalp, from a third-person POV.
What she described matches what happened, including the visual and auditory elements, with eyes shut with tape and headphones stuck in her ears and banging loud signals.

All of the proposed "normal explanations" require lots of grapsing at straws, improbable speculations, lying on the part of the people involved etc... which is backed by zero evidence.
 
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