near to death episodes (Endings)

by whitecraw, Saturday, March 01, 2008, 17:00 (6109 days ago) @ George Jelliss

My explanation of the lost teeth episode was not an imaginative fiction. It was more in the nature of a deduction from the facts of the case, such as one would find in a detective story. One tries to explain an event that appears inexplicable (such as a death in a locked room) by examining the evidence and questioning its reliability.' - It was more in the nature of a conjecture. But that's okay: science proceeds by a process of conjecture and refutation. We're presented with some event or class of event that needs explaining (e.g. near death experiences), we conjecture as to what could cause them, and we test each conjecture by deducing what will be the case in such-and-such circumstances if it is true, and then bringing about those circumstances and observing what does in fact come about. If things turn out as we predicted they would if the conjecture was true, then the conjecture passes muster; meaning that, for the time being at least, it hasn't been falsified as an explanation of the event or class of event that stands in need of explanation. - Of course, this process of conjecture and refutation brings us no closer to the Truth. But science isn't in the business of Truth. It's in the business of theory, aiming to provide the best theories it can to explain those natural events that stand in need of explanation. And its quality standards are as follows: out of the range of available theories, the best theory (relatively speaking) is the one which
 
a) best withstands falsification (the principle of testability)
b) employs the fewest number of postulates in its explanations (the principle of economy)
c) generates the greatest number of problems calling for further research (has the greatest 'heuristic' value)
d) explains more than its rivals can (has the greatest explanatory power) - We can come up with theories to explain near death experiences and the like till the cows come home. But until we subject those theories to comparative philosophical analysis and experimental testing, all talk about their relative merits will remain only a meaningless bandying of words.