near to death episodes (Endings)

by John Clinch , London, Wednesday, March 05, 2008, 12:25 (6105 days ago) @ whitecraw

Yes, aren't they art, philosophy and religion? - I agree that whereas grief or falling in love are as real as chemicals or planets, science can tell us little that is useful (in an everyday sense) about what it FEELS like. Because we're human, we know what it feels like and we respond with grief or falling in love in a human way. - But science can actually say a great deal about whether other creatures grieve and, indeed, whether there is an adaptive aspect to grieving for us human creatures. It can also tell us what is going on in the brain while we grieve. Greater and greater neurological and psychological knowledge informs, or should inform, philosophical speculation about the mind/ body problem. This in turn should aid in our wider understanding of the totality of reality and possibly feed into good, open, religion. So it's not an either/or issue: the point is to acheive a consilience between all these disciplines that produces a coherent and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon on lots of different levels. And the scientific method grounds it all. - Grief is; falling in love is and either an afterlife is or is not. I happen to believe that it is not but it is essentially a factual question: either you and me will enter a life after death or we won't. Science might never be able to conclusively answer this question by disproving it in a formal sense, just as it may never be able to answer the question as to whether there is more than one universe. I suspect that others on this website may jump on the next statement I am about to make, but I'll say it anyway: the factual nature of these questions (about the existence of an afterlife or more than one universe) is not to be doubted on the sole grounds that it is not amenable to scientific study. It is either true or it is not: unless you are an idealist philosopher, reality really does exist independently of your ability to perceive it. - I will go further and say that if there are limitations to scientific study in principle (bound as science is by what is testable or observable, features currently lacking in the afterlife and multiverse examples), this does not detract from their status as statements that are either true or false. It just means we can't, in principle, ever know for sure. For completeness (and for dhw) I should add that, in my judgement, the question of abiogenesis is not, emphatically not, in that category. There is no "in principle" barrier to scientific study of the origins of life.