near to death episodes: latest study (Endings)

by dhw, Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 11:55 (2578 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: If the events described by the patients took place AFTER the death of the cortex, then they are evidence for dualism. The article tells us about events immediately after heart stoppage. We therefore need more information about the timing before we can talk of evidence.

DAVID: After cortical death, the surviving patient is brain dead, living on lower centers only. He cannot communicate anything […] What the patients who fully survive describe are events than occur during resuscitation which can last 20-40 minutes. The resuscitation effort brings back EEG activity in 4-6 minutes, but the patient is unconscious because of the event […] Think of the Dutch patient of van Lommel, brought in unconscious who asked the next day about his teeth and knew the nurse who took them out. Resuscitation provides a low level of oxygen to the brain which preserves the cortex at an unconscious level. How the patient is aware of surroundings is the issue. No one knows how they know what they describe when revived.

I have edited your post, because the focus has now undergone an important shift. If I’ve understood you correctly, the cortex survives heart stoppage for 4-6 minutes, after which the doctor supplies sufficient oxygen to keep it alive, so it is in the same (theoretically unconscious) state as when the heart stopped beating. My original criticism of the article was that it did not tell us the time of the observations, but what you have now explained expands the time range, because the cortex is still alive. You said that: “In the 4-6 minute period after blood and oxygen delivery is stopped, before neuron death, you are correct. Consciousness could be received there, but how would a non-functioning network of neurons handle it?” If blood and oxygen delivery is restarted by resuscitation, wouldn’t the same state continue throughout the 20-40 minutes?

There are two basic assumptions in your comments, both of which can be challenged. 1) That the cortex is only a receiver of consciousness, whereas the materialist will claim that it is the generator. (I’m not taking sides. I’m simply considering both viewpoints.) 2) that an inability to communicate and to perform physical functions denotes unconsciousness. My poor late wife had the same symptoms after her second stroke, but I was told by her doctors that we could not know if she was conscious or not. There are also documented cases of coma patients who were deemed to be unconscious but were fully aware of what was going on around them.

It is clear, then, that all those NDEs that recount events going on around the patient mean that he/she is conscious. But as you say, nobody knows how. Maybe a dualistic “soul” is the answer. But if the cortex is not dead, and is active enough to be the “receiver”, it could also be the generator, and that would be the materialist view. However, in many cases of NDEs, the patient “returns” with information from outside the operating theatre, and I suggest that those are the experiences which cannot be explained by materialism. The article itself provides no evidence for dualism,