near to death episodes: latest study (Endings)

by dhw, Thursday, November 02, 2017, 12:38 (2579 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:I can only repeat that the article does not go beyond patients’ awareness of conversations after the heart has stopped beating, and refers to “a burst of brain energy”, which you have said is irrelevant. I DO accept that information such as the hitherto unknown death of a relative may be regarded as evidence for dualism. I do NOT see how awareness of conversations taking place around a patient whose cortex is still alive but cannot manifest any function (akin to the “locked in” state of coma victims) can be regarded as evidence. Your comment on the article was: “consciousness survives brain death for a few minutes. It is obviously separate from the brain itself, and if so dualism is correct.” The article proves that consciousness survives heart death for a few minutes, but the cortex is NOT dead for a few minutes. I cannot see how this proves that consciousness is separate from the brain. Once more: I am commenting on the limitations of the article, not on NDEs in general.

DAVID: The point you keep missing is the flat EEG during resuscitation. A flat EEG means the cortex is not functioning even if the neurons have not yet died.

See below.

DAVID: Cortical neurons are non-functional within 20 seconds per flat EEG. Current medical evidence states that consciousness resides in those neurons, but consciousness is able to continue. How? Could there be deeper levels of brain activity to support consciousness? Some strange deeper EEG spikes have been seen sporadically, but are poorly understood.

That is indeed the question (though a materialist would say “engender” rather than “support”), and your final comment may provide an answer.

DAVID: You have limited your comment about the cortex to four minutes, but resuscitations can go on for 40 minutes (I've been here) before recovery or death. Remember the van Lommel patient and the teeth, which were removed after the fellow was brought into the hospital (time not specified) and took 45 minutes to resuscitate. I still read the original study as supporting consciousness without a functional cortex, therefore evidence for dualism.

It was you who pinpointed the limitations of the article, as I quoted above: “consciousness survives brain death for a few minutes. It is obviously separate from the brain itself, and if so dualism is correct.” I am happy to go along with your own speculation: if the cortex is not dead, regardless of the time span, perhaps there are deeper levels of brain activity, and these would explain how patients can be aware of events going on around them (including the removal of the patient’s teeth). But they would NOT explain awareness of events such as a relative’s death a thousand miles away. THAT, as I keep repeating, is where you will find your evidence for dualism. Not in the extremely limited article that launched this discussion.