NDEs: It still comes back to epistemology (Agnosticism)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, October 26, 2020, 23:55 (1490 days ago) @ dhw

xeno: Here I'm thinking specifically of that first case in Sabom's book that detailed the lady who pointed out a shoe that was on a ledge outside of the hospital. What about this? Isn't this *knowledge?* My kneejerk response is this: if I walked into a courtroom with a blood alcohol on the borderline of alcohol poisoning, exactly how much veracity should the judge and jury give any claims I make?

Delighted to have you back with us! I hope all is going well in your life. And thank you for this wonderfully well researched article. I agree with most of what you say, except for the above – which is really the only reason why I keep an open mind on NDEs. The shoe on the ledge was confirmed by outsiders. They did not have any disease and were not drunk. And there are many documented cases in which the patient has “returned” with information that he/she could not have known beforehand. There are also many cases in which perfectly healthy people have had similar experiences, in which they acquire inaccessible knowledge that has later been confirmed. BBella once described such a case, though I can’t remember the details, except that it involved prior knowledge of an accident. But the shoe incident will suffice as an illustration. I expect David will be able to give us more concrete examples.

I'm replying directly to you dhw, but am including our good friend Turell since well, I'm lazy. I'm certainly sorry I've been neglecting some old friends here.

The shoe on the ledge was confirmed by outsiders.

Of course, I was leading up to this in my head, but then I was close to the max word count and mentally off on a different tangent.

What does it actually mean that the data was corroborated?

The point I'm trying to get at, and this is oddly difficult for me to express in words, so I might have to try this a couple times so....

The claim here that we're considering is pretty... well pretty banal. So we find a shoe. other people corroborate that.

Looking at some other cases:

"Pam Reynolds: Upon returning to consciousness, she was able to accurately describe the unique surgical instrument used and report the statements made by the nurses."

We've got this dutch guy:
"‘You were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that cart, it had all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer underneath, and there you put my teeth.’"

The thing that *I* notice here, is that in these instances we're all talking about things that are physically close to the patient in question.

Lady finds a shoe. Man finds his teeth. Another lady describes a procedure that the doc and nurses all already know.

I'm having a hard time understanding what the fascination or implications might really be here?

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"