Afterlife: Matt Take Notice!!! (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 09, 2012, 11:41 (4680 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt, the discussion between yourself on the one hand, and David and me (see my unanswered post of 6 January at 12.32) on the other, revolves round two sentences in your last post: “My primary criticism: If we know that we know very little about consciousness, we have very little right to be able to claim we know for sure when it ends. [...] We don’t know enough about consciousness and the mind-brain interaction to give a reasonable discussion of NDEs.”

Back to epistemology. You are fully aware that neither David nor I claim to “know for sure” when consciousness ends. That is a straw man argument. If anything, it is you who are making such a claim, since you do not take NDEs seriously. What do you mean by “a reasonable discussion”? All of us are attempting to understand the nature of consciousness, and in order to do so, we have to consider all the available evidence. If you cannot explain the acquisition of knowledge by unknown means, you should at least explain why you are not prepared to accept it as POSSIBLE evidence of dualism. Not definite evidence, not evidence to tell us anything “for sure”, not evidence that will answer all our questions (e.g. why the cultural differences?), but POSSIBLE evidence of consciousness independent of the physical brain. How did Pam Reynolds see what she saw, how did Yuri know the baby’s arm was broken, how did the man know where his dentures were (van Lommel section), how did the blind Vicki see herself, how did Maria see the tennis shoe, how did the other lady see the red shoe, how did Joyce Harmon see the plaid shoelaces, how did Sue Saunders see the yellow top, how did a whole host of patients see – they all say from above – the details of what was being done to them and around them when clinically they were dead and the medical staff attending to them could detect no sign of life? Do you know the answer “for sure”? Of course you don’t. And yet you are “extremely skeptical”. So let me ask you yet again, do you think all these people and all the witnesses were lying or were victims of collective delusion? If not, what are you “extremely skeptical” about?

David may be more convinced of dualism than I am, since I remain firmly seated on my agnostic picket fence but, for the sake of emphasis, let me repeat: it is an absolute cop out to claim that, since we cannot know “for sure” where consciousness ends, and we do not understand the nature of consciousness, it's not “reasonable” to discuss NDEs, or even to take them seriously. In the context of materialism versus dualism, refusal to consider POSSIBLE evidence – i.e. phenomena that so far remain unexplained – is neither scientific nor reasonable. It is, to put it bluntly, prejudgemental.