nde--read the interview with fenwick

[hamelekim]

huh? Since when does the hypothesis that there is no {lump of green jelly inside me} hold up under scientific study? I believe that there hasn't been a scientific study to declare definitively that there is no {lump of green jelly inside me}.

See the flaw in your argument?

Yes there has, we have opened up the body and seen that there isn't. We haven't seen a soul though. Now you could argue that there is an invisible green jelly inside of you that we can't see yet and you could make an argument for that but then there is absolutely no evidence for that. If people didn't have NDEs then I think you could make a good argument for no afterlife, but the fact that people do experience NDEs makes a possible case for an afterlife.

 

[Mercutio]

If people didn't have NDEs then I think you could make a good argument for no afterlife, but the fact that people do experience NDEs makes a possible case for an afterlife.

But the "definition" of NDE has been stretched thin enough on this thread alone to include experiences nowhere close to "near-death". If someone sees a white light, feels calm, and experiences a life transformation through the course of meditation, how on earth is that a "possible case for an afterlife"? And yet, that situation is claimed as an NDE.

If a white-light-and-tunnel experience is explained by hypoxia in some cases, bringing up other cases where an NDE occurred without hypoxia is only disconfirmatory IF A) the hypoxia explanation is claimed to be exhaustive (that is, it is claimed to be the solitary explanation) and B) the same definition of NDE is being used. A is not the case, and we can see from this thread that B is not true either.

I have claiming proof, nor even evidence, that there is no afterlife. But this is precisely what I mean by "not going beyond one's evidence". NDEs have not been examined with anything remotely approaching the precision that would allow us to say they exist, let alone that they serve as evidence of an afterlife. Sometimes, researchers see what they want to see, and not what is actually there. Remember N-Rays?

 

[nathan]

Yes there has, we have opened up the body and seen that there isn't. We haven't seen a soul though.

Well, my paraphrasing meant to imply *me*, *my body* not anyone else's. Anyhow, are you now claiming there is no evidence for a soul? Why should we equivocate about souls? Isn't the default hypothesis be that souls do not exist?

 

[hamelekim]

But the "definition" of NDE has been stretched thin enough on this thread alone to include experiences nowhere close to "near-death". If someone sees a white light, feels calm, and experiences a life transformation through the course of meditation, how on earth is that a "possible case for an afterlife"? And yet, that situation is claimed as an NDE.

The experiences are usually not just a white light and it isn't like a dream it's reality like flesh and blood type of experience. Obviously it doesn't prove there is an afterlife even if the experience is real, it just means that consciousness is something more than what we think it is. It very well could be that our consciousness only survives a short time without the body and fades away like the image on a tv after it's been turned off.

Also, the argument is given that OBEs just strengthen the idea that there is more to consciousness than just the brain. Drugs supposedly temporarily separate the consciousness from the body and you have an OBE. The fact that drugs help you to do this doesn't mean that it's a drug induced hallucination. Also, from what I read about DMT it's a far different and more lucid experience than other hallucinogenics, hence the argument that it is doing something other than just creating a fantasy world in your brain.

If a white-light-and-tunnel experience is explained by hypoxia in some cases, bringing up other cases where an NDE occurred without hypoxia is only disconfirmatory IF A) the hypoxia explanation is claimed to be exhaustive (that is, it is claimed to be the solitary explanation) and B) the same definition of NDE is being used. A is not the case, and we can see from this thread that B is not true either.

How does that disprove that NDEs are not something outside of the brain? If anything that goes to show that NDEs aren't solely caused by hypoxia and that it takes certain situations for consciousness to separate from the body (including drug use). The argument could also be made that everyone has NDEs when hypoxia occurs but that only some people remember them due to whatever factors effect memory retention of such an event. It's like not being able to remember a dream.

That's another thing, people remember these events long after they have them. Dreams on the other hand (hallucinations caused by the mind) are rarely remembered and even when they are it's only for a short period of time. This suggests that the event is different than just a normal hallucination created by the brain.

I have claiming proof, nor even evidence, that there is no afterlife. But this is precisely what I mean by "not going beyond one's evidence". NDEs have not been examined with anything remotely approaching the precision that would allow us to say they exist, let alone that they serve as evidence of an afterlife. Sometimes, researchers see what they want to see, and not what is actually there. Remember N-Rays?

Yes, some researchers see what they want to see, the same goes for those who deny events like NDEs. I believe the evidence is compelling enough to really study the phenomenon in a serious and large scale manner. Find people who have OBEs on a regular basis and subject them to a study as with the one done some years ago (I forget then names) where the woman had an OBE in the lab and read a number on top of a shelf. If it's real then a certain percentage of people who have OBEs should be able to read the number. You don't see anything of the sort in the scientific community. They look upon such research as being ridiculous because of course there is no such thing as the soul leaving the body, or even an expanded consciousness.

I have to say that I have no clue what N-Rays are and I don't believe in ghosts, psychics, fortune tellers, astrology, etc... I'm very skeptical about mediums as well but the fact that they are all likely fakes doesn't disprove that there is some sort of survive of consciousness after death.

 

[davidsmith73]

A brief lesson on measurement. You are trying, with your data, to say something about the range of experiences called NDE's. This process is called standardization. In the general population, how many see a bright light? How many feel calm? How many are frightened? Excellent questions, and data well worth finding. But... standardization cannot happen without reliability and validity. Reliability refers to consistency in measurement. My in-laws have a scale (for weighing oneself) that can vary as much as 100 pounds from trial to trial, if you simply step off the scale and back on. It is horribly unreliable. I have a scale from a doctor's office that is depressingly reliable. In order to have reliability, one must operationalize the variable being measured clearly. When you define NDE as broadly as you do, you cannot possibly have a reliable measure of whether or not something is an NDE, let alone whether it is a typical one.

Which brings us to validity. A measure is valid if it measures what it says it measures. A culturally biased IQ test measures socioeconomic status, not intelligence; an unbiased test that does measure intelligence is valid. Here's the deal--something cannot be a valid measure unless it is a reliable measure. My in-law's scale is not measuring my weight--if it was, it would give roughly the same number each time.

A failure to have well-defined operational measures of what constitutes an NDE means that the data are unreliable, and thus invalid. It is inappropriate to draw any conclusions about standardization based on invalid data.

Is any researcher actually saying there is a "single entity" called a NDE? The way I see it, there is only categorisation of certain experiences as NDE's based on subjective criteria and I don't think any serious researcher would deny that such a categorisation is subjective. And I bet that if a process is eventually indentified that explains pertinent aspects of these experiences, some NDE's will be found to be not NDE's after all, if you catch my drift.

Science comes across "unreliable" data all the time and has no trouble incorporating subjective categorisation into objective searches for underlying mechanisms. The prime example is research into positive symptoms of schizophrenia.

So why should NDE research be any different? How does an initial subjective categorisation of NDE experiences provide a barrier to finding objective mechanisms that may lie behind the similarities we see in these NDE reports?

 

[hamelekim]

Well, my paraphrasing meant to imply *me*, *my body* not anyone else's. Anyhow, are you now claiming there is no evidence for a soul? Why should we equivocate about souls? Isn't the default hypothesis be that souls do not exist?

I'm suggesting that the experience of NDEs and OBEs seems to involve some other phenomenon involving consciousness outside the body.

It is true that there are OBEs where the person sees something that someone is doing and then asks them if they did this thing and they say no. There are also cases during OBEs and especially NDEs where the patient sees and hears things outside of their range of hearing and sight. You can come up with an explanation that says they overheard their family members talking afterwards about what someone said in the waiting room or that the object they saw was briefly in their vision when passing down a hall by a window, or any other numerous explanations but they aren't necessarily right.

There is the example where a woman had an NDE and went above the hospital and saw a shoe on the roof. You can't see the shoe from any position on the ground or from any of the floors she was on and yet she saw it. So either she was there some time ago and was at a vantage point where she might have seen it but forgot about it until she had the NDE at which point her brain created an image of the hospital including the shoe. The other explanation is that her consciousness left her body and she saw the shoe. I would argue that the latter explanations is the more likely one, especially if she had never been to that hospital before and wasn't on any of the floors that she could see the shoe during her stay up until she had the OBE. If she says she hadn't seen the shoe before then you either take her word for it or call her a liar. I'm more willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

As for taking consciousness as being a result of the brain and nothing else... I agree with this but with the caveat that each of us hold beliefs that are similarly ridiculous in nature that don't hold up to scientific scrutiny. Taken the trickle down theory of economics for starters. There are plenty of economic conservatives who still hold to this belief even though it's been disproved. I'm sure there are beliefs that you hold right now that wouldn't stand up to real scrutiny.

If NDEs weren't at all similar and if we didn't have almost completely scientifically valid experiments that show there might be something to OBEs you could make a very good argument that there is nothing else to consciousness except the brain. But the fact that there is even circumstantial evidence means that you have to give the phenomenon serious consideration if only to disprove it.

I say that anyone who says they have OBEs on a regular basis should prove it through scientific experimentation. Go to a sleep lab and have a random number generator that will select a number and then place that number in a location that they cannot see and have cameras in the room watching the person to see that they are not cheating somehow. No serious scientist is going to bother doing this though, because they would be the laughing stock of the scientific community for even suggesting that such a phenomenon is anything more than just the brain creating hallucinations.

Even if there is no survival after death it's nice to know that at least we all think there will be in the first minutes after we die. That phenomenon is worth studying even if it is only a creation of the brain.

 

[davidsmith73]

NDEs have not been examined with anything remotely approaching the precision that would allow us to say they exist

I find this an absurd thing to say. Surely a near death experience exists as an experience, or do you think the people who report these experiences are lying?

 

[davidsmith73]

There is the example where a woman had an NDE and went above the hospital and saw a shoe on the roof. You can't see the shoe from any position on the ground or from any of the floors she was on and yet she saw it. So either she was there some time ago and was at a vantage point where she might have seen it but forgot about it until she had the NDE at which point her brain created an image of the hospital including the shoe. The other explanation is that her consciousness left her body and she saw the shoe.

Another explanation could be coincidence. Her brain could have envoked the mental image of the shoe from a past experience of "a shoe on a roof". Perhaps she saw a film with a shoe on roof and her brain engaged that particular memory.

 

[hamelekim]

Another explanation could be coincidence. Her brain could have envoked the mental image of the shoe from a past experience of "a shoe on a roof". Perhaps she saw a film with a shoe on roof and her brain engaged that particular memory.

Her description of the location and the shoe are too specific to be coincidence. You're just reaching to anything to explain it as being anything but a real OBE. The idea that the brain would create an image of a shoe and the location on top of the building and that it would match it perfectly is... well I'm sure you have a better chance of winning lottery than coming up with that. I'm not saying that it's not possible that she might have seen it, but it isn't likely from the description of the story, and if she didn't see it then something is definitely occurring. What that something is remains to be seen.

 

[Mercutio]

The experiences are usually not just a white light and it isn't like a dream it's reality like flesh and blood type of experience. Obviously it doesn't prove there is an afterlife even if the experience is real, it just means that consciousness is something more than what we think it is. It very well could be that our consciousness only survives a short time without the body and fades away like the image on a tv after it's been turned off.

"The experiences"--which ones? Lumping them all in together is like lumping all "flying things" together and trying to describe birds alone when your data include butterflies, bats, and beetles (with no discrimination among them). Until the data are reliable, we simply cannot draw conclusions from them. Do birds have feathers? If you define birds as "all flying things", then only some birds have feathers. Only some NDE's have white lights--and this will remain the case as long as NDE's are so poorly defined. There may be something there--the research has the potential to show us unimagined new things about ourselves--but as long as the methodology is so haphazard, we cannot claim we have found anything.

Also, the argument is given that OBEs just strengthen the idea that there is more to consciousness than just the brain. Drugs supposedly temporarily separate the consciousness from the body and you have an OBE. The fact that drugs help you to do this doesn't mean that it's a drug induced hallucination. Also, from what I read about DMT it's a far different and more lucid experience than other hallucinogenics, hence the argument that it is doing something other than just creating a fantasy world in your brain.

"eparate the consciousness from the body"? Sorry, but what on earth allows you to draw that conclusion?

Yes, I recognise that the argument is that OBE's and NDE's say there is more to consciousness than just the brain. I also recognise that it is a fatally flawed argument as long as the data are so haphazardly collected and ill-defined.

How does that disprove that NDEs are not something outside of the brain? If anything that goes to show that NDEs aren't solely caused by hypoxia and that it takes certain situations for consciousness to separate from the body (including drug use). The argument could also be made that everyone has NDEs when hypoxia occurs but that only some people remember them due to whatever factors effect memory retention of such an event. It's like not being able to remember a dream.

Thank you for illustrating my point. You continue to refer to "NDE's" as if they were one sort of thing. And thank you for recognizing that the methodology currently in use cannot separate out the presence or absence of alleged NDE from A) an NDE that is not recalled (your example) or B) a non-NDE that is confabulated to have been an NDE.

That's another thing, people remember these events long after they have them. Dreams on the other hand (hallucinations caused by the mind) are rarely remembered and even when they are it's only for a short period of time. This suggests that the event is different than just a normal hallucination created by the brain.

It does--it opens the door for false memory. Including data such as these is exactly the opposite of what should be done; it is like intentionally reaching for the dirtiest test tube in the lab. Memory is notoriously malleable, and vividness of memory is not a reliable indicater of truth.

Yes, some researchers see what they want to see, the same goes for those who deny events like NDEs. I believe the evidence is compelling enough to really study the phenomenon in a serious and large scale manner.

If you are serious about this, the first step is to clean up the methodology. Clean up the operational definitions, clean up the measurements, get rid of the baggage that is pulling this research underwater.

Find people who have OBEs on a regular basis and subject them to a study as with the one done some years ago (I forget then names) where the woman had an OBE in the lab and read a number on top of a shelf.

That was "Miss Z.", Charles Tart's OBE subject. If you read his account (here's one), you can see that even he sees the possibility of more mundane explanations, although he doubts them. After all, it is more likely that her spirit left her body, yet was still able to see despite having no physical retina, although it was unable to get through to another room where the other target number sequence was, than it is that she somehow cheated. Despite his admission that he sometimes slept in the other room while the experiment was going on, and his admission that there were ways (sneaky ones, I admit) that the numbers could have been read by her physical self.

To me, the most puzzling aspect of the case is the fact that it was a one-time event. Tart chose Miss Z because she had a history of multiple OBEs, and when she finally (after several failures) gets the complete sequence right, and in order, that's the end of it? No replication? That experiment, with proper controls, would likely win Randi's million bucks. That experiment, with proper controls, would blow the sciences of psychology, biology, and physics wide open. That experiment, with proper controls, would change everything. But there is no mention of even an attempt at replication. Puzzling indeed.

If it's real then a certain percentage of people who have OBEs should be able to read the number. You don't see anything of the sort in the scientific community. They look upon such research as being ridiculous because of course there is no such thing as the soul leaving the body, or even an expanded consciousness.

That is because we wish to see evidence before we will believe such a thing.

There is well over a century of detailed experimental work showing how we process visual information. The level of understanding about what goes on at the retina is astounding. We know about multiple parallel pathways where visual information is processes for color, distance, shape, facial recognition, often redundantly (multiple pathways for depth perception, for instance). All of what we know about it so far requires the neural transduction of light energy, and conduction of nerve impulses...in other words, stuff that happens in the body. So it is not merely that we have no evidence for it happening outside the body, we also have wealth of data supporting it happening inside the body. Any new explanation would have to account for all that data AND be a better explanation of OBEs. So far, nothing has come close.

I have to say that I have no clue what N-Rays are and I don't believe in ghosts, psychics, fortune tellers, astrology, etc... I'm very skeptical about mediums as well but the fact that they are all likely fakes doesn't disprove that there is some sort of survive of consciousness after death.

N-Rays. Very good scientists thought they had found a new energy type. Different labs confirmed it, although others could not find them. Proper experimental controls disconfirmed their existence. Good scientists can be fooled.

 

[nathan]

There is the example where a woman had an NDE and went above the hospital and saw a shoe on the roof. You can't see the shoe from any position on the ground or from any of the floors she was on and yet she saw it. So either she was there some time ago and was at a vantage point where she might have seen it but forgot about it until she had the NDE at which point her brain created an image of the hospital including the shoe. The other explanation is that her consciousness left her body and she saw the shoe.

Do you have a reference for this?

 

[Mercutio]

I find this an absurd thing to say. Surely a near death experience exists as an experience, or do you think the people who report these experiences are lying?

By that criterion, N-rays exist.

Blondlott was not lying--he was reporting the results of an inadequately controlled experiment. Same thing applies here.

 

[Mercutio]

Is any researcher actually saying there is a "single entity" called a NDE? The way I see it, there is only categorisation of certain experiences as NDE's based on subjective criteria and I don't think any serious researcher would deny that such a categorisation is subjective. And I bet that if a process is eventually indentified that explains pertinent aspects of these experiences, some NDE's will be found to be not NDE's after all, if you catch my drift.

Science comes across "unreliable" data all the time and has no trouble incorporating subjective categorisation into objective searches for underlying mechanisms. The prime example is research into positive symptoms of schizophrenia.

So why should NDE research be any different? How does an initial subjective categorisation of NDE experiences provide a barrier to finding objective mechanisms that may lie behind the similarities we see in these NDE reports?

With a slight quibble with your first paragraph, I am mostly in agreement with you. I do not at all deny the possibility that well-controlled research in this area might reap tremendous insights. The barrier to finding mechanisms is simply the denial that the current definitions and methodologies are inadequate. When someone points out that your test tubes are dirty, the proper procedure is to clean them and repeat the experiment, not argue that dirty test tubes are perfectly adequate for chemistry.

 

[hamelekim]

"The experiences"--which ones? Lumping them all in together is like lumping all "flying things" together and trying to describe birds alone when your data include butterflies, bats, and beetles (with no discrimination among them). Until the data are reliable, we simply cannot draw conclusions from them. Do birds have feathers? If you define birds as "all flying things", then only some birds have feathers. Only some NDE's have white lights--and this will remain the case as long as NDE's are so poorly defined. There may be something there--the research has the potential to show us unimagined new things about ourselves--but as long as the methodology is so haphazard, we cannot claim we have found anything.

The NDE and OBE phenomenons both share similar traits including floating outside their bodies, seeing other beings, a complete sense of lucidity and of knowledge. I think it's perfectly find to group them together because they do have similarities all having to do with the appearance of consciousness outside of the body.

I agree that there needs to be a standardized methodology test the experiences but until scientists decide to get together and come up with one I don't see it happening.

"eparate the consciousness from the body"? Sorry, but what on earth allows you to draw that conclusion?

Yes, I recognise that the argument is that OBE's and NDE's say there is more to consciousness than just the brain. I also recognise that it is a fatally flawed argument as long as the data are so haphazardly collected and ill-defined.

I don't see how it is any more flawed than ideas like string theory or the multiverse. String theorists can't even agree on how many dimensions there are let alone try to prove that there are an infinite number of universes outside of our own and yet they seriously consider such an idea. I don't see how that is any different from NDEs and OBEs.

Thank you for illustrating my point. You continue to refer to "NDE's" as if they were one sort of thing. And thank you for recognizing that the methodology currently in use cannot separate out the presence or absence of alleged NDE from A) an NDE that is not recalled (your example) or B) a non-NDE that is confabulated to have been an NDE.

NDE's are a "thing". Whether or not that thing is hallucinations or something else remains to be seen but it is a definite occurrence.

It does--it opens the door for false memory. Including data such as these is exactly the opposite of what should be done; it is like intentionally reaching for the dirtiest test tube in the lab. Memory is notoriously malleable, and vividness of memory is not a reliable indicater of truth.

You might as well just invalidate anyone who tells you anything that they don't have absolute proof for. If they say they saw someone or some thing how can you trust that they really saw it? Memory can be tricked but that doesn't mean that the experience as described isn't the truth. You're making an assumption that it isn't the truth.

That was "Miss Z.", Charles Tart's OBE subject. If you read his account (here's one), you can see that even he sees the possibility of more mundane explanations, although he doubts them. After all, it is more likely that her spirit left her body, yet was still able to see despite having no physical retina, although it was unable to get through to another room where the other target number sequence was, than it is that she somehow cheated. Despite his admission that he sometimes slept in the other room while the experiment was going on, and his admission that there were ways (sneaky ones, I admit) that the numbers could have been read by her physical self.

To me, the most puzzling aspect of the case is the fact that it was a one-time event. Tart chose Miss Z because she had a history of multiple OBEs, and when she finally (after several failures) gets the complete sequence right, and in order, that's the end of it? No replication? That experiment, with proper controls, would likely win Randi's million bucks. That experiment, with proper controls, would blow the sciences of psychology, biology, and physics wide open. That experiment, with proper controls, would change everything. But there is no mention of even an attempt at replication. Puzzling indeed.

I agree that is suspicious. I have wondered about that myself. Has he ever given an explanation as to why he didn't continue on with further study?

That is because we wish to see evidence before we will believe such a thing.

There is well over a century of detailed experimental work showing how we process visual information. The level of understanding about what goes on at the retina is astounding. We know about multiple parallel pathways where visual information is processes for color, distance, shape, facial recognition, often redundantly (multiple pathways for depth perception, for instance). All of what we know about it so far requires the neural transduction of light energy, and conduction of nerve impulses...in other words, stuff that happens in the body. So it is not merely that we have no evidence for it happening outside the body, we also have wealth of data supporting it happening inside the body. Any new explanation would have to account for all that data AND be a better explanation of OBEs. So far, nothing has come close.

so you won't do it until you see evidence but in order to see valid evidence you need a methodology that you won't agree upon until you see proof? You don't see the problem here? If someone makes a claim, such as OBEs, then it needs to be tested. You can't just say I won't test the claim until I see proof because the proof would mean the test already occurred.

I also have issues with your claim that all that an OBE requires is internal. I already asked at what level of brain function can a person still take in process and store sensory information. Does it require a certain measurement on the eeg ekg (not sure which one it is) machine? If so then what about cases where the measurements are below the threshold and yet the person still has visual and auditory memories of events after the fact? If we don't even know at what level a brain can still take in and store sensory information then how can you say that it's all in the brain? We need to know these things in order to come to a final conclusion.

N-Rays. Very good scientists thought they had found a new energy type. Different labs confirmed it, although others could not find them. Proper experimental controls disconfirmed their existence. Good scientists can be fooled.

Yes they can be fooled by their biases.

 

[hamelekim]

Do you have a reference for this?

can't post urls until I have 15 posts...

h t t p : / / w w w . shaktitechnology . c o m / o b e . h t m

first site I came across. There are other sites that reference the same story and I'm sure that you could find the journal and read the story yourself. It's interesting but again there is a small chance she might have seen it somehow if it was at a height and location that could be seen from some higher vantage point in the hospital. There really needs to be an intensive and conclusive study of the phenomenon considering that millions of people have had the experience.

Dr. Bruce Greyson is also the editor for The Journal for Near-death Studies, which has published several accounts of veridical of body experiences. These are cases in which a person has an out of body experience, sees something that would not be visible from their body's location, and then later has their perception validated. In one case, an elderly woman in intensive care had a heart attack followed by a near-death experience which included an out of body experience. During her out of body experience she saw the roof of the hospital and noticed are red tennis shoe. A maintenance worker and some medical observers went to the roof of the hospital where they retrieved the shoe. While this seems to prove consciousness can exist separate from the brain, it leaves open one possibility. It may be that the mind, when it is outside of the body has a structure, and that structure reflects the structure of the brain. Proving the existence of consciousness outside the body, or separate from the brain may prove to be very elusive, even if the ideas that support it are valid.

 

[Mashuna]

I don't see how it is any more flawed than ideas like string theory or the multiverse. String theorists can't even agree on how many dimensions there are let alone try to prove that there are an infinite number of universes outside of our own and yet they seriously consider such an idea. I don't see how that is any different from NDEs and OBEs.

Are you sure this is what physicists are claiming?

I also have issues with your claim that all that an OBE requires is internal. I already asked at what level of brain function can a person still take in process and store sensory information. Does it require a certain measurement on the eeg ekg (not sure which one it is) machine? If so then what about cases where the measurements are below the threshold and yet the person still has visual and auditory memories of events after the fact? If we don't even know at what level a brain can still take in and store sensory information then how can you say that it's all in the brain? We need to know these things in order to come to a final conclusion.

I don't think that this is the point Merc is making (although I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong). It's not the question of whether the brain can still process and store sensory information during an OBE. The question is what senses are being used to get this information to the brain? What mechanism is in play to allow people to see / hear things that are out of range of their normal senses. Everything we know about how light signals are interpreted by the retina and nerve endings would indicate this isn't possible. You need to be able to explain this. Otherwise, you at least need to factor it in to your probability assessment of how likely it is that someone 'saw' a shoe on the roof of the hospital.

 

[Mercutio]

The NDE and OBE phenomenons both share similar traits including floating outside their bodies, seeing other beings, a complete sense of lucidity and of knowledge. I think it's perfectly find to group them together because they do have similarities all having to do with the appearance of consciousness outside of the body.

It is fine for you to group them together. It is also fine for others not to. At this point, there is no agreement over definitions. At some point, some definitions will be more productive than others, and the others will drop.

I agree that there needs to be a standardized methodology test the experiences but until scientists decide to get together and come up with one I don't see it happening.

Are the current researchers concerned about this at all?

I don't see how it is any more flawed than ideas like string theory or the multiverse. String theorists can't even agree on how many dimensions there are let alone try to prove that there are an infinite number of universes outside of our own and yet they seriously consider such an idea. I don't see how that is any different from NDEs and OBEs.

Excellent analogy! I agree completely--and note, please, that some scientists say that string theory is "not even wrong", that it is incoherent. Eventually, there will either be utility in these theories or there will not be. For now, it is a mess. One difference, though--for NDE and OBE, we *do* have physiological explanations for some of the phenomena (the explanations break down, as they must, when additional phenomena are shoe-horned into the category of NDE/OBE); string theory and multiverse theory are forays into legitimate areas where we do not know yet.

NDE's are a "thing". Whether or not that thing is hallucinations or something else remains to be seen but it is a definite occurrence.

NDE's may be a "thing". They may be many things. Until tightened controls are in place we cannot say for certain.

You might as well just invalidate anyone who tells you anything that they don't have absolute proof for. If they say they saw someone or some thing how can you trust that they really saw it? Memory can be tricked but that doesn't mean that the experience as described isn't the truth. You're making an assumption that it isn't the truth.

Actually, I am making the assumption that if it is true, tighter controls will produce better evidence. And the processes of confabulation and distortion of memory are a fertile area of research--it is not merely a matter of making an assumption.

I agree that is suspicious. I have wondered about that myself. Has he ever given an explanation as to why he didn't continue on with further study?

I have not seen it. That does not mean it doesn't exist, but if you find it please share!

so you won't do it until you see evidence but in order to see valid evidence you need a methodology that you won't agree upon until you see proof? You don't see the problem here? If someone makes a claim, such as OBEs, then it needs to be tested. You can't just say I won't test the claim until I see proof because the proof would mean the test already occurred.

Please do not put words in my mouth. I can certainly agree to methodology before an experiment takes place. Agreeing only based on results is a terrible flaw. But experimental methodology is something we know a bit about; if you present an experiment without the results, it can still be critiqued for methodological flaws.

I also have issues with your claim that all that an OBE requires is internal.

I have not made this claim. I have said that the current evidence does not support any explanation. Nor can it. The test tubes are dirty.

I already asked at what level of brain function can a person still take in process and store sensory information. Does it require a certain measurement on the eeg ekg (not sure which one it is) machine? If so then what about cases where the measurements are below the threshold and yet the person still has visual and auditory memories of events after the fact? If we don't even know at what level a brain can still take in and store sensory information then how can you say that it's all in the brain? We need to know these things in order to come to a final conclusion.

Psychophysics has explored some of these questions over the past century or so, and other of them are being explored by neuropsychologists and others currently. We are, of course, limited by our equipment. (Incidentally, the founder of psychophysics, Fechner, was a spiritual monist; he would not have said it was all physical. Most of those who followed in his footsteps drew other conclusions. Good methodology transcends one's belief systems.)

And again, I do not say it is all in the brain, I simply say that the evidence does not exist that it is other than this. Please do not put words in my mouth.

Yes they can be fooled by their biases.

This is why we have experts in methodology, and why we have peer review. Scientists are above all human, and thus biased. The scientific method is not "how scientists think", but rather a guard against how humans think. So, tighten up the methodology. If there is something there, tighter controls will show it more clearly. If there is nothing there, tighter controls will show it dissappear.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't think that this is the point Merc is making (although I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong). It's not the question of whether the brain can still process and store sensory information during an OBE. The question is what senses are being used to get this information to the brain? What mechanism is in play to allow people to see / hear things that are out of range of their normal senses. Everything we know about how light signals are interpreted by the retina and nerve endings would indicate this isn't possible. You need to be able to explain this. Otherwise, you at least need to factor it in to your probability assessment of how likely it is that someone 'saw' a shoe on the roof of the hospital.

You are correct.

 

[hamelekim]

I don't think that this is the point Merc is making (although I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong). It's not the question of whether the brain can still process and store sensory information during an OBE. The question is what senses are being used to get this information to the brain? What mechanism is in play to allow people to see / hear things that are out of range of their normal senses. Everything we know about how light signals are interpreted by the retina and nerve endings would indicate this isn't possible. You need to be able to explain this. Otherwise, you at least need to factor it in to your probability assessment of how likely it is that someone 'saw' a shoe on the roof of the hospital.

I agree we need to be able to explain this. If it does occur we should be able to do so. We likely don't have the technology at this point to explain it but we can do experiments to show that it is happening outside of our current understanding of human consciousness.

 

[Mercutio]

I agree we need to be able to explain this. If it does occur we should be able to do so. We likely don't have the technology at this point to explain it but we can do experiments to show that it is happening outside of our current understanding of human consciousness.

Certainly--if a well-controlled, replicable experiment reliably showed (and those are not goalpost-moving words--that is the standard in all science) that even one person could view objects remotely, that would be outside the current understanding of biology, psychology, and physics. It would rock the world.

But...since magicians view things in sealed envelopes all the time, we know that some people who appear to view remotely are actually using trickery. A well-controlled experiment is, therefore, crucial.