The source says that the prevalent interpretation is that the NDE is exactly what it appears to be to the person having the experience. (soul!)
Interaction between body and soul
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The source says that the prevalent interpretation is that the NDE is exactly what it appears to be to the person having the experience. (soul!)
You didn't explain anything. I specifically wrote in OP why scientists may have not detected interaction of soul with matter, and you just said that if the soul existed scientists would have detected it.
Belz...
Fiend God
Prevalent amongst WHOM?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As it was for so many others, the biggest clue that the OP probably couldn't press his claims to a convincing standard of scientific credibility was this howler:
This fundamentally misunderstands how science works, in precisely the way Belz, Loss Leader, and a few others have suggested is wrong with the claim. Yes, when a scientific theory is sustained, we can deduce any number of possible consequents from it. And in some cases such undirected deduction can suggest avenues of possible future research, most often for the purpose of firming up support for the theory. But the real meat and potatoes of scientific inquiry is the observation that doesn't fit the theory. All the really helpful science is done "after the fact," because explaining the newly-incompatible fact is how knowledge is extended.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Did you read the source? Yes or no.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No, I don't read his comment as simply restating his case. He's telling you that you haven't solved any problem, but merely deferred it to a different location n in the causal chain. I read his answer as saying that at some point you need to have detectable energy transfer in order to produce the effect of communication because that's the essence of the effect. Showing that it may not need to happen at Point A, as others have suggested, is not equivalent to saying it never needs to happen at all. I may be wrong, but that's how I'm reading his answer.
It doesn't matter. The source says that to the NDErs, the NDE appears as a soul leaving the body. That's what JayUtah what asking - whether the patients interpret their experience in terms of a soul. I didn't do such a research myself, so I can only point to those who have.
Belz...
Fiend God
It is absolutely VITAL to your claim. It makes a hell of a difference if it's doctors or neurologists or NDErs or evangelists or faith-healers or chimney sweepers.
So it DOES matter, then.
You seem to be saying whatever you think will help your case at any given moment.
No.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed, it seems he didn't read the source. French is studying researchers, not patients. His chapter surveys what theories were floating around (pun intended) at the time, and how they can be taxonomized and characterized. I'll explain it using a hypothetical example.
Let's say we have two people, Tom and Dick. Tom is an artist. Dick is a lawyer. One day, they both have a heart attack and, upon resuscitation, both claim they had a near-death experience. Among the observations each reports is what Greyson would descfribe as a "out-of-body experience." (French focuses on OBEs, but not to the exclusion of other NDE factors.)
We have three other people now: Harriet, Martha, and Joyce. Harriet is a spiritualist author who specializes in books on near-death experiences. Martha is a neurologist. Joyce is a research psychologist. Naturally each might want to interview both patents. When they do, both Tom and Dick say, "It seemed to me like I was floating above my body."
What French is trying to say is that the most likely explanation Harriet is going to come up with is that how the patients subjectively characterized their sensations was what objectively happened, as fact. "It seemed like you were floating above your body because part of you actually was." Harriet's peers, as a matter of statistical survey, most prevalently propose some sort of literal separation of consciousness (French doesn't say soul) as the explanation for the feeling of being outside one's body. She represents one of the schools of though that French surveys.
Martha instead might say, "That's very interesting. We know that a person's sense of body location, surroundings, and equilibrium is controlled by a portion of the brain in the temporal-parietal region. When we stimulate this part of the brain and disrupt its normal function, the patent reports a feeling of being outside his body. I know that seems weird, but we have to remember that all the functions of the brain are going to be perceived as if they were sensory inputs. Now we probably won't be able to investigate the markers of such a causation in your particular cases because the cardiologist was more interested in saving your lives than in collecting data. This is why we prove the causation in the lab using controlled experiments and then generalize the results to situations in which the demonstrated causes might plausibly arise."
And Joyce might say, "We have seen that when people believe they are facing great danger, they sometimes dissociate their conscious thoughts from the surroundings. This might be perceived subjectively as not being inside your body. We think it's a way to shield the conscious mind from things that it doesn't want to deal with."
In summary, Harriet's theory is what the spiritualist school of thought most prevalently applies. Martha's is the most prevalent theory among the physicalist school of thought. And Joyce's is the most prevalent among the psychologist school. What's important to realize in French's study is that Harriet's conclusion has bugger all to do with what Tom and Dick each think.
Tom says, "I've always thought that my art came from somewhere deep inside me that wasn't really part of my physical manifestation. Harriet's interpretation speaks the most profoundly to me." Neither Joyce nor Martha need to revise their theories accordingly because neither of them is based on whether the patients themselves understand or accept the science.
And Dick might say, "I hear you, but I'm quite prepared to believe that the sensation was simply an illusion. Since my predetermination is to follow the evidence, I tend to prefer the explanation for which there is testable evidence, although I do also see some merit in the psychology theory too." Harriet need not change her mind. Her decision to take the out-of-body claim at face value was hers; it had nothing to do with whether Tom or Dick agreed with her.
We have to endorse French's decision to taxonomize as he does because the rhetoric supporting the calculus of parsimony in each case has few if any common axioms. It's not as if Harriet just digs in her heels and sticks with her explanation because she's stubborn. The rhetoric proposes that the patient's perception to have been outside his body should be taken as if it were a literal observation because it's a de minimis interpretation. All the others, they say, require additional factors which lack evidence. But that calculus arrives at parsimony only by ignoring that the existence of the soul is assumed. You can do that in spiritualist circles, and if one presupposes the existence of a soul then the take-at-face-value interpretation comes across as parsimonious. Circular, if OBE is to be considered proof of the soul, but not without intellectual appeal.
What's important to realize is that Tom and Dick don't appear anywhere in French's research. He's twice removed from any information regarding whether the patients themselves interpreted their perceptions as literal records of fact, if any such information was even collected at all by actual investigators. He studies only the Harriets, Marthas, and Joyces.
And I explained in OP how the effect of significant interaction with the soul can be produced without being differentiated in neurological observations from familiar influences: the neuroscientist can see measurable activity of the brain and be unable to tell whether it is entirely caused by known physical particles.
Belz...
Fiend God
ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Fitting the theory to the facts is the OPPOSITE of fitting the facts to the theory.
Now you've stooped to dishonesty.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
It absolutely does. You made a claim regarding what patients think. You're supporting it with evidence of what researchers think about the patients.
The source says that the most prevalant way that spiritualist researchers interpret these statements is to insist they be taken at face value. Even at face value, "out-of-body experience" does not mean "soul," even at the anecdotal level.
And what you provided is evidence that spiritualist researchers interpret others' experience in terms of a soul, simply because the patients described their perceptions in a way that the researchers construe as congruent with those terms.
[When asked if the source was read:]
You need to do more than point at it.
BStrong
Penultimate Amazing
^Wins Thread^
I've been dead twice, brought back twice. No bright lights, dead relatives or heavenly harps.
When you're gone, you're gone.
My best friend and drummer died last July. Between he, I and our guitarist we have a secret word for him to give us if he's on the other side.
Tony and I are still waiting to hear or see that word.
Nonsense. I suggested a reason to explain why only 10% of survivors report NDEs.
Fact: Only 10% of survivors report NDEs.
Possible reason: Other survivors may have forgotten their NDEs, as one would forget a dream or because of amnesia commonly caused by anesthetics.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
No, don't try to put words in my mouth.
No, it's the opposite of what I accuse you of doing. What you do is state what process you think might be operating, and then imagine that there might somehow exist a pattern of as-yet undiscovered observations that support it. You propose a correlation between NDEs and a hypothetical mode of operation for a hypothetical soul. But when the actual numbers show no such correlation, you deploy an argument from silence to imagine a few different ways in which the observations should be edited to support your desired conclusion.
What neurology does is note that certain observations don't fit a model of brain operation that covers both normal, unremarkable operation and certain modes of anomalous operation. It then proposes to extend the model to accommodate the new facts -- not by altering the facts, but by amending the model. I described at length the hypothetico-deductive process by which various proposed extensions can be tested to see whether the mechanism by which they explain the new facts (a) is actually what is happening, and (b) does no regressive injury to the amended model's overall predictive strength.
You continue to demonstrate that you don't know how science works at a fundamental level. That makes it very unlikely that you've single-handedly solved the energy-transfer problem.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
And it's still an argument from silence.
According to Wikipedia, French says that NDEs appear to the experiencers as a soul leaving the body. So either he is right or he is wrong, but that's what he says.
How would these NDEs know it was their soul? Plus you have one NDEr in this thread that contradicts your claim.