I'm at the 46th conference for the Society of Psychical Research

Thanks for posting that, ersby ! There are a couple of statements in there, maybe three or so which I don't agree with, (above and below, not that that matters of course). I'm not qualified myself to refute them, only from what I've been able to learn from medical experts. 

In these cases, brain activity is literally frozen

It isn't literally frozen, though. I'd be surprised if he meant to say that, it's probably just his turn of phrase. If the brain tissue was frozen then the cells would be destroyed. The hypothermia (down to about 18 degrees or so) merely vastly reduces the metabolic need for oxygen and other nutrients.
 
But more to the point, what he seems to be saying is that there is going to be a retrospective study on people who have survived a period of being dead through succumbing to deep hypothermic conditions. And who hopefully have some memories of the time they had no brain activity. 

I wish him the best of luck with it, I really do, but I can't see why this would impress sceptics at all, personally. They will easily wriggle out of anything other than a real time hit on a double blind target when the brain was demonstrably out of action.

I remember the danish episode being reffered to (an absolutely horrible accident). I never heard anything about the survivors reporting any NDEs but 7 kids were in cardiac arrest for up to 2 hours. The story is told by BBC for the english speakers if you are interested https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-50630441

I remember the danish episode being reffered to (an absolutely horrible accident). I never heard anything about the survivors reporting any NDEs but 7 kids were in cardiac arrest for up to 2 hours.

Yes, I saw that, it was terrible wasn't it. I suspect they (some of them) would have had them, though, but of course we don't know for sure. What we do know is that children absolutely do have near death experiences and the percentage that report them is much higher than in adults. 

  Childhood near-death experiences - PubMed (nih.gov)

Incidentally, going back several decades, a prominent sceptic (can't just recall who it was now) stated that, "children don't have near death experiences."

I wish him the best of luck with it, I really do, but I can't see why this would impress sceptics at all, personally. They will easily wriggle out of anything other than a real time hit on a double blind target when the brain was demonstrably out of action.

I know what you mean Tim, but I think you are maybe a bit too pessimistic. People absorb a certain amount of information that is inconsistent with their beliefs and then undergo a 'conversion event'. There have been some interesting conversions in recent years - think of Thomas Nagel for example.

David

I know what you mean Tim, but I think you are maybe a bit too pessimistic. People absorb a certain amount of information that is inconsistent with their beliefs and then undergo a 'conversion event'. There have been some interesting conversions in recent years - think of Thomas Nagel for example.

I might be being too pessimistic, David. But we're still here aren't we, after how long (1975). I don't see sceptics changing their minds yet, maybe they will. BTW wasn't Nagle's movement from materialism to some kind of panpsychism ?

I might be being too pessimistic, David. But we're still here aren't we, after how long (1975). I don't see sceptics changing their minds yet, maybe they will. BTW wasn't Nagle's movement from materialism to some kind of panpsychism ?

Well his latest book is entitled: "Mind and Cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false."

(He isn't an easy read)

David

An Update on Prolonged NDEs: "Being Alive When You are Cold and Dead"
Annekatrin Puhle and Adrian Parker

A major impasse in current research on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), which are currently being reframed as "Recalled Experiences of Death" (REDs) is that the medication given at cardiac arrests severely reduces memory recall of experiences during surgical operations. A review of current research in this field reveals the enigma that veridical perceptions are often reported during these REDs and cognitive activity is beyond what might be expected from a brain devoid of brain stem reflexes and cortic activity. Yet it can still be argued that some subcortical areas are responsible for the experiences reported and thus the claims of ESP are illusory. It is proposed here that a means of resolving some of the basic issues, is to focus on cases of resuscitation with prolonged accidental hypothermia due to drowning, snow avalanches and similar events. In these cases, brain activity is literally frozen and according to conventional neuropsychological belief, then REDs would not occur. We do not know if they do.

........................................................

This ignores the evidence that hypothermia inhibits formation of new memories (anterograde amnesia). I briefly discussed this in another post, at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-i...3#pid55133 .

"Experiments with rats have shown that with these animals anterograde memory loss is induced by hypothermia (see https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1984-03172-001 ). Anterograde amnesia is a type of memory loss that occurs when you can't form new memories. This kind of amnesia is probably common to most mammals including humans. That would mean that for NDEs during which the NDEr was deeply hypothermic, afterward the NDEr probably would have little or no memory of experiences during the NDE including transcendental experiences during OBE, due to neurological impairment caused by the extreme cold. Presumably the memories are held in the spirit and would come back into consciousness after physical death."

This indicates that the probability of patients remembering their RED or NDE must be at least drastically reduced if they are hypothermic during the period, even if their consciousness continued out of body during the NDE. That would be automatically biasing the experiment and making any conclusions invalid, since it would be difficult or impossible to distinguish between anterograde amnesia caused by brain inactivity due to hypothermia (consciousness continued out of body during NDE) and such amnesia caused by brain inactivity during NDE (with consciousness extinguished during the period). The only way of resolving that would be considering the existence of veridical features in other non-hypothermic NDEs, but the typical scientistic response to such evidence is that it is inherently worthlessly anecdotal.

Well his latest book is entitled: "Mind and Cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false."

(He isn't an easy read)

David

Phew, thanks for the tip ! Obviously it's not for the likes of me. Can you recommend anything I could understand?  Harry Potter is about my level.

Phew, thanks for the tip ! Obviously it's not for the likes of me. Can you recommend anything I could understand?  Harry Potter is about my level.

Well I have to admit, I skipped some of that book, but I think philosophy has broken itself by trying to make itself compatible with materialism - so I don't read philosophical works in general.

Nagel seems to realise the truth, but he still has to tangle himself in all that guff to try to push other philosophers to follow him!

David

I might be being too pessimistic, David. But we're still here aren't we, after how long (1975). I don't see sceptics changing their minds yet, maybe they will. BTW wasn't Nagle's movement from materialism to some kind of panpsychism ?

Nagel I think has long been doubtful about Materialism, given his "What is like to be a bat?" essay and his continual noting that to have logical arguments one needs to have a ground for Reason that seems unlikely/impossible to come from the Materialism doctrine. He's also written in the past about how ID is a legitimate scientific endeavor.

I think his idea of human capacity for Justice coming from a "View from Nowhere" also felt non-materialist to me.

But yeah it seems he thinks of himself as in the Neutral Monist / Panpsychist spectrum of positions...though he also seems to feel Neutral Monism is better than Panpsychism...

Nagel’s 1979 article ‘Panpsychism’ is rightly credited with provoking the recent resurgence of interest in panpsychism, the thesis that in some sense mind exists throughout the natural world, after more than half a century of neglect. There is now a considerable and burgeoning literature on panpsychism and related positions...in none of these cases does the reasoning depart very far from Nagel’s concise and powerful formulation.

Thus Nagel is the true father of contemporary panpsychism...