(2018-01-16, 09:10 PM)tim Wrote: Interesting, Stephen but I would refer you to the fact that in cardiac arrest dreaming is ruled out, all brain function is ruled out after 10-20 seconds because the brain stem is not functioning apparently. When I have time I'll follow your link and try to see what you're getting at because it probably isn't something I understand.If dreaming is only a physical function or an epiphenomenon - brain stops --> function stops.
If dreaming is an informational process in the mind, and the mind is processing nothing physical - but is processing meaning, then dreaming in cardiac arrest would be possible.
If meaningful ideas are just physical - well living things effect meaning only by physical actions. We simply know that this is not true, living things can adapt, from mental work and not doing things can bring order and organization.
We used to think in science that matter was it and everything, then we modeled energy (a few hundred years ago). No literate person today believes that the energy they exert is from their "being." We know that we are only transformers of energy. We don't think when a cut heals that the material healing the cut was from our being, but from what we drank, breathed and ate.
Why in the world, do we think that meaning is from our brain's being. We live in a sea of meanings - that we assimilate, expel and build. We are not meanings, we incorporate meaning from the inner and outer environments we inhabit.
In the model I am using - NDE's are just self-aware dreaming, without having the sensory inflow from the brain. Better than dreaming - because it is focused only on what can be detected in the infosphere. (informational environment)