A public domain Bigelow Essay that argues for a kind of hyperspatial dualism based on NDEs (actual NDE accounts are in italics) ->
What would have to be true about the world?: On evidence for the possibility of consciousness surviving death
David Rousseau & Julie Billingham
(One of Smythies' essays can be found here.)
I partially agree here, in that I think another way this is possible is that the Soul is extended in all directions, possibly to infinity. But I don't know if it's such a huge difference as to be worth making a fuss about.
I do give authors credit for further NDE accounts that support a hyperdimensional view, such as this one:
And accounts that suggest there is a hyperspatial soul-body that may or may not be the kind of "Omni-Extended" Field that I am thinking of:
Personally I think some of these descriptions would be of some kind subtle body, because as per the Hard Problem mental characteristics can only be correlated with Structure. Admittedly some might say any kind of extension is a structure, but not 100% sure I agree...
I also thought the attempt to link the responsiveness [of] Psi to Shannon Information, ignoring the emotional connection, was too reductive. OTOH the mention that Psi can be affected by "the local geomagnetic field" is a good reminder that Psi is not wholly divorced from the "physical" world. My personal solution would be that [both] the Soul and this World are, in the words of the authors, "psychonic" in some way.
All that said I thought the essay was really interesting, and the Hyperspatial Dualism seems like a good option that will likely have strong appeal to many even if I have reservations.
More on hypersptial ideas related to the paranormal & consciousness can be found here. A philosophical argument for non-Cartesian Dualism can be found here.
What would have to be true about the world?: On evidence for the possibility of consciousness surviving death
David Rousseau & Julie Billingham
Quote:Over the first part of our essay, we review experiences suggestive of survival and affirm that they warrant scientific investigation. We zero in on veridical cardiac arrest near-death experiences as the most credible, discriminating and useful phenomena for analysis.
In the second part, we draw on such experiences to develop a detailed survival hypothesis. We start by using insights from the metaphysics of science to identify the characteristics of scientific theories. These form guiderails for ensuring our hypothesis is amenable to scientific enquiry. Taking on board logical opportunities and immovable constraints, we arrive at a form of naturalistic non-Cartesian dualism that has the potential to account for the data while also adhering to the guiderails of science.
Quote:In the absence of any existing terms, we will refer to subjective properties that are naturalistic but non-physical as psychonic properties and to things that exhibit such properties as psychonic things
Quote:The very sudden transition from a state of intense pain to complete painlessness at the onset of the NDE, and the immediate return of pain when the NDE ends, is remarkable. Natural endorphins can suppress pain and engender feelings of well-being, but their effects last for hours whereas NDEs last only seconds or minutes [77], so it is unlikely that these effects are due to exclusively bodily mechanisms. This point is reinforced by the cases in which a person can see their body receiving electric shocks, their chest being pounded, their face stroked, and so on, while they
themselves feel no relevant bodily sensations [28], e.g. [64], [92]. Greyson reported an interesting case in which the patient could see their body reacting to hallucinogenic drugs while they themselves were mentally lucid [93].
Quote:...the disruptive physical psi effects provide the clearest evidential clues, so we will concentrate on those at this stage. NDE experiencers widely report that since their NDE, their presence causes interference, malfunctions or failures in
electronic and electro-mechanical equipment such as radios, light sources, cell phones, security systems, toasters, VCRs, TVs, and so on..
Quote:...Melvin Morse has found that wristwatches were unreliable for 25% of adults who survived childhood NDEs, whereas the same is true for only 4% of adults who have never had an NDE or paranormal experience [91]. In fact, NDErs reported every kind of such effect more frequently than these control groups [103]. Nouri also found that the depth of the NDE correlated with the frequency of these after-effects [103]....
Quote:.... It is logically possible that the body is a sophisticated but nevertheless remotely controlled organic robot interlinked via a secure means of communication with a ‘controller’ (the soul) that is located elsewhere. Something like this has in fact been proposed by John Smythies [104].
(One of Smythies' essays can be found here.)
Quote:...I could see everything. And I do mean everything! I could see the top of the light on the ceiling, and the underside of the stretcher. I could see the tiles on the ceiling and the tiles on the floor, simultaneously. Three hundred sixty degree spherical vision. And not just spherical. Detailed! I could see every single hair and the follicle out of which it grew on the head of the nurse standing beside the stretcher. At the time I knew\ exactly how many hairs there were to look at...
Quote:...I could see behind me, from several sides simultaneously, and through objects. I was able to see what was going on in the room and in the corridor, behind the wall… My sight was very particular6 . I don't know how to describe it: I saw everything with a total sight: the lake, the mountain, people along the banks of Evian, the texture of their clothes. I could see in the boats, in the houses, little animals in their burrows, the roots, the blades of grass, I saw all that simultaneously and if I focused on something I could see it through any obstacle and with every minute detail, from its surface to the organization of its atoms. Really a detailed and overall vision...
Quote:...I was everywhere at the same time, you see? ...I was surprised that I could see at an angle of 360°, I could see in front and behind, I could see underneath, from far, I could see up close and also transparently. I remember seeing a stick of lipstick in one of the nurses’ pockets. If I wanted to see inside the lamp which illuminated the room, I would
manage to, and all of this instantly, as soon as I wanted to...
Quote:...My curiosity was attracted to details. This is quite important, since we cannot do this normally, like seeing inside and outside at the same time, an impression of a quasi holographic vision... Not a panoramic view, but seeing in front, behind, all details simultaneously which is completely different from ordinary sight. It is very rich..
Quote:As NDE researchers have pointed out, such perceptions would only be possible if the vantage point were in a proximate higher-dimensional space (“hyperspace”). Roughly, just as everything laid out on the two-dimensional surface of a table is visible to us simultaneously from our elevated vantage point in a third spatial dimension, so everything in a three-dimensional world would be simultaneously visible from an elevated fourth-dimensional vantage point. Once this connection is made these strange reports become immediately interpretable.
I partially agree here, in that I think another way this is possible is that the Soul is extended in all directions, possibly to infinity. But I don't know if it's such a huge difference as to be worth making a fuss about.
I do give authors credit for further NDE accounts that support a hyperdimensional view, such as this one:
Quote:I could see the whole room under me despite this position (...) It was then that I noticed I could move around in space voluntarily. This was interesting, new, and so I made a few trial movements. It seems to me that although my view of the room was always complete, panoramic, that the perspective changed a little according to my movements and my position in that space.
And accounts that suggest there is a hyperspatial soul-body that may or may not be the kind of "Omni-Extended" Field that I am thinking of:
Quote:According to Moody:
Quote:“Most people say they are not just some spot of consciousness when this [the OBE] happens. They still seem to be in some kind of body even though they are out of their physical bodies. They say the spiritual body has shape and form unlike our physical bodies. It has arms and a shape although most are at a loss to describe what it looks like. Some people describe it as a cloud of colors, or an energy field. One NDEer I spoke to several years ago said he studied his hands while he was in this state and saw them to be composed of light with tiny structures in them. He could see the delicate whorls of his fingerprints and tubes of light up his arms” [54].
Quote:My being had no physical characteristics, but I have to describe it with physical terms. I could describe it in so many ways, in so many words, but none of them would be exactly right. It's so hard to describe.
Quote:[When I came out of the physical body] it was like I did come out of my body and go into something else. I didn't think I was just nothing. It was another body ... but not another regular human body. It's a little bit different. It was not exactly like a human body, but it wasn't any big glob of matter, either. It had form to it, but no colors. And I know I still had something you could call hands. I can't describe it. I was more fascinated with everything around me – seeing my own body there, and all – so I didn't think about the type of body I was in
Quote:I was still in a body – not a physical body, but something I can best describe as an energy pattern. If I had to put it into words, I would say that it was transparent, a spiritual as opposed to a material being. Yet, it definitely had different parts
Quote:These reports suggest that a soul is a complex system, having a full complement of spatial properties including size, shape and structure in addition to location.
Personally I think some of these descriptions would be of some kind subtle body, because as per the Hard Problem mental characteristics can only be correlated with Structure. Admittedly some might say any kind of extension is a structure, but not 100% sure I agree...
I also thought the attempt to link the responsiveness [of] Psi to Shannon Information, ignoring the emotional connection, was too reductive. OTOH the mention that Psi can be affected by "the local geomagnetic field" is a good reminder that Psi is not wholly divorced from the "physical" world. My personal solution would be that [both] the Soul and this World are, in the words of the authors, "psychonic" in some way.
All that said I thought the essay was really interesting, and the Hyperspatial Dualism seems like a good option that will likely have strong appeal to many even if I have reservations.
More on hypersptial ideas related to the paranormal & consciousness can be found here. A philosophical argument for non-Cartesian Dualism can be found here.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(This post was last modified: 2025-02-17, 07:35 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel. Edited 2 times in total.)
- Bertrand Russell