In general, anecdotes alone should not be considered evidence, if one is trying to be rigorous. NDEs constitute more than just a few anecdotes, but they still often have anecdotal qualities, in that only a small percentage of people report them. I’ll point out again that even if we accept NDEs as evidence, they’re not necessarily evidence for an afterlife or any related concept. Hypothesizing an afterlife based on NDEs requires the idea that consciousness can exist separately from the brain. This doesn’t seem warranted based on NDEs alone, so it constitutes an unnecessary multiplication of entities, i.e. a violation of Occam’s Razor.
I’m glad I could help with articles on this subject.
Hypothesizing an afterlife based on NDEs requires the idea that consciousness can exist separately from the brain. This doesn’t seem warranted based on NDEs alone
This is exactly the argument I’m looking for. But I’m not sure if postulating other methods NDEs/ODEs could have happened is convincing that that’s how they happened in all cases. So I’m not sure if the conversation has reached the point at which we can say “ergo, NDEs don’t even suggest that consciousness can exist separately from the brain.” My hope is that research into the brain and AI will give sufficient evidence that we can come to this conclusion without this discussion. Perhaps it already has and I’m unaware of it, but the research I’ve seen takes this as an assumption, not a conclusion.
I think they suggest it, but very weakly. We’ve never seen consciousness existing without a brain, and we’ve studied how manipulating the brain affects consciousness (see, for example, Rebecca Saxe’s TED talk which discusses using magnetic fields on the brain to alter moral judgments). All of the evidence we have points to a very high probability that consciousness is dependent on the brain.
In general, anecdotes alone should not be considered evidence, if one is trying to be rigorous. NDEs constitute more than just a few anecdotes, but they still often have anecdotal qualities, in that only a small percentage of people report them. I’ll point out again that even if we accept NDEs as evidence, they’re not necessarily evidence for an afterlife or any related concept. Hypothesizing an afterlife based on NDEs requires the idea that consciousness can exist separately from the brain. This doesn’t seem warranted based on NDEs alone, so it constitutes an unnecessary multiplication of entities, i.e. a violation of Occam’s Razor.
I’m glad I could help with articles on this subject.
This is exactly the argument I’m looking for. But I’m not sure if postulating other methods NDEs/ODEs could have happened is convincing that that’s how they happened in all cases. So I’m not sure if the conversation has reached the point at which we can say “ergo, NDEs don’t even suggest that consciousness can exist separately from the brain.”
My hope is that research into the brain and AI will give sufficient evidence that we can come to this conclusion without this discussion. Perhaps it already has and I’m unaware of it, but the research I’ve seen takes this as an assumption, not a conclusion.
I think they suggest it, but very weakly. We’ve never seen consciousness existing without a brain, and we’ve studied how manipulating the brain affects consciousness (see, for example, Rebecca Saxe’s TED talk which discusses using magnetic fields on the brain to alter moral judgments). All of the evidence we have points to a very high probability that consciousness is dependent on the brain.
I’ll check that out. I have yet to watch all of those talks.