SCHC 480 Exam 2

What is the least frequent event to occur during a NDE?

life review

What are some of the biological attempts to explain an NDE?

1. Hypoxemia and Hypercapnia
2. Ketamine
3. Psychedelics, DMT
4. Endorphins
5. Artificial stimulation of the brain
6. Fainting spells. (Syncope. See Lempert Paper and notes below)
7. Expectation. (Also see Robyn F)


1. Selected brain disorders, temporal lobe seizures

What type of NDE did Howard Storm experience?

Negative (unpleasant or hellish)

What are the different percentiles being given regarding the true proportion of negative NDEs?

Statistics in the field in general and especially for negative events are almost worthless with statistical variations among researchers ranging from 1%, 15%, to 50%. One research suggests the truth lies somewhere between 20-50% but we just don’t know.

What are the problems with the expectation model of the NDE?

1. Many that have these are atheists and agnostics, so they were expecting oblivion.
2. Many that do believe in a religion do not have experiences that accord with their belief.
3. Seeing someone you did not know cannot be something you expected
4. Receiving information that is true but which you did not know.


1. I would further argue that even if something concurs with a prior belief, that does not discredit the event. It could be that the belief was in accordance with what actually IS. To automatically assume because a Christian sees Jesus that this is therefore cultural is to deny the possibility that their belief in Jesus accords with reality, at least in some manner. If an atheist experiences nothing, then that must also be dismissed because that is what they expected. Scientists working under a hypothesis like Darwinism should be dismissed because they find what they expected to find?

Dr Bruce Greyson is an expert on what topic?

Near Death Experiences

What does DOPS stand for?

Division of Perceptual Science

What are the four components of an NDE?

1 Changes in thinking
2\. Changes in feeling
3\. Paranormal features
4\. Otherworldly features

What type of NDE did Robyn F experience?

NDE experiences Without Physiological Death

What does Kingsnorth say that “progress wants” at the very end of his essay?

What Progress wants is to replace us

Name an example of pathological disbelief as mentioned in the slideshow?

1. meteorites

* The issue: do meteorites have an extra-terrestrial origin? Argument in favour: visual sightings, stones found at site of apparent landing, often warm Incorrect argument against: ‘objects falling from space contradicts laws of mechanics’ Alternative explanation offered: optical illusion, stone struck by lightning. Cause of capitulation: massive meteorite falls near Paris


2. continental drift

* Arguments in favour (Wegener, from 1912): ● fit of S. American and African coastlines (Bacon 1620) ● matching fossils, rocks ● coal found in the Antarctic Argument against: claimed phenomenon is impossible


3. cold fusion

* In 1989, Pons and Feischmann claimed to have measured excess heat in a Pd-D electrolytic cell in quantities too great to be accounted for except by a nuclear process. But others failed to reproduce the effect:


4. memory of water

* The claims:
* biological activity present in highly diluted solutions
* electromagnetic induction of biological activity conventional objection: highly diluted solutions are just ‘pure water’


5. the paranormal

* on the one side: the people who quietly get on with investigating the paranormal, gradually improving the methodology. on the other, those who SHOUT their objections, e.g. (some) members of the organisation CSICOP, but don’t actually take proper note of what is going on.

What is the current scientific explanation for the out of body experience?

Syncope

What are some feature of the Life Review?

There is a range to how they are experienced. Sometimes, though very, very rare, an entire life is made known to the person. Whether complete or partial, the person relives what they had done, what they had thought, and they experience what the other person felt, whether good or bad. They can be very painful because they reveal us as we really are, without self justification or rationalization. It is absolute truth about oneself that cannot be denied or rationalized away. Some report that every word, every thought, is there and every effect they had on those around them, even someone passing in the street, as well as to animals, plants, all of it, every detail is made known. There is nothing hidden. They often remark that while Jesus or angels or a high spiritual being is present with them, it is they who judge themselves because they see themselves as they really are without distortion. Most NDE life reviews appear are only partial. Very interesting is that more often than not, they highlight events and things that the person did not expect or think about, that they did not realize, in contrast to things that are more obvious.

What is David Bentley Hart’s statement regarding the sciences?

“In most essential spheres of inquiry, the sciences are subordinate and inferior to the arts, to spiritual practices, to metaphysical speculations, to logical exercises, to moral reasoning, and perhaps to informed guesses.”

Are people like Sheldrake, Schwartz, and Greyson against science?

No, they are not anti-science, they belief however that materialism holds science back

What is a shared or empathic NDE?

Empathic death experiences might be described as events in which a person suddenly senses the feelings of a loved one on the verge of death many miles away, whereas shared death experiences might be described as events in which a person partakes spontaneously in the subjective experience of a loved one dying in their presence.

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participate in beginning stages in NDE, very rare

Interpret Acornology

This is just what he posted not necessarily the interpretation:

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Imagine, I said, that you are a scientist and you have before you the object known as the acorn. Let us further imagine that you have never before seen such an object and that you certainly do not know that it can grow into an oak. You carefully observe these acorns day after day and soon you notice that after a while they crack open and die. Pity! How to improve the acorn? So that it will live longer. You make careful, exquisitely precise chemical analyses of the material inside the acorn and, after much effort, you succeed in isolating the substance that controls the condition of the shell. Lo and behold, you are now in the position to produce acorns which will last far longer than the others, acorns whose shells will perhaps never crack. Beautiful! The question before us, therefore, is whether or not modern psychology is only a version of acornology.

3 examples of evidence that prove that an NDE is a real event

1. Enhanced mental function with an impaired brain
2. Accurate perception from OBE location
3. Visits with deceased persons, especially those who provide accurate information, and deceased persons known to have died.
4. Dr. Long found that children 5 and under have the same experiences as older ones and adults. This cannot be cultural.
5. Blind people report being able to see and can describe it.


1. Most of them don’t have the characteristics of hallucinations. When people come out of it they don’t recognize it as having been a hallucination. On the contrary, they say this existence seems more vague than what they experienced.

Describe one of the veridical components that occurred in the Cardiac Surgeon Interview

The man being operated on saw and remembered the line of post it notes with names on phone numbers that was started after he already was under anesthesia and having surgery

Discuss dementia patients when they are close to death?

dementia patients tend to remember everything right before death

What is the claim that Dr. Kelly made regarding the irreducible mind?

that physicalism is inherently false

What are the opinions of Sherrard, Eaton, C.S. Lewis, Northburne, Kingsnorth, Wendell Berry, Needleman, regarding modern science?

For this group, modern science is inhuman in its approach to the world as it has no place for the most important aspects of being human, such as love, altruism, morals, even consciousness itself, have become objectified, made into epiphenomena, or reduced to simplistic physical explanations. Anything sacred has been removed from the cosmos and from life.

What does Henry Stapp believe about consciousness?

he believes that you can use quantum mechanics in order to show that consciousness is not reducible to physical matter

What does ____ consider the NDE a unique test model?

They consider it a unique test model because it is one of the few times that someone can separate the brain and consciousness.

What are the 2 ways of knowing expressed by Carlton?

Sense impressions (empiricism), and discursive reasoning (conclusion by reason or argument, not intuition)

What is Phillip Sherrard’s approach to modern science?

for all modern scientific theories are in the end not the product of empirical observation and experiment but the inevitable logical consequence of the premises on which modern scientific thought itself is based; and, these premises being what they are, the supercession of these theories is as inevitable as their original appearance. It is no accident either that the age of modern science is the age par excellence of the totalitarian ideological state.

Provide an example of Kingsworth point?

AI, machines, assembly lines etc

What does Schwartz argue?

argues that focus attention can change the brain, you are not your brain

What model of consciousness did DBH refer to as the nuclear option?

eliminativism - consciousness is an illusion