NDE'S

• there is some evidence for dualism in what?

  near death experiences
• NDE'S have been reported from all cultures and time, since the days of...?

  Plato
• who in Book X of the republic tells us the story of who?

  Er
• explain it:

  he was a soldier killed in battle, then awoke on his funeral pyre and described his journey into an afterlife
• what do NDE'S commonly begin with?

  an out of body experience
• for example...?

  when someone recognises their own body on a hospital bed
• give some other symptoms of NDE'S:


  seeing a bright white light

  feelings of serenity and peace

  meeting a barrier/ border (symbolic of death)

  a different understanding of the afterlife
• (negative interpretations of NDE'S) neuroscientific studies of the NDE are generally what?

  reductive
• what does this mean?

  that the whole experience is understood as a product of the dying brain - no further/ deeper meaning
• what do neuroscientists point to?

  that NDE'S are culture/ religion specifc
• what does this mean?

  Christians won't see Buddhist figures and Sikh's won't see Jewish figures etc
• so what does this simply reflect?

  what the person expects to see
• by definition, those who remember a NDE...?

  did not actually die
• so what would many say?

  that the NDE isnt evidence for what happens after death
• (positive interpretations of NDE'S) why do those who believe in NDE'S think that them being culture specific is a good thing?

  because if the NDE is real, we might expect it to be religion specific
• why?

  there would be no point giving a Buddhist a muslim NDE because the Buddhist wouldn't understand it
• what is an indication that the NDE is a real experience?


  there have been examples of people giving detailed sighted experiences, despite having been blind from birth and having no optic nerve
• in a study of such cases, what does Fox comment?

  "what is being claimed is that sight is not simply restored or bestowed during these special cases, but that it is a sight of a kind that transcends the usual limits of perception"
• (the science of when NDE'S occur) what does Susan Blackmore comment?

  that they probably happen at the point of becoming unconscious
• so the NDE is what?

  the product of the brain in a state where is it capable of constructing a fictional experience
• however, when did Pam Reynolds have an NDE?

  when she had no blood flowing in her brain (so she was already clinically dead)
• on the basis of her experience, what do some researchers argue?

  that the NDE shows the possibility of mind-brain separation at death
• what would this suggest?

  that dualism cannot be dismissed