You Are Not Your Brain

[Brant Gaede]

That's called an anecdote. Did she relate the numbers painted on top of the operating lights sometimes put there for collaboration? Did any operating room personnel back up any of her story? Could the whole thing be bullshit?

Sorry, I didn't read the whole story. I just heard the radio interview. She did accurately recount what was said during the operation and complained about the surgeons' flippant comments, and that they even had the song "Hotel California" playing during the operation. ("you can check out, but you can never leave") She also accurately described the highly specialized instruments they used. She wondered why they cut her leg open when they were supposed to be operating on her neck. (They had installed a tube in her leg to drain out the blood.)

Realized those visual and auditory perceptions occurred in a chilled body that had no blood in it, with no heart beat and zero electrical brainwave activity, and eyes taped shut so they wouldn't dry out during the operation. For the "you are only your brain people", your awareness is only electrical brain activity. So how can consciousness obviously continue to accurately perceive the physical activity of the external world when there is no brain activity? How can person see what's going on with taped eyes? And how can they have the point of view from a vantage point totally outside their body... from above looking down?

And sure, it's just an anecdote. But by no means is this the only event of its kind. There are literally thousands of other similar experiences...

...but I'm sure you can explain them all away.

Greg

I'd imagine, out of my medical experience, that installing a tube in her leg would happen before they completely shut her down.

So they cut her leg open while she was conscious? Interesting theory. Keep going. I'm sure you can account for everything.

Greg

There are various stages or depths of anesthesia. It's possible they didn't take her down quite enough before they took her completely down.

I'm only accounting for your not accounting.

--Brant

Ok. Brant... you are only your brain and nothing more.

Greg

I'm talking about the quality of your evidence.

--Brant

[moralist]

I'm talking about the quality of your evidence.

It's not mine... and it's not meant to convince you

to change the view you already chose.

You're welcome to keep what you have.

Greg

[Selene]

I Will Fear No Evil by Heinlein provides a great story for what some folks struggle with as to the extent of our mind/soul can reach.

The story takes place about 2015 AD against a background of an overpopulated Earth with a violent, dysfunctional society. Elderly billionaire Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is being kept alive through medical support and decides to have his brain transplanted into a new body. He advertises an offer of a million dollars for the donation of a body from a brain-dead patient. Smith omits to place any restriction on the sex of the donor, so when his beautiful young female secretary, Eunice Branca, is murdered, her body is used. He changes his name to Joan Eunice Smith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil

Folks who have extreme anxiety and agoraphobia have described being "trapped" in line at the grocery store when this "severe panic attack" occured.

They state that they were elevated above themselves watching themselves checking out the items as they are paralyzed with fear.

A...

Phew good thing Heinlein was wrong about 2015...oops nevermind...

[anthony]

Ok. Brant... you are only your brain and nothing more.

Greg

Greg: 'More than the brain'- doesn't indicate 'more than the mind'; that is: of entities outside of existence. Although, I'm willing and absorbed to try and explore the full extent of consciousness ( the mind or the 'soul'); after all there's so much more to be learned.

The cardinal rule, however, is it must still conform to reality - that which is existent, and possible.

In my understanding, an idea in one's mind, or simply a fleeting emotion, is an existent, too - as much as the physical brain it stems from.

This is such a critical concept. There is the existence-in-reality, of all man's volitionally-gained and held convictions, goals and character which make possible the explicit achievements and potentials which William movingly expressed in his last post. After all, man's creations have to begin somewhere in some individual mind - and not by a robotically-logical, predetermined brain. I believe not enough attention is given to this, investigating the full range of consciousness, as did Schwartz here (and I believe, Nathaniel Branden) . So much discussion is weighted to our external doings, not much about their source. If there is discomfort there by some, in avoidance of the supra-natural or "the mystical", there certainly shouldn't be - not to Objectivists especially.

Sometimes (it seems to me)it's necessary to cross boundaries to discover where those boundaries lie. We aren't going to explore reality and existence by staying safely at home!

[Jules Troy]

I have TWO brains!

(The little one does most of the thinking.)

(It's a deep thinker ?)

[Brant Gaede]

I'm talking about the quality of your evidence.

It's not mine... and it's not meant to convince you

to change the view you already chose.

You're welcome to keep what you have.

Greg

You are aware you posted it? Now you disown it? "My name's not Greg, and I was never here." That you are dropping passive-aggressive smoke to cover your withdrawal? What is "you are not your brain" except a longing for some kind of afterlife? If the brain doesn't generate consciousness then what are those trillions of neurons for when only a small fraction are needed for the functioning of the autonomic nervous system?

The very human need for transcendence is much more worth talking about than the quality of anecdotal evidence. Now that we're done with the evidence qua evidence--it's poor as such but offers avenues and possibilities for investigation--we can rationally talk about this "need." For instance, is it really some human universal or a cultural artifact? If the latter, how does it vary culture to culture? Formally this is called cultural anthropology--throw in some psychology--as opposed to physical anthropology, a much narrower discipline not necessarily needed for the cultural data foundation, which interprets dug up artifacts and excavated buildings if it doesn't go to the South Seas with Margaret Mead to mine data out of an extant society.

--Brant

[Selene]

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kilroy_Was_Here_-_Washington_DC_WWII_Memorial.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Kilroy_Was_Here_-_Washington_DC_WWII_Memorial.jpg

[moralist]

I'm talking about the quality of your evidence.

It's not mine... and it's not meant to convince you

to change the view you already chose.

You're welcome to keep what you have.

Greg

You are aware you posted it? Now you disown it?

Now you're trying to cloud the issue with semantic silliness. Have you ever considered asking yourself why you would you need to do that, Brant? It's worth considering.

What I obviously meant by "it's not mine" is that I had nothing to do with originating that evidence. Someone else had compiled the information. It's just what I heard and read second hand.

Look, there is no reason for you to change your view of being nothing more than your physical brain. So keep it. No one can stop you. Certainly not me.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

My "cloud" over the issue trumps your not dealing with it.

That is, you don't know my view about whether I am more than my physical brain. My view about my brain is only that I need it. Your continually telling people about what they are and believe in and value because they are trying to explicate on or make sense of something or learn something is tiresome and presumptuous.

--Brant

[moralist]

That is, you don't know my view about whether I am more than my physical brain.

Then why do you need to try to argue?

I don't play that game, Brant.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

That is, you don't know my view about whether I am more than my physical brain.

Then why do you need to try to argue?

I don't play that game, Brant.

Greg

I am arguing about quality of evidence. I've pointed that out already. As to your manners, I don't argue, I merely point things out as we go along. I understand you don't play games because logic applied to facts--that is, reason--is not your forte. This is why you think I'm playing a "game." You've nothing else to call it. I also understand you'll not change and I'll not either, but as long as we both post here I'll be calling your cat a dog if a dog is what it is. You really do have some cats too, as I've acknowledged, but you're still a cat and dog man who thinks he has no dogs.

--Brant

Edit: I tried to find an good example of your bad manners on this thread but only found one weak example. So I tried to find one on the current thread on esthetics and I did in a reply to Jonathan:

"As a leftist you were trained to worship random drivel as "art."

Since you are doing this much less than you used to I'm not going to object to it any longer unless it's directed at me. The other posters will have to look out for themselves. As I recall they mostly ignore you when you hit them with this, so so be it. I don't like moderation, btw--one reason I'm here--and I don't do it. In respect to this quote, it's ad hominem that might as well be argumentum ad hominem. It's attacking the man and might as well be attacking the man's argument--but what argument? Why, any argument of his, present and future. You cannot just attack a man without attacking his argument(s) unless there is no argument to begin with. That would only be name calling.

As for your lack of reasoning, I'm not going to keep pointing this out in detail. I may label it ("Lack of Reasoning")--that's all unless there is an ad hoc reason to elaborate.

My not giving you an ass-chewing all the time should leave you free to enjoy these environs enough to stick around. I do admit the selfish motivation of not devoting so much of my time and energy to your postings. I was disturbed to see all I've done the last couple of pages on this thread. This post itself is a good example of that.

Edited December 21, 2014 by Brant Gaede

[moralist]

That is, you don't know my view about whether I am more than my physical brain.

Then why do you need to try to argue?

I don't play that game, Brant.

Greg

I am arguing about quality of evidence.

Then your argument is not with me, Brant.

Go read "Consciousness Beyond Life" first, and then get back to me.

I know that I am more than my physical brain, by the fact that I can observe my own thoughts and emotions from a vantage point outside of my thoughts and emotions. Within my thoughts and emotions, there is only involuntary indiscriminate self destructive reflex... and no choice. But I can choose those upon which to act, and, those I can choose to let go by unresponded. This is impossible to do if I am nothing more than my brain. A brain cannot observe itself.

You either know that you are only your physical brain, or you know that you are more than your physical brain. So either we agree, or we disagree. So what's the point of getting personally offended and arguing?

Greg

[william.scherk]

I heard one story last night in a radio interview of a woman who had a large aneuryism in her neck and went in for emergency surgery using a process where they put her body on full life support and flatlined her, no heart beat, no EKG (no electrical brain activity). All the blood had been drained from her body and her eyelids were taped shut. After her recovery, she wrote a 20,000 word highly detailed account of the operation from the point of view above looking downward where her body was lying.

This sounds like a good story. Can you remember anything about her (a name, a year, a place, title of her account -- or the name of the show you listened to) so the rest of us can examine the story?

The author I heard on the radio is Judy Bachrach and her book is "Glimpsing Heaven". She began as a hospice worker and later became an investigative journalist. She was a "dead is dead" skeptic whose view changed as she gathered first person interviews for the book.

Thanks for the name of the writer/researcher you heard on the radio. I looked for salient details from your retelling, and came up with the name of the actual person Bachrach was talking about: Pam Reynolds Lowery.

Pam Reynolds's aneurysm operation happened in 1991 (she died in 2010). Bachrach's 2014 book is not the only one to present the Pam Reynold's story -- Bachrach's retelling relies heavily on details already gleaned and explained by Michael Sabon in his 1998 "Light and Death."

You got just a couple of things slightly wrong above, Greg.

The aneurysm was not in Pam's neck, but in her brain. The surgery was indeed in response to an emergency (the aneurysm), but Pam was fully briefed on the operation and what it might entail. All the blood in her body was not drained (a complicated mixing and dosing of substances in and of blood and saline solution took place). She didn't wonder why they cut her leg open when they were supposed to be operating on her neck -- she 'heard' an exchange when it was discovered that the first femoral artery they tried was too small to be used in the procedure (they tried and succeeded using her other groin artery).

One thing to consider about Pam's case is the amount of time she was 'under' and the various types and 'levels' of sedation used and their particular designed function. To put it simply, Pam wasn't 'dead' at circulatory standstill for but a necessary time to clip her aneurysm. She was unconscious for the greatest time of the operation under general anesthetic, not standstill. The surgery took just around seven hours, and the amount of time Pam's brain (and heart) was at "standstill" -- was a half-hour in the middle of the entire procedure.

In reading a few skeptical reviews and investigations, I understand that Pam's case is put forward repeatedly as a 'best case" example of the somewhat mysterious Near-Death Experiences. So, I would expect the accounts to have become more elaborated over time, and for some details to be lost. As well, I expect a few misapprehensions to have crept into the retelling. And so my research found. Here's a brief excerpt from an exceptional site:

As Michael Sabom recounts in Light and Death, in August 1991 a then 35-year-old woman he called "Pam Reynolds" (a pseudonym) underwent an innovative procedure to remove a brain aneurysm. The procedure—inducing hypothermic cardiac arrest or "standstill"—involved lowering Pam's body temperature to 60°F, stopping her heart and breathing, and draining the blood from her brain to cool it and then reintroduce it. When her body temperature had reached 60°F and she had no electrical activity in her brain, her aneurysm was removed. About 2 hours after awaking from general anesthesia, Pam was moved into the recovery room still intubated (Sabom, "Light" 46-47). At some point after that, the tube was removed from her trachea and she was able to speak. She reported a classic NDE with a vivid OBE, moving through a "tunnel vortex" toward a "pinpoint of light" that continually grew larger, hearing her deceased grandmother's voice, encountering figures in a bright light, encountering deceased relatives who gave her "something sparkly" to eat, and being 'returned' to her body by her deceased uncle (Sabom, "Light" 42-46).

The case was quickly celebrated because of the lack of synaptic activity within the procedure and Pam's report of an apparently veridical OBE at some point during the operation. But it has been sensationalized at the expense of the facts, facts which have been continually misrepresented by some parapsychologists and near-death researchers.[14] Although hailed by some as "the most compelling case to date of veridical perception during an NDE" (Corcoran, Holden, and James), and "the single best instance we now have in the literature on NDEs to confound the skeptics" (Ring, "Religious Wars" 218), it is in fact best understood in terms of normal perception operating during an entirely nonthreatening physiological state.

Of the several mistakes in retelling I have researched, the most important is in the timeline: it tends to get squashed. So most accounts suggest that the head-drilling 'wake-up' moment came during the half-hour of standstill. That is not true. Her recollections were during general anesthesia.

Two mischaracterizations of this case are particularly noteworthy, as their errors of fact greatly exaggerate the force of this NDE as evidence for survival after death. First, in their write-up of the first prospective study of NDEs, van Lommel and colleagues write:

Sabom mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG [electroencephalogram] of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat. After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep NDE, including an out-of-body experience, with subsequentlyverified observations during the period of the flat EEG [emphasis mine] (van Lommel et al. 2044).

Second, in his Immortal Remains—an assessment of the evidence for survival of bodily death—Stephen Braude erroneously describes the case as follows:

Sabom reports the case of a woman who, for about an hour, had all the blood drained from her head and her body temperature lowered to 60 degrees. During that time her heartbeat and breathing stopped, and she had both a flat EEG and absence of auditory evoked potentials from her brainstem.... Apparently during this period she had a detailed veridical near-death OBE [emphasis mine] (Braude 274).

But anyone who gives Sabom's chapters on the case more than a cursory look will see two glaring errors in the descriptions above. First, it is quite clear that Pam did not have her NDE during any period of flat EEG. Indeed, she was as far as a patient undergoing her operation could possibly be from clinical death when her OBE began. Second, she had no cerebral cortical activity for no longer than roughly half an hour. Both of these facts are nicely illustrated in Figure 1 below.**

Sorry, I didn't read the whole story. I just heard the radio interview. She did accurately recount what was said during the operation and complained about the surgeons' flippant comments, and that they even had the song "Hotel California" playing during the operation. ("you can check out, but you can never leave") She also accurately described the highly specialized instruments they used. She wondered why they cut her leg open when they were supposed to be operating on her neck. (They had installed a tube in her leg to drain out the blood.)

Realized those visual and auditory perceptions occurred in a chilled body that had no blood in it, with no heart beat and zero electrical brainwave activity, and eyes taped shut so they wouldn't dry out during the operation. For the "you are only your brain people", your awareness is only electrical brain activity. So how can consciousness obviously continue to accurately perceive the physical activity of the external world when there is no brain activity? How can person see what's going on with taped eyes? And how can they have the point of view from a vantage point totally outside their body... from above looking down?

And sure, it's just an anecdote. But by no means is this the only event of its kind. There are literally thousands of other similar experiences...

I'd imagine, out of my medical experience, that installing a tube in her leg would happen before they completely shut her down.

-- and you would be right, Brant. Greg did not apparently consider the possibility that some of the re-retold details can have gone awry. When he confidently asserts that "those visual and auditory perceptions occurred in a chilled body that had no blood in it, with no heart beat and zero electrical brainwave activity," his confidence is misplaced. His retelling is wrong.

I don't think it matters that this story doesn't actually provide evidence of life after death. For those who need gods and an afterlife, evidence is nice but not necessary. I am pretty sure Greg doesn't need evidence from anyone else, nor from the dead past, nor from sketchy retellings of NDEs. Not to believe in gods, not to believe in a soul separate from the body.

I believe we individual humans are more than brain/body. I believe we can achieve a sort of immortality. Through our works, through our language, through our art, through our ability to build on our imaginings, we have become gods of the earth, gods of the air, gods of near-space. We are able to individually plug in to the vast interpenetrated networks of human knowledge. We add to it, we subtract from it.

To me, the achievements of human beings are astonishing. That our brain of a body is capable of greater useful manipulations of the visible and invisible world than is the brain of any body in another species -- eg, even among the other primates -- this supplies me with all the wonder and awe at 'creation' that I need. To stand awestruck at the universe and at human emergence from the apes ... to grasp the immensity of time and evolution through human inquiry -- this supplies to me a 'religious' feeling that I have never ever gotten from contemplation of the 'divine.'

In a way, I find insidious Greg's attempts to malign our materialist viewpoints. He must know that 'the house' is overwhelminingly agnostic if not atheist. He must know that logic and reason and careful painstaking inquiry is what binds us OLers. He must also surely know that we relish arguments that advance knowledge, remove error, distill insights, provide new instances of clarity and depth of understanding.

What purpose does it serve (as in this instance of mistaken details) when sloppy or perfunctory reasoning (or masculinized logic) is put in play? Moreover, if the purpose is not to engage discussion, perform reasonable arguments, what is Greg doing here? What is his project?

___________

**

Edited December 21, 2014 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

You either know that you are only your physical brain, or you know that you are more than your physical brain. So either we agree, or we disagree. So what's the point of getting personally offended and arguing?

Greg

Ah, the problem appears. I don't know either of these propositions if we are talking about spirit and or consciousness. (We are obviously not talking about the rest of the physical body.) You sometimes write as if consciousness was not one thing but two: the consciousness of thinking and another that thinks about the thinking. That's the best descriptor I have for it for now.

--Brant

[Frediano]

While we wait the thirty or a hundred million years for incipient telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, mediumship, remote viewing, astral travelling and other extensions of the human sensorium to kick in, we have our present accomplishments to fill in a bit. We have extended our abilities beyond the body in significant ways,

We came to language and culture, arts and sciences, cities and networks, x-rays, television, radio, telecommunications, the internet. We have the human tools of inquiry that have let us sense the entire spectrum of the IR band, and moreover, the 'sounds' of the cosmic background radiation, the entire electromagnetic spectrum, microscopic changes in blood flow in the brain. We can 'feel' the heat of distant stars and galaxies and 'sense' the contours of objects at the atomic scale. Adjunct to human senses abound in many fields of inquiry. We can 'see' magnetic fields and cosmic rays. We can 'feel the effects of gravity in dark matter. We can hear the voices of the long-dead.

We humans have in our cultural and technological powers entered the realms of 'seeing' and predicting that were once only given by seers and prophets and witches and gods, I think.

It's this acceleration of human 'senses' by extra-human auxiliaries that makes me think it will be unlikely that humans will evolve seeming supernatural abilities via 'new' senses. We have our technological adjuncts -- why would we need evolve them in our own bodies when we can 'plug in'?

Like Kurzweil's augmented human? For sure-- long already happening. But don't we have to invent a Board of Evolution Authenticity to care about whether that is 'real in our own bodies evolution' vs. 'artificial augmented evolution?' Said another way, when viewed from a great distance, isn't that exactly still 'evolution?' So, yes, maybe 'evolution' finds a another means of evolution-- an accelerated means -- but in the end, it is still continuous 'evolution.'

And yes, I think it is an example of how a 'new' path of accelerated evolution could succeed in winnowing out entire nets of possible paths of evolution, simply because they are accelerated and more efficient at meandering us from here to there. (Based on Wolfram's NKS, I'd never be so arrogant to assume it was an example of our suddenly navigating to that future state, by design, after millions of years of meander; we don't have the first f'n clue what the consequences will be of augmented humanity. It is just evolution's latest accelerated meander.)

regards,

Fred

[moralist]

I believe we individual humans are more than brain/body.

Could you describe what that more is?

Greg

[moralist]

You either know that you are only your physical brain, or you know that you are more than your physical brain. So either we agree, or we disagree. So what's the point of getting personally offended and arguing?

Greg

Ah, the problem appears. I don't know either of these propositions if we are talking about spirit and or consciousness. (We are obviously not talking about the rest of the physical body.) You sometimes write as if consciousness was not one thing but two: the consciousness of thinking and another that thinks about the thinking. That's the best descriptor I have for it for now.

--Brant

The brain is not conscious of itself thinking. It just thinks... and people who believe they are nothing more than their amoral physical brain indiscriminately emotionally react and act on every thought that goes through their head... as if they thought it.

Because if you are just your brain, how could it be possible to choose to act contrary to thought if it's ALL just you?

The analogy still holds: It's just like standing in a bucket pulling on the handle trying to lift the bucket off the floor.

You'll never do it.

Only from a conscious vantage point outside your brain "looking in" can you gain mastery over your thoughts and emotions as rightfully befits a decent morally accountable human being.

Anything short of that is just talking monkeys with opposable thumbs.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Thought is not necessarily right thought or best thought so the you that chooses to think, say, several different thoughts also chooses which one is best to go with. There's a loop between the brain and consciousness. A lot of those brain thoughts may in fact be previous thoughts consciousness thought of and stored and they come bubbling back to the awareness of consciousness. The brain creates consciousness so consciousness can drive both the brain and the animal. You seem to be trying to introduce something from outside this relationship. I don't know if that something else exists or not.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

I can't argue with the spirit and temper of your response, Frediano. I think a key area where we would find greatest agreement is in considering evolution in living beings and evolution in analogical 'structures' produced by human culture (as enumerated above). Just considering them is fun for me.

I remain skeptical that the human organism will evolve 'new' senses in the body-plan even if a million years passes by. Perhaps that is a limitation of my imagination: I can see an evolved/devolved sense of smell (and automatic auxiliary non-conscious pheromone circuits). I can see a greater reach or density in certain kinds of proprioception. I can sort of sketch out a future human able to see more of the spectrum, but can't quite imagine the selective pressures necessitating or rewarding such extensions to the sensoria.

So, I am quite happy to read theses that posit a future human evolution in fascinating detail. My lack of imagination -- perhaps unfamiliarity with the cutting edge of speculation on these trans-human topics -- leaves me as yet unconvinced.

[moralist]

I heard one story last night in a radio interview of a woman who had a large aneuryism in her neck and went in for emergency surgery using a process where they put her body on full life support and flatlined her, no heart beat, no EKG (no electrical brain activity). All the blood had been drained from her body and her eyelids were taped shut. After her recovery, she wrote a 20,000 word highly detailed account of the operation from the point of view above looking downward where her body was lying.

This sounds like a good story. Can you remember anything about her (a name, a year, a place, title of her account -- or the name of the show you listened to) so the rest of us can examine the story?

The author I heard on the radio is Judy Bachrach and her book is "Glimpsing Heaven". She began as a hospice worker and later became an investigative journalist. She was a "dead is dead" skeptic whose view changed as she gathered first person interviews for the book.

Thanks for the name of the writer/researcher you heard on the radio. I looked for salient details from your retelling, and came up with the name of the actual person Bachrach was talking about: Pam Reynolds Lowery.

Pam Reynolds's aneurysm operation happened in 1991 (she died in 2010). Bachrach's 2014 book is not the only one to present the Pam Reynold's story -- Bachrach's retelling relies heavily on details already gleaned and explained by Michael Sabon in his 1998 "Light and Death."

You got just a couple of things slightly wrong above, Greg.

The aneurysm was not in Pam's neck, but in her brain. The surgery was indeed in response to an emergency (the aneurysm), but Pam was fully briefed on the operation and what it might entail. All the blood in her body was not drained (a complicated mixing and dosing of substances in and of blood and saline solution took place). She didn't wonder why they cut her leg open when they were supposed to be operating on her neck -- she 'heard' an exchange when it was discovered that the first femoral artery they tried was too small to be used in the procedure (they tried and succeeded using her other groin artery).

One thing to consider about Pam's case is the amount of time she was 'under' and the various types and 'levels' of sedation used and their particular designed function. To put it simply, Pam wasn't 'dead' at circulatory standstill for but a necessary time to clip her aneurysm. She was unconscious for the greatest time of the operation under general anesthetic, not standstill. The surgery took just around seven hours, and the amount of time Pam's brain (and heart) was at "standstill" -- was a half-hour in the middle of the entire procedure.

In reading a few skeptical reviews and investigations, I understand that Pam's case is put forward repeatedly as a 'best case" example of the somewhat mysterious Near-Death Experiences. So, I would expect the accounts to have become more elaborated over time, and for some details to be lost. As well, I expect a few misapprehensions to have crept into the retelling. And so my research found. Here's a brief excerpt from an exceptional site:

As Michael Sabom recounts in Light and Death, in August 1991 a then 35-year-old woman he called "Pam Reynolds" (a pseudonym) underwent an innovative procedure to remove a brain aneurysm. The procedure—inducing hypothermic cardiac arrest or "standstill"—involved lowering Pam's body temperature to 60°F, stopping her heart and breathing, and draining the blood from her brain to cool it and then reintroduce it. When her body temperature had reached 60°F and she had no electrical activity in her brain, her aneurysm was removed. About 2 hours after awaking from general anesthesia, Pam was moved into the recovery room still intubated (Sabom, "Light" 46-47). At some point after that, the tube was removed from her trachea and she was able to speak. She reported a classic NDE with a vivid OBE, moving through a "tunnel vortex" toward a "pinpoint of light" that continually grew larger, hearing her deceased grandmother's voice, encountering figures in a bright light, encountering deceased relatives who gave her "something sparkly" to eat, and being 'returned' to her body by her deceased uncle (Sabom, "Light" 42-46).

The case was quickly celebrated because of the lack of synaptic activity within the procedure and Pam's report of an apparently veridical OBE at some point during the operation. But it has been sensationalized at the expense of the facts, facts which have been continually misrepresented by some parapsychologists and near-death researchers.[14] Although hailed by some as "the most compelling case to date of veridical perception during an NDE" (Corcoran, Holden, and James), and "the single best instance we now have in the literature on NDEs to confound the skeptics" (Ring, "Religious Wars" 218), it is in fact best understood in terms of normal perception operating during an entirely nonthreatening physiological state.

Of the several mistakes in retelling I have researched, the most important is in the timeline: it tends to get squashed. So most accounts suggest that the head-drilling 'wake-up' moment came during the half-hour of standstill. That is not true. Her recollections were during general anesthesia.

Two mischaracterizations of this case are particularly noteworthy, as their errors of fact greatly exaggerate the force of this NDE as evidence for survival after death. First, in their write-up of the first prospective study of NDEs, van Lommel and colleagues write:

Sabom mentions a young American woman who had complications during brain surgery for a cerebral aneurysm. The EEG [electroencephalogram] of her cortex and brainstem had become totally flat. After the operation, which was eventually successful, this patient proved to have had a very deep NDE, including an out-of-body experience, with subsequentlyverified observations during the period of the flat EEG [emphasis mine] (van Lommel et al. 2044).

Second, in his Immortal Remains—an assessment of the evidence for survival of bodily death—Stephen Braude erroneously describes the case as follows:

Sabom reports the case of a woman who, for about an hour, had all the blood drained from her head and her body temperature lowered to 60 degrees. During that time her heartbeat and breathing stopped, and she had both a flat EEG and absence of auditory evoked potentials from her brainstem.... Apparently during this period she had a detailed veridical near-death OBE [emphasis mine] (Braude 274).

But anyone who gives Sabom's chapters on the case more than a cursory look will see two glaring errors in the descriptions above. First, it is quite clear that Pam did not have her NDE during any period of flat EEG. Indeed, she was as far as a patient undergoing her operation could possibly be from clinical death when her OBE began. Second, she had no cerebral cortical activity for no longer than roughly half an hour. Both of these facts are nicely illustrated in Figure 1 below.**

Sorry, I didn't read the whole story. I just heard the radio interview. She did accurately recount what was said during the operation and complained about the surgeons' flippant comments, and that they even had the song "Hotel California" playing during the operation. ("you can check out, but you can never leave") She also accurately described the highly specialized instruments they used. She wondered why they cut her leg open when they were supposed to be operating on her neck. (They had installed a tube in her leg to drain out the blood.)

Realized those visual and auditory perceptions occurred in a chilled body that had no blood in it, with no heart beat and zero electrical brainwave activity, and eyes taped shut so they wouldn't dry out during the operation. For the "you are only your brain people", your awareness is only electrical brain activity. So how can consciousness obviously continue to accurately perceive the physical activity of the external world when there is no brain activity? How can person see what's going on with taped eyes? And how can they have the point of view from a vantage point totally outside their body... from above looking down?

And sure, it's just an anecdote. But by no means is this the only event of its kind. There are literally thousands of other similar experiences...

I'd imagine, out of my medical experience, that installing a tube in her leg would happen before they completely shut her down.

-- and you would be right, Brant. Greg did not apparently consider the possibility that some of the re-retold details can have gone awry. When he confidently asserts that "those visual and auditory perceptions occurred in a chilled body that had no blood in it, with no heart beat and zero electrical brainwave activity," his confidence is misplaced. His retelling is wrong.

I don't think it matters that this story doesn't actually provide evidence of life after death. For those who need gods and an afterlife, evidence is nice but not necessary. I am pretty sure Greg doesn't need evidence from anyone else, nor from the dead past, nor from sketchy retellings of NDEs. Not to believe in gods, not to believe in a soul separate from the body.

I believe we individual humans are more than brain/body. I believe we can achieve a sort of immortality. Through our works, through our language, through our art, through our ability to build on our imaginings, we have become gods of the earth, gods of the air, gods of near-space. We are able to individually plug in to the vast interpenetrated networks of human knowledge. We add to it, we subtract from it.

To me, the achievements of human beings are astonishing. That our brain of a body is capable of greater useful manipulations of the visible and invisible world than is the brain of any body in another species -- eg, even among the other primates -- this supplies me with all the wonder and awe at 'creation' that I need. To stand awestruck at the universe and at human emergence from the apes ... to grasp the immensity of time and evolution through human inquiry -- this supplies to me a 'religious' feeling that I have never ever gotten from contemplation of the 'divine.'

In a way, I find insidious Greg's attempts to malign our materialist viewpoints. He must know that 'the house' is overwhelminingly agnostic if not atheist. He must know that logic and reason and careful painstaking inquiry is what binds us OLers. He must also surely know that we relish arguments that advance knowledge, remove error, distill insights, provide new instances of clarity and depth of understanding.

What purpose does it serve (as in this instance of mistaken details) when sloppy or perfunctory reasoning (or masculinized logic) is put in play? Moreover, if the purpose is not to engage discussion, perform reasonable arguments, what is Greg doing here? What is his project?

___________

**

Wow... that's a very thorough and exhaustive analysis, William. You must have put a lot of work into it. Could you please tell me from where you got your information? I'd like to know.

Greg

[Selene]

He

Wow... that's a very thorough and exhaustive analysis, William. You must have put a lot of work into it. Could you please tell me from where you got your information? I'd like to know.

Greg

He is an excellent researcher.

A...

[dldelancey]

He

Wow... that's a very thorough and exhaustive analysis, William. You must have put a lot of work into it. Could you please tell me from where you got your information? I'd like to know.

Greg

He is an excellent researcher.

A...

And like any excellent researcher, his sources are cited.

[Selene]

He

Wow... that's a very thorough and exhaustive analysis, William. You must have put a lot of work into it. Could you please tell me from where you got your information? I'd like to know.

Greg

He is an excellent researcher.

A...

And like any excellent researcher, his sources are cited.

Correct.

I sometimes intentionally do not cite a source and that is because I am creating an argument and not purely researching.

He is somewhat like Heinlein's Fair Witness in his "objective" source searches.

A...

[Jules Troy]

Bill is very very good.

[william.scherk]

Thanks for the kind assessments of my research abilities, Greg, Deanna, Adam, Jules. It's very pleasing to get that kind of acknowledgment.

I wasn't sure if Greg was serious in his question -- there were links embedded in the post he wondered about, so I thought he ought go back and read at the sources provided, and then ask about any particular bit of information in my post he found dodgy or questionable or of uncertain origin.

I cited books by Bachrach and Sabon, and gave a link to the Pam Reynolds Lowery page at Wikipedia. I also gave a link to the Keith Augustine page from which the blockquotes came.

There is a certain amount of interpolation of things I had already discovered or become familiar with. I didn't include links, for example, to GM Woerlee's "Near Death Experiences" site, though it has extensive, excellent resources and a thorough analysis of the Reynolds case, among others. Most of the information I gleaned from Woerlee's work was adequately represented by the excerpts from Augustine.

I have long been familiar with the types of claims made in the literature (yes, there is a Journal of Near Death Studies), and so I understand why someone would ask "how do you know that"?

Greg, if there is something in particular that wasn't covered by the links and references given, please ask. I thank you again for providing the right clues to discovering the story you touted was a garbled rehash of the Reynolds case. You might be interested in the massive site of the International Association of Near Death Studies. This site accords with your bias (the 'afterlife') and the spiritual values of the majority of (non-agnostic/atheist) US citizens.

Belief in an afterlife, an immortal soul, angels, hell, heaven, Satan, miracles -- these are held by a majority. So you are in a large company, Greg -- though you must surely understand most OLers do not share these beliefs whatsoever ...

Edited December 23, 2014 by william.scherk