Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

https://theconversation.com/are-near-dea...non-106286

EXCERPT: . . . Despite several theories used to explain near-death experiences, getting to the bottom of what causes them is difficult. Religious people believe near-death experiences provide evidence for life after death [...] Whereas scientific explanations for near-death experiences include depersonalisation, which is a sense of being detached from your body. [...]

But due to the fanciful nature of these theories, other explanations have emerged. Some researchers claim that endorphins released during stressful events may produce something like near-death experience [...] Similarly, anaesthetics such as ketamine can simulate near-death experience characteristics, such as out-of-body experiences.

Other theories suggest near-death experiences arise from dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychedelic drug that occurs naturally in some plants. Rick Strassman, a professor of psychiatry, observed in a study from 1990 to 1995 that people had near-death and mystical experiences following injection of DMT. According to Strassman, the body has natural DMT released at birth and death. However, there is no conclusive evidence to support this view. Overall, chemical-based theories lack precision and can’t explain the full range of near-death experience features people experience.

Researchers have also explained near-death experiences via cerebral anoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain. [...] But the most widespread explanation for near-death experiences is the dying brain hypothesis. This theory proposes that near-death experiences are hallucinations caused by activity in the brain as cells begin to die. [...] The problem with this theory, though plausible, is that it fails to explain the full range of features that may occur during near-death experiences [...]

Currently, there is no definitive explanation for why near-death experiences happen....

MORE: https://theconversation.com/are-near-dea...non-106286

It has always struck me as improbable that a dying, self-destroying brain should come up with a compelling, structured, and typical experience like an afterlife family reunion. I mean your departed loved ones are the last people you're thinking about as you lay dying around your living relatives. It just doesn't make sense as a sporadic "brain event" rooted in the contemporary psychology of the dying person. It is an experience of the soul itself, which a life well-lived should have accustomed us to by now.

How do panpsychists handle NDE's knowing that on a living planet such as this one there's probably a good chance their particles will be once again be recycled into another organism? Should they even experience them since all particles would have that living attribute?

(Dec 8, 2018 03:21 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]How do panpsychists handle NDE's knowing that on a living planet such as this one there's probably a good chance their particles will be once again be recycled into another organism? Should they even experience them since all particles would have that living attribute?

Since micro-"panpsychism" is being recruited for the current era as an ancillary to materialism, and limited to only an explanation of experience... NDEs could still be deemed dying hallucinations (conforming to the usual expectations or doctrines of physicalists). "Qualia" or whatever phenomenal principles used as elementals for the "internal side" of a particle or atom's be-ing would simply be the exhibited "paint" that a brain system uses for constituting the more complex manifestations of vision, hearing, smelling, touch (as well as introspective personal thoughts). Those phenomenal elementals would not carry aspects of personal identity along with them as they mingle with the rest of nature anymore than individual atoms would carry along higher-organization traits of the once-living but now deceased human body.

Panpsychism shouldn't be conflated with animism ("everything is alive"), though that's not to suggest you were implying that (just addressing any confusion for others with regard to sentence arrangements). Contemporary panpsychism (really pan-proto-experientialism) is the idea that phenomenal properties outrun biology (as extremely primitive precursors to the complex experiences of brains).

--- deeper trip down the rabbit hole from this point on ---

Again, there wouldn't be any personal memories and cognitive processes passed on. Due to that still contended to arise from complex structural relationships of objects/components and their activity, which simpler arrangements of atoms/molecules would lack when not constituting a functioning biological body. Panpsychism recruited as a sub-theme to materialism does not entail afterlife, reincarnation, etc.

Max Sipowicz: Pan-phenomenalism is the view that matter is intrinsically phenomenal, meaning that all material substance has inherent properties that are responsible for generating the conscious experience as obtained via the five senses. Bertrand Russell adamantly argued that physics is silent with regard to the intrinsic nature of matter, that is, whether matter has intrinsic features that cannot be observed or quantitatively measured. [...] It must be noted, however, that phenomenal properties are not considered to be conscious in themselves, that is, phenomenal properties are not subjects of experience in the sense that a human being is a subject of experience. A phenomenal property does not experience itself in the same manner that ‘I experience myself’. [It lacks accompanying, intellectual understanding and validation of itself as thoughts / reasoning.] --A brief introduction to panpsychism

Here's a jumble of comments about ESR (Epistemic Structural Realism), purely intended to casually provide a general idea (don't have the time or incentive to clarify the sources). ESR helps to inform the situation without one having to embrace whatever extended ideas it may dabble in.

Peter Unger (2001) [...] argues that our knowledge of the world is purely structural and that qualia are the non-structural components of reality. [Frank] Jackson argues that science only reveals the causal / relational properties of physical objects, and that “we know next to nothing about the intrinsic nature of the world. We know only its causal cum relational nature” (1998: 24).

[...] Epistemic Structural Realism, or ESR for short, holds that our epistemic access is restricted to structural features of the world. The position can be traced back at least to the beginning of the 20th century, namely to the independent work of Henri Poincaré and Bertrand Russell. [...] We only have direct epistemic access to percepts, i.e. the items of our perception. The only way to attain knowledge of the [metaphysical] external world is to draw inferences from our perceptions. [...] Russell argues that from the structure of our perceptions we can “infer a great deal as to the structure of the physical world, but not as to its intrinsic character” (1927, 400). More precisely, he argues that there is at most an isomorphic relation between the structure of our perceptions and the structure of the physical world.

The qualitative characteristics of sensations and thoughts -- and that ability to "show themselves" as opposed to existence normally being invisible to itself -- would pertain to the internal (intrinsic) manner of how objects are. In contrast to the external (extrinsic) manner of the way things are depicted to exist via mechanical interactions and spatial connections. The latter type of be-ing disappears after death or when non-consciousness ensues.[*] Because although the internal qualitative style of existing may still endure and apply in a primitive context (panpsychism), there's no longer a cognitive system available to both acknowledge/confirm that and to use those elemental phenomenal properties to represent a materialistic, structural outward appearance of objects in space (complex brain experiences).

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[*] "Matter" is a general concept rather than a concrete or particular object. It's taken for granted that such abstract entities aren't part of empirical sensations (i.e., are invisible, silent, unfelt, etc). They're residents of reason or intellectual processes -- that is, only apprehended / described / manipulated by symbolic systems (including ordinary language), as well as thoughts employing such. A particular electron might be detected by an instrument (be indirectly validated as a "real" object of sensation), but not the broad "matter' classification (generalization) which bits of "corporeal stuff" were historically claimed to belong to. This is just to point-out how "matter" as a broad concept is normally not present or manifested to itself (when there are no perceptions espousing it in the form of language or formulae), or how a "material existence" does not show itself when minus consciousness exhibiting specific objects or phenomenal distinctions. (Contributing to why everything disappears after death.)

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