Summary: As a philosopher, Dr. Evan Thompson thinks neuroscience model of near-death experience is fine, but what do NDE researchers say?<br> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgRWh2TfvmM"></a><br> Debate over the science of NDEs.<br> Interview with Evan Thompson, author of Waking, Dreaming, Being on whether near-death experience evidence falsifies the neuroscience model of consciousness.<br> Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Ken Jordan about the consciousness revolution and the shifting paradigm in science and our culture:<br> Alex Tsakiris: I do have to take exception… you’re overthrowing 50 years of neuroscience that claims to understand the correlation between, for example, EEG or FMRI and consciousness. Are we just going to throw that out the window and say, “Well, it’s all just a mystery, folks. All that stuff we thought we knew, we now don’t know.” All because we need to step over this near-death experience evidence.<br> Evan Thompson: There’s a sense in which I agree part of your point, which is, we have no neurological model for [NDEs]. However, It doesn’t follow that we have good reason to think that these (NDE) experiences transcend the brain… for reasons that we’ve just been reviewing… mainly that all of the inferences along the way from the cardiac arrest shut down, the EEG flat line, the subjective sense of when the experience occurs in relation to the objective timing of what’s going on in the brain – our knowledge of what’s going on in the brain based on an inference of a flat line EEG that all of that is so fragile that we can’t say, “Well, these experiences transcend the brain.” We just don’t have that evidence.<br> Alex Tsakiris: It kind of depends on how you slice and dice the data. I mean I just gave you verifiable empirical data. So, I think we have to talk about these two competing theories and which one best fits the data. And whether the neuroscience model of brain-based consciousness really holds up [against the near-death experience data], or whether if it’s been falsified. It feels like we’re kind of propping up [the neuroscience model] here and trying to make it fit. I mean, if we’re going to throw all the [neuroscience evidence] out, and say, “You know we no longer have this understanding of correlation between EEG and FMRI and consciousness [for these NDE cases].” Then, I think all bets are off for the neuroscience model in general.<br> <a href="http://evanthompson.me/waking-dreaming-being/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Click here for Evan’s website</a><br> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgRWh2TfvmM">Click here for YouTube version</a><br> <a href="http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/281-dr-evan-thompson-finds-near-death-experience-evidence-unconvincing.2424/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Click here for forum discussion</a><br> <br> <br> Read Excerpts From The Interview:<br> Alex: Now one thing you do seem to be moving past in the book, and in your other writings is this neuro-reductionist materialism. Often times, associated with the Daniel Dennett, “consciousness is an illusion” stuff. Now, I take it that’s out for you?<br> Evan: Yes. Stated that way, I wouldn’t subscribe to it. I know Dennett quite well. I actually did a post doc with Dennett, and I have great admiration for his work. He was very generous with me. However, the view that consciousness is an illusion and that basically what neural science tells us about how the brain works today that that’s enough to understand consciousness, I think it’s fair to say that that’s Dennett’s view. That’s not my view. I think there is really a fundamental gap in our understanding. We have an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the brain, but we really don’t understand how the brain could be the basis where the source or the kind of contingent platform, however you want to put it, for consciousness.
