Hypothesizing an afterlife based on NDEs requires the idea that consciousness can exist separately from the brain. This doesn't seem warranted based on NDEs alone
This is exactly the argument I'm looking for. But I'm not sure if postulating other methods NDEs/ODEs could have happened is convincing that that's how they happened in all cases. So I'm not sure if the conversation has reached the point at which we can say "ergo, NDEs don't even suggest that consciousness can exist separately from the brain."
My hope is that research into the brain and AI will give sufficient evidence that we can come to this conclusion without this discussion. Perhaps it already has and I'm unaware of it, but the research I've seen takes this as an assumption, not a conclusion.
Hmm, what I said was poorly worded. I may edit it. What I meant was that I considered the evidence to be sufficient for me to believe in God. Here's what I said:
I understand that my personal experiences with what I believe to have been God could be explained by neural anomalies, but until I have convincing reasons to believe that, or convincing reasons to believe there isn't a God outside my personal experiences, or convincing reasons to believe that my experiences are evidence of something else entirely, I'm going to assume that there is a God.
Here's what I meant:
until I have convincing reasons to believe that, or convincing reasons to believe there isn't a God outside my personal experiences, or convincing reasons to believe that my experiences are evidence of something else entirely, my personal experiences are sufficient to convince me that there is probably a God.
Is that better?
If a patient happened to be hooked up to an MRI during what they later describe as an NDE, and the MRI recorded patterns characteristic of other events generally considered hallucinatory, would you consider that evidence supporting the explanation that NDEs are hallucinatory events? Would that significantly alter your beliefs about the existence of an afterlife?
There is an underlying assumption here that hallucinations aren't evidence of an afterlife. I don't believe they are, but I also don't have any beliefs about them in general, so the fact that it was a hallucination wouldn't be convincing until I had more knowledge of hallucinations in general. Maybe hallucinations are our gateway to the eternal! (I don't actually believe this, but I hope it helps you see what I'm saying).
That being said, knowing more about these experiences would only be a good thing, and I have no way of knowing how more knowledge would affect my beliefs, because I have no idea what that knowledge might be.
If it proved possible to experimentally induce an NDE experience by manipulating a subject's brain in particular ways, would you consider that evidence supporting the explanation that NDEs are hallucinatory events? Would that significantly alter your beliefs about the existence of an afterlife?
from this article:
According to Dr. Jansen, ketamine can reproduce all the main features of the NDE, including travel through a dark tunnel into the light, the feeling that one is dead, communing with God, hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, strange noises, etc. This does not prove that the NDE is nothing but a set of physical responses, nor does it prove that there is no life after death. It does, however, prove that an NDE is not compelling evidence for belief in either the existence of a separate consciousness or of an afterlife.
Back to your question:
Would that significantly alter your beliefs about the existence of an afterlife?
Possibly. Like I said before, more knowledge is only a good thing, and I have no idea how more knowledge would affect my beliefs. Hope I'm not dodging your questions here, feel free to elaborate on anything I might have missed.
[I'm going to leave this comment like it is, but I'm adding this edit for clarification. After a second read-through, I do agree that the quote I posted proves that NDE's aren't compelling evidence in the sense that they aren't definite proof of God/the afterlife/whatever. But I don't think they proved that NDE's aren't valid evidence, which it seemed to me at first they tried to do, and I then realized that they hadn't. So take this comment with a grain of salt, and see what you can make of it]
DreadedAnomaly gave two good articles to read in his post below*, which could possibly explain OBE/NDEs as completely natural. These are pretty good articles, but they highlight a problem I have with the whole discussion: that the anti-afterlife side seems biased, too. For example, a quote from this article:
According to Dr. Jansen, ketamine can reproduce all the main features of the NDE, including travel through a dark tunnel into the light, the feeling that one is dead, communing with God, hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, strange noises, etc. This does not prove that the NDE is nothing but a set of physical responses, nor does it prove that there is no life after death. It does, however, prove that an NDE is not compelling evidence for belief in either the existence of a separate consciousness or of an afterlife.
This (to me) certainly does not prove that NDE's are not compelling evidence, it proved that it was not necessarily compelling evidence. It suggested that NDE's were not compelling evidence and further argument might have convinced me, but it seemed a bit too soon to call it a "proof" to me. (and there was no further argument, because they thought they had proved it)
Things like this cause me to question whether there is anyone who has published unbiased arguments for or against God or the afterlife. Responses to this post don't seem to escape bias, and while we can account for bias, it's particularly difficult to do so for a topic where I'm questioning whether I'm biased myself.
*http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ok/is_there_anything_after_death/3bgr
And how exactly do you propose to test the existence of an afterlife with reproducibility? Are you volunteering?
JoshuaZ gave good answers in his post below
http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ok/is_there_anything_after_death/3bhr
Personally, I find Occam's Razor convincing. Doesn't it strike you as unlikely that there would be a God, but the only evidence for God would be subjective experiences?
without evidence, the probability of God, the afterlife, etc. is going to come up very low from a Bayesian evaluation.
That's the whole point I'm getting at here. Should I consider these things evidence? How do I objectively decide? I'm obviously biased to believe in an afterlife and in God and in the supernatural so how do I overcome this bias and look at the evidence objectively? Your former arguments (I'm reading the first article now and it's exactly what I was looking for) could possibly give me reason to "defy the evidence" as E.Y. would say but I'm not at that point yet. I'm coming from a background of religion, and I've denied most of the things I've been taught, but should I deny all of them? I'm trying to be objective here, but it's hard to know whether I am or not (although whether my beliefs are wrong are right is independent of whether I was biased when I decided upon them). by supernatural I mean a universe or some other similar type of thing that has the potential to affect our physical world; Yudkowski would argue that if this exists it isn't supernatural, but I think it's a useful term
was the idea/half-belief already present and NDEs/OBEs only make it slightly more likely or difficult to rule out entirely?
That is almost certainly true. But it doesn't make the first part of your statement false.
Do things like NDEs and OBEs alone lead you to think that there is a possible afterlife[?]
I'm trying to objectively decide the answer to this question. It's difficult because of your other point.
you might be discussing this topic as if a certain set of evidence matters, when it really has nothing to do with why you deal delicately with the afterlife idea while harshly with the other unsupported hypotheses I listed above
If this is true, how do I know? If I'm biased to believe in an afterlife and evidence that would otherwise not applicable becomes convincing to me because of my bias, how would I be able to tell this is true rather than the alternative? (which is that I'm unbiased and that the evidence really is convincing)
Out-of-body experiences are very interesting to me as well. The first response seems to be to ignore them or to assume that they are lying. My response is to cautiously accept that they might be telling the truth, but to wait until we can find out more about what is going on. This could possibly be by using evidence gathered from careful experiments, possibly by using arguments from thought experiments.
Richard Feynman gave himself one on purpose and described it in Surely You're Joking. It's also quite interesting.
I need to read this! I'm intrigued!
A fine argument. I appreciate that you accept that there could be evidence that the brain does not completely implement consciousness (not that I believe that it doesn't, I just accept that it might not. I will live as if it does until I have reason to believe that it doesn't)
I'll check that out. I have yet to watch all of those talks.