near to death episodes: latest study (Endings)

by dhw, Monday, October 30, 2017, 12:43 (2363 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This is confirmed by various websites (unless I have badly misunderstood their message and your post): oxygen continues to reach the brain FOR SOME MINUTES after the heart stops. The physical reflexes are gone, but it would seem from these accounts that consciousness remains for those few minutes. So the cortex as the “seat of awareness” DOES still function for 4-6 minutes.
David: Wrong! When blood flow stops, consciousness disappears in 4-20 seconds. There is no further oxygen delivery but the living, non-functioning cortex has residual oxygen which permits it, in the adult to survive about four minutes before complete death of those cells.

If patients observe events after bloodflow stops, then clearly consciousness does NOT disappear in 4-20 seconds. But thank you for the correction concerning delivery as opposed to residue. I had actually edited the wording before you replied, as I had misread one of the websites. However, it is the 4-6 minutes of brain survival that are crucial. See below.

DAVID: At this point the patient is permanently brain dead, and consciousness has gone to the afterlife. In the 4-6 minute period after blood and oxygen delivery is stopped, before neuron death, you are correct. Consciousness could be received there, but how would a non-functioning network of neurons handle it? You are saying it an function without evidence of function, either physically or by EEG.

There is nothing to “handle”. A materialist can argue that the evidence of function is the patient’s awareness of what went on around him/her during the 4-6 minutes when the cortex could still register events even though it had lost connection with the rest of the body.

DAVID: The brief agonal burst is just for a few seconds. You are trying to stretch it. Resuscitation events can last 20-30 minutes (I've been there), and revived patients can then tell us about the NDE.

Thank you for the information about the agonal burst. In that case, I don’t understand why the researchers attach so much importance to it, since it proves nothing. As for the rest, I can only repeat what I wrote last time: “the researchers claim that the patients must have been conscious for a few minutes after what they regarded as clinical death. If the cortex continues to function for 4-6 minutes and is where “consciousness is conducted”, and patients register information for 4-6 minutes, and the information relates to events that occur during the 4-6 minutes after clinical death, the implication is that consciousness does NOT end after 20 seconds or less, and that the cortex is the source of consciousness. Only when the cortex ceases to function, and the patient undergoes experiences that can later be authenticated can we say that we have evidence of dualism.”

If the events described by the patients took place AFTER the death of the cortex, then they are evidence for dualism. The article tells us about events immediately after heart stoppage. We therefore need more information about the timing before we can talk of evidence.