near to death episodes: latest study (Endings)

by dhw, Saturday, November 04, 2017, 13:25 (2358 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My complaint was that the original article contained no evidence for dualism. However, even the new article confines itself to events happening around the patient, and the fact that patients cannot communicate or control their bodies does not mean they are unconscious. The new article states: “Brain waves from the cerebral cortex soon become undetectable. Even so, it can take hours for our thinking organ to fully shut down.”

DAVID: The 'soon become undetectable' is 4-20 seconds. Please accept that short time. The cortex is NO LONGER functional. The nonfunctioning cells die in 4-6 minutes if no resuscitation.

“No longer functional” is not the same as “dead”. You keep emphasizing function and the short time before the cells die. I keep emphasizing that the cortex of these patients does NOT die, and function is not necessarily confined to the outward signs (reflexes etc.). I used coma patients as an example of no outward signs and no communication and yet the patient is aware. If the cortex cells are NOT dead (and all these NDE patients have been resuscitated before the cells could die), and if patients are aware of events happening around them, this can just as easily be considered evidence that the cells are the source of consciousness as that there is a “soul” which exists independently of the cortex. The evidence for the separate “soul” would only be there (a) if the cortex had actually died, and (b) if the patients could describe events outside the operating theatre. I note you have ignored the following:

dhw: In your earlier post you wrote: “Could there be deeper levels of brain activity to support consciousness? Some strange deeper EEG spikes have been seen sporadically, but are poorly understood.” And I commented: Perhaps when we understand them better, we shall find that the cortex, our “thinking organ”, is still absorbing information.