Who will watch the watchers? (part 2)

In part one we looked at the obvious bias reflected by Beyerstein's article in the Rational Enquirer. Now let's turn to the main subject: the Skeptical Inquirer article that attempts to debunk Kimberly Clark's report of Maria's NDE.

The first thing that struck me about this article is that roughly half of its content (excluding footnotes) consists of general comments debunking the whole idea of life after death. The article begins with a Woody Allen quote: "I'm not afraid to die; I just don't want to be there when it happens." This may seem like no more than a humorous aside, but actually it is a key part of the article's general tactic of suggesting that anyone who endorses a nonmaterialistic interpretation of NDEs is motivated by fear of death. Since people will allegedly do anything to rationalize away such a fear, their beliefs about NDEs are inherently untrustworthy.

Right after the Woody Allen quote, the authors say smugly, "Skeptics enter most debates at a disadvantage because they are usually forced to cast doubt on comforting beliefs." Already we see the clear implication that the skeptic is the clearsighted individual "forced" (by whom?) to undermine "comforting beliefs" -- i.e., beliefs that supply reassurance to people enervated by fear of death, but which cannot be supported by any logic or evidence. The authors go on to quote Susan Blackmore, hardly an unbiased source, as saying that "NDEs provide no evidence for life after death, and we can best understand them by looking at neurochemistry, physiology, and psychology." The authors themselves opine, "NDEs are only one example of episodes in which the brain's construction of reality breaks down temporarily."

So it is clear that the authors, whatever claims to objectivity they may like to make, have already dismissed NDEs as evidence for postmortem survival. They entered this controversial area of research with their minds apparently made up in advance. If a promoter of a nonmaterialistic interpretation of NDEs were to start an article by exhibiting such obvious bias, skeptics would undoubtedly object. But I guess it's okay when the skeptics themselves do it.

The authors' review of the case against the afterlife has only just begun. Before they continue, they take time to say, "Virtually every book retelling this now-familiar story [of the NDE] achieves best-seller status and reads substantial rewards for its author." If only this were true, there would be a sure road to riches for all of us struggling scriveners. But of course this statement is mere hyperbole; of the hundreds of titles published about NDEs, only a handful have become bestsellers. Skeptics routinely criticize their opponents for exaggerating. Is it all right for the skeptics to exaggerate?

The authors then cite James Alcock for his views on "why the will to believe so readily overcomes the desire to examine the evidence critically." This, of course, goes back to the overriding motif of the article, which is that fear of death overwhelms any ability to think rationally. Now suppose that an anti-skeptic were to say that the skeptics' fear of the paranormal is so intense that it overrides their ability to think critically or to deal with the evidence in a logical and fair-minded manner. You can just hear the skeptics howl. Again we see the double standard; the skeptics feel free to disparage the motivations and psychology of their opponents, but their opponents are not free to return the favor.

The authors then claim that the founders of the Society for Psychical Research were "disturbed by the implications of modern science for their Christian worldview," a view that hardly accords with the facts. (See Ghost Hunters, by Deborah Blum, for a thorough overview of the Society's founders.) Most of the principal players in the Society were not believing Christians, and the evidence they found did not necessarily support Christian orthodoxy. But this questionable interpretation of their motives allows the authors to continue their theme that parapsychologists and others sympathetic to the idea of an afterlife are motivated by deep-seated fears and religious biases. Notice that the authors seem entirely blind to the obvious riposte that skeptics, like anyone else, are likely to have hidden motivations and biases of their own. Apparently, in the authors' worldview, skeptics are miraculously free of all prejudice, bias, wishful thinking, fear, and other distortions of the critical faculty; they can see the world is it really is, without delusion or error; while the rest of mankind are hopelessly lost in credulousness and gullibility, which are grounded in irrational fears.

In pointing out that more NDEs are being reported today than ever before, the authors say, "This is likely due to vast improvements in emergency medicine, coupled with a worldwide resurgence of religious fundamentalism." What religious fundamentalism has to do with anything is an interesting question. Actually, of course, the content of most NDEs runs counter to the dogma of religious fundamentalism, and many religious fundamentalists accordingly have claimed that NDEs are the work of the devil -- specifically, that the "being of light" encountered by many NDErs is really Satan in disguise. There are some religious fundamentalists who have endorsed the NDE as a legitimate religious/spiritual experience, but there are many others who have not. Why, then, even bring up the matter? Well, because it allows the authors to again hammer home their point that people who take NDEs seriously are driven by religious attitudes (with the unstated inference that anyone with a religious attitude is inherently untrustworthy as an observer or analyst).

For the sake of argument, let's say that this is true. People who have strong religious beliefs cannot be trusted to look at the evidence with any degree of objectivity. If so, then we need to keep in mind that religious belief cuts both ways. The absolute, dogmatic insistence that there is no God, no immortal soul, no afterlife, no higher power, no higher meaning or purpose to the universe is itself a religious attitude, characterized even by some of its own adherents as not just atheism but "anti-theism." Skeptics who adhere to this position, as many (but not all) of them do, are every bit as "religious" as the fundamentalists they disparage. If strong feelings about religion impair one's critical faculty, then the militantly anti-religious skeptics are every bit as impaired as their fundamentalist opponents. Skeptics, blind to their own biases, consistently overlook this obvious point.

"The concept of immortality is, in the final analysis, a metaphysical proposition that can only be accepted or rejected on faith," the authors say. This presumably means that any investigation into the empirical facts that might support life after death is doomed from the outset. Yet the authors undertook such an investigation, and they want us to believe they did so with an open mind. Indeed, at the end of their article, they have the hubris to claim that they were "disappointed" that the case didn't turn out to be as strong as it initially appeared. Anyone who believes the authors were genuinely disappointed by their alleged ability to debunk this case should call me; I have some high-quality swamp land in Florida for sale.

The authors go on to tell us that "a field known as 'near-death studies' has emerged with the thinly veiled agenda of providing a scientific gloss for religious views of an afterlife." This field is contrasted with "anomalistic psychology," which "seeks naturalistic explanations for various seemingly supernatural states of consciousness based on sound psychological and neurophysiological research." So there you have it. On the one hand, there are near-death studies, a quasi-religious movement with a hidden agenda, while on the other hand, there it is anomalistic psychology, based on "sound" research. Imagine if a parapsychologist were to summarize the situation in an equivalent fashion, saying that there is a field known as near-death studies, based on sound research, and another field, anomalistic psychology, which has a "thinly veiled agenda of providing a scientific gloss for philosophical materialism." Skeptics would probably say that this characterization is grossly unfair. Is it any less unfair when they indulge in the same tactics?

Still continuing with their overview of the general issue of life after death, the authors assert, "To accept notions such as survival after death, disembodied spirits, and a host of other parapsychological phenomena, one must also adopt some form of the philosophical doctrine known as 'dualism.' " The only reason for including this philosophical aside seems to be the authors' belief that dualism has been so thoroughly discredited that linking psi phenomena to it will discredit psi - sort of a guilt-by-association tactic. Actually, it is not necessary to endorse dualism in order to believe in psi. There are other options, including the view that everything that exists is ultimately a manifestation of consciousness ("idealism"), or that both consciousness and physical reality are both manifestations of an underlying plane of existence that incorporates aspects of both ("neutral monism"). In any event, whatever philosophical problems may be raised by the idea of psi are irrelevant to an objective appraisal of the evidence. Once again, the authors seem to have allowed their philosophical presuppositions to bias them in advance of even considering the empirical facts.

In an attempt to deal with the verifiable memories that NDErs frequently report during their period of unconsciousness, the authors assert, "During [cardiopulmonary arrest], the brain undergoes several biochemical and physiological changes, but by relying on its limited backup of stored oxygen and metabolic fuels, certain aspects of consciousness can be sustained, albeit in a somewhat degraded fashion. Thus, it is not surprising that there might be some residual memories from the time that one was dying, but not yet clinically dead."

Among the many problems with this explanation is the fact that some NDEs have occurred when the patient was indeed "clinically dead" - showing not only no heart activity, but no brain activity as well. Moreover, the higher-level brain functions are the first ones to shut down in a medical crisis, and yet it is precisely the higher-level functions that would be required in order to construct a coherent narrative out of detailed observations.

Of course, there are also many reports of NDErs who perceived details that cannot be explained by any form of normal sensory perception. Maria's NDE is one such case. Finally, after this long and most irrelevant philosophical overview, which exists only to bias the reader against NDEs, the authors get around to dealing with the Seattle case itself.

And so will we -- next time.

Comments

[tina brewer]

Can I just take a moment to say that I LOVE the way you write? I just love it. There.

[Troy]

Bravo on another excellent post, Michael!

[RodMcK]

Ditto.

[WT]

This blog has become my regularly-indulged-in antidote to a particular brand of closed mind...

[Leo MacDonald]

I came across a article reviewing a book yes froma christian neurologist named Dr. Warren Brown. Keith Augustine yes him again did a review of his book. The part that made my eyes turn up was this part.

The Evidence From Neuroscience

As one would expect from its title--"Brain, Mind, and Behavior"--Chapter 4 is the most important chapter in the entire book. It begins with a brief historical account of the development of neuroscience to the present day and then illustrates the overwhelming evidence for the dependence of consciousness on the brain by considering localization studies of brain functions, split-brain surgery and hemispheric specialization, various mental deficiencies tied to brain lesions or brain damage, and the effects of brain damage on personality traits and social behavior. Malcolm Jeeves' historical overview of the development of neuroscience ends with a brief consideration of a very famous and dramatic example of mind-brain dependence:

In 1848, a 25-year old foreman, Phineas Gage ... accidentally prematurely exploded a charge which sent a tamping iron through Gage's left cheek, piercing his skull, traversing the front of his brain and exiting at high speed from the top of his head.... His employers described how, before the accident he was efficient and capable, but afterward his personality had clearly undergone a dramatic change. Not only was he feckless and irresponsible, his likes and dislikes, his aspirations, his ethics and morals, were altered. Such findings suggested that ... there may be systems in the human brain, which, if damaged, may alter the personal and social dimensions of normal life (77-78).

In Chapter 6, "Nonreductive Physicalism: Philosophical Issues," Nancey Murphy conceives of physicalism[4]--the position that only physical matter is needed to account for everything encountered in nature--as the "research program" of the neurosciences. For neuroscience, physicalism entails that mental phenomena can be accounted for in terms of brain function. In Imre Lakatos' philosophy of science, a research program is a model which explains known phenomena and (hopefully) predicts the occurrence of novel phenomena. Research programs which generate novel predictions are progressive programs, whereas those which fail to generate novel predictions are considered degenerating[5]. The ability of a program to generate predictions which are later confirmed is an important mark of scientific progress. Murphy writes: "Insofar as researchers ... make progress in explaining 'mental' phenomena, the program as a whole is making empirical progress and its core thesis [physicalism] is thereby corroborated" (140). Murphy continues: "I find brain localization studies to be some of the most impressive pieces of evidence for the physicalist program. Besides simply locating and modeling mental processes as previously understood, these studies sometimes improve our understanding of the mental processes themselves" (140). The enormous success of physicalism as a research program and the complete absence of a rival research program in psychology based on dualism illustrates the level of corroboration that physicalism has received from neuroscience. There is simply no ongoing research correlating mental states to the states of an immaterial spiritual substance. That this is so is no accident; rather, it is indicative that dualism is a degenerative research program--a scientific dead end as useless today as an Earth-centered model of the solar system.

The ability to localize mental traits to specific areas of the brain provides strong evidence that mental phenomena are generated by the brain itself, rather than by an immaterial soul which merely uses the brain to control the body. Nevertheless, Murphy concedes that such evidence does not constitute proof that dualism is false because mental traits could merely be correlated with certain areas of the brain. Why they would be so correlated must be a great mystery to dualists who think that the mind can exist almost completely intact in the absence of a brain, as if thinking, remembering, and perceiving would be unaffected by the disintegration of the brain and sense organs. Furthermore, certain types of well-established phenomena, such as the creation of two separate streams of consciousness operating simultaneously in one body in split-brain patients (who have had the corpus callosum connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain severed), cannot be accounted for on dualism[6]. If the mind was an indivisible immaterial substance that could exist independently of the brain then we should not be able to create two minds simply by severing the corpus collosum. Nor should the mind be directly affected by any tampering with the brain. If Cartesian dualism were true the only affect that brain damage could have would be to incapacitate the ability of the mind (or soul) to control the body, but the mind itself would remain intact. We have an enormous amount of evidence that this is false--changes in the brain result in changes in mental states themselves. The specific evidence from neuroscience, as well as the general success of physicalism and the corresponding failure of dualism as research programs, provides sufficiently strong evidence--even if not irrefutable proof--to make physicalism by far the best explanation of the evidence at hand.

[Michael E. Tymn]

Michael, well stated. To quote a famous skeptic of yesteryear, William James:

"I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But when I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow 'scientific' bounds."

[Satya]

does the below quote come with references from those authors or is more of scientific speculation...

the authors assert, "During [cardiopulmonary arrest], the brain undergoes several biochemical and physiological changes, but by relying on its limited backup of stored oxygen and metabolic fuels, certain aspects of consciousness can be sustained, albeit in a somewhat degraded fashion. Thus, it is not surprising that there might be some residual memories from the time that one was dying, but not yet clinically dead."

the minute I see the "can be", "might be" nonsense in debunkings my antennna goes up...

gotta pity these folks...

[Michael Prescott]

>does the below quote come with references

No specific references for this statement are provided in the article.

For a contrary view, see Pim van Lommel's response to Michael Shermer here. The relevant section begins with the sentence, "We know that patients with cardiac arrest are unconscious within seconds, but how do we know that the electro-encephalogram (EEG) is flat-lined in those patients, and how can we study this?" This is found about one-quarter of the way down the page.