Discussion "Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical? A Philosophical Inquiry"

[Eudaimonic]

Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical? A Philosophical Inquiry

This project is a philosophical investigation into near-death experiences (NDEs). It attempts to answer the central question: Are near-death experiences veridical? The aim of my work is to defend the veridicality of near-death experiences within the framework of idealism. However, this aim is...

ir.lib.uwo.ca

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[TransilvanianHunger]

Haven't read the whole thing, obviously, but some things caught my eye after a quick skim.

Nothing against Wicca as a practice, but presenting it as a philosophical framework is a bit of a strange choice, simply because Wicca doesn't have developed metaphysics in any meaningful sense, and doesn't really need a coherent metaphysical framework to fulfill its role.

The bit on Advaita Vedanta reminded me of the article you shared a few days ago about Atman/anatta. This author's grasp of the Self, particularly the insistence on the necessity of a permanent subject, feels a bit off—reminds me of the classic "if there is no self, who is reborn?" question for Buddhism—though I am not familiar enough with Vedanta to articulate anything more concrete than a vague feeling.

The conclusion is just weird to me: none of the frameworks the author discusses can fit in NDEs neatly, but "if one wishes, with the proper dedication, each can be fixed in order to properly accommodate near-death experiences". Isn't that true of essentially any belief and any framework?

In the end, I am not sure that the "veridicality" of NDEs means much of anything. I can concede that people who experience and recount NDEs are telling "the truth" in the sense that they are not making stuff up, and they had the experiences they describe. Making the leap from there to "NDEs tell us something about the afterlife and the underlying metaphysical structure of reality", though? That's a much tougher sell, in my opinion.

 

[wiggy]

I'm very much an active practitioner of the materialist bias the author describes, and from that standpoint I do think that materialism does a very competent job of reconciling near death experiences. I still have to read past the summary, so my opinion will probably hinge on how well I think the author argues for the idealist framework.