Download Dead as a Doornail

DEAD AS A DOORNAIL
Prof. Matt McCormick
Department of Philosophy
California State University, Sacramento
NEAR DEATH AND OUT OF BODY
EXPERIENCES (NDES AND OBES)
“I had the sensation of floating up out of my
body and hovering over myself on the
operating room table. Then I travelled up a
tunnel towards a light.“
“After waking up I found myself still very,
very tired and I allowed myself to fall
back asleep. In doing so, I became
conscious of some familiar sensations
attributed to out-of-body experiences - I
felt very heavy yet very light and I felt
gentle electric-like pulses running through
my body. Very soon after the onset of these
sensations I knew it was time to get up not up in the physical world - up outside
my body in the astral plane!”
EVIDENCE FOR TRANSCENDENCE?
There are many who take OBEs, NDEs, prayer
feelings, religious feelings, intuitions of certainty
or poignancy, or other extraordinary subjective
phenomena as evidence for something that
transcends the physical.
 Let’s call these magical methods for acquiring
knowledge.
 Roughly I have in mind methods that are
subjective, not intersubjectively verifiable (the
way elephants are,) but not wholly deductive.
They involve some sort of divination of the truth.

MAGICAL KNOWLEDGE, MAGICAL FORCES
Your mind can reach this other place and draw from it.
Or maybe your mind can
channel the magic into
this world.
ARE OBES AND NDES ARE TOO
EXTRAORDINARY TO BE NATURAL?
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Deja vu
Jamais vu
Disassociated states
Auditory and visual hallucinations
Detachment
Capgras Delusion
Fregoli Delusion
Prosopagnosia
Cotard’s Delusion
Blindsight
Phantom limb pain
and so on
IT’S ALL IN THE BRAIN

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The important point is not that these are in the
brain. All experience, real or not, has neural
correlates in the brain.
The important point is that in all of these cases
there is a brain phenomena, and nothing else.
Your spouse isn’t an imposter. (Capgras)
 Your arm isn’t in pain. (Phantom Limb)
 You can’t see. (Anton’s Delusion)
 You do exist. (Cotard’s Delusion)

ARE THERE NATURAL WAYS TO GET TO
THE OTHER SIDE?
There are many ways to get there falsely:
 psychoactive drugs
 sleep deprivation
 fasting
 sweat lodges
 dancing
 dehydration
 meditation
 chanting
 sensory overload/stimulus
 a philosophy lecture
PHILOSOPHERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO (C
AN
GET US TO THE OTHER
THOSE
SIDE?)
Some philosophers are tempted by this sort of method, I
know I have been:
1.
Here are some poignant feelings I have.
2.
They feel really important because they feel so feely,
so certain, so true. They must be philosophically
significant.
3.
So here’s a theory about reality based on them. Or
our theories about what’s real must conform to them.
 The presumption seems to be that the feelings map
onto some reality beyond the mind. Or that analyzing
words and meanings hard enough will uncover truth.
BUT THAT DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT
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Remember this guy:
And remember these:
Transcendence is going to have to be based on
more than just feelings.
BUT IF SOMEONE HAS AN OBE WHILE THEY
ARE DEAD, THEN THAT’S INTERESTING.

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If he’s dead, then the OBE isn’t coming
(falsely) from the brain, right?
Clinical Death

occurs in a patent when the heart stops
beating and respiration ceases.

Being clinically dead isn’t really being
dead.
DEAD AND DEADER

Brain death
Brain death is irreversible, real death
 Indicators: no reflex responses, no breathing, no
brain stem activity.

MEASURING BRAIN DEATH AND REAL
BRAIN DEATH
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Given that there are billions of neurons with
activity at the molecular level, our methods for
determining brain death are quite crude.
An EEG machine gives a gross indicator of
electrical activity in the brain. And reflexes are
macro behaviors.
If all of the diagnostic criteria for brain death
have been met, has all neural activity ceased?
BE THE DEADEST YOU CAN BE
oThere are about 100 billion neurons in the human
brain.
o Each one of these cells has a metabolism that is
fed by oxygenated blood.
o Its metabolic processes produce an
electrical/chemical charge called an action potential.
oWhen the cell’s firing threshold is met, that charge
is sent down the axon and the signal is passed on to
the next neurons in the chain.
o These cascading electrical charges across various
neural networks produce consciousness (and
hallucinations.)
o The typical neuron fires 1-500 times a second.
o Neurons can have as many as a 1,000
connections.
o Real brain death? I suspect that even if the EEG
is flat, some of this activity persists for a while.
OBE DURING CLINICAL DEATH?

We have every reason to think that OBEs during clinical
death are the product of brain function.

Brain functions can produce those sorts of experiences
falsely.

And the brain can be functioning at least partly during
clinical death.
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OBEs during clinical death are no more suggestive of a
transcendental world or experience than the dreams you
have while sleeping or the hallucinations you might have
while stoned.
That is, clinical death OBEs are not philosophically or
transcendentally significant as evidence for life after death,
immortal souls, a transcendent realm, etc.
OBE DURING BRAIN DEATH?
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Suppose that someone had an OBE during real
brain death or during a period when the portions
of the brain that could produce it were not active.
That would be suggestive about a reality beyond
the body.
There have been no reported cases of an OBE
during brain death. (It’s irreversible.)
Hypothetically, how could it be established that
such an OBE had occurred?
FLAT LINERS
OBE?
Could it be established that someone had an OBE during a
period of brain death?
It doesn’t look like it.
THE TIMING PROBLEM
OBE report at
10:45
OBE?
10:01
Suppose someone came back
from real brain death and
reported an OBE.
How would we establish that
the experience the patient
reports happened during the
period of flat brain activity?
Do we just take their word for
it?
10:05
“I was floating up through space
to heaven. And they had a clock
there that said 10:04. I also
checked my angel watch.”
TESTIMONY FROM A BRAIN DEAD PATIENT
ISN’T VERY RELIABLE.

People are notoriously unreliable in their
testimony about events during periods of stress.
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They get the order of events wrong.
They leave out significant events.
They revise their stories.
They are highly suggestible.
They fabricate.
And people’s subjective sense of time is very poor.
To make matters worse, the patient in question
has just suffered severe brain trauma, is full of
psychoactive medications, has had severe blood
loss, and had other mind alterations.
AN OBE REPORTED BY SOMEONE WHO HAD
BEEN BRAIN DEAD WOULD BE INCONCLUSIVE.

A person’s testimony that the experience
occurred during the flat line period won’t be
sufficient—they were dead then.
So there appears to be no way to get the evidence
we would need.
 There is still a very real possibility that the
experience they had (if they had one) was
generated by the brain (falsely) while it was
functioning.
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CONCLUSION

The notion that our feelings are some magical guide
to some secret knowledge common and seductive.

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“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
But those feelings can be produced by abnormal or
even normal brain states.
Being clinically dead, it turns out, isn’t being really
dead. Your brain could make an OBE then.
No one comes back to tell stories from real brain
death.
But even if you could, the Timing Problem would keep
us from believing you.
The prospects for successfully arguing for the
existence or reality of some transcendent, nonphysical, non-brainy reality on the basis of our
feelings are dim.