Abstract
In this paper I suggest that near-death experiences (NDEs) provide a rational basis for belief in life after death. My argument is a simple one and is modeled on the argument from religious experience for the existence of God. But unlike the proponents of the argument from religious experience, I stop short of claiming that NDEs prove the existence of life after death. Like the argument from religious experience, however, my argument turns on whether or not there is good reason to believe that NDEs are authentic or veridical. I argue that there is good reason to believe that NDEs are veridical and that therefore it is reasonable to believe in the existence of what they seem to be experiences of, namely, a continued state of consciousness after the death of the body. I will then offer some comments on the philosophical import of NDEs, as well as reflections on the current state of contemporary philosophy in light of the neglect of this phenomenon.
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Notes
Studies by psychologists include Ring (1980); Greyson and Flynn (1984); Blackmore (1993); among others. Medical studies include Sabom (1982); Morse (1993); among many others in medical journals, including the recent prospective study (most previous studies relied on retrospective accounts of NDEs) by van Lommel et al. (2001). The Journal of Near-Death Studies has been in existence since 1980. A good collection of scholarly treatments of the phenomenon, along with some first-hand reports of NDEs, can be found in Bailey and Yates (1996).
Zaleski (1987) is the most notable example.
A search for ‘near-death experience’ in the Philosopher’s Index yields six entries for the last 30 years. Notable philosophical treatments include Cherry (1986); Almeder (1992); Becker (1993); Griffin (1997); and Walls (2002). For a recent discussion of Ayer’s account of his near-death experience, see Rosenthal (2004).
In this my argument is similar to the attempt of Alston (1991) to establish the rationality of belief in God on the basis of religious experience, but makes use of the strategy employed by Swinburne (1979) and Yandell (1994), among others, to prove the existence of God on the basis of religious experience. Walls makes use of Alston and the ‘Reformed epistemology’ of Alvin Plantinga to argue that NDEs ‘provide support for the Christian doctrine of heaven’. (Walls, Heaven, 140.) I stop far short of this claim.
Of course, one could object that the line of thinking employed in this paper is faulty since an experience can never be used to support the belief in anything outside the experience itself, that is, that all arguments from experience to a mind-independent reality are question-begging. But my principal aim in this paper is to show that there is no good reason why contemporary philosophers, most of whom accept the reasonableness of belief in the external world of material objects on the basis of experiences of what seems like an external world of material objects, should not also accept the reasonableness of belief in life after death on the basis of experiences of what seems like life after death. I do not think my argument needs to meet the burden of proving the existence of a mind-independent world.
Swinburne, The Existence of God, p. 254. While there have been notable criticisms of the principle of credulity when applied to religious experiences, it is not clear that these criticisms also apply to the NDE, which is, in itself, not necessarily a religious experience. But see Rowe (1982). See also Gale (1991). But also see William Alston’s defense of the analogy between religious experience and sensory experience in (1994). A useful discussion of this issue, with a defense of the analogy between religious experience and sensory experience, may be found in Wainwright (1973) and Mysticism (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), chapter 3.
Since my intent here is to make a philosophical point, and since the scientific literature on the NDE is vast, I will not cite specific studies but instead report the general features of the NDE that appear in the literature. A good summary of this literature may be found in Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, 156–158.
A review of the literature out of which these explanations arise can be found in Bailey and Yates, The Near-Death Experience, 12–18. See also Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, 164–175.
Many of these counter-arguments are mentioned in Zaleski, Otheworld Journeys, 175–177, and Becker, Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death, 92–119.
Alston makes a similar point with regard to mystical experiences, as does William James for religious experience in general. See Alston , Perceiving God, 232 and James (1985). James regards this kind of reductionism, or what he calls ‘medical materialism,’ to be a ‘too simple-minded system of thought.’
Gilbert Harman suggests such criteria as simplicity, plausibility and comprehensiveness should guide inference to the best explanation. Others suggest ‘beauty’ or ‘loveliness’ as well. See Harman (1965).
This report is cited in Ring and Lawrence (1993). Some might argue that the purported verification of this instance of veridical perception is simply a report, long after the fact, by just one person whose credibility is unclear. A naturalist, then, would not be unreasonable to follow Hume’s lead here and, given the general standing of testimony to the paranormal, believe that the testimony in question is false rather than call naturalism into question. But this response is simply an easy way to reject even well-documented cases of phenomena that might call into question one’s philosophical position. There is no good reason to doubt the credibility of the person who corroborated the veridical perception in question. And, in any case, this is not the only case of corroborated veridical perceptions occurring during apparent out-of-body experiences. Other examples are described in Sabom (1982 and 1998) as well as Ring and Lawrence (1993).
This case is cited in Sabom (1998).
James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 21.
This argument is a simple version of a similar argument for the existence of God on the basis of religious experience put forward by Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience, 272–275.
But, one might object, perhaps the reviving of the subject is itself the cause of the NDE. That is, a naturalist might maintain that NDEs occur at the time of revival of the brain and are caused by the restarting of neural processes. NDEs would then be more properly characterized as ‘returning from near-death experiences.’ (This point was made by an anonymous reader of this essay.) The major problem with this explanation of the NDE is that it fails to do justice to the phenomenological features of the NDE itself, particularly the sequential stages of the experience. Subjects of NDEs experience seeing their bodies from a point above the body early on in the experience, not at the time of revival. They also experience the more ‘transcendent’ dimensions of the experience after these initial out of body episodes, corresponding to the longer period of time spent in clinical death and, consequently, the lessening of biological activity in the brain. If the NDE were the result of reactivating neural activity, one would not expect this sequence within the reported phenomenology of the experience. Besides, subjects often do report being jarringly returned to an experience of their bodies at the terminus of the NDE, not at its onset. This is not what one would expect if the NDE begins with the revival of neural activity. It makes more sense to propose that the revival of neural activity occurs at the end of the NDE, when the person re-experiences being alive in the body.
This point is made by Becker, Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death, 94.
This issue is the crux of the discussion in Cherry (1986).
This concern was raised by an anonymous reader of this essay.
One might object that the subjects are not really dead since ‘death’ means something like the point at which vital functions cease for the last time. Subjects of NDEs might be in a state of ‘clinical death,’ a state wherein vital functions cease, but not ‘death’ since vital functions are later restored. In that case, ‘near-death’ is more like being ‘almost dead’ rather than being ‘temporarily dead.’ But even if we grant, contrary to standard medical practice, that ‘clinically dead’ does not mean ‘dead,’ then it is still reasonable to believe that, if consciousness persists during clinical death, it would also persist at ‘real’ death. For, what is the substantive difference between clinical death and real death if the feature that distinguishes real death from clinical death is simply that real death is irreversible? There is none. The difference seems to be nothing more than the difference between a temporary and a permanent state.
This is the conclusion reached by Habermas and Morehouse (1992).
This is the view of Potts (2002).
Ayer, ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’.
William Hasker, ‘Afterlife,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2007 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL=<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/afterlife/>.
See Chalmers (1995). See also Shear (1997). The grip of materialism is so tight that even philosophers who recognize an intractable ‘explanatory gap’ between conscious experience and its physical realization insist the problem is more likely with our understanding of nature than that there really is a gap in nature between the mental and physical. See, for example, Levine (2001).
Matthew Bagger (1999) gives expression to this attitude when he writes that, within the contemporary worldview, ‘We could have no good reason for asserting that an event, in principle, resists naturalistic explanation.’ If this isn’t an example of entrenched dogmatism, what is?
Even Christian philosophers now want to be materialists, as if that is the only way to be taken seriously by the rest of the profession. Some prominent ‘Christian materialists’ include Lynne Rudder Baker, Kevin J. Corcoran, Nancey Murphy, and Peter van Inwagen.
An earlier version of this paper was given at an Annual Meeting of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, and I am grateful for the comments of those present. I am also grateful for the comments of the external reviewers of this journal, and especially grateful for the helpful advice of my colleague, Anthony N. Perovich, Jr.
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Dell’Olio, A.J. Do Near-Death Experiences Provide a Rational Basis for Belief in Life after Death?. SOPHIA 49, 113–128 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0154-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0154-z