Science and the Near-Death Experience; How Consciousness Survives Death [Paperback]

After reading Carter's masterful Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics, I eagerly awaited the second book in his three-book series. Science and the Near-Death Experience builds a powerful and compelling case that the mind is not dependent on the brain and can exist independently of the brain.

To build this case, Carter postpones discussion of near-death experiences (NDEs) and survival of death until after he has spent the first 100 pages discussing the fundamental question underlying these issues: Does consciousness exist independently of the brain? After an eye-opening, extremely lucid tour of neuroscience, quantum physics, memory storage, and theories of life (what animates and organizes living organisms), he concludes that empirical evidence and the known laws of science fully permit the filter theory. This says that the brain doesn't produce consciousness, but rather acts as a filter that allows through, as Aldous Huxley put it, only "a measly trickle" of consciousness.

He then moves on to Part II: The Near-Death Experience. In my view, the strongest part of the book consists of several chapters exploring and refuting the proposed psychological, physiological, and pharmacological explanations of NDEs. These chapters were a real tour de force. He examined each of a dozen proposed explanations in detail, finding in each case that the phenomenon that supposedly explains NDEs (e.g., dissociated states, oxygen starvation, ketamine) is simply not a good match for the actual characteristics of NDEs. By the time he is done, all of the proposed alternative explanations look so weak and flimsy that they appear to really rest on the underlying confidence that a materialist explanation simply must be true.

Then come chapters on NDEs that contain veridical perceptions from an out-of-body perspective and NDEs in which those born blind experience sight. These appear to be direct refutations of the mind's dependence on the brain (drawing on Karl Popper's idea that science advances by refutations). In the end, the common equation of science with materialism comes out looking like an ideology, like its own kind of dogmatic faith.

This deserves to become a landmark book in the survival debate. Carter has a real gift for presenting complex, technical issues in simple, layman's terms. And he has an even more impressive gift of total fearlessness in the face of prevailing dogma. He never flinches, yet he meets this dogma, which depends so heavily on ridicule, without ridicule of his own. His arguments have the feel of a Zen swordsman, dispassionate but deadly accurate.

I am simply glad that Carter is out there writing. His book shows that those who believe in survival do not have to apologize, be timid, or take refuge in the mystery of "faith." On strictly scientific grounds, they are in the stronger position. With more books like this one, our society may start slowly waking up to this fact, with all its immense implications.

This is a scholarly, yet readable book. Consciousness is still a great mystery to the scientific community, which presumes it's "in the brain" yet cannot find where. The author begins the book with a section on whether consciousness depends on the brain- which so far no one has been able to prove- or is somehow independent of this organ, and makes his case largely from near-death experience reports and research, and well as from deathbed visions. If you are convinced that consciousness is just another bodily function, this book may give you something to think about. If you've ever wondered why we have a sense of ourselves- who and where we are, why we're here- Carter's work will fascinate you.

Robert S. Bobrow, MD
Associate Professor of Clinical Family Medicine
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, N.Y.

CARTER HITS (ANOTHER) HOME RUN!

Chris Carter is a man with a mission. An Oxford-trained philosopher who is firmly grounded in the physical sciences, he is well equipped for the task he has set himself -- to examine, in the course of three books, the evidence surrounding parapsychology and related subjects. This field, also called psi, rests on the premise that information may be acquired from, and may be inserted into, the environment without mediation by the physical senses.

Many individuals have risen to the defense of parapsychology, but few have done so with the meticulous, full-throated enthusiasm that is Carter's métier. The first book in his trilogy, Parapsychology and the Skeptics: A Scientific Argument for the Existence of ESP, established his credentials as a Rambo-like, one-man wrecking crew for the wearisome, perennial, often flimsy arguments of so-called skeptics -- "so-called" because their tactics often depart from healthy, open-minded skepticism, which is an invaluable factor in science; and because their objections frequently embody not skepticism but distortion, dissembling, bigotry, prejudice, and pseudoscientific dogmatism. As one such scientist sneered, "This [psi] is the sort of thing I would not believe in even if it existed." And as psi denouncer Ray Hyman, a psychologist, concedes, "The level of the debate [about psi] during the past 130 years has been an embarrassment for anyone who would like to believe that scholars and scientists adhere to standards of rationality and fair play."

Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death, the second book in Carter's trilogy, examines evidence suggesting that some aspect of human consciousness may survive the death of the physical body. Carter's focus is on the near-death experience, described in recent years by psychologists Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring, and Erlendur Haraldsson; psychiatrists Bruce Greyson and Peter Fenwick, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long, cardiologists Michael Sabom and Pim van Lommel, pediatrician Melvin Morse; researcher Karlis Osis, and others. Surveys reveal that around 13 million Americans have experienced near-death experiences, not including children. The essential components of the near-death experience are remarkably consistent in western cultures. They include a sense of peace and joy, an out-of-body sensation, entering a tunnel or darkness, encountering a light, meeting deceased individuals or guides, a life review, and encountering an unearthly realm. These features may be experienced in whole or part. On regaining consciousness and returning to daily life, NDEers typically experience a major shift in values, worldview, and a sense of serenity and peace. The fear of death generally disappears, and life takes on a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

Why does Carter focus on NDEs following his initial book defending parapsychology? The reason is straightforward. Materialistic scientists reject psi because they deny that consciousness can operate outside the cranium, the body, and the present. All information, they maintain, must be mediated through the physical senses. Any evidence that consciousness can function independently of the physical brain is denied. NDEs pose a stern challenge to this view, because they suggest that when the brain is profoundly malfunctioning near the moment of death, cognizance and clarity actually increase and mental activity becomes more acute and refined. If consciousness is totally dependent on the brain, as materialists contend, this should not be possible. Carter cites Kelly et al, who describe this challenge to materialism in stark terms:

"The central challenge of NDEs lies in asking how these complex states of consciousness, including vivid mentation, sensory perception, and memory, can occur under conditions in which current neurophysiological models of the production of mind by brain deem such states impossible. This conflict between current neuroscientific orthodoxy and the occurrence of NDEs under conditions of general anesthesia and/or cardiac arrest is head-on, profound, and inescapable. In our opinion, no future scientific or philosophic discussion of the mind-brain problem can be fully responsible intellectually, without taking these challenging data into account."

A book on NDEs, therefore, is a natural follow-up to Carter's initial book on parapsychology.

Carter begins by examining the strongest arguments against the existence of an afterlife -- the conventional belief within science that consciousness cannot exist apart from the biological brain. He endorses the views of philosophers Ferdinand Schiller, Henri Bergson, and William James that the brain does not produce consciousness, but canalizes, confines, and limits the mind. The brain does so, these observers suggest, by restricting its focus of attention and by excluding factors irrelevant for the organism's survival and reproduction. Thus, Carter asserts, the brain exercises a permissive and a transmissive function for consciousness, but not a productive function, much like a television set modifies and transmits external signals, but does not make them. During the NDE experience, these constraints on consciousness are somehow loosened, and a fuller comprehension of reality becomes possible. As astronomer David Darling puts it, we are conscious not because of our brain, but in spite of it.

Carter cites the view of Aldous Huxley who, in his book The Doors of Perception, elaborated on this view. Huxley famously described the brain as a "reducing valve" that screens out perceptions, memories, and thoughts that are not essential for survival and procreation. "According to such a theory," he said, "each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business at all costs is to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us stay alive on the surface of this particular planet."

Carter selects the writings of the anti-psi philosopher Paul Edwards to illustrate the logical deficiencies of the materialist position. In so doing, Carter refers to the observations of neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who said, after a lifetime of investigating the brain, "[T]he mind seems to act independently of the brain in the same sense that a programmer acts independently of his computer....In the end I conclude that there is no good evidence...that the brain alone can carry out the work that the mind does." Carter recruits the similar opinion of Nobel neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles. Carter concludes that Edwards' materialistic stance is "dogmatic prejudice against an empirical possibility that does not coincide with his materialistic faith."

As Carter leads the reader through the contentions of the materialists, it becomes obvious that theirs is indeed a faith-based belief system. There is simply no direct evidence that anything material is capable of generating consciousness. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodor says, "Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness." And as the theoretical biologist and complex-systems theorist Stuart Kauffman puts it, "Nobody has the faintest idea what consciousness is.... I don't have any idea. Nor does anybody else, including the philosophers of mind." Nobel neurophysiologist Roger Sperry took a similar position, saying, "Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature." From modern physics, Nobelist Eugene Wigner agreed: "We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind." And as contemporary physicist Nick Herbert states, "Science's biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot."

In spite of caveats such as these, materialistic skeptics remain wedded to the notion that the brain makes mind, like the liver makes bile, and that anyone who dissents is a traitor to science. But as Carter demonstrates, it is, alas, much more likely the other way `round.
An alternative to the materialistic conviction that the brain makes consciousness is the concept that consciousness is fundamental, neither derived from, nor reducible to, anything more basic. Thus the philosopher and cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, of the University of California-Irvine, states, "I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Space-time, matter, and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being. ...If this is right, if consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that, despite centuries of effort by the most brilliant of minds, there is as yet no physicalist theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless matter or energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience."

As Carter shows, the so-called skeptics deride the possibility that consciousness is fundamental as "absurd," which is Edwards' verdict. Yet where does the absurdity lie? Read more ›