Evidence of near-death experiences often includes stories about a tunnel with a light at the end, or meetings with deceased relatives. Sometimes (and this is a subject that has attracted much scientific attention), resuscitated patients accurately recount the details of their operation, claiming that they had been hovering over their body throughout the process. We refer to these experiences as a kind of phase state, a classification which also applies to lucid dreams.
The subject of NDEs has now also made it into the realm of philosophy. Ira Greenberg, who studies a wide range of questions about the nature of death and the human mind, has chosen to include near-death experiences in his doctoral studies. The resulting thesis was presented at University College Cork (Ireland) in May 2021.
Being a philosopher, Greenberg explores both medical data and the centuries-old experiences of Indo-Tibetan Buddhists. According to this branch of Buddhism, what a person observes at the time of a NDE directly depends on their mental training. If the person had no such training, the experience then depends on their state during and before death, as well as on their cultural background.
On the other hand, medical scientists no longer define death as a specific moment in time (for example, when the heart stops beating, breathing stops, or the brain ceases to function). Death is a process that can be interrupted. Thus, in some cases, near-death experiences were described even in the absence of brain activity. Although, there are, of course, alternative explanations: it is possible that the hallucinations took place as soon as the brain resumed its function, but the patient determined the time of their occurrence incorrectly.
Evidence of near-death experiences is still rare enough to be able to verify it properly. The best way to investigate, Greenberg argues, is to seek a physicalist explanation, but to be open to other possibilities.
