This fine book
offers both an interesting examination and an explanation of near-death
experiences. In the course of doing as much, it also provides a summary of the
available evidence for the near-death experience as evidence for the
possibility of some post-mortem survival of personality after biological death.

After a solid
description of the near-death experience, the author incorporates current
research on the NDE, and evaluates the major arguments for and against the
experience as a source of evidence for post-mortem survival. The topic here is
undeniably important and there is an extensive body of literature devoted to examining
and evaluating the issue. As descriptions of the experience, and of the various
major objections to, and arguments for, the NDE go, as a credible source of
evidence for some form of post-mortem survival, there are very few indeed that
are as good; the author has done his homework.

By way of his
critical evaluation, or explanation of the NDE, he ends up favoring what he calls a holographic
explanation of the data in the strongest case studies.  This is a view to
the effect that while we cannot deny that the experience is due, in part, to
the creative powers of the mind that, in itself, is no reason for thinking
that the experiences are purely subjective.  If people in these experiences did
not actually, objectively, leave their bodies, the best explanation to the
effect that people are distinct from their bodies and, in fact, from time to
time leave them in these near-death episodes, would not be warranted. He is
well aware of the usual objections from skeptics , but
is not at all inclined, for example, to regard seriously the dominant objection
to the effect that all such experiences are purely hallucinatory and, more
often than not,  caused by  decreasing oxygen supply or 
something like frontal-lobe ischemia, not unlike frontal lobe epileptic
seizures.

In offering his
own view on this matter, he develops what he calls the ”holographic model ”
to explain how such experiences can be objective and yet caused by the mind.
For the philosophically inclined, the problem here may well be one of
describing the model a bit more fully and drawing the distinctions necessary to
set it off clearly from the earlier views of some skeptics, such as Susan Blackmore, to the effect that it is ultimately a
hallucinatory experience. In spite of the popularity of her earlier position (which
he points out she has abandoned recently), he is on target with regard to the
deficiencies of her position, as well as that of the more vocal skeptics.

This part of the
holographic model story may be a bit too sketchy for most readers, but it is
steeped in an awareness of the deeper issues, and the author is more than
competent to discuss the delicacies involved in the mind-body problem. In
general, however, I found the book a careful and dispassionately compelling
argument for the author ‘ s
conclusion that belief in mind-body dualism, in the classical Cartesian mode
is, when based upon the NDE experience, is anything but an irrational belief,
when one takes the issue seriously.

© 2006 Robert
Almeder

Robert
Almeder, Philosophy Department, Georgia State University,  Atlanta, Ga.

Categories: General, Philosophical