Near-Death Experiences: Understanding Visions of the Afterlife

This topic fascinates me, but the book is a slow and ponderous read. It was written by philosophers, so the discussion uses philosophical jargon. I had hoped for more examples of NDEs, but the same few are rehashed. There were times I wanted to say, "BUT . . . what about . . . " as I read due to the frustrating arguments offered. I suppose the analysis is fair and scientific, thus the three stars.

I’ll try to keep this brief. Many of the reviews of this book seem to assume the book should be a scientific or empirical study of NDEs. However, the book itself doesn’t pretend to do that. Rather the book is written by two analytic philosophers (including a very famous and prominent philosopher in the field of free will) who attempt to philosophically analyze the nature and entailments of NDEs initially through two famous NDE cases (e.g. Pam Reynolds) as well as make their own philosophical evaluations and reflections. Plenty of other books look at the scientific issues involved in NDEs; this one majors in the philosophical. So if you’re looking for the former, you’ll likely be disappointed with this book. There are few books that are philosophically focused and rigorously reasoned on NDEs. This is one such book. Cf. Stephen Braude (e.g. Immortal Remains). In any case, caveat emptor! Know what you’re getting into before purchasing. By the way, I don't ultimately agree with these philosophers and their evaluations of NDEs. I think there exist some or many NDEs which can't be entirely explicated primarily through naturalistic paradigms and which arguably point beyond naturalistic frameworks.

Recommending The Non Local Universe, by Nadeau and Kafatos, also published by Oxford University Press. My personal suggestion here is that people skip this book. The authors do not seem to have done their homework in researching the research on NDEs. Nor do they have the competence to condemn and/or judge the medical doctors and scientists who are engaged in serious studies of NDEs. Their attacks on Eben Alexander come across as petty, and ought to embarrass them. The authors trivialize and distort what ND Experiencers report and what these people infer from what happened to them. ---Their own endless speculation on what they think might have happened is undisciplined and irresponsible, and rooted more in their dogmatism than anything else. --- Go to the books by Alexander, Von Lommel, Jeffrey Long, Sam Parnia, and numerous others for serious scientific investigation of the topic. --- ND experiencers & NDE researchers are NOT asking that people adopt their religion or join them in worship of their god. What they ARE asking for is serious empirical scientific study of NDEs, rather than dogmatic dismissal of the growing body of reports of these experiences around the world. This is what science does: observe puzzling or new phenomena, , and study this phenomena in terms of consistent patterns, in an attempt to describe HOW the baffling aspects of the phenomena appear to work. And a fundamental fact regarding NDEs is that there are abundant consistent patterns to what experiencers describe that demand this serious scientific enquiry. Also there is a growing consensus that science, at the present time, cannot explain or explain away the NDE. -- This book contributes nothing of value to the ongoing discussion and study of the NDE.

The author demonstrates how rigorous philosophical thinking can be employed successfully to resolve a seemingly intractable problem; i.e. how to extract what's true out of the very popular and seductive stories we hear about what happens after death. Along the way, we get some very useful ways to recognize and understand common fallacies, like confirmation bias, that distort our understanding of the world.

I should have listened to the reviews and not purchased this. But I didn't. So I got what I deserved. A philosophical nose dive into the various possible ways that NDE's can be explained as products of the physical world, if you allow that a, b, c, d, e, f, and g MIGHT be true. The authors try to keep you interested by repeatedly saying that they aren't arguing that NDE's CANNOT possibly be supernatural experiences of the afterlife. But then they go on to repeatedly say that their physical world explanations are AS plausible (and even MORE plausible) typically in parentheses. So views of the Grand Canyon can be transformative too, huh? Terror management theory can help to explain NDF life reviews? That all blind people who have NDE's must be of the "input blindness" type and not the "processing blindness" type. Sorry, your philosophy-rich arguments don't come across to this scientifically-oriented mind as more plausible. Instead, the philosophic principle of Occam's Razor seems more appropriate (given two possible explanations, the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct). Suggest the next book, you tear into climate change and provide the deniers more reason to do nothing by arguing that climate change MIGHT be real since there's at least one possible argument that suggests that it could be explained by a, b, c, d, e, f, and g. Now there's a meaningful contribution to science! Don't waste your money.

Arrived on time (always important to me) but have only had time to read about half it. Enjoy what I have read so far.

It was OK It just had a hard time keeping my interest

This is a great book for someone who wants to know the scientific point of view of Near Death Experiences.

Interesting as a tentative analysis of NDE end naturalist explanation, but not convincing and some of the arguments against are plausible but very weak.