0:07

Welcome to Mortality Matters, a podcast

0:07

about conceptual issues in the philosophy

0:12

of death and the meaning of life. I am your host, Matthew Turnberg.

0:22

Can near death experiences be meaningful

0:22

if it turns out that none of their

0:26

contents are real in any objective sense?

0:30

In this episode, I'm covering chapter

0:30

nine of John Martin Fisher's book,

0:35

death Immortality and Meaning in Life.

0:37

In this chapter, Fisher continues his

0:37

discussion of near-death experiences.

0:42

Having taken himself to dispatch the

0:42

notion that they provide any evidence

0:47

for the existence of an afterlife, he

0:47

now considers the possible objection

0:51

that the awe and wonder that near

0:51

death experiences inspire and the

0:56

profound transformations they induce

0:56

in us are best explained by their ity.

1:03

That is to say, That the beings

1:03

that are so experienced are

1:07

not only real but supernatural. Suppose you were on the fence about

1:09

whether or not there's an afterlife

1:13

and further suppose that you encounter

1:13

someone who tells you not only

1:16

do they believe that there is an

1:16

afterlife, but they believe it because

1:20

they've been there and come back. They had a near-death experience.

1:23

Perhaps they had some sort of car

1:23

accident or some other kind of physical

1:28

trauma, which put them on death's door.

1:31

Where upon they went through a

1:31

dark tunnel towards a bright light.

1:35

They had a review of their

1:35

life as a whole and a sense of

1:38

profoundness and oneness and love. Perhaps they may even have transcended

1:41

to some other realm in which they had

1:45

conversations with people who are long

1:45

dead or some other kind of mystical

1:49

or supernatural experience, and for

1:49

some reason, they were unable to stay.

1:54

They had to return. Back to ordinary life.

1:57

So they've come back to tell

1:57

the tale and inform you of

1:59

what life after death is like. I think in that scenario, it's reasonable

2:01

to believe them if there's no counter

2:06

evidence or if there's no reason to doubt

2:06

that they're untrustworthy or that these

2:11

people might be lying or fraudulent. Now, of course, some

2:13

people may be fraudulent. But if they're otherwise trustworthy,

2:15

I think there's no reason to

2:18

believe that they're not sincere. However, he doesn't dispute that

2:19

such cases must be insincere.

2:23

He thinks many such people can be sincere.

2:26

There's no good reason to believe that

2:26

what they claim to have experienced

2:30

has any form of objective reality.

2:32

His argument is somewhat pres oppositional. So the thought here is that to rehearse

2:34

some of the arguments from chapter

2:38

eight, in order for that to be true,

2:38

what must be true of you such that what

2:42

you describe as even possible, how is

2:42

it even possible in the first instance

2:46

for one to separate from one's body?

2:49

Well, the presumption here is

2:49

that one has a soul or as to

2:52

say, one's mind is one's soul. And.

2:55

It can exist without a body. And furthermore, it can

2:57

exist in some immaterial way.

3:01

It can transcend to

3:01

some supernatural realm.

3:04

So Fisher thinks that's a deeply

3:04

mysterious notion, and in fact is false,

3:08

that the mind doesn't work that way and

3:08

the mind cannot exist without the body.

3:13

And as such, there's no good

3:13

reason to believe those experiences

3:16

as reported are in fact true.

3:18

Or as I might say, vertical. To say what they purport to experience

3:20

are as exactly as they are represented

3:25

by the experience itself, that it's not

3:25

some sort of illusion or hallucination.

3:29

So Fisher thinks that near

3:29

death experiences are a bit like

3:32

dreams, where in your dream life,

3:32

all of the things you think are

3:36

happening aren't really happening. So in chapter nine, you might find

3:38

at this point of the argument,

3:42

something incredibly deflating about

3:42

Fisher's explanation, where you

3:45

might find it overly reductionist.

3:47

And so what he takes away at the left,

3:47

he tries to give back with the right

3:50

fisher attempts to explain how it is.

3:53

That near death experiences can still be

3:53

meaningful and significant for those who

3:57

have them, even if they're not vertical as

3:57

to say, even if there is no supernatural

4:03

realm for one to go to in this way.

4:05

Fisher's argument here in chapter nine

4:05

is a little bit similar to certain

4:09

atheists who can explain how life can

4:09

still be meaningful or how morality

4:14

can still have some form of objective

4:14

basis absent a God, and the arguments

4:20

proceed in a somewhat parallel fashion. So first Fisher reminds us of all

4:22

sorts of other awesome things.

4:27

Things that induce awe or wonder, which

4:27

are not supernatural things like a

4:31

beautiful sunset over in the ocean, or the

4:31

Great Wall of China, or the Grand Canyon,

4:37

or the pyramids of Egypt and so on.

4:39

So the thought here is it's not

4:39

necessary for something to be

4:43

supernatural in order for it to

4:43

be awesome or inspiring of wonder.

4:49

So although Fisher doesn't explicitly

4:49

state this, he's softening up the reader

4:53

by describing purely natural phenomenon,

4:53

which are nevertheless awesome.

4:57

In order to illustrate how it is that

4:57

Supernaturalism is not a necessary

5:03

condition for anything to be worthy

5:03

of awe, and while in the last chapter,

5:07

Fisher drew a parallel between

5:07

near death experiences and dreams.

5:12

Here in chapter nine, he draws

5:12

a similar parallel, but instead

5:16

of with dreams, instead with

5:16

hallucinogenic drugs like L s D.

5:21

So he recounts personal experience with

5:21

L S D that was reported by Oliver Sachs.

5:26

And the details of the case

5:26

are not super relevant.

5:29

I'm not gonna recount them here,

5:29

but they basically have exactly

5:32

the same form of descriptions

5:32

that a near death experience has.

5:36

Namely, there's an out of body experience.

5:39

You go down a dark tunnel

5:39

with a light at the end of the

5:42

tunnel, one has a life review.

5:44

There's a kind of sense of transformation

5:44

and a special connection to the simpler,

5:50

mundane elements of everyday life.

5:53

So there's the sense of the profound

5:53

realization of the importance

5:57

of the ordinary moments of life

5:57

and the preciousness of life.

6:01

And he cites multiple

6:01

sources on this front.

6:03

Not only Oliver Sachs, but also Michael

6:03

Poland has a book How to Change Your

6:08

Mind, which recounts the spirituality

6:08

of hallucinogenic experiences with

6:13

these types of drugs like L S D. And he also references Als Huxley,

6:15

who says quite similar things.

6:19

The reason Fisher is recounting

6:19

these different experiences is to

6:23

try to draw a certain parallelism

6:23

between near-death experiences and

6:28

hallucinogenic experiences on drugs.

6:30

So the argument would be something like this. L S D trips or hallucinogenic drugs

6:32

are similar to near death experiences.

6:38

Trips on L S D are purely physically

6:38

caused and therefore so too, we

6:44

should think near death experiences

6:44

are purely physically caused as well.

6:48

That there is nothing supernatural

6:48

about them, at least in terms

6:52

of how they're produced. However, supernaturalists

6:53

don't deny that near death

6:57

experiences have a physical cause. Of course, when one is near

7:00

death, whatever it is that nearly

7:04

kills you is physically caused.

7:06

And doulas and supernaturalists

7:06

don't dispute that.

7:09

In fact, they might find it entirely

7:09

irrelevant and unsurprising.

7:12

So the dispute is not whether

7:12

some of the causes of a near-death

7:16

experience are physical. But whether all of the causes of a

7:18

near death experience are physical.

7:22

So if the supernaturalists are right,

7:22

then when one makes contact with a

7:26

supernatural realm by going there during

7:26

a near death experience, then part of what

7:32

causes your experience is being an actual

7:32

contact with the supernatural realm.

7:38

And if that's the case, then part of

7:38

the causes or some of the causes of your

7:42

experience is something supernatural.

7:45

And that is what Fisher would deny.

7:48

Or at least Fisher would say

7:48

that there's no good reason

7:50

to believe that that's true. So various kinds of believers in

7:51

the supernatural may make these

7:56

kinds of parallelisms as well.

7:58

The parallelism may actually

7:58

go in the opposite direction.

8:01

Perhaps someone like Duncan Trestle or

8:01

he's a comedian who seems to believe in

8:05

all sorts of spiritual and supernatural

8:05

phenomenon, he may run the parallelism

8:09

in the opposite direction by saying that. L S D trips or any kind of hallucinogenic

8:11

substances are a pathway to

8:17

contacting some kind of supernatural

8:17

realm or supernatural entities.

8:22

And of course, Trussel may be

8:22

somewhat idiosyncratic, but he's

8:24

not entirely alone in this thought. And so far as.

8:27

There are classes of hallucinogens

8:27

that are described as entheogenic.

8:31

That is to say they put you in

8:31

contact with something divine, and

8:35

these substances are used quite

8:35

commonly throughout many religions.

8:40

Not only monotheistic faiths, but

8:40

also at least in some versions,

8:44

but in animistic tribes as well.

8:46

Most famously in South America. So I think the naturalist response

8:47

to that is to argue that it's not

8:53

the content of experience, which

8:53

has a kind of objective status.

8:56

Rather, the hallucinogenic substances

8:56

of this nature are similar to

9:00

dreams, but their value or their

9:00

significance derives from the

9:05

effect they have on the experiencer. And this is pretty much what Fisher

9:07

argues at the end of the last chapter.

9:11

By saying things like near death

9:11

experiences are not best understood in

9:15

terms of the reality of their content,

9:15

but in terms of how they affect the

9:19

experiencer itself, so something like L S

9:19

D or other kinds of hallucinogenic drugs.

9:25

Don't put you in contact with something

9:25

that's objectively real and supernatural.

9:29

Rather, they affect the

9:29

subjectivity of your own experience.

9:34

You might think of it as a kind of

9:34

distortion or glitching your perceptual

9:38

states so that when it feels as if

9:38

yourself dissolves and you become at one

9:44

with the universe or that the barrier

9:44

between what it is that you are and you're

9:49

surrounding an environment dissolves

9:49

and you have a sense of continuity with

9:54

the universe such that it may not even

9:54

be true that there's a you anymore.

9:58

These are all effects of the

9:58

subjectivity of your own experience.

10:03

It doesn't literally become true.

10:06

It's at best a metaphor. It feels as if the self dissolves when

10:07

in fact the self does not dissolve.

10:12

It's merely the feeling that it

10:12

does, which is induced by the drug.

10:15

So I think that is the kind of square

10:15

style response that Fisher might be

10:20

a little square in this regard, but

10:20

I think this is the kind of response

10:23

he would have to give, or any kind

10:23

of naturalist would have to give for

10:28

what is going on with the nature.

10:31

Of experience and what it is like to

10:31

undergo hallucinogenic experiences.

10:37

And this is contrasted with self-described

10:37

psycho knots such as Rom das, who think

10:42

that hallucinogenic substances do put

10:42

you in contact with something divine.

10:47

It's not purely a matter of your

10:47

subjectivity, but is an objective

10:51

fact that when taking certain

10:51

substances, you do come in contact.

10:55

It's not merely that you feel as if you

10:55

do, you actually do come in contact with

10:59

the divine in one respect or another. Okay, so in order to respond adequately

11:02

to this objection that a naturalistic

11:08

explanation is reductive and fails to

11:08

capture what makes a near death experience

11:16

profound or meaningful, Fisher has to

11:16

do a bit of work in order to set up

11:20

what the meaning of an experience like a

11:20

near death experience would consistent.

11:25

And to do this, he makes this distinction

11:25

between, well, you might think of his

11:28

ordinary explanations and storytelling.

11:31

So the thought is when engaging in

11:31

storytelling, this helps us come to

11:36

sort our experiences by constructing a

11:36

narrative in which events are sequenced

11:42

in emotionally recognizable patterns.

11:45

And if stories are told,

11:45

well, they make sense to us.

11:48

They give us a kind of

11:48

emotional understanding.

11:51

And this emotional understanding

11:51

is to be contrasted with what?

11:54

Distinguished as a kind of cognitive

11:54

understanding in which we just

11:58

come to understand new information. So when we give explanations such as

11:59

in science, or perhaps in mathematics

12:03

or in other kinds of scientific realms

12:03

or disciplines, what the scientist does

12:08

is gives us an explanation that yields

12:08

a kind of cognitive understanding.

12:12

That presents a model of how the

12:12

world works in some part or another.

12:16

How psychologist gives a model

12:16

as to how the mind works, or a

12:20

geologist gives us a model about

12:20

how plate tectonics works and so on.

12:25

However, a storyteller

12:25

is doing something else.

12:28

According to Fisher, a storyteller is

12:28

crafting a narrative by recounting certain

12:34

events in certain characters in a certain

12:34

setting, which has a certain emotional

12:39

impact upon us by which we can relate

12:39

to that scenario, or to those characters

12:44

and to the events that they undergo.

12:47

So the important difference between

12:47

ordinary explanations, Which produce

12:51

a kind of cognitive understanding

12:51

and stories, which give us a kind

12:55

of emotional understanding, is that

12:55

we don't have to require that the

12:59

stories are based on real events. We can understand that the stories are

13:02

fictional when they are fictional, and

13:06

yet they can have a certain meaning for

13:06

us, which we can understand emotionally.

13:11

Without being real, without

13:11

there being those characters

13:15

who actually really exist. So for instance, when I watch the Lord

13:16

of the Rings movies, I can suspend my

13:20

disbelief that Frodo's not a real person

13:20

or that the one ring wouldn't really

13:25

have magic of that nature wouldn't

13:25

really be possible in real life.

13:29

I can suspend my disbelief in. The magic of the one ring and appreciate

13:31

the story in a way that can allow

13:35

me to experience a certain range

13:35

of emotions to go on the journey of

13:39

that story, go through the emotional

13:39

rollercoaster, so to speak, and have a

13:42

certain kind of satisfaction in that. However, I think Fisher in this

13:44

regard, underestimates stories.

13:48

So stories are not just happy pills.

13:51

That's a very reductionist way

13:51

of thinking about stories, right?

13:55

Sometimes we watch movies or we read books

13:55

in order to make ourselves feel better

13:59

or even to make ourselves feel worse. We might watch a scary

14:01

movie to frighten us, right?

14:04

To have the kind of emotional impact. But there, I think there's a kind of

14:06

truth in storytelling, which is cognitive.

14:11

To be fair to Fisher, he doesn't

14:11

say that this distinction between

14:13

cognitive and emotional understanding. Is mutually exclusive, right?

14:17

He just distinguishes them. He doesn't say that they don't overlap.

14:20

Perhaps you can emotionally and

14:20

cognitively understand one and

14:23

the same thing and you can have

14:23

overlapping kinds of understanding.

14:26

I would take it that that's

14:26

what he thinks, cuz I think he's

14:29

getting this from Valent's notion

14:29

of a narrative explanation.

14:32

Nevertheless, I think it's important to

14:32

at least emphasize that the appreciation

14:37

of literature and great art should

14:37

have a certain cognitive element to it.

14:43

And if we're only analyzing the meaning

14:43

of a story or its value in terms of the

14:48

kind of emotional outputs that we could

14:48

derive from our experiences of literature

14:54

or fiction, that's a quite impoverished

14:54

way of appreciating great works of art

14:59

and in fact, the greatest works of art.

15:01

Tell us something profound, I

15:01

think, about the human condition.

15:05

And they do. So not just emotionally, but cognitively.

15:07

We can read Russian literature and come

15:07

to have a cognitive understanding of our

15:13

affinity as mortal beings, or what the

15:13

meaning of life consists in, or other

15:18

kinds of philosophical questions, which

15:18

we can understand at a cognitive level.

15:24

Or we can watch a Woody Allen movie

15:24

and have a deeper understanding

15:27

of gender relationships, the

15:27

relationships between men and women.

15:33

Or I referenced Lord of the Rings earlier. So I think that can give us not just

15:35

an emotional understanding, perhaps

15:38

also a cognitive understanding about

15:38

the nature of corruption and temptation

15:42

and desire and the value of friendship.

15:44

I'm also not entirely sure if

15:44

emotional understanding is really

15:48

a form of understanding at all and

15:48

not just emotional relatability.

15:52

I think if we were to call emotional

15:52

understanding as a form of understanding,

15:56

we need to be able to articulate

15:56

what it is that one understands.

15:59

So when it comes to education, when

15:59

students take my classes and I give

16:04

them a test, What I'm not trying

16:04

to do is to set up incentives for

16:10

the test so that students will

16:10

just memorize and regurgitate

16:13

whatever it is that they memorized. Because if I were to do so, I would

16:15

be merely testing knowledge and it

16:19

would be testing knowledge in a very

16:19

ephemeral and temporary fashion.

16:23

The hope is to do something more

16:23

than that, that there's a kind

16:26

of epistemic goal to teaching.

16:29

Which goes beyond the mere acquisition

16:29

of knowledge, but attains a certain

16:33

level of understanding where to achieve

16:33

understanding one must a, know what it

16:38

is that one understands, but furthermore

16:38

be able to have a certain explanatory

16:42

connections between what the knowledge

16:42

is based upon and the knowledge itself.

16:47

So my point is that when somebody fully

16:47

understands something, they should have

16:51

some kind of self-awareness about what

16:51

it is that they understand sufficiently

16:57

for them to be able to articulate it. And in that way, I think it goes

16:58

quite further beyond mere knowledge

17:03

where one can know something without

17:03

being in a position to be able to

17:06

articulate what it is that one knows. In this way, I think of knowledge more.

17:10

Informationally. And although it's somewhat

17:11

controversial, I don't think knowledge

17:14

requires the kind of inferential

17:14

connections that one may draw upon

17:18

in one's web of belief, so to speak.

17:21

However, all of this is merely to describe

17:21

what Fisher calls cognitive understanding,

17:26

but what he says about emotional

17:26

understanding sounds more similar to me

17:31

as what I would describe as relatability.

17:35

If one seems to emotionally understand

17:35

a story, I think what that means is that

17:40

that person can relate to the characters,

17:40

they can relate to the storytelling beats,

17:45

even if it's radically different than

17:45

anything they themselves experienced.

17:50

They can relate to certain elements of it. So for instance, in Lord of the Rings, I

17:52

myself am not very similar to a Hobbit.

17:57

I wear shoes, I'm five 10,

17:57

whereas hobbits are much shorter.

18:02

I don't live in any condition that's

18:02

similar to that, and yet I can relate

18:07

to the kinds of friendships they have or

18:07

their overall worldviews, or some of their

18:12

values, which are skeptical of technology.

18:14

Perhaps I don't emotionally understand

18:14

it as well as I might think because

18:18

I'm not so skeptical of technology. So the point of this digression into

18:19

what level of emotional understanding

18:24

we can have regarding storytelling is to

18:24

bring it back to near death experiences.

18:29

So Fisher, Talks about this

18:29

because he thinks that near

18:33

death experiences are fictional.

18:36

They have a certain narrative structure.

18:38

They have a kind of journey, like a

18:38

voyage to some unknown destination,

18:45

and typically they are accompanied by

18:45

some sort of guide who is a benevolent.

18:51

Authority figure, or even a parental

18:51

figure of some kind, and that figure

18:55

may be Jesus or God, or it might be

18:55

your parents who have long since passed

19:01

and now have come to speak to you from

19:01

the other side of what Heaven is like.

19:05

So Fisher's point here is that, Many

19:05

of the experiences as recounted by

19:10

those who claim to have near death

19:10

experiences are things that play into

19:15

certain storytelling tropes, and I

19:15

think Fisher is using this as evidence,

19:20

a further reason to believe that.

19:23

They're fictional, although Fisher

19:23

himself is not explicit on this point.

19:27

However, insofar as near death

19:27

experiences exhibit a familiar kind

19:32

of narrative and a familiar kind

19:32

of storytelling tropes, they can be

19:38

meaningful without being supernatural.

19:41

Fisher does not think that near death

19:41

experiences must be supernatural

19:46

in order to be meaningful at all. In fact, there are other kinds of

19:48

stories with similar kinds of tropes

19:53

and a similar narrative structure, which

19:53

are quite meaningful, but don't involve

19:58

the same kinds of supernaturalism.

20:00

Now, I think De of Gilgamesh and

20:00

Homer's, I and OSUs are not really

20:04

great examples in the sofar, as they

20:04

do involve supernatural elements.

20:08

In all three of those stories, however,

20:08

what I have in mind about them,

20:11

there's no transcendence to some kind

20:11

of immaterial, supernatural heaven.

20:17

Although there are Greek myths in which

20:17

characters do go to the underworld,

20:20

but Fisher's point in recognizing the

20:20

similarities in storytelling tropes

20:25

was to indicate that, well, we have

20:25

no good reason to believe that there

20:30

really is a cyclops in some island

20:30

as recounted in Homer's Odyssey.

20:35

And so we also have no good reason

20:35

to believe that there's an afterlife.

20:40

Which is an immaterial,

20:40

transcendent, supernatural realm.

20:43

And furthermore, there doesn't have to

20:43

be in order for it to be a good story.

20:47

So just as we can have a certain kind

20:47

of emotional understanding, despite the

20:51

fact that the story is fictitious in

20:51

partial recognition of the fictional

20:56

aspect of a story, we can nevertheless

20:56

have a significant experience.

21:00

It doesn't take away from that experience

21:00

to recognize that the story is fictional.

21:05

However, despite the similarity

21:05

in storytelling tropes, I do think

21:10

there's a big difference here between

21:10

dreams, L S D trips and traditional

21:17

stories of voyages into the unknown

21:17

and the kinds of testimonies that we

21:23

receive from people claiming to have

21:23

gone to an afterlife and returned.

21:27

And the difference is this. Suppose that you are a skeptic and

21:28

suppose that you think there is

21:33

no afterlife and then you have an

21:33

experience, you come close to death.

21:39

You have an accident of some

21:39

kind and you have a near death

21:43

experience with all the same tropes.

21:45

You go out of your body, you

21:45

have an out of body experience.

21:48

You then go down a dark tunnel.

21:51

Your life flashes before your eyes.

21:53

You recount everything in your life,

21:53

and then you go towards the light and

21:57

you enter into some sort of transcendent

21:57

realm of love and happiness, and

22:02

then you are uphold back in return. Suppose you found out somehow that guess

22:03

what everything you experienced is real.

22:09

And that it really is as you thought

22:09

it is, as you experienced it.

22:13

That's a real place. It's waiting for you after you die.

22:16

I think that would give you good reason

22:16

to believe that death isn't so scary and

22:22

it would have an impact upon your life.

22:24

It should change your life in

22:24

certain kinds of ways if you

22:27

were in doubt about it before. But now suppose, guess what?

22:30

That's all a dream. None of that's real.

22:33

There is no heaven. I think that has a different

22:34

kind of practical import.

22:37

Namely, you should fear death

22:37

more than you would've otherwise.

22:41

Cuz you know that's the end. And I think your experience would be a lot

22:43

less meaningful if you, for independent

22:47

reasons, discovered that the experience

22:47

you had turned out to just be like a

22:51

dream and that none of that is real.

22:53

That there is no supernatural realm. There is no afterlife and

22:55

none of that really exists.

22:59

I think that'd be a huge letdown

22:59

and it'd be a huge letdown and be

23:02

significantly less meaningful than

23:02

learning that Harry Potter isn't

23:07

real or that Frodo isn't real.

23:10

Or that there really was no cyclops

23:10

nor an Aus to encounter Cyclops.

23:17

So the difference is that when it

23:17

comes to near death experiences,

23:20

there's an implication for what

23:20

will happen to you after you die.

23:23

Whereas if Frodo is or isn't real or

23:23

any of these other fictional stories,

23:28

there's no implication whatsoever as to

23:28

what will happen to you when you die.

23:33

And that's the difference. And similarly, when it comes to.

23:36

Stories. If it turns out that the stories

23:37

of the Bible are actually true and

23:41

they're suppose Jesus is the son

23:41

of God and the trinity is real.

23:46

That should have a significant

23:46

impact on what your worldview

23:50

is and your thoughts about what

23:50

will happen to you when you die.

23:54

But if it turns out the Bible's just

23:54

another work of fiction, much like

23:57

Harry Potter, that too should have a

23:57

significant impact on your worldview

24:02

and what you think should happen

24:02

or will happen to you when you die.

24:05

So the stakes are as big

24:05

as stakes can possibly be.

24:09

The stakes could not be larger. We're talking about eternity.

24:12

So I don't think that fishers

24:12

argument here succeeds.

24:15

I don't think that near death

24:15

experiences can be just as.

24:19

Significant or just as meaningful

24:19

if it turns out it's all a dream,

24:24

or at least similar to a dream

24:24

in the sense that nothing you

24:26

experienced is objectively real.

24:29

Now, that isn't to say that a

24:29

naturalistic explanation has no sense

24:32

of meaning or significance whatsoever. I just think it's a huge letdown,

24:34

and insofar as Fisher argues

24:38

that it isn't Fisher's mistaken. So lastly, Fisher tries to argue

24:40

that near death experiences are

24:44

kind of like meaningful fiction. They should be understood metaphorically.

24:48

Not literally, and insofar as they can

24:48

be, that we can achieve a certain kind

24:53

of emotional understanding from them. One can have this level of understanding,

24:54

even in the acknowledgement that

24:59

none of it is real and there's

24:59

only one realm, the physical realm.

25:03

So he is a materialist, and yet we can

25:03

still have a certain kind of awe or

25:07

inspiration from the fictional story

25:07

that is the near death experience.

25:12

It's not re reductionist or

25:12

deflating to think of it that way.

25:15

We just need to re-situate our

25:15

sense of awe from a supernatural

25:19

orientation to a natural orientation.

25:21

However, I don't think that's accurate. If anything, if it really is

25:23

true that there's a supernatural

25:26

realm, then that fact should

25:26

lessen our anxiety about death.

25:30

But if it turns out that there isn't,

25:30

that materialism is the case, then it

25:35

should not assuage our death anxiety to

25:35

have a near death experience, no more

25:40

than just having an ordinary dream. And in this last section of the chapter,

25:42

Fisher Waxes poetic a little bit about

25:46

how near death experiences assuage death

25:46

anxiety with a profound sense of love and

25:51

this profound sense of love, specifically

25:51

from one's parental guide or companion

25:57

into this dreamlike state of an afterlife

25:57

should induce in us a sense of awe and

26:04

a sense of a reduced sense of death,

26:04

anxiety, and a sense of loving guidance.

26:09

But again, All of that is an illusion.

26:11

If none of it is real, it really

26:11

shouldn't make a difference.

26:15

So why should a loving companion

26:15

that accompanies want into this

26:19

dream-like existence of an afterlife,

26:19

assuage our death anxiety if it

26:23

turns out that none of it is real? It's just a dream.

26:27

In fact, if it's just a dream,

26:27

it should make no difference to

26:30

oblivion, which is what awaits

26:30

us on a materialistic worldview.

26:33

We're just gonna be food for worms. So if we have some dream which makes

26:35

us more comfortable with our own

26:40

death, then we're just in error.

26:42

We're more or less delusional. Now, if it turns out that the

26:44

near death experience was real,

26:46

that these people really did go

26:46

to an afterlife and came back.

26:50

Then it makes perfect sense why that

26:50

should relieve our death anxiety.

26:53

Because previously we were anxious about

26:53

being food for worms, and then when we

26:57

hear about these people who go to the

26:57

afterlife and come back, we realize, hey,

27:01

they make it, maybe I can make it too. Maybe there's something real to go to.

27:04

And if it turns out that's not

27:04

true, then it's just delusional and

27:08

there's no good reason to think it

27:08

should calm our anxiety about death.

27:11

We should still be anxious about death. If anything, it has no more rationality

27:13

to it than when it comes to death anxiety

27:17

than a pill which would alleviate it

27:17

like an anti-anxiety medicine just has

27:22

a causal effect on calming our anxiety,

27:22

but in virtue of no reason whatsoever

27:26

that would make it appropriate. It more or less just induces

27:28

calmness in us regardless.

27:32

So in this regard, I do think

27:32

that Fisher is quite wrong.

27:35

It is a huge letdown to realize that

27:35

there is no supernatural world, that

27:39

there is no afterlife to go to upon death. Perhaps that's the right left down to

27:42

have, because if it turns out that it

27:46

would be impossible for there to be an

27:46

afterlife, that's part of the tragedy of

27:50

our existence as finite beings and being

27:50

diluted about that is not gonna help us.

28:02

Alright, so in this episode, we

28:02

considered how near death experiences

28:07

could be meaningful within a

28:07

materialistic and naturalistic

28:11

worldview, which is what Fisher endorses.

28:13

So Fisher argues that near death

28:13

experiences can be just as meaningful

28:17

for a naturalist as they could be for

28:17

a supernaturalist, arguing that they

28:21

should be best interpreted metaphorically

28:21

as a kind of last voyage in one's life.

28:27

And in that sense have similar

28:27

storytelling tropes and a similar

28:31

narrative structure as to other kinds of

28:31

works of fiction in which people travel

28:36

from familiar to unfamiliar realms.

28:38

Fisher lichens, near death experiences

28:38

to hallucinogenic drug experiences, such

28:44

as taking a trip on L S D, however, The

28:44

parallel can be run backwards in the other

28:49

direction in which a supernaturalist can

28:49

see things like hallucinogenic drugs as

28:54

pathways by which one would contact the

28:54

supernatural, either for good or ill.

28:59

I challenge fisher's distinction

28:59

between cognitive and emotional

29:03

understanding, insofar as I think

29:03

that emotional understanding may

29:07

just be a kind of relatability. There is no proposition by

29:09

which the person would be said

29:12

to understand in this way. It's something of a mode of speaking

29:14

that we would call emotional relatability

29:19

as a form of understanding at all. And lastly, I think Fisher underestimates

29:21

just how much of a letdown it is to

29:26

realize that there's nothing supernatural

29:26

and we're one to have a near death

29:31

experience and then further discover that

29:31

there is nothing supernatural that too.

29:36

Would have a profound sapping effect

29:36

on how meaningful or significant that

29:41

near death experiences is for one's

29:41

life, not least of which, because it

29:45

has profound implications per what

29:45

happens to us after we die, whereas

29:49

other works of fiction do not.