Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Prometheus Books (1993), Edition: Reprint, 303 pages
Description
Progress in medical science has increased our understanding of what happens when the brain begins to fail. Psychology delves ever more deeply into the nature of the self. In Dying to Live, Blackmore, a leading expert in near-death experiences, explores what psychology, biology, and medicine have to say about this extraordinary aspect of death and dying.
User reviews
LibraryThing member SkepChris
Having had a near death experience herself, Susan Blackmore first investigated the paranormal side of the issue. In that period she wrote [Beyond the Body], in which she collects many anecdotes. She has not developed a very critical stance yet and concludes that there certainly is reason to
When she wrote Dying to Live she had reached another viewpoint. Most anecdotes could also be explained by a, if you will, materialistic explanation, and she offers physiological explanations for most of the anecdotes she heard. She puts great emphasis on the fact that, as the anecdote cannot be investigated physiologically, her explanation is only an option and not evidence that this is what happened. I've seen more than one critic of this book who failed to observe all these notices.
What struck me most is that she describes how people of whom anecdotes are going around were tracked down for further questions. She manages to show quite well that the physiological explanation is never excluded by the miraculous observations that anecdotes often contain. It turns out that when actually checking on the location that there was never made a final proof that a near dead person made observations that could only have been made out of the body. For example someone seeing shoes on the roof of a hospital could have seen them from a window.
For me this book is the clearest of the three books I read of her. After this I read 'Consciousness, a short introduction'. In this book she starts of clearly by showing how we should approach consciousness, and that we assume things like the Cartesian theatre which turn out to be illusions, But she ends up taking a rather firm stancepoint about consciousness, coming to rather strong conclusions from what i see as merely possible interpretations of experimental data.
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investigate this further.When she wrote Dying to Live she had reached another viewpoint. Most anecdotes could also be explained by a, if you will, materialistic explanation, and she offers physiological explanations for most of the anecdotes she heard. She puts great emphasis on the fact that, as the anecdote cannot be investigated physiologically, her explanation is only an option and not evidence that this is what happened. I've seen more than one critic of this book who failed to observe all these notices.
What struck me most is that she describes how people of whom anecdotes are going around were tracked down for further questions. She manages to show quite well that the physiological explanation is never excluded by the miraculous observations that anecdotes often contain. It turns out that when actually checking on the location that there was never made a final proof that a near dead person made observations that could only have been made out of the body. For example someone seeing shoes on the roof of a hospital could have seen them from a window.
For me this book is the clearest of the three books I read of her. After this I read 'Consciousness, a short introduction'. In this book she starts of clearly by showing how we should approach consciousness, and that we assume things like the Cartesian theatre which turn out to be illusions, But she ends up taking a rather firm stancepoint about consciousness, coming to rather strong conclusions from what i see as merely possible interpretations of experimental data.
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LibraryThing member Devil_llama
The author takes on the task of evaluating near death experiences, and does a good job of sorting through the literature. She dissects the credulous arguments for afterlife, and offers her own alternatives. For the most part, the book is well written and solidly researched, but the author does go
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quite a bit beyond the data, offering up the idea that because our sense of self is a mental construct (a point I have little problem agreeing with) and that the world is interpreted through our brain, that there is in fact no actual reality. In the end, she drifts into typical philosophical double-speak, and finally breaks through with a plea to embrace Buddhism. Overall, the book would have been excellent if the author had remained within the realm of the scientific model she was presenting, rather than trying to force it into a preferred metaphysical model in opposition to the metaphysical model she was denying. Good reading for anyone who is well enough versed in critical thinking to notice the bait-and-switch and approach her conclusions with the same skepticism that she has so admirably applied to the other, more Western metaphysical authors. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1993
Physical description
303 p.; 5.54 inches
ISBN
0879758708 / 9780879758707
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