Posted by Alex Blasdel’s long read contains some fascinating facts and speculations (The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense, 2 April). However, it is odd to suggest that there are only three approaches to understanding so-called near-death experiences – physicalist, parapsychological and spiritualist.
While the field of near-death studies is indeed full of “kooks and grifters”, many serious scientists and rational thinkers in this and other fields, who are neither parapsychologists nor spiritualists, are now openly debating alternatives to physicalism. There are other, arguably better, metaphysical lenses through which to interpret the evidence, such as panpsychism and idealism (most notably, in my view, the rigorously rationalist “analytic idealism” put forward by the philosopher and computer engineer Bernardo Kastrup).
Alan Davies
Dale, Pembrokeshire
It’s a little surprising that Alex Blasdel didn’t draw on the (wrongly named) Tibetan Book of the Dead in this article on near-death experiences. The Bardo Thodol is a set of instructions on how to ease the dying person into death, or, rather, into some form of consciousness after death, and much of the initial stage resembles accounts of near-death experiences.
The evident belief in the book is that some form of consciousness persists after clinical death. If my memory serves me, this is up to a period of three days. The parallels are so strong that it would seem that the original author of the text had access to accounts of near-death experiences.
Tom Wilson
Professor emeritus, University of Sheffield
Since 1958, as a mathematician, I have been involved in computer operating system software, sometimes specialising in the efficient digitising, storage and retrieval of data. I always had to know what might be possible with the hardware. Alex Blasdel’s article didn’t discuss the brain’s “hardware”. We need to know a lot more about the everyday processing, storage and retrieval of data and video in the brain before we work on the startup and closedown of the system.
Jim Smith
Bromley, London
While Descartes might have enjoyed the long read (Letters, 4 April), Gilbert Ryle would have been spinning in his grave.
Dr Allan Dodds
Bramcote, Nottinghamshire