Alex Blasdel’s long read contains some fascinating facts and speculations (The new science of death: ‘There’s something going on in the brain that doesn’t make any sense’ April 2). However, it is strange to suggest that there are only three approaches to understanding so-called near-death experiences – physical, parapsychological and spiritual.
While the field of near-death studies is indeed full of “cooks 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 (especially, in my view, the strictly rationalist “analytical idealism” espoused by the philosopher and computer engineer. Bernardo Kastrup).
Alan Davies
Dale, Pembrokeshire
It’s a bit surprising that Alex Blasdel didn’t make use of the (misnamed) Tibetan Book of the Dead in this article about 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 stories of near-death experiences .
The clear belief in the book is that some form of consciousness persists after clinical death. If my memory serves me, it is up to a period of three days. The parallels are so strong that it seems as if the original author of the text had access to accounts of near-death experiences.
Tom Wilson
Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield
Since 1958 I have been involved as a mathematician in computer operating system software, sometimes specializing in the efficient digitization, storage and retrieval of data. I always needed to know what would be possible with the hardware. Alex Blasdel’s article did not 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 system startup and shutdown.
Jim Smith
Bromley, London
While Descartes may have enjoyed the long read (Letters, April 4), Gilbert Ryle would have turned in his grave.
Dr Allan Dodds
Bramcote, Nottinghamshire
