Is Modernism Having a Near-Death Experience?

Examining Shermer and Sacks for clues as we enter the postmodern era

PHI 4341
Ways of Knowing
Jan Whitehouse
4/28/2009
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Most geniuses responsible for the major mutations in the history of thought seem to have certain features in
common; on the one hand skepticism, often carried to the point of iconoclasm, in their attitude towards
traditional ideas, axioms and dogmas, towards everything that is taken for granted; on the other hand, an
open-mindedness that verges on naïve credulity towards new concepts which seem to hold out some
promise to their instinctive gropings. Out of this combination results that crucial capacity of perceiving a
familiar object, situation, problem, or collection of data, in a sudden new light or new context: of seeing a
branch not as a part of a tree, but as a potential weapon or tool; of associating the fall of an apple not with
its ripeness, but with the motion of the moon… The discoverer perceives relational patterns or functional
analogies where nobody saw them before, as the poet perceives the image of a camel in a drifting cloud.”
(Koestler, p. 518, 519)

Abstract:

I am primarily researching contrasts between the writings of Shermer and Sacks,

because I am persuaded that their texts, taken together, can serve as a jumping-off point

for discussing the tension we encounter as we straddle two epochs: the entrenched

modern and still-emerging postmodern schools of understanding experience. Modernists,

using classical science as their oracle, may declare a narrative or experience as being

suspect or “untrue” by providing strict mechanical understandings as to what something

“really” is or how it “really” works. Postmodernism critiques metanarratives, and modern

Newtonian science is a prime example of such a metanarrative, with its own codified

belief system, as outlined in John Broomfield’s Other Ways of Knowing.

Modern science compulsively seeks quantification and closure. It assigns the

stigma of superstition to finding meaning in narratives and experiences. It claims

neutrality when its pursuits and experiments are subjectively chosen and prioritized.

Modern science cannot contain the enormity of the experiences we may have, nor can it

keep pace with narratives to which we subscribe. Modern - or classical - science falls

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silent on crucial matters of the meaning of these experiences and narratives, and the

impact they have on our identity.

Constraints of certitude

When we talk about concepts of knowing we only approximate the subjective, felt

sensation of knowing. Our modern habit is to think in terms like “certainty,” “certitude,”

“conclusion,” and “closure.” These words are like gauntlets thrown. They are destinations

from which there is no turning back.

While Shermer pays lip service to science appending itself and amending its

conclusions, Shermer is quite certain of his determinations. He sounds the trumpet of

victory, declaring, “..eventually the collective science of history separates the emotional

chaff from the factual wheat.” (Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, p. 214, 215).

Shermer’s watchdog instincts are sometimes helpful and he reminds us that we,

even in this day and age, are still juggling allegiances between pre-modern and modern,

let alone incorporating the postmodern era. Along with the misplaced certitude of the

greater part of this decade, we saw a kind of resurgence in militantly anti-intellectual,

half-baked theology with regard to ecological, social and foreign policy issues. Our

society became embroiled in “culture wars” creating fertile ground for a perilous ersatz

eschatology whose believers seek to incite the “end times.” Such abusive doctrine

welcomes skepticism as an antidote, provided the skeptic is fair and credible.

Rhetorically, Shermer is filled with certitude as he argues his cases. He seeks to

disabuse people of their “weird” notions. To characterize sets of beliefs as “weird” is at

least provocative, at worst, pejorative – for after all, who wants to truly be thought of as

weird? The title of the book is calculated to invite the reader to participate as judge, and

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the book cover’s graphic design harkens back to Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not tales. If one

subscribes to an idea Shermer has rejected, one is implicitly a freak or an intellectual

weakling. In a debate with Deepak Chopra, his initial salvo is a reference to a bumper

sticker he likes: “Militant Agnostic: I don’t know, and you don’t know, either!” Chopra

counters, “Is he so proud of his skepticism that literally he can tell what someone else

doesn’t know?” (Shermer, Chopra, 2007)

Chance, Contingency and Error

The basis for what counts as knowledge traditionally has been the deep-rooted
conviction that the real is unified and complete: chance, contingency, and error are
conventionally considered signs that a particular theory is flawed and that a new,
more ‘complete’ theory is necessary. But what if chance, contingency and error are
not flaws but are inherent in the system? What kind of theories would be possible in
such a world, and how would one live in it meaningfully? (Comnes, ix)

For Shermer, flaws are blatant proof against design. In How We Believe, he asserts:

Design arguments from nature are untenable by the simple fact that nature is not as
beautifully designed nor as “perfect” as believers would have us think. The
python’s hind legs – unarticulated bones buried in flesh and totally useless – are
indications of quirky and contingent evolution, not divine creation. Similarly, the
whale’s flipper – complete with useless humanlike upper arm, forearm, hand and
finger bones – is obviously the evolutionary by-product of mammalian evolution,
not the handiwork of a divine Gepetto. (Shermer, How We Believe. p. 94)

Conversely, Sacks’ ostensibly “flawed” subjects are an important recurring theme

in his neurological ethnographies. Without romanticizing, he transcends reporting of mere

conditions and case studies to probe questions of meaning, purpose and identity in the

lives of his subjects.

Sacks was introduced to the possibility of “chance, contingency and error” being

part of design when his brother had to contend with mental illness. In an interview

attending the release of his autobiography Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical

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Boyhood, Sacks told Publishers Weekly, "…when my brother Michael had his breakdown

and became psychotic, one of the things he said was, ‘don't call this a disease. It is my

struggle, my world, my attempt to find meaning.’" (http://www.answers.com/topic/oliver-

sacks)

At this moment in the world, upheavals converge, forcing us to confront great

uncertainty. Certainty, certitude, conclusion are retired as dictionary abstractions. The

postmodern era is now truly and circumstantially upon us, even if we are collectively not

cognizant of it. Chance, contingency and error are manifesting in a most immediate

sense. One may lose employment, another might contract a disease. Knowing then moves

from certitude to become a living, organic, malleable process characterized by

indeterminacy, resolve and assurance.

Bringing me to the focal point of this examination, I will explore how

indeterminacy, resolve and assurance can intersect at the point of a near-death experience.

Sacks discusses a near-death experience in his most recent book, Musicophilia. He

describes a patient who emerges from an NDE (near-death experience) reporting a

dramatic personality change. The fellow was suddenly and overwhelmingly obsessed

with music and the urge to play the piano. He also reported a major shift in his values and

sense of purpose.

Observe the differences in how Sacks and Shermer address near-death and out-of-

body experiences:

Sacks:

While out-of-body experiences have the character of a perceptual illusion

(albeit a complex and singular one), near-death experiences have all the hallmarks

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of mystical experience, as William James defines them – passivity, ineffability,

transience, and a noetic quality. One is totally consumed by a near-death
experience, swept up, almost literally, in a blaze (sometimes a tunnel or funnel) of
light, and drawn towards a Beyond – beyond life, beyond space and time. There is
a sense of a last look, a (greatly accelerated) farewell to things earthly, the places
and people and events of one’s life, and a sense of ecstasy or joy as one soars
towards one’s destination – an archetypal symbolism of death and transfiguration.
Experiences like this are not easily dismissed by those who have been through
them, and they may sometimes lead to a conversion or metanoia, a change of
mind, that alters the direction and orientation of a life. One cannot suppose, any
more than one can with out-of-body experiences that such events are pure fancy;
very similar features are emphasized in every account. (Sacks, Musicophilia. p.
13-14)

Shermer:

The NDE, like its related partner the out-of-body experience (OBE), is one of
the most compelling phenomena in psychology. Apparently, upon a close encounter
with death, some individuals’ experiences are so similar as to lead many to believe
that there is an afterlife or that death is a pleasant experience or both. (Shermer,
Why People Believe Weird Things. p. 77)

Shermer allows that those who have undergone NDEs report similar experiences,

but since he cannot, due to overwhelming numbers, disprove the phenomena of NDE

itself, he discredits individual narratives first by questioning the credibility of affirming

sources (Moody, Kubler-Ross, Sabom) then cites contamination of NDE subjects, either

due to their believing in an afterlife or, at the least, harboring the taint of exposure to a

Judeo-Christian worldview. He refutes reports of individuals with other faith traditions

whose NDEs reflected their particular beliefs and religious understanding. Shermer sees

these as a deal-breaking discrepancies and contends that in light of belief-specific

differences, the accounts are rendered incredible. (I thought this fact lent greater

credibility to the universality of the phenomenon.) He also posits that NDEs can easily be

induced by trauma and various anesthesia, drugs like MDA, or hallucinogenics can

induce OBEs.

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He settles any considerations of possible meaning associated with a near-death

experience by appealing to our logic dripping with his dismissive rhetoric:

Finally, the “other-worldliness” of the NDE is produced by the dominance of the

fantasy of imagining the other side, visualizing our loved ones who died before,
seeing our personal God, and so on....NDEs remain one of the great unsolved
mysteries of psychology, leaving us once again with a Humean question: Which is
more likely, that an NDE is an as-yet-to-be explained phenomenon of the brain or
that it is evidence of what we have always wanted to be true – immortality? (p.
81, 82)

For Shermer it all comes down to whether an NDE is a biological function or a

spiritual experience, especially whether or not near-death experiences provide

compelling evidence for life after death. That consideration for him is cause for alarm. He

sticks adamantly to the purely clinical explanation. He would tell you having a near-death

experience is merely the result of the chemical processes attendant to a dying brain. To

attach meaning to such an event is to chase after the wind in an attempt to secure

immortality.

But others see it differently:

…such rationalizations do not legitimate the social realities and hence the social
experiences of the person, since these are barely acknowledged in the first place.
Privation, life review, sensed presences, and the whole gamut of psychological and
social experiences of dying are not the common lot of most people. Recounted
experiences..can assume the appearance of oddity. In these sociological terms,
clinical NDEs may be seen as part of a wider social experience that every member
of society shares – the status passage. However, the status passage of the NDE, both
social and clinical is not normative; it is unlike transitions to, for example,
parenthood or adulthood. (Kellehear, pg. 52, 53)

Setting aside the agenda to debunk belief in life after death, what if, as with the

transition to parenthood – specifically motherhood – where the brain releases endorphins

so as to ease pain of giving birth, the processes involved in the chemical and biological

shut-down of the brain and the resulting sensations, which are more corroborative than

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contradictory, are likewise purposeful and designed to assist the individual in transition to

new life/non-being? Why does Shermer kick so hard against the goads? Even if

Shermer’s insistence against personality survival is correct, that does not mean that the

reports of seeing loved ones, life review, ecstasy, etc., are not meaningful. Does Shermer

consider a mechanism in nature to ease this passage? Can it be that there is design in

death?

In all his writings involving case studies, Sacks employs what I would offer is a

kind of individual-inductive approach. He shares individual narratives and incorporates

pertinent information about related cases in order to provide context and substantiation

about his subjects’ experiences, but he adamantly refuses to corral these individuals into

neat diagnostic categories. In Sacks’ portraits he surgically removes the stereotype from

the person. He studiously avoids defining his subjects by their neurological challenges as

he helps to tell the stories of how they perceive their altered selves. Reading Sacks is a

lesson in honoring one’s fellows. These studies also challenge our conceptions of how we

know, and how we form and even reinvent our identities. They open for inquiry how one

knows anything, and do so in a non-threatening environment that bridges the personal

and the foreign.

Shermer works impersonally, from a top-down, phenomenon-deductive vantage

point, beginning with the ideas of near-death experiences/creationism/UFO sightings,

etc., and working downward to “hapless” believers. He speaks in terms of phenomena

rather than persons, casting various beliefs as agents of antagonism. These “weird” ideas

brainwash their adherents, which he then labors to debunk. Classical science’s holy grail

of closure is Shermer’s stock-in-trade. He crusades with the confidence that the available

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scientific knowledge at hand is either complete or as good as it comes.

Our classmate, Benjamin Aguda, voiced a plausible defense for Shermer and his

prescribed cure of skepticism: “I think we should distinguish between scientific skeptics

and philosophical skeptics. Philosophical skeptics ... deny the possibility of knowledge.

Scientific skeptics .. simply deny unfounded claims that people call science.” That works

if we are thinking in siloed compartments of here is science, there is philosophy, but such

segregation is the hallmark of modernism and is part of the critique brought against it by

postmodern thought.

A hallmark of postmodern thought is its potential for recovery for ways of knowing

that were previously consigned to the archives in the modern boom. Medieval

philosophers, for example, shared a large tent including the theoretical and practical, the

speculative and active.

Theoretical philosophy included physics, mathematics and theology. Practical

philosophy consisted of ethics, economics and politics. In short, the study of philosophy

was foundational to all other disciplines. If we accept Shermer’s focus on unfounded

claims, his assessments of reality then are somehow segregated from more abstract

pursuits of meaning, and we could be satisfied that he has found his niche. But Shermer is

determined to let his audience know that if they derive meaning from an experience they

are free to do so, long as they know they are deluding themselves.

These older models of integrating thought /knowledge/experience seemed on the

verge of extinction now regain relevance as we enter a time where exalted science, with

the advent of quantum physics, string and chaos theories, refutes itself. Sacks’ approach,

reflected in his individual dealings with patients is integrative in this

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ancient/modern/postmodern sense.

I wish to avoid making sweeping claims relying on connections drawn from

quantum physics and postmodern philosophical thought, but the vision of classical

science, the Newtonian vision strains under the pressure to resolve its promise that

nature, and anomalies in nature, can be explained by an “objective observer.” John D.

Barrow, in New Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation states,

Science is predicated upon the belief that the universe is algorithmically

compressible and the modern search for a Theory of Everything is the ultimate
expression of that belief, a belief that there is an abbreviated representation of the
logic behind the universe’s properties that can be written down in finite form by
human beings. (Barrow p. 11-12)

Where Shermer is a structuralist in his efforts to make clean delineations between

knowledge and ignorance, mathematicians like Benoit Mandlebrot turn the modernist’s

perception of objective truth on its head. Mandlebrot’s fractals are a kind of icon of chaos

– an emblem of the endless permutations of postmodernity.

If, under Mandlebrot, geo-metry goes back to the Earth, then it is only to prove that
the Earth, once thought flat (pre-modern), then spherical (modern), is now fractal
and infinite, thus demonstrably postmodernish (“ish” because should that turn out
to be The Truth of earth’s nature, then chaos is refuted.) (Sim, p. 63)

In The Sleepwalkers, Arthur Koestler wrote about “the conservatism of science,” saying,

The materialist philosophy in which the modern scientist was reared has retained its
dogmatic power over his mind...he reacts to phenomena which do not fit into it
much in the same manner as his scholastic forebears reacted to the suggestion that
new stars may appear in the immutable eighth sphere. (Koestler, p. 535)

Seconding Koestler is Allen Kellehear. In Experiences Near Death: Beyond Medicine

and Religion, he makes connections with regard to methodology and motives,

…despite the claim of value neutrality, more than a few current neuroscience
explanations are partisan ones…I will connect the rhetorical features of this writing
to the sociological circumstances of their rise and use: the resistance of
conservative elements in the scientific community to recent developments in

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postmodernity and science; the ongoing conflict of science with religion; and the
historical rise of the medical profession and the political authority of its theories.
(Kellehear, pg.120,121)

Such skeptical critiques of NDEs are losing their credibility in the postmodern
atmosphere where faith in the authority of a neutral, scientific rationalism has faded
in the face of critiques of economic and gender bias, for example. Appeal to the
dispassionate scientist has been hurt by hidden bias and shrill rhetorical
embellishment. Neuroscience needs better arguments than reduction to ‘nothing
but’ materialist ‘mechanisms’ to answer the NDE’s appeal to personal and religious
needs. (Bailey, Yates. Pg. 18)]

Indeterminacy, resolve and assurance

In Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection, Ornella Corazza

cites a 2000 study (Ring, Valarino) of a boy who had an NDE at the age of 9 months. The

doctors spent 40 minutes reviving him. He subsequently was in a coma for three months,

and a trachea tube remained in place until he was three. Another two years passed until

one day, out of the blue, he surprised his parents talking about “when he had died.” He

recounted not only images compatible with typical NDE reports, but gave detailed,

verifiable information about the goings on in his room while he was out-of-body. He

described communication with a being he understood to be God who told him he had to

return to fulfill his particular purpose, and upon its fulfillment, would be able to return.

(Corazza, p. 32-33)

In his book, How We Believe, Shermer recounts an insincere (by his own

admission) conversion to Christianity and tells of an afternoon he met with a Presbyterian

minister, asking him about free will, predestination and the character of God. It can be

difficult to comprehend the Reformed systematic theology the Presbyterian affirms, even

if one does sacrifice part of an afternoon inquiring. Shermer dismisses the answers he

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got: “The minister, who had a Ph.D. in theology, did his best to address the problem but it

all seemed like labyrinthine word games and obfuscating analogies to me.” (Shermer,

How We Believe, p. 5)

That Shermer gives short shrift to theological concerns is indicative of his Cliff’s

Notes approach in representing science. He proposes to perform proper empirical due

diligence, and in certain cases, such as his masterful refutation of Holocaust deniers, he is

painstakingly thorough, though he is at home with such a case, having access to great

amounts of quantifiable data. For Shermer, if there is no “hard data,” his response is to

get back to him when there is some. Researching that which took the minister years of

study entailed more effort than he was willing to invest. Therefore, the expedient thing to

do was dismiss what could not quantify nor understand.

The frequency of reports of near-death experiences precludes dismissal of the

phenomena, but the subjective experience of an NDE and its implication of personality

survival is a call-to-arms for Shermer. Sacks does not deny the neurological processes of

the “dying” brain, he does not attempt to refute his subject’s intensely held conviction of

having undergone a life-changing experience.

One of the most striking differences in reading these works is Shermer’s incapacity

to disguise his contempt for the people who harbor so-called “weird” beliefs. Such

impatience stood in stark contrast with Sacks’ forbearance and compassion. Sacks

considers it to be no loss of authority to present himself as being on equal footing with

his patients. If anything, his credibility is magnified by his magnanimity.

Near-death experiences, which serve to reveal how ephemeral this world, this life,

our assumptions can be personally revelatory. Add to that a postmodern skepticism of the

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bias of scientific research and an emphasis on the elusiveness of knowledge and meaning

and one can be left to wonder if the only choice is to abandon all interpretations of the

experience.

Finally, it is my contention that neither starched biological explanations, nor

skeptical views of life after death nor skepticism toward the metanarratives often

entwined with NDEs necessarily refute the purpose or meaning of the other-worldliness

of these experiences. I think whether they are indicators of a chemical process or

indications of life-after-death, or something else again, near-death experiences teach us

something profound about what it is to be human. They demonstrate the power to, at least

metaphorically, wake the dead.

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Works Cited:

(author uncredited) http://www.answers.com/topic/oliver-sacks

Bailey, Lee W. Near-Death Experiences: A Reader. Routledge, New York. 1996

Barrow, John D. New Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation.
Oxford University Press, 2007

Comnes, Gregory. The Ethics of Indeterminacy in the Novels of William Gaddis.

University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida. 1994

Corazza, Ornella. Near-Death Experiences: Exploring the Mind-Body Connection.

Routledge, New York. 2008.

Kellehear, Allen. Experiences Near Death: Beyond Medicine and Religion. Oxford
University Press, New York. 1996.

Koestler, Arthur. The Sleepwalkers. Hutchinson & Co., London. 1959.

Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. 1995.

Sacks, Oliver. Musicophilia. Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. New
York. 2007, 2008.

Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and
Other Confusions of Our Culture. Henry Holt and Company LLC. New York. 1997.

Shermer, Michael. How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. W.H.
Freeman and Company, New York. 1999.
Shermer, Michael, Chopra, Deepak. "Skeptic.com/Reading_Room/debates." 01/2007.
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/debates/afterlife.html (accessed 04/27/2009).
Sim, Stuart. Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. New York. Routledge, 2005.

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