Resuscitator Sam Parnia, our old American acquaintance, continues to excite the already muddy waters of thanatology, inviting colleagues to listen to people’s stories very carefully, returning from the next world. In his opinion, which will support any competent philosopher, these stories shed light on the nature of consciousness. “Consciousness does not disappear at the time of death,” he repeats his mantra. – Yes and there is no such moment. Death is a process. ” 
Photos from open sources
What was it – what we called life? (Photo by the author.) In the middle of the 20th century, with the discovery of cardiopulmonary methods resuscitation, the study of death has entered a new phase. At first it was possible to revive a person a few minutes after clinical death, and today people are returning to life, “died” half an hour ago and more. New technologies of the latest years allow achieving fantastic results when the heart begins to beat after several hours of inactivity. But we distracted. As soon as resuscitation became a routine, the doctors overheard strange stories that “after death” a person does not stop see and hear, although the brain, according to medical equipment, no longer works. Similar stories have appeared before, but since from the point of view of neurology it was impossible to explain these visions, then they were simply brushed aside or put off until later – until times when both equipment will be different, and knowledge about the human the body will accumulate more. It seems these times have arrived: Mr. Parnia leads the AWARE research project, which carefully captures the stories of resuscitated patients in 25 hospitals North America and Europe. Last time, “KL” casually said about what Mr. Parnia is thinking about human consciousness, and now let’s talk about this in more detail, since the scientist gave an extensive interview Wired magazine. First of all, it is worth noting that Mr. Parnia proposes to abandon the term “near-death experience” (near-death experience) and replace it with post-death experience experience), because from a medical point of view, cardiac arrest and the cessation of blood flow to the brain is indeed considered death. Thus, those strange and inexplicable visions that patients experience, happen after death. Mr. Parnia discovered that 10% of people who survived cardiac arrest then recall different interesting things. Moreover, the stories are similar to one another: peace and meeting with some perfect being, complete love and empathy. Hindus claim it was a deity their pantheon, Christians remember God or Jesus, and atheists communicate with some abstract entity. Say the same thing even children of three years. Many of the survivors of this experience cease to be Fear of death, confident that their existence is eternal. Most the main question that Mr. Parnia sees here is next: when do these visions appear to people? Is it really time to completely turn off the brain – or in those brief moments, when they were already resuscitated, but they are still unconscious? Second option seems more convincing, but there is one problem. The fact is that, upon recovering, patients retell conversations and even describe clothes of people around them 10–20 minutes before resuscitation, then eat with an idle brain. Mr. Parnia, despite his interesting everyday activities, remains a scientist to the brain bones, and therefore tends to suggest that such cases could become the result of a particularly successful resuscitation when the brain earned earlier than it should. But this hypothesis has absolutely no evidence. We emphasize once again: when it does not enter the brain blood, he does not act at all. Moreover, it is sometimes frozen, so that the cells do not die. Strange visions cannot be attributed in any way weak brain activity not noticed by medical equipment or the work of some secret part of it. Well, before science with a new by force the old question arises about the connection of the brain and consciousness. Materialists they’ll say that consciousness is generated by electrochemical processes, flowing in the brain, according to the law of the transition of quantity into quality. AND ironically add: everyone saw the brain without consciousness, but without consciousness no one saw the brain. However, we just looked at examples of what may turn out to be consciousness without a brain. Hence the conclusion: either we don’t know something about the brain, or consciousness is really not attached to him. In an attempt to reproach him with switching to flirting with supernatural Mr. Parnia replies: “We are trying to explain state of things using the scientific method, but the possibilities of science limited. If someone says something exists inexplicable to science, this does not mean that he is superstitious or is mistaken. When they discovered the electromagnetic interaction, which that time it was impossible not only to see – to measure, many scientists they just laughed at it. In fact, not a single an experiment that would show exactly how the work brain cells leads to thoughts. Unable to watch in a microscope on a cell and say: yeah, the object thinks that he hungry. “” Perhaps the psyche and consciousness, “the scientist continues,” represent a type of physical unknown to science interaction, which is not necessarily done directly to the brain. Yes, brain activity studies with using functional magnetic resonance imaging taught specialists see the connection between the activation of a particular area and certain thought processes. But this does not answer in any way question about chicken and egg: whether the electrochemical activity of cells breeds thinking, or vice versa. “The scientist also recalls that it is still unknown how the brain switches between conscious and unconscious states. They would have known for a long time would learn to bring back to life “plant people” and those who for years lies in a coma. Prepared by Wired. P. S. Anticipating battles that may unfold in the comments on this article, I want to add the following. Philosophers have long noticed the fundamental difference in perception of physical and conscious processes: we are not we can neither study them by the same methods, nor describe them by similar methods terms. This is stated, for example, in the second chapter of the First Epistles to the Corinthians (ignoring the religious meanings of the text) and Descartes in the famous “Discourse on Method”, emphasizing this difference, wrote that thinking does not need to exist to exist in which place and does not depend on any material thing. Please note that this is specifically about terms of description, not justification of the real being spiritual entities. Mr. Parnia seems to be preoccupied with the same question: which the way a neuroscientist could correctly describe the occurrence of visions with the brain turned off, without resorting to the need to dump everything on mysticism. He is not going to prove the existence of the intangible the world awaiting us after death. Life time
