Even if NDEs were veridical, that wouldn't be enough to challenge physicalism or mind-brain equivalence. — sime

If we agree that one case of NDE was real, then we are dealing with an anomaly that materialism cannot describe. I am wondering how you could explain the NDE experience when there is no brain activity.

C'mon ... — 180 Proof

Do you have an explanation for NDE within materialism? The brain does not show any activity, yet the person experiences!

How do you/we know NDE-subjects "experience" anything while there is zero brain activity?

Btw, "materialism" is not a theoretical explanation but an ontological speculation and/or a methodological paradigm – it is not disproven by yet unexplained "anomalies", only replaced by a less dubious, or problematic, alternative (e.g. physicalism, naturalism, etc).

[A] flat EEG reading isn't a sufficient measurement for defining brain death. — sime

:100:

If we agree that one case of NDE was real, then we are dealing with an anomaly that materialism cannot describe. I am wondering how you could explain the NDE experience when there is no brain activity. — MoK

For the record, I don't consider any such case to be real - a flat EEG reading isn't a sufficient measurement for defining brain death. Only quacks seriously entertain such theories. But if such cases were real in some sense of having intersubjective confirmation of anomalous phenomena, then it would at most imply a hole in our current physical theories, resulting in a new physical theory with regards to an extended notion of the body with additional senses, coupled with a new definition of personhood. Ultimately, all of this would amount to reducing our conception of such anomalous phenomena to a new physical normality that would ultimately leave religious followers and believers of the paranormal feeling as dissatisfied as they are presently.

NDEs cannot in principle deliver the epistemic certainty and psychological security that their enthusiasts want, even if they are assumed to be veridical.

Why must it be physical? this assumes from the outset that everything real must be made of particles or fields described by physics. But that is precisely the point in dispute.

Consider an analogy: in modern physics, atoms aren’t little billiard balls but excitations of fields. Yet fields themselves are puzzling entities—mathematically precise but ontologically unclear. No one thinks an electromagnetic field is a “blob of energy floating around.” It’s astructuring principle that manifests in predictable patterns, even if its “substance” is elusive.

Why not imagine psyche in analogous terms? Aristotle’s psuche was never conceived as a stuff or fluid but as an organising principle of the living body. Just as magnetic fields arrange iron filings, so too psyche might be conceived as a field-like effect that accounts for form, persistence, and perhaps memory.

This is roughly the metaphor behind Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic fields”—a controversial hypothesis, yes, but one that at least shows how the psyche might be conceived without assuming it must be particle-based. Ian Stevenson’s work on children’s past-life recall provides data that challenge the default assumption that consciousness ends with brain-death (see report).

Carroll says: everything we know about quantum field theory rules this out. But that simply restates his physicalist presupposition: psyche must be physical, because everything is physical. That is circular. The real question is whether that underlying assumption is itself adequate to the evidence. And perhaps that will require more than ad-hoc adjustments to the presumption that everything is physical.

@180 Proof - save the eye-roll emojis. Seen them all before.

How do you/we know NDE-subjects "experience" anything while there is zero brain activity? — 180 Proof

Ask @Sam26 please. I am not an expert in NDE, but he told me an example of the NDE in which the patient showed no brain activity.

Lots of possible explanations. We really don't have knowledge enough about the brain to rule anything you. But, for example, you can fins studies suggesting that even when the brain is isoelectric (i.e. flatlined so it looks medically dead), it is still actually responsive to external stimuli. I don't think NDE experiences themselves are necessarily problematic in themselves regarding physicalism; studies of dying brains show there is a lot of activity just before death. What would need more explaining is the claim that people have accurate knowledge about events that are happening. Ofcourse, in order to study this you would want to be able to validate the claim that people can have genuine knowledge of things happening externally during NDEs that are not just lucky guesses or confabulation or other things that would not indicate genuine knowledge.

Carroll says: everything we know about quantum field theory rules this out. But that simply restates his physicalist presupposition: psyche must be physical, because everything is physical. That is circular. The real question is whether that underlying assumption is itself adequate to the evidence. And perhaps that will require more than ad-hoc adjustments to the presumption that everything is physical. — Wayfarer

Carrol would say that the mental is nothing m9re than the physical. The issue isn't a blanket denial of the physical. The issue is that other claims about the world where there is an ontological distinction between mental and physical warrant evidence. If there is a distinction between physical stuff and some other mental stuff, there is no evidence for it other than the self-report of people who come to the conclusion, largely via intuition, that the physical and mental are ontologically incompatible. If you take the view that physical and mental are identical, then when looking at the literature of what we know about things in the universe, then you have no choice but to identify it with the stuff that is the subject of our scientific theories... because they are literally the only theories about how the world works that people agree on. Any other theories are unsubstantiated

For the record, I don't consider any such case to be real - a flat EEG reading isn't a sufficient measurement for defining brain death. — sime

I am not an expert in this field, so let's see the opinion of @Sam26 on this matter.

But if such cases were real in some sense of having intersubjective confirmation of anomalous phenomena, then it would at most imply a hole in our current physical theories, resulting in a new physical theory with regards to an extended notion of the body with additional senses, coupled with a new definition of personhood. — sime

I think if NDEs are proven to be correct, then to have a better model, you need to add other substances into consideration, including the mind.

I don't think NDE experiences themselves are necessarily problematic in themselves regarding physicalism; studies of dying brains show there is a lot of activity just before death. — Apustimelogist

According to my discussion with @Sam26, the person does not show brain activity during NDE. So, at least in this case, we are not talking about brain activity near death.

What would need more explaining is the claim that people have accurate knowledge about events that are happening. — Apustimelogist

And we also have this spiritual experience, which seems common among NDEs. Why do such people have such an intense experience, which is common when they are dying or are basically dead?

Ofcourse, in order to study this you would want to be able to validate the claim that people can have genuine knowledge of things happening externally during NDEs that are not just lucky guesses or confabulation or other things that would not indicate genuine knowledge. — Apustimelogist

Well, the question is, what is the right model of reality when it comes to NDEs and normal life? Physicalism fails to explain the strong emergence of experience. Experience cannot be causally efficacious in the physical world, considering the fact that the physical world is causally closed. Moreover, experience is only a mental event, so it cannot affect the physical world since it does not have any physical properties to affect the physical world.

Here are seven medically documented cases you can cite (all with staff corroboration). Quick note for skeptics: during cardiac arrest, cortical EEG goes isoelectric within ~10–40 seconds, so “no measurable brain activity” is the expected physiological state even when EEG leads aren’t on. PMC

1. Netherlands “dentures” case (CCU, resuscitation in progress)
A 44-year-old man arrived cyanotic, pulseless, and not breathing; a nurse removed his dentures during CPR. More than a week later, the patient correctly identified the nurse and precisely where the dentures had been placed on the crash cart, and described the resuscitation from an elevated vantage. The nurse (T.G.) provided a detailed, recorded testimony confirming the events. UNT Digital Library

2. Hartford Hospital ER “yellow smock” case (explicitly “without a heartbeat”)
During emergency resuscitation, a patient later reported seeing a respiratory therapist in a yellow smock using a bag-mask, while he was “unconscious and without a heartbeat.” Staff witnesses corroborated the details. (One of several corroborated cases reported in this paper.) UNT Digital Library

3. AWARE I (Resuscitation, 2014) “AED-timed recall” case
In the multi-center AWARE study, one UK patient gave a detailed account of auditory/visual events during cardiac arrest that hospital staff verified (including the use of an AED). Based on AED algorithms and the team’s timeline, the recall corresponded to ~3 minutes of cardiac arrest and CPR—i.e., a period when cortical activity should be isoelectric. ifac.univ-nantes.fr

4. Prospective ICU case with staff verification (Swansea, UK)
In a five-year prospective ICU study, a patient who became deeply unconscious (eyes closed, unresponsive) later gave a highly specific OBE report: the nurse manually ventilating him (“long pink ‘lollipop’” suction catheter), the physiotherapist anxiously peeking around the screens, and the pupil-light exam commentary. The nurse and physiotherapist confirmed these details; the consultant documented them in the chart. UNT Digital Library

5. Hartford Hospital “plaid shoelaces” / “shoe on the ledge” cases
The same Hartford series includes additional corroborated observations: a resuscitated patient later remarked on a nurse’s distinctive plaid shoelaces (confirmed by the nurse), and another famously described a shoe on the hospital roof later located exactly where reported. These were documented with staff testimony. UNT Digital Library

6) Toulouse (Capio Clinique Saint-Jean Languedoc) — Charbonier’s “amputation in the next OR”
French anesthesiologist Jean-Jacques Charbonier reported a patient under general anesthesia who, on emergence, described her own surgery and an amputation occurring simultaneously in the adjoining theatre, including the leg being placed in a yellow bag. Charbonier says he immediately checked and confirmed the amputation had taken place next door at that time. This case is quoted in an academic paper (with the French source cited in Rivas et al., 2023). publicera.kb.se
How to present it in the forum: “Under GA at Clinique Saint-Jean (Toulouse), a patient accurately described, on waking, a simultaneous leg amputation in the adjacent OR, down to the yellow disposal bag; the anesthesiologist (J-J Charbonier) checked and confirmed those details immediately after.” publicera.kb.se

Limits: single-clinician attestation; no EEG; ‘sealed rooms’ is the clinician’s characterization, not an environmental study. Still, timing + specific, non-generic details (yellow bag; simultaneous amputation) make it a strong C-NDE example.

7) “Al Sullivan” (Hartford Hospital) — surgeon’s idiosyncratic “flapping elbows”
During emergency cardiac surgery, the patient later reported seeing chief surgeon Hiroyoshi Takata moving with elbows tucked and “flapping”—a peculiar sterile habit used to direct staff without breaking scrub. Cardiologist Anthony LaSala confirmed the taped eyes and draping; Takata publicly acknowledged the habit and said he’d never had a patient describe an operation in such detail. The case is summarized by the Society for Psychical Research’s Psi Encyclopedia and discussed in a peer-reviewed overview by Kelly, Greyson & Stevenson (which explicitly mentions the flapping-arms observation as not explainable by ordinary auditory inference). Psi EncyclopediaUVA School of Medicine
How to present it in the forum: “At Hartford Hospital, a patient under GA later described the chief surgeon’s distinctive elbows-in ‘flapping’ gesture used to give directions while keeping hands sterile; the cardiologist confirmed the eyes were taped + drape, and the surgeon confirmed the idiosyncratic habit.” Psi EncyclopediaUVA School of Medicine

Thousands of cases can be corroborated in various ways. Simple detective work can verify many NDEs; you don't need a scientific study, as if you can't know things apart from science. If you think science has to be involved, then your epistemology is wrong.

Thanks for the supporting materials!

:ok: In other words, like @Sam, you don't know.

He told me about a patient with no brain activity while she had an NDE. This is his thread. I am just giving my opinion here. That is why I said, "Please ask him".

Carrol would say that the mental is nothing m9re than the physical. — Apustimelogist

Apustimologist, I think this is exactly where the crux lies. You’re so sure that “mental = physical” that you don’t see how the distinction shows up right under our noses. Consider Terrence Deacon’s formulation:

The meaning of a sentence is not the squiggles used to represent letters on a piece of paper or a screen. It is not the sounds these squiggles might prompt you to utter. It is not even the buzz of neuronal events that take place in your brain as you read them. What a sentence means, and what it refers to, lack the properties that something typically needs in order to make a difference in the world. The information conveyed by this sentence has no mass, no momentum, no electric charge, no solidity, and no clear extension in the space within you, around you, or anywhere. — Terrence Deacon, Incomplete Nature

That distinction is the distinction between the physical and the mental. The squiggles, sounds, and neuronal events are physical. The meaning is not. Yet meaning is not nothing — it structures our cognition, action, and communication. It is essential to our way of being in the world.

So when you say there’s “no evidence” for an ontological difference, you’re missing the point that that every act of reading, speaking, or thinking is already evidence. Information, significance, and intention aren’t physical, but they are nevertheless significant and fundamental to thought and speech.

(That quote is from the introduction to Terrence Deacon's book, Incomplete Nature. The remainder of the book is devoted to understanding how it is that these 'absentials' - factors which are not present, but nevertheless meaningful - came to be. Deacon is a biological anthropologist and neuroscientist.)

According to my discussion with Sam26, the person does not show brain activity during NDE. So, at least in this case, we are not talking about brain activity near death. — MoK

Yes, but I mentioned brains without activity in the sentence directly before. An example suggesting the plausibility that a flatlined brain can still be responsive to external stimuli.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=842513144191377109&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2021&as_vis=1

And we also have this spiritual experience, which seems common among NDEs. Why do such people have such an intense experience, which is common when they are dying or are basically dead? — MoK

I mean you could give an explanation for this that is completely physical; a physicalist would explain spiritual experiences from psychedelics completely physically too.

Well, the question is, what is the right model of reality when it comes to NDEs and normal life? Physicalism fails to explain the strong emergence of experience. Experience cannot be causally efficacious in the physical world, considering the fact that the physical world is causally closed. Moreover, experience is only a mental event, so it cannot affect the physical world since it does not have any physical properties to affect the physical world — MoK

The problem here imo is presupposing dualism and presupposing some fundamental ontological divide between what happens when we perceive and have experiences, and everything else we know about. I don't believe we need to make this presupposition.

Case studies aren't causal, and without detailed imvestigation of possible explanations in a controlled way, there is no reason why someone should not hold the belief that a physicalist explanation is possible if we only had more information, which we can't have from limited amounts of case studies like this.

Biomedical sciences, as well as social sciences by which the required methods overlap, have notorious difficulties with replication as it is, how do you think this is going to convince people. Sure, keep on holding to you wild intuition about the otherside and NPCs, but you haven't presented any smoking gun refutation of naturalistic explanations, which have been far more successful throughout history than things like parapsychology and ghost-ology or even god.

The "meaning" is not different to the sounds, squiggles and neuronal events in anyway that suggests some inherent divide between physical and mental. Nor is communication, intention, significance, cognition, action. I don't believe you can refute this claim.

The "meaning" is not different to the sounds, squiggles and neuronal events in anyway that suggests some inherent divide between physical and menta — Apustimelogist

It is, though - plainly and obviously. Symbols convey nothing to animals, they have no impact on the structure of materials. You're not seeing a distinction which is fundamental to philosophy.

There was a philosophical movement in the mid 20th century called 'brain-mind identity theory', but it fell out of favour in the subsequent decades and was replaced by non-reductive physicalism. Are you familiar with any of those discussions?

plainly and obviously. — Wayfarer

Why? If you can explain vision physically via a brain, why not meaning? How vision would be explained physically and by the brain is not really much less clear than how meaning would be. So meaning is not a counterexample to me.

Have you ever studied philosophy, as distinct from popular science? By 'studied', I mean, done a course in the subject and submitted a term paper in it.

:up: :up:

Yes I have, so what?

The distinction between the physical and the semantic is not a matter of taste, it’s a matter of fact. The ink marks on a page, or the neural firings in a brain, are physical events. The meaning those marks or firings convey is not reducible to those events. That’s why the same sentence can be written in English, Greek, or Sanskrit, with different marks and sounds but carry the same meaning. So the meaning and the physical form are different things.

Philosophers across traditions have recognised this as a basic divide — Aristotle with form vs matter, Kant with concept vs intuition, Peirce with sign vs object, and so on. It's not a distinction that can be denied. Hence my question!

It can all be explained in terms of physical events and brain activity. I don't see that as contoversial. There is nothing else additional going on. You think because you have a brain, you act because you have a brain, you talk because you have a brain, you see stuff because you have a brain. I don't see what else is going on.

It can all be explained in terms of physical events and brain activity. I don't see that as contoversial. — Apustimelogist

But it can't. Any explanation relies on symbolic language, obviously. You're using words to describe the process, but you can't see the words for the trees :rofl:

I don't see what else is going on. — Apustimelogist

You don't say! You keep telling me that you don't 'see the point' of what I'm trying to explain. I think I'll give up.

Why must it be physical? this assumes from the outset that everything real must be made of particles or fields described by physics. But that is precisely the point in dispute.

Consider an analogy: in modern physics, atoms aren’t little billiard balls but excitations of fields. Yet fields themselves are puzzling entities—mathematically precise but ontologically unclear. No one thinks an electromagnetic field is a “blob of energy floating around.” It’s astructuring principle that manifests in predictable patterns, even if its “substance” is elusive. — Wayfarer

Which is precisely why Physics survives theory change, at least for ontic structural realists - for only the holistic inferential structure of theories is falsifiable and semantically relevant. I think you might be conflating Physics with Physicalism - the misconception that physics has determinate and atomic denotational semantics (i.e. Atomism) .

It is because "Physicality" is intersubjective, structural, and semantically indeterminate with respect to the subjectivities of the users of physical theories, that every possible world can be described "physically".

Being "physical" isn't a property of the denoted, but refers to the fact that the entity concerned is being intersubjectively denoted, i.e referred to only in the sense of abstract Lockean primary qualities that are intersubjectively translatable by leaving the Lockean secondary qualities undefined, whereby individual speakers are free to subjectively interpret physics as they see fit (or as I call it, "The Hard Feature of Physics").

I wasn't taking issue with ontic structural realism.

Sure, so the question is whether proponents of physical explanations for "consciousness" and purported anomalous phenomena share that sentiment, in which case everyone is arguing at cross purposes, assuming of course that both sides can agree that the evidence for telepathy and remote viewing is sorely lacking.

↪Sam26

Case studies aren't causal, and without detailed imvestigation of possible explanations in a controlled way, there is no reason why someone should not hold the belief that a physicalist explanation is possible if we only had more information, which we can't have from limited amounts of case studies like this.

Biomedical sciences, as well as social sciences by which the required methods overlap, have notorious difficulties with replication as it is, how do you think this is going to convince people. Sure, keep on holding to you wild intuition about the otherside and NPCs, but you haven't presented any smoking gun refutation of naturalistic explanations, which have been far more successful throughout history than things like parapsychology and ghost-ology or even god. — Apustimelogist

You said: "Case studies aren't causal, and without detailed investigation of possible explanations in a controlled way, there is no reason why someone should not hold the belief that a physicalist explanation is possible if we only had more information, which we can't have from limited amounts of case studies like this."

This seems like a strawman wrapped in speculation. My argument/book isn't relying on "limited amounts of case studies" as isolated anecdotes; it's drawing on millions (100's of millions worldwide) NDE reports worldwide, corroborated by thousands of verified accounts in peer-reviewed studies (e.g., via IANDS, Greyson's NDE Scale, and prospective hospital research like the Dutch study I mention). These aren't cherry-picked "case studies"; they're a massive, diverse dataset of testimonial evidence spanning cultures, eras, ages, and medical contexts. I'm not claiming causality in the narrow experimental sense (e.g., "NDEs cause afterlife belief"); I'm making an inductive argument that the patterns in this evidence (veridical perceptions during flat EEGs, cross-cultural consistency, transformative effects) make consciousness persistence beyond brain activity the most probable explanation.

Your speculation that a "physicalist explanation is possible if we only had more information" isn't evidence; it's a defeater that could be applied to anything to avoid confronting data. Imagine applying this to historical knowledge: "Sure, eyewitness accounts say Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, but without controlled experiments, a physicalist explanation (like mass hallucination or forged documents) is possible if we had more info." We'd dismiss all history! Or in medicine: "Patient testimonies correlate smoking with cancer, but without infinite data, an unknown physical factor might explain it away." This is epistemic paralysis, not rigor. My book (Chapter 4) already confronts physicalist alternatives, hallucinations, anoxia, endorphins, temporal lobe seizures, DMT surges, and shows where they fail: they don't account for veridical elements (e.g., Pam Reynolds' accurate description of the Midas Rex bone saw and arterial issues during no brain activity), consistency across non-hypoxic cases, or reports from blind individuals gaining "vision" that's later verified.

Moreover, "controlled investigation" isn't feasible or necessary here. NDEs occur unpredictably during clinical death (and even when not near death); you can't ethically induce flat EEGs in labs for replication (though attempts like ketamine studies produce dissimilar, less structured experiences). But knowledge doesn't require lab replication; as I explain in other discussions of scientism, we accept quantum mechanics based on unreplicable (in everyday terms) experiments, black holes from indirect inference, and the Magna Carta's signing from testimonial convergence. Your demand is a double standard: you wouldn't apply it to courtroom evidence (where corroborated testimony convicts without "replication") or epidemiology (inductive from patterns, not causal lab proofs). My framework (five criteria: volume, variety, consistency, corroboration, firsthand accounts) turns these "case studies" into robust testimonial evidence, far stronger than "limited" implies.

Next: "Biomedical sciences, as well as social sciences by which the required methods overlap, have notorious difficulties with replication as it is; how do you think this is going to convince people?"
This is a red herring that ironically undermines your own position. Yes, replication crises plague fields like psychology (e.g., only ~40% of studies replicate per some meta-analyses) and biomedicine (e.g., cancer drug trials often fail reproducibility). But that's an argument against over-relying on "controlled" science as the sole arbiter of truth, not for dismissing testimonial evidence! My book isn't pretending NDEs are lab-replicable; it's evaluating them epistemologically, where replication isn't the benchmark—convergence and corroboration are.

How does this convince people? By applying the same standards we use daily for non-lab knowledge. Courts convict on corroborated testimony without replication (e.g., multiple witnesses to a crime). Historians accept Plato's Er myth as a cultural precedent based on textual convergence, not lab tests. Even in science, much "knowledge" is inductive and non-replicable: we can't replicate the Big Bang or a specific black hole merger, yet we infer from patterns (cosmic microwave background, gravitational waves). My NDE evidence replicates in the relevant sense: consistent patterns (OBEs in 75-85%, life reviews in 70-80%, as per Greyson's scale) across millions, verified in prospective studies (e.g., Parnia et al.'s AWARE study, where patients described hidden targets during resuscitation). This is "replication" via independent corroboration, not contrived experiments.

You ignore how my inductive argument mirrors successful scientific inferences: germ theory wasn't "replicated" in one lab but induced from converging testimonies (patient reports, autopsies). NDEs' veridical hits (e.g., the Dutch dentures case, where a revived patient described the nurse's actions and trolley layout) are replicable in pattern, occurring in ~10-20% of documented cases. Dismissing this as non-convincing requires ignoring epistemology.

Finally: "Sure, keep on holding to your wild intuition about the other side and NPCs [what curious about this is that I said most of it was speculation - NPCs, etc], but you haven't presented any smoking gun refutation of naturalistic explanations, which have been far more successful throughout history than things like parapsychology and ghost-ology or even god."

This is ad hominem snark masquerading as critique, calling my conclusions "wild intuition" while projecting your own speculative physicalism as default.

Does history favor naturalism? Selective cherry-picking. Naturalism failed historically on consciousness (Descartes' dualism persisted until neuroscience, yet the hard problem remains unsolved, as Chalmers notes). Parapsychology's mixed record (e.g., Ganzfeld replication rates ~30%, above chance) isn't my focus, I'm not invoking psi; I'm analyzing testimony. Comparing to "ghost-ology or god" is a false equivalence: my claims are modest (consciousness during clinical death probable), backed by evidence naturalism can't explain without ad hoc fixes.

The power of corroborated testimonial evidence—your blind spot—is that it's how most knowledge travels (Chapter 1: birth dates, Antarctica, DNA). When it meets my criteria (high volume: millions; variety: global/demographic; consistency: core patterns; corroboration: medical verifications; firsthand: direct reports), it's not "intuition"—it's justified true belief. Speculating "more info might physicalize it" is like a flat-Earther saying "unknown optics explain away satellite photos." It's not engagement; it's evasion.

In sum, your comment is ridiculous because it demands impossible standards (lab NDEs?) while speculating baselessly, ignoring my framework, and applying selective skepticism. My book doesn't "prove" afterlife; it argues probabilistically that consciousness likely persists beyond brain death, based on evidence warranting belief under consistent epistemic rules. If you want to cling to physicalism, you owe a better alternative that explains the data without hand-waving. Otherwise, it's just a dogmatic defense, exactly what I warn against.

One last point: your approach exemplifies the fallacy of the self-sealing argument, which materialists often deploy to shield their worldview from challenge. This fallacy occurs when a position is structured to be unfalsifiable; any counterevidence is automatically reinterpreted or dismissed as incomplete, with the promise that "more information" or some unknown mechanism will eventually confirm the theory. In your case, speculating about possible physicalist explanations "if we only had more information" seals off the argument from refutation; no matter how much converging testimonial evidence piles up (veridical perceptions, cross-cultural patterns, etc.). This isn't rational skepticism; it's a rhetorical move that begs the question, assuming materialism's truth while demanding infinite proof from alternatives. As Popper noted, true scientific theories must be falsifiable; self-sealing ones, like Freudian psychoanalysis or certain Marxist interpretations, explain away everything and thus explain nothing. In NDE debates, this fallacy lets materialists maintain their hinge without engaging the data on equal terms, turning inquiry into a waiting game for non-existent "complete" info rather than weighing probabilities inductively, as we do in history, law, and much of science.