Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical? A Philosophical Inquiry

This is my thesis as it appears on Western University’s Scholarship website.  It is free to read it.  It took me three years to write it.  Please, feel free to read any or all parts of it.  Here it is:

This project is a philosophical investigation into near-death experiences (NDEs). It attempts to answer the central question: Are near-death experiences veridical? The aim of my work is to defend the veridicality of near-death experiences within the framework of idealism. However, this aim is not achieved simply by adopting an idealist standpoint. Instead, I present arguments for the reason this idealist standpoint is necessary. First, I argue that the traditional way of assessing near-death experiences is often oversimplified and carries an unnecessary bias in favour of a materialist interpretation, which eventually sets it up for a failure to demonstrate that an afterlife state can exist. Once this materialist bias is examined, I make an attempt to level the playing field, so to speak, to see where this equal level can take the discussion. Ultimately, I argue that it is best to fit all evidence and arguments into a theory that best explains near-death experiences; and, the theory that best explains these experiences is philosophical idealism. At the end, I provide examples of this theory and also a synthesized version of the best imaginable theory to show in what way or ways these idealist theories can explain near-death experiences and in what way or ways near-death experiences can be demonstrated to be veridical in nature.

Source: Are Near-Death Experiences Veridical? A Philosophical Inquiry