Back to Sam Harris' Critique of Eben Alexander's NDE

Who is this clown? Image source: Wikipedia.

A teacher of philosophy called Michael Sudduth has written a blog post criticizing what I say, in my book Brief Peeks Beyond, about Sam Harris' attack on Eben Alexander. Let me admit upfront that I had never heard of Michael Sudduth, have no idea who he is beyond what I found in a quick google search, and know nothing of his work. I will explain at the end of this essay why I nonetheless decided to comment on his criticism.

He starts his critique of my views rather colorfully, implicitly promising a knock-out punch at some later stage:

It’s astonishingly evident to me that Kastrup’s thinking on this matter is not merely confused; it’s profoundly confused. ... Kastrup’s reasoning in both his blog and book is an astonishing display of misrepresentation and philosophical obfuscation.

Apparently I astonish him a lot. Undeterred, he uses 1142 words (!) to introduce his essay and disparage my position with pure rhetoric before he even begins the attempt to substantiate his allegations. It's a lot of gratuitous disparaging that doesn't seem motivated by eagerness to debate: when he posted his essay on Facebook, he tagged 34 people (!) with visibility in the media, but failed to tag me, the very target of his criticism. I found this rather curious.

After disparaging me repeatedly, one would expect that, by the time he actually began to justify his prolific allegations, a mortal blow would soon follow. I confess: I was somewhat curious. But the implicit promise of a knock-out punch never materialized. His post disappoints. He uses almost ten thousand words (!) in total to basically fail to even argue against—let alone defeat—the substance of any of my points; the true and unsurpassed feat of philosophical obfuscation in this whole story. But don't let the ten thousand words frighten you: I can summarize the essence of what he says about me in only 3 quick points:

1. The DMT similarity argument. Harris originally stated that Alexander's NDE looked like a DMT trip. Harris overtly suggests that Alexander's experience could have been caused merely by chemicals in Alexander's brain, as opposed to having a transcendent nature. I then argued that a chemical or physical trigger does not necessarily invalidate the transcendent nature of the experience, since all NDEs are, ultimately, triggered by some physical event. What does Sudduth have to say about this? He writes: "Kastrup is correct, of course, that in at least one sense the similarity between Alexander’s NDE and DMT experiences doesn’t defeat the authenticity of the former as a valid transcendent experience." But this was my point. So Sudduth actually agrees with my point. What's his problem then? Well, he asserts that "Harris nowhere claims [that] Alexander’s NDE was produced by brain chemistry," so my point is a straw-man. What? With a blush of embarrassment, I leave it to you to judge it after you consider the following passage by Harris: "Does Alexander know that DMT already exists in the brain as a neurotransmitter? Did his brain experience a surge of DMT release during his coma? This is pure speculation, of course, but it is a far more credible hypothesis than that his cortex “shut down,” freeing his soul to travel to another dimension." Can someone explain to me how is it that Harris is not suggesting here that DMT could explain Alexander's NDE on a purely chemical basis? I mean, how much clearer could this possibly be? Sudduth's grievance is that Harris does not outright state that the NDE was caused by chemicals; that Harris merely mentions the possibility that it was. Duh. So what? It would obviously have been ridiculous if Harris had asserted that he knew what caused Alexander's NDE. Raising the possibility of a chemical cause was as far as Harris could have gone to try to debunk Alexander. And I rebutted this by arguing that a chemical trigger—even if true—wouldn't invalidate the potentially transcendent nature of Alexander's experience anyway (this, even Sudduth agrees with). In other words, I granted to Harris the possibility of a chemical trigger and argued against the relevance of that possibility as far as Alexander's claims were concerned. I never assumed or implied that Harris did anything more than to raise a hypothesis, the force of my argument being directed precisely at the relevance of that hypothesis. I'd bet that all readers of my essay, except perhaps for Michael Sudduth, fully understood this. It's embarrassing to have to spell it out now. Either Sudduth is splitting hairs for the sake of inventing something to criticize and create polemic, or he is so myopically focused on the strict formal semantics of Harris' words that he fails to see the obvious thrust and intent of the text. Harris, my dear Michael, is not writing for analytic philosophy majors here; he's trying to debunk Alexander's story in the public's eye and he is perfectly aware of how the public will understand his words. That you fail to see this is so sweetly naive it makes me smile. Perhaps you've become too engrossed with linguistic games in your academic ivory tower and now lost touch with the real world. Or are your motivations of a different nature? (More on this later.) 
2. The cortical inactivity argument. Harris originally claimed that Alexander didn't sufficiently demonstrate that his brain lacked enough activity to account for his NDE. In turn, I argued that appeals to residual brain activity in sub-cortical areas weren't enough to explain Alexander's NDE: the type of experience Alexander underwent normally correlates with neocortical activity, as opposed to residual activity in deeper parts of the brain. And it was precisely Alexander's neocortex that was devastated by the meningitis. What does Sudduth have to say about this? He writes: "we can concede that Kastrup is at least correct to say that whether there could have been residual brain activity misses the point." Well, once again that was precisely my point. How curious. So what's Sudduth's problem this time? He claims that Harris' grievance was that Alexander did not show that his neocortex was inactive; that Harris was not appealing to activity in sub-cortical regions. Yet Harris' own words, as quoted by Sudduth himself, indicate the opposite: "almost no one thinks that consciousness is purely a matter of cortical activity." Clearly, Harris is appealing to sub-cortical activity to suggest a materialist explanation for Alexander's NDE. Be it as it may, once again Sudduth admits that I was essentially correct. What is he trying to achieve with this?
3. The "Failures of Proper Argumentation" critique. Sudduth writes paragraph after paragraph claiming that I failed to establish that Alexander's neocortex was incapable to generate his NDE. The only problem is that I never tried to construct an argument to establish that in the first place. After all, I have not seen the hard clinical data and, just like Sudduth, am not qualified to judge it. So who is "profoundly confused" here? I simply took seriously the assessment of the data by Alexander—a Harvard professor of neurology and practicing neurosurgeon—and explored its implications. Indeed, I believe Alexander is better qualified to judge this than Harris, who has no clinical experience and isn't a practicing neuroscientist. Harris seems much more interested in studying religion and politics than neuroscience. My argument, as I clearly state in the book, was against the notion that residual sub-cortical activity could have been sufficient to explain the NDE. Sudduth doesn't dispute this at all.

In fact, Sudduth doesn't dispute—let alone defeat—the real substance of any of my arguments. So why this mismatch between what is alleged in the beginning of his post and what one actually finds when one reads it through? It's a lot of fit & fury amounting to nearly nothing at the end. A lot of noisy but empty posturing.

You see, the essence of Sudduth's post is the assertion that Sam Harris never meant to imply what I claim that he implied. As such, my arguments, correct as they may be, are straw-men; or so says Sudduth. "Harris is not proposing any alternative materialistic explanation of Alexander’s experience." (Oh, really?) And neither does Harris "assume, for instance, that a physical trigger cannot lead to a perfectly valid NDE." (Oh, he doesn't?) It's my own delusions that turned Harris into a debunker of transcendence; or so Sudduth's story goes. Leaving aside the obvious naiveté of this position, the problem, of course, is that it ends up completely deflating the main thrust of Harris' very critique of Alexander. Sudduth's "defense" of Harris, if correct, would render Harris' arguments ineffective in rebutting the transcendent nature of Alexander's NDE. In trying to help Harris have it both ways, Sudduth ends up leaving no way for Harris. His 'semantic deconstruction' unintentionally helps further Eben Alexander's claims. With a groupie like this, Harris needs no critics.

Sudduth is so focused on hair-splitting the philosophical minutiae that he seems to completely lose sight of the big picture. To say that debunking the transcendent nature of Alexander's NDE was not Harris' intent seems extraordinarily ingenuous to me, if not outright stupid. But is mere naiveté the explanation here? Or are there other possible motivations for Sudduth's charade? What motivated all the unsubstantiated disparaging in his post? I can only speculate.

In my view, it is entirely legitimate that a new author attempts to raise his visibility by attacking more visible peers, as long as the attack is honestly argued and fairly substantiated. Sudduth's noisy, derogatory allegations in the purely rhetorical opening of his post are neither: they find no justification or substantiation in the body of his text. They seem to me to be aimed squarely at generating polemic and attracting attention. They catch the interest of the casual reader who parses the highly polemicized initial paragraphs but has no appetite for ~10K tortuous words.

The reason I decided to offer this reply was the messages a few of my regular readers sent me immediately after Sudduth posted a link to his essay on Facebook. They'd noticed that he didn't tag me and wanted both to warn me and ask for a prompt rebuttal. I do not consider Sudduth's hair-splitting essay, in and of itself, deserving of any reaction. Therefore, I will limit my comments on this matter to this post. I do not know Michael Sudduth and have no interest in changing this. He's proven to my own satisfaction that interacting with him isn't productive. With this reply, I know I am already giving him some of the attention he seems to crave, but I have no intention to reward attention-seeking behavior any further. Sam Harris does not need an unsolicited interpreter of his meaning or intent, no matter how frantically willing this interpreter may be. Sam can articulate his meaning and intent himself, without a Sancho Panza. Therefore, I remain perfectly willing to continue this debate with Sam, if he chooses to do so.