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And exactly what is this logical conclusion you speak of?
Logical conclusion in fact indicates that there is no afterlife.
The same conclusion that you yourself came to. You can not see it or touch it, so it must not be. On the other hand many people see it, can touch it and know that it does exist. Many people spend their entire life at prayer, they see something you and I don't and they are not crazy. I've had one experience which I shared with my younger sister. When my mother passed we both saw a light where none should have existed. And we were a couple of hundred miles apart.
But it's arrogant for anyone to profess absolute knowledge about what may or may not happen after death. How can anyone know for certain what happens?
I think you are putting up an arbitrary and unnecessarily high standard. I am not suggesting that we have absolute knowledge in this case. I am suggesting that there is strong evidence that our "self" depends on our physical body.
Applying your standard -- a standard for knowledge that requires zero possibility that we are wrong -- would leave us with no knowledge at all. That isn't how we ordinarily use the word "knowledge."
Consider the theory of evolution. Is there are any chance at all that it is wrong? Of course, there is some possibility. Perhaps a highly advanced alien civilization put us here and cooked the evidence to trick us. That doesn't mean we don't have sufficient evidence of evolution to at least act as though the theory is correct.
I don't know why you believe a robust theory of consciousness is needed to know that consciousness supervenes on the physical world. Is there any major theory of consciousness espoused by a relevant expert that suggests consciousness doesn't at least supervene on the physical world?
I don't know if qualia are physical, non-physical properties of physical states or something else. But I am quite certain qualia supervene on the physical world whether that is in the form suggested by reductive physicalists or the type-2 guys such as David Papineau. It seems all of the other questions are superfluous.
There are a few alternatives to supervenience, but I won't bother saying more than that because the proposal that I offer does not necessarily conflict with supervenience. I am accepting that the brain is physical. This is an even stronger sort of physicalism than supervenience. Some forms of mind/body dualism would allow supervenience (e.g., David Chalmers' property dualism), but I'm proposing a variation of mind/body identity. The question, again, is with the concept of "physical." I reject the idea that "physical" necessarily implies "objectively measurable." In other words, I am allowing for the idea that some physical systems have subjective experience. There is "something it is like to be" certain kinds of physical systems. These are intrinsic qualities of a system that don't reduce to the a activities of operationally-defined entities like particles or fields as we currently understand them.
I believe that when the brain dies, the mind dies too, which is precisely in line with supervenience. But without a theory of consciousness, we simply don't know that the "I" that dies is ontologically fully reducible to the brain that dies. A physical brain is needed, but it is not clear that it needs to be "the same" physical brain. Indeed, there are deep puzzles about identity over time. Do I have "the same" brain that I had when I was 10 years old? The material substance has mostly been recycled over the past 40 years of my life. The only continuity on which we can possibly base any plausible sense in which "I" was ever 10 years old is some continuity in the information-processing structures and functions of my brain. But structures and functions are reproducible. (They are "universals" in philosophical jargon, not "particulars.") To whatever degree the structures/functions of my current brain are ever reproduced in physical form (whether tomorrow morning when I wake up, or a trillion years from now in a different part of the multiverse) then, to that degree "I" will be there.
I might be tempted to think: "That guy a trillion years from now won't really be me; he will just be a duplicate; he will be some other guy who just happens to have memories that are like mine, etc." But I think that this is exactly where the deep illusion rests. The very same sense in which "I" will wake up tomorrow is the sense in which "I" will wake up if/when my brain structures are ever reproduced. It could be just as logical to say that "I" am not really who wakes up every morning. Indeed "I" might not ever survive from one moment to the next. But my point is that if I am satisfied that "I" wake up every morning, then I should be just as satisfied thinking that "I" could wake up with a brain made of completely different material substances a trillion years from now, or that "I" could wake up "tomorrow" in a whole different corner of the multiverse.
Bottom line: If the concept of "the I who survives" has any meaning, then the "subjective felt identity" of this "I" follows structure/function, not strict material composition.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 03-22-2016 at 03:22 PM..
There are a few alternatives to supervenience, but I won't bother saying more than that because the proposal that I offer does not necessarily conflict with supervenience. I am accepting that the brain is physical. This is an even stronger sort of physicalism than supervenience. Some forms of mind/body dualism would allow supervenience, but I'm proposing a variation of mind/body identity. The question, again, is with the concept of "physical." I reject the idea that "physical" necessarily implies "objectively measurable." In other words, I am allowing for the idea that some physical systems have subjective experience. There is "something it is like to be" certain kinds of physical systems. These are intrinsic qualities of a system that don't reduce to the a activities of operationally-defined entities like particles or fields as we currently understand them.
I believe that when the brain dies, the minds dies too, which is precisely in line with supervenience. But without a theory of consciousness, we simply don't know that the "I" that dies is ontologically fully reducible to the brain that dies. A physical brain is needed, but it is not clear that it needs to be "the same" physical brain. Indeed, there are deep puzzles about identity over time. Do I have "the same" brain that I had when I was 10 years old? The material substance has mostly been recycles over the past 40 years of my life. The only continuity on which we can possibly base any plausible sense in which "I" was ever 10 years old is some continuity in the information-processing structures and functions of my brain. But structures and functions are reproducible. (They are "universals" in philosophical jargon, not "particulars.") To whatever degree the structures/functions of my current brain are ever reproduced in physical form (whether tomorrow morning when I wake up, or a trillion years from now in a different part of the multiverse) then, to that degree "I" will be there.
I might be tempted to think: "That guy a trillion years from now won't really be me; he will just be a duplicate; he will be some other guy who just happens to have memories that are like mine, etc." But I think that this is exactly where the deep illusion rests. The very same sense in which "I" will wake up tomorrow is the sense in which "I" will wake up if/when my brain structures are ever reproduced. It could be just as logical to say that "I" am not really who wakes up every morning. Indeed "I" might not ever survive from one moment to the next. But my point is that if I am satisfied that "I" wake up every morning, then I should be just as satisfied thinking that "I" could wake up with a brain made of completely different material substances a trillion years from now, or that "I" could wake up "tomorrow" in a whole different corner of the multiverse.
Bottom line: If the concept of "the I who survives" has any meaning, then the "subjective felt identity" of this "I" follows structure/function, not strict material composition.
I think you and I agree on most of this, including our intuitions about personal identity. I largely believe it is mostly illusory, but in general I would accept that the "I" who wakes up every morning is more or less the same "I" who went to sleep. Hypothetically, if a brain a trillion years from now functionally imitated my brain to a sufficient degree, there is no good reason why it would be less "me" than the me who might wake up in say thirty years (or tomorrow, if the future brain was a close enough approximation).
However, it seems exceedingly unlikely that a future brain will be a functional equivalent of my brain. Even though I hold notions of personal identity relatively loosely, the chances that a future brain would be sufficiently similar to mine to be called "me" seem very low. My answer to the question of "What happens after death?" is not really a statement about what the logical possibilities are. It is more a statement about overwhelming likelihood. So long as we think mental states at least supervene on the physical -- which you've correctly observed is a relatively low barrier -- we probably have good reason to think that the destruction of our physical brain will mean the destruction of us.
However, it seems exceedingly unlikely that a future brain will be a functional equivalent of my brain. Even though I hold notions of personal identity relatively loosely, the chances that a future brain would be sufficiently similar to mine to be called "me" seem very low. My answer to the question of "What happens after death?" is not really a statement about what the logical possibilities are. It is more a statement about overwhelming likelihood. So long as we think mental states at least supervene on the physical -- which you've correctly observed is a relatively low barrier -- we probably have good reason to think that the destruction of our physical brain will mean the destruction of us.
Yes, we seem to agree well enough for present purposes on the concept of physicalism, but I am inclined to draw the opposite conclusion. (From a scientific perspective, it's all just speculation and guesswork anyway.) I suspect that the chances of some sort of "re-awakening" for any particular person are widely variable, depending on a host of factors that we can barely imagine at the moment. In other words, for some people the chances might be fairly good (perhaps even near 100%), whereas for other people the chances might be vanishingly small. Here are a few factors to consider:
(BTW: I'm going to use "Reality" or "Being" as short for "the Totality of Everything" - which I suspect is best characterized as one or more variations of the concept of "multiverse". There are several different conceptions of "multiverse" (you can google "Max Tegmark" for descriptions of the variations) and many of them are mutually compatible).
I think it is fairly safe to say that Reality is essentially infinite, so I will simply make that assumption for the purposes of what I'm about to say.
I do not believe that Reality is essentially random, but if it were, and if the relevant processes constituting conscious experience are finite, then "re-awaking" is statically almost 100% certain for everyone. In fact, there would be a possible infinity of re-awakenings for every person from every given moment of their lives. Any finite physical process that is randomly generated becomes almost certain to repeat an infinite number of times in an infinite spacetime. As I said, I don't think this is how Realty works, but I can't totally discount it.
I believe that Reality is not essentially random, although I do think that there are some random aspects. I am inclined to say that Reality is a self-organizing physical system (probably compose of an infinite number of self-organizing subsystems - i.e., universes within a multiverse) in which qualia are "carriers of causation." (I'm adopting something a lot like Greg Rosenberg's Theory of Natural Individuals when I say that qualia are causally relevant.) The existence of my subjective, qualitative experience at this very moment implies that the possibility of this experience is part of the fundamental fabric of Reality. When the fundamental fabric of Reality implies a possibility of X, the question then becomes: What is the mechanism by which X becomes actualized? Is this mechanism purely random? or purely deterministic? or some mixture of the two? or could it be some sort of "free will" in which Reality Itself, or some subset of Reality, serves as the Agent of choice? I frankly just don't know, but I like to speculate.
I suspect that Reality is not a conscious Being with a "Godlike" perspective. I am basically atheist, from this point of view, so I don't think there is any Godlike Agent who consciously decided that I should exist, or that I should have this experience that I'm having right now. But if qualia are carriers of causation, then there could be qualitative reasons for why some possibilities are actualize, and others are not, even if these reasons are not conscious and/or not grounded on any Godlike perspective. Although I think that most of what I experience as the "island-like" ego-centered "I" existing in an ocean containing innumerable individuated "others" is illusory, there are, nevertheless, some aspects of my conscious experience that are not illusory. Indeed, some aspects of experience might be unavoidably real because they are fundamental aspects of Realty Itself.
If I want to have the experience of waking up and experiencing variations of "afterlife" or "reincarnation" or whatever, then there is some deeply fundamental sense in which Reality wants this too. (I am, after all, not ontologically distinct from Reality; I am "Reality Itself" actualizing qualitative possibilities that are intrinsic parts of the fabric of Reality Itself.) There is no guarantee that what Reality wants, Reality gets. As I see it, our best evidence is that Reality is probably not an all-powerful God; it is a self-organizing system with fundamentally qualitative, subjective causal aspects that struggle to satisfy desire, where "struggle" implies some real possibilities of failure. Anyway, all things being equal, I suspect that if Reality wants something, there is at least some reasonably good chance that Reality will get it sometime, somewhere, somehow, within the infinity of its Being.
Bottom line: If Reality were purely random, there would be near 100% certainty of an infinite number of re-awakenings for every person, but if Reality is a self-organizing system composed, at least partially, of qualitative causal aspects that struggle to satisfy desires, then the chances of any particular person re-awakening probably drops to somewhere in the broad range from "vanishingly small" to "highly probable" depending on all sorts of practical limitations and qualitative factors that we can barely imagine at the moment. The one small factor over which I might conceivably have some tidbit of control is my own desire and sense of optimism. In Reality, I suspect that very little is achieved without some level of desire and optimism. But one caveat: I suspect that living with the constant desire/hope for an afterlife could be counterproductive because it works against what I suspect is truly important, which is the ability to deeply appreciate the individual moments of life. At core, I think, is the ability to deeply feel that life has meaning and is worth living. If Reality has any choice in the matter, then to the extent that is has any power to actualize choice, it will probably strive hardest to actualize whatever seems most meaningful. That's just my guess.
I think it is fairly safe to say that Reality is essentiallyinfinite, so I will simply make that assumption for the purposes of what I'm about to say.
How is it in any rational to argue this?
We do know that individual organism are finite, regardless of whether reality in it's entirety is infinite or not. In order to know if anything is infinite, one would also need to be infinite, and since no one is, it's factually impossible to know if anything is. So how is it fairly safe to say reality is essentially infinite? That seems to make sense.
All evidence indicates experience is fundamentally rooted in the brain and nervous system. Evidence also indicates that the brain/nervous system ceases to function entirely upon death. Therefore, the overwhelmingly likelihood is that all experience ceases upon death. In other words, after we die, there is no 'us' anymore, other than the chemicals we were composed of, which become part of other things after decomposition, cremation, etc.
I can give some examples [about why believing in an afterlife is the only logical conclusion] ....
One person can live only for 5 years and another for 100 years. The person who only live 5 years only has short time of existence compared to an eternity? Why would one person be allowed to live a full life and no another one? Why would someone have a life filled with health problems and suffering while another enjoys a lifetime of good health? Illogical.
You will never see the people you love once your life is finished? Never? Again, illogical.
There's not really a nice way to say this: you demonstrate no understanding at all of "logic" and "reason."
The examples you gave might be UNFAIR or SAD, but they're not ILLOGICAL.
What you wrote is like me writing, "My cat Satay died at 14 and a half. My cat Mabel died at 16. Illogical."
Or "I was tired yesterday when I woke up. Today I am wide awake. Illogical."
Or "I love chocolate ice cream while my sister loves vanilla. Illogical."
Nothing illogical about any of those things. Sad or puzzling or weird (the one about the ice cream ), but not illogical.
Perhaps you could take a logic course at your local college. They're usually in the philosophy department.
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I think many of the answers in this thread belong in the Religion forum, not Philosophy -- which is not surprising.
Do you go to heaven, can you still see and breathe, will you have a next life?
Since no one who has died has actually been able to come back and reply, the answer is that we truly don't know. One can only speculate according to their beliefs.
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), but not illogical.
