Once you die, what will happen after death? (religion, Buddhism, soul)
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...there are still ways in which "I" can find myself having experiences after the death of my current brain (as I have explained in previous posts).
Sure, OK. It is totally untestable so go ahead and believe whatever you want. Some people say you get to have 40 virgins in heaven (for guys, not sure what women get, 40 studs?) so you may as well cook up your own story. All the philosophical mumbo-jumbo won't make it so.
NDE and life after death are totally whacky concepts. They violate all kinds of physical laws. Our brains consume about 20% of the total human energy budget. It requires a lot of energy to think and to process sensory inputs. Our senses work due to various electrochemical interactions. So in an NDE situation, where exactly are the sensory inputs occurring? Where is the information going? Where is it being processed? All of that requires energy as per the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so where is the energy coming from? And how is it dissipated (again, a requirement of the 2nd law)? It is complete and utter nonsense that human cognition can occur outside of humans without some sort of physical (biological or electronic) means in order to satisfy physics. You all are dreaming.
If NDE occurs during flat-lined brain activity, then clearly some new theories of physics will be needed (or, at least, some radically new theory of consciousness in which conscious experience is not reducible to neural correlates). One thing to keep in mind, of course, is that any new scientific theory will be required to explain all of the old data, as well as explain the various anomalies that drove us to develop the new theory in the first place.
In every generation you can find plenty of people who think that science has explained all of the most basic and important stuff, and that future science just needs to fill in the minor details. So far, every generation has been proven wrong. It is possible, of course, that we, in this generation, have reached the end of revolutionary science, but I am personally inclined to not bet on it. I would also point out that those who have historically insisted that we are done with revolutionary science have made their arguments based on the idea that there is "no conceivable way" for any new theory to "violate" this or that theory and still explain the old, well-verified data. Generally, what turns out to be missing is merely a sufficient level of imagination, and this lack of imagination is caused by an overly zealous commitment to the popular current paradigm. The trick of genius is to step back and question the "obvious" things that "everybody knows".
So let's speculate, for a moment, about ways in which consciousness might not be reducible to physical processes as currently understood. One possibility is that conscious experience is an as-yet-undiscovered state of matter. The behaviors of physical systems can be radically different due to organizing principles. Solids, liquids, gasses, and plasmas behave in radically different ways, even though they are all composed of the same basic stuff (i.e., quarks, electrons, etc.). I think it is a bit brash, at this point, to think that we know how to track every quanta of energy in physical systems. There is enough energy locked up in the mass of a single living cell to power your whole neighborhood. and the 2nd law of thermodynamics is based on our ignorance. Entropy is a measure of information that we don't know how to use anymore. The information isn't gone; it is just beyond our ability to track and/or reconstruct. We currently "can't imagine" how to use that information, but this doesn't mean that Mother Nature doesn't use it. A flat-lined brain is not lacking energy or information, and it has not ceased to give off heat. If consciousness is an undiscovered state of matter, then it is certainly possible that this state of matter is still on-line when the brain goes flat-line. Sure, this is speculative, but the first step in any scientific revolution is speculation.
Another possibility is that there are still particles that physics hasn't yet identified. In other words, in addition to possible unknown states of currently-known matter, there could be undiscovered forms of matter, and thus even more possible ways for there to be undiscovered states of matter.
What I'm saying is that NDEs don't have to be "beyond science", and they certainly don't mean that we have to become creationists, or convert to some religion, or believe in fairy tales. Just because current physics can't explain how NDEs can happen, it does not follow that future science couldn't explain them. There are impressive reports of NDE that are really hard to explain. Yes they are anecdotal, but this doesn't mean that they are worthless.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 04-16-2016 at 11:54 AM..
Sure, OK. It is totally untestable so go ahead and believe whatever you want.
It is only "untestable" until we figure out a way to test it.
Quote:
...so you may as well cook up your own story. All the philosophical mumbo-jumbo won't make it so.
A lot of things that seemed impossible to past generations are commonplace today. "Philosophical mumbo-jumbo" was not sufficient to make these things come true, but without philosophical mumbo-jumbo (i.e., without people who were willing to speculate beyond the popular paradigms of the day and recognize logical possibilities that other people were missing), the scientific theories that made these things possible would have been discovered.
"Philosophical mumbo-jumbo" was not sufficient to make these things come true, but without philosophical mumbo-jumbo (i.e., without people who were willing to speculate beyond the popular paradigms of the day and recognize logical possibilities that other people were missing), the scientific theories that made these things possible would have been discovered.
Oops, typo. That last sentence was supposed to say: "the scientific theories that made these things possible would not have been discovered." My basic point, of course, is that the only way to get beyond current theories is to go beyond current theories! And this is done mostly via philosophical analysis of the assumptions underlying the current theories.
And, BTW: Even in the cases where a scientist is the one who is speculating (e.g., Einstein challenging the assumption of absolute time, etc.), the scientist is putting on a "philosopher's hat" when they do this. Philosophy is essentially the quest for wisdom, and in western philosophy a central aspect of this quest is the logical analysis of arguments, which generally includes questioning and studying the assumptions that underlie those arguments.
To anyone who assumes that NDEs would necessarily invalidate materialism, I am encouraging you to challenge this assumption. Personally, I think that genuine NDEs would invalidate materialism, but "materialism" is a slippery concept because there could be types of matter or aspects of matter/energy that we simply do not yet understand. A deeper understanding of "matter" or "energy" could bring us back to "materialism" - meaning that minds are "material" in light of the revised sense of "matter".
To anyone who thinks that the discovery of valid NDEs would imply the truth of some religion, I am encouraging you to challenge this assumption.
To anyone who thinks that NDEs cannot be scientifically tested, I am encouraging you to challenge this assumption.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 04-16-2016 at 02:08 PM..
This is simply not true. All of the evidence that supports materialism also supports a variety of other metaphysical positions equally well. What most people don't seem to realize is that materialism is a metaphysical stance, and it not the only metaphysical stance that is compatible with scientific evidence. In any case, even if materialism is correct, there are still ways in which "I" can find myself having experiences after the death of my current brain (as I have explained in previous posts).
It would be very easy to discredit materialism. For instance, if an otherwise physiologically normal person with a dead or otherwise non-functioning brain is able to communicate unambiguously, this would be compelling evidence against materialism. However, there have been multitudinous cases of biologically viable, but brain-dead individuals and none have exhibited communicative ability. Such persons appear to display no voluntary behavior whatsoever. In all such cases speaking and movement is completely absent, and in the few cases where movement occurs, it appears to be entirely autonomic - i.e. involuntary.
The fact that physiological damage and changes to the brain result in consequent reduction/changes in mental function and behavior is compelling evidence for physiological materialism. Ultimately everything 'we' are and experience appears rooted in our bio-physiology; therefore after our all bio-physiological function ceases so do 'we'. Very simple.
The fact that physiological damage and changes to the brain result in consequent reduction/changes in mental function and behavior is compelling evidence for physiological materialism. Ultimately everything 'we' are and experience appears rooted in our bio-physiology; therefore after our all bio-physiological function ceases so do 'we'. Very simple.
I agree that when our physical functions stop, we stop existing. But I see no reason to think that, if a "critical mass" of these functions ever end up instantiated in any other physical system, then from an experiential point of view, "I" will be there, just as genuinely as "I" will "be there" when I wake up tomorrow morning. And if this were to happen, say, a billion years from now, the billion years will have no subjective importance to me. I will simply find myself waking up in the new situation, whatever this situation is.
What we can't really begin to address, at the moment, is the probability of this happening. The chances of the critical self-identifying, memory-holding physical functions recurring could be astronomically infinitesimal, or they could be virtually certain to recur innumerable times, in countless different ways. Without a theory of consciousness, our best bet is full-blown agnosticism.
What we can't really begin to address, at the moment, is the probability of this happening. The chances of the critical self-identifying, memory-holding physical functions recurring could be astronomically infinitesimal, or they could be virtually certain to recur innumerable times, in countless different ways. Without a theory of consciousness, our best bet is full-blown agnosticism.
Not at all. That we don't have a comprehensive understanding of consciousness doesn't invalid the overwhelming evidence that it has an entirely neurological basis. All evidence indicates that no individual person has never been duplicated exactly. Consequently, the idea that any aspect of individual consciousness could be 'certain to recur innumerable times, in countless different ways' seems highly improbable at best.
In for that to occur, someone would require no only literally infinite 'rebirth', but also the ability to retain infinite memories. That we don't have a comprehensive understanding of consciousness doesn't change that fact that there's no evidence this ever happens, when in fact it doesn't appear even remotely plausible.
Last edited by PanapolicRiddle; 04-17-2016 at 08:31 PM..
All evidence indicates that no individual person has never been duplicated exactly. Consequently, the idea that any aspect of individual consciousness could be 'certain to recur innumerable times, in countless different ways' seems highly improbable at best.
It is not clear that your neurological function would need to be "duplicated exactly." A person can suffer significant brain damage without greatly effecting their "sense of self", and people can suffer severe amnesia and still, in some sense, "be there". (People who recover from severe amnesia generally say they were "there" even while they had amnesia.)
But, I will grant you that even the re-creation of even just a minimal amount of brain function in a different brain would probably be, at best, astronomically improbable. Thus we certainly would not expect to ever see such a thing happen on Earth. But we live in an astronomically large universe, and we might live in an infinite multiverse. Given a big enough physical Reality, even astronomically improbable events can become far less improbable. And since we don't know the minimal neural correlates needed to instantiate the experience that I am having right now, we don't know how astronomically improbable it really is for these experiences to reoccur in a different brain somewhere/somewhen in the universe.
It is not clear that your neurological function would need to be "duplicated exactly." A person can suffer significant brain damage without greatly effecting their "sense of self", and people can suffer severe amnesia and still, in some sense, "be there". (People who recover from severe amnesia generally say they were "there" even while they had amnesia.)
But, I will grant you that even the re-creation of even just a minimal amount of brain function in a different brain would probably be, at best, astronomically improbable. Thus we certainly would not expect to ever see such a thing happen on Earth. But we live in an astronomically large universe, and we might live in an infinite multiverse. Given a big enough physical Reality, even astronomically improbable events can become far less improbable. And since we don't know the minimal neural correlates needed to instantiate the experience that I am having right now, we don't know how astronomically improbable it really is for these experiences to reoccur in a different brain somewhere/somewhen in the universe.
The first paragraph does nothing to discredit materialism. This only indicates that certain brain components seem associated with certain functions. But no functioning brain seems to indicate that experience is implausible.
As for the second paragraph, that's an awfully big stretch. It's possible that my neuro-physiology is being duplicated independent of my brain at some other location, kind of like a backup of files in the virtual cloud. If that's the case, then maybe if my brain were damaged or destroyed, my experience would continue. But there's no evidence that's actually the case, and currently that doesn't appear even remotely plausible.
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