Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on August 3, 2011 at 1:28am

Now that's funny. And true. I'm going remember that.

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Permalink Reply by JD Rasco on August 2, 2011 at 11:53pm

Afterlife is a fairly good song by Avenged Sevenfold.

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Permalink Reply by Jay on August 3, 2011 at 12:59am

True, there is no evidence that what we call "ourselves" or our "soul" that sets behind our brain center exists after death.  But let us keep in mind that science has not yet determined what "we" are.  One view is that we really aren't, that we are just software running on our brains.  I'd be fine with that, except that there are zillions of creatures that have come into existence and whatever "I" am is setting behind the brain center of this one specimine in particular.  Why not any other? 

 

I think until we understand what we really are, we are only able to say that we just do not know what happens to our consciousness when the brain shuts off.  Science should study it.  Perhaps if we're successful at wrestling this line of exploration away from the religions' grubby hands we can declare it fair game for science.  

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Permalink Reply by Sassan K. on August 3, 2011 at 3:25am

I disagree. Believing in an afterlife is just as preposterous as believing in a deity.

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Permalink Reply by Jay on August 3, 2011 at 10:41pm

Believing in a reality is futile. Pursuing it scientifically is another matter. Asserting we know what happens to our consciousness when we don't even know what it really is not scientifically valid. It's the same situation we were in when we had nor yet discovered extrasolar planetary systems. We had no evidence before the pursuit that other planets existed. We are there now with the question of other forms of life in the Cosmos. So while there is no evidence to suggest our consciousness can exist without our brains, and it may not seem plausible, we have wait for the science before we can say we know so. Just as with the extraterrestrial planets.

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on August 4, 2011 at 2:11am

No it isn't. There is no comparison at all. And there is no need to wait for the science to catch up with favored world views as the science is already pretty clear about leaving no room for free consciousness floating about in extra dimensions or any of that.

We did have very good reasons to suspect there were planets around other stars. It's part of our theory of the genesis - if you will - of planetary systems and that of the physics of fusion processes in and life-cycles of stars. It would be very hard - I mean to a point of absurdity - to explain the absence of planets forming in the molecular clouds when they gravitationally collapse.

It is was only, very very difficult to see planets around other stars - even small ones or moons within our own solar system. (Only in the last couple of weeks or so we discovered a natural satellite orbiting our own planet and that in a distant past the Earth might have had one more moon.) It was only waiting for the development of accurate and a practical methodology. They are now being detected using statistical analysis in recorded lightcurves.

There are no reasons whatsoever to suspect there being extra-cephalic consciousness floating around. In fact it is a brain function that isn't even guaranteed within our brains and most of what we do we don't need consciousness to take a part in at all. It is actually an extremely small part of what our brains do, containing only a few bits of information at any one time as one day we might develop methods to measure it directly

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Permalink Reply by Sassan K. on August 4, 2011 at 6:00am

Are Albert and I in agreement for the first time in the recorded history of the cosmos?

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on August 4, 2011 at 11:02am

Something's not right, I feel like being transplanted into another Universe. I am going to need a quick lie down now and a couple of aspirins.

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Permalink Reply by Jay on August 4, 2011 at 2:05pm

Albert, Sassan,
No need for science to settle it? That's exactly the point I'm arguing against: Declaring certainty without the science. That's all.

The topic of afterlife is only the instrument of the point. The planetary system validation example was to illustrate that even in the presence of high probability that other systems exist, a scientist does not claim her certainty without the evidence. It's just one of those maybe annoying facts. To assert with conclusive certainty that we know consciousness takes no other form after brain death is a strict lack of discliipline. Understand, just like he planetary system question, I'm with you: I don't see how it's possible given the observable. But to ignore the hard fact that no one can claim to know what consciousness even is, then make assertions that we know its full life cycle, sounds a lot like religious assertion.

Here is the only point I'm trying to nail down: We do not know.

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on August 4, 2011 at 4:17pm

Bad news: The situation is far worse than you are painting here. In science we can never, ever, ever know anything with absolute certainty ever.

This is not to say that we should not dismiss ridiculous (you can put that qualifier on my account, gladly) proposals that would need for whole bodies of science to be overturned and declared rubbish.

Even that isn't completely impossible. It's getting harder and harder though, don't underestimate it. You'll need to replace it with something better.

For example you are going to have to come up with a model of free floating consciousness. You are going to have to prove that it exists. You are going to have to come up with a mechanism how this presumed ectoplasm interacts with your everyday normal matter. You gonna have to rewrite the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Good luck with that one.

And I'm not even touching the exploding field of neuroscience in general and consciousness research in particular.

It is out of the question, contuining existence after bodily death is the superstition of yore. Cold reader lala land.

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Permalink Reply by Jay on August 4, 2011 at 10:28pm

Out of the question?  While science can never, ever, ever, know anything with absolute certainty, ever....most people, yourself among them, want to declare with great certainty, the nature and fate of consciousness at death.  Religous people insist we live on, hand in hand with their gods.  Atheists I've notice, (myself excluded), tend to want certainty that consciousness dies, just as it arose with the brain.  You can believe it, but there is no getting around the fact that we simply don't know.  I don't. And you don't either.  If it were as drop dead simply obvious as you are asserting here, the nature of consciousness would not remain the scientific mystery that it is. 

 

Hopefully readers will see my broader point.  I'm not asserting that consciousness can exist without the brain.  I'm pointing out that it is not known and that when we (atheists) go on about our certainty on the matter, without scientific support, we're doing none other than our religious counterparts.  There is nothing wrong with not knowing. There was a time that we did not know electricity and magnetism were interwoven fields of fundamental forces, or the evolutionary fact of our existence.  Knowing things comes at a great price that every scientist understands.  The universe is built on some mightily strange realities, from electrons that appear to spin only 1/2 way around for every revolution, you cite the famous heisenberg uncertainty principle.  Time does not possess a static rate, but changes with relative motions between objects. Don't forget Young's two slit experiment where electrons will behave as waves uness you count them, then they suddenly act like particles.  When you consider how very unintuitive the Universe has proven to be this far in our scientific pursuit of understanding it, perhaps this utter certainty about consciousness (which is definitely one of these remarkably unintuitive properties of our Universe) will be less freely involked. 

 

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Permalink Reply by Deme Mo on August 4, 2011 at 10:41pm

I understand completely your point. The only way we could know "nothingness" exists after death is evidence and without evidence we can not for certain say Death is the end. who knows we might actually meet baby Jesus...i doubt it but yea..lol.

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