Do you believe there is some form of self-conscious life after death?

[HansMustermann]

We do. It's just that they're always either Cleopatra or Julius Caesar.

I always wondered why people find that kinda thing comforting. I mean, if in a previous life you were some great warrior prince and now you're driving a garbage truck -- and let's face it, you're not exactly super-enlightened in your free time either -- then I don't like where that is pointing. What are you going to be in the next life? A beggar's monkey? A child slave on a cocoa plantation?

Seems more like pressure to get your crap together fast -- and you probably won't -- than a message of hope, if anyone asks me.

 

[arthwollipot]

I'm quite self-conscious enough in this life, thank you.

 

[Lurch]

What the religious or spiritual ascribe to a 'soul' seems to me to be merely 'brain.'

For instance. The phenomenon of the NDE (Near Death Experience) is touted as evidence of the soul's precipitous departure on the way to the afterlife. My objection:

How does this spirit impart its memory of the event upon reintegration into the body? Is there *that* intimate a connection between the ephemeral, other-worldly, immortal soul and the corporeal matter inside the skull?

If the soul is indeed the guide to our conscience, the essence of who we are, why is brain damage or memory loss so debilitating? A serious head injury can turn one into a veritable vegetable. Is the soul so disconnected in life, but is ready and able to carry back memory from a visit outside?

If, as some religious systems claim, our soul is judged in the hereafter for our actions in this life, this *must* then mean the brain is intimately coexisting with the spirit, if not subordinate to it. But our delicate brain puts the lie to this all too often. Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, manic depressiveness, and a host of other maladies alter one's character by turns, sometimes profoundly and frighteningly. Where is the individual's 'real', character that should be a manifestation of and directed by the soul? Is the soul *so* subsumed by the biological as to be effectively a non-player?

That seems suspiciously like nothing more than a brain to me.


And how about infants who pass on early? Are they to be infantile forevermore? What of the profoundly mentally disabled? Are we issued with a mainly unblemished 'adult' soul at conception, so that we are assured of a 'normal' afterlife?

And what would be the purpose of an afterlife of infinite duration? The whole concept is so utterly alien to us as fragile, instinct-driven, emotional, suffering, material, struggling, exploring, striving, short-lived creatures that it beggars belief to countenance the notion that the conscience of our current Earthly form could carry on *forever* in a state of essentially unchanging 'bliss.' To my way of imagining it, it would be like a never-ending love-in at a commune, filled with perpetual smiles, "peace be upon you" platitudes and mind-emptying contemplation of nothingness and all-ness.

It seems to me that it's anathema to our fundamental nature to endure infinity without challenges and outlets for exploration. The dichotomy between this content spirit and the nature of the Earthly host is so vast I just cannot imagine our conscience as we understand it being able to just carry on as is. The change in 'environment' would be so profound that this soul would have to be so different as to be very nearly not us at all.

(Unless the Jihadists have it right, and that Paradise really is about endlessly satisfying our very Earthly and earthy desires. )

And so no, I don't see how my conscience has anything to do with anything more than electrochemical reactions that cease for all time upon expiration.

 

[HansMustermann]

What the religious or spiritual ascribe to a 'soul' seems to me to be merely 'brain.'

I think you're overthinking it. The ancients didn't even know what the brain does. It was the only organ the Egyptians didn't embalm, because surely that one you don't need, and it was the organ that Aristotle thought was just a heatsink for the water cooling system that is your blood. (And I still think that for SOME people they were onto something)

Furthermore, they actually made a distinction between mind or mental processes and soul. See psyke vs pneuma for the Greeks, or anima vs spiritus for the Romans.

The fact and the idiocy is that in most languages the spirit or soul are actually derivatives of BREATH. Spirit for example based on the Latin spiritus, meaning quite literally breath. It's that final breath.

Essentially, it just answered the age old question: when someone gave their final breath, when they stopped breathing, where did the breath go? Which you may recognize as being about as idiotic as asking: when the clock stops, where does the Ticking go?

 

[Jodie]

I think it's more like, " When the clock stops ticking where does the time go?"

 

[Thor 2]

This thread has come back from near death.

Did it have a NDE ynot?

 

[Desert Fox]

I see #3 as a vague "maybe I think there is life after death."
I cannot in any absolute sense say that there is no life after death but don't see any reason which to think there is any likelihood at all that there is.

 

[HansMustermann]

I cannot in any absolute sense say that there is no life after death but don't see any reason which to think there is any likelihood at all that there is.

I think that is just the sane version of "no". And I find it curious that pretty much only when it comes to religion or other woowoo, people need to be constantly remineded of it.

The fact is, on almost any other domain, that's the common sense modus operandi. If I said that I believe I don't have a kitten in the house -- hell, even if I said I'm SURE I don't have a kitten -- it's just common understanding that I'd change my mind if someone presents evidence to the contrary. Like if there's some meowing from the basement. If there's a kitten there, hey, free kitten. I stand corrected.

It's only on woowoo domains, when one can't support their claims, that they fall back on some supposed refusal of the opponents to acknowledge that they're right. No, it's just that the evidence isn't there. If it becomes available, sure, we'll change our mind. Same as on any other domain, really.

 

[asydhouse]

I will let you know after I am dead.

Norm

No you won't.

Peter Sellers promised to let his wife know if he was still around after death, but she never got a message from him after he died. I voted no on the poll, and this was the least of my reasons for doing so.

My acceptance of the ephemeral nature of life and mind is mainly from considering the sheer implausibility from everything we know about how the world works, and how prone to self-delusion and faulty sense perceptions our minds and bodies are. The filtering out of those inadequacies through the methodical application of science only bolsters my impression that death means death (rather more soundly than "Brexit means Brexit"!).

 

[asydhouse]

I think it's more like, " When the clock stops ticking where does the time go?"

That's one of those at-first-glance profound sounding statements which on consideration evaporate into a mist of dumb nothing.

For a start there's a category error at the core of it: the clock is an instrument for measuring regular intervals in a process, perhaps the unwinding of a spring as it pushes cogs, or the vibration of an atom. By convention we call this measuring (or perhaps metering is a better word) the passage of time.

But "time" is a property of spacetime, which is the body of the universe, if you will. The clock neither produces "time", nor affects it. The statement regarding time is the equivalent of saying, with regard to space, "where does the space go when a car pulls off the road and parks".

Life, on the other hand, is generated by certain arrangements of matter undergoing processes. When the processes stop, so does the "life". It doesn't "go" anywhere. It simply ceases processing, and is no more.

No one asks where the fire has gone after the wood has been reduced to ashes.

Life is exactly the same thing: a process which ceases to operate when it runs out of the requisite fuel.

 

[Desert Fox]

I think that is just the sane version of "no". And I find it curious that pretty much only when it comes to religion or other woowoo, people need to be constantly remineded of it.

The fact is, on almost any other domain, that's the common sense modus operandi. If I said that I believe I don't have a kitten in the house -- hell, even if I said I'm SURE I don't have a kitten -- it's just common understanding that I'd change my mind if someone presents evidence to the contrary. Like if there's some meowing from the basement. If there's a kitten there, hey, free kitten. I stand corrected.

It's only on woowoo domains, when one can't support their claims, that they fall back on some supposed refusal of the opponents to acknowledge that they're right. No, it's just that the evidence isn't there. If it becomes available, sure, we'll change our mind. Same as on any other domain, really.

Nick Fury: Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.

 

[asydhouse]

As much as I would want it to be so, I also voted no. My desires and wishes have no effect on reality (sadly).

Well they do, but only if you physically communicate and/or operate on your physical surroundings.

That realisation got me out of a paranoid reaction to some strong cannabis in Goa a few years ago. Having realised that, I went to find my wife and gave her a cuddle, and had a lovely time sitting on the beach after that.

 

[asydhouse]

Oh, I think it quite definitely is part of their findings that the most able self-underestimate. From Dunning and Kruger's paper, "Unskilled and Unaware of it...", section headed "The Burden of Expertise":

"Although our emphasis has been on the miscalibration of incompetent individuals, along the way we discovered that highly competent individuals also show some systematic bias in their self-appraisals. Across the four sets of studies, participants in the top quartile tended to underestimate their ability and test performance relative to their peers, Zs=-5.66 and -4.77, respectively, ps<0.0001."

It's also quite clear from their data that the top quartile underestimate their own performance, at least in relative terms, and it's suggested that this is due to an inability to comprehend the level of incompetence some people are capable of.

Dave

It seems likely that a large part of the result is because people who are genuinely skilled/knowledgeable have worked very hard to get to that condition, while the least developed may have not bothered working much, because they feel as if they have an instinctive grasp of whatever the skill is about.

Similarly, the more you learn, the more you realise there is to learn, a never-ending road that is only recognised by those who have traveled further on it.

 

[asydhouse]

Statistically, there is a huge change that you will live again, because there is evidence that it happened once (this live) that you came from nothing in a universe. Why should it not happen twice.

Because of Chaos (the scientific/mathematical theory, not some war of the gods nonsense).

In a finite universe such as this, Chaos ensures that the incredibly complex and contingent composure of your brain, and therefore you (which is dependant on the arbitrary conditions in which your life unfolded), can never be replicated.


ETA: Why the hell can't you proof read your post?! Don't you respect your own utterances enough to make sure the words you meant to use are actually correct in your messages? You also show lack of respect for your readers by not bothering, and forcing us to try to work out what the hell you are trying to say! And punctuation is as important as words in communication. A question requires a question mark at the end of the bleeding sentence!

 

[Donn]

You also show lack of respect for your readers by not bothering, and forcing us to try to work out what the hell you are trying to say! And punctuation is as important as words in communication. A question requires a question mark at the end of the bleeding sentence!

<slowvehicle mode> Grammar is all that stands between us and chaos!</slowvehicle mode>

 

[Dave Rogers]

Statistically, there is a huge change that you will live again, because there is evidence that it happened once (this live) that you came from nothing in a universe. Why should it not happen twice.

While statistically it is possible (or, in an infinite universe, certain) that another person will come into being in another place and/or time whose physical form and reactions to specific stimuli would be exactly the same as mine, in what sense would this identical personality be me if he had no memory of my experiences? Without continuity of memory, or at least connectivity of memory, there cannot be continuity of consciousness.

Dave

 

[Manopolus]

It depends on what you mean by "after." I lean towards a model in which time has at least three dimensions, with our consciousness permanently existing within the sphere of our own timeframes. What makes time appear unidirectional and one dimensional in this model is memory. That concept is not limited to human memory, but includes anything which stands as a record of past events (data).

This allows for an experiential reality in which we are technically immortal, but merely constrained with limits. Imagine, for instance, a situation where you go to bed one evening, and wake up at a point three years earlier. Because the state of your memory has also rewound, you would not know the difference. At this point, perhaps your reality will examine another trajectory. It's sort of like somebody just hit the reset button or reverted to a saved game.

This is not something which I "believe" but merely a mental model based on the limitations to our experience of time. Admittedly, it's almost word salad when you talk about time "passing" while it's going backward or whatever. The concept is just a way of contemplating a three-dimensional time which would be theoretically outside of the realm of what humans can knowingly experience. It presupposes a hypothetical time outside of time and something similar to simulation theory that is not limited to the single path which we experience.

Of course, I could just be making stuff up (actually, that part is a given). If you want "evidence" of this model having anything to do with reality, I can only resort to false memories and The Mandela Effect, under the assumption that the mind can sometimes dredge up memories that come from places in time not directly causational to the one which we are currently examining. Add in quantum physics and the observer effect, and the only timepath we can be certain of are those related to the measurable qualities of now. The unreliability and inconsistency of multiple eyewitnesses also plays into the notion. Perhaps they actually did arrive at the present moment through different time paths and perhaps may wander off in different directions, as well.

But anyway... I answered "no" to the poll, mainly because it is not possible to remember your own death even if my model has some truth to it. Although it technically could make you seem immortal from a dualistic/idealistic perspective, it is nonetheless constrained by death. The only difference is that death is a boundary of amorphous time restraints, rather than a unidirectional and one-dimensional ending. Because it still isn't possible to live on while remembering your own death (except perhaps in a "false" memory), then "after death consciousness" is still an oxymoron. Not only is the concept wrong -- it violates its own definitions.

 

[bruto]

Statistically, there is a huge change that you will live again, because there is evidence that it happened once (this live) that you came from nothing in a universe. Why should it not happen twice.

Whaaa? Maybe you came from nothing, but most of us came from what was already in the universe. Didn't your mommy and daddy tell you about the birds and the bees?

 

[HansMustermann]

While statistically it is possible (or, in an infinite universe, certain) that another person will come into being in another place and/or time whose physical form and reactions to specific stimuli would be exactly the same as mine, in what sense would this identical personality be me if he had no memory of my experiences? Without continuity of memory, or at least connectivity of memory, there cannot be continuity of consciousness.

Dave

Well, you're obviously aware of the difference between possibility and probability, but lest someone take it too seriously, let me illustrate why we don't even have to worry about the continuity part.

I'm too lazy to calculate it all again, but, lucky me, in an infinite universe someone will have already written it. And it so happens it was me, in this thread: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147003

A human brain has 100 billion neurons. On the average each has 7000 inputs. (The ones in the cortex more, of course, the others less.) It's estimated that a 3 year old has 10^15 such synapses, though the number decreases as you grow up.

Now the "strength" or sensitivity of a synapse is pretty much how your brain learns, and that's really an analogue number. But let's pretend it's an on-off affair, i.e., binary. I.e., we'll only model here which synapses broke off so far.

We'll also ignore that new connections grow in that self-reconfiguring FPGA.

(We'll _massively_ underestimate the information needed to reproduce that C(t) this way, but I kinda like the idea of an afterlife all of a sudden.)

So the information needed for even just that carricature of a model is basically 2 to the power 1,000,000,000,000,000. Read that carefully. It's not just a million billions, it's two to the power a million billions! Well, 2^10 is approximately 10^3, so that's approximately 10^300,000,000,000,000. Yes, you write a one and then 300,000,000,000,000 zeroes behind it.

Even assuming that some particles assembled themselves in the equivalence of a brain (already improbable), it would be one chance in 2^1,000,000,000,000,000 that it's configured like yours.

And again: that's just which synapses are completely off. If we go into more details it only gets more ludicrious.

So on the whole I wouldn't set my hopes too high there of it happening by chance. Yes, in infinite time it would, but in a universe that has a FINITE time before which it's unable to support life or any kind of using energy to control chaos, when I put my pragmatic engineer cap on, I wouldn't bet on it happening.​

And in an infinite universe, surely someone has already calculated what those probabilities mean. Oh, look, it's me again on page 2 of that thread. What are the ODDS, man?

Let's do even more maths, to put those numbers into perspective.

IIRC the number of electrons in the observable universe is anywhere between 10^79 (for an average one atom of hydrogen per cubic metre) and 10^130 (how many spheres the size of an electron you can pack in it).

Let's say that each electron once a second would form a different configuration equivalent to a different brain. (Absurd, because one single electron isn't enough for a a brain, but let's be unbelievably generous with our upper limit.) Basically it's the "monkeys on keyboards" scenario with as many monkeys as electrons you could fit in the observable universe.

A year is 31 556 926 seconds, and let's give the universe a good 300 billion years for that experiment. That works out to about 10 billion billion seconds, or basically 10^19 seconds.

So if every single electron in the universe formed the equivalent a different brain configuration every single second, the universe would only have time to "try" a maximum of 10^149 different combinations. While your brain is one in 10^300,000,000,000,000 different combinations as shown earlier.

So I _really_ wouldn't set my hopes high of such a clone of your synapse configuration happening randomly.​

So basically not only the odds are beyond negligible that another brain with the same memories happens before the universe pretty much dies, it's beyond negligible that even some cluster of particles will ever have the same up/down spin combinations as your brain's synapses are on or off.

We don't even have to worry about continuity basically. Because the moment where we have to worry whether it's continuity or coincidence will just never happen.

 

[ynot]

Seems some forum poll threads at least can rise from the dead.