Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[Mojo]

- I assume that some organic state naturally produces a 'bit' of consciousness.

Nope. Consciousness is not a substance that you can have a 'bit' of. You are still trying to define it as something that you can have a discrete piece of, and it isn't.

 

[aleCcowaN]

- Digging down, looking for the roots of our dilemma...

Whose dilemma?

I have to admit the noticeable ability of Jabba to add momentousness to run-of-the-mill teen-age-like ruminations.

It's like he has watched the Hiroshima mushroom cloud and, in order to cause a worse damage, he has been trying to invent gun powder ever since.

 

[Slowvehicle]

- It could be that no one wants to answer my last question, but at least some of you probably accept that you do have such a sense, and do believe that when your body dies, you will never have that sense again -- your particular sense of self will never exist again.
- My claim is that sense of self, whatever it is otherwise, is probably immortal. I say that, because your sense of self is so unlikely to currently exist if it isn't immortal -- though, this might have more to do with the relativity of time than the length of your actual existence.

My Dear Mr. Savage:

The highlighted bit is bathetic.

And remember, by those very rules of yours, you have already agreed that there is not a single bit of evidence for the existence of a "soul", much less of it's "immortality".

I remain apparently invisibly yours, &ct.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Mojo,
- I must admit that my reflexes do push in that direction -- but, my goal is to avoid those reflexes and instead to be as "transparent" as possible... I know that you won't believe such a thing -- but, I swear to God (or, a reasonable facsimile thereof) that it's true.

Well, I have to trust you on your good intention then, but in that case, maybe you need to try harder.

- I also admit that Blackmore is an atheist, and believes that the "self" is an illusion.

Then I suggest you will be hard put to find honest quotes that support your case.

- What I'm trying to argue here is that even if the self IS an illusion, according to OOFLam, my illusion will cease to exist, will never exist again, never had to exist in the first place and whose likelihood of currently existing is infinitesimal.

Yes. And?

- I'm also claiming that my illusion has feelings,and its existence matters to it.

Of course. We all have.

- Also, I was using Blackmore to isolate the particular kind of self to which I've been trying to refer.

I can do that for you: It is a consciousness formed by coincidences and likely stories, which has a dream to be more than it is. There are nearly 7 billions of them, on Earth alone.

Hans

 

[Slowvehicle]

- Digging down, looking for the roots of our dilemma...

- I assume that some organic state naturally produces a 'bit' of consciousness.
- I claim that a sense of self is an intrinsic part of consciousness.
- Each new bit of consciousness has a new, and different, sense of self.
- If time is infinite, the potential bits of consciousness -- and, different senses of self -- are also infinite.

My Dear Mr. Savage:

The roots of your dilemma are open, patent, and notorious.

What has any of this post to do with demonstrating the existence of a "soul", much less its "immortality"? (Do not overlook that by your own rules, you have agreed that there is not a bit of actual evidence for either one...)

I remain unfulfilledly yours, &ct.

 

[MRC_Hans]

- Perhaps, my basic claim is that if there is no pool of potential selves, each new self is a brand new creation, and potential selves must be infinite. Does anyone see any logic in that?

Yes, that is quite logical. Do you have a problem with that?

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

Each self is an ongoing process in a brain. There is no such thing as a potential self.

Well, we could define it as the potential snapshot of a self that you might take at any given moment.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

No, I don't see any logic in it.

Each self is brand new in exactly the same way that each body is brand new. Or each banana for that matter. Or blade of grass.

Exactly! No problem with the logic.

I know and you know where Jabba is trying to go with the statement, and that is illogical, but the statement itself is fine.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

- Susan Blackmore says that she has a 'sense' (my word) of self, that she believes is an illusion. Do any of you guys have such a sense of self?

That is an essential part of being self-aware.

Hans

 

[Hokulele]

- Digging down, looking for the roots of our dilemma...

- I assume that some organic state naturally produces a 'bit' of consciousness.

This is where you went wrong. Why do you assume this?

 

[godless dave]

- Digging down, looking for the roots of our dilemma...

- I assume that some organic state naturally produces a 'bit' of consciousness.
- I claim that a sense of self is an intrinsic part of consciousness.
- Each new bit of consciousness has a new, and different, sense of self.
- If time is infinite, the potential bits of consciousness -- and, different senses of self -- are also infinite.

The potential bananas are also infinite. Again, so what?

 

[John Jones]

- Susan Blackmore says that she has a 'sense' (my word) of self, that she believes is an illusion. Do any of you guys have such a sense of self?

1) You have been caught misquoting people or quoting them out of context again and again. No critical thinker will consider your version of what Susan Blackmore says without CITATIONS AND CONTEXT!

2) Did you not already appeal to Dr Blackmore for support, and get brushed-off? Maybe I'm thinking of that other 4+ year thread that ended ignominiously.

 

[Mojo]

This is where you went wrong. Why do you assume this?

Because if he doesn't his "proof" won't work.

 

[JayUtah]

- Digging down, looking for the roots of our dilemma

The root of our dilemma is that your argument has been refuted several times over, but you refuse to accept it. You told us the reason you would not accept failure is that you are too emotionally invested in your preferred outcome. There's no mystery here, Jabba.

If time is infinite, the potential bits of consciousness -- and, different senses of self -- are also infinite.

No. First, "potential" this-or-that doesn't provide a denominator that lets you conclude the probability of any one of them existing is zero, because the thing actually, observably exists. The probability of its existence cannot be zero. You can contrive a ratio that is infinitesimally small, but that doesn't stop the thing from existing and as such doesn't constitute any sort of proof.

Second, there are no "bits" of consciousness. You insist on characterizing consciousness as a "thing" when, under H, it is not. As such it is not countable.

 

[JayUtah]

Because if he doesn't his "proof" won't work.

Indeed. Jabba wants to prove the existence of an immortal soul using mathematics. He can't, and he knows he can't. (Yes, he admitted he couldn't, which was why he tried to pull back the goal line to mere "immateriality.") So like all the other fringe theorists who want to "prove" their claim, he has manufactured a false dilemma between his claim and some other claim -- H, the scientific hypothesis for consciousness. At other times it's "OOFLAM," the notion that we have at most only one finite life. (These aren't the same hypothesis, but that's just so Jabba can equivocate between them as an escape technique.)

With the false dilemma set up, he can now "disprove" H and assert that ~H must therefore hold by default. As with many fringe claimants, Bayesian statistics is his chosen tool because it allows the user to quantify degrees of belief. That means, according to the fringe, that you don't need any facts. Hence Jabba just makes them up.

Jabba shows he understands the algebra of the model. It doesn't matter what prior probability you choose, so long as your likelihood ratio given new information is correct. And so Jabba needs a very, very small number to transform practically any prior into a statistical "certainty" that the scientific hypothesis H cannot produce consciousness. This is his disproof of H. If you think of a probability simplistically as the ratio of the cardinality of the set of desired outcomes to the cardinality of the set of possible outcomes, you see what he's trying to do. He needs as big a denominator as he can get for that ratio, because he needs it to be as close to zero as possible. Thus this thread has incorporated several different attempts on Jabba's part to find, beg, or invent something that can be counted up to infinity -- or as close as he can get. He desperately needs the Big Denominator, by whatever means he can get people to believe.

In short, he's desperately trying to cobble up some notion that matches the algebra of the solution he's predetermined.

Today it's the supposed cardinality of "potential bits." Yesterday it was something else. Tomorrow it will be something else. That's because Jabba poured out his real argument some months ago in a lengthy, angsty thread trying to beg acceptance on emotional grounds. He frankly admitted he could never back down without severe emotional distress. It's not enough to believe he has an immortal soul -- his emotional well-being hinges on being able to prove it mathematically. So on he presses in his quest for the Big Denominator. His argument won't work without it.

 

[caveman1917]

He frankly admitted he could never back down without severe emotional distress. It's not enough to believe he has an immortal soul -- his emotional well-being hinges on being able to prove it mathematically. So on he presses in his quest for the Big Denominator. His argument won't work without it.

If all that is required is immortality, then I wonder why he doesn't use more sciency - for lack of a better word - arguments to reach that conclusion. It's not like there aren't serious arguments which can be made which include immortality, rather than this mystical stuff packaged in bad math.

 

[Jabba]

Jabba,
- You are conscious. The consciousness you have today is not the same as the consciousness you had yesterday. Your consciousness as of the moment you read this post is not the same as the consciousness of five minutes earlier. They appear to be continuous with each other because your current consciousness includes memories of those earlier consciousnesses.

Some day, your brain will cease to function. Then, not only will your consciousness of yesterday, and your consciousness of today, and your consciousness of the particular instant you read this post no longer exist, but there will be no consciousness with memories of those earlier consciousnesses. There will no longer be an entity that thinks it is Jabba.

Mojo,

- Do you have a sense of self?
- If you do it will eventually cease to exist, according to OOFLam.

- My main claim here is that there is an infinity of different potential senses of self, which means that the likelihood of the current existence of your particular sense of self -- given that you have one, and given OOFLam -- is infinitesimal.
- Which means that if you do have a sense of self, OOFLam is very likely wrong.

 

[Jabba]

If all that is required is immortality, then I wonder why he doesn't use more sciency - for lack of a better word - arguments to reach that conclusion. It's not like there aren't serious arguments which can be made which include immortality, rather than this mystical stuff packaged in bad math.

Caveman,
- Please tell me what my mystical stuff is, and what's wrong with my math.

 

[jond]

Mojo,

- Do you have a sense of self?
- If you do it will eventually cease to exist, according to OOFLam.

- My main claim here is that there is an infinity of different potential senses of self, which means that the likelihood of the current existence of your particular sense of self -- given that you have one, and given OOFLam -- is infinitesimal.
- Which means that if you do have a sense of self, OOFLam is very likely wrong.

Alternatively your sense of self is generated by your brain, and as a result is the only sense of self it could be. There are no such things as potential senses of self. Which means that OOFLam is quite a bit more likely than having a body and a seaparate entity which exists separately from your brain, and then somehow manages to make your brain function the way is does when generating this process call consciousness.

 

[caveman1917]

Caveman,
- Please tell me what my mystical stuff is, and what's wrong with my math.

Your mystical stuff is NDE or a "soul" which exists without a body. I've already told you what's wrong with your math, your relative likelihoods are equal and not different like you claim.