theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Huh. I guess we didn't need a new LCP or traduced "agreement" after all. Just a naked reset.
Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion
- Thread starter Dancing David
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Turns out, you don't.
jond
Illuminator
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You're right about one thing: we don't agree with you. But, as always, we fully grasp the concept of self to which you're referring. We see it as a process of a functioning neuro system, whereas you insist that is is an entity that is separate from the brain to which it is tied.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
He should have waited at least a couple months. That would have been mildly amusing. This is just sad.
CriticalThanking
Designated Hitter
You exist as the result of physical processes, as does Mt. Rainier. They are different processes at the macro level - you were created by tectonic movement and erosion, whereas Mt. Rainier was created when a mommy mountain and a daddy mountain loved one another very much. Regardless, it's still physics and chemistry. Do you have reason to doubt that you exist without physics or chemistry?
Turn that statement around and see if you agree with it: Jabba does not agree with the points raised here because she can't, or isn't willing to, grasp the scientific and logical reasons her argument is wrong. You have been unable to proffer a single testable aspect of this self.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
That's the basic issue with mortality.
Science has an explanation, you just don't like it because it is fatal to your argument. Your consciousness is the result of your brain processes. On the other hand, your alternative hypothesis provides no explanation whatsoever for the existence of your soul. By your own argument you should doubt your favoured hypothesis more than you doubt the one you oppose.
You're begging the question again. The existence of the immortal soul is what you are trying to prove.
You've been back most days since you last posted.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
My Dear Mr. Savage:
Be so kind as to explain what it is, beyond your own fear of death and dissolution, that makes you free to pretend that there are "reasons to doubt the scientific explanation" for your existence.
It is here you founder, at the first fence. Without a show of valid reasons, you are, simply, repeating your unfounded assertions.
Or it could be that you have not been able to sell your "soul" claptrap here.
Of course you "perceive" what you believe. At issue is the fact that you have yet, after lo, these many years, offered the least bit of evidence for your claims.
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Mojo
Mostly harmless
Filippo Lippi
Philosopher
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Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
We grasp it perfectly well. You are simply using a different word for the concept of a soul. Your problem is that there is no evidence for such a thing.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
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Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
He knows why he is wrong, but doesn't want to admit that a) He is wrong, and b) He knows that he is wrong and why?
Egads...
Egads...
Toontown
Philosopher
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Jabba, since you can't stop trying to "essentially prove" immortality, and I am nothing if not helpful, here are my poorly worded suggestions:
(1) Drop the "soul" assumption. It is a multiplication of entities, is non-explanatory, and is just plain unlikely. Why does the particular soul that is "you" exist, out of an infinite set of "possible" souls? To "explain" that, you have to make even more unlikely assumptions. And the longer your list of unlikely assumptions gets, the less likely it is that they are all correct.
(2) Drop the "OOFlam" assumption that one particular body is the only "you" that can ever exist. This may require defining sentient experience in a way that will be unpopular in this venue. So be it. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
(3) Stop letting your opponents derail you with the "Texas Sharpshooter" nonsense. You did not "cherry pick" a "you" from a group of yous. That "you" is the only one available. Nor is a hypothesis invalid simply because it is post ante, if the observation upon which the hypothesis is based is sufficiently compelling. My poker nemesis, whose style of play I know nothing about, just went all in on the river. It could be an all-in river bluff, but I'm leaning toward the hypothesis that he has my top pair beaten. That's a post ante hypothesis, based on a single data point. Is it invalid? A guy could learn a series of costly lessons about how reliable a post ante hypothesis based on a single data point can be.
Hint: the correct anthropic assumption is that what you are experiencing is typical, rather than anomalous.
Drop (1) and (2), and what you are left with is your best shot at making a case for any semblance of "immortality". Hold on to (1) and/or (2) and you've got no shot at all.
But "prove" it you will not.
(1) Drop the "soul" assumption. It is a multiplication of entities, is non-explanatory, and is just plain unlikely. Why does the particular soul that is "you" exist, out of an infinite set of "possible" souls? To "explain" that, you have to make even more unlikely assumptions. And the longer your list of unlikely assumptions gets, the less likely it is that they are all correct.
(2) Drop the "OOFlam" assumption that one particular body is the only "you" that can ever exist. This may require defining sentient experience in a way that will be unpopular in this venue. So be it. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
(3) Stop letting your opponents derail you with the "Texas Sharpshooter" nonsense. You did not "cherry pick" a "you" from a group of yous. That "you" is the only one available. Nor is a hypothesis invalid simply because it is post ante, if the observation upon which the hypothesis is based is sufficiently compelling. My poker nemesis, whose style of play I know nothing about, just went all in on the river. It could be an all-in river bluff, but I'm leaning toward the hypothesis that he has my top pair beaten. That's a post ante hypothesis, based on a single data point. Is it invalid? A guy could learn a series of costly lessons about how reliable a post ante hypothesis based on a single data point can be.
Hint: the correct anthropic assumption is that what you are experiencing is typical, rather than anomalous.
Drop (1) and (2), and what you are left with is your best shot at making a case for any semblance of "immortality". Hold on to (1) and/or (2) and you've got no shot at all.
But "prove" it you will not.
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Loss Leader
I would save the receptionist., Moderator
Jabba -
You don't "finally" have an answer. This is what you've been saying all along. However, you keep asserting it with no evidence. You invent a thing that doesn't exist (some sort of unchanging "self") and then you demand that science account for it.
The concept is not only unnecessary, but it runs counter to all available evidence. The illusion of an unchanging "self" is a trick the brain plays to keep the organism working. It is a function of the brain. And it's obviously a trick because you are not the same person you were thirty years ago - you look different, act differently, remember things differently, love people who didn't exist back then, and on and on.
If you want to use this concept, you need to show evidence that an unchanging self even exists. What is its definition? What are its characteristics? What is provable about it that excludes the simpler explanation of a working neurosystem?
You've never answered these questions and you never will. But don't just restate your own tired beliefs and tell us that you've "finally" figured something out.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
You couldn't present any, so no. Your personal unwillingness to believe doesn't constitute a "real reason to doubt."
Of course it does. And it was presented to you several times. You spent years trying (and failing) to refute it.
"You're too dumb to get it" is a poor argument, Jabba. We don't agree with you because you tried to foist onto the scientific explanation for the sense of self a pile of gratuitous nonsense you made up to try to make it seem more like a soul, and then declared victory because science couldn't explain your made-up nonsense. Nothing more than that. Despite your best efforts, you couldn't make the straw man work, so now you've retreated back into the self-serving argument that you're just so much better than everyone else at "perceiving" things.
"I feel that I'm right" is not an argument. "I perceive things that I declare to be outside science" is not an argument. This is exactly what it means to beg the question. This is very, very far from the mathematical proof you promised.
No, it isn't. You just did the umpteenth fringe reset of the thread and are back peddling the same nonsense you started with.
Go do something else with your life, Jabba. You're really no good at this.
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I predict more than long enough to state the same things over and over but somehow paradoxically not long enough to actually answer a single question.
Just wrong. And not even new wrong. The same old wrong.
Stop it. Just stop it. Stop begging us to agree with you so we'll agree with you.
WE ARE NOT DISAGREEING WITH YOU BECAUSE WE ARE JUST REFUSING TO UNDERSTAND YOU WHAT PART OF THAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?
wollery
Protected by Samurai Hedgehogs!
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godless dave
Great Dalmuti
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RoboTimbo
Hostile Nanobacon
But that would mean that he's being... dishonest.
godless dave
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25 hours later and still no answers.
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