Proof of Immortality, VI

[JayUtah]

I will very happily try to answer any of your questions.

History has shown that not to be the case. Here are some challenges we know you know exist, and we know you know you haven't answered. Please take no more than an hour and, for each of the listed fatal flaws, write two or three sentences describing how your argument will overcome them.

 

[John Jones]

Fudbucker, Fudpucker up!

Oops!

An honest and understandable mistake

 

[Dancing David]

- No.
- My contention is that the self is the result of the emergent property of consciousness. That scientifically speaking, consciousness intrinsically creates/produces a brand new self that never existed before and will never exist again.

Yup every fleeting moment of everyday!

The persistence of 'self' is the illusion.

 

[Loss Leader]

Ooh, Jabba, I have a question:

If you go into cardiac arrest, your brain stops entirely and your consciousness shuts down. In fact you have no recollection of the time between losing and regaining consciousness. So here's my question:

If someone goes into cardiac arrest and comes back, is that person's "self" a completely new person?

It happened to me. For the full minute that my heart refused to beat, there was nothing whatsoever - not a feeling of nothing, not sleep, but actual nothing.

And I can attest that I woke up a very different person, if only for the fact that this new me had undergone an experience that the old me had never thought possible.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

I see that soul that Janna believes in has changed fundamentally


Again

 

[Belz...]

I see that soul that Janna believes in has changed fundamentally

Is Janna the mirror-universe, female version of Jabba, complete with goatee?

 

[Mojo]

Fudbucker,
- I will very happily try not to answer any of your questions.

FTFY.

 

[Kumar]

FTFY.

This Initialism is not A&F.

Full Time Full Year

or

first-time first-year

or

Otherwise?

 

[John Jones]

This Initialism is not A&F.

Full Time Full Year

or

first-time first-year

or

Otherwise?

Fixed That For You.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Feels Totally Futile, Yes?

Dave

 

[Kumar]

Fixed That For You.

Thanks.

 

[Pixel42]

Thanks.

Mojo inserted a word into Jabba's post so that it now says what he thought Jabba should have said. The word he inserted is bolded.

 

[zooterkin]

Mojo inserted a word into Jabba's post so that it now says what he thought Jabba should have said. The word he inserted is bolded.

No, it's "not".

 

[Jabba]

Thanks for answering. I know that looks like a silly question but this should help move the discussion forward.


Following the same recipe twice will result in two loaves of bread. Even if I bake one loaf, eat it, then make another one, the second loaf is not the first loaf brought back to existence.

Would you say there is a difference between the two loaves?

Dave,
- There would be a difference -- in that the atoms of the two loaves would be separate atoms. In that sense, they would not be the same atoms -- they would be the same kind of atoms. They would have the same characteristics.

So even though I followed the same recipe, I got a different loaf of bread, not the same loaf of bread.

Does this mean the second loaf of bread is brand new and came out of nowhere?

- No.
- My contention is that the self is the result of the emergent property of consciousness. That scientifically speaking, consciousness intrinsically creates/produces a brand new self that never existed before and will never exist again.

Just like following a bread recipe produces a brand new loaf of bread that has never existed before and will never exist again.

- No. There's an important difference.
- The second loaf is completely cause and effect traceable. The second self -- intrinsic to the particular consciousness -- is not.

 

[The Sparrow]

- No. There's an important difference.
- The second loaf is completely cause and effect traceable. The second self -- intrinsic to the particular consciousness -- is not.

It isn't????

Explain.

 

[Belz...]

- No. There's an important difference.
- The second loaf is completely cause and effect traceable. The second self -- intrinsic to the particular consciousness -- is not.

A few posts ago you said that it was an emergent property of the brain. Now you're saying that it isn't cause and effect traceable. Those are contradictory statements. Which is it?

 

[godless dave]

- No. There's an important difference.
- The second loaf is completely cause and effect traceable. The second self -- intrinsic to the particular consciousness -- is not.

Scientifically speaking, it is. It's just as traceable as the loaf of bread.

It's only not cause and effect traceable if you're talking about a soul that is not entirely the product of the physical body. If that's what you're talking about then you're wasting time trying to find a scientific explanation for such a thing. Scientists will either tell you it's outside the realm of science because it can't be observed or that as far as science is concerned such a thing doesn't exist. The latter is my position.

 

[JayUtah]

- No. There's an important difference.
- The second loaf is completely cause and effect traceable. The second self -- intrinsic to the particular consciousness -- is not.

There is no "second self" in materialism. There is no "particular consciousness" in materialism to which something can be intrinsic. That's not what a property is or how it works. The bread analogy was meant to illustrate how the process of consciousness and the illusion of the self work under materialism. You tried to defeat the analogy by -- surprise, surprise -- predictably begging the question that people are somehow exempt from the rules under the materialist model. That's blatant special pleading.

If you're going to understand materialism enough to pretend to have refuted it, you will need to give up all this special-pleading nonsense. You will need to stop thinking of the self in materialism as the same discrete entity it is in your model, and more as a process such as "going 60 mph." And I think you know this. As I mentioned before, people asking in mile-high text for you to address the discreteness of "going 60 mph" is conclusive evidence that you don't have answer for that question. And that question goes right to the heart of what you're trying to do here: abuse words like "particular" and "same" to blur an important conceptual distinction between what you are trying to say materialism is and what it really is.

 

[RoboTimbo]

- No. There's an important difference.
- The second loaf is completely cause and effect traceable. The second self -- intrinsic to the particular consciousness -- is not.

What? The "self", as you're calling it, is a process of a functioning brain. Remember when you admitted that it was a process?

Explain how it is that you're now referring to it as if it were a separate entity, a thing. You seem to be gibbering.

 

[JoeMorgue]

We will never get Jabba beyond "It's different because it is different, the difference is that they are different.""