Cryonics and the soul/afterlife

[KelvinG]

This thread:

Reviving the Dead

in General Skepticims and Paranormal made me wonder about the implications of cryonic suspension and how it could provide almost certainty about questions of a human soul, and that sould passing into another world after physical life on this one has ended.

Now, granted, you will have to buy into the idea that one day science will be able to revive dead persons from a state of cyonic suspension. I realize this is a very big "if", but let's just say for the sake of argument that it will be possible one day.

If a person dies of an incurable disease, or just natural causes, he is obviously deceased. He meets the criteria that is necessary to pass into the next world, if there is one. It doesn't matter for this discussion what that other world is.

Now, if 100 years from now he is revived from this cyronic suspension, what are the metaphysical implications here?
If, upon being revived, he has no memory of anything since he was alive 100 years ago, and it's seems to him that no time at all has passed, then wouldn't that be a pretty strong argument in favour of materialsim? If there is an afterlife, shouldn't he have a memory of that?

 

[Donn]

What if he were converted into information within a very sophisticated computer (by mapping the neurons in his frozen brain by nanotech means - or whatever sci-fi stuff works)?
Would he even be human anymore?

I think the people who believe in souls and such will simply glue the soul to the 'awareness' of the person and invoke any omnipotent means needed to keep the soul where the 'person' is, thus he did not *really* die and so the soul never went anywhere.

There is also the argument that souls don't go to heaven until gawd has done his Final Judge Dreddment thang and that date can be pushed into the future as far as anyone likes really.

Whatever. Me, I'd like to wake up ten thousand years from now to see what's new! I really think we are still living in what amounts to Medieval times. The good stuff's all still coming!

 

[jmercer]

This thread:

Reviving the Dead

in General Skepticims and Paranormal made me wonder about the implications of cryonic suspension and how it could provide almost certainty about questions of a human soul, and that sould passing into another world after physical life on this one has ended.

Now, granted, you will have to buy into the idea that one day science will be able to revive dead persons from a state of cyonic suspension.

Whoa, wait a minute. First, we have to define "death" to discuss this properly. People clinically die all the time and are brought back; this is no different than that except in terms of potential duration and viability of return.

A lot of religions set a timeframe for the soul (or atman, or whatever) to actually depart the body... so you have to deal with that limitation, too. And another question is... is a person who's body is put into suspended animation actually dead? Or simply "interrupted"?

I'm afraid you won't get your answer quite that easily.

 

[jmercer]

What if he were converted into information within a very sophisticated computer (by mapping the neurons in his frozen brain by nanotech means - or whatever sci-fi stuff works)?
Would he even be human anymore?

I think the people who believe in souls and such will simply glue the soul to the 'awareness' of the person and invoke any omnipotent means needed to keep the soul where the 'person' is, thus he did not *really* die and so the soul never went anywhere.

There is also the argument that souls don't go to heaven until gawd has done his Final Judge Dreddment thang and that date can be pushed into the future as far as anyone likes really.

Whatever. Me, I'd like to wake up ten thousand years from now to see what's new! I really think we are still living in what amounts to Medieval times. The good stuff's all still coming!

There was a pretty good thread on this concerning cloning, matter transmission (teleporters a' la' Star Trek or SG-1) etc. The discussion not only included "souls", but the added dimension of "identity" - as in, who is the real jmercer - the replicant, or the original?

It was a lively debate.

 

[Timothy]

Clearly, since you are dead, your soul has gone to (Heaven / Hell / Purgatory / Newark [choose one]).

Therefore, being revived after cryonics means you would be a soulless empty husk, roaming the Earth with no purpose and no morals ... an abomination to mankind.

Therefore cryonics should rightfully be banned by the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, Scientology, Islam, and my neighborhood Christ-O-Rama. (Episcopalians go to Connecticut when they die, so that's not a problem.)

 

[roger]

Re: Re: Cryonics and the soul/afterlife

Whoa, wait a minute. First, we have to define "death" to discuss this properly. People clinically die all the time and are brought back; this is no different than that except in terms of potential duration and viability of return.

I would think for this to be any kind of evidence, we would be need to be talking about brain death. As in absense of any kind of activity in the brain stem. No one has been revived from this state to date, AFAIK.

 

[Donn]

Therefore cryonics should rightfully be banned by the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, Scientology, Islam, and my neighborhood Christ-O-Rama.

Or we could just call it "christonics" and freeze 'em kneeling!

 

[bgwowk]

roger wrote:

I would think for this to be any kind of evidence, we would be need to be talking about brain death. As in absense of any kind of activity in the brain stem. No one has been revived from this state to date, AFAIK.

That's not what brain death is. People recover from total absence of activity in the brain (including brain stem) every day. Anyone in deep hypothermia, barbiturate coma, cardiac arrest of more than half a minute has no brain activity. Brain death means there is no activity in the brain, including brain stem, *when there is warm oxygenated blood flowing through the brain in absence of drugs*. In other words, the diagnosis of brain death is made for patients maintained on life support with brains so damaged that they can't work properly even when provided with all necessary means to do so.

The idea that people "die" simply when normal metabolism or electrical activity stops is primitive nonsense. It's a relic of 19th century vitalism. If you can wake someone up, they were never dead by definition.

Here's an amusing take on this issue

http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/hesdeadjim.htm

---BrianW

 

[Open Mind]

We don’t know what consciousness is, we know it exists ...… The debate often seems to have become a ‘it is all in the brain’ VS ‘no, it is outside the brain’ …… but what if consciousness is both! Yes it seems paradoxical to assume both could be true ……but it might be like arguing over whether an electron is a particle or a wave.

Perhaps consciousness can behave like a brain when viewed by a brain and can behave like beyond a brain, when free from its limitations (assuming it is a limitation) . What is interesting, but dismissed by materialist skeptics, is that the NDE experience seems to occur when the brain is electrically dead (around 14 seconds or so after cardiac arrest) … so either the person has a very vivid experience during the time the brain appears electrically dead or the person dreams it on reawakening, which is a truly bizarre thing to do to dream ones death when waking up. Neither is 14 seconds window of time to have a near death experiences seem long enough to account for the reports, so the skeptic must argue the person is greatly embelishing it or the dying brain thinks faster.

If, upon being revived, he has no memory of anything since he was alive 100 years ago, and it's seems to him that no time at all has passed, then wouldn't that be a pretty strong argument in favour of materialsim? If there is an afterlife, shouldn't he have a memory of that?

Not necessarily If the brain is a filter and a greater consciousness is shutdown (or switched) by the brain (to survive in competitive physical environment that might evolve individuality, privacy of thought, etc. essential to survival ) perhaps upon reactivation the greater consciousness or consciousness of whatever else was experienced (if anything) is just forgotten temporarily again when the dominance of the brain is activated..

You mentioned '100' years and I think the case for materialism paradigm (over survival of a soul) strengthens with a great amount of time the person is successfully suspended, if it is hours, days, months, years, even decades , as Mercer also stated, it could still be viewed easily as an interruption of lifespan consciousness. …. Similarly if reviving the person after centuries only produces a sleeping like zombie, that would actually weaken the materialist viewpoint. Also since reviving humans from near death produces significant number of experiences of survival then it seems likely then something like that may also occur and in future centuries the materialist VS survival debate goes on .... and on

Since consciousness may be both within and outside brain, I doubt the experiment proves either, it provide suggestive evidence.

I think I will give suspended animation a miss, knowing my luck , I'd possibly be in heaven like place with a Claudia Schiffer look alike when some bastard scientist on earth revives my earth consciousness and uses me as slave/servant or exhibit for a zoo. LOL

 

[Interesting Ian]

The idea that people "die" simply when normal metabolism or electrical activity stops is primitive nonsense. It's a relic of 19th century vitalism. If you can wake someone up, they were never dead by definition.

In which case if consciousness is a product of the brain, then no-one ever dies since it would always be possible to revive them.

Here's an amusing take on this issue

http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/hesdeadjim.htm

The link states:

If death is defined as the impossibility of revival, then saying someone cannot be revived because they are dead is obviously a circular argument. Yet this is the most commonly used argument against cryonics.

It's the most commonly used argument against cryonics?? How is it an argument??

Anyway the link points out the silliness of defining death as irreversible and so does not support your position. Why should we not describe a person as dead when they have no electrical activity in the brain?? Thus if they have an NDE during this period of time this would prove the existence of a "life after death".

 

[bgwowk]

Well hello, Ian. Long time no argue with.

In which case if consciousness is a product of the brain, then no-one ever dies since it would always be possible to revive them.

You can't revive dusty bones. When dusty bones report an NDE (ADE?), I'll take it seriously.

It's the most commonly used argument against cryonics?? How is it an argument??

As the link says, arguments that cryonics can't work because cryonics patients are dead typically take this form:

Saying that cryonics patients are dead (by contemporary medical standards), and then extending this into an absolute prognosis amounts to semantic bait-and-switch. Flawed contemporary criteria are first used to attach the label "dead", and then this label is upheld as evidence of absolute irreversibility, which is a different meaning of the word entirely.

Anyway the link points out the silliness of defining death as irreversible and so does not support your position.

The link could be interpreted that way. But more importantly, the link shows that death cannot be simultaneously defined as absent metabolism and irreversible loss of life. They are two entirely different meanings, so we have to make a choice.

In medicine, that choice has already been made. In medicine, nobody is called dead until a judgement is made that they cannot or should not be resuscitated. Whether they have vital signs or not is irrelevant to the determination. It's only society at large that is still caught up in the 19th-century notion that stillness=death, which is used with great rhetorical effectiveness to imply that stillness=irreversible loss of life. Of course, it's one big non sequitur.

----BrianW

 

[Interesting Ian]

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In which case if consciousness is a product of the brain, then no-one ever dies since it would always be possible to revive them.
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You can't revive dusty bones. When dusty bones report an NDE (ADE?), I'll take it seriously.

Scan a person's physical brain and its functions whilst that person is alive, then recreate the brain after he/she is dead. It would not have to literally be the same brain.

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It's the most commonly used argument against cryonics?? How is it an argument??
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As the link says, arguments that cryonics can't work because cryonics patients are dead typically take this form:

I'm agreeing absolutely with the link.

It's only society at large that is still caught up in the 19th-century notion that stillness=death, which is used with great rhetorical effectiveness to imply that stillness=irreversible loss of life. Of course, it's one big non sequitur.

Stillness=irreversible loss of life cannot possibly be true if consciousness is a by-product of the brain.

Should consciousness be a by-product of the brain there is no good reason to suppose why cryonics, at least in principle, could not work. And I'd be very happy to volunteer to be frozen at my death.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Well hello, Ian. Long time no argue with.

You only have 7 posts. When have I argued against you?

 

[Kilik]

THe one article did say though, that 100% oxygen and electric shocks were necessary. Though it appears vibration is the main issue.

 

[drkitten]

Scan a person's physical brain and its functions whilst that person is alive, then recreate the brain after he/she is dead. It would not have to literally be the same brain.

This is a particularly egregious straw-man you've constructed, Ian. And even you should be able to see this.

Even in a completely materialistic environment, a copy, no matter how accurate, is not the same thing as the original. We don't need to invoke nebulous notions of psychology and personal identity to see this, since this clearly applies to the merely physical. A hypothetical "perfect" copy of the Mona Lisa would still be a reproduction, and not the original.

Similarly, there may be kinds of damage to the Mona Lisa that can be repaired, restored, or reversed. As technology improves, we can expect our restoration capacities to increase along with the rest of our technology -- but burning it to ashes and then scattering the ashes into the North Sea would still be an irreversable loss. Yes, the ability to make a perfect duplicate would be useful in that case (people would still have something pretty to look at on the wall of the Louvre), but the original would have been lost.

Stillness=irreversible loss of life cannot possibly be true if consciousness is a by-product of the brain.

On the contrary -- burning a person to ashes and then scattering their ashes into the North Sea should have the same finality as burning and scattering a painting. Duplicating the person would be no more effective than duplicating the painting in re-creating the original.

 

[bgwowk]

Interesting Ian wrote:

Scan a person's physical brain and its functions whilst that person is alive, then recreate the brain after he/she is dead. It would not have to literally be the same brain.

I agree that that would constitute valid resuscitation. That being the case, the person will never have been truly dead (by the criterion of irreversible loss of life). But if your brain disintegrates without extraction of necessary information to reconstitute it, then you really are dead.

You only have 7 posts. When have I argued against you?

In August, 2004, I participated in a lengthy argument with you revolving around issues like how long a brain could remain turned off before consciousness/soul wandered off somewhere else. The discussion started with you making the point that if consciousness was inextricably tied to brain activity, then cryonics should work. The thread used to be at

http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=1870575117#post1870575117

but it mysteriously disappeared, along with my forum registration (unless I used a different userid and forgot).

Mentions of the thread still exist on other websites, so it really did happen. I have no idea why it vanished from the JREF Forum archive.

---BrianW

 

[Interesting Ian]

Dr K,

Imagine that your body is vaporised at location x. Now imagine a perfect copy of your body is made at location y. What you will experience at the moment of your vaporisation is a sudden shift in your perspective from x to y. This will be so even if your copy is made a 1000 years hence, or indeed a 1000 years ago.

Something physically identical cannot produce a different you otherwise this would entail that the totality of physical facts do not fix you. This is incompatible with supposing that consciousness is a by-product of the brain and that brain states fix conscious states.

 

[Kilik]

Yeah. Why do NDEs have to be actual literal NDEs anyways?

 

[bgwowk]

new drkitten wrote:

Even in a completely materialistic environment, a copy, no matter how accurate, is not the same thing as the original. We don't need to invoke nebulous notions of psychology and personal identity to see this, since this clearly applies to the merely physical. A hypothetical "perfect" copy of the Mona Lisa would still be a reproduction, and not the original.

Although this is an admitted digression, I cannot resist pointing out that where personhood is concerned, the issue is not this clearcut. Is a person a piece of hardware, or a piece of software? Is a person a particular collection of atoms, or a particular way a collection of atoms operates?

75% of the mass of your brain right now will be in the sewer system only 15 days from now. That's the rate at which the body turns over water molecules, and water molecules are active partipants in the operation of your brain. Labile hydrogens on many biomolecules freely exchange with water hydrogens, so even large biomolecules in your brain change the individual identity of their atoms frequently. Finally, even large biomolecules are changed out on timescales of days to years, to the point that almost none of the atoms in your brain today were there a decade ago.

So, if we put you into a conventional medical coma for ten years, the person who awakens is a mere physical copy of your old self who has been long since destroyed. Is that person you? Are you the same person who held your name and identification papers ten years ago, even though the atoms of that person are in the North Sea?

If the concept of self continuity has any validity at all, it must be as software, not hardware.

---BrianW

 

[jmercer]

Dr K,

Imagine that your body is vaporised at location x. Now imagine a perfect copy of your body is made at location y. What you will experience at the moment of your vaporisation is a sudden shift in your perspective from x to y. This will be so even if your copy is made a 1000 years hence, or indeed a 1000 years ago.

Something physically identical cannot produce a different you otherwise this would entail that the totality of physical facts do not fix you. This is incompatible with supposing that consciousness is a by-product of the brain and that brain states fix conscious states.

Ian, we've been through all of this before, not 2 months ago. The copy is NOT the original. If you had a camera dedicated recording the original from birth, you would observe the moment of destruction... and the camera would NOT switch to the copy, because it's not the original.

The copy might have the same memories, scars, attributes, etc... but in reality, that body and awareness would not have been present during any of the preceding events. It would only have the mental illusion of being present.