Proof of Immortality III

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Jabba said:
- People who believe in reincarnation believe that a certain kind of self survives and reappears after bodily death. Can you guys define that concept?
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"Entirely speculative".

Hans
 
Jabba said:
- People who believe in reincarnation believe that a certain kind of self survives and reappears after bodily death. Can you guys define that concept?
Click to expand...

That concept is based upon unsupported assertion. Therefore that concept can be defined as "undefined".

In fact, that's exactly what I think is wrong with all your positions; they're founded on nothing of substance. That's also why I don't believe you are sincerely trying to reason your way out of your unreasonable positions.
 
Mojo said:
Jabba,
- What makes you think Dave is better qualified to explain your own reasoning than you are?
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Mojo,
- Dave is the one who makes the claim that I was asking about -- that there is a sense of the brain that cannot be reproduced.
 
Jabba said:
Mojo,
- Dave is the one who makes the claim that I was asking about -- that there is a sense of the brain that cannot be reproduced.
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I've read through Dave's recent posts, and I can't see anything resembling that claim. Please provide a link to a post where he makes this claim.
 
Jabba said:
- People who believe in reincarnation believe that a certain kind of self survives and reappears after bodily death. Can you guys define that concept?
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People who believe in reincarnation are factually wrong. They hold the belief because it provides some comfort to them and/or helps bring them closer to a religious family. In many cases, the concept is so fundamental to a culture that the idea, instilled in early childhood, becomes a part of the person's identity.

There. Concept defined.
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- What can I call that sense of the brain that cannot be reproduced?
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"Sense" referred to the sense of the word "reproduce". I did not say there is a sense of the brain that can't be reproduced.

There is no part of the brain, including the self, that couldn't be copied. And just like in all cases of copying something, the copy and the original are two separate identical things.

Consider this:

My wife and I bought our cell phones at the same time and bought the same model. They were identical when they came off the assembly line.

If I take a picture with my phone's camera, the digital image is stored on my phone's memory card. Is it also on my wife's phone's memory card?

If you understand why the answer is "no", then you will understand the kind of self I'm talking about.
 
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Jabba said:
- People who believe in reincarnation believe that a certain kind of self survives and reappears after bodily death. Can you guys define that concept?
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An immaterial soul, which we don't believe exists at all.
 
Jabba said:
Mojo,
- Dave is the one who makes the claim that I was asking about -- that there is a sense of the brain that cannot be reproduced.
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Misrepresenting people again?

Have you no honor?

Hans
 
- Here's the idea.
1. A certain physical state results in an emergent property we call consciousness.
2. Each new consciousness intrinsically involves what I've been calling a "self."
3. I 'sense,' or imagine, this self to be immaterial.
4. I assume that most humans who have thought about this self also sense, or imagine, it to be immaterial.
5. This is what reincarnationists believe is an immaterial and immortal "soul" that following bodily death returns to existence time after time.
6. Reincarnationists may be wrong, and an immaterial and immortal soul may be a null class -- but it is still a real "class."
7. Here, i"m claiming that it is not a null class, and that if it isn't a null class, science has no clue as to "who" this immaterial "self" will be.
8. Which is the big difference between ME and Mt Rainier.
9. And, is why the likelihood of my current existence (my self) given OOFLam is virtually zero, and why the likelihood of Rainier's exact shape given the natural laws governing geology is virtually one.
 
Jabba said:
- Here's the idea.
1. A certain physical state results in an emergent property we call consciousness.
2. Each new consciousness intrinsically involves what I've been calling a "self."
3. I 'sense,' or imagine, this self to be immaterial.
4. I assume that most humans who have thought about this self also sense, or imagine, it to be immaterial.
5. This is what reincarnationists believe is an immaterial and immortal "soul" that following bodily death returns to existence time after time.
6. Reincarnationists may be wrong, and an immaterial and immortal soul may be a null class -- but it is still a real "class."
7. Here, i"m claiming that it is not a null class, and that if it isn't a null class, science has no clue as to "who" this immaterial "self" will be.
8. Which is the big difference between ME and Mt Rainier.
9. And, is why the likelihood of my current existence (my self) given OOFLam is virtually zero, and why the likelihood of Rainier's exact shape given the natural laws governing geology is virtually one.
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Yes. If you define your terms so that you win, surprisingly you win.

Unfortunately, you still have provided no EVIDENCE that your conception of an immortal soul is correct.

I could just as easily say that English speakers consider a certain fruit to be pineapple. Pineapples have the word apple in them. Most people agree that compound words retain the sense of each individual word. Therefore pineapple is a type of apple.

See? I can write gibberish, too.
 
Jabba: the likelihood of your self being what it is is exactly one. It is the only self it could be, because it is a process that encompasses every experience you have. People who believe in reincarnation think that the self is an entity that can exist outside of our brains. Statistics says nothing about this, so the only thing that you can do is provide evidence that such an entity exists.
 
Jabba said:
- Here's the idea.
1. A certain physical state results in an emergent property we call consciousness.
2. Each new consciousness intrinsically involves what I've been calling a "self."
3. I 'sense,' or imagine, this self to be immaterial.
4. I assume that most humans who have thought about this self also sense, or imagine, it to be immaterial.
5. This is what reincarnationists believe is an immaterial and immortal "soul" that following bodily death returns to existence time after time.
6. Reincarnationists may be wrong, and an immaterial and immortal soul may be a null class -- but it is still a real "class."
7. Here, i"m claiming that it is not a null class, and that if it isn't a null class, science has no clue as to "who" this immaterial "self" will be.
8. Which is the big difference between ME and Mt Rainier.
9. And, is why the likelihood of my current existence (my self) given OOFLam is virtually zero, and why the likelihood of Rainier's exact shape given the natural laws governing geology is virtually one.
Click to expand...


So your OOFLam model includes the existence of a soul, and it's the likelihood of a particular soul existing under OOFLam that you're using to argue that OOFLam is less likely to be true than a model where souls exist but can survive the death of the physical body.

I don't subscribe to any model where souls exist. I think both OOFLam and ~OOFLam as you've defined them are wrong. I subscribe to a model where people have only one finite life because souls don't exist.
 
Jabba said:
- Here's the idea.
1. A certain physical state results in an emergent property we call consciousness.
2. Each new consciousness intrinsically involves what I've been calling a "self."
Click to expand...


Nope. There is no separate "self". The consciousness is the "self". It is an emergent property of the brain.

3. I 'sense,' or imagine, this self to be immaterial.
4. I assume that most humans who have thought about this self also sense, or imagine, it to be immaterial.
5. This is what reincarnationists believe is an immaterial and immortal "soul" that following bodily death returns to existence time after time.
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You're begging the question again.

6. Reincarnationists may be wrong, and an immaterial and immortal soul may be a null class -- but it is still a real "class."
7. Here, i"m claiming that it is not a null class...
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Another unsupported assertion.

...and that if it isn't a null class, science has no clue as to "who" this immaterial "self" will be.
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Nevertheless consciousness is the result of natural processes, even if the results are difficult to predict exactly.

8. Which is the big difference between ME and Mt Rainier.
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Nope. Mount Rainier is also the result of natural processes that are difficult to predict exactly. Geologists would probably have been able to predict that there would be a mountain where Mount Rainier is, but would be unable to predict its exact shape, just as it could have been predicted that your brain would produce a human consciousness but not exactly what that consciousness would be like within the range of human consciousnesses.

9. And, is why the likelihood of my current existence (my self) given OOFLam is virtually zero, and why the likelihood of Rainier's exact shape given the natural laws governing geology is virtually one.
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Nope.
 
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Agatha said:
The notion that a particular c/s/s/s arises again after death but with no memories or characteristics of that c/s/s/s is not supportable - if it has none of the memories or characteristics of the previous existence, it cannot be the same consciousness.
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What about someone who each day appears to wake with little or no memory of what has happened before? Can their consciousness really be considered to be continuous, or do they die each night and a different person awakes in the morning?
 
You really can't "Ship of Theseus" a process the way you can a physical object.
 
Mojo said:
What about someone who each day appears to wake with little or no memory of what has happened before? Can their consciousness really be considered to be continuous, or do they die each night and a different person awakes in the morning?
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I thought about that after I posted, but I haven't fully thought it all through or done any reading yet. I would say (before I've looked into the question) that memories are only one part of consciousness - there's the person's personality, their likes and dislikes and so on - their characteristics.
 
godless dave said:
So your OOFLam model includes the existence of a soul, and it's the likelihood of a particular soul existing under OOFLam that you're using to argue that OOFLam is less likely to be true than a model where souls exist but can survive the death of the physical body.

I don't subscribe to any model where souls exist. I think both OOFLam and ~OOFLam as you've defined them are wrong. I subscribe to a model where people have only one finite life because souls don't exist.
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Dave,
- You left out two words from OOFLam: "at" and "most." Was that dedliberate?
 
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