The Case Against Immortality

Wowbagger said:
I think that's kinda close to what I was concerned about. Here is the Wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
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Yeah, I read that, and then attempted to apply the idea to my hypothesis. Having fallen on my head as a child, i found it a bit difficult. But if you'd like to clarify your concerns before I think my ideas through a bit more, please do so. Otherwise, I'll take the "kinda close" as the working objection.
 
BobR said:
Perhaps so. On the other hand, postulating that all real phenomena derive from the already known (I'm not accusing you of this, just making a point) is confining, and makes for a lack of expansiveness and imagination. Seems to me that imagining the nature of the unknown is just as important to arriving at truth as inducing or deducing theories based on known evidence. To do the latter exclusively is as exceedingly weak as to do the former exclusively, because it leads to the sort of cognitive inbreeding that stifles progress towards truth.
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I'm a little more laid back than some here and likely wouldn't have assumed that you were accusing me of anything. That said, there is a key issue that has yet to be noted. What reason is there to accept that the known is not sufficient to fully explain the observed? If there is sufficient reason to think that the currently known is insufficient to fully explain the observed, what model would explain it more usefully?

There are, to be simple, many people who are all too happy to seriously put forth unfalsifiable models that are, to be direct, useless. These models often could be the case, but it takes exceedingly flawed logic to accept them to be the case based on the arguments presented for them. In the end, the usefulness of a model is all we can evaluate, with the simple very basic assumption that more useful models of understanding reality are better than less or not useful models of understanding reality. There is no reasonable issue with provisionally accepting and defending the most useful current model of reality as being the case until a more useful model is presented and shown to be more useful.
 
BobR said:
Yeah, I read that, and then attempted to apply the idea to my hypothesis.
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I just wanted to know if your idea: "Suppose the mind is an infinite and eternal proposition..." is a re-telling of the homunculus argument or not.

You don't have to fit your arguments to it, if it's not supposed to be like that. I'd rather hear you clarify what you meant.

Are you, basically, referring to a homunculus argument as an alternative to the identity theory, or not?

If not: Explain your ideas a little better, if you can.

If so: How do you address the problems with the homunculus argument, such as infinite regression?
 
Wowbagger said:
I just wanted to know if your idea: "Suppose the mind is an infinite and eternal proposition..." is a re-telling of the homunculus argument or not.
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Oh, I think I see what you are getting at. Maybe this is a better thing to say. Suppose that I am infinite and eternal. I am also infinitely subdivided into fragments of myself, one such fragment being the me that is writing this. Each of those fragments is one of the rooms I spoke of. Does that avoid the homunculus fallacy?
 
Aridas said:
There is no reasonable issue with provisionally accepting and defending the most useful current model of reality as being the case until a more useful model is presented and shown to be more useful.
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Provisional acceptance is fine, so long as it doesn't turn into belief. Furthermore, happiness is useful, so if you don't feel happy with the current model, it's useful to attempt to look beyond it. Reasonable too, unless one should think that it's unreasonable to attempt to find joy in life.
 
BobR said:
Provisional acceptance is fine, so long as it doesn't turn into belief. Furthermore, happiness is useful, so if you don't feel happy with the current model, it's useful to attempt to look beyond it. Reasonable too, unless one should think that it's unreasonable to attempt to find joy in life.
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Happiness has no need to be dependent on the blatantly unfalsifiable, except at the level where directly useful assumptions cannot be avoided. Regardless, though, happiness is not a particularly useful or reasonable criteria for what to accept about reality. It would make me happy to some extent if I could change the Republican party's current trends to something that I didn't find to be terrible. It would make me happy if the corruption in politics in general ceased to be the case. It would make me happy if I could arbitrarily and locally alter gravity at will. It would make me happy if a lot of the things that one can learn about when studying parasites weren't the case. None of these things are likely to be the case ever, despite the increase in happiness that accompanies them. If you think of trying to get around the examples by noting that they're not unfalsifiable and trying to go from there, then you should likely stop claiming that you're seeking truth.

That said, useful was being used in a way that had nothing direct to do with emotion and comfort and everything to do with understanding reality in the most reliable way that we have.
 
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BobR said:
Provisional acceptance is fine, so long as it doesn't turn into belief. Furthermore, happiness is useful, so if you don't feel happy with the current model, it's useful to attempt to look beyond it. Reasonable too, unless one should think that it's unreasonable to attempt to find joy in life.
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But your happiness is not relevant to truth. That you may be happier with the wrong answer than the right one changes reality not one iota.
 
Lusikka said:
DoomMetal, thank you very much for that article, very interesting. My first impression was that Augustine is too much a black-or-white thinker. An analogy would be that he is trying to solve a quantum mechanical problem using classical mechanics. Naturally the essay is also skeptically lopsided.

Augustine has done a laudable background work, and I hope I can return with details after carefully reading the whole article.
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I'm back now after reading the Augustine article and something else, too:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/immortality.html.

I like Augustine's straightforward and uncomplicated writing style, which is not so common among philosophers.

In my opinion immortality is a question which is impossible to settle scientifically, but Augustine tries to do that. The philosophical part of the article does not help much in that direction although there are many good points there. I waited more from the scientific part, but it does not differ much from philosophy.

Creationists notoriously quote single sentences from evolutionist articles as if supporting their own ideas, although the message in the articles is counter-creationistic. It was astonishing to see that Augustine did the same thing to Kenneth Ring.

There is a very tight dependence between the condition of the brain and the person's consciousness, and Augustine dwelled a long time on that topic. However, I think this dependency does not show that immortality is impossible. The hypothesis that consciousness exists only in the brain and ends with the brain is sort of falsified with many observations. That evidence ought to at least make us cautious in building our world view. (I know, the evidence is only anecdotes and results of sloppy research, because that is most plausible and logically it must be so.)

Possible reincarnation does not mean that immortality would be a fact, but Augustine tries to play also it down. Here we have a problem, because he uses heavily the book by Paul Edwards as his source. That means, first Edwards has interpreted the reincarnation evidence without reading the best sources and then Augustine interprets what Edwards has written.

Augustine: "Stevenson's cases then do not amount to even half-way decent evidence. In only 11 of the approximately 1,111 rebirth cases had there been no contact between the two families before an investigation was begun."

I really wonder where he has got this number "11" from. Researcher Tucker writes a review of reincarnation research here:

REVIEW ARTICLE: Children Who Claim to Remember Previous Lives: Past, Present, and Future
Research
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_21_3_tucker.pdf

He says that at present there are about 2500 researched cases of possible reincarnation.

Two researchers have reviewed the philosopher Edwards' book. A long review here:
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_11_4_almeder.pdf

And only four pages here:
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/reviews/reviews_11_4_matlock.pdf
 
BobR said:
Suppose that I am infinite and eternal. I am also infinitely subdivided into fragments of myself, one such fragment being the me that is writing this. Each of those fragments is one of the rooms I spoke of.
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Is there a way in which we can test for this hypothesis, at least in principle?

Any specific predictions it would make, for things to look for somewhere, that we otherwise would not have thought about or at least bothered to get into?

BobR said:
Does that avoid the homunculus fallacy?
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Well, it kinda bypasses it. You're not explaining what consciousness is. You're sweeping the problem under a rug of "it's just something that exists eternally".

How can we go about empirically confirming such infinite and eternal entities? At least in principle?
 
Lusikka said:
... The hypothesis that consciousness exists only in the brain and ends with the brain is sort of falsified with many observations.
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'Sort of falsified' is incoherent. If you think many observations cast doubt on the hypothesis, it's best to say that.

That evidence ought to at least make us cautious in building our world view. (I know, the evidence is only anecdotes and results of sloppy research, because that is most plausible and logically it must be so.)
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One should always be cautious in building a world view. Experience shows that anecdotes and sloppy research are not sufficient evidence to cast doubt on, or 'sort of falsify' any cautiously built world view.

I've spent some time looking at past life memory and reincarnation evidence and in my view it seems inherently unreliable (e.g. anecdotes and sloppy research). Are there any other sorts of evidence in the 'many observations' you claim?
 
dlorde said:
'Sort of falsified' is incoherent. If you think many observations cast doubt on the hypothesis, it's best to say that.
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You are right, sorry for my bad English.

dlorde said:
One should always be cautious in building a world view. Experience shows that anecdotes and sloppy research are not sufficient evidence to cast doubt on, or 'sort of falsify' any cautiously built world view.
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Right again, but you did not notice my sarcasm?

dlorde said:
I've spent some time looking at past life memory and reincarnation evidence and in my view it seems inherently unreliable (e.g. anecdotes and sloppy research). Are there any other sorts of evidence in the 'many observations' you claim?
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Would you please give information of and links to you sources? Otherwise it is impossible to discuss their reliability.
 
Lusikka said:
Would you please give information of and links to you sources? Otherwise it is impossible to discuss their reliability.
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The past life / reincarnation literature breaks down four ways:

  1. Claims that would be interesting if true, but are provably false.
  2. Claims that would be interesting if true, but which are unsupported by evidence
  3. Claims that are not interesting.
  4. Claims that are not interesting and provably false.

There are quite a few threads on this topic here on JREF; just do a search for one of those terms. No-one has ever presented any evidence that would make a reasonable person consider for a moment that the notion had any validity at all.

Also, it's impossible.
 
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