Fear of death.

even then, sometimes it becomes steam, or ice

what is it exactly about consciousness that you guys think is out of science and tech's reach w/r/t curing death?

okay, i mentioned in the "freaky shit" thread that i'd written a 1,500 word rebuttal to nozick-style dualism, but decided it was too long to post. that's true, but i think i will try to briefly summarize and extend it here. it starts like a cosign, but ends up all no way. please forgive all redundancy, as it seems to be my curse:

despite its self-evident existence, we cannot directly access the objective, material world. instead, our subjective awareness accesses the sensory information provided by the body, and this in turn allows it to construct a secondhand - yet seemingly reliable - mental map of objective reality. as subjective entities, we directly perceive only this mental map and not the objective territory it purports to describe. in this sense, the body and its senses form a "bridge" between subjective awareness and material reality. the body-bridge not only tells us about objective reality, it also allows us to interact with that reality. it's a two-way street.

science is subjective in nature, and so are the measurements it takes. the scientific models we hypothesize and test are subjective, and so too are the scientific theories we validate by means of such testing. even when we speak of "the material world", "the physical body", or "objectivity" itself, we can only mean our subjective sense of whatever these things might signify. everything we can possibly perceive and conceive is fundamentally subjective, including our awareness of that which is ostensibly objective.

science does seem to provide reliable information about objective reality, and science is in turn shaped by the discovered nature of that reality. it provides another two-way "bridge" between our internal subjectivity and the external, objective world. it is the nature of science, however, despite its basic subjectivity, that it can speak only of the objective. it is "positioned" in subjective reality just as the body is positioned in objective reality, and it looks out, not in.

therefore, it should not surprise us that science has little to say about the most seemingly important features of subjective, internal reality. science's job is outreach from the subjective to the physical, and it naturally finds no purchase on mere subjectivity itself. it can't even measure or locate "science"!

none of this suggests, however, that the subjective does not arise from wholly material roots, or that science's account of cognition and awareness are insufficient. i do not see any gap between the material and the mental for which we cannot reasonably account, whether scientifically or otherwise. instead, i see a continuum of being on which subjectivity and objectivity are perhaps arbitrary distinctions flowing into and out of one another by means of bridges such as the body, science and communication.

xp - fear of death got left in the "what is existence?" dust

so... you guys want medicine to cure existence, too, now? one day we'll have an app for that.

seconal works pretty well for that right

novocaine for the soul

i believe contenderizer that's a philosophical mission statement not really a proposition per se

i think that school of thought is called physicalism, popular w/ stuffy anglophone analytic types

it is "positioned" in subjective reality just as the body is positioned in objective reality, and it looks out, not in

are you talking about consciousness or science?

a continuum of being on which subjectivity and objectivity are perhaps arbitrary distinctions flowing into and out of one another by means of bridges such as the body, science and communication

anyway that's the major argument against physicalism, that the distinctions are perhaps not arbitrary which makes the notion of bridges suspect

we have nothing to fear but feces

xp - no no no, i'm not advocating any kind of physicalism. i'm not saying that the physical is all there is (that, as i understand it, is the foundational precept of physicalism). tbh, i think it's just as likely that the mental is all there is...

such speculation aside, my point is that the physical and the mental - the objective and the subjective - both obviously exist. in many ways, they seem to be different kinds of things, perhaps even "different realities", but i do not agree that they are entirely separate worlds forever walled off from one another. instead, i see them as engaged with one another, flowing easily into and out of one another. science describes some but not all aspects of this interrelationship, and other ways of knowing perhaps describe other aspects. science's most obvious "limitation" is that it concerns itself only with material reality, with matter and energy, and not with abstract things such as subjective ideas and feelings. the physical sciences can tell us a great deal about the composition and material properties of a book, but seem to understand very little of what it means. though science is a subjective construct (or tool) generated and "located" wholly within our subjectivity, it does seem to permit outreach into objective, physical reality.

when i say that science is sufficient to explain consciousness, i merely mean that it can apparently account for everything we can reasonably expect it to. it does its job. that it leaves the "sense" of subjective experience to be explained by other means is no defect, and this elision does not build an insurmountable barrier between the worlds. different jobs often require different tools.

Even if the physical was all there is, i think anyone who follows pop science knows that that still leaves room for some pretty bizarre and fantastic stuff in the universe.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AB7PA_XQHh8/T2pIk8vn_ZI/AAAAAAAAH98/AZeVLmryDJY/s1600/WAFFLES_Death_by_fan.jpg

I'm a fan of fear of fan death

astounding!

i think we're done here. #seewhatidid

thank you fan death

http://www.care2.com/causes/scientists-proclaim-animal-and-human-consciousness-the-same.html#ixzz253GNGfBc

a soul in every stone

I don't mean to throw atheist all-stars into this but I thought this is is a nice compliment to my and a few other's arguments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oh947g4zvg&feature=related

Ugh and whoever posted it is embarrassing

Thoughts? Not to ignite the same mammoth conversation all over again, but I think it can serve as a tidy summation of our point on the side of realism.

That was good.

I remember watching this debate. Weren't his opponents insistent that "the soul floating off and reuniting with Grandma" is just a metaphor? They seemed to be arguing that talk of "afterlife," with respect to their own Jewish faiths, isn't really supernatural and doesn't conflict with the material fact of death. It's about looking at that final loss of self at the moment of death as a kind of assimilation back into the rest of being. So they could respond that, yes, local damage to the brain can leave you totally changed, and total damage to the brain also leaves you totally changed. You're completely no longer you.

It is a good argument but it also doesn't touch open the yet-to-be-bridged gap between science's conception of matter, and our experience of consciousness. Science actually doesn't tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of matter, so materialism might be true, but we don't actually know what matter is.

I'm OK with science not yet being able to explain every question about our complex perception and experience of consciousness. What I'm not OK with is pretending the unknowns somehow leave open, even support a spiritual/afterlife possibility. That if the issue wasn't so personal people wouldn't feel the need to fill the void of scientific unknowns with extremely hopeful stories that in any rational sense cannot and should not be weighed equally with "I have no idea."

I was talking to a guy at a party that is a physics teacher and was saying the old "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual" line and kept mentioning he just can't accept a materialist nothingness scenario after death, that "It just can't be all there is." He elaborated with existential what-ifs about being on a different plane of existence and some other conceptually intriguing theories, but my position was that those scenarios aren't more likely simply because we want them more, that because they suggest to preserve our point of view and basic sensory reception after death at the very least can only make them a comfort while we're here and ease our minds until they cease.

What I'm not OK with is pretending the unknowns somehow leave open, even support a spiritual/afterlife possibility.

why aren't you okay with that?

how do you know we're pretending?

sounds like you're into denying, don't pretend you're not

What I'm not OK with is pretending the unknowns somehow close, even deny a spiritual/afterlife possibility.

now what?

Jim I actually haven't watched it until right now. I think the opponent's positions throughout the debate seem to morph like liquid around the challenges of Hitchens and Harris, as apposed to the debate on this thread where the opponents of the materialist position seem to focus on holes or unknowns in our arguments that are somehow positive reinforcements of an, if nothing else, wishful preservation of their consciousness after death.

OK sure they leave it open as much as they leave open any possible scenario I feel like conjuring out of nothing.

you use a lot of loaded terms, like "wishful"

why not "hypothetical", i think the materialists get that courtesy from you

To equate its value with that of what is inferred to be the truth based on observable reality, is based only on the wish or hope that you're consciousness can float away intact from the brain from which it is not a separate entity.

your***** oops

Of course nothing can be equated sufficiently with the incredible human consciousness in our observable reality, but it seems to me wishful thinking to look at anything else in physics, where a vessel made up of parts and functioning as a single mechanism produces activity- that when completely inactive stops producing that activity, to say the brain is the one thing that does not follow these logical rules.

not if you've read about billiard balls

"Wishful" specifically because it affects us so personally and we want to keep existing, or in no way can we imagine not existing since existence and our personal perspectives are one in the same. It is natural to want to perceive the universe within our own context of self.

go on

in physics, where a vessel made up of parts and functioning as a single mechanism

LOL

actual LOLs

nobody is saying their brain lives on

just that the "sensation" of consciousness might continue

What's so funny.

The brain would have to live on to "sense" something. Consciousness is not a separate thing from the workings of the brain.

"Wishful" specifically because it affects us so personally and we want to keep existing,

appeal to motive, your honor!

it's funny because at every turn physics complicates that notion that things are made of parts

it's funny because we don't know where the parts of consciousness are, at every turn philosophy complicates that one

it's funny because it doesn't actually function as a single mechanism, brain science confirms that

it's funny because you sound like you're describing a free body diagram

it remaind me of college when i was really good at free body diagrams

in no way can we imagine not existing since existence and our personal perspectives are one in the same

This is what convinced me of life after death as a kid- just the fact that I couldn't imagine what it would be like to not exist. Of course now I'm older and I realize there are lots of times when there's nothing that it's like to be me - ie., when I'm unconscious. Still there's something weird to think about not existing ever again.

it's funny because at every turn physics complicates that notion that things are made of parts

it's funny because we don't know where the parts of consciousness are, at every turn philosophy complicates that one

it's funny because it doesn't actually function as a single mechanism, brain science confirms that

― the late great, Thursday, September 27, 2012 4:40 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm just talking about the the things that are specifically made of parts, not all things.

Are you saying consciousness is different than brain activity, something separate?

A single mechanism in the sense that the activity is happening inside of only brain.

surely the activity is happening inside of your toys?