Fear of death.

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?

whoops! TOES

there is nothing, no part of me, that i can imagine persisting after the death of my body.

im sort with Unamuno on this question: life after death is essentially "unthinkable" and our only ways of thinking about it make it seem kinda sucky.

"What we really long for after death is to go on living this life, this same mortal life, but without its ills, without its tedium, and without death. Seneca, the Spaniard, gave expression to this in his Consolatio ad Marciam (xxvi.); what he desired was to live this life again: ista moliri. And what Job asked for (xix. 25-7) was to see God in the flesh, not in the spirit. And what but that is the meaning of that comic conception of eternal recurrence which issued from the tragic soul of poor Nietzsche, hungering for concrete and temporal immortality?

late great-

You're picking apart my argument and the best you can do is bring me back to a stance of "I have no idea."

If you were successful, how do you then take me in the opposite direction and convince me the shot-in-the-dark afterlife scenario is just as legitimate?

my stance is actually "i have no idea ... wait, do i have ideas?"

i feel like there are many parts of my body i could imagine existing without, least among them my head, though i can certainly imagine losing all my senses and continuing consciousness, maybe. anyway i know that is all workings of brain and not body but sometimes i feel as though there are certain perceptions, like the perception of time, space and ego that seem to be "behind" the screen of consciousness and i have come to conclusion through experiments in electroshock therapy that scramble these sensations

actually there is a missing bit there, that the workings of the brain are consciousness

this shit's been fucking with me lately. sometimes i feel like my heart is just going to stop beating for no reason, cuz why not?

ego is actually in front of consciousness, but i think space and time are behind that consciousness

anyway the egyptians thought we had seven levels of consciousness that scattered in more or less opposite directions when you died, only one was the physical remains

jordan is that a lil b line?

just got shoes! don't got feet.