Fear of death.

If you're responding to my comment to nate

that's argument against motive though

which is a logical thing to turn to when the counter argument has no concrete support for it but is very appealing to the emotions

There isn't just one conception of the afterlife, though. Or existence, for that matter. Yes there is a simplistic and pandering version of the afterlife which many believe in. But a discussion on fear of death should not simply focus on this one aspect. A holistic and more fluid way of looking at the cycle of life and death -- as a complete process informed by a personal philosophy on life as well as death -- is less cut and dry.

And one could argue the psychological reasons behind wanting to say there is no afterlife and that anything beyond our consciousness is meaningless. That these motivations are not brought up indicate just as unshakable a belief in one's philosophy. That you are special and your life is one of a kind and unconnected to anything past your experience can be a very self-gratifying way of looking at your place in the grander scheme.

I don't think Evan or I are "wanting" to say there is no afterlife (nor are we even saying that). Merely that there is no evidence for it and it just doesn't jibe with all that we have learned about the world (yes, there's a lot we don't know, but that fact on its own is not reason to support something. only a reason not to dismiss it). And so for a logical person to lean towards there being one makes one think there must be some emotional factors at play.

it just doesn't jibe with all that we have learned about the world

this part i think i disagree with

Consciousness can be completely altered by subtle changes in chemistry and/or electricity, no? Isn't that evidence that it is an electrochemical process, and once those electrochemical reactions cease, consciousness does as well?

nah

that's like saying cutting out the eyes proves the visual processing happens in the eyes

nah

it says eyes are needed for sight. just like a functioning brain is needed for consciousness.

is a plant's ability to photosynthesize get retained after death? If not, why?

-get

i don't see what photosynthesis has to do with consciousness

and i don't see what it doesn't have to do with it! there's no reason to suspect that they both aren't anything other than processes that require a functioning organism in order to occur. why is one "magical" and the other not?

that's like saying cutting out the eyes proves the visual processing happens in the eyes

does a body demonstrate any aspect of consciousness when you remove its brain? what about when you remove an arm? or a kidney?

well, you'd say the body does not

obviously a continuing consciousness could not reside in the body, as that rots

why? does that mean consciousness resides in the brain?xp

does visual processing continue? does circadian rhythm? or is it just consciousness that is able to persist? why?

i'm just answering your questions man, you said it was because the body doesn't do anything w.o the brain

no it doesn't mean it resides in the brain either, you can turn off parts of the brain and keep experiencing consciousness even as you show increasingly little proof of consciousness to the world

because consciousness is *special* duh

it's special because you can't measure it with a flashlight or a stethoscope

some visual processing happens in the eyes itself doesn't it? i forget if edge detection happens there or somewhere further down the pipeline.

you can prove awareness happens somewhere, but i don't think you can really prove consciousness happens period until you can set parameters on what consciousness is.

so it's now not in the body. it was, but it knew to escape cause of the impending rotting. where is it? how does it interact with the universe? is it in anti-matter?

it might be, it might be a fluctuation on the p brane

you can turn off parts of the brain and keep experiencing consciousness even as you show increasingly little proof of consciousness to the world

if you tinker with or remove some parts of the brain, you lose some aspects of consciousness, right? but you're saying that if you remove ALL parts of the brain, you don't lose all aspects of consciousness. why?

because consciousness is *special* duh

oh ok, that solves things then

i'm just saying you can't prove it either way

would you guys agree that awareness is a pre-requisite for consciousness?

i feel like purely as a linguistic matter, you can't say X is conscious of Y without also entailing X is aware of Y.

i'll agree on that but awareness is tough to demonstrate

but "consciousness" behaving differently from any other known organic process, it being "special" for no other reason than it can't be measured, it knowing when to leap from it's tethers and exist infinitely, apart from matter and energy as we know them, that seems plausible to you?

awareness is an aspect of consciousness, yes. you were conflating them awhile back, and at first i thought you were wrong to do so but now i'm not so sure. consciousness disappears when you sleep, or (practically) when you put LSD into the electrochemical system it springs from. then it reappears once those reactions start firing as they normally do when you experience consciousness.

awareness seems to have a more clearly defined threshold -- if something reacts consistently in response to a stimulus, that is evidence of awareness of that stimulus.

I think it's reasonable to conflate awareness and consciousness until someone can come up with an example where awareness and consciousness are not for all practical applications synonymous.

when people suffer brain injuries and have a new version of consciousness, what happened to the old one? is it still out there somewhere? it knew to mosey on out once that spike came plowing through the skull? but it left some of the consciousness behind, right? so just parts of that old consciousness are floating around in the ether?

if something reacts consistently in response to a stimulus, that is evidence of awareness of that stimulus.

like late great said, it can be hard to demonstrate awareness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

split brain injuries reveal multiple awarenesses competing for control of the body, but more tellingly, that these awareness mechanisms were never the synthetic whole they appeared to be in the first place.

re: locked-in syndrome, you only need one black swan to prove the existence of a black swan.

and if you flip the script on locked-in syndrome as applying to the observer, that is an argument that many more things are probably aware than what we commonly think of as aware.

I think it's reasonable to conflate awareness and consciousness until someone can come up with an example where awareness and consciousness are not for all practical applications synonymous.

sometimes i think it doesn't bode well for our species' ability to philosophise if we can't even precisely define our basic terms.

anyway i've always used them interchangeably, but i kinda like to think of them in three stages: consciousness or awareness of the world, awareness of self, and awareness of awareness. but really that doesn't help nail done exactly what it is in any of those cases to be aware or conscious.

the trouble is that we can't get outside of consciousness to describe it 'objectively'. it's the opposite parable of the blind men trying to describe the elephant - we're stuck inside the elephant.

excellent point

which ties into this:

because consciousness is *special* duh

― the late great, Friday, September 28, 2012 2:37 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's special because you can't measure it with a flashlight or a stethoscope

― the late great, Friday, September 28, 2012 2:38 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's special to US. there's no reason to think the universe views it as special. Can love be measured with an instrument? Can you quantify it? No, right? So it's also special and so probably continues on after death, right? My love for tacos, just chilling out in the cosmos for infinity.

Nah I actually think it is special. The reason it can't be measured objectively is because it's not an objective phenomenon. The reason we can't get outside of it is because it's not the kind of thing that can be got outside of. (But special and magical though I think it is, I don't think that's enough warrant to consider it likely or even very plausible that it continues after death, considering the evidence on the other side.)

i thought the reason it couldn't be measured was it was a verb more than a noun.
like you can't really measure running, but you can measure the distance covered within a timespan, just like you can't measure awareness, but you can show that X is aware of Y.

But wait, can't it be measured? Don't fMRI and other measures of brain activity show "consciousness"? I would say they do, but that some people are inclined to go "nope sorry, you haven't got it, there has to be more to it than that". So an essential part of its nature to them is "something that cannot be measured". Well ok, yes, I surely can't measure something that is defined as "something that cannot be measured".

it's true, some people believe in ghosts

There's a difference between experience and measurement, right? Ok maybe in the future you will be able to look into my brain and measure what I am experiencing, but that's not the same as actually experiencing it. That's what the old Mary the Neuroscientist story tries to demonstrate. You can know all there is to know about how the brain is responsible for the mind, exactly what kind of neurons wiggling in what kind of way are responsible for an experience of the colour red; but if you've never actually seen red yourself you're still missing out on something.

I think you can detect it but measuring implies a scalar aspect to awareness that doesn't seem right. you can measure numerical limits to things you can simultaneously be aware of and stuff like that.

ok but how do you feel about the measuring/detecting vs. experiencing distinction? i think you were one of the people upthread who had difficulty seeing why this is a problem, and i really want to figure out why!