ghost
New
Be aware that your personal consciousness interfaces with the physical universe through the eigenstates of the quantum systems of your cellular biology. Since quantum systems can be in any one of their states at random, then ... It's all very complicated and the physics community is still stuck on stupid. If you want personal evidence, you can get that. But convincing atheists-skeptics probably won't be possible.
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
How can I get personal evidence?
C
chuck.drake
Try booting into the biological BIOS of your eigenstate flux capacitor. That seems to work for most folks.
Kai
New
Understanding the implications of neutral monism has played a major part in disillusioning me of the idea of an "afterlife" over the years. First, monism of any kind is really the idea that only one world exists. It's pretty far fetched to try to shoehorn another into that picture, without getting into the new age fantasy of "vibrational levels" and all that jazz.
Secondly, and just as seriously, although the mind and personality may be made of different "stuff" under NM than under materialism, they are still almost certainly far-from-equilibrium, accretive structures. Such accretive structures will disintegrate as agents upon the death of the body, because the body itself will disintegrate, and in monism, the mind and personality are not something different from it.
However, as radicalpolitik pointed out, a continuity of some form of awareness can be the case without it having to be the fantasy of a "life" made in an idealized image of bodily existence. Possibly the most hopeful scenario is that the whole shebang is a tapestry of basic awareness, and when we "disintegrate" at death, this is synonymous with unravelling back to this basic or universal form of awareness. This awareness may hold all forms, information, and lives upon it, like waves on a sea, even if it is not a specific agency as traditionally conceived. Its agency, as it were, is potent in potential, but in reality is at a cosmic minimum. Whereas the agency of ourselves as specific organisms, is weak in potential, but is also focused to a cosmic maximum. An organism, if you like, is the universe's way of gaining or focusing agency.
Secondly, and just as seriously, although the mind and personality may be made of different "stuff" under NM than under materialism, they are still almost certainly far-from-equilibrium, accretive structures. Such accretive structures will disintegrate as agents upon the death of the body, because the body itself will disintegrate, and in monism, the mind and personality are not something different from it.
However, as radicalpolitik pointed out, a continuity of some form of awareness can be the case without it having to be the fantasy of a "life" made in an idealized image of bodily existence. Possibly the most hopeful scenario is that the whole shebang is a tapestry of basic awareness, and when we "disintegrate" at death, this is synonymous with unravelling back to this basic or universal form of awareness. This awareness may hold all forms, information, and lives upon it, like waves on a sea, even if it is not a specific agency as traditionally conceived. Its agency, as it were, is potent in potential, but in reality is at a cosmic minimum. Whereas the agency of ourselves as specific organisms, is weak in potential, but is also focused to a cosmic maximum. An organism, if you like, is the universe's way of gaining or focusing agency.
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
I've often thought about doing ghost tours, but I can't muster up the desire to spend cash on something like that. Hoping a ghost just visits me in my daily life for now.
I'm not sure why we'd assume mind/spirit/whatever-we-call-it is an accretive structure. It might be, but there seems to be what Braude calls a "small is beautiful" assumption that isn't necessarily warranted. Not to mention any accretive account of consciousness still has to get passed the Combination Problem.
Even the idea of basic awareness seems like a necessary but insufficient condition to describe the full variety of subjective experience, not to mention our ability to reason via logic + mathematics.
Posted this elsewhere but it's a good tie-in to this idea:
"this is okay. i can roll with it.
my mind runs out across the universe.
finds its level.
i'm not leaving.
i'm -- arriving.
everywhere at once.
and whatever else it might be its not the end.
it doesn't feel like death.
unless a rock pool dies, when a wave breaks over it.
or warm breath dies as it fades --
and makes its peace with the air."
-M.Carey, 'Eve'
Kai
New
I don't think it's consciousness, as such, that is accretive or elaborative, it's the development of contexts that make for ever more complex systems of its expression in situ. We know that the body is accretive, and without dualism, which adds a whole other world of assumption, the mind and personality cannot be something different from it.
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
You might enjoy this paper by Morhroff:
Radical Nonlocality
Also, some stuff on Bohm here, here, here.
Haruhi
New
Your problem is that you adapt the evidence to your favorite metaphysics, when what has to be done is the opposite, adapts metaphysics to the evidence. There is only one world, by definition, what matters? The psychic evidence point to that the human personality survives after death and that has some agency, which may have their place in a sub-quantum level, and postmortem communication is much harder than skeptics imagine.
Kai
New
Well Haruhi, personally I find any argument that principally has to lean on 'psychic research' as being extremely weak in character.
Arguments that work on almost everything we *already* observe and know about the world, in contrast, bear realism with them.
Even assuming that psychic phenomena exist at any "macro" level (and I do not assume this), I am not at all persuaded that they originate anywhere but in living human beings.
Arguments that work on almost everything we *already* observe and know about the world, in contrast, bear realism with them.
Even assuming that psychic phenomena exist at any "macro" level (and I do not assume this), I am not at all persuaded that they originate anywhere but in living human beings.
Haruhi
New
The devil is in the details; we should not rule out the psychic research because that does not belong to the majority of our known reality.
And whether the psychic phenomena only show activity of living human beings, I already showed that there are sufficient reasons to consider that there is activity of deceased human beings, for example, in this thread, but no one has made any comments:
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/the-enigma-of-survival.830/
And whether the psychic phenomena only show activity of living human beings, I already showed that there are sufficient reasons to consider that there is activity of deceased human beings, for example, in this thread, but no one has made any comments:
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/the-enigma-of-survival.830/
JKMac
New
I assume you are aware that there are hundreds of cases of peer reviewed "scientific" papers written on the subject. How exactly do you choose these particular papers to call "weak in character" ?
Can you explain what is meant by "everything we *already* observe" ?
Are you somehow segmenting historical knowledge, experience and evidence to two buckets: that which denies psi and that which doesn't? Or that which exists now vs that which has yet to be investigated? Just trying to understand the point you are making.
Kai
New
What I mean is that if an argument about the nature of the world is relying primarily, or even exclusively, on psychic research to prop itself up, then that argument is extremely weak. Anything that relies *only* or mainly on highly contested information disputed by the majority of science has that problem from the outset. We already know a great deal about the existence of mind that contradicts the case that it can exist independent of brain. Our minds come into existence with our brains. This is observed to happen in every child's life. If you prevent a child's mind from developing in interaction with the world, you will handicap them mentally and socially for life. Every single aspect of the mind we can name can be crippled by one or another kind of brain damage. There are no cases of brainless minds. Etc. These are all huge systems of observations that would have to be overcome plausibly to even entertain the idea that your personality could live apart from a physical system.
In addition, even if we accept some of the facts of psi (and I don't necessarily do this), I do not accept that any of the information it bears requires, or to my mind even particularly suggests, independent entities separate from ourselves, or a world separate from ourselves. In my view, though the proponents of dualism do not like it, even those assumptions can be accommodated more economically and more persuasively under monism.
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JKMac
New
If that works for you then that's fine. However it seems to me that you are placing almost exclusive emphasis on the reaction from traditional scientific "community" while ignoring the nature of the evidence itself. It is becoming clear to me that much of traditional science rejects this evidence out of hand, without significant review. I can point to numerous examples right here in Alex's interviews where supposedly "scientific" thinkers discount or ignore the data without any significant effort being spent to look at it. When I listen to these people it is apparent that this is often because it is in opposition to their own dogmatism or personal motivation such as career advancement.
So you are in effect wrapping yourself in the cloak of scientific objectivity when clearly objectivity isn't present. If you were to distance yourself from whether the evidence has been accepted by the science community and look at the evidence without bias, you might find there is more here than you think.
I speak from personal experience. I decided to look at the facts a few years ago and it quickly became apparent that I could not trust the scientific community to be objective. This is not primarily due to a failure in the scientific method, but rather to many human failings such as dogmatism and more specifically the fact that it is in conflict with closely held personal belief.
In addition, I find that science is a great example of the acquisition of new knowledge to be strongly dependant on the ability to accept as fact, those things that have been discovered earlier. There is some merit to this: certainly you can see further standing on other's shoulders...
This is at the core of how we, as a species have made such progress in understanding our world in the last few hundred years. Unfortunately I think this approach often hides and denies new modes of thought until eventually the new thought becomes self-evident through the overwhelming weight of the evidence, or perhaps through the process of the old guard simply dying off...
I'm sure this has all be said before on this forum but just thought I'd throw it out there.
Kai
New
Well, you are deflecting the main point. I am not against the possibility of psychic research evidence (though I think its interpretation is highly moot, and the case for it a lot more precarious than its strong proponents regularly assert). What bothers me is relying principally on that kind of evidence, and ignoring much stronger kinds of evidence we already have, and which really isn't in dispute by any experts in the relevant fields. This is the main thing in that approach that makes it an implausible response to the world, imo. It is NOT possible to talk sensibly about the survival or supposed independence of personality by discussing only psychic research claims. One needs to address everything we already know about the formation and disruption of mind, and that is a huge body of knowledge. People who ignore all that in favor of the pronouncements of a certain spiritualist medium, etc, do not attract credibility to their argument.
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JKMac
New
I agree with the fact that all evidence should be considered. But we need to be careful about how the evidence is interpreted.
The obvious and probably overused example might be that a few hundred years ago there was "evidence" that the sun orbited the earth. It wasn't the evidence that was in error but rather the erroneous interpretation of the data leading to the wrong conclusion.
I prefer to look at as much evidence as possible and see if there is a theory that encompasses it all.
BTW: I didn't get the impression that anyone on this thread is "principally" looking at psychic data. Pointing to "psychic data" is not sufficient to refer to the poster as relying principally on it. No trying to nit pick. Just chiming in because you seem to be a bit too quick to write off the poster's comments as coming from the fringe (my words), with arguments that are "weak in character" (your words). Personally I think it is valid and useful to add any reasonable evidence to the conversation w/o having to defend the fact that it may not be in consensus with the scientific community.
The obvious and probably overused example might be that a few hundred years ago there was "evidence" that the sun orbited the earth. It wasn't the evidence that was in error but rather the erroneous interpretation of the data leading to the wrong conclusion.
I prefer to look at as much evidence as possible and see if there is a theory that encompasses it all.
BTW: I didn't get the impression that anyone on this thread is "principally" looking at psychic data. Pointing to "psychic data" is not sufficient to refer to the poster as relying principally on it. No trying to nit pick. Just chiming in because you seem to be a bit too quick to write off the poster's comments as coming from the fringe (my words), with arguments that are "weak in character" (your words). Personally I think it is valid and useful to add any reasonable evidence to the conversation w/o having to defend the fact that it may not be in consensus with the scientific community.
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Kai
New
I was responding to a particular poster who does that as a matter of habit.
I agree that evidence must encompass all evidence, so that spiritualist medium claims must be balanced against the realities of gradually losing a relative to progressive dementia. And it must be done with intellectual honesty.
Haruhi
New
You are wrong; I was not making an argument about the nature of the world, but on the existence of an afterlife.
All this is not incompatible with a personal afterlife, as we have said umpteen times.
And a personal afterlife is compatible with monism if the disembodied mind system and the mind / body system are of the same nature.
I agree that we must take into account all empirical evidence, both for and against the afterlife, to draw any conclusion, but if you consider all the empirical evidence is still more likely that there is a personal afterlife. Your have not even seen the Hart's book in the other thread? The Enigma of Survival has the subtitle The Case For and Against an After Life, and the author concludes that it is more likely that there is an afterlife. All neuroscientific evidence against an afterlife can be explained by virtue of the mind depends on the body instrumentally, but not existentially, but psychic evidence in favor of an afterlife can not be explained reasonably by the living beings.
radicalpolitik
New
The idea of a personal afterlife where we go forever and ever is actually pretty horrible when you think about it.