Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Philosophy, in all its guises. => Topic started by: Nearly Sane on February 27, 2023, 06:44:43 AM
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An interesting little meditation but one that my experience does not chime with. The dead bodies of loved ones that I have touched seemed nothing to do with the person. Perhaps because of those I touched, one there had been no chance to know, and 4 of the others had been lost in different extents to forms of dementia.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/01/10/alan-lightman-death/
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Perhaps because, the body is not what a person is. It is a temporary home, a shell, a suit that we wear.
The actual person is gone. Ask NDE'rs...they'll tell you. Even they find it difficult to identity with their body when they are out of it.
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Perhaps because, the body is not what a person is. It is a temporary home, a shell, a suit that we wear.
The actual person is gone. Ask NDE'rs...they'll tell you. Even they find it difficult to identity with their body when they are out of it.
So in your view what is dementia?
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The mind and body together make up the outer shell. Both the body and mind can deteriorate and become ill. That which experiences the dementia and the illness is the Self within.
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The mind and body together make up the outer shell. Both the body and mind can deteriorate and become ill. That which experiences the dementia and the illness is the Self within.
What is the mind as opposed to the self?
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These are matters one has to understand through an internal quest. But to give you an analogy....the body is like computer hardware, the mind is like software and the person using the computer is the Self.
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These are matters one has to understand through an internal quest. But to give you an analogy....the body is like computer hardware, the mind is like software and the person using the computer is the Self.
So why would a fault in the software affect how the 'self' perceived itself?
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It is not about the Self wrongly perceiving itself. It is about the computer mind (ego) wrongly perceiving itself as the Self. Correcting this wrong perception and identifying ones true Self is what Spirituality is all about.
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It is not about the Self wrongly perceiving itself. It is about the computer mind (ego) wrongly perceiving itself as the Self. Correcting this wrong perception and identifying ones true Self is what Spirituality is all about.
The analogy cannae take it, Captain
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Obviously! Analogies have their limits.
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Obviously! Analogies have their limits.
And their first limit is that they are not arguments por evidence. Since you were the person limiting the understanding of your idea to an analogy, then we immediately hit that problem.
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We are discussing philosophical matters. You never ask Schopenhauer or Kant or Plato for evidence, do you?!
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We are discussing philosophical matters. You never ask Schopenhauer or Kant or Plato for evidence, do you?!
Depends on the claims. And you missed that I included argument and pointed out that analogy isn't argument.
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It is not about the Self wrongly perceiving itself. It is about the computer mind (ego) wrongly perceiving itself as the Self. Correcting this wrong perception and identifying ones true Self is what Spirituality is all about.
I've never quite understood whether you equate the Self with God (Atman = Brahman), as in Advaita Vedanta. If when we die we are effectively just a wave in the divine spirit, then what is our earthly life at all, and why does God need to forget himself as "us", in order to remember himself later? If the ego is wrongly perceiving itself as the Self, how did this come about if everything is the all-knowing God in the first place?
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I've never quite understood whether you equate the Self with God (Atman = Brahman), as in Advaita Vedanta. If when we die we are effectively just a wave in the divine spirit, then what is our earthly life at all, and why does God need to forget himself as "us", in order to remember himself later? If the ego is wrongly perceiving itself as the Self, how did this come about if everything is the all-knowing God in the first place?
These are just philosophical concepts and there are many different interpretations and opinions. No one can prove it one way or the other.
As far as I am concerned there are three different domains ....the Personality (with body mind and ego), the Lower Self (the soul), and the Higher Self (my personal guide, savior and God). This much I am very sure about from my own personal experience. I also believe that the Higher Self is somehow connected to higher levels of Consciousness beyond that.
I personally don't believe that the Higher Self is itself directly the Brahman...though it is possibly connected to it.
From NDE's we get the impression of parallel worlds into which one goes after death. So, even if we are just a 'wave' in the universal spirit we will still have independent consciousness.
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Sriram,
From NDE's we get the impression of parallel worlds into which one goes after death.
Yet again: you cannot rely on NDEs to tell you anything at all about actually being dead. No-one who had an NDE was actually dead - they may have experienced dying perhaps, but not death.
In short, your cheat here is still to pretend that there's no "N" in "NDE".
So, even if we are just a 'wave' in the universal spirit we will still have independent consciousness.
That's a non sequitur. That "so" might have legs if you had evidence from "DEs", but you haven't – you only have evidence from NDEs.
Try to remenber this.
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Sriram,
Yet again: you cannot rely on NDEs to tell you anything at all about actually being dead. No-one who had an NDE was actually dead - they may have experienced dying perhaps, but not death.
In short, your cheat here is still to pretend that there's no "N" in "NDE".
That's a non sequitur. That "so" might have legs if you had evidence from "DEs", but you haven't – you only have evidence from NDEs.
Try to remenber this.
That's a silly worn out argument. Someone called it 'Near' death doesn't mean it is not a real death experience. There is enough reason to believe that these are actual death experiences.
You are defining death as a final state from which there can be no return and therefore concluding that no one can come back after death. This is a circular argument. It has not been proved that no one can return after death.
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There is enough reason to believe that these are actual death experiences.
Such as....?
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Sriram,
That's a silly…
No it isn’t – see below.
…worn out argument.
Arguments aren’t “worn out” or not – they’re either sound or not sound.
Someone called it 'Near' death doesn't mean it is not a real death experience.
Yes it does. You may as well call sex a “near pregnancy experience”: being on the way to death but not actually dead means you’re not, well, actually dead. People who recover from NDEs may have useful things to say about the process of dying, but there’s no reason to think they have anything at all to say about being dead.
There is enough reason to believe that these are actual death experiences.
No there isn’t. If you think otherwise though, tell us what that supposed “reason” is.
You are defining death as a final state from which there can be no return…
That's called a straw man. I’m doing no such thing (though I also believe that to be the case) – I’m actually defining it as the state of being in which none of the features of life remain. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Sweet FA.
That’s why NDAs don’t qualify. What on earth do you think the word "Near" means here if not "approaching but not arrived at"?
…and therefore concluding that no one can come back after death. This is a circular argument. It has not been proved that no one can return after death.
It’s also not an argument I make (see above).
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Hi everyone
A nice recent CNN article about NDE's
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/14/health/near-death-experience-study-wellness/index.html
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those experiences were categorized along with testimonies from 126 survivors of cardiac arrest who were not in the study, and “we were able to show very clearly that the recorded experience of death — a sense of separation, a review of your life, going to a place that feels like home and then a recognition that you need to come back — were very consistent across people from all over the world,” Parnia said.
In addition, the study took the recorded brain signals and compared them with brain signals done by other studies on hallucinations, delusions and illusions and found them to be very different, he added.
“We were able to conclude that the recalled experience of death is real. It occurs with death, and there’s a brain marker that we’ve identified. These electrical signals are not being produced as a trick of a dying brain, which is what a lot of critics have said.”
“All (the study) has shown is that in some patients there is continued electrical activity in the head that occurs during the same period that other patients report having NDEs (near-death experiences),” Greyson said.
It’s correct that the study was not able to match electrical activity with a near death experience in the same patient, Parnia said.
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Sriram,
From the article:
“In the study, published Thursday in the journal Resuscitation, teams of trained personnel in 25 hospitals in the United States, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria followed doctors into rooms where patients were “coding” or “technically dead,” Parnia said.”
So not actually dead then. Right-oh.
Also from the same article:
“All (the study) has shown is that in some patients there is continued electrical activity in the head that occurs during the same period that other patients report having NDEs (near-death experiences),” Greyson said.”
Ah well.
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Sriram,
From the article:
“In the study, published Thursday in the journal Resuscitation, teams of trained personnel in 25 hospitals in the United States, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria followed doctors into rooms where patients were “coding” or “technically dead,” Parnia said.”
So not actually dead then. Right-oh.
Also from the same article:
“All (the study) has shown is that in some patients there is continued electrical activity in the head that occurs during the same period that other patients report having NDEs (near-death experiences),” Greyson said.”
Ah well.
It shows that NDE's and brain activity are unrelated. They happen in different people.
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So, nothing particularly new then. The evidence that there is electrical activity in the brain after the heart stops and breathing ceases is becoming fairly well established. Here for instance is another study which shows electrical activity in the dying brain, something that has also been observed in other animal species, especially rats.
https://www.science.org/content/article/burst-brain-activity-during-dying-could-explain-life-passing-your-eyes
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Sriram,
It shows that NDE's and brain activity are unrelated. They happen in different people.
No it doesn't. What it actually shows is that for NDEs to occur there still has to be electrical activity in the brain. You know, NDEs rather than actual DEs.
Nice try though.
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Sam Parnia clearly states that......“We were able to conclude that the recalled experience of death is real. It occurs with death, and there’s a brain marker that we’ve identified. These electrical signals are not being produced as a trick of a dying brain, which is what a lot of critics have said.”
Greyson says.....“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.
I don't know what they were trying to establish but they did succeed in establishing that there is no correlation between brain activity and NDE's.
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Sam Parnia clearly states that......“We were able to conclude that the recalled experience of death is real.
Nobody has ever been able to recall an experience of death, on account of the fact that, by definition, they were dead.
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Change your definition...!
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Change your definition...!
Changing a definition doesn't help you.
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Sam Parnia clearly states that......“We were able to conclude that the recalled experience of death is real. It occurs with death, and there’s a brain marker that we’ve identified. These electrical signals are not being produced as a trick of a dying brain, which is what a lot of critics have said.”
Greyson says.....“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.
I don't know what they were trying to establish but they did succeed in establishing that there is no correlation between brain activity and NDE's.
Sam Parnia obviously disagrees with Bruce Greyson. Just read the last part of your link. He suggests that electrical activity is no trick but instead points to such activity being key to understanding NDEs. Even the title of your link (Near-death experiences tied to brain activity after death, study says) suggests this.
This is what Sam Parnia says:
“Although doctors have long thought that the brain suffers permanent damage about 10 minutes after the heart stops supplying it with oxygen, our work found that the brain can show signs of electrical recovery long into ongoing CPR,” said senior study author Sam Parnia, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone Health. “This is the first large study to show that these recollections and brain wave changes may be signs of universal, shared elements of so called near-death experiences.”
https://nyulangone.org/news/patients-recall-death-experiences-after-cardiac-arrest
And he has been and is involved in such work. As far as I know, Bruce Greyson isn't.
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Parnia has clearly stated the following...
“We were able to conclude that the recalled experience of death is real. It occurs with death, and there’s a brain marker that we’ve identified. These electrical signals are not being produced as a trick of a dying brain, which is what a lot of critics have said.”
Greyson says..
“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.
Parnia agrees with that and says....
It’s correct that the study was not able to match electrical activity with a near death experience in the same patient, Parnia said.
The way I see it,... brain activity and NDE's are not related. NDE's are independent of the brain....and the above findings confirm that view. So...all fine, as far as I am concerned!
Now....what exactly Parnia is trying to prove by insisting on establishing a connection between NDE's and brain activity ....I am not clear.
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Parnia has clearly stated the following...
“We were able to conclude that the recalled experience of death is real. It occurs with death, and there’s a brain marker that we’ve identified. These electrical signals are not being produced as a trick of a dying brain, which is what a lot of critics have said.”
Greyson says..
“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.
Parnia agrees with that and says....
It’s correct that the study was not able to match electrical activity with a near death experience in the same patient, Parnia said.
The way I see it,... brain activity and NDE's are not related. NDE's are independent of the brain....and the above findings confirm that view. So...all fine, as far as I am concerned!
Now....what exactly Parnia is trying to prove by insisting on establishing a connection between NDE's and brain activity ....I am not clear.
As I said, Sam Parnia doesn't think that this electrical activity is a trick of the brain, but points to something much more important, as his own words suggest.
Yes, he did say that It’s correct that the study was not able to match electrical activity with a near death experience in the same patient
but, as the article went on to say, Parnia said:
“Our sample size wasn’t large enough. Most of our people didn’t live so we didn’t have hundreds of survivors. That’s the reality of it,” he said. “Of those that did live and had readable electroencephalograms, 40% of them showed that their brain waves went from flatline to showing normal signs of lucidity.”
In addition, Parnia said, people who survive often have fragmented memories or forget what they experienced due to heavy sedation in intensive care.
“Absence of record doesn’t mean there’s an absence of consciousness,” Parnia said. “Ultimately, what we’re saying is, ‘This is the great unknown. We’re in uncharted territory.’ And the key thing is that these are not hallucinations. These are a real experience that emerges with death.”
which suggests strongly that he disagreed with Greyson.
As you can see, by the tenor of the article (its name remember was Near-death experiences tied to brain activity after death) the writer disagrees with you that brain activity and NDEs are not related, as does Sam Parnia of course.
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It is obvious that Parnia thinks of NDE's as real death experiences, as he has said. That is not in doubt.
However why he is trying to link NDE's with brain activity contrary to the evidence that he himself concedes to...I have no idea.
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Not sure why it matters since living brains are capable of producing all sorts of weird shit anyway, such as when we are asleep, if we have taken or been given certain substances, or due to certain types of illness - and truly dead brains don't produce anything.
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It is obvious that Parnia thinks of NDE's as real death experiences, as he has said. That is not in doubt.
However why he is trying to link NDE's with brain activity contrary to the evidence that he himself concedes to...I have no idea.
I think that this very recent paper from the Scientific American clearly sets out the way the present scientific research is heading with a viable, if provisional hypothesis. You are, of course, quite entitled to your own point of view, regardless.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-patients-who-died-but-survived-report-lucid-near-death-experiences-a-new-study-shows/
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I think that this very recent paper from the Scientific American clearly sets out the way the present scientific research is heading with a viable, if provisional hypothesis. You are, of course, quite entitled to your own point of view, regardless.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/some-patients-who-died-but-survived-report-lucid-near-death-experiences-a-new-study-shows/
It's important to point out that the word "died" in the headline is in scare quotes because the patients they were able to interview didn't die.
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Sounds like bollocks to me, but what do others think?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/patients-near-death-may-enter-a-new-dimension-of-reality/ar-AA1gLNt1
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Sounds like bollocks to me, but what do others think?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/patients-near-death-may-enter-a-new-dimension-of-reality/ar-AA1gLNt1
It is bollocks. The authors describe it thus
The authors suggested that as it is dying, the brain removes natural braking systems, which may open access to ‘new dimensions of reality’, including lucid recall of all stored memories from early childhood to death, evaluated from the perspective of morality
That's not a new dimension, even if true. The best you could say is that it is a new mode of operation of the brain. I'm still a bit sceptical. What are these braking systems? Has anybody demonstrated that they do exist?
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Moderator:
Steve started another thread on this which has been merged into this one.
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Sounds like bollocks to me, but what do others think?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/patients-near-death-may-enter-a-new-dimension-of-reality/ar-AA1gLNt1
Might as well face the reality of consciousness surviving death. Why should scientists have so much resistance to this natural and universal phenomenon just because it has been a part of religious teaching in the past?!
Trying to find an evolutionary purpose for the phenomenon will amount to force fitting it.... like pushing a square peg into a round hole.
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Not sure why it matters since living brains are capable of producing all sorts of weird shit anyway, such as when we are asleep, if we have taken or been given certain substances, or due to certain types of illness - and truly dead brains don't produce anything.
But what do we mean by 'living'? When is a brain dead?
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Might as well face the reality of consciousness surviving death. Why should scientists have so much resistance to this natural and universal phenomenon just because it has been a part of religious teaching in the past?!
Because there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it exists.
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But what do we mean by 'living'? When is a brain dead?
When it ceases to function of course - especially when deprived of blood etc, which happens when people die.
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Death is hardly understood. We have childish definitions about 'cessation of bodily functions' and so on, which are neither here nor there.
We can't use such definitions as a base to understand NDE's and other such phenomena.
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Death is hardly understood. We have childish definitions about 'cessation of bodily functions' and so on, which are neither here nor there.
We can't use such definitions as a base to understand NDE's and other such phenomena.
Nothing childish about the reality of death: especially for those of us for whom it is an imminent reality we now have to actively plan for.
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Death is hardly understood. We have childish definitions about 'cessation of bodily functions' and so on, which are neither here nor there.
On the contrary, it is your little fantasies about an afterlife that are childish.
We can't use such definitions as a base to understand NDE's and other such phenomena.
Yes, yes, we should all give up doing proper science and just take Sriram's word about everything. ::)
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Nothing childish about the reality of death: especially for those of us for whom it is an imminent reality we now have to actively plan for.
I didn't say death is childish. I said that the definition of death as 'cessation of all bodily functions' is childish.
Sorry if it has offended you...Gordon.
I do seriously believe that death is not the end and is only a transition. I link again the video I did some time ago. Do try to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhcJNJbRJ6U&t=20s
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Sriram
That death isn't the end, as you believe, seems to me to be cruel: we are bringing up two of our grandchildren, now 9 and 7, who have had a permanent home with us since 2020, and they are going nowhere.
That I won't be able to see the job through as I'd like to thanks to cancer is bad enough - but to think that something of my consciousness might survive after I've died seems to me that, in effect, I'd be abandoning the most important responsibility I've ever held and be leaving it all to Ann because, according to what you believe, something of 'me' will survive my demise.
That seems perverse to me.
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Sriram
That death isn't the end, as you believe, seems to me to be cruel: we are bringing up two of our grandchildren, now 9 and 7, who have had a permanent home with us since 2020, and they are going nowhere.
That I won't be able to see the job through as I'd like to thanks to cancer is bad enough - but to think that something of my consciousness might survive after I've died seems to me that, in effect, I'd be abandoning the most important responsibility I've ever held and be leaving it all to Ann because, according to what you believe, something of 'me' will survive my demise.
That seems perverse to me.
Yes, I often find that what people seem to cling to as beliefs are not in any sense comforting. Knowing you, I know that you would never abandon your children or grandchildren, but this survival of consciousness that is the unevidenced basis of so many claims seems to be based on a denial of what you are.
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Death is hardly understood. We have childish definitions about 'cessation of bodily functions' and so on, which are neither here nor there.
We can't use such definitions as a base to understand NDE's and other such phenomena.
Surely death is a process, and because of scientific and technological advancements we are able to disrupt that process more successfully than we ever could before. Obviously there comes a point in the deterioration and damage done to brain cells when we are no longer able to resuscitate, but we have found that that point is reached sometimes hours after a person has been named as 'clinically dead'.Hence the idea that the brain can continue to function in some way, at least intermittently, during this process is surely a fairly reasonable proposition. Recent research seems to show this as electrical activity within the brain.
As far as NDEs are concerned there is no reason to think that they cannot be classed as brain experiences and we have no knowledge as to when such experiences take place, whether they are at the point of unconsciousness, the point of revival, or during any active phase of brain activity in between.
The main sticking point is whether consciousness is to be regarded as a brain activity or something separate from the brain. All the evidence suggests that consciousness is a result of brain activity, even though we cannot yet define in scientific terms what the hard problem of consciousness entails. There is no evidence whatever to suggest that consciousness is something distinct from brain activity( as, for instance, in the analogy of the TV signal and the TV set).
Therefore there is no evidence and hence no reason to think that NDEs reflect or point to some type of afterlife. One can still hold such views, of course, but I would say that to hold such views is purely a matter of personal faith.
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Sriram
That death isn't the end, as you believe, seems to me to be cruel: we are bringing up two of our grandchildren, now 9 and 7, who have had a permanent home with us since 2020, and they are going nowhere.
That I won't be able to see the job through as I'd like to thanks to cancer is bad enough - but to think that something of my consciousness might survive after I've died seems to me that, in effect, I'd be abandoning the most important responsibility I've ever held and be leaving it all to Ann because, according to what you believe, something of 'me' will survive my demise.
That seems perverse to me.
I don't for a moment claim to understand or justify everything that happens in our lives. There are surely many sorry situations in all our lives that we would like to be different from what they are.
But that has nothing to do with the idea of consciousness surviving death. If that is a reality and there is enough evidence for it, we have to accept it. We don't have a choice. We cannot possibly choose a different reality just because we don't understand or like certain situations.
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Sriram,
But that has nothing to do with the idea of consciousness surviving death. If that is a reality and there is enough evidence for it, we have to accept it. We don't have a choice. We cannot possibly choose a different reality just because we don't understand or like certain situations.
That's right - if ever there was evidence for consciousness surviving death we'd have to accept it. Your problem though is that, so far at least, you've failed to provide that evidence. The same goes for leprechauns by the way for which I've also failed to provide evidence so our different speculations (consciousness surviving death and leprechauns) are epistemically equivalent.
The difference between us though is that you overreach by asserting your speculation to be a fact, whereas I don't.
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Sriram,
That's right - if ever there was evidence for consciousness surviving death we'd have to accept it. Your problem though is that, so far at least, you've failed to provide that evidence. The same goes for leprechauns by the way
And the multiverse.
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And the multiverse.
Yet again for the hard-of-thinking: nobody is claiming any multiverse hypothesis has evidence. They are nothing more than conjectures. Their advantage over things like an afterlife is that they are extrapolated from actual, evidenced science and are not just baseless fairy stories. Each one is still more likely to be wrong than right. An afterlife is even less likely because it's totally baseless in either theory or evidence.
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Vlad,
And the multiverse.
Wrong, but irrelevant in any case.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZDDByT0Vr0
An interesting TED talk about dying. No....its not about NDE's. Just about the process of dying. 15 minutes.
One more. 12 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg8WAv0YT9c