The answer maybe is surprisingly simple as it would create the impression that its simplicity is only another logical or semantic trap.
To my mind, the answer is impinged in the very question, since the calculus if many variables proves how, the gap has narrowed before it being talked about. There is a correspondence here between the onto and ontic logic, whereas that proves the narrowing by a chronological preference of the former toward the latter, and without such transcendence, the question could not even begin to be posed.
That is not to say its pure logic or mathematics, but there seemed a ’ leaning toward’ to such an interpretation.
The OP is correct from a pessimism of strength but he can say it better. Still good work my friend. Life is heavy and it can never dissolve except by totally converting all the energy out of the mass, enlightenment… the guru Babaji from the Hymalayas says you can withstand the atom bomb in full summasamadhi.
Instead [in my view] you just do it again. You provide us with this “world of words” scholastic argument that gets us absolutely no closer to an assessment backed up by the sort of empirical evidence that might make the argument itself more intriguing.
So: What then will be your imagined fate after your own “I” tumbles over into the abysss that may or may not be oblivion?
What “harder stuff” do you have in the way of material evidence to back it up?
That’s why, from time to time, I can’t help but speculate that arguments like yours here are really just exercises in irony.
Attempts to point out why “intellectual contraptions” of this sort are of very little practical use in the course of actually living our lives, dying and then what?
Either that or an “analytic assessment” meant mostly to provide one with a psychological cushion in a really, really scary world that may well end in the obliteration of “I”.
There is ancorrespondence between Your proposition of tangible proof, and the kind of entropy devolution of mathematical logic toward pure logic.
The correspondence is narrowing because the logical connections of identifiable synthetic but elements within and without meaning, (which are at the base of identity per se); of consistent and consisting of being able to recognize and identifiable self, Yourself and mine, parallels the development of more general to more specific recognizable groupings.This was sunstantionally Cantor’s general framework within more definable identifiable sets of variables.
That this is at the bottom a scholastic endeavor, there is no doubt, but its more than that
There is in stricter , more general logic, a loss, of particular types of connections, and what this downward trend indicates is: that when the Great Doubt comes up as a limit, and I mean that of the Descartian limit of total immersion of the intellect as ‘I’, within the diminishing field or context it finds itself in-: the existential limit of Being into Nothingness, it has nowhere else to go.Doubt total becomes the nothingness of the value of existence,
and the underlying logic devolved totally into the nihilistic regression, unto the myth, the myth of this or that.
Now this is where Nietzsche started and ended, in circular pattern, or eternal recurring thema.
That this relates to Your actual query, there is no doubt in my mind. The individual consciousness developed out of a subconscious, and that may have an origin as wide as the propositional logic of Wittgenstein; that words by way of signs and signaling may not have come up to the field of existence if not for the development of intemtionality of cosmic proportion, overcoming the constraint of individual semantic blocks, as if harboring the will to power to overturn the Cogito Ergo Sum to Esse eat Percipii. Remember Einstein’s notion that if consciousness were not am archytipical essential part of existence. then the world would / could not exist?
That proposition. Is scholastic, rather rests on scholastic foundations of the kind Enselm proved.
Without the faithful adherence of Saint Enselm, the religious could hardly fathom its post modern significance as a connecting element between the original sign-the word-and - signifying or signaling It’s coming.
The personality is sinking from less individually apprehensive identity, apprehensive and apprehensible in the calculus of minimum traits that Leibnitz talked about.In his sense the gap is getting narrower as the road to the Absolute becomes more proximal.
Your question about what happens to identity is right on the money, and the above show general propositions that relate to before and after the fall, as in Descartes pointed it out.
As the personality or the individual conscious identity falls , toward the minimal identifiable differences or characteristic traits, eventually becoming fused with the Absolute in individual consciousness of the so called death, the phrase ‘Life is but a dream’ comes to mind, when the separatability between conscious and sub/unconscious states is reached. At that point the question. of what happens after death becomes mute.
I choose to believe by a perfectly lucid argument , and many also do. Steiner is very close to this interpretation.
I believe that this argument rests, on all levels of inquiry. The specific existential nihilism is basically anti intellectual and more of a contradictory vision to an Anthropomorphic denial to faith based on religious grounds. The God is dead idea generally is not an argument against a man - god, but an argument around the concept of perfection in the Greek sense. It is not i who am trying to use it as an irony, as did probably Nietzsche, and am not especially alarmed at the thought of the death of the - ‘i’ , because we are heading toward a new integration, which can be had here, now, and for ever.
The Kingdom is near, and you have to die now, to get to heaven.
Tell me if any of this sounds like a contraption, or if, has any possibility of being an existentially limited reality.
I don’t choose and didn’t chose to believe out of fear, but it kind of shaped and formed me.
Just wanted to address this and another from this post. Sorry about the late reply: working on Part 3 of the Argument and the concluding Part 4, plus dealing with a plumbing issue ha ha.
In the end, no one (I think) will be able to visibly demonstrate the existence of God or the afterlife. So providing that sort of reason for you to believe is out of the question. I think what I am doing here and what others in their own way are trying to do is to shoehorn in the possibility of their existence despite whatever the artificial reality of our current consciousness “depicts”. The most believers can do in my opinion is:
(1) Have (for heaven’s sake) a logically possible God and/or Afterlife hypothesis. Without a hypothesis that is logically possible (that borrows from the evidence of what empirically exists, such as consciousness), it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.
(2) Present a God and/or Afterlife Hypothesis in a way that skeptics can at least see that it is logically possible. It’s the most we can do this side of the grave. In the end there are two doors waiting for each of us at the shores of death: behind Door #1 is eternal oblivion; behind Door #2 is continued consciousness distinct (?) from the current artificial reality…in some form.
As I’ve stated before, all we have is the current artificial reality created by our brains (if that’s possible), created by Psycheons (see Part 3 of this Argument), or by supernatural or metaphysical magic. And that’s primarily the content of visual perception (as non-visual perceptions are invisible).
But if real, of what does it consist if its something that is not our consciousness or that can continue to exist in the absence of our consciousness? As we must be conscious to know anything and anything presented to us appears only in the form of something experienced by oneself rather than anyone else, anything real, if it is something other than subjective experience, must first magically transform into subjective experience in order to be known, as we experience only subjective experience. That is, anything that is not you must first be translated into “you form” in order to be observed and known to exist by YOU. If things in the external world do not exist in “you form” and cannot be magically transformed into “you experiencing them”-form, they can have nothing to do with you or your subjective experience.
I like your definition of determinism, couldn’t have said it better myself.
True, but the artificial reality that is one’s own consciousness is the springboard and the source of these assumptions, particularly given Hume’s supposition that imagination derives from the senses.
True. Or it could be an aspect of the external world that is translated into “you experiencing it”-form after the current artificial reality spends itself. As you yourself said: we don’t know. We only have beliefs that are rock solid in our heads regarding the nature of reality. Reality, however, doesn’t really care what we doggedly and steadfastly believe: it is what it is regardless. If it coincides with our belief? Great. If not, its a learning experience (unless atheists are right).
If God is demonstrable, he would surely be visible. But as ‘God is a spirit’ and “spirit”, I believe, is an archaic way of saying “consciousness”, then in the same way that other people’s consciousnesses are invisible and intangible and are thus not demonstrable, God is not demonstrable if he indeed exists and is a consciousness without a visible body.
An afterlife, well, that’s another artificial reality other than “this” one. It’s non-demonstrable as it’s not what’s currently going on.
True. For the reasons explained above, I think.
This concerns me, but is none of my business. But I can see why the proposition of an afterlife may be appealing for anyone in this situation. I hope to do my best to at least convince you of the logical possibility of an argument that is “invincible” in the sense that it cannot be disproven. It’s the only thing I can do.
Unless of course there is an existing God with an existing afterlife bundled up in salvation; and He chooses to manifest Himself such that no reasonable man or woman can doubt it.
Okay, fair enough. But that largely involves arguments that go around and around in circles. Or so it seems to me. This is said to be possible because that is said to be assumed. But then there’s no way “for all practical purposes” to really go beyond the assumptions themselves.
Around and around they go speculating on either the Divinity or the existence of Jesus Christ. As though it had in fact been established that the man did exist as the Son of God [or as God Himself on earth?]; or that the nature of a Divine existence can be pinned down beyond arguments that are bursting at the seams with assumptions.
The part where I interject and ask what actual evidence is available to bolster the claims is basically ignored. Why? Well, in my view, it’s because that which someone is able to convince himself is true “in his head” here can sustain a psychological “I” that is comforted and consoled.
But that’s no less a speculation on my part. So, what else is there then but that which we are able to provide hard[er] evidence for?
Thus when you note…
…what is there here for me [and others] to sink our teeth down into? And, again, with so much at stake: immortality, salvation, divine justice. A teleological font for existence.
As for the “artificial reality that is one’s own consciousness”, how do we really pin this down pertaining to our interactions with others out in a particular world? What is more or less real? What has more or less substance?
What is in fact more or less likely to be true for all of us? Here, in my view, all we can do is point to something out in the world and [to the best of our ability] come to one or another consensus regarding 1] what it is 2] how to react to it and 3] dealing with the consequences of conflicting assessments and reactions.
And then trying to connect the dots here to one or another rendition of God and religion. To one or another rendition of the afterlife.
Then I can only come back to this:
If…if…if. Isn’t that basically what all arguments of this sort come down to? But in the course of interacting from day to day in the either/or world, ifs of this sort pop up considerably less frequently.
If I type these words on my keyboard they will show up on the screen. If I click on the submit button to post them at ILP they end up there. And that’s true for everyone posting here every single time. If there are no techological problems. But what if one day I typed the words, clicked on submit and nothing happened. And it was determined that in fact there were no technological problems. The laws of nature themselves had simply reconfigured into something else.
For those believing the brain creates consciousness, neurons create one’s experience of oneself and the people with whom one interacts. Its all an illusion created by the brain, in the form of an artificial reality in which one speaks to others (bodies) that are created by one’s neurons that are caused by one’s neurons to speak and move toward oneself in such a way that it yields a super-strong belief that these neuron-created others exist outside the self and have consciousness of their own, and as such meaningfully responds to one’s words and actions. But (taking the “logic” that the brain creates consciousness to the end of the track) these “people” and one’s “interactions” with them are just aspects of the “Princess Leia hologram” created by the brain. The existence of actual people in the external world is and will always be a matter of faith. One is not a solipsist if one’s believes and has faith that other people actually exist, however, as solipsism is the belief there are no other consciousnesses save one’s own.
It’s really pretty simple: in belief that the brain creates consciousness you can divide everything in the universe into two classes:
Things created by your brain.
Things not created by your brain.
If brains create consciousness, there must be a neural circuit somewhere in your brain that creates every person and every event you experience. That is, the persons with whom you “interact” and the events you experience are all created by your brain. In order for you to experience anything, anything you experience must be created by your brain.
Conversely, everything not created by your brain you cannot experience. You can only experience what your brain creates, and in terms of these ‘others’, the brain only creates the concept of the thing it cannot and does not create, or creates a blanket concept that your brain causes you to believe is something the brain does not create and is something that exists outside what your brain creates. This does not mean the thing does not necessarily exist, however, such that the brain created a blanket concept that coincidentally exists. But as it’s not a creation of one’s brain, one cannot experience it and come into contact with its objective existence. The concept of God and the afterlife are blanket, random concepts created by one’s brain (for those believing brains create consciousness), but the fact they are random inventions (if they are random inventions and no forms of communication from more consciousness outside) do not mean they do not exist: they may coincidentally exist even if they are random inventions of the brain.
True regarding 1-3, but if the brain creates consciousness:
When pointing to something out in the world all one is doing is pointing to an illusion created by the brain that is part of the artificial reality or “Princess Leia hologram” created by the brain; it is not the actual thing itself–the thing not created by one’s brain that does not require neurons in order to exist and does not wink out of existence in response to cessation or dysfunction of one’s brain.
One reacting to the thing pointed out is an act of the artificial reality created by the brain.
Dealing with the consequences of conflicting assessments and reactions between oneself and one’s interaction with something pointed out are all part of the “Princess Leia hologram” produced by the brain. We do not know if there is a “real Princess Leia” or brain/mind-independent doppelganger to the thing pointed out or one’s interaction with it in the external world.
It’s basically the same as those believing the brain creates consciousness connecting the dots from the artificial reality or “holographic Princess Leia” that is sensory perception to an invisible, intangible, possibly non-existent doppelganger of the content of one’s (visual) sensory perception that is the “real Princess Leia” that the brain did not create but that the brain purportedly copies to form of the content of visual perception. Mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception and God and religion are essentially in the same boat. Both “exist” outside the brain, are things not created by the brain, and as such are things that are not and that lie outside the artificial reality the brain produces that is called “one’s consciousness and the things one experiences in the here and now”.
But the course of interacting from day to day in the either/or world is just an artificial reality created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness, or an artificial reality experienced by a non-embodied mind or spirit (for those believing brains do not create consciousness, but is an allegory of the forces that actually do).
Well, your artificial reality would simply stop behaving with “lawful” regularity for some reason. We can’t know if there are mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of the artificial reality that begin to behave differently due to a reconfiguration of “outside the brain created artificial realiity” laws.
But, in my opinion, what this particular 1] argument 2] analysis and/or 3] general description/assessment does not do is come down to earth. In other words, such that the ideas conveyed allow us to grasp more clearly how someone might connect the dots between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it. In the “afterlife”.
Two people are arguing about the afterlife. They both agree that it exists. But they fiercely dispute that which qualifies one to attain, say, salvation in it.
And then someone comes along and argues that there is no afterlife. That, through God and religion, the idea of it is concocted because, psychologically, it comforts and consoles us to believe that it exist.
So, beyond the reasons argued one way or the other, what actual evidence is presented to solidify the arguments for or against the existence of an afterlife?
What actual solid evidence is there that confirms ones own rendition of what happens to “I” after the body is tumbling back into star stuff?
Again, from my frame of mind, out on the metaphysical limb — out where, technically, human senses, perceptions and conceptions are fully grasped and wholly intertwined/integrated, this may or may not be true.
We accept that, out in the world that we live in, there things interacting with other things that appear to be true for all of us. We live from day to day for, on average, 70 odd years, and then one by one we die. And there is either an afterlife for “I” then or there is not. And the brain and the mind and the soul are either intertwined here in one particular way objectively or they are not.
So, for me, it’s less a matter of what we think is true here, and more a matter of what we either can or cannot demonstrate is more rather than less likely to be true for all of us.
For some of us, Princess Leia was just a cartoon character created for a cartoon character world of “good” and “evil”. Star Wars barely attempted at all to convey any philosophical depth. Either about life on this side of oblivion or the other side.
But our reactions precipitate behaviors that precipitate actual consequences deemed by some to be good and by others to be bad. Then there are those who argue that only the right reactions will precipitate the right behaviors will precipitate the right reaction from God on Judgment Day. The brain either functions here as the crucial component re human interaction in a wholly determined universe or it is somehow intertwined in “mind” [and for some “souls”] such that through actual autonomous choices we can secure an afterlife more to our liking.
None of us are cartoon characters created for the cartoon character worlds that come out of Hollywood. Instead, from day to day to day, we are confronted with actual flesh and blood interactions that precipitate actual flesh and blood consequences that some of us here then link to what they construe [through arguments in their head] to this thing we call “the afterlife”.
What then can be conveyed beyond the internal logic of definitions given to words that don’t seem to be connected much at all to that which I construe to be of utmost importance here: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view historically, culturally and interpersonally
So, when Donald Trump sends those 15,000 troops to the border with Mexico, this is just an “artificial reality” created by our collective brains? Much the same as regarding all of the conflicting assessments about whether or not this is the right thing to do?
I must be misunderstanding your point here. I mean imagine going to Trump and the soldiers and the folks in the caravan and the folks on the border arguing good thing, bad thing, and conveying this to them. How do you imagine they might react? How could they not see it as just an “intellectual contraption” that you believe in your head but that has no relevance whatsoever to the actual lives that they live?
Someone could connect the dots between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it by:
Looking at the existence of subjective experience itself and
Questioning the ability of subjective experience to come into and go out of existence.
“This side of the grave” is an artificial reality. That is, it is composed of subjective experience and appears only in the form of something subjectively experienced by a person. “This side of the grave” is only someone’s subjective experience of a certain type of world obeying certain types of subjectively experienced rules with certain types of subjectively experienced events occurring in it. It appeared at some point in the past and is presumed to disappear at some point in the future. But despite its finite-ness, it is only the subjective experience of a subjectively experiencing being. It does not (nor indeed cannot) appear in any other form (else it couldn’t be experienced).
That which one “imagine[s] their fate to be on the other side of it” is, admittedly, an act of pure imagination, but based on the empirical evidence of the nature of the “behaviors they choose on this side of the grave” (that this is a subjectively experienced artificial reality), there is every reason to believe that if there is an afterlife, it too is just another subjectively experienced reality composed of the subjective experience of the person experiencing it, like “this” life.
I would question how the person who argues there is no afterlife knows there is no afterlife, and I would question their assertion due to the certainty expressed in the assertion. Lack of evidence of the afterlife in the current artificial reality is insufficient, as we do not expect the afterlife, being another artificial reality, to show up in the current one. So why is the second one necessarily non-existent, other than simply by reason of the skepict’s disbelief?
There is no solid evidence of another artificial reality that replaces the old one, as one can only view the current artificial reality. And we can’t know that the body or star stuff (as it is outside or in the absence of any consciousness) even exists, as everything appears only in the form of the experience of a body and the sighting of stars, which could be just an aspect of the artificial reality that is consciousness.
I don’t think the brain and body objectively exists, nor any other object that we visually perceive. But that’s just my disbelief.
We can’t demonstrate the objective existence of bodies, brains, or any visually perceived object, body of person, or environment. One can only demonstrate, and that only to oneself, the things experienced in the artificial reality that is one’s subjective experience.
Star Wars was never about philosophical depth or meant to convey anything about life or the afterlife, but the scene where R2D2 produced a hologram of Princess Leia implanted by Princess Leia to implore Obi Wan for help makes, I think, good analogy for the brain (R2D2), human consciousness (the Leia hologram), and mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception in the external world (the actual Princess Leia implanting the hologram in R2D2).
R2D2 (the brain) produces (for those believing the brain produces consciousness) consciousness (the Leia hologram). Visual perception and the objects, events, and bodies of persons showing up in visual perception are believed to have doppelgangers in the external world that are not creations of “R2D2” and as such are not one and the same as “the Leia hologram”. Berkeleyian Idealists like yours truly believe the “real Princess Leia” does not exist, nor that there is an external, mind-independent R2D2 that creates “the Leia hologram”. Only the “Leia hologram” exists.
A good barometer for this is the Golden Rule. If a behavior, when you imagine it applied to you is something you don’t like or want, it is “bad”. Or one can adopt a clinical approach to morality and just objectively label anything that is “bad” as anything that follows from the deliberate/willful desire to cause mental/physical pain/death.
I believe the brain does nothing at all, but is a God-instituted symbol of what actually constitutes consciousness. There is only “mind” and “soul”. Everything, actual behaviors and the actual consequences they bring, I believe are all just subjective experiences composed of subjective experience.
Speaking of God and Judgment Day, it is a staple of Judeo-Christian belief that God is extremely conditional in terms of what He requires in order to consign one to a positive afterlife, based on one’s actions in the current artificial reality. If one has conscience and empathy and basically goes out of one’s way to habitually and reflexively obey the Golden Rule, as well as have faith in Jesus Christ, one is certain to gain a positive afterlife.
“To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.”
-Romans 2:7
The Star Wars references are analogies of the brain, consciousness, and things believed to exist in the external world. In no way do I imply we are cartoon characters in a Hollywood cartoon world. Our “actual flesh and blood interactions that precipitate actual flesh and blood consequences” are made up of subjective experience, and occur only in the form of the subjective experiences of persons. We can’t know that they occur in any form outside persons or in forms not composed of subjective experience.
The concept of the afterlife, therefore, is borrowed from the fact of the existence of subjective experience in terms of something that could be experienced when the current subjective experience is done.
The world historically, culturally, and interpersonally is nonetheless composed of subjective experience, and appears only to a subjectively experiencing subject. It is therefore only an artificial reality composed of subjective experience.
Sure. If you believe the brain creates consciousness, and if you believe consciousness magically ceases to exist when the brain ceases to function, it follows that every experience you have from birth to death does not exist without the brain but is created, pieced together, then produced from 100 billion neurons squeezed into a baseball-glove shaped mass of flesh in your skull. The “movie” produced from the “movie projector” of these mass of neurons is an artificial reality that can suddenly wink out at death or upon sudden dysfunction of the brain. This includes Donald Trump and the 15,000 troops sent to the border of Mexico. Trump and those 15,000 soldiers, or at least your visual and auditory experience of them, are all creations of and projections from your brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).
Now, Trump and the 15,000 troops are believed to exist outside your brain, but the existence of these brain-independent doppelgangers cannot be demonstrated nor proven to exist. The only Trump and soldiers that can be demonstrated to exist are the “holographic Leias” produced by your brain and that appear only to you, as they are created by your brain and are made up of your subjective experience of them.
It wouldn’t have any relevance to the actual lives they live, but if they believe the brain creates their consciousness and that their consciousness ceases to exist should their brains suddenly stop working, they can only come to the logical conclusion that their presence on the border and the people and things they see, and the things they feel and think about in regard to the border, Trump, etc. are all creations of the brain, are all part of an artificial reality created by the brain.
