Can you be dead

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
141

We don’t end when our body dies. That’s why we remember our dreams (at least one kind of them, anyway).

I wouldn’t say the two are necessarily comparable since we experience high levels of brain activity in REM compared to the negligible amounts, if any, experienced after death.

I’m not implying that there’s no afterlife or incorporeal experience, but dreams and death specifically aren’t a good comparison.

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142

So you think that it has to register on the brain or it isn’t happening? There’s a whole world happening that doesn’t register on your brain, dude.

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143

I’m not at all saying that, I’m just pointing out that comparing dreams, which are 'caused’ by the high activity measured during REM, to postmortem experience is not a good comparison.

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144

Apple pie makes an impression on the brain that you can trigger even in the absence of apple pie (memory recall that includes sensory “flashbacks” is one way to do this “internally”), but that does not reduce apple pie to brain activity, & that can be said of everything (including mental acts) that triggers or is triggered by brain activity.

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145
  1. Recall of eating apple pie is not the same as the actual experience; After eating pie, you get dopamine release from the sugar and begin to feel satiated from eating, but these reactions are not present during recall, showing a discrepancy between experiences and their memories.
  2. My argument would not reduce the apple pie to brain activity, but rather attributes recall of said apple pie to brain activity, which I feel is a valid statement. Your original claim that we may have postmortem experience is valid, I was just pointing out a faulty comparison.
  3. In my original response, I never implied that all experience requires brain activity, rather that dreams are a results of brain activity; Because dreams are a result of high brain activity, to use them as an argument for postmortem experience (zero brain activity) is a very faulty comparison, but the argument for postmortem experience is valid.
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146

If you agree it is possible that some experiences do not require brain activity, then you should also agree it is possible that dreams may result, at least in part, from something other than brain activity.

147

Yes. I think I am dead.

:jack_o_lantern:

So is this pumpkin here.

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