AN INVINCIBLE ARGUMENT FOR THE AFTERLIFE (PART THREE)

You, me, or anyone currently alive, if one has demonstrated or will demonstrate something to another person or other people in real life, are what is meant by the term “demonstrator” in the existence-analysis above.

The thing a person on this side of the grave demonstrates to others, regardless of what is being demonstrated and regardless of the set of circumstances in which the demonstration takes place, the person demonstrating it experiences that which is being demonstrated from one’s own first-person point of view. He or she does not experience that which is being demonstrated from the point of view of the persons attending the demonstration, as they (if solipsism is false) have their own private, invisible (to the demonstrator) first-person point of view or reference of that which is being demonstrated.

That which is demonstrated manifests or appears only when one (the demonstrator) is present and attending to it, and disappears when the demonstrator (and presumably, those to whom the demonstrated is being demonstrated) no longer looks upon it. It’s very appearance before the demonstrator and the demonstrated, therefore, depends upon the existence of their consciousness and attention. It cannot appear in any other form than something looked upon by a conscious person and how it appears to the point of view of the conscious person, as existence actually manifests and only manifests in the form of a person and that which the person experiences, from the individual’s first-person point of view.

As it appears only when the person experiences it and disappears when the person no longer experiences it, it may be deduced that that which is demonstrated, as its presence or absence depends upon the observer, may actually be something that is a part of the observer that “comes out of” or exudes from the observer, rather than something that is not the observer that exists outside of or independent to the observer.

That which is “demonstrated” (as one cannot experience the experience of other persons, and therefore must have faith that other persons and their consciousness exists), therefore, in order to be experienced must materially consist or be composed of the subjective experience of the experience that looks upon it (a person is fundamentally an experience), as the “demonstrated” only appears within existence as something experienced by a person, and only appears within existence in the form of something seen from the person’s first-person point of view.

But I digress. The explanation remains the same and shall always remain the same, as it is how existence actually manifests or appears.

As to what’s on the other side of the grave—if “I” continue after loss of perception of one’s body and loss of perception of “this” world—on this side of the grave exists only in the forms of an idea (if thoughts are not telescopes into that which lies outside consciousness, in “hypocrisy” of criticism against Direct Realism).

Within the idea of the afterlife, it may be presumed that an afterlife essentially and rationally takes the form of a first-person subject of experience and that which appears before the subject’s first-person point of view.

(If there is a law of existence in which existence can only take the form of a person and that which the person experiences from its point of view)

Fair enough. I simply point out that the concrete aspect of existence is what one currently experiences in the here and now, in the form of current and evolving sensory perception and internal thought and emotion. Anything other than this, “to us” or as existence manifests in the form of oneself, exists only in the form of one’s internal thought in the form of an idea.

However, if solipsism is false something exists that is not you and what you currently and will ever experience in sensory perception and internal thought and emotion. What these “not-you” things are, well, one cannot experience them as they are “not-you”. But one can have one’s thoughts form, using David Hume’s process of accessing past sensory experience and taking bits here and there of the content of past sensory perception to “Frankenstein Monster” a mental imagine of something that does not reflect the content of actual sensory perception that one calls, entertains, or believes is a replica of what some “not-you” thing that may or may not exist outside your consciousness.

My entire spiel, if you boil Phenomenal Graffiti’s philosophy in regard to metaphysics to the bare minimum, is that:

  1. “Not-you” things are probably, given the existence of consciousness, not things that are not composed of consciousness (given that, if solipsism is false other consciousnesses exist and presumably appear to those having them just as your consciousness appears to you), such that the existence of your consciousness, if you are not the only thing that exists (solipsism), may in terms of material substance be the only material substance in and of existence, such that anything that exists must be made out of consciousness, and can only manifest in the form a person and that which the person experiences.

  2. “Not-you” things that we are aware of (because we have formed an idea of the concept of the thing by using our thought as clay to shape the thing’s appearance using David Hume’s process of taking bits and pieces of past sensory experience and “jigsaw puzzling” them to form an imaginary object, place, and person) could exist outside one’s consciousness in the external world exactly in the shape and form one imagined and shaped them in one’s thought (with this appearance being entirely coincidental or even caused by the “not you” thing, that arbitrarily has power to control one’s consciousness and that which one experiences or imagines [as it “just so” happened to exist with this capability]). That is, there really is nothing preventing a “not you” thing that you imagined from coincidentally having objective existence.

  3. Anything that objectively exists outside a person must be composed of consciousness, and must exist only in the form of another person (in new estrangement from belief in mental particles and the “God-Man Machine” in psychic particle form). If, however, something outside all persons is composed of something that is not consciousness, it cannot rationally cause or have anything to do with the existence of consciousness, and cannot rationally have anything to do with the form in which consciousness appears.

From my frame of mind this is yet another “general description” of a hypothetical context in which a demonstrator demonstrates the act of demonstration itself to someone. Entirely in a world of words.

There is no actual “thing” being demonstrated.

To wit:

One can either demonstrate how to perform an abortion or not. But how does one demonstrate that abortion itself is either moral or immoral? How does one demonstrate the manner in which either performing or having an abortion effects one’s fate on the other side of the grave? Instead [to me] this post is basically just an “academic assessment” of demonstration itself.

But what on earth does this demonstrate? To me, only that this “general description” in turn is something that you have thought yourself into believing is true “in your head”. Beyond that it is just sheer conjecture to someone like me.

I see “autodidactic” narratives like this as linked by and large to a psychological boost that one receives in believing something like this. It is a frame of mind that is able to comfort and console particular individuals when confronting, among other things, death and oblivion.

That it “works” for you [in this regard] is the whole point of its existence.

Or so it seems to me.

You simply go on and on in the same “scholastic” vein:

I have absolutely no idea how to make this relevant to the life that I live from day to day. Either on this side of the grave or in regard to the fate of “I” on the other side of it.

Actual consciousness and how it operates is operationally described in the quote above, with the person reading the description using oneself as the model to demonstrate to oneself that consciousness operates exactly as described in the quote.

I can’t demonstrate my consciousness to you (as you have your own consciousness and can only experience your own consciousness: you only believe my consciousness exists due to the hyper-convincing nature of your consciousness as your consciousness assumes the form of what you construe to be my reaction to and actions toward you): for the quote above to actually demonstrate how consciousness operates, you must use your consciousness to demonstrate what is contained in the above quote.

The existence of everything, including eternal oblivion at death, is sheer conjecture, as the only thing that can be demonstrated to exist is one’s own consciousness.

B-but we don’t confront oblivion. We never have. When we see a dead person, we only confront a visual, etc. perception of a body that no longer moves or responds to external stimuli. We cannot know if the consciousness of the person has ceased to exist, or for that matter if consciousness can cease to exist, as we have never experienced the person’s consciousness to know whether or not it is gone or persists outside the body, which from our side of things is just made up of one’s subjective experience within the virtual reality that is one’s consciousness.

It indeed “works” for me and is comforting. But its more than just psychological consoling, as we have no evidence that consciousness ceases to exist at death. From a philosophical standpoint, the afterlife is a hypothetical and more than that, logical, possibility of what happens to consciousness following cessation of perception of one’s body and the world that may be true for all we know, as we have no evidence that consciousness ceases to exist at death.

One can only believe and have faith, brothers and sisters…that consciousness is not eternal and must cease to exist at death. Can I get an amen?

It’s safe to assume you believe that upon death there is eternal oblivion, as you believe that consciousness can cease to exist. But this belief is derived from things we have no evidence for and cannot be demonstrated. Just as one believing in an afterlife that cannot demonstrate the afterlife is only believing in the existence of something that is “in one’s head”—one believing that consciousness ceases to exist also believes in the existence or occurrence of something that is only “make-believe” or “in one’s head”, as it cannot be demonstrated that there are external world dwelling brains, that these external world dwelling brains creates consciousness, or that consciousness ceases to exist.

Content of consciousness certainly ceases to exist in the sense that content of consciousness: what a person experiences at time x as opposed to future time y, ceases to exist in the sense that experience x transforms into experience y

…but does consciousness qua consciousness cease to exist entirely?

Can consciousness cease to exist rather than merely transform into another form of consciousness?

Can we demonstrate that consciousness ceases to exist, given that one can only demonstrate one’s own consciousness and not that of another?

How do we know the consciousness of a deceased person has ceased to exist, given we cannot experience the consciousness of another person?

We believe energy cannot cease to exist a la the first law of thermodynamics, and we buy that hook, line, and sinker given that there is no evidence for the existence of anything save consciousness. Why should consciousness be different?

It follows that one only believes and have quasi-religious faith that consciousness ceases to exist in the first place, and eternally ceases to exist at death. We cannot confront oblivion as an irrefutable truth, as we have no evidence that oblivion is what happens at death. There’s only one’s observance of an non-moving body, and the body of the deceased person before you at the funeral home is, I must remind you, just an object composed of your subjective experience as an aspect of the virtual reality that is your consciousness—if there are no mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception in the external world.

You probably believe in the existence of “not you” things, such as things outside your consciousness that are not created by your brain and that would continue to exist if your brain were to cease function. So that’s relevant according to the life you live from day to day in the sense that the objects surrounding you in day to day existence are “not you” things that persist despite your consciousness.

Consciousness itself is relevant to day to day living, I suppose, as one must have consciousness in order to have day to day life.

The very fact that one’s consciousness is the only thing that can be demonstrated to exist (and that to no one except yourself) is an underlying fact of existence that defines day to day life, although this is a “looking under the hood” of the “car” of your existence. The quote above is, in essence, just a description of day to day life as it may look “under the hood” of day to day existence. Maybe it’s not relevant to what’s happening when the hood is closed, but given that the only thing for which there is evidence of actual existence is consciousness, it’s sorta relevant when one chooses to think deeper and look beneath the waves of day to day life. I think its okay to ruminate about what is or could be under the hood from time to time, when one is not preoccupied with the matters of this here artificial reality.

I think one of the hardest things in dealing with such discussions is to get the other person to be consistant with their doubt and skepticism. They often don’t know the paradigm they are swimming in. Here you point out that the common, based on science supposedly, sense of what happens after death is ‘in your head’ just as much as the afterlife idea.

But it is actually even deeper than that. The tools of the skeptic are just as much faith based and paradigmantically laden with assumptions. But most people think that they are not making assumptions because they are following an authority. Here scientific ones. Scientists tend not to be philosophers and do not tend to realize that their assumptions are assumptions. That while their data may be correct their models are not merely research results, but attempts to simplify and understand a lot of different phenomena.

So Iamb, for example, thinks he can confidently separate out what is radically speculative - objective morals - from things that we can be much more confident with ‘current scientific models’ which are metaphors for reality. That is, metaphysics.

When he comes at your model, he comes at it with the metaphors and images of current -or more likely of twenty or thirty years ago or more - models. Those models have repeatedly been found to be highly incorrect and the metaphysical level.

Technically, this might be right on the money. But until this abstract assessment of consciousness is linked to a considerably less abstract demonstration of the afterlife, it’s still just a bunch of words defining and defending other words to me.

Just more of the same “analysis”. The logic of it is embedded internally in the assumptions that are made about the meaning of these particular words put in this particular order.

Take them to flesh and blood human beings interacting in a particular context and sooner or later your speculation about consciousness and the afterlife is something able to be substantiated beyond the analysis itself or not.

I agree. But here we are interacting with others from day to day. And there are clearly things that can be demonstrated such that to the extent that we are able to grasp reality going back to the existence of existence itself, lots and lots and lots of things seem to be true objectively for all of us.

And the afterlife may well be one of them. But “analyzing” it into existence is just not sufficient for some of us.

Yes, we see the actual dead person. We grasp that unlike those of us who are not dead, the dead person seems entirely inert. Responding to nothing. And, sure, we have no way to know for certain if the dead person’s consciousness [or, for most, the soul] is still around “somewhere”.

And all we can do is to extrapolate here so as to imagine our own fate when we die.

But: where is it demonstrated here that consciousness – “I” – does continue to exist beyond the grave?

So, it’s back then to the argument, the analysis, the world of words.

Back to the part where these things alone are able to bring you some measure of comfort and consolation.

Since no one has yet proven that consciousness does not extend beyond the grave, you are able to think up an argument sustaining the belief that, given your own set of assumptions here, it exists “in your head”.

It has become “philosophically logical” to you that it exists. But only [in my view] as a tautological contraption. The logic goes around and around in circles because it is predicated on the assumption that the definition and the meaning that you give to the words in the argument is sound.

But never are these words connected to the sort of experiments and predictions and replications that are imperative in sustaining arguments that employ the scientific method for establishing things that are thought to be true.

What I think is true about death and oblivion can only be conjecture extrapolated from the experiences that I and others I’ve known have had with death. I see no evidence to convince me of its existence.

Instead, I speculate that, for folks like you, in not wanting “I” to be obliterated for all time to come, and in the absence of hard evidence that it doesn’t, what alternative is there but to “think up” an argument able to give you at least some peace of mind in contemplating the abyss.

I only wish that I could figure out a way to do it myself.

Then I’m back to this:

No, my point is that anything that I believe is predicated only on the assumptions I make about the relationship between “I” and the world around me, taking into account the enormous gap between what I think is true here and now and all that can be known going back to the existence of existence itself.

Just like you and everyone else.

Both the believer and the skeptic are in the same boat here. They think something is true about the afterlife and they are either able to demonstrate that what they believe is true “in their head” is in fact true for all of us or they aren’t.

Until we do grasp a complete understanding of existence itself [either regarding before or after the grave] leaps of faith are the order of the day.

But our “tools” are either capable of nailing things down with hard evidence or they’re not. And then the part about human psychology which seems inherently/genetically prone to one or another defense mechanism allowing for “I” to feel the least discomforted in grappling with before and after the grave.

This is ultimately true regarding science and the really Big Questions. Assumptions galore. But science over the centuries has established so many seeming objective truths regarding the either/or world, that we tend to lend it the sort of credence not readily granted to philosophers or theologians or practitioners of the so-called “soft sciences”.

Can or cannot the “scientific method” be employed in delving into the existence of an afterlife?

Sigh…

What on earth is this supposed to mean about me?

My point is that opinions in the is/ought world are rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. At least as much as in any objective assessments able to be provided to us by philosophers and scientists.

Then I insist that this assumption be explored in an actual context.

As for “metaphysics”, there either is a metaphysical truth about the afterlife [rooted in God or in Nature] or there is not. But the same rules apply for me: What can you actually show us is true?

Again: What on earth is that supposed to mean? In regards to the existence of an afterlife or the lack thereof.

What is his own current “model”?

Response to iambiguous:

Humans interacting with each other, if I were to interrupt them and tell them of the content of my quote could experiment using themselves to see (or instantly realize without self-experimentation) that the content of the quote is indeed substantiated: each individual would immediately discover or admit that their consciousness is not those of the others sitting at the table, and that the existence of every other person at the table is in fact just one’s own consciousness taking the form of the others’ bodies and their reactions to the words of each person at the center of the experiment/realization.

The afterlife, meanwhile, given that it cannot be demonstrated remains, like mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, a matter of faith that one can either believe or not believe.

“I” certainly cannot be demonstrated to continue to exist beyond the grave if we’re talking about the “I” of another person, as one has no evidence of the existence of the consciousness of other people. One cannot demonstrate the existence of one’s own consciousness to others.

Thus:

Only you can demonstrate (or not) that the “I” continues to exist beyond the grave—and can only demonstrate this to oneself.

Absolutely true. These things do bring a measure of comfort and consolation. But the argument and analysis, such as it is, is comforting and consoling not because they “sound good to hear”–but because the subject of the argument is more likely to be true than eternal oblivion, as eternal oblivion relies entirely on the magic of consciousness being able to cease to exist.

  1. No one has proven the consciousness of other people exist.

  2. Given that one cannot experience the experience of other people, one can only prove that consciousness extends beyond the grave to oneself.

  3. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander: anyone who believes the brain creates consciousness and that there are mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception also thinks up arguments “sustaining” this belief and given their set of assumptions in these matters, the existence of external world brains magically conjuring consciousness from either non-existence or magical transformation of non-consciousness into consciousness and the existence of mind-independent distal objects are also only “in their head”. Everyone pulls off the same trick when one finds oneself considering and imagining anything that is not and that exists outside one’s consciousness.

The scientific method cannot establish the existence of anything outside consciousness, indeed, it only establishes the existence of things that materialistically consist of, emerge and originate from, and occur only within the artificial reality of the consciousness of a person. Experiments and predictions and replications related to the existence of the afterlife are impossible as they first require proving the existence of the consciousness of another person.

If it is possible for consciousness to come into existence from previous non-existence, and possible for consciousness to cease to exist while physical matter and energy according to the 1st Law of thermodynamics is the only thing that’s eternal, then despite one’s wish for one’s “I” not to be obliterated for all time the matter is entirely out of one’s hands.

Thinking up an argument that says otherwise will not change this outcome.

But…

  1. Does consciousness indeed come into existence from non-existence?

  2. Can consciousness cease to exist?

  3. Does physical matter and energy (something that is not consciousness or subjective experience) exist?

Peace of mind contemplating “what comes after” is one thing: but one should, in my opinion, put comfort and consolation “in the face of eternal oblivion” aside and clinically and unemotionally consider whether or not one should automatically surrender to the idea of eternal oblivion. One should clinically ask: Does consciousness cease to exist at death? Should it? If it does, how? How do things that exist cease altogether to exist? Why should they come into existence from previous non-existence? How is the brain able to conjure things that do not exist? How are conscious experiences dependent upon the movement of electrons through and across neurons, as opposed to bricks?

Given the huge gaps in logic in scientific and neuroscientific explanation of consciousness, one can ignore the need to be comfort and consoled about eternal oblivion and coldly observe and criticize these astronomic gaps in the logic of godless creation of consciousness and eternal oblivion: one need not quickly surrender to the notion of eternal loss of “I” at death.

This goes over and above “achieving comfort in the face of eternal oblivion”: it’s literally looking at reality as it is (the existence of consciousness) and coming to grips with the notion that given the evidence of consciousness and absence of evidence of the existence of anything that is not consciousness, cessation of existence of consciousness (to be fair, if not cessation of the existence of “I”—but here as a matter of transformation into another form of consciousness rather than magical and inscrutable cessation of existence altogether) may be impossible.

Still, I’m willing to bet you believe in the existence of mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception and that the brain creates consciousness, and that these underlie your belief in the nature of the “here and now” and eternal oblivion.

Yes, we all have to admit that when push comes to shove we have no capacity to inhabit the conscious minds of others. And, therefore, we have no capacity to really and truly understand reality as they do.

And this inherent gap can then be taken all the way back to the biggest gap of them all: the one between what we think we know about all of this here and now, and all that can be known about it giving a complete understanding of existence itself.

That of course is just a “fact of life” we all have to live with.

In other words, to call your argument here “invincible” is merely to note that, given the state of your own conscious mind here and now, you believe that it is. The afterlife itself is not really demonstrated at all. At least not to me.

No, I am concerned here only with my own “I” at and then after I’ve died.

As for evidence of the conscious minds of others, most of us interact with others day in and day out. We note that our own conscious minds seem able to allow us to think and feel and say and do many different things. And then we note that others are just like that themselves. So, we can’t be inside their head but what is inside their head seems clearly to be the same thing that is inside our head.

Unless, of course, this is all a sim world or a dream world, or a matrix world or a manifestation of solipsism in which [re Berkeley] God becomes the link between us.

Or unless we live in a wholly determined world and everything is only as it ever could have been.

Yet you have no way in which to demonstrate [other than in another argument] whether your point here is in fact more likely to be true than oblivion.

But one thing seems beyond doubt. This: That merely believing the argument is true does in fact comfort and console you.

With respect to our day to day lives, we see clearly that science and the scientific method beget inventors and engineers and manufacturers and technologies and consumer goods embedded in what “for all practical purposes” seems to be an either/or world on this side of the grave.

As for the existence of the afterlife, nothing yet.

And what proving its existence [scientifically or otherwise] has to do with proving the existence of other conscious minds is lost on me.

If next week I turn on the news and am informed that physicists have established beyond all doubt that an afterlife does in fact exist, you may or may not be watching it too. But the proof of it is either there or it’s not.

But we don’t know definitively what in fact does unfold here. There is either actual evidence to confirm it one way or another or there isn’t.

So your only recourse here is to think up an argument. It’s not a question of “automatically surrender[ing] to the idea of eternal oblivion.” It’s looking for reasons embedded in hard evidence to convince yourself that the afterlife is in fact “out there” or “up there” somewhere.

And while there may be gaps in the knowledge possessed by neuroscience regarding human consciousness before and after the grave, they aren’t just making arguments…the truth of which revolving entirely around the internal logic of the assumptions made in the arguments themselves.

I have no idea what on earth this means. And I certainly have no idea how this point might be connected to the life that I actually live.

Apology for the late reply.

True. But we do know this: existence at the very least appears in the form of first-person subjective experience. So in terms of understanding existence and “what it is”, this is a ground level “given”.

Yes. The argument is invincible in the sense that despite the fact it’s content cannot be demonstrated, it’s content cannot be dis-proven or shown to be irrefutably untrue. The afterlife is not demonstrated, nor can it be demonstrated as we only experience the current artificial or constructed reality we call the “here and now”, but it is not necessarily non-existent, nor can anything within this artificial reality prove or provide evidence of it’s non-existence.

As I am not a solipsist as I have faith that other people exist (as the existence of the consciousness of other people must essentially be accepted on faith), and that existence seems to have arbitrarily gifted them with the same powers and abilities of mind that I myself have. I infer this from the behavior of their bodies and the sounds I hear seemingly emitted from those bodies, despite the fact that their bodies of these people are actually composed of me, that is, my first-person subjective experience–which is the substance that composes every object, event, and person I see around me.

Ergo consciousness is in fact a sim world composed of one’s first-person subjective experience. It is a matrix world composed of one’s first-person subjective experience. Blind people (in particular) and the existence of unconsciousness and death (if the latter two even exist) actually prove this.

But existence happens to exist in a way that the sim world that is one’s own consciousness and the things one experiences contains bodies that behave in a way that produces, in one’s own mind, the inference that if other consciousness exists, these other consciousnesses seem to have the same powers and abilities that one’s own mind has. But as one experiences only the sim or matrix world that is one’s own consciousness, one must have quasi-religious faith that other consciousnesses exist…or that there are mind-independent doppelgangers of the objects and events that appear within one’s private sim world of first-person subjective experience.

Funny you should mention Berkeley, my philosophical mentor, and his belief that God is the link between us, as this sums up my belief regarding the nature of reality.

I think my point is probably more true than oblivion because it is more likely that things are eternal than that things can come into and go out of existence. To believe in eternal oblivion at death, one must believe that consciousness can cease to exist and come into existence from previous non-existence. Thus belief in oblivion is supported by belief in this absurd magic. It is far simpler, using Occam’s Razor, that we do not rely on magic to explain how things exist and the simplest answer is that everything, including consciousness (which is probably the only thing that exists, as it is certain the only thing that appears), is eternal and cannot magically stop existing or first not exist, then inexplicably begin existing.

Belief that death results in oblivion needs the magic of things being able to come into and go out of existence. If one dispenses with this existence-magic, one realizes it is more rational that things are probably eternal. Consciousness does not nor cannot cease to exist or come into existence after previously being something that did not exist: it merely changes content.

Thus it is not merely believing my argument is true that comforts and consoles me, but the fact that things that do not exist popping into existence, and things that exist being able to wink out of existence, is less rational than things being eternal.

But the either/or world on this side of the grave…is just a sim world made up of a person’s first-person subjective experience.

The afterlife, by definition, is another sim world, made up of a person’s first-person subjective experience, that is believed to exist after (hence the term “after”) the sim world of the either/or world. If the afterlife exists (ergo: if there is not an existence-magic in which non-existent things can come into existence and existent things can wink out of existence), it follows the experience of the “here and now”. Existence could exist in a way that its permutations are of such inexorably nature that sim worlds are chronologically sequenced, with what comes after not being able (by nature of happenstance limitation and permutation of existence) to impinge upon or reveal itself to “what’s happening now”. In Judeo-Christian belief, God hides the afterlife from those in the here and now so as not to “contaminate” the moral beauty of the afterlife with the corruption of the here and now.

An afterlife consists of one’s own minds and other minds. Other than that, there’s no reason for anyone to prove the existence of other minds by proving an afterlife.

Even if proof of the afterlife is never found or cannot be found in the either/or world, the absence or impossibility of this proof does not reveal the non-existence of the afterlife, as the afterlife lies outside the sim world of the either/or world.

“Actual evidence” is merely an aspect of one’s personal constructed or artificial reality (sim or matrix world), composed of first-person subjective experience. If solipsism is false there are invisible, intangible somethings not made up of one’s first-person experience that do not appear within one’s sim world as they exist outside one’s sim world. “Evidence” cannot cover things that objectively and actually exist outside one’s sim world (if solipsisim is false, these things may exist). The afterlife, it is exists, is one of those things existing outside one’s sim world (as does God and the consciousness of other people).

Reasons are embedded in hard evidence are reasons embedded in matrix worlds composed of subjective experience. If solipsism is false, something exists behind one’s own personal matrix world. The afterlife, by definition, is a matrix world that exists behind the matrix world we call the “here and now”.

Neuroscientists aren’t just making arguments…they only tell us of the behavior of virtual neurons they observe in their sim or matrix world, neurons composed only of their subjective experience. When it comes to whether or not these objects have mind-independent doppelgangers outside their sim world, well, that too revolves entirely around internal logic supported only by assumption of the existence of something that does not appear to existence and that purportedly exists outside their person sim world.

I’m stating that you probably believe that there are “real” chairs, for example, that continue to exist if a person, the only one in the room, were to fall unconscious while looking upon or seeing a chair in his or her consciousness, and that there are “real” brains that create consciousness through existence-magic, and that consciousness ceases to exist when “real” brains cease to function. This belief underlies belief in eternal oblivion at death.

Yes, but science has taken this “first-person subjective experience” of ours and put it in context. Re…

  • The evolution of human history
  • The evolution of life on earth.
  • The evolution of earth and our solar system – of matter – back to the Big Bang.

Then this part:

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.

Then the part where that and all the things we are discussing in this exchange fit into an ontological – teleological? – understanding of existence itself.

Okay, but this assessment is relevant to any argument about anything — anything not able to be demonstrated.

But: with so much at stake regarding the existence of the afterlife, a demonstration is all that more crucial.

But my point is that we really have no definitive capacity to demonstratre that solipsism is not the explanation for what we think we know about the relationship between “I” and “out in the world”.

We always seem to be stuck here. Arguments are made regarding all aspects of human consciousness both before and after the grave. But sooner or later the arguments fall over into the abyss that is all of those “unknown unknowns” that stand between “I” and all there is to be known about existence.

Instead, we [all of us] are forced to fall back on one or another intellectual contraption to convey what we think “here and now” is a possible explanation:

So, is this one closer to the whole truth than the arguments of those here who have their own more or less sophisticated “philosophical” assessments of “the human condition”? Before and after we die?

Exactly. Your belief. But why should I or others believe this too? What are you able to demonstrate more substantively about the afterlife.

Sure, these speculations/conjectures can be really, really fascinating. No doubt about it.

But: as I myself get closer and closer [existentially] to oblivion, I tend to want something more.

“Where’s the beef?”, as it is sometimes put.

Basically, we have to keep coming back around to this:

Yeah, this might be right in the bullseye. As an intellectual contraption. But “for all practical purposes” it is useful only to the extent that you are somehow able to think yourself into believing it…such that the belief itself is what sustains your “comfort and consolation”. That you seem to have accomplished this “here and now” is something that I can congratulate you for. But this doesn’t get me any closer “here and now” to believing it myself.

You suggest that…

And “for all practical purposes” this clearly means something to you it does not mean to me. Actual evidence for me is more in the way that science goes about accumulating it experientially.

Instead [to me] you seem more compelled to approach the afterlife “by definition”. And “by definition” the afterlife is "a matrix world that exists behind the matrix world we call the ‘here and now’. "

And that means what exactly?

To you it does. But not to me. Nothing that you note here demonstrates to me in any substantive manner what is to become of “I” on the day that my own real brain ceases to be among the living.

Instead [to me] it’s just about what you happen to believe in your head here and now. And how [from my frame of mind] believing it procures you some measure of psychological equillibrium and equanimity. On this side of the grave.

But science’s statement, any statement about (1) The evolution of human history ; (2) The evolution of life on earth; (3) The evolution of earth and our solar system—of matter—back to the Big Bang; (4) 68% of the universe is dark energy; (5) Dark matter makes up about 27%; (6) The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe….

Are only made-up, imaginary states of affairs believed to have independent existence in the external world based on their appearance as ideas and sensory events within the “matrix” or virtual realities that make up the consciousness of all scientists, which they erroneously believe are magically (through neural transformativism or incantationism) produced by neurons in a skull.

Is it? Or what could suffice, for some, is merely the knowledge or realization that an afterlife is not necessarily or logically false, given that we only experience virtual realities and that consciousness is not logically or necessarily something that ceases to exist (but only changes content)?

We have no capacity to demonstrate that solipsism is not true. The only thing that supports the falsity of solipsism is faith that it isn’t.

True. The only certainty is the existence of “I” and the things that appear within the sensory virtual reality or “matrix” that is one’s (primarily) visual perception.

Outside of the virtual reality of visual perception, the truth of what (or who) may exist outside the virtual reality that is “I” is entirely speculative, supported by intellectual contraptions that are basically statements of (1) faith and/or (2) Arguments that the virtual reality of “I” cannot based solely upon what appears within one’s virtual reality disprove or falsify the existence of an “unknown” that one happens to support or believe in.

It’s the most accurate, based on the empirical evidence of consciousness itself, which is an artificial reality some believe is magically created by the brain. Other philosophies, unfortunately, believe in the entirely imaginary entities of mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, which cannot logically have anything to do with their subjectively experienced “counterparts”. Everything that is not part of “I” or the sim or matrix world that exudes from “I” and consists materially of “I” must be accepted merely on faith.

But is there oblivion? Does consciousness cease entirely to exist ? How can something that exists simply stop existing? How does something that does not exist start existing, when it did not exist a moment before? Are their mind-independent brains in the external world? Where do brains “get” subjective, first-person experience prior to the appearance of an experience? What is an experience before it is experienced? Does it even exist? If not, how does the brain cause something that does not exist to come into existence in the first place?

Fair enough. The afterlife, like the consciousnesses of other people, the ability of the brain to create consciousness, the ability of consciousness to cease entirely to exist or to magically come into existence after first never having existed at all….are all just matters of faith, that must be accepted on faith, and that are supported only by faith. One can choose to believe things that are matters of faith (like the existence of “real world” or mind-independent brains) or not.

Any evidence accumulated by scientists are only aspects of the matrix or sim world that is their consciousness. That’s it. There is no evidence of the existence of mind-independent dopplegangers of scientific knowledge and discovery in the external world. Even if there were external world dwelling, non-person experienced trees, mountains, televisions, moons, stars, etc. they can have no rational or logical power to give rise to subjective, first-person experience because they are not and are not composed of first-person subjective experience. It is irrational to derive subjective experience from something that is not first-person experience. As it is more likely that there are no such things as mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception, everything scientists discover or observe—everything—is all in their heads. It’s all make-believe, the here and now is essentially a constructed reality consisting only of one’s subjective experience that one may irrationally believe airbag deploys from a blob of flesh in their skull (but the blob of flesh and the skull are part of the matrix world that is one’s consciousness, and probably has no “outside you” counterpart).

It means exactly how it’s defined. An afterlife is a subsequent consciousness that replaces the one before it.

But what you believe happens to “I” on the day your virtual brain seems to cease to operate, as real brains probably do not exist and cannot logically or rationally have anything to do with the existence of your virtual or “matrix” brain……also happens to be something you believe in your head here and now. And you believing it (based on the strength of your “evidence” that something outside of “I” cannot be demonstrated and “I”’s that have passed on do not return to report their afterlife experiences, tends to overlook the fact that an afterlife simply cannot be ruled out as absolutely non-existence despite the fact it cannot be demonstrated within the virtual realities depicting “this side of the grave”.

I’ve often wondered; if the world ‘out there’ is a construct of the mind, how is it the mind is constantly learning, experiencing awe and surprise? How can a mind that’s producing its own reality be surprised by or learn anything?

It is producing its own reality within a larger reality.

When I go for drives in the desert, I am producing my own experience of the larger desert reality. More accurately, I am driving on roads made by others who designed that particular approach to experience. Then if I stop, get out of the car and go on a hike making my own trail, then I’m making my own experience approach. It may be that once I leave the physical organism then I go on to other roads and trails. A never-ending supply of surprises and learning whether self or externally generated. :slight_smile:

We can find our dreams fascinating. We can find the vagaries of our own unconsciousness responses and associationg fascinating - even with the everyday realism most work with. We could have chosen to reveal only parts of ‘ourselves’ and over time unveil more. It might be an inevitable partial knowledge, which we have in everyday realism regardning our own feelings, memories, associations, reactions, percpetions…

To Anomaly654:

Whatever the mind learns and experiences, including things that occur by surprise, is nevertheless composed only of the consciousness of the person experiencing it. If there is no such thing as mind-independent entities and substance (and even if these were to exist, they could logically have nothing to do with the existence of first-person subjective experience save by the illogical magicks of conjuring subjective experience that does not exist into existence or ceasing to be something that is not subjective experience to inexplicably “become” first-person subjective experience), existence is just first-person subjective experience, and learning, etc. is just existence “morphing” or “shape-shifting” into future, previously unknown forms of one’s own consciousness, including future, previously unknown forms of the “matrix” world that is only one’s consciousness assuming novel forms.

To Del Ivers:

I agree that one is producing one’s own subjectively experienced reality within a larger reality, but I doubt that larger reality, in order to logically be mapped by consciousness, is made up of something that is not consciousness. If the larger reality is made up of something that is not subjective experience, there is no reason that subjective experience should know it exists (or something that is not subjective experience to know anything exists, as it is not subjective experience) and should “copy” it. We can’t even know what non-subjective experience is even like as it is not subjective experience, which is all we are.

The larger reality, I think, logically consists of just more consciousness rather than something that is not consciousness at all. It could be conscious particles, creating an atheistic or godless mechanical panpsychism, or a theism is indeed at foot with the larger reality being the mind of some Person (or persons?). I believe the latter is the true nature of our reality.

-PG

But mind “producing its own reality within a larger reality” seems to be realism, albeit greatly reduced from my orthodox version of it where there are other minds and stuff ‘out there’. Doesn’t stuff out there logically precede the mind operating within it?

This is closest to my take:
“When I go for drives in the desert, I am producing my own experience of the larger desert reality. More accurately, I am driving on roads made by others who designed that particular approach to experience. Then if I stop, get out of the car and go on a hike making my own trail, then I’m making my own experience approach. It may be that once I leave the physical organism then I go on to other roads and trails. A never-ending supply of surprises and learning whether self or externally generated. :slight_smile:…but I recall catching hell from James S. Saint for defendingr it. But this is essentially realism. Multiple minds use preexistent reality and each contributes its own reshaping of that reality, into individual existence(s).

“Stuff”, to me, only logically exists if it is made out of the same substance as minds. If stuff makes minds (i.e. subjectively experiencing persons and everything subjectively experiencing persons experience) and stuff precedes persons, this logically follows if, given that persons are and are composed of first-person subjective experience “stuff” itself, in order to logically be used as the substance that make persons, itself be made up of first-person subjective experience, albeit in non-person form (particles, most simply). I originally adhered to this, and David J. Chalmers sort of reasoned that this is the state of affairs that logically brings about consciousness as he proposed the existence of particles of subjective experience, but he refused to walk into outright panpsychism by stating these subjective particles are trapped inside outer candy shells of non-subjective experience (“the physical” or physical matter and energy).

Given that we only experience ourselves in the form of a person and that which a person experiences within a “matrix” or virtual or artificial reality composed of one’s first-person subjective experience, “stuff that precedes minds” is actually, when it comes down to it, a fiction or imaginary state of affairs one comes to believe or not believe. Same goes with the notion that “stuff” makes minds. First-person subjective experience is the only thing that demonstrates it actually–rather than fictionally or possibly, exists: everything else is make-believe composed of first-person subjective experience in the form of the thought of a person imagining or coming up with the concept of this imaginary other, that the person somehow comes to believe exists outside the “matrix” of one’s consciousness, regardless of whether or not the imaginary entity actually exists.

That is everything else, following iambiguous, is indeed conjecture that one chooses to believe or not believe and cannot be demonstrated to actually exist (one’s consciousness, for example, cannot be demonstrated to others to actually exist: another person, when it comes right down to it, must have faith akin to faith in the existence of God that your consciousness exists).

Long story short, I personally don’t mind the existence of “stuff” as long as stuff is also composed of first-person subjective experience. That’s the only way it can logically or rationally have anything to do with and to come up with subjective experience and subjectively experiencing persons. When one states that “stuff” is something other than or something that is not first-person subjective experience, that somehow can create or have anything to do with first-person subjective experience, well that’s when you say “bye bye” to logic and reason, as the person proposing the existence of non-experience must (and always must) use the magics of creation ex nihilo and/or transformative magic (when a substance magically stops being what it was to inexplicably become or transform into something it essentially was not) to come up with first-person subjective experience.

The concept of non-subjective experience and its magical primacy and creative power over first-person subjective experience is a fiction created, in my opinion, out of disbelief that only first-person subjective experience exists. One doggedly adheres to the existence of non-subjective experience out of incredulity at the actual possibility that consciousness is eternal. For me, “stuff” can only be made of first-person subjective experience and was never separate from minds, as it is the substance that was in no other form and did nothing but form an eternal Person and persons. That is, “stuff” has never existed as particles creating persons but throughout eternity was only the substance forming an always-existing-infinite-Person that produces other persons from inner coagulations of it’s stuff to form characters forced by existential necessity to follow consciously made-up or lucidly or non-lucidly dreamt narratives within it’s mind (whew).

Never mind the last two sentences: that’s just my new and improved Judeo-Christian theology. :smiley:

The mind is a part of the biological organism known as a human being and biology is applied chemistry and chemistry is applied physics. This causal chain is physically necessary for minds to exist because they are too complex to either have always existed or come into existence just by themselves. I cannot demonstrate this outside of subjective first person experience but that does not automatically render it false. Whether you actually subscribe to solipsism or not the notion of anything outside of first person subjective experience cannot be demonstrated or refuted with sufficient rigour. It is essentially unfalsifiable either way meaning that solipsism could be true or equally could be false. For no one knows for certain whether other minds are simply a construct of their own mind or if they really exist independently of them Still I think that solipsism is false because given free will why would independent minds perceive exactly the same reality ? The fact that they do suggests that it exists as a mind independent phenomenon rather than a mental construct of our own mind. But whichever it is entirely academic with regard to our interactions with reality

The solipsist argument about stuff is quite weak for it does not accept the idea that things other than minds can be made from it as well
These other things collectively constitute the external reality that a solipsist mind instead thinks of as a mental construct that it created