picklepuss

So now you want me to summarize Plato, Descartes, and every other philosopher of mind in succession, while doing the same for David Chambers, Penrose no doubt, and every other researcher in the field.
Don't be ridiculous. If you are truly ignorant of these people, which I doubt, don't expect me to play the tutor. I wouldn't even if I could, which, of course, I cannot. But at least I'm as familiar with the fundamentals of mind/body dualism as you should be, and if you are not, you should keep it a secret, and not blab your ignorance to the world. "Special mind-stuff" indeed!

--pickle

crocodile deathroll

picklepuss, You speak of a "mind/body dualism". Do you believe the mind can retain some kind memory in the absense of the body?

Sidian

how does reincarnation accomodate increase in population?

awesome analogy. but along it there lies a questoin of existence of a computer program.

is there truly such a thing as a computer program? i would say yes, that it is merely a combination of smaller physical parts (flipped switches from 0 to 1 and back), and that we ourselves are merely a combinatin of smaller physical parts working together.

if we can exist as a specific configuration of matter, can't a program can exist as a specific configuration of ones and zeros? closing the thought, can't the mind and its pieces (thoughts, emotions, personality, etc) exist?

Valmorian

I see, so your theory basically boils down to wishful thinking. Ah well.

ps418

I can't find much to disagree with there, since you are not arguing for survival of the personality or memory. You are arguing for some form of impersonal survival. But I am still not clear on what it is that survives, if not the personality or the memory.

What is the vehicle of survival? For instance, with resurrection the vehicle is the physical body itself. More popular are conceptually problematic, pseudo-physical astral bodies composed of vibrating something-or-another, which literally has a position in space and literally leaves the physical body at death. Do you have any thoughts on this, what the vehicle could be? What is it that has the history of memories?

Patrick

crocodile deathroll

You want to participate in the thread <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=57&t=000603" target="_blank">Does Time Exist </a>
Time is not something that flow inexorability along after one dies, it is just a fixed dimension and the universe has more that just one now but an infinity of "nows" and all events in the universe from the big bang to a black hole dominated era 10^100 years into "our" future not "the" future.
So with all your memories of this life obliterated you will have no idea which "now" you belong to, and you could just end up in China building the great wall and be totally oblivious to the fact that you lived centuries into their future.
But you more likely to be born in a era when the Earth's population has reached a peak then in the more thinly populated era in the middle or dark ages. like in with <a href="http://www.anthropic-principle.com/primer.html" target="_blank"> Observation selection effects </a>
So you may even be shaking hands with one of your former selves


Exact we are the "configuration of matter" and not the matter itself. Like does a jig saw puzzle get any heavier if you put all the pieces together and does your hardrive get any lighter if you delete files from it?

crocodile deathroll

If it was wishful thinking, I would like the keep my memories when I die.
That's not possible, shucks

picklepuss

Hi croc;

At the moment I don't believe much of anything in particular. I have no idea what happens once you're brain dead. As I've said before, I'd be content if it was just, "lights out, game over". But I don't know, and there are some strange phenomena that do not seem explicable in standard bio-mechanical terms. I know that it's easy to dismiss paranormal, mind-over-matter, atemporal, non-local experiences, but who knows?!? Heck, who knows how the quantum world operates, let alone the mental one? Or are they the same, do you suppose?

I would say this much with regard to your particular question. I seems to me that "retained memories" would be redundant to a 'life' after death, since without matter, space, and time, all experience would be 'simultaneous'. Don't ask me to explain how that would happen, because I can't.

--pickle

ps418

If you are anything like I was a few years back, it 'doesnt do much for you' because you simply do not fully appreciate the evidence for the dependence of minds on brains. Consider the following facts:

1. Mental abilities in humans (e.g. memory, intuitive psychology) only emerge with the development of the brain. Failures in brain development result in failures to develop these mental abilities.

2. Losses of or damage to brain tissue result in losses in mental functioning. A good smack on the head can temporarily extinguish consciousness altogether. Changes of personality also occur with brain damage.

3. Mental states (pain, euphoria, anxiety, hallucinations, etc.) or states of consciousness can be reliably and predictably invoked by introducing certain substances to the brain. For instance, you can reliably induce euphoria in most non-addicts with a demoral injection, and reliably terminate that euphoria with narcan.

4. If the left and right cerebral hemispheres are disconnected by sectioning the corpus callosum which connects them, the consistent result is not only a split brain, but a split-mind. Decades of ingenius experiments with callosotomy patients have shown that in these patients the right hemisphere can know something and act on it without the left hemisphere knowing that same something or knowing why the right hemisphere is doing what it is doing. And vice versa.

If you can think of a way to reconcile all these observations (and others I left out) with personal survival after death, I'd love to discuss it. But as I currently see it, the causal dependence of the mind on the brain is as well established as the causal dependence of digestion on the digestive organs.

Patrick

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: ps418 ]</p>

Marduk

"how does reincarnation accomodate increase in population?"

I'm not sure it does, (Croc went into some detail on one possibility already)
When you die all memory and time would stop anyway, 100 or 1000 trillion years may pass, there would be no way to tell, you may "awaken" in a universe yet to be formed.
Another possibility is that there is only one universal soul that splits every time a new life is created.
I’m just speculating, have no idea really.

"If you can think of a way to reconcile all these observations (and others I left out) with personal survival after death,)"

I'm not and never really was talking about "personal" suvival. Just the phenomena of finding yourself alive on Earth.

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: marduck ]</p>