It’s one of those topics where both parties present their opinion without evidence.
Don’t you understand how you have no real grounds, and me neither, and it’s just opinion?
You seem to think you have proof of such…
I guess we think if we keep touching on this topic, someone will say something enlightening.
It’s either there’s afterlife, or this is none. No-one has proved either.
???
Here’s an introductory author’s list
Robert Hazen: Mineral evolution on Earth, preparing the ground for biology
Nick Lane: Geology and chemistry harnesses electricity to create biology.
. . . . . Writer of the most excellent summary of “SELF”
Jack Szostak: The Early Earth and the Origins of Cellular Life
Michael Russell: On the Emergence of Life Through “Negative” Entropy Trapping
Arthur Reber: The “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” proposal — CBC
Michael Levin: Bioelectricity in development and regeneration, exploring cellular cognition.
Biology together with time, and chemistry and geology, that is, Earth’s processes created creatures and environments and competition, in short, evolution.
Pageant of Earth’s Evolution, Index of noteworthy YouTube videos
Mark Solms — Regarding the Source of Consciousness
Antonio Damasio — Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
Robert Sapolsky — Behavioral Biology with a Primatology background
Honorable mention, author David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree of Life, a front and center history of the ‘70’s genetics revolution, Carl Woese, and discovery of Archaea that ushered in this golden age of biology.
source: Citizenschallenge: Considering Things Science Can Explain About Consciousness.
You think that proves there is no life after death? I don’t.
You think all these authors believe there is no life after death?
There’s the autonomous parts of consciousness, the part that ‘rides the vessel’, where do these go?
You don’t know if consciousness is deleted when the vessel dies. It may somehow live, by the same luck as it originated.
Does consciousness try to live when the vessel is dying?
You seem to think life, of this special circumstance, is a one-off, and deliberately ends forever.
I think based on how pessimistic, and how imbalanced, that thought is, it sort of proves the opposite.
Anyway, some of consciousness is because of electricity thus, some parts of consciousness aren’t ‘biology’.
Part literally comes from the sky.
Half of consciousness is natural selection and half evolution.
You forget about half of consciousness with your death-forever bias(the part riding the vessel).
I say yes, based on what I’ve said, it’s more probable afterlife is.
Nature has this habit finding the rarest, most special phenomenons, and life appears there.
All the crucial parts of consciousness are set in the electric-cosnc, just that side is enough for afterlife.
Not at all, I do believe in Evolution and base my conclusions on a life time worth of keeping up on science news and proactively learning about it.
Well I know that creatures possess an incredible Drive to Thrive, and staying alive is imperative number one.
I hear that question and immediately think of a generator spin the thing and it will produce electricity - stop the spin and electricity output stops.
Seems like a good model for the biological dynamo that is a living creature.
Yipes, think about what you are implying. Your body runs on bioelectricity.
Biology was only born after Earth’s geology and chemistry conspired to invent the Krebs cycle, which is fundamentally the trapping and subsequent harnessing of electrical energy.
I write more about that over here Does the Krebs cycle provide the key to unlocking the “Hard Problem”?
But consciousness is not riding the vessel. The vessel is producing our consciousness. The step to understand why that makes sense are explained by those scientist authors that I’ve listed above.
Isn’t natural selection part of evolution?
Can you unwrap that a little, I’m not following.
Thanks for the push back.
Natural selection and evolution are different none the less.
Electricity different to biology, even if it is produced by biology. Some parts our consciousness are governed by electricity alone, proof of this difference.
I don’t agree with you where you say it doesn’t ride the vessel, that’s ‘determinism malarkey’.
What’s a better model to those with a drive to thrive, afterlife or death-forever?
Electricity is not bioelectricity literally, that’s talking about where electricity is coming from, not claiming it’s a different type of electricity.
You were fine calling it electrical until you were put on the spot, now is damned- it’s only bioelectric.
In any case, there is a more electrical side of consciousness and a more biotic side.
Because electricity has an effect like that, dividing the conscious, proves afterlife.
For whatever it might be worth, I don’t see it as always pessimistic. Not that I’m looking forward to oblivion, but some people do find a relief in the thought.
It is generally pessimism, not always, but including every living thing, it is the majority vote.
Would they accept life if it was ultimate pleasure and luck, or definitely death-forever? Sounds like more of a bad luck sort of thought.
So they’re sitting out- dead. The prospect of life is put in front of them, it’s completely neutral. Do they accept?
It’s a bit rude and pessimistic to suggest all of us should believe in death-forever, whatever the reason is.
I hope I am disturbed in my wonderful death, with the offer of more life.
Depending on amounts of pleasure, everyone wants to experience the top life. I don’t doubt the high end of the experience to support all people.
Sounds like too much of throwing the toys out the pram, that you’re going to just sit-out in complaint at more life.
The philosophy is that it’s a pessimist view, which can be for a good reason.
Perhaps you did truly suffer greatly, and that I express my deepest concern and apologies.
Well, Somebody or Something filled living organisms to the brim with the passion to survive. I think we should put that variable into the formula. It seems natural that we’d want to survive our own end.
Yes, that would sound rude. All we can do is present our opinions, especially regarding a matter like this.
I think the choice is essential. Continue/Death-Forever.
Can you explain what you mean with that?
Okay, but I would suggest that the “aren’t biology” is restricted to our constant interactions with the world that required to help compose our thoughts.
Okay, but be clear, the easy part of life is creating simple units and single celled entities. Complexity that leads to complex creatures, that requires a mind boggling series of just-so events and turns out to be many many orders magnitude beyond single cells. Though the lessons learned to produce single celled entities are also definitely required to accomplish more complex life forms.
It’s not just talking about where it’s coming from, it about where it’s going, and the medium it needs to travel through.
I have a sense for what you are driving at, and sure thoughts are as ephemeral as radio signals flying through the air. But I’m not getting the distinction you are trying to make.
It feels related to the “Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide”
Thanks BestGuessYet@, I’m with you. At 71 and looking at the direction humans are taking this planet, the realization that I have but one death to die is a real comfort. Because no matter how ugly we make it down here, a black eternal nothingness peace awaits.
As an aside the thought of an everlasting after-life sounds like the ultimate horror to me. I like living the waves of life and experience, all things must pass, including me. I have enough of a foundation under me not to be bothered by the thought of my passing.
Of course, I’ve had a good half century to process this down to Earth evolution respecting perspective.
I am a substance pluralist for many reasons. I don’t know what the soul is, but I think each person has a mind.
Physicalism fails when it comes to explaining consciousness. If the elementary particles do not have consciousness, then how could they become conscious when they are organized and move in a certain way? At the end, they are just moving particles if you think of it thoroughly.
OK, this is the part that I have difficulty with. What happens to our memory and personality after we die? Our minds survive death, but if memory and personality are related to the brain, then we certainly have a problem explaining the continuation of personality after death. You still exist since you have a mind, but I am wondering about the quality of experience you could have.
Yeah, oblivion has a nice ring to it somethings.
Anyway, what would we do with our time?
I’m not sure what physicalism is, but I’m curious about your use of the word ‘consciousness’. Do you believe that the other mammals are conscious? Or are you meaning self-consciousness?
Sorry about the preceding message. I didn’t mean to do that.
I didn’t even know I could do that.
Sorry, I have nothing useful to add. It’s just that I have held such 
holistic views for some time, and this is the first time I’ve seen such views shared by someone else. 
Thank you for taking the time to share that.
It seems to me this is where the consensus of science is going, but our need for a sense of human exceptionalism (that philosophers revel in) above all else blinds many.
Maybe. It’s taking a while, though. It seems that, more than anything else, humans are highly resistant to the idea of connectedness.
I have autism and MS. Both seemingly very different, although both are neurological conditions. And yet they interact! This seems obvious to me — how could they NOT interact, when they both exist in the same bodymind? 
Physicalism states that everything is either physical or explicable in terms of the physical.
By consciousness, I mean the ability to experience.
I believe so.
I believe that they are self-conscious as well.
I recently read Being You by Anil Seth. He seems to argue that consciousness is simply what a body does. I started The Ego Tunnel (Metzinger) but haven’t made enough progress. So, yeah, it seems where science is going, if I’m understanding your position.
Still, I think humans are pretty special, not in a cosmic sense, but in a biological one. We turned around one day and starting looking at ourselves. Then–or simultaneously, maybe–we started talking about it. That’s unusual enough in the history of life to hold my interest.
Thanks. I don’t know one way or the other, but supernatural causes just don’t appeal to me. From my perspective, they end the game of trying to figure this place out, and I’m not sure how to distinguish them from my imagination.
All I can do is observe and try to make my best guess based on that. If there’s something else, well I don’t know how we’d find it except by revelation maybe. (But I notice some trying to do it by elimination.)
Yeah, I’ve just recently learned that’s how the scientists use the term. I’ve sometimes used it to mean ‘self-consciousness’.
Can you say more? They are able to imagine themselves apart from themselves? Like running scenarios of future behavior and such?