No problems. Thanks for your reply. I understand that some replies need time to think over before posting. I do appreciate that.
Yes, I think it is an interesting topic to keep up with thinking over and discussing about it. All the material and historical evidence seems to suggest that physical body resurrection possibility is unlikely. However, it doesn’t mean it is totally impossible.
We could still investigate the religious claims and also from AI side of the progress currently taking place.
The reason why I think that the whole area of life after death is interesting is in connection with shifting ideas of what is possible in physical and other terms. The author of the ‘The Physics of immortality’,is considering the idea of resurrection in the context of ideas about information as a source of manifest ‘reality’. I am sure that at some points in human thinking ideas of simulated consciousness would have seemed absurd and ridiculous.
The philosophy of materialism and Dennett’s idea of consciousness as an illusion are based upon the model of physicalism. The model of ‘reality’ may have many aspects which make it creditable, but there may be so much more to consider, including what near death experiences and reincarnation memories signify. It is extremely complex, as consciousness and the unconscious may be a source which may be derived from the body and brain. However, the nature of such a reductive approach, and the position of philosophical realism are questionable.
Thanks for your reply and I have dipped into the writing of Alan Watts. It is a stark contrast to some of the convuluted ideas of spiritual ‘reality’. It strips down to the basics.
I think that some of the confusion around whether this life is the ultimate is based on how the nature of ego consciousness is perceived. Ego consciousness is part of human identity, on the basis of physical and psychological aspects of the human person. It may involve superficial aspects of identity or deeper aspects of personhood. The ego may be transient, which may mean that each human being is only a temporary form, but part of an ongoing aspect of the evolution of consciousness, in its myriad forms. So, life after death may be partially true but not necessarily in the shape of the ego consciousness which many may see as the essence of identity. As far as the conscious ego of human identity is concerned this may be the limits of human existence.
I found that your thinking reminded me of Sartre’s writing on nothingness, as opposed to ‘being’. There may be oblivion, as a way of not being conscious at all. This may be comparable with the idea of ‘nirvana’. This is complex because it depends on how consciousness is seen and whether there is some merging into cosmic consciousness.
Some may see this as annihilation of the core of what is a human being or others may perceive it as being part of God, such as in Spinoza’s understanding of ‘God’.
The issue of religious claims in relation to science is such a problematic area. It probably comes down to testimonial accounts and the nature of evidence.
It is likely that all ideas of life after death, in whatever form it may take, are regarded with so much critical argument. I am not opposed to such critical thinking but try to keep the options open, for better or worse. I am not sure that I would wish to be an ‘immortal’ being or not.
The philosophy of immortality may seem absurd to many. I do see human consciousness as being bound to the brain to a large extent but am not completely convinced by the philosophy of reductive materialism entirely. Ideas of life after death may hinge on the issues of mind-body connection and whether consciousness is dependent on having a physical body and sentience.
I am not sure about the idea of the body as a ‘container’. It seems to hinge on a philosophy of Descartes, which may be problematic in many ways. The idea of ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ being contained within the body involves dualism.
Some philosophical perspectives on dualism may be open to the independent survival of the ‘soul’ beyond death. However, it does depend on how the idea of’out of body’ experiences are viewed. How much can be taken literally? It is such a questionable area and I am not sure that the nature of embodiment is the only possible and valid form of consciousness.
Interesting, but if you remember the middle of my argument, then I’ve argued that, unless one can make a case that the functionalist view of the mind is logically coherent, or so to say that, if one can make an argument that the immaterial mind is merely an emergent property of material constituent parts of the brain (Which I deny myself, and have not yet seen a good argument in advocation of yet), then what I said which follows from my argumentation is that the mind, which is immaterial, cannot experience any change in response to a material causal interaction, including death. Therefore (And I’ve not read any Sartre, if you pardon me for misunderstanding this view of “Oblivion”), if Oblivion is a true change in the properties of the mind, and so the immortal soul, then it would have to be a state that is facilitated by immaterial causal factors, which death is not one, and so seems to be an insufficient factor to bring about “Oblivion”, even if it possibly does exist, unlike pure nonexistence. Therefore, I don’t think this rebuttal makes a sufficient attack against the coherency of an afterlife versus no afterlife, or at least, in the case of Oblivion, an afterlife which would be akin to no afterlife.
No, the dualism of Descartes is an entirely different concept from understanding that any organism body is a vessel for its genetic material.
The genetic material (DNA) determines the structure and function of the organism, and all of its parts. This includes the brain. The brain is the structure, and the mind is its function. Since function cannot be separated from structure, dualism does not apply in this case.
It’s true that the brain is a biological structure and that mental life depends on it. But identifying the mind with the function of the brain still leaves an important question open.
The central activity of mind is interpretation. Organisms do not merely respond to signals; they take them as meaning something. That semantic dimension is not captured by a purely functional description.
A useful analogy can be made with language. Written marks on a page or sound waves in the air can be completely described in physical terms—their shapes, frequencies, and causal effects. You could do a complete physical analysis of the composition of the book you’re reading. But the meaning of the book cannot be derived from nor described by that physical description. Meaning depends on a system of interpretation shared by speakers and hearers. Semantic content “overflows the bounds” of physical description.
Something similar applies to the mind. Neural activity can certainly be described in terms of structure and function, but the fact that those activities represent or mean something for the organism introduces a semantic level that is not reducible to the physical description of the circuitry itself.
I hope you can see what I’m getting at here, I don’t mean to come off as pedantic or dismissive, but I think there’s an important point which your analyses might be missing.
This also has some bearing on the OP, in a philosophical sense, but I’ll leave that aside for the moment.
But consciousness and unconsciousness would be empty without the content of experience.
My only reason that I feel my consciousness might have been living in the past sometime before my life is, seeing the objects and people that I have never seen or met in my own life in the dreams.
Some nights I also see in my dreams myself wondering around in the places I have never been in my real life.
I wondered, how is it possible that I can see these objects, people and places that I have never seen or been in my own life.
The only possibility for that perceptual experience is that I was recalling the objects, folks and places from my own memory of my past life? This is purely inference. There is no concrete evidence for the conjecture.
If you become a religious folk with some personal divine or incredible magical experience or enlightenment, then your mode of percetion and reasoning might totally transform into the religious way fuelled by deep faith. Then you might start believing the miracles in the scriptures folks dying and resurrecting in flesh like that of Jesus in the Bible.
Buddhists believe that you will be reborn forever, but not the same person or even as a human, but as some other life forms depending on your karma.
I am not sure if the other religions such as Hinduism believe in the life after death. But in the view of most main religious faiths and mind, life after death is the foundation of their system and existence.
Not necessarily. Nirvāṇa is being released from the cycle of saṃsāra.
Good point. I am not a Buddhist myself, but I used to hear the actual Buddhist monks saying it. You will reborn when you die, and what you will be reborn to will depend on your karma.
I am a little unsure whether the idea of Nirvana means a temporary escape from the cycle of rebirth or a permanent one based on my knowledge of Buddhism.
I have read some theosophy texts which suggest that further evolution may be beyond the the human kingdom. Of course, all of this is speculative, with so many possibilities.
Hindus definitely believe in reincarnation. One of the problems which arose was its its justification for the caste system. The idea of karma often is wrongly used to explain inequalities and suffering.
As for reincarnation memories it is unclear how reliable they are. Some have corresponded with human beings and historical events of which a person was not aware. They are the most convincing.
Brian Weiss’s book, ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’ is interesting in this debate. He did not believe in the idea at all until he was giving therapy to a woman, which gave full accounts of a past life, which included both him and the client. His own consideration involved a conclusion that the past lives may have been true or about dipping into the collective unconscious. It is probably on the basis of such reading that I am unsure about whether ideas of reincarnation could be real or fantasy. I have wondered at times whether I was my grandfather in my previous life. He died 6 weeks before I was born and I have often been compared with him. I wondered about being him previously in childhood even though I was not brought up with a belief system of reincarnation and I never mentioned the idea to my family.
There are many expressions of gesture and emotion that repeat over generations. Perception of that element is weakened by the idea of identity.
The phenomenon suggests that we tend to ascribe to agency what belongs to something else. The natural desire to explain is not always a friend of observation.
I think we get a taste of what it means by “life after death” from the experience of anesthesia; specifically, when your body becomes unconscious. You become dead to the world. Most interesting though, is the experience of becoming alive to the world. The sense of duration between the two events is sort of smeared together as one where the experience of duration disappears. I mentioned this simply to say the my physical state that could engage in a world was interrupted. Yet could be revived instantly from a first person point of view. So, I think it coherent that an experience like life after death may also give the same sensation regardless of how much public time may have elapsed. How one’s physical state can be revived to engage in a world I will leave to ones imagination.
Some background. There are two major divisions in Buddhism - Theravada and Mahāyāna. They’re not schools, as there are many schools of Buddhism with Mahāyāna. Theravada is the ‘doctrine of the elders’ and is associated with South Asian Buddhism - Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Mahāyāna Buddhism is associated with Tibet, China, Japan, Mongolia and so on.
Theravadins consider themselves nearer to the original teaching of the Buddha, and they don’t recognise the Mahāyāna ‘sutras’ (‘teaching’) that were composed in Sanskrit (and in some cases in Chinese).
I make that distinction, because in Theravada, Nibbana (that’s their spelling) is forever. There is no return to the cycle of rebirth.
In Mahāyāna Buddhism, there is the principle of the bodhisattva (wisdom-being) who is able to be volutarily reborn for the good of the world. They are said to deny themselves the highest Nirvāṇa (notice different spelling) for the benefit of mankind.
I used to hear the monks saying that Nirvana means process of death which happened to a life relieved from the sufferings in the mundane world. I am not sure how then physical rebirth into the world happens from the process of Nirvana.
Surely you must be carrying some of your grandfather’s genes in your body, which would give some resemblance of his traits to your own. However, it seems needing much more evidence to convince folks that you could be his resurrection.