I don’t have the capacity to demonstrate (to anyone else) that my consciousness exists. No one can demonstrate the existence of anything except what they are experiencing and their first-person subject of experience, and this only to themselves.
A TOE that ‘connects empirically to the world that we live in able to be connected to “I”’—if this TOE is something other than the person and that which the person experiences (that is, if it is something other than subjective experience itself), cannot connect empirically to an “I” until it first ceases to be something that is not or that is other than the person that is to perceive it and is transmuted into the subjective experience of the particular person experiencing it. As only subjective experience shows itself to exist, everything that is not subjective experience must first turn into subjective experience in order to be experienced or have empirical existence.
There are known knowns.
The only thing that can actually be known is that existence only appears in the form of a first-person subject experience and that which the subject is experiencing.
These are things we know that we know.
Whatever one thinks one knows, we don’t know that there is something other than the first-person subjective of experience of a particular person and that which the person is experiencing.
A. In actuality the person only imagines something other than the person exists.
B. The person then randomly and arbitrarily forms a belief that this ‘other’ objectively exists outside the self and more, can survive the future non-existence of the self (as it is something other than the self, which ceases to exist when the brain ceases to function, in belief that brains create and maintain the existence of consciousness: the ‘other’ is not created by the person’s brain, therefore it survives the non-existence of the self).
There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.
Such as the objective existence of something other than an first-person subject of experience and that which the subject is experiencing.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
On the other hand, we really don’t know what science will be able to tell us about human consciousness 100, 1,000, 10,000 years from now.
We don’t know what science (which itself is just the stuff coming from the mind of a first-person subject of experience and that which the person experiences) will be able to tell us about human consciousness 100, 1,000, 10,000 years from now, but whatever these persons discover, it will only be ideas in the minds of these persons. The imaginary concepts will be composed of the subjective experience of the persons, as existence only manifests in the form of a first-person subjective experience and that which the person experiences.
Human consciousness or what will be known about human consciousness 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years from now will not be able to “see” anything more than that. A million years from now no one will know the objective existence of anything that exists outside of and that is conceived to be something other than or that is not a first-person subject of experience and that which the subject experiences.
We just know that in the absense of an actual afterlife for “I”, none of us here will ever be around to marvel at it.
True. In the absence of an actual afterlife for “I”, none of us here will be around to marvel at what science discovers 100, 1,000, 10,000 years from now. But we cannot know that there will be an actual absence of an afterlife. One merely believes there will not be one.
Still, from my frame of mind speculation of this sort will always revolve around “what we think we know and what we can demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to know in turn.”
We can only demonstrate, and that only to ourselves, that only a first-person subject of experience and that which this person is experiencing exists.
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A person experiences visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile experiences that only that person, and not anyone else in the whole of infinity (if these exist) can feel, taste, touch, smell, hear and see.
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A person experiences thoughts in sensory form (though composed of thought) of certain images, actions, speculations, beliefs, etc. that only that person, and not anyone in the whole of infinity (if these exist) is thinking at that moment.
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A person experiences emotions (non-bodily feelings) that only that person and not anyone in the whole of infinity (if these exist) is feeling at that moment.
One can only demonstrate the existence of 1-3, and can demonstrate their existence only to oneself. The existence of anything that is not a particular person and that which the person is experiencing cannot be demonstrated even to the person, as the person only can only demonstrate the existence of his or her subjective experiences.
Since we can only demonstrate the existence of 1-3, and that only to ourselves, this is the only thing ‘all rational men and women are obligated to know in turn’.
The above having been said, the first-person subject of experience can only arbitrarily and randomly form beliefs about the existence or non-existence of things other than itself, as it cannot demonstrate the existence of anything save itself (and that only to itself). Whatever the first-person subject of experience believes or doesn’t believe, however, cannot indicate the truth or falsity of and can provide no evidence for or against the existence of that which it accepts or denies, as a person only has evidence of its own existence and can only demonstrate, and that only to itself, the existence of itself.
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The afterlife, therefore, appears only in the form of an idea in the mind of this first-person subject of experience.
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Since this first-person subject of experience can only experience itself and not anyone else in the whole of infinity (if these others even exist), this subject only has evidence of its own existence, and can only demonstrate the existence of itself to itself. This subject, therefore, cannot demonstrate the existence of the afterlife.
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This inability to demonstrate the afterlife, however, is not indication or evidence of the non-existence of the afterlife.
A person believing in an afterlife, therefore, can do nothing but reveal to rational men and women an idea of the afterlife, while reminding them that the only thing that appears within existence is a single person and that which the person experiences, and that everything that is not a person and that which the person experiences can only appear within existence as an idea in the person’s mind. The objective existence of the content of the idea, however, is not nor cannot be proven or disproven despite the person’s belief or disbelief in the objective existence of the content.
A person not believing in an afterlife, therefore, cannot provide argument for why an afterlife does not exist, as an afterlife is something that is not a first-person subject of experience and that which the subject experiences (now). Therefore, a person not believing in an afterlife cannot use examples of that which is experienced now to argue against the existence of the afterlife. Lack of belief in the afterlife, therefore, can only be a “Nuh-uh”.
(To be fair, belief in the afterlife amounts to just an “Uh-huh”.)
We. Just. Don’t. Know.
True. But the fact we don’t know does not indicate the non-existence of the afterlife.
I’m only presenting an idea of an afterlife that anyone is free to take or leave. My argument for it is grounded in the fact that there is no evidence for or against the existence of anything that is not a person and that which the person currently experiences (as this is what the afterlife is) and belief or disbelief in something that is not a person and that which the person currently experiences in itself has no effect upon the objective existence of this ‘other’ (if the 'other exists).