AN INVINCIBLE ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF THE AFTERLIFE

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.

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.

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).

Such as the objective existence of something other than an first-person subject of experience and that which the subject is experiencing.

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.

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.

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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  1. The afterlife, therefore, appears only in the form of an idea in the mind of this first-person subject of experience.

  2. 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.

  3. 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”.)

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).

Yeah, but here we can go way, way out on the metaphysical limb. How do we demonstrate that our interactions are not just part and parcel of a SIM world? How do we demonstrate that our interactions are not just characters in some entity’s dream the way in which characters pop up in our own dreams? How do we demonstrate that our interactions are rooted in at least some measure of autonomy? How do we demonstrate that “reality” is not embodied in solipsism such that Berekley’s God is the only thing that links everything together? How do we demonstrate that our conscious mind will continue on into the afterlife?

Again: We. Just. Don’t. Know.

But most of us do think we know that our “I” has a consciousness able to communicate with other conscious minds. Given that assumption then, what can be communicated objectively in the either/or world, and what seems to be embedded more subjectively/subjunctively in the is/ought world?

That’s my own “thing” here with respect to “I” on either side of the living/dead line.

Now, in my view, what you note here…

…does not constitute much more than an intellectual contraption articulating a “world of words” that floats around “inside your head”.

How would you perform experiments, or make predictions, or offer others a way to replicate your consclusions such that a more substantive demonstration might be possible?

Then you note a particular set of conjectures that seem to reconfigure [to me] into actual established facts:

What would interest me here is the extent to which you make conjectures of this sort relevant to the assertion that there is an invincible argument for the existence of an afterlife; such that you can in turn provide us with a methodology enabling folks like scientists and philosophers to actually demonstrate the existence of an afterlife. And, in particular, for those of us in the human species who wrap so much of what we call “reality” around “I” in the is/ought world.

Yet you seem to insist that even 10,000 years from now science will still be, what, constrained [ultimately] by the assumptions that you make here about conscious minds?

How on earth could you or anyone actually know – definitively – any of this? But, of course, 10,000 years from now in the absence of an afterlife I won’t be around to tell you “I told you so”.

So, we can predict just about anything at all about the future.

But why stop there…

Here, in my view, you may as well be God.

That’s my point. The gap btween what we think we know about these things “in our head” “here and now”, and all that would need to be known in order to be absolutely certain of it. And even the most sophisticated of neurologists/brain scientists are not excluded here.

It’s just that science is looking for an afterlife re the “scientific method”. Whereas many theologians, philosophers and new age gurus just more or less “will” it into existence out of a world of words.

Out of an “argument”.

And, to me, that revolves more around human psychology – defense mechanisms – than science and philosophy.

Then, in my opinion, it’s back up into “general description” clouds of the autodidact.

etc etc etc

Or so it seems to me.

Or this:

All I can imagine here are others listenting to you and then asking, “So, is there an afterlife or not?!” or “What will become of “I” after the brain and all the rest of me are dead and gone?”

You then note…

And, sure, some will buy it. But my conjecture here is that they will buy it more because emotionally and psychologically it is really, really, really soothing to believe it.

So, the bottom line here [mine] is that others will either believe your argument because it comforts and consoles them to believe it or they will take a Kierkegaardian leap of faith to it because as Pascal suggests what have they got to lose.

Either way, there is no actual hard evidence available to demonstrate that the argument is in fact true. Or at least none that I am familiar with.

Again, I’m all for speculation of this sort. And at least you are making an effort to grapple with it. But with so much at stake here on either side of the grave, it’s just frustrating to come upon arguments alone.

Oh, and how on earth does this…

…factor into your own conscious frame of mind here?

A God, the God, my God? Or the “idea” of it?

True. To believe otherwise is solipsism. My point was that from the “I” point of view, we do not experience other conscious minds, therefore despite the fact that we think we know that our “I” has a consciousness able to communicate with other conscious minds, we can’t demonstrate the existence of other conscious minds. There’s only just the “I” that shows up and can be demonstrated, and that only to itself.

It is not so much a “world of words” that merely floats around inside my head but a reason based on the facts known about the existence of the “I”, including facts you can discover easily about yourself by just observing your own consciousness.

By just looking at yourself and your own consciousness you will discover that the only thing that can be demonstrated to you to exist is you, and what you happen to be experiencing now. That’s it. Everything that is not you and what you are experiencing now (and experincing the next second, and the next), is only an idea within your mind (just your experience in the form of your idea that pops into your head) that you separate into three factions: 1. Things you believe objectively exist despite the fact they aren’t you and what you’re experiencing (i.e. despite the fact they aren’t things created by your brain, for those believing the brain creates consciousness) 2. Things you don’t believe exist, but accept as ideas in your mind and those of others. 3. Things you choose to suspend judgment about, unwilling to settle the matter in regard to the question of their existence with either (1) or (2).

As far as a ‘TOE that connects empirically to the world that we live in able to be connected to “I”’: the ‘world that we live in’ is just an artificial reality created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). We can’t know, given that we can only experience the brain-generated artificial reality, that there is an actual world existing outside the artificial “movie projection” produced by the “movie projector” of the brain. Much less can we know if this unknown world can have anything to do or communicate in any way with the artificial reality.

There are only two things to consider in the question of what exists and what does not:

  1. The experiences created by your brain (the “I” is one of these artificial creations)—for those believing the brain creates consciousness.

  2. The questionable existence of whatever your brain does not create.

You are only able to see and know what your brain generates. You can’t see and know of anything your brain does not generate, and all your beliefs and ideas about things that are not generated by your brain are just more things generated by your brain (for those believing brains generate consciousness). These are not just a “world of words” that speak of nothing or are just an idea in one’s head, you can see it for yourself. You are a subjective experience. In order for anything that is not you to be able to be experienced by you, that thing must be or must transmute into something that can be experienced by you, that is,into your subjective experience. If something is not your subjective experience, it cannot be experienced. This is a simple deduction anyone can make just looking at one’s own existence.

The conjectures are not so much conjectures but facts about yourself that can be instantly observed. They are relevant to the assertion that there is an invincible argument for the existence of an afterlife in that they are support beams for the fact that while an afterlife cannot be demonstrated, given that one can only demonstrate the existence of the “I” and the artificial reality experienced by the “I”, the existence of the afterlife is not absolutely and unquestionably false.

The is/ought world is an artificial reality generated by the brain (for those believing the brain creates or generates consciousness) and is not something that is not created by the brain. If it disappears or winks out upon cessation of function of the brain, it depends upon the brain for its existence and cannot exist without it. The is/ought world is, therefore, just a “movie projection” produced by the “movie projector” of the brain and not something that is not created by the brain that sticks around when your consciousness doesn’t.

There is an ‘invincible argument for the existence of the afterlife’ in the argument in that despite the inability to demonstrate the afterlife or offer proof of it, it’s existence cannot be demonstrated to be unquestionably and irrefutably false given the only thing that can be demonstrated to exist is the “I”.

What else will they be able to discover, since anything they discover is only part of the artificial reality created by their brains (for those believing the brain creates consciousness), and cannot be something not created by their brains?

Anything not created by your brain cannot be experienced, thus cannot be known, thus lies outside the reach of any scientific analysis, experiment, or discovery…which are actually just artificial realities created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Not God, just stating a truth. A million years from now, given that the only thing that can be demonstrated to exist is the “I”, no one even then will be able to experience anything other than their “I”, and the artificial reality created by their brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). Unless… a million years from now people will be able to experience things not created by their brain? If so, how?

All that would need to be known in order to be absolutely certain of something “in our head” would be to actually experience it (have the brain create the subjective experience of it, for those believing the brain creates consciousness). That which is known is experienced as either something that appears to visual perception (relevantly) or it’s just a thought in one’s head. That’s pretty much it.

This doesn’t mean that because it is not created by one’s brain (as the brain only creates tacticle, auditory, gustatory, olfactory experiences and visual artificial realities (the reality is artificial in that it completely disappears should the brain suddenly cease to function) it absolutely does not exist (as if anyone could really know that), it’s just that it cannot be demonstrated. An argument for the afterlife, for example, can only be an argument that one cannot rule out its existence simply because one doesn’t believe in it because the only thing one has is the artificial reality produced by the brain.

Only science can show the existence of the artificial reality the brain creates. That’s it. You cannot look for the afterlife or anything not generated by the brain using the “scientific method”.

Theologians, philosophers, etc. “will” the afterlife into existence only in the sense that they really, really believe it exists. But they are in the same boat as one not believing in an afterlife, because the only thing that can be demonstrated to exist is the “I” and the artificial reality (that can disappear entirely if the brain should suddenly cease functioning) created by the brain (for those believing brains create conscious experience).

Yes, It is a psychological defense mechanism against the terror of the possibility that consciousness can cease to exist and death is eternal dreamless sleep. But I argue that the defense mechanism in and of itself is not necessarily a delusion or a denial of reality (that death is just eternal dreamless sleep)…because we cannot know that death being just eternal dreamless sleep is a reality, as we cannot know that consciousness comes into and goes out of existence (content of consciousness transforms, sure, but we cannot know if consciousness qua consciousness altogether ceases to exist).

I can only respond: “Friends and neighbors…I know not, but there’s nothing about or in the artificial realities created by our brains (for those believing brains create consciousness) that indicate or can indicate the afterlife absolutely, irrefutably does not exist.”

And it is soothing. It’s great stuff, believing your dead friends and relatives still exist in another artificial reality free of the troubles, trials, and travails of the current brain-created one (for those believing brains create consciousness). Comforting stuff it is, a bastion of hope against the horror (to some) that death is eternal dreamless sleep and that consciousness is something that can come into and go out of existence. But we cannot know that an afterlife absolutely, irrefutably does not exist. Sure we can’t demonstrate it exists, as it is not anyone’s “living” artificial reality, but by the same token one cannot know it absolutely doesn’t exist and that those believing in it are only deluding themselves.

Either way, it cannot be demonstrated that an afterlife absolutely does not exist and those comforting themselves or making a leap of faith are just fooling themselves.

Thanks.

Oh there’s nothing at stake. Either there’s an afterlife or there isn’t. Either you wake up to another artificial reality different from this one, maybe one created, controlled and regulated not by a brain but by this other person (or persons?) waiting to reward or punish you for the things done in the current “Matrix”…or there’s eternal dreamless sleep. If the second option is true, as an atheist joked: “I don’t mind, I like to sleep.”

All you’re going to have are arguments…as an afterlife cannot be demonstrated. Why? Because the only thing that can be known and experienced, the only thing that can be demonstrated, is the “I” and the artificial reality (the “holographic Princess Leia”) the brain (“R2D2”) cranks out (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

The artificial reality disappears when the brain stops working. So we know it’s just a “hologram” produced by the “R2D2” of the brain. But what exists that isn’t created by the brain? No one knows. The brain (since everything as far as we are concerned comes from the brain) does nothing in response to this question but produce the idea that one thinks one knows what is not created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

The objective guy himself, if he exists.

Probably true but more to the point [mine], you and I will go to the grave merely speculating about it all. Just as we will go to the grave merely speculating about what becomes of “I” after the body itself [including the brain] is dead, gone and on the sojourn back to star stuff…

Arguments are made. Arguments are believed or not believed. But what is actually demonstrated to be true here?

What facts? As they actually pertain to the existence of an afterlife? Facts that would incline others to take the argument very, very seriously?

As for this…

…the fact is that I can confirm these ideas “in my head” by checking them out. I can ask others to confirm that what I think is in fact true by asking them what they in fact see/hear/experience. Beyond that is this: all that we do not know about the nature of “the human condition” in going all the way out on the metaphysical limb: sim world? dream world?, solipsism? determinism? God?

Yet [from my frame of mind] all you really have regarding assertions like this…

is a “world of words” defining and defending each other. You claim to know what we can or cannot know as though the argument itself need be as far as you go. And, of course, with respect to your own particular “I” here, that is as far as it need go. You believe it. That settles it.

Backed up by more argument still:

So, with respect to your interactions with others, how is all of this applicable, “for all practical purposes”? You argue for the existence of an afterlife, someone else argues that it does not exist. Then what?

This part:

Sure, this argument may well work to convince you that this is so, but it certainly does not convince me and others. The facts here are confined to a set of intellectual assumptions you make about human consiciousness sans all the unknown unknowns that almost surely exist between what you think you know about the afterlife here and now and all that can be known about it given an omnsicient point of view.

Instead, I speculate that you have managed to think yourself into believing this because psychologically it comforts and consoles you more so than those who have thought themselves into believing that we live in an essentially meaningless world that topples over into oblivion.

But here “I” am just as stuck as you: in the enigmatic gap between believing it and demonstrating it.

And while [to you] the “is/ought world is an artificial reality generated by the brain”, there it is anyway: this or that? right or wrong? good or evil? reward or punishment? And then, for some, Heaven or Hell?

Then back up into what “I” construe to be the clouds of abstraction…

In other words, “I can’t actually demonstrate [empirically] the existence of the afterlife, but you can’t actually demonstrate [empirically] that it doesn’t exist.”

Call it a tie.

“In your head” your argument is “stating a truth”. Here and now. And then one day your embodied “I” will die. Then you will either have the proof of an afterlife or you won’t. In the interim though, the arguments must suffice.

Just as with all the rest of us. If we believe that something might be true and others believe that something might not be true, that doesn’t make it either true or false. Here and now. There and then however, well, we’ll see…

And then the real kicker here is that this entire exchange that we are having may well be only what it ever could have been given the immutable laws of matter applicable to human consciousness as only another manifestation of matter.

What of the afterlife then?

But that is basically true of all that we don’t know about whatever it is that brought into existence the existence of existence itself. And that includes mindless matter evolving over billions of years into actual living matter mindful of the fact that the embodied “I” dies and disintegrates into…what exactly? Though, sure, “I” cannot know irrefutably that there is not an afterlife awaiting it.

And if that is enough to comfort and console you here and now then that is all that matters: it works for you.

Just not for me. Here and now.

Though I will be the first to admit that substantively I don’t really have a clue as to what does await “me” on the other side.

Then it all comes down to whether or not you can manage one or another rendition of Kierkegaard’s leap or Pascal’s wager.

Just as it cannot be demonstrated that a God, the God, my God “absolutely does not exist”. Only, unlike them, you are not “fooling yourself” about the existence of an afterlife.

True.

Bodies, brains, and star stuff that are not part of the artificial reality created by the brain exist? If so, how do we know bodies, brains, and star stuff that survive the non-existence of one’s consciousness even exist, since they’re not one’s consciousness (how can they be, when they still exist when one’s consciousness does not), and the only thing that can be demonstrated to exist is one’s own consciousness, and that only to oneself?

Nothing is demonstrated to be true and nothing was ever meant to be demonstrated as true, as nothing can be demonstrated to be true save the existence of one’s “I”. Given that, there is no requirement to demonstrate anything. Therefore, there are only arguments that are believed or not believed. One can posit an argument out of thin air with the same freedom one chooses to ask another the time.

Facts about oneself and consciousness. Given the facts about consciousness, one could play them into the concept of the afterlife…such that in the concept, if one were to leave the question open as to whether or not an afterlife exists and just define what an afterlife is or what consists an afterlife, since we only have subjective experience to show for in terms of what exists and what does not, afterlives are just conscious experiences themselves, and are just artificial realities in the way that the “here and now” itself an artificial reality (brain-created or not).

But the only ideas you can confirm by checking them out is the artificial reality created by your brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). And others you consult can see/hear/experience only the artificial reality created by their brains. They cannot see/hear/experience anything not created by their brain.

But it’s not about I knowing what we can or cannot know, its about observing that, for those believing brains create consciousness, the only thing that can be known (re: demonstrated) to exist is the artificial reality created by the brain. That’s it. Whatever is not created by the brain cannot be demonstrated and may, for all we know, not exist. Indeed, the brain (the mind-independent one) may not exist.

By having faith that others exist. This faith is the only thing preventing solipsism.

Nothing, save the argument and whether or not it is believed.

True.

True. It is comforting and consoling. My question to those that believe we live in a meaningless world that topples into oblivion is, why is consciousness necessarily “not eternal”, or how do we know it is not eternal? A ‘toppling over into oblivion’ implies the non-existence of subjective experience. Why should anything come into existence from a previous non-existence or cease to exist?

Agreed.

Couldn’t conscious matter, after having formed itself into the “here and now” afterwards contort itself into some sort of afterlife, perhaps a godless one, as still another manifestation of matter?


Does existence have to be brought into existence? Could it not be eternal?

Matter that is something other than subjective experience exists? How do we know it exists, given we are only subjective experience and the idea of something that is not subjective experience is itself composed of subjective experience?

Can something that is not consciousness become consciousness by “evolving” into it? How does not-experiencing become experiencing in the first place, even given infinite time? At one point does it stop being ‘something that is not subjective experience (the fact or act of experiencing)’ to become ‘someone experiencing and that which that someone experiences’?

Does the “I” actually disintegrate? If so, how do we know it does? Couldn’t it just merely transform into another “I” or the old “I” remains but experiences another artificial reality, perhaps one that lasts forever? If not, why?

More to the point [mine] what on earth does all of this mean? “Artifical reality”? With respect to the actual material interactions of two members of the human species out in a particular context, what can in fact be demonstrated to be genuine as opposed to artificial reality?

And then, “what if this? what if that?”

In my view, until you are able to reconfigure this “world of words” into a methodology that would more substantively illustrate the text, it’s all just you assigning a definition and a meaning to a particular set of words put in a particular order.

Now, in fact, neuroscientists and others are attempting just such experiments. Putting words to actual processes going on in the brain – “things” in the brain – so as to connect the dots between consciousness and mind and brain and behaviors we choose.

I see none of that here with you.

Might I advise that you take your “facts” about consciousness to them in places like this: blog.feedspot.com/neuroscience_blogs/

See what they think of your conclusions. Then come back here and carry on.

Look, one can assume that we are having this exchange at ILP as part of an “artificial reality” or one can take a leap to the possibility that it is actually unfolding between two entities who possess what we have come to call a consciousness.

My point is that we just don’t know how to close the gap between thinking this and believing this on the one hand, and explaining it going all the way back to whatever is “behind” the existence of existence itself.

What you do here in my view is to take a shortcut. You assume that what you think you know about all of this [artificially or not] need be as far as the rest of us go.

Nope, I’m not on board here. Though I sure as hell wouldn’t advise others to be on board here with me.

Then back to this: We. Just. Don’t. Know.

But: You are not a full-blown solipsist yourself because you still “have faith that others exist.”

Yet how on earth would you really go about examining and then explaining the difference?

Empirically, for example.

And then morally and politically?

You admit that you embrace your frame of mind in part because it is comforting and consoling. But, in turn, you have still managed to think yourself into believing that it’s not all that…or just that.

But [in my view] you have no way in which to actually demonstrate this other than in a world of words. A particular set of intellectual assumptions said to verify your conclusions about human consciousness.

Which others [like me] have no way in which to falsify.

Still, I applaud your attempts to grapple with this. And I truly do hope that you are able win me over over down the road. From my frame of mind, here and now, anything is better than thinking about all this stuff the way that “I” do.

You just don’t get any more cynical or pessimistic or problematic.

The artificial reality is the human consciousness created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Proof (or should I say “proof”) that our consciousness is an artificial reality is the “fact” (for those believing the brain creates consciousness) that the artificial reality winks out when one sleeps (if one dreams, the brain is merely creating another artificial reality different from the one that purportedly reflects objects and events in the external world), or if something should destroy or seriously debilitate the brain.

For example, if one should go to the hospital for an operation that requires anesthesia, falling unconscious from the anesthesia and waking up a micro-second later with the doc talking to your POV saying everything turned out fine is an example of your particular artificial reality being temporarily “turned off” for the operation. While you were unconscious, everyone else’s brain-generated artificial realities were in progress as they operated upon you, waited for news of your successful (or unsuccessful) procedure in the waiting room, etc.

That which is ‘actual material’ (if it even exists) is that which lies outside the artificial reality created by the brain or anything in existence that is not one’s consciousness produced by one’s brain.

Primarily (I’ve saved the blog for later reading: and I plan to interact with them if I can) I can say that whatever they have discovered and come up with will only be part of the artificial reality created by their brain, and will and can reveal nothing about the world not created by their brain.

Well, we each have our own brain-generated artificial reality (for those believing the brain creates consciousness) that would suddenly “go black” if something were to suddenly and unexpectedly go wrong with our brains. We are in the brain-generated artificial reality and anything that appears before us or any idea and belief in our head is not from the outside, but just another thing created by the brain irrespective of what’s outside the artificial reality.

We can only have faith that something outside influences the brain and thereby influences the artificial reality that is our particular conscious experience, and I must say that if brains create consciousness, this probably the case as its hard to imagine an empty infinity filled with nothing but floating bodies and brains having their own internal made up worlds and interactions.

You and I interacting involves just your ‘illusion’ of me in your artificial reality and my ‘illusion’ of you in mine. But the way that you appropriately respond to the things I “say” and vice versa tempts common sense that you most probably actually exist outside my artificial reality. The point being that I’m not solipsist as I don’t deny your existence (although I can’t prove it: the artificial reality that is my own consciousness could just be elaborately fooling me that someone is interacting with me) and I don’t particularly mind that you exist.

The artificial reality itself is just not proof of others’ existence, nor can it be, as others are not our consciousness.

True. I don’t think anyone can do that. All we have are made up ideas that (for theologians anyway) we believe were given to us by Someone “on the outside”. For those that do not believe in gods, there are only made up ideas and beliefs the subjects of which are believed to exist outside and interact with the artificial reality.

My argument is that it’s as far as we can go. Why? Because all we have and all we’re ever going to have is the artificial, manufactured reality created by one’s brain. Everything is produced by the brain, and nothing outside the brain and the artificial reality it produces (for those believing brains create consciousness) can appear in the artificial reality, as this other is…well…not created by the brain so that it can appear.

Fair enough. And thanks.

Solipsism, if true, only means everyone other than you is what is called a 'philosopher’s zombie", or a being that appears to be a self-propelled body in your artificial reality that speaks and responds to you in a meaningful way, but that completely lacks consciousness. For example, it is probably never spoken aloud (or at least I’ve never heard or Googled it) but the people you see and interact with in your dreams are probably philosopher’s zombies. If they had consciousness of their own independent of you although they appear not in waking reality but in your dreams would mean that there is such a thing as a “sub-dimensional consciousness” or “People living inside other people”.

Morally, someone who believed other people were philosopher’s zombies, if not having a moral compass that simply allows them to laughingly “pretend” others are consciousness and play as such, would probably behave like the most reprehensible psychopath. Or not.

Politically? Don’t know.

I believe or have the suspicion that it’s not all that. I believe that even if we can’t prove the afterlife exists, we also can’t prove it doesn’t, or can’t, exist. I happen to believe it does, while open (but adverse) to the fact it may not.

There’s no way to demonstrate it, just as there’s no way to demonstrate that something not generated by one’s brain exists (for those believing brains create consciousness). The assumptions about human consciousness are stated to show that given the existence of the “here and now” consciousness, it is possible that a sibling to the “here and now” consciousness (such as an afterlife) exists.

If consciousness exists, and consciousness is an artificial reality that depicts a certain random, absurd world (this one)–that is the only choice of world that happened to exist and be created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). But it is not impossible that a sibling to this consciousness, such as an afterlife, secretly exists. It may be that this consciousness doesn’t have any siblings to replace it once its done, but their existence cannot be proven or disproven using the current artificial reality: one can only choose to believe or not believe in post-death consciousness.

Believe me, anyone honest with oneself at some point considers the cynical and pessimistic road given the nature and state of the world.

And I admit godless death or eternal sleep is a hell of a lot better than Christian hell (I am a flagging Universalist ruefully dipping toward Annihilism–a view that states the Bible actually points to a “godless” death awaiting the wicked rather than eternal torment in flame–as God just wants to be done with the wicked and not have them sticking around even for the sake of constant, eternal punishment [which to Universalists and Annihilists is overkill]).

My whole point is to “invincibly argue” using facts (or assumptions) about consciousness to “demonstrate” that the afterlife cannot be ruled out of hand: consciousness exists, and possibly exists eternally (if, you know, things don’t come into and go out of existence) and is molded into persons and what persons experience by an unknown process (or person or persons). That same process (or person or persons) could in principle produce another consciousness to replace the current one when the first wears out.

Or not.

Regardless, while an afterlife cannot be demonstrated (as one has only the “here and now” artificial reality), given that consciousness somehow managed to exist in the first place, the afterlife (as it’s just a person’s consciousness showing something other than what the person used to experience in the “here and now”) is not impossible or even improbable.

Yes, I understand that what any particular human consciousness construes to be reality at any particular point in time can be shaped and molded into any number of states through sleep or hypnosis or drugs or disease.

But in any particular context we are able to connect the dots between what we think is real “in our head” and what is in fact real “out in the world”. Or we are not. This exchange that we are having using this technology involves any number of interactions able to be demonstrated as “for all practical purposes” real. Unless, of course, you argue for sim worlds or demonic dreams or solipsism.

Or determinism. In a wholly determined universe every single thing is only as it ever could have been. And how much more real than that can anything get?

In the act of subsisting from day to day, we all take our own leaps to particular assumptions about realities deemed to be considerably more solid than others.

On the other hand, the reality of an afterlife may well be nothing but an artificial intellectual contraption that we invent [and then sustain] in our head. Self-consciously.

Invented perhaps to create and then sustain a more comforting sense of reality “psychologically”.

This would seem to be just another rendition of the God argument. Someone says she believes that God exists. I ask her to demonstrate it. She can’t but then asks me to demonstrate that God does not exist. I can’t.

For me, the only thing that matters is the extent to which those who argue either for God or for an afterlife, are able to provide me a reason to believe it myself. And that involves going beyond arguments themselves, into the realm of actual physical evidence.

Now, sure, this may well be just a further extension of the artifical reality in my head, but I either believe a demonstrable God/afterlife exists or I don’t.

And then beyond what I am able to believe is true is what is fact true going all the way back to why anything exists at all and why it exists as it does and not some other way.

Okay, but from my frame of mind, “arguing invincibly” that an afterlife cannot be ruled out is a long, long, long way from demonstrating invincibly that it does.

And with the abyss looming larger and larger in my own life, arguments themselves barely put a dent in my own apprehension.

On the other hand, I recognize in turn that should the pain in my life ever become intolerable, I may well find myself begging to die.

Okay, but from my frame of mind, “arguing invincibly” that an afterlife cannot be ruled out is a long, long, long way from demonstrating invincibly that it does.

The idea that the ‘I’ has some remainder value, begs the question considered, as a structural residual
may not be am either/or exclusive nominal logic behind it, but the quality of reasoning has also risen with the conditions of arguability.

In this way, the process could be visualized as a continuous process of integration and disintegration in terms of changing conditional boundaries, which do, in fact vary within and without transpersonal, transfamiliar, trans-national, territorial and.cultural contexts.

Weather these do exist sans individual conscious or, sub archytipical manifestations, is no longer in doubt

Therefore, these patterns cam recur. and manifest similar and even indifferentiable formats. This is precisely what Leibnitz concurred with.

Maybe.

But how much closer does this really come to narrowing the gap between an invincible argument that the afterlife exists and an invincible demonstration of?

You have a way of putting things at times that makes me unsure about the extent to which you are only communicating stuff like this tongue in cheek.

But: If you are being serious here, how might I go about calculating the extent to which this does in fact bring us closer to the harder stuff.

In the way of actual empirical evidence for example.

Personally, I want to believe there’s an afterlife. Just more convincingly than what is contained in most arguments about it.

The answer maybe is surprisingly simple as it would create the impression that its simplicity is only another logical or semantic trap.

To my mind, the answer is impinged in the very question, since the calculus if many variables proves how, the gap has narrowed before it being talked about. There is a correspondence here between the onto and ontic logic, whereas that proves the narrowing by a chronological preference of the former toward the latter, and without such transcendence, the question could not even begin to be posed.

That is not to say its pure logic or mathematics, but there seemed a ’ leaning toward’ to such an interpretation.

The OP is correct from a pessimism of strength but he can say it better. Still good work my friend. Life is heavy and it can never dissolve except by totally converting all the energy out of the mass, enlightenment… the guru Babaji from the Hymalayas says you can withstand the atom bomb in full summasamadhi.

Also the student of his student swallowed a whole bag of xtc in Goa and just burped and went on his lecture, he was already there you see.

Instead [in my view] you just do it again. You provide us with this “world of words” scholastic argument that gets us absolutely no closer to an assessment backed up by the sort of empirical evidence that might make the argument itself more intriguing.

So: What then will be your imagined fate after your own “I” tumbles over into the abysss that may or may not be oblivion?

What “harder stuff” do you have in the way of material evidence to back it up?

That’s why, from time to time, I can’t help but speculate that arguments like yours here are really just exercises in irony.

Attempts to point out why “intellectual contraptions” of this sort are of very little practical use in the course of actually living our lives, dying and then what?

Either that or an “analytic assessment” meant mostly to provide one with a psychological cushion in a really, really scary world that may well end in the obliteration of “I”.

There is ancorrespondence between Your proposition of tangible proof, and the kind of entropy devolution of mathematical logic toward pure logic.

The correspondence is narrowing because the logical connections of identifiable synthetic but elements within and without meaning, (which are at the base of identity per se); of consistent and consisting of being able to recognize and identifiable self, Yourself and mine, parallels the development of more general to more specific recognizable groupings.This was sunstantionally Cantor’s general framework within more definable identifiable sets of variables.

That this is at the bottom a scholastic endeavor, there is no doubt, but its more than that

There is in stricter , more general logic, a loss, of particular types of connections, and what this downward trend indicates is: that when the Great Doubt comes up as a limit, and I mean that of the Descartian limit of total immersion of the intellect as ‘I’, within the diminishing field or context it finds itself in-: the existential limit of Being into Nothingness, it has nowhere else to go.Doubt total becomes the nothingness of the value of existence,
and the underlying logic devolved totally into the nihilistic regression, unto the myth, the myth of this or that.
Now this is where Nietzsche started and ended, in circular pattern, or eternal recurring thema.

That this relates to Your actual query, there is no doubt in my mind. The individual consciousness developed out of a subconscious, and that may have an origin as wide as the propositional logic of Wittgenstein; that words by way of signs and signaling may not have come up to the field of existence if not for the development of intemtionality of cosmic proportion, overcoming the constraint of individual semantic blocks, as if harboring the will to power to overturn the Cogito Ergo Sum to Esse eat Percipii. Remember Einstein’s notion that if consciousness were not am archytipical essential part of existence. then the world would / could not exist?

That proposition. Is scholastic, rather rests on scholastic foundations of the kind Enselm proved.

Without the faithful adherence of Saint Enselm, the religious could hardly fathom its post modern significance as a connecting element between the original sign-the word-and - signifying or signaling It’s coming.

The personality is sinking from less individually apprehensive identity, apprehensive and apprehensible in the calculus of minimum traits that Leibnitz talked about.In his sense the gap is getting narrower as the road to the Absolute becomes more proximal.

Your question about what happens to identity is right on the money, and the above show general propositions that relate to before and after the fall, as in Descartes pointed it out.

As the personality or the individual conscious identity falls , toward the minimal identifiable differences or characteristic traits, eventually becoming fused with the Absolute in individual consciousness of the so called death, the phrase ‘Life is but a dream’ comes to mind, when the separatability between conscious and sub/unconscious states is reached. At that point the question. of what happens after death becomes mute.

I choose to believe by a perfectly lucid argument , and many also do. Steiner is very close to this interpretation.

I believe that this argument rests, on all levels of inquiry. The specific existential nihilism is basically anti intellectual and more of a contradictory vision to an Anthropomorphic denial to faith based on religious grounds. The God is dead idea generally is not an argument against a man - god, but an argument around the concept of perfection in the Greek sense. It is not i who am trying to use it as an irony, as did probably Nietzsche, and am not especially alarmed at the thought of the death of the - ‘i’ , because we are heading toward a new integration, which can be had here, now, and for ever.

The Kingdom is near, and you have to die now, to get to heaven.

Tell me if any of this sounds like a contraption, or if, has any possibility of being an existentially limited reality.
I don’t choose and didn’t chose to believe out of fear, but it kind of shaped and formed me.

Just wanted to address this and another from this post. Sorry about the late reply: working on Part 3 of the Argument and the concluding Part 4, plus dealing with a plumbing issue ha ha.

In the end, no one (I think) will be able to visibly demonstrate the existence of God or the afterlife. So providing that sort of reason for you to believe is out of the question. I think what I am doing here and what others in their own way are trying to do is to shoehorn in the possibility of their existence despite whatever the artificial reality of our current consciousness “depicts”. The most believers can do in my opinion is:

(1) Have (for heaven’s sake) a logically possible God and/or Afterlife hypothesis. Without a hypothesis that is logically possible (that borrows from the evidence of what empirically exists, such as consciousness), it doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.

(2) Present a God and/or Afterlife Hypothesis in a way that skeptics can at least see that it is logically possible. It’s the most we can do this side of the grave. In the end there are two doors waiting for each of us at the shores of death: behind Door #1 is eternal oblivion; behind Door #2 is continued consciousness distinct (?) from the current artificial reality…in some form.

As I’ve stated before, all we have is the current artificial reality created by our brains (if that’s possible), created by Psycheons (see Part 3 of this Argument), or by supernatural or metaphysical magic. And that’s primarily the content of visual perception (as non-visual perceptions are invisible).

But if real, of what does it consist if its something that is not our consciousness or that can continue to exist in the absence of our consciousness? As we must be conscious to know anything and anything presented to us appears only in the form of something experienced by oneself rather than anyone else, anything real, if it is something other than subjective experience, must first magically transform into subjective experience in order to be known, as we experience only subjective experience. That is, anything that is not you must first be translated into “you form” in order to be observed and known to exist by YOU. If things in the external world do not exist in “you form” and cannot be magically transformed into “you experiencing them”-form, they can have nothing to do with you or your subjective experience.

I like your definition of determinism, couldn’t have said it better myself.

True, but the artificial reality that is one’s own consciousness is the springboard and the source of these assumptions, particularly given Hume’s supposition that imagination derives from the senses.

True. Or it could be an aspect of the external world that is translated into “you experiencing it”-form after the current artificial reality spends itself. As you yourself said: we don’t know. We only have beliefs that are rock solid in our heads regarding the nature of reality. Reality, however, doesn’t really care what we doggedly and steadfastly believe: it is what it is regardless. If it coincides with our belief? Great. If not, its a learning experience (unless atheists are right).

If God is demonstrable, he would surely be visible. But as ‘God is a spirit’ and “spirit”, I believe, is an archaic way of saying “consciousness”, then in the same way that other people’s consciousnesses are invisible and intangible and are thus not demonstrable, God is not demonstrable if he indeed exists and is a consciousness without a visible body.

An afterlife, well, that’s another artificial reality other than “this” one. It’s non-demonstrable as it’s not what’s currently going on.

True. For the reasons explained above, I think.

This concerns me, but is none of my business. But I can see why the proposition of an afterlife may be appealing for anyone in this situation. I hope to do my best to at least convince you of the logical possibility of an argument that is “invincible” in the sense that it cannot be disproven. It’s the only thing I can do.

Best,

J.

Unless of course there is an existing God with an existing afterlife bundled up in salvation; and He chooses to manifest Himself such that no reasonable man or woman can doubt it.

Okay, fair enough. But that largely involves arguments that go around and around in circles. Or so it seems to me. This is said to be possible because that is said to be assumed. But then there’s no way “for all practical purposes” to really go beyond the assumptions themselves.

It’s like the participants on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=194390

Around and around they go speculating on either the Divinity or the existence of Jesus Christ. As though it had in fact been established that the man did exist as the Son of God [or as God Himself on earth?]; or that the nature of a Divine existence can be pinned down beyond arguments that are bursting at the seams with assumptions.

The part where I interject and ask what actual evidence is available to bolster the claims is basically ignored. Why? Well, in my view, it’s because that which someone is able to convince himself is true “in his head” here can sustain a psychological “I” that is comforted and consoled.

But that’s no less a speculation on my part. So, what else is there then but that which we are able to provide hard[er] evidence for?

Thus when you note…

…what is there here for me [and others] to sink our teeth down into? And, again, with so much at stake: immortality, salvation, divine justice. A teleological font for existence.

As for the “artificial reality that is one’s own consciousness”, how do we really pin this down pertaining to our interactions with others out in a particular world? What is more or less real? What has more or less substance?

What is in fact more or less likely to be true for all of us? Here, in my view, all we can do is point to something out in the world and [to the best of our ability] come to one or another consensus regarding 1] what it is 2] how to react to it and 3] dealing with the consequences of conflicting assessments and reactions.

And then trying to connect the dots here to one or another rendition of God and religion. To one or another rendition of the afterlife.

Then I can only come back to this:

If…if…if. Isn’t that basically what all arguments of this sort come down to? But in the course of interacting from day to day in the either/or world, ifs of this sort pop up considerably less frequently.

If I type these words on my keyboard they will show up on the screen. If I click on the submit button to post them at ILP they end up there. And that’s true for everyone posting here every single time. If there are no techological problems. But what if one day I typed the words, clicked on submit and nothing happened. And it was determined that in fact there were no technological problems. The laws of nature themselves had simply reconfigured into something else.

For those believing the brain creates consciousness, neurons create one’s experience of oneself and the people with whom one interacts. Its all an illusion created by the brain, in the form of an artificial reality in which one speaks to others (bodies) that are created by one’s neurons that are caused by one’s neurons to speak and move toward oneself in such a way that it yields a super-strong belief that these neuron-created others exist outside the self and have consciousness of their own, and as such meaningfully responds to one’s words and actions. But (taking the “logic” that the brain creates consciousness to the end of the track) these “people” and one’s “interactions” with them are just aspects of the “Princess Leia hologram” created by the brain. The existence of actual people in the external world is and will always be a matter of faith. One is not a solipsist if one’s believes and has faith that other people actually exist, however, as solipsism is the belief there are no other consciousnesses save one’s own.

It’s really pretty simple: in belief that the brain creates consciousness you can divide everything in the universe into two classes:

  1. Things created by your brain.

  2. Things not created by your brain.

If brains create consciousness, there must be a neural circuit somewhere in your brain that creates every person and every event you experience. That is, the persons with whom you “interact” and the events you experience are all created by your brain. In order for you to experience anything, anything you experience must be created by your brain.

Conversely, everything not created by your brain you cannot experience. You can only experience what your brain creates, and in terms of these ‘others’, the brain only creates the concept of the thing it cannot and does not create, or creates a blanket concept that your brain causes you to believe is something the brain does not create and is something that exists outside what your brain creates. This does not mean the thing does not necessarily exist, however, such that the brain created a blanket concept that coincidentally exists. But as it’s not a creation of one’s brain, one cannot experience it and come into contact with its objective existence. The concept of God and the afterlife are blanket, random concepts created by one’s brain (for those believing brains create consciousness), but the fact they are random inventions (if they are random inventions and no forms of communication from more consciousness outside) do not mean they do not exist: they may coincidentally exist even if they are random inventions of the brain.

True regarding 1-3, but if the brain creates consciousness:

  1. When pointing to something out in the world all one is doing is pointing to an illusion created by the brain that is part of the artificial reality or “Princess Leia hologram” created by the brain; it is not the actual thing itself–the thing not created by one’s brain that does not require neurons in order to exist and does not wink out of existence in response to cessation or dysfunction of one’s brain.

  1. One reacting to the thing pointed out is an act of the artificial reality created by the brain.

  2. Dealing with the consequences of conflicting assessments and reactions between oneself and one’s interaction with something pointed out are all part of the “Princess Leia hologram” produced by the brain. We do not know if there is a “real Princess Leia” or brain/mind-independent doppelganger to the thing pointed out or one’s interaction with it in the external world.

It’s basically the same as those believing the brain creates consciousness connecting the dots from the artificial reality or “holographic Princess Leia” that is sensory perception to an invisible, intangible, possibly non-existent doppelganger of the content of one’s (visual) sensory perception that is the “real Princess Leia” that the brain did not create but that the brain purportedly copies to form of the content of visual perception. Mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception and God and religion are essentially in the same boat. Both “exist” outside the brain, are things not created by the brain, and as such are things that are not and that lie outside the artificial reality the brain produces that is called “one’s consciousness and the things one experiences in the here and now”.

But the course of interacting from day to day in the either/or world is just an artificial reality created by the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness, or an artificial reality experienced by a non-embodied mind or spirit (for those believing brains do not create consciousness, but is an allegory of the forces that actually do).

Well, your artificial reality would simply stop behaving with “lawful” regularity for some reason. We can’t know if there are mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of the artificial reality that begin to behave differently due to a reconfiguration of “outside the brain created artificial realiity” laws.

But, in my opinion, what this particular 1] argument 2] analysis and/or 3] general description/assessment does not do is come down to earth. In other words, such that the ideas conveyed allow us to grasp more clearly how someone might connect the dots between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it. In the “afterlife”.

Two people are arguing about the afterlife. They both agree that it exists. But they fiercely dispute that which qualifies one to attain, say, salvation in it.

And then someone comes along and argues that there is no afterlife. That, through God and religion, the idea of it is concocted because, psychologically, it comforts and consoles us to believe that it exist.

So, beyond the reasons argued one way or the other, what actual evidence is presented to solidify the arguments for or against the existence of an afterlife?

What actual solid evidence is there that confirms ones own rendition of what happens to “I” after the body is tumbling back into star stuff?

Again, from my frame of mind, out on the metaphysical limb — out where, technically, human senses, perceptions and conceptions are fully grasped and wholly intertwined/integrated, this may or may not be true.

We accept that, out in the world that we live in, there things interacting with other things that appear to be true for all of us. We live from day to day for, on average, 70 odd years, and then one by one we die. And there is either an afterlife for “I” then or there is not. And the brain and the mind and the soul are either intertwined here in one particular way objectively or they are not.

So, for me, it’s less a matter of what we think is true here, and more a matter of what we either can or cannot demonstrate is more rather than less likely to be true for all of us.

For some of us, Princess Leia was just a cartoon character created for a cartoon character world of “good” and “evil”. Star Wars barely attempted at all to convey any philosophical depth. Either about life on this side of oblivion or the other side.

But our reactions precipitate behaviors that precipitate actual consequences deemed by some to be good and by others to be bad. Then there are those who argue that only the right reactions will precipitate the right behaviors will precipitate the right reaction from God on Judgment Day. The brain either functions here as the crucial component re human interaction in a wholly determined universe or it is somehow intertwined in “mind” [and for some “souls”] such that through actual autonomous choices we can secure an afterlife more to our liking.

None of us are cartoon characters created for the cartoon character worlds that come out of Hollywood. Instead, from day to day to day, we are confronted with actual flesh and blood interactions that precipitate actual flesh and blood consequences that some of us here then link to what they construe [through arguments in their head] to this thing we call “the afterlife”.

What then can be conveyed beyond the internal logic of definitions given to words that don’t seem to be connected much at all to that which I construe to be of utmost importance here: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Out in a particular world construed from a particular point of view historically, culturally and interpersonally

So, when Donald Trump sends those 15,000 troops to the border with Mexico, this is just an “artificial reality” created by our collective brains? Much the same as regarding all of the conflicting assessments about whether or not this is the right thing to do?

I must be misunderstanding your point here. I mean imagine going to Trump and the soldiers and the folks in the caravan and the folks on the border arguing good thing, bad thing, and conveying this to them. How do you imagine they might react? How could they not see it as just an “intellectual contraption” that you believe in your head but that has no relevance whatsoever to the actual lives that they live?

Someone could connect the dots between the behaviors they choose on this side of the grave and what they imagine their fate to be on the other side of it by:

  1. Looking at the existence of subjective experience itself and

  2. Questioning the ability of subjective experience to come into and go out of existence.

“This side of the grave” is an artificial reality. That is, it is composed of subjective experience and appears only in the form of something subjectively experienced by a person. “This side of the grave” is only someone’s subjective experience of a certain type of world obeying certain types of subjectively experienced rules with certain types of subjectively experienced events occurring in it. It appeared at some point in the past and is presumed to disappear at some point in the future. But despite its finite-ness, it is only the subjective experience of a subjectively experiencing being. It does not (nor indeed cannot) appear in any other form (else it couldn’t be experienced).

That which one “imagine[s] their fate to be on the other side of it” is, admittedly, an act of pure imagination, but based on the empirical evidence of the nature of the “behaviors they choose on this side of the grave” (that this is a subjectively experienced artificial reality), there is every reason to believe that if there is an afterlife, it too is just another subjectively experienced reality composed of the subjective experience of the person experiencing it, like “this” life.

I would question how the person who argues there is no afterlife knows there is no afterlife, and I would question their assertion due to the certainty expressed in the assertion. Lack of evidence of the afterlife in the current artificial reality is insufficient, as we do not expect the afterlife, being another artificial reality, to show up in the current one. So why is the second one necessarily non-existent, other than simply by reason of the skepict’s disbelief?

There is no solid evidence of another artificial reality that replaces the old one, as one can only view the current artificial reality. And we can’t know that the body or star stuff (as it is outside or in the absence of any consciousness) even exists, as everything appears only in the form of the experience of a body and the sighting of stars, which could be just an aspect of the artificial reality that is consciousness.

I don’t think the brain and body objectively exists, nor any other object that we visually perceive. But that’s just my disbelief.

We can’t demonstrate the objective existence of bodies, brains, or any visually perceived object, body of person, or environment. One can only demonstrate, and that only to oneself, the things experienced in the artificial reality that is one’s subjective experience.

Star Wars was never about philosophical depth or meant to convey anything about life or the afterlife, but the scene where R2D2 produced a hologram of Princess Leia implanted by Princess Leia to implore Obi Wan for help makes, I think, good analogy for the brain (R2D2), human consciousness (the Leia hologram), and mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception in the external world (the actual Princess Leia implanting the hologram in R2D2).

R2D2 (the brain) produces (for those believing the brain produces consciousness) consciousness (the Leia hologram). Visual perception and the objects, events, and bodies of persons showing up in visual perception are believed to have doppelgangers in the external world that are not creations of “R2D2” and as such are not one and the same as “the Leia hologram”. Berkeleyian Idealists like yours truly believe the “real Princess Leia” does not exist, nor that there is an external, mind-independent R2D2 that creates “the Leia hologram”. Only the “Leia hologram” exists.

A good barometer for this is the Golden Rule. If a behavior, when you imagine it applied to you is something you don’t like or want, it is “bad”. Or one can adopt a clinical approach to morality and just objectively label anything that is “bad” as anything that follows from the deliberate/willful desire to cause mental/physical pain/death.

I believe the brain does nothing at all, but is a God-instituted symbol of what actually constitutes consciousness. There is only “mind” and “soul”. Everything, actual behaviors and the actual consequences they bring, I believe are all just subjective experiences composed of subjective experience.

Speaking of God and Judgment Day, it is a staple of Judeo-Christian belief that God is extremely conditional in terms of what He requires in order to consign one to a positive afterlife, based on one’s actions in the current artificial reality. If one has conscience and empathy and basically goes out of one’s way to habitually and reflexively obey the Golden Rule, as well as have faith in Jesus Christ, one is certain to gain a positive afterlife.

“To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.”

-Romans 2:7

The Star Wars references are analogies of the brain, consciousness, and things believed to exist in the external world. In no way do I imply we are cartoon characters in a Hollywood cartoon world. Our “actual flesh and blood interactions that precipitate actual flesh and blood consequences” are made up of subjective experience, and occur only in the form of the subjective experiences of persons. We can’t know that they occur in any form outside persons or in forms not composed of subjective experience.

The concept of the afterlife, therefore, is borrowed from the fact of the existence of subjective experience in terms of something that could be experienced when the current subjective experience is done.

The world historically, culturally, and interpersonally is nonetheless composed of subjective experience, and appears only to a subjectively experiencing subject. It is therefore only an artificial reality composed of subjective experience.

Sure. If you believe the brain creates consciousness, and if you believe consciousness magically ceases to exist when the brain ceases to function, it follows that every experience you have from birth to death does not exist without the brain but is created, pieced together, then produced from 100 billion neurons squeezed into a baseball-glove shaped mass of flesh in your skull. The “movie” produced from the “movie projector” of these mass of neurons is an artificial reality that can suddenly wink out at death or upon sudden dysfunction of the brain. This includes Donald Trump and the 15,000 troops sent to the border of Mexico. Trump and those 15,000 soldiers, or at least your visual and auditory experience of them, are all creations of and projections from your brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Now, Trump and the 15,000 troops are believed to exist outside your brain, but the existence of these brain-independent doppelgangers cannot be demonstrated nor proven to exist. The only Trump and soldiers that can be demonstrated to exist are the “holographic Leias” produced by your brain and that appear only to you, as they are created by your brain and are made up of your subjective experience of them.

It wouldn’t have any relevance to the actual lives they live, but if they believe the brain creates their consciousness and that their consciousness ceases to exist should their brains suddenly stop working, they can only come to the logical conclusion that their presence on the border and the people and things they see, and the things they feel and think about in regard to the border, Trump, etc. are all creations of the brain, are all part of an artificial reality created by the brain.