Apology for the late reply.
True. But we do know this: existence at the very least appears in the form of first-person subjective experience. So in terms of understanding existence and “what it is”, this is a ground level “given”.
Yes. The argument is invincible in the sense that despite the fact it’s content cannot be demonstrated, it’s content cannot be dis-proven or shown to be irrefutably untrue. The afterlife is not demonstrated, nor can it be demonstrated as we only experience the current artificial or constructed reality we call the “here and now”, but it is not necessarily non-existent, nor can anything within this artificial reality prove or provide evidence of it’s non-existence.
As I am not a solipsist as I have faith that other people exist (as the existence of the consciousness of other people must essentially be accepted on faith), and that existence seems to have arbitrarily gifted them with the same powers and abilities of mind that I myself have. I infer this from the behavior of their bodies and the sounds I hear seemingly emitted from those bodies, despite the fact that their bodies of these people are actually composed of me, that is, my first-person subjective experience–which is the substance that composes every object, event, and person I see around me.
Ergo consciousness is in fact a sim world composed of one’s first-person subjective experience. It is a matrix world composed of one’s first-person subjective experience. Blind people (in particular) and the existence of unconsciousness and death (if the latter two even exist) actually prove this.
But existence happens to exist in a way that the sim world that is one’s own consciousness and the things one experiences contains bodies that behave in a way that produces, in one’s own mind, the inference that if other consciousness exists, these other consciousnesses seem to have the same powers and abilities that one’s own mind has. But as one experiences only the sim or matrix world that is one’s own consciousness, one must have quasi-religious faith that other consciousnesses exist…or that there are mind-independent doppelgangers of the objects and events that appear within one’s private sim world of first-person subjective experience.
Funny you should mention Berkeley, my philosophical mentor, and his belief that God is the link between us, as this sums up my belief regarding the nature of reality.
I think my point is probably more true than oblivion because it is more likely that things are eternal than that things can come into and go out of existence. To believe in eternal oblivion at death, one must believe that consciousness can cease to exist and come into existence from previous non-existence. Thus belief in oblivion is supported by belief in this absurd magic. It is far simpler, using Occam’s Razor, that we do not rely on magic to explain how things exist and the simplest answer is that everything, including consciousness (which is probably the only thing that exists, as it is certain the only thing that appears), is eternal and cannot magically stop existing or first not exist, then inexplicably begin existing.
Belief that death results in oblivion needs the magic of things being able to come into and go out of existence. If one dispenses with this existence-magic, one realizes it is more rational that things are probably eternal. Consciousness does not nor cannot cease to exist or come into existence after previously being something that did not exist: it merely changes content.
Thus it is not merely believing my argument is true that comforts and consoles me, but the fact that things that do not exist popping into existence, and things that exist being able to wink out of existence, is less rational than things being eternal.
With respect to our day to day lives, we see clearly that science and the scientific method beget inventors and engineers and manufacturers and technologies and consumer goods embedded in what “for all practical purposes” seems to be an either/or world on this side of the grave.
But the either/or world on this side of the grave…is just a sim world made up of a person’s first-person subjective experience.
As for the existence of the afterlife, nothing yet.
The afterlife, by definition, is another sim world, made up of a person’s first-person subjective experience, that is believed to exist after (hence the term “after”) the sim world of the either/or world. If the afterlife exists (ergo: if there is not an existence-magic in which non-existent things can come into existence and existent things can wink out of existence), it follows the experience of the “here and now”. Existence could exist in a way that its permutations are of such inexorably nature that sim worlds are chronologically sequenced, with what comes after not being able (by nature of happenstance limitation and permutation of existence) to impinge upon or reveal itself to “what’s happening now”. In Judeo-Christian belief, God hides the afterlife from those in the here and now so as not to “contaminate” the moral beauty of the afterlife with the corruption of the here and now.
And what proving its existence [scientifically or otherwise] has to do with proving the existence of other conscious minds is lost on me.
An afterlife consists of one’s own minds and other minds. Other than that, there’s no reason for anyone to prove the existence of other minds by proving an afterlife.
If next week I turn on the news and am informed that physicists have established beyond all doubt that an afterlife does in fact exist, you may or may not be watching it too. But the proof of it is either there or it’s not.
Even if proof of the afterlife is never found or cannot be found in the either/or world, the absence or impossibility of this proof does not reveal the non-existence of the afterlife, as the afterlife lies outside the sim world of the either/or world.
What I think is true about death and oblivion can only be conjecture extrapolated from the experiences that I and others I’ve known have had with death. I see no evidence to convince me of its existence.
Instead, I speculate that, for folks like you, in not wanting “I” to be obliterated for all time to come, and in the absence of hard evidence that it doesn’t, what alternative is there but to “think up” an argument able to give you at least some peace of mind in contemplating the abyss.
phenomenal graffiti wrote:
If it is possible for consciousness to come into existence from previous non-existence, and possible for consciousness to cease to exist while physical matter and energy according to the 1st Law of thermodynamics is the only thing that’s eternal, then despite one’s wish for one’s “I” not to be obliterated for all time the matter is entirely out of one’s hands.Thinking up an argument that says otherwise will not change this outcome.
But we don’t know definitively what in fact does unfold here. There is either actual evidence to confirm it one way or another or there isn’t.
“Actual evidence” is merely an aspect of one’s personal constructed or artificial reality (sim or matrix world), composed of first-person subjective experience. If solipsism is false there are invisible, intangible somethings not made up of one’s first-person experience that do not appear within one’s sim world as they exist outside one’s sim world. “Evidence” cannot cover things that objectively and actually exist outside one’s sim world (if solipsisim is false, these things may exist). The afterlife, it is exists, is one of those things existing outside one’s sim world (as does God and the consciousness of other people).
So your only recourse here is to think up an argument. It’s not a question of “automatically surrender[ing] to the idea of eternal oblivion.” It’s looking for reasons embedded in hard evidence to convince yourself that the afterlife is in fact “out there” or “up there” somewhere.
Reasons are embedded in hard evidence are reasons embedded in matrix worlds composed of subjective experience. If solipsism is false, something exists behind one’s own personal matrix world. The afterlife, by definition, is a matrix world that exists behind the matrix world we call the “here and now”.
And while there may be gaps in the knowledge possessed by neuroscience regarding human consciousness before and after the grave, they aren’t just making arguments…the truth of which revolving entirely around the internal logic of the assumptions made in the arguments themselves.
Neuroscientists aren’t just making arguments…they only tell us of the behavior of virtual neurons they observe in their sim or matrix world, neurons composed only of their subjective experience. When it comes to whether or not these objects have mind-independent doppelgangers outside their sim world, well, that too revolves entirely around internal logic supported only by assumption of the existence of something that does not appear to existence and that purportedly exists outside their person sim world.
phenomenal graffiti wrote:
Still, I’m willing to bet you believe in the existence of mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception and that the brain creates consciousness, and that these underlie your belief in the nature of the “here and now” and eternal oblivion.
I have no idea what on earth this means. And I certainly have no idea how this point might be connected to the life that I actually live.
I’m stating that you probably believe that there are “real” chairs, for example, that continue to exist if a person, the only one in the room, were to fall unconscious while looking upon or seeing a chair in his or her consciousness, and that there are “real” brains that create consciousness through existence-magic, and that consciousness ceases to exist when “real” brains cease to function. This belief underlies belief in eternal oblivion at death.