AN INVINCIBLE ARGUMENT FOR THE AFTERLIFE (PART THREE)

I was responding to your post, not arguing in favor of Berkley’s idealism and immaterialism.

I meant that all our conclusions come from experiencing. If there is a reality out there, we still only access it via experiencing. IOW either way - there is an external reality, there isn’t one, what we have as primary is experience. You presume the external reality. I am agnostic. PG is asserting that there is only experiencing and mind. Regardless of which of you is right, you don’t just get to presume there is an external reality. Why? Because if there is one, our knowledge of it is totally dependent on our experiencing of it. His position is more parsimonius. giving you the burden. As an agnostic. I see your response as precisely what it is ‘tautological’. You interpret everything based on your conventional model. If he uses a noun it refers to an external thing. Wheras for him it refers to his experiencing, which is all there is, for him.

Then you go at the language, without seeming to understand what an idealist would mean. What the idealist is referring to.

Notice that you shifted to a general topic, rather than focusing on my post as a response to your assertion - the assertion was…

This statement presumes the model it is arguing. IOW it is tautological.

Again, I am criticizing your assertion.

You are taking this to mean I am asserting something opposite. You are trying to shift the burden over to me. But you bear the burden of defending your statement, rather than me defending statements I have not made.

It is how it exists as a part of the self or as part of an external world. I don’t think I said what you quoted here, but perhaps you are bringing in quotes of his to give some context.

No, that’s not what I am saying, though that is true if there is an external reality. Again you presume the commen sense model and express some incredulity.

Nope. It is what that experiencing is. Does it necessitate an external reality or does it not. PG argues there is not one. I am agnostic.

More tautology.

No, it would be the appearance. It would not be a mirror of some other thing. No doubling. Just experiencing.

another one:

I’ll let PG handle this stuff.

There would be a seamless experiencing. Not two oars. I mean, do you not understand what idealism is? You just said there would be two oars. That’s external reality talk. I don’t think you understand the position you are arguing against.

Don’t be a smug prick. So far you have tried to shift the burden away from yourself, repeatedly used tautology, presented confused ideas about the position you are arguing against, and now been snide.

You’re a smart guy, but your not much of a discussion partner. Someone who is confused is fine, but a confused smug person is not worth communicating with.

It might be Wittgensteins style. I am skeptical of that but that’s a tangent. I asked what the link had to do with the issue. I don’t think it did have to do with the issue. It was a random appeal to authority. Hey Wittgenstein already showed how you were wrong -when in fact he was talkign about general, radical skepticism and the problems inherent in arguing that stance since the arguments presume knowledge and reason. This is completely different from the situation here. A radical skeptic demonstrating that we can’t know anything is using knowledge and assuming one can draw conclusions from it. Contradiction. PG uses language that idealists and realists interpret differently. And you interpret as a reality as if this must be what he means. It need not be what he means. He does not need to assume an external reality to make his arguments and since those arguments are NOT IN ANY WAY radical skepticism, which attacks induction, deduction, abduction any-duction, that Wittgensteinin appeal to authority is irrelevent at best.

It seems like your point is that sometimes his arguments seem to imply realism. Well, gosh, working in language built up around a philosophy of realism, that is sure gonna happen. Very hard to avoid. It does not demonstrate that he needs external reality, which you simply assume as if it is an argument, for his position. In the idealist model he is being consistant and does not need the realist model in his arguments. The radical skepticism Wittgenstein was arguing against using logic and knowledge to reach its conclusions. Occasionally PG may use language that could be, though it need not necessarily, be taken as assuming an external to the mind reality. When in fact there is no external or internal, in his model, just mind, just experiencing. It’s a category error to think that essay had anything at all to do with PG’s position. And I notice you avoided actually using the essay, but rather just focused on words - since that’s Wittgensteinian to you - and ignored the essay.

Gee thanks, Karpel for the above post. Your responses to Promethean were nothing short of amazing—and informative.


To Promethean75:

Demonstrating something is causing one to experience something. Or one can demonstrate something to oneself by simply experiencing it firsthand. Reality is a ‘thing’ (thing=something that exists), and reality demonstrates through one experiencing something. Everything that is experienced during demonstration is reality. Reality is not an abstract ‘something’ separate from the things that are experienced, but constitutes everything that one experiences. If reality is everything someone experiences, reality does indeed demonstrate something—in the form of you demonstrating something to yourself or in the form of another person demonstrating something to you.

You can’t separate reality from what occurs within it, for the objects that make actions constitute reality. Reality is not some abstract ‘something’ separate from objects and actions, but are the objects and actions themselves. Thus ‘reality’ (the objects and actions and things that appear) ‘demonstrates’ through the experience of things, and the existence of experiencing itself.

It may be that the kitchen table doesn’t exist unless you are experiencing the table. You can’t experience a mind-independent table that is not made up of your subjective experience because…well…the table isn’t made up of subjective experience, and it isn’t made up of your subjective experience. In order for you to experience something, it must be made up of your subjective experience. Not anyone else’s…not something that is mind-independent (thus “you-independent”) that is something that is not your subjective experience (or something that is not anyone’s subjective experience)…

every

single

thing

that you perceive is made up of your subjective experience…and nothing else.

Everything you experience is not made up of something that is not your subjective experience, as that would make absolutely no sense. The kitchen table, using your objective example, only appears because you’re observing it, and disappears when you no longer observe it. There is really no need for a kitchen table to exist that is not made up of anyone’s subjective experience when you leave the room except as a response to disbelief that the only thing that exists, the only thing that has ever existed, is first-person subjective experience that has only ever existed in the form of a Person and persons within that Person.

Hell, this point is made in the ridiculous belief that the brain creates consciousness. Your brain is producing a your-subjective-experience composed kitchen table. Because no single instance of consciousness can exist unless the brain magically produces it, you can’t experience a kitchen table not created by your brain, and your brain only produces your-subjective-experience composed kitchen tables. The kitchen table that is not created by your brain, that is believed to continue to exist when you walk out the kitchen, is actually just an IDEA your brain created, and the idea is composed…shockingly…of your-subjective experience.

The mind-independent kitchen table outside your brain, if it existed, could have nothing to do with the your-subjective experience composed kitchen table that magically airbag deployed from your neurons, as the external mind-independent table never existed inside your brain to eject from the brain to begin with, and as the external table is quite larger and denser than the squishy, spongy brain itself, the external table cannot use itself to communicate to the brain that it is a table (so as to give the brain the idea to form a your-subjective experience copy of the table), as it cannot force itself through a person’s forehead and skull to reach the brain without causing mortal damage.

I like the way Karpel answered this, but existence is synonymous with the things that exist and indeed encompasses everything that exists. Like ‘reality’, existence is not an abstract, separate thing divorced from the things it encapsulates. Existence ‘appears’ in the sense that…well…an existing thing appears. Things, processes, or states of affairs that appear are easily what I meant by ‘existence’. How could you think otherwise?

Existence (err…things, processes, and states of affairs that exist) appears only in the form of a person’s first-person subjective experience of things, processes, and states of affair.

Does existence exist? Yes, in the form of things that exist: the only way things have ever been known to exist and have ever appeared is in the form of a person and that which the person experiences.

It (existence) has never (ever, ever, ever)…appeared in any other form. Hell, mind-independent things not composed of first-person subjective experience exist only as ideas made up of first-person subjective experience. It’s the only thing that can be experienced. I make the further induction that sensibly, first-person subjective experience may be the only thing that exists, and has ever existed, as we really don’t need mind-independence, as it is not subjective experience and thus cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence of subjective experience.

a star collapsing in galaxy x is actually, to us, just a concept. Even if we were to see the collapse of a star through a telescope…heck…even if one were somehow able to orbit near the star close enough to directly observe it collapsing…all this would only be part of an artificial reality or “matrix” world in which the star, the galaxy, and the collapse of the star are all made up of one’s first-person subjective experience: there does not need to exist a ‘real’ or mind-independent star collapsing in a mind-independent galaxy in a mind-independent universe.

In order for a thing to exist, it must be subjectively experienced by a person. If this is somehow false, that which exists that is not subjectively experienced by a person or is not made up of first-person subjective experience at all cannot rationally have anything to do with subjective experience, as it is not subjective experience. In order for that which is not subjective experience to have anything to do with the existence and appearance of subjective experience, one must invoke magic: the magicks of creation ex nihilo or existential transformativism (in the brain, as the brain is believed to be the only thing that can generate the existence of consciousness, creation ex nihilo occurs in neural incantationism, and existential transformativism occurs in neural transformativism).

Within my belief and inference that the only thing that exists is subjective experience, and that things can only exist in the form of persons, things only exist when they appear i.e. when they are subjectively experienced by a person. The things that appear and thus exist, moreover, are created within the person and are composed of that person’s subjective experience. They are not, and cannot, be composed of something that is not the person’s subjective experience (which, in my new and improved Judeo-Christianity is actually an offshoot of God-consciousness).

If, however, one wishes to ridiculously believe in something not made out of subjective experience and ridiculously believe that these non-experienced things are in the form of stars, galaxies, atoms, chairs, etc., that is the person’s prerogative. Perhaps I should have been clearer, but my statement that in order for things to exist they must appear is set within a model of reality in which only persons and first-person subjective experience exists.

Consciousness, understood to be first-person subjective experience qua first-person subjective experience independent of consideration of things observed during consciousness or states of consciousness, is indeed a thing. It is something that exists; a thing that exists. Joe is conscious, but Joe is an aspect or part of consciousness. Joe’s consciousness therefore, is itself a thing. Objects are things, but so are concepts, and so are encapsulating existences, like consciousness. It would be silly to say that only material objects are things.

And consciousness as a thing (something that exists, not just a material object) may be the only thing that exists. That’s not only not-non-sensible, but an easily observed probable fact.

No one needs to perceive God in order for God to exist, as God is an infinite person (there’s no one outside him to observe him or think of him). Berkeley stops at God, and God being the outer marker of esse es percipi is quite alright, actually. It’s a limit to the process or point at which the process begins and ends, and is just a way things happen to absurdly exist. All beliefs, godless or not, must arrive at a point where things must be taken for granted as just absurdly existing for no other reason than that is the way things exist. Limitations of beings and processes within these beliefs, therefore, are absurdly just “how the cookie crumbles”. Everyone in terms of their existence in Berkeley’s model, therefore, are grounded in God, not anyone else. The existence of any person, therefore, depends upon whether or not God is perceiving them. I extend this by asking the question of whether or not God is currently awake and thinking of us or is currently dreaming of us. I suspect, given the existence of evil, that God is not awake but is currently alternately lucidly and non-lucidly dreaming (non-lucid dreaming, which produces uncontrollable content, being the only state of God in which evil can exist).

You, the boat, the optical illusion of the oar being bent in the water, you reaching into the water to feel that the oar is indeed straight, and the thought that there are two oars or that there is only one oar…are all part of an artificial reality or “matrix” composed of your first-person subjective experience. There’s probably no such thing as a mind-independent oar that still exists when you or anyone else are not experiencing the oar.

Okey dokey.

oh man if only it were that simple. your position is one of empiricism… and yet the way you and PG speak suggests you are both approaching radical empiricism. it is one thing to say ‘knowledge’ is derived solely from experience (kant would disagree), and quite another to say ‘reality’ is dependent on experience. there are plenty of conclusions i can safely make trough reference alone without ever having to directly experience anything about them. i can conclude that tokyo is the capital of japan or that spinach grows in kentucky without going to either place to confirm these facts. but more to the point, i can safely say that the world existed in such a state before i was ever aware of it, and that the nature of the state it was in depended not in the least on whether or not i existed to perceive it.

but you and PG are faced with a phenomenological problem. the very act of experiencing something presupposes a difference between the experiencer and the sense data of experience. if reality were purely a construct of the mind, there would be only mind experiencing itself… but if that’s the case, mind would have to be its own sense data… and if that’s the case, the same division between experiencer and experienced would occur, and you again arrive at a difference between experiencing and what is experienced. and language like ‘internal’ and ‘external’ is senseless; there is no ‘inner’ space that awareness inhabits while what it experiences - the world - occupies some outer space.

i want to keep this short and sweet, though. most if not all of this talk about ‘mind-dependent’ reality and ‘subjectivity’ is an aberration that has evolved in philosophy due to metaphysical uses of language which produce seemingly profound statements about reality, but which are really entirely without sense. in general, the metaphysical thesis presents truths which are derived solely from words alone in the form of logically valid and sound propositions… and this is what gets the philosopher all excited. he mistakes proper logical and grammatical form for substantial and meaningful content. the metaphysical statement simultaneously purports the meaning of the proposition with the claim that it’s the truth; to know if it is true is to understand it, and to understand it is to know it is true. for example, how would i find supporting evidence to show that ‘reality is a construct of mind’? i wouldn’t, but with a few specially tailored arguments, i might produce a seemingly meaningful foundation for this premise. so, for instance, if i take the assertion that ‘only experience produces knowledge, and the world is knowable’ and combine it with ‘knowledge is what the mind has’, i can deduce that the world only exists if there is mind, since i can’t know something i don’t experience.

but all these kinds of statements are operating within a language game which is generating its own set of rules that are in violation of the kind of rule-following that led to the learning of the terms and the use they originally stood for. typical of this is the philosophical use of the word ‘mind’. not until the metaphysical use of the word did it ever give sense or reference to something other than the description of particular behaviors; ‘joe is mindful’ when he pays attention… ‘joe has lost his mind’ whe he acts strangely… ‘joe has the good mind to take that job’ when he is ambitious… ‘joe should be mindful of what he is doing’ when he swerves into the left lane, etc., etc.

if, as wittgenstein pointed out, everybody had a box with a beetle in it, but nobody could see the other’s beetle, this fact would not prevent them from talking meaningfully about beetles. the same exists for the ‘mind’, but the philosopher attempts to transcend the ordinary meaning and use of the word ‘mind’ by inventing a language about it that ‘is missing all the signposts (W)’ which otherwise serve to help us identify and understand what the word can mean. to replace the usual signposts, the philosopher builds new signposts consisting of language alone, without giving any ostensive sense or reference to the use of the words.

now, the philosopher can ‘skate on frictionless ice (W)’ because there is nothing to show that what he says is wrong. it is for this reason that philosophy ‘does no real work (W)’.

anti-dialectics.co.uk/Why_al … nsical.htm

All right, all right, I apologize. I’m really really sorry, I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

My very existence is dependent on a mind independent reality which I have to accept unless I actually deny my own existence

I am not eternal or infinite because if I was then entropy would have absolutely no effect on me. But it does so there must have been a point in time where I came into existence. Even if that event was entirely random it would still follow the law of cause and effect which is a law of classical physics that applies to absolutely every single event occurring at that level regardless of anything else. This event [ which was not actually random ] was my conception which would not have been possible without the existence of my parents who were part of the mind independent reality that logically and physically had to exist before me. I could not have magically come into existence all by myself because that is simply not possible

Furthermore the atoms I am made of came from dead stars which again were part of the very same reality that also created my parents
There is a very significant time gap between these two events but that is irrelevant and of zero significance to the argument in question

I cannot therefore claim that mind independent reality does not really exist because it is that very same reality which created me
Because minds are a part of that reality even if some of them reason that its existence is not something that can be demonstrated

Right, like this very assumption you are making here isn’t, in turn, something that you are making up in a context that includes all of these other asumtpions.

But you have to be more specific. Given this very exchange that we are having using this technology invented by a life form on planet earth in the Milky Way galaxy embedded in a universe that astrophysicists have been able to speak of with extraordinary sophistication, how do you go about demonstrating that what scientists “erroneously believe are magically (through neural transformativism or incantationism) produced by neurons in a skull” is in fact erroneous.

What on earth does that have to do with things that we can both know [and demonstrate] about tbis exchange and things that we cannot.

How would you take us out into the world and, empirically, experientially, experimently etc., prove to us that your own particular intellectual assumptions here have actual substance. Insofar as they can be related to our day to day interactions.

Yeah, sure, if someone is able to feel satisfied with the knowledge that an afterlife “is not necessarily or logically false”, more power to them. Whatever works…right?

I’m just not one of them. And to those who are satisfied that oblivion may be theoretically obviated through this frame of mind I would ask this:

1] how much have you got to lose in dying?
2] how close have you actually come to dying?

Me, I’ve accumulated tons of things I don’t want to lose forever and ever and ever. And, three times, I have come close to dying. Twice [way, way back] by my own hand.

In fact it was then that I came to appreciate the one true antidote for thanatophobia: being in so much fucking pain you want to die. Then what comes after hardly enters into it at all.

So we are more or less in sync here. Millions more just like us regarding some really fundamental biological powers and responsibiliies.

And millions like us self-consciously aware that death is out there waiting for them. And, thus, faced with the task of figuring out how to cope with the daunting consequences of that.

The bottom line here though is really this: that I don’t have the capacity to demostrate the truth about solipsism. And you too apparently acknowledge that your own views on it are an existential/intellectual leap of faith.

But: that doesn’t mean there isn’t a truth about it. Perhaps embedded in God. Perhaps embedded in a mere mortal here. Someone here on earth who has figured it all out but someone we have yet to hear about. Or [perhaps] embedded in the mind of a mere mortal on any other planet in the staggering vastness of just this universe alone.

All anyone of us here at ILP can do is to admit that our own understanding of it is predicated on the limited number of experiences, relationships and access to information that we have accumulated over the years. Meaning, in other words, there are a vast, vast number of experiences, relationships and information we have never had access to.

Then it comes down [for me] to acknowledging the implications of that for discussions such as this one.

In other words:

But even here “I” may well be an entity embedded in a “reality” emanating from a sim world, a dream world, a matrix, a dimension of a multiverse we have no grasp of whatsoever.

There’s “I” and then there’s “all there is”. And then one by one “I” dies. Then what?

Then all the various speculations that abound on this thread.

Again, it’s not what is believed, but what is able to be demonstrated as that which all rational human beings are obligated to believe in turn.

What actually is the most sophisticated conclusion relating to the “empirical evidence of consciousness itself”? As that relates to the afterlife? What are the odds that it is being conveyed to us here?

What information is the least likely to come down to leaps of faith?

Well, if consciousness is an inherent component of the brain and the brain is the inherent component of the material laws of nature, then some suggest that this brain reconfigures back to “star stuff”. Star stuff that will someday [maybe] reconfigure back to another “I”.

But then that’s the part where brains here discussing oblivion were never able not to in a wholly determined universe. Then that going all the way back to an understanding of existence itself.

Exactly! Questions with or without answers. Fascinating to speculate about, sure. But also exasperating. Exasperating knowing in all likelihood that without access to an afterlife we will all go to the grave utterly oblivious.

Again, all the more reason for folks to concoct “intellectual contraptions” that psychologically give them some hope for an answer. If not the answer.

Then basically we are more or less in agreement here.

And then it just comes down to grappling with the manner in which we may be construing “faith” in different ways. For me it revolves around…

1] not knowing if human consciousness is autonomous
2] and, if it is autonomous, not knowing if what “I” thinks and feels and says and does is even close to an understanding of why thinking and feeling and saying and doing even exist at all
3] then going back to why and how anything exists at all…and why this existence and not some other

On the other hand, all of this being sheer speculation based on the assumptions that you have concocted “in your head” about these relationships.

Sure, this may be closer to the truth than any of the rest of us here are able to poke around and ponder, but it’s still all just pondering itself.

Only when we wake up one morning and hear on the news that scientists and philosophers are now all in agreement that your “analysis” of these relationships is in fact closer to the whole truth than any other “assessment” can we then take this beyond a thread here at ILP.

Yes, we both believe different things in our heads here and now. But what I believe is about as glum as it gets. “I” die and tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion.

And, here and now, “I” don’t want to die. And here and now you have not convinced me that thinking like you do is how I ought to be thinking in turn. I have no “intellectual contraption” providing me with any measure at all of comfort and consolation.

So, sure, for all practical purposes, what you do believe now, now works for you.

So, between the two of us, well, you “win”.

Apology accepted. Irony and excess ignored.

Most current realists are empiricists. I am arguing against them. I’m not a pure empiricist.

Well,first and appeal to an authority from the 1700s plus a dab of the 1800s might not mean very much. 2) Anyone wanting to take a Rationalist (in the as opposed to empiricist) position, I will be happy to watch deal with current science advocates who will be skeptical of both this rationalist and trascendentalist positions. ,

Obviously if you start from the less parsimonious model that there is a reality separate from expeience it will seem that way. But in fact all I was pointing out was that we are dependent on experience to say anything about outside reality.

Sure, you can via experience come in contact with the conclusions other people have drawn via experience and decide to think something is real.

Who said anything different? certainly not PG, though he would not have a realist account of what that knowledge means.

What you just did here was reassert your position. It is not an argument in favor of it. Nor does it challenge PGs position.

Wow. I don’t think you have read his positions, because if you had you would realize that this is a straw man argument. You need to actually see what position you are refuting, then give it a shot. Again you are presuming your model and assuming that if there is an experiencer there is an object of the experiencing. You presume the subject object split and project this on his position. Admittedly it is a tricky one, but you simply cannot have actually read his threads or you would not be missing by this much. There are two ways to categorize your argument: 1) the philosophical assumptions in everyday language are correct, so he must be wrong. IOW folk philosophy is correct. 2) I don’t need to refute his argument, I can point out that most people don’t think like that.

Yes, I cannot possibly dream and seem to be both an I and objects, while in fact there is just a flow of experience that seems to contain inner and outer things. Such things cannot be.

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No, this is just you talking about stuff you don’t know much about. There are plenty of people who hold positions like PGs based on long experience getting under language - pick nearly any mystical tradition in Hinduism where they can predict how one finds underneath language, which is heavily object/subject split, there is actually a unified experience. IOW there arguements are not based on language.

The irony is that you prior to this point used language, which is heavily biased towards the subject/object split and realism, to ‘demonstrate’ that what PG argues can’t be true. You used language with built in assumptions - go back and read it- to ‘prove’ that he must be wrong.

You just critiqued yourself, and fairly decently.

I think it would be useful for you to actually read some of his earlier threads to understand his position and it would probably be useful for you to read about epistemological solipsism. His position is not epistemological solipsism, but I think that might give you a better handle on how your counterarguments are facile in the extreme.

To iambiguous:

I don’t think that scientists making up or imagining the existence of mind-independent dark energy, the planet earth, the evolution of life on earth etc. is an assumption, or something that I am just making up.

It’s a fact.

Here’s why.

If we accept the belief that brains create consciousness (me for the sake of argument), and that there can be no instance, not a scrap, of subjective experience that is not created by the brain, everything a scientist knows and has discovered about the “world” must be generated by the brain. There is a ‘dark energy’ and a ‘planet earth’ that is created or generated by the scientist’s brain, and there is a ‘dark energy’ and a ‘planet earth’ that is not created or generated by the scientist’s brain (if we accept the existence of mind-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual person).

The ‘dark energy’ and ‘planet earth’ created by the scientist’s brain is something completely different and something that is not one and the same as the ‘dark energy’ and ‘planet earth’ that is not a creation of the scientist’s brain. For one thing, the ‘dark energy’ and ‘planet earth’ that is not a creation of the scientist’s brain exists outside the skull and perimeter of epidermis forming the body of the scientist, thus ‘planet earth’, for example, not produced by the scientist’s brain is too large to fit within the scientist’s skull, much less can an actual planet squeeze itself into a neuron or neurons. So if the mind-independent planet even exists, it certainly didn’t exist within the scientist’s skull and certainly did not airbag deploy from the scientist’s skull, the way the scientist’s subjective experience of a planet does.

The only thing one can experience is that which is created or generated by your brain (if one believes the brain creates consciousness). One cannot experience that which is not created nor generated by your brain. Thus all mind-independent things: (1) The evolution of human history ; (2) The evolution of life on earth; (3) The evolution of earth and our solar system—of matter—back to the Big Bang; (4) 68% of the universe is dark energy; (5) Dark matter makes up about 27%; (6) The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe….

…are just imagined states of affairs produced by the brain (if one believes the brain creates consciousness). They is fact, not assumption. They must be entirely imaginary, because we cannot experience mind-independent objects and events, so everything taken to be mind-independent are made up only of one’s consciousness or subjective experience, which is generated by the brain (if one believes the brain creates consciousness).

It’s erroneous because we cannot prove the existence of mind-independent versions of the objects and processes known to scientific discovery and knowledge. We have no evidence that a mind-independent earth exists. We have no evidence that a mind-independent Milky Way exists. We have no evidence of the existence of mind-independent technology. Everything consists of a person’s subjective experience, and the Milky Way, earth, biological cells, and all the processes of physics are all subjective experiences experienced by a subjectively experiencing person. We have no evidence these things exist in the absence of persons.

I can point to the scientists’ own subjective experience and that the things known to be empirically and experientially true to the scientist have only appeared to the scientist when the scientist experienced them, they exist only as long as the scientist experiences them, and disappear when the scientist no longer experiences them. They only exist when the scientist experiences them. I can state that there is no evidence they exist when the scientist no longer experiences them.

It doesn’t matter if one is able to feel satisfied with the knowledge that an afterlife is not necessarily or logically false. The logical fact remains that an afterlife is not necessarily or logically false.

Doesn’t matter if it “works” in a psychological sense to provide comfort that it is an invincible possibility that cannot be ruled out. The fact is that the afterlife cannot be ruled out. Blanket metaphysical possibility, regardless of whether or not one finds comfort in it, or uses it to provide shelter from the “truth” of eternal oblivion.

That’s cool.

Eternal oblivion, if its the case, is eternal oblivion. Nothing anyone can do about that in the absence of gods. Nothing to lose and if there is a lot to lose, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. I’m sure everyone, whether they realize or not, have come close to dying. Probably several times.

Good you didn’t succeed.

I imagine it wouldn’t.

Death is generally believed to be cessation of the existence of consciousness as a result of cessation of function of the brain. As Karen Gervais states as quoted in Max More’s, The Terminus of The Self:

“[H]uman death, understood as the death of a person, is a state in which the function of consciousness has been irreversibly lost as a result of one of several possible combinations of damage to the brain substratum” [150]. “[T]he individual’s essence consists in the possession of a conscious, yet not necessarily continuous, mental life; if all mental life ceases, the person ceases to exist; when the person ceases to exist, the person has died” [157-58].

-Karen Gervais, Defining Death. New Haven: Yale University Press.

But if consciousness does not cease to exist as there is no such thing as physical energy (such that it is consciousness rather than physical energy that exhibits the properties of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics), and if there are no such things as mind-independent brains, much less the ability of mind-independent brains to create or cause the existence of subjective experience, then ‘death’ is just the absence of one’s subjective experience in the mind of another subjectively experiencing person. If things do not cease to exist, “I” simply becomes “It” in the mind of another. If…the aforementioned “ifs” are true.

But anything that is demonstrated or able to be demonstrated must consist of subjective experience: the subjective experience of the person to whom it is demonstrated. Anything that is not materially constructed of subjective experience cannot be demonstrated. Things materially constructed of subjective experience but is not the subjective experience of the person asking for demonstration also cannot be demonstrated.

The most sophisticated conclusion relating to the “empirical evidence of consciousness itself” is that the only thing that appears or demonstrates that it exists is consciousness.

The afterlife is conceived, made up, or imagined as being constituted of consciousness or subjective experience.

The ‘odds’ are only the level in which one believed it, if one were to claim the afterlife or parts of it were conveyed here. If one believed it, the odds are great, if one did not believe it, the odds would be astronomically unlikely or outright false.

Only the existence of subjective experience itself.

But we have no evidence of the existence of mind-independent brains, and it is probably unlikely that subjective experience can rationally have anything to do with something that is not subjective experience or made up of subjective experience. There is no evidence for the existence of mind-independent star stuff.

There is no evidence of the existence of mind-independent brains. There is only evidence of the existence of persons. Thus we are probably just subjective experience in the form of persons, and are not brains.

As I use “faith”, it means belief in something for which there is no evidence i.e., something not experienced by a person. For example, faith in an afterlife is belief in something that cannot be demonstrated with the “matrix” of current human experience. One has faith in an afterlife because (admittedly!) it is consoling against the idea of eternal oblivion and…well…regardless of whether or not it is believed for consoling purposes…objectively it’s existence cannot be ruled out based on it’s absence from the “matrix” of current human consciousness.

Although concocted in my head, the fact remains that human consciousness is a “matrix” composed of one’s experience of the “matrix”. It’s a fact we have no evidence of the existence of mind-independent things, as mind-independent things are you-independent things. And we have no evidence that things that do not exist can be brought into existence, or that things that exist actually go out of existence and not simply change form.

That would be great if we could move beyond the delusion of mind-independence.

I don’t think I’ll ever convince you that how I think is how you should think. You believe that consciousness ceases to exist at death. I believe, regardless of the psychological benefits, that it is objectively possible or even objectively true that things cannot come into nor go out of existence, thus consciousness cannot come into nor go out of existence. At the end of the live long day, I cannot demonstrate the afterlife and I admit and will continue to concede that I cannot demonstrate the afterlife.

Your argument, it seems to me, ultimately comes down to the conviction that truth must be visually demonstrated or b.s. should be called. But demonstration can only entail…and I mean only entails…the appearance of something within the “matrix” or artificial reality of your consciousness. We cannot experience anything objectively outside the “matrix” of our consciousness or anything conceived to be outside one’s consciousness. If the afterlife is a different “matrix” or artificial reality made up of subjective experience lying outside our consciousness, it is in the same boat as the consciousness of other people, and as such cannot be demonstrated.

My entire rebuttal to your “demonstration” requirement is that things can exist without their ever being demonstrated, and given that demonstration is just one’s subjective experience “morphed” into an absurd form, that which lies outside one’s subjective experience is something objective to and separate from the “medium” of ‘demonstration’, thus logically, being separated, has no requirement (outside establishing the belief of a person) to appear.

karp, what i’m claiming is very simple, but what it would mean is easily overlooked unless one knows the degrees of difference between empiricism and radical empiricism. this can be confusing. typically empiricism states that all knowledge is derived from experience, but it doesn’t state that there are things in the world that cannot exist unless they are perceived. the variation of radical empiricism, which is as PGean as much as it is berkeleyean, states that nothing can exist unless it is perceived. this is quite a different claim than saying all knowledge is derived from experience.

with kant i believe that there are certain categories of reason that exist prior to experience and knowledge, which make these very things possible in the first place. substance, space, time, and causation are four such categories that not only exist prior to experience, but are the very foundation of experience itself. that is to say, they are not things that need to be experienced to exist… rather they must exist for experience to happen at all. they provide the structure and content for all empirical experience. if these categories are real, then there is quite a bit of ‘reality’ that is mind-independent.

Experience has to be temporal so time has to exist as a mind independent phenomenon
For the brain cannot function in a timeless state no more than any physical system can

And if time exists then space must exist also so that is another mind independent phenomenon
You cannot function as an organism without an external physical system so that has to be added

So time and space and matter have to first exist before the solipsist does as they cannot simply exist in a vacuum - if they did they would be dead
Even though knowledge or experience cannot be arrived at by mind independent means that does not mean that the mind creates all it perceives

exactly!

To surreptitious75:

Experience is temporal as we experience (“experience”, get it?) things temporally, that is, we have experience that changes from one thing to the next. Time is change and the measure of change. Timelessness, following Wheeler’s notion of ‘pre-geometry’ is changelessness or the state of being forever frozen in one place, never evolving forward with a future difference or shift from one experience to another. We have never experienced timelessness so yes, experience is temporal.

Change, er, time is a mind-independent phenomenon only in the sense that time is an action (change) and not a person. But get this, since existence has only ever appeared in the form of subjective experience, and has only ever appeared in the form of a subjectively experiencing person…well…time is both mind-composed and mind-independent: it is mind-composed in the sense that time, er, change has only ever existed or appeared in the form of changing subjective experience, and it is mind-independent only in the sense that it is a subjectively experienced action, not the person perceiving or experiencing the action.

Given, but besides the point. Given that, if one believes in the physical or something that is not subjective experience, there are two brains not one: there is the brain that is a visual and tactile “hologram” composed of the subjective experience of the perceiving person created by the brain, that would immediately vanish if the person viewing a brain were to suddenly fall unconscious or die, and there is the brain not created by a brain that exists in the external world, has never formed within or ejected from tiny neurons within a skull, and that supposedly exists even if no conscious being were perceiving it.

Within this ludicrous mythology, the brain not created by anyone’s brain does not depend upon brains to exist in the first place, as it exists outside the skull and it would be hard put to see how this external brain was created by and ejected into external world from a brain within a skull. This external brain, that is not the phantom brain (the brain that would disappear as it is made up of the subjective experience of the person perceiving this brain-created ‘brain’) is not made up of subjective experience, as according to the mythology subjective experience did not exist until non-subjective-experience-composed-atoms accidentally and godlessly formed brains.

But as existence has only ever appeared or shown up in the form of a person and that which the person experiences, there is no evidence…

(…as evidence is subjective experience, and things that one has evidence for are ultimately only things one subjectively experiences that are made up of the subjective experience of the one subjectively experiencing them, otherwise they cannot be subjectively experienced as they would be made up of something that is not the subjective experience of the person that would have subjectively experienced them had they been made up of that person’s subjective experience)

…of the existence things that are not the subjective experience of that person, and there is no evidence of the existence of anything that is not subjective experience nor made up of a persons’ subjective experience.

Thus we have no evidence of the existence of mind-independent (not made up of subjective experience) brains, or of the existence of the ‘physical’.

Space exists as a mind-independent phenomenon only in the sense that it is the subjective experience of space, not a person.

There is no evidence of the existence of an external, non-brain created physical system (for those believing the brain creates consciousness). There is only evidence of a ‘physical’ system or organism composed of first-person subjective experience. Anything that is not subjective experience or not made up of subjective experience is entirely imaginary (and the imagination of things not made up of subjective experience are, ironically, made up of subjective experience).

Time and space are made up of subjective experience or at least have only existed or shown up in the form of first-person subjective experience, in the form of first-person subjective experience of time (change) and space (room for stuff to occupy).

Now, as mind-independence (non-subjective experience) cannot logically have anything to do with subjective experience (independent of convenient magic, in which non-subjective experience conjures something that does not exist into existence or stops being non-subjective experience to inexplicably become first-person subjective experience [during which time it cannot both be non-subjective experience and subjective experience]), and there is no evidence for the existence of non-subjective experience, it is reasonable to assume that time and space outside a finite human person (a subjective experience that experiences change and room in finite form) is itself composed of subjective experience…not non-subjective experience, as non-subjective experience may not exist and as before, could have no logical or rational dealing with subjective experience.

While it is not out of the question that non-human subjective experience could be non-person in shape, with the external world consisting of subjective experience in non-human form, it is more elegant and symmetrical that non-human subjective experience exists in the form of a Person occupying the external world, with humans existing within the mind of this Person, the inner mind of the Person being the true form of the external world itself.

Now the consciousness-substance of this Person is the true “godless matter” sustaining and providing the medium for non-human time and change…though the substance continues to depict non-human time and change in the form of subjectively experienced time and change, in terms of how the Person experiences time and change, not time and change independent of persons.

But all is but mere conjecture regarding the nature of the external world, apart from the empirical knowledge of that which unquestionably and undeniably exists—subjectively experiencing persons composed only of first-person subjective experience and the things they experience, composed of the subjective experience of the person subjectively experiencing them.

There is no way that mind independent reality can be demonstrated to exist without it being filtered through the first person subjective experience of a human mind
[ or indeed any mind for that matter ] This is not merely a limitation of physics and of biology but of logic also. The solipsist can not disprove the existence of a mind independent reality no more than the non solipsist can prove it. The default position therefore would be to accept that reality might be either. Yet human minds both at the point of birth and immediately beyond it are just not sufficiently complex enough to be capable of perceiving reality as mind dependent. That would therefore suggest that it is not actually that at all rather the complete opposite

A mind independent reality does not require the existence of a sufficiently complex mind in the same way that a mind dependent one would. From my own subjective experience I have never attempted to perceive external reality beyond automatic sensory perception. If I am making zero conscious effort to perceive external reality as mind dependent that demonstrates to me that it must be mind independent instead. I simply can not accept from a logical perspective that external reality is mind dependent when I am not remotely thinking of that when perceiving what my sense organs are experiencing and what my brain is processing with regard to said reality

But if it appears as first-person subjective experience, it ceases to be mind-independent. Also, it’s hard put to see how mind-independent reality, if it is not first-person subjective experience to begin with prior to filtering, can have anything to do with first-person subjective experience, since it is not first-person subjective experience. There is no good reason for mind-independence to exist. Even if it exists, it is not first-person subjective experience so it doesn’t follow why it should magically turn into or conjure something that does not exist (first-person subjective experience) into existence.

True. But why even entertain the idea of mind-independence (i.e. something that is not subjective experience) when only subjective experience appears to exist? But one can ask the same question about God, I suppose.

Complexity is beside the point. There’s just first-person subjective experience, and fanciful imagination of something that is not first-person subjective experience in the external world. If the second exists, it cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence of the first save through magic. The second is said to have something to do with the first out of denial that the first may be:

  1. The only thing that exists and that has ever existed

  2. Eternal

Err, the state of the external world is not dependent upon what you, I, or anyone else thinks or perceives: the external world is what it is and is not indicated or determined by our thoughts and perceptions, despite the fact we derive our thoughts and perceptions from it. I have only said the external world is probably and most logically made up of mind, i.e. first-person subjective experience, as it makes no sense to get first-person subjective experience from something that is not first-person subjective experience. The external world is “mind-dependent”, then, only in this sense: I did not mean the external world is dependent upon a human’s mind.

Also, you’re not experiencing the external world: just yourself, i.e. your own first-person subjective experience in a “matrix”-like artificial reality made up…well…of you, i.e. your first-person subjective experience, as opposed to something that is not your subjective experience or the subjective experience of any other being in existence. This is proven by the very concept of unconsciousness or death (if unconsciousness or death exists). Everything around you is not the external world, just your first-person subjective experience in visual and tactile form (primarily) in a “matrix”-like virtual reality “Mystique-ing” into the various objects and environments and bodies of persons around you.

The brain doesn’t do anything. It’s just part of the “matrix” or artificial or virtual reality made out of you, that is, your first-person subjective experience, and is a redutio ad absurdum that irritates logic until one comes to find the brain is as useful as a brick when it comes to creating consciousness and reality. It certainly cannot logically create conscious experience.

There is no need for mind-independence in terms of something that is other than or that is not subjective experience. There is mind-independence in the sense “not-your-mind” or “not-my-mind”, that is, something that is not you or me in the external world. But this other need not be something that is not or not made out of subjective experience. It is probably, given that our existence (as first-person subjective experiences) is indicative of the actual nature of all existence, just more subjective experience in the form of an outer Person.

If mind independent reality exists then a mind could only interpret that through first person subjective experience
So there is therefore a direct causal link between an objective phenomenon and the interpretation of it by a mind

When the eye sees something it is because light has travelled from it to the object in question then back again to the eye and the brain which processes
this sensory experience. The object is mind independent but the sight of the object is mind dependent and so there exists a connection between the two

Another mind observing this interaction would treat both the object and the mind as mind independent. A mind can therefore be both mind independent and mind dependent depending on who or what was observing from a specific point. So for example everything that I see is mind dependent but from the external reference fame of another mind it is mind independent. It is simply not possible for two minds to occupy the same point in spacetime and have exactly the same perspective

The second part of this statement is unfalsifiable given that mind independent reality cannot actually be proven or disproven outside of subjective experience
An external mind or machine with mind like capability could prove or disprove it but this knowledge however would still have to be revealed to ones own mind

I think a mind-independent reality exists as “mind-independent” only in the sense of the reality being a “your mind-independent” or “my mind-independent” external world. It is, in my belief, not an external reality made up of something that is not mind (subjective experience) itself. That is to say the mind-independent reality, in order to logically have anything to do with our first-person subjective experience, must itself be composed of first-person subjective experience.

If a mind-independent (“your mind-independent” or “my mind-independent”) reality exists, a mind could only interpret the external reality through first-person subjective experience. This is correct: in order for something (or someone!) in the external world to communicate with you, it (or he/she/they) must form what it has (or he/she/they have) to “say” in the form of—not the subjective experience of any other person in the totality of existence…but your subjective experience. My whole point in this metaphysical regard is that the external message sender, in order to logically communicate to a subjectively experiencing person, must itself be composed of first-person subjective experience.

Only if the objective phenomenon is made up of first-person subjective experience. If it is not made up of first-person subjective experience it cannot logically causally link to or communicate with first-person subjective experience. Why? Because…well…it is something that is not first-person subjective experience, and one cannot rationally or logically derive subjective experience from something that is not subjective experience. There is absolutely no good reason that first-person subjective experience should not have existed for all previous eternity (i.e. there is no good reason for something that does not exist to come into existence without having already existed), and there is certainly no good reason to achieve the existence of first-person subjective experience with something that is not first-person subjective experience.

The only thing we have evidence for the existence of is the visual perception itself, which is composed of first-person subjective experience. We have no evidence for the existence of mind-independent, non-subjective experience composed light; we have no evidence of the existence of a mind-independent, non-subjective experience composed doppelganger of the object being seen; the brain does not nor has it every produced conscious experience, as there is absolutely no evidence of the existence of mind-independent, non-subjective experience composed brains.

There can be no established connection between a non-subjective experience composed object purportedly existing in the external world and an object made up of one’s subjective experience in visual form, as there is no evidence of the existence of non-subjective experience, much less external non-subjective experience in the form of sensory objects.

The entire process of perception is fictional: with the sole exception of the “Everlasting Gob-stopper” of the conscious experience that cranks out at the end of the “Willy Wonka contraption” that is the mind-independent object in the external world, the light or other physical energy that transmits from the object across space to enter the eye, the conversion of this energy into electrical energy in the nerves of the optic nerve, and final transmission of electrons from the optic nerve to the occipital lobe that magically creates the visual image, is entirely make-believe.

Everything you see is mind-dependent in the sense that they are made up of your subjective experience, and disappear when you are no longer attending to or paying attention to them. From an external frame of reference of another mind, you and the objects are “mind-independent” in the sense that the other person is not you. Nowhere in this is there anything that is not subjective experience or not made up of subjective experience.

Intersubjectivity may be impossible (or at least improbable) in terms of usual sensory perception in which (if one believes the brain creates consciousness), difference of perspective occurs because in everyday reality brains of two different persons are always functioning non-isomorphically (non-identically), but there can in principle be experiential isomorphism or experiential mimicry, in which (if one believes the brain creates consciousness) the brains of two beings are manipulated in a way in which the brains are caused to operate identically, with the neurons of each brain firing identically, creating a shared experience between beings in which they share the same sensory experience from the same perspective although their bodies are, of course, lying side by side which would ordinarily lead to difference of visual perspective (see David J. Chalmers, Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia).

True. In the meantime faith continues to do its poor job of “proving” what does or does not exist in the external world.

Right from the start though both of us are required “for the sake of argument” to “accept” certain assumptions/beliefs about the relationship between the objective truth [going back to an explanation for existence itself] and our subjective speculations here and now given the gap between what we think we know and all that can be known.

For me then it is just a matter of pointing out [in these exchanges] the concommitant gap between my own willingness to admit my conjectures are basically WAGs while others seem entirely more adament about their own arguments being true.

What is the precise relationship between the human brain, human consciousness, “I”, and all the rest of it?

And to what extent does someone seem convinced that they actually do understand it?

That’s why I tack on this part:

[b]"What on earth does that have to do with things that we can both know [and demonstrate] about this exchange and things that we cannot.

How would you take us out into the world and, empirically, experientially, experimently etc., prove to us that your own particular intellectual assumptions here have actual substance. Insofar as they can be related to our day to day interactions."[/b]

On the other hand, in a determined universe there is really no distinction at all. Both “mind” matter and “mind-independent” matter are intertwined – wholly in sync with the only possible reality.

After all, what if that explains your arguments here? Or what if the explanation lies in the relationship between “I” and God?

And here we all seem to be stuck in that we can only fall back on speculation and conjecture given the gaps above.

All you are pointing out here [to me] is the gap between the evidence that has been accumulated so far and all the evidence that is actually available to be grasped in order to resolve all the conflicting theories out there about what it all means.

You offer us one theoretical construct to explain it. And no doubt within the philosophical and scientific and theological communities there are many other differing theoretical constructs predicated on many other different assumptions regarding the necessity --eventually – to close the gap between theory and practice.

It’s always the certainty with which one asserts the assumptions of his or her own argument that attracts me. Why? Because then I suspect that this certainty revolves less around what is believed and more around how what is believed manages to comfort and console the believer psychologically.

Clearly, a belief – any belief – in the existence of an afterlife will comfort and console most of us. But you flat out admit right from the start that what is invincible here is your argument…not any accumulation of evidence that demonstrates the validity of it “for all practical purposes.”

Thus when I nudge the discussion down to earth here…

You take it back up into the clouds of abstraction…the “general description” argument. Or, rather, so it seems to me.

What I want is for you to bring your points about the afterlife out into the world that you live in. What brings its existence into focus given the things that you see, hear, feel…experience…from day to day.

“But if…”

Exactly. They provide an argument describing what they believe may be the case.

But then this part:

There is still the part where aspects of any particular subjective experience is able to be related to others in what clearly appear to be objective truths embedded in experiences shared by others.

At least on this side of the grave. But where is the equivalent of that re the other side of grave. What objective truths can be shared in regard to that? For those who have in fact died.

From my frame of mind [and that’s all it is] this is basically intellectual jargon. In other words, evidence here revolves around going endlessly back and forth regarding the definition and the meaning given to words used in the argument itself. Based largely on assumptions one makes about that which is said to constitute evidence in regard to human subjectivity…given the nature of objectivity in a mindless world.

And it ever and always occurs on this side of the grave. Making any speculation about these relationships on the other side of the grave all that more obscure, ineffable.

Again, from my frame of mind, you are creating a thread entitled…

AN INVINCIBLE ARGUMENT FOR THE AFTERLIFE

…and then flat out acknolwedging that beyond the argument itself your faith in the existence of an afterlife is wholly entangled in the intellectual assessment itself. A psychological [consoling] contraption as much as anything else. But that, “objectively it’s existence cannot be ruled out based on it’s absence from the “matrix” of current human consciousness.”

About which you have no capacity to actually demonstrate the meaning of those words. Calling something “a ‘matrix’ of current human consciousness” means what exactly in regard to the behaviors that you choose on this side of the grave as they pertain to what you imagine will be your fate on the other side of it?

Fair enough. You go as far as you can in “thinking it through” and arrive at a set of assumptions which if true allows for the existence of the afterlife “in your head” to be “objectively possible”.

I’m not able to arrive at this conclusion myself because, in part, I am unable to grasp what it is that you think you believe yourself. Maybe that gap can be closed, maybe not. For me though thinking yourself to a particular conslusion about the afterlife is far, far, far removed from demonstrating to others why they should think that way too. Why? Because you are able to prove that the argument is not just a world of words. But that the dots are able to be connected between words and worlds. A world before and a world after the grave.

Your own rendition of a “matrix” as it relates to, say, me typing these words here and now and you reading them there and then is lost on me. Let alone in explaining how this matrix functions before the grave so as to allow me to grasp the consequences of it after the grave.

Thus, stuff like this…

…has a meaning for you that simply goes over my head. As it relates to the things we do from day to day; and as that relates to what we imagine for “I” after the day we die.

A mind independent reality can be interpreted through first person subjective experience while at the same time being entirely independent of that experience
An object that exists independent of a mind observing it can just as easily exist without a mind observing it - from its perspective there is no difference
It only matters to the mind doing the observing not to the thing being observed because the thing being observed has no consciousness or self awareness