Note that the (party-line) view that consciousness is an emergent property is at least an acknowledgement that strict reductionism cannot work to fully explain consciousness-that at least has been recognized, even by those who otherwise are diehard materialists.
You appear to have completely missed the word “trivial” in my post you cite to support this. To clarify, my consciousness is only a property of the cosmos insofar as I’m an object that is part of the cosmos.
Emergence does not in any way contradict materialism. It’s a facet of material interaction.
Well-formed logical and mathematical statements are irrefutable. For example, if X causes Y, and Y causes Z, then X causes Z. This is always, and necessarily, true.
I don’t think that’s true. I’ve simply taken the position that it may be because I’m interested in the discussion and the possibilities. Instead of an interesting exchange of ideas and possiibilities, the vast majority of responses have been “How ridiculous.” - I don’t think that’s helpful, interesting, or useful. So I continue to offer possibilities in the hope that someone will pick up the conversation in a civilized, agenda-free manner and share their insights, beliefs and knowledge.
Because:
And also from my op:
And instead of any kind of thoughtful examination of what constitutes fact or opinion as applied to things which are currently impossible to falsify, as Gould (SEE THE OP) explains is the test for a fact, this thread has been a string of “The afterlife is bullshit” which, if you care to pay the slightest bit of attention, is not really a response to my OP or my position.
It’s also been a string of “the afterlife is bullshit” without a single cite of any kind to anything that backs up that assertion, which makes it even more disheartening. Because if someone had bothered to back up their rigid convictions with some science, that would have gone a lot further to address the OP by demonstrating that yes, there have been experiments and research that do disprove X, and my understanding would change. But that hasn’t happened. It’s been opinions formed around interpretations of theories offered as fact that is as irrefutable as the fact of the tides. And this is the Dope, this is GD - “Because I’m telling you so” just doesn’t cut it.
Very disappointing.
Somebody missed the post-Newtonian part of science, and also might not be clear on what “true” and “false” mean even within the subset of rhetoric you are describing.
Uh, maybe that is a big part of your misunderstanding.
You seem extremely poorly versed in modern science, and the scientific method itself, yet you are willing to assert what it knows, what it doesn’t know, what it can and can’t know.
No wonder you are disappointed.
Perhaps you can explain the science you “heard” that leads you to believe the universe is infinite? That is a position I would guess would be more closely associated with faith and religion rather than science.
Not that I needed this book to point it out, but I am actually in the middle of reading Hawking’s “A brief History of Time” right now, and the whole point of the book so far seems to be to explain precisely this point to the lay public.
It’s not like this hasn’t been out there in the general press for decades, the better part of your adult life, so I am nothing short of astounded that the idea of an infinite universe is influencing you in any way related to science but not faith at all.
Do you require a cite to back up the assertion that there is no Santa? Santa is much more likely than an afterlife. Do you require a cite to back up the assertion that there is no Queen Vampire? A Queen Vampire is much more likely than an afterlife. Do you require a cite to back up the assertion that you aren’t a rotting corpse with a spell cast on you to make you think you are alive?
You are giving an afterlife a free pass because you like the idea.
It would really help if you understood that one does not disprove fantasy. One asks for evidence. I can’t disprove that you aren’t a magical clockwork gnome.
You are applying different standards to things that have equal evidence. This makes you utterly biased.
All anyone is trying to tell you is that you are choosing to believe in the fantasy that appeals to you. You are created a false premise that you have to disprove your silly fantasy, while at the same time dismissing the Queen Vampire. Again, you are close minded about it, demanding impossible refutations of the thing you like, while dismissing other equally silly concepts.
Pretending you’re above it all doesn’t make you reasonable.
I do not recall agreeing at any point that “continuance of consciousness after death” is in any way the topic of discussion here.
The topic that is under discussion here is whether it is counterproductive to good debate and exchange of thoughts & ideas for a person to behave as if what seems apparent to them is “how things are, end of story”, with the specific example from the OP being
I understood that to be inviting not so much a discussion on whether or not there is indeed an afterlife (which probably would require defining some terms) but whether or not it is fair to assume that the terms have been defined, that the understandings of their meaning has been established, and that the assertion at hand (in this EXAMPLE “there is no afterlife”) is therefore a nonproblematic assertion of fact (correct or incorrect); with the larger question being “Shouldn’t we be more cautious about making those kinds of assumptions when subjects like this are being debated in GD?”.
To the latter question I would say “yes, we should”.
To the former question I have given my answer: it depends on what you and I and the other participants mean when we say “afterlife”; but if I accept the definition of afterlife as life that continues after life ends, then yeah it’s fair to conclude that there isn’t any. But the important stuff is all inside that “if”.
Agreed. That is not something I consider a “fact”, however, but rather a syllogism. I myself (see upthread) have asserted that there is no A in the set of all non-A.
Maybe we’re just arguing terminologies (once again) but I would consider a fact something of this form:
X causes Y (independent blind tests yield repeatable findings that the presence of X is sufficient in all cases to correlate 1:1 with Y, X is prior to Y, and we controlled for every other possible coterminous variable we could think of; and it makes sense to us.).
That is not an irrefutable fact. Additional tests will not turn it into one. It’s a well-supported hypothesis. I’d probably find it a compelling argument if I thought the research had been well performed.
Do a similar set of experiments and you may also convince me that Y causes Z, but that won’t be an irrefutable fact either. But assuming for the sake of argument that X really does cause Y and Y really does cause Z, X will cause Z. I agree. That’s how it works.
Somebody missed the word “if” in my post. That causation in the real world is often far more complex than the situation I described doesn’t change the truth of my statement. Also, since when has logic been a subset of rhetoric?
Quite. I’d say that a syllogism and a statement of fact are true statements, though.
The reason for using that example is that I consider the afterlife, using what I consider to be the correct definition, to be logically impossible. If someone can come up with a testable concept of afterlife, we can attempt to determine if it’s true using your (admirable) definition of scientific fact.
It sounds like to all intents and purposes the soulless universe is functionally identical to the universe with a soul or souls. It seems that believers who follow their reason always get to this place.
All I can say is that you should have paid more attention to the results of your clever experiment.
Your examples demonstrate that we can construct statements that represent logically impossible things. For instance, “before” the beginning of time, north of the north pole, and four sided triangles.
How is the universe where the spirit of the board or the tribe lives on after all who had any inkling of its existence are gone different from the one where it does not live on?
Perhaps the whole afterlife business is the result of our inability to imagine a world where we no longer exist, not really. The narrator of Elton John’s “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself” song talks about hanging around for a couple of days after doing it to enjoy the results - that always has seemed to me a perfect illustration of this problem.
No! Your consciousness is not a property of the cosmos. Consciousness is a property of the cosmos.
It is not trivial. The cosmos exists and consciousness exists. As there is only one cosmos, so is there only one consciousness.
*Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate. *
I was scrolling up from the bottom and this is the sentence from your post that I saw first.
Which made reading the rest of it a complete waste of time, since you’ve obviously not bothered to actually read or comprehend what I’ve said multiple times, starting with the OP. You just want to tell someone they are wrong, and I’m the most convenient person.
By being so sloppy, inattentive and indifferent to what is ACTUALLY being said, you rob only yourself.
But have at it. I’ll direct myself to people who appear to be paying attention.
You rock my world.
You’re the one ignoring content here. You have chosen to accept that evidence is necessary to disprove an afterlife. A default affirmative stance. You have not similarly accepted that evidence is necessary to disprove a dragon living in a garage. Your position is purely based on your own biases and desires. It is anything but rational and utterly self serving.
Sorry, but you’re the one with the closed mind here. I can only point out your incorrect reasoning, I can’t force you to understand.
So, Stoid, are you going to define what you mean by “afterlife”, before asserting or assuming that it is not testable by science?
And please, let it be more than, “Afterlife means a state of existence after one dies that cannot be tested by science.”