• Streetlight
    9.1k
    I have no time for clomping words together and then having to take seriously the idea that an accident of grammar ought to be dignified as something to take seriously either scientifically or philosophically. Just because one word can happen to follow another doesn't mean it ought to be 'taken seriously as a scientific possibility'. One can name a billion utterly stupid and ridiculous hypotheses and one can't use 'buT ScIeNtIfIc PosIbiliTy' as a cudgel to entertain any nonsense that pops into anyone's head. It's a 'scientific possibility' that say, Bob Marley's mum was a cow at some point, but no one has to take that shit seriously.
  • coolazice
    59
    I'm not sure why the hangup on semantics and grammar given that you've already pointed out that there is an actual non-semantic possibility here. Nor is anyone forcing you to take anything seriously. But you seem to have a view of what consciousness is - "it is a product of a process of self-relation that enables situating oneself in an environment so as to act within it" - so why not encourage experiments to find out if this is the case, and if it isn't the case, investigate whether it might be something else, something that could potentially survive the body? That doesn't seem to me to be on the level of Bob Marley's cow theories, nor of mistakes of grammar (which, by the way, are mutually exclusive problems). You seem to be positing a hypothesis - it's a hypothesis I think is very plausible - but then saying that anything which falls outside this hypothesis is ipso facto nonsensical and therefore no interesting scientific discoveries can be made without this hypothesis. In other words, you seem very wedded to a certain paradigm, but you haven't yet made clear (to me at least) why yours is the only possible paradigm. I'm sure if you were feeling creative or generous enough you yourself could come up with 5 more schema to explain consciousness in ways which were neither stupid nor ridiculous nor 'accidents of grammar'...

    Having said that, I'll take some time off to read the article more closely, and think some more about induced OBEs.
  • Streetlight
    9.1k
    I'm not sure why the hangup on semantics and grammar given that you've already pointed out that there is an actual non-semantic possibility here.coolazice

    Have I? Because I mentioned that while you at least offered something others didn't, even what you did offer feel into conceptual incoherency once you actually pried at it a bit - i.e. it had an underdeveloped concept of 'consciousness' at work. And frankly, don't talk to me about 'possibility'. 'Possibility' is a sham used by every half baked shaman wishing to defend aliens and cow mothers and square circles. The modality of 'possibility' simply does not excuse this trash. Anyone even entertaining the very idea of an 'afterlife' needs to minimally answer the question: what kind of thing is consciousness that it could be detached from a body, and how does or can this relate to what we know of consciousness as it pertains to bodies (i.e. everything we know of consciousness now)? What explanatory mechanism could be, even in principle, be at work here? The second part being the most important issue here. Because with out this, it's word games. That's it. It's not that anything 'outside my paradigm' is ipso facto nonsense. It's that without an articulated alternative paradigm, then I absolutely reserve the right to dismiss it as utter trash. Because then literally no one has any idea what they are talking about.
  • Mystic
    145
    You don't really need to convince a skeptic.
    Many people are too wedded to their ideology to entertain serious questions about life after death.
    Some commit the mistake of assuming conciousness is the brain. Zero evidence for this. Others falsely claim conciousness is non physical,also false.
    Many people have physical and verbal contact with "departed" Loved ones,I don't see you how you can disprove this,despite some cases being fraudulent.
    It's like proving that your wife loves you to a dogmatic scientist. How would you do that? And why would you care about a strangers dogmatic opinion?
  • 180 Proof
    14k
    :up:

    Anyone even entertaining the very idea of an 'afterlife' needs to minimally answer the question: what kind of thing is consciousness that it could be detached from a body, and how does or can this relate to what we know of consciousness as it pertains to bodies (i.e. everything we know of consciousness now)? What explanatory mechanism could be, even in principle, be at work here? The second part being the most important issue here. Because with out this, it's word games.StreetlightX
    :100: :fire:
  • baker
    5.6k
    I know evidence that the conscious mind continues after bodily death is rare and iffy at best. But what type of evidence would be reasonable to convince skeptics that an afterlife probably is a real possibility?
    — TiredThinker

    Why do you want to convince them?
    baker

    Still waiting for an answer.
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