"Life after death: how reason can prove that its possible"

ANYTHING that is not established as impossible...is possible.

You do not have to prove it. By definition, it is.

Agreed. Life after death is possible.

That is a redundant observation. What was addressed from the first paragraph of the OP is that the argument is addressed to those who currently regard an afterlife as impossible or, at least, do not recognise the possibility.

TVCL
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↪Frank Apisa That is a redundant observation. What was addressed from the first paragraph of the OP is that the argument is addressed to those who currently regard an afterlife as impossible or, at least, do not recognise the possibility. — TVCL

Nothing redundant about it, TV.

It simply is a statement of fact.

Unless a thing is established as impossible...IT IS POSSIBLE.

One does not have to prove such a thing any more than one has to prove that a circle has no corners or a four sided figure is not a triangle.

Maybe you don't need to have some kind of religious faith to believe that there is something after dead, but you do need to believe that human consciousness is separate from human biology... which i'd say seems very much like some kind of supernatural belief.

If you don't believe that consciousness is separate from human biology, than there doesn't seem to be very much space for something after dead, because dead is the end of biological life, and as such also the end of consciousness.

Unless a thing is established as impossible...IT IS POSSIBLE. — Frank Apisa

I'm not contending this. I am contending the relevance to this post and it is irrelevant. It does not, by itself, demonstrate that an afterlife is possible by definition. Some do regard an afterlife as impossible.

Even if an afterlife were defined as something which is possible or has not been established as impossible, your observation would be tautological: "an afterlife must be possible because it is not impossible" the question would remain: "how do you know?"

That's a fair contention.

Of course, the wedge that we could drive here is to appeal to the "hard question of consciousness". If consciousness was proven to be tethered to biology, there would be a way to prove that consciousness comes to an end at the point of biological death. However, we seem unable to demonstrate the exact connection between biology and consciousness and where, exactly, one is tethered to the other.

What are your thoughts on this?

TVCL
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↪Frank Apisa

Unless a thing is established as impossible...IT IS POSSIBLE.
— Frank Apisa

I'm not contending this. I am contending the relevance to this post and it is irrelevant. It does not, by itself, demonstrate that an afterlife is possible by definition. Some do regard an afterlife as impossible.

Even if an afterlife were defined as something which is possible or has not been established as impossible, your observation would be tautological: "an afterlife must be possible because it is not impossible" the question would remain: "how do you know?" — TVCL

I appreciate what you are saying, TV. You seem to be suggesting that my comment "Unless a thing is established as impossible, it is possible" does not add anything to the conversation..

One: "Unless a thing is established as impossible...it is possible"...is tautological.

Two: Mentioning that makes a hell of a lot more sense than mentioning that "Reason can prove it is possible."

↪ChatteringMonkey

That's a fair contention.

Of course, the wedge that we could drive here is to appeal to the "hard question of consciousness". If consciousness was proven to be tethered to biology, there would be a way to prove that consciousness comes to an end at the point of biological death. However, we seem unable to demonstrate the exact connection between biology and consciousness and where, exactly, one is tethered to the other.

What are your thoughts on this? — TVCL

I think there's certainly a lot we don't know about consciousness at this point, but we do know some things. And from the things we do know, it seems like a reasonable assumption that our consciousness does indeed seems to be tied to our biology.

For example drinking a lot of alcohol or getting hit hard on the head, can result in you being unconscious. This alone seems enough to conclude that the state of our biology at least has some non-negligible effects on our consciousness.

You have yet to make an argument or to offer anything constructive

ANYTHING that is not established as impossible...is possible.
You do not have to prove it. By definition, it is. — Frank Apisa

Indeed by definition. Which puts it all in the house of language - which itself is not reality, by definition. Language is reactive to reality - when it is dealing with reality. That is, language is our best tool for exhibiting what of it we have captured, if and when we capture any of it.

But language also soars off away from the ground of reality into speculation about things for which there is no referent in reality. And this can be a problem. What is possible on the ground is not the same thing as what is possible in speculation. And they reconcile only with careful and appropriate qualification.

There might be life after death? Does that not call for some qualification on the meanings of both "life" and "death"? And while it may be speculatively possible, that does not mean it is possible "on the ground." Two different things, confused because of similar language, among other reasons..

Yeah, it's interesting, right? The two do seem to interact and so there is some connection there. That's why the hard question appears to be so weird... on the one hand we experience effects on consciousness due to to changes in biology yet, on the other hand, the "Hard Question" leads to the conclusion that even if you mapped an organism down to the atom, it may well be that one could not say why it is conscious, or even prove that it is, in fact, conscious.

Consider this extract taken from the extended version of the OP:
"First of all, we could posit that just as we don't understand how consciousness is tied to physical reality, we don't understand all of the ways in which the contents of consciousness are tied to physical reality, such as our memory. It might be that our memory is stored in the brain, or it might be that there are aspects to memory that are as ethereal as consciousness that are not tied down to the brain. However, even if we could also consider that this possibility may be very slight given the apparent evidence, and it appears more likely that the memories and other aspects of our physical being that make up our identity will not carry over after death, we could still posit that life possibly carries on after death, but with a different identity. In this manner, you or I would have all but our consciousnesses swapped out for new identities at the point of death.

In this sense, you or I in the sense of who we are now will die. But our lives as-such might carry on. Consider by analogy how it may be as if consciousnesses is like a series of films being played. Once one film ends, the protagonist, characters and world within that film end, and when the next film begins, its cast and universe come into being. Likewise, it may be as if the film of our life ends and an entirely new story beings, but consciousness carries over and there is still life for "us" in the sense that a film is always playing, whether we remember the one before it or not. In any case, this possibility gives an adventurous spin on the cycle of life and death. If we consider a second analogy, it might be as if the cycle is akin to a series of video games in which the characters from one game do not exist to the characters in the next and as for you and I, instead of having our characters, their memory and the progress of the game carried over from one game to the next, it would be like starting with a new character in a new game each time life renews. Again, I am not advocating that this will actually happen, but positing it as another possibility as evidence that mere nothingness after death is far from guaranteed."

What do you reckon?

I think we simply do not yet understand how consciousness can emerge from physical stuff. But the fact that we can't explain it yet, doesn't mean that it doesn't emerge solely from the physical. Of course there's always the possibility that something else is going on, but what that something else would be seems entirely unclear to me. And alternative explanations generally have the problem that they seem at odds with other more fundamental scientific understanding of the universe. I get a bit suspicious if we would need to revise theories that otherwise seems to work perfectly fine everywhere in the universe, only because we can't yet explain how a small part of it, consciousness, works. Which is why I would put my money on consciousness arising out of and ending with our biological life.

Specifically about your text, this seems like an odd statement to me:

we could still posit that life possibly carries on after death — TVCL

Isn't death, by definition, the end or absence of life? I'd be curious to know how you define life (or death) such that it is possible to carry on after death.

I'm conceiving of life as conscious awareness, in the sense that a subject can only know that it is "alive" if it has conscious awareness which may be related to biological life, but not the same as if. Consider for example how you and I, for example, were living organisms in-utero but life as we know it did not begin until some time after birth.

Admittedly, this isn't an exact definition, but life as conscious awareness is used in contrast the conception of non-life in which many commonly presume that there will non-consciousness after death. Admittedly, even in biological life we are at time consciousness and then non-conscious but what I am arguing against is that this non-consciousness will be final at the point of biological death and that conscious awareness will not occur again afterwards.

Does that make sense? That might have been a bit messy.

Which is why I would put my money on consciousness arising out of and ending with our biological life. — ChatteringMonkey

As for this, I cannot knock you for that. The certainty has been far from demonstrated and so this remains a bet which is as likely as the alternative. For my own part, I hold off being sure for the reasons explained above.

I'm conceiving of life as conscious awareness, in the sense that a subject can only know that it is "alive" if it has conscious awareness which may be related to biological life, but not the same as if. Consider for example how you and I, for example, were living organisms in-utero but life as we know it did not begin until some time after birth.

Admittedly, this isn't an exact definition, but life as conscious awareness is used in contrast the conception of non-life in which many commonly presume that there will non-consciousness after death. Admittedly, even in biological life we are at time consciousness and then non-conscious but what I am arguing against is that this non-consciousness will be final at the point of biological death and that conscious awareness will not occur again afterwards.

Does that make sense? That might have been a bit messy. — TVCL

I understand where you are coming from I think. But there seem to be some issues with it, which you seem to be aware of, because as you say we can be non- or un- conscious and still be considered alive... which would point to the conclusion that consciousness is not necessarily a determining factor for life?

In biology, life has been a notoriously slippery thing to define, but I think typically it is understood to be something that takes up energy to sustain itself in the same form (homeostasis) and reproduces itself via a process that allows for variation (not merely replication). Death then is when it no longer sustains itself. Consciousness usually isn't included in that description...

But I take it that since you think consciousness will occur again afterwards, and don't think it is tied to some biological life, you have to assume some kind of panpsychism? If so, I don't think I have much to say to that... we just have different basic assumptions then.

Respectfully, I'm not sure whether the position requires an assumption of panpsychism and we may be speaking at odds if two definitions of life are being conflated.

The biological definition of life accounts for biological process, but says nothing about whether life is present for the subject. For example, if a fly is biologically alive but is devoid of consciousness, in what sense could the fly regard itself as alive? Or, another way to put it is that if you or I were biologically alive, but our consciousness came to a final end, in what sense would you or I, as subjects, know that we are alive? This is why we can remove consciousness from the definition of biological life but, when we do so, we are merely describing a process and an organism becomes just as "alive" in some sense as an engine.

Moreover, panpsychism posits that mind is more fundamental than matter to the extent that it permeates the entire universe. Admittedly, the OP leaves that possibility open but it does not appear to be an assumption that is required for the OP. It could well be the case - as you hold - that matter is more fundamental and that conscious life must arise from biological life. The case being made is simply that this is an open question and we cannot presume that - say - conscious life will come to a Final End once our biological life does.

Respectfully, I'm not sure whether the position requires an assumption of panpsychism and we may be speaking at odds if two definitions of life are being conflated.

The biological definition of life accounts for biological process, but says nothing about whether life is present for the subject. For example, if a fly is biologically alive but is devoid of consciousness, in what sense could the fly regard itself as alive? Or, another way to put it is that if you or I were biologically alive, but our consciousness came to a final end, in what sense would you or I, as subjects, know that we are alive? This is why we can remove consciousness from the definition of biological life but, when we do so, we are merely describing a process and an organism becomes just as "alive" in some sense as an engine.

Moreover, panpsychism posits that mind is more fundamental than matter to the extent that it permeates the entire universe. Admittedly, the OP leaves that possibility open but it does not appear to be an assumption that is required for the OP. It could well be the case - as you hold - that matter is more fundamental and that conscious life must arise from biological life. The case being made is simply that this is an open question and we cannot presume that - say - conscious life will come to a Final End once our biological life does. — TVCL

I guess I don't see why something needs to be aware that it is alive, to be considered alive, that's not how we typically use the term I don't think. Someone in a coma is generally considered to be alive, even though he is not conscious.

You seem to be making a distinction between two sorts of 'life', biological life, and some kind of life as awareness... but it isn't clear to me why you wouldn't just call 'life as awareness', consciousness. Why the need for an additional concept for life when we already have a word for essentially the same thing? Doesn't that just unnecessarily complicate things? Or maybe I just don't understand what it is you are trying to convey with that second concept of life, that can't already be done with the concept of consciousness.

Regarding panpsychism, maybe biological life (or some kind of other artificial life) it not strictly necessary for consciousness in a non-panpsychist universe, in the sense that it is logically precluded without it... But I guess it's more a matter of induction, that as far as we know, consciousness only occurs in biological life. And so if you want to posit that consciousness can exist outside of it, it seems reasonable to expect an account for how and in what way consciousness arises then. Maybe it's not that reasonable since we can't yet explain how consciousness arise out of biology :-). Anyway, that lead me to idea you may have to assume some kind of panpsychism to give a beginning of an account for how consciousness can exist outside of biology. But maybe there are other ways, I wouldn't know and I don't have particular strong opinions on that.

but it isn't clear to me why you wouldn't just call 'life as awareness', consciousness. Why the need for an additional concept for life when we already have a word for essentially the same thing? — ChatteringMonkey

This is where we might be tripping over one-another because this is essentially what I'm trying to say. But you have my apologies if I've not made my writing or intentions clear enough. I'm using the definition of life as consciousness. The idea behind using "life after death" in the OP is simply because when I hear people commonly refer to life after death, they do not imply that their biological life continues after death but that there will be a continuation of their 'mind' or their 'soul' at some point, even if this requires a new body. In brief - when they say that there will be "life after death" they imply that conscious awareness will occur again at some point after their current, biological life has come to an end. Hopefully this explains the rationale for my use of terms.

As to the latter part of your comment; I'd like to make a recommendation and do so without be factitious of meaning disrespect (it be hard to convey tone properly over forums). The recommendation is that you have a further look at the Hard Problem of Consciousness, if you are so inclined. The idea that:

as far as we know, consciousness only occurs in biological life. — ChatteringMonkey

might not be what it seems. We may not, in fact, strictly know that consciousness either occurs in biological life or only occurs in biological life. We presume that it does because we see physical behaviours that we assume are connected to consciousness, but we lack a scientific way of getting a metric for measuring the subjective experience of what it is "like" for a subject to be conscious. Without which, we may be unable to demonstrate where consciousness does or does not occur.

This is where we might be tripping over one-another because this is essentially what I'm trying to say. But you have my apologies if I've not made my writing or intentions clear enough. I'm using the definition of life as consciousness. The idea behind using "life after death" in the OP is simply because when I hear people commonly refer to life after death, they do not imply that their biological life continues after death but that there will be a continuation of their 'mind' or their 'soul' at some point, even if this requires a new body. In brief - when they say that there will be "life after death" they imply that conscious awareness will occur again at some point after their current, biological life has come to an end. Hopefully this explains the rationale for my use of terms. — TVCL

Ok yes, but isn't that essentially a religious rationale then, in that you seem to define terms only for the purpose of making sense of what seems like essentially religious concepts like the soul... which was something I thought you wanted to avoid as stated in the OP. And isn't your argument then a bit circular, insofar as you already assume and have to assume something like a soul-like awareness in your definitions for the argument to work?

might not be what it seems. We may not, in fact, strictly know that consciousness either occurs in biological life or only occurs in biological life. We presume that it does because we see physical behaviours that we assume are connected to consciousness, but we lack a scientific way of getting a metric for measuring the subjective experience of what it is "like" for a subject to be conscious. Without which, we may be unable to demonstrate where consciousness does or does not occur. — TVCL

If you mean by "strictly know", knowing with absolute certainty, then yes we do not know... but I don't think that is a standard science or I should necessarily aim for, as it probably is an impossible standard to attain. I think we are justified in inferring things from what we do know or experience to the best of our abilities and form tentative beliefs until we are confronted with evidence to the contrary... because that seems to be the best we can do. If all swans we have ever seen are white, it seems reasonable to assume that all swans are white, that is until we see a black swan.

So I guess what i'm saying is, what would count as an adequate demonstration for me, is showing me a black swan, rather than pointing to everything that is theoretically possible... anything is theoretically possible unless it is proven impossible, like some previous poster already mentioned.

By changing the meaning of the terms...

but isn't that essentially a religious rationale then, — ChatteringMonkey

No... not necessarily. Although, it may depend on how broadly we define "religion". The case that I was/am trying to make is that one need not appeal to a given religion such as Hinduism or Christianity in order to accept the logic of the OP. The idea would be that one need not have faith in a given religion to recognise the possibility of life after death. If the logic of the OP works, one might have to posit the existence of a 'soul' to explain the possibility, but I'm not sure if that alone makes it religious.

If you mean by "strictly know", knowing with absolute certainty, then yes we do not know... but I don't think that is a standard science or I should necessarily aim for, as it probably is an impossible standard to attain. — ChatteringMonkey

That's fair enough, but that isn't quite the argument. The argument is not that we cannot know about subjective consciousness with absolute certainty, it's that we might not have any knowledge of it at all outside of our own direct, personal experience of consciousness. In that regard, it is unlike other scientific conclusions that we make based on good but incomplete data.
Consider the matter in this way:
Let's say that you put a man in a machine that maps his body down to the atom. Now, you stab the man in the hand, exciting the signals there that go up to the brain. Now, let's say that you track this signal minutely from the nerves in the hand, through the body, to the neurons in the brain... the question is: at what point could you say that you have observed the conscious, subjective experience of "pain" and have not simply tracked an biological-electrical process?

I would contend that all of us, whether we are religious or not, can know at least two things about death:
First, we know what it can be like to not be alive (which is the state we were in before we were born) and;
Second, we know what it can be like to not be dead (which is the state that we are in now). — TVCL

I am not religious, but I am also not an Atheist. So, I'm not prejudiced against the idea of life after death. To the contrary, as a child, I was taught to bank on an afterlife, despite the paucity of evidence outside the Bible. But that "karmic" reward was contingent, and making the wrong choice would be horrible beyond imagination. Yet, many semi-religious afterlife proponents discount the possibility of eternal punishment, when they imagine a do-over in a new Body, or as a bodyless Soul. When we are imagining future possibilities though, it would be unreasonable not to take into account the equally important negative prospects.

It's easy to convince grieving survivors that their loved ones are merely "sleeping", and will eventually wake up. But that metaphor does not really apply in the first case you mentioned. Before we were born, we were not sleeping, we were non-existent. So the most logical assumption would be that after death, we would return to the original state. Of course, we can imagine many other paths into the "unknown territory" of the future. But the logician Bertrand Russell noted --- long before humans had any means to visit that unexplored realm --- that it's possible there is a tiny teapot in space between Earth and Mars. Yet, in the absence of objective evidence it would be more reasonable to deny or discount that remote possibility, because, at this time, it could not be proven right or wrong, except as an item of blind Faith.

Regarding what might count as evidence of life-after-death, most of the recent accounts are based on weak non-empirical anecdotal evidence. So, if your prior inclination is leaning toward an afterlife, you will more easily accept such hopeful stories as valid evidence. But skeptical scientists typically put more weight on reproducible objective empirical evidence, and subjective opinions are discounted, pending further developments. Unfortunately, new evidence is typically evaluated in the light of an unproven hypothesis or theory.

As the quote above says, we know two things about Death (from inference, not experience), and Life (from first person experience) but we know nothing about Afterlife, except as speculation based on the inherent human desire to continue living as long as possible. Ironically, the Bible put a limit on that possibility, threescore & ten years, yet I am still alive well beyond that boundary. So, I could easily imagine that I could outlive the statistical inevitability of Death, and enjoy immortality. But, while I can't categorically deny that possibility, I am not optimistic about its actuality. Therefore, going against my youthful training, I am not making plans for an afterlife. Yet if I wake-up in Heaven, I'll be pleasantly surprised. And if I wake-up in Hell, I'll have no choice but to "live" with that possibility. :pray:

Karmic Reward : denoting good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one's actions.

1 Thessalonians 4:13
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

Russel's Teapot : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

What counts as evidence ? : "At the same time, evidence means little in itself. To make sense of evidence, we need theory, an understanding of context, prior experience and a critical mindset. . . . Evidence is always gathered in a particular context, which means that evidence in itself can never be treated as a "universal truth".
https://cebma.org/faq/what-counts-as-evidence/

Either there is or there isn't. The burden of proof falls on the positive claim either way. So without proof it doesn't really matter.

ANYTHING that is not established as impossible...is possible. — Frank Apisa

That's wrong. There may be impossibilities that have not been established.

=

By changing the meaning of the terms... — creativesoul

Yep. Poor technique leading to delusional musings.

we know what it can be like to not be alive (which is the state we were in before we were born) and; — TVCL

Well, no; there is not a something it is like to have not been born.

No... not necessarily. Although, it may depend on how broadly we define "religion". The case that I was/am trying to make is that one need not appeal to a given religion such as Hinduism or Christianity in order to accept the logic of the OP. The idea would be that one need not have faith in a given religion to recognise the possibility of life after death. If the logic of the OP works, one might have to posit the existence of a 'soul' to explain the possibility, but I'm not sure if that alone makes it religious. — TVCL

It need not imply religious faith, it could exist outside religion certainly. But the concept is religious in origin, and there doesn't seem a good reason to believe in it otherwise. So the question seems to be why would we assume something like a soul to begin with.

That's fair enough, but that isn't quite the argument. The argument is not that we cannot know about subjective consciousness with absolute certainty, it's that we might not have any knowledge of it at all outside of our own direct, personal experience of consciousness. In that regard, it is unlike other scientific conclusions that we make based on good but incomplete data.
Consider the matter in this way:
Let's say that you put a man in a machine that maps his body down to the atom. Now, you stab the man in the hand, exciting the signals there that go up to the brain. Now, let's say that you track this signal minutely from the nerves in the hand, through the body, to the neurons in the brain... the question is: at what point could you say that you have observed the conscious, subjective experience of "pain" and have not simply tracked an biological-electrical process? — TVCL

I don't disagree with this, we don't have any direct experience of consciousness outside of our own. Following this line of reasoning to the extreme, we don't really know if a world outside of our own experience even exists, because all we have is our experience... and so it'd be perfectly coherent to believe that only our experience exist. Solipsism is logically irrefutable. We typically do assume that a world outside our experience exists however, not because there is a good argument or proof for it, but because it's one of those things that seem better to believe in than not, all things being equal, because solipsism is a dead end (aside from the fact that we are probably hardwired to assume that a world outside of our experience exist). I'd say something similar about other people's consciousness. We assume that people that look and behave in a similar way have a similar experience.... and I think you do too. So are we to entertain a possibility we don't really believe in, for the sake of making another argument?

Banno
9k
ANYTHING that is not established as impossible...is possible.
— Frank Apisa

That's wrong. There may be impossibilities that have not been established. — Banno

ANYTHING that is not established as impossible...is possible, Banno.

They are at least POSSIBLE.

Think about it.

Unless a thing is established as impossible...IT IS POSSIBLE. — Frank Apisa

I think it is better to say 'for all we know it is possible.' Why do I say this?

Well, saying something is possible can mean: I can't rule it out.

But it can also mean something like given the conditions of the universe of reality one thing that might happen or whose reality could be supported is X.

One is an in situ realization of what i or we can't rule out (now) and the other is an ontological claim.