Haven't some of them been debunked? — Michael Ossipoff

I think that it would be difficult to debunk but it would also be difficult to verify. I think it is more likely that children will remember because adult social patterns tend to force a denial of any such memory sense.

What an suggesting is that it is a area worth investigating. So much can be explained with such a new paradigm. Everything seems to fit. Anyway, I hope some young, brave, creative group of philosophers who want to do more in their life than proving with logic that there is no free will, will be motivated to start delving deeply into this fascinating possibility.

cool post.

It seems necessary to point out that having even a very strong, clear memory does not mean that what is remembered is what happened.

There is reification here, to be sure. What is being reified are cups, tables, and kettles. The stuff that our language talks about.

If you could find that objectionable... well, it takes all sorts. — Banno

When I say things like:

The kettle is boiling.
The cup is in the cupboard,
There is no third person point of view.

I am using the third person form. I have no problem using it to talk about the world as it is, abstracted from how it is experienced, I do it all the time. What I object to is smuggling a fictional experience back in in the form of a third person who experiences it. I do not object to reifying kettles, but to reifying grammar.
There is a kettle.
There is a third person mode of speech.
There is no third person, and no third person point of view.
If you think there is a third person, be so kind as to introduce them to me.

And that's me done with this.

Since we are arguing Reincarnation, following should be well defined first:

1) Life
2) Consciousness
3)Time
4)Death

Should we ignore it?

One time someone was addressing me by name while saying the things I do to someone else, and I told them that it's rude to talk about people in the third person while they're in the room. So they looked around, and began counting the people in the room... which I of course laughed at them for.

There is a third person, which is precisely the person that isn't there, or the event you aren't there for. We talk as if there are general principles that supervene on the particular objects of sense, and we must, or talking wouldn't be possible in the first place, and they're predictive... when they are... but definitely not always. It's more like semi-hypothetical.

The weird thing about universals is how vague they are about particularity. No single attribute of the cup, or the cupboard is necessary to identify it, and not even its function, as drawings and photographs will do as well, even when they can't be used at all for it, but I still think that there is a semi-hypothetical nature to them that suggests that they could be used as cups or cupboards, even when they can't be.

I can tell you "this rock here is a cup, for our purposes", and you can nod, and then we can talk about my rock which is in no way a cup, no problem.

I like to think though, that these are all abstractions that are taken directly from experience, and do reduce entirely to the particularity, and the universality cannot be tied down because it is both hypothetical, working in contexts, and like a rough analogy. I'm deeply suspicious of the existence of universals beyond working analogies of form and function, as well as family resemblance, or historical origins in the precise same particular.

Definitions do not help.

And there we will leave it.

I actually think that more than that, art has taught us all how to see, hear, feel smell and taste. Our minds works by bundling things together as analogues, and literally superimposing on sensory experience that which has come before. I think that it is as universal as the forms of creative expression that dominant a culture, and are also reduced to a certain particularity.

I'm deeply suspicious of the existence of universals beyond working analogies of form and function, as well as family resemblance, or historical origins in the precise same particular. — Wosret

Universals are what we make of them, and not things found around us. Austin's critique, from “Are There A Priori Concepts”.

Yep.

...literally superimposing on sensory experience that which has come before. — Wosret

...which so much resembles a strange loop.

So that's what I'm stuck in!

....that's what you are...

art has taught us all how to see, hear, feel smell and taste. — Wosret

...and then we created art, which taught us all how to see, hear, feel smell and taste, and then...

We didn't, a tiny minute fraction of us did, and then we all dance to their tunes. Where even they were dancing to someone else's tunes, you aren't entirely innovative, and mold breaking in everything that you do, just like one thing if you're one in a billion.

The old hiarchy is not only big, but there are many many of them

a tiny minute fraction of us did — Wosret

No, we all did; some of us said "T'was me!" Some of us believed them.

Well, no one is an island, and it takes a conspiracy of everyone for such a thing to work at all, for sure. It isn't even as if people are against it, really. We're deeply social, and mimicking creatures -- just looking for the best tune to dance to, to dance the best dance.

There is a third person, which is precisely the person that isn't there — Wosret

But there is always a person. Problems arise when someone insists on an object existing apart from b some human observation. It doesn't. It is the human mind (and other minds) that morphs a quantum state into what humans recognize as an object. Without the human mind, what exists is a quantum state, that is simply unknown.

"Quantum state" is a higher level abstraction than just an experiential cup is. "Quantum state" may be more spooky, and interesting, because it lends itself to more mystery than cups do, but I don't think that it's more real than a cup is, because it's further removed from experience than a generalized cup is.

Unenlightened said earlier something like nothing looks like anything absent sight. That's pretty much a tautology, and not only do cups I imagine look a lot different to ants, but I doubt that they even see them at all, rather than an undifferentiated part of the environment, significant only to the extent that it's an motor-cortical obstacle, or sticky with sugar or some such, but still wouldn't differentiate it in the same way, let alone look at it like we do. We don't just see some physical object, we see a whole array of things in the cup, some of which isn't even present in the visual field, but is filled in with expectation.

I doubt that anyone is all too big of an naive realist, whereas they think that objects exist precisely as experienced by them, independent of experience, at least if they've ever given it any thought or research at all. The thing is not about appearances (that's the point that things don't "look" like anything at all absent sight, that's just a tautology), but object permanence is all that is at issue. That the cup is in the cupboard when no one is looking, or around, or knows about it even, because the world exists independently of subjects, not that perception exists independently of perceivers.

"Quantum state" is a higher level abstraction than just an experiential cup is. "Quantum state" may be more spooky, and interesting, because it lends itself to more mystery than cups do, but I don't think that it's more real than a cup is, because it's further removed from experience than a generalized cup is. — Wosret

Quantum state is the limits to which we can describe anything that has not been observed. We can speculate as to what it is (I speculate it it's a hologram of some sort) but we cannot say, it is impossible to say, that what is there, unobserved, is a "teacup". It it's not. It is totally unknown as is what happens after death and how "it all began".

That the cup is in the cupboard when no one is looking, or around, or knows about it even, because the world exists independently of subjects, not that perception exists independently of perceives. — Wosret

There is something there. It is called a quantum state. What that may be independent of any observer if any sort (an ant or a human) is entirely inaccessible. This is when the so-called third-non-person comes in handy for some. It inserts a a non-human as an observer with all the attributes of an observer. This sleight of hand is used all the time when a human mind is needed but a human mind is unwanted.

That the cup is in the cupboard when no one is looking, or around, or knows about it even, because the world exists independently of subjects, not that perception exists independently of perceives. — Wosret

The question is whether or not this independent world can be said to contain cups. Some will say that it is wrong to reduce experienced objects like cups and cupboards to whatever material stuff is floating about in space. Is a cup nothing more than a particular arrangement of excited states? Seems there's more to a cup than that. And if there is, then even if we grant the independent existence of these field quanta, it doesn't then follow that we must grant the independent existence of cups.

A window isn't just glass but glass that is shaped and used a certain way, and so it might be that cups aren't just collections of particles but collections of particles that are interacting with an observer.

As an example, see enactivism. It claims that when we perceive we aren't just presented with information about an independent world but that our interaction with the independent environment creates the world that we see. The cups and cupboards that we see are part of the enacted world, not part of the independent environment.

Not really... "quantum" is derived from "quantity", and is just a quantification, or a mathematical representation of the minimum values involved in a physical state. We would be hard pressed to quantify a physical state having never observed it, and there is no perceptual levels involved at all in quantification, it is, as I said, a higher level of abstraction, further removed, not closer to reality. Although many would argue that math is more real than anything else, that is a view to hold. Imagining that "quantum states" are at all about observation is like imagining that you can see what "one" looks like without there actually being one of anything at all, but just "one" as the pure abstract entity.

I don't feel that one gets closer to metaphysical reality, the further removed from sense, or experience we go into abstraction. I really don't think that we can even really understand abstraction as all without representation.

However, one wishes too speculate about what is "out there" it ultimately comes down to the speculation of a mind. It is impossible to discuss it as if there is some independent object and labeled as such (a teacup?) just swimming in the universe without acknowledging that it is a creation of the mind. Outside of this, it is simply unknown and no label can be applied.

In this manner, the mind now becomes permanently entangled in every discussion, as it should be since it is the source. I just want to make clear that there is no "cup" floating somewhere out there that is magically being imprinted in some brain cells.

As I said, I doubt that anyone holds such a naive view -- but I think that it's important to appreciate that everything you know about cups, and what's being talked about cups comes from your personal experience of cups, so that one doesn't get a better understanding of them, let alone could even apprehend what is being talked about at all, except through that experience. So I just don't buy that some mathematical quantification of states of the cup is somehow more real. I think that the cup on my coffee table is immensely more real than any indistinct general cup, let alone a mathematical description, at least it never can be to me, or my comprehension. Nor to anyone's.

Worse than that, I think that it's even dangerous to think that way. If one thinks that ideas get them closer to the true true than sense (the only place new information even comes in from), then sense will become less significant than models, and they'll begin to pay more attention to their thoughts than their sense... and the real world will become less and less real, and ideas will become more and more real... and that ain't good.

So I just don't buy that some mathematical quantification of states of the cup is somehow more real. I think that the cup on my coffee table is immensely more real than any indistinct general cup, let alone a mathematical description, at least it never can be to me, or my comprehension. Nor to anyone's. — Wosret

It's not a matter of whether it's real. It's a mater of whether it's independent of perception. Something can be real but dependent on perception. The claim is that a cup is independent material stuff being perceived, and so dependent on perception, and not just independent material stuff.

As I said, I doubt that anyone holds such a naive few — Wosret

Actually, I think most people hold this view, that there is a cup out there independent of the mind.

That cup is certainly real, as your mind perceives it.

Problems only arise when a non-mind mind is inserted into a discussion as a placeholder in a direct attempt to remove mind from the equation.

There is object permanence. Does it look like anything sound like anything, taste like anything absent those sensuous modes? Of course not, that's tautologous, but beyond that any conception of them is necessarily empty, and modeling them in some other way always reduces to the sensuous for comprehension of what is even being discussed, and never bridges that gap. The thing in itself, is always out of reach. I like the idea of undifferentiated oneness, chaos, and things, and don't think that anything represents it better than negation.

I'm not saying that there isn't object permanence.

Consider a collection of bricks. Is it a building? Only if it's structured and used a certain way. There's no denial of object permanence in claiming that there isn't a building if those bricks are knocked down.

So consider a collection of molecules. Is it an apple? Only if it's being perceived a certain way. There's no denial of object permanence in claiming that there isn't an apple if those molecules aren't interacting with an observer.