“We have a number of situations in which we can hear music in this world e.g. Hitting play on your laptop. However this is just the data we have; there are many situations we don’t know about. Can we really say that when a song stops, it doesn’t continue somewhere else? Personally I see no reason to believe this. At best we’re talking fifty-fifty here.”
The situations that cause music to be heard are exceedingly complex and are not likely to happen in other parts of the universe by accident. Similarly, the situations which cause consciousness are exceedingly complex, involving so many substructures and modules working in some currently unfathomable way (Daniel Dennett suggests the need for competition ). Even if you think it’s likely that all of the necessary parts exist elsewhere in the universe, that’s like saying you think music exists somewhere else in the universe—it doesn’t explain why you expect the music that stops here to keep on going elsewhere. There’s nothing so special about consciousness that it probably just jumps out of the atoms it’s being run on—that’s magical thinking. Of course, if you are thing like that, maybe you are religious, and you have to contend with everything we know about the mind so far in cognitive science etc.
I don’t think it’s “likely” that consciousness remains after death, and I’m not religious.
My point is that we have no data on the possibility of us retaining consciousness after death but being unable to communicate it to the living. We aren’t aware of any preconditions that lead to this, and we aren’t aware of any preconditions that don’t lead to it.
“if you turn the laptop off, how do you know the music isn’t still going, and you just can’t hear it?”
We see a phenomena and we see it’s causes (to the best of our knowledge). It is not a fifty-fifty chance that if you stop the cause, and you furthermore have no evidence of the phenomena, that the phenomena still exists. It is vastly improbable.
You can’t hear it, so it’s a more complex thing to suppose it’s still there. All the aspects of consciousness can be changed by affecting the brain, so to say that if we turn the brain ‘off’, that consciousness is still functioning just fine, is a hypothesis you have no evidence for.
You can’t hear it, so it’s a more complex thing to suppose it’s still there.
If it is indeed a more complex thing, then I think that means you’re right: the chances of it happening are small (inversely related to the complexity).
But how do we know that it’s actually a complex thing? The correlates of consciousness on the neuronal level are complex, but what if underneath it all on some smaller physical level there’s a simple cause of consciousness? How do we know that “consciousness is complex” is more likely than this theory?
By the way, sorry I took so long to make this point. This is the real point I’ve been trying to make, but I haven’t really been able to articulate it well until talking it over with you guys.
My original point: the hypothesis that, when all our evidence says that the causes of consciousness have ceased operating, consciousness is still existing, is a much more complex hypothesis than saying it stops existing when all the evidence suggests so, and so you shouldn’t expect it to still exist.
Your new point: Just because all the evidence we have says consciousness is a highly complex feature of the world that requires brains functioning in certain ways, doesn’t mean that it is, therefore I’m fifty fifty on whether or not it continues when the brain dies (apologies if that seems a little uncharitable).
My recommendation: Maybe watch some Daniel Dennett talks on consciousness, and read some science of how the brain works (I hear Pinker’s “How the Mind Works” is good). At the very least, I think that there’s so much evidence showing how each aspect of our conscious experience can be affected by affecting the brain, that to suggest consciousness isn’t almost entirely dependant on brain function is no longer reasonable. And even then, if you want to suggest that, once the brain stops functioning and you have no memories, no reaction to stimuli, no thought processes (because all of your modules that run these functions have stopped working) that then some essence of experience still exists… That experience is more than the sum of these brain parts, and will continue to exist, seems like a confusion. It really can just be the sum of its parts, a bag of trick, because that’s what the evidence indicates.
After thinking about it some more, I think my point comes down to this: when we say that “messing with the brain messes with consciousness”, how do we really know that? How can we infer that someone else is conscious?
We infer from behavior that someone is conscious, but can we infer that from the absence of behavior that there is an absence of consciousness? That’s like saying A ⇒ B, therefore ~A ⇒ ~B.
And if we can’t infer whether or not someone is unconscious, we have no data on what does or doesn’t lead to unconsciousness.
when we say that “messing with the brain messes with consciousness”, how do we really know that?
Everything about someone’s personality and mental functioning can be affected by affecting the brain. Take an example; people with a certain type of brain damage can stop recognising faces. Their qualia have been fundamentally messed up. They can see the world just fine, but if their mother comes to talk to them, until she says ‘hello’ and they recognises her voice, they don’t know who she is.
There are so many cases like that.
Now do you really think that it’s fifty fifty on whether their consciousness has been affected by the brain damage? I mean, what’s the alternative? That they’re recognising their mother and choosing not to act on it? That their consciousness has disassociated with action, and inside their head they’re thinking ‘Help me! Help me!’ whilst their body says “I’m sorry, I don’t recognise you”?
All the components of your mind are created by the different modules in your brain. When you affect the brain, it totally messes up your mind. When the brain stops, the totally best guess is that consciousness stops too.
“We have a number of situations in which we can hear music in this world I.e. Hitting play on your laptop. However this is just the data we have; there are many situations we don’t know about. Can we really say that when a song stops, it doesn’t continue somewhere else? Personally I see no reason to believe this. At best we’re talking fifty-fifty here.”
The situation is not analogous since whether the song stops or continues where it can’t be heard no one experiences it. Consciousness, on the other hand, is always experienced by the conscious entity.
From an external point of view, the situation is analogous. Every time everyone’s ever died, the evidence of their consciousness has ceased, and whenever a song has turn off, the evidence of it’s being on has ceased. So to say that one has definitely ended, whilst the other one is fifty-fifty, seems a mistake.
“We have a number of situations in which we can hear music in this world e.g. Hitting play on your laptop. However this is just the data we have; there are many situations we don’t know about. Can we really say that when a song stops, it doesn’t continue somewhere else? Personally I see no reason to believe this. At best we’re talking fifty-fifty here.”
The situations that cause music to be heard are exceedingly complex and are not likely to happen in other parts of the universe by accident. Similarly, the situations which cause consciousness are exceedingly complex, involving so many substructures and modules working in some currently unfathomable way (Daniel Dennett suggests the need for competition ). Even if you think it’s likely that all of the necessary parts exist elsewhere in the universe, that’s like saying you think music exists somewhere else in the universe—it doesn’t explain why you expect the music that stops here to keep on going elsewhere. There’s nothing so special about consciousness that it probably just jumps out of the atoms it’s being run on—that’s magical thinking. Of course, if you are thing like that, maybe you are religious, and you have to contend with everything we know about the mind so far in cognitive science etc.
I don’t think it’s “likely” that consciousness remains after death, and I’m not religious.
My point is that we have no data on the possibility of us retaining consciousness after death but being unable to communicate it to the living. We aren’t aware of any preconditions that lead to this, and we aren’t aware of any preconditions that don’t lead to it.
“if you turn the laptop off, how do you know the music isn’t still going, and you just can’t hear it?”
We see a phenomena and we see it’s causes (to the best of our knowledge). It is not a fifty-fifty chance that if you stop the cause, and you furthermore have no evidence of the phenomena, that the phenomena still exists. It is vastly improbable.
Using the music example, you don’t know if you stopped the cause of “music playing in such a way that can’t be heard”.
For the record, I’m confused about this whole thing, especially the 50⁄50 part. I’m just saying what my best understanding tells me.
You can’t hear it, so it’s a more complex thing to suppose it’s still there. All the aspects of consciousness can be changed by affecting the brain, so to say that if we turn the brain ‘off’, that consciousness is still functioning just fine, is a hypothesis you have no evidence for.
If it is indeed a more complex thing, then I think that means you’re right: the chances of it happening are small (inversely related to the complexity).
But how do we know that it’s actually a complex thing? The correlates of consciousness on the neuronal level are complex, but what if underneath it all on some smaller physical level there’s a simple cause of consciousness? How do we know that “consciousness is complex” is more likely than this theory?
By the way, sorry I took so long to make this point. This is the real point I’ve been trying to make, but I haven’t really been able to articulate it well until talking it over with you guys.
My original point: the hypothesis that, when all our evidence says that the causes of consciousness have ceased operating, consciousness is still existing, is a much more complex hypothesis than saying it stops existing when all the evidence suggests so, and so you shouldn’t expect it to still exist.
Your new point: Just because all the evidence we have says consciousness is a highly complex feature of the world that requires brains functioning in certain ways, doesn’t mean that it is, therefore I’m fifty fifty on whether or not it continues when the brain dies (apologies if that seems a little uncharitable).
My recommendation: Maybe watch some Daniel Dennett talks on consciousness, and read some science of how the brain works (I hear Pinker’s “How the Mind Works” is good). At the very least, I think that there’s so much evidence showing how each aspect of our conscious experience can be affected by affecting the brain, that to suggest consciousness isn’t almost entirely dependant on brain function is no longer reasonable. And even then, if you want to suggest that, once the brain stops functioning and you have no memories, no reaction to stimuli, no thought processes (because all of your modules that run these functions have stopped working) that then some essence of experience still exists… That experience is more than the sum of these brain parts, and will continue to exist, seems like a confusion. It really can just be the sum of its parts, a bag of trick, because that’s what the evidence indicates.
After thinking about it some more, I think my point comes down to this: when we say that “messing with the brain messes with consciousness”, how do we really know that? How can we infer that someone else is conscious?
We infer from behavior that someone is conscious, but can we infer that from the absence of behavior that there is an absence of consciousness? That’s like saying A ⇒ B, therefore ~A ⇒ ~B.
And if we can’t infer whether or not someone is unconscious, we have no data on what does or doesn’t lead to unconsciousness.
Everything about someone’s personality and mental functioning can be affected by affecting the brain. Take an example; people with a certain type of brain damage can stop recognising faces. Their qualia have been fundamentally messed up. They can see the world just fine, but if their mother comes to talk to them, until she says ‘hello’ and they recognises her voice, they don’t know who she is.
There are so many cases like that.
Now do you really think that it’s fifty fifty on whether their consciousness has been affected by the brain damage? I mean, what’s the alternative? That they’re recognising their mother and choosing not to act on it? That their consciousness has disassociated with action, and inside their head they’re thinking ‘Help me! Help me!’ whilst their body says “I’m sorry, I don’t recognise you”?
All the components of your mind are created by the different modules in your brain. When you affect the brain, it totally messes up your mind. When the brain stops, the totally best guess is that consciousness stops too.
The situation is not analogous since whether the song stops or continues where it can’t be heard no one experiences it. Consciousness, on the other hand, is always experienced by the conscious entity.
From an external point of view, the situation is analogous. Every time everyone’s ever died, the evidence of their consciousness has ceased, and whenever a song has turn off, the evidence of it’s being on has ceased. So to say that one has definitely ended, whilst the other one is fifty-fifty, seems a mistake.
The difference is that with consciousness there is also an internal point of view, with songs there isn’t.