I agree with everything you said, except for the Devils Advocate part.
We have as much reason to reject them as we have to reject the existence of a slice of chocolate cake in the asteroid belt.
It’s not an argument against against my claim. It’s just saying “don’t play Devils Advocate for fun, only do it to help you find truth”. I’m definitely not playing Devils Advocate for fun, I’m trying to arrive at the truth.
I’m not confident in my belief that “we don’t know whether or not we’ll remain conscious after we die”. I’m more confident in it than the alternative, so it’s the belief I’ll go with for now, but I’m exploring whether or not it’s true, which is why I posted here.
Anyway, consider the possibility that we remain conscious after we die, but can’t communicate this consciousness to the living (if it helps to be more concrete, let’s say that consciousness resides on some super small physical level that is uninterrupted when we die). We have no data on whether or not this possibility is true. We aren’t aware of any preconditions that lead to it, and we aren’t aware of any preconditions that don’t lead to it (the correlation between the brain and consciousness is a correlation between the brain and consciousness that can be communicated). I know it seems crazy (and my inner voice sort of tells me that it’s crazy), but I think that this means that my model of the world should give it a 50⁄50 shot at happening.
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think the reason it feels weird to say that is because we’re so used to dealing with things for which we do have information about. I think the instinctive thing to do is to query our minds for data that could support or reject this possibility, and our mind returns data on a similar possibility: consciousness that we can communicate. Another thing: I think it’s tempting to reverse stupidity. To say “people who believe in the afterlife are clearly wrong; there isn’t any afterlife”. I’m still confused so I apologize for this paragraph being jumbled. I’m basically just saying that these are things to maybe be weary of.
I’d really like to get your thoughts on this after considering my argument again and giving it an honest chance (that we have no data on what does or doesn’t lead to the state of “being conscious after you die but being incapable of communicating it to living people”). I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if I made a mistake in my reasoning and I would really love to know what it is if I’m making one.
Sorry, I wasn’t intending to make a reference to Devil’s advocacy with that link, but to the question of whether it is reasonable to claim that there could be a slice of chocolate cake in the asteroid belt. It is true that we can’t observe the asteroid belt well enough to tell directly, but the world has patterns, and what we know of those patterns, tested by the observations that we have made, rules out the chocolate cake hypothesis. We don’t, indeed can’t, say, “how can we know?” and give it 50% probability.
Our observations of the connections between brain states and consciousness also don’t leave much room for disembodied existence. Personally, I wouldn’t say it’s as well established as the nonexistence of asteroidal chocolate cake, but I put souls, ghosts, and other spirits a long way below the 50% of maximum ignorance.
Any ghosts out there reading this? Show yourselves, don’t just give a few people spooky chills!
1) Regarding connection we see between brain states and consciousness, how do we know that people are really “unconscious”? What if they’re still experiencing and feeling things, but are just incapable of communicating this to us at the time, and are incapable of remembering it? Sort of like how when we are asleep and dreaming we’re conscious but we could only confirm this is we wake up at the right time (actually, I’m not sure if this is actually true).
2) Assuming that the connection between brain states and consciousness is legit, then I think you’re right. After thinking about it some more, I think the point you make below means it’d be much less than a 50⁄50 chance.
That leaves open the possibility that consciousness is a physically separate entity for which the brain is the interface through which it moves the body and receives sensation from it, rather than brain processes themselves being consciousness. However most of the ground for that is undercut by the fact that some brain injuries severing parts of the brain from each other also appear to sever the corresponding parts of consciousness—split-brain observations. It seems that it is not only components of consciousness that correspond to brain regions, but also their interconnection.
We have all this data that says “mess the brain up, and you mess consciousness up”. It’s possible that there is some underlying thing that represents consciousness, but we have data that says that this thing is messed up when you mess the brain up. It’d be crazy if your brain happens to be messed up in such a way when you die that it leaves the thing underlying consciousness in tact.
But as far as overall likelihood of consciousness remaining, it depends on 1). Could we really say that brain states correlate with unconsciousness? How can we determine unconsciousness?
What if they’re still experiencing and feeling things, but are just incapable of communicating this to us at the time, and are incapable of remembering it?
A hypothesis thus described is untestable. Moreover, it’s inconsequential: the observed result is the same regardless of whether the hypothesis is true or not. In such a case, the hypothesis can be safely ignored because it adds nothing to our models.
I agree with everything you said, except for the Devils Advocate part.
It’s not an argument against against my claim. It’s just saying “don’t play Devils Advocate for fun, only do it to help you find truth”. I’m definitely not playing Devils Advocate for fun, I’m trying to arrive at the truth.
I’m not confident in my belief that “we don’t know whether or not we’ll remain conscious after we die”. I’m more confident in it than the alternative, so it’s the belief I’ll go with for now, but I’m exploring whether or not it’s true, which is why I posted here.
Anyway, consider the possibility that we remain conscious after we die, but can’t communicate this consciousness to the living (if it helps to be more concrete, let’s say that consciousness resides on some super small physical level that is uninterrupted when we die). We have no data on whether or not this possibility is true. We aren’t aware of any preconditions that lead to it, and we aren’t aware of any preconditions that don’t lead to it (the correlation between the brain and consciousness is a correlation between the brain and consciousness that can be communicated). I know it seems crazy (and my inner voice sort of tells me that it’s crazy), but I think that this means that my model of the world should give it a 50⁄50 shot at happening.
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think the reason it feels weird to say that is because we’re so used to dealing with things for which we do have information about. I think the instinctive thing to do is to query our minds for data that could support or reject this possibility, and our mind returns data on a similar possibility: consciousness that we can communicate. Another thing: I think it’s tempting to reverse stupidity. To say “people who believe in the afterlife are clearly wrong; there isn’t any afterlife”. I’m still confused so I apologize for this paragraph being jumbled. I’m basically just saying that these are things to maybe be weary of.
I’d really like to get your thoughts on this after considering my argument again and giving it an honest chance (that we have no data on what does or doesn’t lead to the state of “being conscious after you die but being incapable of communicating it to living people”). I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if I made a mistake in my reasoning and I would really love to know what it is if I’m making one.
Sorry, I wasn’t intending to make a reference to Devil’s advocacy with that link, but to the question of whether it is reasonable to claim that there could be a slice of chocolate cake in the asteroid belt. It is true that we can’t observe the asteroid belt well enough to tell directly, but the world has patterns, and what we know of those patterns, tested by the observations that we have made, rules out the chocolate cake hypothesis. We don’t, indeed can’t, say, “how can we know?” and give it 50% probability.
Our observations of the connections between brain states and consciousness also don’t leave much room for disembodied existence. Personally, I wouldn’t say it’s as well established as the nonexistence of asteroidal chocolate cake, but I put souls, ghosts, and other spirits a long way below the 50% of maximum ignorance.
Any ghosts out there reading this? Show yourselves, don’t just give a few people spooky chills!
1) Regarding connection we see between brain states and consciousness, how do we know that people are really “unconscious”? What if they’re still experiencing and feeling things, but are just incapable of communicating this to us at the time, and are incapable of remembering it? Sort of like how when we are asleep and dreaming we’re conscious but we could only confirm this is we wake up at the right time (actually, I’m not sure if this is actually true).
2) Assuming that the connection between brain states and consciousness is legit, then I think you’re right. After thinking about it some more, I think the point you make below means it’d be much less than a 50⁄50 chance.
We have all this data that says “mess the brain up, and you mess consciousness up”. It’s possible that there is some underlying thing that represents consciousness, but we have data that says that this thing is messed up when you mess the brain up. It’d be crazy if your brain happens to be messed up in such a way when you die that it leaves the thing underlying consciousness in tact.
But as far as overall likelihood of consciousness remaining, it depends on 1). Could we really say that brain states correlate with unconsciousness? How can we determine unconsciousness?
A hypothesis thus described is untestable. Moreover, it’s inconsequential: the observed result is the same regardless of whether the hypothesis is true or not. In such a case, the hypothesis can be safely ignored because it adds nothing to our models.
1) Untestable doesn’t mean wrong.
2) What about the possibility that we just can’t do a good job of measuring peoples’ consciousness given our level of technology?