Of course there's stuff there to be explained. Of course there's accounts that we can't simply hand-wave away. In truth, the only honest answer is, we simply don't know. The claims that brains aren't working at the point of death is bollocks, because that point of death thing is like a piece of string. Death is a process. Dead people have been resuscitated hours after 'death'. During attempts at resuscitation, is a person dead or alive? If oxygenated blood is flowing (thanks CPR), including to the brain, should we really be surprised that some people might have some memory of the event, or hallucinations surrounding some awareness of the event?

It is possible that there is something quite unknown at work, maybe even something we currently refer to as 'paranormal', or even 'spiritual'. It's equally possible that it's about a mix of consciousness & hallucination (in variable degrees).

What pisses me off is the people who claim that unanswerable questions means their answer is right. There is no evidence that points incontrovertibly & unambiguously towards discarnate consciousness, and survival of death. At best, you might construct an explanation for the data (such as it is) that includes such features, but to do so without following through with the implications such explanations carry with them, is plain lazy, and just a little bit dishonest.

That brings me back to an earlier set of questions that the dear doctor has skirted around - where do these discarnate consciousnesses come from, where do they go, how do they get here (become incarnate), why do they become incarnate, do they persist after death, or do they eventually fade away as death becomes final (the sort of differences between Plato's & Aristotle's take on the soul/psyche)? I'd like to know what function they provide (they don't seem to be required for life), I'd like to know what they did before we had life, and I'd like to know whether they evolve or not. Further, what is this discarnate consciousness? How does it relate to the sense I have of 'me', given that any concept of 'me' is so tied up in the relationships I have with others, and particularly with my memories. What is this discarnate consciousness like when inhabiting a new-born, or a brain-injured patient, or someone with a dementia?

The thing is, all of these things are explainable (or dismissable) from within a materialist, naturalistic paradigm. They simply become difficult or impossible to address from the supernaturalist one.

This isn't to dismiss the possibility, but I think it certainly indicates that any claims to know that we survive death, should be treated with derision

Methodological Naturalism is a foundational axiom of science. It is itself not a scientific fact but a metaphysical tool; it is of no more scientific status than say Occam's Razor. Utility is not equal to truth, as any philosopher of science would point out. You are confusing means and ends. And Eliminative Reductionism is incredibly dubious and far from "proven" or even accepted by most in neurology as far as i can tell - see Talis for more

j x

Bill speaks sense. And I'm off. See you at six.

j x

jerome wrote:I assumed by mechanistic M.O.S meant as in "materialist": I'm not denying causality. I'm denying "Self" = "brain activity"

j x

Well, this means that you are willing to be more explicit than the good Doctor has been so far.

Would it be correct to say that you are a substance dualist? That is to say, you are of the opinion that there are two different kinds of "substance" in reality: physical substances and spiritual substances?

This view of reality would provide some kind of hypothetical "mechanism" (what I think MOS was getting at) by which it might be possible for a person to survive bodily death, but it has more than a few problems.

jerome wrote:Bill speaks sense. And I'm off. See you at six.

j x

He does indeed. The argument for the afterlife being made here is nothing but special pleading. I earlier linked an article (just one of several on the topic) on the question of perception and memory continuing to function while a person is under the influence of a general anaesthetic. To my knowledge, no anaesthetist is suggesting that this is evidence that the soul rises out of the body during an operation and starts listening to what the OR team is saying, then rejoins the body and somehow incorporates its experience into the patient's memory. The researchers simply suggest that the finding means people may retain awareness of their surroundings while apparently unconscious from anaesthesia. Simple and straightforward. It seems arbitrary to start suggesting supernatural explanations for some sets of neuropsychological phenomena and not others.

jerome wrote:Methodological Naturalism is a foundational axiom of science. It is itself not a scientific fact but a metaphysical tool; it is of no more scientific status than say Occam's Razor. Utility is not equal to truth, as any philosopher of science would point out. You are confusing means and ends.

I'd suggest that the ongoing utility of the underlying assumption allows us to say it's asymptotically approaching a truth statement.

jerome wrote:And Eliminative Reductionism is incredibly dubious and far from "proven" or even accepted by most in neurology as far as i can tell - see Talis for more

j x

As far as I can see, most of the objections come from philosophers rather than neuroscientists. Who'd you side with? The astrologers, or the astronomers?

Good night!

jerome wrote:

Fallible wrote:

Good, you have a sincere belief, you think there is evidence that needs explaining. How does that help?

I have an informed opinion. I think Dr Pariseti needs to concentrate on presenting decent papers rather than an overview of the entire issue, but his choice not mine. I simply think it is wrong headed to dismiss him without examining the actual science. Beast Rabban also has a fantastic knowledge of the literature, and could contribute.

We very much want to examine the science. He seems unwilling or unable to present any of it. The stuff he has presented has thus far been unconvincing.

And can I add that I've experienced out of the body events, and I wasn't even slightly dead at the time. Incredibly sleep-deprived & under some considerable stress, but far from dead.

chairman bill wrote:Of course there's stuff there to be explained. Of course there's accounts that we can't simply hand-wave away. In truth, the only honest answer is, we simply don't know. The claims that brains aren't working at the point of death is bollocks, because that point of death thing is like a piece of string. Death is a process. Dead people have been resuscitated hours after 'death'. During attempts at resuscitation, is a person dead or alive? If oxygenated blood is flowing (thanks CPR), including to the brain, should we really be surprised that some people might have some memory of the event, or hallucinations surrounding some awareness of the event?

It is possible that there is something quite unknown at work, maybe even something we currently refer to as 'paranormal', or even 'spiritual'. It's equally possible that it's about a mix of consciousness & hallucination (in variable degrees).

What pisses me off is the people who claim that unanswerable questions means their answer is right. There is no evidence that points incontrovertibly & unambiguously towards discarnate consciousness, and survival of death. At best, you might construct an explanation for the data (such as it is) that includes such features, but to do so without following through with the implications such explanations carry with them, is plain lazy, and just a little bit dishonest.

That brings me back to an earlier set of questions that the dear doctor has skirted around - where do these discarnate consciousnesses come from, where do they go, how do they get here (become incarnate), why do they become incarnate, do they persist after death, or do they eventually fade away as death becomes final (the sort of differences between Plato's & Aristotle's take on the soul/psyche)? I'd like to know what function they provide (they don't seem to be required for life), I'd like to know what they did before we had life, and I'd like to know whether they evolve or not. Further, what is this discarnate consciousness? How does it relate to the sense I have of 'me', given that any concept of 'me' is so tied up in the relationships I have with others, and particularly with my memories. What is this discarnate consciousness like when inhabiting a new-born, or a brain-injured patient, or someone with a dementia?

The thing is, all of these things are explainable (or dismissable) from within a materialist, naturalistic paradigm. They simply become difficult or impossible to address from the supernaturalist one.

This isn't to dismiss the possibility, but I think it certainly indicates that any claims to know that we survive death, should be treated with derision

I'd have just said it's bollocks and arrived at this same point. less convincingly, though.

chairman bill wrote:And can I add that I've experienced out of the body events, and I wasn't even slightly dead at the time. Incredibly sleep-deprived & under some considerable stress, but far from dead.

Are you sure you weren't a bit dead? Perhaps you are not opening your mind to all the vast amounts of evidence which I won't show you?

He wasn't dead! He didn't want to go on the cart! He felt happyyyy!

If I hadn't been nailed to that perch ...

I would like to question the idea that an inactive brain can't produce long term memories.

a) First off, what is an inactive brain? Are the laws of physics to be suspended, and if so, what causes this?
b) Are all chemical reactions in an inactive brain on hold, and if so, what causes this?
If (a) and (b), what causes brain damage in cases of cerebral hypoxia and cerebral anoxia? How do the molecules know when to resume activity (in the form of decomposition), so that near death becomes death?

If an inactive brain merely means a state where brain activity can't be detected, then you can't claim that an inactive brain can't produce memories, just because we don't know exactly how (yet).

jerome wrote:Methodological Naturalism is just fine: it's when people conflate methodological naturalism with ontological naturalism there is an issue. Plenty of scientists (including a good number of neurologists curiously) are still dualist - I'm a neutral monist. Mechanism (by which I mean something akin to eliminative reductionism) is not scientifcially established: it is a philosophical axiom. It's a pretty sensible one, but one must consider the evidence that seems to contradict it or you end up holding a faith position, and falling victim to blind prejudice like that of all faith-heads

You touch on some interesting topics here:

-Methodological naturalism, often used synonymously with the scientific method, which nobody is arguing against.

-Eliminative reductionism, which is somewhat open to interpretation (is it meant metaphysically, or is it a way of looking at empirical constructs?).

-Ontological naturalism, which is an unfalsifiable* philosophical position.

-Dualism, an unfalsifiable* philosophical position.

-Monism, an unfalsifiable* philosophical position.

-(Metaphysical) materialism, an unfalsifiable* philosophical position.

Each of the unfalsifiable positions we can more-or-less ignore for the purposes of the discusion. If they're empirically unfalsifiable, it makes no sense to look for empirical evidence. Dr. Parisetti has also said that he is not interested in any philosophical aspects of his afterlife hypothesis (see point 3 of post 8). And we obviously don't need a discussion of methodological naturalism and science here. Dr. Parisetti's case would soon fall if, like the user christine, he began declaring that science is a "false orthodoxy" or whatever.

That leaves the "eliminative reductionism" you mentioned. You seem to imply that this is falsifiable on the basis of empirical evidence. Well, I think you'd have to define exactly what you mean by this, and what empirical evidence one would need to for the purpose of falsification.

As for the point of dismissing evidence like a faith-head, I'd say that the problem has been the underwhelming nature of the evidence presented so far. There is of course also the point about the burden of proof. The onus would not appear to be on the sceptics in this case.

* - AFAIK in each case.

Ok, so help me out here (and if I'm creating straw men, just point it out to me; I'm not trying to):

1) The brain of the person is dead; totally inactive. Let's assume this for the sake of argument. Dead as in dead.

2) While the brain is dead, the person in question is experiencing 'stuff'; sights and sounds in this world, and/or sights and sounds in another world.

3) When the person in question 'comes back', he/she has memories of what transpired while dead.

Ok. So while this person is still alive, the activity in the brain is responsible for interpreting the auditory and visual data it gets from their ears and eyes, and output them as - more often than not - a coherent experience.

But now the physical brain is dead. And so it can't do anything. Voila - not to worry, because your spiritual 'brain' takes over, and both hears, sees, and records memories, which it then later - if you 'come back' - transfers to the physical brain, and the now again living person can therefore remember things seen and heard while dead.

Have I gotten this right so far?

If so, I have to say it begs the "age old" question, of why we have a massive physical brain in the first place? I've forgotten what the answer to that has been. I know it's been asked before, probably by me(!). Not in this thread, but before.

So an answer could be along the lines of "The brain is just an 'antenna' for our immaterial, eternal soul/Mind, and is used as a 'translator' between our soul and the physical world, so that the soul can have the physical body do work".
First of all, this wouldn't be in keeping with neuroscience AFAIK, and secondly, if the immaterial soul can both see, hear and remember things happening in this world and the next, one would think that a small brain only responsible for the motor functions of the body should suffice?

This of course brings us to how the immaterial interacts with the material to make it do work, but one step at a time.

Before I am convinced of life after death I am going to need a clear explanation of what this "death" is that people continue living after it, and what this "life" is that people have after they are dead.

In my world dead is defined by the lack of life.

New life arises from existing life either asexually or sexually. It seems to me old life lives on in the new life that arises.

chairman bill wrote:If I hadn't been nailed to that perch ...

I drowned when I was a young teenager. Splash, splash, blub, blub, everything just went black. My last thoughts were that it was a pity to be dying so young. Until my field of vision returned, starting in the center, of men carrying me out of the water. My first thought then was on how pleased I was to be breathing air again.

No NDE. No magic shit.

John P. M. wrote:Ok, so help me out here (and if I'm creating straw men, just point it out to me; I'm not trying to):

1) The brain of the person is dead; totally inactive. Let's assume this for the sake of argument. Dead as in dead.

2) While the brain is dead, the person in question is experiencing 'stuff'; sights and sounds in this world, and/or sights and sounds in another world.

3) When the person in question 'comes back', he/she has memories of what transpired while dead.

Ok. So while this person is still alive, the activity in the brain is responsible for interpreting the auditory and visual data it gets from their ears and eyes, and output them as - more often than not - a coherent experience.

But now the physical brain is dead. And so it can't do anything. Voila - not to worry, because your spiritual 'brain' takes over, and both hears, sees, and records memories, which it then later - if you 'come back' - transfers to the physical brain, and the now again living person can therefore remember things seen and heard while dead.

Have I gotten this right so far?

If so, I have to say it begs the "age old" question, of why we have a massive physical brain in the first place? I've forgotten what the answer to that has been. I know it's been asked before, probably by me(!). Not in this thread, but before.

So an answer could be along the lines of "The brain is just an 'antenna' for our immaterial, eternal soul/Mind, and is used as a 'translator' between our soul and the physical world, so that the soul can have the physical body do work".
First of all, this wouldn't be in keeping with neuroscience AFAIK, and secondly, if the immaterial soul can both see, hear and remember things happening in this world and the next, one would think that a small brain only responsible for the motor functions of the body should suffice?

This of course brings us to how the immaterial interacts with the material to make it do work, but one step at a time.

Or putting it another way:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6iHe0ra_UM[/youtube]

John P. M. wrote:... if the immaterial soul can both see, hear and remember things happening in this world and the next, one would think that a small brain only responsible for the motor functions of the body should suffice?

...

Well, that there is one fine question.

Shrunk wrote:
Or putting it another way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6iHe0ra_UM

Well yes in a way, but I am aware of the usual reply to that; that if you damage a radio here and there, you will impede it's function in certain areas, but that doesn't mean the signal is damaged, it's just not being properly conveyed.

I've also seen answers to that answer(!). But what I wanted to get at was why we have a brain such as the one we have in the first place. And come to think of it, I seem to remember now that someone answered that with 1) evolution took its course and resulted in a large brain for humans, and 2) the immaterial 'souls' will 'attach' themselves to sufficiently complex brains (for some reason).

If so, it seems to be saying that our brains are complex yes, but not really as complex as the experience of being alive necessitates. That we have a rather 'crude lump' of a brain, and the immaterial 'soul' takes over the higher functions.

Again, I feel like I may be building straw men here, so I'll await an answer from the people 'in the know' about our afterlife. This is just how I remember the discussion going once before.