Necromancer

Well I certainly believe in positive karma and having good moral scrutiny in ones life verses the opposite. But I believe and understand it having more viability during ones lifetime more so, than the so called, after life, reincarnation, or however you want to label it. When we die, its over with and doesn't matter.
I would actually like to hear your view concerning the subject of your post Larehip, it is quite interesting and I am not completely closed minded on the subject, please continue.

butthead aka 216

hardcore atheist....... air tight argument for reincarnation..... does not compute captain.

reading this i got the feelin you were stoned bull****tig wit ya bois about religion and just typed it up. id like to hear your explanation. i think a bulk of your passage is 'why dont we break laws and break social norms' and the bulk answer to that would be fear of getting caught and consequences

Guybrush

Yes, at least some of us do. I feel like I'm repeating myself from another thread now and probably many threads in the past, but morality has evolved. It is a behavioural strategy to maximize fitness. Other people are potential resources or potential competitors to us and so we have evolved emotions that motivate us to deal with others in a way that ultimately helps up our own fitness. Morality is part of human nature.

If you observe social animals like wolves or bonobo chimpanzees or dolphins, you'll see they too have rules that dictate how to behave. It may f.ex be that the alpha male is the first who gets to eat. Eating before the alpha is "rude", perhaps seen as a challenge, and provokes aggression. Our ancient ancestors would have social rules too; a more primitive version of todays human morality.

Many things flavour morality, like culture, upbringing, availability of resources and health, but what I wrote is the general jist of it. It's a huge subject and if you want to get further into it, I suggest you read up on some biology. I often recommend reading Dawkins The Selfish Gene because, even though it's not about morality, it will give you great insights into how and why such things inevitably evolve and a greater understanding of what stirs in the depths of not just human nature, but in all of life.

edit :

Sociopaths are, for some reason, underdeveloped emotionally. It might be environmental with a very strong genetic component. Either way, healthy humans are not sociopaths.

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Something Completely Different

Lord Larehip

Okay, the argument. Let's get to it.

First, we have to establish that we exist. How do we do that? Descartes put it best: "I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt." We know we exist because we have thoughts. Put another way: we have self-awareness.

There is the brain-in-the-vat argument that goes: You are nothing but a brain in a vat of solution in the laboratory of a mad scientist (the same guy who created the human centipede). He dumps various chemicals into the solution and shoots voltage through it and this causes you to have various sensations--sitting on a beach in Waikiki watching the sunset as the waves gently lap the shore, running down a dark alley for your life from a knife-wielding maniac with your adrenalin pumping and your heart in your throat, having hot belly-rubbing sex with the person of your wildest fantasies, sitting in a chair in front of your computer reading this post, etc. None of it is really happening. It's nothing but an electro-chemical reaction in your suspended brain being stimulated by a madman. How could you prove you are really where you believe you are, who you are, what experience tells you what and where you are and not simply a brain in a vat? You can't. You must doubt all your experiences, sensations, memories, beliefs. But you can't doubt that, in some way or other, you exist.

"And now, Igor, we put the lime in the coconut!"

And what is the agency responsible reaching this conclusion? In a word--consciousness. You are a conscious being. So let's define consciousness in an experiential way that we can all understand and relate to:

I. I experience.
II. I know I experience because I remember my experiences.
III. I can also remember remembering my experiences.
IV. I can remember some experiences as many times as I wish--an infinite number of times theoretically.
V. How many experiences must I remember to be conscious? All of them.

That's it. Simplistic but to the point. These are the bare minimum requirements in order to be conscious. You can add more but it makes no difference here. You can't take any of them away, however. But most importantly, they are a priori or self-evident. I don't want to get into long discourses on dualism and materialism. This clutters the landscape unnecessarily. Let's keep it simple and see where it takes us.

Okay, what is an experience? There are two kinds--inward and outward. Or those that happen within the mind of the experiencer and those that happen outside. For now, we are only interested in those that happen outside or what we call external events.

When you sense an event, you have an experience, right? Not quite. You must have a memory of the event that you sensed. Why? Because without it, can you know you had the experience? Or, more properly speaking, was it experience at all? Suppose, we are standing on opposite sides of the street and two cars collide in the street between us. I look at my watch and yell across to you that the accident occurred at 4 pm. An hour later, you say to me. "At 4 pm today, we witnessed a collision of two cars in the street."

But suppose I was drunk at the time and in a blackout mode and now say, "Sorry but I don't remember that at all."

Even though I witnessed the accident and even noted the time, without a memory of that event, did I experience it? Now you might say, "Yes, you were there." (The empirical view) But that doesn't matter to me--I don't have any recollection whatsoever of this event. I may as well have not been there. Without memory, I have no experiences.

Hence, my experiences are a chain of memories of events. I live in the same area I grew up in but I spent 6 years in the armed forces traveling much of the world. I was changed so much by those experiences that I am not the person I was before I left town/the state/the country. But if I could not remember anything of my travels would I be any different than before I left? No.

Moreover, if I lost the memory of all my travels and everything I encountered during those travels would I just have this 6-year gap of no memories? No, I couldn't or I would be remembering something--namely, a period of no memories. In other words, my consciousness is continuous. It has no gaps in it. If I lost the memories of my travels the day after I returned to town, it would seem to me as though I never left. Instantaneously, 6 years just went by. You can't remember having no memory. To be aware of nothing means you cannot even be ware of the passage of time or you would be aware of something. CONTRADICTION.

Ok, let's break here. I have things I have to do and I want to make you sure you understand what I have said here. If you have questions, ask away.

Lord Larehip

So, suppose you should wake up tomorrow morning and you have complete amnesia. I mean, COMPLETE amnesia--you have forgotten EVERYTHING. You are like a newborn infant and must relearn everything from scratch--how to walk, talk, learn your name, use the toilet, everything.

When do your memories start to accumulate?

To make answering that easier, let us assume that you were born at time T0. At time T1, you got amnesia. Now between T0 and T1 you lived a decently full life of, say, 30 years or 50 years, but let's make this interval long enough for you have reached well into your adulthood. During that time, you went to school, graduated, learned to drive, went to college, joined the service, got out and got married and had 3 kids. Suddenly, T1 arrives and you wake up with no memories of anything that happened in your life whatsoever--a total blank slate.

When do your memories start to accumulate? At T1 or later. Everything between T0 and T1 is lost. Your memories can only accumulate at T1 or later.

Were you ever conscious between T0 and T1? Well, if you meet the criteria I listed in my previous post--

I. I experience.
II. I know I experience because I remember my experiences.
III. I can also remember remembering my experiences.
IV. I can remember some experiences as many times as I wish--an infinite number of times theoretically.
V. How many experiences must I remember to be conscious? All of them.

--then you were conscious. But there is a problem now:

You lost your memories and can no longer recall them as many times as you wish or at all. They no longer meet the criteria of consciousness. Then could have you been conscious? No. And yet, you were conscious during that time. CONTRADICTION.

Will you get complete amnesia at some time in the future? No. How do you know? Because you are conscious right now and consciousness is continuous. If your T1 moment was to occur, say, 5 years from now--2018--your memories would not start to accumulate until then. All the memories/experiences that occurred before would be wiped out. Life began for you, as far as you know, in 2018. It would just BE 2018 for you. Since it is earlier than 2018 and you are conscious, you know you will not get complete amnesia in 2018 (or any other future date) or you simply wouldn't be conscious right now.

Now--if death extinguishes consciousness as many people assume, then death is a complete amnesia. So, now we can say that you WILL die at some time T1 in the future. Your entire life experiences and memories from T0 to T1 are wiped out. When do your memories start to accumulate? At T1 or later. But what about that whole life you lived from T0 to T1? It's gone. And yet you WERE conscious during that time (i.e. you met the criteria of consciousness). CONTRADICTION.

Conclusion: Death cannot extinguish consciousness. If it does, then you cannot be conscious now.

Once you are conscious, you are always and forever conscious. Consciousness, then, is eternal.

This is a big piece of philosophical meat to swallow but it is essential that you you understand it so I'll leave off here to give you time to digest it. Any questions--ask.

Freebase Dali

The problem with this is you're basing consciousness on memory, which is a biological function, which ceases to function when you die. Amnesia doesn't erase a person's physical existence, it simply erases a persons reference to it. The existence was still there, and the person was conscious of it at the time, but that doesn't throw physics and biology out the window simply because you don't remember anything after you die...

I think you're going too far into the philosophical when the simplest answers are right here on earth, and contradictory to your venture.

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Lord Larehip

I am advancing an argument that says that does not happen. You have to counter that argument with one of your own. We can assert anything we want to but that doesn't make it philosophically sound.

First, I am not talking about real amnesia. I am positing a hypothetical amnesia--one that completely wipes your memory clean. I don't know that any such form of amnesia exists and I doubt it. I'm using it as a metaphor for death. If death wipes out all the memories of this life you are living, then how can you be conscious right now? If death occurs in a future moment, T1, and everything before it is wiped out then your consciousness can only begin accumulating memories at that point T1 or later but since you are dead at T1 then that can't happen and it is as though you never lived at all. You must have been unconscious your entire life. But since you know you are conscious now, then your future death will not eradicate consciousness. Somehow, some way, it survives.

They are right in your own experience. That's what this argument is based on--your own experience. What's not part of anyone's experience is a big spook in the sky watching everything you do while sending down himself as his own son to deliver messages we don't give a s-hit about.

You could destroy the argument easily by proving there is no such thing as memory. But you're going to have a very difficult time of that. You're welcome to try.

Freebase Dali

I said I'm not a murderer/rapist because I don't want to go around murdering and raping people, not because I don't want to go to prison. Perhaps you misunderstood my post. It follows that I think murder and rape is immoral. I don't care where that morality comes from. It still isn't the kind of thing I refrain from doing simply because there's a prison sentence attached to it. I haven't changed my position on this.


So then your answer is unsupported speculation? I gave you a supported reason that it's to our evolutionary advantage to co-exist with our own species. We can speculate as to the intellectual mechanisms along those lines and probably be far closer to the mark than "reincarnation".

Sure. But at the same time, I don't think about driving to my parent's house and murdering them in their sleep simply because I won't be able to bring them back from the dead. I care about them, and I don't think I'd be able to go through with that even if I could bring them back.

It's true we are able to emotionally detach from far-removed tragedies. It was not required of our species to be emotionally attached to every living human or thing. Early man existed in tribes. It was to that tribe's advantage to invest in it, not necessarily the entirety of the species, at least emotionally or consciously. But even then, it was still necessary to co-exist with other tribes, because the gene pools needed the opportunity to become diverse.
I don't see this [being conditionally attached] as true psychopathy in our standard definition, as I don't believe such a thing to be a mental disorder. We ourselves characterize disorders based on a norm, not a standard outside of our own capacity to adhere to.
It's easier to see the relevance of this via the fact that we emotionally connect to people we spend time with, versus someone we've never met. It should be obvious why there are differences in emotional attachment there.


I'm not asserting a philosophical argument. I'm asserting facts and reasonable conclusions.

This makes absolutely no sense from a neurological standpoint.
Memories and consciousness is a function of our brains. When the brain ceases to function, that person's consciousness does as well. It doesn't mean that the brain was not functioning before it stopped. It just means it stopped.

Take a computer, for example. Pretend it is sentient. It does calculations with its processor, and stores information on its drives that it can access at any time. Let's say it prints out useful calculations, then someone pulls the plug and it stops functioning. It can no longer calculate, but it has calculated, and there is evidence of that. It does not go on calculating, as it is turned off. Its mechanisms functioned, now they don't. It was sentient during this time, and had consciousness... no longer having it does not change this. It doesn't matter from which perspective this is observed. It's verifiable. Even if it was not verifiable, the print out still exists as evidence, even though the collective consciousness is not there to see it. (tree falls in the woods...)

Subjective experience does not dictate the physical world, so we use a plurality of experience to make observations about it and arrive at a probable conclusion. Which is what I'm doing. I find that to be more valuable than a single person's philosophical meanderings that have no relevance to the world we live in.
Why would I try to do that? The problem here is you seem to be arguing that memory is something other than a neurological function, which you're still not any closer to proving.

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Paul Smeenus

This is the most preposterous argument I've heard since I tried to debate a member of the Flat Earth Society when I was a young man. I discovered then the futility of attempting to reason with someone who was using fallacy and illogical impossibility as a weapon.

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Lord Larehip

Try me.