+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Logic, Metaphysics & Philosophy (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-80.html)
+--- Thread: Life after death pet theory (/thread-5444.html)
Pages:
1
2
Life after death pet theory - Ostronomos - May 28, 2018
I have a theory that consciousness isn't individualized and divided (or "localized") from the rest of the universe and at death it merges with the universal consciousness since death is not a normal everyday event that transitions from the everyday reality of the physical world. As a mechanism we are provided with a failsafe against fatality. And so panpsychism would be understood as the primary existence prior to the physical world and is isomorphic to our natures. This metaphysically idealist view is consistent with the fact of universal sentience. If this argument is more than a matter of semantics then the after-life can be proven mathematically.
I also believe it is possible for the dead to communicate from beyond the grave via mediums and other methods of simplicity.
RE: Life after death pet theory - Zinjanthropos - May 29, 2018
When one professes to know more of an unproven metaphysical.existence than of.their own physical reality it causes my guard go up. Of course this subject has been beaten to death (npi) in never ending debates.for.ages without resolution. It's nonsense to say one has to wait until they die to find out so maybe as long as something remains mysterious or without proof, people will.tend to profess its authenticity.
RE: Life after death pet theory - Ostronomos - May 29, 2018
(May 29, 2018 10:51 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: When one professes to know more of an unproven metaphysical.existence than of.their own physical reality it causes my guard go up. Of course this subject has been beaten to death (npi) in never ending debates.for.ages without resolution. It's nonsense to say one has to wait until they die to find out so maybe as long as something remains mysterious or without proof, people will.tend to profess its authenticity.
But the metaphysical HAS been proven mathematically by both I and Langan. More so Langan. And I am not professing its authenticity which is why I called it a theory. It is not an appeal to the awe and mystery of death.
RE: Life after death pet theory - Yazata - May 29, 2018
(May 29, 2018 10:51 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: When one professes to know more of an unproven metaphysical.existence than of.their own physical reality it causes my guard go up.
Me too.
RE: Life after death pet theory - Ostronomos - May 29, 2018
When have I ever professed to know more about metaphysical reality than physical reality. My knowledge of both is approximately equivalent.
RE: Life after death pet theory - Magical Realist - May 29, 2018
In a way, we are more immediately and directly in a metaphysical conundrum than in a physical world. We are not just objective physical bodies in a physical environment. We are minds in a physical environment, which is a rather paradoxical state of affairs!
RE: Life after death pet theory - Ostronomos - May 29, 2018
(May 29, 2018 05:57 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: In a way, we are more immediately and directly in a metaphysical conundrum than in a physical world. We are not just objective physical bodies in a physical environment. We are minds in a physical environment, which is a rather paradoxical state of affairs!
This is precisely correct. If physical realty is a projection from a fundamental higher dimensional reality then our bodies are simply images projected from the ultimate reality of consciousness. Recall that the universe is indeed a hologram.
RE: Life after death pet theory - Zinjanthropos - May 29, 2018
(May 29, 2018 05:33 PM)Ostronomos Wrote: When have I ever professed to know more about metaphysical reality than physical reality. My knowledge of both is approximately equivalent.
You're too sensitive, I mentioned no names, unless you are known as the one.
RE: Life after death pet theory - C C - May 29, 2018
(May 28, 2018 10:20 PM)Ostronomos Wrote: . . . And so panpsychism would be understood as the primary existence prior to the physical world and is isomorphic to our natures. [...]
Panpsychism could potentially be described without mental terminology. Since the "experience" aspect of consciousness would amount to upper-stratum manipulation of the actual "intrinsic stuff" of be-ing (whether the "upper-stratum" is neural tissue, electronic components, hydraulic valve networks, etc).
And the cognition aspect of consciousness would reduce down to the extrinsic structure and "capacity for action" fundamentals found throughout the cosmos which humans can successfully map at the higher levels. (I.e., intellect and memory are just more mechanistic relationships in a complex, specialized package of functions). An overall world "map of causal connections" then being the conceptual construct which abstract (as opposed to phenomenal) meanings of "physical" effectively rest on.
Frank Jackson (1998), Rae Langton (1998) and David Lewis (2009) also advocate views similar to ESR [Epistemic Structural Realism]. ... Peter Unger (2001) also argues that our knowledge of the world is purely structural and that qualia are the non-structural components of reality. Frank Jackson argues that science only reveals the causal / relational properties of physical objects, and that “we know next to nothing about the intrinsic nature of the world. We know only its causal cum relational nature” (1998: 24). Langton argues that science only reveals the extrinsic properties of physical objects, and both then argue that their intrinsic natures, and hence the intrinsic nature of the world, are epistemically inaccessible. Jackson points out that this inference can be blocked if the natures of objects and their intrinsic properties are identified with their relational or extrinsic properties, but argues that this makes a mystery of what it is that stands in the causal relations. Lewis' structuralism is based on the centrality he gives to the Ramsey sentence reconstruction of scientific theories that is the subject of the next section. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/#KanESR
Quote:[...] we are provided with a failsafe against fatality. [...]
If a believer in such, scientific realism would provide that even for the atheist or philosophical naturalist[*] It's just that many people aren't really satisfied with the life they have between this particular biological conception and death being alone what endures perpetually for them. They want to keep on going (or feel like they're illusorily flowing or moving anyway) to some "different life" which they don't currently know about.
But personal evidence for "this particular identity I have now" extending beyond the set boundaries of "this particular life" depends upon memory being retained or surviving. Which seems highly unlikely if continuance rests purely on a generic subjectivity or primal experiencing underlying all these discrete instances of viewing ourselves as individuals that are distinct from each other.
For instance: Tom Parks is never going to consider himself also being Sandra Rowe and countless other people throughout history when the only information his experiences and cognitive acts revolve around is what his "current" brain / body has legitimate access to (the local environment). The same reason is why Tom Parks at age ten doesn't consider himself to be Tom Parks at age 35. The younger version has no access to the information of the older version and his world / era; the latter thereby cannot be manifested as "immediately or empirically real" in the perceptions and thoughts of the former. Tom Parks at age ten is permanently stuck in that segment of his identity; he can't be anyone else (including his future selves) and have confirming evidence for it.
On the flip-side, while Tom Parks at age 35 does have memories of being age 10 in the past -- he doesn't have access to all the information necessarily for processing and generating manifestations of that younger version of himself and its world in an empirically real context (only privately, in flawed imagination or activation of eroded memories). Even if he could magically do so, the circumstances of his own immediate public environment would swiftly intrude upon that of the other ("get out of way of falling tree cut down by chainsaw"). He'd be diagnosed as insane, experiencing two different worlds / stages of his identity imposing on each other. Which is why any so-called "general consciousness" would have to maintain those distinctions and the isolation of individuals from each other to begin with -- why the very possibility of experience would demand a regulating space/time template or "principles for maintaining incremental differentiation" to conform to, to keep them separate.
- - - footnote - - -
[*] Paul Davies: "Peter Lynds's reasonable and widely accepted assertion that the flow of time is an illusion (25 October, p 33) does not imply that time itself is an illusion. It is perfectly meaningful to state that two events may be separated by a certain duration, while denying that time mysteriously flows from one event to the other. Crick compares our perception of time to that of space. Quite right. Space does not flow either, but it's still 'there'." --New Scientist, 6 December 2003, Sec. Letters
RE: Life after death pet theory - Ostronomos - May 29, 2018
CC,
Individualization could be a misconception or image that stems from societal and parental conditioning. Consider that objects exist in space and time but reality does not. At the most fundamental level of reality the concrete and the abstract are one and the same. It was demonstrated as a logical necessity to say so and its at the forefront as a resolution to some important questions like that of the set of all sets.