Rather than myths of rewards and punishment and reincarnation, we are confronted by the incoherence that arises when a single, unified person is divided in two and only one part of who he is is believed to endure. — Fooloso4

That might need reworking, but I gather you are asking about what happens at the point of death. The language "divided in two" is loaded with dualism. The common prejudice is that at death something leaves the body. I don't think that's right - rather the body stops doing stuff it once did. It no longer works in the same way.

That can be put in terms of identity. The body no longer serves to present the characteristics that made it the person it once was. In the same way one looks at a person in pain and understands that they are in pain, one understands by looking at a corpse that it no longer functions as a person.

Nothing to do with the choice between process and substance - I don't think physics has made much use of "substance" for a few hundred years.

Nor is physics deterministic; We can see this not only from quantum unpredictability, but from consideration of complex and chaotic systems.

No, I'm suggesting the broader point that attempting to treat of human freedom in physical terms at all is problematic. Physics simply doesn't provide the resources to decide if you will put sugar in your coffee, or not. For that sort of thing we need a different conversation, one about what what you want and want you believe.

Well, put simply, we seem to be able to talk about the universe with some considerable understanding, and yet, for you, it's not clear what it's "true essence" might be. One might conclude that we do not need to understand the "true essence" of a thing in order to understand it and talk about it.

There's a philosophical conceit that knowing about something involves a capacity to articulate its essence - the thing that makes it what it is. But on reflection we commonly work with words and things despite not being able to explicate their essence. Various analytic philosophers - Quine, Wittgenstein, Kripke, to name three - have levelled criticisms at the hegemony of essentialism.

You wonder if "the human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe"; but it seems we might not need to do so in order to get on with some pretty damn amazing cosmology.

My reason for not believing in any form of personal rebirth or afterlife is not that there is any definitive evidence against it, but simply that I cannot make rational sense of the idea, and I cannot believe something I am incapable of even making coherent to myself. So, I can honestly say that my thoughts on this are not at all driven by wishful thinking. — Janus

Yep.

If we conceptualize the universe as a single process... — Count Timothy von Icarus

...we mix physical explanations with intentional ones. It's not unlike getting an ought from an is. It's like mistaking the physical body for the mind.

In my Companion Book to Philosophy, there is neither entry for the Universe, nor the World. So I went to Wiki, and read about the Universe. It seems too monstrously vast in size and scale. I was wondering if human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe. If we cannot conceive the true reality of the universe, how could we conceptualise it? — Corvus

Yet there it is, the article that shows how we conceive of and conceptualise the universe.

You want to express awe in the face of the vastness of existence, and so on; fair enough, except that what you actually say here isn't quite right. Human minds do grasp the universe. That's shown by this very thread.

Perhaps it's the expectation of a "true essence" that is problematic.

Sure. Not a bad first version. The problems go deeper, as the SEP article cited previously shows.

For my part, I suspect that individuation is an act rather than an observation. I might borrow Searle's counts as here: we can choose what we like to count as an individual. Then it's the utility and community acceptance of the mooted usage that carries weight. Or something like that.

I'll drop this here, just by way of summary.

a. Reincarnation

Parapsychologists usually claim there is a good deal of evidence in favor of the doctrine of reincarnation. Two pieces of alleged evidence are especially meaningful: (1) past-life regressions; (2) cases of children who apparently remember past lives.

Under hypnosis, some patients frequently have regressions and remember events from their childhood. But, some patients have gone even further and, allegedly, have vivid memories of past lives. A few parapsychologists take these as so-called ‘past-life regressions’ as evidence for reincarnation (Sclotterbeck, 2003).

However, past-life regressions may be cases of cryptomnesia, that is, hidden memories. A person may have a memory, and yet not recognize it as such. A well-known case is illustrative: an American woman in the 1950s was hypnotized, and claimed to be Bridey Murphy, an Irishwoman of the 19th century. Under hypnosis, the woman offered a fairly good description of 19th century Ireland, although she had never been in Ireland. However, it was later discovered that, as a child, she had an Irish neighbor. Most likely, she had hidden memories of that neighbor, and under hypnosis, assumed the personality of a 20th century Irish woman.

It must also be kept in mind that hypnosis is a state of high suggestibility. The person that conducts the hypnosis may easily induce false memories on the person hypnotized; hence, alleged memories that come up in hypnosis are not trustworthy at all.

Some children have claimed to remember past lives. Parapsychologist Ian Stevenson collected more than a thousand of such cases (Stevenson, 2001). And, in a good portion of those cases, children know things about the deceased person that, allegedly, they could not have known otherwise.

However, Stevenson’s work has been severely critiqued for its methodological flaws. In most cases, the child’s family had already made contact with the deceased’s family before Stevenson’s arrival; thus, the child could pick up information and give the impression that he knows more than what he could have known. Paul Edwards has also accused Stevenson of asking leading questions towards his own preconceptions (Edwards, 1997: 14).

Moreover, reincarnation runs into conceptual problems of its own. If you do not remember past lives, then it seems that you cannot legitimately claim that you are the same person whose life you do not remember. However, a few philosophers claim this is not a good objection at all, as you do not remember being a very young child, and yet can still surely claim to be the same person as that child (Ducasse, 1997: 199).

Population growth also seems to be a problem for reincarnation: according to defenders of reincarnation, souls migrate from one body to another. This, in a sense, presupposes that the number of souls remains stable, as no new souls are created, they only migrate from body to body. Yet, the number of bodies has consistently increased ever since the dawn of mankind. Where, one may ask, were all souls before new bodies came to exist? (Edwards, 1997: 14). Actually, this objection is not so formidable: perhaps souls exist in a disembodied form as they wait for new bodies to come up (D’Souza, 2009: 57). — IEP Immortality

I supose it was inevitable that this thread become yet another on the topic of reincarnation.

My appologies, .

And yet the vast mass of humanity have no such recollection.

And what it means for an experience to be reincarnated is obscure. Are you the experience of being a handmaid to Cleopatra? And this despite having no such memory?

We have a congenital difference, you and I, that leads me to think of you as credulous. I won't be able to show you - it's not just that the evidence is insufficient, but that it is incoherent.

I’m a bit unclear as to why this question keeps being asked. — Wayfarer

It's tempting to treat this as a curious piece of biography, and leave it. But.

Your suggestion is that it is memory that is reincarnated; @Baker says otherwise. There is a discrepancy amongst the advocates of reincarnation. My evil purposes can be served by niggling at that. The vast mass of humanity have no such recollections, so one might conclude that if that is what reincarnation is, it is very rare indeed. From a more philosophical perspective, it is just not clear what it is that makes you the reincarnation of Napoleon, or whomever...

At issue is the capacity of advocates of reincarnation to present a coherent account.

Reincarnation involves something moving from one body to the next - being clear as to the nature of that something is central. And problematic.

A zombie thread.

Better to keep a few rather than rely on one. Flew's is brief and comprehensive, and remains at hand. The Oxford (Blackburn) is similarly useful. The more comprehensive Shorter Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy makes an excellent dictionary.

But online resources take centre stage; the Stanford Encyclopaedia, of course, the IEP, and a subscription to Oxford Reference via the local library. Their search functions are indispensable.

, I'm advocating for semantic holism. — baker

I've been unable to see any such advocation. Perhaps if you were to set it out more explicitly, I'd be able to follow.

But especially in virtue of adopting semantic holism, it seems reasonable to ask what it is that is reincarnated; the answer will after all tell us where reincarnation fits in any mooted semantic web.

It's like with one's native language: it's not subject to one's choice, it "just happens". — baker

Yep.

You know it's more complex than that. — baker

Well, sure. There's all the living, doing, wanting, making that takes place within the made-up world. Unfortunately including sacred cows and the existence of the dalet. If we are to treat Hinduism holistically, such must also be taken into account.

Autonomy — baker

Interesting. There's a tension between placing emphasis on autonomy while maintaining that one is culturally embedded, as you did in your reply to Joshs, .

No, I mean individuation, not autonomy, and am looking to the logic of the description of reincarnation and asking, again, what it is that is born again. And it seems that we not only do not know, but have no way of determining the answer; and so we turn to mandating that it is so, instead. We make it up.

creating the internal idea of “my understanding” — Antony Nickles

If Wittgenstein draws a picture of such a thing, it is only to reject it - no?

I would hope that such august folk would reject the idea of some private understanding that was made manifest in word and deed, in favour of word and deed being one's understanding.

I'll pause at this point since it seems pivotal.

Nice. Would that I could have been there. As it stands I am having trouble tracking the various threads through the paper, especially given my only passing familiarity with Cavell and Rhees. But the piece set me to puzzling over the apparent desire to give priority to either scepticism or to certainty. We are not "always uncertain"; much of our daily living takes place within a frame of certainty. Our use of criteria in an attempt to justify certainty or scepticism only enters into a small portion of our world, those few occasions of hesitancy. Those criteria are public; or they are nothing. Hence we tend to talk about the stuff of which we are hesitant, the things about which we disagree.

But this seems to me to accord with the final quote.

:meh:

...reincarnation is taboo in Western culture... — Wayfarer

Taboo?

Levels of belief in reincarnation are more comparable across the region. In most Central and Eastern European countries surveyed, a quarter or more say they believe in reincarnation – that is, that people will be reborn in this world again and again. In many Western European countries surveyed, roughly one-fifth of the population expresses belief in reincarnation, a concept more closely associated with Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism than with Christianity. — Pew

Seems not.

why, given that we don't remember who we purportedly were prior to this life. it is considered that it would be important, even if it were true — Janus

Yes. Sure, we're reincarnated; the bits that make up one's body once made up another body. Dig dead people into the compost, use the result to grow carrots so as to ensure theur reincarnation...

Nietzsche's eternal recurrence — Janus

That is quite close to what seems to have in mind. Eternal recurrence strikes me as rather silly. After all, one doesn't know one is a recurrence, and has no memory of such... it's not as if we will get bored...

one of its major points is how something maintains its identity whilst changing... — Wayfarer

There's a few problems, such as -

How is it that old you is the same as young you - directly contradicting Leibniz’ Law
Chrysippus’ Paradox
101 Dalmatians
The ball of clay
Theseus' ship
London and Londres

But sure, Aristotle...

Interestingly, adopting relative identity might offer some solace to and . If identity is indeed context dependent then the hurdle is lowered for the identity of souls, and of disembodied consciousnesses. The case is perhaps stronger for Baker, who has the backing of the traditions of India.

~~

~~

My apologies.

Sure. All that by way of saying, folk can make stuff up?

I supose a bit more detail might not hurt.

What Aristotle thought is of some historical interest, but certainly no longer authoritative - I hope. One likes to believe that there has been at least some progress over the millennia.

And much the same goes for that some cultures make up stories about reincarnation. Sure, they might be right.

But you don't actually know. Just-so stories.

You like that stuff. Be my guest, but I'll decline the offer.

Isn’t there a fundamental principle in Aristotelian metaphysics that it is the material that constitutes the particular? — Wayfarer

So what.

, ,
So the topic becomes that of individuation - what is it that makes something this and not that? The question applies more broadly than to self, so let's have at it.

Historically there were two approaches. In the Bundle theory, what makes an individual is the bundle of properties that make it up. Change the properties and the identity changes. In the Essences theory, the properties are like pins stuck in a blob of essence. Change the properties and the individual remains the same, that essence.

The idea you both are suggesting is that it's not what one commonly calls one's self that is reincarnated, but a something else, a sort of essence...

But what that is remains undefined, or defined only by hand-waving.

At least since Kripke, there has been a third option, that there need be no essential characteristics of an individual, nor some bundle, but that being an individual is constituted more by the way we treat stuff than by any characteristics the stuff has. Precursors to such a view are also found in both Wittgenstein and the German Phenomenologists.

You can get an idea of what is at play from the SEP article on Relative Identity.

For my purposes here, I don't need to advocate one of these views over the other. Instead I'll just draw attention to the options, and point out that what the two of you are advocating is one choice amongst several, and perhaps not the best one.

comes at the issue from some imagined, internal, solipsistic position. "What are the minimum requirements for finding our way about?" Well, being able to find your way about! As points out, you are already embedded in a community, so much so that your attempts to imagine yourself apart from the world carry the world with them. Basically, Joshs, you can't build the private language you need in order to formulate your solipsism.

I don't know what your point is. But "logical impossibility" is a term used by philosophers and logicians, with a clear meaning.

Yep. Similarly, what reason would we have to think that 's disembodied consciousness was Art, and not some parasitic spirit that digests Art's experiences?

More broadly, we understand - more or less - what being oneself is in the normal circumstances of growing old, forgetting, being injured and so on. But remove the body and the context in which all this makes sense drops out as well. In philosophical terms, the language game has been over-extended to the point where it needs to be radically rebuilt; we no longer have the capacity to find our way about.

So we make stuff up.

But there is nothing that makes the stuff we make up right or wrong...

Sure, good reply. What I'm getting at is similar to the difference between watching a documentary and being a part of that documentary. I think that ambiguity may be built in to your speculation. The difference is in who is doing the "watching". If you go back and re-live a part of your life, will you be you, now, re-experiencing that life? If so, you are not re-experiencing, so much as watching from the outside. But if you loose what makes future-you to re-live what it was like for you, then, then it's not future-you who is having the experience - it's just old you.

A different, perhaps more accurate way to think of the block universe in these terms would be that the you from your past is still there, in an atemporal sense, experiencing the things you experienced.

...that thoughts, feelings, the body are not the self. — baker

How odd. Then it doesn't seem to do what wants.

There's a conceptual flaw in all this speculation.

Supose you were to go back and become yourself at some earlier point in your life, returning to an earlier point in the block universe. In your description you make this sound as if this would be the you of now, observing the you of then, watching as if at the movies.

Perhaps what you are experiencing now is a "you" of the future, who has "come back" to experience this time...

But that isn't right, since you have no recollections of your future. You are you, now.

And this would be the same for the you of now, re-becoming an earlier you - in that very process you cease to be the you of now.

The "disembodied consciousness... somehow reenter the stream of time and re-experience my life" would not experience that life in any way differently to how you experienced it.

The problem here is the same as that for reincarnation: what is it that is reincarnated? What is it that revisits an earlier time? What could it mean to say that you experience what it is like to be Lincoln? It would be Lincoln experiencing what it is like to be Lincoln. It's not that any disembodied consciousness can experience any portion of any life, since there could be nothing to say that this was Art experiencing Lincoln and not Lincoln experiencing Lincoln.

If you returned to an earlier time, it would not be as an observer, but as that participant; nothing would or could be different.

The philosophical problem for reincarnation - and for the re-embodiment of the OP - is explaining the individuation of the self.

"logically impossible" is not recognized in philosophy. — L'éléphant

Yeah, it is. (p & ~p). Contradiction.

This entry is about worlds that are not possible, with “possible” understood in an unrestricted sense. Start with the intuitive idea of the totality of possible worlds, which capture all and only the genuine possibilities. The worlds we are interested in are not in there. These worlds are often called logically impossible worlds, as logical laws such as the Law of Non-Contradiction or the Law of Excluded Middle are assumed to be the most general and topic-neutral: they are supposed to hold at all possible worlds. From now on, we are talking of impossible worlds simpliciter, meaning worlds that are not possible with respect to an unrestricted notion of possibility, however this is further characterized. — Impossible Worlds (Stanford Encyclopaedia, my bolding)

i.e. it's impossible to be in two places at the same exact time. — L'éléphant

Tell that to an electron in a double-slit experiment.

I'm sure you do.

It's an inveterate issue in Psychoceramics.

Yeah, OK. No progress to be made here. Publish your article and then invite me to the ceremony when you win the Turing Award so you can say "I told you so".

We also cannot correctly determine the square root of a stack of pancakes. — PL Olcott

Yep. Quite agree. If your conclusion is a logical impossibility, there is something amiss with your assumptions.

Or with your process.

We've already agreed that a reductio argument uses a logical impossibility to show that an assumption is in error; and that Turing's argument is a reductio.

Hadn't we?

That is, a logical impossibility places a limit on the viability of our assumptions... to adopt your odd wording.
If one's assumptions lead to contradiction, then at least one is in error. Assuming we can produce H leads to contradiction. Hence we cannot produce H.

I just totally proved my whole point if and only if you fully understand all of its words. — PL Olcott

:rofl:

If you would prove Turing wrong, you will need more than mere assertion.

These words may be a little too technical for you. — PL Olcott

:wink: You don't have to be here. No need to respond if my comments are not useful.

Or is it that what you have to say cannot be made sufficiently clear?

You started this with Carol's question, went on to claim that Gödel's theorem was wrong, backtracked to Turing and now obfuscate.

That it is possible to write a program which undermines H shows that H cannot be applied to all programs. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.