Correct. What seems to be happening here is that some people have decided in advance that reincarnation is impossible, irrational and evil, and that any consideration of the possibility should be suppressed by all available means. — Apollodorus
What seems to be happening here is that some people have decided in advance that reincarnation is essential, rational and good, and that any criticism of the possibility should be suppressed by all available means. — Banno
However, supposing we accept reincarnation either as fact or as theoretical possibility, how would we convincingly justify it in philosophical terms? — Apollodorus
Following Searle and others, mind is to brain as digestion is to gut. That looks pretty clear to me, if still debatable. Suppose that someone were to suggest that digestion could become disembodied. That the digestion from one body could move to another. Would you think this idea had conceptual issues? — Banno
I would have liked to see some comment on the conceptual difficulties I raised, but that's OK — Banno
I prefer dancing as an analogy for minding to Searle's "digestion" ... ; still, as Banno points out, "disembodied dancing" doesn't make conceptual sense, and the activity or process is localized and does not "travel" like a 'thing' from one container (body) to another. Besides, reification of "mind", or "consciousness", is just as groundless as the deification (myth-ification) of unknowns, so whatever is thingified about, or in relation to, the body rots away to oblivion with the body. Epicurus rather than Plato – or 'eternal recurrence of the same' rather than 'karmic wheel of rebirth'.I don't think Searle's analogy holds any water, to say the least. — Sam26
"disembodied dancing" doesn't make conceptual sense — 180 Proof
an OBE — Sam26
The only way it wouldn't make conceptual sense is if it's not logically possible to be disembodied. — Sam26
Are you saying disembodied dancing has the same conceptual problem as a four-sided triangle? At the very least it would be metaphysically possible to dance as a disembodied person. — Sam26
And how does this woo-woo distinction make a factual difference? Changing words in itself almost never changes facts and usually just wallpapers over ignorance by trying to say what isn't sayable (or claiming to know what isn't knowable). "The fact that many traditions state that" e.g. spirits of various kinds rather than germs cause sickness or plague tells us only that most people are profoundly ignorant of – wrong about – most everything outside of their immediate everyday experiences (re: natural selection rewards such a parochial focus) ... such that they/we make shit up rather than admit "I don't know".The fact is that many traditions state that a disembodied soul does have a "subtle" or "astral" body that is visible to other (disembodied) souls. — Apollodorus
It is always an embodied person who has an alleged out of body experience. It is always an embodied person who related their experience. — Fooloso4
What does it mean to be disembodied? Who or what is it that is without a body? "You"? Is it not you who gets hungry? You who feels pain? You who feels loves and desires? What would such things be for a disembodied you? Is it not you but a body that somehow happens to be yours that experiences these things? — Fooloso4
Fashionable? My post history attests to my decades-old affinity for emergence (systems thinking). And if by 'music is emergent' you're implying that the brain-CNS is like a vast, highly complex, orchestra such that "mind" "consciousness" "psyche" what have you is a grand epic symphonic performance, then I completely agree with the analogy. :up: — 180 Proof
Factual possibility is the only modal distinction that makes a difference regarding facts of the matter. — 180 Proof
As far as I or anyone is rigorously aware "NDEs" & "OBEs" are, at most, uncorroborated anecdotes. Idle speculation, like idle doubt, maybe passes the time like daydreaming but that's context-free diversion which neither presupposes commitments nor entails prospects. — 180 Proof
True, I dismiss them too, but for other reasons than most. I dismiss them because they are not relevant in terms of insight into how to make an end to suffering. The past lives acounts of those children don't contain any insight into the workings of dependent co-arising, nor the causal linkage between one birth and the next.Stevenson' attempts to corroborate evidence of children's memories of past experience have all been dismissed as we've seen here. — Wayfarer
Factual possibility is the only modal distinction that makes a difference regarding facts of the matter. — 180 Proof
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.