(Play nice.) — 180 Proof

Yes, and present arguments, not mere assertions of personal opinions.

Fair enough, but I don't think the fact that we cannot even begin to imagine the form such a purported experiment would take gives us much reason to believe that there is one out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. Of course I don't deny that there could be, but I remain skeptical.

Also even if there were such an experiment it. like any other scientific experiment could never constitute a proof.

!

you're right, I agree and I simply acted as a spokesperson for Don. I don't agree with his position, but you asked for a transliteration, and I simply provided that.

I wish you'd read my post that came from my own thoughts, and commented on it. Nobody EVER comments on my posts. It's either because they think it's total gibberish or because they think it closes the argument properly, after which there is nothing to say, and that is not fun. Or else, like Banno, they have complete and utter, pure as hell disdain for me, and they would rather die than express an agreement with what I say.

The upshot is I feel like I am leaving posts for the fucking wall.

The time to believe something is when there is good evidence for it. However, this just kicks the debate down the road into the what-counts-as-evidence territory. — Tom Storm

Many know, manier don't, that to believe is stronger than to know.

In my opinion human knowledge is based on belief. Not religion or in faith in god, but in belief, which COULD be religion or faith, but does not have to be necessarily.

This I arrived by believing Hume (everything could be only coincidental, and it's possible that no determinism exists as causation does not have to exist to experience the world as we do), and by believing solipsism; I think even if we experience the real world, and our senses give us true feedback, the overall effect is not any different from living in a solipsistic world. That is so because we are string puppets, either by the solipsistic director, or by reality, because then reality acts as a director that uses us as string puppets.

Hey I'm just answering questions!

I mean it though - the notion of an afterlife simply has no conceptual coherence. After-life = life after the cessation life. This is no different to a square circle. The woo peddlers reckon they get get around this by cleaving life into two such that there is bodily life on the one hand and then - depending on who you ask because there is no precision here at all - mental, spiritual, conscious or soul-life. But no one has any idea what this last kind of 'life' is, or exactly how 'life' and any of these categories are meant to be conceptually articulated. Or how the 'life' that qualifies any of these latter things has anything in common with the 'life' of the body. It's complete wordplay. A grammar mistake that, because it is so obviously incoherent to anyone with a basic grasp of english ("life that is no longer alive that is alive but not"), must cover it up by conjuring - like a cheap magic trick - internal distinctions that have no purport at all, and fall apart at the slightest prodding because held together by nothing than pseudo-grammatical glue. A conceptual tromp l'oeil with nothing behind the curtain.

One doesn't need to 'argue' that square-circles don't exist: anyone who thinks they do disqualifies themselves as a speaker of english. So too peddlers of 'the afterlife'. The question of 'evidence' here is already seven steps too far.

I mean it though - the notion of an afterlife simply has no conceptual coherence. After-life = life beyond death. This is no different to a square circle. The woo peddlers reckon they get get around this by cleaving life into two such that there is bodily life on the one hand and then - depending on who you ask because there is no precision here at all - mental, spiritual, conscious or soul-life. But no one has any idea what this last kind of 'life' is, or exactly how 'life' and any of these categories are meant to be conceptually articulated. Or how the 'life' that qualifies any of these latter things has anything in common with the 'life' of the body. It's complete wordplay. A grammar mistake that, because it is so obviously incoherent to anyone with a basic grasp of english ("dead life that is alive"), must cover it up by making internal distinctions that have no purport at all, and fall apart at the slightest prodding because held together by nothing than pseudo-grammatical glue.

One doesn't need to 'argue' that square-circles don't exist: anyone who thinks they do disqualifies themselves as a speaker of english. So too peddlers of 'the afterlife'. — StreetlightX

That's true but it somewhat misses the point, given the flexibility of one's choice of grammar.

Chemists has no problem with the statement "Gold was destroyed on Earth, but later discovered in Alpha Centauri" - in spite of absence of information transfer.

Why are natural kinds such as gold and operating systems entitled to "after lives" , but not persons?

Consider the fact that a person isn't rigidly defineable as a type of object, due to an absence of essential criteria.

Why must Elvis Presley be treated as a rigidly designating proper name as opposed to a universal?

Isn't it purely down to the qualities of his impersonators singing and the legal politics of his estate?

OK, but this is just word games - in a way that not even the after-lifer would accept! No 'after-lifer' would accept that the 'afterlife' refers to the 'same kind of thing' existing elsewhere (Gold on AC). No 'after-lifer' would accept that they're just talking about some impersonator having a good time after they are really dead. I'll grant you that grammar is flexible, but the afterlifer is after something much more than any of this. The best I can put it is a vague hippie-like, 'I'm like, dead, but like, also not dead because it's like I'm alive, but not dead, mmaaaaaan'. By all means, if it's a question of the legal politics of someone's estate than have at it - afterlives for all! I'm a believer! But I have this nagging suspicion that this isn't what's at stake.

The most charitably I can put it is this: the afterlifer is after something so radically different from life that it would simply have nothing to do with what we understand as life. It would be something wholly different that one could not even call it an afterlife. But what, exactly, would that be? Once the afterlife becomes unmoored from anything recognizable as life, then what conceptual bearings do we have to even talk of it? And here, the concept needs to be defined, long, long, long before any search for 'evidence' would even be remotely contemplated.

Insert good reasons in my head.

To even ponder a question like that we need to agree on the definition of words that we use. Like soul, existence and mind. — Don Kotlos

Bravo! :up:

:smirk: (Play nice.) — 180 Proof

I thought it was Play fair!

But what type of evidence would be reasonable to convince skeptics that an afterlife probably is a real possibility? — TiredThinker

Beats me!

A can of worms, with immortal worms in it. — Wayfarer

Immortal being the key word! Worms irrelevant unless one is being parasitized by eternal helminths. :vomit:

* — Wayfarer

That asterisk (*) sums up the thread to a T. Nice work!

A visit from my grandmother would be nice.

Seriously, I miss her.

But what type of evidence would be reasonable to convince skeptics that an afterlife probably is a real possibility? — TiredThinker

This reminds me of the first elk I ever killed. Even before I finished gutting, skinning and quartering, the flies were on it. Shortly there after, a motherless cub bear started in on the gut pile as I started to pack out the meat for consumption. I'm no biologist, but I was told that once death sets in, certain microbes inside the body started their work. I know for a fact there is an afterlife. Every time I perceive life I see it.

In ‘ Human Immortality: two supposed objections to the doctrine’, William James offered a creative ‘empirical’ hypothesis concerning the possibility of life beyond death.

“It is true that all this would seem to have affinities rather with preëxistence and with possible re-incarnations than
with the Christian notion of immortality. But my concern in the lecture was not to discuss immortality in general.
It was confined to showing it to be not incompatible with the brain-function theory of our present mundane
consciousness. I hold that it is so compatible, and compatible moreover in fully individualized form. The reader would be in accord with everything that the text of my lecture intended to say, were he to assert that every
memory and affection of his present life is to be preserved, and that he shall never in sæcula sæculorum cease to be able to say to himself: "I am the same personal being who in old times upon the earth had those
experiences.”

https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/JamesHumanImmortalityTwoObjections1898.pdf

I wish you'd read my post that came from my own thoughts, and commented on it. — god must be atheist

Point me to the post you are referring to and I'll be happy to comment on it. And don't worry about Banno, he's egregiously pompous and opinionated.

After-life = life after the cessation life. This is no different to a square circle. — StreetlightX

This is a disingenuous strawman: 'afterlife' is taken to mean life for the individual after this life.

I'm not a believer, and I dislike the way belief in such a thing may lead to smug indifference and devaluation of this life, and consequent toleration of social injustice and exploitation, but it is good form to at least try to understand what proponents of views incompatible with yours actually believe instead of mischaracterizing them and rejecting them out of hand.

We have the cadaver farms that document each stage of decomposition, and archeological evidence showing a wide variety of methods of disposal of human corpses, all of which proves to us the extent of what happens to us after death.

After-life = life after the cessation life. This is no different to a square circle. — StreetlightX


This is a disingenuous strawman: 'afterlife' is taken to mean life for the individual after this life. — Janus

Exactly what is different about what you said?

it is good form to at least try to understand what proponents of views incompatible with yours actually believe instead of mischaracterizing them and rejecting them out of hand. — Janus

It would be good then, if these so-called proponents offered anything close to a coherent concept of the afterlife with which to discuss.

Point me to the post you are referring to and I'll be happy to comment on it. — Janus

there are some... have fun. Philosophy should be named Funosophy, because we don't do it for the love of it, but for the fun of it. Socrates very much being a pioneer in this movement.

To me, if you reworded the question, the only proof would be personal. — god must be atheist

this starts with a pedantic analysis of the wording of the OP. If this post of mine was read and taken seriously, the thread would be stopped dead in its tracks. But that's no fun.

I think you are using an equivocation. — god must be atheist

Debunking a skeptic -- this is a bit more meaningful

Many know, manier don't, that to believe is stronger than to know. — god must be atheist

my epistemological manifesto

Any evidence of disembodied minds (conscious or otherwise)? If the eliminativists are correct, however, we're all just p-zombies deluding ourselves that we're each something more like a "self" (pace Buddha, Hume ...), or a "somebody", when in fact we're each something much less complete / autonomous (vide Spinoza ... Tom Metzinger).

When I said proof I certainly wasn't referring to first person accounts. That isn't even reliable enough when observing stars in the sky. But yes I am wondering how appropriate scientific methods could be applied to something along the lines of the accult. And lets also consider that although we can measure the brain and compare its activity to the activity of the person with great accuracy that doesn't strictly show that our mind doesn't have redundancy outside of the physical? What experiments could be done that the parapsychology researchers haven't tried yet?

No need of scientific method here, just obvious rationality: Socrates has outlived and will outlive every one of us mere mortals. Isn’t he still on our tongues?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17234565/

I found this study interesting although I feel too much psychic research is done at University at Arizona to seem credible enough to my liking versus other colleges as well. I do know U@Virginia has a special department DOPS for such stuff as well, but two schools isn't enough. And I know this study doesn't show consciousness survival after death but does certainly insist that our abilities to acquire knowledge while alive has range.

Maybe we could also ask what counts as proof or good evidence. This topic is certainly more flighty and hard to pin down versus quantum research of very small things with very exact measurements.

Maybe we could also ask what counts as proof or good evidence. — TiredThinker

Gotta fuck around (e.g. give encrypted passwords / messages to the dying) and find out (e.g. somehow receive unencrypted passwords / messages back from the dead). Or this.

there are some... have fun. Philosophy should be named Funosophy, because we don't do it for the love of it, but for the fun of it. Socrates very much being a pioneer in this movement. — god must be atheist

True it must be fun in the sense of interesting, but don't you acknowledge a dimension of philosophy that may inform the living of life?

To me, if you reworded the question, the only proof would be personal. — god must be atheist

Proof is always analytic or empirical (which means inter-subjectively decidable). It's impossible to see how any proof of an afterlife could be either. On the other hand a religious experience or intuition may be convincing enough, in a subjective sense, to count as "proof" for the individual; but it isn't really.

Many know, manier don't, that to believe is stronger than to know. — god must be atheist

my epistemological manifesto — god must be atheist

To know just is to believe, unless it is direct. I see it is raining, therefore I know it is raining. I can be said to therefore believe it is raining but that belief is of a different order than secondhand beliefs like believing in the Big Bang. Of course the so-called "global" may question even the directly derived beleifs, by saying that they might be dreams or hallucinations. For me, that;s an absurd step too far.

After-life = life after the cessation life. This is no different to a square circle. — StreetlightX


This is a disingenuous strawman: 'afterlife' is taken to mean life for the individual after this life. — Janus


Exactly what is different about what you said? — StreetlightX

You characterized afterlife as a logical absurdity, like a square circle. But there is nothing logically contradictory about imagining that there might be continuance of an individual life in some different (obviously unknown) form, unless you make the definite stipulation that an individual life is inseparable from the life of the body. I believe the latter, but others don't and therefore their claims that there is or may be an afterlife are not logically inconsistent or contradictory.

The idea of an "afterlife" sounds like a very toxic ideology to motivate someone to the point of suicidal acts from the guidance of an unethical manipulator.

Or some kind of comfort in passing.

I do wonder sometimes if mass shooters really believed they would go to hell for their actions, whether they would carry them out. The belief that ‘death is the end’ might be part of the rationale for such massacres, in that the perpetrators believe that when they die there won’t be further consequences. So that belief might be, ironically, consequential.

there is nothing logically contradictory about imagining that there might be continuance of an individual life in some different (obviously unknown) form — Janus

'Continuance' from what exactly. Go on. Spell it out. Which 'discontinious' moment is this 'continuance' meant to follow from?

How about personal experience like a near - death?

Many know, manier don't, that to believe is stronger than to know. — god must be atheist

my epistemological manifesto
— god must be atheist

To know just is to believe, unless it is direct. I see it is raining, therefore I know it is raining. — Janus

ever been in a state of optical illusion, or normal delusion?

True it must be fun in the sense of interesting, but don't you acknowledge a dimension of philosophy that may inform the living of life? — Janus

I don't think of philosophy in terms of it
- giving moral guidance
- providing a template for living
- teaching useful, applicable wisdom

at all. Many do, I appreciate that, but they are normally the morally superior, the religious, and the so weak and feeble, that they can't work out each problem on their own, so they will use "life philosophies".

I think of philosophy as a field of inquiry, to find answers to those questions that have not been answered by science, yet they can be figured out speculatively.