If I understood correctly, it follows that other people with experience would remain. But not that anyone dying would be the cause of another experience coming into being.

There's no reason to suspect that such a thing happens.

I don't think naturalism says much about experience or lack of experience. We can only point out what looks like consciousness to us, as is found in other people, and some animals. But what happens after death or why we even have experience at all, likely does not fall under the purview of naturalism.

As I understand the term "naturalism", it's useable for publicly observable phenomenon (things everyone can see).

But for private phenomena, it's of less use.

Thanks for responding.

I agree with what you said about someone dying not being the cause of a new experience coming into being.

But if one person’s consciousness ceases to exist while others’ continue to exist and new consciousnesses come into existence, could it be the case that the consciousness that disappeared is in a sense ‘replaced’ by one of the others?

And perhaps my use of the term ‘naturalism’ here was ill-informed.

But if one person’s consciousness ceases to exist while others’ continue to exist and new consciousnesses come into existence, could it be the case that the consciousness that disappeared is in a sense ‘replaced’ by one of the others? — Paul Michael

I don't see how that follows. Take the number of people who've been born in the 20th century alone, we're beyond 7 billion people now.

For the "replacement" to work in any coherent sense, you'd want to say something like, for every person that dies another person "takes in" or is influenced by the consciousness of the dead person. But population growth has gone up globally, this would require a single experience to subdivide into many people.

How would a newly born person "make up" for the experience they did not receive from the dead person? They'd need to get it from there own internal resources meaning genetics, brain activity and whatever else plays a role in consciousness.

So I think you can eliminate the whole thought experiment and assume that our individual experience does not affect other individual experiences without direct interaction of some kind.

And perhaps my use of the term ‘naturalism’ here was ill-informed. — Paul Michael

Few of the terms in philosophy are well defined. So there's no problem with your formulation. I was using my own too. :)

You’ve made some very good and thoughtful points here.

I don't see how that follows. Take the number of people who've been born in the 20th century alone, we're beyond 7 billion people now.

For the "replacement" to work in any coherent sense, you'd want to say something like, for every person that dies another person "takes in" or is influenced by the consciousness of the dead person. But population growth has gone up globally, this would require a single experience to subdivide into many people. — Manuel

I guess if I were to continue to defend the original model, I would say in response to your objection about population growth and the ‘replacement’ not being 1 to 1 is that it doesn’t take into account the possibility that other species possess some level of consciousness and that their consciousness might also be considered to be one of the alternative contexts of consciousness that could replace or be replaced by another. Also, there very well could be conscious (though not necessarily intelligent) life on other planets in the universe.

This doesn’t mean that the exact ratio of all conscious life throughout the universe is in a 1:1 ratio, however. It may be that the ‘replacement’ doesn’t necessarily happen instantaneously.

Also, I want to add that I don’t dogmatically defend the model I proposed, I just wanted to see whether it could be a possibility.

How would a newly born person "make up" for the experience they did not receive from the dead person? They'd need to get it from there own internal resources meaning genetics, brain activity and whatever else plays a role in consciousness. — Manuel

What I had in mind with the original model was more like this: when a conscious being dies, their consciousness entirely ceases to exist. This means that their self/identity effectively ceases to exist. But if other selves/identities still exist and new ones come into existence when that conscious being dies, the ‘self-void’ left by the dead conscious being would be ‘filled’ by one of the other existing selves or one of the new selves. Now, I have no proof or evidence that this actually happens, but it’s an interesting possibility to entertain, at least to me.

Few of the terms in philosophy are well defined. So there's no problem with your formulation. I was using my own too. :) — Manuel

Good point haha.

other species possess some level of consciousness and that their consciousness might also be considered to be one of the alternative contexts of consciousness that could replace or be replaced by another... there very well could be conscious (though not necessarily intelligent) life on other planets in the universe. — Paul Michael

It doesn't solve the problem of how consciousness first arose, unless you accept some form of panpsychism. Which is fine. I don't personally see good evidence for panpsychism, but it's not something I can outright reject. It's unfalsifiable, though it does solve the problem of emergence in a certain way.

If you say something like, human beings can be said to represent one large mind or brain, I think there are ways to formulate that into something coherent.

the ‘self-void’ left by the dead conscious being would be ‘filled’ by one of the other existing selves or one of the new selves. Now, I have no proof or evidence that this actually happens, but it’s an interesting possibility to entertain, at least to me. — Paul Michael

It could. And I have nothing against entertaining these ideas, to be clear.

From my perspective, this creates more questions than it solves. It forces mind to be something separate from the body, but there's no evidence that mind can exist without an accompanying body.

So to be consistent, you'd also have to entertain the view that (say) your arm is created in part, by the arms of a dead person. I can't make sense of that.

It doesn't solve the problem of how consciousness first arose, unless you accept some form of panpsychism. Which is fine. I don't personally see good evidence for panpsychism, but it's not something I can outright reject. It's unfalsifiable, though it does solve the problem of emergence in a certain way.

If you say something like, human beings can be said to represent one large mind or brain, I think there are ways to formulate that into something coherent. — Manuel

Good point, I didn’t really consider the metaphysics of consciousness in the model. I personally would go the route of monistic idealism over panpsychism, which you may have been alluding to in the latter part of the above quote.

From my perspective, this creates more questions than it solves. It forces mind to be something separate from the body, but there's no evidence that mind can exist without an accompanying body.

So to be consistent, you'd also have to entertain the view that (say) your arm is created in part, by the arms of a dead person. I can't make sense of that. — Manuel

Unless monistic idealism is true. Then body is actually just an image of mind. And your last comment conjured a pretty disturbing image in my mind that made me laugh :lol:. But you’re not wrong.

Unless monistic idealism is true. Then body is actually just an image of mind. And your last comment conjured a pretty disturbing image in my mind that made me laugh :lol:. But you’re not wrong. — Paul Michael

Yes. I mean, I believe that some form of monism is ultimately true, that is, everything is made up of fundamentally the same stuff. I don't think the universe cares for metaphysical dualisms. It seems nature prefers simplicity, meaning that there has to be something that accounts for everything in terms of constitution.

So far, we cannot account for 95% of the mass-energy in the universe, hence label it "dark". But I suspect that in some respects, it will have to share some simple property with "ordinary matter".

Then body is actually just an image of mind. — Paul Michael

I agree that it is.

But then my body is not fundamentally different from mind, if it is the same stuff in some sense. If my body is fundamentally different from my mind, I could not see how my mind could represent itself in a body. So some similarity must be assumed.

Yes. I mean, I believe that some form of monism is ultimately true, that is, everything is made up of fundamentally the same stuff. I don't think the universe cares for metaphysical dualisms. It seems nature prefers simplicity, meaning that there has to be something that accounts for everything in terms of constitution. — Manuel

I couldn’t agree more. Monism in some form appears to be the case.

When it comes to the case of monistic idealism in particular, I’m pretty much agnostic on it at this point. I’ve read some very interesting and convincing arguments for it and against materialism/physicalism, but we just don’t really know for sure.

But then my body is not fundamentally different from mind, if it is the same stuff in some sense. If my body is fundamentally different from my mind, I could not see how my mind could represent itself in a body. So some similarity must be assumed. — Manuel

Yes, this makes total sense to me.

To put this another way, it could be the case that when one’s consciousness ceases to exist but other contexts of consciousness still exist and new contexts of consciousness come into existence, one of those existing contexts of consciousness or one of the new contexts subsume the disappearance of the consciousness that stopped existing. For the person that died, it would be as if they became that new context of consciousness, but with nothing linking the person that died to the new context. — Paul Michael

I'm not sure I followed all that mind-hopping. But the crux of the Consciousness debate hinges on whether it is simply an ongoing process generated by the body/brain, or is a substance floating out-there in the ether, or is received as a signal from some transmitting source. If it's like a radio signal, then of course any physical radio mechanism (receptive context) could tune into it. But if Self/Soul/Consciousness is unique to each person, then death of the personal body would terminate that particular process of person-oriented awareness.

I'm reminded of some old Star Trek episodes that dealt with a similar issue of human personality. The hypothetical (imaginary) "Transporter technology" was described as somehow "reading" the information patterns of each person on the platform, converting them into something like a radio signal, and then "beamed" down to a planet like radar. There both body & mind would be recreated in a different location. But some members of the crew panicked at the possibility of losing the essence of their personality in the process of intake & export & re-constituting of information. This philosophical quandary has been explored in various science fiction stories. But it all comes down to the question : is Consciousness physical (like radio waves), or meta-physical (like souls & ghosts)?

The Star Trek scenario is also similar to the notion of Reincarnation or Transmigration of souls (old soul in new "context"). So theologians & philosophers have long debated how such an exportation of essence could work. If the "essence" is a physical substance, no problem. But if the essential Self is simply a metaphysical pattern of relationships, the problem would be how to map that unique pattern into some different material substrate. In the old horror movie, The Fly, a man was transported from place to place, but a fly happened to be in the capsule at the moment of transmigration. Hence the reincarnated body was a hybrid of homo sapiens and fannia canicularis. Their physical essence was blended, as was their mental nature.

Most scientists seem to view Consciousness as simply a side-effect of neural mechanics. But they still must admit that there is no known technology for capturing Consciousness in a bottle. So any talk of exporting or transporting or migrating Self or Soul, is based on a material model, which may be pure fantasy. For example, Dragons & Unicorns are well-understood hypothetical images (mental representations) based on well-known models. But, at this moment, their actual existence remains imaginary, not empirically proven. So, is the Conscious Mind a physical thing that can be replicated by technology, or simply a unique pattern of centered relationships that can only be reproduced in approximation via genetics? :chin:

I'm not sure I followed all that mind-hopping. But the crux of the Consciousness debate hinges on whether it is simply an ongoing process generated by the body/brain, or is a substance floating out-there in the ether, or is received as a signal from some transmitting source. If it's like a radio signal, then of course any physical radio mechanism (receptive context) could tune into it. But if Self/Soul/Consciousness is unique to each person, then death of the personal body would terminate that particular process of person-oriented awareness. — Gnomon

I don’t blame you, I realized recently that the model I proposed in the OP is fairly convoluted :lol:.

If consciousness is like a radio signal and brains are radio receivers, doesn’t this posit a dualism between the physical and consciousness? Like a sort of ‘pandualism’ where there’s a non-physical/immaterial ‘field’ of consciousness that is tuned into by the brains of organisms composed of entirely non-conscious physical substance?

And yes, I do currently agree with you that if consciousness is localized to each individual, then when that person dies their awareness dies with them and they don’t ‘become’ someone else.

When it comes to the case of monistic idealism in particular, I’m pretty much agnostic on it at this point. I’ve read some very interesting and convincing arguments for it and against materialism/physicalism, but we just don’t really know for sure. — Paul Michael

I think it's a semantic issue at this point. I don't want to go over my spiel for the 100th time, it will bore others. So let me put it in a different way:

What difference is there between "materialism/physicalism" and "idealism"?

Assuming this distinction holds up for the sake of discussion, then either the universe is made of the stuff physics describes - at least in part - and we too are part of the world physics describes. The mind and the quantum world are both quite strange and "insubstantial".

Or, if the world is not made of the stuff physics describes, then it is made of the stuff of mind. But this does not imply that the most accurate knowledge we have - which, again, is physics - is incompatible with the mind. There is nothing in physics which says anything against the mind.

But we can "compromise": we know the world as it is presented to us given our cognitive architecture and the world is made up of the same type of stuff as our minds are - at least at the very bottom.

So we then emphasize a semantic preference.

I am explicitly not dealing with "materialist eliminitavism" here, I don't think this view merits much attention or discussion. But even if it were true, by some miracle, we are still left with a monist view.

It does seem to largely be a semantic issue in many ways. And I liked the point you made about physics being compatible with a ‘mind-only’ ontology.

My son is taking an intro to philosophy class and asked me just the other day, what is "conscious". We had the following exchange:

Me:

“The problem is, all words we run to in aid of a definition of "conscious" suffer from the same need of definition: What is "awareness" "perception" "cognition" "contemplation" "sense" "feeling" etc.
So I think, then, maybe we should go by contrast: What does it mean to be "unconscious"? When that is asked, people usually look to the comatose, the dead, a P-zombie, or, ultimately, a rock. All things which we think distinguish conscious from unconscious.

But when I think of a rock, I am not so sure it is not conscious. After all, where an objective view might see the Ancestral Rocky Mountains rise and fall, like an ice cream cone on a hot summer sidewalk, only to rise and begin melting again, then who is to say that such a time-lapse is not lapsing, and the rock is just is on a different plane that we are not (and cannot be?) conscious of?

And what if the rock is an integral part of a different consciousness, without which that consciousness could not exist? For example, when does an automobile cease to be an automobile? When you take away the body? A tire? All tires? The engine? What makes an automobile and automobile? If "we" are conscious, what parts can be removed without removing consciousness? The leg? An arm? Our heart? The blood it pumps to the brain? Can we do without some parts of our brain while still being conscious? And, as to that last piece of the brain without which consciousness cannot be, how much of it can be removed while still retaining consciousness? And if that part has no blood to serve it? No heart to bring the blood?

Are there different levels of consciousness? Low, medium, high? Or consciousness for different purposes? Accomplishing the job in the cubicle to earn a living? Fixing/rigging a broken farm implement because it's too far to town? Wandering around Athens in a robe, contemplating the nature of consciousness? Is consciousness brought to us by leisure, purchased by a full lung and belly, rested?

I say conscious is to be. The rock is conscious, because it is. We are no better, not higher, and maybe, from an objective perspective, not even different. Do not dismiss the rock so lightly, or we might be just as guilty as those who discounted the sentience of the non-human animal. And who's to say that rock is not to a different consciousness as that last individual cell is to the last part of the brain without which consciousness cannot be?

As one wag once said: "You know what a rock says? 'It's your move.'"

My son:

“Interesting, so from there, out of sincere curiosity I ask to you: what is it to be? Because, we may think that as a simple answer to be is "well.. to be." but I don't think that to be is simply to exist as a body, potentially it lies in that definition of consciousness that you provided me, if so then that is the answer but I have to ask can you be without being conscious? Can you be conscious and not be? I feel like this sounds elementary on my end but It's the first question that popped up when reading this, as basic my question is it was the initial question so I ask that to you in hopes of an answer despite how abstract or undefined it might be. What is it to be? Liked reading your response it was very good to read and to help me think!”

Me:

“Well, as you know, my opinion is that A not only = A, but it also = -A. So, yes, you are, and are not, and conscious, and unconscious as to each. After all, if A could not be not-A, then it is a weak sauce indeed. ("A" being All, or God, if you will.) But I don't want to go that far right now. I would rather submit that there is a greater conscious (A) of which we are, in all our manifestations, simply a part. Like the rock to the Earth if the Earth were a being, ala Gaia (which she is, and is not). Check out Gaia. Could she continue to be without that rock? I guess it depends upon how you define her. Like the automobile. What is an automobile? Or, better yet, there is the old philosophical argument about "All swans are white." What happens if you find a black swan? Well, it depends upon how you define "swan." If all swans are indeed white (i.e. whiteness is an integral character of swanness), then that which is black is, by definition, not a swan. But if you define swans in some other way, then a black swan proves the statement false. So, what is "conscious"? Is there more than one? Are their levels? That brings us back to my previous argument. Who are we to say what conscious is?

So, to answer your question, to be, is to be a part of. Since it is not possible to not be a part, then to merely be, conscious or not, is to be conscious. No man is an island; the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth, etc. So, we are conscious whether on an individual level, or as part of a greater consciousness. But our conscious is to the greater conscious as a rock's conscious is to that greater conscious.

To be is to be a part, not apart.

Is this model of post-death coherent — Paul Michael

No but it doesn't have to be.

To be is to be a part, not apart. — James Riley

And so being is part of – not apart from – non-being?

And so being is part of – not apart from – non-being? — 180 Proof

When I said:

But I don't want to go that far right now. — James Riley

I was trying to stay down to Earth and away from my A = -A rant (which I have annoyed my my son with for years and myself for decades), at least for the purposes of my discussion about "conscious' with him. So, in that limited light, "being a part of" would not be a part of non-being because there would be no such thing as non-being. Everything "is", and, whether it wants to be or not, it is a part (much to NOS's chagrin). In other words, it is impossible to be apart when everything is a part.

That which pretends to perceive separateness (or which we perceive as separate), is pretending to unconsciousness. And, while it/we might be in denial about the matter, it/we are still not separate. It is still a part of conscious. In light of the OP, it's not one conscious replacing another, or a greater and a lesser. Rather, it's all one. So it is not a matter of "to be or not to be." It's simply being and thus being a part.

But if I were to step back into my old A = -A rant then yes, "being a part of" is both apart from and not apart from being and non-being.

Off to bed! :sweat:

If consciousness is like a radio signal and brains are radio receivers, doesn’t this posit a dualism between the physical and consciousness? Like a sort of ‘pandualism’ where there’s a non-physical/immaterial ‘field’ of consciousness that is tuned into by the brains of organisms composed of entirely non-conscious physical substance? — Paul Michael

Most of the early theories of Life & Mind assumed that some physical substance was the cause. For example, the Soul/Anima/Life was compared to Breath (intake of air). So they assumed that life could be breathed into a body like CPR. What they didn't know was that an invisible substance, Oxygen, was the essential ingredient. But we now know, that even oxygen is not capable of reviving a dead body. So there must be something more to life.

We now are capable of understanding that, the life-giving "something more" is not any physical stuff that could be taken like medicine. Instead, Life is a Holistic Metaphysical Process, not a single thing. So, that Whole Organized System is the missing element in the duality of Body/Mind, and Life/Death. In-organic substances lack Life. But organic systems live & breathe & think.

Therefore, what remains to resolve the apparent duality is a way to convert dead stuff into a living organism : like Frankenstein. Unfortunately, even the power of lightning energy is not sufficient to organize inert matter into a living being. And that's the basic problem with the "naturalistic model" : it's strictly materialistic, with no organizing essence -- soul/anima/psyche. :smile:

Naturalism as I understand it embraces the idea that the comprehensive experience of cognition/thought is a feature of the universe, versus any kind of eliminativism or reductionism. Any speculation about what happens to that thought after physical death would be just that, speculation. Naturalism does not preclude emergence; in fact, it assumes it.