, ’s intuitions seem out of kilter.

They at least accomodate the empirical data of ‘children who recall their previous lives’ (although as previously acknowledged I’m well aware of the taboo around the subject.)

:up: Far be it from me to pontificate as to what should seem intuitively plausible to others.

:up:

I think the interesting philosophical question is that the most common reaction to Stevenson's research is that it couldn't be true, that there must be something wrong with him or his methodology, and that it can or should be ignored. — Wayfarer

I think this kind of work is non-Hindu, non-Buddhist. For at least some Buddhist and Hindu schools, remembering past lives is a special knowledge that is only possible after the person has attained certain higher abilities.

On a general note, remembering past lives is pointless if it doesn't also serve some higher purpose, such as disenchantment with samsaric existence or realizing dependent co-arising.

Would this include the hundreds of millions of middle-class Indians now employed in call-centres and high technology industries in Hyderabad and the like? I've worked with quite a few IT people of Indian extraction (one of whom always wore a bindu) and, although it didn't come up much, from time to time there might have been discussions of such topics as Hindu beliefs,

and they didn't seem all that reticent to me. They noted approvingly of my interest in Eastern philosophy.

Of course. There is something to be said about Asian politeness and indirectness ... and supremacy ...

:up:

I am familiar with them too, but I can't say they make sense to me beyond the fact that they are all logically possible in the sense of not being obviously self-contradictory. That said, I think the Buddhist concept on the face of it is the most incoherent. — Janus

Well, what is your source for reading up on rebirth?

The way I've learned it from Early Buddhist sources and Theravada is this: Kamma, therefore, rebirth. If one understands kamma, one will understand rebirth. For some of these schools of Buddhism, a person is a bunch of stuff held together by craving.

My main objection, or more accurately indifference, to the ideas of rebirth or resurrection, is that they have no significance to this life, and I think this life is all that is important, given that anything beyond it can only remain nebulous. — Janus

That's because you have it backwards. Kamma, therefore, rebirth. This is the right order of understanding things.

I agree with this and often say that critical discussion has no place in the contexts of spiritual disciplines and religious practices, and even, as Hadot notes in the kinds of ancient philosophies which consisted of systems of metaphysical ideas meant to support "spiritual exercises". But tell that to the fundamentalists!

In any case, this is a philosophy forum where ideas and arguments are presented for critique, so if people want to present their beliefs and ideas here, they should expect questioning, criticism and disagreement.

I'm rather amazed, though, how philosophers are sometimes willing to bang their heads against walls ...

So wouldn't that give us an account in which the process stoped, as opposed to the substance of body and spirit being split asunder? — Banno

Of course. Here is such an account, in both directions; firstly, how come birth (ie. living bodies) comes about, and then how the process of birth/rebirth stops.

From ignorance as a requisite condition come fabrications.
From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness.
From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form.
From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media.
From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact.
From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling.
From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving.
From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance.
From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming.
From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth.
From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play.
Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.

/.../

Now from the remainderless fading & cessation of that very ignorance comes the cessation of fabrications.
From the cessation of fabrications comes the cessation of consciousness.
From the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-&-form.
From the cessation of name-&-form comes the cessation of the six sense media.
From the cessation of the six sense media comes the cessation of contact.
From the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling.
From the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving.
From the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging/sustenance.
From the cessation of clinging/sustenance comes the cessation of becoming.
From the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth.
From the cessation of birth, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of stress & suffering."

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.002.than.html

Solved equally well by the understanding that it never truly existed, but only appeared to exist because of identification with phenomena. — Wayfarer

(Quoting it to point it out; yes.)

Me neither. I think it clear we do not know what happens when we die. All the rest is story telling.
— Fooloso4

Totally agree; there seems to be no conceivable way to rationally or empirically justify the idea that intellectual intuition can yield propositionally configured knowledge of such things. — Janus

Notice how in all major religions, the religious doctrines are said to be given to mankind by God, or some other supreme being, or by an otherwise uniquely and supremely developed human?

Religious doctrines are always top-down, not bottom-up.

Notice how I talk about not taking concepts out of their native contexts?
— baker
Oh, yes. How you square this with semantic holism remains unexplained. — Banno

By ignoring your commitment to semantic atomism (or at best, semantic molecularism) ...

Mental (or semantic) holism is the doctrine that the identity of a belief content (or the meaning of a sentence that expresses it) is determined by its place in the web of beliefs or sentences comprising a whole theory or group of theories. It can be contrasted with two other views: atomism and molecularism. Molecularism characterizes meaning and content in terms of relatively small parts of the web in a way that allows many different theories to share those parts. For example, the meaning of ‘chase’ might be said by a molecularist to be ‘try to catch’. Atomism characterizes meaning and content in terms of none of the web; it says that sentences and beliefs have meaning or content independently of their relations to other sentences or beliefs.

One major motivation for holism has come from reflections on the natures of confirmation and learning. As Quine observed, claims about the world are confirmed not individually but only in conjunction with theories of which they are a part. And, typically, one cannot come to understand scientific claims without understanding a significant chunk of the theory of which they are a part. For example, in learning the Newtonian concepts of ‘force’, ‘mass’, ‘kinetic energy’ and ‘momentum’, one does not learn any definitions of these terms in terms that are understood beforehand, for there are no such definitions. Rather, these theoretical terms are all learned together in conjunction with procedures for solving problems.

/.../

https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/holism-mental-and-semantic/v-1

By ignoring your commitment to semantic atomism (or at best, semantic molecularism) ... — baker

oh, the irony.

Well, what is your source for reading up on rebirth?

The way I've learned it from Early Buddhist sources and Theravada is this: Kamma, therefore, rebirth. If one understands kamma, one will understand rebirth. For some of these schools of Buddhism, a person is a bunch of stuff held together by craving. — baker

Karma makes no more sense than rebirth to me, and I am very familiar with the theories in Buddhism and Vedanta. The point about dualism stands even without the idea of a soul, because there must be thought to be something (at the very least mental tendencies to attachments) over and above the body that carries on from one life to the purported next one, if sense is to be made of the idea of rebirth. But then this is just mind body dualism in another guise.

Notice how in all major religions, the religious doctrines are said to be given to mankind by God, or some other supreme being, or by an otherwise uniquely and supremely developed human?

Religious doctrines are always top-down, not bottom-up. — baker

That's true of course, but the followers must feel that what is being fed to them "rings true". There is always the possibility to question, and accept or reject, what is offered, which is not to say that everyone is capable in actuality of such questioning.