A Review of The Myth of an Afterlife

Note:  This review is approximately 5,000 words long. I have a longer version that is approximately 13,000 words that I have called A Response to the Myth of an Afterlife that some readers may prefer to read. It incorporates what I write here, but also includes some philosophical arguments.

1) Introduction

This is a huge book of 700+ pages with a total of 29 contributors, all of whom sport impressive academic credentials. A good proportion of the book focuses on the tight correlations between mental states and brain states. Just to mention a few examples. Our capacity to understand written and spoken words, or the capacity to speak, are impaired or even eliminated with injuries to certain regions of the brain. Damage to the hippocampal and thalamic areas of the brain can destroy one's ability to store new long-term memories. In addition, radical personality change may be brought about by injury to the brain. The most famous example here is undoubtedly Phineas Gage. We could also point to the effects of drugs that have a propensity to affect our emotions, attitudes, and dispositions. Indeed, even alcohol and caffeine do this. If changes in the brain can bring about such changes, then how could we possibly survive the death of the brain?

It is also stated there is no evidence for a soul, and a soul is not required in any case since a purely physical account can wholly explain what we human beings are. Alleged conceptual difficulties involved in survival are also advanced. Thus, for example, how would we recognise other souls in the afterlife realm if they do not have bodies? How do souls travel from A to B in the afterlife realm, and what is their mode of propulsion? The evidence for survival is also addressed; primarily NDEs, the research by Ian Stevenson for the evidence suggesting reincarnation in the form of children's alleged memories of previous lives, and mediumship. But all such evidence is dismissed as being of very poor quality, at best.

In what follows I will refer to the hypothesis that our consciousness survives the death of our body in some form as, the survival hypothesis. I will refer to the notion that we simply cease to exist when we die as, the extinction hypothesis.  I will refer to that which survives as the self.  LR refers to my longer review.

2) What is it that might survive?

The various authors are all agreed that if anything survives then it is what we commonly call our minds.  That is to say, if anything survives it will be our present psychological make-up with all our attendant beliefs, interests, dispositions, emotional reactions, memories, and so on. 

I disagree.  Consider how our emotions can change after imbibing alcohol. It may be that one might be more easily aroused to anger, more prone to being upset, more gregarious and so on.  Or compare what we are like at the present time to when we were children. We now have a much increased intelligence, we have differing interests, we have differing memories, our emotional reactions are very different.

Despite such changes, it feels to me that I am precisely the same self after a few beers, even though my mood and so on will have been affected. And I still feel that same connection to when I was a child.  I still feel like I am the very same person.  To reflect my feelings here I therefore propose that the self (or soul) is one’s inner essence, that which makes me me, that indelible sense of a self that has persisted from childhood to adulthood despite my beliefs, hopes, dispositions, emotional reactions, memories all being different. None of these constitute the self rather they are properties or attributes of the self.

As I see it, the problem with the conception of the self or soul that all the authors hold is twofold. First of all, our beliefs, interests, dispositions, emotional reactions, and memories change throughout our lives. Hence, with such a conception of the self, we do not even survive from one year to the next, or indeed come to that, from one hour to the next if we have a few beers.  Hence an afterlife seems unlikely.  Secondly, their conception of the self doesn’t do justice to our feelings that we are the very same selves throughout our lives.

The first glaring problem with this book then is the authors’ conception of the self or soul.  At the very least they needed to defend their conception, at least one of the authors.  But none of them do.

3) The Mind-Brain Correlations

However we define the self, doesn't the fact that mental capacities vary according to the intricacy and condition of one’s brain demonstrate, or at least make it highly probable, that consciousness, or the mind, could not exist without the brain?

This certainly seems to be the case for all the authors’ conception of the self or soul.  And they use up approximately half the book, 350 pages or so, painstakingly describing all the ways in which brain damage also damages the self as they conceive it.

But what of the conception of the self as I outline it in the previous section? Consider the following metaphor.

“It surely must be obvious to everyone that spectacles (i.e. eyeglasses) actually create vision. Changing the lenses affects the vision in certain characteristic ways. One can make one's vision worse, or better. One can make one be able to see in the distance, but not close up; or conversely, to see close up, but not at a distance. We can invert peoples' vision. We can make people see everything in blue, or red, or green, you name it. Or all blurry. By painting the lenses black we can even eliminate one's vision completely! And all these effects are consistent across different people”.

Of course, we know that spectacles don’t create vision. Indeed, we know in principle that spectacles could not create vision all by themselves since there is no appropriate mechanism, or conceivable causal chain, whereby vision could be created. Extra ingredients are required; namely eyes and the part of the brain dealing with vision.

Other examples apart from spectacles can be considered. Thus, consider a prism. The mixture of coloured lights obtained is not wholly produced by the prism all by itself. Something extra is involved, in this case, the white light that enters the prism. Or consider a TV set. The internal components all by themselves do not produce the programmes. Similar to the prism something else is involved, in this case, TV signals. More generally, if changes in x somehow precipitate changes in y, this might be because x somehow produces y all by itself, but it is also possible that y originates from z or have no origin at all, with x merely altering the form that y takes.

It is my belief that when we consider the mind-body relationship there is likewise an extra ingredient involved. This extra ingredient, I suspect, is the conception of a self or soul as I have presented it in the previous section. This self is comparable to one’s unaided vision. One’s present mind, on the other hand, is comparable to one’s bespectacled vision.

There’s only one attempt by any of the authors to address this conception of the mind-body relationship, and that is from one of the editors, Keith Augustine, who is by far the most prolific contributor to this volume. He considers the TV metaphor.  Unfortunately, he completely fails to understand it (see LR section 3).

The question here is how do we know that the mind-body relationship is not of this nature?  In LR section 3 I consider various examples of personality change brought about by brain damage but conclude they do not refute the mind-body relationship I have advanced.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that it is correct either.  Perhaps this notion of a persisting self – that is to say a self distinct from one’s varying mind-states -- is an illusion.  And even if it is correct, perhaps such a self is bound up with its brain somehow and couldn’t exist without it. Indeed, if we just consider the mind-body correlations in isolation, then it will seem that the hypothesis that the brain simply creates consciousness is by far the most parsimonious one.

A relevant point here is that if there is an extra ingredient, or self, apart from the brain, then it has never been detected. And if it doesn’t correspond to any part of the brain, then such a self would seem to have to be non-material. Thus, to either establish that materialism is likely to be true, or that any non-materialist position, such as substance dualism, is likely to be false, will suffice to show that such a self is not required. How do the authors fare in this task?


4) Materialism

I and many others have made the argument that materialism cannot possibly be correct (see LR section 4).  So I was interested to see what the various authors might say against such arguments, and further, what positive reasons they could advance for supposing materialism to be true.

They don’t bother.  They neither defend materialism against such arguments, nor do they provide any positive reasons for supposing materialism is true (with the arguable sole exception being a certain Raymond D. Bradley, see LR section 5). Indeed, the authors appear to have an implicit assumption that the mind-body correlations all by themselves very strongly suggest that both consciousness is produced by the brain and that materialism is true. Indeed, they do not seem to differentiate these two positions. But, what we require is a justification of materialism independent of such correlations. Otherwise, we do not have any additional arguments for supposing consciousness is produced by the brain over and above such correlations. Hence, we still have insufficient reason to suppose that the mind-brain relationship is not of the same nature as the aforementioned spectacles, prisms and TV set metaphors mentioned in the previous section.

5) Dualism

Although no arguments are made for materialism, there is some attempt, at least by some of the authors, to argue against dualism, and specifically against interactionist dualism.  For example, some of the authors believe that even our voluntary behaviour originates from unbroken chains of physical causes and effects. Thus Rocco J. Gennaro and Yonatan I. Fishman in their chapter, The Argument from Brain Damage Vindicated, claim that no “soul-stuff” has been experimentally detected; that is to say, no neurons have ever been detected firing in absence of any physical cause. They are claiming here that no effects of consciousness, at least as considered something separate from physical effects, has ever been experimentally detected.

We need to bear in mind that it will be simply assumed by neuroscientists that some type of materialism is correct.  Consequently, any influence from a non-material consciousness will simply not be looked for at all. Any firing of neurons will simply be taken for granted to have been caused by prior physical events. Moreover, even if they were looking, our functional MRI's lack the resolution to make any definitive assertions in this regard. Apart from this, and indeed much more importantly, I regard the denial of the causal efficacy of consciousness to be fatally problematic. Nor does identifying consciousness with physical processes seem to make it any less problematic (I go into detail as to why I believe this in LR section 6).

Another point made by Keith Augustine and Yonatan I. Fishman in The Dualist’s Dilemma chapter is that interactive dualism necessarily contravenes at least some physical laws. I am entirely in agreement with their assertion here.  But this is no argument at all against interactionism.  Why?  We simply need to remember that current physical laws, being restricted to the quantitative or measurable, necessarily leave out consciousness in their description of reality (see LR section 4). At best current physical laws merely give us philosophical zombies. It follows then that if consciousness is causally efficacious, then our physical laws as currently formulated, cannot give a complete description of reality.  So, necessarily, consciousness contravenes current physical laws somewhere. A new science is required that is not restricted to the merely quantitative.

6) Science

It is continually stressed throughout the book by the various authors that the thesis that consciousness is somehow produced by the brain is entirely consistent with everything that science teaches us about the world; contrariwise, the notion that our consciousness might survive, is emphatically not.

This is absolute nonsense. There are two possibilities.  Either the brain-consciousness relationship is of the production type as the authors believe, or it is of a similar type to the vison – spectacles relationship.  In the latter relationship, there are selves that are altered by the brain resulting in our mind states.

How does science decide between these two hypotheses? If we independently conclude that materialism is correct, then there is no problem.  For it then follows immediately that consciousness is produced by the brain. But none of the authors provide an argument for materialism.  And it’s worth remarking that even if they had successfully argued for materialism, it will have been through philosophical argumentation rather than science, belying their claim that science has shown that consciousness is a product of the brain.

Alternatively, they could accept that materialism is incorrect, and claim that even though consciousness is non-material, it is a simpler hypothesis to suppose that the brain produces consciousness rather than merely altering it.

The problem here is that not only do we not have such a hypothesis but that such a hypothesis necessarily eludes any possible scientific justification, at least while science is construed as studying merely the quantitative/measurable.  For if brains produce consciousness, this relationship is of a differing type to any other whereby X produces Y. Normally it is unproblematic; for example, when we examine the internal components of a clock and their interactions, we can deduce that the hands must move. Contrariwise, if the brain produces consciousness, then this isn't explicable through physical chains of causes and effects since at some juncture there is a leap from purely quantitative events to the richness of qualitative conscious experiences.  We would need to identify such conscious experiences with a physical process -- that is, independently establish that materialism is true.
 
The final strategy I can think of would be to have argued that my conception of the self doesn’t make any sense.  But, as I pointed out in section 2, none of the authors even attempt any such critique. Indeed, they do not seem to be even aware of such a conception of the self.  And again, even if they had attempted to do this and additionally did so successfully, this will have been through philosophical arguments, not through science.

The crucial point then is that science, in this limited sense of mapping out the various correlations, cannot distinguish between the two respective hypotheses of the brain creating consciousness, or merely altering it. This is why a philosophical appraisal of this issue is indispensable.  And it is especially important since it seems to me we lack any conceivable mechanism whereby the brain could produce consciousness. Conversely, merely altering it, might not be so problematic. It is therefore flat out dishonest to claim we have overwhelming scientific evidence that the brain produces consciousness.

7) Problems with the Evidence for an Afterlife

Unfortunately, I feel I lack sufficient knowledge of the evidence to provide an informed opinion here. I do though have a few comments to make on David Lester’s chapter, Is There Life after Death, and specifically what he alleges are the “logical problems of reincarnation”. I’ll also take a brief look at Keith Augustine’s chapter, Near-Death Experiences are Hallucinations.

One “logical problem” that David Lester mentions is that when young children apparently recollect a previous life, they do not generally recollect the time in-between lives (data suggests this only happens in around 20% of cases). Related to this is the fact that only a minority of children appear to recollect previous lives, and then only mainly one previous life.

It needs to be pointed out that most people do not remember their childhood before the age of 4 years old, and that most people do not remember their dreams. Does this likewise present a logical problem for the notion we all existed from 0 to 4 years old, or for the notion we all dream? Presumably not, so why does it somehow present a “logical problem” for reincarnation? The fact of the matter is that we can recollect very little even of our past present lives. However memory works, it only enables us to recollect a very small percentage of our past existence, and the further back in time we go, the less and less we are likely to remember. Whatever it might be that prohibits recollection before a certain age, or recollection of our dreams, might also somehow prohibit past life memories and the time in-between lives. Specifically, in respect of the time between lives, perhaps the unfamiliarity of the afterlife environment, or the events in-between lives, somehow makes recollection more difficult. And parents may think such memories of in-between lives are fanciful and discourage their child from talking about them. So I’m not sure this constitutes a problem, least of all a logical one.

David Lester notes that frequently the previous person lived in the same region as the current person.  He thinks that the reincarnated person shouldn’t be constrained by space and therefore there should be many more cases where people are born in different nations. He also thinks that cultural beliefs, for example that sex change does not occur from one life to the next, should not actually be reflected in the case reports. This implies that he thinks that our expectations, beliefs, yearnings, should have no influence whatsoever on where we are born, how quickly we are reincarnated, what sex we are born, and so on. 

But why would anyone conclude this? I would have thought otherwise, personally. If someone has both a belief that she will be reincarnated and a desire to be quickly reincarnated to the area she lived previously, then it is entirely unclear to me why such expectations and desires would have no causal influence whatsoever in “gravitating” that individual to a suitable host body to be reborn. Of course, we have no idea how the whole reincarnation process works, but the evidence would seem to back me up here.

On to what I regard to be the best chapter in this book, Near-Death Experiences are Hallucinations, authored by Keith Augustine. He correctly points out that it wouldn’t be surprising “if NDE’rs consciously or subconsciously exaggerated the accuracy of their descriptions in order to validate their experiences”, that NDE’s featuring hallucinatory elements might tend not to be published, and certain NDE’s might be under-reported if they conflict with what actually happened in the physical environment.  I’m in agreement with all of this.  It seems likely to me that we’ll hear a disproportionate number of NDEs that seem consonant with an afterlife, and we’ll hear less of those NDE’s with bizarre elements.

Keith Augustine also points out that, on occasions, NDE’res sometimes see people that are still alive during their experience. On the face of it this seems pretty damning. But, it depends. A crucial question here is whether these NDEs are phenomenologically identical to standard NDEs where apparitions of dead people are encountered. If they are, then this might suggest that the people and entities seen during all NDEs are likely to be all hallucinations. But, if they are not, and especially if the experience of seeing apparitions of living people during their NDE seems less authentic, then this objection loses much of its force.

He also mentions the fact that only a small fraction of those who come close to death report NDE’s.  The hypothesis that people simply forget the experience he rejects as being unfalsifiable and blatantly ad hoc and he maintains we need some independent reason to suppose they had an NDE.

I’m not sure why it should be the default assumption that everyone will be able to recollect any experiences on the threshold of death. Further, we need to bear in mind that we know that at least some people who have undergone NDEs do forget either their entire NDE, or at least elements of it. For example, the philosopher A.J. Ayer could not afterwards recollect the entirety of his NDE. And I recollect hearing other reports of people coming close to death who initially had no recollection of any NDE only to report remembering elements of an NDE afterwards. So it might be that NDEs are similar to dreams in this respect. Everyone dreams, but most people cannot recollect dreaming (although some people can). Why is it unlikely that this could not also apply to NDEs?

There is, in addition, another possibility. It might be that those who were unable to recollect any experiences never, in fact, left their bodies in the first place.  If this is so, then they will still be subject to the constraints of their bodies and hence didn’t have any experiences to recollect any more than if they had been in deep sleep. 

8) Miscellaneous

Much of the material in this book is essentially irrelevant to the survival question. Thus, for example, one chapter, by a certain Ingrid Hansen Smythe, attempts to cast doubt on reincarnation by linking it with a certain conception of karma that punishes people for their wrongdoing in previous lives. The problem here is twofold. First of all, reincarnation need not imply the existence of any type of karma, and indeed the scientific research in the form of investigating young children’s alleged memories doesn’t suggest anything like karmic influences. But, even if reincarnation did somehow entail the operation of karma, why would it imply such a preposterous notion of it that Smythe articulates? Of course, it might be retorted that many people do believe in such a notion of karma. But what all this amounts to is that certain peoples’ conception of the way that reincarnation works are implausible. It certainly doesn’t suggest in any way that reincarnation doesn’t happen.

Interestingly, the authors often seem to presuppose we would have no body of any type in any afterlife realm. Theodore M. Drange asks whether we would see from a particular location in the afterlife realm, and given that we have no body, what would be located there? And, indeed, how could we move anywhere if we don’t have a body since what would move? Raymond D. Bradley asks how fast our souls would go and by what means of propulsion and he also “wonders what could bring about changes in what you see, hear, feel, or smell, once you are deprived of the corresponding bodily organs and brain centers”? Michael Martin also asked how we would manage to travel in Heaven. Referring to OBE’s, Susan Blackmore claims that a soul, being non-physical, couldn’t possibly travel in the physical realm. There are countless other objections of a similar trivial nature which would be too arduous for me to comprehensively list.

I think the main problem here is that all the authors seem to presuppose that any afterlife realm will be similar to our physical reality and so will be subject to the same physical laws as our world, such as, for example, Newton’s three laws of motion. Hence souls will need a power source to move around and so on. But I see no reason to suppose that any afterlife realm would operate according to the same regularities as our physical realm does. Perhaps just thinking about a location in the afterlife realm will be sufficient to take us there. What moves to the new location? Well, why does anything, as such, have to move? Why can’t it simply be a case of having a view from one visual perspective and switching to a view from another visual perspective, much as one might do, say, in a computer game or virtual reality? Unlike our physical reality, perhaps nothing need traverse from x to y. Having said all that, it’s not entirely clear to me, in any case, that in any afterlife realm we would have no bodies. We might, for example, have bodies in an analogically akin sense to how we have bodies in virtual reality.

Several of the authors mention split-brain patients who appear to have two streams of consciousness. Their argument here is that this is incompatible with any soul since, presumably, a soul’s consciousness should not be able to be split into two streams.

I agree. If our original consciousness is split into two streams, then presumably neither will be identical to the original. Hence, after someone has had this operation, then they – both theys! --should feel very different. After all, each of the two streams of consciousness are only half the person they were originally! And if this were so I would be in agreement with the authors that this would create difficulty for the notion that we are souls.

But this is emphatically not the case. Split-brain patients claim to feel exactly the same as they did before the operation, and they behave perfectly normally. How do the authors explain this? They don’t, they completely ignore this awkward fact.

It seems to me that if we are to accept there are 2 streams of consciousness in split-brain people, then we will be compelled to accept that even in normal (non-split brain) people there are actually 2 streams of consciousness that reside in us all. So, my present stream of consciousness or “self” is not an amalgamation of the 2 different streams of consciousness. Rather I – the “self” typing these words – am exclusively the stream of consciousness corresponding to one of my hemispheres (the left?).

For various reasons, I find this philosophically problematic. My original intention was to discuss this and show why I think this is untenable. However, since the publication of this book, there has been additional research on split-brain patients that contradicts the former research. In brief, this new research suggests that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, there still is only one conscious perceiver in split-brain patients. The relevant paper is here.

 9) Conclusion

The authors’ first task was to articulate a sensible conception of a soul. They failed in this task – the concept of the “soul” or “self” they advance not only couldn’t survive the death of our bodies, but also couldn’t survive from childhood to adulthood, or, come to that, even survive after a few alcoholic drinks.

Nevertheless, since a sensible conception of the self or soul would seem to have to be non-material, the failure here could have been remedied by showing both that materialism is a viable metaphysic, and that it indeed is likely to be true. But quite incredibly the entire book was devoid of any such arguments. Indeed, it’s as if authors are completely unaware of the difficulties of materialism and many of them give the impression that they believe the mind-brain correlations all by themselves are enough to establish materialism.

I find the constant assertion by most of the authors that science very much favours the annihilation hypothesis, to be reprehensible. Similar to their conclusion that materialism must be correct, it is purely based on the mind-body correlations. Hence, the authors content themselves with harping on about all the ways our mental life is affected by the brain, going into great detail and frequently repeating each other. In this great huge thick book, it scarcely gets beyond that. They live in this world where it’s all so obvious. A brain injury affects our ability to think, hence the brain creates consciousness. And this is scientific. That is the extent of their reasoning.

They give no indication of being aware that such mind-brain correlations can also be explicable given a more commonsensical conception of the self or soul coupled with the thesis that the brain merely alters consciousness.  Science cannot decide between these two hypotheses, it requires a philosophical appraisal.   Such philosophical appraisals are entirely absent from this book.

In many respects, this book very much resembles the mirror image of the countless popular books extolling the reality of an afterlife. Books that concentrate on the evidence for an afterlife -- NDEs, deathbed visions, mediumship, memories of previous lives and what have you – but accept it uncritically. No difficulties with the evidence are ever addressed. No alternative hypotheses are ever considered. They are devoid of any philosophical thought. These books are all about persuasion. Persuading people it is utterly foolish to reject an afterlife.

Likewise for this book, The Myth of an Afterlife. Similar to such mass-market books this is not a serious book. It concentrates on the evidence for the annihilation of consciousness at death – namely the mind-brain correlations -- but accepts this evidence uncritically without ever delving in further. No difficulties with the evidence are ever addressed. No alternative hypotheses are ever considered. It is essentially devoid of any philosophical content. This book is all about persuasion and nothing else. It is purely about persuading people that it is utterly foolish to believe in an afterlife. 

But this book is worse than those mass-market books advocating an afterlife. For this book purports to be a collection of scholarly essays. It is pretending, hoodwinking, people into thinking it is something that it is not. That it has an intellectual respectability that the mass-market books lack. That it has the prestige of science behind it. That it will be balanced, come to a conclusion based on all relevant evidence and considerations. But none of this is true. Oh yes, and unlike the mass-market books, it is very repetitive.

Who is this book for? Not for those who are seeking the truth. Most likely it’s for those who are already convinced that there is no afterlife, and can use the research detailed in the book to bludgeon their opponents with. My recommendation is to save your money and not buy this book. If you see it in a library, then save your time (and arms) and leave it on the shelf.

Underdetermination of Scientific Theory

How do we make sense of change in the world? We need to dream up a theory that explains what we see. We can understand why the black dots move in the way they do if we hypothesize that the dots reside on the apexes of invisible moving equilateral triangles. We might not be able to perceive the triangles, perhaps not even in principle, but we can confidently infer their existence.

But wait!

The movement of the black dots is equally explicable if we imagine the dots reside at the apexes of invisible moving squares. Or, if they are moving along the lines constituting a star shape. If we are unable, perhaps even in principle, of perceiving any of these shapes, then how could we know which theory is correct? Indeed, perhaps none of them are?


Likewise, change in our world is accounted for by the existence and interactions of subatomic particles. We cannot see these particles, not even in principle, but we can infer their existence, just as we can infer triangles for the movement of the black dots. So, does this mean that what we see with our naked eyes could appeal to quite different entities to explain what we see? I think so.


This is a problem in science since all possible evidence we could have radically underdetermines which theory is the correct one. This is called the underdetermination of scientific theory by evidence. It also invites the question of whether our theories that utilize entities that can never be directly observed, actually depict a literal state of affairs.

The difference between science and metaphysics

Think of a computer game. In order to play a 3D game proficiently, we need to know how the game environment changes when the character moves and behaves in particular ways. The character you control who presses buttons in the game environment will cause certain things to happen in that environment. Shooting at certain spots will cause other things, such as "killing" a bot. And so on and so forth.

One can become extremely proficient at a game. Yet, at the same time, one might know absolutely nothing about what makes the game possible to exist in the first place, and why the game environment changes in the characteristic way it does. In other words, one might know nothing about CPU's, RAM, or anything else about the underlying machinery of the computer, even though one might be better at the game than anyone else.

I submit that our science, together with the technology it has spawned, is analogical to playing a computer game proficiently.  I submit, that is, that science deals exclusively with the patterns discerned in reality and how the world changes with particular actions on our parts. Similar to the game, science tells us absolutely nothing about the underlying machinery of reality. Science tells us nothing about how or why the world exists at all and why it has the particular physical laws it does. That is what metaphysics deals with.

It might be thought that the existence of forces like gravity refutes this.  Objects fall to the ground because the force of gravity compels objects to fall down.  On this view, gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, are intrinsic to reality and make reality behave as it does. 

But how do we know this?  We can observe an object falling, but we never observe the gravitational force that allegedly causes it to fall.  Or we never observe the warping of space-time that allegedly causes it to fall (indeed, what could a warping of space-time possibly mean?)

Consider the Earth as it orbits the Sun.  It is considered that the Earth is compelled to follow a circular path around the sun due to gravitational force.  If the force were to suddenly disappear, then the Earth would travel in a straight line at uniform velocity.   Now, why is it the case that motion in a straight line is considered to be natural motion with no forces requiring an object to move in such a manner, but circular motion is considered unnatural with a force required to constrain an object to follow such a path?  I suggest because it's simpler to think of reality in that way. 

At the end of the day, all we know about the world comes from our senses; mainly from our visual qualia.  Science is in the business of describing the patterns in our visual qualia.  In physics we find that mathematical equations, such as Newton's equation (F = G(m₁m₂)/R²), describe the falling process.  But these equations are all we need from a scientific perspective.  Postulating such forces like gravity might make it easier to derive such equations, but they are not strictly necessary.

Note I am not saying that forces like gravity do not exist.  They might exist (although I don't think they do), but if they do that is part of the underlying machinery of reality, and hence comes under the purview of metaphysics.

Think back to our computer game. One's character can jump up and down. Why does the character fall back down to the ground? Because of gravity? Obviously not! The game operates according to its software instructions.

Now, let's consider our physical reality and why objects fall.  It might, as mainstream opinion holds, be due to some force intrinsic to reality. Or it might be because we're living in a kind of virtual reality created by beings existing "outside" of our reality, and the falling down process is just the way our reality is programmed.  Or it might be (to give my own personal opinion) that the explanation resides in the fact that reality is infused with teleology or entelechy, and that our scientific laws simply describes such innate propensities. But the point is that this is a metaphysical issue, not an empirical or scientific one.


Science is not in the business of providing literal explanations, rather it is merely in the business of describing reality. To suppose one can use physics to explain why reality exists at all, or why reality is described by the laws we find, is to misunderstand the legitimate scope of science.  For genuine explanations we have to look to metaphysics.

Similar posts by me:

Do scientific explanations actually explain?
What philosophical questions does science answer?
Is Reality real?
A very brief introduction to subjective idealism.

Does the evidence entail the brain creates the mind?

Does the fact that mental capacities vary according to the intricacy and condition of one’s brain show that consciousness, or the mind, could not exist without the brain? Most of the scholarly community appear to think so. But it seems to me that this is not correct. Indeed, I submit it is quite a glaring error. To try and illustrate this I'll expand upon an analogy I've used before (the analogy was originally employed by J. M. E. McTaggart in "Some Dogmas of Religion" p105):

If a man is in a house, he can see the sky by looking out of a window. But he can't see the sky if the curtains are drawn, or if no windows exist in the house. Would that mean the ability to see can't be intrinsic to the man? That's clearly nonsense since he could go out of the house and have an unrestricted view of the sky!

Nevertheless, we get the -- let's call them "housists" -- who insist that it simply must be the case that the windows somehow create our visual experiences. For, after all, slightly closing the curtains restricts one's ability to see the sky outside, and indeed, drawing the curtains completely totally destroys one's ability to see the sky outside. And what if the house had no windows at all? So it simply must be the case that the windows somehow creates one's visual experiences.

But how? This is the visual-house problem, and it's a problem that's fiercely been debated for millennia with no solution in sight. All the housists, all the great "intellects", the "experts", believe that somehow windows create vision, but they all propose different solutions as to how this is achieved. They vehemently attack each others "solutions" to this problem. And, indeed, their attacks on each other are all valid. And this is because it's not possible for windows to create vision! And it's an obvious impossibility because there is nothing about windows that could magically conjure up a visual experience from nothing. It would be miraculous. But try telling that to the "experts"!

It's obvious to us that the windows themselves do not create the man's visual experience of the sky. They merely enable him to see the sky. But the actual ability to see the sky resides within him.

But it seems to me the exact same argument applies to the self and brain. Whilst my self is "housed" by the brain, then the brain can affect many abilities of the self (perceiving, thinking etc). But it's just as implausible that the brain creates such abilities as windows create visual experiences.  See my essay where I explain this http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/neither-modern-materialism-nor-science.html

It should be noted that this doesn't mean there's a life after death. Unlike the materialists, I think there must be something non-physical, a non-physical self even. And it is this self that has the innate ability to see, think, etc.

Nevertheless, maybe this self cannot exist outside the brain. But I think there are many reasons to suppose it does.

If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?

This is not an essay written by me, but is an essay written by a certain Charlie Huenemann who is professor of philosophy at Utah State University. It's an Aeon article that can be found here. He makes the same argument as I do in my own:

Do we die when we teleport?

So if people don't understand my essay they can read this one. Or vice versa! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am stranded on Mars. The fuel tanks on my return vessel ruptured, and no rescue team can possibly reach me before I run out of food. (And, unlike Matt Damon, I have no potatoes.) Luckily, my ship features a teleporter. It is an advanced bit of gadgetry, to be sure, but the underlying idea is simplicity itself: the machine scans my body and produces an amazingly detailed blueprint, a clear picture of each cell and neuron. That blueprint file is then beamed back to Earth, where a ‘new me’ is constructed using raw materials available at the destination site. All I have to do is step in, close my eyes, and press the red button…

But there’s a complication: a toggle switch allows me to decide whether the ‘old me’ on Mars is preserved or destroyed after I teleport back home. It’s this decision that is causing me to hesitate.

On the one hand, it seems like what makes me me is the particular way in which all my components fit together. I don’t think there is such a thing as a soul, or some ghost that inhabits my machine. I’m just the result of the activity among my 100 billion neurons and their 100 trillion distinctive connections. And, what’s more, that activity is what it is, no matter what collection of neurons is doing it. If you went about replacing those neurons one by one, but kept all the connections and activity the same, I would still be me. So, replacing them altogether at once should not matter, so long as the distinctive patterns are maintained. This leads me to want to press the button and get back to my loved ones – and back to Earth’s abundant food, water and oxygen, which will allow me to continue repairing and replacing my cells in the slower, old-fashioned way.

So: if I put the toggle in the ‘destroy’ setting, I should survive the transfer just fine. What would be lost? Nothing that plays any role in making me me, in making my consciousness my own. I should step in, press the button – and then walk out of the receiver back on Earth.

On the other hand, what happens if I put the toggle in the ‘save’ setting? Then where would I be? Would I make the trip back to Earth, and then feel sorry for the poor sap back on Mars (the old me), who will be facing slow death by starvation? Or – horrors! – will I be that old me, feeling envy for the new me who is now on Earth, enjoying the company of friends and family?

Could I somehow be both? What would that be like? Would I be seeing the scene on Earth superimposed upon the Martian landscape? Would I be feeling both pangs of hunger and exquisite delight in eating my first home-cooked meal in years? How would I decide at the same time to both walk over the dunes of red sand and go to sleep in my own bed? Is this even conceivable?

A residual conservatism in my nature prompts me to think that I would stay the old me, and the new me – whoever he is – would be like a twin to me, indeed more similar to the old me than any natural twin could possibly be. He would feel all the things I would feel, have the same memories, and be so very glad that he’s not starving on Mars. But, for all that, he would not be me: I would not be thinking or experiencing the things he is, nor would he be aware of my own increasingly desperate experience. But if this line of thinking is correct, I am suddenly very reluctant to turn the toggle over to the ‘destroy’ setting. For then it would seem that I would simply be annihilated on Mars, and some new guy on Earth, some guy a lot like me, would falsely believe he had survived the trip.

But why ‘falsely’? The memories are just as much in his brain as mine, are they not? From his point of view, he experienced stepping into the teleporter, pressing the button, and walking out onto Earth. He’s not lying when he says that that’s what happened. Still: I – the one who steps into the teleporter and presses the button – would not subsequently have this new guy’s experience of walking out onto Earth. My next experience after pressing the button would be – well, it would be no experience at all, as I would be dead.

Perhaps I need to adopt a more objective point of view. Suppose others were observing all this. What would they see? They would see me step in, press the button, and then – depending on the toggle setting – they would see either two copies of me, one on Mars and one on Earth, or else just one copy of me on Earth and some smouldering remains on Mars. There is no real problem, from this outsider’s point of view. There is no test an observer could perform to determine whether I survived the trip to Earth – no personality test, no special ‘me-ometer’ readings, no careful analysis of discrepancies among the neurons. Everything proceeds as expected, no matter what the toggle setting is.

Maybe there is something to be learned from this. Perhaps what seems to me an extremely obvious truth – namely, that there should be some fact to the matter of what I experience once I step in and press the button – is really not a truth at all. Maybe the notion that I am an enduring self over time is some sort of stubborn illusion. By analogy, I once joined a poker club that had been in existence for more than 50 years, with a complete change in its membership over that time. Suppose someone were to ask whether it was the same club. ‘It is and it isn’t,’ would be the sensible reply. Yes: the group has met continuously each month over 50 years. But no: none of the original members are still in it. There is no single, objective answer to the poker-identity question, since there is no inner, substantive soul to the club that has both remained the same and changed over time.

The same goes, perhaps, for me. I think I have been the same thing, a person, over my life. But if there is no inner, substantive me, then there is no fact to the matter about what my experience will be when ‘I’ press the button. It is just as the observer says: first there was one, and then there were two (with the toggle set to ‘save’), each thinking himself to be the one. There is no fact about what ‘the one’ really experienced, because ‘the one’ wasn’t there to begin with. There was only a complex arrangement of members, analogous to my poker club, thinking of themselves as belonging to the same ‘one’ over time.

Small comfort that is. I went into this problem wondering whether I could survive – only to find out that I am not, and never was! And yet the decision still lies before me: do I – do we? – press the button?

Note: I make no claim to originality in this thought experiment. A very similar sort of question was raised in 1775 by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, in a letter to Lord Kames referencing Joseph Priestley’s materialism: ‘whether when my brain has lost its original structure, and when some hundred years after the same materials are again fabricated so curiously as to become an intelligent being, whether, I say, that being will be me; or, if two or three such beings should be formed out of my brain, whether they will all be me’. I first encountered it, with the Martian setting, in the preface to the essay collection ‘The Mind’s I’ (1981), edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. The British philosopher Derek Parfit made much hay out of the idea in his book ‘Reasons and Persons’ (1984). And the podcaster C G P Grey provides an insightful illustration of the problem in his video ‘The Trouble with Transporters’ (2016).


Charlie Huenemann

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

If all Scientific Knowlege were destroyed

Richard Feynman once said:

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

I definitely wouldn't say that! I would say:

"Subtract the qualitative from the physical world, the rest follows patterns described by mathematics".

In a thread on facebook people were suggesting things like "know yourself" and mentioning micro-organisms. 
 
"Know your self" will not precipitate any scientific discovery. Neither will saying everything is made up of atoms. The ancient Greeks said both. Neither precipitated much scientific progress. I mean "know yourself" has nothing to do with science!

What precipitated modern science in the 17th Century was the notion that physical reality -- at least the quantifiable aspects -- are governed/described by physical laws written in the language of mathematics potentially discernible by us human beings. See my essay:

Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia

Regarding atoms, micro-organisms and the like. They need to learn to walk before they can run. They need to find out how to conduct science, not tell them about scientific discoveries.

Even if they could make sense of sub-microscopic particles or micro-organisms, remember the saying:

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".

Could there have been absolutely nothing?

You know, I can grasp that perhaps my life has no purpose, that we are all biological robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe. 

I can grasp too that the human race as a whole has no purpose. Soon -- a few thousand, a few million years time, or however long -- the very last human being will die and humanity will be no more, not ever again. And in a sense human beings might as well never have existed. Yes, I can grasp that.

But when I try to grasp that the totality of all things, the whole Universe (or multiverse or whatever), has no purpose, and might as well never have existed? I find that I momentarily grasp the enormity of that, or at least I seem to get the faintest glimpses of it, but then my mind immediately slips away. As if I'm thinking, but there must be something, something beyond the Universe. To think that absolutely nothing could have been the case, is too mind-blowing. I find my mind cannot grasp it.

Do we die when we teleport?

Consider a teleporter. Let's say you go into the departure teleportation booth. Your body is scanned. Your body is then disintegrated and simultaneously, from the information that was scanned, a replica is created in the destination teleportation booth. As part of your ongoing experiences, you will have seemed to "jump" from the departure booth to the destination booth. A splendid way of travelling!

What implications are there though if the machine malfunctions and there's a 10 minute delay before your body is disintegrated? Apart from this, the teleporter works, and the replica is still created at the time it should be. So, for 10 minutes there will be 2 versions of you. As part of your ongoing experiences, you might still seem to "jump" to the destination booth. However! Equally possible is that you seem to remain exactly where you are. If the latter pertains, then how would you feel about your impending disintegration 10 minutes hence?

Well, of course, one would be horrified. One would typically presumably think this shows the copy is not actually you -- it is merely a copy.

But wait!

The replica is physically identical. Hence (assuming materialism), the replica's memory and personality are also absolutely identical. And the replica looks absolutely identical too.

To insist, nevertheless, that the replica is not a legitimate continuation of the original person is, therefore, to deny that one's physicality wholly determines one's self. That there must be something over and above one's total physicality -- a soul or whatever. But this then is a straightforward denial of materialism.

So materialists cannot deny that a physical replica would be you, it is simply incompatible with all forms of materialism to maintain this.

But do we have a paradox here? In the case of the malfunctioning teleporter, what if you do not appear to "jump" to the destination booth but remain exactly where you are? How can the replica, therefore, be you?? Is this then a paradox? No, not for the materialist.

Imagine the following scenario. Imagine that every infinitesimal fraction of a second you are getting teleported from place to place. Obviously, if you keep your eyes open, you'll just see a confusing blur. But you could close your eyes, and everything would seem to be normal. You could be thinking of a problem, daydreaming, or whatever. Nothing would seem different as compared to when you have your eyes closed normally, except in the teleportation scenario you are continuously being killed and spontaneously coming into being every infinitesimal fraction of a second!

Now, if we suppose that precisely this is happening in our second by second everyday existence then there is no paradox for the materialist, at least not in this regard. We do not actually exist from one second to the next -- a persisting self, and indeed a self, is an illusion. It merely seems we have a continuous existence.

Notes

To see why I believe such a momentarily existing self is incoherent, see my following blog entry:

Does the self as opposed to a mere "sense of self" exist?


Also, see an entry from my other blog where it seems that Buddhism shares a similar belief:
Buddhism and a persisting self

Finally, the following webcomic featuring a teleportation machine might be of interest.

Ian Wardell

Update 2/8/17: Just posted an essay on the same topic written by a certain Charlie Huenemann who is professor of philosophy at Utah State University. He comes to the same conclusion as me. It might be useful to read if people didn't find me sufficiently clear.
If I teleport from Mars, does the original me get destroyed?

How could we see, hear, taste, touch and smell during an "out of body experience" (OBE)?

Someone in a Facebook group who has had a near-death experience was stumped when a nurse asked him how he could see, hear, taste, touch and smell without their five sense organs during their OBE.

Clearly the nurse, and indeed many others, think that from the fact that damage to one's eyes or visual part of the brain leads to a reduction in vision or even blindness, that both one's eyes and one's brain are crucial to being able to see. The same argument applies to the other four senses.

It seems to me though that this argument is without merit. Here is an analogy. If one is in a house, the transparency of the glass within the windows is an essential condition for being able to see the sky. However, this only applies whilst we are in the house. If we were to venture outside, the windows are an irrelevance. We would have an unrestricted view of the sky.

I suggest exactly the same could be the case during an OBE. Let's suppose the ability to see and hear and smell are intrinsic aspects of a non-physical self or soul. In that case, during an OBE we should have unrestricted vision; maybe even vastly enhanced vision and the ability to see in all directions at once. But, whilst the non-physical self or soul is "housed" within one's body, we can only see, hear and smell by virtue of a functioning brain and unimpaired senses. Here, though, the brain and senses are only playing a similar role as the windows do within our house in the analogy outlined above.

For many of those who believe in an afterlife, the hypothesis is that the brain suppresses or filters conscious experiences rather than creates them. A properly functioning brain will allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell. And indeed, come to that, a properly functioning brain can allow us to be able to perceive, think, feel, and deliberate too. Contrariwise, a dysfunctional brain might reduce or completely suppress our senses and mental capacities just as dirty windows or drawing the curtains can impede or completely obscure our view of the sky.

None of this of course entails that the brain does play such a role. But the fact our five senses and mental capacities can be impaired, if not eliminated, due to a dysfunctional brain does not in itself entail that all these abilities could not be had by non-physical selves or souls. And indeed, should the above reasoning be correct, one might expect that a disembodied self or soul might well have enhanced senses and an enhanced mental capacity. This can be compared to having a greater view of the sky once we have exited from a house.

Some quotes by me

Various quotes I've made on facebook, sometimes after a few beers!

There's 2 possibilities:

a) This is the only life there is. When we die we simply cease to exist. Our lives and the Universe are, in a sense, ultimately absurd. In that case nothing we do ultimately matters. How much money we accumulate and our social status are transitory and ultimately unfulfilling, and in the end are to no avail since we all end up in the same boat -- namely eternal non-existence. I suggest instead we just live our lives, have a laugh, have a few drinks, be kind to others, but most importantly of all not to take life too seriously.

b) Or there is a "life after death", and perhaps an ultimate purpose to our existence and to all things. But if we continue to exist after death, why do we think what we achieve in this life is so terribly important? If there is some ultimate purpose to life, we don't know what it is, but presumably it will have nothing to do with how much money we accumulate and our social status. I suggest instead we just live our lives, have a laugh, have a few drinks, be kind to others, but most importantly of all not to take life too seriously.

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 Nothing to do
 
I'm astonished to hear that many people -- if not indeed most people -- would find it profoundly boring not being in a full-time job as an employee. That they would have nothing to do all day. Indeed, many people claim that when they were unemployed they were sleeping 12 hours a day and were just depressed.

I have to say I find this utterly bizarre. So going for walks in the countryside; visiting museums; learning and becoming proficient in some subject and perhaps even becoming an expert; discussions on a variety of subjects on the Internet and elsewhere; reading novels; playing games; exercising; just simply thinking about reality and our place in it and what it all means; laying in a field in the warm bright sunshine in the arms of the one you love. And so on and so on and so on... None of this has any appeal? Peoples' only aim in life is to sell their labour to an employer? Nothing else in life is worth doing? Wow...
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In the Future

I wonder what it will be like in the year 802,701? Or in the 111,394th Century approximately 11 million years from now? Will human beings be long gone? Will there still be complex life on Earth? Or will the Earth be wholly devoid of life due to some catastrophic event? Such an event will surely be very unlikely. Perhaps gigantic creatures like dinosaurs will exist then. I'll probably never know.
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In a Million Years time

I was just thinking. Suppose we could go into the future exactly 1 million years from now. What would we see?

I would speculate that our technological civilisation will have disappeared and most probably that we will have become extinct and the Earth will have returned close to a pristine condition.

Will other life forms have evolved with limbs and something like opposable thumbs so they can manipulate their environment? Probably not, but maybe. But even if they did arise I doubt they would build a technological civilisation like ours.
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The last human ever

I wonder who will be the very last human to ever live, what his/her life will be like, what his/her thoughts will be, and when this will occur.
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We're all on a Train

We're all on this train. We do not know where our fellow passengers come from, nor even where we ourselves come from. Perhaps people just materialise out of nothingness, or perhaps people just don't remember. And we do not know where people will go when they finally get off the train. But we know we will finally get off at some point. To some strange destination, or to oblivion -- we do not know. Meanwhile the train and its inhabitants are our world -- the only world we know. Let's read, chat with our fellow passengers, play games. Something to do before we alight from the train to our new strange destination, or to oblivion.
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What are we?

We find ourselves in this world not knowing what we are, who we are, or why we are here.  Are we are mere meat robots with no free will living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe?  Or are we souls with an ultimate purpose to our existence -- a purpose which we cannot as of yet know, or possibly even comprehend. Worst of all we don't know what our ultimate destiny might be, whether it will be oblivion or whether it will be to ascend into some mysterious new reality.

In our day to day lives let's just be happy for the day and have a few pints of beer.
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What's it all about?

Questions about what the world is, what we are, why we are here, what it all means, are questions we surely are all interested in. But most of us react angrily when people ask such questions. It's something most of us don't want to think about. Most people want to concentrate on the "real world" -- the practicalities of existence, the transient issues of the moment.

I have been told that people are not interested in such ultimate questions because they are concerned about the next meal and being able to make a living.  Yes, but questions about what we are, what the world is, are nevertheless questions which some of us will entertain no matter what our circumstances. They are perennial questions. Struggling for a living will perhaps necessitate that we cannot find time to pen such thoughts or even think about them too deeply, but they are there underneath the surface of existence nevertheless.

What's it all about eh? We find ourselves on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an infinite sea of nothingness. And yet . . and yet . . people just live out their lives thinking exclusively about the mundane, being concerned about wearing the right clothes, and condemning those who think beyond everyday concerns...
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Occupying my 13 year old body

I'm just wondering what it would be like if my soul travelled back in time and inhabited my 13 year old body? I'm guessing I'd lose my current intelligence, but yet retain my current memories as an adult. But if I do keep my memories, it seems I might understand more on, say, something like philosophical issues, than I originally did when I was 13. But I wouldn't understand as much as I do now.
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The world of work

I don't really like the idea of a job where you're working for someone else from 9 to 5 and you don't find the work interesting at all, but find it dull and repetitious. The type of work where you occasionally look at your watch and hope 5pm soon comes round. And the weekend! Wishing our lives away. Then feeling gloomy on a Sunday evening as it's soon going to be the start of another week.

The thing is we live finite lives. Maybe there's a "life after death", and I think there is. But maybe I'm wrong and there isn't. But while we're healthy is it really a good idea to spend most of our daylight hours hoping that the evening and weekend will soon roll round?

There's making friends and the general camaraderie with work colleagues. And there's the issue that we all need to have money! But the point I'd like to make is that there seems to be something fundamentally wrong and unsatisfactory about this whole arrangement. Something fundamentally wrong about the way modern society works. Unsatisfactory and unfulfilling and ultimately dispiriting to our yearning souls.

Arguing with people

It's an extremely common tendency to try and justify one's position on any topic by seeking out those opponents who advance the most naive, the weakest and most ridiculous arguments. Or, when arguing with more thoughtful opponents, to attribute to them a more naive or simplistic position than the one they actually hold and attack that.

In addition, it seems that people often appear to deliberately avoid clarity and revel in being abstruse. My suspicion is they do this in order to give the impression of winning the argument. In reality though their words convey little, or indeed, any meaning.

It is admittedly very tempting to simply attack your weakest opponents. Or attack the weakest arguments against your position. Or to employ other underhanded strategies in order to "win". It's easy, requires little thought, makes you feel superior, and of course most importantly of all it garners support and admiration from those who share your sentiments and beliefs in the matter in hand.

These tactics might rally those who subscribe to your view, but do precious little . . nay . . nothing to justify your own position. If we're sincerely interested in the truth, then what is needed is to seek out those opponents who provide the most challenging and sophisticated arguments, and to address those specific arguments. If you can outargue them and even make them appear to be foolish, then you'll have some confidence that your position might possibly be correct.

The claim that people who have had a "near death experience" are not dead.

People keep saying that NDE's necessarily cannot provide any evidence for an afterlife, since those who underwent the experience didn't really die. Presumably, the idea here is that if they didn't actually die, then whatever they experienced, cannot be of any afterlife realm.

There are two issues here. The first issue is, how do they know these people never actually died? When asked this question, they say it's true by definition! They returned to life, and anyone who returns to life, by definition, never actually died.

But I submit, this then makes their original assertion vacuous. The issue here is whether it is possible that what NDErs experience is a glimpse of some afterlife realm. Such a possibility can only be ruled out if we are in a position to surmise their brains are perfectly capable of having wholly produced these experiences. But, if during an NDE, there is no detectable brain activity, or there is insufficient brain activity, then it matters not one whit whether one labels this as still being "alive" or dead. From a metaphysical neutral standpoint, the most straightforward hypothesis under this scenario is that those undergoing an NDE are perceiving some type of external reality, even though the details seen might be shaped and moulded by one's implicit and cultural expectations. Of course, it might be contested whether the NDE really occurred during this time period, or it can be argued that there might have been undetectable brain activity that produced the experience. But it remains the case that this experience does provide evidence for an afterlife realm -- non-scientific evidence, perhaps, but evidence nevertheless. And this evidence could be very powerful if we have good reasons to surmise the NDE indeed occurred when there was no detectable brain activity.

The second issue is that, in any case, it's not entirely clear to me why a person couldn't experience the afterlife realm whilst still alive. And I mean alive in the proper sense, as in some detectable brain activity. If we are destined to travel to some afterlife realm(s) at death, then whilst still alive it presumably must be the brain that prevents the perception of this realm or realms. Perhaps it is some particular region of the brain that does this. If this region is compromised in its functionality, or is simply not as active as it normally is, then perhaps one could still be alive and yet have some perception of this other reality or realities. If the skeptic wants to maintain that this is impossible, the onus is upon him to explain why.

Who am I?

Worth watching for those who know nothing about philosophy.

What is it that makes me me throughout my life? We might say the self, but what is the self? My body changes throughout my life. My interests, intelligence, pre-occupations and so on change throughout my life.  So shouldn't my self too literally change throughout my life?

In order for the self not to literally change and avoid the conclusion I am literally a different person at time A than at time B, then the self has to be something distinct from all these things. I suggest the self is the author, or the experiencer, of one's thoughts, interests, and more generally of one's experiences. That is to say that in addition to experiences, there is an experiencer that has them.  Experiences don't just exist without an experiencer, or self, to experience them. It is this author/experiencer/self that we can hypothesize remains unchanged.

Note that materialists can not believe in such an author/experiencer/self.  This is because the materialist would have to identify any such self with some physical thing or processes.  But physical things and processes are in a constant state of change, and certainly our bodies are.  Hence, there is nothing unchanging which they can call a self.

They can of course believe in a sense of self.  But the sense of a self differs from the actual self in a similar way to which a sense of a table differs from the actual table.

See the following blog entries by me:

Is a "life after death" conceivable?   Part 3: What is the Self
Does the self as opposed to a mere "sense of self" exist?
The self and its experiences

What philosophical questions does science answer?

Just reading the following recently published article:

Mind, Matter And Materialism


Near the beginning the author says:

"Questions that once lay firmly in philosophy's domain have now fully entered the realm of science".

This is something I hear from people frequently. Unfortunately they never seem to specify what philosophical questions science has answered or shed light upon. I'm not necessarily saying that science doesn't, it depends what they have in mind.

But at first blush it seems to me the domains of science and philosophy are distinct. First of all we need to understand that science doesn't provide explanations as such, but mere descriptions. Consider playing a computer game. You need to know how the computer game environment will react when your character performs certain actions. You could be really excellent at the game and have a comprehensive knowledge of exactly how the game environment changes with specific actions. However, that furnishes you with no understanding of how the game is possible and why the game has the rules it does, or even why the game exists at all. The player might know nothing about the underling computer architecture or software in other words.

How the game environment reacts seems to me to be analogically akin to what science is attempting with its description of our physical reality. How the game is possible, why the game exists, why the game has the rules it has, seems to me to be analogically akin to asking how and why the world exists and why it has the attributes it does. Questions that belong exclusively to the domain of philosophy.

How can knowing how the game environment changes, or physical reality changes with particular actions, help with any philosophical questions?

Update 1/10/2019   I have just written a simpler version of this above argument here.

Is suffering incompatible with a higher purpose?

If it's considered that suffering is incompatible with some higher purpose to our existence, then what would the world have to be like so that it is compatible with some higher purpose? Perhaps if no one ever experienced any pain; not just physical but mental pain too? And no one ever experienced misery, least of all depression? Indeed, that our lives are in a constant state of maximum happiness?

And what would such happiness consist in? Pleasures? Or the feeling like you had as a child when you woke up on a Christmas day morning? Or if you were in a permanent state of a certain type of intellectual satisfaction?

Obviously that's silly. But perhaps people mean there's too much suffering -- not that we shouldn't have any suffering at all. But how do we work out how much suffering would be compatible with some higher purpose?

I think arguably suffering, pain, anguish, despair, loss of a loved one etc, could conceivably be held to be compatible with some higher purpose. For much of history, mankind lived a life full of dangers with the constant threat of death, and suffering, and loss. Close brushes with death from predators with the consequent comradeship and camaraderie when others save your life, and you theirs. The collective outpouring of emotions, the bitter and sweet taste of life in the raw.

In the modern west we are cosseted from all the harsh elements of life. I'll probably die an old man rather than get eaten by a predator. But perhaps, safe and rich as we are, the modern western way of life loses something. It loses the sheer rapture of being alive. If we never experience any dangers, then the sheer thrill of having overcome dangers is also lacking.

So it's not clear to me that suffering is necessarily incompatible with some higher purpose. The problem here is we don't know what the purpose of life is! Hence I think it's impossible to answer such a question.

Maybe it is, but until we know what the purpose of life is, why we are here, how can we say what the nature of our lives should be like?

Feel the rapture of being alive!

Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth said:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Our modern world is not ideal for experiencing the rapture of being alive -- indeed the precise opposite. I reckon that's why so many people get depressed. Instead, life has to be an adventure. Like it might well have been in the stone age. A journey with ongoing meaningful experiences. Close brushes with death with the consequent comradeship and camaraderie when others save your life, and you theirs. The collective outpouring of emotions, the bitter and sweet taste of life in the raw. All this with the implicit feeling that death is just another journey and all will come right in the end.

Of course what Joseph Campbell articulating here is how we get satisfaction and fulfilment in life. Which is a different question to what the meaning of life is, as in the sense of what is the purpose or ultimate goal of existence is. See a blog entry by me here. Having said that, I do agree that perhaps most people, when lamenting about what the meaning of life might be, are motivated by a dissatisfaction with their own lives that they undoubtedly would not express if they felt the rapture of being alive.

A creator or a multiverse?

Let's imagine there only existed one planet in the entire Universe, and it is Earth. Now I would suggest that it would be utterly extraordinary if it just happened to be ideally suited for life. It would be far far more likely that it would be a planet wholly devoid of any life.

But, of course, there are at least trillions of planets in the Universe. The overwhelming majority are likely to be hostile to life. So why do we happen to live on one suitable for life? Well, obviously because we couldn't have evolved on any of the planets hostile to life!

Now, the Earth is ideally suited for life. Hence, even if we knew of the existence of no other planets, it would be overwhelmingly likely that zillions of other planets must exist.

This is the precise same argument whereby we infer there must exist zillions of other Universes, all with random differing values for the constants of nature. In the overwhelming majority of such Universes' life simply could not arise. The reason why we live in an incredibly unusual Universe that happens to permit life is precisely the same reason why we happen to live on a planet which is ideally suited to life.

The other alternative is to suppose there is only one Universe. The reason why the physical constants and properties permit life must be because some outside influence -- a creator of some description -- constrains the Universe to be that way.

Obviously scientists prefer the multiverse hypothesis.

An extremely short refutation of materialism

Think of Lego. You can stick the bricks together and make lots of interesting things. But if sticking together a load of lego bricks -- even if the bricks could move in relation to each other -- somehow produced pain or greenness or hope or despair or intentionality, then that would be kind of magical.

Exactly the same applies to the ultimate constituents of matter.

Keith Augustine in "The Myth of an Afterlife"

Does the thesis that the brain produces the mind cohere well with our overall background knowledge?

 

In the book The Myth of an Afterlife two of the authors Keith Augustine and Yonatan I. Fishman pen the following:

Of course, compared with a hypothesis that coheres well with our overall background knowledge, an “extraordinary” hypothesis at odds with our knowledge about how the world operates would generally be assigned a low prior probability. Accordingly, insofar as the independence thesis entails that a separable soul can perceive, think, feel, and deliberate apart from any biological basis at all (sometimes suggesting a stark break in our evolutionary connection to all other forms of life on earth), and apparently requires either that a nonphysical soul violates well-established physical laws by interacting with the brain, or else that the soul is itself a physical thing completely unknown to science, it is a highly extraordinary hypothesis that should be assigned a low prior probability. For the independence thesis to be more plausible than its antithesis on Bayesian grounds, we would need a considerable amount of compelling evidence in its favor—and at the expense of the dependence thesis—to outweigh its initially low prior probability. (page 260).

The independence thesis here refers to the notion that we survive our deaths in some form. Contrariwise, the dependence thesis refers to the notion that the mind and consciousness depend on the brain, hence they cannot exist without the brain. Here and elsewhere in the book (this is a huge book of 700+ pages with a total of 29 contributors all sporting impressive academic credentials), it is repeatedly hammered home ad nauseam -- and especially by Keith Augustine -- that the dependence thesis is consistent with the rest of our scientific knowledge of the world. And, conversely, the independence thesis is emphatically not.

Now, in order to claim this, consciousness must at least be potentially scientifically explicable. It is not sufficient to hold that consciousness simply appears as a brute fact once there is a certain level of physical complexity. We require a scientific explanation for how the brain produces consciousness, or we at least need to be confident that one will be eventually forthcoming. 

But I have previously argued that it is not possible to provide such a scientific explanation for consciousness, at least not based on our current conception of science. I go into some detail as to why this is so in both my Science, the Afterlife, and theIntelligentsia (especially parts 4 and 5), and my Neither Modern Materialism nor Scienceas currently conceived can explain Consciousness (especially part 5). But, in a nutshell, I argue that because science limits itself to the quantifiable or that which can be measured, then it necessarily follows that it cannot in principle explain consciousness since the latter is essentially characterised by qualia (construed in its broadest sense) and intentionality (in its philosophical sense).

It is important to realise it is not only me that thinks there’s a problem here. The precise nature of the relationship of consciousness, or mind, to one's body, and more specifically how the brain can give rise to the mind, has been labelled the mind-body problem. There have been a variety of proposed solutions to this problem, but for each and every proposed solution there are dissenting voices questioning its intelligibility. And, to correct a possible misconception, although the overwhelming majority of scientists and philosophers adopt what they label as a materialist position, it’s not as if they’re all in agreement with each other – indeed far from it! There are many varieties of materialism and there is much disagreement as to which of the available varieties, if any, might be the correct one. Indeed, there are a small but increasing number of vocal philosophers and scientists who hold that no proposed materialist position can be argued to be adequate. If this is so, then how the mind relates to the brain is up in the air. Indeed, in recognition of the apparent irreconcilable nature of this relationship, and the problem of why the mind or consciousness exists at all, the philosopher David Chalmers has coined the phrase the hard problem.
 
Astonishingly The Myth of an Afterlife has very little to say about the mind/body problem. Where it is mentioned it is to attack dualism ( i.e the notion that the brain and mind are distinct, even if the former somehow gives rise to the latter). One will search this massive volume in vain for any mention of the well known difficulties for both materialism and for providing a scientific explanation of how the brain produces consciousness. Difficulties, as I make clear in my two essays, I regard as insurmountable; at least with our present conception of what comprises the material or physical. It is of little avail to stress the fact that mental capacities inevitably vary according to the intricacy and condition of one’s brain, if the intended conclusion -- that the latter produce the former -- cannot, in principle, be rendered scientifically explicable. Of course, undoubtedly the authors would not agree with arguments suggesting that the difficulties for providing a scientific explanation are insurmountable, or indeed that there are any difficulties in principle at all here. But such arguments should at least be addressed! They had over 700 pages to do so. Instead, much of this volume, and by differing authors, keeps repeating the same tired points over and over again -- namely the fact that mental states are altered by physical states of the brain. All well and good, but if the process whereby brain activity produces consciousness is wholly mysterious, if not effectively magical, then clearly one ought to be more open to alternative hypotheses.

 

2. Is it possible we could perceive, think, feel, and deliberate without a brain?

But are there any alternative hypotheses? Even if materialism should be false, doesn't the fact that mental capacities vary according to the intricacy and condition of one’s brain show that consciousness, or the mind, could not exist without the brain? Specifically, what about Augustine's and Fishman's claim that a disembodied soul or self would not be able to 'perceive, think, feel, and deliberate'? Their reasoning here is that the brain is always implicated when these abilities are present, moreover our mental capacities are often compromised with dysfunctional brains, hence the brain must play some essential pivotal role. This being so then it follows a disembodied soul or consciousness could not possibly perceive, think, feel, and deliberate.

In responding to this, we should first of all remind ourselves that we have no idea, even in principle, how the brain all by itself could explain consciousness, and hence we have no idea of how the brain could 'perceive, think, feel, and deliberate' either. To that extent the possibility of there existing some sort of substantial self interacting with its brain, might provide that essential ingredient in some expanded physics. (See part 6 -- "The Mind-Brain Correlations" of my Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness.) But perhaps even here such a self would require a brain? Does the fact that the brain is always implicated in our conscious experiences -- at least while we’re embodied -- entail that it plays a crucial role in the production of such experiences? Or does it at least make it extraordinary likely that it plays a crucial role in the production of such experiences? 

Here we need to ask ourselves what the alternative is. Certainly, given the reality of the mind-brain correlations, then we should surely at a minimum acknowledge that the brain at least influences the abilities to perceive, think, feel, and deliberate, even if it does not produce them. A possibility that presents itself here is that such abilities might be innate to the self or soul, but that the brain serves to either facilitate or inhibit them. The brain, that is, might function in a roughly analogical manner to a type of reducing valve. So here our perceptions, thoughts, feelings and so on, could still be attributes of the soul, but while the soul operates through the brain, a dysfunctional brain could impair their manifestation where as a normal functioning brain allows their manifestation. To use an analogy employed by J. M. E. McTaggart:

If a man is shut up in a house, the transparency of the windows is an essential condition of his seeing the sky. But it would not be prudent to infer that, if he walked out of the house, he could not see the sky because there was no longer any glass through which he might see it. (Some Dogmas of Religion p105).

This view of the relationship of the self to its brain is sometimes referred to as the filter hypothesis. The authors do recognise this hypothesis but do not find it compelling. They say:

If the mind is “not generated by the brain but instead focused, limited, and constrained by it” (Kelly et al., 2007, p. xxx), the filter theory entails that a brainless mind will be expanded, less limited, and unrestricted by brain function. [This implies] that the greater the disruption in brain function, the “freer” the mind will be from its neural confines, and hence the clearer one’s cognitive function will be. For example,we would expect the progressive destruction of more and more of the brain’s “filter” by Alzheimer’s disease to progressively “free” more and more of consciousness, and thus increase Alzheimer’s patients’ mental proficiency as the disease progresses. (p230)

But it's not clear to me why a dysfunctional brain would necessarily make the mind "freer". In McTaggart's analogy, one could make the windows larger, or more transparent, but they could be also made smaller, or the view less clear by putting net curtains up. Or consider a radio. The internal components do not produce the voices and music from the radio, and in this sense might be comparable to the filter model of the soul/brain relationship. Would damaging the internal components of the radio improve the quality of the sound? Presumably not, so why would a damaged or dysfunctional brain necessarily result in an expanded mind?


It's also worth mentioning that in rare instances one's mind does appear to improve alongside a dysfunctional brain; or at least the mind improves in some respects. The authors mention Alzheimer's disease. Pertinent here is a phenomenon called terminal lucidity that has been described by German biologist Michael Nahm as:

The (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner. (From here p89)

There's also hyperthymesia, the ability to remember practically everything that's ever happened to you. Hence a person afflicted by this condition has the ability to precisely recall what they were doing on a specific day that happened many years ago. And then there's acquired savant syndrome. In the link the author Darold A. Treffer describes this condition as 'instances [where] dormant savant skills emerge, sometimes at a prodigious level, after a brain injury or disease in previously non-disabled (neurotypical) persons where few such skills were evident before such CNS injury or disease'.


We currently lack an understanding of how such a self interacts with its brain, but, in stark contrast to any materialist position, I see no reason why the filter hypothesis might not be true. It does, after all, seem to be consistent with the fact that our mental capacities are normally impaired with brain damage, but on rare occasions are enhanced. On the other hand, reconciling any type of materialist position with these rare instances where mental capacity is enhanced, could be a challenge. Note that this is a challenge over and above the philosophical reasons for rejecting any type of materialist position I have articulated in my two essays.

It is to be conceded that this filter hypothesis does generate a whole host of questions. For one, why on earth does the self or soul operate through a brain in the first place? I do not profess to be able to give any answers as to why there should exist a physical reality at all, but given that one does, then it seems the self or soul operates through a brain to enable us to interact with this physical reality. In addition, I would speculate that it might be the case that part of the brain’s purpose is to filter out the perception of other realities, and conscious states, which might prove distracting in our ability to function proficiently within this physical reality. Hence, when our brains are in their normal functioning state, they might serve to normally prohibit such experiences like mystical experiences, near-death experiences, savant syndrome, hyperthymesia, experiences induced by psychedelic drugs, and so on and so forth. If this is correct, then such experiences are not a product of a disorganised, dysfunctional brain. Rather they are realities which exist out there that we are allowed a partial glimpse of due to our impaired ability of the brain to act as an effective “filter”.

3. Does the soul or self violate physical laws?

Finally, the charge that a soul or self would 'violate well-established physical laws by interacting with the brain', is to make precisely the same mistake as Sean Carroll does in this article. I explain why he is wrong here. It is also to put the horse before the cart. Physical laws are supposed to describe reality, not dictate to reality what can or cannot exist.  

If we have a phenomenon that has been universally reported, we cannot assert it doesn't exist because it doesn't fit in with some pre-defined laws. Rather, a more encompassing theory needs to be advanced. A new theory, which while still explaining existing phenomena, is able to also accommodate this "anomalous" phenomenon.


In this context, I submit that we can be completely certain of the existence of at least one "anomalous" phenomenon, and that is our own consciousness. Moreover, I maintain that consciousness is necessarily causally efficacious as I argue here, and cannot be reduced to any physical processes as I argue in part 4 of my Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia. So a new more encompassing theory needs to be proposed. No flavour of reductive materialism accommodates these facts, although possibly some other mind-body position, but one that still holds the brains elicits/causes the mind, might. But what is certain is that current physical laws wholly leave out even our normal everyday embodied consciousness in their description of reality. It follows they cannot, therefore, be invoked to rule out consciousness surviving the demise of our bodies.

Sean Carroll and the philosophy of mind and science

I recently read the following article by Sean Carroll who is a theoretical physicist.  In it he says:
 

If these mental properties affected the behavior of particles in the same way that physical properties like mass and electric charge do, then they would simply be another kind of physical property. You are free to postulate new properties that affect the behavior of electrons and photons, but you’re not simply adding new ideas to the Core Theory (the enormously successful model of the particles and forces that make up you, me, the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything you have ever seen, touched, or tasted in all your life). Instead, you are saying that it is wrong. If mental properties affect the evolution of quantum fields, there will be ways to measure that effect experimentally, at least in principle, not to mention all of the theoretical difficulties with regard to conservation of energy and so on that such a modification would entail. It’s reasonable to assign very low credence to such a complete overhaul of the very successful structure of known physics.

 
There are 2 points to be made here.

First of all, science as currently conceived cannot in principle explain consciousness (see my essay Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness ). The "Core Theory", as he labels it, therefore we know is false. Or, as I would prefer to say, at least it cannot be a complete description of reality. Hence, to say that any modification has little credence simply fails to understand this point. Necessarily the "core theory", is incorrect, or at least it is not wholly correct.

Secondly, there's this persistent misunderstanding, and one that Carroll seems to share, that scientific theories describe reality in their totality. But that's not what we learn from the history of science. The history of science teaches us that our theories give approximations only, even if those approximations might be very close approximations. Generally, our old scientific theories are often perfectly adequate to describe a given domain, but break down when attempting to describe that which resides outside that domain. Thus, the science prior to relativity and quantum mechanics is "wrong", however, that does nothing to prevent the Newtonian mechanical description of reality being able to be used to get us to the moon and back.  In addition, the classical mechanics espoused before the advent of Quantum Mechanics is perfectly adequate to describe the macroscopic realm, even though it might be "wrong".  Quantum Mechanics is only needed when we describe the microscopic realm.

Now, consciousness has only existed for a vanishingly medium part of the history of the Universe and is confined to planets which presumably will be very few and far between. I suggest the "core theory" describes non-conscious reality -- that is to say the overwhelming majority of the physical realm -- to a very close approximation, just as classical mechanics describes the macroscopic realm to a very close approximation. But that it breaks downs when it comes to consciousness, just as classical mechanics breaks down with the physics of the very medium.