Kirby wrote:
daniel_the_smith wrote:
Kirby wrote:
I guess I'm just saying that consciousness is not something we know much about, and there exists the possibility that there is some form of post-death consciousness of which we are not aware.
We don't know how to make consciousness, but we aren't completely ignorant. There is very, very strong evidence that the human brain generates our consciousness...
Agreed. There is probably also strong evidence that there is no consciousness that can exist without a brain.
But, in my mind, I still hold a higher degree of confidence to things that I can recall an actual experience for - experiences that I can fathom within the bounds of my own existence. For example, I believe that the chair in which I sit exists with a higher degree of probability than the confidence that I have that there is no consciousness after death.
I have some actual experience sitting on my chair, and that's why I can have more confidence in it.
My existence is a closed system, so it's difficult for me to comprehend something outside of that system. It's possible that another system exists outside of the closed system of my existence. Would that system include consciousness?
There's no reason to really think so, but I cannot help but admit my uncertainty in the unknown that exists outside of the realm of my own existence.
I took some time to reread this thread - it was over 10 years ago since I started commenting on this thread. And in 10 years, I still feel confused about consciousness. I know there were some adamant arguments about how consciousness is simply an artifact of the neural connections in your brain; there was also talk about identity being equivalent to memory.
I'm still not really sure.
Probably my consciousness is closely intertwined with the physical construction of my mind. If that's true, then maybe freezing can help preserve that in some way. Similarly, if consciousness is tied to the mind, if my mind dies and deteriorates... Then no more consciousness.
But I still maintain that there isn't a way to scientifically prove this in a convincing way. As described in
this article:
Quote:
...physical science doesn’t really tell us what matter is.
This may seem bizarre, but it turns out that physics is confined to telling us about the behaviour of matter. For example, matter has mass and charge, properties which are entirely characterised in terms of behaviour – attraction, repulsion and resistance to acceleration. Physics tells us nothing about what philosophers like to call “the intrinsic nature of matter”, how matter is in and of itself.
It turns out, then, that there is a huge hole in our scientific world view – physics leaves us completely in the dark about what matter really is.
The consciousness of others is not something that can be directly observed. As the article notes:
Quote:
Of course, scientists are used to dealing with unobservables. Electrons, for example, are too small to be seen. But scientists postulate unobservable entities in order to explain what we observe, such as lightning or vapour trails in cloud chambers. But in the unique case of consciousness, the thing to be explained cannot be observed. We know that consciousness exists not through experiments but through our immediate awareness of our feelings and experiences.
In other words, we can get information about our own consciousness due to our own experience. But we do not share the experience of other entities, and cannot perceive the same awareness.
One crazy idea is that of panpsychism, which hypothesizes that even the smallest bits of matter, like electrons and quarks, have very simple forms of experience and/or consciousness. Similarly, various animals may have different levels of consciousness than, for example, humans - maybe a mouse has consciousness that's simpler than that of a human. But if consciousness exists even at the level of electrons and quarks, then perhaps there's some extremely simple form of experience from non-living things as well.
From this perspective, the brain itself allows us to experience some form of complex consciousness, perhaps due to the combination of smaller component parts - down to the level of electrons and quarks - which each have their own simple forms of experience. Combined, these smaller consciousnesses combine into the more complex conscious experience that we understand our brains to have.
Seems a little bit crazy, but it's
not a totally rejected belief.
As a thought experiment, we can temporarily give a little credence to the idea that the more complex consciousness constituted by our brains is comprised of the simpler consciousnesses of the underlying electrons and quarks that make up the matter of your physical brain... Then what exactly is happening right now while I'm thinking at my desk? I suppose I am able to have a conscious experience due to the combination of simpler parts, each having their own simpler experiences. What happens if those composite parts separate in some way - such that they are no longer united as a single entity making up my brain? I'm reminded of the case of
Phineas Gage, brought up earlier in the thread. In some ways, this kind of happened to him: a bar went through his head, and a large portion of those composite parts in his brain were no longer in his head. Friends who saw him later said that he was "no longer Gage", and that his personality was different... Yet, the part of his brain that remained IN his head presumably continued to have consciousness; some form of human experience.
So it means that if you separate those composite parts of the brain - maybe even down to the composite electrons and quarks, which according to this crazy theory, may have their own simpler forms of experience - it's possible for those separated components to continue to function in some way and have some sort of experience. After all, the remaining portion of Phineas Gage's brain continued to have an experience; albeit in the form of a person having a different personality.
So coming back to death... If we give credence to the hypothesis that simple composite parts, even non-living ones, have some simple form of experience... and that those composite parts can combine to form more complex experiences or consciousnesses... then I would imagine that even after death, the matter composing one's mind still exists in some form. It's changed - maybe eventually it turns to dirt or gets burnt, or something else. But the matter is still there in some way. The underlying electrons and quarks, each having extremely simple experiences are still there. Not alive in the form of a human brain. But they're still there.
And if that matter is still there, over the course of millions or billions or trillions of years... is it not possible that some combinations of those composite parts may form yet another complex structure sometime in the future? That complex structure probably wouldn't be human... But maybe it'd have some sort of consciousness - some sort of experience... Formed from the simple experiences of those electrons and quarks which form our minds today...
Your group on the board may die; maybe you lose the game. But in time, the component stones that made up that group are returned to the bowl, ready to play another game - this time in a different combination; comprising a different complex experience...
Or maybe not... My only point in this rant is that the mystery of consciousness is by no means clear to me. It's a
hard problem, after all...