(2023-05-22, 12:54 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ] - you are beating a dead horse. The debate about this argument has persisted, at the very least, since the dawn of the Enlightenment Age.
And now we have a crowd here.
I see a lot of responses, but nobody really addresses antegrade amnesia.
Are memories stored in the soul? If so, why does the soul start forgetting things it experiences after brain trauma. If not, how can the survival of a soul after death have meaning without memories?
I won't keep on beating a dead horse--and definitely not a living one--but I will simply note that I see no answer here to this question.
(2023-05-22, 04:22 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Regarding recollection when faced with brain illness, I think Terminal Lucidity challenges your view. There's actually a SciAm article on this by a self-styled "radical rationalist":
One Last Goodbye: The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity
I see that in no way addresses why a soul loses memories when a brain is damaged. Why does this happen?
A sudden rush of lucidity after death--if it is a verified thing--could be similar to a rush of strength when the adrenaline flows.
Quote:More generally, as per the neuroscientist-philosopher Raymond Tallis memories cannot be held in a brain that is defined as being made of non-conscious matter.
I see no reason to believe that memories cannot be stored in molecules. Even simple creatures do that.
(2023-05-22, 05:12 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I do think we should separate the irreducibility of consciousness from the afterlife. It definitely makes an afterlife more plausible but in itself isn't sufficient.
Everybody seems to jump to their canned talk rather than address that souls can lose the ability to remember after a brain injury.
(2023-05-22, 06:43 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]...her human self as experienced in body definitely was impaired, since human spirit embodiment mostly in the brain involves the human spirit becoming intricately and closely intertwined with the neurological structure of the brain, in order to achieve the mind-body interaction required for embodiment and manifesting in the physical world. That close intertwining and interaction between spirit and brain matter in physical life means the human mind self as experienced in the body will, as we well know, experience much apparent damage due to damage of the brain and body.
The damage to the mind after damage to the brain is real. I see no question about that.
If a spirit intertwined with a brain loses the ability to remember when the brain loses the ability to remember, how would the soul remember anything about my life after my brain is gone? It seems it relies on what the brain knows.
(2023-05-22, 08:23 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Sorry, missed this bit. The question how can the brain which is made up of stuff (particles, waves, fields, whatever) that is defined by physicalists/materialists as having no mental content end up producing something that has mental content.
To quote Neuroscience PhD and New Atheist "Horseman" Sam Harris:
I don't think Harris questions that brains can produce mental content. What he finds admittedly baffling is where consciousness comes from.
Harris does point out that, under anesthesia, consciousness completely stops. So without a brain function, no consciousness. So I think he thinks the brain is necessary for consciousness, but questions whether it is sufficient.
(2023-05-22, 10:43 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think Harris questions that brains can produce mental content. What he finds admittedly baffling is where consciousness comes from.
Harris does point out that, under anesthesia, consciousness completely stops. So without a brain function, no consciousness. So I think he thinks the brain is necessary for consciousness, but questions whether it is sufficient.
Well it's not clear what happens under anesthesia.
I don't think Harris thinks there's an afterlife anymore than Tallis does.
But it seems odd to me to that when there's such a huge explanatory gap one could assume consciousness ceases when the brain-body dies.
Other's mileage will vary of course.
(2023-05-22, 10:32 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Everybody seems to jump to their canned talk rather than address that souls can lose the ability to remember after a brain injury.
It isn't clear that it is the soul that loses the ability to remember. But it's fine if you want/need to believe that death is the end.
"Death destroys a man but the idea of it saves him" - EM Forester
(2023-05-22, 10:29 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I see that in no way addresses why a soul loses memories when a brain is damaged. Why does this happen?
A sudden rush of lucidity after death--if it is a verified thing--could be similar to a rush of strength when the adrenaline flows.
I see no reason to believe that memories cannot be stored in molecules. Even simple creatures do that.
You seem to be saying two things at once - that the brain damage causes memory loss because the the mind is totally dependent on the brain, but somehow this is overcome by a "rush of strength"? Does a surge of electricity fix damaged memory storage on a computer?
The Tallis article I linked gives plenty of reasons for why memories cannot be stored in molecules, specifically separating human memory from simple creatures...
(2023-05-21, 06:24 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]What is doing these actions? Surely the brain is a key player. Are other physical entities involved? Perhaps. Are other non-physical entities involved? I think we can rule that out be definition. After all, if any entity affects something physical, then it seems to me, by definition, that entity would be physical.
That is very unclear. In the Copenhagen interpretation of QM it is consciousness that collapses the wave function.
If you think of a simple double slit experiment, then you can say that the wave function (of each photon) collapses when it hits the screen. However, since the screen is made of particles that are also obeying the laws of QM it is not clear why the wavefunction should collapse at this point. The physicists who came up with the Copenhagen interpretation certainly didn't include consciousness in the fundamentals of physics without a very good reason!
The physicist Henry Stapp has studied how consciousness can couple with matter in a bit more detail. He is easy to GOOGLE if you want more details.
David
(2023-05-22, 10:39 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]The damage to the mind after damage to the brain is real. I see no question about that.
If a spirit intertwined with a brain loses the ability to remember when the brain loses the ability to remember, how would the soul remember anything about my life after my brain is gone? It seems it relies on what the brain knows.
How do you really know that the soul relies on what the brain knows? First thing, please define what you term the soul. It doesn't seem to be anything like the standard meaning of the term in English, which is an
immaterial spiritual entity in part comprising the human self; this soul would by definition not be limited to or be composed entirely of the physical brain neurological structures. You appear to define the word
soul as meaning nothing more than the human self, which of course in physical life is drastically limited through its occupancy of the physical brain with all its vulnerabilities.