Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism

Quit making these pseudo-authoritative pronouncements on others. You don't have the right.

Well, that's how I also see your pronouncements ~ as pseudo-authoritative. It's not fun.

I state it like that because that's how it feels ~ that I feel that you're not considering all of the possibilities, so I want to point them out.

Yet another bare claim pronounced pseudo-authoritatively. How would you know?

Because you don't know, and neither do I! All I know is that people have reported NDEs and OBEs during anesthesia, so it logically follows that mind doesn't "cease", but that something else happens.

There's nothing "pseudo-authoritative" about that. You don't know that mind "ceases" under anesthesia. That is what I would call "pseudo-authoritative".

Dude, I (and others) have been under general anaesthetic, and that's the most straightforward description of what occurred to me (us).

Unless we have a good reason not to, we should accept the most straightforward description. You have not given us a good reason not to.

I've also been under anesthesia, yet I wouldn't conclude that my consciousness, my mind, "ceased". I simply experienced a skip in time, unable to recall the interlude. Who knows what my full mind state was in that moment. I would have to be outside of my ego, looking from the outside, to know.

Yes, you experienced a skip in time ~ but does that mean that consciousness, mind, "ceases" in that period? You cannot know for certain.

Think about it ~ you can sleep, experience a skip in time, and yet, you might have had a dream that you cannot recall having had.

I know, because it happened to me.

You've failed.

Or rather you simply didn't try to comprehend.

Re your later post:


You're arguing selectively, because if that was what followed, then it would follow too from the general fact that drugs affect the mind, such as when taking psychedelics for recreational or spiritual purposes (as you do), or even just when getting drunk. You clearly don't think that it follows in the general case, because you accept that mind is not the result of brain activity.

Minds are not the result of brain activity ~ but I fully accept and believe that brain activity influences the mind to a significant degree while minds are perceiving through brains.

Drugs do not directly affect the mind ~ they affect the brain, which then alters the mental state in certain ways that are not understood, however known.

It's anyway only one potential explanation. The better one is that while the mind is embodied it is strongly intertwined with and influenced by the brain, such that it can be temporarily rendered non-conscious by the brain. That's the sort of explanation you'd accept in the general case (of drugs), and it's what you ought to accept in this specific case of anaesthetic drugs.

Not that I disagree... but why are you telling me what I'd accept, and what I ought to believe, irrespective of anything else...?