Dualism or idealist monism as the best model for survival after death data

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but here's my shot at it:

While beginningless time is incoherent (because it entails an infinite regress), time with a beginning is difficult to make sense of too, given that it seems to entail a cause from outside of time ("Eternity"), and it's not clear how Eternity - a domain not subject to time - could cause anything in a domain subject to time, let alone time itself.

Yeah it also isn't clear to me that Eternity, as a domain not subject to time, has any real meaning save perhaps in reference to Mathematical/Logical truths. Even then we might better describe those as Universals that are "context-less" in their truths?

Fair enough. It might, though, be analogous to free will, in that there is by no causal explanation; the explanation is meta-causal and holistic: all we can say is that free will exists because we exercise it as whole, conscious persons. Similarly, there might be no causal explanation of God's creative agency; the explanation might simply be meta-causal and holistic: God simply exercises those powers as a whole, conscious, divine Being.
(Again, just rough thoughts, subject to critique and revision).

I would say there are no causal explanations that are adequate for any observed change or lack of change save for those that involve mental causation. 

But then this is one of my issues with Physicalism in general, that the "physical" cannot have any causal relations that are Mind-less.

If souls are eternal, then they have always existed, only changing form. But perhaps souls can create new souls from their own essence, which doesn't seem impossible, given that we can create thoughtforms that have some level of autonomy. New souls would therefore be the extreme of that

I have to admit I don't really see a mechanism for this either, at least because I am not sure what "create thoughtforms" means?

Admittedly I've begun to lean toward multiple personalities and even tulpas being Persons that already exist but take on roles rather than newly created entities.

I also admit "eternal" is a word with heavy connotation. Does it mean existing all the back to the supposed Beginning of a linear temporal progression? Or does it mean something existing "outside Time"?

Maybe it best signifies that our understanding of Time is limited in some way, without making a definite claim about what the true understanding of Time could be....

I have to admit I don't really see a mechanism for this either, at least because I am not sure what "create thoughtforms" means?

Well, I guess it's the imbuing of a concept or idea with life and will through intense focus. It's sort of in the name ~ a thought given form, or perhaps more accurately, a semi-independent existence. The spiritual experiences people can have of deities might be an example of this. I've encountered Jesus, Zeus, Buddha, maybe Lao Tzu. All of them I've met precisely once each, though.

Admittedly I've begun to lean toward multiple personalities and even tulpas being Persons that already exist but take on roles rather than newly created entities.

Multiple personality I see as just fractured aspects of the psyche, generally ~ considering that the majority of, if not all, cases are correlated trauma in some way. There is possession and walk-ins, but those don't appear to be the same thing, qualitatively.

I do think that there are the possibility for newly created entities ~ because we incarnate beings are examples of such. We are aspects of our souls, but we identify so closely with our physical forms that we more or less become that during the entirety of incarnation. We imbue form with life, with our peculiar personalities. So why could we not do something similar with thoughtforms / tulpas? It's just a microcosm of that higher power to create.

In a grander sense... is this incarnate reality itself not a thoughtform, in some sense, with the majority of forms within it animated by souls.

We can even be captured by powerful ideas that exert a pull over our psyche ~ a sort of groupthink that drives us, compels us, an intensity of emotion.

The spirit of Ayahuasca doesn't seem to be a thoughtform / tulpa, though... she has too much presence and power ~ especially if she is the personification of the Earth itself. She may even take on other forms, depending on the culture. The Sun may also be a "Person", though as shown to me by Ayahuasca, was so alien to my perception. I think that "Person" might be more confusing a term than not, unless by it you mean an entity with will, life, personality. What Jung would have called "the Self". What spirituality and religion calls "Soul".

But even they could be microcosms... reality is very mysterious, overall.

I also admit "eternal" is a word with heavy connotation. Does it mean existing all the back to the supposed Beginning of a linear temporal progression? Or does it mean something existing "outside Time"?

I guess something that exists outside of time as we perceive it. The physical reality seems to be within its own... time-bubble, though I have yet to comprehend what that means... as according to my loong spirit at least, time flows much differently in the astral, especially the further from this layer of reality one goes, though proximity to me seems to pull their perception of time to be the same as mine. I cannot say I understand much of it, perhaps because it is not something that can be explained or described beyond direct and extended experience of such a thing.

Maybe it best signifies that our understanding of Time is limited in some way, without making a definite claim about what the true understanding of Time could be....

I agree. We are locked into a very human comprehension and perception of Time, one further defined by physical incarnation.

[Laird]

Responding first to your questions of Valmar, Sci:

I also admit "eternal" is a word with heavy connotation. Does it mean existing all the back to the supposed Beginning of a linear temporal progression? Or does it mean something existing "outside Time"?

In my view, these are two distinct meanings, and it's important to distinguish between them. In my previous post, I tried to make it explicit that I interpreted your usage according to the second meaning: that of a domain beyond (outside of; not subject to) time.

Also, I think it's worth noting that according to the first meaning time is in general of infinite duration, which could be back into the past, forward into the future, or both.

Yeah it also isn't clear to me that Eternity, as a domain not subject to time, has any real meaning

I agree that it's difficult to find meaning in it. It seems to be necessary given that beginningless time is actually incoherent, and a beginning to time with no cause seems like the creation ex nihilo that you abhor, but I too resist it given its apparent senselessness: in addition to the reasons already shared, I don't know what it could possibly mean to be conscious outside of time.

Various people who've had various mystical experiences like NDEs do describe timelessness, but, again, I've not been able to make sense of this given that they seem to describe events occurring, which seems to entail time.

I don't know whether it's even possible for us to make sense of time(lessness) from within the flow of time. It's all very puzzling.

save perhaps in reference to Mathematical/Logical truths. Even then we might better describe those as Universals that are "context-less" in their truths

"Contextless truths" sounds like a good description to me. While they definitely exist eternally (second meaning) - in the sense in which not only are they true at every given moment in time, but they would be (are) true even in the absence of time - they don't exist in any tangible sort of sense in which a person could, say, travel out of body to a timeless, Platonic realm and exclaim in delight, "Oh, wow, here's the perfect form of the triangle, and - look over there! - there's the law of non-contradiction!"

At least, that's my view.

I would say there are no causal explanations that are adequate for any observed change or lack of change save for those that involve mental causation.

Yes, you've been very clear over time that that's your view. I was getting at something perhaps(?) a little different though: that free will (and, by analogy, God's creative agency) can't be reduced to operating within a causal chain of "event A necessitates event B, then event B necessitates event C, etc", and that it's rather that they (free will and divine creative agency) are meta-causal, operating in a sense on the causal chain as a whole, beyond supposed necessitation. That's not to deny that they are causally efficacious though, it's just - it seems to me - a more productive way to frame their causal role. Perhaps it's not perfect or ideal though.

Yes, you've been very clear over time that that's your view. I was getting at something perhaps(?) a little different though: that free will (and, by analogy, God's creative agency) can't be reduced to operating within a causal chain of "event A necessitates event B, then event B necessitates event C, etc", and that it's rather that they (free will and divine creative agency) are meta-causal, operating in a sense on the causal chain as a whole, beyond supposed necessitation. That's not to deny that they are causally efficacious though, it's just - it seems to me - a more productive way to frame their causal role. Perhaps it's not perfect or ideal though.

Ah that is an interesting framing, I have seen an argument that the Big Bang is best thought of as a creative act by a freely acting Mind as otherwise such a beginning runs into the problems you mention regarding Eternity and infinite regression.

Causality will always be somewhat tricky, and I don't pretend simply saying all causation is mental is a complete solution. I just don't know how else to even begin to make sense of how of all possible things that could happen only one possibility does happen.

Dr. Josh Rasmussen joins me to discuss the interaction problem, the causal exclusion problem, and the pairing problem. Your existence might be on the line. Like the show? Help it grow! Consider becoming a patron (thanks!):   / majestyofreason   If you wanna make a one-time donation or tip (thanks!): https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/josep...

OUTLINE

0:00 Intro
2:07 Problems of mental causation
4:28 Interaction problem
24:19 Causal exclusion problem
1:05:09 Pairing problem
1:13:43 Decombination problem
1:20:38 Final comments

RESOURCES

(1) Josh's PhilPeople profile: https://philpeople.org/profiles/joshu...

(2) Josh's YouTube channel: ‪@WorldviewDesignChannel‬

(3) Josh's co-authored paper, "No Pairing Problem": https://andrewmbailey.com/PairingFort...

(4) Josh's book, "Who Are You Really?": https://www.ivpress.com/who-are-you-r...

(5) One self view resources: (a) https://nautil.us/is-everyone-the-sam... (b) https://philarchive.org/rec/ZUBOST

(6) Philosophy of mind playlist:    • Philosophy of Mind  

.....

To assume encounters are solely “in our heads” misinterprets Co-Creation Theory. Any cursory survey of Fortean literature reveals physical effects from non-physical stimuli, including stigmata (wounds on devout Christians mimicking crucifixion) and dream injuries. In the 600s, St. Peter scourged Archbishop Laurentius in his dream before he awoke to painful lacerations.  More recently, a Scottish victim dreamt she was punched in the mouth— waking, she was bloodied, with several teeth painfully knocked loose. This implies our modern dualism is a false dichotomy— consider psi studies and hauntings, where the intangible (i.e. psychic faculties, ghosts) influence the tangible (e.g. moving objects, leaving footprints, etc.)

“This is an important point to make, which the ‘flying saucer people’ are forever misunderstanding… saying that the flying saucer is a psychic object does not mean that it is not a physical object,” said psychonaut-cum-philosopher Terence McKenna. “Jung, in Mysterium Coniunctionis is at great pains to say that the realm of the psychic and the realm of the physical meet in a strange kind of ‘Never-Never Land’ that we have yet to create the intellectual tools to explore.”

Cutchin, Joshua. Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal - Vols. One & Two (pp. 19-20). Kindle Edition.

Consider these quotes as they might tie into the "Uber-Umwelt" ...

In this episode, I'm joined once again by the ever-brilliant Joshua Cutchin to discuss his latest book Fourth Wall Phantoms. This conversation is a deep dive into the fertile terrain between fiction and reality, where paranormal phenomena blur into imagination, archetype, and culture. He asks; What if stories were more than just stories? What if fictions came to life? What would that say about our greatest mysteries? What would that say about you?

Joshua shares how this book was a cleansing act for him—an unapologetic exploration of how stories, symbols, and media shape and even generate anomalous experiences. We talk about everything from the dream-logic of high strangeness to the surrealist lens through which we might better understand UFOs, spirits, and cryptids.

[Laird]

So good. What a great breakdown.

It's also helped me with my (still in progress) critique of monistic idealism, and I'll probably come back to it after (finally) publishing that critique.

In the meantime, there was an interesting parallel with an article I posted yesterday, in which Mark Mahin points out the problem with trying to explain macro-level features via micro-level DNA. Similarly, in this video, they point out the problem with trying to explain macro-level causality and intention via micro-level physical entities.

"...In ‘Ghosts in a Secular Age,’ columnist Ross Douthat began by invoking a report of a widow encountering her discarnate husband. The significant thing here was not so much the discarnate husband (again, we are veritable experts at ignoring the marvelous), but the fact that the couple hailed from the hyper-secular world of the New York literary establishment. The widow was Lisa Chase, and the husband, Peter Kaplan, was editor of the New York Observer. Douthat goes on to reference another essay he had written earlier about an outbreak of ghosts after the recent Japanese tsunami. There he invoked the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor to ask the question of why ghosts no longer appear in the present to the same extent that they seemed to appear in the past. The first possibility is that modern peoples experience the mystical and the ghostly as much as premodern peoples, but their secular culture or ‘immanent frame’ encourages them to privatize these and keep them out of the public culture. Hence the illusion that these experiences are uncommon or anecdotal flukes, statistical blips, as it were.

The second possibility is that what Taylor calls the ‘immanent frame’ somehow ‘buffers’ the self and prevents the numinous from reaching us to the same extent. As Douthat explains, ‘the secular frame somehow changes the very nature of numinous experience, so that it feels more attenuated and unreal, and the human self is more ‘buffered’ against its enchantments, terrors, and pull.’[2] Here, religious experiences are actually being repressed and made less possible, even impossible, by the cultural filter and subsequent heavily buffered self.


In Authors of the Impossible, I lean heavily toward this latter hypothesis, partly through reading Fort, partly through the ‘filter thesis’ of consciousness (which sees the body-brain, in effect, as a kind of buffering or stepping down of consciousness as such), but mostly through the work of the French sociologist and philosopher Bertrand Méheust, whose two-volume history of animal magnetism and psychical research in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century France demonstrates the same thesis in rich and erudite detail.[3] Following Bertrand, I suggest that we have literally made the once possible impossible. We have changed the texture and reach of the real, even if its potential spectrum remains the same as it always was (or is). Jack explores a similar notion in his Introduction through his concept of ‘ontological flooding,’ and many of the essayists return to the same tantalizing idea in their essays. Of course, we cannot prove this notion of a ‘culturally conditioned nature,’ as the Italian anthropologist Ernesto de Martino had it, but we can certainly think with it and see where it leads."


 - J. Kripal, Damned Comparisons & The Real

Religious Experience and the Modern Self

Ross Douthat

… Indeed, “enchantment” is something that we have special trouble understanding … we tend to think of our differences from our remote forbears in terms of different beliefs, whereas there is something much more puzzling involved here. It is clear that for our forbears, and many people in the world today who live in a similar religious world, the presence of spirits, and of different forms of possession, is no more a matter of (optional, voluntarily embraced) belief than is for me the presence of this computer and its keyboard at the tips of my fingers...

In a sense, it’s hard to imagine a better illustration of Taylor’s argument than the Verhoeven-Ono contrast. In the case of the Japanese man’s experience, you have the porous self made manifest — his experience of the tsunami’s ghosts is explicitly one of external forces entering his “psychic and physical” space, collapsing “the boundary between self and other,” and there’s no clear place where belief or dogma intrudes to control the experience, to make it somehow “optional” or “voluntarily embraced.” Then in the case of Verhoeven, you see the modern “buffered self” in action: An unusual experience is met with an “intra-psychic explanation,” which treats the feelings that overtook Verhoeven in the Pentecostal church as by definition internal. Whatever they are, they can’t possibly represent something crossing over into his consciousness from outside: Instead, they can only be approached as “coded manifestations of inner depths,” as Taylor puts it later in the excerpt, that we “define” and “deal with” very differently than Ono did with his ghosts — in Verhoeven’s case, by doing everything possible to avoid having the experience recur, out of fear for his very sanity.

But my question, which surfaced when I read (okay, browsed) Taylor’s argument the first time and came up again while I was thinking through these cases, is whether the buffered self/porous self distinction is supposed to describe a difference in the lived, felt substance of religious experience itself, or whether it’s ultimately an ideological superstructure that imposes an interpretation after the fact. Taylor’s argument seems to be that the substance of experience itself changes in modernity: He leans hard on the idea that (as he puts it) “the whole situation of the self in experience is subtly but importantly different” for people who fully inhabit the secular age. Which would seem to imply that when Verhoeven was in that church, his actual experience of what felt like the dove descending was “subtly but importantly different” from the experiences that the not-as-secularized believers around him might have been having — more attenuated, more unreal, and thus easier to respond to in the way he ultimately did. And it would imply, as well, that if Takeshi Ono’s worldview had been more secular to begin with, he wouldn’t just have reacted to his visions differently (by, say, visiting a therapist rather than a Buddhist priest); he would have had a different experience, period, in which he somehow felt more buffered and less buffeted throughout.