Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

A different "take" on this - a look at just a little of the actual data relevant to these issues.

From: Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences. International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

The following are a few cases selected randomly from this compilation of more than 100 generically similar cases in various categories. This book contains over 100 reliable, often firsthand accounts of uncanny perceptions during NDEs that were later verified as accurate by independent sources. These near-death experiencers were everyday people from all over the world — many of whom were clinically dead, unable to see or hear.


Discussion:

These are among more than 100 other cases of verified paranormal knowing and other veridical paranormal phenomena described in accounts by NDE experiencers and investigated by Titus Rivas and colleagues.

Of course materialist skeptics will always question the validity of such reports, since they conflict with their deep almost religious belief in materialism. They can always find some flaw or other, no matter how unlikely, where there just might be some "normal" explanation.

But how likely is it that every single one of the more than 100 verified veridical NDEs compiled and documented in this book, and of the host of others that must exist but were not found, has a conventional "normal" explanation? This "normal" explanation has a wide range of choices, ranging from fraud, coincidence, some sort of medical errors in reporting, to anesthesia awareness, hallucination, it goes on, with generally minimal plausibility.

If even only just one out of all these cases is valid, then it is known that it is a fact that sometimes an NDEer will lose consciousness with brain dysfunctional after incurring deep trauma, and somehow still experience leaving their physical body and going elsewhere, to observe various things that they could not have normally known and that still were later verified by investigators. These observations can sometimes be of the physical body being worked on by the resuscitation team, seen from the perspective of the ceiling of the ER or operating room.

By strong implication of this, during a period during which their brain was dysfunctional due to severe trauma, a victim's consciousness still exists and is sometimes capable of separating from the brain and body as some sort of mobile center of consciousness and traveling to some other location in the physical world or other realms, veridical details of which are later recounted to investigators and found to be correct.

This clearly is impossible if the conscious mind is a function of or in some other sense really one with the physical brain neurons.

Therefore the conclusion from a lot of experiential data in evidence: the mind is not a function of the physical brain neurons and theories of mind that assume this are invalid.

To believe that every single one of all the experiences documented in "The Self Does Not Die" is invalid, really somehow being a fraud or misperception or coincidence or anesthetic awareness or hallucination or whatever, reveals a strong and unquestioning religious faith in materialism.

I find it interesting that there has still been no response from Merle to my citing the 3 cases in this post and the 3 in closely following post #348, of a total of just six out of the more than 100 investigated and verified veridical NDEs in the Rivas, Dirven and Smit compilation volume The Self Does Not Die published by IANDS. And no response yet to my little exposition on the successful use of abductive reasoning by veridical NDE investigators, in post #407. Not interested in examining the actual data?

I find it interesting that there has still been no response from Merle to my citing the 3 cases in this post and the 3 in closely following post #348, of a total of just six out of the more than 100 investigated and verified veridical NDEs in the Rivas, Dirven and Smit compilation volume The Self Does Not Die published by IANDS. And no response yet to my little exposition on the successful use of abductive reasoning by veridical NDE investigators, in post #407. Not interested in examining the actual data?

There is a problem with believing books.  The author has a vested interest as well as his/her own biases.  I don't think we can use this as evidence as it is too anecdotal.

I find it interesting that there has still been no response from Merle to my citing the 3 cases in this post and the 3 in closely following post #348, of a total of just six out of the more than 100 investigated and verified veridical NDEs in the Rivas, Dirven and Smit compilation volume The Self Does Not Die published by IANDS. And no response yet to my little exposition on the successful use of abductive reasoning by veridical NDE investigators, in post #407. Not interested in examining the actual data?

Its not intentional that I have not yet responded. There is a lot of things on this thread that I wish I had time to respond to. There is no way I can respond to everything addressed to me.

Regarding the NDE stories, yes, I have read them. I can't verify any of the details, but for every story, I can think of many ways to explain it short of the person somehow traveling out of the body and sensing things.

If souls can travel out of the body, why don't we see them? Seeing occurs when photons strike an object. In the case of humans, the photons strike our retina. That blocks the light from traveling further. In other words, anything that sees has to be opaque and block the light from traveling through it. And if that is happening, why can we not sense these opaque soul eyes?

If souls really survive death and can communicate with the living, you guys could make a fortune. Just agree that the first one of you to pass away will go to a certain gambling table and tell the rest of you what is in the dealer's hand. And if you think that is unethical, we could use you guys to spy out terrorist activity or to verify other countries are keeping their nuclear arms agreement. Even if you just set up a stunt, in which all of you could accurately report what is going on in some hidden room based on the input from the soul of the first one to go, that would be impressive.

Instead of real evidence from people that have actually died, we get stories that could have many other interpretations. Sorry, but if souls really survived and could communicate with us,  one would expect evidence that is much more clear than a few antecdotes.

There is a problem with believing books.  The author has a vested interest as well as his/her own biases.  I don't think we can use this as evidence as it is too anecdotal.

That pretty much rules out all science textbooks too. And all scriptures... Where does it all end?

This is clearly true, but explains nothing concerning how consciousness is produced in the first place.

Can you point to a post in this thread that does explain how consciousness is produced in the first place, other than appealing to something that looks like magic?

None of us can explain consciousness, and none of us can jump over the moon either. There are some things we cannot do. Your point is?

For reasons I explained in the post you quoted, I think it is more probable that:

• The underlying unconscious nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.
  

compared with

• The underlying conscious nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.
  

Which do you think is more probable? Or do you have a third option (besides postulating that magical souls commandeer bodies)?

I tend to think the underlying nature of the universe i(s) unconscious.......
Again, this is my point:

• The activities of the mind require the brain. 
  

After 400 posts, I don't find anything here that substantially refutes that claim. Can you point to a post here that refutes this claim?

I must agree that there is a route for unconscious mental responses to evolve into being self-aware states in a living agent.  Subconscious processes are the bedrock of mental organization that coordinates physicality.  That a signal can make a frog leg jump, shouldn't obscure what kind of skillful jumping done by a frog with a working mind.  Instinct is complex and is the subject of renewed interest in bio-informatic research.

First rebuttal point is: to pragmatically frame the picture.  Do not the activities of the brain require mind, equally? The information processing by means of signals has never been modeled.  The other side is quantum mind, which explains many more outcomes, in a duel of razors.

Second, You cite complexity, an information science field of study.  Sci has cited a seasoned professional published with a younger professor saying they have math to support the operation of brain/mind has a quantum level of actions.  I surely think this direct refutation to your assertion that's all signals within a brain.  From the paper:

 a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics was offered by Werner
Heisenberg. The quantum states are potentia hovering ghost-like between an idea and a
reality (Heisenberg, 1958). We here adopt Heisenberg’s view. Reality consists in
ontologically real Possibles, Res potentia, and ontologically real Actuals, Res extensa, linked
by measurement. This interpretation explains at least five mysteries of quantum mechanics,
including nonlocality, which way information, null measurement, and “no facts of the matter
between measurements” (Kauffman, 2016; Kastner et al., 2018) so may rightly be considered
seriously. It is of fundamental importance that Heisenberg’s interpretation of quantum
mechanics is not a substance dualism so does not inherit the mind body problem arising
due to a substance dualism (Kauffman, 2016; Kastner et al., 2018, Radin and Kauffman,
2021). Thus, the hypothesis that brain mind is partly quantum allows a new prediction: it
suggests a natural role for mind (Radin & Kauffman, 2021). Mind collapses the wave
function, as von Neumann, Wigner and Shimony, hoped (von Neumann, 1955; Wigner &
Margenau, 1967; Shimony, 1997, Chalmers, 1996, Svetlichny, 2011).
Remarkably, this testable hypothesis stands quite well confirmed. 

Again, this is my point:

• The activities of the mind require the brain.
  

After 400 posts, I don't find anything here that substantially refutes that claim. Can you point to a post here that refutes this claim?

It is not for us to refute.  It is you who are making the claim, now prove it, and when you try, remember that correlation does not equal causation and information processing is not consciousness.  While you are at it, maybe you can explain how consciousness can emanate from physical matter.

Its not intentional that I have not yet responded. There is a lot of things on this thread that I wish I had time to respond to. There is no way I can respond to everything addressed to me.

Regarding the NDE stories, yes, I have read them. I can't verify any of the details, but for every story, I can think of many ways to explain it short of the person somehow traveling out of the body and sensing things.

If souls can travel out of the body, why don't we see them? Seeing occurs when photons strike an object. In the case of humans, the photons strike our retina. That blocks the light from traveling further. In other words, anything that sees has to be opaque and block the light from traveling through it. And if that is happening, why can we not sense these opaque soul eyes?

If souls really survive death and can communicate with the living, you guys could make a fortune. Just agree that the first one of you to pass away will go to a certain gambling table and tell the rest of you what is in the dealer's hand. And if you think that is unethical, we could use you guys to spy out terrorist activity or to verify other countries are keeping their nuclear arms agreement. Even if you just set up a stunt, in which all of you could accurately report what is going on in some hidden room based on the input from the soul of the first one to go, that would be impressive.

Instead of real evidence from people that have actually died, we get stories that could have many other interpretations. Sorry, but if souls really survived and could communicate with us,  one would expect evidence that is much more clear than a few antecdotes.

Instead of a generalized dismissal out of hand (amounting to an invalid argument by simple assertion), how about some actual detailed alternative plausible explanations for the 6 example cases? Remaining aware that these "normal" materialistic explanations whatever they are (plus more that you also require), need to be strong enough and applicable to every one of the rest of the more than 100 cases in the book. The devil is in the details as they say. 

Concerning your gambling and terrorist activity arguments. Straw men, since you automatically make the unjustified assumption that the human spiritual entity released from the body would have the same degree of consciousness and desires and inclinations and addictions and whatnot of the human embodied personality, and you also make the assumption that the disembodied human spirit would have the necessary capability in the world to do what you expect. I might also remind you that what the NDE data mostly directly verifies is that something that could be termed the soul (or mobile center of consciousness) evidently can sometimes on relatively rare occasions (usually involving serious trauma and brain dysfunction) separate from the physical body, and then make observations that can be verified later by investigators. Of course, this is not in itself evidence for survival of death; it just makes it very much more plausible.

Again, this is my point: The activities of the mind require the brain. If the brain is destroyed, then, as far as we know, anything that would be left that had been part of the cause of my thoughts could not be expected to carry on the activities of the mind that occurred in this life..

I'm reasonably convinced that I wouldn't be having this experience without what I experience as my brain. But I would struggle to make the case for any broader claim. Also I find labels like the mind, consciousness etc too vague to be of use.

If the brain is missing, it is hard to see that anything that remained would continued to output any mental functioning that would continue to be the self.

Physics is in a period of flux at present, it seems pretty certain to me that our ideas about Spacetime are going to have to give way to something more fundamental that underlies spacetime. Something new, and more fundamental that will generalise spacetime and quantum mechanics. Therefore it seems possible to me, that at the point of death, all bets are off, about trying to understand what happens after, or what happens after to ones sense-of-self, if our concepts about spacetime breakdown at this point. Asking about what happens after death, may not have any operational meaning we can yet understand, if our concepts of space and time themselves breakdown at death.

It seems reasonable to me that my experiences are the summed result of processing information, and not the information itself. That experience must also include my experience of brains (say for example, if I open up someones scull and stick some probes into their brain to make some measurements). i can't separate brains out from my experience, and say my experience starts there, as my experience of brains is also just part of my experience. But I strongly suspect how we experience them, will have some accurate relationship to the processing of information into the result of brains that we do experience.

My own research suggests that brains seem to be able to store patterns of association classically, and also sum those patterns non-classically, which I suspect is where our shared experience comes from.

Sciborg,

Please compare the following statements:

1. The underlying nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.
   
2. The underlying conscious nature of reality is such that, when humans exist, they are conscious.
   

I contend that the first statement is true. I understand you think the second statement is true. Fine, #2 may be true, but the problem is that your words imply that statement number 2 proves that statement number 1 is false. That is wrong. If statement number 2 is true, then, by simple logic, statement number 1 is also true.

Regarding the underlying nature of reality, it might or might not be conscious. I don't know. I argue that statement 1 is true, and am not specifically arguing that the underlying nature of the universe needs to be conscious or unconscious.

I tend to think the underlying nature of the universe in unconscious. For consciousness is very complex. Laws of a universe can come from nothing ( see The Problem with Nothing ) But laws of a universe that thus come into existence are more likely to be simple, as per Occam's Razor. So there is a prior improbability that the basic nature of the universe is not conscious.

Of course one could argue that a conscious universe better explains human consciousness, and that compensates for the prior odds against the added complexity of universal consciousness. Perhaps. I don't know. But I find a universe with an underlying consciousness to be less likely compared to a fundamentally unconscious universe. 

Again, this is my point:

• The activities of the mind require the brain. If the brain is destroyed, then, as far as we know, anything that would be left that had been part of the cause of my thoughts could not be expected to carry on the activities of the mind that occurred in this life. If the brain is missing, it is hard to see that anything that remained would continued to output any mental functioning that would continue to be the self.
  

Carrier is saying that the laws of logic are Universals that must by necessity exist even in the absence of everything else...He does know that one of the proofs for God's existence is that Universals are mental objects and must be in a Mind right?

As for his argument that because there'd be no laws of physics governing Nothing it could in fact produce Something...this would violate the law of logic that an effect must come from something that exists potentially within the cause...

Carrier seems to reason poorly in general...

Anyway, not sure what the point of the link was but it did raise something I'll get to below...

As to whether the universe is conscious...Not sure. My point is much smaller, that non-conscious constituents can't produce consciousness. Anymore than red paint, no matter its arrangement on the wall, will turn green. This means either one puts consciousness into the constituents or believe the consciousness is separate from the non-conscious constituents. Of course the question of the nature of matter comes up, and how to put consciousness back in so that you get our human consciousness. Can the subjectivity of particles become my subjectivity, can the thoughts of particles become my thoughts, can their use of Reason become my personal use of Reason?

Additionally, consciousness awareness is simple. Red is simple. Feeling cold is simple. Logic and thoughts are possibly complex, but I am not sure complexity is the issue?

I think everyone would agree that activities of the mind require the brain for most aspects of existence in this life, including just being alive. But if it's accepted the brain couldn't even produce just the Subjective 1st Person raw feels (qualia) it is difficult to see how it could be necessary for cognitive functioning beyond this life if we assume there are souls.

Logical reasoning has a feel to it, a training of the proper intuition to grasp what is logically sound and/or what steps to take when solving a math proof. Remembering how to play tennis is based in memories about how the racket feels, taking into account the feeling of the right position of your arms as well as the rest of your body. It feels like something to have thoughts about Paris, trees, etc.

We abstract out Thoughts, Logic, Subjectivity as separate aspects of Mind but they are part of a conscious whole. And they are my thoughts, and my use of Logic, and so they are part of the subjective 1st Person POV. Thus it seems to me an inability to deal with Subjectivity that includes feels is going to yield to an inability to produce/handle Thoughts and Logic. (There are other reasons to reject non-conscious constituents being able to deal with Thoughts & Logic but it comes later in your post anyway so will deal with that more down the line.)

Furthermore, even Carrier seems to agree that Laws of Logic are non-physical, existing in his hypothetical Nothingness. How does the Mind grasp these Laws then if it has only a physical character? As per an essay I previously quoted:

"If one accepts, as even Papineau suggests, that there exists what the logician Frege called “the third realm”[16] (beyond physicality and mentality) of objective truths—such as the truth of modus ponens, the properties of Pi, the Pythagorean theorem, or the Form of Beauty—truths that exist whether or not they are discovered, meaning that they are in essence neither mental nor physical (as there can be no neural correlates of non-existent mental events), then it implies that their existence has an effect upon the physical through their discovery. For example, the discovery of the golden ratio had an effect upon the bodies of its discoverers in terms of their expression of it, and subsequently upon mathematics, aesthetics, architecture, and upon me in writing this essay. Thus the existence of such universal truths implies the falsity of one of physicalism’s key tenets: the causal closure of the physical. Universals crack open the causal closure principle of physicalism, which is to say they crack open physicalism itself. "
 -Peter Sjöstedt-H,Why I am not a Physicalist: Four Reasons for Rejecting the Faith

So if the varied mental activities are not something the brain made of non-conscious constituents can handle it seems arguable that consciousness and its relationship to the brain is neither production nor complete dependence. Even if we allow mental character to the universe's constituents that make up my body it's very unclear how these will bring about my mental character. (The Bottom Up Combination Problem for Panpsychism)

Thus it seems the dependence on the brain is in this life alone, something Terminal Lucidity suggests. There are also those cases where a person has a normal or largely normal life while lacking a large percentage of brain matter. Also the appearance of Sudden Savants which, taken in tandem with the aforementioned, also suggest consciousness is anchored and in some ways limited by brains but potentially extant beyond said brains' deaths.

One can then look at Survival cases to ask *if* souls exist (assumed in the premise of what's being debated) what might their existence be like. And in the vast majority of those cases souls have memories. It actually seems to me the first thing one would logically do after accepting the soul's existence is look at the evidence to see what that existence might be like.


I'll respond to the other parts of the post later.