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

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(2023-10-12, 09:33 AM)sbu Wrote: I'm a bit surprised if this is his position. A random googling gave this fairly recent post about Kastrup and survival Bernardo Kastrup (the Well-Known Cosmic Idealist) and His Afterlife | by Paul Austin Murphy | Paul Austin Murphy’s Essays on Philosophy | Medium

Unless he's been coy for the last few years, Kastrup has made it clear that what survives is the Mind @ Large not the individual self. So there is no personal Survival. He even said the medium who channeled the chess player was just accessing content in the M@L, rather than the chess player actually being alive beyond the grave.

To me that seems little different than saying there is no afterlife, but others' mileage may vary.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


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(2023-10-12, 01:46 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: Unless he's been coy for the last few years, Kastrup has made it clear that what survives is the Mind @ Large not the individual self. So there is no personal Survival. He even said the medium who channeled the chess player was just accessing content in the M@L, rather than the chess player actually being alive beyond the grave.

To me that seems little different than saying there is no afterlife, but others' mileage may vary.

I've been reading some recent essays by Kastrup on https://www.essentiafoundation.org, as well as on his personal homepage. Despite having some understanding of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, to which he often refers in his writings, I must admit that I don't understand a word of Kastrup's work.
(2023-10-14, 02:05 PM)sbu Wrote: I've been reading some recent essays by Kastrup on https://www.essentiafoundation.org, as well as on his personal homepage. Despite having some understanding of the mathematics of quantum mechanics, to which he often refers in his writings, I must admit that I don't understand a word of Kastrup's work.

Oh my objection to Kastrup's Absolute Idealism has nothing to do with QM really. Given Kastrup's work on CERN I'd defer to his knowledge of QM which exceeds my own, but other's knowledge of physics is probably better than mine.

My issue is that Absolute Idealism negates the individual consciousness.

Prolly repeating stuff I've said and you've maybe read but just in case ->

The starting point of Absolute Idealism is that very same first person PoV consciousness. As others have said, and I've admittedly repeated here in different threads, this is akin to having a math proof whose conclusion falsifies its first step. Not exactly, of course, but it is rather strange that Absolute Idealism gives primacy to consciousness but ultimately eliminates that first person PoV from the Ground of the Real.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


(This post was last modified: 2023-10-14, 05:50 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel. Edited 4 times in total.)
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(2023-10-12, 01:46 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: Unless he's been coy for the last few years, Kastrup has made it clear that what survives is the Mind @ Large not the individual self. So there is no personal Survival. He even said the medium who channeled the chess player was just accessing content in the M@L, rather than the chess player actually being alive beyond the grave.

To me that seems little different than saying there is no afterlife, but others' mileage may vary.

He's agnostic about it from what people have told me. He says because NDE testimony, there may be some individual level of subjectivity that survives, but he's not sure.

I think regardless, you can still enjoy his stuff without agreeing with all of it. I personally disagree with him on some things, but I think that he is 100% on the right track towards materialism being a bunch of junk

Kastrup also has his own biases, as he mentioned when he was a materialist, he had zero fear of death because he figured it was just lights out. After he formed his theories though, he began having severe death anxiety/fears related to an afterlife, as he had a very bad psychedelic trip.
As much as materialists like to mockingly say "You're just afraid of deeaaath!" a lot of them are basically so afraid of an afterlife/filled with religious trauma that they treat the "gospel" of Keith Augustine/Sean Carroll as comfort material. At least Kastrup acknowledges most of the facts regardless of his own fears.
(This post was last modified: 2023-10-14, 08:25 PM by LotusFlower. Edited 3 times in total.)
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(2023-10-14, 06:51 PM)LotusFlower Wrote: He's agnostic about it from what people have told me. He says because NDE testimony, there may be some individual level of subjectivity that survives, but he's not sure.

I think regardless, you can still enjoy his stuff without agreeing with all of it. I personally disagree with him on some things, but I think that he is 100% on the right track towards materialism being a bunch of junk

Kastrup also has his own biases, as he mentioned when he was a materialist, he had zero fear of death because he figured it was just lights out. After he formed his theories though, he began having severe death anxiety/fears related to an afterlife, as he had a very bad psychedelic trip.
As much as materialists like to mockingly say "You're just afraid of deeaaath!" a lot of them are basically so afraid of an afterlife/filled with religious trauma that they treat the "gospel" of Keith Augustine/Sean Carroll as comfort material. At least Kastrup acknowledges most of the facts regardless of his own fears.

I tend to think that the arguments people use reveal something about their own inner self. Reaching for the "comfort" argument as an attempt to dismiss anything 'supernatural' really points back towards the one making use of that argument. It implies that they themselves are fearful and discontented with their own beliefs. Otherwise why not simply relax, 'chill out' and assume that that is the natural state of being?

To be honest in the past I took some cues from Eastern philosophies and came to the view that a flower or a tree is not fearful by nature, and that was the natural state for people too, regardless of whatever else one might believe.
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(2023-10-14, 06:51 PM)LotusFlower Wrote: Kastrup also has his own biases, as he mentioned when he was a materialist, he had zero fear of death because he figured it was just lights out. After he formed his theories though, he began having severe death anxiety/fears related to an afterlife, as he had a very bad psychedelic trip.
As much as materialists like to mockingly say "You're just afraid of deeaaath!" a lot of them are basically so afraid of an afterlife/filled with religious trauma that they treat the "gospel" of Keith Augustine/Sean Carroll as comfort material. At least Kastrup acknowledges most of the facts regardless of his own fears.

Certainty becomes reassuring regardless of what you end up believing, whether it be hell, oblivion or a pleasant afterlife. People do take ressurance in NDEs or the like when they think about death, I know I certainly did when I first started learning about them, but as time went gone that went away as I learnt just how much we still DON'T know. If materialists accept that NDEs are legitimate, that things are weirder than we think they are and we don't actually know what happens when we die after all then that invites in a lot of anxiety, so the fear ends up going both ways in the end.
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(2023-10-18, 10:08 AM)Smaw Wrote: Certainty becomes reassuring regardless of what you end up believing, whether it be hell, oblivion or a pleasant afterlife. People do take ressurance in NDEs or the like when they think about death, I know I certainly did when I first started learning about them, but as time went gone that went away as I learnt just how much we still DON'T know. If materialists accept that NDEs are legitimate, that things are weirder than we think they are and we don't actually know what happens when we die after all then that invites in a lot of anxiety, so the fear ends up going both ways in the end.

Unless the person is a deep NDEr and actually had the transcendental experience.
(2023-10-18, 10:08 AM)Smaw Wrote: Certainty becomes reassuring regardless of what you end up believing, whether it be hell, oblivion or a pleasant afterlife. People do take ressurance in NDEs or the like when they think about death, I know I certainly did when I first started learning about them, but as time went gone that went away as I learnt just how much we still DON'T know. If materialists accept that NDEs are legitimate, that things are weirder than we think they are and we don't actually know what happens when we die after all then that invites in a lot of anxiety, so the fear ends up going both ways in the end.
 I am VERY sure there's an afterlife because NDEs/DBEs/DBVs/OBEs/etc (And I'm also pretty confident there's never gonna be any form of materialist explanation for them), but it is also the unknown that scares me. Would it be a really weird trippy multi dimensional one? Would it just be a chill peaceful one? etc etc. It always flips me out when I hear how theoretical physicists think there are 10 dimensions of reality beyond our own, and infinite dimensions on a quantum level.
(This post was last modified: 2023-10-18, 04:25 PM by LotusFlower. Edited 2 times in total.)
(2023-10-18, 04:16 PM)LotusFlower Wrote:  I am VERY sure there's an afterlife because NDEs/DBEs/DBVs/OBEs/etc (And I'm also pretty confident there's never gonna be any form of materialist explanation for them), but it is also the unknown that scares me. Would it be a really weird trippy multi dimensional one? Would it just be a chill peaceful one? etc etc. It always flips me out when I hear how theoretical physicists think there are 10 dimensions of reality beyond our own, and infinite dimensions on a quantum level.

I don't think those 10 dimensions of String Theory are beyond on our own?

Admittedly those abstractions, AFAIK, don't have much actual evidence for them...
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell



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