The Best Basis for Believing in an Afterlife?

While we are on the subject, here's a Guardian article I came across via Google. It is a long article and generally critical of the brain is a computer analogy. However, it is nevertheless an unwaveringly materialist account, completely ignoring the possibility that consciousness might not be a product of brain activity. From reading this - if it is a representation of where neuroscience and consciousness research stands - then there's not much hope for the views expressed on this forum. Those views are, apparently, not even part of the conversation.

The closest the article comes to acknowledging even a dualist approach is contained in the snippet:

The materialist working hypothesis is that brains and minds, in humans and maggots and everything else, are identical. Neurons and the processes they support – including consciousness – are the same thing. In a computer, software and hardware are separate; however, our brains and our minds consist of what can best be described as wetware, in which what is happening and where it is happening are completely intertwined.

Imagining that we can repurpose our nervous system to run different programmes, or upload our mind to a server, might sound scientific, but lurking behind this idea is a non-materialist view going back to Descartes and beyond. It implies that our minds are somehow floating about in our brains, and could be transferred into a different head or replaced by another mind. It would be possible to give this idea a veneer of scientific respectability by posing it in terms of reading the state of a set of neurons and writing that to a new substrate, organic or artificial.

While we are on the subject, here's a Guardian article I It is a long article and generally critical of the brain is a computer analogy. However, it is nevertheless an unwaveringly materialist account, completely ignoring the possibility that consciousness might not be a product of brain activity. From reading this - if it is a representation of where neuroscience and consciousness research stands - then there's not much hope for the views expressed on this forum. Those views are, apparently, not even part of the conversation.

The closest the article comes to acknowledging even a dualist approach is contained in the snippet:

from the Guardian article:

 Brette’s fundamental criticism was that, in thinking about “code”, researchers inadvertently drift from a technical sense, in which there is a link between a stimulus and the activity of the neuron, to a representational sense, according to which neuronal codes represent that stimulus.   The unstated implication in most descriptions of neural coding is that the activity of neural networks is presented to an ideal observer or reader within the brain, often described as “downstream structures” that have access to the optimal way to decode the signals. But the ways in which such structures actually process those signals is unknown, and is rarely explicitly hypothesised, even in simple models of neural network function.  

My rants are all about these "downstream structures" that have access to decoding (and encoding) signals.

But it seems to me that the basic point is that since AI computers can mimic these computational mental operations in silicon-based hardware, it is at least possible that they are in humans implemented in the physical neuronal network of the brain, regardless of the failure of neuroscientists to tease out the exact nature of how. Whereas the "hard problem" is the fundamental inability, the impossibility, of material computation to generate subjective awareness.

The Hard Problem extends to mental operations - does the computer actually comprehend the results of the mental operations?

If your calculator says 2+2 = 5, is this a mistake or an intentional sabotage by its designer?

Arguably if qualia simply are material, then it's not so impossible to believe a brain is capable of subjectivity. OTOH the operations of the intellect, especially concerning Reason, are far harder to comprehend as being material.

I'd say it's a combination of philosophy of mind/maths and reincarnation evidence that make me lean toward survival.

Warning - this post is rather tetchy and irritable in some of its content.

Since I arrived late in this thread, I'm referring back to the opening post, and the referenced article by Mark Mahin. That article seems to be a hotch-potch of unrelated topics, a good deal of which have little to nothing to do with the purported topic of 'Believing in an Afterlife'. There's the bits about fine-tuning of the universe, which might be used in a case for the universe being designed, but doesn't say anything for or against an afterlife (cringe - I really don't like that word since I accept beforelife too, which makes afterlife seem very limiting in so many ways). Later in the article there is reference to orbs - a photographic artefact which should be deleted from the discussion since it is based on a misunderstanding of how optical systems behave.

On orbs, he says,

There is very dramatic and extremely abundant photographic evidence of massively repetitive and inexplicable orb patterns that seem to be manifestations of some unfathomable spiritual reality.

That to me is sheer folly. It is indeed evidence of something: the lack of basic knowledge of optics.


On the other hand, he accurately states

When materialists claim there is no evidence for ESP, they are either reflecting their failure to research the topic with adequate diligence, or simply speaking dishonestly.

However, he goes on to say,

Such evidence for ESP is not direct evidence for life after death. But we may reasonably consider evidence for ESP as being evidence indirectly supporting the existence of life after death.

ESP may be evidence for consciousness being something independent of the expected physical limitations such as distance or time. But afterlife, no ESP doesn't say anything about that. Perhaps it provides a possible environment in which to evaluate other phenomena, including survival of consciousness.

Eventually he gets to the actual topic, by talking about relevant evidence, such as death-bed visions. Then follows an evaluation of types of apparition sightings. Very much on topic. And past lives. Then mediumship. and on to Near-Death Experiences, of which he says,

There are four reasons why it is not credible to maintain such experiences are hallucinations.

and goes on to present good arguments.

After that, he returns to a discussion of the relation of the brain to consciousness which, considered together with the previous subject matter now becomes relevant as supporting context. It gives some sort of arena in which the other phenomena can play out. But on its own it cannot say anything on a so-called afterlife.

And more on the physical:

People sometimes refer to the "miracle of birth," but there is nothing very marvelous about the moment when a baby comes out of a mother's womb. The real physical miracle is the origination of a human body, its growth from a speck-sized egg.

Because of a fixation on the so-called afterlife, he expresses little interest at this point in the coming into the world of a non-physical consciousness. Lots of discussion of the complexities of the developing body, and fine-tuning. On consciousness he says

Your mind arose from some other unfathomable spiritual process also a thousand miles over the heads of today's scientists.

which is ok as part of a larger discussion, but in the context of a discussion on the developing embryo seems more than a little lacking. Right at the very end, as part of the closing line of the article, he uses the phrase, "the origin of your mind", but does not elaborate.

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Ok, let's move on. There is some good stuff there, but I'll offer my own view on the topic,  rather than on the article.

I cannot be sure that I will wake up tomorrow. The future is yet to unfold. But I can be sure that I woke up yesterday morning, and the one before that. Evidence for the past is as solid as for anything physical. Indeed, physical evidence tells us about our own past - the clothes, furniture, cooking utensils all tell a story of what happened recently.

In a similar way, though I am impressed by all sorts of evidence such as NDEs and give value to them, they refer to an as-yet unwritten future. But what happened in the past, the beforelife, that is something for which there is evidence. The past leaves its mark on the physical world. But it also leaves its mark within our consciousness. For me, reincarnation evidence was the turning-point, the point at which I stopped considering life and death as an abstraction, a theoretical concept, and it became something solid for me.

As mentioned I don't much like the term afterlife as I consider the beforelife an equal partner in the topic. One cannot understand our own nature, and why any of this might be relevant to our life here, now, today, by considering only the afterlfe. For me there is only life. The eternal, timeless Now. That is life. Both the past and the future are part of life. But I don't dwell on considering the afterlife - it can take care of itself just as well as next week's breakfast. Nor do I concern myself with the past. It was important to me, in that I needed an explanation of my own nature, why I am the way I am, what I am made of. It was not without relevance for me and indeed a damned sight more important than a consideration of an afterlife. But really, it is now, life at this moment, here today which concerns me. The rest is like a map of the territory - one may refer to a map from time to time, but having reached any particular destination, the map is set aside.

That’s a thought-provoking post Typoz thank you.

In a similar way, though I am impressed by all sorts of evidence such as NDEs and give value to them, they refer to an as-yet unwritten future. But what happened in the past, the beforelife, that is something for which there is evidence. The past leaves its mark on the physical world. But it also leaves its mark within our consciousness. For me, reincarnation evidence was the turning-point, the point at which I stopped considering life and death as an abstraction, a theoretical concept, and it became something solid for me.

I was reflecting on the phrase "turning point" which I used above. When I look back, this is no idle turn of phrase or literary flourish. There actually was a precise moment when it happened. I found an entry in my diary for one day in August 1981 where I briefly marked it. The other pages of that diary were almost uniformly blank. So yes, there was a point at which I became convinced of the reality of reincarnation. 1981 is a good few years ago now. Though I questioned a lot of the details and rethought plenty of my views both at that time and during the years up to the present, that simple fact of accepting the reality of past lives, that remains unchanged.