Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Consul
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Consul »

eyesofastranger wrote: May 6th, 2019, 9:25 pm Felix mentioned "true hallucinations." I'm not saying there is no such thing but I haven't seen proof.
I'm saying so, simply because hallucinations are nonveridical by definition. A veridical hallucination is like a true lie.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

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Note that if there were such a parapsychological ability as "remote perception" or "teleperception" ("television", "teleaudition"), it wouldn't count as hallucination. For example, if somebody located in London could undergo an immediate visual appearance of somebody else located in New York or have an immediate auditory impression of what he says, that would be a case of (supernatural) veridical perception rather than of hallucination.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

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By the way, an alternative term for "remote perception" is "telesthesia": "an impression supposedly received at a distance without the normal operation of the organs of sense" (Merriam-Webster)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

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The parapsychological term "tel(a)esthesia" was coined by Frederic Myers:

"Telepathy and telaesthesia.—It has become possible, I think, to discriminate between these two words somewhat more sharply than when I first suggested them in 1882. Telepathy may still be defined as 'the communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognised channels of sense.' The distance between agent and percipient which the derivation of the word, 'feeling at a distance' implies, need, in fact, only be such that no known operation of the senses can bridge it. Telepathy may thus exist between two men in the same room as truly as between one man in England and another in Australia, or between one man still living on earth and another man long since departed. Telaesthesia—perception at a distance—may conveniently be interpreted in a similar way, as implying any direct sensation or perception of objects or conditions independently of the recognised channels of sense, and also under such circumstances that no known mind external to the percipient's can be suggested as the source of the knowledge thus gained."

(Myers, F. W. H. "Glossary of terms used in Psychical Research." In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XII, 166-174. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1897. p. 174)

Interestingly, Myers thought that hallucinations can be veridical; but it seems that by "veridical hallucination" he means a "veridical perception at a distance/remote perception". But such alleged parapsychological forms of perception shouldn't be called hallucinations, because the latter aren't any form of perception at all, being nothing but pseudo-perceptions, because to hallucinate something isn't really to perceive anything. It's just to sense something, i.e. to undergo a sensation, which is an appearance of nothing/a nonappearance of anything. A hallucinatory experience has a real sensory content but no real object. Therefore, strictly speaking, all hallucinations are falsidical by definition.

"Hallucination.—Any supposed sensory perception which has no objective counterpart within the field of vision, hearing, etc., is termed a hallucination. Hallucinations may be delusive or falsidical, when there is nothing whatever to which they correspond; or veridical, when they correspond (as those of which we treat generally correspond) to real events happening elsewhere. A pseudo-hallucination is a quasi-percept not sufficiently externalised to rank as a 'full-blown' hallucination."

(Myers, F. W. H. "Glossary of terms used in Psychical Research." In Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. XII, 166-174. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1897. p. 170)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Felix
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Felix »

"I am a true believer in the need for instrumentation to confirm what the mind has experienced."

Do you rely on external instruments to tell you whether your subjective experiences are valid or not?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Felix
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

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Felix wrote: May 7th, 2019, 3:48 am "I am a true believer in the need for instrumentation to confirm what the mind has experienced."

Do you rely on external instruments to tell you whether your subjective experiences are valid or not?
Sorry, the quote I gave is from eyesofastranger....
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by eyesofastranger »

ra you can all fu and Scott will bashee me. o'm sorry to surprise words to follow
sorry Felix I tried
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Felix
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Felix »

Be well, EOAS... and if the stranger asks for his eyes back, make him sign an expensive lease for them, and go out and buy yourself a metaphysically inclined seeing-eye dog. :)
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by JikanSurfer »

Modus Ponens:

Clearly it is nonsense to assume I can fly.
If you are alive long enough and are wealthy enough, you can fly someday. That is to say, there are people who fly already, somewhat like Ironman, though it is expensive and experimental, but they can go very high and very far.
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

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I don't imagine anything particularly intimate about oneself could survive. I just get the sense that the more generic way in which the universe views itself through one person, e.g. me, can occur again in another person given similar enough conditions. No raw matter could survive, just the experience of the process of consciousness forming again from the particles of the universe.
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Sam26 wrote: November 3rd, 2018, 6:21 pm My claim is that there is sufficient testimonial evidence to reasonably conclude that consciousness survives the death of the body. In other words, I'm making the claim that I know the conclusion is true. And although I believe that I could make other claims based on the evidence, i.e., claims of knowledge, I'm limiting the scope of the conclusion. By limited, I mean I'm not trying to give evidence of a god, heaven, that we are eternal beings, or any other spiritual or religious idea; nor am I trying to give evidence of many of the other claims people are making while having such an experience. Although I do believe there is strong evidence to support other conclusions, and these conclusions have varying degrees of certainty, just as many of our everyday rational conclusions have varying degrees of certainty.

The first question is, what makes a strong inductive argument? As many of you know, the criteria for a good inductive argument is much different than the criteria of a good deductive argument. The criteria of a good inductive argument are as follows:

(1) number
(2) variety
(3) scope of the conclusion
(4) truth of the premises
(5) cogency

First, number. It seems rather obvious that if you have a greater number of testimonials that say X happened, then the stronger the argument. This does not mean that the conclusion relies solely on numbers, because numbers in themselves are not sufficient.

Second, variety. The greater the variety of cases cited the stronger the conclusion. Remember that when examining the conclusion of an inductive argument, the conclusion is either strong or weak, which is much different from a good deductive argument, where the conclusion follows with absolute necessity. The difference being what is probably or likely the case (inductive arguments), verses what necessarily follows (deductive arguments).

Third, scope of the conclusion. This has already been covered briefly in the opening paragraph. It means that the less the conclusion claims the stronger the argument. In other words, conclusions that are broad in scope are much are generally harder to defend. A conclusion that is limited in scope is easier to defend.

Fourth, truth of the premises. Clearly this means that the premises must be true, which by the way, is the same criteria that makes a good deductive argument, i.e., a good deductive argument must be sound (soundness has to do with whether the deductive argument is valid, plus the premises must be true).

(4a) Also, since we are dealing with testimonial evidence, in order to know if the testimonial evidence is true we need corroboration, i.e., we need an objective way to verify some of the testimonial evidence. This helps to establish the truth of the testimonial evidence, and since the evidence is testimonial evidence, it helps to establish the fourth criteria of a good inductive argument, viz., the truth of the premises.

(4b) Another important factor in determining the truth of testimonial evidence is firsthand testimony, as opposed to hearsay or secondhand testimony. Firsthand testimony is stronger than hearsay or second-hand testimony, all things being equal.

(4c) Consistency of the reports is another important criterion in terms of getting to the truth. However, testimonial evidence does not have to be perfectly consistent to be credible. When dealing with a large number of reports you will inevitably find some inconsistency. So, inconsistency itself is not enough to rule out the reports unless the inconsistency is widespread, and of such a number that it affects the quality and number of consistent reports. So although consistency is important, it must be looked at in terms of the overall picture.

Fifth is cogency. You rarely here this criteria, but it's very important in terms of effectiveness. Any argument's (deductive or inductive) effectiveness is going to be based on whether the person to whom the argument is given, knows the premises are true. For example, if I give the following argument:

The base of a souffle is a roux.
This salmon dish is a souffle.
Hence, the base of this salmon dish is a roux.

If you do not know what a souffle or a roux is, then you do not know if the premises are true, so how would you know if the conclusion is true. You may know that the argument is valid based on its form, but you would not know if the premises are true. Thus, you would not know if it is sound. For any argument to be effective, you have to know if the premises are true; and since knowledge varies from person to person, an arguments effectiveness is going to vary from person to person.

I will give the actual argument in my next post based on these criteria.
If consciousness were to survive then it would be a simple enough test to verify. As yet not one single claim as survived the most cursory examination.
The university of Southhamton commissioned a long term study many years ago. They investigated near death experiences, where people claimed to have been able to leave their bodies and hover above their bodies. sadly none were able to recognise the notices that had been placed on top of all cupboards.
Their ten year (It think) study revealed zip, nada, f all. nothing.
In fact there is not one scrap of evidence to support this absurd claim.
When you die you die.
Get over it!
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Sculptor1
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Sam26 wrote: November 3rd, 2018, 8:12 pm
JamesOfSeattle wrote: November 3rd, 2018, 7:09 pm Okay, I’m confused. I see evidence that consciousness survives NDE’s. I don’t see evidence that consciousness survives death. None of the people that reported NDE’s were, um, dead.
Two two things here: First, one of the consistencies of the testimonial evidence is that people meet deceased relatives, friends, acquaintances, etc., that have been deceased for years.
This is imagination. Since dead men tell no tales, those relatives supposed to have been dead for years, and not around to verify your claim.
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Belindi »

It's true that a dead person appears to a mourner. This is a well documented hallucination. Neurotransmitters the action of which cause hallucinations and other sorts of consciousness act to conserve the life and wellbeing of the living person. Grief is very painful and hallucinations can act as natural painkillers.
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Sculptor1 »

I often talk to the dead and they talk back.

I often hear my Grandmother in my head, or when I am fixing the car, have my step father breathing down my neck.
Maybe I have Darwin Joston listening to me when I do a Southern Drawl, or I will hear his phrase; "thing of it is!"

I no way do I think any of these are autonomous agents, spirits or ghosts. They are all DEAD. Death is what happens when consciousness ends.

Stop pretending.
You are all going to die!!
LOL
Steve3007
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Re: Evidence that Consciousness Survives Bodily Death?

Post by Steve3007 »

Going way back to the start of the topic:
Sam26 wrote:The first question is, what makes a strong inductive argument? As many of you know, the criteria for a good inductive argument is much different than the criteria of a good deductive argument. The criteria of a good inductive argument are as follows:

(1) number
(2) variety
(3) scope of the conclusion
(4) truth of the premises
(5) cogency
I think there's something missing from here. An inductive argument is a process of proposing a generalization from a pattern spotted in specific observations. There can be many possible generalizations that fit the same pattern in the same set of observations. That seems to be the part that's missing. The challenge then is deciding between all of the generalizations that fit the pattern.

In this case, the generalization is the proposition: "Consciousness survives the death of the body". But there are other possible generalizations that fit the same set of observations and which hinge on the fact that human brains are broadly similar the world over and can therefore be expected to have broadly similar psychological needs and desires and to undergo broadly similar physical processes in similar situations, such as being near to death.

That being the case, a large number of people who claim to have had NDE's (1) from a large variety of cultures (2) doesn't support the proposition "consciousness survives the death of the body" any more than it supports other propositions that are based on similarities in the psychological makeup of all humans.
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