Dualism (Identity)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, March 13, 2015, 00:33 (3542 days ago) @ dhw

Sorry I had to trim so much to meet the word count..->DHW: You appear to be arguing in favour of the dualism favoured by David. However, the more I study your beautifully laid out “recap”, the more convinced I become that you are as neutral as I am on the subject. I'll try to explain why I'm still confused:
 
>DHW: This is where I begin to find your scheme confusing. NDEs suggest that consciousness is NOT dependent on the energy, information and mechanics that are essential to LIFE. Our identity (inseparable from our consciousness, but not confined to it) may depend on all the information that we have collected throughout our lives - consciousness has to be conscious of something - but that is all.-During NDE's and OBE's the body is not completely dead. It still provides energy and an 'anchor' of sorts, if you will. More importantly, if NDE's or OBE's are remembered then apparently the brains functions have not entirely ceased. Either that, or there is some form of buffer between the consciousness and the brain. This would act sort of like RAM in my computer analogy, storing data in the form of energy until it could be written more permanently to the hard disk (brain).-
>DHW: According to NDEs, consciousness functions perfectly well without the energy and mechanics of life. -See Above. NEAR death is not the same as dead. When you are dead, there is no spark of life in you. You are dead. Mostly dead is something else altogether because the body still contains the spark.-> 
> DHW:If, as I assume, you are referring here to NDEs and other psychic experiences, you seem to be saying that the three fundamentals essential to life are actually irrelevant to our understanding of the nature or cause of consciousness, because it can exist independently. But then you qualify this (“short term limited capacity”) which suggests there is a kind of brief remission from dependence on the three fundamentals, and then it dies with the rest, which suggests in turn that it IS dependent on them!-Consider the human heart, for a moment, or even the entire body below the neck. You can remove someones heart, or their entire body, and the brain will continue to function for a short time after the removal has occurred. That means that while the brain does have dependency upon the functions of the heart, it still retains a degree of autonomy. I think consciousness works the same way. It IS dependent upon energy, information, and the mechanics of the body, but it is able to function autonomously for a limited duration. ->DHW: If my understanding of these arguments is correct (a big “if”?) I can't help feeling, Tony, that you would make a good agnostic!-I'm afraid not, my friend. I do not see how something so complex, with so many redundancies, and with so many interconnected moving parts that all have to have existed simultaneously from the beginning fully functional could have been arrived at by chance. There had to be a designer. Therefore, I am afraid that my theist cap is still firmly affixed to my head.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.