Dualism (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, March 16, 2015, 21:37 (3539 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

I asked Tony what he thought was the source of consciousness, materials or something else, and misunderstood his reply, which I thought equated consciousness with the spirit. Tony believes that consciousness does not survive the death of the body, but the spirit (= energy) does, and returns to God with a “backup” of the individual's data. I hope this is a fair summary. I called the unconscious spirit a blob.-TONY: Where are you getting this "blob" from? Any energy can contain information. 

Yes, but we are talking about an individual's information. So are you saying that the spirit is me but because it is unconscious (consciousness, remember, has died with my body) it doesn't know it's me? What is this backup? Forgive me, but I have an image of a blank balloon floating up to heaven with a memory stick attached to it and wobbling along in the breeze.
 
None of this would make any sense if you believed even one NDE, in which patients claim to have communicated with dead people. In your post last Friday you argued that because the patient was still alive, consciousness was not yet dead. But the dead person's spirit would have to contain the information relevant to its identity, including memories, and would have to be conscious of these in order to communicate with the NDE patient. So in that case, consciousness could not have “simply ceased to exist” when that particular person died. No doubt I am being obtuse, but perhaps you could dispense with images and, just as plainly as you have said that consciousness dies with the body, tell us either how you think the spirit (energy) can retain its identity without consciousness or, alternatively, confirm that in your view the spirit (energy) that survives death has no identity.