Afterlife: Matt Take Notice!!! (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, January 10, 2012, 04:07 (4680 days ago) @ dhw

Matt, the discussion between yourself on the one hand, and David and me (see my unanswered post of 6 January at 12.32) on the other, revolves round two sentences in your last post: “My primary criticism: If we know that we know very little about consciousness, we have very little right to be able to claim we know for sure when it ends. [...] We don’t know enough about consciousness and the mind-brain interaction to give a reasonable discussion of NDEs.”

Back to epistemology. You are fully aware that neither David nor I claim to “know for sure” when consciousness ends. That is a straw man argument. If anything, it is you who are making such a claim, since you do not take NDEs seriously. What do you mean by “a reasonable discussion”? All of us are attempting to understand the nature of consciousness, and in order to do so, we have to consider all the available evidence. If you cannot explain the acquisition of knowledge by unknown means, you should at least explain why you are not prepared to accept it as POSSIBLE evidence of dualism. Not definite evidence, not evidence to tell us anything “for sure”, not evidence that will answer all our questions (e.g. why the cultural differences?), but POSSIBLE evidence of consciousness independent of the physical brain. How did Pam Reynolds see what she saw, how did Yuri know the baby’s arm was broken, how did the man know where his dentures were (van Lommel section), how did the blind Vicki see herself, how did Maria see the tennis shoe, how did the other lady see the red shoe, how did Joyce Harmon see the plaid shoelaces, how did Sue Saunders see the yellow top, how did a whole host of patients see – they all say from above – the details of what was being done to them and around them when clinically they were dead and the medical staff attending to them could detect no sign of life? Do you know the answer “for sure”? Of course you don’t. And yet you are “extremely skeptical”. So let me ask you yet again, do you think all these people and all the witnesses were lying or were victims of collective delusion? If not, what are you “extremely skeptical” about?

I can't verify the means with which they gained their information. THAT is what makes me skeptical. I have to take their stories as an article of faith, and I've never been shy about not liking faith. Maybe you think I'm psychologically defunct for that, but that's why. You've pressed me into the very reason that the whole subject... is uncomfortable for me. You can call it prejudging all you want, but short of experiencing one of these events myself I have no "warm fuzzy" that lets me go beyond acceptance without something in my brain rupturing.

David may be more convinced of dualism than I am, since I remain firmly seated on my agnostic picket fence but, for the sake of emphasis, let me repeat: it is an absolute cop out to claim that, since we cannot know “for sure” where consciousness ends, and we do not understand the nature of consciousness, it's not “reasonable” to discuss NDEs, or even to take them seriously. In the context of materialism versus dualism, refusal to consider POSSIBLE evidence – i.e. phenomena that so far remain unexplained – is neither scientific nor reasonable. It is, to put it bluntly, prejudgemental.

No, its not a cop out, its pointing out why a solution cannot be claimed. Dualism's automatic failure has been in explaining the physical basis for consciousness. If mind and body are separate, than it is for the dualist to discuss how exactly the transfer of information between body and mind takes place. (If you stick your finger in an outlet, how does the physical body tell the mind to say "ouch?")

Buddhism's approach is drastically different. Since we are all manifestations of the same consciousness, there is no possibility for dualism. After doing some digging, one possibility is that we can see other people in an NDE because we are in a state where our mind is dissolving--we're half-in and half-out of the illusion of the "self." If there is a universal consciousness in the Buddhist sense, when you're still "half you" it makes sense that you can see nearly everything because you're tapping into everyone else's consciousness.

This isn't the work of Buddha, but some of the Tibetan mystics that wrote the Book of the Dead. Buddhism offers no ontology for the mind--one of its attractions is its implicit assertion that ontologies are dangerous. (They create illusion as opposed to helping us dissolve them.)

^^^Take everything I said above with a grain of salt. When dealing with metaphysics, there is no right or wrong.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"