Computer programmer and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup provides a surprising answer:
A leading cosmopsychist doubts that computers can be conscious. He doesn’t think consciousness dies with the body; rather, near-death experiences are genuine.
Michael Egnor: Do you believe in life after death?
Bernardo Kastrup: I certainly believe in consciousness after death. I believe that our core subjectivity, that implicit, innate sense of “I”-ness, remains undifferentiated. That’s the reason you still think you are the same person you were when you were five years old even though everything about you has changed. Every atom in your body has already departed, and new atoms are in. Your thoughts are different, your emotions are different, your memories are different. Everything is different about you, but your core subjectivity is the same. That’s why you think of that kid as you, even though everything else about that kid was different.
I think the same core subjectivity… it’s not only that it survives death, death happens within it. Life and death happen within that core subjectivity, that undifferentiated witness that is the carrier of all reality.
News, “Michael Egnor: What happens to our consciousness after we die?” at Mind Matters News
Cosmopsychism and panpsychism are taken seriously in science culture mags today because there is no reasonable materialist/naturalist account of consciousness. But look what it’s doing to their brand. Forcing them to be serious about the issues will be their downfall.
See also: Here are some other discussions between neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and philosopher and computer geek Bernardo Kastrup:
Bernardo Kastrup argues for a Universal Mind as a reasonable idea. The challenge, he says, is not why there is consciousness but why there are so many separate instances of consciousnesses. He tells Michael Egnor why his view, cosmopsychism, makes more sense than panpsychism.
Why consciousness couldn’t just evolve from the mud. Kastrup, a panpsychist, is sympathetic to the basic intuitions behind the idea that there is design in nature (intelligent design theory). Philosopher and computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup discusses the problems with such claims with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor.
Why is science growing comfortable with panpsychism (“everything is conscious”)? At one time, the idea that “everything is conscious” was the stuff of jokes. Not any more, it seems.
and
Does physics today point to mind rather than matter only? A cosmopsychist looks at the universe, God, and free will. Bernardo Kastrup tells Michael Egnor that he does not think God is self-reflective. That, he thinks, is a unique job for humans.
As to:
What Bernardo Kastrup is referring is referred to as ‘Persistence of Self-Identity (through time)’ and is one of 6 characteristics of the immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with materialism
Persistence of Self-Identity (through time) is exactly what Stanley Jaki was getting at when he when he elucidated the problem of ‘the experience of the now’ for materialistic explanations.
In the following article Stanley Jaki states that “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”
Likewise, Dr. Suarez states the irresolvable dilemma for reductive materialists as such, “it is impossible for us to be ‘persons’ experiencing ‘now’ if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as ‘persons’, we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. (In other words) We must refer to God!”
“The experience of ‘the now”, (and/or the persistence of self identity through time), also happens to be exactly where Albert Einstein got into trouble with leading philosophers of his day and also happens to be exactly where Einstein eventually got into trouble with quantum mechanics itself.
Around 1935, Einstein was asked by Rudolf Carnap (who was a philosopher):
Einstein’s answer was categorical, he said:
In the 1920’s, prior to that encounter with Carnap, Einstein also had another disagreement with another famous philosopher, Henri Bergson, over what the proper definition of time should be. Bergson was the reigning expert on the the fact that physical time could not possibly be reconciled with the mental experience of ‘the now’.
Einstein’s disagreement with Bergson over what the proper definition of time should be was one of the primary reasons that Einstein failed to ever receive a Nobel prize for his work on relativity:
The specific statement that Einstein made to Carnap on the train, “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.” was a very interesting statement for Einstein to make to the philosopher since “The experience of ‘the now’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of our physical measurements in quantum mechanics.
For instance, the following delayed choice experiment with atoms demonstrated that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.
From many experiments such as the preceding, it is established that the immaterial mind’s ‘experience of ‘the now’ plays a central role in quantum measurement.
As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
Besides quantum mechanics, in over the top fashion, showing that ‘the experience of ‘the now” is very much an ‘object of physical measurement’ (Einstein), in experiments such as the preceding, recent experiments in quantum mechanics go even further than those experiments and confirm Stanley Jaki’s specific, and obvious, contention that “There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future” (Jaki).
As to the ability of the mind to extend from its experience of the now to past moments in time, in recent experiments in quantum mechanics, it is now found that “quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”
And as the following 2017 article states, “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.”
And to drive this point further home, in the following 2018 article Professor Crull provocatively states “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
It is also very interesting to point out that these experiments demonstrating ‘quantum entanglement in time’ are very friendly to Dr. Michael Egnor’s (Theistic) contention (via Aristotle) that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.”
And it is also interesting to note that this finding or ‘quantum entanglement in time’ also refutes Dr Vincent Torley’s strenuous objection that he raised against Dr Egnor.
Specifically, Dr. Torley strenuously objected that perception cannot possibly occur ‘at a distance’ since a Supernova that we might be observing “ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history.”
Yet, despite Dr. Torley’s strenuous (materialistic) objection against Dr. Egnor’s claim that “Perception at a distance is no more inconceivable than action at a distance.” and to repeat Professor Crull’s provocative statement, the findings of quantum entanglement in time “implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
In short, quantum mechanics itself could, apparently, care less about Dr. Torley’s materialistic presuppositions. ‘The experience of the now’ simply takes precedence in quantum mechanics regardless of space-time considerations..
In further confirmation of Stanley Jaki’s contention that, “There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future.”, not only does “quantum mechanics show us that “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.”, but recent experiments from quantum mechanics also now show us that our present conscious choices determine what type of future will be presented to us in our measurements of quantum systems.
As leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
As well, with contextuality we find that, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”
Thus, Stanley Jaki’s contention that “There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future.”, is now experimentally established to be true by the fact that “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.” and is also established by the fact that, “We are not just passive observers,,, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure”.
Thus in conclusion, and very much contrary to what Einstein himself thought was possible for experimental physics, advances in quantum mechanics have now shown, in overwhelming fashion, that ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of experimental physics.
In fact, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to rephrase and correct Einstein’s answer to the philosopher Rudolph Carnap in this way:
As well, the ‘experience of the now’ also makes itself known in experimental science through what is termed the quantum zeno effect.
An old entry in wikipedia described the Quantum Zeno effect as such “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”
Likewise, the present day entry on wikipedia about the Quantum Zeno effect also provocatively states that “a system can’t change while you are watching it”
Atheistic materialists have tried to get around the Quantum Zeno effect by postulating that interactions with the environment are sufficient to explain the Quantum Zeno effect.
Yet, the following interaction-free measurement of the Quantum Zeno effect demonstrated that the presence of the Quantum Zeno effect can be detected without interacting with a single atom.
In short, the quantum zeno effect, regardless of how atheistic materialists may feel about it, is experimentally shown to be a real effect that is not reducible to any materialistic explanation. And thus the original wikipedia statement of, “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay”, stands, as far as the science itself is concerned, as being a true statement to make.
Moreover, on top of the quantum zeno effect, the mental attribute of ‘the experience of the now’ is also now verified by recent experiments in quantum mechanics that have, more specifically, shown that “entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
As the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
The reason why I am very impressed with the preceding experiments demonstrating that the mental attribute of ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of entropy, is that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is very foundational to any definition of time that we may have.
As the following article states, “Entropy explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,,”,, “Even gravity,,,, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy.,,,”
On top of the fact that “(Entropy) explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe”, Entropy is also, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Finely tuned to an almost incomprehensible degree of precision, 1 part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd power. As Roger Penrose himself stated that, “This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123.”
In the following video, Dr, Bruce Gordon touches upon just how fantastically enormous that number truly is.
Dr. Gordon states, “you would need a hundred million, trillion, trillion, trillion, universes our size, with a zero on every proton and neutron in all of those universes just to write out this number. That is how fine tuned the initial entropy of our universe is.”
In fact, entropy is also the primary reason why our own material, temporal, bodies grow old and eventually die in this universe,,,
The burning unanswered question is, “Why in blue blazes should the finely tuned entropic actions of the universe, entropic actions which also happen to explain time itself, even care if I am consciously observing them, and/or describing them, or not (i.e. Quantum Zeno Effect)?
The obvious answer, as we can now see, is that mental attribute of ‘the experience of ‘the now’ really is more foundational to reality than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is?
As should be needless to say, this finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system.” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Christian view of reality.
For instance Romans chapter 8: verses 20 and 21 itself states, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Moreover, the scientific evidence for life after death extends well beyond what Bernardo Kastrup himself found sufficient to infer that there must be life after death.
That is to say the scientific evidence extends well beyond the mental attribute of persistence of self identity through time and/or ‘the experience of ‘the now’. (Which, again, Kastrup found to be sufficient in and of itself to infer that there must be life after death, (and I agree with his inference from that one fact)).
For instance, whereas atheists have no experimental evidence supporting their unfounded conjectures for multiverses, Christians, on the other hand, can appeal directly to Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, (i.e. our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science), to support their belief that God upholds this universe in its continual existence, as well as to support their belief in a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension.”
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicists-life-forms-could-flourish-in-the-interior-of-stars/#comment-711489
Moreover, advances in quantum biology also support the Christian’s contention that there is a transcendent component to our being, i.e. a soul, that is capable of living past the death of our material bodies,
The interesting thing about finding quantum information to be ubiquitous within living organisms is that quantum information, like quantum entanglement itself, requires a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, cause in order to explain it. As the following article noted, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Moreover, it is also important to realize that in quantum theory that it is quantum information itself that is conserved.
As the following article states, “In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, i.e. cannot be created nor destroyed, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.
As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Verse:
Of supplemental note.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead provides a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’:
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse:
True. Materialism is a tu**, a philosophy of a by-gone era.
There is an alternative to materialism that preserves scientific objectivity and avoids the ”hard problem of consciousness” without falling into idealism: Hylemorphism
Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).
I appreciate you getting the distinction between cosmopsychism and panpsychism right this time. Thanks.
Kastrup’s a brilliant guy, but sometimes it seems as if he falls back into mental habit. His theory is that reality is mental in nature, so what does “life” mean in that context? In his book, “The Idea Of The World” he states flat-out that our bodies are mental manifestations (as is everything) that a self requires to self-identify and exist in a context. So it is obvious by his own theory that life continues after what we call death. What was the point in qualifying his response?
Beyond theory, there exists overwhelming evidence of life after death available to anyone willing to do the research.
BA77, your information above is greatly appreciated. This experiential realm, whatever it is, appears to be finely tuned for the experience of linear time and a mortal existence, including what we see as “death.” Now imagine an experiential world without entropy and without all that ensues without it. What would be the “now” experience of a conscious being without the experiential limitations imposed by entropic circumstances?
It seems to me that a lot of the information we have coming from the afterlife (and there is a LOT) describes precisely what a non-entropic experience would entail.
WJM “It seems to me that a lot of the information we have coming from the afterlife (and there is a LOT) describes precisely what a non-entropic experience would entail.”
I agree!
7 William J Murray
He is. 🙂 So is Dr. Dennis Bonnette, who thoroughly demolishes “materialism” and advances hylemorphism !
Naturalism’s Epistemological Blunder