Surprisingly, says Michael Egnor, no. You must make a decision to believe logic or evidence:
“I think therefore I am” is not the most fundamental claim we can make about the nature of knowledge (an epistemological claim). Why not? “I think therefore I am” depends critically on “therefore”—that is, it depends on logic, specifically on the law of non-contradiction.
The law of non-contradiction says that two contradictory positions cannot both be true in the same way at the same time. I cannot exist (in order to assert my existence) and simultaneously not exist. And of course we all accept that law. But notice—we believe in the law of non-contradiction; we don’t know it. And we can’t logically claim that we absolutely know it, because any claim to the truth of the law of non-contradiction depends on… the law of non-contradiction. To claim that the law of non-contradiction is certain is to reason in a circle.
But note what follows: Because we can’t prove that logic is true, we could “think” but not “exist”! Thus we can’t even claim to know with certainty that we exist. To do so is to invoke a law of logic that, however obvious it seems, we must take on faith.
Our most fundamental knowledge is of logic—specifically, the law of non-contradiction—and even that we must take on faith.
Michael Egnor, “How do you know you are not the only human who ever existed?” at Mind Matters News
We must believe that the universe is a certain sort of universe for logic to make sense to us.
See also:
Physicist rejects free will — and thus fails logic. If we accepted his argument for materialism, we would have to stop believing in it—a curious, self-refuting result.
and
Interview with a woman (or women) formerly called Susan Blackmore. A professor of psychology argues that there is no continuity between our present selves and our past selves.
I’ve never found solipsism to be tenable because whatever really exists I am not in control of it. It seems to me that if I was the only conscious being who exists or who ever existed that I should have more control over the circumstance in my life. I don’t, so I don’t believe solipsism is true. Is it logically impossible? I can’t say that it is but it doesn’t follow from that that it’s believable– even though there apparently are some people who are at least sincere if not honest to goodness solipsists. My reaction to that is, really?
Logic is the starter toolkit. 🙂
Even to claim you are a “solipsist”, you need logic because you’re claiming that “one sole existence” and “more of one sole existence” at the same time are an impossibility (due to the LNC).
And we know that we didn’t create ourselves, nor the logic we appeal to to navigate the world.
And a stupid process of “molecules in motion” (atheistic evolution) could not create logic because that would be an ex-nihilo creation: “magic”.
(Naturalists appeal to “magic” all the time because their doctrine is irrational and childish, an aberration to the intellect ).
NS can not “check” if we are following proper logic rules to help us survive because NS doesn’t know logic at all.
There’s obviously a Mind out there.
John: I’ve never found solipsism to be tenable because whatever really exists I am not in control of it. It seems to me that if I was the only conscious being who exists or who ever existed that I should have more control over the circumstance in my life. I don’t, so I don’t believe solipsism is true.
You could have set it up to confuse yourself on purpose, deliberately making yourself think exactly what you’re thinking right now. Just for fun. All by yourself. So that’s not an argument. And this is true of any possible viewpoint.
As to
If logic or evidence can’t help you decide, perhaps your father, who is paying for your high priced college education in philosophy, can help you decide that you are NOT the only person who has ever existed in the world when you come home on college break and try to tell him that you believe, via your high priced college education that he is paying for, that you are the only person who exists?
🙂
As J. Budziszewski put it,
In regards to solipsism, Alvin Plantinga often tells these stories to his audiences,
As well, In 1967, Alvin Plantinga wrote a fairly influential philosophical book which was entitled ‘God and Other Minds”.
In his book Plantinga ends up concluding that, “belief in other minds and belief in God are in the same epistemological boat; hence if either is rational, so is the other. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter.”
The entire issue of solipsism vs belief in other minds arises from the fact that we can only know our own inner subjective conscious experience and that we do have direct access to the inner subjective conscious experience of others.
Our inner subjective conscious experience is known as ‘qualia’:
In debates with Darwinian materialists, it is often pointed out to Darwinists that the reductive materialism of Darwinism cannot possibly cannot possibly explain qualia and that the specific mental attribute of qualia is forever beyond the scope of any possible materialistic explanation and/or any possible physical examination.
As Frank Jackson made clear in his philosophical argument ‘Mary’s Room’, no amount of scientific and physical examination on Mary’s part will ever reveal to Mary exactly what the inner subjective conscious experience, i.e. qualia, of the color blue actually is until Mary actually experiences what the color blue is for herself.
Likewise, no amount of us knowing exactly what state a material brain may be in, whether it be by MRI brain scans or whatever, will ever be able to reveal to us exactly how something may feel or look like to someone else personally.
As David Chalmers, (whom I believe originally coined the term ‘The Hard Problem of Consciousness’), has pointed out with the philosophical zombie argument, for all we know, the person we are talking to, or even the person that we are examining with all our scientific instruments, could hypothetically be a philosophical zombie who has no inner subjective conscious experience whatsoever and that the philosophical zombie we are examining may just robotically be giving us correct answers that seem appropriate to any situation that we may be asking the philosophical zombie about.
Atheists and/or Darwinian materialists simply have no answer to the hard problem of consciousness. i.e. They have no clue how anything material can generate a inner subjective conscious experience.
As Professor of Psychology David Barash honestly admitted in the following article, an article which happens to be entitled “the hardest problem in science?”, “But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.”
In fact, the hard problem of consciousness is such a hard problem for reductive materialists to try to explain that many leading materialistic/atheistic scientists (and philosophers), often end up claiming that consciousness itself is just an illusion and that it does not really even exist at all.
If you telling your father, via your high priced college education in philosophy, that you are the only person who really exists in the universe, is enough for your father to formally ‘educate you’ on exactly who is paying for your high priced college education, then subsequently telling your father, via your high priced college education, that you don’t really even exist at all and that you are just an illusion would probably be more than enough for your father to take you behind the woodshed and remind you, via a lot of pain, just how real you really are.
🙂
Let’s just say, where logic and evidence presented by professors may fail to convince a son who is in college that he is not the only person in the world and/or that he is not an illusion, a father will have far more success in convincing him otherwise! 🙂
Verses:
The Hard Problem of consciousness is still hard and religious belief does not make it any easier. We do not observe consciousness that is not intimately correlated with the physical substrate of a brain and we do observe that when the brain is destroyed the associated consciousness disappears irretrievably as far as we can tell. That alone is significant evidence for the physical basis of consciousness.
Seversky, you really need to preface your statements with the qualifier of ‘there is no evidence that I will personally accept’ of consciousness existing apart from the material brain.’
As to there being evidence, millions of Near Death Experiences testify against your personal belief that consciousness can not exist apart from the material brain.
Bornagain77/8
Why should I? It’s not a true statement of my position
Millions of people have dreamed of flying. That does not mean they flew unaided at any time in objective reality. NDE’s may be no more than an internal experience like a dream. They are real to the person experiencing them but they do not correspond to any events in objective reality. What reasons are there to think they may be anything else?
Bornagain77/6
So physical violence is a proper answer to beliefs you disagree with?
Is that what the father should do if a student comes back from a high-priced college education in physics with the belief that nothing exists unless you are looking at it?
Seversky states, “Why should I? It’s not a true statement of my position”
Au contraire. You simply refuse to accept the testimony of millions of Near Death Experiences. Whether you admit it or not, that is prima facie evidence for consciousness existing apart from the material brain that you simply refuse to personally accept.
As to your (oft repeated) claim that the experiences are just a dream and or hallucination of the material brain. Brain surgeon Dr. Eben Alexander commented,
Moreover, your hypothesis that the experiences are just a drean= m and/or hallucination has be tested and has been found wanting.
In the following study, materialistic researchers who had a bias against Near Death Experiences being real, set out to prove that they were merely ‘false memories’ by setting up a clever questionnaire that could differentiate which memories a person had were real and which memories a person had were merely imaginary.
Simply put, they did not expect the results they got: To quote the headline ‘Afterlife’ feels ‘even more real than real”
My question for you Seversky is this, exactly how is it remotely possible for something to become even ‘more real than real’ for a person having an NDE unless the infinite Mind of God truly is the basis for all reality, and this material reality we presently live in, and as is claimed in Christianity, is really just a shadow of the heavenly paradise that awaits us after death?
After all, in any model of reality that we may put forth, consciousness, (and certainly NOT material particles), is the primary prerequisite of all possible prerequisites.
Thus the Christian readily understands how Near Death Experiences can be ‘more real than real’. Whereas, on the other hand, not only do Darwinian materialists not have a clue how such a ‘more real than real’ finding is possible, when. push comes to shove, and as mentioned previously in. post 6, Darwinian materialists, in response to ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ end up (insanely) claiming that consciousness itself is an illusion.
Here are a few ‘more real than real’ quotes,
Verse
Seversky at 10, I suggest you take it up with the father(s) who shelled out tens of thousands of dollars of his hard earned money for his son to be ‘properly educated’ that he doesn’t really exist as a real person but is merely an illusion.
🙂
I’m sure the father might like to talk to you behind the woodshed as well.
Don’t forget to tell him that, under Darwinism, morality is illusory as well, before you go to the back of the woodshed with him.
He might find that piece of information, (i.e. morality doesn’t really exist), useful before he begins his little ‘lesson plan’ for you behind the woodshed.
🙂
Seversky: We do not observe consciousness that is not intimately correlated with the physical substrate of a brain
Um, no, you don’t observe consciousness at all… except for your own. It’s the primary fact of your existence. (Assuming you are conscious at all- I have no way of knowing that.)
Which makes this so fun.
Seversky,
Your closed-minded materialist position is a good example of what could charitably be termed delusional thinking, or deliberate ignorance of the data.
Just to start with, there are so many elements and characteristics of NDEs that make it preposterous to suggest that they are illusionary or dreams or hallucinations, that it is hard to see how a rational person can seriously consider this hypothesis. This is so much the case that I think it would be more interesting to examine what sort of twisted mindset could generate such a belief. This would apparently start with an immovable conviction or compulsion that the mind must be the brain and that a soul and an afterlife are fantasy.
A good example of the research data on NDEs is the book The Self Does Not Die by Rivas, Driven and Smit, which contains numerous well-investigated veridical NDEs, divided into several categories, such as extrasensory veridical perception of the immediate environment, extrasensory veridical perception of events beyond the reach of the physical senses, awareness and extrasensory veridical perception during cardiac arrest and other conditions during which the brain is dysfunctional, telepathy, after-death communication with strangers, and after-death communication with familiar people. There are also a number of other additional categories of paranormal veridical phenomena accompanying some NDEs. Overall, more than 100 investigated veridical paranormal NDE cases are documented.
In these cases, orthodox physicalist explanations could not possibly account for the remembered veridical perceptions many of which are visual later reported by the patients in their accounts of the experiences.
The power of numbers also operates here, in that even if some few of the cases actually have ordinary medical of other explanations, this can’t possibly account for all of the cases. Even one truly anomalous paranormal veridical case constitutes strong prima facie empirical evidence for separation of consciousness from the physical body during the reported NDE. There are cumulatively countless numbers of cases.
Also, looking at the big picture, parapsychology and psychical investigation over the last 130 years have accumulated a very large body of other types of empirical verified evidence for separation of the mind from the physical body (or in some cases veridical perceptions while conscious in the body that imply independence of consciousness from the physical brain). Furthermore, a number of very strong philosophical arguments in the discipline of philosophy of mind have been developed that very logically establish the untenability of physicalism in general and specifically in philosophy of mind. Again, the power of numbers operates. Even if ultimately some of this empirical data and some of these philosophical arguments are somehow invalid, all it takes is one valid one to establish the case against physicalism.
Further still, concerning the numerous neuroscience studies researching neural phenomena such as revealed by FMRI scans and the like: they are ultimately interpretable as just as likely to be mere correlations of neural activity with consciousness, as they are interpretable as evidence that mind = brain.
Bornagain77/11
I accept the existence of a large number of accounts of what are called Near Death Experiences. I doubt that they are anything other than subjective experiences like dreams but perhaps the results of the AWARE II study will shed light on the question.
The researchers found that the NDEs were associated with more vivid experiences of both real and imaginary events, which sounds like they have some similarities to experiences induced by hallucinogenic drugs.
They don’t claim that they are experiences of some sort of afterlife.
My questions to you would be, first what does “more real than real” mean other than something like “more vivid” and, second, given that drugs can also induce vivid experiences, why should we leap to the conclusion that they are experiences of an afterlife?
Mike1962/13
Okay, we do not experience the consciousness of others – assuming they exist at all – but we do observe behavior in others which is indicative they are experiencing consciousness much as we do.
And for all those who can argue that this Universe could be a figment of their imagination I doubt there are any who would be willing to step in front of a speeding truck just to prove the point.
Seversky: Okay, we do not experience the consciousness of others – assuming they exist at all – but we do observe behavior in others which is indicative they are experiencing consciousness much as we do.
A.I. could conceivably do the behaviors. So it’s not evidence for consciousness. Just evidence of intelligence.
7 Seversky
Not under the hylemorphic view of the human being.
Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).
When one understands how consciousness is define, it is not particularly difficult to grasp.
Merriam-Websters defines consciousness as:
1a : the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself
b : the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact
c : awareness especially : concern for some social or political cause The organization aims to raise the political consciousness of teenagers.
2 : the state of being characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought : mind
3 : the totality of conscious states of an individual
4 : the normal state of conscious life regained consciousness
5 : the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness
We can go through each of the 5 definitions to prove consciousness.
1. Being aware of an external object. Any time you don’t bump into a wall or stop to open a door proves this to be true. Even blind people use the aid of a cane to help detect external objects, since they are aware of the their presence.
2. Any time you are aware of your thoughts, which happens whenever you type a response in UD, or anywhere else, proves an awareness of thought. Without awareness of thought, the letters would be nothing more than a bunch of letters with no meaning.
3. The totality of the individual. This is understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual through trial and error. Just because someone wants to do something, doesn’t mean they have the ability to do it.
4. The normal state of conscious life, meaning being aware of your surroundings. When someone passes out, they lose consciousness. When they come to, they regain consciousness.
5. Being aware of something that happens on the subconscious level. A heart beating is evidence of being aware of something happening on the subconscious level.
Doubter’ at 14 is simply devastating to Seversky’s position.
Seversky at 15 states,
“I doubt that they are anything other than subjective experiences like dreams”
Yet, the ‘more real than real’ aspect of NDE’s that I cited refutes your ‘they are just dreams’ hypothesis.
In regards to the study I cited, you state, “They don’t claim that they are experiences of some sort of afterlife.”
So what? I did not claim that they did claim that. I claimed that they had a bias against NDEs being real,
As the article I cited stated,
The fact they they got results that were completely contradictory to their original hypothesis is strong evidence against their original hypothesis being true.
You cited that a researcher still, “doesn’t think it comes from a spirit world”.
Yet, that a researcher refused to believe his own results of his own experiment, i.e. “he doesn’t think it comes from a spirit world”, does not take away from the fact that his own results directly contradicted his original hypothesis.
That he refused to believe his own results only testifies to the fact of how badly personal biases can blind someone and prevent them from seeing what is right before their very own eyes.
In short, science itself, and his own results, could care less about his own personal bias that led him to deny the validity of his own results.
Moreover, the fact that dreams and hallucinations are extremely varied in their content, whereas NDE’s all have the same basic structure to their content also refutes your hypothesis that they are just dreams and/or hallucinations (see Raymond Moody).
Moreover, several key aspects of Near Death Experiences, (the sense of timelessness, moving through a tunnel at a extremely high rate of speed, and the feeling of being in a ‘higher’ dimension), all match what we would expect to be true beforehand from what we now know to be true from special relativity, (which happens to be one of the most accurately verified theories ever in the history of science).
Specifically, the evidence from Special Relativity, (which is currently one of our most powerful theories in science), strongly supports the physical reality of a timeless eternity and of a heavenly dimension that exists above this temporal dimension.
As to a timeless eternity, we now know from special relativity, that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop for a hypothetical observer travelling at the speed of light.
To grasp the whole concept of time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the very same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into special relativity. Here is a short clip from a video that gives us a look into Einstein’s breakthrough insight.
That time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light, and yet light moves from point A to point B in our universe, and thus light is obviously not ‘frozen within time, has some fairly profound implications as to verifying the reality of eternal, i.e. timeless, dimension.
The only way it is possible for time not to pass for light, and yet for light to move from point A to point B in our universe, is if light is of a higher dimensional nature of time than the temporal time that we are currently living in. If this were not the case, then light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ to our temporal frame of reference.
And indeed that is exactly what we find. “Hermann Minkowski- one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space.”
One way for us to more easily understand this higher dimensional framework for time that light exist in is for us to visualize what would happen if a hypothetical observer approached the speed of light.
In the following video clip, at around the 2:40 minute mark, (a video which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors), we find that the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer approaches the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light.
Interestingly, as was visualized at the 3:00 minute mark of the preceding video, (i.e. all of the light concentrating into the direction of travel, i.e. the light visualized at the ‘end of the tunnel’ in the video), is termed to be the ‘headlight effect’
Now that we have outlined the basics of what we know to be physically true from special relativity, It is very interesting to note that many of the characteristics found in heavenly Near Death Experience testimonies are exactly what we would expect to see from what we now know to be physically true about Special Relativity.
For instance, many times people who have had a Near Death Experience mention that their perception of time was radically altered. In the following video clip, Mickey Robinson gives his Near Death testimony of what it felt like for him to experience a ‘timeless eternity’.
And here are a few more quotes from people who have experienced Near Death, that speak of how their perception of time was radically altered as they were outside of their material body during their NDEs.
As well, Near Death Experiencers also frequently mention going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension:
In the following video, Barbara Springer gives her testimony as to what it felt like for her to go through the tunnel:
And in the following audio clip, Vicki Noratuk, who has been blind from birth, (besides being able to ‘miraculously” see for the first time during in her life during her Near Death Experience), Vicki also gives testimony of going through a tunnel at a ‘horrifically’ rapid rate of speed:
And in the following quotes, the two Near Death Experiencers both testify that they firmly believed that they were in a higher heavenly dimension that is above this three-dimensional world, and that the reason that they have a very difficult time explaining what their Near Death Experiences actually felt like is because we simply don’t currently have the words to properly describe that higher dimension:
That what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension, that they experienced first hand, and that they say exists above this temporal dimension.
I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who, in all likelihood, know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete scientific verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies.
Verse:
Moreover, the main debate between ID advocates and Darwinists also supports the reality of a immaterial soul that is capable of living past the death of our material bodies.
Namely, the main debate between Darwinists and ID advocates has to do with the sheer inability of the unguided material processes of Darwinian evolution to account for the immaterial information that is now found to be ubiquitous within life.
Indeed, immaterial information is now known to ‘run the show’ in biology.
Yet, it is the immaterial nature of information itself that forever prevents Darwinists from ever giving a adequate explanation for its origin in biological systems and which is also what happens to support the reality of a immaterial soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies..
As Dr. Stephen Meyer explains in this following video, information is immaterial in its fundamental nature and therefore, by its very nature, is beyond the scope of any possible materialistic explanation.
Moreover, in addition to this immaterial ‘classical’ information that Dr. Meyer was referring to, there is also now known to be immaterial ‘quantum’ information that is also found to be ubiquitous within life. (of technical note: as far as physics is concerned, ‘classical’ sequential information is to be considered a subset of non-local ‘quantum’ information)
The interesting thing about quantum information is that it is non-local, i.e. beyond space and time, and also that it is also conserved, i.e. it cannot be created nor destroyed.
The obvious implication of finding ‘non-local’, (beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule of our material bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have very strong physical evidence directly implying that we do indeed have an immaterial, and ‘eternal,, soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies.
As Stuart Hameroff states ‘it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Verse:
Thus, as far as the science itself is concerned, (from numerous angles of science I might add), the science itself overwhelmingly supports the validity of NDEs.
Whereas atheists in general, and Seversky in particular, are forced, (in the face of all this scientific evidence that is in direct contradiction to their position), to try to maintain that NDEs are merely dreams and/or hallucinations of the material brain.
What is REALLY ironic about Atheists trying to claim that NDEs themselves are merely imaginary is that, (for the atheist who is committed to the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution), EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, becomes imaginary and/or illusory in his worldview.
(Especially with the fairly resent falsification of ”realism” by Leggett’s inequality),,, there is simply nothing that can be said to be truly ‘real’ in the Darwinists reductive materialistic worldview.
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
One final note, perhaps Instead of me trying to prove that NDEs are real to Seversky, perhaps it would have been a much better tactic for me to make Seversky try to prove to me that he is real and that he is not merely a figment of my imagination?
Besides being a better debating tactic, it would have also been a far more humorous debate with Seversky as well (that is if Seversky really exists as a real person and is not merely a figment of my imagination).
🙂
Yes, there is a physical BASIS for the consciousness of PHYSICAL beings. So what? That doesn’t mean consciousness is reducible to the physical.
God and the Afterlife: Latest Findings from the Largest NDE Study Ever Reported
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfiwd2PzXvw
He actually talks very little about “God,” and only in clinical terms about what NDEr’s report. There is an incredible amount of evidence in addition to NDE research that make it clear that we continue to exist after the death of the body.
7 Seversky
Hylemorphism agrees. We need a “physical” brain. But there’s a but:
Seversky,
I’m still anxiously awaiting your response to my Post #14. The crickets are chirping. What doesn’t count is a response like “Go away – I won’t look at this data – it’s all suspect. (argument by dogmatic assertion and faith in materialism).
27 Seversky
Might, perhaps, and “it’s not known” and “controversial.” (From the article).
Come back when you have something conclusive , not purely speculative.
Seversky is getting obliterated by the overwhelming evidence for the validity of NDEs, and he apparently is getting desperate. Desperate to come up with evidence. ANY evidence.. So he reaches for his ketamine/psychedelic drug rip cord. Yet the ketamine/psychedelic drug rip cord breaks off in his hand as he is pulling it.,,,
Maybe if Seversky started flapping his arms real hard he might find some evidence. ANY evidence, to save himself from getting obliterated by the overwhelming evidence for the validity of NDEs??? 🙂
And please note the hypocrisy in how Seversky evaluates the evidence for the validity of NDEs compared to how he evaluates the (non)evidence for Darwinian evolution,
29 Bornagain77
Dr. Egnor is an intelligent man. 🙂
Seversky@27
As has been pointed out, DMT experiences lack most of the fundamental features of NDEs, indicating that the two experiences are almost certainly of fundamentally different natures. Just for this reason, DMT is a poor hypothesis for materialist skeptics to base their hopes on.
But this issue is missing the main point.
Neither DMT or any other hallucinogen or psychoactive drug can even in principle through its effects on the physical brain enable consciousness to continue while the brain is dysfunctional due to cardiac arrest, for instance. And neither DMT or any other hallucinogen or psychoactive drug can through its effects on the physical brain enable consciousness to observe the emergency or operating room from above, remembering details not observable from the table or discussed by the doctors. Aside from the fact that in this situation the NDEer’s brain is usually dysfunctional, prohibiting any physical observations at all. And so on for all the other veridical paranormal evidence of a separation occurring between the mind and the brain, obtained from the NDEers’ accounts that I referred to that are documented in just that one book I cited.
This is the key point that blows the DMT theory out of the water. You have simply totally failed to engage with the points of evidence and other factors that I cited.
The materialist scientists that push such theories to explain away NDEs always conveniently ignore all the veridical evidence, assuming in their arrogant superiority that it doesn’t exist because it can’t exist according to their ideology. And of course they also ignore the DMT experience’s failure to exhibit the most important and transcendental features of NDEs.
Seversky is shedding bitter tears.
Seversky, maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re wrong, but you’re concerned about the question.
Aren’t chya?
Hehe. Hehehehe.
P.S. Hehehehehehehehehe
Doubter/14
The other side of that coin is that the credulous are far too easily swayed by flimsy data just because they think it says what they desperately want to hear.
If I told you I had died briefly, been drawn down a ‘tunnel’ towards a blinding light, gone to heaven and then returned to this life, would you believe me or not? Either way, how would you decide? Because that is all you have as evidence just multiplied by hundreds of thousands. Did we all experience an afterlife or were we ‘tripping out’ on some distortion of the biochemistry of the brain?
I haven’t read that book so I can’t comment on it specifically but I have read about NDE’s and when you actually look critically at the alleged verifying evidence, while there are a few instances which are certainly difficult to explain, a lot of it does not stand up to close scrutiny.
And in other cases, patients reported procedures that did not happen as described and the wrong equipment present. A scientific evaluation has to take all of that data into account.
And yet, in spite of all that effort, none of the alleged paranormal phenomena under investigation have been established to exist. Compare that with the case of the neutrino in physics which went from being a purely hypothetical particle proposed in 1930 to being confirmed by experiment just 25 years later.
The Hard Problem of consciousness, trying to explain how the mind could arise from the physical brain, is still hard. But the hard evidence, that when the brain is destroyed the associated consciousness disappears for good, is also hard to ignore.
Bornagain77/29
What overwhelming evidence? You have a set of data comprised of a large number of anecdotal accounts of subjective experiences which have some characteristics in common. That’s all. That data could be evidence for a theory of life after death if you can find other evidence for an afterlife existing at all. Otherwise it is not a theory, just speculation. The experiences could also be something like dreams or hallucinations. For this explanation we can at least cite examples of similar – although not exactly the same – vivid experiences produced by hallucinogens or psychoactive drugs. Both explanations are still speculative but with the evidence in favor of the biochemical explanation being slightly stronger.
35 Seversky
This coming from the guy who offers as “proof” to support his materialist side a pseudo-scientific paper filled with the words: might, perhaps, it’s not known and controversial.
Very flimsy and desperate indeed.
35 Seversky
The HP is only “hard” for the materialist side, that has failed strepitously as a worldview and is trying to resist its impending doom with all its might.
Yes, hylemorphism agrees that we need a brain. The problem for your failed materialist paradigm is that there’s more to it than just the brain. That’s why your side is stuck and we are forced to hear the most glaring non-sense coming out of the mouths of atheist “philosophers”.
Materialism is over. Get over it. Mind reigns supreme.
Materialism’s Failures: Hylemorphism’s Vindication. (Aristotle is back).
35 Seversky
In your kindergarten dreams only.
There is zero proof that the brain “generates” the mind.
And no amount of “promissory materialism” will help you.
The physicalist side has failed.
Aristotle (and the soul) are back.
Seversky, (as a Darwinist with no real time experimental evidence to support your claims), the hypocrisy is literally dripping off every word when you write,
To repeat Egnor:
Moreover (as was pointed out in post 21 and 22, and as you apparently ignored), besides tens of millions of such profoundly life changing experiences (that you ‘yawn’ at), special relativity, one of our most powerful theories in science, and the immaterial nature of information itself, specifically, the immaterial nature of biological information (which Darwinian materialism has no hope of ever providing a coherent explanation of), both those lines of ‘scientific evidence’ offer strong corroborating evidence for the validity of those 1ens of millions of NDE testimonies (which you ‘yawn’ at).
https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/can-logic-or-evidence-help-you-decide-if-you-are-not-the-only-human-who-has-ever-existed/#comment-712849
Seversky, In terms of someone having personal biases that unfairly skew how they weigh the evidence for or against something, I would not be so quick to accuse others of having personal biases if I were you.
I have seen you personally write vehement diatribes against God that are on par with what Richard Dawkins wrote in ‘The God Delusion’.
Dawkins gives a unsolicited recital of his diatribe for Ben Stein in the following interview,,,
,,, Since you apparently agree wholeheartedly with Dawkins, then, as should be needless to say, that is a clear indication that you certainly ARE NOT a neutral arbiter of evidence for anything having to do with God and/or with the afterlife.
Seversky, although (after all these years of debating you), I have scant hope that you will ever be fair with the evidence for God and/or the afterlife, perhaps if you made a conscious effort to set aside your irrational hostility towards God , and then tried to take a fresh look at the evidence, then that would be a big help for you in you weighing the evidence much more fairly than you are currently doing?
Seversky,
As I expected, you refuse to look at the data and simply without substantiation claim it’s “flimsy”, despite many multiply witnessed and verified accounts of paranormal extrasensory perception during NDEs. Please give a physicalist explanation for the following case, documented in the book I cited:
Summary of the case of a (then) 35-year-old American singer-songwriter, Pamela (Pam) Reynolds (1956–2010).
Note: On top of everything else, Reynolds accurately described (for a layman) the specialized Midas Rex bone saw used by Spetzler. She never had any opportunity to observe it.
(From Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (pp.95-103). International Association for Near-Death Studies.)
39 Bornagain77
Seversky, Darwinism and hypocrisy are the atheist Holy Trinity. Indivisible.
Look at how this guy, whose worldview could not be more amoral, tries to lecture us about “our sins” (not his of course, because pure as a lamb this creature is).
I believe Seversky’s surname is Hypocrite.
Makes sense.
First name: Seversky
Surname: Hypocrite.
You gotta love the losers who say paranormal activity doesn’t exist and then refuse to actually go to the places where paranormal activity exists.
And seeing that biochemical processes cannot account for the existence of the brain it is obvious they don’t account for the existence of the mind.
Some time ago on another thread I argued,
However, I am not suggesting that using deductive and inductive logic (as well as abductive logic) are useless in determining whether or a philosophical belief is true or false. Quite to the contrary logic is the only tool really all we really have in such discussions.
What is totally useless, on the other hand, are ungrounded personal beliefs and opinions. Doubling down on the same ungrounded personal beliefs and opinions is not advancing an argument, rather it’s being argumentative. That’s all we are getting from most of our interlocutors most of the time. Basically their argument is as follows:
For example, the proposition, “to propose that mathematics was used by the designer to create the universe is beyond preposterous,” is not something that is self-evidently true. So it is an ungrounded assertion– just an opinion or belief. Stand-alone opinions and beliefs are not arguments. Doubling down on opinions and beliefs is a waste of everyone’s time.
Nevertheless, I think starting with the fact of one’s own conscious experience of one’s own existence is a logical place to begin logically, ontologically and philosophically.
Seversky@34,
“… none of the alleged paranormal phenomena under investigation have been established to exist.”
Your claim that parapsychological phenomena including psi have not been demonstrated to be real after more than a century of investigation is totally false. A case in point is a recent survey article in American Psychologist by parapsychologist Etzel Cardena. This was an umbrella review of meta-analyses of the experimental evidence for parapsychological (psi) phenomena accumulated over many decades – “The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review (https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Famp0000236 (Abstract, rest behind paywall).
The article exhaustively examined the experimental evidence and concluded that the evidence across time and research paradigms is comparable to that for accepted phenomena in psychology, medicine, and other disciplines.
The best skeptical materialists could do in their responses was in the Skeptical Enquirer by Reber and Alcock, and was remarkably weak. They knew they would lose on the grounds of the data, so it was an appeal to David Hume’s Impossibility Argument, that psi, esp and paranormal phenomena in general are impossible according to physics theory (appearing to violate four fundamental principles of physics) and therefore they were justified in simply ignoring and refusing to look at the empirical evidence. Impossible is impossible, so it is OK to ignore as irrelevant very strong empirical experimental data and evidence.
Wow, case closed. What an excellent argument.
Of course wrong on several counts, starting with the claim relative to physics. This ignored quantum mechanics, and ignored the fact that with time current physics theory will undoubtedly be replaced. From Cardena’s rebuttal in the Journal of Scientific Exploration (at https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/volume-33-issue-4-2019 ): “1) Reber and Alcock’s disregard for the data goes against a core tenet of science, 2) eminent physicists have not considered psi phenomena to be incompatible with their discipline and some have even proposed theories to explain it, so no definitive conclusion can be advanced with regard to the possibility or impossibility of psi phenomena based on physics, and 3) Reber and Alcock misrepresent the history and current status of psi research.”
Rather than being based on any kind of substantial evidence, Reber and Alcock’s criticisms are instead based on a combination of narrow personal opinion, unfounded assumption, and superficial rhetoric, leaving their claims totally unsound. It occurs to me also, that following this line of argument, the existence of consciousness itself could be ruled out, since it can’t be located among any of the standard model laws of physics. Do the researchers on realising this then disappear?
It should be noted that your criticism here has (if it were possible) even less substance.