There just isn't any sensible reason why consciousness should have a conservation law akin to those for mass/energy, momentum, or electric charge. You may as well ask whether there is a conservation law for chicken nuggets.
There simply isn't any decent evidence to support an afterlife, whereas what we know so far about how the brain works tends to be pretty good evidence against one.
Not inherently, just that they wouldn't believe in it for the same reasons they lack a belief in a deity. The problem is that as far as we know consciousness isn't a tangible thing so I don't know if that would really apply as it stands.
Is there anything else in the universe that we know is there but is intangible?
Obviously you could count things like knowledge and information but he law refers to actual energy. As far as we know conciousness is a mechanism of he brain, so it would not apply. If I burn a book, it is converted into heat and ash and particles in the air, but the information held within the texts is still lost (lets just assume this is the only copy, for arguments sake). Now we can get into hypothetically woo stuff like the Akashic records but I think we're speaking about what we generally know scientifically today.
But aren't knowledge and information parts of human conscious? The book doesn't inherently contain information, it's just a method of one conscious communicating with another.
Not inherently, just that they wouldn't believe in it for the same reasons they lack a belief in a deity. The problem is that as far as we know consciousness isn't a tangible thing so I don't know if that would really apply as it stands.
Is there anything else in the universe that we know is there but is intangible?
No. All things we "know" have some experimental, or at least theoretical, basis. The things that only have the latter are widely dissented: see String Theory.
No. All things we "know" have some experimental, or at least theoretical, basis. The things that only have the latter are widely dissented: see String Theory.
So then why do we assume that this one phenomenon is different from literally everything else in the universe that exists?
Is the afterlife inherently against atheism? Could it be that the Newtonian principal of conservation is applicable to human conscious, without any sort of supreme being to direct it? But why? Is there anything else in the universe that we know is there but is intangible? Are there other things that don't follow conservation? But aren't knowledge and information parts of human conscious? The book doesn't inherently contain information, it's just a method of one conscious communicating with another. So then why do we assume that this one phenomenon is different from literally everything else in the universe that exists?
What are you on about, dude? Up to this point, all but one of your sentences are questions, and that one's broken, too.
So, Socrates, let's skip to the end. What's the question you're really trying to ask?
"This phenomenon" being consciousness? I think you're begging the question.
I suspect you're angling toward some how-can-we-be-sure argument, but your questions are poorly formed. It's just sooooooo super doubtful that there's any afterlife, as described by any religion or philosophy ever. We have no reason to believe one exists.
I'm trying hard to not angle towards an argument. I don't want to be hostile. I'm not looking to convert anyone. I had a thought and wanted to explore it.
Your assumption that consciousness is intangible is false. Consciousness is matter and energy, just like everything else. Even information is tangible, and will be destroyed by a black hole.
It's a complex subject with a great deal of very technical and specific research. But no study or experiment has contradicted the basic principle that consciousness arises from the complex structure of the brain, and that neither it nor memories persist outside of that structure.
For an "afterlife" to exist, it would have to mirror not only the specific structure of an individual brain, but its reactivity both to internal and external stimulae.
Is the afterlife inherently against atheism? Could it be that the Newtonian principal of conservation is applicable to human conscious, without any sort of supreme being to direct it?
Conservation laws are a direct consequence of underlying symmetries in the action of a system, nothing more. This is Noether's theorem, and it's perhaps the most fundamental mathematical tool in theoretical physics. The reason we have conservation of energy is that any Lagrangian of a physical system has time-reversal symmetry. Rotational symmetry gives us conservation of angular momentum, and mirror symmetry gives us linear momentum. Different systems may have other conserved quantities.
What I'm getting at is there is no such thing as "Newtonian principal of conservation" in physics, at least as it is being used here. Quantities are conserved only in very specific situations, and the only action that conserves entropy are adiabatic processes, and even those won't save the information in your brain, just guarantee that an equal amount of entropy is generated elsewhere as your brain is destroyed. And decay is certainly not adiabatic, so that doesn't help you anyway. If you think consciousness is Shannon information, arranged just right, and you believe in modern physics, you cannot come to any other conclusion than you are dead when you die. Your only out, if you want to believe in an afterlife, is to think that consciousness is non-physical, and then you cannot avail yourself of the tools of science.
It's a complex subject with a great deal of very technical and specific research. But no study or experiment has contradicted the basic principle that consciousness arises from the complex structure of the brain, and that neither it nor memories persist outside of that structure.
For an "afterlife" to exist, it would have to mirror not only the specific structure of an individual brain, but its reactivity both to internal and external stimulae.
Everything in this statement is true except for the "worse" part. The fact that everything arises from the complex structure of the brain means that with a large enough engineering effort, Ghost in the Shell cyberbrains are a possibility. No ghost necessary.
Not inherently, just that they wouldn't believe in it for the same reasons they lack a belief in a deity. The problem is that as far as we know consciousness isn't a tangible thing so I don't know if that would really apply as it stands.
Is there anything else in the universe that we know is there but is intangible?
Social constructs and relationships like gender, friendship, Wednesday, and the US government all come to mind.
Not inherently, just that they wouldn't believe in it for the same reasons they lack a belief in a deity. The problem is that as far as we know consciousness isn't a tangible thing so I don't know if that would really apply as it stands.
Is there anything else in the universe that we know is there but is intangible?
Social constructs and relationships like gender, friendship, Wednesday, and the US government all come to mind.
Those things have tangible underpinnings in the societies, humans, actions, neurons, atoms, etc... that create them. They exist on a substrate, and effectively are MADE of that substrate.
Not inherently, just that they wouldn't believe in it for the same reasons they lack a belief in a deity. The problem is that as far as we know consciousness isn't a tangible thing so I don't know if that would really apply as it stands.
Is there anything else in the universe that we know is there but is intangible?
Social constructs and relationships like gender, friendship, Wednesday, and the US government all come to mind.
Those things have tangible underpinnings in the societies, humans, actions, neurons, atoms, etc... that create them. They exist on a substrate, and effectively are MADE of that substrate.
Grubby materialists always manage to ruin good fun.
The question of whether the human consciousness is subjective or objective is largely philosophical. But the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is a bit easier to measure. In a new study (abstract) of how anesthetic drugs affect the brain, researchers suggest that our experience of reality is the product of a delicate balance of connectivity between neurons—too much or too little and consciousness slips away. During wakeful consciousness, participants’ brains generated “a flurry of ever-changing activity”, and the fMRI showed a multitude of overlapping networks activating as the brain integrated its surroundings and generated a moment to moment “flow of consciousness.” After the propofol kicked in, brain networks had reduced connectivity and much less variability over time. The brain seemed to be stuck in a rut—using the same pathways over and over again.
Does that beg questions about the continuity of the conscious?
We likely "die" regularly, in that it is far from continuous. Just a bunch of memories made of nerves and some semi-random fluctuations that come and go arising from them.
There's serious problems with Pascal's wager: 1. Say I make the seemingly logical jump over to hedge my bet and believe in a god. Then I die and, oh shit, turns out its Baal, the golden calf, Allah or Zeus waiting for me. Well I'm fucked now. 2. I can swear on a stack of holy books that I believe something, follow all the rules the books say I should follow, etc, but that won't make me believe it. At it's core Pascal's wager can only be an argument for feigning belief. I better hope the deity in question isn't of the omniscient variety. Otherwise it's all for naught isn't it. I mean wouldn't a deity value honest doubt over feigned belief?
In any case Pascal was probably joking when he proposed it, as I am now as I explain why I'm not convinced.
I'm glad it falls in line with what I'd already concluded without it. I'll give it a look when cron jobs aren't intermittently failing for seemingly no reason (/var/log/syslog only tells me they ran, fucking guy who wrote them didn't set verbose mode)
Comments
There simply isn't any decent evidence to support an afterlife, whereas what we know so far about how the brain works tends to be pretty good evidence against one.
So, Socrates, let's skip to the end. What's the question you're really trying to ask?
I suspect you're angling toward some how-can-we-be-sure argument, but your questions are poorly formed. It's just sooooooo super doubtful that there's any afterlife, as described by any religion or philosophy ever. We have no reason to believe one exists.
It's a complex subject with a great deal of very technical and specific research. But no study or experiment has contradicted the basic principle that consciousness arises from the complex structure of the brain, and that neither it nor memories persist outside of that structure.
For an "afterlife" to exist, it would have to mirror not only the specific structure of an individual brain, but its reactivity both to internal and external stimulae.
What I'm getting at is there is no such thing as "Newtonian principal of conservation" in physics, at least as it is being used here. Quantities are conserved only in very specific situations, and the only action that conserves entropy are adiabatic processes, and even those won't save the information in your brain, just guarantee that an equal amount of entropy is generated elsewhere as your brain is destroyed. And decay is certainly not adiabatic, so that doesn't help you anyway. If you think consciousness is Shannon information, arranged just right, and you believe in modern physics, you cannot come to any other conclusion than you are dead when you die. Your only out, if you want to believe in an afterlife, is to think that consciousness is non-physical, and then you cannot avail yourself of the tools of science.
source: I am a theoretical astrophysicist.
Better in the sense that there is no reason humans can't create their own "afterlife" as an extension of life in the natural world.
Gabe! U m play god!
I also think Pi, the worker/employer relationship, and confidence might count.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/01/27/1625201/consciousness-may-be-the-product-of-carefully-balanced-chaos
There's serious problems with Pascal's wager:
1. Say I make the seemingly logical jump over to hedge my bet and believe in a god. Then I die and, oh shit, turns out its Baal, the golden calf, Allah or Zeus waiting for me. Well I'm fucked now.
2. I can swear on a stack of holy books that I believe something, follow all the rules the books say I should follow, etc, but that won't make me believe it. At it's core Pascal's wager can only be an argument for feigning belief. I better hope the deity in question isn't of the omniscient variety. Otherwise it's all for naught isn't it. I mean wouldn't a deity value honest doubt over feigned belief?
In any case Pascal was probably joking when he proposed it, as I am now as I explain why I'm not convinced.