What's the most convincing rational argument for experience

there isn't any unless you make a leap of faith

This question only exists if you believe in substance dualism. Substance dualism is full of holes, so you should just stop believing in it.

>>8676930
The best I've heard is that consciousness is the fabric of the universe and that our individual consciousnesses are like grains of sand taken away from a beach full of sand which is eternal knowledge i.e . God. When we die, we are no longer human and don't experience human emotions but our grain of sand ( individual consciousness) is cast back to the beach from whence it came and become one with god again.

We have no recollection of this because we must forget everything we have ever known in order to start a new life in a new brain in order to subjectively experience the universe

Are you asking what's the argument for people saying they died, saw something, then came back? There are two explanations:

1) They weren't actually completely dead and were in a dream-like state.

2) The brain just filled in the gap with some random memory because it was panicking.

1 seems more likely at glance but actually 2 is the one that's probably true.

>>8677006
Well thats just about the most far fetched bullshit I´ve read all day

>>8677321
The "near death experience" stuff like seeing a tunnel of light and hallucinations of prior memories (your life flashing before your eyes) has been shown to just be something the body naturally does in some situations even when your life isn't at risk. Specifically, it is easily reproducible using centrifuges and extreme gforces.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/triggers/extreme-gravity.html

>>8677323
It's not exactly far-fetched if you take the time to look into quantum experimentation if your mind is even capable of wrapping around the complexity of it.

The brain does a horrifying amount of extrapolation and interpolation to convert momentary flashes of sensory input into a multi-dimensional, apparently seamless experience, and that's when everything is working as intended. Hell, you can get visual and auditory hallucinations just from depriving yourself of normal sensory input without shutting your brain down.

The idea that the brain constructs an artificial experience from whole cloth based on the process the shut-down or start-up process before and after brain-death doesn't strike me as farfetched at all.

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I have a theory that I'm really surprised is not more common among people.


Feel free to debunk if you like.


Basically, we know that we are capable of manifesting consciousness from nonliving matter over a finite time. ASSUMING a cyclical model of the universe, time is infinite.

So after dying, wouldn't you just wake up immediately like a trillion years from now, when your mass-energy randomly is assembled within a new conscious creature?

>>8677426
I'd like to wrap your mind around a baseball bat.

>>8677445
Even if such a thing happened, it would not be you. It would be an entirely different, unrelated organism that just by random coincidence happened to resemble you.

Stop being dualist scum and this won't be an issue.

>>8677448
This is a science discussion thread, it would seem you are in the wrong place you polfag

>>8677445
My question is, why would it have to be in a trillion years? Why not instantaneously into another organism with the same amount of mass-energy or multiple organisms with your initial combined mass-energy?

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>>8677466
>stop being duelist scum

>>8677426
>hurr durr quantum shit look im smart
get the fuck out of here, brainlet

For me best argument are memories of small kids saying they lived before and they had another mommy or smth. There was one boy who remembered he lived on an island, and parents took him there, and all names he said were real. There is a documentary about him, but I can't remember the title

>>8677528
sounds like something faked by the parents to get on the news

>>8677525
>Says hurr hurr
>Tries to call someone stupid

Haha you are an incompetent troll

>>8677541
I've always thought the same about those stories. There is an interesting one where a child knew something about where they had lived in the past life and who they were that lived there with a full discription of appearance, come to find out her death had not been discovered yet and her body was found.

Could be just a story but it's pretty wild if it's true

>>8676930
no experience, since the stuff you use for experiencing things is dead

>>8676930
Material identity is an illusion.

I don't want to die bros.

>>8677596
That's a good sign that your survival instinct is working properly and that you are blissfully unaware of our circumstances upon this earth as slaves to the system.

Yet, that is an entirely different discussion meant for a different board :)

>>8677596
sadly you will die

>>8677006

that actually sounds quite nice to me

>>8677451
Actually if it's enough of the same particles (i.e. the neurons and brain parts) then yeah it is literally you.

>>8677445
Not likely to happen because of entropy. Think: Isn't it likely that, if this were true, you would have already went through it at least once?

I'm a high school drop out brainlet that just stops by to have a look occasionally but I've always thought reincarnation is what will probably happen. Not because of a soul or anything, just that it's all a bioelectric system and it's starting and stopping all the time from births and deaths. You've lived once, I think you'll live again. Except it won't be a specific "you" living again, so no past life recollections, just another life with another mind. It might not even be a human one, good chance it won't be. Probably a bug or some shit.

>>8677808
Makes me think of that hypothetical situation of using a teleporter that disassembles you and reconstructs you somewhere else. Even if it is perfectly accurate in doing this the reconstruction would still be only a copy of you wouldn't it? The copy will carry on living the same way you would have, make the same choices you would have, and believes that the teleporter worked fine and that it's you. But you died when you used it. And this perfect copy is you but "you" are not that same consciousness anymore. You are gone.

>>8676930
nothing happens because why should anything happen?

>>8677953
Things like this are reasons why you shouldn't believe in substance dualism.

>>8677808
>Actually if it's enough of the same particles (i.e. the neurons and brain parts) then yeah it is literally you.
Yes, but that also highlights how "you" isn't really a thing to begin with, just like "forests" don't really exist, only a bunch of trees we like to relate so it is easier to conceptualize and talk about.

>>8677966
That actually had nothing to do with substance dualism. Why are so many people throwing that term around as if they have any idea what it actually entails?

I'm not sure if you are referring to teleportation not being possible or to the paradoxical scenario of if your entire body was replaced, would you still be the same you. AKA Theseus's paradox.

>>8677992
Saying that forests don't exist is like saying trees dont exist but there are just those tall plant things.

A forest is a term given to a coagulation of trees. Yes, humans do have a problem with obsessively labeling things but there are some things that are helpful to be labeled. Such as forests.

>>8677997
The object of the problem is the "identity" of the human, and that type of identity only exists in dualism.

>>8676930
You're going to have to delve into philosophy to get an answer. I'm too lazy to combine all of my favorite points together so I'll just list them out and you can make the connections.

Kaant/Schopenhauer - humans are unable to perceive reality as it actually is

Buddhist philosophy - existence is an interruption in the vast sea of nothingness

Our true nature is that which cannot be broken down any further. By definition, that would have to be something that is immortal.

God is an attempt at explaining a very complex idea using crude language.

>>8678003
I agree that identity is a flawed paradigm but I think we can agree that people have individual brains which work in -even if- ever so slightly different ways which creates somewhat of a base identity for any given individual.

Also, experience and/or upbringing determines the way one reacts to a certain situation which in turn gives proof of ones "identity".

The part of identity that does not exist is when one labels themself as something finite rather than accepting themselves as their own unique every changing identity

The fact that we exist in the first place is really weird and illogical so I think anything could happen after death.

>>8677954
Why shouldn't anything happen?

>>8678101
>The fact that we exist in the first place is really weird

We should be asking what happens when something stops existing? Or what does it mean for something to not exist?

>>8678101
It's only weird if you make unnecessary assumptions instead of sticking to the pure model of consciousness.

>>8678101
Is it really that weird? It looks weird only when you consider the final result without taking into account every contributing part. Kinda like how videogames and graphics are like magic to those who don't know anything about computers or programming.

>>8678101
Existence is definitely an odd thing that drives many people crazy when pondering upon it for too long.

I personally believe it is an important topic for humanity to focus on as a whole.

Among other things such as social and political issues we are facing within our individual countries and among the world in its totality

>>8678122
"Focusing" on it at this point will accomplish nothing.

>>8678116
But the fact of the matter is, we haven't found any true answers to existence other than the widley accepted big bang theory which even still doesn't answer what caused that.

Existence as a whole is weird to think about and it only gets more and more weird the deeper you go

>>8678125
I disagree, I think that collectively we could come about with some form of logical consensus for questions such as 'what am I' or 'why am I'.

Perhaps humanity is not in the proper place for such question at this time being and social and political issues as well as economic issues are vastly more important.

To me it just seems apparent that there is much more to this life and the universe than what meets our senses

>>8678133
Reality isn't determined by consensus.

>>8678134
No but conclusions are.

All I know is, neruoscience and quantum physics are important fields of science that need to be studied greatly in order to make grand revelations and ground breaking discoveries

>>8677445
Our energy does go into future life after we die, but the amount varies on a lot of factors. The chances of all your matter and energy going into a single lifeform are unlikely, rather they could potentially contribute to hundreds of new lifeforms. Or maybe you'll die in space and no ecosystem will ever decompose your corpse and all that potential energy will be selfishly horded in your bloated cadaver until the universe finally dies a slow boring heat death.