BothAndBlog Forum

Is this naturalist model of what happens after death coherent?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/605907

To put this another way, it could be the case that when one’s consciousness ceases to exist but other contexts of consciousness still exist and new contexts of consciousness come into existence, one of those existing contexts of consciousness or one of the new contexts subsume the disappearance of the consciousness that stopped existing. For the person that died, it would be as if they became that new context of consciousness, but with nothing linking the person that died to the new context. — Paul Michael

I'm not sure I followed all that mind-hopping. But the crux of the Consciousness debate hinges on whether it is simply an ongoing process generated by the body/brain, or is a substance floating out-there in the ether, or is received as a signal from some transmitting source. If it's like a radio signal, then of course any physical radio mechanism (receptive context) could tune into it. But if Self/Soul/Consciousness is unique to each person, then death of the personal body would terminate that particular process of person-oriented awareness.

I'm reminded of some old Star Trek episodes that dealt with a similar issue of human personality. The hypothetical (imaginary) "Transporter technology" was described as somehow "reading" the information patterns of each person on the platform, converting them into something like a radio signal, and then "beamed" down like radar to a planet . There both body & mind would be recreated in a different location. But some members of the crew panicked at the possibility of losing the essence of their personality in the process of intake & export & re-constituting of information. This philosophical quandary has been explored in various science fiction stories. But it all comes down to the question : is Consciousness physical (like radio waves), or meta-physical (like souls & ghosts)?

The Star Trek scenario is also similar to the notion of Reincarnation or Transmigration of Souls (old soul in new "context"). So theologians & philosophers have long debated how such an exportation of essence could work. If the "essence" is a physical substance, no problem. But if the essential Self is simply a metaphysical pattern of relationships, the problem would be how to map that unique pattern into some different material substrate. In the old horror movie, The Fly, a man was transported from place to place, but a fly happened to be in the capsule at the moment of transmigration. Hence the reincarnated body was a hybrid of homo sapiens and fannia canicularis. Their physical essence was blended, as was their mental nature.

Most scientists seem to view Consciousness as simply a side-effect of neural mechanics. But they still must admit that there is no known technology for capturing Consciousness in a bottle. So any talk of exporting or transporting or migrating Self or Soul, is based on a material model, which may be pure fantasy. For example, Dragons & Unicorns are well-understood hypothetical images (mental representations) based on well-known models. But, at this moment, their actual existence remains imaginary, not empirically proven. So, is the Conscious Mind a physical thing that can be replicated by technology, or simply a unique pattern of centered relationships that can only be reproduced in approximation via genetics?

If consciousness is like a radio signal and brains are radio receivers, doesn’t this posit a dualism between the physical and consciousness? Like a sort of ‘pandualism’ where there’s a non-physical/immaterial ‘field’ of consciousness that is tuned into by the brains of organisms composed of entirely non-conscious physical substance? — Paul Michael

Most of the early theories of Life & Mind assumed that some physical substance was the cause. For example, the Soul/Anima/Life was compared to Breath (intake of air). So they assumed that life could be breathed into a body like CPR. What they didn't know was that an invisible substance, Oxygen, was the essential ingredient. But we now know, that even oxygen is not capable of reviving a dead body. So there must be something more to life.

We now are capable of understanding that, the life-giving "something more" is not any physical stuff that could be taken like medicine. Instead, Life is a Holistic Metaphysical Process, not a single thing. So, that Whole Organized System is the missing element in the duality of Body/Mind, and Life/Death. In-organic substances lack Life. But organic systems live & breathe & think.

Therefore, what remains to resolve the apparent duality is a way to convert dead stuff into a living organism : like Frankenstein. Unfortunately, even the power of lightning energy is not sufficient to organize inert matter into a living being. And that's the basic problem with the "naturalistic model" : it's strictly materialistic, with no organizing essence -- soul/anima/psyche.