Minds are affected by brain damage, but souls aren't

 Sam Harris has said:

"we know [there are very good reasons for doubting an afterlife] from 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain and faculties are lost and they're clearly lost, it's not that everyone with brain damage has their soul perfectly intact and they just can't get the words out, everything about your mind can be damaged by damaging the brain".

Sam mentions, for example, that brain damage can result in not being able to recognise faces. So it's not the case that we really do recognise faces, but find we cannot communicate to other people our knowledge. Our minds are actually adversely affected.

The problem with his argument, and the mistake that skeptics always make, is that he conflates the soul with the mind. In fact, even with brain damage, our souls can still be perfectly intact. Suppose someone has perfect unaided vision and puts on a random pair of eyeglasses. Wearing them she cannot read the registration plate of a car 25 metres away. It's not as if she can really see the plate but is unable to communicate this information. She really can't see the registration plate.

But it nevertheless remains the case that her unaided vision is still perfectly intact. Her bespectacled vision is poor, but not her unaided vision. And she merely needs to take the eyeglasses off to restore her vision. Likewise, with brain damage, our minds might be affected, but not our souls. Our souls merely need to detach from our bodies to restore full cognitive abilities (or indeed enhanced cognitive abilities).

The standard model prohibits an afterlife

Sean Carroll said: 

“Believing in a life after death, to put it mildly requires physics beyond the Standard Model.”  (From an Express article)

I agree.  But so does believing in a "life before death".  "The standard model" does not accommodate consciousness whether disembodied or embodied. 

We believe in an afterlife because we want an afterlife

I think many people are extremely averse to feeling their lives are to no ultimate avail and that the Universe has no purpose and just exists by happenstance. Equally it is repugnant to people and that they will cease to exist forevermore when they die. I agree with atheists/materialists that this is why most of us believe in an afterlife and God. We want it to be true so we believe it, although deep down I feel many of us don't really believe it.

The mistake here though is to imagine that just because someone believes something because it makes them feel better, then it is false. There are compelling arguments and evidence to reject materialism and all that it implies.

Is this argument against an afterlife as compelling as it might seem?

One could equally retort:

What we're being asked to consider is that if you damage the lenses in your spectacles in one way so as to result in a deterioration of your vision, you damage them in another way resulting in yet further deterioration of one's vision, and yet if the spectacles suddenly disintegrated our vision would be fully restored??  You silly irrational people!

Also see this post and a more expanded version here in my other blog.

Return from the dead.

Return From The Dead (2016) | Nat. Geo... by cosmosdocumentaries

A programme about NDEs that advances the case NDEs are purely brain-based hallucinations. It asks how can we show our brains are capable of generating certain aspects of the NDE like the mystical and spiritual feelings. Apparently such feelings can be induced by being struck by lightening, and epilepsy. This Vicky woman, whose mystical and spiritual feelings are induced by her epilepsy, is convinced this shows her brain generated such experiences. Apparently she knows the brain creates such experiences.

But you'd expect a more objective and nuanced assessment from Professor Steven Laureys . . . right? Er . .no. He says her experiences shows the brain can generate mystical and spiritual feelings!

He seems to think that if a change in x brings about y, that necessarily x generates y. But that's obviously false. Consider a person who is blind due to the fact that the part of the brain dealing with vision is malfunctioning. If this part of the brain repaired itself and that person now had visual experiences, would this show that the brain generated such visual experiences, in other words that they are hallucinations? Clearly not. So additional arguments need to be advanced by Professor Steven Laureys. But he doesn't give any. 

Update 22/4/18  Video no longer available.  Oh well.

Another Update 31/10/21  The video is on facebook here (at least I assume it's the same video)

Is the flow of time illusory?

I've just read the following article:
There is no death, only a series of eternal ‘nows’

How do we know that presentism (only the present or now exists) isn't correct? Wheeler's delayed choice experiment doesn't show that we can influence the past. It seems to me to suggest that our observations define the past -- that is make a particular past concrete.

If the past (and future) exist just as much as the present, then this doesn't just mean my grandparents exist, but also my self of one second ago! It all seems kinda implausible.

And I'm not sure any sense can be made of the notion that the flow of time is an illusion. I experience change, both in the world around me and in my own mental states. It seems to me that "time flows" by definition (consciousness I suspect somehow creates the flow of time). And it is clear we will actually die, and indeed cease to exist, should the brain create consciousness.

Not that I do believe the brain creates consciousness. There are difficulties in supposing it does as I explain in a blog entry on my other blog:

Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness

Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness - See more at: http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/neither-modern-materialism-nor-science.html#sthash.4GdagbQR.dpuf

Neither Modern Materialism nor Science as currently conceived can explain Consciousness - See more at: http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/neither-modern-materialism-nor-science.html#sthash.4GdagbQR.dpuf

What I'm really interested in.

I am interested in what the world is, what I am, what we all are. I'm interested in why I'm here. Did I have a choice in being here? Am I supposed to be doing something now I am here? If so, then what? Is it possible I might never have existed? Does the Universe have a purpose? Do we have some ultimate purpose? Do all things have some ultimate purpose? Or are our lives and the Universe ultimately absurd? Is this the only reality? Or are there many realities or dimensions, whether afterlife realms, parallel Universes, or even magical lands like Narnia? I want to know what all things mean. These are the questions I'm interested in.

Soul relocating to my younger self.

I'm just wondering what it would be like if my soul travelled back in time and inhabited my 13 year old body? I'm guessing I'd lose my current intelligence, but yet retain my current memories as an adult. But if I do keep my memories, it seems I might understand more on, say, something like philosophical issues, than I originally did when I was 13. But I wouldn't understand as much as I do now.

Journey on the train of life.

We're all on this train. We do not know where our fellow passengers come from, not even where we ourselves come from. Perhaps people just materialise out of nothingness, or perhaps people just don't remember. And we do not know where people will go when they finally get off the train. But we know we will finally get off at some point. To some strange destination, or to oblivion -- we do not know. Meanwhile the train and its inhabitants are our world -- the only world we know. Let's read, chat with our fellow passengers, play games. Something to do before we alight from the train to our new strange destination, or to oblivion.

Shared Death Experiences

Interesting article about a phenomenon called a "shared death experience"

Beyond Goodbye

Reading the article Joe Nickell asserts it is grief which wholly causes a shared death experience. One might wonder how he can be so certain? What evidence does he have that he is content in asserting such a thing? I strongly suspect he doesn’t actually have any evidence.

He’s a skeptic and thinks that the notion of a “life after death” is extraordinary implausible.No doubt he shares Sean Carroll’s sentiments. Later in the article it says that Sean Carroll asserts that “life after death” is dramatically incompatible with everything we know about modern science.

It would be helpful if physicists didn’t pontificate on issues which reside outside their area of expertise. Unless one embraces reductive materialism (which is conceptually incoherent) then current science completely leaves out consciousness in its description of reality. Indeed, so far as science is concerned, we might as well all be what has been termed philosophical zombies — that is to say we might as well all be entirely devoid of any conscious experiences whatsoever, even though we externally look and behave exactly like real people.

So we cannot say consciousness is incompatible with physics, it simply is not something which currently lies in the purview of physics. And of course this applies to whether we’re talking about consciousness before death, or after death.

Going back to Joe Nickell’s assertion: It seems then he has neither any evidence for his assertion, and, as we have just seen, no reason either. But it’s worse than that. A good rule of thumb is that similar effects have similar causes. “Shared death experiences” have a number of similarities with NDEs. Hence it seems likely that whatever causes shared death experiences will also cause NDEs. Hence if it is grief which causes shared death experiences, then it seems likely that it is grief which causes NDEs.

But this seems to be clearly false. Let’s put aside the fact that NDEers are on the threshold of death and really shouldn’t be experiencing any emotions at all. From their reports they often say they were filled with profound joy and are extremely reluctant to return to their bodies. Sometimes it’s reported that they experience confusion as to whose body they can see below. On odd occasions they report unpleasant feelings if they perceive malevolent entities etc.

But I can’t recollect them reporting grief. At most there is sorrow at leaving loved ones behind, but that is outweighed by their anticipation of what is to come.

So it seems to me that Nickell’s hypothesis is simply not plausible. It’s a hypothesis conjured up out of desperation to explain away the evidence for an afterlife.