I enjoyed reading your post. I think you made some good points regarding humanity's fear of death and intuition and that these should be taken into any account as to what happens after death.
I also appreciated your point about a new baby is an extention of an ancient heritage, and that it contributes to our understanding of "steps" in the pattern of life on Earth.
I disagree, however with some of your conclusions. One example concerns heaven and hell and how we should behave in our lives to ensure we enter heaven.
Even though I don't think you have made a convincing case for an after life of heaven or hell, if I were to accept that conclusion, I still don't understand how you would be qualified to explain how each of us should behave to gain entrance into heaven.
Aren't there numerous religions claiming the authority on how to do this? They can't all be right, because they are often in direct conflict with each other. I don’t have to go any farther than Islam vs Christianity or even Catholicism vs the Reformation to make this point.
If there is a heaven or hell in an afterlife, it does us humans little good to know it if we are unable to know what is required of us to enter heaven.
What makes you sure that you know the way into heaven?
Hi. Thanks for reading. I don't claim to know the way into heaven. If there was such a easy answer, there wouldn't be a need for discussion. I am making the point that death isn't the final step. That would be absurd.
Since many refuse this on face value we can be sure hell is the default. This is the problem. People are induced to believe the absurdity that there won't be any thing after death.
That in itself is a religious doctrine that does no one any good. What needs to happen is serious debate. Not about religion, but values, discussion about the consequences of humanity.
Definitions rarely completely cover the meaning of a concept. Very roughly speaking, I use "mind" in the ordinary sense of the set of processes that add up to our ability to think and perceive and remember and use language. Our preferences and personalities, motives and memories - and all of these are vulnerable to trauma or other dysfunction to the relevant sections of one's brain.
Perhaps silicon already has recreated consciousness. It is unclear what consciousness is.
One possibility is that it is the series of perceptions of incoming stimuli. If so, perhaps when a computer vision system processes incoming images, it may have a sort of consciousness, and the same may be true of large language models receiving and processing incoming prompts.
Alternatively, consciousness may be our internal monologue as we work through problems or comment to ourselves. Again, these may have already been replicated in silicon systems that represent intermediate conclusions as a set of language tokens.
I enjoyed reading your post. I think you made some good points regarding humanity's fear of death and intuition and that these should be taken into any account as to what happens after death.
I also appreciated your point about a new baby is an extention of an ancient heritage, and that it contributes to our understanding of "steps" in the pattern of life on Earth.
I disagree, however with some of your conclusions. One example concerns heaven and hell and how we should behave in our lives to ensure we enter heaven.
Even though I don't think you have made a convincing case for an after life of heaven or hell, if I were to accept that conclusion, I still don't understand how you would be qualified to explain how each of us should behave to gain entrance into heaven.
Aren't there numerous religions claiming the authority on how to do this? They can't all be right, because they are often in direct conflict with each other. I don’t have to go any farther than Islam vs Christianity or even Catholicism vs the Reformation to make this point.
If there is a heaven or hell in an afterlife, it does us humans little good to know it if we are unable to know what is required of us to enter heaven.
What makes you sure that you know the way into heaven?
Cheers!
Hi. Thanks for reading. I don't claim to know the way into heaven. If there was such a easy answer, there wouldn't be a need for discussion. I am making the point that death isn't the final step. That would be absurd.
Since many refuse this on face value we can be sure hell is the default. This is the problem. People are induced to believe the absurdity that there won't be any thing after death.
That in itself is a religious doctrine that does no one any good. What needs to happen is serious debate. Not about religion, but values, discussion about the consequences of humanity.
This is crap. Once our last neuron fires for the last time, our minds no longer exist. We've known this in rough outline for about a century.
Define mind.
Definitions rarely completely cover the meaning of a concept. Very roughly speaking, I use "mind" in the ordinary sense of the set of processes that add up to our ability to think and perceive and remember and use language. Our preferences and personalities, motives and memories - and all of these are vulnerable to trauma or other dysfunction to the relevant sections of one's brain.
If mind is purely physical, why can't silicon recreate consciousness?
Perhaps silicon already has recreated consciousness. It is unclear what consciousness is.
One possibility is that it is the series of perceptions of incoming stimuli. If so, perhaps when a computer vision system processes incoming images, it may have a sort of consciousness, and the same may be true of large language models receiving and processing incoming prompts.
Alternatively, consciousness may be our internal monologue as we work through problems or comment to ourselves. Again, these may have already been replicated in silicon systems that represent intermediate conclusions as a set of language tokens.