(March 19, 2015 at 10:34 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: I'm skeptical but open minded as to what consciousness is. One of my earliest memories as a child is being stymied by the riddle of what I experience reality only from this frame of reference and why I'm self-aware, though I didn't have the word "sentience" to describe it. I'm open minded that there COULD be something beyond brain activity, emphasis on wild speculation rather than anything we know.
That said, there are things we do know about our experiences. Memory is stored in the brain and accessed through it. We know that when the brain is damaged, memory access may also be damaged. This lesson was painfully taught first by the experience of my granny who, in the later stages of Alzheimer's, was unable to recognize me or remember who I was. The lesson was taught again by a mother who died of necrosis of the brain (mercifully within months and not years). Then there's my own experience from my younger party-animal phase of my life of waking up in a strange room and wondering where I was. I remember the sensation, that split-second confusion, as if I was accessing a file to answer that question. I wondered if this is a small taste of what Alzheimer's must be like, how terrifying it must be to not find that file and be trapped in that confused state.
Anyway, point is we know memory is accessed in the brain. So if memory can be lost if that brain is damaged in some way, it is reasonable speculation that the memory is lost when the brain is utterly destroyed. If the "soul" has a memory function, why can this not be accessed in life?
So if we were able to somehow bring back the dead and they had stories of the afterlife, it would break my brain. I would wonder how they were accessing these memories and where those memories would have been stored.
Now the lack of memory doesn't preclude conscious experience. I was alive prior to my first memory of my 3rd birthday (and I was able to later in life look at pictures to confirm that my memory was accurate) but I have no memory of any of that. The nature and limitations of memory as a function DOES, within reasonable speculation, preclude the Heaven/Hell scenario. Reincarnation might be a workable model and the nature of memory as a brain function would explain why we have no memory of previous lives. Fluctuating population would be a complication, solved perhaps if time is not so linear as we think but we've veered off into wild speculation at this point.
I learned long ago that the best way to deal with worry is to imagine the worst case scenario and ask if we could deal with that. The answer is usually "we can" and the unknown is usually more frightening than the worst case. The worst case scenario is that God gives us one shot at the brass ring and then it's fade-to-black, credits roll. It won't be painful. We won't know any better. We'll go to a place where no tears fall, no fears loom over us and no wish goes unfulfilled. I think I can deal with that.
I'm not, while "technically" we "don't know". Our macro medicine is pointing to the safest bet, "You" are merely your brain in motion. It is really a bad idea to treat "you" as separate than your brain" It is a process, combined with fuel/material in a specific structure/and motion.
I don't think it is a bad idea to say we are finite and say we are merely our brains/fuel/motion.
We don't know everything about the brain, no. But every time we figure something out it is never a result of the super natural.
Ocham's razor basically says when you have competing claims trying to fill in a gap, the one with the least superfluous or no baggage is your most likely answer. And that is one of the core principles of modern science today. When you sit up an experiment you don't over complicate the data, formula, or control groups or methodology. Keep it as simple as possible.
Trying to separate you from your brain begs more questions than it would solve. Our consciousness is an outcome of those factors mentioned, those are specific in size and arrangement. Take those things away, the process cannot function.
