[Serious] What is the current best scientific evidence we have that shows that consciousness...

[born_to_be_a_loser]

ends with death? Given that i dont want to live forever, it sounds awful (even if its perfect like i would personally desire still it would eventually get boring, as AronRa put it a perpetual bj is hell no matter how hot the chick is) esp one with theistic gods who are homophobic and misandristic scums.

Tnx in advance guys.

[Nay_Sayer]

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[BrianSoddingBoru4]

ends with death? Given that i dont want to live forever, it sounds awful (even if its perfect like i would personally desire still it would eventually get boring, as AronRa put it a perpetual bj is hell no matter how hot the chick is) esp one with theistic gods who are homophobic and misandristic scums.

Tnx in advance guys.

Probably the best evidence is that the evidence for post-death consciousness never holds up. Your dead granny isn’t talking to you through the Ouija board, psychics claiming to contact the dearly departed are - without exception - confidence tricksters, and so on.

Consciousness is a product of brain function, full stop.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

The best current evidence that consciousness ends in death, as a positivist assertion, comes from the damage that consciousness appears to suffer in life, as a consequence of damage to the brain. It follows from this observation that if a brain can be made inoperable then consciousness can as well. A person might then contend that some sort of "essence" could still live on, as meaningfully different from the mechanism that consciousness is, a soul or a spirit..but then the whole game is up. The question of whether consciousness ends at death has given way to some other question about souls spirits and essences described by them as meaningfully different and materially distinct from consciousness.

[Alan V]

Scientists have documented a lot of evidence that consciousness is entirely brain-dependent, including studies of dementia, brain injuries, anesthesias, the effects of brain chemistry and activation, drug use, sleep and dreaming, specialized areas of brain functions, and so on. All of this information is now easily accessible to anyone who is really interested.

Although I was raised to believe in an afterlife, as an adult I prefer the facts to wishful thinking.

[Angrboda]

There are several converging lines of evidence which strongly suggest that consciousness arises from physical processes. If this is the case, then it is highly unlikely that it survives the destruction of that process in death, failing some sort of intervention to transfer that process to another physical system.

I had a good summary at one point, but I can't seem to find it. Off the top of my head, some of the lines of evidence are:

1. a priori arguments -- there seems to be no way of reconciling the physical evidence with non-physical mechanisms even in principle; a non-physical mechanism implies dualism and the problem of interaction or communication between obviously physical processes (our senses) and some process or thing separate from the body seems hard to imagine or resolve;
2. Evidence from physical damage: brain damage affects consciousness in ways that are both profound and largely predictable; it's hard to square this with the idea that consciousness isn't physically based;
3. Evidence from drugs; same as 2;
4. Evidence from evolution: many animals show signs of some sort of consciousness suggesting that as brains evolved, so did consciousness; otherwise this seems to require a rather elaborate ad hoc explanation;
5. Evidence from sleep and anesthesia; if consciousness is non-physical, where does it go and how or why does it come back? This is similar to #2 and #3.
6. Evidence from brain studies and imaging; brain activity correlates very strongly with the presence or absence of various features in consciousness. The receiver theory has been suggested in which the brain is just a receiver / transmitter that sends and receives information from a non-physical process. This in addition to the communication problem (e.g. Popper's three worlds) leaves unexplained why so many different areas of the brain seem involved with and correlated with aspects of consciousness. If the brain just transmits and receives information, why is there so much complexity and so many correlations with the thing itself -- consciousness?

I've no doubt missed a few. If I think of them then I'll add them.

If you want to read a good book about physical ideas about consciousness and the philosophical problems with a physicality theory, I'd recommend Neurophilosophy by Patricia Churchland. Written in the 1980s, the neuroscience is a bit dated, but the meat of the book is about how to think about consciousness from a philosophical viewpoint, and the various paradoxes and questions pertaining to the subject. Highly recommended.

[Deesse23]

We have billions of sentient, conscious people alive on the planet, but science hasnt found (yet) a single conscious dead person. Hence, i will stick to the notion that conscious ends with death, until the first "mind" is found without a living body.  As has been already outlined, we also have tons of evidence that consciousness is tied to a brain, a working one, not a rotting one.

I am not saying that consciousness definitely ends with death. I am saying we dont have good reasons to think otherwise.

[brewer]

Welcome Woof.

Can I interest you in creating an introduction thread and tell us about yourself? We'd like to get to know you better.

[arewethereyet]

Welcome Woof.

Can I interest you in creating an introduction thread and tell us about yourself? We'd like to get to know you better.

Spidey senses indicate that we have already met.

[Paleophyte]

ends with death? Given that i dont want to live forever, it sounds awful (even if its perfect like i would personally desire still it would eventually get boring, as AronRa put it a perpetual bj is hell no matter how hot the chick is) esp one with theistic gods who are homophobic and misandristic scums.

Out of the billions of humans that have died not one of them has ever remained conscious. It's one of the key diagnostics of dying. If the poor bugger's still talking at you then he's not dead yet!

At that point, people who would have you believe that consciousness doesn't simply cease have to start making excuses about why we don't see it anymore and those invariably invoke the supernatural or equally meaningless rubbish. The claim is that the consciousness goes somewhere that science can't reach. It's a bit like they're having trouble with object permanence. If you shatter a glass nobody with any wits claims that the ghost of the glass persists in some otherworldly space, but do the exact same thing to a much more delicate and complex living and thinking person and all of a sudden you're hips deep in people who are convinced that some intangible and undetectable portion of them carries on.

I can't wait until we get the hard AI figured out so we can watch the clerics and the philosophers go bonkers trying to figure out if it has a soul.