Objectively you don't know that anything other than your own perception (mind) is 100% real. For reference the concept is called Solipsism.
Description of Afterlife?
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Objectively you don't know that anything other than your own perception (mind) is 100% real. For reference the concept is called Solipsism.
This is only true if you personally believe in Solipism, which I dont. I dont get why you needed to bring this into this thread, it has nothing to do with the topic. There is zero reality to this philosophic concept, it is merely an idea.
If you dont think that red blood cells are 100% real, feel free to drain all of yours and see what happens.
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It isn't about what you believe though Bhavv as you keep reminding us, but about what you can prove....and you cannot prove anything to 100% certainty. As you brought up the concept of 100% proof then it is relevant to the topic.
Like I said it isn't about what I believe, but what you can prove to 100% certainty as you claim.
Prove that to 100% certainty. There are various definitions regarding Solipsism and if you look at several of them, your statement of zero reality is kind of ironic.
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This thread is entitled 'Description of Afterlife?' and contained links to Muslim interpretations of life after death. What part of this suggested the thread was about neurology rather than religion when you entered?
I found this thread most interesting in some respects, though a lot of it inevitably goes over the same, tired old ground.
I'm restricted to mobile internet and as such have little time or opportunity to post these days, but the discussion about consciousness in reincarnation piqued my interest sufficiently to join in. The Buddhist perspective would be that each successive lifetime is akin to one candle lighting another as it is about to be extinguished. The same continuation of consciousness, from an originating source, but not quite the same. This doesn't necessarily mean a loss of personal identity ('self' is a strong word as Buddhism teaches no-self, with individual ego being seen as illusory); rather one should consider it thusly:
Can you please immediately recall for me who you were, what you were doing, how you were feeling and what you were thinking at 10am on the 17th May 2003? How about the 23rd of August 1986? You have no recollection of this? So can you legitimately consider yourself the same person as the one who existed on those dates? Your consciousness has invariably changed, as do all things, since your birth. Given that your physical appearance, size, shape, emotional state, learning and other aggregates have changed over that time, what makes you feel you are the same person as you were back then? Or at birth?
Reincarnation is considered along these lines. The consciousness stream continues forward, lighting a new spark and emerging back into Samsara (the world of delusion) as a new body but with the karma (cause, effect, consciousness stream) as the 'old' person.
So while it's easy to say that you wouldn't be the 'same' person in a reincarnation, it's just as easy to argue your neurological patterns, psychology and physiology are so different from 10, 20 or more years ago (or even from yesterday!) that the same could be said even for this lifetime.
Conversely, one might consider that rather than physicality producing consciousness, that consciousness is what creates (the appearance of) physicality. Maybe your own delusory, highly focused and relatively limited viewpoint is what makes you seem to be a product of your biology. What if your true self, your 'soul', is a multi-dimensional entity from our perspective, and in fact your current physical expression is just like a dream body containing a fraction of that entity with conscious awareness of only one dimension at that time?
Maybe we are simply clever creators expressing various portions of ourselves to experience life, outwork our personality or 'evolution', and feed back to the whole? So when we physically 'die' (taking certain aspects of NDE reports, new age theory, Spiritualism etc) one might integrate back to full awareness and memory of lives. This would be much as your consciousness emerges back to full awareness from the limited conscious thought and awareness during dream states.
There's nothing to say that this isn't measurable. When TV was proposed and invented, mainstream science thought the idea laughable, impossible and the inventor was ridiculed... until a working example was produced and the establishment had egg on its collective face. The point being that closed-mindedness and overly focused ideas are harmful, even (or especially) in scientific pursuit.
So much to discuss, so much to ponder... and so little opportunity.
Maybe so, however you cannot prove anything to 100% certainty, whether it be trees or atoms or blood cells as everything is predicated by your perception and the assumption that your senses are giving you objective and truthful information that is not being altered by a range of cognitive functions (or disfunctions) of your brain. You are basically applying a level of faith in what you perceive is the truth....100% certainty requires that faith. It is a bit of an experiment in reductive logic, but it does illustrate the problem with asserting authority to certainty....this is why science deals in evidence rather than 100% proof.
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Ironic. The idea of this thread was, according to the OP:
As such neurology and science are the off-topic entrées, not philosophy or Solipism...
In my dream state (or maybe that's the real state, I don't know) I am aware that I can fly and walk through walls. I can see 100% that this is real, repeatable and I can demonstrate it to all who wish to see with 100% proof. Until I 'wake up'...
Thats simply called growth and memory. I dont know how you think it supports the idea of an afterlife.
I dont think that it requires faith in any way at all to believe that something you can see, touch, hear, smell and / or taste is real.
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It requires faith insofar that your senses, such as sight, touch, smell and taste are giving you real information and your conscious mind or cognitive brain function is perceiving the universe as it truly is. Reality is largely subjective.
Precisely, Reality is predicated by perception.
Wrong. A belief that is based on proof =/= faith.
It's not wrong Bhavv....your perception and therefore your ability to judge reality objectively is predicated by your senses and your cognitive function. You cannot with 100% certainty know whether you are not subject to something that alters your perception...you may have bipolar, psychosis, be subject to any range of cognitive issues that alter the information your brain recieves from your senses.....your sense of taste for example can be altered quite drastically in several ways, the easiest with the miracle Berry Fruit Pills mentioned in another thread, does the lime really taste sweet? Or is it simply an effect of a change in how your taste buds percieve sour tastes?
We rely on a certain amount of faith on what our senses are telling our conscious mind is true, so we cannot apply 100% certainty to our perception.
You are missing the point Bhavv.....your perception is subjective, therefore the proof/material evidence is subject to your senses giving you the correct information...you require a certain level of faith (your definitions fail to mention that faith is also a reference to trust) in the information being a true representation of reality in order to process any proof/material evidence in the first place and even then you cannot ascribe 100% certainty to that information as aside from the other issues with doing so, your perception could be potentially flawed due to a fallibility in our cognitive function.
The short answer is that you cannot prove your perception is 100% certain to be an accurate representation of objective reality.
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You are missing the bigger point that this is merely your personal opinion, and not a fact of reality. Your arguments are about on par with Creationists.
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Everything is a matter of opinion (or perception) Bhavv...that is the point.
Statements such as this only illustrate your own failing Bhavv, not mine.
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If you care to re-read my post it was an illustrative example of how it might be consideded from a Buddhist perspective. I never offered it as 'proof' in any way. Im on my phone atm, be back later.
I don't suppose you include the philosophy behind the scientific method you are so keen to employ as part of your critique in that analysis? The only ramblings I see here with no reinforcing structure, as you put it, are your own. You ramble on about seeing atoms and trees yet can't see the wood for the trees. Vienna circle and bigotted much.
I dont bother with quackery such as that, and it is never covered by any Science course. Its pretty much the same thing as Creationists trying to teach their theories on creationism as an alternative for Evolution.
? Yes I can. I see trees outside my window, they are made of what we call wood.
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