Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasper84  I do not know what happens after death.
But I have the idea that the problem is deeply related to why we perceive ourselves. What I mean is: Even if we could perfectly understand the (human) mind, explaining why a person says that he perceives himself, it does not explain/prove why/that the person actually perceives himself. Since I perceive myself, i believe the perception of myself exist.(that others do so seems a reasonable assumption, because of it) And since no understanding of the physical manifestation can explain that, the question remains what this thing is. Another question is what happens if the physical manifestation is destroyed. (people call this thing "soul" i believe.)
Assuming souls exist, i dislike the idea of them being seperate, because of the (assumed)uniform behavior of physics, which governs their manifestations. Then again, assigning spatial positions of souls seems silly too. It is all a mystery to me.
It could, of course turn out to be a part of physics somehow, and i have said things about trying to relate randomness and quantum mechanics. However, when i do that, i realise i am grasping for straws. (At least so far)
@handy: a computer is too simple to make a good analogy. but very complicated systems can look like they have animal-like (or in future maybe human-like) behaviors. In that sense it is a good analogy, i think. Brains are machines too. |
This is how I see it also, and it complicates the question substantially. The problem with consciousness in general is that we can only be absolutely certain of our own, but not anyone else's. I am entirely certain that I am a thinking thing (as Descartes would put it), but this knowledge cannot be perceived by anyone else. Similarly, I cannot perceive anyone else's consciousness.
For example, suppose we build a machine that is every bit as complex as a human (possibly even a replica of the human). Modern scientific evidence would suggest (although the human brain is still mostly a mystery) that the machine would act exactly like a human; it will have emotions, it will describe them as feelings, it will be able to fall in love, fear death, and so on. But is this machine conscious? We have no way of telling.
A common view in neuroscience today is that the brain creates the mind, so to speak. However, I don't find this explanation convincing simply because it would imply one substance creating an entirely different substance. This is the chain of reasoning that eventually convinced Descartes of the excistence of an immaterial mind (or soul).
The problem with Cartesian dualism is that it requires two substances
interacting, which is just as absurd as one substance creating another.
Here are a few questions and potential answers:
Does the soul include our memory? Highly unlikely scientifically, since it is possible to destroy (and almost certainly create) memories purely physically by poking around in the brain.
Does the soul contain our personality? Probably not, because personality has also been shown to be directly related to the state of the physical brain. After an accident in which the brain is damaged, personality can be severely altered.
Does the soul contain our intellect? For the same reasons as above, it is unlikely.
The only thing that's left for the soul to contain is then consciousness, which suggests to me that it is more of an observer than a pilot.