Atheist In A Foxhole

[Conde Lucanor]

In which case, I would be a light bulb behaviourist. The point I am making is that we don't know what consciousness is. We do know that there are no examples of any consciousness that is not generated by a living brain, but then it is only by observing the physical behaviour of other beings that we infer something similar to the experience we have of our own consciousness.

We do know what cognition is, or at least we have a fair idea of how it works. And since we do know there's an objective world, something outside our minds (as you have made explicit in your statement about what "we do know"), there's more to the experience of death than our own personal consciousness of it.

On the other hand, we can measure the fields generated by living brains at a distance, using various scanning techniques, such as PET and MRI.

I'm a bit confused here. To my knowledge, PET and MRI scans are just imaging methods, which use some type of radiation to reconstruct an object, in this case, living tissue. An analogy can be made with a sonar or a radar, with which you can reconstruct the shape or position of objects. That doesn't mean we are capturing and measuring a signal emitted actively by these objects, we're just capturing their passive response to our measuring device.

In the terms of the analogy, we don't know whether consciousness is the electrons being forced through a tungsten filament, or the light thereby generated. Our own experience of consciousness, mine at least, is not of billions of disjointed physical events, but a (sometimes) coherent whole; more like the emergent light, then the jostling electrons. It is fanciful, I know, but the former is entirely consistent with the current understanding of physics; in which case, no laws are being broken by supposing that just as stars are visible to us that are long since dead, the field generated by our brain continues long after we die.

Your supposition contradicts our empirical observations. If there were such fields measured with PET's and MRI's, wouldn't it be easy to know whether they continue or not after we die?

[uwot]

We do know what cognition is, or at least we have a fair idea of how it works. And since we do know there's an objective world, something outside our minds (as you have made explicit in your statement about what "we do know"), there's more to the experience of death than our own personal consciousness of it.

We know what David Chalmers describes as the easy problem of cognition, or at least we know that there are mechanisms and processes in the brain that are associated with conscious experience. We don't yet know the 'hard problem' of how these processes generate conscious experience; Chalmers believes we never will. So yes, we are getting an improving idea of how cognition works, but we don't know what it is.

I'm a bit confused here. To my knowledge, PET and MRI scans are just imaging methods, which use some type of radiation to reconstruct an object, in this case, living tissue. An analogy can be made with a sonar or a radar, with which you can reconstruct the shape or position of objects. That doesn't mean we are capturing and measuring a signal emitted actively by these objects, we're just capturing their passive response to our measuring device.

I take your point about PET and MRI, I'm not entirely clear how they work. It is a fact though that consciousness is associated with electrical activity in the brain, which is routinely measured by EEG.

Your supposition contradicts our empirical observations. If there were such fields measured with PET's and MRI's, wouldn't it be easy to know whether they continue or not after we die?

The light bulb analogy is a bit misleading, since the human skull is opaque. However, if you painted a bulb so that it no longer emitted light, you could still measure the electric and magnetic fields. These, like light, propagate at c, and if the bulb blows, you will know it more or less instantly. 186 000 miles away, they won't find out for a whole second. It is unlikely that a machine sensitive enough to enable that will ever be built, but it is a fact that once you generate a field, it goes on, essentially forever. It would be very strange, if the same were not true of fields generated by electrical activity in brains.

[Conde Lucanor]

We know what David Chalmers describes as the easy problem of cognition, or at least we know that there are mechanisms and processes in the brain that are associated with conscious experience. We don't yet know the 'hard problem' of how these processes generate conscious experience; Chalmers believes we never will. So yes, we are getting an improving idea of how cognition works, but we don't know what it is.

We may not know the substance or ultimate physical structure of mental phenomena and a lot of the theory of mind remains theoretical, but we do have a fair knowledge of the structure of mental representations. That's why we can have a theory of language. We also know that mental representations can be understood as symbols of our actual sensory experience, that is, a replication of it. We see a tree and then we can recall the experience of seeing that tree, even when the tree is not there anymore. And we can subsume that particular tree into a general category of trees, so that even when seeing a different tree, we still recognize it as a tree. The point is: whatever consciousness is, it is intertwinted with sensory experience, it does not seem to be an autonomous entity that has discrete existence, as in the dualistic concept of matter and spirit or matter and mind. What I intend to highlight here is that the problem is not that some processes generate conscious experience (as a product itself), but that the processes themselves are the conscious experience.

The light bulb analogy is a bit misleading, since the human skull is opaque. However, if you painted a bulb so that it no longer emitted light, you could still measure the electric and magnetic fields. These, like light, propagate at c, and if the bulb blows, you will know it more or less instantly. 186 000 miles away, they won't find out for a whole second. It is unlikely that a machine sensitive enough to enable that will ever be built, but it is a fact that once you generate a field, it goes on, essentially forever. It would be very strange, if the same were not true of fields generated by electrical activity in brains.

It is obvious that you are assuming that consciousness is made of those fields (and I'm assuming here that those fields actually exist) instead of assuming that those fields are a by-product or simply another substance related to the process of consciousness. Just as the smoke or the heat that comes out of the combustion of a substance should not be confused with the substance itself. In any case, there's no reason to believe that whatever structure an "electromagnetic consciousness" may have (and by structure I mean its semantic structure), it will remain assembled outside of its assembling device (the brain), instead of dissipating into the chaos of entropy.

[uwot]

What I intend to highlight here is that the problem is not that some processes generate conscious experience (as a product itself), but that the processes themselves are the conscious experience.
...It is obvious that you are assuming that consciousness is made of those fields

I'm sorry if I give that impression. I'm really not assuming anything, I simply don't know.

(and I'm assuming here that those fields actually exist)

That is demonstrably the case.

instead of assuming that those fields are a by-product or simply another substance related to the process of consciousness. Just as the smoke or the heat that comes out of the combustion of a substance should not be confused with the substance itself. In any case, there's no reason to believe that whatever structure an "electromagnetic consciousness" may have (and by structure I mean its semantic structure), it will remain assembled outside of its assembling device (the brain), instead of dissipating into the chaos of entropy.

Electromagnetic consciousness is way too crude, it is just an analogy. I really don't know how consciousness is generated, but I suspect it is a natural product, subject to natural laws. I take your point that one possibility is that consciousness is the processes responsible for it, I think that is perfectly plausible, but I understand objections that experience feels different to processes. I generally take Feynman's stance on science, that all we know is what isn't the case. I think so far, not much has been ruled out with regard to consciousness.

[surreptitious57]

Even if a successful theory of consciousness is ever discovered how will it be subject to potential
falsification ? Because a functioning brain is obviously not something which can be observed under
a microscope. That consciousness exists and is generated by the brain are the only two fundamental
facts known about it upon which all can agree. And so given this then it seems next to impossible that
a successful theory can ever be discovered though facts may increase within an overall knowledge base
but nothing significant. Indeed the mysterian school of philosophy accepts humans shall never be able to
comprehend the extent of the consciousness which their brains generate. And one then wonders if at some
point in the future if this is a problem that may probably have to be resolved by artificial intelligence instead

[PaulB]

I would just like to thank David Rönnegard for writing this article from his "privileged, but unenviable position".

[Immanuel Can]

Yes, I agree, Paul B.

What can get lost in the philosophical shuffle here is that this is a real human being facing something very serious and tragic. It's unusual for someone in his position to make a gesture so public and frank at a time like that. Usually these things are occasions of grief and doubt...and such things are inherently private. There's somewhat of a compliment in this, and something of a gesture of trust as well.

I hope we don't lose sight of the man and become merely academic in our discussion.

[marjoram_blues]

Yes, I agree, Paul B.

What can get lost in the philosophical shuffle here is that this is a real human being facing something very serious and tragic. It's unusual for someone in his position to make a gesture so public and frank at a time like that. Usually these things are occasions of grief and doubt...and such things are inherently private. There's somewhat of a compliment in this, and something of a gesture of trust as well.

I hope we don't lose sight of the man and become merely academic in our discussion.

Well said, IC.

Update on ' the man ' in latest PN issue.
The party without me...

[marjoram_blues]

David Rönnegard asks how a committed atheist confronted with death might find consolation.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/At ... _A_Foxhole

"I am a secularly-minded philosopher. Faith is not a virtue I hold. In particular, I disbelieve claims to knowledge about God’s existence or will. As an atheist and a Humanist, my approach to life has been grounded on rational thought and empirical evidence. I consider death to be the end of our conscious existence, and that any meaning that life may have resides with man.

Public reflecting on life is often done in fear of, but seldom in the face of, death. I am in the privileged but unenviable position of doing the latter. I have just been told, at the age of 37, that I have stage four lung cancer. Atheism and news of one’s impending death would appear to be a particularly unfortunate combination. From where does a faithless philosopher obtain consolation? What provides meaning for a life lived, and acceptance of a fate anticipated?"

The author's answer:
"What gives rise to enduring sentiments may well vary among us, but my new shortsighted spectacles suggest to me that they will spring from events that have touched the lives of others. When such sentiments are shared they live on in those who stay behind. And so the Humanist quest for immortality is not corporeal. Rather, it takes many forms that touch lives, such as the friendships we maintain, the children we give birth to, the enterprises we start, and the books we write; in essence, the footprints we leave behind."

But, why does the Humanist even have a "quest for immortality"? (Jacques Maritain argued that many militant atheists display a "metaphysical anxiety". Is the author's admitted quest for immortality a tacit admission of his metaphysical anxiety?) Doesn't his atheism rule out, in principle, such a quest because it is a quest for an impossibility?

The immortality is with regard to leaving a bit of oneself behind. A quality of giving.
Of course atheism doesn't rule out this desire.

[Immanuel Can]

The immortality is with regard to leaving a bit of oneself behind. A quality of giving.

No, this is universally recognized as a "good" thing to do, I think.

Of course atheism doesn't rule out this desire.

Or any desire, of course.

But it cannot make sense of the desire, and that is quite a different thing. For why should one "desire" that which one simply cannot have, and which one's own worldview assures one cannot possibly ultimately matter? Atheism has us dying and scattering our atoms at random across the universe forever. If that's what "leaving a bit of oneself behind" entails, then it would seem a singularly unimpressive achievement, would it not?

So there must be a better meaning for the phrase. But from an Atheist view, it's hard to see what it might be. After all, all people will likewise die and scatter their atoms across the universe, so how could "giving" to that process be rationally exalted in any way? And human beings are just sophisticated animals, so how could even something like "contributing to the survival of the species" be an exalted process? Species die out all the time: and when humans are gone, who will be left to say, "What a pity!" What makes that an exalted process, then?

Exalted to what status, in fact? What does it even mean to say that some(human) actions, (such as "leaving a bit of oneself behind") are privileged in any moral or ontological sense? How can the death of a man be more than the death of a grasshopper, if one is an Atheist?

Here I'm not trying to be difficult: I'm simply unaware of any rational sense in which an Atheist can privilege a certain kind of act of dying. It rather seems to me (from my outsider perspective, admittedly) that there is no rational link between dying as a fact, and dying in a "special" way or for a "special" purpose that is rationalizable within an Atheist worldview.

[marjoram_blues]

The immortality is with regard to leaving a bit of oneself behind. A quality of giving.

No, this is universally recognized as a "good" thing to do, I think.

Of course atheism doesn't rule out this desire.

Or any desire, of course.

But it cannot make sense of the desire, and that is quite a different thing. For why should one "desire" that which one simply cannot have, and which one's own worldview assures one cannot possibly ultimately matter? Atheism has us dying and scattering our atoms at random across the universe forever. If that's what "leaving a bit of oneself behind" entails, then it would seem a singularly unimpressive achievement, would it not?

So there must be a better meaning for the phrase. But from an Atheist view, it's hard to see what it might be. After all, all people will likewise die and scatter their atoms across the universe, so how could "giving" to that process be rationally exalted in any way? And human beings are just sophisticated animals, so how could even something like "contributing to the survival of the species" be an exalted process? Species die out all the time: and when humans are gone, who will be left to say, "What a pity!" What makes that an exalted process, then?

Exalted to what status, in fact? What does it even mean to say that some(human) actions, (such as "leaving a bit of oneself behind") are privileged in any moral or ontological sense? How can the death of a man be more than the death of a grasshopper, if one is an Atheist?

Here I'm not trying to be difficult: I'm simply unaware of any rational sense in which an Atheist can privilege a certain kind of act of dying. It rather seems to me (from my outsider perspective, admittedly) that there is no rational link between dying as a fact, and dying in a "special" way or for a "special" purpose that is rationalizable within an Atheist worldview.

This quality of 'giving' is not found in any 'scattering of ashes'.
Who is saying that this 'giving', or 'leaving something behind' is an 'exalted process' ?
It is not about dying in a 'special way' or for a 'special purpose'.
It is the way they have lived and would like to be remembered.
Quite simple really.
That's my take on it.
Others will have their own.

No matter what -
the sentiment is about aiming to leave the world a bit better for having been around.
I think a human - atheist or otherwise - has more of this moral sense than a grasshopper.

[Immanuel Can]

This quality of 'giving' is not found in any 'scattering of ashes'.

Agreed.

Who is saying that this 'giving', or 'leaving something behind' is an 'exalted process' ?

Why, the Atheist who thinks "being remembered" or "leaving something" is better than "being forgotten" or "leaving nothing" is saying it. He thinks one outcome of death is somehow "better" than another. He "exalts" "being remembered" over "being forgotten." But why should it matter? From the Atheist perspective, is it not simply "Dead is dead"? How can Atheism itself supply any different view? How can it rationalize preferring what Atheists do, in fact, seem to prefer -- that they should be "remembered" or "leave something behind"?

Are they afraid of what Hitchens said? He said, "There is nothing more, but I want nothing more."

Well, he's got it now. I wonder if he's happy about it.

It is the way they have lived and would like to be remembered.

This is, of course, quite the point. Why would he "like to be remembered"? Does he actually think there IS some larger significance to his life and death? Atheism itself would seem to deny that possibility.

Quite simple really.

When we don't think about it deeply, perhaps. The minute we do, it becomes problematic: we have to ask, why care?

No matter what -
the sentiment is about aiming to leave the world a bit better for having been around.
I think a human - atheist or otherwise - has more of this moral sense than a grasshopper.

Let me say again very carefully that I am NOT saying an Atheist cannot want to leave the world a better place. (We have already acknowledged he can desire anything.) I'm saying that Atheism gives him no basis for knowing or caring whether it's really better. "Better" has no relevance to the dead. They're not around to enjoy it. Nor can Atheism provide grounds for asserting one thing to be "better" than another, even in this life.

Atheists CAN believe in better and worse -- many, in fact, do. But when they do, they are not acting consistently with Atheism. They are borrowing hope from some other source that is clearly not theirs, since Atheism as a belief system has no such values.

Finally, if it's true that an Atheist has "moral sense" more than a grasshopper, then we need to ask why. If, as Atheists maintain, both humans and grasshoppers are mere products of random cosmic chance plus time, why does the "moral sense" of one of these creatures get some importance attributed to it that is not attributed to the other's senses? Does that no seem Atheistically illogical and inconsistent?

We die like grasshoppers. What makes us special?

[Hobbes' Choice]

David Rönnegard asks how a committed atheist confronted with death might find consolation.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/At ... _A_Foxhole

"I am a secularly-minded philosopher. Faith is not a virtue I hold. In particular, I disbelieve claims to knowledge about God’s existence or will. As an atheist and a Humanist, my approach to life has been grounded on rational thought and empirical evidence. I consider death to be the end of our conscious existence, and that any meaning that life may have resides with man.

Public reflecting on life is often done in fear of, but seldom in the face of, death. I am in the privileged but unenviable position of doing the latter. I have just been told, at the age of 37, that I have stage four lung cancer. Atheism and news of one’s impending death would appear to be a particularly unfortunate combination. From where does a faithless philosopher obtain consolation? What provides meaning for a life lived, and acceptance of a fate anticipated?"

The author's answer:
"What gives rise to enduring sentiments may well vary among us, but my new shortsighted spectacles suggest to me that they will spring from events that have touched the lives of others. When such sentiments are shared they live on in those who stay behind. And so the Humanist quest for immortality is not corporeal. Rather, it takes many forms that touch lives, such as the friendships we maintain, the children we give birth to, the enterprises we start, and the books we write; in essence, the footprints we leave behind."

But, why does the Humanist even have a "quest for immortality"? (Jacques Maritain argued that many militant atheists display a "metaphysical anxiety". Is the author's admitted quest for immortality a tacit admission of his metaphysical anxiety?) Doesn't his atheism rule out, in principle, such a quest because it is a quest for an impossibility?

I'm still surprised to encounter an atheist who is in quest of immortality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

You seem to have picked up on the most irrelevant passage in the article.
And what do you think is added by linking Wiki?

[Hobbes' Choice]

Let me say again very carefully that I am NOT saying an Atheist cannot want to leave the world a better place. (We have already acknowledged he can desire anything.) I'm saying that Atheism gives him no basis for knowing or caring whether it's really better. "Better" has no relevance to the dead. They're not around to enjoy it. Nor can Atheism provide grounds for asserting one thing to be "better" than another, even in this life.?

You are saying nothing. Atheism is contentless.

So what? His humanism can provide all those things (that theism is utterly incapable of), and does. His job as a lecturer in Corporate responsibility, working in Stockholm does; much more for the world than a hundred Ayatollahs.

Being a Theist does the opposite. Many of you are engineering the world in readiness for the Apocalypse and far too many of you are actively working to being it about. So much for Theism.

[Immanuel Can]

Atheism is contentless.

You and I are not disagreeing. Other than a bald negation of any gods, it has nothing. In terms of values, Atheism is simply an empty vessel.

But that's the point. It doesn't give any warrant for "better" or "worse" deaths. Death is death -- final, irreversible, and ultimately meaningless, if Atheism is right.

So what? His humanism can provide all those things, and does.

But Humanism is a creed, a religious belief...an unjustifiable exaltation of the human. It has to be overlaid artificially on top of Atheism. A committed Atheist would have to regard it as a sort of cancerous 'faith' imposed on the body of "pure" Atheism, corrupting it from hard-nosed Materialism, and reducing it to soppy sentimentalism. For why should we think humans so privileged?

Humanism, then, comes dangerously close to agreeing with religion, that human beings are special creatures with a special role in the Creation...and that thought Atheism simply cannot tolerate. No wonder the first Humanists were religious: for Humanism is really a Renaissance belief, not a modern one, and its natural fusion was with some form of Theism like Catholicism, not with Atheism. (http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/humanism.html)

Atheism itself provides no warrant for Humanism. Dead humans and dead dogs are the same...dead. There isn't an afterlife for either, and ultimately human beings perish in just the same way dogs do.

This is what I meant when I spoke of Atheism "borrowing hope" from some source to which it has no rational link. Humanism, as you will know, is a faith in the exceptionality, the specialness, the unique value of humankind. In Materialist universe, it is simply an example of entirely gratuitous, unsubstantiated belief -- the very thing the Existentialists would call "bad faith."

Atheism cannot warrant special regard for the human. Hitchens knew that. That's why he said what he said.

If he was right, he'll never know it. If he was wrong, he assuredly does know it now.