Philosophy Now Forum

The online dictionary says consciousness is the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings.

If there is an afterlife, then where does consciousness fit in (or not fit in)? I'm well aware of the difficulties with the concept of consciousness and I don't see a resolution on the horizon anytime soon.

Here is an article concerning consciousness:

http://m.livescience.com/47096-theories ... sness.html

It would be interesting to hear from others on this topic.

PhilX

It's probably better to give a full entry on the word, since consciousness has several meanings. I'm partial to the OED, so here goes (it's a long one, but since it's behind a paywall, I figure I'll share with the community ):

Oxford English Dictionary wrote: 1. Internal knowledge or conviction; the state or fact of being mentally conscious or aware of something. Cf. consciousness to oneself at Phrases.

2. Philos. and Psychol.
a. The faculty or capacity from which awareness of thought, feeling, and volition and of the external world arises; the exercise of this. In Psychol. also: spec. the aspect of the mind made up of operations which are known to the subject.
The word had been used to cover a wide variety of mental phenomena, being applied both to whole organisms and to particular mental states and processes. Accounts differ in two main ways: (i) as to whether consciousness is transitive or intransitive, i.e. whether it is primarily an awareness of something distinct from the conscious subject or primarily a state of the conscious subject; (ii) as to whether it involves self-consciousness, i.e. awareness of one’s own states, even if one is also conscious of things distinct from oneself. An organism’s consciousness may thus range from a simple capacity to sense and respond to surroundings, and this to varying degrees and in different ways, to an awareness of its own awareness. For ‘wakefulness’ as an aspect of consciousness see sense 5.
See also altered state of consciousness at altered adj. and n. Special uses, datum of consciousness at datum n. 2b, split consciousness n. at split adj. Special uses 2c(a), state of consciousness at state n. 2c, stream of consciousness n., threshold of consciousness at threshold n. 2c(a).
b. As a count noun. A state or form of consciousness.

3. Shared or mutual knowledge. Obs. rare.

4.
a. The totality of the impressions, thoughts, and feelings, which make up a person's sense of self or define a person's identity.
b. Attributed as a collective faculty to an aggregate of people, a period of time, etc.; a set of shared defining ideas and beliefs.
c. With adjective specifying an area of operation, as moral consciousness, religious consciousness, etc.

5. The state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings, regarded as the normal condition of waking life.
Consciousness is no longer regarded as having only two states, but many levels, the measurement of which is an important part of the assessment of persons with brain injury; it has also been shown in psychology that people can process and respond to information presented subliminally even if they are not, or are only partially, aware of it.

6. As the second element of compounds with the sense ‘consciousness of ——, awareness of ——’.

I would suggest that consciousness relates to living beings, and the afterlife relates to beings that are not alive, so any proposed relation is tenuous at best, and probably there is no relationship at all. If non-living beings are aware in the afterlife, it is probably due to some other effect that is not consciousness as we know it on this side of death. However it might well be the same consciousness that a living being experiences, there is no way of knowing. This also brings up another idea relevant to another thread, if the non-alive entity is conscious, it is so in eternity and in eternity there is no passage of time as we know it, so every moment would be now, the present moment, and consciousness would always be of now, and not history, as it is in the temporal existence.

Well, having been unconscious, I will avail myself of what I recall from the experience; bugger all. 36 hours of it. I firmly believe that consciousness relates to life in our bodies, that the mind does not extend beyond our synapses, indeed are them. By extension, it does not relate to anything beyond our physical life.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:The online dictionary says consciousness is the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings.

If there is an afterlife, then where does consciousness fit in (or not fit in)? I'm well aware of the difficulties with the concept of consciousness and I don't see a resolution on the horizon anytime soon.

Here is an article concerning consciousness:

http://m.livescience.com/47096-theories ... sness.html

It would be interesting to hear from others on this topic.

PhilX

The links you provide are interesting but they don't add anything that we don't already know in relation to cognitive science. The problem of dualism still remains despite the progress science has made in the last ten years or so. If you are a physicalist then there is a good chance you are of the opinion that consciousness as a physical substance ends with death. The body dies and so does the brain-- consciousness ceases to exist. Dualists, on the other hand are more likely to believe that consciousness, as a non-physical substance survives death.

So long as dualism remains a viable metaphysical theory then there can be no consensus for many people. Nonetheless, a third option that can be considered is Hameroff's quasi-scientific explanation for how consciousness survives death. However, I use the word, "quasi-scientific" in a loose fashion.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:
If there is an afterlife, then where does consciousness fit in (or not fit in)? I'm well aware of the difficulties with the concept of consciousness and I don't see a resolution on the horizon anytime soon.

I predict that your thread will be quite short as few know anything about the afterlife and most of what you read will be speculative at best and nonsense at worse.

But I have the truth.

Have a look at this clip and if you give that science any veracity then you might believe as I do, since I claim apotheosis and going there just the one time, that that cosmic consciousness is our final evolutionary step.

Like all such claims, I have no proof to offer and only offer this as a true anecdotal rendering.

https://vimeo.com/26318064

Regards
DL

It is easy to imagine having a consciousness after dying, just as bad movies find it easy to get us to follow waking up in someone else’s body.

Or with a little more imagination, as befits a better class of literature, even in the body of a giant vermin of cockroach-y anatomy.

This also makes it relatively easy to imagine various soul-like theories of consciousness, on which consciousness has enough independence of the brain for it to continue to exist when the brain ceases to function.

Regrettably, at least for those of us who think continuing after bodily death might be fun, the more we learn about consciousness and the brain, the less likely all the soul-like theories of consciousness seem. In fact, there is a great deal in recent psychology as well as neuroscience that makes it pretty clear that our folk psychology of our own consciousness is far too soul-like to stand up to the data.

We may have drunk too deeply of wine of the church, whether in the Platonic version of Augustine, the Aristotelian version of Aquinas, or the rationalist version of Descartes.

Among those things with which we have the closest acquaintance, we are probably most in error about our own consciousness .

Lawrence Crocker wrote:
Regrettably, at least for those of us who think continuing after bodily death might be fun, the more we learn about consciousness and the brain, the less likely all the soul-like theories of consciousness seem. In fact, there is a great deal in recent psychology as well as neuroscience that makes it pretty clear that our folk psychology of our own consciousness is far too soul-like to stand up to the data.

We may have drunk too deeply of wine of the church, whether in the Platonic version of Augustine, the Aristotelian version of Aquinas, or the rationalist version of Descartes.

Among those things with which we have the closest acquaintance, we are probably most in error about our own consciousness .

I disagree that we are showing less likelihood of a separate consciousness. I put that clip up of the latest science I have found that seems to show a depository of conscious thought. They may prove it soon.

That speculation aside.

Let me ask you if you think our brainwaves end in our skulls?

We know that other radio waves continue to travel after we shut the source off.

We also know that our brain waves are readable outside of our brains. Do you think they also continue after the brain shuts down.

I intuit that they, like all other radio and light waves continue. That does not answer the question of our consciousness surviving but it does improve the chances. Right?

Regards
DL

If there is no consciousness after death,there is no afterlife.
I am my consciousness.

Greatest I am wrote: We know that other radio waves continue to travel after we shut the source off.

We also know that our brain waves are readable outside of our brains. Do you think they also continue after the brain shuts down.

I intuit that they, like all other radio and light waves continue. That does not answer the question of our consciousness surviving but it does improve the chances. Right DL

I believe that there are some long wave, very low power, electromagnetic waves that it may be possible to pull out of the noise at very short distances from the skull. In principle these should continue outward forever. Even were they considerably more robust, however, their continuing after my death does not cheer me much. The locus of my being seems much more like the radio transmitter than it does the waves that continue on their way into the universe after the transmitter is smashed.

I think we are more our thoughts than the radio although we need the radio to form the thought.

The announcers noise is nothing useful unless the brainwaves form something coherent.

Regards
DL

Greatest I am wrote:

Lawrence Crocker wrote:
Regrettably, at least for those of us who think continuing after bodily death might be fun, the more we learn about consciousness and the brain, the less likely all the soul-like theories of consciousness seem. In fact, there is a great deal in recent psychology as well as neuroscience that makes it pretty clear that our folk psychology of our own consciousness is far too soul-like to stand up to the data.

We may have drunk too deeply of wine of the church, whether in the Platonic version of Augustine, the Aristotelian version of Aquinas, or the rationalist version of Descartes.

Among those things with which we have the closest acquaintance, we are probably most in error about our own consciousness .

I disagree that we are showing less likelihood of a separate consciousness. I put that clip up of the latest science I have found that seems to show a depository of conscious thought. They may prove it soon.

That speculation aside.

Let me ask you if you think our brainwaves end in our skulls?

We know that other radio waves continue to travel after we shut the source off.

We also know that our brain waves are readable outside of our brains. Do you think they also continue after the brain shuts down.

I intuit that they, like all other radio and light waves continue. That does not answer the question of our consciousness surviving but it does improve the chances. Right?

Regards
DL

Wrong. That's like saying if an alien picked up a radio signal, and traced it back to the station thousands of years later, they'd come across the DJ.

Artificial radio waves have no thought attached. The waves a human brain sends out do.

I think military experiments show this to some extent.

If that is the case, someone finding or capturing thought waves, would get more than white noise. They, like all who say they have received a telepathic message always get information or al least recognize the sender.

I don't thing you nor I can be cock sure about anything of this issue till we progress a lot more in understanding our sixth sense.

I do have a personal telepathic experience to help me along but not do not believe what I say on it.

Regards
DL

Interesting article and an equally interesting video.

I am not one of those who thinks dualism is a viable metaphysical theory. Whatever consciousness is, it must in some way involve a self-referring process.

The physics of time seems to be symmetrical. If so, consciousness must relate in some way not to time per se, but to a timeless eternity, the "afterlife," and the universe as a whole. One idea that I like to play around with is the possibility that the present moment is where the past and its echo from the future intersect, creating an interference pattern we call 'universe,' and the way we elect to see things effects the universe as a whole and the entire timeline. In other words, we are co-creators: as it were, we, as a collective, decide whether the cat is alive or dead.