Death Is Not Final ---- IntelligenceSquared Debates
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Near death experiences are conscious experiences that the brain produces. Superimmortality predicts that if the structure and functioning of the brain was duplicated in the same or another body then the near death experiences would be duplicated again. This hypothesis can be tested at least in theory. But it is also a rational consequence of the same behavior being produced in a body that has identical structure and functioning to the that of the original. Consciousness is produced by the functioning of the brain. As the brain's functioning differs enough the consciousness produced by the brain varies as well. Near death experiences do not prove the existence of an after life. In fact, if they really showed that this was the real and only after life it would be so much worse than the many different worlds that the science of superimmortality predicts can exist and allows us to create.
Steven says at 33:44:
If you vote for the notion that death is not final, then you by necessity, means that you are voting against the conclusion that the scientific position that the mind is what the brain does the mind is a process of the brain itself. You would have to reject that in order to accept the mind exists without the brain.
This is a false statement. The brain through its structure and functioning produces consciousness or the mind. Repeating identical structure and functioning in the same brain or a different brain will produce identical behavior and consciousness ---- and identical mind. It is not necessary to create identical structure and functioning to produce you because there were, are, and will be many different structures and functioning of a brain that will produce a consciousness that you experience. Death of you, for a body, is the body no longer producing a structure and functioning of matter that will produce a consciousness that you experience. Restoring any of a large number of different physapaths will produce you again. It is not true then that believing that death is not final, we have to reject the fact that the brain produces consciousnesses and you with out any supernatural concepts like souls, spirits, hell, or heaven.
Steven says at 37:44:
There is no limit, there is no practical or functional limit that neuroscientists have encountered so far to the degree to which we can mess with your mind by messing with your brain. The sense that you are in your body, that you control your body, that you are separate from the universe, basic fundamental things about your concept of yourself, your experience of reality, are all things demonstratively happening in the brain and we can turn it off like a switch. Now we actually have the technology to do that.
The sense that you are in your body, that you control your body, that you are separate from the universe, basic fundamental things about your concept of yourself, your experience of reality, memories, self identity, etc., will be produced in another brain functioning identically and we can turn it off like a switch also by modifying the brain structure and functioing.
Sean says at 24:40:
What science says is that life or consciousness is not a substance like water or air it is a process like fire when you put out the flame on a candle the flame does not go anywhere it simply stops and that is what happens when we die. We are faced in the end with two scenarios. One scenario says that everything we think we understand about the behavior of matter and energy is wrong in a way that has some how escaped notice by every experiment ever done in the history of science and instead there are unknown mechanisms that allows information in the brain to be transferred to blobs of spirit energy that persists after we die and can talk to the other blobs of spirit energy but don't talk to us except some times they do. The other scenario says that physics is right and that people under stress sometimes have experiences that are not actually real. On the basis of rationality it is not a difficult decision to choose between these two options. On the basis of emotion it might be difficult but we need to have the courage to live life here in the actual world.
The second scenario does not lead to the conclusion that death is final. It leads to a conclusion that consciousness is not the body but something that the body or specifically the brain produces through it structure and functioning. It is something that can be stopped like a fire but reproduced some where else with different matter in a different place and time. Under the right circumstances one fire can be identical to another fire or one fire can be so closely like another fire that although they are not identical they can not be distinguished from each other. There is no need to accept any supernatural beliefs, deny any scientific facts, or experimental results to believe that death is not necessarily final. There is over whelming evidence that superimmortality is true. We do need courage, not because we will die, but because we can consciously exist again, with all the uncertainty of the conscious experiences that we will go through, and all that this might mean to us.