There Probably is no Afterlife

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In one experiment, Kelly and Arcangel employed nine mediums to offer readings for 40 individual sitters – two of the mediums doing six each, while the other seven mediums did four readings each (each sitter had just one reading done). The sittings were done without the actual sitter present (the researchers acted as a ‘proxy’ to keep a blind protocol), and audio recordings of the mediums’ statements were later transcribed. Each sitter was then sent six readings – the correct reading, and five ‘decoy’ readings drawn from those given for others in the group – but were then asked to rate each overall reading on how applicable they thought it was to them, and comment on why they chose the highest rated reading. Thirty-eight of the forty participants returned their ratings – and, amazingly, 14 of the 38 readings were correctly chosen (while at first sight ‘less than half correct’ may seem a rather poor success rate, given there were six readings to choose from, this is actually a number significantly above what would be expected by chance). Additionally, seven other readings were ranked second, and altogether 30 of the 38 readings were ranked in the top half of the ratings. What’s more, one medium in particular stood out above the others: all six of this person’s readings were correctly ranked first by each sitter, at quite astronomical odds!

(http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife)

A zombie pandemic … is something that is plausible, it's something that at least in terms of spread, is very likely... a potential virus leading to an outbreak could overwhelm a city the size of New York in eight to nine days once a single zombie is infected.

(http://geektyrant.com/news/2012/12/13/discovery-special-to-prove-a-zombie-apocalypse-could-happen.html)

JV-Stalin

I’d like to thank Con for accepting. I can tell this is going to be a very good debate. I do see there is a bit of problem with my definition, but Con understood where I was coming from. An afterlife is mental events without said brain events.

Premise two

1. Con’s analogy is false. Having a debate causes your mind to have an experience, but your mind started first. This could cause the body to have an experience. This is completely different from the studies I’ve cited. The physical event happens first. The mind being dependent on the brain is the best explanation for this. Sure, they could be non dependant, but this would be an ad hoc view. The best explanation is that they are.

2. This is a straw man of my argument. Con makes it sound like I’m defining mental states as brain states. This is false. I do not mean mental states that can be detected by science at all. We don’t see people who just suffered severe brain injury saying “Hey guys, some crash huh? Look, you can see my brain!”. It’s pointing out when people’s brains are shot, the mind appears to be shot. Of course, it is possible for there to be some hidden mental states. But the debate title is “An afterlife is improbable” not “An afterlife is impossible”. Appealing to some hidden mental state is an ad hoc.

3. Con referred us to a previous response

4. Con’s response here is unjustified. Brain complexity is defined by a variety of things, not just by the complexity of mental events [1][2].

5. Con refers us to the objection above. He claims it still holds, but it directly rebuts Con’s initial response. Con is saying brain complexity is defined by mental complexity, but this argument states mental complexity correlates with neuronal growth. This is requires a completely different response. Meaning, #5 is unrebutted.

Con’s arguments here are mainly appeals to possibility and not probability. Combined with strawmen,

Con brings up stories of people with flat EEGs remembering things. However, this assumes the old view that a flat EEG means death. People with flat EEGs still have this strange type of brain activity [3], so it is still mental activity with brain activity. Furthermore, it is expected that this would happen. Neuroscientist Susan blackmore writes

“If sensory input is reduced or disrupted, the normal input-based model of the world may start to become unstable and break down. In this case the cognitive system will try to get back to normal by creating a new model of the world from imagination... [from] a bird's-eye view, as though from above…..if the OBE occurs when the normal model of reality is replaced by a bird's-eye view constructed from memory, then people who have OBEs should be better able to use such views in memory and in imagery”[4]

Con brings up the idea of biocentricity. I don’t see how this dents my argument at all, since the mind could have created the body and came about simultaneously. Making it dependant on the body, yet still a creation of the mind. Scientifically, biocentricity is flawed. It may be true that under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics there are superpositions that are broken when they hit a measuring device. However, the idea that a conscious observer is required is not currently accepted, as wavefunctions are broken by quantum decoherence. In a Nobel Prize winning experiment, Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland showed that quantum wave functions can collapse on their own. It was also shown that some states can be observed and measured without collapsing them [5].

Con also claims since this premise can’t be falsified, it can’t be shown true or false. This is irrelevant, because I’m arguing it is more probable than not.

You can talk to what???

Here, Con argues that since mediumship is true, an afterlife exists. First, all that can be demonstrated is that these mediums knew the information. It is unjustified where this information came from. Second, the article is very vague in what was revealed. Magicians can use a variety of tactics to achieve amazing accuracy in psychic readings. I’ve done it many times with stunning accuracy. The trick is to use a cold reading which is just a list of tactics to gain and reveal information about a total stranger, even if it’s not done in person [6]. So, I’d tend to agree the probability is about 0.000021%, but only if you’re dealing with pure guesswork, it does not take a cold reading into account. Furthermore, confirmation bias is subject. Since they asked the sitters to rank the readings. The sitters tend to forget the wrong readings.

Con brings up post-mortem appearances. However, it is more likely that the person in morning is so open to the suggestion that the person is alive, that they see them. We know hallucination is possible with suggestion [7]. We also know that even normal people can hallucinate [8]. We even have stories of ghost sightings that have been solely the result of suggestion [9]. So, post-mortem appearances don’t seem to be supernatural, but psychological.

You’ve got to shoot them in the head

Con unexpectedly brings up zombies as evidence of an afterlife. This hardly counts as an afterlife, since it is defined as you living on after your death. But, if you’re eating your friends and family, then your mind has degraded to the point that it’s no longer you. All his evidence points to the possibility of some virus affecting your mind, but this clearly isn’t an afterlife. Even if the body was alive, the mind could be dead. In this sense, you are still gone. This objection seems to be based on equivocation.

Although, if a zombie apocalypse happens, Con and I will just go to the winchester tavern and wait for this all to blow over.

Back to Con.

[1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC43925/pdf/pnas01133-0433.pdf

[2]http://www.researchgate.net/publication/12173817_Connectivity_and_complexity_the_relationship_between_neuroanatomy_and_brain_dynamics/file/9fcfd51095ad128590.pdf

[3]http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/266379.php

[4] Blackmore, Susan. "Out-of-the-Body Experience." InThe Oxford Companion to the Mind. Edited Richard L. Gregory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987: 571-73. p.573 and 133.

[5]http://www.bluffton.edu/~bergerd/essays/impert.html#fn6

[6]http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cold_reading

[7]http://io9.com/5864221/easily-hypnotized-people-can-hallucinate-colors-whenever-they-want-to

[8]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3806071

[9]http://www.hauntmastersclub.com/editorials/fake_ghost.html

JV-Stalin

Premise Unus

Con claims I have changed my definition to fit me. This is clearly false. What do you think I mean by “you”. We are clearly just beings that participate in the activity of consciousness. Living after death is us with consciousness after our death. Or simply mental events without brain events. It’s just a similar restatement. Ironically, if Con wishes to challenge this he must concede that my position is correct. Which in a sense he does. He claims premise one is a tautology. It essentially is, that’s why I called it self-evident. There’s nothing wrong with that, many laws in philosophy are indeed tautologies. For instance the Identity of Indiscernibles is tautological. If A=B, what is true for A is true for B. He then claims there is no equivocation fallacy. This is only true if the definition is changed, which it wasn’t.

He challenges the definition which kills his entire case and supports mine. If you can be alive without being conscious, then being alive must be in some sense physical. I’ve been supporting a variation of that throughout the entire debate! Furthermore, it kills his objection because it makes this idea of an afterlife meaningless. If we can are resurrected, we are not living on after death because life itself is in some sense physical, an afterlife must be after this physical world. This demonstrates that what Con is defending is full of inconsistencies and contradictory views.

Con has been inconsistent in this section and shot himself in the foot. I’d like to point out his objection here has been entirely semantical. It doesn’t further the debate at all. He also claimed this is the only thing that matters. This means his strongest argument is simply sematical. Does that really do anything to my position? Clearly not.

Premise Duo

Con has repeatedly made the claim that x doesn’t prove dependence. I will respond to them all in this section. Con brings about more false analogies to support his position. For instance, his God analogy is false because that’s an internal mental event. Completely irrelevant. His solar flare analogy is false because affecting the Earth does nothing to the flare. Nor is there evidence to support the Earth is contingent on the flares. However, with my evidence it does show the mind is contingent on the brain. What criteria of evidence would demonstrate dependence? Con needs to answer that because otherwise he can commit the moving goalpost fallacy over and over again. Similar to the vague definition of “kind” given by creationists. All evidence supports the idea that the mind is contingent on the physical. Take perception for example. Physical perception organs are required to perceive. Similarly, if the parts of the brain that process things like smell, hearing, sight, ect are damaged so are the perception. Memory is stored in the brain. I’d say everyone of us has forgot things. Some have damaged brains so they cannot remember things. Alzheimer's for example. The act of thinking uses words and pictures, which are dependant on perception and memory. Beliefs and knowledge are also dependant on our memories and perception. This proves they are contingent. Much like a sound and a wave. We see sound/wave correlations and claim they are contingent on each other. If we wish to adopt Con’s position, we have to argue against the dependence of the sound and wave. When we affect the wave we know we affect the sound. Similar to the mind and brain. In reference to the claim of 4, I didn’t respond to it because I responded to it in the first point.

On point 2, he claims I am saying mental states are brain states. In round 1, I quoted Tooley saying

“All minds that it is generally agreed that we are definitely acquainted with ... are either purely physical in nature or else are causally dependent on something physical in nature."

Con then posits some ad hoc view that the body may be dependant on the brain. This leads to a bit of an interaction problem. How would the mind have any effect on the body if this were true? Furthermore, something Con has ignored throughout this entire debate, it is simpler to just say the mind is dependant on the brain.

All I have to do to refute Con’s objection to point 4 is demonstrate seperate ways of defining said events. Which I have. I gave seperate ways of defining brain complexity, furthermore mental capacity would clearly be defined by our observations of the creature. You don’t have to crack open someone’s head to determine its mental capacity.

I never claimed point 5 was different from 4. That’s a strawman. I said it refutes his point 4, because it gives a separate way of defining brain complexity.

The other stuff

Con misunderstands my argument. I’m saying since there is brain activity it is more probable to think the brain maps out a false memory instead of some ontological experience.

Con says biocentricity does dent my argument. But he didn’t respond to why I think it doesn’t. There is nothing wrong with the idea that the body and mind come into existence simultaneously because of the mind. Making them dependant. Con furthermore ignored the refutation of biocentricity. He also claimed probability isn’t how science works. Con has given no source for this. On a University of Georgia article titled “What is science” states

“....we can't know many things with absolute certainty - we only know the observable evidence. However, we can reach the best possible conclusion based on the most complete and modern evidence available.”[1]

This is what I’m doing. Making Con’s objection irrelevant. One problem with Con’s argument here is that I’m making a philosophical argument using science to come to a philosophical conclusion. If Con wishes to extend the scientific method into philosophy, he is promoting the rejected philosophy of logical positivism [2]. He then needs to show this rejected and flawed philosophy is valid.

Although I feel I have refuted the idea, I will propose a philosophical argument that demonstrates biocentricity is self-refuting and incoherent. Biocentricity is essentially a type of idealism. It states the world is the way it is because of our minds. Nothing is mind-independent. We know that consciousness is just a process. We are not consciousness, we are beings that have consciousness. This is not compatible with biocentrism, because it proposes some mind-independent thing, the entity itself. One could say this being is a mind, but this would be redefining terms. If there was some brain that popped into existence, if this was the only mind that existed it would be a brain that is conscious. But the only thing that exists isn’t consciousness, there is still the being that has consciousness.

A short psychic that breaks out of jail is a small medium at large

Since I only have to refute the idea of an afterlife, I could concede to the ideas of telepathy or some alien experimenting on humans. It’s still simpler than a whole entire world full of unembodied dead people.

Con tries to respond to my many naturalist examples. I find he misunderstood them.

Cold reading: I said it could be done even when not in the room. The tactics can be transferred. For example, that book you stopped reading, you should finish it. You should also get that door fixed. I don’t have to be looking at Con or the voters to make these claims. Most people have messed up doors and have stopped reading a book half way though. Other statements like “You are shy at times, but can be really outgoing” are utterly contradictory, but the sitter only focuses on the parts that fit them. I know it sounds absurd, but I’ve done it before and people don’t notice. It’s called double speak. None of these techniques need anyone present and there are so much more like these. Having someone present is just a bonus, not a necessity.

Vagueness: The conception of what is personal is entirely subjective. Someone could rank the simple statements I gave as extremely personal and non-vague.

Confirmation Bias: Nowhere did I claim there had to be multiple readings. One shot is all they need. For example one can read the statement “Your great grandmother died of some condition of the chest, or it could have been your grandmother or even mother.” We now have three chances for the statement to be true. One can remember one statement, but forget the other and then state he knew my grandmother died of a heart attack.

The naturalistic explanation still holds.

Con makes the statement

Night of the living dead

Zombies will definitely come to being. We’ll have to hit them in the head!

If you're eating your friends. You are no longer you. Your mind has been degraded so far. Living things change their mental states, but there are certain things that never changes. Such as, well zombieness. Furthermore my other arguments here were dropped

Conclusion

Con has dropped many arguments and has inconsistent contradictory views that he uses to try to help his case. Ultimately, Con had to resort in a lot of ad hoc hypothesis to hold onto his view. He has a vague classification of what is dependant on what. In the end, my position is the most probable.

Now to Con’s finial.

[1]http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/1122science3.html#CERTAINTY

[2]http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/346336/logical-positivism