Reincarnation

[Yoseph]

Now my thinking is that when you die, you could wait an inumerable amount of years / universe births etc. until at some point your conciousness will be recreated in one form or another. So to me it seems that reincarnation is inevitable, because during the time you stop thinking, you will experience nothing until at some point you start to think again... However unlikely it may be that it happens.

 

I'm sure what happens after death is discuessed here a lot, but I'd like to know what you guys thought?

[lemur]

What is the physical part of the person that transcends death and survives to transit into a new body, iyo? How would it survive the transit and when do you think it would enter into a gestating fetus and why? What would prevent other "souls" (if I may use that term) from coming along and uploading into the same body, kicking another soul out, etc.?

[JillSwift]

Now my thinking is that when you die, you could wait an inumerable amount of years / universe births etc. until at some point your conciousness will be recreated in one form or another. So to me it seems that reincarnation is inevitable, because during the time you stop thinking, you will experience nothing until at some point you start to think again... However unlikely it may be that it happens.

 

I'm sure what happens after death is discuessed here a lot, but I'd like to know what you guys thought?

 

You never mention why you think this is so.

 

So far, all the evidence more than strongly suggests that "self"/mind/consciousness is a property of matter - specifically the brain and its interaction with its sub-systems and the world around it - and as such consciousness simply ceases to be then the brain is wrecked in the same way 75mph ceases to be when the car is wrecked. (Why do I keep using that metaphor? People say they find it depressing. )

[lemur]

You never mention why you think this is so.

 

So far, all the evidence more than strongly suggests that "self"/mind/consciousness is a property of matter - specifically the brain and its interaction with its sub-systems and the world around it - and as such consciousness simply ceases to be then the brain is wrecked in the same way 75mph ceases to be when the car is wrecked. (Why do I keep using that metaphor? People say they find it depressing. )

By all empirically-based plausibility, you're right. The thing I don't understand is why people find it more interesting to always re-iterate the implausibility of death-transcendent subjectivity than to explore potential avenues for it. Unless you expect that one day people are going to give up speculating that there is a potential for subjectivity to transcend the body, it makes sense to try to at least impart some amount of scientific rigor into the theorizing of possible channels. At least that way there is the chance of falsifiability and testable hypotheses instead of conjecture with insistent bickering devoid of most forms of rigor.

[JillSwift]

By all empirically-based plausibility, you're right. The thing I don't understand is why people find it more interesting to always re-iterate the implausibility of death-transcendent subjectivity than to explore potential avenues for it. Unless you expect that one day people are going to give up speculating that there is a potential for subjectivity to transcend the body, it makes sense to try to at least impart some amount of scientific rigor into the theorizing of possible channels. At least that way there is the chance of falsifiability and testable hypotheses instead of conjecture with insistent bickering devoid of most forms of rigor.

 

The first sentence of my previous post explains to a T why there's no discussion of any "potential avenues" for duality.

[lemur]

The first sentence of my previous post explains to a T why there's no discussion of any "potential avenues" for duality.

 

Well, I don't see how science should become a boundary-defining discourse for what questions people should ask. If anything, I think it should add rigor to any and all contemplation of questions that its knowledge could pertain to. If nothing else, it should go beyond correlation with regard to what constitutes subjectivity. Saying that what goes on in your computer's OS is happening in the RAM may be true, but it doesn't provide a complete understanding of how the OS works and what possibilities there are for uploading and downloading it into other storage media, for example.

[JillSwift]

Well, I don't see how science should become a boundary-defining discourse for what questions people should ask. If anything, I think it should add rigor to any and all contemplation of questions that its knowledge could pertain to. If nothing else, it should go beyond correlation with regard to what constitutes subjectivity. Saying that what goes on in your computer's OS is happening in the RAM may be true, but it doesn't provide a complete understanding of how the OS works and what possibilities there are for uploading and downloading it into other storage media, for example.

 

I never made the claim that "science should become a boundary-defining discourse for what questions people should ask". (I'm not even certain what that means.)

 

But, when no reasoning is given for an assertion, not a lot can be discussed. As in this case, all I know is Yoseph believes in reincarnation. I don't know why, so I can't really comment on it in any meaningful way.

 

Since he asked, I offered my take on death as it involves the mind. I find this a useful thing to do as a matter of contrast between our points of view in hopes it will help Yoseph give us some reasoning to discuss.

[lemur]

I never made the claim that "science should become a boundary-defining discourse for what questions people should ask". (I'm not even certain what that means.)

I don't know what's unclear about the language I used.

 

Since he asked, I offered my take on death as it involves the mind. I find this a useful thing to do as a matter of contrast between our points of view in hopes it will help Yoseph give us some reasoning to discuss.

I agree. Conflict is good as it stimulates opening for discussion.

 

 

[JillSwift]

I don't know what's unclear about the language I used.

Linguistically, no problem. Conceptually, I'm not sure I get how science could even be used that way.

 

 

I agree. Conflict is good as it stimulates opening for discussion.

Well, contrast over conflict. ==

[lemur]

Linguistically, no problem. Conceptually, I'm not sure I get how science could even be used that way.

Ok, replace "linguistically" with "conceptually" then.

 

 

Well, contrast over conflict. ==

contrast is to conflict what passive is to active? . . . linguistically/conceptually?

 

 

[mooeypoo]

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Moderator Note

Religious questions go to the religion thread. There's a reason we limit post-count there, I know it can seem like a bureacracy, but it isn't. We're a science forum, our focus is science, and the religion forum is secondary. Please don't try to circumvent the rules we've created by posting a religious debate anywhere outside the religion forums.

[Marat]

The 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz once remarked that it would be useless to him if a magician were to make him the Emperor of China, since he would no longer be himself in any meaningful sense if he were to undergo such a massive transformation. So all that would really happen in such a case would be that Leibniz would cease to exist and in his place a new person, now the Emperor of China, would appear.

 

The whole idea of reincarnation covertly depends on the assumption that there is some underlying platform of all the positive predicates that constitute you, and that this bare, underlying platform is also somehow still significantly you, even though it has none of your characteristics, which it merely underlies and supports. It is then this platform which makes the new individual -- who will be entirely different from you in all positive and measurable features -- still somehow meaningfully 'you,' even though he is not like you. This is of course absurd, as the whole idea of reincarnation is.

 

Thus if 'I' were 'actually' a twelfth-century, French- and Latin-speaking Templar knight en route to the Crusades, who believed that the world was flat, who thought that God determined everyone's fate, who believed that the whole point of marriage was to find someone to provide sons to carry on the family name and to supply some adjacent fields to join with your own farm to make a better estate, and who earnestly believed that by kissing the rosary beads he could get three days relief for his soul from Purgatory, then how could my present incarnation, in which everything about me is entirely different, actually 'be' a 'reincarnation' of that entirely different person, rather than the reincarnation of someone, anyone else, or of no one at all? The whole idea is just too silly if you don't believe in some distilled essence of the person, such as a soul, to establish a bridge of identity between these entirely distinct persons.

[lemur]

The 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz once remarked that it would be useless to him if a magician were to make him the Emperor of China, since he would no longer be himself in any meaningful sense if he were to undergo such a massive transformation. So all that would really happen in such a case would be that Leibniz would cease to exist and in his place a new person, now the Emperor of China, would appear.

 

The whole idea of reincarnation covertly depends on the assumption that there is some underlying platform of all the positive predicates that constitute you, and that this bare, underlying platform is also somehow still significantly you, even though it has none of your characteristics, which it merely underlies and supports. It is then this platform which makes the new individual -- who will be entirely different from you in all positive and measurable features -- still somehow meaningfully 'you,' even though he is not like you. This is of course absurd, as the whole idea of reincarnation is.

This is a good point but my response to it carries over into the more religious/social ideas of the issue of karma in reincarnation, which basically says that even if you were reincarnated as a completely different person with no memory or measurable continuity with your former incarnation, you would still be drawn to karmic debts incurred in prior lifetimes. However, since mooeypoo doesn't want this thread to address religious (or social?) issues, that topic would have to be re-started in another section I guess.

 

As for the physical/material side of it, just because your re-incarnation would not resemble you in any way, does that mean that nothing of you transferred into him/her? Even if you insist that there is no scientific basis for legitimizing karmic patterns resulting in "debts" and "entitlements" that follow souls through multiple lifetimes, there might still be some other aspect of a living body that transcends and re-implants in a gestating fetus. Granted, it seems implausible but then parameters for a relevant theoretical basis haven't even been established.

 

 

edit: consider, for example, if you looked at subjectivity/personality/cognition as consisting of fragments of software like a particular computer. So when your computer breaks down and you get a new one, you reinstall much of the same software that you had on your old computer before it broke. You pull up the same webpages on your browser, etc. In many senses, the new computer is a "reincarnation" of the old computer, just because it emerges within a context with a certain amount of data/software continuity.

Edited April 22, 2011 by lemur

[random]

The trouble with science is if somthing cannot be proved or disproved it is rejected, ignored or labelled impossible. Then someone comes along and proves and everyone jumps on board as having known it all along. Scientists are the most egotistical self centered and IGNORANT!!!! people I know. Many tend to spend too much time proving their intellectual superiority and broadcasting firm scientific beliefs which stifles creativity In my opinion many scientists and scientific beliefs do more harm than good. We have perpetual motion, we have free energy, we have many things that are supposedly impossible but some loud mouth scientist comes along and say's NAY and it's dead in the water.

 

There is so much we don't understand about life, death, everything !!!! but it is a constant up hill battle to convey theories and have them accepted or tested because of the ignorance of the scientific community. It's everywhere!!!! herbal remedies that work,,,,,get rejected, Multiple sclerosis cures, cancer treatment's / cures even HIV preventative medicines all get shot down because science considers it impossible. Even though they have been used successfully for thousands of years.

 

That's just the hippie coming out in me so suck it up anyone who has had a near death experience oor communication with deceased or precognition knows somthing bigger than us exists but science will say NAY I think we all are reincarnated over and over which helps explain instinctual intelligence but ain't no scientist gonna agree to somthing they can't explain.

[lemur]

That's just the hippie coming out in me so suck it up anyone who has had a near death experience oor communication with deceased or precognition knows somthing bigger than us exists but science will say NAY I think we all are reincarnated over and over which helps explain instinctual intelligence but ain't no scientist gonna agree to somthing they can't explain.

Actually, the explanatory value of science gets debated in this forum quite a bit. Many people think science suffices to predict accurate outcomes. Still, I think everyone would agree that science should not accept anything without skepticism, let alone without any explanation at all. I mean, do you think about what you're saying? You're basically saying that science is bad because scientists won't mindless accept whatever they're told on an instinctual level. What would be science about it if they did that? If nothing else, I think the purpose of science is to dissect the mechanics of processes to know how they work. If reincarnation is a possibility, there should be an explanation for how. If you're more concerned with the subjective effects it has on people to believe in reincarnation and act on their belief in their daily lives (e.g. in how they treat others), I think that discussion should be posted in philosophy or religion.

[michel123456]

Population of Human Kind is growing constantly. So if we consider reincarnation, we must admit that a few amount of souls are transmitted to more people, that after dying you will be reincarnated in 1,2 bodies (if it happens quickly). The other scenario would be that there are not enough souls at disposal and that from time to time a desesperate child is born with a soul made from scratch.

 

That's me.

[lemur]

Population of Human Kind is growing constantly. So if we consider reincarnation, we must admit that a few amount of souls are transmitted to more people, that after dying you will be reincarnated in 1,2 bodies (if it happens quickly). The other scenario would be that there are not enough souls at disposal and that from time to time a desesperate child is born with a soul made from scratch.

 

That's me.

Some people think that all living things have souls and souls can be reincarnated between organisms of different species.

 

edit: maybe that would correlate with the notion that as human population grows, natural habitats and biodiversity decrease.

Edited April 22, 2011 by lemur

[Moontanman]

Aren't there examples of children who describe their past lives in detail?

 

 

Bubble bubble toil and trouble, lol

[Marat]

There was a case reported of a modern woman who began speaking a long-extinct form of Icelandic, which was known only to a few linguists. But detailed investigation of her life showed that she had at one time very briefly seen material discussing this ancient language, so the strange phenomenon was regarded as debunked. However, her ability to recreate in such detail many years later, and without being aware of having seen it before, something which she had only very briefly seen is itself remarkable, though not mystical.

 

I have seen an estimate that 60 billion humans have lived and died before the present generation of humans, so if there is reincarnation, it is not guaranteed to everyone, or at least not to everyone very soon after death. A few people may have to settle for being reincarnated as tuberculosis bacilli or toads.

 

If there were some sort of karmic punishing of a future person X for things which person Y had done a few hundred years before, then that punishment would simply be unfair and would in no sense be a just retribution, since X would know nothing of the reasons for the punishment in Y's life. It would make no more moral sense than A murdering B and a volcano then killing C. The punishment wouldn't even really meet the definition of karma. In New York it used to be illegal, as it was in many other common law jurisdictions, to execute anyone who was not sane at the time of his execution, on the grounds that if you didn't know why you were being punished, the punishment would be cruel and unfair. So the same principle seems to apply to karmic retribution for person X who carries some present, mystical link constituting a sort of metaphysical 'sameness' with the guilty Y of previous centuries, but who has no awareness of that link, its meaning, or its association with his own identity.

[lemur]

The punishment wouldn't even really meet the definition of karma. In New York it used to be illegal, as it was in many other common law jurisdictions, to execute anyone who was not sane at the time of his execution, on the grounds that if you didn't know why you were being punished, the punishment would be cruel and unfair. So the same principle seems to apply to karmic retribution for person X who carries some present, mystical link constituting a sort of metaphysical 'sameness' with the guilty Y of previous centuries, but who has no awareness of that link, its meaning, or its association with his own identity.

I think the ideology of karma is designed to give people the sense that suffering is indeed fair because it has been earned by deeds in past lives, and the repayments of its debts will be rewarded by transcendence of suffering in the future.

[michel123456]

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Moderator Note

Religious questions go to the religion thread. There's a reason we limit post-count there, I know it can seem like a bureacracy, but it isn't. We're a science forum, our focus is science, and the religion forum is secondary. Please don't try to circumvent the rules we've created by posting a religious debate anywhere outside the religion forums.

 

That's the reason why Yoseph disappeared from this thread. You shut down his mouth.

 

It is not a "bureaucracy", it is totally unfair IMHO.

 

Even the worst murderer has the right to express himself.

 

"Please don't try to circumvent the rules we've created" you must be kidding. Who ever told you people out of here agree with your rules. They don't.

[Marat]

Reasoning by analogy and extension from it gives us very good grounds for saying that consciousness is entirely tied to its material foundation in the nervous system of the human body. If you suffer a small injury to the physical basis of your consciousness you will become temporarily unconsciousness and experience nothing for a while. If you suffer a larger injury to this physical basis yoy may not only become unconscious for a while, but also wake up with permanent neurological deficits which forever more make you less conscious than you used to be. If you suffer a very much larger injury to the material basis of awareness you may well enter a permanent state of unconsciousness in a persistent vegetative state. Finally, if your head is exploded in some accident and you suffer the ultimate undermining of the physical basis of consciousness, then there will be no positive evidence that you are conscious -- which seems logical, since in all the previous stages, the greater the insult to the physical basis of consciousness, the more your consciousness was reduced.

 

So the most natural inference from this continuum is that the ultimate injury to the physical basis of consciousness, i.e., death, will also mean the ultimate suppression of consciousness, i.e., utter nothingness. So we have no reason to posit the existence of a soul or any awareness that persists beyond the physical support of awareness, and so there is no persisting platform of consciousness beyond the physical body to support the connection between a dead person and one now alive, as reincarnation requires.

[mooeypoo]

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Moderator Note

Initially, I moved this thread to the Religion forum because of the original post and the semi-spiritual/semi-philosophical debate that seemed to be building up. I was notified, however, that it might not be that,and that the debate is actually concentrating on a science focus.

After a small deliberation, we decided that you're right. I'm moving this thread back to speculation to allow everyone fair chance to participate in the discussion as long as it remains with a scientific focus and avoids going into any religion or spiritual content.

Thread moved BACK to the speculation forum.

"Please don't try to circumvent the rules we've created" you must be kidding. Who ever told you people out of here agree with your rules. They don't.

With due respect, michel, the original post is on the very borderline of religion, and the religion thread is closed to posters with certain amount of posts.

The rules are there for a reason, and they're not up for debate. But you are always welcome to do what others did, click the "report" button, and make your case.

As you can see, we're listening.

[michel123456]

Hm. yes. But now that this thread is under the religion forum, the OP has no ability to respond. Something is going wrong IMHO.

 

I completely disagree with the OP, but with all my respect, I find the situation creepy. I am out of this thread.

[Yoseph]

The reason why I didn't reply was actually because I just wanted to read what other peoples thoughts, I'm not a great debater and would probably sound naive.

 

If you just think that you have an Infinite amount of time to be reincarnated, how can your conciousness not come about again? In whatever form it may be, maybe in some bizarre universe completely different from ours. Surely anything can happen in an infinite amount of time? Or is that changing the question to "is there an infinite amount of time?"...