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It's easy to forget that after all, our brain is just a complex chemical machine. Introduce a new chemical into it, and everything about you can change. There i
by wintorez 3y ago
It's easy to forget that after all, our brain is just a complex chemical machine. Introduce a new chemical into it, and everything about you can change. There is no abstract "self" inside. Our mind is just a function of our brain.
- monero-xmr 3y agoUnless you believe as I do that a metaphysical soul inhabits your body, there is life after death, and your memory continues on after death.
- naikrovek 3y agoseems unlikely to me. it makes much more sense to me that how and why we behave as we do is a function of the mechanisms in our brains and bodies.
- wintorez 3y agoI used to believe that completely, until I got to experience my grandmother's Alzheimer's and Dementia. Nothing disproves the idea of a ever-lasting, metaphysical soul, like seeing it crumble before your eyes as various parts of brain decay and shut down. I really hope that you never experience it yourself, and I respect your beliefs, but I'm convinced beyond a doubt that there is nothing in there that is not chemical.
- monero-xmr 3y agoYes I have had elderly relatives fall apart. But you can certainly appreciate that I have thought about all of the big questions - bad things happening to good people, injustice, our body and mind decaying - and it doesn’t shake my faith.
- stouset 3y agoI for one can certainly appreciate that faith often seems to be unshakeable in the face of contradictory evidence. When someone’s metaphysical soul passes on, what snapshot in time are someone’s memories plucked from their Alzheimer’s-riddled brain?
- monero-xmr 3y agoYour soul isn’t a snapshot in time. Aborted fetuses or mentally challenged people also have souls and go to the afterlife. It’s beyond human comprehension but I have faith we leave this world behind and go beyond once we perish.
- bundie 3y agoLmao
- Apocryphon 3y agoThis isn’t Reddit.
- DropInIn 3y agoAka faith is delusion used to avoid dealing with reality.... But you worded it in a way that placates the insanity and undermines any value of discourse. We don't get to Truth by saying "Whatever you feel like believing is fine"....
- kyriakos 3y agoEven though I don't believe in the metaphysical, one could argue that the brain is just a tool helping the soul manifest itself physically and a broken brain is just bad at doing that.
- krapp 3y agoIn the absence of actual evidence, one could argue literally anything.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoThought experiment: Take a remote control car. Damage the radio receiver or the chips that translate its signals into signals to the motors. Observe that this creates degraded performance (perhaps the car can only turn left now, not right). Does this disprove the idea that something operated the car other than those chips?
- wintorez 3y agoWhere is the interface between the soul and the brain? How do they communicate? Why and how the chemical changes in the brain changes the character and psyche of a person if it comes from the incorruptible soul?
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI don't know. OTOH materialism doesn't have an explanation for consciousness so I can live with that.
- DropInIn 3y agoIt absolutely does, it's just not as detailed as we have for how computers work.... Consciousness is in many ways an illusion, manifested as a result of complex chemical processes passed on from our predecessors and developed over the course of billions of years.... Just because you perceive yourself as having free will does not mean you actually do... See the recent post on this site about people getting convinced they committed a crime they not only were innocent of but had never even happened at all....
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI don't think that's true; while it's obviously true that many mental processes can probably be explained away, something sits at the center of the mind that perceives things, and claiming that said awareness is a material or emergent property is a claim you can make, but it's a completely unsubstantiated one.
- trane_project 3y agoNeither life after death nor memories require the existence of an inherent self (see the Buddhism belief in karma, rebirth, and past-life recollection which coexist happily with the doctrine of no-self). But you're right in that they depend on the mind being primary over the body.
- afiori 3y agoBrain injuries proove that the brain is necessary to the mind at least as much as bones and muscles are necessary to movement. This does not prove the non existence of an immortal soul† but proves that any effect metaphysical entities have on our observable (both inner and outer) behavior is heavily mediated by neurons. † I mean this literally as I am not sure how to conceptualize the concept of existence for metaphysical entities
- wintorez 3y agoAlso, even if the metaphysical soul existed, they needed to interface with the physical entities somehow. In other word, if the soul is in control of the brain, and thus requires some form of communication with the brain, which enters into the realm of physics.
- marak830 3y agoWell we can all believe anything we want, but that doesn't change reality. We are meat meacha controlled by pudding with rudimentary intelligence. This brings us great joy, especially when raising mini-mechs, but at the end of the day, we all end up rotting in the ground.
- bananabiscuit 3y agoDoesn’t your own lived experience cause any doubts that we are just meat automaton? Sure to an outside observer we can be just a pile of molecular reactions responding to outside stimulus, but doesn’t that fall short of explaining your own consciousness that you are experiencing?
- solarmist 3y agoSure. But so does gravity makes thinks fall to the ground. Just because you can explain things simply doesn’t mean it’s a complete description. “Simple” mechanisms give rise to complex behaviors.
- aleksiy123 3y agoWhat exactly about your experience shows that there is more to your consciousness than the physical?
- solarmist 3y agoI love this. Pudding.
- drewcoo 3y agoNo. If I believed as you do, it would still be easy to forget that the brain is just a complex chemical machine. Easier, probably.
- sheepdestroyer 3y agoThat seems extremely unlikely. But anyway, shouldn't it be considered good form to keep random unfalsifiable beliefs to oneself since they can't be part of a conversation on reality?
- DropInIn 3y agoThat's just a delusion people hold on to in order to avoid the existential crisis, dread and depression that often accompanies acceptance of the fact there's nothing "after". It's literally just magical thinking, no different than believing you were created by the spaghetti Monster...