Inductive Argument for the Afterlife: Philosophy Forums

Philosophy Forums » Philosophy of Religion » Inductive Argument for the Afterlife » Inductive Argument for the Afterlife

Inductive Argument for the Afterlife

Page: 1 2 3

Inductive Argument for the Afterlife

Postmodern Beatnik
I Just Work Here

Usergroup: Administrators
Joined: Nov 18, 2005

Total Topics: 17
Total Posts: 2103

Posted 11/01/09 - 08:05 PM:	#21
I don't agree with either of your premises. npage85 wrote: 1. For all events X, if X is impossible to imagine happening, then X is impossible to occur. This premise suffers from a severe lack of clarity. Who needs to be able to imagine X? I understand that the premise is not limited to humans, but are we considering only possible beings here? After all, an impossible being could be posited to understand anything, perhaps even impossible things. But if this is the case, what evidence is there that any possible being is imaginative enough to be able to imagine every possible event? Remember, some people think God is an impossible being; therefore, it would be question begging to introduce Him as a candidate without first proving His existence (preferably to the satisfaction of 180 Proof -- do that, and I'll allow it). npage85 wrote: 2. It is impossible to imagine the event "your consciousness ceasing to exist." No it isn't. I can imagine it quite easily, and have had at least two different sorts of experience that approximate it.
"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided." --Casey Stengel

swstephe
Tenured Poster

Usergroup: Moderators
Joined: Apr 20, 2006
Location: borneo island

Total Topics: 28
Total Posts: 3304

Posted 11/01/09 - 09:50 PM:	#22
npage85 wrote: I would say, in response to your Renaissance objection, that you are forgetting the part in my definition of "to imagine" that specifies the necessity of fidelity. It seems like you anticipated that I would say that, and responded that it is actually impossible to imagine being consciously aware of not existing, but I would respond with "While that is also impossible, I have a deductive argument which concludes with the state of affairs in my argument being impossible to imagine as well." If you require fidelity, then everything would be impossible. I can't image exactly what it will be like tomorrow, even if I rigorously checked all the available predictions. There are too many variables to consider, including the possibility of me getting hit by a bus on the way home tonight. If some agent can predict with certainty a future event, then they are pretty much omniscient. Your omniscient agent may also easily distinguish between things imagined which will occur and will not occur. So your omniscient agent could imagine a consciousness existing in the future and know that this imagining doesn't correspond to reality. But maybe we don't know what an omniscient being's imagination can be like. If you think about it, you get into a recursive argument. We mortals with limited foresight may not be able to imagine something that could actually happen, so we imagine a non-human agent who is capable or not capable of imagining something. But if we can't imagine a non-human agent who is capable of imagining something, does that make it impossible, or is it possible that we are still mortals with limited imagination, and we could imagine a non-human agent who is capable of imagining a non-human agent capable of imagining a state which is impossible ... and so on. Eventually, everything is possible, because we can imagine some agent who can conceive of a chain of agents who are eventually capable of imagining something we can't imagine. I would suggest sticking to what is logically contradictory -- or creating a new system of logic which is based on something other than the "3 laws of logic", (non-contradiction, etc). npage85 wrote: In no way am I doing this. I am saying that if the event is impossible to imagine, then it's impossible to happen. Since it is therefore impossible for your consciousness to cease to exist (and it does exist presently), then we would say that it will forever exist. You see? It's nothing about opposites like you suppose, but it can be in only the context of certain impossible to imagine events. For example... your example of it being impossible to imagine "wet fire" does not mean that one must be wet or on fire... it means that the existence of "wet fire" is impossible (according to my argument). I thought you led to a contradiction, (imagining you exist when you don't, which is actually a kind of opposite to "I think/doubt therefore I am"), and followed that the contradiction meant the opposite was possible ... for all time. If not, then why is the event impossible to imagine? I have the direct experience of my consciousness ceasing to exist whenever I sleep (without dreaming?), or am under general anesthetic, or all the billions of years before I came into existence to demonstrate that it is definitely possible for me to not be conscious and what it means to stop and start into consciousness. While I'm not present to observe the actual state, I know such states exist, therefore my consciousness could stop for one final time and never restart, just like it started for the first time.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

Page: 1 2 3

Sorry, you don't have permission to post. Log in, or register if you haven't yet.