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Inductive Argument for the Afterlife

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Inductive Argument for the Afterlife
npage85
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Posted 10/29/09 - 11:07 PM:
Subject: Inductive Argument for the Afterlife 		quote post
#1
I would like your input on this argument. I am not posting this to get into some heated debate with flaming all about... I would just like to have a reasonable discussion, and see where it leads. smiling face


Definitions of terms:

X: Some person (you, for example).

X's consciousness: the collection of all of X's presently occurring subjective experiences.

to imagine Y: to create a mental representation of Y with at least some degree of fidelity.

event: transition between two states of affairs, with all encompassed as one event.

The event "X's consciousness ceasing to exist:"
State one: X's consciousness exists...
State two: X's consciousness doesn't exist...

An event is impossible to imagine happening if, and only if, the second state of affairs in the event is impossible to imagine.


Now for the argument:

1. For all events X, if X is impossible to imagine happening, then X is impossible to occur.
2. It is impossible to imagine the event "your consciousness ceasing to exist."
3. Therefore, it is impossible for your consciousness to cease to exist.

This argument is valid... now to demonstrate the truthfulness of the premises.



Since this is an inductive argument, premise 1 doesn't need to be shown true, it only needs to be shown true in many cases and never shown false. So, it wouldn't be "sound," it would be "cogent."

So how do I demonstrate that premise 1 is true in many cases? Well, I point to all those events that contain logical contradictions in their second states.

For instance:

The event "a circle-square comes into existence:
State one: a circle-square does not exist.
State two: a circle-square does exist.

Since it is logically impossible for a "circle that is a square at the same time in the same sense" to exist anywhere (including the imagination), then it therefore follows that the event itself is impossible to imagine happening *and* impossible to happen (it therefore satisfies both parts of the if/then of premise 1, and renders it true).

There is *one* case where the first premise evaluates to true. There are very many, if not a near-infinite amount, of these examples.

Therefore, premise 1 has a very good deal of true cases.

I would also say that no false cases for the first premise have ever been shown.

Thus, the first premise satisfies the requirements for a cogent inductive argument. That then means that the conclusion is most likely true (if the second premise is true as well), as that is the necessary result of an inductive argument being cogent.



Now all we must do is demonstrate that the second premise is true.

So how does one go about showing the event "your consciousness ceasing to exist" is impossible to imagine happening?

Well, we must only need to show that the second state of affairs is impossible to imagine (by the definition earlier of "impossible to imagine an event happening").

To do this, we must not only show that it is impossible for *you* to imagine your consciousness not existing, but we must also show that it is impossible for *everyone* else to imagine it as well... if we can do that, we would then have shown that it is *impossible* to imagine.



Here's the argument for it being impossible for *you*:

1. To imagine one's consciousness not existing, one must imagine all their subjective experiences not existing.
2. To imagine, one has some subjective experiences still that are *about* the imagining.
3. Therefore, it is impossible for one to imagine one's consciousness not existing.



Here's the argument for it being impossible for *other* beings besides you:

1. Consciousness is a subjective thing.
2. In order to know anything about a subjective thing, you must be the subject of that subjective thing.
3. You are not the subject of my consciousness.
4. Therefore, you can not know anything about my consciousness.

5. In order to imagine anything about an object, one must know what that object is.
6. (fourth premise... a conclusion... goes here) You can not know anything about my consciousness.
7. Therefore, you can not imagine anything about my consciousness.
8. Therefore, you can not imagine my consciousness not existing.


The reason you must know something about what you are imagining is because remember, I defined "to imagine" as "creating a mental representation with some degree of fidelity." Therefore, that "some degree of fidelity" that you are including in your mental representation must be known by you.

For instance:

If you said that you could imagine my consciousness not existing by simply imagining my body never being born... that mental representation contains no degree of fidelity about my subjective experiences. Thus, you wouldn't actually be imagining my consciousness not existing.

So, the *second* premise of the original is therefore true.


So, since the first premise is true in many cases and never shown false, the second premise is true, and the argument itself is valid, that means that (as inductive arguments go) there is a high probability that the conclusion is right (it is a cogent inductive argument).

Therefore, it is likely that your consciousness will never cease to exist.
mric
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Posted 10/29/09 - 11:20 PM:
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#2
Imagining isn't the process of making a faithful representation. People's internal representational abilities are very limited. Nobody can imagine a clock ticking for a thousand years (imagining it would take a thousand years), but that doesn't make thousand-year clocks impossible. Nobody can imagine every sunrise since the world began, but that doesn't mean the sun didn't come up. Nobody can imagine what it really felt like to be a slave under Tutankhamun, but that doesn't mean he had no slaves (or they had no feelings!).

We can imagine that certain things are true, which is a much less challenging test. Imagining what it feels like for something to be true is not a reasonable one.
npage85
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Posted 10/29/09 - 11:36 PM:
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#3
@mric:

Most of what you have said is true, and I agree with it.

However, I don't see how it relates to the argument. For one, I am not limiting "impossible to imagine" to humans.

So, theoretically, "imagining a clock ticking for a thousand years" hasn't been shown to be impossible to imagine. There could be a possible being which could imagine it. smiling face

Also, as to references to the past (e.g. slaves from the past): the slaves under Tutankhamun could imagine it, therefore it is possible to imagine.
mric
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Posted 10/30/09 - 02:24 AM:
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It is impossible to imagine being a rock. There is no possible being that could imagine it (in your sense of imagine). There are rocks.
mric
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Posted 10/30/09 - 02:26 AM:
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#5
By the way, if your argument were good, it would prove eternal conscious existence in both directions in time - i.e. a pre-life as well as an afterlife.
npage85
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Posted 10/30/09 - 03:57 AM:
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#6
mric wrote:
It is impossible to imagine being a rock. There is no possible being that could imagine it (in your sense of imagine). There are rocks.

Well...

If it is impossible "to imagine what it is like to be a rock," then it would then follow (from my argument) that it is not possible for there to "be anything like what it is like to be a rock..." not that "there are no rocks."

wink

mric wrote:

By the way, if your argument were good, it would prove eternal conscious existence in both directions in time - i.e. a pre-life as well as an afterlife.

Well... that is assuming that one of the things that I said... namely
npage85 wrote:

An event is impossible to imagine happening if, and only if, the second state of affairs in the event is impossible to imagine.

is actually false.

If it were true, then "your consciousness coming into being" would not be shown to be impossible to imagine. smiling face
[/quote]
mric
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Posted 10/30/09 - 07:36 AM:
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What do we mean when we say that someone is knocked unconscious? Can you imagine being unconscious in the future? Does that mean that, however hard I hit you with a cosh, you will never become unconscious?
mric
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Posted 10/30/09 - 07:42 AM:
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npage85 wrote:

Well... that is assuming that one of the things that I said... namely:

"An event is impossible to imagine happening if, and only if, the second state of affairs in the event is impossible to imagine."

is actually false.

If it were true, then "your consciousness coming into being" would not be shown to be impossible to imagine. smiling face

I would suggest it is false. You have defined an event as a pair of states linked in some way. Surely either the impossibility of imagining either or both of the events, or the impossibility of imagining the linkage, would be sufficient to make the event itself impossible to imagine. Otherwise you have imaginable things that have unimaginable components.
npage85
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Posted 10/30/09 - 02:31 PM:
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#9
mric wrote:
What do we mean when we say that someone is knocked unconscious? Can you imagine being unconscious in the future? Does that mean that, however hard I hit you with a cosh, you will never become unconscious?

I would state that your consciousness never ceases when you get knocked unconscious, your brain simply loses the ability to retain the memories of your experiences.

mric wrote:

Surely either the impossibility of imagining either or both of the events, or the impossibility of imagining the linkage, would be sufficient to make the event itself impossible to imagine.

The reason I would say that it is true is because I can come up with an event that has, as its first state, something impossible to imagine, yet I can imagine it with perfect fidelity: my consciousness coming into existence.

The reason I *can* imagine my consciousness coming into existence is because I can imagine something akin to waking up from dreamless sleep: a sudden realization that "I am."

Since your consciousness coming into being would be precisely like that, except that it never existed before, you are indeed imagining an "analog" of "your consciousness coming into existence" every time you awake from dreamless sleep.

So, I conclude that events with the first state impossible to imagine and the second state possible to imagine are not always impossible to imagine... hence, my statement in my OP.
jsidelko
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Posted 10/30/09 - 07:58 PM:
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We can't imagine our consciousness coming into existence because we have never had any experience when it didn't exit. From our frame of reference we have always existed even though the distant memories recedes into mental fogginess. We may represent our non-existence as a concept, but never as an experience. When we have surgery, there is never a mental gap between our awake, sleep, and reawakened state. This raises the question. Is there ever a gap between our death and a continuous post-mortum existence still conscious but with a new identity? Is conscious a permanent universal phenomenon that is always available to the right creations? Or is it a specific phenomenon that dies with the termination of the user? Either alternative is plausible.

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