Possible to contact the dead using DMT?

[DwayneHoover]

Thanks VERY much for the link to Kevin O'Regan's paper, and all the other material at the oreagan.pdf page, invert... I'll definitely check it out, LOTS of fascinating material there!

But I think you are wrong that it is truly and fully possible to share internal subjective sensations in any meaningful way. No matter what you do or say, it is utterly impossible to explain to someone who has been totally color blind since birth what the EXPERIENCE of any color is "LIKE". Which leads to the entire question of, "what exactly ARE these internal conscious experiences we have?"

I agree with where Chalmers seems to land: what we call "subjective consciousness" is some fundamental & irreducible property of our universe, like charge/mass/time/etc. that we must take as a given and cannot really 'pick apart' in any meaningful way. I think that our brains evolved to take advantage of this basic property of reality as the most powerful available aid to survival of the organism and genome, just as they evolved eyes to take advantage of the existence of light, and other features of our organisms to take advantage of air-vibrations, gravity, energy, leverage, etc... DNA did not INVENT any of these things, but it WAS powerful enough to be able to eventually devise ways to USE them. I think it must be the same with "subjective consciousness." It seems presumptuous and maybe even preposterous to assume that the only answer is that DNA "invented" consciousness by evolving neural structures/processes that conjure it up out of nothingness. Hence the attempt to "explain" what is "really is" by looking at details of brain function is a fool's chase for a chimera that does not exist... hence the "Mysterian" position.

The classic question of how you explain the nature of the perception of a color, or any internal subjective experience, remains. O'Regan's paper still just addresses structuralist topics... it really says nothing to the basic question "WHY/HOW DOES IT 'FEEL LIKE' ANYTHING TO BE A BRAIN" In other words, in what ontological reality does our subjective experience reside.

To say it is some kind of illusion and and is not really real, is essentially cancelling yourself out of the discussion is it not? That is like saying "I" am an imaginary illusory construct and I do not believe my own subjective experiences actually have any true existence in the universe... only matter and physical processes are real, and therefore 'I' am not" Huh? This is totally self contradictory is seems to me like it is just trying to brush this deep, centuries old issue under the carpet and get people to stop talking about it, which, like Chalmers, I just cannot accept as a valid contribution.

Isn't the position that ONLY matter and physical processes are "real", and the subjective experiences are somehow less "real" or "true", as much a matter of some kind of faith as religion?

 

[invert]

I don't think subjective experiences are less real or true than matter and physical processes. I think they are physical processes of matter. Thus far, that seems the reasonable conclusion to draw from the study of psychology: things that seemed mysterious and inexplicable and surely nothing to do with the 'mere' behaviour of matter are slowly but surely being revealed to be precisely that (and there's nothing 'mere' about the complex behaviour of highly organized matter!). Just because there are aspects of human experience not yet effectively described by the science of psychology doesn't mean that we need to invent a new type of non-matter to explain them, nor does it mean that we must declare them inherently mysterious. That's just a cop-out.

I don't believe, for example, that we don't have souls. Of course we do. Each attribute that people have ascribed to what they call 'soul' over the centuries (except for the attributes that weren't descriptions but aspirations, such as the claim that the soul must be immortal or immaterial) is a real and genuine attribute of something which we all recognize as something we have. I'd argue that psychology is the study of that thing which we call 'soul', and that that thing is another word for 'what our brains do'.

And the fact that people have pondered a question for a long time doesn't make that question meaningful.

(ETA: Didn't theologians once seriously ponder how many angels could dance on the head of a pin? Or, if that's a myth, didn't they ponder equally absurd and meaningless things? And these were great, intelligent people. But people working within a structure of thought and language that facilitated the generation of meaningless questions.)

To think that it does is to put language on a pedestal it doesn't deserve, in my view. Language is an imperfect, though functional, tool. One may defend a question against an accusation of meaninglessness, of course; but mere historical longevity is not a defence worth countering, not least because part of the reason for its longevity may well be people reasoning like you reason, that there must be something in this question since so many people have asked it already. :D

I agree with where Chalmers seems to land: what we call "subjective consciousness" is some fundamental & irreducible property of our universe, like charge/mass/time/etc. that we must take as a given and cannot really 'pick apart' in any meaningful way. I think that our brains evolved to take advantage of this basic property of reality as the most powerful available aid to survival of the organism and genome, just as they evolved eyes to take advantage of the existence of light, and other features of our organisms to take advantage of air-vibrations, gravity, energy, leverage, etc... DNA did not INVENT any of these things, but it WAS powerful enough to be able to eventually devise ways to USE them. I think it must be the same with "subjective consciousness." It seems presumptuous and maybe even preposterous to assume that the only answer is that DNA "invented" consciousness by evolving neural structures/processes that conjure it up out of nothingness. Hence the attempt to "explain" what is "really is" by looking at details of brain function is a fool's chase for a chimera that does not exist... hence the "Mysterian" position.

Okay. I think I get roughly what you (with Chalmers) are claiming here, and it sounds familiar from The Conscious Mind, though it's been a while since I read that. But, if you don't mind, can you expand on this a bit? First, what do you actually mean by "subjective consciousness"? What thing or process are you talking about here? (I ask because 'consciousness' is a notoriously multi-meaninged word. ) Second, why do you think this thing or process cannot have emerged from evolution and must be some fundamental property of the universe? You've just asserted that you do, here; not given any justification.

ETA: You sort of rhetorically imply an argument with the analogy to eyes. So are you suggesting that light is to consciousness as eyes are to some property of the organism that uses or experiences consciousness? If so, I request further unpacking of this intriguing idea. You are implicitly positing that what one might loosely call consciousness is actually two things: a fundamental property of the universe (the 'light' in this analogy) and an evolved capacity of the organism (the 'eye' in this analogy). If this is right, please explain further what each of these things might be.

 

[invert]

But I think you are wrong that it is truly and fully possible to share internal subjective sensations in any meaningful way.

Hmm, that's a rather hedged claim. No, language cannot truly and fully convey anything. Language is an effective but flawed tool by which one organism can alter the contents and behaviour of another organism's brain, including conveying to the (spoken to) organism approximate representations of those contents of the (speaking) organism's brain that are accessible to the bits of that brain that control language use.

Those bits of the brain (and hence of mental experience) that are not accessible to the bits of the brain that control language use can be studied in other ways. Psychology doesn't rely on verbal report alone to study human experience. There are plenty of 'clever scientific tests' (to quote an earlier post) that can help us access (and test explanations for) other aspects of human mental experience.

No matter what you do or say, it is utterly impossible to explain to someone who has been totally color blind since birth what the EXPERIENCE of any color is "LIKE".

Well... that's debatable. I suspect sensory substitution might give them a pretty good idea. At any rate, if O'Regan's right about sensory-motor contingencies being key to what an experience 'is like' (and that's a big 'if', I grant, [I'm by no means sold on O'Regan's ideas] but it's one of many possibilities), a device that converts visual information into appropriately transformed auditory (say) information could give a blind person a very good idea of what colour is like. Alternatively, one could say to them "You know how the note 'A' sounds different to the note 'B', regardless of which octave it's in? It's like that, but with photons and eyes."

But anyway, I'm not sure why this argument (that one can't explain colour to a blind person) has any bearing on the wider issue we're discussing?

 

[DwayneHoover]

Give me a little time to respond more fully ("real life" errands to take care of!)... but as a quick response:

Chalmers actually goes into considerable detail about this I believe... but by "subjective consciousness" the classical example is best... what is "REDNESS", inside your mind, as YOU EXPERIENCE IT? Or rhe sensation, as you feel it, of touch?

As a great starting point, see the Wikipedia page on "Qualia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Some argue that there really is no such thing, but it seems to me that is totally turning the mountain on its head,or putting the cart before the horse... really, ALL ANY OF US REALLY "KNOW" IS OUR OWN EXPERIENCE... ALL OF REALITY COULD THEORETICALLY BE OUR DREAM, RIGHT? (like in "The Matrix"). Over time, we developed language, mathematics, science etc. But it ALL began with individual people having internal subjective perceptions of an "I" that was "experiencing" a world. Chalmers argues, and I agree, that denials of the reality or "real" existence of Qualia are totally insubstantial and an attempt to wish away the question. You don't seem to be doing that, but ALOT of the physicalist philosophers/scientists are, if you poke around I'm sure you'll find them, as well as rebuttals. I think our private internal flow of subjective feelings/impressions DO need understanding and explanation, and, in fact, are THE BEGINNING, the origin point, of all logic, reason, science, etc. To "explain away" our internal individual private personal subjective sensation of experience is absurd, IMO.

 

[invert]

Give me a little time to respond more fully ("real life" errands to take care of!)... but as a quick response:

Likewise, forgive the brevity of this... I don't have the time to devote appropriate energies to this interesting discussion.

Chalmers actually goes into considerable detail about this I believe... but by "subjective consciousness" the classical example is best... what is "REDNESS", inside your mind, as YOU EXPERIENCE IT? Or rhe sensation, as you feel it, of touch?

As a great starting point, see the Wikipedia page on "Qualia"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Oh, yes, I've read a lot on qualia, though not recently. So if that's what you mean by subjective consciousness, I still really don't grasp (and didn't when I read The Conscious Mind, either) why that must be something special and additional to matter and energy (still less why it should be a property of the universe that existed before complex life-like structures did! That really does seem preposterous to me.), rather than a property of highly organized matter (like all other aspects of our experience are). And if you side with Chalmers on this, then you are talking about a sort of consciousness that has absolutely no impact on anything. That's what Chalmers says about his 'consciousness'. He claims (in The Conscious Mind) that one could have a universe devoid of consciousness, and it would be *indistinguishable* from 'ours' (since he thinks ours has consciousness): he even goes so far as to imagine that there would be a Zombie!Chalmers in this 'other' universe, saying exactly the same thing he's saying, and meaning it, and feeling it, and believing that it had consciousness. If that's right, his 'consciousness' does *nothing* to explain the so-called hard problem.

Some argue that there really is no such thing, but it seems to me that is totally turning the mountain on its head,or putting the cart before the horse... really, ALL ANY OF US REALLY "KNOW" IS OUR OWN EXPERIENCE... ALL OF REALITY COULD THEORETICALLY BE OUR DREAM, RIGHT? (like in "The Matrix"). Over time, we developed language, mathematics, science etc. But it ALL began with individual people having internal subjective perceptions of an "I" that was "experiencing" a world. Chalmers argues, and I agree, that denials of the reality or "real" existence of Qualia are totally insubstantial and an attempt to wish away the question. You don't seem to be doing that, but ALOT of the physicalist philosophers/scientists are, if you poke around I'm sure you'll find them, as well as rebuttals. I think our private internal flow of subjective feelings/impressions DO need understanding and explanation, and, in fact, are THE BEGINNING, the origin point, of all logic, reason, science, etc. To "explain away" our internal individual private personal subjective sensation of experience is absurd, IMO.

Indeed, as you acknowledge, neither I nor O'Regan deny the existence of qualia. O'Regan offers an explanation of them (not an 'explaining away'). I've no idea if his explanation is right, but I see no reason to expect them to be outwith the scientific study of human experience, nor has anyone presented a persuasive argument that they must be.

ETA: Incidentally, when I first read The Conscious Mind, I was going through a period when I was desperately seeking philosophical justifications for my intuition that qualia were something special and that we had libertarian free will etc. The Conscious Mind was the final straw (or one of the final straws) that led me to suspect I was never going to find arguments that would convince me that my intuitions were right. Even though it purported to support my (then) intuitions, the absurdity and - in the end - inefficacy ('cos what's the point of a consciousness that has no effect on the world, when - as I think you agree - our consciousness very much does impact on our experience and, though that, on the world?) of its arguments had the opposite effect.

 

[DwayneHoover]

But anyway, I'm not sure why this argument (that one can't explain colour to a blind person) has any bearing on the wider issue we're discussing?

I'm not quite sure what that is any more, but it sure is interesting. Originally I brought up all this as I say above as a way of refuting the idea that "communicating with the dead" is a-priori nonsensical, saying, "well we really dont really know what our 'selves' and 'conscious beings' actually are"

Is there a topic area at bluelight where this more detailed discussion of philosophy belongs? Though I'm fine with it remaining here if MODS are - I think it is of GREAT interest to anyone who has had an ego-destroying psychedelic experience, and been astonished to discover that there still seemed to be some sort of broader more pervasive "consciousness" happening that was itself the "true experiencer" of everything else... The Watcher, or "The Big Eye" or whatever you'd like to call it.

 

[invert]

Personally, I agree: I think it falls within the broad remit of PD of dealing with both psychedelics and psychedelic culture. There are few things more trippy nor more cultural than philosophy of mind. But yeah, of course, if the mods suggest we take this elsewhere, off we go.

ETA: Ah, that (ego-destruction) reminds me, somewhat tangentially, of a strong 2C-C experience, in which, well, I don't know whether it was ego-destruction, I'm not sure I know what that means ('ego' is a Freudian concept and has little bearing on how the human brain actually works, as far as I'm aware), but my senses broke down and I was aware of myself and of the universe as waves, nothing but waves.

I tried to describe this experience in a trip report here:

String Theory

The awareness of vibration, and of myself as a source of vibration, extended and universalized during this trip beyond what I'd ever experienced on DiPT. For a while, my perception had broken down to the extent that it was as if I had just one sense. I'm not sure what to call this sense, but the actually-existing-sensory-system it most resembles is vibroception, since essentially I was sensing every modality equally as vibrations (the vibrations of air in sound, the vibrations of light in colour, the vibrations of my motor system, etc). Cognitively, this went beyond what I could sense into an awareness of absolutely everything as just vibrations of different frequencies, my body, the universe, all just symphonies of waves. Vibrations vibrating vibrations at other vibrations.

Two objective (I think) bodily rhythms formed part of this focus on vibrations: motor tremors and breathing. The motor tremors I'd found disquieting on my previous 2C-C trip were transformed into a subjective awareness of the objective fact of the universality of vibration. (ETA: I have been aware of this on higher doses of 2C-E too, I recall now.)

Must do a decent dose of 2C-C again soon.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Indeed, as you acknowledge, neither I nor O'Regan deny the existence of qualia. O'Regan offers an explanation of them (not an 'explaining away'). I've no idea if his explanation is right, but I see no reason to expect them to be outwith the scientific study of human experience, nor has anyone presented a persuasive argument that they must be.

That may well be, and I think Chalmers is in total agreement with that. Which may be to say that the Mysterians are on the wrong track, which I THINK was your original reason for posting. I just pointed them out to say, well, here's an approach I'd not considered... perhaps it has merit, perhaps not.

I guess it has to do with the very meta-metaphysical question "what types of things are knowable and what are not?"

That's getting a little to deep (or is it lofty? :D ) for me at the moment.... I'm getting a low-blood sugar headache from all this cogitation.... I need some lunch!

 

[invert]

That may well be, and I think Chalmers is in total agreement with that. Which may be to say that the Mysterians are on the wrong track, which I THINK was your original reason for posting. I just pointed them out to say, well, here's an approach I'd not considered... perhaps it has merit, perhaps not.

Yes, I remember now... Chalmers (in his role as part of the triumvirate of the Consciousness Institute - is he still there?) was very much advocating a scientific bridging between conscious experience and their neural correlates. I'd forgotten that...

He might have used the word 'neurophenomenology', iirc.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Not sure if he's still there or where hes at right now. Anyway, here the two of us are, finally standing side-by-side on the same little piece of a planet floating in the middle of ??? That was a fun little hike, no?

So, GREAT to meet you, invert... we seem to work well together...hope to see you around and chat alot more in the future! Perhaps we ought to start a web-broadcast together and become a sort of Siskel & Ebert of Psychedelic Mind Philosophy on the Web, HAHA!

 

[invert]

Not sure if he's still there or where hes at right now.

*googles* Ah, so it looks like he's no longer at Centre for Consciousness Studies, Arizona, but that he is at Arizona Uni and is also at the Australian Centre for Consciousness: http://consc.net/chalmers/

Anyway, here the two of us are, finally standing side-by-side on the same little piece of a planet floating in the middle of ??? That was a fun little hike, no?

So, GREAT to meet you, invert... we seem to work well together...hope to see you around and chat alot more in the future!

Likewise, indeed! *tries to shake you by the hand* I think we may currently have rather radically different perspectives (I've been holding back slightly in this discussion, though without being deceptive I hope, on the extent of my deterministic and materialistic tendencies; partly so as to focus on our common ground, in an attempt to maximize fruitfulness of what became apparent was an interesting discussion), but I think we share a fascination with certain wonders of the mind (as, I guess, must many in this forum) and a keenness to understand them, and - to the extent that I'm correctly judging your perspective - I think I have had a similar perspective before, and thus can see to an extent where you're coming from, and indeed can come from there too if I try hard enough (if you see what I mean).

(I'm using 'perspective' in a loose sense. I'm not accusing you (or myself) of being dogmatic. )

All of which was a needlessly lengthy way of saying yeah nice chatting with you.

Perhaps we ought to start a web-broadcast together and become a sort of Siskel & Ebert of Psychedelic Mind Philosophy on the Web, HAHA!

:D I don't know who Siskel and Ebert are. I shall consult google. Outrageous proposition. Who knows, though?! Our divergent perspectives on a shared focus would make for a good double act, potentially...

 

[sheepie]

Well, your worldview may be different, but DMT, LSD, and the other sacraments have always shown me a universe in which our individual ego identities and notions of "free will " are illusions - a universe in which consciousness is never born and never killed but also never actually housed in individual skulls called "Volcano" and "sockpuppet" in the sense we ordinarily perceive.

DMT has shown me that "I" do not exist as I generally perceive "myself" to exist, and therefore that there is no "sockpuppet" soul to linger on after my "death".

So I would say "No - DMT cannot allow you to contact "the dead" but it can help you understand why the question itself is meaningless."

I wish you luck in finding peace re your loved one.

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Once you realize that the only reason you love your loved ones is for genetic reasons (only part of the body, ego). Those become meaningless when your soul exits your body since memories, thoughts are part of the brain not soul (not for sure, but most probably). You'll have no memory of your loved ones once you die, and they will have no memory of you after they die.

it's amusing when people speak with confidence about the nature of our conscious minds / souls / whatever you want to call the thing that is us which perceives, and how it relates to life and death.

The fact is our science has nothing to say on this. It can discuss the biological operation of the body and how sensory information gets into the brain, and it can show how neurons fire in certain ways, but the closer we look the more remote from our experience the results become.

The world is more mysterious than anyone knows.

Cool, I agree. Most people don't understand when I say science is essentially useless when you're trying to find the meaning of life (granted, the sentence is rather ambiguous).

It's like if I created a virtual world with virtual characters... The science these characters could come up are limited to that of the virtual world. They will never be able to contact the "outside", the real world. In the same way, our science can prove the smallest of things in our virtual world, but it can never prove that this world is real to begin with.

We may or may never be able to contact the real world.

 

[Albert King]

fractal light

It's like if I created a virtual world with virtual characters... The science these characters could come up are limited to that of the virtual world. They will never be able to contact the "outside", the real world. In the same way, our science can prove the smallest of things in our virtual world, but it can never prove that this world is real to begin with.

We may or may never be able to contact the real world.

oh yes but now..
Imagine that humans are the characters only we are given these little tools(the plants) that act as little keys to the many doors in the mind(outside world). The dilemma that we face on earth is not whether we CAN open the door(because we can), it's do we want to?? That's the personal choice. Not every person wants to know that one can eat a mushroom and realize the aliens(or unknowns) are not OUT THERE far away in outer space but instead right here, all around you, in your head and outside.. invisible to our normal eyes but now so suddenly so real. It would suddenly melt the thoughts of having a 'grip' or feeling of being in control. People like to be in control, our culture currently preaches this in it's most self fulfilling way. Psychedelics take that illusion away and remove that filter. The implications are shattering to the preconditioned mind. There is still a tremendous fear of these unknowns by many people.


One can not / should not expect to get a feel for DMT or these experiences over the internet or even through the english language; words in general cannot even touch the fractal mechanics of a full blown DMT immersion.

Many do make contact with these other worlds. Unfortunately the human brain and social constructs prohibits the monkey from integrating the experience let alone begin to talk about and discuss it with others. Psychedelics tend to have the effect of flipping the previously assumed perceptions of the user on its head and this is constant theme I have found. Even to go as far to say the human trip may just be an escape of some sort to create reality instead of being crushed by the all knowing reality that is...if that makes sense.


well kids back to business...

If Albert is talking about his night last night on DMT - How his third eye became like that of a self reflecting pin ball... rolling down those mirrored tunnels of his nervous system at high speed. Well shucks then he isn't talking about sports or buying some stupid material shit he doesn't need. bad for business it will fuck up the economy ha ha ha

 

[puckboy]

I'm sorry for your loss. My only breakthrough DMT trip took to me to a place that felt like had always existed, even though it was nowhere I'd ever been, it just 'was'. Like pure conciousness without the attached ego of 'me'. Made me aware of our collective conciousness as humans/animals.

IMO the mind functions like the universe. The first time a baby opens its eyes, is like 'the big bang', the person then grows up adding things to their ego creating that illusion of individuality, from a spiritual perspective. But a little bit of ego is important, it's what drives us to do anything in life and such things are not an illusion in my eyes (while in this life atleast). Then that baby who has grown up now eventually grows old and dies, which would be like the end of this universe (theory), the reverse of 'the big bang'. All matter in the known universe falling back in on itself when the force of 'the big bang' has ended, I believe the force we know as gravity plays a massive role in this.

But it's not something to worry about, universes have been coming into existence and then dieing for, well who knows how long? I believe in the theory of the multiverse. Black holes are like the decomposers on our planet (organisms breaking down dead plants and animals). Black holes are doing the same thing in the universe, cleaning things up so to speak, sucking all matter into a singularity, due to the inescapable gravitational pull.

Sometimes things seem chaotic, but I believe there is a beautiful order about everything. And everything (good and bad) happens for a reason, a reason greater and much bigger than ourselves. I'm not religious btw. The universe/mind is like a blooming flower, exploding outwards in the beginning with much energy and beauty, but once it stops blooming it cannot sustain itself and dies. But the plant it grew from continues to live.

Went a bit off-topic. Also please don't think I'm stating all that as fact, just speculation.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Here is another perspective of the "existence" of passed-on people "after" death:

It is so difficult loosing someone close to you... 9.5 years ago my significant other of 20 years - Terry T., artist/chef/gardener extraordinaire - got ill, ended up unconscious on respirator and passed before meds could work. I still feel the loss but know he would want me to go on and not mope... I still honor all he gave me every day, he visits me in dreams often and I tell you it feels like really him somehow not just something my brain made up... life is far far deeper, loftier, and more mysterious than our conscious minds are able to fully comprehend... I feel there is part of our lost loved ones still alive in our hearts... the eternal part...and on some level beyond time they are still right beside us, and our thoughts, feelings, experiences, and especially our love are still continuously being shared, we just exist on different planes.

I hope you do not find this flippant, but I have found the thoughts of author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. hugely helpful and comforting, so much so that my handle Dwayne Hoover is really the name of the protagonist of one of his best books "Breakfast of Champions"

[ Also, the film version of BoC while different from the book in lots of ways is proabably delightful and quite touching to anyone who is into psychedelics IMO... you can get it here free (I found "freedownloadmanager" did a nice job as a torrent-downloader though there are many others including Chrome browser you can use) which I have no problem doing since it is now out of print: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3903517/Breakfast_of_Champions_-_Bruce_Willis.3903517.TPB.torrent ]​

From novel Slaughterhouse Five (note 1 - also a film you can find, though somewhat "old" & dated looking at this point but still really great; note 2 - SPOILER ALERT (highlight text to read if you don't care) "Talfamadorians" are aliens that abduct the main character and cause his mind to become "unstuck in time"):

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

 

[invert]

Ah, splendid. I love Vonnegut's Tralfamadorian concept of time. It is a way of thinking about time that doesn't depend on any actual propositions about the nature of the universe (which may then be true or false; and probably, given they were dreamt up by a novelist, false), but just on a perspective, and it is a perspective that can be rather comforting.

Another perspective again on the continued existence of people after death is that of Douglas Hofstadter, as expressed in his I Am A Strange Loop. Briefly, he suggests that we run 'models' of people we know in our brain, and that our models of people who are closest to us are very realistic and complex (though never quite as precise as the 'original'). Thus, for example, even when one's beloved isn't present, one may - as well as experiencing an event oneself - simultaneously also experience it for, or as, one's beloved. He also argues that what makes a conscious self a conscious self is that, like a properly positioned video feedback loop (in this respect), it contains an infinite recursive loop of (in this case, but not in the case of video feedback) symbolic self-reference within it. Finally, he argues that the model our brain has of those that we know most thoroughly may be sufficiently complex that it reaches this level of consciousness, such that the beloved is a conscious self running as software on your hardware (your brain), in exactly the same way (though not to the same extent, nor with the same fidelity to the original) as your own software runs on it.

There are a lot of 'what ifs' in Hofstadter's way of thinking about consciousness, many of which are empirical questions which we may well not be in a position to test yet. But I find it a fascinating set of hypotheses.

ETA: D'oh, I've already mentioned this on page two (though even more briefly then). Sorry for repetitiveness.

 

[DwayneHoover]

Thanks invert. I read "Strange Loop" too but had forgotten that part. I guess that explains why Terry visits me in my dreams at totally random times and just sort of seems to insert himself into other dreams that were nothing about him, seemingly at his own choosing... and then his dream-self behaviors are every bit as unpredictable & chimerical as he was in life, nothing that "I" feel I could ever predict or design on my own... and I swear when we talk and he looks at me I feel *EXACTLY* like somehow it IS really him., though his dream persona always seems more "knowing" about what is really going on than my dream-self does, its really uncanny and "out there"... he acts like he knows he is in some non-physical reality, while my dream-self doesnt realize it till I've woken up and in the dream I'm like "why/how the hell are you doing/saying THAT? WTF???" and he just looks at me with this little sly grin like "you'll figure it out later, babe!" How cool... I guess it IS him, just running on my brain, haha!

 

[invert]

Thanks invert. I read "Strange Loop" too but had forgotten that part. I guess that explains why Terry visits me in my dreams at totally random times and just sort of seems to insert himself into other dreams that were nothing about him, seemingly at his own choosing... and then his dream-self behaviors are every bit as unpredictable & chimerical as he was in life, nothing that "I" feel I could ever predict or design on my own... and I swear when we talk and he looks at me I feel *EXACTLY* like somehow it IS really him., though his dream persona always seems more "knowing" about what is really going on than my dream-self does, its really uncanny and "out there"... he acts like he knows he is in some non-physical reality, while my dream-self doesnt realize it till I've woken up and in the dream I'm like "why/how the hell are you doing/saying THAT? WTF???" and he just looks at me with this little sly grin like "you'll figure it out later, babe!" How cool... I guess it IS him, just running on my brain, haha!

Right! I think that's quite plausible, yes.

I think it's really important to reflect on what we mean by "I" (and I like that you put it in 'scare quotes' there, when you used it, above) when dealing with this sort of topic. As you say, the fact that Terry-in-your-dreams is able to behave in ways that "you" can't predict does not necessarily mean that Terry is a disembodied entity or in another dimension or whatever (as some people might, understandably, interpret such an experience).

The "you" in question is - arguably - just those bits of your brain currently having access to those bits of the motor cortex that are able to control your typing (or, more broadly, but still quite narrowly: those bits of your brain that have access to the parts of the brain able to produce language, whether outwardly or in your inner reflections on your experience). There's no reason why there can't be a whole load of stuff going on on your brain, including a conscious version of Terry (in Hofstadter's sense, wherein there are degrees of consciousness - it's likely that a self running on someone else's hardware will be less fulsomely conscious than the original, just as an operating system is likely to run more slowly inside a virtualized box on another computer), that "you" (the you that's doing the thinking about this) have no access to (except when, for instance, dream-Terry wills it so).

ETA: Incidentally, I feel - models of actual other people aside - that there are multiple 'centres' within the 'main' self that runs on my brain. I think the illusion of unity may arise from a sort of bottleneck in the control of the language parts of the brain (which we, or at least I, rely on for talking about experience and for internally reflecting on it). There's only ever one 'voice' at a time, but I see that voice as being used by multiple (often competing) wills and identities within my self.

The separableness of these distinct selves within my main self is something which psychedelics have on a fair few occasions drawn my attention to. Well, that's a gentle way of putting what has often been more like the psychedelic grabbing me by the hair and forcing my face in the multiplicity (and, depending on my mood and recent behaviour, inconsistent hypocrisy) of my self/ves.

 

[Psychodelirium]

I think it is of GREAT interest to anyone who has had an ego-destroying psychedelic experience, and been astonished to discover that there still seemed to be some sort of broader more pervasive "consciousness" happening that was itself the "true experiencer" of everything else... The Watcher, or "The Big Eye" or whatever you'd like to call it.

I have had experiences of this sort but I don't see how they could lend any support to the idea that the human personality can persist after death, which is really what this thread was about. If anything, such experiences indicate that the human personality does not really exist even in life, that it is a kind of shadow puppet.

Also, despite having had experiences of this sort, I'm sure that they are subserved by neural processes that will one day be discovered and understood. In fact, this will probably happen fairly soon, since there are already a lot of people interested in connecting the dots, making a lot of good starts. Here is one the best I've read recently.

Despite all the Penrose and mysterian talk about quantum consciousness, quantum process in neural microtubules and so on and so forth, I think it's pretty clear that you don't get anything resembling conscious behavior without macro-level complex dynamic systems engaged in some kind of recursive self-representation (e.g. brains).

Now if you want to talk metaphysics, I've said that I don't think you can get minds without brains, but I'm not sure what exactly the relation between the two is. Obviously it can't be a relation of strict identity (not even physicalists believe this anymore). Actually I think the question, "what happens to my mind/soul/whatever when I die?" has the same form as the question, "what happens to a piece of music when I stop playing it?" or "what happens to a narrative when I stop reading it?" and so on. We don't think of a song, say, as "existing" only in that moment when someone plays it. We seem to think of these things as objects that exist in a timeless hyperspace that "manifest" in our experience at particular points in time.

If you're familiar with flatland, McKenna says somewhere that we ought to think of "mind" and "life" as a 4d hyperobject penentrating into our 3d space of experience the same way that we think of a 3d object like a hand penentrating the 2d space of the flatlanders. The hand appears first as 4 expanding circles, then 5, then 1, and then it contracts and vanishes as it passes through the plane. Similarly the passing of mind through time and space appears as birth, life, and death, when in reality the hyperobject was never born and never died but simply always is.

Compare William Blake, "Man has no body distinct from his soul, for that called body is a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses."

 

[DwayneHoover]

Great thoughts Psychodelirium, thanks, and thanks for the book tip!

My point was not so much that this proved our earthly personalities survived death, rather the more generic point that

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Shakespeare-More-Things1601.htm

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE / Hamlet Act 1. Scene V abt. 1601

Hamlet speaks these lines to his friend Horatio. The sentries who keep night watch over the castle at Elsinore have seen an apparition of the ghost of the late king of Denmark, Hamlet's father. Although Horatio pleads with the ghost to speak to them, it refuses and disappears at morning light. Horatio tells Hamlet about it the next night, believing that the ghost will only speak with his son. Hamlet goes off with the ghost, where he learns that his father was murdered by his own brother, Claudius, who has now taken the crown for himself. When Hamlet returns to Horatio, who expresses his bewilderment over the apparition, Hamlet points out that ghosts speaking, and brothers murdering, and wives remarrying may exist outside the moral framework of the average man….but that these things occur in the real world.​

I mean, what if the "I" we experience arises from some sort of living, conscious hyperdimensional beings that exist in higher dimensions, who temporarily attach themselves to our brains in order to HAVE THE EXPERIENCE of being a mortal earth primate... after death of the 3D human, perhaps these experiences would become part of the eternal "memories" of the 4D Hyperbeing, along with memories of MANY other living/dying primates, other animals, plants, aliens, etc

[This was actually the content of an experience I had once on a combination of Syrian Rue (an MAOI), 1.5g pf psilocybin shrooms, plus a properly prepared Amanita mushroom boil tea]

Maybe, while "I" may never get to see "you" after death... but maybe perhaps "my" 4D Hyperbeing might somehow get to meet and know "your" 4D Hyperbeing... maybe they are one and the same?

To be a human and say you KNOW everything about us is gone forever when your body dies, never to be encountered again, and that such things as 4D immortal hyperbeings ("angels" so some?) who "take in" our stream of experiences are wrong and impossible is totally egotistically over-confident, no?

"More things in heaven and Earth, Horatio...."