Why we're immortal

[Sunflowers]

I don't think anything in that passage is true

So you think that I am a professional philosopher?

No. I think you did claim to be one - for it is dishonest to suggest that saying you are a philosopher implies anything other than that you are a professional philosopher - and that you are not one.

I also think you have not shown this thread to any professional philosophers.

And so on.

Anyway, this is a philosophy thread so why not drop the lying and just do some actual philosophy?

[Not The Real JReg]

I don't think anything in that passage is true

So you think that I am a professional philosopher?

No.

So you are a liar.

You said that you do not think that anything in that passage is true. I said that I was not a professional philosopher in that passage. If you really didn't think that anything in that passage was true, then you wouldn't believe that I was telling the truth when I said that I wasn't a professional philosopher.

I think you did claim to be one - for it is dishonest to suggest that saying you are a philosopher implies anything other than that you are a professional philosopher - and that you are not one.

It isn't.

I also think you have not shown this thread to any professional philosophers.

I have.

[PhilRisk]

All your examples use physical dividable entities. You even speak of materializing. These examples are irrelevant if you state that the soul is completely different than bodies. Therefore, your examples are not convincing.

Why should I apply physical conservation or analogous principles to minds, if they are so utterly different?

One further point, if I grant you a sort of conservation principle. Your physical examples only need physical conservation principles, which in a analogous form would only give rise to a very weak notion of immortality of the mind. The mind as a simple might still be there, but could loose or change all its content. This is a kind of immortality not worth talking about from the perspective of practical reason.

I don't understand what you're saying.

You started out by saying that you wanted to challenge my claim that simple things are indestructible. To do that you would need to maintain that things can vanish - that something can become nothing.

I have pointed out that such a claim is wildly counter-intuitive.

This claim - 'something cannot become nothing' - is far better supported by reason than this claim - 'something can become nothing'.

Once more, it is irrational to favour a weaker premise over a stronger one.

You claim "simple things are indestructible". I will give a physical example for a simple thing vanishing. From physical theory it is possible, that the universe can collapse in a reverse big bang. The universe is a simple thing. Therefore, from physical theory the vanishing of a simple thing is possible.

Your examples to back up the claim, that it is counter-intuitive are all physical examples of compounds. It is rather incoherent to use such examples, to prove your point. You did not establish, that is counter-intuitive for minds and it is not even irrational for physical simple things as I have stated. I don't think it is counter-intuitive that mind, even if they were simple thing, would be immortal. In the literature and other media spirits, which I would conceive as simple, vanish quite often. Therefore, it is not counter-intuitive for many people.

And as I have stated above it is reasonable to believe minds come into existence. Than by analogy, it is reasonable and not counter-intuitive, that they can vanish. They come from nothing, they go to nothing, if one follows your simple-mind theory. Why do you believe in the asymmetry? Or do you believe that minds are eternal? Then the question is clear, what what the content was before the mind.

This leads to my second point. There is no reason to believe, that minds are immortal in a meaningful way. The contents of our minds are not simple, as thoughts can be articulated. Therefore, the contents can be destroyed even by your premises. The content of minds is already destroyed when people get old or sick and is acquired? (Descartes thinks otherwise for concepts, but not for beliefs, otherwise it his argumentation would be nonsense). Even if your argument is sound. There is no reason, to expect immortality of the content of mind. This is why I mentioned Locke, because identity in substance does not warranty identity in person in his position.

[teo123]

if a physicist makes metaphysical assumptions in how they interpret data, that is not evidence that the metaphysical assumption is true.

It's not to interpret the data, it's an assumption made to make a theory that makes testable predictions. First came the assumption that virtual particles (that come into being and disappear) exist, and then came the formulas.

[Sunflowers]

if a physicist makes metaphysical assumptions in how they interpret data, that is not evidence that the metaphysical assumption is true.

It's not to interpret the data, it's an assumption made to make a theory that makes testable predictions. First came the assumption that virtual particles (that come into being and disappear) exist, and then came the formulas.

No, that is false. But even if it were true, then you have a 'gap' that you are simply refusing to fill. And that's typically what physicists do, precisely because what does or does not fill it is a metaphysical matter, not a matter physicists need to concern themselves with. It is idiot members of the public who then stupidly conclude that physics somehow implies that something can become nothing.

Let's say we do not know how to explain a particular phenomenon. In the 12th century it would have been easy. God did it.

But nowadays the God thesis isn't in fashion. Nowadays materialism is in fashion and so the same idiots that would have said "God dun it then" in the 12th century say today that 'it just came into being out of nothing' or 'it has no explaination - it just appeared'.

Stop. Being. Stupid.

Stop running arguments from the gaps.

The material constitutive of a particle does not disappear.

If the state of science is such that at the moment it is not known what happens to it, that is not evidence that it vanishes.

[Sunflowers]

You claim "simple things are indestructible". I will give a physical example for a simple thing vanishing. From physical theory it is possible, that the universe can collapse in a reverse big bang. The universe is a simple thing. Therefore, from physical theory the vanishing of a simple thing is possible.

No, you didn't. An example of something changing is not an example of something vanishing. Obviously.

And 'science' does not show that the universe came into being from nothing. It implies it has a beginning. It does not imply that it came into being from nothing. Big difference.

You're on a hopeless mission. You're not going to find any compelling evidence that something can become nothing. All you're doing to do is find gaps in our understanding.

Saying 'nothing caused it' or 'nothing created it' is not an explanation, as everyone - but everyone - recognises in all other contexts.

Again, hire a prostitute and have her lie in your bed. When your wife returns explain her presence in the bed by saying that she just appeared out of nothing and see if she accepts that as an explanation.

She won't, unless she's extremely thick of course.

[teo123]

No, that is false.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it is so, that quantum field theory is made to explain some known data and that it doesn't really make any clear predictions. So do quite a few things in science. Would you reject the theory of evolution just because most of it can't be directly observed? Would you reject the existence of Proto-Indo-European language? If the vast majority of the experts agree on them, they are probably right, even though the reasons may not be transparent to us. If nearly all experts appear to assume something, perhaps we should also assume it's right.
Why do you insist that physicists don't have the right to claim particles can disappear and come from nothing? Just where do you draw the line here? Many philosophers have claimed that geometric claims, such as the Pythagorean Theorem, are true or false regardless of what exists anywhere in the universe. Theory of relativity has shown that this is not the case, that Pythagorean Theorem is only approximately true here where the space-time curvature is negligible. Would you reject the theory of relativity because of that?

Nowadays materialism is in fashion and so the same idiots that would have said "God dun it then" in the 12th century say today that 'it just came into being out of nothing' or 'it has no explaination - it just appeared'.

"God did it" is not an explanation at all, for God is, by definition, inexplicable by reason. Virtual particles are the best explanation we have for a wide variety of things in physics, and they are an actual explanation, they are (at least in theory) falsifiable mathematical models.

[PhilRisk]

You're on a hopeless mission. You're not going to find any compelling evidence that something can become nothing. All you're doing to do is find gaps in our understanding.

Saying 'nothing caused it' or 'nothing created it' is not an explanation, as everyone - but everyone - recognises in all other contexts.

Again, hire a prostitute and have her lie in your bed. When your wife returns explain her presence in the bed by saying that she just appeared out of nothing and see if she accepts that as an explanation.

She won't, unless she's extremely thick of course.

Again you only answered, what pleased you. Are you eternal or where have your mind before your life? What is your connection to the mind before your life?

And again you only used an bodily example. How should this show anything for simple entities?

[teo123]

You're on a hopeless mission. You're not going to find any compelling evidence that something can become nothing. All you're doing to do is find gaps in our understanding.

Saying 'nothing caused it' or 'nothing created it' is not an explanation, as everyone - but everyone - recognises in all other contexts.

Again, hire a prostitute and have her lie in your bed. When your wife returns explain her presence in the bed by saying that she just appeared out of nothing and see if she accepts that as an explanation.

She won't, unless she's extremely thick of course.

Again you only answered, what pleased you. Are you eternal or where have your mind before your life? What is your connection to the mind before your life?

And again you only used an bodily example. How should this show anything for simple entities?

Yeah, thank you for noticing another level of wrongness with @Sunflower's reasoning. If the mind is some atomic thing that can neither be created nor destroyed, then a human mind not only continues to exist after death, it existed before birth. But, clearly, we don't remember the time before we were born. So the mind isn't the same as the person, since the only reasonable definition of a person is a psychological continuity. So, even if Sunflower's arguments were valid (which they aren't), they still wouldn't argue "we" are immortal.

[Sunflowers]

"God did it" is not an explanation at all, for God is, by definition, inexplicable by reason. Virtual particles are the best explanation we have for a wide variety of things in physics, and they are an actual explanation, they are (at least in theory) falsifiable mathematical models.

It's more of an explanation than 'nothing did it' (which is what you're saying is the case).

Anyway, you're not getting the point.

Metaphysics isn't physics.

Physicists aren't doing metaphysics. They aren't qualified. They aren't doing it. That's why they don't do metaphysics in physics. It isn't metaphysics. They aren't metaphysicians.

The claim that something does not become nothing is a metaphysical claim.

it is not a claim in physics. It isn't physics.

There is no theory in physics that entails it, there are just lots of non-philosophers who think that if you have a gap in our understanding of how something occurred, then nothing caused it.

That's you that is.