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A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

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Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#121

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

lapcat wrote: post #59
md224 wrote: post #22

The most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death. > My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be . (italics mine) I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas…

> I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. I feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress. I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, sta…

The reference to eternity in afterlife doesn't mean "very long time"; it means "no time", a world that has no time. You can briefly feel the difference by being present in the current moment.

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#122

Post by ButlerianJihad »

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #121
lapcat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. I feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress. I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, sta…

The reference to eternity in afterlife doesn't mean "very long time"; it means "no time", a world that has no time. You can briefly feel the difference by being present in the current moment.

No, this is a very bad misunderstanding of the term.

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05551b.htm

Eternity in its proper sense belongs to God alone; human beings sharing in "eternal life" will experience time differently. Even the angels experience "aeviternity" which is unique to their kind.

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article5

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#123

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

I011010011 wrote: post #87
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #14

Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one. Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality. Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge. - Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few - Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping…

100% agree with BoardsOfCanada. Note: Atheism, agnosticism are all religions ( or religious thinking disguised as reasoning ); no less fanatic than the ones their adherents so fervently ridicule.

False religions are all fanatic; they are narcissistic pseudo religions, stemming from the desire to be right.

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#124

Post by bobbyswiss »

LocalH wrote: post #109
bobbyswiss wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a model and models are of the mind

But outside of what we can model, said atoms exist, and we perceive them. Objective reality is those atoms before we perceive them

[dead]

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#125

Post by throwanem »

card_zero wrote: post #58
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I listen to 100 NDEs and in 50 they travel through a tunnel like this or somehow go through space, and in 2 from stone age cultures they travel in a manner apt to their everyday experience and it has those things in common I think it's a fine hypothesis that what they have in common is the nature of what's happening. And in 48 they didn't experience this stage.

Have you read any pop neuroscience book? There are common experiences that can be generated by one or another kind of brain-wrong. You sort of acknowledged this already when you mentioned DMT. If you poke somebody in specific parts of the brain you can get illusions of changing size, shadowy figures, mirth, and other delightful errors. We also interpret things very eagerly, like the "night hag" phenomenon where being…

I would be seriously uncomfortable to discover myself making authoritative reference to anything out of a "pop neuroscience" book, unless I had myself validated the claim - at least as far as making sure there is a paper that says what is claimed of it, by whatever failed academic turned mountebank I am reading. (If those guys were comfortable being held to what they say, why did they stop writing for peer reviewers? I'm hardly an academic chauvinist, God knows, but if you want to be safe here in the 2030s, you really need to learn to spot a grifter...)

The tunnel vision you experience during hypovolemia is nothing like the "tunnel of light" reported in NDEs. It's just that you lose your visual field gradually, from periphery to fovea, as your visual cortex loses perfusion. In theory, a well-perfused brain dying for some other reason, such as a sudden complete loss of oxygen supply secondary to circulatory collapse secondary to fine VF or asystole, would retain the ability to "fill in" with something, the way our brains in normal operation cover the many gaps and lacks in our visual perception. (This is part of why I asked the other fellow not to bother me again about this at least until he knows what "ATP" means and why that is relevant here.)

It is strikingly absurd to imagine any of this does or can support a radically materialist conception of the universe. As I said before, materialism is exactly as religious as simulationism - exactly so, inasmuch as I expect to see a "solution" for the "mind-body problem" [1] around the same time as we solve the halting problem or constructively prove P=NP.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#DuaMinBodPro

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#126

Post by pseudohadamard »

hackthemack wrote: post #88
anonymousiam wrote: post #74

I've told only a few people about my near death experience, and most of them were polite, but obviously didn't believe a word I was saying. To be honest, I wouldn't believe it either if I had not experienced it myself. I did not "see" anything other than a bright light, but I was overcome with an incredible feeling that I was in the presence of, and communicating with somebody who was conveying a message of absolute…

My memory is a bit hazy, but I thought what you are describing is very common with people who flatline and come back? I have vague memories that a new anesthetic drug was developed and used on soldiers undergoing surgery in the Vietnam war, and there was something about it that caused the same kind of reaction in those who were put under. Again, my memory is very hazy on the subject. I should go do some research and…

I prefer Mullah Nasruddin's experience, which was that death is perfectly OK unless you disturb the camels, at which point they beat you. https://ia800908.us.archive.org/28/items/idries-shah-the-exp...

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#127

Post by card_zero »

throwanem wrote: post #125
card_zero wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read any pop neuroscience book? There are common experiences that can be generated by one or another kind of brain-wrong. You sort of acknowledged this already when you mentioned DMT. If you poke somebody in specific parts of the brain you can get illusions of changing size, shadowy figures, mirth, and other delightful errors. We also interpret things very eagerly, like the "night hag" phenomenon where being…

I would be seriously uncomfortable to discover myself making authoritative reference to anything out of a "pop neuroscience" book, unless I had myself validated the claim - at least as far as making sure there is a paper that says what is claimed of it, by whatever failed academic turned mountebank I am reading. (If those guys were comfortable being held to what they say, why did they stop writing for peer reviewers?…

OK, you could also read a serious neuroscience textbook, but that seemed a less reasonable thing to expect of anyone. The basic point remains true though.

Tunnel vision is a tunnel, in your vision, associated with death. Since I'm talking to people who will latch on to anything at all similar to a tunnel in reports of experiences, and say "See! Commonalities!", this is sufficient to explain why a lot of the nearly-dead throughout world history have involved something tunnel-like somewhere in their reports.

I don't know who is reporting a "tunnel of light" specifically. I would expect that belongs to a post-1970s culture of near death experiences that's part of the rest of the culture of Forteana and the Mysteries of the Unexplained.

When talking about what evidence supports, really we're talking about the opposite: which theories evidence falsifies, and which surviving, falsifiable theory is the most parsimonious. Falsifiability matters, and parsimony matters. Otherwise, you can imagine what you like, but it carries no weight as an explanation.

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#128

Post by throwanem »

card_zero wrote: post #127
throwanem wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be seriously uncomfortable to discover myself making authoritative reference to anything out of a "pop neuroscience" book, unless I had myself validated the claim - at least as far as making sure there is a paper that says what is claimed of it, by whatever failed academic turned mountebank I am reading. (If those guys were comfortable being held to what they say, why did they stop writing for peer reviewers?…

OK, you could also read a serious neuroscience textbook, but that seemed a less reasonable thing to expect of anyone. The basic point remains true though. Tunnel vision is a tunnel, in your vision, associated with death. Since I'm talking to people who will latch on to anything at all similar to a tunnel in reports of experiences, and say "See! Commonalities!", this is sufficient to explain why a lot of the nearly-de…

Why is that unreasonable to expect? How can someone participate in a discussion of neuroscience without the requisite knowledge?

But, luckily for me, I'm not among those here who have arrogated unto themselves the requirement, with its implicit assumption of the necessary capacity, to explain all or indeed any of this. I'm just here to counsel those who do persist in such insistence, much in the manner of that fellow whose job it used to be to murmur memento mori.

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#129

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #122
Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference to eternity in afterlife doesn't mean "very long time"; it means "no time", a world that has no time. You can briefly feel the difference by being present in the current moment.

No, this is a very bad misunderstanding of the term. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05551b.htm Eternity in its proper sense belongs to God alone; human beings sharing in "eternal life" will experience time differently. Even the angels experience "aeviternity" which is unique to their kind. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article5

Could be; I'm not too literate on this, I'm only retelling what I understood directly and this could be very limited. I just wanted to point out that "eternal life" is not going to be the same life we have now, only endless. It is very different and, speaking of boredom, definitely not boring. Boredom is an invention of mind.

Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)

#130

Post by maxaw »

anonymousiam wrote: post #74

I've told only a few people about my near death experience, and most of them were polite, but obviously didn't believe a word I was saying. To be honest, I wouldn't believe it either if I had not experienced it myself. I did not "see" anything other than a bright light, but I was overcome with an incredible feeling that I was in the presence of, and communicating with somebody who was conveying a message of absolute…

This is lovely. Thank you for sharing this
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