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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)

#51

Post by card_zero »

BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #35
card_zero wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Plato's thing, the "myth of Er": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er What are the unaccountably unlikely commonalities that I should be noticing? Between this and the article, I see only: some kind of colored light, some kind of officiating beings, and a river (A.J.Ayer says he presumably had the Styx in mind, though amusingly in the actual ancient Greek account it's a different river and there's no need…

So it has the same stages as modern NDEs: - Out of body experience - Journey through realms - Bright/universal light - Life review - Encounters with spiritual beings - Reincarnation / life selection - A message of peace, well-being, and survival of consciousness I've never heard of life reviews for example outside of NDEs, most of these things are not in the collective unconscious.

These things are not really present, unless you do a lot of generalizing, squinting your eyes, and wishing. Besides which the ancient Egyptians influenced many of our shared tropes. There's that whole bit with weighing the heart while a monster (the Eater of the Dead) sits and watches. The Sumerians have a lot to answer for, too. You may now point to Amazonian tribes, but why shouldn't our tropes go all the way back to a shared past in Africa? Not to mention the convergent evolution of obvious ideas. South America (Maya? I forget) had flood myths of its own, and a world tree.

Yeah, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths . This does not mean that at some point there was a global flood brought about by a deity in retribution. It just means people throughout time knew the same stories or invented the same stories, and often thought about deities and floods. Similarly with your afterlife tropes. Memes are the freaky thing here.

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

#52

Post by BoardsOfCanada »

tsimionescu wrote: post #47
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking past each other. The problem isn't coming up with a hypothesis of why experiences differ according to experiences. Start by explaining how there can be any experience at all after an hour without oxygen to the brain. But after that we come to a stage where experiences differ so much that they aren't reconcilable in one objective reality and that's what I tried to address.

> Start by explaining how there can be any experience at all after an hour without oxygen to the brain. Besides the clear possibility that the memory forms later, the brains of people who report NDEs have never stopped - there is no report of anyone ever recovering from brain death (as in, from a basically flat EEG).

[dead]

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

#53

Post by card_zero »

tsimionescu wrote: post #50
BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously impossible to say. Why would there be a life review, reincarnation, or message of peace?

You're the one who claimed that we should believe NDEs represent more than hallucinations because they all contain the same elements. I was pointing out that I can see major differences between two of these NDEs we are just discussing, instead of the consistency you were claiming.

Well, the claim is only that several of them contain some of the same elements as others.

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

#54

Post by throwanem »

card_zero wrote: post #39
throwanem wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A materialist would argue that nothing you describe rules out malfunction in a brain failing rapidly due to oxygen starvation, and that the commonality of experiences is explicable in terms of common failure modes in effectively identical brain architecture. (Just about everyone's visual cortex works about the same, etc.) I think it's cute how hardcore materialists believe it is even in theory possible to distinguish…

You think it's cute, do you? But there are endless unfalsifiable and silly alternative explanations for everything. They're distinguished only by being silly. The observation that everything could be a simulation deserves a "so what". Maybe you're the cutie pie.

It means something to you that I should be, eh? I don't really take a position in the matter, but one can't spend all day reading - though feel free to continue flattering my looks here while I do so, of course! Being called cute is a rare pleasure indeed for me, these decades.

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by card_zero »

BoardsOfCanada wrote: post #45
tsimionescu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In particular, what was convincing to me, is how very very similar the cases are and that they happen to tribes living at a stone age technological level with no contact to Hollywood, and that there is a described case from Plato from over 2000 years ago that is identical to modern cases. This sounds intriguing. > Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of…

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 unable to sense one's own breathing turns into an illusion of something sitting on your chest. That's another worldwide cross-cultural concept, by the way, but there is no night hag, there's just human physiology.

So, bright lights and tunnels. Shared human visual neurological glitches. Heard of "tunnel vision"? That's a real medical condition, which can be caused by blood loss, adrenaline, or low oxygen.

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

#59

Post by lapcat »

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, starring Elizabeth Olsen, in which everyone after they die has to choose their own form of afterlife and then stick with it forever. All I could think about was how bored I would eventually get. (The film itself was pretty good, not boring. That's because it had an ending!)

Fiction is ideal for playing out these scenarios. Think also of the film "Highlander", in which the ultimate "prize" of the immortals turns out to be mortality. MacLeod's life had become repetitive, and he couldn't fully invest in it, because he kept losing everyone he loved. They grew old and died, while he lived on and had to keep changing identities. For a while it's a grand adventure... until it isn't anymore.

I can certainly understand wanting to live longer, but eternity is unimaginably long, way too long. I don't think that's something to be desired.

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

#60

Post by card_zero »

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…

Problems, yes. "Biology is going to kill me soon" shouldn't have to be one of those problems, and in fact I think it makes us all slightly crazy in different ways, from not caring about the future to unscrupulously believing in afterlives.
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