What is life? Is death real?

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If somebody told me that a tree in Siberia was felled by a snowstorm, and I see evidence of it in Doppler radar, I will believe that tree has been felled, even if I didn't see it or hear it actually happen.

Even if "love" and other emotions have a chemical basis, I still feel the full impact of these emotions, which are real to me, whatever their origin. This is because I "feel" those emotions.

Well my reply literally vanished, so time to retype it all...

"The universe isn't a scheme. Our idea of it is a scheme. It simply is.
Why? Because we made the word scheme in order to express an idea that we need to share with each other through language: the word is meant to signify "a large-scale systematic plan or arrangement for attaining some particular object or putting a particular idea into effect."

I am perfectly aware that the universe isn't a scheme.
""In the grand scheme of things" is an idiom. It means that when you put things into perspective, taking everything else into account, sometimes what has previously been considered significant isn't quite significant."

"It (materialism) is not germane to a discussion about significance unless you accept as a premise that significance must be based on something immaterial.""

I completely agree.

"We have a consensus understanding of what it (significance) means: that which is worthy of attention, that which we find to have some importance and also the meaning that we attach to words and events. The idea of "objective significance" may be nonsense, but the idea that some things are significant to the minds that attach importance to things is axiomatic, true by definition."

Once again, i completely agree. If something is important to someone, then it is significant to them, as you so eloquently stated. Is life important to me? In the grand scheme of things; no. The universe will exist without us, and we're a very small part of it. In our little world, Earth? I suppose it would be considered immoral to say that life isn't important (when only taking Earth into account). In our little world (we could possibly extend this to the solar system), i do agree that life is significant. Life is important for people's happiness. It's also important for productivity. We've also left a mark on this planet. But in the grand scheme of things, we are not significant.

"You can't even be sure that your mind exists in your brain rather than as some kind of simulation, but this isn't a rational argument for or against the significance of the thoughts or sensations being processed by that real or simulated mind."

I completely agree. The thoughts and sensations are significant in that little Earth/solar system bubble, simulation, real or nonexistent. But if it's not real, then they have zero significance in reality.

"If nothing exists in any sense, then I am not here to care and this discussion can't be happening. I'm pretty sure that reality will continue regardless of what I think about it, so I don't think trying to disprove the nonexistence of everything is a useful pursuit."

It would be quite inconvenient if people started assuming that nothing exists. Trying to disprove the nonexistence of everything isn't a useful pursuit; you can't do it.

I saw that! Very weird. I thought you must have deleted it, because it vanished not long after I read it, but there was no record of it being deleted in the logs, so it must have been consumed by a bug of some kind. I posted about this to the other mods, just so they know something is eating posts every now and then. Sorry this happened to you--it was a good post!

But you can't take everything into account. No human has the cognitive power to do that! The question is, what perspective are you putting things into when you assign some value to the "grand scheme of things?" You are revealing a cognitive bias in the construction of this thought. You have determined that only large things are significant and the perspective of a being looking at very large scale structures in the universe rather than very small or human scale structures somehow has a superior or privileged perspective.

There is no rational basis for that view. There is no logical reason to consider the scale of galactic superclusters or voids as superior to the planck scale--nor is there any logical reason to consider any scale inferior to others.

Some scales may be more suitable for examining particular features of the universe and others less so, but that doesn't make any scale somehow "better."



I think I understand. When our species gets involved in certain kinds of horror, I comfort myself by contemplating stellar and galactic evolution. The ghastliness of a particular war, or the rise of a loathsome political idea that spreads violence and misery across nations seems less consequential to me when I lose myself in the journey of the stars on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram or contemplate the quenching of M31's satellite galaxies.

But this isn't logical. There is no reason to think that events on those scales are more important than smaller events. The underlying idea is that relative bigness=significance.

The proposition reminds me of this:


So I suggest that any argument in the form "this thing is very big, therefore comparatively small things are insignificant" is false. Size is not where significance comes from.

The human genome consists of about 6.5 billion base pairs but we know there can be single nucleotide polymorphisms that cause significant phenotypic variation. Sometimes, in genetics as in other areas of life, it's not the size of the variation, but where it occurs or how it's used that counts.

The only measure of meaning, or significance that we currently have access to is the significance we assign. If we meet other intelligences in the cosmos that employ language in similar enough ways, we may learn about the sense of significance that pertains elsewhere, until then, what we make is what we have.

It doesn't matter if you saw it directly, you still betrayed yourself to my argument because you SEE evidence of it in the Doppler radar. Also, it should be noted if you were to directly see the tree, you wouldn't directly see it either. What you actually see is light from the tree...except you don't even directly experience that, that just triggers some proteins in the eyes which start a chemical reaction which sends a electric signal through the brain to the visual cortex...and that's as far as science can get before "and somehow you see the tree", or rather, you see the image of the tree, and you infer the existence of the tree from that image.

I mean the universe literally wouldn't exist if there were no observers in it, as to exist is to be experienced. The nature of existence is something only meaningful to those capable of experience, and to experience the universe is to observe it. A universe without observers is just an intellectual exercise, not something that really exists, as the universe which exists clearly has observers. It's clear you are so entrenched in materialism you can't even comprehend arguments against it, and haven't considered any other approaches to ontology, so I suggest reading some Berkeley as he has thought about this more than I have.

Now, you speak about a "grand scheme of things", but unless you rely on invoking a God, how can there be a grand scheme of things except what we define? Your position is inherently nonsensical. Just because the universe is really big doesn't mean the vastness is some sort of grand scheme. One problem is it seems you are trying to be objective, but that's impossible because the nature of existence is subjective, so you're just ending up a contradiction.

If I'm "bigoted" it's because I used to hold a viewpoint like yours, but then I realized how incredibly flawed it was once I actually got educated on the scientific process and started to think about epistemology and ontology. What you fail to realize is that because of your brainwashing (it's not a deliberate process, it's just deeply pervasive in our culture) you're not going to see evidence against materialism, because you're just going to interpret everything you see into a materialist context. So let's take consciousness having an electromagnetic basis....how did you come to the conclusion? Are you are neuroscientist, or did you just read what neuroscientists (most of whom inherently had a materialist worldview otherwise they wouldn't have decided to become neuroscientists) wrote? When you think the world is material, neural networks (not electromagnetism, that's just a way of observing neural activity) is the only possible explanation of consciousness, but it's certainly not the only way to read the data they have. Finally, as someone who is studying both psychology and computer science, all this talk about emergence is nonsense. It's just an excuse explanation which they need for their theories to work, but it no mathematical basis. For more on that particular subject I suggest reading David Chalmers.

PS: "but that doesn't mean you can jump the gun and say there's some kind of 'spirit' or something when there's no evidence for that." This is a sign you have no understanding of immaterialism at all, as that's not what it's saying all. And there is plenty of evidence for such, it's the fact you are even capable of reading this.

Interesting conversation on schemes. To a certain degree if we're measuring power - a comet that could slam into the earth and dust half the planet would be bigger in the scheme of things than whether or not I go to Starbucks tomorrow or what kind of lunch I pack myself for work this evening.

The video's poppy and dumb probably for a reason - it's Youtube education. I think even with the transhumanist biases that crop up in it a certain point still gets made clearly; we have no clue aside from "Yep! It's got a pulse!" or "Nope! Go bury it!" as to what life or death are in the qualitative sense. That may well be a temporary mystery, just that for the time being I think it forces us to realize that we probably have a pretty dumbed down and overpolarized view of the whole matter regardless of what the final analysis points to when we do figure it out.

that's an interesting definition of existence which i'm pretty sure is adding additional content to conventional definitions.
like the other guy rightly said, things probably don't cease to exist just because our consciousness vanishes.
i mean when we die there will be other people to observe our dead bodies and the world which we left.
are you saying when ALL people die then the universe vanishes?
so there was no universe until conscious observers arised? how is that even possible when we know that the universe precedes intelligent life by quite a lot of time, unless dinosaur bones and the history of the universe was also invented by our minds to create a convincing story.
there you are with the 'materialism' boogeyman again lol, i don't see how this is even necessarily related to materialism.
do you really think a rock doesn't exist independently of a mind?
you realize the observer effect is bunk, right?
it's just a misunderstanding, the observed object only changes because of the photons emitted by the observing device.
either way, your idea remains speculation as it can't be fully falsified. i do think that the normal view of things is more plausible even if it too can't be proven to satisfaction.

fair enough, and i thought you may say something to this effect, but really all that matters is that it's NOT significant objectively (even if it's because it cannot be), it doesn't need to be 'insignificant', and you're right i think there is no grand scheme when you put it that way.

no i'm not a neuroscientist and you're right in that i have a limited knowledge in the field, but it's clear that for instance in cases of brain damage and split brain patients etc. that consciousness is a physical phenomenon.
you can condescendingly say i'm brainwashed again, but no, i'm not.
i don't even like materialism, it's just that it's the position i'm forced into.
you haven't offered any evidence for immaterialism so why should i listen to all this talk of me not accepting any evidence?
and if me being able to read this is evidence for immaterialism, is a computer then not made of material?
all it really requires is an information processor, it's nothing special really.
also if you don't adhere to a spirit, i don't see your issue with materialism when it comes to consciousness.
what is the other alternative?

I apologise for the late reply, my wifi gets turned off at 10:30pm, so i couldn't reply until now.

After i made that post (that vanished) i noticed there was a duplicate, so went ahead and attempted to delete the duplicate. It would not load, and popped up with a page saying that the request could not reach the website, something like that. Once the site was working again, both posts were gone, but in the most recent post of the topic part, it said i had posted a few minutes ago.

"But you can't take everything into account. No human has the cognitive power to do that! The question is, what perspective are you putting things into when you assign some value to the "grand scheme of things?" You are revealing a cognitive bias in the construction of this thought. You have determined that only large things are significant and the perspective of a being looking at very large scale structures in the universe rather than very small or human scale structures somehow has a superior or privileged perspective.

There is no rational basis for that view. There is no logical reason to consider the scale of galactic superclusters or voids as superior to the planck scale--nor is there any logical reason to consider any scale inferior to others.

Some scales may be more suitable for examining particular features of the universe and others less so, but that doesn't make any scale somehow "better.""

Of course you can't take everything into account individually. But you can understand that the universe's size is so large that you can't comprehend it. I think it's a good idea for me to rephrase my opinion on scale and significance. In my opinion, humans are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, as they have next to no influence on the universe as a whole.

Let's do a bit of a thought experiment. Let's say we have a species of organism, and a tiny ecosystem box (let's say 1 metre cubed) for that species of organism that is completely isolated from the rest of the universe. That species of organism will have no influence outside of it's little ecosystem. What is more significant, humans, or that species of organism?

From the above two paragraphs, i suppose we can conclude that i measure significance on how much influence that thing has. In our little species of organism box, those organisms are very influential, but outside it, they do not matter. The same can be applied to us humans, outside our solar system box, we don't matter. Yet (as we may survive long enough to venture out of the solar system). So in the grand scheme of things, i don't see us as significant. Now, wether we are more special than a rock or not. We certainly have a greater influence, but we're made of the exact same stuff fundamentally. Once again, for me this depends on what scale you talk about. In the grand scheme of things, i don't see us as any more special than the rock. On the subatomic scale, i don't see us as any more special. On the human scale, yes, we are more special.

"The only measure of meaning, or significance that we currently have access to is the significance we assign. If we meet other intelligences in the cosmos that employ language in similar enough ways, we may learn about the sense of significance that pertains elsewhere, until then, what we make is what we have."

Very true. Significance and meaning are man-made concepts.

When you have shown that you have a rational basis for measuring what matters, I'll consider that. In the meantime, have you ever heard of panspermia?

Is it possible for a self-replicating molecule that originates in a smaller area than a cubic meter of amino acid rich sludge on some tiny, seemingly insignificant rock in space to have a huge impact in the universe? Maybe.

Maybe a sample of that self replicating molecule gets blasted into interplanetary space and seeds itself on other more hospitable worlds. Maybe in time it evolves into intelligent beings that deliberately spread themselves across an entire galaxy, or several. It is theoretically possible.

I suggest that's it's probably better to be agnostic about "significance" and admit that one lacks the data to argue strongly either way.

Why do you say that i do not have a rational basis for measuring what matters?

I am familiar with panspermia.

"Is it possible for a self-replicating molecule that originates in a smaller area than a cubic meter of amino acid rich sludge on some tiny, seemingly insignificant rock in space to have a huge impact in the universe? Maybe.

Maybe a sample of that self replicating molecule gets blasted into interplanetary space and seeds itself on other more hospitable worlds. Maybe in time it evolves into intelligent beings that deliberately spread themselves across an entire galaxy, or several. It is theoretically possible."

I completely agree. I don't see how this is relevant, though. There is no evidence suggesting that this has happened. There is no evidence for life that i'd consider significant in the grand scheme of things.

First, you're mistaking a universe without a particular observers for a universe without ANY observers. Second, you're mistaking biological death with oblivion, they aren't the same thing. I'd argue that oblivion is fundamentally impossible, but I'm not going to get into that. Third, if anyone is adding anything it's the materialists, because the existence of qualia is self-evident, while the existence of material is just inferred from the existence of qualia. Fourth, you're misunderstanding my defination of a universe with no observers. That's mean there are no observers not only through the space of the universe, but throughout all time in the universe as well. Both time and space have a noumenal as well as physical defination. Finally, we DON'T know the universe existed before any conscious life for two reasons: we don't know there was no consciousness back in the past, and we don't know the universe even exists back then because we weren't there to observe it, we just infer it's existence from our scientific theories, which may or not not be correct. I told you to go read up on Berkeley, and you clearly didn't.

If a rock had no influence on anything observable, then who are you to say it exists? It's just a hypothetical rock. And what is material beyond a mathematical formula for organizing qualia? I'm not talking about the observer effect, you're even more clueless than I thought. Again, go read Berkeley.

"either way, your idea remains speculation as it can't be fully falsified." So you're so entrenched in scientism, not just materialism, that you've forgotten other epistemologies even exist. Also, the ultimate irony is none of your claims are falsifiable either, your position is inherently incoherent.

"that it's NOT significant objectively (even if it's because it cannot be)," And here striving to be objective is just stupid. If it can't be objective, then it makes no sense to look at it from that viewpoint. It's the subjective which defines life.

" but it's clear that for instance in cases of brain damage and split brain patients etc. that consciousness is a physical phenomenon." No, it is not. By your own admission, unlike you, I actually study this crap academically. With brain damage, first, that's the argument from deficit regarding ablation, and it's obvious logical fallacy. Just because something impacts something does not mean it's the source. For example, damage to the visual cortex prevents seeing...so does damaging the eyes. In fact, so does just turing out the light. So it can't be concluded the visual cortex is the ultimate cause of sight any more than any of the other constraints are. Second, scientific experiments of consciousness are impossible under modern ideas of science because consciousness is a subjective phenomenon, while science has to be objective. In those experiments, it can't be said that consciousness is what was effected rather than memory or language. You do an experiment by altering your own consciousness, but that's not science in the modern sense. Split brains are a more interesting case, but making conclusions about consciousness from them have the same central problems.

"you can condescendingly say i'm brainwashed again, but no, i'm not." Yes, you are. One who is brainwashed doesn't know they are brainwashed, but an external observer can tell. It's extremely obvious that you're stuck in a mental box from the way you respond to my questions, you fail to even realize there is a box and thus completely fail to understand what I am saying.

"you haven't offered any evidence for immaterialism" Yes, I have, you just either fail to understand what evidence even is because you're so stuck in the scientism mindset, or it just went right over your head. "and if me being able to read this is evidence for immaterialism, is a computer then not made of material?" Here you go, you COMPLETELY misunderstood what I said. I'm not talking about your freaking computer, I'm talking about *YOU* *READING*. I'm assuming your are sentient, if you're not, then I'm just wasting my time, but I know I'm sentient, and that's were the evidence lies. So let's rephrase it this way: HOW does qualia "emerge" from material? Not behavior, qualia. An information processor explains behavior, but it does NOT explain qualia.

"also if you don't adhere to a spirit, i don't see your issue with materialism when it comes to consciousness.
what is the other alternative?" There are SO many other alternatives. Mostly what I've been referring to is idealism. There is also dualism, which comes in a wide range of flavors. There there is other, more arcane stuff, as well as quasi-materialism like panpsychism or metaphysics. Your attitude to a spirit anyway seems to be just assuming a spirit is some sort of special-material which is super-natural, which is COMPLETELY missing the idea of immaterialism.

Dead brain = mind no longer functions. The (so-called) Mind is what the brain does. Mind is a process, not an object.

Have you died and confirmed this?

On a side note I have to offer that while I'm sure the brain adds a lot of speed and capacity to consciousness I really can't subscribe to the notion that mind equals the firing of neural synapses or that nerves are even needed at all for it to occur.

Part of the problem with that notion is I keep seeing more articles about complex behavior in single-celled organisms and in the case of a particular single-celled slime mold (Physarum polycephalum) they've documented learning. Even more puzzling is you have organisms too small to have a single neuron in their composition, including single-celled organisms apparently, which procreate sexually rather than asexually. That seems to indicate that while neurons really do help efficiency of communication they're not the be-all-end-all for storing reactions or behavioral data. Admittedly I've never really heard that issue discussed in terms of a defense from the emergentist side and I can't say what degree of consciousness a yeast cell would have compared to our own. Still I feel like the conversation is being played along really dated lines if we're hanging our hats on neurons being synonymous with consciousness.

As for the life hereafter vs. no life hearafter debate I think there's plenty of cause for caution. A lot of ideas can look great on paper, get considered to be slam-dunks, and then one or two turns of history or research upset the whole apple cart. If people do get particularly inflamed about that debate IMHO they're not getting inflamed about whether consciousness continues or not, they're inflamed over politics and its good to remember that the actual topic and the visceral reaction are two different things.

first, how? pretty sure i never said anything that implied the identity of the observers mattering.
second, if you say so.
third, just because we can't properly explain consciousness/qualia doesn't mean they're magical, non-material, or even 'real'. it may be an illusion. you are engaging in an argument from ignorance fallacy.
fourth, so our universe could've existed before, as long as it was GOING to produce observers? how does it know? are you working with a less linear version of time?
yes, we don't 'know' (though it seems like the default position would be to assume it did for the sake of occam's razor and everything we understand about reality).. but i thought you were claiming it couldn't have, because a universe needs observers to exist, right?
we know there can't have been observers in the early universe because it was uninhabitable.
no i'm not going to go read a book, if your idea makes sense i shouldn't have to read a whole book to get it.

the material is what we perceive. yes we experience it through our senses and interpreting the information in our mind, but that's not to say that it needs our awareness of it to exist. i don't see how i'm the one making the jump here rather than you.
i didn't have much confidence that it was the observer effect you were talking about but you left me guessing.

without being falsifiable it at least needs to be an implication of reality, something we can infer from what has been discovered.
i don't see how your ideas are, and you seem to be the one making the claims here.
i'm not postulating anything beyond what is known, i'm just questioning the unconventional things about the 'immaterial' and our consciousness having the power to literally bring the universe into being, which are usually considered woo.

okay, as long as you realize the subjective is just that, subjective, which is what i initially labelled life as in this thread, so i'm glad you actually agree after all.
life is a descriptive label that only exists in our mind, what we call life is still just atoms in motion. complex physical systems. it only seems unique due to selection bias. that's all i was saying.

yes of course, that's the usual response to the argument of the brain being the seat of consciousness due to physical changes having effects on consciousness, but it at least shows that there's a correlation and you need to justify there needing to be more than the brain to produce consciousness.
again if you're not even postulating a soul then i don't even know what's your point.

just because i'm not ready to believe in magic after you say something about 'qualia' and some other sophistry and denounce big bad materialism doesn't mean i'm brainwashed. you are being way too worked up over this like it's part of your personal identity or something.
i'm simply someone who follows the evidence, and you seem to think you provided a knock-out blow to materialism but i don't think anybody would be convinced. the scientific world isn't brainwashed just because they don't agree with you, that's just childish.

sorry for misconstruing something which i think could've been made clearer, but again, i'll just sit back and wait for YOUR account of qualia and consciousness which is outside of 'materialism', because otherwise it's just an argument from ignorance.
i don't think qualia is super mysterious or special either, but something characterized by descriptions of our perceptions of physical qualities which are processed by the central nervous system, and not something that exists independently, so it's basically the same problem as consciousness.

okay then, while that stuff may be fun to think about, i don't get why it's something to get heated up about.
i think that regardless of 'idealism' or 'materialism' being true, it doesn't really change anything in practice. science soldiers on and on its own you're still not getting a god, an afterlife, etc.

Because when challenged to explain what it is, you have only been able to come up with size as a metric of "mattering."

You speak of "the grand scheme of things" as if it is self-evident that big things are more important than small things, but no rational argument for the idea that bigness is relevant in determining what matters has been made.

I believe that the suggestion that how large something is somehow indicates how much it matters is irrational.

The only known minds we know of in the universe are the ones originating on this Earth. Until someone from somewhere else comes into the picture and explains what matters to them, we are the only measure we have of what matters and the size of things in the cosmos has nothing to do with it.

A question for Ganondox about observers... do you believe that the "observer effect" noted in quantum experiments requires that a consciousness make an observation?