An interesting proof of the afterlife?

Note:

I read an article by Tavian Jean-Pierre published here a while ago. I thought it was deep and insightful and very well-argued but I disagreed with it.

Here’s why

There are only two models. Socrates’ interpretation of Parmenides, as I understand it, is that form is unchanging and matter is the flawed physical manifestation.

We know that there is a value of pi, that may be calculated to an infinite degree of precision. If we draw a circle, no matter how finely we draw it, our measurements will never attain the accuracy of the ideal. There will be — ahem — a rounding error.

Aristotle argues the opposite, that matter has form within it. What you see is what you get. Draw a circle, measure the circumference, divide by the diameter, you have pi. Contemplate a person, a house, a cloud, you must be able to discern what makes it that way and is its essence or form.

Socrates might say that a cloud has no existence in itself. Where the conditions are right in terms of air pressure, temperature, humidity and so on, a cloud forms, not because a cloud has any substance in itself but because it is what we label a region of atmosphere where water vapour is visible.

Where the right conditions exist, a cloud, a dog, a house appears. Though this is going beyond Socrates’ understanding, there is a cascade. An atom appears when the correct conditions exist — energy and matter are, as we know, interchangeable — the number and type of sub-atomic particles determine whether it is hydrogen, or iron, or uranium, the atoms form molecules according to underlying conditions, the molecules arrange themselves in shapes of complexity and you end up with a horse or a house, depending.

I prefer Socrates’ view over Aristotle’s.

But who am I?

If I ask who I am, the “I” is a manifestation of consciousness. It appears when the conditions are right, it disappears when they are not. There is no need to look within a body to see if it is conscious or not; consciousness is not formed there.

Nor does an individual consciousness persist. Socrates imagined differently, chuckling when one of his companions asked what they should do with him after his death, and saying that they would have to catch him first.

“…in what way should we bury you?” Crito asked.

“Any way you like,” Socrates replied, “that is if you can catch me and I do not escape you.”

With this, he laughed gently, looked towards us and said, “friends, I cannot persuade Crito that I am this Socrates who is conversing with you right now and arranging each topic of discussion. Instead, he thinks I am the one he will see in a short time as a corpse, and he asks how he should bury me. I presented extensive arguments a while ago, that once I drink the poison I shall no longer remain with you but shall depart and be gone to some delights of the blessed, but I think these have been spoken to him in vain, while consoling both yourselves and myself at the same time.” — Plato’s Phaedo, 115D, translated by David Horan 2021

He imagined some afterlife where the good lived and the bad went around the rivers of the underworld until they had served their time of punishment.

This is fanciful rubbish, no matter how many times you rearrange the writings of the ancients to create some flavour of afterlife. The temperature changes, the air grows less humid, the cloud vanishes. There is no form of a particular cloud hanging around in the heavens awaiting rebirth.

It is a fanciful conceit to imagine that our “I” lingers on in some notional body after the physical one is gone. The recognisable features of the body are not somehow transmitted into ether, any more than the neurons that hold our memories, our knowledge, our habits, our skills persist. The structures stop working, they disintegrate. they vanish like the vapour of a cloud.

I don’t believe in life or death, for the simple reason that science has yet to find any sort of life force that is not chemistry or neuroelectricity. Get the right molecules in the right order and you have an entity that moves and grows and forms a vessel for consciousness but there is nothing special, nothing divine, nothing extra in any of that.

If you want to believe that a person has a soul that somehow persists after the physical body vanishes, that’s fine. But to have me change my views, then you will have to show me one, and you cannot do that by stacking words on each other in some persuasive pattern, any more than Socrates could convince Crito that there was something different to the apparent processes of life and death. At the very least, those words would have to be Sanskrit, for my view is formed upon Vedic philosophy.

But my soul is real!

I know that consciousness is real because I experience it. It is reasonable to accept that other entities also experience consciousness. But I reject the notion that “my” consciousness is in any way special. It exists for the moment, it vanishes when there is nothing left to support it. It doesn’t hang around waiting to be reborn like the spirit of a cloud existing in some airy fancy.

When the conditions are right, consciousness appears. It is the same across the cosmos, because it underlies the matter of creation, just as a star forms when there is enough matter and energy, whether nearby, or at some immense distance.

If there is an atmosphere on a planet orbiting that star and the conditions are favourable, a cloud will form. And if there is an entity sufficiently complex to support consciousness, then consciousness will appear.

And it will be the exact same consciousness that makes me perceive myself.

That is my understanding of Advaita Vedanta.

Britni