specklebang said:
These were Rabbinical commentaries that were in the edition that I got from a Conservative Jewish Synagogue. I didn't like read the scroll or anything. It didn't seem agenda driven, just explanation and amplification to expand the literal English translation. I'm unfamiliar with the term "tanakh".
"Tanakh" is a notariqon (sort of like an anagram) for Torah (the law), Neviim (the prophets), and Kethuvim (the writings). What we call the "Old Testament" is the Tanakh. The term "Old Testament" is a mildly insulting term for Jews, since it inherently assumes their holy scriptures are merely a prologue for Christianity. It's fallen into such standard usage that some haven't thought about it, but I prefer to respect Judaism as it is.
Anyway...ah. Unless you read Hebrew, you haven't read the Tanakh. There's too much going on with biblical Hebrew that cannot be captured efficiently in English.
specklebang said:
Just logic. I could be wrong. Anything is possible. Death, and the accompanying rotting of the body appear to be final. So, that's the opinion I ride with. I'm also a pretty nice guy, good deed and charity oriented, so in case I'm wrong, I'll (hopefully) be able to debate my way out of eternal damnation. You can never be too prepared.
Well, surely you are aware of instances where appearance doesn't match reality. If I weren't habituated to the idea, for instance, I wouldn't have any cause to believe other people have minds. The only appearance is behavior, and I can imagine behavior without anything behind it.
specklebang said:
I am not certain there is an afterlife, but I am fairly sure death is not the end of consciousness. It may be, for most people, the end or near-end of memory. I came to these conclusions due to the convergence of multiple lines of argument and evidence.
First, I began to investigate neuroscience. Long ago, when I was an undergrad in my intro to philosophy class, the professor was explaining ontological materialism. I recall thinking that in order for us to be certain that materialism is true, some scientist somewhere has to have put together a nuts-and-bolts account of how we go from neural activity and physiology to phenomenology and intention. But she was so persuasive, I assumed that someone must have done so, and the subject was simply so technical there's no way I could understand it. So, I bought it, and all that it entails (including that there is no afterlife), and was quite content for a while.
But that point (that someone would need to have the correct account of how the brain produces the mind) stuck with me subliminally, and the more I studied, the more I began to realize its importance. I left school and got into business, though in my spare time, I began studying all the neuroscience I could get my hands on. I bought textbooks and studied just as if I were taking classes, and then started reading journal articles. After a decade, I came to realize that in fact not only does no one have such an account, no one has any clue how to even begin making one. I then came to two related realizations.
First, I understood that there's nothing we could know about the brain that would give us a complete explanation for the mind. This is particularly damning to materialism, since the whole point of materialism is that matter is supposed to explain all non-physical properties.
Second, I understood that there aren't any good positive arguments for materialism. The main arguments are all arguments against some other position, and all of those arguments are fairly weak. It was at that moment that I finally ceased being a materialist. I decided that it would behoove me to try to figure out what kind of universe we actually live in.
I began to think about the notion of scientific law. It occurred to me that what we normally think of as laws are really just approximations or idealizations of observed phenomena. Classical sources distinguished two motive forces--physis and telos. In the modern period, physis is the kind of motive force that planets are supposed to have as they orbit the sun. Its major distinguishing feature is that it doesn't deviate from the mathematics that describes it. Telos, on the other hand, is distinguishable because it does deviate from any mathematics that purports to describe it. Physis is a feature of non-conscious objects. Telos is a feature of conscious objects. As I considered these points, I came to realize that the universe resembles much more closely an object with telos than one with physis. This is especially the case when we realize that you simply cannot get telos out of physis. Since telos exists (conscious beings exist), this presents a further connundrum.
I began to survey forgotten or marginalized ideas, because the epistemic picture that emerged from these considerations is that somewhere in western culture, we've failed to account for everything. We've cut off something real because we couldn't conceive of how it fit with other ideas that, for whatever reasons, stood out to us as bright and shiny. Our concepts simply do not correspond with the whole of reality. Thus stated, the point is almost obvious, but this has a very significant import: our most basic beliefs are probably not right. I think we have concepts that almost necessarily lead us to be materialists, and those concepts are just incorrect.
The upshot of these meditations led me to a few distinct beliefs:
1) The world is an illusion at least in the sense that it doesn't resemble our impressions of it.
2) At least some aspects of mind are likely fundamental, and thus not explainable or reducible in other terms.
3) If we want to understand the world as it really is, it's important to admit all evidence gathered according to reasonable epistemic standards, even if it seems contradictory. The universe may not conform to the laws of logic, and probably does not.
I see many of the current puzzles in physics as evidence for the first. I've taken graduate level courses in quantum mechanics, relativity, and astrophysics, which did nothing to alleviate this concern. The world is an illusion of some kind, and the evidence that it is an illusion is both apparent and plentiful to those who look.
The inexplicability of phenomenal experience, intention, memory, emotion, and other such recommend mind as in some way fundamental.
Among the evidence that should be considered is evidence from parapsychology. The relevant questions are not whether, if we admit this evidence, it contradicts everything else we've come to believe. The only relevant question is whether it was gathered according to the best epistemic standards. One body of evidence in particular that I think was gathered according to such evidence, and bears on the question of an afterlife, is the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson on reincarnation. Stevenson was a well-respected psychologist who didn't put up with nonsense. He worked at one of the best universities in America. He applied rigorous standards to the data gathered and found some convincing cases of reincarnation.
This is important because, if it's possible for a human being to be reincarnated, that means it's possible for memory and consciousness to survive whatever happens after death. It completes a kind of conceptual circle. Evidence from mediums, for example, can always be given alternate explanations that don't entail the survival of consciousness. But the return to life in another form of something previously taken to be dead is definitive. If that is something that actually happens, then death cannot be the end. Of course, I grant that despite all this, I could simply be wrong. Stevenson might have screwed up or lied, or I might have just missed something.
There's lots more to be said about this topic, but that at least sketches some of my thoughts on the matter.
Moved to Philosophy.