Jayarava's Raves: Rebirth is Neither Plausible nor Salient.

Jayarava's Raves: Rebirth is Neither Plausible nor Salient.: The idea of anything surviving the death of the body, and in particular the death of the brain, seems so incredibly unlikely that I no longer find any afterlife theory plausible. ...

[...] Neuro-anatomical investigation shows us that mental activity is inseparable from brain activity. Even in the case where mental activity does seem disembodied—e.g. the out-of-body experience  (OBE)—scientists have shown that electrical stimulation of the angular gyrus, on the tempero-parietal junction, will create this precise effect. We now have plausible explanations for how the sense of self may be disrupted in such a way as the ego is perceived to be connected to the felt sense of the body, but disconnected from visual sense, all the while remaining tightly correlated with brain activity.

Thomas Metzinger, however, has observed that having had an OBE the overwhelming temptation is to conclude that consciousness is not tied to the body: i.e. to believe in a strong form of mind/body dualism. I would add that even those who haven't had the experience personally are tempted by the testimony of those who have. The conclusions of neuroscientists, however, are profoundly non-dualistic: there is no separation between brain function and consciousness, they are manifestations of the same process.

[...] When reasoning we use emotion to assign value to facts. Antonio Damasio describes a patient with damage to the emotion centres in the pre-frontal lobe, but whose intellect is otherwise intact. Asked to make a decision they cannot do so because they cannot assign value to facts, they get caught up in an endless exploration of the available facts without ever coming to a conclusion.

The strength of emotion around death makes us weigh facts in a biased way: for instance we see the corpse of a loved one, but cannot accept that they have simply ceased to be, so we imagine that their consciousness (or their soul) lives on in some disembodied state.

When we combine all of these observations we can begin to see the dynamic that is at work:

We believe a priori:

1) that self-awareness is not tied to the body, so the idea that 'something' survives death and continues to 'live' seems plausible;

2) that emotional weighting of facts makes this seem probable, and the finality of death improbable;

3) and since we don't want to believe in death, post-mortem survival seems preferable.

We make the leap from preferable to actually true, and it feels satisfying because we have resolved the dissonance and been consistent with our other beliefs.

Jayarava's Raves: There is No Life After Death, Sorry.

Jayarava's Raves: There is No Life After Death, Sorry.: In this essay, I begin with a longish introduction in which I recap some important points made in previous essays about the idea of life ...

According to Jayarava, the dynamic of afterlife beliefs is like this:

1) The fact of universal death creates cognitive dissonance.

2) According to testimony, certain experiences appear to demonstrate that consciousness is not tied to the body, but can exist independently.

3) So the idea that something might survive the death of the body and continue to "live" seems plausible.

4) Emotional weighting of facts (salience) makes this seem probable, and the finality of death improbable.

5) Since the finality of death causes intense cognitive dissonance, post-mortem survival seems preferable.

6) We make the leap from probable/preferable to actually true; and it feels satisfying because we have resolved the dissonance created by the fact of death and been consistent with our other beliefs.

Respectful Atheist's take on a phenomenon usually called patternicity

Respectful Atheist: Patternicity: There are a handful of others, who played heavily into my de-conversion, that I have thus far barely mentioned here on the Respectful Atheist blog....

Patternicity can be defined as the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise.

Our pattern seeking behaviors are closely related to magical & religious thinking a.k.a. the brain's oldest Information Processing System built on emotional, intuitive, associative, and illogical "reasoning" so typical for children and adult woos.

The patterns we perceive are not always real. Actually there are two types of pattern related errors,

1) Type I Error a.k.a. false positive patterns, i.e. when we believe a pattern is real although it's not (meaning we've found a nonexistent pattern)

2) Type II Error a.k.a. false negative patterns, i.e. when we believe a pattern isn't real although it actually is (meaning we've not recognized a real and existing pattern)