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.