Instigator / Con
oromagi's avatar
14
oromagi
1922
rating
117
debates
97.44%
won
Topic
#3720

HUMAN CONCIOUSNESS DETECTABLY REINCARNATES after DEATH

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
6
0
Better sources
4
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
2
2

After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...

oromagi
Tags
Religion
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
One week
Max argument characters
5,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Pro
Ehyeh's avatar
8
Ehyeh
1487
rating
31
debates
35.48%
won
Description

HUMAN CONCIOUSNESS DETECTABLY REINCARNATES after DEATH

DEFINITIONS:

HUMAN [ADJ] is "of or belonging to the species Homo sapiens or its closest relatives"
soul (countable and uncountable, plural souls)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/human

CONSCIOUSNESS [NOUN] is "the state of being conscious or aware; awareness."

DETECTABLY [ADVERB] is "In a way that can be detected"
DETECT [VERB] is detect "to discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing"

REINCARNATES [Third-person singular simple present indicative form of REINCARNATE]
REINCARNATE [VERB] is "To be, or cause to be, reborn, especially in a different body or as a different species

DEATH [NOUN] is "The cessation of life and all associated processes; the end of an organism's existence as an entity independent from its environment and its return to an inert, nonliving state"

BURDEN of PROOF

Wikipedia advises:
"When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo. This is also stated in Hitchens's razor, which declares that "what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence." Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion – "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" – which is known as the Sagan standard."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

As the maker of an extraordinary claim, PRO has the sole BURDEN of PROOF in this debate.

PRO must substantiate the existence of pre-birth human consciousness via specific recollections of experience that can't be explained by some simpler theory.

Because PRO is the claimant, this debate is designed for PRO to argue first and CON second.

Therefore, PRO will omit any argument in ROUND1 stating "As agreed, the CONTENDER will write PRO's affirmative in the ROUND1"
CON will omit any argument in ROUND5 stating "As agreed, the CONTENDER will omit any argument in ROUND 5"

PRO is requesting sincere and friendly engagement on this subject.
No trolls or kritiks, please.

- RULES --
1. Forfeit=auto loss
2. Sources may be merely linked in debate as long as citations are listed in comments
3. No new args in R5
4. For all relevant terms, individuals should use commonplace understandings that fit within the rational context of this resolution and debate

Round 1
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#1
As agreed, the CONTENDER will write PRO's affirmative in the ROUND1
Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#2
introduction:
Due to character constraints, I will be forced to only make bare-bones arguments (at least within the first round). I wish all the best of luck in this debate. I'm sure it will be an interesting one.
-
The burden of proof in this debate has been solely put on me to show how we can (1) detect and (2) detectably know how reincarnation happens.

Detecting consciousness
Considering it is my role in this debate to demonstrate we can detect how consciousness can survive after death, it is then imperative for me to prove how we can even detect consciousness itself to come to contemplate this idea itself.
-
Knowledge can generally be split into two categories; (1) discursive knowledge (2) intuitive knowledge

Discursive knowledge is knowledge predicated upon rational deduction. When we go to school, everything that we learn is either discursive or conceptual knowledge. Intuitive knowledge, on the other hand, is a direct experiential knowledge that is beyond words. To use an example of intuitive knowledge, imagine a person who has never tasted chocolate. You can sit here all day and try to explain to that person what chocolate tastes like, but they would never know what chocolate tastes like from your words alone, until they taste it. It then follows that we can detect things which science cannot, such as the taste of chocolate or consciousness itself, and since I can detect things without the aid of discursive knowledge or empiricism (I don't need a calculator to verify 2 + 2 = 4), it then does not follow that we necessarily need empirical knowledge to detectably know that consciousness survives after death, just as I do not need a calculator to verify mathematical equations or to detect the taste of wine.

DETECTABLY [ADVERB] is "In a way that can be detected"
DETECT [VERB] is detect "to discover or find by careful search, examination, or probing"
Since we know we can detect the taste of chocolate through experience, it then follows that we can detect consciousness itself through experience. That means I have shown the detectability of consciousness. Through careful searching of this experience, we can come to know how consciousness can survive after death. If oromagi wishes to deny the detectability of consciousness, he ought to deny he knows he exists (as truly, all he can be said is to be consciousness).

Oromagis baby analogy
Take a survey of all the newborn babies who can speak in complete sentences.  As long as that number remains zero, reincarnation is almost certainly false.
Within Phaedo (one of my favourite dialogues of Socrates's), this would fall under the cyclical argument Socrates postulated. It implies that the soul must be immortal since the living come from the dead. Socrates says:
 
"Now if it be true that the living come from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other world, for if not, how could they have been born again?". He goes on to show, using examples of relationships, such as asleep-awake and hot-cold, that things that have opposites come to be from their opposite. One falls asleep after having been awake. And after being asleep, he awakens. Things that are hot came from being cold and vice versa. Socrates then gets Cebes to conclude that the dead are generated from the living, through death, and that the living are generated from the dead, through death. The souls of the dead must exist in some place for them to be able to return to life.

It is evident for all to see if we're to follow our phenomenological experience. We appear to come from a place without consciousness (or death). It therefore does not follow that just because one's consciousness can be dimmed or snuffed out all together, that reincarnation is impossible (since we can come from a place without it, yet we seem to exist despite coming from death or non-existence). If we were to take what Oromagi said to be correct, it would then follow that when I go under anaesthesia in a week for my surgery, the person who wakes up will not be me, as during the time my consciousness ceased, I was incapable of complete sentences. In this same sense, someone can have a traumatic brain injury and radically alter their intellectual capabilities. Let's say this person is now incapable of speaking. Does it then follow that this person is no longer the same experimental being? surely not. This argument possesses feet of clay, and he will not be able to move very far if he chooses to try and defend it. If it follows that I came from nonexistence, it then follows that I can return to nonexistence at my time of death but then come back from this nonexistence (as I have done in this life to make it experientially possible). The only other alternative to this, is to argue we're immortal, but lose our memories.

 

CONCLUSION
Sadly, due to character constraints, that is all I can offer for this round, although it did act as a good foundational round to show how my latter round philosophies will fulfil both the detectability criteria and the detectable criteria.
 

Round 2
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#3
Thx, Ehyeh!

HUMAN CONCIOUSNESS DETECTABLY REINCARNATES after DEATH

CON1:

P1A: The only proof of a persistent past consciousness is memory
P1B: No unimpeachable memory from some past life has ever been recorded
C1:  Therefore no proof of past consciousness has ever been recorded

P2A: Reincarnation requires the successful transfer of perception and memory by neurons from one brain to another
P2B:  No such neural transfer has ever been reliably documented
C2: Therefore, the basic physical function of reincarnation  (neural transfer) has not been proven possible
CON assumes:
  • that neuro-chemical signal migration is far easier from one active synapse to another
  • that neuro-chemical signal migration is far easier between proximate synapses
  • no neuro-chemical signal from the human brain has ever been received over any significant gap in time or distance
  • no neuro-chemical signal from the one human brain has ever been received by another human brain
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer over significant gaps in time and space
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer between two different human brains
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer between dead axons and live axons

Since any such signal transfer is easier to accomplish and document than the migration of an entire human consciousness from dead or destroyed brains to living brain, CON assumes that these proofs would precede any proof of reincarnation and that so long as none of these physical problems are resolved, the likelihood of detectable reincarnation  remains close to nil

COUNTERS

Detecting consciousness

  • I'm not sure I understand the relevance of intuition to our argument
    • CON agrees that intuition is a form of knowledge but by definition intuition makes poor proof because intuitive knowledge fools the human brain
      • Copernicus intuited that the Earth revolves around the Sun but it  took Galileo and Brahe's  careful observations to build a model on which Kepler could define laws of planetary motion, test those laws by confirming previous unpredictable movements in the planets
      • We can infer from a short study of religion that many different beliefs have been intuited from the absence of evidence regarding the persistence of human consciousness after death
        • Many theories are contradictory to others but we may assume that soon after any hypothesis actually passes the threshold of tested, predictable, justified truth then  all other religions will fade in favor of the proven faith.
          • That is, if we could reliable prove reincarnation, much of Christianity and Islam would stand falsified
    • Since intuition if easily fooled and often false and since human intuition regarding reincarnation is profoundly split and contradicting (either way, half of religions are wrong), we must not rely on intuition as evidence, much less proof of reincarnation.  Let's toss out intuition
  • I've tried to reduce PRO's argument to syllogism minus intuition:
CP1A: we can detect the memory of human experience
CP1B: memory of experience is evidence of consciousness
CC1: Therefore consciousness is detectable
  • CON finds this reasoning sound but far short for proof of reincarnation
    • We already know what test would prove migration: we see it in the Spot the Imposter meme frequently repeated in many TV shows
      • The heroes encounter a situation where the villain is an imposter of one of their own and/or a sympathetic character. The heroes must find out who is the imposter and who is the real deal.
      • The trick is to detect the familiar, knowable, conscious personality.  In these situations it is often important to ignore intuition and rely on hard reasoning:  typically what very specific memory are hard knowledge can delineate the familiar consciousness from the merely convincing imposter?
    • That is our test here as well. 
      • It is not good enough to just have vague recollections of some prior life, proof requires very specific recollections that could not possibly have been transferred any other way. 
      • Almost all attempts to establish such proof fail:
        • Most claims of past life memories come from children but children are easily coerced or led into false testimony.
        • Most claims of past life memories involve relatives, associates, or documented past experiences (i.e. Cleopatra)
        • Most claims result from the same kinds of tricks that inform psychics who speak to the dead.
Oromagis baby analogy

  • Please refrain from using arguments I've made outside of this debate
 We appear to come from a place without consciousness (or death).
  • What evidence supports this presumption?
    • Most adults have no memories before 2 or  3 years of age.  Why should we not assume from this that full consciousness develops in situ as part of maturing brain development?
      • And therefore, consciousness dies with the brain?
  • Over to PRO for R2
SOURCES in COMMENTS


Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#4

  • It does not follow that we should consider memory recollection to be the pinnacle of truth. I cannot remember what I had for breakfast the other week. Does that mean I (1) didn't have breakfast the other week? and (2) there is no way to prove I had breakfast the other week other than memory recollection? False memories have been shown to be easy to implant within people, even promoting people to formulate false memories.
  •   Considering oromagi has misunderstood what intuitive knowledge and discursive knowledge are, we will simply drop it. Within the word "bachelor" is actually the word "unmarrieman.an" I do not need experience with a bachelor or bachelors to know they're all unmarried. This is analytic knowled. Thisis demonstrates I can know things without physical, empirical evidence but come to detect truths through analytic knowledge (simply through necessity). It will always be truth that all bachelors are unmarried men, as it cannot be any other way. Therefore if I can reason reincarnation to not be any other way, it then does not follow you need physical evidence or memory recollection for it to be true.
  • Science is adamant of the existence of dark energy (which it cannot directly detect), yet it can indirectly detect it through the fact that it is necessary for the things we do see. If I can reason something to be necessary, regardless of whether it's detectable a posteriori (like consciousness), we can know it's true through indirect necessity.



universals
Universals can be said to be a class of mind-independent entities, usually contrasted with individuals (or so-called “particulars”), postulated to ground and explain relations of qualitative identity and resemblance among individuals. Individuals are said to be similar in virtue of sharing universals. An apple and a ruby are both red, for example, and their common redness results from sharing a universal. If they are both red at the same time, the universal, red, must be in two places at once. This makes universals quite different from individuals; and it makes them controversial.

a nominalist would argue, that because we can destroy a particular, e.g.. throw a vase onto the floor and it smashes, that means particulars are real. Yet when i drop a green vase on the floor and it smashes the smashed vase doesn't lose any of its "greenness". Therefore nominalists argue that the problem of universals is either

Consciousness is a universal as it exists in more places than one, I am not the only person with consciousness, just as i am not the only person with "humanity" or "humanness" just as humanness cannot be mereologically divided like a particular such as an arm can. Consciousness cannot be dissected or cut up like the brain can. Considering that consciousness cannot be divided that means consciousness is then a universal. This is another heavy hitting argument to all being one. A form of panpsychism. 

Humanity being denied as a necessary universal can be done based on the fact we can deny that we necessarily have to recognise humanity as a thing based on reality. This is impossible with consciousness itself as it is the entire reason we can experience some form of reality. This then proves some forms of universals are necessarily real, therefore consciousness is all one and exists in all of us at once.

When a new-born baby is born, that baby is infact the same consciousness as oromagi. In this sense, oromagi is constantly reincarnating. Unless he can prove otherwise 

Abiogensis
Abiogenesis is the biological problem that biological life appears to have formed from non-living matter. It is evident for all to see that we are a mixture of both the traits of our mother and father. My father's eye-colour genes have been passed onto me, and in this sense, he reincarnates himself through me and allows himself to live on. If all our physical traits are simply the traits of our mother and father, then we ought to admit that these traits constantly reincarnate and rebuild themselves through a new body.

If it follows that my hair colour genes are a reincarnation of my mother's genes in a new body, as are all my other traits, it should then follow that my mother's and father's consciousness are passed onto me too. For Where else do I attain consciousness? If consciousness is passed down (reincarnating), where does it come from? If oromagi says it is simply an emergent property of high functioning brains, well, biology itself appears to be an emergent property of non-living matter. It would then not follow that my consciousness is any different from my mother and father than my eye colour is from my parents. In this sense, one's own consciousness is spread and continues to exist within a new body whenever one chooses to have a child.



Conclusion

  • Oromagi has left us comment-less on Phaedo, and instead made a weak argument to memory recollection.
  • oromagis arguments thus far have all existed as strawmen.

Round 3
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#5
Thx, Ehyeh!

CON1:

P1A: The only proof of a persistent past consciousness is memory
P1B: No unimpeachable memory from some past life has ever been recorded
C1:  Therefore no proof of past consciousness has ever been recorded

It does not follow that we should consider memory recollection to be the pinnacle of truth.
  • Not "pinnacle of truth," rather  proof of persistent past consciousness
I cannot remember what I had for breakfast the other week.  
  • No, so that would be a bad question to ask for us to prove that you had been reincarnated
    • But you would certainly remember how to speak English.  Therefore,  if somebody claims to be a reincarnated Egyptian priestess- it would be reasonable to expect that person to be speak/read/write that ancient language  and if they could not, dismiss their claim as fraud.  
False memories have been shown to be easy to implant within people, even promoting people to formulate false memories.
  • Exactly why such tests need to meet a very high standard of evidence to be believed.
CON2:

P2A: Reincarnation requires the successful transfer of perception and memory by neurons from one brain to another
P2B:  No such neural transfer has ever been reliably documented
C2: Therefore, the basic physical function of reincarnation  (neural transfer) has not been proven possible

 it then does not follow you need physical evidence or memory recollection for it to be true.
  • PRO has no physical evidence and won't be using memory tests.  He's about to concede intuition.  How then, will PRO ever detect consciousness much less prove transmigration?
COUNTERS

Detecting consciousness

 we must not rely on intuition as evidence, much less proof of reincarnation.  Let's toss out intuition

we will simply drop it.
  • PRO concedes intuition
Science is adamant of the existence of dark energy
  • False.  Dark energy is a popular conventionalism but more placeholder than observation.  Roughly, the hypothesis of dark energy states that
    • assuming Einstein and Hubble are correct, and
    • assuming our Hubble images of very distant supernovae are accurate and representative and
    • assuming our galaxy is situated in a fairly representative part of a  fairly "dusty" universe, then
    • some as yet unknown form of energy in the universe is indicated
  • Seems like we ought to be able to at least observe and measure a component theoretically making up 73% of the universe before getting adamant about its existence.  Science was once adamant that electrons orbited an atom's nucleus.
If I can reason something to be necessary, regardless of whether it's detectable a posteriori (like consciousness), we can know it's true through indirect necessity.
Oromagi's baby

Universals can be said....and it makes them controversial.
  • This paragraph is cut & paste from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and deserves crediting.
  • Red is universal but few would mistake an apple for a ruby.
  • If I eat an apple one day then see an apple growing on a tree on another day,  I'd be a fool to assume that something essential has passed between the two fruits just because I detect universal similarities such as redness.  In fact, most commercial apples come from cloned trees so two apples on the shelf are more likely to be genetically identical than any human twins, so much so I'd have a hard time telling one apart from another but still to conclude that that they share some invisible spirit seems entirely unwarranted.  What is the evidence for apple ghosts and what is the evidence any apple once eaten can pass its ghost on to the next?  None.
    • For exactly this same reason, I don't assume some invisible, transferable undefined thing must be universal to all humans
      • I have my consciousnesses and other humans tell me they have theirs, but I can't verify that.  I can only respect their claims as I expect my claim of self-awareness to be respected- I can't know their claims are true
When a new-born baby is born, that baby is infact the same consciousness as oromagi
    • I can testify with confidence:  I have shared no awareness, no self-consciousness, no essential or eternal existence with another, baby or not.
      • Even if another human were to swear they had this experience even though I have not, I would have no means to test that claim beyond the memory tests or neuro-chemical signal transfers PRO rejects.
Abiogensis

  • Another scientific mystery but seems non-sequitur to this discussion
 If all our physical traits are simply the traits of our mother and father, then we ought to admit that these traits constantly reincarnate and rebuild themselves through a new body.
  • I don't get how this connects to abiogenesis
  • I never shared any awareness, memory, perception with my parents
    • Nor  have I heard any such report from others.
  • Most parents and children's lives overlap but we are discussion the transmigration of souls after death
Phaedo

  • Speculation w/out evidence

  • Over to PRO for R3

SOURCES in COMMENTS


Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#6
  • Considering you once more never actually rebutted anything i presented in this round i finally have the chance to answer a few of your questions.

 We appear to come from a place without consciousness (or death).
  • What evidence supports this presumption?
    • Most adults have no memories before 2 or  3 years of age.  Why should we not assume from this that full consciousness develops in situ as part of maturing brain development?
      • And therefore, consciousness dies with the brain?
  • Oromagi says there is an assumption in phaedo that we come from non-existence or we don't come from non-existence. Truthfully, I'm unsure why he wants me to make his argument for him! To find the truth, we work within the law of non-contradiction. Something either exists or it doesn't. Before Oromagi was born, his consciousness either existed in another place or it didn't. If it follows that your consciousness didnt exist before you were born, that means your consciousness came from non-existence, which means if you were to die, there is no reason to think you cant come back from non-existence even when you die. In the alternative, it is necessary that your consciousness has simply always existed. Within even the worst case scenario for me, reincarnation remains possible. Oromagi never rebuts this but simply says it's an assumption. It's not, it cannot be any other way, unless he shows how it can be any other way. I'm not making your argument for you, oromagi.
    • The con then asks me to demonstrate how consciousness can pass from one living brain to another, which I did using my abiogenesis argument. 
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer over significant gaps in time and space
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer between two different human brains
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer between dead axons and live axons

  • One's brain rebuilds itself (therefore consciousness in a new body). If consciousness does not come from one's parents, Where does it come from? This is not a god of gaps, as the only other explanation is that consciousness once more comes from nothing, or comes from some sort of spiritual realm.
    • In the end, Oromagi never commented on this outside of an argument to intuition and emotion, that "he has never shared perception with my parents." This is a non-argument. Just because you cannot see through their eyes (obviously as that consciousness is in a different body locked to it), doesn't mean your consciousness is different from theirs.
      • Because you are a CON in this debate, it is your responsibility to demonstrate to the audience that you have disproven my evidence that I have not proven reincarnation to be true. These arguments about intuition, feelings, and statements with no evidence are not sufficient to show you have proven my arguments to be wrong.
  1. A thing or set of things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.
  2. Something indicative; an indication or set of indications.
Evidence definiton:  
  1. A thing or set of things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.
  2. Something indicative; an indication or set of indications.
"what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence." Carl Sagan

Based on the definition of evidence, i have presented evidence to reincarnation. It does not follow that any of oromagis "arguments" which are:

  • More inquiries
    • Or an argument to emotion or intuition or saying "that's a non-sequitor" without explaining why a non-sequitor is sufficient to disprove anything I have said thus far.

  • I could sit in a physics lesson and listen to a physics professor talk about the big bang and say, "I have never had experience of the big bang. Why should I believe this? " Or I could hear his arguments for the big bang and simply say "that's a non sequitor." Evidently, my saying it is a non sequitor doesn't make it as such if I can't explain why.
      • I can sit here and say all ponies are pink, but me stating it as a matter of fact does not make it a matter of fact.
          • Just because you can doubt something does not mean you're correct in your doubt, for everything can be doubted or denied. You need evidence for why your doubt is correct.

Conclusion


  • Oromagi never replied to Phaedo, except to want me to answer it for him. Considering he is con in this debate, it's his imperative to prove to the audience my evidence is not sufficient to prove reincarnation true. Simply saying "no" or "that's a non sequitur" without explaining why doesn't make it so. I could say that to Einstein, but what is said without evidence can be refuted without it. I can state all monkeys are pink, but me stating it as a matter of fact doesn't make it a matter of fact.
    • I have shown to Oromagi how brains can transfer consciousness even in the living. I fulfilled my burden of proof both within a dualist and materialist sense. Oromagi has yet to refute any of them except appeals to intuition and feelings.
      • Everything can be doubted, but being capable of doubting something does not do enough to disprove it, as i can even doubt my own existence.




Round 4
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#7
Thx, Ehyeh!

BOP:

Because you are a CON in this debate, it is your responsibility to demonstrate to the audience that you have disproven my evidence that I have not proven reincarnation to be true. These arguments about intuition, feelings, and statements with no evidence are not sufficient to show you have proven my arguments to be wrong.

 Considering he is con in this debate, it's his imperative to prove to the audience my evidence is not sufficient to prove reincarnation true
  • False.  Let's recall the rules PRO agreed to for this debate:
    •  PRO has the sole BURDEN of PROOF in this debate
    • PRO must substantiate the existence of pre-birth human consciousness via specific recollections of experience that can't be explained by some simpler theory
CON1:

P1A: The only proof of a persistent past consciousness is memory
P1B: No unimpeachable memory from some past life has ever been recorded
C1:  Therefore no proof of past consciousness has ever been recorded

  • PRO drops:
    • You would certainly remember how to speak English.  Therefore,  if somebody claims to be a reincarnated Egyptian priestess- it would be reasonable to expect that person to be speak/read/write that ancient language  and if they could not, dismiss their claim as fraud
CON2:

P2A: Reincarnation requires the successful transfer of perception and memory by neurons from one brain to another
P2B:  No such neural transfer has ever been reliably documented
C2: Therefore, the basic physical function of reincarnation  (neural transfer) has not been proven possible

  • PRO drops:
    • How then, will PRO ever detect consciousness much less prove transmigration?
con then asks me to demonstrate how consciousness can pass from one living brain to another, which I did using my abiogenesis argument.
COUNTERS

Detecting consciousness

  • PRO concedes intuition
  • PRO drops dark energy analogy
Oromagi's baby

  • PRO drops Redness/apple analogy.
    • Our consciousness defines the metaphysical whole of our reality
      • By definition, universal qualities do not themselves exist
CON: "I have my consciousnesses and other humans tell me they have theirs, but I can't verify that.  I can only respect their claims as I expect my claim of self-awareness to be respected- I can't know their claims are true"

 If it follows that your consciousness didnt exist before you were born, that means your consciousness came from non-existence, which means if you were to die, there is no reason to think you cant come back from non-existence even when you die.
  • False.  There are many excellent reasons to think you can't come back from non-existence after death
    • No convincing evidence exists of people coming back from the dead.
      • No babies have ever been born with unexplainable mental capacities, language, consciousness, etc.
    • No evidence exists of information transfer between dead axons and live axons.  
    • No evidence exists of primate or tree shrew memories although the overwhelming majority of our ancestors come from these species
One's brain rebuilds itself (therefore consciousness in a new body). If consciousness does not come from one's parents, Where does it come from? 
  • Frontiers in Psychology:
    • "Human consciousness emerges on the interface between three components of animal behavior: communication, play, and the use of tools. The interaction between communication and play yields symbolic games, most importantly language; the interaction between symbols and tools results in human praxis. Taken together, this gives rise to a mechanism that allows a creature, instead of performing controlling actions overtly, to play forward the corresponding behavioral options in a “second reality” of objectively (by means of tools) grounded symbolic systems."
  • PRO dropped:
    • Most parents and children's lives overlap but we are discussing the transmigration of souls after death
Phaedo

Oromagi never replied to Phaedo, except to want me to answer it for him
  • CON is disproving PRO, not Socrates
  • Socrates is arguing for the persistence of the human soul, not CONCIOUSNESS, our topic
  • Just as the Second Law of Thermodynamics disproved Socrates' claim that "things that are hot came from being cold," his conclusion that "the living  are generated from the dead, through death" is likewise false.
    • Dead organics can feed living things but have never been shown to "generate" progeny
    • Plato's generation was not confident that the human brain was the seat of consciousness much less understood the components of human consciousness the way Modern science does
I have shown to Oromagi how brains can transfer consciousness even in the living
  • Utterly false.  PRO has barely sustained a thread of thought from one round to next much less assembled some kind of coherent explanation of the "how" of migration of human consciousness from one brain to the next.
  • Over to PRO for R4
SOURCES in COMMENTS

Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#8
I've lost all interest in continuing this debate.
Round 5
oromagi's avatar
oromagi
Con
#9
Thx, Ehyeh!

HUMAN CONCIOUSNESS DETECTABLY REINCARNATES after DEATH

CON interprets PRO's R4 remarks as a probable concession but in the absence of any official concession, will proceed with some concluding remarks.

Let's recall  that PRO accepted the sole BURDEN of PROOF in this debate
  • PRO must substantiate the existence of pre-birth human consciousness via specific recollections of experience that can't be explained by some simpler theory
PRO1:  CONCIOUSNESS  can be DETECTED  INTUITIVELY

  • PRO argued that science can't detect consciousness in the same way science can't detect chocolate.
  • CON argued that science can detect consciousness  in the form on neuro-chemical signals between neurons in the human via the persistence  of memory which interacts with human practice and play to allow humans to project and characterize a model of their behavior that humans call self-awareness or consciousness.
  • PRO dropped this argument in R2.
PRO2: UNIVERSALS

  • PRO argued that because particular things hold in common some abstract qualities, such as the color red, human consciousness must be one of those abstract qualities that are recognizable in particular humans
  • CON argued that the perception of the abstract is not proof of existence nor proof of any transference to a new particular after transference.  A new apple does not receive its redness from an eaten apple just because it shares the quality of redness.
  • PRO argues that CON never countered and that he proved transference "within a dualist and materialist sense."
PRO3:  ABIOGENISIS

  • PRO argues that organic matter comes from non-organic compounds and so consciousness can pass between living brains.
    • CON argues that PRO's conclusion is non-sequitur
    • CON refutes that consciousness passing between is an example of reincarnation, which is definitionally the transference of consciousness from the dead to the living.
PRO4:  PHAEDO:

  • PRO quoted a Socrates saying, " the living are generated from the dead, through death" and demanded CON response.
  • CON argued that Socrates was merely hypothesizing without any experiments or results to back his theory.

CON1:

P1A: The only proof of a persistent past consciousness is memory
P1B: No unimpeachable memory from some past life has ever been recorded
C1:  Therefore no proof of past consciousness has ever been recorded
  • PRO dropped this argument entirely
CON2:

P2A: Reincarnation requires the successful transfer of perception and memory by neurons from one brain to another
P2B:  No such neural transfer has ever been reliably documented
C2: Therefore, the basic physical function of reincarnation  (neural transfer) has not been proven possible
  • PRO dropped this argument entirely
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer over significant gaps in time and space
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer between two different human brains
Therefore, CON must prove the physical possibility of neuro-chemical signal transfer between dead axons and live axons
  • PRO inaccurately argued that CON had the burden of proof here
CONCLUSION

  • PRO failed entirely to substantiate the existence of pre-birth human consciousness via specific recollections of experience that can't be explained by some simpler theory.  PRO's hypotheses were notably  hippy-dippy intangibles, lacking any kind of documentation much less persuasive evidence.
  • CON asks VOTERS to award arguments to CON because PRO failed to meet that burden of proof.
  • CON asks VOTERS to award SOURCES to CON because PRO plagiarized a full paragraph without credit in round2 and never backed up any of his claims with source material (except perhaps for Phaedo)
  • CON asks VOTERS to award CONDUCT to CON for R4 forfeiture  and plagiarism.
  • CON thanks PRO for the opportunity to debate and reminds PRO that he agreed to skip Round5 using this statement:
    •  "As agreed, the CONTENDER will omit any argument in ROUND 5"
  • Thanks to all VOTERS for their kind consideration.
  • Please VOTE CON!



Ehyeh's avatar
Ehyeh
Pro
#10
( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)


Win or lose, you cant say my arguments weren't good with what i was offered.