Review of Memories And Post-Death Out Of Body Advantages

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by davidelkins, Feb 27, 2016.

  1. davidelkins Registered Senior Member

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    108
    If a person dies and their physical body dies and they go to Heaven and take on a Heavenly form and if they are reviewing their memories from their physical life, what advantages are their from an out of body state in reviewing their memories from their physical life? I will use the Box Analogy. A person lives in a box for their first 100 years, then at the end of that 100 years they come out of the box and examine their environment. The box is analogous to the birth, inhabitation of the body, death and departation to the afterlife from the body. If the person who lived in the box is reviewing an event that happened when they were 20 years old, which was a period in which they were in the box, then how might the memory review be different than if they were 80 years old and still living in the box and reviewing their memory? Would there be any advantages to review post-removal from the box? Would they have any unique angles with which to review the scene? In this I am attempting to apply a science and a mathematics to a topic that is normally considered beyond the purview of the sciences and mathematics. Please give me some suggestions. Thank you.

    Author: David Elkins
     
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  3. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    If you want to apply science to this topic, prhaps you should start with why you think what you think.
     
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  5. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    I'd be unable to get past the traffic congestion of what a "non-physical" life is supposed to be, or rather how it usually winds-up looking like just more movement and modification in yet another geometrical place or realm with effective presences located in it. The "immaterial" would be a semantically deceptive ontological style which doesn't resolve much if it simply repeats a similar manner of existence at another level (Russian doll syndrome).

    Much of the trouble stems from there being no universal agreement as to what "immaterial, non-corporeal, non-physical, etc" mean. In contemporary philosophical context such can refer to abstract entities that are non-spatial, non-temporal, and causally inert (at least in terms of how they would exist in themselves minus extrinsic relations to other affairs). The nearest that brand of "immaterial" might be grazed in physics is pregeometry[*], which has been inching toward becoming more of a mainstream focus over the last decade.

    But traditional theological and spiritualist folk beliefs go against the grain of the above in that their immaterial agencies are treated as extended, changing (and potent). They are referenced as manifesting, interfering / interacting in the sensible world and thus would qualify as much as members of space and time as an electromagnetic field. They're also not beyond mental activity, as indicated by this very topic.

    The "double-sided" Kantian approach of "things" having an extrinsic character of relational influences with other things [from which the interdependence of the natural world falls out of] and an intrinsic character of being things in themselves [freedom from the natural system] does not often seem entertained by the traditionalist groups (Catholicism is outright hostile to Kant's approach of establishing peace between science and religion).

    Of course, similar conflict of definition can arise with the meaning of "physical" or "material" when those spatiotemporal properties are also classified as extramental. Extension and change are first encountered as self-evident aspects of experience, and converting them from sensible / empirical to a rationalist mode of abstract description only superficially remedies the problem. Since description is as much an outputted artifact of a thought-guided, do-ing organism as the more automatic, uncontrollable sensory showings. Again, there's a handwaving at something prior in rank to phenomenal forms and systematic symbolism, mandated by the West's restless inability to be satisfied with "objectivity" just being "inter-subjectivity".

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    [*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregeometry_(physics)
     
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  7. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Unless you define the characteristics of Heaven it is impossible to determine how the perspective inside the box would differ from that outside the box. So, please define the characteristics of heaven.
     
  8. Edont Knoff Registered Senior Member

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    547
    a) I believe that memories are bound to our brain, not our soul. Loss of memory due to brain malfunction makes me think so.
    b) If the disembodied self can remember the former life, it can learn from the memories, and compare new impressions to the old memories. Both can be useful even for a disembodied self.

    c) I don't think the "self" can survive the body. While there are reports of out-of-body experiences, there are strong indications that our "self" is bound to the brain. If the brain takes damage, our "self" also takes damage. The final extrapolation of this is, if the brain stops to function, the self also stops. I'v seen enough people with damaged brains, to be quite sure that the "self" is not detached from the body, but needs the brain.
     

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