Only seven multiquotes? You're slipping. :sarcastic
Already told you: you don't like point by point debates, quit making multi-point posts.
Not only do we often not remember consciousness during these states, but they don't really change our mood, implying that there was no causality or continuity in experience during the state. If a unit of consciousness experienced something wonderful or at least extremely different during these times, one would expect it to affect near-term consciousness despite lack of memory. Every time I've been put asleep for a surgery or something, I've woken up in basically the same state I've gone under (with the allowance of drug effects), without any experiences. (And yeah, my father came out of his coma. That's how I know he didn't experience anything; he was able to talk about it.)
Anecdotal evidence can be submitted, but ultimately, I think evidence lies strongly on one side.
Why exactly? What I mean is you're using using the idea that something "often" goes one way to dismiss having to consider the times when it goes the other way.
That doesn't really make any sense: it's sort of like saying "since people don't often understand Einstein's theory of relativity, we can dismiss the fact that a few people do and settle for the conclusion that it doesn't make any sense".
Yes, some people claim experiences, but they are often not verified.
"Often" again. I would think that in dealing with something like what we're talking about here, one verified case would be reason enough to suspend definite conclusions until either the verifications were discredited, or the event were explained in some other way.
Put it this way: if 100 archeological teams were looking for Troy, and 99 of them found nothing, but one found what they were looking for, should we still consider the idea that Troy actually existed a 99 to one against proposition?
They are "near death" rather than "death" experiences. There have been studies, for instance, to see if people on an operating table can look down and read a code that can only be seen from the ceiling, and whenever controlled tests like those are done, they show up with a negative.
That's a bit vague. Did any of these test subjects actually report having any sort of OBE? If so, did they specifically say that during the experience they had the perception of looking down on the operating table?
You continue to push this towards non-falsifiability rather than defend validity, despite the fact that non-falsifiability has been granted.
Just for the hell of it I'll say it again: the argument is "does consciousness originate in the brain?" Since the claim being examined is that it does, that's the claim who's validity needs to be defended.
I've presented alternative possibilities for the sake of showing that there are other alternatives.
You're position: "Consciousness originates in the brain"
My position: "Oh? How do we know this"
You're argument: "Well show me that it doesn't originate in the brain".
What you're asking me to do is present every other possible scenario and then present evidence for each one.
Even if you're right, the way you're going about debating is this is still all wrong:
if I were a blind person, and someone came up to me and said "the sky is blue"
and I said "How do you know the sky is blue,
and they answered "We'll, as a sighted person I can look up and see that the sky is blue" Fine. I would be like, OK, glad that's settled.
But, what you're doing is more like this:
You: "the sky is blue"
Me: "How do you know the sky is blue"
You: "Well what other color could it be"?
Me: "Well, until we establish that it's blue, I guess it could just as easily be any color. Red for example".
You: "Oh? Well then, prove to me that the sky is red".
Me: "I didn't say it was red, I'm just saying there are other colors and that until we establish that it''s blue, it may just as well be, say, green."
You: "Oh? Well then: show me you're evidence that the sky is green instead of blue".
Basically, you're saying that the onus is on me to go through the entire spectrum, review every other possible color and shade thereof, inevitably come to the same conclusion about each and every one: that as a blind person I can't possibly offer any evidence for any of the other colors, and therefore we have to accept that the sky is blue by default.
Basically, your asking me to prove a negative.
Of course, in as much as I'm being asked to do the impossible, and since you're not offering me any actual evidence that the sky is blue, at this point, as a blind person, my conclusion would be that Penumbra must also be blind and that her belief that the sky is blue is just something that someone told her, someone who, for all I know, was just guessing themselves.
But as I said, there's only so far one can go until one dismisses the possibility, and it differs a bit for each person. I dismiss the possibility of invisible, incorporeal dragons in my apartment despite the non-falsifiability of them. Few people would criticize me for that dismissal if I said they weren't real.
So you're saying consciousness doesn't exist? Remember: the subject of this debate is consciousness, location is the question.
The subject of your metaphor is invisible, incorporeal dragons, the location is your apartment.
Unless you actually believe in the existence of invisible, incorporeal dragons, or don't believe in the existence of consciousness, you should probably come up with a different metaphor.
Yet Hawking dismisses heaven and it makes headlines.
the existence of Heaven isn't what we've been arguing about.
I'm not saying consciousness would be any different. If it were as you say, it would likely be the same as these things, and therefore would be non-continuous, non-orderly, and quantized on a much smaller level than on the level we see ourselves as. Matter and energy come and go through our bodies. If consciousness were an aspect of the universe, then I think a more logical situation is that, like matter and energy, it wouldn't group into permanent "self-units" of people, and instead would be flowing and intertwined like every other force, and so what would be heaven?
If awareness is continuous, ie., if it can't be created or destroyed, then moving out of a confined form wouldn't mean the end of that awareness, merely an expanding of it.
I'm reasonably familiar with Vedanta literature. I've read the Bhagavad Gita, the Mukhya Upanishads, and part of the Brahma Sutras, and I'm familiar with the wave/ocean atman/brahman analogy from discussions with Advaita Hindus.
This isn't heaven, though. This is something else entirely.
Define Heaven then.
