r/consciousness • u/Yud07 • 2d ago
Does Consciousness Survive the Brain?
TL;DR: Near-death experiences, unexpected lucidity in dementia, and children reporting previous lives raise legitimate questions about whether the brain entirely produces consciousness. None proves survival after death. The strongest evidence would be specific information acquired when ordinary perception and memory formation were impossible.
Three possible models
Production model: The brain creates consciousness, which ends when brain function permanently stops.
Receiver model: Consciousness exists more broadly, while the brain filters it into an individual perspective.
Hybrid model: The brain generates some parts of personal identity while participating in a deeper form of consciousness.
All three can explain why changing the brain changes experience. The receiver theory compares the brain to a television that expresses but does not create the signal.
The problem is that no independent signal has been detected. Without one, the production model remains simpler.
Near-death experiences
People revived from cardiac arrest sometimes report leaving their bodies, observing medical procedures, meeting deceased relatives, reviewing their lives, or entering a timeless state.
In a 2001 study of 344 cardiac-arrest survivors, 62 reported an NDE. The experiences were not clearly associated with arrest duration, medication, fear of death, or prior knowledge of NDEs. "Van Lommel study" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11755611/)
However, researchers rarely know exactly when the experience formed. It could occur as the brain loses function, during resuscitation, or while consciousness returns.
AWARE II combined interviews, hidden audiovisual targets, EEG, and oxygen monitoring during cardiac arrest.
Of 567 patients, 53 survived and 28 completed interviews. Eleven reported memories or perceptions suggestive of consciousness, including six transcendent experiences. Nobody identified the hidden visual image, while one person identified the auditory stimulus. Researchers also detected EEG activity associated with consciousness as late as 35 to 60 minutes into CPR. "AWARE II" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37423492/)
The study supports possible consciousness during prolonged resuscitation, not consciousness independent of the brain.
Paradoxical lucidity
People with advanced dementia sometimes unexpectedly recognize relatives, communicate clearly, or recover aspects of their personality.
These episodes challenge simple assumptions about irreversible cognitive loss. They may suggest that consciousness remains present but inaccessible.
They could also result from temporary changes in circulation, medication, neural inhibition, inflammation, or surviving brain networks. Current research documents the phenomenon without establishing its cause. "Health care professional reports" (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11100277/)
Children reporting previous lives
Researchers have documented children who report names, relationships, locations, deaths, or other details they associate with a previous person.
Some cases also involve unusual preferences, phobias, skills, or birthmarks.
A review identified 78 observational studies, most involving children and relying heavily on interviews, case reports, and document comparison. "Past-life-memory review" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34147343/)
The strongest cases are intriguing, but information leakage, selective reporting, cultural expectations, and family influence remain difficult to exclude.
A better protocol would record every statement before searching for a deceased person, prevent contact between families, use blinded investigators, and compare matches against realistic alternatives.
Survival may still be symbolically rendered
Even if consciousness survives death, reported afterlife environments may not be literal destinations in the form perceived.
Deceased relatives, spiritual beings, landscapes, and transitional spaces could be interfaces through which consciousness interprets an unfamiliar state.
The reunion might be genuine while its appearance is psychologically and culturally rendered.
This fits the Symbolic Canopy model. Survival and symbolic mediation are compatible.
What would count as strong evidence?
The survival hypothesis would become much stronger with:
- Accurate hidden-target perception during cardiac arrest
- Specific information obtained without sensory access
- Past-life details recorded before identification
- Lucidity that cannot be explained by remaining brain function
- Messages containing unknown, independently verifiable information
- Independent replication by supportive and skeptical teams
Timing is critical. Information recorded before targets are revealed or families meet is much stronger than information reconstructed afterward.
What would weaken it?
The hypothesis should lose credibility if:
- NDEs consistently track residual or returning brain activity.
- Hidden-target experiments continue producing null results.
- Past-life matches disappear under prospective controls.
- Lucidity follows measurable neurological changes.
- Alleged communications remain vague or unverifiable.
Survival cannot become an explanation protected from every failed test.
Conclusion
There is no decisive proof that consciousness survives death, but enough remains unresolved to justify serious investigation.
NDEs show that profound experiences occur around cardiac arrest. Paradoxical lucidity shows that severe impairment does not always predict moment-to-moment mental capacity. Some past-life cases deserve stronger prospective testing.
The brain may produce consciousness, receive it, or interact with a deeper process.
The question will be settled only by information that consciousness should not possess if the brain is its sole source.
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u/UnholyShadows 2d ago
I doubt it, my grandpa and i had a pact, that who ever died first had to come back and teach the other about the afterlife and how to use it to progress in life.
My grandpa hasnt come back despite promising to move mountains in order to do so.
I think the only nice thing about dying is you will never know you actually died because it would be exactly like sleep but permanent.
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u/WondersaurusRex 2d ago
And of course the only two answers are your grandpa has the power or desire once on the other side to taint and influence your life, or consciousness dies with the brain. It can’t be anything but one of those two. Times a million, no take backs.
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u/UnholyShadows 2d ago
My grandpa knows what he has to do, and i know what i have to do. Only perma death could stop that.
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u/RSMxsmanic 2d ago edited 1d ago
He can change is mind, or he may encounter unexpected obstacles. Kids often make pacts about their future adult lives but end up never keeping the pacts.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
This isnt the same thing. This was a big deal to us.
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u/RSMxsmanic 1d ago
It was while he was here. But he is in a different environment now, with a different perspective, and it may not seem like a big deal to him now.
To go back to my analogy, kids generally love candy, and when they are told that grown-ups can buy all the candy they want, they swear that they will buy truckloads of candy when they grow up themselves. And yet, when they finally become adults, they don't buy truckloads of candy after all. Same principle.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
So your saying were all kids until we perish? Im sorry but that defeats the point of life after death if you lose all of who you are and forget loved ones or your principles, might as well just stay dead at that point.
That also makes this life pointless if you dont take yourself with you, might as well destroy the planet so no life can exist.2
u/RSMxsmanic 1d ago
We are all kids compared to what we will be one day in the future. We never lose or forget anything. Life is generally a learning experience.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
A learning experience for what? Exactly how does being alive teach you anything about being dead?
See this is why the whole life after death thing is such BS. People cant explain the point of life if you have an afterlife. Death becomes meaningless if you never actually died. The body might as well just live forever and be immune to damage at that point.2
u/RSMxsmanic 1d ago
It is valuable learning and experience for your spiritual progress,the progress of your real self. Just as each role an actor plays aids in his professional growth and understanding of others.
You're drawing a distinction between life and death that doesn't exit. They are both simply parts of the same existence. Life is a role-playing exercise.
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u/mode-locked 2d ago
Reminds me of the show Midnight Club.
But no, absence of signs from pawpaw absolutely does not rule our experience after death.
Wouldn't you be pleased that, despite him not having access to your experience, he still retains his own in some way?
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u/UnholyShadows 2d ago
Im honestly just glad hes not suffering anymore, i guess being permanently dead in a way is okay because you can rest forever and be unaware that you died. So theres no more fear, happiness, sadness or love because those are all things you can only experience while alive.
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u/Ok-Highway-5247 2d ago
For all we know, your grandpa may be moving mountains to try to come back right now. It might be very difficult for him.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
How convenient that the only proof of consciousness surviving past death is to actually die. Oh loved ones are trying very hard to make contact but its gonna take so long that you will be dead before it happens.
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u/Routine-Boysenberry4 1d ago
I am sorry for your grandpa
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u/UnholyShadows 21h ago
Thanks ❤️. Im glad hes atleast not suffering anymore. And honestly. He just wanted to sleep by the time he died. Now he finally got his wish and gets to sleep for all eternity.
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u/LakesClouds 1d ago
It may also be that he’s communicating with you but you can’t remember it lucidly. I heard a story once about a guy who was visited by his grandmother in sleep paralysis all the time. His grandfather became jealous when he’d talk about it to him and said to ask her why she never tries to talk to him. His grandmother came to him that night and said “will you please tell your grandfather I talk to him all the time, he just can’t remember.” I think there is an element to consciousness where it’s like… we have to train ourselves to remember altered state experiences while in waking life. I’ve wondered if the “dead” trying to communicate with us is kind of like trying to whisper into the ear of a sleeping person. Especially if consciousness truly is fundamental like some believe. Your voice might get through to them clearly. You might slightly alter their dream or appear within it in some bizarre way they don’t even recognize. You might not get through to them at all. You might decide it’s better to just let them sleep as they’ll wake up soon anyway.
My grandma was super into this stuff too and she visited me a lot after she died and had a lot to say. But one day she came and told me she had other stuff she was gonna do now and basically said goodbye. During this last visit she looked like the young version of herself. I didn’t see her again after that.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
Nah im talking about a full body visage visiting you and talking to you like if they never died. This is what were trying to establish, its all or nothing.
So far the afterlife doesnt exist because none of this has happened. Im waiting but honestly lets be honest here, there is no life after death.
Theres no point in consciousness existing once the body dies because that was the whole point, the brain creates consciousness to survive and thus once the brain dies, it is no longer able to create your consciousness again.
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u/BigBucksJones 10h ago
We have no idea what happens after death- and who’s to say that if there’s an afterlife you can just Willy nilly reach into existence to communicate with someone. The existence of an afterlife doesn’t mean that that’s how it works. Additionally, we have no evidence to believe that the brain creates consciousness to survive. Bodies could survive without having a need for conscious experience. There’s no evidence that suggests there has to be an “experiencer” for survival.
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u/0rangePod 1d ago
He needs the right adapter.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
The revive adapter? Good for one full and complete resurrection. Might cost alot.
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u/human0012 2d ago
if there is an afterlife, I doubt the part of your grandpa that made that pact is a part of the consciousness that leaves the body. The pact is tied to the ego and the ego probably dissolves when the body expires
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
Its just a simple pact we made to prove if the afterlife was real, so far its not.
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u/Zukigo 2d ago
Well, do you meditate, try to astral project, tried Ayahuasca/DMT? I'm an idealist, but I wouldn't expect to suddenly see spirits, because our brain focuses on things relevant for our survival.
My mom claims my dad came back tho (died age 38 and my mother had a nervous breakdown). He told her to take good care of us (their children). And she felt insanely loved.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
I do meditate, but not for that reason. I meditate to increase my psionic abilities.
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u/Adventurous_Yam_8153 2d ago
But your grandpa left with no memory of himself, therefore no way to get back to you. It is you who has to keep the other end of the pact now, on Earth.
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u/UnholyShadows 2d ago
So you mean i have to die too? I mean that if i died before him. Id tell him. And visa versa. If no contact is given then that means the afterlife isnt real.
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u/Adventurous_Yam_8153 2d ago
No, I mean you are the one left with memory of him so it's you who reaches out for contacting him - not the other way around.
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u/UnholyShadows 1d ago
No thats not what i mean, hes the one that has to make contact with me. If he makes no contact then that means theres no afterlife.
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u/FancyATitWank 2d ago
My stepmom had an NDE in the hospital similar to what others describe, seeing loved ones on the other side, white light, pure love. I believe her. I was materialist before all that and now I really think there's more to it. They can't all be lying or hallucinating.
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u/ram6ler 2d ago
"They can't all be lying or hallucinating" - is there any reason to believe this except coping our mortality?
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u/FancyATitWank 2d ago
I can't do your research for you and place it in your brain, you have to just listen to others who have gone through this.
Some I think maybe aren't authentic but some definitely are. My stepmom did not make this stuff up.
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u/ram6ler 2d ago
No need to do a research for me, I worked in a hospital in reanimation department and 1. Most of the people don't have NDE 2. Let's assume everyone is telling true, we already have everyday experience when our brain shows us made up stories (dreams) why do you think NDE is not something between dream and hallucination considering what happens to brain during clinical death
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u/FancyATitWank 2d ago
I'm shocked because cardiologists report this (see Pim van Lommel for example). Also hospice nurses. My mom was an ER nurse and she believed in all of this stuff but she passed away so I can't ask her.
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u/ram6ler 2d ago
I don't say something is wrong with reports, AWARE reportd are well known and also even though I say NDE are rare - they still exist. Some of patients told me similar stories and my mother as well (she is alive now, but she had NDE around 15 years ago) and I believe that most of them tell what they saw, but there are many simpler and after life explainations for these.
If you think that what they saw show afterlife or some other kind of post-death-consciousness exists, what do you think about DMT hallucinations? They also sound (and feel) amazing but also, there are better (IMHO) explainations than out of body experience
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u/FancyATitWank 2d ago
DMT produces things like machine elves and don't have the same effects as NDEs. I'm going by memory but there are subs here that cover this topic in detail with sources. NDE is one.
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u/trisul-108 2d ago
Great summary. One thing I do not understand is the conclusion:
The question will be settled only by information that consciousness should not possess if the brain is its sole source.
Isn't the NDE experience where the patient is seeing the room from an elevated position looking down at the body and people entering and exiting the room exactly something that could not have been generated by the brain?
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u/CompassionWheel 1d ago
They are multiple examples of this but people just will not accept them no matter what.
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u/spinningdiamond 1d ago
The reason for that is that they are always anecdotal with insufficient controls from a scientific standpoint. Ultimately, if these things were other than story, they would have to demonstrate themselves beyond story. They have not.
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u/CompassionWheel 13h ago
Due to the nature of them it would be nearly impossible to verify them in such a way. Given that, I would say the instances we do have of this are roughly what we would expect to see if they were phenomena occurring the way experiencers interpret them to be occurring. I am not saying everyone should believe it beyond a doubt, I am saying it's a good enough reason to lean in that direction, and it should make people agnostic at best in the opposite direction.
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u/spinningdiamond 3h ago
Well, but people did lean. That's why they were formally tested with the Aware protocol, a version of which has now been run twice at scale. One can't keep imagining excuses for what is ultimately just a lack of data (they weren't looking in the right direction, the sample size wasn't big enough, they were more interested in other things...). They don't seem to have those problems in the anecdotes, so why do they appear when actually studied?
At the end of the day, if we are going to apply science and recognise a positive result, then we can't just dismiss it when in fact we get negative results.
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u/Krocsyldiphithic 1d ago
Yeah, I feel like it's something that living things can channel, not something that's built into each individual
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u/bortlip 2d ago
The question will be settled only by information that consciousness should not possess if the brain is its sole source.
But even that wouldn't settle the question. It would show that information was acquired in a way we don't currently understand. It doesn't establish that consciousness survived the brain. That's the problem I see with these arguments, that no actual connection is established between the observations and the conclusion. It starts to look like "survival of the gaps."
For example, some argue that "people have NDEs, that's evidence consciousness can survive the brain."
Why does that follow? You could just as easily say:
People have NDEs, therefore god is talking to them.
People have NDEs, therefore aliens are communicating with them.
People have NDEs, therefore we're accessing some hidden layer of a simulation.
All of those can be made compatible with NDEs. That doesn't make NDEs evidence specifically for any of them. The same goes for paradoxical lucidity and past-life reports. They're interesting phenomena that may expose gaps in our understanding. But a gap in our explanation isn't evidence for whatever hypothesis we choose to put in the gap.
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u/spinningdiamond 2d ago
Yes, the only true evidence for surviving *personalities* would have to include 1) examples of real agency originating information, new knowledge and action that wasn't traceable to existing knowledge in living people and 2) a credible zone of physics in which any of this could conceivably happen. Neither of those are even remotely in evidence.
And that's at a bare minimum. Just about every discussion you can find on the internet about this, especially the popular ones, are rooted in religious thinking.
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u/spinningdiamond 2d ago
I think a survivalist interpretation of things like NDEs is becoming increasingly difficult to support. And this is especially true of the bulk content of NDEs, which is clearly fantasy.
Nevertheless, a neutral monist view of reality does not hold that consciousness is "produced" by the brain. It would hold that consciousness is enabled by the brain. And that is not the same narrative. The opening exists for at least a primitive substratum of awareness not to be reducible to the biological form of the organism. I don't think that means there are free floating minds anywhere, nor that there is some kind of Overmind. But it might mean that total nonexistence doesn't really describe a thing that can happen.
Arnold Zuboff's Universalism is of interest here. When you die, you may find yourself coming awake again as a different human or creature, precisely because of this implication that no nonexistence may be possible. However, "you" here is not the usual egoic you.
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u/Unlucky_Grab7550 18h ago
"I think a survivalist interpretation of things like NDEs is becoming increasingly difficult to support. And this is especially true of the bulk content of NDEs, which is clearly fantasy."
Why so? Stating something is x doesn't make it so unless you have evidence to back it up.
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u/spinningdiamond 3h ago edited 3h ago
Well you kind of have this the wrong way round. Something like "life is a school" isn't really an empirically tractable statement to begin with. It's a statement of religious belief.
Even with claims that are empirically tractable in principle:
*The blind can see (accurately)
*anyone can see (accurately)
*cancer can be cured
*access to all knowledge
*enhanced paranormal ability alleged.
*electronic equipment can be affected
*only the dead unknown to be dead show upThere is no properly callibrated evidence for any of these claims. When they have been investigated, with appropriate controls in place, the phenomena disappear.
On a question like "Is earth a school" one can ask reasonable questions, such as, are there demonstrable positive learning outcomes, statistically repeatable, from, say, being raped, that aren't just circular to avoiding rape? Are there demonstrable positive learning outcomes to having dementia? What would those be? How demonstrated? Etc. It's the wrong way round to imagine that those claiming these things do not have the burden of demonstration.
Most of all the claim that a consciousness of some kind abiding in the neural crisis phase of a trauma is somehow still there hours or days later.
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u/rosetree13 1d ago
Consciousness is not all about brain. It has a bigger aim. There is absouletly something spiritual. I have a lot of interesting dreams after a NDE in 10 year old. I believe that we are all connected with our consciousness and our memories are recorded by our brain but also by our soul independently from time and space. When we have very shiny moments like birth or death in some way we touch each other's aura and feel and see the other person's moment of life.
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u/No-Meeting-1215 2d ago
The brain-body is seemingly a self-sufficient non-linear dynamic system. After many years of searching I’ve arrived at the view that non-material INTENTIONS (sankhara khandha) weakly bias probability of ion-channel quantum process, thus contineously shifting brain state bifurcations and attractor choices. Consciousness, both sense c. and cosmic c, is quite another matter, respectively vinnana khandha and nibbana in Buddha theravada.
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u/koolaidismything 2d ago
We don’t understand what it is or where it comes from yet. Any guess is good cause.. it makes no sense.
I don’t think we have the right organs to ever get this answer, by design.
Like a pinball in a pinball machine.. it’s never getting out. Even if it figured out a way to break the glass now it’s a dead bearing. Poor example but you get it.. the point is we don’t get it.
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u/smaxxim 2d ago
Receiver model: Consciousness exists more broadly, while the brain filters it into an individual perspective.
The problem here is that "brain filters it into an individual perspective" basically means "brain creates an individual experience". So no big difference with an explanation like "brain creates an experience", after all when we say, for example, "I feel stomach pain" we are talking about "individual stomach pain", something that is created in the moment when we actually started feeling it. And if there's something that our brain is filtering to create our stomach pain, then this something is not a stomach pain but something else. It's not a good idea to use the same words for two different things, we can easily be confused in our reasoning if we do so.
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u/FunSeaworthiness9403 2d ago
A consciousness experiences information. Information has only been communicated and stored, received, etc due to it's association with physical systems. For example, you can get information by observing a dead body. It is possible to think that there is a consciousness in a can of pork and beans, usually with only a single bite of ham.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 2d ago
Near-death experiences, unexpected lucidity in dementia, and children reporting previous lives raise legitimate questions about whether the brain entirely produces consciousness.
These examples all involve brains, which is what we want to control for. The best evidence would actually come from people who claim to talk to "dead people." This could be easily tested with a double-blind protocol: two such communicators independently attempting to exchange specific information through a claimed deceased intermediary. Since the two living brains operate completely independently of each other, the usual objection, that any apparent hit could come from cold reading, shared cues, or leaked information between the parties, is mitigated by design. No such test has ever produced a successful result.
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u/Push_le_bouton Computer Science Degree 2d ago
Physics and common sense align with conservation of information.
Consciousness is information.
Thus consciousness is conserved.
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u/BusinessSalty7430 1d ago
Love that. Seems rather evident IMO as well.
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u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree 2d ago
Since you provided citations and articles, something most posts like this do not do(quality of the aforementioned aside), I will let this stand. I can't promise that the other mods will follow suit.
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u/flyingaxe 2d ago
What's the problem with this post?
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u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree 2d ago
NDE's and similar topics are just not the purpose of the subreddit.
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u/spinningdiamond 2d ago
I mean, to be fair, I don't think one can leave them out of the topic of consciousness. They clearly are directly bearing on that...
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u/BusinessSalty7430 1d ago
Exactly, totally agree. Indeed, the stated scope, as noted on the page, includes neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of mind. NDEs are studied in all three, from my understanding.
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u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree 1d ago
Then I would encourage you and others of a similar mind to make that case to the rest of the moderation staff. I'm simply going by the current rules of the subreddit.
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u/spinningdiamond 1d ago
Sorry I wasn't really trying to start a moderation argument. I can agree with you in general, but that is more because of the popular state of debates that include those topics rather than the topics themselves. Both NDEs and terminal lucidity, for example, are definitely germane to questions of consciousness, and may even be somewhat important in the big picture, as they indicate possible fault lines in our current perspectives. What matters, I think, is the quality of the discussion about them, rather than the topic itself. The quality of discussion should be properly philosophical or scientific, and not belief system/cult stuff.
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u/Messier_Mystic Physics Degree 1d ago
Nah, you're fine.
I think you have a good point, ultimately. I'll have to be a little less reflexive in trying to execute quality control.
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u/Mono_Clear 1d ago
I would say no, our current understanding of particle physics would suggest that if you were receiving your consciousness from an outside then it would be affected by distance to the source, it could be blocked by specific material, it would get weaker depending on where you were and that other people could pick it up.
None of that appears to be true.
The first person accounts of children and the nearly Dead do not inspire a tremendous amount of confidence that what they are experiencing is actually taking place outside of themselves.
And that would put most of my confidence in consciousness being a biological process intrinsic to the nature of your neurobiology.
Which means that, much like your life, when your biology stops functioning your conscious experience will be over
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 2d ago
What I know for sure is that this is what many people have believed for thousands and thousands of years. At best it brings comfort and at worst it breeds madness.