Superimmortality's response to The Case Against Immortality

This is the science of superimmortality response to The Case Against Immortality by by Keith Augustine that can be found at http://infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/immortality.html

Superimmortality does not argue for for the existence of any thing supernatural like souls, spirits, reincarnation, near death experiences, heaven, hell, gods, resurrection, etc. So any arguments that Augustine makes against the existence of these things or concepts are arguments for superimmortality also.

Let start with Corliss Lamont quote about immortality.

The literal survival of the individual human personality or consciousness for an indefinite period after [physical] death, with its memory and awareness of self-identity essentially intact.

Augustine writes:

The survival hypothesis asserts that the human personality will continue to exist in some form after the death of the physical body. The extinction hypothesis contends that the human personality will permanently extinguish after the death of the body.

Superimmortality predicts that there can and will be periods of time when there is no consciousness produced that a person will experience. But there is never a time where you can never exist again as long universes exist where matter can form into human brains or matter can form structures and functionings of matter that are as complex as human brains.

There are three "vehicles" for the survival of the personality after the death of the body that will be considered: the disembodied mind, the astral body, and resurrection.

Superimmortality does not argue for any of these three types of immortality. All of them seem to need some form of supernatural entity like souls, exotic matter, or gods. Arguments against supernatural based types of immortality are helpful supporting arguments for superimmortality.

Resurrection can be conceived of in two forms: the literal resurrection of the decayed corpse or the creation of a new body or "replica". It should be noted that there can be no empirical evidence in support of resurrection if it is taken to be a future event on Earth or an event that takes place in another world.

Resurrection of the body is an overt miracle from God in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic tradition and thus presupposes the truth of traditional monotheism. Thus, as Kai Nielsen points out, "if the grounds for believing in God are scant the grounds for believing in bodily resurrection are doubly scant"

Superimmortality is a materialistic theory so a need for a god is not necessary. However, god like conscious super beings made of matter, with extensive scientific knowledge and technical ability, should be able to more carefully direct the creation of brains with specific structure and functioning thus more likely producing desired awarepaths. Humans with their limited knowledge already have the ability to produce an endless numbers of conscious beings in the universe. They just can not very accurately control the consciousnesses produced by these beings.

Resurrection is consistent with dualism if it is coupled with the notion of a soul which constitutes the personality and thus does not extinguish with the body at death but continues to exist and is later rejoined to a resurrected body.

Superimmortality is not consistent with dualism. This is one of the reasons that superimmortality is not a form of resurrection or visa versa. The concept of resurrection does not allow for the self control of the process. It also is a singular form of immortality not a multiple form of immortality like superimmortality is.

Personal identity is concerned with what makes a person the same person over time. Personal identity problems will arise in the context of specific arguments about the logical possibility of immortality.

It is not logically impossible for many different bodies to have identical structure and functioning at the same time.

Many philosophers have argued the bodily continuity is more essential to personal identity than memory because memory claims can be true or false; thus memory in itself is not enough to make you the same person over time--bodily continuity, they argue, is required

Approximate to identical structure and functioning of matter is more important for immortality than body continuousness. The body supplies this because the structure of the body changes relatively slowly.

Another problem for disembodied minds is called the problem of individuation. Basically, the problem is: How do we distinguish mind A from mind B? The answer is spatial location of their bodies It is inconceivable how two minds could be distinguished otherwise, especially if we add the further condition that these minds be identical in thought content, which is logically possible.

The way you distinguish between two different minds is by the differences in consciousness produced by the structure and functioning of matter over time. This is now not really a mind. The mind is being treated like a brain in this sense, when the mind should be treated like a consciousness over time or an awarepath.

Finally we are brought to resurrection. Literal resurrection of the decayed corpse faces a single insuperable difficulty: How are the constituent parts of a long-decayed corpse that have been absorbed into other human beings going to be reconstituted along with the other people who share the same matter?

This is not a problem for superimmortality because the same matter is not necessary for producing the same consciousness. For the same matter to be important in the process of recreating the consciousness of the original there needs to be something unique that is created in the original's matter during the life of the original that does not exist in other matter that can produce identical structure and functioning. Science has not found any such thing in matter. Even the though of it is illogical. The matter in your is constantly being replaced It is like a soul of matter

The other form of resurrection invokes the creation of a new body that is not materially continuous with the old. Flew immediately objects: "Thus to produce even the most indistinguishably similar object after the first one has been totally destroyed and disappeared is to produce not the same object again, but a replica"

The problem with this statement is that there is proof that cidentireplicas, as will many different videntireplicas of an original will produce the same behavior consciousness, feelings, emotions, self identity, perception of placement in space and time, memories, etc., that the original produces. See: TV analogy What is the proof that another body cannot produce a consciousness that you will experience? See: me singular bias argument. This is an assumption that is made without scientific evidence. It seems so obvious to people that they do not even question this belief it. But if you do not experience a consciousness that has all of the personal conscious aspects of yourself then who (or what) does? If another a third cidentireplica is made the first and second you's can not experience this identical consciousness either so there now has to be a third you identical to you consciously but none the less not you. There is the unscientific result of some form of uniqueness that can not be physically identified or distinguishes. This is something paranormal or supernatural. The quote says as a definition of replica " the most indistinguishably similar object". A cidentireplica is a continuing identical replica not just an object at a particular moment in time. Flew's replica does not include by not mentioning change in the object through time. The change in the replica over time is what produces the consciousness that then can be identical to another consciousness without being physically identical to the other object.

Past-life memories are also considered evidence for survival, particularly for reincarnation. There has been evidence accumulated by parapsychologists where people provide accurate historical details when they describe "memories" of "past lives" while under hypnosis.

An interesting fact is that if there were a person that had the exact same memories, personality self identity etc., exactly like the original in every way without ever knowing about hearing about, reading about, the original, his family or friends, or any one that knew him and this could be proven without any question, it would be considered as good evidence that something was happening like reincarnation, resurrection, or at least some thing else. And then if many different people seemed to have this same identical one on one relationship to some other dead person this would add to the evidence. Now lets say that even more bizarre cases occur like some of these people claim to be the original at previous points in the life of the original and through documented cases of actual information about this person in the past, this person actually knows exactly what the original knew at that age and knew nothing further into the future from that point. In this case you no longer get the original of the present but a past version of the original. At least some people would want to know why?

See: Past-life memories analogy argument

Past-life memories

Another form of past-life memories does not involve hypnotic regression. "Memories" of previous lives spontaneously occurred during waking life in cases investigated in India by Ian Stevenson.

If two different brains are close enough in their structure and functioning they could produce the same memories or at least reports of having the same memories.

The Scientific Case Against Immortality is that the state of the evidence--strong evidence for extinction and no good evidence for survival--when taken as a whole not only paints a picture that is completely consistent with extinction but also that the best explanation for the state of the evidence is that the mind ceases to exist at death.

If extinction for Augustine means only that at death the brain no longer produces consciousness, he is right, this is true. But if extinction means that there will never be a consciousness produced again that is identical or closely identical to that of the originals consciousness this can not be proven. See: Restoration experiments and Restoration arguments. Creating identical structure and functioning in another body produces identical behavior. This is logically true.The experiments do not need to be done to prove this fact, but the experiments would prove it. This is true for every conscious body duplicating identical structure and functioning duplicate the behavior. See: Proofs for the consequences of identical structure and functioning Changing the make up of the matter or the place and or time that the identical structure and functioning is produced does not change the behavior. There can also be numerous very small changes in structure and functioning of the body that do not change the behavior produced by this body. What further knowledge we can gain from these facts? Through the behaviors of speech, writing, and other physical actions of the body information can be gained about the consciousness produced by the body. See: Experimental evidence for identical structure and functioning of matter producing identical consciousness.