Below is the fallacy that I came up with.

Humans and animals that are alive and not asleep are all comprised of a soul and a body. The soul means consciousness, namely the ability to feel, to experience or to sense, and also can be called the real "self", similar to the concept of All-encompassing foundation consciousness in Buddhism.

When being asleep or dead, the soul leaves the body. The outside soul lost all connections with the old body, including the memory inside the old body. Then, the outside soul progresses to recombine with another asleep body (an empty body). When the soul and the new body combine, the new body wakes up. When the soul combines with the new body, it gains all of the new body, including the brain (the brain also includes thoughts and memories).

Therefore, although every time when falling asleep, the self (soul) leaves the old body and enters a new body, it will never know, and believes that this is itself (because it has lost all the memories inside the old body, and received all the memories inside the new body).

Being dead is the same as being asleep - they both mean the soul has left the body. The difference is that the dead body has lost the ability to carry any soul, so it is impossible to wake up after death.

For example, there are three people X, Y and Z. X has the soul "A" and the body "a"; Y has the soul "B" and the body "b"; Z has the soul "C" and the body "c". If the three people X, Y and Z are all asleep, then when X wakes up, the combination of its soul and its body can be "Aa", "Ba" or "Ca". If X and Y are asleep, and Z is dead, then Z's body "c" can no longer combine with any soul, but Z's soul "C" continues to try to combine with another body.

The reason why you can have your current thoughts and memories, and can sense and control your current body, is because "you"(your soul) sojourn in this body. Once the body falls asleep or dies (namely losing consciousness), "you"(your soul) leave the body and go to sojourn another body.

The "soul" and the "consciousness" in this article refer to the ability to feel, to experience or to sense. I have my memories and thoughts, and control and sense my body. You have your memories and thoughts, and control and sense your body. Assuming when bodies are asleep, your soul and my soul transfer, then after waking up, I no longer have my memories and thoughts, and can no longer control or sense my body, but have your memories and thoughts, and can control and sense your body; you no longer have your memories and thoughts either, and can no longer control or sense your body either, but have my memories and thoughts, and can control and sense my body.

You currently control and sense your current body (including the thoughts and the memories), and your consciousness can transfer. Your consciousness can transfer to another body, controlling and sensing another body, and completely losing connection with the body you used to have. For example, now using a needle to prick your body, you feel pain, but using a needle to prick other people's bodies, you don't feel pain. This is because your soul is inside your current body. After the transfer of souls, the body in which your soul stays has been replaced. At this time, using a needle to prick your new body, you feel pain.

Below is refutation against the fallacy above.

(I)

If a creature can control and sense itself (have the ability to feel, to experience or to sense), then we can say this creature has consciousness. A creature's consciousness is merely an ability of this creature. The reason why this creature has this ability results from the evolution of the natural selection.

Creatures evolved the simple nervous system from no nervous system, and then evolved the more complicated nervous system. Whether a creature has a nervous system decides whether this creature has the ability to feel, to experience or to sense; the complexity of a creature's nervous system decides the strength of this creature's ability to feel, to experience or to sense. In other words, a creature's consciousness is merely an ability of this creature's nervous system. Your consciousness is an ability of your nervous system. An earthworm's simple responses to external stimuli are also an ability of its nervous system. Only because your nervous system is much more complicated than an earthworm's, you have the ability to feel, to experience and to sense, but the earthworm can only make simple responses to external stimuli (but it itself doesn't have very strong feelings because its nervous system is not complicated enough).

Every single creature is unique. "You" are you this creature (more precisely, the nervous system of you this creature), not something like "your soul".

(II)

A creature's consciousness was produced by this creature's brain, and cannot exist when leaving this creature's brain.

Many kinds of general knowledge can also prove that a creature's consciousness is just an ability of this creature's nervous system.

For example,

1) When a person is asleep, if his brain has not got a complete rest, he can still have weak consciousness (such as dreams).

2) When a person's brain does not have enough supply of blood (for example suddenly standing up after crouching down), his consciousness will weaken, or even temporarily die (fainting).

3) If some important structures of a person's brain get damaged, his consciousness will weaken, or even permanently die (brain death).

4) A newly born baby barely has consciousness (research has proven that a newly born baby barely has pain sense); with the development of its brain, its consciousness gradually comes to existence.

(III)

This fallacy also has the error of inverting cause and effect. It is not the soul (or the consciousness) that controls and senses the body, but the body that controls and senses itself (this phenomenon is called the soul or the consciousness). But why a body can control and sense itself? Just a result of the evolution of the natural selection.

(IV)

This fallacy can also be refuted from other angles. For example,

1) What media and ways does the consciousness rely on in order to transfer? What is the existence form when transferring? Where does the energy for the activity come from?

2) Creatures came to existence from nothing, and grew from a few to a lot. Also, the randomness of the objective world has shown that the number of conscious creatures changes randomly.

3) The transfer of the consciousness is assumed to be a natural rule, but there is nowhere that shows its existence and significance.

4) This fallacy does not admit the authenticity of the memory. You are not sure if the one who controlled your body yesterday is yourself, believing that the reason why you feel so is because you yourself have received the memory of the body. According to this, you cannot ensure either if the one who controlled your body a second ago or a moment ago is yourself. This even further increases the absurdity of this fallacy.

5) Many evidences have shown that this fallacy can never hold true, unless this world is false or disorderly. But if this world is false or disorderly, any kind of situation, whether it be imaginable or unimaginable, is possible to happen. Therefore, there is still less need to worry.

You could/should post the OP in the RGT forum as well.

I have no comment on the contents other than the above except that the post is probably too long and covers too much for discussion on all the 'points'. Succinct and simple is the aim.

I believe what you have here is a hypothesis on what conciousness is, not a fallacy.

Maybe. Terminology really confusing.

Now it is beginning to look like fantasy. Sorry giving up. Cliffs?

Mumbo jumbo

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/t...ion-71651.html

It didn't go very far there, either.

I do not think what you are posing is a fallacy, but it is a thought experiment.

It reminds me of solipsism ("my existence is dreamed up by a King and all other people are figments of His imagination"). It is a thought system that is internally consistent, meaning, once you step over its rather absurd premises, there are no logical flaws, hiccups or inconsistencies to find.

Mathematics on the other hand is proven incomplete. Mathematicians are a bit harder on their own thought system than mystics. I say "thought system" because I see maths purely as (mental) computation, not as a discovery of some Universal principle, so what is valid for you, may not be valid for me, and I am fine with that.

I do not think that your thought experiment can be proven internally inconsistent, or at least I do not agree with your assumptions:

"A creature's consciousness was produced by this creature's brain, and cannot exist when leaving this creature's brain."

Let's zoom in on this problematic sentence. Consciousness (as in neurons) is distributed outside the brain, for instance your intestines and heart.

Consciousness may arise/emerge as a by-product from a functional system. Like heat waves from a lamp. Also "consciousness" as we know it, may very well be an illusion of our focus and mental compartmentalization. You are not aware of many processes that contribute in parallel to our final model building of reality.

Also, there is nothing to say that consciousness can not exist outside of biological neurons. What makes biological neurons so special? Also what happens when you chain multiple consciousnesses together for a common purpose? You get a complex mega-consciousness influencing the behaviour of its members, but without a biological brain to house in. Functional and behavioural systems do not need a body. Google is (at least partly) aware of itself.

In so many words you said, "Let's say your consciousness can leave your body, then this can not be, since consciousness cannot exist when leaving your body", a logical faux-pas: you played mysticism on its own turf with scientific tools and lost.

The best refutation to such thought systems (should you for whatever reason desire to) is the "flying teapot" and the refutation for Solipsism.

That is:
- The burden of proof is on the consciousness ghost walker theorist (good luck with that!).
- "If you really think that pompous theory is the truth then any further adult discussion is impossible. Either I and my refutation does not even exist or you are the figment and I am the true Solipsist."

As for a similar shorter thought experiment by Robert Anton Wilson:

"I have been replaced by a biological robot which thinks it is me".

Like said above, the easy way out is to place the burden of proof on the one posing that hypothesis or to dismiss it as nonsensical bait.

But if you entertain the thought for a while you can learn some seriously interesting things about yourself and the mind. The superstate of being unprovable both ways generates a big justified "What if?" for your mind to juggle with.

I'm not sure as to what exactly you're saying but at first glance your basis, or coordinate origin appears to be the physical body, or the "materialist manifesto". there, I've said it again.

You spoke of "soul" and body only, probably not realizing that the "spirit" was outlawed by the Christian church ( read Papal) at the Synod of 847 AD(? exact date). It was declared heretical to speak of "spirit" in that man ws composed of body and soul only with the soul having marginal spiritual characteristics. Prior to this time the human being was considered within "body, soul, and spirit".

Since that time, only the "soul and body" are considered within the Western exegesis , even through the halls of science. LOL today, right. Of course with the opum magnus of science the "soul" is being outlawed by fiat and as noted above, we have materialism.

And so I believe that you, OP, are clothed within the materialistic ethos in that the basis of all is the physical body, even when you speak of sleep and death and whatever.

Getting back to you're referral to consciousness we have a" daylight consciousness" to which all three bodies are related and at nighttime the soul and spirit do , indeed, leave the "physical body" and "body of life" in bed( this actually makes it four (4) while the soul and spirit leave the bodies and enter into our surroundings or what you see with your eyes and hear with your ears, etc... In this realm there is another consciousness to which Man is learning, while on earth, to live within through repeated earthly lives. He learns this upon the earth, of most important effects. IN short, there are higher realms of consciousness while we, on the earth, experience "earth consciousness".

The body lying in bed is known in ancient lore as the "temple" and can be likened to a plant which has "life" and "materiality" but of course without individual "sentience" or "thoughts". Man is not a plant nor was ever a plant but the allusion is correct.

Its a beginning for it is important to know that the human soul/spiritual being abandons his "body" at sleep only to return in the AM, this abandonment in one sense is a refurbishment from above.

In "death" the "body of life" also leaves the physical body and therefore the corpse. The story of seeing one's life pass before one's self at death is true and that is the unraveling of this "body of life" . Of course memories are included in this "body of life" which are not in the physical body but as noted. this event, having one's life pass before one's self can happen and has happened when in an extreme episode such as near drowning or falling off a precipice (extreme, extreme) which is a "loosening of the "body of life" from the physical body which does not come to completion(death) during the stressful episode.

The "body of life" is known in Anthroposophy as the "Etheric Body" which has more characteristics and activities but should not be confused with the ancient scientific term of ether.

From "Earthly Death and Cosmic Life": Mods; please move this if need be; trying to display the historical appreciation of this "scientific" belief/disbelief in the soul and spirit as pungently compelling.

Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople; 869 AD

"One can foresee a permeation of the religious life with concrete ideas when it is deepened by Spiritual Science. ‘Spirit’ was eliminated (as I have often related) from Western humanity in the year 869 at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople. The dogma was then drawn up that Christians must not regard man as consisting of body, soul and spirit, but of body and soul only, though certain spiritual qualities were to be ascribed to the soul. This abolition of the spirit is of tremendous significance. It was dogma, — that in the year 869 in Constantinople, it was decided that man must not be regarded as endowed with ‘anima’ and ‘spiritus,’ but only ‘unam animam rationalem et intellectualem.’ The dogma that ‘The soul has spiritual qualities’ was spread over the spiritual life of the West in the twilight of the ninth century. This must be overcome. Spirit must again be recognised. Trichotomy — body, soul and spirit, — regarded as heresy in the Middle Ages, must again be recognised as the true and exact view of man's nature. Several things will be necessary to this end for those who to-day naturally challenge all ‘authority,’ yet swear that man consists of body and soul alone. Such are not only to be found in particular religious persuasions, but also among the ranks of those who listen to professors, philosophers, and others. Philosophers, as can everywhere be read, distinguish only body and soul, omitting the spirit. This is their ‘unprejudiced’ philosophy of life; but it rests upon the decision of the Church Council in the year 869 not to recognise spirit; — that, however, they do not realise. A well-known philosopher, Wilhelm Wundt — a great philosopher by favour of his publisher, but at the same time renowned, — of course divides man into body and soul, because he regards it as ‘unprejudiced’ science to do so — and does not know that he is simply following the decision of the Council of 869. We must look into the actual facts if we wish to see what takes place in the world of reality. If a man looks at the actual facts in the domain especially mentioned to-day, his consciousness will be opened concerning a connection with that world only dreamed of and slept away in history. History, historical life, will only be seen in the right light when a true consciousness of the connection of the so-called living with the so-called dead can be developed."


- See more at: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA1...,10,31#WN_mark

Ok, so I realise that I am a biological robot who thinks I am me; I am not sure what RAW means by replace?

Well, what happened was that WWE determined that 'Murcia needed a wrestling program on Monday nights.