Talk:Consciousness after death

Current neuroscientific view?
"According to the current neuroscientific view, consciousness fails to survive brain death and ceases to exist."

Sources in support of that claim are extremely obscure: Since when does some philosopher like Piccinini decide the scientific consensus?

Also, how can this view be elevated to a current neuroscientific view? It is just the common-sense view! There are no new discoveries in modern neuroscience which make a a big difference. If you can reconcile your belief in consciousness after death with cases like that of Phineas Gage from the 19th century, there is nothing in modern neuroscience that could trouble you.--Anubixx (talk) 08:00, 28 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, and actually, the only sense in which that's a "scientific view" is in the fact that most scientists don't believe that consciousness continues after death. The belief in (and the concept of) eternal oblivion is by itself philosophical/metaphysical. So i agree that that sentence needs a little bit of editing. But then again, so does the rest of the article. Because the only way in which the neuroscience section in its present form is relevant to the article is if by consciousness someone means the same thing as the mind. - Ironrage (talk) 10:59, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Most? How do you know that? From a Pew Survey in 2009, 33% of US scientists do believe in God. I have no data on the belief in consciousness after death, but I speculate that it isn't much lower. Probably it is lower for neuroscientists, but as long as no source is provided, this is just pure conjecture. --Anubixx (talk) 21:39, 12 May 2015 (UTC)


 * "Current neuroscientific view" is necessary because polls show that the majority of nonscientists believe that some sort of consciousness survives after death. I believe that Piccinini is as good an authority as any here, given that there is no unique individual who is empowered to speak as the "voice of neuroscience".  And the neuroscientific consensus is basically that on any reasonable definition of consciousness it does not survive after death. Looie496 (talk) 13:54, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Piccinini is not a neuroscientist, he is a philosopher. And he didn't give any evidence about the neuroscientific consensus in the cited article. There you can just find his personal interpretation of modern neuroscience.--Anubixx (talk) 21:39, 12 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Also pretty comically the article states that neuroscience is founded on the premise that the mind is a set of operations carried out by the brain (again just supported either by dubious sources or 1000 page textbooks without giving a page number or chapter). If you can just do neuroscience by assuming that, it necessary follows that the neuroscientific consensus is that consciousness does not survive brain death.--Anubixx (talk) 21:53, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

"Most? How do you know that?"

It's a reasonable inference from what i know is true.

Although, being a materialist does not necessarily mean that someone can't believe in an afterlife of any sort. It just means that consciousness floating off the brain at death is not an option. Mind uploading for example could provide some sort of personal continuity after death.

And maybe if you could open those 1000 page textbooks (written by actual scientists in the relevant field for future scientists and researchers for learning purposes) and read them you would see that it states that "neuroscience is founded on the premise that the mind is a set of operations carried out by the brain" on the very first pages. In the preface for "fundamental neuroscience" and in the first chapter for principles of neural science to be exact.

Also, i recommend that you look up the branch of neuroscience called cognitive neuroscience whose job is to describe how the brain creates the mind (and consciousness). - Ironrage (talk) 16:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I took the liberty of rewriting the last sentence, to reflect the language actually used in a clinical setting when discussing brain death. I've never come across somebody saying "consciousness ceases to exist" in a clinical setting, only "permanent unconsciousness" and "irreversible loss of all mental functions".  Notions of "eternal oblivion" are a philosophical/religious concept, not a scientific/medical one.  If the intention of this article is to discuss this topic from a scientific/medical standpoint, we should use the language of those fields. -- KRAPENHOEFFER!   TALK  06:47, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I tried to remove this section of the article but it seems to have been reinstated. If we are not entirely sure exactly what consciousness is then how can such a bold statement be made about what happens to our consciousness when we die? Can we please review this section of the article? we ma @& — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.146.20.24 (talk) 16:10, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Who Owns This Issue?
There is a "point of view" bias laden in this article, which has framed the issue in a way as to inject the premise that neuroscience owns the issue, even as a science; whereas this - itself - is also an open issue, subject to debate. I would contend, instead, that it is physicists who own this issue and have primary say on the matter, not neuroscientists. We don't know that consciousness and mind are rooted in the neurology of individual life forms (as opposed to merely being expressed neurologically in such life forms). It may very well be rooted in the very fabric of the universe, itself, that manifests itself most readily in those systems (be they natural lifeforms or mechanical systems, machines & robots) that exhibit sufficient complexity to allow it to be expressed.

But either way: the question of ownership and jurisdiction of the issue, itself, has to be made part of the article. It doesn't require much search to see how much prevalent of an issue it has become in foundational physics in recent times - the very question of whether the mind and consciousness are deeply rooted in the universe, rather than just being "emergent" outgrowths of complex systems. There are also testable hypotheses that come out of this question.

Here are a few references, on this matter, for starters: "Is the Universe Conscious?" (NBC News 2017/06/16, reporting on Matloff's research) https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/universe-conscious-ncna772956; "Can our Brains Help Prove the Universe is Conscious?" (space.com 2021/04/25, discussing Kleiner, Tull et al.) https://www.space.com/is-the-universe-conscious. And here are a few related topics: panpsychism, the hard problem of consciousness, the Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation (which inverts the issue and says it's the other way around: that the universe is rooted in consciousness) and the no-hiding theorem (which asserts the conservation of quantum information ... including all that which makes up all the details of all the structures contained in your mind, such as the "self").


 * There's nothing in those references about "consciousness after death", which is the topic of the article. We can't connect speculative information about consciousness in general to the topic, that would be WP:SYNTH. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:32, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

What is the point of this article?
Looking over this page's history, I see that this article started out as a bit of an essay of sorts, and gradually turned into a minor controversy. As of right now, the article seems to just be running all over the place, with very little linking the various sections. The note at the top says that this is trying to discuss the topic from a scientific perspective, but it really doesn't. Instead, it gives an extremely brief overview of the functionalist program in neuroscience and philosophy of mind, but completely glosses over the fact that the (for lack of a better way to put it) "nature" of consciousness is still a very controversial topic in neuroscience and philosophy of mind.

Then you have a discussion of brain death, which is a medical diagnosis. And a diagnosis of brain death (at least in the United States) require permanent unconsciousness and loss of all mental functions. And then finally, there's the section on NDEs, which shouldn't be in this article by definition, as people who report having a near-death experience are by necessity not dead.

All the information in this page is already discussed elsewhere in the encyclopedia, and reading this page just leaves me confused as to what it's doing here. I propose scrapping the entire page, and replacing it with a disambiguation page, with links to a variety of articles surrounding this topic, and a 1 paragraph intro explaining that this is a huge topic with lots of people having different opinions and perspectives. Thoughts? -- KRAPENHOEFFER!  TALK  07:27, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Id second this. This whole article reads like snippets of a debate on the afterlife with the positions of the participants removed, leaving only their defenses. I suppose the point of this article is to define the neuroscience behind consciousness, but that really is a problem when (like you said) the controversies regarding consciousness are not explained. The article just swings between scientific and philosophical terminology too easily for it be really of any use.

I cant think of anything this article could hope to provide that wouldnt be better suited under other pages (i.e. Afterlife, Eternal oblivion, Consciousness, etc.) Rosencrantz24 (talk) 03:18, 1 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Thirded.


 * Also, this conversation appears to be what led to the creation of this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Afterlife/Archive_1#Neuroscience_and_IP_213.109.230.96
 * GVO8891 (talk) 04:09, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

NPOV
Written from clearly a materialistic perspective, the conclusive tone of this article fails to represent the fact that questions and conversations about the nature of consciousness in our present day are anything but resolved, including the so-called "mind-body problem." (This is why some philosophers of mind who are atheists don't accept the standard materialist model of brain creating consciousness, such as Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers ). The article implies that only ascribing to a religion causes one to believe consciousness survives death, whereas in reality this is a major ongoing topic of debate and research in neuroscience and consciousness studies, with important figures such as Pim von Lommel and Dr. Sam Parnia (among others), who argue against the materialist view, even though from not a specifically religious perspective. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.56.7.87 (talk • contribs) 06:49, 6 December 2015
 * Fine, but proposals for a change to the article need to be based on reliable sources. Please do not add an NPOV tag based on the minimal outline above—what text in the article is a problem? why? what do you propose? Johnuniq (talk) 07:08, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, just sort of what I'm saying, leaving room for ambiguity and emphasizing the ongoing debate aspect of these topics. So the second sentence of the opening paragraph could say something like "While the dominant scientific view since the 20th century has been that the mind and normal waking consciousness are closely connected with the physiological functioning of the brain, and the cessation of which defines brain death, the topic of consciousness and the mind-body relation are still today a prominent field of discussion and research, with scientific figures such as Dr. Sam Parnia arguing and advancing evidence against the materialistic view, although not from a religious perspective." The following sentence might read "Life after death is a widely held belief and common to many religions." (i.e. I have dropped the "however" which pits religion against science right from the opening paragraph). Similarly, many NDE researchers don't share the "dying-brain" hypothesis, making "Research from neuroscience considers the NDE to be a hallucination caused by various neurological factors" not a neutral or balanced statement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.248.112.181 (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That kind of thing is just article development. NPOV tags are not used for that. The proposed text would need a fair bit of tweaking: the current statement about brain death is more or less true by definition, so I guess you are saying there should be an additional point including Sam Parnia's views. For that to happen, those views would need to be mentioned in the article (see WP:LEAD—the lead is a summary of what is in the article), and there would need to be a reference. Research into NDE is well and good, but it's not an area conducive to study apart from fiddling around the edges with various observations that may or may not be relevant. The current lead appears to be a simple matter of logic—obviously the mind and consciousness are closely connected with a functioning brain (and see references), and a cessation of activity in one is likely to be associated with a cessation of activity in the other. However, no one has a definitive test of that hypothesis. Please review WP:TP for information about indenting and signing comments. Johnuniq (talk) 22:22, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

It is very much relevant for the NPOV tag. The article is essentially saying (albeit gently) "there is no afterlife," which many people disagree with, including informed scientists and researchers who aren't necessarily coming from a religious point of view. A page called "Conciousness after death" should be more balanced than that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.184.83.55 (talk) 23:47, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the page is called "Conciousness after death" but explains largely the opposite "(in all probability) no consciousness after death". I think my consciousness is gone after I die though, like before I was born. But there are considerations from atheistic/spiritual points of view (Arthur Schopenhauer, Stuart hameroff and Pim van lommel). Consciousness could also be fundamental aka panexperientialism (Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead). They, and others, view (if i'm not mistaken) consciousness like a signal, so your brain works like a antenna, when the radio is broken (dead body) the signal is still in the air. This is, for example, a counterargument, for more balance. Only my English isn't that great to edit the page. Praegressus (talk) 20:06, 24 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The straight dope is that science has no tools for investigating the "soul", life after death, reincarnation, and such. So, as far as science goes, it says that we have no shred of evidence for life after death. If you want to believe in life after death, it is fine, but it is not science, science cannot prove anything about life after death (not even that it does not exist, Google prove a negative). Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:43, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

However, interesting research
A main problem of such claims is that since the patient survived to recount it, the patient obviously didn't die. The source may possibly be acceptable, but presenting it this way as new discovery "However, ..." may be misleading... One should also take in consideration that even if brain functions were temporarily suspended completely (which is difficult to reliably assess), neurological activity occurs just before (then disrupted), and just after when activity resumes (with expected disruption artifacts which could include very fast generation of dream-like scenes and false memories, etc). It's also not uncommon for people to have the impression that they were doing something or thinking of something when recovering from a vasovagal syncope, some don't even notice that it occurs, even if consciousness was temporarily interrupted (but of course not necessarily all neurological processes). — Paleo Neonate  – 03:32, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Update: It appears that the author is notable for advocating pseudoscience so I'll remove this for now. — Paleo  Neonate  – 04:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Just how is Sam Parnia advocating pseudoscience? He seems very thorough and scientific in his research. Msiehta (talk) 06:53, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Little actual discussion of consciousness after death
Forgive me for saying so, but it seems that there isn't actually very much about theories/ideas/debates/the history of whether consciousness exists after death in this page. The main thrust is an interesting description of neuroscientific techniques and information, but I don't see any actual mention of consciousness or life after death contained within it. I feel like this is an important enough topic to deserve a more detailed article, but I lack the expertise to add anything to to. 2601:240:C401:9450:BD5C:4828:AF34:FD14 (talk) 05:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)