What's your heaven?

[warpus]

but because they have a valid model of conciousness that either precludes or entails an afterlife.

One thing that you're forgetting is that after you've built a model, you need to test it to see if it actually works and is a good model of reality. Otherwise you might as well just be making things up as you go along - not paying any attention to reality. And that will obviously never get one anywhere.

No such models (that include an afterlife) have ever been tested successfully, to my knowledge, although I do know of cases of where people have tried. That's why the sensible thing to do is to dismiss them, until the next stage in verifying them has been reached somewhere, by someone.

Not all models are built equal. Some are actual attempts to mirror the world in some way - while others are based on nothing but speculation or wishful thinking. It doesn't make sense to treat them on an equal footing - some are basically "just ideas", while others are actual attempts to approximate reality.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's not actually possible to objectively test models, though. They're always tested within the terms of other models: a materialist model of conciousness is tested within the terms of a materialist model of reality. Maybe Descartes was right, and this is all an illusion, who can say? At the end of the day, it comes down to whether a model is convincing; there is no point at which a model can be defended beyond all doubt, so to insist that a model must be so defended would be just the sort of fanatical scepticism I'm referring to.

 

[Kyriakos]

^'Testing' is only having meaning in the space of so-called verification that a theory is apparently in line/isomorphism with 'the external world'/phenomena. Testing does not have meaning either when there are no conditions to run an experiment, or when one is asking whether something non-external world based is true (eg if one asks if some mathematical issue is correct or not you can only build up a proof or dismissal out of the set axiom system; that is not tied in any direct manner to the external world, so is not an experiment but a progression of logic following from the axioms).

So of course there is no such testing for views on an afterlife. But that in no way means that all views on it are equal, for we still examine any issue logically. It is just that logic is less clearly/openly defined than math axioms.

 

[warpus]

Maybe Descartes was right, and this is all an illusion, who can say?

If your standards of proof are so high that this becomes your position - then that's even higher than the standards of science. Much much higher.

In your post you proposed much much lower standards, what gives?

All I'm saying is: "Test your model, and let's see if things work like you say they work". If the model isn't a good simulation of reality, then we can discard it. If it actually seems to mirror it in some way - then we can accept it as a possibly good way to describe reality.

And if it isn't yet possible to test your model.. well, that's fine, we can put it off to the side for now and get back to it when such tests are possible. But accepting models willy nilly isn't really very logical. You're going to have to accept an infinite number of models as true - if you let one in past the floodgates.. well, you know what they say about the floodgates. It makes the position logically not tenable.

 

[Traitorfish]

There's a difference between accepting that a model is true, and accepting that a reasonable person might believe it to be true. The latter is wholly compatible with agnosticism: that reasonable people might find a particular model entailing the existence or non-existence of the afterlife to be convincing, but that you personally do not. So what I'm saying is, adopting a hard agnostic position that no reasonable person can find any of these models convincing is not on the face of it any less "fanatical" than a the position that a reasonable person must find any given model convincing. (Unless the given model is so ridiculous as to be self-evidently untrue, I mean.)

 

[warpus]

I think my disagreement with you was over the use of the word "model".

Let's look at an economic model - for example an Austrian school of thought one. I don't know much about economics, but there are a lot of models in the field - widely accepted ones, ones that aren't really that accepted, even more fringe ones, and so on.

Models are things that simulate reality in some way - so they must have inputs and outputs - and the fact that they have inputs and outputs means that you can test these models and see how good they actually are at modelling reality. If a model doesn't have such things, then it is probably not a model - or just a very badly constructed one and essentially one that we can ignore (as a model).

What you have written above makes me believe that the conclusions you drew from your assumptions do not rely on that definition of "model" to be so strict.. so I think it's worth dropping the disagreement as one that doesn't really matter, even though I don't really think I agree with you on a couple other things either, especially the Descartes bit, which I see as a copout type of answer that essentially says "You can never be 100% sure of anything, so you might as well assume anything you want."

 

[Narz]

Endless experimentation with reality, can twist space & time & make my own rules of the game (I can tweak the parameters of it & try to create my favorite reality). Kind of like being God I suppose.

And hanging with lots of other Gods (and Goddesses of course ) to play together with. And no one has the power to hurt you or trap you within their reality. No scarcity unless people want to play at scarcity within their realities.

 

[warpus]

I figured out another thing that I would want to find in my heaven:

All the answers I want at my fingertips. About anything I can imagine. No longer would I need to log into CivFanatics and argue with people about morality or consciousness - I could just ask the question out loud and an annotated report would be delivered to my fingertips by one of the sexy babes.

 

[Hygro]

I figured out another thing that I would want to find in my heaven:

All the answers I want at my fingertips. About anything I can imagine. No longer would I need to log into CivFanatics and argue with people about morality or consciousness - I could just ask the question out loud and an annotated report would be delivered to my fingertips by one of the sexy babes.

You don't have sexy babes already telling you what you want to hear on command?

 

[warpus]

Now I'm starting to wonder about the morality of somehow enforcing that sexy babes do all these things for me. At first I sort of assumed that they would just be doing things with me because heaven me is so awesome, but report deliveries would be just degrading. I suppose to make things fair I would also devote a part of my day to dress up all sexy like and deliver reports to sexy babes. Then they can do the same for me, and overall we'll be even and it can be a heaven for all.

 

[Kyriakos]

There's a difference between accepting that a model is true, and accepting that a reasonable person might believe it to be true. The latter is wholly compatible with agnosticism: that reasonable people might find a particular model entailing the existence or non-existence of the afterlife to be convincing, but that you personally do not. So what I'm saying is, adopting a hard agnostic position that no reasonable person can find any of these models convincing is not on the face of it any less "fanatical" than a the position that a reasonable person must find any given model convincing. (Unless the given model is so ridiculous as to be self-evidently untrue, I mean.)

Agnosticism does not mean that one argues that others may or may not believe something else. Furthermore it is a bit of a convoluted (and likely inherently problematic in other ways too) scheme to argue that while one is not accepting something as logical, they are better off by accepting that it is potentially correct anyway. There are two different factors here:
a) what is/seems to be correct to a specific individual
b) what is correct 'in reality'.

And while b may not be applicable at all, it still does not negate the ability to argue in terms of presenting a view as being correct regardless of entirely personal contexts

 

[cybrxkhan]

In my sister's (sisters'?) arms

Thinking it over, to answer the OP's question, I honestly dunno what a lot of my heaven would be like, but I figure it'd probably have a lot of french fries, Mediterranean scenery, and everybody speaking a language that sounds liken a bastardized cross between Greek and every major language of the Sinosphere except Korean. Also, it'd be called Scarborough Fair.

(Okay, I might've been slightly serious about the sister thing, sans the incestous connotations.)

 

[Richard Cribb]

Basically a place without pain, unhappiness and want, where all my wishes would be fullfilled.
What to say? I am quite shallow when it comes to metaphysics.