Atheists....a question, if I may:

Here is my answer to the idea of afterlife:

A person's memory and personality are part of the brain. If those are destroyed, which they are when the brain is destroyed, then what is left of the identity and individuality?

Really?

So when a baby is born with a brain, he has memories and a personality?

Don't these develop (and even change) over time?

Real life

When a computer come out of he assembly line, there is capacity for memory and data processing. There are no such processes going on until they are started. But when the computer is destroyed all such processes and capacity for them is gone too. Same principal.

I agree that memory and personality are part of the brain, or that brain is part of memory and personality. It's a chicken or the egg thing.

When it come to beliefs, mine is that there is some focuspoint of energy, a soul if you will, that resides in the body, an animating flame of some sort. I like to think of it as the life force.
This force will vacate a body when it dies, leaving brain, mind, memory and personality behind. It will not remember a life lived when it goes on to start a new one, but it will be altered by that life, molded into something other than what it was at first.

That is why living a good life is important, because this life force will be shaped by what we do with it. It's basically the hindu idea of reincarnation and karma...

Oh, and did I say that it is my belief? That is maybe taking it too far. Let me moderate my statement by saying that this belief is the most entertaining. I have no opinion on wether it is true or not. I just like to think about it...

I hate when Frank takes his ball and goes home.

Ya, I hope the old boy is not ailing. It's not like him to not want to mix it up.

If you agree that the computer hardware and software are not the same, then you will understand why I said that the memory and personality are not 'part of the brain'.

A brain is a mass of cells. The personality is not part of that, but may be expressed through means of it.

Perhaps you read the word 'brain' and thought 'mind', which is a different concept.

If personality is not a part of the brain then please explain how lobotomies work.

Do you not understand the analogy between hardware and software of the computer?

The hardware is necessary for the software to produce results. But they are not the same thing.

Hardware (brain) without software (mind, personality, etc) will produce nothing.

The mind is dependent on the brain to express itself in the physical universe in which our senses operate. But that doesn't mean that the mind doesn't 'exist' without the brain.

The brain is not a peice of silicon with metal connectors. The brain has no such thing as "hardware" because neuron connections can be strengthened, weakened, moved, disconnected, and so on by the brain itself. The brain's "hardware" IS the software.

Doesn't your argument also imply that the soul, which is able to control the brain and thus all the parts of the body and the cellular machinery to repair the body, somehow does NOT have control over the cellular machinery to fix the brain?

You offered words but no explanation as to how a lobotomy works. How does the combination of matter inside one's head impede the ability of the soul to interact with the world?

Not necessarily. The brain CAN be repaired, as shown by recent cases of persons awaking out of decades-long coma and having new neural connections established to replace damaged ones.

I never thought the day would come, but I agree with real life.

Brain and mind are not the same. We know that the relationship between the two is mutual. A lobotomy of the brain affects the mind. But in reverse, changes in the mind affect the brain.

They are not the same, but neither are they separable. The mind is a function of the brain.

Mesquite

Are you sure that the mind is a function of the brain?

Can it not be that the brain is a function of the mind?

does the mind exist within the brain ?

You will have to flesh that one out for me.

I am only saying that there may be more to the realtionship brain/mind that what can be measured in terms of neural activity.

Those who dismiss notions like spirit seem to be sure that mind is merely the output of chemical signals in the brain. Hence the claim that mind is a function of the brain.

But if we think about it, it sounds reasonable to state that fear triggers the corresponding neurons in the brain, not the other way around.

At the risk of repeating myself: Many say that the brain makes the mind. To say that the mind makes the brain amy be going too far, but that there is a mutual relationship between the two sounds more than likely to me.

Cyracuz, the only notions of spirit that I dismiss are those that separate spirit from dependence on a physical body.

Ok. For myself, I try to keep an open mind on that. I haven't met on, so I am not convinced they exist. But then, I have never met an eskimo either... :wink:

Can we imagine a mental experience (mind or minding) without a brain? And can we imagine knowledge or experience of a brain-object without mind?
Perhaps the relation is reciprocal: mind is a function of brain and brain is a function of mind.
Or are we doing the flapping?

Let me explain my last line. Two zen monks were debating as follows: One said that a flapping flag moves the air around it; the other said that the flapping air moves the flag. When they asked their master who was right, the master observed that it was their minds that were flapping.

Consider the relationship between brain and mind of a person afflicted with alzheimer's.