I did not get to read your thread on "artificial consciousnes" as it was hidden when Mike responded to it. Most of us have hidden Mike's posts.
But regarding what mainstream thinks happens to consciousness when you die, I can only offer anecdotal references. I first learned what chemists thought from my high school chemistry teacher. He claimed that consciuosness must cease to exist because when you die the blood stops flowing and the body decays, and even though he did not know what consciousness, it must cease to exist because there ain't anything left to support it. Although he did not know what it was, he and the rest of us in that class did experience it, and we all knew what that experience was like. Life in all its aspects according to him was based in chemistry.
I heard nothing about consciousness all through college. But in grad school, Prof R. W. P. King, my thesis advisor, who I had lunch with every day was quite explicit in that consciousness must exist on a chemical basis and therefore must cease to exist upon death.
Then later on when I worked at the AVCO-Everett Research Labs, where the most powerful CO2 lasers in the world were were built, Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz, our Director, had all journals reported on astral projection removed from the lab because the human consciousness was confined to the physical body and if astral projection were true, then a supernatural medium must exist, and that was just superstition. Kantrowitz more than anyone else I have know represents what mainstream science thinks about everything.
Here is a link to what Crick thinks about consciousness. He is as mainstrem as anyone.
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/crick-koch-cc-97.html
|