Yes, that’s what I said. I may have misunderstood what you said earlier, but it seemed to contradict that:
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I don’t think that SR and GR are relevant to the question of rebirth at all. Inanimate objects—for instance, a asteroids moving through space—have frames of reference.
You can get relativistic effects without consciousness being involved at all—a sample of a radioactive isotope taken to the top of a mountain and back down again will decay more than one which stayed at sea level the whole time.
“Frames of reference” have nothing to do with consciousness.
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Whether one talks about an asteroid or an observer, these words are used only in as far as there is cognizance of these things.
And so to say that consciousness is not involved is kind of like saying that the atmosphere of planet earth is divorced from percipitation that there is.
It’s how i understood it and i have no problem with what you are saying in that consciousness & rebirth have no immediate relevance to designing accelerators & modelling cascades. And so i don’t think an experiment can be set up to prove this either way and therefore this is in the realm of philosophy more so than physics as i understand it.
Rebirth and evolution go perfectly well together, and I see evolution as proof of rebirth. Sentient life on earth changed according to their choices, and with enough choices, fueled by craving, the entire species changes into a new one. A common phrase in biology, the struggle for life, is approximately that very clinging which has been there since before the beginning of sentient life on earth. I posted a video about this before Evolution was perpetuated by our decisions and the struggle for life, and barely natural random selection.
Before sentience, before the split of animals, fungi, and plants (which some could be sentient arguably), there was life, but I don’t think there were choices nor clinging, but just the frame for beings to go into out of desire for earth food.
The relationship between us and other primates, you asked? Eventually, a group of these animals wanted to use tools, so they tried their hands, so they developed strong motor skills. They wanted to communicate, so they tried to make sounds, creating language. They wanted to figure out the world to survive instead of just hunt non stop, so they became relatively very intelligent. Then comes culture, kingdoms, and philosophy, and figured out rebirth themselves, and even an end to that.
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Do you know that the mind-brain relationship problem is a philosophical problem that is yet to be resolved? (For example, see article below. ) Considering this, we cannot make assumptions about the mind based on the observation of simple neural correlations.
First of all, everything we know about how the universe works is based on an assumption: the very foundations of science are assumptions, and as a result science itself is really nothing more than a set of beliefs. The only thing you can know for a fact about yourself and the universe is that what is here and now is present as an experience, and even more, that experience is solely and exclusively not public. Even the idea of stepping outside that experience to make any observations about it’s origin and nature is incomprehensible.
Secondly, rebirth is not a life after death, it’s a completely new life of a new born being. What continues here is not a being, but a being’s assumptions about the continuity of itself, about own personality - ignorance. Rebirth is no different from waking up or even from any present moment of your life: on the same ground you assume the continuity of you right now or after waking up from the oblivion of the dream on the same ground there is the continuity of rebirth. Is the you reading this word now the same you reading the word you now? And how do you know this? What does this knowledge consist of? What are the facts and what are just assumptions and beliefs? And, most importantly, are you in control of that continuity, are you in control of that of which the experience you take as yours and of yourself is composed? Are you in control of the presence and continuity of you and what is yours?
The ultimate happiness is freedom. For without absolute mastery and control over that which is you and yours, unhappiness is still possible and would happen.
Noble means free. Ignoble means not free, shackled, subjected, fettered, not the master of one’s own happiness.
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Philosophers who say that there is a “mind-brain relationship problem” (usually referred to in contemporary philosophy as “the hard problem of consciousness”), generally don’t doubt that science will be capable of giving a complete account of the causes human behaviour in terms of physical phenomena. David Chalmers calls the project of giving such an account the “the easy problem of consciousness”.
It seems to me that the theory of rebirth does entail that we can’t give a complete account of the causes of human behaviour in physical terms. If a past life has some effect upon my behaviour now, this would seem to entail that there is some non-physical cause of my neurons firing. Since my neurons are merely composed of ordinary matter, this would seem to imply that the laws of physics could not in principle predict the firing of my neurons—the matter in my brain does not behave in the way that the laws of physics would say that it would.
I don’t think many atheistic philosophers—even non-physicalists such as David Chalmers —would accept this, even if they do think that there’s a hard problem of consciousness.
Why? According to chaos theory every single action we take in any life has uncalculable further consequences for the light cone traveling outward into the universe from the moment the action was taken. Then you have QM and entanglement and the influence of subatomic particles entangled with other subatomic particles no matter the distance. And that’s even assuming we actually know the physical laws; which we manifestly don’t. QG hasn’t even been figured out yet.
Another way of saying it, maybe kamma causes collapse of the wave function 
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If you think of it this way: seeing an object (let’s say a dog) would manifest a particular type of feeling in you and a different feeling in another person based on each person’s experiences with dogs in the past. Interestingly, the rebirth cases that have been carefully investigated by scientists (like Dr. Jim Tucker, Dr. Ian Stevenson, etc.) also indicate that past life experiences play a critical role in their present life encounters. For example, various phobias, food preferences and unusual play habits etc., which the children (that have been investigated) display, appear to correspond to activities, habits and experiences (i.e., representing different types of inclinations) of the previously deceased person (see the article below). Considering all this – the mind does appear to be immaterial.
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IMO this is a classic problem with the western scientific model (one where I work in medicine btw!). Two things can be true at the same time:
- Physics and the associated sciences understand matter *
- Physics and the associated sciences dont understand consciousness
*(so everything about all the different particles we have found, and even those that we havent found but have theorised about exist as per physics and theoretical physics)
If you think physics and associated sciences explain everything, tell me how any particle explains anger…or greed…or delusion itself?
Can you rotate a Higgs particle the other way and go from a happy mind to an unhappy one?
As a Buddhist who publishes in the medical literature and use statistics etc etc…I dont question physics and associated sciences in what they are saying about THAT domain. I just look there for things about matter…and I look to Buddhism to explain the other domain in this universe…consciousness (or whatever term you use for the mental objects that have no physical essence).
An example. Look at a red bowl. You can see it is red right? Actually, you are not seeing anything. Red doesn’t exist. All there are, according to science, is a series of waves of different lengths. There is no red anywhere in the universe. The wave has no colour. What happens is the neuron you refer to is firing, electrical info is transmitted, through something called the optic radiation, to another neuron (in the occipital part of the brain, right at the back of the head). That region takes all the electrical (NOT colour) data it is provided and it creates a visual image that “you” see. It creates a movie. There is no movie. There is no red. Its all a creation. Tell me if a single word of the above is wrong.
There is no red in the universe at all. The red we “see” is all from us, its not from the universe. Interestingly the red in the red bowl you see might well be what I see as green in my head…absolutely no way of knowing. As I “perceive” that wave length with a particular colour in my head each time I see it and you “perceive” that wave length with a particular colour in your head each time you see it so we can converse about it and design traffic lights and give the colours common names we all use…however, what you “see” as red in your head might be what I see as “green” (that may not make sense because its hard to explain, but its nevertheless true!)
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…so to explain how that post fits with rebirth… if there are two domains (matter and mind) there might be things with matter (rocks), mind and matter (us) and even things with mind only (arupa realms described in Buddhism). So the physical and mental can interact and be interdependent (ie living things) and physical things can thus influence mental (ie alcohol) but mental “things” can also influence physical (ie psychosocial illnesses).
- Oxytocin provides a lovely warm loving feeling when it surges after a mother gives bith
- Oxytocin poured over a rock aint gonna do nothin folks! No matter the dose
But we are starting to understand the importance of this inter-relationship now with quantum physics where light particles (photons) behave differently depending on whether there is a consciousness observing them. One entangled particle can be rotating clockwise or anticlockwise…right up to the point that a conscious being observes it! At that instant, the associated entangled other particle instantly rotates the other way…no matter how far away it is, even if it is in another metaverse. Yes, that “information” travels faster than light as it is instant no matter what distance.
Explain any of that without the existence of some not particulate consciousness concept!
So rebirth is happening in the mental domain, the body deteriorating and going back to its elemental parts is happening in the physical domain.
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Why? According to chaos theory every single action we take in any life has uncalculable further consequences for the light cone traveling outward into the universe from the moment the action was taken.
Chaotic systems in nature aren’t actually non-deterministic. Their behaviour is still entirely determined by their initial conditions, which are physical. Their evolution is just highly sensitive to differences in initial conditions. That the weather is chaotic doesn’t mean that the weather has non-physical causes or effects.
It seems pretty clear that the proximate cause of my behaviour is neurons firing. For example, neurons fire and cause my muscles to contract. Neurons are merely composed of matter, therefore their behaviour is described by the laws of physics (eg, the Standard Model of particle physics). Neurons fire when physics says that they will fire.
If karmic traces are going to have some influence on my physically observable behaviour, then it seems like there’s going to have to be some cause of my neurons firing which isn’t some cause found within physics. They will have to fire when physics says that they will not fire.
If I have a memory of juggling, and say “I can remember juggling”, my neurons fire so as to cause me to vocalise in this manner. The cause of these neurons firing is just other neurons firing, and, further back, a chain of various biological phenomena going back to my conception.
As far as I can see, there is no reason to suppose that this causal chain is not the one which would be predicted by our current theories of physics. If there are to be past life memories, then it seems like we’d have to have some sort of causal chain going back from my saying “I remember doing X in a past life” which includes some element which would not be predicted by our current theories of physics.
Perhaps the firing of the neurons which cause me to vocalise a past life memory cannot be accounted for by physics (maybe memories aren’t in the brain at all). Or perhaps the neural structures which constitute my memories arise from causes which are not contained in our current physical theories (eg, some sort of immaterial spirit which moves from body to body).
I’m inclined not to believe in rebirth because I don’t really see any evidence which suggests that either of these things are the case.
I don’t really think that any of this is outside the bounds of empirically observable phenomena, so I don’t really think that one can insulate the theory of rebirth from empirical refutation. The theory seems, at least implicitly, to make claims about the behaviour of publicly observable phenomena. It seems to suggest either that memories aren’t in the brain at all, or that, if they are, then the structure of a person’s brain isn’t solely determined by what has happened to them in this life.
Then you have QM and entanglement and the influence of subatomic particles entangled with other subatomic particles no matter the distance.
I’m not sure of the significance of this to rebirth. It’s astronomically unlikely that a significant amount of the particles composing my parent’s gametes would be entangled with those composing some other being which was about to die so as to affect my early development. It’s not even clear how, even if they were entangled, such entanglement could have the effects which seem to be required for the theory of rebirth.
And that’s even assuming we actually know the physical laws; which we manifestly don’t. QG hasn’t even been figured out yet.
It seems like we have a pretty good grasp of the behaviour of objects that are about the size of human brains. Human brains are well within the domain of applicability of QFT.
Is there any reason to think that this is the case? Even if you are going to posit non-physical causes for the collapse of the wave function, why posit kamma? Maybe it’s ghosts, immaterial souls or god.
I’m not actually a materialist/physicalist. I don’t think that science will be able to explain why it is that certain physical phenomena give rise to conscious experience. I think that this is just a brute fact which nobody will ever be able to explain. I don’t think that this is particularly mysterious or troublesome. It’s inescapable that our theory of the world is going to have some brute facts which cannot be further explained.
But it does seem to me that the sciences can give an account of publicly observable phenomena like human behaviour. The “hard problem of consciousness” isn’t really about whether we will be able to explain publicly observable human behaviour in terms of physics. Most non-religious philosophers—even non-physicalists—do not doubt this.
If I have a past life memory, and speak about it, then my speaking those words—a publicly observable phenomenon—will have some cause which is temporally prior to my birth. The question of why it is that there is subjective experience doesn’t really seem relevant to this.
But we are starting to understand the importance of this inter-relationship now with quantum physics where light particles (photons) behave differently depending on whether there is a consciousness observing them.
I think a small minority of physicists who are actually engaged in foundations of quantum mechanics (which itself is a pretty small minority of theoretical physicists) would say that consciousness has some effect on the behaviour of subatomic particles. As far as I can tell, the most popular theories are Bohmian mechanics, GRW’s theory or the many worlds interpretation.
In any case, I think the idea that it’s “consciousness” in the sense of subjective experience that causes the collapse of the wave function on the Copenhagen interpretation is sort of a misconception. The Copenhagen interpretation is consistent with a physicalist account of consciousness.
One entangled particle can be rotating clockwise or anticlockwise…right up to the point that a conscious being observes it! At that instant, the associated entangled other particle instantly rotates the other way…no matter how far away it is, even if it is in another metaverse. Yes, that “information” travels faster than light as it is instant no matter what distance.
Entanglement does not allow the transmission of information faster than the speed of light: What Is Quantum Entanglement? Quantum Entanglement Explained in Simple Terms - Caltech Science Exchange.
On the many worlds interpretation, different universes don’t actually causally interact. That’s why they’re called different universes. Phenomena like entanglement occur before the wave function branches into different universes.
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It’s how i understood it, the collapse is intentional and mind can be developed in disinterestedness to the point of it’s not coming into play.
Also i can add that I think the proposition of rebirth asserts infinite past causal development and making an absolute determined prediction is in a sense as magical as teleportation because one would be predicting exactly how the cookie will crumble beyond the uncertainty that there is before measurement.
Until they come out with clear equations akin to GR, QM, or Newtonian dynamics on exactly how atoms interacts to produce cells to produce the exact firing of neutrons to produce thoughts, I think it’s an assumption that the brain and therefore mind is dependent on physics alone, or the higher level derivation of biochemistry, neutroscience etc.
You already provided the mechanism of how one can voice a past life memory, through mind-body interaction which is taken as an empirical observation.
The notion that only physical things can affect physical things is actually an unstated assumption and it’s is not proven by science, but is disproved by rebirth evidences, as your logic goes, past life memories can affect present life without clear physical chains in between other than the mind.
So inherently, it goes to philosophical adherence. Science does not prove phsyicalism philosophy, it’s an assumption. One which is widely shared and therefore it soaks into the teachings of science by science popularizers who are atheists.
Since physicalism inherently cannot admit any mechanism for rebirth, leading those who adhere to it to reject rebirth, even with evidences of rebirth right in their face, then it’s actually like the notion of the Catholic church to adhere to earth centered solar system due to belief in certain principles rather than to follow the evidences.
I think it’s safest to be on philosophical grounds when discussing science and Buddhism rather than to venture into quantum entanglement, consciousness causes collapse, etc. (it is it’s own interpretation, Bohm, many worlds and GRW doesn’t use consciousness to cause collapse, some of them have no notion of collapse of wavefunction). If one doesn’t actually have a degree in physics or read enough in physics.
One can read more about quantum interpretation at r/quantuminterpretation. On reddit.
Another example of the deficiencies of western scientific thought if I can say that with respect and no ill will intended. Just because science cant explain it doesn’t mean that nobody can or ever will. The Buddha had a perfectly good thesis about the non-physical domain. It could be wrong, it could be right, but that will never be proven in the physical domain, it can only be proven or disproven in the mental domain as thats its domain…ie meditate and we may eventually “prove” it there.
This is indeed “independent of Buddhism” because it involves both an ātmavāda and a sassatavāda. Which is why they talk about reincarnation rather than rebirth.
Normally at this stage of an argument on Sutta Central, participants cite numerous passages from the Pāli suttas to prove their point. To the best of my knowledge there are no stories in Pāli of children remembering their past lives. Children are notably absent from the Pāli most of the time (apart from the occasional dead infant). Does anyone have any such stories from Pāli suttas to share?
To the best of my knowledge, in Pāli no one other than the Buddha is able to exercise this advanced magical power of having knowledge of past lives (pubbenivāsānussati). While it is true that theoretically any arahant could also perform this magic, in practice none do. Moreover, arahants are not reborn after they die. So no child could possibly possess this advanced Buddha-magic. If the Pāli texts are any guide.
To the best of my knowledge this idea that children might remember a past life is not present in any Buddhist tradition of any time or place until the modern era. The one exceptions is Tibet where is it inextricably linked to issues of monastic governance and succession. And there, the sprul sku is a bodhisatva choosing to reincarnate (however that is supposed to work): in which case there is no reason that their memories would be selective or that such memories would fade as the child matured. If they possess the power of pubbenivāsānussati then they ought to clearly remember all of their past lives, like the Buddha.
As far as I can tell, this phenomenon of children aged 4-6 remembering their past lives (and subsequently forgetting them) seems to be begin with 20th century Western materialists (around the time of the Tibetan diaspora?), and in every case there is continuity of personality across lifetimes. They insist on an entity that survives death unchanged. This is, by definition, an ātmavāda and a sassatavāda. I’m sure I don’t need to restate the Buddhist arguments against these kinds of views.
The other problem with Stevenson and co is that they aren’t really doing science. The minimal requirement of doing science is that it results in a causal explanation of the phenomenon in question; and that the explanation can be used to make testable predictions. Moreover, any proposed causal explanation has to be consistent with other widely accepted causal explanations, or it has to replace them. So an explanation of reincarnation that, for example, relied on breaking the laws of thermodynamics would not be considered science, unless it also proposed a new way of understanding thermodynamics that allowed for the breaking of the rules under specified circumstances.
And, to be clear, the persistence of coherent information structures like memories beyond the death of the brain that encoded them, very definitely violates the laws of thermodynamics.
The so-called science of reincarnation is an example of the aesthetic fallacy. Although they use many of the external forms of science, they don’t produce causal explanations and they don’t make testable predictions. Ergo, what they are doing may appear to the uninitiated to be science, but it is not science.
I remain open to reviewing any explanation of rebirth that is consistent with other scientific insights and capable of making a testable prediction, just as soon as one of their predictions is accurate and precise to 5σ (the usual standard in scientific publishing). And don’t worry about it being left-field. I’m a great fan of novel and heterodox scientific explanations such as Chiara Marletto’s Constructor Theory, or Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle. I only stipulate that the explanation and the confirmed prediction it makes be published in a mainstream scientific journal before being presented in simplified form to a lay readership. This should not be that hard given how much “evidence” there is.
The problem remains that if reincarnation is real in the way that Stevenson and co assert it is (in their self-published works), then the Buddhist anātman view of rebirth has been decisively proven wrong. Religious Buddhists would be better off sticking to the story that science—as the embodiment of materialism—has nothing to offer Buddhism.
If you have never practiced science, if you have only ever read about science in books, then you don’t know what you are talking about. Until one has practiced science for a number of years under the instruction of a qualified teacher, one really has no hope of understanding science well enough to apply it or to assess a novel scientific explanation.
Everything considered a body or in nature is subject to conservation laws. Why would consciousness be different?
Edit: It seems physicalist materialism in which consciousness is a product of brain is question begging. They now have to give a casual account of consciousness. But some traditions have a casual account of how consciousness arises and is conserved.
Perhaps this is a matter of semantics but your first statement is about consciousness not having an effect on particles but the second is referencing work suggesting exactly that. The balls can be either red or yellow, then as soon as one is observed (by a consciousness) the other is instantly “fixed”. Yes, perhaps it isnt information travelling instantly, the information is already built in, the ball “carries it” mysteriously. Not in matter but in something else.
So there is something linking the two things that cant be seen and cant be explained by any particle. Evidence for there being a second domain that isnt physical you could argue…
Both from the external point of view points to the same empirical findings. There’s no self, yet unenlightened people feel that there is due to self delusion. And it carries across lifetimes, so while the past life is not a soul, or self, but just causality continuing, it’s still feels like it’s the same self for those who are not enlightened.
The difference between reincarnation and rebirth would be the philosophy behind it. How to explain the phenomena. I will just take these 2 as the same word referring to the same phenomena from now. Just because one has different ways of explaining the phenomena, doesn’t deny the existence and factualness of the phenomena.
Just by having kids who can remember things which no normal materialistic way can explain is enough to raise questions as to how valid materalism is as a philosophy to describe the world. The alternatives are like possession, mind reading etc basically are also against the materalism assumption. And judging from many cases, they conclude that rebirth/reincarnation is the most likely explanation.
Not so relevant, we don’t expect the Pāḷi canon to describe all possible supernormal phenomena that exists in the world. Just that all possible supernatural phenomena is able to fit inside the superstructure of the Buddhist cosmology, including prophets and God based religions from DN 1. From materalism point of view, if materalism is true, we would never expect any, not even a single verification of memories of the kids to happen. We can say they are delusional, but thousands of cases later, it becomes harder to deny that materalism assumption about the world is faulty. If Buddhism is true, there is no surprise to find some kids can remember past lives.
It would be interesting to find cases before this date indeed, well, perhaps the tibetan ones would do. Would just saying that the data is clouded with religion makes it biased? I haven’t read wide enough yet to find if there’s any stories before this period. But still, this period being pre-internet is a strong case for not cheating due to finding information online.
How about this: if rebirth is not true, we wouldn’t find kids claiming to remember past lives to have the correct details. So prediction if rebirth is true: kids who remembered past lives should be able to correctly (within human memory error) point out the things related to their past lives accurately as possible. And this has been seen in so many cases that once we read it, any disbelief goes shatters and out of the window. Read enough cases, then there’s no way this cannnot be deemed as a fact. So I suspect people who still doubt haven’t read enough detailed cases of verified past lives recollection.
There’s also quantum information which cannot be erased. Although I suspect memory is more of classical information, there’s also no reason why it cannot be stored in a non-phsyical medium (mind) then reloaded to another body, much like we can store data in a pendrive and put it to another computer. No physics violation here.
I am not sure how this can be done. Any suggestions? Not like recalling past lives is about numbers. But still how to analyze the thousands of cases consistently to come out with statistics, I am not sure. I am not that deeply learned in all the details of the cases and stats yet.
I think we shouldn’t use conservation laws onto the mind. Using this we come to the conclusion that mind cannot cease forever. Mind ceasing forever is what happens at parinibbāna.
Also, what many people who has reviewed the evidences says that it’s enough for a court of law, which many countries use for judging life and death. Scientific verification depends on scientists being able to overcome their views and read the cases then proclaim boldly against the majority of scientific opposition that this is fact. I don’t forsee this happening soon. That social internia is what I am battling against here.