Resolving the ‘Natural Afterlife’ issue: It Seems There’s No Real 'Natural Afterlife' After All

 

Natural Afterlife proponent Bryon Ehlmann insists I have no clue about how the NA works, and that “there is no violation of the 2^nd law of thermodynamics”.  He writes:

“Because the natural afterlife involves absolutely nothing that is physically any different from what science assumes occurs at or after death, it cannot possibly violate any physical laws, including the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If it does violate these laws, then such laws are being violated every time someone dies.”

 

Let’s drop the semantics and just cut to the chase: whether we are talking about the dead person locked into an “ideation” or a “perception” it still requires ENERGY to sustain it.  This is irrespective of whether the person is actually DEAD and in a natural AFTER-life, or is "near" - dead, in which case remaining living processes ensure further energy inputs!

Meanwhile, you cannot have a perception for an already dead man, unless you are arguing for a non-physical existent, in which case your afterlife is little different from supernaturalism.

 Now, since energy at death has reached the ultimate disordered state, as I showed in my blog post of Feb. 10, it means there is no further capability to support any kind of an ordered state, i.e. bearing content or information. This includes a “perception” which, irrespective of being for dead man or living, must embody an energy content per bit. This informational energy per bit has been quantified as 0.693 kT where k is Boltzmann’s constant and T is the ambient temperature.

 As for “laws being violated every time someone dies” – yes – they seemingly are, by the natural afterlife brigade! Specifically the 2^nd law of thermodynamics is being violated. We are expected to believe that an entity in a state of maximal entropy, including its brain, can be expected to give rise to any kind of “perception”.

 
But wait! Hold strain! Evidently I got it all wrong and my presumption that the natural afterlife is really an AFTERLIFE, is totally mistaken! Evidently, according to a further comment from Mr. Ehlmann,  I have conflated a pre-death perception with a post –death “never ending dream” or dream state (never mind proponents refer to it as an NED, or “never ending dream”).   It’s time to really clean up the language here, especially the  murky semantics.

Fortunately, Mr. Ehlmann’s next comments help immensely:

“My bottom line: the natural afterlife DOES NOT “persist indefinitely” in any physical way following death and thus needs no energy to support it!”

 But again, the problem is in the semantics! If it “does not persist indefinitely in any physical way following death”, then what NON-physical way is left?   It is clear that we are being led into metaphysical territory here. The only alternative is the supernatural.  

Let’s lay this out in clear terms: There are only two defined possibilities for bracketing conditions of life and afterlife: the physical and non-physical. If then the conditions don’t meet the first, then the second are all that’s left, and the only non-physical realm which has been adequately elaborated (by theologians) is the supernatural.

 

Bryon could help us out here by providing the necessary and sufficient conditions for the natural “afterlife” to occur, but he has not yet done so. This shows me the NA concept isn’t clear in his own mind. It’s more a matter of words or rhetoric, with overtones of philosophy.

Fortunately, an additional, clarifying  comment by Mr. Ehlmann seems to clear the way for final resolution, making it feasible for us to not even have to ‘agree to disagree’:

Your blog posts of Feb. 9-10 clearly indicate that you mistakenly think that the natural afterlife requires a dream state that survives death. IT DOES NOT! A timeless, everlasting natural afterlife exists only as a perception in the mind of the dying person BEFORE death. The combination of matter and energy required to produce this perception does not survive death.

 

Okay, I guess I can be forgiven for taking too literally the natural afterlifers’ NED – or “Never ending dream”….or AFTER-life concept. So, okay it’s not a never-ending dream after all, it exists only as a “perception” in the mind of the dying person before death. So, in other words, the natural after life doesn’t exist at all!  There is NO  “after”  in any real, objective sense.

 What we have here then is a phenomenon of subjective time – experienced by the dying person before he shuffles his mortal coil.

 If this is so, then Ehlman is correct that the 2^nd law doesn’t apply. (However, if he objects to the subjective time format, he essentially contradicts himself).

 The downside is that then there is no genuine afterlife, only a semantics ploy based on a perception that erupted in the dying person’s mind before death. Nothing is carried on.

 Let’s now examine subjective time as represented in the graphic shown at top. Here I plot the subjective time t on the abscissa vs. the proper time (actual clock time) T, in the objective physical world.  We assume an inertial reference frame to measure T, and no relativistic motion.  In addition, we adopt the (Henry Stapp) version of the Copenhagen Interpretation and assume that the angle f is linked to the presence of an evolving wave function y so long as there is an objective passage of time.  (In which case the time -dependent Schrodinger equation applies).

 As shown, the peculiar nature of subjective time is that a psychological, internal state is able to “stretch” the experience of objective or proper time. In the case shown, 1 minute is stretched to roughly 4 mins. of subjective time, though it could also be 1 hour vs.4  hours, or 1 yr. vs, 4  years. The point is that given an appropriate psychological state to induce it, yes, the personal experience of time can be subjectively extended at the level of t, but despite that the actual clock time hasn’t changed.  (I.e. minutes are still minutes, hours are still hours, etc. Perception doesn't change the units of proper time, only internal or subjective time!)

 Now,  what if the extreme case occurs such that f = 0?    This logically means there is no further evolution of  y   in time.  (Hence, by the CI model, consciousness is no longer applicable since it requires y,  according to Stapp's CI variant).  If we are reluctant to identify definite states, i.e. death – then we might use an analog of the limit concept such that:

 lim  _{t ® ¥}    (T /t)  =   tan f = 0 

In other words, as the subjective time t tends toward infinity, the tangent of f  tends to 0, and of course so does the proper (clock) time T. (When T = 0 entropy ceases to enter into  further considerations. Bear in mind in our context here,  T is paired to the person's biological processes. Thus, at T= 0 there is full biological death)

 Bear in mind given the use of a limit here, we aren’t technically talking of a post death state, we are only approaching death as the time T  ® 0 (i.e. t ®  ¥).   But for all intents, to the person, it is a "timeless" state. In effect, we have finally come to agreement in what Ehlmann refers to as:

“A timeless, everlasting natural afterlife exists only as a perception in the mind of the dying person BEFORE death”

Indeed, in the subjective temporal context  the person would be in a timeless state, since for him the clock time T = 0 (i.e. “timeless”) but in his experience his perception is “ever lasting” given the subjective time t ®  ¥. (Again, bear in mind the limit concept!)

 My problem again, is the use of the term “after life” for this pre-death subjective, temporal anomaly  – experienced by the dying person. Indeed, given Ehlmann admits the NED isn’t a true post-death state then it bears some analogy to the NDE, which also isn’t a genuine post death state  - only “near” death. (I won’t get into all the technicalities of how NDEs differ from NEDs).

I am not sure what term (or acronym)  is better suited, but perhaps we might finally be able to agree on:

Ersatz afterlife, or NEAR Afterlife, e.g. NAL

Of course, this means that  the de Broglie wave option is the only true natural afterlife left – justified by the name!   That is, it is applicable to the post-death state, unlike the NED, which Ehlmann admits is only applicable to the pre-death state (irrespective of whatever “perceptions” the person has)

 

One more caveat. The Heisenberg energy- time uncertainty principle, e.g.

D E D t  ³  ħ  

Can certainly be applied to the case of a dying person’s synapses up to the point the proper clock time T = 0 (i.e. all biological 'clocks' cease). Hence, Ehlmann’s complaints that it’s “not applicable” are irrelevant. So long as any (biological) clock time is recorded, one can estimate energy in the dying person’s synapses using it.

In conclusion, it occurs to me – after seeing all these semantic contortions (in order to proffer an “afterlife” that’s not really an afterlife) - that the NAL proponents are more lost in their own rhetoric than they realize. It also brings to mind the old adage of Lord Kelvin: "Unless a man can quantify what he's talking about, he isn't saying anything."

But at least it appears we can finally end this debate if the NALs will at last acknowledge that what they have is no real afterlife but a facsimile of one- based on their insistence of a perception in the mind of the dying person BEFORE death.

Why the Concept of "Natural Afterlife" Is Nonsense (2)

If you ask a serious, decently informed person if s/he believes a perpetual motion machine is feasible, the person will likely respond: "Of course not! It's nonsense!" This shows the person may at least have had some basic exposure (maybe in high school physics) to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  In a more advanced course, i.e. Calculus Physics taken in first year university, two statements express the 2nd law. They are:

(I) The Kelvin -Planck statement:

It is impossible to construct a heat engine, operating in a cycle, which produces no other effect than absorption of thermal energy from a hot reservoir and the performance of an equal amount of work.


II): The Clausius statement:

It is impossible to construct a cyclical machine that produces no other effect than to transfer heat continuously from one body to another at higher temperature.

These are often generalized in another form to read:

“The entropy (degree of disorder of a system) increases in all natural processes”


Thus, for example, gasoline once burnt in your car engine cannot be captured from the exhaust gases and used over again.. Also, any energy process will also have a large part of any energy produced coming off as unusable waste energy. There is no way, or any process that can deliver 100% usable energy.

In terms of biological -organic systems it means that death is the highest entropy state. This means that once one is dead he remains dead.  There are no "Lazarus-type" resurrections.  Once one's life is extinguished it remains so. In other words, if one adheres to the laws of the natural world there can be no personal afterlives, i.e. peculiar to the individual which are contingent on a lower entropic state (e.g. dream ideation or experience) that pre-existed the person's demise.

However, the supernaturalist doesn't adhere to physical- natural laws, so of course, he is at liberty to invent "afterlives" - even eternal, or "timeless ones".  No biggie. He can even invent "heaven" and "hell" plus "purgatory" - if he happens to be Catholic.

The point is, that unless one is a supernaturalist, he cannot invoke a timeless state contingent on a "dream state" condition that had to involve a particular energy regime associated with synapses in the brain. In other words, a "natural afterlife" which demands indefinite preservation of a synaptic state pre-brain death,  must be as much nonsense as perpetual motion machines.

Let's delve into this further.

According to Bryon Ehlmann,  a proponent of this "theory":

The natural afterlife is timeless. Again, it is the final moment of your NDE. It is like a paused movie scene and the feelings and memories you have at the exact point at which the movie was unknowingly paused. Since it is timeless, no further events happen within the dream. You, however, are never aware of this and that your dream was not just “paused,” but actually stopped since you too were “stopped.”


Now consider: He at once invokes the presumption this "natural afterlife" is timeless. But what must happen in terms of the 2nd law, i.e. to be "timeless"? The answer is that the entropy of the dream- sustained system - whatever it is-  must be zero. However, the natural afterlife proponents decline and indeed reject nonlocal consciousness (e.g. of the Stuart Hameroff or Bohmian type), which means they are hoist on their own petards.  This means they are left with explaining a "dream state" system they invented that has arrived from a higher entropy state to a lower one, something completely disallowed for closed systems. (Wherein the entropy must always increase, unless it can avail itself of external energy, i.e.  green plants in terms of sunlight).

Consider that in the instants preceding actual death, and possibly with an NDE in train, successive brain states evolve leading to one final state:

{s₁, s₂, s₃, s₄……………s_n}   ®  Ã

Entanglement and increased entropy of neuronal states is dictated by:

 

ENT (Ã) = -Tr à ln Ã

Where Tr denotes the trace  (of diagonal elements)  of the  corresponding density matrix.

This means, using our model from the previous blog post, that synaptic function must begin to slow, i.e. as neural transmission and efficiency begins to recede. The person is headed toward a maximum entropic state as are the specific portions of the brain which create the ideations, dreams, thoughts a person has.

The entropy then will be the total aggregate of accessible states:

ENT(Ã) = ln Ã

Conservation of probability requires:

¶P/ ¶t = ¶ / ¶t (Tr(Ã)) = 0

In other words, the process must be one for which any change in the defined state  Ã   tends to zero , given there can be NO further entropy change. However, the natural afterlife bunch are asserting there is a change from what would be maximum entropy (at death) to a defined zero entropy ("timeless") state, post death, i.e. in their NED (never ending dream scenario). Hence, they are postulating a major contradiction of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

If one agrees that the synaptic cleft dimension (see last post) is scaled to allow application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (as Physicist Henry Stapp has shown, i.e. in his 'Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics') then it is feasible to obtain a rough estimate of the final energy state potential just before death. I.e. let us imagine the last workable synapse firing to generate an ideation. For this estimate we will allow a   2τ time indeterminacy or:

2 τ = 2 x (10^-34) s

Then using:

ΔE Δ t ³  h/2π

the calculated energy change (‘indeterminacy in energy’) is:

ΔE » (h/2π)/  Δ t

Or:

ΔE »  1.05 x 10^-34 J-s/ (2 x (10^-34) s) » 0.5 J

So one half joule is available - which means for the end state to be sustained this energy must also be sustained, e.g. in the alleged "timeless" state. This is roughly equal to the energy given off by a half-watt bulb (say in a small flashlight) for one second..

 

It is also useful to estimate how much information - as bits-  this amount of energy corresponds to. We already know that one bit has 0.693 kT of energy (in joules) where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the ambient temperature. Then the number of bits would be:

N(bits) = (0.5 J) / (0.693kT)

 

Taking k = 1.38 x 10^-23 J/K and T = 300 K (about typical room temperature), one obtains:

N(bits) = (0.5J) /  [(0.693 x 1.38 x 10^-23 J/K) ( 300 K)]

N(bits) = 1.74 x 10²⁰

This would be the total number of bits in the final ideation (dream state)  that would need to be sustained in the timeless state. (The only assumption made is that any given 'frozen'  dream image contains information, it cannot be content or information free, or it doesn't exist - especially to the person allegedly experiencing it.) Thus persistence of the dream image/content  cannot be done without energy, any more than a paused TV image can be sustained without electrical energy. But where is it coming from? The natural afterlifers reject non-local consciousness as even remotely possible, indeed they dismiss consciousness entirely! This leads one to believe they are making the error first identified by Prof. Daniel N. Robinson (op. cit., p. 6):

 

"The claim 'I am conscious of the rabbit in the garden' is different from the claim 'I know there is a rabbit in the garden'.  There is a difference between being conscious of and being conscious. The former is always subject to error. Being conscious or aware is to be the possible subject of an experience, the self."

He also expands on the  notion of self-reference, and takes to task those who believe it to be merely an epiphenomenon of the brain, by way of the 'Mary' problem. 

A bit of digression here: Central to discriminating opposing Materialist models of mind are qualia. The term refers to subjective properties perceived in the material world, including colors, shapes and sounds (music). Arguably, none of these have objective existence but are tied to our neural processing and mode of consciousness. The qualia problem is often also called the Mary problem since it presents a hypothetical character (“Mary”) who inhabits a black and white world, but knows everything about colors in physics terms. Still, though she knows what color signifies – a particular wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum – she has never experienced it.  The qualia problem helps to distinguish between what many call monistic physicalism and what I refer to as quantum physicalism. Monistic physicalism in its most rudimentary form can be summarized by Victor Stenger’s comment[1]:

 

It does not matter whether you are trying to measure a particle property or a wave property. You always measure particles. Here is the point that most people fail to understand: Quantum mechanics is just a statistical theory like statistical mechanics, fundamentally reducible to particle behavior

 

And the biggest contradiction to Stenger’s interpretation is[2]:
 

Although Y is a real field it does not show up immediately in the results of a ‘single measurement’, but only in the statistics of many such results. It is the de Broglie –Bohm variable X that shows up immediately each time.
 

In Stenger’s monistic physicalism, reality is structured around locality (predicated on particles), and quantum wave mechanics and its inherent potentiality never enters the field Y  to the extent of overturning particle dominance. In this way, emergence and holism are kept at bay. Conversely, J.S. Bell’s awareness of the hidden variable X enables quantum waves to supersede particles and in turn, demands the brain is treated as a quantum mechanical device.

 

 

On account of the latter position, physicist Henry Stapp has correctly noted[3]:
 

Brain processes involve chemical processes which must, in principle, be treated quantum mechanically. In particular, the transmission process occurring at a synaptic junction is apparently triggered by the capture of a small number of calcium ions at an appropriate release site. In a quantum mechanical treatment, the locations of these calcium ions must be treated quantum mechanically
 

 All of this means, again, that the only "natural afterlife" plausibly (albeit improbably) on offer or even remotely feasible based on physical laws, is the one described in the previous post to do with de Broglie waves.

 

Bryon Ehlmann writes:

 

  The natural afterlife is relative. Others know that you are dead and that your brain is no longer functioning and that your last dream—what would have been an NDE had you recovered—has ended, but you do not. For you, the NDE becomes an NED.

 

But this really says nothing, not anything a physicist can hang his hat on, i.e. in terms of energies available, entropy, neural thresholds etc. So whether the 'natural afterlife is relative" is roughly like whether one million angels can dance on the end of a pin, or one thousand.  Others "know you are dead" - ok, fine, but if they have sense they will have an EEG attached at the last instant to see if any mercurial action potential causes wave spikes that might indicate a final dream state. (Better yet, keep the EEG attached over time to see if any tiny wave forms re-appear  - after all a 0.5 J end state in stasis ought to be detectable electrically!)

 

Bottom line: a dream state or dream, final or not, must have energy to support it as I showed. It can't persist indefinitely in a metaphysical vacuum, following death,  no matter how many words (or clever analogies)  the natural afterlife crew churns out.  (See A.J. Ayers'  Language, Truth and Logic).  Those interested in seeing Ehlmann's detailed responses to an earlier blog post of mine on the after life can go to this link.

 

http://possibilities-and-phenomena.quora.com/The-Natural-Afterlife-vs-a-Quantum-based-de-Broglie-Wave-Afterlife

 

 

Then make your own decision!

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Addendum:
 

 Ehlmann's comment in his link response,  that:

"The deBroglie wave afterlife is described using phrases such as “de Broglie waves,” “essential energy associated with the microtubules disperses out from the brain and becomes ‘entangled’ in a larger, undifferentiated whole,” “quantum coherence,” and “quantum wave states are stored in a multitude of microtubules” as well as by numerous mathematical equations. The complexity is enough to make one’s head spin!"


Is really irrelevant. He mixes up the use of precise language (which any serious person ought to strive to employ to avoid ambiguity), with constructs that others have invoked. Thus, the terms "de Broglie waves", "quantum coherence" and "entanglement" are all well known within the context (QM) in which they apply. Their use doesn't make for 'complexity' but rather exactitude in referencing and distinguishing elements of a hypothesis related to the underpinning physical theory - something Elhmann would do well to attend to more.

"Undifferentiated whole",  likewise, is merely another term (synonym) for quantum nonlocality - which again is basic to discussing anything to do with quantum mechanics. Since de Broglie waves encompass quantum mechanics, it is natural for this term to appear. That doesn't mean the basis is "complex", only that the person approaching it from a more generic (anecdotal) perspective hasn't adequately done his homework.

Where the complexity actually arises is in the use of "micro-tubules" (an added structure of the brain inside neurons) but which is really due to Hameroff and Penrose, not me. Technically, the de Broglie wave hypothesis requires no special additional structures since these decay anyway at the time of death - the only thing really left are wave forms, i.e. the  de Broglie  waves themselves.  NO unheard of violations of natural law are required here, unlike the violations of the entropy law by the NED team.

Ehlmann maintains he is a "skeptic" and he:  "will wait until (my)  theory of de Broglie waves is published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal".  Of course,  this is ridiculous. I make no claim to having a "theory" that is in any way significant enough to qualify to be published in a journal. I only offer the de Broglie wave hypothesis as a scientifically plausible, albeit improbable, explanation for a possible afterlife scenario.  I offered it as part of two blog posts-   because I maintain the 'natural afterlife' proposition of Ehlmann et al isn't plausible at all.

Let me also again clarify that my own POV is that death means the end of whatever had previously existed, including ALL formerly conscious states, ideations and any residual derivatives of them.  That means I implicitly accept the scientific world view of entropy as defining the "arrow of time" (at least in the classical realm) and that death means one has reached a maximum entropy condition. This maximum entropy automatically rules out any "timeless state" embodying any kind of ideation, or "dream" - since such state would have entropy zero.  Others can go along with the natural afterlife if it makes them feel better, but I believe they will only be fooling themselves.
 

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[1] Stenger, God and the Folly of Faith, 155

[2] Bell,: Foundations of Physics, (12,) .989

[3] Stapp, H. op. cit., p. 152