fleetmouse
Briefly, my thesis is as follows: There are two potential ways an afterlife could happen - moving and copying. if copying the self is possible, then moving the self is impossible, and vice versa. (I will flesh out this mutual incompatibility later)
Copying is impossible because of the thought experiment I outlined - briefly, if you can be copied, then it's logically possible that you already have, and are unaware of it. Perhaps your copy is in Japan, or Heaven, or Hell. Either way you're unaware of it. Your copy has a separate experientiality, a separate ego. It's an alter ego. If you are annihilated, it makes no difference to you, from a first-person perspective, that your copy's first-person perspective carries on. You are gone. So that's no afterlife at all - it's a different life "continuing" even if that alter ego has your memories.
So that would leave us with moving. I will argue that moving the self is also impossible, because of the interaction problem - the "essence" of the self to be moved, which would putatively include the ego, the center of attention, the first person perspective of you, would have to be non-physical, which invokes dualism and the interaction problem - and dualism simply isn't tenable.
At this point I am confident that, because of this problem, religion is simply wrong about there being an afterlife. I'm intellectually satisfied that this is true and I'm tempted to simply drop the mic forever, but I'll be back... I'll be back... [shakes tiny mouse fist angrily at you]
The whole copying issue just sounds like cloning a sheep in the 'material' world. Doesn't this argument presuppose, that reality is based in physical matter, and that the material body and brain produce the mind, and so therefore one would need to be "cloned" upon death for there to be an afterlife?
Well, you guys get to do thought experiments, I prefer life experiences. We leave the waking world, and fall into the dream world, which can often seem just as real as the waking world, while in that experience. We leave the dream world upon awakening into the 'real' world.
I am not saying this proves anything. I am pointing out that it seems like the philosophical assumption is that the 'material' brain produces the conscious experience, and so leaving the 'material' world, would require the logic and assumptions of your philosophical worldview. Since, according to such a philosophy, we don't live in an animate world, but at base a physical one, and the brain produces the mind, so of course, one would need to be cloned after one dies. And a clone isn't the real you, so no afterlife....
In the experience of entering the dream world, the self does not need to be moved to experience it, but be put into another mind state.