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Recently, I had an argument with someone who stated that the chance of experiencing nothing after death is extremely low. Their reasoning was that one can think of many more metaphysical realities in which something else exists that would influence what we experience after death. So, if we look at the chances of nothing metaphysical existing compared to the chances of something metaphysical existing (which, at least for some of these possibilities, something is experienced after death), it seems extremely unlikely that nothing metaphysical exists, and also that nothing is experienced after death.

While it seems as if this argument is invalid, I have difficulty refuting it. What, if anything, is wrong with this argument?

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  • Was the argument only verbal or was there a reference that you were reading as well? The reference might help put the argument in context giving more detail. Welcome! – Frank Hubeny Jun 15 '19 at 16:51
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    No, it is not possible to enumerate speculative hypotheses, let alone assign probabilities to them, in a meaningful way. One can split metaphysical non-existence into multiple options based on some other factors to bump up its likelyhood, for example, or achieve any desired result by such manipulations. And there is no reason why the options should be equally likely in the first place. The mistake of this argument is similar to one (of several) in the Pascal's wager, see What fallacy in Pascal's Wager allows replacing God with the devil? – Conifold Jun 16 '19 at 10:10
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    My guess is, because many find them intuitively appealing, for the wrong reasons. Aside from the fact that our probabilistic intuitions are known to be very poor even in ordinary circumstances, transplanting Bayesian patterns of updating ordinary beliefs based on ordinary evidence to the metaphysical beyond constantly invites the base rate fallacy. In short, these are intuition pumps, to borrow Dennett's term about the qualia/consciousness arguments, which are also very popular. This is the Wykstra-Alston objection to Rowe in the article you linked, ironically, backed by intuition counterpumps – Conifold Jun 17 '19 at 16:59
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    "Relatively more likely" may save the validity of the argument, but it makes its conclusion nebulous. If we start from "setting the probability of God’s existing at 0.5 and the probability of God’s not existing at 0.5" because... we cleared our mind, it is garbage in garbage out, as they say. It is not even clear what salient meaning the base rate can have in this case, or the updated probabilities, for that matter. – Conifold Jun 17 '19 at 20:55
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    It is an inference of the sort:"if x made sense, and we set it equal to 0.5, then X would make it smaller". Except we have no clue if it does, or what it is even if it did. Why even bother objecting to something like that? The most rational thing seems to be a shrug. – Conifold Jun 17 '19 at 21:08
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There is no chance ,all metaphysical realities are experiential ,so there is no chance and there is no proof ,but if you take the experiential reality as reference then there is more probability that there is a continuity after death than not because everything is in flux and nothing ceases to be completely ,everything changes its form and since we know little about human consciousness another question arises does the metaphysical change just like the physical ?.Also from an experiential point of view ,I see a beautiful woman after 40 years her body is no longer attractive but her qualities are the same .Another woman faces a trauma and her qualities change ,thus metaphysical can stay or change its form but physical only changes its form.

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What's wrong with this argument is that the "many metaphysical realities" is a refutation in itself.

I think many will agree that we try to live our lives by trying to think and make decisions as rationally as possible. This means that when presented with two ideas, we choose the one that is most grounded with supporting evidence or does not lead to any contradictions/absurdities with previous experience. Suppose for example the question "will we wake up tomorrow morning or die in our sleep from a catastrophic collision with an unknown planet heading our way?". We could say both are within the realm of possibility, yet we both wont treat today as our last day on earth. That shows we live by what's most reasonable.

So the issue with this argument, in my opinion, is that science supports the idea that our mind is the result of the neural interactions in the brain, thus if the brain dies, so does our mind cease to exist. But if you believe in the nth metaphysical reality without any supporting evidence, then you might as well believe the nth+1 or the nth+2 etc. Because they all have equal support. This is an absurdity. We don't do this in our everyday life. If an infinite amount of realities are equally probable because they have no support then they are all likely improbable.

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I think it's irrelevant whether the argument is valid because the conclusion reports only what "seems" likely to your interlocutor, which is not particularly interesting.

There's no (known) objective probability measure over all metaphysically possible worlds. So the probabilities (chances) in the argument you report must be subjective, which is just to say that they express the idiosyncratic opinions of the person advancing the argument. If you happen to have different opinions, then there's no reason for you to accept the argument's premises.

Moreover, it's not even clear that subjective probabilities can be defined for all metaphysically possible worlds. Probabilities are defined on sets, and there are too many metaphysically possible worlds for the collection of all of them to form a set (they form a proper class). For example, for every cardinal number x, it is metaphysically possible that I have experiences for exactly x seconds after I die; and the set of cardinal numbers is too big to form a set.

(Incidentally, this answers your title question: the set of metaphysical hypotheses cannot be enumerated. The set of metaphysical hypotheses is too big to form a set, let alone a countable set.)

In sum, the best case scenario here is that your interlocutor has deduced some consequences of his/her idiosyncratic opinions, which you might not and need not share. The worst case scenario is that the premises of the argument don't even make sense (i.e. they're not reconcilable with standard ideas about probability, sets, metaphysics, etc.).

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The problem is that there is no way to know. You can even assert that the perceived material reality is a mere secondary to a mote beatifull reality still to come. Like Plato saw the dirty, dusty, cracked, and maybe spit upon, reality of a circle form to be a weak reflection of the true mathematic form of the circle existing in an realm of its own. The whole Christian tradition is based on this.

And there is more than one other metaphysical reality (outside of the real of the physical reality). Maybe even infinitely many but that much hasn't been thought about yet.

It makes no sense to speak of their probable existence. For some they exist and for others not. If you think that there is only a physical reality then it makes no sense to say that it is probably not so because you can think of many other (metaphysical) realities. For you there is just the physical reality. For others our existence is just like a temporary speck of dirt in the mire, where one waits for the splendidness to come.

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