My original point: the hypothesis that, when all our evidence says that the causes of consciousness have ceased operating, consciousness is still existing, is a much more complex hypothesis than saying it stops existing when all the evidence suggests so, and so you shouldn't expect it to still exist.
Your new point: Just because all the evidence we have says consciousness is a highly complex feature of the world that requires brains functioning in certain ways, doesn't mean that it is, therefore I'm fifty fifty on whether or not it continues when the brain dies (apologies if that seems a little uncharitable).
My recommendation: Maybe watch some Daniel Dennett talks on consciousness, and read some science of how the brain works (I hear Pinker's "How the Mind Works" is good). At the very least, I think that there's so much evidence showing how each aspect of our conscious experience can be affected by affecting the brain, that to suggest consciousness isn't almost entirely dependant on brain function is no longer reasonable. And even then, if you want to suggest that, once the brain stops functioning and you have no memories, no reaction to stimuli, no thought processes (because all of your modules that run these functions have stopped working) that then some essence of experience still exists... That experience is more than the sum of these brain parts, and will continue to exist, seems like a confusion. It really can just be the sum of its parts, a bag of trick, because that's what the evidence indicates.
After thinking about it some more, I think my point comes down to this: when we say that "messing with the brain messes with consciousness", how do we really know that? How can we infer that someone else is conscious?
We infer from behavior that someone is conscious, but can we infer that from the absence of behavior that there is an absence of consciousness? That's like saying A => B, therefore ~A => ~B.
And if we can't infer whether or not someone is unconscious, we have no data on what does or doesn't lead to unconsciousness.
I've read a fair amount on Less Wrong and can't recall much said about the plausibility of some sort of afterlife. What do you guys think about it? Is there some sort of consensus?
Here's my take:
Edit: People in the comments have just taken it as a given that consciousness resides solely in the brain without explaining why they think this. My point in this post is that I don't see why we have reason to reject the 3 possibilities above. If you reject the idea that consciousness could reside outside of the brain, please explain why.