# Assuming no metaphysical reality, and everything is just spacetime and matter, where do the moral concerns regarding suffering and pain come from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 13, 2022, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuming-no-metaphysical-reality-and-everything-is-just-spacetime-and-matter-where-do-the-moral-concerns-regarding-suffering-and-pain-come-from/962783 "2022-04-13T18:21:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![fordgt100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@fordgt100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fordgt100)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2023, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuming-no-metaphysical-reality-and-everything-is-just-spacetime-and-matter-where-do-the-moral-concerns-regarding-suffering-and-pain-come-from/962783/81 "2023-03-02T18:07:47Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > However, after I die, if the consciousness that felt that pain no longer exists to remember it, does it matter that it happened? Well, it certainly won’t matter to you because you’ll be, you know, dead. Is there anything after death, consciously speaking? We’ll all find that out, but at this time we can’t know. That should not lead anyone into nihilism though. Our friends and relatives will remember the pains we went through if we made them aware of them, so it would still exist in their memories. From those memories, they could do things in the present moment from them, so in a manner it certainly does matter. Remember, quarks may or may not even exist, people just posit that they exist experimentally. No one has ever seen an electron either. We don’t actually know much on an experiential level. My uncle Ralph was a physicist, and he once told me that we don’t even know exactly what electricity is. We can measure it and we have tons of theories and experiments, but what it really is, we don’t know. This is all beyond me though. On my level, I have to make an entry on my new TO DO list to try and find the old TO DO list that was misplaced. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2023, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuming-no-metaphysical-reality-and-everything-is-just-spacetime-and-matter-where-do-the-moral-concerns-regarding-suffering-and-pain-come-from/962783/82 "2023-03-02T18:17:31Z")
What if the consciousness that felt the pain gets resurrected after a couple months? ---
**Author:** ![fordgt100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@fordgt100](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fordgt100)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2023, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuming-no-metaphysical-reality-and-everything-is-just-spacetime-and-matter-where-do-the-moral-concerns-regarding-suffering-and-pain-come-from/962783/83 "2023-03-02T18:21:54Z")
Well, in that instance you would have experiential proof. But to my knowledge, that has never happened, other than on those old scary movies. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2023, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuming-no-metaphysical-reality-and-everything-is-just-spacetime-and-matter-where-do-the-moral-concerns-regarding-suffering-and-pain-come-from/962783/84 "2023-03-02T18:27:39Z")
You’ve been wooshed… I was teasing about the resurrection of a thread that’s been dormant 2 months. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/assuming-no-metaphysical-reality-and-everything-is-just-spacetime-and-matter-where-do-the-moral-concerns-regarding-suffering-and-pain-come-from/962783.md?page=4)