Here’s my really depressing take on what must happen when you die.
Consciousness can’t experience its own end. So the last moment can’t end (from our perspective). Therefore it must last forever (from our perspective).
ie. JFK is still getting his brains blown out in Dallas (from his perspective).
Have you ever been knocked out, or passed out, or even fallen asleep? You can’t remember the events directly preceding your loss of conciousness. Why would someone who dies?
–Tim
You’re still assuming an after. I’m saying that moment never ends.
Have I heard this somewhere before?
or
Conciousness can’t experience its own end because it is ended. We have no perspective if we have no conciousness therefore it doesen’t exist wether or not we experienced it.
But you’re still looking at the moment AFTER consciousness ends (death). It’s the equivalent of people who talk about what happens beyond the boundaries of the universe. It’s fallacious.
I’m saying - from the perspective of a conscious being - a moment cannot end unless it is conscious of a moment which comes after. Most people compare it to falling asleep or passing out - but that’s fallacious too, because in those cases the last moment of consciousness has been replaced by a following moment - whether it is semi-conscious, conscious, whatever. That’s how those moments end.
The problem is your perspective no longer exists. The moment doesen’t repeat forever because the perspective no longer exists. So conciousness may end like that, but it can no longer repeat. You just cease to be.
I am reminded of the statement that, at the event horizon of a black hole, from the reference frame of being at that point, time stops. But I’ve probably got that wrong, and one of our physics-heavies can correct the misinformation.
On the other hand, suffering occurs because a tiny moment of it occurs, ends, and another begins. A strip of film that is frozen on a single frame does not have an image that moves.
On the other other hand, all the more reason to die in bed at a ripe old age while with incredibly attractive members of your preferred gender.
I think when we die, our consciousness assumes its place as one shining atom in the ever-growing spiral horn of the Inivisible Pink Unicorn of the Cosmos.
Actually it was a brief history of time that got me - not because i think it’s nec. analogous, but because it forces you think about the end of time without stepping outside of it.
nah. it’s not an isolated sliver - consciousness might not extend forward in time, but it extends back.
I was thinking more along the lines of a morphine-induced euphoria. But I’ll add the attractive guys to my list.
I’m so relieved now.
I’m not saying the moment repeats. I’m saying it never ends.
Does it?
The time-stoppage at an event horizon happens because of the curvature of spacetime, and the way that curvature “looks” when an appropriate reference point is chosen.
As far as I’m aware, one of the major mismatches between quantum theory and general relativity is that the boundary between the two hasn’t quite been figured out yet. Relativity treats spacetime as a smoothly curved continuum. Quantum theory treats it as very very tiny and–the important part here–discrete chunks, or slivers–no such thing as a continuous curve, it’s all quantum spikes and slivers.
IPUs aside, it seems reasonable to me that experiencing requires “movement” along a timelike curve. The mind is the brain in one kind of motion, as walking is the body in another kind of motion. If the nature of that timelike curve means no movement is possible along it, experiencing doesn’t exist at that reference point. I’m guessing you believe experiencing is actually timeless?
The really interesting thing is that I’ve always heard that time “stops” at the event horizon–but the event horizon is still some definable distance away from the singularity responsible for it. Spacetime still reaches it, even though time does not.
That makes very little sense to me, but apparently it’s what happens. At least by one very accurate theory. The other, sometimes even more accurate theory, hasn’t been figured out how to apply to that situation yet. They’re not yet unified.
And perhaps consciousness needs a third theory entirely to describe it. It would make the universe a less tidy place, but I don’t think it’s really under an obligation to be.
Note: The following post is third/fourth/fifth hand information. It might be true; it might be full of beans. Caveat lector.
I’ve heard of people who have undergone hypnosis and brought back memories of what happened to them all the way back to conception. When they try to recall anything that happened before conception, they can’t do it. It’s like hitting a brick wall.
What happens when you die? I imagine it’s like turning off a TV set. There used to be sounds and images coming from the set. Now there isn’t. My guess will be that it’s like going to sleep. Everything shuts down, and your consciousness(sp?) ceases to exist. You probably won’t percieve the end.
Ah well…we will all find out for ourselves soon enough.
This is not unlike those scenes in SF films where time is brought to a standstill, but we can see objects as if ‘frozen’, what is neglected is that if time was frozen, photons would cease to move and the area of space affected would appear as a black void.
In the same way, consciousness experiences things ‘happening’ - i.e. transitions from one state to another, if the moment is frozen, no transitions can occur, nothing can be experienced.
Seems to me the “ultrapessimistic” take is that we all go to Hell. Or to Cleveland. Same diff.
Don’t think the ‘event horizon’ example works here because, as far as I know, me dying wouldn’t cause a black hole to form where I had been standing. I may be dense some times, but I’m certainly not THAT dense! My personal take is that consciousness is based on a biological matrix (i.e. your brain) and that once the brain ceases to function, so does your consciousness. Using the JFK analogy: there wasn’t enough gray matter left to support consciousness and so he didn’t have any post-bullet (hell, you could actually make the argument he didn’t have enough gray matter BEFORE the bullet to support consciousness but I’m not even gonna go there). As far as post-death and all that, we can’t empirically study the Afterlife and so science is no help here. Basically, believe whatever you want because it probably won’t make a difference anyway. And with that cheery thought, I’m outta here. 
W.C. Fields said that he wanted his gravestone to read, “All in all, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” Cleveland must have been less of a dump in the '30s.
My old man explained to me once the significance of Fields’ statement.
I held his hand while he died and his ashes (and my mother’s) sit on my bookshelf. Sometimes, when I contemplate my athiesm, I think about Fields’ words. But I’ve never had the belief that the moment of death extends indefinitely. Father Pacelli, it seems to me has summed up my beliefs on this issue quite well. I think I agree with him.
I could envision this if the person/consciousness were frozen at that point in time - not that JFK is still getting his brains blown out today (and what a horrid image to use as an example), but that JFK never progressed beyond that moment and is stuck there. He no longer exists at this moment in time, because (from his perspective) that moment in time stretched to infinity.
Of course, for me this is a non-issue, since I believe that consciousness continues after the death of the body. But it’s interesting to think about.
You’re making absolutely irrational arguments. A moment in time is supposed to continue unchanged for eternity as experienced by the conciousness but the conciousness no longer exists after this moment and therefore cannot experience a moment for eternity.
Furthermore, you argue that it has no ancedental but only precedental experiences, but it continues a single frame of experience ad infinitum.
Becoming an atomic addition to the horn of the IPU is a more reasonable assumption than the infinite continuation of a single frame of existance. A frozen frame does not change it is static and therefore cannot be experienced continuously. It lacks the fourth dimension, time, and without time there is not change, and without change there is not experience nor continuity.
–Tim
I think you’re running into a paradox, uglybtch. Just like that one with the hare who gets half as close to the turtle with every passing moment, but never actually catches up.
Of course, who says consciousness can’t experience its own end, and who says it has to experience its own end. Sounds like that nutbar Dalai Lama saying consciousness cannot be created, it has to come from some pre-existing consciousness.
An interesting conjecture, but I don’t think it is tenable. You seem to be arguing from a materialist perspective, in which case a conscious moment must be represented by a neural pattern. The transition of one conscious moment to the next occurs when the neural pattern shifts. Now, not every neural pattern results in a conscious moment (dreamless sleep, unconsciousness, coma, death). However, the preceding conscious moment, in all of those cases, ends when the neural pattern shifts. Whether I am “aware” of teh shift is irrelevant. The conscious moment ends when the neural pattern which represents it no longer exists.
The last moment before sleep does not last until you wake. The last moment before death does not last past it’s own destruction.