Is it just the termination of consciousness? As in absolute nonexistence?
An eternal heaven or hell where all your wishes/punishments are granted?
Reincarnation?
What happens when we die? Do near death experiences prove anything?
With all the great advances our society has made are we any closer to answering this question? Does the fact that we, as humans, have a consciousness prove anything? Does it mean anything?
With “all the great advances science has made” the best any objective observer could say with the data available is that death is the end of life. Done, caput, out-a-here.
Any religious person is going to dispute that, which is fine by me. There might be a debate between various relgions on this, but between religion and science, I don’t see a debate.
PS: I took the liberty of substituting “science” for " our society" when quoting you.
Either this was an unpopular question or I’m in the wrong forum…
If time is eternal doesn’t that mean eventually the same roll of the dice that formed us will eventually happen again?
For instance, if the universe collapses back into itself once all the suns have burned out and thus recreates another “big bang” there is a chance that the universe will duplicate itself. When you stretch that “chance” over an eternity it becomes inevitable. So then what does that mean for our consciousness? We are doomed to repeat it? This example assumes a gradually slowing rate of expansion to the universe. Current theories are beginning to emerge suggesting that the rate is actually increasing…
If we just end, then it would seem to me that the only goal or purpose (if you could indeed call it that) is to ensure the survival of our species. While that’s a noble goal in and of itself, it seems to me, at least on an individual level, to be personally pointless. Why do I need a consciousness if in 80 years it’s going to be forever gone?
A second question besides “what is death” might be; why did humans evolve consciousness? Or if the word evolve doesn’t do it for you, why do humans have consciousness?
I’m not sure if it can really be said that time is eternal…
Current cosmological models suggest that the universe will not collapse back in on itself, but will continue to expand until there is not much left but a vast emptiness and a few particles. (Cheered up yet?) But also, even if, the universe did end in a big crunch followed by another big bang, it is not at all certain that a similar universe to the one we know would form, and the chances of a duplicate are highly doubtful.
So far this does seem to be the only goal. It takes a bit of bravery to face reality in such a universe eh? As far as being personally pointless, only the person can answer what reason they need to be here. Personally I don’t much care. I’m here because I am, and I’ll help anyone along the way, hoping to leave things just a little better than I found it. Is there some grand all purposeful reason for each of us or humanity to be in the universe? I don’t thiink so, it seems a bit arrogant to me to really consider such a possibility.
If by consciousness you mean ‘self awareness’, it would seem we evolved this ability in response to natural selection, and it’s a hot debate among the many who are trying to pin down the circumstances of how this came about. I see no evidence of anything after death, as much as I would like it to be otherwise. When I think of the possibilities of me being born, existing, being self aware, I realize how truly lucky I am to have that chance. I attempt to live life, and worry little about the end of it.
If one must have a reason for living, make up your own.
I’d say the easiest, and most logical answer is… :dubious:
We don’t know!
She’s this really friendly Goth-type person with spiky black hair and an ankh necklace.
Death is what happens when a cell or cells undergo necrobiosis.
I see no significant difference between “after death” and “before birth” since I did not remember existing then and therefore assume there will be nothing to remember in future.
So yes, to me, this consciousness is it. Yet I cannot understand those who refer to “meaning” and further ask for a reason not to commit suicide now. Surely, if this is all I have, I may as well use it all up? After all, the total amount of time for which I will not exist will not be affected by suicide, but the total time for which I do will be seriously curtailed.
Near death experiences can be induced in people who are not near death using substances such as ketamine. This strongly suggests that they are hallucinations brought on by oxygen depletion in the brain or the like.
Finally, your reference to a collapse of the universe is a little off-topic, but there is no reason to belive that the universe would evolve exactly as this has since randomness lies at it’s very heart in the shape of quantum mechanics.
Well, the Universe reference does assume randomness, but with an eternity of possibilities eventually the universe would evovle exactly like it already has. BUT this does assume the universe’s rate of growth is slowing, which is currently under debate.
SentientMeat you bring up a very good point when you mention the “before birth” bit. It’s true that I don’t remember anything before I was born… or for that matter anything before I was 3 or 4.
Maybe I’m wrong in what I’m about to say, but aren’t humans the only life forms on earth that have a consciousness? If so, isn’t that significant? If there is no meaning or purpose to our consciousness, why do we have it?
-side question, has science determined where consciousness is “stored” (for lack of a better word) in the brain? Can it be measured?
-side question II, what do you imagine death to be like? I just can’t wrap my brain around nonexistence. Sometimes I get panicky at the thought of just being nothing. But not even knowing I’m nothing…
If you’re religious, do you imagine an eternity of heaven/hell? An eternity is a long, long time…
The universe is not eternal. Present estimates are around 14 billion years. (And you yourself are talking about the end of it!).
I don’t see why this should be so at all, since animals have similar brains to our own, merely rather less complicated by comparison. It would therefore seem reasonable to say that animals are perhaps less conscious, like a year-old child, say, but there seems no reason to posit a “quantum leap” of it suddenly sparking to life once a certain size/complexity is attained.
The answer may be as simple as “it is an evolutionary advantage which allowed us to adapt to our environment better than the species without it”.
Studies on brain damaged patients have concluded that “consciousness” must be a function of pretty much all of the brain.
How do you know I’m sentient? 'Cos I say so?
Like I said, I spent 14 billion years not existing. I didn’t get bored once!
TVAA: Wrong forum. 
Quibble: when you die, you aren’t. You don’t spend the next X billion years not existing. You just don’t exist for the next X billion years.
(I’ve frequently not been on boats)
There are many answers to this question…
perhaps there is an afterlife,and it is exactly as described in one of the major religions…(take your pick)
perhaps it is exactly as described in all major religions… you might get the opportunity to to a bit of tourism, and visit the Elysian fields and Nirvana as well as Limbo and Purgatory- Warning! some parts of Paradise are alcohol free!
Or you might be lucky and get reinacrnated by scientific emulation…
not enough data to make a full reconstruction?
The best way to reconstruct a personality of a historical individual is by analysis of their writings and other written records- so keep sending e-mails and fill in your blogs, lads and lasses, and some 40th century computer will be able to reconstruct you.
(it wont really be you, by the way, but it will* think** it is.*)
Or you could just cease to exist at death, which is most probable of all.
Sci-fi worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
The definition is ever changing. Clinical death 100 years ago is deifferent than clinical death today. We can restart a heart these days. People have “died” and been revived. Cryogenics is a field that is counting on the definition of death changing to an extreme degree. I may seem dead, but that is just because science can’t repair me yet.
I’m planning on taking out an insurance policy that will pay to have me frozen until such time as I can be revived and the cellular damage done during freezing can be corrected. The tough call right now is should you go with freezing or vitrification. Vitrification retains a better resolution of your cells (less damage), but as of right now, they can only do this to a head, whereas they can freeze your whole body, but the cellular damage is pretty severe.
Whether it works or not, it’s better then doing nothing. There is no reason to think that our definition of dead will not continue to change as our tools get smaller and better.
DaLovin’ Dj
As has been said death has many meanings. Though they seem related thay don’t necessarily have to be.
At the most basic I can think of, Death is a transaction point from a more active state to a less active state. By which we can talk of the death of a Univeree, or the Death of a firework.
Micro-Biologicaly it is “what happens when a cell or cells undergo necrobiosis” (thanks SentientMeat). But even that is fuzzy, since we may even consider biologically the death of a virus which does not consist even of a single cell.
Then we can consider it as the complete dissruption of mettabolic processes within a living thing. But what then of the walking headless chicken, is it dead yet?
For Humans (and possibly some other of the more advanced animals) there is also this thing we feel as conciousness or mind, a nebulous idea which we still strongly associate with our state not only of life but also of existance (“I think therefore I am”). If your mind existed despite the complete disstruction of your physical body, you may well consider yourself still alive. And anyone who could communicate with you would likely agree (how many Dopers here do you believe are alive simply through communication on this board? with no proof that they are biologically alive available to you?).
Go on Bippy, please continue… if the mind exists despite the removal of the body… is there any theorizing we can do at that state?
Very interesting points everyone! Ultimately one of us will be right…
Going off of Bippy’s mentioning of consciousness existing outside of the body…
If time is relative could your consciousness exist forever in the second before you die? Take dreams for example. A dream in REM could physically last a minute, but the memory of the dream, or rather, the perception of the dream could have lasted hours. The dream seems like it lasted all night, but in reality it lasted perhaps 3-5 minutes. So…
based on the dream example in our last second of life if we entered into a dream/subconscious then since there is no “waking” point that last second would seem endless to the dying person. The dying person would enter into an endless second where the subconscious supplants the conscious.
Does any of that make sense? Or am I pulling way too much out of my ass?
In an infinite universe, anything is possible. I remember reading Carl Sagons Demon Haunted World, where he postulates that eventually, in an infinite universe, he would be re-united with all his loved ones again. I suppose its possible. He was using his musing to make a point, but it was still interesting…
I’d have to say that, as far as Near Death Experiences go, it only proves that we have a very complex psychological make up, and that we have a lot to still learn as far as how the brain operates. I see nothing that even remotely shows that NDE ‘proves’ life after death.
But thats just my opinion…I could be wrong.
-XT
Well consciousness outside the body could mean the soul, if you believe that sort of thing. But a sufficiently complex computational model of the brain should exhibit consciousness (in fact if you believe in a purely physical brain, it must be able to exhibit consciousness provided the model contains all necessary systems) such a consciousness would then exist without the human body.
The mention of time brings the fact/problem that if backwards time travel is possible then death is only a thing that happens at a point in time, so the dead could be revisited whilst they were still alive, leading to a somewhat less final idea of death.
Also an entity outside of time as we observe it, would not see the point of birth and the point of death as the start and endpoints of a four dimensional “worm” (as in our time like length is far greater than out physical height, width, and depth) that is a human life.
I will now mention a problem I have always had with the idea of a permanently existing consciousness. I as have many people have been anaesthetized for an operation on several occasions. Every time this happens a purely physical thing (a drug) causes me to become completely without consciousness far more unconscious this seems than mere sleep. It is as if my mind does not exist during this time.
Now if I have a soul, and that is the ‘me’ that experiences life, I would expect to keep on experiencing something even with my body anesthetized, but I don’t, why?
My belief is that if a soul exists then it does not have memory of its own, it acts and feels, but relies on the physical human brain to record memories. As such when unconscious the soul does not write information to your brains physical memory and as such you don’t have any way to remember what it was like when you were unconscious. This I believe is supported by the finding that the physical brain can indeed store memories, and my belief that such an ability would not develop if their was a soul ‘within’ the brain that could also record memories.
You guys know when you go to sleep, you don’t remember exactly when you slept or anything that happened when you slept? You just fall asleep and wake up at the snap of a finger, 8 hours or however long it was just passed. I think death would be like that.
Such optimism! The Bible says three score & ten, on average (70 years). You’re off by ten.
By definition, this would not be Paradise.