No good answers, though.
To treat the OP with more respect than it deserves, however, I’ve always had a lot of affection for the idea of reincarnation. The moral consequences of this belief seem very positive. It’s a little hard to talk about it with someone who sees no contradiction between the thread title and " . . . when you die, there is no afterlife, and you are dead forever."
If you’re able to keep your frames of reference separate it’ll be easier for you to imagine.
Huh? can anyone make sense of this remark for me?
None at all? Neuropsychology has absolutely nothing to say of any worth with respect to the process of turning sensory input into memories as contextualised by language, which we call ‘self awareness’?
Hyperbole on my part. I do think that there are some very real philosophical puzzles and confusions in talking about and thinking about consciousness and will. I am thinking, in particular of questions relating to artificial intelligence, Turing’s test, etc. These seem to be separate to scientific questions.
The petulence level of this thread is at the point where I’m loathe to even repond. If I had any sense I’d let it die.
shrug. Here goes. Be warned. I’m not able to explain this without making it long and boring.
Your original objection was:
I’m just saying that if you think about two frames of reference these do not have to be contradictory statements.
Frame of reference #1 = F1* = time as an observer experiences it.
Frame of reference #2 = F2 = time as you experience it.
(*Please don’t beat up on me for using variables. I’m doing it for simplicity’s sake, not to lend any pseudoscientific credibility to speculation).
F1 and F2 are more or less the same until death. But then what happens?
F1 - time continues on
F2 - time stops (Since you don’t perceive your own end, it’s reasonable to say that for you, you don’t stop. Time stops. The statement could be wrong, sure, but it doesn’t exactly defy reason.)
In F1 it’s appropriate to say that you’re dead and there’s no afterlife.
In F2 that’s not an appropriate statement because you never reach death.
Ok now maybe it sounds like I’m making an obvious statement really complicated. But I’m only doing it because to make it harder for you to casually switch frames of reference. (My objection every time someone says “it doesn’t matter, you’re dead.” or “you live you die. end.” That’s only from an F1’s perspective. It’s nonsensical from F2’s perspective. And Marley23 that’s the answer to your question why those statements are a paradox - it’s because they’re only true from someone’s else’s perspective. To say them when you’re supposedly talking about your own experience of death is paradoxical.)
So if in F2 time stops, what’s that like? That’s all Aeschines and I are wondering about. (Aeschines let me know if I’m misrepresenting you)
I’m personally of the inclination that you experience a bit of a freeze-frame. A moment that isn’t followed by another moment is a strange thing to contemplate.
Aeschines is doing more interesting speculation that if time stops for you, then maybe its linear continuity dissolves and becomes irrelevant. He’s just being very imaginative when he says maybe you wake up crying. Who knows? Maybe you do.
But maybe you can see now how that statement “you wake up crying” from F2’s perspective does not necessarily contradict the statement “there is no afterlife” from F1’s.
OK, **Uglybeech ** and Aeschines, you’ve demolished a position that we all deny holding. What does it have to do with reincarnation?
Me too. He’s had good things to say.
I mean that when you’re born you “wake up to” being in the space-time that you will occupy. When you die, from your own perspective, you’re still in the whole of the space-time you occupied, one significant point of which is the very beginning.
We are used to thinking that we have not yet died, since the future doesn’t really exist. But even now the future is set; the instant of our death is as actual as this very moment. Hence, in a sense (especially because we’re pondering the matter!) we have died and “woken up” to this moment, right now.
You win the debate.
Do you have any evidence on which to base that belief?
It IS followed by another moment. But in that next moment YOU’RE DEAD.
Again, what possible reason could you have for believing this? I don’t find it interesting at all. It’s just nonsense. Do you really have that much trouble comprehending existence without you in it? You know about the Civil War, right? Were you there? No. So right now, take a moment to imagine the Civil War. THAT’S what it’s like for you not to exist.
Just for a little clarification here, surely all of this can be applied to general anaesthetic? When that sevoflurane entered my bloodstream, I experienced no ‘freeze frame’: My consciousness gradually faded as the modules which process sensory input and memory became inactive.
I didn’t wake up crying, merely groggy.
When you die (and therefore have no perspective), the piece of cooling meat that was you is now just as much not you as someone else, an animal, or a disparate cloud of supernova remnants floating around for those 13.7 billion years before your birth, yes?
No it can’t be applied to general anaesthetic. Because when you’re under anaesthetic you wake up eventually. So the conscious moment before you go under is replaced by another conscious moment when you wake up. (And the time in between doesn’t exist as far as your consciousness is concerned.)
You stilll don’t get it. I’ll never live in an existence without me in it. It’s irrelevant to me. So there’s no reason to imagine it. What I will have to live through is at least one moment that isn’t replaced by another. I think I’lll experience time stopping. So the implications of that are interesting to me.
Not necessarily - you might die on the operating table. And since we agree that you are unconscious at that point of death, your experience of death is located at that moment you lost consciousness.
Put simply, your experience of that last conscious moment cannot tell whether or not there will be another moment coming along in a few hours time to replace it. Why, then would it feel any different in the case that you died on the table compared to the case where you didn’t, and subsequently woke up?
I don’t think there’s anything to “get”.
And that is different than saying, “it doesn’t matter, you’re dead.” or “you live you die. end” (to which you said you objected), how? I’m trying to understand the distinction you’re trying to make between “It doesn’t matter” (to which you object) and “It’s irrelevant” (to which you do not object). I’m not seeing it.
The only explanation for what you’re saying that I can see is that because you cannot imagine existence without you, that you therefore believe there cannot be existence without you. But that doesn’t seem to be what you’re saying either.
What implications? You will stop being conscious. What I’m trying to tell you is, from your perspective, it will be exactly the same as the Civil War, or any other event before your birth. It will be existence without you in it. There’s EVERY reason to imagine it, because that answers your question as to what it will be like.
What makes you think a “moment that isn’t replaced by another moment” will be any different from any other moment of your life? What makes you think it will be any different from the moment you lose consciousness as in Sentient Meat’s example? Anything other than wishful thinking, that is?
When a baby is born it does not “wake up to being…”. It just comes out through the birth canal (or incision). A baby gradually develops conciousness - perhaps a newborn has the conciousness of a fish - it develops over time to possess the conciousness of an adult.
OK I get the bit about our body existing in spacetime. Do you understand my earlier post about conciousness being a process …like a sunset.
“we have died and “woken up” to this moment, right now” - does not compute…pzzt…wizzz…frrtt…bang.
IMHO the experience of going under ends for you not when you become unconscious, but when you begin to wake up. You think a moment ends for you when it passes “in real time”. I think a moment ends for you when you’re able to register its passing. In other words, only when it’s replaced by another conscious moment.
Since for you the first moment of waking up follows immediately upon the last moment of going under, everything seems copacetic. One moment ended the one before. It doesn’t matter how long you were out. No time or 1000 millenia is all the same to you because unconscious time doesn’t register.
But it’s not all the same if you never wake up. Because then there’s nothing to replace the last moment and that really is a scenario to consider separately. Because in some sense that moment has to be eternal. It is endless. It wouldn’t be experienced as a great deal of time. But it would never pass.
But then aren’t I saying that the future is impacting the past and screwing up cause and effect? Not necessarily. Any given moment is inherently “endless” until replaced by another conscious moment. Any moment has the potential to be a freezeframe. Any moment has the potential for time to stop. The difference is if we EVER wake up or if we NEVER wake up.
There’s the moment, and then there’s the passing of the moment. The moment itself is located…well, in the moment. The passing of the moment (in other words, the continuation of time) is located further on ahead.
The big question that’s left is - are you sure that a moment that doesn’t pass is experienced the same way as one that does?
Well I’m pretty sure it’s not wishful thinking because the consequences of an endless moment at death are um…horrible. I’m generally of the mind that everyone else is thinking wishfully because they believe that death ends suffering. Oh no. I don’t think so. If you die suffering you never get to see the end of it. Is that comforting? I’d rather believe in God any day. I’d certainly prefer nonexistence.
Honestly I’m not sure how similar or dissimilar it would be from any other moment. But I do know that every other moment has been part of a continuous timeline. Every other moment has had a before and an after. And I’m remembering what every other moment was like from the perspective of them being over and done with. Not being stranded in them. I think it’s reasonable to ask whether the moment that ends our own personal timeline might not be different from the rest of our life. It’s reasonable and interesting to speculate what is at the boundary of our consciousness or our own personal timeline just as it is to speculate what’s at the boundary of the universe and what’s at the boundary of time.
I’ll leave it to the dense, unimaginative and incurious to be perfectly satisfied with their answers.
No, because the memory chain isn’t broken. There are some wicked paradoxes we could get into involving memory, however.
Yes, your body is at that point completely irrelevant to the consciousness that remains in its own piece of space-time. I don’t see the relevance of the point, however.
You’re right, it wouldn’t feel any different. What feels different (in the case of survival) is the you who can later remember the falling asleep and waking up. The real paradox is what happens when the memory chain is finally broken for good.
Great analysis, Ugly Beech.
I think it’s weird that certain atheists here seem to think that this is an argument for something mystical or pleasant (“wishful thinking”). This seems to me to be a kind of zealousness to perceive any philosophical argument in the light of those beliefs that you think you can trounce without much effort (“damn belief in the afterlife! wishful thinking!”).
How weensy.