I find it quite hard to follow the thread when posts people have responded to are later altered. For myself I would prefer if the modifications or developments were included in later posts: but it is just a personal preference I suppose. Anyway I have decided to quote your new OP and respond to that.
[QUOTE=ex nihilo,15/12/2011, 11:32 ?t=49121045&st=0#entry341698208]
Phoenix/Scatter Hypothesis: Life after death?QUOTE
Is there life after death or is death an eternal sleep to which you cannot awake?
It is not clear what you mean here. In ordinary useage the first part of such a sentence would mean "is there a personal afterlife in which the individual sense of self continues?". At least, that is what it would mean in an culture steeped in the abrahamic religions. In a society which had a different history of religious and philosophical belief the question would carry different implications, and so we are already in trouble.
But leaving aside which conventions we are talking out of, the body of your post makes even the typical abrahamic reading doubtful. I do not know if the first part means "does
any life continue after my death" (I would say Yes): or "does
my life continue after my death" (I would say No): there are other possibilities which arise also: for example it could mean "does the collective unconscious continue after the death of one of its components; and if it does, does the component still participate in it?". (Again I would say No). Then there is the question which arises if you mean the first of those three:and that is, "does any life
necessarily continue after my death (to which I would answer No on the basis that I can imagine a dead universe).
As to the second part of the sentence all I see is a false dichotomy. I do not envisage death as "eternal sleep" and I do not know anyone who does. It is a common enough metaphor, but that is all it is and I think it is meant as a comfort for the bereaved, maybe. To me what is after death is likely to be exactly the same as what was before birth. There was life before birth in some of the senses outlined above. But for me personally there was not. I did not exist and that is all there is to it. It makes as much sense to consider a personal existence before birth as it does to ask what you see when you use your elbow as an eye. And so it will be after death so far as "me" is concerned.
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Many people seem to view death like this now day, a final end to which you can never return from and are doomed to exist in, in a permanent stasis or purgatory which is irreversible. Many seem to view it like this, but I disagree.
I will take your word for it that people of your acquaintance see it like that: but I don't, and no-one I know does. There are religious people who envisage a continuation of the self: some of them have quite a complicated after life, including heaven and hell and limbo and purgatory etc: and some of them disagree about how many states there will be, or what those states consist in and how they are experienced. Some believe in eternal torment for some: some believe that you do some time either in that torment or in some kind of variation on the state you describe (absence of god type of thing) and then get promoted/forgiven or whatever. All of those people believe in the continuation of the "self ". The reason I say it is a false dichotomy is because anyone who says yes to the bit of your sentence after "or" has already answered the first part in the affirmative.
For me the point about death is you no longer exist, as I said above. It follows that "I" cannot be "doomed to exist" in any kind of state because "I" have been annihilated. I do see it as a "final end" with emphasis on both words. So I cannot say yes to either part of your proposition.
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This is not because I am emotionally opposed to the idea, but rather there seems to be logical contradictions with this belief. For everything in existence there are two unchangeable principles: it can either (i) neither have the properties to be converted into different forms. An example of this being space. Space cannot be created, converted nor destroyed; it continues to exist in its original and only state, remaining unchanged and unchangeable
I cannot square this with the big bang: is space not expanding? Perhaps you see that as a sort of "stretching" (like a balloon when you blow it up) and so you consider it is not a change in any meaningful sense? That is not how I envisage it, but I can be very wrong on this kind of stuff. I am maybe confused because of your next phrase:
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and (ii) the ability continuously change form.
The balloon metaphor describes a change of form to my mind. So I do not see two principles here.
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Anything that has this property must eventually change. For example, a statue of the most durable material possible would once made eventually change to another form. Let us imagine that a wind carrying small dust particles came into contact with it. Over time, no matter how strong this material made, it would gradually begin to deteriorate with the constant stream of dust and energy it processes, interacting with the statue would and lead to the statues gradual decay and change in form. It would not be possible for the statue to stay in the same form forever. This is due firstly to probability interfering with the possibility of such an occurrence, as it is most likely at some point it will change due to the infinite nature of existence, and secondly because if such a thing that once it is created could never be destroyed. Then theoretically everything in existence in that specifics [
] an unchangeable object is based in should have already been turned into that particular form.
I read this as a reference to entropy: but still it is my understanding that matter and energy are conserved. So if you intend to say that those things are unchanging, but are expressed in different forms, then I agree: but I still don't see two principles: I only see one.
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This same principle counts for Life and death. For death to occur there must also be life thereafter. If this was not the case then the phenomena of life would seem unlikely to continue to exist.
Whoa. You lost me. If you had written "for death to occur there must be life beforehand" I would not have a problem. But after??? I just don't follow the steps. Can you elaborate this part please?
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So life must continue after you die.
As I said, I do not see any reason why it has to. I can perfectly well envisage the end of life through entropy or even through cataclysm, but I await your explanation asked for above. Meantime this is the part where the big word comes in: are we talking about "my" life, or about "any" life? If you mean that when I die there will still be cockroaches and daffodils then unless said cataclysm or entropy coincides with my death I agree. If you mean that my personal life will continue then I don't: mainly because it is linguistically incoherent, actually. Personal life and death do seem to me to be either/or. It is true that those who make the determination of which state I am in could make a mistake: but that doesn't make any difference to the fact that I am either alive or dead. This is one of the areas where I really do not see a third way.
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The atoms and molecules that made life will in the end form new life after death. But before we go further however, this does not also mean that you as an individual being existing; it is more accurate to say that if by chance a new life form is created, the new life form was once you but now is not. The end of the individual self is not the end of the many selves that will be created by the same building blocks and fuel that made you after you die.
With you so far: this is the end of the self, but life as an abstract noun continues (barring entropic death of the universe, or cataclysm, as already mentioned ). I have no problem up to this point. But then you say:
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So the self, like all things does not truly disappear in a sense.
and that makes no sense to me at all. Not a jot. I find it really hard to envisage what you mean by the word "self" now. I do not think it is the common useage. And you go on to confirm that when you say:
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But then to me the self to me does not exist, at least not as we perceive it.
And I am lost again. The self is what we perceive it to be and it is nothing else. I don't even see how it
could be anything else.
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Humes notion that to believe the self is unified is a fallacy is perhaps a better way at looking at the concept.
Are you quite sure that is Hume's position? He certainly had a problem with the concept of self because he was so wedded to sense impressions as the sole source or foundation of our knowledge. He also incorporated abstract reason. But that Hume's philosophical musings fail the test of common experience in this area, is his problem not ours: or so I think. I think Hume thought so too
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What is self really, but neurons and other components of the body combining their efforts to create such phenomena as consciousness, sentience, soul, and etcetera. Hence, what are these things truly but machinations of the body, illusions of something that appears to be there and existing as a unit, while being seemingly independent of the body but actually solely relying on it to continue to exist?
You turned a number of corners there, so can we slow down?
First there is the language you use: I cannot get my head round terms like "effort" and "machinations". You are indulging in personification, perhaps. I do not honestly believe that my body wakes up each morning and says to itself "right, time to construct a self" Surely that leaves open the possibility that one day it will decide to have a lie in, and so I will not have a sense of "me" till after lunch? Of course the whole pr any part of the organism can fail through injury or disease or age: and that can lead to the loss of the sense of self: but I cannot take seriously this dualism. It is all one thing.
If they are all one thing then there is no "illusion" and no "appears to be there": it is there just as much as my leg is there. I do not experience my "self" independently of my body: I cannot do that. Again there is a metaphor. It is true that one can tell oneself a story about the mind "overcoming the body" or about "triumph of the will". But this, I think, derives from a culture steeped in dualism. When I broke my shoulder I could not lift my arm: but I did not then think my arm was separate from my body or from my mind: it was not acting of its own volition, it was just broken. Why would I think differently about my sense of "self"? It is working or it is not.
To me a working human brain produces the sense of self as a byproduct of the way it is made. There is no more to it than that. To be a fully functioning human being means I walk on two legs, see out of two eyes, and have a sense of myself which we call self consciousness. Those things are all of a piece. I walk as I walk because of how my legs are made: I see out of eyes and not elbows because that is how my sense of sight is made: and I have a sense of self because that is how my brain is made. All of those functions and every other function I have is determined by how my body is constructed. None of it is illusion.
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We Humans think we are above our body - our shell - that our consciousness is superior to it.
Again that is not what I think nor what anyone I know thinks. But I accept that this is the way things are seen in your circle, and that is interesting in itself.
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But actually we are more like the product it produces. Instead of us being the puppet master and it the puppet, it is more like a reversal of roles. Us being the puppet and it being the puppet master. Without the body, the self could not exist. What are we really then but the music the instrument gives off? Without the instrument being played, the music does not exist. But even so, the music has the potential to exist if played again. This same principle can count for the self. If the brain stopped working for a period of time, the self would not exist. But if turned on again the self would come back into existence.
Again this is dualism. I do not think like that and so whichever way you run the strings I cannot agree: I do not think there are any strings. It is all one thing.
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Now, let us take this argument further. Let us assume that during this black out, the entity lost all memories and its persona that made the entity an individual self, when the entity woke up. All information about who it was is now gone, and its mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate with no connection to once was except the body it dwells in. This is arguably not the same person that once was, but a new individual as all the information that made up that person is now gone. Even if someone had back up memories and a persona of the original entity, it would not be the same as the original as there was no continuity between the two consciences. You have basically copied the information before hand during the time of the original entities, so two sets of individual memory existed simultainlessly. Hence, though it may exhibit the same mannerisms as the original entity, it is not the same one and is a completely different to the original before it. So in a sense, people who have gone through this process have already experienced death.
I am with you so far. There are interesting explorations of that concept in science fiction and also in thought experiments. In both you are invited to imagine a machine which can instantly transport you to distant places: all it has to do is dismantle you completely and reconstruct you in the new location from atoms it finds there. We are to imagine it can do so perfectly. Whether you will accept that mode of transport tells you a lot about what you think about the concept of self, and indeed the value of human beings. One interesting question (to me anyway) is why do we dismantle the person in the original location? I concluded it is because we cannot accept that the new identical person is the
same person unless we don't have two: and that answered the question for me. Personhood involves counting heads as well as much else. Of course you may come to a different conclusion or even explore different questions: it is interesting nonetheless.
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If at least, death during life. A full death I would imagine, where both the consciousness and body stop working would be something similar to this. Memories and personas are lost but existence in some form or another continues.
This is life/existence as a conflation of the
any life/my life problem I outlined above. You need to tease out which you are talking about, or so it seems to me.
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It is better then, instead of thinking of death like an eternal sleep, more like a form of severe amnesia which the memories of which can never be given back. So all dying will result in is an end to the individual self that you once were and a transformation of it to a new self which is completely different from the original (the time of such a procedure will vary, but in the end it will happen).
Not sure what you mean for reasons just explained. When we die we cease to be, in my view. In this part you seem to agree. A new self is not my self: it just isn't. So you seem to be having your cake and eating it, as Vninect said. But you really can't do that. You might just as well say that your son is you because he has some of your atoms in him: but he isn't, you know. He is closer to a lamb chop, if that was his last meal. Is your son a lamb chop?
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However, the new self is not a complete transformation of the old self. If it was then all energy and mass that made up the old self would have been used to create the new self when only a fraction of it is used. Death scatters these components for life, self and consciousness. An entity can be separated to help partly form many other entities and objects. To be used in plant, animals, gases, solids and liquids, all having been a part of an original entity. We are in a sense like a collaboration of many different type of playdo. This forms us as individual entities. When separated however into our respected colours, we attach ourselves to new playdo and hence creating new individual selves.
No. It is true that we do not reuse all of the components in one new entity, as you say. But I dispute the idea that a gas has an individual self: that is a function of a working human body, and that is all it is: again as Vninect said.
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This goes back to the argument that the self is not one massive individual unit, but a collaboration of many different things which make it capable to exist. This also relates to the self being a machination of the body, an occurrence made possible by all of its components working together to produce it. And so, like the phoenix we living entities will go through this process again and again and again. Being reborn in one form or another, but having little physical connection to the previous self and no mental one whatsoever as our mind is blank. We have repeated this an infinite amout of times now, but it takes long for the right conditions to be met to allow such existance to occur.
Any thoughts?
If we have no physical or mental connection with a previous self that self does not exist and that is the end of the story. That is how I see it. I am not sure whether it is the linguistic confusion which leads you to a rather obscure conclusion or leads me to find it obscure. But I am certain that we need to disentangle the terms if we are to make any progress.
I take that as a compliment