Life after death

[tar]

When I used to hear the phrase "life after death", I always assumed people were talking about heaven or hell, or becoming a spirit that floated around in some new state of consciousness.

Several months ago, reading Kant, he used the phrase, referring to life in general, continuing after an individual dies. That there indeed IS life after death.

 

If someone were to ask me if I believed in life after death, I previosly would have said, "no, when you stop functioning, that includes your mind and senses, you are no longer alive.

 

But in the second sense, I would have to answer "well of course there is." People have been being born, living, and dying for quite a long time, and always, since there were first people, there has been life after death. And I suppose even if all people were to die, there would still be some plants and fish and microbes somewhere.

 

Both senses though, have a common feel, somehow.

 

What is it, of what an individual is, that continues to exist, that continues to live...after death?

[the asinine cretin]

I don't know. To have existed at all is pretty wild. If I may indulge in a stoner trip...

 

I'm hesitant to say that people unequivocally cease to exist when they die. To me there are too many unknowns with respect to reality in the ultimate sense. This is not to say that I advocate belief without evidence, or that I reject the "lights out" hypothesis. I mean, if the ultimate cosmic horizon is infinite - which is possible - there are a lot of very odd possibilities, to say the least. Some kind of eternal recurrence may be true. Maybe there are infinite instances of each of us living an infinite number of lives forever. Maybe the Many Worlds Interpretation. Maybe the simulation argument is true and there is an ever growing chain of simulated universes spawning instances of us - "we" ultimately being information. Maybe time is static from a higher perspective and the idea of anything ceasing to exist is illusory. Maybe something like the Ultimate Ensemble multiverse is true and we're each as real, eternal, and Platonic as the number Pi, or the Mandelbrot set. Maybe some other thing that is literally beyond our powers of imagination. Based on our working foundational understanding of reality right now I find it logical to assume that death effects a kind of personal annihilation. I'm not aware of any good evidence to the contrary, nor am I aware of a means by which persons could exist without a functioning brain. I just lack confidence that our powers of mind are capable of apprehending the depths of reality. Maybe we'll seem like macaques to our far-future descendants. (And please, nobody misconstrue what I'm saying as attempted woo-woo. I realize the frivolity of the things I'm saying.)

 

 

"What is it, of what an individual is, that continues to exist, that continues to live...after death?"

I think the overwhelming majority of people have vanished without a trace. I sometimes consider the hoards of anonymous skulls piled about the catacombs of Paris. People who were their own centers of the universe for a few brief circuits around the sun. I suppose in a short span of geological time all of the things we care about will have vanished forever. If the biota ever happens to transcend this little rock maybe we'll be graced with interstellar progeny capable of some unimagined greatness that will make it all worthwhile. Pure fantasy, I know.

Edited April 1, 2012 by the asinine cretin

[immortal]

David Hume's essay, 'of the immortality of the soul?' is an excellent work on Life after Death which is must read on this topic.

 

If anyone can come in terms with the style of writing of the philosophers and other thinkers in the Enlightenment Age then its great for you.

 

David Hume makes arguments from three different perspectives and strongly criticizes the religious superstition of the immortality of the soul.

 

1. Moral arguments

2. Metaphysical arguments

3. Arguments from Physical grounds

 

On all these three occasions he assumes the existence of God and then goes on to give his arguments that even then there are no rational reasons for believing in life after death.

 

He says the only reason that exists for believing in life after death is because it says so in the revealed religion which can be put in his own words as "I am indebted to God for revealing the immortality of the soul to humanity because there are no rational reasons for believing in it".

 

Therefore the answer to the question is there are no empirical evidences and no rational reasons to believe in the immorality of the soul.

 

He also criticizes the society for condemning those who commit suicide, from the same argument from design for the existence of God he goes on to argue that it is God himself who takes one's life away even when one has committed suicide.

 

The argument is that why condemn suicide and not condemn those who move aside when a stone is falling on their head if God's influence exists in every actions of ours and in providence derived from the design argument for the existence of God itself.

 

There is no wonder why the Age of Reason was called the Age of Enlightenment.

[tar]

Yet and still, I am drawn toward the question of why I have a care for, and a feeling of belonging to, life after my death.

 

That there is "something" that I know and am part of, that proceeded my birth, exists as I do, and will continue to exist, when TAR is dead.

 

Perhaps the nature of our consciousness is not so isolated from all else as we seem to think.

 

It often occurs to me, that in some senses we are like the surface of a still lake, with the trees and clouds and sky and sun and stars reflected in it. The lake does not produce or own the pattern of photons it receives. And it only remembers the photons by the energy gain and subsequent release. But it contains "information" from near and far, the tree and the star.

 

Perhaps life evolved as the cycles of input created swirls and eddies in a repeating pattern, and the interplay became complicated enough that patterns took on a "life of their own".

 

It is possible to imagine the human brain as simply a complicated, folded up lake surface. Capable of remembering patterns, and comparing patterns. And imagine life itself as an evolved continuation of the first pattern that found a way to reproduce itself.

 

In this way, one could explain the feeling of being part of something larger, that you can not lose. Because you are completely made up of it, in the first place.

 

Regards, TAR2

[immortal]

Yet and still, I am drawn toward the question of why I have a care for, and a feeling of belonging to, life after my death.

 

That there is "something" that I know and am part of, that proceeded my birth, exists as I do, and will continue to exist, when TAR is dead.

 

Perhaps the nature of our consciousness is not so isolated from all else as we seem to think.

 

It often occurs to me, that in some senses we are like the surface of a still lake, with the trees and clouds and sky and sun and stars reflected in it. The lake does not produce or own the pattern of photons it receives. And it only remembers the photons by the energy gain and subsequent release. But it contains "information" from near and far, the tree and the star.

 

Perhaps life evolved as the cycles of input created swirls and eddies in a repeating pattern, and the interplay became complicated enough that patterns took on a "life of their own".

 

It is possible to imagine the human brain as simply a complicated, folded up lake surface. Capable of remembering patterns, and comparing patterns. And imagine life itself as an evolved continuation of the first pattern that found a way to reproduce itself.

 

In this way, one could explain the feeling of being part of something larger, that you can not lose. Because you are completely made up of it, in the first place.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

Your question is not of the origin of life, it is of the origin of consciousness which some consider was the next biggest leap in the cosmos.

 

The question is of why do we have an inner life at all (i.e the feeling of being part of something larger).

 

According to Schroedinger consciousness is not going to be found in the world picture because it itself is the world picture. Or in other words it is consciousness which is fundamental to everything. So a lot depends on whether consciousness can be understood through the reductionist approach or not.

[tar]

immortal,

 

Indeed. But lets, acting as reductionists add several simple ingredients together. Memory, focus, and reflection.

 

The grooves of a vinyl record can remember. An impression can be left in a muddy river bank. A softly folded leaf will spring back to its shape. A bent nail will retain the effects of the blow.

 

A lens can focus, perhaps a bubble or drop as well. A pin hole in a sheet of paper can project an image of the sun on a surface shaded otherwise by the sheet.

 

And perhaps there is reason why we call thinking about something, reflection.

 

The "leap" to consciousness need not be the case. It need not have been instantaneous, but a gradual evolution, a repurposing of existing patterns, a folding over so to speak, to where we remembered remembering.

 

Regards, TAR2

[immortal]

immortal,

 

Indeed. But lets, acting as reductionists add several simple ingredients together. Memory, focus, and reflection.

 

And perhaps there is reason why we call thinking about something, reflection.

 

The "leap" to consciousness need not be the case. It need not have been instantaneous, but a gradual evolution, a repurposing of existing patterns, a folding over so to speak, to where we remembered remembering.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

 

These are the easy problems of consciousness which can be explained by the functionalism approach of cognitive sciences.

 

Focus or Attention is called as Introspective consciousness.

 

Memories is called as access consciousness.

 

Reflection on a subject is called as transitive consciousness.

 

Now just naming and classifying them becomes one step but we still need to explain how it works using the functionalist approaches of cognitive science but calling them as easy really undermines the job that is in hand.

 

There are hard problems too, its mainly about the feel, 'what it is like to be', I mean redness, blueness, taste of wine etc which are called as the phenomenal character(quale) associated with brain activity which is the real hard problem.

 

It is mainly because even in a machine, some of its parts gets damaged and stop processing things but they don't feel the pain or hunger deep inside them, now brain is also an analog machine which does some processing and its no different than any other machine but why do I have to experience pain and hunger, surely the brain can send signals just like a machine and fix things but why do I have to feel the pain.

 

As you can see it appears as though the phenomenal character have no function at all, it seems they are unnecessary and serves no purpose and hence their origin through the process of evolution is in question and those things cannot be studied through the functionalist approach.

 

 

The inverting spectrum argument indicates that the there is no connection between the representational content (i,e information) and the phenomenal character.

 

I would see a banana and experience it as yellowish and say it is yellow.

You might see the same banana and experience it as blueish and say it is yellow.

 

Yellow is the representational content and yellowish and blueish are the experiences and we can no way say that whether my subjective yellow is also your subjective yellow or not.

 

There are lots of other problems and we are very far away from explaining the distinct experience of self and how it arises with fullness and to introspectively think on your mental states and have an experience of future and past relationships as you call we remembered remembering.

Edited April 1, 2012 by immortal

[tar]

"Yellow is the representational content and yellowish and blueish are the experiences and we can no way say that whether my subjective yellow is also your subjective yellow or not."

 

Immortal,

 

Maybe, maybe not.

 

Perhaps yellow hurts you and is just yellow to me.

Perhaps blue is soothing to me and is just blue to you.

 

The fact would remain, that when a canary flew by you would wince and I would say look at the canary. We are both seeing yellow.

 

Or when the blue jay flies by I sigh and relax and you say look at the blue jay. We both see blue. (Given we both see the birds, and neither of us is colorblind)

 

Fact remains that certain cones in your eye respond to yellow and certain to blue, and each of us knows the difference.

And each of us knows which is which.

 

There is a certain amount of my subjective experience that you already know about. Because we are both human, with human senses and human brains.

 

Then there is additional similarities we learn about by talking to each other.

 

Enough similarities that you might imagine what I mean by blue looking soothing, and I might imagine what you mean by yellow hurting.

 

Yeah but you say there is no way to know its really the same thing. No there isn't, it is sure to not be exactly the same. Just close enough for any practical purpose. Need not be a mystery.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Tres Juicy]

Define "life"

 

Define "death"

 

Without such definitions this conversation is not possible

[immortal]

"Yellow is the representational content and yellowish and blueish are the experiences and we can no way say that whether my subjective yellow is also your subjective yellow or not."

 

Immortal,

 

Maybe, maybe not.

 

Perhaps yellow hurts you and is just yellow to me.

Perhaps blue is soothing to me and is just blue to you.

 

The fact would remain, that when a canary flew by you would wince and I would say look at the canary. We are both seeing yellow.

 

Or when the blue jay flies by I sigh and relax and you say look at the blue jay. We both see blue. (Given we both see the birds, and neither of us is colorblind)

 

Fact remains that certain cones in your eye respond to yellow and certain to blue, and each of us knows the difference.

And each of us knows which is which.

 

There is a certain amount of my subjective experience that you already know about. Because we are both human, with human senses and human brains.

 

Then there is additional similarities we learn about by talking to each other.

 

Enough similarities that you might imagine what I mean by blue looking soothing, and I might imagine what you mean by yellow hurting.

 

Yeah but you say there is no way to know its really the same thing. No there isn't, it is sure to not be exactly the same. Just close enough for any practical purpose.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

The inverting spectrum argument was a thought experiment to show that qualia experiences or experiences which have a phenomenal character associated with them are purely subjective and ineffable, the reason why we can understand is not because they can be described, its because they can be experienced and that knowledge is what qualia represents.

 

Need not be a mystery.

 

The opinions of various philosophers and scientists who have extensively studied consciousness is the very opposite of yours.

 

Define "life"

 

The experience of or the state of being alive.

 

Define "death"

 

Total annihilation, no subjective experiences, if you had an experience of a partial or a near death experience you know what its like when your brain shuts down.

[Tres Juicy]

The experience of or the state of being alive.

 

Total annihilation, no subjective experiences, if you had an experience of a partial or a near death experience you know what its like when your brain shuts down.

 

 

Then by this definition, life after death is impossible

[immortal]

Then by this definition, life after death is impossible

 

If you have a subjective self experience even after the complete shut down of the brain then its rebirth or reincarnation not death.

[tar]

If you have a subjective self experience even after the complete shut down of the brain then its rebirth or reincarnation not death.

 

immortal,

 

But "what" is having that subjective experience? And where is it having it? and When? Is it having it in "this" reality?

 

What is your opinion on the second sense of "life after death"? When I die, will you still be alive?

 

Regards, TAR2

[immortal]

immortal,

 

But "what" is having that subjective experience?

 

An external mind, you cannot be aware of your brain and body once they shut down.

 

And where is it having it? and When? Is it having it in "this" reality?

 

There can be only one external world existing independent of the mind, if physicalism and scientific realism is found to be true then you're dead, completely annihilated, nothing would exist.

 

If there is an external mind in the external physical world then you'll be having that experience in this reality not the physicality or scientific reality which would found to be exist only in your external mind and not really out there.

 

What is your opinion on the second sense of "life after death"?

 

Regards, TAR2

 

For Buddhists everything is an illusion, they don't even believe in the existence of any form of external physical world, for them the external mind is an illusion too and hence they don't believe in an individual self and its strictly called as rebirth and not reincarnation. So for Buddhists even life after death is unreal.

 

 

For Upanishads there is an external noumenon or a numinous world having an objective external mind and they believe in an distinct individual self and also in God, they are not an illusion, they are real and an objective world exists independent of the mind and its strictly called as reincarnation and not rebirth since it is real.

 

This is the reason the Upanishads say everything in the world is God or All is God but Buddhists don't say that, for them any world is just an illusion and hence they don't say that everything in the world is God.

 

 

When I die, will you still be alive?

 

The answer varies depending on what kind of "you" and "being alive" you're referring to.

 

If physicalism is true and if you're referring to my body and brain then yes, I will be alive in a real sense.

 

If physicalism is false and if you're referring to my body and brain then yes, I will be alive not in a real sense but in a kind of virtual reality.

 

If you're referring to the way the Buddhists would refer "I" and "you" as self then there are no distinct I's nor distinct You's, there is only one Self which is beyond life and death itself.

 

If you're refering to the way the Upanishads would refer "I" and "you" as self then there are distinct individual self and an objective external mind and a God exists. So it says there is a subjective-objective noumenon world which is "one" only in essence but not "one" numerically. So the numinous objective world goes on to exist even after the subject loses his self identity.

 

For Buddhists this noumenon world doesn't exists and so does the distinction of subjective and objective.

Edited April 3, 2012 by immortal

[questionposter]

What's the point of dying if you just end up living?

For right now, I suppose there isn't actual evidence to support life after death, since the only way we can confirm experience is by what we know to be alive which doesn't include any state of being after which the brain is destroyed, but I guess we can't really prove it either way. Sometimes it kind of seems like there should be something, but that's just an arbitrary feeling.

Edited April 4, 2012 by questionposter

[tar]

immortal,

 

I don't know how anybody can say reality isn't real.

 

What do you think they are referring to, when they say it doesn't exit?

 

And who do they figure is making that determination?

 

An interesting angle to this objective reality thing, that is rather obvious, but none-the-less just occurred to me, in reference to this life after death question, is that I am fully existent in your objective reality, with or without your thought of me. And vice-a-versa, of course. That means that you are a rather sound argument that there is more to reality than what is in my imagination. And vice-a-versa.

 

If I should die. And you found out about it. That should prove to you, that there is such thing as life after death, because there you would be, an object in living TAR2's objective reality, still alive, after TAR2 has died.

 

In fact it should already be obvious to us, because we all have witnessed living things die, and we are still alive.

 

Proof beyond any reasonable doubt that objective reality goes on being real, even when and if a subject ceases to be viable in it.

 

Regards, TAR2

[immortal]

immortal,

 

I don't know how anybody can say reality isn't real.

 

What do you think they are referring to, when they say it doesn't exit?

 

And who do they figure is making that determination?

 

An interesting angle to this objective reality thing, that is rather obvious, but none-the-less just occurred to me, in reference to this life after death question, is that I am fully existent in your objective reality, with or without your thought of me. And vice-a-versa, of course. That means that you are a rather sound argument that there is more to reality than what is in my imagination. And vice-a-versa.

 

If I should die. And you found out about it. That should prove to you, that there is such thing as life after death, because there you would be, an object in living TAR2's objective reality, still alive, after TAR2 has died.

 

In fact it should already be obvious to us, because we all have witnessed living things die, and we are still alive.

 

Proof beyond any reasonable doubt that objective reality goes on being real, even when and if a subject ceases to be viable in it.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

If you're reading Kant then you should be aware of his "categories", for him time, space, mass and other physical quantities are categories, just like sweetness, redness and other things are universals (i.e I mean we all experience it) in the same way for Kant the physical quantities are universals (i.e the mind plays an active part in the recreation of reality).

 

Now we find that there is nothing in our Brains which we can correlate it with categories, so Kant is not talking about the mind as a brain, Kant is talking about an external mind and in fact brain itself is a reality created by the external mind and brain as such don't exist in the external physical world.

 

Its just the eastern schools of philosophical thought show how true Kant really was in his distinction of phenomenon and the noumenon in the reality of the world and they are best suited to falsify the existence of an external mind other than the brain.

 

The whole Copenhagen Interpretation leans slightly towards subjective idealism, we are just caught up in the world picture that is been given to us and not the way how actually it is.

 

This raises the question as to whether science is really modelling the external physical world or is it modelling just the categories which exist only in our external minds and external sense organs.

 

When an apple falls, is it really falling in the external physical world or is it falling only in our minds? The universals existing independently in each of our minds is responsible for the retrospective creation of reality.

[tar]

immortal,

 

Interesting take of Kant. Perhaps that is what he is saying, I have not read Critique of Reason all the way throught yet. And that was not his only work. But I would not put, what I know of his thoughts in quite the manner you just did...But to each his own. There is probably a tendency we all have to cherry pick ideas and take them the way they could be taken that would fit into our already formed understanding of the way things are.

 

But none-the-less, I think he was saying something different.

 

To me, it makes perfect sense that there is an objective reality that exists, that I am in and of. My body and heart and brain are the reasons that my mind emerged. I am conscious of what is going on in and around my body/brain/heart group. I know that I do not "contain" the world around me, but that I do contain an analog representation of it. That you also contain an analog representation of it is also true. If I were to die, my analog representation of the world would be destroyed, along with the death of my brain. The objective reality that I had a model of, would still be existing. Objectively true, still, and the analog representation of it that you hold in your brain, your mind, would still be alive.

 

If you were to reach nirvana, you would be the only one to make the trip. The rest of the world would not have any way of knowing such a thing occurred, unless you told them.

 

However, if you where to climb to the top of a mountain, anybody looking at the top of the mountain could see you standing there. Because you really did that, on a real mountain, that exists in reality on a real Earth.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Snowman]

I'm only 14, you can go ahead and dismiss my ideas if you wish. What I believe is that Life and Death is another cycle in this endless universe. It is much like the water cycle, rain, life, evaporation, death, breakdown of chemicals. When a human is broken down, like anything else, it is a chemical equation. Like anything else, it can be broken down and spent elsewhere. As the law of conservation of mass and matter states, chemicals can't be destroyed. This means that our components will just be made into something else, if all goes well it will end up back in a humanoid form. Thanks for reading, once again I'm only 14 so if this is completely unintelligible, please dismiss or correct me. Correction is preferable, I would love to learn more on this topic.

[questionposter]

Personally, I don't see what the point of death is if you just continue living, but I suppose there isn't really enough evidence to really support whether or not you can be conscious after your body dies seeing as how consciousness is not a part of the definition of life.

[ewmon]

What is it, of what an individual is, that continues to exist, that continues to live...after death?

About 100 to 200 pounds of chemicals ... AND ... how they have changed or impacted the world.

 

As to some other aspect of our being (call it a soul, mind, spirit or whatever), it's nice to think that fully-functioning people who suddenly dying continue to exist vivaciously in some spiritual form. We certainly see some people's souls/minds/spirits decay to the point of nothingness (brain dead, flat line, etc) before the plug is pulled, but we never hear about these feebly-functioning people existing in some sort of morbid, minimal spiritual form, sitting and staring at a spiritual wall. Instead, we tend to hear of them remembered in "better days".

 

It's the same thing with near death experiences. Has anyone ever experienced descending into a fiery lake of hell (or other less-than-ideal afterlives), and then being told to go back? I've never heard of it happening ... it's always a bright, warm, cozy, lofty, pleasant experience.

[JustinW]

ewmon,

 

It's the same thing with near death experiences. Has anyone ever experienced descending into a fiery lake of hell (or other less-than-ideal afterlives), and then being told to go back? I've never heard of it happening ... it's always a bright, warm, cozy, lofty, pleasant experience.

I read an interesting book a while back called "To Hell and Back" by a Dr. Rawlings. It gave quite a few vivid accounts of trauma patient's near death experiences. I recall one about a patient that was flat lining from cardiac arrest. He was resusitated 4 or 5 times, and every time he came back, he was screaming that it burns. Still sends chills up my spine just thinking about it. Anyway, whether true or not, it was an interesting read.

[questionposter]

About 100 to 200 pounds of chemicals ... AND ... how they have changed or impacted the world.

 

As to some other aspect of our being (call it a soul, mind, spirit or whatever), it's nice to think that fully-functioning people who suddenly dying continue to exist vivaciously in some spiritual form. We certainly see some people's souls/minds/spirits decay to the point of nothingness (brain dead, flat line, etc) before the plug is pulled, but we never hear about these feebly-functioning people existing in some sort of morbid, minimal spiritual form, sitting and staring at a spiritual wall. Instead, we tend to hear of them remembered in "better days".

 

I've kind of been thinking about it like that too, but at the same time, as robots can or I guess possibly eventually can show, you don't need "life" to have consciousness, which leaves it sort of open ended.

Edited May 1, 2012 by questionposter