A simple question about absolute death

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Andrew256, Dec 4, 2017.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yep. Learned that one too. The ritual.
    Mine is that of assembling a scale model of a Phantom F-4.
     
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  3. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    I just try to imagine the most pleasant scene I can, on the basis that if I can't sleep I may as well enjoy what I'm imagining seeing. The problem I have with methods that make you think is that the thinking keeps me awake. So I simply imagine a scene that otherwise requires no thinking: a warm beach, blue water, gentle breeze. Or a warm fireplace, dog curled up in front. That sort of thing. Just picture the scene. Relax. Transport yourself to that place. Let your worries seep out and let your mind slip into something more comfortable.

    There'd be nothing worse than have my brain trying to figure out some boring stuff... it wouldn't send me to sleep but just infuriate me. I'd probably end up getting out of bed, getting a pad and pencil and doing the sums!
     
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  5. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Unless you understand what it is that makes you "you", how can you possibly conclude whether or not it could happen again?
    And you want to answer this without first agreeing what "you" is?
    First, every instance of consciousness that we are aware of - our own and others - appear to be unique to that individual. If you strip away the memories and the processing template etc and limit "you" to being just the emergence of consciousness then what stops every person who is currently conscious being the same person?
    Or is the "you" both the consciousness and the thing that differentiates the individual instances of consciousness, be those spatiotemporal or memory/processor layout etc.
    Can consciousness arise? Yes.
    Can your consciousness arise again once you are dead? How can you answer this without understanding what "you" are, and thus how to assign the consciousness as "yours"?
    Is one ripple in a pond the same as another earlier one simply because it looks the same or acts the same?
    If "you" are limited to the spatiotemporal parameters of a particular instance of consciousness then it is clear that you can never exist again. Any copy in a different timeframe or space would just be a copy but would not be "you", under this understanding of what "you" is.

    If, however, you deem "you" just to be the instance of consciousness upon which memories and processing is baggaged, then how would you know that a subsequent instance is "you" rather than the reemergence of someone else's consciousness.

    This is a flawed theory, though. The number 19/90 adequately demonstrates that it is not the case: the digit 2 appears once in the result, the number is infinitely long, yet 2 does not repeat.
    Not if "you" is defined as belonging to a specific spatiotemporal instance of consciousness.
    For the same reason that every currently existing instance of consciousness is not the same "you".
    What differentiates them from one another? What differentiates my "sense of self" from yours? Or are you simply referring to the state of being conscious?
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Death is the lack of absolutes. Peace transcends it and makes it nothing at all.
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    This is a deepity.
     
  9. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    Following the same logic, how can anyone conclude that it wouldn't? Not a single person on this planet is capable of truly understanding how it all works, because everyone is locked inside their own brain and cannot possible see the true nature of reality.

    There's no way to know. And it doesn't really matter. There doesn't have to be a thing you call "reemergence". It's not reincarnation or anything like that. It's just repetition of a process which results in emergence of consciousness which would defferentiate itself from other consciousnesses in the same way you do right now.

    That's because your example is not truly random.

    What indeed? We don't know exactly. We have no doubt that after our deaths, new consciousnesses will emerge countless number of times. But then, a "thing" which creates the defferentiation between them could emerge again, no? It did emerge in your current consciousness. There's no hard denial it can't happen again.
     
  10. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    There are denials which can be stated which are so close to the odds being
    ONE IN INFINITY
    it really is not going to happen

    Me being the next Miss America is one

    If you can lower the odds so I'm a shoe-in I'll be in it

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  11. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    My sole purpose in this thread is to explore the idea that this probability might be just a little higher, but looks like I'm not successful so far

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  12. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Fair enough
    To do so you might like to start putting some numbers in your calculations
    Somewhat like the guesstimates made about life being found on other planets
    Good luck

    I guess you do agree though I really don't have a shot at being Miss America 2018?

    Oh well another dream busted

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  13. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    It seems like everyone I'm talking to tries to prove or disapprove something.

    What do you say if I tell you there is a non-zero probability that a fluffy pink unicorn if floating above your head right now, but as soon as you look up, it disappears? It's just a very very tiny probability.
    But, philosophers, unlike scientists, doesn't always need numbers and calculations. If no one is there to observe that pink unicorn, it both exists and not at the same time. Likewise the tree falling in a deep forest when no one observing it both making a sound and not, at the same time. All unobserved possibilities are constantly in a state of superposition, just with different probabilities. My consciousness exists right now because something in the universe makes me observe myself. But when I stop observing myself (die), how do I know that I'm not sprung into existence again as a green lizard from andromeda?

    There's no way to know, therefore no way to prove or disapprove anything. Just comprehend the thought. That's what philosophy is about, no?
     
  14. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Since they are thinking OK I'll say you would be correct
    Schroeder's cat is a stupid thought but I haven't got the time or inclination to explain it at the moment
    Both correct and incorrect depending on the definition of sound you employ
    I would contend not so. Unobserved anything are no more or less anything other than unobserved. Non existent things are not even that
    Not so. Your homework is to work out why
    Remember you can play the odds of me becoming Miss Universe 2018 and apply the same odds to your idea as well as the as the billions upon billions of other senerio's which could be dreamt up

    Hopefully it is more about thinking. More about finding meaningful answers than wild speculation about wild speculative thought bubbles

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  15. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    No it doesn't.

    You don't. Objective reality doesn't require you to know about it.

    And the corollary is that you not knowing doesn't breath life into something non-existent.

    We get that. That's a well-known philosophical issue.

    But science (and its application - engineering) doesn't need to "know" anything. What it needs is models that accurately predict things (such as what hydrogen and oxygen will do if you apply a spark.)

    No model involving a fluffy unicorn possibly appearing for no known reason where it can't be seen by anyone leads to any useful predictions, nor does it advance our understanding of the world, therefore it falls outside the scope of science.
     
  16. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    So, do you think wave-particle duality is also a stupid concept?
     
  17. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    You are right, there's no practical point whatsoever to speculate on anything that we don't have the means to determine, can't build a model of, can't use to predict something or to advance our understanding. However, that didn't stop countless renowned philosophers throughout history. Pointless effort? Well, so is life

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    (but that's just one of many points of view).

    That's why there's no such thing as the only one and true philosophical view.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2017
  18. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Please explain the link between the two

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  19. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Changes do "seem" to take their turns at having brief reality or "now" manifestation in consciousness. That perhaps results from a distinct brain state or chunk sequence of brain states only being able to provide awareness of itself, not all the other ones composing an entire life history. But in the context of literal be-ing (rather than these winking in and out representations of it via consciousness) those changes would actually be differences that co-exist with each other. So accordingly there's a big question mark whether you could ever escape this particular life even by death. Certainly there's no future or "nothing following" once the illusory "flow" of personal experience reaches death -- i.e., that final conscious brain state or chunk sequence of them that corresponds to yet another milliseconds-long duration of awareness. But all the so-called "past" states of your life are still around with their corresponding experience of themselves.

    Your identity footprint could only "move onward" (so to speak) beyond the worldline of this body if there is a relationship to some other bodily instantiation of yourself elsewhere which is also *somehow* devoid of amnesia with regard to the events of this life. That relationship or connection definitely wouldn't consist of a chain of mechanistic interactions transferring information. So you're left with positing wild scenarios like Frank Tipler's VR simulation of all possible humans at some cosmos-ending Omega Point, or the sheer coincidence of some multiverse copy of you in a weird natural laws cosmos happening to have your final memories (before death) in a youthful body, and whatever other oddities which current science could not entertain.

    You might lower your most fundamental identity to that of whatever unknown attribute of electromagnetism or charge enables the input / output configurations of biological neurons or alternatively micro-circuits in a future computer to have experiences or multi-modal "manifestations" to begin with (as opposed to the usual not-even-nothingness). But that would as much mean that "you're all other people as well as animals" as much as any potential physical replications of your current body / life history.

    - - -
     
  20. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    Both are utilizing the uncertainty principle. As it's impossible to determine the state of a particle without interacting with it, so it is impossible to determine the state of a cat without opening the box and observing the inside, upon which the function, which describes the state of the cat, collapses to one of the states. But before we open the box, the function can describe both states being in a superposition (undetermined state) pretty neatly.

    Math can describe many counter-intuitive things including dimensions beyond the four dimensions of space-time, entangled particles, e.t.c. and so on. Wave-particle dualism and the Uncertainty principle are among those things. If it weren't considered a sound theory, it wouldn't trigger so many scientists and mathematicians around the world to care.

    I understand I'm not in a position to throw around statements without backing them up by math, but once again, I'm looking from philosophical point if view, not mathematical.
     
  21. Andrew256 Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, that's what I'm trying to tell - there is a big question regarding so many thing about life and death.

    What I'm trying to comprehend is how can anyone believe their statement is the only one correct in the face of all the possibilities.
     
  22. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    OK

    As I understand the the uncertainty principle, in two form types

    The more you know the speed the less you know the position, the more you know the position the less you know the speed

    OK with that

    The cat in the box can be alive or dead

    NOTE not the more you know it's alive the less you know it's dead, the more you know it's dead the less you know it's alive

    With only two options, alive / dead, either can exist without any observation

    With a variable, speed / position, observation is required for determination

    Schroeder's cat - stupid - no maths really needed - it's 50 / 50

    Wave functions - OK - use a spectrum of maths to calculate over numerous possiblities speed / position of waves / particles

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  23. birch Valued Senior Member

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    i prefer most people in the dead state to never exist again. i wish i could prevent them from existing. the idea that such disgusting and horrible creatures exist that ooze sweat, urine, feces, dead skin cells, pollute and snot coming out their noses is insane. then to realize you are made of billions of living organisms inside and outside your body and to add further insult, you have to deal with further injury and threats from the environment.

    it's like this universe's mission to create the most disgusting and fault-ridden specimens it possibly can or produce the most embarassing and disrespectful/undignified mode of existing possible.

    Nah. i don't want to sign up for this EVER again. it bothers me that you have no choice. i even suspect that something is not right with that. somewhere and somehow, that is logistically wrong, wrong, wrong!
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2017

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