Immortality

[Scott H Young]

I was born and raised an atheist who is very scientific minded. Right now my current belief system is an objective one in line with current scientific thinking. Not saying I reject a subjective or religious mindset but simply that it isn't my current belief structure.

Recently I began to question the idea of immortality, or whether our consciousness can ever truly 'die'?

I've come to the logical conclusion that I don't think we can.

Here is my reasoning:

Let's say you were to die. Consciousness would end for you and you would stop experiencing.

At this point time for you would effectively stop. Because you can't think, you can't experience the passage of time.

Let's say that an extremely large amount of time passes (but since you can't experience time it is irrelevant) in which the exact configuration of your consciousness is recreated in the world.

Wouldn't from an experiential standpoint, your death not have even happened? You would simply return to life at some point in the future?

Let me explain. Let's say that you were suddenly hit by a bus, killed instantly. Your consciousness would be defined by the pattern of molecules that make up your brain (I'm assuming scientific objective reality for this analogy). Then a few quintillion years later that exact pattern of molecules that created your consciousness before the bus incident happens to be recreated. Wouldn't your consciousness then resume back at that moment?

What are your thoughts?

As an aside, this provides pretty convincing logical evidence for why a subjective reality mindset could work even if it was false.

If you tricked your mind into believing a different version of reality then what, traditionally, would have been the only way you would have realized you are wrong? If you died.

As an analogy, lets pretend you got your body hooked up to a simulator that interrupted all of your senses from the outside world (like a perfectly construde subjective reality belief structure). You would still stumble around the world and make motions, but you would think it was happening in the simulator instead of in real life. So long as all your senses are hooked up to the simulator (including the ones for pain and those that signal you're about to die) the only way you would break out of your simulation is if you, let's say, accidentally walked into a bus (splat!) and you died.

But if death itself doesn't interrupt the continuity of experience then there would be no possible way of distinguishing a subjective reality belief system in an objective universe from an actual subjective reality?

Does any smart person see anything wrong with my conclusions? I've been trying to logically deduce what the true nature of the universe is.

[november]

But if death itself doesn't interrupt the continuity of experience then there would be no possible way of distinguishing a subjective reality belief system in an objective universe from an actual subjective reality?

Exactly.

I don't really understand how you came to your conclusions from the direction you took, but I agree with them.

I think you're confusing physical matter with consciousness (which isn't comprised of brain bits), but other than that...I agree with you.

Let's say you were to die. Consciousness would end for you and you would stop experiencing.

At this point time for you would effectively stop. Because you can't think, you can't experience the passage of time.

This is where I think you get illogical, for lack of a better word. Consciousness does not end b/c your physical body has died. So, time does not "effectively stop" and thinking is not how we experience the passage of time. The passage of time is an absolute truth, meaning it exists with or without us.

In order to see my point, you may have to agree with me that consciousness has nothing to do with the body...but the fact is that you can't prove that it doesn't.

[Scott H Young]

november,

I'm working upon the assumption of an objective reality mindset with a scientific base. From a purely empirical and scientific standpoint, consciousness is the result of a complex pattern of neural activity in the brain. I believe my reasoning is logical if we start with that presupposition.

Of course if we assume a model of reality where consciousness is distinct and doesn't require a body then you can pretty much speculate whatever you want to happen when you die. Unfortunately, there is little logical evidence (possibly only experiential) that says this is correct (or that it isn't correct, for that matter).

My point is that most viewpoints (subjective, soul-based) of consciousness/reality make it relatively easy to avoid the undesirable outcomes of death. But I've yet to see any logical evidence that any of these belief systems are more likely than a purely objective one that says we're simply our brain.

But, if you can explain that even in this possible scenario, death wouldn't stop consciousness, then you don't have to worry as much about which philosophy is correct.

[thavelick]

Scott,

This reminds me of a philosophy I first learned of in the Movie, "American Beauty":

[I'm quoting from the pre-editing script, so this may vary slightly from the actual flm]

They say your entire life flashes
in front of your eyes when you die.

First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time...

It's not really your entire
life...

It's just the moments that stood
out...

And they're not the ones you'd
expect, either...

The moments you remember are tiny
ones, some you haven't thought of
in years...

If you've thought of them at
all...

But in the last second of your
life, you remember them with
astonishing clarity...

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...

...and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

(amused)

You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry...

You will someday.

Its not exactly what you've described, but its close, and equally "scientific"

Thanks,

Tristan

---
www.TristanHavelick.com

[november]

Originally Posted by Scott H Young

My point is that most viewpoints (subjective, soul-based) of consciousness/reality make it relatively easy to avoid the undesirable outcomes of death.

What are the "undesirable outcomes of death"?

[Radical]

Originally Posted by Scott H Young

Then a few quintillion years later that exact pattern of molecules that created your consciousness before the bus incident happens to be recreated. Wouldn't your consciousness then resume back at that moment?

In a few "quintillion years" the human race will almost certainly have been wiped out. Who the hell knows what will be in existence then, if anything, as the universe is only 13.7 billion years old.

Anyway if your logic is true then our consciousness will have likely existed before in another life, yet since we cannot remember anything from those lives, does it really matter? As far as we can remember nothing existed before we were born, so even if our consciosness is reborn in a physical form it won't be us.