Warning: this post makes highly speculative claims on the nature of life and death, so read with caution - or don't. I don't want to be the one that negatively breaks someone else's metaphysical views.
I made a reply to this thread on what happens after death that was so long, I thought it may be worthy of its own discussion thread:
I think agnosticism is the intellectually honest answer, but if I were forced to make an unambiguous bet I would say "more experience".
I think then dominant view of personal identity that we are individual closed selves traps us into a notion that everything is tied to our current lives and once were are dead, we're completely gone.
However, this idea of being a persisting individual self doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny, even from a Western materialist point of view. The cells in our body are constantly being replaced in our body all the time. Even the neurons in the brain, which are said to be stable, have their proteins and molecules replaced. Hence there's nothing that ties me to the me of 10 years ago, from an atoms point of view (different atoms), or even a personality point of view - in some ways I do sometimes feel like I've evolved a lot.
And yet the continuing sense of always having been here persists.
Let's consider an experiment where a surgeon replaces my neurons one by one. In the end, I'll be a completely different person on the inside, entirely indistinguishable from who I was previously. Let's say I'm awake in this operation. At no point will I actually stop existing. I'll always feel like I'm me.
Let's say I die, and someone is born after that. Is that not identical to the previous experiment? Do I not experience life as this new person?
That's the bold claim I'm making, but this isn't some reincarnation-karmaish proposition. I'm merely pointing to the fact that our consciousness is completely impersonal to what we experience within that consciousness. Everything I experience is simply inside consciousness. None of that is permanent. From pain, joy, memories, my sense of self, the thoughts in my head. All of that happens within consciousness. And that's why the contents of that consciousness can be radically altered and I still claim it's the same consciousness because consciousness is completely untouched!
Note don't confuse my choice of the word consciousness for self-awareness. Think more 'awareness'.
So ultimately, where there is consciousness I am and you are. Perhaps solipsism is true and you're the only person in the existence. Maybe we're in a simulation. Maybe even Christianity was right all along! Doesn't matter. Whereever consciousness manifests itself, that will be your experience.
Admittedly this is very similar to Hindu/Eastern traditions, except I'm not making any higher claims such as the concept of karma or reincarnation, which I personally find implausible. Western materialist thinkers who espouse this view include Tom C Clark who wrote an essay on what I'm talking about, and Arnold Zuboff.
I made a reply to this thread on what happens after death that was so long, I thought it may be worthy of its own discussion thread:
I think agnosticism is the intellectually honest answer, but if I were forced to make an unambiguous bet I would say "more experience".
I think then dominant view of personal identity that we are individual closed selves traps us into a notion that everything is tied to our current lives and once were are dead, we're completely gone.
However, this idea of being a persisting individual self doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny, even from a Western materialist point of view. The cells in our body are constantly being replaced in our body all the time. Even the neurons in the brain, which are said to be stable, have their proteins and molecules replaced. Hence there's nothing that ties me to the me of 10 years ago, from an atoms point of view (different atoms), or even a personality point of view - in some ways I do sometimes feel like I've evolved a lot.
And yet the continuing sense of always having been here persists.
Let's consider an experiment where a surgeon replaces my neurons one by one. In the end, I'll be a completely different person on the inside, entirely indistinguishable from who I was previously. Let's say I'm awake in this operation. At no point will I actually stop existing. I'll always feel like I'm me.
Let's say I die, and someone is born after that. Is that not identical to the previous experiment? Do I not experience life as this new person?
That's the bold claim I'm making, but this isn't some reincarnation-karmaish proposition. I'm merely pointing to the fact that our consciousness is completely impersonal to what we experience within that consciousness. Everything I experience is simply inside consciousness. None of that is permanent. From pain, joy, memories, my sense of self, the thoughts in my head. All of that happens within consciousness. And that's why the contents of that consciousness can be radically altered and I still claim it's the same consciousness because consciousness is completely untouched!
Note don't confuse my choice of the word consciousness for self-awareness. Think more 'awareness'.
So ultimately, where there is consciousness I am and you are. Perhaps solipsism is true and you're the only person in the existence. Maybe we're in a simulation. Maybe even Christianity was right all along! Doesn't matter. Whereever consciousness manifests itself, that will be your experience.
Admittedly this is very similar to Hindu/Eastern traditions, except I'm not making any higher claims such as the concept of karma or reincarnation, which I personally find implausible. Western materialist thinkers who espouse this view include Tom C Clark who wrote an essay on what I'm talking about, and Arnold Zuboff.
