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Author Topic:   Existence After Death
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 163 (581607)
09-16-2010 3:48 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by AricVader
09-14-2010 9:56 PM


First, let me welcome you to the forums! I find this topic extremely intriguing, as I've myself put a great deal of thought into the issue of of mental immortality, which seems to be the type of immortality about which you're speaking.
The conclusion I have come to is that our reality is made of energy and matter. If everything is energy and matter then thought and memory would have to be a form of energy. Now, I like to think that in death these energies just change form (energy cannot be created or destroyed) and one simply enters a different state of mind so to speak.
Let me ask you: Into what other form might these 'energies' change that would allow them to continue performing the functions of the mind's thought and memory systems?
Recall that while all things may share the similarity of being matter and/or energy in composition, they differ in the arrangement, special functioning, and relationships of the composite parts to other partsthemselves being also matter and/or energy, of course. We may recycle our old television set and end up with parts of it in other products now available for sale, and while we may say that parts of our TV are existing after being recycled (dying), it is something of a stretch to say that we still have our same old TV; what we have no longer looks like a TV, it no longer functions like a TV, no one would buy it as a TV, and we'd be hard-pressed to identify the new products that now contain parts of our old set.
In short, form and function often go hand-in-hand. When we destroy the form of the matter on which the energies operate to give us the mental functions of thought and memory, we quite undoubtedly destroy also the functioning of the matter and so render the ability of the energies to perform the functions of thought and memory defunctmuch like the recycling of the electrical components of our TV makes them incapable of harboring an energy system that can produce a nice colored picture and good sound.
Do I find immortality of thoughts, memory, and ultimately the mind to be ridiculous? Not at all. In fact, I firmly believe that the possibility exists to maintain at least a large portion of the self after the brain inside which that self resides ceases to operate. However, it would also seem that such cannot occur simply through the transference of the matter-energy states into other forms, but that these matter-energy states must be held, at least in part, to the structural-relational 'blueprint', as it were, of the original design if they are to perform an even minor number of their original functions. I believe we can keep the functions of the mind living, but not simply through haphazard redistributions of the original matters and energies.
Jon
Edited by Jon, : Commas...

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by AricVader, posted 09-14-2010 9:56 PM AricVader has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 7 of 163 (581609)
09-16-2010 3:58 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by greyseal
09-16-2010 2:39 PM


Re: it's not the energy, it's the structure
The problem with that is it implies some sort of body-mind duality which is, quite frankly, impossible to maintain. I'm talking of course about a mind-upload. Backup your memories, your personality and store it safely. Bite the big one when you want, you can always download into a new clone or instantiate yourself into cyberspace and carry on.
If you do not believe in some non-corporeal you-ness which cannot be duplicated (i.e. you're a rationalist who doesn't believe in the soul) then there is no reason to assume you cannot create a copy of "you". Things get complicated, but look at it like this:
When you were born, you weren't who you were now. Infact, every molecule in your body gets replaced over some span of time, so if you believe that you can't be copied then you're already dead, you died years ago.
If you complain that dying and recovering from a backup is "death" then what is memory loss? I argue that somebody dying and recovering from a backup and waking up in the hospital in a new body, having lost some days or weeks, is much the same as some person getting a huge bump on the head and losing their memory. To all observers that count (your friends, you yourself), "you" are still alive...
Silliness. I am me. A clone of me would be my clone, and would have the same desires to live as myself. It would be murder to kill either one of us, and neither of us would be willing to die knowing the other is going to continue living in our stead. When something is copied, a new one of that something is created and becomes an entity distinct from the old. To move our thoughts on to an alternate medium (i.e., hard disk, network, etc.) would be to create a copy, and then kill the original. The only way to avoid this is to find a way to move the information after death, thereby ensuring that all aspects we desired to copy were copied from the individual and set into the new medium. Then we may say that the entity picked up where it left off and is thus a revival of the old entity that had dieda reincarnation in a new form of the copied properties of the individual.
It has nothing to do with duality; it has to do with unique individualityall individuals believe themselves unique, even when confronted with an identical copy.
Jon

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by greyseal, posted 09-16-2010 2:39 PM greyseal has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by lfen, posted 09-17-2010 1:05 AM Jon has replied
 Message 18 by greyseal, posted 09-17-2010 2:37 AM Jon has not replied
 Message 22 by Modulous, posted 09-17-2010 12:09 PM Jon has seen this message but not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 19 of 163 (581736)
09-17-2010 8:55 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by lfen
09-17-2010 1:05 AM


Re: it's not the energy, it's the structure
An identical copy would exist for only an instant as Alfred Korzybski pointed out following Heraclitus, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
This, of course, is ridiculous. You have taken the word 'identity' and used it to mean something far removed from, and far more irrelevant than, its regular meaning. Likewise have you done to the words 'same', 'man', and 'river'. What meaningful relationship do these word games have with the topic of continued existence?
Jon

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by lfen, posted 09-17-2010 1:05 AM lfen has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 20 by Omnivorous, posted 09-17-2010 11:02 AM Jon has not replied

  
Jon
Inactive Member


Message 39 of 163 (581815)
09-17-2010 4:57 PM


I think the topic is drifting from the original point. I'd be happy with someone starting a new topic on what constitutes the self, identity, and individualism, but right now we're not giving the topic started enough of our attention, and that's no way to welcome a new member!

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer
"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by AricVader, posted 09-18-2010 1:32 AM Jon has not replied

  
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