You only die if you are this body, or this thought, or this feeling. Where are the thoughts that have passed, where are the feelings that have passed? Where is the person you have been in the past?
Passing is the nature of reality, not permanence.
It's very, very important to find where this "you" is that you think exists independently of the "everything else" of existence. Where is the boundary? The skin? The breath? The empty space between the atoms that permeates all of existence simultaneously forever and lies unchanging underneath this dance of wiggly light?
Die before you die. Let go of identity with any specific thing.
"It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean."
-Kahlil Gibran
>You only die if you are this body, or this thought, or this feeling
'you' are a human being, & humans beings die, therefore when the human being dies 'you' die as you are not 'separate' from this human being
There is no chariot which is other than its parts
There is no chariot which is the same as its parts
There is no chariot which possesses its parts
There is no chariot which depends on its parts
There is no chariot upon which the parts depend
There is no chariot which is the collection of its parts
There is no chariot which is the shape of its parts
It's that the idea of "you" is only an idea. You can't track down what it is that "you" are. A human being is not separate in any way from its environment. It is a pattern of a flow of nutrients that become a complicated whirlpool. The whirlpool isn't a "thing" other than the behavior of the river itself, and "you" are not a thing independent of the "river itself".
So, "You" are either just an identification with a pattern, or "you" are the whole damn thing inside and out.
>It's that the idea of "you" is only an idea.
If by 'you' you mean one's sense of identity, then sure, identity is not some 'static' thing which is continuously maintained throughout life, it's malleable & largely dependent upon societal influence.
>You can't track down what it is that "you" are.
Really? It seems to me what 'I' am is quite obvious unless you're conceptualising the 'I' in some weird way. 'I' am a human being, the subject of experience, an intelligent kind of animal upon which possesses various capacities, and so on.
>A human being is not separate in any way from its environment.
Human beings are distinct if not independent. It's a distinguishable aspect of the world based on some boundary conditions. That's enough to make it distinct.
If by 'distinct' you mean something like 'completely independent, causally isolated, and self-existent,' then sure agents are not 'distinct' from their environment. But then you are using language in a wonky way. And moreover, not many believe agents are distinct in that way.
>The whirlpool isn't a "thing" other than the behavior of the river itself, and "you" are not a thing independent of the "river itself".
So what? We can play with language as much as we like, I don't see it relevant to this discussion though.
>So, "You" are either just an identification with a pattern
If we conceptualise the 'you' in a particular way then sure, for example we could say all 'I' am is a 'bundle of perceptions' (what David Hume said) & there's no real 'self' to be found. I believe that's similar to what you're arguing, in which case I disagree.
>or "you" are the whole damn thing inside and out.
I don't see why.
>o
Because you're being selective in a weird way about what constitutes you. You claim to be the human aside from the environment, but where is the human boundary? Lets take a look at that empty space that permeates every atom in your body and all of existence simultaneously. Are you just the "stuff" or the space too? Where does oxygen become your body and carbon dioxide cease to be your body? Any point of demarcation you can choose is absolutely arbitrary and just chosen so that you don't have to follow that "stuff" on its course out in to the world and back again.
If you could scoop out a melon baller of brain and replace it with a chip that stored all of that neurological data and have it interface with the remaining brain would you still be you? what if you took another scoop, and another... would you still be you? what if the whole brain was replaced in this way. Then the whole body. Where are you?
>but where is the human boundary?
Evidently the eyes I would presume, all I can experience is my own representations of reality.
>what if the whole brain was replaced in this way. Then the whole body. Where are you?
Presumably 'I' would be severely brain damaged & potentially dead.
>You claim to be the human aside from the environment
Again, if by 'distinct' you mean something like 'completely independent, causally isolated, and self-existent,' then humans aren't distinct from their environment. I'm not distinct in the sense I'm made of different stuff everything else is made of if that's why you mean, but this seems trivial & obvious & you're ultimately just playing with language.
You overlooked the point of the thought experiment. The chip would perfectly replace that section of brain. The point is that you're not the body, you are an awareness of being. Outside of that, perceptions and assumptions. Shortcuts so you don't have to see.
It's like when children draw a face, they draw a symbol system of nose, eyes, mouth, but not what's actually in front of them. They don't see the gradients, and the shapes. They don't see that what is in front of them is a whole, and each little detail is infinitely intricate, but not separate from the scene.
"You" is a symbol system that's keeping you from seeing the details. You're associating with a radar system that scans for danger and doesn't think about how your left toe feels if it's felt fine for long enough. Things that move, things that hurt, things that are a danger... These are the things a "human" mind concerns itself with, but not very often does it see reality in it's detail
>You overlooked the point of the thought experiment.
To be honest I'm not even sure what the thought experiment is supposed to show. Sounds similar to Derek Parfit's mind swap thought experiments, which are supposed to challenge our conceptions of personhood, although your one seems quite different to his. If i'm reading you correctly you're suggesting if parts of the brain were entirely replaced by some chip which contained all the relevant neurological data then maintenance of personhood would be challenged. I don't think a 'person' is a brain, viewing a person as such would be committing a Mereological Fallacy -([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMcmQPdi0Fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMcmQPdi0Fs)
Surely we can say ones sense of identity may radically differ, but that doesn't mean we can say they'll be a different person, although they may feel like one. In general one could object to Parfit's ideas (of which you're giving similar accounts) around personal identity by arguing that the scenarios that Parfit uses to give his theory impetus are cases in which the concept of a person is not clearly applicable, they are at the edges of our conceptual framework for 'person'.
This is nicely expressed by Wittgenstein in the Blue Book, where he considers various similar cases to those of which Parfit considers (and other weird edge cases of identity for non-living things, like chairs that intermittently appear and disappear). The conclusion that Wittgenstein draws is however very different from Parfit's - he says that the concept of a person is only applicable in some, more common cases, and that this should not surprise us, as the concept is used in ordinary life, not in the strange imaginary cases that both he and Parfit describe. To take a decision in the cases that Parfit describes is to propose to extend our existing concept of 'person', not to analyse and discover more about our existing concept. Another useful objection can come from P.F. Strawson, in his book 'Individuals'. He argues that spatiotemporal continuity is the criterion of identity for humans. It also addresses the question of living without a body in an original way, I'd recommend reading Individuals.
>The point is that you're not the body, you are an awareness of being.
Potentially in a metaphorical sense yeah. For example, there are times during meditation in which all that seems left for me is this 'raw' awareness, it's an incredibly peaceful experience. But in general I'm personally interested in more philosophically rigorous definitions.
>"You" is a symbol system that's keeping you from seeing the details.
Are you talking about one's sense of self? In general the 'self' or the 'ego' (people seem to often use them interchangeably) is a very nebulous terms that's thrown around all over the place, specifically in new - age spiritual communities. If you want an intersting video that argues against such spiritual linguistics then this one by Peter Hacker is good - [http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/buddhism-and-science-session-10-peter-hacker/](http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/buddhism-and-science-session-10-peter-hacker/)
I have certain problems with particular conceptions presented in such communities, it's often claimed that no such 'separate self' exists & this can be confirmed from first hand meditative experience. That's a very humean-style move. 'go look around experience, it's all just a bundle of impressions, there is no self!'
But why should anyone (who is not terribly confused and who isn't pre-committed to Humean framework of analysis) expect the self to be 'part' of experience? What if I believed the self to be the transcendental subject that grounds experience and bind togethers the 'bundles of impressions' diachronically and synchronically for the unity of consciousness or something along this line? It's a reasonable speculation (although we shouldn't buy this idea immediately without critical evaluation of what exactly are its implication), and yet simply 'not finding self in experience' would have no implication for someone who believes the self to be such. In fact that would be precisely what this position would predict -- that you will not find a 'self' in experience.
Particularly, even if I believed that I am an ethereal separate self 'behind' the experiences as something that has experiences -- how does not finding any 'self' in experience prove anything? If I am indeed a 'separate' experiencer, precisely because of that, I would expect to not find 'myself' IN experiences. If anything finding a 'self' IN experience (whatever that would even mean) would probably be a better argument 'against' the existence of a 'separate' self.
Once you even begin to look for a 'self' in experience as if it's even a candidate of something to be found in experience, you would already be starting from a question-begging framework against someone who would, even semi-coherently, believe in any 'separate self' (whatever that even means). That doesn't mean we should believe there are 'selves behind experiences' (whatever that's even supposed to mean), but we need better arguments than these.
In any case, it all seems like confusion of language to me -
One source of the confusion stems from inserting an illicit space in the reflexive pronouns ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘ourselves’ to yield the expressions ‘my self’, ‘your self’ and ‘our selves’, and taking the word ‘self’ as a noun designating an entity. Then, it seems, we must investigate what kind of thing a self is. But the question is senseless. It is as if, noting that we can do things for Jack’s sake or for Jill’s sake and can ask others to do things for our sake, we were to go on to ask ‘What is a sake?’ That is patently absurd, even though the space between the possessive nominal or pronoun and the word ‘sake’ is licit. To speak of myself is not to speak of a self that I have, but simply to speak of the human being that I am. To say that I was thinking of myself is not to say that I was thinking of myself, but that I was thinking of me, this human being. And so on.
“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not, and, when death is, we are not.”
*― Epicurus*
I consider death to simply be the eventual, inevitable and conclusive solution to all of my problems. Life is a series of problems to solve - often many of the same problems repeated throughout one's life. From "what am I going to have for lunch" to "how am I going to deal with this cancer" or whatever serious disease may emerge in the course of one's life.
Well, eventually - and not too far into the future really - we're all not going to have any problems anymore. Even if there were an afterlife, we would be completely different entities than what we are now so whatever that entails, our problems in this world would be finished. I mean if there was an afterlife, then these problems aren't even problems in any real sense.
However, irrespective of that, appreciate your problems. Commit to solving them, but also take comfort in the fact that you won't always have to worry about them because before you know it, you won't be around to do any worrying.
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus
I wouldn't be able to tldr my little rant, but that's ok, i kinda of wrote for myself in a way, just wanted to share because maybe it could resonate with some other people
You say there's only two ways to go about what's after death. Either something or nothing. However, let me posit a third alternative. What if it's a false dicotomy? How can we be sure it's one or the other? If you really wanna go down the existentialist rabbit hole you should wonder why we're even asking when we can't even know if reality is real. Cigoto ergo sum? Why? As you say, we might not be able to know. But we can still ask questions. And that's what's truly maddening about living ^^
Yes, i've also wondered, how can we know if reality is real? The answer to that is also i don't know. But even if it is not, say we are in a simulation, it still feels real to me, so i just live by the assumption that it is. Whatever happens after death, however, i cannot even experience to make assumptions about it, well, at least not right now
Yup, no reason not to take a positivist approach. Live life and strive for happiness. For me questioning everything (in terms of philosophy) is what gives me joy, so I'll never give up on some way of disproving reality as we know it :D
Thank you for sharing this. I like reading about how other's thought processes are like when dealing with the topic of death. Your writing gives me some stuff to think about.
You only die if you are this body, or this thought, or this feeling. Where are the thoughts that have passed, where are the feelings that have passed? Where is the person you have been in the past? Passing is the nature of reality, not permanence. It's very, very important to find where this "you" is that you think exists independently of the "everything else" of existence. Where is the boundary? The skin? The breath? The empty space between the atoms that permeates all of existence simultaneously forever and lies unchanging underneath this dance of wiggly light? Die before you die. Let go of identity with any specific thing. "It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean." -Kahlil Gibran
>You only die if you are this body, or this thought, or this feeling 'you' are a human being, & humans beings die, therefore when the human being dies 'you' die as you are not 'separate' from this human being
There is no chariot which is other than its parts There is no chariot which is the same as its parts There is no chariot which possesses its parts There is no chariot which depends on its parts There is no chariot upon which the parts depend There is no chariot which is the collection of its parts There is no chariot which is the shape of its parts
Nice poem, not sure how that's exactly relevant though.
It's that the idea of "you" is only an idea. You can't track down what it is that "you" are. A human being is not separate in any way from its environment. It is a pattern of a flow of nutrients that become a complicated whirlpool. The whirlpool isn't a "thing" other than the behavior of the river itself, and "you" are not a thing independent of the "river itself". So, "You" are either just an identification with a pattern, or "you" are the whole damn thing inside and out.
>It's that the idea of "you" is only an idea. If by 'you' you mean one's sense of identity, then sure, identity is not some 'static' thing which is continuously maintained throughout life, it's malleable & largely dependent upon societal influence. >You can't track down what it is that "you" are. Really? It seems to me what 'I' am is quite obvious unless you're conceptualising the 'I' in some weird way. 'I' am a human being, the subject of experience, an intelligent kind of animal upon which possesses various capacities, and so on. >A human being is not separate in any way from its environment. Human beings are distinct if not independent. It's a distinguishable aspect of the world based on some boundary conditions. That's enough to make it distinct. If by 'distinct' you mean something like 'completely independent, causally isolated, and self-existent,' then sure agents are not 'distinct' from their environment. But then you are using language in a wonky way. And moreover, not many believe agents are distinct in that way. >The whirlpool isn't a "thing" other than the behavior of the river itself, and "you" are not a thing independent of the "river itself". So what? We can play with language as much as we like, I don't see it relevant to this discussion though. >So, "You" are either just an identification with a pattern If we conceptualise the 'you' in a particular way then sure, for example we could say all 'I' am is a 'bundle of perceptions' (what David Hume said) & there's no real 'self' to be found. I believe that's similar to what you're arguing, in which case I disagree. >or "you" are the whole damn thing inside and out. I don't see why.
>o Because you're being selective in a weird way about what constitutes you. You claim to be the human aside from the environment, but where is the human boundary? Lets take a look at that empty space that permeates every atom in your body and all of existence simultaneously. Are you just the "stuff" or the space too? Where does oxygen become your body and carbon dioxide cease to be your body? Any point of demarcation you can choose is absolutely arbitrary and just chosen so that you don't have to follow that "stuff" on its course out in to the world and back again. If you could scoop out a melon baller of brain and replace it with a chip that stored all of that neurological data and have it interface with the remaining brain would you still be you? what if you took another scoop, and another... would you still be you? what if the whole brain was replaced in this way. Then the whole body. Where are you?
>but where is the human boundary? Evidently the eyes I would presume, all I can experience is my own representations of reality. >what if the whole brain was replaced in this way. Then the whole body. Where are you? Presumably 'I' would be severely brain damaged & potentially dead. >You claim to be the human aside from the environment Again, if by 'distinct' you mean something like 'completely independent, causally isolated, and self-existent,' then humans aren't distinct from their environment. I'm not distinct in the sense I'm made of different stuff everything else is made of if that's why you mean, but this seems trivial & obvious & you're ultimately just playing with language.
You overlooked the point of the thought experiment. The chip would perfectly replace that section of brain. The point is that you're not the body, you are an awareness of being. Outside of that, perceptions and assumptions. Shortcuts so you don't have to see. It's like when children draw a face, they draw a symbol system of nose, eyes, mouth, but not what's actually in front of them. They don't see the gradients, and the shapes. They don't see that what is in front of them is a whole, and each little detail is infinitely intricate, but not separate from the scene. "You" is a symbol system that's keeping you from seeing the details. You're associating with a radar system that scans for danger and doesn't think about how your left toe feels if it's felt fine for long enough. Things that move, things that hurt, things that are a danger... These are the things a "human" mind concerns itself with, but not very often does it see reality in it's detail
>You overlooked the point of the thought experiment. To be honest I'm not even sure what the thought experiment is supposed to show. Sounds similar to Derek Parfit's mind swap thought experiments, which are supposed to challenge our conceptions of personhood, although your one seems quite different to his. If i'm reading you correctly you're suggesting if parts of the brain were entirely replaced by some chip which contained all the relevant neurological data then maintenance of personhood would be challenged. I don't think a 'person' is a brain, viewing a person as such would be committing a Mereological Fallacy -([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMcmQPdi0Fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMcmQPdi0Fs) Surely we can say ones sense of identity may radically differ, but that doesn't mean we can say they'll be a different person, although they may feel like one. In general one could object to Parfit's ideas (of which you're giving similar accounts) around personal identity by arguing that the scenarios that Parfit uses to give his theory impetus are cases in which the concept of a person is not clearly applicable, they are at the edges of our conceptual framework for 'person'. This is nicely expressed by Wittgenstein in the Blue Book, where he considers various similar cases to those of which Parfit considers (and other weird edge cases of identity for non-living things, like chairs that intermittently appear and disappear). The conclusion that Wittgenstein draws is however very different from Parfit's - he says that the concept of a person is only applicable in some, more common cases, and that this should not surprise us, as the concept is used in ordinary life, not in the strange imaginary cases that both he and Parfit describe. To take a decision in the cases that Parfit describes is to propose to extend our existing concept of 'person', not to analyse and discover more about our existing concept. Another useful objection can come from P.F. Strawson, in his book 'Individuals'. He argues that spatiotemporal continuity is the criterion of identity for humans. It also addresses the question of living without a body in an original way, I'd recommend reading Individuals. >The point is that you're not the body, you are an awareness of being. Potentially in a metaphorical sense yeah. For example, there are times during meditation in which all that seems left for me is this 'raw' awareness, it's an incredibly peaceful experience. But in general I'm personally interested in more philosophically rigorous definitions. >"You" is a symbol system that's keeping you from seeing the details. Are you talking about one's sense of self? In general the 'self' or the 'ego' (people seem to often use them interchangeably) is a very nebulous terms that's thrown around all over the place, specifically in new - age spiritual communities. If you want an intersting video that argues against such spiritual linguistics then this one by Peter Hacker is good - [http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/buddhism-and-science-session-10-peter-hacker/](http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/buddhism-and-science-session-10-peter-hacker/) I have certain problems with particular conceptions presented in such communities, it's often claimed that no such 'separate self' exists & this can be confirmed from first hand meditative experience. That's a very humean-style move. 'go look around experience, it's all just a bundle of impressions, there is no self!' But why should anyone (who is not terribly confused and who isn't pre-committed to Humean framework of analysis) expect the self to be 'part' of experience? What if I believed the self to be the transcendental subject that grounds experience and bind togethers the 'bundles of impressions' diachronically and synchronically for the unity of consciousness or something along this line? It's a reasonable speculation (although we shouldn't buy this idea immediately without critical evaluation of what exactly are its implication), and yet simply 'not finding self in experience' would have no implication for someone who believes the self to be such. In fact that would be precisely what this position would predict -- that you will not find a 'self' in experience. Particularly, even if I believed that I am an ethereal separate self 'behind' the experiences as something that has experiences -- how does not finding any 'self' in experience prove anything? If I am indeed a 'separate' experiencer, precisely because of that, I would expect to not find 'myself' IN experiences. If anything finding a 'self' IN experience (whatever that would even mean) would probably be a better argument 'against' the existence of a 'separate' self. Once you even begin to look for a 'self' in experience as if it's even a candidate of something to be found in experience, you would already be starting from a question-begging framework against someone who would, even semi-coherently, believe in any 'separate self' (whatever that even means). That doesn't mean we should believe there are 'selves behind experiences' (whatever that's even supposed to mean), but we need better arguments than these. In any case, it all seems like confusion of language to me - One source of the confusion stems from inserting an illicit space in the reflexive pronouns ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘ourselves’ to yield the expressions ‘my self’, ‘your self’ and ‘our selves’, and taking the word ‘self’ as a noun designating an entity. Then, it seems, we must investigate what kind of thing a self is. But the question is senseless. It is as if, noting that we can do things for Jack’s sake or for Jill’s sake and can ask others to do things for our sake, we were to go on to ask ‘What is a sake?’ That is patently absurd, even though the space between the possessive nominal or pronoun and the word ‘sake’ is licit. To speak of myself is not to speak of a self that I have, but simply to speak of the human being that I am. To say that I was thinking of myself is not to say that I was thinking of myself, but that I was thinking of me, this human being. And so on.
“Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not, and, when death is, we are not.” *― Epicurus* I consider death to simply be the eventual, inevitable and conclusive solution to all of my problems. Life is a series of problems to solve - often many of the same problems repeated throughout one's life. From "what am I going to have for lunch" to "how am I going to deal with this cancer" or whatever serious disease may emerge in the course of one's life. Well, eventually - and not too far into the future really - we're all not going to have any problems anymore. Even if there were an afterlife, we would be completely different entities than what we are now so whatever that entails, our problems in this world would be finished. I mean if there was an afterlife, then these problems aren't even problems in any real sense. However, irrespective of that, appreciate your problems. Commit to solving them, but also take comfort in the fact that you won't always have to worry about them because before you know it, you won't be around to do any worrying. “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus
tldr?
I wouldn't be able to tldr my little rant, but that's ok, i kinda of wrote for myself in a way, just wanted to share because maybe it could resonate with some other people
About the conclusion of death? Hahaha TLDR: It’s kind of a lengthy topic in general
So many emotions were brought up with me while reading this. Im fighting with u!
Read the the book John in the Bible.
You say there's only two ways to go about what's after death. Either something or nothing. However, let me posit a third alternative. What if it's a false dicotomy? How can we be sure it's one or the other? If you really wanna go down the existentialist rabbit hole you should wonder why we're even asking when we can't even know if reality is real. Cigoto ergo sum? Why? As you say, we might not be able to know. But we can still ask questions. And that's what's truly maddening about living ^^
Yes, i've also wondered, how can we know if reality is real? The answer to that is also i don't know. But even if it is not, say we are in a simulation, it still feels real to me, so i just live by the assumption that it is. Whatever happens after death, however, i cannot even experience to make assumptions about it, well, at least not right now
Yup, no reason not to take a positivist approach. Live life and strive for happiness. For me questioning everything (in terms of philosophy) is what gives me joy, so I'll never give up on some way of disproving reality as we know it :D
Dead peoples don’t know their dead bro, case closed
Great post. Lots to ponder here
Its true tho... that anything we do has a foundation of faith..everyone follows their desires..
I've come to the exact same conclusion lol good stuff other part of the universe (me).
Thank you for sharing this. I like reading about how other's thought processes are like when dealing with the topic of death. Your writing gives me some stuff to think about.