Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
Philosch
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Philosch »

Quotidian wrote:As it happens, I have just completed a Master of Buddhist Studies Degree at the University of Sydney.

There is a statement by the Buddha in the Pali which says

' I declare that it is in this fathom— long carcass, with its perceptions and thoughts, that there is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.'

Incidentally this was in dialogue with a deity. The Buddhist literature and Buddhist traditions around the world are replete with references to divine beings of various kinds. So ex cathedral statements of 'what true Buddhists ought to believe' ought to be taken with a grain of salt.

But the idea of 'the gods being within yourself' is not really a Buddhist idea.

A joke: A scientist who has discovered how to create living things has an encounter with God and says to Him 'hey we've discovered how to create life.'

'very interesting' comes the reply. 'How do you go about it?'

Scientist stoops and picks up a handful of dirt.

'Hey', says God.

'make your own dirt.'
Of course they are replete with references to dieties and thus taken literally one would think just what you do, that was my point entirely. If one were to recognize that the dieties are references or symbols that represent different aspects of the human psyche then one would have a different notion altogether. This is not something that would necessarily be obvious in an academic study but rather from a deep understanding and appreciation for what's really being said. I will give you that probably most practicing Buddhists may be stuck to their metaphor like most occidental followers and so my original statement may have been a little overly ambitious but my original point about science stands.

LOL Nice joke :lol: Made me laugh and I will be sure to retell it, thanks.
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Quotidian
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Quotidian »

You're welcome.

Have a look at this book - The Twilight Language Bucknell and Stuart-Fox.

Has some very interesting things to say about the symbolism of meditation. Fairly generous preview on Google Books.
'For there are many here among us who think that life is but a joke' ~ Dylan
Belinda
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Belinda »

The novel Frankenstein is frequently misrepresented as a superfical horror story about a monster. Not a simple complaint about science and industry, it is a psychological study about how the ugliest looking body is combined with soul which is destroyed by tortures inflicted upon it by an uncaring and ignorant world.

It is also a political social criticism:

The creator of the monster, a man named Frankenstein, does not want to destroy his monster, initially, but realises the monster has to go. Mary Shelley's theme is not about simply science and industry but about how science and industry has been deprived of human feelings despte its origination in human endeavour.

The message is clear that the human must recover its soul, and so must industry.
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Owoicho-ada
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Owoicho-ada »

If assuredly I get to retain the "mental me";

1. I will choose to teleport,

2. I will not do the special brain surgery, because losing memory and personality is to lose the "mental me". Although it is a shot at a fresh start, the problem is I would be a demented and retarded adult. I may consider it as a child,

3. I will do the brain transplant. Although a new body would invariably change my future and cumulative personality, the future may yet hold critical changes to my present personality and

4. I may upload my mind for a double measure. Although my faithful view of the afterlife is of an undying mind that cannot develop further and to upload is suicide since i will not develop beyond the uploaded version, my faithful view may not hold true

My view is that minds develop from unconsciousness, and consciousness when lost stands in hope to be regained whether or not it ever is regained. But that the future infinitely stretches, hope is never lost. Physically, the body may be irredeemable or deteriorate permanently culminating in physical death, but the mind does not die. The coming to consciousness is “faith” reverberating in the self-asserting notion “I”, and to lapse into unconsciousness is the loss of “faith” and the death of the mind.

Looking at mind topography and structure as put forward by Freud, the initial unconsciousness simulates an id which was ever present but unconscious, only bought to light by the development of the conscious ego at physical existence. With the loss of ego at physical death, the developed SUBCONSCIOUS (abstract/mental consciousness) superego (conscience and ideals) would forever bear on the eternal id as the everlasting afterlife if “faith” is not lost.

All of physical perception is a mental construct, and it sometimes forcibly bear on us because of the “collective unconsciousness”.
Schaps
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Schaps »

As this topic indicates the concern about the finality of death is arguably the single most important philosophical issue with which humans wrestle. My current perspective is to accept the death of my body and the finality of the death of my self- being reconciled to the continued existence of the elements that constitutes my body and the energy that constitutes my soul/self .
Joe
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Joe »

Relevant to the discussion topic, it would seem that van Lommel's "Consciousness Beyond life, The Science of the Near-Death experience" suggests that the physical and its limited life-span is simply an essential initial phase in the creation of the individual eternal spirit/soul with its permanent store of lifetime memories vested via nonlocal information processes at the deeper quantum level, a realm apparently underlying the emergent objective qualities of time and space. It would seem that Creation is literally Creator on eternal journey from eternal sameness into eternal novelty, where novelty is not possible except that the perceptions of the Subject Agent (the good reader) be limited by the emergent constraints of time and space amid the wonders and challenges of the emergent universe; a lifetime of memories to be shared eternally with spirits who have gone before, and with those who will come after. The physical is just the beginning.

Joe
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Thinking critical »

Joe wrote:Relevant to the discussion topic, it would seem that van Lommel's "Consciousness Beyond life, The Science of the Near-Death experience" suggests that the physical and its limited life-span is simply an essential initial phase in the creation of the individual eternal spirit/soul with its permanent store of lifetime memories vested via nonlocal information processes at the deeper quantum level, a realm apparently underlying the emergent objective qualities of time and space. It would seem that Creation is literally Creator on eternal journey from eternal sameness into eternal novelty, where novelty is not possible except that the perceptions of the Subject Agent (the good reader) be limited by the emergent constraints of time and space amid the wonders and challenges of the emergent universe; a lifetime of memories to be shared eternally with spirits who have gone before, and with those who will come after. The physical is just the beginning.

Joe
As poetic as all that sounds, it's not really an accurate representation of the process in which memories are formulated. Quantum behaviour should not be used to describe the interaction of organic matter, organic matter being the substance in which memories are stored. Even neurological behaviour can't be calculated by the same process as quantum mechanics. Science is a long way from connecting the quantum dots to the atomic ones, let alone speculating if and how information accumulated from conscious beings can be somehow be stored at a quantum level.
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Keithprosser3
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Keithprosser3 »

As poetic as all that sounds
I take it that 'poetic' is meant as a euphemism.

(hmm, a euphemism? an euphemism? Strange, a euphemism sounds better).
Let us suppose that a teleporter device like in the first example really does exist and that it can recreate a perfect duplicate of all the particles in your body (including relative positions and velocities of every atom). Now suppose that you use it, but it malfunctions, and it creates a perfect duplicate of you at the arrival teleporter while leaving your original body also intact at the departure teleporter. Which one would be you? Would you have the experience of being at the departing teleporter, or at the arriving teleporter? Would you experience being both at once? Neither? I have no idea how I could possibly answer this question, and it is a serious problem for me.
That's a quote from way back, but I'll offer a take on it.

There is no problem here - not even a semantic or even an apparent one.

Suppose you volunteer for an experiment. YOu don't know what the experiment is, only that they are offering voluntreers $25. You turn up, there is a flash of light and you are sent home with $25 dollars in your pocket, having never having made an easier 25 bucks. And that's it as far as you are concerned.

Now the flash of light was the operation of a scanner that was used to produce a duplicate of you. That duplicate is produced in a room somewhere. When he pops into existence he will find it a bit strange because just a moment ago he was standing in a different place waiting for the experiment (what ever it was) to start.

Now the duplicate isn't 'you'. You have gone to the pub to spend some of your easy $25, completely unaware of the existence of the duplicate. The duplicate is entirely new person, without any actual history. He has memories of things he did in the past, but they didn't happen to him. They happened to the bloke in the pub.

So after a minute or so, the experimenter comes into the duplicates room and explains what has happened. No doubt the duplicate will have difficulty believing it, and really the duplicate is in a bit of an awkward position. But there is no physical or logical paradox about it. It is all very straightforward from a logical point of view. The only problem - if it is a problem - is that the duplicate might not want to accept how he came into existence. He might not want - might not be able - to accept it psychologically, but that's just tough. He isn't 'you'. He is a completely newly created entity with the false belief that what he remembers happening happened to him.

That way of looking it at is intended to show one thing - there is nothing logically or physically anomalous going on. There is no splitting of identity, no sharing or mixing of identity. Without a doubt there are practical problems (and probablty psychologica problems) for the duplicate, but the situation is not physically or logically anomalous.

A more positive way of looking it is that the duplicate would be a perfectly good replacement for you if you had been destroyed by the scanner rather than copied. The duplicate could have been let out of the room, been given $25 and sent home (or to the pub) and never know he was a duplicate, although he might occasionally wonder how he had suddenly found himself in another room. 'I must have blacked out or something', he will say to himself.

Of course that is the case where teleporting happens unbeknownst to the teleportee. If you know you are teleporting you will know before hand what will happen. For example, I am currently kp3. If I teleport I will become kp3.1. I am aware of the relationship between kp3 and kp3.1. I am prepared to accept that relationship as good enough to treat teleporting as a super-convenient form of transport - probably because I associate my identity with my mental life, which the teleporter preserves, not with my physical body or my atoms which the teleporter does not. Other people do not feel that way, and reject teleporting outright. One person said if teleporters were invented he'd make its his life work to destroy them as murder machines.

Other debates on teleporting has told me one thing - anti-teleporters are seldom converted, but sometimes pro-teleporters are. I think people are sentimentally attached to their bodies even if they are intellectually advanced enough to feel they shouldn't be.
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Joe »

Thinking Critical wrote:

"As poetic as all that sounds, it's not really an accurate representation of the process in which memories are formulated. Quantum behaviour should not be used to describe the interaction of organic matter, organic matter being the substance in which memories are stored. Even neurological behaviour can't be calculated by the same process as quantum mechanics. Science is a long way from connecting the quantum dots to the atomic ones, let alone speculating if and how information accumulated from conscious beings can be somehow be stored at a quantum level." --------------------

There is always theory based upon objective assumptions, and now there is a significant body of new subjective experience that seems to have no objective explanation, such as the near-death experiences (NDEs) reported. These are experiences in which hospital patients are observed to pass into actual "clinical death", yet later recover to report their out-of-body experiences including events they could not have "sensed" in their clinical death-state. On the one side is objective science. On the other side are the surprising reports of NDEs; subjective experience during a state of clinical death. What is the bridge between the two?

Joe
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Wow1500
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Wow1500 »

Thought Experiment One - The Teleportation Device

I would choose teleportation. I don't believe there is anything supernatural about the mind or consciousness; it's just the brain. If the duplicate is a perfect copy, then my original body would have died, but my mind will have "continued."

Philosophical Thought Experiment 2 - Special Brain Surgery

No I wouldn't take the surgery, I see this scenario resulting in mental death, I wouldn't want to live like that.

Philosophical Thought Experiment 3 - Brain Transplant

Yes I would take the transplant, because my sense of self is so rooted in what I see in the mirror. (Yes, insecurities, but I'm totally fine looking like the way I do, but in this very unlikely hypothetical, it would be ideal for me to alter my appearance the way I would like)

Philosophical Thought Experiment 4 - Mind Uploading to The Matrix

In my opinion, this is probably the closest anyone will ever get to an afterlife. I am perfectly happy to leave my body in this scenario.
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Whitedragon
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Whitedragon »

I started a blog a while ago about faith vs. memory and was referred here by Scott. Here is the link and my contribution to the question. http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... =2&t=11880

Personally I would not want to live indefinitely, I think it devalues life. If I'm going to live for a long time I would want sensible things to do: here is a question, are dreams that go to Hades, AKA forgotten or lost aspirations just as bad as death, maybe a mental loss? If playing the violin made me happy; I would rather live my last year and die, as living a life where I forget that art, which enriched me. I might not fall in love a second time with my wife. I suppose I could build a new life, just as rich, but the body I get may make me repulsive to the opposite sex and I will live a life of loneliness. My new body or new, strange world could put me in a depression I can't recover from. I would change bodies, or go into stasis; but I would not want to live a thousand years, with what will I entertain myself: it sounds to me like the recipe for mischief. As for the transport idea, I really don't know what to say.

What says the OP and its bloggers about space-time memory?
We are a frozen spirit; our thoughts a cloud of droplets; different oceans and ages brood inside – where spirit sublimates. To some our words, an acid rain, to some it is too pure, to some infectious, to some a cure.
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Uriahharris
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Uriahharris »

Death of self means death of reality yes? Or no? Who is to say that death of body is death of self? What of contradiction? here is a mind game on death of body versus death of self via contradiction.

Contradiction permeates existence as we know it, doubly so for existence itself is a contradiction. What then is death? Death is a contradiction, the absence of life. If this is true, and if you lose your self thought when you die, then contradiction follows and is destroyed, thus banishing all contradiction, even life and death. If life and death do not exist, if contradiction itself does not exist, then is your self thought not restored?
-UriahHarris
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Atreyu »

My view is that awareness goes on after the death of the physical body. This is because I view awareness as a more 'fundamental principle' than the physical body. Your awareness is more 'you' than your physical body is. The physical body is a product of your awareness, rather than your awareness being a product of the physical body.

Where does it go after death? Into the past from the point of view of the living. It's trapped there. Life is cyclical, not linear, and so awareness has nowhere else to go other than the point of conception. Round and round it goes, from conception to death, 'trapped' in its limited time.

BTW, this theory is called 'recurrence' and is a bit more complicated than, and is the origin of, the more simplistic idea of 'reincarnation', which is actually an adaptation of it.
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Belinda »

Atreya wrote:
The physical body is a product of your awareness, rather than your awareness being a product of the physical body.
My physical body is "a product of" my parents' reproductive cells, food, air, shelter, health and education services, and policing and justice services, and probably much of my country's foreign and interior defence policy. If what Atreyu says is true my "awareness" is the defining attribute of my physical body without which the causes of my physical body as I listed would not serve to support my body in existence.

Hpwever I don't believe Atreyu's claim because I know that there are human bodies that are not dead and to which no awareness ever attaches. Moreover healthy, not moribund, humans can lose awareness in deep sleep, in the unconsciousness that follows bangs on the head, and under anaesthesia.
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Uriahharris
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Re: Death of the Body versus Death of the Self

Post by Uriahharris »

Atreyu wrote:My view is that awareness goes on after the death of the physical body. This is because I view awareness as a more 'fundamental principle' than the physical body. Your awareness is more 'you' than your physical body is. The physical body is a product of your awareness, rather than your awareness being a product of the physical body.

Where does it go after death? Into the past from the point of view of the living. It's trapped there. Life is cyclical, not linear, and so awareness has nowhere else to go other than the point of conception. Round and round it goes, from conception to death, 'trapped' in its limited time.

BTW, this theory is called 'recurrence' and is a bit more complicated than, and is the origin of, the more simplistic idea of 'reincarnation', which is actually an adaptation of it.
If this incurred maybe a little logic it might be worth something in the philisophical world. It does not, however, and therefore can be lowered to the level of "belief" instead of "theory".
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