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Death After Life vs Death Before Life

suren

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suren
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I didn't exist long before I was born and similarly I will not exist after I die. At least that's what many people on this forum think.

If so, does it mean that the nonexistence before I was born (let's name it nonexistence 1) the same thing as the nonexistence after my death (let's name it nonexistence 2)?

Even some famous people seems have claimed a similar thing:
Arthur Schopenhauer said:
After your death you will be what you were before your birth.
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Mark Twain said:
I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
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So if they are 100% identical it seems that nonexistence 2 can be followed by life (consciousness) like nonexistence 1. So in some sense life after death is possible. Or perhaps there is no "self" or "consciousness". :confused: What are your thoughts about that?
 
theprestige said:
My thoughts are that Schopenhauer and Twain seem to have already said everything that needs saying.
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But what puzzles is if nonexistence before death is identical to the nonexistence after death then why they appear to think that life after death (nonexistence) is impossible? As far as I know Twain and Schopenhauer didn't believe in any kind of afterlife.
 
What do you mean?

Consciousness is a function of a working brain. It isn't a discrete thing like a chair or a book.
 
suren said:
But what puzzles is if nonexistence before death is identical to the nonexistence after death then why they appear to think that life after death (nonexistence) is impossible? As far as I know Twain and Schopenhauer didn't believe in any kind of afterlife.
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You're equivocating on the meaning of "life after death".
 
It's not really a paradox when you understand that "life" is just a chemical-mechanical process performed by a being and Consciousness is a function of a working brain.


They're not claiming that non-existence before life is literally death, just that you don't exist before you're born, and you don't exist after you die.
 
suren said:
But what puzzles is if nonexistence before death is identical to the nonexistence after death then why they appear to think that life after death (nonexistence) is impossible? As far as I know Twain and Schopenhauer didn't believe in any kind of afterlife.
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If you believe in life after death or anything like it, the word "nonexistence" is misplaced. Nonexistence is, by its very definition, devoid of nuance. It is complete, and there are no different degrees or types of it.

I would consider the cessation of existence at death to be the default position, and belief in an afterlife the position that requires belief and evidence.
 
Both of those statements are just philosophical arguments for why death should not be feared, nothing more. It's also a theme Lord Dunsany really, really liked to go on about in his fantasy writing. I think my personal favourite might be the following short story of his:

THE DEEDS OF MUNG

(Lord of all Deaths between Pegana and the Rim)

Once, as Mung went his way athwart the Earth and up and down its cities and across its plains, Mung came upon a man who was afraid when Mung said: “I am Mung!”

And Mung said: “Were the forty million years before thy coming intolerable to thee?”

And Mung said: “Not less tolerable to thee shall be the forty million years to come!”

Then Mung made against him the sign of Mung and the Life of the Man was fettered no longer with hands and feet.

At the end of the flight of the arrow there is Mung, and in the houses and the cities of Men. Mung walketh in all places at all times. But mostly he loves to walk in the dark and still, along the river mists when the wind hath sank, a little before night meeteth with the morning upon the highway between Pegana and the Worlds.

Sometimes Mung entereth the poor man’s cottage; Mung also boweth very low before The King. Then do the Lives of the poor man and of The King go forth among the Worlds.

And Mung said: “Many turnings hath the road that Kib hath given every man to tread upon the earth. Behind one of these turnings sitteth Mung.”

One day as a man trod upon the road that Kib had given him to tread he came suddenly upon Mung. And when Mung said: “I am Mung!” the man cried out: “Alas, that I took this road, for had I gone by any other way then had I not met with Mung.”

And Mung said: “Had it been possible for thee to go by any other way then had the Scheme of Things been otherwise and the gods had been other gods. When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI forgets to rest and makes again new gods it may be that They will send thee again into the Worlds; and then thou mayest choose some other way, and not meet with Mung.”

Then Mung made the sign of Mung. And the Life of that man went forth with yesterday’s regrets and all old sorrows and forgotten things—whither Mung knoweth.

And Mung went onward with his work to sunder Life from flesh, and Mung came upon a man who became stricken with sorrow when he saw the shadow of Mung. But Mung said: “When at the sign of Mung thy Life shall float away there will also disappear thy sorrow at forsaking it.” But the man cried out: “O Mung! tarry for a little, and make not the sign of Mung against me now, for I have a family upon the earth with whom sorrow will remain, though mine should disappear because of the sign of Mung.”

And Mung said: “With the gods it is always Now. And before Sish hath banished many of the years the sorrows of thy family for thee shall go the way of thine.” And the man beheld Mung making the sign of Mung before his eyes, which beheld things no more.


This story also holds an idea that approaches what you're asking about:
And Mung said: “Had it been possible for thee to go by any other way then had the Scheme of Things been otherwise and the gods had been other gods. When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI forgets to rest and makes again new gods it may be that They will send thee again into the Worlds; and then thou mayest choose some other way, and not meet with Mung.”
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If one really feels like playing with this concept from a scientific point of view, there's technically no reason why your exact brain with its exact memories couldn't appear somewhere else in the future as long as the universe is infinite. Some people will tell you that this brain won't really be you, but just a copy. I, however, believe that they ascribe undue value to a completely imagined continuity of consciousness. Everyone is already an aged copy of the person they were yesterday.

Of course, this doesn't usually help people who actually care about the answer. It doesn't truly offer perpetuity. Instead, it actually takes away what most people take for granted: the idea that their self is a continuous consciousness from birth to death, rather than a fleeting ghost that gets extinguished and replaced from one day to the other.
 
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Thermodynamics would seem to make life after "nonexistence 2" extremely unlikely.

Consciousness, as far as I can see, is an emergent property of the arrangement of matter in my brain. Since death is the cessation of my body's self maintaining functions, leading to the breakdown of the arrangement of matter my consciousness depends on, I don't see any way to posit a return of my consciousness after that. Some of my matter may, in future, end up in some other conscious brain, but it won't be any sort of continuation of my consciousness.
 
Non/existence is all about memory, though. I don't remember what I was up to before I was born, but I don't remember the first few years afterwards either. I only have other people's word that I existed, and a few cute baby pics. Stretching the point, I don't remember what I was doing at 3AM today either, although sleeping is a strong evidentiary contender.
 
arthwollipot said:
Existence is binary. Either something exists or it does not. There aren't different ways to not exist.
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This unfortunately seems to be an idea that mystifies mystics, who so often find ways to sort the attributes of nothingness.

I've mentioned this before, but there is a philosophical paradox in that some people of an idealistic bent and, perhaps a tendency to overlook the limitations of language, consider that an idea is a thing rather than an event, and therefore once an idea is uttered, it is, as it were, born into a kind of existence. A now-late Austrian philosopher (at least presumed by most outside this thread to be late) named Alexius Meinong postulated that if an idea can include attributes, there is a kind of provisional reality to it, and it inhabits an ontological realm now called "Meinong's Jungle," in which invisible pink unicorns dance in square circles around the rocks too heavy for God to lift.

I would not want to damp suren's or anyone's sense of adventure, but would remind you, if you stray too close, to beware the frumious bandersnatch.
 
Thermal said:
Non/existence is all about memory, though. I don't remember what I was up to before I was born, but I don't remember the first few years afterwards either. I only have other people's word that I existed, and a few cute baby pics. Stretching the point, I don't remember what I was doing at 3AM today either, although sleeping is a strong evidentiary contender.
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I know you disdain philosophy but existence is not all about memory, even if it seems so to you in your personal life. Evidence is not proof, perhaps, but it is not nothing either. There is a period of time in which you are part of the world. And a much longer period when you are not. A rock exists though we are fairly sure it remembers very little.
 
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