Death After Life vs Death Before Life

[suren]

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.

I think the paradox can arise because of the word "you". The word "you" seems something abstract and not a concrete physical thing. Even if by "you" we mean some physical entity / process, this thing is not constant since the person's body atoms are replaced despite that we identify him and consider him the same person.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

in an infinite universe over infinite timescales, it's inevitable that another pattern sufficiently similar to you to be functionally identical will arise.

Boltzmann Brains for All !!!

 

[arthwollipot]

OK, but anyways, you mean there is no qualitative difference of any sort, right?.

How can nothing have any qualities?

 

[steenkh]

In mathematics there is only one empty set. Emptiness, or nonexistence has no qualifications. You can’t have two different kinds of nothing.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I think the paradox can arise because of the word "you". The word "you" seems something abstract and not a concrete physical thing. Even if by "you" we mean some physical entity / process, this thing is not constant since the person's body atoms are replaced despite that we identify him and consider him the same person.

But "you" is not a thing, it's a process. You cannot conflate the two.

You're claiming a paradox where none exists. There is no difference between the two periods of non existence in the same way that there is "no difference" between two examples of a car going 40 miles per hour. You wouldn't clam that "40 miles per hour" is a thing, it's a function of the thing. Equally you can't differentiate between "two non existences". They're not distinct objects. You're equivocating by mangling language.

A person is born, the chemical-electrical processes in the brain create a consciousness as an emergent property of the function of the body. Then the person dies and that emergent property stops.

A car is started and drives at 40 miles per hour as an emergent property of the chemical-mechanical process of the engine running, then the engine is cut out and the emergent property stops. You wouldn't say that there was a "not going 40 miles per hour 1" for the car before it was started and a "not going 40 miles per hour 2" for after it was stopped. It's either going 40 miles per hour or it isn't. A person is either alive, and conscious, or they're not.

 

[Darat]

I think the paradox can arise because of the word "you". The word "you" seems something abstract and not a concrete physical thing. Even if by "you" we mean some physical entity / process, this thing is not constant since the person's body atoms are replaced despite that we identify him and consider him the same person.

Perhaps a have a read of Ship of Theseus? It's not really a paradox.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

OK, but anyways, you mean there is no qualitative difference of any sort, right?.

The universe considered at two different times is not identical. So the universe before a thing existed isn't going to be identical to the universe after the thing existed. But those differences will be with things which do exist and not things which don't.

 

[Mojo]

OK, but anyways, you mean there is no qualitative difference of any sort, right?.

"What's your dog called?"
"I haven't got a dog."
"What's that one called?"

 

[Foster Zygote]

So it's much more likely than after "nonexistence 1" and why?

Consciousness doesn't come from nothing. We are the result of billions of years of self-replicating polymers using energy from the environment to arrange matter in ways that make more copies of themselves. "Nonexistence 1" is simply the time before the particular arrangement of matter that results in my consciousness existed. All the matter of my brain was already in the world, but it hadn't been arranged into my brain yet. "Nonexistence 2" is simply the time after my brain can no longer sustain the arrangement that produces my consciousness.

Nonexistence isn't some potential from which we spontaneously poof into existence. Our consciousness emerges from the complexity of our brains. The only way to have life after "nonexistence 2" would be to figure out how to reassemble and maintain my physical brain. I don't see that happening.

 

[steenkh]

"What's your dog called?"
"I haven't got a dog."
"What's that one called?"

NoDog 1 as opposed to NoDog 2 which would be after having had a dog.

 

[theprestige]

OK, but anyways, you mean there is no qualitative difference of any sort, right?.

I'll buck the trend and say that of course there's a qualitative difference. But it's literary, not metaphysical.

Schopenhauer and Twain are each making a "before and after" joke. Their jokes depend on our perception of the passage of time and the sequence of events. The nothingness before has the literary quality of being before, distinct from the literary quality of being after, that distinguishes the nothingness after. Twain's joke isn't funny, without that distinction. Schopenhauer's pith isn't pithy, without that distinction.

So we can add equivocation between the literary and the metaphysical, to the equivocations you are equivocating.

 

[bruto]

Of course during the time in which you exist, you are part of the world and of society, and therefore there is a difference to the world between the time before your life and the time after. Before we exist nothing is known, nothing expected, and nothing missed.

Once we begin we have at least the potential for a social impact, small or great. Some of us procreate, and some of our children will, and so forth. Some will die in infancy, some found clans and dynasties. And our lives may have an enduring social impact, depending on what we have done, how it affects the world, and how it is recorded. Some toil as slaves and some drop atom bombs. How important it all is depends on how far ahead we look. Even the persistent is not permanent. We play Bach still, but the universe will exist long after the last human being has sounded the last note.

We ourselves will have ceased to exist, and what we have done cannot be undone, the lives we have lived cannot be unlived, and our stories can be forgotten or changed, but not by us.

 

[Oystein]

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.

I would strongly disagree with that.
Existence (of a person) is a matter of a working (I wouldn't even say functioning) neural matter, or something equivalent. It doesn't matter whether any of the past workings are remembered.

Like you said, we remember nothing from a time well after we were born, even though we are certain that babies of those ages do exist, do have working brains - feel pain, feel satisfied, even seem to have a sense of self and of relationships.

Similarly with people with severe dementia: They cease to remember pretty much any new thing, by and by lose functions (that's why I would not require brain to be "functioning", as a brain and body can survive biologically without strictly the need for any mental functions related to personhood, consciousness etc), by and by also lose existing memories, lose speech even - and yet I insist they exist until the day they die.
Similarly with people in a coma whose consciousness and, presumably, memory functions are on hold and who die without having regained such upper brain functions: I would argue here that their brains have (probably) retained at least a subset of potential mental capabilities (includin memory), even if those have not been called upon for a while.

If on the other hand you keep a body alive that has lost its head (say, you are interrupted in the middle of a head transplantation, or really a body transplantation), then the brainless body probably does not "exist" as a human person (this is assuming that none of the neural fabrics elsewhere in the body - spine and intestines come to mind - can form a mental image of self).

 

[Oystein]

So it's much more likely than after "nonexistence 1" and why?

No.

 

[Oystein]

So nonexistence 1 and nonexistence 2 are the same thing?

Probably not - but that would depend on the meaning of the word "thing".
I say "probably not", because nonexistence is not, IMO, a "thing".

 

[Oystein]

How can nothing have any qualities?

Well, since all statements about the elements of the empty set are true, everything in nothing can have any quality you'd like!

 

[Oystein]

...since the person's body atoms are replaced ...

Is that true for the brain? I don't think it is, but I really don't know!

Sure, some brain cells die over time (and by "some", I mean billions), and some evidently grow even in adulthood. And so the mind changes, too.
But I have always been under the impression that for most people, those who do not suffer catastrophic injuries or illnesses of the brain, much of the bulk of our cranial brain cells stay with us all life long - and I presume that much of the structural matter (cell membranes, DNA, mitochondriae...) also remain?

I may well be mistaken. Perhaps someone knows better than I?

 

[dann]

So in some sense life after death is possible. Or perhaps there is no "self" or "consciousness".

After you die, there is plenty of life, self and consciousness.
They just aren't your life, self and consciousness, obviously, since you have died.
They are all the still living and breathing people's lives, selves and consciousnesses.

 

[Thermal]

I know you disdain philosophy but...

...?

...existence is not all about memory, even if it seems so to you in your personal life.

That's where I was jumping off with Twain's thought. He didn't exist for billions of years. How you know that, Sammy? "I don't recall anything." Well, surely his atoms existed, as well as that spark of life passed down for eons. So it's his subjective sense of unique self that he refers to, I would think. And that, I would humbly opine, is his collective experiences...his memories...as opposed to him physically existing as a thing, or functioning process of an organ or organs.

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.

Agreed, and Sammy C's atoms continue to exist, by any definition. But our sense of self is only memories. Even experiencing the here and now is fleetingly a memory, as we process input in measurable time. Even our sense of right now is a recent memory. We can't remember the future, and we only remember but so far back into the past.

 

[psionl0]

I didn't exist in this world long before I was born and similarly I will not exist in this world after I die.

I don't wish to start a 100 page argument but the purpose of this ftfy is to point out that this is what most of us believe.

All we know is that a person lives in this world for a limited time only. We have zero information on whether a person could possibly have existed (in some form or other) before or after they lived in this world nor if there is an alternative "world" where such a form of person could have existed or will exist.

Sure there is a lot of religious/philosophical speculation on the subject of life before birth or life after death and reincarnation etc but there is absolutely no way that any of that speculation can be tested.