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What is death like?

Halfcentaur said:
The great majority of people who were pronounced clinically dead and later resuscitated have reported no near death experience. The majority of people, believers and non believers, report nothing at all. A dreamless sleep no different than before you were born and were able to form memories.
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A slight aside - does this ever actually happen? I know people's hearts and/or respiration can fail but is that really considered "being dead"?
 
It's not "like" anything, because it isn't anything. It's like asking me my thoughts on the content of a perfect vacuum. There's nothing to describe, it's simply an absence of life. The philosophical part of my brain isn't scared of being dead for this reason, but the evolutionarily programmed part is still saying I need to get lots of stuff done first, like sleep with lots of attractive girls, and then maybe have some kids and teach them how to hunt and forge basic tools.
 
Darat said:
A slight aside - does this ever actually happen? I know people's hearts and/or respiration can fail but is that really considered "being dead"?
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Clinically dead does not mean that the brain has shut down.
 
punshhh said:
I'm more interested in whether people have reconciled themselves with what it means to them and their psychology.

Also focussing on our inability to imagine the state of being dead, while knowing that it is our destiny.
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I think you will find that atheists in general are reconciled, while many religious people simply can't accept death, they must imagine they will live forever in some form.
 
Darat said:
A slight aside - does this ever actually happen? I know people's hearts and/or respiration can fail but is that really considered "being dead"?
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"Clinical death" is when circulation ceases, but this is no longer the same as death, since some patients can be resuscitated. "Death" is now considered to be when brain activity ceases.
 
BoogieWoogieWookie said:
I concur with the surgery and anesthesia comments. I have had more than thirty major operations (ones that require more than local anesthesia). Without going back and looking at my records, I believe that more than twenty of those required general anesthesia.

The longest one required about twelve hours. This is a very long time to "be under", I was told. What I remember of it is the anesthesiologist asking if I was OK. I replied something to the effect of being quite used to it by now, but still a little scared because of the length of time it would take. He then told me that he had all kinds of good drugs to take care of that and I wouldn't be scared of anything in just a few seconds.

Then, as if by magic, I was lying in a different room with people sitting and standing around my bed. I was quite groggy and very uncomfortable with the breathing tube down my throat and tied down such that one arm is all that I could move.

There was no sensation or memory of anything between. It was exactly the same with the other times I was put to sleep. I suppose this is what it is like to "not exist".
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That's my experience.. the guy said "I'll be your anesthesologist".. I was gone, and woke up in a different room with "no sensation of anything between". But conscious of the void.
 
punshhh said:
Not existing "forever", it doesn't compute.
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Nothing that is "you" exists past death. Your components do, and become components of other things as they disintegrate. But those daisies your corpse is pushing up aren't "you".
You are gone.
Forever.
 
Ocelot said:
In twenty years time I will either be alive or dead. I find it difficult to imagine what being alive will be like at that age. I have no difficulty knowing whether a state of non-existence will feel like anything at all
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Talked to an active 87 year old at the Mall yesterday.
I wonder about the next 14 years... :)
 
We must distinguish between what death feels like and what dying feels like.
Dying may be extremely unpleasant.

Death probably feels a lot like your sofa feels to your television.
 
I Ratant said:
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With any luck at all.
The long disintegration of the body and the mind due to the numerous diseases, and mental failings are awful.
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A good friend of mine dropped down stone dead two weeks ago. It was hard to lose him but rather that than see him suffer with some awful disease. Where is his ''forever'' now punshhh? He wasn't famous so when the last person who knew him dies, he will be really gone, forever.
 
This quote from Wittgenstein seems relevant:

Ludvig Wittgenstein said:
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
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I've never really grasped the idea of "never waking up again." I realize that it seems like the most likely result but I can't get a handle on it. The metaphor of gaps in consciousness while still alive doesn't really cover it, because you are always looking at those from across the gap, so to speak. How can experience of the present moment be like anything at all if at some later point there will be absolutely no memory or experience?

Not that the alternative makes any sense either; the lack of a functioning brain seems to rule out experience of any kind.
 
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