If it's not my consciousness that continues, what is the point? Other consciousnesses will continue after you are dead - is that the recompense? But we don't need reincarnation for that.

Inclined to agree. But most will mistake consciousness for one's own conscious self-awareness, which is but the tip of a very large iceberg.

That "aggregate of material elements" is the very source of value. — Banno

In Buddhist philosophy the five skandha are the aggregates of

1. Name and form (Rūpa)
2. Feelings or sensations (Vedanā)
3. Perceptions/Cognition (Saṃjñā, saññā, samjfia or sanjna)
4. Mental formations, volition, habits, or fabrications. (Saṅkhāra, samskarah, or saṃskāra). ...
5. Consciousness awareness (Vijnana, vijfianam or Vinanna) (ref)

All of which are said to be empty of own-being, i.e. not possessing their own causal principle, and therefore incapable of providing anything of lasting value, being impermanent, devoid of self, and unsatisfying.

From our point of view, they must be of value, as there is nothing else, nothing beyond. But from the Buddhist perspective, the reason this is seen as nihilistic is the implication that at death, the deeds of the most heinous criminal and those of the most altruistic philanthropist are all equally negated as there are no consequences for them (although of course there are consequences for others).

But then I'm also reminded of these aphorisms, with which you're no doubt familiar.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.

the deeds of the most heinous criminal and those the most altruistic philanthropist are all equally negated as there are no consequences for them — Wayfarer

So Indian religion is an elaborate confabulation from the yearning for justice? Fine - as Lennon sang, whatever gets you through the night, it's alright.



There's more than just the Tractatus, from where your quotes come, to consider. We make it so with the games we play. What we value is - well, valuable. We are the source of value. And the "we" is intentional, not the "I" of Nietzsche.

So Indian religion is an elaborate confabulation from the yearning for justice? Fine - as Lennon sang, whatever gets you through the night, it's alright. — Banno

There's a book by an analytical philosopher, Mark Johnston (Princeton, from memory) - Surviving Death. He attempts to stay firmly within the naturalist lane.

Johnston’s argument challenges the Cartesian idea that an enduring ego or soul is required for meaningful survival. He proposes instead that re-birth could consist in the continuation of one’s moral concerns and commitments in future personas. He confronts the common Western objection: If I don’t persist as a distinct person, how can that future person be me? He argues that this objection rests on a mistaken notion of identity fixed, rather than recognizing identity as a dynamic pattern of values, intentions, and relationships. Johnston’s account connects survival to the persistence of what we care about. This echoes Buddhist ethics, where moral causation is the primary thread linking past and future lives. His focus on love, moral concern, and relational continuity offers a powerful secular counterpart to Buddhist teachings on compassionate action as a means of transcending the egoic self.
gives meaning to the idea of survival without postulating a supernatural soul.

...re-birth could consist in the continuation of one’s moral concerns and commitments in future personas. — Wayfarer

...which may well happen without any recourse to mystical notions... those with whom you have interacted may carry on in kind; see Hofstadter's I am a strange loop, an odd but quite appealing little book.

But that is not what you are gesturing towards, is it? Again, if that is all you are saying, then there is little with which I might disagree.

Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me.

how swifty the conversation moves on to something easier to circumscribe.

I prefer the original topic about impending death.

We are still on that topic.

Okay. I will try to stay with it.

Another popular position is so-called eternal oblivion. Simply put, there’s nothing at all after we die. After all, if it’s the body that produces consciousness, there’s no reason to believe in any continuity of life once the body ceases to function. — Zebeden

Its not a popular position, its the only rational conclusion we can draw at this point in science and history.

What bothers me, though, is that there is no reason to believe that consciousness cannot reoccur again. It already happened once – I’m conscious now. Why wouldn’t this phenomenon occur again? But if it can happen, then it’s no longer eternal oblivion. It appears to me as some sort of reincarnation. — Zebeden

Not quite. You are conscious because of the way matter and energy is arranged. In theory if we could copy your exact physical make up we could reproduce your consciousness. The funny thing is, "you" wouldn't be you. If you still existed there would be two different consciousnesses, one in each body. Meaning that if you died and we reconstructed you...it wouldn't be you either.

Even if there's a heaven, its merely a reproduction of you here. It would be a new body and brain constructed with the pertinent memories of your now dead body. Which, if that's the case, why wait for you to die at all? If you were good, wouldn't heaven just reproduce you up there at your prime? Its not like your old shell will ever know. Why wait until you're old? Maybe if you're really good heaven makes a few copies of you as you age, each needed for different purposes.

The thing is, there is only one 'you'. This is it. It can't actually be reproduced as you in that location and moment in time is a seminal event of irreproducibility. So...better live well. There is no do over, no eternal reward or punishment. There is only now and how far you can carry the future version of you after present you dies.

Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me. — Wayfarer

What difference to you would it actually make if it was "for real"?

As death is inevitable, one of the main questions any person can ask themselves is what awaits us when we die. — Zebeden

when you are dead, there is no longer a "you". — Banno

when you are out of the game nothing will disturb you because there will be no 'you' to be disturbed. — Janus

:fire:

What bothers me, though, is that there is no reason to believe that consciousness cannot reoccur again. — Zebeden

On the contrary, all impersonal evidence suggests that, even while alive, "self-consciousness" is the river one cannot step in twice. What you/we "believe" doesn't change this fundamental fact of nature. (Re: "afterlife" from a 2023 post)

:death: :flower:

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — 180 Proof

:up:

This again is the problem of confounding what you believe with what is true. That you will not know that you are oblivious does not mean you are not oblivious... Rather the opposite. — Banno

Does it mean you are oblivious, even if you will not know you are oblivious?

If it's not my consciousness that continues, what is the point? — Banno

We're talking about what is actually true, not what we want to be true, no? There may be no point from bert1's point of view. I enjoy talking about myself in the third person.

Other consciousnesses will continue after you are dead — Banno

I'm not sure they do. Other identities continue after I'm dead. I'm not sure there can be more than one consciousness. Insulation between 'consciousnesses' is a function of identity it seems to me.

I'm not sure they do. — bert1

Ok. Others will be. :wink:

That's a possibility, but it's question begging. It sounds like we just disagree about there being a distinction between self and consciousness.

'You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the ocean in a drop' ~ Rumi

You can't read the same book twice if it has been erased before the second reading. — Nils Loc

That is the kind of oblivion that I fear.

It applies to memory of information and events but most keenly to my life as homo faber. I have learned a number of trades and there is always a period of disconnection when I have been away too long.

When the art returns, it is like coming back to a forgotten life. The ability frees me from numb ineffectual gestures made in dreams against imagined opponents.

That is the kind of oblivion that I fear. — Paine

There is no such thing as eternal oblivion. Even when you fall asleep at night, you don't notice time while you were sleeping. You close and open the eyes, momentarily it is next morning.

If you were spending a whole night without sleeping and fully being awake, a night would be very a long time till next morning. Without mind, there is no time i.e. no past, no present, no future and definitely no eternity.

And when one dies, the mind will be totally cut off from the rest of the world, and other minds too in any relation it has made with them due to nonexistence of the mind.

I am not claiming what returns or not in the frame of some future {maybe} possible world. My life dissolves before my eyes.

On the other hand, your last statement is a declaration of fact that is beyond yours or my experience.

No. It is not a declaration.

It is only an inference from what we see from the dead, and we also reason and infer the same situation to the ultimate fate of the living including us.

I was not questioning why you claimed what you did. Claiming what minds are is another matter. Literally.

You seem to have misunderstood the inference as a declaration, hence pointed it out.

Or you misunderstood the context of expressing my limited understanding of our experience.

I knew what you meant. No misunderstanding there at all.
At the point where experience is limited, inference takes place.

Plato addressed that better than I can.

What was his view on it?

Another popular position is so-called eternal oblivion. Simply put, there’s nothing at all after we die. After all, if it’s the body that produces consciousness, there’s no reason to believe in any continuity of life once the body ceases to function. — Zebeden

Some religions teach that the body is merely a temporary receptacle for the eternal soul --- which is temporarily oblivious to its heavenly history. Since I don't buy that unfalsifiable notion, I'll accept your implication that the conscious Mind is dependent on the sensory Body for Life, to extend the Mind over time, and to provide sensory inputs from which the Mind can create a worldview. In that case, Life, as we experience it, and Mind, as we know it, are dependent on a functioning World as a viable habitat for the body. Hence, no physical World, no metaphysical Mind.

The most generally accepted scientific hypothesis for the beginning of space-time is the Big Bang theory. But some thinkers are not satisfied with the something-from-nothing implication of that sudden emergence of Space (matter) and Time (change) from who-knows-where-&-why. So they ask a child-like question : what happened before the Bang? Those who do not believe in God or magical creation typically answer with a shrug : that the question is meaningless ; no Time = no Before. Likewise, what happens after Heat Death of the universe is unintelligible and incomprehensible.

Yet others may imagine that the timeline of our temporary universe is bounded on one end with eternal nowhereness and on the other end with infinite nothingness. However, in between those absent book-ends of the Space-Time-Line is a brief era of self-aware Mind (300,000 years and counting), whereas in the previous 14 billion years there was only Matter-occupying-space and Change-wasting-time, but zero Self-making-memories. That amounts to 0.00002142857 percent of Time with no knowledge of anything, including Myself. Nevertheless, during the current period of memory-making there must be a lot of meaning to forget, when the body ceases to support its brain functions. And some believe that I am what I remember. Hence, no remembrance, no Self : a zombie ghost.

If so, the possibility of "eternal oblivion" (absence of awareness) may be a valid philosophical topic for speculation, but with no scientific data to provide a grounding from which to conjecture. Hence, if "eternal oblivion" is possible-but-unprovable, why bother to worry about it? Unfortunately, most of us have been indoctrinated, not with abstract notions of nothingness, but with myths of eternal agonizing punishment, from which oblivion or obliteration would be a blessing, and not something to fret about. Yet, traditions of post-life oblivion or perpetual pain typically offer only blind faith, leap into the abyss, as the saving grace to avoid the void and the inferno. Does that make sense? :worry: