The OP's question is actually really good and more intractable than it appears, imo. All the answers along the line of well you won't exist after you die, and you didn't exist before you were born, while true, miss the point.

This response, in particular, encapsulates the confusion:.

"So, no need to worry about it. If something wakes up and thinks it is you, it won't be you. It also leads to the fact that we will never be able to "upload" our consciousness into computers or robots or inhabit other bodies."

Ironically, it's those arguing against the OP's coherence who cling most to old and ancient ideas about identity and the simplicity/unity of the soul. They're confusing "I" or "me" qua persistent self-identity (as in "I am Jake") with the actual question - which is about the emergence of conscious existence from non-existence - i.e. it's about the emergence of an (indefinite) process of identification, not of some specific, definite identity.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar.

What I mean (I think) by me coming into existence again, is the same 'subject of experience', experiencing again.

My present experiences all have this first person phenomenal quality of 'subjectivity'. There's not just a free floating visual field experiencing itself, likewise for all my other experiences - rather there's this distinct feeling that it's all being felt by the same subject. All my experiences have this subjective component to them. 'Being felt by me'. All my various experiences have this unified quality to them, they're all brought together into a cohesive present experience, because they all feel like they're happening to the same subject.

So why are my experiences mine and yours yours, and neither of us can feel each others sensations. why am I me and not you? The most obvious answer (to me) is that there exists two separate subjects of experience. The subject of experience is just whatever it is that's undergoing all the sensations that make up your conscious experience. Whatever it is that those experiences are being felt/known by. I suppose whatever that thing is, it's not really knowable - at the very least it can't be sensed or experienced (because the subject would be the thing doing the experiencing). But it seems to me that it must exist. When you break your arm it's *your* pain, you're the one that has to feel it, it's being inflicted upon you and nobody else. How could this be if there is no subject of experience? If it's an illusion that the pain experience is being felt by a subject, what is it that's being fooled by the illusion? Nothing?

So, how do I know that whatever it is that's 'being pained' by my broken arm, is never going to be pained, or experience anything again after this lifetime?

Is there actually something that's 'being pained'?

I really have no idea what I am. That I even exist in any way is incomprehensibly bizzare!

Anyway, it's tangential to the thread and the OP seems to have no interest in the Buddhist account of the matter, so I'll leave it at that. — Wayfarer

I don't really grasp how the Buddha says there is no self, and yet you come back to the world in the next lifetime, and what you come back as depends upon your karma.

If there's no self, what lives the next lifetime? What accumulates the karma?

Actually I take what I said about a subject of experience back. Because then what am I saying, that there exists a non-experiential subject of conscious experience which continues to exist after this lifetime ends, and what it just sits there ready for another life to undergo? Seems wrong.

If I fall off a cliff, my conscious experience will cease. The question is, why wouldn't it start again? There was a cessation of conscious experience before I started experiencing this lifetime, but that didn't stop my lifetime coming into existence. So why would the cessation of conscious experience after this lifetime be any different from the one before? If they are the same thing, and we know because we exist right now that conscious experience follows after a absence of it, then it seems almost mandatory that conscious experience must follow after the absence of it at my death.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar. — csalisbury

Precisely! You explained it far clearer than my ramblings haha.

Honestly, this same problem has pestered me for a long time so it'a kind of a weird relief to see someone else independently come across it. I still want to hone and clarify it, because it usually is met with immediate dismissal - which I understand. You have to really delicately draw out the aporias of identity to show why those rejoinders miss the mark and I think I'm still failing to do that well. But I'm always trying to work on a clear articulation of this idea. It's so much more interesting and difficult than it first appears!

I actually started a thread on the old philosophy forums site about this very thing. I have that OP saved somewhere, I'll try to dig it up.

I don't really grasp how the Buddha says there is no self, and yet you come back to the world in the next lifetime, and what you come back as depends upon your karma.

If there's no self, what lives the next lifetime? What accumulates the karma? — dukkha

That's a very good question, and quite a hard one to answer. First of all, in the early Buddhist texts, this is not a question that receives much elaboration, beyond the formulaic expression that 'the Buddha knows and sees the fate of beings in the next life due to their actions in the present life'. It is generally understood that beings are reborn in one of the 'six domains' due to their actions.

But the Buddha was emphatic that there was no essence, self or soul, which migrates from life to life. Those who interpreted his teaching to mean that there was a self that migrates, were corrected in no uncertain terms (e.g. Sati the Fisherman's Son.) This was because in the Buddha's day, there were wandering ascetics who taught just such an idea - that the self was an unchangeable essence that went from life to life, indefinitely, for countless lifetimes. But the question Buddhists ask is: where is this 'self'? Where is something that never changes? Show it to me! And of course the questioners can never do that, because there is no such thing.

So when asked if a person is reborn, a Buddhist will often answer the question with another question: 'are you the same person that you were when you were seven?' 'No'. 'Then are you a different person?' 'No'. So the same logic applies in the case of re-birth. In this life a being sets in motion a set of causes, which then cause the birth of a future life, that is born as a consequence of those actions. Is that being the same being, or different? It's the same answer as above: neither the same nor different.

The central philosophy of Buddhism is dependent origination i.e. everything arises because of causes and conditions. That analysis is applied on many levels, and takes quite a bit of study to understand. But the way it was formulated in the Buddhist tradition, was that mind (citta) is actually a stream of momentary events which gives rise to the sequence of lived experiences. This happens on a micro level, i.e. moment to moment, but also on a macro level, i.e. life to life. In Mayahana Buddhism, this 'mind-stream' was given the designation citta-santāna (see here).

As to 'who this is happening to' - that's the million dollar question! When I was a child, walking to school, I used to have this odd idea - if I suddenly was transported into the body of the person walking towards me, but at the same time, I inherited all their memories, then how would I know anything had happened? It seemed to me that I couldn't tell. And that, I think, is because at the center of one's sense of being is a pure potentiality, that the sense of being can only be differentiated with regard to memories and the like (not that I would have understood it in those terms, at the time.) That is not how Buddhists explain it, but it is one of the ideas that interested me in Buddhism.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar. — csalisbury

But then you need to ask it in different language. You can't say "Will I (re)awaken" or "Will he."

And course, "Will some other consciousness awaken after I die" is trivial.

Your consciousness, your sense of self, etc. are simply brain states re your particular brain.

It's so much more interesting and difficult than it first appears! — csalisbury

Kudos to you if you can express an issue in this vein so that it's not simply muddled-to-incoherent thinking and so that it seems like an interesting and difficult issue, but we're sure not anywhere near that yet.

I don't agree at all.

Also a lot of people don't seem to get that if consciousness is simply the state of your brain, this means that the body and the world around you perceive - being conscious experience - must itself be a particular brain state.

So you're left in the horrible epistemic position of the brain state that gives rise to/is equal to your conscious experience not being within your head that you feel, see, touch, rather all those sense experiences, and the world around you, and the people you interact with, must all already be the particular state of a brain.

So basically you're a homunculus. An onboard body/world model within the brain of a physical human.

This is a horrible epistemic position to be on, because from the position of the onboard self/world model, you do not have any access to anything BUT the model. So if you have no access to the supposed brain which is carrying the conscious experience which you exist as within itself (or, as itself/as it's state), then I don't see how you can justify even positing it's existence. You can't know anything about it from your position, all you have access to is the phenomenal world.

Also what does it even mean to say that a state of a physical brain IS your conscious experience? How can something experiential be literally also a non experiential physical thing?

our consciousness, your sense of self, etc. are simply brain states re your particular brain.

Actually, that is not at all established - it is the basic idea of philosophical materialism, in the form of what is called 'identity theory'. However it's not by any means scientifically established, and can be challenged on many grounds.

Your consciousness, your sense of self, etc. are simply brain states re your particular brain.

I know you're not impressed by the OP's line of thought. Rather than try to sway you to that line of thinking, I think it'd be more fruitful to ask you to elaborate your own. What do you mean by 'states'?

I vote that the discussion about brain states be a different OP as it is irrelevant to this thread.

I don't think it's irrelevant.

Well, it's not irrelevant, but it is a large topic in its own right.

How do you know that? What's your argument to support such a belief?

So, no need to worry about it. If something wakes up and thinks it is you, it won't be you. It also leads to the fact that we will never be able to "upload" our consciousness into computers or robots or inhabit other bodies

The only way we will be able to know if we will never be able to upload our consciousness into computers or robots is to try it by experiment. I see no reason to dismiss the idea of a gradual introduction of synthetic processors into the brain, if there is a continuation of consciousness. Although it does occur to me that there would be some psychological issues, or a alteration on personality developing into a "different" person. But the critical issue is that the continuous living experience of me would be maintained. I would still be here, although feeling different. Rather than having entirely ceased to exist, when my apparatus stop working.

There is a conflation, much like with the virgin birth and immaculate conception, non-self (not "no self") and co-dependent origination are different things. Non-self is a strategy. It's so different when it's me! Non-self is the active distancing, and development, or cultivation of non-identification with thought, body, aggregates, world, universe others, or anything else. It's a strategy for reducing the pain of truth, and increasing resilience. The second is an alternative explanation, or idea of the self to the atman, or eternal unchanging soul (actually just literally "breath"....). It also isn't "no self", but rather that we're always changing, no part of us is permanent, and we're a product of causality.

He's wrong on both points, but that is my understanding of his views.

So the OP isn't really talking about whether he as the same person will exist, but, rather, whether he'll emerge into existence again - whether he'll get 'caught back up in' existence. Even as something different. The focus on pronouns misses the problem entirely - it's a problem that is difficult to pose due to the limitations of grammar.

I know it's difficult to articulate with the language we have. But I think we all know instinctively what you are thinking about and I have puzzled over it for a long time too.

I remember clearly a realisation I had at the age of about 5, that when I die, I won't be aware of the passage of time, so a very very long time could pass in an instant to me. Also that the same circumstances which resulted in me being here would happen again eventually, so I would find myself here again eventually, and in my perception, it would have happened in an instant. So when I die, the next instant I would be reborn.

I think the problem with this issue philosophically is that it seems to hinge on whether one considers the existence of an immortal soul or the equivalent. Or whether one is of the opinion that we are an emergent property of physical material etc. In the former reincarnation is pretty much a given and in the later, it's impossibility is a given.

Also a lot of people don't seem to get that if consciousness is simply the state of your brain, this means that the body and the world around you perceive - being conscious experience - must itself be a particular brain state. — dukkha

You can add me to that list, because that simply isn't true. It doesn't follow that if consciousness is simply a brain state, then everything is a brain state. I have no idea what your argument would be for that, but surely the argument isn't sound.

This is a horrible epistemic position to be on, because from the position of the onboard self/world model, you do not have any access to anything BUT the model. — dukkha

I'm guessing that you buy some sort of representationalist theory of perception? I do not.

How can something experiential be literally also a non experiential physical thing? — dukkha

Brains are not non-experiential obviously.

By the way, so you are, or were, an atheist who was also a dualist?

Actually, that is not at all established - it is the basic idea of philosophical materialism, in the form of what is called 'identity theory'. However it's not by any means scientifically established, and can be challenged on many grounds. — Wayfarer

Plenty of people do not believe it. Those folks have mistaken beliefs.

I don't know if I can cope with such polemical fire-power, but I might start up a thread on the subject.

Well, as if it matters that some people do not believe it or feel that it's "established." No matter what we're talking about, some people do not believe it or feel that it's "established." And otherwise, if you're proposing that there's a consensus that doesn't believe it, AND you're proposing that consensuses matter in such things, you're forwarding an argumentum ad populum.

Around here (and on another philosophy forum I've been frequenting), there are a bunch of people with religious views they need to protect, and who are various stripes of idealists (which is also probably a result of religious views they need to protect), so obviously they're not going to buy physicalism (or "materailism"), they're not going to buy relativism or subjectivism re value judgments, and so on. On my view, philosophical views are mostly ad hoc constructions supporting things we already believe. I'm not excluding myself from that, either, but it certainly isn't limited to me. That's how people operate in general.

What do you mean by 'states'? — csalisbury

Nothing at all unusual, just the normal sense of "state:" the particular (dynamic) conditions, that is, the particular set of materials and their (dynamic) relations at a set of contiguous points of time (or abstracted as a single point of time).

How do you know that? What's your argument to support such a belief? — John

Well, the first part of it is that the very idea of nonphysical existents is completely incoherent.

" 2015, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has said the procedure (head anastomosis venture) might be feasible – with improved technology and more accurate ability to keep neural tissue perfused – before the end of 2017, when he intends to perform the procedure in either the United States or China.[A 30-year-old Russian programmer Valery Spiridonov with Werdnig–Hoffmann disease (type I spinal muscular atrophy) and rapidly declining health has volunteered to offer his head for the study." Wikipedia

He plans to do a brain transplant (probably in Asia from what I can gather).

I bring it up because I think it points to an identity issue that has to do with the "I" as referent to some indefinable essence that is referred to when I say 'I am constituted by my experiences', it is what makes these experiences mine.

So he goes ahead and finds someone (Joe) whoes is brain dead and the Doc gets all the consents, finds a place that will allow the operation and the operation is a success. What happens to the "I" that represented 'my experience', is the resultant being me or Joe, did the 'my' as in 'my body' die and a new 'I' emerge as some sort of synthesis of Joe & me? Or perhaps Joe is now me.

Even if there is some vital essence that persists, it could not be the "I", or mine that it was.

It's important to note that we use "I" or "self" in a couple different senses, one where we tend to only be referring to our conscious experience, our thoughts, etc., and one where we tend to refer to our entire body, or at least the parts of our body that are important to remain attached at any given moment (so that people don't strongly associate personal identity with the ends of fingernails, particular hairs, skin cells that slough off, etc., but they do associate it with their entire feet, arms, etc.)

In the mental sense, then the person whose brain is transplanted is the "I" or "self" in question, and Joe is irrelevant. In the entire body sense, it's a combination of the transplanted and Joe (since the entire body sense does include one's brain, too).

I think that brain transplants are certainly feasible, and someday they'll probably be relatively commonplace, but at first, there are likely to be a lot of issues that have to be tackled, akin to organ rejections and so on, re getting a different brain to work well with a particular rest-of-the-body . . . and that will probably always take years of physical therapy afterwards to be able to adjust to it and function normally re control of limbs and so on.

I think there may be a basic error in saying 'my experience constitutes me'. Suppose everything that is embedded in the brain could be downloaded, put on a disc and that disc were capable of being uploaded into as many brains as wanted, overwriting whatever was there. Are the resultants all the same individual? No, I don't think that it works, since they all would have different bodies.