Yes. Another way of putting it in order to sound less speculative, is to remark that the predicate 'being conscious of' has the grammar of an indexical, like 'this', 'here' , 'now' etc. It doesn't make sense to speak of two 'nows', let alone a succession of them, because 'now' isn't an observable referent. Rather, 'now' is an ostensive means of referring. Likewise, it makes no sense to speak of consciousness as changing, appearing or disappearing, for in all of those cases what is being referred to are various observations that one 'is conscious of' .

What about the idea that the new life picks up where the old life ended? Since the new life begins as a baby, and a baby doesn’t process experience, including memories, via verbal language, memories of the old life will not be recognizable in verbal concepts. So there would be an ‘identity carrier’, but one that would remain hidden to the new life, being only implicit and ‘unconscious’.

Interesting observations. Your explanation definitely seems less speculative than mine. I don’t see a way to definitively prove that this is the case, but it’s just where logic is taking me at this point.

You bring up a good point. In my opinion, I think it all depends on whether there actually is an aspect of our individual being that continues on after this life ends, which is currently unknown. It seems to me that it would have to be some aspect of our consciousness or mind that isn’t strictly tied up in our brains or bodies. From a naturalist perspective, there really is no such thing — when you as the body die, everything that makes you ‘you’ permanently ends as well.

If we’re taking a strict naturalist point of view, then it could be the case that the experience of a fully grown adult human could follow someone’s death, for example, and neither the person who died nor the person who’s experience followed that death would be aware that this happened. In other words, it doesn’t have to be a newly born human’s experience that follows death, it could be any living experience.

So are you basically suggesting a 'reincarnation' wherein your previous life experience is present but hidden but it acts as a depository which may/will influence decisions you make in your new incarnation?

I agree with your opening statement. Consciousness is permanent. Even while asleep you still have some hold unto the fact you exist

We already know what happens after death, have the cadaver farms to prove it, and it ain’t pretty.

We already know what happens after death, have the cadaver farms to prove it, and it ain’t pretty. — NOS4A2

That 'we know' what happens after death in the sense to which you refer, is a valid, albeit tautological conclusion relative to the biological definition of death. This 'conclusion' however, is not a conclusion in the sense of an empirically inferred contingent proposition, given that it is more or less a restatement of the premise that death means biological extermination in the sense that is ascertainable by third-parties.

Such behavioural definitions of death are therefore not in conflict with the supposedly conflicting conclusions arrived at via other definitions of death in relation to other conceptual frameworks, such as solipsism, phenomenology and presentism which present a different tautological conclusion.

:broken:

Sleep has always been an interesting phenomenon to me. In dreamless sleep, it always seems as though there is no perception of time, space, or even self, though there is a vague sense of existence or presence. I don’t think that dreamless sleep is the complete absence of experience, but rather a temporary state of repose from the richness of the experience of the waking state.

So are you basically suggesting a 'reincarnation' wherein your previous life experience is present but hidden but it acts as a depository which may/will influence decisions you make in your new incarnation? — universeness

Yes, something like that. This transition would be just a more extreme version of the changes re-make the self on a continual basis. We aren’t the same person from
day to day, and certainly not from year to year, but there is a continuity through change, a slowly changing thematics.

... then the you dies

the body rots

the living involuntarily forget the dead

eternal tides forever crash waves on oblivion

understand: we always already never were...

Neither destination nor direction, this north of the north pole (i.e. "life after life", "you after you") fetish is the delusion.

:death: :flower:

The other conclusions beg the question. They assume that an entity or substance exists within the biology but is not the biology, and second, that this entity or substance can somehow persist beyond the biology itself. It seems to me one should be proven before contemplating the other.

Consciousness is not an object or a subject but experience. We experience life as a body but can experience life in an alternative way too. All that is required is for the biology to die.

An experience of what? It is the experience of a body, by a body. It’s body all the way down.

Non-existence is not a state. It's nothing, so nothing can't be because it is not anything at all. The afterlife flows from Descartes's cogito. Body is substance, experience is states.

Experience could be construed as the state of a living body, perhaps. But beyond that it cannot go. Both the body and thus all states of the body dissolves upon death.

It truly doesn't matter what happens after death. It's just hard to be rendered something that stiffens and rots. But surely the dead have the last laugh. Surely.

The other conclusions beg the question. They assume that an entity or substance exists within the biology but is not the biology, and second, that this entity or substance can somehow persist beyond the biology itself. It seems to me one should be proven before contemplating the other. — NOS4A2

The presentist/idealist alternative doesn't speculatively assume a soul substance, rather it simply treats first-person experience as ontologically fundamental and unchanging. Of course, it's conclusions beg it's own ontology, but this is unavoidable whatever stance one takes.

The question one needs to ask, is given that different ontological assumptions about life lead to radically different conclusions about death that are in large part tautological, why choose a single ontology as being correct? Why not accept all of them and accept their respective conclusions relative to their respective ontology?

Both the body and thus all states of the body dissolves upon death. — NOS4A2

I agree with this quote completely. However, when a body dies and all of its experiential states dissolve, there are still other living bodies having experiential states, either now or in the future. I don’t think there would be a continuation or transference of any experiential states from a body that dies to a body that is living, but I do think the entirely distinct and separate experiential states of a body that is living would follow the cessation of the experience of a body that died.

This, of course, assumes that there really is no dualism — no souls, spirits, or permanent selves that inhabit bodies, just bodies having experiential states.

I think out of sheer intellectual curiosity it can be interesting to try to determine what happens after death. Does it really serve any practical purpose? Maybe not. And no one can know with absolute certainty.

To think that experience is a something coming from the body leads one to an experience of dissolution. You are attaching yourself to the body experientially by wishing death. To wish life is to see body and consciousness as not identical for the reason that experience is empty of a nature while a body has a nature and substance. What I am saying is not really dualism or parallism because the body is who a person is but experience and bodily identity are not the same except in thought

In the soothing light of the infinite cyclic big bang, reincarnation is the norm. In every new pair of universes, we are born again. The moment I die, I'm reborn in the next one. How else can it be? Being dead takes no time. Like this, all creatures in our universe return infinite times! No reincarnation in other bodies in the current universe. How can my constituent particles after my death reshape in another body? They can't. A new fresh start is needed. And nature provides...

While it can be fun to speculate about what happens after death, without some rational basis, its just a supposition, not really philosophy.

From everything we know, you are a physical entity. If we damage the brain in particular areas, you will lose capabilities. There are several examples. Phineus Gage had a complete personality change when a rebar shot through his skull. There are people who cannot remember longer than a few minutes, which of course limits who they are. There is an example of a man who had brain damage and could no longer see colors, everything was black and white.

Barring extremes, diet and proper firing of the brain result in a happier and different person. A person without depression is very different from a person with depression. When you get drunk, your brain hinders your ability to think. That isn't your soul being affected by alcohol.

Finally, there's death. We have countless cases. In every case of a person dying, they've remained dead. The brain is gone, and so is the person. There is no field of consciousness. No electromagnetic transportation of our consciousness. There is only the belief and desire that such things will occur.

I am not trying to be mean, or get you down. On the contrary, understanding the truth of your own inevitable death can help you in how you approach life. Make sure you make the best of it, one day it will be gone forever.

I agree that, as far as we can tell, we are entirely physical entities, which means that I agree that there probably is no supernatural soul that leaves the body or some sort of transportation of consciousness at death.

However, I am open to the possibility that when I as a body die and the experience that I as a body am having permanently comes to an end, another living body’s experience follows it. Under this view, the two experiences (i.e. mine that ended and the one that follows it) would in no way be related to each other nor would there be any connection between them. My experience stops occurring, and an experience that is occurring follows it with nothing connecting them.

It doesn’t have to be the case that the next experience is that of a baby or child. Maybe the next experience after mine ends will be that of a fully grown adult or an entirely different species.

I will be the first to admit that this is speculation, but I think it’s at least a possibility.

Finally, there's death. We have countless cases. In every case of a person dying, they've remained dead. The brain is gone, and so is the person. There is no field of consciousness. No electromagnetic transportation of our consciousness. There is only the belief and desire that such things will occur — Philosophim

However... There is the possibility that once all matter in our universe has turned into black holes, accelerating away from each other in a couple of trillion of years while turning into EM radiation, so there will be nothing left tha vague massless remembrances turning into oblivion, that it all starts again. With the same you and me. Maybe we had this conversation before. Once all matter has gone in our universe and only the interaction fields are left, then why can't newly appeared matter at the Umbellicus not give birth to new particles leading to us?

I think out of sheer intellectual curiosity it can be interesting to try to determine what happens after death. Does it really serve any practical purpose? Maybe not. — Paul Michael

On the contrary it very much does, considering the fact that all moral and ethical conclusions are relative to the premise of death that one adopts. In my opinion, society's beliefs regarding death are very much decided according to the behavioural advantages that result from holding those beliefs, which under capitalism tends to favour beliefs that motivate someone to work and spend intensely, as if they only lived once.

On the other hand, if the general public believed in reincarnation, and hence that there is no escape from the physical suffering perpetuated by unfair economic outcomes and environmental destruction, then I cannot see why they would continue to accept the current system of capitalism.

Cultural atheism under capitalism is more a less a sect of Protestant Christianity rather than being it's antithesis. The myth of the afterlife has only slightly changed, with ethereal promises of a heavenly paradise being substituted for an equally ethereal promise of perpetual nothingness - which most boomers are banking on for their post-humus escape from the mess they created on Earth.

Wow, I never actually made the exact connections or came to the conclusions that you did about how important one’s view of death is regarding morality and ethics. But after reading your post I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree.

Your point about the atheist afterlife of perpetual nothingness makes a lot of sense.

The question one needs to ask, is given that different ontological assumptions about life lead to radically different conclusions about death that are in large part tautological, why choose a single ontology as being correct? Why not accept all of them and accept their respective conclusions relative to their respective ontology?

Simply because observation and study confirms the one and not the other. I am just unable to take the leap from assumption to conclusion.

There are deeper questions, like is anything real temporal, that pertain, that don't rely on a linear framework of time, and time is not linear as we know it. What exactly is death in a reality where the past is as real as the present? This is not known.

This chance is almost certainly zero. Even if the universe happens again, even a slight fluctuation would result in a different outcome. You only happen once. You will never happen again. Embrace that.