3 does follow from 1 and 2. So there's that.

My advice is to not give advice, unless sought. It's rather pompous.

So again, my bottle of bleach has this written on it: danger! Do not drink. What does that imply - that drinking it will benefit me or harm me?

My reason says of death: danger, avoid dying. What does that imply about it?

I say no one exists without the living body. — 180 Proof

I can certainly apply your extensional definition of a person to the people I meet. In which case, if I notice their body to be deconstructed I can say they are dead by definition. As an aside, how do you suggest that I should extend this definition in the case their body is reconstituted, considering the fact that the biological identity of any person is open and under-determined?

On other hand, what does it mean if I apply this definition to my own body? Does the logic still work in the same way? For I sense a person's body in relation to say my field of vision. But can I speak of sensing my field vision?

Eh? It's not about fear. If Tom - who has no fear of dying for he's just watching a bird eat a fly - is shot in the back of the head, he's harmed by that. — Bartricks

Yes, we know he's harmed by being shot, by dying, but we don't know that he is harmed by being dead.

Epicurus assumed that when we are dead we are nothing, and he was correct in concluding that is that is so, then we are not harmed by being dead.

I don't believe that most philosophers "think that's nuts" since most philosophers as far as I know ( according to some polls I've seen), don't believe in an afterlife. If you believe in an afterlife, then whether or not you believe you will be harmed by death depends on what you believe that afterlife is like. No one knows whether there is an afterlife, or whether, if there is one, it will be better or worse than this life, so no one knows whether being dead (being dead understood relative to this life) is harmful or not.

I don't have any idea why you question the obvious fact that being harmed requires existence: how could you be harmed, or anything else, if you don't exist?

The whole thing should become much clearer to you if talk, not in terms of the question of death being harmful, but in terms of the questions of dying being harmful and being dead being harmful.

Sigh. Yes, most contemporary philosophers do not believe in an afterlife. Which is why they think there is a puzzle about why death is harmful.
They try and explain how it would harm you despite you not existing at the time. And they fail and point this out to one another.
And it isn't dying - there's no puzzle about that. It's death. Not dying. Death. Christ.

reincarnation — TiredThinker

Reincarnation isn't a falsifiable hypothesis with respect to recollection of past lives due to the fact that it's compatible with both memories of past lives (good recall) and also no memories of past lives (poor/defective recall).

Reincarnation is pseudoscientific woo woo!

Sigh. Yes, most contemporary philosophers do not believe in an afterlife. Which is why they think there is a puzzle about why death is harmful.
They try and explain how it would harm you despite you not existing at the time. And they fail and point this out to one another.
And it isn't dying - there's no puzzle about that. It's death. Not dying. Death. Christ. — Bartricks

I have come across some ideas along the line that death is harmful in that it is a deprivation of life. I don't buy that because if there is no afterlife, then there is no one to be deprived of anything. So, I can't see any justification for thinking that being dead is a harm.

It also seems obvious that dying is likely, if not certain, to be harmful, for the reasons I have already stated. You have not attempted to address this, which makes you look like a "bad faith" or willfully blind interlocutor.

I think your confusion about this will be ameliorated if you think not of death, which can mean both dying and being dead, and instead think separately about the possible harms of dying and being dead, and the appropriate imaginable scenarios for each which would likely to be harmful. .

Reincarnation isn't a falsifiable hypothesis with respect to recollection of past lives due to the fact that it's compatible with both memories of past lives (good recall) and also no memories of past lives (poor/defective recall).

Reincarnation is pseudoscientific woo woo! — Agent Smith

Yes. To articulate where I believe your position to be heading towards; reincarnation can be supplied a workable definition, e.g if someone's brain activity, as defined and measured by a particular instrument, stops for at least 10 minutes and then later continues, then science is free, if it so chooses, to define this as an instance of "reincarnation". Such a definition can then be used when testing a hypothesis that a given subject has 'reincarnated'.

The problem then, isn't so much that reincarnation cannot be defined so as to support testable hypotheses, but the fact that with respect to any such definition a hypothesis as to whether a given subject has 'reincarnated' merely relates empirical data to the definitional criteria, and says nothing in support of , or in opposition to, the metaphysical reality of the said definition.

The same problem exists when deciding whether a subject is self-identical within a single biological lifetime. So hypothesis testing cannot lend support to either the view that two subjects are identical, or to the view that they are different, except in the trivial and tautological sense pertaining to linguistic convention..

RE: Evidence of conscious existence after death.
SUBTOPIC: Reincarnation isn't a falsifiable hypothesis
※→ et al,

The implications of reincarnation open the door to some very many questions that cannot be tested in a manner consistent with the Scientific Method. (ie. a falsifiable hypothesis)

What is "being reincarnated" actually mean? Is it some aspect of a previous intelligence, a knowledge of past historical events, an understanding of things that cannot be known?

IF reincarnation implies a detailed knowledge of past events,

◈ THEN where has that memory been?
◈ THEN what form of medium was the memory maintained?
◈ THEN what modulation was the memory maintained?
◈ THEN who has the capacity to detect and demodulate that coding?

What is it we are discussing? Is it simply that some person says they remember the past life (or lives)? Is this person some form of "host" to an energy form that has the capacity to replicate all the processes that would be necessary to perform these various functions? What are our base assumptions?


Respectfully,
R

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

The implications of reincarnation open the door to some very many questions that cannot be tested in a manner consistent with the Scientific Method. (ie. a falsifiable hypothesis) — Rocco Rosano

was reincarnation ever supposed to be testable by science? because from what Eastern philosophy i have read, it certainly doesn’t seem like it to me, seems like a bit of a way to just sweep the discussion under the rug and hope no one lifts it up ever again — anyways

What is it we are discussing? Is it simply that some person says they remember the past life (or lives)? Is this person some form of "host" to an energy form that has the capacity to replicate all the processes that would be necessary to perform these various functions? What are our base assumptions? — Rocco Rosano

the general and overall idea at least within Hinduism pertaining to reincarnation, is that the body is nothing more than a shell that houses an eternal and immutable force of sorts (the atmān) that never perishes once the body dissolves and ceases functioning, the atmān is also the director of the entire body, and without it there is no life within the body from the senses to the rational intellect. implicit assumptions i guess would be the existence of the non-physical and us being more than the brain-body dichotomy, also apparently upon reincarnating into another body, to avoid clinging and attaching to your old lives, memories etc. this is all supposed to be washed away and forgotten as this soul inhabits another body, people recalling past lives and the like could either be exceptions to this function, delusional, or… it could genuinely be something, it’s supposed to be exceedingly rare. (i honestly haven’t cared to look into it too much) the conscious memory that one carries with this life is supposed to perish alongside the body. what is left over from these reincarnations are known as karma vasanas which apparently influence your behavior(s) in the next life, iirc this is where Ian Stevenson (reincarnation researcher) took particular interest, because he thought it had the ability to explain different phobias and even random talents from people that seemingly had no obvious explanation for it.

as far as i have read, the atmān is by default non-spatiotemporal naturally if there is no beginning and it is eternal, this puts it out of the reach of science, the closest thing we can get to any sort of “evidence” are testimonies from people who allege to recall past lives, this is obviously inextricably of a subjective nature and is therefore not testable or able to be codified into a sort of hypothesis which science seeks out to do because subjectivity is of an experiential and private nature, this is what opens it up to skepticism and eye-brown raising, as a lot of things are in these types of matters it seems like it is a matter of faith or a sort of knowledge that you come to by practicing different rituals and forms of meditation to come to an understanding of this concept. (purportedly by said practitioners) forcing the Western physicalist paradigm within this framework such as talking about the conservation of energy or the first law of thermodynamics etc is not what was taught in Buddhist and Hinduist schools of thought alike. that’s pretty much all i got.

Find out what life is, then the answer will be obvious.
— ArielAssante

What does this sentence mean?

What is it that puzzles you? — ArielAssante

You'll note, I wasn't the only one who did not understand your cryptic comment.

What does the expression 'find out what life is' mean? Please clarify. Then maybe we will understand what the next part - 'then the answer will be obvious' means.

I have come across some ideas along the line that death is harmful in that it is a deprivation of life. I don't buy that because if there is no afterlife, then there is no one to be deprived of anything. So, I can't see any justification for thinking that being dead is a harm. — Janus

Again, the evidence that death is harmful is that our reason represents it to be. Why do you think that philosophers try and explain the harmfulness of death otherwise?

And it isn't about dying. Lots of things are harmful and their harmfulness can be explained.

Death - the point at which one is no longer here - is the event whose harmfulness is self-evident yet hard to explain (or hard to explain if we are no longer anywhere).

Pointing out that something else is harmful is just ignorant and off topic. It's like saying "but being punched is harmful. So there".

Death is self-evidently harmful. And that's not just my reason making such representations, it's everyone's including yours - it's why you try and avoid it, yes?

And it also seems self-evident that you need to exist in order to be harmed.

Hence if one dogmatically thinks that we cease to exist altogether at death, one has a problem.

Hence the literature.

But you don't have a problem if you just follow reason, for then you conclude that death does not cease our existence, but rather transfers us into a worse plane of existence.

See?

I'm not following you ...

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

So you're worried personal identity exists only in the body and doesn't move forward in a hypothetical spirit form? If that's what you're saying maybe the hypothetical spirit changes over time too and in a matching way as the nervous system so information is identical, and physical was always built to die?

Quick survey. Was Descartes an idiot?

What world would we live in in which a person would suggest someone drink bleach to their benefit? Lol.

Death is self-evidently harmful. And that's not just my reason making such representations, it's everyone's including yours - it's why you try and avoid it, yes? — Bartricks

I'll try one last time to explain the way I see it and if you don't respond to that, but to something of your own fabrication, or just keep repeating the same baseless assertions, then I won't waste more time.

We see death as harmful because it forcibly removes us from what we love, or are at least attached to.

WE see death as harmful because we fear it will annihilate us, and we don't wish to be annihilated.

We see death as harmful because dying is most likely to be painful and humiliating, even if just in terms of the loss of control it involves. It doesn't matter if the control we thought we enjoyed was illusory.

We see death as harmful because we don't know what being dead involves (if anything) and we fear the unknown.

Being dead, though, cannot be harmful if being dead is not being anything..If being dead is being in a worse situation than we were in while alive, then death is harmful, to be sure, but we don't know that.

Respond directly to these points, criticize them all you like with counterarguments if you have any, or I'm done bothering with you.

It seems you are unable or unwilling to explain what puzzles you. Okay. — ArielAssante

This is strange. I told you I don't know what the sentence means. I was very clear. I would have thought that this is your que to elaborate and maybe express the same idea in more words to give it some nuance. If you are unable to do this I'm happy to move on.

Not a straight answer.

I assume you agree that the warning on the bleach implies that drinking it will harm the drinker? I mean the answer is so obvious that only someone on this site would dispute it.

It's yes.

And that's the label our reason puts on death. So it is reasonable to conclude that death will be an immense harm to us.

Yet it wouldn't be harmful if it ended our existence. For what does not exist cannot be harmed.

Thus, the conclusion that follows is that our deaths will not end our existence. We will survive our deaths. It won't be nice, but we'll survive them.

Our bodies know pain whether it is the end of all for us, or just the beginning.

We see death as harmful because it forcibly removes us from what we love, or are at least attached to. — Janus

No, we see it as harmful because our reason represents it to be. That's why there's a big debate about the harmfulness of death in philosophy.

And to be clear, you are stating that death is actually not a harm.

So, killing someone doesn't harm them, yes - that's your view?

You're welcome to resist my argument by adopting such a silly view. It means you lose.

Our bodies know pain whether it is the end of all for us, or just the beginning. — TiredThinker

I don't know what that means.

No, we see it as harmful because our reason represents it to be. That's why there's a big debate about the harmfulness of death in philosophy. — Bartricks

If reason represents death to be a harm, then there must be a reason for that representation; so what is that reason? Why does reason represent death to be a harm?

You just keep coming back with the same assertion, and you haven't even attempted to address with counterarguments any of the explanations I gave for people thinking that they will be harmed by death.

You think killing someone doesn't harm them, yes? That's really silly.

You think killing someone doesn't harm them, yes? That's really silly. — Bartricks

I haven't said that. Of course killing someone harms them. Even if there is no pain involved it deprives them of life.They are harmed in the act of being killed. Of course once they are dead, if they cease to exist, then there is no longer anyone to be deprived of anything, but that doesn't change the fact that you harmed the person in the act of killing them.

Try addressing your interlocutors' actual arguments instead of behaving like a shit-stain, Browntracks. :roll:

I haven't said that. Of course killing someone harms them. Even if there is no pain involved it deprives them of life.They are harmed in the act of being killed. Of course once they are dead, if they cease to exist, then there is no longer anyone to be deprived of anything, but that doesn't change the fact that you harmed the person in the act of killing them. — Janus

So, just to be clear, your view is now that death does harm the one who dies? It's just that earlier you said the precise opposite.

Here was my argument:

1. If death harms the one who dies, then the one who dies must exist at the time
2. Death harms the one who dies
3. Therefore, the one who dies exists at the time.

You now accept that premise 2 is true.

So if you're remotely logical, you must now accept my conclusion or deny that one needs to exist in order to be harmed.

Being dead, though, cannot be harmful if being dead is not being anything..If being dead is being in a worse situation than we were in while alive, then death is harmful, to be sure, but we don't know that. — Janus

So, I can't see any justification for thinking that being dead is a harm. — Janus