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? — Zebeden

But would the fact that it can happen again be any different from the fact that it has happened for both you as well as me (it has happened "again" spatially rather than temporally, as it were), only I cannot experience what you experience because wwr are two different individuals?

Also, what are the merits of eternal reincarnation. You and I probably have it pretty good right now - not just pretty good considering this isn't neolithic era or 14th century France or something like that. Then you look at how lukcy we are to be humans over other organisms.

Surely, it is only overwhelmingly likely to go downhill after this life? Or if not downhill, to another form of life one wouldn't necessarily want to live. I am not sure about life as an aphid. I guess they probably don't live very long anyway.

Best to distinguish genus and species of consciousness - not made easier by using the same term for both. That is, there is the abstract noun "consciousness" as a collective term for a set of ideas, and there is my consciousness and yours, two different things.

Consciousness genus seems to be one of the tricks the Universe performs, mine and yours (species) being examples. But I think it's the mineness and yoursness that having come, will soon enough go. You can if you like, I suppose, imagine that when you die, your consciousness as part of the genus endures, and that only the yoursness of it ceases, and that the consciousness will reappear. But all the youness that was you will not; or if it does, who would know?

Consciousness genus seems to be one of the tricks the Universe performs, mine and yours (species) being examples. But I think it's the mineness and yoursness that having come, will soon enough go. — tim wood

We are more or less of one mind about this. :joke:

The way I usually think about it is that it is a question of Identity, or rather, of identification. If oneself is that blank emptiness that is aware of whatever it happens to be aware of, then perhaps there is no difference between one self and another, aside from the particulars that it happens to be aware of from time to time.

What connects the child to the adult to the old man is memory, a narrative that can be recited, and that particular narrative cannot be repeated, because even if another life occurs that is exactly identical, it will not connect, and so will not continue the narrative that ended. No more than identical twins are the same person.

Actually, because of my rather materialistic worldview, it’s even more bothersome to me that eternal oblivion seems unlikely, as I wrote above. — Zebeden

I wonder if you find such considerations reassuring or not?

What connects the child to the adult to the old man is memory, a narrative that can be recited, — unenlightened

I've heard this trope expressed often enough. I think it was Lock (?) who first articulated this as being pivotal to the sense of self.

But consider that many out there do not have memories of their early childhood. Or else those with amnesia, or maybe even more extreme, advanced Alzheimer's. The sense of self yet persists even in Alzheimer's (via, for one example, listening to certain music). And even when not related to past events, certainly the sense of self persists in terms of "mine" and "yours".

I've tended to instead ground the core aspect of a sense of self on one's affinities and aversions. This, as one example, being a plausible reason why identical twins separated at birth or during early childhood can be found brushing their teeth when in their 60s with the same toothpaste, etc.



This makes full-blown sense to me. Consider that in all of humanity's history there probabilistically is one former human whose intrinsic, genome-inherited predispositions and whose first 7 or so years of life (a very formative time period for humans) are more alike to your own than any other. In terms of affinities and aversions to environmental factors and thereby core attitudes toward existence, their life would be as identical to your own as - via analogy - one's life one day is identical to one's own life on another day (separated by periods of sleep). And this same general outlook can then be further abstracted to a multitude of former lives.

The same roles (personas) playing out the same general interactions on the stage of life but at different times and in different contexts. And hence the same core self that ever evolves into different realities.

The tricky issue in so contemplating is when considering things not historically but in terms of the present moment. Same could be claimed of another human on the planet (who might look utterly different) that lives while you live. Here, the notion of reincarnation would be off. Nevertheless, there then would yet remain the notion of kindred spirits: someone you might see things eye to eye with to an extreme extent.

the sense of self persists in terms of "mine" and "yours". — javra

And how does one know what is mine and yours, except through memory? Dementia becomes fatal when it extends to losing the function that controls breathing. "My lungs?" "My wife?" "My children?" "My home?" "My name?" Such are the identifications one can lose.

And how does one know what is mine and yours, except through memory? — unenlightened

Not an easy question to answer. I've worked with Alzheimer's patients, some in rather extreme conditions. One such I presume mistook packaging styrofoam for popcorn and began eating it, such that I had to struggle taking it out of the patient's mouth. There was still an understood notion of things like "my mouth" "my food" "my will", etc.

I'll just point to the fact that ameba have a sense of self in the sense of being able to distinguish self from other, not to mention other as predator or prey. And they do not have anything resembling what we term memory.

You can argue for eternal oblivion or eternal consciousness, depending on what has been lost or gained. Without memory there is no way to know what has already occurred, if that occurrence technically does not belong to you.

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

You can't step in the same river twice, unless the river suffices as the same river you remember stepping in.

You can't remember stepping in a river you know you've never stepped in.

As Wittgenstein pointed out, being dead is not something that will happen to you; when you are dead, there is no longer a "you". Death is no more a part of your life than the space two inches past a ruler is part of the ruler.

I agree, yet I do think death, as opposed to being dead, is very much part of our lives. We experience the death of loved ones, including our beloved animal companions.

And thinking of death in a broader sense, we experience the loss of our mature capacities and faculties. We all face the posibility of an agonising, or at least an unpleasant, death, meaning not 'being dead' but dying.

I quite agree.

This is a different topic to "eternal oblivion", which is not something to be feared. One might not be anxious about being dead, so much as about how one gets there.

And then there is the considerable discussion about whether being dead amounts to a bad thing, in that it deprives one of ongoing experiences. I'd like to know what happens next, although I expect I would not much like it.

Exactly...eternal oblivion is not to be (rationally speaking at least) feared. Perhaps it can be, on an arational level, troubling because the idea of our own non-existence is difficult to grasp.

I think that difficulty, at least in part, is involved in the idea of death being a deprivation of experience.

I'm certainly with you in thinking I would not much like what seems likely to come after, if not before, my own death.

I would not much like what seems likely to come after — Janus

Once one is dead, one is no longer a player, as it were, and so inevitably things cannot go in one's favour. The particular interests that make you who you are will inevitably dissipate in your absence; the papers you wrote will no longer be cited, the events in the lives of your dozens or hundreds of descendants will not have relevance to you, and what belonged to you will belong to others or end up in landfill.

That's what it is to be a ghost.

I’ve always had the belief that what is understood in the east as Saṃsāra - the eternal cycle of birth and death - captures some fundamental truth about existence, even if allegorical in some sense. The process that drives the cycle of life and death and of which individual beings are the product continues after individual death, and countless individual beings will continue to be born and to perish, each one of them taking form, from their own perspective, as ‘myself’ or ‘I’. In those belief systems, it is desire or clinging to existence which causes the birth of the individual, and only through the cessation of that desire or clinging is liberation from the cycle (Mokṣa) attained. The natural corollary of that is belief in rebirth, although in Buddhist culture, it is without the belief that there is an individual soul as such, but a stream of consciousness which manifests across many lifetimes. However it clearly requires that that there are planes of existence beyond the physical in which karma (the consequences of acts) is accumulated and transmitted.

In Western culture there is no such belief, instead it is thought that living beings are aggregates of material elements which are born as a consequence of physical processes which cease when those comprising physical elements disperse at death. It is a view seems intuitively obvious when viewed ‘from the outside’ or from a third-person or scientific perspective. However from the ‘eastern’ viewpoint it is a nihilistic attitude.

Where it sits uneasily with me is a sense I have had since I became conscious of memories from a previous life. That too could be understood allegorically, as the inheritance from or a transmission of the collective unconscious. I can’t say that I know it’s true, but on balance of probabilities I think it is more likely than not. I’m mindful of the fact that in those Eastern cultures, the prospects for a future existence are often said to be grim, as we inherit the consequences of acts carried out with no awareness of their eventual consequences.

Wishful thinking?

What remains of the Wayfarer from previous lives? In what sense are you still them, and not just someone else who happens to have memories of the life of a different person? What is it that is continuous from one metempsychosis to another?

If there is a collective unconscious - whatever that might be - why do you have the memories of particular individuals, and not of some amalgam of all past consciousness?

Again, when one turns a critical eye on these ideas, it is difficult to see how they can be made coherent.

I was responding to the OP, not to you.


....although I will say that individuals are born into specific times and places, with some kinds of apparently-innate abilities and proclivities, which are then subject to further influences and changes throughout their early childhood and adulthood. Some genetic inheritance, some cultural inheritance, but some elements of which can be quite subtle.

I will also note that there's a distinction between critical thinking and antagonism, and that these kinds of discussions will invariably generate the latter, as there are longstanding cultural taboos around this topic.

Yep. I was responding to that response. I do understand that you do not like what I have to say. You are of course not under any obligation to respond to my critique. But my critique of your response to the OP, is also, thereby, addressing the OP.

I will also note that there's a distinction between critical thinking and antagonism — Wayfarer

As Sir Bernard Woolley might say, I'm critical, you are antagonistic, he is a right bastard...

Yep, so I guess for some the idea of being out of the game will be disturbing, even though when you are out of the game nothing will disturb you because there will be no 'you' to be disturbed.

Therefore, I see no reason to commit to eternal oblivion, although it would seem likely from the material point of view. — Zebeden

When there is no mind to perceive, is eternal oblivion possible?

...the idea of being out of the game will be disturbing... — Janus

Comforting, then, to think that some part of each of us returns in another. But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure.

When there is no mind to perceive, is eternal oblivion possible? — Corvus

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.

But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure. — Banno

Do you mean something like influences we might have had on others, or our works that survive us or our physical components reconfigured after dissolution? I take it you are not referring to consciousness.

A nod back to .

Given that I was oblivious to much of what occurred last night, only finding out about it after I woke, I'm not too concerned about oblivion.

So I find the Wittgenstein's approach amiable, especially as it fits in with other ideas as to the nature of measurement - the official metre rule in Paris and so on. One's death is not a part of one.

In Western culture there is no such belief, instead it is thought that living beings are aggregates of material elements which are born as a consequence of physical processes which cease when those comprising physical elements disperse at death. It is a view seems intuitively obvious when viewed ‘from the outside’ or from a third-person or scientific perspective. However from the ‘eastern’ viewpoint it is a nihilistic attitude. — Wayfarer

What about those centuries when you could change your prospects in the afterlife by getting with the winning team?

There is a large distance to travel from visiting Hades to get playbacks from souls by pouring blood into their cups and the descent and ascent of a particular soul as described by Plotinus. The arguments of authority from the latter have had much to do with the secular as such.

What about those centuries when you could change your prospects in the afterlife by getting with the winning team? — Paine

I'm not sure if you're being serious.

OK, I get it now. My disposition on this is similar to yours—I don't find myself concerned about oblivion either. The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me?

The Wetsern idea of the eternal life in heaven that awaits the good or the eternal life in Hell that awaits the evil is at least, if believed, rationally motivating. That said the Buddhist have their own hells to motivate the believers, but if it is not to be you who will suffer in them, it would seem far less rationally motivating.

I'm not sure if you're being serious. — Wayfarer

The precursor to the 'materialistic' age was people saying they knew what your deal would be after you died.

Luther said no human could be involved with deciding that outcome. That question regarding human authority led to others.

So, pretty serious about the afterlife question.

The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me? — Janus

Nice. Yes, this is the issue with reincarnation. It is at best a very minor consideration.

In Western culture there is no such belief, instead it is thought that living beings are aggregates of material elements which are born as a consequence of physical processes which cease when those comprising physical elements disperse at death... However from the ‘eastern’ viewpoint it is a nihilistic attitude. — Wayfarer

So is it nihilistic? I don't see that it is. That "aggregate of material elements" is the very source of value.

A distinction between consciousness and identity might be helpful. Consciousness continues, but bert1 doesn't. If I (where 'I' is the conscious subject) persist, it's not as bert1.