What happens after death?
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Lol. Funny how many Nihilistic Athiests we seem to have here.
You know how vague the definition of death really is?
No? Perhaps you'd like to consider how much of you is still technically alive when they pronounce you dead. Most of you, in fact...
For that matter, how can you be 'legally dead', and then come back to life if that weren't the case?
You can't become alive again if your body wasn't still functional for the most part, so that means you can't have been dead to begin with.
As for the rest, how well do you remember yesterday? Or last week?
Who are you if you have amnesia? The same person? Or somebody else?
Have a look at this: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7733704&page=1
And think about how that figures into the whole notion of life and death...
Then there's more esoteric notions.
Some branches of physics point to the fact that our linear understanding of time, or perhaps the notion of time itself is actually an illusion caused by the nature of our mental processes.
If this were true, then our existence need not have any correlation with our understanding of time.
At the very least, if time doesn't exist, then one option is that your entire life ALWAYS exists, because time, and thus the idea of future and past do not.
And while that's speculation, it's speculation based on theoretical physics...
Face it, nobody who hasn't died can really know what happens.
And if I hear anyone else proclaim 'science has all the answers', I feel rather sorry for their foolishness.
Science is a particular world-view, like any other.
And like most world-views, it has limitations.
You know how vague the definition of death really is?
No? Perhaps you'd like to consider how much of you is still technically alive when they pronounce you dead. Most of you, in fact...
For that matter, how can you be 'legally dead', and then come back to life if that weren't the case?
You can't become alive again if your body wasn't still functional for the most part, so that means you can't have been dead to begin with.
As for the rest, how well do you remember yesterday? Or last week?
Who are you if you have amnesia? The same person? Or somebody else?
Have a look at this: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7733704&page=1
And think about how that figures into the whole notion of life and death...
Then there's more esoteric notions.
Some branches of physics point to the fact that our linear understanding of time, or perhaps the notion of time itself is actually an illusion caused by the nature of our mental processes.
If this were true, then our existence need not have any correlation with our understanding of time.
At the very least, if time doesn't exist, then one option is that your entire life ALWAYS exists, because time, and thus the idea of future and past do not.
And while that's speculation, it's speculation based on theoretical physics...
Face it, nobody who hasn't died can really know what happens.
And if I hear anyone else proclaim 'science has all the answers', I feel rather sorry for their foolishness.
Science is a particular world-view, like any other.
And like most world-views, it has limitations.
If you ever pissed me off you end up in a huge room with fat ugly nymphomaniacs and you spend the eternity in there. Other that, I don't know. I guess we just shut down, destined to never see the light of the day again.
But what if the server crashes??Reeper0278 said:
I reckon we go to a big screen, and we can see stats (kinda like a GTA game) for anything like "times used the word fidget" or "jam consumed in grams" or "litres sweated" and we can replay any bit of our lives, from all different angles (you can tell I play too many games 
)
)
On the inability of bodies to become alive again without still being partially alive: You'll have to explain this more. An internal combustion engine can stop completely and then start working again even though the pistons had completely stopped. Does the presence of gasoline in the tank (and whatever else that allows ignition) mean the car isn't really off when you take the keys out? Is the engine sleeping? No, it's basically dead. There is no necessary reason to believe that the same sort of thing cannot happen with the functionality of a person. You'll have to do some biology to show that. But in any case, the strangeness of the legal definition of death doesn't really have anything to do with what actually happens when people actually die... not just legally die.CrystalShadow said:
On amnesia and personal identity: You can be called whatever is the result of the convention or standard that you apply, whether that be the mereological theory of identity or spacetime continuity or anything else that suits your fancy. Philosophy of identity is a tricky business even without amnesia, and it's not clear that any of it is more than just the consistent logical relationships of words without much at all to do with the objects themselves.
About Kayla: It doesn't really figure into the whole notion of life and death. Some of the physical material in her brain that was her memory stopped working due to a collision with or a shock from other physical material. Relating this to what happens when people die would be an operation of metaphysical nonsense. Now if her entire brain had been destroyed somehow and yet she still walked the earth... that would be the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. And also handy evidence that something other than decomposition happens when we die. But that is not what happened.
Speculation based on theoretical physics: Whether your entire life always exists or not, there is no particular reason to believe that your perspective of it will somehow change at death; the meaning of "after" is still well understood, even if it is only a direction in space. And as far as we can tell, nothing happens other than the decay of a corpse, even though the decay of that corpse may exist eternally at a number of points in the dimension we know as time.
On the inability for us to gain knowledge about death without dying: This is where we use an inference to the best explanation. It is speculative, but some answers are clearly better than others. "Nothing happens" wins right now because that's how much we can observe from the corpse: when the brain dies, observations of the physical patterns that accompany (and may just BE) thought or awareness cease altogether. (I must reiterate that the previously mentioned horse rape explanation is still very powerful if only for its comedic value and social utility at discouraging suicide.)
Worldviews: Science is not a worldview, it is a method. Type Physicalism is a worldview. Materialism is a worldview. Cartesian Dualism is a worldview. Functionalism is a worldview. Behaviorism is a worldview. Fascism is a WeltanSchauung (worldview). Science is not a worldview. Some scientific conclusions are parts of worldviews, and all scientists do have their own worldviews, and some worldviews are at odds with the scientific method, but science itself is a method and not a worldview. Wherever science seems like a worldview, it has been mixed with something else. It is not an untenable idea that science indeed does have the potential to allow us to know all that there is to know, all that can be known. For what example is there of something that cannot be known via science that can really be known otherwise? Problems of skeptical doubt hurt any other method just as much (or more) as they would hurt science, and that which cannot be verified as true or justified by science may plausibly be described in all cases as a mere belief and not knowledge. Or is there an example that would show otherwise?
I apologize for breaking the post into many sections, but there were so many very different points and questions to answer that it felt necessary.
That which we call 'ourselves' is merely a collection of memories, to die is to loose them and never again to make more. To be reborn is to begin existence anew, with no remembrance of previous life, therefore we are no longer us. So, is there such thing as rebirth, do we get another chance, and if so, is it really us who gets it...
Ok so that is just one man's opinion, take it as you will.
Ok so that is just one man's opinion, take it as you will.
Personally I don't believe in rebirth, i believe that we are an arrangement of atoms that react in certain ways, forming proteins, cells, even nerve impulses, and, as we die, the atoms begin to react differently and move apart, deconstructing the cells and proteins etc.
We are little different to a science laboratory, a series of chemical reactions, many happening simultaneously. The difference is that the "laboratory" is made of cells and proteins, as opposed to wood and metal.
We are little different to a science laboratory, a series of chemical reactions, many happening simultaneously. The difference is that the "laboratory" is made of cells and proteins, as opposed to wood and metal.
Well i want to be shot off into the sun after i die, that way there is no way for me to come back as a zombie!
OK...Seanchaidh said:
You make valid points, but you still presume a lot. That's understandable, but my point is, how can you know that the 'observed' universe is all there is?
By definition, you can't know the unknowable.
Maybe there's no evidence for anything 'after' death because there really isn't anything. Maybe not. But regardless of wether science is a method, or a worldview, it makes certain fundamental assumptions, several of which aren't nessesarily true in all cases.
Quantum mechanics shows us that the observer and the event being observed aren't seperable from eachother, despite this being something mostly relied on as being true.
Furthermore, quantum mechanics also has a large number of interpretations that are hard to tell apart.
Granted, that's what Occams razor is for. (If two theories predict identical results, the one that makes the least number of assumptions is likely to be correct. - Occams razor gets misused a lot by people that don't understand it.)
Let's look at what science cannot answer:
It can, for the most part, answer 'how'. How does it work?
Mostly, the answers are reasonable, although complex systems often cause problems.
It cannot however, answer 'why'. You can determine that something works a particular way, but not why.
We have been able to make an educated guess as to how the universe started. But I've seen people that claim it explains anything meaningful, when saying the universe spontaniously came into existence of it's own accord is really no better than saying 'god did it', or 'blue mountain goats did it'.
This is where thinking science can provide answers becomes a mess.
Subjective reality is another good one. - You can map the entire brain. Deduce exactly what concsciousness is, what's responsible for it, how it all works, and still you won't be able to determine why I experience blue the way I do, or that my experience is actually the same as anybody else's.
It shares a common origin related to wavelengths of light, and there's reason to believe we share a common way of experiencing it, but no actual way to prove it.
Where subjectivity begins, science pretty much ends.
Now then. On to the definition of death: You make this out to be irrelevant, and talk about a car engine still being functional when it's turned off.
But, how can you possibly hope to explain something you can't properly define?
A human body is a multi-cellular organism composed of billions of cells. Each individual cell is 'alive' in it's own right.
Arguing about wether a person is alive or dead, means defining what a person is, exactly.
The average 'dead' body, is technically still alive for the most part, and this remains true for quite some time.
What is it that's 'dead' when we talk about death? Certainly not most of a person's body.
How about their brain? - Well, possibly. But again, the cells involved aren't nessesarily dead either.
Let's consider a computer; - If I turn off my computer, is it dead? It doesn't work while it's turned off, but I can easily turn it on again, and it'll work again.
Granted, in turning it off the memory usually gets wiped, but that's not such a big deal.
Does it do anything while it's turned off? Mostly, no.
This issue is a question of definitions though.
What is a person?, and when we talk of death, what is it that has 'died'? - Death is permanent, to most people's understanding, but again, what is it that we're talking about here?
If we cannot even answer that, how do we ever expect to answer something as vague as the 'subjective' experience of being dead?
- Because that's what we're on about here really.
This isn't a discussion about what a dead body is. It's about what it 'feels' like to be dead, and that's rather subjective, and science is very bad at answering subjective questions.
subjective experience cannot be shared. I cannot even prove you have a mind capable of experiencing anything at all.
I can infer it from comparing the way you react, and deducing that you therefore probably experience the world in a similar manner to me, but I cannot prove it.
For all I know, you don't experience anything at all.
This is at the heart of questions like these.
Subjective VS objective reality.