If our consciousness ceases at death, how can we ever be aware of anything?

In a similar vein, if you know what you're doing right now, you'll never be afflicted with amnesia.

Think about it.

The idea that so long as you know what you're doing, you'll never be amnesiac is...cute...but somewhat trite. On one hand you have the obvious idea that if you know what you're doing someplace, it gives you some notion of who you are, but on the other hand it almost sounds like the Varna system from Hindu India. What you do, it states, dictates who you are.

That seems a poor commentary on the human experience. Ant-like castes. What you do is all that you are? No thank you. Part of being a human is striving to be something other than what you are, and the most human things of all are not universally quantifiable (try to find a quantifiable universal value for justice or honor).

Interesting discussion seed. though.

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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Blindy McBlinderson said:
It's not like you can be mad if you die and there isn't anything for you. Because you won't exist any more.

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As a matter of your opinion.

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Mightion Defensor's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
If our consciousness ceases at death, how can we ever be aware of anything?

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Because you're conscious before death. Duh.

All through a person's life, his or her thoughts and feelings radiate in a sort of faint energy, which for the sake of the religiously inclined we may call an aura. This aura allows others around the person to sense her emotions or thoughts, if they are naturally inclined to do so. It also causes the emotions of one person to "rub off" on others around her, even if they don't consciously notice her.

When a person dies, all the stored energies of her thoughts and feelings, what people of religious inclination might call her soul, leave her body at a much higher rate. The method and of death determines how quickly these energies leave the body, though under all circumstances they escape more quickly than during the person's life. Anyone around the person at the time of her death picks up remote traces of her escaped soul, with other parts radiating over potentially great distances. Some of the energy gets absorbed by non-living matter, or passes off into space.

Those who pick up pieces of a person's soul may acquire anything from emotions towards other people (specific or in general), to learned or inherited "natural" talents, to specific memories. In each case, the person either dismisses the acquisition as something with which they are more familiar, such as imagination, or (occasionally) credits their acquisition to reincarnation in its religious interpretation.

This is my theory, summarized. I do not claim to ground it entirely (or even predominantly) on proven scientific principles.

It's a depressing subject: you can either seek comfort in any number of religions, or deal with the fact that when you die, that's it.

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Karnaj wrote this stupid crap:
It's a depressing subject: you can either seek comfort in any number of religions, or deal with the fact that when you die, that's it.

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A sleep deprived Karnaj stammered:
None of us can be absolutely certain anything exists outside our own thoughts.

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But then, how do you know you cease to be when you die?

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

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Suddar stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
But then, how do you know you cease to be when you die?

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

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I'm just explaining the idea of absolute certainty as it pertains to life, the universe, and everything. The only things I can be absolutely certain of are my own thoughts. I cannot ever be totally sure that you're all not just figments of my imagination and the whole world is just one massive hallucination generated by my mind to keep me entertained.

That said, I, for one, am not about to say that there isn't an objective reality outside of my own self. I'm just saying that no one can ever be totally sure that anything outside their own thoughts.

Sorta..

Fuck, I just stopped and thought about that for a moment.. it's a bit disconcerting. (The whole figments of our imaginations thing.)

But if that were possible, someone who is very negative would tend to think negatively, and thus imagine everything negatively. Would that make his imaginary world worse? Or are you saying everyone is given a 'basic' template, and all imagining happens based off of this.

I dunno, I may not be understanding correctly, but shit I'd feel like a smart ass for coming up with all those mathematical/Chemical theories and stuff without realizing it

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Maradon XP was listening to Cher while typing:
As a matter of your opinion.

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I was more saying, that if there isn't an afterlife, you'd never find out, and you wouldn't have a chance to be mad about it. Because if there isn't an afterlife, then you just don't exist anymore.

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Vorago wrote this stupid crap:
People want to believe entirely too much that we are special and not like every other living thing on this planet

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We are, though.

Opposable thumbs, bitch.

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Tarquinn thought about the meaning of life:
Yep, sometimes it's hard to be part of the non-believing part of the population.

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And yet in stating that, you are removing yourself from the non-believing population.

The belief that you cease to exist when you die is just that - another belief. Just like any religious belief, it too lacks any logical basis.

[ 02-19-2003: Message edited by: Maradon XP ]

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Karnaj thought about the meaning of life:
I'm just explaining the idea of absolute certainty as it pertains to life, the universe, and everything. The only things I can be absolutely certain of are my own thoughts. I cannot ever be totally sure that you're all not just figments of my imagination and the whole world is just one massive hallucination generated by my mind to keep me entertained.

That said, I, for one, am not about to say that there isn't an objective reality outside of my own self. I'm just saying that no one can ever be totally sure that anything outside their own thoughts.

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So what the bloody hell, enjoy them!

Ties into my personal philosophy that I mercilessly stole from a Circle of Dust song... "live without a doubt". Beleif and imagination are two of the most fun things a person's got, and the two tie together so well you often get double the fun at the same time.

Me, well... personally, I beleive that at the end of all things, it is ourselves who judge us... and it is our thoughts and feelings, our beleifs that guide us into an afterlife, of sorts. This would be better explained if I just let one point go... I beleive there's more than one universe, and that "God" or "the Gods" are nothing more than people who've died before us, their/his/hers/whatever's thoughts shaping and creating this reality. "Life is but a dream", as it were. And us... well, we go where they all went before us, to the space outside space, and make our own worlds. Maybe to visit again.

I have one friend who beleives death is an event horizon... the more you die, the more time slows, and for the rest of the world you bite it, but for you, it goes on forever. People get scary after reading Neuromancer.

What happens after you die is just one of those things that we can't have any conception of until we are, indeed, dead.

Any more than that is opinion, belief, and pure speculation.

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Vorago thought about the meaning of life:
People want to believe entirely too much that we are special and not like every other living thing on this planet

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There's another sentient lifeform around?

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Mightion Defensor had this to say:
There has to be some form of life after death.

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There is, it's called Undead.

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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Maradon XP was all like:
And yet in stating that, you are removing yourself from the non-believing population.

The belief that you cease to exist when you die is just that - another belief. Just like any religious belief, it too lacks any logical basis.

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Actually, it's the logical default, because it's the negative position of the issue. There's no evidence for an afterlife, so by Occam's Razor, asserting that there is an afterlife is throwing in unecessary terms, so there isn't one.

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Maradon XP had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
There's another sentient lifeform around?

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Animals are sentient. They're just not smart (by human standards).

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Karnaj had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
Actually, it's the logical default, because it's the negative position of the issue.

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On the contrary - saying you cease to exist is drawing a conclusion from no evidence. It is not a logical default because it's an affirmative.

"I don't know" is a logical default.

And no, animals are not sentient, they are not capable of cognitive thought. They are only capable of being trained to mimic the actions of a being with cognitive thougt.

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Maradon XP had this to say about Knight Rider:
On the contrary - saying you cease to exist is drawing a conclusion from no evidence. It is not a logical default because it's an affirmative.

"I don't know" is a logical default.

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You're trying to mire the argument in semantics. Asserting that something "is" --in our case, that there is life after death-- is the affirmative. What follows is the logical conclusion that, because there's no evidence for it, there isn't one.

Saying "I don't know" is not committing to the negative or the affirmative, so it's not the logical default.

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So quoth Karnaj:
You're trying to mire the argument in semantics. Asserting that something "is" --in our case, that there is life after death-- is the affirmative. What follows is the logical conclusion that, because there's no evidence for it, there isn't one.

Saying "I don't know" is not committing to the negative or the affirmative, so it's not the logical default.

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You're not getting what I'm saying.

Claiming that you cease to exist after death is as much an affirmative as saying that you sprout wings and a halo and play a harp all day.

Neither opinion has any evidence for or against it. Both opinions are pure speculation.

The logical default in a situation where there is absolutely no evidence in any form is that you just don't know.

So I thought to myself- dying is the ultimate "brain shut down" Why should me being drugged be any different than me dying in terms of the expirence?

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Maradon XP had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
You're not getting what I'm saying.

Claiming that you cease to exist after death is as much an affirmative as saying that you sprout wings and a halo and play a harp all day.

Neither opinion has any evidence for or against it. Both opinions are pure speculation.

The logical default in a situation where there is absolutely no evidence in any form is that you just don't know.

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No, I'm getting it. Death isn't somehow exempt from application of logical principles. Observe:

There's absolutely no evidence for any sort of life after death. So, since there's no evidence for one, what's left? An abscence of an afterlife, or no afterlife, is what's left, and that is indeed the default position. Simply saying "I don't know" doesn't address any issue at all, and isn't a default position in any venue.

It works the same way for any issue. Let's say you and I are standing in a room with a table behind us, which both of us have never seen before. I say, "There's a cookie on the table." You say, "There's no cookie on the table." It's up to me to show you evidence to support my assertion. Until I do so, you're correct in assuming there's no cookie on the table.

You can't use an analytical principle on nothing. You can say "I believe it's most likely that we cease to exist after we die." but what information is that based upon?

We know nothing about being dead.

Occham's Razor goes like this: "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything."

But what are we explaining? There is no evidence or situation to be explained. Occham's Razor doesn't even apply.

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Karnaj said this about your mom:
It works the same way for any issue. Let's say you and I are standing in a room with a table behind us, which both of us have never seen before. I say, "There's a cookie on the table." You say, "There's no cookie on the table." It's up to me to show you evidence to support my assertion. Until I do so, you're correct in assuming there's no cookie on the table.

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In this situation, though, we have no evidence that either tables or cookies exist.

You are saying "I believe that nowhere in the universe exists a thing I would call a cookie on a thing I would call a table."

Take special note that the definitions of "cookie" and "table" are completely arbitrary.

The opposite would be "I believe that there is a thing I'd like to call a cookie on a thing I'd like to call a table, somewhere in the universe."

Who is logically right? You don't know - there is no question being posed to be answered. It doesn't solve any issues because there is no issue.

[ 02-19-2003: Message edited by: Maradon XP ]

EDIT: didn't see your other post, I will address it after my class.

[ 02-19-2003: Message edited by: Karnaj ]

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Karnaj had this to say about Knight Rider:
And because we know nothing about being dead other than the observed phenomona, we must assume, by default, that nothing, save decomposition, happens after someone kicks off.

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Right, including the cessation of our existence.

oh btw, 42.

"There are more things in heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

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Maradon XP stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
In this situation, though, we have no evidence that either tables or cookies exist.

You are saying "I believe that nowhere in the universe exists a thing I would call a cookie on a thing I would call a table."

Take special note that the definitions of "cookie" and "table" are completely arbitrary.

The opposite would be "I believe that there is a thing I'd like to call a cookie on a thing I'd like to call a table, somewhere in the universe."

Who is logically right? You don't know - there is no question being posed to be answered. It doesn't solve any issues because there is no issue.

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You're absolutely right; my analogy was flawed.

Forget the table, we're back in a room, facing the same way. In front of us is a black box; this represents death. We can observe it, but can in no way otherwise probe it for information. I say, "There's a cookie inside that box." You say, "You're just pulling shit out of your ass. There's no evidence to support your claim. There's no cookie in that box."

Note, I never used the word 'believe'. As I've said, like, a bajillion times, it is impossible to objectively qualify someone's beliefs as correct or not. If I say, "I believe that a cookie is inside of that box," you'd probably just say, "that's great, Karnaj," and go have a beer. And so would I. The point is, however, I attempted to make a qualified statement with no evidence at all. In the abscence of such evidence, you have no reason to accept my statement as true. Because of this, you are correct in asserting the negative until such time as evidence to support my statement can be given.