Fear of death.

I think consciousness attaches to matter, rather than matter creating consciousness.

??? "consciousness" as we understand it is a product of processes in the brain. there is nothing problematic about positing that certain cells that make up part of that process die and duplicate and are replaced etc, because consciousness does not reside in any given cell.

besides which, if consciousness is "the root of consciousness," i should point out that (a) the root is not the thing; individual stem cells are not "conscious" in any meaningful sense---- (b) DNA is matter, just very very very small matter.

i think you are leaping from science to mystical speculation. and i think you are entirely wrong. but if it makes you feel better....

i meant to write

if DNA is "the root of consciousness"

DNA is no more consciousness than a marigold seed is a fully-blossomed marigold.

"consciousness" as we understand it

ie not at all

do you follow contemporary neuroscience? we know a lot about it.

the royal we?

oh, yes. [strokes albino cat seated in lap.]

well, probably none of us do, but certainly there are philosophical aspects of consciousness that the nuts and bolts of neuroscience can't really answer? i mean, it's not like "yep, we've got that thing everyone's been arguing about since the beginning of humanity wrapped up. moving on."

#YOLO

paging CaptainLorax

Death would be a drastic change in consciousness, to be sure. But given these facts and a gut feeling, I really don't see it as being the complete and total annihilation of the pattern.

no offense, but this strikes me as wishful thinking. serious brain injury can result in the complete and total annihilation of the pattern; death isn't even required. personally, i don't see any good, non-faith-based reason to suppose to suppose that free-floating consciousness attaches itself to matter. otoh, there's lots of seemingly sound evidence in support of the idea that sophisticated, human-type, self-aware consciousness is the fragile product of organic matter organized into specific and highly complex arrangements. when death decomposes us, the "pattern" fragments and is lost. the energy remains, as does the gross matter, but as the organic processes that support cognition fall apart, so does the self. you know, probably...

self is overrated

try saying that without one

i didn't say useless

what contenderizer said.

Seeing the loss of self as the loss of meaning is at the core of the fear of death. That is why I say that self is "overrated". We prize it above all other things, although our self is clearly just a temporary condition of the universe and the apparent otherness of the rest of the universe cannot be maintained. Whether there is an "I" to say this or not does not preclude its truth.

lately, whenever I come down with a moderate illness - cold, flu, gastroenteritis - a little voice pops into my head that tells me that lots of people have begun the process of dying feeling the exact same way.

^^^ why stephen king is a bazillionaire

Seeing the loss of self as the loss of meaning is at the core of the fear of death. That is why I say that self is "overrated". We prize it above all other things, although our self is clearly just a temporary condition of the universe and the apparent otherness of the rest of the universe cannot be maintained. Whether there is an "I" to say this or not does not preclude its truth.

― Aimless, Saturday, June 30, 2012 11:29 PM (3 days ago)

any debate on this is a tail-chasing spiral that goes nowhere, i know, but i still don't get how this is supposed to be reassuring or even significant. of course the world (within me without me) will continue to exist absent my conscious (living) perception of it. but "meaning" is something that has only ever existed in relation to me as something that i make in existing. without me, all the relative meaning my particular version of the universe has ever held will vanish forever. this isn't what scares me though. what scares me is cessation itself, nonbeing, the end of me. being is all i've ever known, after all, and arguably all i am.

well without you you won't be able to miss you either so what's the problem

this thread is funny

not to give anyone insomnia, but given these weird constraints on what dying is, you've "died" already every time you go to sleep. the dude who wakes up is no more "you" than some post-singularity replicant.

http://theios.net/content//2012/06/Mind-Blown_thumb.gif

"meaning" is something that has only ever existed in relation to me as something that i make in existing. without me, all the relative meaning my particular version of the universe has ever held will vanish forever

You could argue that we touch the people we meet in our lives, we impact the environment, we change the world in many ways which have lasting effects that survive after our own death. You can devote your life to a cause that is greater than your life, and will outlast your physical body (ML King Jr, Gandhi, Jesus, etc.). In the most extreme cases (probably the ones i just noted) a life cause can be so meaningful that it overrides the natural fear of death.

Aimless is otm.

i still don't get how this is supposed to be reassuring or even significant.... "meaning" is something that has only ever existed in relation to me as something that i make in existing.

If you find no meaning in the continuing existence of a universe that quite clearly spawned you, that presently contains you, and will be here in all its glory beyond your death then I am at a loss to see how to provide you with any meaning or comfort there that you might accept as real. But I think you are engaged in a solipsistic enterprise in thinking this perspective to be true.

what scares me is cessation itself, nonbeing, the end of me

However common this outlook seems to be, it still baffles me. Of all the ultimate dispositions of my being that I can conceive, personal immortality seems to hold the most frightening possibilities of all. I am no god who can look on myself with the complacency of the omnipotent.

OTOH, the idea of impersonal immortality, as a merger of my puny suffering self back into the all-there-is, seems to me to be quite soothing.

If you find no meaning in the continuing existence of a universe that quite clearly spawned you, that presently contains you, and will be here in all its glory beyond your death then I am at a loss to see how to provide you with any meaning or comfort there that you might accept as real. But I think you are engaged in a solipsistic enterprise in thinking this perspective to be true.

lol, by directing the implied question to me ("If you find no meaning in the continuing existence of a universe that quite clearly spawned you..."), you seem to endorse my argument. of course i find meaning in the universe and its continuance. i'm alive! the finding/making of meaning is the sole province of the living. when i am no longer living, not only will i find no meaning in anything, all the subjective meaning i've made along the way will vanish completely from the universe - and subjective meaning the only kind i really know. this isn't solipsism, as i don't deny the existence or significance of the subjective meaning made by others. i don't deny the ways in which we affect one another and carry on as echoes and memories. i just think that all the existential wisdom in the universe provides little protection from the terror inspired by the honest contemplation of nonbeing - on those rare moments when we manage to fully grasp its threat. the void!

there are few sins i couldn't countenance in return for healthy immortality...

the terror inspired by the honest contemplation of nonbeing

Again, this is not in any way a required reaction to this idea. Whether or not you find it terrifying is a personal trait, not the result of 'honesty'.

there's no non-condescending way to put this, so i'll just embrace the condescension: i suspect that the sort of philosophical equanimity you're espousing here proves a lot less soothing when staring down the barrel of a gun than when talking things over in relative peace and comfort. then again, we're all different, and who am i to say?

Wait until you are 90 years old and that 'gun' won't look the same to you at all. Imagining a "healthy immortality" for your corporeal body is nothing more than an exercise in wishful thinking based on a nonsensical combination of words. This horrific 'non-being' is, in many ways, just as strange and delusional a concept, really, in that it doesn't describe anything known to exist.

sure, perhaps one day i'll welcome death's release (or transformation or whatever). for the moment i stand unnerved.

This horrific 'non-being' is, in many ways, just as strange and delusional a concept, really, in that it doesn't describe anything known to exist.

whatever we make of it, non-being can't really be said to "exist". that's in large part the point.

I hate and fear it! (Most of the time). Sometimes I long for it. Cessation. But mainly I quite like the western propaganda of I and me. Don't find any sort of merging with the ever and the all at all soothing. In fact on Sunday afternoons the thought of it invades me with a sickening paralysis and terrifying emptiness and fear. Of course there's the self-loathing, longed-for-oblivion, sickness of the only you that comes with addiction to the self, and I've toyed with different types of religion pretty much as I toy with iphone. Put it down in the end after having an unsatisfactory flick around. Probably should read a book instead. Larkin to thread, obviously - as he said, the fact you won't be aware of anything after death is no consolation, it's exactly what's frightening. Also decline and pain before death. I find it as impossible to be sanguine about the immediate run-in, as I do about moment of death or as I do about the afterwards. If I get to 90 and I'm ready then I've won God's lottery imo.

There, that should set me up for a wet Wednesday at work. Time to make a cheese sandwich.

to aimless: i hope i'm not being too much of a dick here. on a philosophical level, i agree with you. the only problem is that my maintenance of philosophy's distancing abstraction sometimes falters, and the horror comes gibbering...

xp

the fact you won't be aware of anything after death is no consolation, it's exactly what's frightening

Seems to be a rather attenuated thing to fear. idgi.

It is a fine thing to value your present configuration, but you can be damn well sure it will be changing, over and over again, just between today's cheese sandwich and tomorrow's wetness. That is real. Your sense of self is little more than a thread running through the midst of a million sensations that slough off you like the skin from a snake. It is a hell of a thing to pin the universe on.

I fear attenuated things.

It is a hell of a thing to pin the universe on.

correct.

Your sense of self is little more than a thread running through the midst of a million sensations that slough off you like the skin from a snake. It is a hell of a thing to pin the universe on.

nevertheless, the only thing that's there to pin the universe on anything seems to be the self. that's maybe what's so scary: the perceiving self is such a fragile thing to begin with, a self-recognizing "pattern" (for want of a better term) sustained by the electrochemical sloshings of a three-pound wad of tissue. we can't comfortably imagine the eradication of the self, because the self is what "we" are and all we've ever known. it is, in a sense, the universe. each individual death is, in this relative sense, the utter annihilation of all that has ever been and might be. the end of the world.

^ death as the solipsist's apocalypse

sense of self seems more like a linguistic/legal construct rather than a biological one, so i'd wager this is a culturally-specific fear, like leprechauns.

so far as i can tell, the fear of death - in the moment when death seems both imminent and not a blessed relief from prolonged torment - is a human constant. since biology has been brought up, i suspect that this fear has deep biological roots, that it is the way we most immediately experience the true essence of life: the "will" to be and do.

the survival instinct engenders a fear of being immediately killed but i really don't think it cultivates an abstract fear of death. for example, people smoke and speed on the highway all the time, knowing full well these behaviors very much increase their chances of death.

i've noticed that many people, as they grow very old, seem to welcome death. other people are in the other group and seem very afraid of it (one grandfather). other people are oblivious to this shit because they're too senile waste thought on it (my other grandfather).

i figure my odds are 2/3 i won't give a fuck when i get there which iirc is better odds

It's the little things about death that get to you. The fact that when you're dead you can't get a drink of orange squash with ice cubes clinking in the glass. The fact that death has no decent motels where you can pull over for a few good hours of shut-eye on a freshly-plumped pillow. The fact that death smells of nothing at all, not even turpentine on particle-board. The fact that death has had no reviews on Metacritic, despite the fact that everyone's seen the trailer. And death's deafening silence, which has long slim fingers, but no fingers at all.

I'm not speaking from personal experience, you understand.

the fact you won't be aware of anything after death is no consolation

First of all, how is this a fact? Do we have first-hand reports from people that have died? No reviews on Metacritic.

The root of the fear of death is that it is truly unknown. You can tell yourself there is an afterlife, or that you instantly go to a state of non-being, but nobody really truly knows either way and that is terrifying.

I kinda hope that death is quick, painless and unexpected. No worries, no effort, no problem. Sure, loved ones will be beat up for a while, but lets face it, they'll get over it in a year or so.

Do we have first-hand reports from people that have died? No reviews on Metacritic.

reactions to the afterlife have been surprisingly mixed, its score is yellow atm

ok fin e everyone goes to eternal life in heaven

reactions to the afterlife have been surprisingly mixed, its score is yellow atm

iirc you either loved it or hated it

Well it does keep us coming back for more.

This conversation has been happening coincidentally alongside a series of discussions I've had recently with family members, some less receptive than others. So weird how close it is in subject specifically to this talk!

Anyway, I find any idea that suggests continuation after death the product of a perception of our world/ourselves that takes root at any early age and is hard for those who believe this to self-analyze, generally. I am comfortable in my certainty that some sort of continuation of ourselves after death is as likely as that of a post death continuation of a blade of grass or a car. Simply because humans are more complex than those two examples doesn't make it more likely that we are any different. The perception I think believers hold comes from a subconscious, passionate feeling that their deep thoughts and meaningful experiences are so intense and complex that there isn't a way it could end completely. That completeness equals absolute, meaning that there isn't any layer of thought saying "its so dark" and "I'm dead" and this is simply the most frighteningly painful thing to perceive. A lack of existence cannot be imagined, so we conceptualize alternatives to cope.
The world's balance made humans possible, but the way we've dominated it and the conveniences of living in a society have trained us to view it as relative to us, as opposed to us being relative to it. If we accept that yes our design is intricate and amazing but our physical matter is no more significant than that of a tree or a rock then we realize there isn't a reason our spectacular thoughts or feelings should be attributed to anything more than the mechanical workings of the mind they reside in.

loss of ego

"but i don't want to be a river! i'm a droplet!"

"but if i die, i'll only be a memory, a change arrangement of electromagnetic forces representing a decaying lump of matter"

all that it ever was son

so there's existential dread too

it helps to remember that we're just fleetingly brief fields of energy (99.99 plus nine more nines percent vacuum) in a big supercollider

i'm sorry i forgot the percentage shift, only seven more nines after 99.99