Death, Atheism

[Received]

I don't see how these comments have relation to what I'm saying. I don't deny that there is death. I'm saying that understanding what it means to not exist is nonsensical subjectively understood -- first person --, while it makes perfect sense objectively, when other people die, for instance.

And I'm not speaking of measuring any sort of afterlife, or saying that it makes any good sense from pure reason or science. Far from it! I'm saying the idea makes sense metaphysically, while subjective nonexistence doesn't. This doesn't mean that the afterlife is therefore true! Nope. It means that if there is any such thing as the cessation of existence for me, or anyone subjectively conceived, it is a completely vacuous concept, and therefore not a concept at all. We can't speak about it, and we certainly can't parade it as a supplement to a rational nontheistic philosophy. It isn't rational. It isn't even intelligible.

 

[Kharak]

I don't see how these comments have relation to what I'm saying. I don't deny that there is death. I'm saying that understanding what it means to not exist is nonsensical subjectively understood -- first person --, while it makes perfect sense objectively, when other people die, for instance.

And I'm not speaking of measuring any sort of afterlife, or saying that it makes any good sense from pure reason or science. Far from it! I'm saying the idea makes sense metaphysically, while subjective nonexistence doesn't. This doesn't mean that the afterlife is therefore true! Nope. It means that if there is any such thing as the cessation of existence for me, or anyone subjectively conceived, it is a completely vacuous concept, and therefore not a concept at all. We can't speak about it, and we certainly can't parade it as a supplement to a rational nontheistic philosophy. It isn't rational. It isn't even intelligible.

Rationality? I can argue all day about non-living in spite of that 'un-intelligibleness' that is the lightness of death. That it cannot be conceived fully within a mindset is conception enough. Wordplay is very nice and all, but that does not make non-existence irrational.

For the sake of being quite transparent: The goal of die hard, old school Buddhists is to achieve non-existence, as it is the only manner in which transcendence of suffering is achieved.

Very clearly, non-existence is the inability to feel any stimuli. Sentience and thought cannot exist in a vacuum, but death is the conclusion of both. Nonexistence is rational because, according the information that anyone is able to obtain within practical material limits, that is the only think that may occur when there is a bullet lodged somewhere important in your brain. Of course, arguing that being dead is non-existent is fallacious. You're still there (albeit, well, dead of course), but the elementary portions of your thought processes are draining out onto the pavement along with some other viscera.

That it is the inability to continue on with a short, pitiful life and perpetuate petty leisure time that mortals fear death. I will argue eternal life is irrational, for there is no limit on the depravity of an individual if they are allowed to develop with no luxury that is the constraint of a finite lifespan. It is always the Olympians I fear far more than the cold grip of death, and so I can see the Aegeans were fearful of of immortals far more than being consumed by maggots.

I cannot share my death realm with you, but I cannot also show you how it is to truly live.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Then how do we make sense out of a claim of subjective nonexistence? If it makes no sense, then the phrase as a signifier is empty.

I disagree. The phrase is meaningless if it's just that: without meaning. But non-existence isn't without meaning. We can't conceive not existing, but that doesn't mean non-existence is a meaningless phrase, nor that there won't be a time when we won't exist.

Well, it isn't our ultimate faith; "our" presupposes existence. Nonexistence isn't technically a fate; fate implies a modification, which implies existence.

I disagree (as always ). I used the phrase "our fate" to simply refer to an inevitable outcome. That we (the concious 'I's) are doomed to one day cease to exist is a very real possibility.

Your fate is to be a watchmaker: that makes sense, because being a watchmaker is a modification according to the category of existence. Thought isn't limited to language; we can think in images. But even here subjective death cannot be conjured up imaginatively. It makes no sense linguistically, and it isn't even applicable to images, since this implies experience. The concept has absolutely no meaning. It isn't even a concept. Saying "it" is our ultimate fate would mean a pronoun without a referent.

The referent is the phenomenon of not existing . "It" refers to the "it" we have been talking about throughout this thread.

 

[Received]

I disagree. The phrase is meaningless if it's just that: without meaning. But non-existence isn't without meaning. We can't conceive not existing, but that doesn't mean non-existence is a meaningless phrase, nor that there won't be a time when we won't exist.

And if we don't have an experiential basis for the signifier, and it isn't a priori (it isn't), how does it have meaning? Again, it's a confusion of death-in-the-world with death-of-the-world-creator (subjectivity, self). People are applying the former to the latter -- fallaciously, for these are two completely different things.

And the only way people explain death of subjectively is objectively: i.e., the biological processes in the brain stop working, and that's it. But explaining things objectively is not to explain them subjectively, even if your ontology is psychopathically materialist. Others may say something like "we are no more," but I can't understand nothingness, or "no more,"except in an objective sense: i.e., a soap bubble is no more, I saw it and now I don't. There's an infinite difference between seeing something else negate and having oneself negate. There is no experiential basis for that at all.

 

[ragarth]

And the only way people explain death of subjectively is objectively: i.e., the biological processes in the brain stop working, and that's it. But explaining things objectively is not to explain them subjectively, even if your ontology is psychopathically materialist. Others may say something like "we are no more," but I can't understand nothingness, or "no more,"except in an objective sense: i.e., a soap bubble is no more, I saw it and now I don't. There's an infinite difference between seeing something else negate and having oneself negate. There is no experiential basis for that at all.

As a side question, am I psychopathically materialist? and if so, what is that?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

And if we don't have an experiential basis for the signifier, and it isn't a priori (it isn't), how does it have meaning?

I disagree that it isn't a priori.

Again, it's a confusion of death-in-the-world with death-of-the-world-creator (subjectivity, self). People are applying the former to the latter -- fallaciously, for these are two completely different things.

Agreed, but I don't think people are confusing the two. You might be, but we're not .

And the only way people explain death of subjectively is objectively: i.e., the biological processes in the brain stop working, and that's it.

Not quite. That's how we define when death has occurred: it is the cessation of brain activity, nothing else, that causes one to die. What happens next is anyone's guess.

We know (usually) when you're dead, but that's the extent of our knowledge. Our conciousnesses could then cease to exist, or go on to some next life, or something more fantastic still.

But explaining things objectively is not to explain them subjectively, even if your ontology is psychopathically materialist. Others may say something like "we are no more," but I can't understand nothingness, or "no more,"except in an objective sense: i.e., a soap bubble is no more, I saw it and now I don't. There's an infinite difference between seeing something else negate and having oneself negate. There is no experiential basis for that at all.

Nevertheless, the possibility remains. Regardless of whether we can fully comprehend what it entails, it's a very real possibility.

 

[Received]

As a side question, am I psychopathically materialist? and if so, what is that?

A joke.

 

[Received]

Nevertheless, the possibility remains.

And a possibility that cannot be elucidated, can't even be spoken about, can't be signified as a possibility. It falls within "we don't know," but "we don't know" is not a particularity that can be signified. It falls in a category: agnosticism. And how can you speak about something you don't know about? You can say that subjective death falls into "we don't know," but you can't argue subjective death as an intelligible concept. That just doesn't work, because there is no concept -- subjective death makes no sense, given that it isn't based in experience, and isn't accessed via a priori.

Most atheists -- or whoever -- don't say "we don't know"; they say that death is metaphoric sleep, or a return to nothingness, or something like that. But how the heck does that make sense given that our signifiers are experientially based? How can we comprehend not simply something in the world, but the cessation of experiencing a world? We can't.

 

[Received]

Agreed, but I don't think people are confusing the two. You might be, but we're not .

I don't just think they're confusing them; I absofreakinglutely think they're confusing them, and when you put a word within a word like that, man, it means somethin' serious.

It makes perfect sense why people would not consider it: subjective death implies transcendence of any relation or experience or understanding we have of any other subject, because any other subject has to do with objects in the world. A kitten gets thrown on a ceiling. Heidegger postulates being as essentially becoming. My professor gets homicidal about Managed Care for therapists. But the negation of experience, rather than an experience that involves negation? Absolutely nothing like it. Nobody has ever been provoked to think that way. And that's why there's confusion.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

And a possibility that cannot be elucidated, can't even be spoken about, can't be signified as a possibility.

Sure it can. It just can't be imagined (in the same way we can imagine eating ice-cream).

It falls within "we don't know," but "we don't know" is not a particularity that can be signified. It falls in a category: agnosticism. And how can you speak about something you don't know about?

But we do know about it, inasmuch as there is anything to know about it.

You can say that subjective death falls into "we don't know," but you can't argue subjective death as an intelligible concept. That just doesn't work, because there is no concept -- subjective death makes no sense, given that it isn't based in experience, and isn't accessed via a priori.

But it is a priori: as you say, we have no prior conception of non-existence, because, for the totality of our existence, we have never not existed! Nevertheless, just as we can't concieve the singularity of a black hole, such a thing is still possible.

Most atheists -- or whoever -- don't say "we don't know"; they say that death is metaphoric sleep, or a return to nothingness, or something like that. But how the heck does that make sense given that our signifiers are experientially based? How can we comprehend not simply something in the world, but the cessation of experiencing a world? We can't.

Indeed, and no one says we can. If pushed, the atheist will simply shrug her shoulders and say, "I don't know". Because we don't know. We have no idea what will happen after we die.

But why should anything happen to us after we die?
Why shouldn't we cease to exist after we die?

Received, I'm a little confused as to what you're trying to conclude here. Are you saying that we cannot cease to exist?

 

[Received]

I'm saying that the cessation of subjective experience cannot be talked about, because it makes absolutely no sense, given that it 1) isn't experiential, and 2) obviously isn't a priori based. So anyone who says something like "when you die, nothing happens" is making a nonsensical statement. Most atheists implement this with the philosophies as a response to theistic claims that we live forever: no, atheists would say, we don't live forever; we simply stop existing. But what on earth does that mean? What does it mean for subjectivity to stop existing? It is incomprehensible, because there's nothing to comprehend: comprehension implies ideas or concepts, and these imply a basis in experience or logic. The only way we think we understand it is by displacing it to objectivity: death happens to other people, and so it happens to me. But this is completely different: in the one, death can be understood, because it signifies the negation of something in the world; in the second, it makes no sense, because we're not talking about things in the world, but that which makes the world perceivable, the self, subjectivity.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Received, I don't see what the problem is with understanding personal non-existence.

I'll admit, it might be difficult to imagine, because the act of imagining intrinsically involves a personal perspective.

It may also be a kind of inference from what happens to others and not a product of personal experience, which it could never be anyway since personal experience would be nonexistent.

But one can conceptualize non-existence because one can understand what negation is. Now you exist, and now you don't. Now you are aware, and now "you" aren't.

I just don't see the problem here. This is an exercise in logic, even if it requires one to stretch beyond direct personal experience.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Received]

One can understand negation, but only within an objective framework -- i.e., one understands the negation of something out there. The negation of the subject is an entirely different thing.

 

[Stellar Vision]

I disagree. It makes no sense even on an everyday level to say that Bill is Bill's dead body; the very phrase "Bill's dead body" implies that Bill is more than his remains. It's my understanding, and so far as I can tell at least a decent consensus among philosophical thought, that what makes us human beings is subjectivity, and what makes subjectivity is consciousness, typically with an element of self-consciousness (which some would say is essential to all consciousness, but that's another discussion). Existence is not tantamount to consciousness; human existence, however, is based in consciousness, and essentially human beings are their consciousness.

Organization is what's missing from Bill. The runaway chemical reaction known as life has been disrupted, and (possibly like a computer shutting down) our 'software' is... gone. Unfortunately it's not backed up on a hard drive, which is why you can turn your computer back on and have the Operating System 'revived'.

 

[Eudaimonist]

One can understand negation, but only within an objective framework -- i.e., one understands the negation of something out there. The negation of the subject is an entirely different thing.

What is insufficient about understanding negation in an objective framework? It seems that the implications are clear enough for subjectivity, despite the difficulties one might have in imagining nonexistence.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Received]

We only understand nonexistence objectively -- in relation to other things in the world. We don't understand nonexistence subjectively. We are consciousness, and moments of the negation of consciousness (i.e., with sleep) are not recorded by us. All we know are moments of consciousness, existence. Nonexistence is therefore an empty concept, and when people speak about it by applying it to their post mortem views, they're confusing nonexistence or negation with regard to things in the world with nonexistence or negation with regard to the world-perceiver or -enabler (consciousness, self).

 

[Eudaimonist]

We only understand nonexistence objectively -- in relation to other things in the world. We don't understand nonexistence subjectively. We are consciousness, and moments of the negation of consciousness (i.e., with sleep) are not recorded by us. All we know are moments of consciousness, existence. Nonexistence is therefore an empty concept, and when people speak about it by applying it to their post mortem views, they're confusing nonexistence or negation with regard to things in the world with nonexistence or negation with regard to the world-perceiver or -enabler (consciousness, self).

Let's say that you are right about this. What problems in reasoning do you foresee from this confusion? What ideas or arguments have you seen that are the result of this confusion?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[ragarth]

Let's say that you are right about this. What problems in reasoning do you foresee from this confusion? What ideas or arguments have you seen that are the result of this confusion?


eudaimonia,

Mark

Given the topic of this thread is 'Death, Atheism' if taken under consideration of the atheism aspect, it seems to me like an argument for atheism. The idea being that since Received is defining death as nonexistence, and that we cannot comprehend the state of nonexistence, then we cannot comprehend a state after death that does not allow the continuation of consciousness. This would mean that the idea of an afterlife is based not upon fact or observation, but upon a limitation of personal experience.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I'm saying that the cessation of subjective experience cannot be talked about, because it makes absolutely no sense, given that it 1) isn't experiential, and 2) obviously isn't a priori based.

You keep saying it isn't a priori, but... it is! And, once again, the nonsensicle isn't necessarily meaningless, un-talk-about-able, or wrong.

So anyone who says something like "when you die, nothing happens" is making a nonsensical statement.

Why? It's a perfectly valid claim: when you die, nothing does happen (or rather doesn't happen ). That we can't comprehend non-existence, that doesn't mean we can't postulate that our existence comes to an end after death.

Most atheists implement this with the philosophies as a response to theistic claims that we live forever: no, atheists would say, we don't live forever; we simply stop existing. But what on earth does that mean? What does it mean for subjectivity to stop existing?

It means that you cease. That your peripheral reality winks out. We can't comprehend a lot of things, but that doesn't mean they don't exist, or the germain claims are wrong.

It is incomprehensible, because there's nothing to comprehend: comprehension implies ideas or concepts, and these imply a basis in experience or logic. The only way we think we understand it is by displacing it to objectivity: death happens to other people, and so it happens to me. But this is completely different: in the one, death can be understood, because it signifies the negation of something in the world; in the second, it makes no sense, because we're not talking about things in the world, but that which makes the world perceivable, the self, subjectivity.

And when people say "We cease to exist after death", they obviously aren't making the objective comparison. Any fool can see that the death of the body and the subsequent state of the concious mind (or lack thereof) are two different things. Nevertheless, it seems that only you have trouble understanding what people mean by "non-existence".

 

[Received]

the nonsensicle isn't necessarily meaningless, un-talk-about-able, or wrong.

I always considered nonsense to be approximately tantamount to meaningless. If there is no sense to something, presumably it is vacuous with regard to meaning.