“Ignorance is bliss”
Which reminds me of a question I constantly ask myself. It’s kind of off topic though so I’ll start another post.
The proof of what happens after death doesn’t really matter to the discussion at hand: there are at least two kinds of death.
The first is physical death (hearts stop beating, lungs stop working, the flat line kind of thing) and death as a definition. In the first kind, people who come back from the Great Beyond are coming back from death; in the second kind, you can’t come back by definition.
The funniest way to look at this is from an incredibly bad movie I saw recently, “Spawn”. As the situation is explained, the main character must conserve his power (his thanonuematic energy or some such thing) because when it is used up he dies, but those powers come to him precisely because he’s already dead. So what happens when he dies again? Does he go back to hell and the whole thing starts over again? Or does he really die, or can he really die now and only now after he’s dead?
If we concentrate on the second kind, death as a definition, then this makes a kind of sense and I think that’s what should be focused on in discussions of this type. 
Polemarchus, there is a problem with your series:
in that your premise cannot be verified and therefore it is useless to base anything else upon it. You cannot know in any verifiable sense that because you did not have a body before you were born, you also did not possess a life of some kind. You have reached your conclusion, to write your series to verify your conclusion. This is not a worthwile way of disproving an afterlife in my opinion.
That said, your point that one can never be dead amazed me, I had never thought of that and I found it very interesting.
One further point. If we define death as the cessation of existence, and existence as the source of meaning, then is it not a waste of existence, and hence potential meaning to discuss death? Why are we doing so?
Alex,
Thanks for the reply. It’s nice to hear from you. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts on this Forum.
My mother tells me that she had to change my diapers (nappies to you) when I was young. Imagine that. If my life on Earth were merely a resumption of an earlier life, isn’t it a wonder that of all the great knowledge acquired in my earlier incarnations, I still had to be re-taught not to shit in my britches? I might have been as clever as a Newton, talented as a Mozart, and as articulate as a Shakespeare in my earlier life (or lives), nonetheless, I arrived in this world drooling saliva out of my mouth.
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that I did have an earlier existence. Despite the fact that I remember none of it, could it be that I’ve already lived millions of prior lives? Alex, you might argue at this point that it doesn’t matter if I remember my earlier lives. You might say that the fact that I don’t remember them does not preclude the possibility that I had earlier lives. I say it does preclude the possibility, and here is my argument.
My argument revolves around the notion of what makes you, you, and me, me. Also of pivotal importance is the concept of the continuity-of-life.
All right, let’s imagine what it might be like to have a very specific earlier life. Let’s erase from your mind everything you have learned since you were conceived in this present life. Yes, I know, you’d be back to drooling and messing your pants. So let’s make you a mature man. Your name is Simplicus Simplicissimus. Let’s drop you into the world in what is present–day Germany, say in the year AD 1669. Despite the fact that you’re an earthy character; you still manage to “humiliate the mighty, confound the gods, and ridicule the pretentious.†You’re something of a rustic version of James Bond. You live in a time and place of incredible upheaval and turmoil, the time of “The 30 Years War,†to be exact. Simplicus doesn’t just go to the office after his breakfast of orange juice and Wheaties. Simplicus has to fight daily for his very life. He uses his wit to survive. If he wins, he is allowed a bit of “rape and pillage.†If he loses, he gets a pike in the belly. Now please remember Alex, this isn’t just your ancestor we are talking about, this is you, in everything but the flesh.
So, we have you born to parents you now don’t remember, living in a distant time you now know little of, and speaking an old dialect of German which would sound much the same as Greek to you today. You have had incredible memories that you now cannot remember, as well as friends and loves whom you couldn’t today even recognize. You perpetually had a bad haircut and smelled like the monkey house. Yes I know, this guy doesn’t look, think, or speak like you do today. Still, despite the fact that you’ve no recollection of it, and despite the fact that nothing Simplicus thought or did in his entire life changes a single moment of your present life, I’m supposing for the sake of argument that he is as much you, as you are you today.
But wait. If Simplicus bequeathed you nothing; not his genes, not his memories, and not his ideas, then Simplicus could have just as easily been me in a former life as he was you! What claim do you have of him that I could not equally make? Actually, neither of us could make a credible claim that one over the other were Simplicus.
You and I are each the direct product of our individual genetic, environmental, and random histories. Part of what makes me who I am is the scar on my forehead I got when I fell down the steps as a kid. Part of what makes me was my thrill of climbing with a girl into the backseat of my old Chevy. It’s also the fact that my eyes are blue and my arms were too short to throw a baseball from the outfield to home plate. Part of what makes me who I am was as a kid coming across a novel by Albert Camus, and my early chance hearing of a sonata for violin by J.S. Bach.
If you remove from me all I’ve experienced in this life, I’d be back to chewing on my buttons and throwing my food across the table. I’d have to begin again to make myself; partly from the world as I find it, and partly as I make it. I’d still have the same parents, the same siblings, and the same body, yet I’d become a different person. Simplicus had neither the same parents nor the same memories as you and I. Well, I have a term for people with different bodies and different minds than mine. I call them other people. Simplicus’ entire life of struggle means far less to you or I than the most insignificant and random event of our life here.
One Random Event
One morning as a kid at summer camp, my friends and I decided to practice archery just after breakfast. We were screwing around as usual when we walked up to the range. I was the first to put an arrow in my bow. I aimed, released, and watched my arrow skim just over the top of the bales of hay that held the target. I heard a scream. My legs were barely strong enough to carry me behind the wall of hay to see a woman lying on the ground. She clutched her left arm up near her shoulder and cried hysterically. I nearly wet my pants. Her husband appeared, insane with fright and anger. My arrow wasn’t sticking in her arm. It had struck her and bounced out. I suppose the blunt target head had something to do with that. It did however, make a gouge to the bone. An ambulance took her away, and I never saw her again. I should explain that the two of them had been searching for their own errant arrow behind the wall of hay, as we walked up to begin shooting. I worried for years what would have happened if my aim were just a tiny bit to the left. I would have sent the arrow into the woman’s heart. I might have killed a young woman if only I’d turned my body a single degree to the left. On the other hand, if I’d aimed a degree lower, I’d have hit the bale of hay instead of the woman. Doubtless, I’d be a somewhat different person today if that arrow had hit the target instead of the woman. An individual life is filled with millions of such “could have†events. The totality of these millions of “could haves” makes you what you are.
My life has a continuity about it that may be traced back to the first replicating organism on this planet. The climate and food supply of my ape-like ancestors some millions of years ago continues to have a profound effect on what I am today. Each moment since my own birth has had a part in shaping the person that now sits before this keyboard. The next sentence I write is a result of the totality of this history. The stars that exploded billions of years to produce the atoms that give me my body have as much to do with the next sentence I write as does the fact that the mushroom I had for dinner last night wasn’t toxic. Life is a major result of a near infinity of minor details. Herr Simplicus simply wasn’t one of those minor details! My life is mine, his was his, and yours is yours. That I aimed my bow a bit too high back in summer camp, means far more to my life than if “I†were the Pharaoh of Egypt in a previous life.
The exploding stars that produced my body were not “me.†My millions of ancestors whose lives had so much to do with who I am at this moment, were not “me.†If some nebulous spirit descended from the heavens to further impregnate the moment of my Earthly conception, that spirit was not “me.†The single celled zygote that attached itself to my mother’s womb and began the process that eventually resulted in my sitting at this keyboard was not “me.†The microscopic dot of ultra-dense matter that triggered the Big-Bang might be the ultimate zygote of life. Still, that tiny ultra-dense dot of everything wasn’t “me.†Take a way a cell here, a memory there, turn up the heat to high, or turn on the wrong gene, and you will destroy “me.†Human life is characterized far more by its delicacy rather than by its robustness. If upon my death a spirit should rise out of my body to take flight; well, that spirit won’t be “me†either. I’m no more a spirit than I’m an arm, a leg, or even an entire collection of body parts. I am a specific, composite biological organism endowed with a unique history.
Let me make one last point. Suppose that we somehow could transcend our own death, and manage to retain our own identity. Which version of me becomes immortal? Perhaps I should better explain my question.
Suppose a man has a normal life, with the usual birth, adolescence, maturity, and old age followed by death. Let’s say that at his maturity he was a happy, successful and respected man, but in his later years he fell ill with Alzheimer’s disease. His last years in were spent in a nursing home, unable to recognize his wife and children, unable even to dress or feed himself. My question to you is, which version of this man flies away with the Angels to become immortal? I suppose we might first think that the man that exists at the moment of his death is the one to fly away. To take the man at any other place in his life would be arbitrary, besides, to preserve the man as he was in his earlier life is to discount a portion of the man’s entire life. If this were permissible, the Angels might as well “rewind” the man at his death, and thus preserve the man as he was at birth. But the “man†at birth is nothing at all like same man at his death! To preserve the man as he was at birth would say that the details of his life were not important. You might suggest that the man as he was at the height of his life should be preserved. Yes, but which point in his life would that be? Would it be when he is 21 and able to play a 90 minute soccer game, or is it when he is 50 and at the height of his successful business and social network? I would point out that even though his Alzheimer’s prevents him from recognizing his wife, even while ill he might have still enjoyed contemplating a vase of roses, or taken some secret delight in hearing a Mozart piano concerto. The day before his death might have held a moment for him that was the most beautiful of his entire life. So my question is; Which version of this ever-changing man would the Angels choose to wisk away so as to preserve his immortality? If they take the eldery and sick man, they leave behind most of his memories. If they take the young man they leave behind most of his life experience.
Alex, along with nearly everything else in this life, my premise can never be absolutely verified. I have however, attempted to explain how it makes sense to me. The subject matter is not at all simple, and despite the fact that language wasn’t designed for discussing philosophy, it will have to do. Wittgenstein remarked that:
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
The validity of my viewpoint is one thing, my ability to express it is another thing, and your abilty to understand what I have written is something else altogether. It’s a wonder that few of us ever feel we are truly understood. 
Michael
Alex I would differ from u on the point that “existence is the source of meaning” rather existence is the vehicle which allows us to arrive at meaning. thats all
DS
Polemarcus,
Pretty much agree with everything you just said there.
Polemarchus I like the way you write and I like the way that you argued your point of view there but I still feel that you have made assumptions based on your knowledge, which is inevitable, to prove what you already believe given your knowledge. I would agree that life experiences are crucial to form individuals. Character is created from experience but are you suggesting that we are little more than what has happenned to us at earlier points in our life? This could be seen as reductive to the nature of character. I know that at times what I say is not based on my experiences and how I behave does not correlate in anyway to how I have behaved before. I would instead argue that we are continually changing, in a process of flux and reflux. How we behave at any given moment depends in part on our history but also on the stimuli of the moment. So where am I trying to go with this?
We are never the same at any point in our life (as was discussed elsewhere, change is the only constant) and so we shouldn’t expect continuity throughout eternity. However is it not possible, and of course I am only speculating here, that there is an eternal part to our ‘self’ - the part which transcends life. Now I don’t wish to complicate the matter by discussing what this is (since all I am doing is giving a possibility) so I cannot provide an answer to the problem of what part of us forms our soul or which man, as it were, goes on to the next life given that we are continually changing. The problem with your argument Polemarchus is that you are denying character. How can you say what you are if you are always changing? Are you the same person as who you were five minutes ago? The only way of creating something that you can say is you is to say that you must have a soul - something not physical which unites all the different people you have been into one ‘thing’ and is it not possible that this soul could live before and after its current manifestation as YOU. So the soul makes you you, but it can make any form or series of experiences or beliefs or whatever you. what do you think? I’m not sure that I’m even convincing myself to be honest. Can you provide a critique of this please.
Hey Alex,
Some experts claim that within a period of seven years we replace all the molecules of our bodies. If that’s true, then molecule for molecule, I’ve replaced my entire body six times since I was born. The man my wife hugs today is not physically the same man she married. On the other hand, since one atom is indistinguishable from another, it would be impossible to detect a difference on this account alone.
This brings up a question with huge philosophical implications. Our body naturally uses its present physical form as a blueprint to slowly replace its cells, one-for-one. What if we could develop a machine to do this? The machine might scan the type and location of each atom in my body, and then using, say, a pile of compost as raw materials, assemble an exact duplicate of me. Suppose we perfected the machine such that it could flawlessly replicate every atom in my present body in less than a second. Now please bear in mind that atoms don’t come with identity markers or barcode identifiers of any kind. Thus, these two replicas of me are truly identical and indistinguishable from one another, save their physical location.
But what about your concept of a “soul”? If the “soul” is not made of matter, our scanning machine won’t pick it up, and thus not be able to recreate it. Would there be a difference between the original and the replica, or do you think this mystical “soul” would render the original unique from the duplicate? Given the two versions of me standing side-by-side, if you kill the original version of me and keep the duplicate, would you be guilty of murder, or would it be no different than if you had asked me to take one step to the right? Of course, what I’m describing is little more than the transporter from Star-Trek. My question is; does the transporter routinely commit murder, or is it simply a useful transporation aid?
Actually, every time I take a step to the right I do much the same as the transporter. I force all the atoms in my body to be recreated, one step to the right. In effect, I kill myself in one location and recreate myself in another.
My repeated use of quotation marks around the word “soul” likely gives away the fact that I’m skeptical about the concept. I believe that a sufficiently complex arrangement of atoms is capable of emotion. A neuron is a sophisticated logical component constructed of lowly meat. A lion could make a nice meal from me, without fear of choking on my “soul.” I’m made of meat and bone, but I see no reason why a conscious being couldn’t be constructed of silicon, or gallium arsenide, just the same.
One neuron is incapable of producing much in the way of thought, but one hundred billion neurons connected in a complex system of feedback loops does indeed appear to be capable of complex thoughts. Once you accept the fact that we are complicated machines, the idea that “no machine = no life” follows quite naturally. To think that we are incredibly sophisticated machines takes nothing away from the dignity of life. In his book, The Future of Life, E.O. Wilson wrote:
Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to the others.
Alex, I don’t see where I’ve belittled the importance of character in my assessment. If anything, I probably belabored that point in my last post, in relating all that is necessary to make me what I am. While my personal history is of critical importance in making me what I am at this moment, it isn’t everything. My favorite quote of all time is from Kierkegaard:
“The ‘self’ is only that which I am in the process of becoming.”
We live neither in the past or the future. We live in the present moment. While I live, I am in a state of “becoming.” My becoming is a product of the physical machinery of life as well as my memories. Equally important to my becoming is an element of randomness in my next thought. A number of recent books refer to a quantum aspect of our consciousness. Here’s a quote from one such book, titled, The Physics of Consciousness, by Evan Harris Walker, pp 259 - 260:
[i]"The concept of will is not compatible with the classical conception of physical processes. Classical physics would demand that nature grind out blindly and automatically the consequences of any initial action. Any mind attached to such an automaton would be only a passive observer.
…when the quantum observation happens - when the state vector collapse occurs - one synapse, from all those that could have fired, does fire."[/i]
Of all that is possible, each moment of our becoming is the continual birth of “is” from “could have been.” The world is partly as we find it, and partly as we make it.
I enjoyed reading this, Alex. You’ve spoken like a true philosopher.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas. - Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Roman proverb
I’ve never written a single paragraph that I’ve been satisfied with. As soon as I put the last period in place, I start to see cases where what I said might not be correct. Discovery, in the best sense of the word brings new questions rather than certitudes. I remember reading Charles Dawin’s warning:
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
No matter how wise you and I become, let’s agree to leave room in our hearts for that beautiful mistress known as doubt.
Michael