eternal consciousness

I think it might be possible that, after death, "you" could essentially immediately wake up as some new conscious pattern again (though almost definitely with an erased memory of this "previous life").
Before that sounds like some sort of metaphysical reincarnation type deal, here is the reasoning:

An inanimate object cannot experience existence or the flow of time, etc. because a pencil or oxygen molecule etc. has no sense organs or brain.

So say I die tomorrow.. scientists would probably agree that I'd become inanimate. My brain wouldn't be working and I'd decompose. Other things like bacteria/predators/worms would eat me. My body energy would disperse to who-knows-where over time.
At this stage "I" am dead/inanimate.. but since I can't experience the flow of time as an inanimate being, time passes instantaneously. A zillion years passes in 0 seconds as far as "I" can tell. Therefore, even if it takes the universe a million jillion zillion years to crank out computation until all my original molecules/energy/essence or whatever are unified back into the same "me" again, it'll happen instantaneously as far as I can tell. Or the universe could rearrange "me" into a different conscious entity with something equivalent to a brain. As soon as that happens (instantly in a sense), I am conscious again.

And it might be possible to never shake free of this eternal consciousness; you might always be conscious in some form or another for eternity, like groundhogs day.

(cool story bro)

kill yourself, come back and let us know.

You mean like reincarnation?

Just make sure that you tell your kids to put a rocket launcher in your coffin, just in case.

This mindset is confusing for me. If we really do recycle(spiritually or consciously) who cares? Seriously. So my conscious or spirit is reborn, how does that bring any comfort. Our "selves" or "being" is formed through experience and memory. Without those, any spirit is insignificant.

It's actually depressing. The planet would be so much better off if we had a collective of knowledge throughout human existence. At least knowledge that didn't have to be re-educated to every generation anyway. If we lived hundreds of generations as few minds, ignorance would be abolished. At least I'd hope.

EDIT: Grammar.

I have thought about eternal consciousness and thought it made sense before but I'm guessing it's only because I have a hard time accepting that the switch will eventually be flipped to 'off.' How can you experience when you are a nonbeing? It all boils down to our inability to imagine ourselves as without any form of consciousness.

Technician said:

Our "selves" or "being" is formed through experience and memory. Without those, any spirit is insignificant.

THIS x 1000

All of this is pointless, because I'm being buried with a weapons cache.If I wind up going to Hell, I'm gonna do my hardest to beat the everloving shit out of it.

Good point that a "reincarnated" "you" would essentially be someone else if experience and memory aren't brought along, but maybe its something interesting to think about without completely being The End when you die.

I think humans have a very skewed view of reality, because the only way we've ever experienced it is through our brain. Our brain has a very strong "me" feeling inside it, which might be an illusion. Like the universe is all the same program. I am this program, you are this program. I am you, I am a rock, I am a pencil. Or there is no I. I wonder if the universe program itself is an "I". Like all the light/sound in the room right now seems pinpointed on my skull. It feels like "I" am here inside the room. But really it might be a room with a 3rd person view (of sorts) of a living thing inside it who isn't me just as much as you aren't me. The death of that thing is just part of the universe's program and the room still exists after it dies. Hmm, I wonder what a psychologist would say to a person who refers to himself as 'it' in the 3rd person.

Mr. Freeze said:

If I wind up going to Hell, I'm gonna do my hardest to beat the everloving shit out of it.

Maybe you said that your last life and this is hell. Not sure if you were born holding weapons though.

It all really depends on perspective. "You" as in, your conscience (or, as some may call your spirit) is a development of the brain. Your identity is a result of this. When you die, your brain ceases to function. So, in this sense "you" disappear when you die.

However, the matter of your body does not. It is used and transformed by other things. So, in a way, you do continue on. We're all connected in that way.

The idea of being reincarnated with no recollection of anything that happened in this life doesn't bother me at all.

Krispavera said:

The idea of being reincarnated with no recollection of anything that happened in this life doesn't bother me at all.

Yes, but it's contradictory unless you can define something constant.

The chances of the same bunch of molecules forming another person is so close to zero it's not even worth considering. Aside from the astronomical numbers involved, there's the fact that the involved molecules and even atoms can easily cease to exist for all kinds of reasons. Then there's the fact that human bodies are less like collections of stuff and more like processes that use stuff as they go along. I likely no longer contain any of the material I did when I was 12, except for maybe bits of bone and tooth enamel (especially where that retainer is glued to my bottom teeth).

Unless a consciousness has some way of persisting free of a brain, which it doesn't, then it's just gone when the brain dies. What remains is mostly heat (for a little while) and residue like the goo left over when you make a vinegar/baking-soda volcano.

I find the older I get the less this bothers me. Maybe when I'm old and broken I just won't care at all. Probably a good thing.

Aliotroph? said:

The chances of the same bunch of molecules forming another person is so close to zero it's not even worth considering.

What if it turns out that the universe has these properties though:
* its tiny tiny tiniest constituent elements are digital
* the universe program cycles form going forward to reverse to forward, repeat

If that was the case it could be that "you" will exist exactly the same again and again, each time the program goes forward (and uh, I guess also when it goes reverse.. but you might feel kinda funny living a life where you throw up eggs into a frying pan, uncook them and put them back in the shells (not to mention the toilet part.. you'd always eat out of the toilet then undigest it)). Then again, maybe our current direction is reverse but it just seems normal because everything is consistently reverse together somehow.

Ok, now you are just making shit up. I know you are trying to make conversation for us but unless you just come forward and admit to a deity or a soul I see no point in continuing.

Actually, I take that back because your claims have the same merit, but Your forward/reverse universe makes no sense.

I think references to making shit up/claims/soul/deity has more to do with faith, ie. belief in the absence of evidence. I'm just saying "what if" which is more like guessing in the absence of evidence (well scientists and culture as a whole knows more than me, so the absence of my own observed evidence and extremely limited knowledge). I don't know if the universe can ever go in reverse.
Well I was addressing the problem of how randomness is astronomically unlikely to produce "me" out of molecules again assuming everything is bumping about randomly for the most part. Ignore the reversing and just suppose that maybe the universe always recycles back to its same initial conditions (maybe the start of the big bang is the equivalent of a single 1 bit or something similar) and then unfolds digitally the exact same way every time like a cellular automata. Everything might continually reoccur again and again, including my existence and typing this exact same sentence, etc. I'm not claiming this. Its probably unlikely simply given that this unknown possibility is as unlikely to be reality as a myriad of other possibilities.

I, too believe in reincarnation.

Also, the concept of ancestral memory is interesting. Read the original Dune series or watch Altered States if you're interested.

Krispavera said:

The idea of being reincarnated with no recollection of anything that happened in this life doesn't bother me at all.

It bothers me. It would make it seem so obsolete. You'd see a picture of yourself and say "You are one ugly motherfucker." Your former ways of doing things, all those skills you worked on, "right down the crapper". ANd because of this thought or thinking, I want to reincarnate as a baby with full knowledge of my former life, whether it come instantaneously or devolops over time like the movie Fluke.

My grandmother died a few days ago, and yesterday I said my last goodbyes with my family. When I took the camera out to take my mum's picture with her, it worked, but after that when my mum wanted to get a picture of just her (my grandma), the camera suddenly went nuts with the picture on the screen going sepia and warped, and any picture taken would be bizarre. On the hearse itself in the photos it was all blurred and hazed with the whole photo going green, and little orbs too. Pointing it away at me and my brother cleared it up a bit, with half a grewn picture...and a white haze near us. Mum is adamant it was her mum being a rebel like she was in hopsital, as she was QUITE quirky, and im inclined to agree. The camera magically went back to normal once shed been driven away to be cremated.

I wish I was making this up.

So yeah, I do beleive something is left after, even if its just the remnants of a personality without a shell.

gggmork said:

So say I die tomorrow.. scientists would probably agree that I'd become inanimate. My brain wouldn't be working and I'd decompose. Other things like bacteria/predators/worms would eat me. My body energy would disperse to who-knows-where over time.
At this stage "I" am dead/inanimate.. but since I can't experience the flow of time as an inanimate being, time passes instantaneously. A zillion years passes in 0 seconds as far as "I" can tell. Therefore, even if it takes the universe a million jillion zillion years to crank out computation until all my original molecules/energy/essence or whatever are unified back into the same "me" again, it'll happen instantaneously as far as I can tell. Or the universe could rearrange "me" into a different conscious entity with something equivalent to a brain. As soon as that happens (instantly in a sense), I am conscious again.

I think you need to ditch the pseudo-pantheistic bullshit and try to think more rationally about what happens.

I think it's inherently difficult for humans to imagine death. We see always things from our own perspective, so if I try to imagine myself being dead, I'm imagining my consciousness not existing any more, but if I do that in the normal way that I imagine things (from my personal perspective), it's like I'm seeing my death from the perspective of my own mind. So in a sense, the idea of an afterlife intuitively seems to make some sort of sense, although logically and rationally thinking it doesn't, and there is no reason to think that such a process exists.

The simple truth is that when you're dead, you're dead. You're not going to magically come back from the dead in millions of years time as the result of random chance. It's over.

gggmork said:

I think references to making shit up/claims/soul/deity has more to do with faith, ie. belief in the absence of evidence.

Which is exactly what you're postulating. And your idea comes from the same 'kinds' of thinking that those other things come from, that is, the fear of death and finality. All of these ideas, including yours rests on the idea that there is some intangible thing about 'us' that persists beyond biological death. That is magical thinking.

"The simple truth is that when you're dead, you're dead. You're not going to magically come back from the dead in millions of years time as the result of random chance. It's over."

This is sort of a statement of faith, because its stated in a matter of fact way whereas there probably isn't enough evidence for science, let alone a single brain, to know this or the true nature of the universe.

Here is cellular automata rule 30:
http://teachers.tmu.ac.ir/ghaemi/page2/files/CA_rule30s.png

Even though its complicated (like the universe is complicated), every time you run that program from the same initial conditions it produces the exact same pattern. Using this as a desperate analogy to how the universe MIGHT work (since I don't definitely know how it works), lets say the bottom row of that picture is our current state of the universe, including me and you and everything. Hell, our universe could be a simulation. Maybe hyper complex aliens are playing multiple instances of it on multiple computers like we might play the sims. Everytime one of them fires up the program, and it gets to the last row of the picture, it produces "me" again, in body/matter at least, though I agree if that were the case, there'd be no continuity of experience and memory... even if that "me" would be entirely identical to the current me.
I can't really even entirely rule out the possibility that my thoughts MIGHT carry over into a 'next life'. Because who knows how complex the universe could be or become. Maybe it will become so complex that it will start keeping track of past information/states, so it could be possible that the current information/experience/memory constituting "me" could carry over to a new me fillion jillion gillion years from now. I'm just saying that, given my limited knowledge, I can't rule that OUT, but I certainly can't rule it in as definitely positive either.

gggmork said:

Maybe it will become so complex that it will start keeping track of past information/states, so it could be possible that the current information/experience/memory constituting "me" could carry over to a new me fillion jillion gillion years from now.

The constituent atoms that make up your physical body with either be transferred into heat energy or decay into nitrogen and aluminum in fairly short order. Depending on what is done with your body after death of course. The half-life of carbon is only like 5000 years.

I can't really even entirely rule out the possibility that my thoughts MIGHT carry over into a 'next life'. Because who knows how complex the universe could be or become. I'm just saying that, given my limited knowledge, I can't rule that OUT, but I certainly can't rule it in as definitely positive either.

Then you need to do more learning about the future evolution of our universe. Yes, you can do this. There is science going on trying to understand these things and it's not very hard.

It sounds like what you're trying to say is: Well I don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, but hey, maybe dragons are going to fly out of my ass and I'll become king of the multiverse and be able to walk on my head, WHO KNOWS, RIGHT?

This is a little more reasonable comparison to your idea: Barack Obama is a space alien sent here to destroy the united states. He hasn't proven that he ISN'T a space alien sent here to destroy the united states, so I can't rule it out. That is fairly close to your line of reasoning

Ha ha, yeah pretty much. Ok, I guess I'm done being an idiot for now.

chances are just about same as going to heaven and enjoying afterlife jumping on clouds with Jesus

gggmork said:

"The simple truth is that when you're dead, you're dead. You're not going to magically come back from the dead in millions of years time as the result of random chance. It's over."

This is sort of a statement of faith,

No, it isn't. What I state is the only reasonable conclusion if you look at the world we see around us and examine the evidence in a rational way. Do we know everything about how the brain works? No, but we know enough to know that the human mind is a product of electrical impulses in the physical brain. When those impulses stop, the person that they represented no longer exists. None of this is "faith".

Is it possible that I'm wrong and there is some way that humans could be reincarnated? Yes, it is always possible. My opinions will change if and when new evidence becomes available. But until then I don't see any plausible mechanism by which this could occur. The only conclusion I can draw is that reincarnation isn't possible and theories to the contrary are just wishful thinking.

blah blah blah cellular automata

Seriously? This is some first rate bullshit you're coming up with here. I refer you back to my previous comment: ditch the bullshit and look at what we have really discovered. You aren't going to discover any kind of profound truth about the universe through this kind of tenuous nonsense, only self-delusion.

fraggle said:

I think you need to ditch the pseudo-pantheistic bullshit and try to think more rationally about what happens.

I think it's inherently difficult for humans to imagine death. We see always things from our own perspective, so if I try to imagine myself being dead, I'm imagining my consciousness not existing any more, but if I do that in the normal way that I imagine things (from my personal perspective), it's like I'm seeing my death from the perspective of my own mind. So in a sense, the idea of an afterlife intuitively seems to make some sort of sense, although logically and rationally thinking it doesn't, and there is no reason to think that such a process exists.

The simple truth is that when you're dead, you're dead. You're not going to magically come back from the dead in millions of years time as the result of random chance. It's over.

I've thought about what gggmork stated in the first post. The point of the discussion becomes, for me, what is consciousness? It's a philosophical question. At what point does the human have consciousness? Sometime in the womb? What is that consciousness like at the very start? Is it weak, vague and fuzzy? Does it 'come on' gradually and its awareness increase as the brain's neural network increases? Or does it 'come on the scene' immediately like a light switch going on? Is consciousness the result of a complex brain or is it something separate from matter entirely? If the former, then the question becomes at what point in the pregnancy does the embryo start having consciousness... and how does something that does not have consciousness then have consciousness; how does matter have as a biproduct something that is totally amaterial.... Can we really expect a machine to develop consciousness? Does complexity of matter really have the potential to produce amaterial consciousness? Does that follow logically? that something amaterial would come from something that is strictly material?

But back to what I think gggmork is asking: who is to say that after you die, and your consciousness ceases to exist, that when another life form is born, that 'you' aren't the consciousness that is germinating in that embryo? Where is the 'you' in consciousness? Why must it only be in one life form for the entire history of history, let alone the history of the universe, let alone the history of the Earth?

While I think it is unlikely this is how it really works, it raises an interesting problem with consciousness. That problem is that there is no satisfying explanation for what consciousness is, and its origins. The only way that I can make sense of it is that it is a timeless thing that has always been and transmutes between matter. What I mean is, in its purest form, it is outside time, it never wasn't. But when it comes under the program of a brain, it has an experience specific to the program of the brain: so humans have the problems and experiences that we have of temporality: before, after, beginning, end; and the problems of logic: "When was the beginning? How did the first matter in the beginning come about? Where did it come from? Where did the laws of the universe come from? how did they come about? Where did gravity come from? Where did the first elements come from? Why did the combinations of the raw materials that mysteriously came about in the beginning eventually form 'life' forms? Where did the program for survival and 'progress' come from? Why?

These problems are a result of consciousness being tied to a human brain. If that consciousness is tied to a simpler brain, like that of a golden retriever, its going to have a different thought process. But logically it doesn't make less or more sense to say that consciousness assumes the experience of human form than it does to say that it comes about as a biproduct of blind complexity, as it were. The point is, there is no logically satisfactory explanation--consciousness just is.

How about that there karma which determines if you come out the vagina of a wealthy aristocrat, or you end up hatching out of an egg as an ant? If you came back as a life form which lacks sentience then you wouldn't be able even ponder past lives, or think about much of anything. So the concept is relatively flawed, beyond the scope of scientific reasoning.

Nobody ever talks about their past lives in which they were a rat, or a beggar. They always talk about being Knights, somebody important, or a noteworthy historical figure. Which come across as the individual wishing to project an ideal archetype onto themselves.

Although people do claim to have a natural intuition or proficiency towards something in the early stages of their life without ever being taught it. These are evidenced as traces of a former life. It would also make for an explanation of children with gender identity confusion. Such as they were a lady and now they a little boy and enjoy dresses and dolls.

But enough mental diarrhea for one day.

Hellbent said:

The point is, there is no logically satisfactory explanation--consciousness just is.

I disagree with this assessment and it seems that this kind of reasoning really just descends into a question of semantics. When you are talking about "consciousness", what are you referring to, exactly? For me, the word means a certain higher level of awareness, encompassing behaviour like self awareness and the ability of a being to process and interact with its surroundings.

It seems that higher mammals like humans, apes and dogs are "more conscious" than lower animals, like insects and fish. These animals show a more elaborate understanding of the world and themselves than their counterparts. But really, you might just say that it's a type of intelligence, that these are more intelligent animals and what we call "consciousness" is an emergent behaviour of that. Certainly what we call "more conscious" animals are also "more intelligent" animals. I don't really see why it's necessary to add anything more this definition.

There seems to be a rather sad tendency to go from talking about what constitutes "consciousness", which is a perfectly sensible discussion, to start talking about consciousness as though it's some kind of non-physical property that transcends the normal boundaries of the universe. These types of discussion aren't really very useful and I think go way off into the deep end of baseless unfalsifiable nonsense. I think they stem from ideas like cartesian dualism (which is basically completely untenable with today's understanding of how the brain works) and outdated religious ideas about souls and spirits that also don't have any real basis in reality.

Really it seems just another example of the type of religious thinking where we like to imagine ourselves as special and important to the universe - whether it's imagining the earth as the center of the universe with everything circling around us, imagining the universe as having been created for us by (effectively) a super-human who looks just like us. Thinking that we have some undefinable property of "consciousness" that less intelligent animals don't have makes us "special", and so obviously having that property should grant us other "special" benefits.

I bet every universe is supposed to have third-person omniscient narrator, who sounds like James Earl Jones, explaining shit to all the clueless inhabitants locked inside their subjective skulls, but ours was accidently shipped without one.