Philosophy Now Forum

Death is without argument or doubt the last great frontier that every man is destined to cross in this life irregardless of his will.

What we are able to question is what comes after death and the reality that awaits every man.

Existence or non-existence?

The only absolute truth is death.

Whatever comes after, You are still dead.

When people experience brain damage, some of their faculties become impaired for the rest of their life. Part of them ceases to exist perceivably. When the brain damage becomes total...

One could conjecture that the part that was lost in a brain damaged person went to a "metaphysical realm" to wait until the person dies and be rejoined with the rest of the "mind entity" or "soul" that remained in the person.

Has anyone ever become retarded due to accident of illness and then somehow untarded?

In ancient Greek mythology θάνατος (Death) and Yπνος (Sleep) were brothers. Unless we dream, we have no recollection of anything that occurred during our sleep. It's a reasonable belief I find, that the experience of death is pretty much like that, except it doesn't stop.

Are you

Without continuation of experience, both would be pretty useless in terms of what humans personally value. But the loss of one's current identity would really make even the persistence of experience not much of a soothing balm to the current identity itself. Nevertheless, perhaps this is the best a naturalist can hope for apart from the possibility of block-time and related temporal variations:

Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity: http://www.naturalism.org/death.htm

Abstract. This paper critiques the widespread secular misunderstanding of death as a plunge into oblivion. It uses a thought experiment about personal identity similar to those concocted by British philosopher Derek Parfit in his tour de force Reasons and Persons. By degrees, the reader is supposed to see that the notion of a blank or emptiness following death is incoherent, and that therefore we should not anticipate the end of experience when we die. This conclusion has a bit of a mystical feel to it, even though the premises are naturalistic.....

Just one question:
How can you definitely tell if a brain-damaged person is indeed limited as person from a soul? Isn't there a chance that the "soul"-world is in some senses always perfect and that the limitations of the body or brain not necessarily apply there?
Cheers!

The question "Who am I?" seems a required first step in addressing this question.

The proposal is that something may be dying, ending.

What is that something?

We take it for granted that we know. Do we?

Again Yamakage does it for me(not that I've quite got it yet) and I thank them for the link.

Had at least three good laughs although I have just a couple of unresolved issues about the paper but can't fault how much I agree with its ideas

I agree with Arising_uk, Thomas W. Clark's paper is very good, but as a quick estimate, I think it falls short of (the potential of) Deism.

Yes. Jack is dead. Something may move on or return to whatever but Jack is dead. Reason enough to get on and live your life now to the fullest.

I have meditated for a long time and sometimes it felt almost like a trance state where I experienced things that I hesitate to discuss for fear of being thought mad.

Nevertheless these experiences have helped to developed and cultivate my beliefs. Therefore in any discussion these experiences and resulting beliefs come into play.

Unfortunately, while trying to discuss these experiences, we don't seem to have the right words so we have to make do with what we do have. So here goes nothing.

There is nothing 'out there'. It's all in our head! It's what we do to Survive. We are quite amazing. Subconsciously we conger up whatever we need when we need it.

If we are suffocating in grief we may see or feel the presence of our loved one. If we are unable to cope with what we have created we might end up in a mental ward.

Whether brain damaged, mentally ill, or simply struggling with the loss of a loved one, we subconsciously create a scenario in our head as a way of dealing with it all - we do this in order to Survive. Not just for Jack, MysticRose or Typist to Survive but for the Soul, the Core Being to Survive. For whatever reason, I haven't got that far yet. I'm having trouble separating what I may have create from why I may have created it.

It’s all to do with Survival! But the survival of what part of us? It isn't necessarily about the survival of the body.

The "soul world" isn't perfect but it is a billion times better than this one but mistakes are still made - and we are the ones making them!

If that didn't make any sense I'm not surprised. It's difficult to find the right words in order to get this stuff across.

I hope I don’t get locked up in an asylum or put under house arrest like some of those poor bastards in history.

And the search for Truth goes on.

If there is a God out there, then death cannot be the end.

Existence of true God would logically means that there would have to be existence for us after our death.

The Supreme Being would never do cruel things.

Ha, ha!

Let me guess.

You live in a big city, and never watch nature shows.

Right?

A few quotes to follow-up on my vague mention of how the ultimate nature of time might also impinge on the issue of Death. This arena of expanding possibilities doesn't resolve anything, it only reminds the individual that knowledge is contingent and revisable. Modern society, OTH, must necessarily be responsible and parsimonious in the facts and models it accepts and methodologically approves; more belief options are always open to the individual than the critical community, as long as they do not corrupt or threaten the standards of the latter (snake oil is a potential disaster to all).

Brian Greene: Einstein greeted the failure of science to confirm the familiar experience of time with "painful but inevitable resignation." The developments since his era have only widened the disparity between common experience and scientific knowledge. ...in moments of loss I've taken comfort from the knowledge that all events exist eternally in the expanse of space and time, with the partition into past, present and future being a useful but subjective organization. --"The Time We Thought We Knew", NYT article, 2003 or 2004

Roger Penrose: I think there is a positive side to this picture of space and time being laid out there as 4 dimensions, because it tells you that all times are there once and it can affect the way one thinks about people who have died. I mean, I remember thinking in this kind of way when my mother died. In some sense she was still there because her existence is still out there in space/time although in our time she is not alive. A colleague of mine had a son who died in tragic circumstances and I presented this idea to him and it helped his understanding also. This was before I heard that Einstein had a colleague died and he wrote to the man's wife that Bessa was still out there, and that somehow this was reassuring. I certainly think this way often, that space/time is laid out and that things in the past and things in the future are out there still. --Transcript of BBC production http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e1 ... wtime.html

Paul Davies: Physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety - a timescape, analogous to a landscape - with all past and future events located there together .... Completely absent from this description of nature is anything that singles out a privileged special moment as the present or any process that would systematically turn future events into the present, then past, events. In short, the time of the physicist does not pass or flow. --from "That Mysterious Flow"

Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMla61cOMtc





Medical Strategies-Flight from Death

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g9q2wFvB80





JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY AS MECHANISM OF DEATH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXtNJFVDsSg